Ducks and Convicts...now THERE'S a title

I have several posts that I'm in the middle of...mainly halloween stuff. I know I'm such a lagger, but I'll get there. In the meantime, today, the boy and I headed to a park during the lunch hour. Usually he's sleeping during lunchtime, which means I don't get to the park as often as I should. But since he's getting more molars and has been downright nasty and not napping as well as I'd like him to, I decided to keep him up and get some fresh air and burn some energy off of this kid. I had a loaf of bread in the freezer, so I grabbed it and decided we should go feed the ducks in Oceano. I put the loaf on my dashboard and turned on my defroster hoping to thaw out the bread, which was kinda funny because I had a few errands (bank, post office, etc) to run and I did it all with a loaf of bread on my dashboard. Got a few funny looks but it worked, and by the time we got to the park, we had squishy bread!

It was freezing down there and windy as could be, so I put made Adam put his hood up which made me laugh because he looked like such a little goblin running around. He of course made a beeline for the water, so I had to keep him from going right in...which he would have done - given the opportunity - and then I started to toss out some bread for the birds and ducks. He was dazzled by them (enough to stop wanting to get in the water anyway) and I forgot how ruthless and evil some of those birds can be! damn seagulls kept snatching it all away from the poor mallards. Anyway, it was interesting - but way too cold and windy, and every little movement caused a huge flock to fly around and I could just see myself getting crapped on, so we made it a quick bread tossing adventure.

Then we hit the park - which was toasty warm in the sun and not at all windy. Adam quickly made friends with two other boys there and as always ran around for a bit and then headed directly for the swings. He LOVES to swing...and nine times out of ten, we leave the park with him screaming his bloody head off because we had to take him out of the swing. But I love that smile, and the laughs and giggles that come out of him while swinging make the fuss totally worth it.

I got to chatting with another mom that was there and we were both pushing our kids for at least 20 minutes, and then we saw a white van pull up and a bunch of prisoners from CMC in yellow jumpsuits (you know, the ones you see working on the side of the road every so often) jumped out and piled onto a couple of picnic benches to eat lunch. There was ONE guard with them, and it just creeped us out because they were literally like 20 feet from the playground and sort of leering at all the mom's...so I decided it was time to go, as did the mom next to me. I noticed a few others leaving as I was getting into the car, and then a busload of kids from a school showed up, looked like they were on a field trip or something and you could tell some of the teachers and parents were eyeballing each other. I felt so weird about it - and wondered why in the heck the guard would bring them to a fricking playground full of kids to eat lunch. I have half a mind to call CMC and find out if that's even allowed. I certainly didn't feel comfortable staying there, with all of them watching...but who knows - maybe I'm being over-protective. What do you all think? Would you have felt the same way?