So it’s a sad day for us when it becomes apparent that one of them is coming to the end of its life.

On the way home from our walk on Saturday, our 11-year-old German shepherd, Xena,  tweaked her hips as she turned to greet another dog. Her right back leg gave out from under her and she couldn’t regain any strength in it. Taking a few steps at a time, she was able to wobble slowly back home.

We were lucky to be able to get an appointment with the vet later that morning and as the vet explained it, there is inflammation surround some nerves so basically, she doesn’t have feeling in her legs and that’s why she can’t get them underneath her. Also, as is common in shepherds, she has always had bad joints and there is degeneration because of her age. We left with some anti-inflammatory medication that might or might not improve her condition.

We are thankful that for now, her appetite is good and she doesn’t seem to be a pain. It’s just painful for us to watch her move with such extreme difficulty.

We’ve never been through this process with a pet who has been such an important part of our family. Tears were shed when my daughter’s two pet rats died, but we didn’t feel much of a loss when the numerous fish and fire-belly toad came to the end of their lives; I find it a lot harder to feel a connection with a creature that doesn’t have fur to stroke.

We want to do the right thing for Xena so I’ll be calling the vet tomorrow to get some advice. In the meantime, all we can do is look into her brown eyes and tell her the truth, “You’re a good dog.”

Some of the letters even started to resemble the credit card offers we used to get by the dozen when credit was cheap and easy. But instead of offering “0% interest for 12 months,” they were offering her “No application fee and we’ll waive the essay requirement!” Unless she gets a letter that screams, “Full-ride for four years!” she just puts the letters into the “Thanks, but no thanks” file.

Just like when we got credit card offers because of our credit score, Valerie is getting these letters because of her score – but in her case it’s her SAT and ACT scores, GPA, class rank and AP scores. Apparently for those colleges, as well as some of the UC’s, she would be accepted based solely on her strong numbers.

But for the private schools, high test scores alone aren’t enough to ensure acceptance.  They’re putting together a freshman class that has a mix of strengths and interests – and even a little bit of quirkiness. After going to a number of presentations by the schools, I came away with the impression that they review the student’s applications as if they are developing a guest list for a really interesting party. Test scores are important but they also want kids who can do more than use a #2 pencil to fill in the correct bubble.

So, if that’s the case, how do you showcase your student beyond just what can be recorded on an application form? In a sense, how do you market a student? And placing an ad in the school’s newspaper probably isn’t the best way.

 Since Steve is in the marketing business, it wasn’t a big leap for him to come up with the idea of making a video of Valerie. We interviewed her on camera talking about what she is passionate about and what she hopes to get from her college experience. In editing it, Steve cut in some samples of her art portfolio as she talked about specific pieces.

Are we being stage parents who think their daughter is so special that an admissions director has to see a film of her in order to fully appreciate who she is as a person? Not entirely. I think it’s more akin to the father of the talented place-kicker who sent videos to 200 schools so they could see his son in action, and as a result, got a full scholarship. Our attitude is that if the schools are willing to take the time to look at the video, it won’t hurt her chances of being accepted and could certainly help.

At this point, we’ve sent a link to the video to admissions directors at two schools. One of these people was out-of-town so we don’t know what his reaction, if any, will be to receiving it. However, the dialogue that followed when the gal at the other school watched it was very interesting.

Steve first got an email back from her basically saying that it was too long and didn’t focus enough on what admissions departments would really be interested in. Steve listened to her comments, edited it down, and exchanged many emails with her. At her request, Steve sent her a revised version. Thinking he was done, he was surprised when a couple of days later, he got an email from her that starts, “I’ve been thinking about Valerie’s video…” and goes onto suggest that he put back in some of the footage he had edited out.

Did the video get the attention of an admissions officer and make Valerie not just a name on an application but a real person to them? Most definitely. Does this mean she’ll be accepted and get lots of financial aid? That’s our hope.

It’s hard for me to argue that he should have taken a more considered approach; he got accepted at his first two choices.

Then I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about parents who quit their jobs so they could devote themselves completely to helping their child through the college application process. Based on my experience with our son, this seemed like the higher education version of parents doing their kid’s fourth grade science fair project. Shouldn’t the students be filling out their own applications?

Fast forward a year to our driven, type A(+)daughter’s college application process. After selecting nine potential schools, she created an Excel grid of their due dates, essay requirements, contact info, etc and posted it on her wall. Then the process seemed to come to a halt.

