Confessional

Two-thirds of the family is sick, so yesterday I decided to give Vicki a break and take young Samson to the early (8:00 am) Mass. I figured she could get at least an hour's worth of rest with two of us out of the house.

I packed all the requisite church/distraction necessities and off we went. By the way, I love having Cheerios and goldfish in church. I mean, I feed most of them to Samson, but it is nice sometimes to have a little pre-body-of-Christ snack.

Did I mention Sam was sick? His nose continues to run. And run. But instead of a constant flow, it's now like electricity in Baghdad. Hours of nothing and then bursts of power.

We got through the second reading before I realized that the one thing lacking in my backpack was tissues. By this point, it was either use the hymnal (probably blasphemous, definitely uncomfortable for Samson) or go to plan B.

We went with plan B, wherein I do the third-grade hand wipe of the nose and surreptitiously insert said hand into my pocket to wipe it off. I know, EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW. Luckily, by the time the sign of peace came around, we were already standing in the back because Samson kept trying to grab the head of the guy in the pew in front of us.

We made it through Mass without further incident. Let's just say those jeans went into the wash post haste after church.