Our experience was very different. My father's doctors told us we all and to wear scrubs and such around him, then put them immediately in the laundry, and we were all on a med routine. The home health nurse wanted max precautions. Maybe it was because I was so worn down from caring for him, and they thought I would get it or something. But they created an absolutely draconian routine for me and my mother, and were beyond firm that it had to be followed. I have never been more exhausted in all my life. I guess we all have different experiences from which we speak, and doctors have differing opinions about precautions.

This. cDiff can kill. It is the kind of communicable disease that should be avoided like plague. OP, do not go over there. Don't let your kids go over there. Frankly, since sil, bil, and fil are crazy, I would encourage dh to NOT go into the house and just speak with his dad from the doorway. You do not want this to come to your house.

There is an outdoor one here. Totally feral and completely wary of strangers. We are using food on Friday to coax her into the shed, and have a box lined with a solid blanket and flannel and fiberfil from an old pillow under that. We think with food to keep her metabolism burning, and out of the wind that she can snuggle into that box (which is up on a pallet so that the cold of the floor doesn't bleed through the box) sure will be okay.

Has Carol in CA checked in? I think she is in North Cal.

It is, they just like to bake it until it is really hot all the way through. They aren't big cold ham eaters. And we are assuming it is a spiral slice because when we asked what kind it was, the response we received was, "The kind in a purple wrapper". 😂😂😂

I am so sorry. Ugh. I am trying to he very unemotional about canceling our Jul festivities, but deep down, I was just deeply looking forward to them so this is hitting me a bit hard.

No crockpot. I told him if he doesn't buy an aluminum pan, they can cut all the meat off the bone, put it in baggies, and then pop what they can back into the freezer around the turkey, and just put what they want to eat wrapped in aluminum foil on the pizza pan and pop it in the oven.

LOL, youngest just got home from work, and the boss gave everyone big, spiral sliced hams for an added Christmas gift since they had to cancel the company Christmas party due to the impending storm. He and his brother - our guys are roommates - have no freezer space for it because management handed out 15 lb turkeys at Thanksgiving and they not only were coming home for the holiday, they have no roasting pan. Their budget for buying a nice roasting pan is apparently none existent at the moment because they blew their wad spoiling the grandmas and nephews for Christmas. So I told them to go get an aluminum foil roasting pan, and gave instructions on cooking the ham. Guess they will have ham sandwiches tomorrow, and grilled ham and cheese for supper, and ham and eggs Thursday, and.... It is nice idea. I am glad he works for a family oriented business that does nice things for their employees. (Profit sharing every year as well) But for two bachelors and no chest freezer, it is too much in four weeks. They called area food pantries thinking they could donate the turkey, but none of them have freezers, just a few industrial refrigerators for dairy products. Roasting pan goes on my list of items to buy for them.

Michigander here, and in general, I absolutely love four seasons and the drop dead gorgeous beauty of this state. But dang it! 8-9" snow preceded by rain and then a temperature drop of 30° with 30-60mph winds causing white outs of zero visibility right before Christmas is a drinking' bridge too far! -13 wind chill Thursday night and Friday in our grown sons area, and we will see -5. I worry because both regions have a HIGH percentage of low income families and poverty. Many folks cannot afford the kind of winter gear that makes those temps not dangerous. This year the coats and boots at the thrift stores were wretched pieces of junk that weren't water proof, and only had thin poly fiberfil. Mittens were nothing more than dollar store knit gloves. I really hope people stay home. Just don't go out. We have LLBean, Columbia, and Carhart here, and it can still be uncomfortable being out when the wind chill gets below zero plus those wind speeds. My coat lane rated as low as Mark's and I can get dangerously cold in less than 45 minutes. My old coat for winter rocketry which kept me warm no matter the snowmaggedon gave up the ghost a couple years ago. I should probably replace it.

