Oh yes, we've had that too with dh's siblings. Two of them live out of state. They wanted her to move here, be his responsibility entirely, and have us do all the work, but were beyond angry when she gave financial and medical POA to him. Especially his sister who is a not nice person, and will NEVER lift a finger to do anything. His brother only comes up once per year, but at least when he is there he does maintenance on her house, finds out what her future needs are - like this coming summer he and his son are going to put a wheelchair ramp on since she is starting to walk regularly with a cane and has a few steps going into the house - and such. He isn't entirely inactive. But honestly, when he got mad about the POA, I simply said, 'Then move here and take care of her yourself." He eventually conceded that if he is 800 miles away and only comes once per year, it isn't reasonable to be making these kinds of decisions. Sister simply has been a jerk and remains that way. She is six years older than DH, and thinks she is the queen of the family. Mostly I think she wants to make all the decisions in order to preserve the money, and then claim it all for herself. Thankfully, MIL is smart and has it all set up in a trust, advance directives on paper, everything taken care of so there can be no argument about it. Quill, that is one thing to consider. When the decisions get to be tough, "Do we continue medical intervention, should she have a ventilator or a feeding tube or whatever?", how is that going to play out in this sibling group. Does anyone have POA, is there any agreement among the sibs? This is something to definitely be working on right now before she slips any further. Emotions run high, very high, and not all of it is always someone just being a jerk, or making a power play. I think that often sibling groups under immense emotional pressure with a medically fragile parent revert back to some childhood style relationship interactions - kind of a reflex - and forget their supposed to be mature, grown ups. The stress can push them over the edge. So if they can come to some agreements now, and get it on paper, it may save some bad interactions later.

Some people just think they are divas and should be accommodated no matter what. My father in law was one. When he retired, he'd just suddenly decide to come up from Florida. No warning. Get in the car and show up on our doorstep. I was a mom of four, teaching at a parochial school, and had an active music studio - 22 students plus was performing quite often in the city. There was no "just roll with it." So I'd come home from school to find him on the porch livid that I wasn't home to receive him or that the door was locked and he couldn't just let himself in. He honestly thought our lives should revolve around his whims. The very last time he did it, he actually called ahead of time and said he'd be coming and thought he'd arrive on day X. Day X came and went, Day Y, Day Z, and well a week later we still hadn't heard from him. MIL, who was still working full time so never took part in these trips, didn't know where he was, figured he was just meandering his way north, and found some interesting places to stop and see. Well, after 8 days went by, dh's annual vacation arrived, and we had campsites up north. We'd planned that for months in advance. So we loaded the camper, the kids, and off we went. This was in the days before everyone had cell phones so there was no way to contact him. We weren't going to sit around and miss out on a vacation that the kids were very much looking forward too only to have him not show or stay so long that they got no vacation at all. Apparently, he arrived the day after we left after deciding at the last second to stop in Ohio and spend a week with his cousins. He talked to our neighbors after sitting in the drive for a couple of hours, and they indicated that they thought they had seen us leave with our pop up camper. Eventually he drove to my parents home to complain about us not waiting for him to arrive - eight days late dude, eight days late no communication - and all he got was my mother and brother letting him have it royally! LOL And that ended the nuttiness. He never did it again. He only came to visit one time after that, and mother in law made him plan it out in advance and stick to the itinerary, and dh warned him of dire consequences if he pulled another stunt like last time. I adore my mother in law, and am glad she lives near. It is so much easier. She has always been a pretty darn good MIL, but her one quirk when she lived long distance from us was that when she came to visit, she expected a script for every day. She wanted to do something special every single day, and know exactly when meals would be and what we were having. That was really difficult with four kids, dh's work schedule which was never that reliable because of the type of IT position he held, and the music studio. When she moved here so she could see us regularly, all of that kind of thing melted away. She became especially easy going after FIL passed away. I do not think that it is easy for anyone to deal with in laws. Family cultures can be so bizarrely different. I try REALLY hard to be the most laid back, respectful mother in law in the history of the world with my son in law. I adore him. But, the reality is that I think it is still challenging a little for him because his family culture growing up was soooooooooooo different from our daughter's.

