School's out for summer - almost

This is the last week of school for the children although why anyone bothers I am not sure. There was a four day weekend so no school last Friday or this Monday. They had already handed in all of their textbooks and cleared out their lockers. By yesterday evening it was 9th grade promotion party for Sam and 'yearbook stomp' for Catherine. I drove Sam and three of his friends over - had to roll down all the windows because of the asphyxiating amount of cologne they were all sporting. Here is a picture:

Today they are all at our local amusement park, Lagoon, for the day. Catherine and her friends went up to the university to watch the senior class graduation.

Craig and I had a quiet evening in last night watching an episode of Damages on Netflix. Our peace punctuated by phone call from Sam "How late can I stay out?" Followed by text "Spending the night at Quinn's." Catherine appeared briefly to collect stuff for an overnight at her friend Karli's - "Hi mom, just getting some stuff. Do you want to see Karli's belly button piercing." How could I resist. Not sure if Catherine was there while she got it - it was all of 20 minutes old.

Could not make myself get up for bootcamp this morning.

The birthday evening

Last night was supposed to be the Adele concert - tickets to which at vast expense were my birthday present from Craig. Got there only to discover it was cancelled due to illness. Now comes the long wait where you hang on to the tickets and hope she reschedules at a time that actually suits. So there we were all dressed up and no place to go. Decided to catch a movie and ended up at Hangover Part II which was hilarious but verging on too raunchy even for me. There were two tween age kids sitting in front of us with what I thought was their mom, until head turned and I saw full beard. Seemed like way inappropriate movie for them, to which Craig said "visitation." Midway through the movie a woman squeezed past us and plopped down in one of the two vacant seats next to me. She had an enormous bucket of popcorn and within about 30 seconds began agitatedly looking for her "bag". Very distracting. Then she began to talk to herself. Even more distracting. Craig and I got the giggles, speculating that perhaps she had gone out for a popcorn refill and had ended up in the wrong movie. She stayed to the end though, muttering a lot and then when house lights came up, crawling around on the floor looking for the bag which once found looked alarmingly like one of those tied closed bags of dog poo you see people with when out walking the pooch. Woke up to snow.

????

This has gotten ridiculous. This is what was on the grass this morning. SNOW! It is May 30th. We are still running the furnace.

Guess the native language

This could be a fun game for linguists. You get something like this in an email and you have to figure out what the writer's first language is.

"I do not think I can make any difference if I try to talk to him because
I already did and he is just like someone carrying two big melons and has
lost balance."

PS- It is Arabic

Birthday Party

The Bieber party is still going on chez nous. After five straight days of rain, today was perfect. sunny and 75 degrees - which Catherine assured me it would be. The certainty of youth. How could the day not be perfect? I'm having a party.

My morning started early with the arrival of Ellen's son Zack. Ellen is in Norway and Jerry was off to 'enjoy' some 100 mile bike ride so we had Zack for a chunk of the day. My hat is off to all you people with three year olds... We were full speed ahead until Dad returned at a little after 3. Super lucky for Zack that the company brining the bouncy castle with velcro wall had to drop it off a couple of hours early so he got to bounce his little heart out before heading home.

The party was joint with Catherine's friend Gina who also has a May birthday. We contributed the venue and bouncy castle and Gina's Chinese parents arrived with trays and trays of homemade Chinese food. The girls decorated like mad - balloons, fairy lights, tea light candles. Now that it is after 10pm they have gathered every sleeping bag we own and are camped on the lawn about to watch the Justin Bieber movie on the projector I borrowed from work. Catherine is still saying it is the best party ever so I'm happy.

maintenance

One of the things I love about being an academic is never having had to give up the rhythm of the school year. I always loved the excitement of late summer and some new clothes and shoes, but best of all school supplies, and then the weeks at the end of May anticipating summer. Being a professor is much the same except the end of the school year has also come to mean physical maintenance. All the necessary things that have been put off I try to cram into the month of May while the children are still in school. The teeth get cleaned, a visit to the doctor - blood work perhaps - revisiting medications, some attention to the lady parts, and this year I dragged myself for a mammogram having not gone since I turned 40. That was this afternoon and I still feel a bit squashed and tender. I even decided to have a brow wax and that turned out to be a big mistake. Fine for about four days afterwards and then suddenly I broke out in random dry patches or bumps and just generally looked even more ill kempt than I had prior to my attempt to be better 'kempt'. I've also been for a kick ass 90 minute hot stone massage by our lovely masseuse Michele (Alison may have a cleaning lady, but we have a masseuse...).

The joys of having teenagers, really

This is the card I got from Sam on mothers day. He gave me $11 to buy two perennials that we planted together in the piece of the garden we have been working on for the last two years.

Catherine used my ipad and the next time I opened it....