Getting to Mass

As a large Catholic family, Sunday mornings are typically the most chaotic time of the week.  When I wake up in the morning, I immediately say at least one bad word and give myself one reason to get to Confession before mass.  This is really too bad, because after I am done cursing the alarm clock, I turn it off and go right back to sleep, which means that we probably won't be there early enough for Confession anyway. 

When I manage to peel my eyes open, I roll over and poke my husband in hopes that he will wake up first and start getting the kids ready, giving me another fifteen minutes to sleep.  He does not.  I roll out of bed, trip over whatever pillows the kids have dropped on the floor during their nightly attempts at getting in my bed, and turn on the shower.  There is never hot water on Sunday mornings.  I don't know why, but our water heater turns off on Saturday night in a consistent effort to keep us from being clean on Sunday morning.

On my way to reset the water heater, I wake up the kids and throw clothes on their beds for them to put on, minus the various articles that are still in the dryer or need a second round of de-wrinkling.  The kids follow my example and say things that should land them in the penalty box, as well.  I tell them to knock it off, and go make a pot of coffee.

While the coffee brews (far too slowly), I dress the baby and fix the girls' hair.  Or, more often, I dress the baby and decide not to fix the girls' hair, because I just can't tackle it before coffee.  By the time the kids are dressed and the water is hot, the baby has lost the shoes I just put on him, and all five of the other kids are searching for the spot they placed their shoes after I told them to find them last night.  As it turns out, nobody found their shoes last night, and somebody has broken into the house and stolen at least one shoe from every pair we own while we were asleep.  I take a quick, slightly cold shower while they "look for their shoes".

"Looking for shoes" consists of wandering around staring at the ground for an entire minute, then watching TV, jumping on the couch, wrestling various siblings, and coating the kitchen with the hair spray I left out. 

Post-shower, I dress in battle clothes.  There is no way I can wrangle my children into some semblance of proper Sunday attire when I am tottering around in a skirt and heels.  I come out and whack each barefoot child on the head, then offer a dollar to whoever can find the missing shoes.  This results in a race between all of the children, half of them running out to look in the car, and taking a swim in the puddle at the end of the driveway while they're out there. 

When the victorious seekers emerge with the shoes, I smack them again for getting muddy, go through closets to replace the clothes, and decide once again that maybe it's not so important that there are holes in their jeans or that they are wearing T-shirts instead of the nice collared shirts that are now dripping mud all over my laundry room.  It'll be fine.  No big deal.

I leave them to re-dress while I go find something for myself to wear.  I cannot find anything to wear, because every week, as soon as I leave mass, I change back into pants.  I then leave my skirt in the back of the car until every skirt or dress I own is in the trunk because I forgot to get it out and wash it.  I spend fifteen minutes trying to find something that counts as a dress.  When I am done getting dressed, I usually have to wake my husband up a few more times, and he either gets ready or does not.  At this point, time is of the essence, and I won't see him again until it's time to get in the car. 

I tell the kids to go load up, and they all run outside.  I run around the house putting together a diaper bag, finding cell phones and keys, changing into the stupid shoes that go with my skirt, and finding some pants to change into later.  If my husband is ready, he meets me at the door and we are ready to go.  If he is not ready, I will go check one more time.  If he's out of bed and getting ready, I move on to Loading the Kids.  If he's still in bed, I say one more word worthy of the confessional.

The kids are not in the car, they are down the street, so we spend another twenty minutes catching them one at a time and belting them into the car, closing and locking the door between each one so they don't escape.   After they are all buckled in, we head out of town, stopping at a gas station for gas, PopTarts, and coffee (because I never had time to drink any before we left, and I am unsafe on the road without it).  We have fifteen minutes to consume our "breakfast" in order to be done before the Communion fast.  The kids have no problem with this, they eat much like Cookie Monster, scattering crumbs and smearing everything in sight with PopTart jam.

We have a family-wide addiction to the country gospel music that airs on two stations every Sunday morning, so we drive the hour and fifteen minutes to church with a symphony of Amazing Grace and people trying to kill each other in the backseat.  No matter how many times I have asked, God has not granted me go-go-gadget arms to use to smack people during car rides, and my children know this.  The two in the middle keep their mouths shut, because I can reach them with my regular arms.  The four in the back are insanely loud, and I am a nervous wreck by the time we pull into the church parking lot and I discover that two kids re-lost their shoes before they got into the car, and one of them has used their shirt as a community PopTart removal system.  Thus, we approach Sunday morning mass and cause people to wonder who the new heathens are.