If memory serves, Barbados is being very welcoming to workers who can work their current jobs remote. This probably means it is easy for IT workers and their dependents to go there. Mark and I have talked about doing a 3-6 month stint there just to escape it all. However, his mom is so unstable at the moment, it isn't a possibilty.

We are encouraging all of our adult children to find employment abroad if they can. We have one who is an electrical engineer, and he is a candidate to move to France. Right now they are super duper low on EE's, and they are very willing to train American EE's to meet their needs. I told him he should look. My sister is a permanent EU resident settled in France with her French husband, and ds does speak a modicum of French and is a fast learner. I think it is doable. One son may, if he completes his PH.D, be a candidate for an academic job in Germany. He speaks and reads German and is considered fluent. He dreams in German as much as he does in English which I guess is a sign of being fully bi-lingual. Our middle son is working on going to grad school in Denmark, and is culturally like his siblings, HalfDane. It makes it a smidge easier to emigrate though not significantly easier. He has studied Danish for years and is almost ready to take his Danish language test. We hope for his sake that he can go. That leaves dd, son in law, and their three children. They have very few options. Until they can go, I am not willing to leave because I am not abandoning those grandbabies to the misery and despair of this country without the love and support of their Marmee. Not happening. But if they could go, then Mark and I are in an excellent position to take up retirement in several countries. We would need to sell the Alabama house, however that would not be a problem in the near term. That house though exists for the express purpose of the reality that things will get worse before they get better, and that the path to leave the US permanently is not easy, and as our country gets worse, may close entirely because a lot of nations will just say, "Hell no! No Americans can come. Keep your crazy back in North America." We chose this place not because he and I need 4000 sq ft and nearly 2 acres to care for in our old age, but so that as money gets tighter and tighter, and things get worse, our adult children have a place to hunker down. If they are housing insecure, they can come to us. If they lose their jobs, they can come to us. My mother is not a barrier to our leaving. As a widowed mother in law of a French citizen and parent of EU resident, she can be declared their dependent and go live with them so long as they can show they can support her and she has a set amount of money in the bank. It isn't a huge amount of money. So we have already talked this over. My sister has prepared a bedroom for her, and in the coming year she will spend six months in France, six months here. If it gets worse, she will stay there, and we will visit. Mark's mom probably won't last more than another year. We aren't preppers. But we truly also feel that the U.S. is a failed experiment. So no burying dehydrated food in the backyard and such. We don't subscribe to prepper magazines, go to their shows, and or anything like that. We own a hunting gun, and one air rifle for dispatching wayward coons and gophers. We make our short term decisions based on the assumption that life will be similar to this in the near future. Long term decisions definitely take into account the absolutely eminent issues of global climate change, increased violence, collapse of the healthcare system all together. The sheer number of mass shootings coupled with the healthcare system insanity indicate to us that the U.S. is a failed experiment. And all that said, only a tiny percentage of people can make it out of the States. So the need is not for emigration, but for somehow beginning to TRY to make it better for everyone. To quote the deputy National Security Advisor in season 7 of West Wing, and I can't remember the exact wording, but to the effect, "The shame might not be in failing to succeed, but in failing to even try." We need to stop letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. There aren't any full proof or even near full proof solutions. But ringing hands, thoughts and prayers, and never making an effort is what our children and grandchildren will judge us for. Not for being unable to stop all the carnage, just for refusing to try.

It is worse than that. No matter what your instinct is, you probably won't be able to shoot the shooter unless he/she is bizarrely close range. Trained FBI officers who have to recertify each year on their weapons and spend a lot of time at the range can only nail a moving target at 30 ft 38% of the time. Ghis is why unless a shar shooter is called in, it is several officers/agents unloading a HAILSTORM of bullets in the hoprs somebody lands one. Think about that. Every damn citizen who thinks they are Bruce Willis in Die Hard will mostly be shooting wild. They have a greater chance of killing an innocent person, one of their students, than of ever deliberately shooting the actual perp. The answer is not EVER to arm the teachers and staff. Sure, if they are National Guard like my nephew who has extensive weapons training, time on the range, more training than ANY of our police or sheriff deputies, and also has been taught significant descalation techniques, then maybe. But I don't see this nation deciding that our schools will be entirely staffed by the National Guard, Army, or Marine force. I don't see anyone even being willing to go into teaching if they have to go to West Point or Quantico or whatever in order to spend an entire year doing nothing but active shooter drills, and spending hundreds of hours on the shooting range. People think they will be Ethan Hunt, John McClain, Clint Eastwood, or John Wayne when the time comes. 99% of the time they won't. They'll be Ernest P. Worl attempting to do the impossible. Not to mention that the one school in our area that told teachers they could carry on campus if they want to, ended up with the janitor finding an unsecured loaded gun on top of a teacher's desk unattended. I have heard stories of them being found in teacher's restrooms and such. No freaking thanks!

