Jump to content

Menu

sweet2ndchance

Members
  • Posts

    2,095
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by sweet2ndchance

  1. I think it doesn't necessarily have to affect both to be a problem. My night vision is steadily getting worse now that I'm in my 40s. It's not horrible yet and I still do drive at night when I need to and, personally, I wouldn't ask the host to change their plans for me. I would either plan to leave early or stay the night somewhere or if it wasn't too far, I might just do it and know that I will be exhausted the next day from stress. But that said, my husband has this huge fear of deer when he is driving lmao! Like he is in panic mode driving at night or in the early morning or near dusk, pretty much any time of day that isn't broad daylight lol. We live in a rural area and we see deer on a daily basis almost year round. Certain routes we have to take around here, it isn't unusual to sight deer 5 or 6 times just one way on our way to somewhere. Dh is a nervous wreck driving at night. That's why I often do any driving we need to do at night but even with me driving, it still stresses him out that a deer could jump out in front of me at any time. FWIW, I've never hit a deer or even come close but he has. It was just one of those things that no one could have predicted or avoided. Just saying, they don't both have to have bad night vision necessarily for there to be a good reason. At least not in my opinion.
  2. Sounds like SIL knows that MIL will bend over backwards to have all of her family together and uses it that fact to her advantage. Whether she is doing it purposely or just generally thinks the world revolves around her and does whatever it takes to keep her world in order, I can't tell but that is definitely what it looks like to me at least. I wouldn't back down on the time dinner is being served at my house either if it were me but I have a reputation for being very hard headed on some of the weirdest things, so take that for what you will. Does SIL possibly have some sort of issue, mental or physical, that makes traveling at night hard for her? You know, like bad night vision or some other reason that driving at night makes her uneasy? Does she turn into an ogre or something after the sun sets each night? Has she ever given an indication that it is anything more than inconvenient for her to have dinner instead of lunch with her husband's family? The only reason I ask is because if she's not just being a little princess who bullies her husband and her MIL through manipulation into doing things her way all the time outside of this dinner thing, I would be more inclined to possibly have an earlier dinner since MIL's whole deal is wanting to have all the family together. If the only thing she is suffering from is princess syndrome, I would be much more inclined to tell her "Sorry to hear you can't make it. Your husband and kids are still more than welcome to come without you since you can't come. See ya next year maybe." Or my husband's response to this is also appropriate, "If you want to pick the time, SIL, then you can host this family get-together next year. But THIS YEAR, when I am hosting it at MY HOUSE, we are having dinner at XXXX time. Hope you can make it."
  3. Would it be possible to maybe sell just the teacher book of Treasured Conversations as an Amazon book, for the same asking price as the teacher and student book together right now, then include a "free" copy of the student pdf as a link to download separately that is hosted elsewhere? Maybe include the link in the book or a password for a password protected download? I was able to go ahead and purchase Treasured Conversations today and I've only had a small chance to glance through it but I already love it more than I thought I would. I'm so sad that some places make it so difficult for small business owners and we lose great things like this.
  4. If you keep the stub from the post office or the Walmart money orders, you can verify that they have been cashed. I've had to do it to prove that I gave the land lord the MO and it is a book keeping error on their end. I always keep the stub and put it in a safe place the same way you would keep cancelled checks or or the duplicates to keep records. It has come in handy more than once to prove that I paid and paid on time despite not using checks. That's how I have gotten by for the last twenty years with writing probably less than 15 checks in that time. The tankless hot water heaters I've had experience with have not needed anymore maintenance than my regular tank hot water heater that needs yearly maintenance as well. There are lots of different kinds though and my experience has mostly been overseas with them. We plan to do it more like we have seen overseas where the kitchen has its own little tankless heater and the each bathroom has its own tankless heater. The ones that I have heard about having the most problems are where they try to have a huge tankless system for the whole house and then end up needing boosters everywhere because the water doesn't stay hot enough when it has to travel so far to the outlet. The biggest draw for us is not heating tons of water in a tank to just sit there until it is used and the endless hot water part. We live far enough south that it isn't difficult or too expensive to do. I've heard the farther north you go, the more expensive it gets to do tankless hot water because the starting temperature of the water before it is heated is lower.
