The boy’s been gone for over a week. It’s not all that much different around here, since he was gone so much over the summer, so I guess his strategy worked; all that time away to “help me with my separation anxiety.”

Truth be told, the only one in the family who is seriously brokenhearted over the missing boy, is the dog.

Clover has been waking us up at 3 or 4am to go outside. He’s never done this in his life. He whines at night and wants to either sleep in our bathroom or outside the boy’s room. He mopes. I’m thinking of putting the phone to his ear the next time the boy calls. He’s snooping around in the woods just beyond our yard (his fur is full of burrs tonight) as if he’s seeing if maybe the boy is out there somewhere.

The boy is also doing fine — likes his roomie, meeting lots of new people and so far; going to class!

The girl commands our full attention when she’s not at school, doing homework or at some after-school activity. She’s loving being an only child.

I’ve been terribly consumed with work — part of why I haven’t even had time to mourn the boy too much, or post an update here. But I’m fine! Really!

There’s been some exciting new work coming my way and some business travel planned for the near future. Posting might be sparse (of course every time I say that I follow with a rash of posts.)

Oh, and just so you know, Bossy’s son also went off to college this fall.

Who let these kids get married, anyway?

Today, in addition to being the day the boy left for college, is our 19th wedding anniversary.

We got married on the 19th, have been married for 19 years — that seems extra-significant somehow.

So, sans scanner, I’m sharing this darling wedding photo of two twelve-year-old kids who up and got hitched in 1989.

Aren’t we just adorable?

We’re here; the day before the boy leaves for college. Some of you have called, written or e-mailed to say you’ve enjoyed this series and hey, where did you go? Why did you bag it when you were just getting to the bitter end? Well, we’re here. The last several days the concept of “gone” has become much more real; and I’ve grown quiet, reflective.

To my rescue came two guest posters — G. Mehlhose and J. Varsoke. G-man is a guy who was integral to our overall freshman year experience. J. is a guy I only wish I’d known since freshman year (although we met many years after college, he certainly has the status of college friend in our realm).

G-man’s advice came in a box filled with energy drinks, Ramen noodles and a few bucks for ordering late-night pizza. G. wrote:

• Always do your homework
• Always go to class
• If possible, never take a 7:40am class. If you get stuck in an early class, go to class

He also mentioned, “Hydration is important so please consume lots of water.” Good advice for anyone.

From J., the following:

Practical Advice to Freshmen, Class of 2012:

•  Girls - don’t be a nice guy.  Actually, be kind of a jerk.  Unless she’s ugly, or you have no future romantic or sexual plans with this girl, then go ahead, be a gentleman.  Otherwise you just locked yourself out of anything beyond friend status.  No, I don’t know why this works the way it does.  Play your cards close to your chest.  Ignore their probing emotional questions.  Don’t talk about how your first dog was taken to a farm when you were eight.  Don’t offer to carry their mini-fridge up three flights.  Don’t console.  Keep them anxious about whether you like them.  Frustration is the best bait.  If the girl is marriage worthy (you’ll know) tone down the jerk thing - that can come back to bite you.
•  Studying - the women’s dorm is a good place to study all night . . . unless you actually have work to get done.
•  Freshman year - until cliques are established you will have lots of friends whom you’ll never talk to again after Freshman year.  Just keep that in mind when the “most embarrassing moment” question comes around.
•  Roommates - work out a code.  Sock on the door-handle doesn’t cut it.  Don’t be passive aggressive.  Don’t let him be passive aggressive.  Be men; settle your problems.  Don’t go after the same girl.  Bring headphones.
•  Parents - it’s about negotiation. You want freedom; your parents want you to nail this critical part of your life.  And here’s the hint: better your grades the stronger your position.  Bring home straight As and you could set the house on fire but still leave a smile on your old-man’s face.
•  Money - lots of ways to solve this on campus.  Iron shirts a buck each.  Burn a girl’s LedZep bootleg CDs to mp3.  But asking for a hand-out from Mom and Dad erodes your position as responsible (read: trusted to do whatever the hell he wants) - grand-parents on the other hand have deep-pockets and no strings.
•  Grades - this is the last time in your life that when you work hard it will be directly for your own benefit.  After 2012 you’ll likely work hard for someone else’s. 
•  Grades 2 - the harder you work now, the easier you’ll have to work for the rest of your life.  Rumor has it summa cum laude translates to “goof off until retirement.”
•  Cultures - eat with the foreigners.  Find where they hide in the cafeteria and join them once a week.  Then squirrel money away for when Raj invites you to stay in his father’s palace over winter break.
•  Dating - Freshman girls are looking for confident status symbols who can show them around.  Upperclassmen are looking for easy pickings.  This means you’re SOL until sophomore year.  BTW: dating high school girls will brand you for life.  Sorry, that’s just how it is.
•  Girlfriend back home - take a break.  Cuddling with a telephone and a drunk co-ed are two very different experiences.  If you get back together after Spring finals, it was meant to be.  BTW: no need to tell campus that you’re a free-agent (see Girls).
•  Limits - challenge them.  Challenge your beliefs.  Challenge old ideas.  It’s the only way to make sure you’ve got the right ones.
•  Phone home - just to say hey. Moms eat that stuff up.

