Random Religious Ramblings

 

Tonight I went to Confession and asked the priest if leaving during Adoration was a sin, and he wasn't sure either, but he said it was good that I confessed it. He asked if there were other people in the chapel when I left, and I said yes, and some of them spoke Spanish but they didn't say anything to the guy who was loudly praying in Spanish. I had wondered if it was pride that made me leave, so that I could say I got in my daily rosary, and he said maybe next time (if it happens again) I should stay in the chapel and just finish the rosary later. Though he did concede the guy was the real jerk, praying out loud in a silent adoration chapel. They had adoration at this church right before Confession, and the priest has a good voice but can't really carry a tune, which is a fascinating combination. They were singing "O Salutaris Hostia," and I didn't have the words in front of me, but there were a few lines I remembered better than others so I would sing them more confidently. Then I realized that on those lines everyone would stay in tune, because they must have been following me. If I'd only had the words in front of me, I could have led the singing. I was the first in line to go to Confession, then I did my three Hail Marys and left. Was that gauche? Adoration was still going on, but there were plenty of people there... and not one of them praying really loudly in Spanish, or any language. I just wanted to get home before Travalon did.

So you guys, I have to tell you that the camera on this computer seems to be able to take a better picture of those windows in my new rosary than my cell phone camera did. (I found that out when I held the crucifix up to the camera for Jilly Moose to see it.) Maybe I can make a short movie showing each of the Seven Sorrows of Mary! I can put it on YouTube and get 23 views! Wouldn't that be awesome?

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Basque Class or Basketball?

 

Travalon said I should blog about this, so here goes: as my readers probably recall, last week we didn't have Basque class due to "unforeseen circumstances," and I joked that the teacher probably didn't know his team was going to be playing that night. Then on Sunday Travalon told me there were actually March Madness games on Monday this week too, so I joked that our teacher would cancel Basque class again. Sure enough... he said he had been exposed to COVID (like we could get it via Zoom), and that just that afternoon he was developing symptoms. So I replied, "Yeah, I didn't know there were going to be March Madness games tonight either. I hope you feel well soon." Then after a few minutes I thought better of basically calling him a liar, so I sent a second email saying please don't kick me out of the class for being a smartass, and I would have done the same thing myself if the Packers were playing the Bears on a Monday night. So now he probably thinks I'm totally nuts, but whatever. If he's really deathly ill, then I will feel very bad for suspecting that he was just watching college basketball. Of course, if he cancels class next Monday, how will I know whether he is super sick with COVID or he is just watching the championship game? Rich says a college kid wouldn't get deathly ill with COVID, so there's that.

Here are some photos from today. First, there are crocuses blooming in our neighborhood.

Today Travalon picked up dinner from Liliana's, and he had some extra time, so he took a walk by a pond at McKee Farms Park, and he saw this muskrat.

Here he is watching basketball with the panda family!

This evening at Adoration I got very annoyed because a guy started praying really loudly in Spanish, so I couldn't finish my rosary. I went and sat in the library to finish it, and then I could hear that the jerk had shut up, so I returned to the adoration chapel. Anyway, there's a subreddit called "Am I the Asshole?" and I wondered if I was for ditching the chapel during my adoration hour, because then maybe other people were stuck there, since you aren't supposed to leave the Sacrament alone. Or was the guy the asshole? Seriously, there are signs in both languages saying it's a SILENT chapel. Of course, there are also Anglo types who refuse to wear a mask in there, so they are DEFINITELY the asshole.

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Travalon's King Arthur Kick

 

Today when the mail came, it felt like Christmas. There were so many packages, and most of them were for Travalon, although I did get my quarterly package from the secret club I'm in. He got a T-shirt of Droopy Dog, an atlas of England and Ireland, and some King Arthur stuff. First is the Knights of the Round Table.

Did you know King Arthur was a lagomorph? Neither did I!

And he's getting Guinevere and Sir Lancelot as bunnies too, so look for that in the future.

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Coots and Spies

 

This morning after a very long Palm Sunday Mass and a normal length brunch, Travalon and I went to the Square so I could take a picture for the secret club I'm in. Our homework this month was to take a selfie with our penguin in front of the most whimsical place in our own town, so I naturally thought of the statue of the stick figure sitting on the wall. It actually worked on the first take:

Then Travalon and I went for a walk along the Lakeshore Path. We saw so many coots!