And I do find it interesting that around here the dentists offer opioids like they are candy. The amount of prescription is staggering, yet they are never prosecuted. It's always the doctors dealing with people in chronic pain situations like orthopedic specialists that get into trouble. DS had a crown put on, and the dentist handed him a prescription for 21 days of hydrocodone. That's nuts! I hear this a lot from people about their dentists. My guess is that they are given very little training about the limited number of pharmaceuticals they are allowed to write scripts for, and may not stay on top of research surrounding the crisis or pain management because they aren't physicians and tend to not deal with long term situations. I have also never had a pharmacist question a prescription from the dentist, but have had them argue ridiculously over my mother's prescription for pain meds after having total ankle joint replacement therapy. What gives?

My brother is like this. When my father figure was so sick and sis and I were going out of our minds trying to juggle his medical issues and his legal crap, my brother did not ONCE step up to the plate and volunteer to help us in anyway. I finally figured out that I had to simply say things like, "We have to have a break. It is your responsibility to care for them on X Y Z dates or hire someone to do it." or "We have three different shifts that have to be covered which one are you going to take?" or "This bill is _____ and they can't pay it. How do you intend to help us handle it?" (For the last one, he actually took care of signing them up for a charitable program that would pay the bill.) He would always, always, always assume that somehow sis and I had everything covered, everything handled or would if he did not volunteer. Once we changed tactics and said, "This is you portion of the responsibility, how are you going to deal with it because we aren't going to keep doing it? " He then would get on board and do something. I had a similar issue with the first community musical that I just pulled off in my new job as a community arts director. I had a ton of scenery and props that needed to be brought in and set up, and it was most certainly nothing I could do alone. I put out a newsletter in the community saying that I needed five volunteers on evening X to help transport and set up for the musical. Crickets. Nothing. Not a soul volunteered. So, I called the businesses and civic groups that support the program and said, "I need one person from your organization on X date to do Y, please let me know within 24 hrs. who this person will be and provide their contact information." I did not leave it open for debate. I was pleasant, but firm. Low and behold, I ended up with more people than I asked for so it worked out really well. Many people will not step up to the plate because they will assume everyone else is magically getting the job done. With these folks, you just kind of have to be matter of fact and kind of assign some responsibility or give them the choice of fulfilling responsibility with choice A or B. So you could try with the brother, "We have shift X or shift Y that must be covered. Which one are you going to take?" And of course that is only assuming that the brother has the cognitive ability and emotional stability to handle it. Some people, especially when it comes to hospitals, freak out entirely and can't manage the environment. I have a cousin who has panic attacks in hospitals so we never asked her to do anything in that setting when grandma had her stroke. She would call and we would put grandma on speaker phone. Once she was released from the hospital and out of re-hab, she was more than happy to sit with grandma at home, do housework, run errands. So those of us that could manage the medical, hospital stuff, did so, and the ones that couldn't, then were asked to help at home, and did so.

I can see that. I have an acquaintance that has gotten out of a bad marriage, and she is adjusting to the idea that she is a person with full bodily autonomy.

I was afraid that this would be the outcome. Seems like the pendulum went too far one way so instead of looking for the middle ground, they went radical and it went too extreme the other way. I have a son who is permanently disabled and will never be out of pain. He is insanely careful about not using opioids, and many days simply suffers because he can't just always take extreme doses of tylenol and advil because he'll box his liver and kidneys. So much pain. He's only 21, almost 22. He faces this for his entire life ahead, and once told me he really hopes to not live to a ripe old age because what would be the point of living like this. Very scary. Right now he manages on hot baths, ice packs, heating pads, and mild doses of advil as needed, benadryl to help him sleep. But he just barely manages and as more arthritis sets in, it is going to get exponentially worse. My hope is that someday he will get a job in a foreign country with really good health care system and better pain management attention. Seems like here it is pretty much an all or nothing proposition. "Here's a big script for opioids or Suck it up buttercup!" We can't even get a referral to a pain clinic, nor for more physical therapy, aqua therapy (the number one thing that would help, but isn't offered within a two hour drive of her...we tried to force the medical and car insurance company to pay for at least a jacuzzi tub - in some states they have to do so - but got no where and right now we don't have the extra cash to do it ourselves), or biofeedback. Nothing. Haven't found a damn doctor that gives a crap about his pain. The insurance not providing really makes me livid. I know people in other states who have even had indoor pools installed and the car insurance company had to pay for it. When he has access to lap swimming and jacuzzi, it really helps. But nothing. No help. Just suffer.

