Seriously Easy Scapular Fix

On this week's Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I went through my house collecting all of our broken scapulars. I have enough to make a habit! Never learning my lesson, I put them on right after I get out of the shower when I have a towel turban on my head. *Snap* Another one bites the dust.

What do you do with broken scapulars? Since they're sacramentals, you can't throw them away. You're supposed to fix, burn, or bury them, but around here they usually they just get shoved to the back of a drawer (the drawer with tacky holy cards, broken rosaries, headless statues and rusted medals). "I'll whip out my sewing machine later and fix them."

But that requires a seam ripper, carefully lining up the cords and trying to get my sewing needle through two thick layers of fabric... not impossible but certainly not easy. Therefore, it usually places slightly higher than "dust behind the storage boxes in the garage" on my to-do list.

It never ceases to amaze me that I can burn through a scapular a month while my husband has had his forever. "How do you do it? What's your secret??"

"Oh, when they break, I just tie them back together."

*blink blink*

I married a genius.

Why I Wore My Pajamas to Work

Since the second week of June, I've breathed, eaten, and dreamed dust, cherries, and Spanish (respectively).

I've had neither the time nor the energy to do anything other than work. The schedule this week was a lot more relaxed: 5:00am-5:00pm... who would've thunk an 84 hour work week could be considered semi-vacation?

When I drag my dusty body to bed at night and mumble my prayers, I'm distracted by the panicky feeling: "What am I going to wear tomorrow?" Laundry, you see, has been on the back burner for almost a month. I've exhausted all jeans, slacks, skirts, tees, blouses, and blazers I own.

Yesterday I finally broke down.

Did laundry? No.

I broke into the garbage bag in the back of my closet... you know the one... the one I hoard in hopes that some day I'll fit into them again. My old "skinnier clothes."

I stretched that too-small t-shirt over my knees every time I thought no one was looking, but all day long I had to hold my stomach in and breathe shallow breaths. I was so cranky and asphyxiated by mid-afternoon that I resolved on the spot, "I will do laundry tonight!"

Yesterday was July 4th! After the outrage of having to work all day when everyone else I knew was grilling bratwursts, doing laundry was the last thing on my mind... until this morning at 4am when the alarm went off. "What am I going to wear?!?"

For a few moments I thought, "maybe they're not so dirty," and almost sniffed the smoldering laundry pile. "No," I caught myself in time, "this is no mere laundry, this is the garb of harvest -- sweaty, dusty, grimy, smelly."

So it was either wear another two-sizes-too-small-tee and if-that-button-pops-off-it's-gonna-be-a-dangerous-weapon-jeans, or go in my pajamas.

"They kind of look like slacks," I reasoned, "except they're loose, pink, and have a drawstring."


I got away with it in the wee hours of the workday (when it was too early and too dark to care), but as the day progressed, people started looking at me like a bum.

Load #5 is currently on the final spin cycle. Wake me when it's time to switch loads.

Contagious

I was driving to the farm at 4:45 this morning (Cherry Harvest 2012 continues), and while stopped at a red light, I yawned.

The guy in the oncoming lane yawned back.

Then I called a friend over 2,000 miles away. I yawned.

She yawned back.

Just now I searched for yawning artwork for this post, and I yawned 8 times looking at the results.

When I'm this tired, I love yawning.

Did you yawn reading this?