Don't bleed on the quilt! Sorry. Gut reaction from many years of being a quilter. I've accidentally stabbed myself with a needle when sewing so often that "don't bleed on the quilt" is my automatic reaction, even if the thing I'm sewing is a white snowflake costume.

Don’t select unaccompanied minor. It is optional at that age, per this support page. On the other hand, while I have no problem with my DD (younger than 17) flying alone, I won’t let her fly Spirit at all. We have had bad experiences with Spirit canceling flights. If that happened, DD would be unable to rent a car or get a hotel room. Being stuck in a distant city with no place to stay and limited transportation options due to a flight cancelation with an unhelpful airline sucks. I’m probably overreacting. Since your DD will have friends, being stranded won’t be an issue (unless there might be a layover).

This is what jumped out at me. The job itself is a good fit. Other related changes are not. it sounds like your husband is doing his best to shoulder the additional load. Good for him. But what about your kids? Are you offloading some of the load for getting ready every morning to them? It sounds like it is hard for you to shift that load to your kids. Instead of you making sure that everyone has everything in the morning, can you give the kids checklists and put them in charge of their own stuff? And accept that some things will fall through the cracks? As for the sickness, it sucks. It seems like this year has been worse than normal for everyone. If you choose to quit mid-year or at the end of the year, how do those different options affect your future employment in a few years when your kids are grown and flown, or at least more independent? Would you be burning any bridges that you would regret? If you hated the job itself, I think your choice would be clear. If your kids hated school, your choice would be clear. But you don’t hate the job itself. You’re tired of dealing with the physical and mental exhaustion. You are going to have to give up something. What is the combination of things that will work for you and your family? I have no idea. Hugs and best of luck in your decision.

I’m in Texas where the legal minimum wage here is $7.25. But when my teen DD’s were looking for their first jobs, they never found any that paid that little. Annoyingly enough, when DD moved to California for college, she had a much harder time finding a good job, even though the minimum wage is much higher and there are plenty of “hiring now” signs. She doesn’t want and can’t work a full time job. She just wants a small part time job to fill in the edges as a student, same as she had in high school, not a full time job to support a household. While it was easy to find a good part time job in Texas that could fit around her school schedule, she has been unsuccessful in doing so in California.

If you really want to do public transit, stick with venues along the light rail system. The science museum (HMNS), art museum (MFAH), and zoo (Herman Park) are within a few blocks of the Red Line. If you stay on the north side, y’all could take a commuter bus to downtown, with a walking transfer to the Red Line. But you need a way to get to the Park and Ride in the first place. Your husband could drop you off, you could drive to the park and ride, or you could Uber to the park and ride. The Metro commuter bus is fairly safe. Make sure you use the Metro commuter bus and not one of the other commuter buses that have much more limited service and are far more expensive. The rail system is also fairly safe, but you might see some colorful characters. Once you are downtown, you could also check out the free Orange and Green bus routes. They just circulate downtown. Hope it doesn’t rain. Many bus and rail stops don’t have good shelter from the rain. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in Houston with young kids and no car, but my kids and I all got hangry very easily at those ages. If you don’t want to drive and will be on the north side, skip Space Center. It is too far.

For Houston???? You have got to be kidding me. No way. If you want to get around Houston for a 3 day vacation with kids, you need a car. This is coming from someone who is a generally a fan of public transit. I also think the HMNS and Space Center Houston are great picks. Galveston also has fun activities, but might be too far, unless you do Galveston and Space Center Houston on back to back days with a hotel near one of them. If you are up for another drive, Kemah can be fun too.

I was at a doctor’s office and had to sign a bunch of standard paperwork including a piece of paper saying that I had been given the privacy policy. The paperwork explicitly stated that I was acknowledging receipt of the privacy policy, but not that I read it or understood it or even whether the privacy policy was in a language that I could read. However, I hadn’t actually been given the privacy policy and I said so to the receptionist. The receptionist had to go digging for the privacy policy, which turned out to be several staples pages of dense text. Apparently most people sign that they received the privacy policy even though they have not actually received it.

Same here. When I decided to rejoin the workforce, I decided that I didn't want to go back to creating documentation that no-one read unless they were already upset about something not working right. So I went into a different field. I also agree that having text that is easy to read is much harder than most people think it is. Go in too much detail and it is so long that people don't read because it is too long. Not enough detail, and people still have questions. Poor organization and no-one reads because they are faced with a wall of text and 99% of it doesn't apply.

Very impressive work for a 12 year old!

