Five Things for March 29
In like a lion…kinda out like a lion too.
- I started reading Inheriting Paradise, which is the pick for our women’s book group pick to read during Great Lent. Y’all. This book is so good. Just so beautiful. It’s the author’s meditations on gardening and its relation to spirituality (spiritual life?) — I completely buy the idea of agony happening before ecstasy is achieved. The ache of the hike, the strain on the lungs, the stinging sweat (all this imagery is paraphrased from Guroian, by the way) before reaching the top of the mountain. The seven weeks of fasting and prayer before the joy of Pascha night.
- This week has been bonkers with work. For some reason (don’t ask me, I’m just the junior) we’ve promised a big update on April 7 to appease some fancy customer, I dunno. The problem is, we’re all scrambling to even make the deadline. Which I’m sure will lead to some sloppy work but WHATEVER. To make things even more spicy, one big task was replacing our old, buggy WYSIWYG editor with Froala. The guy who did it was sort of pressured into getting it merged in sooner rather than later, so QA could start work on identifying all the missing functionality…so he did that, and now he’s on vacation this week. I’ve sort of made it my sole crusade to take on the project of fixing everything, and hoo boy. Hoo. Boy. (All this to say: it’s still super fun. Just also quite stressful and is leading to me neglecting other areas of my life.)
- Presanctified Liturgy last week with the kids was HOR.RI.FIC. Did I write about it? No. I didn’t. I’m really mostly ashamed of how I acted, because I’m the adult, and I just lost it on them. Super not proud; I’ve spent the entire week apologizing. Afterwards, I realized that one big issue was that they weren’t prepared for what exactly Presanctified Liturgy is — read: how many times prostration happens, when to prostrate, how to behave while everyone is prostrating, etc. Jarrod and I were super intentional with prepping them this week, and things went much, much better. The lil gems prostrated every time. One service at a time, man. We’ll figure it out eventually.
- I keep 2-3 slots on my TBR list each year for rereads; this year I decided it was finally time to re-read Good Night, Mister Tom. I read this book so many times as a kid. I remember pulling it off the library bookshelf randomly — it has a completely unappealing cover (just navy, with pink letters) but somehow I started reading it. Twenty-odd years later and I’m still riveted by this book. It’s so good. Curmudgeonly old man with a tragic past is forced to become a father figure to an abused little boy. Love ensues. Excuse me while I begin sobbing.
- And now, to end on a completely consumerist note: I got these grilled olives from Trader Joe’s after Theodora requested some without pits. Let me just go up on my roof…get my shouty voice on…THESE. ARE. INCREDIBLE. The end. See you all next week. With an empty jar of olives, I’m sure.
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