"You have made me for Yourself and my heart is restless until it rests in You."

St. Augustine of Hippo

For those of you who read my blog weekly (are there some of you out there?), I apologize for the late post. Last week was an odd one for me and by Sunday the last thing on my mind was posting. *Sigh* but, I'm here now... and not all together sure exactly what to say!

I chose the above, often quoted, phrase of St. Augustine's because it pretty much sums up last week for me. Having come to a stopping point on a work project in the house, with Sr. Gretchen down with a terrible case of strep throat for several days, my class at Oblate not getting any better, and with several outside community activities my routine was really messed up.

Thursday - Sunday I was pretty restless. And I'm not altogether sure restless is the right word. Distracted? Maybe that's better, but not quite. It's difficult to articulate, for sure. Being the "creature of habit" that I am, once I've established some sort of routine, I am fairly comfortable. When the routine gets thrown out... without any to take its place... or when things seem out of balance... I have a hard time concentrating.

Perhaps I should explain my week a little...

• Sr. Gretchen and I had class together on last Monday, but didn't meet again until this morning.
• Tuesday was the Patronal Feast of the Society of Mary (the Marianists brothers and priests) because it was the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. Also, the celebration was combined with a "good-bye, good-luck" celebration for one of the brothers who was just elected to the General Adminsitration in Rome.
• Let's see... Wednesday... I have no recollection of Wednesday. That should tell me something, shouldn't it?!
• Thursday was Oblate day... To make a long story short, I ended up meeting with the Assistant Academic Dean for about 45 minutes. The actual Academic Dean will be meeting with my professor in the next few days. Need I say more about that???
• Friday Sr. Marcia, Amiee and I did faith sharing on the readings for Sunday's liturgy. That was nice.
• Saturday, after helping Sr. Stephanie with arrangements for the jubilee celebration on Saturday the 23rd, Sr. Marcia, Amiee and I went bowling. We also had ice-cream from Cold Stone (yum!). If Sr. Gretchen would have been feeling better, she would have been with us on both Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. Anyway, Saturday evening I had "permission" to go to dinner and the A&M/Army football game with my friends Robert and Terri Cooper. That was fun. But... the game started at 8:15 and, since it was televised, lasted until midnight. I didn't get home until 1am!
• Sunday morning before Mass, I helped Sr. Durie bake bread. That was cool. After Mass and lunch, Amiee and I went swimming (as per our normal Sunday schedule). Sunday evening we had our "Spaghetti with the Sisters" with some students from St. Mary's University. We had about 12 students over for prayer at 5pm and dinner following. By the time everything was cleaned up, it was after 8pm...

Looking back on last week, I completely understand my sense of being scattered... Lesson learned? I hope so! I guess the week was just a little too full of "stuff" for me. It's no wonder I was distracted in my study & prayer! By Sunday night, seriously, the last thing I wanted to do was talk on the phone, write e-mail, post a blog or socialize. I needed my introvert re-charge time! *smile*

With all that being said, however... I still wouldn't say that the week was bad. I had a good week. It just wasn't as productive as it could have been.

Before ending, I'd like to comment a bit on the format of this blog. Those of you who know me well must know how annoyed I am at the fact that on some of my posts I can't seem to separate the paragraphs. I use a lot of formatting when I type. And when I'm typing a post, I see the formatting... but when I actually post it, *poof* it disappears (usually). So, just FYI, I'm trying to fix the problem, but it's not something I wish to spend a lot of time doing. Today, I played around a little with the html code stuff. Yeah, so I have no idea what I did, but for today the paragraphs are separated and I'm happy about that.

I pray that all is well with everyone. I hope to hear from you soon.

With prayers and blessings,

Sr. Nicole