Aurora Borealis

The first night of our parish mission was tonight.  We’re doing an abbreviated version of Walk Thru the New Testament.  It looks like it will be good.  The hand signs and such are a little hokey — I think I’m not primarily a visual learner that way and would rather just take notes — but the concepts are good, and I think the program will help some of these ideas be more memorable than they have been when I’ve learned them in other contexts.  So I think it will be a good use of our time.  And Agent Murphy gets to spend three nights in a row at the parish nursery and stay up past his bedtime!  He likes it there — they have good toys, including a little puppet show stage and a play kitchen.  He was playing at the kitchen when we came to pick him up tonight.

One comment the presenter made this evening was in reference to the believing Christian’s appropriate focus being on eternity, as opposed to the past, present, or future.  He suggested as a Lenten exercise to try to make a habit of making decisions/choices in light of how they will impact eternity.  That’s a good reminder.  I’m often very bad about that, especially lately.  Get caught up in too much trivial stuff and lose sight of the ultimate goal and outlook.  I guess I will have to work on that during Lent.

We are excited (though terror may be the better word for what I’m feeling) to announce that Garbanzo Bean III is expected to join our family around July 25.  Yes, the third.  That’s not a typo.  There was, briefly, a Garbanzo Bean II (now known as our Agent Raindrop), but I miscarried back in February at only 8 weeks, before almost anyone even knew I was pregnant.

So we’ve been rather cautious about saying anything about the new bean.  My gynecologist managed the beginning of this pregnancy very carefully. I just saw the OB for the first time today.  He had a hard time finding the heartbeat with the doppler.  He thought he heard it faintly in the background, but he wasn’t sure; so we got to have an unofficial ultrasound and saw the heartbeat and an active little baby.  Even with having seen that, I still have no sense of who this one is.  With Agent Murphy we pretty quickly felt the baby was likely a boy, and we were convinced pretty much right off the bat that Agent Raindrop was our little girl; but so far no feeling about this one.

I have an “official” ultrasound next week to confirm or modify the due date and then my next appointment with the OB 4 weeks from today.  Here we go!

I am in a horrible mood.  I guess I wasn’t doing too great, yesterday, either. I keep crying.  Given my wretched mood, I’ve wanted very little to do with The Agent and his antics.  But that sweet boy brought one of his diaper wipes to wipe away my tears.  I don’t know how he’s such a good kid given the crappy mommy he’s stuck with.

I’ve gotten very little done so far today, and I have to try to get ready to host play group next week.  I was hoping to get some artwork up before then, not to mention cleaning, so our house won’t look so pathetic.  (It’s a pitiful little place compared to the mansions some of these women have.  Good heavens — we don’t have a dedicated playroom!  I wonder if we’ll be allowed to stay in play group?)  Agent Murphy has a bit of a cold.  Maybe if he stays sick, I can cancel like just about everyone else has done.  (It’s supposed to meet every week. There was one in the month of January.)

Yesterday we went to the funeral of the first Grand Knight of the All Saints K of C council and a founding member of the parish, Frank Welter.  Mr. Tldz would have liked to have been there, but he’s just too busy at work right now to get away; so Agent Murphy and I went on his behalf.  The Agent was really pretty well-behaved. But All Saints is in general a very quiet church, and for a funeral, with a smaller crowd than a normal Mass, it was even more so; so every little noise he made seemed to me to be very loud.  The Knights Honor Guard (of 18, 19, or 20 — I got a different number every time I tried to count) was quite impressive.

Today we went to IHM for the funeral of a long-time usher, Eli “Joe” Giaquinto, who was a very nice man.  When I and then we were regulars at the 11:30 Mass, we usually sat near his wife, her twin sister, and the sister’s husband, son, and daughter-in-law.  I was on my own with the Agent again today, as Mr. Tldz had his Third Degree exemplification ceremony for the Knights.  (He’s now a full-fledged knight — can hold an office and whatever.)  At least IHM is a noisier church (the Baptismal font babbles, it’s just louder and more echo-y with tile floor and wood pews instead of carpet and upholstery, etc.) because Agent Murphy, while still quite good, really was a bit more active today; and we did have to go out to the narthex near the end.  I fear that he will freak when we go to church tomorrow — “What?!? Not three days in a row!”  At least I will have Mr. Tldz to help ride herd.

