St. Catherine of Sienna

Sometimes I look around me, and realize that I have a pretty cool life.  Friday night was one of them.  I was sitting in the passenger seat of Pippi’s Jeep, exchanging flirty texts with a total stranger whom I devoutly hope I will never meet (one of the odd side effects of the even odder weekend I had last weekend), driving through one of the tiny, intensely Catholic farming towns you find about an hour north of here, scanning the countryside behind the houses for signs of a bonfire to attend.  And I thought to myself, you know, I could not make this stuff up if I tried.  And I am a lucky girl.

The deal is that Crafty Chick (one of the few people I know who has a crafting room almost as messy as my own), had invited us up there for a Holy Hour followed by a bonfire at her new house, and while Pippi and I left town far too late to make the praying part of the evening, we were determined to at least be social.  The problem was that although we knew where Crafty Chick used to live, neither one of us had ever been to her new place, the only address on the invitation was for the church where the Holy Hour was, and we had no idea where we were going.  None of the people we knew were already there were answering their phones, so we started just driving around town looking for bonfires.  The town was small enough that we thought we had at least a 50/50 chance of finding it.  We did find one bonfire, but we didn’t recognize any of the cars parked there, and Pippi wouldn’t let me get out of the car to check (horror movies never start that way, no…).  I suggested just looking for the fire house, since the guys there would probably know about all the bonfires in town.  Ironically, soon after that we happened to drive past the fire house, and right next door found a bonfire with cars we recognized.  Even then Pippi wouldn’t let me get out of the car until she recognized one of the people standing around it as Flo’s brother.

The bonfire itself was fun – PM decided that he needed to show me what he remembers of his ballroom classes, so I got to dance a little.  One of my friends made me text The Duchess to suggest Moneypenny as a name for her unborn child, should she turn out to be a girl.  I got to see Crafty Chick’s craft room, and her awesome 1940s turquoise tiled bathroom (she doesn’t like it, and I’m totally jealous).  And then I was back in Pippi’s Jeep, heading out again across farm country, this time heading for Flo’s house.  It was time for a sleep over.

You see, back in February I promised Flo that while she was recovering from reconstructive ankle surgery I would come to her house and show her Star Wars.  She had confessed that she had never seen any of the Star Wars movies, not even the awful ones released in the 90s, a state of things I found tragic and wrong.  Surprisingly, Flo turned out not to be as enthusiastic about the prospect of watching science fiction classics as I was, so it took a while for this to finally happen.

Sleep overs are an odd concept for me.  Johnsy used to be a big fan of wanting to get a bunch of friends over to stay the night, but I always resisted.  I know there’s the traditional girl-bonding activities of watching soppy movies, painting toenails, eating unhealthy food and oversharing.  But the whole concept is still somewhat fraught for me with too many memories of childhood sleepovers full of pre-teen angst and the certainty that I could not escape betraying in some humiliating way my total social awkwardness.  Now that I’m a grown woman, I like sleeping in my own bed.  Staying over at another person’s house for no particular reason never seemed like, I dunno, fun.

All that being said, I think this may be one of the first sleep overs I have ever really, truly enjoyed.  There have been some that were fairly pleasant, but this one was just fun.  Flo has two very comfortable guest beds, so there was no need for sleeping bags or getting stiff sleeping on the floor.  We all fell asleep pretty soon after we got there, and slept like logs.  When we woke up we sort of lounged around and talked for a while.  There was a very lazy attempt at a pillow fight that didn’t go very far.  The words “french toast” began to be mentioned with greater and greater frequency, and after a while we gathered up the momentum to actually go into the kitchen and make some.  We had that for breakfast, with fresh pineapple and strawberries and Greek yogurt.

After breakfast we put the first Star Wars (Episode IV, if you acknowledge the existence of those other films released in the 90s, which I don’t).  Flo and Pippi both had never seen it before, and were not really sure they were going to like it.  I did my best not to say all the best lines along with the actors (not sure how well I succeeded).  Afterwards, I was ready to grab my stuff and go – Pippi had a thing she was supposed to be back in Dayton for, so I thought we had to leave.  But to my surprise, suddenly Flo was talking about the pizzas she had in the freezer, and saying that, since we had all of the movies here, we might as well put in the next one, and Pippi’s thing she had to be back for turned out to be not so pressing after all, and to make a long story short, we watched all of them.  All three movies.  A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, back to back.  We did nothing all day but watch movies, getting up only for food or drink or to go to the bathroom.  It was fairly epic.

