Lost Cause

So, I'm in charge of RCIA at our church this year.  I'm not sure if I mentioned that.  I've really been enjoying the process and I'm really enjoying reflecting on what more I can do next year to make the experience better and run more smoothly.  I've already got a few things in mind.  However, I'm also having a bit of trouble this week as we come to the end of Lent.  What is this trouble?  Absent-mindedness.

Working for two separate parishes in the same diocese for Christmas and Easter is not easy.  Easter is especially more difficult for the Catholic Church because we really take Lent seriously.  This is not to disparage Protestant beliefs at all, though.  I was raised Protestant, so I feel qualified in this instance to say so.  Angela, having experienced both sides would likely agree if her family joined in the Lenten festivities as I suspect they might have.  Just take a look at the list of things we do:

1. Fat Tuesday- eat all your delicious goodies now, because forty days is going to feel like eternity.
2. Ash Wednesday- proclaim your Christianity with ash on your head day; by the way this is a fast day so remember not to eat.
3. Fridays- remember all those delicious things you like to eat that come from animals?  Not today.  You can come to the fish fries though, because fish don't count for some reason.  As long as you're here, stay for the stations of the cross too!
4. Rites for RCIA candidates and catechumen (yep, that's happening!)
5. Confirmation for the high school crowd; we put children first.
6. Palm Sunday- get free stuff day (namely a palm).
7. Holy Thursday- Jesus died
8. Good Friday- Jesus is still dead, so let's get fasting!
9. Easter Vigil (Saturday)- Jesus is alive!  And guess what?  Everyone gets confirmed/baptized who went through RCIA.  Woo!
10. Easter Sunday- Do I really need to explain this?  Don't forget to check for rogue eggs. 

 Incidentally, Easter doesn't end on Easter Sunday.  That's when Easter begins.  Bet you didn't know that.  Unless you're Catholic.  Then you should know that.

So being as I have a lot of stuff I need to prepare for during this time, I've become really, really, really, really absent-minded.  This is extremely emphasized by the story I am coming to the point with.  Yesterday, twice, I locked my keys in the car.  The first time was when I accidentally left them in my coat pocket when I spontaneously decided it was warm enough to discard my coat and leave it in the car.  The second time, I left them in the ignition for some reason.  Both of these times, I happened to have my spare key on me and was able to get in anyway, however, I was irritated with myself for not paying close enough attention to what I was doing and for also doing it twice in the same day.  Then today, I was picking up a package for one of the churches and spontaneously decided to discard my coat in the car again.  I likewise decided not to take the thing that has my spare keys in it because, "I [was] only going in for a minute."  This proved to be a mistake.  Moments ago, recounting the fact that I had locked my keys in the ignition, I made a mental note to take the keys out of the ignition and put them (you guessed it) in my coat pocket.  I had planned to leave my cell phone in the car too, but since I shut the door too quickly after I tossed my coat in, I decided not to bother.  By the time I realized I had locked my keys in the car, it was too late to do anything about it.  I also didn't have my spare, so I ended up having to call the police.  I think if they knew this was the third time I had done it in 24 hours, they might have left me to suffer.  Honestly, I will be happy when Easter comes.  Maybe I'll regain some sanity then.  Four more days!

Paranoia Cake

I think part of being a woman is having an intricate network of internal paranoia.  By internal I mean only our BFFs and significant others truly know how deep it goes.  They see all of the parts of us.  For the sake of illustrating my point, I will allow a brief glimpse into my internal paranoia factory.  First I will simply tell you the 2 simple ingredients that it took to bake today's paranoia cake: my sons strange eye color and one egg.  Now here's the recipe. 

It all started yesterday when I realized Bishops eye color hadn't changed in a long time.  He was born with blue eyes and around 4 months he got this brown patch on his left eye.  I just assumed his eye color was changing because neither of us has blue eyes and I don't know of anyone in our family with blue eyes.  They never changed, they're still like that.  Although now his eyes just look grey.  So I looked it up on the internets and it's called sectoral heterochromia.  The most likely explanation is just some weird genetics going on.  However, one of the rare explanations for any type of heterochromia is chimerism.  That's where 2 separate fetuses fuse together very early in development and you end up with one seemingly normal person with 2 sets of DNA.  My first thought was if that's true, I could possibly have twins in the future (which is scary). 

Of course my rational brain remind me that this is very unlikely and my son is not a chimera.  But now I just happen to be thinking about the possibility of having twins and how hard that would be, etc. 

Then the final nail in the paranoia coffin: I was making eggs this morning and I cracked open the second one and there was 2 yokes in it!  My first thought was "OMG, this egg is twins, is God trying to tell me something?!" 

Then my rational brain enters the room and says "you're not even pregnant.... why are you worrying about fictional babies?" 

The answer: because that's what women do, worry about fictional scenarios.  We are prepared for ALL OF THE THINGS! 

