This is giving me all kinds of Steel Magnolia’s “my colors are blush and bashful” vibes… 
All joking aside, I too would prefer bedding in pale blush over bubblegum pink so I get where she’s coming from. And maybe the queen size will be useful after college because who really wants to stay in a twin bed any longer than they have to?
This - the transition from project manager to consultant - is so true and also so hard. I suck at consultant. I rock at project manager. But it needs to be done, so I’m trying to make the pivot this summer. I’m really trying to embrace the idea of letting S25 know about things that he may not have seen or known were important, then letting him follow up or fail to follow up on his own. It’s really hard for me, but so far at least it seems like he’s making some effort. He’s communicated with his future roommate (albeit barely) and he’s checking the school email address at least once a week (not really as often as I’d like, but at least it’s something).
On the agenda for this week: I think he did not do everything he needed to do to give me access to the finances portal. I can’t pay the bill if i can’t get to it, so that needs to be fixed. And he got two late graduation gifts, he was supposed to write the thank you notes over the weekend and didn’t. For both of these things he’ll be hearing from me if they aren’t done by the end of the week.
I’ve been working hard at becoming the consultant. Never mind that I spent over 20 years as a consultant in my professional life - I still want to default to being my child’s project manager. I think I am starting to make progress, then I slip and get a text that reads “I appreciate and acknowledge your concern” 
@2plustrio great idea about the thrift shop! I am going to head over there!
T-46 days here also and it all seems surreal. At least I have D27’s athletic recruiting to keep my mind busy elsewhere.
Am so hearing this, lol. Was literally a production manager for 15 years in book publishing – my default mode is to keep.track.of.every.little.detail. Watching (and letting!) my kid take over some (let’s be honest, not yet all) of these endless administrative details as we transition into the first year of college is hard! 
S25 just had his last meeting with his psychiatrist before he heads off. He’s had the same one since he was 8 or 9. Psychiatrist is pretty much retired except for a few kids he still sees online. I ran home during lunch so that I could talk with the psychiatrist after my son met with him to get all the details of the prescription process once he leaves. S25 came upstairs after about 15 minutes, and I said, “Is it my turn to meet with Dr. X?” And he responded, “Nope. All done. We worked it all out.” WHAT?!? You worked it all out? And apparently, they did. He told S25 to just let him know which pharmacy he wants to use in Terre Haute, and they made a follow up appointment for October. Proud of kiddo for working it out, but I feel ill not being involved. Maybe the consultant will just offer professional reminders about getting the prescription refilled for the first few months…
I know this isn’t the place for it and it will probably be deleted but need to write it out. Good friends/neighbor has 3 dogs. They were left alone for 20 minutes and the new rescue dog attacked the old sick dog. Friends husband was at work, she herself has an autoimmune disease and is limited in mobility. Thankful my husband was outside spraying wasp nests as I had just gotten stung as he heard her scream and ran over to help her get the dog into the car. In the excitement (and hubby not doing well with ahem, you can guess), I get out of my shower to find him white as a ghost on our living room floor sweating profusely. Neighbor calls as her car gets a flat right around the corner so I rush to pick her up and get the dog to the emergency vet 25 minutes away while hubby is still practically passed out (with our dog totally freaking and avoiding him-suffice it to say our dog would fail as an emotional support dog!) The ER/trauma nurse of 25 years in me knows hubby will be fine in a bit as he was already laying down so he was safe and wasn’t going to hurt himself. Cue me guiding neighbor to make the calls she needed to make and she was able to get her husband there about 15 minutes or so after we got to the emergency vet. Dog is old and has Addisons disease and already has been on the decline but vet says dog is in shock and the recovery will be long and bumpy. My friends make the choice to put the dog down. Now this dog is her adult sons dog that he loves. The adult son that is already out of state at an Army base getting deployed for a year in 3 days. She is frantically trying to video call him. I get home and my husband is awake and has it together enough that he goes over to the neighbors and starts cleaning up the mess. We know the neighbors will give back the dog that attacked to the rescue as they can’t trust it with their remaining dog and we all know what will happen to a pittie mix who has hurt another dog. The rescue was a beautiful dog who sadly had a rough start to life and is unpredictable.
I give a short version to S23 and although he can be a self centered jerk most of the time, he understands and gets home from 10 hours of work and immediately cleans the kitchen and starts the dishwasher for us at home. D25 is visiting her birth country with her dad and she is a huge dog lover so she always gets sad when dogs leave. I just really feel for the neighbors son who was already afraid this dog would die due to her disease while he was in Kuwait and it just brought back memories of us having to put our dog down with one of our kids hours away. The reality of kids adulting and no longer living at home.
Aww, I’m so sorry – what a sad and stressful situation. Y’all are great neighbors.
Our yellow lab is almost 13, and she had TPLO surgery earlier this year and is really slowing down. Of course, she thinks she’s still a puppy, so we’re not supposed to let her off leash in our yard, where she might run like a maniac and tear up her other knee.
We got her as a puppy when S25 and D26 were in kindergarten. I can’t even fathom what we’ll do if the kids are all far away and we have to make that kind of decision. Ughghgh.
