My mother in law had a 3 season room. The issue was that it really wasn't pleasant for six months of the year. I could Ser it being a lovely thing in a more temperate place. She eventually had it converted to full living space but with big windows to let in a lot of light. Thankfully she still has a lovely, covered front porch to sit on in good weather. I do think a glass solarium might be nice. Typical 3 season rooms are not made for cold weather which is when I need to pursue sunshine more than any other time of the year. I had a friend who had one, and she absolutely loved how bright and toasty it was in the dead of winter.

This is so important. Right now Michigan State University is in charge of getting the Ag community on board with testing and creating protocols. They are pretty well trusted within the agricultural community and many of the family owned farms and dairies that have the younger generation of young adults working in the family business have the added bonus that a lot of these "kids" are products of the MSU At Science department. They are science oriented. On top of that, it is also our state wide most favorite Vet program so our livestock vets are up to date with the latest, and in direct communication with their alma mater. The governor and legislature have earmarked money to help with the cost of biohazard protocols and testing. It isn't as much money as I would like, but it is a start. There will be many, many more cases because the state is taking it seriously.

Deet. The discerning guest in 2024 is wearing deet, and the party favor is bear spray tied with a ribbon.

That is very nice! I am glad that the college did that. For our youngest, his smaller state U did not charge to attend thank goodness. It was $80 for his cap, gown, and cords. It was also $35 for the diploma presentation folder. They did not provide any food, but we were allowed to come up front and take photos so that was nice. We could not have done that for middle ds at WMU. Eldest boy didn't even price it out He was adamantly opposed to "engaging in the outdated ritual!" He has always been my buck the system child.

You are so right! On my paternal side, there were a total of 11 grandchildren. Among those nine, there were 9 great grandchildren. Below replacement, and among the great grandchildren who have married (6), only 3 afforded weddings, and of those, 2 invited aunts and uncles. So for instance, my cousin S's boy invited aunts and uncles, no cousins. The wedding was a simple affair, backyard, limited amount of tables and chairs, all to keep costs down. I was not offended. But we took that as a cue to what was going to be acceptable going forward so with Dd getting married 2 months after cousin's boy, we didn't invite cousin and wife nor grand cousin and new wife. The number of potential weddings is going down for sure! I had four kids. My daughter has 3 and is done, and I am fairly certain these are the only grands I am going to get.

Agreed. I think this is where it all falls apart with some folks. They seem to have missed the fundamental truth that your right to do anything exists only for yourself, and does not extend past anyone else's right to not participate.

Right! And I feel like kids are missing out on so much because of how spread out most families are these days and the cost of travel. My cousin's only and only nephew (cousin S, her brother) only had one child, and when he graduated though Cousin V, his auntie came, due to the cost of flights D didn't thus depriving the young man of the memory of Uncle D wandering around an exceptionally informal, taco bars graduation open house in a 1960's tux! Epic. This kid does not know what he missed! And due to college finals week, he didn't get to attend his great uncle's funeral (my dad). There is just nothing like a man in white tux with tails at a rural funeral sporting a red rose in his lapel, and silk hankie in the pocket. This should be a thing for all the people! 😁 But I know my grandsons are going to miss out on so many of the fun aspects of crazy family. They live in Bama, and we live here. No one gets together anymore because all my cousins and the remaining aunts and uncles are spread hither and yon., long hither, long yon. Emails. One of my favorite family memories was from when I was about 12 or 13. My mom's side had their every other year family reunion. My maternal great grandmother had managed to birth and raise to adulthood, 17 kids! Most of them went on to have 2 or 3 kids a who went on to have 2 or so kids a piece. Thus present that day were 64 great grandchildren, and a great grandmother with dementia! This was kind of legendary. They made us all form a parade line that wound around the pavilion so we could be walked past her and introduced. After about 25 kids, she looked at my aunt who was standing next to her and said, 'Where the hell did you get all these damn kids? Did you kidnap a school?" 😂😂😂😂😂

