Yesterday, with Lil’B was not one of the more exciting outings I’ve had, but it was still good.  I mentioned that last week his mother  had asked that I help him with some of his school work that she couldn’t really help him with.  I was happy to do so and it actually  worked out kind of well, because I didn’t have a lot of money to spend this week.

I picked Lil’B up at 12:00 and we went to pick up a take ‘n bake pizza.  I asked him what kind of toppings he liked and he said  pepperoni.  (Good start.  I’m kinda finicky about my pizza toppings and I like pepperoni.)  I asked him if he liked anything else on his  pizza and he thought for a minute before telling me that he only liked pepperoni.  I like extra cheese, pepperoni and black olives.  I also like Hawaiian pizza but that’s not relevant to this story.  I asked him if he liked black olives and he said, “What are those?”

We went to the pizza place, which happens to be inside of a mom and pop (actually, I’m fairly certain this one is pop and pop) video  store.  I put in the order and got half with black olives and half just pepperoni and while we waited for them to make the pizza we did our usual dance where Lil’B wanders around in no discernible pattern and I follow him to see what he finds.  He headed toward the  “Sci Fi” section of the store, and I put that in quotes because some of those movies seemed more like horror to me, and as far as I’m  concerned Horror is not Sci Fi.  First he was attracted to the Star Wars DVD covers.  He picked up Episode IV (the first one) and I  asked him if he’d ever seen it.  He said he had not and then I looked at the back cover only to realize that the movie came out only  two short years after I was born.  Then he picked up Episode I and he told me had seen this one.  When he asked me how old that one  was I turned it over and saw that it came out in 2000 (IMDB says 1999, I’m not sure what the discrepancy is.)  I told him, “This one  came out in 2000.  Before you were born!  And I’m getting older by the second!”

He perused some more titles, grabbing the cases and ooing and ahing in typical seven year old fashion, showing great cinematic  discretion as his level of excitement increased in direct proportion to the gruesomeness of the cover photo.  When he picked up one  (the title immediately forgotten) with a giant picture of a snake on it, I turned away.  “Ooo.  This one looks cool!” he said.  “Yeah?” I asked, still not looking.

“It’s got a snake on it,” he told me excitedly.  I’ve told him I do not like snakes.

“I know,” I said steadily, “that’s why I’m not looking.”  And wouldn’t you know that’s when they called my name and announced that  my pizza was ready.  Bummer!

I took Lil’B back to my house, where I baked the pizza while cleaning up my kitchen.  For a few minutes Lil’B just stood in the kitchen  watching me, still wearing his jacket and backpack.  I told him to make himself comfortable and he loosened up a little bit.  Still  wearing his jacket and backpack he began counting.  He counted my light fixtures.  He counted my windows.  He counted my cupboards.  Then he noticed the superman dry erase board on the side of my refrigerator and thought that was pretty cool.  I asked him, “What else do you see on that side of the refrigerator?”

“Cat,” he said.

“Cat?” I asked.  “There’s a cat on the side of my refrigerator?”  He pulled a magnet with a picture of a cat just like Mischa off the side  panel and showed it to me before putting it back.  “Sure enough.  There’s a cat on the side of my refrigerator.  What else do you see?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he told me, as he so often does.  It’s all one word that I’m not sure how to type.  Something along the lines of  “iontknow”

“You don’t know?” I asked him again.  “There’s something else over there,” I told him.  There’s actually a few somethings else over there, but I was looking for one thing in particular.

“Kevin Riggs,” he read aloud.  “Oh!  My picture!” he said with great pride.

On our very first meeting, we wrapped up our play time by drawing pictures for each other.  He had written my name on the paper.   When I got home I put the pictures he drew for me up on my refrigerator.  I knew he’d come over sooner or later and when he did I wanted him to see that I appreciated his gift.

The pizza was ready and I took it out of the oven.  I have marble counter tops, which I love because I could put the pizza down right  on the counter without worry.  I let it cool for a minute while filling a couple of cups with ice for beverages.  The cups are from The Rainforest Café and they have flashing lights in the bottom of them.  I surreptitiously pushed the button and the lights started  flashing and he was absolutely dazzled, thought it was the coolest thing ever!

