August 2020 Resolutions

I have decided to drastically scale back on other forms of social media for the month of August, which should make it so that I have more time to devote to this poor old neglected blog of mine.

More time to read, too--not just Tweets and IG captions, but actual BOOKS. (Some of the ones I’ve finished recently and am currently reading will most assuredly make it into a future blog post.)

More time to get in shape, because the past month of too-little working out has not been very good for my stamina (or my waistline!).

July was an extremely busy month for us here at my husband's childhood home by Lake Champlain.  There were get-togethers with many members of our extended Pearl family, including nieces and nephews and great-nieces and nephews.  And best of all, we were able to spend a week at our Oyster Haven Vrbo house early in the month, with most of our own family (three of our boys and their wives, and 11 of our 16 grandkids).  When we get to use Oyster Haven to make family memories of our own, it makes all the work of running it as a rental property for others to enjoy worth it!

We also made a short trip back to VA late in July to reconnect with our kids and grandkids, with whom I got to enjoy some belated birthday celebrations.  (If turning 62 can be considered cause for celebration--ha ha!)  Missing our family--our gang down in VA, and our married son in OK--is the only downside to our summer life up here in Upstate NY.  Because other than that, things are pretty near perfect. Lake Champlain is literally in our back yard, and this is what we wake up to every morning.

I need the tranquility this lake provides, I really do.

We are living in terrifying times, and watching YouTube videos of the chaos and rioting in our cities (which I don't believe always show up on the mainstream media, but I see posted on Twitter) fills me with a feeling of despair.  Will we ever be okay again?  Will people who disagree politically ever be able to treat each other with respect?  With such drastic differences of opinion regarding vitally important issues (many on which we can’t really compromise), issues regarding faith, freedom, morality, and the right to life, can the Left and the Right ever truly live in harmony?   And even this: will the Catholic Church eventually have to go underground--literally underground--so that the faithful will not have to endure physical persecution?  (Because let's face it, emotional/psychological/media-driven ideological persecution already exists, and it's getting worse all the time.)

This blog has never been nor will it ever be a political platform.  But many of the issues some call "political" (such as abortion) are merely a matter of good v. evil, right v. wrong, and I don't even know how they end up being topics for heated discussion.  And I can't help but think that this Covid-19 crisis, like almost every aspect of life on planet earth these days, has been politicized.  I'm not nearly eloquent enough to explain how much I worry about the way this virus has changed the face of human interactions (do you see what I did there?--our faces are all changed via the masks); but I read this post by Melody Lyons at The Essential Mother Blog, and she expressed some of my innermost feelings better than I ever could.  If you have a few minutes, please read it.  She writes so beautifully, and as an individual who would be considered one of those particularly at risk from this virus, her words are exceptionally powerful.

That's it for today.  Just trying to scrape the rust off this blog site and get it back up and running again.  My husband and I are off to Mass now, at the church where we got married (it'll be 40 years ago this December!).  Some of the pews are roped off, and we have to wear masks as we walk in and out of the church and when we are in line to receive Communion; but at least, for now, we have an infinitely better option than watching the Mass live-streamed on TV.

Bye for now!  Happy Sunday!