LOL, I am really tired, and read the threat title as "Forum Rage". I was like, " What the neck happened while I was walking the dog?" 😂😂😂

Tuesday: Breakfast - slaughter of the king's beans, and toast Lunch - Discovery that the speciality coffee has only one more pot left in the bag. Much weeping and gnashing of teeth, followed by a baked potato with Greek yogurt, green onion, chives, and fresh spinach. Dinner - Meatless ziti, large spinach salads. I managed to score a bag of decent spinach so we will have the last of it tomorrow. Today I craved juice. Don't know why. I think I drank 16 oz of V-8 juice, and 8 oz of orange juice.

Hysterical and SOOOOO true!

I agree with Carol. Also, hire servers and kitchen staff so you do not have to man the kitchen. But be sure they are professionals who know what they are doing. My mother hired the kitchen committee at her church. They didn't really pay attention to what was going on, and we were the last folks to get back from the cemetery, and then we had to deal with a few things before going to the luncheon. We were last in line of the 350 people, and there was no food left except desserts. On top of which, I brought gluten free food for myself and my sister who has Celiac, had it labeled with my name and do not touch, and they gave it to somewhat new else who asked, 'Are there any GF options available?". Sis and I had not eaten since 7 am, and by the time we cleaned up because that was not included in the kitchen committee charge, it was 8 pm. So make sure you work with people who have a contract that you can read and specifies everything. Hire the people who provide all the services you need rolled into one team because that makes it much simpler than dealing with two different groups. Wedding caterers might be a good place to find kitchen management and servers. Ask for references, and see if you can find reviews of their work. Otherwise, I'd be inclined to rent a banquet hall that is also a restaurant instead of a church so you can pay one price and all of your needs are provided.

😂😂😂

Not long. Move stuff out. There are a lot of things that should be fixed up IF real estate here had value and actually sold for more than peanuts. But, the house lost $150,000 of value during the Great Recession. The town closest to us, a population to 2100, had over 200homes repossessed. They sold for next to nothing, some of them having once been $300,000 houses purchased for $15,000-20,000, by realtor and are now profitable rentals. You can't sell anything now for enough to be worth doing any fixing up. So we would leave with renovation projects unfinished, take our pennies, and never look back. It is a different story with the Alabama house. We have painted her top to bottom, have been fixing all the crazy things the previous owner did very very wrong (It is a miracle he never burned the place down), and DD and I have been re-decorating. It is adorable. She and hubby could probably be out in one week with help, and everything is so new that apart from a quick freshening, it would be ready. I told her we could make a killing the other day because we have only owned it 18 months, and it is has gone up $100,000 in market value and estimated sale of less than 60 days. It was just a tease. That house is Shangri la to us, and we have no intention of selling it until Mark and I have a had a good long time retired in it and want to down size. It is, for now, the multi generational house for family who need it, and my mother's mid-winter break from Michigan.

Breakfast: The usual slaying of innocent coffee beans, and boiled egg Lunch - broccoli pasta salad with lots of broccoli and red pepper, and tuna melt Dinner - leftover mashed potatoes, green beans, and carrots, Greek yogurt and parmesan on the potatoes, slice of GF garlic bread

It is absolutely beautiful!

Yup! I will have spinach, artichoke dip, veggies and chips ready. But I told Mark that his contribution to NOT having to have ovaries and a uterus and birth children and then have this bodily assault afterwars was at minimum, a grand display of his award winning homemade toffee, and unbelievable chocolate fudge!

A.M.E.N!!!!! 🍫🍫🍫

😂😂😂 I feel a party is in my future!

Just chiming in to say that ovaries are the dumbest organs in the entire human body. Truly stupid and also depraved and evil, psychopathic really. I am 54. I went 9 straight months, no period, very few hot flashes, more energy than I have had in decades. I thought I was getting my life back. I have been wonky, perimenopausal since the day I turned 40. Nope December, period, sore breasts, the whole stupid mess. I crossed my fingers, hoped it was a fluke, and would not return in January. Bwahahahahaha! I have it now, and am currently with my feet up, cramping so hard I can hardly move, and getting exsanguinated. Miserable. And the doctors just shrug their shoulders like, "Tsk tsk tsk, sucks to be you little snowflake." What I want is someone to carve the dang things out of my body, and save them in a jar. I will bring them home, make a fire in the fire pit, throw the ovaries into the fire, and then do a happy dance around the fire as they incinerate while singing some sort of song about freedom.

