All Saints Day/All Souls

I had a dream last Thursday evening that all the kids were grown and All Saints Day came, and we didn't know what to do. I dreamed we got together with some dear friends for the celebration-we all dressed as saints, made the "who am I?" presentations and celebrated.

Waking up I realized that we didn't celebrate All Saints Day just for the kids. So for the first time this year, I dressed up as a saint and gave my presentation on ... who else, the patron saint of swine herders: St. Anthony the Great

I am always disappointed when a great feast is moved or made non-obligatory. We traveled to our old stomping grounds, Columbia, for Mass Saturday morning. Then we went over a friend's house (the same friends who I dreamed about) and we did our saint presentations, ate breakfast, ate lunch, said the rosary, talked, (the kids got together and practiced some sort of play they are working on together.) It was a great day. And we got home in plenty of time for the animals' 2nd feeding.

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Mrs. Curley and I also slipped out and went to a yard sale Saturday. Mrs. Curley had seen a lawn mower with a bag at a yard sale in our friend's neighborhood. (When I was a kid, I hated the bag. Lugging it to the woods to empty it was the worst part of mowing the lawn. But now I see it as the best way to capture clippings for the compost, to feed to the chickens).

Alas, the mower was gone-but I had a field day (to Mrs. Curley's amusement) getting other stuff.

I picked up two shovels in great condition for $3/each. I got a bevel gauge, a tape measure, two 24" x 18" maple boards, three railroad spikes (worth more their weight in metal than the pennies I paid for them), a heavy duty hack saw, and a tool I couldn't quite figure out what it was for. We also bought a guitar case for son who has guitar but no case. It looked too small, but the owner assured me it would fit any standard guitar; I guess any standard one but ours. So it now proudly houses my .22 Henry!

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Sunday after Mass we drove to the old Scottish Cemetery just outside of Bethune to say the rosary for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. We figured these were mostly Presbyterians and therefore had no one praying for them. We'll hit some other local cemeteries this week.

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Very busy week this week, and of course election day is tomorrow. Received an email from a reader here which links to a site in Australia. People in Australia are really praying for a pro-life victory in the US. Despite all the overseas rhetoric against the USofA, foreign countries do look to us for direction on these issues. (This was reiterated this weekend by a friend who was raised overseas.)

Oremus pro invicem!