If everyone moves out west, I am going to cry forever. Come on, people! Some of us have to stay east of the Mississippi!

HEY! I just got back here! I count for *something* don't I??

I applied to three schools - EMU, CMU, MSU - got into all three and wanted desperately to go to MSU. CMU came through with more money and there were residual bio-dad issues with me going to MSU. I loved my year at Central and wish I had had more than the one.

So very tired and am wearing jeans today because somehow my work clothes didn't make it to the new place from mom and dad's. Oh well. THere is laundry detergent and a washer and dryer, so laundry will happen while we paint the dining room and prime the living room.

And YAY NICOLE!!

YAY MEARA!!

WindSparrow. Have you heard of or tried Xylitol as a sweetner? Its natural, not chemically made.

Thanks for the recs for sweeteners - here at the house we have only the blue stuff, the pink stuff, the pink stuff in liquid, Splenda and highly concentrated stevia. I don't suppose anyone has any tried and true recipes for the xylitol or blue agave that will make it worth going to the health food store to buy more fake sweet stuff? Some, "Hey, I make this awesome dessert for a dinner party, and no one guessed it wasn't made with cane sugar, with a side of corn syrup and topped with honey. Here's the recipe," would be brilliant. I mean, I've got some ideas of my own, and there's a whole wide internet full of recipes. But in the end the only way to find out which recipes actually work is to test them, and I simply am too lazy to start randomly trying them out.

I was a slacker in high school and I applied to one state school and one community college. I got into both, went to the community college. Dropped out. Worked. Quit work, went to private college. Dropped out. Etc.

I kinda wish I had some kind of traditional college experience, but this is the way it worked out.

Go meara!

GO Nicole!

YAY! It's about time we get some good job news around here!

So, applying to colleges. Each time I've gone (and I've been to four. Crazy), I've applied to one and only one. I knew where I wanted to go (well, except for the first one...I didn't really have a choice; dad taught there, so it was free for his kids), and put all my eggs in one basket. The third one was a community college, so I wasn't worried at all. And I really wasn't worried at UMB either. I'd met with the honors department, and they seemed certain I'd get in. So, I said, "Ok. Here we go."

Here's a funny for the morning:

While priming the dining room last night, Joe accidentally stepped on Em's dinosaur and smashed it to bits. He valiantly tried to get it into the garbage before she noticed.

Not so much.

For the next half hour, we were treated to a barrage of, "You broke my dinosaur! HEY! You broke my dinosaur! You broke my dinosaur!"

Finally I snapped and said, "Em. Daddy said he was sorry. We will get you a new dinosaur. That dinosaur is dead. Everything dies. Get over it." (I was verry tired and cranky.)

Joe says, "You're using a broken dinosaur to teach her about death? I thought we'd wait for a hamster or a goldfish."

"You want to listen to a half-hour of 'You broke my goldfish'?" I ask him.

He's about to respond when Em bursts back into the room.

"YOU BROKE MY GOLDFISH!! HEY! YOU BROKE MY GOLDFISH!!"

wow ... lot's happened.

Congrats to Nicole on her raise. And to meara on her job ... but you're leaving us! sob! Although you'll probably do well in Seattle - can we think of it as trading one Washington for another?

Colleges ... I graduated HS in 1969. HS was hell and my only ambition was to get the hell out of the miserable town we lived in and away from my family. I applied to four colleges, none local (HS counselors were no help at all - most of the kids I graduated with didn't go to college, most of the girls married within a year of graduating), got into three, waitlisted for one (the one I really, really didn't want to go to). Didn't make as much of the time in college as I should have - wasted a lot of opportunities which I regret now. But ... I got a good education, learned a lot academically and socially, so I'm glad I went there.

"YOU BROKE MY GOLDFISH!! HEY! YOU BROKE MY GOLDFISH!!"

Heh. Now I wanna get a kid, just for the amusement value.

In good news, my latest royalty check was for more than I expected. Apparently, not all college students know where/how to get their textbooks used, and for that I am grateful.

In bad news, the librarian with shingles is going to be out for the next week, and I think she may have a rough semester getting over this. She's a hard worker, and very sweet, but I wouldn't call her tough, so I'm not sure how she'll handle the pain.

Poor MM. His own daughter won't give him a break. Hee!

All too soon it is going to be...

"YOUR BROKE MY FLYING MONKEY. HEY. YOU BROKE MY FLYING MONKEY!"

the lunch of choice at St. Ursula Academy

Hey! I went to an Ursuline h.s. also. Small, all girls. I don't remember what all I ate for lunch except for on hot dog and tater tot day! yum! For 1st - 8th grade I had brought a 1/2 peanut butter on whole wheat sandwich for lunch every day so I know I started branching out when I got to h.s.

I mostly had a positive high school experience after getting over the weirdness of going from public to small, private, Catholic school where many of the girls had been in school together since kindergarten. I met my best friend almost right away so that helped. We could be freaks together! And even though there was a big jock culture at the school it was really very cool to be smart and/or arty. The principal sucked but the teachers were awesome.