"You're knitting socks!!!"

"Boy, you really don't have anything better to do, do you!"

This was said to me yesterday at my great-nephew's birthday party**. And it wasn't said in a "Wow, you sure are inspiring way."

There were many retorts I could have made about the activities that the speaker chose to do in her time. Most, well all, would have be cruel. So I said nothing except, "I enjoy it" and went back to my knitting.

I found this comment odd since the speaker knew that I am not a sit around kind of person. She knew I homeschooled my four children. She knew that I have 2 children with Asperger's. She even knew that I made the birthday boy's cake. But she felt this need to belittle me for knitting a pair of socks.

So I paused my knitting to check on my four boys and then think about any possible reason she say such a thing.

Why?

Was she offended by knitting? Maybe had some repressed fiber trauma that just exploded out at the sight of my partially finished socks.

Does she have a long term memory issues? Perhaps she actually thought that all I did was sit around knitting.

Maybe she was jealous that she didn't bring anything to do? With no other distractions, she was forced to talk to other adults while ignoring her small toddler who kept wandering off.

Maybe I just offended her? I try not to put some air of "being able to do it all." Because I don't do it all. I just do the things I want to do and few things that I have to do.
My priorities are different.
I care more about baking birthday cakes than I do cleaning my sink for the 5th time in a single day, or cleaning my oven. I am more interested in knitting socks for all my guys than getting my nails done. I'd rather homeschool my own children than spend my days in a classroom teaching a group of children.
I pick to read a book over watching some old Western on TV. (DH doesn't care if I read while he watches TV...as long as we are together.)

These are the my choices. My choices don't automatically negate other people's choices. I honestly don't really care how other people spend their time. I figure that they too make choices of things they want and need to do. And that all those decisions fill up their day just like my choices fill my days.
I can't even say that either one of us uses our time more wisely. Because I don't have any clue. Now, if they start griping about their choices, I may form an opinion. But until then, I'll just assume that you can manage your time planner as well as I can.

And while I'm at it with the venting about comments. "I just don't know how you do it all," is my second most hated statement. (Second only to "Four boys....when are you going to have a girl?") I'm no super woman. I don't do anything special. Please don't make me feel like a freak because the things I chose to do are not the things you choose to do.

One day I'm going to just going to lose my last strand of sanity and I will say, "Well, I don't know how you get all the kids up at 6:30, feed, pack their lunches, and dress them, get dressed yourself, get to school by 8 am and then leave your kids with people you don't even know. Then go to work away from your family all day, pick up the kids from afterschool day care, help them with their homework, cook dinner, clean the house, do laundry, watch TV all evening while your kids watch TV in their rooms away from you, and then go to bed knowing that you'll have to do it all over again tomorrow.
How in the world do you do it all?"

But that would be vicious.


**Great Nephew's party was at one of the indoor, inflatable jumper places. The kids were all buddy-paired and no adults were near me for conversation at that time. My choices were knit in peace or gawk at children who were not mine. I chose to knit.