let there be lent

i had a lazy sunday. natasha! i painted my corkboard (although it's certainly not an original design of my own). i grew up with very basic art supplies, but once, perhaps more than ten years ago, my parents bought me set of nice acrylic paints for christmas. so, armed with nothing but magenta, yellow, cyan, black and white, i came up with a punchy color scheme. i have this intense desire to buy more cork boards and hang them all over the house. i went to 5pm church service today to get a big hug from chelsea and to see one of my photographs on the postage-paid tithe envelope.

so, lent is upon us and everyone at work chose something to give up. i grew up catholic, and fridays during lent i remember my mom cracking open old jars of home-made canned salmon that i may very well have caught with my own hands. i hate fish, and this, proved to be the fishiest of the fish-based products, except maybe tuna. when i got older, my mom told me i was exempt from abstaining from meat because i wasn't an adult. my dad made the observation one year that eating fish wasn't a sacrifice for my mom because she loved seafood! when i went to a protestant high school, i realized that the kids gave up things they actually enjoyed, like chocolate, and not just on fridays.

so for forty days, i am giving up "not cleaning," and andrew is giving up "not eating." in other words, i'm giving up messiness and andrew is giving up starving himself, because he doesn't eat at work.