7 Ordinary Time Takes

One

I guess it must be admitted that we’re coming on towards Advent. Feel terribly troubled and shocked that time should be moving this swiftly. Put off thinking about the Christmas Pageant as long as possible because of not wanting to cope. Picked a fight with Matt to relieve my own stress. “I hate Christmas,” I said, hoping for the usual response. He leapt up in anger. “Well I love Christmas” he roared. We do this every year. I say how much I hate it and how much work it’s going to be, and he reposts that it’s the best time of the year ever and I will not be allowed to spoil it with my grim and irritating compliant about reality. We waste actual time we could actually being doing stuff, arguing about it.

Two

I do need to worry about Advent candles, though, and St. Nicholas. Every year I want to fill the children’s shoes with something charming, meaningful and lasting, when really they want candy and plastic. I need a free moment to wander around online without the peering curious gaze over the shoulder and the snuffled, “whatryadoin?” over and over. Last year I gave them massive bags of marbles that jingled horribly in the still night air as I dropped them and cursed quietly to myself. This year whatever it is, it has to be completely silent–nothing clangy of rustly.

Three

Spent several hours when I should have been thinking about Advent and Christmas watching clips of Hamilton in wonder and fascination. I am so uneducated. Watched as much of the singing as I could find on YouTube, and then watched clips of the writer and actors, talking about what they were doing. So when the writer and inventor of the show said that Alexander Hamilton is Hip Hop…I realized, again, a huge gap in my cultural understanding. Hip hop must not just be a kind of music. Anyway, Cat Hodge is right, such catchy music, so many bad words.

Four

Yesterday was the hundred and something annual Harvest Dinner at church. It’s been going on practically since the congregation was founded, in 1800 and something. I’m so useless about dates. My contribution to the event was wiping up spills of juice from the packs of children roving over the hall, and then filling empty milk jugs with left over gravy and then trying to shove them into the freezer. The gravy was delicious and, in my careless haste, I kept sloshing it over the sides of the jugs so that I was forced to constantly be licking my fingers. Did seem, for a while there, that I would never come to the end of the vat, that I would be steeped in gravy until the return of Our Lord. If you’re hungry, for any reason, and stuck in Binghamton, there’s potatoes and gravy over here to die for.

Five

Tomorrow I’ll be indulging in a little autobiographical interlude, making the long 20 second commute over to church to talk to the ACW (Anglican Church Women) about my unicorn childhood in Africa. Have shoved off thinking about this until the last possible moment, not because I hate the Church Ladies (of which I am a qualifying member) but because anything relating to Africa makes me desperately homesick. ‘See,’ I always say when it happens to come up, ‘an MK’s child is the stringing together of individual losses, that can,’ to horrifyingly mix all the metaphors, ‘be poured out into a bottomless well of grief from which, whenever you like, you can always drink longly and deeply.’ ‘That sounds bad’ normal people say. ‘No no!’ I insist. ‘It’s lovely. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.’

Six

The ACW (see above) always puts me in mind of Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women. I wish the group name could be changed to that. It’s essentially the same thing–lovely, selfless women who basically hold the church together through tea and charitable good works. In Pym, though, they also open tins and think terrible things about each other’s hats. The absence of hats, in modern Anglicanism, is a great tragedy.

Seven

Here’s a picture of a troubled cat. #catsofinstagram Have a lovely weekend and go check out This Ain’t the Lyceum!