I would gladly tune in for this! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I am sorry! People are, well, words I can't post on this forum.

I found philosophy of religion, and comparative world religion to be quite interesting. I have taken a space technology and exploration ethics class, and the discussions were fascinating. I think we spent two weeks just hashing out the ethics of the beginning of the space race, Werner Von Braun and others being brought in after the war, the money spent in the space race at a time when poverty was so high and money was flying out the door for the Vietnam Wars etc. It was really interesting. I never knew, prior to that, just how much protesting of the Space Program there was in that era, not to mention all of our discussions of misogyny and the treatment of women, the 13 female astronauts some of whom beat out every single male astronaut in the core on every test devised and still were not allowed to continue because "female". Personally, my aerospace engineering coursework has been very fulfilling, but it isn't the kind of thing that really affects worldview per se. The next course so want to take is introduction to anthropology. I am just waiting to find a well planned and executed online class from a really good university, something that has been highly rated by previous students for having good online discussion groups, sufficient content depth, and papers and essay writing not multiple choice quizzes and tests.

Truth! And the same folks that are anti government being involved in private business and telling employers what they can and cannot do and say the bakery can have whatever rules it wants about baking a cake for a gay wedding, now want government mandates preventing employers from making health rules in the workplace. Which is it folks? You can't have your cake and eat it too! Anti-vax, by the way, is not a protected class of citizens.

Thanks!!! ❤

Oh yes, they know more than the HCWs and PhDs in the field until all of a sudden they have a stroke, heart attack, cancer, meningitis, car accident, aneurysm, intestinal block, you name it, and the suddenly these folks are trusted. Makes my head explode! 😠

LOL, no camping in the summers in Alabama! Last week was just wretched when we were working on the house! So, spring, fall, or winter camping when we get there. Summer is for the pool or indoors!

Boy oh boy, I really hope they do not delay again! Fingers crossed for you and your little boy.

Paramedics here a quitting all over the place. It is dangerous for the public, but I do not blame them. Some have long covid from last spring and fall before vaccines were available, and they just can't continue. Burn out his high! For them, the idea that so few people give a damn about healthcare workers hurts deeply. It is awful! My heart breaks for HCW's. A dear friend who is a wonderful doctor in Chicago now wishes he had never gone to med school because so much of the public is just awful, and he is tired of patients screaming at him that he is lying when he tells them they have covid. He has always LOVED being in healthcare. He has always felt it is a calling. Now he is talking about quitting. It.is.sickening.

We already have. He refused, and said he would not do it until there is a firm recommendation from the CDC.

Eldest ds goes off to grad school next year, middle ds is on his own already, and youngest ds graduates from college and already has a job offer upon graduation and will be on his own. The whole thought of how much less cooking and laundry there will be makes my heart sing. But first I have to get through the crying. I adore all my kids, but youngest ds and I are super super close. He is my buddy! It was hard when he left for college, but I had all the breaks, and the long summer. This is it. 9 months from now, my buddy will move away for good. 😪

We already have eldercare. We got it young. Smacked and sandwiched between still raising kids, still homeschooling, and parents who never planned and didn't give a scrap what happened to us or our stress levels. A few weeks ago, Mark and I had an epiphany. Enough is enough. We are going to grind our own health into the ground. So apart from our multi-generational home which they will eventually be welcome to live in, they now have responsibilities. Hire yardwork and plowing/shoveling/snow blowing done, hire drivers for medical appointments that they won't let us attend anyway so we waste a lot of time in the parking lot on top of the commute and still have no new information, hire a housekeeper once per week. Mother in law went bananas about the cost of drivers. Mark told her to sell her car that she cannot drive, and reminded her that between the proceeds of that and no longer paying for auto insurance and car maintenance, there is plenty. This week she had a driver, and a very nice teen Mennonite girl who was looking for work and was willing to mask, came to wash the kitchen up, clean the bathroom, and bake cookies. We will do routine house maintenance eat three meals per week with them when on vacation and do that cooking, take them grocery shopping when again, not camping, help with annual taxes and paperwork, and do normal family helps family type things not physical care, nursing care, and endless running running running nor mowing/show blowing for three homes here in Michigan. It was just beginning to really take a toll. Hopefully this will be the wake up call that we can't and won't do everything, and that our siblings can either get on board or get out of the way. Eldercare would be much easier with them under one roof, and the Alabama house is a much, much better place for that with everything handicap accessible. But mother in law refuses to work with physical and occupational therapy and is rapidly losing mobility so she may end up in a nursing facility soon. Her home is simply not convertible to handicap. So she may end up in a facility here, and then when we move, we will find a facility down there. My mom is beginning to get the idea that she cannot simply expect me to give up my husband, my grandsons, and my health to be 100% devoted to her care. Slowly, but surely, she is thinking about how to make all of this work. Recently she went back to physical therapy to increase her mobility which is a very good thing. That was a relief.

How about things that should not be in the Olympics? Hunting. Definitely not. Hours of watching someone do nothing from a deer blind. Nope. Fishing. Just no. No one wants to watch fishing. Seriously, PBS, give it up. Tag football. Dodgeball. Snowball fight. Though let's be fair, this could be QUITE entertaining, and some countries would be pretty wicked with each other! 😂

Our next camping trip.

