On February 9^th, our daughter Valerie celebrated having her driver’s license for one year. As a parent, this is one of those good news / bad news moments.

In case you aren’t familiar with the rules regarding teenage drivers, the DMV issues a provisional driver license that has certain restrictions.

For the first year that a teenager has their license or until they turn 18, they can’t transport anyone under the age of 20 unless there is a licensed driver over the age of 25 also in the car. What this meant for us is that Valerie couldn’t drive her younger sister to school or give her friends rides to anywhere.

(Yes, I know parents often allow their teenagers to drive siblings to school saying that if the teenage driver has a note showing that the parents have given them permission, it’s ok. I did a little research and according to the DMV website, the intent of the law is that teens are only permitted to drive siblings if mom and dad are in an accident and are declared brain dead and you have a note signed by a doctor…ok, I’m exaggerating. But the DMV’s point is that driving a sibling is only to be used in definite emergencies, not just for the convenience of the parents.)

The second restriction for the first 12 months is that the teen driver cannot drive between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am. This meant that at 11:01, I would hear the garage door opening and I could go to sleep knowing that Valerie was home safely.

So now that these restrictions no longer apply, the good news is that Valerie has a lot more freedom about who she can drive and when she can drive them. I love it that she can drive her eighth grade sister to school most mornings or pick her up if Steve or I can’t get there. It’s really great to have another chauffeur in the house.

And it takes the pressure off of Valerie if she is at a friend’s house and at 11:00 there’s still 15 minutes to go until the end of the movie they’re watching. She can stay until the party is really over.

However, the restrictions that were in place for that first year of driving – no other teenagers in the car and home by 11:00 – gave me a certain amount of security because I knew she was driving without the added distraction of having someone else in the car and I knew exactly when she would be home.

Watching your daughter pull out of the garage and drive down the hill on their own for the first time really tells a parent that you’re not in control of your child’s life anymore.

But watching her drive away with another teenager in the car and the opportunity to stay out late…let me insert here that Valerie is a very responsible girl…I’m still going to double up on my prayers.

As part of our effort to not get stressed out and lighten the mood in our household, our family went to see a comedy heavyweight…Gabriel Iglesias, who by his own admission, tips the scales at 400 pounds. We saw the earlier of his two Friday night shows at the Wells Fargo Center.

We first became aware of Gabriel Iglesias when my daughters were flipping channels one night and landed on Comedy Central. His routine was very funny, if slightly R-rated in terms of language and subject matter. But his ability to tell a funny story, and tell a story funny, won us over.

I saw in the newspaper that he was going to be at the Wells Fargo Center. However, I was concerned about whether his live performance would be family-friendly fare because of what we had seen in his routine on TV and later when Jennifer had looked him up on YouTube. So when I went to buy tickets at the box office, I specifically asked if the show had “Mature Content.” For example, that description was given for Larry, the Cable Guy. I was assured that Gabriel’s show didn’t come with a “warning.”

Good. Our family had also recently seen Brian Regan at the Wells Fargo Center. He is a comedian who is incredibly funny and also very clean in his choice of material and delivery. I really enjoyed his show because I knew he wouldn’t be dropping any F-bombs and his stories would end up in a safe place.

On the day of Gabriel’s show, there was an article about him in the Press Democrat which described him as “squeaky-clean.” That made me wonder if the person writing the article had actually watched any of his routines; Disney Channel material they are not.

However, the article went on to emphasis his “clean comedy.” He said that he used to perform “really, really blue” – meaning adult humor – but that he had made a decision early on in his career to take that out.

Regardless that the person who wrote the article and I have different definitions of “squeaky clean,” I felt reassured that Gabriel would do a show that wouldn’t make me feel uncomfortable while watching it sitting next to my 13-year-old daughter.

There is always an act to warm up the audience before the headliner, and in Gabriel’s case, there were three comedians who performed before him. The first comic was only about a minute into his routine before it was apparent that he hadn’t gotten the memo that this show didn’t include “mature content.” His material and that of the other two comedians who followed him was pretty raunchy.

Also, hearing something in person always has more of an impact than when the same words are said but you’re watching them in a pixilated video in a three-inch window on your computer screen.

So I’m sitting there with my family, thinking this isn’t what I came to see. I felt misled by both the Wells Fargo Center and the newspaper; I had done my research so I would know what we could expect for the evening and this wasn’t it.

So did I get up and leave in a huff? No, the language and material wasn’t any worse than my daughters hear on the front steps of the high school every day. Did we enjoy Gabriel’s performance? Yes, very much so. But I think I’ll skip the live performances and stick with YouTube for a while.

