Day 15: Almost done!

71: I married a Repubican, and I wound up being the Republican election judge at our little country precinct in Bismarck.

72: Scratch a Republican OR a Democrat, and you'll find....a POLITICIAN! That's what I told myself, anyway.

73: When the wrens arrived in our yard in the spring in Bismarck, I knew the wild asparagus would be up in the woods!

74: Jobs I have done because nobody would hire me to do anything else cuz I was deaf: student apartment cleaner, trumpet vine removal, walking beans, newspaper carrier for the Daily Iowan (2 hours' exercise 5x a week, no collections, $100 pay/month), alterations in tuxedo rental shop, kitchen prep in the Mt. Vernon General restaurant, house painting (inside and out), steak knife packaging, sorting hangers in a commercial laundry (white for shirts, bronze for uniform pants), mortgage filing for big bank, data entry for health insurance company, writing papers for hard-pressed students (all women). Loved it all.

75: Good God....25 more to go....Planted garlic one year, and little Sally loved to go through the garden and sample the fresh vegetables. She'd scream bloody murder when she bit into the garlic.

77: I taught 4th grade catechism for several years. Loved 4th graders. They're still kids, but they're old enough to converse with you.

78: I was Girl Scout cookie mother one year in Minneapolis for our local troupe.

79: My friend Maureen and I used to plan and throw parties for senior citizens in our parish at St. Anthony's. It was great fun.

80: When St. Anthony's had their 100th anniversary, my friend Sarah and I videotaped interviews with all the old timers who had gone to St. Antony's as children. I asked Sister Antonine (the redoubtable former 'Stacia O'Brien and then Provincial Superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in St. Paul) if she remembered the name of her father's newspaper. She said, "Yes."

81: Sister Antonine, who was mistress of the Juniorate when I was there, said my handwriting looked like "ant tracks."

82: Sister Antonine was about 4'10", and at Sarah's funeral, I told her I hadn't remembered that she was so SHORT.

83: My first crisis of faith came when I was assigned to be sacristan in the convent. One of the sacristan's jobs was filling the ciboria with unconsecrated wafers prior to Mass. The unconsecrated wafers came in a cardboard box from a community of cloistered nuns, whose job it was to bake and ship them. Wear and tear due to rough handling in the post office resulted in a few unconsecrated hosts getting cracked or broken. Courtesy, or something, required that we not put any BROKEN wafers in the ciborium. And we were not allowed to throw them away, either, because someone might think it was a consecrated wafer. So we ate them. They didn't taste any different, whether they were consecrated or not. Hm.

84: I always wanted to marry an Irishman, and I did.

85. more to come....meh