ADIOS O.S.!

What?
Everybody else is doing it!

Besides, it is not entirely untrue.  Tomorrow morning I am driving my 19 year old daughter to Scottsdale, Arizona from Kansas City, Missouri in her tight little black Nissan.  She is going there to attend Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute having decided against Nuclear Physics as a career and opting for that of Pastry Chef instead.  For the next fifteen months she will be sharing a two-bedroom apartment with three other female students.   I am slightly concerned for their mental well-being.

Am I a bad mother because I am looking forward to an empty nest?

We've already shipped five boxes ahead to my brother and sister-in-law's home in Scottsdale, but I am quite certain that she plans on transferring the remaining contents of her room into her compact car insisting that the trunk is MUCH bigger than it looks.

I already have that familiar gastric knot in my gut in anticipation of the histrionics that will ensue once she realizes that lampshades are not collapsible and it probably isn't a great idea to strap an oversized, stuffed platypus to the roof no matter how many childhood memories it holds.

Once we arrive, it will be fine.  It is the three-day road trip that has me worried.

Out of my three kids, this one is my toughest critic.  She is bright, beautiful, energetic and independent.  She also contains enough moxie to easily run a small country and has the genetic disposition of her father in that she does not suffer fools lightly.

According to her subjective inventory, I hover in ranking somewhere between one and three.  I don't know exactly who occupies the number one and three slots, but my guess is that number one is most people in the world and three, everybody else.

But I have to give her credit.  The girl knows what she wants, who she likes and almost always has a well-thought out plan as to how she will get wherever it is she wants to go.

Up to this point, that usually involved heavy emotional and financial investments from her father and I, but we take it in stride as part of our job description.

In any case, I've noticed that it is deemed routine to alert those among the OS Crowd who care of any departure that might be regarded as permanent or otherwise lengthy, and since I have no backbone, I'm just following suit.

I am assuming that two weeks is considered lengthy.

If I am wrong and won't be missed for such a brief period of time, can we please pretend I never wrote this?  I've got enough self-esteem issues as it is without adding conjectural hubris to the mix.

Hopefully, I will still find it possible to check in every now and again while I'm away. I will be staying with my parents, whom I don't often see since moving to Kansas City five years ago, and want to spend quality time with them; time when I am not otherwise obsessing about what to write for OS and fretting about whether or not I've read and commented on as many of my favorites as possible.

I don't know that I can go cold turkey, so my laptop is coming with me and I've scanned a bunch of old drawings that I can throw up on my page from time to time just so I won't be forgotten.  I don't want to have to start over here, and I don't want to miss out on any news from my OS friends and the stellar writing I've come to count on to color my days.

For the next three days, however, I will be on the road.  I am trying to conceive of it as being a non-violent, non-sexist exploration and bonding opportunity aka Thelma and Louise, which we rented and viewed together the other night.  (No way would I ever let this kid anywhere near a firearm.)  If Mussolini and Eva Peron had a love child, I'm quite certain my daughter would still scare the hell out of her.

So, off we go!  And if I fail to resurface on OS after couple of weeks, please send a search party to the desert Southwest, as it is a certainty I'll be tied to a cactus somewhere, likely also bound to an over-sized, stuffed platypus.