Agreed. The next one is going to bring this country to its knees.

I think how you are doing it is fine. I consider the use of the common areas to be just as important as the bedrooms, so since everyone uses them, I would have charged $120 per bedroom knowing that the singles are paying as much as the couples, but more time is spent on the common areas than in bedrooms usually so everyone needs to pitch in an equal amount to cover the whole house.

Gorgeous. I love ruscus!

Some mitigations work for short term loss of power/heat but not long term. I remember an ice storm in the 70's in which homeowners of well insulated homes still had to thaw pipes with blow torches. Unfortunately, many folks need help with improvements that would mitigate severe change. We havea lot of folks living in very run down homes and apartments in this state, some face dire peril every single winter. Apart from some feeble tax credits for energy upgrades like energy star windows or insulation or the massive investment in solar, there have not been any attempts to assist with upfront costs all of which could have also reduced emissions through reduction in heating and cooling consumption. As always the worst of what has happened and is to come will fall hardest on the folks with the least financial ability to mitigate anything or provide even the smallest comfort to their family. Our next place, despite the expense, is getting geothermal and enough solar setup plus car battery bank to run it. That is a privilege. Most folks cannot afford this expense.

Maybe. The sea level rise is going to be so high that the elevated areas are nor going to withstand it. If you look at 2050 maps as well as 2100 maps, most of Florida is uninhabitable. That is true of many places. Literally a dead zone for humans. It isn't that the Great Lakes Region is a haven from change. Not at all. It is going to have major problems. The difference is survivability. It is somewhere humans can survive. That cannot be said of southern California, the deep south, Texas, the American southwest, the dry plains states. The prognosis is actually that dim. Nowhere will be imimmune. But there are places where are species can make it. I wouldn't clal it thriving, just averting extinction really. We will by the turn of the century lose a billion people, minimum to this and that is a conservative estimate from what I am reading. Pandemics plus apocalyptic weather events could cause that to be much higher. The world gdp estimate is 30-500 trillion dollars of disaster (basically more than the entire world economy produces currently) so there won't be money for technology and advancements to mitigate the circumstances. It all depends on if we hit the 3 degree threshold or not. At this rate? We will exceed 3.

These are cups and saucer sets that are eco friendly. They are a bit fru fru, as in tea party, but cute if the colors were okay. Also from tablecloth factory. -vintage-mixed-floral-disposable-cup-and-saucer-set-paper-tea-party-supplies-kit?_pos=3&_sid=4fcfea6bf&_ss=r&variant=43253145403577

I think a food truck would be a lot of fun. Count me in for a wedding with a taco truck! 💃💃💃 3 packs of forks are $1.25 at the Dollar Tree. Same for spoons and knives, even steak knives. For 30 folks it would be $37.50 plus tax. Seems like a lot, but you could wash it, and then donate to a soup kitchen/food pantry. I can attest to the quality of the bamboo disposable plates. We used those at a wedding in a state park this past fall. They were very sturdy. But chinette, white cardboard plates are biodegradable. I am pretty certain a pack of 50 of those would be cheaper than the bamboo. These cups are cute and disposable, but also not plastic or styrofoam. pack-9oz-white-tropical-greenery-gold-trim-party-paper-cups-eucalyptus-disposable-cups-with-gold-rim-250-gsm?variant=43666554945721&utm_source=google&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItYSR7PamhQMVDnJ_AB1nMQ8VEAQYBSABEgJzhvD_BwE They are from tableclothfactory.

Agreed. I know of someone who just moved to Miami to live at the beach! 🤔🤔🤔 I am struggling to wrap my head around that as Miami is trying to figure out how on earth to deal with their flooding.

No, it doesn't wipe out neighborhoods. Usually the problem is frozen pipes and flooded floors. That said, it is entirely possible the Great Lakes Region will experience flooding and major erosion on the coastlines. Sigh. 40 years wasted that could have been spent problem solving and tackling things head on for all the humans, not just the mega rich. It is beyond frustrating now, and crossed into the Twilight Zone.

