Do I Out Myself?

I have been asked to give a talk at my church, a 20 minute talk. For starters 20 minutes is a very long time, secondly I am not sure they really want to know my opinion and they might possibly kick me out. Another quandary.

The church I regularly attend is often off in left field in practices and beliefs. While being open and welcoming it occasionally fails in the integrity to our faith principles category. This has been a constant struggle and I am not the only closet conservative in the parish. A number of us actually teach the children weekly, seeing ourselves as preserving the true faith in the generations to come. We have actually considered leaving our parish on more than one occasion, as we live close to at least two other churches that would fill the bill, but we haven't. And now someone has asked me to talk about "What the Roman Catholic Church Means to Us as Women" well, what it means more specifically to me.

There are many answers to this but I guarantee they will not match the reasons of even a few in my audience and many will be appalled. So do I speak my mind, and possibly make life uncomfortable enough that we will have to move on? As open and welcoming as they appear, some are not very welcoming when it comes to those who wish to uphold the teachings of Rome. Hospitality of the warmest sort is reserved for those who condone and hold in esteem a gay lifestyle, who insist that women be admitted to the priesthood, who believe that abortion is truly a woman's choice, who think the problem with a shortage of priests will be improved by allowing priests to marry, who really think men are incapable of running anything and women always do it better, and think the atrocity of pedophilia is a by product of the church's insistence on chastity. If they only knew...It would be back to my Memphis days, Wednesday nights when all the Baptists are out witnessing to everyone at Burger King.

It didn't take long to find out how to rid yourself of the salvation onslaught. And the approach was unavoidable, these folks are truly on a mission, and would speak to everyone in the building before they would leave. You have to admire that kind of passion. As you are just getting ready to sample your flame-broiled selection someone slides into the seat next to you "Have you been saved" is their opening line. "I'm Catholic" became my standard response. This is like a garlic necklace to vampires, the unsuspecting Baptist backs away slowly with the parting response "We'll pray for you." People would be backing away at church like I had the plague.

So I am praying, and waiting and wondering, but still don't know if speaking up will serve any good purpose. And may just bring an end to my clandestine endeavors to save our youth.

Transitions

It was the discussion topic last night at our homeschool parent meeting, transitions. That combined with the new year makes for whirlwind thoughts in my brain. Time for change or just time to improve, or maybe a little of both. My eldest is already in transition, taking college courses, for her last two years of high school, the younger girls just stuck in junior high but we should be gearing up for those high school years. I would like for them to also begin college courses in their junior years so I can avoid teaching calculus and lab sciences. It would effectively end my homeschool hands on time a full year earlier than anticipated. Nice, except I don't know what I want to do with my life.

Lounging at home is out of the question, we will have three in college, which means gainful employment must be in my future. Retirement a distant dream in a fragile bubble. So life in the next few years will be filled with transitions. Scary precipices requiring leaps of faith too often for complacency. What's a mother to do? It is amazing to me how much teenagers still need a mother at home. While they all transition there are frequent explosions, hours of angst, and soulful apologies, that shake a home to the core. So until they are all safely out of the house I feel I must remain in my current unpaid position. It would be nice to find something to do now and smoothly and effortlessly transition to full time when the younger two head off to college. This would avoid transition trauma for me, and make life a little calmer in the intervening years. Eighteen months before I need the brainstorm from which emerges the idea of the century. That and the lottery will keep me from transition trauma.

Happy New Year?

We are days from the beginning of another year, a time when reflection on the past and how to improve the situation are top of mind. I bought a lottery ticket for the first time in 20 years, and of course didn't win last Tuesday, jackpot is now over 200 million, do we need another? Is one dollar the price of hope today? One simple buck and dreams and miracles play in one's brain until the smiling lotto lady dashes them a day or two later. It would be nice, my siblings all agreed to share their 96 million if they won, but holding that ticket would certainly change my life.

