December Wrap-Up (ft. an ER visit, a snake, and a very Merry Christmas)

Hello wonderful people! Merry Christmas! I hope that your Christmas has, so far, been a season of blessings for you and your family and friends, with much joy and eating of cookies. (An essential part of the celebration of Christmas, in my opinion, and one which I have not indulged in nearly enough yet.) (That will be fixed, by the making and eating of many cookies, as soon as I finish this post.) (If it seems a bit rushed, now you know why.)

Alrighty, a few highlights from my December before we get to what is objectively everyone's favorite part of the post, i.e. the quotes...

-After my last wrap-up, which was written and published in the middle of my trip to the East Coast, I had a few more wonderful experiences on that trip which seemed worth sharing. First of all, I got to meet Allie from Married And A House, who is a Cool Catholic Mom Blogger, and ALSO happens to be a friend of my aunt, because when you're Catholic, you're really never more than two or three degrees of separation from anyone (ask me about my connections with Fr. Gregory Pine and Fr. Thomas Joseph White). Allie is wonderful, and we had a great time chatting about this and that and my new color analysis results, and she gave me a recommendation for a new book about Mary that I just got for Christmas and am super excited to read! 
Second of all, and not nearly as cool as meeting Allie, I got to hold my cousin's corn snake, named Rosie. If you ever wondered if corn snakes were cute, they definitely are, and Rosie seemed to like me, which she manifested by wrapping her tail [?] around my wrist and grabbing on when my cousin tried to take her back from me. 

-I got to be part of a wonderful Christmas concert at the Newman Center, ft. two of my friends singing an incredible duet with only a day of rehearsal, and my 'choir group' singing a six-part polyphonic piece and nailing it. 

-One of my friends took me shopping for heels for Christmas, and thus I am now the proud owner of a beautiful pair of lace-up black heeled boots that make me feel like Samanthawise Gamgee, Slayer of Men. 

-I made it through finals! Or rather, I made it through multiple final projects, a ten-page paper, and one final that was possibly the most stressful test I've taken in my time in college. (Trees, y'all. They're stressful.) Having successfully finished my last final, the next day I landed myself in the emergency room with chest pain (shout out to the friend who drove me to the emergency room, the friends who burst into the emergency room within less than half an hour of me telling them that I was in the emergency room, and the friends whose Christmas party I had to leave precipitously who were my prayer backup) and having had an EKG, a chest x-ray, and multiple other tests that my nursing student friend found fascinating, I was given a steroid, told there was nothing wrong with me, and sent 'home'. Upon me arriving back in the PNW, my mother, who's a trained massage therapist, took one feel of my shoulder and exclaimed "how did you manage to mess up every single muscle attached to your shoulder blade?" I don't know, Mom. I really don't know. (But apparently I hold stress in my shoulders?) Several days and multiple massage treatments later, most of the pain was gone, and I could breath and laugh and sing again, which was much appreciated. 

-Being home has been wonderful--I've gotten a lot of rest, gotten to see a lot of my favorite people who I hadn't seen in far too long, and been in the Land of Mountains again (finally!). 

-Christmas was a whirlwind--I was at five Masses in 36 hours--but a beautiful whirlwind! Two of those five Masses were ones that I cantored while Legolas played the organ, a first for me, and two were ones where our parish choir (that Legolas was in) sang, and one was Midnight Mass, a favorite of mine (such a peaceful, luminous experience). All of them were beautiful liturgies, and I was grateful to get to go to all of them, even if I only got three and a half hours of sleep on Christmas Eve. 

Fun Quotes

Me: "Yeah, I'm the worst."
Louis: "But are you the bratwurst?"
Me: "No, I don't stoop that low."
Louis: "But are you a brat?"
Me: "I mean, yes."
Louis: "So, you're a bratwurst."

Father M: "I mean, have you read the Song of Songs? Jesus has got the rizz."

Jem: "I was going to try to think of a transition, but...CONFESSION. GO TO CONFESSION."

Dom: "I mean, I would hope I'm an adult; I'm teaching children, and I'm getting married."

Mark: "Can you give me back the thing I threw back there?"
Lane: "Hey! That was the RD phone!"

Mark: "Renewal fee?"
Lane: "That's my insurance!"
Mark: "Ooh, an old gum container!"

Kay: "How do you feel about fake dating?"
Father M: "Who is Sam fake dating?"

Me [a completely different day]: "We're talking about fake dating."
Leah: "Who are you fake dating?"

Overheard in the caf: "We start with these two RANDOM expressions which we then multiply together to get this RANDOM equation, and then we multiply both sides by this even MORE RANDOM variable, and look, this BS we managed to create in the process is the correct answer. This BS is in the answer key."

Galadriel: "I don't see you using German on a daily basis!"
Eomer: "Was? Worüber sprichst du?!"

Eomer: Careful of my kidneys! They're retroperitoneal!"

Eomer: "Jejunum! This is a whole encyclopedic small intestinal rabbit hole!"

Adam: "You can draw muppets, I can't draw Jimmy Stuart!"

Eomer: "Except, I don't have chiseled abs."

Eomer: "Egads! My weird little mustache is becoming more defined."

Eomer: "I have earned the most powerful weapons and faced that creature which we gamers fear the most: a woman." 

Me: *staring at Eomer's upper lip* *whispers* "Mustache..."
Eomer: "Do you MIND??"

Mom: "Father, did you get stepped on?"
Father DD (in full habit): *cough* *hoarse whisper* "I usually try to avoid crowds like this."
Eomer: "When did you become Batman??"

