Somewhere between boorishness and buffoonery

My week has been a week of highs and lows.  The highs were a little harder to find, a little fewer and farther between, but there nonetheless.  So, instead of focusing on the stresses of homeownership, severed phone lines, my work "mom" quitting, yardwork, working my least favorite shift, a double-back at work on two hours of sleep, two STM school Masses this week, and a complete lack of exercise, I'm going to focus on the good.

Eutrapelia: once again, my week is blessed with Catholic Stuff You Should Know.  It's making my commute super tolerable.  I just wish that when I went to explain it, I could remember half of what I listened to.  So instead of saying, "there's three...things...that are part of everything...they're called the three...I don't remember," I could intelligently discuss the three transcendentals of beauty, good, and truth.  One of the more obscure topics this week (I'm listening all out of order, so this was this week in listener land, not in podcast recording time) was eutrapelia- essentially wittiness and good humor.  I also really enjoyed the Christological Constellations, although I wasn't going to even try to explain that one to someone.

Girls Night In: I am so grateful for the reminder of the wonderful women of God that grace my life, even though I routinely forget about them when I'm wallowing in self-pity about my work schedule.  They are friends for life because the friendship is founded in something deeper than a weekly happy hour, and I know that these are women who care about my soul, my true happiness.  It didn't hurt to have fabulous food, gorgeous weather, s'mores around the fire pit, or some significant good-natured ribbing.  But the overwhelming feeling that has stayed with me is that I still do have a Catholic community surrounding me, ready to bail me out when I get bogged down with the stress of life.

Beer With A Priest: Despite the horrific traffic and the craziness of the rest of the day, I did get to have a beer with Fr. John at the Avery Tap Room in Boulder.  We caught up a little, mostly talked about Kilimanjaro, and I got on the schedule for the next 14er Mass.  YES!!!  It only took about 6 hours of scheming and four or five detours in my plans before I found someone to trade shifts with me so I can go.  I'm also grateful for a friend at work whose question was, "Will your life be worse if you don't get to do this?" and then agreed to the trade when I said yes.

Almost to another "weekend": I'm exhausted and therefore closing out the blog early.  A final bright spot in my week is that it's almost over.  I have two days coming up to catch up on sleep, laundry, sunshine, new food spots, friends, and more of that good Catholic community.  And then eight more days of work before a whole bunch more bright spots: Hootie at Red Rocks, Laura's graduation, football playoffs, etc.  I'm ready for bed just thinking about it.  Here's to finding the good in life and holding on to it.

Patience

I've been leading a small faith-sharing group called a Virtue Challenge Team.  I volunteered to host the group and therefore got appointed the de facto leader.  Not sure I'm qualified to lead a group in discussing and cultivating virtue, but it's been good to get back into a fellowship setting.  There are definitely a lot of challenges, mostly revolving around everyone in the group being strangers and at completely different points intellectually, spiritually, and vocationally.  With no unifying event to forge a bond (retreat, mission trip, etc), we are revealing bits of ourselves by degrees.  Fitting, then, that our first virtue to discuss was patience.

It's a virtue that I struggle with.  I'm the person praying, "God give me patience and give it to me now."  I've always associated patience with tolerance of a trying situation.  But the chapter from DeMarco's The Heart of Virtue that we read had some interesting thoughts on looking at patience in a way that is much more in tune with my own natural inclinations.

"If something appears without fanfare, patience will take the time to find its inner glory.  When the moment seems unpromising, patience will discover some surprising benefaction."

I can work with that understanding of patience.  It's about a search for the three transcendentals--beauty, goodness, and truth--in the midst of everyday life.  Any object, person, event, or situation has some element of these three things.  Patience takes the time to find them.

"Patience gives us the flexibility we need so that we can find worthwhile pursuits when other opportunities have been taken from us."

This seems to hold a lot of relevance in my life recently.  With my work schedule the way it is, I feel like a lot of opportunities have been taken from me.  I haven't had the patience to find other worthwhile pursuits, hobbies, passions, missions.  They would bring me fulfillment and reveal the goodness, truth, and beauty in my current situation.

So, while I still lose my temper at the drop of a hat, maybe cultivating patience in this new light will allow me to grow in virtue in a way that seems to be more freeing and less restricting.  The next virtue is meekness and I'm not sure I'm ready for that one either.

If I could wish upon a star, I would hitch a cable car...Won't you save me, San Francisco?

Had a heck of a birthday vacay in the city by the bay.  Here's a few highlights:

Transportation.  We hit all the kinds.  Taxi, BART, CalTrain, PediCab, walking, biking, ferry, Cable Car.  Each was a different, authentic look at the city.  My faves were the PediCab and the Cable Car.  Almost got my ankles swiped by a crazy driver standing on the outside of the Cable Car, but I guess that goes with the territory.

