Quest for prom dress

My sister in law and her daughter are coming to spend a day here tomorrow and Saturday. It seems like we never have the house to ourselves anymore. Our older daughter constantly has friends over, my wife's friends are always dropping by, and every once in a while, relatives descend on us.

I've always been a person who craves a great deal of solitude; I feel like I need to spend a certain amount of time just daydreaming without distractions. I find it hard to relax if I cannot do this at least some of the time. Instead, I am having to mimic having social skills all the time now, with very little time to think. Of course carefully navigating the treacherous waters of human interaction does require a fair bit of thinking, but it gets tiring after a while. I feel like swelling waters in spring, straining to burst the beaver dams.

The niece is coming to Ottawa to buy her prom dress. There's a goth store here in Ottawa that is just to her tastes. What Mom, I think, did not realize is that this store needs to carry a large supply of wide price tags, if you know what I mean. Between that and the cost of traveling here, this will be one expensive prom dress!

I never went to a prom. I was barely aware our school was even having one. I think this particular rite of passage is a far bigger deal for girls. I don't think it would even occur to a boy without a date to go to one. When my daughter had hers last year, I was astounded by the amount of ritual and planning that goes into this particular rite of passage. That's the fascinating thing about having daughters - entire windows open on a completely different way of growing into adult life.