And let me just say, we should not call the Velcro suit idea abusive. I am pretty sure that all the monster myths, and evil witch stories, enchanted forest fairytales, and all that jazz were desperate parents without daycare in the Middle Ages just trying to keep their imps inside the bloody house when they had to go out and do all the staying alive things like fetch water, chop wood, hunt, tend crops, pay taxes to the robber barons. You just can't blame them, and I think velcro suits are a better idea than telling them the neighbor is going to cook them in an oven for lunch! 😁

We are getting hit with bad blizzard conditions. The entire route from Kalamazoo home is going to experience massive white outs with whole areas at zero visibility, and frostbite warnings of 15 minutes for exposed skin which makes it dangerous to be out walking if stranded. On top of that, Kzoo may get rain before the blizzard that will freeze on. The words local authorities are using are, "Treacherous", " Hazardous", Stay home". So with sadness but determination to keep everyone safe and hunkered down, we have candles our Jul celebtations, and are moving them to New Years weekend. We have also been pulling together a list of items for our apartment dwellers to purchase so they have what they need if power goes out because that is predicted as well. They all have electric heat, and some of the predictions are for anywhere from a few hours to a few days without power when the wind chill is -13F and the winds 30-60 mph. I have the mothers preparing to be snowed in without us because the county road commission says it has no funding to pay holiday pay and overtime to plow Saturday and Sunday, and we are getting 8-9" Friday. We live on side roads so it is going to be a while before we can get out. Plows will only run for ambulance service...ambulance following a plow to wherever. Nothing else. Sigh. I took the day off from quilting and baking, and am just being fairly lazy and watching movies, petting the dog, and doing some laundry. Our Christmas Eve, likely at home alone or just with my mom if we can get a vehicle to her house two blocks away (she can't walk in 8" of snow, and when it is bitter cold, she shouldn't do it at all) is spinach artichoke dip and chips, buffalo wings, and cookies. Yummy, but not complicated or time consuming.

My holiday baking is delayed a week. Due to the blizzard that is coming, and treacherous travel warnings for all of our adult kids, getting a dump of about 8-10" with winds 50-60 mph so total white outs, we had to cancel Christmas weekend festivities and move them to the New Years weekend. I am sad. Very sad. But, we would never recover if one or more of them were in car wrecks or suffered frostbite (we have those warnings too starting on Friday). So I am only making gf butter cookies for Mark and I to snack on with tea. Next week I will be making Danish peppernodders, a decorated chocolate cake with a woodland theme, Danish Kringle, and then all of the Smorrebrod cooking on top of that.

I related this story to Mark, and well, I think he laughed too hard! I have always said that the greatest gift engineers could give mothers would be industrial strength Velcro suits and large Velcro panels for walls so we could suit up the kids, and when we need to leave the room, stick them to the wall until we return!

I had heard of it, and watched it. Unfortunately, the producer was Gloriavale friendly and determined to make them look better than they are. If you do some online research, you find out a LOT of horrors. Tone of sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, twelve old geezers at the top making all the marriage arrangements for all of the young people, numerous infant and child deaths from dubious "accidents", and lawsuits for committing wage fraud. There several couple who were featured in the documentary that have left the group now, and are fighting to get New Zealand to do something about what is essentially slave labor, child labor, etc. and abuse. it is essentially a sex and fertility cult, much like the FLDS, with the higher ups making incredible money on the forced labor of their underlings, and of course the oppression of women and girls is a huge part of it. Given what I have unearthed about the group, I call it human trafficking. It is absolutely a cult. You don't need to shy away from calling it that.

Mark made a new shelf for the Christmas stockings. He used hickory, stained it walnut, and bought brazen bronze wrought iron brackets. I love it! We have a spot of unfinished drywall which we taped wrapping paper to and then hung the shelf.

We are fooded out, but mostly because we are just running our legs off helping the mothers, and I am a quilting nut trying to get presents done. So today we kept it super duper simple. Breakfast - scrambled eggs Lunch - salads and fruit (mixed greens and spinach, green onions, carrots, dehydrated cherry tomatoes, black beans, parmesan, dressing of choice and navel oranges) Small piece of dark chocolate mid afternoon Savory polenta and roast brussel sprouts for supper