Agreed. I do feel like the BBC does a better job covering as many sports as possible, and having a lot of replay to watch. NBC is wretched. Truly wretched, and I am tired of how few sports actually get any seconds of air time much less decent coverage.

Yes, we didn't do any kind of sink. I really like doing dishes outdoors, and Mark always helps after every meal. We warm water on the camp stove in our galvanized bucket. We also use that bucket to warm water for washing up. So far we have stayed in campgrounds with showers, but eventually we will try dispersed camping. We do have a portable composting toilet that we can take with us, and we will probably buy a solar shower. But when you disperse camp, you have no potable water source and have to carry it all with you. So, water conservation becomes the name of the game!

Our son that got JnJ because that was all that was offered, really wants to get Pfizer, but none of the local pharmacies are willing to do it.

Hmmmm. I haven't thought about that much. I thunk that while things like golf and tennis, soccer, etc. do have a lot of international play so I don't think they need the Olympics, a lot of sports only have national level play so the Olympics are very important to those athletes. I do wonder about the addition of sports for whom there are very few countries with athletes interested in them. It doesn't end up being much of a "world" event so to speak. But, mostly I am happy for the diversity. And hey, it is very, very important because we love that Jamaican Bobsled team! 😀

For us, our youngest graduated high school/homeschool when I was 50 and DH 54. He won't retire until he is 62, and I went back into the work place. So since our retirement plans are dependent on not holding down salaried positions that offer very little flexibility, what we do now is not the same as what we will do then despite the fact that we are fairly empty nested. Two boys are going off to grad school in 2022, and youngest ds graduates with his BS in April, 2022. So we will be truly empty nest at that point because none do them will be living around here as employment/grad school options in their respective fields are not available. But, dh won't be retired. My job in community fine arts has been gutted by covid and isn't coming back, so I am working off and on as a gig pianist. I am not sure if I will take on other work or not.

Thanks! A Pro master is nice because it is taller, and it is a very good performer in accidents so safety is a bif consideration. You can get more storage and stand up inside. That is one reason I would consider a taller van. But we want to cover such long distances that we need something that gets good gas mileage so we are likely to buy a hybrid minivan in the future. The Chrysler Pacifica is out because currently it only goes about 35 miles on electric only, and the battery pack is in the back under the bench seats so those seats do not stow, and you cannot get extra cargo space by removing them (ie. using the bench well like we can in the Sienna). However, since we have a five year wait before we absolutely want to make the transition, we can see if their design changes. That said, we are pretty brand loyal. Christopher and I were in a Sienna when we were t-boned in 2014 by a woman driving like a bat out of hell who was playing on her phone and ran a stop sign at high speed. Two firemen and a state trooper told my husband that Christopher would have been dead if we had been in any other mini-van or smaller vehicle because the Sienna had the best engineering for t-bones available at that time, and even the old models came with side curtain airbags (saved Christopher's head) when no one else but the newer Odyssey minis and none of the American SUV's had them as standard features. It made me very emotionally attached to the brand. I have recently purchased a Chevy Equinox for my regular driving now that I do not have a rocket team of teens to transport to practice and competition launches. It has just enough cargo space for Mark and I to use for our own personal rocketry trips. It came with all the safety features I wanted, gets the same safety rating as the Sienna, and gets much better gas mileage. I have adjusted to the smaller vehicle. I can use it solo camping because with the back seat folded down, I can just sleep in the back since I am only 5'4". But poor 6' Mark absolutely cannot, so even though our tail veil fits it, we won't be able to camp together in it. I am going to do a solo camping trip in it in October. I am excited about that prospect! I am also going to take another photography workshop. Some car and camp gear companies will pay Vanlifers for photos they can use in promotional materials. I also absolutely love our National Park and National Forest service and am willing to donate photography to them for their use. I need to up my game and abilities in this regard. I have taken one beginner and one intermediate photography class, and am taking fairly decent photos now. I need a lot more practice though, and I also need the advanced class after I get that practice. Most of what I post here has been quick, cell phone shots, not anything with my good DSLR.

I am so sorry. I think what happens to people like this is, sadly, they die in their homes alone, or sometimes social services gets involved if they make too many 911 calls due to not being able to take care of themselves.

We just bought our retirement home in Alabama, and bought one with a view, a wonderful yard, fruit trees, gardening options, and is a great gathering place for the whole family. There is room for our mothers if they live that long. Currently, our daughter, son in law, and two grandsons live in it, and we have a suite. We will come and go from the house for the next five years when dh officially retires. We intend on not being there all the time though. We are keeping a small place by Lake Huron here in Michigan for a summer place because Bama is too hot and sweaty for summer. We also will be VanLife camping all over the United States with the house in Alabama as home base. My sister lives in France so we will be making regular excursions to see her and my brother in law.

We haven't canceled, but we have modified. We chose a more remote campground for fall van camping than the one we had originally booked just to be sure we don't encounter very many people and are sharing the restroom facilities with a sparse number. (We make in the restrooms as well.)

Also z though expensive we found a two burner Coleman camp stove with a refillable tank that can run on unleaded gas. We carry a pen gallon gas can now. We GRT a TON of cooking from that so for gallon. Way cheaper than buying those little propane tanks that you can't get refilled, making them undesirable environmentally speaking. It won't take long for the new stove to pay for itself.

No, we don't keep an electric pot. We can cook in our tail veil with the camp stove, so we have a perk pot for coffee which doubles for hot water for tea and cocoa.