Late Summer Slump

Mom, the Son of Never Stops Eating sighed a few days ago, I'm tired of being hot.  I wish it were October already.  I'm done with summer.

I feel you, kid. I really do.  The Mom of No likes the heat- most of the time.  In mid-summer, I can walk down the trails and see dragonflies everywhere, which makes being drenched in sweat worthwhile.  But in late September, it seems like the heat should go, already.  Rain has been scarce and everything is dry and brown, and the dragonflies have left (mostly), except for a few elderly scarred stragglers and a bunch of common green darners.  As I walk down the trail, grasshoppers fly everywhere, announcing my arrival to anything that happens to be lurking around.  A stealthy approach is just not possible.  Thanks for nothing, grasshoppers.

I'm in a prolonged late summer slump, brought on only partially by the paucity of observations on my favorite trail;  it seems like this year there is less to see, although that could be because I've forgotten that it is like this every year, or that this year it's particularly parched, or that I've been reading about the decline of birds and insects and seeing only grasshoppers instead of common buckeyes and Gulf fritillaries and Queen butterflies is reinforcing what I've read.  I am fascinated with the intricate beauty of butterflies and dragonflies; a future world in which small children will never see a dragonfly and then think of winged fairies is not something I really want to consider.

Soon enough, the Mom of No will celebrate that half-century milestone birthday, and the feeling is strong that if I want to do something, now is probably a good time to do it.  However, the practical side of me then asserts itself to state that most of what I really want to do involves a lot of time or a lot of money (or both), so there's the realization that maybe I should pare down the list just a bit.  One of my dream bucket list items is get the Observation of the Day on iNaturalist; that could be within the realm of possibility.  I'll just have to keep on hiking- a task I am willing to continue.

It's sad to see the trash people leave on the trail- either purposefully, like a plastic soft drink bottle sticking up from the mud in a marshy area, or unwittingly, like a balloon that has probably floated in from some celebration elsewhere and now lays forgotten by the original celebrants a few feet off of the trail. The balloon's bright colors contrast with the brown and faded green and dull yellows of the grass and leaves, marking it as painfully out of place.  I leave the trail and walk the few feet needed to retrieve the balloon, fold it up, and stick it in my field bag for dumpster disposal later.  As I walk back to the trail, the grasshoppers leap before me.  I have no way to reach the plastic soft drink bottle, so it must stay for the time being.

I've been advised that shortly I am to temporarily lose access to my favorite trail due to some infrastructure work; the area will be closed off to the public for safety reasons.  I try to view this as an opportunity- I am fortunate to live in an area with other trails, so there is some exploring to be done.  However, I have bonded with this trail; I've seen it lush with wildflowers and butterflies and gem-like variegated meadowhawks in spring and fall; I've seen it newly emerged from flooding; I've seen great blue herons walking on the iced-over marsh during a deep winter freeze.  I stood alone on that day, hearing only my breathing, watching the herons walk confidently on the thin ice, knowing that I was watching something beautiful.  I've seen my offspring stare, gape-mouthed, at egrets and herons and once, the possibility of a beaver swimming across the marsh.  I know I'll be back, but it will not be easy to wait.

Enough of this funk, I tell myself.  The winter birds are on their way, as is (hopefully) some cooler weather.  I sit at a table at one of the wildlife blinds, drinking some water (hydration is important) and wiping off sweat from my forehead with a bandanna (always carry a bandanna in your field bag).  I look over at the green reeds- almost the only thing bright green in this dry landscape- and when my eyes adjust I see a small green tree frog, curled up on a green reed, almost perfectly blending in.  Then I see another, and another, and soon I realize that the reeds are full of green tree frogs.  It is just what I needed; my slump is not cured, but for a moment it is forgotten.

Lunch Treat

Earlier this afternoon, the Son of Never Stops Eating did something I honestly didn't see coming: he took me out to lunch after church.

You don't have to, I told him.  We have plenty of food at home.  But he had his heart set on chicken and fries, and he was willing- insistent, actually- to pay for it with his snow cone stand job earnings, so after some discussion about who had the best chicken tenders and fries, we set off for the local Whataburger and enjoyed a delicious lunch.  Today is his last day of work since school is starting this week, and he told me he was going to miss his job and his paycheck and that he was going to stop buying Legos for awhile because he wanted to save his money (but I've heard that last one before, and then two weeks later he finds his newest heart's desire online, and that is the end of the saving money- so I'm dubious about the last part).

