Glad to help, Bill! It is so hard to parent, but not parent, the adult child who needs parenting. It is quite the delicate little dance! Happy to help.

She was, in my mind, the very best character of the show.

I agree about the ER cast. Many of the actors and actresses were more realistic in their representation of medical personnel and first responders as well as patients and their families. But I have to say, I was a Bailey fan when it came to Grey's. Her personality was awesome. Private Practice is another kettle of fish. The reality is that the show was predicated on concierge medicine at a big price tag, and with a beautiful people cast for the most part, spectacular costuming/clothing. It was Malibu Barbie medicine, and though it did wrestle with some major societal issues, I feel like it failed spectacularly at these representations compared to ER and Grey's. But I am sure other people saw different things in it. Film/t.v. is an art form so we all form very subjective opinions about it. I am no expert.

Theoretically, I think it is possible. In practice, not so much because in order to change one has to have motivation to do so, and usually the NPD person is bizarrely unmotivated to give a care about other people.

I feel the same way about the old medical show E.R. in a one hour show, it is impossible to fully represent the operational function of an E.R. and trauma medicine. If the cast of characters gets too big, people will lose interest because they can't follow the story lines. T.v. really can't imitate life accurately, but with persistence it can get closer which is probably what Rhonda Rimes was going for with her shows. One of the things that struck me about E.R. was that it seriously tried to deal with societal issues from mental illness, racial inequality, LGBTQ discrimination and so forth. I did like the fact that the E.R. nurses and even the reception/check in desk characters were important, had lines, had lives, and weren't just extras. It some what accurately represented the frustration of the highly trained trauma nurses who often DO a ridiculous amount of training of interns and first year residents, but then were looked down upon for not being doctors. It showed the E.R. staff having to do their annual paramedic ride alongside and coming to appreciate what their medics and firemen endured in the line of duty as well as dealing with the death of a dearly loved medic for giving his life to rescue another, and how that impacted his paramedic partner, the E.R. staff. I honestly felt like despite the fact that as I watch it today I yell at the screen, "Are you kidding me? No way do they delay that intubation until_______!" or other inaccuracies created for the added drama, it was one of the better medical dramas for showing the humanness of what medical providers and patients face in a busy, urban trauma center. And again, I really loved the nurses. I felt their frustration, and their struggle to decide if they would pursue medical school or not because being a doctor meant moving beyond the discrimination on them, and much bigger pay, more options. On the other hand, they loved patient care, being so hands on at every level of what happened to their patients, and becoming a doctor meant losing that connection. Michael Crichton was the consultant for the show and seemed to do a pretty good job of it despite the limitations of a one hour show, and all the ridiculousness of Hollywood.

I am so sorry to hear you had trouble. Maybe it is a combo of unusual things like the pasta and the wine/mead, and the chocolate a sort of trifecta of abnormal things that lead your body to go, "Hey, what are you doing to me?" Sometimes mine can tolerate one change or splurge, maybe even two, but three is often a bridge too far.

I HAD a strawberry tablecloth. Had is the operative word. Hubby and five male rocket team members that included our sons ruined it. It wasn't a little rocket poxy. It was a lot. Rocket proxy is a thermodynamic mixture that has to be mixed. Two said males took the components away from the work tables so "they won't get bumped" and apparently thought the table I had decorated for tea with some ladies latter that day was a good work space. They then managed to spill the 13 oz of it on the tablecloth immediately after mixing it. 😭😭😭 It went all over and there is no chemical that dissolves it without ruining the surface it has been applied to. The tablecloth went into the garbage, and the leader of the bunch, husband the 4H mentor, was dressed down for not paying attention to the team and what they were doing. I had run to town to pick more five minute epoxy for the construction of the avionics bay. We all made up easily after I decided to get over the loss about an hour later. I have such a nerdy soft spot for rocketry and teens that I just had to sigh and take one for the team as the saying goes. Don't ask what the wood floors in that same area loom like after failure to notice that the engineering team's hydrogen fuel cell project had cracked and begun leaking. My house has been battered and bruised in the name of scientific exploration. We do not have a garage which is problematic for such endeavors!

Wow, okay. She enjoys being a broken record! LOL. At least no one is ready to lose their cool.

May The Force Be With You, always!

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Maybe mountain oysters and fiddle head ferns would work. 😁

This is what a deer tick looks like.

