Seven Quick Takes

~~ 1 ~~

Are you looking for a cool t-shirt and/or a way to help orphans? You can get one right here from my friend Megan. She's running a fundraiser for orphanages in China, which you can read more about here or follow on Facebook here. The shirt pictured is the women's shirt; a unisex shirt will be available soon (by the time this is published, it may already be available.) Megan says that these are good-quality t-shirts and the printing is well-done. It's a t-shirt you could actually wear in public, not just something you'd have to use for pajamas.

~~ 2 ~~

I got home on Tuesday just in time for my little brother's Confirmation on Tuesday night. He's so old. My little sister was his sponsor. He's taller than she is. I remember when he was born.

~~ 3 ~~

A cousin that I thought was five made his first Communion this spring. All these little kids doing big-kid and grown-up things. I feel so old. :(

~~ 4 ~~

My mother is driving me to my house this summer so she can help me set up. I'm looking forward to this! It might be just the two of us. Road trip! K and M and G will be there that weekend to help too. (Legal, responsible) party time!

~~ 5 ~~

Packing up all my stuff in my dorm took longer than I thought it was going to. I rented a pickup truck and moved it all out to a storage locker. My sister and R also shoved some of their stuff in there. I think we'll need to make a couple trips to get it out. Sounds like fun right? Not.

~~ 6 ~~

I've been trying to pick up more knowledge about homeschooling and homemaking and budgeting wisely. I'm realizing that I'm a terribly disorganized person. If I could fix that, the rest of my life would be awesome. It really would. (For an example of disorganization, see this post.)

~~ 7 ~~

On that note, one of my main summer goals is to get more organized. I'm hoping to blog about progress. Watch this space. But not too closely, because I don't want to be embarrassed when I forget.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Here she is....the big reveal

This beautiful child, "Aisha K" (the name is fake for privacy reasons), is three years old and condemned to a life of neglect and abuse because she lives in Eastern Europe and has Down syndrome. When she turns four, she will be transferred to an adult mental institution and left there until she dies. Her only hope is to be adopted.

Reece's Rainbow is an organization that tries to save as many children from this fate as possible. They do this by raising funds for waiting children and families adopting children with special needs internationally. Their biggest fundraiser each year is called the Angel Tree.

Aisha K is my Angel Tree child! That means that I am going to do my best to raise $1000 for her between November 1st and December 31st. You can help by making a purchase through one of my links, or by donating money to her grant fund, or by participating in one of my other fundraisers.

Click here to view Aisha's profile on Reece's Rainbow.

Click here to view current fundraisers and sales links.

Please pray that my fundraising is successful and that Aisha's family finds her soon.

Thank you!

I have a Christmas baby!

Reece's Rainbow has a fundraising program every year called the Angel Tree. Some of the kids on the website are selected as targets for a concentrated fundraising effort. Each child picked has a target of $1000 raised for their grant between November 1st and Dec 31st. You can read more about the program here.

Christmas Warriors are assigned to a particular child and asked to raise at least that $1000 (this is not a legal commitment). I have a child to fundraise for. It's not Kurt, and it's not Gertie. She's a three-year-old (so baby in the loose sense of the word) with Down syndrome. I will release more information about her later--watch this space!

My sister (who blogs here) is planning to help me with some fundraisers, including an auction and a blog giveaway. If you're interested in hand-sewn items, hand-knitted items, jewelry, books, or other such items, I suggest you check back soon. Other ideas I'm playing with include a run at my school and participating in some commission sales things like Tastefully Simple or Just Love Coffee. Got suggestions? Want to help? Let me know!

Two days in a row, it's a record!

Is it actually a record? It might be.

My fast yesterday went well up until about 9pm, when I started feeling sick. I think part of the issue was dehydration. I don't have good thirst signals, so I wasn't feeling thirsty. I usually drink water at lunch and dinner, but of course I wasn't in the dining hall. I was aware of this as an issue and had been trying to remember to drink water during the day, but I guess I didn't do a good enough job. Anyway, at about 9:15 I fell asleep on A's futon. I woke up again at about 9:45, just in time to go to 10pm Mass in the dorm next door. I was feeling sick to my stomach and dizzy and I had a headache, but I went anyway. I was hoping Mass would make me feel better, but it didn't. I actually left right before Communion because I thought I was going to throw up. (I didn't, as it turned out.) So I missed Communion. :( After Mass I went back to A's room to get my backpack and went to bed, delaying only long enough to say Compline and email the people I'm supposed to volunteer with on Thursday morning and tell them I was sick.

So this morning I woke up at about 10 and ate two cheese sticks even before getting dressed. I still feel somewhat sick (and I have a bit of a headache) but it's been much better today. I think I'm still somewhat undernourished.

