My daughter Caitlin wrote an item on her blog the other day about how tough it's been learning how to function in the cold, cruel world after leaving the cocoon of college.

She graduated in May and is spending a year in Baltimore, working with a volunteer services program that helps disadvantaged kids.

"First of all, did you know that you have to go grocery shopping every week in the real world?" she wrote. "I mean, I suspected milk and bread could go bad... But, it turns out that everything else can grow mold too! Tomatoes, broccoli, rice, garbage cans, lunch meat, bed sheets. You have to clean or eat all of these things regularly or throw them out. And money doesn't grow on trees (though mold probably grows on money) so it's good to not have to buy new bed sheets every other week..."

She goes on to write about how challenging it's been to learn household tasks. (She lives in a house with four other young people.)

"Bathrooms clean people," she wrote. "Why can't they clean themselves? Well, it turns out they can't because human beings are filthy and disgusting. Within nine days our brand new tub had a gray ring around it and it stopped draining completely. We took measures to correct the situation with Drano and something called a 'hair strainer.' I assure you, it's as gross as it sounds..."

Ah yes, the perils of early adulthood. I've been trying to prepare my kids for their first transitional months away from home or college for years. But everything I've told them has apparently just gone in one ear and out the other without spending any time in between.

All three of my kids chose to white-noise my didactic stories of what I call the "hot-dog egg foo yung" era of my life.

This is the two-year period after college when I had to learn from scratch how to cook, clean and balance a checkbook.

For my financial record keeping, I employed a system my friend Dave refers to as "mystery checking," whereby you keep your brain active and the fear-of-overdraft adrenaline flowing by only logging checks once every couple of weeks, by memory, and then guessing how much money is left in your account. As long as the guesstimate is within $50, I learned, the banks won't threaten to have you arrested.

Cleaning wasn't much of an issue because I lived alone in an apartment. As long as I replaced my roach motel, ran the dishwasher and washed clothes once or twice a month I was fine.

Food was the biggest challenge. All I knew how to cook when I graduated from college were frozen pizzas, hot dogs and fried eggs, which was OK because that's all I could afford. My favorite homemade dish during this stage of my life was a mixture of egg, hot dogs and whatever else I had on hand -- usually peas, corn or cubes of pepperoni pilfered from a frozen pizza -- that I tossed in the frying pan, doused with ketchup and called hot-dog egg foo yung.

I later found something that miraculously cleaned up my bank account, dramatically improved my diet and forced me to acknowledge that frequent flushing and aim improvement is not enough when it comes to bathroom cleanliness.

It's called a spouse.

I'd hoped my kids would absorb these lessons long before I did. But Caitlin, our first born, is learning the hard way.

"There is WAY more to adulthood than having to staple your papers before you bring them to class," she wrote on her blog.

All three of Greg Sellnow's children were born and raised in Rochester. He invites feedback to his columns at (507) 285-7703. Next, he writes about the (not-so) fading vocation of journalism.

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