Using the alarms on my cell phone improved my life. I used to always watch the clock and stress about forgetting to take a kid to an extracurriculuar activity or pick them up. A few times over the years I did forget a kid! Now I have repeating alarms for all of the activities and an alarm that means it's time to get ready. I'm so much less stressed when kids are at activities.

I thought Depp also had people who worked in the house testify that Heard was the one who was physically abusive to him. Either way, it sounds like they were both a mess.

Our community has a UCC church and a Church of Christ and they are very, VERY different. The UCC is very much into politics and the Church of Christ Church is not. My church is nondenominational and I've never heard anything political from the pulpit or during church events. Of course people in the church will make political statements, but I've heard both sides in that case.

I had to take DD somewhere and it was snowing hard right before we had to leave. By the time we went out the door, the sun was out and the snow had stopped. Kristen0713 is right about spring being a tease. I never know whether to wear a short sleeved shirt or a winter coat!

This was my first thought. Maybe it's a language barrier, but reading your conversation makes it seem that he's deflecting because he really doesn't have the experience he claims he has. This reminded me of a conversation I had with my oldest son. He interviews people for his international company and was doing a phone interview with a man in Poland. The resume looked fine, but when ds asked questions the guy kept deflecting just like this. DS started asking more specific questions about the guy's experience and training and the guy started yelling at him, "You can't ask me about that!" Um, the questions were pertinant to the job! Obviously the guy was not hired.

I just want to whine a bit, so I'm warning you up front. I'm homeschooling my last child through high school. Since she was going to be the only student, I had planned that we would do several outside classes and maybe even a co-op. We usually do classes at home and only attend outside events that are hard to do without a group or that provide unusual opportunities. We didn't have a lot of options suitable for teens anyway, but Covid wiped out the few we did have. Two co-ops I'd considered, one specifically for teens, closed. The field trip group with some activities geared toward teens stopped meeting. The interesting classes offered for high school homeschoolers all stopped. Anyway, our school year has been less than exciting. I've been looking and looking for interesting things to do nearby and finally found a group doing homeschool classes. It's an hour drive to the facility, but the activities are things DD would really enjoy, are only once a week in the afternoon for five weeks, are affordable, and are suitable for teens. Last week was supposed to be the first class. The activities are outdoors and there was freezing rain, so they canceled and rescheduled for late May. Today was supposed to be the second class. It's 35 degrees with pouring rain starting to turn to snow, so they canceled again. It's mid-April. Can't we please have some nice weather and a chance to get out of the house? Is anyone else having a tough time getting their kids out of the house to do something interesting either due to the effects of Covid or weather?

Aww, I'm sorry you're sick, but I'm glad you got to see him graduate. Congratulations to your son and to his proud mom!

Wow, I remember staying there in the mid 1990's. I had two very young children and was pregnant and it was still in an excellent location to walk or get public transportation.

I do this too and then don't feel bad at all about asking people's names the next few times I meet them. I also remind them of my name or they feel comfortable asking me again since I asked them. Also, when someone calls me by the wrong name, I smile and remind them of my name. My husband refuses to correct people and now there are two people at our church who have been calling him by the wrong name for years!

I can understand why you're angry. There's no way I'd put a pet rabbit outside. They make wonderful indoor pets and there are so many dangers for them outside (heat, cold, predators, escape). House rabbits don't stink much and our rabbit and her litterbox was much less smelly than having cats. I'd be willing to put up a big fight with grandma when it involves my kids and proper animal care.

My teen had a problem connecting to people at that age too. We don't have an active high school homeschooling community and she was lonely after quitting an activity that took up most of her time and sort of had built in friends. We don't allow personal cell phones until age 15, but even then she neglected to get contact numbers at first. She started making a couple of friends at her new main activity and then the friends suddenly quit the activity for one reason or another and she realized she had no way of contacting them. Now she's more willing to ask for contact information earlier in a relationship. She also connects to friends on Snapchat. I've noticed she's much happier and more connected to peers now.

Yes, this is a scam that's been going on for a very long time. They pretend they're giving you a refund, make a large mistake, and try to get you to repay it. I love watching some of the scambaiters on youtube who call them as elderly people, waste hours of their time so they're not scamming innocent people, delete their "customer" files, and help victims.

Your poor daughter. I have sons and I cringe whenever I see those stupid promposals. I think they started with dating couples who knew the girl was going to say yes, but there's a LOT of pressure on other guys to make asking a girl to prom into a big event. It's hard enough for some guys to get up the courage to ask someone to prom, but then he has to decide whether to do it quietly and have the girl upset that she didn't get the big themed proposal or do a promposal and risk being turned down in public. Then, as with your daughter, the girl might have to decide whether to embarrass the guy in public or agree to something she doesn't really want to do. Soon my FB page will be full of parents gushing about how a guy showed up (usually with friends in tow) carrying a stupid sign, candy, balloons or whatever and then many of their friends gush about how it's all SO exciting. UGH! I think it ends poorly more often than we know.

