Returning to mass, and navigating a heat wave...

Hello all and happy Friday! I've had a week full of actual STUFF, shocking, I know. :-0 And I thought I would fill you in. Grab your coffee!

Yes, I'm still drinking coffee despite it being a thousand degrees here for the past week. OK, maybe not *quite* that hot, but it feels quite close to that. I live in a mostly cold weather climate, and thus a lot of people here do not have centrally air conditioned homes, including us. So heat is very unpleasant. And this week, we've set a record: 7 days in a row so far (today projected to be the 8th) of temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Farenheit, with yesterday topping out the week at 98. Around here, that might as well be the Surface of the Sun. 😂 We are blessed to have window a/c units for our bedrooms, though not for the rest of the house. Taking my dance and fitnes classes in our home office has been occasion of melting for me this week. It's kept things interesting, to be sure. We've actually fared pretty well until yesterday, when everyone just felt lethargic and vaugely ill all day. We've taken the kids out to places that do have a/c: the public library, local coffee shop, and also on a wooded hike to look for birds. It's actually been quite lovely in it's own way. A summer family adventure!

In other big news, I went back to mass for the first time since the pandemic started (nearly 4 months)! I went to the vigil mass, figuring it would be a pretty small turnout to test the waters, and I was right: even counting Father, 2 ushers and the music minister, there were 26 people present. And our church is HUGE. The restrictions were pretty much what I expected, and I think all are prudent at this time. In my personal opinion, I would rather have less tape on the floor and pews (I can ascertain how to stay physically distant from others without it) but I suppose I can see the other side of this, that the parish wants to assure they are doing absolutely everything they can. Everyone was wearing a mask, which is the proper course of things right now, and very doable for an hour.

After I sat down, I excitedly paged through my new missal and got the ribbons all situated. I had heard that some churches were not letting you bring in your own missal (and the paper missalettes are all removed from the pews, I think this is pretty standard everywhere right now), and I was going to be sad if that was the case for me, because I thrive in being able to follow along visually with the readings and prayers. Happily, bringing your own missal was not an issue at my parish.

Isn't it beautiful?! I set up my ribbons for the prayers of the liturgy and the readings of the day, one just to keep track of those wily Prefaces, one for the calendar, and the last one for the Proper of Saints. I was IN LOVE. I've subscribed to magazines like Magnificat and Living with Christ for as long as I can remember, or I've had the small annual St. Joseph's Sunday missal. This is my first daily missal, and it's sheer heft excites me. 😁

So, mass started, and while everything feels a bit awkward with the necessary restrictions, it was very, very beautiful. Receiving the Eucharist again for the first time in nearly 100 days was...emotional. I haven't gone without receiving for that long since I fell away from my faith in graduate school (and that was 2 decades ago!). The only part I didn't love was that we were rushed out of our pews to comply with the one-way markings for dismissal. When it was your pew's turn to leave, you literally had to leave, no lingering to pray for a few extra minutes. :-0 I could have lived without that, but nothing is perfect, and the parish is just doing the best they can to hold public masses while complying with necessary public health precautions.

I didn't bring the kids. I wanted to scope things out a bit on my own so that I can tell them what to expect. I'm also going to be honest and say that it's not going to be easy to drag them back to mass after not going for all of these months. They are at ages where "church is boring," and I get it, as that's exactly how I felt, too, when I was their age. So I'm working on that. I'm undecided as to whether I'll bring them this Saturday, or wait until next weekend. But we *finally* got word about First Communion, and Anne will be making hers on August 2nd!! I'm SO EXCITED, and so is she. I'm planning to use the weeks leading up to this to share tidbits with her about receiving to try and stoke her hunger to receive Jesus, and hopefully this will lead to a softening about attending mass again.

I've also been trying to keep my spiritual spirits up by delighting in my new St. Dymphna rosary!

Rosaries by Allison on Etsy

Isn't it beautiful? St. Dymphna is the patron saint of those suffering from anxiety and depression. St. Dymphna, please pray for us! In your charity, please keep my kids in your prayers that the Lord will light a fire in their hearts for their faith. Thank you!

Have you returned to in-person mass? If not, how is your experience going with the streaming mass options? How are you holding up in the July heat? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

Summer heat waves, and book club conspiracy theories...

Happy long holiday weekend (?!) to my fellow American readers! Independence Day falls oddly this year, does it not? It fell on a Wednesday, and can we agree that this is the absolute worst possible day for July 4th to land on? You either have a day off right in the middle of the week, making your work week all choppy and awkward, or you use up more vacation days than you really wanted to just to make your week not completely ridiculous:

Monday - work. Next day - ugh, work. Should I just take this day off? Next day - holiday, woo hoo! Next day -  I should take a vacation day, right? Right! Staying home, woo hoo! Next day - wait. I have to go into work? What the heck day of the week is it anyway?!

Mike and I both went for option (2), and so here we are, sweating our booties off at home with both kids during a heat wave in our un-airconditioned house.

yyyaaaayyyyyyy.

Togetherness. And lots of it. ;-)

You'll also be happy to know that I have continued misting our bedroom with anti-mosquito oils at night, AND I have an order in for Avon Skin So Soft. :-0 Thus, I have not had any new mosquito bites since last week, and my old ones are healing.

*trumpet blare!*

Despite the heat, I have been knitting, and making progress on my Great Crafting Obstacles List, and I will post an update to that towards the end of July. *halo*

So, next week we are scheduled for our first Summer Book Club discussion on How God Hauled Me Kicking and Screaming into the Catholic Church. Apologetics, I love it. I have to be honest and admit that I find the title of this book incredibly awkward, but I suppose they were going for the dramatic impact. ;-)

At any rate, I did not find this book in any of the library collections I have access to, so I requested that it be purchased as an ebook via my local public library. I've been trying to be a good girl and not spend so much money on Kindle books. I have a bit of a habit, and it's become addicting. ;-) The library wrote back to me later that day saying that they were purchasing the ebook, and that it would appear in the catalog within 48 hours. Grand.

Granted, ebooks usually appear way sooner than they say, and I should have headed over the very next morning to investigate and check it out. This was mistake #1. :0 I didn't, and 2 days later, I innocently logged into my account at the public library to check on the ebook. It was checked out. To somebody else.

d'oh!

I will admit, I figured: how big of a market IS there for Catholic conversion stories? No need to be rushy, right?! I was banking on the niche market theory, to be sure. It was still mid-June, so I didn't panic. I figured, closer to the book club, I'll come back, it'll be available, and I'll check it out then. This was mistake #2.

😱

Last week, I logged back in, and it WAS STILL CHECKED OUT. Not only that, but now there was also a person on the waiting list. What is this blasphemy?!

The only reason the library even HAS the book is because of me, and now there's all of these other apologetics fans swarming. I did finally place myself on the waiting list, but that was last week, and I'm still quite impatiently in the queue awaiting my turn.

All of this is to say the following: do you mind bumping the first discussion post for the book another week? That would make it July 19th and 26th, instead of starting on the 12th. I mean, I could just buy the book. Is God telling me to just buy the book? He obviously had me request this book from the library so that other people could read it and become Catholic, so maybe I'm supposed to be grateful to be part of God's plan for the universe and fork over the $10 to support the author?

It's a quandary, to be sure.

If you all don't mind, it would be fabulous to wait/read for an additional week, and chat slightly later in the month. Now that I've requested the book and it was purchased, I feel stubborn that I want to read that particular copy. 😂 Thoughts?

In the meantime, I carry on with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I will update you all next week! What are you plans for this summer weekend? :)