Kelly, that is wonderful! Thank your to being willing to be a lab "rat". I hope this drug is wildly successful.

I agree with this. I think work culture is a big influence on this. Mark has always worked IT and since 1998, "work through lunch and not eat at all or try to wolf down a bite in the five minutes between meetings" has been the business expectation. Always. Still is. I think this mentality sifted into culture. When I was a kid, my parents took full lunch hours, and in school we had a full hour at lunch. The local school has a 10 minute eating time. The kids get 20 minutes outside afterward, but they are kicked out of the lunchroom after ten minutes, and they are draconian about it. Meanwhile my sister tells me in France, lunch is a revered part of the day, people take plenty of time to eat, children are served generous, healthy, chef quality meals at school, and there is encouragement to eat slow, enjoy the meal and time with friends, etc. Even when we had huge time crunches with our competitive rocket team, we took time out for generous meal breaks, and often if they were here in the evenings, I served pasta, salads, and fresh fruit, or a roast chicken with roasted veggies. We encouraged them to relax and talk about something other than the project. Other 4H leaders thought we were nuts. It is a HARD thing to go against in this go go go culture.

I have used cornmeal for regular polenta.but what my family loves is fried cornmeal mush with maple syrup. I don't make it very often for breakfast because it is a lot of carbs, but occasionally for a treat is nice.

What? I would sub! My local district keeps calling and begging me to sub. Here is what they are offering. Work day 7:30-3:30, half hour lunch with the kids actively supervising so a working lunch. No benefits. $85.00. I would get $12 an hour at fast food and not have the responsibility of teaching children. I don't sub. And I have a bachelor's degree and at one time held a full teaching license in this state. (Let it lapse during my homeschooling years.) Crazy, crazy!

Yes, when I was in elementary school it was timed as well. The recess aides stood at the drinking fountain and ran us off if we went over our allotted quick sip. So the kids who arrived on the bus had many times already been on that bus for an hour. No one was allowed to drink water from the drinking fountains in the morning before school started because the teachers didn't want us to have to use the bathroom before recess. Then we had the timed sips after recess and nothing until lunch. We were not allowed a drink after lunch recess because we had had milk or whatever with our lunch. Then one timed sip at the drinking fountain after the afternoon recess. They did not allow us access to drinking fountains or bathrooms after school, just rapidly funneling kids out of the building to their buses or carpool. I know we spent most of the day dehydrated. Then when the new high school was built, it only had one set of student bathrooms for a school with at that time 700 students. So everyone learned not to drink anything when you woke up in the morning and to NOT drink anything at school either so you wouldn't need the bathroom because the lines were so long. I am surprised it was even legal to have a public school building with so little bathroom access, but apparently the state didn't care. So if a student went to bed at 11 pm, that person likely did not have anything to drink until after 3 pm the next day. 16 hours without liquid. Sure whatever was eaten for breakfast or lunch would have contained water especially to they had vegetables and fruit. But there is no way in the world that was enough. I am surprised we all didn't have major health problems. I know some kids every year passed out running laps in P.E. Every.single.year. The school could not be held responsible because technically, they were not restricting the students' intake by policy, it was a choice. However, it was the stupidity of the school board who voted to have only one set of bathrooms in order to save money on the build. I have no desire to return to those days. But swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction has caused this absolute mess of plastic water bottles littering the nation. I am not sure why every correction of a problem had to be some nutty extremist pendulum swing which creates another set of problems. Seems to be there American way.

Bingo. Locally, fast food, gas station owners, etc. still want people to work low pay, no benefits, and no regular hours, posting the Monday-Saturday schedule on Sunday night at 5 pm, and never scheduling people in any reliable way. They want them on call 7 days a week, and will always work them 1 hour less than full time every single week so they don't have to give them any benefits, and treat human beings like rental cars. Local business owners feel very entitled and feel that their employees should be loyal to them for absolutely nothing in return. Well now that there is a labor shortage people have options so they are not willing to take these jobs when they can work for larger businesses with corporate policies and HR departments that respond to complaints or at unionised jobs. I have said to the owner of the local hardware who is a very unkind, mean employer, "You reap what you sow." He was not amused, but he and his wife now have to work constantly, are exhausted, have no time off, etc. and I don't have sympathy. They treated their former employees like rented mules, and they all left during the pandemic and now have much, much better jobs in a small manufacturing plant that opened here, better pay, regular and reasonable hours, health insurance, and vacation with recourse for addressing concerns. Who wouldn't jump ship! I think employers who are known for treating employees terribly will continue to face inability to hire. Dh's employer is being really smart. They know that a wave of retirement is looming in the next four years with their highly trained IT personnel, and though they do have employees who have the skills to be promoted up the ladder, they do not have enough to then take those positions vacated and the department needs to grow, not contract. So even though right at this moment they do not need a whole bunch of newbie college grads, they are hiring them anyway, and getting them them trained. These are really excellent jobs for newbs to IT, and not remotely stressful because they are doing a ton of job shadowing, and assisting under seasoned workers, but do not have a ton of responsibility yet. It is a very gentle introduction to their career with good pay and benefits, excellent health insurance, and very generous 401k matching. I also think we needed a course correction in certain industries. A McDonalds and Taco Bell every couple of miles in every city was just not a sustainable model when looking at birth and population demographics. We have seen the change in shopping habits for the last 20 years, but that didn't stop new malls from popping up even though that model of business was already on the wane. On a lot of not great corporate decisions have lead to this in terms of food service and retail. The county seat of my area is a town with a population of roughly 4200 people in a county of only 50,000 total. There are six auto parts stores, and someone is opening a 7th! Two of the six were already struggling. Literally all of these stores are less than two miles apart. So when I saw the sign for "future home of auto parte X", I just 🙄. That is a bankruptcy waiting to happen.