Gotcha!

Sorry, Band! For some reason I thought he lived with his dad so therefore visitation at grandpa's house was also at his house.

I do not believe you are paranoid. I think he has some sort of pathology that makes him very, very dangerous. OP, I would hire a security expert, maybe ex military or retired FBI or something to come and sweep my home for devices, sweep the cars, the kids backpacks and bikes, etc. I would hire them to watch your home for a few days. I think he is stalking you and the kids, and I am very concerned this will escalate. Since the custody order is for supervised visitation only, if you have any control of the where it happens, I think that I would insist upon it being not in his home because that allows him a lot of easy plotting about how to abuse the kids, and I would want a lot of witnesses which might make him less likely to escalate so instead of a park or somewhere with no guarantee of people close nearby, a restaurant or something similar that has a staff. The reason for this is that when these things happen inside a private home, the police often do not take it seriously. They see it as a he said/she said. When there are multiple witnesses who are not relatives, "Dude was seriously losing his mind, and I was scared for the child." "Dude was creepy, made me nervous..." Police, judges, and prosecutors take more notice. You are right, your kids are probably not safer in a public space if he decides to do something. Sad to say. But unrelated witnesses may make a difference going forward. I feel his behavior is getting worse, and that makes me very nervous for your children.

Sunday: Breakfast - coffee tsunami, toast Lunch - small piece of roasted chicken breast, roasted carrots, mashed potatoes, broccoli, salad, and a small serving of chocolate pudding Dinner - bowl of granola with milk

Absolutely heartbreaking! Child poverty rates are hard to nail down here because there is a lot of tampering with the models that predict it depending on who is asking and what outcome they seek. But a good estimate appears to be 18%. I did Google how much the White House and all its support costs the tax payers. 1.4 billion. 1.4bn. Annually. Trying to wrap my head around it. My initial, knee jerk reaction is, "Beans and rice for you! Take some Zoom meetings for heaven's sake. And for crying out loud, stay home and stop jet setting all over the world." This is why we have a Secretary of State. They fly with extremely limited staff, and not a lot of fanfare. Let them go do the things.

(((Hugs))), it is not good when your encounters, just even phone calls, leave you shaking and in a cold sweat. She is inducing panic attack type responses, raising BP and heart rate, and that is with you establishing boundaries and keeping your distance. This is not good! You can end up with shredded arteries, and exhausted adrenal system over this. There are significant, physical consequences. I think you may have to put some extreme boundaries on this. You need a break. Your body is begging you for a break. I would suggest something like a one year moratorium on communication except by mail. If she refuses to mail things, that is on her. No phone calls. No meetings. If you do this, she is of course going to have a cow when you tell her how it is going to be. Let that go. Just state the case, tell her that her behavior is having negative effects on your health so there can be no phone calls, emails, or face on meetings for a period of one year, and that includes to minor children. Send her some stamps. If she doesn't send cards or letters to the minor children, that is on her. Let the adult children, if you have them, make their own choice but let them know that the house line or cell phone cannot be used for phone calls, and they are to abide by your boundaries. So if they want to talk to grandma, that is their business, and they are not to involve their minor siblings. Just explain that you are having trouble processing certain grandma behaviors, and it is starting to cause you to have anxiety and stress that simply cannot also be handled at the same time that other grandma is so very sick, and grandpa needs so much support. Chances are they will understand, and it won't be a big deal. Then in one year you can re-evaluate. Give your heart and adrenals a much needed break. Please take this from someone who DID not do this when the warning signals of being no longer able to manage the toxic relative's behavior were obvious. Though one is dead, and the other is cut off, I am permanently on panic attack meds as needed, and blood pressure meds.