Number one my husband's and daughters' anxiety would diminish to the point where I bet we could discontinue therapy within 2 months. Or would all that available cash just cause more worry? I might just have a heart attack when I read off the numbers and realized I had won, and then how in the world does one turn the ticket in without revealing oneself so as to avoid the whole publicity thing and potential thieves. It is beginning to sound complicated. I have to think about this trade off.

I could vastly improve my living conditions, here I see no drawbacks or complications I could even tolerate continued housing within the arctic circle so my daughters could keep their friends as I could actually jet off the warmer climates on a weekly basis if necessary. We would call them "geography lessons" on our homeschooling transcripts.

I could fund our little theatre enterprises including space for whatever we need. Now the only drawback here is I already need a business manager, an accountant, and someone for property management. I think I could handle these complications with the right people in place. This would also allow time for the whole creative aspect of the theatrical business that I do like. I would hire drones as needed too, or maybe just one full time specialist for each technical area that came with the space. That could work, privately funded of course so I don't have to deal with unions. Or wait... will that happen too. Another concern.

We would move but do we change churches? We are a bit entrenched in our current parish, maybe a large donation earmarked for something special before we leave would make departure easier. We should really have moved on three years ago, before we hit the high school problem. Daughter #1 is pretty well schooled in the tenets of her faith, her sisters lack a bit in that area making them less able to defend their faith as they will need to at their current home church, or with their friends. Leaves them much more open to heresy problems. O K this question deserves its' own post and I don't know if it is good or bad so I will just move on.

We would get the cash discount on the dual braces, which would be lovely, and have all the dental nonsense taken care of with nary a concern. Here again no drawbacks it would just make it faster and less painful for the parents. Thinking about this, is insurance necessary for those who have mega millions? I mean does Oprah carry any kind of insurance? And if so why? When all those bills are just inconsequential to your personal budget, wouldn't eliminating the hassle of insurance companies be a dream come true? No pretreatment permission, no referrals, no arguing over what is a medical necessity and what is not, this would keep my mail box much emptier. I guess the car thing you would have to continue, I would push for getting rid of laws that make insurance a requirement, if you can pay your own way why bother.

I could give people jobs, this would be very cool, I could even employ my children if needed. And my special needs girls could go to Landmark for as long as they needed. This would be way fun, we could also visit Vermont and family on a more regular basis, plan family events twice a year, travel, etc. Only challenge here is homeschool becomes more difficult. This shouldn't happen but the fun option sometimes interfere with certain academics. More choices can be overwhelming, I know they learn from all sorts of things but touring Ireland would put algebra on the back burner, and rightfully so but, when do we schedule that math?

Time is running out and this is getting wordy, and I need a lottery ticket. If I win...well, we will live with the consequences tough as it is. And if we don't it will be a good new year anyway.

Happy New Year 2011

Christmas is here! We are settled in and looking forward to an evening with 34 celebrants, lots of laughter, card playing and food. Well I guess Christmas eve is here, but we are celebrating anyway.

We managed to leave town within one hour of our plan, and the house was only a partial disaster area. Thanks to the bigger folks in the household. Number one daughter and co-blogger made herself most helpful, vacuumed and scrubbed so I didn't have to do quite so much. Spousal unit was also in on the house saving mission, we managed to get enough done, leave calmly, without forgetting anything of major importance. Except some make-up, folks will just have to live with the real face this holiday season.

Holiday choices

Christmas rushes to meet us, and frantic activity keeps the house humming. Of course it creates more disaster too. We closed our theatrical season for the fall last weekend and I was sure I would have time to correct the lack of housekeeping that has occurred because of costuming three shows back to back. I was wrong, we leave town in just a few days and holiday tasks keep forcing vacuuming to the bottom of the list. I do have a couple of good excuses, I was under the weather for a couple of days after the last show, and our 20 year old water bed sprang a couple of leaks. Leaky beds cause extra laundry, and cleaning tasks one just doesn't keep on a todo list. The bed is full and quiet, tonight the real test of patched seams begins.

