Hello, Goodbye

We got a new car about a month ago. She's dreamy. We named her after my late grandmother, Eleanor Agnes, who drove until the fierce age of 91 years young. We were blessed to be able to purchase our new whip, and I'm particularly, profoundly celebratory over being a 30 year-old woman who owns and drives a vehicle. I know, for example, that women in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from driving. I'm suspecting, therefore, that if one went to an Acura dealership (how she would get there, I'll leave you to speculate), she would likely not be granted a payment plan for the TSX Sport Wagon. Driving really is a privilege, and it's one that I enjoy, and even though I try not to enjoy it so much (at the great expense of the ozone and traffic on I-93S and my wallet), I especially enjoy the view this new ride provides in its rearview mirror :)

Said goodbye to my hairdresser and my PCP this week. There weren't any greeting cards saying, "Thanks for ten years of putting up with my paralytic agony over lady land exams." Nor were there cards for "Thanks for keeping me mullet-free since '04." But hopefully they got the sentiment.

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First Lady

photo credit: White House

This photo of First Lady Obama represents, to me, everything that she is and all that I could hope to be: poised, fashionable, and able to interface with Europeans without getting all flushed and having to excuse oneself because surely she just lost all of her teeth.  Can you stand her, The Michelle?  She's just so sensational.  She never seems robotic, but sincere, and yet, so refined. I adore her. I want to be her best friend, her sister, her daughter, her sorority sister, her cousin twice removed by marriage.  I will be her dog Bo, if I must.

I will get behind any of her campaigns.  Obesity epidemic? Support for Military Families?  Worldwide Hug-a-Monk Awareness?  I will wear that button on my lapel.

My freshman seminar at Small Liberal Arts College on a Hill was on America's First Ladies.  It was such a fascinating opportunity to roundtable about the hardest unelected position in politics.  My favorite First Lady was Lou Henry Hoover (seriously, she was a phenom), but she has been bested - indubitably! - by The Michelle.  Who's your fave First Lady?

High School Musical

The summer before I left for college, my sister and I were in a musical through our church. It was the most fun. (Okay, it was "Godspell.")(Yes, I had a singing solo.)(Yes, the 2nd and 3rd nights sold out).(GOSH. STOP ASKING!!!) If you have seen the show, you know that most of the musical numbers are very lighthearted. But the scenes that are dark and condemning are intense, it being about Christ's life and all. There was one particular scene when the Jesus in our play would say something about all the bad being "cast out," and that was the cue for the lights to go out and for us as a cast to fall and scatter ourselves around the tiered stage area. Every single time we rehearsed this scene, I would land right next to my sister, and this other kid, Nick, would plant himself between us, and while Jesus exhorted everyone to repent and be sober-minded, Nick would be mashing his hand into my sister's and my face and pinching our earlobes and mussing up our hair and we would be trying our very dadgum hardest not to die laughing.

Pretty much from that point on, Nick has been close to making me die from laughter poisoning. When he gets on a roll, particularly about irreverent, absurd topics, it's just hysterical. Fortunately he married someone who is delightfully good-humored, so much so that she came to stay with us for Laughapalooza 2011.

Last weekend, Nick and his lovely wife Emily came to indulge our children and spoil them with books and creampuffs and attention. I always find it a profound experience to meet the children of the people I love, to see a smaller interpretation of their features and characters in this lively little soul. Likewise, it's really something to share your little iterations with other people that you've loved for a long time.

It took a good few days for my kids to come off the rousing high from this visit. Every day since then, Baby Girl has mentioned something to the tune of, "Heyyyy, I want to see the Nick that goes with the Emily to the New York!"

May someday she, too, be in a play with an irreverent earlobe pincher.

Seriously. If you've gotten this far, you can see that no one had any fun that weekend.

photocredits to the FamiLowe, with grateful huzzahs from the FamiLee <3