ashes

Today was an extremely busy day, not helped by poor sleeping last night. I know that many people split their T3 dosage to smooth out their responses, but I think popping 15 mcg of Cytomel yesterday afternoon really messed me up. I took all 25 mcg this morning at once, with nary a palpitation or anything, so I think I'll stick with that until I have a reason to do otherwise.

I spent the day as a walking Catholic PSA: Hey, it's Ash Wednesday! We went to the 8:15AM Mass before taking DS2 to preschool. Mom's and the boy's ashes were almost immediately indistinguishable. I had (still have most of) a very dark gray cross on my forehead. The ashes themselves were mixed with water to form sort of a slurry, something I had never seen before. I was more a less a victim of the technique, which involved "reloading" the thumb every 2nd or 3rd person. So if the person giving the ashes dipped right before you, you got a huge dark cross. The next 2 people got huge crosses that faded away a lot more quickly.

Neither Mom nor I had ever seen ashes distributed this way, mixed with water. She speculates that it was because my parish makes it own ashes; we collect all the blessed palms that were distributed at the previous year's Palm Sunday masses, and they are burned to make the ashes. It is also very dry here, and dry ashes, I think, would be too much of a dust hazard (not to mention the mess!). They just wouldn't stick. Back in MA, there is always sufficient dampness in the air so that's not too much of a problem. Then again, back in MA, all we ever got was a thumb print on the forehead.

I got a number of weird looks (of course), but several people said to me, "Oh! I didn't realize today was Ash Wednesday! Thank you so much!" Seriously, people were thanking me for walking around with ashes on my forehead. Hey, no problem! I'll be sure to stop by next year, too!