It’s December 15th, I’m Flunking Advent and Christmas and Let’s Add New Year’s While We’re at It.

It’s December 15th, I’m Flunking Advent and Christmas and Let’s Add New Year’s While We’re at It.

I put off shopping for Christmas.. I have great aspirations. I make lists.  I make plans.  The store and I never converge until we get to the eleventh hour.  I realize, I am at the eleventh hour.  I also am still procrastinating.  So as a result, you get to read something.   Yay.

When people meet me and find out I have ten children, they say the strangest things.   Things like:

“You must be organized.”   –This proves they have not really met me.

“The big ones help out the little ones.”  –It’s not that they can’t.  It’s that they’re still brothers and sisters and, it’s not their job to manage these people, it’s ours.  Admittedly since I received my diagnosis, they have stepped up and helped out.  One does get everyone up and make lunches.  Another assists with dishes when asked without compensation.  A third shepherds Paul to the bus, and a fourth is there for pick up (an adult one).   They are a good team but they are also all still fundamentally kids and as such, have other things they’d rather be doing.

“Every day must be like Thanksgiving for dinner.”  No.  I would have collapsed a long time ago.   Pasta is a life saver. So is cereal.  They love turkey, but seriously, who spends 5 hours cooking a meal except when one has to spend five hours to cook a meal?   My goal is one hour tops or one of those put it in the oven at four, dinner at six, we’re good.

“How much laundry do you do?”   The world can only bear so much reality and the same holds for me, so I’ve ever sought to discern the truth.

“You don’t work do you?”  Actually, I do, part time, but I also work at home managing them…so yes. I work.   Next.

“All of them yours?”   Picked up a few at a specialty store while on vacation.   Assembled others from a kit.  A few came over and just stayed.   So…yeah.   Yes, all mine, all his, all ours.

“You seem so normal.”   –first time for everything.

“You don’t look like a mother of ten children.”  –Not that many of us.  What is the stereotype vision of a mom with ten kids?  Asking for a friend.

It’s a great gift to be surrounded by people to love, which reminds me, I’ve put off shopping as long as humanly possible (I don’t like doing it), time to go get the gifts ready for the ten gifts I’ve received.   Blessed Third Week of Advent everyone.