Gradu-palooza -- the girl version!

So the girl in charge graduated from high school last weekend.  

 I feel old.  I ask you -- does this look like the face of someone who is ready to step out into the wide world? 

No?  OK -- how about this?

I know, right?

 [ The festive bow was after the fact, and I say -- too bad.  ]

While the mortarboard hat does make a definite statement, I think the bow shows way more fashion flair.  Call me crazy.

We partied it up for our girl, with balloons and party platters, and grandparents and aunts and godparents. 

My friend Saskia made this beautiful cake, which tasted even better than it looked, and strictly followed the girl in charge's instructions:  chocolate, with a side of chocolate, filled with chocolate and frosted with chocolate.  Please.

The bestie was there to make the day perfect.  It wouldn't be a celebration without her and her mom -- they make any party more fun!

So, yeah!  My girl in charge is already making her lists and organizing her minions as she prepares to leave for Emory University in the fall, but we're not going to talk about that because I can only absorb so many of these  moments when my life swings on a hinge and everything changes.  I don't really understand how parents make it through life without sobbing every day.

But we do.

The best cheerleaders ever!

So the girl in charge and the rest of the Bulldawgs played their last softball game yesterday.  We traveled down to Halifax County, Virginia for the Regional tournament quarter-finals.  The Bulldawgs played hard on a hot, hot day.  Mercy -- it was hot.

But these three guys brought even more heat!  They call themselves the Hype Squad, and they are hilarious. While the guy on the right has two sisters on the team, the two on the left are football players, and seniors, and friends with several of the Lady 'Dawgs.  Their sports season is over; they will graduate in a week and a half.   So why not concentrate all (and I mean all) their school spirit and electric friendship vibes on these awesome Bulldawgs?

Fabulous!
 

 

The girl in charge and her kick-ass bestie were a little ambivalent at the end of the game.  They hate to lose, y'all.  But they also will graduate in a week and a half, and I suspect they are looking forward, just a little bit, to chillaxing these last few days.

They've earned it.

How 'bout them Bulldawgs?!

So the girl in charge has had what you might call a roller coaster ride of a softball season this spring.  She's playing right field for the Bulldawgs again this season -- it's her senior year, so she really intended to make every game count.  At let me tell you she got off to a great start!  During the first game of the season she hit a home run!  OK, so it wasn't really an official home run: she hit a totally sweet bunt that flustered the other team so much that all they could do was make error after error as my girl ran the bases.  The scorebook called it a "single with multiple errors," but at our house, we're calling that bad boy a home run!

But that was the last home run the girl in charge would hit for quite a while, because later in the same game she took a bad fall . . .

. . . and you can see why she was no longer all that up for running the bases.

Instead of softball cleats and a glove . . .

. . . the girl in charge cheered on the Bulldawgs carrying these accessories.  Yes, she usually had a book, too -- but I'm talking about the crutches and the boot.


But last week she got the all-clear from the quasi-sexy orthopedic surgeon.  She avoided an actual operation and was relatively good about obeying his instructions.  If she cheated a little bit there toward the end of her stint of "no weight-bearing whatsoever," well -- we will just keep that to ourselves, won't we?

 And now -- she's back on the field, wearing the good old blue and gold polyester Bulldawgs uniform!  It's nice to see her running those bases again.

Bring it, Bulldawgs!

Road Trip

Well, so a while back the girl in charge and I took a little road trip to Atlanta, which was one of the swellest trips ever.  I need to say that she is really just the most pleasant traveling companion, plus she was a great navigator while I was slinging the rental car around a city that can give the sucky Washington, D.C., traffic a run for its money.

We did a little sightseeing while we were there.  At the Georgia Aquarium, the girl in charge was ecstatic to see this sea turtle, which I took at least fifty pictures of because the dude was moving pretty fast.  I mean, he's a turtle -- who knew?  The girl in charge is pretty sure she would like to have a sea turtle as a pet.

The only creatures that gave her more happiness than the sea turtle were these penguins, because come on.  Look at 'em!  Aack! -- they're so stinkin' cute!

I, on the other hand, felt like I was going to pass out from happiness when we walked into "The World of Coca-Cola" museum.  I seriously almost hyper-ventilated.  Many of you already know that I love the red Coca-Cola with a deep and abiding love.  But you may not also know that at one point (before I married the husband) I had an apartment that was totally decorated with a Coca-Cola theme.  I say "decorated," which is generous . . . .  

 

I feel silly but somehow defiant when I describe how giddy I was when I entered the gift shop of this museum (a place that in the past I usually dreaded entering with urchins because of the "I want it, I need it, I have to have it or I'll die" disease that always overtook them).  I couldn't breathe, people.  I just looked over at the girl in charge, and she rolled her eyes, then cracked up.

Pathetic . . . .

We feel so lucky that we were also able to visit this sweetest of women, who is part of our beloved un-family, and who lives about a half hour away from the city.  It was so fabulous to spend time with her -- it always is.  And as it turns out, now I'm more glad than ever that she's there.

Because we went to Atlanta to visit the two lovely campuses of Emory University -- and confirmed for ourselves that this is the girl in charge's dream college.  And guess what we found out last week?!

Look out Atlanta!  Here she comes!

A bummer -- but not a tragedy

So just look at this sad little fender bender! The girl in charge was just a wee bit traumatized when she was rear-ended on her way to school, but frankly, I was relieved when I saw how little damage was done to her fun little get-around-town car.

I did have the classic racing-heart moment when my phone rang at 7:15 that morning -- exactly eighteen minutes after the girl in charge and the sunny girl left on a drizzly Thursday morning on their way to school. The voice on the other end of the line was a slightly breathless sunny girl, who said, "Hello -- Mama? OK, we'll all fine, no one's hurt, but . . . " You can figure out the rest of that conversation! It turns out that after picking up a carpool pal, the three girls were stopped in traffic when they were hit from behind by a distracted commuter who didn't even see the traffic stopped in front of her.

The sunny girl said, "she wants to talk to you," and handed the phone to the girl in charge, my calm, cool, collected girl, who promptly burst into tears. When I got to them ( about thirteen seconds before the pal's mom showed up and approximately seven minutes ahead of the husband, who courteously paused to put on pants before he flung himself into a car), I was just glad that everyone seemed to be OK, and our car had managed to escape major damage.

But . . .

The little red car is almost ten years old, so it didn't take much to total it. The insurance company was d-o-n-e, done with us, thrilled to write us a check that so completely did not cover the cost of buying a reliable-if-used kid car. And I tell you what: if it hadn't been so sad, I would have laughed my ass off at the husband, who kept saying after we got off the phone with the insurance company, "This can't be right . . . . This morning we had a car . . . "

So the quest began for a new get-around-town car, and we turn out to be total creatures of habit.

Not only did we replace the fun little red car with an almost identical fun little red car. . . .

. . . but the girl in charge raced to place her Golden Snitch back on the antenna -- right where it belongs.

Here's a November prayer of gratitude -- that my girls and their friend are healthy and safe, and all we lost was a car.