 – J. Varsoke

Good stuff, guys. Tomorrow is the big day.

The girl went peach picking with her daycamp and brought back a couple of pounds of fresh, delicious peaches with a request for peach pie.

Peaches are now in season!

I put her in charge of researching the recipes and decided on Peaches and Cream pie with an all-butter crust. My pie experimentation has led me to determine that all-butter crusts are particularly suited to fruit pies and so that was my crust of choice for this pie.

Peaches and Cream pie is simple, really. The ingredients include fresh peaches, heavy cream, powdered sugar and a sprinkling of brown sugar. What could be easier?

After preparing the crust, the first step with the filling is to skin the peaches. So, I donned a negligee, poured myself a sloe-gin fizz and told the peaches, in a Southern drawl, how I’d always depended on the kindness of strangers. Nothing happened. You can’t Blanche peaches, you must blanch them to remove the skin. That “e” sure makes a big difference.

Blanch your peaches, don't Blanche them.

To blanch a peach, boil a big pot of water and lower each peach into the water using a slotted spoon. Count to 15 and lift the peach out and let it cool for about a minute. This makes the skin slide right off effortlessly.

Some people are peach-skinning whizzes but I find this retains more of the fruit and is kind of fun to do, anyway.

I hadn’t made a peach pie since I was a kid. We had a peach tree in our backyard and I lived in it for about three years. I’d climb up there with a book and come down covered in sap, just in time for dinner. The smell of peaches holds strong memories of my childhood. We had so many peaches from that tree that I remember making several peach pies each summer. I haven’t done it since because my husband simply does not like peaches. I love peach pie! I had enough peaches and so made two, one for the family and one to share with friends.

Peaches and Cream Pie

My friend Linda invited a few of us to her home for a get-together. This group of women are all involved in communications and design in one way or another; we enjoy one another’s company and had a wonderful time chatting and updating one another on our professional and personal lives.

You CAN make friends with pie!

The pie was a success! One friend even said it was the best pie she’d ever had. It was good, too — I served it with fresh whipped cream for an extra-special touch.

I think what I like best about baking pie is sharing it with others who appreciate it. Here are my friends Linda, Anne, Maggie and Caroline digging into the pie (they graciously agreed to let me post this photo). Thanks guys!

Dear A.,

Happy 12th birthday! I remember, before your brother turned 12 how I had a habit of saying anyone immature was “acting like a 12-year-old” — something I picked up from my boss at the time. He turned 12, I said it one more time and he said, “heeeyyyy — I’m 12. You’re going to have to pick on another age.”

So I swore off picking on 12-year-olds long before you got here. Lucky you.

But enough about your brother already. I’ve been composing daily letters to him before he goes to college but today is your day — there’s no letter for him today. I’m sure it must feel as if everything is about him these days. Let me remind you though, as of Aug. 19, the day he leaves for CNU, our attention will be completely focused on you.

Taking the role of temporary only child is sometimes good, sometimes bad. Just think! We can blame everything on YOU! On the flip side, you get all the benefits of having us around and taking advantage of all the entertainment we provide.

Of course, being 12 means more in this house; more chores, doing your own laundry and additional responsibilities. With these come more privileges, too. The three of us are going to have a great time this year and even though you don’t think so, I know you’ll be happy to see your brother when he returns.

This year you’ve grown up so much. Everyone thinks you’re older than you are, something you’ll like until you get to be about 30. At 5′9″ you’re on track to pass me up by the end of October, you and I both agree. Of course your growing up has been more than merely physical. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our philosophical discussions and have stood in awe at your growing interest in politics and in the world around you. It has given me a flash into what the future will hold when we are both grownups.

This has been the year you dove headfirst into reading as obsessively as your mother, the year you started your own blog, The Daily Banana (because, duh, you eat a banana every day), the year you developed a passion for anime and manga and a talent for basketball. You’re becoming a teenager before our very eyes.

Now, if we could just get you to stop speaking text-speak, (LOL, TTYL, etc.).

I’m so proud of you and love you so very much.

Mom

The Girl Turns 12

I took a break from pie and drifted over to the land of cake. The girl requested banana cake and I decided to get fancy with it and make fondant.

It turned out pretty well — a pale blue (that matches the new paint in her room) and the requested clouds. I also did a ruffly band around the cake and that was the limit of my fanciness.

Not a bad first go at fondant. I may do it again, once, in about ten years.

Cake is really not my specialty, as the boy would point out again and again. Partly it is because I decide on any cakeworthy occasion to try a new, previously untested (by me) recipe. I figure I can read, right? So how hard can it be?

Cake is always better with ice cream

Unfortunately not all internet-based recipes are worth a pinch of salt and I’ve been burned a time or two by cavalierly plunging forward with an unreliable cake source.

