I know...bad title. My other options were to go with either, "When Mass Attacks" or, "Nightmare at St. Mary Magdalen" and I thought this was the least blasphemous of the three. Maybe not.
If this blog were to be meaty enough to actually encompass any sort of specified theme it would probably be something like, "One bottle of whine with a dash of shoddy alterations" or maybe, "Goodwill maven's daughter was mistaken for a boy today...again" or "Complain, complain, indoor photo, outdoor photo, have a nice/tolerable/pleasant day".
Well...we're going to stick the needle in the whine and complain vein for today's garbage as I recount last night's horror.
(fine, horror might be a bit of a stretch but let me have my 15 minutes of unadulterated sulk)
(this is long and boring...almost as bad as the cry it out post...maybe just skip and move onto something more fun...like breakfast)
As I'm sure I've mentioned about four times...Simon is at work this weekend and I think for the next million weekends as well. This simply means that the Goodwill down the street will be seeing a lot more of my puffy face and that I have to brave Mass alone at our cryroomless parish with the little terror tyrant while Simon will have to attend a late night Sunday Mass wayyyyyy past Julia's bedtime. (I know I know...one baby at church should be a piece of breezy cake but Julia is strong and I am weak and containing her wailing and gnashing for an entire hour in one square foot is really difficult for the likes of my pathetic self)
I decided to be a little heathen and hit up a little Saturday evening Mass in order to take advantage of Julia's weirdly good mood. And to be honest I welcomed the thought of a small break from the endearing monotony of watching the shepherdess mind and annoy her lone sheep hour after hour:
So we put on our Sunday best, grabbed our stash of plastic rosaries and headed out the door. As soon as we walked in and took our backish row pew...I took note that we had missed the dress code memo which was: sweats, sweats and denim if you dared to be fancy and felt immediately like two hairy hammertoes on an otherwise pedicured foot in our dresses, heels and mascara.
[cut the baby thrashing and mom frown from yard and paste into pew for imagination's sake]
I won't singe your sockets with all the gruesome deets but basically the entirety of the hour was punctuated every 90 seconds by the lady sitting directly in front of us turning around and medium volumed whispering at Julia (doing her best vowel sound utters) to be quiet and "SHHHHHHHH!!!" complete with finger on mouth and eyebrow furrow. This amused Julia and encouraged her vowel sounds to move to shrieks and pew bangs and kicks which only exacerbated the lady's already sourpuss tude. I would like to mention that the offended feline was donning some heavy duty hearing aids and if Julia had understood English I would've definitely instructed her to reach over and swiftly turn them both to the off position. Call me heartless or hell bound...it is thee truth. I do have to say that Julia was content with her bottle during the in-ordinarily long homily about the case of the missing organ broker and the church's $29,000 that appears to be lost forever. She did redeem herself though when she entertained the children to our left with an ugly cacophony of gross from her diaper region which irritated their mom and turned my face bright red no fewer than three times during the consecration.
Anyway, the final blessing was given and Mass came to a welcome end as I sat Julia sideways on my lap while I packed up her little rosary arsenal. I felt like I was getting out unscathed for the most part when a lady approached us from behind to tell me how much Julia admired her sparkly necklace when...."crack!!" I turned to see that Julia had fallen backwards and upside down from my lap throne and directly onto her head on the cold tile floor. Luckily I grabbed her right big toe before she completely collapsed into the folded kneeler but the damage had been done and poor Julia waited three long seconds before she let the longest and loudest permanent brain damaged scream loose. I obviously felt horrible and was able to pacify her pain with the remnants of her bottle and we finally, finally stood up and started to make our way out of the church. Of course, as I reached down to grab our bag, I accidentally pinched the already wounded patient's toes in between my mammothy thorax and the side of the pew which understandably elicited another round of tears...but this time, embarrassingly, from both Patton parties. I booked it to the car where lucky Simon perfectly timed a phone call from his busy and crazy perch where I'm sure he enjoyed my exaggerated, tear-filled and irrational rant about never attending Mass again, him taking Julia to work tomorrow and [sniffle] exactly how dangerous is heavy drinking when pregnant?! (joke mini...calm down)
Of course, this is basically the end of the story and I'm not sure why I felt the need to type this all out and click "publish post" this morning. I guess the lesson learned here is to suck it up, Grace, and gird your wussy, wussy loins for next Sunday and the Sunday after that and the Sunday after that and so on.
Amen and goodbye.
