Balls and bubbles.

Yesterday was a perfect day for taking Eleanore outside to play. Let me try and explain how our base housing is set up. All of the houses are in big circles. Loops if you prefer. As you drive along the roads, rather than driving beside front yards, like you would if you were driving through most other neighborhoods, you drive beside individually fenced in back yards, and driveways. All of our front yards, are where the back yard should be. And they're all connected. We've all got our own little front yards that's we're supposed to take care of, and then a big giant yard in the middle. A large circle shaped sidewalk separates the two. Are you following? Because I think I've just confused myself. Well in that joint-yard space, is a park. And there is a park in every housing loop. Sometimes two. Does that make sense? What I'm getting at, is, when we want to take Eleanore out to play, the park is just a few steps away, I can see it from where I'm sitting as I type this. Yesterday morning I covered her in sunblock and we went to swing. When that got boring, she decided she wanted to play with her ball. Well this decision came after I was tired of standing in the big sand pit, and asked her "Do you want to go get your ball?". So we walked home, I hunted down her ball (in the kitchen?), and back out we went. I kicked it as hard as I could, so it went out of our yard, and into the joint yard. I turned back to say "Eleanore, go get your ball", and when I looked forward again, there was a giant dog running for the ball. It scared the crap out of me. Where in the heck did this dog come from?! He wasn't there 10 seconds ago! The dog is obviously thrilled to be playing ball. Hes falling all over it, tearing it up in his mouth, and before we knew it, running towards us with the ball hanging out of his mouth. He knocked Eleanore right on her butt, but in a gentle way, so I could tell he was used to being around kids. She started crying, and was more scared than anything. The dog was super excited, and couldn't sit still for even a second. He took off running around the houses, and left a very shredded pink and grey ball behind him. A woman and her son came out of one of the nearby houses, and were calling for the dog. I replied with "Your dog ate our ball". I guess I could have said nice to meet you, but at the time, I was still recovering from the death of the ball. All of it had happened in about a minutes time, it was very quick. I was glad to meet the lady, even though I still can't remember her name. A lot of our other neighbors are snobbery at its best, and turn their noses up to us as they drive around in their golf carts, go carts, and toy power wheels. When they caught the dog a few minutes later, I decided to take the slowly deflating ball over to them, and let the dog finish the job. The son kicked the ball for the dog, he chased and attacked it, and they did this until the ball was flat as a pancake. And while they were doing that, Eleanore was standing next to me whining and crying about either the fact that there was a big barking dog, or the fact that the big barking dog was playing with her ball and she wasn't. We didn't have anymore balls inside, so I decided we'd blow bubbles instead. We being me. I blew bubbles until I was light headed. When she takes a bath, we call her bubble bath "bubbles" as well. So she had a hard time telling the difference between the two, and kept sticking her hand in the bottle and then rubbing the solution in her hair, while saying "clean! clean!". Ugh. So we sat out on the sidewalk "getting clean" for at least an hour. I kept trying to teach her how to do it, but she would just try to stick the bubble wand in her mouth. Last night after all of the grocery shopping was done and dinner had been placed in the oven, the ball killing dog owner came over, and presented Eleanore with 3 brand new balls. Wow! So all morning Eleanore has been piling balls in my lap and yelling "Ball!". As soon as it warms up a little this morning, we'll put on our sandals and sunblock, grab the balls and bubbles, and try again.