FWIW, this is my plan. My older boy, in Massachusetts, has to go in to the campus health center to see a doctor and get them to prescribe the meds. MA has pretty restrictive laws on this - my doctor from VA can’t prescribe and a doctor must talk with the patient before prescribing (I think some places are willing to do telehealth, the school medical center wants you to come in in person). So S22 has to manage it all on his own and it was kind of rocky at first. He’s my hyper competent planner child, so better him than S25, but it was a lot to figure out how to get the meds (the school doesn’t have an on-site pharmacy, there were consistent rolling shortages at all the other pharmacies too).
S25, on the other hand… our regular doctor can send a prescription to the on-site school pharmacy. S25 can request the refills on his own. I just asked him to do that and he was all “can’t you”. Uh, sure, but you need to learn. I won’t know when you are low, you have to figure this out. I have a feeling I’ll be setting myself some kind of calendar reminder to remind him to do this, at least for a little bit.
It is helping to read these posts about our kids heading off. S25 has just over a month before he goes to MIT, and that reality is hitting me hard. I’m under a deadline for my next novel to be delivered to my NY publisher, so my head has been in that space, but no more. I’ve been trying to cram in all the things I want him to know (watch this Chaplin/Kubrick/Scorsese movie! Read this book! Listen to this band!) before he leaves, but now I’m planning on just spending as much time as possible with him. Best wishes to all of us. . .
Looking into using a queen size comforter as well. Is that a bad idea for a bed lofted atthe height of a top bunk? S25 wants to have his desk under the bed…
I would just be careful not to have any part of the comforter touching the (potentially dirty 
) floor.
If the comforter hangs down on the front/entrance to the desk that could be annoying. Desk under the bed often doesn’t get a ton of light, so you don’t want to make it worse. But as long as they pull the extra fabric toward the back/wall side of the bed then that should be fine. The only other potential negative I can think of is if the heat is really high in the winter. It was not adjustable in S22s room, and they kept the windows open all winter, even while it was snowing, to try to cool the room. If the room is really hot and your student sleeps warm, they may not want to deal with having that much extra cloth to get out from under. Like it would be easier to kick aside a twin width comforter than a queen width.
Can you tell my kid sleeps hot and had this issue? He ended up taking the comforter off the bed altogether and having me send him a thin waffle knit blanket. The comforter got put in a bag that you can vacuum seal and shoved in the back of the closet. I’m not sure it got put on the end at all sophomore or junior year.
@dfbdfb stay safe! (tsunami warning in Alaska)
No worries! The warning did extend up into the Cook Inlet (where Anchorage is), but the geography of the inlet is such that in order for Anchorage to be hit by any level of tsunami at all would require something like a mountain shearing off and falling into the water, not a regular earthquake.
Dropped off D25 at a two day new student orientation yesterday. Already got a bunch of texts this morning! Lol. 
The bed was uncomfortable so she couldn’t sleep and the sun woke her up at 5:30. I told her that’s why we got her that expensive mattress topper for the school year!
Are your students actively engaging in the process of getting ready for college - dorm list, roommate contact, calendars/schedules, etc., or are they simply ignoring it for now and just enjoying summer?
S25 has been doing a lot of mental “work” in accepting the transition to being away from home and not having his “quiet space” (a big one for him), but no practical/concrete steps other than the mandatory class registration and health forms.
My C25 is going abroad and has a slightly longer timeframe than many kids who are going to college in the US, but I still would like for them to start getting more into school mode and making sure they have all their immigration stuff lined up. Still, I can’t fault them for alternately working and enjoying summer.
Hahahahahaha
Uh, no.
I mean, I WISH he was. We talk about stuff a lot. He could care less about stuff for his dorm, so I’ve bought him the things that make sense to me based off what we did for S22. If those aren’t the right things, then he’ll need to figure out how to fix it. Today he came down to the room where I’m storing and sorting all the stuff and we talked about what I’ve bought so he can start thinking about his room a bit.
He’s messaged his roommate maybe twice. He’s got a day and a half orientation next week. They are running many sections of this over the summer, but it sounds like his roommate is doing the same session as him, so maybe they can connect up.
He’s got a class schedule, but has seemed barely interested in it. I showed him where to find the required courses for his major, he registered for four of those and picked a random elective that we think will count for one of the gen ed categories. The electives he seemed most interested in were all full so he took what he could find. We know they open more seats as time goes by, but he’s expressed zero interest in trying to get an elective he’s more interested in when registration re-opens.
Two nights ago we went to an alumni event to welcome incoming freshmen. He wasn’t exactly asking questions or really mingling at all, but eventually they pulled the incoming freshmen and current students into another room for a photo and he stayed out there chatting for a bit.
But I cannot get him to check his school email regularly, I don’t think he’s done what he needs to do to give me access to the payment portal (and bills post next week and I’d like to have it early to make sure I get the process correct this first time), and I haven’t really seen him do anything that seems like getting ready.
We’ve got a month. We’ll see how it goes.
@OctoberKate sounds like we are on the same boat, minus the roommate messaging! We also have about a month, but we will be visiting my parents outside the country for 10 of those. Yes, we shall see.
Attending new student orientation seems to have motivated D25! She got along well with her orientation roommate and they will be in the same residence hall in the fall, but on different floors. I think now she is not as nervous about move in, etc. as she was before.
The orientation coincided with a big family reunion in northern Idaho so she also reconnected with family in the area she hadn’t seen for a while. They are all so excited that she’ll be near by!