Thank you for stopping your dh. My mother always let our father catastrophize and just all out lose it in front of us, sometimes off relatively easily solvable problems, and it had a very negative effect on us.

I feel that, Bill! I really do, the extreme brokenness. My preemie grandson had a cardiac incident today. He seems to be okay now, but honestly, I just feel like he has been born into horror, and that the horror comes from every corner. But my other two grandsons who are in my care for now need me to buck up. It is so damn hard!

I have to wonder if any amount of training would have fixed these monsters. I have a feeling they were enjoying the blood thirsty, cold hard power they had over him.

My mother in law always said they experienced a high drop out rate in the first semester when she was instructing because the failure of high schools to prepare was quite high. I will say this though. We were considered the crazy home schoolers in our area for insisting on significant high school math and science skills being mastered. This is an area that is largely ignored locally because most of the homeschoolers are for religious/sh entering reasons, not academic and have this automatic assumption that by keeping their kids home, they are automatically doing better than pi pic school students. So we have a lot of homeschooled graduates in the area who think "I will go into nursing" only to find out they are going into exactly nothing at the university until they take math, science, and sometimes even reading comprehension remediation.

This. We know a young man from our community who was, hate to say it, the kind of person who should never have a gun and NEVER be in a position of power and authority. He still got hired at the state police post and hadn't been on the job eight weeks before he punched a woman in the mouth for simply asking why she was being pulled over. And no, though he did lose his job, he was never charged with assault because "reasons" and a D.A. that is a jackass. The reason he pulled her over was a taillight was out. So apparently, it is okay to assault and batter the citizens because something broke on your car and you ask,"Officer, why did you pull me over?" It was startling, due to the fact that when we are in real danger such as "man with gun in school" they are so freaking slow to respond, and then twiddle their thumbs before someone finally has an idea, but will abuse you over a traffic stop, the citizenry is afraid to call 911. They are forcing us all into a Wild West system whereby we call the army veteran next door who has a hell of a lot more fire arm experience and within a system in which one does not indiscriminately fire on people because there is accountability. That is the person who might come save your butt, not the police. I would trust my two nephews, one in Coast Guard and the other in National Guard, before I would ever trust a LEO. And sure, there are good and decent LEOs out there, but most of them are still of the "protect the brothers in blue" mindset which makes them indistinguishable from the others. No one can trust dispatch to send a reasonable human being.

Yes. This. Out of state tuition is unaffordable for most folks, and in our state, admissions gives priority first to in-state prospective nursing students because they are more likely to remain in-state to practice. It isn't feasible to suggest that "fly over states" is an option for most students.

They will look the other way. They don't care. They really don't. It is not a criminal court. My brother committed perjury all the time during his divorce proceedings and the years of custody issues. She proved he was lying every.single.time. He also was in contempt a staggering number of times, and the judge never held it against him. It was disgusting! I wish I could be more sunny for you, Heart. I think you, like my sister in law, need to be prepared to be given the shaft by the system for the next ten years. Your ex is positively evil.

I agree 100%. I think for so long there was so little accountability and so much victim blaming that many police officers believe they are above the law in every way. The arrogance combined with years of power combined with protecting each other combined with prosecutor's looking the other way combined with society's determination to always blame victims had made those with the pathology to move to very unhinged behavior into monsters. I never thought I would be in the "refund police" camp, but I am. I think the entire thing needs to be gutted and start over. While that is being figured out, put the money to hiring community mental health workers for both the health department and for our schools.

Thank you for the re!minder, Bill!

It is staggering brutality! My feelings are all jumbled up, currently fly in the rage phase where I think they deserve to be hung in the village square. That's saying a lot because I am otherwise not normally prop death penalty since I don't like giving the powers that be quite that much power.

Supply and demand. Capitalism rules everything here including healthcare.

We had two kids back to back and due to where their birthdays fell, they were only year apart in homeschool. Since they were interested in some of the same colleges, we took them both on visits so youngest had a ton of his visits in his sophomore year because the eldest wanted his visits in fall of junior year so as not to waste time his senior year applying blind. Then when the younger one got to his junior year, we visited a couple with him that had not been on his brother's list. I am a big believer in visits early in high school if they are interested or curious. I think it can be hard for some students to imagine what it might be like to be a college student majoring in this that or the other thing. Sometimes getting to visit departments they are interested in and talk to students really helps. We also wanted them to be able to ask targeted questions that would not be on the regular tour so we always set up faculty interviews. They would think of questions prior to the tour and write them down on 3x5 cards, and take a pencil so that they could take notes. We also did some of the fun, student days when all the departments had displays, students in the major and faculty available for questions, food in the cafeteria (always a big lie because they will feed the prospective students better than the ones they already have 🙄), and took advantage of the free concerts/plays or sporting events that were offered since many of the schools gave away free tickets to those things.

I believe this is a huge issue potentially the number one issue when it comes to nursing schools. Universities pay nothing for professors, and everything for sports coaches and administrators. 😠 At the college my mother in law taught nursing school, the current pay for an instructor is the same as it was 25 years ago! That should be illegal. And ya, why would a nurse take a position teaching for pittance when he/she can get such better pay elsewhere. I also think the number of positions available for medical school should be doubled. I know numerous high MCAT scoring, 4.0 science bachelor degree folks who cannot get in anywhere. That is absolutely nuts when we need more doctors. And if we had double the number we have now, docs would not need to work such insane hours or we wouldn't struggle to cover the patients and the hours so doctors can have a life.