Sorry. Boundaries. This is unacceptable and you should not allow it. So you call her up and say, "I am sorry you purchased the ticket, But you didn't ask us about this and we already have plans, will be visiting others, etc. You can either get a hotel, and we will see you when we can, or hopefully you bought travel insurance that allows you to get a refund." Don't budge. This is bizarrely unacceptable, and if you accommodate this, what's next? Your husband needs to tell her she cannot come and stay with you, and give her the names of area hotels, and some dates here or there in which you'll be home and she can have dinner with the family or something. Her poor manners, and narcissistic behavior need to be checked.

I agree with this. It is also how our marriage operates. But I think that the issue we fight in modern times with marital consent is that we are still shaking off the concept of "women as property". For most of human history, female consent was a "non thing" and especially when it came to marriage because marriage was an economic contract in which a female was bartered off for some monetary, political, or status gain. Men were entirely in control. Whatever he wanted he got whenever he wanted it. I think that an awful lot of men, while not actually thinking overtly in this way, still have a little bit of this mentality when it comes to marriage. They figure they got married which means sex whenever they desire, and are baffled by the concept that they don't own the woman's body. As a nation, we are still working to shed our puritanical roots.

I did this with my niece who is easily taken in with crazy conspiracy theories, and thinks memes are actually The News. She has untreated bi-polar disorder - uses only essential oils - so I know that this is a factor in why she thinks these things. Trying to be kind, and a voice of reason. Probably won't work, but giving it the old college try as the saying goes.

It is hard though when you have a lot of fibroids. I have had that with dense breast tissue since I was 17. It is fairly impossible for me to track all the lumps with a breast exam, and my nurse practitioner laughs when she does them because she thinks, "Okay then. That wasn't helpful." So regular ladies, yes, you need to check them yourself. And those of us with the above problem need to fight the good fight with our insurance companies or save the cash for breast ultrasound because it is horrifically painful to have mammograms, and they aren't super helpful for this condition but ultrasound definitely gets the job done. Ladies, we just simply need to take care of ourselves. It isn't selfish or narcissistic. We are people too, and our families need us. We would want our partners and kids to have preventative and diagnostic care, it's okay to make that a priority for ourselves as well.

When I hear the word, I think of middle and high school students. 18 to 22 seems like young adult to me though I refrain from using the word young because my adult children don't like it LOL. "Adult mom. I'm an adult. Not a young adult." When I was 30 I had one child, pregnant with another, working full time as a band and choir director in a parochial school, possessed two bachelor's degrees, and was chair of a community charitable group. This does not seem like "youth" to me, and I know I didn't feel that young!

Dh and I met him after a lecture at one our ds's universities. I don't know the man, but the first impression was NOT good. He was quite condescending to me and to our daughter when we asked questions, but all Mr. Wonderful to Dh and the boys. He made my misogyny metre go "BING BING BING". But I have know idea if he is guilty of the accusations. None at all. I just know that I don't have a favorable impression of the man despite having been impressed with his scientific contributions. It is a little surprising how many professional people do not know how to act professionally.

Cardboard building blocks. I have seen these much loved by children. They can set them up, knock them over, and do it again, and if a baby is sitting nearby, no worries about an injury if something tumbles over them. Easy to store, and dirt cheap so if some of them need to be replaced, no worries. On

Hugs to you! I hate our system. Hate it. I am so sorry.

Same thing here. The reality is meth and some of these stupid novelty drugs that go around from bath crystals to kids eating Tide Pods to....when added to the Opiod epidemic keeps them hopping. It isn't that they aren't concerned about these youngsters, but if the parents look like they are going to intervene, references to help through community services and family court is what is going to happen. They are not going to clog the criminal courts with "15 year old got caught with a doobie" kind of thing. I am okay with that if the parent is actually going to be proactive. The reality is that 15 is young to have a drug bust on his/her record that might, depending on the judge, not be expunged after the 18th birthday, It's the kind of thing that could keep the new, young adult out of college, professional licensing programs, certain trades, jobs, etc. No thanks. If that young life can be turned around without the possibility of such drastic measures, then I'm all for it. Our police departments are stretched thin, and when they have the opportunity to protect a young person from horrible fall out over something much less dangerous than other drugs, I am thankful they try.

