As colleges started these last couple weeks, I realized there is a comparable agony to the empty nest syndrome: when your kids aren’t leaving and you don’t see any signs of them taking steps toward their futures. It’s not that I’m not proud of my kids, I am. They don’t get in trouble, they aren’t abusing controlled substances and they have jobs. They haven’t been arrested (although in a totally odd, random family conversation we’ve decided that if you’re going to be arrested you should go big and get arrested by the FBI). My biggest complaint about them is it would be nice if they did the dishes once in awhile, without being told. My issue is that they don’t seem they want as much for themselves as I want for them. I don’t want them to wait for life to start happening. It’s already started; they just need to get on the carousel. They seem to have dreams, but are slow to pursue them. My oldest, who has attention deficit disorder, has a difficult time wrapping her head around change. My youngest just graduated from high school, is simply tired of school and wanted a break.
Dr. Universe: How can birds fly when they flap their wings, but when we flap our arms nothing happens? – Ravin, 9, London, UK
I have failed in my duties as a mother. I have not prepared my children to go out into this world and survive on their own. The other day my 19 year old asked me how one would get a package from our house to her friend’s dorm in San Diego.
Why are apples red? -Emily, 5, Seattle
This Saturday, Sept. 17 at Stocktons Restaurant in Maple Valley, Ante Up Band will be performing.
My daughter decided to celebrate her birthday over Labor Day weekend. One because the date and venue of the anime convention I usually took them to changed, and two, a couple of the girls she goes to the convention with were leaving for college soon. It’s just another adult reality in her new, post-graduate life: get a job, go off to college, and celebrate your birthday when it’s convenient for your friends.
Why do cheetahs run so fast?
When my brother and I got our driver’s license, my dad made a deal with us. Whatever we put down for a car, he would match.
I had a vague idea what Labor Day was, so I looked it up. Loosely translated it means barbecues and yard work for America. I personally have been laboring all week to excavate along my fence to create a new flower bed.
“I wrote this book not to dissuade us from war but to understand it. It is especially important that we, who wield such massive force across the globe, see within ourselves the seeds of our own obliteration. We must guard against the myth of war and the drug of war that can, together, rend us blind and callous as some of those we battle.”
Why do we hear the sea in a seashell?
Forgive me for the continued obsession over my daughters’ graveyard schedules; going to bed in the wee hours of the morning, getting up by the time their dad gets home from work. I just don’t like this newly acquired bad adult habit. I would like to converse with them before it gets dark; maybe plan a family outing or something that doesn’t include star gazing.
Why does onion cause you to cry? –Kera, 5, Lawrenceville, GA
I’ve mentioned before how my kids are vampires. They are still awake in the wee hours of the morning when everyone else is asleep. Sometimes they tell their father, who leaves around 4:30 a.m., goodbye.
Most of us have probably had that feeling where we don’t want to cook using the stove or oven when it is hot outside.
Why do we feel pain? -Sara, 11, Moscow, Idaho
I was going to write a “you know summer is over when…” column. The first awareness I was going to add was that school supplies are in the stores. However, it’s not a good indicator of summer being over because school supplies are out at the beginning of July. You also can’t say summer is over when you can’t find a bathing suit in the store, because you’d be hard pressed to find one in July, either. And for God’s sake, Costco had Halloween stuff out at the beginning of this month.
What is cheese exactly? -Mark 11
I remember turning 18 and getting plenty of “you’ve been approved” credit cards in the mail. I was too scared at the time to get a credit card because I had seen just as many “are you in credit-card debt?” commercials on TV. The thought of owing thousands of dollars from credit card debt scared me. The funny thing was, when I actually tried to get my first credit card, it was a nightmare. I couldn’t get approved because I didn’t have credit. Go figure.
I feel bruised and beaten as a mother these days. I just came from a weekend where once again, I was regaled with the accomplishments of someone’s perfect child. In this case it was a grandmother, at a Rod Run we were attending, bragging about her seventeen-year-old granddaughter who built a street rod with her own welding torch, and HAD to go to the Car Show awards because she won the junior division. In that same breath she also managed to tell me that the girl is getting straight A’s in Running Start and will graduate from high school with an AA before she heads off to an Ivy League college.
