I just want to say I am heartbroken. The inhumanity of it all, and so many children makes me weep. I don't know how they endure, and they shouldn't HAVE to endure it. Apart from donating to Doctors Without Borders and other organizations trying to help. It feels hopeless.

It is a safer mall company in SW Michigan. I don't have my son's permission to out his location and employer online at the moment. I can ask him if he is comfortable with that when he gets back from his vacation. I will also have to ask eldest ds about outing his location/school as well. My kids are starting to really tamp down on social media personal info.

Niece in NYC has covid. She caught it on a plane from San Francisco to NY. She is having a rough go, but is considered a "mild" case. She hasn't seen her son in two weeks. He is 8 going on 9, and daddy took him to their vacation house and straight up told his school that they better be streaming zoom because son was NOT going to be in school for ten days while they hunkered down away from mom and hope they don't get it. Niece and family have had all the shots, combo of Moderna and Pfizer. The school protested, but relented when dad got tough on them. One would think they would be happy that he was trying NOT to spread covid to classmates. There I go thinking again. Cases in my county are still low. We are getting ready for winter, and the usual hunkering down, mask at the grocery store and pharmacy. Apart from a routine vet visit for Lewis that I really do not want to skip because he is 14 years and 3 months so things could go wrong at a moment's notice, we are back to pretty much the pod with our adult kids. Three are working remote or in grad school online/in person but with very small classes in large rooms with everyone back to masks, and the other working but not in an office environment, and in a building that upgraded its air, and has a work remote if known exposure and everyone is required to mask. So we have some hope we won't transmit this to mil who had had ONE Johnson/Johnson shot and refuses to do any others. My mom had covid this summer from being stupid and going to a party that my brother and his witch threw with a bunch of their nutter friends some of whom were symptomatic and did not care because "not willing to miss this party". We plan on sending her to France to hunker down in the Riviera (Nice` area) for the bulk of the winter while she still has some immunity. She will get her booster right before she leaves as well. I am so tired of this. But I still am not willing to let my guard down and throw caution to the wind. The statistics on long covid are NOT reassuring.

I think we should phase out party buses because every year our neighbor hires one for his college age kids, and then the whole town is up til 3 am from the noise and chaos. I would like someone to phase out my husband's inability to get rid of clothing that is so worn out it barely resembles clothing. I have not been successful at this so we need a legislative ban!

In my experience, libraries make great places to meet new friends. You will not only have coworkers but so many adults coming and going, and it is natural to chat a little when folks see what is being checked out and returned, plus there are often many activities that bring opportunities to chat. I hold out a great hope for you that you will meet some great folks!

My heart hurts. My sis lives in France, thankfully not in Paris, but her sister in law does and has a little girl in school though I do not know which one. I need to reach out. So much pain in the world....

Those things are so bad, I usually think, "Nah. I think I will just take the disease!"

That is absolutely insane!

I agree with you on this! I am sorry the referendum is doomed to fail. It is gut wrenching. I get it. Same racist pit on this side of the planet. Hugs. I truly believe you are telling the truth. Half the sh$t that goes down on my county/region of Michigan, USA can't be posted here because no one would believe it no matter how much journalistic evidence was provided.

Agreed. And I knew parents who were struggling, an so they hired tutors, or enrolled their older kids in dual enrollment, or in the case of some moms, signed up for college math and science classes or college comp, and took those classes in advance of their students arriving at upper level work so they would have the knowledge and confidence to teach their own. This was because the motivation was academic, for their kids to get a solid, well rounded, foundational education that they could build on, and their kids either didn't fit the mold well for PS, or their PS was falling down on the job with a lot of their students for a wide variety of reasons like too high a student to teacher ratio or whatever. Now I feel like the motivations for homeschooling often have nothing to do with education itself.

Congratulations! I think this sounds like a win. The reality is that retirement benefits are a big deal, and library jobs often allow a person to make a lot of connections. You might find that you can do some tutoring for extra pay outside of work, or contract work for some event planning, that kind of thing. Some of the library staff at our township library tutor outside of work for $20 an hour, and they have a never ending stream of students most of whom they have met at work, and whose parents said, "We need to find a tutor. Know anyone?" And of course sometimes they do activities that require additional staffing so regular staff can pick up extra hours by working an evening they would not normally do, and that all helps. I hope you find a new place soon! You are doing great, Heart! Keep on chugging along. I am cheering you on here from Michigan.

Nevermind. Discussions of math expectations on this board never go well. Never.

