Weekend with my mother

I'll be gone all this weekend, so I don't forsee any blog posts being made again until Monday. I'm going to visit my mother in Van Buren, AR. It's a 4 1/2 hour drive up there, but we tend to eat dinner and run errands on the way up there, so it ends up being 6 hours or so. Plus if we can get out early enough we might stop by the outlet malls to pick my husband up some shoes. I've been promising him some shoes for his birthday, but he hasn't found any that he likes yet.

I may tell my mom about becoming Catholic, if religion comes up. I'm just so happy to be converting, and have found a joy on a different level and want to share it. I am worried about her inevitable "disappointment" but it's also important to me to share this with her. I'm a little nervous about going up there anyway because last time we went up there, Dan was sick. My mother smokes, and the smoke really bothered Dan, to the point where he got super sick. I called her and asked her to please open the windows and smoke outside for a few days so it wouldn't be so smoky, and she got really ... well, pissy for lack of a better word. She was really offended that Dan would all of a sudden be allergic to her cigarette smoke. He always gets sick when we go up there, but since he was sick already he got super sick when he went up there.

Long story short, it should be a very interesting trip.

I'm finding that I'm "outing" myself to a lot of different people. For example, today at work they furnished us lunch. When I ordered my veggie wrap, I didn't realize it had tons of fresh jalopenos on it (ouch!). So I was telling a co-worker that I was hungry, and he told me that there might be some fajitas left from a group lunch that was done in another room. I told him, "Well, I can't eat any meat today." He asked me if I was Catholic, and I said not yet, but I will be soon. He's only the third or fourth person I've told at work. Most people won't care, but there are a few people who might think me odd to convert. I know, I know, "Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." But I still don't feel like dealing with it.

I've been rather unhappy at work this week. Basically, what it boils down to is I work in a very noisy cubicle call center environment. I asked for an office, with multiple justifications related to the new tasks I have been assigned, but got shut down. It wasn't the shutting down that was so bad, it was the reasoning. "If we give you an office, we're going down a slippery slope and everyone will want an office." I'm the only one in my department who doesn't have an office, and all of the other people in the cubicle area have their departments in the cubicles around them. And it's noisy, and annoying, and very hard to do my job.

So basically it's a control thing to have me doing all of the work that I'm doing (complex reporting and analysis, podcast recording, webinar monitoring, etc) in a completely unsuitable environment. And for some reason, it really has upset me.

I need to go spend some time in front of the blessed sacrament today. I know it would calm me and make me feel better about things. I haven't been since Wednesday. I haven't been to mass all week, although I've listened on EWTN every day this week. I knew that these 40 days were going to be rough for a variety of reasons, but I didn't realize that I would be so emotional about it.

Maybe I'll get a pedicure - being able to wear sandals would most probably cheer me up a bit. I haven't had a pedicure since December. I have Winter Buildup of callouses and gunk on my feet, plus my toes barely have any polish on them anymore since they've grown out so much.

So anyway, wish me luck. And don't forget to pray for Deacon Charlie. I sure hope he's doing better.