Yoga has helped with a lot of my peri and back pain issues. I also walk about 3 miles a day because I need the outdoor time or I feel like I am going to crack up . I am on low dose bcp to stop periods, which has been a big quality of life improvement. I'm going to try borage oil capsules, because my moodiness is making me a misery to live with. I have found that I can't eat as many carbs as I could when I was younger, otherwise I get bloated and hang on to weight.

Yes, it could be benign. Could be worms, could be dietary indiscretion, could be something awful like parvo, could be stress. You are right to keep the dogs separated and get new pup checked out in the am. I'd definitely get a parvo test! They can run them in office so you'll know right away if it's parvo.

There's a vet tech and support staff shortage. A lot of techs and assistants jumped to other jobs during the pandemic because the pay was way better. $15/hr to perform nursing duties at the vet hospital or $18/hr in fast food or retail? 🤷‍♀️ Many of my former co-workers moved to human medicine and make vastly better pay. The patients aren't nearly as cute, though!

Glad you are taking her in. Bloat is unusual in small dogs, but still possible. I would want it ruled out since bloat is very, very serious.

Also, making friends with women can lead to introductions to nice men! If you have enough women friends, odds are that one of them will have a single cousin, brother, BIL that they'd love to introduce you to.

I've never heard of this. I'd be really upset if "friends" and family did that to me.

People that want to abuse kids will find a way to do it, regardless of school. It will happened regardless of church attendance, doctor visits, swim lessons, band camp, or enrichment classes. We need mental health care in this country. We need CPS and social services to be adequately staffed and funded. There are already laws and organizations that handle allegations of neglect and abuse; we don't staff and fund them. You can take those same abused homeschool kids and send them to public school, and guess what? They're still going to be abused. The parents just get creative about hiding it.

The woman in this article was a stepparent. How many children are abused by stepparents annually? If I had to guess, I'd bet the stats are much bigger for stepparent abuse than homeschool abuse. Maybe we should make laws that require annual parenting classes for all blended families, to ensure step kids aren't being neglected and abused. We'd surely catch more abuse cases that way.

The family in this article was reported to CPS. THEY WERE REPORTED. CPS didnt investigate. Now what? But hey, must have been that homeschooling that caused the problems!

Should laws also require kids below the age of compulsory education to be monitored and presented to mandatory reporters a few times a year?

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Putting in my vote for D&D people, too. Comic and game shops often have game nights at the shop where everyone meets up to play.

I suspect people will protest my perspective on this, but I'm going to put it out there anyway. Most people in the US have more than enough "stuff". They have plenty of mugs, candles, lotions, chocolates, ornaments, scented soaps, picture frames, doo dads, and decorations. They do not need any more of this stuff, certainly not x20-30 (depending on how many students this teacher has). Everyone means well but saying "Just donate it if you can't use it!"...ok, now you've given the teacher a chore to do on their time off: donate the doo dads, knowing darn well that it's most likely going to get dumpstered if it doesn't sell in the next 2-4 weeks at the thrift store. It's really ok to dial back on the gifts. People will still know you love and appreciate them.

I see a LOT of handmade teacher gifts at Goodwill. A lot. Just saying... I think it's ok to not give someone a gift, especially someone you have a professional relationship with. Write a note, express your thanks, ask if you can donate to their classroom.

Ours is HAL.

Maybe she said no gift cards because she gets lots of Starbucks cards and doesn't use them. I'd probably skip giving her a gift because it sounds like she gets too much from students and it's turning into a burden.

Right? She can't find something useful at Amazon or Walmart?

We call it shakey cheese!

I have also had people ask for "more support" in the local fb group, meaning, they wanted to read positive, encouraging blog-style posts about homeschooling in our community. They didn't want to feel pressured to come out to any sort of homeschool event, field trip, or park day. They very specifically said they had their family and church for socializing. They just wanted to read about what other successful homeschoolers were doing in the area, and I was like "Yeah, I'm not able to offer that. Please let me know if you change your mind about attending the Valentine's Day party". I actually had an argument with a co-admin about these requests. They felt that letting other moms from all over the state lurk was simply part of "community outreach", and I was like no. This is weird.

Around here, the park day groups meet your definition of "support group". When I ran the local group, we had mom's night out, occasional field trips, weekly park days. A smaller group of us also hosted something closer to a "co-op": twice a month meetings where the kids worked on an activity together (baking, art, little engineering projects, for example). We'd also get together for kid birthday parties and holiday parties. We had a nerf war and field day once, too. Not much convo about curriculum because people around here don't really care about spiral vs mastery or anything academic. Around here, the mindset is "Anything, including doing nothing, is better than public school". 🤷‍♀️ There are Field-Trip-Only groups where all you do is go on a field trip once a month. I never participated in those groups because I would rather go to museums, industry tours, etc. by myself. Co-ops around here seem to mean either drop-off or parent-participation required. Quality varies a LOT. We took some classes a la carte from one co-op, and it was pretty fun because the classes were "enrichment" and not core classes, but it was an hour drive for me, and I just couldn't do it anymore. We took classes at another co-op (45 minutes in the opposite direction), and it was a cliquish disappointment. Day schools are one day, drop off programs with paid teachers. The kids have homework, projects, required reading. There's usually a lunch break between classes so the kids can socialize. The quality seems higher for these classes than for co-ops. The people I have seen around here that specifically ask for "support groups" are typically having some sort of legal problem with the district, a soon-to-be-ex spouse that wants the kids in public school, or they've got special needs kids and a frustrating experience with their medical provider. They are looking for advice on really complicated situations and generally aren't interested in coming out to socialize. (No clue why not; it's just a pattern I noticed).

You can't. 🤷‍♀️ Text and fb messenger with direct questions like "Will you be attending X event at Y time? When will you be sending me your deposit for the event?" got better results, but it was basically nagging people. I appreciate vendors/businesses that keep their fb page updated with current info so I don't have to message with "I forgot what you told me 2 weeks ago".

Can they check the airline website via their cell phone? They may be able to change their tickets to a later time.

I applied to 3 schools. It was a pretty simple process, even considering I was a music major and had auditions on top of the regular application. Oh wait, my father insisted I also apply to Harvard, even though there was no way I was ever going to get in and couldn't pay for it even if they accepted me. So that makes 4. Spoiler: I did not get in to Harvard. 🙃

What exactly is a homeschool support group? I know what park days and field trip groups are about. I know what co-ops and day schools offer. But I have no idea what a homeschool support group looks like. Most of the moms I met around here didn't feel like they needed support in how to teach something; they were looking for friend-making opportunities for themselves and their kids.

When we were in a co-op, I resigned myself to thinking of the classes as "activities" rather than real learning opportunities. I adjusted my expectations way, way down and never relied on co-op for teaching anything. My standards are different than the norm for homeschoolers around me. In my case, co-op was a poor fit because it was very cliquey with too many mean-girl moms. My kid was also not very excited about it. He was perfectly happy noodling around the park with random kids, but I felt like co-ops were the thing we "should do" because everyone else was doing them and giving me dire warnings about socialization if we did not. That being said, if your kids really like co-op and have friends there, I'd find a way to reframe how you view this experience and see what you can cut from your obligations to the co-op. Do you have to teach through the end of the school year or the end of this semester? Can you teach a different class?