  5. Tankless instant hot water heaters. They are very common in Europe and parts of Asia. I can't wait to replace our tank hot water heater. It's been on the "someday" list for a while now lol
  6. I've done money orders for many years (the last twenty years maybe?) because even though we had a checking account, ex-h was horrible about pulling money out from under checks I wrote to pay the bills. It was cheaper to pay 50 cents to a dollar for a money order to pay bills than it was to pay bounced check fees. You can get them at the bank, at the post office, even at Walmart. I was bound to be at least one of those places on or near pay day so it worked. I've never run into a problem giving a money order to anyone that requested checks only. Yes, money management, or lack thereof, was part of our irreconcilable differences. It was the weirdest feeling after the divorce to be able write a check from my own account to open my utilities and not have to worry about it bouncing. Amazon, Walmart, Target or any big box store gift card would be almost universally appreciated as a gift I would think. Personally, we buy stuff from Amazon every month so I would apply an Amazon gift card toward that and if there was nothing gift-like that I wanted on Amazon that month by some strange coincidence, that gift card would at least free up some of my money that would normally go to the monthly household supplies Amazon order and I could buy whatever I wanted from where ever. We have a couple of places here that buy unwanted gift cards for cash so if you really will not ever use the gift card it can be turned around for cash if necessary, less a small fee of a couple of dollars. I've not done it personally but a few stores have signs that say "We will buy any gift card". A large one time gift like graduation or wedding, I wouldn't consider the less than $10 fee for the prepaid card too much and just factor that in to how much I can afford to send. If money was really tight though and the fee would drastically affect how much I could send, then I might do a money order (from Walmart or the post office so they could easily cash it for free if they don't have a bank account) or send a gift card for a store they were registered at or ask if there is a particular gift card the graduate would really like.
  7. I have one child who will eat the heels of store bought bread by choice lol. And I chose squirrel because the best part of homemade bread is the heel but I don't like the heels of store bought bread. And it's the best part of making bread because that means I get first pick and I pick the heel lol. But I don't usually have anyone to fight me for it. I get one, ds that likes heels gets the other, and the rest is devoured long before it has time to dry out or even cool off most of the time for that matter!
  8. OT but thanks so much for the recommendation! One of my biggest pet peeves is animal hair on clothing when I'm wearing it or one of the kids or dh. I also wash the dog blankets often to keep the smell under control (one of the dogs is a bassett that was found near our home and never claimed) but ds LOVES to lay with the dogs or get them up in his chair. The dog hair is getting harder and harder to wash out! Going to try this out!
  9. I still sing the Wells Fargo Wagon when the kids are all excited about the UPS man showing up with our online orders lol.
  10. I had to laugh a little about the first part. There was a an older couple I saw at the self checkout the other day trying to use a card with the microchip in it that you have to insert into the pos machine from the bottom instead of sliding it. They were having a lot of trouble but I wasn't paying much attention at first. Then I realized they were trying to insert the card and then yank it back out like you do on some ATM machines and then getting frustrated when the machine kept canceling his payment lol. Before I could say anything, he pulled out a card that can be slid through the machine and paid that way but he was grumbling to his wife that he would have to go to the bank the next day and get a new card because that one was obviously faulty. lol I didn't get a chance to catch him and explain but I don't know if it would have mattered, he was pretty steamed already when I got there lol. Hopefully the bank employee explained it to him lol. I don't like the idea of implantables either but I could see the argument that a wearable can be physically stolen but an implantable would be a little harder to do that. Doesn't mean I'm going to be anywhere near the front of the line for it, but I can see the argument for it. Again, because of the poor internet around here, we still see signs even in Walmart that the internet is down and they are accepting cash only because the pos machines cannot communicate and function without internet. Really sucks sometimes because there is no such things as paper food stamps anymore, so when the machines are down, you are just out of luck for food stamps, WIC, personal checks, credit cards, debit cards or gift cards. Until internet is more reliable and universal in first world countries, much less poorer countries, I don't think physical money can plausibly disappear.
