Wednesday

Wednesday was called "Hump Day" when I worked downtown. The idea, of course, was that it was the halfway point of the work week. If we survived Wednesday, it was a smooth downhill slide to Friday afternoon and the joys of the weekend.

Now, of course, I'm in a different business entirely. So what's Wednesday now?

• If I'm scheduled to preach, I hope I've got at least the bare bones of the sermon down, maybe even a first draft. Wednesday is also usually when I think the sermon is a flea-bitten dog, to be put out of its misery, and that I should start over. I rarely do - this is my normal worrying pattern.

• If I'm teaching on Sunday (as is the case for me this week), I am thinking about what materials might need to be duplicated, if I'm going to use the projector, in which case I have to make sure that the Keeper of the Projector gets it to church, and if I'm on the right track at all (the flea-bitten dog thing again), and if this was all a Big Mistake.*

• If the alb is at the cleaner's, I should pick it up. I will forget it if I wait any longer. Nothing like waking up on Sunday morning and realizing it is in the cleaner's, which of course is closed on Sunday.

• And Wednesday is also food-shopping day chez Mibi, especially this week, when the assembled masses of kids and grandkids are coming for the ordination on Saturday.

So what are my plans for today, outside of blogging?

• Yes, food shopping. Necessary. We are out of tonic water and ingredients for guacamole. This must be remedied.

• A pedicure. Appropriate liturgical color for ordination is red, so it will be red toenails, invisible in my cute new shoes, but as important as good undergarments for a special day. Purple toenails would be overreaching. Pink would be not celebratory enough.

• A massage from the estimable Erin, who weighs something like 83 pounds but has the hands of a sumo wrestler.

• Oh yes, the Sunday School class. Talking about the thesis and the surprises to be found in the Gospel of Matthew, using the story of the Canaanite woman's encounter with Jesus. Got to print off copies of the text...beyond that, it is finished.

So Wednesday is not really Hump Day in the same way anymore, because the weight of the week falls differently now. It becomes an odd sort of midweek Sabbath, when I can catch my breath and say I may indeed be ready for what awaits me in the days ahead. May it be so!



* "Big Mistake:" A story from our honeymoon in Italy. We had lunch with a food-writer friend and some other folks in a wonderful Florentine restaurant. When we got to the secondi, my friend told us that the chef, an enormous guy with flaming red hair, said that you cannot eat risotto with a spoon - it harms the grains of rice. You have to eat it with a fork. She warned us that he was pretty passionate about that. The risotto arrived at the table, and,sure enough, one of the group started eating it with a spoon. The chef, Fabio, came rushing out of the kitchen, screaming "Is mistake. Is Beeeeg Mistake!" He snatched the spoon out of her hand and told her that for her transgression, she was not getting any dessert. Some folks' ideas of mistakes are different than others, I learned. Context matters. So around our house, Big Mistakes can be about all sorts of things, and the one who names it as a Big Mistake has the right to do so, even if others think it's no big deal. We own our neuroses here at chez Mibi, and we're even a little proud of them.