Busybusybusy

Mondays are always a little crazy for me. I've spent the weekend sleeping in and getting up at 5 AM is not fun anyway. A quick breakfast of fruit and yogurt, time for yoga & 30 Day Shred, and then I woke Jude. Some mornings he wakes with a smile, sometimes he is just...crabby. Today? Crabby. After his breakfast and a little time outside in the sunshine while I watered and weeded, he was 100% sweetness.
*BAD thing: He is saying "fuck" when he means to say "truck". Every time a truck drives by our house (quite often) he yells "Fuck! Fuck!". Giant sigh.
Anyway. I threw on my shoes and went walking. I pushed him around in the stroller for about an hour, then we went to the park. Basically he plays by himself while I walk circles around the playground and keep an eye on him. It's a smallish toddler playground that's fenced in. A lot more peace of mind than the other playgrounds around here.
Lunch, laundry, and now here I sit blogging before I start dinner. A boring but busy day.

In my back yard.....

The last picture is of what grew from some beans I found. I took Jude to the park, and in some random spot there was this huge pile of little round pink beans. I grabbed a handful and this is what's grown so far.

Day Trip to the Zoo

It was hooooot, but we went anyway. It ended up being a {mostly} lovely day. Hours looking at animals, slathering on sunscreen at regular intervals, then a picnic at the park. Jude played with his cousins at The Turtle Playground. If I lived in the city we could do this kind of stuff way more often. Every time I go to St. Louis, I wish I lived there.

In a small town.....

My 10 year old son, JB, has a friend named Josiah. Even though JB and Cate are gone to their dad's for a six week visit, he comes over to visit with Jude. Jude loves him, and asks for him almost every day. Anyway. Josiah is a nice kid. He's the kind of kid that'll show up, and if I'm pulling weeds in the garden or unloading groceries he'll say "Let me help you with that" in a way unusual for ten year old boys. He's really nice, very polite. Today we were sitting on the deck talking like we were BOTH grown ups. One thing we talked about was how some of the kids in our neighborhood get really MEAN to other kids. Especially the girls. We talked about why they were like that (he is 100% sure the parents have made them that way by being that way themselves. smart kid, huh?) He then told me that there's a lot of kids in his school that don't like him because of his color. His mom is white and his dad is black. We live in a very small town. It might be the county seat, but there isn't much here. There's a lot of bars, a lot of churches, and a lot of thrift shops. It's very limited here. I can probably count the number of non-white people I've seen on, well, my two hands. There's not a whole lot of diversity. Without diversity, that whole white-centric thing is sure to happen. It's just the way it is. I told him "Josiah, it really isn't like that everywhere. You know that right?" And he said "Yea. It's just hard to make friends."  My heart breaks for him. I gave him a bowl of strawberries from my garden (he asks for them every time) with some whipped cream, and hoped that that made his day a little better.

Sisterhood

 What's on my mind today? Sigh. I just started blogging and here I am with a real downer. Sorry.
I have a sister. We're occasionally close. We tend to have a falling out every so often, and she gets angry and ignores my phone calls. Then I quit calling and we go on like that for a while until she decides to call me all easy breezy like nothing every happened. Our most recent falling out happened months ago. She was in a mood and was being mean. I was all "hey I'm your sister, you could be a little nicer" and then she said "I KNOW. I just don't feel like it". I told her, calmly and quietly, that I didn't feel like talking to her, and to give me a call when she's in a better mood. Her moods last forever, because she still hasn't called me back. And she won't answer the phone when I call her. So! It all around sucks. She's got a lot of problems. She's an addict, bipolar, and who knows what else. It's been a tough time for her, but she uses these things as an excuse to be mean and not face consequences, I think. "I can't HELP it, I don't have my MEDS" kind of thing. But even with the meds, she goes on the same way. It's a sad state for sisters to be in.
I REALLY wish she was easier to get along with. Because when she is normal and sane, it really is fun to have someone to talk with that gets all of my weirdnesses, someone that I can vent with and share with and just..... be sisters. Right now though, she is still ignoring me while sending my husband messages on Facebook. I'm just so tired of this....mess. I would like to be Sisters. I would like to be able to see pictures of my nephews.