Riding bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge

Food.  Burgers and local beer in Sausalito.  Homemade pasta in short rib ragu in Little Italy.  Authentic Mexican brunch (I know you don't think of Mexican as breakfast food, but they do it right).  Chowder in a sourdough bread bowl.  Ghiradelli cookie-bottom sundae.  Late night pesto pizza.  Polish sausage from a street cart.  Yummm!

Polish Sausage with Sauerkraut and Red Onion Relish

Touristy things.  The Golden Gate Bridge.  Fisherman's Wharf.  Pier 39.  Ghiradelli Square.  Union Square.  Alcatraz.  Lombard Street.  We pretty much did it all.

Felon in Cell Block D

Giants game.  Those folks love their World Series Champions.  While I felt like a poser in my just-purchased Giants' t-shirt, I had a blast cheering for the home team.  Hot dog, beer, churro, sunshine, nail-biter game won on an RBI double in the bottom of the ninth.  Did I mention they put on a fireworks show for my birthday?  Strong work.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Wine.  Our tour was cut short by a driver who called in sick.  But we still managed to hit a few wineries and sample our fair share.  The hands-down highlight was Homewood Winery.  Killer food pairings, uber-friendly staff and volunteers, and AMAZING wine.  The Barbera was to-die-for.  The Chardonnay was good enough for me to buy two bottles, and if you know me, that's a big deal.  Among the 4 of us (I'm not counting Brad and Rachel because they were too poor to buy any), we walked away with 50 bottles of wine.  Not joking.  I was the responsible one and only bought 10, and half were for Dad.  But that tells you how much we liked them.

Sonoma Valley Vineyard

And there was my five days in San Francisco.  Made complete by a turbulent landing in Denver that had me sick enough to warrant the paramedics.  Awesome.  And now I'm watching the snow continue to fall and add to the 3 inches from yesterday.  Welcome to April in Colorado.  Bottom line- San Francisco is a great city.

"You go to Sunday dinner and all you do is fight. You sure you're not Italian?"

So I'm watching Blue Bloods, and I had to laugh when Danny asked the OR pharmacist if she was familiar with fentanyl.  The first words out of her mouth were "Yeah, synthetic heroin."  (Also, my brain wants to spell heroin h-e-r-o-i-n-e, cause that's the better kind)  I don't know a single pharmacist who thinks of fentanyl first and foremost as synthetic heroin.  Some see it as a pain med, some as a procedural sedation for RSI or a reduction, some as a sedative anesthetic in the OR.  I suppose as long as Blue Bloods stays away from pharmacy, I can keep watching.

I've been trying to figure out why I like this show so much.  There's not a lot of humor or any sort of love story (unless you count Linda and Danny, which I'll get to), and through a little more than a season and a half, I'm not sure I've seen a ton of character development.  Character revelation, yes.  Each episode, we do get to see a little more of each character's soul, but they aren't really evolving or growing that I've seen.  Those are all the main reasons why I like most shows.  But something about Blue Bloods just keeps pulling me back.

I think it's simply that no other show on television is so rooted in a family's commitment to faith and family and justice.  Nobody on TV has a moral code anymore.  Much less an entire set of characters.  Most episodes have me thinking that Danny is finally gonna blow it with Linda.  Or Erin is being just too darn strict with the letter of the law.  Or Jamie is going to get killed because he kept something from his dad.  Or Frank's stubbornness is going to prove to be his downfall.  But these are their human sides and weaknesses. And it makes it that much more appealing when they triumph over them.  When Danny gave Linda his badge after she threatened to leave him, and she said, "I don't want you to quit being a cop," I nearly cried when he said, "I just need you to know that I would."  Since when does marriage get the trump card?  Never in our society.  But it should.

Every time the sibling fighting seems ready to boil over, one of them does something to show without a doubt that family and the right thing are more important than opinions and prejudices.  Every dinner starts with a prayer.  Mass isn't a four-letter word.  The Catholic priest was defended for his abuse accusations until the truth was revealed.  Four generations of moral conviction, compassion, work ethic, honesty, sacrifice, and love.  I think that's why I love this show.

