Does the pope chop onions?

I rather like what I read about Pope Francis.  He was not afraid to butt heads with Argentine politicians. He lived rather humbly for a Prince, sometimes cooking his own meals, riding a bus to work, strolling the slums for a personal look at  the real world.

I suppose his new responsibilities will temper that sort of thing.  It's hard to imagine the staff will let him rummage in the fridge for a half-pound of nice pampas beef,  light off the charcoal, and grill it himself.

But I really don't know, of course. My ignorance of how a pope lives is comprehensive. Because any ignorance a personal failing, I set out to rectify it by exhaustive research*, namely a look at Wiki.

There I discover that when he uttered "Accepto"  he was instantly blessed wiith a huge "family."  Or beset. Butlers and cooks and cleaners and chaplains and secretaries and body guards -- all those and more constituting what his church calls the papal "family. "

For a life-long celibate, that has to be a little unsettling. Most fathers, using the term in its biological sense,  get to work into the role gradually, learning as they go how to deal with a family, how to either supervise or ignore a forced grouping of fractious, bickering, grasping, malcontented egos.

Even the best of them will from time to time  lose it -- or persuasively pretend to. He rises to full height. Steely eyes sweep over the kids and cousins and in-laws:

 "Sit down and shut up!"

May Pope Francis never reach that point, but if he does we'll know for certain that he and we share a defining human trait.

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*Exhaustive research is somewhat more amicable when the weather offers no  invitation to leave the cheery hearth.  So there's been a lot of exhaustive research around here lately, and frankly we're sick of it. So, Your Holiness, if at an early point in your new papacy you could file a petition for a bit of sunshine and more March-like temperatures in the general vicinity of 43N by 95W, we'd all take it kindly.

Reloading side bar; on self-induced gun lust

I don't know if William Strunk deemed  throwaway lines bad writing, but I do know they can be expensive if you treat them stupidly. Some  silly thing pops into your head. Okay. Write it down, hope someone smiles, then forget it.

Do not ponder what your fingers typed, especially some idiocy about a hole in your arsenal. Excuse me. Veritable arsenal.

It's true. I own no non-assaulty rifle in .223 Remington. Therefore, when using real guns,  I'm limited to launching fast projectiles only in diameters of .244, .257, .264, and .308.

Suddenly, my soul is troubled.

Tales from the reloading shack

I finally said to Hell with it. The Catholics could probably pick a new Pope without my counsel, so I switched off the idiotic cable channels and hit the reloading room.

Turns out I was right about the Pope, of course. A Pope from the Pampas. First Jesuit ever, and I suspect that will be interesting. I had a great grad school buddy, a Jesuit priest who -- true to type -- liked to fool around with Aristotelian logic, a discipline overdue for renewed respect here in the image-mad 21st Century, and I -- as a backslid Methodist --  can find no reason whatsoever why my Catholic friends should not lead us out of the of darkness of reasoning via sound bites and photo ops.

But I digress. Worse, I intrude on arcane and complex theological matters, a field best left to such experts such as Tammy Faye, Jerry Wright,  and Jimmy Swaggert.

---

It  began as a .30-06 afternoon for no better reason that these noble dies were in the press. Production was just one box, 20 rounds, carrying a 125-grain SP,  Sierras (I think) at a book speed of just under 3,000. It's a little heavy for gophers, somewhat under powered for woolly mammoths, but usable for either. (Obligatorily: "If I do my part.")

Besides, it's fun to reload, hefty enough for a big-handed guy to handle without tweezers and pretty forgiving from any reasonable safety stand point.

But not that forgiving, and I took a spiritual break during the process to thank Whomever that I am such a frightened old woman when in the vicinity of high combustibles. The partial green box of bullets was plainly marked 125 grain SP. Something doesn't feel quite right. So weigh one. 150 grains. Weigh them all. 150 grains each. Recall that I buy a lot of components at auctions and loophole shows, and some sellers are just not trustworthy. Dig out the actual 125 grainers and proceed as planned, then on to the real chore that's been nagging at my conscience.

A few hundred unprocessed 5.56x45 mm cases (also known as the .223 McNamara Stalemate)  have been kicking around the shack since about 2006. It isn't that there's a shortage of ready rounds at hand. It's more like a spiritual obligation. Any empty cartridge case calls to Heaven. "I feel so empty. Help me, please. So lonely. Prime me. Fulfill me."

Compassionate to even the most inadequate, I yielded to the little devils. I yielded for quite a while, enough to get about half of them ready for primers. Then even my patience ran out. Perhaps tomorrow.

But seriously, folks, I have nothing other than my assaultish looking rifle in which to shoot these things, and I do understand that they can be supremely accurate in an actual gun. If I organize those facts into a rationale for buying yet another bolt-action rifle, I do so hope you will be understanding.

Did anyone else ever wake up feeling so highly intellectual  and literarily competent that a long post explaining the world  -- with unprecedented insight and elegance -- was a sure thing?  Then you wrote it down. Then you drained the coffee dregs as you "edited."  Then something inside you whispered, or, rather, shrieked, "what utter, banal, bullshit."  

So you decided to clean the damned house instead. 

Hit delete. Confirm delete.  Sometimes a guy's most important contribution to the world of letters.

Me. This morning.  That's why  my kitchen almost sparkles. It's also why you don't get my analysis of Fox News thighs as a marker of societal decline.