The kids at the pizza place over shot “half” by a little bit so some of the slices on Lil’B’s side of the pizza had olives on them.  I told him this and said, “Give it a try.  If you don’t like them you can pick them off.”

“They look like wheels!” he told me.  He thought that was pretty great.

Since I don’t have a table I had to improvise and then I remembered when I was a kid, sometimes my mother would spread out a  blanket on the living room floor and we’d have a “picnic” right there in the house.  I have a tray with legs like you’d use in bed that I  set up on the blanket so he’d have a steady and somewhat elevated place to work from and we sat down to eat while I looked over his  assignments.

Man it’s been a long time since I was in the second grade.  I found a lot of the work to be tedious and I was surprised to see how long it  ook us to go through it, about two and half hours that felt like five.  But I knew that it was right on the level it needed to be for him  and he did a good job with it.  Some of the instructions on the pages weren’t very clear, which is a bad thing, but other than that we  got through it just fine.

On Saturday, Michelle and I made a quick trip to Target and I looked at the toys and games.  I wanted to have something for him/us to do if and when his school work was finished.  I found Monopoly Junior for only $10.99 and decided that it fit the bill.  When we went back to Michelle’s apartment, I made her play a couple rounds, while my clothes were in the wash, so that I was sure I knew  how to play with Lil’B.  I found the game very – almost too – simplistic, designed in such a way that the games are pretty short; however, I guess that’s ideal for a five to eight year old as the box said.

After all the schoolwork we could do was completed, I put his papers back in his backpack and we set up the game.  I wasn’t sure how it would go over, but he thought it was “Aaawwesoooome!” so I guess that’s good!  We got three games in before I had to take him  home.  I wasn’t sure how he would react to losing, (I know I was a pretty sore loser at his age) but he took in stride.  I’m sure it helped that of the three games we played, he won the first two.

It was a nice change of pace from our usual outings, which, while I want to show him new things and have fun doing things he might  not otherwise get to do, I also want to do more normal, down to earth things with him.  My only concern is I don’t want to have our relationship relegated to being his tutor.  I’ll have to keep a close eye on this and make sure that doesn’t happen.

I was supposed to have a phone check-in with Hadley, the Match Support Specialist, today, but she didn’t answer the phone when I called and her office hours are officially over for the day.  We’ll see when she calls me back.  I’m hoping she can give me some input about it.

I decided that I had been spending too much money on dry cleaning, just to have at least three shirts come back every time with  broken buttons, all because I hate to iron, so I broke down and bought an iron and ironing board last week-end.  After I dropped Lil’B  off I went back home and spent three hours ironing twelve shirts and three pairs of pants.  When I finally stopped (with twenty more shirts to go) my legs were kind of twitchy from standing on them on my hard floors for a few hours.

I sat down in my recliner for a little while to give Mischa so much demanded—er, deserved attention and watch one of my favorite TV  hows, Brothers and Sisters.  My legs were a little sore and my muscles were twitching a little but I put the foot rest up and  relaxed.  No big deal.

My DVR’d recording of Brothers and Sisters ended just in time for me to see the weather report and the description of the massive  storm headed for the Bay Area.  I take these reports with a grain of salt because anything more than a light drizzle is so uncommon  along the California coast line and the weather reporters are so unreliable that it should be called a “Weather Guess” instead of a  Weather Report.

The graphic swirled with colors and three dimensional rain drops and lightning bolts and the weather woman mentioned high winds  and it all evoked images of The Day After Tomorrow and I wondered if I should plan my root to the main library branch (or build an  arc).  And then in a moment of random thought I said to Mischa (‘cause he pays attention) “Looks like earthquake weather.”  For those uninitiated, there is no such thing as “earthquake weather”.  I turned the TV off, checked the locks and headed toward the back  of my apartment for my bedtime rituals. When I went to bed at 11:45 my lower extremities were much relieved to be horizontal.

