What, no quote de jour? No photos? What's going on?

Can I really be in two places at once? Yes, in the spirit of "expect the unexpected' this week, I can be here and Here at the same time. I leave my space today in the capable hands of guest blogger Thought Bubble Ten who is sharing her sassy look at the world. Here's a taste. Things will resume to normal (whatever that is) tomorrow.

New beginnings?  Sure but some things just don’t end.

I’m not exactly the most tactful chick in town.  In fact, my ability to hide my emotions or thoughts has an almost evil and calculated way of deserting me when I need it most.  It’s not that I advocate being disingenuous but I’m sure you’ll agree that sometimes, it’s better to keep your immediate gut response to a situation to yourself and share the more, shall we say, ‘sensitive response’ that, given time, does eventually occur to you.

Let me share with you one example of an unthinking, tactless gut-response from my vast collection of examples.  It happened many years ago when I was a young mother of two.  (I now am an older mother of same two and only two, in case you’re wondering). In fact, it happened on my daughter’s first day of school. 

There I was, anxiously walking my daughter up the steps from the car park through the grassy play area that ran along the side of a dismal looking row of classrooms.  I was one of several mothers leading their child into this glorious new chapter in their lives and indeed in ours, or so we desperately wanted to believe. Fortunately for me, I was somewhat distracted from this nerve-wrecking journey to the schoolyard assembly point by my son, three years younger than his sister, who could not resist a running commentary of everything before him.  

It must have been quite the spectacle to him, this noisy, nervous gaggle of mothers and their kids carrying school bags almost twice their size, their maroon and white uniforms looking as fresh and crisp as you could ever expect them to be, their shoes and socks the cleanest you were ever going to see them.

As my daughter walked excitedly on in front of me, I tried to divide my attention between her, my son and this world of school that seemed to be rapidly engulfing us.  It was while I was in this state of diversified attention that one of the mother’s struck conversation with me as she walked alongside us with her one, no, two, no, wait a minute, how many kids did she have?

“Nice day”, she said as I tried to tear myself away from kid-counting and look at her.  She was a slight, sweet-faced woman with an infant on her right hip, a toddler in one hand and a slightly older kid attached to the toddler.  I noticed then, somewhat vaguely, two kids in uniform who seemed to be keeping an even pace in front of us.“Ye..e..s”, I replied rather distractedly while arguing with myself that those kids could not all be hers.

 “Jonathan”, she called out to one of the two in front as the kid who'd been attached to the toddler tried to catch up with its brother., “just wait for your sister, sweetie”. 

The argument in my head was getting too much to hold in. I had to settle it.

“So, your son’s starting today?” I asked, trying to find a way to ask the question I really wanted to ask.

“Well, he’s Grade two this year, but my daughter’s starting Grade one and I’ve got the twins starting high school”.

“So, you’ve got six kids?” I could hardly believe the number that escaped my lips.

“Eight actually and another on the way”.

And that’s when that insensitive gut reaction just tore right away from me giving me no chance in either hell or heaven to deflect it. “Jesus Christ!” I heard myself say even as my brain started to shut down with embarrassment and disgust at myself for not exercising a bit more tact. There was an ever so slight pause before the highly productive mother kindly explained,“Yes, he gave them to me”. And so began that chapter in my daughter’s life and in mine, a chapter that unfortunately did not see the demise of my tactlessness.