Another Prom Picture

Here's The Boy and The Girl Who Thinks She Lives Here at prom.

Cute enough to make your eyes melt!

A Yard of Loss

Note:  This post was way too much trouble to get together than it should have been. It's taken days!

Once I had a hammock.  A colorful retreat suspended in the trees.  Here it is in happier days, back when Mamacat was still just the stray in the yard,

Here is my hammock now.  Chewed and defiled by rodents, probably of the mouse persuasion.

They ate through the ties too, just to be spiteful.  Utterly destroyed.

Once I had a lovely chiminea.  So many many many days and evenings were spent in front of it.  Plenty of hot dogs and pie iron pizzas.  Even more s'mores. 

Look at it now.  Reduced to a planter after the bottom fell out.  A clever use, yes, but it's not my fireplace.  

Doesn't even have any flowers in it.  Just a pot of dirt.

Once I had a lovely sunflower garden with majestic giants swaying in the breeze.

Now the only residents are two trees that are pushing their luck and a freak of a prickly weed that's about 100 times taller than it should be

Oh, woe is me.

Our Prom Attendee

First I couldn't find my memory card reader.  Then I remembered it was at work.  But when I went to work, I forgot the card.  Then I remembered to find the reader and grab the card, but the cord attaching the reader to the computer was missing.  I ripped my desk and then the entire office apart until I could it.  Then I didn't have the card with me anymore.

But now all of the piece are together, in one place, functioning correctly and you are rewarded with pictures of seriously handsome Boy.

Seriously.

Handsome.

Boy.

 Oh my goodness.

The plans for prom were a bit sketchy right up to the end.  How was he getting there?  Getting home?  Getting to After Prom?  Getting home from After Prom?  But eventually, he had it all ironed out.  My only part in it was getting him to Big-Beautiful-House-At-The-End-Of-The-Street.

"Do you know which house I mean Mom?"

"Ah, yep.  I sure do."

So we got him there and then girls in gowns and guys in tuxes started showing up all over the place.  More and more and more kids dressed to the nines filled the beautiful lawn.  And the owner of the home provided cold beer and cocktails for the parents while the kids visited and took pictures.  It was awesome!  Thank goodness I brushed my hair!

Here's the reason that The Boy got to go to Prom, Kate.  She's been in The Boy's art class all year and asked him to go as friends.  Awwww!

The hostess wanted a group picture of all of the kids who had shown up at her house.  They tried several locations around the property.  This is finally where they settled on.

As for The Girl, no Senior asked her to Prom which was fine because at the time she was still speaking in just whispers.  She spent the night at the friends' house and came home in the morning talking like the Man-Frog again.

The Wide Mouth Frog

Okay the title of this post relates to a joke that most people don't think is funny but cracks me up so hard I can hardly tell it.  And it's a joke that has to told out loud.  Wouldn't be funny to read at all.  So all and all, the title of this post is not getting job done.  Let's get right into the story then...

The Girl has been sick.  Coughing, sore throat, feeling crappy kind of sick.  But yesterday was Physics Day at Cedar Point so she couldn't, she wouldn't miss that.  When I dropped her off in the morning, she sounded exactly like my daughter.

What I picked up 13 hours later was a loud, raspy, deep, deep, DEEP-voiced frog woman.

Her voice was so loud and so foreign I had to stare at her all the time when she spoke or I didn't know who was speaking.  It was hilarious.  She's tried so hard to tell us about her day and what she rode and what she ate and all we could do was laugh at her.  And then she would tell us to shut up in that deep crazy voice and we would laugh harder. 

This morning she woke up with no voice at all.  Just a raspy whisper.  She's not in pain, she just sounds that way. 

I'd rather have the frog woman back.

Drowning in Pics

It's been quiet around the office for the past week.  Silent actually.  We are in a bit of limbo between tax season and getting busy doing the rest of the year stuff.  The Boss has been gone for three days.

I've kept busy during this time going through old memory cards from the camera and getting things uploaded to Flickr.  It seems that around 2009 I just up and quit caring about uploading and organizing pictures.  The memory cards are a complete mess.

So slowly, carefully, I am uploading batches and instantly organizing them into sets and collections.  Then I go right back to the card and delete the files.  I know if I don't delete right away, they'll be on the card forever because I won't be able to remember if I uploaded them or not and then I'm too lazy to go check if they are sitting in Flickr or not. 

That's probably what happened back in 2009 when I just gave up on the entire process.

But here's some love to Flickr.  Thank you for being so easy to use.  Thank you for constantly coming up with updates that somehow make things better, every time, instead of worse. Thank you for helping keep track of all of these pictures because I truly despise the idea of scrap booking and was barely on board with photo albums.  It's like you were made just for me, Flickr, and I love you for it.

PS:  I know that Flickr widget runs the most recently uploaded photos.  If you see pics in there with The Girl in braces, now you know the reason why.

National Honor Society Induction

 Much to my heart's delight, last night the kids, and almost all of their closest friends, got inducted into National Honor Society.

You know these three.  No surprise they get to share this moment as well.

My cutey girls.

I didn't think of it until we after we left, but I should have tried to get a shot with all of their crew together.  This is a small pile of them anyway.

The 88 new inductees to NHS of EHS.  If you can get this picture bigger, The Boy is right in front on the corner.  The Girl is buried in the back row.

The reception afterward was a claustrophobic affair in the auditorium lobby.  There was lots of congratulating, hugging and cookies.  We went out for ice cream afterward.

You two make me so proud.

Love, Mom

The Music Man Recap

When we were leaving to see the show Friday night, The Man made the claim that the only reason he was agreeing to go was because the kids were in it.  He hates "The Music Man".  Hates the story.  Hates the music.

On the way home, he admitted it wasn't as bad as he remembered, but he still didn't like it.  A little progress at least.

If we just focus on the school's performance itself, it was so much fun.  All of the kids did a terrific job.  The Girl was a joy to watch dance and perform.   Every "Ye Gods!" was cuter than the next.  Her dancing partner was successfully was able to lift her and at one point she jumped into his arms and he held her until the curtain closed.  I didn't get to the see The Boy since every scene change happened behind curtains, but he was back there pushing those heavy set pieces on and off.  He's got the bruises to show for it.

But let's think about "The Music Man" as a story.  One word comes to mind:  Reprehensible.  It's a show about a con man who gets away with everything through of a combination of charm and dumb luck in the form that parents blindly believe everything their children do is amazing.  A true ending would have had all that tar and feathers they were gathering put to good use.  The townspeople don't care that he's fallen for the librarian by the end of the story.   They are not even aware of that situation.  They are way too hopping mad about being swindled over paying for a fake band, and they should be.

Luckily for Professor Hill, the bright colored uniforms and shiny instruments show up.  They are more than enough distraction to keep everyone off balance.  The noise is heard as music and Harold Hill is saved.

But saved for how long?  "The Music Man Part II" would be an interesting affair I think.  Harold Hill stays in town to start his new life with the little librarian.  But the townsfolk are still expecting a band.  Eventually they are going to expect to hear music.  What will Harold do?

I guess that's why the story ends when it does.  These questions are just too big.

Anyway, here's the Girl and her stage boyfriend for two shows looking adorable.

PS:  Everything my children do is amazing.  I would fall for Professor Harold Hill's fake band right with everyone else.