My D not even close as a debutante. I don’t think I was able to get that tomboy out of sweats until college…
Ha ha ha mp – almost spit out my coffee over the bathroom breaks comment! When is this beach trip taking place?
Definitely no debs in our extended family. D’s sorority sister/sophomore year roommate did the whole deb thing, though; she’s from the Tampa area. Our D and a couple others from the sorority were invited; it was during the holiday break, after Christmas. D had a blast but said she couldn’t imagine being a deb herself. Somewhat of an outdated social thing, IMO, but a great excuse for a fairly extravagant party.
RM – great news about the house. Fingers crossed.
I also should have asked if any of you were debutantes. Maybe we could vote for a CC Superlative…Most Likely to Have Been a Debutante
I thought I had dodged the whole debutante thing because I had boys. But they got invited to cotillions and debutante balls by girls they knew in school. I don’t quite get it but it seems to be a good excuse for a party!
It seems the charitable donation that the parents are required to make is in the mid 5 figures. The cost likely varies depending on the city.
That would be a big nope on the debutante thing here.
Though we did have cotillion.
No debs in our family.
In the summer before college, I was invited to one at a country club that didn’t admit Jews. I couldn’t imagine being comfortable there – I didn’t know how to dance or dress and said no. My mother was very disappointed. One of my GFs in college was in a family that came over the Mayflower (also with an anti-Semitic mother) and she may have been a deb.
I grew up in a tiny town in the midwest. I guess that answers the debutant question!
S attended cotillion for 3 years. Good way to learn manners, some dancing and how to shake hands, etc.
I definitely have some sort of adware malware something on my computer… all kinds of pop ups, redirects getting really annoying. Anywhere else, I’d just run to the genius bar or geek dr and have them fix it. Closest thing is almost two hours away.
S went to a debutante ball with his GF in Texas (her cousin). It looked incredibly fancy and she most definitely looked like a bride. But they had a great time and S met a lot of his GF’s family. (PS jury still out on med school and I admit I am very anxious for him) and therefore there are worse things than his being insanely busy, getting more leadership responsibilities in his job. Hoping he loosens up on the lack of communication soon before this morphs into some sort of normal.
I am in a state of doing little to nothing, which is growing concerning to those around me more than me myself. I keep very busy and have gotten involved in a few local concerns but otherwise keep pretty much to myself during the week. H and I are talking but mostly about day to day stuff. Not sure how to broach larger topics but mostly because I don’t know exactly what I want to happen but don’t want it necessarily dictated to me either.
But I am looking forward to leaving for Denver next week and realize I scheduled a hair appt for the same day I am leaving. Thankfully it’s in the morning and my flight isn’t until evening… should be interesting traveling day to make such a weird loop but the timing for a cut and color and then be gone for three weeks (and hoping that the worst of winter will be behind us when I return) seems almost as if I planned it! Again, my only issue with being here all year round is the gray skies and I totally look forward to some sun from CO to FL to AZ starting next week!! My sister in AZ is talking a little spa time, so that seems a definite upside.
This weekend is the big winter festival in the local village. They are currently in the process of building an ice castle from the ice on the lake, cutting it into blocks the same way they did when there were ice companies etc. It should be pretty neat for at least short periods considering it’ll only be in the teens.
This talk of debutantes prompted me to google a friend from college. She was from a fabulously wealthy family and was a debutante. Not my background, nor of my children. I did find my friend on the internet, by the way. She still lives in the city where her family goes back several generations.
Hi moda, thanks for checking in. I have been thinking about you. Safe travels.
Moda, still sending good karma your son’s way. Glad you’ll be able to get out of the cold/snow.
Good Morning! Ordered a new laptop but it won’t be shipped until the 20th. Using my phone is a little strange for me.
Yesterday was D1’s birthday. We celebrated on Saturday as a family. Lots of fun. Her New boyfriend sent flowers , balloons and a candy bouquet to her work. He is taking her to NYC for the weekend for Valentine’s Day. He is very nice but I still feel like I don’t really know him well.
Mods…sending good thoughts and fairy dust your way
Moda, we don’t have pixie dust but we do have snow (it’s snowing lightly now and another foot+ is expected this weekend). Not sure you need any of that (or that we do) so I’ll send best wishes for you and ModaS.
I don’t know if I mentioned this. In earlier posts, I think I mentioned a young woman who was a friend of ShawSon’s from college. Very bright Chinese-American young woman – ShawSon thinks of her as one of his few intellectual peers in college – who attends one of the hardest law schools in the country to get into. She met us in Croatia after her boyfriend in law school abruptly broke up with her and apparently ShawSon was the guy who everyone went to with problems (she also told us that she thought he was good at everything). She showed up again at Thanksgiving (I think) and again at Christmas break. Well, as part of ShawSon’s plan to get himself on track for the rest of the year, this young woman is taking a semester off from law school (she is trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life) and is, at least for the time being, moving in with ShawSon in his dorm room. Still not clear if this is a non-platonic relationship (we saw no evidence that they were anything other than friends). But, she’s got a lot of angst and in her mind, ShawSon is the guy with no weaknesses who fixes everything and …? Apparently she’ll get a part-time job and then an apartment. She is really nice but we’d strongly prefer to see ShawSon with someone who is cheery and supportive and low angst (like GF #2). Well. Not clear what will happen but we can be certain that we don’t really have a say in the matter.
