After the launch

College Majors Visual Arts and Film Majors
1741

<p>Hello Everyone</p>

<p>Yes, more dog trouble. But more on that later.</p>

<p>Im sorry Ive been so not around. Its the end of the fiscal year, so all my eggs have to be in one basket. Ive just been working working working. Also, yes Bears, I claim Iphone handicap. But I have been reading about all y’all. Bears, laundry soap story is so typical. And face stuff. We have the face stuff/prescription refill fairy at our house. It turns out that the only way for them to learn is to suffer. But I am not harsh enough. As I mentioned before, the packing fairy went on strike, but she still slipped the extra acne medicine in the backpack. It is kind of amazing what 19 and 20 year old men do not know how to do. (probably women too, but I only see the guys flounder.) This summer I tried to either stop fixing everything for everyone, or at least making them watch while I did fix it. One story that comes to mind is baby Swits bank account. Long story, but getting lots of fees he shouldnt have been. He tried to fix it on his own, went to the bank, was told a mess of BS by a branch person about how they would fix it for the future, but the hundreds of dollars he had already been charged couldnt be returned because there was nothing in the system that allowed branch person to do that. I got to give the lecture about how with big corporations, all the little cogs dont know what the other little cogs do, and you just have to keep trying until you find the right little cog. So we spent a couple of hours on the phone finding the right slightly larger cog, and he got his money back. Because his dad is as dreamy and impractical as he is, I am kind of a local hero in the practicality wars. </p>

<p>Which brings me to empty nesting. Apartment life is going well I think. He seems to have some balance, he got the Saturday teaching gig. He is making it to his early class on time. The only thing the apartment gang did that upset me was adopt a kitten. Being the person in my universe most likely to end up with or worry about discarded animals, I am well aware of the joint ownership/transitional life style issues that can threaten pets. Had I been asked I would have had a lot to say about it. Having said that, I think it will be ok. Plus I got to be the practicality hero again. As soon as I heard they got the kitten, I had a list of predictions that all came true. </p>

<ol>
<li>She will have worms</li>
<li>She will have fleas</li>
<li>She will keep you up all night because kittens are crazy.</li>
<li>She needs vet care and right away</li>
</ol>

<p>So the impulsive boys had all that to deal with, and they dealt with it really well. They all marched her to the vet, she had fleas, she had worms…The apartment had to be vacuumed really well, and since Baby Swits was the only softy who let her sleep with him, all of his clothes and bedding had to be immediately gathered up and washed.</p>

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<p>But the most sucky thing about empty nest is that my son is the most interesting he has ever been, and I see him the least. I am being really good about not calling constantly. I now talk to him on Thursdays and Sundays, and we have nice meaty conversations, which I try not to make all about him.</p>

1743

<p>Waving at Switters… </p>

<p>Bouncing back in - glad to hear that baby swits is doing swell, kitten and all! But where is the dog story? More on that later? How much later?</p>

<p>Bears, hang in there – it sounds like baby bears is figuring stuff out. At least he knows how to do laundry!</p>

<p>Red - thanks for the tips on the horsey colleges – especially in NY. Nazareth College actually has an equestrian team too. Aspie girl, though, seems determined to live at home. We had to pull her out of the college chemistry class she was taking. It was too much to do along with the AP Bio, calculus and honors world history class. I had to go pick her up at school from the nurse’s office twice in one week. She was way too stressed out. I know that’s a normal state for seniors, but her medication had been working pretty well since the horrible end to her sophmore year and the doctor had been talking about working on getting her off of it, but I think maybe now is not such a good time to try that. On top of everything, she got this ‘job’ at the barn doing the Sunday morning ‘feed’. The first couple of times I took her, the owner’s teenage sons were around to ‘help’. But then she ‘graduated’ to doing it on her own. The problem was that the first couple of times she was done in about 2.5 hours, but on her own, she took almost 9 hours one time and 6 hours this past Sunday. The 9 hour day was when D1 drove her to the barn and was forced to wait that whole time. I was sort of thinking that D1 and Aspie girl must have had a spat and Aspie girl deliberately went really really slow, but that seems to not have been the case. Aspie girl just has trouble with sensing how much time she’s spending doing something and then that perfectionistic piece kicks in… I’m sure there wasn’t a stray bedding chip in the whole place by the time she was done. Nevertheless, nobody has that kind of time to spend up at the barn doing chores, not even Aspie girl. I was glad that she was gaining a sense of achievement and responsibility by having this job (which she loves) but she knows school work comes first and if school work/homework suffers, the job will have to go. Our current thinking is that (if she wants) she can go to community college half time and we will let her lease a horse if she helps work it off at the barn and can drive herself up there. Those are pretty big hurdles. Therapist told her yesterday to tell us to take her to the DMV to do her written test tomorrow. Now I have to figure out some time during the day when I can get away from work obligations to do that.</p>