I’ll tell you, one thing I miss about IHM is that it’s a singing parish, by which I mean the congregation really participates in singing.  That’s atypical of Catholic parishes in my experience, and one thing I always liked about IHM.  And at IHM, they pretty much sing all the verses of the hymns, even if there’s 6 or 7.  At All Saints, the processional typically makes it to the altar in one verse, so we’re done.  Maybe on Christmas or something we might sing 2 whole verses.

Both gentlemen were WWII veterans of the Navy. Sir Knight Welter remained stateside, as by the time he enlisted, one brother had been killed in the Atlantic theater and one in the Pacific.  Joe was in the submarine service and apparently had a “submerged tenure” of 9 months, 4 days.  Whew!  Joe’s funeral included military honors with four uniformed representatives of the Navy to do a flag folding ceremony and a live playing of taps.

Both also had long marriages.  Mr. and Mrs. Welter were married 62 years, I believe, and the Giaquintos 59 years. That’s hard for me to believe, because I was at the 11:30 Mass when Joe surprised Helen for their 50th anniversary by renewing their wedding vows. Father Fred was our pastor then, and he wasn’t saying the 11:30 Mass that day.  There was a visiting priest.  And then in the middle of Mass, Father Fred came out, fully vested, and announced that the Giaquintos were celebrating their 50th and Joe had requested a renewal of their vows.  Helen looked completely surprised.  It was very sweet.  Can that really have been 9 years ago?!?  Both wives are still living.  Helen is doing quite well.  Mrs. Welter, apparently, is pretty frail.  She was unable to attend the funeral.

Oddly, funerals always make me weepy, even if I don’t know the person very well. (Or in the case of Sir Knight Welter, not at all.)  I guess they just help recall the funerals of loved ones, and even bring some thoughts of funerals yet to come.  Both of these funerals used as the first reading the reading from Wisdom that I read at my aunt’s funeral.

Larger crowd today — I suppose the advantage of having one’s funeral on a Saturday rather than a weekday.

Both men were cremated, which had the benefit of allowing a rather lengthy delay between their deaths and their funerals.  Sir Knight Welter died December 19, and Joe died January 4.  While I have nothing against cremation per se, having been to two of these in a row, I have to say that a funeral without a casket really does feel like it’s missing something.  There’s not the ceremony of placing the pall (which is really a beautiful and meaningful ritual that hearkens back to Baptism) and processing the casket in and recessing the casket out.  The urn is still incensed at the end of Mass during the final commendation, but it just doesn’t seem the same.  And there really seems to be something to having the casket there during the Communion procession. At every casket funeral I’ve been to, pretty much everybody lays a hand on the casket as they walk by.  Somehow it makes the farewell more real.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them.  And may the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen.

So the other day I hung up bulletin boards in my office area and hung up pictures in Agent Murphy’s room.  He seems very happy to have his stuff back.  He keeps pointing at all of it excitedly.  Now I just need to get to putting up some pictures/artwork elsewhere around the house…

So Agent Murphy and I made it to our MOMS Club play group for the first time yesterday, after the first two of 2010 were canceled.  It was all little boys this time, and I think he had a good time.  Hopefully next week’s will happen as scheduled, and we’re hosting in 2 weeks.

My goodness, another one?  6.1.  Does that really count as an “after shock”?  I’d call that another quake!

Hooray!  Scott Brown wins in Massachusetts!  Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of the attempted Leftist takeover of the country.  Woo hoo!  Now let’s get back to some common sense, personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility, smaller government, and all that good stuff.

So I actually made it to my first MOMS Club event last night.  (Just about everything I’ve tried to attend has been canceled, and then for the Christmas cookie exchange I ended up sick.) We met at Cafe Intermezzo to discuss The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  Jodi, the mom who was leading the book club, asked for volunteers to take on future meetings, so I told her that I’d be willing to host/lead the next one in March; and then yesterday afternoon Jodi had to back out so I ended up “leading” this one, too.

There ended up being just 3 of us, and we’d all actually read and enjoyed the book, so we had a good, informal, pleasant discussion.  It was a bit of an adventure, because none of us knew each other, but we managed to meet up at the restaurant.

We’ve selected The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger as the next book, and I expect I’ll host that get-together here at the house.

Wow.  Lots of prayers going that way. My goodness, something like that makes you realize how fragile life is and how fortunate we are. We just made a contribution to Food for the Poor for Haiti relief.  FTP is an organization we’ve supported periodically and just recently started giving to them monthly. They’re very good stewards of their contributions — very low administrative and fundraising expenses, so most of a contribution goes directly to help people.  If you’re looking for a way to help, that’s one organization we’d recommend.