For me, the issue is my dad. Apart from clothes and some cheap jewelry she really doesn't have anything unique to her. Everything is pretty well linked to my dad, and he is the one I try not to let haunt my life.

I just bought a cherry cart with two shelves and butcher block top for an empty spot in our kitchen because the Michigan kitchen is small, and I got spoiled over Christmas at the Alabama house because there is so much counter space. I put the instapot, blender, and kitchen aid (for which there wss no room in the cupboards) on the shelves of the cart, and then had dh hang a new, larger spice rack on the wall so I could empty my spice cupboard and then use that for the toaster and a few small things that were out. The resulting increase in clear counter space has made me feel happy.

Yes and also not. Sigh. This virus has too many symptoms. I will say though that if I get stuffed up from forced air heat, often when I unstuff, it is a crazy faucet because my body seems to think it had to make a gallon of mucus to counteract a small amount of stuffiness. It is maddening. Calm down body. A little stuffy is not the end of the universe. OP, I hope you don't have covid! Hugs

I would do Ktgrok suggested. I would not keep it, pass it on, of worry about dividing up the money. Sell it and then use that money in a positive way now. The vast majority of what my mom has to pass on will be gotten rid of due to negative memories associated to it. There is no point in keeping an albatross around. Don't let abusers have free space in our hearts and brains from beyond the grave!

We are well stocked and since temps have been in the single digits and teens with wind chills below zero plus very high winds, I have been in no mood to venture out. The whole county is in a full covid meltdown. The two large hospitals our county there patients to because what we have for a hospital is a stitch and ditch band aid station are both so overwhelmed they had to close their ER's until more federal help arrives. It doesn't leave me with any confidence about going anywhere or being around anyone. So I have no idea what the grocery stores are experiencing. We have no curbside pick up, delivery, or instacart options here. But, I am going to grab a KN95 - I bought 30 of them back before the omicron surge began - and am going today during the 2-3pm lull at the least populated, least popular supermarket so it should be just me, a couple of other customers, a manager, a cashier, and someone at the deli in a huge building. I will use the self checkout and then be nervous for ten days waiting to see if I get the damn disease. I will report back on what the stock conditions are.

We just had something similar on our college son's debit card. It was a "reoccuring" charge billed out to look like it came from the campus bookstore as a "membership". It took almost a week to straighten it out. I am glad you got a refund.

Sadly, I was a stable hand for a fiber farm for several years, and while I adore the creatures and loved lambing season with all of the adorable, energetic, so funny little lambs, I can say from experience, sheep are really not very bright at all. There just isn't much going on there compared to goats or most other livestock. Being called sheep is one whale of an insult, and so damn disrespectful. I remember a pastor saying on time, "When God refers to us as sheep, it isn't a compliment!" OP, don't give up on what you believe! Stand firm.

I haven't done grocery shopping in quite while. I have heard of some shortages, but nothing major. We have enough meat, vegetables, and fruits in the freezer to feed us for quite a while. I have rice, beans, quinoa, and gluten free flour as well. But I am low on broth, taco shells for the others, sour cream, and Greek yogurt. So I do need to pick up what I can. I guess I should get on that. None of our stores have delivery, curbside pick up, instacart, you name it. So I have to venture into a store, and basically consider all the humans of Michigan to be nothing more than walking biohazards. Sigh. Our hospitals are so darn overwhelmed, I am just loathe to be a part of continued spread. Dh has gone into the market a couple of times in the last week and half for his mom. He somehow manages to go at low times when hardly anyone is in there. He said what he is seeing as problematic is produce. It is arriving so late after being ordered that it is going bad. Most of it does not look promising so if purchased must be used immediately or frozen. It isn't just covid making me lazy about this. Our wind chill factored have been at or below zero every day for me entire week, and high winds to boot. Nothing melts even with salt on it so the road is a sheet of ice. I have had a lot of mental attitude just about taking the dog out four times a day. Poor old, Lewis. He hops on three legs sometimes alternating paws to hold up. Trust me. He isn't that cold on his paws. He does this in the rain too. He has always been a wimp since puppyhood! 😂

I am so sorry. I was reading about that today. The MAB's that worked on the previous variants do not work on omicron. There is a new one in development, begins with an S, but I can't remember the name. I doubt it will be approved and mass produced in time. I just wish I could hug you, and help take care of your children so you could rest.

Policy? What's a policy? 😡 It is a free for all with most parents not keeping their kids home, and even when the kids are symptomatic, sending them to school. After one week of classes, they have 51 students test positive in the 7th-12th grades out of 438 students. Everything is going on as before as if nothing had happened. "Move along. Nothing to see here".

That would make me bananas!!!

Man, I am not q violent person, but this kind of makes me want to spank that patient!

Uhm, does anyone else think that this calls for a Lois Lizard companion! 😁

You go, Sid! Save the world!

