<p>seriously the thought bubbles help, but I listen to Bernie Siegal (sp) every night.
They do sell those voodoo dolls on etsy. I sent one to a BC friend, her ex was being a real jerk. </p>
<p>Moda, glad that’s all settled!</p>
<p>Remember a few years back my menopause voodoo doll idea? I really should get around to doing that…I’m sure it would sell ;)</p>
<p>Modadunn, glad S’s info is finally on its way. I ran into one of D’s friends from HS this past spring, she attends a large public university and evidently got horrible advising on the timing of her medical school application, which means she plans to take an unintended gap year.</p>
<p>My college roommate is a medical doctor (as is her H, another college friend) and their son just graduated from Yale in May and is heading to medical school at our UG’s medical school this fall. Seems like it is very rare these days to go straight through with no break.</p>
<p>NM, the wedding sounds absolutely wonderful. So happy for you all. </p>
<p>Missypie, I missed that Project Runway had re-started. Thanks for the reminder!</p>
<p>D called last night for my birthday. She is really enjoying her new job so far. The company sounds fabulous. They have a mentoring program and she is being treated to lunch frequently by the higher-ups in the company so she can get to know them better on a personal level. She’s busy studying for the Series 6 license/exam. She has been very impressed by how organized her new employee training has been. After all her temp jobs where she was just thrown into a situation, having a training plan was a welcome change!</p>
<p>So glad it is working for your D, c_q – and I suspect all that temping has given her some mad organizational skills that should serve her well. </p>
<p>I know only one student who started med school the year after college graduation, and that was a MD/PhD program. Everybody else has taken one year or is applying this cycle to start next summer. There seem to be a lot of jobs/internships for prospective med school students that work well with the weird interview schedules.</p>
<p>If you could see me IRL, you would be able to tell that I watched Project Runway instead of working out, as today I am wearing a combination of jacket and skirt that I normally wouldn’t wear together. No, it’s not remotely as “out there” as the PR Runway clothes, but I do tend to be very “matchy matchy”…that used to be a virtue, now I guess it’s a sign of age.</p>
<p>The large exercise ball is in the same room at the TV with the DVR, so I did yoga and stuff with the ball while I watched that…and the Phoenix Mercury WNBA game.</p>
<p>Yesterday Son found out who his apartment-mate is going to be. From his Facebook postings and Tweets, he is a darker haired, more profane, less sweet clone of Son…it’s really scary. I don’t know whether they will become instant best friends, or whether the guy will be a bad influence on Son. Both gamers, both into film, both very smart with learning differences.</p>
<p>OMG I am watching Leah Remini, she is so funny and her family makes me laugh. I admire her for standing up to the church.
Looks like another pending MP family adventure with son, never a dull moment. Hope its him finding his spot in life.
CQ D waited but got a great job, so glad its working out, in the city she wanted too.</p>
<p>Moda I am glad it worked out as I felt bad I had no advice, hard to know how to handle your kids issues when they are 'grown up"</p>
<p>I think it goes to show that life is one big Darwinian exercise. There may well be very qualified people who would make excellent physicians, but who don’t make it into medical school due to failure to follow up, lack of knowledge about the process, insufficient motivation or executive function to take care of every last detail, etc. But that means that those who do make it DO have those skills or attributes.</p>
<p>Same with getting through college in 4 years…or earning a degree at all. Some of the delays are due to prerequesites being full, not enough sections of required classes, etc. But yet people do it…they take AP classes to come in with more hours, they ride the waitlists, they are willing to sign up for the 7:30 am section of the class. They have skills and attributes that are not just academic, and they benefit from it.</p>
<p>NM, thanks for the notes on the wedding; it sounds as if it went off just as–even better than!-- you’d hoped, and that’s something to be thankful for.</p>
<p>MP – hope the roommate situation turns out well . . … even maybe some dull moments??</p>
<p>Well, D2 comes home from her year in Germany this evening – should have landed in the USA right now. I think she’s going to have some serious culture shock for a while … W shall see how living at home for a month affects her parents …</p>
<p>Zetesis – I’m curious to hear whether she struggles in English at all – D had a tough time the first week or so searching for words in English. It was funny. </p>
<p>MP – Sounds like the roommate situation could be epic – one way or the other. Have you set up some expectation that you’ll skype with PieSon weekly? That might be a nice way to keep connected with more information flow than a phone call would provide. </p>
<p>Skype - D2’s favorite way (only?) to communicate. It is usually early morning and yesterday we had the pleasure of literally watching her straighten her hair! But then too - you’d get to see the condition of how he is keeping his room. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing.</p>
<p>Letters still “not received” - it says 24 hours, but even I considered this overly optimistic. I think S had all the executive functioning right, but wasn’t wanting to complain too loudly for fear it would hurt him further than the whole setting up of interviews when he was in MN vs east coast. She was to be one of his interviews, but whereas all the profs agreed to Skype his interview due to distance, she had insisted to him he had to fly there until he went over her head to figure out how accurate that was (again, not what it said in the handbook). So I think the head person is a bit of a pill… which is concerning and may be something S has said he may follow up on AFTER he is safely matriculated, that is. :)</p>
<p>Z- a friend of mine whose D did the same - in Spain though - was given a whole little pamphlet/brochure about the culture shock of reentry from travel abroad. I have no idea of what advice was in it, but it sure must be a “thing” to consider, so good luck with that!</p>