Now for decisions, I need to decide what is unnecessary in the next couple of days because I really want to participate in all the social events on my calendar before we leave town. Said social events will eat up all evenings prior to travel and force gift purchase and prep into the earlier hours of the day, which in turn forces housekeeping into the very early am hours, which I really hate. I guess this means we come home from Christmas break to a dirty house.

I could become a raving lunatic and turn off all electronics until we leave town but that would certainly put the kybosh on holiday spirit, somehow I have failed to instill the need for order in one's surroundings to any of my offspring. While I feel the clutter strangling me they are one and all oblivious. "Mom it's just gonna get messed up again" I am regularly told. We also are in the home stretch of gift creation and construction, each and every homemade gift leaves a trail of craft materials in its' wake. So surrender seems the only sensible thing to do, I will just have to close my eyes and take long slow calming breaths as I trip over tasks in my house.

It's Christmastime! (Also known as, I am actually going to try and start writing about life.)

Man, you can definitely tell my mother works in a bookstore.

Anyway. Hello, followers of three. I think I'm going to have to start promoting this place on Facebook. I feel like nobody reads this. HEY, I HAVE AN INTERESTING LIFE TOO!

So. As you can tell by the title, I'm actually going to start writing sometimes. When I remember. Shocking, right? I'll start updating so mom doesn't feel so alone by herself, writing about all of her newest book finds.

This post is boring already. Crap.

Okay. So, life as we know it... hectic, as lives tend to be. We're in the middle of one tech week - for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a week of intense rehearsals (for us, lasting only for 3-6 hours per day) during the week preceding the opening of a show - for my show, "An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde. Plus, I've got my first college final next week (AAAAH!) and I hafta make christmas presents for everyone.

There's a lot going on.

Plus, we're in the middle of Advent... which is always bittersweet. It's full of joy (the one time when I'm not so uptight about spending money...) but it's also pretty stressful. I love making presents for my friends cause it feels way more personal. I don't mind buying presents for friends, but I love making presents because I love putting lots of time and effort into people's gifts.

I love the way the bottom of the tree mushrooms with presents right before Christmastime. I love hanging up ornaments and I love putting up twinkle lights around my room. I love hot chocolate and the warmth of watching classic movies like "White Christmas" and different types of Christmas music playing everywhere you go.

Oh, there's something to talk about. Christmas music. I love it, a lot. But only around Christmas time. I hate when people sing Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Like, come on, guys, there's plenty of other music out there and Christmas music is kinda specific to one month. And there's a lot of boring Christmas music out there too. I don't mind all the classics, like Bing Crosby and all that, but I love alt/rock music and I want to listen to some fun artists singing the classic songs interspersed with the originals, you know? There's just too much of the same a lot of the time.

So, I went on a rock Christmas song rampage a few days ago! And it's pretty amazing what I found... I didn't think that I would be able to find that much. And boy, did I find some cool things! A lot of bands have singles, but there's still quite a few good full albums from nice artists. iTunes had its Single of the Week last week as "Wish List" by Neon Trees (one of my favorite bands) and I practically died. It started the aforementioned rampage.

I had already had holiday singles by Fall Out Boy, The Ready Set, Something Corporate and Never Shout Never on my iPod unknowingly but I also discovered cool Christmas music by Weezer, Relient K and a super cool compilation album called "Winter Songs". And I've also been working on getting "Noel" by Josh Groban and Michael Buble's Christmas EP. YEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHH.

Christmastime is also just a fun time for family. It's always so warm and cuddly and I just love it. It's probably my favorite season of the year.

So, to end this all, I'll be writing more often and trying to make my posts more interesting. Adieu.

Breathe

I have taken off 3 days now from the manic activity of costuming and am beginning to feel guilty and know I will pay for the respite. But at the same time think the time to breathe is necessary. It gives me time to reflect, plan, panic, and hopefully reorganize to maximize the next couple of weeks.

If it were just the shows I know it would be more manageable but with attempting to homeschool amid the chaos, planning a dance event shortly after Christmas, and taking on the "Cookie Mom" position for two troops, it all seems a bit overwhelming and I have to take the time to remember to breathe.