Wonderful news, thanks for sharing!

These words are among a set that I pronounce more than one way, more or less ar random. Route oot and route out--I say both. Same with 5 syllable vs 4 syllable laboratory. And either comes out as ee-ther or as eye-ther as predictably as flipping a coin.

I've often wished I had a recording of myself as a young adult--people often commented on my accent and asked where I was from, and I wonder myself what it was they were hearing. Both my parents have fairly generic Western US accents--my mom grew up in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and my dad in California and Utah. At the time I came back to the western US for college I had been out of the country for 9 years, living in 4 different countries with 3 different languages, and most of the English speakers I interacted with were not American (and often not native speakers). I'd clearly picked up *something* but I don't know what. My siblings all had similar experiences of being asked about their accents. It's been years since people have commented on my accent or asked where I am from after hearing me speak, so I assume I have naturalized here.

This exactly--your accent is just the way you speak, the only way not to have an accent would be to not speak at all. Our own speech patterns, the patterns we have grown up with, of course make up our sense of "normal" speech so we recognize differences in the speech of people from elsewhere and identify that as an outside-our-norm "accent"--but of course to the person from elsewhere it is we who are speaking with an outside-the-norm "accent".

I have often regretted that my children could not have been born English--5 of the 7 really, really struggle with the strong rhotic American R. They are often told by people around us that they have a British accent. They of course don't have any true British accent, but words with R in them sound closer to British than American in pronunciation--in spite of years of speech therapy.

I'm so glad you had such a lovely visit ☺️

I cough, sneeze, and blow my nose loudly--more airflow=more gunk ejected from where it doesn't need to be. I don't moan though unless I'm in labor!

My 11 year old had his out when he was about 4--tonsils and adenoids. It helped immensely with his breathing and sleep (his nose was almost entirely obstructed by overgrown adenoids, and his tonsils were enlarged as well). Recovery took maybe a week? I remember it took longer than recovery for my older son who had only his adenoids removed. No regrets, no known negative side effects.

I don't think any of my seven kids potty trained until at least age three. I'd just let it go for a bit--I would suggest a few months--and try again later.

If you would consider a full-size van, I drive a mid-roof (tall but not the tallest option) Ford Transit. The 10 passenger version minus the back row of seats would be fantastic for transporting tall people + large instruments, and there are a variety of seat configuration options.

It's probably a soft case, needs something in it to give it form.

Newspapers can be interesting for sure--including for turning up some of the more colorful bits of family history! Years ago, I was researching the G-G-Grandmother I was named after and found a whole juicy scandal that she was involved in, complete with eloping with her then-husband's hired man and heading for Mexico with him and her children. She led an interesting and repeatedly traumatic life, including 6 marriages, 2 divorces, being widowed 4 times, and the deaths of several children--one scalded to death as a child when the family was processing a slaughtered pig, an adult daughter who drowned in a river when she was several months pregnant with her first child, and an adult son shot to death by his father-in-law who supposedly mistook him for an intruder. It's hard to idealize the past if you have spent any time at all investigating the lives of individuals and families who lived in any period of history.

I've also been contemplating the harsh reality that the group of contemporary Americans who have the highest probability of having slave-owning ancestors are probably those Black Americans who are themselves descendants of slaves. Powerful men spreading their own genes far and wide is another of the universal realities of human history.

I've been researching the branch of my family from South Carolina since yesterday and can find no evidence of slave ownership--they were far too poor. There was mostly no property ownership at all, including land. They moved frequently trying to make a life for themselves, heading further and further west.

My last name is crazy common, including among Black Americans. When we lived in California the Black family next door shared our last named and we told everyone we were cousins. Definitely caused some confusion!