<p>Manga girl is sad that she is going to miss ANOTHER (horrors!) manga class on Saturday because of the jewish holiday (art center is closed). Apparently she’s made alternative plans with Manga boy to watch Atlantis or some such (that’s not even manga, is it??). </p>

<p>D1 is in a day program at the hospital. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this ‘DBT’ thing will help her. I don’t know much about it. I think it means dialectical behavioral therapy – could be diabolical behavior therapy (!). Her psychiatrist suggested it and it was seconded by the other professionals involved as maybe a way to get her ‘unstuck’. She is driving herself there everyday and yesterday came home in a very upbeat mood. She doesn’t say much about it, but she doesn’t say much about much of anything anyway. </p>

<p>Bo…Bou…Bouncing Out now…</p>

1744

<p>sky is gray and Eeyore-y today.
I need more poodle laugh.
“she really likes it”
should be another one line nominee.
Switters, knowing you I can totally see how you observe coming and going of petsdom and wrote it as you saw, but gawd you are good. better than that driving Rhodes dad, I bet.
more poodle! more poodle!!</p>

1745

<p>drama! is in making.
“manga boy and manga girl watching TV k * s * ing!!”</p>

1746

<p>Thanks for all the laughs guys! This thread is on a roll.</p>

1747

<p>S1 called to say he signed up to be a tour guide at RISD. I asked him if he would be a backwards walker. He said he was actually trained to walk, stop, talk and then walk again so that people could hear what he is saying and be able to ask questions. </p>

<p>Funny…every tour we ever went on was led by a backwards walker!</p>

1748

<p>Thanks all for the fun sharing!</p>

<p>In the summer, H get out all the old letter I wrote to him in the old time …
I was worried he read out to make fun of me but turned out it brought us so many fun!
We had three years live in different city right after we had little loveblue and we wrote a lot letters, all the one he wrote to me got lost and he kept the one I wrote to him.
It turned out many, many of the writing is talking about D. Many little thing/story I can not remember now got refreshed!
One part make me cry is:
I wrote down the whole story about when D called me mom the first time consciously! I recorded her expression and what I was thinking …
It is so sweet!</p>

<p>Our family started to write letters again! till now I got two letters from D and H got one from her. I send out three letters already.
Trust me it is fun! With email and phone, it seems not needed. But holding a hand writing letter from D is so sweet!</p>

<p>D just wake up thinking about this year the class load is not hard. She went to ask to register a German class but is already too late. Good thing is she said she will go to student service center asking help on her Resume …</p>

1749

<p>That is just great about writing letters, it is really becoming a lost art. When I was in college, a good friend would occasionally sent me letters, several pages long, that she had worked on for at least a month. Getting one of those made for the happiest day! It was like hearing her voice and sitting in on her experiences. </p>

<p>We used to do similar things in high school, even though we saw each other every day. We would take the “notes” and work on them a little bit here and there during the boring parts of class or during a break, and after we had added at least 2 - 3 pages, we would turn it over to the other person to do her share. Very chatty and fun and it helped make the day go by when you can share your observations and thoughts with your friend even if she isn’t right next to you.</p>

<p>OK, I haven’t done this in ages, but I will try to keep a running letter with me to work on here and there. I know it won’t work for me to sit down and just start writing. It will have to be one of those things I bring along (like knitting) so I don’t get too antsy and bored watching someone’s soccer game, or waiting my turn at DMV. I have far too many unused notecards sitting around anyway, maybe I’ll start chipping away at them.</p>

1750

<p>Ok Bears, more poodle stories for you…</p>

<p>Gmom and anyone else who is interested Greeny posted a link to the poodle saga above, I dont know how to post links, or I would. So my poodle problems appear to be resolving themselves, he is now putting his weight on all four legs, and being a little too active. But he is a funny bossy guy. In order to keep him immobile yesterday, I pretty much kept him with me all the time. This isnt hard, because he follows me around the house anyway, so I would let him walk a little, but carry him up the stairs. There is a wing chair next to my desk in my “office”, this sounds fancier than it is, it is more of a cat scratching post icky chair that dogs sleep on than a real chair. When he is in my office with me he gets up on the chair. That has become his spot. So I sit down to work, and lift him to his spot. I forgot to do that yesterday and he gives me this sharp quick one word bark, which was clearly a directive to lift him up. So now he has me trained. Last night we go up to bed, and he stands at the bottom of the stairs, and looks at me and gives me the one word bark. Get to the bedroom. I put him down to get ready for bed, he looks at me and its the bark. I am his willing servant.</p>

