I’ll be out of town for most of next week at a training. I hope to continue blogging, assuming I can do so without annoying or arousing the suspicion of my roommate, a member of the church. I promise to do my best to bible-blog this week. In the meantime, everybody loiter around Songbird’s place until she posts the texts.

I’m going to miss my girl terribly this week. And this was a big weekend at the church, a retreat of sorts, which means I was up there a lot. And it all went beautifully, but it meant not much time with her before I go. I’m really sad about that. A fluke of the calendar. She did have a great time with everyone last night at the intergenerational spaghetti supper/recreation time. She left with my husband a little early, and I stayed around to give the closing announcements, prayer and benediction. Not until I had finished did I realize I’d been up there, sharing all that liturgical goodness, with her bright red sippy cup in my hand. Yes, a true reverendmother moment.

Everybody welcome kindredspirit to the blogosphere. I wonder how the journalscape folks feel about these lefty Christians all up in here. Too bad blogging is free, otherwise I’d be making quite a commission.

Random pet peeves:

people who spell it “ya’ll.” What exactly do they think it’s a contraction of? It’s Y’all!! You-All! I’d just as soon boot you out of Texas/the south for that.

the fact that when you receive Yahoo! sponsored e-mail to your Yahoo! account, it shows up in the inbox rather than in junk where it rightly belongs. You get all excited to be getting new mail until you see that it’s just some “remember mom for mother’s day” advert.

there never being enough hours in the day. What else is new.

Random stuff I like:

the fact that I can take my knitting with me and make some headway on projects while sitting in these trainings all week.

the many people from the church who are bringing dinners over to R and C while I’m gone. Of course, I’m not the meal-provider. A true RM substitute would do all the laundry and fight the forces of clutter entropy. But I wouldn’t wish that job on anyone. It is an incredible gift that they are providing.

the wonderful people I’ve met in blogland. I especially appreciate the camaraderie with the various working moms out here. As a member of the church put it bluntly in a communications/evangelism ministry meeting, “The majority of families in our community reflect a very traditional structure.” That is, men are breadwinners, women don’t work outside the home… Well, they don’t work for pay—I tell you, the amount of stuff they do around the church—and the quality of that work—knocks my socks off. Still, the fact is I am a working mother, pastoring this congregation filled with stay-at-home moms. (There’s a good contingent of working mothers, and they do a lot at the church as well, but they keep a lower profile. More protective of family time, perhaps?) I don’t know whether they find it awkward, but I do sometimes. I don’t judge them or count myself better than them. I just hope it goes both ways. When I talk about how much C loves and benefits from our child-care arrangement, do they believe me, or does it sound like a big rationalization?

Let me go back to pet peeves—unsolvable conundrums. (Conundri?)

Time to pack!