Prom and Church

Chris kicked up the blogging thing this morning, and I'm going to follow in his procrastinating ways and make a post myself.

One thing that has happened since returning from Disney is Kaitlyn's prom. Meghan and I spent the weekend at the Johnson house, to help with the post-prom party and so that we could see Kaitlyn off to her senior prom, making her feel embarassed and uncomfortable. I truly have picked up this whole sibling thing very well.

On the way down to Connecticut, I started piecing things together and realized that I was going to be the only male in the house for most of the weekend: Mr. Johnson was at a race and Chris wasn't spending the weekend... On prom weekend... I started figuring out an escape plan in the car and never fully unpacked my bag, just in case.

Friday night was the night of the eyebrow plucking and waxing, which took only four people to accomplish, including the pluckee, Kaitlyn. Nothing like spending your Friday night watching girls wax their eyebrows. If this is what girls' slumber parties are like, then my life just got a little sadder.

Luckily there were no injuries and Kaitlyn emerged with great looking eye brows (because I'm such a friggin' eyebrow expert) and the full use of both of her eyelids. About halfway through the process, I slunk off and played Metroid on Wii.

Saturday was the big day and we actually escaped the full brunt of things since Meghan and I were off doing wedding errands. One of those things was going to the florist to drop off something for our wedding, but while there, we picked up the boutonnière for Kaitlyn to give to Andy and I met the store cat, Holly. Holly is a very beautiful, old, grey and creepy cat. Every time I moved my head to look at her, she moved her head at the same time in the same manner to look back at me with a soul piercing stare. It may have been enough to make me believe in reincarnation, since I'm pretty sure that cat was a person at some point. A very creepy person.

Chris stopped by the house to drop off Jenn's glasses, since she had left them there last time she was there (aren't you glad I explained that? How else would she have left them there?) but Chris mailed back the wrong pair of glasses back to her (which raises the question of how many extra pairs of glasses are lying around the house). He didn't even come in the house at first, and I went running out yelling "You're coming back, right!!?!?!?!" but he abandoned me for the weekend. I was thinking naughty words about him - ones that are wholly inappropriate for this blog.

Anyway, after finishing our errands, we ran the boutonnière back to the house. The florist had done this neat little wire daisy in red to add an accent color to Andy's flower to match Kaitlyn's dress. They did it for free and as a favor for us because we're having them do the wedding flowers. Kaitlyn applied her special super deflating power upon seeing it, claiming it was "nice" in the flattest tone possible.

This would be Kaitlyn if you gave her a Ferarri: "Oh, that's nice. Why is it red?" Kaitlyn if you gave her a million dollars: "Oh. Okay. I need to go talk to my friends online." Kaitlyn if you offered her world peace: "Oh. Why?"

Mary Pat has the glare, Kaitlyn has the "Oh." They both have similar results.

So where were we? Um... eyebrows, prom, flowers, making fun of Kaitlyn, me playing lots of violent video games to maintain some semblance of masculinity... that about sums up prom weekend.

That brings us to this past weekend. Chris did a good job summarizing it in his most recent post, but I have to elaborate on the homily. Out of all the homilies I've heard in all the times I've gone to mass, this is probably the worst. I sympathize with priests - it is tough to get up there week after week and give an interesting speech on on something relevant and meaningful to the congregation. But then there are times where it all just crashes and burns so badly, it makes you cringe, and Sunday was one of those times. Not only was it long (clocked in at around 30 minutes) and rambling (at least three major key points, all of which were unrelated) and thickly accented (not much you can do there, but it made it even more difficult to understand and pay attention) but he brought visual aids. An 8 x 10 photo. In a Cathedral. A big, cavernous Cathedral. We were pretty far up towards the front, so we could at least see that it was a photo - anyone sitting in the back must have wondered what was up with the postage stamp floating in front of the pulpit.

At one point, a guy in front of us actually put his head down on the pew in front of him. Looking around, no one in the church was paying attention. It was a life-changing mass: I bet at least five people changed religions after that homily.

I can't offer too much else other than saying that this whole graduation/college/wedding summer needs to end soon, or Mrs. Johnson might go careening off the precipice of sanity and right into the pit of insanity. While going to visit Pappap in the nursing home, she told Jenn that "we really need to get you a house for the key."