<p>Missy – your neighbor must be the twin of our engineer neighbor.</p>
<p>I have worked with a number of engineers/wives (sorry no engineers/husband mixes) in couples counseling. It usually works best to say things such as “of course, you remembered to take her flowers and tell her you love her this week–right?” or regarding whatever we are working on. Through the back door…not directly or a big shut down will happen. I am certainly generalizing but you get my point. I try to use the “back door” with S as even though he is not planning an engineering career (he should) he is of the same material. It does help when I remember but unfortunately I tend to be very direct with my family.</p>
<p>Tonight I’m hosting a “send a care package to your college kid” party tonight for moms I have known for 18+ years. I got the idea from someone on CC - sorry I forget who right now. Everyone is bringing a little something for exam relief and we’ll all sign the boxes.
Everyone else has daughters in college - no sons. I have a daughter and a son. I’m not sending anything to son. He won’t care. He probably won’t go to the Post Office to pick it up. Stuff like this just doesn’t matter to him. He still has crap in his desk drawer at home that I bought for his stocking years ago.</p>
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<p>When H and I took a road trip a couple of weeks ago, I was looking through the stack of CDs for good music to play. I found one unopened CD that I got him for Christmas two years ago and another that I got him for Valentines’ day three years ago. I was really considering wrapping up as Christmas gifts all the unused/unopened stuff I’d gotten him in 20 years of marriage, to see if he’d even recognize it. (At Thanksgiving, he did finally use the electric knife that he asked for for Christmas '07.)</p>
<p>Son has only two real finals. I don’t think that merits a care package (esp since who knows when he’d pick it up.) (But sweet of you to do, Woody!)</p>
<p>Well, if I do anything for S, I’ll pop $20 in his account so he can go get a couple of beers at the end of it all! THAT, I know will be appreciated…</p>
<p>^^Moda - love that you sent a Giant Wicked Whoopie Pie! 
Made just down the road from me.</p>
<p>woody…recycle it in his stocking this year, see if he notices! Haha! That would be great! :)</p>
<p>Sent D2 a box from that alice dot com site…gum, blowpops, popcorn, fruit snacks, etc for finals. Last time I sent hair products, laundry detergent, and food. She loved it. Love the no shipping part!</p>
<p>H was ahead of me on this one - he sent D a care package from Zingermans dot com. (The man is ALL about food!) I’ll follow it up with a small Hanukkah package - Hanukkah starts the day before she comes home.</p>
<p>D2 is going to a Chrismakkah dinner this Friday. She wanted me to send her ugly Christmas sweater that she wore to the ugly Christmas sweater party last year. I just laughed. ;)</p>
<p>Will check out Zingermans!</p>
<p>Well H is also an engineer. So there are two of us in the house. I’ve always been more talkative them him but he’s getting to be more talkative as he get’s older. D is a science major currently and is also very interested in math so takes after H and myself a lot. S however wants to be a corporate lawyer – very different than the rest of us in the family. Very different and very talkative!! I’ve learned to not ask easy questions of my staff like “hows it going” I won’t get much back unless they are upset.</p>
<p>I’ve always heard of the freshman 15, so I was surprised to see that son seems to have lost weight. At 6’ 2", 145 pounds he didnt have a lot to spare.</p>
<p>He says he eats ok, but never eats breakfast (I used to insist at home) and he doesnt have any spare $$ for junk food. He is going to drop his meal plan to 12/meals a week next semester.</p>
<p>Anyone else have a shrinking freshman?</p>
<p>D has lost 5 pounds. She sleeps through breakfast. She eats one meal from the salad bar (never uses salad dressing- just balsamic vinegar) with either soy or tofu. Eats a regular dinner and never goes back for seconds. Even though she has access to unlimited sodas, she drinks water. Bikes everywhere. Who is she and what have they done to my daughter?!!! She’s never been worried about her weight and still doesn’t seem to be. Her reason that she eats from the salad bar is that it never has a line. She thought the tofu was feta cheese the first time. She never goes back for seconds because she is too lazy. The soda thing I just don’t get. She loves ice cream but they only serve fro yo. She is appalled. According to her, yogurt is disgusting. How would freezing it make it any better? </p>
<p>I must admit, I spent most of the Thanksgiving break just shaking my head with the stuff she was saying. She signed up for an Economics class, which shocks me (but I secretly approve of) and some other really hard classes. Another surprise is that she signed up for a ‘lifestyle class’ called Abs and Glutes. I asked her if she was concerned about her abs and glutes and she said she was hoping there would be guys in the class. That answers that question.</p>
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<p>LOVE THIS! Chrismakkah. Son did in fact take an ugly Christmas sweater back to school. Actually it was one he stole from H’s closet a couple years ago. Think Bill Cosby in the 80’s and red and green patchwork on acid. </p>
<p>My H “saves” gifts. Never understood it. It’s like he doesn’t like new, but it’s not exactly “used” if you never use it. So… say you give him a new shirt. He’ll wear it no sooner than a month or two after receipt. A wallet? Could sit for almost 6 mos to a year. </p>
<p>Son is clearly not an engineer. We have a calico cat and over the break he came in our room where the cat was curled at the end of the bed, sat on our bench and went on for about 10 minutes on why calico cats are indeed calico, gene expressions, etc - H finally said, “Wait, did we ask the question?” It was actually pretty funny. Other times, all you will hear is “fine.” To avoid the short answers, we used to always ask the kids what was the best thing that happened to you today and what was the worst. Certainly there was always debate about whether what you considered the worst was actually bad by anyone’s standards but it got them talking. My father used to require a current event but it always digressed to ridiculous trivia. Can only imagine how that would go today with the internet!</p>
<p>S lost about 10 lbs his first semester. He could stand to lose 10 more for his 6 feet.
So I hope it is a trend, though I am expecting not.
I am pretty sure I gained 10 to 15 my first year at college.</p>
<p>My father actually bribed me to lose weight over Christmas following my first semester. Probably not a good idea in general, but it worked!!</p>
<p>geek_son has gained weight, but lost inches. This in spite of flexing out on candy bars most weekends; he’s been working out and eating mostly at the salad bar. He plans to drop to a 12-meal plan next year too.</p>
<p>I recall losing weight in college, mainly because I was a commuter student and had to park about a mile away from my classes. Wish I could lose it so easily now!</p>
<p>wish I could lose at ALL now :-(</p>
<p>“I’ve learned to not ask easy questions of my staff like “hows it going” I won’t get much back unless they are upset.”
RM–made my day! funny. I teach “taking donuts to work” as a skill. The engineer has to ask a question such as “how was your weekend?” or say “it was nice that it did not rain” and we call that a donut. Hey, it has really worked!</p>
<p>oregon101 - love the donut idea. Too funny. Engineers are definitely a breed all their own.</p>
<p>eggmom, I think your son is my son’s clone.</p>