Lent, Suffering, and Spilled Fry Oil

As Danielle Bean has pointed out so eloquently, God has a way of sending us the penances He wants us to have for Lent. We may choose to give up things, but cheerful acceptance of what comes our way is sometimes even more difficult.

This has been a week for little, not big suffering, at least so far. I haven't been writing or blogging because my back has been a problem and sitting in the computer chair is one of the things that predictably makes it worse. Kneeling in church is another thing that predictably makes it worse, but since I've only been to church three times in the past week, that hasn't been too much of an issue. Interestingly, the chair I sit in to spin does not make it worse, so I have gotten some spinning done, go figure.

On Saturday morning there was a fry pan full of congealed fry oil (actually a mixture of Crisco and oil, so it wasn't all that congealed)sitting on the stove. My husband doesn't approve of dumping hot oil in the garbage so it had to cool off before being disposed of. As I was doing my morning cleanup in the kitchen(but obviously before I got to the fry pan) I managed to bump the handle and tip the whole thing over on the kitchen floor (which my dd had just cleaned the day before because her boyfriend was coming down on Saturday). I tried to be cheerful about cleaning it up, but I will admit my first reaction was not, "oh joy, something to offer up." That was only my second reaction (or maybe the third).

Next I could not find the package of pine nuts (which I knew I had), so making the meatless lasagna for Sunday dinner got put on hold. I managed to get through the rest of the day without too much trouble until I was cutting the vegetables for the minestrone soup for supper and sliced off the top layer of skin on the side of my left thumb (I swear I need a thumb guard or something, I'm always cutting that thumb). Still dinner was a success. DD and her bf picked up the pine nuts for the lasagna while they were in town renting a video. Of course by the time they got them home I'd run out of steam for making lasagna.

On Sunday morning I got up early and spent over an hour putting the lasagna together without too many complications. Sunday actually went reasonably well, as a matter of fact. The only problem was the dishwasher which dd had loaded on Friday. It got run again on Saturday (of course), but not unloaded. What did I discover on the dishes Sunday morning, but guck (due to the fact that dd had put three jars for recycling through the dishwasher with labels still on and the filter had gotten clogged). Of course this meant that most of that load had to be rewashed, only I couldn't really do that before church because we had four more people to take showers at the point I discovered this. Our hot water heater is marginal under the best of circumstances, dishwashing on Sunday morning doesn't fit into its capacity. So the first thing I had to do when I got home from church was dishes.

On Monday evening I had put together a plate of dinner for myself (leftover lasagna and salad) to eat while the guys were at town meeting. I got the salad dressing out of the fridge and lo and behold someone had put a bottle of French dressing back in the fridge, but there was no dressing left in the bottle. I grabbed the rapsberry vinagrette as a second choice. It wouldn't open, so I ran it under the hot water. The cap came off easily, but when I went to pour the dressing, it did a Mt. Vesuvius type discharge out of the bottle. Hence, I now had salad dressing, not only on the salad, but all over the lasagna as well. Offering it up was still not my first reaction.

Now in the midst of all of this I am trying to do meatless meals because we have one person who's given up meat for Lent. I'm trying to do Light Weigh type eating as my own Lenten sacrifice and waiting for level three hunger all the time is tempting me to crankiness under the best of circumstances. So when you're at level 3 or maybe even 4 salad dressing all over your meager meal is more of a big deal than it ordinarily would be.

I'm spending a lot of time reminding myself of all the hungry people in the world, but so far Lent has been a series of temptations to not be cheerful and to forget to offer it up.

And oh, to make things more interesting today, I now have to go to the dentists for a cleaning and my dentist's hygenist belongs in a horror film. It's not just my opinion, but that of every patient of his I've spoken to. She macerates your gums.
So offer some prayers for me while I go offer this one up.