Juliana's thoughts on life, motherhood, marriage and just day to day life

26 December 2006

You know your orthodox if..................

The following was e-mailed to me today and I just thought it was great and all of you Orthodox readers would appreciate it:)

1. On Wednesdays and Fridays you eat sea food
2. You are more comfortable standing in church than sitting.
3. You can suck/vacuum up the crumbs of bread out of your hand without coughing.
4. You can sing ison to any song (and you know what an ison is… LoL).
5. Lent to you means peanut butter, tofu, soy, lots and lots of pita bread and hummus, and services at least five times a week.
6. You're used to skipping breakfast on Sundays.
7. On your first encounter with long words, you pronounce them stressing the 'next to the next to last' syllable.
8. You wonder why the Pope crosses himself backwards when you see him on TV.
9. You wear comfortable shoes to church, because you know you'll be standing a long, long time.
10. To you, a 'topless' gal is one without a headscarf.
11. You get great deals on Easter candy.
12. You spend time figuring out the best way to remove smoke stains from your ceiling and wax from your walls.
13. Before you pray, you say a prayer.
14. You don't flinch when someone throws water at you.
15. When you first tell people who ask what religion you are, at first they think you're Jewish. Oy!
16. You're experienced at removing wax from clothing.
17. The service routinely starts at least 15 minutes late and lasts 2 ½ hours — and nobody around you complains.
18. You consider any service two hours or under short/regular.
19. know you're in an Orthodox church when the priest says, "Let us complete our prayer to the Lord", and there's still half an hour to go.
20. At the end of Holy Week, you have rug burns on your forehead.
21. Your Easter isn't Easter without an all-night party (featuring 10 dishes of sausage with cheese).
22. Your priest is married.
23. You have seen all members of clergy in purple robes.
24. You can differentiate between the eight different chanting tones.
25. You typically celebrate a feast day by observing strict fasting.
26. You celebrate feast days the night before.
27. You address the City as Constantinople instead of Istanbul .
28. You can say "Lord have mercy" 40 times without making a mistake.
29. You can say "Christ Is Risen"/"Indeed He Is Risen" in a million languages.
30. You have tournaments of red-egg-cracking on Pascha... And you usually know who's being a wise-guy with the wooden one.
31. You have multiple priests' numbers in your cell phone.
32. You actually read the Bible in your spare time.
33. You've slept overnight in your church for a retreat.
34. You've grown accustomed to the taste of wine because you've had it since you were a baby.
35. Even if you don't speak the language fluently (i.e. Albanian, Greek, Russian, etc.) you could still carry on a decent conversation about food in it.
36. You've been or plan on going to Alaska .
37. You could write a book on the symbolism in an Orthodox wedding... during the wedding... because they are just that long.

22 December 2006

an evening with Santa


Last year we started a tradition of going into the city the week before Christmas to walk around the Kris Kringle market, eat some yummy German food and then head to fields to see Santa.
Well this year I am very annoyed that it is now MACY'S. I was not so thrilled to have the boys see Santa at MACY'S - I want fields back:)
We noticed that Santa was at the market so we decided we will see Santa at the Kris Kringle market instead.
Noah was a little scared at first but then warmed up to him quickly.
Here are some pics from our fun family evening at the Kris Kringle market.



Noah was much happier walking around and splashing in the puddles

21 December 2006

More blood work, you have got to be kidding me......

So i get a call from the lab at the hospital today telling me that the doc "did not like the way my results looked and wants me in asap for more blood work"
What does that mean he does not like the way they look? Why is he not calling me to explain what the hell is going on. It is not easy to load two babies in the car and take them to the hospital. Noah gets so scared watching them poke me with a large needle - i hate bringing them but what else am i supposed to do. Finding a babysitter for an hour is not easy.
I am so frustrated. I just put a page into the doc in hopes he can talk to me in laymens terms.
This is starting to get overwhelming! I JUST WANT ANSWERS.

13 December 2006

Frustration

Ok so I called my infectious disease doctor today to get some info on this virus. I told him what my cardiologists told me and he said " I don't know what she is talking about, I did not see those results"
I was speechless, how can one doctor see one thing and the other see another. SO they are clearly not communicating properly with eachother. My infectious diseases doc only has office hours on Tuesdays from 1.30-3.30 - lovely huh. I can not make it this coming Tuesday and the following Tuesday I will be in Ohio visiting my granparents and so it looks like it will be 2007 before I know what the HELL IS WRONG WITH ME.....HOW FRUSTRATING!

12 December 2006

New info on my heart

I saw my cardiologist today and it looks like this has all by caused by a virus called coxsackieviruses A & B. You may have heard of this virus in children as the hand, foot an mouth disease. They are not sure when I contracted this virus or how I got it. I could have contracted while I was pregnant or after. I am not sure what this means fo me and my future really. I have to wait and talk with my infectious disease doctor since it is more his area of expertise then my cardiologist.
My EF ( the efficiency of my heart) has gone down a little since being home from the hospital. It is now at 45%, it was 50% and normal is above 50%. I need to really take my restrictions seriously now that my hearts efficiency has gone down. It is so hard to let the laundry pile up or wait for Eric to carry it down and up for me and it is even harder to not be active with Noah. I have to stay positive and I am trying. I have to have blood tomm to make sure my tropine level has gone down. Tropine is the enzyme, that was elevated when I went to the ER.
Please keep me in your prayers! Thank you!

05 December 2006

Baptized into Christ

We celebrated Silas Baptism this past Saturday! He was baptized into Christ and into the Orthodox church by his Grandfather, this is so special to me!
It was a great day and Silas did a GREAT JOB! He was held all weekend and he just loved it, so much so that on Monday I had to carry him in the sling all day if I put him down he freaked!
It was a glorious weekend




Our Good friends and Silas GodParents; Randy and Danielle