<p>doesn’t respond to emails - check
signs off IM in the middle of my sentence - check
has no need for money - check
it’s a good day if we have an IM “conversation” which doesn’t include him saying “Stop asking annoying questions” - check</p>
<p>the good news is that it does mean they’re engaged and self-sufficient</p>
<hr>
<p>re email - DS told me to label the ones I actually <em>need</em> him to read “RTR” (required to read). I use my enhanced version, “RTRR” (required to read and respond). It works. Sometimes.</p>
<p>Speaking of kids not calling home so much, etc., a friend told me this weekend that her daughter, who attends Miami, would like to move off-campus. As it is, the girl shares an on-campus apartment with two or three other girls and they each pay $675 per month! When my friend tried to tell her daughter there was no way she would be able to afford the move off-campus, her d said, “Mom, please stay out of my finances. I do work 10 hours per week!” Puddles of pee? That’s what I nearly did when I heard that story. Her father said, “Hey, sounds good to me. We’ll be happy to stay out of your finances. Maybe we’ll be able to eat more than tuna and noodles now.”</p>
<p>Well, I hate to brag, but I’m a dinner hero too. There’s homecooked sit-at-the-table-together dinner at least 95% of the time. S1 always brought his friends home for dinner, and they still come home for dinner whenever he is home. And sometimes when he’s not! :D</p>
<p>S2 friends are not as reliable, but I’m working on it. After all these years they all seem like my kids.</p>
<p>Mootmom, I remember you are a dinner hero. Do the dinners continue now that S1 is gone?</p>
<p>Yay, wyogal, let’s hear it for dinner heros! 95% of our dinners are still at home together, too. (I thought it might be a challenge to cut back from 4 eaters to 3, but that third one has become the black hole of teenage boy-dom, so I just cook as I used to.) Friday was baked chicken and noodles with gravy and broccoli, last night was pan-fried fish with rice pilaf, steamed artichokes, and green salad, tonight is a giant pot of lentil-sweet potato-leek soup with fresh bread and cheese, tomorrow is Chinese-style beef strips with fried rice, Tuesday is crockpot beef stew over noodles with steamed French beans on the side (with a special dinnertime guest from CC/MITblogs whom I haven’t met in person yet!). </p>
<p>S and his new GF are coming here for spring break (just got the itinerary tonight, yay!!) – he says he can’t wait for a week of home cooking. So I’m sure you don’t wonder why I’m motivated to finish this “Mom’s Greatest Hits” college student cookbook, right? </p>
<p>Um… I guess this has nothing to do with Cur’s Puddle of Pee, whoops! Sorry for the thread-jack, Cur, can you forgive us? (… creeps away, head hanging…)</p>
<p>We just got what may have been the last phone call for 10 days or so…D is scheduled up to her eyebrows, including one day that runs solid from 10:30am to 10:30pm. But she’s actually been e-mailing to solicit comments on her internship app cover letters and resume…hey, I’ll take the communication whatever the reason.</p>
<p>“Mom, please stay out of my finances. I do work 10 hours per week!” </p>
<p>DS told me to label the ones I actually <em>need</em> him to read “RTR” (required to read). I use my enhanced version, “RTRR” (required to read and respond (Copy that!)</p>
<p>Yay, wyogal, let’s hear it for dinner heros! </p>
<p>and for TheDad who is going to take a look-see at the internship apps…you mean Apps aren’t like, OVER?</p>
<p>It is Sunday night and we have not called our son all weekend. We have not called our son.<br>
See…it’s eas-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.</p>
<p>what was this thread about…the title always confused me…
Ya’ll are too much fun.</p>
<p>I time my phonecalls for the walk across campus times too. Easy since I know her schedule. I probably call her 5x for ever call she makes. Who cares; it makes me really happy that she’s self sufficient in her life. The thing I am dreading is the first summer job that won’t be in our town. With me, that was the summer after junior year, and I never lived in my parents house ever again :eek:.</p>
<p>Shhhhh! Don’t anyone give any ideas to my D!</p>
<p>Well, I did get one genuine e-mail from S about a week ago. It was short, but it will have to do for awhile. The time before that, he sent an e-mail in response to my cell-phone message wondering how he was doing that was a blunt–“Don’t worry, I’m fine. Gotta go.” And when I called him I got this out of him, “Uh, I’m kind of busy now . . . (pause and wait for me to hang up).” I did used to get kind of jealous of those parents whose kids actually communicate, but I’ve gotten kind of used to it.</p>
<p>A very fortunate mom here that has boys that call often, about 3x/wk. They are usually just calling to say hi and tell us about what’s going on. The calls are always best when they are the ones to initiate them when they have free time, so unless it’s something important I usually just email. H says that they have inherited my “phone gene”.:D</p>
<p>Shhh!..nobody tell them that boys don’t call.;)</p>
<p>We were and still are big on the family dinners even if it means eating at odd hours to accomodate everyone’s schedules. It doesn’t happen every night, but it does many nights. I grew up that way so it just seemed natural.</p>
<p>Edit-Curm, beware, last year (Cpt)S’s overtime loss in the ice hockey state semifinals was more traumatic than the waitlist letter from the top choice school. He is very happy at a great college, but we all still see that fluke goal in our nightmares. Aaaaargh!</p>
<p>The phone is my most effective threat; ie if you don’t answer it, I’m not going to pay for it. Grrrrrrrrr.</p>
<p>That said, both sons are very chatty–if and when they have the time to chat and if I am awake at that hour. I’m often told that my sense of S1’s university life is higher than many other MOBs (Mothers OF Boys). Most of my friends are on a Need To Know Basis Only with their boys. </p>
<p>Never heard the term Dinner Hero, but this past summer, S2 declared he was on H-O-L-I-D-A-Y which included a ‘holiday’ from family dinners where he is now the center of attention. In the spirit of Pick Your Battles, H and I carried our trays down to his room and ate dinner in his room with him. (His room is bigger than the living room). </p>
