During COVID, I was privileged to be the only person to attend a private live-streamed daily Mass. I was supposed to be quiet. But . . .
But first, I’ve figured out how to add a Tip button for my Substack posts.
Did you ever feel so overwhelmed that you start doing things not on your must-do list in uncontrollable emotional rebellion against having too much to do? I noticed other Substacks with “Tip Jar” or “Buy me a coffee” buttons, and thought I’d like one of those too. I’ve been wanting to add one for a while, but I didn’t feel free to take the time to figure it out. Until now. On top of a long list of articles I should be writing, I still have to recover from losing all of fifteen years of documents and photos of both professional and personal significance after my previous iMac died in February. Last week, I finally got the files back on a hard drive from a recovery company after waiting three weeks past their original estimate, and after paying out almost $4,000. Now the task facing me is daunting. I won’t upset myself or bore you with all the details. But, one of the complications is that I had 1.7 Terabytes of data on the old 2 TB drive, and by mistake my new iMac has only a 1 TB drive, so I have figure out what to bring back and what to leave on the recovery drive. Decisions when your brain is over-tasked are hard.
Making a Tip button seemed more like something I could handle today. The idea behind a Tip button is that if you enjoy my writing and you can afford to help support what I am doing at this Substack, you can leave me a one-time tip. If you click this button, it will bring you to a page called Ko-fi where you can choose how much you want to donate. And you can choose to use PayPal, Venmo, or your credit card.
The other option, if you are feeling even more generous and are able, is to become a sustaining member with a paid monthly or yearly subscription. If you enter your email address in the field below and click the Subscribe button, you can either subscribe for free (if new), or switch to a paid subscription.
Now for the main event. Here is another one of my stories about the ridiculous things that happen to me.
Five years ago, on Wednesday, May 2, 2020, when public Masses were forbidden during the COVID epidemic, I had been longing to attend Mass and receive the Body and Blood of Christ, and so I felt blessed to get permission to attend a private live-streamed traditional Latin Mass at the clergy residence for the Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory, which I attend in San José, California. Canon Raphael Ueda, the oratory rector, was only able to allow one person at a time. I was instructed to sit way back behind the camera and be very quiet.
Even though I have bad allergies all year around now, I hadn't sneezed for three days. But wouldn't you know? I got a sneezing attack right in the middle of Mass. After various attempts to stifle the sneezes, one sneeze, in spite of my best efforts, came out anyway, explosively.
After the sneezing came an outpouring of mucus down my face. I didn't have any tissues, and my only option was to start blowing my nose in one sleeve of my blouse, and then another sleeve—and then my skirt. I was glad the priest and the seminarian who was the altar server were facing the other direction, ad orientem, towards the liturgical East, towards God, thank goodness not towards me.
After that, there was a blessed period of silence, for a while. Then my phone rang . . .
I thought at the time I probably got added to a blacklist for in-person Mass attendees.
I had planned to stop at Trader Joes for groceries on the way home. They were letting in a few masked people at a time, but with the condition my clothes were in, I wasn't going anywhere else but home.
Two links to other stories along the line of “ridiculous things that happened to me,” if you like this sort of thing.
Yeah, that's part of the total ridiculousness of what was going on when I was trying to be quiet during a live-streamed Mass.
Disgusting about the mucus