When we would ask her, she said that she wanted to do some more “art” for her college app portfolio. After a couple of weeks of this we realized that she was probably over-whelmed and was using adding to her portfolio as an excuse to put off tackling the immense amount of work to apply. No two schools have exactly the same requirements and navigating her way through complex websites to figure the details was certainly daunting.

Then there are applications themselves…supplemental applications and departmental supplements to the supplemental apps…and all of them require specific essays. And don’t try and take any shortcuts because as the University of Southern California website warns, “We can tell when a recycled essay has been changed only slightly to fit one of the topics.”

With the early action deadline for some of the candidate schools fast approaching, we sat her down and after two hours of “whatevers” and moping, we extracted an admission that she needed our help.

Since that conversation, any time that Valerie isn’t doing homework, has been spent sitting in front of the computer with her as she slogs her way through this tedious process. She’s still the one doing all the work; I just proofread her essays and encourage her as she clicks “Submit” that her hard work will be rewarded.

And here’s good news, she doesn’t even have to wait to find out where she’s been accepted to reap her reward because another two weeks and she’ll mostly be done – after which I’ve promised Valerie and myself a shopping trip to Nordstrom Rack.

Wherever Valerie eventually enrolls, I have now an appreciation for that mom who quit her job to get her daughter into a good school. Applying to college may not be a full-time job, but it certainly feels like it.

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.

When I was about 10 years old, I can remember sitting on the couch and looking through Gourmet with my older sister, Carolyn.  She aspired to a more sophisticated style of cooking than the very basic meat-and-potatoes fare that our mother prepared. So when she found a recipe in Gourmet that appealed to her, she cut it out and filed it in a binder under the appropriate tab of soup, salad, appetizer, etc. And then at some point she would cook from the recipes; complicated directions and hard-to-find ingredients never stood in her way.

What I took away from that time with Carolyn was that if you really wanted to be someone who knew about food and entertaining, Gourmet was the essential magazine to read. So when I got married, I began subscribing to it. I pictured myself being the gracious hostess and using recipes from Gourmet for the many dinner parties we were going to have.

My image of evenings filled with luscious food, sophisticated cocktails, and witty conversation turned out to be more fantasy than reality. But even when our children were little and plain pasta and chicken tenders were standard fare, I still looked forward to Gourmet arriving in the mail each month. I would read it cover-to-cover and if I found a recipe I liked, particularly in Gastronomie Sans Argent, I would highlight it in the index with the hope of making it.

The lush Thanksgiving and Christmas issues were like a gift arriving in the mailbox. I loved looking at the tables set with layers-upon-layers of china and reading the recipes that required so many steps to make that a person would have to quit their job to be able to have time to make them. And the gorgeous cookies. I still have on my shelf the December 1992 issue that has the recipe for Biscotti De Greve. Page 164 of that issue is now very splattered and wrinkled; I’ve been making that recipe for biscotti to give as Christmas gifts for the past 17 years.

I had probably been subscribing to Gourmet for more than 20 years when I began noticing changes in it that were certainly the result of Ruth Reichl being hired as editor. The most obvious difference was that the photos in the magazine started to be staged with models. Previously, the photography that accompanied the recipes was only of food; people weren’t shown eating it.

Once the editors added people, the food was no longer the focus. Instead of looking at a gorgeous cake or beautifully plated meal, my eye was drawn to the models who were cast to set the scene. The photos that accompanied recipes for a child’s birthday party or a family gathering all looked so artificial and staged. They always seemed to be saying, “The setting is perfect, the food is perfect, we look perfect and we know it.”

When only the food was photographed, I could have the hope that if I made a particular recipe, my finished product would look as beautiful as the one in their photo. But now, there was no way I could ever measure up to the scene they had set.

It was enough of a turnoff that about two years ago I decided not to renew my subscription.

When I read in the Wall Street Journal article that Condé Nast Publications which owns Gourmet told its editors to only fly first class and stay in top hotels, the editorial attitude of the magazine began to make more sense to me. These people indeed felt privileged and that came through in the magazine. Gourmet’s motto of “Good Living” had become “Smug Living.” That’s not a quality that tends to keep readers.

When anybody asks for volunteers, you generally won’t find my name on the top of the sign up sheet. But this request was hard to ignore; it was only for the morning, my calendar was clear for the 10^th, I could procrastinate cleaning our own house, and it was an opportunity to give a little something back to the city that has been our home for the past 15 years.

People were already chatting and holding cups of coffee to keep their hands warm when I arrived at the Fairgrounds parking lot. At 8:00, when Mayor Pam welcomed the volunteers and thanked everyone who was involved in the putting the day together, several hundred people – all dressed in grubby clothes and ready to work – had gathered. After a brief blessing was offered on the event, we regrouped to get the details of where we would be working.

