Beer-drinking, gun-toting sock-knitting momma! Don't you want to send your kids to play here too?

Joey asks a little friend over to play on Saturday morning. Sweet boy, one of those uber-Christian types. My family is happily Christian, I'm not bagging on them, it's just important to the story line. I like this overly-going-to-Church-functions DAILY family because though they are quite involved in everything, and you know they are, they don't flaunt it in your face. ANYWAY, the point is, the boy's from a bit of a sheltered home.

He comes over, the boys are playing like boys do, running around throwing balls at each other and walls, causing lots of havoc and noise. After a bit, I send them down to play video games and legos in the playroom in the basement. On the way down to the basement is our family room/den. It's the manly room. We've got deep red walls, leather big-ass couch, wood stove, pictures of Jeff's cows, his stereo, etc. Along with all this is an old cowboy lamp with an actual (but disabled and not able to shoot anymore) real live cowboy's revolver hand-gun as part of the lamp that you can remove. I come down to the little boy saying, "Wow, your mom lets you have guns on your tables? Cool!" nice. STIKE ONE

Later, they come up to the kitchen for a juice box. I'm preparing some beer bread from my Tastefully Simple stash from my cousin. The beer can is sitting on the kitchen island next to my bowl and spoon. Oven's pre-heating. The boy keeps watching me strangely as he sips away on his apple juice. After I pour the beer into the mix and then into the pan and throw away the can, he says, "OH, you're not DRINKING the beer?" It's 10:00 in the morning. STRIKE TWO

As visions of the horror-striken face of the mother as the little boy tells his mom "Joey's mom has guns AND beer at his house!" I figured I'd better send her boy home with a disclaimer so she wouldn't think we were the spawn of satan. She laughed and smiled and said "oh, I totally understand, no problem" but then she said "hey, I have an idea, why don't the boys play at OUR house the next couple of times?" STRIKE THREE

(OK, so our house was the scene of various shot-gun blasts blowing chunks of our yard into oblivion on new year's eve, but those guns are for hunting and are locked up away from children, not sitting out on the coffee tables.)

Ah well, life goes on. I'm now the 10am-beer-drinking gun-toting hoodlum momma of 1st grade. who knits. socks. Beer-drinking, gun-toting, sock-knitting momma!

On a side note, Joey's perking up a bit and his coughing wasn't so bad last night, signs that the new medicines and increased vest therapy seems to be working to fight the lung infection.