I'm on VA-CAAAAAA-TION!

As of today, I am on my Becoming Catholic vacation. I've got four more days, and then Saturday Morning I'm going in for my Easter Vigil rehearsal, and then a few hours later I become Catholic. It's been nuts.

I apologize for my light blogging as of late. I do a lot of blogging at my job because I don't really like my job, and I tend to blog instead of work. Well, this past week I had to play catch-up at work for all the things I neglected to do while blogging, and I had to get it done by Friday or I wasn't going to get to go on vacation. It all got done.

I suppose I should catch you up a little on what's been going on in my life. On Wednesday night, I brought up the subject of the MegaMarch to my RCIA classmates. I suggested that Breaking of the Word be cancelled for Sunday because of the march, but all my classmates and my teachers said that they really wanted to have Breaking of the Word and that the crowds didn't scare them. I went to an early Mass at the Chapel on Sunday because I was going to skip the Noon mass at the Cathedral, but then I started feeling guilty that everyone else in my class was going to the Breaking of the Word and I was wussing out. I had my husband drive me within a few blocks of the Cathedral, and I walked the rest of the way. It was a madhouse. In case you missed it, it looked a little like this (you can see the Cathedral in the lower left hand corner of the pic):



So I get there and ... yep, I'm the only one from my class there! Holy cow. So finally 10 minutes after the Mass started, two of my RCIA classmates show up. I was rather irked. No sponsors, no teachers, and only two classmates. Ugh.

Today I went to Daily Mass and got to sit with my friend L. She has resolved her issues with the Chapel and feels comfortable attending there again, which makes me happy. After L got off of work, I met her up at the Chapel and we cut up the blessed palms that were not distributed this year during Mass, and buried them in the flowerbed outside of the church. Then some lilies were delivered for the Sunday services, and we carried them upstairs to be stored until they are put out on Sunday.

We received sad news during Sunday mass at the Chapel. Apparently it has been made official that Fr. Celio will no longer be serving at St. Jude Chapel. His medical problems have become very extensive, and the time that it will take for him to recover will be quite long, so they're going to bring in a temporary head until the Dominican Priory and the Diocese of Dallas can figure out what is best for the chapel. However, if anyone cares to send letters to the Dominican Priory in Irving for Fr. Celio, they will make sure that he receives them. I will get that address this week and would be happy to get that to anyone who sends me an e-mail about it.

On a lighter note, when I signed my lease, I was given the option of either having a free clubroom rental or a free maid service. Since my place always has a perpetual layer of dust and cat hair, I opted for the maid service. I decided to schedule the maid service for today, my first day of Becoming Catholic vacation. The cleaning crew came in and scrubbed my tub and cleaned my floors very nicely and dusted everything. So I'm happy. I wanted to have a nice, clean, stress-free environment to be able to pray and contemplate this decision that I'm making.

On Saturday, my husband looked at me and said, "So .... you're really going to do this then?" And it kind of hit me like a rock, and scared me, that yeah, I guess I'm really going to do this. That's kind of a scary thought on a lot of levels.

I'll write more tomorrow. I just wanted to let you, my faithful readers, in on where I've been and to let you know that I hadn't died or I wasn't lying in a coma somewhere or anything.