I’ll take it! What’s that expression? Even a blind squirrel finds a nut, from time to time.
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I have started buying a few little surprises for D24 and hiding them away as we pack. I bought a bunch of stackable Sterlite drawers and am dropping in surprises. Most recently, I hid a few bags of Texaroni, which is pasta shaped in the shape of the state of Texas, for those of you that do not have pasta shaped in the form of your state.
She has access to a full kitchen in her dorm and I know it will delight her to find it when she unpacks.
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By the way, I am giving myself a C-, because I forgot to get grapefruits so I can’t actually make the Clouseau!
It would be even worse except we are putting together a welcome-home meal for my S24 who is coming back from a short vacation with NiceParticularGirlfriend’s family, and he is apparently missing home cooking (or even just our normal restaurants). For the record, NiceParticularGirlfriend basically refuses to eat my cooking, so it is a two-sided culture clash.
Anyway, the shopping for that went pretty well, so I guess a passing grade is warranted. But barely.
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At our house, we are all nursing post-vacation illnesses, but most of us are starting to turn the corner on that, so that’s good.
back in May during graduation, SIL said that she & her 2 kids were going to come out here for a short weekend visit this coming weekend (last weekend in July) because my niece (SIL’s daughter) really wants to see D24 before she heads off to college.
And as all of us parents know, it’s tricky at times coordinating this sort of thing given different school year calendars and all that. D26 starts school on 8/5. We hit the road w/D24 to drive her to college on 8/22. Niece & Nephew start school sometime around 8/15.
well, we learned today from DH’s phone call w/SIL that Nephew has been in a summer swim league and the end of summer big swim meet is this Fri & Sat. D24 foolishly requested this coming weekend off of work because she wanted to make sure that she didn’t have to work when her cousins were going to be visiting.
SIL said she’s now not sure if they’ll be able to come. SIL is also one of the least organized people we’ve ever met. I know from personal experience that when it comes to swim team stuff, they tell you ahead of time on a summer swim league when the big meets are. So the only reason why SIL didn’t know about this is because, truly, she is a flake and unorganized.
So now my kids are frustrated and disappointed because: (a) they didn’t get to see their cousins at graduation in May (because SIL left them at home); and (b) they probably won’t be coming here this weekend either.
A normal person would suggest, “Hey, you guys could get together at Thanksgiving or Christmas!” Great idea. We suggest that to SIL every year. Every year, SIL says, “We’ll probably come out for a few days after Christmas” and then she doesn’t follow through.
It’s to the point that DH & I really don’t trust anything she says to us anymore because she won’t ever make a decision, says one thing and does another, etc.
Sorry for airing all of this extended family dirty laundry. It’s frustrating. There’s nothing we can do about it. We did our part and tried to get everybody together but life got in the way and it’s not going to work out.
Nor do we have the time to go out there to visit them right now.
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Super frustrating I am sure- I remember you called it back in June when your D24 asked to be off work and you said they likely won’t even show up. I’m sorry- family stuff can be really hard and draining.
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Now see if I were nearer I’d drop some off for you.
Tomorrow is another day!
Good luck cooking for NPG…
ETA: at different times I have garnished the Clouseau with orange and grapefruit rounds. Different but the former for sure takes things in a sweeter direction. No garnish also works for sure.
OK, rice-washing experiment #1:
Interesting!
I intentionally made a cocktail I had tried before and not liked, even though it is in a family I could like. It has rye aged in port casks, Martini & Rossi Fiero, and sweet vermouth. So basically a Boulevardier, but to me it has a sort of funky sour vibe I don’t love.
OK, so I made a 3 oz version (1 oz each) then split it evenly. I rice-washed one half, not the other. I had a wire strainer ready for the rice but it turns out I didn’t need it–my shaker caught the rice fine.
First observation: the rice-washed portion went from 1.5 oz to about 1 oz. That rice really did some work! It was also noticeably cloudy.
OK, both shaken with ice, then compared. No feasible way to do it blind.
And the rice-washed version was definitely better! I won’t say it entirely cured what I don’t love about this cocktail, but it was definitely less funky, and a little less sour.
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Love it! You’ll have to have someone on hand next time to facilitate the true ABX blind taste test 
BTW I wonder if you made that drink 2/1/1 whether you’d like it more. I find a Negroni works fine for me at 1/1/1 but I like my Boulevardiers a little more bourbon or rye heavy. Of course maybe that’s just the extra alcohol talking.
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In this case, probably not, because it is really the port-aged rye causing the main problems for me. That was an experiment that simply has not paid off as I have never found a way to drink it that I truly like. So even more of it would probably be going the wrong direction for me.
