<p>redbug
when I sent my kid to MCAD I did step by step google map direction if he were to take train either way.
not needed at all for his friend’s dad came and sent him to airport (see, midwest rocks!!) but I can see that she would try to walk. I’d made him because that’s all I do when I travel. If shows in google map in the same pad 2mile radius, WALK!!
but snow!!! and bags make it a deferent matter.
yep, pay it up mom.
I learned to spent " peace in my mind" money. like, direct flight even costed more that I had to tip in. possibility of lost or ruined then can not replaced-fixed stuff and so much of cold and misery of our loved one could not put on money-wise value, esp for supposedly happy occasion.
like if it was my funeral, he can use cheapest method and take as long as it takes and be miserable being alrady too late.
Happy holidays all (can I say it already or had to wait for Christmas/ hanukah/ Kwanzaa/ new years?)</p>
<p>redbug, I would definitely check with the school…there may be a free service available especially if there are a lot of out-of-town students and the school runs a regular shuttle during the quarter/semester. </p>
<p>My daughter goes to SCAD and at every break period they run a free shuttle service to and from the airport, bus and train station during the last two days before each break period and for two days starting when the dorms re-open. All my daughter has to do is get a reservation on-line for the time slot she wants.</p>
<p>Sometimes she may end up at the airport earlier than she needs to be, but a free ride is better than a $35 cab.</p>
<p>Oh, fammom, daughter is a vegetarian, and son won’t touch raw meat, so they won’t cook a turkey up there. :-)</p>
<p>Hey Glutenmom - How about Megabus? Not terribly convenient times, but $25 one way to NYC. Friends in OH and IL swear by it. WiFi and TV’s at each seat. </p>
<p>[megabus</a> US - Home](<a href=“http://us.megabus.com/JourneyResults.aspx]megabus”>http://us.megabus.com/JourneyResults.aspx)</p>
<p>Gmom - Delaware may be the most hellish part of your trip. There’s construction at the toll plaza (what is it, $4 for 12 miles?) that limits lanes, and if you try to bail out onto route 40, the bridge over the Susquehana is reduced to one lane in either direction.</p>
<p>We usually try to avoid Delaware’s toll, and it’s easy to figure out how just by looking at google maps. You get off at the exit right before it (exit 1), go up to route 4, head over on route 279 and rejoin 95 at the first Maryland exit. As a bonus, there are two Dunkin Donuts’, on different sides of the road, so there’s one on your right no matter which way you’re going. </p>
<p>For a holiday though, Delaware’s toll traffic often backs up all the way to the Delaware Memorial bridge. You can go over to route 4, or the old Baltimore pike, as early as exit 4. I’ve never done that so I don’t know what it’s like.</p>
<p>I have no problem paying for the taxi, she just had to find out for herself. After seeing the Google walking map to the light rail, she found she would have to navigate around the highway, which was not doable. When I mentioned a school van, she said they probably wouldn’t have one because everyone is leaving different days/times. She’s going to check, but I’ll bet I end up calling myself. At least with the taxi she can bring her suitcase and bring her stuff home with her instead of me paying to ship it. And yep, it’s a one stop but no plane change flight!</p>
<p>ref back to page 19 post 277</p>
<p>So I can never be a journalist. Cathie Black is only "appointed " by the mayor, not going to “replace” dept of Ed chancellor just yet.
now on big time backfiring.
three geezers, I mean caballeros approved of her, ex- mayors Dinkins Koch Giuliani, it is tough time, need good manager, business people rather.
some teachers, parents are against, collecting signature and try to block eh, what was the word? give thing to excusing her for not having education degree… waver? which old chancellor was awarded when he took the job.
now things are getting ugly, like, how much her jewelry or Park avenue home cost, she’s chum with the mayor, her kid goes to private prep school etc etc…
drama! drama!!
