Amy Gen
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Posts posted by Amy Gen
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4 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
That doesn't surround like what I've read anywhere. I mean, I'm sure they'll be more comfortable that way, but it doesn't sound like a good idea.
It isn’t like anything I’ve read either, but several of my friends have been given these instructions at the testing site.
I wonder if the administrators are saying it so fewer people have side effects and maybe more people will be willing to get the shot?
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2 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
I think one isn't supposed to take anti-inflammatories in order to not interfere with immune response.
That makes sense to me, but my friends are being told to hydrate the day before, and start taking ibuprofen in the car on the way home and keep taking it on a 4 hour schedule.
The instructions are just so contradictory.
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I have been homeschooling for 21 years now, and I still have a 14 year old and an 11 year old. I’m committed to homeschooling until these last 2 go off to college and even then, my dream life is to have grandchildren to homeschool.
I may go back to work (teaching) in a couple of years to make sure these last 2 kids can go to good schools and not take on debt. Dh will continue working from home, so he can pick up some of the slack if I go back to work.
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Good news! I just found out that my autism kid got her J&J shot at school right before it was paused. She has been completely isolated for a year, so I’m really glad she got this done. She said she didn’t even worry much because she could clearly tell that she didn’t have any symptoms of a reaction. It is a huge relief because she is also celiac, and is always having reactions to everyday stuff.
She still isn’t going out much because she says the vaccine isn’t proven effective in keeping vaccinated people from infecting others.
She also told me that the nurse administering the shots told them not to take any pain relievers unless their symptoms are very extreme. That is opposite from the instructions that were given at the hospital where I got my shot.
Do you think it depends on which manufacturer the vaccine comes from? Or should everyone just try to tough it out?
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I found some of my posts going back to 2008, but that was when we got the “new” board format. I know I joined originally in 2000 when I first started homeschooling.
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72 hours after my 2nd modern shot, and the only side effect was some fatigue and very slight soreness in my arm. I feel completely recovered from both now.
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I always wear an apron when I’m cooking or washing dishes. I have a couple of special ones that were made for me.
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I got my second moderna shot 4 hours ago. My arm isn’t even sore, but boy am I sleepy.
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Sorry for posting and running this afternoon. I got too busy to remember my priorities. LOL.
Actually it is my son whose serious girlfriend has a toxic mother. I started out vague because I’d be so sad if she read this and was offended, but if that happened, I’d just have to tell her that I needed advice because I really don’t know what the right thing to do is.
Yes, both kids are in therapy.
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48 minutes ago, OH_Homeschooler said:
t sounds like the partner is aware of the toxicity, is that accurate? I think that will help quite a bit.
Yes and no. Partner has only had contact with this parent for the last 2 years, so not much experience. My kid went over there 2 or 3 times, took one look at the dysfunction going on and said, “No, I won’t be doing this again.”
There was a time when the parent accused my kid of something. Partner didn’t react right away, thinking it must be a joke, but later came out strongly in defense of my kid. I don’t think there is a very high level of awareness yet.
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I have a what-would-you-do.
Say, you have an adult child in a serious relationship. And say this child’s partner is everything you could ever dream of, smart, generous, giving, trustworthy, funny, inclusive, frugal, responsible, loving......every, every thing you have ever wished for. And the couple is moving in together talking about marriage and children. Oh happy day.
There is just one problem. The partner has a toxic parent, and my kid was raised to stay away from anyone who brings chaos and misery everywhere they go and is refusing to have any contact with toxic parent. Partner feels very torn and stuck.
I’m close to both of them. They are both asking me for advice. I’ve told them I’m super proud of them for talking about these things now, and realizing they need to be prepared and have a plan instead of moving in together believing everything will magically be perfect.
How would you advise this couple? I’m at such a loss.
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17 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:22 minutes ago, Scarlett said:
You're right, diagnosis or not, I need to do what I need to do. I will say, though, if she doesn't have a cluster-B personality disorder, I would be shocked. She possesses so many of the traits.
I am not comfortable assigning labels like narcissist unless the person has been professionally diagnosed. When I was a teen, I was in therapy, but I was sufficiently programmed to never tell anything that would reflect poorly on my mother.
But the therapist said that she knew my mother was mentally ill by the way that she talked about me. She said my mom was the kind of person who never gets help because they quit therapy as soon as any of their own weak areas are exposed. She said that my mother was not a safe person for me to live with and she worked things out so I could move into my dad. How much better my life would have been if I had stayed with my dad. Looking back, I think my therapist must have been referring to some sort of personality disorder, but I can’t be sure.
