I did not mean to laugh and can't undo it. The cat jumped on my kindle. I was trying to hit the cry button! I am so sorry!!!! Oh wait, I finally got it to change. Giving my cat the evil eye.

I wish I knew. Nothing we do seems to survive winter very well here, and we are not investing concrete. I am all ears!

That sounds very inviting!

Very, very cute and cuddly!

From this website, I have made tomato, roasted red pepper soup. It was very, very yummy. https://www.purewow.com/food/vegan-soup-recipes I served it with garlic hummus and avocado slices on toast using earth balance vegan butter on the toast before spreading the hummus.

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/02/16/mystery-emu-on-the-loose-Franklin-County-Virginia/8361645040108/ I hope Emu is having a marvelous time on vacation from wherever he is incarcerated! 😁

What's Fern Gully? 😂 So uhm, I homeschooled all my kids, youngest is college senior. I have no idea about this movie!

Michigan's new two day total was 3827 for an average of 1914 ish (can't really divide a person in half thought the math would suggest it 😁) per day. I do have a concern that there are many, many cases that are home test positives not being reported. My concerns about this are two-fold. 1st, since long covid is a thing, it is important for their covid positive to be a part of their medical record however I suspect that mild case folks may not be informing their doctors. 2nd, I have not been able to find any evidence that those doctors who are aware of home test positives among their patients, have a reporting mechanism for making sure their patients are counted in the state totals. It seems as though it is pretty much lab data only. However, I am not sure. So I have this queasy feeling. Cases are going down, a lot, and that is good. But, do we really have a remotely accurate picture of community spread? Doubtful. I do think I will stick to my plan of getting a haircut while wearing my KN95 if reported cases go below 1000 per day, and there are no new school outbreaks. It is a total anything goes environment here. So if the new Omicron/Probably Needs its Own New Letter, Michigan will be right back down that hole again. My hope is we make it to spring without another surge because everyone heads outside, and all the outdoor Michigan living stuff kicks in which will help tamp it down, and I will feel a lot better. Puttering about outside, getting the boat ready, buying plants, putting in the fledgling garden, and walking the beach will make me feel much, much better.

Yes this. Very sad.

And in our area, none of the hospital chaplains are Catholic or Orthodox priests. Other clergy have not been allowed into hospitals when covid restrictions on visitors are in place, same for nursing homes. So for folks of Catholic faith, that has been really tough. At the hospital most patients here are turfed to there are only two chaplains, one is Presbyterian, and one is UCC. As you all know, I deconverted from Christianity. I just happen to have some former neighbors who are Catholic and very, very sad about this so I have been lurking. I don't know what to say that would be of comfort to them. They have no association with this priest, PHEW, but just a general sadness about the situation. Anyway, it is a very interesting discussion, and I will go back to lurking.

I do agree there is a lot of learned helplessness and many life skills are not being passed down. Absolutely. But I don't personally think the place to start on food insecurity created by a very greedy oligarchy and failed political system that favors that oligarchy is here. I think it needs to start with the oligarchy and work through the issues from there because all of it really does trace back to a very small number of robber barons who have raped and pillaged the nation for their own narcissistic, money addictive ends. So I consider learning to cook with simple, nutritious staples to be a mitigation of circumstances, but not an answer to the fundamental problems.

I had a long post. I also realize there is zero point in it. People on the outside refuse to comprehend the evil inside IBLP /Pearl thumping households. Suffice it to say that anyone who thinks staying in order to "breathe" or "clear the cobwebs" is better than running like the wind to the nearest domestic violence shelter is sadly naive. I have been the parentified teenager sister mom of a baby/toddler/preschooler who by four years of age was suicidal and praying to Jesus to let die which my parents thought was so cute because "she must just love the idea of heaven", but I had caught her with a knife cutting her arms so I knew better and slept on her floor night after night. I left home at sixteen and went to live with my aunt and uncle, and cried uncontrollably because I was leaving her behind. But my grandparents intervened, my mother finally grew a backbone, and my father went to counseling. So things got a lot better for her. Still, all that abuse in her formative years caused her serious problems which did not get better until she was in her late twenties after years of secular counseling/therapy. My father died with nothing resolved between us. I am okay with that. My sister was not. It is a mystery to me, the attitude here. Duggars are open, unashamed advocates of the Pearls, and IBLP is clear that JB is now Anna's headship. People here have been wildly against the Pearls. The concept of leaving kids with the devil's spawn for any reason is just something I cannot wrap my brain around. That is the last I will say on that. I think it is probably the last I will ever say about IBLP. People don't want to believe it. And yes, I misspoke or rather didn't express myself well. The lawsuit was indeed settled. I can just about imagine what court employees thought at the time of the filing. I don't think the Duggar local reputation is very good. Derrick has confirmed that they did receive money, just no details which is typical because often settling comes with disclosure rules. But I considered it a win for Jill in a battle with a truly evil parent. I should have been clearer. Peace. I will leave y'all alone about this.

