<p>Must be the day for good news! Congratulations to cq D!!! Hooray!! What great news!
Just got a call from D2 and she just learned that she has passed her second CPA test! Whew! I was worried since she had the wedding, honeymoon and a new H taking up her study time! The new H isn’t a study person so he didn’t quite get the amount of time she needed. Two more tests to go!</p>
<p>RM…I bet she is anxious to get moving. Will keep her in my thoughts and prayers!</p>
<p>Congratulations to your D too, NM!</p>
<p>RM, Hope your D can move soon and yeah, yikes on the skunk!</p>
<p>I think not knowing exactly when she can get in is the worst. She just can’t get as excited about it as she should be. Yeah – the skunk story when he told me was the best. Of course if things hadn’t worked out the way that they did he would be telling it to me from outside the house!</p>
<p>HA! RM, you made me choke on my drunk! That was funny! :)) </p>
<p>Reading along. D broke up with her new BF. She is wondering why this year has to be so difficult. (because she is not listening to me ;
).
S and family will be here for 4 nights over the Holiday. We are paying for them to take the train which meant we needed to buy a car seat and a booster seat. But it is ok. DIL did not buy G’son a ticket as she read that 2 did not need one. But he is 2 1/2… I mentioned it and then let it go. Sent her the link and she had already figured it out and thanked me! Said sorry she had not understood. So NICE! I don’t know why (oh yah, really don’t care for my MIL)
but I keep expecting trouble.
Skunk story was fun. </p>
<p>Sorry to hear about your D, Oregon.
Kudos to CQ and NM D’s!
I’d be gong crazy if I were RM’s D…I’m a moving ninja/nazi according to those have experienced the whirling dervish :)</p>
<p>Crazy busy workwise…mcson worked more OT last night…but his gf is coming Saturday for a final visit before heading to SF so I’m sure he wants to be ahead of the curve. Gonna be a crazy weekend, as my trainer pal is staying over too due to an iron triathlon on our route Sun a.m., mch and I have a party out at the lake at which to put in an appearance at, and I have to get a kayak relocated for the race. All with our road shut down and thousands of athletes meandering about.</p>
<p>Glad I enjoyed my comparatively quiet weekend last weekend!</p>
<p>Finally feels like summer here though, so I will visit from the pool when I can!</p>
<p>Hope y’all have summer-fun in store this weekend.</p>
<p>LOL! I just read what I previously wrote! I meant drink!!! Wonder if that is foreshadowing??? ;)</p>
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<p>I feel that way about younger D all the time…you’re in good company. I bet most parents have felt that way.</p>
<p>Many congrats to c-q D and NM D!!!</p>
<p>The move in was SO well organized from the University’s standpoint. The school is starting to grow on me. Our move in time was 9:30 am (Wednesday) and by 9 pm, D was pretty much pushing us out the door. We wanted to have her for a couple of hours yesterday - grocery, ATM, prescriptions, books, etc. but she would have none of it…wanted to do it all herself So H and I went to a few antique malls on the way home and went out of the way for terrific barbeque. Got home about 9 pm, then couldn’t fall asleep. D didn’t answer a text right away, so I had visions of her already dead or arrested or whatever. This morning, for about 15 seconds, I had the wonderful “today is Friday I can rest over the weekend” feeling…until I remembered that we get to pack tonight and tomorrow do it all over again with Son. Then older D arrives on Monday for a 10 day visit and will expect attention when all I really want to do is straighten the house!</p>
