I was thinking of travel threads (here and elsewhere) which say things like: You'll need pants with 12 pockets! And quick dry fabric that dries in 10 minutes! And the skirt than doubled as a poncho/sleeping bag/hat! Well, I'm making those up, but that's the general idea 😄 I started thinking like that too (especially because we're only taking a carry-on backpack each for winter travel) but then I asked myself why I wouldn't just wear the same clothes I do at home with a warmer jacket. I figure I might look a lot less touristy that way! Actually we are going to Greece too, I didn't mention it as it wasn't train-related. The 4 flights on RyanAir from Rome to Athens were £200. We have an open jaw flight, so into London and home from Athens.

Exciting!! For us using air miles doesn't work because we wouldn't accumulate enough for the 4 flights and the relevant airlines are so much more expensive than the cheaper ones we'd normally opt for that we wouldn't come out ahead. But we're not in the US, your situation is probably entirely different. I always like to fly with a stopover in an 'extra' country. This time (Dec) we're stopping in Abu Dhabi. We're just sleeping over on the way there, and taking 2 days on the way back. Apart from the sightseeing aspect we get to our destination ready to hit the ground running. I used Visit a City as a starting point for planning itineraries. You can start with, for example, a 4 day family trip to Rome and then add or delete sites or activities, adding days if necessary. It plots best routes, gives you travel times between points etc. It's a lot of fun to play with! I love Trip Advisor for info. I tend to Google weirdly specific questions ("best place to hire a car to travel from London to Stratford") and Trip Advisor will always have a helpful discussion. How long are you going for? For us the airfares are such a big chunk of the expense that we're doing a longer trip with 4 cities. We've booked mostly Air BnB for accomodation with a couple of youth hostels and hotels. We're coming out at under AUS$150 per night for accomodation for the family of 4, which I'm very happy with. We couldn't do that at home. Staying safe: I don't think its that hard... common sense and avoiding "travel clothes" that make you stand out as a tourist is probably a good place to start. I did look at some YouTube videos of child pickpockets in Rome which a little alarming, but very instructive. I did/am doing all my planning online. As I'm the one 'in charge' which I find stressful I'm collecting detailed information on pretty much everything (like alternate travel routes from Site A to Site B within a city for instance) and saving it all in Evernote so when we're actually there I get to enjoy things rather than spend my time Organising. Compared to the 'old way' of guide books the Internet allows you to cover every single aspect and answer every question, and I'm already feeling much less stressed and somewhat 'familiar' with the places we'll be visiting as I'm prepared for most eventualities. For anything train related The Man in Seat Sixty-One is absolutely fantastic. (We're traveling by train from London to Paris, Paris to Venice, Venice to Rome and Rome to Naples/Pompeii).

I'd go with cash and the Tshirt. If you don't mind spending a more then a 'treat' outing - a movie at a 'gold class' type cinema, or dinner or a coffee shop with no siblings.

I never do. If other women do I've never noticed it, but I'm pretty selective in who I spend time with. I do keep quiet to avoid conflict. Sometimes I think I do that too much, but on other subjects (like my views on the school one of my children currently attends) I think I speak my mind way too freely and should keep quiet more.

Honestly, that sort of thing doesn't really bother me or tire me out. We always do self-catering holidays, but we would opt for the sorts of convenience foods we'd never use at home - pasta and sauce in a bag, bottled curry sauce, pre-marinated meats and heat-and-eat foods. For the end-of-holiday clean I usually do some of it the day before we leave then have dh take the kids out on the last day so I can clean quickly, quietly and efficiently. Dh and I share cooking duty and he drives. I try to make sure any place we stay has a washer and dryer so I bring home clean folded clothes (sometimes I send dh and the kids to a laundromat while I clean), and I clean our house well before we leave. I really, really hate it when my work starts the moment I walk in our door after the holiday. Apart from that, it's mostly the planning I find stressful so I try to research and plan before we go, not while we're actually on holiday (eg opening times, transport routes and traveling time).

