Growing up

Last year, when the kid moved into his dorm for his freshman year, I spent about 2 hours in bed afterward crying and feeling sorry for myself. Today he moved back for his second year, and I wept for only ten minutes. I guess that means I'm growing up!

It also helped that a few hours later, I saw him again. He and his dorm buddies decided to go for dim sum after moving in, and asked their families to join them. So we had three sets of parents and two sets of grandparents along with half a dozen college sophomores at dim sum.

The restaurant was crazy busy and since I was the most experienced dim sum-er, I found myself selecting and ordering up a storm for the first furious fifteen minutes or so. By the time I actually started eating, half the food was already gone! That made it much easier to stick to plan.

I had a serving of braised chicken feet (my favorite), one shrimp dumpling, some bbq pork, a bit of radish cake, and then lots of veggies. It can be *very* easy to go off track at dim sum, but I managed today. I did select a lot of deep-fried and baked treats for everyone else, since that was what they preferred.

After that, the college kids asked for us to get them into Costco so they could fill their dorm rooms with supplies. So lucky me, I got to spend more time with the kid and his friends.

But now it's late at night and there is only one kid in the house and it feels just a little too quiet and empty here. I'm not looking forward to going to bed, and thinking too much in the dark. I'm happy for the kid, he's made some good friends, he's having fun, and he's doing well (knock on wood). But why does growing up have to be so hard sometimes?!

I'm indulging in some ridiculous self-pity, I know. I'm going to go read some inspiring and empowering Spark blogs now!