In an interesting place tonight. Lots of ground to cover. Don't know where this will go or if it will come together, so we'll get the thread title part out of the way first: Today "I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be."
Saturday morning I got an e-mail that confirmed that I am currently retired. Around that time I also checked my page with the property manager to confirm that all my rents came in for the month. I did some of the weekend chores Saturday, but today, I made a Day of Rest. Despite going to bed relatively early--and having some WHACKY dreams I may or may not try to relate elsewhere--I managed to sleep too late to make church. BUT! I still made the effort. Out the door to walk The Dog by 9:58. To make church, she'd have to decide to cut her walk short by 25%. As it turned out, she took a 30 minute walk, leaving me time to fart around in the yard for 15 minutes with her and still make church.
When the 'Rona hit, they stopped getting the monthly missal booklet for the church service. Now they've got big ugly screens that project song lyrics for the service, but I see that they did get a yearly service book. I don't like it. Mostly. It's supposed to cover everything the old booklets did, but it's a lot clunkier and divided into sections and a bit like those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books: "2nd Sunday of Easter. Blessing (Turn to page 12)" And each week's section has an awful Chick Tract looking illustration of a sucky Jesus doing whatever the week's Gospel is supposed to be. BUT! At the end are a bunch of prayers. Like, the Rosary, a couple St. Michael prayers, a guardian angel prayer, a bunch of the litanies. Stuff that is downplayed in the modern Church. Oh, and ahead of that is the songs section, which has all the old songs my old German priest was so fond of. I could hear him singing them as I read the words.
And that's something I'm wrestling with right now: Something that we, for lack of a better word, call "magic." Or "miracles." There's the passage where Jesus visits Nazareth and he has no power there because everyone's just like, "Isn't that Joseph's kid? Why's he think he's such a big-shot?" and he can't do any big miracles because no one believes. I've seen unexplainable things happen because of the power of prayer and I'm intrigued by these old prayers that are neglected nowdays; whether they have any power that isn't being used.
Meanwhile, instead, at the end, they read the same announcements they read at the end of last week's Mass. THEN! For added fun! They rounded up all the children, handed them roses, and had anyone who'd had an anniversary or birthday stand up so kids could wander around and hand them roses. And it went exactly as smoothly and painlessly as you'd think it would. Fuck this touchy feely shit. Release the Old Magick: "St. Magoo, Pray for us, Sister Mary Motorcycle, Pray for us, All you Holy Brothers and Sisters, ride with us, ... "
So after the morning dog walk, church, Sunday brunch (at home because I'm still not 100% trusting my cash flow structure--but it was excellent--waffles. eggs, hash browns, toast, milk, OJ, coffee), Internet fuckery, and a nap, I took New Dog to the first park I took Old Dog to when I moved here. I hadn't taken her initially because I wasn't sure of her off-leash control, but actually she's better off-leash than Old Dog. Also, she's not that excited to ride in cars. But she seemed to enjoy it and it was a good time.
Got home, farted around in the yard a bit before heading in to make dinner. Channel surfing for something to watch with dinner. Ordinarily it would be "Sell This House" reruns, but CBS decided to rebrand Dabl from a "lifestyle" network to a UPN black girl comedy rerun network. And that's their prerogative, but a 2004 episode of "Sister, Sister" just doesn't do anything for me. My backup would be RetroTV for "Dr. Who," but it was a late 5th Doctor episode and at this point I've gotten so anything after K-9 shows up is skip-able. (There are exceptions. The one after K-9, "Image of the Fendahl," is quite good. The e-space vampire serial... But all in all, once John Nathan-Turner takes over as producer it goes into a death spiral IMO). Next choice would be Story Television, but they were doing women "Biography" and Farah Fawcett's cancer and Dana "Different Strokes" Plato's decent into shittiness and an early death isn't exactly great dinner fare, so I channel surfed. And the CW had "13, Going on 30," the Jennifer Garner version of "Big." It's cheesy and corny, but Garner really sells it and Ruffalo is likable as the romantic interest and the message really resonated for me right now.
And now for something completely different.
I don't know if other people have this, but for me, I've had waaay too many times where I looked at what was in front of me and, whether it was desirable to me or not, I could see that everything in my life before that point had put me into the place where I was the perfect person for what was required of me. Shit, I can't even remember the latest one. I know I had it just happen recently, but I forget it. But the Iraq war. My (short lived) Dream Grown-Up Job. My pets. This house. "I love it when a plan comes together." I'm usually a lot more cynical than Hannibal Smith and will usually say something more along the lines of "Fuck it, why not? Fuck it. Fuck it." Or "Well, this went *exactly* the way I planned it," but the sentiment is there.
OK. That didn't totally suck. Although it should probably have some kind of wrap-up: And that's another night on Walton's Mountain. The Cat is in and farting around in the basement. The Dog is snoring peacefully in the guest bedroom, and I've had at least 1 too many cocktails for the evening. All is well. Good night.