I get that. I am going to blame schools in my region at least for this. Commencement and all of the hubub around graduation used to be paid for by the schools. There was the photographer paid a flat fee, and 8x10 for each family, free tickets to graduation though sometimes a limit on the number depending on the size of the gym, invitations printed by the school, and then the student just put their photo inside, and these often were free or low price for a packet of 6 -8, low price to order more, and graduations were heavily announced in newspapers and that was paid for again by the school or a free community service from the local paper, and a journalist/photographer came to cover the event. In my area, commencement is not free to students. No joke. It is $20 a ticket with a limit of 5 or 6 depending on the venue, photos are $35-50 per 8x10, the rental is $35 or buy for $60-70, they charge to print the diploma, and if you don't pay for the diploma cover, you cannot be called on stage to walk across, your announcements in the paper are $80-100 a piece, no journalist covers the event for the newspaper they just write up a few sentences taken from the school Facebook page, and students are charged $100-200 to attend their own commencement. Baccalaureate doesn't exist. On average, more than half of each graduating class does not attend commencement. The kids who didn't play sports are increasingly not particularly excited about announcing their school name. They do not feel their school has had any loyalty to them. It is the same with college commencements. They charge so much for the students to attend ($100 to print your diploma, $200 to attend, and $60-75 for the regalia at WMU and the school is so big you won't actually walk across the stage) that a startlingly large number of students do not participate. You add to it to pandemic weirdness affecting having an effect on part of their educations, and you have a recipe for not caring about anything except "Hey everybody, I survived!" So many formalities and milestones we used to take for granted have been commoditized to the nth degree. I am not sure we can expect students to react the same way we did to these events. Given how very little I see communities demonstrating care and concern for our youth, mostly a whole lot more of the curmudgeonly attitude, I feel like it is a lead by example. If we want them to have a sense of community, the school and those in the district need to ACT like a community. It mirrors the extreme divide we see today.

Well, I think here is the rub. Most of Emily Post and her followers' notions of etiquette, mannerisms, and consideration are taken from wealthy British society and Gilded Age New Yorkers. That's fine for The 400, but it was never the cultural norm or standard for every one else. It may have been emulated in a few ways within the rising middle class, like the concept of weddings and what not, but the application of it was still restricted by finances and many other practicalities like workers don't get time off from work to observe the niceties, and can't afford the hullabaloo anyway. As for consideration, graciousness, and kindness, I think in the big picture, it would be nice if those were universal American societal norms, but if you look at our history, again not in evidence, and one would need to take a closer look at "consideration and kindness" when it comes to the upper class's actual behavior. It was performative and superficial, but by in large, not actually considerate or kind. There was a certain Victorian version of appropriateness for quite a while which did hold a lot of conversations and interactions to a level of superficial civility, but there had always been a good bit of passive aggressive snarkiness. Now as to the Boston U definition I think that one thing to discuss is the role of religion in creating societal norms, and traditions handed down between generations. We used to have that in a limited way. Not as a monolith because this is a nation of a plurality of ideas so while Catholics and Methodists and whomever may have handed down what was considered the traditions and ceremonies of their particular version of religion, these still did not hold societally. There was sometimes a crossover, but consider how much there wasn't as well. Catholic weddings were dictated by a religion that went back more than a thousand years, oft influenced by the actions of nobles and aristocrats. Poor Methodists went back a couple hundred and their only very notable culture norm was to be "not like Catholics and Anglicans", LOL. The music was different, the ceremony was different, the prayers were different, the Eucharist was not part of the ceremony, and there was no spiritual difference between being married in the church by the pastor or being married by the magistrate. Additionally, while some churches in SOME areas were inclined to help put on some version of a wedding dinner, many did not. Religious communities varied so much one cannot claim a sort of US general custom about weddings, and the celebration thereof. It was very much the same for funerals and baptisms: Methodists don't have wakes, etc. Holiness association churches do not baptize infants nor hold confirmations or anything that really resembles that. Many countries have an official church of the nation, or a dominating religious force in the region that is pretty consistently the same in the big picture. The USA has never had that. I am trying really hard to come with a fairly universal to the US custom/societal norm. I come up fairly empty, especially if I look at it from the perspective of classes. Across classes there are pretty glaring differences on pretty much every level with few to none in terms of even accepted mannerisms. Education break down doesn't help any cause for a national standard for art, communication, culture, and behavior. As for the arts, the one universal American social norm I can think of is, it gets no respect, and sports is god. Sports is god might be the one fairly consistent cultural norm we have, and that isn't something that is more than just a few generations old. I agree with SKL, weddings are slowly going the way of the dodo. Once Gen X is gone, they will be once again, something only the rich do. My Millenial daughter and son in law, solidly middle class on paper, would never be able to pay for even a modest wedding for their children, and I suspect my grandsons will see weddings as a ridiculous use of money. Of the ones we have been invited to in the last 5 years 7 weddings), only 2 were quasi-formal, the other five were informal or just plain a handful of people and a restaurant. Many young people we know have opted out of the idea in its entirety. I didn't wear hose at any of them! 😁 I also see a lot of not holding funerals anymore. They are very expensive even when cutting corners. While some churches do still allow the use of their facilities for free or low cost, many do not except for members and even some of them are charging significant rent to their members. We all know what the cost of food has done to being able to afford get-togethers of any kind. Locally, IF an obituary is put in the paper (increasingly less common because the cost is now $80-100 per paper), it says private memorial service after every one of them. That could be my local culture only, but as a musician who used to be in huge demand to provide funeral music, I can say those gigs are few and far between, and I serviced a wide, wide area. So it is at least regional. I honestly think economics dictates a huge array of cultural practices more than tradition and mannerisms.

