I would plan a minimum of $1k a month, plus copays and at least a $5k deductable. Beyond that though, it's a total crapshoot.

I agree with a lot of the ones people have already come up with. Especially meat. I think future generations are going to be horrified that we raised animals in horrific conditions to kill and eat. I would guess that a century from now, it's going to be akin to how people think about slavery. One I haven't seen yet (unless I missed it) is that I think future generations will have much more flexible ideas about marriage. People change so much over a lifetime, and I've always found it odd that you're expected to find someone when you're fairly young and stay with them until you die. I think that as certain religious traditions continue to shrink in numbers, people are going to be more open-minded about marriage. Plural marriages, marriages that expire after a certain amount of time or when the kids are all adults, etc. I don't know that it will happen in my lifetime, but I think it will happen eventually.

I don't think anyone said conservatives are backward. If you look at the overall trend, however, each generation does tend to be more progressive and open-minded than the generation before, so it's only natural to assume, when thinking about future generations, that they would continue on that way.

I'm this way too. I was inwardly freaking out when my own mother held the new baby. There was no reasoning behind it, it was just a combination of hormones and anxiety. It went away around two months, and now I'm the one begging other people to hold the baby so my arms can have a break. She's eleven months old and twenty-five pounds and my arms are SO SORE.

That was interesting. Seriously though, who in the world thought it was a good idea to take marriage advice from a 21-year-old virgin in the first place? It's like someone with no children writing a book on a better way to homeschool.

I think so. I have to look at "It's Perfectly Normal" to see if we even need it, because we have a ridiculous number of books on puberty and health laying around. I'd rather have it and not need it than the opposite, though, so I'll probably just go ahead and buy it. I don't plan on buying anything else at this point.

We're going to do it alone at home.

We're going to use the UU OWL curriculum for my fifth grader: https://www.uua.org/re/owl

Those easy readers can be deadly boring. Could you look around for something more interesting? Or maybe write something yourself, like a serial drama written in one-syllable words that ends on a cliffhanger every day? Also, some kids find it helpful to spend a bit of time doing flashcards of the most common words in the English language. Stuff like the, a, for, at, and. The flashcards aren't a ton of fun, obviously, but once they can recognize the very common words on sight, sounding out a book becomes less of a slog.

I'd start by reading "The Book Whisperer" by Donalyn Miller. It's inspiring and has a lot of great ideas.

I use a printing/cursive hybrid, and in my experience it's faster than both. The letters are connected but I avoid all the frilly decorative crap. Most people that I know write in a similar style.

There are a couple of free museums in Duluth you could check out. UMD has a free art museum on campus called the Tweed that's fun to walk through, and there's the Karpeles Manuscript Museum in town which is also free (or at least it was a few years ago). If you don't mind a bit of a drive, Gooseberry Falls, which is like an hour north of Duluth, is gorgeous. There's a giant docked ship in Duluth that does tours if you have anyone in your family who likes boats, though I'm blanking on the name of it. The Vista Fleet does boat tours on Lake Superior, but I went on one and was bored out of my mind. There's also the North Shore Scenic Railroad, which I never made it onto but a lot of people really enjoy. The Great Lakes Aquarium is fun, but super expensive. There's also the Lake Superior Zoo, but the zoo doesn't have as much as they used to, though it's still worth an afternoon. Leif Erickson Park is a huge rose garden and would be a fantastic place for a picnic lunch. It's where my dh proposed. ?

Ah. Yeah, we aren't exactly a global beacon for diverse communities outside of the bigger cities. Especially as you get further north into the smaller, more cut off areas that might have something like a one percent non-white population, there tends to be more racism, though in my experience it's more often ignorance and fear than outright hostility. (I grew up on the northern border, so I'm pretty familiar with things up there.) Though Duluth, where I went to college, was much more diverse. It's one of the reasons I was so sad to leave, though the economy back in '08 didn't really give me a choice. The person you met is pretty extreme, though. I'm glad things turned out well.

