Oh gosh. Another really busy week.
More good stuff than bad though.
Though, for some reason, Blogger won't let me upload any images to this post. (Except this flower one, as i discovered a full day after i wrote the rest of the post).
1.) Confirmed
'Tis the season for sacraments, and I got tapped to be my teen brother's Confirmation sponsor, as I mentioned in last week's takes.
I did NOT go into labor before or during the big day. I did, however, get a blessing the night before from our pastor, who specifically asked God not to let me go into labor for the next 48 hours. And I got to go to confession, which I always like to do before having a baby.
The Confirmation mass in the Cathedral went well. Our bishop may re-use an anecdote or two, but he actually gives different homilies instead of the same canned one at every mass. As someone who's had a fair amount of teenagers in my life and has been to a couple of these, I really appreciated this, and as someone who's done a little public speaking, I'm pretty stinkin' impressed.
We ended up parking in the space right next to our pastor, and got back to the car after the mass just as he was pulling out to leave. He saw me, rolled down the window, and shouted, "You didn't go into labor!! I wasn't sure you'd be here!!"
"Yeah Father, the blessing worked!"
2.) Kindergarten Graduation
Little Boy still has a day or two of school left, but they held a graduation ceremony for the kinder classes on Wednesday.
It was actually pretty well done: short and sweet, but not overly sickly sweet, only one song performance (which was frankly adorable), with lots of support and enthusiastic cheering from parents, and with a principal and staff who obviously had a good rapport with one another as well as enthusiasm for their jobs and the students.
Little Boy did well, and was very happy to have us, his little sister, and both sets of grandparents (both fully vaccinated, for the record) there cheering him on. And it was lovely to see community again. I've really missed that. In a year where we weren't able to go to any football games, pep rallies, or parish festivals, it was surprising just how meaningful a few families gathered in an elementary school cafeteria could be.
3.) Reasons to live in South Texas
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure about how I feel about the Benedict Option. Initially it seemed like a paranoid reaction to the world at large, reminiscent of some of the less healthy uber Catholic homeschooling groups I was around as a kid (the type that banned Disney movies because Simba kicks up some dust and it spells "sex" in the Lion King if you pause it at exactly the right moment).
Then I realized that part of the reason that it seemed like such an overreaction to me was because i live in a pretty unusual area. South Texas is primarily Tejano Latino, and it's still very very much culturally Catholic. Blue collar Catholic: you won't find many "Theology on Tap" groups or book clubs dedicated to Tolkien and Chesterton. But you will see things like a little shrine to our Lady of Guadalupe in a local restaurant, a holy water station in a mechanic shop, or a picture of St. Martin of Tours behind almost any cash register in a family owned business. And many, not all but many, of the parishes here are vibrant and active and have full masses with families and children in attendance (and there's several of them). Our bishop is pretty pastoral too, which I'm realizing more and more is a bit of a rarity.
So if you're one of those people I've been seeing online talking about moving to a more Catholic friendly area, I recommend South Texas. The Latino culture takes a little getting used to if you weren't raised here (anglos are the minority in many neighborhoods) but it's beautiful and vibrant and a wonderful place to raise children. It's one of the few places that an ethnically Catholic culture still exists.
4.) Controversial Two Cents
I've been more on social media lately, which means I've actually noticed the latest "controversy" among Catholic social media.
Yet another reason to get rid of my Facebook account....
So, after the kids were put in bed, Chris tried plunging it.
He tried poking an untwisted wire coat hanger through the tiny holes in the immovable, built-into-our-ultra-cheap- shower's drain grate thing.
He left the house for about an hour. When he returned, he had a plastic drain cleaner thingie (a long thin plastic thing with a handle to twist it and what looked like the rough side of velcro on the end), a package of some sort of enzyme stick meant to keep the drain clear, and two very, VERY large cans of michelada (tomato and clam juice mixed with beer and sometimes spices).
The drain cleaner thingie was only able to get tiny chunks of the hair clog out, and eventually became bent out of shape.
At this point, it was getting to the point of ridiculous. Chris did a phone search and found a recommendation to mix equal parts baking soda and salt, stuff as much as possible down the drain, and then chase it with a pot of boiling water. He figured, "well, it's worth a shot", and we had plenty of both in the house.
That finally worked. I'm not sure how or why it worked: why that particular combination would be able to break up and wash down a, quote, "brillo pad of hair", but now we know that it works and we have that tip in our arsenal.
He also drank both micheladas (it was a long day).
It's Thursday afternoon as I write this, and I really am not sure WHAT the heck is going on. My body is sending very mixed signals-- I'll have an hour go by with nothing, and then get a contraction so hard I have to yell (though my husband and midwife prefer the term "vocalize") to get through it. And then another half hour or so of total inactivity.
On the bright side, the kids and my husband are out of the house for the day, so I get peace and quiet to write and sleep a bit.
I guess if this makes it up on time to the link share, without any addendums, y'all will know that it was really and truly a false alarm. If I do have a baby sometime in the next 12-24 hours (though that seems a little unlikely), I'll be sure to update this before I post to the linkup.
Way to go girl! Congrats on your little princess.
ReplyDeleteI love the update at the end, lol. Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations!! From now on I'm going to recommend writing up SQT to induce labor.
ReplyDelete