<p>PS I say drive carefully all the time to anyone! And I tell the kids to make good decisions you’ll be proud of all the time.</p>
<p>Sabaray… My younger two can be a little like that… love to twist events to leave me looking as wrong as possible. Now I barely offer an opinion just so it CAN’T be my fault or influence.</p>
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<p>Sabaray, I say RIGHT NOW 
So cheers to that!</p>
<p>I am jealous of you nappers. I might go home soon and have a little “leaving-work-early-nap.” Except of course, most folks don’t call 5 p.m. “early” and there is dinner to consider.</p>
<p>KMC, cheers, indeed! </p>
<p>I would love to stay in my pajamas all day. Because I wanted to, not because I was sick! Unfortunately, sabadog would have none of that. I don’t live far from where I work, so since the weather has been so nice I’ve been walking. The only problem is that it’s an uphill walk home and when I get there, sabadog is eager to romp through the neighborhood. Tonight is our first obedience class, only he doesn’t get to come. I think obedience class is more for the owners.</p>
<p>sabaray…D1’s puppy has stopped jumping on people. It was very controversial between she and her H. He is home more often than her and started training the dog with a shock collar. D1 was not happy. It was short lived as the dog is now trained not to jump.</p>
<p>NM, a lot of people are very firm believers in that method; the class we are doing is a positive reinforcement class so I don’t think we’ll be doing that. He is actually getting much better about not jumping; he now does what D calls “little jump” which is literally, someone comes in the door and his front paws lift off about 6 inches with excitement repeatedly. He doesn’t jump on you or touch you, which is a big improvement.</p>
<p>Envy the discussion of naps!!! It is a rainy day and I SO want to be at home on the couch. Made myself an iced double espresso just to be able to get through the documents I was reading.</p>
<p>Moda, best of luck on the surgery! </p>
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<p>I remember as a kid my grandma telling my parents to drive safely!</p>
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<p>Your D2 reminds me of myself at that age. I was all about graduating and working as soon as possible. In law school that was my “edge” - I didn’t think of it as college, it was like a job. (As I tell H, I never said I was fun.) NM, soon enough, your D will have a responsible position where she makes good money, then she can travel for pleasure.</p>
<p>D1 is not a proponent of the aversion training. Her H grew up with dogs that were not allowed in the house. He was raised in Farmland, USA so his view of dogs is very different from hers. This dog is very much a pampered pooch when D1 is around!</p>
<p>D2 just got her hair cut: quite a lot of hair cut off, layers cut in. And she got bangs, like she used to have years ago. The difference is these are longer bangs and parted way on the side, with the result that they flop directly in her face and cover her eyes. She says she will “train them” to the side. It would drive me crazy – almost does just looking at her.</p>
<p>I am buried at work and feel myself coming down with something…likely what Son just got over. That makes me feel ticked off. I am more than willing to start the year working very hard, but I don’t want to do it sick.</p>
<p>End of vent. I know that others have real problems. I just told Son to go out and bring home Chinese food…I can’t (won’t) work for 11 hours, be sick AND cook dinner.</p>
<p>Sorry, I’m late to the comments on the pjs. I was taking a nap. In my pajamas.</p>
<p>LOL CF… truth is… i hadn’t even considered a nap earlier until I read those posts. Was going to watch a Castle on hulu and promptly fell asleep. I must have been really tired because when I woke up I thought it was morning but it was really 7! This could be very bad for falling asleep tonight, which will make me very late to get up tomorrow. </p>
<p>I think S also regrets slightly not studying abroad, but it is what it is. D2 on the other hand is making the plan to study abroad at least once and she’s hoping it’s for an entire year! So we’ll see. I texted her a while ago to see how things were going being back at school. No response as yet. I don’t expect weekly phone calls anymore, but what does it take to text back “fine”? But you can bet she will be wanting ME to respond immediately when she needs money in her account. grrrr</p>
<p>I actually had stopped at Whole Foods and bought dinner to make for tonight and then proceeded, as I already said, to sleep right through it. H made himself left over tacos without waking me up at all, which is definitely a new thing.</p>
<p>I love to take naps, but if I fall asleep in the afternoon for more than a few minutes, I pay the penalty at night. I will, however, admit to crawling back into bed in the morning, after S2 and husband are off for the day. This morning was another 5:30 AM wakeup; the alligators were yerping, really!</p>
<p>Our D regrets not studying abroad, but she says her schedule with bio and neuro wouldn’t allow it. She was also doing research at her college and I think her adviser would have been fit to be tied had she left. I also like to remind her that around that time she started dating her BF, so I suspect she had another motive for not leaving the country. S1, on the other hand, spent a semester in central Europe. We thought he might never come back! He loved being abroad. We felt like he grew up much while gone.</p>
<p>S1 leaves tomorrow AM for his interview. Of course, this could not happen without a last minute crisis. He beat whatever bug was gnawing at him over the weekend (thank you flu shot?), but today the hinge on his laptop broke. He couldn’t close the thing, which he needs to travel for the interview–coding. A quick trip to the geek squad at least fixed the thing so it will now close and open, if done very carefully. He asked if he could take my computer, but thankfully he will be able to use his own.</p>