<p>I had to go out to lunch yesterday with a friend, and I didnt want to leave him in the house to run around like crazy when the mail man shows up, or chase the cat or whatever. When I inherited him, he came with a pursey carrying case. So I brought him along for the lunch, and the quick shoe shopping trip. I put the purse on the chair next to me (its a pretty casual place) and zipped it up so that only his head was sticking out. He was perfectly happy to sit there like that, and I slipped him bits of lamb. Boy was he smug. I am seriously this guy’s b***tch, in the vernacular.</p>

<p>When he first got to us he was a little nasty to the other dogs, but now he is very sweet, in a using kind of way. One of my dogs is a perfect little furnace of body heat, I use him myself when my feet are cold. The Poodle always manages to sleep up against him. The other dog is a poodle/terrier with tennis ball OCD. You can throw the tennis ball for hours and she wont quit. Literally the first thing we tell anyone who comes into the house is dont throw the tennis ball. Well The Poodle finds her tennis ball habit annoying, and he yells at her when she does it.</p>

<p>I am currently working on engineering some kind of backpack device so that I can continue my long walks with the other dogs, and carry him, since I almost wore him out on the last long walk… </p>

<p>When I first got him I was all excited about having a “real poodle” since the mixey one is kind of not cute at all, and I have kind of resigned myself to give away mutts. He desperately needed a haircut, and his previous mom told me what to tell the groomer. He came out of it looking like a combination of ant-eater and star nosed mole. I could barely stand to look at him. Also his name is kind of hard to pronounce, but it starts with P. My mom tells this yiddish joke about how all the ladies wanted their kids to have fancy french names, so now when you go to the playground you hear “Pierrepont-eh-leh”. I dont know how well this translates, if you didnt grow up on yiddish jokes. So since he is a french poodle my mom refuses to try to call him by his real name, and refers to him as Pierrepont-eh-ley…</p>

1751

<p>^I wish we had like buttons on CC.</p>

1752

<p>That was really an amusing story – thanks for the link to the thread! Perhaps Switters would enjoy a sojourn with the yappillion. She is quite verbal about most everything. Very neurotic too. Since I’m the only one around during the day, she’s taken to lying next to the treadmill while I’m working and I have to be careful not to step on her when I climb up and down. The yellow lab lies at the bottom of the stairs so he thinks he can beat the yappillion to the front door in case someone else shows up. I could tell a funny story about when we first got the treadmill and tried the yappillion on it… and didn’t realize that we’d better hold on to her and she kind of ended up splatted against the wall. None the worse for the wear though.</p>

<p>Oops got a meeting, be back later.</p>

1753

<p>Hi everyone. Just wanted to say hi. Glutenmom, dd loved RIT too and would love the art house. One thing I did note was even if someone could not get into the art house floor to sleep, there was a way to be a member anyway. That could be helpful to both our kids if they can’t get there right away. </p>

<p>Bears, I agree with everyone here when they say how mean that poster’s comment was to you. You can bet that if they had to use their real name, they would never say anything. Anyone who can be so ignorant is the real fool! </p>

<p>I am so sad from reading about the dad losing his fight with cancer. I admire him so much from the description here. </p>

<p>That is all for now. No new news from dd, except she wanted to drop statistics and her counselor suggested she contact the schools she was applying to. It was so funny to hear the responses, from “drop away” from an art school, to needing to hear every part of her schedule and past classes from a major university with an art program. Needless to say, it was fine with everyone, so senior year will be much more relaxed around here. Dd said that she could not understand anything that the teacher said, and I believe her.</p>

<p>Glad to chat. See you later.</p>

1754

<p>Gmom it’s funny you mention the yapillon coming for a spa vacation. It often happens that people offer me their dogs (for keeps) that is how I ended up w OCD tennis ball girl ( also known as the terrierist) and The Poodle. OCD tennis ball girl’s ex mom had a job that was taking her out of town way too often and OCDTBG was practically living at my house anyway. One time she came to pick her up and she refused to get in the car. </p>

<p>My h and I are kind of ridiculous about how much we love our pets. H wasn’t a pet person, but how happy it makes me rubbed off on him and then it just made him happy because In my circle of friends, the standing joke is when you die if you are very good you get to come back ad my pet.</p>

