Miss 14This weekend I was supposed to be in St. Louis hanging out with my bloggy friends at Show Me the Blog but do you know where I am? I’m at home. On the sofa. And I’m OK with that. Yesterday my daughter, Miss 14, invited me to her school to eat lunch with her. Apparently, this is a tradition at their school. For the parents to bring food to the school and eat with their children. I didn’t know about the bringing in the food part, but I’ll get to that later. Anyway, I chose to go to my daughter’s school for lunch today, therefore, I couldn’t make the trip to St. Louis.

Initially, I told my daughter that I wouldn’t be able to make it because I had a previous engagement. You do not know how much I was looking forward to this trip. Seriously, I want need to be around people who understand exactly what it is that I do. Her face fell and then she said “OK, it’s not like a lot of parents were gonna be there anyway.” I told the hubs what happened and told him that I couldn’t let her down. So I made the command decision to miss the first day of the conference to eat lunch with my daughter.

When I arrived at the school, I saw all of these parents walking in with containers of food from all sorts of local restaurants. Ummmm, I assumed when they said eat lunch at the school it meant eat lunch at the school, in the cafeteria. As the kids started pouring into the hallway, I saw Miss 14 peeping over people’s heads ~ she’s really tall ~ looking for me. When I waved at her, she smiled. A big smile. A huge cheese eating grin, which was immediately replaced by a surly teenage scowl. But it was too late, I saw the happiness.

LunchAfter realizing that her mother had failed to bring her sustenance, Miss 14 and her new BFF led me to the cafeteria where we purchased, um, lunch. A peanut butter sandwich, mac~n~cheese, a tortilla with bacon and turkey and a peanut butter cookie. After we settled at our table, I immediately whipped out my camera and began taking pictures of the girls. I was the only parent with a camera. We were the only table laughing.

As we finished our lunch and cleared the table, I looked over at Miss 14 who looked genuinely happy and said “This was fun.” She smiled at me and replied, “Yes, it was.”