Congratulations on graduating and the new job! Well done!

I thought the same thing. But, back in college, I went on a band trip in the late fall (meaning snow on the ground) and our host family had a hot tub. I thought they were crazy to use it with snow on the ground. Back then, I had very little cold tolerance. It took some convincing to get us to try it, but it was heavenly. We got warm (hot) enough in the tub that the race back to the house was refreshing rather than terribly cold. That was the best sleep I've ever had in a sleeping bag on the floor. Any time we visit people who have one, I take advantage. My back certainly loves it. If I ever get too warm, I sit up on the edge out of the water to cool off. 😄 We don't have one and I've always wanted one. (The people we bought the house from had one, but they took it with them ☹️ But I just didn't have any extra bandwidth for the maintenance at the time. Maybe we will get one to help with the aches and pains of getting older. It would be great after a long shift at the hospital.

The average football player needs to consume 50 calories per 2.2 lbs of body weight to maintain weight. For a 200 lb player (this would be on the light side for a football player - certainly not a lineman who would need to be 300+ lbs in the Big 10), he would need to consume over 4500 calories per day. PBJs aint' gonna cut it. At some schools, athletes like football players have special meal plans for their higher calorie needs. Most players are not looking to cut weight but to add or maintain muscle mass.

Ok, this trip down memory lane has brought up a dilemma. For all you crunchy moms out there ... have you figured out what to do with that placenta in your deep freeze? Embarrassed to admit that, 20 years later, I still don't know what to do with it. No room in my yard for a new tree. We have a dog who would dig it up.

Thanks for the laugh, and the trip down memory lane. It was bittersweet to see all those posters who don't come around anymore. < sniff, sniff>

And we are supposed to be going to a lake cabin near Elkhart tomorrow for the weekend (just our household.) It's a gift to my hubby from someone he helped. I wasn't in favor of going, but we've been assured by the owners that, if we don't need to stop to use a restroom and bring our own food, that we don't need to even see anyone. Can I make a 2+hour drive without a potty break when I can barely make it through a 2 hour zoom class? 😁 ( Today, I had to go so bad during an important class that I had to turn off my mic and camera so I could go to the bathroom and not miss some important stuff. And double checked the camera several times to make sure my entire class was not watching me pee. 🤣)

We have 2 on our street and it makes me so sad. It is one of the more affordable neighborhoods in our affluent town. One house has been vacant for 19 years when the sweet old lady who lived there passed away. Her son inherited the house, but he lives overseas. We wondered if he plans to retire to this house - I'd guess he is in his 60's. I guess he comes back every couple of years to check on the house. Another neighbor mows the lawn and checks on the house in return for using his garage for his boat. What's really creepy is nothing has been moved in the house. The same vases with the same fake flowers are in the front window ... they haven't been touched for nearly 20 years. There is another house in the neighborhood that was owned by a nice elderly man who I guess had invented something really important that we use every day (can't remember what it was.) He never moved from our neighborhood despite having the means to live someplace much more extravagant. His wife was in memory care with Alzheirmer's. When he passed away, I guess the house was in trust for his wife's care. His adult children didn't get along and the house sat vacant and in disrepair. After a few years, one of the sons fixed the place up really nice, but nobody moved in. It has been fixed up and vacant for over 10 years. I'd be surprised if the mom was still alive as she would be over 80 by now and had been in a nursing home for some time before we even moved here. Our neighborhood is in high demand so it seems like such a waste. Unfortunately, many nice homes are gobbled up by developers adding to the glut of McMansions in our town. Mean selling price is somewhere near $450,000, but there are nearly 100 homes for sale at $1 million+ (which is what these tear-down new construction homes are going for.) It just baffles me.

With my oldest, my husband noticed a phenomenon where this previously perfect sleeper would go on a 2-week jag of waking up several times a night. When I had reached the end of my sleep-deprived limit ... BAM ... the kid would do some new milestone and then start sleeping normally. My other two weren't great sleepers so we didn't notice this milestone thing. 2 of my kids hated the car and would scream until they turned purple and started choking. I would pull over every 20 minutes to nurse the baby to calm us both down. It got so bad that we just didn't go anywhere that took longer than 15 minutes. Back then, the recommendation was rear-facing until 1 year. So we turned it around at about a year. Then my screamers suddenly liked being in the car. My oldest was tall for his age ... 99th percentile. I don't know if car seats are different now, but his knees were about at his ears by the time we turned him around at a year. I'm a rule follower (the laws of physics, not just some statutes) and we probably would have suffered another year if it had been the recommendation back then.

