Last night’s post-nightmare question from Zag, to Tilt, who took the call:
“Has Mama changed out of the spidery dress?”
Great, I think, lying in bed. Now I’m going to have nightmares.
After doing what needed doing today (and doing it reasonably well, I felt), and a brief stop at the local hospital to do some pastoral visiting, I took myself over to Le Target for the tail end of the afternoon to see if I could find some clothes. I have ascertained that neither the TJ’s nor the Marshall’s in town carries maternity clothes, and the nearest Motherhood Maternity is 45 minutes away, as is the nearest children’s resale shop that might carry maternity clothes. There’s a consignment store only 25 minutes away that bears investigating. But in the meantime, there’s Target, and good old Liz Lange.
I think I tried on four batches of six items each. It was as blast. I had forgotten how much fun it is to try on maternity clothes. For a woman of my general size and shape, the biggest bummer about clothes shopping is all the time one has to spend looking at one’s belly, sucking in one’s gut to see how a piece of clothing looks with belly-minimization, and the associated worrying about how a piece of clothing will look when one is out in public and inevitably forgets to suck in one’s gut. But now? Now it’s all about the belly. Flaunt it. Admire the curves. It’s terrific. I tried on a tight little black knit dress and looked like a million bucks. I didn’t buy it because I couldn’t quite convince myself that it was professional wear, which is really what I need, but it was fun to look at myself. I felt like a total babe.
I didn’t need a professional wardrobe last time I was pregnant – I was teaching anthropology to undergraduates part-time, so I had to look decently put-together, but the standards weren’t that high. Also, Zag was born in May, so I didn’t have that many summer maternity clothes. So I do probably need to acquire a few things. As my loyal readers, you know I’m hoping to get most of what I need used, because I am both cheap and ambivalent about the ethics about buying new clothing. But acquiring used stuff takes time, and I’m really kind of short on clothes. I have some non-maternity stuff that will still cover me, but non-maternity clothes stretched over a pregnant body tend to look dumpy, whereas actual maternity clothes tend to look cute. After buying a few things today and digging a few more items out of our basement, I think I can scrape by until I strike it lucky at a yard sale or get myself down to that consignment store.
In other news, yard sale season is beginning! I’m looking forward to spending a beautiful Saturday morning working the sales. Yay!
… I’m pregnant. About twelve weeks. The next member of the Weirdbird/Tilt household, if all goes well, will make a first appearance around All Saint’s Day. (That’s Nov. 1 for the non-church-geeks out there.)
Everything seems to be going well so far. We had our first prenatal appointment this morning and heard the little prawn’s heartbeat, loud and clear. And I’m really starting to show. So it seems like time to go public, here & elsewhere.
I’ve managed to keep the secret until now, but I was sorely tempted to go public here on my blog much earlier. The two weeks while Tilt was out of town and I had no one ready to hand to whom to complain, and was suffering through nausea, super-sensitive nose, many taste aversions, bloating, and gas, were particularly difficult. I really wanted some sympathy, y’all. (more…)
It all went pretty well, actually. I haven’t yet heard from/about anyone else who feels that I ruined anything, and a few of my gentle additions seem to have been well-received. For example, we added images to a couple of occasions – an icon (Robert Lentz’s Christ of Maryknoll) to pray with during the Thursday night vigil, and our burial icon of Jesus for the kids to put flowers on at the Friday afternoon children’s Stations of the Cross – and in both cases the addition seems to have been effective and appreciated. (more…)
I reworked the Passion drama for St. Cosmus’s this year. On Palm Sunday, most Episcopal churches read the whole story of Jesus’ last supper, arrest, trial, crucifixion, and death, from one of the Gospels. To make this more engaging and not just twenty minutes of one voice droning on, it’s divided up into parts – Narrator, Jesus, Judas, etc.
Now, Mark, John, & company do not specify exactly how their accounts of the Passion of our Lord should be interpreted as a dramatic text. Assigning the parts involves some small degree of interpretation. The tradition seems to be to cast the congregation as “The Crowd,” and to give them all the really negative lines – attacks on Jesus, calls for his death, mockery, etc.
I’m troubled by this. That traditional approach puts a lot of really horrible words in people’s mouths – and never makes space to unpack what that feels like. It seems founded in a very negative vision of human nature: in spite of our efforts to follow Christ, we are bad people who would turn on him at the drop of a hat. (I’m not alone in this concern, though I can’t remember where I first heard someone raise the issue. It may have been someone from St. Gregory of Nyssa, where, I believe, the congregation reads Jesus’ voice – we are, after all, the Body of Christ.)
So after looking at the tidy little insert we get in the mail with the Passion drama, I went to Mark’s text (Mark chapters 14 and 15 are our Gospel this year) and took a look at who says what for myself. Seems to me there are two distinct group voices: Jesus’ disciples and other followers; and outsiders who readily accuse and mock Jesus. Mark nowhere implies that the followers become those outsiders. Jesus’ followers get scared and run away, but they don’t turn against him. (more…)