Dd15 is now at a school a 25 min drive from us. It would take about 90 minutes and 3 buses to get there. It makes more sense for me to drive her, especially in the mornings. I do have her use public transport a few times a week though, to save me the afternoon drive and allow ds9 to have afternoon play dates. Then she walks to a train station near her school and catches the train to a stop a 12 min drive from home, and I collect her from there. I usually have her take the train if she's meeting friends at the mall too. When I opt for her to use public transport it is either because there is a clash of schedules or because during after work rush hour the 25 min drive to her school (which is also where the mall is located) can takes at least 35 min. However, since she intimated that maybe it was 'expected' that I lift her as I don't work outside the home the frequency with which I expect her to take public transport has definitely gone up.

I dozed off during one of the Star Wars movies but never apart from that. We see family movies at the Drive-in once or twice a year and I do drift off then, but that's on purpose because it's summery and I'm sitting in a chair under the stars and the rest of the family are distracted and not talking to me and really, how often does that happen?

It was my 'right side pain' which lead to my overall medical 'wait and see' policy. Which works until it fails catastrophically, I suppose. But in the last decade I've checked out the following after a decent waiting period (1-2 months): heart palpitations, a lump on the tendon in my index finger, the right side pain, a very swollen vein under my tongue and a 'freckle' on my face which expanded and became raised (checked that one out immediately!). Guess what? After tests which either didn't find anything or found nothing obvious or found something that couldn't really be fixed easily, all went away on their own. After I waited and then paid for the tests. It's so frustrating! I see the doctor about once every 18 months, always for something weird like this. Incidentally, after an initial appointment about heart palpitations I did some reading and added magnesium supplements - that seemed to take away both the heart palpitations and some other weird random symptoms I was having. I'm currently viewing magnesium as a sort of cheap wonder drug - it helps with cramps, so might be worth a try if your pain is digestion or muscle related. I saw improvements within a week.

I'm predicting it's going to be one of those weird pains that is never diagnosed, goes away eventually, then pops up again periodically... That describes my 'right side pain'. It is a little higher than yours, almost under my lower ribs. I had an ultrasound and a series of other tests about 6 years ago. Nothing was diagnosed. At times the pain was take your breath away, keep you awake at night bad, but it lessened after a couple of months then disappeared. It reappears year or two and can last on and off for a month or so. I actually had it a few days ago, but haven't had it since. That's no help, really, I'm just reassuring you that consistent pain isn't always something serious. One thing I noticed when I Googled was how many people were reporting similar undiagnosed 'right side' pain in various positions. It's really odd.

Cold tomato soup with pesto, cream and chives is elegant and cheap. My recipe is basically onion and carrots, grilled red pepper, tomatoes and stock. The pesto, cream and chives are added at serving. You can make little mini fridge cheesecakes or similar in cupcake papers with a biscuit as a base. I can't help on costs though.

There was recently a news story here about a snake found under the top cover of a dishwasher. They removed the top cover for some reason and found a snake there. We're in Australia so it was naturally a deadly one! Another place to look! https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/32006178/cottesloe-mum-finds-deadly-snake-in-dishwasher/

We have done both a retractable and a wall mounted fold-down line in different houses. I think the fold down is more stable, but the retractable may look neater, and probably offer more line space. Both held up for years with no rusting etc. (we moved - the lines were still fine). The fold-down does need to be oiled or it gets difficult to 'slide'.

It does download automatically. I think it was something counter intuitive like if you press the X to shut down the dialogue box it takes it as "YES" and downloads. It happened to me. But it was also really easy to uninstall. I can't remember what I did, but there was some sort of option on the screen to do that, instead of proceeding with installation.

At one stage I did prefer one child over the other based on age and ease of parenting. It was a horrible time. Now I can say I like both equally. We have an easy relationship so I'll often tell one or the other that they're my favourite based on something silly like being ready on time or bringing me coffee, but they know it's a joke and that the winner of the "favourite kid award" changes several times a day!

While I think there's two sides to this and Crimson Wife and I seem to have the opposite approach go you, it's definitely not that I disagree with you speaking up. But I think that once someone is accusing you of a guilt trip they're not listening to you. That quite possibly is to avoid responsibility. It might be that they're just not programmed to deal with difficult emotions. I'm not sure that bringing feelings in to it is the best way to express your position in this case. Would there be a more objective way to express yourself with this person, focusing on actions and results rather than feelings?