But the exact label doesn’t matter to me. What I care about is that I get to choose who I let into my life and not everyone is a good fit. It isn’t necessary that the other person be a narcissist, or evil or even wrong. It just isn’t my preference to be around them. That is enough.
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My mother is your mother’s twin.
25 years ago we let her move in when she had no place to go because she “divorced” her mother with whom she had been living. It really isn’t surprising that she continued her toxic behavior and tried to come between me and Dh and tried to cause drama with the kids.
We sat down with her to talk. We laid out the ground rules for the meeting. She could go first and talk as long as she liked without being interrupted, but after that, she would need to listen to us without interrupting. When it was our turn, my Dh couldn’t get out 2 words before she was yelling. I said, “This meeting is over. You have 90 days to find another place to live.”
That was a hard 90 days. I tried to ignore her and only be home when I knew she wasn’t, but she wanted to have confrontations in front of my young kids. I actually ended up moving with them into a hotel to keep them safe from her drama. When the time was up, my aunt called and said that my mom was gone.
I brought the kids home to find trash everywhere. She had taken their beds, their clothes, my photo albums, and anything else she thought might hurt us. Even that was fine, so long as she was out of my life. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. She was just waiting around the corner and came back when she saw we were home and refused to leave. I had to call the police.
The police had to make her leave because we owned the house, but they made sure to let me know what a piece of trash I was for treating my own mother that way. She continued to stalk us for a few years.
There is actually a funny story about this. Around this time, a new neighbor moved in next door. She came over to introduce herself after work. Through the leaded glass, I just saw blond hair and assumed my mom was trying to start trouble. I walked away from the door and closed the entry way door too. A week later, I was at a neighborhood party, and she said, “Hey, I stopped by your house and you slammed the door on me .” I said, “Oh, I thought you were my mom.” That made complete sense to her because she has our mom’s triplet. Everyone else at the party thought I was crazy.
Many people who were close to me sided with my mom and cut contact with me. Eventually, they have all apologized and told me how much they regret that choice, which is nice, but doesn’t really replace the years that were lost.
For myself and my family, we have had 25 years free from disfunction and sabotage. I’ve never regretted going through the drama of setting my family free.
I’m certainly not assuming you need to go this far. Hopefully your mother is much more reasonable.
For me, once I crossed her, there was no going back. I could either be the “good child” and put her desires before those of my husband and children or I was the enemy. Those were the only options she gave me.
Since all of this happened, I’ve been a magnet for girls and women with toxic mothers. I become the surrogate mother who tells them all of the affirming things their own mothers never said.
I went through a period of one miscarriage after another and my heart was broken. I prayed that God would send me the people who needed my mothering whether I gave birth to them or not. Recently I was at a gathering with all of my people, and I was introducing “daughter” number 7 to “daughter” number 8. I realized that my heart and my life and my family felt so complete. I instantly thought of the Psalm 30:11 “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing; Thou hast put off my sack cloth, and girded me with gladness.”
I’m wishing you the best of luck with her. You are not alone.
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20 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
You mean 2020 or 2019?
Yes. 2020. Sorry. Also, I just now registered that you aren’t even asking about immediate family now.
Just ignore me. LOL
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I strongly suspect that my 11 year old had it in late Jan 2019. We came back from a big swim meet and she started complaining of a headache, then her fever started. For a full week, she was either crying or asleep. Her fever lasted all week, even with cycling ibuprofen and Tylenol. Looking back, I should have taken her to the doctor, but I was already dealing with undiagnosed severe anemia and pulmonary embolisms and I thought, “The doctor isn’t going to be able to do any more than this for a virus.”
After a week, when her fever broke, she wanted to go back to swim practice. Her coach said that she had to be back to eating 3 meals a day, and she had to be able to walk from room to room without getting out of breath. It took her 3 more weeks to meet those requirements and it took her a full year after that illness to get back to making the same swim times she had before she got sick. She also experienced an increase in anxiety and depression afterwards.
So, maybe it was COVID, maybe not, but it was the worse illness any of my kids have ever had.
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Episcopal church and yes. I think so.
Church is still via zoom with a max of 5 masked people in the church during service.
There is talk of holding an Easter service since many of the parishioners are vaccinated, but I’m pushing for holding it outside in the cypress grove.
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4 hours ago, Kanin said:
If your DD is happy, I wouldn't worry. 🙂 Some girls may just be mean-girl-proof!
One of DDs close friends has a very powerful personality. I don’t know how to explain it. She isn’t loud or anything, she is just powerful. When she was about 6, she was very threatened by my youngest. We were at a meet where the coach was giving out prizes for best times, and my Dd was on fire, getting one for every race.
