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So…

*sigh*

In about six weeks, two of my three children will be college students.

*gulp*

It’s just absurd to find oneself become a living example of a cliche, but I’ve realized I have. Picture a woman who begins crying while staring at the pair of animal print flats on her feet. That would be me. Yeah, it’s embarrassing and I can’t even cite the traditional excuses women have at their disposal.

Pregnant women do occasionally cry for what seems like no reason whatsoever, but that one’s mostly a myth. Post-partum women also cry. It’s mostly not clinical depression, however, that’s another myth. For most, it’s perfectly understandable. It’s women who find themselves still in their pjs at one o’clock in the afternoon, who smell like spit up, who do the crying. If it’s your first baby, that’s reason enough. Moms in later rounds cry, too. But with additional babies, it’s not only because they don’t smell lilly fresh and are dog-tired. It’s because they find themselves comforting a crying eight week old while carefully chasing a two year old headed towards the bathroom with a set of car keys. While smelling like spit up. So tired they can hardly see. In their pjs. At three o’clock in the afternoon. This scenario would provoke tears in any woman of sense.

But I’m not pregnant, post-partum, or chasing a key-flushing toddler while holding a screaming baby (yes, he did beat me there).

No, I’m one of those other cliches. One that I’ve not heard about much. The one about the weepy mother who is sad to see one of her kids go. Animal print shoes can bring a mother to tears because the shoes are shared. And its not because the shoes are really cute (although they are). The realization comes that the shoes leaving means they are going with a certain pair of feet, come the end of August.

Again, *sigh*.

I will deal with the emotional “mommy response” on the whole thing. I’ve been doing it for over twenty years with each new phase, because that’s what the child needs now.

Then I can move onto a whole other set of worries about college. As a frugal Constitutional Christian, (a phrase chosen as a substitute for worn out terms like conservative) I’m driven crazy by the absurd costs, progressive indoctrination, and commune-styling living forced upon my child with bonus meal plan and text book side rackets. It’s all a bunch of nonsense, considering the point of the whole endeavor is supposed to be to obtain an education in a particular field in preparation for a career.

Considering the “mommy” thing and the college-drives-me-crazy-thing, I shouldn’t have laughed so hard I had another kind of tears in my eyes when I accidentally stumbled upon IowaHawk’s article entitled, “So You Have a College Diploma”.  Check it out. If you’re reading this and you have kids in college, or are about to, I particularly urge you to have a read. The good Lord knows we folks all need a good laugh.

Speaking of laughter as a diversion, I found IowaHawk’s article by accident when going to the site to retrieve a link for a GiN article written by Linda about the “debt ceiling” debate, entitled, ironically “Debt Ceiling: I Laugh Because I Must Not Cry — That is All!” Check that out, too, if you have a mind (click the image below, to read the full article). I think it’s well done: