Oooooo, Pie Jesu...Jesus you got alotta kids..

Ok, so I did a rare thing about a month ago...actually over a month ago...I went to church. It was a moment of divine guilt and being Catholic, I gave in and went for my obligatory once every few months.

It had been a while since I'd been in a church. We went for the boob's christening, but we were fortunate enough to schedule a christening on a non-service day...so no big service. It was in, poor water on the baby, and out. Ok so not that quick. It was a nice ceremony just without all the sitting, standing, kneeling, and giving money.

I had never been to the church in my area. Well I had been there, but not for service. It was pretty interesting to see 'country Catholics'. I'm a Jersey catholic. Now we've all heard the Catholic jokes...you know...Catholics don't use birth control (we do), Catholic guilt (yep I get that), Catholics are crazy (yup) and a whole list of others. I can say growing up, even though we weren't big on church, there was definitely one thing I noticed...in New Jersey, very few Catholics feel the need to have a million children. You may have one or two, maybe three families with three/four kids. That's considered alot. Then there's always that ONE family that's insane and has like eight or ten. But their nuts and everyone talks about them behind their backs.

Well, in Virginia...it's not like that...these people are serious die hard Catholics...which surprises me...

I went by myself without the boob. I left her to be a heathen with her dad. There I was sitting in the pew by myself. Instead of trying to figure out the best way to use the hymnal book as a pillow during service, I found myself counting the number of children the people around me had...

Woman to my left...four kids...
Woman to my right...five kids...
Woman in front of me...six kids...
Oh here comes my friend...she's got eight, crazy nut...(god bless her I love her, but seriously)...
Oh here comes my other friend, she just had her fourth...
Woman two pews up...five kids...
Woman three pews up...six kids...

Now my friend with eight kids, she's no dummy. She brought her three youngest kids. I guess her husband came to an eariler service with the other five. Good...sucker...Well I see another woman come into the church. I swear there were so many kids walking in front of her they were quacking...'quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack'...seven quackers quacking in front of her and she was carrying the eighth...a baby in a beautiful white dress...

Then word started getting around how one family that WASN'T there just welcomed their tenth child into their family. TENTH...I have to tell a friend of mine that just had her fourth that 'at least you don't have ten'. She'd probably say "I'd have to shoot myself". Don't get me wrong, I love kids...but there becomes a moment when I think...it's just too much. And while I'm sure these mothers can spread their love around...I can't see me being able to spread my love around so much. And I don't find that fair to any child.

I began feeling that my fertility was way way behind. I began to thing "How dare I get my life together before I had a child. I should have gotten it together way before or just gave up and had babies before my fertility abilities died down..." Then I thought, I should get home right away and start on that next child...Then Jesus bitch slapped me and I came back to reality. Spoiling this child now...another can come when I am damn good and ready. And I'm not ready ya'll...

I noted during that trip the lowest number of children anyone there had was four. Four...boy am I behind. I could only imagine how much this increased the amount people put in the little envelopes that you throw into the collection plate. Me, I get those little envelopes every month...they go right into the garbage...so I just throw in a dollar for Jesus. He's a single guy, he can go shopping at the dollar store...or Wal-mart.