What Do I Want To Do When I Grow Up?

I came back from Bloomington in July feeling challenged and championed. That's what you get when you hang out with some of the smartest, goodest girls on the planet. I brought Zach back to Bloomington, stayed with Jeff and Mimi, and let some more of that good Bloomington juju rub off on both of us. Zach is seriously going to apply to IU, which I think may be a match. Thank you, Dr. Z, for that. If he goes IU I swear I'm going to buy a house there. My midwest sensibilities have been revived.

Senior year is here and I am already grieving the loss of my last spawnling. I have vowed to work on disengaging from a happy co-dependency with this particular son. There are projects, concerts, retreats, college trips, one last mission to the DR...a monsterous amount of "last things" to walk through. But everything points to a winning year.

John will turn 21 in December and soon will jump from being a commuter student to his first apartment, so I'll be losing 2 pups around the same time. I am contemplating my retirement from the mom thing and am attempting to plan and cope by writing at least 300 words a day (a la Anne Lamont) and, no lie, have started seeing a therapist (but we like to call him a "life coach" cause it sounds oh so much nicer).

Anyhow, I've been writing. Thanks to Allison I'm trying to take myself seriously here and have been reading, reading, reading, reading and checking out writing options without tipping over the marital shopping cart. That's where the therapist comes in. For the first time in my life I am exploring the extent to which I may be ADD and whether I can organize my life outside my role as a mommy in a focused, productive way. Start praying, girls, it's gonna be a bumpy mid-life ride.

I am looking forward to a cycling trip in Maine in a few weeks. Have been working toward this all summer. Also will be taking the pup up north to check out more schools. The fall will be a zoomer. But I hope to be faithful in communicating and may send some drafts of my stuff your way. In the meantime, carpe diem.