I like the THINK before you speak acronym (in fact it's a poster in our study and for a long time was the screensaver on my phone and used with the children almost daily), I also think the ideas of a guilt trip as a monologue that gets repeated are helpful. If someone is accusing you of laying on a guilt trip, you're definitely not involved in a conversation and what you said was neither Helpful nor Necessary (if they are feeling remorse they probably already knew they were in the wrong, if not, they're now focused on resentment). I don't think we need to express every hurt or try to 'teach' others when we're hurt. If someone's behaviour was out of line I'll call them on it because it objectively wasn't OK, rather than because of how it made me feel. But I agree, this is probably very much a personality issue.

For a long lasting professional finish use plastic cover sheets outside the card stock. I never could get the very large spines (I was overseas when I bought mine) and there were times I had to split books in two, so I really wish I had some of those. The medium thickness spine was perfect for most uses, though.

I like it. I think the least we can do for the privilege of living in a democracy is pitch up every couple of years when called. Of course, voting itself can't be compulsory. If you take the paper, fold it up and shove it in the box, you've said your piece. Labour seemed to be making a big play for the seat in our area. I saw the candidate 3 times, and she doesn't live anywhere near us. I saw her two mornings at the same intersection - now that was smart politicking - she promised two flyovers on a particular road then campaigned on that road knowing we'd all be stuck at the intersection for ages with nothing to do but read her signs :-)

We had 7. My understanding we had to number them all for the House of Reps, but at least 6 on the Senate paper, although I've since read the latter was a recommendation and a ballot is still valid if you number less that 6. I like the atmosphere at the polling stations and the sausage sizzle option is fun. It was quick also. I voted in the first post-apartheid election in South Africa - the queues!

It gets silly though... The senate ballot paper was at least twice as wide as the voting booth. And there are tons of single (or at least limited) issue parties. The Australian Cyclists Party for example. There might be room for a balance between 2 parties and a proliferation of minor parties... And I realise it's illogical but I really don't like needing to number candidates in order of preference - perfectly happy to number the ones I could live with in order of preference but my fingers don't want to put a mark anywhere near some of them! What do I know, though, only my second election as an Australian.

That's not really my experience. We talk about how to achieve more, but the focus is on motivation, inspiration, finding what works, rather than failure. Although failure is part of the learning process, not the end of something. So if the subject were dieting, we'd share science article, amusing articles, exercise together, we'd share the horrible news that the scale must be broken because it says we've gained weight, or agree that if you put zucchini in your chocolate cake the calories clearly don't count. If the issue is organisation, same thing: talk about success and failures, shares videos and ideas. I have one friend I laugh with a lot about this sort of thing. Another friend mostly laughs at me for spending so much time thinking about 'self-improvement', but that's okay too :-)

Just to say that it almost always works out cheaper to use Book Depository for books rather than Amazon. Compare a few times to confirm if that's true for yourself, though. Many people will also use one of the forwarding companies that give you a US or UK address so that you can receive orders from places that don't ship internationally (outside of booksany Amazon products don't ship to us here in Australia, for example). You will quickly learn the best way to do things through the expat grapevine.

My first thought too!

I've been using the "I need to have an agent drop by" excuse to get the kids to keep their rooms clean and clutter hidden away for a couple of months now. I suppose it can't last for ever - I'd better actually call an agent!

I was much more needy in my 20s and early 30s. I put a lot more into the relationship than I got out, emotionally speaking. I came to realise I was expecting someone else to make me happy and that was never, ever going to work. Happy and fulfilled is up to me. I just stopped expecting him to do that for me, to provide what I was lacking. Overall I'm so much happier in my relationship now because I don't feel like I'm the vulnerable party in it. I'm ok. I'd be ok on my own. It's very freeing when you realise that. I'm much more assertive about what I do need to be happy, but I let a lot of things go because I realise they're not really central to my needs (example - it would bother me if dh opted for drinks after work when I expected him home on a Friday. I changed my thinking: what I need to be happy on a Friday is to get everyone sorted early and to relax with a movie. If dh doesn't let me know he'll be home I don't plan supper for him. I no longer take it as a slight, it's just a fact and I work with that fact to make sure I get what I need.)