Filed under: Middle Age, Parenting | Tags: adulating, college, college life, kids, raising kids, school, university, venmo
As a parent, you know when your kid goes off to college to live in the petri dish they call a dorm, there will be times when they have to “adult,” like making doctor’s appointments or figuring out how to get to Target because because, God forbid, they can’t have a car on campus Freshman year. What we didn’t realize was that all of these things would be documented in Venmo, the payment app.
You can parent your college kids however you want to, but one of our decisions was to let both of our kids charge Uber and Safety rides to our cards, so that they never felt like they had to get in a car with someone who’d been drinking so they could get home.
They used it. A LOT.
(And we were glad.)
We also allowed them to ASK for help when they needed it, like for doctor’s appointments and things that normally wouldn’t be in their budgets. But what we didn’t count on, but were happy to pay for (mostly), were the MANY charges from multiple trips to urgent care, Target and CVS for medicines….and many other “necessary” items.
Since her year got cut short, I thought i would share this little financial diary. For so many reasons I’m sad that her and her sister’s years were cut short…and one reason is because I will miss these entertaining requests:
And then there are the requests for daily living, because adulting is expensive:
Welcome to adulthood, young lady.
And welcome home. 🙂
Filed under: Sports | Tags: family, French kiss, humor, kids, Kissing, Middle-Age, mom, parenting, parents, raising kids, sex, south, southern, subourbonmom, teenagers, teens, Valentine's Day
I’m beginning to understand now why my mom never talked to me about anything to do with sex or relationships. The topic of sex and love with your kids is a minefield, and I am regularly blowing my opportunities to impart wisdom.
Take, for example, the topic of first real kisses (the French kind).
While driving to pick up the girls from school on Thursday, I was thinking about Valentine’s Day, which led to reminiscing about past Valentines, and from there I digressed into past boyfriends. Somewhere between Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble I remembered my first kiss. Not the fireworks that I anticipated…
I can’t remember where my keys are, but I can bring THAT up from the vault?
I vaguely recall it as being in a dark room with a boy I didn’t really like that much, REO Speedwagon playing in the background, and a spinning bottle… and a lot of spit.
As I waited in the carpool line, I wondered why people kiss in the first place. I mean, think about it. Who on earth thought touching lips and tongues would be sensual? We eat, sneeze, cough, and probably have bad breath most of the time. Not to mention the weird thing in there we call a tongue—not a particularly attractive anatomical feature, if you ask me.
According to a couple of strange and unreliable websites, some anthropologists speculate kissing is a primal way of sampling a potential mate’s pheromones, determining a mate’s personality and potential. If that’s the case, no wonder I was so grossed out.
Others speculate kissing was a learned behavior, since other animals do it. I don’t believe that one–after all, we don’t lick ourselves, do we?
So I took a survey of some friends’ first kisses, and the nearly universal response was that it was…”awful.” But there was one caveat—if you were kissing someone who was older (read “more experienced”), it was definitely better.
The other thing I found out is there are several kinds of “awful” first kisses:
The Slobberer
The Tongue Thruster
The Tongue Sucker
The Lip Biter
The “I-Have-No-Idea-How-Much-My-Head-Weighs” Leaner
The Absentee (no tongue at all)
The Stuffer (similar to the Tongue Thruster but more tongue, less movement)
The Side-to-Side Rotator (just pick one side of the face to stay on for a while!)
So, when my daughters asked me what it would be like (and I’m assuming, like an ostrich with my head in the sand, that it still hasn’t happened yet), I told them it probably wouldn’t be all that great the first time, and poured myself a drink.
And then, in a moment of stupidity, I told them it would get better.
Yep, I basically said practice makes perfect.
Excellent parenting.
Subourbon Mom 