Today is Ash Wednesday. I thought I should remind you because, if you're like me, you forget every year and inevitably tell someone they've got something on their face. It happens to me every single year, I see all these old ladies with smudges on their foreheads, and eventually I always run into someone I know and try to do them a favor (as I hope they would do for me) by telling them "you've got a..." rub forehead "thing..." Then they remind me that it's Ash Wednesday and we both feel like ass holes: me for being insensitive, them for walking around all day with crap on their face.Anyway, my point: Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. Traditionally during Lent Catholics (and Episcopalians like my mom, the renegade Catholics) show their love for Jesus by suffering and giving up meat and generally being chaste and moral. I'm not Catholic, or religious, or even very spiritual in any way, but I like the idea of taking 40 days and giving up an indulgence or a vice in order to appreciate the things I take for granted, or to break a bad habit. The whole giving up meat thing is kind of redundant for a vegetarian, so every year I try to give up something else. Things that I've given up in the past: drinking (that lasted about 3 days), smoking (that lasted about 3 hours), dairy (lasted about a week), sugar (I made it through a month that year), and lent (I made it all 40 days without observing lent the year I gave it up).
This year I wanted to give up something that was having a negative impact on my life. But since
I've given up smoking, drinking, and even coffee (except in great moderation), I don't really have any addicting vices anymore. I thought of giving up rest days, but that just seemed like a great way to get injured. I thought of giving up food groups, but that seemed like a great way to get my parents to stop buying my food (I know, I'm spoiled!). And then I hit on it, my greatest vice: I stay up nights just to do it, and it has me lying lifeless on the couch for hours at a time. RERUNS! I spend hours a week watching CSI and Law & Order reruns. House is also a huge time suck, but I've just seen the last missed episode (and I feel like I've just gone through a break-up). So for 40 days and 40 nights I am going to give up re-runs, which probably means all TV what with the writers' strike and all.Luckily, the Catholics have left a caveat for me. Sundays don't count as lent (that's why Catholics are allowed to eat meat on Sundays). That means that I can watch the CSI marathons on Sunday afternoons!!! That's 5 hours of dead bodies! Stay tuned to find out what I find to fill my buckets of free time from Monday to Saturday...
8 comments:
Technically Catholics only have to give up meat on Fridays during lent and fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday..I know I blew that one today......but you are right about the "Sunday" Cheat rule, granted my Mom never used to let us get away with it when I was little...also if St. Pat's falls on a Friday alot of full blooded Irishmen/Irishwomen would go to mass say a prayer for Il Papa and eat their corned beef..sin free...like I said I don't get half of these rules and regulations crap, but the point of all the giving up stuff, and fasting, and charity...blah blah.. is to try to appreciate the wonderful things we have been given, and how others go with out on a daily basis.....damn I just pulled what my priest did this Sunday...and got preachy...disregard...
Thank you, Bob! "the point of all the giving up stuff, and fasting...is to try to appreciate the wonderful things we have been given, and how others go with out on a daily basis..."
That's EXACTLY what I meant! Appreciate the wonderful gift we have been given with the Spike channel and their dozen daily episodes of CSI, and think about those who go without cable on a daily basis... I can see now how religions recru... er... convert so many people. This particular one really speaks to me.
Good luck giving up your reruns. I'm not religious either and the only time I ever knew about lent was when I was living down in Texas and had a lot of Catholic friends. I had friends that tried to give up swearing and cheese. Those were the big ones.
Good luck! Although my advice is to watch as muc TV (including re-runs) as humanly possible for the next bunch of years. You never know what's coming down the pike. Pop out a few babies and your days of watcing re-runs is over! You'll be watching Dora and Disney and wanting to shoot yourself in the head! I say live it up now!
Ooooo, I can't wait to see how it's going.
I think re-runs suck anyway so all I ever watch is the evening news and go to bed upset about what I've just watched.
Sorry about that whole religious spiel yesterday,(for a while I contemplated that whole joining the celebate white collar club thing.), but no I do know the experience of living without cable...not having fox news is a good thing....not having House could drive a person to insanity..hang in there.
Speaking of religion, the last episode of House had him going all funny on some Jewish chick.
If you think the Catholic rules are "stringent", you wouldn't even want to hear what my church requires of it's folks during lent. Bob-O knows some of this stuff. If i can pull some decent sources of protein, I may too do me a little 'fasting'...if it drops my bodyfat.
Now that I think about it, 'my' lent does not start for another month. If you screw the month of Feb. up you can always kick it with the Orthodox starting in March. I can explain the difference in calendars up on request. Maybe I'll give up women...
Oh you crack me up! Reruns???!!! Have fun renting Block Buster! ha ha ha... oh, you have something on your forehead...like a smudge!
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