Heaven Or Hell...?

Fr. Tim is constantly telling me that I wouldn't oversleep (or run the risk thereof) if I went to bed earlier. I'm very much a "Night Owl" so I'm not totally convinced... He's just put up an account of his latest retreat at Pluscarden, noting that the monastic chanting of the psalms is a foretaste of heaven...

...ummm, chanting anything at 4:45am is more like my personal idea of hell!

Woo Hoo !

Yippee... I have finally cracked the 40,000 visitor mark. It should have been earlier in the week, but I wasn't in the mood to post anything much, and numbers tailed off just a wee bit.

Visitor 40,000 was, as you can see from the screen shot below, from Cincinatti, Ohio in the USA, and he/she/it popped over about two-and-a-half hours ago... while I was visiting my friend Leutgeb to give some technical advice. So, whoever you are, welcome to my blog, and thank you for visiting. You win a Hail Mary said for your intentions (or an Ave Maria if you prefer!)

Encouragement

The great thing about the Blogosphere is how encouraging it all is. The trendy-libs haven't got anything to say (on the whole) because they might offend someone if they imply that they have a definite opinion on anything (except for pointing out that everything pre-Vatican II was a disaster and ignorant and superstitious and...)

That leaves the field wide open for the Traddies. Among the Traddies you have all the orthodox clergy and seminarians (mainly because the majority of the trendy clergy are too old to know how to use a computer, and there are very, very few trendy seminarians because the lefty-trendies don't really feel comfortable with a ministerial priesthood which excludes women and condemns gay sex); you also find the Traddy families, which are often silent hymns of praise to the Church's teaching on marriage and the family: ie. more than 2 children.

Twitch of the mantilla to Karen for finding "the Mom," a mother of five who has been lurking around the Blogosphere since January but has only just started her own blog: Shoved to Them. The rather odd title refers to a saying of her Nanna's: "One day God will have enough of your foolishness and demand that you hit your knees before Him. You can either do it willingly or He will put his hand upon your head and shove you to them." I like that quote. It sums up my own Damascus Road conversion (technically a reversion, but you catch my drift!) as I feel that God "lost patience" and finally took me in hand.

Another new blog to surface is written by a young music teacher: Leutgeb is the author of Bara Brith (another strange title for a blog - it refers to some sort of spotty Welsh bread favoured by the author's father.) A particular idiosyncracy of Leutgeb's seems to be the need to mention food in each of her posts (four out of four to date!) so she is obviously a woman after my own heart.

Anyway, new blogs always need more encouragement, so pop on over and say hallo.

Nightmares

As the end of the Summer Holiday approaches, I can feel my anxiety levels increasing. I have a terrible fear of oversleeping, made worse by the fact that, left to my own devices, I would probably spend 20 hours under the duvet, surfacing at about 8pm. This term, my oversleeping anxiety is slightly heightened by the fact that I am due to start at a new school.

I can tell that it's nearly the end of the holiday: I have had my first nightmare... I dreamt that I overslept and completely missed the first day of term. I woke up thanking God that it was at least just an INSET day, so I hadn't actually missed much...

I have the ability to turn off alarm clocks in my sleep. I've tried putting them right next to my head, but that makes it too easy to switch them off. I have put them a reasonable distance across the bedroom so that I have to get up to switch them off, but I then seem to be able to ignore them. Notice that I refer to alarm clocks in the plural. I have a small travel alarm clock (saved for term time and important events), my mobile phone alarm, my old mobile alarm, a radio alarm and an old-fashioned fire-bell type alarm clock. And if it's a really important event, then I can arrange for a wake-up call from my landline phone operator...

Paranoid? Moi?? No, just careful.

The first day back after one Christmas holiday, my then single alarm clock went off. I switched it off, got up, washed, did my makeup and got dressed. I drove in to school, and wearily made my way into my Science lab. The first class came in, and I started to teach them something or other (I forget what.)

In the middle of the lesson, the telephone rang. Now this was a little unusual, not least because I didn't actually have a telephone in my lab, but I answered it anyway. A voice on the other end of the line told me that it was the Head's PA. She asked if I was actually going to come in to school that day...

This was really bizarre. I retorted, "I am in school, I'm..."

It was at this point that I woke up. At home. In my nightdress. On the phone (which was in the spare room) with the Head's PA on the other end of the line...

What Kind Of Sandwich...?

You Are a Club Sandwich

You have a big personality. It's hard for anyone to ignore you! You dream big. You think big. And you eat big. Some people consider you high maintenance, but you just know what you want... and when you want it. Your best friend: The Tuna Fish Sandwich Your mortal enemy: The Salad Sandwich

What Kind of Sandwich Are You?

Mantilla twitch to the Thorn in the Pew.

New Blog...

Mantilla-twitch to Carpe Canem for finding Tigerish Waters, who describes her vocation as being one half of a married couple. She hasn't been going long, but I like what I've seen so far...

How About...

... a little Caption Competition? I thought "Mutton dressed as the Lamb of God" was rather appropriate, but I'm sure you can come up with better ones!

Twitch of the mantilla to A Thorn in the Pew.

Too Tired To Blog?

I seem to be out of ideas today!