HMD #37 - Court-Date

Well some professional obligations are keeping HM quite busy of late, but here's the overdue update on the Westley-Buttercup ice-cream social:

1. Nice, well mannered young man. HM likes him.

2. His first "date" ever. He just turned 18.

3. His parents allowed him to go, but he pointedly neglected to tell his older siblings he went out to meet over ice cream with a...gulp...Catholic girl. One who is a cheerleader and wears the short-skirted uniform at that.

4. He is pondering the USMC but is concerned it will interfere with his Christian values and obligations.

5. No dancing allowed by his pastor or his parents.

6. He is not a fan of some of the #5-like rules and regs of his very fundamentalist Baptist upbringing.

7. He asked if she had any objections to dating a Protestant, she said not as long as said Protestant has any objections to dating a Catholic.

8. They plan to have another meeting when he returns from family vacation next week.

We shall see - HM thinks these are two very good kids who, while virtuous and religious in their own respective faiths, are too different for any sort of relationship to be successful beyond being friends. Maybe boot-camp penpals.

HM has been wrong about such matters before. The Athlete leaves for college in 3 weeks and intends to persist from afar.

Sigh.....

HMD #36.5

Beautiful Stranger takes the lead:

Westley and Buttercup are scheduled to meet - ice cream social is tomorrow....tensions are high....cute little sundresses are littering the hallways and bathrooms....hair options are being considered.....

HM will update you accordingly, after dodging the "does this make my butt look big?" and "I think I'm getting arm fat!" bullets several dozen more times between now and then.

HM out...I hear practice primping coming from the third floor....must feign sleep.....

HMD #36: Question of the week

If you are a Princess, do you choose to remain with a Beautiful Liar (Beyonce, Beyonce...Shakira, Shakira)...or do you take a chance on a Beautiful Stranger (Madonna, Madonna)???



The Beautiful Liar



More drama with the belaguered Princess/Athlete duo...another spat erupted over the original lying episode. The Princess, whether sadly or luckily, has inherited her mother's cross-examination skills and is now tending to pick apart even the most mundane statements the Athlete makes and stories he tells, because she has a hard time believing him. It is good that she spots these things, but it's not exactly her most endearing trait. She's caught him in some pretty glaring inconsistencies more than a few times. All I can say is that it's a painful process to watch them both go through.



He's not helping matters - the more defensive he gets, the more likely it is that he's not being completely candid or accurate. He admits it eventually, but not before making her feel guilty for not believing him ("I can't believe you think so little of me...") - even when he knows he's not telling the whole truth. She nailed him for being emotionally manipulative as well as dishonest, and rightly so. And so here we are...five days, several dozen roses, countless texts, and scores of profuse apologies later. She remains sequestered in her garret on the 3rd floor, while he stands on his family's hillside across the river, gazing over at our 'hood and missing her.



To his credit, he's recognized that much of this petty dishonesty stems from hiding information from very strict and unyielding parents, and he's making strides by being more open with them, even when it means he isn't allowed to go places he might have otherwise gone under cover of going to a movie with friends, etc. It's a tough behavior to change. He swears he's trying. I hope he's being honest about that, at any rate. However, for now, and perhaps for good, they are on boyfriend-girlfriend hiatus again.



The Beautiful Stranger



In other news, the Royal Grandparents have acquired the teen-yard-slave services of a fine-looking, well-raised, and respectable young man...let's call him Westley....who spotted our Princess (Buttercup?) flitting about barefoot in the garden in one of her cute little sundresses, blonde tresses blown about by the breeze, laughing and chasing her little brother through the beanstalks. (This was a few weeks ago, during the first break-up period.) I was sitting on the porch swing and watched him stop dead in his tracks, crane his head forward...I SAW the poor boy's jaw drop open, but then he recollected himself, turned away (and saw me smirking as he did so), grabbed the rake he'd come out back to get, and practically ran back around to the front of the house to keep working with King Grandpa. We ate dinner, but young Westley remained outside because he hadn't finished his work and didn't want to intrude, despite numerous invitations to join us. When we were done, he came in to check with King Grandpa about the next day's agenda, but fell silent when the Princess came into the kitchen with a stack of plates. She (unaware of his interest in her) smiled, said hello, and offered to prepare him a plate now that he'd finished working. He smiled back and very politely declined, because his mother was holding dinner for him at home...but then clever Queen Grandma mentioned that Princess had prepared one of the side dishes. He promised to try what she'd made when he came back the next day. :)



