The air is so good and crisp and clean that I want to buy new shoes.

I won't though.  I don't need new shoes.  I have two pairs of old Danskos that I love and they love me back, even though I totally busted up the toes on my brown clogs when I fell smack on my face in the middle of the ghetto a few months ago.  Did I tell that story here?

Yeah, well, I fell flat on my face when I tripped on a piece of nothing over in Point Breeze and a big old prostitute (she was big, and she was old.  For a prostitute.  I'm guessing 55?  60?  Or maybe just a really rough-looking thirty-something) started running (read: braless in a miniskirt) across the street screaming "girl!  You best get up off the street like that!  You can't just be laying in the street over here.  They come and lock you up for sure you just keep laying on the street like that" and then a handful of teen aged boys came across from the other corner yelling at the big old prostitute "don't you touch that girl in the street! Don't let her touch you!  You gonna get AIDS or something for sure if you let her help you up".  And I stood up and brushed myself off and rubbed my knee and picked up my phone that flew out of my bag and said thank you to everyone and went home.
All in a day's work.

So I don't need new shoes.  Which is good because I just bought school shoes for the boy.  And soccer cleats.  And ballet slippers.
When you buy ballet slippers for your boy at Payless during BOGO, the sales associate will pick up the slippers and point them at your child and suggest that you "pick up the stockings that go with these for her" but luckily your boy will be too obsessed with the security cameras that display on the cctv that is hung above the registers to notice that someone just asked you if you wanted to buy him pantyhose.  And called him a her.

Jacob would make a funny looking her.
Not really.
He would make a beautiful her.  Who am I kidding?
But with his hair cut shortish and his clothes, he makes a funny looking her.

There's no difference between boys' ballet slippers and girls' ballet slippers, just that boys wear black.  I'll sew them up for him tonight or sometime this week and put them with his ninja suit so they're all ready for school.

When I was newly pregnant and envisioning late nights spent sewing up ballet slippers, they were pink.  But this is okay too.

Something I do to teenaged (and sadly sometimes beyond) boys who wear their waistband below their butt cheeks is pull them aside and whisper in their ear that they "must have sat in something because there is a mark on their undershorts that looks like-um- you know" and then they get embarrassed and say thanks or say nothing but they always pull up their pants.

Soccer started last night.  Dave is coaching, he sort of got roped in to it.  Jacob seems to listen to Dave as Coach miles better than he listens to Dave as Dad.  We might have to work that in to homelife somehow.  The jerseys this year are a weird celery color that would make a great bridesmaid dress but don't scream "SPORTS!!" in any sort of way. 
The girls who I can't stand are on Jake's team.  Of course.  I can't STAND these kids.  Or their parents.  And I feel bad because I know that all three of the children in the family are diagnosable but they don't go to a school/ have a mom and dad that really supports or encourages treating diagnoses so they are sort of screwed.  It's not the kids' faults that they aren't getting the help they need.  And you should see how gorgeous the girls would be if their mother would wash and brush their long thick curly blonde hair and scrub the snots off their adorable faces.  They'd be like little Gap Kids.  But instead they look like Walmart Brats.  So sad.  I know some of the guidance department at their school (last spring at tee ball I asked the mom where the kids go to school, I wanted to be sure it wasn't the same as Jake's) and I think I might call in a favor.  Is that wrong?  I don't think so.  But what do I know? Ethics?  Bah!

Two weeks from yesterday until school starts up.  I think I might take the whole day off.  And get a massage or have my feet professionally cleaned or something.  I can make it an annual ritual.  All I need to do is find a spa open on Mondays.