Growing up Catholic taught me many things. The first and foremost is how to feel guilty…for everything. Even for not blogging. I was thinking about this today and I started to wonder. My parents are notorious for not pushing religion on us or making it a big part of our lives. We went to church up until I got a job in high school and then that was it. But then there are times when they will suddenly throw a Catholic term out there that I’ve never heard before. I often forget they spent their entire lives in Catholic school and they often forget that I did not.

A few years ago when I came back from an exhausting trip moving Tonja to California and then back up again in a matter of four days, my parents told me, “Well, just think of all the hours of indulgences you earned.” This was met with my vacant stare. “Hours of what?” To their dismay, I knew nothing of this so-called reward for good deeds. From what I’ve gathered, we are all going to spend quite a bit of time in purgatory awaiting our entrance into heaven. By being a good person and doing right by god, you earn hours of indulgences, which translate into less time spent in purgatory. Now if I am wrong about this definition you can blame either my parents or my lack of listening to my parents. (Sidenote: I looked it up and if you read further down on this link it describes a similar idea.)

So, this brings us back to my blog. I feel guilty that I have had so much to say yet I have neglected my blog for almost two weeks. It’s sickening. The saddest part of all this is the fact I have now convinced myself that there is a place in purgatory especially for pathetic bloggers. In fact, instead of earning hours of indulgences, I believe for every day I don’t blog I will exponentially gain another day in purgatory. This is my plight.

Now for those who really know me, this all means nothing. The guilt I have is real, it’s achingly tangible, but I do not truly believe there is anything beyond this world that will punish me for the guilt I feel now. I believe the guilt is punishment enough. If you understood the effect guilt has had on me in my life, you would agree. Jeff and Scott always told me that I needed to stop feeling so guilty about things (i.e. not making it to someone’s party, not remembering things about people, not helping enough with something, not being able to pick someone up at the airport). Of course, both of them only said this when it involved the guilt I felt over other people, not them. Isn’t that always the way.

This was going to be an entry about my new amazing 30GB IPOD, but I will save that for tomorrow. Tonight I am working on instructions for The Toft Family website so my family members can upload pictures. Just ask Kris. I went about it the entirely wrong way. Don’t ever create instructions with pictures in a Word document if you intend on making it something like a webpage. Thank god for Scott B.’s class on making Word documents into PDF’s.

Now I must fill my gut because my guilt has eaten away at me and I am starving.