<p>Well, almost everything TFSFH might need for 9 months is packed and we head out the door at 5am tomorrow for the airport (courtesy of Older Brother). Hang out with cool Uncle Dave for a day, H arrives from guitar camp on Sun. and we check Himself into his room (BBB has sent the confirmation for the Pack and Hold boxes having been delivered there already, and supposedly the rented school-approved fridge/microwave is already installed), have the farewell send-off, go back to Uncle Dave’s and drink heavily Sun. evening, then head into NYC for a brief 3-day vacation on Mon. morning. I’m not sure how long it will be before I’m ready to clean out his bedroom (he sleeps in a waterbed, so I won’t be cleaning under the bed, but in the closet and behind the desk? EEEEWWWW!). I’m thinking I may need a hazmat suit, it <em>smells</em> funny in there! (Although I think most of it is man-sweat. He doesn’t wash his sheets very often.)</p>
<p>I’m trying to think ridiculously good thoughts, but it is gonna be one quiet house around here starting next week…</p>
<p>I hope he’ll call me once in a while, or not hang up on me if I call him. I love listening to his laugh.</p>
<p>My personal plan to welcome BAfromBC was derailed by my sorry self’s inability to come up with anything suitably clever enough to equal our first 50 pages.</p>
<p>You are so right, BAfrBC… those were the days! </p>
<p>Maybe when things get a little routine around here, we can dredge up some randomly selected great post from Those Days and re-post. See if we can’t start something big.</p>
<p>Well. I don’t know that we should forgive him for taking his best work outside the Alley. But I do know that it rivals anything in our First Fifty.</p>
<p>Oh, thanks, jmmom, I came straight here without a stop in the parent’s forum, so I hadn’t seen it yet. Funny, funny!</p>
<p>I finally entered D’s room and found myself sitting down to watch a couple of episodes of Gilmour Girls on her TV…gotta get that mother-daughter fun/frustration somehow!</p>
<p>Talked to her for 30 seconds since she arrived on her campus–sounds of happy chaos in the background, cell phone cutting out, but she said she loves it already.</p>
<p>Drinks are on me! I finally managed to scrape up enough posts away from the Parent Cafe to rise from Junior Member to Member. I’ll have a mojito with an umbrella, please.</p>
<p>You don’t just get a mojito - you get a dance! First we all line up to do the conga, and put the umbrellas behind our ears. Then we wiggle our way through the Alley, out the back door to the hot tub, special pit stop at the orange naugehyde booth where Sluggie is sleeping, grab the chicken baskets from Sybbie and put them on your feet. Then we call all the sons from their holes, turn the disco ball on, and give you a solo…</p>
<p>Curm meanwhile scribbles frantically, TheDad adds a few puns, and the event is memorialized for your scrapbook. Or Facebook if you wanna get modern.</p>
<p>Ay, caramba. I am second in Moominma’s conga line. </p>
<p>I put a bowl of my world famous Guacamole on the bar - actually two bowls (the small one on the right is sin cilantro para Alumother and her ilk :p).</p>
<p>Moominmama, what’s your solo? So You Think You Can Dance ala Alley!</p>
<p>Modern? Jazz? Hip Hop? I think not. We are not letting you off so easy. For you it’s the Merengue. The Marmot Merengue. The alpha Marmot, Marmot the Magnificent, is up on his hind legs, lifting his paws, placing one firmly on your back and beginning to trip the light fantastic.</p>
<p>jmson had a college friend visiting the last couple of days. Would you be surprised to hear that the very first item on their social agenda was for said friend to take the hair clippers and even out the area around the now-diminished but still visible stripe? For some odd reason, he never asked me to perform that little task. :o</p>
<p>Keep mum? Refrain from grossness? In the Alley? Heaven forfend.</p>
<p>Jmmonm - I thought you were going to say his friend shaved a stripe on his own head in solidarity, causing a wave of stripe shaving to sweep the neighborhood, and jmmson to become an unexpected fashion icon.</p>
<p>We will shave our heads here in the Alley for him. Virtually, of course. It will help when we pour our mojitos on eachother’s heads anyway.</p>
<p>I am just sitting here hoping Mootie survives her dropoff of beloved baby son from, well, from the beginning of his next life phase.</p>
<p>Turns out the little gremlin took photos of himself to share with the masses. Of course, that was after my corrective work with the #2 buzz cutters on that fateful day. Not as dramatic as a photo would have been when he still had an inch of dark brown hair straddling the offending area. (Of course, that situation only existed for about 3 minutes).</p>
<p>The kid’s got a sense of humor; I give him that.</p>
<p>Funny thing is, alu, that striping and other Hair Effects are de rigeuer here (as I imagine elsewhere) during soccer and lacrosse state championship seasons. The team members give each other various and sundry coiffeurs - Mohawks, stripes, plaids, you name it. But he was a bit out of season when I <em>made my mark</em> and a bit over age, I suppose.</p>
<p>Well jmmom - let’s all hail senses of humor. Especially on our minimal talkers:). And as for head shaving, this is California, remember? You lived here. Here, when S’s soccer team won their league championship last year, they got to shave the COACH’s head:p</p>
<p>TJFS returns today from the Costa Rican jungle. </p>
<p>I called his cell phone this am, so he’ll get my message when he changes planes. His outgoing message said “only messages in song form will be returned.”</p>
<p>So here is what I sang:</p>
<p>(sung to the tune of “The More We Get together”)</p>
<p>You’d better call your mother
Your mother, your mother
You’d better call your mother
Or she’ll kick your a$$</p>