Bloomberg said not to bug her until she is IT, but that’s not gonna happen, it seems?</p>
<p>Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!</p>
<p>I left home at 5 am yesterday and drove to MICA to pick up MICA girl. I had left detailed instructions at home, on the kitchen table for DH and Manga girl to follow concerning cooking (make pie dough, make gf crescent roll dough, make two kinds of cranberry sauce) and some light cleaning. I intended to bake the pies when I got home, the gf pie crust needs to be well chilled to roll out properly, so I was planning time down to just about the last minute.</p>
<p>I arrived at MICa at 9am sharp, having phoned (didn’t get answer) and texted MICA girl several times that I was on my way and that I’d be there at 9 am. Traffic was light at first, but steadily built up. The Travel rest stops got more and more crowded as the morning progressed. Traffic heading north was much heavier than traffic going south. </p>
<p>Anyway, I got to MICa and MICa girl came out of dorm, bags in tow and noticed that I had the small cooler, a couple of cases of diet coke, and a bag of food with me. So she put her bags in the car and ‘offered’ to take the food up to her dorm, but I didn’t let her off the hook so easily. The room was a mess, lol, but I held my tongue, except to point out that maybe she should wash the dishes before we left. So she did that and we put away the food. We were ready to leave at 10. But the kid wanted Starbucks and I needed gas. I decided to try to take an alternate route home, through PA in order to avoid the NJ turnpike and I-95 mess. In Towson we spent an hour(!) getting Starbucks and gas. Then we were finally on our way. The alternate route was supposed to take 5 hours and 18 minutes (vs the official 4 hours and 30 minutes going through NJ). The traffic was okay for most of the way. We lost time mucking through little towns on surface roads and there were a couple of places with construction… and the bogged down traffic around Allentown from an earlier accident. We got home at about 4:20 (I heard about the 20 mile back up on the NJ turnpike, so I was SO glad we did this alternate route).</p>
<p>Anyway, I had expected to make dinner while DH to the kids to their riding lesson and then make the pies and crescent rolls. But holy hellfire… somebody had cleared the kitchen table and ‘nobody’ saw the note and the recipes I had left for them to do – even though I had talked it over with them on Tuesday. I was beyond annoyed and frustrated. I had left a second note right before I left at 5 am, because I noticed our turkey for Saturday was leaking all over the second refrigerator – and I needed someone to clean that up – and Manga girl saw THAT note and cleaned up after the turkey. But she never saw the other note.</p>
<p>Sigh. DH and I got into it. He said that he thought nothing needed to be done becasue we weren’t doing "our’ turkey until Saturday. For twenty five years, I told him, we have spent nearly all day Wednesday before Thanksgiving cooking… AND we talked about it Tuesday night, and now you’re claiming that you didn’t realize that I meant for things to happen when I was gone??? We even discussed it when WE decided that, since I had the day off, I should be the one to go to Baltimore and he would deal with having Manga girl and Aspie girl and him get started with the cooking.</p>
<p>Grumpy doesn’t begin to describe it. He took kids riding, I made pie crust and crescent roll dough and made two kinds of cranberry sauce as usual. Plus dinner. then we had dinner at 10 pm and pies weren’t done and I left them to Dh and manga girl and went to bed.</p>
<p>This morning made gf crescent rolls and we are now late for getting to our friends in CT for gf turkey day, so I’d better go. Anyway it was a really bad day yesterday,but it’s good to have MICA girl home… however messed up she is (didn’t refill meds; has work to do this weekend, etc etc)</p>
<p>Aaarghh…</p>
<p>Gmom, don’t you love the holidays???</p>
<p>Well, it sounds like you survived, and if you got to Connecticut, I hope you treated yourself to a big glass of wine first thing! I admit, I usually get a certain amount of cooking done on Wednesday, and I got very little of it done because H and the kids sucked me into going to a movie (Tangled) and then I had wine after I got home, and that was that.</p>
<p>Today was much busier than usual and I was very grateful to D1 (not Mica girl) for all the help she gave helping me catch up. D2 (mica girl) was still in massive sleep mode. I picked her up late Tuesday morning but she was still wiped out. The kids all vanished quickly after dinner and our guest was miffed that they didn’t help clean up much. I told him, “don’t worry, I’ll get them back…you see all those leaves in the back yard? Mwwwwwaaaaah”.</p>
<p>D2 goes back to MICA tomorrow to do all the work she needs to catch up on. I’ll miss her, but she’ll be home for a whole month soon enough and I’ll enjoy sleeping late, or at least later, for a couple of more days.</p>
<p>so geezer committee head denies waver she needs to become new chancellor.