I have no advice except to say that I think we need a council meeting, and I am voting your buyers OFF the island Survivor style!

I hate to say it, but probably gift wrap and Christmas cards. 1 billion Christmas cards are thrown away each year and 2.3 million tons of wrapping paper. That is a lot of waste. Maybe whiteboard style reusable Christmas cards could become a thing. People can read the message, wipe it off, and then send it to someone else with a new message, round and round they go. Fabric gift bags that get used forever would be good. I did make fabric gift bags for our kids, used cheap Wal-Mart quality fabric. Over the years, I have occasionally repaired a seam, but otherwise, they have been the energizer bunnies of gift wrap.

Pick up trucks. All the spectacularly bad drivers in our area are the pick up drivers. I don't know what it is about owning this type of transportation that short circuits their own survival instincts, but we should just say, "No more pick up trucks!" 😁 I am on board with getting rid of fireworks. I would be a big fan of phasing in a lot more rail. I took Amtrak to Chicago a week ago yesterday. It was so pleasant to not drive on I94 which is a free for all of insanity. But, Amtrak only runs once a day here which is highly problematic for using it regularly. So if I could get on at some other time besides 7 am, and get off in my son's SW Michigan community at some other time besides 10 am when they are both at work, it would be truly awesome, and I would happily not drive. I would like to be able to arrive in Chicago at some other moment than 11:45 am. And it would be great if that law that freight trains are supposed to give passenger trains the right of way would actually be ENFORCED. I would like to phase out the mowing of lawns except where venomous snakes and such are a major problem. By all means, mow those areas. But we at least in other places need to plant other things that are better for our ecosystems or raise the threshold of height so they are mowed far less often. Plastic packaging. Can we get rid of this? I am so darn tired of plastic crap that can't be recycled having to be thrown away. I bet if we simplified and rethought packaging, I could get my garbage down to a single bag per week.

Yes. And in that stupid game, I died of snake bite so often that it convinced me as a kid that the west was so entirely inundated with rattlers that one could not stir a step without encountering one. 😂😂😂 Oregon Trail was one of the most traumatizing games ever!! And then they turned it into a card game, and my demented son in law bought it, and subjected me to playing it FOURTEEN times. Only ONCE did we actually have a member of the party survive to the end. The Donner party had better odds! On another note, our entire county with a population of 52,000 people only has one warming center, a small high school building that can handle at the very very most, about 500 people. We have had storms so bad that half the county was out of power for an extended period, and the county did not even open it up for warming because it couldn't afford the gas/diesel for the generators to operate the forced air furnaces, didn't have the staff, or both. I think people who are dependent upon city services, services which tend to be reliable and well funded, do not have any idea how rural folks survive inclement weather. And of course we definitely have times when people do not survive it. So we do have more of a drive, as a general rule, to be less dependent on the community at large, and more on our own preparations and family/friend pods. LOL, I think wr may have been preparing our whole lives for covid. Hunkering down is not new. An actual world war???? No one can prepare for that in any kind of big way. However, some of the pain could potentially be mitigated by some of us because we do have some resources to put to that, and so we will do what we can for our family and neighbors. But most of us do regularly have to be able to manage 5-10 days and even more without back up from the community. So we tend to think more about resourcefulness and preparation. Most people can do nothing. However, I can see rising food prices, the pressure on my young adults, and I can do something to ease that pain. Therefore, I choose to do that. No judgements to those who are not able to do the same. You do you. I will do me. Now, if we get bombed with nukes, I do prefer to be in the "instantly vaporized" group. I have no desire to be trying to navigate the aftermath of that! Climate change IS going to cause people in our life times to have to adapt to some pretty awful stuff, and it IS worth thinking about. Animals are migrating north in the Northern Hemisphere, South in the Southern Hemisphere at an average rate of 10-30 miles per year now. This means in ten years, species normally not found in colder climates will be adapting and arriving here. For rural folks living near water sources, like me, it is worth giving some thought to and researching how that might play out, what kind of adaptations might be useful. Sorry to say, but it is going to wreck havoc on ecosystems, and we will all feel that pain. Our government does not give a crap. So we, the little guy, must actually deal with this. I have to do so. I have three precious grandsons who deserve to have their parents and grandparents thinking about how they can help them through it.

We had ash and smoke from the Canadian wildfires, and I had to wash it all off the plants every couple of days. It was pretty awful, and we didn't have it nearly as bad as other place like NYC.

