"Do Not Put On a Gloomy Face" -- Or, Bits and Pieces of Our Days

It's Ash Wednesday!

Mayhaps Ash Wednesday does not, in your view, call for an exclamation point. Especially if you are giving up coffee. Which I'm not doing this year. So my exclamation points remain.

One of the antiphons in today's Morning Prayer is, "When you fast, do not put on a gloomy face, like the hypocrites." So, you'll find no gloom here on this Ash Wednesday.

And -- also not gloomy, and something Ramona still loves to do during Lent -- the Lamb of God calendar? I just snapped a new picture of our latest one and added it back to "A Meaningful Lent: The Monstrously Long Post." (Blogger sometimes eats up my photos and leaves ugly, blocky exclamation points in their place. It had done so with my old Lamb of God picture. Why do you do that, Blogger? It's not the kind of exclamation point that I wish to have remaining on my blog.)

The Lamb of God calendar this year (color and bell by Ramona):

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On with the recent bits and pieces:

Last week we went to Mass at a neighboring parish. As we left they handed out baby bottles (which contained instructions to fill them with change) as part of a collection effort to help women in crisis pregnancies. We took one. A couple of days later, Anne-with-an-e told me that before we return the bottle to the church I should take out the message that Ramona had rolled up and inserted:

"Help! We've been on this island for three days with no snuff." *

(Can you tell we've been reading Pippi Longstocking?)

And also? If I'd listened to the announcements after Mass instead of reading them later in the bulletin, I would have realized that the baby bottle project was for the junior high kids of the parish. No wonder that kid looked at me so funny when I took one of the bottles.

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Ramona and I continue to have fun with Ancient Egypt projects. An idea I first got from History Links is an archaeological dig into Jell-O:

The remains of ancient civilizations appear to include little green army men. 

Our Jell-O layers of terra not-so-firma 

Ramona's sugar cube version of a pyramid: 

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Anne-with-an-e read the Van Morrison post yesterday.

"Van Morrison is dead, isn't he?"

"I hope not," I said. "He's advertising his latest tour on his website."

"Oh. I guess if he were, that would make him the Rocking Dead."

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Betsy bought something that she calls a hoodie and I call her new Obi-Wan inspired clothing.  ("Obi-Wan" is a more flattering description than, "That thing makes me think of the Emperor! Ewww!") But it does look incredibly cute on her. 

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* As I was typing this up, I was informed by my daughters that Ramona never actually got around to getting the note into the bottle. She claims she never had plans to do so. The whole story strikes me as Pippi-ish.