It's dreary here too. I'm looking forward to summer. It's not that I have anything exciting planned, but I love sunny, warm days. Every year I have more and more trouble leaving the house and getting anything done when it's cold, grey, and rainy or snowy. On sunny summer days I have so much more motivation and energy. For the first time in my life, I'm seriously considering moving south.

We usually only put candy in Easter baskets and I only do them for kids still at home. We'll probably still have and Easter egg hunt because my teens still seem to enjoy it.

I have friends in their 70's. The man hiked the Camino de Santiago trail when he was 70 and went back a few months ago at age 72 to explore Portugal with a relative. The wife used the time to drive and visit friends in 4 states. They hiked in Switzerland right before Covid. They boat, travel, remodel their house, have events with grandkids and generally have a very full life. I feel like the old lady when I hear all they're doing and I'm 15 years younger! Grace Hopper talked about people on multiple meds. My 79 year old mom says when she goes to the doctor she always overhears the nurses talking about her and expressing surprise that she's not on any meds. Apparently it's extremely uncommon.

I think there's something to looking at how long most of your relatives lived. My parents are 79 and 81 and both mostly healthy and both my grandmothers died in their late 80's. A few relatives died in their late 70's, but one great aunt was 101 and another aunt lived with major health problems and horrible health habits for over three decades. I have anxiety and am always worried about an injury or accident, but I'm not ready to go yet because I have two kids still at home and a lot of things I still want to do. As I approach my 60's, I do feel like getting rid of more stuff and preparing things to make it easier for my children someday, but I hope I have a few decades left. I laughed about the grandmother who was dying forever. My own grandmother never visited because she was "so old and sick". It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that she was only in her early 50's at the time. She was almost 88 when she died.

Rabbit cages should be larger than the one you linked. Our Mini-Rex bunny roamed the house during the day and only went in the cage at night, but we had a very large crate. With the litterbox, feeding area, and a big overturned box where she liked to sleep, it needed to be that big. She also HATED to be in the cage and would try to stay out of our reach at bedtime. We had water available all the time. When she was out it was a large metal bowl. In her cage she had one of those water bottles that hang. She used it but was only in the cage at night. We cleaned and refilled the water bowl daily. Rabbits are somewhat fragile animals and they usually don't like to be picked up. Make sure he knows how to pick them up safely and hold them securely so they learn to trust him. He should hold them daily. Another vote for checking out the House Rabbit Society. I really miss my bunny now. 😞 She was the best pet and kept us laughing. Every morning when I tried to tie my shoes, she would run over and untie them. She threw the kids toys around the room. When we let her out of her cage in DS's upstairs bedroom, she would race down the stairs and then race around the living room doing binkys. She would chase the cats and nip their butts. And, I couldn't even try eating a banana without sharing!

I thought I was ready to buy Berean Builders Chemistry and then I saw many recommendations for ChemExplained and checked it out. It looks like it's taught by video as a traditional high school chemistry class. It looks interesting, but I can't justify the cost so will probably go ahead with Berean Builders. If that's not an issue for you, they provide a free trial on the website.

Quickly adds "make sure children can identify snakes, especially pythons" to list of homeschool requirements.

All of the colleges and universities around me (a lot of them both big and small) use semesters. They start in September, take a break of at least Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving, and end in December. The second semester starts in mid-January and goes until May with a week long spring break. Spring break is usually around the end of March or beginning of April. I don't know of any local university that goes into June.

Camping in Yosemite and hiking to the top of Vernal Falls. The rainbows on the Mist Trail were beautiful.

I was on Celexa/citalopram for years for depression. I didn't realize how much it helped with my anxiety until I tapered off of it. Now anxiety, especially related to driving, is really affecting my life negatively because I can't go very far from home. It worked long term for me with few side effects.

My son was talking to me about something called simultaneous enlistment that lets college students do ROTC while also serving in the National Guard. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/simultaneous-membership-program-rotc-4139867

I think that colleges look at DE or college level classes as something different than foreign language classes taught at the high school level. Our local university requires everyone to take a placement test for languages. My DS was completely self taught in high school, tested into a 4th semester DE college class, couldn't get in the class so took a different language for fall DE, took both languages for spring DE, then continued both languages as a freshman at the university. I think colleges are just looking to see progression and, if your student doesn't love languages like mine does, I think it's fine to move on to other electives after getting 4 credits.