I am so sorry! That has to be nerve wrecking. Good thoughts for you and your dh. Mark and I too our middle boy to Iceland in 2014. We love the country. It is really hard to see this happening. Icelanders are like Minnesotans, famous for friendliness. It is scary to see this happening to anyone, but extra twinges from us for it being Iceland. 😢

Regular. We had a memory foam and it was a disaster.

This one. https://www.westinstore.com/product.aspx?Mattress-Box-Spring&referrer=ga

I was thinking that at my best, I could manage the single stitch chain thing. LOL, no idea if that can be used to make a rug or if I have to learn something else. For a pianist, it is just a little bit ridiculous that I never seemed to manage the coordination of crochet and knitting needles! 🤣🤣🤣

I am going to report now because we are going to take ride tonight up to the lake in the hopes of catching the Aurora Borealis. I feel a bit better today. So I am making a chicken vegetable stew with mashed potato dumplings. My mom gave me some leftover rotisserie chicken. It has 930 grams of veggies in it, and there will be enough for Mark and I to eat it for both lunch and dinner. We are also having 2 cups of salad at each meal. I have estimated the salad contents and masses so I think with half that soup and salad two times, I will be at or just over 800 grams.

I seriously need to learn to crochet!

Hey all sewing fiends! 😁 I found two vintage/estate sale fabric stores that ship. ATriftyNotion in Ogden, KS, and TheFabricMarket in Bakersfield, CA. I have ordered from thrifty notion before. Their things are wonderful. I have a two hard piece of chocolate colored wale corduroy that is simply some of the highest quality fabric I have ever worked with, and so I am excited to cut into the 3 yard price of soft, lamb's ears green that came from them. I am ordering today from The FabricMarket. I was flabbergasted to find several light and medium weight cordoroys as well as some gorgeous 100% cotton velvet, and some 100% wool pieces. They have some pretty amazing vintage quilters cotton that I am looking at too. They do ship internationally, but I have no idea if that would be cost effect for our none stateside fabric-a-holics. The corduroy is $4.99 a yard ($7.84 aus, $4.09 gbp, $6.89 cad). Did see in the comment section that someone from the UK had ordered, paid for shipping, and when the store shipped it, the cost was slightly less and the refunded the difference to the customer's credit cars which I thought was very nice customer service. With ThriftyNotion, it is easy to get lost in their vintage buttons! I tried to tell Mark that he needs to drive me there so I can handle all the fabrics. But sadly, he was just fine paying shipping. 😂

Ya. That top 50 thing is an awful lot of hype from those schools to try to make kids think it is true, but it isn't at all. Two of my kids went to "public ivy" U of Michigan, and the education was not half as good as what my youngest got at a well reputed, regional university. The "rankings" have little to do with the intricacies of individual majors. There are some fields where the top 50 is pretty necessary, med school seeking students, several specific niche areas within physics and chemistry, music performance for sure. But music ed and therapy does not need a top 50 music department, and actually can be counterproductive because of the emphasis on tippy top performance for concert careers that are not likely to materialize for 90% of the students. I think it would be really great to have your student meet some music therapists and talk to them about the job, and their experiences in college. I feel sad for young people putting so much pressure on themselves. It is college. Not the end of the universe. The vast majority of successful humans did not get into tippy top college. Yet, they are doing great!

I don't know what your budget is. We decided we would spend whatever it took to get what we needed because I have some issues leftover from the car accident, and Mark was having some neck ache problems. we thought back to all of the different hotels we have stayed in and over and over again, Westin's just had such comfortable beds. Some of our best rests ever. So we bought one of their Heavenly mattresses, and never looked back. It has been a pleasure to sleep on. If memory serves, Carol in CA bought one from Holiday Inn and it has been a very, very good mattress for them. But I am not 100% on that. We had a thread on this 3 or 4 years ago so I may be blurry on the details.

Still not feeling to well today. I ate the sum total of a cup of mashed potatoes, a boiled egg, and a clementine. So ya. Falling off the band wagon. But my head is still pounding.

I have been using some ceramic casserole dishes with lids from Aldi. They are only a year old, so far, so good.

Fun idea!

Thanks, Carol! I need a set of new sheets, so I will be looking at their stock.

