Fancy Meeting You Here!

I am digging out from under a pile of work that built up during this most recent pledge drive--our most successful October drive ever, by the way--and I thought I'd drop in to say Hello.

Hello! The pledge drive is still on my mind, of course, because its remnants are scattered all over my office. We took 119 pledges on nine phones during the last hour of the drive (Car Talk), and things were insane. I still have a minor case of PTSD from all the ringing phones, and the sound of the Car Talk banjos makes me want to cry, but it's all for the good, and I'll survive.

The Boy is surviving well, too. His casts are off, and he's back to soccer and hand-writing his school work and playing his precious Xbox, so he's a happy camper. He's also happy because his dad and I have agreed to let him go on a school trip to France and Spain in June. He's thrilled, of course, and I'm thrilled for him--it's going to be a great time, and a great experience--but I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to be in a medically-induced coma while he's flying. I know it's irrational, but he's never flown without me, and . . . I can either protect him with my Magic Mom Powers or go down with him if we're together, but this way FREAKS MY SHIT OUT. But I accept that it would be selfish to cheat him out of this experience because of my anxiety attacks, and deposits have been sent in. His passport is being renewed, and the trip is a go.

According to my mother and various other parents whose children are my age or thereabouts, this worrying (if you're the kind of person inclined to morbid worrying) never goes away, no matter how old your kid is. Great. Nobody told me that when I signed up for this parent business. Oh, Waiter! Could you bring me a Xanax sandwich and some Bourbon soup for lunch, please? There's a big tip in it for you!

Okay. Nice seeing you all, but I have to get back to work.

Still Life for the Common Cold

So this is how I spent my weekend (the squirt bottle is for keeping the cats away--I love them, but they shed and the fur sticks to the Vick's VapoRub I'm liberally coated with, and that's just miserable). Not pictured: Boiling my Diva Cup, because it's *that* time. So, I have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad cold, it's that time of the month, and the fall fund drive starts at work on Tuesday, just to add waking up at 4:15am into the mix. Yes, I really do still love October, but this isn't going to be an especially good week. Sigh.

The Boy has his casts off, which is a delight for both of us, and he's taking his opposable thumbs to see a friend's band play at the Hard Rock Cafe tonight. Now, I know it's an all-ages show at a lame chain restaurant that hasn't been cool since I was a wee lassie, and I know that the show is more like a piano recital for kids whose parents let them play rock music, but still. I can say with confidence that I didn't do anything that sounded so cosmopolitan until I was at least . . . I don't know . . . 25 and living in London?

I'll just stay home with my Vicks and watch The Simpsons.

Random Rocktober

October may be my favorite month of the year, despite the reality of my public radio job and October Pledge Drives.

I miss high school football Fridays. The Boy's school doesn't have a football team (it was in fact an all-girls school until the 1980s), and I just don't feel a part of any of the other schools' teams, so we don't go to games on Friday nights. I admit that if I still lived in my home town, I'd probably go.

The Boy is coming home from a four-day school trip to DC, where they braved the weather and walked all over the place, enjoyed the Air & Space Museum and the Smithsonian, and went to the Holocaust Museum. The Boy had done everything on the trip already, since we have relatives very nearby in Maryland, but I hadn't taken him to the Holocaust Museum before because I thought he was too young to have to go through that up to this point. The 8th graders at his school spend a lot of Social Studies time on WWII and the Holocaust, though, so this was a great way for them to start off. I'm interested to hear what he thought about it--especially since he's close friends with lots of Jewish kids.

I had a Holocaust . . . thing . . . that started before I was in 8th grade, and before I'd seen anything like the Holocaust Museum (it all pretty much started with Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself), and I didn't know a single Jewish person until I went to college!

Anyway, I've missed The Boy this week, and I can't wait to see him this evening. We're having pizza with his dad so we can hear all about the trip, and I can't think of a better way to spend my evening.