I am so sorry Tiggy! You just seem to get hammered and again and again. So many hugs from me to you. 💓💓💓

Yes, ours have textbooks. Parent backlash a few years ago for wanting digital downloaded to tablets. One of the few parent backslashes I agreed with.

Yes, some UMC's and Catholic churches here were doing it in summer 2020.

What would be even better would for the music to be pre-recorded. The masks that can be used with mics are not even remotely sufficient for omicron. Not.at.all. So at this point, everything really needs to reset to hard shutdown, no in person services, and drive through communion unless it is the south and nice out for parking lot services. Here in the North where our temps are 9 degrees with windchills in the negatives, they need to stop holding church in person period.

A variety. I would not have every student research the same thing so that we had more than one interesting prospect to discuss and write about.

Why? She can't be fully vaxed, and orthodontic is not anything in the ballpark of life saving medical treatment. There is no reason to do this, and put herself at crazy risk. Have you seen Michigan's numbers? We have five hospital systems with federal crisis teams assisting now, and refrigerator trucks for the bodies, heated triage tents in parking lots like it is a war zone, and three more hospital systems saying if things do not improve soon, they will need federal help as well.

Michigan? Yup, we are a state in crisis. My guess is this is going to peak by mid February and then start going down. So I vote for a reschedule to March. Plus your kids are not at full immunity yet from the boosters.

Oh, my mom was done right before she turned 53, so I am also going past her. She got her first period at 12, and I had my first the month after I turned 11. Her own mother didn't start until 16 and ended at 45, but I think that was food insecurity as a child having a hand in it. Grandma's family was dirt poor, and the food was rationed so the oldest boys got way more than the girls and little boys (family of 17) since those three oldest ones worked the farm with their dad. There were definite health problems associated with childhood malnutrition.

We thought it illustrated very aptly the inertia and stupidity of the plights of both the pandemic and climate change. I would definitely, if subbing at the high school right now for a science or social science class, take a week to go through it 40 minutes per day with 15 for discussing that portion, until we had it done on day 4 and then assign them an essay or something to research on the topic onto being back on day 5 and then go through as many of those aloud in class as we can manage. I figure that if movies are.what the elementary school is doing most to the day because they do not have enough teachers, then I could do that with a legitimate lesson plan based around it. They would probably remember more of that then the rote memorization of definitions in life science and biology classes that passes for "science literacy" in that district these days.

And another thing. The town itself has become a partial ghost town since so many businesses have left the area. Numerous, very nice stores are empty so at the beginning of the year since the city council owns most off them due to back taxes, they offered them for use to the school as a way of spacing out the kids. Basically, put 12 students to a store, get a substitute teacher and aide so there are two adults, and then you have easily isolated groups. Several churches volunteered to make brown bag lunches, each church taking one store front class per church FOR FREE, and also saying they could probably rustle up some volunteers for the classrooms as well. Frankly, a retiree reading good books aloud, showing science and history videos, and working simple math problems on a white board, handing them the math and language arts textbooks and say "start working forward, do what you can" would be a hell of a lot more education than these kids are getting now. But the school board and superintendent were horrified. No way. Couldn't imagine how that would work. What a crazy idea...and their most unbelievable thought was basically, "How dare the community get involved!" They have no idea how to think outside the box, and no desire to even solve their problems or give anything different a try. Just haul them to the campus, pretend everything is fine, don't attempt to give them an education, but keep that per head funding rolling in. It should be a crime. The superintendent and school board should be arrested. Every principal for the district quit. Every.one.of.them. They just couldn't stomach it. Three were younger and not ready to retire, but ended up with good jobs in management at a company 30 minutes from here that is expanding. Their message on social media is don't go into education. Do anything else!

Right, and if our middle school and high school sent home all of the main streamed students for two weeks of virtual learning, and only had special needs face on, those buildings could be used to space out the elementary students to helm squash the outbreak. If they also bought some cases of KN94/95, and made those students wear them, I would consider substitute teaching under those circumstances. Give me ten students in a classroom that seats 35 and an air purifier with all of us masked at that level, and despite the dismal pay, so would do it for two weeks in order to help tamp this down because Michigan is in a horrible state of crisis. But these parents are so damn "covid is a hoax and everyone is lying, and freedumbs" that they would rather have their children getting NO instruction, shoulder to shoulder in a gymnasium than have them wear a mask. I would volunteer to supervise recess and eat and have my water outside just to help protect my family, toss my clothing in the washer and shower when I got home just in case I was infused with virus in droplets. Since they are letting dimwitted parents run the show, they can't get anyone to assist. Michigan just passed an emergency bill allowing anyone on staff at any school for anything, lunch room, bus driver, custodian, whatever to be a substitute teacher or basically supervise/babysit students and call that instructional minutes. While some of them might have the heart to actually try to teach something, but most are just going to take the emergency sub pay on top of their regular salary, and not really give a thought to what they could do with the kids.