Month: October 2004

Just two more days until Halloween. I can hardly believe it. As usual, I have been mostly oblivious to it’s approach. Luckily the kids haven’t and have their costumes all planned out. I don’t know how Trick or Treating will go on a Sunday night though. With Jay having mass to sing… looks like I am on my own.

Oh, and just so you know, we DO celebrate Halloween, in case you hadn’t figured that one out yet. Our family is not celebrating anything evil, even if other people are. We are just dressing up and getting WAY too much candy. I figure the “Holiday” means whatever meaning you give it. Yes, we will go to mass and celebrate All Saints Day. But first we will get all jacked up on sugar the night before. There, that is my final statement on Halloween. I refuse to debate it.

Anyway, this was supposed to be about TIME, not Halloween. This month I had a birthday, Ok, why bother to try to keep it a secret, I am 33 this year. Does that still count as “Early Thirties” or does that put me in the “mid-thirties” range? Doesn’t matter anyway. I feel like an old goat waddling around with this enormous belly. (Blessing though it is!) I have been noticing my hands lately. They have changed so much over the years. No ammount of moisturizer will ever bring them back to what they were, nor should it, I suppose. The skin looks so much thinner, my knuckles are getting wrinkly, and the veins pop out. I can remember as a child sitting in church next to my mom and tracing her veins on her hand. Now my own hands look like hers. I have mom hands. That is certainly not a bad thing. I have several little people around who love to hold my hands and rub them or just fall asleep with them placed on their backs. So as elderly as they may look, they still suit me just fine.

Just when I thought the height of rudeness had already been reached…. I run into Sue (Not her real name).

Yesterday was our fall festival, and by and large we had a really nice time. It was annoyingly hot, but fun anyway. Except for the comments. Going to the fall festival entails running into (and having to actually talk to) people I can successfully duck away from after mass. They, of course, feel the need to comment on the size of our family and how THEY are DONE. (Unless they are older, then the comments are usually mostly friendly and the worst it gets is “So, any day now?” Uh no.

So Sue starts a conversation with us by telling Jay what a beautiful voice he has and how his singing just makes her mass so much more prayerful, etc. Then she starts in with “I can’t believe you are having another one…” and before we can respond in some positive way she continues. “Since my husband and I know for sure we are done… we DO want to be able to go on a vacation without the kids someday… this is the year *I* get my tubes tied and boobs done!” (She even grabbed her boobs for emphasis.)

Jay’s response was “Aw, that’s too bad. ” in a sympathetic sort of way, while all I could do was to allow my eyes to glaze over and wish I was on vacation away from her.

Anyway, here are some of the horrible judgmental things we DIDN’T say:
– Do you share your mortal sins with EVERYONE, or just us?
– WE think that God would be happier with a new baby in the world than with having your boobs look better.
– We like our kids much better than vacations. (Most of the time)
– We felt that way too once, and Thanks be to God we were able to reverse our mistake.
– Sticking our fingers in our ears and singing “La, la, la, la…” really loud.
– Um, Sue, we didn’t ask if you were having any more.

Now I know that all families are not required to have as many kids as we have. We feel called to it ourselves, but why do people feel the need to divluge intimate details like this with us. We NEVER ask!

(And Sue was the THIRD person that day to tell me why/how she was “done”… and I had only been there for two hours.)

Oh and one more thing, one mom of five almost redeemed everyone else with her compliment. She said, “Oh, Jenni! I see that you two decided to go for number six! Congratulations!” First, she assumed that we did this on purpose, second she said congratulations without any reservation. But then as a mom of five, I am sure she had BTDT!