Along these lines, I would be all for some sort of penalty tax on manufacturers over the "planned obsolescence " that forces all of us to buy appliances over and over again. Call it a carbon tax or whatever. If they are going to use up valuable resources to create these machines, then they should have to work for a minimum 10 years, and I think 15-20 should be more like it. My grandmother's close dryer ran for 40 years without repair. Meanwhile, I have had to replace dryers 3 times in the last 15 years because either repairs could not be made or the cost to repair was higher than purchasing a new one. I just feel like we need penalties for creating crap or legislation to at least force warranties on appliances that cost more than $100 to last long enough that companies must repair. The cost to be constantly repairing or paying penalties for crap might increase their incentive to make quality items since it would hopefully not be cost effective to maintain a massive fleet of repair persons, parts, and then all the travel expenses. The cost of manufacturing to the planet is just too high to not do something about this. Of course, I have zero expectation of the United Oligarchs of America to do anything on behalf of planet and peasants.

I have had a migraine today. I haven't felt like eating at all. So I have nothing to report today. The pain is lifting, and I hope to have a good night's sleep, and then be back on track tomorrow.

I had three stair step boys so when the eldest went on college tours, the others tagged along. It was great for them. Middle boy ruled out two colleges during his 10th grade year as not being good fits, but also added one to his list. Youngest had so many experiences that he was quite solid on where he wanted to apply by his junior year just from all the tag- a longs. One year it was a big road trip. We visited 8 colleges in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota during late September. Mark couldn't take time off from work so my mom went with us. She had so much fun, and the boys loved having her there. She often had some neat grandma insights on everything from the campus feel to dorm layouts to food to well just all kinds of things. College visits can be very exciting for kids and help them ramp up for the pressure of senior year. We also found it was super helpful to go early because the college app season starts so early these days, has so !such essay writing and what not, process is longer, and the best scholarships and financial aid seems to go to the early birds so on top of dual enrollment, AP's, senioritis, etc. a ton of this happens in September and October right at the beginning of the school year. In addition, kids who get invited to scholarship competitions will have travel as well. Not only is it great to have the list narrowed before even embarking on the process, it is especially nice to not have the "Is this school even an option for me?" type visits over with. For our dd, 6 years older than her eldest brother, we took her best friend along. BF's parents both worked full time and one had a major health problem so they weren't going to do any college visits. She and DD were interested in several of the same colleges so we just took her with us. We have a ton of wonderful memories of traveling with them, seeing campuses, discussing options, helping them narrow their focus, figuring out good fits. Definitely do it!

LUNCH - 2 cups of the heavy veggies chili - 453 grams SUPPER - 2 cups of mushroom stroganoff (found a couple pkgs of shrooms pushed to the back of the fridge, still good but needing to be used right away so dinner plans changed) and 1 cup green beans., 278 grams total Total - 732, not quite there but pretty good

For us it is not that we don't like them, it is that we haven't been able to get any the last very well at all. They seem to get holes so easily and not in easy to repair places. They also fade terribly fast even if washed gently in cold and put onto he drying rack indoors. Just not finding the quality we need.

Thanks a bunch!!

I sighed with delight when I saw this.

I think you will eventually be okay. We tend to adjust to what is normal, even if it is really hard. Then when we do an about face kind of change, it is overwhelming and our bodies have to compensate to the new routine, new way of doing life. I am pretty certain it will get better.

Once again, Rosie nailed it!

I have been looking at Pendleton wool. I want to make a winter cloak as well as a riding skirt. The warmest I have ever been was when I was a young adult and owned a wool riding skirt. I wore that with silk leggings under it, good socks, and a cashmere sweater with a tank top under it. My dorm was cold, very poorly insulated, drafty, and poor heating. That outfit was DA BOMB! I wore that riding skirt for several years, but at the time I was a size 2, and after Dd was born, my stomach was a size 8 and never going back into that size 2 waist. I used the fabric to make pairs of wool mittens with embroidery on them for several family members for Christmas. Man do I miss that skirt. Did you order directly from Pendleton or did you find it from a fabric outlet?

My mother is a couture seamstress. People want her to do repairs like replace zippers, which takes considerable time and skill, for free or maybe $5 for the cost of zipper. One of the bazillion unintended consequences of allowing our manufacturing to go overseas to what is virtually slave labor is that people have lost all respect for this work. They feel entitled to it, do this work for nothing/peanuts. She doesn't do it for anyone but family. But when I was a child, she was paid a very reasonable skilled labor wage for doing repairs and alterations through the dry cleaner. Fast, sweatshop fashion has made people feel think they should never have to pay a fair price for skilled labor in the textile industry.

I give you permission to break the code! Do something else. Be the rabble rouser. 😁