Annie Turner

Annie Turner
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Thursday, December 13, 2012

My Crazy Brain on Advent

I have just spent an inordinate amount of time wandering around the internet.  I managed to make myself a cup of hot, strong English tea (with real cream and sugar, no crap splenda thank you very much) and sit at my desk--always a challenge with this ADD broad.  I answered email, looked at Joyce Rupp's message (a marvelous Catholic writer with deep spirituality), thought about it a bit, tried to send it to a friend, and failed, because everytime Google sends something to me that requires ACTION, I enter fail-mode.  The email link did not get sent, and I wasted more time berating myself for being a techno-boob.
  Then I had to check on my www.jacquielawson.com Advent calendar.  This is a nifty little gizmo (only $2.75 if you get TWO) where you click on this Alpine Village and the tree and village are covered with glittering little ornaments.  Each day you click on the date and some new scene appears.  It's INTERACTIVE.  You can make actual digital wreaths on it!  You can pretend to decorate a SOCK for Christmas.  Don't bother to go out into the woods and actually harvest any greens and don't bother to knit a sock (something that also puts me in fail-mode) and decorate it.  Just do it on the screen, and then go down and eat some cookies.
  Then I had to go click on Allie Brosh's blog--www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com and see my favorite take on Christmas: "The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas."  This is a hilarious blog which will make you fall on the floor crying with mirth.  Hopefully it is mirth and not an excuse to mourn a dog which died five years ago, or perhaps mourn an ex-boyfriend of thirty years ago.  Not that I do that.  The dog came over and nosed me worriedly, whining a little and wagging her tail to show that she thought I was totally f....ed because I was writhing on the floor and crying.  She doesn't understand human mirth.
 Oh, and that brings me to another dramatic event in our life up here on the hill.  "Squirrel Murder."  I came home from spending massive amounts of money at the Big Y yesterday (it's only the wine, I consoled myself, it's not that I am not thrifty with our family's money, it's the wine....) to find my friend, Mel, who helps clean our house and generally keep us from being condemned by the Department of Health, looking very worried indeed.  The story came out in bits and pieces.  "Squirrel dropped from side of house..."  (Yes, they roam across our clapboards with impunity!)  "Dog went for the animal"...."blood gushing everywhere"....I began to get worried.  "Wiped off the dog's muzzle--her paws were bloody too...."  Clearly, an Alfred Hitchock Bates Motel had occured on our very deck.  I went out, and indeed the deck had red spatters on it, so did the gate, and other parts of the deck.  Ack.  Serious murder. Not to be cleaned up by the application of spray cleaner and wipies.  Ack.
  Perhaps it was time to drink straight gin out of the bottle.  But perhaps not, as I had to unload my groceries.  So all this was whirling around my mind at 4:50 a.m. today after I woke to pee (sad but true), and my thoughts took off like a winner at the Kentucky Derby, reins flying.  It would probably take some serious drugs to get my mind to slow down, but I'm not going to go there.
  Anyway, how do we get from the Internet, Kenny Loggins, and squirrel murder to Advent? Because that was what I was thinking about this morning (after worrying about the dog, getting in some early anxiety about our spring trip to Italy and could I sleep on the plane?) as I lay in the dark, saying a decade on my Rosary and praying for all the wounded people I know.  Which is rather a lot.  I thought of lying in the dark, and how the light would soon (well, soonish to be accurate, as in 7:00 a.m.) pierce the edges of the curtains.  I would wait for it--like Advent.  I would prepare myself for God's coming, aka, the Light.  I would think prayerful thoughts and think about Jesus, instead of worrying about our hotel in Rome and did our dog actually get scratched by the squirrel and would she die of a massive infection because I was too LAZY to take her to the vet?
 I gave up after awhile and let my mind run crazily in and out of reality.  And I knew, as I did so, that God didn't mind.  He/she doesn't care if my mind is a bad neighborhood, as Annie Lamott so famously observed.  I suspect he was actually grinning at me as my thoughts writhed around inside my head.  "Poor sweetie," he would say, giving me a digital pat, "it will all be better by and by.  Because, as one of my favorite holy women once said, All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. 
 I guess if you are holy you don't have to be grammatical.