Of well-behaved swords and lack of sleep...

Well hello there, dear reader! I'm not wild about this new schedule yet, as it feels like a long time between Thursday and Tuesday, but it can't be helped. Mondays...

*shudder*

I do have Zumba on Mondays, which is going *splendidly* and delights my whole afternoon. This week, I didn't bump into anybody nor did I get hideously tangled in my own feet by losing track of the combination. I call that a Zumba Win!

But the rest of Mondays? Yeah, no time to blog. So for now, Tuesday through Thursday it is. 

In other news, today is the first day of the Our Lady of Lourdes novena! Head to the link to pray along and get the prayers emailed to you daily. I love it when we pray together!

So, let's see, the weekend. On Friday afternoon I received a call from my ophthalmologist's office that my new reading glasses were in, so I stopped to pick them up. Ta DA!

I like them. And they're not *ah hem* bifocals. I don't like those. And my distance vision isn't poor enough yet for them to make a big difference for me. So, reading glasses it was, and the frames are purple. A match made in heaven.

Friday evening found me back at dance troupe rehearsal, and I felt a lot less rusty this week. We continued our sword choreography, and that too went better this week. Can I even tell you how excited Sword is to be tucked into my trunk each week to accompany me to dance class? He is just pleased as punch. And then he gets a starring role in our choreography, doing lots of dramatic swooping and scooping. Pretty soon we'll get to the balancing part and then he'll *really* get into it. ;-) Right now, we're still working out the logistics of doing a group number with eight women all wielding swords:

"All right, now we all bend inward, swords towards the center...Oh. Brandy's sword is right above my right eyeball, we need to change this part."

:0

Hopefully, by festival season we'll be good to go. No lost limbs or eyeballs.

So then, I get home from dance. I'm all energized and flitting around the house in a good mood. I drink a glass of wine with Mike. Then I hear:

"Mom?" *crying!*

That's not good. I hurry upstairs.The needy party is this one:

Showing off her new Valentine leggings in happier times

Who, when I enter her room, continues to cry, but refuses to tell me what is wrong. Mike and I both work to soothe her for some time. She's had a cold, so I figured it was some discomfort related to that, but it's hard to find a remedy without really knowing what you're dealing with.

Lots of sobbing. So much sobbing. Eventually, we ascertain that her head hurts, and so we administer some ibuprofen. We give her water. Some Vicks on her chest for her cough. Fresh blankets and snuggles. Then we tiptoe back to our room. Ten minutes later:

"Mom?!" *crying!*

*long suffering sigh*

I go back in. More head shaking and crying, zero information parsed out. She simply would not calm down, and so I ended up sleeping in her room. Which means me sleeping on *the floor*, which means every muscle in my body aching the next morning. When you're twenty, you can sleep on floors pretty easily. When you're *delicately clears throat* older than twenty, you cannot.

As if to add insult to injury, in the morning, as I kept my eyes shut and willed sleep that came so rarely over that night, I hear soft whispering start up in the bed above me. An invasion of The Others? Nope, just Anne starting her day. NOW, she wants to talk. I pretend to sleep. Then I feel a not-so-gentle tapping on my shoulder.

"Mom?!"

"How are you feeling, dear?" *bleary*

"I feel great! I slept good! My head doesn't hurt anymore, Mommy!"

Joy. All joy.

She did sleep without interruption the next night, but last night I woke to coughing at around 4:30 am. More water, more Vicks. Ugghhhhh... This winter season of illnesses seems like it will NEVER end. Someone has been coughing in my house for the past six months it seems. Perhaps pestilence is about to sweep through out land next.

All right, how was your weekend? Did you remember your novena prayers today? :-) Tomorrow, I will talk about...hum, I'm not sure. But I'll think of something! And Tea Time on Thursday, I got better at the audio last week, right?! What do you want me to talk about this week? Write in!

Ordinary Time heralds lots of new things in my life, including my glasses...

Happy Tuesday all! And I hope you had a wonderful weekend. I did. For the most part. The kids fought a lot, that always brings everybody down, but on the whole it was really nice. ;-)

This section of Ordinary Time has felt really refreshing to me, sort of like a new start in my spiritual life in a lot of ways. I've been novena'ing along nicely (new verb, coined right there), and Adoration has been going pretty smoothly, which is great. But I've also noticed some changes with my kids and their spirituality. Anne is suddenly...such a big girl!