They look like little ducks (or bathtub toys), but they are actually more closely related to chickens. They have feet like chickens when they get out of the water and run around, but unfortunately we didn't see any do that today. We also saw a ton of gulls.

We saw a bufflehead and some other types of ducks swimming with the coots, but those photos didn't turn out as well. Here is an example - I believe it's an American wigeon.

And guess what else we saw? Remember when we saw the mysterious boardwalk with the wall and towers over in the marsh? And then it turned out to be the Hoofers pier? Now it's over by Picnic Point.

And we saw a bunch of the food delivery robots awaiting orders. I'm not sure why something that is basically a cooler on wheels is TOTES ADORBS, but they really are.

Here is a view of the water tower not far from our house as viewed from across the lake.

And here is a view of Maple Bluff, where the rich people live, from across the lake.

On our way back, we saw some of the food delivery robots set off on their missions. SQUEE!

This is a view of the downtown skyline from near Picnic Point.

Here is a video that Travalon made of the little food delivery robots setting off.

As you can see, it was a beautiful, sunny day, but it was also extremely windy. We saw the MedFlight helicopter take off, and I really feared for them, flying in this wind. Then we went home, and I joined my family Zoom meeting and then my Irish class, also over Zoom. We had to try to describe what we had done this weekend in Irish, and I mentioned that I got an appointment for the vaccine because I had a secret phone number, and Travalon got the vaccine at Walgreen's because he had a secret code number from his job, and also that he had been taking pictures of birds and that I had taken the selfie with the stick figure on the wall for my secret club. One of the other women in the class said, "I don't know, everything Famous does is secret, and she takes a lot of photos. I think she's a spy!" That sounds far more exciting than my real job of being a low-level civil servant, so I'll let them keep thinking it...

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Another Amazing Bird-Watching Day

 

Today was an amazing day. I got to sleep in until nine, and then Travalon and I went to Ancora and tried other flavors of donuts besides lemon lavender; I had blackberry mint, and he had chocolate peanut butter. It was a cold, drizzly day so we decided to go to Lake Wisconsin via Sauk. We went to the antiques shop in Sauk, and I found this cutie that I named Katie Kitty. 

I also saw this beautiful rosary from the 1930's. The beads are glass and the crucifix is Bakelite.

See the little windows in the crucifix? Years ago Rosa Peligrosa had a rosary with a crucifix that had a window you looked into, and you could see a picture of Our Lady. This one has seven tiny windows, and when you look into them, you can see each of the Seven Sorrows of Mary beautifully illustrated. I tried to take a picture, and this is the best of the sorry lot - you can kind of see part of the Flight into Egypt.

On a related note, the other day my new story icon of the Mysteries of the Rosary arrived.

I was floating on air after finding such an incredible rosary, but the best was yet to come! We went to the dam, and we saw an immature bald eagle.

Then we took the Merrimac Ferry to the south side of Lake Wisconsin, and a pelican flew over us!

I was so excited! Spring is here!! But then the wayside was closed, and I really had to powder my nose, so we decided to go to Fitz's on the Lake for a drink. From the parking lot we could see the best ever bird party: seagulls, pelicans, and loons!! Travalon took a ton of photos.

Here Travalon caught the loon about to dive.

We heard the loons sounding off now and then, but we were never quite quick enough to catch the sound in a video. Then we drove to Sunset Bay, where we saw buffleheads and a loon.

We headed home and stopped at Governor Nelson State Park. They have this interesting statue on top of the shelter that neither of us had ever noticed before, so perhaps it's new?

We saw a muskrat - maybe the one we swam with there last summer?

And I think these are buffleheads too. We could see them in the distance.

Here is one of them swimming alongside a much larger mallard duck.

We also saw a kingfisher fly by, but it was too fast for Travalon to get a photo of it. Finally, once we got home, we went out on our dock. Here's a bird party: sandhill crane, mallard ducks, and Canada geese.

And off to the left we could see a whole lot more buffleheads.

The sandhill crane appears to be nesting!

And we saw this male canvasback duck. I didn't know what he was - I had to google "gray duck with brown head." No sign of a female one.

If you listen closely, the crane sounds like it is purring.

Travalon wanted to watch more March Madness games, and then at halftime we took another walk in our neighborhood, and we saw the two cranes chasing two Canada geese. So far the teams he wanted to win (Loyola and Villanova) both lost. Right now he is rooting for Oral Roberts, and they are winning, but not by much.

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