Unreal, and Final

Husband and I will be hitting the road again tomorrow, on our way for the final time to the Big University in the south where three of our sons have been students.

Boy#4 is graduating.

This trip is an odd combination of finality and unreality: It is quite certainly the final time we will sit in the fieldhouse and cheer as one of our Boys walks across the stage to fistbump the president and receive his diploma. It probably is the last student apartment we will clean out (and marvel at how much STUFF can accumulate in a few short months). It's the end of saying "We need to eat at Vitek's the next time we're down here," and never eating at Vitek's.

But it's unreal to think that the beaming little boy in today's picture is now a full-fledged college graduate, who has signed a contract to work for an actual corporation earning an actual paycheck in U.S. dollars. And while getting the final child off of our family plan work benefits certainly gives Husband and me the giddy expectation that we will be swimming around in extra cash like Scrooge McDuck in his vault, it's...unreal.

 

Four will come back to the House on the Corner for a break before he starts his real-life job. By the end of that break he will be thoroughly tired of his parents, with their too-loud television and insistence that he ignore texts during meals. He'll be glad to get back in his car and head off to his new life as an official grown-up. 

When that happens I'll be pretending that I'm grown-up, too, and wave cheerily as he drives away. I know how this goes--I've done it many, many times before. This time, though, I won't be able to fool myself that my kid is just going back to college, and that home is still in the House on the Corner.

This is the final Boy, and the nest will now be truly empty.

Advice From an Old Person

What is it these days with me and flowers? It must be spring.

Anyway, I'm back again with some Advice From an Old Person. In this case the advice is coming from that bee up there, who has her nose stuck practically into the appendix of the rose in front of her. Do you know why that is? It is because this bee apparently is old (notice the wrinkles) and as one ages, one's sense of smell deteriorates.

I know exactly what you're thinking! "What next?" you're thinking. "MomQueenBee, you're telling me that along with losing my keys and my knees and my memory I'm going to lose my NOSE?

Yes, that's what I'm telling you. And that has prompted my advice for today:

If you are age 40 or less, your assignment is to make a note of how much auxiliary odor you are putting on your body. Is it one spritz of your favorite perfume? Do you use scented body lotion or hand cream? Do you sit right next to the pine tree hanging from your rearview mirror when you drive? Do you use any Axe product at all? And if the latter is the case, why are you, a teenaged boy, reading this blog?

Now that you have made this scent assessment, you must never, ever, ever exceed the under-40 standard you have set. I give you that advice because, oh, you will want to.

You will get to be 50, and think to yourself, "Huh. I don't think they're making this Eau De Mi as potent as it used to be. I believe I'll use two squirts instead of one." Or you'll take advantage of Bath and Body Works two-for-one special and use both the body wash and the scented elbow cream simultaneously.

You will think you are underscented, and that you smell disgustingly of...nothing. No, you smell refreshingly of just the right amount of jasmine, fresh muguet and soft florals touched by green and sparkling top notes, with sandalwood added to round out the base. You smell enough!

You will not provoke your sons, when they return to the house after having been banished while mama hosts club, to comment "Wow. Smells like Old Lady Central in here." (They do not mean this as a compliment.)

Understated is the key to being a non-offensive Old Person, and this applies in many, many areas of life but today we're talking about artificial fragrances.

Also, I want a job writing product descriptions for perfumes.

You're welcome.

Blessed by Blooms

I was late for work this morning because I was wandering around in my yard looking at flowers.

Last night a storm rolled through Small Town, and this morning was one of those times that remind us Kansas truly is the most beautiful place a human being could live. Just a week ago an uncommon early May heat wave left us wondering if we would have any spring at all, and this morning felt as if all the perfection of the season had been distilled into these few hours--cool and so calm that raindrops still balanced on the leaves of the iris.

Besides the irises, the first peony bloomed yesterday,

 and the other peony plants are showing promise of bursting with blossoms soon.

In the front yard the flower bed hasn't even been planted yet but I can see four different blooms in one blink of an eye. More iris, hanging begonias that are just out of camera range, knock-out roses that should have been pruned but are forgiving my gardening ineptitude, and a gerbera daisy plant I couldn't resist buying the last time I was at WalMart.

And then I came to the office, and within a few hours my friend who works for the florist delivered Mother's Day greetings from my sons.

An old Irish blessing begins "May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day." Today I am seeing flowers at every turn, and I am blessed indeed.

TBT (Mother's Day Edition)

I have not yet jumped into the ThrowBack Thursday movement, but today I came across this picture on my computer and it propelled me that direction. This shot is of me and my siblings on Easter, somewhere around 1965-ish. (I'm carbon dating that by the fact that my youngest brother looks to be about two, so I could be off by a year.)

Once you get past F's snazzy plaid sport coat and my cat-eye glasses, you may notice that my sisters and I are dressed in identical polka-dotted dresses, with white gloves and white sandals. We are all spiffied up and ready for church and smiling for the camera.

So this is a shout-out to my mom, who had sewed those three dresses, plus one for herself, the day before. She did this without killing any of us, which would have been my impulse if I had tried to sew clothes for my own children on that kind of a deadline.

My mom rocked and I miss her every single day.

Hope in a Bucket

Nothing in this world screams HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL quite as loudly as my annual efforts to grow tomatoes.

Not the making of New Year's resolutions, not the pope's Easter message, not the lighting of a single candle in the darkness. No, nothing says "I believe in the future!" as emphatically as the time and money I pour out on my patio plants  each spring.