It was funny watching the movies again.  I hadn’t seen them in a long time, though they were so much a part of my childhood they’re sortof just part of my subconscious.  It was odd watching what I remembered as intensely romantic sexual tension between Han and Leia, and thinking “Man, Han sure is a jerk.”  I also hadn’t remembered how much C3PO whined.  All the time.  On the plus side, I hadn’t completely remembered how utterly adorable R2D2 is, or how much I really, truly love these movies with all my heart.

After we had finished all three movies, Flo wanted to show us a Darth Vader cameo in Night at the Museum 2, and then we were watching the outtakes, and then Pippi saw Hank Azaria’s Arms of Total Manly Hotness, and somehow before I knew it we were watching another movie.  And it was awesome.  My favorite part?  ”How about you shove your hands in your pockets, take your attitude way down, and also, be nice to people.”  (Not that there’s anyone in particular I’m dying to say that to.  Or anything.)  And I have to admit, Hank Azaria’s arms really are something.  It doesn’t hurt that the brain animating those arms belongs to a hilariously funny man.  If my heart weren’t already given to Ryan Gosling, I’d be tempted to switch my allegiance (Pippi: “No!  He’s mine!”)

Speaking of which, Ryan Gosling is now also apparently Catholic:

Perfect. Man.

St. Joseph of Persia

I don’t know how to write about this weekend.  I just don’t.  I mean, do I write about the weird head place I’ve been in for the last week, mostly on account of things I also don’t know how to write about?  Or perhaps I should write about my very strange day at work on Friday.  Then there’s the odd story of how Saturday night I found myself sitting in a hotel room with seven strangers and one friend giggling (because, really, what else can you do at that point?) my way through a sales pitch for, um, intimate objects (believe me, I had no idea that was going to be part of the evening’s entertainment), and then less than twelve hours later, helping to set up for my brand new baby niece’s Baptismal celebration at a small, conservative, small town Catholic church with large posters announcing some sort of presentation on Holy Modesty posted on every door.

Then, just to top everything off, I sprained my ankle kinda badly in the church parking lot as we were leaving, requiring me to spend the rest of the day on the couch with my foot propped up on a block of ice.  Seriously, the only thing that would make the weekend stranger would be if someone I haven’t seen in five years (and, yes, I’m thinking of a particular person) suddenly burst through the front door wearing a pink elephant costume and leading a brass band through the living room.  Which the way things are going, just might happen.  Let me just check to make sure that the door is really, really locked.

Ok, we’re good.  The door is locked, and while I was up I limped down to the basement to cycle the laundry.  Because sprained ankle or not, I’m going to need clean uniforms to wear tomorrow.  Though how I’m going to wear the required pantyhose with an Ace bandage on my ankle I don’t know.  But we’ll deal with that later.

Perhaps we should look at a picture of the cutest niece on earth for a moment, just to settle our nerves.

There, that’s better.  That’s Sweet Pea sleeping the sleep of the newly Baptized in her godmother’s arms.  The blanket was lovingly crocheted by Mariah.  My own christening present, the sweater I started knitting, um, a while ago, is still missing part of a sleeve, so she doesn’t have it yet.  However, she’s so tiny that she’d be swimming in it anyway, so I’m ok with this.

So this is what happened on Saturday.  A good friend asked me to come to a bachelorette party with her.  The bride-to-be was a work friend of hers, and while she wanted to go to the party, she also wanted someone with her.  I happened to owe her pretty big for how she helped me avoid the relationship equivalent of starting a land war in Asia just a few days earlier, so I said yes even though I did not see how this could be anything but awkward.  So I put on my Standard Girl Party Clothes (jeans, nice shirt, slightly fancy earrings), and was ready to go at the appointed time.

And, you know, I had heard about bachelorette parties like this, the ones with the embarassing reproductive organ adornments for the bride, and the way too much alcohol, and embarrassing public displays, but I think I didn’t really believe that real people really did this.  I mean, what woman in her right mind would willingly parade around in public carrying a many times life size balloon version of a male reproductive organ?  What loving relative would force their sister/daughter/cousin to wear a tiara ornamented with midget penises that light up and blink?  People didn’t really do that, did they?  All the bachelorette parties I’d ever been to were much more like nice dinners out with the girls, with sometimes slightly risque gifts.  (My favorite was always to give the bride a couple of cans of Redi-Whip and label it “tasteful lingerie.”)  And it wasn’t just because most of my friends are fairly religious.   If anything, the parties for my more secular friends were tamer than the ones for the Good Catholic Girls.  This party, however, was the one that was going to prove me wrong.

