I am very worried about raw milk. It is being toted heavily here among certain very conservative groups as the "cure to what ails you". It is very tricky to sell raw milk in Michigan. It isn't legal to sell, but it is legal to own a cow and not pasteurize milk for personal consumption so there are cow share programs where folks go in on owning a cow " boarded" on a dairy farm which allows them to pick up x amount of raw milk from their cow each week. We also have hobby farmers who keep belted Galloway or other smaller milk cows and do not pasteurize the milk. I feel like this is how bird flu is going to jump hosts to humans, and the kill rate is going to be like Black Plague of history levels. Just put the raw milk down.

Oh good grief. Highly likely this pair was making a run for it.

"How do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food" and the other titles from that series have lovely artwork, funny little rhyming stories. My grandsons love them. Human parents with dinosaur children, and the thrust of the series is teaching manners and good character traits. The artwork is absolutely adorable. We enjoy reading them to our grands.

I think it is a bubble thing. They already function under certain false assumptions about the bible, and within a sphere that believes certain things about the USA and christianity. Their beliefs are not supported by trained theologians/scholars and most of the best seminaries are very cautious about who can enroll there. So untrained or "bible school" candidates make the best pastors in their minds because they are "uncorrupted" by theology, seminary, and scholarship. Like the church in Missouri several years ago that advertised to come to their church if you were tired of your pastor preaching about ancient languages and societies (I forget the exact wording, but this is the jist), and come to their church where the pastor preaches from the true Bible, the KJV.

He would be 68 when a child graduated from high school IF he had a child this year. This is not good. He will be potentially retired and on fixed income by then which is fine if he has amazing retirement savings, but otherwise not the best plan for sure unless he wants to work to 70 or 72. Gently, if he says he absolutely must have a baby, and you are not comfortable with that, I would recommend you put him the friend zone and be willing to do something fun once in a while as friends, but absolutely nix any possibility of romantic relationship. Financially, for you, it doesn't make sense. You are trying to get out of debt and build savings, and need to make up for lost time saving for retirement. Taking time off for gestation, birth, recovery, and then child rearing as it is quite likely a sick child will side line you not him, is going to really delay making financial strides forward.

They do not allow this. The only way we know what is going on with mother in law is she leaves lab test paperwork and results laying around so he sees it. They have to be driven to their medical appointments, but tell the staff that I have to remain in the car or the waiting room. It is their legal right, and in my state getting a POA or guardianship only happens with a dementia diagnosis or something like schizoephrenia, and often only when police get involved. Our neighbor just went through this. Her husband was never willing to give her POA, and he has Alzheimer's, wouldn't do it before he was diagnosed, wouldn't do it after, and doctors do not interfere here because it is so easy to get into legal trouble. Last week he ran away because he was mad at her for not taking him to church even though it was Tuesday and not Sunday. He ran into the woods, and she couldn't get him back, then he got lost. Police, sheriff, and EMS came with a tracking dog to find him. Only then, could a social worker get a judge to give her guardianship. He did not want to go to the hospital though he was injured and dehydrated, but the medics declared him "altered mental status" which was what the police needed to force him onto the stretcher and restrain him. Now he is in the dementia wing of our county medical home which is actually a very good place that does an excellent job. But it took this level of horror to get guardianship of him. We would never get it over either of our mothers in their current conditions.

I would dog the manager about it. The reality is they should fix this or replace the toilet. You should not endure big water bills in order to save the owner money.

I agree. Mark's employer has a PPO plan. So the only coverage except in emergencies that result in hospitalization is in state. Everything else that happens to you out of state is 100% out of pocket. It absolutely should be illegal. Insurance controls our lives so much.

Neither of our elderly mothers is willing to give anyone POA. They are determined not to let anyone have that kind of power or influence. It is very frustrating.

Yew, do this. And there are some good YouTube videos about making the repair yourself if the landlord is not willing to come do it in a timely manner.

Yes. We are experiencing this.

No worries. It is a lot of CRAZY to keep track of for sure. So the new girlfriend's husband died by drowning in a community pool. Did anyone check to see if Miller was holding the man's head under water?

Okay, wait I am confused. Was Mica's first husband killed or died under suspicious circumstances? Mica is the one I was referring to as being 14 when he friended her. I haven't read much of anything about the new girlfriend.

It is especially creepy that she began attending the church when she was 14. He was 28, and "befriended" her. 14 and 28. So I get it that she had an affair with him while married to someone else, but she was 23 when she divorced and married him. Married, affair, and divorce by 23. That doesn't happen in a vacuum. Given everything we know about predators, I have to think he groomed her from her teen years.

