Great to hear from you, MP and glad that the work project is finished. Congrats on your D’s engagement and to your S’s teaching job.
No offense taken. I was a poli sci and history major, English minor, for whom law school was a dream since about age 10. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life, though at this point, I would love to retire in about 6 or 7 years. My ultimate goal is to leave the snow behind and like you, I am doing the tax implication research. We are here definitely until I retire and MIL passes, whichever is later, and then I have to work on H to convince him to sell our money pit and move. I have bribed him the possibility of a new dog, an RV and a sports car., none of which I will sign off on while we still live in our current home.
How is your wife doing? H had both knees replaced in late 2016, about 2 months apart. He is no longer in pain but he can’t kneel yet. He got down on the floor to do some electrical work and middle son had to pull him back up to standing.
@missypie, congrats on completing the transaction and on your D’s engagement. Having lived through the kerfuffle between my more religiously observant mother and my less observant MIL, I’m all for being very relaxed about what gets done for a wedding. If things move forward, we may have a Jewish-Chinese wedding (her family moved to the South and joined a church because people ask what church you are a member of but I don’t have the sense that Christianity is an any way meaningful to her/them) and a Jewish-Jewish wedding. My MIL has offered to have each kids’ wedding at the 125 acre farm where we were married (so long as she is alive) and has agreed to pay for each kid a rather large sum for the wedding. Not sure if either will happen, but ShawD could be faster acting than ShawSon.
@college_query, congrats.
@techmom99, I don’t know about kneeling but ShawWife and I hike all the way around Walden Pond today on a snowy path. It was stunningly beautiful (even for a winter-hater like me).
I’m actively analyzing the tax implications of various moves. I don’t have enough to do – I have an 8 AM call to my MIL’s accountant (I recommended she replace him as he doesn’t seem to know what he is doing), a 9 AM call to one of my clients from my car on the way to the airport, an 11 AM-2:30 PM flight to Miami, a 3-4 PM call with a client (from the uber), a 4:30 meeting with the client for whom I’m flying to Miami and then dinner with the client and counterparty.
mp, good to hear all of your news. Many congratulations–work, D’s engagement, mom’s marriage.
I am sorry to hear about her strokes though. It sounds like your S has really succeeded. I know we are all
thrilled for him, his wife, your family.
We are having another ice/snow storm which is super late given that it is Feb. Aging is not fun but
not having to figure out daycare, driving on dangerous roads, school closures, etc. is great.
D is pregnant and due in Sept. She and her H move here in June when she begins her residency.
H and I have been talking about locums possibly overseas. She has informed me that we have had three years to travel and do locums and now is not the time. ^:)^ . I asked her when my job is done and she told me not this year when she is having a baby. I am partially baited her. We are talking about 1-1.5 years from now. Unfortunately D is having a particularly bad pg with day 2-3 times vomiting.
Her H had to clean out the drain in the bathroom…brushing her teeth makes her ill really
suddenly. I cannot think of a solution for her on this one.
Life is pretty quiet right now. I play MahJongg twice a week. I really like it but am not totally into it like most local players. I figure it is good for my brain.
cq, what fun news about your D! Congratulations to her.
dt, I certainly think you have earned a fabulous retirement. It takes a good while (5 years for me) to let go of my identity as my career. It is a huge transition.
Great news about the grandchild to be, but so sorry about the “morning” sickness (what an inaccurate name!)
This week, I had a call from my mother’s pastor and my sister has had a call from my mother’s doctor about Mom’s situation. It is obvious that they need to be in assisted living. I’m pretty sure Mom would rather die. It seems her husband has some early dementia as well.
My sister is perfectly situated to lend a big hand in caregiving to keep them at home…she works only three mornings a week, in Mom’s town, is single, no grandkids around, lives 30 minutes away. She checks on them twice a week and does the absolute minimum. She accepts a sizable monthly check from Mom and has for years, just to make ends meet…but doesn’t feel the need to “pay back” in Mom’s time of need. (She is great at sending concerned text messages, however.)
Anyway, not going to change her, but any tips on finding assisted living? Her H is a veteran but I know nothing about any available veteran’s benefits. I hesitate to involve her H’s son just yet, because he would have the moving truck at Mom’s house tomorrow.