Apparently he's smitten. He made some discreet inquiries the next day and asked Queen Grandma a number of questions about the Princess, her intereests, her grades, the state of her soul, etc., and then asked King Grandpa for his permission to speak to me about possibly COURTING the Princess, as the Beloved is not here for him to ask properly. Yep. He gets it. He's a hybrid-homeschooler. Another half-Catholic, half [fundamental Baptist of some sort] boy with a very conservative upbringing. Just got done with his high school work a year early and is pondering college vs. enlisting in the USMC when he turns 18. (Former Marine King Grandpa is skipping about with joy and whistling the Marine Corps hymn...Queen Grandma is dropping all sorts of little hints via email and phone call about how gorgeous these two blondes would be as a couple...) He is a very handsome boy, the Royal Grandparents have raved about him and what a good kid and hard worker he is, and the Princess admits he's....interesting. Young Westley confirmed to Queen Grandma that he approves of Princess Buttercup's culinary abilities as well as her overall appearance, demeanor, and toddler-wrangling skills. Queen Grandma heard about the latest "off-again" incident and gave him our home number yesterday. He indicated that he would be making use of it in the very near future.



So the question remains. Should she stand by her Beautiful Liar and hope he does some growing up and character building, or invite the Beautiful Stranger over for a chaperoned dinner or perhaps an ice cream cone outing with the family?



Hard to know....all HeloMom does know is that she needs some Jimmy Buffett-esque boat drinks....

Wedding bells....

Fr. Cutie got married yesterday. I wonder if they're registered anywhere.

Thoughts On The Fallen

It's been about 18 months now since we were all wringing our hands over Fr. Francis Mary Stone's decision to leave the priesthood due to his relationship with a woman he met through his ministry at EWTN. He was about to become a biological father. Yep, he sinned, defied his priestly vows and vocation - and he was publicly bludgeoned for it. He then had to choose between walking away from his vocation and manning up to take moral and financial responsibility for his child and the mother (hopefully his bride by now), or living his vocation by remaining in the priesthood, thereby denying his child - the one innocent involved - a traditional father-child relationship and leaving another single moter out there struggling to raise a child - his child - on her own. I never have and never will condone what got him to the point of having to choose between these options, but I can understand and support what he ultimately did. He's a dad, and he's doing what he can, in his 40's, to start a business and generate enough income to support his family.

THEN there's Fr. Alberto Cutie, the soon-to-be Episcopalian. Caught with his speedo and his grope on. As our dear Fr. Erik points out, he's the worst kind of hypocrite. Becoming a Protestant as a means of getting his cupcake and ea....ok, never mind. You know what I mean. So he's leaving the Church without following the proper laicizing process, hoping to forge ahead as an Episcopalian cleric of some sort, with his concubine-turned-wife at his side grinning and squeezing his....ok, never mind....for the cameras.

Father Oprah? I think not. Nay, I foresee them becoming the Jim & Tammy Faye of Univision. Get thee behind me....

Unlike Dave Stone, Alberto Cutie's defection really pisses me off!!!

(Yeah, yeah...prayers, charity, and all that. This is why I am NOT a religious, it's the bitter, snarky thing...)

Helo Mom #25 - A trend?

Our dear Athlete is coming to Mass with us tomorrow for the second time in three weeks. We are heading to Grandma's for dinner afterwards, so that may be the draw, but hey...it's progress.

When he joined us two weekends ago, he said that was the first time he's actually paid attention to a [homily] in a long time. (And it wasn't even the one good homilist we have around here saying Mass...sheesh!) He also liked the fact that we were done in an hour, whereas his Methodist service typically lasts for around two hours, then there's the social donut and coffee component for another hour thereafter.

This seems odd....I mean, they only believe in two of the seven Sacraments, they believe that faith is all it takes to get to Heaven...what the heck do they have to talk about for that long? They do sing better than we do, though, I'll give 'em that.

Anyway, I think the Princess is kinda happy he's been joining us, because a fair number of their schoolmates attend and can see that they are "together"...at church and not at a kegger or in someone's back seat. I also sense some gladness on the Athlete's part, both for the respectable "together" time as well as the fact that he can lock eyes with anyone he catches "admiring" her from the pews. Apparently he noticed several young knaves last time, and pushed one into a locker on that following Monday morning at school for doing too much peering and not enough praying.

Ahhh.....young love.....

HeloMom out.

(P.S.: No "Passion Sunday" comments. Naughty Little Therese took care of that already.)