My other resolutions have had mixed results. I didn't do my Bible or my rosary yesterday, although I think I might have if I hadn't been feeling so terrible after Mass. I have been doing fairly well on the charity towards B. (I was starting to get annoyed with him at one point, so I put my head down on my desk and prayed for him. I will have to remember this strategy.) Dessert is going fine, but it's not far enough in to have become a struggle yet. As soon as this blog post is done, I'll say Vespers and my rosary and read the Bible. (Then I have to do homework, and say Compline, and then go to Mass, and then meet my friends to plan spring break's road trip....)

We had our third theology club organizing meeting today and dang are we organized. We have a monthly schedule and most of our details worked out, and the next step seems to be to meet with the organization that approves clubs and become official. Afterwards I had a delightful dinner with one of the other guys organizing. (B and R saw me and thought I was on a date....don't they know I would have told them if I had been asked on a date??) We were talking about life plans, so I told him about a special needs orphanage in China that takes US volunteers that I'd love to go work with. This guy has two sisters with Down's Syndrome....talk about coincidences!

Lent!

Happy Lent everyone. Personally, I dislike Lent. That whole self-denial thing doesn't go over very well with me. (Yesterday A told me that he has no favorite liturgical season because none of them makes sense without all the others. Therefore he doesn't separate them like that. My response: can't you be like normal people and say Easter because you like the Exsultet or Christmas because you like the carols or something? He just laughed. Normal isn't really A's style, and I mean that as a compliment.)

Disclaimer: I'm about to tell everyone what I'm doing for Lent/Ash Wednesday. I don't mean this a la hypocrites and Pharisees. It's a reminder to myself and hopefully inspiration for others. (Not that I think my resolutions are that great.)

I'm trying something new for fasting today, and that is literally fasting. As in, I haven't eaten anything yet today and I'm not planning on eating lunch. We'll see what happens about dinner--I'm open to the possibility that I may have to eat something, but if I do, it will be small, and if possible, I'm not eating anything today. (This might be stupid--I donated blood yesterday....) The reason why I'm doing this is because the two small meals and one normal meal route doesn't inconvenience me that much (I don't have very good hunger signals, so being somewhat hungry all day long isn't really distinguishable from being sick or being tired). Also, I get so bogged down in the details (how many apples are equal to one piece of toast?) that I am not focusing on anything spiritual at all. I'm hoping this method will be more of a sacrifice and more spiritually successful.

Anyway, here are my resolutions:

• Prayer: Read the Bible regularly (as in, every day). Pray the Rosary regularly (as in, every day). Neither of these is something I currently do (even if regularly is not defined as every day), which I know is bad. This is not allowed to replace the Liturgy of the Hours or daily Mass.
  
• Fasting: No dessert! Yesterday's homily (Father V) was about choosing something that would make you a better Christian, rather than using Lent as an excuse to start a diet. Which I totally agree with (although I did give up biting my nails one year...). That said, I think a) there is spiritual benefit in self-denial, and I need to be better at saying no to temptation (I like sugar :( ); and b) sugar is in some indirect way a spiritual problem for me. Too much sugar --> depressive mood/depressive episodes --> doubt/despair. Not really sure how the science of that works, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
• Almsgiving: $5/week to Reece's Rainbow. This probably isn't enough, but I have no idea how to choose an appropriate amount. There's nothing that I can think of to give up and save the money from--living on campus means I spend almost no actual money. Also this will probably be one lump sum because I don't have Paypal or a credit card, so I'll just mail a check.
• Not sure how to categorize: Be more charitable towards B. I realize this breaks most of the cardinal rules of resolution making (hard to measure, no clear definition of success, etc.), but it really needs to be on here. (I told this resolution to A and he said, "Yeah, that's a good idea.") This is one of the areas in my life that I'm struggling most with at the moment. It's certainly my biggest interpersonal problem right now. So, stop being critical, stop making negative predictions, assume good motivations, and stop taking the things he does personally. (This I think is the root of the problem; perhaps I'll post on this later.) Thanks Father V for the idea of giving up a negative character trait!
  

It will be challenging to do all of these. So, while I think I can and should accomplish them all, I'm deciding in advance that I'm not going to tear myself apart if I don't. That's not meant in a get-out-of-jail-free card way, but rather in the way where I accept that I'm not perfect and am not overly critical of myself. (Another weakness of mine!) As in, if I miss my Bible reading, I'll feel bad, and be sorry, and ask for forgiveness, but three days later I will not be still thinking that I'm a terrible person who does not love God and is therefore damned for all eternity. (Sadly, this really isn't that much of an exaggeration as to a possible trajectory of thought.)

Yesterday I attended the Last Alleluia and Lenten Lamentations in A's dorm. I liked them very much. There are so many interesting liturgies in the Catholic Church. Speaking of which, I don't think I'll be getting to Mass until 10pm. Sadness. I like walking around all day with ashes on my head. But I have class at 11:30 and 12:10, and 5:15 won't be over before a meeting at 6, and I have to do something from 9 to 10 (which I could skip out of early to go to 10pm Mass). Actually, I just remembered a 4:45 Mass, so maybe I'll go to that.