If a visitor from the future had appeared to me back in the mid 2000's and told me "In a few years, this kid who isn't talking to you and who doesn't seem interested in human interaction and who just wants to run around whenever you try to get him to participate in anything will be taking you out to lunch with money he earned at a part time job", I would have been convinced that this time traveler's brains were completely scrambled by whatever process had enabled him or her to venture back to the past, or that they had me confused with some other person, but I wouldn't have believed a word of any of it- which is likely a problem time travelers encounter on a regular basis.

This is the problem with autism: I usually have people make one of two assumptions about the Son of Never Stops Eating, when they find out he's on the spectrum.  I once tried to talk to a church youth counselor about the Son of Never Stops Eating participating in activities, and his concern was that I needed to be there so that I could toilet him and help him eat.  His impression (based on one encounter) was that people with autism were essentially helpless.   I also have people who will tell me not to worry about my son's future because he's probably a coding savant; he'll get a job at Microsoft, and them move to Seattle, where evidently he'll fit in just fine.  Neither of these things happen to be true here- the Son of Never Stops Eating is definitely capable of feeding himself (as I write this, he is feeding himself a huge piece of chocolate cake), and he has zero interest in coding.

These encounters usually end in me saying something like "not all kids with autism are similar, that's why it's referred to as a spectrum", and then the other person says something like "oh yeah, I think I've heard that before, so he's not like Temple Grandin? Because I watched that show on TV and it was really good".

In the recent past, one of my concerns about him was what would happen if he got a job and then his employer wanted him to wear khaki pants, or an itchy polo shirt?  At his current job he can wear shorts and a t-shirt, so it was a non-issue.  Since school starts Tuesday, I asked him what he is going to wear on his first day of school, and he responded with "the usual", which maybe because he is a teenage boy or maybe because he hates wearing pants and itchy shirts or maybe both is always going to be shorts and a t-shirt even if it's freezing (that's one of the things I'm always wondering: is this a teenage boy thing, or an autism thing, or a Generation Z thing, or am I just being an overthinking mother and it's not a thing at all?".  So then I asked him what he'd do if he got a job and had to wear clothes he didn't like.

He sighed deeply.  Mom, he says, I don't like itchy clothes for school but if I had to wear it for work, I would do it because I am getting paid at a job and I like money but school is just school.

I wanted to ask him if he was also willing to wear deodorant to work, because the last time we had a discussion about deodorant he was insistent that deodorant was for school days only, but some things I honestly just don't want to be aware of.

The entire time we were eating, The Son of Never Stops Eating's latest Lego creation, some V-wing or X wing or something like that space fighter, was sitting on the table next to his Whataburger box of chicken tenders, and at least twice someone stopped at our table to ask him- with apparent genuine interest- if he'd built it himself and how long it had taken (yes, and 2 hours).

Yep, back in 2009, when I was chasing the Son of Never Stops Eating around a baseball field, trying without any success to get him to at least look at me and maybe try swinging a bat, and he was running away from me with the speed of an Olympic sprinter, I never saw a day in which I'd be sitting at a Whataburger with him (and an intricate Lego creation he'd built) eating a meal he'd paid for with money he'd earned himself and having conversations about why it would be OK to wear itchy clothes to work (but definitely not school), whether Mr. Burns is more evil than Darth Vader, and how he might join the art club at school (but maybe not).

I saw a lot of possible futures, but not a single one looked like this.

A Teen and His Money

Several months ago, when the Son of Never Stops Eating was still in 10th grade, he was going on a field trip with his class.  As part of that excursion, they were going to stop and eat at a restaurant, and the instructions said to bring money for a lunch and tip.  The night before, I went searching for $10 to give him and came up with about $5 and a few stray pennies.

"I don't think this is going to be enough", I told him.  "Use your debit card and I'll pay you back".

About ten minutes after lunch the next day, he started texting me: MOM! Did you pay me back? MOM! I need money! MOM! Don't forget to pay me back! MOOOMMMMMMM  I want my MONEY MOM! Did you put $10 in my account yet? MOM I want my MONEY!

Then: Mom I love you Mom don't forget my money!

He was being really persistent, considering that the only money he had at the time was the allowance I was giving him, so technically he had loaned me my own money and was now demanding rapid reimbursement of money I'd given him in the first place even though I'd meant it to pay for hamster bedding and saving up for Legos, not for lunch- it was like dealing with a Vegas loan shark (not that I've had that experience first hand, but I can envision it) or the Mafia.

