Drunk Gospel and a World of WIC

Josh and Aylah were leaving the house the other day to go for a walk. As they were walking out the door Aylah leaned back in and said, “Have fun my house.” I started laughing. Everything these days belongs to Aylah; my house, my car, my chair… I was also walking out the door this morning to go move our car for the street sweeper and she said, “Bye kids.” I laughed again. She’s funny these days and has been making us laugh with all of her crazy things she says.

October is here already. I love October for many reasons, the Fall weather, Halloween candy, the Halloween parade in Hoboken, and most importantly the apple orchard. We plan on going in about a week. I’m sure Aylah will be even more fun this year in the corn maze, apple orchard, and pumpkin patch!

Macy has been sitting up like a pro lately. She only topples over occasionally, and then only when Aylah comes plummeting full throttle into her space. She is also babbling mama, dada, baba and squeals very loud when we tickle her. She is getting to be more fun in our interactions. Yesterday she was on her stomach and trying to get a toy out of reach. She was doing the butt up in the air, full body extension reach. Crawling can only be right around the corner. She is also on an amazing sleep schedule that I have tried for 7 months to finally attain. She eats at 7:00 pm and then goes to sleep for the night until 6:30am! MMM, a night of peace and quiet again.

We have this neighbor named Charles. We are pretty sure that he is drunk a large percentage of his life. There is another guy, Lowell, who is the building super. He is drunk a larger portion of his life then Charles. They are both harmless but minorly annoying. Charles doesn’t work but lives off some sort of government support. So I see him around during the day pretty frequently. He is also proud to announce he is a deacon at his church. Charles is notable in one certain area… he likes to sing drunk gospel on his front porch. He props up his radio in the front window of his apartment, which happens to overhang the front patio/walkup of the apartment building. And then he either sits in a chair he brings out or stands up and belts it out. A couple days ago I came home from a kickboxing class to find him out there at 6 pm singing at the top of his lungs and then started singing to me. Soon after Josh came home with the girls in the stroller and Aylah, who loves music, ran over to join Charles. I came outside to find a hilarious scene. So it is not infrequent in our house to hear, “Charles is out singing drunk gospel again.”

My Mom’s group recently “multiplied.” We split into two groups; one staying in Hoboken and the other starting a new group in Jersey City. So the girls and I have been going on Tuesdays now instead of Wednesdays. I really love our new group. It is much smaller, 6 instead of 20, and there are some new moms that are younger that I am excited to get to know better and hopefully spend some more time with. It has also been amazing to me how the feeling of the group has changed. The Hoboken moms, in general, are very high strung, worried about every little detail (organic vs. regular) (classes (like ballet, music) for your 2 year old or no classes), and the list goes on and on. I always felt it but couldn’t identify the anxiety that I sensed from the women in the group. It was palpable. But since going to our new group, the anxiety is gone and I can now see just how intense it used to be. We are also reading a great new book called, “Good and Angry.” It is very convicting and I would recommend reading it.
Our last memorable thing is that we are thinking about buying a house and have been looking at some condos. They will be brand new, they are haven’t been built yet but they are scheduled to be finished in Summer 2010. We have been thinking about it a lot and have applied and been accepted for a loan. We are still praying about it a lot and just asking for wisdom during this process. We are both hesitant about feeling trapped once we buy it. We talk a lot about how we don’t have any idea of how long we will be here. So even though we don’t have an end time in mind, it still makes us feel a little controlled as to how long we will stay here.

Yesterday I was in Walgreens with the girls buying some formula and milk. When I got up to the cash register the cashier said, “I don’t mean to pry, but aren’t you on WIC? You can get this for free on WIC.” (WIC is Women, Infants, Children; they provide you with a certain amount of free food of certain brands. You have to be under a certain income bracket in order to qualify) I looked at her and said, “Umm, we don’t qualify for WIC.” She looked at me with a dumb-struck face, continued checking us out, and we left. As I was talking to Josh about it last night he said, “That girl lives a world where everyone is on WIC.” How true that must be. We live in a community where the majority of people aren’t making it on their own. Some take advantage of the system, like maybe Charles who is fully capable of working somewhere but doesn’t, and some need it to survive, like a family we know who just had a baby boy 2 weeks ago. The live in a 500 sq. foot efficiency apt. and neither the mom nor dad can find jobs right now. They can get formula and diapers through WIC along with milk, bread, etc. But either way, we are an abnormality in the world around us. I’m reminded every single day of this when I leave our house, but some days it’s more in my face than others. Who knows what today might bring… we’ll just have to wait and see.