now mayor says, she is going to get deputy sidekick with tons of credential to even things out.
official announcement will be on Monday.
drama!drama!!</p>
<p>really, anything to help kids, anything to make sense of the broken system.
anything, so that kids won’t go to middleschool without knowing timestable or never finished reading one chapter book.
so that social study teacher won’t take kids to see Castro without getting OK from the officials (obviously parents were OK with it, needing passport and all?)
no more kids broken fell off the stairs pushed by school security guard.
never the kid drown that terminated chaperone teacher’s job but not the assistant principal who lazed out and didn’t accompany the beach trip as planned.
no more scary beef patties or fake breaded chickens for lunch.</p>
<p>Bears, didn’t Joel Klein try to tackle the scary food issue? Whatever happened to him? I loved it when he took all the soda machines out. The man seems to like making waves!</p>
<p>G
he is going to work for Rupert Murdoch (geezer to geezer inc.) and do some education related stint in corporate world, whatever that’s going to be.
he tried, or so it seems, but kids won’t eat limpy salad bar or bruised apples, still go for french bread “pizza”, rubbery chicken strips and my kid’s new found love, fake beef patties (enemy of acne! but, for hungry teens, hard to see the dark side is)
even Jamie Oliver in England yonder failed, so I hear. point is, if food at home is OK enuff, who’d blame(awful,wasteful,yet oh so inexpensive if not free) school lunches, hum?
or pack your own, moms, stop whining.
I know I know, like, whatever.
let them eat patties!</p>
<p>While having to live gluten free has a lot of down sides, there is the bright side that the kids have to take their own lunches to school, and we mostly avoid junk. Ok, most chocolate is gluten free, and we always have a stash of chocolate around here, but chocolate doesn’t fall under the category of junk (or scary) unless its carob, though I did see an article somewhere (plane maybe?) about how chocolate is going to get a lot more expensive and the lowly Hershey bar will be in the neighborhood of $15 bucks or so. I guess I’ll have to find another vice then… oh, never mind, I have enough of those. Second thanksgiving turkey (this one is ours, and it was free) is in the oven, but I had to spend the morning making gluten free stuffing. In the olden days I would spend several days baking bread to turn into stuffing (and suffering when our ill-mannered bassett hound would snag a loaf here or there – thank goodness she’s gone now and we just have the yap-pee-on (that’s really papillion, bears) to contend with – the yellow lab is so mellow he would never snag anything when we weren’t looking) but now I just pick up gluten free bread at the health food store and turn it into stuffing. My grandmother was French Canadian and I use her stuffing recipe which involves using a ‘FleishWolff’ hand grinder and the turkey guts and neck and ground pork. Yum. Seriously, yum.</p>
<p>MICA girl got her hair cut and dyed and highlighted and god-knows-what-else yesterday, so she looks almost human again (though people don’t naturally have black and blonde hair)-- she was sporting quite a mane. She told me on the way home from Baltimore that she was out of her meds and needs them refilled, so we had to jump through some hoops yesterday in order to do that. She has quite a bit of work to do but had been planning some social time today – only to discover that the day her HS friends were talking about turned out to be yesterday. She grudgingly went to see Harry Potter with us last night.</p>
<p>We were amused to find out on Thursday that our friends in CT had met the ‘art nun’ (MICA and Manga girls’ art teacher) at some kind of nun anniversary celebration for the order that Sr. Janet belongs to. They introduced themselves to her as friends of ours and she gave them one of her infamous stares (she’s scary in real life) and wanted to know what their ‘connection’ to us was. They told her that MICA girl was doing well and all Sr. Janet wanted to talk about was Aspie girl (who is not an artist at all, but wishes she was, and who has very few friends who all happen to be art students and spend their lunch in the art room working on art… Sr. Janet is strict about who can be in the art room at lunch but has taken a shine to Aspie girl and lets her in there – probably because when Aspie girl was a freshman she tried cross country running… and Sr. Janet is the coach of the track team - -and she was always scared to death that Aspie girl would get lost).</p>
<p>Anyway, there’s lots of scary food for celiacs out there in the world. I just found peanut butter with wheat germ in it. sigh. You never know where the gluten monster will pop up. We used to have to be really careful with turkeys, but now you can find a fair number of brands that are gluten free.</p>
<p>Happy Holidays</p>
<p>Gmom
you got yap yap hairy one and an yellow lab? (roll around and pant pant)
and owned a basset? (more pant pant huff huff)
how did you like HP 7?
