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Friday's home inspection went well. There are just the usual repairs needed on the outside of the house. I'm once again waiting to hear back from the seller about the repairs I want them to take on. I'm holding off on packing for fear of jinxing the sale, but August 1 is only fifteen days away! This weekend I went to a Spa Day at the Pastor's house for the women of our church. Only a handful showed up, but it was still a good time. We had a mini-women's ministry meeting to discuss what we wanted to do as a group. Some of the ideas involved making bears for the police to give out to kids and blankets for some of the local shelters. We also discussed the upcoming "secret sisters" program. We were trying to figure out some of the details such as how long it should run for and the dollar limit on gifts. We decided it should go from August to March and have a $10 each cap on gifts. The next major issue was the cap on the number of gifts. Should we have only 1 or up to 3? I brought up the point that I would like to see us allow the range of 1-3 gifts. I explained that my reasoning for this is that if my secret sister has a birthday during this time, I may want to get her something. Yet people who only give 1 gift during this time (ie, for Christmas) wouldn't need to feel like they are slacking. While most of the women nodded in agreement, one asked me "Are you a mother? You aren't a mother are you? If you aren't a mother then you can't understand." I was shocked into silence by this response since it is so irrelevant. This is not the first time that this single mother of an elementary school aged girl and her friend (also a single mother of a school aged child) have said this to me. The first time was because they were complaining about the excess charges by the after school care program run by the local church school when someone is late picking up a child. My response was to ask, "Couldn't you ask one of the other parents to pick up your child if you know you are going to have an issue making it there on time?" The response I got was: "Apparently, you are not a mother. You don't get it." True, I don't get it. But that has nothing to do with not being a mother. I don't get how there is not another parent in the entire SDA school that you would trust to pick up your child for you occasionally. Talk about overprotective parents! Now, I understand that being a single parent is not easy. Heck, being single isn't easy either. What really gets me is that fact that these two women who have been single mothers for several years and who have probably been burned in the past, are taking it out on me. The fact that I am not a mother makes all of my thoughts, opinions and comments invalid in their eyes. I call malarkey on that one. Being a parent, expecially a bitter single mother, is no excuse for putting people down nor is it permission to feel entitled to pressue those around you to feel sorry that your life is not turning out how you planned it.