They look wonderful!!!!

Here in Alabama gas fuel is lower than our area in Michigan. It is $5.29 at home, $4.49-4.53 here. Produce prices seem to be holding steady, but the Farmer's Markets are full since so much is ready to harvest all ready which is maybe competing with Kroger, Publix, and Wal-Mart a bit. Maybe. I don't know enough of the local economy to know.how it works. Meats and poultry are definitely going up, and of course part and parcel of the poultry issue is Avian Flu. I think the count of culled birds has reached 40 million. We know it is bad in our area of Michigan because of the number of dead song birds we have been finding. It is startling. Normally, one occasionally sees a bird that broke its neck from flying into a window or a cat got it, maybe it got smacked by a car. But in our county, they are numerous. Dead birds in yards, along the side of the roads. My guess is like a human pandemic, it is going to get a lot worse before it runs its course and ebbs. I wheeled dd around a nursery while Mark wrangled our grandsons so she could have an outing, and we could pick some things for more future food production here. (She is still on extreme rest to hopefully prevent a bad case of long covid.) We picked two kiwi vines, and two figs. None of us have done much with figs in the past, but we do like them and thought it might be nice to have for variety. We are on the autumn list for two peach trees, two nectarines trees, raspberry canes and a pear tree. We don't need a second pear because the neighbors have three, and so the nursery said we shouldn't have a pollination issue. The blueberries are producing nicely. They won't feed large servings to multiple people, but the kids eat them ripe off the vine which is very healthy for them. The Mulberry tree was PROLIFIC and produced before Dd got covid so not only did they eat fresh and have them on pancakes and waffles, she was able to freeze four quarts. She lost a bunch in a bad thunderstorm that produced some high winds otherwise she would have had much more put away. The plum trees did not produce this year. They blossomed and then there was a late frost, and that was that. I worry about food prices continuing to escalate. Prescription drugs, everything is going up. So many people have large deductibles on their policies, and it is coming down between buying food or buying medicine. Son in law's meds jumped from $250 a month to $345 in a single month. Lots of families simply can't absorb that on top of everything else. I am getting whatever veggies and fruits are available in bulk at the produce stands right now and freezing, dehydrating, and canning for her in between homeschooling N and chasing C. Mother in law is no longer using her chest freezer so I think the next time we come down, we will bring that and stick it in the basement so she has a second large freezer. Our big chest freezer at home in MI is all Mark and I need.

When someone I know went through something very similar, she didn't give up, but she also did visitation in a neutral place which helped prevent some of the triggering. So she would make an arrangement to take him to McDonald' for french fries or at his school to watch his play practice and have a brief conversation afterward like, "You did well. I am impressed with how quickly you memorized your lines." A few times they met at the library so she could help him with homework. Something about a neutral, public place diffused the situation so their interactions were more positive. Then she began offering more when he reached adulthood and his frontal lobes were more mature. He did come around, and they have a decent relationship now. So my advice is don't give up, but change the parameters of the time spent with you. He doesn't need to go to the concert. Don't bring it up. It is a lot of time spent together which can be too much pressure. An ice cream cone at Dairy Queen and 30 minutes of, "How's soccer?" or whatever is a building block.