  11. Oh my god yes! It drove me nuts before we had cellular internet and before we had unlimited data. We had to run ad blockers religiously because some websites who over do it on the ads to support the website would take ages to load. And pages that have auto-play videos too where the video is programmed to load before the rest of the page does. Then there are the pages that come up with the "We can see you are using an ad blocker. We depend on ads to support our site, please turn off your ad blocker to continue to our site." If I turn off my ad blocker, there is no guarantee I will be able to see the page at all if it won't load for me on my slow internet. I get it. I have designed websites for a living (and still do on occasion). I totally understand that maintaining a website costs money and intimately understand just how much it costs. But not everyone uses ad blockers to deny you ad revenue and peruse your website without giving you something in return (which is a whole 'nother rant for another thread). Some people need those ad blockers just to be able to view your website at all. There are still people in the world, even in first world countries, who do not have the luxury of fast, reliable internet.
  12. Ummm, out here in the middle of nowhere (but still smack in the middle of the US), some people still have dial-up. Sadly, it is more reliable than the small local cable provider's internet service that advertises up to 100 Mbps connections but the key words are "up to". You might get 100Mbps... at 2 am.... if they aren't doing maintenance and everyone's internet is down. Otherwise, on most days you are lucky to get 10Mbps. Complaining to the company results in someone on the phone 3 states away telling you there is definitely a problem and they send you an apathetic repairman then charge you $50 just for him to get out of his truck on your property. He turns it on and off and again, tells you it is working normally and leaves within 15 minutes of arriving. So, yeah there are still dial-up services here that are slow but reliable. We tried satellite, way more trouble than it is worth but still slightly better than aforementioned cable company. So now we have cellular internet through our phones. We have a plan with unlimited tethering and unlimited data. It's faster than dial-up (you can actually stream with cellular but you can't with dial-up) and we almost never have an issue with it unlike satellite and cable internet. We love it and have no plans of ever going back unless maybe we finally get Cox cable down here. When we lived in areas that had Cox service, they were always spectacular with their service and the prices were reasonable. What I think will be gone in 10 years is paying for data on mobile phones and I think more people will use cellular data for things like internet service. It is less costly to maintain and/or upgrade a cell tower than it is to lay miles upon miles of cable or maintain a satellite. Also cell signal, even in our mountainous region, is more reliable than satellite signal which goes out every time a cloud passes by when we had it. Ten years ago, a lot of people still paid by the minute for long distance phone calls but now it is the normal to have unlimited long distance within your country and only pay for certain international phone calls. I think paying for cellular data is going to go the same way, it will get cheaper and cheaper with less and less restrictions until finally it is just normal for unlimited, unrestricted data to be the expected instead of the exception.
  13. My youngest ds is weird and hates uncooked cottage cheese too lol! But he loves lasagna when I make it and doesn't even notice the cottage cheese. Like some else mentioned if you really don't like cottage cheese or ricotta cheese at all, you can just leave it out altogether. I put a couple of cloves of minced or pressed garlic, a teaspoon of Italian seasoning and a quarter cup of grated parmesan (not the powdered stuff in the can, the stuff in the refrigerated section with the other cheeses, I get it pre-grated) in the cottage cheese and let those flavors meld for a few hours before making lasagna before I add the cottage cheese to the lasagna.My meat and sauce are the exact same recipe I use to make no-mato spaghetti sauce. Then it is just layering sauce, noodles, cottage cheese mixture and mozzarella or Italian blend cheese in the baking pan. I follow the baking directions on the no cook noodle box since everything else in the pan is cooked already. Usually it is something along the lines of, add a 1/2 cup of water to the pan to help the noodles cook, cover the pan with foil or put a lid on it, bake at 350 or so for an hour then remove the lid or foil and bake until the cheese is melted and browned.
