Oh for crying out loud.

Well, thank you all for weighing in on what I should do this weekend. Obviously, I am still here, and not on retreat, though I think of this weekend as its own little retreat. And I am scheduled to go on retreat now in February.

So, last night, after getting my crying jag taken care of, I did the blogwalk thang, the email thang, and then crawled into bed with a glass of milk (to take care of the calcium thang) and re-read my journal from sophomore year of college (the journal and the year were both pathetic, in case you were wondering).

This morning, I got up at 7:10, showered, drank coffee, put on makeup, dried my hair, put on a skirt, walked my dog, and was ready to head down to see what this whole Greek Orthodox thang is all about in Columbia, MO.

Liza got here with her three kids in tow, and we headed out. She said the car seemed a little off to her, so we drove it, her engine light came on, I told her that can happen a lot with older cars. We went down the highway. She got nervous. We turned around. The van rode fine. We turned around and got on the highway again. We're talking and we're behind this white truck that is going irritatingly slowly, but we can't pass it, when suddenly she exclaims that the engine is HOT and notices steam coming out from under the hood. We pull over immediately, and so does the irritating truck-- which had noticed the steam long before we had, and was probably, in fact, going that slowly to keep an eye on us.

They recommended a tow. After getting her water pump replaced last week, it seems that somebody forgot to put the hose in correctly. No coolant.

Liza does not have a cell phone, but Jen does.

So, I called my insurance co. and got some numbers for weekend towing, and got the tow truck, and then we called our friend Dan and minivan to come and get us.

Dan is married to Barbara, my Jewish friend who does not read my blog and does not yet know about THE CHANGE. So, she spoke to Liza on the phone later and wanted to know why I was in the car with Liza going to church... I had take my cross off and put it in my wallet before Dan got there, and told Liza later, "I am hiding my light under a rock."

So, any good ideas, for when we all have coffee later, for what I should tell Barbara? She will not take this well at all, so I have been avoiding telling her.

I go home, then I go to Liza's, we have coffee (this is all this morning) and then we walk over to Mass with the kids. We go to Mass. I am sorry. I love Mass. It is the one thing I have returned to over and over during the years.

We go back to her house, and then I come home, have a cuppa soup (yes, again) and talk to my friend Rachel, who is Unitarian, and starts quizzing me: "Why would you go to church, when the ritual is so embedded with Jesus stuff, unless you liked the Jesus stuff too?"

I told her I would write to her because I couldn't talk to her about it because she would make fun of me for being a Jesus freak.

Oh boy.

And when I got home from Mass, I discovered that my silly dog had chewed her way through her harness, so I have to go to the store and get her a new collar, til I get back to the vet to get her old one, so I can take her for a walk later.

I put my cross on for Mass, but it is on my bathroom counter now, because I don't want to wear it around Barbara today.

I am no better than a dog in the yard, chewing through the very tethers that keep it safe.