But my beloved is in the shower, and I am in my fleecy robe and jammies, sipping a Coke and wondering how I should spend the rest of the morning. I have to admit, “very little” sounds very good; it’s rare that I have a not-too-busy day to sit around and daydream.

Canuck, TBS and I all went to IKEA together last night. It felt like we’d bought out the store! We got a new TV stand that will better accommodate all the electronic gadgets he brought; we got him one of those funky Poang chairs that he’s wanted for years, which is a Christmas gift from me; we got him a desk chair, which is his Christmas gift from his mother; and he splurged a little and got me a drying rack that I’d wanted for ages but had never found anywhere until IKEA came to town.

You are officially old when a drying rack seems like a fantastic gift.

We’ve also gone ahead and purchased a new stove, which should be delivered Friday. I will, unfortunately, be back at work by then; but assuming they deliver it before about 4 p.m., he can have a nice dinner waiting for me when I get home.    I have already begun the “Honey-Do list” of things he can be working on during the days while I’m working; and with his help, I am thinking I will go back to riding the bus in the mornings. I’m terrible about getting out of bed, which means I drive nine days out of ten. (I will still have to drive one, maybe two days out of five, but if I can reduce the wear and tear on that poor old car, doggonnit, I will.)

Tonight we have plans to go to a New Year’s party in Rochester, unless of course the weather turns nasty – it’s a long drive on what my mother calls “Amateur Night,” and if bad roads get thrown into the mix, I might chicken out. I hope not, though; I’m quite looking forward to it!

Funny story before I sign off for the moment: yesterday we went to go meet with the priest who’s celebrating our nuptial Mass, and he was telling us (in his Slovak accent) how he, his associate pastor, and his former associate pastor were all riding together out to Toronto for a fellow priest’s birthday party. They get to Canadian Customs and are being asked the usual questions: where do you live, where are you going, whose car is this, what do you do for a living.

Three Slovak citizens in a car together. Illinois plates on the car (the former associate pastor is now at a parish in Chicago). Two say they live in the Detroit area, one in Chicago. Going to Toronto for a birthday party.

“What’s your job?”

“Saving souls.”

Customs agent looks at them – I’m surmising they weren’t wearing their Roman collars, but he didn’t say one way or the other whether they were. Customs agent writes “Saving souls” down on the yellow referral form and sends them straight to Secondary for further questioning.

These are the times that try Customs agents’ souls…kind of like when I told the U.S. border agent I’d bought a “missal”. I recommend saying “book”, if you are ever faced with that situation…  :-p

I never told you how the sangria turned out. It was actually pretty good, and for a first effort I think it was outstanding – we used a recipe we found on the ‘net and modified it slightly to suit our tastes and what was on sale.

We used white wine – I didn’t even know you could use white wine for sangria, but there you have it – a big bottle, with a shot or two of Bombay Sapphire (Canuck’s gin of choice), some sugar, and a whole mess of fruit: strawberries, raspberries, lemons and limes. We’d bought oranges, but there wasn’t room in the pitcher for anything more. We let that marinate overnight, and by the next day, it was a yummy fruity treat!

One note – I strongly do NOT recommend adding club soda or tonic to the sangria for fizz. It was revolting. By the way, what IS the difference between the two? If I want fizzy sangria, I’ll add ginger ale or Seven-Up, thanks.

We went to see Wall-E, and it lived up admirably to all the positive reviews I’d heard about it. I highly recommend it.

The parishes in Chatham just had a massive personnel turnover – the Diocese of London is clustering, merging and closing parishes just like Detroit has had to do, and this July was the big change-over. The small Czech/Slovak parish we’d visited so many times, St. Anthony, is finally being closed; and of the five remaining parishes in town, there are now two clusters of two plus an ethnic (Polish) not-quite-a-parish.

Much as I’m sad to see restructuring, because of what it means more broadly, so far I’m pretty happy with the changes. We’ve only visited one parish so far since the changeover (obviously), but the priest seemed OK – didn’t set off any warning flags – which is especially nice because he’s the pastor of the closer cluster to Chez Mère de Canuque. I was dismayed to see that the parish was using GLASSWARE (ok, maybe it was crystal, but it’s still NOT acceptable as far as I know!) to distribute the Precious Blood, so I only received the Host and walked past the Blood. However, it was this pastor’s first week, so I can understand even if he sees the issue he probably hasn’t had a chance to take care of it yet; I am hoping that he will address it on his own. If it’s still going on by the end of the summer, I will write him a letter asking about it. The other cluster is now being pastored by a priest who worked with Mother Teresa at some point, so I do want to check them out…

In other news, my car turned over 260,000 miles today. Forty thousand more before my pride will allow me to replace the car. Hopefully both the car and my budget cooperate.