I was treated by HP fanatic friend for exchange of bunny-sat I did for her.
by the way, bunny is fun thing to have, if you can’t have a dog. slow moving once domesticated and somewhat aged, easy to draw. look at them nibble greens make you wonder why we should worry about anything. nibble nibble nibble the way they do!
MICA gal did hair before the movie so she wasn’t inspired by Malfoy mom’s-do?
It was rather well done, good edit. assuming everyone read books so skip tedious details and super visual do big help.
now when the part 2? Bunny offer would expire then.</p>
<p>Yes, the papillion is supposed to be MICA girl’s dog. I wish she could take the dog with her to college. That dog is so high strung and neurotic, a pain in the behind to live with. Being a ‘lap’ dog, she needs a lot of human attention. It was easier when I was home all day - but having gone back to work, the dog seems to have an attention deficit and is just terribly ‘needy’. As a bonus, she is prone to submissive pee-ing at the most inopportune times. When I got back from the UK last month I sat down and the stupid dog jumped up in my lap and promptly peed all over me. Not nice. The mellow yellow lab was just as you describe, lol… rolls on the floor, wants a belly rub. Sometimes he wants to sit in my lap too… it’s a bit awkward when both dogs decide they need to sit in my lap at the same time. He is everyone’s best friend. His only draw back is that he happens to be gluten intolerant too (who’d have guessed?) and has a very delicate digestive system – if he doesn’t get his food close to the scheduled time of day we are rewarded with dog barf… not fun… and if he gets the wrong sorts of foods (table scraps, for instance, that are too greasy) we get barf. Sometimes dogs are a lot of trouble, but I don’t last long with not having at least one in my life. Mutts are the best, but we’ve had the bassett hound, a scottie, a greyhound (that didn’t last long), the lab and the papillion. If I had to rank them in terms of my favorites it would be mutt, scottie, yellow lab, grey hound, bassett hound, papillion. Rabbits would probably be easier. I was really crazy a few years ago and let each kid get a guinea pig. Then they were fighting each other so we needed to get three cages. sigh. Then we had battles with le children about keeping the cages clean. It was so not worth it. Eventually the guinea pigs got old and died. I was surprised, though, at how personable they could be, whistling at you when you walked into the room hoping for a treat.</p>
<p>MICA girl’s hair is the opposite of Narcissa Malfoy’s. Hers is blonde on the top and black underneath. I lost a bet to her two years ago and the pay off involved allowing her to dye her hair. I didn’t know it would turn into a long term thing. It is kind of cool in an artsy fartsy way though. It’s kind of like a long version of a 70’s shag hair cut, all choppy, with a lot of hair hanging over one eye or with this strange swoop horizontally across her forehead. She wears black clothing mostly (such a shame), usually her daily outfit is skinny black jeans, converse high tops, black band t-shirt with zombies on it (or other equally odd emo band whatever) and a black hoodie. Throw in her lip ring and too much eye liner and you get the picture. At least she doesn’t wear black lipstick <em>yet</em> and we’ve forbidden tatoos. But actually, I don’t really know what she looks like when she walks around MICA. But she hasn’t spent much money and I know what her clothes are… so I’m probably pretty close. Her meds stunted her growth a bit, so she’s not tall and she’s too thin.</p>
<p>I liked the Harry Potter movie. I think the next part comes out in June? I really like the way Luna is portrayed… I think it’s very close to the way I imagined her in the books. Bellatrix, too – but Helena Bonham Carter or whatever her name is… is always so over the top. Not much depth between Bellatrix, queen of hearts and whomever she played in Sweeny Todd (one of MICA girl’s favorite movies… her being a Johnny Depp fan and all). I thought that the movie ended at the right place and on the right note. We went with Manga girl’s friend who is a HP fanatic – Manga girl wore her ‘muggle’ tshirt and manga-friend wore full Hogwarts robes and probably had a wand with her. Unfortunately for me, while I read the books and have seen all the movies, I don’t remember all the details too well from the previous episodes (I was the LOTR fanatic, though, and thrashed everyone with LOTR trivial pursuit – I wonder if there’s Trivial Pursuit for HP? – probably).</p>