Easter Sunday: I had coffee and a bagel at 7:00 am. Niece took us to Sunday brunch at 11 am. I am so proud of myself. I exercised serious restraint. I had a lovely salad of spring greens, broccoli, and carrots with a nice lemon dressing, and that was a good 1/4-1/3 of my dinner plate. I had a small piece of chicken breast with mushroom sauce, and a little taste of smoked trout. I had a serving of roast baby red, herbed potatoes, a little roasted cauliflower, and a stuffed mushroom that so was assured was gluten free, and given how good I feel, they were accurate. I did not eat a single thing off the dessert buffet which was incredibly beautiful and lavish, but since there was not a single GF thing except fruit which was scattered around piles of gorgeous gluten laden pastries, I shied away in horror and did not eat any berries. I did not have seconds of any of the other food I liked. Poor niece. I am fairly certain she paid a pretty penny for that brunch, and I didn't exactly eat her money's worth. But, while everyone else was experiencing food comas, demanding naps, and now feel somewhat lethargic. I am absolutely fine and went for a walk in the sunshine. Yay for me. And it was tough, because I really WANTED another helping of the roasted potatoes and the stuffed mushroom.

My first word of advice is for him to take a permanent marker and draw a tight circle around the perimeter of the bite. While about 40-45% of Lyme disease sufferers will not develop a bulls eye rash, the other's will, and the amount of spread outside the circle when the bite was discovered can indicate to a practitioner the level of reaction and potential infection the patient is experiencing. 2nd, there are very specific ticks that transmit disease. So a lot of people get tick bites from other species who do not transmit Lyme's. So try to reassure him that this is not an automatic danger. He can see student health in the days to come. The infection does not go nuts and get crazy overnight. A delay of a day or two in treatment should he actually be in danger of developing the disease is not dangerous. Now all that said, IF he develops any symptoms, if he gets a bulls eye rash, if he wants bloodwork in order to be sure he is in the clear or to be sure that he does or doesn't need treatment, then he should feel comfortable advocating for himself if student health doesn't take him seriously, or may need an appointment at home with your own physician. Not all student health centers are created equal. No matter what, encourage him not to panic, sleep well, stay hydrated,rat his veggies and fruits, all the things we do to support immune health. If he ends up on a a course of doxy, then he does need to have a little nutritional coaching. There are certain things one should not eat within two hours of a dose of fish because it can inhibit efficacy/absorption. And then it is super important to rest well.

My sister lives in France. I generally go two years in between seeing her sometimes more since it costs so much for us to visit each other. We keep in touch with Facebook messenger. I have a brother who lives one block away. I only lay eyes on him two or three times a year and there are no family get togethers. That is a whole kettle of fish I won't relate here. Mark is not communicating at all with his sister. But, he and his brother are close. They live 14 hours away, so usually they only get to see each other once at most twice per year. However they talk on the phone and email a lot. The only big family get togethers have been weddings, and due to work schedules impacting the ability to travel, we have only made one out of three of his kids' weddings, however, he was able to make it to our dd's wedding. His schedule is tighter now, so he was unable to make it to our reception for ds and daughter in law. No worries. Life is hard, work dominates family life, so no one can expect to be able to host or attend a lot of family events unless the nuclear family lives very close to each other.

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The concept of decorating a flat surface for any reason is incompatible with boy life until approximately the age of 50 which is about when said males will actually NOTICE that maybe grandma's 100 year old strawberry basket theme tablecloth with a WHITE background is not the place to apply rocket poxy, an adhesive not unlike a cross between peanut butter and tar, on rocket fins and bulkheads, and more predictably permanent than gravity itself. Ask me how I know this. 🙄😜😠 How the male mind ever became in control of the earth, I will never know. Yes, dh and his three sons lived to tell the tale. I am, after all, a benevolent ruler. That's not to say that the queen refrained from dressing down her subjects on the matter. 😁

Agreed. Our youngest is an electrical engineer, and his speciality is microcontrollers, robotics controls and programming. So not every posting for "electrical engineer" was a good one post college. He graduated April 30, 2022 and was employed in his first career job which fit his specialty quite well by mid-September. Dh is a database architect which is different from a solutions architect or Java systems engineer. It is much more specialized now than way back in the mists of time when he was getting his bachelor's degree.