I agree with Murphy and Tiggy. We won't stop it entirely unless we decide to allow the seizing of weapons from all private citizens and have them melted down, then restrict gun sales entirely. This is not a nation of volunteers, unlike Australia whose citizens said, "Well, if we have twists people who can't be trusted with guns and we want our society to be safer, we will all voluntarily participate in getting them off the streets" which is exactly what they did. But there are a lot of things that can be done to make schools and crowded venues a lot safer to reduce gun based domestic violence. Ammosexuals and their supporters are completely against any measures to do so, and the NRA had a stranglehold on politicians. After the Oxford shooting, which was shortly after I had begun doing some occasional substitute teaching in our school district, Mark asked me to stop. Nearly everyday in our tri-county area there is at least one school, often multiples, closed for threats. One of the schools closed yesterday found a Molotov cocktail in a garbage can in a hallway. Another found a gun in a child's backpack. Gun owners here are by in large utterly irresponsible, and openly brag about it. My hope is that the prosecutor is successful and the parents of the Oxford shooter receive hard prison time. Maybe if that precedent is set, there will be more of an impetus to force responsibility and take commonsense measures that can reduce the number of guns on the streets, and potentially get the assault rifles seized. I favor making them illegal with 60 days to surrender them, and a buy back program. Each person gets the full market value of the gun, no matter how old, in cash from the sheriff's office when it is surrendered since their property is being taken. It should be noted that when my father tried to kill my mother and himself (unsuccessful), he was ordered by the court to surrender his weapons. No one came to get them. No one followed up. His home was not searched. Nothing was ever said. My brother and husband searched the house, and took the guns and ammo out. My brother kept it. No one from the court or police department even asked. After he died, we were helping mom clean stuff out and found another hand gun with ammo. It isn't my family's fault. They did not know how to conduct a search, and given the circumstances, it was a highly emotional, gut wrenching nothing to do. They did their best, but didn't know how to be 100% thorough since they had had zero training, and just two people to conduct the search of a large house with lots of nooks and crannies. So ya. No one is even going and getting the guns from the known criminals or the, in case of my father, known very mentally ill and incompetent folks.

This. We really would be best off in another country, and our belief system and political beliefs better fit secular, EU countries. But, if we left, our four adult children and our three grandchildren plus honorary daughter and grandchild would be here suffering without our support. We decided we couldn't live with that. If the opportunity some how existed to get out as a group, then we would go. One thing we have looked at is if all of the primary earners could get work remote contracts Barbados is very open to remote working Americans emigrating there. We haven't done a lot of research though so we don't know what kind of health care system they have, and what our cost to participate would be.

I am so very sorry. You and your church family are in my thoughts.

I recognize that. But comment was not made about housing in general. It was in response to the idea that one can buy a home and have students live there cheaper than dorms. It included specific information about dorm and off campus housing policies colleges often maintain to keep students in the dorms as long as possible, and how landlords around colleges take advantage of the situation. I was not suggesting anything about the greater housing issue.

I am behind again. It was a crazy weekend. Saturday - coffee and salad was it until 6 pm, and then we had a seafood dinner with our son and daughter in law and the grandmothers. Salmon, crab legs, Cole slaw, baked potato, green beans. Sunday - Coffee, taco salad for lunch, nothing for dinner. I felt too full and kind of bloated.

