so, how's Lent going folks?

So, how is it going?  I must say that over the years, I have tried a variety of things for my Lenten sacrifice.  Yes, one year I even gave up chocolate - WHAT was I thinking?  That's like giving up oxygen!  40 days without chocolate?  Surely God doesn't really want me to make those kind of sacrifices, does he?  For the second year, our family has chosen to do TOM and GUS jars (did I mention this in my Ash Wednesday post?  if so, I apologize).  Take On More and Give Up Something, thus TOM and GUS!  Each jar has 40 slips of paper with a variety of appropriate options in them and we draw a new one out of each jar at night for the next day, for example, yesterday we gave up tv and we are to read a story (not a passage, a story that the kids can follow) out of the Bible.  Other TOM things have included "tell each person in the family one reason why you love them", "do an extra chore", "do a decade of the rosary", "call your Godmother/Godfather"... you get the idea!  

The GUS jar includes things like: "bedtime music" (my kids all fall asleep to music or a book on cd, so it's a true sacrifice), "pleasure reading" (the kids freaked out with this one, they all love to read, but they also all have free reading time at school and were afraid of getting in trouble - there is now a caveat the these things don't interfere with school or work!!), "computer" (again, hubby can use his computer at work and I can do my photography stuff, but no fun time on the computer!).  Anyway, you can imagine that none of us are excited about the GUS jar, but it's part of it, and it's just one day at a time - even though most things are in the jar more than once, we do have a rule that we don't do anything two days in a row - gotta mix things up!!

Anyway, the whole point of this tangent was that one day last week we had to give up chocolate (just for ONE day) and everyone but hubby was in a tizzy!!  Men just don't get it!  Chocolate is a food group for us women - all females of all ages actually!  Little G is as bad as me when it comes to chocolate - maybe even worse!  It is not beyond her to ask for chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, or a candy bar - she can't help herself really!  Anyway, that morning she is beside herself!  Big S, being the smarty pants in the house, wants to know if "chocolate flavored" counts!  I admire her tenacity and creativity!  Way to think outside the box honey!  Hubby immediately says "of course chocolate flavored stuff is ok!"  She of course didn't take his word for it - he's a man and she innately knows he doesn't have the same relationship with chocolate!  So, she calls upstairs to me and says "mom, if this has cocoa in it can I have it?" to which I reply that chocolate is made from cocoa and so, no.  Hubby later explained to me that he thought chocolate meant just chocolate candy bars, silly man!  I had to explain that a woman's need for chocolate can me met in many other ways than just a chocolate bar - ice cream, milk, cookies to name a few.  He got it intellectually, but he didn't REALLY get it - he probably won't poor thing.  Perhaps men are lucky that they aren't under the thumb of chocolate.  That of course means that they don't derive the same joy from it that we do, so I guess I'll take the agony in order to be able to experience the joy - isn't it often that way in life??