This is a science class, right?

For my chemistry class (a non-major chemistry class, which I am beginning to regret taking) I have to do a project on three elements. One of the things that I needed to do for this project was "something creative - a poem, collage, song, etc... yours or someone else's."  So, rather than dig around the internet for a poem about tin, tellurium, or xenon, I wrote one.  It's not exactly about tin, but it plays a prominent part.

Mister Loki Peepers

He's gotten so fat on the grain-free diet.

More parenting milestones...

Ethan has been to a few school dances before, in middle school, but those were right after school, during the day and not formal at all.  Last night, Ethan went to his first Homecoming dance.  He had a date (a friend from cross-country, nothing serious, just friends, he says) and it was from 8:30 to 11pm.  Afterward, he spent the night at a friend's house.  I know the kind of trouble I got into unsupervised when I was young and I worry so much.  I shouldn't, but I do.  A bit hypocritical, I suppose.  He seems to be in with a good crowd (cross-country athletes, piano players, and blues guitarists) and he can't be any stupider than I was at fourteen.  Sometimes it is easy to allow him his independence and accept his teenageriness.  Others, I am reminded that I have less than four years left with him, before he is an adult and autonomous.  This is the home-stretch, the last inning, and every day I have to let go a little bit more.



( Three More )

Here are some pictures I snapped before he left for the dance.  I learned how to do the Ediety, or the Atlantic knot for his tie.  In some ways, this makes me a bit sad, because I never had these moments with my father and it leaves me wondering if he felt this way as I got older.  So often he seemed so oblivious to me (and my siblings) as if we were just noise, a buzzing bee, interrupting a summer nap.  A wave of the hand, and all is quiet again.