You should be happy he doesn't know about interest, a co-worker said.  He'd be charging you by the minute.  I was making a mental note to never borrow my own money from my son again, and was remembering the days long ago when I wondered if he'd ever be able to read or write well enough to get a point across.  Clearly, this educational milestone had been met.

A few weeks ago, he ordered, using money he'd made from a part-time summer job, his latest heart's desire: a Lego Star Wars X-wing or V-wing Darth Vader Super Fighting Rebel Warp Drive Fighter Jet (or something like that). He had ordered this, with my assistance (by which I mean he stood behind me and told me exactly what number the Lego set was from memory while I typed in the order) from a gargantuan online seller.  It was actually being shipped by a third-party, not the behemoth itself, a fact which really didn't register at the moment.  He ordered it using his debit card (side note: we won't be doing that anymore, so if you're tempted to message me that this was a bad idea, you don't need to) and immediately (and by immediately, what I really mean is "the nanosecond I pressed the order button") started pestering me about when this Super-V Wing Jet Nuclear Powered Jedi Fighter was going to arrive.  Patience, grasshopper, I advised him.  It's not like he doesn't have at least three huge tubs of Legos already.

It didn't arrive that day, or the next day, or the day after that, or even the week after that- it hadn't even shipped.  I tried to cancel the order, but was being ignored by the evil third-party seller, who had promised Legos but wasn't delivering.  Fortunately the debit card hadn't been charged but it could be, at any moment, so I had told the Son of Never Stops Eating that he couldn't spend that money on anything else just yet.  I needed the order cancelled, desperately, because the Son of Never Stops Eating was wanting his Legos, or permission to use his money, and  he was wanting them RIGHT NOW and by RIGHT NOW I mean that the kid was on summer break and he had plenty of time to text his mother about his desperate lack of a specific Lego construction kit.

MOM! I WANT MY LEGOS! Did you call? Mom don't forget to call! Mom, I NEED my X-Wing fighter! Mom, Don't forget I need my Legos MOM! MOM! MOOOOMMMMMM! I want my money!

MOM I love you MOM Did you cancel it yet? Don't forget MOM!

Please, I am begging you, I told the customer service representative from Gargantuan Seller.  My son is obsessed with these Legos and also with his money.  Please help me cancel the order so that he can order something else.  The customer service representative was efficient and merciful and was able to inform me that yes, the order was being cancelled and with that miraculous news, the Son of Never Stops Eating was once again free to spend his money on some other Lego set despite both the Father of No and I encouraging him to do something bold and new, like save his money or buy something else that isn't Legos.

In special education transition to adulthood meetings, the subject of handling and managing money often comes up as a needed skill.  The next time it does, I'll be able to say that while we don't have all the intricacies worked out of good money management skills, I think he gets that his money is his money- and once he learns about interest, I'll have to be sure to keep cash on hand so I won't need to borrow any of my own money to pay for field trip lunches. I'm fairly certain I won't be able to afford it.

Bureaucracy

You'd have to be a hermit who has been living in a cave for the last 100 years to not realize that one of the biggest issues in the United States is healthcare.  People have all kinds of pros and cons for wanting one solution or another; politicians running for office promise great solutions that will make everyone happy with either no intention of delivering on their promises or no plan for delivering on their promises, or both.  Usually one reason people trot out for not wanting any kind of single payer or universal healthcare is that they don't want to deal with the inefficient and heartless government bureaucracy.  Definitely, the private sector works like a well-oiled machine- and it's not confusing or complicated, and everyone knows exactly how much things are going to cost.  I can't imagine why anyone would want something different.

So someone in the Family of No needs oral surgery to extract some wisdom teeth.   The Mom of No has medical insurance and springs every pay period for the extra dental insurance because hey, four people, that's a lot of teeth- and the Mom of No had a root canal earlier this year, so the policy has already paid for itself, because those root canals are expensive (and painful). I should have done a better job of flossing in my youth; lesson learned.  So the oral surgeon's office is called, appointments are made, and of course then it comes time for the healthcare acquisition ritual known as "We Must Discuss Your Insurance Benefits Before Care Can Commence".

"Well", the benefits coordinator tells me, "Medical is your primary insurance, so we have to file with them first, but they're a non-participating provider. Your dental insurance should pay it but we can't submit the claim to them until your medical insurance denies it.  That will take several months, so in the meantime, you'll have to pay the balance and wait for the claim to be paid.  She makes it sound like having two policies is a huge imposition.  It's not my fault that's how my medical insurance is, I want to say.

