It really is. Just remember that this was per face, so a full cord would have been between $120-200 depending on how generous the faces were. Most of the local guys are not bothered about precision so some faces can be huge and others a little scanty. I would say that we had two of the faces that were generous and more than four ft high. The one that was rounds cut from the ends of logs, was definitely scant in terms of volume, but by burn potential, good value. Those rounds were all top quality red oak, cherry, and maple. Some of the ash though, just pieces here and there, are nothing but kindling because they were trees hit by the emerald ash borer so they are gopher wood as the saying goes. Ash can't be transported across county lines except as kiln dried lumber due to that rotten insect. So part of the reason we got those face so cheap was that they were blended with good ash pieces, but that ash can't be shipped. Very little damaged wood in there, but that is the law, and I do not blame the DNR for instituting that ban. It is possible if he didn't have so many of the rounds which are not popular with fireplace people as well as some ash to get rid of, we would have paid a whole lot more for that wood. He has two more face at that price, and I bet Mark will buy it Monday if it is still there. The thing is, I have a zoom mini-concert on Sunday afternoon next week. I can't be sore and worn out because I am performing. I really cannot help him, but I feel horrible about making him do it alone. I need to see if I can find a willing teen who is also willing to mask when in the car with dh. This could be like hunting for a needle in a haystack. But, if we got the other two face, we could make it through March (most of the really nasty temps will be over by then) and save a lot of propane. Spring break isn't until the first week of March. Otherwise, this wouldn't be an issue because youngest ds really does not mind helping his dad.

I agree. Michigan is sequencing so few samples. So when Omicron hit Tennessee county, it completely overran the hospitals who were already overrun with Delta. A month later the news from the state health department was, Genesee County has its first case of omicron". The response from healthcare workers was an eye roll, and something along this sentiment, "No sh#t, sherlock!" I can only imagine the amount of regeneron wasted assuming it was still delta until it was obvious that it was omicron, and HCW's came to that conclusion long before the state health department did. This nation has been 20 pts down since February 2020, and has never gotten in the ballpark of catching up. Sigh.

Agreed. 14 is old enough to begin embracing the awful truth about our society, how many people view teenage boys. He needs to know she is not a good person for him to think of as safe, and protect himself. It is never, ever fun when we finally have to let our kids see the ugly that our relatives can be. However, it is for the best since we cannot control the other person. We did not like having to say, "Your aunt is a bad person because x.y.z. You cannot trust her, and while you are minors, we will keep her from you. It is your choice what to do as adults, but we urge you to at least keep your distance. For what our advice is worth to you in your adulthood, we do not recommend having a relationship with her, your uncle, or your two female cousins." All three boys took that to heart, and as adults, are entirely estranged from that family. However, DD the softy, threw her aunt and uncle a bone about three years ago, and was instantly slammed with nastiness that my brother thought she should put up with so he could have a relationship with his niece. Nope. She shut that down with prejudice. It was startling just how vicious my sil was after ten years of no contact. I swear narcissists just live for the day when they can get another opportunity to be wicked to someone they have decided is their prey. There is no "time heals all wounds" kind of thing there. That is a personality that just can't be given an inch.

It is so sad, and I am sad for you. Your sil is not a good person at all. I am so sorry this leaves you in that position. Other people suck sometimes!!!

Sounds like a real supply issue. Transporting wood long haul is super, duper expensive. Here there is an over abundant supply right around the corner in terms of free wood on state land, and so many farms having their own woodlot. It has only been this year that it has been an issue. I was shocked when two of our three normal suppliers had transitioned to making lumber or selling firewood to Detroit Area dealers. I guess they are really making a killing on that. They did not say what people are paying down there for this wood. I have often wondered if some of the campgrounds are buying it up, and reselling it. Camping is at an all time here thanks to the pandemic. We have seen and heard of campgrounds selling firewood to campers for $1-2 dollars a log. Hard to imagine paying $10 or more for every time they want to sit around a campfire or roast a hot dog.

Does OP own the home, and the grandparent lives with her? Than if yes, sorry grandparent, but those kids are not over unless I feel like putting my life on hold to directly supervise the whole thing. If sil doesn't like it, she can take the grandparent to her house for visits. If the OP doesn't own the home, grandparent does and makes the house rules, I would be making haste to find new living arrangements. This sil has been a loose cannon, and always taking advantage of Baseball, just unacceptable levels of expectations on her. So I would really do everything possible to limit sil and kids being there or find new living arrangements. I truly expect that sil will just continue the attack, making life more and more miserable. A lot of what OP posts about this woman follows the exact same trajectory of my own sister in law whom we know rarely ever speak to much less see. Our kids have not laid eyes on her in many years and that is a good thing.

