i get it, but i often forget it.

after all is said and done, i am a pretty together person. at the end of the day (year) - and even at the beginning of it - i "get" it.

i get what it means to live a truly "good" life. not thee good life, perhaps, but a good life. i understand that living a good life means having God as your center - not having your own thoughts, conclusions, ideas, opinions, and desires as your center.

i get it that in order to assemble anything remotely akin to a happy life, i have to surrender my will to God's will. (what's even better? - matching my will to His.)

i get it that this, too, shall pass.

i get it that what i do to the least of these, i do to Him.

i get it that the beatitudes are true.

i get it that i will be okay, if not right now, then at least, in the end. (which is actually the beginning.)



i get it.

i also forget it.

new year's resolution?



remember.

debit cards that you should never use as debit cards you should use them as credit cards and oh, btw? cut up your credit cards.

y'all know how flippin' insane i think the world has become these days, right, and having a debit card that you should never use as a debit card you should only use it as a credit card and oh btw, you should cut up your credit cards has got to be thee best piece of evidence for the truth of that that i can possibly think of.

"never use your debit card as a debit card."

i'm sorry - i'm not stupid - but that, right there, just freakin' blows. my. mind.

although, when you think about it, maybe there's some good, sound advice buried in there somewhere. maybe we should apply the debit card advice to everything else. for instance......

"never use your car as a car." - if we never used our cars as cars, we'd never get into car crashes. we wouldn't care how high the price of gasoline goes. we wouldn't have to go visit a bunch of people we don't wanna go visit. if we ever became homeless, we'd have a ready-made home to sleep in, so, voila, we'd never be homeless!

"never use your stove as a stove." - if we never used our stoves as stoves, we'd never ruin another thanksgiving dinner. we could finally stop yelling at our kids, "don't touch that! it could kill ya!"

"never use your lipstick as lipstick." - i read somewhere once where most lipsticks make much better eye shadows than they do lipsticks. (maybe the people who make lipstick are also the people who make debit cards.)

"never use your lawn mower as a lawn mower, use it as hair clippers."

(well, ok. if you really don't like somebody, sometimes the advice does make sense.)

anger that comes out the top of your head

i have had so much of that this year, i don't know where to start. so i won't start anywhere. i'll talk about something else instead.

i'll talk about how i really wish people would stop being so horrified when they hear that i like snow.

i'll talk about how it's a terrible, terrible, hurtful thing to scrawl the word "TRASH" across the back window of somebody's car.

instead of talking about having so much anger that it comes clear out the top of your head......instead of talking about that, i'll talk about how my dog can't sleep (a-gain), and how i am going out of my mind with sleep deprivation.

i'll talk about 5 ohio state football players who don't seem to have too much moral compass inside them and then i'll talk about the whole rest of the world who doesn't seem to, either.

i'll talk about "buy one/get one free" and how that just means buy two and pay more for the first.

i'll talk about how i cannot comprehend how it is that so many people can go to church on a pretty regular basis, sit there, appear to listen, and then turn around and act like assholes.


i'll talk about anything except the anger that comes out the top of my head.

the blue jacket dairy garlic quark

i ordered a portobello mushroom sandwich at lunch yesterday and, although i do like portobello mushroom sandwiches, i am not over the moon about them, but the reason i ordered this particular portobello mushroom sandwich is because the menu said it had "blue jacket dairy garlic quark" on it and i was like, hell.........i gotta have that. (whatever that is.)

usually, if i don't know what something is on a menu, i'll ask. and by "usually i'll ask" i mean, usually i won't ask.

and so it was that i didn't ask what blue jacket dairy garlic quark was and so it was that when my sandwich arrived (btw, it was, hands down, thee best portobello mushroom sandwich i have ever had in. my. life. - and i give the credit to the blue jacket dairy garlic quark - whatever that is)......but when my sandwich arrived, i lifted the bread to see where the blue jacket dairy garlic quark was and, even though i wouldn't know a blue jacket dairy garlic quark if it stood up and punched me in the face........even though i wouldn't know it if it did that, i was still pretty convinced that my sandwich had arrived minus the blue jacket dairy garlic quark cuz i didn't see anything that even faintly resembled a blue jacket dairy garlic quark. whatever that is.

anyway, to make a boring story interesting (too late, i know)......anyway, to make a boring story interesting, this morning, i finally decided to google blue jacket dairy garlic quark and who knew?????

first of all, let's work backwards.....

a quark is cheese. who knew????

garlic quark is cheese with garlic in it. who knew???

the blue jacket dairy is an ohio-based dairy and they specialize in artisan cheeses, especially quarks, and especially garlic ones. who knew????

so there you have it. that's what a blue jacket dairy garlic quark is.


