<p>Son called to tell me he loved his first two classes. Of course, those are his higher level classes in his major. Two classes in, younger D thinks college is “pretty great.” Would that the positive thoughts about college would stay that way!</p>
<p>Oh MP! That is such great news!! I’m so happy for them both although I do not in the slightest envy you and kmc your weekends…O.M.G.!!</p>
<p>dte - hugs and congrats to you as you start school! Very impressive!</p>
<p>For the first time ever, I hung my diplomas in my office… basically at H’s urging. He felt that some people might look at me a bit differently after seeing the sheepskins on the wall. Well, he was right. Two parents who had treated me rather rudely and dismissively in the past saw them today and were all chatty. I know, I know, it is a bit small-minded and gloating like that is not my style at all…but it worked!</p>
<p>Congrats to Pie Kids. And Mom for surviving.</p>
<p>woody–made me laugh as I have never framed my diplomas but have them here now thinking about it while am thinking that I will only keep my office open for another 1-2 years. I do not think it will make a difference (so glad it did for you) but it is sort of on my bucket list. </p>
<p>If you want a trip down memory lane to when your own kids were new to college:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Younger D called mid-laundry. She had stopped the front loading washer to untangle something and called me to ask if it would start the cycle over again or pick up where it left off. (She has a lot of confidence in the breadth of my knowledge!)</p></li>
<li><p>Son called to complain about all the walking he has to do. (His original school was a small LAC. He is now at a large U.) We were watching the Emmy’s and admit that I wasn’t highly sympathetic.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>And we’ve sent the first “care” package to D…as in “Did you intend to bring your graphing calculator?” “OMG yes can you send it to me ASAP?”</p>
<p>Have had a good little spell catching up… </p>
<p>Missy - Moving two to dorms/college and one coming home - I would want a tidy house too. Seems that even though they take a ton of crap with them, putting it all together makes more mess left behind! Maybe the trick is to have older D help you with a project or two while the other two are away from the nest? I did that with S somewhat last fall and we had a good time going through “crap” and deciding what to keep and what to toss. </p>
<p>Oregon - So sorry about your D’s BF. I thought it was a good relationship, but ultimately perhaps one of rebound.</p>
<p>Great Story about the ex and long distance - Shaw. It’s amazing what one can recall in the retelling.</p>
<p>Lots of crap to get through here, and now there’s some more work/additional fixes needing done. However, with memorial day weekend, no one much working around here. Anyway…. all of a sudden, it’s become Sunday and it’s dead as a doornail around here. This is both good and bad.</p>
<p>So much going on I’ve missed, but it is that kind of crazy with work. Good, but I’ve also gotten new books that I can’t yet read (including somebody or other’s poetry book!) – but with running a weekend workshop this weekend, reading is not in the immediate future. Dang. </p>
<p>Congrats on the test passers, college move in successes, and skunk relocation. We had a much less successful skunk relocation when a baby fell into our window well years ago. We relocated for two days, and were afraid to have visitors for a week. H did not laugh when I suggested rubbing him down with tomato juice. He still does not laugh. </p>
<p>In other news, it is fall. Seriously. The high temp yesterday was 78, 77 is predicted today, and it is cool and crisp. Now if I could just bottle that and keep it for, say, five months I’d be really, really ecstatic. Instead, we keep intoning in that quiet nature narrator voice, “Winter comes early in the high country.”</p>
<p>Need to vent:</p>
<p>I HATE MY JOB!!!</p>
<p>Maybe it’s time to concentrate on me and not my job. I no longer think of it as a career – just a job that I really, really hate.</p>
<p>End of rant. Thanks for listening…</p>
<p>RM, rant away. We’re here for you!</p>
<p>Are you in a position where you could leave this job?</p>
<p>RM: are you at least off for the weekend? I hope so. </p>
<p>I could leave if I had another job. However our area hasn’t really recovered so finding a job when you are over 50 would be difficult. I’m a manager also so that makes it even more difficult. Issue is not matter what I do it’s never “good enough” but when I ask what more they want they can’t answer it. So WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? I keep getting well you need to work on a revenue generating project or a high profile project or you need to have more technical knowledge about the product. I’m on a high profile project, it generates revenue, and I know a lot of the technical abilities of the product even though I have never written code for it. I DO know who to contact if I can’t answer the question. So this past year I have spent many long weekends and days at the office. Still not good enough – I’m done. I have checked out. Doesn’t matter they are going to s*** on me regardless. Currently I’m responsible for about 30 million dollars of development. I’m on schedule and budget. ARGHHH!!!</p>