In the “unnecessary details” department, I have sham pillows on my bed that I don’t have anywhere to put when I’m actually in the  bed so they sit leaning on the headboard which reduces the amount of space for me to sleep in.  This is generally not a problem but I  hadn’t realized I was lower on the mattress than normal.  I was lying on my stomach and had my left leg extended straight down with my foot pressed up against the foot board.  I was just dozing off at about 12:05 AM when I heard a loud popping/creaking sound and felt my bed shake.  I was wide awake after that, certain there had just been an earthquake.

I grabbed my trusty iPhone and pulled up the USGS website with the recent earthquakes maps to see what magnitude the quake had  been and there was nothing for the Bay area.  I waited a couple minutes and refreshed the page to see.  Still nothing.  I waited a few minutes more and checked again, with the same result.

That’s when it dawned on me that with my foot pressed against the foot board, I must have had a muscle spasm in my leg and shaken  the bed.  And shaken myself…awake.  I turned on my side, pulled my knees up a little closer to my chest and was out like a light.

In other news:

It’s Monday again.  A Monday that should be a holiday but apparently my company hates Christopher Columbus.  I’m not sure if  BART was running a holiday schedule today or what, but the garage was very full when I arrived this morning.

The weather has turned and it’s very cold.  Of course in the Bay area cold is 63 degrees with cloudy skies, so I expect little to no  sympathy from my readers in the great white north today, but it’s still cold to me!  Monday’s are the worst in my office after a cold  week-end ‘cause the heater hasn’t been on since Saturday afternoon and it takes a long time to get warm.  My hands have been like  blocks of ice most of the day and I literally just took my coat off for the first time today, just so I can put it back on to go home in about forty-five minutes.

My iPhone Genius play list seems to be racist.  The last two play lists have been all African American artists (both based on Jennifer  Hudson songs) unless you don’t consider Maria Carey to be black.  How “genius” can you be if you’re racist, I ask you?!?

One of the things I really enjoy about being a Big Brother is that I have an excuse to do things I might not otherwise get to do.  Sometimes it’s as simple as going to kids movies, like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and, later this year, Alvin and the Chipmunks.  Sometimes it is something more touristy.  Either way it is new to Lil’B (formerly known as “Little”) and it is fun for me.

This week, I decided to take Lil’B to the Cable Car Museum in San Francisco.  From my first experience on a San Francisco cable car, I have loved them.  If you’re lucky enough to get to “hang on”, a San Francisco tradition of standing on the step of the cable car and holding on to the poles (sometimes for dear life), it’s one of the best  ways to see the sites of The City, and every trip, as the cable car passes by the  Cable Car Museum I think to myself, “I’ve really got to get in there.”

I picked Lil’B up at 11:30 in the morning and we went to Boston Market to get some lunch and while we were eating it occurred to me that I had to buy cat food and the store I have to get it from would close before I got back across the bay.  I told Lil’B we had to make a detour and we headed off to the pet food store.  I had opened the last can of food that morning and if I came home empty handed Mischa wasn’t going to let me in the house.

With the cats ransom demand in tow, we headed to the BART station for our ride into The City.

By the way: For those who do not know, there are, apparently, three separate “the city”s.  There is “the city”.  This is how anyone who lives near but not in an urban metropolis refers to said metropolis.  There is “The City” which as anyone who’s anyone knows, is San Francisco.  And then there’s “THE City”, New York City.

Anyway, Lil’B told me he had never been on BART.  Hard to imagine a kid growing up in the Bay Area has never been on BART but that’s what he told me, never been on BART, never been on a cable car, so this outing was full of new experiences for him.  I purchased the BART tickets and showed him how to use his to get through the turnstiles.

