We spent the day at a graduation party, at a man-made beach at a tiny little lake in Westchester.
My cousin's kid graduated high school. He's enormous, and very well behaved, and his girlfriend slapped him on the arm for cutting ahead of me on line for hot dogs.
HM spent most of her time in the water - made about eight new instant friends, as usual - and patiently let me spray (Kiss My Face, and it rocks, in case any one out there has a kid who resists sunblock or does themselves) SPF 30 on her at intervals.
Her new bathing suit looks like the side of a trout that was colored in with a pink highlighter pen. Many sparkles. The baseball cap is also pink. She was not hard to keep an eye on in the water.
We stopped at the convenience store across the road from the "beach" and bought italian ices to distribute to the assembled short folks, and from then on, we were in. Odd old folks, but well meaning.
It's a wonderful serene feeling, being One Of The Moms. It's a particularly solid piece of common ground to stand on. Not, maybe, with my mom, who Did It Different, and has the concommitant Issues, but I sat in my cousin's beach chair and watched the kids splash in the water through my oversized Boss Hogg sunglasses and the husband's hideous faux-australian straw hat, and even the painfully tanned lifeguard kids treated me as if I was passably cool, in my rampant middle-aged dumpiness, as moms go.
HM has started grandma camp for the summer, and we're all starting to relax into the kind of calm none of us have been near since this awful school year started (and honestly, I'm terribly sorry that her teacher is an unhappy woman, but I dearly hope someone offers her a job as a frustrated office manager or something before she messes with any more kids' heads).
A whole day of calm. What a treat.
I haven't the vaguest idea what happened in The World today, and for the moment I'm going to bask in the luxury of not finding out. Let 'em suck on a styptic pencil, Messers Bush and Co. I'm going to finish off having a nice day.
My cousin's kid graduated high school. He's enormous, and very well behaved, and his girlfriend slapped him on the arm for cutting ahead of me on line for hot dogs.
HM spent most of her time in the water - made about eight new instant friends, as usual - and patiently let me spray (Kiss My Face, and it rocks, in case any one out there has a kid who resists sunblock or does themselves) SPF 30 on her at intervals.
Her new bathing suit looks like the side of a trout that was colored in with a pink highlighter pen. Many sparkles. The baseball cap is also pink. She was not hard to keep an eye on in the water.
We stopped at the convenience store across the road from the "beach" and bought italian ices to distribute to the assembled short folks, and from then on, we were in. Odd old folks, but well meaning.
It's a wonderful serene feeling, being One Of The Moms. It's a particularly solid piece of common ground to stand on. Not, maybe, with my mom, who Did It Different, and has the concommitant Issues, but I sat in my cousin's beach chair and watched the kids splash in the water through my oversized Boss Hogg sunglasses and the husband's hideous faux-australian straw hat, and even the painfully tanned lifeguard kids treated me as if I was passably cool, in my rampant middle-aged dumpiness, as moms go.
HM has started grandma camp for the summer, and we're all starting to relax into the kind of calm none of us have been near since this awful school year started (and honestly, I'm terribly sorry that her teacher is an unhappy woman, but I dearly hope someone offers her a job as a frustrated office manager or something before she messes with any more kids' heads).
A whole day of calm. What a treat.
I haven't the vaguest idea what happened in The World today, and for the moment I'm going to bask in the luxury of not finding out. Let 'em suck on a styptic pencil, Messers Bush and Co. I'm going to finish off having a nice day.