<p>So since I"ve checked out yes I have the weekend off. I’ll also be “busy” most evenings from here on out as well as weekends - and I don’t mean at the office. I’ve taken enough abuse from my manager. I’m just done. I think I’ll try to exercise more, spend more time on my hobbies and perhaps have a clean house. Either way I’m not going to take any more of this crap. I’ll come in, do my job in the 40 hours and leave. </p>
<p>RM, so sorry for your work situation.</p>
<p>I’ve had my ups and downs in past and present jobs. For my former part-time job, which I did for 12 years, with a change in staffing I had the same situation where it didn’t matter what I did, it was never good enough. I kept trying to change what I did to what the new supervisor wanted, and then I finally realized that it didn’t matter what I did, it would never be good enough. Although it was scary at the time, after I resigned in retrospect I wish I had done it sooner! But unfortunately that doesn’t appear to be an option for you.</p>
<p>For my full-time job, which I do like (most days), I have had periods where the amount of work was overwhelming. It got to the point when I realized even if I worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I wouldn’t have enough time in the day to get everything done, that epiphany helped me to accept I wasn’t going to get it all done and to stop burning myself out. I made it my goal last year to work less and achieve better work-life balance.</p>
<p>I hope things change for you for the better, in whatever way that can happen.</p>
<p>RM, first off, hugs. Secondly, if I recall, you’re in programming. I know you said your area is depressed, but by all accounts around here programmers get snapped up like hotcakes. With your experience and with some lifestyle adjustments, could you not perhaps do some independent consulting? </p>
<p>You may just find that you make more money and spend less time working, or spend more time working but truly enjoy the work… </p>
<p>I realize its a terrifying idea, but if you’re the type of person who cares about your work, then don’t kill off your passion for it by letting some doofus destroy it on you. Outlast him, sabotage him or remove yourself from his sphere of influence any way you can. Life’s too short to spend punching the clock.</p>
<p>That said, would love to be punching the clock at all…as in finishing a days work at a decent time…so I might be the wrong person to listen to when it comes to work life balance ;)</p>
<p>@Shaw, indeed, I’m clear after these brutal but short two months that I would love for mcson to take over the reins one day. It does make the whole distance relationship thing much more daunting. McGF left for SF last night and lets just say emotions are running high around here. Mcson wrote a beautiful Facebook farewell and tribute to his beloved ;)</p>
<p>On the weekend, her and I joked around that perhaps we could help control her living costs in SF by having “joint custody” of them where they retreated here six months a year to write and get projects together 
Who knows how this will all go.</p>
<p>I just feel very sad for them at the moment. But really, if they’re meant to make it, they will. In mcson’s fb tribute, he spoke of this “beautiful chapter in their lives” closing. I hope the next chapter is even better.</p>
<p>I’m back from the drop off trip and trying to keep up here. Belated but sincere congrats to NM D2 and C_Q D.
Hugs, RM. I hope that you get some much needed time off. I’m not exactly the poster child for work-life balance myself right now, but I’m fortunate to work for a good boss. </p>
<p>The trip was not restful. Four nights total, in four different hotels, terrible traffic, got rear ended in CT (we are fine, car bumper is messed up), S went from being excited to being anxious (never a good thing). But we were able to see D and her fiance along the way as well as my sister, BIL and one of my nieces. Move in went well and while I am a little nervous about an introvert in a suite with 4 other guys, they all seem very nice and as S says “normal”. As soon as we left he had a meeting for his orientation trip and has been “off the grid” since. So we have not heard anything and wont until Sunday at the earliest.</p>
<p>Phew, congrats to all on the move-ins, though it sounds like they came (not surprisingly) with some bumps in the road. FallGirl, so glad to hear that the fender bender only damaged the car. Missypie, you are multi-talented, for sure.</p>
<p>Reading about everyone else’s move-ins is inspiring me to get going on ‘organizing’ D2’s for Sunday. She has been off the grid in Ontario since June (camp counselor), flies back Sat night to be picked up by friends and taken straight to college, and then guess who is driving her stuff down Sunday for move-in to her apt. In normal circumstances, she would manage this herself, but the logistics with camp ending/college starting are so tight we are breaking from tradition. And then she’ll have to move again in December because she and her friends are subletting (primary tenants are studying abroad this semester) and need to move elsewhere for second semester. She and co-subletters were sophomore transfers last fall, and they didn’t get onto the apt thing until most of the available apts had been snapped up. But she’s mellow and happy about all it. She loves the transfer college, and figures the rest of it is just part of life.</p>
