A Path Not Taken...Because I Am A Melon Head.

So....

Twins.

They've mostly moved in tandem through their milestones,

from crawling to kindergarten,

and college was no exception.

In May The Boy flipped his tassel...

... and in June The Girl, weighed down with honor cords and medals, did too.

While The Boy's ceremony was a smooth (albeit sweaty) affair,

The Girl's did not go off without a hitch.

Unlike the dorm-dwelling, close-living Boy,

 The Girl need to be moved out of an apartment

and into storage 180 miles away from our house.

We arrived the day before the graduation to find that her soon-to-be-ex roommate,

an otherwise delightful, Star Trek-obsessed, cat-loving geek...

...had left behind the detritus of her near-hoarder lifestyle.

As The Girl and I shoveled  cleaned the place,

The Boy and The Sweet Man made trips to the storage locker.

Then...

they returned from the last haul to inform me that the passenger-side window

had evidently decided, "Eff this!" and had slid down into the door,

where it sulked and refused to come back up.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Some back story: for the previous four weeks,

we had not had more than two  -- and sometimes only one --

of the three cars at our house running and available at a time.

The repair bills had been mounting at a horrifying rate.

Also, the window had already been repaired on the driver's side of my car,

so I knew the passenger's window would require a trip to the dealer 

and several hundred dollars to fix.

AND...

we were 180 miles away from the dealer...

The Girl didn't have a garage...

and the car was filled with The Girl's belongings.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

But The Girl said we should at least try to call the local Honda dealer.

And while it was closing in ten minutes, the repair guy, a grease monkey with a halo, 

explained how this...

this...

and this...

...would be a temporary fix until I was back in my own zip code.

The Sweet Man and The Boy set off to Home Depot in one car,

 while I followed, sourly, in my Element.

We got to the street in front of Home Depot, 

but The Sweet Man, inexplicably, burned a u instead of turning into the parking lot. 

I followed, thinking he wanted to go into a different driveway,

but then saw he was driving past Home Depot.

I began making the "What the?" gesture to him...

...but kept going, because there must be a reason, right?

But once the car got on the freeway, I realized I was following the wrong car!

!!!

I am famous in my family for having no sense of direction,

but this is the first time I managed to get lost while following my own personal Sherpa. 

However, instead of becoming even more of a grumpy-pants, 

I began to laugh.

And laugh. 

And laugh so hard I was crying.

Every time I started to calm down,

 I thought of the Sweet Man and Boy scanning the parking lot, bewildered,

 and I laughed even harder.

Ten minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot and explained what had happened.

 Now, I know I will be teased about this 

until my kids are clutching my feeble, wrinkled hand for the last time...

 "Mom!  Don't follow the WRONG LIGHT!!"

... but it was worth it for the way it turned my mood around.

We gathered our supplies at Home Depot and as a team wrestled that window up.

After invoking one of the patron saints of this blog...

...the Sweet Man bent a wire, slipped it down into the door, and hooked the window.

The Boy grabbed the window when it poked out of the door,

and because the inner mechanism was frozen, I jittered the window button,

working it while hollering "Up!  Down!" like a demented coxswain.

Once up, we jammed in two door stops and duct-taped the top closed for good measure.

My heros!

The repair job held through the weekend,

The Girl graduated the next day...

...and the ceremony ended with

the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the releasing of white doves.

Why doves?

Because doves make you look like a bad-a**, that's why!