Having Teens That Like to Hang Out With You is Awesome

Massey added this picture of her huge ice pack from therapy!!

The picture above is of my childhood home. A place full of memories and a house that will ALWAYS be my home no matter who owns or lives in it. We rode by it on the way home today.

Today was another day trip to take Massey for therapy at Children's Healthcare (a FANTASTIC place.) Once she gets there , Zach and I have an hour and a half to cruise around Lenox and look at where we wish we lived! The neighborhoods are beautiful...two blocks off of Lenox Road and you are surrounded by huge Oak trees. After we go back and pick her up, it is after 6:00 and there is NO WAY I am getting on the downtown connector. It was bad enough on the drive up after school. Once you get to the Grady curve you never get over 40MPH until the 75/85 split.

So instead we headed over via side streets to Little Five Points for a slice of pizza and a slice of life you can find no where except little Five. Street musicians, people on unicycles, homeless people, freaks, families and plain ole folks.

RAGORAMA is our favorite hangout...you can look around for hours and never get bored. We found a new pair of "Uniform" pants for Zach to wear to school and wandered around a bit more.

There is a small park at the corner of Euclid and Moreland where the homeless claim all the benches as their own and nobody argues with them. I saw an exchange of cash going down and knew what what was going on but said nothing to the kids. We hung out in Wax N Facts for a while. Walking in there is like stepping back into 1968 and a fun place to browse the myriad of cardboard boxes and see albums you haven't seen since high school.

We left to see the people who had been doing the cash swapping all sitting on a bench hand cuffed by an APD officer. Obviously someone didn't appreciate them rolling a joint at their self claimed bench.

I told the kids "Hey, at least they all have a bed for the night now."

Massey had come out of therapy with an ice pack as big as a cantaloupe plastic wrapped around her knee and we stopped to pull it off after all the ice had melted. I bet five different people asked her what was wrong and a few wanted to hear the entire story.

At Little Five Pizza, the guy who took our order had a Tat on every part of his body that we could see and was one of the nicest people we have ever met. He wanted to know about the knee, about the therapy and wanted to know WHY she needed therapy. The guy behind us in line was in a wheel chair with one tiny shriveled leg...needed no help maneuvering in the place or getting in and out of the door and got no stares from any one. Nobody stares in Little Five. Nobody looks out of place in Little Five.

There are yuppies, moms like me, single dads...entire families and every other person is an eclectic and sometimes an extreme individual... that all blend together in this small corner of the world. Some are homeless and some are driving Maserati's. Every one is an equal in Little Five and I think that is one of my favorite things about the area.

The other is that I have two teenagers that will go there WITH me , walk the streets and cruise the shops...not walking five feet behind me like they are embarrassed to be seen with me but are glad to be there with me.

Chidren's Healthcare is an awesome place and they are taking GREAT care of my girl. The bonus is that Zach always wants to go too.

It's a really HARD work out for Massey...but therapy for all of us.

Kids are TOTALLY what you raise them to be. You can raise little snots or you can raise kids that are fun to be around even when they are teen agers.

They keep me young, they keep me on my toes, they keep me in debt but I wouldn't want it ANY OTHER WAY!

Kudos to Children's Healthcare...and Kudos to my kids!

So Zach doesn't look particularly happy in the above photo...it's just because he hasn't met the woman of his dreams yet that will shove him down the path of life.

Maybe he'll meet her in Little Five!!

Thank you Children's Healthcare for doing SO much for my girl, thank you Massey and Zach for loving your "OLE" mom and thank you Atlanta for having such a wonderful place for us to hang out and enjoy each other's company.

I just wish I would have asked the drag queen at RAGORAMA what shade eye shadow was he was wearing...I think it would have looked REALLY good on me!

What a fun day...if you can't enjoy being with your kids, you haven't done something right!

Til next time...CONTENTED COTTON