The previous week, Lil’B pointed out an Oakland Police SUV in a parking lot as we drove by and I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him some probing questions about how he feels about the police.  I found out that Police are not his “friends” because “they’re adults and I’m little” and he’s been taught not to talk to strangers.  This is good advice for sure, but I assured him that policemen were his friends and if he was  ever lost or in trouble and he saw a policeman he could trust them to help him.  I gathered from this, though, that Lil’B has some apprehension about strange adults and it showed on our outing.

Riding BART on a Sunday afternoon, there is no guarantee of finding a seat and when we first boarded the train there was one open seat  available.  I offered it to Lil’B and at first he did not want to sit down.  There was a woman sitting in the seat next to it and I suspected he was nervous about sitting next to a stranger.  I assured him, I’d be right there with him and he finally sat down.  Very quickly after that a seat adjacent to him became available and I sat down as well.

Once we arrived in The City, the plan was to take the cable car from the Powell street end of the line and ride it to the Cable Car Museum, which also happens to be the “barn” where they park the cable cars overnight, but when we arrived at the “turnaround” (they literally turn the  cable cars around on giant turntables) the line was out of control. It would have taken hours to get on a cable car, so we started walking  toward the museum, toward a very steep hill, while I tried to think of an alternative method of travel.  I saw one of the cable car operators sitting on a cable car waiting his turn to go down the way and pick up passengers, so I stopped and asked him, “Short of taking a cable car, what’s the best way to get to the Cable Car Museum?”

“Taking a cable car,” he answered.  My face smiled, but my brain was rolling its eyes.

“But there’s a huge line,” I said as I gestured back down the hill, “That’ll take three hours.”

“No it won’t,” he told me, “walk up to O’Farrell and get on at the first stop.”

Brilliant!  Why didn’t I think of that?  We didn’t get to ride on the section of cable car with the outward facing seats and the “hangers on”, and  we didn’t get to sit down, but at least we got on and made our way to the museum.

The Cable Car Museum is a free attraction in the center of the routes, which doubles, as I mentioned, as the over-night storage facility for the cars.

It is also the source of the power for all the cables that run underground and power the four cable car routes.  In other words, the machinery that powers the movement of the cables is all right there, out in the open in the museum and it is very loud.

There is about 800 square feet of museum, which is not guided and requires a lot of reading, and not a whole lot of meaningful pictures to look at.  We walked in and Lil’B trotted off, with me following behind, making his way…to the gift shop.

After we looked around the gift shop we went on to explore the museum, but it was pretty clear that nothing was holding his interest, however at the far end of the museum was a clearly antiquated documentary  video that lasted about 15 minutes and it talked about the history of the cable car system and how it worked.  I found it fascinating, Lil’B did not and as I’m writing this, I’m remembering that I wasn’t really  particularly interested in history when I was a kid…teenager.  I don’t think most people can have a real appreciation for history until they’ve actually experienced some of it.  In other words, until you’re old enough to remember how things have changed in your own lifetime, the way  things used to be isn’t really all that interesting.  And unless you have a desire to know how things work, perhaps museums in general aren’t  all that interesting.

Anyway, I was interested in what this video had to tell us, but it quickly became apparent that Lil’B was not into it.  But here’s the cool part: he fidgeted, he squirmed, and he eventually got up and walked over to a wall where there were some pictures to look at but was still within my view, but he never complained, or whined, or asked to leave!  I was just waiting for that to start and it never did.

Not long after the video was finished we left the museum, but we still had almost four hours to kill before I was supposed to take him home.  I thought the museum would take all afternoon and it took about 40 minutes.  What was I going to do?

We walked back to the cable car stop and boarded the next one to come by, taking us along the rest of the Powell/Hyde line and depositing us at the western edge of Fisherman’s Wharf.  I decided we’d go to Pier 39 to see the Sea Lions that live there year round.  We walked for what I’m sure seemed to him like forever, but he never complained or asked where we were going, or how much farther.  He just kept walking with me.  I assured him we really were going someplace specific and it wasn’t too much farther.

As we got closer to the pier, we began to encounter more and more tourists and at one point we encountered a woman taking pictures of her group.  We were headed straight toward the gap between the camera and it’s subject and before I could say anything, Lil’B ducked right and went behind the woman with the camera.