Copycat Blog

Things I like this week (stealing from Laura):

-Sleeping in
-That first breath of fresh air when I step outside in the morning
-Reading the paper with a hot cup of coffee in my hand
-Getting a voicemail that says "Meechelle, I have a ketogenic diet crisis and you have to call me back right now" (I'm paraphrasing, there may have been a bad word in there)
-Brother Donald subbing on our Ultimate Frisbee team
-Corned beef, cabbage, and green beer
-Watching Blue Bloods, loving that a TV show exists that shows Catholics in a positive light
-Getting a manager's SEED at work
-Having the end-of-Mass announcement be "Habemus Papam"
-Knowing Laura is coming home
-Family lunch at Maggiano's (and three subsequent leftover meals)
-Having one of my favorite techs tell me I'm the greatest
-Free Bistro Box from Starbucks
-Having the rest of today and all of tomorrow to do WHATEVER I WANT!!!

Habemus Papam!! Viva Il Papa!!!

I'm keeping this short because I have to go to work early tomorrow for the annual Great Potato Race (yes, I work at a Children's Hospital, we are awesome), so to bed forthwith for me.  But, since the whole world is talking today, and the Catholic Church is on fire, and since the world is ending because the media has been positive toward the Church today, I figured I'd mark the occasion with an overdue blog post.

Mass today at the AI started with Fr. Riley saying, "the almighty iPad says we don't have a pope yet, keep praying."  And midway through Mass I was embarrassed when Dad's "knock knock knock" text alert went off, and mortified when it went off again as he received communion.  Then at the end of Mass, right before the final blessing, it was announced that we had a pope!  No name yet, but Habemus Papam!  I felt the Holy Spirit pretty intensely right then.  It was like all of our prayers had culminated in a glorious moment to give us a new Vicar of Christ.  (And it explained the texts-- kudos to FOCUS for popealarm.com)  What a blessing to have been praying during the moments of the election, and knowing that despite claims of politicking and scandal and whatever else, it was really the Holy Spirit who has given us a new Holy Father.

By all accounts, I think that Pope Francis I will be a strong, passionate, gentle, inspired, and humble leader.  I am excited about his choice of namesake, about his Jesuit background (all jokes aside), about his presence for the Americas, and about the reaction from the Church thus far.  I am excited to see where he takes us.  And, if any of the prophecies are true, he better live to 100, one lung and all.  May God abundantly bless the Church and her new shepherd!

Me, Myself, and All the Things I'm Not

Because it was my idea first, but Laura beat me to the punch.  Because I spent the weekend doing things that weren't fun for me, but that I "had to try to get outside my comfort zone."  Because after said weekend, I got home to find that my roommate had spent her weekend in the mountains, eating dinner with priests and trying the local brewery.  Because I'm keeping calm and staying shiny.  Here are some things about me that I've decided to embrace instead of fight:

I like beer.  I like to have a beer.  One beer, maybe two if we're enjoying ourselves and staying awhile.  I don't like to get drunk, I don't like to get tipsy.  I don't like shouting over the music or the crowd to carry on a conversation.  I like trying the craft beer, not because I'm a beer snob, but because I like the feeling that something is my little secret, my discovery.  Give me a pint at Dry Dock over a night out on the town any day.

I'm Catholic and I love being Catholic.  I love the Church, I love Her wisdom, I love the Pope, I love spending time with priests, I love learning about the Saints, I love the Sacraments (most of them).  I feel a deep sadness that not everyone gets it, and fewer people love it.  But I also feel a great joy knowing that I have found my home and I know exactly where to go when things get tough.

My TV and movie preferences aren't always mainstream.  I'm a fan of NCIS (along with most of America), and I'll watch a few Oscar nominees and probably even enjoy them.  But give me Firefly or James Bond or old school Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Arrow or Waitress or Tomb Raider, and I'm set.  So sue me if I've never seen Modern Family or Anchorman.  I'm judging you because you've never seen Castle, so we're even.

I like to win.  I don't always express it with grace, and I don't always accept losing with humility.  I'm not always successful at just having fun.  But I'm not going to apologize for being competitive, or for using my athletic talent.  Someday, someone will like that I jump off the couch when the Broncos have a Pick-6.  They'll like that I make single-handed double plays in wiffleball or that I catch the girl extra-point in football.  And they won't mind if I take a couple hours to unwind if we didn't win.

I read to relax and feel guilty that I should be reading to better myself.  I'd wear my Chacos every day if I could.  Sometimes I'd just rather stick a baseball cap on my head than care about my hair.  I like flannel.  I don't like skiing.  If I'm gonna hike, I'd rather end up on top of a mountain.  I'd prefer if you'd leave the F-bombs at home.  I am horribly naive and uneducated when it comes to music, but I'll sing you every word to All For the Best.  I can quote Alias bloopers.  I can't wink, whistle, or burp.  I hate talking on the phone.  I don't do well meeting new people.  I sing like a (tone-deaf) diva in the shower and the car.  And at work.

And I'm PRETTY DARN AWESOME!!!