<p>I learned this much: S2 is a very skilled multi-tasker. He can eat, text, read the paper, carry on numerous IM conversations and build animation figures on 3D Studio while he argues with his father about inane topics.</p>
<p>Faline, apps for Summer/Fall are going out in the next week or so. Some of them have deadlines of May 1! It’s kinda like college all over again…she’s applying to 11-12 places, competitive, yada yada. You cast your bread upon the waters and see what returns. The internship program that’s accepted her guarantees her a spot if necessary but wants the students to apply for or otherwise develop their own internships. It was a stunning revelation to my D that one could apply to intern someplace that didn’t have a posted list of internship possibilities or formal internship program. That in itself was worth the price of admission. She’d been a little dubious about my advice until she ran across sample letters at the Career Counseling office for exactly that situation.</p>
<p>Next Spring’s Semester Abroad program is rolling admissions and deadline isn’t until November but she’ll have that done by April. That one doesn’t seem excessively competitive and I think for that one she’s in good shape no matter what.</p>
<p>TheDad…what year is your D? She is a bit further past freshman year, correct? My S seems to be groovin on his newly fully rewarding social life (it’s best not to peak in high school, right?), interested in about five-ten majors and is Not one the the laser focused preprofessional freshmen types around him–although I met some kids that I am grateful are laser focused. I am getting old and may need brain surgery before we finish college tuition for our Ss and saw some guys who look downright ready to roll into Residencies at 18. I like to call our S, only fondly of course… a Lost Boy but in a good way. He is going to surprise us with a brilliant career but we just can’t imagine what it is yet and he doesn’t make early decisions ever. Internship options therefore are rather broad. I wonder how much he really wants to come home and do two menial jobs this summer. He has taken two of those inventory career tests this month…let’s not start on that again though folks. After all this thread is supposed to be about Pee, and I want to help everyone stay focused. Sounds like your D has some direction going…</p>
<p>Faline, D went into her first year with about five majors on her mind, three of them serious enough to affect first-year scheduling. By second semester, she had declared a double major (Math/Government), and gotten two profs to serve as Major advisors. With <em>that</em> out of the way, she started casting her eye ahead to Junior year…about 2/3 of the juniors go away for junior year. Some students manage to split time…one of her friends spent the first half of this year in Rome, the second half in Oxford. (Classics major, I think.) </p>
<p>D is aiming to do a Summer/Fall internship somewhere in D.C. as part of her Government major and then go off to Budapest, taking Hungarian and some math courses for the Budapest Semester in Mathematics.
(Fortunately, the courses are taught in English.)</p>
<p>She’s a bit, ah…driven. Still doesn’t know what she wants to do after college but graduate/professional school seems to be looming.</p>
<p>enjoyed seeing her path unfold a bit…since we are in semester 2, and seems to me a choice of majors enhances internship apps…thanks…How great that her college immersion has been so fulfilling for her already, and may all her apps have pixie dust on them for the coming opportunities.</p>
<p>jmmpm, mootmom, faline and mstee:
The problem is we are all talking to the same kid and he just hasn’t got time to communicate with all of us!</p>
<p>I love the story about IMing from mootmom. That’s pretty much how our IMs go too. Yesterday he IMed me “mom what can i use for emergency oven mitts.” I responded back “a towel” and about 4 hours later I see “i used my shirt” on the screen.</p>
<p>He actually called me yesterday. He was in a grocery store and wanted to know where to find pita bread. (I have never even been in that store before.) That was the whole conversation, “gotta go.” Then I got thinking, hmmm, I wonder how he’ll get the stout beer to make that dip (he was making his “special” artichoke dip).</p>
<p>Isn’t it nice to just hear their voice though? </p>
<p>Just lately I keep having dreams about my son. I see him odd places, but he’s always just acting happy and normal. Odd.</p>
<p>Weenie-Mine once called from the middle of campus to ask me how to get to the Study Abroad Office. My reply, “You do realize that you’re there, on campus in Miami, and that I’m in New Hampshire, right???” The sad part was, I knew the answer.:o</p>
<p>Mine called me at work from campus on the first day of 2nd semester classes asking me to go online and look up what room his class was supposed to be in because he was at the wrong place. Good grief, what did we old fogies do in the old days before there was an internet?</p>
<p>jmmpm, mootmom, faline and mstee:
The problem is we are all talking to the same kid and he just hasn’t got time to communicate with all of us!</p>
<p>Weenie and other last year’s CC parents (oh my god, we are also “Last Year’s CC Parents” sigh…even that sort of has an obsolete sound…) longing for the cell phones to ring, even though we know that it is just prolonging the inevitable to try to stay in day to day contact with our delightful freshmen just because we now have the technology our parents did not have to keep tabs on us. </p>
<p>I have a solution. </p>
<p>I think Alumother’s D should volunteer to call each of us once a week. </p>
<p>I know I would enjoy that. She seems so breezy and approachable for middle aged parents who miss the Daily Dish. Is that too much to ask? HUH?? I think not. Maybe she could go to the Student Activities Fund and create Ring up a Freshman Parent as a funded volunteer/community service program and claim it as her new original cool EC. I can’t think of a Better Way to spend the Student Activity Budget that we are paying for anyhow…</p>
</p>