<p>Oh Missypie!! :eek: My goodness!! Yes, I would opt for a cartilage piercing as well. Amazing how we accept thongs in the face of what we think the alternative might be!!! A large ink reminder of a short-lived relationship for example would be preferred over say, oh…idk, a quickie Las Vegas wedding. 
</p>
<p>Never a dull moment with this bunch of kids!!!</p>
<p>Morning All…</p>
<p>Oh Missypie…I hear ya…My sister in law has a peacock on the upper part of a bre2st…she was a wild child for a season…
Having it removed would cause too much scarring so she left it…</p>
<p>As she gets older and everything sags, it isn’t going to be so pretty/perky…</p>
<p>I appreciate my mom’s philosophy…
calling tatts, a “permanent reminder of a temporary feeling…”</p>
<p>A friend of mine is an attourny…years ago she had a tatt done on her ankle…now she finds herself very self conscious about it and finding ways to hide it for interviews etc is tough because women don’t wear pantyhose anymore…</p>
<p>I agree with BI…could have been something worse…Did her piercing expense come out of her “spending money”? Piercing may be popular with some girls, another CC friends daughter just pierced her nose at college…</p>
<p>Hugs</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>bahahaha!!! 
I promise this was the iphone, not a freudian slip…or was it? I guess along this line of thinking a thong would be better then full frontal? 
Oh my goodness I need coffee and some more sleep!!! Sorry, I’ll pull it together guys!</p>
<p>This was supposed to read…</p>
<p>Amazing how we accept things in the face of what we think the alternative might be!!!</p>
<p>Hey, blue, it took me a LONG time to accept thongs.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the laugh this morning.</p>
<p>missy - breathing a sigh of relief. I am so grateful my girls are absolutely anti-tattoo. D1 did get her tragus (the bump at the very front of her ear) pierced a year ago, after many months of considering it. She says that’s the closest she’d ever come to her actual face (phew). When she did it, she went with a friend who was getting her 2nd or 3rd tattoo, and D secretly thought that was extremely gross.</p>
<p>Made my travel plans for the 10/22 trip to see D. I think it will be a nice weekend. We talked yesterday about how I’d love to meet her friends and see things around campus, but I have been there several times and our main focus will be getting her off campus as much as possible.</p>
<p>BI: Made me laugh this morning!</p>
<p>Hey blueiguana
when you wrote about accepting thongs, I thought for a moment am i being little conservative considering i come from India. I am not being a prude or anything , and i do have a liberal upbringing and my D does don a two piece on the beach, but thongs always have been a point of concern not for the miniscule thing that it is but that it looks so uncomfortable on the person wearing it. So thank you for clarifying caz i would have a hard time accepting, no offense to anyone who enjoys wearing one.</p>
<p>So glad I could add morning levity. Honestly it was purely a slip/typo. I am still laughing about it as I type. Bluedog just thinks I’ve gone nuts as no one else is in the house…cue music…heavenly alone time!!!</p>
<p>**51 days to Thanksgiving break **</p>
<p>(Based on kids touching down at home on the Wednesday before TG. Some kids may get the full week and will land at home sooner.)</p>
<p>Good morning. I’m catching up after a late, cold night at the Ravens/Jets game last night.</p>
<p>BI: Thanks for the laugh!</p>
<p>Holliesue: I’m glad that you had such a nice visit. Your D’s school sounds wonderful.</p>
<p>Siemom: I understand your frustration with your son. I’m not sure about the best way to handle this, other than setting up a time for a required once a week call or skyp.</p>
<p>Bajamm: It’s so frustrating to have to listen to family and friend’s disaproval of things that aren’t their business. I think that you made a great decision for your D. College is much more than rushing through to get a diploma. You’ve given your daugther a great gift. A lot of our friends think that my H and I are crazy to send our D’s to private, OOS schools but we felt that it was a priority to give them the same opportunities and choices we had. </p>
<p>Madbean: Sorry you had to miss the production. I hope your injury heals quickly. How nice to hear that your son thinks his assignments are fun.</p>
<p>Ohiomom: I hope things work out for your son’s trip home. I was worried about the same thing when my D came home, but she managed very well. </p>
<p>Missypie: A piercing is much better than a tatoo! I let my D2 get some odd ear piercings in the past few years, but I nixed the nose piercing. Now that she’s 18, I’m praying that she’s over it. Fortunately, D1 is very conservative and has stuck with one hole in each ear.</p>
<p>Have a good Monday!</p>
<p>Thongs forever!</p>
<p>We had a lovely visit with D this weekend! Met her for dinner Saturday night along with a few friends, who were all lovely articulate young women. The friends only ordered appetizers and excused themselves afterwards, which seemed odd at first but turned out to be really nice because we got to spend some time talking alone with D. I don’t think the friends were uncomfortable with us - there was a major campus party that night, our dinner reservation was for 8pm because D had a rehearsal until 7:30, and they wanted to get on with their evening. D had decided she would rather spend time with us, which was also nice.
