<p>OK, this time around I want a tiara. And some sort of long veil in the theme colors. And my virtual self will have long hair that I can put up and be be-you-tiful. </p>
<p>This is like playing dress-up! :D</p>
<p>With our colors, a tiara, long hair and beads, we are inching perilously close to Mardi Gras :D. Do we have to let the bride and groom pick the date, or can we zero in on Shrove Tuesday, 200x? And can we cyber-travel Sinners Alley to New Orleans for the occasion? Along with the cyber-chapel cheers is doing?? She nixed the pergola, but I think we can pick one up at Home Depot - a HD pergola would fit right in with the Cheez Nips and Pigs in Blanket, sez me.</p>
<p>And miss the looks on P2n’s W’s and D’s faces when we careen down the aisle of that Tampa church? Not on your life!</p>
<p>However, since we will surely be tossed out as wedding crashers, we could hop on a flight to New Orleans and party on in the Vieux Carre. Dress in style, go hog wild. Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun down on the bayou.</p>
<p>cheers is right, as usual.</p>
<p>The look on their faces, first. Priceless.</p>
<p>THEN the trip to NOLA.</p>
<p>Wedding dresses… hmm… way back on my 10th anniversary (that was 11 years ago), I decided to surprise hubby by putting on my wedding dress. It took me 4 months to lose the 24 lbs to fit into it.</p>
<p>Needless to say, on our 20th… well the 24 lbs was back plus a few more, and I am no longer motivated to exercise or starve. I wouldn’t be able to come close to zipping that dress. Which is just as well, it was a 1980’s horror show complete with a sun-hat style hat with veil. My daughter is horrified by my wedding pictures and tells people I wore a “cowboy hat.”</p>
<p>So I told her, don’t get married at 23 like I did… you won’t have good taste in clothes until you’re 27 or 28. And BTW, if you wait, your fiance will have worked longer and have more money and you’ll get a much nicer ring!</p>
<p>But if this is a virtual event, then I’m sure my awful dress will fit perfectly. 30 lbs vanish easily in cyberspace.</p>
<p>Pick up the U Haul trailer later today and head to D’s first apartment tomorrow.</p>
<p>Summer has gone by quickly, with no major incidents other than the terrifying passenger seat during her student driving. Part of me is looking forward to her return to school, especially seeing her enthusiasm toward her first place.</p>
<p>Happy packing and shuttling all, especially the first timers.</p>
<p>i just can’t believe the summer has passed by so quickly. </p>
<p>i thought i had lots and lots of time, and now, the calendar tells me the house will soon be empty again. i thought that with time i might be stronger this year. i guess i AM a bit better, but i feel that nagging feeling in the corner of my heart–i just need to keep it there!</p>
<p>This summer was funny–deadly slow the first half, when I mostly did my own thing and sometimes packed a lunch for the son in town who was working. </p>
<p>Then mid July–the schedule speeded up and we seemed to be going out of town every week or weekend for something. More of the same in August, then bam–it’s time to pack up the boys for school, fitting in those dental appts and haircuts.</p>
<p>I learned last year what an almost-empty house is like (DH travels a lot) so I won’t be surprised this year. Oldest son will be a senior in college, thinking about what to do next year…where did the years go??? :eek:</p>
<p>Rescued from PAGE 3!!!</p>
<p>Okay, I have a question:</p>
<p>What is so hard about rinsing off a knife, a fork, or a spoon before you put it in the dishwasher?</p>
<p>I am pondering…</p>
<p>I loved reading about the wedding dresses and all of you finding your inner Kathryn and Audrey. We gotta find Bhappy to make sure all of the fairies are present and accounted for (in case we have to put the marmots in check).</p>
<p>Can you find some tulle that won’t clash with my favorite bucket? I will try not to channel my inner Elsa (Lancaster) especially when Auntie mame, Dolly or Momma Rose is more my speed. Can we have big fans and sip mint julips?</p>
<p>Welcome washmom!</p>
<p>Congrats to the noles, sounds like your D picked a good one.</p>
<p>M&S, Where is the red table and will you have to take it to the new apt?</p>
<p>Slugg my girl, why would you ever think that those people who take up space in our home would do anything, and I mean anything that resembles or can be mistaken for work?</p>
<p>Day 7 of S1’s visit home and, lo and behold, my last missive about stepping into a more adult role had some impact! He has discovered the dishwasher, the cutting board and the laundry hamper! Praise be the heavens! The missing cogs of cheers’ mighty parenting machine are dropping into place!</p>
<p>M&s dad, we did the U-Haul thing two weekends ago. So much fun! Sluggodad wore his UCSC baseball cap old-guy style (facing forward) and looked like a regular teamster behind the wheel. I followed in our Escape, a karmically cruel name for a vehicle that was originally purchased for us to “Escape2N(star),” like our license plate said. We have driven it to Tahoe twice and to Santa Cruz 25 thousand times over the past four years. </p>
<p>I looked like Rosie the Riveter on a bad hair day, mainly because I wanted to kick our D’s ass for leaving us with an apartment full of furniture to move. It wasn’t her fault. Her language classes at the University of Copenhagen started less than a week after her last final, and I don’t know about anyone else’s 23-year old slightly eccentric daughter, but with ours, having her red streaks refreshed by her favorite stylist-slash-colorist, Edwin, is way more important than say, packing up her apartment. At the same time, I was really hoping to get through the move without leaving a body behind.</p>
<p>It’s still a toss-up over which was more fun…dragging cheap furniture made of particle board and Elmer’s glue down a rocky path to the parking lot OR standing in the parking lot three hours later trying to figure out how to cram the last piece --a bed frame-- on top of all the crap that had already been lashed together in a complex spiderweb-like network of plastic yellow rope. DO NOT FORGET THE ROPE…and a dozen moving blankets…and that self-sticking, non-adhesive plastic wrap that comes on a roll at the Container Store and is used to wrap cabinet doors and drawers shut. We ended up hauling that SOB bed frame back up to the apartment and taking it apart. At that point, we were a well-oiled machine obsessed with taking our wagon train of shi% onto Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz mountains. Sluggodad bundled the boards with plastic wrap, while I collected all of the screws in a baggie and duct-taped them to the slats. We jammed it all into the 10-foot cab, drug ourselves down to the apartment manager’s office (scaring a few people along the way), and dropped off the key.</p>
<p>27 miles of narrow shoulders and sharp turns; blind curves; wandering fauna, including deer, skunks, raccoons, and the occasional unlucky mountain lion; freakish fog; and crazed, speeding drivers (despite the 50 mph speed limit) have created a rep for Highway 17 as one of the most dangerous highways in the state. It’s even more fun in a fully packed U-Haul. 
