<p>Moda- All I can say is that you are a much braver woman than I…</p>
<p>So much going on…</p>
<p>Congrats to shawS on the thesis and summa honors!</p>
<p>Congrats to rmS on law school and MBA grad!</p>
<p>Nice to hear from you zim, you sure lead an interesting life. D will not be getting any land but since her grad gift was help on her rent in nyc for a few months while she got on her feet I guess that might be considered real estate. Certainly not measured in acres,maybe inches.</p>
<p>Happy Nurse’s Week to our own dte and woody! In my previous life as a medical technologist I came away with a huge respect for nurses.</p>
<p>sabaray - it’s good to see you here and I hope that things get better for you soon. I am another one who was not part of the HS 09 thread and have thought about going back and reading through it, but haven’t found time.</p>
<p>Sabaray, hugs! There’s nothing “bad” to say here…this is where we get to express our secret fears…and in my case, occasional evil thoughts 
I think by now each of us knows by now that the unverse has some kind of unique path in store for each of our kids, fraught with a mixture of good and bad choices, potential fulfilled and unfulfilled. It’s hard to realize that we don’t really get a say in how that path is shaped or how it looks from a different vantage, and sometimes you want to rage against it. I’m sure my own life has looked like that to my mom. But I would not trade it – I can only “own” it. If I had have done what my mother wanted, for my “safety” and to her mind, happiness, (and to reduce her anxiety) I would not have all the good bits that were hard-won, that make my life my own. </p>
<p>And I have to remember and repeat that to myself about a thousand times a day with my kid, believe me. So go ahead and grieve the notion of the relationship you wanted or who you wanted her to turn up like, but then release it from your heart so that you can enjoy her on her terms. Sendin ya the light for a happy heart!</p>
<p>PRJ, did you remember comfortable shoes? By day two, I no longer cared how cute my Helle comforts were (because they were no longer much good on the comfort part, heavy on the helle) and wore chacos with my nice suit ;)</p>
<p>Shaw, outstanding news. Kudos to Shawson!</p>
<p>And missy, I know that kid of yours is going to get up to something, so we’ll just keep this thread going a while to find out what it is ;)</p>
<p>One fascinating aspect of our grad party was the presence of two of mcson’s friends who dropped out of college – one of them from Northwestern, no less. They are both quite bright but had some issues. Through mcson, they met, and are now living together and working on a side business together that is starting to take off involving rally cars and creative enhancements to them – specialty stuff. (Pun intended.)</p>
<p>So a group of fellow college parents from the same GT program these kids all started out together in back in middle school were asking them all about what they were doing and were I think quite impressed to hear both their passion and deep engineering knowledge. One of the guys had a perfect ACT in HS, and is so much a self-learner that I’d put him up against any eng grad in terms of knowledge. At any rate, these two seem on the brink of something pretty solid and I won’t be surprised if they end up being mcson’s patrons one day 
Seemed everyone was pretty fascinated by them.
As y’all have taught me, many paths, right?</p>
<p>sabaray, sorry to hear that things arent ideal right now. How long will your D be home before her job starts? </p>
<p>S2 may be living with us for much of the summer, which makes all of us a little nervous, but we have a lot to get through before we can even start to worry about those dynamics. He moves out of his apartment and will drive home the 13th to catch an early flight on the 14th for his interview. When he gets back the night of the 16th our out of town relatives will already be here. We all head back to his college town on the 17th for graduation week-end and guests fly home on the 21st. Then we only have about a week before we leave for Ireland. </p>
<p>Of his six best friends from high school, two are graduating this spring (including S2), two are scheduled to graduate about a year late, and two dropped out. There are indeed many paths.</p>
<p>Son reported quite happily that he has been invited to the grad party of one of his HS friends, who was at the top of the HS class and is now headed off to med school. Since the invitation was by text message (etiquette these days?!), he needn’t have told us if it made him feel bad. But he is planning to attend and is looking forward to it.</p>
<p>Yes, Happy Nurse’s Week! I am fortunate in that I have only been hospitalized as an adult when I had my kids. Until I had Son, I had NO IDEA how vital nurses are!!!</p>
<p>I was a relative latecomer to the '09 thread, too…I feared a bunch of pretentious “Ivy or bust” types and I figured I wouldn’t fit in.</p>
<p>Sabaray, I was always the “good kid” but by college graduation, my parents didn’t like me very much. I broke up with my long term BF from home to date a frat boy who became my 1st husband. They didn’t like him and really really didn’t like it when they became aware that some of our dates were of the overnight kind. Launching me on my first job/apartment (graduating in 3 1/2 years, immediately employed and self-supporting), my mother told me that she never wanted to talk to me again. That lasted for about 4 months until (fortunately for me) she had to have major surgery and didn’t want to face that estranged from her daughter. Long term it was as bump in the road that I’m sure she would prefer I never bring up. </p>