  14. Yes, do not use low fat cottage cheese in lasagna! Use full fat or whole milk or 4% cottage cheese! Lasagna is not suppose to be healthy lol! It is suppose to be ooey gooey delicious and full of calories that can be written off because it is comfort food lol!
  15. Not understanding what is tacky about it either. It's still dated for 5 days before Christmas. Christmas presents can still be bought in time. But it is probably fair to add that I am one of those people that believes Christmas is not an emergency. It comes the same day every year. You can plan for it, or not, but not planning for it or having an emergency that blows up your Christmas plan does not make Christmas presents an emergency. I never count on bonuses of any kind. Including tips when I worked jobs where I was allowed to accept tips. It gets put into savings or a little extra in the "fun money" category. Or used to pay off a debt faster. But never ever counted on to pay for something, that practice has never worked out well for me or anyone I know.
  16. My husband made the pioneer woman lasagna recipe for my birthday years ago. It was really good but I don't think he used spicy sausage, just regular sausage that we like. I will admit that before I was we identified tomato as one of my biggest food allergens, we would have Stouffer's lasagna about once a month during the winter. So that is the taste and texture we prefer. Unrefined and totally American? Probably. But that's what we like so that's what I aim for when I make tomato free lasagna for us now. I use cottage cheese instead of ricotta. I tried several different brands of ricotta before conceding that we just prefer the texture and taste of cottage cheese in lasagna. I definitely think that you could substitute one for the other in any lasagna recipe based on your families preferences. I rarely use sausage in lasagna. Yes it adds a wonderful flavor but it just isn't something I keep around. I usually use just ground beef with whatever Italian herbs strike my fancy at the time I'm making the sauce. I use no cook noodles because my family prefers the firmer texture they provide. Whenever I've used cooked noodles, they are almost soggy textured by the time the lasagna's done. It could just be something I'm doing wrong but we like the no cook noodles so that's what I use. Again, I think you could use either in any recipe and it would be fine. Of course, my lasagna has no tomatoes so my lasagna is never going to be exactly like tomato-based lasagna but plenty of people have eaten my lasagna and been shocked to learn that there was not any tomato in it. Now I've got a craving for skillet lasagna. Too late in the day to start regular lasagna lol. Guess I know what is for dinner now lol.
  17. We've bought used washers and dryers many times. More than once, they ended up being great machines that lasted longer than expected (5 years or more in some cases). Where I live, used electric dryers that are in good working order run between $75 - $150 depending on age and/or cosmetic damage that doesn't affect how the unit runs. Used top loading washers in good working order run about $100 - $150 again depending on age and cosmetic damage. I have no idea on front loaders, never had one, don't want one, so I've never really priced them.' I also agree with the posters above that said don't worry too much about your old washer/dryer. Post an ad stating that they are free to whoever hauls them off. Someone will snatch them up. Normally, if we have an issue with a used appliance, when the repair would cost more than another used appliance, that is when we have either got another used one if we just weren't the position to buy new or go ahead and just buy new if we are in the position to get new ones. I've had a pump replaced for $100 or so on $150 washer, but when replacing the transmission would cost over $200 just in parts, that's where I draw the line and decide it is not worth it. YMMV.
  18. If you didn't create the password back up disk (this is different from the install disk or bootable media), do you know if you enabled the administrator account? Can you get into that account? Yes, it is possible to get into a Windows 7 computer without the password backup disk or the administrator account (or if the account that is locked is the admin account) but you need to be at least a little bit computer savvy because at that point the only way to get in is to hack your own computer. I had to do it on a computer I bought from Sam's Club years ago that was a floor model they were clearancing. No one in the electronics department could remember the password to the admin account so that I could get into more than just the guest account they use so customers can play with the floor model computers in the store. It took me several hours and multiple methods of hacking my own computer before I finally found a hack that worked. I was able to strip the password from the original install and then re-install Windows 7 with my own passwords. It required going to safe mode and using the command line. If you aren't comfortable with doing those sorts of things, you will probably need to get a computer repair shop or Geek Squad to do it for you.
