Life in Flu-ville

Do you live somewhere that H1N1 is a big deal? I do.

They finally brought out the vaccine on Monday. The weekend papers had moaned that not enough people would choose to get the shot, nobody cared, the health system would be completely bogged down. Seemed to me that a good citizen would get immunized, so I did.

I stood in line waiting for an hour outdoors in 1 degree C weather, followed by 1 hour indoors. Filled out the paperwork, got 2 shots, the seasonal and the H1N1. Won't take effect for 8-10 days, so have to be careful until then.

Read the newspapers Tuesday morning and discovered that I'd jumped the queue! If not in a high-risk category, or a health care worker, I should not have had the shot. Felt kind of bad about that. Wondered how many of the people standing in line for hours out of doors in winter weather were in the high-risk category. I know that my mother (who is a transplant patient and therefore has a suppressed immune system) is SERIOUSLY high risk and that her doctors have told her that she MUST get the shot as soon as possible. Of course, she is in her 70s and cannot stand in line for 2 hours. Her doctors don't have any vaccine. She and Dad drive round the clinic (one of 5 clinics in a city of 1 million souls) and hope to see a short queue. So far no luck.

I can't say I'm too sorry about jumping the queue now. One of my girls came down with cough and fever and is feeling rotten. I went to the provincial health website and did the good citizen things: stocked up on meals and flu meds. You cannot buy a pump bottle of Purell hand sanitizer in this town for love or money. I've cancelled my few appointments (minor physical therapy, personal trainer) so that I don't spread the germs round the neighbourhood as I look after my girl. And of course, I'm trying VERY HARD not to get sick before the vaccine has a chance to kick in, sometime next Thursday!

Adding to the pressure -- I'm not 100% sure my girl has the flu. Low-grade fever, chesty cough, killer sore throat, cranky and tired. Could be flu. Could be a chest cold with a fever. Could be another virus that I hear is doing the rounds. No way to find out without breaking all the protocols (stay HOME if you are sick unless you need emergency medical treatment).

Not that I fear for her health, she'll be fine in a few days -- but she is heartbroken about not wearing her Wonder Woman costume to various Hallowe'en parties this weekend.

And another daughter is moving out this weekend! Packing up and leaving. A friend of mine told me that she and her daughter were practically at each other's throats before the daughter moved out -- a sort of necessary distancing, unconsciously done but required in order to let each other go. I think I understand what she was talking about. I'm so tired of arguing with this child. It's just exhausting.


If I close my eyes, sometimes I can imagine that I'm back in Kirkwall or on the Isle of Skye.

Home again.

We are home from our great holiday in Europe. Scotland is just a wonderful country! Especially in North -- the Orkney mainland and the Isle of Skye -- the people, the atmosphere, the country, were breathtaking. I could live there.

Edinburgh is an amazing city, well worth a visit. Glasgow has a different flavour, but wonderful shops and museums. Inverness ... well, we didn't see all that much, mostly we hired a car and went out of town -- Culloden, the Clava Cairns, Fort George.

But Paris... ahh, Paris, my old friend. She's changed! People no longer market every day, there are far fewer specialist boutiques (fromagerie, triperie, boucherie). Now there are lots of little super-marches. There are still plenty of boulangeries (bakeries), thank God! i didn't see much of the cheek-kissing that used to go on. Is that a change or is it that I wasn't spending time among students? People didn't greet the queue ("boujour messieurs, dames") when entering the bakery.

Also, thank God for cathedrals, churches, chapels, and the great and visionary people who built them -- even if many of the buildings now serve a more secular purpose. You are still confronted at every turn with the astounding dedication people used to have to glorifying God. We did some glorifying ourselves at an English mass at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Paris. This is a bunker built in the 70s --- 1970s, and the mass sounds like it is stuck in the 1970s. Disappointing.

On first Friday, however, we were fortunate enough to venerate the Crown of Thorns and other relics at Notre Dame de Paris. I recognized one of the clerics on the altar -- it was Cardinal Sean from Boston! I've only read his blog a few times, don't even know his last name -- but it's funny, I felt I knew him! :D He was a familiar face.

As for my continuing adventures with the Divine Office, I bought and downloaded the Universalis application for my iPod. GOOD APP!!! I found it interesting praying the Psalms in the translation from the Jerusalem Bible, but it made me pay attention more closely.

I definitely recommend the iPod for travelling --- not only can you get the entire Breviary on it, but interactive Metro maps, travel guides and tourist information, and with all the wi-fi available around the world, you can check the weather and get your email.

Also, it makes a great clock for several time zones and an excellent flashlight for finding your way to the bathroom in another strange hotel room.

