Waiting for Patience

--- 1 --- If I could tell you the one thing I absolutely hate, it would be confrontation.  I dislike when people are upset with me or dissatisfied with a decision that I made - and I will almost always do whatever it takes to make them happy.  However, this week I went face to face, head to head with a volunteer about her continued involvement with our programming.  The answer ended up being no because of her thoughts about some of the Church's teachings (basically that someday the Church will catch up with the culture and she is a more progressive thinker because she can see people's needs and respond to them - the Church doesn't though) specifically regarding homosexuality and gay marriage. --- 2 --- Last Saturday I took our middle and high school students to the Diocesan Eucharistic Congress.  In the morning after the procession I had the kids explore the vendors and take tons of photos with the nuns, priests, interesting booths, and even the Pope!!! ...

You may rest assured, my dear friend, that what best guarantees our perfection is the virtue of patience; and if it is necessary to practice this virtue with others, it is right to exercise it first of all towards ourselves. Those who aspire to the pure love of God need patience with themselves even more than with others. - Saint Padre Pio  This was the quote yesterday for the Daily Blessings  email and I was especially moved to write a blog considering my specific theme - waiting for patience! Patience exercised toward myself  is the area of patience that I need the most work on in the regular practice of my life.  So I thought I would write about the areas where I am most impatient with myself. 1. Physically  - In the last three years I have made a significant improvement in my health.  I add 65 less pounds to the earth.  I can do more at the gym than just the elliptical (started there and it was hard enough to do 20 minutes).  ...

--- 1 --- Was SUPER excited to see Matt Maher in concert, yeah - that's right - in person!  3rd row! At a Protestant Church in Charlotte, WHAT?!  During the 'talk portion' of the night, Matt sat down with the pastor  and they discussed some of the differences and misconceptions people have about the Catholic Church in general - not really specific teachings that we are different on, but the things that we are on the same page with - ie: the CREED!  We were all pretty psyched to meet him afterward too! --- 2 --- Santa Fe Chicken in the Crock Pot = the dinner I'm making for myself and MG tomorrow for our dinner in!  With one exception  - NO BEANS! Yuck! --- 3 --- She doesn't know it yet, but I'm thinking we might play... OR maybe... LOTS of fun will be had! --- 4 --- In the last 2 1/2 months, 4 people have left my place of work!  The preschool director's husband got a new job in Tennessee, so she left in the beginning...

Dear man riding your loud dirt bike around and around our apartment complex, If doing laundry after 10pm is a violation of our quiet hours, then so is this! Sincerely, A tired gal --- best email I've ever written (IMHO)...after recommending to a friend we go kayaking during our trip to Savannah over Thanksgiving okay, so i've been thinking about this kayaking, and not to be a debbie downer, but i think it's a terrible idea (not sure who thought of it first, but in my humility i'll take the blame) ... it's NOVEMBER and not the WARMEST month of the year! what CRAZY fool would think we could be wet & on the ocean for an hour and NOT get hypothermia!!!  so, i take the idea off the table and PTL that someone wasn't crazy enough to just 'buy up that deal' while it was hot! (cause it wasn't; hot that is - just COLD, VERY COLD!) --- Dear Matt Maher, THANKS for representing the Catholic Church last night at CharlotteONE when David Hickm...

Today is September 11th, 2012 - 11 years since the most destructive attack on our country in my short lifetime.  For my generation asking "Where were you when you found out about the Twin Towers?" is like asking "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" for my parent's generation. So, Where Was I? I was in Dr. Marz's AP World History Class, 2nd period, when we were watching the news and actually saw the 2nd plane hit the building.  Then I remember him telling us to turn off the TV so we could get back to work.  I think this was in an effort to make sure no one was panicked about what was going on or what was happening.  The dailiness of my life was not particularly affected since we lived so far away and didn't know anyone in the towers or even anyone who knew someone in the towers. However, when I came here to Charlotte, I met a man who was on the 101st floor and has an incredible story of survival.  I have it recorded somewhere - maybe...

--- 1 --- Still working on my 5K training!  I ran this morning, but it wasn't amazing...  I guess I should be happy I made it 2 miles even without a lot of running.  My back has been hurting the last few days so I was moving quite slow this morning.  I've tried heat and ice as well as stretching.  It's all helping for a bit but nothing is making it go away. --- 2 --- My Facebook status the other day reflects pretty much my entire outlook on life lately: today will be the day my computer & i fight! EVERYTHING is going wrong! i don't understand why my computer would do complicated, amazing things just yesterday and TODAY it's like the end of the world for it to type a sentence! be warned! if all you can do is type a sentence, i WILL recycle you into this!!! it will not be pretty (& it will hurt - both of us)! --- 3 --- The fruit of my labor on Tuesday (& probably part of the reason why my back hurts). Arranged 4 full shelves ...

Lots of things have been produced from this little apartment lately! With all those T-Shirts I've been making some great things! The first choice was re-usable bags!  Using them to put my recyclables in!  Re-purposing an item in order to recycle others, totally 'gone-green'! THEN, thanks to my friend MG, I got this CRAZY idea to make a rug out of my t-shirts.  So cutting up many shirts into strips that were too large, I embarked on this adventure.  So I bought a latch-hook form (30x36) and a hook and began this effort.  In a week, I've done 15 squares of 10x10 - I'm trying not to count the number of little strips, but that's 1500 and as you can see I'm almost nowhere close to even being a quarter of the way through!  I WILL not be conquered - so this is a project I will eventually finish, I think!  By eventually, my first child might enjoy this - and that's at least 2 years, but most likely more away from today! Today for lunch...