Hobos, Old Man Booty, And Cat Vomit

I'm a bad blogger. A bad, bad blogger. I shall say The Blogger's Oath fifty times before I go to sleep tonight as penance for not writing for so long (Is there a blogger's oath?).

In my defense, the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. First, I traveled to the writer's conference. Then, it was a week of preparing for prom night--not only dealing with dress, hair, shoes, jewelry, nails, flowers, etc., but also the fact that ten girls were coming back to my house for a sleepover following the festivities, so I also had to prepare sleeping arrangements, food, and drink (water and soda only, thank you very much). It's a lot of work, but so much fun to have the house full of teenage girls in gowns, gossiping about their dates and the dance itself, and then to wake up to bobby pins everywhere from the deconstruction of ten up-dos. (And guess what? I get to do it all again in a few weeks because the boy my daughter took to Junior Prom invited her to Senior Prom.) Plus this past weekend, we traveled to Pittsburgh to attend my daughter A's graduation from college--YAY! I'm a woman on the move these days.

Getting my daughter M ready for the prom was interesting. The two of us went to a local hair salon for her special 'do. She asked me to go with her to help explain what she wanted. It should have been an exciting time of preparation for a fun event. It was not. During the whole time we were there, the salon had the TV tuned in to an Oprah episode where she was talking to a young boy who had spent several years locked in a closet and was basically tortured by his family. Not likely to put you in a partying mood. Then, a male senior citizen walked by me and I noticed that he had money sticking out of his back pocket about to fall. I told him about it, he thanked me and stuck it in his front pocket, then wiggled his butt in my face and asked me if I saw anything else there I liked. I did not. Really, really not.

The prom was Friday night and on Monday, my husband, my daughter M, and I traveled to Florida to visit my oldest daughter J. J is an aerospace engineer who works on the space shuttle Endeavor. We originally made plans for the visit so we could watch the shuttle launch, but the launch was postponed. We can't go down then, so we decided to keep our plans and spend the week sightseeing in Florida. The day we arrived, J arranged for us to attend a private function where we met the astronauts who had just flown on Discovery's last mission. It was amazing to get to shake their hands, talk with them, and get pictures signed. I was humbled by the dedication and sacrifice these individuals make and was a little tongue-tied. My husband--not so much. He said, "Nice chucks," to one astronaut who was wearing sneakers and then told him to have a safe flight---despite the fact that they had just returned from their last flight ever. Oh, well. His isn't the only red face. I thanked an astronaut "for all you do" and he thanked me for all I do in return, thinking I was one of the employees who maintain the shuttle. Rather than hold up the line explaining that I didn't do anything other than raise a smart daughter who helps keep the shuttle functioning, I just smiled and stammered, "You're welcome."

We also spent several days at the beach. My youngest daughter M, who is seventeen and gorgeous, came back from the beach one afternoon and told me she'd felt uncomfortable tossing a football with her dad and sister since, as she put it, "Two hobos were staring at me." I laughed for a half hour, not at the sad plight of homeless men or the creepiness of them staring at my young daughter, but because all I could picture was two guys sitting on the beach in top hats with sticks thrown over their shoulders supporting a bandana full of their belongings as cigar stubs dangled from the corner of their mouths. I couldn't remember the last time I heard anyone use the word hobo and I told her so. The next day we visited the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum in St. Augustine and there was a plate made of cigar bands by, yup, hobos. And then we were watching a popular sitcom on TV and one of the songs had the word hobo in it. On one of the pages of the book I read that night was a sentence with hobo in it. I guess hobos are making a comeback. We should all take the wads of extra cash we have laying around and invest in companies that make bandanas. We'll make millions! Wouldn't it be odd if you avoided becoming a hobo by investing in supplies that hobos use?

This past weekend we were at A's graduation. We paid tens of thousands of dollars in four years of tuition so we could spend Sunday at a two hour ceremony in the morning where the speaker talked about himself and his accomplishments with barely a mention of the graduates, followed by a three hour ceremony in the afternoon where a twenty minute introduction of the speaker was followed by a half hour talk by the speaker about the speaker. I think someone thought they were at a political fundraising function instead of a graduation. All that was followed by a five hour car ride home. I lost all feeling from my neck to my knees, but my daughter A graduated Magna Cum Laude and is qualified to psychoanalyze me, which should be a full-time job. She now has the degree to answer the question Am I Crazy? and it only cost me sixty thousand dollars. Plus, by the time she hit puberty, she was telling everyone who would listen that I'm crazy, so I must be crazy to spend all that money to hear her reaffirm her beliefs. Or something like that.

I'm back home at last and my pets are punishing me for leaving them so often and for so long. The older dog just stares at me with baleful eyes if I call her or give her a command. The younger one is trying the helpless baby approach to getting attention and suddenly must be lifted up the stairs and onto the couch despite the fact that he has no problem doing it on his own when he thinks I'm not looking. The cats take turns climbing on me and sharpening their claws on my clothes and skin, giving each other a nod when it's time to trade places. This isn't just my guilt talking--there is an actual plan to punish me afoot. Speaking of afoot, M must be included in the punishment since one of the cats threw up on her bare foot last night. With a whole house and seven acres to throw up in, tell me that wasn't deliberate.

Life has slowed down to its normal craziness, so I'll try to post regularly again. I wouldn't want any of you to have to resort to coming up with elaborate plans to punish me the way my pets have. I can only take so many baleful stares and my clothes have so many claw holes that if you hold them in front of a light, you can see a whole galaxy of stars shining on the wall.