a cord that ought not be broken

Very very grateful to have finally received the grace and mercy of The Post Office in the matter of Receiving A New Computer Cord. Well, of course, we ordered the cord and paid for the cord and expedited the cord, but it ultimately rested with the gods of the post as to whether they would let us have it in the end. And I think you know what I mean by 'let us have it'.

Also very grateful to have only had to stand in line for an hour and a half to mail a few flat packages and purchase some stamps. Expected it to be, perhaps, the whole day of standing there. And then paid Less than Fifty dollars for this enterprise. Like Whole Dollars Less. The people standing on either side of me, in this line, were trying to smile cheerfully but one was twitching weirdly and another looked to have actual tears in her eyes. I was saying quietly to myself, 'stamps.com, blast it all, stamps.dot.com.'

So here I am, veritably plugged in to the inter web superhighway and ready to catch desperately up on a few things like email, wasting all that lost time on facebook and doing a little tiny bulletin for the Christmas Pageant. In spite of my great loss the Lord was merciful to me. I sat around freaking out for a whole half a day but then, surely inspired by the Holy Spirit, the alien thought struck me that I could, perhaps, rearrange the order of my week. In the absence of a computer I forced myself to catch up on laundry,  complete all my Christmas shopping, wrap piles of stocking presents and get a proper haircut.

And while I have been rushing about, you might wonder, what has everyone else been doing?

Matt has been sitting under a pile of books all week muttering to himself about the Magnificat. I saw a look in his eye two weeks ago and realized that he was planning to carry on with Mark through the Christmas season (where are we in Mark? In the section about corban?) and had the presence of mind to throw a temper tantrum. After a measured amount of shouting and hand waving, he saw things from my view.

The children have been playing wildly, on one end of the spectrum, and on the other (Elphine and Alouicious) writing long chapter stories about Christmas. I haven't had time to read them yet but seeing that they've been carefully written and stapled together and given title pages I feel perhaps this would not be the moment to come out with my red pencil and my clever and critical eye, but rather to put a bow around them and leave them out for "Santa".

Along with a little glass of sherry. And not cookies. Blech. "Santa" wants a large pork pie.