MYOB?

Maya enjoying her cake at Don'tae's family's party for her

Steve found a doll for her almost her color. Not easy to find a mixed race doll.

A few weeks ago, I was walking along a row of condos in Naomi's complex. A girl of 3 and a boy a few years older were  on the porch knocking on their door screaming to get in.  The boy out of frustration started hitting his sister hard on the head and she screamed more. Just as I was about to suggest to him to leave the girl alone, the door pops open and a screaming woman emerged furious about all the noise and suggested that she really give the girl something to cry about. Yeah, mother of the year, lock your kids out. Do I tell her that the girl had plenty to cry about and then see her abuse the boy? What does one do? This, BTW, happened in a town where a man is serving prison time for shaking but not injuring a parrot. But what did I do? Nada.

Flash forward to yesterday. A firetruck is racing down the road behind my house. Not too unusual as the township's firetrucks regularly race back and forth. But this one stopped. Is it turning into the complex for Naomi's condo? The one time that it did, I was asleep. Naomi had called the ambulance because her sister-in-law to be was going into shock and needed to be at a hospital ASAP. I went out to investigate. The firetruck had stopped in front of the condo of the abusive mother. Who knows the story there. Hopefully all will be well and  the crazy rageaholic  will get some help.

When will it rain? There is a small chance that it might later today but everything is extremely dry. I have to water my flowers constantly.

I ordered the Athena dress the other night, nervous because we are just guessing at the size. I did try on the same size dress from the same manufacturer and it was a bit big. Also I hope to be smaller by the wedding but I can't play that game. I can always get it altered. I will have to figure out a way to hoist up my one and a half boobs. Sewn in cups? The owner of the store, motto "Clothing as Art" was very sweet and we schmoozed for a long time.

After my dress ordering, I got some bi bop bim, and went to watch Josh with Julia on his new soccer team. Sadly, Josh and his friend are the only talent and they lost. They have a third friend who keeps promising to show up but never does. His mom was the one who died of DCIS run amok last fall. Julia earlier in the day had taken Naomi to register. In one store, a saleswoman kept trailing them insisting that Naomi sign on for some expensive, fancy china. Julia politely told this woman that everyday china was all Naomi would need but this woman kept insisting. She also crassly lobbied for other useless expensive stuff that Julia seemed helpless to stop. The officious saleslady was lucky I wasn't there. I will be polite once but when that it is ignored, I become, not so nice.

The biggest problem is the capacity of our venue. We have to include all the personnel in the final total which cuts down on the number of guests. Naomi and I have had countless discussions on who should be a guest. Sample: a bridesmaid has a baby. Who is going to watch the baby while she is standing with Naomi? Naomi's solution: invite the grandmom to watch the baby. Sue's solution: grandmom can stay home with the baby saving two precious spots.  A family of 4 just declined which gives us some breathing room. A lot of the 'guests' are actually babies..lots of them but they count as people. Too bad that can't be counted  in tonnage..twelve of these babies being equivalent to an adult.

Sidetrack: weighing things metaphorically in 'tonnage'. One of my favorite things is what Shanna wrote in a report in middle school. Tons of black people died of starvation during the Depression.

Say what? Exactly how many tons of these people died anyway? Was the tonnage measured before they starved or after?

Even better: on a housing show last night, a realtor remarked As you can see, there are tons of space.

How many tons of space?