Pippin: "Men are a liquid."

Legolas: "Twilight is actually making you dumber."

Eomer: "Shakespeare was a hermaphrodite married to three vampires."
Legolas: "Honestly, that's not the craziest theory about Shakespeare I've ever heard."

Thomas: "I'm like feta cheese!"

Legolas: "That will be much better than royally messing up."

Galadriel: "Eomer! You should pierce one ear and get a long dangly earring!"
Eomer: "Ooh, that's a great idea!"
Mom: "Galadriel! Whose side are you on?!"
Galadriel: "The side of chaos and disorder."

Pippin's mom: "Eomer, what are you doing with that sugar dish?"
Eomer: "I'm making out with it."

Mom: "Brandy is the breakfast of champions."

Worth Reading If...

(I will be putting up my Good, Better, Best for New Books of 2023 in the new year, and I'm very much looking forward to when that happens, but today is not that day, so here are three books I enjoyed in December.)

...you like anime and/or Brandon Sanderson

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson
I made my way very quickly through the four Brando Sando (as my siblings affectionately call him) Secret Projects as soon as I got home, and Yumi was far and away my favorite of the four. It's set in essentially two worlds, both beautifully rendered--one where twin lines of teal and magenta light keep back surroundings of semi-solid darkness that burp forth nightmares, and one where the ground is warm, plants float on the warmed air, and specially trained people can summon spirits by stacking rocks. Both settings are beautiful, and such a contrast! 
The story follows two characters, Yumi and Painter, one from each world, when a surprising connection upends both of their expectations and cause them each to learn each other's art. It's beautiful, suspenseful, and rather adorable. Painter is cynical; Yumi is innocent. Yumi is a rule follower; Painter doesn't care about disappointing people. Painter has essentially disowned all of his friends; Yumi never had any friends to begin with. They forge this wonderful friendship that forces both of them to reconsider everything they've thought was true. Plus, there are hilarious Cosmere connections, especially if you've read the Stormlight Archives, and the whole thing has a very anime type "vibe" which isn't what makes it my thing (anime isn't something I'm super invested in) but which was fun and different for a print book by Brandon Sanderson. Oh, and friendship was a major theme, which, if you've known me for any period of time, you'll know is something I love in a book. 
I've done a very poor job of capturing the beauty and magic of the book, but please believe me when I say it's there. 

...MG is more your speed

Here in the Real World by Sara Pennypacker
I picked up this book originally because it seemed like it revolved around fantasy world vs. real world, which reminds me of a long-running discussion/debate I have with one of my close friends. It turns out, it rather revolves around "the idea of a fair world" vs. "the real world", both of which are rather the perceptions of the characters who champion them--still fascinating. And despite the fact that it wasn't quite what I expected, I loved it. 
It tackles themes of what it means to be an artist, friendship, what it means to have ideals, what it means to stand up for the weak in the modern world, and what is beautiful, and whether it's worth pursuing. 
And you know what else, to me as an adult it really captures the purposeful-useless play of childhood in a beautiful way--the papaya plants, which are purposeful, and the creation of the castle, which is imaginative and useless but still worth doing. 
Also, the main character spoke to me so much in that he was an introvert and constantly was wondering if there was something wrong with him because he didn't want to play with the other kids in the way that all the adults around him expected. <3

...you like books about people who are hunted by the Hound of Heaven

The Letters of Magdalen Montague by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson 
This is actually a short novella, originally recommended to me by our Newman music director, and by the same author who wrote the Bloody Habit and Brother Wolf books that I so enjoyed a while back. It's a story told in letters--but only one side of the conversation. Other letters exist, and are referenced, but not shown. Which makes it fascinating, because you get to know the writer, but you only know the person he's writing to by what he says, how he says it, and the allusions to the other letters. It's essentially the story of a hedonist coming to become a Catholic through the example of someone he knows in Society in London, and while I really don't want to spoil it (and because it's short, it would be really easy to!), some of my favorite themes in it were friendship (again), both spiritual (through prayer) and 'in real life'; and how one's example can be important to someone else's journey in ways you never expected. Oh, and the human-ness of priests...but in a good way. ;)

The Month In Music

(I'm purposely not including Christmas carols, although there were many of those, as well, because, well, there were so many. :))

Chesterton Carol by Vos Omnes: the Christ-child lay on Mary's breast/His hair was like a star/o stern and cunning are the kings/but here the true hearts are

Bells by Audrey Assad: then pealed the bells more loud and deep/God is not dead, nor doth He sleep

What Sweeter Music by John Rutter: we see Him come, and know Him ours/who with His sunshine and His showers/turns all the patient ground to flowers

Simeon's Lullaby by Wendy & Mary: come, let me hold Him/O bless you, Lord/and I will depart in peace

O Magnum Mysterium by Tomas Luis de Victoria: o magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum/ut animalia viderunt Dominum natum/jacentem in praesepio

Winter Song from If The Fates Allow: I'll be your harvester of light/and send it out tonight/so we can start again

Joseph's Song by Michael Card: Lord, I know He's not my own/not of my flesh, not of my bone/still, Father, let this baby be/son of my love

Winter Snow by Audrey Assad: He came like a winter snow/so quiet, so soft, so slow

Ad Te Domine Levavi by Andres Hakenerger: ad te Domine levavi animam meam...non erubescam neque irrideant me inimici mei

What are some of your favorite non-carol Christmas songs? How was your Christmas? Have you ever had an EKG? 😅