You may be sensing a theme in what I’m saying here, which is that, I am consistently impressed with this kid.  When he goes to the  restroom, he washes his hands without being asked; when we’re driving in the car he doesn’t complain about how long the trip has been or  where we are going; he saw the woman about to take a picture and ducked out of the way; he waited semi-patiently while I watched the video at the museum; and he never complained that the museum was boring.  I admit that I don’t have much experience with kids, but I imagined that he would be more unruly and I’m consistently just so impressed that he’s not.

Anyway, I’ve gone and gotten long winded again and there’s not that much more, exciting information to tell. We got to the pier and looked at the sea lions for a long time.  I was kind of bored but I was going to allow him to look for as long as he wanted.  Once Lil’B had his fill of the sea lions we explored the pier, spent some time touring the arcade but not playing games (he never asked or  complained) and then we watched a “street performance” at a little outdoor theater on the pier where they have juggling and “comedy”, after which we began to make our way back home.

We still had to get back to  the BART station and the  easiest, best way to do that is by way of the SF Muni Historic F Line, old street cars from all around the  world that have been donated to The City and restored for the Market and Embarcadero Streets Metro service.  Once again, though, it was Sunday and there is reduced service so the cars are fewer and farther between and very crowded when they do arrive.  Lil’B handled it like a trooper though and soon we were back on BART and headed for more familiar territory.

When we got back to the car, I asked him if he had any ideas about what he wanted  to do next week and he said, “Um, actually, I think we’re going to Disneyland.”

“Um, OK.  I wish his mother had told me this before now, but OK.” I thought.  I said, “Oh. You are?  OK.  Well, I guess we’ll just–  Wait a minute.  You say, ‘we’re going to Disney Land’ I assume you mean you’re family, right?”

He did not.  I told him that sounds like fun, but unfortunately, Disneyland is really far a way, and really expensive and there’s no way we could do it in one afternoon.  I don’t think that’s going to be possible.

When I returned Lil’B to his home and spoke with his mother, I mentioned that neither of us had any ideas for next week and so I’d pick him  up at the regular time (2:00) unless I came up with something else.  She looked at Lil’B and said something to him in Spanish and he smiled at her, then at me and then he ran outside to play.  His older sister, who often translates, chuckled and said, “She told him you ought to take  him to the park and help him with his homework.”

Turns out, while Lil’B is smart and does well with his school work, he doesn’t like having his mother try to help him along with his other  siblings and would rather have undivided attention (wouldn’t we all?).  She also doesn’t understand all of it because her English is only so-so.  I told her that I’d be happy to help out if that’s what she needs.

Now our plans for Sunday are for me to pick him up at 12:00 and bring him to my house where I’ll feed him lunch and do his homework—er, rather, I’ll help him do his homework, which, since I don’t have a table should be interesting.

A table is definitely the next big purchase on my list!

Wow, what a week it has already been.  I feel like I’ve been going non-stop for days and yet really haven’t accomplished much.

This week-end provided no opportunity for rest.  Saturday I had a special training to attend with regard to Big Brothers and Big Sisters and  some special circumstances in Little’s life.  Normally, I do my laundry at Michelle’s house on the off Saturday (that being the Saturday  opposite pay day).  The training was very useful and informative but it didn’t end until 3:00 and I didn’t arrive at Michelle’s house until 3:30 or  so. I only had three loads to do, but they were big loads so they took a while to dry.

I was at Michelle’s house until around 11:00 and then had to drive home and take the laundry back in the house and feed Mischa.  He was rather insistent on his need for food and I can’t ever come straight in the house and go to bed.  I am required to sit down for a little while and let him sit on me before I can go to bed (he’s not allowed in my bedroom.)  I went to bed around 1:00 Sunday morning and got up at 9:00 or so in the morning.

I did some household chores, like cleaning the kitchen and the floors.  I also started putting my laundry away while watching a very tedious episode of 90210 (If it doesn’t improve quick, it may get dropped) but I couldn’t finish because I had to get showered and ready to go pick up Little.

