After looking up Alvin Ailey, I really appreciate your kind words, dcarch and everyone. Now, on to Daughter-san. Her year has been consumed with the college application process and with finishing high school. Getting into college is not what it was when I was a kid; it is much harder and more stressful today. Kids seem much better prepared, admissions are more competitive, and college costs are an order of magnitude higher. It is easy for kids and their parents to get sucked into the vortex of expectations, ambition and status. We got pulled partway into that mess, but thanks mostly to Daughter-san's level head, we got through it. She will be attending the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. It is a smallish liberal arts honors college of 700 students, with their own building, faculty, advisors, and dorm, in the midst of a 30,000 student university. I think she'll have the best of both worlds - a small school with personal attention, and a big school with a diverse student body and endless things to do. She'll be about two hours from home, which seems to me like a nice distance, and will allow her to come home when she wants to, to have her little brother visit, but keep mom and dad mostly out of her hair. The university has a biology program, which is her science interest, and also a full fine arts program (BFA, MFA, design, etc) which is her non-science interest. There is talk of a double major. Finally, Eugene is one of the most livable towns in Oregon, where a bicycle is accepted and adequate transportation. Naturally, I look forward to fitting out her bike for college duty; any excuse to wrench on bicycles is welcome. Because we'll pay in-state tuition, and she's getting some scholarships by reason of being a National Merit Scholar finalist, the cost is manageable and we'll be able to send her to study abroad as much as she'd like. I've suggested that she brush up on her French! Daughter-san had an interesting high school "career" which is how the kids refer to it. She started as a shy, introverted kid who was very much a study nerd. During high school she did a lot of drawing and photography, had a two-month solo exhibition, took most of her friends' senior portraits, and ended up being voted "best photographer" by her class. Her favorite model was her brother, who was even willing to dress in drag and bite .38SPL cartridges for her senior photography project, which was a photographic interpretation of Truman Capote's "Other Voices Other Rooms". (Unfortunately for him, that project is being kept by the photography teacher as an example for future classes.) She did some interesting things, like embroidering photographic prints. She also got involved in Speech & Debate, went to tournaments, became one of the team's officers and placed second in State in her event. In senior year she started doing theatre and made a whole new set of friends among the "drama kids". During the summers she worked as a cook and later assistant supervisor in the Berkeley camp in Yosemite, which involved responsibility, a lot of hard work - cooking 8 hours in a commercial kitchen during 100 degree heat waves - and, I'm told, some vigorous partying on days off. So Daughter-san is leaving high school as a much more outgoing, confident, social person than she entered. Her high school GPA is perhaps not, err, quite as good as it could have been had she remained less social, but it is pretty good, enough to get her into a good range of colleges. By the time she graduated from high school, she was Miss Popularity, with a whirlwind of parties and outings during the last month. She told me that, while fun, being so social was exhausting and she had started to turn down most invitations. Which was a relief to me, since I would like her to be a serious student in college in addition to having fun. She's back at camp cooking for half of this summer - a different Berkeley camp, after the Yosemite camp was burned to the ground last summer. She'll fly back to Oregon for college orientation in the middle of the summer, then will have the last month of summer free to relax and play with her brother before heading off to college. So there we are, all caught up. SWMBO and I are kid-free for a few weeks and even after DS gets back from his trip, life should be less hectic and I might even be able to do some cooking. Not that we've been starving, but the cooking here hasn't been interesting - just utility cooking. Hoping to change that this summer. Here is a link that might be useful: an online portfolio

Karen, welcome to the group. jcs7, I'm a teacher, too and could always tell the kids who are indepdent at home. I still have 3 in elementary school, so all papers in the backpacks go on the kitchen table when they get home. Field trip/permission slips are put aside on my control journal so I deal with them after dinner. Everything else is either an "atta boy" and in the trash, something for our art corner or they can put it up in their room with a push pin. Homework is back in the backpack when finished. We have a funky hallway area and that has become where we post the artwork. It has a bookshelf that the top is reserved for those clay and papermache projects. My calendar is made by More Time for Moms. It is 16 month calendar so I can write an entire year's events as soon I get the calendar for school, scouts, etc. and then I don't have to keep the schedules. The boxes have enough room that I can put down "field trip/need sack lunch" and still have other events listed. There is a packet at the back if I really need to keep something. I also keep a hanging file for each kid in the same place I keep my medical, household type stuff. If it's something I think I may need in the future then I put it there and I purge that stuff every fall. Part of keeping this stuff in control is to learn that every paper is not a keeper. I put away beginning of the year examples and then another one at the end of the year because it's nice to see the growth. Otherwise, we really don't keep daily stuff. If they do want to keep it, their bedroom is a good spot and if it becomes too much, they have to decide what goes and what stays. I have to say that "out of view" doesn't work for our family. When we remodeled this house the contractor wanted to put up a wall next to the fridge so you wouldn't see the fridge. It was so ingrained in having our calendar on the side of that fridge there was no way I could have a wall there and no calendar. With the calendar out and easy to get to, all six of us check it constantly. We know now-if it's not on the calendar-it isn't going to happen. Can you at least designate the inside of one cabinet for the calendar and have a big pocket there? Gloria Here is a link that might be useful: mom's calendar

compumom - You must have missed my recent rant about PB shipping charges. About a week ago I ordered 2 end tables to use at nightstands. They added "shipping and handling", "delivery fees" and tax which added up to about $230, about $90 of that was tax. I called the support number, the local sotre, and tried every coupon code I could find. I was politely told that's just the way we do it. So I sucked it up, pretended it was just the cost of the tables and paid it. For my outrageous delivery fees I got the tables shipped from 10 mi down the road...lol. One came on a truck on Fri, the other on another truck the next Monday. They came UPS and were placed on my porch, no setup or anything. BUT, I do love the tables so I'd do it again and next time I won't beat my head up against the wall trying to avoid their charges I guess. Wish I'd known about Nancy's trick, I might've given that a shot! Good luck to you.

Good ideas, Talley_Sue. I'd like for her to be able to make these choices and feel positive about it. Elbow room is one of those things I'm just learning to appreciate in a whole new way, and hopefully she will acquire that if I can pare down more and more and set that good example. She has been good about putting some things away- outgrown books, we've packed away. We had some toys that we boxed for storage overhead, and that seemed like a big step, but at the last minute she changed her mind and wanted them back in her room. For now, she fits fairly well in her room, providing things are in their place, but her closet is a feat in organization. This morning as we were heading out the door, I commented to her that I had gotten another couple of boxes of my stuff together and needed to arrange for another thrift store pick-up. She said, "Great! More room for me!" Um, no.... I think that is one of my biggest fears- that as I minimize my belongings, DH and DD's stuff will just filter into the elbow-room spaces and it will be as though the house only belongs to them :( So far, I've done well keeping open spaces open, but who knows what will happen in the future- stuff has a way of taking over if it's not wrangled.