The Fluffbucket Diaries

This is pretty much why I hunt Pokemon and breed cartoon dragons in my spare time.

The cat would like to know why Shane Bieber has given up such a lucrative pop music career to fling baseballs at people.

Not that it’s anybody’s business but God’s, but it dawned on me that one could ask: Why do you opt to view Mass from home on Sundays rather than attend in person, but you’re okay with going into restaurants, a Pilates studio, and even a museum occasionally?

I’ve thought about this a lot. And I don’t emerge from this guilt-free. I get that it is incongruous to be unwilling to go to church yet be willing to go out to these other relatively less important places. The possibility of infection is only a small part of why we remain home Sunday mornings.

The truth is, if it was just me, I’d likely be more inclined to go to Mass. (I haven’t received the Eucharist since my November retreat. And it kills me to think about it.) But I have to consider my daughter, who is preparing for confirmation and reception of Communion in the Roman Catholic Church.

My Episcopal and Anglican friends, having been part of F’s First Communion celebration at our former Episcopal parish a couple of years ago, would be horrified and indignant that our Roman parish’s pastor decided F would have to wait and prepare another 2 years to begin receiving the Eucharist again. But that is what we have agreed to do. F agreed to go through 2 years of CCD – asking to do this first year remotely, rather than in person – rather than try to rush the process by going through, say, a year of RCIA with older people or even periodic meetings with the pastor. Our pastor gave F those options, and she opted for the 2-year deal.

But, my Episcopal and Anglican friends would insist, our former parish was “Catholic,” and the longtime rector there taught that the Episcopal Church is on equal footing with Rome insofar as the sacraments go. This teaching helped me feel better about being at the Episcopal parish, where I was very happy for a number of years, because I knew in my heart of hearts that I was Catholic, and this place – back then, before that rector retired – was in many ways more “Catholic” than a lot of Roman parishes I know. (This was before my husband’s annulment gave me the opportunity to return to Rome, which is a subject for a future post.)

Despite that rector’s contention, however, and the informal agreement of many Roman Catholic clergy with that idea, this is not what the Church – that is to say, Rome – officially teaches. And we are part of Rome now.

F and I had attended Mass at a couple of different Roman parishes since leaving our old Episcopal parish, and F dutifully would join the Communion line, arms crossed, to receive a blessing. There were several times when eucharistic ministers didn’t know what to do with a tween who wasn’t receiving; confusing scenarios would ensue, and they became increasingly awkward. When the pandemic dispensations came down that allowed us not to worry about our Sunday Mass obligation, I was relieved that F didn’t have to go through such awkwardness for a while.

After churches shut down, I set up our own home liturgy each week, based on the Sunday rubrics – the Sunday readings and many of the Mass prayers, up to the Eucharistic celebration, obviously – and wrapping up with our own intercessions and the prayer of Spiritual Communion, plus the Hail Holy Queen and prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. We continued with this even after we returned to in-person Mass for a bit.

When we started going back to Mass after churches reopened, things became even more awkward; the kabuki-like processes involving hand sanitizer and masks complicated things, and both priests and eucharistic ministers became even more befuddled by a non-receiving kid. After several Sundays of this, I finally decided we would remain at home on Sundays. F seemed relieved.

Nowadays, we pray through our home liturgy together before CCD; after CCD, we usually view the Sunday Mass from Holy Name Cathedral. At the very least, this gets F acclimated to the words and routine of the Sunday liturgy without either the distractions that come with in-person worship or the anxiety that comes with awkward Communion line situations.

It can be laborious sometimes, putting together the home liturgy, but reading and praying through the process has been an enlightening and fruitful experience for me. I’m grateful for it, and F seems to appreciate the intimacy of praying through it together as well.

So, no, we’re not attending Sunday Mass these days. The pandemic dispensations remain, so we are okay as far as the Church is concerned. And until the dispensations are lifted, I’m going to forge ahead this way with my daughter.

I can never decide how I feel about local sports references being inserted into the Sunday Mass from Holy Name Cathedral. But this time, I approve of the assisting priest’s White Sox mask.

The traffic from here is, in fact, far worse than I remember.

Deleted the pottymouthed post from a couple of days ago. There are more pleasant ways to announce that I started subscribing to MLB.tv streaming video in a fit of pique over a lousy day.

This is what conversations with my child amount to these days.

Welcome to another year of MLB Closed Captioning, beginning with Jason Benetti calling it: “Oh, yeah! Jose Abreu!”

Local elections today. I appreciate the fact that people here vote in Tagalog, Spanish, and Polish.

I wish I could use this line when it gets busy at the office.

I don’t know how it happened, but I dropped another 3.6 pounds this past week. Forgetting to eat half the time, with minimal eating on Good Friday, may have helped.

It was an odd week, as I was off Monday and Friday running around happily with F, with three very stressful work days in between. I had a few more sugared sweets than usual (what with Easter and spending time with F and whatnot), though I was careful to stay within my carb limits. I was short on sleep a few days, too. I assumed this would be the first week with a gain, but nope.

So, I’m down a total of 30.8 pounds since January 11, weighing in at 252.2 pounds. Another 70+ pounds to go.

