Hey folks, what can I say? I admit I’ve been a blog fugitive ever since I got back from RT, LOL! Deadlines… yeah… that had something to do with it, but something even more insane was the true cause—my daughter’s senior prom.

I don’t think there’s anything that can prepare one for the onslaught of events that happen in the senior year of a high-schooler that’s morphing before your eyes into a young adult and college student. I write about transitions of the mysterious and paranormal kind, but I can assure you that nothing is scarier for a parent than being on the cusp of watching your kid fly the coup. And, yeah, yeah, yeah, we all claim that we’re gonna be different when it’s our turn—BIG SMILE. I really have no excuse, given that I was a child of the seventies, and I’ll just leave it at that and never try to run for public office.

But, still, there’s nothing like seeing your baby girl all dolled up and then turning her over to the arm of a suit-bedecked young gentleman in a tuxedo. The experience truncates time. I saw a grown man (her Dad) get all misty-eyed one moment as he looked at “his little girl,” and then go all alpha male werewolf in the next, LOL… something like a cross between Big Mike calling for an RPG shoulder launcher and a Shadow Wolf… you know that low growl, “Take care of my baby or I’ll come visit you in hell” mano-y-mano routine. It is genetic, the warning growl… and younger males do know what looking death in the eye means when a bristled dad takes that quiet, solemn oath to hunt them down, should anything untoward happen to his daughter. (Sigh)

However, all things considered, we had fun—the adults—that night. We embarrassed my poor kid by taking amateur paparazzi shots like crazy, laughing on the steps, holding buffalo wings with one hand while saying, “Wait, boo, turn this way,” and trying to navigate a handheld digital camera with the other. Then we stayed up waiting for the couple’s return, transforming the prom send off into a reason for the family to hang out with folks on the block and share laughs, as the mortified young couple made haste away from the madhouse into a limo… and the young man was both handsome and such a good sport. I swore I wouldn’t do that family ambush thing to my kid, but it is, after all, genetic, like birds that must migrate to the same nesting grounds—there we were, all hanging out on the front steps hollering goodbyes, LOL!

I figure a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few showing me doing the Mom make up thing (and thank you Roshida & Sandra for the matching t-shirt, LOL!), and a couple of my daughter and her date. Seems like time sped up and pulled me through a vortex; how did my kid go from being a little one on my lap to this project runway diva? My BFF, Tina, created the mango-hued gown from pure concept ether and made my daughter’s eyes light up… that is a bippity-boppity-boop Fairy Godmother move, if ever I saw one, so yes, I believe in magic—BIG SMILE!

Thank you all for enduring this spring of AWOL author status. Between Mother-daughter school events, the prom, school spirit day, an 18th birthday, and then graduation—all of which requires a party per event, I won’t be back to even keel until after the first week of June, LOL… or, most likely, until I keel over! But I wouldn’t miss one iota of this for the world. These rites of passage moments are what we Kool Aide Moms live for

BIG HUG for understanding… even bigger hug for not getting mad at me for not answering posts individually like I normally do–and for giving me a “senior year syndrome” mother pass, BIG SMILE… and much love, Leslie!