So there we are. Home and close to recovered --- jet lag seems to take longer when you're OLD. ;)


Not sure what to do with myself for the rest of the semester. I have Hebrew Club of course, need to catch up on that. And RCIA has begun -- we have a huge crowd of inquirers this year. And I suppose I will have to call my trainer and use up the rest of my exercise sessions.

With all the wonderful food and drink we enjoyed, I actually LOST weight in Europe. Do you suppose walking 5 hours a day had anything to do with it?

Long time no blog

For the 2 of you who keep an eye on this blog, so sorry I've been so silent.

Life caught up for a while.

We celebrated our 25th anniversary with mass and renewed vows and new rings and dessert and coffee and friends and family.

And of course, the Grand Voyage is starting next week.

We are off for 2 weeks in the Scottish Highlands followed by a week in a big beautiful apartment in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris.

I've set up a new blog for the trip -- I'm still working on it, trying to decide, private, or public?

For those of you who are BOOK PEOPLE ---- and you know who you are! -- my eldest writes romance reviews and blogs at Gossamer Obsessions. And she's been shortlisted for the Book Blogger Appreciation Week awards!!!!!!!!!

Go on over and VOTE and read her stuff and VOTE and see what a clever girl she is.

*big proud mommy smile*

And VOTE!

Exercise your priesthood! Pray the Office!

Ron Rolheiser's column this week is brilliant. We are copy/pasting it into our RCIA lesson on Christian Prayer for next year.

What is priestly prayer? It is the prayer of Christ through the church for the world. Our Christian belief is that Christ is still gathering us together around his word and is still offering an eternal act of love for the world. As an extension of that we believe that whenever we meet together, in a church or elsewhere, to gather around the scriptures or to celebrate the Eucharist we are entering into that prayer and sacrifice of Christ. This is liturgical prayer; it's Christ's prayer, not ours. We pray liturgically whenever we gather to celebrate the scriptures, the sacraments, or when we pray, in community or privately, something that is called the Prayer of the Church or the Office of the Church (Lauds and Vespers).

And this kind of prayer is not restricted to the ordained clergy. We are all priests by virtue of our baptism and part of the implicit covenant we make with the community at our baptism is the commitment, when we reach adulthood, to pray habitually for the world through the liturgical prayer of the church.

What needs also to be highlighted here, since we easily miss this aspect, is that the church's liturgical prayer is for the world, not for itself. The church, in this world, does not exist for its own sake, but as an instrument of salvation for the world. Its function is to save the world, not itself. In liturgical prayer we pray with Christ, through the church, but for the world.

He speaks of devotional prayer and liturgical prayer and the importance of being aware of which you are participating in. Excellent stuff!!! (as usual).

Or sometimes the confusion leads someone to abandon one form of liturgical prayer altogether. I know a man who after years of praying the Office of the Church is substituting his own private prayer in its place because he doesn't find the ritual prayers personally meaningful. His private meditations now might well be wonderful affective prayer, but he is no longer praying the priestly prayer of Christ when he is praying in this way. We see this sometimes too in well-intentioned, but badly planned, churches services where what is intended to be a liturgical service ends up being a guided private meditation, however well-done and powerful, which neither uses scripture nor prays for the world.

So true!!! I stopped praying the Office -- in part for this reason. I had lost sight of the purpose of my prayer. This might just get me back into it.

Spring

Funerals
Weddings
RCIA
Hebrew Club
Spring Session Linguistics 101 and trying to remember the IPA
car maintenance
planning the autumn trip to Europe
housework
planning the renovation and nagging the contractor
The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint
re-visiting all 7 seasons of Buffy and her 'verse
Trial and Retribution
Whisper to the Blood by Dana Stabenow
Aristocrats
Mavis Gallant's Going Ashore

oh yeah, and Star Trek. Enough happy nods to the past, homage without impersonation. Fun, fun, fun.

What have you been up to?

May perpetual light shine upon her

And as she joins the communion of saints, now we can pray TO her instead of just FOR her.

Aw, Chrissie, I know I should rejoice that you are seeing God at last, but I feel so sad for your family. Thanks for sharing your last days with us - what an impact you made.

xoxox

Quiet alleluias

I found out 10 minutes before the Vigil began that my cousin - from perfect health to fatal cancer in about 6 months - had gone into a coma.

I pray that she have an easy passage if God is calling her home, and that her recovery be swift if that be his will.

She is the first of my generation to be this close to death and it is hitting me hard. So many of Saturday night's readings spoke of life conquering death. Tears ran down my cheeks a couple of times. Sadness at her seemingly inevitable end. Jealousy that she will face God soon and know all the answers. Grief for her husband, her children, her parents, her siblings. For myself.

So yes, he is risen, alleluia, indeed he is risen!

But the rest of us wait.