*sob!*

She goes up every week now during Mass with the Children's Liturgy of the Word crowd, and is all excited to do so, coloring pictures ahead of time to give to the teacher. I mean, did you ever? She is so cute. This frees me up to actually be able to HEAR the Gospel and the Homily, which I will admit, is a nice amenity. She also brings me rosary beads at home, and asks to pray with me. I'll recite the prayers, and she keeps track of where we are on the beads. Just...

So precious. She keeps asking to go to church, she loves it. Henry, on the other hand, while a very good boy, is definitely going through that "church is boring!" phase. Very age appropriate, to be sure. And he's acting very stubbornly as a result, taking forever to get ready for Mass and to accompany us out to the car. He still loves learning about the saints, but connecting the lives of the saints with Mass attendance just hasn't happened for him yet. I have been praying for him to make a more personal connection with his faith and with God.

As for me, I can feel myself having to adjust and adapt to these new emotions going on with my children. As ever, I'm doing the best that I can, but I fear that I'm screwing it all up somehow. :) Thank God for the guidance that comes from Adoration.

#ThePiecesComeTogether

But in other weekend/changes news, I had my yearly ophthalmology appointment, and we all know how these appointments seem to somehow form an annual ode to my aging process. New year, new me, right? Especially with a milestone birthday coming up in a month. ;-) Happily, I have found a doctor at the practice who is gentle and soft spoken, doesn't tell me I'm old, and also doesn't mandate drops for his patients, so I can actually see to drive home. Brilliant!

I arrived Friday afternoon apprehensive as ever, because I feared that this would be the year. You know what I'm talking about, right? THE 'B' WORD. Bifocals.

*glares*

I have reading glasses, and at work I'm constantly taking them on and off my face. I need them to see my computer screen crisply, but they makes the person coming to the reference desk to talk to me somewhat blurry, so then I have to remove them. But I don't want to move to bifocals. I'm afraid of change, OK, don't judge me. :0

At any rate, I was called back, and the nurse first had me do this peripheral vision test whereby I had to click a clicker thingy whenever I saw a flicker of movement on this little screen. This test is my favorite part of every appointment, because it involves zero discomfort, and I'm certain that I scored 100%. *gold star!* I then had to do the chart reading thing, which I hate, because my left eye is so much weaker and it's depressing how the letters jump around when that eye is the only one I'm using. This is followed by the ever fun pressure test wherein a large wand is pressed to your eyeball and you're told to "just relax!" as if that was remotely a possibility. Then I moved over to the doctor, and he did the usual: "A, or B? B? Ok. B or...C!" thing. The verdict?

"Just a small change. Head out to Ed and he'll help you order new glasses."

Weellllll, that sounds *not bad* I suppose, but small changes in the negative direction over time could mean I'm blind by age 60, right? That's a little worrisome.

Ed is helping someone else when I make my appearance, so I busy myself looking at new frames. It's a good thing I started early, because I took a freakishly long time to make a decision, finally just deciding to be done with it and go with my instinct. Which was to text selfies to a friend:

"Do you like the brown? Or purple?" Wait. Maybe I should ditch both the brown AND purple and go back to the thicker red ones. What about...

Ed was amused. But I finally made a decision:

This is my scholarly look :0

Then Ed tried to ruin my day:

"Oh. Did you know that he wrote the prescription for progressive lenses?"

*look of pity*

("Progressive," you see, is ophthalmology code speak for "BIFOCAL.")

"Oh. Well. I guess that's what I'll get then."

*look of misery*

"For progressive lenses, there is a minimum size, so let's see if these frames meet that..."

Uh oh. After 30 minutes of agonizing frame-trying-on, now they might be too small?! I definitely favor narrow lens sizes in my frames. Luckily for both Ed and I, my selected frames squeaked in at the minimum. Now to wait two weeks for them and see if I hate them when they come in, huzzah!

How was your weekend, dear reader?

Clearly, I have too much time on my hands...

As Anne would say, da da DAAAAA!!!!

Hip new look, it's called "Librarian Sassy"

:) My new glasses. They are all the rage.

 And speaking of Anne...

She demanded in on the photo op.

"This is my 'I say cheese!!!' face"

I had to get them readjusted yesterday, but besides that all is well. I kind of love them.

Other than that, I don't have too much going on besides work and my family. Barreling through a tundra each day, sure. Just walking from my car to the library has been taking my life into my hands these days. That's been interesting.

I've also been knitting like crazy, and all of my walking and dancing has caused me to lose almost 2 pounds towards my 6 pound goal. You have to stay warm somehow. :0

I'm ruminating over a Catholic Nook post for tomorrow, that's long overdue. I haven't selected a definite topic yet, trying to keep it all suspenseful. If you have an idea, leave me a comment. :)