And cheap too if you are willing to make them yourself. I have done that two different times. One was with cheap Styrofoam craft boards roughly 2" thick, and then I bought fabric I liked and covered them. Another time with craft balsa wood ply covers first with poly fiber fill for a little lumpiness, and then covered with fabric. One time I had to decorate an area with huge, long, white walls for a Christmas wedding. At the time, 4'x8' sheets of foam insulation board were dirt cheap. I bought commercial size rolls of beautiful wrapping paper that coordinated with the bride's colors and covered them. There were existing wall hangings (nails and such) that the facility took down, and I used fishing wire secured to the back of the panels, and hung them just like framed photos. They were gorgeous, and really brought the room to life without a huge expense.

Thinking of you today! Hoping you are finding some time to de-stress, and that your mom is having another good day.

Choose your small town judiciously. Ours has no sidewalks, and the township is too poor to afford them. The streets are narrow, and the main road has semis and beet trucks whizzing past all.the.time. The speed limit is 35, but the trucks do 55-65 because law enforcement is not interested in policing this little hamlet, and that is quote common in villages of 1000 people or less because they often do not have enough tax base to have their own police officers.

Oh, yes, we have wide swaths of folks here that are bizarre distances from really good hospitals. That was one reason we picked the greater Huntsville area. Our house is rural, but less than an hour from good hospitals there, and then there is Vanderbilt in Nashville if needed. Here we are an hour from a mediocre hospital or shall we say, a set of mediocre hospitals, and two hours from the very, very good, preferred hospitals.

This is happening in our area. We were not out of the Delta surge at all before omicron hit, so people who got Delta than also got omicron. We have very low vax rates here so a ton of people got Delta. Then bam, got omicron.

Sadly, you are right. There is no other way to respond. You have to protect your son so saying they can't play unsupervised is the right thing. If what you surmise is true, she and her 11 year old are the losers. But, I would advise you to take it a step farther and say that you can no longer babysit her kids. It is unreasonable. It makes you a prisoner in your own home because you can't get anything else done while they are there because you can't be in the room supervising every second. This is what we did with my nasty sister in law. Our kids did not ever go to her house, and her kids did not ever come to mine. She always wanted me to babysit. However, I pulled the plug because I was not going to allow her to cast a shadow over our home, and turn me into knots trying to keep everybody safe, and her happy. So they only met at the grandparents, and never without dh or I there because I knew mom and dad were not up to the task.

Our trailer can only haul one facecord at a time. Well it could haul more, but the towing capacity of my Equinox limits how much we are willing to try. So it was about 40 minutes of loading in that cold, six mile drive home, 40 minutes of unloading, and doing that three more times. I think when I looked at the clock, five hours in the actual cold, and there was a transit trip when the trailer was empty to McD's a few miles north of the supplier to grab a couple of hot mochas, and to warm up just a bit more inside the car before getting out again. I do not relish going out to state land for wood this summer/fall. For that part of it, we can't take hired teens because there is too much liability when working with chain saws and inexperienced kids around them. But once we have a load on the trailer, it is okay to let them use the log splitter back at home and stack it especially because we have a neighbor that is very experienced and a really good guy who won't mind pulling up a lawn chair with an iced tea and slice of pizza to supervise them when we are in the woods. It will be worth it to pay their wages and feed them. And if we can find an experienced teen to go with us to the woods, that would be for the better so I don't get quite so stove, and can limit how much I carry. In years past when we had teen sons at home to help, we burned wood exclusively. 15-20 face cord depending on the quality of wood. What we bought yesterday was very good oak and ash. It was leftovers from an Amish sawmill/lumber business. They had cut and split it, and had sorted it into face cord stacks. But because it was done so late in the season, and very few people here are heating with wood anymore, they didn't have a stream of people standing in line for it. They just wanted it gone. That is why we got it for $40 a face. I am sure had it been fall, and they had bothered to advertise, they would have gotten a whole lot more for it! I always laugh when I here folks from the city who have never lived rural a day in their lives say they wished they could homestead! 😂😂😂 uhm, ya. Sure. It isn't a bed of roses. Get ready for the hard labor! My dad had an alternative heating business so we grew up accustomed to solar panels on the roof with a battery bank, wood stoves, fireplaces, pellet stoves, corn stoves....whatever he wanted to show off in our living room. My brother and I are not strangers to cutting, splitting, and stacking wood. But, I never got good with an axe! I manage making kindling with my nice Stihl hatchett. I am wretched at splitting with an axe. Thank goodness we have the gas powered log splitter! Even dh is not willing to be enough of a "Pa Ingalls" to go at it the old fashioned way. We have two nice Stihl chainsaws too.