Her friend asked to read the words on one on Dds prizes and then “accidentally” dropped it in the warm up pool which was closed, so they couldn’t get it back out.
I told Dd to pretend that she had forgotten all about it, and act all “That old thing?” When the other girls brought it up. It worked in winning the respect of the friend and now they are besties even though the friend just turned 8. My daughter said, “I feel like I could tell K. anything in the world. She just needed time to grow up a little bit.”
Being trustworthy seems to be a big factor at this age. The middle school and high school seem really awful in the neighboring town. My daughter finds many of the girls there pretentious. They are all fake and backstabbing each other all of the time. Even though I worry about my 14 year old being mean, the parents of her friends rave about her and how much their kids love having someone they can trust.
So here is what I think is bugging my. I think real maturity may be something different from what the girls and some of their parents. For example, a bunch of girls are running in the grass and building things with sticks and rocks. Another girl the same age comes over, looks down her nose at them, tries to lure the high status girl off to do something else, fails at that, then walks away. Her mother says, “She is just more mature than that group.” I feel like it isn’t maturity to be too insecure to let loose and have fun. I feel like the ones having to put people down and act superior are less mature. But I guess that isn’t how most people see it.
In any case, if Dd does move up this month, I’m going to make an extra effort to have her meet up with her close friends from the other group every week.
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56 minutes ago, hippymamato3 said:
One pattern that has emerged for DD is that she has the ability to have beautiful close friendships, and then her friends decide they like her romantically.
This is what happens to my poor 22 year old. My sister was the same way. They go along thinking a friendship is going great and everyone enjoys doing things together and them, Boom! The friend makes the big announcement that they are romantically interested. Then it is really hard to get back to being close friends without a bunch of awkwardness.
It doesn’t help that my kid says she has never really had romantic feelings for anyone except fictional characters.
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11 hours ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:
Super friendliness wouldn't have earned respect because the teen years in public school were fairly toxic. Being different kinds of tougher/savvy/cool were respected. It really sucks for nice people.
This would be my 14 year old. She is so confident and very cool. I worry about the possibility of her being a mean girl, because she for sure does not like some people and everyone in her friend group follows her. Here is what is a little different to me. Even though she has a lot of social status, who she chooses to be around isn’t based on their social status. In fact, it is often the underdog girl who doesn’t have the same brands of clothes that the in kids have, and always the goofy, boys. But when a girl shows that she is going to talk behind the other girls’ backs or tell the grown ups when they teasingly call each other stupid, then she will simply not include them. That seems mean, like I said, it works for her much better than being nice has worked for my youngest.
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18 minutes ago, Excelsior! Academy said:
No advice, but I could've written your post almost word for word with the exception being my youngest is 10 and her sister with all of the friends and respect is 12 1/2.
I wonder if it is like the joke, “I’d never want to be a member of any club that would accept me.”
They don’t get social status from being warm and inviting. Dh said she has nothing to worry about because she has traditional good looks. He means that she is thin, blond, tan and has blue eyes.
I told Dh that sometimes that makes girls even more mean to you.
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My 11 year old is a happy kid. Adults are always telling me how much they love seeing her because she is always smiling and enthusiastic about whatever we are doing.
At home, she loves doing school, she still plays with American Girls and Barbies. She plays SIMs with her 26 year old sister and she plays competitive Teken with her 24 year old brother.
On the swim team, she is always the first to befriend new kids on the team. She makes sure they get to their races on time and waits to cheer for them. She shares her snacks and introduces them to everyone
But a pattern has emerged. She befriends the new kid and when they make other friends, they dump her. I’m happy for them to make new friends that might be a better fit. I just think that when they walk past her, they should still say Hi in passing, but they don’t.
And then there are the friends that she used to be close to with birthday parties and sleepovers, but now they are only interested in tik tok and makeup while my kid still likes monkey bars and pretend play. I tell her that people have a right to grow up. People have a right to move on. People have a right to have different preferences. But I know it is still a loss.
She has 2 friends right now who she enjoys and she feels like she could trust with anything. I tell her that is more than many people have.
She isn’t unhappy. I’m just worried because she is supposed to move groups with the older girls and she would be leaving her 2 close friends in her old group. She wants to move up badly, but every time the coaches test her, half of me hopes she will fail so that she will stay with the nicer girls.
Is this a big time of change for girls?
I just find it weird that my 14 year old is very discriminating about who she will even talk to and she is treated with 10 times the respect that my 11 year old is.
it is so weird to me, and this is my 4th 11 year old girl.
Can anyone relate?
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5 hours ago, regentrude said:
I think Covid made some people reach out to long lost connections.