<p>Reading that last paragraph makes me think that Son got his autism from me. So much change, so many emotions, and I just want an orderly house. I guess it’s a coping mechanism. I am so happy to be sitting in my tidy office right now.</p>
<p>@missypie, two drop-offs. I wish you luck. We are leaving much of it up to ShawSon, which is probably a bad idea as he may be as inept at such things as I was at that age. </p>
<p>ShawSon is backpacking in Montana and was caught in a hailstorm – must have been serious because he and his partner (the same guy who got dehydrated on their 11 trip inside the Grand Canyon – and he consulted with me about whether or not to go back in. I counseled day hikes until the extreme storm warning goes away and a couple of hours later, he text back that they are going to do day hikes. ShawD is flying to grandma’s currently empty house in Sanibel. </p>
<p>I just got back from DC/Germany and can be home for a week but ShawWife is now heading out in a couple of days for a week-long workshop. Lots of work to do but I have a last minute option to do my annual life retreat next week for 3 days in the Rockies. I hate to add a trip – I haven’t been home for a 24 hour stretch in August and the following week, I have to go to London then DC then home then Germany again on the weekend. The week after that DC and then we are going to provide ShawSon with largely undesired help in setting up his dorm room.</p>
<p>Son is still The Most Distractible Person on the Planet. Try to imagine him trying to pack to move into an apartment. Oh my goodness. </p>
<p>On that front, Missy, if its any consolation, McSon as you will recall moved home July 31st.</p>
<p>Last night he was still unpacking his dishes and kitchenware because mcgf is due in today
When he looked at the boxes, he made a joke about seeming to have been “mildly distracted from the evil kitchen plan.”</p>
<p>So he toiled away for a while in the pool house while I and two of my girlfriends had drinks, swam, and warmed up by a fire. Then two of HIS friends turned up (for the second shift, as I like to say ;)).</p>
<p>Which is pretty much why its taken him 24 days to unpack ;)</p>
<p>Shaw, I don’t know how you can handle so much travel! Would the retreat still feel like a retreat righ now, or would just chillin in your home be more rejuvenating?</p>
<p>I know that I would look like I was about 80 years old if I traveled that much. </p>
<p>Vans loaded. Check. 100 degrees. Check. </p>
<p>@kmcmom13, that’s exactly it. I’m a bit tired from the non-stop traveling and know I have non-stop traveling coming up. So, I’d have a preference for staying home – and I have a lot of work to do. But I also know that my partner in these annual retreats is, if it is possible, significantly busier than I am. So, it could be months before we could schedule it.</p>
<p>@missypie, good luck.</p>
<p>Missypie, I hope you survived!</p>
<p>Well MP two kids is quite the workload. I am at a point where my house is so crazy as I am cleaning out cant stand the clutter must be an age thing.
D2 is living at home for two weeks as she is working , it is difficult to get her to work and we are exhausted. We just drive so much that adding the additional is exhausting. She is home until she can move into her apartment.
My H works with someone who is friends with the reporter who was killed in Syria, it is sobering and very upsetting. My Mil is now losing weight, at a rapid rate. We think she may be getting there. it has been difficult trying to keep her home, and although it might be a relief, it is very sad.
Shaw it is hard to say as you get so much out of your retreat.
Congrats to NM and CQ D’s. D1 takes her LSATS next month.