Thanks! Dh, the bread maker, feels bad about it (and I really wish he wouldn't because I volunteered knowing that doing that in the cold was going to be hard on me) and is making his gourmet GF sandwich buns. LOL, I am willing to admit to being impish enough to take just a little bit of advantage of his good will because those buns are yummy. 😁 He has ground beef thawing and will be grilling hamburgers in the boiler. That is the great thing about the boiler. Get a good bed of coals going, and you can use grates in it to roast food on. One of our favorites is buffalo chicken made with Frank's buffalo wing sauce, and chicken breast cut into wide strips. Very, very good!!!

I agree because omicron seems to so often begin in the throat, but the tests are for nasal swab. I think that throat swab is the way to detect this variation.

I am so sorry to hear this. Covid is the bane of human existence at the moment. I REALLY extra hope you manage to skate through without it yet again.

I think you should make him some blond (none chocolate) marijuana brownies, and fee him one or two per day! 😁

Right! I am flabbergasted. What in the hell goes down at that pharmacy? Are they selling drugs out the back door on the black market? Crazy

Right. The issue is the little cousin is unfortunately the daughter of a not very good person. Stinks for the kids, but can't be helped. My own sister in law could have a horror movie made about her. Hollywood would not need to exaggerate a darn thing to make it a blockbuster. So it definitely affected our decisions about her and her kids being around our kids. Frustrating for sure! And as the mom of three upstanding male sons, it is very upsetting to live in a culture that pretty much views all males suspiciously after the age of 8 or 9. However, it is not possible to change that viewpoint in other people's minds. We can only protect our sons from the fall out of people like this sister in law. Blech. Extended family is often just so problematic!

Right. That is what got me, and my muscles. I am soooooooo sore today. My wrists, fore arms, and shoulders hurt so much that I am just tolerating typing on this kindle, but I couldn't stand to play the piano when I got up this morning. That is a big no no for me as a professional pianist, so we simply have to get our 2023 wood this summer or fall. The DNR will do a "take fallen trees for free" day in the late summer, so we are just going to have to head out to state land, and do it ourselves. I feel bad for dh though because he works so many hours for work and does the maintenance on his mother's home. So adding "must go chain saw trees in the forest, cut small enough to haul, and then split it all at home plus stacking" is hard. We have always, until this year, been able to buy as much as we want at $40 a face cord from local Mennonite farms/lumber businesses. It was shocker when we couldn't do it this year.

And normally I would agree with you. Unfortunately, in this case I can't because this is the SIL who has been the topic of many threads due to her major personality problems. She is a real piece of work so the fact that the comment came from her is a red flag for Baseball and her son. This woman is extremely problematic.

I our area, minced (ground) chicken is about $5.00 per lb (1.1 lbs would be half a kg), and that is up $1.00. For beef, it is up to $3.99-4.29 depending on the store for that same amount which is up $.50-1.00. We bought a half beef from a local producer at $2.79 per lb hanging weight (which is butcher speak for organs removed, head removed, hooves off, but the other bones still intact so the price per unit is taking into account that bone weight). This comes out to approximately $3.00 a lb or roughly for you $6.60 a kg and that was cut how we wanted, wrapped, frozen, and ready to be picked up. We paid roughly $1000 and had 200 lbs of minced beef, plus a crazy amount of steaks, roasts, some stew beef and soup bones. We did not take the organ meat except a couple of packages of liver which we gave to my mother in law. She cooks and eats liver. I cannot get past the smell of the stuff cooking. What has gone up a lot more in price here has been seafood, chicken breast, and beef steaks and roasts in terms of meat market and supermarket prices buying a package at a time. Chicken breast bought in a 10 lb bulk bags is $3.99 a lb. A year ago, $1.99, and it is 4.59 per lb if purchased as single packages. A simple round steak was $4.99-5.99 a lb a year ago, and is about $8.99 now. Roasts have nearly doubled in price as well. Turkeys have until this year always been the cheapest meat at $.99 - $1.79 a lb. Those have almost doubled in price except before Thanksgiving Day when the supermarkets sell them at cost if you buy X dollars of other items.