Michigan is just a barrel of laughs right now. (with all the dripping sarcasm I can muster)😤😤😤

Yes, they come out like a can of crushed tomatoes. You need to really pack the jars well so you don't need to add very much water since the freezing process seems to break them down a bit. But crushed tomatoes work for me for many sauces anyway, so I don't mind. My family doesn't really like tomato lumpy pasta sauce or chilli so I run my jars of tomatoes through the blender before cooking with them except for salsa which I make with fresh picked tomatoes, cook up, and then can.

And you can blanch them, remove the skins, bag, and freeze. They blend nicely when thawed so you can make sauces with them or as chilli base. I plan to do that this year whenever I have too many tomatoes ripe to eat fresh, but not enough to do a canning load.

Us too, and with freezing rain before the snow. It was so nasty our son and daughter in law ended up staying over and not driving home after dinner. that was fine. We played cards and had a lot of fun with them. But I am sick of it. Today has been blue skies, everything melted off, somewhat warm. Hello, Michigan. Darn it all! Make.up.your.mind!

Update to my plans: I am not going to Colorado. It didn't work out for two different reasons. One: I spent so much time in Alabama after Baby T was born preemie, that I was hedging on speaking ding the time and money to take that larger vacation. Two: Cousin also has a new grandbaby, born the beginning of December, and her daughter needs surgery which is scheduled for May, and she is going there for three weeks to take care of grandchildren so she would only be home a few days before I would have come. Pretty hectic. That space had been filled, however, with a four day quick trip to Virginia and back to volunteer with National Association of Rocketry to put on the American Rocketry Challenge national finals. Our 35th anniversary is scaled back to just three days up by Sleeping Bear Dunes for kayaking and walking, a ferry ride out to an island in Lake Michigan. But we still have our week in North Carolina with my nephew and his wife in July, and we are very much looking forward to that.

Swoon! You can decide if that's for the soup, the skills, or him. I don't care. 😁

Nope. Not possible. You can never have too many. 😁

This is what I would do. Put out the maximum allowed number of garbage cans at the road. Cut the fabric apart, get a sledge hammer and saw, destroy the furniture into smaller pieces, and fill the garbage cans.

I am a big fan of hummus and then one other dip, maybe one you would not eat, and then a big tray of veggies and another of fruit.

I think Tiggy and Corraleno are spot on with what is probably the heart of the issue. I am very sorry. You and your kids deserve better than this. But people will always think first priority of safety for their own child. 💓💓💓

Yesterday, Thursday, was a crazy day. Apart from slaying the evil java beans, I ate salad and baked potato at lunch, and salad at dinner. I didn't cook, and really didn't have time to cook. So it wasn't an unhealthy day at all, but it wasn't much food or variety.

Still too cold here to do very much outside, but the snow has actually melted. I a! giving it a couple more days for the soil in the raised bed I currently have to fully thaw out, and then I am going to rake out the leaves on top that did not compost (Dh threw them in there whole when I was in Alabama last fall with our grandsons), and add compost from the munched leaf pile that has broken down nicely. There has been some soil compaction and loss, and I have two bags of top soil to add on top of the compost and some composted chicken poo as well. I figure that by the time I add plants in May, it should be some decent, fertile soil. Those beds have had tomatoes, broccoki, and pepper plants in the past. This year I am going to put cucumbers in one section, and basil, rosemary, and green onions in the other section. My plans are hectic. Mark agreed, without asking me because he was under a lot of pressure at work and from his mom so wasn't thinking about it 😬, to take his mother to Pennsylvania to see a relative over his four day Easter break. That Easter break was vital to my plans for getting the new raised beds built, and full of soil. We have guests from out of town this weekend, have to go out of town ourselves the following weekend for a family baby shower, and then now he is using his holiday vacation the week after to travel. He sprang on me that his mother is expecting me to go too. I am not happy, and have not made that decision. I am not angry with him simple because this is not the norm for him, he always consults me and is not a presumptuous person. His mother has been a real difficult piece of work to handle this past month, and he is exhausted by her. But, this means the ONLY weekend I have home before May to do any garden preparation is April 15/16. I was already committed to being in Alabama to help Dd for a week of from the 22nd through the 30th. Some how he and I m now have to get seven raised beds built in that one weekend. I am worried about getting it done, and I have all of these seeds I started inside right before he committed to this trip. (I started them a week earlier than I had planned due to my favorite local nursery saying they were advising gardeners to get started ASAP.) I am considering not going on the trip which leaves him rather miserable dealing with his mother alone. But if I stayed behind, I could start building the beds and shoveling dirt as well as get the fertilizer stakes in for the apple trees, and get the garden trellis (which desperately needs a coat of sealer) ready for the cucumber plants. I really do not know what to do. I am very committed to growing a lot of food this year and preserving it. But he is going to have a very difficult time with her if he has to travel without me. Anyway, besides that, I am looking forward to getting started. I do need to call the nursery and arrange for the delivery of the soil.