  19. Yes, just a smear. You want them to have to thoroughly investigate the trap to get it, not play chicken with it. Too much PB is usually the issue when they are obviously around but not springing the traps. On the the cheapie traps that we get, I try to get as much of the pb as I can inside the little curl of metal at the end of the trigger. They can smell it but they can't just carefully swipe it and try not to set off the trap. It's very likely they never get to eat the pb before they set off the trap looking for it.
  20. No rhyme or reason as to what month I got married either time. First marriage was in March at the justice of the peace office. We separated in March 13 years later but the divorce wasn't final until August of that year. My current marriage we got married in December. We had not planned to get married, it just wasn't high on our list of priorities and a piece of paper didn't change anything about our relationship. It was just a formality really. We will have been married for 7 years this Sunday. We don't celebrate, half the time both of us forget until a few weeks after the fact lol. We will see if I remember since I just now realized that our anniversary is the day after tomorrow lol. Didn't have a wedding or anything either time. I decided when I was a teenager that I did not want a wedding. Ever. They just aren't my kind of thing.
  21. I don't pamper the mice and rats we have around here. They get whatever the Dollar Tree has for their last meal. Or if they are really stubborn, they get d-Con mouse block baits. When we use them in the house, we have the little traps that make it so curious pets and children can't get to the poison but mice can squeeze their way in to get it. We've sealed up most of the ways they can get in the house so we don't see them in the house much any more. Steel wool and caulk are great for that.
  22. I'm frugal to a fault sometimes but I don't see this as money spent on the neighbors. It was money spent on my children who chose to give their efforts to someone else out of kindness. I provided my children with the money to do a fun project that they enjoyed, what they decide do with the finished project is irrelevant to what I spent. If it makes them feel good to be kind to someone else with the finished product, it was still money well spent in my book. Even if giving the cookies to the neighbors was the plan from the beginning. Now if this project was my idea and I was having to nag them to get it done the same way I have to nag them to clean their rooms, that is when my frugality streak would set in and wonder why I wasted money on a project they obviously were not interested in or enjoying. As to whether we would eat it if we were on the receiving end, I have to be careful due to food allergies and my experiences with people having a flippant attitude about cross-contamination but dh and ds love treats no matter who made them. Dh's grandmother, who is also our landlord and next door neighbor, is a rural letter carrier. She gets all kinds of treats and gifts this time of year from her customers on her route. She accepts them all graciously, but sometimes she doesn't like it or can't eat it herself. She gives those items to dh and ds. It all gets eaten one way or another. She gave us some homemade chocolate covered pretzels the other day that someone on her route gave her. She said it bothers her dentures to eat hard pretzels so she gave them to us. I have no earthly idea who made them but dh and ds enjoyed them lol.
  23. I know this might not be the most popular way to handle it but I found, by 7th grade, that it worked much better to work through a writing handbook with them and address things one issue at a time in their writing. I want to say we used a combination of Writer's Inc. Student Handbook and one my old writer's handbooks from college and the Purdue Online Writing Lab for the most up-to-date guidelines for citing sources. Things like where to place punctuation and such don't change much so my old college writing handbook and I think Writer's Inc had some info like that too if I remember right but citing sources was evolving at the time because the internet was becoming and acceptable source back then but not everyone fully agreed how to cite it yet. Anyways, I would pick their most glaring error and we would look it up in the handbooks or on the Purdue website and they would make notes for their writing notebook about it and we would work on only that error for a while until they were about 90% competent at catching their own mistakes or not making the mistake at all. Then I would pick the next most glaring error and we would repeat the process. All my kids who have reached or passed high school age did great with starting this type of "learn by doing" sort of informal approach to mechanics and grammar in 7th grade. Yes, sometimes I wanted to rip my hair out at some of their consistent mistakes and say "You learned this and have used this skill since elementary school, when did it fall out of your head, kid?!?" but I kept all that to myself and kept just calmly and consistently reminding them to look for "X" mistake until they found all the offenses. I can say three have grown up to be competent writers into adulthood who can sound educated and polished in writing and one still enjoys writing fiction for fun in his free time as an adult despite their seeming lack of intuitive grammar and mechanics in 7th grade.
