::Serendipity::

Mrs. Garden Gnome Generally Grates on Me ________________________________________________________________

Maggie and Riley are at a Bible study this afternoon. Maggie didn't want to go without me, poor thing. I think it will be great for older sister relations. At least I hope. Maggie sometimes annoys Riley in her attempt to get her attention. Not good.

It's been great for Emily and Timmy today. They usually get along great when Maggie isn't around to keep Emily occupied because those two are joined at the hip. There's been a lot of encouragement and helpfulness this afternoon. It's a beautiful thing to see them together and both helping Xander.

Nephew left a bit early today. My youngest sis in law picked him up and is spending the night with oldest sis in law's boys while she has to go out of town for her job. It's weird not having him here! He's become such a part of our lives. I don't get a lot done with the kids as far as school goes, but whatever. We'll get there. Nephew is important too.

SO many ladies at church are getting ready to have a baby any minute, or just found out they are expecting. It's so cool. But it makes me want to have one. This is probably not cool. Monday night I actually attended a Ladies Night. I KNOW! Shocking! I actually wanted to go! And I actually went! Two ladies brought their brand new weeks old babies. *sigh* It was all I could do not to pick one of them up. But I know if I picked one of them up, I would go home and throw away my birth control and attack Michael until sanity took back over. I made two dinner's for families with new babies yesterday. It felt SO great to be able to do stuff like that again. It took me all day to make dinners for all of us, but I loved it. I so appreciated it when we had Xander. But I've been thinking a lot about babies... Baby baby baby baby.

Mrs. Garden Gnome (my "friend" at church) was at Ladies Night. After we listened to this great inspiring tape, she proceeded to gossip about another one of my friends. Mrs. Garden Gnome had my friend over for dinner a few times in the attempt to sway her into coming to our church. After my friend neglected to attend church for whatever reasons, the dinner invitations stopped. I hate that. The motivation is all wrong. I don't think Mrs. Garden Gnome even said hello to my friend when we were all at the Christmas party. Any chance of my friend coming to church is pretty much nil at this point. Which sucks.

My friend has a teenager Riley's age and her daughter actively dates. Mrs. Garden Gnome asked me if I knew that my friend's daughter was pregnant. I told her that was impossible. She went on to tell me how she saw her at Walmart and she looked fat. I told her that wasn't very likely either, since she's first string on a varsity basketball team. She kept telling me how she was sure she was pregnant and I calmly went off on her. The girl has goals. She's taking college courses. She has a direction that doesn't involve having sex. Mrs. Garden Gnome didn't really know what to make of it. There is a rift between us that's been there a while and this didn't help. I'm really upset about it still, and I'm tempted to talk to my friend about it, but I don't want to upset her unnecessarily.

I am really bothered by Mrs. Garden Gnomes negativity and honestly, I realized that she was a big reason why I let insomnia overcome me so I wasn't able to attend church Sunday mornings. Mr. Garden Gnome works with Michael and he's still jealous and petty at the office. It's very uncomfortable. She gave us a $50.00 gift card to Walmart for Christmas and I am very uncomfortable with that too. There are other families that need it more, so I don't know if it's a gift from the church (since they are Elders) or a gift from them. It's very awkward. I know Mr. Garden Gnome doesn't like us very much. I know Mrs. Garden Gnome feels things are awkward. This gift card thing is like a lead weight in my wallet! Was she trying to buy her way back into closeness with me? Was she trying to make me feel like I owe her something? I don't understand... I e-mailed her earlier and tried to tell her how I feel about it in simpler terms. We'll see how that goes.

It's one reason I'm glad I don't have the van, because I can't meet her periodically for awkward judgmental lunches anymore. She was VERY supportive of us during Maggie's awful situation. She was VERY kind. I feel loyalty to her, but I'm torn by the twisting in my stomach whenever I'm around her. I have rarely met more judgmental people. I can feel it drain my energy.

posted by Terri at 1/10/2008 05:55:00 PM >8 comments

8 Comments:

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