Hi all. Just wanted to say farewell to this forum. It’s always interesting to look back and think about how things might have been with slightly different nudges at critical points, and I will be ever grateful for the advice, commiseration, and reality checks I have found here because I think D24 is ending up in the best fitting college for her. Time will tell. With one child, I get one shot at any parenting thing, then it’s time to move on, and it feels like the moving on time now…I wish everyone the best. 
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D24 is getting some adulting practice today in navigating through the confusing world of healthcare. Over the weekend, she insisted that she needed to see a doctor because she didn’t feel well enough to go to work today (Mon). We’ve made her:
- find an in-network urgent care
- schedule an appointment with the urgent care
- figure out what to say when you see the provider, what sorts of questions they will ask, and how to explain your symptoms other than a stupid general comment of “not great” when the provider asks you how you’re feeling
- get the provider to switch the pharmacy that they’re sending the prescription to because D24 screwed up and told them Walgreens instead of CVS and Walgreens isn’t in network for our insurance.
- pay the $75 urgent care copay out of her own pocket
- pay the prescription copay out of her own pocket
- ask the provider for a doctor’s note so she could get excused from work
- drive to work and drop off the doctor’s note re: reason for today’s absence
- think through the pros and cons of this decision and recognizing that in your adult work life at multiple times, you will not have the luxury of it going this way and you will have no choice but to suck it up and go into work anyway because you either: don’t have anymore PTO left, need the pay in order to be able to pay your rent this month or whatever, or you’ve missed so much work because your kid is young and gets sick once a month and you really need this job and you’re screwed if you lose it.
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I was struggling with the plan to move in, since it’s just going to be me driving D24 and moving her in, since DH cannot take off the time and we do not want to bring the two younger siblings.
I did not want to have to unpack the whole car, but I also did not want the car broken into. I finally came to the perfect solution. I’m driving our minivan, and I realized that Lake Charles, Louisiana, is the perfect place to stop because they have casinos with parking garages monitored by security, and I can back into a space making it impossible to get anything out of the hatch anyway. So we are staying at the Golden Nugget rather than some roadside motel where I’d have to park in some open surface lot. The casinos actually have pretty good security, so as two women traveling alone I feel better, actually.
I will also probably grab a drink and spend 20 minutes at the slot machines too.
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S24’s move in date of Aug 30 just came through.
I feel like I should stop the arguments with him now, perhaps?
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I impulsively bought another fan because hte one we have will not fit in the car. IT seems that I am the one not sticking to the budget more than S24
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Love the logic and creativity utilized here.
For me though, the reasoning breaks down on your last sentence - those 20 minutes in the casino would probably cost me more than if someone set fire to the van with all the stuff still in it.
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Seriously. I would need to practice a lot of restraint
My spousal unit is very frustrated w/me about this, but D24 & I have decided that we 100% will be taking all of her worldly possessions out of the rental car and into the hotel room with us for the 1 night we’re staying in a motel/hotel on the way to college move-in day. I’m already prepared for my crying, moaning, groaning, and gnashing of teeth from the husband, but D24 & I don’t care if he doesn’t agree with it. in fact, I’m totally fine if he wants to sit and watch us unload it all because, as D24 put it herself, “It’s MY stuff and I’m going to need it all at college. And if a bunch of it gets stolen out of the car because we were too lazy to bring it into the room, that’ll be on me and I’d be dumb to leave all my stuff in the car for everybody to see there all night long.”
In other news, D24 is mad at me because I made her apply for a secured credit card today and she doesn’t understand why she can’t just put it all off until “later.” When is “later”? She doesn’t know.
Why do it now? Because you’re moving out in a tad less than 4 weeks from today and it can take a couple of weeks for a new card like this to come in the mail. So suck it up, buttercup.
The season of soiling the nest has begun, I think.
Yeah, there’s security cameras all over the place at casinos!
Some good news to report.
What with our recent vacation and everything else going on, I hadn’t yet bought D24’s return ticket to fly back to Dallas at the end of Xmas break. Went and checked the prices at Southwest just now because my gut said that ticket prices are going to go up soon for the holidays.
She has to be back at college ON 1/1 because their 3-week Jan Term classes start on 1/2.
Holy moly. Got a 1-way ticket from PHX to DAL on New Year’s Day for $113 and that included the $20 Early Bird Checkin, too! WOO!
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ok, some more good news to report! D24 found out that for her First Year Seminar course, she got assigned to the Transcultural Health class. So she got her #2 pick. The class is taught by a professor in the Public Health department who also leads an annual Jan Term healthcare-themed trip to Ghana.
I’m super stoked for my kid about this. I was hoping that she’d get assigned to this one. Yay!
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