Home Stretch

I read Angela's post before posting again.  This time it was a good thing.  She posted similar things to what I was going to post.  Now I feel a little obligated to do something different.

I kind of feel like I failed Lent this year.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it was all of the business of the time for RCIA and church things, it didn't really lend well to allowing me to just go through the experience.  About the best part of this Lent was going on that retreat a couple of Saturdays ago.  I feel like I came to terms with some really big stuff in my life on that day.

There are a couple of retreats coming up after Lent.  I'm considering going to them and keeping a journal about the experiences.  It seems like something that would be beneficial.  I could use more time with God.  In fact, that's a really bizarre statement, considering I work at two churches.  You'd think you would have more time for worship.  It seems like since I've got more access to church, I tend to spend more time in prayer than I did before, but I'm not sure that I actually have set aside more time to really spend in worship.  So yeah, kind of disappointed with myself, but there will be other Lents.  Only a few more days until Easter!

Home Stretch

It's less than a week now before I can eat sweets again!  I'll admit, I did cheat once.  Or twice.  No ones counting.  One time was for our anniversary so I don't feel bad.  I did pretty good.  I lost about 7 pounds.  I think I've gone as far as I want to with changing my diet.  I make pretty good food choices most of the time.  I don't wanna be so strict about food that it makes me miserable cause that's not how I want to live my life.  So I guess the next step is starting an exercise routine.  We're going to invest in a treadmill so hopefully that will give me a better opportunity to exercise.  I can walk while Bishop eats his breakfast and watches his morning cartoons. 

I wont be eating a ton of sweets either even though I can.  I was thinking about getting some of those dark chocolate squares to satisfy my cravings.  Maybe if my exercising goes really well, I can splurge even more. 

I've actually been feeling pretty good about body lately.  Maybe that extra 7 pounds just made me look plumper. 

Roll or Die

So this is what I do when I'm hanging out with the awesome people in my life.  We enjoy spending time around a table rolling dice and telling stories.  Tonight's tale was a pirate epic put together by Tom.  He's the one hidden behind the awesome wooden screen gifted by the awesome Brit (not pictured here, unfortunately).  We are totally going to use this to death!

It's hard to believe, but this is actually our tenth year together doing this.  Or the eleventh...probably the eleventh.  I've shared this game with Angela and some of her awesome friends in the past.  It's a great way to get to know people and a pretty good ice breaker along with being fun besides.  I can only imagine what this table is going to look like when we're actually all together again.  We're in ever increasing numbers these days.  Muahaha.

John

John wants me to talk about how awesome he is.  He likes it when I talk about him.  So this whole post is going to be about him. 

John is pretty awesome.  He spent 2 of his weekends putting a shed up in our yard.  It looks really good.  He also spends his Saturday mornings hanging out with Bishop so I can sleep in.  I'm not a morning person and on Saturday, I get to be lazy.  He also cooks lots of delicious food.  He's taught me a lot of what I know about cooking.  I mean, I wasn't horrible before but I certainly know a lot more now. 

He never argues with me, even when I'm wrong.  I mean, we do argue about stuff but they're more like discussions in that we're disagreeing but no one is getting upset.  Those usually have to do with movies or TV or some kind of fictional scenario. 

He's very socially adept.  Whenever we're out in public in social situations, I never have to worry about awkward conversations because he always has something to say. 

He's an amazing father.  I'm happy that he's the one who will be teaching our son what it means to be a man. 

John being an awesome father

Lexi's Cones

I was just about to go to bed last night when I looked over to find my dog chewing her paw up.  I cleaned it out and managed to wrap it up for the night, but I was worried about her continuing to do more damage today.  I opted to get up early this morning to construct a cone so that I could ensure that she didn't hurt herself further this morning.  I missed the first attempt, but I documented the others.

Attempt 1:  I got the cone around Lexi's neck.  Within ten seconds, she smacked it against the door and it popped off.

Attempt 2:  After discovering that I didn't seal the ends of the cone properly, I wrapped copious amounts of duct tape around the sucker then tried again.

Perhaps you've noticed what I failed to notice.  In trying to make sure the cone wasn't too tight, I left a crucial opening.  Lexi stuck her paw in and snapped the cone off her neck like a trained martial artist.

Attempt 3:  I wrapped copious amounts of duct tape around the cone again to fix it.  This time, I made it quite small so that she couldn't do her snapping paw trick again.

I was pretty much convinced that when I came home today, it was going to be in pieces on the floor.  So I resolved to go to the store and get a cone for her.  While I was there, I also splurged and picked up one of these food toys that they have for dogs.  You put their dinner inside this cone shaped toy and as the dog plays with it, pieces pop out, so it turns dinner into a game.

When I came home today, this third attempt cone was still intact!  I resolved to go ahead and give her the actual cone, however, so that I could save my cardboard shame cone for later if I needed it:

Look how happy she is!

