Public Notice

It has come to my attention (again) that people don't know what to do with me.  I've lived in Texas for almost two years now (yay!) and during that time I have lived with my aunt and uncle (double yay!).  Now to clear up some of the misconceptions that seem to be circulating AT CHURCH of all places.
That's right, people I am not a secret daughter from my uncle's fictional previous marriage, or a lovechild of the 80's.  I am not my uncle's second wife (as a nice gentleman in Fort Stockton found out), and, more importantly, I am not LDS, LSD, Muslim, or Mormon.  I am not my uncle or my aunt's younger sister (okay, perhaps that one is reasonable.  If Tia had been born earlier in the lineup of the ten children family she comes from, I very well might have been.  And my uncle has siblings younger than I am... five of them actually, but I digress.)
As one unlucky church lady found out this morning, I am not the mother of my three Ukrainian children and I did not move in with my aunt and uncle so that they could have a stable influence in their lives (yes, because I'm so wild!)  I'm twenty-three.  I have a bachelor's degree.  I am finishing up a Texas Teaching Certificate that I may or may not use.  I do not have a boyfriend, fiance, or husband, and to the best of my knowledge I am not prepping to enter a convent.  I do not have any children, biological, adopted, or surrogate.  I frequently take five of my younger cousins, age 10, 8, 7, 6, and 4 to Mass with me.  When they are not with me they are with both their parents, not their long absent father.  It would be impossible for me to be the mother of the first two and illegal for me to be the mother of the next one.  I suppose in all technicality I could have given birth to the youngest two but the likelihood of me have a four-year-old or a six-year-old is somewhere between "a snowballs chance in hell" and my cat spontaneously combusting into a chartreuse cashmere, life-size model of Yankee Stadium.  In other words- no.
I love the kids all greatly and they are mine... but in the "I love you because you are my family" way, not that "I love you because I went through labor with you" way.  For the record, their mother did not go through the conventional labor with the youngest three either... she went through a different kind of labor.  I sometimes spoil them (okay, I usually spoil them) and occasionally they misbehave but that's because they are kids... and not because I am an ill-fit teenage mother (well I would be a bad parent right now but that's more because I'm not married than my alleged drug addiction and rampant party ways.)
There now, I just have to post this in the Church bulletin... and wear it on my persons at all times and THEN maybe people might stop guessing during Mass.  Gosh, Father really needs to spice up his sermons...
Sincerely,
The Gabbie Lady