😞 What a miserable person this teacher must be.

Can I add my vent, too? I'm feeling very sour about this, and it's probably none of my business...but... The local school district has a summer breakfast and lunch program sponsored by the USDA. The meals are free for all kids 18 and under. We don't participate in the program, because my son wouldn't qualify for any sort of free meal program if he were in school, and I feel like we'd just be mooching. This program is supposed to support the families that really *need* those free meals in school and who struggle when school is out of session. It feels wrong to me to take from that program, even though when we've happened upon the lunch program at the park, they've always offered him what they were serving and make it clear that any child can have a free meal. We live in a poor area and I want that food to go to the kids that need it. I'd feel horrible if they were one meal short because my upper-middle-class kid took a meal for funsies. I'd feel like a hypocrite if we took meals, so we say thank you, but we're fine. But the moms in the homeschool group? Woohoo, summer time means free meals at the park! They're loading up all the kids and giggling about how great it is that they won't have to feed the kids the entire summer! These are families that a) do not need a free meal program and b) are VERY outspoken against receiving government "hand outs" c) are VERY outspoken about the schools overstepping their roles. Lots of "We homeschool to avoid government oversight and control! We don't want charter funds for school! Stay out of our lives!" talk. But they'll happily, joyfully take the government and school sponsored free breakfast and lunch because they are cheap and lazy, and no one will ask them for id or proof of income, so they can fly under the radar and get free meals with zero accountability. They do the same thing at the "kids and cops" event, where the cops give out bikes to low-income families. Oh, and they are "unschoolers", too. I have nothing against the idea of unschooling. We've been pretty darn unschooly at times, but I also have a kid that reads math curricula and the atlas for fun, so I'm hard pressed to interrupt him reading about ancient trade routes to drill spelling words or whatever. I'm just tired of really lazy, unmotivated people who claim all the nothing they do is "unschooling", when I know the only reason their kids aren't in school is because school would force at least a teensy bit of accountability upon the parents. *scowl*

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Their call is very alarming! It scared me half to death every time it yelled at the door, and it would make the dog bark, too. This bird also got up on our roof a few times. If I had a drone, I would have chased it off of there, as well. Of course, one of the times I was running the bird off with the RC car, my other neighbor's kids saw me do it and just stood there shocked, mouth agape. So now I'm the crazy homeschooling lady that is mean to birds. 🙄

Our neighbor's peacock used to come yell at his reflection in my storm door every morning at 7 am. I ran him off with my son's RC car.

@PeterPan I am kicking around the idea of becoming an Ultrasound tech. Short training time, high pay, good projected need for techs. I was a vet tech for a long time, so I'm used to talking to people about health related matters. I still have time to think it over. DH and I are also talking about moving out of this area in a year or two. He's a little frustrated with his employer, I'm a little frustrated with the lack of opportunities for teens (and adults!) around here. It's been a nice place for DS10 as a young kid, but I'm having a hard time finding opportunities for him now that he's hitting the tween years. There are opportunities in other towns, but those all require 60+ minutes of driving each way. I've got some hobbies I enjoy: I crochet, I needlepoint, I have been working on a genealogy project with my aunt via email. I have a small, online business. I keep busy. So, we've got some thinking to do about where the family is headed. Like I said, there's nothing exactly wrong and none of us are depressed or upset. We've all got kind of a sense that this chapter of life is soon to end, and it's time to think about where we'd like to go next.

Agreed. My boredom with homeschooling morphed into a mid-life crisis of sorts. I almost posted a thread about it in the chat forum! I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. I'm not depressed, just totally bored and over homeschooling, lol. We're about to start year 6.

This is my worry, too. Who's giving my 14 yo a phone and why? Since there has been sneaking behavior in the past, I'd try to ascertain who owned the phone first. If a friend forgot to take it, ok. Let's call friend's parent and let them know that friend left the phone here. If it really belongs to friend, that shouldn't be a problem, vs asking friend directly who may have been told to lie if asked about a phone. If the phone doesn't belong to a friend? Man, I'd probably blow my top and over react, so I will leave it to wiser, calmer people to advise.

I'm in total agreement with everything you wrote, but the bolded part jumped out at me because there was another mom in our local homeschool group that did this regularly. I'd schedule events and she'd schedule other events to conflict with mine and invite all the same people. It was exasperating.

I only realized this to be true within the last year. I know a great many people, but they are not all close friends, and that is ok. It is kind of how it's supposed to be, because it's simply not possible to be in so deep with everyone you meet. It's taken 5 years, but I now have 3 pretty good friends among several "regular" friends. The "good" friends are ones that I'd help move or run a garage sale with them, lol. I have lots of buddies and pals that I wouldn't go out of my way to make plans with, but I'm always delighted to see them at events. I think social media promotes an unreasonable expectation of female friendship: everyone is supposed to have dozens of besties they share everything with. Lots of "girls weekends" and "love your tribe!" There is a level of intensity there that rivals new romantic relationships. I haven't had that kind of a friendship with another female since high school. It just doesn't seem sustainable. I know several women that feel vaguely defective because they don't have that kind of friendship as grown women with job, spouse, home, and kids. I also see that pressure being pushed down on to the kids, especially in homeschool groups. "My 9 year old doesn't have a best friend. What am I doing wrong?" Is your child happy? Then you are doing nothing wrong.

