American flag in my living room.

Jeremy did buy a Minnesota sweatshirt for Vince – sized L. But somehow it’s the smallest L anyone has ever seen. So it’s mine. We had to tell Vince that the more prestigious the department, generally the worse the undergraduate learning experience is because the department gets famous for producing famous research so then the faculty’s main job is to produce the famous research and maintain their labs and tend to their funding and graduate students and then undergraduate classes are the last on their list of priorities. And then Vince asked me if all my teachers in college were terrible and I said that I had a bunch of teachers that were quite good and the classes were great but I also had many many classes that were just terrible and incoherent and I wished I had youtube in the day because I did not want/need to learn math theory which was pretty much all I got in class. I just want to know how to do the math problems. Jeremy had the experience of being a TA at Caltech and watched his advisor prepare for class and the professor would intentionally skip over the introduction, overview or review because “these were Caltech students and that would be too easy for them” which resulted in me sitting in class totally lost from the very first line at the chalkboard. I have never felt as stupid in my life as sitting in graduate classes where the first equation contains 17 greek letters and I had no idea what any of those letters meant. Jeremy piped up and explained to Vince – that is the argument for a small liberal arts school – the professors are there primarily to teach undergraduates. You still have a few days to apply if you want to. Haverford’s deadline is the 15th. Vince said that he’d think about it.

Vince asked if I would make him go to any particular college and I said generally no. He would get to pick it himself. I said there are thousands of kids at these universities, you only need about five really good pals. You’ll find five good friends anywhere. Vince laughed and said – mom, you only need five, I need about twenty five. And I said – really? And he said – I need 25 because I need three groups of friends. The goofy/fun set I can just relax with, the deep conversation set who I can talk to about my problems with and the the smart set who will help me with my schoolwork/classes.

Jeremy promised me that I’d get new rugs for Christmas. (I got new rugs and a blood pressure cuff for Christmas. I’m so old and boring). We went to IKEA last week and picked out rugs for the living room and the bedroom. (Look at photo below.) I now have a gigantic American flag in my living room. Sometimes I can be very oblivious. I did not do this on purpose. And then I thought I should somehow fix this because are we really patriotic in this way? Is this what I want my guests to see when they first walk into the house? And then I decided it was fine and I’m going to leave it and not feel self conscious about it. After we put the rug down, Edda tripped on the edge of the rug and fell flat on her back and hit her head. Ugh. We kept an eye on her and she seemed fine and we readjusted the rug to hopefully prevent future tripping. And then, later this weekend, when I was lifting her off the toilet we almost both fell again – I was wearing slippery socks and she tilted a certain way and I thought for sure I was going to drop her and send her slamming into the corner of the sink, but somehow I did manage to slow the tumble, so she did come in contact with the sink with her cheek, but by the time that happened, she was moving slowly enough that it was just a gentle tap and I was able to re-right her from that position.