We spent most of last weekend moving D from Kenosha to Madison (Wisconsin!). It’s an interesting time for him right now. After doing production work for a mid-sized marketing company for the last year, he was hired by a much smaller graphic design firm. He’s wanted to work at this place for nearly three years, since he was still finishing his classes. Here’s the rub: he’ll be a design intern, which is fantastic for long-term and getting him where he wants to go in his career but in the short-term, it’s a pretty significant pay cut. That’s why we’re focusing on the long-term. His living situation is also being downgraded;…
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Passing My Gifts On To The Next Generation
Presenting the special people in my life with gifts is one of my very favorite things to do in the entire world. I mean, you have no idea. Last year I wrote about the method behind my gift-giving madness: “I’m the type of person that will remember something you casually mention you like for ten full months until your birthday so I can get it, wrap it in pretty paper, and present it to you as if I bought it on a whim. I have bookmarked things online that family and friends share because they think they’re cool, pretty, awesome, or whatever, for later gift consideration. I will buy something…
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Auto Awesome = The Next Level Of Awesome
Like most people, I use my phone to take pictures much more than I use my actual camera these days. I have it set up to backup my pictures to “the Cloud” (oy, so mysterious!) but it occurred to me that maybe I should back them up to Google+ as well. I started that process a few days ago. It takes a long time when you have nearly 2000 pictures. One of the really cool things that Google does, when it finds that you have a group of pictures that are taken around the same time and are similar in some way, is to engage its “Auto Awesome” feature. It…
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We Made It Out Alive!
As I mentioned last week, D and I had plans to go to Six Flags Fright Fest on Sunday, and we had a great time. It was wonderful to go there with no pressure to get on as many rides as we possibly could so we could feel like we got our money’s worth, since the tickets were a lovely gift. It was completely relaxing—well, except for seeing things like the blood red pool in front of the carousel at the park entry, the ghostly, creepy park decorations, and the regular people walking around with various deep wounds (and ninja stars) on their faces, applied by Six Flags employees at…
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Stay Hydrated, You. (And You, Too.)
I am going to Six Flags this weekend (with D) for the first time in years and years. Yikes. I used to love Six Flags until it played a role in one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had as a parent. Long story short, when the boys were seven and ten we had an exciting day planned at the park. We were having one of those summer weeks during which it’s even sweltering hot in the morning, and literally the minute we handed over our tickets and entered the park, D passed out from heat stroke. It was a scary couple of days (understatement) and truly affected all of…
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Take A Hike.
When D was a Cub Scout and going on his first group hikes, he used to stay at the front with the other little boys. They would inevitably increase the distance between us parents and them by speeding up from excitement and not paying attention. “Slow down,” we’d yell. “We need to be able to keep an eye on you.” As one would expect, the boys learned very well as they grew older to pace themselves according to the rest of the group, and hikes became a little less stressful for the parents. A couple of years in, he and his same-aged friends hiked in the middle of the pack…
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Buckle Up!
My nineteen-year-old son J is very good with money. He has a job during the school year when he’s away at college, and this is the second consecutive summer he’s worked his tail off at his job here in town for the express purpose of making a maximum contribution towards the cost of his tuition. I think it’s all that squirreling away he does with his money that doesn’t make me blink an eye when he tells me he’s spending what I might think is a crazy amount of money on something. He works hard, covers his tuition commitment to us, and is otherwise responsible with his finances (all good…
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When Type A + Type A = Type B
In yet another example of how time flies and how surreal it is to have grown children, we moved D into his first solo apartment over the weekend. He hasn’t lived at home full time for four years now (!!!!), spending the first three years in the dorm and this past year in a house with several of his friends. After graduation they all started to go their separate ways and he needed to find his own place. Jim and I drove up to Wisconsin to help him move, and we were secretly-not-so-secretly thrilled to find out that he had rented a truck the night before and had friends help…
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Absolute Proof That Time Flies.
I know it’s something we say all the time, but I can tell you without a doubt that time flies because I know it was only yesterday that this happened: Wasn’t it??? And then suddenly, this past Sunday, this happened: That’s right. It’s been four whole years since I was wondering how this house would feel when our older son left for college and it was just the three of us, and now we’re already a year into being empty nesters. D’s graduation from college over the weekend (Mom brag: graduation from college with honors!) was lovely. It was a proud day for our entire family, and I watched in…
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Go West, Young Man! (Part 2)
Last weekend D left his Wisconsin home to head out west with three friends on a trip he’s been talking about for nearly a year. To sum it up, they are driving all the way across the country to visit (and camp and hike in) a couple of different national parks. This is totally different from the last time he left for the western United States; that time it was a controlled summer of working for the Boy Scouts. This time? Pretty much flying by the seat of his pants. In the wild west. It took a while for Jim and me to warm up to the idea of this…