I don’t really know the full scope of the jobs that were done, I overheard talk about painting fire hydrants and picnic tables and picking up trash. Our church was assigned to spread mulch around the bases of trees at five different parks and that 10 yards of shredded bark would be waiting for us at each location thanks to good advance planning by the Parks Department. My daughter and I had spread 20 yards of mulch around our backyard last summer, so I felt highly qualified for the task at hand.

We divided ourselves into teams for each of the parks, and since I live on the west side of town, Walnut Park seemed as good a place as any to put my mulch moving skills into action. There were four of us who headed off to Walnut Park and thankfully one who had thought to bring a wheelbarrow. I shot home for reinforcements: more shovels and a couple of garbage cans that are my mulch moving medium of choice.

Experience should have shown me that 10 yards of mulch looks like a deceptively small amount to move. About half way through we were joking that the pile of mulch was like the Bible story about the oil that never runs out because the mulch seemed to be replenishing itself.

We kept at our weeding, hauling, dumping and spreading and in a little less than three hours, the last of the mulch pile was swept up and all the younger trees in the park wore collars of clean mulch.

What did I get out of the day besides sore latissimus dorsi  muscles? An opportunity to get to know some folks in our church who I didn’t know before yesterday, gratification that I took part in an event that beautified Petaluma, and gratitude that I was moved to serve in this small 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.

Let me share with you what put this in black and white for me.

Our daughter, Valerie, who is a high school senior, got a brochure in the mail titled “Introducing the University” from the University of California system. Of course, it was filled with photos of good-looking, ethnically-diverse students participating in all sorts of intriguing activities that represent the college experience at a particular UC campus. It was obvious from the happy expressions on their faces that none of them were thinking about their student loans.

The brochure also had a single page for each UC school that gave the 2009 admission profile for freshmen. There was a little pie chart showing the percentage that were accepted and their average high school GPA and SAT scores. This profile page looked familiar so I flipped through my file labeled “General College Info” and there I found the same information except it was for 2003. These pages had been photocopied and handed out at a college information night I attended for our son six years ago.

So now I could compare apples to apples and see if it really was harder to get into a UC in 2009 than it was in 2003.

Looking at UC Davis: in 2003 they admitted 56.8% of applicants and the average high school GPA was 3.86. In 2009, the admission percentage was 46.2% and the GPA was 4.0. Next page; UC Irvine. They admitted 53.8% with a 3.89 GPA in 2003, and in 2009, they admitted 42.3% and the average GPA had gone up to 4.01. Wow, they are admitting about 10% fewer applicants. It seems as if only students loading up on AP classes so they can super-size their GPAs should even bother to apply.

In my small statistical comparison, the only UC school which increased its admission percentage was UC Berkeley. They admitted 23.9% of applicants in 2003, and in 2009, they admitted slightly more, 26.6% which is still  basically one out of every four applicants. The gates into UC Berkeley have not been flung open; the statistics show that now they are letting in a couple of salutatorians in addition to the masses of valedictorians.

The piece of information that really amazed me about Berkeley and the other big UC schools was the huge numbers of applications that they receive. More than 55,000 students applied to UCLA and almost 50,000 applied to Berkeley.

So that means that these schools are receiving 50,000 or more essays that are supposed to be read and evaluated as part of the selection process. The thought of reading 5,000 or 10,000 essays boggles the mind, but 50,000? And I have to wonder; does the essay that an over-achieving high school student spent hours crafting get the same consideration whether it’s essay number 49,899 or essay number 130?

That leaves me with one piece of advice for my daughter about the process, “Valerie, get your application in early.”

Next week: paying for college.

The rep told me that we could get a better deal on our package of phone services if we signed up for AT&T Universal Messaging. And as a thank you, they would send us a $25 Visa gift card. OK, fine. Sign me up.

I hung up and forgot about the entire phone call until a letter from AT&T arrived in the mail a couple of months later. Instead of the usual “your contract is about to expire and your rates could go up” message, enclosed was the promised gift card.

While an unexpected $25 isn’t exactly winning the lottery, I was happy to take the money and run an errand to Target. All the items that I buy there that get entered in the “Household” category in QuickBooks can really add up, so this was the perfect time to use the gift card to shave a little off the total.

At the checkout stand, I handed the AT&T gift card to the cashier and watched the screen so I could feel the victory of saving some money. She swiped it once, and nothing happened. And then again without so much as a penny coming off the $95.36 that I had spent.