Wait, what? That's not what the dental insurance benefits book says. I eyeball the clock, hoping that I'll have time to get some dragonfly hunting in before dinner.  I sense that yes, this is about to get complicated.

The benefits coordinator is unimpressed with my knowledge of my dental plan benefits.

Doesn't matter, she says. That's our policy.  Because you have two insurance plans.  We're only doing this as a favor to you.  Usually we just file one.  But the secondary insurance you have is easy to work with.  So lucky you.  But you still have to pay up front.

But my medical insurance won't even pay anything, I tell her.  It doesn't even cover dental procedures.  That's what the other policy is for.  That's not how they do it at our dentist's office. That's why I bought this policy.  So that I wouldn't have to pay the entire cost of stuff like this.

It doesn't work that way, she says.  That's how we do it. We don't care how they do it at your dentist's office.

So what do I have to pay? I ask her.  It's impossible to say without filing the claim, she says. It depends on how things are coded.  You might have to pay 30% of the extractions and 15% of the sedation.  Or, maybe it's 50% of the sedation and 35% of the extractions.  Plus, she mentions, there's another procedure that involves taking blood and putting it on the extraction site, and insurance doesn't cover that.   It depends on what your medical insurance pays.  Then there's your deductible.  But that's after we file the claim.  You have to pay the entire cost up front.  

So, I'm paying the oral surgeon more money than I'm supposed to pay for a procedure and no one can say how much it will cost because no one knows what the insurance companies will pay, and then I wait to hopefully get some money back at some undefined time in the future after the dueling insurance companies duke it out at some point in time that is convenient to them.  Absolutely makes sense.

So at this point I call the dental insurance company. The rep there tells me that contractually, they can't require me to pay the entire cost.  With some technical assistance from The College Student, I manage to get the surgeon's office, the insurance rep, and me on a three way call.  This turns out to be a bad idea;  almost immediately the benefits coordinator and the insurance rep start screaming at each other.  I look at the clock again.  I've been on the phone for nearly an hour.  I can't take it anymore.  I'm absolutely baffled.  I need nature.  If this were an old fashioned phone on one of those spiral cords I would bang it against the wall, but I don't want to break my mobile device so I settle for rolling my eyes and beating the palm of my hand against my forehead.

Nothing gets resolved.

So today I spent an hour of my life (and I'm about to turn 50, so the clock, it's a-ticking - every moment spent arguing about insurance is an hour less to spend in nature) on the phone trying to work out how much a wisdom tooth extraction will cost me, and I'm still confused. Why do we do this to ourselves?  We're a nation of smart, resourceful people.  Maybe one day we'll work it out;  maybe one day we'll get tired of jumping through hoops to get a few teeth extracted.

Dragonflies

I haven't been writing lately because I have been busy dragonfly hunting.  I like birds a lot, and in the winter I am more than happy to spend hours looking for birds out in the woods, but in the summer looking for birds becomes tangential to looking for dragonflies.  The minute I spot that first common whitetail or Eastern pondhawk, my brain starts to shift its focus to insects with four wings and a wide variety of colors and patterns.  I'm continually in awe at the variety of dragonflies I can find just walking around my local nature preserve. Finding dragonflies is like going on a treasure hunt; some dragonflies settle in full sunlight, soaking in the heat, and some prefer hanging from branches in the shade, where you can walk right by them without knowing it unless you are fortunate enough to see them move.  One of my favorites- the smoky shadowdragon- blends in so well to its surroundings that I wonder how many I've unwittingly walked past.

The elusive Smoky Shadowdragon

People often tell me how much they love dragonflies; dragonflies are gorgeous, gem-colored ethereal dainty beauties; they are delicate fairies come to life. You can see dragonflies depicted everywhere- tattoos, notepaper, t-shirts, handbags, artwork.   In reality, dragonflies are sex-crazed cannibalistic vicious little critters- they eat each other, they eat spiders, they eat butterflies, they eat other insects, and sometimes they're eating while preparing to mate. However, they are beautiful, and when the sun shines on the dragonfly at just the right moment, the sparkling light on the intricately patterned wings can be truly breathtaking.