<p>ShawWife had a year in a remote village in Fiji (you needed a small plane and then a boat to get there) and said the culture shock returning was remarkable. She then had some Fijians from this village come to her parents house in Toronto and they lit a fire in the oven and took a shower with their clothes on. So, their adjustment was even greater.</p>
<p>Younger D now has her second tattoo. I talked her out of the lip piercing…for now. I ate an entire small bag of Smarties while texting her back and forth seeing a picture of it, the size, location, etc. Not an extremely productive day.</p>
<p>Lol. The adventures continue, Missy 
you know, it could go the other way with Pueson, where he is the positive influence on his dark twin ;)</p>
<p>Shaw, thank you for the glimpse into the Fiji visitors…I turned it into a sitcom in my mind ;)</p>
<p>Beated happy birthday, CQ. Awesome your d is enjoying the fruits of her patient labor.</p>
<p>Well, mcson is off today to take a bus to his former city, pick up a rented uhaul, pack it, return to this city and give my couch and wrought iron bistro set to my employee, who is moving into her own place, and then unload everything else into the poolhouse.</p>
<p>What could go wrong, you ask :)</p>
<p>That is the question. Mch and I were supposed to go to the symphony tonight, but really, my hunch is I should be on standby…</p>
<p>Happy Birthday, c_q.</p>
<p>Welcome back to the states to Z’s D.</p>
<p>As expected I have been swamped at work trying to catch up. We are also going through a major software upgrade and I’m in training meetings all day…did I mention that I am the person who is conducting the training for the AM meeting.? Standing up in front of 50 people and talking doesn’t bother me, I just hope that I know what I am talking about.</p>
<p>Welcome back to Z’s daughter! I am sure it will be an adjustment but I bet she will love being home! what are her future plans? How exciting for her!</p>
<p>FallGirl…H hates re-entry to work after vacations! Good Luck!</p>
<p>kmc…exciting times with Mcson coming back. Hope the long distance relationship works for him!</p>
<p>missy…sending calming thoughts and prayers your way. </p>
<p>D2 and her H are settled in their new apartment.It is a small one bedroom. Great amenities, though. Their plan is to stay for a year and then buy a house. </p>
<p>FallGirl, I’m sure you will do great with the training, but please be gentle. Many of us are clueless AND very resisitant to change when we have to learn new software. As I’ve vented here before, computer issues make me very short tempered (and actually dredge up feelings of inadequacy). So it anyone seems hostile or short with you, please remember that it’s not you, it’s the software.</p>
<p>Hello to all! I’ve been reading like mad for the last several days for my various Book Clubs, so haven’t been spending as much time online. “Books on the Beach” here in RI is great, but it meets every 2 weeks, which is a little intense. Plus, the Book Club here on CC chose a v-e-r-y long book for the August selection. I’ll be a little late to that party.</p>
<p>Moda – so glad to hear (read?) you took control of things. Really, there is far too much riding on your S’s UG school getting their act together for you not to have jumped in. </p>
<p>NMinn – the wedding sounds lovely, and the FB photos are wonderful. Nice to hear their apartment ended up being ready for them to move in – as opposed to them moving in with you!</p>
<p>Z – when my D came back to the US after only a semester abroad, one of the last gatherings of the group was a “re-entry” discussion. D was OK, but she did say the contrasts between where she’d been (India, China, S. Africa) and the US hit her smack in the face as soon as she got off the plane in DC.</p>
<p>mp – if the choice is between a 2nd tattoo and lip piercing, the tattoo starts to sound not so bad … What and where is this tattoo?</p>
<p>dte – your BIL & SIL sound like first-class jerks! Hopefully the saying, “What goes around comes around” will kick in …</p>
<p>c_q – glad to hear your D is enjoying her job.</p>
<p>shaw – sounds like another amazing birthday dinner. Kind of makes turning 60 seem worthwhile, right? 
Re: women going to college - my mother’s mother grew up in Grand Rapids, MI and “came east” to Mt. Holyoke. It wasn’t until I was in HS that I realized how unusual that was at the time.</p>
<p>H just bought tickets for tomorrow night at the Newport Jazz Festival. The weather is supposed to be great, so it will be fun. Then a family(ish) wedding on Saturday afternoon/evening. (H’s SIL’s sister’s D; she and our D are the same age and are pretty close; our D calls her a cousin, but I guess it would be a cousin-in-law if there were such a thing?) Sunday a friend is coming to the beach for 1 night – we’re going to a chamber music concert at URI. And in the meantime, reading, reading, reading …</p>
<p>Loved the Fuji sitcom!</p>
<p>Missy - just ask her to please consider not touching her face until she is at least 25! You could also point out that even McDonald’s workers have to remove facial piercings (well, they do where we live) and you can see the holes in their eyebrows etc. D2 ended up with an upper ear piecing, but that never bothered me. But the actual face? Yes, that would. After all, I did everything I could when pregnant so she would turn out perfectly - why mess with that kind of perfection?</p>
<p>Yeah!! S’s committee letter et al is marked as received in the AMCAS website. So… now he just needs an interview somewhere! Anywhere! I noted that his number one hopeful continues to ask for secondaries well into September, so not hearing from them yet is not an all hope is lost proposition… yet. And even further glad that he needn’t know I meddled. Does he?</p>
<p>Nice that the kids’ apartment was ready, NMN. Must be nice to have both your girls in town for family stuff. Is D1 thinking of moving into her own place? Had she already done that? I imagine the dog is a hurdle though as we’ve found that most nicer rentals never took pets. :(</p>
<p>Speaking of which, my cat has become the neighborhood cat. He sleeps on various porches during the day and no one - absolutely no one - seems to mind. Even the dogs have come to accept him!!! Weird little guy that our cat is.</p>
<p>Moda, That’s great that the committee letter has been received. Good luck to your son with getting interviews! I would tell him what you did , just in case he would potentially hear it down the line from somebody else. I figured you had run this by him before you did it. I would just tell him since you seem a little worried about whether or not he knows you intervened. Maybe others here have different thoughts on that. </p>