Bee Costume, 1978

Today we celebrate, or perhaps, bow our heads and offer praise unto the heavens, because this morning we (and yes, that is the royal “we”) got the glorious news that Voldemortress, the woman who helped us decide to leave teaching in order to write, is moving away from our hometown and moving her well-dressed, scheming self to greener pastures at a different university where she will no doubt topple kingdoms in her plan for world domination. No longer will we have the annoying moments of bumping into her when our hair is un-brushed. Nor will we have to worry about being put in a position of needing to weigh our Christian values against our desire for vengeance should she find herself in need of roadside assistance (as we were in December and about which you can read  here: “Christmas with a Carpetbagger”).

Initially, we were not amused. In fact, initially, we were upset on two counts: 1) the obvious, in which our world was rocked for no real reason and now what little reason there was is gone 2) we realized a better description would not have been Voldemortress but instead Voldemort and Cersei Lannister’s soul-sucking love child, and we have denied our readers this image until today. Sorry.

We quickly skipped past all other stages of grief and moved on to revenge fantasies, which involved sending fruit baskets to her new colleagues with a note explaining how best to protect themselves from her Dark Arts. From there, inexplicably, it was Lorde’s song “Royals” playing on a loop in our head for an hour—like an anthem—and this gave us great joy because, hello, we are the protagonists of the song (even if we are thirty years older than Lorde). It is true: We will never be royals, and everyone who knows us knows that we’re fine with this.

And now, we plan to explain to Z that tonight there will be celebratory cupcakes at Cupcake Royale.  Because the queen is dead.

Long live Queen Bee.