In years when I don't have the time and energy to do decorating, I have left our teenage/college boys in charge of it IF they want a tree up. I pay the price, but roll with it because they do a tree whose ornaments are Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper throw back cans with Star Trek ornaments, white lights, and toilet paper for the garland. They find this quite amusing. I usually take the time to locate my Christmas Evergreen arrangements for the piano and the kitchen island so that I have something pretty to look at. One year when we had been in Egypt doing some work at a hospital there, we came home to find they had put up two trees. The bigger of the two was rocketry themed and the second one had llama and sheep ornaments mixed with my good music themed items. They called the last one "The Musical Farm". So, if you let older kids be in charge, then be prepared to have a sense of humor abou it.

So I did some searching, and my first name is not uncommon, just not popular now, but add my last name the combo gets rather rare. 360 million people, and there are 2945 of me. So .000008 of a percent. I think the Puritans had an awful lot of crazy when it came to naming. Farewell Skye and his brother Die Well, a girl named Fear Not whose last name, no joke, was Helly! Another boy name was Damned Barebone. Damned had a brother names Praise God. Abstinence, More-Fruit Fowler, Rememberence, Hopestill, Humiliation, and Fly-Fornication (no joke, it given to more than one child). Is it just me or do you think that some old fashioned kind of Puritan punishment like a month in stocks should have accompanied naming a child any label that includes "fly" or "fornication", and potentially some lashes for putting them both together??? Good grief. Poor child! So maybe some of the more fringe, novel names we hear in modern times are really quite nice, beautiful in fact. Let us always proclaim it a crime to use the Puritans for baby naming guidance!

I understand where you are coming from, but we also don't know where our kids will land in life. In this global economy, many of our kids will also end up. More than one of my kids is going to end up living abroad so they are going to spend their entire lives spelling their names and teaching people how to say them anyway. Our Danish last name is CONSTANTLY misspelled here. Since I married and took Dh's last name, I have spent 30 years telling people how to spell it, a six letter surname. We increasingly live in a diverse society with people from a plethora of heritages. I have a ridiculously common English name, one that no one would think odd, and I have to spell it everywhere I go. Everywhere. Our eldest daughter has a five letter NOT difficult or unique name at all. She has to spell it. Everyone wants to put a "y" in it even though it is spelled according to the English phonetic rules with an "i". Eldest boy has another ridiculously normal name meaning Christ follower, but he always has to spell it too. The "ph" is considered weird these days I guess even though it is the standard English spelling, very common. My cousin Stephan always, always, always has to spell it because everyone goes for Steven, and his name isn't even pronounced with a 'v" when he introduces himself. He's 48, and has never lived anywhere that he hasn't had to train people how to spell and say his name.

Yes, and I think that in particular, both Alaska and Hawaii would have more unusual or "not white" names than we are used to on the mainland. The Hawaiian language only has 12 letters. The Inuit language has nine written versions and two alphabets with close to 40,000 speakers in the state, I would think that this would lead to some names that are very rare if not non-existent in the other 48 states.

