It was a fairly emotional weekend. Saturday morning I had to wake up extra early to get me and Emma Kelly ready for a fashion show benefitting the Elisa Project. Parents who lost their daughter to an eating disorder decided to do something to prevent this from happening to another family, so they started this organization to help young people develop a healthy relationship with food and to love and accept their bodies. As the mother of a daughter and a recovering bulimic, how can I say no to that!

On the way to the event, I pumped Emma Kelly up, talking about how we were going to pose and how great she was going to do in the show. I was just praying it went better than last time. It’s been a full three years since EK’s first — and what I swore would be her last — time modeling at the Elisa Project’s ESTEEM Fashion Show. On that fateful day three years ago, EK and I held hands as we walked out onto the stage, and she promptly folded her arms, stuck out her lips, and stood there as I continued to walk ahead. I assumed that when I got a few feet away from her, she’d give up and follow me, but nope! I looked back over my shoulder and there she stood, defying me to make her move. So I walked over, picked her up, and struggled around the runway in my 4-inch heels, while she crushed by super-expensive, borrowed modeling outfit beneath her balled-up body.

But this is three years later! Emma Kelly was excited about the thought of modeling with mommy! In fact, one of our favorite things has become watching “Project Runway” together, so we practiced walking and posing like the models on TV do. And other than her having a conniption fit when she saw my boobs hanging out in the dress that was picked for me to wear during the show (we had to pin that up a little!), EK did GREAT! I was so proud.

After I took off the booby-baring dress and slipped back into my flats, I got a text from one of my new neighbors. “Looks like you got TP’d. Found kids cleaning up.” He attached two pictures. The first one showed four kids in my toilet paper and shaving cream covered yard and the next was just my yard, cleaned up again and captioned, “Good as new.” Every scrap of toilet paper was gone and al the shaving cream had been showered off my front door and away from my walkway.

My first thought was how incredible is it that my neighbors’ children saw what had happened and decided to clean it up for me! How many people are lucky enough to have such considerate kids in their neighborhood! But then the sadness started washing over me. Why would somebody do this?  If my daughter was in high school, would this be considered an honor? But the shaving cream and its ability to eat away at my freshly painted front door — that’s not a compliment, is it? That’s straight-up “If I find you, I’m suing your parents to re-paint my door” vandalism, right? I mean, is somebody mad that I’ve moved into the neighborhood? Or was this an initiation? My corner neighbor who’s lived there for years says this has NEVER happened before, so that can’t be it. Now, the neighbor who texted me about the mess said he thought maybe it was because of the sign for my daughter’s school that I’d placed in my front yard. He said he never puts one in his yard because he was afraid of school rivals. So maybe it was that?  The word “smoke” was sprayed down my walkway — whatever that means. And whoever did it also scribbled shaving cream all over the Christian school yard sign, which certainly knocks off the vandals’ getting-into-Heaven points, right?

If I could only know the intent behind it, I don’t think I’d be quite as upset. For now, I’ll just keep anxiously peeking out my front windows every morning to see if I’ve been hit again.

But rather than wallow in that all day Saturday, I had to get ready for dinner with some fabulous men in the military, accompanied by their wives, a date and one lovely daughter. Every few months, Operation Once in a Lifetime takes members of the military to dinner at Del Frisco’s and pays for everything. Very cool. And this time, I was invited because — unbeknownst to me — they wanted to present me with a plaque to thank me for helping them with their bedding drive. How sweet is that! And I got to eat steak surrounded by a bunch of handsome men made even more handsome in their dress blues! How can I stay sad about shaving cream and toilet paper after that?