I have sometime to kill so I thought I'd give this another go at a long, rambling, pointless entry.

I'm waiting at work for my mom to come pick me up. In no way is this a good thing. I should have left an hour ago. My car is in the shop, it's going to cost me a little over $500, and Molasses is sick or something I haven't been able to reach him all day. It's a little bit annoying but I do hope he's okey. (I keep thinking if he's really bad and in the hospital I'll feel *really* bad, but if he isn't I might just kick his ass...)

I don't really have the money for my car and my savings is going to have to bear the brunt of it. I'm way to old to be relying on my mom, but here I am. And what's really bad is she has to drive up the 5 from Fullerton (40ish miles away) to grab me, and then we'll head right back down the 5, all smack dab in the middle of a fun little time I like to call you-might-as-well-get-out-and-walk, aka rush hour.

I hope my mom's doing okey. I don't know if she can figure out alternate routes in case she gets lost and I don't know if she has my work number.

So I got to thinking about my mom and I get so many things running through my head, it's really hard to pick one stream of thought and go with it. So I'll start as close to the beginning as I can.

My mom was born to a really huge family, I'm not sure exactly how many but I think about eight of the kids made it to adulthood. Her mother had a pretty tough task and had two other sisters, one of who had no children though she really wanted one. My mom's mom was over burdened and agree with her sister, Ana, to turn over care and everything that goes with my mom to Ana. So my mom's actual mom didn't actually give birth to her. But she did raise her, and that what's important to this story.

My mom was raised as an only child by Ana and Samuel Garcia. Sam Garcia was born in the United States on purpose, that is his mother wanted to be sure her son had American citizenship. So when he had grown up he had returned here at some point and owned and operated a gas station/car wash. There must have been a decent amount of money in it because my mom is very aware of never needing for anything as a child. But what's important is that my mom's family was primarily in Mexico, Guadalajara and the area around it, mostly. But her father's work was in Buena Park, California, USA. Now it was a good business and he spent time trying to run it long distance from Mexico but it didn't always work out and he'd have to head back to the US and often enough my mom and Ana would go with him. So my mom went to schools both here and in Mexico.

I'm not sure from her stories which seemed worse and which seemed better. Primary school she didn't mention very much but it seemed that the white kids teased her a lot for her skin. My mother is very dark skinned, if I had a deep tan *maybe* I'd be getting there. But they would ask her if they rubbed her skin hard enough if the color would come out and as often as some would try to "rub" some of the color into their own skin, some would avoid touching her in case it *did* come off. The called her indian girl and ask if she lived in a tipi....Let me remind you that this is Buena Park, CA. Not the most whitebread of American cities. Today the Latino population is even higher than then, but it couldn't have been very rare to see Mexicans there. But my mom was born in 1956, so Civil Rights was only getting started when she was ten.

And this was *WAY* before correct and political started to go together. It makes me fairly angry to think of it, but I have to put myself in the mind of a kid and remember how much I just accepted things that happened because I didn't know there should be another way. At ten it made sense that none of the kids were friendly, it made sense to find something about a kid and tease them mercilessly about it. It was the thing to do. Calling kids cruel is bullshit. People are cruel, but kids can still be smacked and told to apologize.

hmm. Molasses just called. Earlier he had decided to take a nap and never check to see if his phone was on. He needs a damned land line. And I could probably use a cell, but don't tell anyone. I will resist, dammit!!

anyway. So kids are dumb and all grow up among each other's cruelties and some how most of us survive and seem relatively normal. My mom doesn't seem to have many insecurities, but then again she is my mom and has probably taken the last 24 years to be very careful that I don't find her insecurities. Well she probably thought of it as hiding weaknesses, but she actually just exposed different ones...but I'm getting far ahead of myself.

She also went to school at private schools in Mexico. I don't remember the exact details, but I believe Mexican law makes it so that kids get free education until the age of twelve (contrast that with eighteen here).

Ooh, my mom's here. Gotta go. TBC