Is it possible to stop sending now? I am just wondering if seeing the photos quarterly, riles her up in her twisted mind...doesn't allow her to calm the hell down and move on. Would family court allow you to end it since she has violated the agreement repeatedly? My heart breaks for you and your son! I am just thinking about a relative who was very unstable and her child was taken away. She didn't settle down until the court just ended it, and she no longer had pictures or any kind of update. After about a year, she began to grasp the concept that the child was out of her life for good, and time to obsess about other things.

Yes true. I don't really know how he can disguise it for long. I was thinking about how close to the roof of our Equinox my boy is who is 6'1". Not even sure that would help this scam bag! It is just a super noticeable height.

Agreed about the deputy. This guy is too depraved to care about her, and would likely see her as a liability on the lamb. He is 6ft 9in. Way outside the normal range of height for white guys. I think it may be hard for him to blend in so he is going to have to stay off grid. I hope enough Marshals have been put on the job to detect manhunts outside of major population areas.

So what. It doesn't change the fact that the world, the million, isn't going to share resources. This would be not nearly as big of an issue if there were two billion less people on the planet. There is evidence that the planet, even with equitable sharing, is not capable of supporting 8 billion basic needs. There is only so much arable land and potable water to go around even if the million greed meister polluters did not exist. No one wants to hear it because the religious line had been about god sustains the earth therefore it can handle all the people. There is much scientific evidence that this is not true. The answer isn't to continue to increase the population exponentially under these conditions. However, that isn't going to change anything. Thus mother nature will take care of it. More pandemics, more wars for oil, water, and food, more deaths by natural disasters due to climate change.

Your neighborhood is my personal, whacky sitcom.

I was! I felt dejected. My mom, whom we have been trying so hard to protect, was there and bless her she said, "I would not miss this for anything! I have waited for this day, and been able to see so many of these life celebrations for my grandchildren. Please do not feel guilty or angry if I get sick. I am ready. I am also privileged to have made it these last two years and been able to continue to love and spend time with my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren. It will be okay." I think ds would have a hard time though because if she got covid and something bad happened, it would cloud his memories of his big day for a long time to come. On another note. I feel a little better tonight. Hopefully I am kicking this stupid sinus infection. Mark and the three musketeers had a wonderful time at the Museum of Danish America. Eldest has an appointment with the archivist tomorrow as well as the genealogy center so he and the other two will be going to a winery. I am going to rest again.

Hey Bootsie, look up Lake Erie. It had been killed TWICE by pollution to the point that the Cuyahoga River which dumps into Lake Erie burned. These events were the catalyst for forming the Ohio State EPA which became the catalyst for the federal EPA. It isn't a joke. I am so sick of people not giving a shit about the Great Lakes and proclaiming those of us in the region as "hysterics" is ignorant times a gazzillion. It took decades to recover and find signs of life in that ecosystem. You think every time it happens it will just continue to bounce back? Rubbish. https://phys.org/news/2011-10-dead-lake-erie.html https://toledocitypaper.com/feature/lake-erie-dead-or-alive/ https://deadzonesjw.weebly.com/lake-erie.html https://www.smithsonianmag.com https://www.outsideonline.com

Yup. Anything to oppress women...economic slavery.

Dawn, I am so sorry! This stuff makes me so darn mad!!!! And it is so variable between states and counties. Our son was a moderator of a forum where things would get out of hand at times, and he would have to give 30 day bans or permanent bans of some posters. He got a death threat - one in which the person described exactly how he was going to go about murdering our son - and son called the state police post. They sent their cyber person out to talk to our son, get the printout of the poster's escalating posts leading to the threat, and then forwarded that to a colleague in the Rochester, MN police department. That officer and partner went to the person's address, showed him the documrntation, and told him to cool his jets or something. It ended. Our officer confirmed someone went to talk to him just not exactly what was said. I really appreciated that. Maybe it wasn't a crime at that point, but giving a warning that says, "You are cruising for serious trouble" might turn some people around. I have heard from law enforcement that putting up beware of dog signs, having a HUGE chain around a tree, and massive dog dish with a name like "Killer" or "Brutus" on the porch, and motion detector lights that can activate a recording of "big dog frothing at the mouth waiting to eat you" kind of barking is a huge deterrent to people who would consider breaking into a house to assault someone.

