I am nothing if not illogical when it comes to my children, so after telling you last week how graduation didn't hit me the way I thought it would---because it's a Very Big Thing, y'know---of course this morning I'm on the verge of tears because Monkey started his summer job. As in, working. For money. In a lab. LIKE A RESPONSIBLE GROWN(ISH) PERSON. I need a minute. I considered taking a picture of his shoes, per tradition, but it was clear that I was already irritating the snot out of him as he got ready ("Mom, I have everything. STOP ASKING.") so in the end I opted for discretion. Feel...
There isn't really a good way to "top" graduation, so a smarter family would not try, but we are nothing if not sort of dumb. Chickadee graduated on Saturday and then yesterday she had her wisdom teeth out. INSERT SAD TROMBONE HERE. The bad news is that I was ready for post-anesthesia hilarity---I had been told not to videotape anything, but I made no promises---and I was disappointed. For all of her larger-than-life antics while completely sober (and let us not forget that her last oral surgery was a Party with a capital P), this procedure was anticlimactic. All she wanted to do after was...
Hey! How was your weekend? Didja do anything fun? Things were pretty uneventful 'round here. I mean, um, I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything good on TV, though my firstborn did graduate from high school. That was pretty much the most exciting thing ever for a million reasons, chief among them that I will do almost anything to see her looking as happy and proud of herself as she did on Saturday. It got even better on Sunday, when everything was over and we bid the relatives adieu and commenced spending the entire day lounging around in our pajamas. Not that the rest of it wasn't great, you...
Graduation is on Saturday, and so I will just be over here Cleaning All The Things and Cooking All The Things and Crying About All The Things, if you need me. However, I'll leave you with a few items I've noticed of late, because I am nothing if not helpful. 1) Wishing you could lose a little weight, but feeling stupid for being shallow and wishing you could lose a little weight? Solution: Have one of those fancy keep-track-of-everyone's-profile bathroom scales, and then one day while trying to flick some lint off the scale with your toe before weighing yourself, somehow accidentally tell it...
As we continue barreling down the road to graduation (AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE), life refuses to stop, regardless of the MANY MANY FEELS that seem to be popping up everywhere. Sheesh. To top it off, today is Otto's and my 9th anniversary. I'm not entirely sure why he's still here, but I do bake a lot of cookies and stuff, so who knows. He continues to be my anchor in the very best sense of the metaphor: my strength, my favorite, my dependable partner in everything, really, but most notably in late-night-television-watching-and-tormenting-the-dogs-with-popcorn. Everyone should have an Otto. But not...
School is almost over (!!!) for the year, and my kids are deep in exams. The great state of Georgia (and most of the country, it seems) is eager to make sure that No Child Is Left Untested, so between SLOs and EOCTs (Student Learning Objectives and End of Course Tests) and APs (Advanced Placement), I'm pretty sure classes are over and the only thing the kids are currently learning is how many kids can actually walk right off campus with a single test pass. On the rare occasions when they find themselves in class WITHOUT a test, they seem to be engaging in the time-honored learning traditions...
This whole school year has blown by in about three seconds. While I think to myself, "Wow, this year is just ZOOMING by!" about 428 times a day, I must've randomly ALSO thought, "Wow, I haven't been sick in a long time!" at some point last week, thereby jinxing myself. We had some family visiting for the weekend and I woke up sick on Friday but rallied for their arrival and dinner that night. By the next morning, though, it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to shake it off. I ended up having a cup of coffee and going back to bed, where I pretty much stayed until yesterday. So that...
In the ever-losing game of balancing out the time I spend with each kid so that neither assumes I love the other better---or both of them assume I love the other better, but I feel pretty confident that they are being ridiculous drama llamas---I was thrilled to discover that the day after Chickadee's birthday, there was going to be a screening of Autism in Love at our local indie cinema. "Hey Monkey, would you like to go see this documentary with me? I think it'll be pretty interesting." I was braced for a shrug or a swift refusal (this would, after all, cut into his gaming time...), but to...
