Tired.....

Yesterday was D-day. As in depart, descend, deliver and die-from-heat-stroke. We took Perfect Daughter to her perfect law school in very imperfect Austin.

So we departed....and we descended on that town...to deliver our first-born daughter into the hands of every weirdo and wacko who lives in Texas. Seriously, at one point we were driving down Riverside and DH said, "This reminds me of that bar scene in Star Wars". It would have been funny if it wasn't so um, funny. Keep in mind, DH was born and raised in Austin. And attended UT, where of course, he met ME. So, there are moments of happy reminiscences, entertwined with, "Our little girl is going to live HERE??????". Yikes.

As we were delivering Perfect Daughter's ten million pieces of luggage, each weighing 100 pounds, up three long flights of stairs, past more odd Austinites, we once again thought, "Our little girl is going to live HERE?????". Mr. herewegoagain valiantly staved off a heart attack as he made trip after trip. Our daughter is the girl who lives by the code of "travel light". Apparently "traveling light" is not the same as "moving light". Her new apartment is all bills paid, so we did enjoy running the a/c at 60 degrees to combat the 100 degree/98 percent humidity that is Austin in August. I was in charge of opening doors and even I was hot and tired! (And apparently not very good at the door-opening either according to the hot, sweaty people on the other side. Hey, I move slowly-- it's an age and weight thing, OK?).

I looked around at the young people milling about. I read (and winced through) 101 Ways to Survive UT (just to let you know...it's definitely PG-13 rated). I tried, I really did, to find a little can of pepper spray for her key ring. You know you are in a rough part of town when you ask the young male cashier at Walgreens if they sell pepper spray:-- "You know, to keep mean dogs away when you jog, wink, wink" (yeah, right), and he says, "If you find some, buy some for me, it's scary out there".

Oh, how I hated to leave Perfect Daughter. Yes, she is all grown up. And yes, she has NOW (waaaaaaay after the fact) regaled me with stories of the sorts of places she lived in France and D.C. (some things are better for moms never to know), but the thing is...she is so very small. Rather like Piglet. She is freakishly strong for her age (living in the country does that to small girls), and decidedly opinionated (being my child does that to small children), but somehow vulnerable. I know she is going to take Austin by storm, own the Law School, and have a large building named after her someday on campus, but for now, she's just my little girl. Pray for her to navigate these next few days. I worry, I really do.

And I need to get that pepper spray, pronto. There are a lot of mean dogs out there.....