Oh, I hope this baby eats his raisin toast. He is picky! Didn't used to be though. He is a man of few words at one year old. He says only the important things: cookie, ball, mama, dada, papa, uh oh, and bad boy. With emphasis on cookie...and bad boy. He did repeat "poopy" a little while ago. See. Just the important things. So far so good with the toast. He even called it a cookie.

Kelly was not at the bus stop this morning. She must be in fourth or fifth grade. I don't know that she is sick, because she was not at the bus stop yesterday either but when passing her house on my way back I saw her and her pajama'd mother having a screaming fit out the door. She was dressed in her gym shirt and ready with her back pack. She was late, she was crying and pleading, and her mom was overreacting. I don't know if it was the rain; the umbrella covering my face; the fact that I was alone; the return of my period after two years of pregnancy and nursing; my relative fondness for Kelly...

--She is sweet. She shows me things from her back pack, shares her ideas with me, tells me her troubles, saw the same double rainbow as I did the other week, and looks after my daughter on the bus. She also showed me that she must have issues when she wore all black with black All-Stars for picture day. Still sweet--

...coupled with my disdain for her overweight, unkempt, husbandless mother with an equally unkempt house and yard and a bad attitude about her job as a nurse; or all of the above--but I lost it on the way home.

It felt good to cry.

It was my prayer for Kelly.