It came down to $4.09 here. I did see $3.99 in the airport vicinity, Romulus (Detroit) last night.

I agree with granny. You should talk this over with the kids. This has a huge effect on them both now and sadly, after you are gone. Many hugs, Kelly. 💓💓💓

We have gone to this as well. We are headed to Alabama Saturday, and I am making my yummy broccoli pasta salad in two serving size containers, fresh fruit, fresh veggies and dip, and cheese sticks along with two stainless steel water bottles. I have a gallon jug for water that I keep in the trunk, and we will refill the bottles. We will begin with travel mugs of coffee from home. I would be thrilled if we could rinse them and fill them at gas stations or hand them through the drive thru at McD's. I hate the refuse, the garbage in my car. We also eat better and drink more water when I do it this way instead of relying on take out/to go. It is NOT convenient. But the earth is struggling, paying the price for lollygagging on environmental issues and reliance on convenience. I don't use Starbucks at all, so don't really have a dog in that one particular fight or profess to know if i will work out weel or not, however, I am pro companies looking for ways to eliminate garbage and the manufacturing of vast amounts of disposables.

If I had that kind of time and energy, I would have written five symphonies and twelve sonatas in the last few years. Nope. So I am with you. I do not get the enraged crazy over not much.

Lots of shortages here even in manufacturing. A ton of people retired early at the beginning of the pandemic, and the younger generation is smaller. Gen X is far along I to their work journeys and arena taking any lower level positions. Millennial and Gen Y/Z (can't remember what the official designation is) were much smaller birth numbers than was going to be needed without robust immigration. Most of our fast food establishments have never reopened dining rooms and are just drive through due to lack of staffing. Youngest ds doesn't know what to do. He has eleven offers for post -graduation (electrical engineering). He never expected to have that much choice. We are trying to help him wade through the details of benefits packages, COL in each area, available housing, etc. He feels a smidge overwhelmed because they all are very heavily pressuring him, and do not want to give him time to evaluate each situation and HR in each company knows he has multiple offers. They do not back down.

My sister is a crazy Jane Austen fan so I just had to send this to her!

Congratulations to you! Awesome job, and you are a wonderful mother and role modeling huge awesome sauce to your kids! Rock on, woman!!!

I love that idea! I wonder if the farmer's market we like would be willing to consider something like that for apple cider. We buy quite a lot of the stuff during the autumn season, and I hate the plastic jugs. I have a lovely glass half gallon one with a screw on cap (I also have a cork that fits too).

Oh, I think we have all had that thought!

That would be frustrating! People have budgets. They can't just have a whole lot more money added to their grocery order. Grrrr..... 😡

Yes, the sense of community fostered by publicly dispatching a rat! 😂

The New York Post has it listed as an Iraq attack on the consulate. Whatever. I didn't say I agreed with "pipe down". Nor did I say it was a good judgment call. I just said what I thought the political mindset was.

Well, I think a lot of holidays are stupid. So one that celebrates something math in a society largely math illiterate is kind of okay I guess. I would like to eliminate Sweetest Day, Boss Day, Secretary Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and about a million other Hallmark holidays. At least this one I have zero obligation to acknowledge with anyone.

I think the experts have been told to pipe down. The world is watching a possible global war if the Ukraine situation escalates, Iran lobbed missiles at a US consulate in Iraq, the world is just in a crisis mess other than just the pandemic, and so the political will to do any mitigation is over with. They have their fingers crossed that nothing bad will come of taking their eye of the ball in favor of gaining public goodwill for measures like weapons and money for Ukraine, and sanctions on Russia, etc. It will probably backfire, sad to say, but I am pretty sure this is what they are all hoping for anyway. That is my guess.

Michigan reported just under 1400 new cases for Sat, Sun, Mon. It is encouraging since we are coming into our spring/summer season where everyone goes outdoors and kind of stays out, and the major indoor sports stuff is over. Some of the schools are saying that if weather permits, they are going to hold spring band concert, choir concert, and school play outside because everyone, including teachers, are tired of being shut inside. We will see. It is a pain to set up for these things outdoors and none of these schools have band shells or amphitheaters. Plus, spring rains. But I would be happy if they managed it, and would attend as a show of support if they did.

Ours went down 6 cents from $4.25 to $4.19.

Hilarious! Nice for Sid to have a social event. 😁

I am in love!!!!

This reminds me of that Mary something or other magazine on the rack at TSC. The dumb model on the front is always dressed in a white gauze or white lace dress with cutey patootie nonsensical shoes, carrying some fancy schmancy basket, headed to the chicken coup or out to harvest vegetables and weed the garden! 😡 No. That is not Howe this is done. Mucking out boots, worn out jeans, faded t shirt and if chilly, a ragged looking flannel shirt over it with a ball cap or faded sun hat, NOT, a straw hat designed for a Jane Austen festival, and a sun dress nice enough to wear to a wedding! The people who make these ads and do the photography are a little bit nuts.