My concern is that they will end the spousal benefit. There are numerous, misogynistic p.o.s. male politicians who have suggested that this would be one way to fix ss because why should a woman get benefits when she didn't work for money! So that weighs on me as we look at a fairly bust system as of 2030 when there will only be two workers for every one recipient. At some point, someone is going to get burned, I suspect the SAHMs will be the torched folks.

We thought so too! They lifted it a day before we left!!! I couldn't believe it. Sigh. But at that point we had our hearts set on going, and decided to risk it. I.was.unhappy. I suspect local politics had something to do with it. The college has always tried harder and been more accountable and covid cautious than the county in which is resides.

I am totally on board, anti-packaging. It is UNHOLY the amount of crap generated from packaging. And seriously, all that crap that comes in a box of shoes can be re-used for the next pair of shoes. Dolls and matchbox cars really do not need to come in plastic, non-biodegradable packaging. I would love it if we went back to the concept of the old general store. Glass and wood display cases, no items in packaging, the glass jars of buttons and sewing notions, you name it. The utter lack of packaging in a 1950's Woolworth would be so great! I also think we simply have to have local, policy initiatives. I can't make Capitol Hill do a damn thing. But if just my local municipality would ban plastic shopping bags, plow up the three acres sitting fallow around the old elementary school that has been defunct since 1988 and allow folks to have a community garden plot or plant carbon sequestering plants like clover which also helps pollinators out, and then increase the routes of the one and only transport bus in the county, it would be huge. If they forced parents to use common bus stops instead of going to every single child's home individually, the school district could run HALF the number of buses they do now. In this rural area, we run busses with only 15-20 kids on them! No joke! Insane. Have some centralized stops, and have the parents get their kids to those stops or walk to them. A lot of our retired folks have said if kids could do more walking, they would be willing to serve as volunteer crossing guards and safety patrol. The amount of fuels saved plus just bus purchase, bus maintenance, you name it would be amazing.

And of course, ya, I get it. I have four kids. I adore them, wnd didn't think about population. But regardless, people eat, and they use water. Even if no other consumptive actions occurred, people have to be fed and watered to live, and we have whole areas of the world without enough of that. Sure, we don't have that shortage totally at the moment now. However, we are beginning to see it. Wildfires and droughts, water wars in the west, 22% of the world's freshwater is in the great lakes, and other states want to drain them (Looking at Nestle as the corporate giant pushing for that as well" which will decimate the climate if we destroy them in order to irrigate deserts to create more food, continue to use water for manufacturing/coolant. It is a real problem. I do believe there's a maximum number of humans that can be sustained with present technology combined with the lack of will of world governments, the wealthy oligarchs, and corporate leadership to radically change. So the end result, unfortunately, is that population will have to decrease rapidly. Everyone who has nothing to do with this mess, with the decisions bring made, with leadership, who are powerless to stop it will be the ones to suffer the consequences. Government leaders and the rich are going to steal everything they need to survive. The world my kids and grandsons are inheriting sucks to high heaven. I do not blame my three sons for determining that if would be immoral to have children, and that is how they feel though their natural instinct is that they would enjoy fatherhood and family life. Sigh.

Not happy with Michigan. Really not happy. Commencement was all of the students, faculty, and staff masked, and then taking the mask off for the photo with the president receiving their diplomas, removing them if a parent came forward to snap a pick as they left the podium. But the 4000 or so people who attended were entirely unmasked. We masked as did my mom, sister, adult sibs of our graduate, and just a few people in the handicap section. They do have a new, very good filtration system and I am hoping against hope that saved us. We are now on our outdoor, socially distanced vacation eating on the meals I cooked and froze, either microwaved in our hotel room, or warmed on park grills or our campstove. We are enjoying ourselves. Or should I say THEY are! I came down with a bacterial, sinus infection and blocked eustasion tubes, due to prolonged allergy aggregation giving that stupid bacteria room to grow. Negative for covid and adenovirus so that's good, but despite 18 hours of antibiotics from urgent care, I have nasty headache, aching ears and such. That said, I got enough relief to get a good night of sleep last night, and that is helping my outlook today. We will be seeing the Hans Christian Andersen sculpture park, the windmill, and a few things today. They will go into the Museum of Danish America masked. I will stay outside and take a long walk because I sound terrible, and don't want to make other visitors feel like they are in the presence of the plague. It has been a long two years, and I am not looking to make other people that much more nervous. I am so tired of it, and keep reminding myself that being sick of it doesn't change a damn thing. Have to keep on keeping on. Hopefully, another day of antibiotics, and I will feel enough better to have a sunnier outlook. That said, I am so grateful that we chose to attend commencement, and are now on the road trip with our sons.