This party had it all: the balloon reproductive organs, the embarrassing head ornaments for the bride, the dysfunctional family dynamics.  And, well, it wasn’t my family, and the poor bride (who looked like she just wanted to get through to the other end of this night in one piece) wasn’t my friend.  I would never see any of these people again in my life, so I decided that I would be the perfect party guest, helps things go off smoothly, and do my best to help both my friend and that poor bride have a good time.  And I think I did pretty well.  All the alcohol helped.  Even discovering that the two nice ladies who had been waiting in the hotel room when we got there weren’t also party guests, but consultants representing a discreet line of, well, sex toys which they were about to present to us didn’t phase me too much.

But after the presentation came the ordering, and then came the family dynamics of getting people out the door to the next thing, and then there was the comedy club, and the maid of honor who wanted all the attention for herself, and by that time I’d been hanging out with these people for close to six hours and I didn’t even know them.  I was done.  Thankfully my friend was willing to run me home (she ended up going back to support the bride for a few more hours), which meant I got home at a fairly reasonable hour.  But still.  One of the more surreal nights I’ve ever had.

And then the next morning I got up, got dressed, and headed off to help Sweet Pea get Baptized.

My dears, life is strange.

Also, if I ever happen to get married (and let’s not hold our breaths for that one), and happen to have a bachelorette party, anyone who comes near me with plastic reproductions of sex organs will get their hands cut off.  Just saying.

St. Ardalion

You can tell it’s been a busy week when you’ve been trying to write a blog post for days, but somehow it just never gets done, and suddenly it’s Saturday again, and you still haven’t hit the magic Publish button.  And for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what made the week so busy.  Just it somehow was.  But now here we are on the other side, and to make up for my non-blogginess, here’s a picture of Sweet Pea being ridiculously cute, as she is wont to be.

Seriously, I think this kid may be the cutest baby who ever lived.  I know that, as her aunt, I am contractually obligated to say this, but still.  She is still so tiny, but already full of so much character.  She likes having her hands free so she can curl them up by her face, and she likes to push her head out of her bunting, stretching her neck out to try to see everything around her, for all the world like a little turtle sticking its head out of its shell.  She makes the most ridiculous faces, including the best little baby scowl that I somehow did not mange to take a picture of.  When she squinches up her face, she gets a little wrinkle just on the bridge of her nose which is amazing because I get the exact same wrinkle on my nose too!  We tried to get a picture demonstrating this miraculous likeness, but instead it just looks like we’re scowling at each other.

As for the news, well, Easter was good.  On Friday I got to go down to see Sweet Pea and Sae and Mr. T.  I brought Pizza Factory, and got to hold the baby, and hang out some.  On Saturday most of the clan gathered at St. Anthony’s for the Easter Vigil.  This year’s Easter Vigil bet was a tie between me and Mr. T – it came down to the seconds, and since all of us use our cell phones as our watches, none of us had a watch with a second hand.  If I were a little more unscrupulous I would declare it in my favor, but that darn conscience… gets in the way all the time!  14 even texted his bet in from Missouri, and he would have won, but he got it in too late, so it didn’t count.  Sunday was lots of family time.  Since we didn’t get to have the baby with us (she’s still much too little to be exposed to large groups of people), Boy-O brought the sugar glider he and his roommates adopted, and we got to play with it instead.  Which was also adorably cute, though not nearly as cute as Sweet Pea.

The rest of the week has flown by.  Thursday night was the first night of the Spring Theology On Tap series.  Adam Pasternak gave a really great talk on religious freedom, particularly as it applies to the current political situation.  I kinda love Adam, whom I knew back when we were both at UD, and it was a really great talk.  Unfortunately, I didn’t pay very much attention to it.  I was sitting in the back whispering and having fun with Pippi, and drinking really, really delicious Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, which had a little higher alcohol content than I realized.  After a while Pippi and I decided to order a pizza, and when the break came, various vultures of the male variety came over to try to steal some.  Lately I haven’t been in the most charitable mood towards persons of the male gender (this may also have something to do with the not-blogging), so I really rather enjoyed denying them all access to the pizza.  All in all, it was one of the most fun TOTs I’ve been to in a long time!

