College kids

When I started writing this 'blog, in the winter of 2006, I was a half empty nester - my older son was a 2nd semester freshman in college, and my younger son was a junior in high school. Now my younger one has graduated, so by the end of this summer, I will be a real empty nester - no kids in the house, except for my sweetheart's son, who comes over two nights a week, and my own sons when they come back to visit.

This summer has been rough, though, in transition - I've been keeping the fridge pretty empty. Or is that the right metaphor? What I really mean is that the kids are out of the house, but only sort of - I am still expending tons of time and energy on them - not that I'm complaining - I'm a mom, right? that's what I'm supposed to do.

My younger son's at camp, working as a counselor, but appears every so often to do laundry and eat. And he makes the occasional call home, to ask for favors - I overnighted him a WWF wrestling belt to give to one of his campers as an award at the end of a session, and even drove to camp myself with a dozen steaks for him to barbecue, on 4th of July.

My older son tried to stay in Milwaukee over the summer, but he couldn't get a job, and had to come back to Madison a lot for the 80 hours of community service he had to do for his graffiti arrest last summer. And then he thought he had an apartment - but he let his room mate-to-be pick it, and, even though it's spacious, it's in a neighborhood where neither he or I is comfortable. So he's looking for another place, and a subletter for the place he's got. So he's around to eat sometimes; I don't want to let the milk or Ovaltine run out - and I have been going to Milwaukee, a lot.

Yesterday I went to UW-Milwaukee's new freshman orientation, and, while it was crucial for my younger son to be there - they actually set them up in a computer lab, and had them go online and register for their fall classes, with some advisors around to help; and then they had student "ambassadors" lead them to the class rooms where their classes will be held - my presence did not seem nearly as required. So I bailed - got the older one to meet me at the free lunch at the UW-M Union, then we went to Bay Shore Mall , oh excuse me, I see it is Bay Shore Towne Center, more correctly ... and got his iPod fixed, and he looked at some shoes, and applied for a job.

The food at the free lunch was pretty lackluster - John's word - turkey & provolone on a squishy Kaiser roll; John doused it with yellow mustard, and a vegetarian wrap with herbed cream cheese & broccoli slaw & cucumber. We got Thai noodles at Outpost that were tons better.