My sons watched football with their grandfather, brought books to read, brought hand held video games to play, etc. We made sure they had a way to entertain themselves, and we did not exclude teens from adult conversations. I am not willing to attend "family" get togethers in which conversations among the adults turn into private matters, especially not with an adult woman in the family whose mind set and personality was so manipulative.

Well, I was always protective of my sons' reputations, and part and parcel of that was because my youngest niece - age gap between her and our sons - was a liar big time. She inherited her mother's narcissistic need to be the center of attention at all times, and she for sure made stuff up about folks to get attention which then fed my sil's drama. So our kids were not allowed to be around our two nieces without us, and believe me, even that was very, very limited. Our teens liked conversing with adults and stayed with the adults. The extended family dynamic was such that we didn't allow conversations to drift into anything inappropriate for our teens. If it did, we left. My brother and his wife have such a dysfunctional relationship that we weren't going to stay for the meltdown, and so many topics would set her off. It was fairly easy though because my mom loves to sew, cook, craft, etc and Dd loved all of those things. They were safe topics around SIL, and SIL was also an amazing artist so she usually had some work to show us and talk about, and we would talk about that as well. Of course it fed her narcissism, but on the other hand, my kids did also pick up some education in art and art history. My dad often wanted to watch sports, and while my kids are not into team sports at all, they didn't mind watching a football game or whatever with grandpa. Dh stayed in the room which annoyed my brother because he refused to go off and talk about other stuff. But, we weren't willing to leave them with my folks while the nieces were there. And my sil absolutely did make similar comments to what your sil just made, and she eventually escalated to worse. She tried to imply absolute sh#t about all of my kids (told the youth pastor at a local church that Dd was pregnant - dd was 15 and not sexually active, told her daughters that all boys even uncle and grandpa are sex perverts and would rape them any chance they could get, so my dad stopped allowing the nieces to even come on the property, accused her step sons who did not live with them and were adult men in college or out of college and with jobs of drooling over their half sisters, and these were young men who at the time had not even visited their father for three years, had not laid eyes on their sisters in longer than that, and before she was done with her crazy, my nephews were awarded restraining orders against her). So I am not talking about hypotheticals. I know what it means to deal with an unstable personality, and have to protect my kids. None of my children as adults have chosen to have any contact with my brother, his wife, and their female cousins. They are good friends with their eldest male cousin who is 9 years older than our daughter, 18 years older than our youngest son. The thing is, you have posted a lot about this sister in law, and in all of it, she is a selfish, unstable, green eyed jealous, person. She sounds so much like my SIL. So I truly believe her behavior will escalate. She wasn't willing to have an actual conversation about what was bothering her, just this inappropriate one-off comment. That is my SIL's m.o. Drop the bomb, wait to see how it is received, and if no consequences, escalate. Having close relationships with cousins sounds like a nice idea in theory. In reality, it is just a luxury and not a big deal if it doesn't happen. I do not believe for an instant she was making an innocent comment of "It is odd to me that cousins with such a big age and gender gap would enjoy each other's company because I would not have been that way as a child". I truly believe she meant it in the, " Maybe your son is a predator" kind of way. She should not be in your house nor her kids, and when at the grandparent's home, your kids do not go if her kids are there unless you can be there to supervise it closely. Yes, that is sad for sure. It is not nearly as sad as what can happen as the fall out of worse comments/behavior on her part. Circle the wagons. And from another perspective, you do have a responsibility as a parent to respect her with regards to her own daughter. If she thinks it is weird or inappropriate, it doesn't matter what you think or your ds thinks. That 7 year old minor is her domain. She gets to decide what is right for her kid even if you don't agree with it. So you need to take the hint, have a frank discussion with ds, and make a plan for him to have something to do during family get togethers that does not involve playing with his little cousin or leaving the room with her. You should tell sil that she cannot bring her children to your house unless she is staying. It is not appropriate for her to use you for babysitting/default parenting from this moment forward, and ds should not be a prisoner in his room in his own home because she wants you to watch and feed her kids which is a running theme with this woman.

That would be so much fun! I will tell her.