I my state, minors are not emancipated just because they become parents or get married. So here, she would not even be able to sign up her children for medicaid. There would have to be a legal guardian of her or social worker or a representative of family court do it. I know a girl who married at 17, and when her husband got conked on the head at work and was unconscious, the hospital wouldn't even give her information or let her make decisions. She was a minor, and marriage is not legal emancipation. They called his parents as next of kin. My ex sister in law was not allowed to sign for emergency care of my infant nephew because she was 16. My brother was 18 so they called him at work.

I was not referring to any individual person nor this nurse. I was responding about our system which is specifically designed, by means of politics (so I cannot say more), to be total crap. No single social worker, medical worker, etc. has any responsibility for that. But they also cannot do a darn thing about it. Not unlike when HMO's controlled healthcare to the extent in my state that women could be turfed home from the hospital 12 hour post birth even after major complications. No one was angry with the doctors or nurses. It was the system. They also could not change that either. My state had to pass legislation to force insurance to pay for 24 hours. Note that they did not change the system to say, "Screw the damn insurance companies, doctors and doctors only will decide when mothers and babies are ready to leave the hospital". No. This country is not a developed nation regardless of the capitalist metrics used to determine this. It is a hell hole by design to keep the wealthy getting immeasurably wealthier. I don't have any problem with the nurses, and frankly, any social worker with 50 families on case load is not going to do anything if the 14 year old seems to be somehow managing. Not because they do not care, but because there isn't enough time in a day, a week, or a year to worry about the people who are somehow holding it together in some crappy situation because the system is designed to prevent them from being a success at their job. Not their fault at all. But I will never back down about the system.

I would not refer to the USA as a developed nation. We have the glitz and tech to put glitter on a buffalo plop and make it look like a work of art. While the 14 year old having triplets is not common, turning people out to highly unsafe environments with no support is totally the norm here. The system appears to only care about humans as embryos and fetuses, but now so much once they can breathe independently. Society is AWOL.

🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃🏃

Same here. Housing is a racket all around in college towns. Landlords know students are over a barrel so they charge as much as dorms. Sellers know they can sell houses above market value than they would be worth in non college markets because often the population seeking housing is greater than the number of units. So there just isn't such a thing as lower cost of living. The supermarkets in our middle son's city charge double of our local supermarkets in the same state only three hours away. Why? College kids have to eat and do not have options. Colleges charge a horrific price for meal plans and low quality, quantity foods. Everything is a crazy amount more expensive for no other reason than exploitation. But that's true of just about anything in America. Capitalism without morality. I think the bubble will burst and the price tag come down. Gen Z is a small generation, and they aren't having kids because they aren't willing to consider it while they face massive consequences of climate change and eating nothing but ramen noodles well into their thirties. All of these huge dorm expansions and big price tags are going to be for nothing when there aren't freshmen to fill the class. Across my state, enrollment this year was down 4.1%, and this is after losses in previous years which means colleges are competing for an ever growing smaller pool of students. At some point that will likely mean having to become competitive with tuition, room and board, as well as larger merit award scholarships and more financial aid. We have schools that will tell students they got "the big scholarship", and it is $2000 on a $28,000 bill or $4000 on a $42,000 bill. Uhm. Nope. Eventually that isn't going to cut it. As for other things, utilities went up again. So we changed phone plans for less data and no international calling, as well as replaced all the rest of the light jobs in the house with LED warm white light bulbs in order to cut electric again. Problem and went up, so instead of leaving the heat on at 52 to keep the pipes from bursting when we were in Alabama, we winterized, turned the water off, and took the houseplants to my mom.