I would say our spending is different, not less or more. We are empty nested now so we actually pay less for groceries due to fewer mouths, no longer provide clothing to growing sons, etc. and we no longer have tuition payments for college. But, our utilities have gone up, and we are doing some things we had delayed due to tuition like getting new glasses and contacts, replacing a car. I do not think we will see a difference in actual dollars spent this year though we are not cutting back nor increasing the budget. For the time being, it is just getting shuffled. At some point, I suppose we will sit down and discuss a new set of spending parameters. We are very fortunate to have enough buffer to not need to sit down and make a hard and fast budget for the time being.

Bummer. It is called aquafaba and vegan cooks make meringue with it. It works well. I am not a real chef or baker, nor do I play one on t.v. I just watch a lot of "Beat Bobby Flay" and "Great British Baking Show" where I learn bizarre things. Therefore, all cooking advice I give should be verified by a team of experts. 😁

So about those Amish Paste tomatoes? I have never grown those before. I have never had amazing success with any tomato except cherry and grape varieties. Tomatillos do like me very much! Apparently, they are the kind of masochistic plant that sidles up to plant killers and says, "I double dog dare you! Therefore, I need advice. I have given the raised bed that many of them will be planted into two inches of leaf compost that also had some composted apples, carrot, peelings, a small amount of coffee grounds, and some grass clippings. It was fairly well composted when I put it in the bed. These beds have settled, and I will be adding two inches of topsoil on top of the compost. I also sprinkled some composted chicken manure pellets on top, and it has rained since then so I assume that this is breaking down and beginning to infuse the soil with nutrients. I have built some stick frames that I can tie the plants to as they grow and need support. Is this enough? Do I need to do more? Plants will not go in until the 2nd week of May so there is a whole month yet that I could do more prep if it is necessary. I do have some gossamer fabric to put over them if there is a frost predicted. Are there more soil amendments that I need to do? Should that bed be fertilized every week or biweekly before the tomato plants go in or do you think I have cone enough? I am really hoping to grow enough of my own tomatoes to do some canning of salsa. I know in order to make the sheer amount of salsa, pasta sauce, and chilli, I will have to buy in bulk from the farmer's market. But if I could get a half bushel, I would be so thrilled, I would celebrate for a long time. I am going to put in 12 Amish Paste plants.

If you have a can of chick peas, you can drain them saving the liquid, and use that. It is commonly used as a vegan, egg substitute and works quite nicely.

Said many years ago, "No, you may not dress your brother up in my wedding dress for church." What was my daughter thinking? 🙄

Christos Anesti! My mother is watching my seeds, and nine have germinated. So I got a text today to report this to me, none had terminated before we left for the Poconos. I am so proud of myself! I have never grown a thing from seed, ever. It is a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. If they make it to actual seedling, transplant size, I will probably be found dancing in the yard, and turned in for appearing to be full on crazy! 👯💃💃💃

My trip report so far: Friday we had enough coffee to win War of the Worlds, and send the aliens packing back to wherever with their green tails between their weasely legs! We ate breakfast at the hotel, scrambled eggs and GF cheerios. My mil piled her plate full of sausage and eggs and then put three packets of salt on the pile! You know, the woman on four BP meds and kidneys functioning at 32%. Today she ate an entire grapefruit immediately following the ingestion of her morning meds. 😠😠😠😱💀 But I digress. At lunch we stopped for a picnic, and had bagels with peanuts butter, my yummy veggie and pasta salad, and hummus with veggie sticks. Mil complained about the fare, and then when we got to niece's, waxed poetical about my wonderful picnic lunch. 🙄🙄🙄 Dinner - niece made a wonderful vegetable stew, cheese board, and fruit. We enjoyed it a lot. Today, Saturday: Breakfast - scrambled eggs, toast, and oranges. Niece had GF bread for me. Lunch - She took us to a lodge. The menu looked marvelous, but on the lunch menu it turned out they had only one item that was gluten free. I had the side salad. Very small. But that was fine. I don't need to eat heavy. Snack - niece brought out chips and dip. But, I felt like I needed something healthier, and grabbed the leftover hummus and celery. Dinner - We had buffalo chicken Quesadillas and veggies. It was a food splurge but yet not a bad one. I fear tomorrow. Niece booked us for an Easter brunch. You all may end up putting me in food jail.