As the holidays get closer, I get a little more protective of the downtime that I get. There is so much to do and I want to make sure that I’m rested and well.
Today is my “day off”. It began at 4:30 a.m. as I walked over to the office/church in order to open up for the 6:30 a.m. Holy Day of Obligation Mass. I opened the church by 5:00 a.m. (yes, we really do get people that come in that early to pray!) and then went to my office to work on future bulletin pages because of the accelerated transmit schedule that we have to follow due to the holidays.
After Mass, I went with Deacon Joe to breakfast which is our weekly Wednesday thing. After I came back from breakfast, I got ready for the 9:00 a.m. Holy Day Mass.
Once Mass was over, I went to the office and kicked it in high gear. I made flight reservations for my April back-to-back cruise to the Bahamas and then worked on the Christmas bulletin since that has to be transmitted tomorrow. That took a bit of doing to format.
When I finished the Christmas bulletin, I started working on the pastor’s page for the December 19th bulletin (which has to be transmitted Friday) as well as the December 26th bulletin.
I got partially through the page for the 26th when I turned my attention to queueing up the Daily Reflection posts through December 31st. I had to get them in the blog and schedule them to publish on their specific date. Then, I had to post them to the Facebook page and schedule them for their specific date. Finally, I had to put them into my email program to send to the mailing list on the appropriate dates.
Eyes swimming and fingers hollering at me, it was about 1:30 p.m. when I cried “uncle” to the day. It was supposed to be, after all, my day off. So, I came to the house to relax but, instead, jumped on my computer to continue some of my office work. That’s the benefit and the curse of having my computer at the house hooked up to our network.
Since it is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. watching The Song of Bernadette was a must-do. Now, I’m going to try to sleep. Tomorrow: Christmas cards.