I feel like I should confess that when I very 1st saw the title of the thread, I thought it said Florida man not Florida bans, and I kind of feel like that isn't all that different. 😂

Yes. My mother in law and mother make a lot of choices that have profound negative effects on my husband and me, and then laugh about it, acknowledge that they are making things difficult, and then announce we have to "respect our elders". It isn't funny. We have been taking some steps back, and reducing our work load with them. They will either figure it out, hire someone, or do without. Mark is going to kill himself young if we don't. It is a balancing act of respecting them and giving reasonable assistance and still surviving here. Mark hasn't retired yet, and I have grandchildren and adult kids also wanting to spend time with me. But they don't have an ounce of respect for us, nor care what happens to us. That makes it very hard to keep going. If I infantalize them, if is because they act like petulant toddlers, especially mother in law who is literally vengeful. But, the reality is they can't be forced to change, and there is no use trying. All you can do is do you which is IF you are in charge of the food or the activity or whatever, do it the way you believe is best and won't leave you feeling guilt riddled. So for us that means if I am cooking, it is low sodium, low protein, high fiber, complex carbs, and no dessert though I do provide a nice fruit bowl with things like mango, grapes, and blueberries.

Amazing!

Agreed. Very very weird. Off topic, but I do not get the current popularity of churches with uneducated pastors at the helm. It is bizarre.

I get it. We change as we go through life. I would have loved it in my 20s. But I have never been on a cruise before, and no matter how great I am told it is, it sounds like misery to me. I do much better in nature, in quiet, among a limited number of humans at a time. I used to be such a people person, so outgoing. Bam. Not anymore!

She posted claims of physical abuse, and her family believed she was abused. She had filed for divorce and seemed to have a plan in place for a future without him. Since the most dangerous time for an abused person is when they are attempting to escape an abuser, it makes me believe the odds are that he did it. I also think it was telling that he told his congregation that they were to leave immediately and not to talk to each other. Attempting to control the narrative at that level is a pretty big red flag.

Well now, that goes without saying. Hear hear for never cooking again! 😁 I also want to know what happened to our future from 1986 when Bones gave the dialysis patient a pill and she grew a new kidney. I feel a little ripped off in 2024!

Right. And I can't really change that. But I will say when it comes to these two women, they were diagnosed with these conditions at a far younger age, far younger. Mother in law began having BP issues while still teaching nursing school in a BSN program, and still kept up the sodium like crazy. So I think there is extreme resistance to change with her. Sort of like when Avian BirdFlu was going around a few years ago and bird feeders and bird baths were banned for 90 days in our township in order to slow the spread. She refused to comply even when commenting about the plethora of dead birds she kept finding! "I have always fed the birds." Sigh. It is so very hard. And I hope that I can maintain my mental well enough to do better on behalf of my kids.

I wish I had advice. My mom, a type 2 diabetic, has refused to change her diet for 30 years since her diagnosis. She just figures "pop pills". Everyday a piece of white bread toast or a bagel to start the morning. Sigh. And my mother in law has terrible BP issues, and is now taking five meds to keep it down to borderline high. She is a former nurse! 😠 She eats a crap ton of lunch meats, salts everything like salt is a food group in and of itself, and also has renal problems (down to 34% function) and won't lay off the salt nor the high potassium foods. Absolutely refuses to do a damn thing about her diet. We have given up. 81 and 87 respectively. They can do what they want and take the consequences. I can't make an adult so anything. Sigh. All I can do is learn from this experience and try to be a LOT better as I age on behalf of my own kids and grandkids.

I am so sorry! That is pretty awful. Keep sharing. No need to bottle it up.

I absolutely agree that plant based earing reduces animal suffering and killing. Of course it is a reduction. The reality of the messaging, at least in my neck of the woods, from the folks who came it from an animal cruelty perspective instead of a health or reduction perspective is that it ELIMINATES it. Many of the people who promote this are not at all informed about how their plants make it to their plates. If we are going to save agriculture and feed the planet, then we need to just start from the basic acceptance that humans are predators and things will die to feed us. That does not mean we should be tolerating factory animal food production. It should never have been a thing to begin with. It is disgusting that it is a still the primary source of protein, and the primary source of everything else is monoculture, pesticide and herbicide saturated plants. But in terms of lab based meat, IF the actual issue at hand by the leadership involved in this decision was actually to make strides to secure food for humans, then the place to begin would have been Monsanto. Ban the use of it, the sale of it, the manufacture of it, the everything of Round Up and its cousins from that state. Take that to the supreme court. Bring up the cancer, the endocrine disruption, the decimation of vital insect species. I am not a fan of lab based meat from the standpoint of corporate monopoly. However, in the grand scheme of things, this is just a practical non starter compared to Monsanto, Monoculture, corn taken out of the food chain for use as ethanol, feeding cows gum and discarded practically not even food sh!t, twenty hens crammed into a single pen becoming so sickly that their lives last one year before Campbell's soup takes them for cream of crap soup, farm policy that concentrates farming in the hands of a few conglomerates and punishes family owned and operated small farms and dairies, and policies that continue to support farming in arid areas already suffering so badly from water insufficiency. Farming strawberries and avocados in Arizona. Almonds in California. Ican't take DeSantis seriously even if this was the only crazy stunt of his on behalf of Floridians. It just is that dumb. Florida grows a ton of food and faces very real challenges and Floridians and Americans deserve food that is raised as ethically and health fully as possible. So his stupid ban does exactly diddly squat for food security. Just epic stupid. Tackle farm policy, ban Monsanto, make it a crime to raise chickens the Tyson way, beef cattle the factory farm way. As always, follow the money trail, the corporate money trail.