Class of 2007

I'm still recovering from all the cleaning, company and ceremonies, but I miss the blog, so I figured I would slap up a few pictures from all the excitement. Until my brain is working better.








I had ordered this very cool cake at the supermarket bakery. I was really excited when I picked it up and saw how great it looked. Then, when I was putting something else in the shopping cart, the obvious suddenly occurred to me - "We're going to have to cut her face!" Interestingly enough, nobody else was bothered by that, least of all my daughter. There was, however, much discussion during the consumption of the confection about the horrors of face-eating people and such.

The graduation ceremony was nice and not terribly long, for which we were all grateful. And now we have another hi skool grajeate.We had people in and out and in again at all hours of the day and night. Lots of food coming in and out of the fridge, daily trips to the grocery store, a few loads in the dishwasher, and lots and lots of fun. One night everyone got to try their hand at being a rock star when they hooked up Guitar Hero. I was snapping pictures and telling them all they looked too serious and they were like, "Mom, this is harder than it looks!" But I asked them just for a minute to act like real rock stars so I could get a photo. Sigh. I never learn.

Junk in the Trunk

Last month I went to New Mexico, which is where I pretty much grew up. My mom was in the hospital and spent a lot of time sleeping and I would take off for long walks. New Mexico has always been a spiritual place for me, somewhere that has a good aura. Huge blue skies and big mountains. I got some good karma. I came home feeling like I needed to unburden myself of crap. I always do spring cleaning, but this year was different. I attacked the house with a vengeance. Threw out three and a half drawers of a four drawer filing cabinet. Half of the things in the pantries. That was interesting because there was a bottle of celery salt that I told hubby he had probably bought in college (a couple of decades ago). He scoffed, but then got to looking, and the date on the bottle was 1975. (I am not a packrat, but I totally married one and my offspring inherited the gene. God help me.) I got hubby to help me with the garage and we ended up with the van packed to the gills. One third to recycle, one third to donate and the rest to the dump.

We are having company come for the upcoming graduation of the baby daughter, so the cleaning of the house has been a priority. For me. As I said, the rest of the house dwellers are not really into how shiny things are, or how many piles of clothing, paperwork, magazines there are sitting on the tables, desks, counters, floors . . . you get the picture. I could probably qualify for Clean Sweep.

Last year my daughter moved home from a year in Minnesota and was in dire need of sun and fun. She decided we needed a backyard pool and hubby indulged her. Bad idea. She spent almost no time there after days of her and her friends setting up the whole thing. Near the end of the season, the pool was neglected until it turned into a study in fungi. We tried dissembling it and it turned out daughter had terrible allergies to the molds it had grown, and it was right outside her bedroom window. It was heavy and then, after a year and a half of drought, we got rain, which translates to more mold and more weight. So the whole thing was impossible to move. Last week we cut it into pieces and hauled it into the back of the pickup and to the dump. But that was after it lay, deflated, the entire winter. Every time I caught sight of it, I thought "You might be a redneck if . . . " Anyway, that is my foray into spring cleaning 2007. I took a break for company and the upcoming rite of passage, but then I am right back into it. The attic is trembling in fear.

Pomp and Circumstance

Fourteen years ago, my daughter graduated. From pre-school. I remember that night I was thinking about how big she was getting. Shows what I knew. A lot of stuff happens in fourteen years. She went to kindergarten and then elementary school. She learned cursive and went on field trips. She was moved from one state to another and then another and she felt like she didn't fit in. She went to junior high and made tons of new friends, got braces, got her first boyfriend followed by her first broken heart, learned how to drive, went to school dances, had lots of noisy sleepovers. She spent her junior year 700 miles away from home, living in an apartment with her brother. She did her own cleaning, cooking and grocery shopping while maintaining a budget, two part-time jobs, and a 4.0 GPA. A week from tonight, she will don another blue cap (one not made from construction paper) and graduate again. I only hope I can keep from bawling like an idiot because I am so proud of her. Actually, I am in awe of her, particularly when I remember how dumb I was at her age. She is so much cooler than I was.

So Jess, congratulations on an excellent job! We love you so much. There aren't words to describe you, but I think this picture speaks volumes.


Like the windshield says, that is NOT her boyfriend's bike.

Another Trip Around the Sun

So today is hubby's birthday. It's a big one. The big Five-Oh. He actually mowed the lawn, but then he got to play 18 holes of golf, because it was a beautiful day for a change. Then he got taco supper and birthday cake.

After that, it was opening cards and presents.



Now he gets to have some fun. Because when you turn 50 in this house, you get . . . VIDEO GAMES!

Peevish

I'm going to haul out a couple of my peeves and pet them. I find myself longing for the days when phones looked like this and were connected to the wall. I want to go to the grocery, a restaurant, the mall, anywhere, really, and not have to hear some screaming band ringtone. Or any other ringtone, for that matter. Likewise, I am not interested in hearing your side of the conversation about someone who just had a colonoscopy. Listening to your side of a fight, complete with f-bombs, is not appealing either.

Our town hosts the Tri-State Music Festival every year about this time. Yesterday, I went to the mall just in time to see hundreds of teens get off activity buses and head to McDonald's, IHOP, and the food court. They were all either talking on the phone or texting on the phone. Some of them were dressed oddly.

Which brings me to my next item of peevishness. When did it become okay to wear your pajamas in public? I'm not talking about going out to get the newspaper in your robe, or running out to the back yard to hang something on the line first thing in the morning (which only takes 30 seconds unless there is a neighbor lurking about). I'm talking about going to restaurants and the mall and the grocery wearing the stuff you wore to bed. As far as I'm concerned, these are the only guys who get to wear pjs outside of the home. During an extended cold spell several months ago, I went to the mall. I was cruising through the food court and saw a woman in line waiting for a hot dog. She had on plaid flannel pajama pants, a tank top, a coat and flip flops. I rounded the corner to encounter a teen girl wearing plaid flannel pajama pants, a tank top, no coat, and pink fluffy slippers. And oh, yeah, she was talking on her cell phone. Sigh.

That Darn Cat

So we were moving into the house before this one, and there was a kitten across the street. He looked over and said to himself, "Now there's a woman who's a sucker for tiny, homeless kitties. I'm just going to take my fine self over there and get some food, lovin' and a warm bed." And that is what he did. Ten years ago.

So sweet. So innocent. Except for the fact that he liked to get into the sinks, terrorize the dogs and climb the walls. Literally. We named him D.C. for a reason, and the D doesn't always stand for 'darn.' He got older and a little rotund, and he doesn't look the same, much like the rest of us.

This is a pose we call 'road kill kitty.' Now this dumb cat has spent ten years eating, shedding, whining and sleeping in our house. Recently, he has taken up a new habit. We gave ourselves a wide screen television for Christmas. Hey Mikey, he likes it! We were watching Discovery Channel's Planet Earth a couple of weeks ago. The camera crew was in the rain forest waiting for a Bird of Paradise to show up. Which he did, after several weeks. The photographers were ecstatic. So was D.C.

He watched until they moved on to a different part of the earth and larger animals. It's not that he doesn't like to watch larger animals. They just have to be birds.


I'm hiding the remote.