Remind me- did you live in MN previously, or is that a general impression? I'm horrible at keeping track of where everyone lives/lived no matter how many times I read these kinds of threads, lol. It certainly varies depending on where you live in the state. Rural farming communities tend to be more conservative than the metro areas, and the former will have a much lower COL than the latter, of course. And you get those uber loud crankypants anti-government types anywhere you go. Overall though, we pay higher taxes, get a lot in return, rabidly protect the environment, happily fund good schools, and are glad to sacrifice to make life better for everyone. We just can't seem to shed the Scandinavian socialist mindset that many of our great-grandparents brought over. ? It's definitely not the place for everyone, but I've lived here pretty much my whole life and unless I win the lottery and can move to a stretch of beach in Hawaii, I can't think of any other place I'd rather live in the US.

I can't sell you on Minnesota because it's the exact opposite of what you're looking for, except that the cost of living is pretty reasonable. I love it here and we do have a lot of beaches, but it's more of a collectivist, liberal state and most of us like our vaccines quite a lot. MN does have a lot of decent-paying entry-level manufacturing jobs in certain parts of the state though, if your dh is going to have to look for a new job. So there's that, if you decide to embrace your inner Socialist and give us a try. ?

"Factory job" is pretty broad. My dh works for an aluminum manufacturing company and it's definitely not a tedious, stand in one place and do the same thing all day kind of job. He has to program a range of machines for a broad variety of different things, then run the actual job, and it requires an insane amount of learning. Not to mention that because they extrude aluminum on site, the temp in there averages around a hundred degrees at any given time. Their biggest problem keeping employees isn't because people fail the drug test, but because between the physical and mental strain, not everyone can even do the work. We're in a fairly low COL area too, and it pays a decent middle class income, but he often puts in sixty hour weeks. The toll it takes on your body is no joke. I don't know what kind of factories you have where you live, but manufacturing now is often highly technical and a lot of hard physical labor. It isn't something I'd want to do for just a few months to earn some extra cash, but again, that varies by workplace.

I do, but dh made our boxspring by hand because in our last home we couldn't fit a queen-sized one through the bedroom doorway. So he just built one himself right there in the bedroom, then took it apart and reassembled it when we moved. It's unfinished wood, so I put a fitted sheet over it because it looks nicer.

I'm in MN and I had to stop and wait for two just today. Both that I saw today had 30+ vehicles and police escorts with flashing lights and everything. People generally pull over and wait even on the opposite side of the road here, so they back up traffic quite a bit. I don't mind pulling over and waiting, but I'll admit that by the time the second one passed by I was eyerolling and sighing.

My guess is that the problem is the litter boxes being in the bathroom. Nothing makes litter boxes stink like humidity, and bathrooms are humid. Can you try putting them in a less damp area and see if that makes any difference? Also, you just have to accept that when you have multiple cats, you're going to get a whiff of cat smell on occasion. That's life with animals. I will say that we have four cats and our home is 1000 sq ft, and I still find our cats way less stinky that other peoples' dogs. ? I love dogs, but they stink.

I'm from MN. It could be typical. It depends. I've had conversations like this, and I've had cashiers who didn't say a word. Though I do seem to get chattier cashiers more often than not, and then they tend to way overshare, lol. I joke to dh that I've got one of those faces that invites people to tell me everything that's going on in their lives. I've gone to the grocery store to buy one thing and by the time I leave, I know how many kids my cashier has, what school they go to, why her son doesn't like his teacher, how things are going in her marriage... I don't mind most of the time. I'm starting to think I missed my calling as a therapist.

That's the problem right there. Why in the world do you have to have a big discussion with him about it? I probably wouldn't be cooperative either in that kind of situation. Just acquire the stuff, stick it in the fridge/freezer, the end. If you don't think he'll find it, say, "Hey, SS, there's some <whatever> in the freezer if you get hungry." That's all you have to do. You don't have to make a big production out of asking him to please eat veg burritos for the sake of his health because he's obese and on and on and on.

Yup. Halogen bulbs are actually what they use in electric wax warmers (or all the ones I've seen, anyway) because they get so hot they melt the wax.

That's the kind of attitude that isn't going to be helpful at all for your ss. When you feel hungry all the time, choosing a food that's better, even if it isn't perfect, IS great. And can be really difficult.

The higher fat content his milk has, the better. Skim milk is all empty carbs. Fat is what makes a person feel full. Contrary to popular belief, eating fat does not make you fat. Trying to encourage him to eat low fat foods is setting him up for failure.

Really? You know all your other posts on this same topic still exist, right? And yeah, struggling to maintain weight to the extent that your mom loses her sh*t when someone drinks all the milk is most certainly a medical problem.