#tht

Jeddy delightedly barged into the school room in the middle of Lizzy’s lesson on coordinating conjunctions, as is his occasional tendency, to show me a tiny list of five items that comprise his entire remaining high school academic workload.  He calculates that he will finish this week, despite the fact that he’ll have to attend his final classes next week.  I even remembered to inquire about PE (the necessary credit that is always an afterthought, if we remember it at all), and after very brief counting of recent volleyball games, he realized that he has completed that already.

Graduation is four weeks away.  His cap and gown are hanging in the closet.  He has registered for college orientation and declared a major (computer science).  

And I remember when he was a baby!

Early love of computers, age 9 months

I used to have to squat way down to zip up his little coat.

Preparing for the great outdoors, age 16 months

Now I’d have to reach up to adjust his graduation tie (that’s assuming I win the argument that he has to wear one).

He’s come so far on the path of life and stands at the brink of a new road.

His talents have developed over the years such that he now makes it through most days without getting a green smudge on his forehead.

We’re so proud of you, son, for growing up, learning how to zip your own coat, and all the other accomplishments we’ll celebrate this spring.

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

The most disgusting part of marriage

Before there was Duck, before there was the cruise…there was Dancing Queen.

One of Ada’s friends starred as Sophie in her high school’s production of Mamma Mia! and we were able to go the night before we left town to cruise. 

Ada’s friend was great, the lead singers were talented, and the choreography made me wish I could relive my college days wherein I may or may not have danced fervently to ABBA late at night under a miniature disco ball my roommate and I had taped to the ceiling.

Mamma Mia is a “jukebox musical,” which must be its excuse for its plot.  Because nobody watches it for profound philosophical musings, right?  Let’s be real, we’re just there for Dancing Queen.  

In the middle background:  evenly sliced potatoes.  In the far background:  the evil machine I used to evenly slice potatoes.  In front of evil machine:  the safety guard, which I was not using because it prevents you from getting that last thin potato slice, and also because “I’ll just be careful.”  The potatoes turned out quite tasty, after I had dumped tons of cheese on them and Ada had located and removed the chunk of my thumb that was also evenly sliced, while I laid on the floor trying not to bleed out and Jason googled whether we needed to go to the doctor. (We didn’t, and my thumb is growing back together.)

I saw the movie years ago and remembered being moderately grossed out by the storyline (as well as confused about what the song lyrics had to do with anything).  But I either forgot the ending or the stage version is even more unsatisfying than the movie.  Indiscriminate sex is a given; fatherhood is showing up at a key moment a couple decades after the fact; calling a marriage on or off is subject to the merest whim and signifies nothing.

Contrast that with my own bridegroom of nearly twenty years.  Conjugal love is not a sudden whimsy to be entered into for novelty’s sake, cycled through when the next stage of life presents itself.  It’s also not high unending passion or trysts set in Mediterranean island paradise.  And for heaven’s sake, it’s not throwing your internationally-gathered loved ones for a loop at the last minute because you were seized with the idea to ride a boat around the world together rather than go through with a covenant promise.

What is marriage?  It’s years of making the bed and taking out the trash and paying the mortgage and figuring out who needs the car that day.  It’s taking that car to get the oil changed, and endlessly doing dishes, and remembering to say thank you.

And worst of all, it’s being there in sickness as well as health; so that the man I attracted with the bloom and beauty of youth is the same one whose feet I still see approach through my sweaty curtain of hair when I’m bent over vomiting on the bathroom floor.  All these years later, he still comes to me with a towel and a cup of water, reassures me that he loves me, and tucks me in bed.  

I’ll take that kind of commitment over Grecian island trysts any day.

 

Duck 2

Mornings at the beach started per usual, doing a Bible lesson while Caleb may or may not have been paying attention, with the added pleasure of having Jason working at the table with us.

Below, Caleb learns the fine art of blowing paint bubbles to make bubble prints.

Everyone takes a brain break; Caleb with the ubiquitous cars, Liz and Jed throwing a nerf football that “fell into the cart” when we sent Jed and Ada to get groceries. 

Jason working through it all with astonishing powers of concentration.

On Wednesday evening Ada insisted on making dinner from scratch to take a break from eating out, so the rest of us took a walk while she was finishing up cooking.

We found this little guy sleeping alone on the beach, which seemed….unusual.

And not quite healthy.

On our way back he at last stood up and moved, so maybe he hasn’t yet flown over the rainbow bridge.

The first couple days of our trip it was 30 degrees outside and windy, and we discovered after the first night that the lower two levels of the house, where three of the kids were sleeping, did not have working heat.  Despite a visit from an Australian air-fix-it guy who sounded like Crocodile Dundee, during which I worked very hard to a) not laugh and b) understand him, it was deemed irreparable in the short term.  So we were glad the weather warmed up, and it was so nice by later in the week that we started taking our lunch out to the beach to enjoy it midday.

The ocean was not, BY ANY STRETCH, warm enough to swim in.  And though I did dip my toes in when I was very warm from the sun and/or jogging, I was careful not to get any of my clothes wet.  This did not, however, keep my children from wading in, or indeed, from actually putting on swimsuits and submerging themselves completely, as Liz and Ada did Thursday afternoon.

After dinner at a fancy-pants restaurant

Caleb fending off the encroaching tide by throwing sand at it