She is going to be loving in poverty then no matter what. JB has demonstrated nothing but criminal indifference and apathy if not sociopathy towards children and females. He is an s.o.b. to say it mildly. I find it disturbing that with an infant in that compound and two grandparents who publicly advocated for the use of the Pearl book and blanket training infants, screen shots still in existence of Michelle admitting online that she beat infants as young as six months with plastic rulers, and the fact that staying makes JB her " headship" by IBLP standards, anyone would advocate for her staying. Disturbing. It baffles me that anyone would advocate for her to stay. These kids would be better off in foster care than in the Duggar compound. IBLP fanatics are just that evil.

There aren't going to be more food producers. Family farms have been going under in droves every year. They have never been paid a fair price for their labor and endeavors. Corporations are buying up land left and right. Some for corporate farming, but a lot for commercial development unrelated to food production. The top 1% got immensely richer in the past ten years while 99% paid the tax bills and got poorer. It has been prove time and time again that higher corporate profits does not produce any benefit for the people who produced the goods and services that actually did the work that earned those profits. It is instead hoarded by billionaire robber barons. Meanwhile, the over-worked workers are having a hard time putting food on the table and roofs over their heads. Unregulated capitalism is nothing more than medieval feudalism. In modern times, it just looks shinier due to the technological glittery coating that makes society seem so advanced.

My comment was NOT directed at Coca Cola. It wad directed at the robber barons of America.

Our travel budget usually does not allow for anything better than economy. So it was long and cramped on those 12 hour flights to Egypt. We don't fly enough to earn points and miles that earn us upgrades.

Everyone in the IT department at Dh's company is going permanently remote with the option of work stations and conferences rooms in one small building that can be reserved for meetings that really need to be on site. They performed admirably during work remote through the pandemic and the company saved a lot of money not having all those building open, staffed with security and custodial, parking lots plowed, sidewalks shoveled and salted, utilities, etc. So they decided that they would let everyone stay home, and then just have the one building as needed. I do feel bad for security and maintenance personnel who have been let go. These kinds of decisions have so many ripple effects.

Very special person!!!

Actually I don't know the science. Seriously! I am what is known as a "Botanical Assassin". Plants have been known to end themselves immediately when finding out I am their caretaker. So gardening is a challenge for me. Dd is a natural. But this is the first place she had lived since leaving home at 18 where she has room to garden. So we are always learning, however, she is the one likely to succeed. I have my small raised bed here, and for the third summer in a row will have broccoli, cherry tomatoes, romas, eggplant, basil, and bell peppers. I have some old, large planters made of wood and am going to try salad greens (butter lettuce is my favorite), and I have four hanging pots and am going to put strawberries in them. Then I will try very hard to remember to care for it all properly, and create the impression in these plants that I am not setting out to deliberately murder them. 😁

Oh come on Michigan!!! Try harder!!!! 😠

This! Oh my gosh. Dh has this mental break down over painting wood. Dd and I have all kinds of ideas for some distressed wood items and what not, and Mark just gets this depressed, puppy dog, anxiety riddled face and whines, 'But we don't paint wood!" I tell him to go eat a piece of chocolate, grab a cup of coffee, and chill because it will all be over with soon. You'd think we said we were going to roast his pet rabbit or something. 😂

Well, she is careful about the chicken she buys because he has so many sensitivities that she worries A LOT about antibiotics and additives to the feed. So I don't think she buys generic chicken. They use one bag per week of Perdue or Applegate organic chicken tenders. She bakes them and he eats two with his veggies and fruits and grains, and then all week long he takes the others to work for lunch with salad and fruit.

I 1000% agree that our food producers are being shafted, especially dairy farms.but others too, while the middle man makes out like a bandit! Staring at Tyson and others. And artificially cheap food had been one method of the oligarchy to keep wages artificially low. The peasants have enough food to keep working so they can keep making ungodly profits on their backs while sticking them with the tax bill for running the nation and maintaining the infrastructure that the oligarchs useto keep making ungodly profits. Staring at Amazon and many others. Well, between the insane housing market, cost of healthcare, and now food, the peasants aren't going to be able to continue slaving for their overlords. Homeless, cold, hungry, sick, injured, and in despair doesn't make for a workforce enthusiastic to make them even more money to hoard.

We only have an 1.75 acres at the mountain house. And the investment would be costly. Lots of predators in the area, hawks, eagles, owls. I don't know if she could make that work. But there is a small chicken coup on the property in very nice shape. The thing is though that feed is so high, I don't think she could even break even on the venture since she couldn't raise a bunch of meat birds in the space there. But, we are on the hunt for a local source of whole chickens, hopefully a family farm where we could order 20 or so chickens to put in the freezer. There is a wonderful family owned farm and feed store just six miles away at the bottom of the mountain. We have been getting to know the owner, and just love them. They said they would talk with all their farm clients and see if anyone is going to raise meat birds this spring. At any rate, we adore our kids and our grandsons, and are in a position to not let anything happen to them. We just have to offer and make gentle prods.because Dd feels so bad, like they are mooches or something, if they need help. Finances are tight because our grandson had a heart condition and absolutely cannot attend school during covid. He is being homeschooled, and she had to take a break from her business which was bringing in additional funds. We have their backs! But the whole thing makes us determined to at least grow a robust amount of veggies, fruits, and herbs on the property and make a habit of having a stocked pantry with staples like rice and dried beans.

I am so sorry. Many hugs. The way employees are treated in this nation is criminal. There are a few good employers out there, but they are rare rubies these days.