This time I was OK, though. Fondant is really not a big deal; just marshmallows and powdered sugar heated, kneaded and, if you’re up to it, color it. I made blue and pink, which, in restrospect, were sort-of babyish colors, but that’s the way it goes. When the girl was about four, she requested a green, orange and yellow cake. Then she raked her fingers through the just-decorated cake. I gave up getting too attached to my cake decorating attempts a  long time ago.

The girls enjoyed the slumber party and our girl was delighted with her gifts, the cake, and being surrounded by her best friends. They played games, ate lots of food, slept little and I think, had a pretty good time.

Me? I think I’ll go back to pie.

Advice for the college freshman — I give you (drumroll, please) the Freshman Ten:

1. Don’t consume alcoholic beverages. Not only is it illegal to drink under the age of 21, it’s also, um, a sin! And immoral (leading you to lie, at least to your parents if not others). Also? Probably unethical too because you’d just be supporting The Man who owns the industry. And we know you hate monopolistic capitalism. Right?
2. Don’t smoke anything. Think about it. With your allergy track record, being allergic to anything that grows, that is, you’d probably just have a really ugly reaction to it. Imagine all smoke-ables are birch leaves. You’re WAY allergic to birch. Take your epi-pen just in case.
3. College campuses are cesspools of disease and filth. Not unlike 1940’s Army barracks and ghettos, dorms are merely thinly disguised, expensive housing projects. Viruses spread faster than rumors. Don’t touch anyone.
4. If you must go out in the rain, wear a raincoat.
5. Don’t roll your eyes at me, young man.
6. Should you get sick, go to Student Health. Do not believe everything Student Health says. (Sometimes they treat you for that which you do not have; say, for mono when, say, you’re maybe a little bit pregnant.) Should you get an Rx for an antibiotic, take it all as prescribed (see #3.)
7. At the dining hall, do not consume only carbs. Focus on protein; it lasts longer. And yes, a salad is still a salad if it’s coated in ranch dressing.
8. Do not fear the Freshman 15. You could use some meat on that lanky frame.
9. If someone’s pitch for the night or the weekend ends with “It will be fun,” or worse, “You’ll be cool,” give that guy the hairy eye of suspicion. This is not a friend.
10. Studies show that contrary to popular belief, you are not invincible. Please make a note of it.

I have a friend* who is suffering from a co-worker with tremendously bad body odor. This person’s odor is so bad, it’s legendary. It’s the kind of B.O. that stays behind after the co-worker has gone home for the day. I commented that in arenas outside the workplace, say, summer camp, middle school, the military, this sort of thing would be handled in a different way. We’d kick it old school and leave gifts of bars of soap, deodorant sticks, a bottle of Febreze. But in the workplace, one can’t very well, even anonymously, decorate a co-worker’s cube with a dozen car air fresheners.

But what to do? HR is reluctant to bring it up. The offender seems not to have friends (understandably so). It’s pretty dire, particularly in the warm weather.

I feel for my friend, but also for the offender. Perhaps it’s some kind of medical condition. But if that’s the case, this person really needs to see a doctor.

In my work life, I’ve only had to address wardrobe issues (had more than one conversation with a co-worker who failed to recognize the line between casual and business casual), but never one that addressed grooming.

How would you handle it? Have you ever witnessed this kind of situation at work?

*It’s not me. I work at home. My only co-worker there is Clover and I tell him when he’s smelly. I’m starting to think he just doesn’t care.

Dorm room supplies purchased. Check.

Shots updated and record faxed to university health. Check.

School supplies purchased. Check. Except for rubberbands. Why on earth do you need rubberbands?

One navy blue sportjacket (required by the university) purchased, being tailored and waiting to be picked up. (Today?) Check.

School books bought online from the university bookstore (at a whopping $650). Check.

Two weeks and one day to go. I think we’re ready.

I was interviewed recently for a piece in a national women’s magazine about ways working moms are saving money. I have some cost-cutting measures of my own and with gas prices and a kid headed to college, am thinking more and more often about how to reduce our budget.

So far, it’s little things: getting just coffee instead of a latte or a mocha. (I know, I’m spoiled). Trying to stretch the food budget by planning meals a little more carefully. Taking advantage of entertainment we’ve already paid for; the Netflix movies, the neighborhood pool membership. We asked the girl to make her birthday party a low-budget affair. We’re having cheeseburgers at home and celebrating with homemade cake. The girls will play the variety of videogames we have for entertainment.

We buy stuff in bulk when it makes sense; stocking up on toilet paper, paper towels, tissues, cleaning supplies and cereal at the big box store. I’m on a self-imposed clothes shopping freeze — what I have will have to do until the economy improves. Today is a tax-free holiday in Virginia so we will buy the girl’s school supplies and save a few bucks.

It’s tough to adjust a lifestyle to Depression-era tactics but I’ve been thinking about my grandmother and what she would do. I can’t sew, so I won’t be making our own clothes any time soon. I think I can reduce the food budget with a little more strategic buying and cooking. It’s almost fall (yes, sorry, but the summer’s almost over) so we’ll likely be going out to eat less often as our evenings fill up with school-related activities and homework.

What are you doing to save money and stretch a dollar? Are you even worried about it, yet?