I'm a party pooper.  I'm a downer.  I'm no fun.  I ruin other people's good times.  (Because I totally have control over other people's good times, you know.)

You see, yesterday Mark and I had plans to take the kids to a pumpkin patch.  We were going to let them run around and jump off hay bales and find pumpkins and navigate a kiddie corn maze.  But I woke up a few hours into my night's sleep when one wet child tried to climb in bed with me and an hour later when another child sniffling from the tail end of a cold woke up early and was ready to start the day.  And, as people who don't get enough sleep will be, I was cranky.  Bite your head off cranky.  Stab you in the eyeballs with a fork cranky.  Blast your eardrums straight out the top of your skull with my screams cranky.  That is, if I could open my bleary eyes long enough to find you.

I decided that I needed to go back to bed.  And that was a good decision.  But there was that whole pumpkin patch thing.  Now, the kids didn't know we were planning it, because I'm no fool or at least not so much of one as I used to be.  I know that my kids get so hyped up about exciting events that they can't sleep.  (Not that they slept anyway on this occasion.)  And then they become sorely disappointed (read: wail all day as if the world has ended) if someone gets sick or it rains or the car blows a tire and we can't go.  So I rarely tell them what we're up to until we're up to it.

I knew that they were none the wiser, but it still triggered that whole party pooper speech in my head.  That whole "I should work harder and do better" speech.  That whole "Why is it that everyone else in the world seems to be able to juggle jobs and sleep and housecleaning and taking their kids out to one freaking pumpkin patch once a year and I can't?!" speech.

I knew those speeches were coming from a place of exhaustion, but they were still pretty persuasive.  (You do have a point there, crazy voice in my head, I can be pretty sucky.)  But I went off to bed anyway.  And hours later, when I woke up, all the crazy talk was gone.  I took my son out to a park while my daughter went to a friend's house to play and Mark took a nap of his own, and suddenly I felt like the most together Mama ever.  Amazing what a little sleep will do to turn the party pooper into the life of of her own party.

Most kids (at least those who grow up in safe, middle class, American neighborhoods) don't see every new face at the front door (from evangelists to pizza delivery guys) as a potential threat.  But Austen is not most kids.  Unless they come bearing an Amazon.com box with a video game in it, he is not a fan of strange people on our front step, and he reacts more like a defensive pit bull than an eight-year-old boy.  Intruders!  They startle him.  They frighten him.  They alarm him.  And he makes it clear.

He'll eye the door warily when he hears a knock, and like a dog sending out its initial warning bark, he'll demand "Who is it?!"  Because it could be a UPS delivery guy with a package full of games (sure, it's highly unlikely, but as far as Austen is concerned, you never know), he always hesitates and waits for more information before rushing in ferociously to drive the miscreants away.

A few weeks ago, there was a knock on my front door.  "Who is it?!" Austen demanded anxiously.

"I don't know, buddy.  I'll find out." I said.

He followed me, and as I opened the door to reveal two smiling elderly women holding Bibles, Austen stood with his body huddled slightly behind mine, clutching my arm and glaring around my side.  My daughter Janie, curious, peeked around the door frame smiling up at them and grabbed my other hand.

"We're here to talk to you about the love of Jesus," one of them said.

"Thank you, but now is really not a good time," I said as Austen pulled on my arm trying to simultaneously get my attention and drag me from the door.

"We understand you must be busy.  What lovely children."

"What do they want?!" Austen growled.

"Thanks, yes, I'm sorry.  I really need to go."

"Maybe we could stop back sometime.  When are you free?"

"What do they want?!" Austen yelled, continuing to tug furiously on my arm.

"Yes. Um..."  At this point my brain was struggling with several competing demands.  I wanted to tell Austen who these people were to reassure him.  But more than that I wanted to close the door between him and the offending strangers who were not bearing video games.  In order to do so, I needed to figure out how to extricate my hands, one of which Janie was holding and the other Austen was tugging on.  And of course, part of me was automatically trying to process the question that had been posed to me.  When would I be free?  Good one.

I decided to answer Austen's question to buy me some time to process the rest of it.  So I said, calmly, with a warm glow in my voice that lingered on the word "God" and was meant to come out like a comforting verbal version of a motherly hug, "They want to talk to us about God, buddy."  At which point Austen screamed, so loud that it shook the foundations of neighboring homes, "I HATE God!"

Ok, oops.  Didn't expect that.  Apparently I got the order of operations wrong.  It should have been extricate arms and shut door first, then explain.

The two elderly ladies gasped and their smiles faltered.  "Well, God loves you anyway," one finally stammered.

"No!  There is no such thing as God!  I HATE God!" screamed Austen furiously.  He had stepped forward, advancing to drive off the enemy and in doing so had (mercifully) released my arm.  He was standing, leaning forward slightly, stiff and straight as a board, fists clenched with his arms tight by his side, face screwed up in rage.  The women looked shocked, clearly convinced that my house was demon possessed and I was poisoning my child's mind.  So much for that verbal motherly hug of mine.

"Um, ok.  Well, maybe-when-the-kids-are-back-in-school-then-thank-you," I said in a hurriedly cheerful voice as I shut the door.  The women have not come back.  And I'm considering a sign that says "Beware of the 8-Year-Old."

That's right, Jack told everyone on the island where they could stick the Hippocratic Oath, because apparently, when we're talking about Ben, "do no harm" means the greater harm would actually be letting him live. What's more, Jack held firm in the face of several different people begging and bullying him to change. My husband and I speculated that Jack must have attended some of those fast acting TV 12 Step meetings around the time he shaved off the alcoholic-Jack beard and went back to clean shaven control-freak-Jack. Yeah, TV isn't always so realistic. But what was realistic was the way other people reacted to his sudden ability to say no (and mean it): they were pissed. And they pushed back.

"For crying out loud, Kate," I mock-yelled at the TV, "It's hard to say no! Respect Jack's boundaries!" Because that part is still the part that trips me up. I'm getting better at the saying no part, at the "this is as far as I'm willing to go and as much as I'm willing to do" part. I'm just not so good at holding to that path as others get angrier and push harder and harder for me to change, to go back to the old me, the one with the friendly and free flowing boundaries. So I was inwardly gleeful that this character on TV (having gone to the imaginary 12 Step meetings my husband and I invented for him) held his ground in the face of angry attempts to get him to change. And I loved what happened after he did. People took care of themselves and figured out other solutions without him. What a beautiful thing!