One of the things I talked about at the training was that Little doesn’t always answer me when I ask him questions or he’ll just say, “I don’t know.”  Someone suggested to me that the best time to really talk to the Little’s is when you first pick them up, like in the car on the way to  the activity.  I explained that I usually try but that he doesn’t respond and since he’s still pretty short (he’s only 7 after all) I can’t even see him in my rear-view mirror to get an idea of if he’s paying attention, or if he can hear/understand me.  Someone suggested that maybe he needed a booster seat in my car.

The law says he has to be 6 years old and 60 pounds or he has to sit in a booster seat.  He’s got the 6 years old part, obviously, but I haven’t been able to find out how much he weighs.  I asked his mother on the first outing how much he weighed but she couldn’t tell me. I asked her if he had to sit in the back seat and she said yes.  Then I asked her if he needed a special seat and she told me she didn’t have one for him.  So for the first three outings he road in the back seat of my Mitsubishi Endeavor without a special seat and without responding to much of  what I said.  I felt badly that we weren’t talking but I didn’t know what to do.

Saturday, after I started my first load of laundry, Michelle and I went to Target and I bought a booster seat suitable for 40-100 pounds.  I wasn’t sure how Little would react to having to sit in it but he didn’t resist in the least and in fact was noticeably happy to have it.

Turns out, he couldn’t really see out of the car before, and while I couldn’t see him in the rear-view mirror he couldn’t really see me either.  I’m not really sure what made the big difference, but this week he was so engaged and responsive, we talked the whole time we were in the car.

We went to Castro Valley to play Miniature Golf.  Little told me he’d never been and I remember it was one of my favorite things to do when I was a little kid (I still like it a lot, shhhhh!).  What I didn’t remember is how impatient I was when I played as a little kid.  The place we went had two 18-hole courses and we were only doing one.  I let Little pick the course and he headed straight for the one I hoped he’d pick.  It was 95 degrees out when we got there (something I hadn’t accounted for in my planning) and the course he chose had a lot of water features and fountains which helped to cool the air somewhat.  The problem was, it was the more popular course and a foursome of teenagers had just started that course when we arrived.  Little didn’t want to have to wait for them.  He wanted to get to the playing.  “Oh, yeah,” I thought, “I  remember feeling like that when I was his age.”

When the teens moved on to the next hole we started out.  He told me to go first on the first hole so he could see how it’s done and I did.  I told him that after each person putts his ball toward the green, whoever gets closest to the hole goes and keeps going till he sinks his ball and then the next player goes.  On the first hole, I got my ball closest to the hole and I told him I go until I sink the ball and etc., etc., etc.  Before I even finished talking he was putting his ball.  “Oh, yeah,” I thought, “I remember feeling like that when I was his age.”

We moved along to the next hole and had to wait for the teenagers again.  Little never got particularly antsy about having to wait but I could tell he didn’t like it.  About four courses in, Little decided to putt first.  Fine.  While I was putting my ball, he went ahead and started working on sinking his ball. Hmmm, that’s not how this game works, but OK.  By the ninth hole, he was running back and interfering with my ball and  trying to finish putting my ball too.  “Oh, yeah,” I thought, “I remember feeling like that when I was his age.”  I didn’t say anything for a few  holes but finally I told him to putt his own ball and let me putt mine.  I wanted to play too.

The score card shows that Little beat me by about 6 strokes.  It’s an estimation to be sure.  I couldn’t always see him playing and don’t know how many of his wholes in one (he got three) were really holes in one, and I reduced the number of strokes on my plays whenever he interfered with the natural progression of the ball.  Since he “beat” me, I don’t figure it matters too much that I was creative with the numbers.

“Oh, yeah,” I thought, “I remember feeling this way when I was his age.”

The score card also had a coupon on it for 60 tokens for the arcade for $10.00.  Without the coupon you only get 40 tokens so this was a  good deal and I had promised him we’d play arcade games as well.