A few months ago, Valerie told us about this really funny comedian who she had seen on a DVD at a friend’s house. So we looked him up on YouTube, and after watching a few of his routines, everyone in our house was a big fan of Brian Regan.

At about the same time, Steve and I had been talking about looking for opportunities to lighten the atmosphere…or as Steve calls it, the “tense-o-sphere” in our house. All too often, we focus too heavily on the immediate stresses and forget how to have fun.

So, when our youngest daughter spotted an ad in the newspaper that Brian Regan was coming to the Wells Fargo Center on January 9, we decided to get tickets for a several reasons. We wanted to show our kids that we are optimistic about the new year by doing something that we don’t typically do; I can’t remember the last time we got ourselves off the couch on a Saturday night and went to a live show.

Also, we would have an event in January to look forward to following the post-holiday letdown. And from what people had to say about Brian Regan on YouTube, I knew we would get a couple of hours of good clean humor that would certainly leave us laughing and lift our spirits.

Last night’s show delivered on all counts. Brian Regan is an incredibly polished performer – the program said he started doing standup in the late 1980’s and we found a video of him on YouTube with a mullet and parachute pants – yet because it’s a live performance there is an element of unpredictability. And when those moments happen, such as when an audience member shouts out something unexpected, his finesse and wit are amazing.

I was concerned that because we had watched a lot of his routines on YouTube that we had seen all his material. That was absolutely not the case; the entire show was fresh for me and the only bit I recognized was his encore routine about his visit to the emergency room which he did because it was a shout out from the audience.

And the funny thing was…and it was funny…that even though I had watched him perform this same routine on a video on YouTube, I enjoyed it even more this time. I guess that’s what makes a really great performer, there’s really nothing spontaneous about the story he’s telling…who knows how many hundreds of times he’s done this routine, yet Brian Regan delivered it as if he was telling it for the first time.

One side note about the evening, just as the show was about to begin, a group of about 10 people was escorted into the theater and sat down in the only vacant seats in the house…which also happened to be the best seats in the house. I didn’t pay much attention until Steve pointed out that John Lasseter was there. For our daughter who dreams of working at Pixar someday, she was more excited about seeing him in person than if Daniel Radcliffe had shown up. I wonder if Brian and John met up after the show and if we’ll hear Brian Regan’s voice in a Disney movie two years from now.

Milton Berle is so right when he said “Laughter is an instant vacation.” We’re  looking forward to our next one on January 29 when we see Gabriel Iglesias at Wells Fargo Center.

This Christmas I really enjoyed seeing what our children bought for their siblings and Steve and me now that they can do their own shopping. Each gift showed that they thought about what the person likes and then combined it with their own interests.

Some highlights: Ethan, our 21-year-old son who is a film production major at San Francisco State, went next door to State to shop at Stonestown Galleria. Ethan and his dad share a love of movies, so it’s no surprise that Steve unwrapped a DVD from Ethan. We don’t take it personally that he chose “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” after all, it’s the classic spaghetti western that according to Ethan, should be in the collection of any serious film aficionado.

For me, Ethan bought a book called Inventory by people who write the A.V. Club for The Onion. It’s a book of lists such as “7 terrible movies on the top 100 all-time box-office hits list” and “15 really good bands with really bad names.” He’s hoping it will give me a crash course in the pop culture world that he inhabits.

Valerie, 17, avoids malls (unless it’s the gleaming, upscale San Francisco Centre) but loves antique stores. Fortunately, Petaluma has plenty of them so that’s where she headed for her Christmas shopping. She bought Steve a 1950’s 35 mm Argus range-finder camera. Although still functional, she brought it because she knows it would make her dad happy to look up from his computer and see this well-crafted old piece of technology.

Jennifer is the only one of the three who isn’t old enough to drive so she put her creativity to use in making hand-crafted gifts. I got an embroidered felt key chain and Steve got a polar bear and penguin vignette (think Hallmark Card store) that she had crafted out of Scupley – a brand of bake-able clay.

Barbies and Legos are great but Christmas is a lot more fun when personalities shine through.

Our family really enjoys outings into San Francisco to take a break from our intense…with the emphasis on “tense” when the stress starts getting to us…focus on work and school. So when I saw that Costco was selling tickets for the King Tut exhibit at the de Young, I thought that would give us the opportunity to plan another day-cation into the City. Plus, I had fond memories of the Tut exhibit because it was one of the first events Steve and I went to as a couple more than 25 years ago.