<p>Her reaction was extreme, but I had rejected one of her tightly held values. Bring that into modern times, and I can’t promise that I would react well if one of my kids rejected one of my tightly held values.</p>
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absolutely not. I feel often feel the same way, both about the unfulfilled potential and feeling bad about feeling that way. sigh.</p>
<p>kmc - comfortable shoes. got it. thanks. that reminds me that I really haven’t thought about what I will wear. having been in 80 degrees AND snow in the last week, I’m not even sure what season this is. </p>
<p>just took a peak back at the '09 thread. I was right there on the first page, worrying about D not taking her AP test prep seriously. somethings never change.</p>
<p>PHEW!!! I have literally spent the last week catching up on all the catching up AND had my own issue to post about in a more general way and didn’t want to hijack this thread with all the news.</p>
<p>First of all… congrats to all who should receive it! I should have cut and pasted into a word doc and then quoted to be more personal, but … umm… missed that idea as I was too busy just reading. But I am so proud of ALL of our kids! And here’s why… </p>
<p>My oldest D graduated college this weekend. She is 28. It was not an easy journey, nor was it the one I expected or planned for. There were months, nay years, that my disappointment in her unfulfilled potential was crushing, but there she was… having lived her life HER way and still managed to earn the pearls (my family’s traditional graduation gift). All I am saying is… there is never a straight and narrow path and what my daughter said at dinner pretty much sums it up for me: I never doubted my family’s support of me. And then of course, we all thanked her husband-to-be for being the one to finally convince her of all the things we’d been telling her for years. He too gave a lovely speech. The point is… if they’re doing it on their own without your financing, they own their decisions. And if nothing else, be proud of the independence. </p>
<p>And Missy - we’re all staying until MissyS takes on the world, because the speech given at Ds school by a successful guy was very much about “school doesnt come easy to everyone” but that lightbulb moment … is worth waiting for.</p>
<p>(I will interject here to say… D’s fianc</p>
<p>missypie, thank you for sharing that. Reading that really helps. </p>
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</p>
<p>This is what’s doing it for me. D has been not completely truthful about certain aspects of her personal life and what I suspect about some of her activities really, really concerns me. KMC, it’s not so much what I wanted her to be or who I wanted her to be like. I can’t enjoy her on her terms when her terms cause me to be concerned for her safety and judgment (or lack thereof). Yes, I know kids make mistakes and hopefully learn from them, but I don’t want her mistakes to cause her physical injury or even death. She is not as worldly as she pretends. </p>
<p>I probably shouldn’t make it sound so sketchy, it’s just enough to make me worry…a lot. </p>
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<p>PRJ, thank you. Glad to know others from time to time have the same thoughts. </p>
<p>TA, D will be home for approximately 6 weeks. Unless she’s lying about this too, she is signing a lease for June 1 but the current tenant won’t move out until July 1 (D will be rooming with the other tenant) when D will move. H and I have given her funds to cover her expenses until her first check on or around September 1. I know my mother is giving her cash for graduation as well; perhaps MIL will drop some $$ off the back of her broom as well. Not holding my breath there. </p>
<p>Speaking of different paths, S is working two jobs and in 38 days will have his own health insurance! He may never have a college degree, but I’m okay with that. If he can earn a living and support himself that would be a wonderful thing. I hope to have really good career news for H in a few days. Sabadog is awesome; we are taking a summer break from formal training but are still walking and practicing. Tomorrow I’m attending a webinar on how to photograph your dog. </p>
<p>Anyone going to see The Great Gatsby Friday? My mother and I went to see the '70s version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow when it was released; we’ll also be going on Friday for the new version. Not sure what Mom will think of it, but I’m just glad she’s here to go.</p>
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<p>Awesome! And great for the president (or his office) to let it not fall through the cracks.</p>
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<p>just…not…right…</p>
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<p>LOL</p>
<p>DS will be graduating in early June. What is appropriate attire for parents at the ceremonies?</p>
<p>Sherpa - D’s school said most people do business casual.</p>
<p>Shaw - nice news for S. Moda - well, that’s pretty amazing!!</p>
<p>We were invited to go to some recognition ceremony for D - only about 30 students of the whole university will be there but it happens to conflict with our one and only dinner reservation for the weekend of graduation. She wants to blow the ceremony off and just have dinner with H, S and me. She thinks it will be the only time we’re alone all weekend - and she says the food is really good. Really? I don’t know what to think at this point.
