I re-organized the kitchen this afternoon after the gravel was delivered. I put my baking dishes which I use less on lower shelves and moved the food I access often into the cabinets. This should improve the workflow quite a bit. I bought three gallons of paint (yay, holiday weekend paint rebates!) and my toilet paper holder arrived via amazon. I got one of those rotating ones rather than a spring loaded one. The previous owners had literally attached the old toilet paper holder with a putty caulk, which failed. 🙄 I also picked up a shelf for the bathroom. I would love to completely renovate our master bathroom, but it’s not in our budget right now. We are still recovering from last year’s major repairs.

Oh.heck.no. She should have someone else in the office represent the buyer (or you). She can not fairly negotiate price, repairs, or other things that will pop up. Her commission price should be the least of your worries, IMO. The ONLY way I would be ok with this would be if I had done a market analysis with comparative pricing through a couple of agents before listing AND and I got a full cash offer, no repairs requested. This could happen in some markets, but it’s not likely. One of the first things I always cover when hiring a realtor (I have bought and sold 3 hours in the last four years) is what will happen if one of her clients wants our house.

What you suggest is how we handle it at our house. I sometimes get back a text "So and so has another commitment and can't make it", and sometimes I don't.

Yeah, this will likely be an on-going issue. I have been mad for about a decade now. IME, it’s still not taken seriously in jr high. I have been making rounds and it’s up for discussion in next week’s IEP. I think they see so many low functioning kids that they don’t want to support the 2E ones.

We’ve bumped into this. I think this misperception is one reason the DSM has moved from calling this dysgraphia to SLD-Writing (specific learning disorder= SLD). The Understood page on Dysgraphia and what it looks like at different ages is a helpful resource. I have a bunch of printoffs that I bring to each IEP meeting to help educate.

No, I recycle them. 🙂 If you want to keep something, keep only the tests. (Some states require you to keep samples of work.)

I just ordered 7.5 cubic yards of gravel, which doesn't sound too bad...until you calculate that that's 21,262ish lbs. Also on tap for this summer: laying 9 cubic yards of mulch, repairing and staining the deck and fence, and starting the repainting of the interior of this house. What projects do you have planned for this summer?

We did the Feingold diet with our kids to see if we could pinpoint issues and triggers. ITA with the above point that it takes months to sort this out--this can't be a try for two weeks and give up thing. Everybody has to be on board--anyone who may have contact with him needs to know he's on a special diet for a period of time. We had people at church try to hand our kids candy, we had to deal with playdates, etc. You have no idea how food-centered our culture is until you have to deal with food issues, iykwim. The other bit I wanted to share is to not only look at food categories, but food textures. A lot of kids have oral tone issues and like starches (white bread, pastas, nuggets, etc.) that become paste-like in the mouth. Other kids might like cold and sweet things. Some are really into crunchy things (popcorn, chips, carrots). Of the family and friends in our circle with food issues, like 90% of them are in the limited range of foods and those foods are: white bread, pasta, chicken nuggets, and maybe yogurt. You can use food chaining to expand those choices---you might choose a different brand of nugget, then move to chicken tenders, then move to homemade breaded chicken, then move to grilled chicken in nugget sized pieces (chik-fil-a has awesome grilled chicken, fwiw), then to marinated chicken breasts cut up, etc. From there you can jump to fish.... The idea is that gradual incremental change can take you a long ways....

The going rate in the last two states we've lived in has been $250 for a full detailing. There are places that were in the $60 range for simple shampooing and wipe-down of the interior. Check with the higher end car washes....they tend to offer better rates or more a la carte services compared to dedicated car detailing places.

The ingestion issue is a point of controversy in the aromatherapy community. There are some qualified aromatherapists who do it, but I am in the camp who disagree with the practice. Essential oils are not water soluble. Putting them in your stomach means that they cannot be dissolved and that they won’t be distributed evenly in your body. It also makes you more prone to stomach upset. (Some medical researchers are looking at nano-emulsions to minimize gastric upset, fwiw on this particular point.). Even if your mucosa lining wasn’t upset by the oils, I am still concerned about the potency of the oils when we are talking about a therapeutic oral dose. I haven’t worked out the math personally, but I have heard that 1 drop of Roman Chamomile is equivalent to over 35 cups of tea. Given what I know about how many pounds of rinds go into lemon essential oil or that about 3 lbs of lavender make 15mL (3 teaspoons) of lavender oil.... that’s a lot for a body to handle, even if the “dose” is just a few drops. I am deeply concerned to read of people recommending 3 drops of lime oil in a glass of water. No one eats 9 (making this number up—I think it’s more but I can’t find it with a quick google) pounds of lime rind, right?!! Juice of half a lime, sure. But lime oil is not the same as lime juice. The doses make no sense especially compared to what we see in “safe” topical dilution ratios. I just don’t think ingestion should be in the realm of the casual hobbyist.

I personally blend it with lavender, frankincense, geranium, carrot seed oil and a few other things and use it with a blend of rosehip and seabuckthorn carrier oil. If I were to use it as a single oil I would use rosehip as my carrier.

Helicrysum italicum.... Helichrysum's is an effective antibacterial against gram positive and gram negative bacteria, it has some anti fungal properties, and it has been the best wrinkle, age spot, and scar oil I've tried. If you wanted an oil to work on anti-aging stuff in your skin, this is what I recommend. If you want to read more, and get a sense of pricing I'd point you to Mountain Rose Herbs or Eden's Garden.

Lavender: for various skin rashes (allergic, eczema, fungal) as it has antimicrobial and antifungal properties, for tension and migraine headaches, for mild burns and cuts/scrapes, for mild colds, and for PMS crabbiness.

Peppermint: to repel ants (I put on cotton balls and leave them out, refreshing that oil often), to open up breathing (put into my cupped hands and hold my cupped hands over my mouth and nose when out and about), to relieve tension headaches, and for upset tummies. I use peppermint in lots of blends, but those are my single oil use applications.

So, you asked above how I use peppermint, lavender, and helicrysum. I should share that I use conventional and complementary medicine but that I am on the medicinal not woo side of complementary medicine. I read published medical articles (Europeans use aromatherapy much more than US drs), I have a decent number of aromatherapy books, I have studied a bit, and I cross-reference against Tisserand’s work on safety, efficacy, uses, and counterindications. I am not an aromatherapist, but I am more than a “read this cool thing on Pinterest” kind of user, iykwim. I firmly believe: 1. Essential oils are not for ingestion, 2. They shouldn’t be applied “neat”—the only exception for me would be lavender oil with re: to a burn in an emergency, and 3. Essential oils should be treated with the same cautionary thought we use with Rx medicines. They are highly concentrated forms of flowers and herbs and despite all of the “everything is safe” rhetoric we sometimes hear, anything metabolized by our liver and kidneys should be taken seriously. Ok, going to do another post because my internet is glitchy today with storms coming through...