It’s only 3 weeks until D comes home for the weekend, and 4 weeks until Family Weekend, so suddenly it seems like we have gone from her being gone for a long time (6 whole weeks!) to seeing her all the time. Funny how my time continuum is changing.</p>
<p>MadBean, no skinny dipping - The PUddle isn’t frozen yet <em>thank god</em>!</p>
<p>Saturday took BC out for dinner at a local brew pub and then he was off to a Sailing Club party so we went to an after dinner dessert reception for parents. It was lovely - choccie cover strawberries, choccie mousse in dark choccie cups, etc., etc., etc. I was in heaven. </p>
<p>Yesterday was a very long day. Boychild’s geology field trip got cancelled because the weather was so horrid. We took him to breakfast at a place DH found on Diner app. It was one of those dives that serve fantastic breakfasts and is cheap. Lots of locals were there and a lot of Bates parents with there kids so it must be the place to go. </p>
<p>After he took us to see the yacht club (and I use that term loosely) where they practice and then we stopped at an apple orchard to buy some apples & cider. </p>
<p>He was more then ready to see us go by then so we drove to Yarmouth and wasted a few hours there before meeting the in laws for dinner. If any of you are ever in Portland have dinner at Fore Street. It was excellent. Just be sure to make reservations well in advance. </p>
<p>We got on the road a bit after 8 and pulled into the driveway a little after midnight.</p>
<p>And like Fog-Fog we’ll be seeing BC a lot in the next few months with all the vacations he has coming up.</p>
<p>Hollie, glad to hear you had a lovely weekend with DD. </p>
<p>Avon, thank for the T’day count down!</p>
<p>Emmy, yay for your trip to see DD! Oct. in NYC is always beautiful. You’ll have a great time.</p>
<p>blue - I was reading so fast, I didn’t even catch the things-thongs typo! It was only when I read your second post that I did realize what you had said! Funny!</p>
<p>Missypie - glad that it was only cartilage. Personally, I am not fond of tattoos - I’ve always told the kids that temp tattoos are fine. Interesting what you find out when you look at the bank account uh? I had looked at D’s account the week before and there was a charge on there for “Coach”. Now, she didn’t mention anything to me - so didn’t ask. She had said she got me a surprise birthday gift - so was wondering if I had ruined my own surprise. Birthday came and went with no “Coach” gift in sight - so I did ask her one day. It was her bus ticket to Pittsburgh for the fall break 
D’s comment - Mom, since when do you think you’ll get anything decent at Coach for 22$ :)</p>
<p>H is in California this week - stopped off in Cleveland on Sat as a surprise for D. S and I were texting her - she had just gotten back from practice and was sitting down to do homework when he showed up at her dorm room! She was so surprised!! Her games on Sunday were cancelled due to the rain, so she got to spend time with him before he headed out Sunday afternoon. Took her and her friends out shopping to Target/Walmart for essentials and some fun. Both of them had a good time - she was apparently emotional and a bit teary when he left. She texted me later and said she was doing better. Gosh, was I jealous :(</p>
<p>Amanda - hugs. I’ve had that same conversation about caring about the sibling with D and S several times. Enough to make you pull your hair out! There were times when they would be sniping at each other constantly -and I’d be really really tired of hearing this. But according to them, this was “normal” and I shouldn’t be bothered!</p>
<p>Gee everyone thanks for the laughs and hugs to all those struggling.</p>
<p>No words of wisdom just checking in to let you know I am around-I know you were all worried about that. :)</p>
<p>BI-thanks for the laugh!!!</p>
<p>We got to oovoo with DS last night. First time we’ve done that. Had some technical difficulties–tried skype first but for some reason we couldn’t get the audio from him to work. Couldn’t seem to fix it, so we switched to oovoo. All was smooth and we had a great visit. DS spent all day Saturday doing multi var calculus problem sets. Evidently the teacher decided they were behind and assigned three and a half chapters for the weekend. So he had a long day. He was able to make it to the 4th quarter of the football game, but didn’t get to play with the band since he was late. Team won so that was good he was able to see the end of the game!</p>
<p>He’s loving his evolutionary biology class. Seems his fellow students aren’t as enthralled. Guy on one side spends the class on the internet, girl on other side said she doesn’t understand what’s going on and wondered if she should be doing the pre-reading. My DS says the class is the highlight of his schedule. I’m glad because he didn’t like biology in HS and he wondered if he should try pre-med since he didn’t like biology. Guess that’s not an issue now! </p>
<p>Parent weekend is in two weeks. We’re looking forward to seeing him and learning more about the school. Didn’t really get much information when we took him to school, so hopefully this weekend they will wow us with all the wonderful things that are his college. DS2 is excited because he’s going to sleep in the dorm with DS1. I hope he doesn’t have too much homework that weekend (at least not like this weekend!).</p>
<p>He’ll be home after another two weeks for fall break, then home for turkey day, so we’re going to be seeing a lot of him, which will make us all happy! I’m just glad he’s settling in so well and enjoying his classes. </p>