This. The last two times we purchased suitcases, we got them from Goodwill. They were $20-$30 each. New suitcases of a similar size would have been $100-$200+. At the time, I thought we only needed the suitcases to last a single one-way trip. However, one of those suitcases actually ended up crossing the country multiple times. These suitcases lack many of the features of modern suitcases, but they work well enough given the cost savings. I'll splurge on a nice carry-on, but a large checked bag that won't need to be schlepped very far is different.

I recommend that each have a personal item and a carry-on size bag, and avoid a check back if possible. If the carry-on has wheels, it should be easy to transport through airports. With two people, that should be enough luggage space. I think having a personal item in addition to a carry-on is important. I have been forced to gate-check my carry-on several times, and the bag was usually checked to my final destination to be picked up at baggage claim. I keep my computer, snacks, meds, some toiletries, etc. in my personal item. I wouldn't worry about weight limits of a carry-on bag. If you are carrying-on the bag, there is no weight limit. If you end up gate-checking the bag, they don't weigh it. If you plan on checking it, it is small enough that it will probably be within the weight restrictions anyway. I'm jealous that Arcadia's son didn't have a problem taking a full size bag on public transit. My younger DD and I found that getting even carry-on size bags through subway turnstiles and up/down subway stairs to be a pain. There is no way she could have done it by herself with multiple bags. We found it easier to fit two carry-on size bags in a city bus versus a single large suitcase that wouldn't fit in the seat next to us. My older DD also had a large suitcase when the bus she was on broke down in the middle of a freeway. She needed help maneuvering that large suitcase along the narrow inside shoulder of a busy freeway when they had to change buses. I had to laugh about mommyoffive's comment excluding packing for a ballet summer intensive. For my DD, we managed to go carry-on-only for her first away ballet summer intensive. My things fit in my personal item. DD had her personal item plus both of our carry-on bags. No checked bags. She still had more than she needed. For her second away ballet summer intensive, she flew alone, so she had to check a bag. No way to do a ballet summer intensive with only a single carry-on. All those pointe shoes take up a lot of room, and no way I'm putting pointe shoes in a checked bag when traveling to the intensive.

Yeah. There are lots of easy ways for people to fill in forms. But sharing data back with the original person and also include cumulative info from previous entries can be tricky. Especially when you need to make sure that people cannot see each other’s data. Having people able to see only their own cumulative hours, but not other’s cumulative hours without having accounts for each person is tough. Would simply periodically emailing each person their own cumulative hours be good enough? There are ways to do this in Airtable, but it is soooo much easier when there is budget and people have their own (free) accounts. Can at least the list of members be public? E.g. you might not know how many hours anyone has, but you could see a list with all the members names?

Shucks. If you need to track 3000 entries, the free version of Airtable won't work for you then. The free version maxes out at 1200 records/entries. Out of curiosity, can you share examples of tasks? How many tasks are there per week? Is picking tasks done first-come, first-serve basis? Do some tasks have multiple slots? Who decides what tasks need to be done? Who verifies if a task is done? Is each task worth a specific number of hours or do people just log actual hours? Is that 4 hours per plot requirement per week, per month, or per year?

Yeah. I've been a fan of Airtable ever since I discovered it. But I rarely hear about it being used outside of the context of the AIrtable community. I would love for Airtable to be as common as Google Sheets. I think that learning databases is going to be just as essential as learning spreadsheets, and I think that Airtable is a great platform for high school students to use to learn databases.

Yay! Someone else who uses Airtable. Hearing about Airtable usage “in the wild” brings a smile to my face.

Zero budget is tough. I also use Airtable. it has a free tier that might work. I found it intuitive to learn, and there are lots of videos on YouTube about it. It can be setup so people click an email link and fill out a form without creating an account. However, if people need individualized emails, you would have to send them manually to deal with that volume of emails. (If you send out only a handful of group emails each week from a gmail account, the emails could be automated.) Dealing with 4-5 languages is tough. What are the languages? How much needs to be written in those languages? You say there are 200+ plots. How many people are there? Also, how private does information have to be? Is it okay if everyone can see everyone else’s data? For example, is it okay if everyone can see how many hours other people have and which plots they have? And what is the turnaround time required? How fast do you need a system built?

Do you have any budget? I personally would use a database system, rather than a spreadsheet. But building databases is also my hobby-turned-job. I also like Signup Genius for signups, but it sounds like you need a bit more than what that offers.

Lol. I thought everyone at the Prix de Lausanne was good!