Oregon - oh how I sympathize with your D. My S - no issues. I figured second pregnancy would be the same. Nope not by a long shot. I was sick EVERY DAY from the time she was conceived I think until the day they took her by C-section. EVERY DAY!!! I didn’t miss ONE! I figured out in about month 4 if I just got up and so to speak “let it flow” I would be okay for most of the rest of the day. Working full time with a toddler and not one day of feeling normal. Day that I had her was scheduled and as I’m taking care of my typical morning routine by that point my H said I had to hurry or we were going to be late. Now this is after 10 months of this! I turned to him and said “Good - let them start without me. Tell me how far they get”. By this time I had had it!!! Actually at first I didn’t even know I was pregnant. Just thought I caught a stomach bug that would not go away. After a couple of weeks a neighbor asked if I could be pregnant and that was how I figured it out. 
Not too smart I guess.
Work is terrible. Working 10 hours a day and getting in a few hours over the weekend and I still can’t keep up. Latest is we need to swipe in and out on the building so now they are tracking our time here. I suddenly feel not only that they don’t trust us but like a child. If the days don’t let up soon I will be acting like a child too and have a temper tantrum. I am just SOOOOO tired.
congratulations on babies and marriages and engagements. I anticipate weddings in the future. prob 2018, the 2019 or 2020. One will be Catholic the other is unclear.
I am thinking more about retirement and possibly teaching. Unless I can find a more part time job. The work I do is very heart rending.
DTE, ShawD’s favorite teacher at one point encouraged her to think about teaching at some point and said she didn’t need another degree to teach. I fear that they don’t pay that well for teaching, but it could be rewarding and I suspect you would be able to draw on your wealth of experience. Generally, I think there is a shortage of nursing professors (in part because the pay is less). It could be part-time. Maybe you should talk to a couple of the professors.
My mother visited my younger sister in Memphis and they visited a couple of senior assisted living facilities. I think my mother actually liked one. She has two school-age grandaughters there, with whom she has a lovely relationship and a great relationship with that sister. Over time, it could be a great choice with her.
It would involve moving and not seeing old friends, but more difficult, would require my brother making real decisions about his life. So far (meaning for the last 40 years), he has been unable to make tradeoffs and my parents have been in effect bailing him out. He couldn’t part with his stuff and used several rooms/closets from my parents 5 BR house for his stuff. When she sold the house, she has been paying for storage for his albums and things. He hasn’t gone to storage but can’t bear to throw them out. He is also using the crappy apartment he pays for in a dumpy town as storage while living with my mother. If she moves, he will have to deal with getting a new apartment, which would could be much farther from the clay court tennis club he’s played at since we were kids. He finds that distance troubling. Or, he could move to Memphis, which could be good for him from a music standpoint, but was worried about where he’d play tennis. Of course, he did no research. Just said if my moved (in September), he’d have to make a split second choice about what to do (somehow knowing now that she will terminate that lease doesn’t enable him to act). When he does have to make a choice, he’ll blame me and my sister. Ah well, my mother blames me for stuff when I help her, so I guess failing to take responsibility for one’s choices and then blaming others has some learned basis, though he is much more extreme.
Just a random aside. I ran across this really moving version of Leonard Cohen’s Bird on a Wire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N8pFSH8xYQ. I hope you enjoy it. LC is not to everyone’s taste, but I’m a big fan.
She was a Mexican American kid whose father was a mariachi singer who grew up to become one of Leonard Cohen’s backup singers (he always had 2 or 3 great female singers as backup). Apparently he encouraged her to leave and start singing solo and also asked her to sing this song in a concert to his mentor (probably a Buddhist monk). She said, I don’t know if I can do it justice. When she had gotten a really good feeling, she said, “I think I own this song.” He said, “Don’t kid yourself. The song owns you.”
Started work this morning at 6. Now my boss’ boss would like a meeting from 5-6 today. No way! I know that some people live for work but I do not.
I gained close to 10 pounds over the course of my big deal. I thought it would magically melt away once I started a bit of exercise. “Wrong,” said my middle aged body. I’ve got to get very serious. Last night, after working out and refusing dinner, I told H that I was disgusted with myself, to which H replied, “You don’t look that bad.”
Wrong answer. All husbands should know that.
Good morning, all. Just a quick proof-of-life 
Congrats on all the accomplishments shared since I posted last. Got out f the habit of checking the last month or so since my iPad is slowly revolting/blowing up. The thing is 8 years old. I have a new one I use for work but have always avoided personal surfing/storage on it and leave this one in the house bookmarked to forums etc.
Nothing terribly exciting q1 to report – nice blues cruise with hubby earlier this month, lots of home automation experimentation/struggle/hack code comedy around here as my new hobby has been to take my automated pool system online. Unfortunately, though its zwave, Intermatic no longer supports smartthings integration so I’ve had to learn to more than I intended about hacking code for automation At times I’ve had it working beautifully, then it runs amok.
