Dear Kid,

There is no letter today (except the letter “Q” brought to you by Sesame Street).

Last night was taken up with

1. Making dinner
2. Helping Pi study for her accounting exam
3. Snuggling the Puppy

And dessert. There was excellent dessert.

And a soccer game. With a surprising upset. (Sorry. I won’t talk about that.)

And a little bit of late night TV. With a commercial (for cars, but don’t ask which one because I don’t remember) that used “winter” as a verb. As in, “Get ready to winter.”

Doesn’t that sound like something out of a romance novel? “Lord and Lady Beauford felt it was their duty to winter at their country estate, near the river where Beaufords had held property for 17 generations.”

Who knew you could use “to winter” in a modern car commercial? Clearly not someone who has eaten too much dessert and helped a child construct a fictional balance sheet and income statement. (Don’t even pretend that “U. O. Mee Industries” is a real company. And yes, we put that entry under accounts payable.)

Have a great day, sweetie.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

It’s hard when your college kid is sick.

Let me back up. It’s hard when your kid is in college. But it’s even harder when said child isn’t healthy.

When you’re home, I can baby you for a day, refill your glass with apple juice, tuck blankets around you, serve you chicken soup, and tell you not to worry about your homework—just get some sleep. After 24 hours, I have generally ruled out most Major Illnesses and then nudge you back to health and activity. Don’t all mothers say, “I understand you have a cold. Here’s a tissue. Get your homework done and take out the garbage.”?

But when you’re at college, I can’t do much. I can’t kiss your forehead to see if you have a fever (forehead kissing is much more accurate than a thermometer or “Mom, I’m fine”), I can’t insist you drink more (let’s face it—“insisting” by text only goes so far), and I can’t check on you whenever I want to make sure you’re still breathing.

I can’t do the check-on-you-mom-thing. I can’t do the take-care-of-you-mom-thing. I can do the put-money-in-your-account-to-pay-for-antibiotics-and-Nyquil-thing but that’s more of a banking function than a mom function.

Which leaves the fretting-mom-thing and the texting-mom-thing neither of which are as effective as chicken soup.

It’s very hard to be a mom when your college kid is sick.

Hope you’re feeling better, kiddo.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I bruised my wrist yesterday, which is making typing dificu diffff difac hard. (Don’t ask. Let’s just say it was a Genius Move Typical of Your Mother and leave it at that.)

Pi: Do you want me to type for you?
Me: Don’t you have homework to do?
Pi: Yes, but I’m offering to help you
Me: Very kind, but I’m still trying to figure out what to write about
Pi: Fine, I’m just offering
Puppy: I can help
Me: That’s sweet, but I don’t think you know how to type
Pi: I know how to type. That’s why I offered to help
Me: Thank you. Homework
Puppy: I can type
Me: You can?
Puppy: Of course
Me: You got a nose print on my screen
Puppy: See? I am terrific at this
Me: You have to press the keys to type
Puppy: OK
Dad: What am you doing? Since when is the Puppy allowed to touch your computer?
Puppy: All done
Me: I don’t even want to know what “njkm” means…
Puppy: It means I pressed the keys.
Me: That it does
Pi: Should have let me help
Me: Fine. You’re right. Can you come help?
Pi: Nope. Doing homework.
Tal: What is all the noise?
Pi: Don’t look at me. I’m doing homework
Puppy: I typed!
Me: I’m trying to write a blog. It’s not going well
Tal: I think I will make coffee
Puppy: I will help because I love you
Tal: Good morning, Boo-ker
Puppy: I love you I love you I love you!!
Me: How did I lose control of the situation?
Dad: What makes you think you had control?
Me: I didn’t?
Dad: Not this morning, lady
Pi: I’m going to football practice
Puppy: I love Tal
Pi: And after practice we can go dress shopping
Puppy: Can I go dress shopping?
Pi: No baby, not today
Me: I still need a blog topic
Pi: And shoe shopping
Tal: I will like to go shopping too
Me: Perhaps I’ll go back to bed until then
Dad: I thought you had a blog to write
Puppy: I will write the blog! What’s a blog?
Me: Coffee. Maybe I just need more coffee

And another morning is off and running.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Some days are easier than others.