I agree with so much of this for my own personal responsibility. I don't think in a "profit above all other considerations" system, corporations will EVER get on board despite being the big polluters, big water consumers, big emissions producers. They just won't, and we don't have the political will to do less. I have gone back to buying used as much as possible, replacing low quality items with high quality that will last longer when we can find them. I feel like appliances are a total loss. We will eventually use Dh's GM discount to get an electric vehicle, and get a Sienna hybrid for our van camping. We are investing in a lot of home food production, fruits and vegetables, at the Alabama house, and have started pulling together what we need to run the house on solar. It is a prime location for solar. We will be off grid for that as there are issues in the area with connecting personal solar to the grid even though we could produce more than we need. If it were possible, we would have geothermal, but that isn't an option for a variety of geo reasons there. Geothermal for new construction could be a huge improvement for the future if folks will get on board. The up front cost is more than forced air heat and air, however, it really pays for itself in the long run and is a big reducer of fossil fuel emissions. Less children. Bottom line is the planet only has enough resources to support all the humans, and we humans do not equitably share resources ever. Not in the history of human kind has the species shared well. Therefore, we will have to have fewer humans. I think that ultimately, our own mismanagement of resources will result in this. How many million dead now from covid due to an animal virus jumping host and likely because of decimation of habitat putting diseased animals constantly in company with humans allowing the mutations? Ebola? You name it. More to come. Wars will take people out as everyone fights over arable land as the earth gets drier, potable water as droughts increase. At this point, we could end up with California and Colorado going at it and killing one another over water. Politicians are weak willed, money driven weasels lacking any of the moral capacity required to actually make the right, necessary, tough decisions. Families will have to pretty much think of what they can do for their own families only because it isn't like the governments of earth are going to do a damn thing before it is far too late, and we are right on that precipice. I look at it this way. Every tomato, every blueberry, every head of butter lettuce, or clump of basil leaves I produce is one less of each that has to be trucked here from California or Oregon or wherever. Every chicken egg I produce is one less produced in a high energy using, emission producing mega farm. If my house is using solar power, then I am not producing even more emissions from fossil fuel produced electric. However, I am a drop in the bucket. My family alone makes exactly zero impact in the grand scheme of things. The point is that for us as things get worse, the hope is to have a haven for our adult kids and our grandsons that is stable and pleasant. It is satisfying to make the effort. We would have to radically reduce consumption, invest in rail, invest in public transportation, invest in solar, invest in nuclear, upgrade the tranmission lines on the grid so that we don't lose 30-50% of the energy produced to inefficient transmission, have cooperation from all or most world governments but especially all the big polluters and the US and China, to name two, are never going to get on the right side of that, and equitably share food, water, arable land, sustainable farming, etc. and that is never going to happen because humans would rather see an awful lot of other humans suffer and die than change or share. This is our collective history, and as seen in the past, mother nature fights back and thins the herd when that happens. So I do think we will see another full on world war, regional water wars, regional food wars, world wide skirmishes over rare earth minerals, etc. as well as an increase in pandemics as we continue to decimate rain forest and are driven even further into animal habitat with diseases that will jump host, and we lack natural defense and medical knowledge to fight effectively. The next generation of kids might need 40 vaccines in the first year of life just to survive. If the population is reduced by 2-3 billion, the earth will heal. And all of that sounds depressing, and it is. That said, I don't think there has been a time in history apart from maybe for white folks 1950-2000 that wasn't fairly depressing and a constant fight for survival. It has always been this way. National news and media being so readily accessible is what makes the common person so very aware of how bad it is out there. On another note, in our remote area of Michigan, we don't have a buy nothing group. But I do have a lot of stuff to get rid of and no desire to use eBay or anything else that requires shipping. So we have decide to put our two work tables outside during good weather, and all summer long as we purge, put it out on tables in the front yard near the street with "free" sign. Hopefully local folks will find something they can use.

