Three men and a girl

AKA -- I made an apology in advance to our neighbors this weekend. "For awhile, our driveway and curb are going to look like a used car lot."



All the chicks are back home. On Thursday, Faith and I went to campus to pack up the kitchen of Joshua's apartment and fill the van with boxes to bring home. On Saturday, we took a car and a van and loaded them up and brought the rest home (a lot of which went straight to the curb because of stupid landlord rules that it couldn't go in the dumpster). I cleaned the apartment and we locked up and left. As I did all this, I had many thoughts to share with those of you following closely in my footsteps -- getting ready to send your babies off to college. Alas, those thoughts are now gone, like the gray, sudsy water down the drain.

An acquaintance once told me regarding the condition of college dwellings, "After you move them into their dorm (or apartment) you can never go back. The sight of it is like looking into the sun -- it will blind you." I completely agree. The problem with college dorms and apartments is they are never clean to begin with, so you can hardly leave a truly clean dwelling behind, and the dirt accumulated in a year is astonishing.

And really, you can hardly not go back and get them, right?

I suppose I could have pulled up to the curb and said, "Load it up and hop in."

At present, my garage is full of boxes -- some that have belongings that will be stored until the wedding next year, and some that need to be unpacked, and all contents washed in hot water and harsh soap before they are put away.

The funny thing is, or not funny if you are me, I thought I had a whole week to catch up before I moved Geoffrey home (for three weeks until his grown up apartment is ready). But, after we arrived home and unloaded the boxes on Saturday, Geoffrey arrived in his car loaded full of his boxes. He is home, for good (temporarily), but will go back each day and bring more home. Most of it will stay in the garage for a month and get moved to his next apartment in August.

Do I have any advice? I told Doug we have a new rule --"If you leave home for college you can never come back." I know...that's mean. So, I'll revise it to "If you go away to college, your stuff can never come back." These kids today think they should have all the comforts of home while they are away at college. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of "comforts of home"? So, I guess my advice would be -- don't set them up for comfort at college, set them up for school. If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't let them take their electronic gaming consoles, or DVDs and viewing devices, and I would spend a lot less money on anything devised to comfort. I also won't be cleaning any more college apartments. Nope. You're on your own there.

So now the kitchen table is full at meal time again, and I am exhausted. I cooked a big meal yesterday (this dish with my own homemade sauce and meatballs -- six "yums") and an apple pie for dessert. I cooked most of the day (I've never been able to reconcile "no work on Sunday" with big Sunday dinner). My washer has been running almost constantly since Thursday evening and I have hardly a dent in the piles. First world problem, I know.

Lucky for you, I didn't take one photo, so you can wait to be blinded by your own experiences.



I did take this photo at home yesterday -- this is me for the rest of the week.