Getting Ready

This past weekend was spent getting ready.
Big changes and little changes, all require a certain amount of preparation.
We have both going on at our house this month.

Although the Boychick went camping--in the rain!--with his scout troop,
the Chem Geek Princess still launched her clothing initiative so that the Boychick would be fashionably ready for school.

The CGP is the only member of the family with any fashion consciousness whatsoever.
The rest of the household believes, along with most New Mexicans, that formal means ironing your jeans and putting on a bolo tie. Left to ourselves, we'd go everywhere in jeans, flannel shirts over t-shirts and hiking boots. Not the CGP. She refuses to even wear t-shirts, taking the free ones she gets for donating her rare O negative blood in extra large to give to the Engineering Geek. The CGP dresses for dinner (she actually owns dresses!) and does not leave the house without changing into designer jeans. "No one knows that I got these, originally $120.00 MSRP, for one tenth that price!" she says with great pride. "Never buy retail!"

So Saturday evening, after the cloudburst, CGP took off for town headed for Marshall's--a local seconds outlet--to find some "halfway-decent clothes" for her "baby brother."
"High school!" she said, on her way out the door. "Fashion becomes important in high school."
"Size fourteen?" she said, tapping her cell phone impatiently. "Oh, well. I guess he is fourteen, so that should not be hard to remember."

Yesterday, while I was assembling a backpack with a binder with the Boychick's schedule inserted on the front, pencils and extra paper, the CGP spent several hours teaching her little brother the ins and outs of teen hygeine and fashion.



I doubt any other freshman boy had his new t-shirts washed and ironed with spray starch!

I doubt that any other freshman, male or female, began his high school career learning about dryer cycles and proper iron temperatures for various fabrics.

If she hadn't been so set on chemistry, I believe that the CGP could have made a great career as a county extension agent, circa 1940. The first item on her list for going to college was not an I-POD, nor study materials--it was an ironing board. When she lived in the dorm for a semester, she requested a rice cooker for her birthday.




The Boychick seemed receptive to getting ironing lessons, as well as being told how he must shower each morning--"you have boy-funk, you know," carry a comb at all times, and keep his clothing hung neatly on hangers. "You may not under any circumstances wear a shirt without washing it in between to high school," the CGP lectured. "But jeans may be reworn as long as they are clean and pressed."

"Pressed? Jeans?" the Engineering Geek said. "I never press my jeans."

"That's obvious," the CGP sniffed. "Thank goodness I am here to get the Boychick started properly!"

"Hey, Mom," the Boychick enthused. "Look at this cool Elements t-shirt! It's starched."

I wonder how long that will last? I mean, once the CGP moves out?