Mid December

 

We had quite a snow on Saturday, and then the temps dropped. Right now it is Monday morning and seven degrees, up from close to 0 last night. BRRRRR!

We had two kids working on Saturday and both had to drive home through a snowstorm. One was Angela, who is a very new driver. She made it just fine, and I am so thankful!

Big news! Isaac has accepted an offer for an engineering job!  We are very excited and happy for him. The job is about an hour away from us, so he will need to find an apartment. The start date is late January so he has about a month to get organized and moved.

Joseph is also apartment hunting but his job is close to us so he needs an apartment nearby. The boys were considering living together but with Isaac's new job, that won't be happening, which is totally fine. Both boys will be making enough that they can comfortably live alone.

Neither big boy has any debts. We were able to pay for Isaac's college without needing debt either for him or us. I have opinions about college loan debt. First, yes, it is necessary sometimes. Second, universities have been jacking up tuition prices crazily for decades and I think the ready influx of money through student loans is part of the problem. Universities haven't had any reason to be careful with money when loans are so readily available. And then the poor students, who were young and financially stupid in their late teens and early twenties, find themselves having to pay back huge loans, which is really hard on them.

There has been this big fuss about nursing degrees being shifted away from "professional" to something else... nurses have been screaming about how the Trump admin is evil for saying nursing isn't a profession.

Of course nursing is a profession. Everyone knows that. Everyone I know admires nursing as a profession. Very hard job! The question is weather a nurse should be able to borrow over 100K to get a nursing degree. Nurses often make good money but wow, 150K is so much!

Social work is also admirable and doesn't pay well, and young people with social work degrees should REALLY think about loans and how they will affect them in the future.

It will be very odd having the big boys out of our house, but it is also a good step in their journey toward full adulthood. There are so many things we are taking care of that they don't have to think about -- soon they will have to determine what to cook and when to grocery shop and all that stuff.

A few comments on health problems of my own: my plantar fasciitis has popped up again and I am wearing my boot at night. My foot is better than it was a week ago, so that is good. Still hurts some.

Mostly I am in fine shape for a 56 year old, but there is a little of this and a little of that bugging me. I am grateful for padded boots and doctors.