<p>MICA girl gets the bus back to Baltimore this afternoon. Don’t know what we’ll do if she misses it. I should make her take the train down to the city…but I know we’ll have a good time chatting in the car (but she still hasn’t got her bus ticket for December).</p>
<p>So…we seemed to fit the typical pattern of college student return…I pick him and his roommate up late on Tuesday and then start driving back the 4 hours. The boys chat with me for perhaps 1/2 hour and then fall into comas for the remainder. I make a pit stop halfway home --gas, food, restroom…they do not stir. I drop off roommate, head home, almost midnight and son comes alive chatting with sister, calling friends (at midnight) ready to get started catching up with everyone and everything…he is persuaded to go to his bedroom but stays up working on a project…sleeps the next day until 1pm when I call from work. He helps bury his sister’s frogs (that is a story in itself) and then takes her to the mall (she is in far suburbs and the mall has been a traditional halfway point) to meet ex girlfriend and a group of friends.!!! Seemed to be quite friendly and not too awkward. Returns, has dinner with grandparents that arrived in afternoon, plays game of wist (spelling) and goes out…thrilled to have his car and freedom. He is shocked when I say…back at 1am? But I can’t sleep until they are home. He came home at 1:30 after I texted. So is this so unreasonable? Crazy? Helicopter? he, as is his nature, is pleasant about it but I sense some frustration about return of the curfew. Am I the only parent who thinks that curfew will be around for a while? I also pointed out that drinking and driving will also have the same impact…loss of insurance, car, and any chance of driving one of our vehicles for the rest of his life…he says he is fine with the drinking/driving rule but we should rethink the curfew now he is 19…</p>
<p>He seemed more grown up about school work. What was amazing is that he had a schedule of work to finish during break and he was more disciplined than he ever was in high school. I asked what his plans are and his schedule included two papers, a short video and 14 small drawings. He said he actually did all of this work… He did go out each night but was home by 1am after the first night. He slept a lot and ate a lot and by the time he left he looked markedly more rested and healthy.</p>
<p>So good visit. Little family stress. My parents are not going to see the kids until the spring so S was considerate and made an effort to spend time with them with only a couple of hints from me. </p>
<p>However, he left today early in the morning–roomate’s parents were doing the return trip–no call to say whether/when arrived. Nothing… I sent an email telling him that a courtesy call to say he arrived safely is expected when he leaves home (even when he is 40). Learn this rule, live this rule, spouse will expect the same so he might as well start now. </p>
<p>So this short break taught me that I had better start thinking about how to handle the next visit home in terms of expectations–curfew or not–and family time, meals, etc. Suggestions welcome.</p>
<p>FAMMoM, sounds like you had a relaxing Turkey day!</p>
<p>I was surprised to hear that my SIL requires her two single over-college-age daughters to text her at least once a day. By that standard, I feel very lenient and permissive by requiring MICA girl to phone home once a week. We did tell her that we expected a fairly prompt reply if we text or email her… but I don’t usually do that every day unless I’m really trying to get a hold of her to find out what’s going on. MICA girl said on the way home Wednesday that she ‘thought’ she would be seeing HS friends on ‘Saturday’… but she didn’t have any details yet. I told her that was fine, but to please let me know the details when she could because I was going to make a turkey on Saturday (I doubt that she would be happy to just take the car and go somewhere on her own… meeting up with her friends was going to involve me or DH chauffering her somewhere… ). So Thursday came and went. I mentioned to her a couple of times that her aunts needed her Xmas wish list (me too…) and to please send it or give it to me…nothing happened with that. Friday she had a hair appointment in the afternoon. She did some work. She was in a bad mood after she got her hair done… I’m not sure why. It could be that the hair stylist cut her hair too short for her taste or something… who knows with moody teens. I dropped her and Aspie girl off at the hair salon and went to buy movie tickets for HP7… right after I bought the tickets, MICA girl texted me that she thought she had too much work to do and that she shouldn’t go see movie with us after all…grrr, I thought. But fine. Whatever. I did not make a scene. I said to her that she should do what she needed to do. A bit after that she said that she’d made a mistake about when the HS friends were getting together and that it had already happened on Friday afternoon… so she came along to the movies with us. She spent most of the day Saturday working… she had two papers, some reading, and I suspect a drawing to do… though the sheet of drawing paper she brought with her from MICA is still sitting on her desk.</p>