(i knew that.)

gimme that old time (Catholic) religion!

if you know, without looking it up, what "Laudeter Jesus Christus" means, then you must want that old time (Catholic) religion, too.

and, if you know, without looking it up, what you are supposed to say in response to someone who says to you, "Laudeter Jesus Christus," then you must be the pope. either that or on the payroll at wikipedia.

"Laudeter Jesus Christus," unless you are a complete moron, isn't really all that hard to figure out. there's really only one word - and that's the first one - that should give you any amount of difficulty at all - and that one shouldn't give you much. i mean, "laudeter, laud, honor, glory, all glory, laud, and honor...." - how hard can it be, right?

where the real trick comes in is in knowing what to say back to a person who just said "Laudeter Jesus Christus" to you. without looking it up, that is.

without looking it up and off the top of my head, i would probably guess that what i should say back to a person who just said, "Laudeter Jesus Christus" to me is..... i should probably say back to the person who just said that to me, i should probably say, "amen." or, maybe, "amen, amen!" (but definitely not "sure, dude. whatever.")

if, without looking it up and off the top of your head, if you would guess that what you should say back to a person who just said, "Laudeter Jesus Christus" to you is, "in saecula! amen!" -you would be right. (you would also be the pope. either that or on the payroll at wikipedia.)

"Laudeter Jesus Christus" which, without looking it up and off the top of your head i sure hope you have enough sense to figure out is latin, means "praised be Jesus Christ," and the correct response that you should make when someone says, "Laudeter Jesus Christus" to you - which, granted, isn't very often - (and, sidebar here - that, according to those who want you to give 'em the old time (Catholic) religion, is part of the problem) - but, what you are supposed to say when someone says "Laudeter Jesus Christus" to you is, you are supposed to say, "in saecula! amen," which, also in latin, means, "forever! amen!"

if you don't like "in saecula! amen!" which, sidebar here - what's not to like? - but if you don't like "in saecula! amen!" you can say "nunc et in aeternum! amen!" which, personally, i find harder to say and get it right, but if you took latin in high school, go for it.

but, the whole point of my post this morning isn't so much what the words "Laudeter Jesus Christus," and "in saecula! amen," and "nunc et in aeternum! amen!" mean (by the way, "nunc et in aeternum! amen!" means "now and forever! amen!).....but the whole point isn't so much what the words themselves mean, although, don't get me wrong......what the words mean is vitally important, especially to people who want you to give 'em that old time (Catholic) religion.....but the bigger point, the larger point here is that there is a movement afoot, within the Catholic church, to restore many of the traditions and practices and customs and devotions of the old time Catholic (pre-vatican II) church, including saying such things as, "Laudeter Jesus Christus!"

and to that i say......

you betcha.

"when, with the ever-circling years, comes round the age of gold...."

i have always loved those lyrics from "it came upon a midnight clear." every time i sang them - or heard them sung - in hushed and tender tones - i got teary.

this year has been no exception and this year.....this year? this year my age of gold has come around.

oh, it's not that i'm all that old or anything like that. it's not that i'm ready for the company to give me my gold watch. it's not that i'm scoping out burial plots.

but it is that i have arrived at, if not my late years, then at least my later ones, and i am taking stock.

what does one do when one "takes stock?" especially when one "takes stock" with the lyrics from "it came upon a midnight clear" ringing in her ears?

(does one ponder whether it is better to invest in stocks or in gold?)

no, what one does is......or, at least, what this one does is.......this one begins to see that the age of gold has been here -  all along.

it wasn't anything i needed to wait around for the ever-circling years to bring me, after all.

it was there all along.



my life has been an age of gold. i have been lucky, blessed, and lucky and blessed again. and again. and again. i have been living the age of gold.

and now? now that there's a bit of tarnish on my gold?  (yes......it turns out that gold tarnishes just as surely as silver does).......now that there is a bit of tarnish on my gold?

now that there is a bit of tarnish on my gold, i am going to sing the song even louder. and even stronger. and with even more elbow grease on my part. because you know what?.........

the song never said i'd never have to.

whadja git?

that's the question everybody's gonna be asking the next few days.....whadja git (for Christmas)?

i got a lady from united dairy farmers.

i got a lady from united dairy farmers who said she didn't have any family to buy for this year and so she was buying for everyone at united dairy farmers.

she sprang for my 3 coffees and 3 hot chocolates, she sprang for the teenager ahead of me in line who bought 6 liters of soda, she sprang for the person to her left and the person to her right. she sprang for the whole dang store!

you could tell by looking at her that she probably didn't have much money herself. she looked like she could have used someone to spring for her, but instead, she was playing santa claus to total strangers.

i told her thank you, of course. i told her thank you a million times - over and over - as did everybody else in line. but i didn't tell her enough. i stopped one "thank you" short, because:

this lady restored my faith in mankind. she was like the miracle you see in Christmas movies except the miracle never really happens in real life.


except, sometimes, when you least expect it........sometimes, it really does.