<p>wow Plantmom… that crisis would have sent my entire family into meltdown, but mostly because we are all, at the end of the day, not very techy. S changed the password on the wireless router (older airport) and it took practically a week to get H’s computer to recognize it. So frustrating. SO… kudos to him and GOOD LUCK on the interview! </p>
<p>Part of the reason S didn’t go abroad are exactly the same as your D’s and at the time he had no real desire to. And thing is… he has all next year. He could, if he wanted, do a very interesting travel abroad stint under the guise of global health etc, which I would THINK would look like time well spent from a med school application standpoint. His hope is that something will be offered to him this summer during another year as RA at this summer program. All I can say is that I hope H&I made it clear that the check book is closed on our paying for his life… certainly we would be willing to revisit the situation if he gets into med school but he seems set on taking off a year or even two. My cousin’s BF is a radiologist in SF and actually was an artist in NYC for two years post undergrad. The older i get the more I realize that it will most likely work out one way or another, but it will work out.</p>
<p>D2 wishes she had been able to study abroad, but her major (chem) made it really hard to do. </p>
<p>D1 never really had the desire, it seems; but then she connected with her current H sophomore year, and I think that settled it for her. She did go on a shorter trip to Japan.</p>
<p>Finally Fang Jr has a class he’s excited about. He texted me today about whether I happened to have a copy of some statistics software (sadly I don’t) and said this class is “awesome.” He wants to get his hands on numbers. Chip off the old block. Chip off both blocks, really.</p>
<p>All the discussion of naps makes me a bit envious. Last week at work (Wed - Fri) was busy, but productive. A lot of people were still on vacation. This week most people are back, and it’s been CRAZY. </p>
<p>D started her internship at a local TV station on Monday and is enjoying it a lot. They have another intern from Northwestern who started the same day, who will be here for the trimester, and a new employee (reporter) who just started, so they are all training together. </p>
<p>To manage the car situation, S is now the designated chauffeur. The arrangement is: he takes me to work, returns home, takes D to her internship. Then he’s free to use the car/see his friends, etc. until he picks up D in the evening, then picks me up after that. He’s grumbled a bit since it means he has to get up earlier than he would, but hey, he has the option of taking a nap if he wants!</p>
<p>CF, great news on finding a class he loves. Neither of my boys ever got excited about a class. </p>
<p>Moda, I can sympathize with the irritation over the lack of response from your D. I have not heard anything from S1 since last Friday, nor has he posted anything to his Facebook page, although that isn’t unusual. I’m sure he’s busy at work after a month off, but it sure would be nice to have some contact every few days no matter how mundane.</p>
<p>S2 never wanted to go abroad and has no regrets on that score. He could end up working abroad and is neutral on that idea–i.e. he doesn’t want to but won’t avoid it if that is the firm’s need. He is well traveled enough I don’t think he missed anything important by not studying abroad. </p>
<p>S1 on the other hand made going abroad a priority from the beginning. He did summer long language immersion programs the summers after his freshman, sophomore, and junior years, as well as a semester abroad fall of his senior year and stayed through winter break. I remember being peeved that he flew back the day classes started rather than a day or two before and Moda telling me it would be OK. He didn’t work during the summers at all, but he did work every winter, including the internship abroad his senior year that got him his post-graduation job, so as Moda seemed to foresee, it all worked out in the end.</p>
<p>Great for CF. You can sometimes get stats programs pretty inexpensively with a student license. I did that for ShawSon. </p>
<p>ShawSon has been excited about a number of courses starting with one entitled Happiness taught by a practitioner of the dismal science. Never was that excited about the stats courses, but he never had a good one AFAIK. ShawD loved Anatomy and Physiology and also a class on Health Assessment (for the lab each week you interview someone with a health problem, or something like that).</p>
<p>Both kids have wanted to study abroad, but ShawSon thought he was doing so well with school support for his LDs, professor relationships, and friends that it would be crazy to risk going somewhere else. He’s also afraid of going anywhere that English is not native as his dyslexia does seem to make learning languages hard. ShawD would love to go and is relatively fluent in French – she’s even helped work with getting a car repaired and trees cut in Quebec which have fairly arcane vocabulary. But, science and now nursing are not easy curricula to do abroad without losing place in the program.</p>
<p>Fortunately, both have traveled abroad a lot and ShawD might be willing to take a job abroad for a while (clearly she doesn’t consider Canada abroad as she’s already been to school there).</p>
<p>Uh oh…have a little tickle in my throat and getting a bit congested. Both Ds are fighting terrible colds at the moment. I am getting very paranoid about flu season. H says the hospitals are packed. He always gets flu shot but I haven’t. </p>
<p>CF…great news re the stats class. So nice to hear when they get excited about something.</p>
<p>NM, I could feel it in my chest yesterday and now I’m full blown Sick. I need to get one thing done, then I’m headed home.</p>