Catholic Mom
Mention of knitting; not quite knitting content, but it's all I got at the moment: Amber and Megan have the first few court cards up for the knitting tarot, and I'm going to write about them, but I can't yet, cause I'm thinking them through. But they're there, and now we know the suits: needles, skeins, gauge, and spindles.
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The child's off on the bus now, all set for a field trip to the circus.
We knew about the field trip; we'd sent in the permission slip and the money. But still, we weren't quite prepared.
This happens to us a lot. There's some sort of agreed-upon reality that all the rest of the parents live in that we can't quite get into. It's an alternate reality, and occasionally we can see a little window into it, and a high proportion of the messages we get from the school come out of it, but we haven't found the door yet.
The part about wearing his uniform -- well that's sort of weird, but we could live with that. It's easier, in fact, than the Special Non-Uniform days which show up on the school calendar, and which we're never prepared for, and always involve wearing some special kind of clothing we don't own -- funny socks, or interesting hats, or team sweatshirts. I'm a little disturbed by the idea of all those Catholic school children sitting at the circus with their uniforms on (Why uniforms? Respect for the clowns? Keeping the kids separate from any neighboring public school children? Marking them out as special in case the elephants go mad and decide to smash somebody -- here! come get the Catholics! -- And if uniforms for the circus are in order, why not the ties, too? Let's go all the way here!) -- but I can deal with the uniform.
However, they didn't bother to tell us till last night, in a note sent home with the child, that he needed a brown bag lunch, with a drink in a disposable container.
Well.
We don't have any proper brown bags, though Sam found something like. And we don't have any drinks in disposable containers, cause we don't buy juice-in-a-bag, or canned soda, or anything like that. We did have some water in plastic bottles, though -- sent that. Sam made a cheese sandwich. Found an apple. Oh, yes, and there were some candy bars he got on Halloween. Great. That'll do.
But darn it all, if you want us to make bag lunches, ya gotta tell us, cause we don't stock up on supplies otherwise.
This sort of thing happens all the time to us. We're clueless. We feed the child oddly, we dress the child oddly, we read him bizarre books, we don't understand what kinds of presents we should buy for all those birthday parties which involve going to the bowling alley and which we don't give in return.
I have learned to keep brownie mix on hand, since occasionally I get little notes telling me that I'm supposed to bake NOW for bingo the next day. Great. Got that covered. (Though there's a whole nother conundrum. What the hell is Bingo about? Why do people go to Bingo? Why am I baking brownies for Bingo? The other altos in the choir told me that I should come to Bingo with them and they could teach me. I don't think so. I think it's probably like shopping -- one of those things that All The Other Ladies Get and I'll never understand. I told the child we just had to live with this. "I understand the Doctrine of Transubstantiation," I told him. "I don't HAVE to understand Bingo.")
I was responsible for snacks once, and showed up with grapes. "Oh, LOOK," some other woman said in one of those high, poisonously sweet voices. "She's brought GRAPES! That's so nice. The children aren't going to eat those, you know."
Apparently, the Proper Snacks are Oreos and Cheetos. Grapes are right out. Well, where the hell is the damn manual explaining this to me? I missed it. How does this knowledge get disseminated? Is there some Catholic Moms newsletter I'm missing out on?
I'm just sorry we didn't know about the Annual At-Home Dads' Convention in time to sign Sam up and get some tickets, cause he'd maybe pick up some pointers. And a manual.
The kids ate the grapes, by the way.
*******************************
The child's off on the bus now, all set for a field trip to the circus.
We knew about the field trip; we'd sent in the permission slip and the money. But still, we weren't quite prepared.
This happens to us a lot. There's some sort of agreed-upon reality that all the rest of the parents live in that we can't quite get into. It's an alternate reality, and occasionally we can see a little window into it, and a high proportion of the messages we get from the school come out of it, but we haven't found the door yet.
The part about wearing his uniform -- well that's sort of weird, but we could live with that. It's easier, in fact, than the Special Non-Uniform days which show up on the school calendar, and which we're never prepared for, and always involve wearing some special kind of clothing we don't own -- funny socks, or interesting hats, or team sweatshirts. I'm a little disturbed by the idea of all those Catholic school children sitting at the circus with their uniforms on (Why uniforms? Respect for the clowns? Keeping the kids separate from any neighboring public school children? Marking them out as special in case the elephants go mad and decide to smash somebody -- here! come get the Catholics! -- And if uniforms for the circus are in order, why not the ties, too? Let's go all the way here!) -- but I can deal with the uniform.
However, they didn't bother to tell us till last night, in a note sent home with the child, that he needed a brown bag lunch, with a drink in a disposable container.
Well.
We don't have any proper brown bags, though Sam found something like. And we don't have any drinks in disposable containers, cause we don't buy juice-in-a-bag, or canned soda, or anything like that. We did have some water in plastic bottles, though -- sent that. Sam made a cheese sandwich. Found an apple. Oh, yes, and there were some candy bars he got on Halloween. Great. That'll do.
But darn it all, if you want us to make bag lunches, ya gotta tell us, cause we don't stock up on supplies otherwise.
This sort of thing happens all the time to us. We're clueless. We feed the child oddly, we dress the child oddly, we read him bizarre books, we don't understand what kinds of presents we should buy for all those birthday parties which involve going to the bowling alley and which we don't give in return.
I have learned to keep brownie mix on hand, since occasionally I get little notes telling me that I'm supposed to bake NOW for bingo the next day. Great. Got that covered. (Though there's a whole nother conundrum. What the hell is Bingo about? Why do people go to Bingo? Why am I baking brownies for Bingo? The other altos in the choir told me that I should come to Bingo with them and they could teach me. I don't think so. I think it's probably like shopping -- one of those things that All The Other Ladies Get and I'll never understand. I told the child we just had to live with this. "I understand the Doctrine of Transubstantiation," I told him. "I don't HAVE to understand Bingo.")
I was responsible for snacks once, and showed up with grapes. "Oh, LOOK," some other woman said in one of those high, poisonously sweet voices. "She's brought GRAPES! That's so nice. The children aren't going to eat those, you know."
Apparently, the Proper Snacks are Oreos and Cheetos. Grapes are right out. Well, where the hell is the damn manual explaining this to me? I missed it. How does this knowledge get disseminated? Is there some Catholic Moms newsletter I'm missing out on?
I'm just sorry we didn't know about the Annual At-Home Dads' Convention in time to sign Sam up and get some tickets, cause he'd maybe pick up some pointers. And a manual.
The kids ate the grapes, by the way.
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