Uncle Tommy needs to meet my cousin in law. Cousin D somehow came into possession of a very out of date white, tux with tails. He thinks it is the bomb. So he wears it to all the occasions. My parents' 40th wedding anniversary party that was held in a church fellowship hall and was dress up but not remotely formal? Yes. Hi wedding at the court house with my cousin in which she showed up in jeans and a flannel shirt? Yes. His first grandchild's baptism? Yes. My father's funeral? You betcha. It is quite entertaining. I think every family needs an Uncle Tom/Cousin D. Life is too short.

No idea. The USA has a real obsession with the concept of individualism, and rugged individualism at that. Since the roots of the nation are based in a plurality of cultures, I am not sure we can actually develop anything that looks like a cohesive society. We are not only a young nation, but one new to the continent in the grand scheme of things. We don't have a history, in terms of colonization, that goes back far enough. I actually think social conventions for us were really not particularly well defined. Knowing what to wear based on the time of day came from emulating wealthy English/British mannerisms, and tons of people never came from that background to begin with so it was a pretty limited social convention, and existed only among those with the most money. For sure in my parents' day, they never were around people with enough money to have that variety of dress/clothing. People wore their Sunday best to a wedding, and the bride and groom could just suck it up. My mother didn't even wear anything better than a nice Sunday dress to my own wedding. It was expensive enough to pull off the do it yourself function and provide a wedding gown for me without her paying for an evening gown. So I think that it never was a strong custom except amongst people raised within the perimeter of wealthy folks. Apart from Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, the more I think about it, the more I can't name very many wide spread, accepted cultural norms. My experiences with society as a child raised rural low income and low middle class vs. my husband raised solidly middle class, vs. a sister in law raised very upper middle class, to a niece raised wealthy are just hugely different, and apart from some evangelical Christian tradition, not really at all steeped in any common practices. I don't think we had had a cohesive culture ever. Culture between the colonies was often different, sometimes radically different. Thinking of Quaker Pennsylvania vs. Anglican Virginia here, and by the time westward expansion occurred, even more different. Probably the only time there was maybe something kind of cohesive was the period after WWII when culture had been defined by a massive war effort, rationing, victory gardens, the advent of the GI Bill, every ody pretty much rowing together, etc. It didn't last long when one considers the cultural changes of the 1960's, the Civil Rights movement, another war very unpopular and divisive. With the rapid rise of Nones, Christianity really isn't even holding together its own religious culture. I think this has always been a nation in flux. We aren't like the Danes who have been on the same land for a 1000+ years, developed the concept of Hygge, which has no real equivalency in the English language, and work hard as a people to maintain customs and widespread cultural beliefs.

Could you get enough air out of pillowcase with a vacuum? Also, Aldi used to have gallon size bamboo composting baggies. They are ziploc, but they aren't plastic either. I have some, and they definitely feel very different and they say "compostable" right on the bag, though in English that might not be helpful.

Well god forbid the leaders that be exhibit an speck of common sense. That is a super power they do not possess!

