Teenagers' bedrooms

You haven't truly been initiated as a parent until you've dealt with teenagers and their bedrooms. They're really more like caves than bedrooms. Dark, dreary, messy, smelly....

Dwayne and Dexter each have their own loft bed, but they now have wandered to a spare mattress on the floor. After days and days of cleaning, this is Dexter's idea of clean:

All you can really do is shut the door and hope nothing escapes!

Dexter, being the more artistic and sentimental kind of person, has made the most of the shelf next to his bed. His treasures include his priesthood certificates, state choir rating, program from Phantom of the Opera, and the stems from the glasses he smashed in his wedding scene for Fiddler on the Roof.

Facebook

I have a Facebook page now and I've managed to find Cheri, some high school friends, and some people from work. It's kind of cool and much, much tamer than MySpace. Dexter spends a lot of time on his Facebook page. Unfortunately, he won't add me as a friend. I'm pretty sure he doesn't want me looking at his page and seeing the conversations he's having with his friends. The crazy thing is he has over 188 people listed as friends.

Too much of a good thing?

Those who know me well are aware that I generally put my whole heart and soul into my work, especially when it's something I really believe in. The primary purpose of my job at Heritage is fundraising. Since 2000, Heritage has incorporated a performing arts program into the therapy we provide. I'll let you read more about it on the Heritage website (http://www.heritagertc.org/). What's important here is that I'm heavily involved in the performing arts program and have been focused on trying to raise money to build a theater for it. We've been fundraising on this project for a few years now and we raised enough money to be able to begin construction. The open house and grand opening for our new performing arts center are this Wednesday through Friday. This project has now consumed me as I try to arrange for speakers, entertainment, food, invitations, press releases, film projects, tours, etc. We had the governor speaking and Gladys Knight speaking/singing, then the governor had to cancel and Gladys had a new set of tour dates to play. Back to nothing, we tried for the governor's wife.....didn't work out. Then we got the lt. governor. Luckily, the lt. governor is not going to cancel out on us because his daughter works at Heritage and she'd have something to say to him about it. The building wasn't completed on schedule and we had to change the grand opening date several times. It was supposed to be completely done by Memorial Day. The Open House starts tomorrow and they are still fixing problems, painting things, and cleaning up. We sent out about 1500 invitations to the open house and grand opening. Most of the other arrangements are set, but I still have to print the programs and set up displays and write some speeches.

To add to the chaos, auditions for this year's play were yesterday and today. I had to make copies of the music, help kids fill out forms and get pictures taken, run errands for the directors, and continue to work on plans for the grand opening. It looks like we have a great group of kids this year. Our executive secretary already cracked under the pressure today. I'm kind of surprised I haven't done that yet. With all that's going on, though, I will end up working about 52 hours this week. I don't mind the long hours, but it's really rough on the old marriage. Even after nearly 20 years (it will be 20 years on Aug. 20!), Emerson's not a fan of me working past 5 pm. You wouldn't know it from talking to Emerson or the boys, but I'm pretty dang good at my job. They trust me with a lot and they know I won't let them down. The executives are my biggest fans. I'm hoping that the hard work and my degree will add up to some good promotion possibilities down the road. Who knows? It's a little late to try the stay home mom thing....lol.

Teenagers are messy!

With the Independence Day holiday, we had both boys home all week. Dwayne is working as an intern in the kitchen at Heritage while he is on break. He will be home with us until July 15. It's kind of weird having three of us working at Heritage, but it's nice to see him working. Dexter returned to camp on Sunday. The biggest thing we noticed with the boys home was that the place got messy fast. Nothing ever seems to get put away or thrown away. I think the dogs decided to act like our boys. They managed to find a weak spot in their pen and worked their way out. By the time I found out, the dogs had trampled their way through my garden. More than half of the corn, all the canteloupe and watermelon, and some of the squash is now gone. I managed to forgive the dogs (mostly) and am focusing on what's left of the garden. Things are a little calmer this week. Not as messy with only one kid at home, and the dogs seem to be staying where they're supposed to be.