I’m focusing on those whom I should mate with to repopulate the earth after the nuclear war. They should all be good breeding stock who will bear strong children to pull the plow and till the soil.

I’m also looking at the pros and cons of staying in the workforce vs retiring and doing volunteer work to stay active and involved. You know, just in case the nuclear war thing fizzles and peace breaks out.



 

Keep moving forward, and you'll  get there.

Clodfobble wrote:

... because in 11 days Minifob heads off to Florida for college.
 

Good lord, I'm getting old.

Summer is supposed to be endless and lazy.  It's anything but.

Embry-Riddle. It's an aerospace/aeronautics specialty school--they don't even offer an English degree, History degree, etc. The closest thing they have outside of STEM is a business degree, but it's still like "Project Management for the Space Industry in Particular." He's very excited and only a little anxious, which in itself is a massive achievement. We're so, so proud.

That's fantastic! Great parenting once again!

That is amazing. Nice one, Mini!

Oh yeah, they've been stable for years. They still take a fuckton of meds/supplements (occasionally we've been able to remove one, but just as often we try and symptoms start coming back, so the med goes back in rotation) but they handle all that themselves--filling their own weekly pill organizers, able to explain what each pill does and why they take it, etc.

The cooking, for me, is routine by now, and involves things like "once a week I cook a 7-9 lb. brisket and just put the whole thing cut up in the fridge so there's always meat for lunches and nights when I can't manage to cook." I admit I don't bother as much anymore with the more labor-intensive things like hamburger buns and salad dressings--I still will sometimes, we're just more likely to eat things like pork chops or chicken thighs that I can just pop in the oven with minimal prep. I keep a permanent stock of frozen fruits and vegetables in case I fail to keep up with the fresh options.

As far as the kids, they are both fully on board, conceptually, with their diet, and honestly intend to eat the right stuff when they're on their own. I've been very clear that once they're 18 their choices are their own, and it's not my job to tell them what to do anymore. And I'm not really worried about the college years, because cafeterias have gotten way better since allergies became a generation-wide issue, and there will always be a salad bar and fruit available. The real test will be once they have to start cooking for themselves. They've been responsible for cooking two of their staple foods (lamb meatballs and coconut flour muffins, which they both eat every day) for about 5 years now, and they're good at it, but neither one of them enjoys cooking. Minifobette actively hates it. But even then, I don't think she'll cave to fast food or anything like that, she'll just choose to live off nothing but frozen peas and blueberries.

I worry a little about them getting into relationships with people who don't eat well, because Minifob especially is a people-pleaser and I can see him eating the wrong food not because he wants to, but because someone he cares about is pressuring him to--but then again, I'm also pretty confident that same person would break up with him once they saw the full force of what he's like, emotionally, on those foods, even if they walked away never believing it was the foods causing it.

Long story short, everything got slowly easier as we honed in on what worked for them, and now it's not hard at all beyond normal teenage stuff--which in itself is never easy, but it's at least readily identifiable.
 

I'm glad to hear it, Clod.  It's about what I imagined for you.

FYI, before you know it, your life is likely to be quiet.  Don't blink.

A 'two elephants on the beach' vacation?  Where a mahouts provides everything.
 

An old friend of mine went to Embry-Riddle. When she graduated she had become so proficient at doing the setups and maintenance on their flight simulators they offered her a job. BUT, (there's always a but, sometimes a butt) before she could start a hurricane came through and decimated all their planes and some of their buildings. So that job disappeared until they got squared away again.

Oh, and that's where the 9-11 terrorists learned to fly, which isn't the schools fault, but they went there because it's the best.