Cindy, are you keeper of the preggo list? Fiona's got baby #2 coming at the end of August.

Coolness! I will dig up list when I come back. Is there an actual date for the estimated due date? I'm still waiting for one for Burrell, too.

(Thanks, Lyra)

{{Beej}} For B&B stuff and dog stuff. I think you might want to remind yourself that the B&B is not your responsibility, it's the new owners. I know it's frustrating to see it all going wrong, but it's out of your hands. I think you are well within your rights to refuse to be the one to inform people that their pre-paid stays are not so guaranteed after all, unless you really need to keep this job until the place closes.

Parents ar hard, P-C. I recommend a firm but vague "I have responsibilities here". Don't get too specific or she will start marshalling arguments why any particular thing you want to do in MI could be done in TX or doesn't need to happen or something. I watched my parent-in-laws ask my my sis-in-law why she needed to live in NY every time she came to visit for years. Build yourself a thick skin now.

35 minutes of work sounds like too much. You deserve a vacation, Hec.

Thanks -t. The phrase "not enough money in the world" has been rolling around in my head.

I've already spent 20 minutes on the phone with a frantic/angry/begging woman who was planning on sending 6 young interns to us in May.

One down, 129 to go? I don't think so.

DH's mom thought we were going to head back to CT until we bought a house. Actually, I still thinks she has vague hopes.

Just keep sayng , " I'm here, it is where I want to be" and leave it at that. Don't argue or give reasons.

I recommend a firm but vague "I have responsibilities here". Don't get too specific or she will start marshalling arguments why any particular thing you want to do in MI could be done in TX or doesn't need to happen or something.

Yup. My parents still occasionally point out how much lower the cost of living is in Birmingham, and MIL will tell us about job opportunities in Tulsa. Parents just do that. And while I won't say we'd never live in Tulsa or B'ham, because if I said that, DH would follow through on his dreams of getting a PhD someday, and he'd be offered exactly two faculty positions--at the University of Tulsa and Birmingham-Southern--they're awfully low on our list. It's just the way it is. They can't help wishing we'd move home. First it was because we were still so young; now it's because they don't see as much of Annabel as they'd like. And I do envy people who actually like the town they're from. Babysitting is much easier to arrange when you're not 3000 miles from Grandma. But you just have to make your choices, stand by them, and live with them.

{{Beej}} - that's just an eveil thing to have to do. so don't - make the evil people do it themselves.

and I never wrote the ma~~~ to Steph's bigboss , but I started sending the instatn I read what he had. ( okay - there was a pause when I said ewww)

I think my mom still secretly beleives we'll all come back and live near her, although we're all in our 40s now and it will NEVER HAPPEN.

I think my grandmother nourishes a belief that they'll all (meaning my grandparents & mom & stepdad) move down to Eugene, OR (where one of my uncles & his family is), and then Z & I and my other uncle & his family will move to the Pac NW, and then we'll be one big happy clan. I think my mother is also starting to believe that.

Not enough no in the world. P-C, you keep following your own goofy little star. Your mom may never give up her hopes, but the best antidote is living well.

I know a number of people, actually, whose parents have picked up and moved to near where they are rather than the reverse. When my siblings and I were a little more scattered, I know my father was tossing around options for eventually moving closer to one of us as well.

It makes so much sense when the parents are retired - frequently they've got a big house they'll be wanting to sell at some point anyway, and so much more freedom to pick up and move whereever they choose than younger folks, especially with kids, tend to have.

My mom would all but wet herself with delight if we moved closer to them. (We're only an hour away now, but don't see them that often because I'm a bad daughter, and anyhow we all appear to share the common Baltimore-D.C. area delusion that the Potomac River is a Berlin Wall.) And every time we visit St. Louis, Patrick's mom and sister spend half our visit talking it up to us.

As other people said, parents are like that.

Probably serial:

It makes so much sense when the parents are retired - frequently they've got a big house they'll be wanting to sell at some point anyway, and so much more freedom to pick up and move whereever they choose than younger folks, especially with kids, tend to have.

I'm hoping that when my parents retire (still five or ten years off), they'll do exactly this. For one, they have three acres and it's a lot for them to keep up even now; for another, my mom has never liked living in the country, and I think it's time she gets to pick where they live.

That said, I cannot imagine my dad opting to move to a smaller house in a more urban area without a lot of persuasion from everyone else.