I don't know beans....

Check this out. It's a giant bean. Who thinks these things up?

Yesterday I went mini golfing with my son because they had a special reception for all the kids who made their First Communion last weekend. Then they let the kids out of school. (Helpful if you work... uh, I need ANOTHER day off...)

We swung by my daughter's class first to see if the teacher would let her go but she more or less said "Hi" and in a subtle way let me know we should get lost, she wouldn't be joining us. :o)

I was looking at some stuff on the wall outside the class because they hang up the children's work. They had written pieces titled "My favorite person". I was trying to find B's because I knew she wrote about my sister. So this guy L. was standing there with his son looking at them too. (R. also made his first communion and was free for the rest of the day). R starts reading one girl's story and it is about her Mom..... and how she died a couple of years ago. He's asking me what the words are and I'm telling him (things like "cancer") and I'm thinking "Oh, this is so sad!!!"

L. mumbles "I didn't see this before now" and I realize that once again I have failed to connect what is actually going on around me. I do this all the time and I hate it. I had forgotten that R.'s sister is in my daughter's class, and so I'm realizing the guy next to me is hearing for the first time his son is reading this piece that the daughter wrote about their deceased Mom.

L was actually crying a bit and I just felt so horrible. I don't really know him at all and I didn't know what to do, so after the kid was done reading I made this lame guesture of ruffling his little buzz cut and touching L's arm and saying "well I guess we're going to go, you take care now. " So lame! I couldn't scrape up a better sentence. I wanted to say more but the guy has actually remarried (I think the Mom died 3 years ago) and the new wife was coming down the hall so I figured maybe it was best to excuse myself.

Oy vey.

So off we go to mini golf, and now I'm thinking about children missing their moms, so basically if Dan had said "Let's go to Disney" I would have said "get in the car, you're on". On the first hole I shot an 8 and thought "this is going to be a very long day". I got my act together though. Around the 6th hole I thought I had forgotten to write a score down because I had actually started writing too high on the little scorecard. (I'd scan it to show you but damn Filebin is still down. Eff you all over again, hackers, and thanks JV for esssplaining it to me.) So yes, I can not even keep score for mini golf correctly. You have to laugh about things like that. He ended up beating me by 1 shot on the first 9 but the back half of the course is much harder. I realized I was ahead of him by 11 shots when we got to the last hole so I deliberately hit it very hard several times in all different directions. Shot a 12, and we tied. Who says I don't love my baby? I will completely shame myself at mini golf for him.

The sun is out. At least, I think it's the sun. I've forgotten. It's a great big yellow ball and it's warm. I'm going to sit out in the sunshine and be all sentimental and stuff.