First Son to Go To College

It has been a long and messy year, but today a milestone has been reached. My oldest son has left for college, and in his wake, there is one less person, a lot less stuff, and a large piece of our family life missing. The sheer effort of packing, trying to get him to pack without being too overbearing, stressing about the fact that he was not packing or readying himself to leave, shopping trips to purchase extra things he did need, and the up to the last second of getting out the door was exhausting. It didn't occupy all my time, but it certainly took up a lot of space in my mind. In fact, much of this year has been spent on the emotional tasks of dealing with oldest child applying for college, waiting for acceptances, stress over where he would get in, etc. I really have not met any of my "goals" which have continued to be, get more organized, lose weight, exercise harder and more consistently, be more productive, etc. Still, I'm not going to give up those dreams, it's what keeps me going, after all! I have a strong desire to clear more junk out of the basement, and make the "hell" room to a usable room. After dealing with cleaning out my parent"s apartment, and clearing stuff out of Warrensburg, it is clear that extra stuff serves no purpose. Memories, such as photos do have a purpose, but random papers....all they do is make you feel guilty. For the longer you have them, the less you feel that they should be thrown away.
A few observations from the college drop off:
I was really struck by the contrast between my 3 children and their ages. Middle son is now regularly being mistaken for his older brother. He has grown a great deal in this past year, his face has changed and their body types and physiques are quite similar. During the spring he was often congratulated, and thought he was being congratulated for a golf achievement, when actually he was being congratulated for acceptance to Yale, to which he would then have to correct the embarrassed complimenter. Similar things happened yesterday, with various parents asking where he was from, and thinking he was the college student. On the other hand we had youngest son, who seemed to have arrived on a planet called "college" and had absolutely no idea what to expect. I actually asked him what he was expecting to see and he said something like "streets paved with gold"I warned him that Yale was in the middle of a city, with normal streets and sidewalks to cross, and the buildings spread out, but I reassured him that there were nice quads "what's a quad?", beautiful buildings, etc. He still had a million questions while we were there, most of them pertaining to eating. "How do you pay for meals?" he asked, imagining it to be a school cafeteria. I explained that I had prepaid for the meals, and that freshmen had no choice in the number of meals so he could eat 21 meals. "a day?" no. A week. Where could he eat? In any dining hall on the campus. What kind of food would it be? Was it a buffet? There were endless questions. I told him every college was different. I had no idea what the dining halls at Yale were like because I had never eaten there. We did get to eat there today however, and so he had more questions. My favorite was "Do they change out the food for the different meals?" along with "Are there different times that you can get breakfast and lunch?" It really made me consider the age difference as far as the giant leap from middle school to adulthood. Youngest son lost a tooth in the car on the way to take big brother to college. 11 years old seemed old to me at one time. Now comparatively, it seems very young. I'm not sure if youngest child tends to ask more questions than my older ones did, or if he is less mature, or what. I find myself having to explain things a lot, things I assumed that he knew. But as adults, we sometimes assume children know a lot, when they actually have a lot of questions. I try to keep that in mind as a teacher.
DH asked, "will oldest son know when he's supposed to....audition, register for classes, etc" I assured him that it was his responsibility and that I'm sure he would do whatever was important for him to do. DH said I always handled the scheduling of things. It's true, In a way he was "The Prince" and I did take care of a lot of scheduling and organizing. I wasn't crazy about it like some people, and I really do feel that he was, and always has been very independent. But organized? I cannot say that I'm terribly organized but I am about certain things. Many times he would call and ask "where are my keys" and I would be able to tell him. I also reminded him about deadlines often. He often could see the big picture, but not the forest for the trees, or something like that. I'm tired. Not making sense. At least I wrote today.

Starting Up Again

It has been over 9 months since my last blog post, and that is not a good sign. This is the time of year that everyone thinks of New Year's Resolutions and of course, I am no exception. This year I won't say that I want to get organized because that is too general. But I have small goals such as hanging shelves, getting 2 console tables, a coat hook, a shelf with hooks for keys, a white board or magnet board and various other items that will help the house "declutter itself". I also want to waste less time on the computer. (This blog however, is not a waste!) I want to take a few online courses via Lynda.com and have all my bills paid automatically. But first step is to declutter the small extra room downstairs where I have parked all my paper.
To work I go!