As soon as we walked into the Arcade and before I could get the tokens he started running around the arcade.  I grabbed the tokens and found him by the ski-ball games.  I told him before we started playing games I wanted him to do a loop around the arcade and see what there was before he spent all the tokens in one thing.  He looked at the air hockey table, he looked at the Mrs. Pacman game, he looked at the  shooting games and he looked at the driving games.  Would you believe we walked all around that arcade and played several different games and never once did he ask to play the shooting games!?  Victory is mine! Hah hah hah!

No, really, I didn’t say one word to him about the shooting games.  If he had asked to play one, I would have let him play it a couple times.  I wouldn’t have let him spend all the tokens in it.  He never even asked to play it.  I was stoked!

Many of the games give out tickets and he ended up with about 420 tickets at the end of the tokens.  THE BOY SPENT EVERY ONE OF HIS TICKETS ON CANDY!!

I know this isn’t particularly surprising; only, Little doesn’t get a lot of candy and in fact hasn’t asked for it once in our time together.  I asked his mother when I picked him up the first time if she had any rules I needed to enforce like no candy, or gum or soda.  She said no candy and no soda.  Glad I asked.  Later, Little told me he was allergic to candy.  (So much for my idea to take him to the Jelly Belly Factory.)  I asked his mother about the allergy.  She said he’s not allergic; she just doesn’t let him have much.  “Sometimes I give him a little, but if he has much he gets a little crazy,” she told me.

So I stood there watching the boy spend all his tickets on candy thinking, “Oh boy, this should be interesting.”  All the candy went into a  plastic bag and as we were walking back to the car, he started digging in the bag.  I told him he could have one piece of candy and the rest he had to give to his mother and she could decide when he could have more.  He got in the car and strapped himself into the newly christened  booster seat and started digging through the bag.  While I settled into the driver’s seat he selected a candy package and I turned to him and said, “Here, let me take the bag.” (I’m not a total dummy!)  With about an hour to kill before he was due home I decided to take Little to the  grocery store so I could buy the few items I had written down earlier with the intention of going after I dropped him off.

It turned out that the “piece” of candy he selected was a three in one item.  It looked like a baby bottle and the nipple of the bottle was a  sucker.  The bottle part was two pieces, the bottom piece filled with what looked to me like Nerds and the top piece filled with a powder.  I didn’t realize he was eating the powder until we were at the store, but I think it was probably intended to be mixed with water as a beverage a la Kool-Aid.

By this time, the sugar was coursing through his veins and at the store he made a B-line for the giant Halloween candy display, saying, “Cooool!  Look at this candy!  Woah!  What’s this?! Cooool!”

I told him, he had enough candy in the car and we went on about our business.  He never got particularly rambunctious but he did act almost  like it was a drug he was addicted to.  Every outing we’ve been on he’s had popcorn and/or hot dogs at the movie theater.  He has drunk water even when other things were available.  He’s a pretty fun and even tempered kid.  But I made the mistake of introducing candy into his system and suddenly…  Well…  “One was too many and a thousand was not enough.” (I filed that away for next time!) I felt badly about it as we were heading back to his house and when I dropped him off I told his mother everything.  She didn’t get upset, just seemed a little concerned and  asked, “How did he behave?”  Fortunately, he was fine, but I will definitely be vigilant about what I let him eat.

Next week we’re taking BART to San Francisco and a Cable Car to the Cable Car Museum.  Little says he’s never been on BART or the Cable Car so these will be new experiences for him.  I’ve never been to the Cable Car Museum so this will be a new experience for me.  I can’t wait!

I was going to tell you about the emotional tumult that’s occurred as a result of my Healthy Selfishness post from Friday, and about the  unbelievably fun (sarcasm is implied) time I’ve had the last three days at a Safety Fair we’ve had in our building lobby, but the unbelievable fun (sarcasm still implied) has just plain tuckered me out and it took longer than I thought it would to tell the story of my week-end, so you’ll all  just have to wait for my next post to hear the rest.

Good night and good luck!