Three Strikes for Simultaneous Success

When it comes to success in education, my family seems to like to experience it in multiples. I graduated from community college the same year my older daughter graduated from junior high, for example. But that was the last time my kids and I coincided. I was, after all, 46 before I finally got my bachelor's degree.

But my younger daughter and her family seems to be trying to set some kind of educational success intersection record. The year my younger daughter received her bachelor's of nursing, her daughter graduated from high school and her son from grade school. I took them to Disney World for a couple of days to celebrate. 

This year my daughter received her master's of nursing, her daughter graduated from community college, and her son from middle school. We're going to Disney World for a week this time. I hope this will be our last trip to Disney World for oh so many reasons. Thankfully, my daughter has chosen not to pursue her doctor's degree right now, and my granddaughter will be finishing her bachelor's degree, while my grandson has four years of high school ahead of him, so this should be the end of their coinciding graduations--I thought.

Then a couple of days ago, I realized that because my granddaughter is taking a year off to prepare a portfolio before entering a three-year program, she will graduate from college the same year her brother graduates from high school. In the meantime, their mother will be teaching next year while she decides if she wants to earn a doctor's degree, which could take three years. 

Nooooooooooo...........

copyright Angela Parson Myers 2011

Picnic Season Has Arrived

I know picnic season has arrived because I'm fighting my yearly battle with ants in my kitchen. Can you blame me for fantasizing about revenge?

Barbeque Guests

With sun-bright shell and fragile limb,

When all the world is still and dim,

Before the dew and the setting sun,

On a muggy summer’s eve they come.

They dip and weave on gossamer wing,

Those that glow and those that sing,

In whining cloud or sparkling group,

String quartet or ballet troupe.

Like good performers, right on cue,

They join us in our barbeque.

So we, with heartfelt heavy sigh,

Turn on the bug-zapper and watch ‘em fry.

copyright Angela Parson Myers 2011

Expectations

On a weekend when some people expected to be raptured, I chose to go with my daughter and her children to Anime Central, the largest anime convention in the Midwest, held each year near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. It’s the type of convention that the Westboro Baptist Church likes to picket, and I expected to enjoy it as much as I have the last four or five years I’ve attended. So you might say I didn’t expect to be raptured.

And I didn’t. But not for the reasons members of the Westboro church would think. I vividly remember reading in the Bible that Jesus told his disciples even he didn’t know when the end would come. If Jesus didn’t know, how the heck could any mere human be presumptuous enough to expect he (or she) could figure it out?

So I enjoyed the convention as much as I expected. My granddaughter was one of the models in the Kaotic Kouture Japanese street fashion show, showing an ensemble she designed and constructed herself. She was adorable—as I expected. And not one of the attendees was raptured right in the middle of it.

Still, since I drove, I made sure my daughter and grandkids knew where I kept my keys, you know, just in case I broke my ankle—or something.

copyright Angela Parson Myers 2011