hmmmm????

You know, sometimes there are just things that make no sense to me. 

For example:

I got a new gadget to go with my Promethean board.  Here is the quick reference guide.  It is about 100 pages thick.  SIX of those pages were writen in English.  Seems like a waste of good trees.  On the up side, all of the English was together.  I hate, hate, hate when you have to sift through directions looking for the English.  (I don't really know how long the book is, because it was just numbered 1-6 over and over and over.)

Exhibit 2: 

I completed my training to be a counselor for Ad Altare Dei, which is a Catholic award for Boy Scouts.  I got the patch in the mail today.  Isn't it beautiful?  (not really - kind of ugly as patches go, IMHO)  Notice anything else?  There's just one of me.  So I'm not a Counselors.  Notice anything else?  How about - they need to buy another vowel for "religious"?   Fail?

Here's another one: 

This makes me absolutely crazy.   I try to get to Mass early, so I don't have to see it.  It's our parking situation at church.  We have a parking lot.  It has lines.  You park between the lines.  One behind the other.  Supposedly all facing in the same direction.  Everyone fits that way.  We don't have much problem with people leaving Mass early, because if you park in the parking lot, you can't get out anyway.    Except for some people. 

I arrived towards the end of Mass a couple of weeks ago, because we were taking altar server pictures after Mass. There was no place to park.  See all that empty space??  You couldn't get to it because people facing the wrong way had totally blocked off any access to the space in the middle.  Just go with the program, people!  It maybe takes five minutes for the lot to empty after Mass.  When we painted the lot, we even painted arrows pointing the correct direction.  For all the good it did.  Enough to make me lose my religion sometimes! 

God had the last laugh on these pictures, though.  I had brought my camera so that I could get a picture of the altar servers.  But the batteries gave up their last bit of juice to take the parking lot pictures.  :-(

My last "thing", I'll have to "paint the picture" with words.  A couple of years ago, we (the kids and I) decided that we would aim for confession every 3 months or so.  It was more than once or twice a year, but not so often that it would be over the top.  Since then, I find my way there more and more often, but with the kids, every three months is the goal.  They both went during Lent.  July would have been a good time to go again, but the summer was just crazy.  I thought I was going to have to confess being a slacker parent with regards to my children's spiritual welfare, but when I actually looked at a calendar, there were only about 3 weekends all summer when we were all home at the same time and Saturday confession *might* have worked. 

Fast forward to last weekend.  Oh - and my boys have decided that our priest "knows them too well", so they have asked to go somewhere where they can be anonymous. Whatever works. 

So, the planets all lined up, and Saturday afternoon found us on the way to a nearby parish.  First of all, my car was running on fumes.  Then the nearby soccer fields were emptying of spectators, and we were stopped to let them out.  More traffic down the road.  Took an alternate route, and got stopped at every. red. light.  One of the kids remarked that it was Satan trying to keep them from going.  I was in a bit of a rush because I really wanted to make 4:00 Mass at my own parish.  Anyway, we made it, and there was a handful of cars in the parking lot, and I thought "uh-oh, a line." 

But, alas, there was no line.  There was a sign saying, "Confessions will not be heard today.  Sorry for the inconvenience."  That is just something you should never have to see.  You do the prep work.  You find the courage and get yourself there.  And then... no priest?  What a let down!  (Although I'm not sure my kids shared the disappoinment.  It might have been relief I saw in their faces.)

The end of that story...they served early Mass at our parish on Sunday, and then we went back to this church, because they have confessions 30 minutes before each Mass on Sunday.  This time there was a priest (and a line). 

Are there sometimes things that just make you go "hmmmm???"