This morning I awoke at 3;00 am having a dream that the pool automation had run amok and indeed it had, inexplicably turning off the pump while the heater was on. Back to the drawing board
Apparently my subconscious is a more accurate alert system than my current deployment of home automation
Hi ho.
Good to hear from you kmc!
I have also been AWOL. Have been keeping busy with care for H’s mother who is battling cancer and enjoying being a grandma! Still out walking and trying to maintain weight loss. I am really looking forward to warm weather. It has been a long winter.
Great to hear from both of you. ShawWife and I drove early Friday AM to NY where she went to art fairs and had a business meeting with her NY gallery and I had a couple of business-y meetings and we got together with friends. One of our friends, a West Coast collector, bought a piece for their Australia house (life is tough). They stay in a time share in midtown – run by Hilton Club – unclear why this is better than staying in a hotel (I’m Hilton Diamond and we stayed in a HIlton three blocks away and were upgraded to a nice room and paid with points).
Then I collected my mother’s tax info, reviewed a revised will (that she somehow thinks I forced her to do but I only suggested that my brother’s money should go in trust as he has never shown a capacity to make wise decisions about money), and reviewed brochures about a couple of independent living facilities she visited near my sister in memphis and one she is going to look at in NJ. I wanted to see the contracts. Then, I took her, my brother, and my cousin and her husband and their youngest kid to dinner – the cousin and family all said thank you, then belatedly my mother did (highly unusual that she thanks me for anything) but of course my brother never did. Ah well. She did complain that I hadn’t visited since August and that her other grandkids call weekly and that my kids don’t and that my son better visit while she is still alive (he is finishing his last quarter of business school and getting a startup off the ground at the same time – he and his partner raised several million in december and and hired 4 or 5 people since January and have signed up a bunch of customers and is recovering from a surgery last month to remove a metal plate from his jaw from last March’s surgery. So, he might be a little busy. Honey definitely beats vinegar, but OK.
Then we left at noon on Sunday, drove back to Boston, and hosted a 65th birthday dinner party for a good friend, who was acting very weird. Kind of hyper. When she is relaxed, she is lovely. When she is insecure (not infrequent), she turns all conversation about her (which she did a bit – her husband gave a very touching and emotional toast and she barely acknowledged him until ShawWife nudged and prompted). But, more she was hyper – she couldn’t focus on reading a Shelley poem that was in one of the birthday cards while trying to read it. Interesting to observe.
But, we were exhausted. Having ShawWife’s knees fixed means that she is now in hyper-energy mode again (ah, we had a blessed few years where she had just a normal amount of energy). So, life will get exhausting again. When we lived in NY and I worked on Wall Street, our weekends were so busy that I found the work week relaxing and rejuvenating.
Agree it has been a long winter. Lots of work time for me. Mandatory 55 hours a week now. I don’t get much else done it seems.
D and SIL listed their old house Thurs. So far they have one offer but the real estate agent they are working with expects 2 more to come in today. We will see. They are out of the house and into their new home which is closer to us so we do see them a bit more.
S is now taking paternity leave and has 5 weeks off starting this week from the birth or number 3 back in Oct. DIL ha have a bit of postpartum depression of late. With the flu being so prevalent this year she has been keeping close to the house and not taking the kids out as much with other people. Although I think that was a good move with 3 I also think it has added to her issues. With S home they can do more and the flu season here is starting to ramp down. Less cases being reported in the last 3 weeks.
I’m looking forward to vacation. H and I are going to SC and NC at the beginning of April. He has a duathlon race in SC at the beginning of April so we decided to make a vacation of it. Will be good to get away.
We’re supposed to get another 12-18 inches of snow tomorrow. Uggh.
shaw, went to the beach yesterday and have some color on my arms…
I need to remember your winter when our rains return.
RM, have a well deserved trip!
We are grateful and enjoy having our “other D” visit with her 4 week old and 2.25 yr old.
But, oh my, there is so much stuff and energy. They stay long hours. I would not give it up for
anything but remain so glad I am done with that stage of life.
How does it go for you when they are all over?
All in preparation for D and SIL’s new baby boy due in Sept.
They will be living back here by then. She continues to have terrible all day long morning sickness.
shaw, sounds like your S is doing a great job with his dreams.
mp, 
highest weight I have been in my life. Decided to tackle it but wonder how it is going to go.
My daughter was in town this weekend and she said yes to the dress. She tried on about 20 dresses at two different salons. There were two that were perfect so it took her a few days to decide. Wedding dress shopping- just D, H and me- was a delight.
Congrats, MP.