Whiny and petulant v2.0

This post originally contained unbelievably mopey dreck and was titled 'Whiny and Petulant'. Because that pretty much encapsulates my day. That and a good dose of BLAH.

But it was ONLY whiny and petulant and NOT entertaining, not even in the way that my brother out in the godforsaken undisclosed Middle Eastern country would read it, snort to himself and say "Sucka!" It was a rather large dollop of miserable on low-carb bread and who wants any of that!

So here we are, edited to add: Things? Not so bad!

Well, here are the bad things, in short order, just so we can get them out of the way:

• It's that time of year again. When people stop reading directions, when they are oblivious to deadlines, when they feel entitled to favors, when they call asking for information they could find on the same piece of paper where they found my phone number. It's the time of year where my dislike of the General Public slips even further into the murky misanthropic swamp of stinkeye.
• It is sunny and I am not at home being "sick".
• I had to go to a meeting about 401k plans this morning and not only was it the boringest thing in the universe, there was a giant box of doughnuts sitting in front of me the whole time.
• I feel as though I went through an entire week of high school basketball practice last night, but all I did was weed and pull out a 3-foot-high bush in my postage stamp-sized yard. Am getting old.

But here are the good things!

• In a desperate attempt to save my sanity re: the general public and their determination to ignore the words "no" and "deadline", I've begun accepting bribes. People just do not understand a simple "I could have helped you if you'd turned this in TWO WEEKS AGO when you were SUPPOSED TO." They do understand a vague "Well, I'm not sure what I can do..."  As of mid-Monday morning I've traded a well-situated table for free cocktails from 6 to 7 p.m. the night of the event and I'm ready to schedule the rest of the evening. At this rate I'll be hurling in the fancy hotel bathroom by ten. Excellent.
• It is sunny and I have flowers to plant when I get home. Yay!
• I amused myself during the 401k meeting by dredging up my giant database of Friends quotes and laughing inside my own head whenever Phoebe says "Four oh wunk."
• All the yard work probably prevented a 400-pound weight gain from Easter brunch. At the very least, I am now a smidgen less embarrassed about my shabby little yard.

There. This is MUCH happier than the original.

Oh, and on a TOTALLY unrelated note, I wanted to say something about Easter.

For the second year in a row we attended the Triduum, which, in case you are not Catholic, just means a LOT of Mass. By 8:45 pm when we had to leave for the Easter Vigil, I was tired and crabby and crampy and gloomy and NOT looking forward to sitting in a dark church on a hard pew. And it was bad. I was falling asleep. I was cold. I was uncomfortable. What important thinker person said that it's hard to be all spiritual and holy when you're trapped inside a needy body? But eventually they turned the lights on and they baptized the elect and we sang "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" and it was EASTER. And then afterwards we went to the little party for the new Catholics, even though it was midnight, because there was some GOOD food and the priest sat with us and told super funny yet terribly embarrassing stories about all the old people who went on the Italy pilgrimage. Like one lady who complained to the hotel staff about how the microwave in her room wasn't working. And then the hotel staff explained that the microwave was not working because it was actually a SAFE.

But that's not what I wanted to tell you about. I wanted to tell you about the altar servers. We have girl altar servers at my church, but I've noticed that on Important Days, there are only boys. At the Easter Vigil there were four older men, two teenage boys and two younger ones, maybe eleven or twelve. I sometimes wish I was more indignant about this, more enlightened about women being priests and all that, but it doesn't really bother me. I actually LOVE seeing those men up there. I love seeing the adults wearing the same server robes as the little ones. I love how somber and dilligent the older men are about the altar cloth and the gifts and reminding the little ones when to do their chores. But the teenagers are my favorites. We've got a handful of them at my church. They press their palms together, they sing the hymns, their shoelaces are tied. They're reverent. And the best part is when one of them takes the incense from the priest, goes to the front of the altar and bows. He bows to US! And we bow back and he flings incense at us and bows again. I love the bowing. I love the ceremony and the ritual and I am so pleased to see it conducted by two teenage boys. I'm a little young to be Proud of our Youth, but I'm old enough to remember that the boys I knew at 16 and 17 were far from the kind who could take the Easter Vigil seriously, much less participate in the liturgy.

Maybe I will write more about this later. I'm thinking about one of these altar server boys in particular, and also this show I found while channel-surfing last night. It's called God or the Girl and it was RIDICULOUS, but also sort of fascinating. It reminded me of the seminary student I met when I was in high school, who kept a picture of his ex-girlfriend near his bed to remind him why he chose celibacy. Heh.