I start school soon, yikes. </p>
<p>I’m excited for you, DTE, on the starting school front. </p>
<p>Missy, hope you’re ready to enjoy a rest after the dual move! If for any reason you don’t immediately love the empty nest, we’ll send the bus over for a little argarita therapy.</p>
<p>Crazy weekend here…never even ended up making it to the party Saturday despite valiant efforts.</p>
<p>First, my “weekend” sandals broke. Had time to run out and get a new pair. Simultaneously, mcson’s gf’s bus was an hour late, and she’d missed her connection in a city about an hour away. So he was headed to go collect her.</p>
<p>Then discovered that ate Friday night, the old rattan couch by the firepit that I had lovingly sanded and repainted earlier this year broke beyond repair. Since people were coming to see mcgf off who’d like to use the fire pit, I rushed out and found a new outdoor sofa frame…and then discovered my kayak strapping belts were not in the car to tie it to the roof rack. McH had to come to the store with them. He was not thrilled with my plan to ail this new couch in my stubborn quest for outdoor seating…but we were still going to be able to make the party.</p>
<p>Through this there were a flurry of texts from my friend who was staying over and using our Place for staging for her triathlon team that was doing the iron (our house is on the route).</p>
<p>So while mch is driving behind me with cardboard tearing off and flying in front of his windshield… He gets a phone call from mcson saying “HELP.”</p>
<p>Mcson has dropped his car keys down a sewer grate. Cannot retrieve them. Is stranded with his exhausted gf in the sweltering heat in the roughest part of town in another city.</p>
<p>Our friends having the party, of course, live another hour away the opposite direction ;)</p>
<p>So after a mad search, we find what we think might be the spare key to the jeep, and I truck off to save the day, and mch calls his friend and explains our last minute absence. His friend says he believes him because “you couldn’t possibly make this **** up” ;)</p>
<p>Saturday night was a little smoother. Friends staying for triathlon got organized and settled. Mcson’s group got suitably drunk and in mcson’s case, quite emo, but nothing that was not generally expected giving that mcgf is saying her farewells. i stay up drinking with the kids far too late considering I have to be on a boat by six a.m. to help support the swim portion of the triathlon…but manage to make it.</p>
<p>By comparison, Sunday was downright fun 
More folks over for dinner, swimming, and general visiting with mcgf, who leaves this a.m. to do her final packing for a Thursday flight home. Its clear to me mcson is putting on his game face but is deeply sad about the imminent geographical separation. I wish someone would hurry up and invent teleportation ;)</p>
<p>kmcmom13, I am exhausted reading about your weekend! I’m glad Sunday was fun.</p>
<p>My D did the geographic separation thing for several months and survived. They had regular Skype dates. Hopefully mcson and mcgf will work around the separation until they can be together again.</p>
<p>kmc, okay, your weekend may have rivaled mine!</p>
<p>We did the greatest portion of the move on Saturday, in an apt. where the AC wasn’t working. We told the management office and they did send someone over and by yesterday it was cool in the place. Son’s roommate had lived in the place last year and it was more than obvious that nothing had ever been cleaned…not even the room into which Son was moving. I used most of a spray bottle of all purpose cleaner with bleach and many rolls of paper towels cleaning cleaning cleaning. Tackling the toilet probably took years off my life. We even took roomie’s food out of the fridge and cleaned that. The place now looks totally presentable.</p>
<p>Boys are so different from girls. In the living room of the apartment, here is what roomie had on the two end tables. End table #1: His coffee maker, the yellow pages, a hammer and two screw drivers. End table #2: An orange extension cord (not connected to anything.) Son wouldn’t allow me to move the stuff.</p>
<p>Son’s GF helped with the move. Her job was to fill out the damage/condition report. She had something written on every line.</p>
<p>We all came home on Saturday night and then finished up yesterday. H and I got home around 11 pm. Older D arrives for her visit at noon today. </p>
<p>@kmcmom13, I’m sure that Saturday was quite stressful, but from a distance, it sounds like the fodder for a great situation comedy episode. I had an assistant whose life was like that. Too ridiculous to make up. For example, at her wedding, her 2 year old daughter (from past relationship) had her first epileptic seizure and my assistant hopped into the ambulance in her wedding dress. They had to complete the wedding later. </p>
<p>Distance relationships are tough. Although I never have told ShawSon this, when I started grad school at the school in California where ShawSon is heading in September, I had a lovely GF from college (whom ShawSon has met at our college reunions). We kept things up for the year but broke up at the end of the year – she with me but it wouldn’t have worked over distance for that long. In that year, I didn’t date except on one blind date with a nice woman who clearly wanted to sleep with me (wow – I’d forgotten about this) and I ignored it because, I guess, it would have been unfaithful. But, I have to say that I was thinking about it. Anyway, just to say that I think it is generally smart that ShawSon is ending his relationship with the current GF. But, it isn’t the LT and deep relationship that mcson and mcgf have. And, phone calls are free and we have facetime and skype. So, I think distance can work better. But, not forever.</p>
<p>The sad thing is that it sounds like mcson could create a great opportunity for himself in your business and would have the skills to take it over when you are ready to give it up. </p>