The case of the cat and the hot tub

Today, as my time in the Claims Department section winds down, I had an interesting call from a lady whose cat ran away, began living under her neighbor's hot tub and bath apparatus, and then died, creating a huge... stink in the neighborhood. Literally and figuratively.

It was a "fun" call. I felt pretty bad for the cat.

Things are currently stressful chez moi. Why do I say currently, they always are! It is time for Boy #2 to try to finagle his way into an institution of higher learning. His scores on the standardized tests were out of this world, he got a perfect 800 on the verbal of the SAT, a 780 on the math, and I believe a 780 on the writing portion as well. His GPA is also pretty high, 3.8ish. The problem is that he goes to an excellent public school crammed with ultra-competitive social climbers and so all the other GPAs are quite high too. He just misses being in the top 10 percent of the class. He wants to go to Notre Dame. We'll see. I would be happy because my impression is that it is one of the few universities that are re-Catholicizing after a lengthy stay in Irrelevant Secularism Land.

Anyway Dearest Mother is tearing her hair out lest this last child of hers fail to obtain admittance anywhere decent and wind up having to go to a second-tier public school like yours truly did. I am not being snide, either, he really is the cleverest in our family and we are kind of counting on him to get some kind of degree in corporate law and make enough money to save the family prestige. It is horribly shallow but to a certain degree we really do live in fear that he will have a horrible accident and be intellectually maimed or that he will decide to be a painter or something.

By this time next year everything will be all over, no more essays to write or applications to fill out or college representatives to butter up, he will be off and launched at whatever university is smart enough to accept him. Hopefully at that time Dearest Mother will still have some of her hair.