+Summer News and Blues

Hey everybody.  Life’s been… interesting.  Rollercoasters are interesting, aren’t they? 😉

To take things roughly in order:

I talked to my mom and aunt about the funeral stuff.  Eventually I talked them into letting my aunt and uncle know about it.  Though I’d been terribly nervous about it, it turned out completely surreal…  They showed up and acted like nothing had ever happened, we’re all just one big happy family.  Yay.  My uncle even asked me for my email address.  He has not, however, emailed me;  nor I him.  (For what it’s worth, though, my mom says he’s always seemed more conciliatory about the whole thing than my aunt, her sister.)

This summer has been reeeeeaaaaaal sloooooooow.  Very little work, and it eats at me.  I hate having too much time on my hands;  it’s not good for me.  I did have a bit of work with a student named Gonzalo;  we had some interesting discussions about religion.  (He’s basically an agnostic.)  I’ve been in sporadic touch with Juan this summer too.

I went on a trip with my friend Matt, now Brother James.  (I think that’s what I called him – I can’t keep track of the aliases I use any more!)  See, he wanted to go visit some family members out of state on his vacation time from the monastery… but the mileage he had to pay on a monastery car would have really eaten up his trip budget.  Plus he wanted to spend time with me.  So it seemed best for all concerned to use my car, with him paying me for a chunk of the gas.

I had a good time.  We drove about 1500 miles through some really neat countryside, and had some good discussions.  One funny moment:  We stayed the night at a casino hotel, just because it was extremely cheap.  (Swankiest place I’ve ever been, and it cost only $45 for both of us!)  After getting dinner, we looked down into casino, which was literally a pit. 🙂  All flashing lights and noises… and James says in a quiet voice, "Everything the world has to offer."  It’s funny because it’s true!

I was a little apprehensive about staying with his family, as I didn’t know them at all… but his grandmother turned out to be an almost completely sweet person.  She can’t speak (she had a stroke recently) and it frustrates her at times.  (Also, she can’t spell very well, so it can make interpreting her written messages a bit chancy…)  But she was so nice to me and hugged me so often it was almost like having my own grandma back before she got all bitter.  I worked up the courage to tell her that too (well, not mentioning the bitterness part) and she was really touched.

His other family members were pretty nice too;  about the only grating thing was his grandmother’s neighbor and part-time caretaker…  A garrulous lady you can’t get a word in edgewise with, and who goes on and on about racist and anti-Semitic stuff.  (What’s particularly weird is that while she sounded almost like a Skinhead at times, she herself was Chinese!)  It was revolting listening to her;  I debated on whether telling her off would really do any good, and ended up just making my disagreement with her stances plain.  She was Catholic, more’s the pity, so James and I ended up taking her to Mass several times.  (After we got back, James asked me, "Is it uncharitable of me to be glad to be 2000 miles away from her?" 🙂

We also visited a national park that had some truly bizarre landscape… looks like another planet.  But my car’s transmission was doing some really alarming things (a shop near his grandmother’s place told me they’d have to rebuild it for $2000!) so we took it easy on the way back, taking an interstate through some really bland, boring areas.  Too bad.  (When I got back, a shop here fixed the problem completely for $65. :P)

James and I got into a rather vociferous argument on the way back.  (Neither of us has ever been accused of not being opinionated! 🙂 but we made it up that evening.  The funny thing is we both had it in mind to quote to the other, "Do not let the sun set on your anger."  He beat me to it, though.

Since I got back, I’ve had some pretty heavy mood swings.  I’ve never given away any information that would help pinpoint my location, but I can’t help it just now – I’m in one of the dioceses with bankruptcy problems.  And there is legal action underway to try to seize all the property of all the parishes and schools in the diocese.  Which infuriates and scares me.  What have the people of my parish ever done wrong, to justify trying to take our church away?  What about all the people the parish helps?  The courts are treating the Church like it’s just a nonprofit service organization rather than a community – that parishioners are just customers with no "controlling interest" in our own place of worship!  It just drives me nuts.  I suppose I ought to be rejoicing instead – that’s what Jesus said to do when persecuted unjustly – but I can’t find it in me yet.

I applied for a job at a community college that seemed almost made for me, but they picked somebody else.  Sigh.  I realized a few days after my interview that I made a really stupid mistake on one of the problems they had me do, too.  I must’ve punched a number in wrong on the calculator, as my method was correct.

My 35th birthday happened this last Monday.  I’ve never been one to find birthdays depressing, but this one did the trick.  Maybe because it’s the halfway point of the Biblical "threescore years and ten". 😛  I got all maundering about how little I’ve accomplished with my life and so on, and it was moderately awful.  Got in a long talk with my mom about stuff that gets me down… and we suffered our usual complete failure to communicate (she keeps trying to fix me instead of empathizing) until she finally gave up and just listened, which was all right.

After a good night’s sleep with vivid dreams I don’t remember well, I felt a lot better.  It often seems to happen that way for me.

In more positive news, about a week ago I got some Liturgical Twilight Zone weirdness. 🙂  I went to bed after some desultory prayers, when I felt a strong urget to get up and pray the Rosary.  So I did, and it was wonderful.  Guess what day it was?

The memorial of the Queenship of Mary. 🙂  Things have been looking up for me a bit since then, too.

Thanks for always reaching out to me, Beloved.  And thanks for looking out for me like usual, Mom!