Building...

We are adding on to our home right now.  Living in half a house is proving to be pretty fun but takes some flexibility.  The kids like to play piano a lot.  We are the rare parents that have to kick kids off of the piano and into bed, eating, school, general self-care and good hygiene.  The piano obviously has to stay with us in an easy to access place during the entire course of construction.  We now have a piano in our kitchen.  Did I tell you we are now living in the kitchen and bedrooms and that is it?  Too true.  We eat at the kitchen counter, we read in bed.   Lucky the jackhammering is over for now.  At some points in the last two weeks, there was jackhammering right beneath the floor of our house as they removed the massive fireplace foundation.

Back to the piano.  Last night we had a meeting with a solar power contractor (yes, we are considering this again . . . more about that later).  We are not going to invite contractors for meetings into our bedroom, so we all crammed into the kitchen with the kids eating dinner (all of us still in taekwondo gear) and getting going for bed.  J wanted to play piano for a while during the meeting.  Luckily, we have a piano that has a silent mode.  He remembered this and I watched him proudly as he donned the headphones and got set up to go.  Well silent is not exactly silent and he was playing something pretty fiercely.  You still hear the hammers hitting the strings but the soundboard is pulled back, or something like that.

After listening to it and trying to concentrate on what the solar sales guy was presenting, it dawned on me what the piano was sounding like:  muffled jackhammering.

Off to the races!

I am very involved in a fascinating Spring ritual called college admissions.  Of course, you can see from my picture that my kids are way too young to be participating in the process for themselves yet.  Oh. Wait. I do hear other moms of my 6th grader ALREADY talking about what would be good for college....

Seriously, I have a volunteer position for my alma mater that is practically a full time job for a few weeks in the winter months and now in April.  I coordinate all the interviewing and enrollment activities for a few counties in Northern California.  A Few Counties.  That sounds big.  Well it is big space-wise (it would take me 2-3 hours to drive from one end of the region to the other), but I get around the same number of applicants as some of my counterparts who cover a much smaller area--the San Francisco Peninsula exclusive of San Francisco, for example.  

Let me start off by saying that I can't talk too much about the numbers or anything because it is confidential.  Actually, there is not much I can talk about here because of privacy issues, both for me, the volunteer team, and the applicants.

I will tell you that the students were admitted on Monday and we were allowed to start contacting them on Wednesday night.  They have one month to carefully consider their options, including financial aid and such, and they have to reply to the schools by the beginning of May.  With Spring Break, Passover, usually Easter (not this year), etc., the timing is truly tight.  In addition, these are all high-achieving seniors who still have a full slate of schoolwork and extracurriculars to support.  I don't know how they do it.  Having witnessed this for several years, I am so impressed with the composure and maturity of the seniors that get in and manage to make it all work.  I just hope that they all make the right choice for themselves, although many of them would be happy and successful anywhere.

What do we do now?  We hold "receptions" to introduce them to the local alumni community.  They also other admitted students from the area.  Ours is this Sunday and there is a bit to do before then because the timing is very tight.  The energy that night is amazing.  The kids come from different places and all get along so well.  The parents learn a few things and have relief and anxiety in their faces at the same time (unless they are extremely wealthy or not so well off--in either case, money is not an issue for college).

The hard thing about this week is thinking about the stellar kids who did not get in.  The application numbers get higher every year and the admission rate gets lower.  It is hard because these are such good kids with real stories.  You interview them and you get to like them.  You make lifelong connections with them.  You become a mentor for them.  Some get in but most don't.  It is hard.  This year, none of the seniors I personally interviewed were offered admission.  I try to cut off contact and move on, but there is one that I will be calling.