Dealing with Rough Times

The little puppy we will be meeting tonight!

I am so turned off my by fellow American Catholics.  I was already greatly disturbed by their embrace of Trump.  I got that they felt constrained to vote for him because of the Supreme Court picks.  And frankly, l am more of a strict constructionist than I am an activist, simply because I am not into having a group of 9 judges - a tiny little oligarchy - legislating from the bench.  So I got that they had to hold their noses and vote for someone despicable like Trump because the other choice simply wasn't viable in their eyes.  I get it.  However, the whole cult of Trump is so weird and disturbing.  The whole 'only listen to Brietbart and Fox News' and embracing his war on the free press, and not caring about Russia and especially rejecting the Church's own teachings and getting really racist against immigrants is appalling.  What terrible witnesses they are to any kind of consistent reasoning in terms of life.  And they often hold themselves out to be better Catholics because they go to the Latin Mass or they veil or they homeschool.  What sinful pride!  What distortion of virtue!  And don't get me started on how it is a heresy now to be against the death penalty.  Only in America can the same people be supposedly pro-life in the womb but willing to reject every other attempt at respecting life because it doesn't mesh with their American/right wing view on things. 

And now we have it all coming out about McCarrick and a whole network of sick sexual abusers in seminaries.  Now they want to scapegoat homosexuals as a result.  They want to cast it in terms of liberal vs. conservative when it seems quite clear this is a problem across the board and does not break down in the progressive vs. orthodox way. 

They hate Pope Francis.  They already hated him but now they really do.  And in the meantime, most of this happened under the auspices of Pope JPII who we rushed to make a saint before we should have.  They couldn't wait to name schools and such after him.  Yet he seems to have had extremely poor judgment in this area.  It really looks like Pope Benedict resigned because he couldn't get the bishops to cooperate with him in cleaning things up.  And Pope Francis who is so good in many ways, seems to be just as caught up and incapable of handling this deeply infiltrated disease of corruption. 

The Church is falling apart before our eyes.  And we aren't helping at all.  Instead we are tearing at each others throats.  I can't stand it.

And on top of all this, in addition to struggling with various emotional/mental problems in the family which is constantly wearing on me, our dog, Tillie, died.  Poor Tillie. 

So we are going to get a puppy!  That's the one thing we actually have under our control.  So this evening we are going to meet a possible rescue puppy.  I'm excited!

We did have a lovely week at the beach.  Sitting out on the sand in the morning, just sitting there feeling the breeze and watching the waves and the pelicans and the occasional dolphin was incredibly relaxing.  It was really therapeutic for me. Thank you, God, for that opportunity!

I have all day today to look forward to meeting our possible puppy.  The idea that I have to prep the house for a little pup has given me energy to clean that I haven't had in ages!  Puppies are like have little crawling babies around, you have to make sure there is nothing on the floor they can choke on or get into.  So we are puppy-proofing. 

We've already decided that I will do the morning walk and training and B will do the mid day one.  And then anyone who is available in the evening will do a walk/training session then.  So that evening session will rotate among whomever is available.  I'm already thinking I'll take the pup with us when I take B to her co-op classes on Tuesdays, I'll drop by the dog park that is sort of on the way home.  Unless there are other homeschool moms with dogs who want to meet up and walk our dogs together.  That could work too. 

Contemplating getting a puppy is really a sweet way to deal with all this.