Bound With All The Weight

For the last two hours, Dannette/Sharise has been on the phone apartment hunting. Intersperse that with shameless conversations with the boyfriend it sounds like she's leaving and random lines like "It was NOT an innocent child!" and you have an idea of what my day is like. She's CRAZY.

I went at lunch to Old St. Pat's church on Des Plaines and Adams to get a mass card for Shane. I couldn't figure out how to do it and decided to stay for the mass and ask the priest afterwards. I got a bloody nose right at the outset, like God was spiting me for taking so long to return to his house. After my red river clotted (doesn't that sound like something else?) I stopped leaning my head back to swallow the blood and noticed that there was a surprising cross-section of worshipers in attendence. Young people and older ones; people dressed to the nines and some in jeans. All at a quick lunchtime mass in the city. At the time for Peace, I turned around to the person I sensed was behind me to offer him peace and it turned out to be this semi-strange family friend of Mary's whom I know from my youth at DeVries. Nice family but the LAST person I expected to ever see again, let alone there, then. At Mary's sister's wedding a couple years ago, me and her now brother-in-law Jason were sitting in front of this man and his wife and they insisted on striking up detailed conversation. Mr. Edwards, the family friend, gave me peace today and then said hello in one foul swoop. So quick I don't know if he caught my nod of recognition. He'll probably go home tonight and over dinner with his family relay the story above and wonder if I knew who he was. Brilliant!

Afterwards I asked the priest how to get the mass card and he after he told me, asked my name and a few other questions. I gather this was because there really is no "parish" at this church because it is among skyscrapers and not in a residential area. It is super famous in the city, but not in a central location. So he was wanting to know about the people who come to the masses. It was also surprising that he was relatively young. All the news and articles in the media have been either about the sex abuse scandal or about how there is a dearth of new priests. He reminded me of Father Mike Shanahan who was a deacon when I entered junior high and became a priest when I was in seventh grade. He was probably 25 when he started but frames of reference are so screwed up when you're young. He was the fun priest who would take exotic vacations and make up stories about bears and exciting adventures when he came into our classrooms and spent time with us. He was the "cool" priest, who eventually left after the spinster religion teacher fell madly in love with him. He went to a Spanish-speaking parish and was profiled in Time Magazine as the future of the Church.

Then I went to lunch at Angelo's, an unclassifiable greasy-spoon-esque eatery. I got me a Charred Asparagus sandwich and some fries, it being Friday during Lent and me coming straight from guilt-demanding church. Yesterday when I had lunch with my grandma for her 83rd birthday she told me that Fridays all year long used to be meatless and then made a joke about how old am I? It wasn't that long ago they changed the rule to just Fridays during Lent, and since she mentioned it I vaguely remember that, but as I was the son of my mother, we never followed it. My grandma and thusly my dad like to follow those rules (though my dad hates the meatless Friday one) but my mom couldn't care less. Every Sunday I see my dad getting ready to go out or when he comes home from somewhere and I ask him where he's going or where he went and he always says, like a broken record, "To a place called CHURCH!" I'm going to hell, I tell him, he raised a heathen.

On a separate note, I have gotten really into "The Contender" this week. I always "liked" boxing but now I love it. It's so entertaining. And the show is great because there's much more to it than just pounding flesh and uppercuts and hooks.

Nasty. The leftover fries from lunch today are sitting in my garbage can and make my whole area smell like bottled rotten farts. I'm gonna leave soon and enjoy me a tall glass of Green River and watch the Illini game I TiVoed. I heard the final score was 68-43. Can't wait to see the details.