Some days things come easily. It’s easy to pop out of bed and face the day. It’s easy to get to class on time. The lecture is easy to understand and the homework takes all of 92 seconds to complete.

You’re able to run an extra 3 miles during your workout and you throw in a couple of extra sets on the weights just for fun. At your group meeting, you work seamlessly with your peers, coming up with great suggestions and finishing your project in record time.

Then there are the other days.

The ones where the very concept of getting out of bed is more than you can stand thinking about. Where you just want to snooze no matter how much caffeine you mainline directly into your blood stream. Where the professors all talk in a long-forgotten Sanskrit dialect and it will take the next 16 weeks to finish your homework—and that’s just for one class.

Those are the days when lifting 3 pounds of books feels impossible, never mind lifting serious weight. Where people grumble and gripe and half the time you’re not even sure what they’re grumbling and griping about. They’re the days when you are not only overwhelmed by the big decisions in life, you can’t figure out whether to have pancakes or French toast. When there is no way to figure out the shortest distance between two points because there is no such thing as a straight line.

Hoping today is one of the easier ones.

Love, Mom

P.S. At least here, the answer today was French Toast.

Dear Kid,

Once upon a time there was a deadline. It wasn’t a deadline far off in some mysterious future. Those can be easily ignored. One can put those off until tomorrow even though it would be better to get to them today. It wasn’t a faux deadline, self-imposed to give the illusion of urgency. No, this was an Imminent Deadline and it Loomed.

Imminent deadlines have a way of looming that is quite unlike any other kind of looming. There is no warp and no weft. There is just great, hulking looming. In fact, imminent deadlines often loom with malice. And hostility. Sometimes even with hostile malice.

This particular Imminent Deadline loomed with more hostility and more malice than most.

And it Smirked. It was a hostile, malicious, smirking sort of Deadline whose vocabulary consisted mostly of “mwahhahahahaha” and the theme from Jeopardy!

You might think it was deadline for a college assignment. You’d be wrong. Those sorts of Imminent Deadlines are generally mainlining Starbucks and cursing Higher Education in multi-syllabic (albeit meaningless) words.

You might think it was a deadline for a work assignment. You’d be wrong again. Those sorts of Imminent Deadlines are generally accompanied by visions of the unemployment office and spreadsheets with circular logic.

You might think it was a deadline for voting. You’d be wrong there too. Those deadlines are used to being ignored and generally skulk along near the voting precinct hoping someone will notice even if it’s only an eager journalism student.

You might then think it was a deadline for a college application. It wasn’t, because it was the wrong time of year for those deadlines.

You might consider the possibility of a Deadline associated with some sort of Ultimatum. Those Imminent Deadlines can be quite terrifying. Their bite has been known to cause all kinds of paralyzation.

This was a deadline for a blog. And it Lurked. And it Loomed. And it radiated Hostility.

It is worth noting that almost no heat is generated by a Lurking and Looming Deadline except upon those who are being Lurked and Loomed at. So while deadlines are terrible for generally heating up a home, they are quite clever at lighting a fire under someone’s posterior.

History has noted that many attempts have been made over the years to deal with Imminent Deadlines. One way is to simply ignore the deadline. However, since deadlines are distantly related to hangovers, it will not surprise you to learn that they (deadlines) hate being ignored and will do their utmost to bring themselves to the forefront of the conversation.

Throughout time, the most popular method for dealing with a deadline has been to turn over and go back to sleep. This is sometimes a slightly effective method for dealing with hangovers, but pretty much never gets rid of a deadline.

It turns out that there are two effective methods for dealing with a Lurking and Looming Deadline full of Hostility and Malice.

The first is to become so wildly popular and successful that you become the Boss of All Deadlines. This almost never happens between the time the Deadline begins Lurking and the actual Deadline in question.

The other way is to simply Deal with It.

The third way (I love how Douglas Adams counts and may use his approach exclusively from now on. Or I might not) is to write a blog about them. This not only addresses the actual Deadline itself, but serves to flatter the Lurking and Looming so much that they sit down like obedient puppies waiting for a snack.

I hope you have nothing Lurking or Looming on your horizon today.

Love, Mom