Some countries are pretty strict about this stuff, one is Iceland. Their law is concerned with not mixing up gender because their surnames are all based on the first name of the mother or father with the Icelandic word for son or daughter added to it. Girls have dottir added to their mothers' names and that becomes their surname, and boys have sson added to their father's first names. It is illegal to use anything that approximates a unisex name, or to give a masculine name to a girl and vice versa. The Icelandic Naming Committee is in charge of keeping the official list of what you can and cannot name an Icelandic baby. A young mom in Iceland several years ago didn't seem to be aware of the strictness of the laws and named her daughter Blaer which was considered masculine by the naming committee. This was illegal. While she wasn't fined or forced to change the child's name, the child was punished by being referred to as "girl" plus surname on every official document, and no passport could be issued for lack of a legal first name. Eventually a judge ruled that Blaer could be considered female - a bit of a shocker because culturally they have been against unisex names - and the by then young woman was able to get a passport. Some of this is I think due to the cultural desire to keep their language rather pure. Icelandic has been largely the same for 1200 years and most languages cannot claim such purity. They do not allow Icelandic words to be created for technological advances and such. So computer is computer. Automobile is Automobile, car is car, etc. This way there are no new words introduced to the language. I think that probably makes the naming thing tougher if parents want to do something unique there. With only 338,000 people on the small island, I would imagine that a LOT of people have the same first names, and with their system of surnames, it could get a bit tricky. But they are following their Viking heritage in this regard which is also kind of cool! They also control spelling for this reason. One government official named his daughter Camilla, only to have her registered as Kamilla because Icelandic language has no C. It gets tougher when one parent is from another country because the naming committee has rejected the use of foreign names for children with Icelandic citizenship. Iceland's list of approved names is only about 3500 and Denmark's is around 7000 with a committee that reviews new options or rejects parental choices. Dh's family is Danish - grandpa had dual Danish and US citizenship and his wife had some Danish heritage as well. We named our middle boy after great-grandpa not realizing that his first name was a long standing top three name for baby boys in Denmark for many, many years, and that our last names was also in the top three surnames. He wants to go to grad school in Copenhagen and is almost fluent in Danish at the moment so he has a good chance of being accepted. This should be interesting. He's going to meet a TON of men with the same name.

I don't think it is totally uncommon for children to be named for their parents favorite pursuits in some way. A friend in college who was also a music major named her two daughters Melody and Harmony. Not unusual names per se but definitely reflecting her passion in life, and one of the string professors had a daughter named Viola. Viola is an older, but "normal" female name for sure, but he said she was named that deliberately for his love of the instrument.

I had Remington in my choir. His dad was open about the fact that his kids were named for his hunting and guns hobby. Remington's middle name was Winchester. It kind of stuck with me all of these years because it was so unusual for the times, Hunter not so much. I did not know any other students names Colt, but there were several Cody's in the district.

We have moved cross country three times - anywhere from 1400-2500 miles each time - and the economics of moving that far, putting all of what we brought into temporary housing or storage while we found a home dictated losing attachment to a lot of things. I find that apart from the children's name ornaments and the ones we received from one of my music professors when we got married, a few special toys which we saved for our kids to hand down to their children if they have them, and some china that has been in the family for a century, I am pretty "meh" about everything else other than the baby grand piano, and sadly, if we do end up retiring overseas, she'll have to go. But, I have two adult kids who would like to have her so that's good. Our house is cluttered. Dh is a project man and so are our sons. Sometimes I get completely overwhelmed. I am looking forward to the next move in order to purge it all.

I had a professor whose first name was Garnet, and two great nieces (two different families) one is Ivy and the other Emerald. I also had a Great Great Aunt named Peace. Peace was a somewhat common female name in the 1800's. Her sisters were Temperance, Patience, and Honesty. The four girls' parents were Quaker and lived in a commune type community which may have had something to do with the naming scheme. When I was teaching full time as a young woman so late 80's to late 90's, I had students names Stone, Amethyst, Birch, Brandy/i, Forest, Hawk, Remington, and a Pearl. Among character trait names, I had two Charities that I recall, and one Serene. I had a lot of students over the years and most had what I would describe as more conventional names though some had unconventional spellings of those names. I used to have to constantly remind myself not to spell one young girl's name, Hannuh as Hannah. Oh, and my sister has a nephew whose name is "Indiana". His parents named him that because he was conceived there while they were on a business trip. So I didn't encounter anything quite so unusual as Abcde, but definitely some names that are very uncommon. Remington had two brothers named Hunter and Colt. Hunter is common, but Remington definitely not. You can imagine what the father's big hobby was.

When I do chores on my friend's horse and llama farm in the dead of winter, I wear JcPenney Cuddle Duds under my clothes. They work very well for me even when it is below zero with terrible wind chills. I also use those handwarmer packs from my local farm store when it is really terrible out. They make a new one now for body heat that you place on your chest or some other part of your body. We bought a bunch of these for our son who is going to college in the upper peninsula of Michigan and has a ton of walking between the engineering building which is not on main campus, and then his classes near the university center. He says that one placed on his chest really helps his body stay warmer.