This post originally appeared February 25, 2009…

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I said I don’t talk about religion? Well, scratch that. I saw a lot of comments on the internet last night from people who were confused by Lent. Never fear! Momo is here! Here to set you heathens straight.

Let’s start with Ash Wednesday, because well…it’s today, and if you see people walking around with ashes on their foreheads, you won’t just think they need to bathe.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent in the Roman Catholic church, which is the 40 day period of preparation before Easter. For those of you who think Catholics can’t count and say, “You people drink too much! There are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter!”, that’s because Sundays don’t count. It’s kind of like kissing your grandma, in that you probably kissed her first, but you don’t consider her your first kiss. Some things just don’t count.

Ash Wednesday is a day of fast. Many Catholics will take the money that they would have spent on food and give it to the poor. Though, you know…recession. The act of fasting allows us to begin this period of reflection with a clean slate. It is a form of penance for our sins. It also makes most of us grumpy and gives us bad breath.

At Ash Wednesday Mass, the priest, or deacon or someone else authorized to do so, will take ashes made from burning the palms from last year’s Palm Sunday Mass and put a cross on the congregant’s forehead and say, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

This is to remind us to shape up real quick-like before St. Peter meets us at the pearly gates and says, “Sorry ’bout your luck.”

So for 40 days and nights we reflect. We think about our sins, we fast, we pray, we give alms and we repent. A lot of Catholics offer up sacrifices. I am giving up chocolate. Mm-hmm. That’s right. Just when the Girl Scout cookies get delivered too. This is why my Fat Tuesday dessert consisted of chocolate molten lava cake with ice cream and Reese’s Cups on top. What?

When it gets hard to bear…like when your husband eats an entire sleeve of Thin Mints in your face…you remember Christ’s ultimate sacrifice, think about how you have sinned against Him and try not to smack your husband. Then you can offer up that you didn’t eat the chocolate AND you didn’t smack your husband. That’s a Catholic two-fer.

If you see someone with ashes on their forehead today (including me) now you will know why. We are reminding ourselves that we won’t be on this earth forever and we need to be sorry for our sins. It may not hurt you to remind yourself of that as well. Catholic or not, you can’t deny that life is short and good morals aren’t so bad.

So, if you see us, we don’t care if you stare at our ashes, but don’t get close enough to smell our breath. Fair warning.

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1. You know you’ve seen a lot of snow when the meteorologists are predicting six to nine more inches and you think, “Please. That’s nothing but a dusting.”

2. Winter storm warnings take on a whole new meaning when there are icicles as tall as your children hanging from your gutters and trees.

3. You may forget about those icicles until you’re grabbing the morning paper and you open the front door only to have a dozen of them fall on your head.

4. No matter how many times you go to the grocery store, if it’s a snow day you will suddenly be out of bread and milk.

5. And, beer.

6. If your one year old puppy enjoys chewing on ice cubes, she will really enjoy eating the huge, filthy chunks of ice that fall off of cars as they drive down your street.

7. If you have two children and a husband who walks three miles every morning, there will be so many wet clothes that your dryer will work overtime.

8. So will your mop.

9. There are not enough movies, or games, or jigsaw puzzles to get kids through two weeks of snow storms.

10. Which means there is not enough patience to get a frazzled mom through them either.

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My children like to talk. A lot. We have a video of my daughter telling a story when she was three and she doesn’t finish before the tape ran out…after 30 minutes.

Though, at times, it can drive me crazy, I’m glad my kids talk to me. Our conversations have opened the doors to discussions that (hopefully) let my children know that I’ll always be honest with them. If they ask me something, I do my best to give them a truthful, accurate answer.

Being that kids are naturally curious about the human body, this means that some of the things we’ve talked about would make typical parents squirm. That’s right, I’m talking about ex-say. (Ha! Find me now, spammers!) I have always spoken openly about ex-say because we’re all human and it’s a topic that everyone has to deal with at one time or another. God gave us noses to smell and He gave us other parts for other things.

I discuss these things with them because I believe that knowledge is power. I want my kids to be armed and ready to make informed decisions…when they are adults and have finished college and are married to someone who loves and respects them and tells them the sun rises and sets with their smile.

Depending on the age at which they have asked questions, I have had to use language that my children will understand. Which may have backfired on me when my son once told a complete stranger that he had babies in his bawlz.

But, as it turns out, I may have confused my daughter as well. A couple of years ago, when I first explained how babies are conceived, I apparently messed things up quite a bit.

Let’s just say that the other night she told me that she walked away from that conversation thinking that a women had to chew up the man’s parts…as if sitting down to a steak dinner…in order to have a baby.

I’m glad we cleared that up before she meets her future husband.

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Almost every night, at roughly 9:30 PM, I fall asleep on the couch. My husband and I are usually in the middle of watching TV and let me just go ahead and say thank goodness for our DVR, or I would never know what the heck Jack Bauer is up to.

The lights are on in the living room, the television is loud, the dogs are playing and yelping at each other, the coffee table is leaving deep indentations in my calves and my laptop is burning a hole in my thighs. But, boy can I sleep! All I have to do is set my head at an extremely awkward angle so that when I wake I’ll barely be able to move my neck, and I am OUT.

Sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 my husband will tell me to go to bed, at which time I rub my eyes, mumble something about being “so tired”…you know, because it isn’t obvious…then head upstairs.

When I climb into bed I begin, what I refer to as, my ballet.

This little dance starts with me on my right side as I notice that my top pillow is too close to the edge of the mattress. Then the top pillow is too high in the back and too flat under my head. Then the bottom pillow has slid toward the back of the bed. I simply can not get comfortable.

I flip over to my left side and start again. Tossing, turning, fluffing, adjusting, and flipping over and over again. For real, it’s like Baryshnikov up in here.

Last night this went on for many minutes and when I finally got settled just so, I realized that I had forgotten to take off my socks.

One of these nights, I’m just going to stay on the couch.

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