Mostly

My kids were out playing a baseball game in the meadow as Allen mowed around them, shedding clothes to get hung in the mower's blades, I'd tried to pick up socks and shirts.  I see Nando in his camouflage boxers.

Because my life is so happily safe now, I don't necessarily wake up at four in the morning anymore, stressed out and totally unable to sleep.  I find myself sleeping in until 6, sleeping soundly until my rooster predictably raises Cain.

In Sarah's Yoga Teacher Training Classes, she's learning an awful lot about nutrition that we thought we already knew, having read volumes upon volumes since the 1960s.  But vegetarians back then were just told to eat a ton of complete proteins, newer research indicates we need less, Sarah reported back to me that 10% of our daily caloric intake is enough.

My mom's read Prevention Magazine for many decades now, it's a generational obsession apparently.

I ate a bowl of taters this morning before church, fried (in olive oil) okra for lunch along with five freshly picked colorful bell peppers, chopped with five heirloom tomatoes, garnished with sunflower seeds and Balsamic vinegar, trying to maintain a mostly vegan approach as I grow older.

I'm mostly avoiding sugars lately too, well except for those in very dark chocolate, those don't count, right?  The Nutrition Gospel According To Big Mama.  Oh puh-leeze, I don't drink or smoke, let's allow me an indulgence of a square or two of high-quality bitter dark chocolate.

Mostly is the key word, allowing myself some wiggle room.

I had a thuggish son get arrested again yesterday, this time an older son isn't gonna bail him out, my handsome little thug's been bailed out too often, has learned nothing, no lessons, no real consequences, but I'm pretty sure his baby's mama's gonna bail him out - words and phrases I wish I didn't have to use.

She's worried about his job, which I understand, but I'm afraid the job will eventually be lost anyway if he keeps getting arrested.  His consequences need to be his alone, not hers.

It's just so much easier to always do the right thing.  I failed to get that point across, but I have so very little time in which to get it done, compounded with genetic influences and predispositions, plus some malfunctioning brain synapses.

On the other hand, an older son spoke words I've long waited to hear, "I'm too old for this crap," was the gist.  Well, I wish he'd have chosen the word 'crap.'  Or selected 'screwed up' as he later elaborated with some other choice bad words.  At least he's verbalizing, right?

A son-in-law has undergone two blood transfusions in two days time, diagnosed with a thalassemia blood disorder, it's seen in Southeastern Asians.  Even I know where Laos is located.  Both parents have to be carriers for the next generation to have this, therefore his wife's Central American heritage has saved the day for my three Honduran-Laotian grandchildren.  Who knew?

I know the heavy load his wife, my daughter, is laboring under.  Life is completely hard enough without bad choices putting my other thuggish kids in jail.  I go from one extreme to the other.  Collect phone calls from jail and scary texts from the ER.

Again, folks, doing the right thing is best case scenario.

I do not bail people out of jail.  That is only enabling these criminal behaviors.  It would then be me silently saying, "This is acceptable behavior," when clearly it is not.

Don't want to go to jail?  Don't break laws.

I'm afraid his baby's mama will bail him out.  I like her, she's very cute, but her baby's gonna need this money, and this guy has been arrested too many times, never learning not to re-offend because someone always bails him out.

That someone is never me.

Good Golly, who can afford to throw away money like that?

I will work my paperwork marvels and come up with scholarship money for my grown kids to go to college, I'll buy gifts when I can, I'll even financially help out at times if I have the money (which is becoming increasingly rare - the Recession is kicking everyone's financial butts) and if I don't see the needy person squandering everything.

Lily photoshopped this 'Forever Alone' cloud for me.  We'd all been laughing about if I ever won a trip for four who would I take?

Duh, y'all.  I'd go four times ALONE.