<p>So curfew… with MICA girl refusing to drive, she’s pretty much stuck with what we tell her in terms of times… if she’s not spending the night somewhere, then she leaves at a reasonable time. If and when the time comes that she actually goes somewhere on her own, I think it’s reasonable for adults who are living together to have enough common courtesy to tell one another a rough time frame for when they should be expected home. Or, if they aren’t coming home, that that be relayed in a timely manner. When I was ‘that’ age and still living at home, I’d stay out and if I was drinking and too buzzed to safely drive, I called my folks and told them I was staying over at so and so’s house and that was fine with them. Even into my mid-20’s, if I was living at home and came in very late I would still go into my parent’s room at whatever time it was and tell them I was home and wish them a good night. They did not try to control how late I was staying out – but they did want to know a time frame for when I would be home and if it was going to be later than what I’d told them, I’d call and tell them I was still out and would be home in another hour or whatever. It’s not so much asking permission to stay out or do something as it is common courtesy. Now if one of our cars is involved and we have to go somewhere or need it, then that would be a different story and we would expect a kid to be home at whatever the agreed upon time was because there might be some need for the car. But if the kid had her own car, then I would say no ‘curfew’ after 18. </p>
<p>As for calling when you get where you’re going… absolutely! I told MICA girl to text me when she got to her dorm room this evening… I knew it would be dark and she was going to have to walk from the bus stop back to MICA… not terribly far… but still… so she texted me around the time her bus was supposed to get to Baltimore… lots of traffic bus was running late… and then she texted me again that she was safely in her dorm room… but I still don’t have a Xmas list.</p>
<p>Just my .02…</p>
<p>fammom
I was thinking about you last night.
every year after candied yum with melted marshmallow on top, we’d save bit for the hotcocoa use thru winter and the rest is made into ricecrispy treat while marshmallows are still fresh, nice and fluffy.
Traderjoe’s now sell rice crispy for $1.99. no recipe comes with the box but you can guesstimate. so made butch and here,
do you know that, half harden rice crispy dough(?) is malleable as playdoh?
I’d make rice crisculpture; bear shape, dog shape, heart, star. I buit whole teddybear out of it and thought, fammom said making bread babies for Halloween?
your home stories are the best immigrants could make out of American Holidays, fun for all.
about curfew
I said in parents’ forum,
“here, kids would come and go on subway 2-3 in the morning once in HS, even on school days and parents are either away or sleeping at their home or somewhere else with someone else and as long as kids do well at school (they do) stay out of real trouble (they know how to not get caught) all is O-kay.”
and the post gotten deleted.
it really come down to regional, socio-eco, family value thing.
It seems famkid is been respectful of your core value, knows how much he is loved and cared for. I won’t bug.
I am more interested in what happened with his ex-girlfriend. have you seen her at all?
drama! drama!!!</p>
<p>I did enjoy to read all your story … and here is mine</p>
<p>I spend a lot of time before thanksgiving to prepare all kinds of food I can think of so that I can have more time to be with D. Her plane landed 7:19 PM Thursday, there is planned sleepover that night with her two best friends at my house. After we get home, her friends showed up in half hours and don’t have any time for me to be with her that night. :–(
I did some simple breakfast for them Friday morning and after that they rush out shopping and D got some cheap clothe, 10$ for two pieces from forever 21. She is very excited for the bargain. I used Friday lunch as our family thanksgiving dinner and we did have a good time since Friday night is Church’s Thanksgiving gathering. D can have time to be with her Church friends, which is important to her.
