If you have not read the previous entry yet, please do so before reading this one.

Now if Nathanael goes to Miami, which it is looking like he will probably do, I have heard comments from a couple of people that it would be too familiar. No. Let me remind you that Nathanael is NOT from Oxford. He is from Cincinnati. Staying "home" would be, for him, going to UC or Xavier or UK or CTI. Several of his friends are going to those. Does he regret not applying to more schools? Yes. I think Case Western might have been good. But MU is as good as Case Western.

Just because Nathanael has relatives in Oxford does not mean it won't be new and fun and different, but also a little familiar because 2 of his cousins are there (Travis and Katie). Grinnell would be also a "little familiar" because 2 of his aunts went there. It is as if I had gone to Drake or University of Iowa. That's where MY parents went. It would still have been new and different for me. That's how I feel about Nathanael and Miami. It is old and familiar to me and Steve and my parents because we have spent so much time there. But Nathanael, let me remind you, has NOT. It IS new to him. So much has changed, too, since I went there. Were I 18 again, it would all be different for me, too.

OK let me preface this entry by saying that Nathanael spent all of about 10 seconds upset about this, and it happened yesterday and he even forgot to tell me until today. You all and I are probably more upset. He went back to working on fonts and reading and joking around. I am going to try not to obsess over was it fair? was it right? who was responsible? did we do something wrong (no)? When I asked how he felt, he was his usual very non-upset self and said, "Eh, I take rejection easily." The rejection was Carleton. I thought he must be more upset than he let on, but I know him and I know he just isn't so upset. Even if Grinnell and Kenyon say no, he is still in MU's Honors program. He was actually given a space on the waiting list if he wanted it, so that's not an out-and-out NO NEVER, but he doesn't want to be on the waiting list. If he's named a merit scholar (he's still a finalist) he will have had to make a decision by earlier than he'd find out about Carleton were he on the waiting list. Let's just say his grades for jr. and sr. years were/are 3.8 and 4.0, and freshman and sophomore a little under those. Despite his near perfect and perfect SAT scores (perfect 800 on 2 different sections, once for each time he took it) and near perfect ACT (34), he doesn't have the perfect 4.0 GPA. Freshman year was the worst because he just wasn't mature like he is now.
So anyway there we are and God will get Nathanael where God wants him, where he will thrive. Hey he sure as heck has done a lot better than either his dad or I did. And he's not even upset.

PS This is an hour later. Just got the mail which had been sitting in the mailbox, forgotten. Kenyon also said, waiting list only. Oh boy, what is it? Now I'm beginning to wonder if they got his test scores. Nathanael says, "It's my freshman and sophomore years. My grades were just not good enough." This is so disappointing- thought rejection for him was an anomaly- this is crazy.

The good thing is the sizeable scholarship MU has offered. A lot of people get rejected from MU. MU is the best undergraduate school in the state. If Nathanael still wants one of these schools, maybe he can apply again for a transfer after he's shown them his good grades he will get at MU.

He would have fit in so well at Kenyon or Carleton and I just hate to see those dreams, at least those possibilities, go up just like that, for him. To be exact, I'd rather HE reject them than they reject him. I'd rather he or we reject THEM on any other premise- money, distance, anything. But at least have HIM reject THEM. Kenyon was so keen. Now only Grinnell is left and I just don't have a lot of hope at this point.

Carleton and Kenyon only take a few hundred each year. It's hard to imagine, though, anyone actually being smarter than Nathanael, who routinely slams whole teams to pieces in academic competitions without even a sideways glance, but always with a smile.

He is not too emotional, my son, either high or low, and this disappointment would floor most people. I think it is a little bothersome now that it's happened twice.

Miami has option after option and a new writing program after a generous donation by one of its benefactors. Nathanael may be one of its first graduates.

Shaking my head, I tell you.

My baby is grown! 18 years old.

He got a bike for his birthday and money from the g-parents on both sides. On Sunday we went to the symphony. The 3 composers we listened to wrote their pieces in various Jerry Springer phases of life: one (Berlioz) while stalking an actress (she was lucky he only married her-for a while; he planned to shoot the next victim and himself when she jilted him), one (Bartok)while on his deathbed and for his wife who never played it, one (Smetana) while going deaf and insane with syphillis. That sucks. Oh, and they died penniless. Musicians. A bum rap. They can't all be Paul McCartney and enjoy it while alive, can they.

Bartok died before he finished the last 17 measures so someone had to finish it for him. Well it's all good because I think Piotr Anderszewski probably played it better than his wife could have.

Quite an amazing conductor and orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Now for Micah's recipe for an enjoyable day:

OK I've been warned by my brother Dan not to post this "recipe" for pop bottle bombs any longer, so I'm editing the post.

You can find the recipe on the internet. But as I say, Micah isn't doing this any longer...
I have always heard these silly things go off and normally if it's done outside and FAR from people it just makes a big noise. I am not advocating it in ANY WAY.
None of it was ever done in a building or mailbox...just in remote locations...Hm, I do believe it is something Steve may have done as a kid....? I will ask- now his job is environmental responsibility...and safety...LOL.


My brother thinks I'm in De Nile...but now that it looks like Nathanael will attend MU you can be reassured of his hockey future (a sport in which Nathanael has -100% interest).

Nathanael's been offered a pretty good scholarship opportunity at Miami in the Honors Program. It cuts the 37+K/yr. bill by about 2/3. Miami will be doable. We will have to compare that to the other 3 univerisities' offers, assuming his acceptance into those.

I really am liking Miami a lot since it is so noticeably different than when I was there, and a really good mix, notwithstanding the lack of minorities (that really didn't matter in our estimation since almost everyone we have lived among for the past 20 years is part of a "minority"). We are not a white-bread area, LOL. Anyway, most of the students in those other 3 places aren't "minorities". I put those in quotations because I am so beyond that. I am officially a minority too just by being a woman, though 52% of the people in the world are women. By global standards, my ethnicity is pretty much a minority, too. The standard "average" person in this world, if we were to take an "average" person, would be about a 20-year-old Asian woman. LOL

Sorry abuot digressing. University selection is coming along. Another thing about Miami is, no matter how isolated it seems, the other 3 seem even more isolated, and for 4 years really it seems they are so very cloistered...it would almost be a shock at the end of those 4 years to see more than 100 people at once, let alone 100 people of whom some are NOT birkenstock-wearing, clove-smoking hippies (JUST KIDDING!).

Spring has sprung and the daffodils are out. March is fantastic and comes after 2007's presentation of a somewhat formidable winter (for southern Ohio, what we got was formidable and fun).
Though I personally prefer places where I never have to put on a jacket all year round, I can endure a winter, especially when my kids have so much fun in it- Nathanael with hiking and writing about it, Micah with skiing in it, both of them sledding and just being boys in it.

Spring allowed me the opportunity to clean, clean, clean. We have the new fuse box now and Steve yesterday installed another outlet in the rehabbed bathroom. We also got a new vacuum cleaner (okay, by my mentioning that my life is officially a non-life) and cleaned! Woo hoo! A clean house! A clean, spring-y, open house.

Was wondering why I was getting a little loopy despite not taking extra drugs and taking the drugs I was supposed to take. Then it occurred to me that I have a fever from this stupid ear/throat infection I got from Micah (darn it! they are the only ones I catch colds from- my kids- because everyone else I don't hug and/or I wash hands after touching them if THEY are sick...somehow it doesn't occur to me to do that after touching my little grubby kids...)anyhoo, it's really fun sitting at work with that disconnected sensation of your head not being attached to your body, listening to people talking, listening to the thunder, kind of wondering what's it all about...
loo loo loooooooo.....