Do not feel bad. That lady was crazy and you owe her nothing. I sell a lot of stuff online, and I am very blunt with my expectations: first person to show up with cash in hand gets the item. I will NOT hold items. I will NOT deliver items. Google the directions to the meeting place. I will NOT be providing turn by turn assistance if you get lost, (I had a guy who did not speak English get lost on the way to my house and it was a giant mess as he'd call his wife to call me to get directions to relay back to him. It was a disaster). No, I won't call you to talk about the item. If you want more info, you can email, text, or call me your dang self, but do not message me to say "I'm interested. Call me". I'm not chasing you down. Seriously, be firm and do not feel badly about it. Your camper will sell, promise.

I've gotten way better about tossing the junk from MIL. And since she's moved 3.5 hours away and DH refuses to drive down there, (long story), the steady flow of junk has been reduced to a trickle. Woohoo! I just have to find a way to sneak that bowling ball out of here!

The people that bought my grandparents' house cut down the mulberry trees to expand the driveway. I cried hard about that. 😞

I don't know how she does it, but my MIL has a never ending supply of trinkets and doodads from when DH was a kid or "precious treasures" from some long deceased relative DH met once in 1983. MIL has been "downsizing" her junk for easily 5 years now and it never ends. My favorite was when DH came home with the bowling ball he used when he was 14. DH is nearly 50. MIL kept an old bowling ball for 35 years "just in case"! DH brought it home and made a to-do about giving it to kiddo for him to use. Except it's several pounds too heavy, so it will be a few years before kiddo can use it, and we'd have to get it re-drilled for his fingers anyway! This might make sense if DH was some sort of bowling aficionado and wanted to pass on a legacy, but he is not. He has not bowled probably since he was 14. There are no special memories or significant events associated with this bowling ball. It is not a fancy, expensive, pro-level ball. It's just a regular bowling ball that he got from camp or VBS or Scouts or he-doesn't-really-remember-where-it-came-from. But we can't get rid of it, and now kiddo is stuck with it in his room. Now it's A THING. It's a MOMENT between father and son! If I get rid of it, I am not only denying kiddo some sort of bond with his father, I'm erasing part of DH's childhood. Just whyyyyyyy.

Yes, homes have limited space. DH and I were disagreeing about stuff in kiddo's room. I don't think kiddo cares one way or the other about what is in his room, with few exceptions. I cull his stuff regularly and sell what has value. He has never, ever asked "Where is my..." in his entire life. Selling out-grown toys makes DH really squirrely, because his dad used to sell DH's stuff to punish him. As a result, DH doesn't want me to sell or get rid of anything of kiddo's EVER. Yet he buys him new stuff, and then complains there is no space in kiddo's room for anything. DH insists if we just get some bins and tubs and reorganize it all, it will be better. Except, kiddo will not play with stuff he can't see. If it's in a tub, it's forgotten, and then DH complains that he spent alllll this money on these toys and they get ignored and it was such a waste and blah blah blah. Like, dude...stop buying the stuff. Problem solved. His room is a finite container. It will only hold so much stuff.

My DH has kids from his first marriage. The kids are in their early 20s, so not really kids anymore. DH still thinks of prices in terms of what everything cost when his kids were little. When our DS10 was a baby, DH was convinced that if I simply looked harder, I could find daycare for about $200 a month, because that's what he paid in rural Texas in the early 90s. Surely daycare could not possibly be much more than that in suburban Chicago nearly 20 years later! 🙄

DH has kept dress shirts from the late 1980s/early 1990s. Blue and pink striped dress shirts. Because what if he has to go on an interview? These are perfectly good shirts, donchaknow. 😕 Yet every interview he's had since I met him, he buys a new dress shirt. Still can't get rid of these pink and blue striped dress shirts, though! We have also dragged a set of 3.5 foot tall black cabinet speakers around the country several times: Texas to California to Illinois to Texas. They've never been hooked up in all the years I've known DH. I desperately want to sell them, and he insists we can't because they are great speakers that were so expensive back in the day! To which I counter that Victrolas were expensive in their day, too but technology marches on and *we never use these speakers*. They currently function as giant, black, monolithic stands for the xbox controllers. I hate them. There's also a boatload of junk from my MIL that we apparently can never get rid of: ugly art, souvenirs from *her* mother's travels, and ugly furniture. MIL didn't want any of this crap in her house, but cried and cried and cried when no one would take it off her hands. DH caved and now we have all this nonsense. The last time we saw MIL, she tried, (for the 3rd time), to give us these ugly, ugly, ugly giant brass 1970s reproduction Gone With the Wind style lamps. "They belonged to great aunt so-and-so and are just toooo precious to give away". I told her if she gives them to me I will sell them on eBay and not feel bad at all. Suddenly she found the space in her own home to keep them. Stop trying to decorate my house, MIL!