Tundra Hybrid spinach Nantes Carrots San Marzano tomatoes Derby Bush green beans Parade green onion Little Finger carrots Nellie Chives Salad Bowl Mixed Greens California wonder bell peppers Bellstar Hybrid Broccoli Sparkler Radishes Candy onions Wee B Little pumpkins Sparky cherry tomatoes Buttercrunch lettuce Sweet Basil Cleopatra Oregano Pretty N Sweet ornamental peppers Italian Plain leaf parsley My goal is that all of the raised beds will be devoted to bell peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce/spinach, radishes, and green beans. I have 12 decent size pots, two shepherds hooks that hold 4 pots each, and some oak stumps that I can sit pots on for summer so that I don't have any weed invasion for the other four, and they can be in the sun. Our back steps are shade in the morning and sun after lunch but not strong sun so I don't want to try to grow anything in pots there except maybe oregano which I have heard handles shade decently. The hanging pots will be devoted to green onions, chives, basil, and parsley. I have a patch of overgrown yard that we don't want to mow anymore. It is along a stone wall, very pretty, and the wall has iron spikes embedded into it, a leftover from the 1800's when folks needed to tie up their horses. I think it would be an okay spot for vining things. I also really do not care if anything grows or not other than I would prefer not to mow. So Mark is going to spade it up, flame throw it to kill weed seeds, and then we will add some compost, turn it under, and try those ornamental baby pumpkins. We will try the ornamental mini peppers in an old water trough we found which will make another raised bed . It is about 2 feet wide, 6 ft long, and 2 ft deep with a plug. So we can remove the plug so it drains, and then I also plan to have some garlic growing in there with just one of the ornamental peppers. We will see how I do. This is all so novel to me, and this plan is a huge undertaking. But I am so sick of the prices we are paying for absolutely terrible condition salad greens. I am also worried about some of my young adults possibly not eating as many vegetables as they would if living at home due to the rising prices of produce. On top of that, our youngest, a real foodie, is missing my homegrown herbs especially the basil. He is living in an apartment, but has noted that the balcony (big enough for four people in lawn chairs and a small grill) gets decent sun so he would like to try to grow some herbs and a cherry tomato. I am planning on sharing seeds with him as well as with our daughter. I want to share with my kids as much as I can, and there is an elderly neighbor who eats quite poorly due to poverty, and being mostly housebound. County elderly services bring him groceries once a week from the food pantry. It is a lot of pasta, hamburger helper (but they don't bring him hamburger) pasta dauce, canned soups, mac n cheese, ramen noodles, some canned veggies and fruit, tuna, and then usually a little dairy. It isn't great. I like to be able to drop of fresh things for him. She will have a spring garden due to how flipping hot it is from late June through August and then replant around Labor Day for some fall harvest. She will be getting some of these seeds too. Since she is busy chasing younglings, she is just going to have three beds of green beans, a lot of tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, herbs, green onions, and salad greens. We are going to spend three weeks with them in March, and will get the beds built pronto, and then order the soil and compost. With any luck, she will have seeds in by the end of the second week. She is going to start the tomato plants indoors in February. Fingers crossed. I would like to harvest 30 broccoli heads, 2 bushels of sauce tomatoes so I can make salsa, pasta sauce, and have jars of plain ones for making chili and other sauces, 4 quarts of dehydrated cherry tomatoes, bell peppers for eating fresh and for preserving, onions to eat as well as dehydrate, carrots to eat fresh but also to dice and freeze, green beans to can and freeze. I will buy more broccoli plus a bushel of sweet corn and some other things from my favorite Mennonite farmer/greenhouse, to shore up the fall harvest. He grows wonderful jalapenos so I can pick those up when I make salsa. I can also buy artichokes from him $1.50 each. I have been considering canning some for spinach/artichoke dip. We pay almost $4 a can for artichokes, and just about that much for fresh ones at the only grocery store that sells them. The last can I bought did not have good flavor. So ya, I am crazy enough to be considering taking on that crazy job too. My dehydrated apple rings are so crazy popular that the adult children and the grandchildren have gleaming eyes, maniacal eyes whenever they mention the apple tree. Woe to the apple tree if it both not produce abundantly again! September next year ya'll will be trying to keep me sane again.

This is exactly how my sil would act. Fortunately, mil has cut her out of all decision making, the will, everything. She isn't even welcome on the property. It is the only way Mark and his wonderful brother can manage to do what is best for her. Their sister is just that horrible of a person. Thankfully his brother's wife is also right on the same page with Mark and I, and their adult kids along with ours, so it is like a large block of people all forming a wall to keep the abuser out. Katy is 100% spot on about using the words neglect and abuse consistently, all.the.time. On top of that, OP I recommend you start a paper trail to protect you and your dh. Call the hospital social worker, tell him/her what has happened, reiterate repeatedly that you and your husband were against what they are doing and cannot provide nursing care. Follow up with an email so you have something with a date and time stamp. Screen this the texts and Dh's responses. Print. Keep that file very handy. You may end up needing it.

