You might think that blogging is simple. You would be wrong. Being brilliant on a regular basis is draining. And then you worry that you aren’t brilliant, or poignant or strong, or that you’re being mean, or saying things you shouldn’t, and so you hit backspace about 3,000 times until your post vanishes letter by precious letter. But today is my name day. I’m an American, so this is a foreign concept for me, but fortunately I’ve read a lot and heard this phrase mentioned before, so when a couple of people from my church congratulated me on my Name Day, I was—er—puzzled and immediately went to Wikapedia (the source of all knowledge) and looked this thing up.
It turns out that when you are Orthodox (and I hear Roman Catholics do this too) that the saint name you are given (some people choose their own, but mine was given to me) gives you another day to celebrate. It’s not exactly like a birthday, I mean folks don’t line up to give you cards or send you presents, and no one seems to think this is a good excuse reason for cake, but it’s pretty awesome anyway. (I’m kidding about the cake. I’m not a cake person. Please don’t force one on me. Unless it’s carrot cake.)
My name day did not start out great. Somehow I overslept and woke up with precisely 22 minutes to get to work. I would have made it on time, too, but I could not find my Beyonce coffee mug. I could not go to work without Beyonce. Beyonce is supposed to stay at the office, but yesterday for some reason I didn’t realize I still had my mug ’til I got in the car, with the office door locked behind me. So I checked around the apartment. Then I checked the dishwasher. Then the counters one more time. No Beyonce. I grabbed a travel mug and ran out the door, realizing that I was really cutting it close.
I got to the office, put my feet on the asphalt and promptly wound up on my butt, my lunch smashed on the ground beside me and rather stunned. I tried to get up but the ground was so slick I couldn’t quite figure out how to get up without sliding again. Then the embarrassment of a 4 page report to let the company know I had fallen. Nothing like reporting your embarrassment and making it all official-like. Sigh.
But then I opened my email and found out that this is my name day. Saint Bridget (various spellings of the name are given) is my name saint. She’s fairly remarkable and annoyed her father with her generousity. I seem to have gotten into a bit of trouble with my own father over the same thing, as I recall… Anyway, this idea of celebrating the saint day is rather cool. I’m guessing I should be giving a special offering as thanks to God for the example of Saint Bridget. I’ll have to ask.
significanttrivialities 