I have written many times about how quickly time flies. That’s not what this post is about, though I can’t write about life’s milestones from my perspective as a forty-something mom of an eighteen-year-old and a nearly-twenty-one-year-old without inadvertently injecting a little bit of that sentiment. I mean, at this very moment in this very house we’re preparing for the fact that the kid in this picture, the one on the right who it seems was just starting preschool yesterday, is graduating from high school this Sunday. This being our second time around the block with this graduation business and his being a different kid, I’m not at all surprised…
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Oops, I Did It Again
I may or may not have had to confess to J that I “tapped” the front of his car today when I was backing down the driveway. Luckily, 1. I only bent his license plate a little bit and 2. He “tapped” my car into something when I was in Costa Rica so he couldn’t really say anything except, “Well, I guess we’re even.” Also, when you do something twice, I’m pretty sure it can be spun into something like, “Oh that? That’s a family tradition!” It sounds better that way. Anyway, I’m just thankful that he wasn’t standing in our front window watching me do it, like his brother…
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The “Problem” of Lunch
In light of the events of this week in both Boston and West, Texas, and after our school district closed schools for the second consecutive day due to the massive flooding the entire area of Chicago has been dealing with (but of course mainly due to some of our hyper-local roads, which are still impassable), I decided that today would be a good day to take J out to lunch so we can count our blessings together. This conversation just happened and is very typical when it comes to deciding on stupidly simple things like where to go for lunch: Me: “Where do you want to go for lunch?” J:…
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I Was Here First.
This conversation actually happened at the base of the Marina City towers (my lifelong dream home) over the weekend: D: I would love to live here. Me: I would love to live here. I have wanted to live here since I was a kid. D: Well, you’ve only wanted to live here longer than me because you’re… Me: Because I’m…OLDER???? *rolling eyes* I KNOW. I’m older. I was here first. D: Anyway, I want to live here. Me: Sigh.
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When Television Collides With Real Life
When “That 70’s Show” was on television originally, friends told me it was really good and I sometimes thought, “I should watch that!” but it ended up staying in my peripheral vision and then landed in my rear view mirror when it went off the air after eight seasons, seven years ago. Thanks the miracle of Netflix and our ability to stream television classics, J and I have been watching the show together (in episode order) for the last couple of months. We LOVE it. I really wish I had watched it the first time around because it would have been a really good “water cooler show”, but alas, I…
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Silent Scream
Around these parts Jim and I have chatted frequently about our impending “Empty Nester” status. We’re not only fine with it; we embrace it. We’re all sunshine and rainbows, happy that we’re thisclose to being able to say that we have raised two boys and sent them both off to college to prepare for their own life paths. It’s pretty exciting. It was also pretty exciting for the two of us to accompany J over the border into America’s Dairyland (Wisconsin) on Saturday so he could audition for a music scholarship. (He’ll be majoring in Business but the college offers music scholarships to non-majors: hurray!) We arrived early and had…
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We’re All Adults Here.
Major milestone in our house today. This guy? Turns eighteen today. EIGHTEEN. His coming of age means all kinds of things for him, of course. Among other things, he is eligible to vote, and as he pointed out at the dinner table a while back, he can now sign himself out of school “should he need to leave early for any reason.” Ahem. This birthday also impacts Jim and me, of course. It’s a little stunning to realize that on this, our younger son’s eighteenth birthday, we are no longer legally responsible for anyone except for ourselves. Bizarre, even. I casually mentioned to J two weeks ago that he only…
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Proud Moments In Parenting
I was always adamant when the boys were little that I wasn’t going to be one of those moms who always put the kids’ music on in the car. I mean, we had a couple of cassettes (YES, I SAID CASSETTES: my boys were little in the 90’s.) that were in the genre of Children’s Music–and by “a couple”, I literally mean “two”–but for the most part the soundtrack for our time in the car was made up of Top 40 radio and tunes from the 1980’s and early 1990’s. I figured that the boys would grow to like whatever music we listened to, and I was right. Of course,…
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How Can You Argue With Logic Like That?
D’s affinity for taking showers that use every last drop of hot water in the house has been well-documented (Okay, in one post, but it was a very thorough documentation). When he went away to college, our water bill went down by about $750 per month* and the whole family got used to having enough hot water for our own showers again. Whenever he comes home, there’s always a “re-acquaintance period” during which we all forget that we need to do anything we can to take our showers before he wakes up each day. Yesterday was Christmas, which in our house means that we just laze around in the family…
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Adulthood Looms
It’s thick in the air around here. I can feel it looming. As busy as I have been lately, I have noticed. What’s fleeting around here? Childhood. I have been doing my best to pay extra attention to my boys, to close the laptop when they are talking to me, to listen fully, to answer them thoughtfully. When they want to play a game with me, I drop everything I’m doing if at all possible and I play. When J wants to show me his latest DJ video, I watch. Same with D and those random YouTube videos that college students seem to spend hours sharing and laughing about. (He…