I just read this post by Julie Kenner (http://juliekenner.com/blog/?p=273#comments) and I wanted to share another rude person story. This didn’t happen to me, and wouldn’t because God has seen fit to only bless me with two children.

I went to a VBS planning meeting at our church on Friday. I always do the story/drama part of the week, and it has nothing to do with me being a ham and feeling totally free to make a fool of myself for the sake of Jesus Christ. Really!

Anyway, we were sitting around the conference table and the woman across from me told this story. I’m not sure how many kids she has, 3 or 4, I think.

Anyway, she and her children were going into a store and one of her sons held the door open for an elderly woman with a cane or a walker and the woman approached the mother.

“Are these all your children?” Elderly woman asked.

“Yes, they are,” my friend said, expecting to hear some comment about how good they were or how nice it was that her son held the door.

“It’s people like you with all these kids that are using up all the resources and ruining our planet.”

What do you say to something like that???

We all sat around the table suggesting things like, “These kids will be paying your social security soon” or “I think it’s the old people using up all the medical resources that are ruining this country.”

What is it about people that they think they can just judge how someone else lives or how many kids they have? I wonder which child this old lady thought shouldn’t be here.

Thoughts?

Well, school’s out and it’s not even June. It still feels weird to this girl from the North.

Anyway, I’m trying to keep the Boy entertained, as well as doing some pseudo-homeschooling. Monday was good, but the week kinda went downhill. Yesterday I felt like I didn’t want to do anything. I did have him do some reading and some math, but I didn’t do any writing or much with him.

Well, I guess maybe he needed attention or something, but two things he’s been specifically told not to do, he did deliberately.

He got into the refrigerator and took out food by himself. Now he didn’t eat anything bad for him or anything but he’s been told not to eat stuff without asking me. Then later, I took him outside and he climbed on the roof.

I don’t even know how to keep him from doing this stuff short of never letting him out of my sight, literally. He’s seven years old and all the parenting stuff says that he’s more independent now and should be given a little more freedom, but he’s being deliberately disobedient and honesty, I don’t know how to stop him.

He’s been punished with time outs. I’ve explained the dangers of climbing on the roof and explained to him that if he keeps taking stuff out of the refrigerator to eat he might end up eating something that’s not good for him. I told him it’s my job to keep him safe and healthy, but if he keeps disobeying me, I can’t do that.

On the eighth of June, he has week of soccer camp, and I signed him up for basketball from the Y, so maybe once June starts he’ll be more busy and won’t have time to be bored. In July we’ll have VBS and I’m going to sign him up for swimming later.

I just want him to get himself under control so first grade will be better than kindergarten.

Life has been crazy around here lately.

A little over a week ago, my mother-in-law called.They live in New Jersey and this was Friday, last week. The first words out of her mouth were, “Surprise. We’ll be there Sunday.”

Now, a little context. I had my brother on the other line. He lives in Ohio and has been going through the same kind of medical stuff I went through before my transplant, and while he’s not sick like I was, he’s having a tough time of it. Fortunately, this conversation had been just something kinda fun, so I was able to just tell him she was on the phone and they were apparently coming to visit. He understood and I went back to her.

They’ve been trying to sell their house for at least two years so they could move down here. Well, they finally got a good, solid offer and were coming down to look at houses.

A little context on my end: Beloved was in California and due home the next morning (Saturday). We had been invited to a wedding reception Saturday evening and some time in the afternoon we were suppose to see Star Trek. Then on Sunday, the Boy had a birthday party to go to.

I told her she might need to kick her way through clutter to find their bed, but she said not to worry about it.

They were here when we got home from Mass Sunday evening. The Boy had school Monday and Tuesday, Beloved went to work, and the Girl stayed home. The grandparents had driven HER car down – that is, they have been promising her this car when they moved or this summer, whichever came first. In fact, she had been making plans to fly up to NJ this summer with a friend and drive her car back.

Well, now it’s in my driveway. Needless to say, the Girl is thrilled. It’s an old, huge boat of a car, covered with Marine Corps logos and filled with waste material that used to be “useful” gadgets, but it’s hers. Now she has to get it registered and inspected and all that.

Wednesday was the kindergarten end of year paraliturgy, so the grandparents got to see it.

They looked at houses every day and on Thursday, signed the contract for one.

It’s a small, almost cottage like house, 8 years old, 4 bedrooms about a mile and a half from us. So, yay!

They left Friday morning.

Saturday was a HeartLA meeting. I spoke about Internet resources for fantasy writers and social networking sites. Not too exciting, but at lunch, my friend Rhonda, who has sold a couple of novella’s but hasn’t posted that news on her site and who is also in my critique group, told me I need to finish the bridesmaid dress book, which I’m now calling Catering to Carter. This is the first in what I hope will be three (maybe four) books in the Fairy Godmother’s Bridesmaid Dress series.

So, I’ve been working on that while Beloved edits three chapters of Sword & Illusion.