Taxi-ing Teens and Feel Good Friday

July 2, 2010 by Rieshy
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This week has flown by, it's Feel Good Friday time at The Girl Next Door Grows Up.  My 5 feel-goods seem to all involve my van, a 12 passenger van, in one way or another.  

  1. I started this week keeping extra gas in the van because our 4 year old was flirting with metabolic de-compensation and we had to be ready for the 45 minute drive to our hospital.  I'm ending the week with extra gas in the van because my son bounced back so quickly and so vigorously that my husband and I are planning on a date tonight. A real date: uninterrupted conversation, flirting with my love, and greek salad.  A week cannot end better than that.
  2. One night my teens met a bunch of people out at a friend's very dark pasture and played ultimate frisbee after dark with a glowing frisbee and glowstick necklaces and bracelets.  Between the pitch black darkness of the country, the glowing colors of the glowsticks, the amazing number of stars, and the fun of racing around like wild people they had an incredible time.
  3. I was driving and chatting with our Swiss exchange student. She commented that American mini-vans were much larger than European mini-vans.  I realized that she thought our 12 passenger van was a common example of an "American Mini-van".  I'm still getting a kick out of her thinking that anything about my family is a common example of... well, anything!
  4. In my "minivan" we picked up a full load of my daughters' friends and went to see Eclipse last night. Late.  My brain is still fuzzy, either from all the cinematic hormonal angst or because we didn't get home till well after midnight.
  5. The great thing about teens is that they introduce you to new people (which of course involves driving).  My son's girlfriend's mom is a someone I would have never met in a teen-less life.  She picked up a book of poetry while on vacation and gave it to me yesterday.  Picture Poems for Young Folks, by Marian Douglas (1872).  One of my favorites has the most amazingly wonderful title.  The title alone begs to be read aloud:
The Egotist Blossom

Waking the blossoms as it passed,
The summer wind went by;
A flax flower opened at its touch,
And looked up towards the sky.

"A royal thing am I," it said;
"Though earth my light receives,
The very firmament reflects
The color of my leaves!"

Ah, foolish little egotist!
When fell the evening dew,
It only bathed a flowerless stem,
And scattered leaves of blue!

But still, as calmly over all
Looked down the glorious sky,
As gayly whispering to the flowers,
The summer wind went by;-

As sweetly sang the joyous birds,
As fragrant was the air,
As brightly bloomed its sister flowers,
As if it had been there.


Have a wonderful weekend!

6 comments:

Amber at The Musings of ALMYBNENR said...

What a great five! You know, I'm always visiting on Fridays so I might as well just stay and make up a room for myself!

Here's my Feel Good Friday!

Pamela Bousquet said...

Ah, Susan-
memories...my youngest (one of 3 boys) will be turning 18 in Dec. I'm actually going to miss (some) of those teenage joys!
I Have a "little" award/pat-on-the-back for you over at my site! Have an AWESOME 4th!
Peace,
Pam

dollycas aka Lori said...

What a great week!!!
I LOVE THIS MEME because I have found people like you.

Dollycas

Marla said...

Love this! I remember our 12 passenger van days very well. People were always asking me if I ran a pre-school. It was more like running an insane asylum, in truth.

Love that you have a Swiss student. My mom was 100% pure Swiss. Our family is still in Guibiasco.

Anonymous said...

Isn't it funny how even though it was a semi traumatic week with your son, it ended up perfect!!!

I hope you had a great date night!!!

At the golf course, we used to play night golf with glow balls and sticks and it was so much fun to be out at night. I think it even smelled better at night.

Fiorella said...

Thank you for sharing the poem. LOVE the title, especially!

I kind of wish I was a passenger in your van this week!

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