And while we’re on the topic of Men Are Strange, it’s so bizarre that right when you’re feeling cranky about men in general is right when all the guys start coming out of the woodwork.  Friday morning, our new maintenance guy was totally flirting with me while I made his badge, and then the guy who comes to empty the shred box decided to tease me about my somewhat battered door sign.  I ended up chatting half the morning with Atlas, during the course of which he said he might start coming to TOT himself, and then when I went down to lunch the pretty cute and slightly geeky (a good thing) lab manager decided to sit with me.  In the afternoon, one of the other maintenance guys (the much too young for me but pretty cute one) decided to come hang out in the HR office for a while, just, you know, for kicks, and then the topper was getting a message from Sarge saying that he was very sorry he hadn’t been able to come see me yet that day, but they had a situation in the ED they had to deal with.  It reminds me of when I started wearing makeup, and suddenly had the two single guys at my old work in my office building towers out of empty pop cans.

Men are strange.

Good Friday

This is so weird for me.  For the first time in years, I am working on Good Friday.  It just feels wrong.  Good Friday was always this sort of very solemn holiday.  You didn’t have to go in to work, and you got to sleep in, but you still had to spend a significant chunk of the afternoon in church thinking about Christ’s death on the cross.  Today, however, I got up at the usual time (well, a little late), dressed in my lovely, lovely navy polyester uniform, and headed in to work just as usual.  So strange.

This week has been a bit odd in general.  It started off with a bang on Monday morning when I finally, finally moved in to my new offices.  I was so ready to go – by 8am I had all my stuff packed up in boxes and bags, and already loaded on the cart I’d borrowed from Shipping & Receiving.  So of course the guy who comes specially every time I move to personally oversee the transfer of the badge printer messaged me to say that he wouldn’t be there until 9:30.  At which point I had to unpack a few things so that I could do some work while I waited.  But eventually he showed up, everything got moved, and I could start the process of arranging things and settling in.

The new offices, honestly, are beautiful.  They are bright and open and airy.  You feel like you can breathe here.  From where I sit I can look straight out a huge window and see trees and grass and open sky.  There is room to spread out here.  Someone pointed out that my desk is as big as my whole office used to be, and when I looked I realized that he was right.  I have a printer/copier I can use without bothering the ED nurses.  I have my storage room and file room right next to me, so now getting someone’s uniform takes five minutes instead of twenty-five.  I have a little waiting area, so now when I have a line people have somewhere to sit instead of having to hang out in the hall.  I even have flat surfaces where I can put out brochures and coupons and all the other random goodies that a good HR office ought to have.  All in all, it’s pretty wonderful.

Unfortunately, what is also is, is kinda lonely.  My old office was tiny, but it was right at the heart of the hospital, and right next to my friends.  My new office is kinda tucked back around a corner in a part of the hospital that opened up so recently a lot of people don’t realize yet that it exists.  So while I still get plenty of business, I don’t have so much of Sarge dropping in to tell me the latest outrageous thing someone did, or Sir Walter coming to show me pictures of his new baby, or the ED manager running in to grab chocolate from my candy dish because she forgot to eat lunch again.  I was getting rather mopey about this yesterday, starting to think gloomy thoughts about how this was just a prettier version of the trailer, when the day took a dramatic turn for the better.

You see, Pippi had come to have lunch with me on Tuesday.  While we were eating, Atlas stopped by our table, and started telling us hilarious stories about all the random interactions police officers have with the public.  Pippi and I didn’t even get halfway through our lunches because we were laughing so hard.  In the course of the conversation, Atlas mentioned that Selleck has dashboard cam videos of arrests and high speed chases, and just random stuff that he’s done which apparently make for very entertaining viewing.  Of course, you can’t tell us something like that and not expect us to want to see them for ourselves.  And right then Selleck came down to the cafeteria to find out what was taking Atlas so long, so both Pippi and I turned our imploring eyes on him and asked if he would bring them in so that we could watch them.  So, you know, he said he would.  And honestly, it would take a man of deep moral fiber to resist both me and Pippi once we pull out the imploring eyes.  Or even without the imploring eyes.  Just saying.

Yesterday Selleck said that he had the videos, so I texted Pippi and told her to come for lunch.  Selleck brought the thumb drive to our new office, but it turned out my computer didn’t have the right software to play them.  After all the build up, I couldn’t let a little thing like that stop us.  So I suggested that we should go back to the police office and watch them there.  This was pushing things a bit – they’re really not supposed to have non-officers hanging out in there watching videos.  But I was having too much fun to let a little thing like that stop me, and Selleck didn’t seem to mind.  So off we went.  This time the videos played just fine, and we got through one very high speed chase (apparently the police car Selleck has for his other job is the really, really fast one), and had almost got to the dramatic finish when the two top police officers suddenly pulled up, and we all had to scram as fast as we could.  Which was also, in its own way, fun.

This whole little adventure cheered me up no end, and I finished the day much more cheerfully.  And then in the evening I headed out to St. Anthony’s for the Mass of Our Lord’s Supper followed by Adoration, and the beginning of the three holiest days of the year.  And it was good.