<p>Hope you all have a wonderful day. Can you believe it’s October already???</p>
<p>Finally got in touch with D yesterday. She was sitting in the quad, with a new friend, reading Plato’s Republic. What more could any parent want?</p>
<p>My D came home this past weekend, put her on the train back to school this morning. She should have gone back on Sunday night, but wanted one more night in her bed, and one more evening eating dinner down in the livingroom and watching 60 Minutes, our Sunday night routine for years. She actually got teary when I told her that she really shouldn’t skip her Monday morning class… She misses Sunday nights at home with her family so much she started to cry.</p>
<p>She worked 6 hours at her cashiering job so she made some money on Saturday, got homework done, got to hang with her little sister and start playing Pottermore, and met a friend at Starbucks for about an hour on Sunday.</p>
<p>She commmented how nice it was to talk to someone that she wasn’t trying to impress, wasn’t trying to get to know, wasn’t trying to live with, wasn’t trying to negotiate with, just someone with shared history that she could talk to.</p>
<p>She felt so much less stress while here. Bought some cookie sheets and a brownie pan for the suite because theirs disappeared. Got teary when we hugged goodbye before she got on the train (so did I) but she will be coming home again next weekend. It’s saying goodbye next weekend that’s going to hurt, we won’t see her again for a while.</p>
<p>Just caught up on three days of laughter, tears, parents and kids needing hugs and those feeling more comfortable. We are finally home. Had a “delightful” trip back. We sat behind one year old twins who screamed for 6 of the 10 hours from Tel Aviv to JFK. The icing on the cake…they were on our second flight also, altho this time they were in first class, ten rows ahead of us. I’m sure the other first class passengers loved their company. As much as we loved seeing our family and friends, Dorothy was right, there is no place like home.</p>
<p>First, hugs to AK to help her deal with her teens, siemom for having to handle her anger and disappointment long distance and fogfog for her near tattoo scare.</p>
<p>Glad to hear the recent visits home and FWs and surprise visits by dad all worked their magic. We are looking forward to FW in 11 days (but who’s counting).</p>
<p>bajamm - is your DD’s hand OK?</p>
<p>madbean - thanks for the trip down memory lane. Maybe I’ll dig out those TDay decorations my DS made in preschool.</p>
<p>Had a great Skype visit with DS yesterday. He is really growing up and taking on responsibility for things I did before. I love it. His school has a big job fair (summer and permanent) on Wed. 47 companies for less than 400 students. I’m impressed. Olin kids are in demand. One student was on the team at Microsoft that developed an app that is part of Windows 8. [How</a> Microsoft interns blazed a trail for Windows 8 apps - GeekWire](<a href=“http://www.geekwire.com/2011/how-microsoft-interns-blazed-a-trail-for-windows-8-apps]How”>http://www.geekwire.com/2011/how-microsoft-interns-blazed-a-trail-for-windows-8-apps)
Gotta get back to the mail and pile of things to do.</p>
<p>Hi FlMathMom </p>
<p>I am glad you made it home alright!</p>
<p>I think D’s hand will be fine, she finally told me she has blisters from being on the rowing team. She just needs to turn those into callouses and she’ll be fine. Thanks!</p>
<p>Welcome home FlMathMom!! I am soooo with you, there is no place like home! Dorothy had it right, and her little dog too! Sorry about the crying babies. At least they weren’t coming home with you! :eek:</p>
<p>bajamm, glad your DD finally told you about her hand. So glad she’s alright and it’s nothing worse. My mind would have been going a million miles a minute about what was wrong and why she wasn’t telling me. It probably wouldn’t have dawned on me that it was something logical. In this situation, the blisters are the thong…not desired perhaps, but better than an alternative, say an injury from careless nighttime adventures climbing on university statues or crawling through steam tunnels. Now, why does my mind go there…because that’s why I would have had my hand bandaged. ;)</p>
<p>LL - Wow, working on her weekend home! I admire that. I agree that it’s nice for the kids to be able to just turn it all ‘off’ when they are at home. They don’t have to be available to anyone. It’s a big relief for some kids.</p>
<p>VAMom - Thanks for the update! Aren’t those video chats awesome. Actually seeing them and their body language, smile, laugh, is so refreshing, and soothing for this mom! </p>
<p>325 - Glad you got in touch of your DD. Agreed, that does sound pretty idyllic!</p>
<p>We have back to school night tonight for Bluejrjr. It will be the first time in umpty-umph years that we don’t have to divide and conquer. Only one in k-12! Wow!! Bluedad was a little taken back when I reminded him and said he was going with me…youbetcha. We started this together and will finish B2School nights together!! (read, if I have to go, you do too!)</p>
<p>Happy Tuesday everyone!!</p>
<p>LeftyLou – how bittersweet – sounds like she really misses her family. </p>
<p>D called last night. “Can I come home on Parent’s weekend?”</p>
<p>Of course I said no (kidding). </p>
<p>Flights are just as expensive as Thanksgiving. Go figure. I told her we’ll make it work. She’s been there since mid-August. Time for a little break. No need to tell her we’ve been using her room as a storage facility since she was gone…</p>