Sometimes karma comes back to bite you in the behind...

Yes, I'm still whining about the weather. But you know what happens to people who whine, don't you? Bad things happen to them. Remember how I complained the other day about us not getting enough rain? Do you know what happened THAT VERY DAY?

I packed up my stuff to leave work. I looked out the window. It was pouring.

I was happy. I mean, we need the rain. But then I realized that my umbrella was in my car. Useful place for it, don't you think? But hey, I'm a big girl. A little water won't kill me.

By the time I was finished checking out a book downstairs I could see that this was more than just a casual rain. Cats and dogs were about to appear from the sky. I decided to walk via the above ground passageways so that I could get as close to the parking lot that my car was in as possible without going outside. As I walked, I could see huge puddles forming by the sides of the roads and lots of people wrestling with umbrellas.

When I got to the final door, I didn't hesitate. I mean, what good would it do to stand there and bemoan my fate? It wasn't slowing down anytime soon. Out I went.

In the short time it took me to run out to my car, I got *drenched*. As in, my clothes were soaked to the skin and my hair and face were dripping.

I scrambled into my car real quick-like and laid my drippy bags on the passenger seat. I turned on the car and the defogger. Because, since it is still HOT out, the windows began to fog immediately. I put it on full blast and set off.

Pretty soon, my hands were all sticky from being wet and collecting some kind of dirt from the steering wheel (lovely), and I was sitting awkwardly because I hate that "my clothes are stuck to me" feeling. Halfway home I could feel my hair drying, but I knew this was bad. A glance in the mirror upon arrival at home confirmed it: I looked like a poodle. When my hair gets wet and dries by itself, it waves up and generally acts very irritating. It was all kinked up right at the scalp. Since it was half wet, half dry, when I tried to pull my comb through it it behaved precisely like a rat's nest. Not a pretty sight.

When I got out of the car, I could still feel that icky damp clothes feeling and my hands were even stickier. My hair was a complete lost cause.

I rushed into the house and thought to myself that I shouldn't have been so bad tempered about the weather. We did need the rain but there's no saving the grass here this year.

Next year is another year, I suppose.

Happy Feast of St. Anne :)

And it's also raining here today, so obviously, it's a good day. We had thunderstorms overnight, which woke me, but thankfully not the kids. I've been SO sleepy. Last night I slept good aside from the thunder wake up call, but my body feels like it hasn't caught up from poor sleep the night before with Anne. So blogging will be light today. I can barely keep my eyes open. And somehow, I have to look alive on the reference desk from 3-5 pm today, and then go to a belly dance class later. Sigh.

At any rate, I'm all excited by the Ravellenic Games starting tomorrow, and have my yarn and needles all packed and ready to go. I will be posting updates as the Games unfold on how my sweater is progressing. I'm ridiculously excited.

This is my kind of weather, and ponderings on Church weddings...

Ah, the past few days have been overcast and breezy. I love this kind of weather. Clearly, I should be living in the Pacific Northwest.

There has also been some "rain activity" but I wouldn't actually classify it as "RAIN," unfortunately. I mean, little drops have come down, but they never pick up their pace nor last for longer than 10 minutes at a stretch, so total accumulation is something like .000567 %. This is not going to make the grass green again, people. Maybe if it kept doing this for 3 weeks straight, but I'm doubting that will be the case. At any rate, I'm grateful for the break in the heat and the hope of rain, so I'll take it.

On a totally unrelated note, I read an article last week about Katie Holmes coming back to her Catholic faith. Did anybody else see this? It was from a reliable source like Yahoo News *rolls eyes* so I take it with a grain of salt, but it piqued my interest because I had always wondered about this.

I knew that Katie Holmes had been raised Catholic, and that when she married Tom Cruise, they were married in a Scientology ceremony. These are the only two facts that I'm certain of, you see. Thus, everything else that I'm about to say is pure conjecture, but that's what blogs are for, no?

When they married, I remember thinking to myself, "her parents must be heartbroken that she's leaving her faith." I don't know the Holmeses, so I have no earthly idea how they felt about their daughter's marriage, but this is how *I* would have felt. I'm also presuming here that Katie did not pursue and receive a dispensation from canonical form, because if she had, then her marriage would have been valid in the Church. So, I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but bear with me.

My whole point is that the situation got me to thinking about our children retaining their faith as adults. I pray for this intention weekly at Mass, that my children always stay close to Jesus and His Church. Do I think that in order to do that, my children need to marry other Catholics? No, I don't think that, actually. Would it help if they did marry other Catholics? Yes. But is such a marriage *necessary* for them to remain Catholic or even grow deeper in their faith? No, I don't think that it is.

But presuming that Katie here didn't seek out her parish priest prior to her wedding to receive Catholic marriage preparation and a dispensation to marry outside of a Catholic ceremony, this is what I'm getting at. When a Catholic person does not seek out the Church for their marriage, and marries outside of Her authority, that makes me sad. Because that's often the impetus to them leaving their faith entirely. In that state, they cannot receive the sacraments, and without the sacraments, their faith will suffer. Plus, the fact that the person didn't care enough to go through the Church for the dispensation demonstrates (at least in my opinion) that they don't feel very attached to their faith to begin with. And as a parent, this would break my heart.

Many times, it seems to me that the people I see not pursuing a Church wedding lose interest in religious faith altogether. This would bother me the most. It would bother me considerably less if my child became a member of another church. And even that has degrees. I would rather they stayed Catholic, but if my child became a very devout Anglican or Methodist, I would be ok with that. (But I'll just admit that I'd always still pray they would return to their Catholic roots :)). I would struggle, however, if they became a member of a non-Christian faith, probably nearly as much as if they lost all faith in God entirely.

In the end, all we can do is pray. Once they become adults, it's their choice, and we have to hope that something we did as parents acts a springboard to them making their faith their own and growing in their relationship with God.

This is all a bit rambling, but back to Katie. According to Yahoo News, she is now a registered parishoner at a local Catholic Church. If true, I think this is good, and I'm sure her parents are thrilled. :)

So, our thought-provoking question for the weekend: what in your childhood (if anything) caused you to remain attracted to religious faith as an adult? Or alternatively, what in your childhood acted as a spark to reignite your religious faith after leaving it for a time?

DROUGHT

I know that much of the country has been experiencing drought conditions this summer, and western New York is no exception.

"It looks like we're growing wheat out in the front yard."

...was Mike's comment the other day, as he narrowed his eyes. We're not really big "grass people." Did that come out right? I mean, we don't have a sprinkler system nor pamper our grass. But it would be nice if the grass were green, I don't think that's too much to ask.

The grass everywhere here is almost totally brown. The campus really looks abysmal. They are clearly trying to keep the main entrance with the sign and flowers looking nice and are watering everything. But the rest is too vast to water and is brown, brown, brown.

I think when it finally does rain I'll go outside and turn my face right into it. I like rain. It's cozy. And the living things outside need it in order to grow. Rain gets a bad rap, but we need to be honest:

Rain is good. I miss rain.

Rain, rain, how I long to see your face...