Sunday is funday.

I GOT TO GO TO MORNING SERVICE!!!

It's funny how the things that made me want to cry as a kid, like getting up for morning service, make me so happy now. I had to get up at eight after wrestling with insomnia all night, and I didn't even care.

Ok, I cared a little.

But I was so excited. And nervous. Don't forget nervous.

I left the house 40 minutes early to avoid missing my bus. It's a direct effect of growing up in my always-late household. When I first moved to Allentown I was at least an hour early for just about everything. It wears off with time.

But until I get used to taking buses and trains, I will be spending large amounts of time standing at stations and wondering why I felt the need to leave the house in such a hurry.

I waited on the wrong side of the station until I thought, I better ask someone. I did and then ran over to the other side. I sat at the first bus stop I saw. The woman seated at the other end of the bench looked me over, hugged her bags and then laid down. She muttered something and then eyed me again.

I pretended to be deaf.

She sat up, looked me up and down with disgust. Stood up. Glared some more. Wrapped her arms tighter around her canvas parcel. Walked down the street.

A kindly looking woman came and sat on my other side.

Lady Number One came back and asked me for a dollar. I was able to answer honestly when I said I had no cash. My wallet was safe at home. I had a metro card and a bag full of wardrobe changes. Which strangely enough, she didn't appear to need.

I saw her on my bus later. She had at least $2.50.

I waited nervously for a while before gathering the courage to ask the driver to tell me when we were at my stop. Fortunately, he was nice and he obliged. I've heard some drivers will just grunt at you and not help at all.

I met a girl in the lobby of the church who directed me to the bathroom to finish putting my face on. And then I talked with her through the rest of Sunday School, which my bus arrives halfway through.

I was so happy to hear a sermon, to hear people talking about Christ. I think that's the hardest part of living with this family. Not that taking the Lord's name in vain is ever ok, but I am so used to at least hearing it that way. Here, nothing. Not one reference to Jesus. Ever.

I'm pacing myself so as to not get fired but one of these days the parents are going to come home to find their children singing Jesus Loves Me...

KIDDING.

I mean, I'll teach the parents first.

I chatted a bit after the service, met a few people and got an escort to the bus stop outside the church. I made the trek home, which honestly doesn't even feel like the two miles it is.

For some reason I asked the kids if they wanted to go to the park. And then for some reason I took them.

We had a good time. I love the looks the parents give me when they see me pop out of the tunnel slide or chasing my kids (or their kids) around the playground. How did rich people get so boring? These people have the means to pay everyone else to do their work. They should be able to play with their kids.

Anyway,

We went home after an hour and E and T had to leave for a wedding.

And then, for ANOTHER some reason, I told the kids we would make what I like to call Squishy Balls for dinner.

I take veggies and sautee them and chop them up. Then I take leftover rice, which is the bane of my existence, and the kids get to pull up a chair and mash veggies and rice into balls which I then fry, because what's the point of eating something that's not fried?

R had a blast. She ate and mashed and mashed and ate. She ate an entire ear of corn on the cob in addition to her aspargus-carrot-rice balls.

J ate nothing. He's actually making up for it now with some leftover Challah bread.

R is gloating with her dessert.

Baby I fell asleep in his chair because he had no nap today. I don't know how this family functioned before I was here, because that poor kid's schedule gets wrecked when I'm not here.

I woke him up for a bath and then put him to bed an hour early.

After the big kids got their bath and I vacuumed up the rice explosion in the kitchen the kids proceeded to push me into using my angry voice, not once, not twice but FOUR times. I had to YELL. I had to threaten. I had to take the marker out of R's hand and tell her to go to bed.

She's got the idea that if she tells J to do the naughty things instead of doing them herself that she's safe from trouble. Boy, is she mistaken. Last night she pushed some buttons. Tonight she flipped the master switch and she is lucky she's not my kid, because I would have painted her backside red. As it is, that was the first time I had to REALLY get mean, and I mean really mean, with her and she did cry.

But, still, when I opened my arms to her she came to me and I told her to stop crying. She did and I told her that I can only be nice if she's good. She's been a doll ever since.

Bedtime is soon though, and good thing, because I don't know how long she could keep this up.