<p>I so enjoy reading about where people are in their careers - such a range of talented, interesting folks on here. We all face so many common challenges, and yet there is such diversity here too. This fall, in addition to taking another management course and cleaning out two houses now that my mother has passed away, I’m thinking about getting another dog. We so miss our wheaten terrier Casey who passed away in February. Wheatens are energetic and fun, great companions if you have the time to spend with them. But finding that time can be challenging, especially with a busy career. So I’m torn, but my heart says: get another dog.</p>
<p>Best wishes to all for a fun and relaxing Labor Day weekend!!</p>
<p>Ah, Peonies, isn’t motherhood glamorous?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Good for you. I keep waiting for my stay-at-home-dad-with-no-kids-at-home husband to express SOME idea of what he wants to add to his schedule. Maybe he’s so content that there isn’t anything he’s really been wanting to do all these years. (If that’s the case, I can give him part of my own to do list.)</p>
<p>@Peonies, ShawD says she wants to get a Wheaten Terrier when she is able to take care of a dog. Given her wheat sensitivities, ShawSon suggested that she called it Gluten Free. She got her preceptorship assignment for the fall. For some reason, a number of her other clinical assignments were in lesser hospitals that were not in the Harvard Medical area. This is in one of Harvard’s main teaching hospitals and basically, she works whenever her nurse works for the semester. And, she had hoped for an ICU or something complex and, if I read the acronyms correctly, her nurse works in the cardiac intensive care unit. And, she can walk (looks like about 20 minutes or so from her place or she can take a city bus which also looks to take about the same amount of time but might be good in the winter.) She is very pleased. </p>
<p>I have a question for the folks in nursing. She is going to need to get employed part-time when she becomes in RN as part of her NP program. This seems to be a pre-condition of her program. Both the hospital she works now as a CNA and the hospital where she will have her preceptor assignment this fall are part of the same parent organization. We know the CEO of the hospital where she works now. When he asked, he was told she was terrific, but later on, he really didn’t know if she was still working there or not (this is not the only facility that reports to him and I imagine he has a few things to worry about). His wife loves ShawD (and vice versa). ShawD or ShawWife could ask him to call the other hospital about getting her a job (e.g., “A young woman who is getting her RN as part of the NP program, has done a great job for us and been a terrific employee while in school. Can you see if you might have anything for her at your hospital?”). Is he too highly ranked to do anything? Or would his introduction/request help?</p>
<p>The first year that I had an empty nest, I will admit that I did very little that I could tell you about. I did however begin the never-ending purging and sorting of getting ready for the big move. While I not suggest you rush into downsizing, what are the odds he might want to become master of all things organized? </p>
<p>A friend of mine here lives in NYC. She basically coaches and helps kids get into the various performing arts schools in the area. I have no idea how that works, but perhaps there is something like that?</p>
<p>This week there was a choral program… basically people 55 years or older who like to sing work with great choral masters all week and today there was a free concert. There were some truly stellar voices… and everyone had a great time.</p>
<p>S and GF coming for the weekend. We spent $300 at the grocery store in prep. I am trying to come up with a way to ask him about applications to med school without tripping him out. He is hugely stressed. I know he has said that he didn’t complete two of his secondaries because in answering “why this school” he determined that even if he got in, he would "rather reapply next year than attend. (So, at least I know he has a plan B?) Anyway… This left him with 14 schools. With one rejection, he’s down to unlucky 13. There is one school that has not asked for a secondary though (SF) and although they seem to still be asking for them, S is of the belief that that one is sailed.</p>
<p>And then too, he did throw his hat in the ring at Harvard after all after saying he didn’t think Boston was his town… but likely more of a case of rejection avoidance. Anyway… some people have said on this forum that they find both rejections and Interview requests in their spam folder… Let’s just say I’d like to ask he makes sure to check there but would prefer he find the later than a slew of the former. There is definite risk involved to even put it on his radar.</p>
<p>I just hope he gets good news soon. Then I can start harassing him about shaving his beard. It’s neat and all, but he is just so much better looking without it!!</p>
<p>I grew a beard while on the beach in Croatia. Ten days of Eurostubble. But, two of the ladies in my life really like it (ShawWife and my assistant). A couple of others not so much. I’ll keep it for a while I think. We filmed some videos of me today inviting folks to a seminar in South America, with the beard, even though my headshot photos are beardless. I wonder if that will confuse folks. </p>
<p>Well, if ShawWife and your assistant both like it, you’re good. </p>
<p>When he was younger, DH looked like a terrorist when he got grizzly. It was most definitely not a good look. Now he just looks demented. The deal is that he has to shave at least every third day. Or else. </p>