This weekend there will be a lot of going to church (of course), though this time we’ll have our own ridiculously adorable infant along with us.  The whole family will be coming to St. Anthony’s with me, which I’m looking forward to a lot.  I love my parish very much, so I’m excited about sharing it with them.  And then next week I’m told that the rest of my HR team is going to start spending more time over here (I mean, I even bought them post-it notes!), so hopefully my mopey days will be entirely in the past.  And that will also be very, very good.

Happy Triduum!

Palm Sunday

I have often thought that one way to tell that you had a really good weekend is by how sore you are when you’re done.  By that measure, this weekend just now winding to a close was a rousing success, cuz, man my calf muscles are killing me.    And, yes, this is dancing related, though not the usual dancing.

You see, Saturday night there was a square dance in Cincinnati, a special square dance put on for Catholic young adults, self-proclaimed as the social event of the season.  Some of us in Catholic Life (my Catholic young adult group) are friends with some of the people putting it on, so we decided to get in on the action.  Well, I should say that the girls decided to get in on the action.  Most of the boys (except for a select few, who consequently got major cool points) decided to stay home.  But the girls put on their dancing shoes and headed down.

And, you know, I guess we made something of a splash.  It helps that we’re pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself, and most of us really like dancing.  There were three sets of square dances separated by good old fashioned shake-your-booty DJ’d dancing (think really good wedding DJ), and pretty much any time the music was playing, you’d find us out on the dance floor, having a really good time.  It was a lot of fun.  I hadn’t been noticing other people noticing us (I was mostly having much too good of a time dancing), but at the end of the night when it was time to say good-bye, it was kinda awesome finding my girls in the center of a group of guys all trying to persuade them to come back down to Cincinnati sometime.  We, of course, tried to persuade them to come up to Dayton.  We’ll see if any of them make the trip.  We know that at least one succeeded in getting a particular girl’s number (Pippi and I gave each other a high five when we saw him go for his phone – we’re fans of our friends getting some action), so I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing some new faces in our neck of the woods sometime soon.

For myself, I especially enjoyed seeing That Guy again.  I was trying to remember the last time I’d actually seen him, and I think it was about three years ago.  We had hung out some back then, but then life happened.  We didn’t see each other so much anymore, he started grad school and moved to Cincinnati, and we sortof lost touch.  He has always been one of my favorite people, so it was really, really good to reconnect with him.  All in all, it was a really good night.

The rest of the weekend has been pretty low key.  I’ve been doing some spring cleaning, which is new for me.  Usually the only thing that really gets me to clean the house is knowing that I have company coming over!  But it feels good.  One of my New Year’s ambitions was to get the house in better order, and it looks like I’m making some pretty significant progress towards that.

The really exciting thing, though, is that on Monday I’m finally, finally moving into my new offices.  At long last I will be in a place that is really mine, not a place where I’m there on sufferance, as a favor for the time being.  Moreover, I will have my storage areas right next to me, instead of on two other completely different floors.  No longer will I have to make a field trip every time I have to help someone pick up their uniform order.  No longer will pulling someone’s file take up to twenty minutes.  I will have room to file things, room to store things, room to spread out and get things organized.  Oh, my friends, I can’t wait!

And while I’m deliriously happy about this move, I have to also admit that there is some sadness too.  My old office has been good to me, particularly since it’s right next to my friends.  There’s the ED unit admin who’s become a good friend and a few others, but mostly it’s my police buddies.  It makes things easy having them so close, and I will miss seeing them a lot.  They’re not really happy about me moving either.  They like having me close, not just because it makes it easy to hang out, but because we have to work together a lot on setting up badges.  It was very cute watching them try not to grin every time I told them there had been another delay in me moving.  On Friday Sarge told me that he had actually been pretty upset that I was really moving, that he likes having me nearby, particularly since I always have a smile on my face.  He has a bit of a temper, does Sarge, and he told me that there were times that he was feeling like punching someone’s face in, and then I would walk by and smile, and he’d relax.  It was the most awfully sweet thing.  I keep telling them that they have to come visit me, but it won’t be the same, and we all know it.

Of all the people in the hospital, the police officers are the ones who have been the most consistently kind and welcoming to me, the ones who have always had my back.  With my own actual team so far away, they are the ones I’ve relied on.  Now that my real team has offices at the hospital, they’ll be spending more time there.  I know that it’s time for me to start bonding with them instead of the cute guys down the hall.  But still I don’t want to say good-bye.