I gave homeschooling a try after our eldest attended kindergarten and I could see she was going to spend most of her time in elementary school very bored. She is six years older than her next closest sibling, so I was pregnant during K. I was reluctant because the idea of taking on homeschooling with a newborn made me nervous. However, at the end of the school year her teacher told me we needed to stop doing "educational things" with her at home and "don't read so many great books out loud to her" all so she would fit in better with the rest of the staff and be content with the curriculum offered. That boggled my brain quite a bit since we weren't doing anymore with her at home than my own mother had done with my brother and I back in the late sixties/early seventies and back then our teachers were glad she was doing that. They wished more parents were. The change in attitude and lack of challenge for a kid I thought of as bright but by no means a "genius" really upset me so we began homeschooling. That journey was easy from the standpoint that she was an easy to teach and very compliant, people pleasing crowd, and difficult because I gave up a blossoming piano performance career to make that happen, and then had two surprise pregnancies after our second child both of which were very problematic and I nearly died. I was struggling emotionally watching dh's career flourish and gain momentum while mine was dead. I needed a break, and we found an excellent Lutheran K-8 for her for 5th grade, preschool for C, and the school had an opening for a music teacher (my teaching license was current at the time, my back-up plan from my college days) and they wanted me desperately enough to put together a schedule of wonderful volunteer moms and 8th grade girls to watch our toddler and 3 year old when I was in class. We did this for 3 years and then C had a major, medical emergency whicch required us to go back to homeschooling. And as it turns out, back to no career and I was really loving my teaching job and was even doing some off and on well paid performing. That was so hard. Really, really hard. I did keep my piano and voice students. By the time C was cleared to go back to school, it was too late. Dd was in high school and none of the local public or private schools accepted homeschool credits. Once she graduated, the others had been homeschooled so long that they were way ahead of their p.s. counterparts. We couldn't find a good educational setting for them so I continued. 19 years of homeschooling in total. We were loosely WTM style especially in that I ran literature and history studies together, Great Books emphasis, cyclical Ancients - Modern and emphasized essay writing. But, where we veered off was that we had what I would call a STEM high school. Dh and I are very math and science oriented so we went much deeper with those topics, and the kids had a lot of science electives. We had a STEM club we ran through 4H until 2021, and a competitive rocketry team. Dd went to paramedic school after high school and then worked weekend shifts and holidays to work her way through U of MI because at the time, we were struggling to pay for college. She had some good scholarships but was in that first group of students who hit the crazy rising costs of higher education with the lowering of merit aid such that great students getting "good scholarships" were blindsided with how little that meant for the bottom line. Her senior year of college she met her now husband. They married before she graduated ( she had one class left), and at the same time had a scary, major health issue. She eventually was able to take the last class. But she has never worked with her degree, and she had to end her paramedicine career because of a significant injury on the job. She is now a prenatal and birth educator and loves it. Two very frightening pregnancies have resulted in two wonderful grandsons who are playing at my feet as I type. I am here taking care of them while she hopefully recovers from what could be long covid. We will see. I am homeschooling the six year old, and am loving it (surprisingly because I always said I was DONE with this) but had forgotten what wiggle worms six year olds are! How many times can he drop his pencil in an hour? I swear my grandson may have the record for it! 😀 C, the next oldest, has a bachelor's degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing and a German minor. He is currently working as an editor at a publishing company, and has himself published 11 peer reviewed academic articles. His creative writing is great, but he spends a lot of time on academic writing so who knows where this will go. He is in grad school part time, but he does plan on quitting his job in a couple of years and going full time. He has met his life partner - they had a non religious commitment ceremony but no marriage license due to their own beliefs. We adore her and love having her in our family. P, has a bachelor's degree in Anthropology and Archaeology with minors in history and the Danish language. He speaks and writes Danish fluently now, and also can conversationally get along in Norwegian and Icelandic. He translates Norse runes. He is working for a museum, paying off his federal student loans, and then is off to grad school. He is taking one grad school class per semester while he works just to keep his skills current. A, just graduated last month with his bachelor's in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in something related to power or powering things or some such niche. I should ask him exactly what it is called. He has job offers and is waiting to find out some of the particulars of health benefits and what not, cost of living in each locale, before making his decision of which one to take. C and P both declared different majors at the beginning of their college journeys, and then at the end of their sophomore years, radically changed majors which caused them to take 5.5 years to get their degrees. They both went from B.S.'s to B.A.'s and the gen ed requirements were so different that they had about three semesters of "electives" for credit after the change. It worked out okay. It was hard on us financially for a while since it greatly extended the amount of time we had three in college at once. None of our boys are willing to have children so long as nothing significant is being done on human rights, maternal medical care, and global warming issues, and especially if living here in the U.S., so I think our two grandsons are all the grands we are going to get. I better stop writing. It is 7:57 am in Alabama and my grandson is waving his math book at me quite anxiously because he LOVES math, and thinks I am "da bomb" at coming up with fun ways to approach it 😁. The two year old has his favorite book and is demanding I read. My body is saying, "Seriously woman, more coffee or you aren't going to survive these people." 😂😂😂

Bill, No worries. You are not expressing any dark thoughts I haven't already had. I appreciate all of the advice. I told Dd a few minutes ago that she will do exactly nothing while I am there. Nada. I will bungee cord her to the couch if necessary. Oh, also, she is tracking her pulse. She is former paramedic and is aware of the research so she has been on top of that from the beginning. So far it looks okay. She has four pulse ox monitors in the house, and when they all came down with covid, she made everyone wear them practically as accessories!