I’ve seen this grocery store cake in my nightmares. Happy Easter.

Still not too old for a backyard egg hunt.

Morning has broken, like the first morning.

The cat joined us for Easter Mass video from Holy Name Cathedral.

Happy Easter! To paraphrase the Passover Seder, next year in an actual parish pew.

And thank God for it.

Today, the most deeply heartfelt Good Friday social media posts — to me, anyway — came from Patti Smith on Instagram.

And so it begins.

I hate April Fool’s Day with every fiber of my being.

Yikes.

It’s Holy Week. And once again, I arrive at this moment realizing that I suck as a Catholic.

Except for some reading I actually accomplished, Lent was a dismal failure. I haven’t been to Mass once, and it looks like I won’t be hitting the confessional until after Easter. I think about God a lot, and I pray each night with Frannie, but my rosary beads have largely gone untouched. I’ve been cranky about the Church, and anything that smacks of traditional Catholic practice or belief leaves me guarded in case it’s linked to some kind of scary far-right extremism.

So, I gravitate to my old comfort zone of moderate evangelicals and Catholic voices like Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Fr. Jim Martin, and Franciscan Fr. Casey Cole. My media consumption veers sharply away from EWTN and Relevant Radio now, and more toward America and U.S. Catholic magazines. It feels like the more outspokenly traditionalist and more-orthodox-than-thou the voice is these days, the more likely the voice belongs to angry people who hate the current pope and/or hold frightening views on COVID-19 vaccines, political conspiracy theories, and policies that support the common good.

So much for gravitating back to basics this Lent and getting to know Jesus again. There is that – but then I think, Jesus, have you even met these people?

(Yeah, I know: He has. And yeah, I know: They need His mercy as much as I do.)

Between the pandemic that still scares me from Mass and the divisive politics in the Church today, I feel a lot farther from Rome than ever.

Posting my weight update a little late in the day. I took a PTO day today to start F’s spring break week; I had considered canceling the day off because work has gone haywire with the project load, but ultimately I decided that getting F’s week off started well was more important.

(We had breakfast out at a diner that is handling COVID-19 restrictions well; afterward, we hit a craft store and splurged on a bunch of craft paints to decorate Easter ornaments for the little not-just-Christmas holiday tree we’ve kept up since December. Spent the afternoon painting pieces of wood to hang on the tree, and then picked up cones at a local ice cream place. All in all, it was a day off work well spent with my kid.)

Before F and I had breakfast, I weighed myself and had surprisingly good news: I’m now down another 1.4 pound to 255.8 pounds. (I’m 27.2 pounds lighter since January 11.) I didn’t feel terribly diligent with my eating this past week, even though my food diary entries indicate I went over my carb count only once: on F’s birthday, when I had a small piece of cake to celebrate.

Birthday cake aside, I hit my biggest calorie overage, around 335, twice during the week. I grazed on relatively low-carb snacks more than I should have some afternoons. Work stress worried me. (Stress and the cortisol levels it unleashes, along with poor sleep quality, can hinder weight loss.) And I continued to be lax with exercise. So, I wasn’t optimistic on this past week’s numbers.

I did work on improving my sleep quality with some success. And I generally tried to be diligent with my meds and keeping the carb count low. (I went over the 100-gram carb limit – by one gram – only once.) So, there was that. I guess it was enough.

Took F to a movie theater for the first time since the Before Times. It hasn’t been easy to get any gift or celebration ideas from the birthday girl; however, she really wanted to go to a movie. Specifically, she wanted to see “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Soul.” The latter is streaming only, but we could catch “Raya” in a theater.

It was an entirely manageable experience. I bought tickets and snacks online in advance; we picked up the snacks at the allotted time and found the seats (sanitized for our protection) flanking our reserved seats taped off. Aside from having to wear masks except when eating or drinking – and the very sparsely attended theater – it was fine.

“Raya” was a good movie for our return to an afternoon at the movies. It’s another well-done Disney feature that gets away further from the princess-without-a-male-love-interest trend among Disney movies. (I just learned that there’s speculation that there’s an LGBTQ bond between the protagonist and her frenemy.) I appreciated the Southeast Asian cultural smorgasbord it offers, despite understandable anger about the casting of non-Southeast Asian actors; still, I was delighted to realize that Awkwafina is the voice of the goofy dragon. Meanwhile, F was just there for the dragons.

Anyway, it was a nice afternoon with F. I’ve missed hanging out with her at a movie theater.

My kid turned 13 years old this week. We turned over control of the Gmail account I created for her 13 years ago and, per her request, set up an Instagram account for her. I’m her first follower.

We said we’re fine with her setting up a couple of social media accounts now that she’s at that golden age. She requested IG and Reddit.

Excuse me while I research kid safety and parental controls (if any, and it looks like there aren’t) on Reddit.

Henry Huggins, Ribsy, Beezus and Ramona, and Ralph the motorcycling mouse were such a huge part of my grade school years. I know Beverly Cleary was 104, so her passing should be no surprise, but I’m still so incredibly sad about it.

It’s not so much that a piece of my childhood died. It feels like my childhood is officially dead.