This makes me so happy that two of mine are determined to remain single, and ds/dil were completely uninterested in a wedding, for married by a friend with about ten people watching, and then we went to a restaurant where I put flower arrangements and candles on the tables, and that was that. We did one wedding, dd's, and for me pulling it all off so we didn't have to pay for help except the caterer, it was exhausting and not even remotely enjoyable. OP, the "leave within 30 minutes" thing bothers me even more than the dress code color, and that bothers me too. This is a wedding where I feel like they do not want people to be there, but do want to make a gift grab. They would get a card, congratulations and signature, and a twenty dollar Amazon gift card. I would not make an effort. I am becoming a curmudgeon who has decided what I have remaining of time on this earth is NOT worth making myself crazy for ridiculously picky people.

We had that last year with Nutcracker tickets. $125 from out computer, but when Mark used his mom's computer in a different zip code, less than $50 for nice seats. I miss travel agents. Data mining and dynamic pricing make my blood boil.

Also, I have an enameled cast iron cloche for artisan bread. It came from Aldi and I love it.

This. And we don't know how chaotic the office is. It is one thing to gain a new skill set when not under pressure, it is quite another if the phone rings off the hook all day, walk in customers are frequent, everyone is talking all at once. I would not have envied anyone trying to learn the receptionist ropes at my dad's business during the busy season. It was always like a three ring circus in there. Tons of customers all talking at the top of their lungs and wanting attention simultaneously, all three phone lines going off together constantly, my dad wandering around muttering and wondering where he put his keys, his tool belt, his multi-meter, and estimate, somebody's file, the office manager arguing with a manufacturer, sale's reps loitering, and people wondering where the bathroom is. Sometimes it was like this everyday for weeks on end. So I don't know enough about the environment to know if it was appropriate for this teen to try it.

I have several cast iron pieces. I cook with them regularly and always use them when camping.

I freeze bread all the time. I am allergic to wheat, and Mark cannot go through a loaf of bread very quickly, so I automatically subdivide fresh loaves into four slices per freezer bag.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I have spent more than one night fitfully not sleeping on a waiting room couch so staff could come get me for my mom. I have to tell you that I don't think it will happen again. The reality is that I am wearing myself out as a care giver. Between my mom and my mother in law, I will very soon have health problems caused literally by the stress and wear and tear on my body. My kids are pressuring me to let it go. I am 56 and they would like to see me make it to 60. The reality is most people are still working for a living or raising kids or both while dealing with very elderly, medically fragile parents/grandparents because medical science is helping everyone live long, but not healthy. At some point, the health of the younger generation has to count for something. It is not right for family members to be pressured like this, and it is sad that hospitals are so understaffed that it feels so necessary to provide 24/7 advocacy. Our system is beyond broken. OP, boundaries. It is very okay to say no.

Thanks! I need to cackle like a crazy lady after spending two hours looking for plane tickets! 😂

I gardened heavily last year, broke even on the costs of start up, so this year anything I grow will be saving money. I canned a lot of tomatoes, and tomato based sauces and salsa, plus froze a ton of green beans, carrots, basil, and broccoli, dehydrated apples, bell pepper, garlic, celery, and cherry tomatoes, and also pickled banana peppers and jalapenos. I buy beans in bulk for soups, stews, and refried beans for tacos which is cheaper than buying cans but more time consuming. I am still using up the last of all of this, and plan our meals around it. All winter long, salad greens, citrus, and mushrooms were all we bought from the produce section. We used the dried cherry tomatoes and red pepper on salads plus banana peppers so we didn't have to buy tomatoes. This year I expanded my garden. I will have sweet corn to freeze, plus more of everything I grew last year, and some chives. We eat fresh on the cukes and radishes, but I might try my hand at pickled radishes in jelly jars, water bath packed, and see if we like them. I am skeptical, but Mark likes all the sour, pickled things. I am also going to make a no sugar raspberry jam as well as blackberry. The recipe calls for a very very small amount of honey, lemon juice, and uses pomona pectin for thickening agent. I prefer recipes that don't go crazy adding sugar. Honey is bad enough with already sweet fruit. But I just can't handle the sheer amount of added cane sugar most recipes require. We try to eat more eggs, and keep any meats to small servings. We usually have multiple lunches or dinners that are meat free.I make a mean guyere and swiss mac and cheese with roast Brussels sprouts and broccoli which is one of our favorite meals. The main issue is controlling Mark's snack tooth. Boy if he gets snacky, next thing you know high priced nuts, chips, and beef jerky come wandering into the pantry!

Adorable!

I have had acceptable results from using Earth Balance sticks.