Ash Wednesday

It seems as if I have these spurts of posting where I post a couple things at a time, then go like a week without. OH WELL!

SO - today is Ash Wednesday. Growing up Catholic, that meant going to Mass and getting a cross drawn on your forehead with ashes which you wore for the rest of the day. It also meant the beginning of the Lent season. In my house Lent meant giving something up until Easter. The idea being that Jesus sacrificed his own life for us, therefore we can sacrifice SOMETHING for him during these few weeks. I never quite got the hang of how giving up chocolate and giving up your life equated, but who was I to question?

Well, as we are not practicing Catholics (Mom still is, of course, although I can't remember the last time she saw the inside of a Catholic church), we have been less than adherent to the whole "giving something up for lent" thing. This year, I decided to give M the chance to decide for herself.

I explained to her that "when I was growing up" we did this, Grandma still does it, and does she want to. I told her that while our current church celebrates Lent, we do not do the giving something up thing, so it was entirely up to her. She decided to do it. SO - she has given up watching TV shows. Movies are OK, just not TV shows. AND, there's some flexibility here as we can only control things in our own home, so if she's at another house and the TV is on, that's technically OK. Hey - more power to her for doing this!

Am I giving something up this year? WELL, yes, I am! I have given up drive-thrus (not fast food, just the drive thru so it makes life way more inconvenient for me to get the crappy food - who likes to go INSIDE????) AND soda.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, this morning already I was put to the test. The housekeeper came earlier than expected, which threw our groove off. OK, just my groove, but it meant I didn't get breakfast. That's OK, I'll just hit Starbuck's on the way to work. WAIT! That's a drive-thru...so now I have to go inside Starbuck's to get my coffee and fruit/yogurt parfait. UGH! AND - I can't swing by Walgreens to pick up the Diet Coke for my lunch b/c now I'm not drinking that, so I had to go and get some Diet Green Tea for my lunch - which was packed, and not gotten through a drive thru.

Going to be interesting how this goes... bet M does better with no TV than I do with no soda or drive thrus! Already worried about what I'm going to eat for dinner tonite...