Moving with less risk is not an option really. We already have a housing crisis, if we have large numbers of people move from the coasts, and then also from wildfire areas, the safer places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Western New York State, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Western PA, Vermont...don't have the infrastructure, the housing, the medical professionals, the anything to really handle climate movers and refugees by the tens of thousands to upwards of millions. Our governments are about 40 years behind planning for this. Climate refugees will end up, even if they are US citizens, in National Guard camps under crude care unless they have relatives who can take them in. Short term a few at a time can move. But if say a million Floridians flew the coup due to lack of homeowner's insurance and climate risks, we are all in big trouble. There are some rather quick, in the grand scheme of things, options including government instigated and funded construction of duplexes and apartment complexes which are a more efficient method of housing large numbers than building single family residences. It would have to be tax subsidized. I can tell you that the folks from these states are not keen to pay for it. In addition, Michiganders are pretty concerned about having an influx of people who will not respect the Great Lakes and our gorgeous outdoor life. They see the endless National Park Tourons posts, and just pray none of them want to move here! It is a massive issue because our society has refused to spend time thinking about, discussing, and acting in the face of the inevitable. It isn't as if we have a safe from everything region either. The ones I mentioned often face "snowmaggedon", icy roads that cause major pile ups, temperatures the folks on the coasts are not used to and could be deadly when not prepared for them, some tornados, and we do get wildfires, just not nearly as often or as large. We don't have " safe from mother nature" either. In general, probably statistically safer though.

Potty. It needs the word potty. "The Potty Chronicles of Saraha Foxworth!" Best seller!! 😂😂😂

You could try 35W if it looks like the freeway is jam packed going west. I don't have my atlas at hand, but if my memory is accurate, you can pick it up in OH and transit through Indiana, go up round Muncie and into Kokomo. Might be worth looking at map though. That side of the state is not in the path of totality so I think traveling west bound towards Indianapolis on side roads might be okay from Ohio.

It is on hours. The Alabama house insurer is pulling out. We are up in the mountains, an hour south of the TN line, and really do not suffer much from hurricane issues though that may change in the future. The insurer does not want to insure the gulf coast so is pulling out of the entire state. Supposedly our agent can get us in with another company, but it had also put us on a timeline to sell the home within 4 years. It was supposed to be our winter retirement Shangri LA. But climate change effects are now advancing so rapidly, that this probably cannot happen. People are still moving to Huntsville in record numbers due to employment so my guess is we will not have trouble selling if we don't hold on too long, and Alabama will have to state insure.

Just remember this episode is more material for your upcoming book!

Agreed. Our 4H kids have to show they are following MSU bio security standards every time avian flu rears its ugly head. Pasture raised hens are at extreme risk due to exposure to wild birds who are the carriers. All egg producers regardless of size of operation or practice will be forced to follow protocols in order to try to tamp this down.

We leave from Alabama Friday for the Heber Springs, remote, country house we rented. We are leaving early and expecting it to take more than the average 5.5-6 hrs to get there because everyone will be on the road getting to their eclipse locations. We are also packing ALL of our food, every single ingredient we can think of plus snacks for the kids. I am baking tomorrow, bread muffins, and biscuits. That county which is rural and not a big population so not a huge infrastructure is now expecting a million visitors! We do not want to forget anything and have to go to town.

We also have a major, huge producer in Michigan that has found bird flu as well. The scary thing is that this producer had pretty tippy top biosecurity procedures. They will be culling the flock beginning today if they haven't already. Millions of hens and chicks. My guess is that egg prices will go through the roof. Dd and I are buying 6 dozen today and scrambling them,and freezing in silicon ice cube trays. (They do not come out of the rigid plastic trays well.) Due to all of the food allergies in her family, she really needs eggs, one of the few things that no one in the family is allergic to and she bakes all their bread, muffins, etc. So she needs to have some eggs on hand in order to feed her family properly. Food allergies make everything so stinking difficult. Michigan also has avian flu in a dairy herd. Cows usually come through it just fine so the current plan is to not cull that cow, but just see how it recovers while removed from production. I would imagine if more cows come down with it which would indicate the virus has mutated and become a cow to cow transmission, then the whole herd will at least be out of production and milk dumped, if not possibly a kill zone to prevent it from making it out and infecting another herd by riding on workers clothes and such.

I think they will close them when so many staff members have died that they have no hope of keeping them open. It isn't like the powers that be have an ounce of respect for faculty and school staff. Not sure they give a rat's rear about kids at all. Sigh.