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<p>I love all the story about dogs, but will not get one. Too much to clean up the fur…
I got one cat when D was 9 years old and the cat died in her senior year. I clean up the fur for 10 years, it was hard. In the end I really love our cat and the part make me feel it really worthy my effort to have the cat is I found D wrote: “The day got her cat is the happiest day of her life”
D beg me to get another cat this summer, I have to say “no” this time. She no longer live here.
I read somewhere, say having pets can make you live at least 6 years longer.
Good thing to all of you!</p>

<p>phillyartmom:
if your D want to get in art school, I think dropping statistics won’t hurt her?</p>

1756

<p>awww switters
I wanna be your pet. or the poodle’s bit*ch.
too bad we can’t see his haircut. </p>

<p>I had a french bull and a chihuahua this summer, the chihuahua(girl) was a late comer and rescued one. the french(boy) was not happy, he was sort of de-throned already when human baby came along few years back and now this.
He pretty much ignores her and go on his business but at meal time, this used to be picky, even staged hunger strike after day or so the vacationing family left him, was a changed dog.
Now the french would gobble up his food as if there is no tomorrow, then proceed to eat chihuaha’s portion.
She eats only few nuggets anyway and seems OK the way she would go poop.
I’d walk them side by side, with two leashes. yeah, swits, I was becoming “that person”.
they are both black and white with mixed and matched patterns.
Someone passing by looked at them and asked (straight faced)
“they can’t be the same breed, are they?”
I got tell you though, tiny lap-dogs are lovely. She was suspicious of me at first but figured out quick and followed me around everywhere, looks up and ask “am I doing OK?” “what are you gonna go next?” “is it time we go out?” " are you gonna open the fridge? (means “treat” provided by the owner - piece of ham in its juice"
she slept on my face or chest, curled up like a cat, while the french would claim his spot (right in the center of the bed) and refuse to budge, so I’d have to bent my legs manoeuvring around him to sleep. then he farts and grumbles. wipe off his snot from lip flaps on the bed sheet.
yet yet
the french is my man.
In the Madison Sq park we walked everyday, the park association would sell spots on the benches to donors who could put small plaque on the back of the seats engraved whatever they want to say.
When you’d walk slow-sh moving dog (I don’t know about yours swits) you’d notice things you never did when walked human speed and of human mindset.
among the generic
“in the memory of…”
those ones to honor deceased family members, there are odd fun pieces.
the bench near the super popular long wait Shake shack burger sports young siblings’ quote with the recent date
"how much longer till we get our burger? "
added bellow is Ben Franklin’s line about waiting and its reward.
and
the one near the flower bed
“Bo and Rocky loved this spot”</p>

<p>I don’t know how much it would costs to buy one plaque, but when the french passes, I am going to dedicate one for him.
every summer for few weeks, he was the king of the park, and my man.</p>

<p>I was NEVER the dog parson, even making ones for living, til we happened to adapt one.
It changes your life, really really.
try it loveblue?</p>

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<p>lol
my sister loves dog, years ago when I was debating get a dog or cat for D? My sister think I was a fool get a cat instead of a dog!
Thinking I have to walk the dog, I end up get a cat for D. I was happy to see D hold the cat read her book or do her homework.
I am planing to get a cat or dog before Winter break to surprise D. This time I may get a dog?!</p>

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<p>We are dog sitting my mom’s dog since she’s been in the hospital for a week. She was supposed to get an esophogus stent, so they took her off her blood thinner (she has a mechanical heart valve) and since they couldn’t get the right size stent, she was off too long and she got clots in her arm. So they had to do a vein patching thing (I’m not the medical person in my house, can you tell??XD). She came home yesterday, but doesn’t want to take the dog back yet because she pulls hard and she’s afraid she’s not going to be able to hang on to her, (it’s a Welsh Corgi). She (the dog) has been unfriendly to my terrier until he started to fight back, now things are better. But she’s a spoiled b<em>t</em>h for sure. She didn’t mess with my Irish Red & White tho, must be a size thing.</p>

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<p>that makes swits’ poodle ever more THE POODLE
who humps the cat twice bigger
and
“she really likes it”</p>

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<p>Bulldogs are famous for their farting and they’re really, really expensive! You gotta wonder, something must inspire that love. Maybe the dog’s plaque could also quote Ben Franklin, “he that lyeth down with dogs, shall riseth up with fleas”. That’s me these days. Our dogs have terrible fleas but they still sleep in our bed. So far, no bites anywhere else but I still get the lovely job of flea-combing them every day.</p>