Thank you, Bill! You are such a good forum friend, and I very much appreciate you. I will stay for two or three weeks, and if she needs more care, will be bringing her back to Michigan for two weeks while I do some things for the elderly mothers, and spend the 4th weekend with our middle son and his fiance` whom we do not get to spend time with very often. N and C will have uncles and aunties (eldest son has his life partner as well) to love them and keep them busy. Then we will head back to Alabama and see how she is doing. Her doctor's idea is actually that she must have extensive rest, do nothing rest. He wants her to have some early morning sun before it gets hot out, feet up just sitting. And obviously he knows she has two little ones and that doesn't really work even though it is needed. I told son in law to let the laundry accumulate this week so he doesn't worry about that in the evenings. I will get that done when I get there. N called me today to ask if I thought it would be okay for him to cook for his mamma. It made me cry. He is six, and I had to say that I didn't think it was safe because he is still young enough to need supervision and mamma needed to rest. But he had never made a tuna salad sandwich before, so I was able to coach him through that plus making a salad for her. He made peanut butter sandwiches with grapes, blueberries, and baby carrots on the side for he and his brother. He is such a precious child, and I felt like a heel for not getting into the car immediately and getting myself down there. Mother in law has to see the vascular doctor tomorrow, and I have to go with her. Saturday cannot come soon enough.

He can't have rotisserie chicken. They always have paprika which is a nightshade. He is allergic to nightshades, wheat, dairy, and due to alpha gal from untreated tick disease, no mammal meat, and on top of that he is allergic to seafood. So it is very problematic. When he brings fast food home to his family, he still has to feed himself. He tends to eat simply, fresh veggies and fruit, tosses a chicken thigh in a pan with garlic, salt, and black pepper.

I plan on it. They already do not have wheat in the house because her dh is allergic. She allows only very limited sugar. But, I also know that when my son in law can't get home in time to cook dinner, he brings fast food, and that is not good. No judgment. He is working full time, has a half hour commute each way, and recently had covid too, so he is just doing his best. The poor guy does not know how to cook much variety so he gets her cookbooks out on the weekend, and is slow going just front lack of practice. He loves them and is doing his best, often quite tired at the end of the work day. So it will be good when I get there. I make some mean soups and stews, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes. So hopefully if there is a nutrition need in order for her to recover, I will be able to provide it.

Not that she has reported. But she is not pushing herself either. A friend of hers is there today to do some things around the house, pick up a grocery order, and make sure the boys are doing okay. Probably the main thing is that if C is not tired and doesn't go down for a nap, she stays awake just for safety sake. I don't know if she is sleeping as much as she needs to in order to make strides. It is hard to tell from here.

I am reminded today of the insanity last summer at school board meetings with parents screaming that children having to wear masks at school was traumatizing. Yet not one of these people had a fit about active shooter drills. So, kids can be confronted with the reality of terror and death, and practice for it, but no worries. A mask though, that is a bridge too far. I literally have no use for these people. Done. 100% done with these ammosexuals.

What the hell? Is he nuts? These families will be grieving for the rest of their lives!!!

