A Glimpse of Alex

There's no telling what might come out of a 17 year old's mouth. He's on top of the world and totally invincible.

"When I'm old and have cancer, I want to drive my Lamborghini off the Grand Canyon. And I'll video tape it all with an indestructible video camera so that everyone can see how fun it is."

With football and track seasons both over, I would have thought his life would slow down a little bit. But, at 11:00 last night, when he finally had all of his college history work submitted, an hour before the deadline, I realized that it's true: we will always find something to demand our time; the same holds true for busy teens.

During the week of Prom, a month ago, Alex had all of his usual deadlines, and added in a track meet and a student council trip. He left for the track meet at 5:30am and later that morning, I drove the hour to pick him up so that he wouldn't have to stay for entire meet. (This same day, Dustin took Allie and her friend to their last swim meet of the year in Pecos, which is 2 hours away.) We then drove an hour to Midland to have his tux adjusted at the last minute (the pants were hemmed at least 2 inches too short), and then 45 minutes back to Andrews to get to Prom dinner on time.

After Prom, they had an after-party, which everyone was encouraged to attend, and bribed with lots of cool prizes (Alex won a Kindle). After the after-party, it was back with their group for after-Prom breakfast (what the???...) and he got home at about 6am. (I helped at the party until 2:30 and called it quits for the night.) At this point, he dozed off for 20 minutes before grabbing his bag, already packed, for his 3 day student council convention.

We don't really pack quite that much into every weekend, but sometimes it sure seems like it.

His hard work and dedication to his school work, Scouts, extra-curricular activities, and community service are paying off. On April 23, he was inducted into the National Honor Society, one of only 25 in his school.  After filling out his application and interviewing with the committee chairs, they told him he has dedicated his efforts to worthy causes and they'd like to see him use his positive influence in a stronger manner.

Apparently, he interpreted that to mean that he should run for Student Council President, since this past week, he has been making posters and campaigning.  His speech was today, so we're hoping for the results by the end of the day.  Aimee said it even made her a little sad, because he included in the speech that he wanted to make the most of his senior year and use his presidency to improve upon the great experiences he's had there. She realized that next year would be his last year there with her.

This past Christmas, I didn't get in gear and get our Christmas cards out in time, and I decided that it was okay; I would just send Happy New Year cards. That turned into procrastinating to Spring cards, and then Happy Easter cards, and here it is May, and I have no cards to show for it. The realization hit me that next Christmas, would be his last living here at home and I seriously wanted to find a way to pause time. Where's the rewind button when you need it? I need to rewind to key moments and pause them and savor them for a little longer.

A quick scattered version of Alexisms lately...

...everything is YOLO. You Only Live Once. Apparently this was made popular by a recent song, which I'm told you really don't want to listen to. It's the catch phrase of the month, though, so ... YOLO.  He even used it in his campaign, YOVO: you only vote once.

...many words can be made longer, and therefore more important by simply adding "zor". "Dude, have you seen my jacketzor?" "I just have to go get that form out of the truckzor."  He insists he exaggerates its use around me because I think it's so lame and roll my eyes every time.

...insists we have too many mirrors in the house because the only reason he gets sidetracked is because he has to stop and check himself out every time he walks by one.  Really, that's just an excuse to not stay on task, but he has a new addiction to working out, so he truly doesn't mind walking by the mirrors.