All sliced up and no place, "to go"

I feel like a mother today! Madison drove in from Emory. She got on the road at 9AM and had a speeding ticket by 10…it was one of those ticky-tack offenses, going 65 in a “construction zone” on the highway where there wasn’t any construction going on and 10 seconds further down the road, the speed limit was 70 again…I figure if you are a car driver in America, every 5 years or so, you are going to get a ticket of some sort, so I was very Zen about this one.
To celebrate the end of the year, Zeke was having 4 friends from Tulane over here for an early dinner on Friday (they clearly wanted to be gone by the time anything fun would be happening, but I take what I can get). You know how John loves to cook for a group, but then about 2PM, we found out the group would be more like 10 people…not too cool to increase a dinner party by 6 guests just 3 hours before it is to be served, but whatever, “college kids” and “exact plans” are not groups of words that go together easily…
Just as Madison was pulling up from her 7 hour drive, 2 car loads of Tulanians were also pulling up, it was a perfect storm, and the car that took Madison 2 days to load up was unloaded in 5 minutes! It was a whirlwind of lamps and comforters and boxes and kids, it’s 18 steps up to the front door of our house, so that was a great start to a great night.
Meanwhile, the freshmen at Tulane have to get the Full Meal plan; in addition to the dining hall, they get $300 Greenbucks, which you can use at the Food Court. They are non-refundable, and Zeke still had about $100 in Greenbucks, so I had the excellent idea of going as a family to Einstein’s Bagels in the Tulane Food Court on Saturday morning.
Pretty much the entire clientele on campus is buying one item or maybe two, like a bagel or a decaf…
Here we come, family of 5, ordering basically everything on the menu, two dozen bagels, lots of things with cheese and bacon and snacks for later…. the line behind us was getting longer and longer and Zeke, who is almost out of the stage in life where anything I say is a complete embarrassment was starting to distance himself from us and get that “I really don’t know her that well” look in his eyes…Our server, at a perfunctory glance, was missing approximately 25% of her teeth, and the ones she did have were in the wrong places. I think that is why I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, and in all fairness, I don’t think she could understand my words either. Although both of our native tongues were English, we were having one of those weird communications issues, which was not speeding things up. Finally she got both of the other servers to help. The sophomore behind me was getting impatient, can you blame him? I can’t stand it when I get in line behind people like me!!! He said from 5 yards back “Does it really take THREE people to deal with ONE order?!?” Miraculously, my server understood every word of his comment, and took more time to deal with him…
Well-fed and hours later, Zeke was calling with those uneasy requests of a boy moving out of a dorm, like “Could you bring me a vacuum cleaner and some cleaning supplies?”
That brought up the suspicion that nothing has been cleaned since January or maybe September, but I’m going with the theory that they RAN OUT of supplies…
But here we are on Mother’s Day, what a nice day to be reassembled... We had my mother-in-law over for lunch, I always like her explanation of why she OWNS but does not USE her cellphone..."It bothers me when it rings". Well, there you have it!

Patty