After buying the tickets at Costco, I went online and chose Sunday at 10am for the day and time; I remember how popular the exhibit had been last time around so I was hoping that a Sunday morning wouldn’t be peak hours. That strategy worked; when we arrived at the de Young we there were only about 20 other people in line. The group of us was ushered quickly into a small room and the doors closed behind us.

Then the room went dark and the video screen lit up; it felt exactly like we were getting on the “Tower of Terror” ride at Disneyland. I was expecting lightening flashes and Rod Serling on the video screen welcoming us to a continuum of time and space. Instead, we heard Omar Sharif’s voice as he narrated a brief history of the boy king. Just like a thrill ride, they wanted to add some drama and build up our sense of anticipation before we entered the mysterious world of mummies and golden sun gods.

Inside the exhibit, we thought that the craftsmanship and sculptural shapes of the pieces were amazing. Valerie particularly liked Tut’s bling; a huge necklace that had a beautiful yellow-green stone scarab as the centerpiece. Jennifer liked that Tut’s tomb contained the 1322 BC version of a Nintendo DS in the form of a two-sided carved game board. Steve’s favorite part of the exhibit was some large photos documenting Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb.

Looking at one of the display cases that contained an embellished dog collar, I couldn’t help but think how prosperous the Egyptians must have been. If you’re living at subsistence level, you’re probably not spending a lot of time thinking about dressing up your dog.

Although there are more than 130 pieces in the exhibit, it didn’t have some of the really large items that I remember seeing when the Tut exhibit came through San Francisco in the late 1970’s. For example, the iconic blue and gold Tut coffin is there, but it’s not the full size piece, it’s a canopic coffinette which is only about 18 inches high. And just when you think that they have led you through all the chambers for a big reveal, the exhibit ends. “Please place your audio tours on the rack by the exit.” Darn, over so soon.

It probably took us about an hour to move through the exhibit and then we spent another hour perusing the de Young museum store. We extended our time in the City with a trip to Haight Street to find a clothing store that Jennifer had found online and we had a great time window shopping in several funky stores along the street. Should I ever need vintage glass taxidermy eyes, I now know where I can get them.

Was the Tut exhibit worth the $26.99 that I paid for each ticket? Probably not, if we went there solely to be blown away by the art and history. For me, going to the exhibit was really about setting aside time to do something together as a family and take a break from college applications and work demands. And that was worth the price of admission.

I am quite sure that there are 609,000 teenagers who are in a better mood this week. That’s the number of high school seniors who submitted their applications to the California State University system by the November 30 deadline, and if they are like my daughter, Valerie, they are relieved that at least one of their applications is done.

Valerie is especially happy because she submitted her applications to the other schools by the Early Action deadline so she is completely and totally done. We celebrated this achievement with a trip to Nordstrom Rack last weekend.

So besides starting early which I wrote about last week, what did we learn from the college application process?

One thing we learned is that applying to college is a family effort. The amount of work required to apply to the recommended six to 10 schools can be overwhelming. Although I had heard the process was more streamlined now that it is done online, that is really not the case. Each of the private schools required different essays and supplemental applications. Valerie needed support in sorting through the details, and at times, a little prodding from us to keep focused.

There were times it took all three of us, Steve, Valerie and me, to decipher the application requirements from a particular school’s website. And it certainly took Steve’s skills with PhotoShop to put Valerie’s portfolio on a CD that met the school’s criteria for dpi, size, files, etc.

I realize that some of what we encountered is specific to applying as an art major and might not be necessary for students going into engineering or business. But they are still going to need your encouragement when they need some additional information in order to complete the application, and like many teenagers, they are reluctant to pick up the phone and call the admission department for help.

If nothing else, your kid is going to want you close by when it’s time to take out a credit card and pay the $60 application fee per school.

But most importantly, get organized as soon as you can. When you’re applying to several types of schools, such as state schools, UCs, and private schools, keeping track of the various requirements and deadlines is challenging. Valerie made a grid in Excel and it proved to be very helpful because as she began researching the school’s websites, she had a place to record the information Down the left hand side of her grid, she listed the schools she was applying to, and then across the top, a column for application due date, if they required a supplemental app, essay requirements, portfolio requirements, etc. And as she completed each application, it gave her a lot of satisfaction to draw a big, fat line through that school on her chart.

The one column that she didn’t have and that I would recommend adding, is for your major. We had to look at the academic programs offered at each school in order to determine if at a particular school, she should apply as a Graphic Design major, or an Art Major in the Design / Media Arts Department. Perhaps if you’re planning to major in biology, the choice of majors among schools might be more consistent. However, I would certainly recommend researching the websites in advance. It really speeds up the process when you sit down to actually do the application, if you don’t have to stop and go back to the website.

