Prolific congratulatory offerings are in order for the conTIMplating household!  My extraordinarily talented and formerly red-headed daughter, Thing 2, graduated from high school last week!  Thank you. Thank you very much.  That’s one reason I haven’t posted in a while.  I’ve been busier than Josh Earnest after Obama goes off teleprompter.  This is because as the end of the senior year approaches, everything leading up to graduation is The Last One:  The Last choir concert; The Last theater performance; The Last prom; The Last suspension; etc.  And being the good parent I am I felt I should be there for The Last One.  I can’t just sit around and blog or go out and play golf and miss The Last One like it was The Second-to-Last One.  Well, maybe a quick nine.  I can be a little late.

Unlike Thing 1’s graduation, which was highly celebratory in nature, going through the process of graduating my concluding offspring made me a bit nostalgic for the tight-rolled pants and leather ties of my own commencement.  I suppose it was due to the compatible similarities of the two events, detached only by the passage of 30 years:  both were in early June in un-air-conditioned arenas where friends and family sweat it out on bleacher seating; both of us were the youngest in our family to graduate leaving the distinct probability of parental empty nesting; and both were as a member of a quartet of inseparable friends taking part in one last official and emotional milestone together.  (If I knew what an emoji was, I would insert it here.) Continue reading →