Peanut sesame sauce...yum yum yum!!

Sigh..yes this. She is now being deliberately neglected and abused by fil, sil, bil. Just stay away OP. This could turn into a legal nightmare.

We will "burn a Jul log" on Wednesday. Viking tradition was for it to be carved with runes, so our resident Rune expert, son P, wrote out some runes for me so we can use a drywall knife to carve them into one of our birch or oak logs. I have to go out to the log pile and pick one, and since Mark's vacation begins tomorrow, it is his job to do the carving. I have more quilting to do. I will serve lamb stew with root vegetables, rye bread, dried berries and Greek yogurt (hey, I have a lot on my plate right now and simply do not have time to play viking wife and make skyr!), and Mark will drink a Corona beer in place of traditional ale or mead because again, "I don't have that kind of time!" 😁 I hate beer and will drink my usual water or LOL, a Mike's Hard Lemonade. 😂😂😂😂😂 We will burn the log in Mark's mom's for place at 4:47 pm, and eat dinner with her. Then back home to quilt and begin cookie baking for the weekend.

Here it is, and my phone did a HORRIBLE job with the photo. It is ridiculously blurry and making it look wrinkled and has nasty. Sigh. It is absolutely gorgeous. The fabrics were chosen for our youngest son who graduated from college this past April 30. He went to university in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and for those who do not know about this area, it is one of the most beautiful places you can visit in the Great Lakes region/Midwest/practically in the 48 continental states. Lake Superior is positively breath taking, and the elevation is high enough for mountains, mountain lakes, you name it. The mineral make up of the region means that the cliffs are multi-colored like rainbows. If you want to see photos, google Presque Isle Park, Marquette, Tahquamenon Falls, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Copper Harbor, and Lake of the Clouds/Porcupine Mountain. These are all places that in his time at school he hiked, camped, kayaked, etc. Lake Superior is DA BOMB! He loves his down state job, but misses his "heart home" as he puts it so I tried to give him a quilt that will remind him of it. Drat my very bad phone camera!

Today was NOT healthy. I hit the ground running, early, on coffee and nothing else all day. I am so behind getting things done for Christmas because the grandmothers need so much help recently. No food until 6 pm. Mark had been helping his mom, and ate lunch at her house, got home to find me ripping out a seam on a quilt that is a Christmas gift, and also very hungry but unwilling to stop and make anything. He cooked. Bean burritos and all the trimmings. Very very yummy. He just brought me a snack of smoked oysters in gf pretzels. Hopefully, tomorrow will go better.

I have been harvesting basil, oregano, mint, and chives from my east window pots, and will soon have some salad greens. I have spinach and leaf lettuce going. They seem to be cool weather crops that are not minding the house at 70° and the draft knees around the window. Next year I would like to replace these windows if finances work out. Mark can do the labor, we just have to buy them. I think I could have even more things growing in pots there if we eliminated the draft. Oh and the aloe is managing okay as well. I had a little grease splatter burn the other day, and was able to harvest aloe for it. I have to admit to being proud of myself. I don't have any great amount going, but it is nice to be able to harvest them in small amounts. Given the state of salad greens and the prices as well, I would love to double the amount I grow next year. I recently harvested a little spinach to saute with mushrooms and red pepper to add to wild rice. It was delicious with my fresh herbs. I other news, Mark found a trucking place near here with pallets, many hundreds of pallets. they are desperate to get rid of them, and told him he could take as many as he wanted for $1 each! So far he had hauled 24. He is going to get 24 more. They are wonderful oak pallets in beautiful shape. He is going to make 10 more 4ft * 2ft raised beds, and then some green bean beds as well as a garden bench. Here is the link to the green bean bed.

Hear hear! There is absolutely nothing OP can do because of a total lack of authority and influence. I would be very tempted to block SIL's phone number. This is Dh's circus and monkeys, and since they don't listen to anything he says, and refuse to do the right thing, since FIL doesn't listen to his son, maybe dh should stop responding to their texts. It is okay for him to read them so he has some idea what is going on with his parents, but they have made their bed, and they have to lay on it. Dh does not need to put his head on the railroad tracks and get decapped due to their awful choices.