Three Longish, Late Takes. I've Been Off Lately.

1.) I Think I've Gone to Seed. 

You guys, I'm brain dead. 

I've reached a point in my pregnancy where my energy and motivation levels are pretty low. Little Girl gets two hours of TV time a day-- I used to use that time to write, but lately I've been using it to nap. I've been managing to force myself to keep more or less up with the housework, but not a whole heck of a lot else. As a result, predictably, my writing has pretty much bitten the dust. I'm also doing less interesting stuff or failing to remember to take pictures of whatever I do manage to do. 

So. I expected to need to take another hiatus from blogging when Bitty Baby is born, but it's looking like I might need to start it earlier than that. Or at least post something explaining why the consistency around here has gone to pot (does this count?). 

2.) Holy Week Prep

I did manage to sit down (sitting down takes less energy than housework, you see) and write out a grocery list for Holy Week. Then, on my errand day, I was able to purchase most of what was on the list. 

Last year, being the Covid-pocalypse, we dove pretty hard into doing liturgical stuff at home. We couldn't go to mass, but I still wanted Holy Thursday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday to be somewhat special (I can't for the life of me remember what we did for Good Friday, if anything. I know we started the Divine Mercy novena, but that's it. How does one explain a man getting brutally tortured to death to a four year old without causing some long term issues?). That resulted in some actually pretty cool stuff that worked out pretty well for our family and that I think I want to keep doing, at least until my kiddos are old enough to sit through an evening liturgy without losing their ever-loving minds. 

So Holy Thursday we watch Prince of Egypt as a family, roast a hunk of lamb (which is REALLY expensive and hard to find down here. Go figure), make matzoh and charoset  and do a Passover-ish meal where we talk about the Passover and what Jesus and His apostles would've eaten and been remembering the night of the Last Supper (we don't do any of the prayers from a Seder or anything like that: all we do is the food). 

I was not able to purchase lamb at our neighborhood grocery store. I'm going to have to wait until I get a chance to drive into the city and try my luck there (Chris wants to raise or purchase our own lamb to butcher next year...I'm still trying to warm up to the idea. I draw the line at smearing the blood over the door: we have enough issues with flies as it is). 

For Holy Saturday, I bought chips, stuff to make seven layer dip, and hot dogs to make pretzel dogs with. 

There's no way our kiddos can sit through a two to three hour nighttime liturgy, no matter how beautiful it is, so we do a sort-of one at home. We light a fire outside in the grill, bless it with holy water, and then light a homemade paschal candle with it. Then we renew our baptismal vows, go inside, watch The Miracle Maker and eat party food for supper.

Not as good as the real thing, but it'll work for now. 

For Easter Sunday, I bought marshmallows. 

We do this thing called Resurrection Rolls where you take a marshmallow, dunk it in butter and cinnamon sugar, then wrap it in bread dough to make a roll. As it makes, the marshmallow "vanishes" (melts) and you're left with a bunch of sweet bread that looks like empty tombs. 

If you also dunk the bread dough in butter and cinnamon sugar before baking, it reaches a whole new level. Definitely a holiday food (the recipe I linked uses whack-em-on-the-counter tube rolls, but we usually just use a basic bread dough). 

And on Easter Sunday this year, we get to go to MASS!!! Our diocese is back at full capacity, asking people to wear masks and use hand sanitizer, but not restricting numbers or access in any way. It's basically like we're at a semi-permanent flu season, which hey, I'll take it.  

I'm really happy. Not getting to go was really hard last year. 

3.) Paper Mache

I had a weird burst of energy this evening and ended up with this...thing. 

I think I found a way to talk about Good Friday with the kids in a way that won't cause undue trauma or be painfully long (I don't think my kids could handle Stations of the Cross right now). I saw this post on Catholic Icing  that suggested putting up a homemade paper crucifix at noon on Good Friday, then taking it down at three and putting paper Jesus into a paper tomb. She has this beautiful printer kit you can buy, so all you have to do is print it out, cut it out, and color it. 

Did I take advantage of this reasonably priced, easy offer that would have simplified my life and spared my waning energy? 

Of course not. I looked at that thing and thought, "I can make one of those with stuff I have lying around the house, and I can use my snap installer thing on the paper pieces to make the corpus detachable!" 

I wish I could say this was due to pregnancy hormone addled brain chemistry gone haywire, but let's be real. I'm this crazy anyway. 

So I successfully make a functional detachable corpus crucifix with a cannibalized Seton kindergarten textbook picture, card stock, a toilet paper tube, and those snaps you find on the bottom of baby onesies (which I have the equipment to install for some reason) and then thought, "hey! I should make a tomb to put the corpus in." 

This initially simple idea turned into turning a two-five-lb-bags-of-raisins-per-box box from Sam's club into a double sided thing with a paper mache hill of Golgatha on one side (the crucifix taped and paper-mached into place on top) and a tomb complete with removable door made from a tiny cardboard gift box with lid inserted into the raisin box on the other side. 

That one I am going to go ahead and blame at least partially on preggo hormones clouding my judgement. I mean, it was fun to make and Little Girl had a blast getting messy with me dunking chunks of newspaper in paste and smearing them onto the balls of paper we taped to one side of the box to get it to look hill-like. 

But...yeah, it just sort of took on a life of its own. Hopefully I'll get another energy burst once it's dry to actually paint the thing and get it to a point where it looks nice (and like a hill, rather than garbage).

I also want to make a resurrected Jesus figure to put next to an empty tomb Easter morning. We'll see. 

For the rest of this week's (almost certainly better formulated and complete) takes, click here.