WobLog

We had a very full day today, which started like normal with breakfast and homeschooling, though it was punctuated with the excitement of Don getting home mid-morning from a trip. We ate lunch, and then we headed off for our first honest-to-goodness public protest! The kids and I met with several other Catholics in front of the Hacienda Regal Cinema to protest the release of The Dumb Vinci Code. Oh, I mean, The Da Vinci Code. We had Rosaries and signs protesting the movie.

We must have been really tough there with our violent Rosaries swaying in the wind, because someone called the police and told them we were "throwing things." The police realized pretty quickly that they'd been had, and they were quite nice to us. (They'd sent two cars, though, so we must have really been portrayed as daunting!) Most people who saw us seemed more puzzled than anything, though one lady joined us in our prayer, and others came to ask what we were so upset about. (Hmm, does blasphemy not get anyone angry these days?) A group of young men took their pictures in front of us at a distance, as if to say, "Look at the kooks we encountered on our way to the movies!" It was a very strange experience for me to have so many people staring at me with varying looks from approval to hostility. Even stranger were the looks we got from the local security, before the police came. They acted like they expected us to break into violence at any minute, and they walked around us in a rather intimidating manner for some time. For Heaven's sake, we were the mildest-looking people, some with young children, and we were praying. Come to think of it, though, prayer is pretty powerful.

Unfortunately, after we'd been there about an hour, our day's plans got altered. Alex started to have an allergy attack. I decided he needed to get indoors, so we walked back to the car and I drove to the grocery store to buy some antihistimine for him. By the time we got to the store, his eyes were swelling. Not just the skin around his eyes, but the whites of his eyes. The whites had begun to overlap the edges of the iris. We went into the store and I asked the pharmacist if there was anything over the counter we could use. He got us some Claritin and opened the package right there for us so Alex could have some. He suggested going to the doctor if things didn't clear up in 3 hours. So I did a little shopping, but then decided I needed to call the doctor myself. They told us to come in.

So off we went. To make a long story short, Alex ended up with a breathing treatment to ease his wheezing, and now he's on an inhalant for a week, as well as Claritin every day. When we got into the car after the doctor's office visit, Alex said, "Well, at least I didn't die." We have a very unusual three-year old boy. And a day that reminded me that we are not in control of our lives.