Valerie also made a Pendaflex folder for each school so that she had a place to file any mail she received from a school she was applying to. And once she had paid the application fee and printed out a receipt, it gave her a place to file it. This was a good thing because by the end of the process it was all such a blur that without going back to the file, I had totally forgotten that we had submitted and paid for applications for two schools.

College will start her on the road to independence but her, and probably most high school students, need some help to get started.

One of the things I’m thankful for this weekend is that Valerie, our high school senior, has completed her college applications. When she clicked on the “Submit” button on the online app for the last school, there was a huge sense of relief that this time-consuming and often tedious task was behind us. She has done the work and now whether or not she gets accepted is in the hands of the admissions committees. She’ll keep saying her prayers and wait to see what the mail brings in January.

So thinking back on the process, what did we learn? While it’s still fresh in my mind, I thought that for my blog this week and next, I would record some of our thoughts. Although none of these bits of advice are groundbreaking, they may be helpful to parents who have yet to go through the process…and reminders for me when we go through this again in four years with Valerie’s younger sister.

Start early. That sounds obvious. But a friend told me the story of her daughter frantically trying to finish her application on an uncle’s computer after Thanksgiving dinner. No one wants to spend the last weekend in November cramming to complete the applications by the end-of-the-month deadline. And given the quantity of information required by most schools, such as essays, lists of classes and grades, letters of recommendations and transcripts, it would probably be impossible to do it anyway. However, I’ll bet there’s a high school counselor or two with stories about getting panicked calls at home from seniors begging them to give them a printout of their high school record.

Valerie was fortunate to have a teacher who knew how overwhelming college applications could be so she got the process started last year. In her honors junior English class, her teacher assigned the two UC essays as the final writing exercise for the year. So even though Valerie had at least six essays she needed to do for the various schools and departments, she already had two of them done when she started the process. This gave her more time to refine the syntax and correct any elusive typos.

Starting early also allows time for the technological glitches. There were a couple of times when Valerie was ready to complete her application for a particular school but she wasn’t able to log on. We figured that every other student was also trying to check this school off their list and the websites were jammed to the point of not being functional. We were glad that she had a cushion of another 10 days before the deadline.

And I’m sure teachers who are writing letters of recommendation appreciate it when the student doesn’t ask for a letter and then say, “Oh, by the way, I need it tomorrow.” Of course, the student hopes the teacher will enumerate all their wonderful qualities. I think a teacher would be much more predisposed to do that if the student shows some common courtesy and gives them plenty of advance notice.

That’s my thoughts on the applications themselves. Next week I’ll share what we learned about how to get organized to manage the application process.

Last week, I wrote about preparing to say goodbye to our 11-year-old German shepherd, Xena. It turned out that our goodbyes were short and sweet.

While we were at the park on Saturday, she turned sharply and it was as if the thread that was holding her deteriorating hip joints together snapped. She couldn’t get control of her right back leg and her condition worsened on Sunday. By Monday morning, other systems in her body were shutting down and we knew that we were sharing the last few hours of her life.

As with anyone you have loved, when they are gone it’s natural to think back on your life together…

Our life with Xena started when our son was 10. Like many parents, I thought having a dog would be a great lesson in responsibility so we starting thinking about what kind of dog we wanted. We had friends who owned German shepherds and we thought that they were exceptionally handsome and intelligent, so we decided on that breed.

The breeders who we bought her from did Schutzhund training – that’s were they train dogs in obedience, tracking, and chomping down on bad guys in quilted suits until they are told to release. They showed us some videos and it looked really cool and we wanted to train our dog to do that stuff too. So we chose the most aggressive puppy from the litter.

And in keeping with our noble and brave image of shepherds, we named her Xena; “Xena Warrior Princess” was an extremely popular TV show at the time.

The only problem was that Xena was my first dog and I didn’t have a clue about how to get her to obey me. Schutzhund training? That was a total fantasy. I was much more concerned with how to get my shoe back after she stole it and bolted into the backyard. I knew she was faster than me and I was beginning to think she was also smarter than me.

And speaking of chewing shoes, I was beginning to think that we had bitten off more than we could chew by choosing a German shepherd. I began to understand why sweet but not very bright golden retrievers were such popular family dogs.

After about four months of this, I thought I had reached the end of my rope…or in this case, leash.  I was about ready to put an ad in the newspaper for “A Complete German shepherd package, including the dog, crate, Dogloo, kennel, food and accessories. A $4,000 value, yours for $150.”

But then things improved; Xena calmed down and we got help. We hired a wonderful trainer who trained me in how to work consistently with Xena so that she would predictably “come” when called and could even walk by my side off leash through a crowd of people.

