Lightening Bugs and Margaritas

I took the dreaded jack russell who has a napoleonic view of the world for another walk. We are walking alot lately. He needs the exercise to tame that attitude and settle him a bit for his indoor life. I need the endorphines that generate from the exercise after looking after six kids, and I need the silence of walking in a quiet neighbourhood. While we walk I am retraining the dog-who-thinks-he-rules-the-planet, one of the nieghbours dog, a beautifully natured lab, has in the past had issue with the jack russell trying to overpower her. It has been interesting reminding little napoleon that walking is a much nicer outing when he sits and watches as beautiful lab walks by rather than morphing into a tyrannt, that his overindulgent owner has let him get away with previously.

So we walk.

A couple nights ago we walked and on the way home, I spotted Lightening BUGS!
The bugs brought to mind a sweet time in my childhood. Before my mum married my stepfather, my sister and I used to roam free as little birds, as a parent I find my mum's hands-off laizefaire attitude to childrearing slightly scary, but as a little urchin I LOVED it. I wandered the neighbourhood completely independent of adult input, climbing to my hearts content, and running around with the other urchins in the neighbourhood, occassionally I had to tolerate my sister's input but that too was rare, we came to an understanding quite young in our life "she who tattles -SUFFERS!" It worked for us. She ran and got me an icepack, an ice cream sandwich and a neighbour when I got partially impalled on a tree. True sisterly love. The lightening bugs brought it all back.

I did not see lightening bugs in Australia.

I realize now that I missed them.
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Post walk and budget talks with my friends that I am staying with I caught up with a friend in town. She had blown in to rapid fire advertise all over town for her upcoming shin-dig. We met up, and parked ourselves at a cute little Mexican cantina look-alike, to talk life over Margaritas and chips and queso. Life is ever so sweet. Good friends are precious, and friends who have seen you through years of stuff in life are a commodity that can not be measured. Nice to see the town I currently live in and have chosen to raise my babies in, through another's eyes. Eyes that like mine like to see the good all around us. Optimism is fabulous and catching.

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The Texas A&M women's soccer team dominated Uni of North Carolina. I took the kids to see the girls play last night. We parked ourselves with some friends and some of their friends in amongst the Uni students to yell our team to victory. UNC is ranked 4th, we are 9th. They were favourites. They were confident. 8,204 fans made sure we held that in check for them. Two halves passed with nil all. The first period of overtime passed still nil all. The Aggies had controlled the game each time they got the ball, quite regularlly stealing the ball to take a shot at goal. The second overtime period was drawing to a close, it was 10:28, the girls won the ball at halfway, sent it up, showed some grand skills and then rocketed a goal home with 2 minutes left on the clock. The stadium went bananas. It was loud and ruckus. My babies and I love it.

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I don't know why I worry.

But I do.

On the way home from the match, my oldest informed me that a girl asked him out today.

I visualised my favourite beach and calmly inquired what his response to that was, I get points somewhere for that.

He said "um, that's nice but no thank you." and then he added for my benefit, "what was she thinking mum? I'm way too young to date."

Bless you sweet innocent little Australian boy!

I might need a rum though.