top ten ways my daughter’s $80,000 college degree (and subsequent marriage to the wonderful nathan) has cost me

Today's blog entry is all in good fun. I ADORE my daughter more than you can imagine! However, this will make little sense unless you read Daughter-Face’s blog entry first. I highly recommend it. She’s funny.

10. I had to teach myself Adobe Photoshop. But just the Elements version. No money left over after her tuition to pay for the full program or the cushy classroom instruction for me.

9. I had to pay taxes on daugher-face’s car for 2008 (even though she has been driving it for 3 years) ‘cause she’s been so busy pouring coffee that she STILL hasn’t dealt with her expired tags!

8. While she studied grammar and Greek, I spent mucho bucks on Starbuck’s Gift Cards to enable her caffeine addiction, thus once again contributing to the training for her current job sloshing Joe.

7. Her dorm furniture that I not only bought, but spent hours putting together with a screwdriver, Q-tips, and my bloody fingers wasn’t good enough for her to take to her new “married” apartment. Her new living room now consists of my mirror, my floor lamp, my coffee table, and my comfy chair that she took from me, leaving my current living room naked and empty.

6. New shirts and hoodies for every club function, every campus event, every mission trip, every new dorm cost me $29.95 every other week for two years so she could look cute in the latest logo-laden cotton top. And she still brought home laundry for me to wash.

5. Her $80,000 journalism degree has succeeded in making her blog funnier than mine, thus leaving me feeling inadequate and unvalidated. I ask you, where are my accolades? Huh, where?!

4. We lived off Ramen noodles at home for four years so she could cook in her PRIVATE dorm room with that nifty little hot pot, cute little plastic plates, cups, can opener, and matchy-matchy little towels that she is now complaining about. (Oh, and daughter-face, next time you’re frying chicken, don’t throw tequila into the greasy pan. That will prevent your little kitchen fires. Just a helpful hint from mommy.)

3. She has a minor in Greek worth about $25,000 of that $80K. Unless they serve coffee in “Alpha” cups and “Omicron” mugs at her new Coffee Shop Job, I’m not sure how helpful it actually was. At least it helped her write her sorority name: Alpha Sigma Sigma

2. Again, no money for expensive geography lessons for me. No fun-filled trips out of the country. No last-minutes weekend excursions to New Orleans with my fiance’. (Though I did have that one really exciting outing to the Saddle Boy competition in Fort Worth in September, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.)

And I had to self-locate the island of Saba on Google maps. Took me forever. Like 3 minutes.

1. I tried to fix my daughter up with a certain boy from home when she was 14 (in future tense since she couldn’t date until 16). I tried to fix her up with him again when she was 16, and then again when she was 20, but NOOOOOOO. So instead, I spent $80,000 on a Christian college education so she could find her a good man. What did she do after she earned her degree? Went off and married the boy I tried to fix her up with 8 years earlier!!!

$80,000. Sheesh.