I told her to go out and buy a nice dress. Well, that’s not flying either. She said she can’t stand all the talk about new Lily Pulitzer (!) dresses and will just pull something from the closet.</p>
<p>Woody, it’s always about the food with the kids. It’s going to be a logistical nightmare to get to our post-departmental grad dinner reservation. If it’s a rainy day, it will be D’s departmental ceremony or dinner. I suspect she would choose dinner. </p>
<p>We’re going down Friday and not sure what dinner will be then. We may go for barbeque at a place a bit out of town (that’s my vote anyway). Saturday is Valediction (with Steven Colbert as the speaker), a reception at the President’s, a party with some of D’s friends on the Lawn, dinner and then who knows. Sunday will be the big day with the final exercises on the Lawn, a departmental reception, then departmental graduation. And then hopefully we’ll make our dinner reservation. And then it will be over! And hopefully we’ll all be speaking to each other at that point.</p>
<p>Sabaray, wishing you peace. Congrats to Shaw, Woody, and everyone else that I am forgetting.</p>
<p>Oh my gosh! It is so cool to see what we were talking about 4 and 5 years ago. Thanks, QC, for finding that thread.</p>
<p>Thanks EddieO!</p>
<p>Sabaray -re: ‘it’s always about the food with the kids.’ My S emailed to say he’s ‘happy to go anywhere but the hors d’oeuvres at the reception are definitely a plus.’</p>
<p>I don’t even want to think what kind of an outfit S will bring with him. Not many options for him to buy new duds in China.
Poor woody family - no new clothes, no dinner reservations but at least we’re done with tuition!</p>
<p>Opinion, if you had a car with 180k miles and you drove over an hour in expressway traffic each way. would you want to wait until he car had major mechanical issues to get a newone?</p>
<p>You all have so many plans! D has already had her department end of year gathering so nothing scheduled (that I know of!) during grad weekend. She is not going to the Baccalaureate service so the only thing we are attending is the grad ceremony and then the President’s reception afterwards. Then we head to eat. We gave her the option to go out to eat or come home for a party. She decided we would go casual for dinner and then come home for late night festivities. H keeps saying he is going to stop at all of the college bars and make her see the inside of them. (He thinks he is funnier than he is.)</p>
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<p>My husband thinks he’s hysterical when in reality he can be wildly inappropriate. Of course, to call him out on it is to not have a sense of humor. </p>
<p>So S called me… today he got an invitation to a dinner at the president’s house with the speaker at graduation and the honorary degree recipients and their families on the night of graduation… the only down side of that is I had planned to take his good clothes to get dry cleaned before the wedding, but obviously he can do that perfectly well without my help. He is truly honored to have been invited. He was stoked and I am just beaming.</p>
<p>Moda…that is so cool! What an experience!</p>
<p>lovely, moda.</p>
<p>dte, get a new one. at this point, it is likely to \ beak down on the expressway.</p>
<p>Moda, kudos, that’s so awesome! Clearly he didn’t need to do the thesis to receive notice as a stand-out in his department!</p>
<p>Sabaray, hugs. I hate being lied to more than anything. I think you may recall last summer that mcson and I had one of those “I’m not interested in having an inauthentic relationship with you” conversations and lying was at the heart of it. I was pretty ready to cut him off. “Looking good” (as in a form of denial) is usually at the heart of lies. I hope you two can work it out and I hope you can takeaway the good parts of graduation and celebrate the accomplishment nonetheless.</p>
<p>DTE, I guess for me it would depend on the condition of the car and whether it was misbehaving or not. My Land Rover didn’t start acting dottery at all until about 250,000 miles and even then remained structurally sound – but it was getting about time for a valve job, and the cost/benefit didn’t quite compute. But they’re also pretty sturdy vehicles. </p>
<p>My father had a car that nobody could kill…someone somewhere is still probably driving that thing. It just wasn’t interested in car heaven.</p>
<p>I guess the question is, do you WANT a new car? And what does your mechanic think? I guess that’s who I’d ask, if you like/trust him I may be more intrepid than most in this department. Read cheap (Then again, being cheap does not necessarily mean practical…there’s nothing cheap about a Land Rover in the maintenance department…except of course to drive it to its end of life…)</p>