insert your favorite and strongest, vilest swear words here

My son has been so not paying attention to the commencement ceremonies at the school that I did not know until just this goddamned very instant that I will goddamned well miss his fucking graduation because I will still be chaperoning high school students in blooming Hawaii. Goddamn it. I can't back out now -- I'm an integral part of this project, and I have the care of three particularly active boys (yes, three: Sterling's in the other too energetic for their own good group).

Now I am finally reconciled to the nice fellow not going with us. He gets to go to the graduation. Now to lay down the law: he must not work on that day. Must not, must not, must not. Since he's the most experienced cook they have, they often tap him to cater the graduations. There is no alternative though: he must represent us at Frank's commencement. Damn. I wanted to see the guy walk.

I'll be getting home at 10:30 that night, damn it.

How the hell is he supposed to know how important his future is to me when I have to blow off this event? It's easy to say he doesn't care himself, because he never bothered to order a cap and gown, but it does matter to him, I know it does, and it matters to him that I care, too.

I will figure out something.

trinker's happy and productive thing (about 425 words, more later)

I'm not generally going to respond to these things, not least of all because I hate the word "meme" and the wrong understanding of evolution and genes that it rode in on and its little dog too.

But I agree with Trinker: for the Northern hemisphere, we're coming out of the dark time and it can be a rough transition for our vulnerable friends, so let's share the happy memories and the productive things.

Both of mine are about my son.

1) memory: when he was almost eight and I was expecting my daughter we went to a couple of mother-and-child singalongs. They were singing this song that goes (for example) "Mary can tie her shoes, her shoes, her shoes, Mary can tie her shoes, all by herself." Obviously meant for the extremely young, but there we were. They asked all the kids and the adults who wanted to to come up with something they could do all by themselves.

My kid's verse was "Frank can think, can think, can think, Frank can think all by himself."

2) the thing I did: I ordered Frank's cap and gown for him and wrote him an email about the snafu and what we can do about it (we can't get me there, because even if I weren't needed to shepherd the boys who are too active for their own good, the flight is already just about as soon after the parade as possible and I would also have to come up with an extra several hundred dollars to take an earlier one).

Oh, also, I'm slowly back on track in the novel. I've introduced, I think, all the many players in this part of the book, and I've got the position statements from each of them, I think, and now I'm just about ready to push the lead domino.