Comfort Drinking, Christmas Knitting, Religious Musing

Lately I have been all about heating up a cup of milk with a packet of Splenda (well, the Safeway generic equivalent) and a splash of vanilla. I used to just drink it at bedtime but have been having it at any hour recently. Odd, I suppose...

In college I used to just get steamed milk at cafes. I might do that again, now I remember it.

(Yes, I do indulge in the more traditional type of comfort drinking. It's just not noteworthy.)

I have been knitting away on Item A and Item B for Christmas. One of them is in laceweight, although it's not lace (it does have a YO in the border, but that's it). It's going to take awhile but it's mindless, which suits me. :-) The other requires somewhat more thought, but not a lot.

The economy is actually starting to worry me. I hadn't been tripping, since I'm endless years away from getting to retire, but man... Although I am constitutionally fit only to be a housewife and find having a very regimented office job quite psychologically stressful, I certainly don't want to lose my job. It's relatively unlikely, but anything can happen.

Speaking of the housewife thing, sorta. I was listening to the local Catholic radio station while knitting today. They're way more orthodox than I am in most ways, but I find it interesting (until I get told obliquely that I cannot in good conscience vote for Obama, but that's another topic). I got to thinking about what the role of single, childless women is in the Church. I'm not a sister or nun, I'm not a consecrated virgin (!!!), I'm not married, I don't have kids. I don't see myself remarrying -- I'm not opposed to it at all; I just don't think I will. I also don't see kids in my future. I've only ever wanted one person's child (and I am ever so grateful it didn't happen, in retrospect).

However, regardless of the hypotheticals and the minutiae, the facts are: Divorced/annulled, childless. I don't have this family that is always spoken of in religious discourse. It's just me. I have relatives, but when I think of the family in the "domestic church" sense, I don't think of siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins. And since I'm the only practicing anything in my entire family, it's not like faith or spirituality comes up much.

(OK, maybe not "entire family." I have some Catholic cousins who may go to Mass, but I see them approximately once a decade. I have a fundamentalist cousin whom I avoid who may go to some church or another. By "entire family" I mean my aunts and my sisters and their families.)

And really, my ideal life, should I be able to snap my fingers and conjure it up, would be: Married, no outside job, and no kids. One of these things would be condemned by the orthodox (and possibly by the Orthodox). However, since the first one will almost certainly never happen, I don't need to worry overmuch.

I'm actually not really worrying in any case. I do need to think, though, at least, about my place in the Church. And actually, though I started this by wondering about the place of single, childless women in the Church, it applies to men too. I have read heated discussions about whether someone can be "called" to the single (but unconsecrated) life; whether it's a vocation. Most people seem to strenuously believe it's not, but there are partisans on both sides.

Something to ponder.