Hello, Hello

I gave Madeleina the day off today. It's only her second of the year and I figure she's entitled to one every six week period, her call. She had band stuff the last two nights, coming home at about 8:30 each night, then doing homework, sort of. Yesterday she went to school exhausted, but today she was just not thinking clearly. She talked for an hour from 7 AM till 8 AM and didn't speak a single coherent sentence.
"Dad, you know what the science experiment was yesterday? Fantastic......Oh, I can't remember....your fault!" Whack! Whack! Whack!
"Okay, now I remember....oh, I hate you...did you feed the goats?"
That sort of thing. So she stayed home and slept till 1 PM.
Then she did homework, tended the animals, came with me to Walmart, to Two Bucks, read a book, sang songs. And she's just come in singing the Beatles' Hello Hello, Goodbye Goodbye, or whatever the official title was. I was smoking good pot back then so beg your forgiveness on song titles.
"Dad, I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello. Hello? HELLO? Hello starts with HELL. So that means HELL TO YOU! With an "O" on the end to soften it up but still "HELL!"
"I don't think that's what they had in mind, girl...."
"They were smoking dope! They have no idea what was on their mind! Just stop saying Goodbye when I say HELLO, okay?!!!!!"
You pause, you look at her, you laugh, you get Whacked! a few times. You keep grinning. She's gonna break some hearts and some balls some day. I'm just the practice punching bag.
But if she finds a good man--or woman or dog or whatever/whomever she decides to shine her love on--who knows how to roll with those punches and laugh with her insane brilliance, well, they will have found a good one. I'm just sorry that when she does, I will lose some of this spirit in my life to someone else. And I'm spoiled and want it all. It's like having a paint colt living in the house and charging through the rooms now and then, full speed. Just get out of the way and admire the damned thing.