Holy Tuesday pt 2

Apparently I'm not the only getting totally confused by what day it is - Jeremy can't remember what day it is either, and we ended up using the tv programs that were on tonight at his house while we were eating dinner to figure it out. You know it's holy week when...

actually, that's a decent idea for a list. Here a few of the things that I've been discovering -

You know it's Holy Week when:

• vegetable soup is so totally a food group. ditto rice
• pasta tastes perfectly good on its own, thanks
• your sister points out that you were reciting the Trisagion prayers and Psalm 50 (51) while you were chopping up vegies for soup
• you can't remember what day it is, but you know what time all the services were today and exactly how much sleep you *should* get tonight
• you can tell everyone exactly what happened on every day of Holy Week in the Gospels
• reading prayer books by candlelight is perfectly normal
• you realise you haven't checked your email all day at midnight
• you pack clothes for an overnight stay where you're going to be going to Church in the morning, and automatically pack black/navy everything
• you've figured out how to do the small prostration (bow from the waist to touch the floor then cross yourself) holding a chunky lighted candle
• you've figured out how to do full prostrations with a lighted candle
• you've decided that you don't care how silly it looks, scarves tied babushki style (under the chin) don't fall off the way they do practically every other way
• there are palm crosses in every room of your house
• someone says 'glory...' and you automatically finish it with 'to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and to the ages of ages amen'. bonus points for doing it in a foreign language
• you feel out of place when everyone's speaking english
• you have hymns stuck in your head and weird people out as you chant 'Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, doxa si O Theos' in the shower
• your eyes hurt in bright light at coffee hour
• you finish 'forever and ever' with 'and to the ages of ages amen' (though this one's more a 'you know you're Orthodox when' thing)
• you are scouring recipe books for Pascha recipes, while observing the strictest form of the fast
• nestissmo is an english word, right?
• you mark off tomorrow's date by accident on your calendar when you get home
• you've discovered the best ways to lean on pews during reeaaaalllyyyy long Gospel readings
• you have almost set someone's hair on fire with your candle. Multiple times.
• you and your friend try to juggle a heavy prayer book, a fan and a massive lit candle between the two of you and manage to cross yourself multiple times at the same time
• four hours sleep is a good night's sleep
• you go to a service that begins at 7:30, and get there at 7:20, when you usually don't get up before 10
• you start to forget that there is a normal world
• your family start wondering if your crazy is contagious
• your family start asking when you're going to become a nun
• your sister announces that she's sick of vegetable soup, and you say oh good more for me
• loukoumia is the best snack ever
• you can understand half the gospel when it's read in Greek/Slavonic/Arabic, even though you don't speak much of the language
• you can chant hymns you don't chant any other time of the year in several languages
• you realise that you've only been home for six hours total today, and you're about to go out again...and not get home until midnight
• bus drivers ask why you're so dressed up to go into the city on a Tuesday night, and then you end up telling them a paraphrased version of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins
• bread is more of a staple food than ever before
• you can't eat eggs, but you handle a zillion of them while dying them red
• you wonder where you can find a wooden egg, or egg shaped rock, to paint red and beat everyone in the egg cracking
• you plan dishes of sausage with cheese, and LOTS of chocolate, for Pascha
• you don't expect to sleep before dawn on Easter Sunday
• you've figured out how to do prostrations even when your skirt is long and narrow and you step on the hem
• prostrations don't bother you in the slightest anymore, hard work? what do you mean?
• you do, however, envy your priests ability to bounce from prostration to standing up again without moving his feet
• you find yourself muttering litanies and psalms in foreign languages absent mindedly
• you haven't read anything or watched anything fictional in days
• you answer every invitation by non-Orthodox friends with 'sorry, it's easter' 'what, all week!?!?!?!' 'yup.'
• you never realised how many black skirts and blouses you owned

that's addictive. I better stop and go to bed, I need to survive tomorrow night.

Tonight was beautiful. A lot of the things on that list happened today, including me making 'prayer soup' which is kind of like a minestrone. I call it prayer soup because a) I eat it during fasts (more like, live on it) and b) I basically throw a bunch of vegies, beans, pasta and tomatoes in a pot and pray that it works!

Now I am going to go pass out, and refuse to get up in the morning. Sounds wonderful.