By the time we left the apartment complex that always smelled like urine because of the surrounding Eucalyptus trees, we had already decided to take our Twenty Mule Team cargo of shi% back to our house and park it overnight in our driveway. We would unload it at sluggboy’s new hovel in Berkeley the next day. That turned out to be a really good idea. At the end of the day, all we wanted was pizza and cold beer.</p>
<p>On Sunday, we met the other occupants of sluggboy’s building while we were shoving furniture through his front door. Stiv and Stiv’s roomate, Steve; a European dude with an unrecognizable accent; and a group of people who live in the upstairs apartments. I think they were women, but I’m not sure because I was too busy trying to squeeze a desk and a sofa through a door jamb that was built in 1920.</p>
<p>This past weekend was the first weekend out of the past seven weeks that we haven’t had to think about coordinating these two moves, sluggyD’s move-out and sluggson’s move-in. Sluggdad and I are still a little surprised that we still had the stamina and the physical strength to pull off another move. After we bought this house, we vowed never to move again. But, little did we know…I am adding to my List of Things They Don’t Tell You About the Post-High School Years in 2 Thousand Whatever…#2. YOU HAUL: At some point, you’re probably gonna have to rent a U-Haul and help your ds or dd with his or her first apartment move, times by however many kids you have. After that, if you haven’t done so already, change the locks on your own house, and do not ever answer the phone again! :D</p>
<p>I am in awe. Highway 17, which I dread under normal circumstances, with a U-Haul?</p>
<p>So you have one kid studying Danish in Copenhagen and one kid pursuing a music career? What did you feed them, Creative Puffs for breakfast?</p>
<p>slugg- too funny!! times number of kids, OH NO!!-4:( but by the time 4th goes I will be ancient, and DH never answers the door anyway.</p>
<p>And don’t you love when they all pretend to never hear the phone!!</p>
<p>The Unofficial List of Things They Don’t Tell You About the College Years*</p>
<p>(*The College Years: a general term that includes drop-outs, stop-outs, and the ever popular 7-year English-Accounting-Philosophy major)</p>
<ol>
<li> ** Move-In Move-Out<a href=“Post%20#7267,%20by%20sluggbugg”>/b</a>
1A. **Summers Back Home<a href=“Post%20#7269,%20by%20jmmom”>/b</a>
1B. **Gullible Mom<a href=“Post%20#7270,%20by%20mezzomom”>/b</a>
1C. **You Haul<a href=“Post%20#7593,%20by%20sluggbugg”>/b</a></li>
</ol>
<p>Hmm…I’m beginning to see a pattern. :)</p>
<p>The Unofficial List of Things They Don’t Tell You About The College Years (cont.)…</p>
<ol>
<li> **I Didn’t Get Your Message Because…<a href=“inspired%20by%204Giggles,%20Post%20#7596”>/b</a>
My battery died.<br>
I had it set on vibrate.<br>
I turned it off in class and forgot to turn it back on.<br>
I never check my messages.
I temporarily lost my phone.
I think it’s in (my friend’s) car.
I dropped it in the toilet.
I was at the bus stop.
I was on the bus.
I was at a concert.
I have no idea what you’re talking about! :p</li>
</ol>
<p>Sluggbug asked: Okay, I have a question:</p>
<p>What is so hard about rinsing off a knife, a fork, or a spoon before you put it in the dishwasher?</p>
<h2>I am pondering…</h2>
<p>It is that there are too many choices. What order do you rinse them off in – knife first?, fork first? etc. </p>
<p>Do you rinse the handle ends or the other ends? Do you rinse both ends? If so, which first? Do you use cold or hot water? What if the water starts cold, but end up hot – do you have to start over again? What if you forgot which one you started with? Just how long is a “rinse”, anyway?</p>
<p>Loading into the dishwasher: Which end pointing up? Which piece into which bin? Do forks all go togther, or should silverware be mixed in some method that is proven scientifically to have the correct feng shui to get every crevice clean?</p>
<p>At this point, the average slacker dude will be paralyzed with possibilities and go off to lie down for a few hours. By the time he’s gathered his resources to deal with it, someone else will have taken care of it in the meantime. Problem solved.</p>
<p>
All nice reasons you came up with, sluggie. Or your sluggoffspring came up with and pawned off on you. Now, on to the real reason… “I looked at my LED screen and saw it was Mom(Dad) calling… What could they have to say that I would need to know?” :p</p>
<p>Courtesy of Urbandictionary: they are “sidebuttoning” you :eek:</p>