When we had the rocket team and they had to launch eggs as the payload in their competition which also meant for all of their practice and qualification launches, we had both a weight range and diameter/circumference that had to be met. This meant that often out of a dozen grade a medium eggs only one or two would meet the requirement. We would do 3 to 9 launches at a time 21 to 25 launches prior to competition - and eggs were never re-used because even if you pack and launch them correctly so the shells have no damage the first launch, G force weakens the structure, and they will absolutely break the second time which is a D.Q. So that meant we went through several dozen eggs during the season just to have enough eggstranauts. Usually we had to have the team over every couple of weeks and make them eat scrambled eggs or quiche so the rejects were eaten in a timely manner. I'd say it was about as hard to end up in the Rocket Competition Astronaut Corp as it was to make it into the NASA Astronaut Corp if it was a bad year for finding eggs 55-58mm circumference and 57-62 grams. 😂 The golden egg, the Neil Armstrong of eggs, was the rare eggstranaut from a farm fresh dozen. If there was one that met the restrictions, it seemed to have indestructible shells. One of those things survived the most epic crash landing, and came out unscathed. The kids decided to boil him, draw a face on him, and keep him as a good luck mascot for a while. One season, NAR officials (National Association of Rocketry) estimated they would have to buy 2000 eggs in order to have 300 eggstranauts for the Finals. They begged for recipes to use up the crazy things because since the teams would all be traveling back home the next day, they couldn't just stick eggs in every team's field box which meant 10 dozen or more going home with every NAR volunteer. Anyway, off topic. But, if you happen to be in the Front Royal/Great Meadows, Haymarket, Manassas area the third week of May and cannot find eggs anywhere, you will know who to blame. 😁 🚀🚀🚀

I can understand that too. I do feel like there should be some societal rule about it though like, "When it comes to egregious acts of abuse and life altering violence, the perpetrator does not get public acclamation regardless of how nice they were prior to the events because that is a pretty damn awful thing to do to the people picking up the pieces of their lives in the wake of those actions." Something like that. I would have been just fine with the pretending people of my extended family making a super simple death announcement with no history, and then having a small, private funeral. Have at it. That would have been respectful. Agreed.

Yes. With this I can agree. If not willing to listen to reason from others, the decisions made in the midst of the trauma are really odd to everyone on the outside looking in. What was weird for me was just how much the community was willing to play along with it. There were 350 people at the funeral, and everyone besides my sister and her husband, my husband I and our kids, one aunt and her family and two nephews and their wives, acting like he was a saint and this was normal and good. I have to say, it actually was really hard on me because it was as if about 325 people decided that those of us suffering the harsh realities of what he had done were not entitled to also recognize that this horrible, nightmare had occurred, and hurt us so badly. It was very troubling. We as a family have all had some sessions with a trauma counselor since then which has been quite helpful. But having seen the devastation, even though I understand the weirdness of dealing with trauma, I still feel quite judgy about the obituary of this guy in the OP.

I have been in that position. Fortunately, the murder suicide was not successful. The perpetrator died 18 months later of cancer. I voiced my opinion about the egregious immorality of publishing an obituary, and hosting a public funeral, and was overruled by the other relatives. So I bowed out of three ring circus. I still maintain that it was a _______ up thing to do and never should have occurred. It isn't like anyone had "closure" from it either. I am, unfortunately, the person they always look to for rationality so they can ask what do we do, and then promptly do the exact opposite, then vilify me when the opposite turns out inevitably to be a bad idea, and why didn't I warn them. 🙄 Sigh. This is why there is a total loss of emotional connection to my mother, and one of many reasons my brother and I are estranged, combined with total estrangement from a couple of cousins, an aunt, and two nieces. It was a well, crapshow. I don't know any other way to adequately describe it.

Which begs the question, "Who paid for this?"

That is just, uhm, disturbing isn't the word. The word my brain goes to cannot be printed here.

Our minivan camper when all the seats are in it fits us and our three adult sons for travel. Our last trip was in May. We took them on one last, major trip together as a graduation gift since in the last three years, all three had graduated college at some point. Now the back seats are out, and my mom drives the van as her regular vehicle so she can hold four. But when we want to camp, we take it without the seats except the front buckets, and she drives our Equinoxes which could technically hold five people, but I wouldn't do it for a long trip because it is would be tight for the person sitting in the center. The Equinoxes gets 29/30 mpg for me around town, and 32 on the highway most of the time which is way better than the Sienna, and for whatever reason, it is cheaper to insure. Insurance costs are a huge issue in Michigan, so we prefer out two car method. Dh drives a Saturn Astra, an itty bitty sail-a-car as he described it. He gets 35-36 to a gallon no matter if it is town or freeway driving because it is a manual which apparently increases fuel efficiency if you drive it right. It is bizarrely cheap to insure.