My next dream. A greenhouse coffee plantation in Michigan!!! 😂😂😂😂😂

Being without coffee is my personal, zombie apocalypse nightmare! 😱😱😱💀

Gorgeous! I love that photo of little fuzzy, bumble!

I would like to say that when I pulled the pepper plants, I was absolutely shocked at the size of the root ball and depth. I had to really heave on them to get them out! It was a shock to me because I have not grown jalapenos before and didn't expect that. I was so proud of how healthy they still looked, and it made me a little sad. But, the weather is changing rapidly here, and I really need to get the compost and leaves in these beds. I am a total pansy about working in the beds once it stays below 45° (7.22C) during the day, and it was only a high of 49° (9.44C) today, nothing much higher predicted for the next few days. 😭

We LOVE to hear about flowers! I am always impressed when people can grow them. I am still a bit of a plant assassin and haven't quite mastered the pretty things. So I live vicariously through flower people. I am going to branch out though and try sunflowers. I have heard they are resistant to assassination attempts! 😁 Moles are evil, sheer evil! I hate them, and they make all vegetable gardening attempts just maddening. You need an evil cat. A half starved, seriously sadistic cat will usually thin them out. Don't give it kibble. You have to make it want to eat the blasted things. I love that you are planting for pollinators, and absolutely encourage wild, natural, native plants to grow is worthy of posting about here. We love it!

I am struggling for words. He is a truly gross, depraved human being.

So you know how I was supposed to be done with the whole canning/drying/harvesting thing? Well, while I was gone and before all the plants were pulled, Mark picked all the jalapenos left on the plants. It was a lot. I got home from Chicago, ready to just winterize the gardens, and there was this big bowl of jalapenos on the island. He gave me these puppy dog eyes, followed by the whole kissing up routine. I fell for it. I spent this afternoon pickling jalapenos and cold pack canning them. 😂😂😂

This is why I garden. It is for my family, to share, to give to people in need. The reality is we are seeing a lot of grocery inflation coinciding with the insane increase in housing costs. The Ukraine War brought us rising prices on wheat, and increasing exports of wheat from the USA to countries who relied on Ukraine and Russian wheat. Now we have the Israel/Palestinian war, and the bombing if farmland/crops in that area. Already a lot has been lost and the left olive harvest is going to be very poor along with a village that farmed 2000 acres of fruits and vegetables utterly decimated. Even if the U.S. experiences exactly nothing causing us shortages, not only will we export more to the region causing a rise of prices here, but Big Ag will use it as a pretty big excuse go raise prices while NOT paying producers more. So more folks at home feeling the grocery squeeze. I have two adult kids who have medical issues, one is very medically underweight and can not afford to cut back on groceries, and yet neither of them are experiencing any increase in wages. So far this year they have received fresh produce, canned tomatoes (a huge amount), several quart jars of dehydrated apples, numerous pints of taco/enchilada sauce, numerous jars of salsa, frozen broccoli and carrots, frozen raspberries and blueberries which they eat frozen as snacks and on top of oatmeal, tons of herbs, and because I got a deal of $1.57 a lb for chicken breast if I bought 80 lbs, they also received 48 pint jars of home canned chicken for soup/stews and sandwiches. They have small apartment freezers, so canning the chicken made it closer storage friendly. I can also buy grains and produce cheaper here than in the cities where they live, and so we can supplement them. This year I had so much produce, that twice I had a banquet table out front with a sign for neighbors to help themselves. Cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, basil, courtland apples, and red chilis. People were so happy to come by and grab items. Some of them are pretty hard up financially. It isn't a lot, yet it is something. At a time when civility and neighborliness is at an all time low or so it feels, it is this tiny thing I can do that maybe makes someone else smile. I don't expect people other folks to do that, and certainly not just because there is war in the world. But I also thing it is a little snarky to pick on everyone who does look at rising grocery prices and unrest, climate change, and then mock their efforts. The other thing that no one ever brings up is that if you grow your own, at least you have control over whether or not it is sprayed with Round Up and all manner of carcinogenic pesticides and herbicides. My produce didn't get anything except some organic vegetable fertilizer, diatomaceous earth on some insects that were going after the eggplant, and my own compost. As for other things, every square foot of lawn torn out and planted to anything at all that pollinators like which includes vegetables and fruit is a win for the environment because short groomed grass is not a climate win. And for sure if you don't like to do it, don't want to do it, or don't have the resources to allocate to it, then by all means take care of yourself and don't do it. I get joy from it, and I feel better contributing to my adult children's households by doing it. I could of course just as easily give them more money. But I like the look on their faces when they get my home canned tomatoes.