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Oh gosh, dear reader and friend, I want to apologize up front for sending such a strange newsletter this week. I know some of you have been waiting a number of days now trying to get a better idea of what is going on with me and then others of you are wondering, “Why has she not answered my email?” and then others of you are probably like, “Why is she writing at all?”

I’ve spent the last couple days at St. Meinrad’s Archabbey in southern Indiana. Although it was not my first time to visit the campus, I think it was my first time to lollygag here. I spoke for a couple hours on Wednesday, but decided to hang around an extra day since the drive to and fro is rather long and my sciatica….okay, I’m sure none of you are interested in hearing about my sciatica.

Hello there! Or, more appropriately, since I’m in Sweden, “Hej!”

It feels bold to address those I meet here with a casual-sounding “Hey,” or even better yet, “Hey Hey.” I keep trying but can’t quite get it right. It comes out “Hi Hi” and then it makes me giggle, so I’m sure the people on the train at present must think me very strange. Which I am, of course, but usually it takes more than 10 seconds to figure that out. Swedes can tell in far less time.

The last time I wrote I was fresh back from the heat of Texas and having a hard time finding words to describe all that was going on in life. Today I am back in Texas. It is still hot. And I am still having a hard time coming up with suitable words. What’s different is the nature of the heat. Less to do about the physical climate (though it’s still pretty darn toasty!) More to do with the political climate. Who knew it was possible for it to get even more heated? And yet here we are.

Whenever it has been a while since I’ve written, I have a hard time starting up again. In good part it’s because so much keeps happening, it is hard to know where to pick up the conversation. I’ve been a bit harried of late. I’ve had two trips to Texas in the past two weeks. I like Texas because of the good people I know and love there, who are growing in number all of the time, but it is a bit of an undertaking to go back and forth twice during what we can just call "Sauna Season."

Last fall my family started a book club for the young women of the clan. I know what you are thinking: Ann, you are not exactly young. That is true. But I was the one who organized it, so I get to attend… along with my school librarian sister (because not only am I not young, I also know nothing about young adult novels and someone needs to pick the books.)

My first memory of Lole is of the night she bit me. I realize that is not the typical memory most women have of their mothers-in-law, but you need to understand that Lole was not the typical mother-in-law. The first time I went to meet her, she told me that a traditional village doctor had mentioned that in a former life she’d been a dog. I was brand new to Guam. What did I know of the local culture and belief systems? So, I said, “Okay.”

“You want to know how the doctor knew?” she asked.

“How?” I asked.

Aspiring to introduce social media into our children’s life in a healthy and limited way, a couple of years ago my sisters and I got onto Be Real. If you are not familiar with this app, let me just say it is 90% great. At a different time each day, you receive an alert that it is “Time to Be Real” and then you have two minutes to take a picture of exactly what you are doing at that moment. The app takes a picture in both directions at the same time—i.e.

The celebration of Corpus Christi each June always brings back for me fond memories of the liturgical theology courses I took as a grad student. I remember the brilliant and witty Fr. Frank Quinn, OP, who finally explained transubstantiation to me in a way that I could understand. In our course on Eucharist, he tracked the long history of Catholic inquiry concerning when in the Mass the bread and wine starts being the Body and Blood of Christ.

Before explaining why I was standing outside with 200 people in a pair of pajamas labeled “Trophy Wife,” it probably would be a good idea to explain why I own such a pair of pajamas in the first place.