I agree with this. My mother and sister are the kind of people who simply cannot let go. They will take every conceivable, fruitless, trauma inducing measure possible even when doctors and nurses are pleading them to rethink it, and as a result, my terminally ill father -who put them in charge of decision making - suffered unimaginably despite the fact there was ZERO hope of recovery. It was gruesome to watch. It convinced me that not only should those two NEVER be in charge of making medical decisions for others, that I would put my former paramedic daughter and my hyper rational next eldest child in that position should something happen to Mark, and I have informed my sister and mother that they may be barred from being near if they cannot be trusted to leave the decisions makers in peace. The drama was literally mind boggling.

Love it!

It is happening in our area in Michigan. But they aren't closing all the outpost hospitals, they are just retooling them. We have two in our county. One was bought by a larger, urban hospital and turned into a more robust urgent care with a good lab. This helps the larger hospital not become overwhelmed with more easily treatable patients since they are pretty landlocked in the city and have nowhere to expand. The other hospital was bought out by a big, very good medical establishment in the city about an hour away. It as a stitch and ditch ER, so it doesn't see a lot of action, but what it has that is wonderful is a rehab now so families do not have to travel an hour one way when their relatives are in rehab care after being released from the large hospital. It also has specialists in cardiology, and a couple of other areas who come out once a week and see patients, and there is a very robust out patient physical and occupational therapy clinic run on site. This is very helpful given the high percentage of 60+ residents. They have a sports therapist there who works with school kids who have been injured playing sports. Patients used to have to travel 90 minutes one way to see a sports medicine therapist. So it isn't all bad. That said. As long as we have for-profit, insurance dictated medicine, healthcare practices in many rural areas will go under, and many times, nothing will replace them. For big issues, our preferred hospital is a two hour drive away. The care there is so top notch, and the staff upper echelon, so we make it work. The level of expertise, the care, the compassion, is just amazing. They are super well funded because several very wealthy corporations and individuals in the area give copious amounts of money to the hospital. Since they don't worry about money, they do not run understaffed, and for every nurse position they have open, they take about a thousand applicants. When they do a doctor search to fill a post, it is startling how many apply. Everyone wants to work there because they are so tippy top. But the sad thing is, all Americans should have access to this level of care. It shouldn't be only X people get that because they are lucky enough to live near rich people endowing medical care or like us, able to manage the ridiculous commute and often hotels in the city. My sister lives in France, and the level of care she receives for even minor issues just makes me cry when I think of it in comparison to here. They spend a lot less to provide that care too. Our whole system is nothing but a disaster.

Ahhh, that explains it. I really didn't know anything about him.

Well, I think I did okay today with the kiddos. They had oatmeal cooked with dried cranberries and topped with blueberries. They each had a dollop of coconut milk yogurt in their bowls and ate well. Lunch - I made whole grain pancakes with maple syrup, mango chunks, and a scrambled egg a piece, almond milk to drink. Snack - chocolate chip granola bars and blueberries Supper - black bean and chicken tacos (which they liked so note to self, make sure to serve this often), cheddar cheese, and since they don't like veggies on their tacos, I insisted they pick a finger veggie. They each ate a healthy dose of fresh carrots they also asked for more mango which I obliged. I am stressed, and actually my fear of stress eating was for naught. I have ZERO appetite. I could easily just not eat anything at all. I made myself eat two small black bean tacos tonight with green onions and salsa, some sour cream. It tasted fine, but it was force of will to make myself eat. I think that all of the intensive care giving and sick people in my life this year is taking its toll. I must solider on for everyone else's sake, but I would secretly like to crawl into a hole and hibernate. Their vitamin c, vitamin d3, and zinc supplements come tomorrow. C has been fever free today so that is good. He fell asleep on my lap tonight while I was doing bedtime stories, and I need to go put him down, but am reluctant because the snuggles are nice.

I have to say that sometimes I really wonder about Roald Dahl's childhood. He didn't seem to have a sense of adults who love children.

Thanks. I really think that while they have so much separation from mom and dad, and also have to be isolated from their homeschool group friends, that I want to keep things fairly cheery.

You all are great! I am looking up all the suggestions, and so far have twelve books purchased and downloaded. I really appreciate this!

Owls in the Family. That is another one I am not familiar with. Owls are another much loved creature. Off to look it up!

LOL, I was not even aware that existed. My youngest is 22 so I am out of the loop with current options. Thanks for the info.

Thanks. I think I will buy those too. They are easily spending two hours a day snuggled up for read alouds. So it doesn't take long to get through the average chapter book for 1-3 graders. Plus, they are really feeling stressed, so I am keeping schoolwork short and super focused on the 3 R's. N doesn't have the emotional bandwidth right now for history narrations, science, art, and penmanship. Math, reading, Language/Spelling that's it.

😂😂😂 Depends on how caffeine deprived I am! 😁