I then gave her the supper kong to play with.  It took her all of thirty seconds to figure out how to get the pieces out.  For a while, she was perfectly happy just rolling the thing all over the place, but she soon decided that was boring.  Instead, she discovered that if she put the toy at the end of the furniture and let it go, gravity would take care of the rest.  She proceeded to do this.  Over and over again.

Oh yeah, immediately after she finished her supper, she figured out how to contort herself so that she can get her foot into the cone.  Round four goes to Lexi.

Secret Project Pictures

I realized I totally forgot to post pictures of the super secret project I was working on.  It's only been.... over a month since I gave it to John.  Hopefully blogger lets me upload them. 

Just ignore the phone reflection in the first picture.  That's not part of it.  I made him book art.  I saw something similar (and way more detailed) in an etsy shop and since I didn't have $100, I decided to try and make something myself.  I think it turned out pretty nice.  I had to commandeer one of our picture frames though.  I didn't wanna drive all the way to ikea for a new one cause I don't know that area very well and I get scared easily.  I figured we could just grab another one next time we're in the area.  I don't even think John noticed that it was missing. 

In case you're wondering, he bought me a blue tooth speaker.  I use it everyday.  We listen to music before bed now.  It's very relaxing. 

Right of Passage

When I was about nine years old, my mother taught me how to cross-stitch.  She made it sound like it was a big deal, so I wanted to learn.  I remember the hours of torment poking myself with the needle, getting the thread tangled, making mistakes and not knowing how to fix them.  I remember many times when I had to ask my mom to help me fix the mistake I had made.  I also remember many times when my mom refused because she wanted me to learn on my own.  I hated it at first because It was difficult and painful, but eventually I started to figure things out.  I learned how to hold the needle so that I didn't stab myself constantly.  I learned how to thread the needle easily.  I learned how to fix major mistakes I had made and to pay very close attention to what I was doing because small mistakes early can lead to huge mistakes later.  Most importantly, however, I learned that at the end of all of this pain and toil and aggravation, when everything was said and done, when it was finished and I could stand back and see what hours upon hours upon hours of work got me, I saw a beautiful picture unfold and I got the satisfaction of knowing that all that effort paid off.

I still make mistakes when I sew.  I still have to go back and fix things I've done wrong.  I'm still learning tricks too; this last year I finally figured out how to avoid having the ends of the thread become horribly uneven.  Tonight, I also did something I have never done before:  I somehow broke the needle.  I still don't know how it happened.  The eye of the needle somehow snapped off.  I didn't even know that was possible!  I feel kind of accomplished.

Addiction

I never told anyone this, but at the beginning of lent, I decided to give up looking at facebook and other time wasting websites from my phone.  To accomplish this, I moved all of the distracting apps from the desktop screen.  That latest a WHOLE day.  I've just been going down to the list of apps and accessing them from there which has slowed me down an entire half second every time.  So today I deleted all of them from my phone.  I even deleted the game I play every day where I collect butterflies.  I was pretty much done with it anyway but I decided to cut ties early. 

Smart phones should come with some kind of anti-addiction feature which only allows you to use certain apps or limits the amount of time you can use it every day.  Although I use mine for music now since John bought me a blue tooth speaker.  Since I got that speaker, I've listened to the mumford and sons albums like 50 million times on youtube.  They never get old.  I should probably just buy them.  I can't remember the last time I bought actual music.  Amazon sometimes gives me credits for 2-3 songs but I never know what to get.  I haven't gotten any lately though.  I think they stopped doing that cause I've been buying diapers instead of textbooks.  Amazon is like "you don't have time for music anymore cause you have babies".  You're wrong amazon.  Babies love music. 

Tickle Farts

I waited too long to blog.  We got caught up watching TLC.  The Learning Channel.  They should rename it to The Human Train Wreck Channel or THTWC.  Fun fact: if you watch over one minute of my 600lb life, you go directly to hell.  Then after that, there was some show about people with random weirdness.  Like, completely unrelated weirdness.  One girl had a beard and was talking about accepting herself and accepting her facial hair.  The other person was an albino black guy.  The theme of that show was 'some people are weird and different than you'.  What the hell, TLC?  What is going on in your life?! 

It's too late.  I need to go to bed now. 

The End is Nigh

I keep thinking about how I'm not ready for the end of Lent yet.  I feel like I didn't make nearly as much progress as I did last year and that is a bit troublesome for me.  I suppose it's also a good thing, though.  Just because I don't feel like I made much progress during this Lent season doesn't mean I can't continue to work on myself the rest of the year.  I think I've also learned that I have a few ideas I would like to spend more time developing, including doing a little more research into a few areas that I haven't had time to do research in.  I don't want to talk too much about them right now.  Maybe by the time next Lent comes around, I'll have some better material.

With a little over a week left before Easter Vigil, I'm pretty stoked about RCIA coming to an end.  This is when we bring everyone into the Church.  It's amazing to think about how all these people are going to be brought into the Church from around the world on the same day.  I wonder if they have people doing actual statistics on these things.