Vacation Drama

Take four kids (2, 3, 4 and 5 years old) two sets of parents, one set of grandparents and stick 'em all in a house for the weekend during a heat wave and what do you get?  Drama.

I guess I can't complain.  I know many families have much worse dynamics with their relatives and overall we are pretty civil and reasonable with each other.  The problem comes with the "gotta get out of the house" folks vs the "I'm on vacation and want to take it easy" folks.  You may have guessed that Hubby and I are on Team IOVAWTTIE while the others are on Team GGOOTH no matter if it's 100 degrees in the shade and simply stepping outside for 5 minutes results in heat exhaustion or not.  The two senior citizens have insisted on going out for several daily walks (by themselves, thank goodness) and come back in fanning themselves with their hats and marveling about how unbearably hot it is outside. 

We are staying in a nice suburban house - they have a lovely sizeable, shaded backyard with a great wooden swing set, covered back porch and plenty of water toys/activities.  What's wrong with the kids playing out back, the adults sitting on the shaded porch and calling it an afternoon?  Why do we have to pack everyone up and leave the premises in order for it to count as a fun activity "for the kids"?  It's not for the kids, it's for the adults.

I just about lost it trying to negotiate with Team GGOOTH and figuring out the logistics of how to fit in a visit to the pool, a visit to the Science Center and celebrating the 2 year old's birthday in between naps and feeding times for the kids.  I'm steadfast in not giving up my children's nap times in favor of doing a bunch of activities to keep the adults happy.  Nope, not worth it.  You will always end up paying for it later and it's just not fair to the nap skipping kid either.

After much discussion I stayed home with the napping 3 year old while the 2 year old went out with Team GGOOTH (of which his parents are members).  We will be meeting up for dinner once he wakes up and I'm enjoying the quiet until then.  Rest assured that dinner will be full of the antics of an over-tired 2 year old; I will relish my role as just the aunt and can stand back and let his parents juggle him in between bites of their cold dinners.

Not So Smart Spending

After reading this article about posh dorms in the Chicago Tribune today I felt disturbed for a variety of reasons; however, the most annoying was this quote:

"You are going to be in debt anyways, might as well enjoy," said sophomore Ashley Hendzell of Tinley Park.

What?? Has she not noticed the financial crisis that so many people are currently facing? If she could talk to 10 of those families do you think they'd say "sure, go ahead! You'll be in debt after college anyways so why not throw a couple $5,000, $10,000 or more on those loans!" I'm sure more than one of them would grimly look at her and say "yeah, that's what I thought and look where I am now". I guess the mention of her 30 pairs of shoes kind of indicates she isn't the most fiscally minded student anyways.

I had a friend that went to a private school for both undergrad and graduate school. During those years she justified taking a nice vacation (Aruba and Hawaii are two that come to mind) by saying she "deserved" them; she was under a lot of stress, you know. And the money was, somehow, readily available via her student loans. Post graduation, after she married and tried to get a mortage her $120K in student loan debt made her enough of a liability that they left her off the mortgage altogether.

If you can pay for these posh dorms outright, than more power to you. If you need to roll the extra cost into your student loans then just say "NO". Isn't living in a cramped dorm room using milk crates as end tables kind of a college right of passage anyways?

Quotable

“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This goes hand-in-hand with one of my pet peeves - apathy. People who don't care, are too busy, assume "someone else" will do it or "it's not my problem". It alternately makes me angry and sad. It also makes me a little crazy because sometimes I feel like I have to be extra vigilant about things to pick up the slack.

Snopes.com and Internet Myths

I, like most other people, hate getting spam. More than that I hate getting junk email from FRIENDS!! The chain emails (now that's downright insulting) and all the other odds and ends, pet photos, off color jokes that while well intentioned I just don't have time for. Plus I'm always worried about opening something with a virus so often times I just delete these emails.

Many well meaning people (my dear Dad!!) will forward the "warning" type emails - like about the guy that will approach you in a parking lot telling you he found the $10 bill you dropped and then attack you. Or some that SOUND legit like "don't pump gas on May 15 and it will help lower gas prices".

I forwarded one of these (it was the one about Swiffer making babies and pets sick - I remember it because I was so embarassed that I was duped too!) to a fellow dog owner who forwarded it back to me with the http://www.snopes.com/ report on it and that it was false! I quickly realized how these rumors can be perpetuated so fast and here I was helping (incorrectly) to drag Swiffer's name through the mud. One person tells 5 friends who tell 5 friends, etc and before you know it it's whizzed all over the world via internet.

So now when I get a well meaning email like this (about cell phones, gas boycotts, or rapists lurking out there) I will check http://www.snopes.com/ to see if it's real or not. Most times it is not and I will diplomatically forward the Snopes report to the sender just so they know and will (hopefully) check Snopes first before forwarding those types of emails in the future.

Recently I did find one that actually WAS real. It was about the state of Michigan and the $10K/per day fine they threatened local beavers (yes, beavers, the furry brown creatures) with if they did not remove their dams! If you don't believe me check it out at

http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/dammed.asp