Neither the cashier nor her supervisor had an explanation as to why the card wouldn’t go through; I had definitely activated it. Now I felt like $25 had been taken away from me, so I was determined to find out why the card didn’t work.

At home, I retrieved the letter that accompanied the gift card from the trash and called the number for “Card activity.” After I made my way through the phone tree, all I was able to get was an automated voice telling me that I had a negative $15.62 balance. Wait, they’re giving me $25, how did I end up owning them money on a prepaid gift card?

I tried the number for customer service on the letter. After making my way through the phone tree and techno-pop hold music, I was connected with a sweet girl who confirmed, that yes, I had a negative balance. I explained that I had tried to use the card at Target but that it wouldn’t go through. She conferred with her supervisor and said to give it a few days for the transactions to clear and then the card would show the correct balance.

Two weeks later, nothing had changed when I checked the balance online at www.myattgiftcard.com. I called again. I was put on hold again then given a different number to call. I spoke with David (although I’m sure his name was Rajnesh) and he referred me back to the original number. I called again and got the same story.

At this point you may be thinking, why am I pursuing this with such vengeance? It’s not like I’m really out $25; it was money that was never mine in the first place. Two reasons: I’m cheap and I want my $25 and second, I love a challenge. So if it’s me versus AT&T, I’m up for it.

I spoke with four different reps and three different supervisors, until I got one that said that AT&T had sent out a batch of “hot” cards, meaning they actually didn’t have any funds on them. They apologized for the inconvenience and said I could expect to receive a new gift card in about six to eight weeks.

Last week, I got my new card. And when I tried to activate it, I got a recording telling me the status prevents them from activating it and to call the AT&T Customer Care Center.

Yes, I’m conceding defeat. An hour of phone-tree hell made sense if I was at least going to get $25 for my effort. Three hours…not so much. As Cesar Millan says to a bulldog and Steve sometimes has to say to me, “Drop it.”

So how does this experience affect my opinion of AT&T? Did I think more positively about the company before the gift card fiasco? If their goal was to create customer loyalty and generate warm and fuzzy feelings, it had the opposite effect. And these days, companies need all the goodwill they can get.

There are, after all, advantages to acquiring a piece of furniture that has already been broken in by kids and pets; anything that could happen to a sofa already has happened, so everybody can just have a seat and relax. Feet on the couch, who cares!

But alas, no takers.  In the meantime, our loveseat sat warm and cozy in the garage while our daughter’s car shivered in the driveway.

The only option left was to call up a local charity and schedule a pick-up. I had been resisting doing this for fear of rejection; whether or not they will take an item is at the driver’s discretion and a few years ago we had a close call when the Salvation Army almost refused to haul away a sofa that I considered to be in pretty good condition. I was a little shaken to find out that the Salvation Army has higher standards in home décor than I do.

So rather than risk having the same picky driver inspect our loveseat, I instead called the local Catholic charity to schedule a pick up – at least that’s what I hoped it would be. While I was on the phone giving our contact info to a very nice gal, I tried to get a sense of how particular they are about the condition of items they will accept.

“So if you can see the pattern of the fabric through the cat hair, that’s ok, right? Steve was across the desk gesturing wildly at me, certain that the mere mention of cats would be enough to doom any possibility of them taking it.

Steve was the one who was going to be home on the day they were scheduled to come. Throughout the day I kept checking in with him. “Have they come, did they take it?”

When I pulled into the driveway late that afternoon, the garage door was open and…yippee!…where the loveseat had been was now empty space waiting for my daughter to pull her car in.

Of course, I wanted to know right away from Steve how the transaction had gone. Did he have to bribe them to take it? No, a payoff wasn’t involved but it was Steve’s quick thinking that saved us from having to chop up the loveseat for firewood.

Steve said the driver gave it a thorough once over and said with a half-smile, “The problem is it has a lot of dog hair.” Even though I had used the “Warning: Sucks up small children and animals” pet hair attachment on my new vacuum.

“Wait a minute,” said Steve and he shot upstairs to retrieve the Pledge Fabric Sweeper I had bought at Target a few days earlier. The driver immediately recognized it as the product he had seen TV ads for. In a few strokes, Steve had swept off about a pound of assorted pet hair. “Wow, does it work on cat fur, too?” Which of course Steve’s demonstration showed that it does. “I gotta get one of those.”

So everyone was happy. With the loveseat thoroughly de-thatched, the charity was willing to take it, we had our garage space back, and Pledge has sold another sweeper.