We did have a call from ShawSon yesterday and he sounds a lot better than he did. He did quite well on one mid-term and pretty mediocre on another (probably his lowest score on test, but he was above the median). He’ll take the latter class P/F, though he will have to take another course for credit that he wants to take anyway, but it will force a rejiggering of his schedule. Anyway, he now seems to have things under control and called me last night while he was taking a break from studying for midterm number 3 by going to the gym to play basketball. Taking breaks for exercise implied that he has things under control and is no longer panicked.
Interesting arrangement with the girl and ShawSon…
I am getting into territory that I really don’t like and am not good at. I had coffee this morning with a guy at the firm who had a small part in getting me placed here. (He thinks he had a larger part than he did.) He is my partner and I know that he wants Credit for all business that comes out of this. All of the Credit as in financial credit. All of it. He is known to have gone to the mat with others over Credit. Knock down drag out forming enemies type of fights over Credit. He and I have always gotten along well, but I can see the fight coming. I can tell by the gleam in his eyes that he can see his financial prospects and status in the firm skyrocketing as a result of my 50-60 hour workweeks here. (And yes, I am senior to him.)
I am going to seek advice from others in the firm as to handle, because I am very low key and have never engaged in battles within the firm and have suffered because of it.
Missy, why not ask to share credit but insist on a fast phase-out? While his origination credit may be dubious, perhaps its worth something, but to me it doesn’t sound like that something has legs 
Our situation is entirely different, being a design/development studio, and mostly related, but I limit origination credit or share to the first blush of billings because it take the whole team to deliver and generate future billings 
One would think. Our system is outdated and at odds with how corporate legal departments see things. Won’t go into more detail here, but there are folks (including this guy) getting credit for clients that they wouldn’t know if they bumped into them.
Final comment about the situation is that this all makes my head pound. Back to real work.
I’d say that you need to build a coalition about how this should be handled with senior folks and circumvent Mr. Credit-Taker.
I have a couple of highly talented, highly neurotic folks at my firm with grandiose visions of how much they contribute (one contributes a lot but not as much as he thinks). Always a challenge dealing with them. But, they report to me so it is easier.
^i second Shaw’s suggestion.
One of my many little life lessons has been about the importance of team recognition. Its probably fair to say that in a different setting and with less seasoning, I could be one of those credit-grabber/rainmaker type A neurotics. But a weird little story that I’m still, 15 years later, almost too embarrassed to share, made me a better person
Through a lot of shenanigans, we’d inherited a disastrous, major project for a very well-known, world class theater. We didn’t want it because it was a) a disaster and b) high profile with crazy tight and very public deadline and c) involved complicated moving parts. But they were stuck and we’d had some unique experience that had us among a handful who could actually help out.
I was the front face of the team that interacted with those connected to the project. The person in charge there felt that I had brought a lot of innovation and “saved” the whole mess. Its true I did, but my team, including and especially mch, toiled endless late nights to make it all it happen, often against their will or better judgement mch and I were not married at the time.
So at the end of the project, the project leader had me come to town, took me out for a spa day, wining, dining, and gave me a personal bonus beyond the final payment of the project to express their gratitude, made out in my name.
And self-centered jackass that I was, I unilaterally decided to use my bonus to take a trip to southern Spain with my girlfriends. The relationship between mch and I had been very strained at the time, largely over this project. Let’s just say the bonus and my decision to go to Spain nearly caused that strain to cause a fracture that might never have recovered if at some point I hadn’t gotten straight with myself and recognized that while I might look like the fire, fire needs the wood to sustain it.
At the time, I rationalized this behavior by being sucked into the idea – fed by a handful of folks around me – that I was an irreplaceable element, that somehow my personal charisma benefitted the team, as in fed them. That because my contributions were obvious, they were somehow more important. In other words, my views were distorted, and likely reflected a form of insecurity. I’d been used to the culture of the lone wolf journalist. Now I was thrust into this very scary, quasi-entrepreneurial role, and in truth was deeply terrified in terms of my actual value.
A series of life events followed that helped me both learn the value of the wood that sustains, and helped me see how a deep and unrelenting terror can feed illusions of grandeur A good part of that discovery might be chalked up to the love of a good man
So Missy, totally not your job to help your partner understand how to be a better human…but if you fight him and help him recognize his own sponsoring terror a little, he might thank you one day Some of us need a nudge…or a wifflebat over the head, to get it!