Not yet. The class ahead of us is just starting back at clinicals this week. There are several sites that are not yet taking students so they have had to scramble to get those students into other clinical sites. They hope to get us back in August. However, we just got permission to go back to the lab to practice scanning on each other again.

March 11 ... During my clinicals shift, an announcement had been made about moving all in-person instruction to online starting the following week and we were speculating about when we would get pulled from our clinical rotation. In Madrid, where my daughter was studying abroad, they had recently closed all schooled and moved everything online, but they were acting like it would be 2 weeks and then back to normal. Then at 8 PM, POTUS gave the address where he was suspending all travel from Europe as of Friday, March 13. I thought about texting my daughter, but realized it was the middle of the night there, so I got online and started working on getting her on a flight home. As I was clicking on flights, they went from $800 one way, to $2000, to $3000, to sold out. I wasn't OK with spending upwards of $3000 on a one way ticket, but I couldn't even get a flight out in time. Then, my daughter called me from Spain since her roommates' parents did contact their children in the middle of the night. Dd was OK with spending a month in Spain if we couldn't get her home, not realizing that the country would completely shut down in 2 days. My phone was lighting up with messages from other parents who had kids in this study abroad program. While I was trying to quell the growing panic during that conversation, the White House walked back that declaration and clarified that US citizens and legal residents could return to the US from Europe after that deadline, but would face increased screening. We were able to get dd on a flight home on Sunday. The next day, DD called me, crying, after she helped put her roommates into a taxi to go back home, knowing that she had 3 more days in Spain, but was so alone. Then we received word that her flight got cancelled and were panicking that she would be stuck there. Fortunately, they re-booked her on another airline. That Friday, in the last 15 minutes of my shift at the hospital, we received word that our clinical rotation was on hiatus until further notice. Most of my co-workers had left for the day and I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to them. I've been home for nearly 3 months. On that Saturday, we watched in horror as hoards of travelers from Europe were stuck for hours in close proximity to each other while waiting to get through customs. It was taking 5 hours. I was really worried about my daughter flying home the next day going through that same airport. We made plans to all quarantine together for the next 2 weeks, planning menus, getting groceries, etc.. On Sunday, dd made it home. I hardly slept until she was on the flight home and fought back tears when we picked her up from the airport. In less than 5 days time, I went from having a full class schedule and a stressful clinical rotation to being at home, only leaving to walk the dog. I went from an empty house to having dd home and dh working from home. And a nearly silent neighborhood.

I did the subscript notation and a key at the bottom (in a box with tiny print) to note all outside classes. I also used a background highlight for all dual-enrolled classes to make them further stand out since those were taken at a nearby 4-year liberal arts college. Most admissions counselors we talked to appreciated the information on the transcript because it showed in a quick glance that this kid had contact with outside instructors. My kids weren't applying to tippy top schools, but they did received top scholarships at those schools. The big schools where the transcript only got a 2 second glance probably didn't matter as much, but those schools weren't giving good scholarships anyway.

My son said the exact same thing about Marsh.

Glad to hear that you are making some positive changes to handle this. Good luck to you!

Last year at this time, we were visiting our oldest who is a PhD student in Connecticut. He was fascinated by dinosaurs for much longer than your average kid ... he planned to be a paleontologist until he was 14 years old and would (daily) keep me abreast of all new developments in the paleontology world. Well, he left that behind and moved in a different direction in evolutionary biology. While we were visiting, we took a trip to the Yale Peabody Museum as a trip down memory lane. M became so excited when he read about this debate and the rebirth of the Brontosaurus. My then 25yo son was back like his 5 year old self (who used to school the docents at the Field Museum.) I thought he was going to join the school group's field trip. 😁

This has been on my mind lately. When my mom was alive, there was always this pressure to do something for my mom for Mother's day. I would have been happy to have someone just clean my house and cater food and have my siblings families over. But, the reality was that either I had to find a place to have a meal for 20+ people that accommodated everyone's schedules or I had to spend 2 days cleaning and host everyone said 20 people. It's not that I didn't enjoy spending time with her and she certainly wasn't a narcissist who expected it to be all about her ... she just wanted her family to be together and celebrate with all of us. I just didn't want the responsibility of all the work and planning. If I didn't do it, nobody else would and my mom would be hurt. There was a part of me that resented the expectation. Now that I am nearly an empty nester, I get why Mother's Day was important to my mom. To tell you the truth ... I am lonely. I miss my kids. And I would love to spend time with them.