Dd, hubby, and both kids got it three weeks ago. All but our two year old grandson had been fully vaxed. Son in law was the only person left in his entire building at work still wearing a mask (eats lunch in his car) so this was a ticking time bomb situation. He got it and brought it home to the family. We were so concerned because of his asthma and six year old grandson's heart condition. They had mild symptoms except the two year old who was very sick and ran fevers of 104 for days, fevers that would not break or come down for very long at all. He had to have IV's in the ER twice. But, he bounced back really well despite the severity. Our other grandson had a mild fever and mild gastrointestinal distress for one day, that was it, and is right as rain. Even son in law came through just fine despite his pre-existing condition. Our daughter however is doing very poorly. She had mild upper respiratory symptoms, fatigue, and mild fever and headache and thought she would come through well, and then was hit one week after her initial symptoms ended with debilitating fatigue and joint aches. She is almost non functional. Son in law had to use up all his paid vacation for his isolation period and now has none left to use to take care of his family. Our six year old grandson is absolutely amazing. He helps his little brother use the potty, makes breakfast and lunch for his mother and brother, plays and reads to his brother, and even did a load of laundry yesterday all by himself. She can barely walk from one end of the house to the other. I couldn't get away last week to go down when it hit her because my mom and mother in law had medical appointments this week with specialists down in the Detroit area. I couldn't find a driver for them, and Mark couldn't take any time off work this week. But I leave this weekend, and will be temporarily moving in with them. She had a year round homeschool schedule for grandson, and he is one of those crazy little "must do schoolwork" kind of kids who has been opening up his math curriculum this week and trying to figure it out on his own. So I will be homeschooling again, and taking care of her and the kids. I have no idea what to expect in terms of how long I will be needed or if she is facing long term disability. She is only 30, and hasn't worked since she was injured so bad as a paramedic therefore she doesn't have her ten years of social security credits and is ineligible for social security disability. She was also in the middle of getting her pre-natal and birth educator license, had just gotten her CPR instructor's done, so that work future is on hold. Thankfully, it was going to be a few months before her OB and CNM were ready for her to begin holding classes. Her doctor has some ideas for treatment. But of course this disease is so new, everyone is just stabbing in the dark. So I am very scared for her! Mark has four years before he can retire, and we can move permanently to Huntsville, and things are going to get very very dicey here if he is trying to work his insane job AND deal with the two elderly mothers while I am away all the time caring for Dd and grandsons. I don't know how we will manage it. I really don't. I am heart broken for dd, and will have to figure out how to make this work for as long as it takes. At the moment, I am nervous and really upset. I am staying away from the other humans because I could easily rip their heads off with their stupid million dead, ten million sick but who gives a crap mind set.

My husband has worked for EDS, HP, and IBM before his current company. 30+ years in the IT business and has never worked less than 60 hour pets week, and never given comp time or overtime pay. Never. Occasionally a bonus. He does get regular pay raises. My brother the same.

In our case it had been the opposite. We see people dying all.the.time. because they have to keep working but have health issues and injuries and should not. There is very rarely any opportunity to change careers/fields/type of employment after 55 in America because age discrimination, though illegal, is rampant and not easy to prove. Stress kills. Continuing to work construction after rotary cuff injuries, knees that need to be replaced, back injuries, and the like is so common and among many, many problems with working 40+ hours a week beyond what the body can take. Dh does not have a physically grueling job. He has a mentally grueling and very stressful one. I.T. workers in the U.S. typically work salary which means constant over time without pay or time off. A typical work week for him is 65 hours and has been for the last three decades. He is exhausted. He also at 58 will not find employment in another field because of discrimination in employment. But, he plans to do woodworking for extra income in retirement, and we both will be volunteering as N.A.R. launch operations for The American Rocketry Challenge, NASA Student Launch, and Spaceport America Cup IREC plus we will be mentoring various college rocketry teams. It also looks like we will have a science club and rocket program for children through a homeschool group in Huntsville when we make the move. I suspect we will be busy. Except for one uncle, we have not personally known anyone who "let the grass grow under their feet" during retirement unless their health had completely given out. Most have been super busy. Until my mother in law's health and hearing gave out, she was a volunteer with NICU babies, and ran the nurse's station at a youth camp on the lake in the summers, plus her gardening, knitting, and quilting. My mother makes baby clothes for non-profit organizations, gardens, and until the pandemic hit was tutoring young students in reading two days per week. It is odd to me that people would retire without having a clear plan of what they are going to do with their new found time.

Dh will retire around 62-63. His company tends to offer an early retirement package around then. We have good savings in our 401k, and the retirement plan continues medical insurance coverage for the employee until 65. I am four year younger than he so I have to get a job where I can buy insurance. I imagine that my entire salary will go to that given how fast insurance premiums are increasing, and I won't have any seniority wherever I am working so I expect the employer contribution to done quite small. But I need to do this. Dh is 58 and worn out. He has worked himself into the ground for his family, and now our elderly mothers. He has to slow down soon. He loves woodworking and has a laser cutter, CNC, and all the tools needed to do custom cabinetry and sign making so he plans on doing some side work to stay busy. He really enjoys that kind of work.

In Michigan, forfeiture proceedings begins after two consecutive years of nonpayment, and normally the property is auctioned in year three, four at the latest. I am surprised Virginia has let this go on for so long. OP, my guess is she will soon be losing the property.

According to some of my neighbors, and my drunken bum, gun toting nephew, yes.

