the bean

it poured, and it flooded last night. julian had practice, and although i know they’ve made him play through bad weather before, they usually don’t when there are hurricane like conditions coupled with lightning. they wound up watching a film instead. he had a “meet the teachers” event at the high school [still can't believe he's entering NINTH GRADE!! JESUS!] afterward so we went there and rushed about meeting all his teachers. while walking through the halls, there were kids from his last school, and kids that he hadn’t seen since elementary. [kids i haven't seen since then, either, it's amazing to see them all so grown. scary, too.]

while walking through the hall trying to figure out where to be next, i spied a red head and immediately knew it was stephanie. fancy that! her son blaine will be going to the same school! what a handsome and very charming fella … definitely takes after his mom.

the last class we went to was his spanish class. while waiting at the door, a father and his daughter were behind us. i recognized the exchange between them … he was asking her what the words were outside the door … she sounded it out, unsure of herself … and the father stifled a giggle. “what? i don’t know!”, she said, and still he pressed on with another word. it was all in playful jest, but i have been there … the gringa frijolera who gets picked on by her elders because she can’t speak spanish. i turned around, half giggling myself, and said, “ay! dejala!” ['leave her alone!'] and he cracked an embarrassed smile and i called him a meanie. heh.

. . . . .

school hasn’t even started and already we’re having transportation trouble with the boy. tim left from work to get julian to practice yesterday and i had to drive from downtown to deer park, pick up the boy and drop him off at his friend’s who lives across from the school, so he could kill time there until he his 2:30 gathering … they have a scrimmage game this afternoon. his school is a lot closer [3 miles] than the last school he went to, but it’s still to far to walk when the shortest distance is on a busy thoroughfare with no decent walkways. and unfortunately, deer park is not set up such that he could take the back streets to get there, since many subdivisions only have two entries/exits …. you get in and find yourself circling the neighborhood looking for a way out since none of the streets are throughways into the next neighborhood. i always wondered what was the point to that, i mean besides making the place unsafe if there were a disaster. if you have a neighborhood of even eight blocks and only two ways to enter/exit onto a main highway, think of the traffic and nightmare this would cause. [boy, did i ever go off on a tangent there. sorry]

at any rate, i won’t be able to make it to his first game, sadly. but it is only a scrimmage, he assures me. and says that in the future, if we ever intend to go to any of his games, to show up early since the stands fill up quickly. i am so ignorant in the way of sports, i still have to ask him what position he plays. they switched him out for different ones last year. this year he’s defensive end. we’ll see if it lasts. unrelated, he showed me his tummy which was a bit red. when i asked where it came from, he said it must have been when he was doing pushups in the grass, that he learned he has a mild allergic reaction to grass. WTF? never heard of that. weird.

*sigh*

growing up. whether i like it or not.