Saturday, we have D’s cousin and her husband joined us for lunch and they left in the afternoon. We canceled our Saturday evening’s party at our friend’s horse so that our family can have a little more time alone. Her mood is low Saturday night since this break is too short and she miss to be home … I tried to cheer her up by telling her winter break is coming …</p>
<p>I did tried to know more about her school. As for classmates, she said they have so many classes together and she is getting familiar with them. I always worry about her social life, this makes me feel good. She told me two her roommates and her are planing to looking for a place next year, they are going to move to Brooklyn. I want her to find a place near Cooper but that won’t happen. The good part about this mean she is getting along with her roommates.</p>
<p>In a presentation Bears attend, there is a statement: “Cooper’s 4 year is their second important 4 year and the first important 4 year is their 0 to 4 years old”. I did asked D if this is exaggerate. She said that she did learned so much already and this makes her feel this statement make sense at certain point. I talked to her about the website art21 ([Art21</a> . Artists A to Z | PBS](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists]Art21”>http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists) ), Drae posted at #178 and she love that web site also and mentioned she watched an DVD of it. She don’t think I understand that and i have to admit it.
I told her I am glad that she can enjoy jogging a hour almost every day and how can she manage to do that. She said she have to try to use every minutes of her day time to work on her homework so that she can have a free evening to enjoy. Another reason is she won’t spend hours on one project, she just don’t have patient to do that kind of time consuming thing… I don’t know this is good or bad …</p>
<p>fammom: about curfew, I don’t have this problem since D just have a very small group of friends and if they have fun doing something, that always end before 12:00 other than sleepover … i feel better to set up some expectation. 1:00 AM is not hard for them to follow. That is just me …</p>
<p>Nice to hear the stories. Loveblue you did good with the whole accepting the move outside the school housing. I actually would like S to move off campus to save some $$ and I think would lead to less distractions than the dorms but he wants to stay on another year. She sounds to be very balanced in her lifestyle so be thankful. </p>
<p>The whole curfew thing is very cultural/personal. My H in safe 1970’s quito never told his mother when he would be home and often was out all night. But no one had cars and taxis were cheap and the city was small with very little crime. </p>
<p>He is less tolerant of S because of the car issue and because the US seems so dangerous to him. He has no problem with enforcing a huge double standard for D and she should not expect to have curfew disappear until she is married…seriously. H hates this sleepover business which he thinks is a crazy american custom. He points out (and I admit has reason) there is no way to see that each family has similar rules/values about curfew, supervision, appropriate entertainment etc so D can’t take the sleepover route to stay out past curfew. She had sleepovers galore until this year when the girls started preferring to go to the “cool” parents’ house and one mom busted them letting boys into the house with beer, etc. There is a moratorium on sleepovers that is indefinite and causing major conflict at the house. Boys don’t do this “sleepover” business as often…they prefer to macho it out and come h ome no matter how late they are. </p>
<p>I came from a very permissive background–no real curfew but emphasis on consideration and full information. I had more problems with my relatively young parents partying and staying out late. Like G-mom, I just had to tell my parents where I was --they just trusted me to make smart decisions. But then again, I was a hopeless nerd and was the first to volunteer as designated driver. S is more likely to make good choices than D but I worry. I think if he was consistent about texting where he is and answering the phone I would be more likely to lift the curfew…that may be the way we go this winter break…if he consistently texts us his location/plans we can drop the curfew. D is going to have to work on rebuilding some trust issues (she kinda hoped we would not hear about the party bust and did not give full details on the party and her role) to even think of going out at all but the sleepover tradition has probably gone the way of the Dodo…extinct and unlikely to be revived.</p>
<p>Oh…important detail…our county has a curfew on minors between 12 and 4:30 am (crew and swim teams start early) so curfew is a slam dunk until they turn 18,</p>