Right, and a big time change as well. So even if that person saw it, and for me when it comes to texts, I don't keep my phone in my pocket and do not ever look at it while driving, it can be a couple of hours before I respond. Then that person would have had to call their local authority who would have had to forward it to the embassy or find out what authority/phone number to call here in the states. That is not an instant process by any stretch. Texting someone in Germany on the day of the shooting is really not particularly relevant when it comes to response and questions about the response.

Well, I mean is that what it takes? Do we have to toss the corpses of precious children off the balcony onto the senate floor in order to motivate these pieces of crap to do the will of the people? "Failed state" doesn't even begin to describe this.

I couldn't come up with a word. I my head every applicable adjective, deplorable, depraved, despicable, reprehensible, revolting, evil, psychopathic, sociopathic, none of them hit upon it well enough. I just can't describe my guttural reaction to this level of inhumanness.

This. I mean at this point, we the people of the United States of America, have so profoundly cluster effed up this nation that we have no leg left to stand on. None. Sorry. Children today are seeing their homeland for what it is, An Alt Right, fascist, war zone, and since the grown ups refuse to stand up for what is right, refuse to even make flimsy efforts to protect them, they are exercising their basic human rights to stand up for themselves, to have a say in the dystopian horror show they live where every child in this country has to figure out how to be required to attend school while being terrified of it. We don't have a right to criticize. We just don't. These kids are telling their stories because they are in the fight of their lives, the fight to survive in the dystopian Hunger Games we have made for them. In case this has not been discussed, I am posting this article. I have no words. Well, I do. But they aren't fit for public consumption, and would turn the Mods hair blue. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/maker-gun-used-uvalde-shooting-long-known-incendiary-ads-rcna30631

Ya. I don't have any sympathy. I don't think the answer is more Wild Wild West on top of Wild Wild West and am not supportive of that. But, on the other hand, they made their bed....chickens come home to roost and all that.

I don't think it is selfish. Half or more of the families in this country are dysfunctional, acrimonious divorces, nasty people, narcissists. I have not been to a single wedding in the last eight years that did not have drama caused by family that left the couple regretting that they bothered to invite anyone to their wedding in the first place. Not one. Every single one has been an exhausted bride with puffy, teary eyes, a groom that looks like he is going to pound some people at the reception, the narcissists in the family preening around making everything all about them, and an unholy amount of money spent for even a simple wedding because food costs, venue costs, everything has skyrocketed. Shoot, there isn't a single church in my county that even allows regular attenders and members to use the facilities without a LOT of money. $500 for the fellowship hall, $500 custodial fee, $250 for the pastor or priest, $1000 security deposit, rental does not include chairs and tables which must also be rented. A small church wedding here is $2500 just to have a place for the building, tables and chairs, and officiant. This doesn't cover musicians or prerecorded music that has to be played by the designated tech person also $250, any kind of food or beverage, plates, silverware, napkins, anything. All of that money plus a whole lot more and still only cake and punch so that the couple can be harangued by family and guests who feel slighted because they didn't get entertained properly or given a sit down meal or childcare provided or any number of other complaints. At my own daughter's wedding, trying to do the right thing and have the family there, my aunt had a meltdown, I got yelled at in front of all the guests by the groom's aunt because I didn't think to provide chicken nuggets from McDonald's for her kids, and then a nephew showed up drunk and had to be bounced, the caterer screwed up big time, while I and four other family members had NO food. When I was done cleaning up at midnight, I still had not eaten that day. And this isn't 1950. The church ladies don't stay to help clean up, and neither does the custodian. You pay the custodial fee JUST so that person can inspect it later. She spent five minutes looking around. I wish I made that kind of money for five minutes. It is not refundable. The security deposit we did get back. If my sons ever decide to get married, I will pay them good money to elope to some exotic location. And dd's wedding was mild compared to some of the other weddings I have been to because the US culture is exactly that blatantly, badly behaved.

I don't think it should be other police departments. FBI, Federal Marshalls, National Guard, someone who doesn't have a vested interest in cya for this situation, and is more objective at this time. Other p.d. is not the answer. People don't even feel safe around them anymore.

The adults have utterly failed them in every possible way. They have to take matters into their own hands. That is where we are at. A failed state, children trying to figure out how to move forward from the ashes. The children have more sense the adults.