Recently I went on a trip to California.  I'm sure that when other non-Californians think of California, they think of wine country, or movie stars, or the Golden Gate bridge, or a state full of vegans eating organic produce hand-harvested by vestal virgins dressed in white, or renting half of someone's garage to live in for $3500 a month.  The first though that came to me: A new place to look for dragonflies! I spent a few hours online looking for possible dragonfly-hunting spots close to where I was going, as well as looking on iNaturalist to see what other people were finding in those places.  I had my fingers crossed for some new species.

My flight landed, I drove to my hotel, I checked in,  I headed to the local park, and I started my search.  After an hour, I had found exactly one dragonfly: A widow skimmer.  I can find widow skimmers 5 miles from my house.

Ah well, as the College Student says, it be like that sometimes.

About a month ago, I printed off a list of dragonflies that could be found at our local nature preserve, and crossed out the names of the dragons I'd already found.  I was left with 15, a few of which had been seen once 5 years ago.  My goal became to find the 15 I hadn't seen, so that I could say that I'd seen all the dragonflies on that list.  About two weeks later, I came across one of the 15 just as the park was getting ready to close: the swift setwing.  Of course, the swift setwing had chosen a perch that made it nearly difficult to get a decent photo, because that is what dragonflies do best (besides mate and eat each other)- but I succeeded after about 20 tries, all the while stressing out because I knew I had about five minutes to get in my car and out the gate.   Who only knew when I'd find this dragonfly again?  It could be never.

Then a few weeks later, I was in another park, also close to my house, and I found four swift setwings in two hours.  Yes, it do be like that sometimes.

I have at least two more months of hot summer weather to be hunting dragonflies (with a camera), so if you are looking for me, look outside- and bring a lot of water.  I have dragonflies to find.

Bioblitz Weekend

Last weekend was one of my favorite events of the year:  The annual iNaturalist City Nature Challenge.  The Nature Challenge is a good-natured world-wide competition to find out what region can get the most nature observations in a 4 day period, and since Friday and Monday are work days for me, I spend all weekend out in the field taking photos and downloading observations to my iNaturalist project.  This year I logged over 40,000 steps getting 110 observations of 65 different species of plants, dragonflies, snakes, birds, and butterflies.

My favorite trail is partially flooded once again because of the release from the dam, and the flooded part includes one of the best places to find dragonflies, but I adjusted, with great success.  The dragonflies are just getting started; the Eastern pondhawks, common green darners, plains clubtails and common whitetails are plentiful but I know there's more to come as summer gets closer.  People often tell me they love dragonflies; they're fascinating beauties with their often complex coloring and ethereal looking wings. In nature, however, they are also often downright vicious, especially when they capture a tasty meal- which is often enough another, less fortunate, dragonfly or damselfly.

Of course, what I was really looking for was the snakes.  On Friday night I was fortunate enough to observe this gorgeous broad-banded water snake, and at that moment I knew that it was going to be a great Bioblitz weekend.  It didn't stick around for long, but it was long enough to get a few great snake photos.  During the weekend, I was also able to find two rough greensnakes, a cottonmouth, and a western rat snake.  It was a good snake- observing weekend.

When I first got hooked on iNaturalist in 2014- which seems like such a long time ago, now- I could reliably identify a few birds and plants (northern cardinal, blue jay, robin, and bluebonnets).  Now I can identify much of what I see (with the exception of plants- sometimes the best I can do there is "flowering plant").  I don't always get it right, and sometimes I'm fooled or led astray by wishful thinking; a few weeks ago I was really excited because I thought I'd gotten a new species of dragonfly; it looked similar to a common green darner but the colors were slightly brighter that what I normally observed.  Of course, it ended up being a common green darner (but a really pretty one!).  I've learned so much in five years and I am only getting started.

Every year that I've participated in the City Nature Challenge, I've found at least one "WOW!" observation, and this year was no exception.  As usually is the case, I found it when I was least expecting to find anything in a place I had looked at hundreds of times and seen nothing.  This is probably the cutest observation I have in my iNaturalist project, and it was really difficult to resist the temptation to pick up one of these SUPER CUTE ADORABLE opossums and cuddle it.  Better sense prevailed and I settled for standing a few feet away, gushing to myself about ALL THE CUTE!

What really amazes me is that I was able, in two days, to document 65 different species, some plants but most not, in a nature preserve located in the middle of a huge, extensively developed, metropolitan area.   Wildlife is all around us, whether it's a monarch butterfly passing through on its migration or the rat snake the Dad of No found while cleaning out some vegetation in our backyard (the snake left before I got to see it).

