Seven Quick Sunday Takes

I think the linkup over at Conversion Diary is still open a few more hours...

I

Goodness, I'm late this week. All of my blogging time recently has been absorbed by a freelance writing project that's due tomorrow, but I'm finally finished! Little Bear loves to bang on the keyboard, so it was pretty much impossible to get anything done unless there was someone else to play with him. Matt and my family helped out a lot, though, and there were also the times when he fell asleep in the car; I took to carrying my notes everywhere I went, so I could just sit in the driveway or the grocery store parking lot and write until he woke up.

II

Friday afternoon at Mass we learned that our diocese will be getting a new bishop. Our current bishop has been reassigned to St Cloud, Minnesota. We will certainly be praying for him in his transition, and praying for whomever our new bishop will be! Hopefully our diocese won't be shepherdless for too long; it seems like the last time we lost a bishop it was more than a year before a new bishop was installed.

III

No WIWS this week; as soon as we got home from Mass this morning I changed out of church clothes to go bake rhubarb coconut bars for the dessert contest at my family's parish's harvest festival this afternoon. I don't actually know what the contest results were, since we had to leave early for Little Bear to take a nap, but it was gratifying to see the pan empty when we picked it up to head home! 

IV

The spring equinox really gets short shrift here: Summer solstice gets a street fair, midnight baseball game, and late-night 10k run; winter solstice gets a fireworks show and other activities depending on whether or not it's -50F; and the autumn equinox gets our annual marathon and ultra marathon. Even when it's snowing, like it was yesterday. We watched part of the finish, cheering people on as they came in down the last hill, and couldn't help but notice that this is probably one of the only marathons where you see some of the runners in heavy sweatshirts and coats.

V

Yes, it's snowing. Not sticking yet, thankfully! We woke up to a half inch or so on the ground Wednesday morning, but it was gone by early afternoon and since then the daily snowfalls haven't really lasted. It's cold, though; definitely weather for spending more time inside with hot cocoa and afghans, pumpkin spice baked goods and Rachmaninov. Why Rachmaninov? I don't know; his music just seems appropriate right now. And Little Bear likes it, too, so I can always claim it's for his brain development or something.

VI

The Sojourner asked, last week, what it is we're looking for in a house, as I keep writing about some of the different houses we have looked at. I've been trying to come up with a good answer all week, but the most accurate answer is one that really doesn't answer the question: we're looking for the right house. I know, I know. But I can't say we're looking for one with a normal pad foundation, even though that's our preference, because some post-and-pad places weren't rejected because of the foundation. I can't say three bedrooms, because a place with two could wind up being better depending on the floorplan. We want a house where the floors are level, the doorframes straight, the kitchen cabinets installed properly, no fixtures have gaping holes where they enter the wall... and you'd think those would all be givens, but they aren't here, not in our price range. A house with triple-pane windows, to keep the cold out and the heat in; with a well, ideally, or at least a buried water holding tank instead of one sprayed with yellow foam and stuck right next to the window as a fifteen-hundred-gallon eyesore. A house with a short enough driveway that I can shovel it alone in no more than an hour and a half. With a bigger kitchen, and in a perfect world, a garage... but we know we can't really afford anything with a garage. And all this in a safe area, where no neighbors have yards full of broken-down school busses and tractors. We are, unfortunately, delusional to think that we can afford such a house. But we'll keep looking, anyway.

VII

Thanks to all of the media mis-coverage of Pope Francis, our pastor has designated one of the bulletin boards in the social hall the "what did Pope Francis really say?" board: he's posting the full text of any address, interview, etc. which comes along and gets twisted and misreported and sends everyone into a tizzy, so that everyone can go read what the pope said for themselves instead of fretting about doctrines changing right and left. It's a good idea, and I hope others find it helpful too! I wonder if there's a website that does this? It would certainly be a helpful resource!

Have a lovely week!