Our sellers were retired military that had taken one of those "How to be a House Flipper" courses and tried for a year to sell this house FSBO. They painted the walls and trim in the LR and DR mustard yellow and fire engine red. The office was sponge painted orange. The bathroom was lavender with metallic gold paint on the trim. It was AMAZING in how bad their sense of design was and how they truly believed this house was a rare jewel. They bought the house in 2008 right before the bubble popped, painted it this nightmare of colors, priced 125K above market, and tried to sell it with themselves as the real estate agent. After a year, they got a "real" realtor who insisted they paint the inside something neutral and lower the price. They were kind of weird about money. They wanted to sell the appliances for cash outside of the house sale, but then keep using those appliances until they moved out. So, you want me to give you money for appliances today and you keep using them, (and potentially breaking them), but keep it outside the sale of the house, so I have no recourse if you *do* break them?? No thanks! We saw the house on a Wednesday and decided on Friday that we wanted to make an offer. On Thursday, right before we made an offer, the sellers raised the price of the house by $100 because they'd just received a propane delivery and wanted to be reimbursed for that expense. Really? They also wanted to sell us the water softener system for cash, separate from the sale of the house. I told them I was not paying extra for it. They said they'd disconnect it and take it with them to their new home 1000 miles away. Um, ok. Knock yourself out, but you will have to pay a plumber to disconnect it, reconnect the plumbing, AND I am demanding a new inspection of the plumbing, paid for by the seller, to make sure this is done right. The seller decided to leave the water softener after that. We live near 2 military bases and I am former military. Our bank is a major, national bank that has tons of experience with VA loans, but our loan officer acted completely baffled by the process. There was a lot of drama there that I won't detail, but the overview is one of the underwriters threw a HUGE tantrum right before closing because I said I was frustrated by the lack of communication between her and the loan officer. Her tantrum pushed closing back by 2 weeks, which caused the sellers and their realtor to throw a fit. Everyone started acting ugly and rude, and we almost backed out of the deal. It only got resolved because I threw a massive fit about how everything was handled and CC'd everyone's bosses. A regional director called me at 9 pm on a Saturday night and said "You will close on Tuesday. I will make it happen". And we closed on Tuesday, after weeks of nickle-and-diming and petty melodrama. I hate that I had to throw a massive fit to get everyone to behave. 😞 The sellers were in the house on the walk-through. They'd already moved all their things out, and sat in the livingroom in lawn chairs while we went through. As soon as we were done, they locked up and drove off to their new home out of state. I have no idea why they were there.

Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters will kick you out if you talk during the movies. They are also really firm about no cell phones and no kids after a certain time. I love going there during the day!

I keep thinking he needs something more like an inpatient program. Is that what the internet addiction treatment will be? There's just so much to unpack with this young man. I'm not sure outpatient would be enough? (I don't know?) And if outpatient is enough, it would be interrupted by this trip to Japan.

I only know a teensy bit about slaughterhouse work from vet tech school. Maybe this varies from place to place, but the houses near my old college had the workers rotate through the jobs because it was too mentally/emotionally hard on the workers to always be the one killing the animals. They had to rotate through different jobs every few days to save their mental health. There's a difference between working a family farm where you slaughter a few animals in season each year and working at a commercial slaughterhouse, where you are killing dozens of animals every day. This is not an easy job. At all.

Therapy. The young woman needs some therapy so that she can learn to assert herself and deflect her parent's emotional manipulation. Unless she lives in an area where public transport is readily available, driving in the US is a life skill. She needs to drive to be able to maintain employment, visit doctors, buy food. Her parents are not doing her any favors by keeping her dependent on them. Daughter needs to learn how to lovingly detach from her parents. Therapy can help her achieve that.

I'm so sorry for how harsh this will sound, but DO NOT send this young man to Japan to work in a slaughterhouse and supervise young children! The person that has been described here needs psychiatric help. The whole family does. Something is deeply, deeply wrong here! Why do you want to send this mentally unstable young man to the other side of the world to work in a slaughterhouse? What is the positive that you envision coming from this? If there is money to pay for private religious schools and a trip to Japan, then surely there is money to get him into psychotherapy?!

I don't think they are still in Japan. Yael said that hubby was in Australia and his Sabbath began 14 hours before hers. There is only 1 hour difference between Japan and Australia, but 14 between Aus and Boston.

I love assigned seating! I usually buy our tickets a few hours before the movie starts, and I can see whether the theater will be full or empty. We go during the week to the "expensive" theater where they also serve food. The tickets for the kids movies are only $1 but most parents don't want to shell out money for a meal, so the theater is mostly empty. It's awesome! What grinds my gears is when we are in a completely empty theater and someone comes in after us and picks seats *right next to us*. Are you kidding me? Why?! Why do you need to sit right next to me when there are 75 other seats you could pick?! I have been told it's some sort of extrovert vs introvert thing, but I don't know.