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This was in my inbox the other day, and wow, what a GREAT idea: 84,000 Novenas for the Pope’s 84th Birthday!

Pope Benedict XVI is celebrating his birthday on April 16th and praymorenovenas.com is trying to get 84,000 people to pray a novena for the Pope’s 84th birthday.

On April 8th, we will begin praying for nine days leading up to and ending on the Papa Benedict’s birthday as a way of saying thank you to our Holy Father for all the prayers he prays every single day for each of us.

+ Sign up here.

+ Join the facebook event and invite your friends here.

+ If you have a website, post about it there!

+ Email your friends and family and get them praying too!

Be sure to sign up for the novena by clicking here and then share it on Facebook!

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A few weeks ago, because Michelle and Barb swear by it, I downloaded a new app…a household management app…a help-me-clean-my-house app. (Note: the app does way more than just that. That ease-of-use is what made me shell out money for it, though.)

And then, after I tooled around with it and remembered all the FlyLady wisdom about how easy all this can be (and knowing, in my heart of hearts, that never will I find it fun), I asked my mother-in-law to help me.

She’s been coming over, once a week, to help me clean one of the zones in my house.

And I’ve noticed something.

Clean, to me, means something entirely different than it means to her. The difference is not only irreconcilable, it requires me to ingest a fair amount of coffee to ease my fear and trembling.

My house, though is coming along nicely.

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This week, we had snow. As in an accumulation of snow.

As I do NOT live in the northeast, but rather in the middle of Ohio, I am NOT HAPPY about this.

Just in case you were wondering.

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Have you heard about Ask a Catholic Nun on Twitter? They have a Facebook page too, and, though I don’t spend a lot of time tooling around on Facebook (or, lately, on Twitter either), I just couldn’t resist sharing this. The two nuns that post are Daughters of St. Paul and work at Pauline Books & Media publishing house. Pretty cool, huh?

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This week, I was talking to a dear friend and hugely inspirational mentor of mine and had a light bulb moment.

This year marks my ten year anniversary of being Catholic, so this is the Lent I’ll write it down, at least that first part of my conversion.

I’ve always been so hung up on the fact that my conversion story is ongoing, not just a moment in time. I’m such a different person, interiorly at least, than I was ten years ago, that writing my “conversion story” has seemed like a writing assignment that just wouldn’t ever end.

But I feel pretty convicted, after the conversation this week, that it’s time.

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The Catholic Writers Guild has started a blog, and I’m honored to be a weekly contributor. You can read my first post, Changing Roles, here.

And if you’re a Catholic writer, whether an old pro or a newbie or even a wannabe, I highly recommend the cost of membership to the Catholic Writers Guild. I wouldn’t be calling myself a writer today without the support, encouragement, and tools I have had access to thanks to the networking and my membership.

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We found out, last Friday, that there’s a horse show tomorrow. Tomorrow! Because of when we have riding lessons now, we haven’t been in the office and our trainer didn’t mention the exact dates (she spoke in generalities and, in my muddled baby-induced brain, the show was always a month or so away).

We were able to juggle a few things (my visit with Jeff and Lisa, namely – SOB! – which is what I get for bragging a bit in #3 of this post that I’d be seeing them). Consider yourself fairly warned that there will be horsey pictures next week.

Do you have any fun plans this weekend? Have a great one, whatever it holds for you!