Bright Tuesday Post

Ah, I once again overestimated how much time I'd have to blog during Holy Week!  We don't do anything but Holy Week during Holy Week so I always think I will have plenty of time for "home" kinds of things.  But there are hours and hours and hours of church services in there, and plus cooking!  It was an amazing, exhausting, same kind of holy week but different kind of holy week.  I'm always amazed at how I remember the rhythm from year to year but it's always a new experience, too.  

This year there was a difference for me.  Holy Saturday is traditionally the time of bringing new Christians into the church.  And this year we had 10 (10!) new members join our community on Holy Saturday.  Five were brought in by baptism.  And one, Jonna, gave me the honor of asking me to sponsor her.  I was delighted!  Jonna is married to a Greek man, but instead of converting before they got married, as some do, she took her time to get to know the church.  She's been very involved in our community, helping with the Cusina cooking program we did in the fall (along with follow-up sessions).  I am happy to be her godmother.  This was the first time I'd sponsored an adult, so it was a new experience for me!  

I helped with the chanting all week and sometimes was in charge of it.  And I am happy to report that the apple cider vinegar remedy for my acid reflux has really done well for me this year.  That didn't stop my voice from being completely thrashed by the last hymn I sang:

It is the Day of Resurrection

Let us be radiant in the Festival!

Let us embrace one another.

Let  us call brother and sister

Even those who hate us 

And forgive all things in the Resurrection.

And therefore, let us proclaim!

that Christ is Risen from the dead

By death trampling down death!

and to those in the tombs

bestowing  Life!

Sunday was Great and Holy Pascha--Easter in the Orthodox church.  We had our midnight service and our 11 am service, which seems like a lot but by that time in the week it just seems like normal!  On Sunday afternoon we had three different gatherings to attend.  I ate a small amount at each and still found myself able to eat--just barely!--at the third.  I tried my first vodka ever, which I surprised myself by liking.  I don't usually like hard liquor straight up.   

Paul didn't get to rest yesterday like I did, but is taking today off.  He is working on the greenhouse we've started building, and will come to homeschool co-op with us in a bit.  Tonight is Taize service at the Catholic Worker house, and we plan to go for that.  A nice, relaxing day.  

A happy Bright Week to you all!

Predestined?

My parents were visiting tonight, and we went out to a pizza place for dinner. We sat at a table right next to the large window overlooking the street, and while we were waiting for our pizza, my dad suddenly pointed out the window saying "oh no!" And there was a car that, while trying to park, had scraped against a parked car. She had a tough time getting her car backed away from the other car while trying to do minimal damage. We kept watch while she tried to excavate her way out, then a man came out to direct her how to do it, and then she successfully parked her car. She came inside the pizza place looking for the owner of the car, unsuccessfully. She then left a note on the windshield.

But what made this blogworthy was another observation my dad made while she was writing the note: the license number of her car was 565 BAM. Poor girl, it was fated.

Muesli the hen

It looks like we can call Muesli our hen now! Seems she's decided it's a fine place to live and a good family of hens here. She started out just by staying longer than she'd been, and a couple of nights when the hens were getting ready to go in for the night, we picked her up and put her in. Then we had nights when we weren't here at dusk and she finally decided that she could go in by herself. She's been in for three nights now of her own volition! And laying really tiny beautiful eggs that I look forward to sampling once Lent is over. :-)

And speaking of which, yes, as Deb said, I'm slowing down with blogging. Just too much going on, and too little going on all at the same time. And I'm ready for cheese and not having it yet. Soon....I'm sure I'll be back before Pascha so I won't say Kali Anastasi yet. ;-)

Tears update

Funny timing, this, just after I got a comment on my Tears post saying that tears in the workplace are not acceptable. Well, I didn't really address crying in the workplace, as I don't really have a context for that--I haven't been in the workplace for quite a few years (though I do remember fighting tears at times).

This morning when I finally got around to reading the rest of the Sunday newspaper I was very interested to find this article by Margie Boulé.

(I wish I felt okay about copying and pasting, so you don't have to look at the Macy's underwear ads, which I didn't have to do while reading it in paper form. But there you go.)

It's about a news anchorwoman who lost it on air. And about: is she allowed? Are we allowed to still be human while at work?

Road Trip!

Tomorrow, the kids and I and a very sweet friend who agreed to come along for the ride and help me out with driving are heading out of Portland for California. Our first stop will be San Francisco, where Zac will get to spend some time with his very best friend in the whole world. We'll get to see best friend's family and another good friend from church while we're there. And have an Indian dinner in my favorite Indian restaurant with my brother and sister-in-law. (Alas, they were busy for breakfast, so no crepes with ice cream at Crepevine! Maybe next time.)

Next we're going to central California, where my parents and grandmother live. My grandmother, who will have her 103rd birthday in less than two weeks, has decided that she is tired of living. She has had a full life and has outlived how long she wanted to. She is ready to die. I don't know if you can will yourself to finally die, but if you can, she's about to. I wanted to go and see her one last time, if things do go the way she wants them to. It will be a bittersweet visit, one that I'm not sure I'm fully prepared to make.

So, Happy Early Birthday, Grandma, and Godspeed.

"Our" new hen

I put "our" in quotes because she hasn't decided whether she belongs to us or not yet.

Our neighbors across the street had 3 hens when we moved in. I think it was the second time we came to look at the house, that the hens were on the lawn of what would be our house! I thought, cool! Someone else in the neighborhood has chickens.

Well, two of their hens got killed by a raccoon, and they were down to just one. And one hen by herself is not a happy hen. Plus, their garden is in the backyard, with nothing protecting it from the chicken(s). And so they decided to give Muesli the hen away, and perhaps start from scratch when they've got some kind of fence up around their garden.

They offered Muesli to us, and we decided to go ahead and take her. But the problem is that she knows where home is--just across the street! She's only slept in our coop one night, the night they brought her over and we shut her in immediately. Since then, she comes and hangs out in the daytime and goes back to her favorite hedge to sleep in at the neighbors' house.

She has been a good companion hen for Louise, who lost her hen friend Thelma last May when a raccoon killed her. Louise seems lately to be feeling her age (I actually have no idea how old she is) and has been doing a lot of laying around.

And Muesli has laid us one egg! The delicately-colored robin's egg blue one on top is hers.

Beauty Everywhere

Gleaned from Molly's blog, a link to an SFGate article which includes this gem:

In Margaret Cho's "Beautiful" tour, she talks about recently being on a radio show and having the host ask her point-blank, live, on the air, "What if you woke up one day, and you were beautiful?" When asked, he defined beautiful as blonde, thin, large-breasted, a porno stereotype. Cho says, "Just think of what life is like for this poor guy. There's beauty all around him in the world, and he can only see the most narrow definition of it."