We have added one camping trip in the Traverse Bay area, and will be taking our grandson to Sleeping Bear Dunes. Covid cases are ramping up here again, so everything we are planning is outdoors, socially distanced. We leave tomorrow for youngest's college commencement,the only indoor thing we have planned. Kn95 will be our friends. Then Sunday we head out for South Dakota. I have nine evening meals cooked, frozen, and ready for thaw/reheat in our hotel rooms. We have scoped out our picnic stops for subs, hamburgs, hot dogs, and brats. Tons of fresh fruit and veggies. Taking water and lemonade with us. So hopefully we can hike around Badlands, Custer State Park, and Agate Fossil Beds, enjoy the great outdoors, and not come home with covid! I really am tired of cooking since we aren't eating out here so it has been cook meals for the trip while cooking meals to eat at the time. Double cooking. I would be happy if people stopped eating! 😁

You get rotisserie chickens for $4.99? Here they are almost $12.00!

When she is able, I highly recommend therapy for PTSD. It helped with mine post car wreck. It didn't cure it, but it made it liveable so I was able to safely resume driving. So many hugs from me to you, your dd, and your whole family minus MIL who I am giving some serious stink eye.

I am so sorry for your loss. Many hugs and good thoughts. 💓

Salute in butter with a little cognac and make sure the cognac cooks out well, so don't overdo it. Yummy! We eat them with steak. I also like to salute them and then add to an omelette.

This is the best idea I heard all day! My other one was to just get a shot gun, shove the barrel down one of the holes, shoot, while screaming, "Die you moles, die!" and hope the neighbors don't sneak over with a straightjacket. I mean, it's moles. Desperate times call for desperate measures! 😆

I totally get that. Does your church have a support group or maybe through your therapist? Just meeting once in while to air your feelings and get support without having to put the energy into forming new relationships might be really beneficial. You don't have the bandwidth yet for all the work of finding new people for your inner circle. Hugs, hugs, hugs

I have no answers. Mark says I am not allowed to gasoline and torch the yard so they will go away. I am sad. It might have solved both the mole problem as well as the mowing headache. I thought it was a fine idea. Him not so much!

Do you kids have their own therapist that they can talk to about this? I think they need a professional to discuss this with so that your feelings do not end up in that mishmash. I don't think you can fix this, and I think BIL is stepping up as a godfather and fulfilling his role in your religion to provide spiritual and emotional stability for his godson, and that is something that is very, very good. Ds's frontal lobes are not fully developed and won't be for a while so this might not be "fixable" at this time, and DH will need to learn to live with that or take the consequences. Just prioritize your kiddo, and make sure he has a competent professional to bounce his feelings off.

The same thing for my brother in law in France. He is in IT, and that department has been work from home for two years. They resumed working in person March 1st. He wad the ONLY person wearing a mask, and well, that doesn't help so much when no one else wears them and also refuses to stay out of his cubical. He got covid. Actually, several hundred employees all got it at the same time. Thankfully, his case was light. But, he has two coworkers who were hospitalized, and one took it home to his immune compromised toddler, and the baby is going to be taken off life support today. 😭 We are still holding out here, anxiously watching the numbers. We are still going to ds's commencement a week from tomorrow. It is mandatory masking, and everyone who doesn't like it will be bounced at the door. An outdoor amphitheater will be livestreaming the ceremony on big screen, but since it isn't going to be very warm, I am not sure how many people will take advantage of that. We will be indoors, but all of us in KN95. His college bought special order KN95 to match cap and gowns for the seniors and faculty. Fingers crossed we will be okay. The venue does have a new ventilation system that is supposed to be really good, and I know that current research supports that being very helpful.