And a lovely lunch it was. I had a coffee, a cider, and the ploughman's platter. Got lots of hugs, caught up with some folx, met some oft-admired others for the first time. Jhames is adorable, Jessica's a doll, as is Bob. Min Jung & I both had Djarums. George was all smiles & hugs and Gwen reigned supreme. Joe took pictures & made me laugh. We had Lara and Melissa reppin' The Town, and I wished I'd had a chance to chat with Adrienne. Some of the peeps were too far down the table for me to get much conversation with 'em, but everyone meeted & greeted & had a good time. So many cool people in one spot - you can't get much better than that.

Well, this here is better - much, much better: Jayden gets a ride both ways now, to and from his morning school. They take him to his Head Start in the afternoon, and the only bus ride he takes is the one home. He loves his morning school, and he's been getting up without crying in the morning, getting dressed without fuss, and even getting him to bed at night seems to have improved a bit.

*WHEW!*

Getting around is still rough, and I'm still gonna try to get me a bucket somehow, but now I HAVE TIME to get some shit done. It's the biggest relief, you just don't know.

We left basketball early Saturday morning, because Jayden was unable to keep his hands off the other kids. He did really well in the warm-up, and he's getting good at shooting the ball, but when the actual practice started he became just too disruptive. So we went outside for a walk, and Jayden fell in a big ass puddle. I decided I didn't want to put wet clothes on him after he went swimming, so we skipped swim class and got on the bus. It was raining pretty hard, and I just wanted to be out of the Y and somewhere dry; the bus was coming so we hopped on. And I had a couple of movie passes in my purse - I'd won them, and was trying to hold onto them until I could maybe go see something with a grownup, but instead we went to see X-Men 2.

It's the first time Jayden's been to see any movie without a G rating; I felt a little guilty at first, because of the violence, but I talked to him about it before & during the movie, pissing off the guy behind us, who kept muttering "Jesus!" every time Jayden asked a question & I answered (and Jayden was constantly with the "why? who is that? what are they doing?"). He'd asked me a few minutes into the movie to "keep it down", which I was trying to do anyway, and I told him that I needed to explain things to my 5 year old because he didn't understand everything that was going on, and he asked us to move. I said "we're staying right here" and he was all "well can you please keep it down", which I didn't respond to. Fuck him and his funky little comments. If he didn't want to deal with people, he shoulda waited for it to come out on tape. If he didn't want to deal with kids, he shouldn't have gone to a Saturday noon matinee, dammit!

I wanted to see the movie as bad as Jayden did. I haven't seen the first one, but I've loved the X-Men comic books since I was in junior high. I also happen to have this big, inexplicable crush on Alan Cumming. He was great as Nightcrawler, but I didn't like the chick who played Mystique. They shoulda had her wear her dress with that skull-bomb belt. And I think Angela Bassett would make a better Storm than Halle Berry. Halle's cute, though. And what happened to Rogue's southern accent? Where's Kitty Pryde? Was she in the first one? Still & all, I loved the movie. I'm glad we went.

My daddy's in town, and he's at my brother's house, which is three blocks away, and he wanted to hang out with his grandson. So I dropped Jayden off there and his Zaide brought him home a few hours later. They had a great time. Today, daddy's taking Jayden to the Y, where Jayden's going to swim with his grandma, and they're gonna have lunch, and the boy's going to have a blast.

There's quite a bit of writing I feel I have to do right now, but there's no time...and I have tons of emails to send, and hella notes to mail off, some incense to light and a gang of packin' to do, so I'll holla when I get a minute...

*muah!*