letdown

So, I finished a paper today. Normally I feel great when I finish and hand in a paper. I like the squaring away the details at the end: formatting the footnotes, filling in the title on the cover page. Especially if it's a good title. This time the title may be the only good thing about the paper, except for the enormous fact of it finally being done. I just don't have my done-with-the-paper high this time.

So, let's face it, my life is really boring. All the good stuff that you'll ever read about here is stuff that's really happening to someone else, whom I happened to be married to or related to or live next door to or met on the street yesterday or something.

My husband is becoming Episcopalian. This means that all of you who know me will need to know that "Episcopal" is the adjectival form, as in "the Episcopal church," and "Episcopalian" is the noun, as in "he is an Episcopalian." For all you grammar nuts who are scrutinizing my original sentence, therefore, maybe it will interest you to know that I first wrote "Episcopal," intending it as a predicate adjective, but it looked a little funny, so I replaced it with "Episcopalian," which functions as a predicate nominative. Anyhow, I don't know much about the Episcopal church, although once in high school I wrote a paper on Henry VIII and religion. I hadn't realized it before Brent started this journey seriously, but I had some prejudices built in regarding the Episcopal church. Like, it only exists because some fat king wanted a divorce. It does seem a hard thing to dispute, regardless of the gross oversimplification (and I mean gross both ways). Plus, I've grown very suspicious of over-friendly relations between church and state...just look at the mess going on now...and the idea of a state church makes me wince, not because I am afraid of my civil liberties being infringed (although that consideration is starting to take on more weight as we all get sucked into GWB Happy Christian Crusader World) but because it makes the church the bastard child of the state. How can the church be the church if it's appended to the government? You're just asking for corruption and hypocrisy and power abuse. Fred would say I'm sounding dangerously Hauerwasian, I suppose, but this is something I think he gets right. So there. Anyhow, I was talking about Brent. So I have had to get over my suspicion of the Anglican church's origins. It IS more complicated than the fat lusty king model, I admit. And I suppose a desire for pristine origins is only to be expected in a Restoration Movement girl, and doubtless will get me nothing but disappointment...

I'm trying to talk Brent into a confirmation party, but I can't get him to agree to the white lacy dress.