Alabaster Mom

Unless you live in a cave that doesn't have wifi, you've probably heard about the killing of Cecil the lion. He was killed by a dastardly dude who, one can only assume, has a very small penis. The man is a dentist. Or was a dentist, I guess. I can't imagine anyone wanting to use his services ever again. I think his main job now is "professional pariah." Speaking of dentists, I had an appointment with mine this morning. I've been going to the same dentist for years. Last time I was in the chair, Dr. F's wife popped in to have a brief chat with him. She was going shopping for some new things for their grandchild. A discussion about Kohl's coupons ensued. After I heard about the lion-slaughtering dentist, it occurred to me that if my dentist uses coupons at Kohl's, he's probably not going to spend $50,000 to travel to a foreign land to take down some majestic creature. After a day or so of expressed outrage on Facebook and via all news outlets t...

We got our kid back (from the beach) on Saturday. We dropped our dogs off for boarding and then hit the road Saturday morning.  The airport is about two hours from our house and her flight was due at 11:55 a.m.. My geeky husband found out that there was a comic book convention at a hotel right near the airport and wanted to stop there before the flight was scheduled to arrive. He generally attends these events without me but in this case he really had no choice. We arrived at the hotel at about 10:20 a.m., 20 minutes after the shindig had started. There were a bunch of cars in the lot already. "Your people are already here!" I told him. I think he was actually perturbed that we weren't there right at 10:00. I had promised that I would sit in the lobby and read a book on my Kindle. However, I could not resist taking a peek in the room where the convention was being held. It wasn't a big ballroom or anything - just a conference room. There were about 20 tables with lo...

(Sub-Title: The secret life of the tween) My daughter is coming back from the beach in a couple days, which means I need to hurry and finish cleaning her room. I have to be done before garbage day so that she won't be able to pick through the stuff I'm tossing.  I know the little pack rat pretty nervous about it. She wants a full accounting of what I'm ditching. But guess what? I do this every summer when she's visiting our family in other states, and she has never noticed one single thing that was missing from her room when she got back. Not one. This year, I mostly focused on her desk. She has approximately a hundred thousand tiny notebooks, each with one or two pages used. She mostly seems to use them to write: Song lyrics  Complaints about her mother (wait, that's me!) Notes about boys that she likes Diaryish entries, sometimes with dates Short stories Business plans for the upcycling store she plans to own someday.  Sketches of ballgowns For the r...

At 45 years of age, you'd think I'd have a grasp on a few things by now. You'd think I'd know how to make (and keep) friends, for example, but there is mounting evidence that I am clueless in this department. It's hard to be lighthearted and jokey about it, though, because it hurts. Badly. In April of 2014, I was the speaker at one of my church's Sunday services that month. I am not a particularly good speaker and I do not have some great wealth of spiritual/religious knowledge to impart, but you'll find me at the pulpit from time to time. I've spoken on topics ranging from non-conformity to animal rescue, typically with a spiritual tie-in of some sort. It's kind of a win-win. My church (which does not have a regular pastor at this time) doesn't have to pay me (I don't cut into the budget, in other words) and I get a little practice speaking in front of an audience. Last April, my topic was friendship. I actually did a fair amount of diggin...

Like most people, a fair number of my Facebook connections are friends and acquaintances from high school. When I get a friend request from someone I knew in high school, I generally accept it. Of course, I haven't seen most of my classmates in many years - particularly since I did not attend the 20-year reunion held in 2008. I regret that I didn't try a little harder to get there. After the reunion, I spent some time looking at the photos that were posted on the Class of 88's Facebook group. We attended Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield, Virginia. Go Lancers! One thing that struck me about the reunion photos was that there seemed to be less of a divide between . . . popular and not, band and not-in-band, athletes and theater kids, and so forth.  But does anyone really forget who was who? Recently, a guy from my class posted a photo of the Freshman football team. I guess it would have been taken in 1984 or 1985. There were dozens of guys in the photo. I recognized ...

Now, that I've been home a week, I need to share the second part of our vacation. We arrived in Ocean City on Monday, July 6th. We used the Glympse app once again so that my dad and stepmom could keep an eye on our travel and arrival. It always gives me a bit of a thrill to pull into a beach town. I love how you can look down each street and each one abruptly ends because, well, the ocean is right there. I love hearing the waves. I love the ocean breeze. I even love the sand. Mostly, I love being on vacation and not going to work. Shortly after we arrived and got unpacked, my dad invited us to walk on the boardwalk with him. The boardwalk starts at 27th Street. My stepmom has some physical issues, so she can't walk with him. She drops him off and then waits for him at Marty's Playland at the end of the boardwalk. They both like to play this Wizard of Oz game (with the goal to collect colored poker-type chips and character cards and exchange them for prizes at some point)....

After narrowly escaping the Super 8 with our lives, my husband and I finished the drive to Northern Virginia. We hit some traffic in Maryland and Virginia. Ah, good ol' DC. It brings back fond memories of my one-hour commute when I lived in Alexandria. And did I mention that my office was only eight miles from my apartment? My friend Carrie told me about an app called Glympse. When you're traveling, you can send someone a Glympse, which basically connects their phone to your phone and location for a set period of time. You can leave the connection open for 15 minutes or up to four hours. The other person can see where you are traveling (and at what speed). They don't get to know if you are listening to bad 80s music and eating chips while you drive, but they know just about everything else. Anyway, I sent a Glympse to my sister so she'd know where we were. As we rounded a curve about a block before her house, I spotted my daughter and nephew on the sidewalk, jumping a...

I'll bet you were getting worried that I wasn't going to bore you with details about my vacation. Fret not, mon ami! Our vacation started out a bit rocky, got dicey again in the middle, and then ended up just fine. My other half and I left on July 2nd, embarking on a long car ride that made us really glad that our daughter was already in Virginia. Nothing makes a long road trip even longer like an unruly tween complaining about how hot/cold/hungry/bored she is. Our departure was a bit delayed because we couldn't drop our dogs off until a certain time, but we got on the road as soon as we could . . . and then hit massive traffic that delayed our progress by at least two hours. Grrrr. The drive was mostly uneventful once we broke free of the congestion. We usually take turns driving, each of us staying behind the wheel for two to three hours at a time. The full drive to my middle sister's house is about 16 hours. I wanted to do the lion's share of the drive on Thurs...