  24. I just wanted to comment on the medication part. Among other things, I am diagnosed with severe chronic depression and anxiety, PTSD/C-PTSD and a whole lot of other suspected but not confirmed yet mental issues. This most recent and onoing round with medications we started with Zoloft. Zoloft definitely helped no question about it but it was like taking a regular dose of tylenol for a migraine. Maybe it took a little bit of an edge off the pain for a little while but it definitely doesn't make you feel completely better, KWIM? We messed around with increasing the dose of Zoloft for a while to see if we could increase the good effect for before the side effects became unbearable. But ultimately, there was a ceiling to the good effects and the high doses were making me zombie like. I wasn't living anymore, I was just existing. The Zoloft was helping mask or suppress some of the troublesome emotions I was experiencing but it also kept me from experiencing excitement and pleasure and other "good" or mostly good emotions. My husband often described me as "a Zoloft zombie", lol. Since I was at the max dose of Zoloft and things still weren't "right", definitely better than they were pre-medication but still not right, it was suggested I try an snri for while. I've been on different anti-depressants over the years so I wasn't really expecting a huge change. I'd never seen a huge difference between taking Lexapro vs Zoloft vs Wellbutrin vs all the other antidepressants I've tried so why would this new class of anti-depressant be any different? I. Was. So. Wrong. The difference was night and day. I've been on Effexor for a couple years now and it is definitely what I personally need for my mental health conditions. When I went back for the first med check after starting Effexor, I remember telling the doctor that I only thought I was doing better on Zoloft. I had no idea how much difference a medication could make until I was on the right class of drug for me. Has it "cured" my laundry list of mental health conditions? No, but it definitely makes them a ton easier to manage most days. Long story short, don't accept that "helping some" is as good as it gets with mental health medications. I accepted that "helping some" is all mental health medication was good for, for a long time. Far too long to be completely honest. If she has been taking it for more than a few months (2 - 3 I would say roughly) and she's not getting progressively better as the weeks go by, try a different medication. Preferably a different class of medication as there are a fair few classes of anti-depressant. Why try more of the same by trying another drug from the same class? It might help, but chances are it will give pretty close to the same results. Since everyone is different, what works for me might not work for your dd and what works for your dd probably won't work for me but if she's not steadily improving each week for the first 8 - 12 weeks of taking an anti-depressant, then IMO it is time to try something else until you do see improvement each week. Chances are, there IS an anti-depressant out there that will help make a difference between "just surviving" and "successfully managing" mental health issues. Good luck finding what works for her!
  25. I would take this month off from anything that looks or smells like math curriculum to her at the very least! She's still little! She can and will make it to high school and college math without any trouble related to taking a month off of math right now! After taking a break, do some sneaky math like the competition you set up with her and her brother. Read some of the Danica McKellar books about math for girls with her. Play games. Observe consumer math that is used every day (Don't make her do it! Just point out and talk about the math as it is used everyday). I wouldn't even try to push curriculum on her until she is feeling a little more confident in her math abilities. I had typed a bunch more but I realized it was a bit of a long winded diatribe. Long story short, you absolutely can do a "hodge-podge" as you call it and just have fun with numbers all the way through middleschool in my opinion. None of my adult kids were math geniuses, but one was great at math and she went on to take honors math courses in high school even though she had nothing but "hodge podge" math all the way through middle school! They all have, at minimum, the math skills needed to be a competent adult.
×
×
  • Create New...