In our years together, I got into the rhythm of having a dog and I found that I really liked it. Why bother going for a walk if I don’t have a dog to do it with? Cooking is more fun when there’s a dog to toss the scraps to. And my house and family was safer because no one was going to mess with a German shepherd…even if she didn’t have Schutzhund training.

So I miss Xena and I miss having a dog. I know we won’t have another Xena, but I’m confident that at some point in the future, we will have another dog. I think that will honor her memory.

If you were standing on our front porch and hearing snippets of the dialogue taking place inside, it would sound something like “Blah blah blah college. College blah blah college.” That is because most of the conversations in our house these days center around the college application process. “I need to write another essay for this college.” “I don’t know how I get my transcript sent to the colleges.” “Does this college require a supplemental app?”

And especially as it gets closer to November 1^st which is the date that the UC schools begin accepting applications, if you have a high school senior in your family like we do, things are getting pretty intense.

From the start of the college selection process, our daughter, Valerie, has been afraid that her hard work in high school wouldn’t be rewarded by being accepted at a school that she saw as being prestigious. All along, we’ve assured her that it’s the student who makes the school and not the other way around. So she is applying to a mix of private, state and UC schools. We believe she could go to a state school and get an excellent education; a big-name school doesn’t guarantee a better college experience or more career options down the road.

We want her to know that hard work always pays off in some form. If not now, later in life. So even if heavy duty financial aid isn’t forthcoming from the college that is at the top of her list, and that means that she ends up attending a state school so that she doesn’t graduate with $200,000 in student loans, she is still the same talented, diligent person that she always was.

So we’ve trying to temper her perceptions about what is a “good school,” particularly after doing some research and finding out that getting into a UC is even more competitive that it was a few years ago.

She recently got some encouraging news. First came a postcard from UC Riverside saying that Valerie was guaranteed acceptance. “Nice,” but not on her list. Then letters from UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara arrived, again saying she was guaranteed acceptance. Like Steve said, “Now we’re getting warm.” And then a day later, an acceptance letter from UC Irvine, one of the nine schools that she is applying to. We pointed out to Valerie that this was proof that her hard work was recognized…whether or not she ends up going there.

For those of us with college-age children, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of good news coming our way.

It’s tougher to get in to college because more kids are applying so the standards for acceptance have gone up. At University of California schools, C+ students need not apply: the average high school GPA of the freshman class of 2009 at UC Davis was 4.0.

It’s rapidly getting more expensive. In 2000, tuition at a UC campus was about $3,500. California Regents are expected to raise next year’s tuition by 45% which takes it to over $10,000 a year. My husband, Steve, remembers attending UCLA in the 1960s when tuition was $60 and a parking pass was $90.

And because attending college is getting more expensive, students are having to borrow more to pay for it. An article in the Wall Street Journal said that now two-thirds of students borrow to pay for college and the average debt load by the time they graduate is over $23,000.

I’ve certainly done my share of whining and stressing over these changes. I get a little twinge in my stomach every time I think about the amount that our son will be paying off for his student loans over the next decade. And I worry that our over-achieving daughter will be disappointed if her only option is to attend a much more affordable state school even if she gets accepted at a more prestigious UC or private school.

Okay, so getting into college isn’t as easy as just sending in your application and if you really want to go, you had better be prepared to make some sacrifices. But is that necessarily a bad thing?

The attitude today seems to be that a college education is a right. And as such, there would be funds to pay for it, whether from your parents or the state. In fact, student protestors at UC Berkeley last week are so convinced of this, that they went so far as calling for tuition to be free. “No cuts, no fees! Education should be free!” But isn’t going to college a privilege?

The value you place on something is in direct proportion to what it costs in terms of time, energy and/or money. And I say this as someone who has just recently begun to understand the value of my college education. My tuition was paid for and I didn’t even have to adjust my living situation when I went to college; I continued living at home, so really the only difference I felt between going to high school and going to college was that it was more difficult to find a parking place. The achievement of a college degree didn’t really mean anything to me because I there wasn’t any struggle involved in getting it. So although it’s becoming more difficult to get a college education, the students may actually value it more.

And is a college degree really necessary for most jobs? For many of us, we have gotten the mindset that going to college after high school is a given. If you’re going to compete in the professional job market these days, you had better have a Bachelor’s Degree.

I have read that the narrowing pipeline into four-year schools, state schools, and eventually junior colleges might mean a resurgence of vocational schools that teach specific, marketable skills. In a tight job market, that certainly sounds like a positive consequence.

So the college system is changing. But what comes out of it could be really good.