Weekend wrap up

It was an odd one. It started with a bizarre encounter with a very disturbed young man at my favorite Silverlake park. He was a slight teenager who was loitering around suspiciously, who I had noticed was watching a girl work out a little too closely. It's funny, whenever I have a weird episode with someone on the street, I always notice them being inappropriate before they even get to me. I remember as a kid my mother pulling me away from a man at the beach in a flesh colored Speedo standing in the waves, saying, "that man looks like he's about to do something unpleasant." So this kid makes a bee line for me, where I am sitting in the grass next to my stroller a good distance away from Bumpus who is wandering near some bushes.

"Do you have the time?" he asked.

"Ummm...twelve thirty," I responded.

"Is that your son?"

"Yes."

"What's your name?" that man is about to do something unpleasant...

"Hilary."

"My name's Mike," and he leans in way too close and kisses my hand. I dart up and say, "well, time to go!" and immediately shove the stroller over to where B is and don't leave his side again. Ugh! Creeps! Talk about rapist-in-training. The guy lingers around for a bit looking for another woman to harass and I keep my eyes glued to him, until he leaves the park. It kind of makes me not want to go there anymore, even though there were plenty of people around and nothing could have happened to me. The paranoiac in me wonders if he followed me home. And now my Internet has crapped out which leaves me with the side effect of no burglar alarm tonight. Sleep tight!

In other news, went to a very kid-friendly baby shower today, in which a gaggle of toddlers, babies, and kids laid ruin to this nice family's house. Oh, the mouthed toys, the crumbs smashed into carpets, the shoes on couches - the horror! It makes me sad that I am too uptight to probably ever be able to have large groups of kids over at this house...but this also means I get to enjoy an adult home with nice things in it and don't have to live in a padded romper room like most of my friends. Of course, I say that now.

Took B into the bouncy house. He found it horrifying. He clung to me until I convinced him it was ok to give it a little bounce. I can see how scary this must be to one who's just getting his bearings on hard ground and now we've gone and changed all the rules on him. Later I observed an older girl ripping chalk out of his hands and pushing him away from toys she was playing with. Sigh. I'm kind of accepting that this is a big part of having kids - watching other, bigger kids be mean to your kid, and just having to deal with it. On the bright side, he didn't seem to care. He was more interested in kicking the soccer ball around. He is 1/4 Brazilian after all.