TGIF

The past 24 hours have been pretty darn good. Last night, after my ride, Sarah and I took turns on the treadmill. It was my first run in a few weeks - maybe even a month. We took it a quarter mile at a time and did crunches or squats or lunges in between. My belly really feels it today. Everything went well with dinner - yummy turkey burgers and vegetables. Everything went well with bedtime. Every one got up and got ready for school on time and I was able to spend a bit of time with this three girls, dressed in their Wacky Tacky Friday best (it was Wacky Tacky Day at school). I took Bay a soda when I picked her up from school. She has always had a problem with transitions and she used to get angry with me before we were even a block away from the school. The soda seemed to work. She drank it down and talked about her ex-boyfriend who apparently now has a car.
Back at home, Sarah and I went over to the pool. Karlee, the blonde from the picture up top, came down to meet us. She and Sarah have been friends for years. They get bickery sometimes. I think this was one of those times, but I'm unsure. All the kids get louder at the pool. I don't know why that is - something about the water makes them scream with every interaction. I try to quiet Sarah down, but she has trouble with volume control when she's on land. In fact, I can hear her voice all the way at the playground right now. "Give it back, Will!" she is saying.
I like the pool best when there's very few children around. They tend to jump on each other's heads and that stresses me out. We had very strict pool rules when I was a kid. My grandparents had a pool and we spent the entire summer in it. There was no dunking, no splashing, and absolutely no running.
These boys, Joe and James, ran all over the place. They also splashed water up each other's noses, pushed each other in, dunked each other, and screamed. A lot. Sarah was fascinated. See how she's watching them?
They have long been a couple of my favorite boys from school. Joe is getting older now, he's at the end of 5th grade, so the sarcasm is kicking in. The kids who are in the 6th grade use sarcasm regularly. I get the impression that they feel it's the way you are supposed to talk to adults - like one big kid talking to another.

Joe and James have lots of freckles and teeth. They are BOY-boys. Once, I saw an older girl beating up Joe and even though I know he could have taken her, he didn't. He isn't supposed to hit girls. I said, "Hey!" and made them follow me down to the principal. I can remember thinking that it was after school hours and I wasn't sure what I would do if they didn't follow me. I was so upset, I was shaking all over and felt sick to my stomach. Happily, the kind of thing doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I have the same reaction. The violence, it scares me. I'm having a problem getting my entries to format properly. For example, right now I want to start a new paragraph and I can't get the cursor to move where I want it to. Grrr.