The Queen's Rambles

Boy howdy, people, I was hot under the collar today. Still am, truth be told.

Erik was outside playing with a group of kids I don’t really like him to play with. They were two bitchy young teen girls, hanging all over a nice young teen guy. Erik likes to play with them because the nice guy has a five year old brother that tags along every where.

When I got home from getting groceries they were playing right in front of our house. I hear the black teen girl (if this story matters, one girl is white, one is black, and the boys are Filipino) calling Erik “Hitler.” She is laughing and keeps saying his new name is Hitler and that she likes to call white people Hitler.

I was livid, as you can well imagine.

Erik was clueless and thought Hitler was a fun new name.

At first I just asked what was going on and she denied it, but I told her I heard her. I took the groceries in the house and became angrier by the minute.

It would be one thing if Erik was being bossy and they were all teenage peers and she called him that. It’s quite another for her to call an innocent little boy a name that he has no clue about and think it’s some big joke. It’s racist. Pure and simple.

So I go over there and ask if her parents are home. She tells me no, but I went up to knock on the door anyway since there were three cars in the drive. She started screaming at me that she was going to call the police on me if I didn’t get off her property, which was when I knew her parents would not approve of her calling little five year old boys racist names.

Indeed, her mother was PISSED. She apologized to me and made her daughter apologize. We didn’t see the daughter again.

Poor Erik, though.

He had no idea what was going on, why I was mad or why I had just gotten this girl in trouble.

The other jackass teenagers started being mean to him and wouldn’t play with him. His days of lots of unsupervised outside time are at an end for awhile, I’m afraid. I don’t know if I did the right thing by tattling, but at the time it felt right. If my teenager was calling a little girl a horrible, racist name I would want to know (and my teenager would be feeling my WRATH).

Both Mike and I took turns outside with Erik and he was crying and crying because those kids wouldn’t play with him, but he refused to go up the street to where the nice kids were playing. I tried to explain that those kids were mean and it would be much better to play with his real friends, but he thought the teenagers were cool and wanted to play with them.

I just hope that we don’t see any worse fall out from this. It is often not wise to get on the bad side of a bitchy teen girl because they know no limits. We live directly across the street. The mom was horrified and so I guess she would probably be on our side, but who knows what will happen?

I’m still kind of shook up about the whole thing. I suppose I was making a mountain out of a mole hill, but that girl needed to learn that you just don’t do that. You don’t pick on an innocent little five year old boy.

In happier news, I guess I have just been feeding Elsa the wrong things. In the past 48 hours she has totally devoured spicy pinto beans, pesto pasta, taco meat, cheese, apple cereal bars. She no longer wants the gross little Gerber Pasta Pick-ups, which is fine with me except they were having a sale and I totally stocked up. Maybe our food bank will be getting a big donation sometime soon. Maybe she’ll eat them if I put a big dollop of pesto on them. I’m just glad she’s eating and that my freak out about her gagging was all a huge overreaction. I just really really really really never want to be in denial when something is wrong because that bugs me, so I guess I go the other direction. Not that I was ever super worried, but I think it’s good to keep an eye on things you aren’t sure about.

Kindle update: Love it! I like to read when Elsa is sleeping on my lap, but it is really uncomfortable to hold the book and sometimes turning the pages wakes her up. No problemo with the Kindle. I can just sort of lean it on her and the page turns with a single little button click. Unfortunately, my library does not offer any Kindle loans, but I have discovered some Kindle book trading sites. I haven’t explored them fully b/c the loan only lasts 14 days so I don’t want to download anything until I finish my current book.

Diaper Update: Remember a few weeks ago I was praising Ecobumz diapers? I hope none of you rushed out to order some. I don’t know what the deal is, but they are still having their “72 Hour Sale” from a few weeks ago, my diapers haven’t been shipped and no one is answering e-mails. I am irked because those diapers are totally awesome for night time, but at least I paid with paypal so I will be able to get a refund if I file a claim within 45 days of the sale. I need to mark my calendar. I was really happy yesterday when I opened my diaper bag and found another one of those diapers. I put my least desirable diapers in the bag so obviously I haven’t changed her diaper while out in quite awhile. I also found a cute shirt and pair of pants that had been missing. Guess I need to rotate the contents a little more often.