So, I survived my great Middle Eastern adventure. Not that I had concerns regarding my destination, it was more that I wondered if I could survive 18 hours in the air without hurting myself.  Or my fellow travelers for that matter.  Why do some women dress for air travel as if they are running a special on massage services at at "gentleman's club"?  I can think of nothing more uncomfortable than being wedged into a coach seat  next Skippy The Incredible Snoring Fat Man unless it was being wedged there in a micro mini, 4 inch stilettos and showing off the twins to the extent everyone knows them on a first name basis.  But that's just me.  Personally, I had on a pair of capris, a lightweight shirt, a hoodie, and a pair of Keens.  Given a chance I probably would have worn my damn jammies, but contrarty to popular belief, I do have some social graces.  The hoodie happened to be FB's because as I was scurrying around trying to get out of the house and to the hotel before the airporter left my ass (and I made it by *that* much only because I pulled in front of him and frantically waved, refusing to let him leave without me), I could not seem to locate my dignified, adultish hoodie.  I grabbed FB's and spent my trip hunkered in this thing with the punk ass graphics.  Ah well, at least I was warm on the plane.

Dana Delaney, when she was filming China Beach went to Viet Nam for a visit and said the heat "just hit you in the crotch and all you could think about was sex."  Obviously a different heat from Bahrain because that heat hit me with a full body slam and all I could think about was air conditioning.  Of which there was plenty.  Usually set at 45 degrees below the coldest place on Earth.  So, despite being in the Middle East with temperatures in the high 90s to low 100s, my punk ass hoodie and I spent some quality time together.

About a week before I came home we had gone to bed and my cell phone rang.  What?  I looked at the display and it read "FB's Middle School."  What, what what???  Answering cautiously, the man on the other end introduced himself as the 6th grade counselor and he would like to speak with me regarding FB.  I informed him of where I was and he replied, "Oh, then I will send you and email; would that be okay?" Yes, please, because this short minute is going to cost me $300 dollars.  I got up the next morning, wrestled the Nav away from the Drudge report, and logged on to my email.  6th Grade Counselor had done what he said and so I opened said email and read, "I would like to talk to you regarding FB."  That was his message in its entirety.  Unfortunately, I had gotten that much from the 14 seconds on the phone the night before.  And it's not as if I thought he wanted to discuss some other 6th grader.  I took a cleansing breath and sent a reply requesting a little more detail, if it wasn't too much trouble.  Apparently, the school was concerned regarding FB's academic progress.  When I got home this is the conversation FB and I had:

Me:  "So, how is school going since I was gone?"
FB:  "Great!"
Me:  "Good, good.  So getting your homework done?'
FB:  "Yep!"
Me:  "Getting good grades on it?"
FB:  "Yep!"
Me:  "So, no problems then?"
FB:  "Nope!"
Me:  "Your guidance counselor called me while I was gone.  Why do you think that was?"
FB:  *crickets* "I don't know."

Luckily, there is this wonderful thing in our school district called Parent Portal where you can log on to the school website and, not only see your child's assignments, but their grades as well.  And his were, in a word, DEPLORABLE!  He was getting A's in Global Adventures (sounds like something in special ed) and PE.  The rest were Cs and below including, (are you ready?  because I wasn't) an F in Language Arts.  Do you want to know how bad it chaps the ass of a mother with an English degree for her kid to get an F in Language Arts?  There isn't enough Boudreaux's Butt Paste on the planet!  Now all of these grades are the result of his lazy ass not doing, or not turning in, his homework.  His in class classwork show As; he's just being a turd.  So we had a fulfilling discussion about grades and his future (including such inspiring phrases as "I don't even care that you're crying!  You SHOULD be crying!") and he and his phone have parted ways until I see some serious improvement on them thar grades.  Jeez.