Deadline "Fun"

Aren't deadlines fun? No? No, I don't think so either. Why does February only have 28 days to begin with? Yesterday was a big deadline for ALL the adults in our family.

For my husband, it was a deadline at work that he'd been working 65 hour weeks to attain. He made it. Yay! Now he can take it a little easier for a little while.

The adult kids in Kentucky were moving out of their shared apartment into three separate places...and were stressed and tired with all the arrangements to be made along the way. Who borrows or rents what truck for which move, and on what day? Plus cleaning the "old" apartment. Somehow they got it all done. I think they are probably exhausted by now. One good thing is that they are definitely still speaking (for anyone who heard my joking comment when they moved in together, that I just hoped they'd still be speaking after living in an apartment together). As a matter of fact, they all worked together to help each other move.

For my 18 yr. old here in Maryland, the deadline was for a college application. The University of Baltimore was offering free tuition for the first year...as long as he applied by February 15 and got the federal application for financial student aid (FAFSA) done by February 28. Our tax man got the taxes ready for us in time and sent the numbers we needed in an email; but the email ended up in my bulk mail, so I couldn't find it for awhile. (Yes, I knew to put the tax man's email addy in my address book...but when his assistant called last Friday, when I had a migraine, I forgot to add HIS address, too.)

Then we needed pin numbers to electronically sign the FAFSA...one for the student, one for a parent. Does anyone actually REMEMBER their pin number? My son retrieved his a few days ago, but who remembered (in advance) about us needing one? (Answer: No one.) We applied to retrieve it around 3 p.m., and it was supposed to come "within four hours". But the system, of course, was overloaded. So we searched through papers, papers, papers to find that pin number from last year...all to no avail. Emotions were running high (very high for one middle-aged woman who just happens to have hit an emotional stage of life!).

At 10:45 p.m., the pin number arrived in the email! The FAFSA got signed, and all the deadlines have been met! This morning I've been letting the two who are not adults sleep in, the two who probably need it least. Or not - as maybe listening to all of us, without being able to do anything about it, was just as stressful. But I think what I'm really doing is giving myself a morning off. And I am not even going to feel guilty about it! We have worked through snow days, so this will be our "snow delay". Hmm, there's still a little snow around that tree out there...