[lindyhop]

My baby, my roommate of 26 years, has moved into his own apartment. I told him when he started college that I would be glad to support him while he was in school, I just didn't think he would become a professional student.

A couple of months ago I had my "you need to work on your financial independence" speech all ready when he told me he was looking for an apartment with his old high school friend, Mike. Even though I was trying to push him towards the door, my first reaction was total panic. How will he manage financially when he doesn't even pay me for his portion of car insurance and gas? And he's leaving me, I'll be so lonely!

Well, I realized pretty quickly that his financial issues are his problem and I just have to be more insistent about the money he owes me. And because we have opposite schedules most of the time, I rarely saw him.

My next thought was his room, I get to use his room! I have too much stuff and barely have room to look through it all and figure out what I should keep and what I should throw away. So now I'm all excited about being able to get rid of clutter, even if all I do at first is dump everything into his room.

Of course his room has to be empty first and that's going to take a while. He moved his bed and a few other things on Thursday but when I got home and looked in his room I didn't even notice at first. The room was still full. I've told him I don't want to store his stuff and his new place has a lot of storage space so someday I'll have my extra space.

This is an interesting time since it's as much a transition for me as it is for him. I'm looking forward to seeing how things turn out for both of us.