Snowplow Parenting

Last night was the local high school's prom.  As I was looking at all the prom photos on Facebook, I kept thinking, has it really been almost a  year since the College Student graduated from high school?  Why, yes it has.  She has almost a complete year of college under her belt, and it's been a growth experience for both her and her parents.  I can't speak for her, but I'm having to learn how to restrain my inner urge to solve any problem I am confronted with- even when it's not exactly my problem to solve.

Recently, I was reading about something called "snowplow parenting", in which parents not only helicopter but they actively work to remove all the obstacles in their child's way, so that the path is smooth and easy.  This seems like a lot of extra parenting work, and also a bad idea- at some point obstacles will be encountered no matter how much snowplowing happens, so it's probably better to learn how to overcome when you're young and the stakes are lower than when you're all grown up.  One of the examples I read was about a kid who hated sauce, so the parents actively worked to make sure that the kid never encountered any- not at home, not at school, not at friends' homes.  Then lo and behold, she goes off to college and encounters sauce in the dining hall.  Apparently things did not go well.  Obviously no one told her that sometimes the sauce is the only thing appealing about dining hall food.

When I was a kid and I said I didn't like the sauce, the Grandma or Grandpa of No would glare at me and then say "Well, then, just scrape it off, but that is what there is".  Sometimes there might be a little extra spice tossed in, in the form of "There are hungry kids who would be happy to have that sauce", or "If you don't like it, then you can start doing the cooking".

Oh, thank God, I told myself, when I heard about this.  My kids are too old for this latest parenting trend, and I'm too old to be doing all that work when I could be taking a nap or looking for my reading glasses.

Then Spring Break happened.

So earlier this spring, I needed to get the College Student home for Spring Break.  I went to the trusty ol' American Airlines website only to find out that apparently EVERYONE wants to fly over Spring Break; tickets were well over the Mom of No's budget.  I went to the trusty ol' Southwest Airlines website and discovered that I could get the College Student home somewhat within budget but she'd have to go to Las Vegas, Phoenix, St Louis, and Denver first.  Remember this, children: you can have it under budget, on time, or within specifications, but you can't have all three.

"How about the bus?"  I texted the College Student. "Road trip!" she replied.

Despite the horror stories people insisted on telling me about the bus, her ride home was fine.  She even got dropped off at a gas station close to our house.  This was better than flying! No check bags fee, no drive to the airport!   When her visit came to a close, the Dad of No took her to the bus station and dropped her off.  All was apparently well until about 7:30 AM the next morning, when she texted me that she was stranded in Wichita.

"Wichita Falls, Texas?" I said.  I wasn't yet caffeinated and therefore not fully competent to confront any obstacles the day would present.

"No, Mom! Wichita, Kansas!"  Apparently the bus driver had stopped at the bus station at some ungodly hour of the morning, told everyone to get off the bus, unloaded their luggage and drove off.  No one knew where the bus had gone, or when a new bus would arrive to take everyone to their final destination.

This is where the parental urge to snowplow started kicking in, and I had to work hard to resist it.  My brain was presenting two possible reactions to this issue:

1.  Your young adult child is delayed at the Wichita bus depot. She says that she is safe but somewhat hungry and a little worried about missing calculus class on Monday morning. You need to back off and let her do the adulting thing.

2.  PARENTAL EMERGENCY! ALL HANDS ON DECK! THE BUS STATION IS HOLDING MY BABY GIRL HOSTAGE AND I NEED TO GO RESCUE HER! RED ALERT! RED ALERT!

Many conversations ensued. The Grandpa of No called (Hey, I heard the College Student is stuck in Kansas!).  The Dad of No and I had discussions about would it be better to drive to Wichita and then take her back to school, or bring her back home and put her on a plane.  At no time did the College Student ask us to come get her; she seemed to be bonding with her fellow stranded passengers while looking for places to charge her devices and consuming the snacks she'd brought from home.  We were the ones feeling the desperate need to snowplow.

Fortunately, by early afternoon, a bus representative had appeared and was rescheduling all the passengers.  The situation was under control without any real intervention on our part (well, OK, maybe a phone call to the bus customer service number to find out what was going on).  She arrived back on her campus around midnight and went to eat with a friend. She now has a bus story to tell, which seems to be an American rite of passage.

Meanwhile, at home, by Monday morning my adrenaline levels had returned to normal, and my urge to snowplow parent the College Student had receded into the background, where it probably needs to stay.