The Car is Tired and Happy Milestone O

I've been driving all over almost every day for as far back as I can think, which is not very far at the moment.  I want a day at home.  A whole day.  No shopping of any kind, no classes (which btw O passed with A grades!  Yay!) no meetings ...

And yet I thrive on meetings, enjoy shopping, and driving O to class turned out to be great discussion time.  I don't want to give anyone the impression that I spent the last couple of weeks or so being dragged from one thing to another and that I hated every moment.  I had a lot of fun.  I'd do it all over again.  But I do want to give myself a day off.  Tomorrow sounds good.

Today is the boy's b-day.  He's so tall and strong and smart.  I'm immensely proud of him, especially now because he's coming into his own.  After years of childhood luxury where failure held no terror and success didn't interest him, he's learned to succeed.  He's learning he's powerful, and that with not very much effort he can achieve a great deal.  He's learning that success isn't negative.  That seems obvious but it really isn't.  When failure has been working for you throughout your living memory, why in the world would success hold any interest?  Why change and grow when things are good?  People told him it would be better, but he had only our word (and the word of every adult) to vouch for success?  He knew he'd need to succeed eventually, but putting it off was easy and didn't cost him anything that he could relate to.  

The beauty part of where he's headed is that he decided to do this.  I didn't even give him choices.  We looked over his options together and this is what he decided to do instead of extending his high school education or the drawn-out failure he seemed willing to accept.  He's been given opportunities like this before, but this is the first he's made his own.

My son is becoming a man.  Now if I could only get him to stop teasing his sister ...