I agree. And the common person has very little more they can do. The mitigations and interventions are a matter of public policy, a matter of leadership. Our leaders don't give a flying fig. So my plan is as the world seems to regularly go to hell in a handbasket is to just try to provide for my own...masks for my kids and their partners, for the grandkids, important items stocked, ways of keeping morale up, disinfection and over the counter items on hand for all, and a bigger garden, and harvest preserve sharing among them so they have some back up stock if things get scarce again. There just isn't a lot else we can do so there is zero point in obsessing about it, and making mental health tank into the abyss. I am heart broken for the world my grandsons are inheriting. World leaders had many opportunities to solve so very many problems and save our kids from the earth burning, and that was apparently way too much to ask of these !@#$$&#^#^!%%! a$$holes!

Sharon Astyk is a former professor now subsistence farmer in New York. I don't know what her qualifications are for reliability about an H5N1 pandemic. I do feel that it isn't far fetched. Destruction of rainforest and other elements of climate change make frequent pandemics a new normal. That post was a lot to process.

Yes. I appreciate this approach. That said, we live in an area surrounded by dairy farms, huge dairy operations, and we have had bird flu in the past that decimated flocks, and shut down the county fair for 4H and FFA kids. Realistically, if it is going to be a thing and start going around humans, we will be in a high risk area. So when I get home, I am going to prepare the pantry, put some things in the freezer, and make sure I have what I need for summer gardening, boat fuel so we can use the trolling motor to get out of the channel and past the break water, and plenty of supplies for making several weeks of Lewis' dog food. Then we can just be at home with the grandmothers enjoying spring. We can go to the nursery for flowers as soon as I arrive home, and then moms can happily putter in their flower beds and make up hanging pots which they love to fuss over.

Wonderful!

I have changed over the years from a classic extrovert to a somewhat introvert due to life trauma, and now find that I get peopled out much more easily. I feel like being around folks that aren't in my inner circle can be overwhelming if I have to do it for more than 3 hours. This past weekend we had a family wedding to attend so we stayed with Mark's cousin and his wife lovely people, total extroverts, so I had to really keep up, and then the wedding which was hours and hours of LOTS of folks and assisting brother and sister in law with her elderly parents - happy to help but an immense amount of peopling - and then on Sunday a trip to Great Smokey NP, and the visitor center was packed. The long walk with dh was really wonderful and much needed, but the visitor center almost put me over the edge! Everyone was so chatty, and bumping and jostling, all of them happy for sure. But the noise and then everyone wanting to make comments, and the rangers talking, and all the exhibits with sound playing simultaneously was just humanity overload. All I was trying to do was get the stamp in our NP passport, and buy the matching sticker. We have been there 3 other times, but didn't own the passport during those visits. Thankfully, when we got on the road, Mark made a point of stopping a beautiful scenic turn out/park along the river in Cherokee National Forest to take another walk along the stream. I needed the quiet nature time, then the long drive into Lacey Springs area of Alabama where three very rambunctious grandsons greeted us, and Marmee had to people yet again. This peopling is okay though...my inner circle, and we have a bedroom suite where I disappear as needed. Saraha, I recommend a nice, long non-people down time for your mental health. Self care is so important, and you have had a ton of stress this past year.

My Dd says, "No mom. Percocet, Ativan, and Vicodin." 😂

Yesterday, we worked outside in dd's raised bed garden in northern Alabama. We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, mild banana peppers, basil, and mint plus marigolds, snap dragons, and petunias that our grandsons chose. Then we made a pallet strawberry bed. We found some heat treated, but not chemically treated pallets for $2.00 each. I underestimated how many plants we could put in the pallet so I need to get 4 more plants. We sowed seeds for radishes, and once the rain clears, I need to set up the green bean pallet and seed that for her. We have been double layering burlap under the pallets as a first year or two weed barrier. Some of her gourds did dry out really nicely. I am going to try to turn them into bird houses, and hang them from hooks near the garden. She gets a lot of not beneficial insects, and I am hoping that birds will come live there and keep the pesty insects down. We will see. Tomorrow we are setting up a 31 gallon galvanized trash can on cinder blocks, cutting and bending down spout, and fitting it into a hole in the lid to create a rain catchment system for watering the garden. Last year she had to use city water (no well here) during the dry snap, and it killed her veggies and strawberries. Since it is a small garden, and she uses drip hoses and mulch, I think this will be enough to overcome a short dry spell. The hugelkultur in the deep bed helps retain some moisture. We have mosquito dunks to keep that from being a problem.