After a vain attempt at ‘sleeping in’ I’m back at the ‘puter. There is little for the early riser to do except prayer and reading since most family members don’t appreciate the clatter of housework at 5:00am. If I were able to sleep I know I wouldn’t. The downside to this early waking is that I need a nap by about 1:00pm. Which makes the family think I’m slipping into my decline. Skipping the nap does not improve the quality of my sleep, just makes the second half of the day less productive.

Soon it will be late enough that I can start puttering around. Work some more on the antennae for the ancient stereo receiver in the living room. The car is the usual radio source around here - but it would be nice to crank up Breakfast with the Beatles while eating the pancakes that I am no longer allowed to cook. Sunday breakfast is officially Dad’s. First it was the whole wheat pancake thing. Then the kids complained that the homemade pancakes had a funny metallic taste. Perhaps I was using too much baking powder to make them fluffy. So I turned to Hungry Jack or whatever it is that comes in a box. Those are “too thick” for pater. This is the first day of my ‘lifetime ban’ from pancake cooking. I’m good with that. I’m still allowed to do pain perdu. And play on the computer.

If I didn’t want to make sure Dad didn’t have some sort of nervous collapse getting Rod and Todd to Mass by himself (hmmm, now that Martha is back he does have an extra buffer to put between them) and because I do so want to look like the model family, I would be up and out of here to Mass already. The 7:30 Mass is lovely. Sometimes it seems that the congregation is half comatose but there are few squawking children (not that I’m anti-child, it’s just that I’m more distractable than I used to be) and little wiggling and crobbling from the older folks.

Then I could devote the rest of the day to doing the laundry that hasn’t been done since the dryer tanked on Friday afternoon. This isn’t servile labor really is it? I mean, people will will need towels, socks, tidy whities, etc. to face the world tomorrow.


Let’s Codify Conditional Love!
This was not the inspirational uplift I was looking for this morning.
Well, except for the end quote from the mother of 12, almost 13.