This jumped out at me. At this age, time spent working on a group recital dance is time not spent learning technique. If she gets a one hour class once a week, and half that time is spent working on a recital piece, that leaves half an hour for technique. If that technique is split between ballet and jazz in the same class, that leaves practically no time to actually build up foundational ballet skills—alignment, posture, balance, timing, strength, memorization, etc. When combining this statement with the above statement that the dancers are practicing the recital piece months before the recital, I really start to wonder if something is amiss. How can second grade kids practice a dance routine weekly for months and still need to follow along with the teacher for the performance? Is there high turnover in the kids? Poor attendance? Choreography not matched up to the ability level? At the ballet studios I’ve experienced, it is normal for five year olds to perform their dances without a teacher on stage. These kids have a weekly hour long ballet technique class, plus a weekly hour long rehearsal.

I don’t think it is irrational. But you could go with public transit for those places. Taking public transit can be an educational experience in and of itself. For me, the main factors that make or break a museum trip have little to do with the museum itself. - avoid crowded times - schedule enough time so there is no rush - make sure no-one gets hangry

Here are the features that I think are important: - Until he is 18, he cannot get a credit card on his own, but he can be an authorized user on one of yours. He can get a debit card if he has his own checking account. - A debit card and a credit card are very different, even though they feel the same when you are at checkout. Make sure he understands the difference and decide which is best for him. - If you add him as a user on your credit card, make sure that you have an easy way of identifying which transactions are his versus yours. If there could be fees, make sure you can tell which fees are his versus yours. - If you use a credit card, be sure that it is clear who is responsible for paying off the credit card. - If you use a credit card, make sure there are no fees for the card itself (e.g. no annual fee). This is what worked for my family: I opened up a new credit card in my name for each of my kids. I made each kid an authorized user for one card, so there was a completely different card for each kid. Each kid was responsible for making their own payments and paying any fees on their own card. So far there haven't been any interest or late fees, but if there were it would be clearly who was supposed to pay how much. Because the credit cards were in my name, the kids could not access their balances online, but I just sent screen shots of their activity to them whenever they asked.

I used to use Anki in combination with Breaking the Spanish Barrier 1. I have since switched to a custom app that I wrote using the Airtable platform. I really like the system I have now. It lets me take it easy and go into maintenance mode when I need to, or I can easily ramp up when I feel motivated. I work on vocabulary (English to Spanish), verb conjugation drills, and grammar (English to Spanish sentence translation). My system is heavily influenced by Gabe W.? (the polyglot) but I prefer straight translation versus straight visuals If I was still with Anki instead of my current app, I probably would have given up. I’ve tried Duolingo and several other apps, but none of them lasted for me.

We’ve flown United, not American, but American may be similar. I found the United app to be incredibly helpful. It has tickets, boarding passes, boarding group number, flight status, departure gate, arrival gate, baggage claim carrousel, airport maps, etc. It also opened up lots more in-flight entertainment (movies, shows, games). Bring you own *wired* headphones for entertainment. Don’t expect much in-flight snacks. Beverage service is about the same, but we now get one tiny bag of pretzels or a tiny pre-packaged cookie on a flight. Carry-on and “personal item” quantities and dimensions may have also changed since you last flew. Depending on our type of ticket, sometimes we get only a single small personal item and no carry-on. Sometimes we pay more so we can get both a personal item and full size carry-on. The official dimensions for both a personal item and a carry-on are much smaller (and weirder) than they used to be. Old suitcases that we used to use as carry-ons are now too large and need to be checked. Even when our carry-ons are the right size, if we are in a late boarding group, we often have to gate-check our carry-ons. Gate-checked bags are also usually (but not always!) now picked up at baggage claim, and not at the arrival gate. Keep all essentials (meds, important paperwork, computer, etc. in a personal item, not a carry-on) Airport food is more expensive than ever. There are also unattended. self-serve kiosks that sell all the usual stuff. These unattended kiosks were super helpful last year when my daughter and I had to spend the night in the airport. Every airport has slightly different rules for how you place things when going through security, so pay attention. Some airports you have to take laptops out of bags. Other airports tell you to keep laptops in bags. Some airports tell you to put all bags (even large ones) in bins. Other airports tell you to only put certain bags in bins. I haven’t seen people pulling out quart size baggies of liquids, so I don’t know if that is a thing anymore or not.

Since you are excited about the return to work, I think you should still go for it, even though it will increase your income for the fafsa. Since you’re talking about a professional job, your income (after taxes and expenses) will likely be more than the value of any Pell grants. If so, the possibility of having work that is personally fulfilling isn’t worth passing up. Your new income may not cover all the costs of college, but neither would the Pell Grants.

My family members have been on ten domestic (USA) flights across six airports since the beginning of summer, all on United. The only issue was one flight was delayed. Fortunately the layover was several hours long so the connecting flight was not affected. May the flights for your family members be just as easy as ours were!