My parents received a card addressed to me from the girl who lived in the same house as we did until I was 10. I have seen her last in 1983. I have been living in another country for the past 20 years. Who knows what prompted her to write.You can tell her that you don't have the capacity to connect with another person right now. Or just ignore her.
I think you are right. In the past year, I was contacted by a “little girl” who I babysat when I was 18. And just this week, I reconnected with a friend from my 7th grade math class. I guess they finally had the time to do the research needed to find me.
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2 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:
So I’m incapable of having non-anxiety-provoking situations.
The neighbors of the property have seen the proposed listing agent, me, and my land engineering guy checking out the property and are supposedly trying to buy it out from under me. We’re trying to get a sale agreement out this morning. If I get it, I already hate my neighbors. 😝. If I don’t, I may need to take a mental health break from this whole game.
Our house in Texas is on 6 acres, but it is surrounded by vacant lots because every time someone tried to buy one, my neighbor would buy it out from under them. He has Parkinson’s and is getting on up there in age. If he decided to sell, the whole neighborhood would be so different with houses between us instead of woods. I think other neighbors have first refusal agreements with him so maybe one of them would just buy them instead.
So I understand why the neighbor is giving you grief. They may not be against having a new house on that lot so much as they are afraid of having a house there with horrible people living in it. It seems weird that people would assume a new family would give them issues, but I’ve seen it happen.
If I were in your position, after securing the lot, I’d go out of my way to win them over and show them what a great asset you are to the neighborhood. My hope is that years from now, you all will laugh and say, “Can you believe you tried to buy this lot out from under me?”
Fingers crossed here for you too!
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My 14 year old wants to sell some of the things that she inherited when my dad died.
My son told me to join a tuba forum and get them to help me price the tuba, but the Ukrainian bandura has me stumped.
I noticed there are 2 Ukrainian churches in San Francisco. I’m thinking trying to get contact info for someone there to ask if they know anyone who might be able to help me.
I don’t really want to ship, so finding a buyer in SF would be ideal.
Unemployment/wages/economy/the future/I need more coffee
in The Chat Board
Posted
When our California had our first lock down, our outdoor pool closed. My friends were very proactive and wrote letters to our city officials with research showing how being in a chlorinated pool was one of the safest places the kids could be. We also included diagrams of how we would keep them socially distanced. We made sure they received our letters before the vote was brought up to reopen so they could have facts at hand.
Amazingly, we got the shutdown overturned, but there was an unexpected kink in the process. The mothers of the teenaged lifeguards started calling saying it was way too risky for their kids to sit up high in a guard chair. Their kids got unemployment plus extra payments during the brief closing and did not want to return to work for less money than they were making at home. The manager told us that we couldn’t open without lifeguards. A couple of adult swim instructors said they would take a couple of shifts of guarding and ONE high school student picked up the phone when the manager called. She said she would work every hour they would give her and get her school work done around work. She has already been accepted into her first choice college and will be heading there in the fall with a pocket full of savings.
Is lifeguarding a job that should pay enough to support a family of 4? I really don’t know, that is why I’m asking.
I see such a difference in my kids’ personalities that are leading to very different income potential. My 14 year old has her future planned out. As soon as she turns 15, she wants to be a bagger at Safeway. Then when she turns 16, she wants to move up to working at Starbucks. She will also start lifeguard training when she turns 15 so she can stack her jobs. Then she wants to go to a private university and on to law school.
Contrast that with her next oldest sister who just graduated with highest honors and an interdisciplinary degree in English, Psychology and women/gender studies. She has been given a car, but doesn’t drive. She will be lucky to get a job paying $13 per hour. She just doesn’t have the same will to visualize her goals and start going after them. I can’t blame the system for her predicament.
My 2 oldest children are just as different. Some may remember that my oldest has autism. And yet, she makes a way for herself everywhere she goes. She finishes her masters next month and has always been able to find great paying jobs in her own special talent niche.
My son is my most highly gifted kid. He has had high paying jobs, even without finishing his undergraduate degree. But he decided that it isn’t worth it to him. He is an extreme introvert and hates having to deal with people. His girlfriend is buying a condo for them to move into and I warned her that she needed to make sure that she could pay bills for both of them. She assured me that she can because she is the kind of person who is always going to school full time plus working 3 jobs. She has the ambition that my son just doesn’t have. That isn’t the systems fault either. ThankfullyI think he might make a great stay at home dad someday.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are problems with the capitalist system that need to be addressed, but one person can have every gift and privilege but choose not to do the work it takes to become financially secure while another person can have so many strikes against them, but have so much determination that they find a way to succeed.