Making it big

Time marches on. My baby has been out of college for several months now - sort of looking for a job while taking care of her mom while my arm was keeping me from doing lots of household tasks and driving. But its time to move on.....

We are giving Christina the opportunity to try to "make it" in her chosen field - entertainment, in particular screenwriting for TV or TV promotion/marketing. She and everyone she's contacted tell us she has to actually live in LA in order to be considered so she's making the big step with us subsidizing four months of it.... then she's really on her own. In a scary way, it reminds me of all the stories of kids who wanted to be actresses or actors and ended up waitressing, washing dishes or parking cars. At this point I'm just hoping she can land one of those jobs if she can't get anything good.... But at least the weather is nice....

We so hope she'll have the energy and motivation to find a good job despite the odds, despite the economy. We hope she listens to all our advice, tries to follow it and then ends up not needing it by landing a great job the first week..... if so it will be thanks to Seth who ran the "Making the Cut" TV promo contest for the CW network in which Christina was one of the winners....

So, its with mixed emotions I let my baby go to California to try this all on her own. At least her sister lives there although she's busy 6-7 days a week in medical school. We'll be going out to visit for Thanksgiving and a few days later, leaving here there....

Halloween

There were no smashed pumpkins in our neighborhood. And almost no trick-or-treaters either.  I imagine they've all gone the way of community parties and other events to keep kids from walking the streets.  It seems to be something that has gone the way of most childhood activities - sports, after school fun, just being a kid - supervised and planned by adults and run on a schedule, a very busy schedule.  I find it sad that kids have so little time and parents are run ragged getting them to and from those activities.  We used to spend hours out trick-or-treating. We played baseball - in our yards or a nearby open field where we had to bring our own bases. We thought up and ran a neighborhood newspaper, we played games in the neighborhood at night, we rode bicycles for hours, watched the clouds go by, days, weeks, years seemed endless (they weren't though)..... slow down, kids (and parents), childhood goes fast enough....