"I believe in you!" I whisper to the seedlings as I lovingly cover them with fertilizer-saturated moisture control potting mix. "I know you can do it this year!" I croon as Miracle-Gro transplant easer pours out of my watering can to soothe their roots. "I have faith in your abilities to provide me the perfect spaghetti sauce, the most nostalgic of BLTs," I intone over the herbs and the tomatoes (two Romas, a patio variety, an heirloom, and two basils).

This year, I will be sleeping in on Saturday morning instead of setting my alarm for the crack of dawn so I can fight through the mob around the tomato vendors at the farmers' market. My plants will be so productive that they will belie my bedrock philosophy about gardening (which is to say, just don't, because if it's a good year gardening friends will keep you supplied and if it's a bad year...).

So yesterday, as the temperature approached triple digits again (In early May? What the heck, Kansas?), I was gardening. I was ruining my nail polish and mentally applauding as if I were at the end of a production of Peter Pan.

I do believe in tomatoes! I do, I do!

They're doomed.

Selfie Expression

These "ice"bags were ZipLocs filled with frozen corn syrup. Who knew?

Today's illustrative picture will not win any prizes in the county fair's Ansel Adams Open Class. It is a bit fuzzy, and the light seems to have been sucked out of the atmosphere (it was taken in my office)  and the guy in back does not have an icepack on his head so he's not appropriately dressed for the occasion.

But there is a good reason for this selfie's lack of professionalism: The subjects are old.

Yesterday was Commencement at Small College, and my office group decided the theme of this year's documentation of the event should be selfies. You're familiar with selfies, right? Those self-portraits of beautiful young things taken at arms length with cell phones? This year, we decided, we were going to encourage every one of the several thousand people in attendance to snap a shot with their friends, professors, babies, grandmothers, etc., and post it to our institutional Twitter account.

Our only concern was whether enough people would be willing to share their selfies with us. 

Hahahaha. The things I worry about needlessly.

Our new grads not only were willing to take the selfies, they knew exactly how to tilt the phone juuuuuuust so in order to cram six or eight or ten people into the shot. They could immediately strike the exact pose that angled their heads so their mirrored sunglasses ping-ponged back the reflection of their phones. People, I don't know if these new graduates know the difference between "compose" and "comprise" (that's my litmus test for whether a person is truly educated) but they are experts when it comes to the art of the selfie.

Not one single person turned us down for a shot.

So it only seemed fair when we got back in the office and all of us had ice bags on our heads that we should document the moment. It was 102 degrees, which means the football field where all of these photographers had been roaming was quite a bitter warmer, but we all survived and were laughing at how pretty we looked with our sweat-saturated bangs and sunblock-defying burned noses.

The youngest in the group lined us up, and snapped the shot--and if the picture here is any indication, we broke the camera. I'm convinced it's because I pulled the average age of our group up to the mid-40s.

Selfies, like parenthood, are for the young. But on the other hand, if we didn't have some old knees in the crowd we wouldn't have had the ice bags already stocked in the office refrigerator and waiting to cool us off. I can live without the ability to take good self-portraits as long as my knees don't hurt.

Getting old isn't so bad, especially if you are aging with grace. And ice bags.

Friday Orts and Blurb

Hey! It's Friday! Which means that today's posts will be a collection with no theme except...nope, no theme.

*****
I work with the. best. people. in the world. Notice the pauses for emphasis I puncuated into that sentence? That means that there are no better people in the world. During the past two weeks, you may remember from all the whining I've done in this space, I have been essentially non-functioning for 75 percent of my working hours. One week of that was due to The Plague, the remaining half-week was due to The Computer Plague.

Not only did my staff keep the juggled plates in the air for me, they reassured me constantly that things would be fine (even though one of the two busiest weekends of the year was coming up at the end of that two week-stretch), and covered for me while I was being puny and ineffective. Then one of them brought me MomQueenBee flowers (also known as tulips).

They are the bomb.

*****
If you do not have sons, you may have missed the most important news of the week, which is found here. All of that socially unacceptable behavior is just a sign of healthy gut microbes. Hrmph.

*****
And speaking of sons, I'm pretty sure Boy#2 will think this is the coolest story ever to hit the internet. It has it all--exploding whales, science, and slow-motion intestines shooting across the video screen.

If you don't care about the science and just want to see the slow-motion intestines, here's the video:

*****

Source

 Finally, the Blurb of the Week:

Because I have managed to co-parent four Boys through their teenage years without starving them to death, I'm often sometimes occasionally practically never asked for recommendations on the most important piece of kitchen equipment. But since I have Opinions, I'm going to recommend what I would buy with my household-establishing gift card, were I getting married or graduating or in the position of receiving household-establishing gift cards:

Pyrex measuring cups. 

I have them in all available sizes, from the shot-glass-sized to the big two-quart pitcher sized, with multiples of the one-cup and two-cup sizes. They are microwave safe, have enough heft that they don't skid off the counter, and are unetched by acid-y foods such as lemon juice and vinegar.

And what do I use them for? Melting butter, whipping up pancake batter (measure it right in the bowl), making "buttermilk" for my famous sheetcake, beating eggs, emulsifying salad dressing, whatever needs to be done can be done in a Pyrex measuring cup.

They make a rather spectacular crash if dropped, so I try to not do that, but thumbs up for Pyrex measuring cups. They are oldies but goodies.