Life as we Know It

The final days of this semester are coming hard and fast, and things are very busy around Chez Mibi. Much of the Christmas shopping is done and shipped, thank heavens, but the school stuff still hangs on. And I'm still on strong drugs, which are in their way harder than the remnants of my illness. I'll go back to the doctor's on Monday to get my blood counts checked again and am hoping the numbers stay where they need to be.

The tail end of this week is challenging, in that we have our Seminary Advent Lessons and Carols service tomorrow night, in which I organize the choir and the handbells (since I'm music TA), sing with said choir, and play Eve in a stylized tableau of the Genesis reading. Why they matched me, a 50-something chubby woman with graying hair, with a twenty-something Adam, heaven only knows, but it will still be fun. The service will be preceded by a full day: Small Group worship, coaching two students for the Church Music final oral exam, including singing the Sursum Corda and the Proper Preface, coordinating a GOE scripture prep session, rehearsing the tableau, etc. Then community dinner and the service.

Saturday is relatively mellow, with icon-writing, I hope, plus Christmas tree shopping and house decorating. I should also do another rev of the sermon - it needs a bit more polishing, since it is one of the ones I'll be submitting for the fancy preaching award competition .On Sunday at Saint Middle School, I will preside over the first half of the service - we will have a retired priest who is doing the communion portion - as well as preach, teach a class on the liturgical calendar and the colors and the lectionary and all that, come home, go to tea at our dean's house, go to ordination of several friends, and then go home and collapse.

One more week of classes, during which I need to finish one relatively brief but thorny Medical Ethics paper. I have two exams - one is for a pass-fail class that I know I'll be fine on, the other is the Medical Ethics one, which will be challenging but not beyond manageability.

Somewhere in there I'll be meeting again with my thesis advisor, but where I am with it right now will probably be where I am when I meet with her. No time to do anything else.

And in the midst of it, StrongOpinions is driving east with a friend from Hippie-Dippy town at the foot of the Flatirons. Pray for traveling mercies for her.

I'm hoping the next few weeks for you is lovely and meditative and not hectic, but I suspect your schedules are just as wacky as mine. Blessings on us all!