For a short month, even with a Leap Day included, it's been a big bad one in Baby Girl's crib. Major milestones include, latching on, making direct eye contact, and reciting the prologue to the Tales of Canterbury BACKWARDS, YOUNG! Here's a shout out from our girl.
Recently a somewhat estranged friend e-mailed me to tell me she was downloading "My So-Called Life" episodes from abc.com, and that there was no one else with whom she'd rather share the discovery of this online trove of teen angst.
What do you say to that?
I'll tell you what you say. You say WHY did I not know you could download those episodes from abc.com!?! And then you CTRL+T post-haste over to abc.com and you transport yourself back to your freshman year of high school when you hung out with Angela Chase and Jordan Catalano like they were three locker doors down from you.
The great travesty of these downloads is that ABC only releases two at a time. Naturally, this was not enough to sate me whose husband had once attempted to purchase the complete series by e-bay, but then got scammed, and learning that the whole gift horse had been unintentionally aborted was like getting my visa application rejected. Or something perfectly melodramatic like that.
So of course I had to turn to Netflix once again, where I'd been reviewing my queue since '52 just to see if the 'Flix had finally stacked its inventory with MS-CL. Well put extensions in my hair and call me Paris Hilton. They totally had it in stock!
Today I re-watched the pilot episode. People, it was totally, like, deep. Like, Angela? Has these, like, intense monologues like, but they're like NOT monologues, because, she's, like, talking to someone else but just, like, babbling on and on...
There really is a beautiful parallel between Angela and Anne Frank in the pilot episode, and I realize now - as I was not keen enough to do as a wee fresher back then - that this, this proram, is her diary, of sorts, that her soul is in hiding and what she wants most of all is to be locked in a secret annex with the boy that she likes. It's probably what I wanted when I was a freshman, too.
Half a lifetime later, and what I want most of all is to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. Next to the boy that I like. Secret annex notwithstanding.
One of the most common questions I'm asked when people learn that we keep sabbath is, "Oh, so what can't you do on sabbath?" I typically take a step back before I answer, because I never want to present sabbath as a day of exclusion. Since I became a fundie gone wild, aka a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, sabbath has become to me a day of inclusion, a turning toward rather than a turning away from, a day of proactivity rather than negativity. Growing up Catholic, my experience of weekly worship was, basically, Park, Pray, Peace Out. I know this is not every Catholic's experience with the mass, but I felt like worship was like a fast food drive-thru. Got my homily, Apostle's Creed, and a communion wafer and . . . I'm good to go. I struggled with this. We kept the other commandments. But as for keeping the Lord's day holy, there seemed to be a huge disconnect between what Jesus' worship and healing ministry was on this day and what my experience was as a Catholic. Which was minutes after "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord," we would be buying bologna at Stop n' Shop.
Lately, however, my sabbath keeping has not been exemplary. It has been hard to keep sabbath. I'm not out buying bologna, or any other kind of lunch meats for that matter, but since I have been unable to make it to church on sabbath because of either my beached pregnant whale state or because I have had a Baby Beluga on my hands, I feel very convicted. I've begun to think of late what things I can't do on sabbath, when I should be fixing my focus on the Lord, His word. I should be resting, yes, but I should also be reading, calling family and friends I've neglected, memorizing Scripture. Lovey Loverpants is giving sermon this sabbath, though, so I think I'll try to go to church. It will be my first time having to make sure someone other than myself is dressed and ready on Saturday morning. Fortunately, only one of us will need her hair brushed.
*** On the seventh day, even the Lord rested. What a great idea.
