I love Easter when it is so close to the start of true spring here in Michigan. We normally do ham packets. Mark starts a fire in the fire ring, gets a good bed of coals going, and we let everyone make up their own veggie and ham or chicken packets. We provide: Ham slices Chicken breast cut into thin strips Cubed potatoes Thin sliced carrots Thin sliced sweet onions Asparagus spears (the thinner the better) Fresh green beans Pea pods We wash/rinse the veggies, shake off excess water, but do not dry them. Double layer of aluminum foil, large enough to roll like a burrito for each person. Everyone places their protein of choice in the center of the aluminum foil, piles on all of the veggies they like, generously sprinkles steak seasoning all over it, adds two pats of butter (which along with the residual water on the veggies helps them steam), and rolls the first layer up like a burrito good and tight. Then we use a large permanent marker to put initials on that layer and blow on it hoping to set enough the ink that at least part will remain.) Turn the packet 180° and roll burrito style with the second layer of aluminium foil. Mark tosses those into the coals, using leather gloves and long tongs to turn regularly, and cooks for about 30-45 minutes. We also, if we can get sweet corn, roast sweet corn in the fire (doesn't take that long so don't start it until 15-20 minutes before the packets are going to come out.) We make lemonade, and eat up! This year we have a wedding the day before out of state so we will be traveling and not with our kids or our mothers that day. The moms are going to cook for our sons and dil while we are gone. This has been our Easter Sunday meal for about 10-12 years.

I tell ya, Saraha, she is quite the handful! I commend you for being willing to see her on her birthday, but boy oh boy, you need a 1 year break now.

We really enjoyed Free Guy on disney, the new Cruella with Emma Stone, and the new Cinderella musical. Also, if you haven't seen Saving Mr. Banks, I highly recommend it. The 1st and 2nd Night at the Museum/Smithsonian were great and genuinely funny. I think those are on Disney. Leap Year was a kind of cute, comedy romance. Pg. I think it is on Amazon prime.

As someone who has two degrees in music, and who would have literally wilted had I not pursued it in college, I can honestly say that it is so important for students to study their passions. Contrary to the popular notion that you can pursue music as a hobby and learn it without college, I can say that is erroneous information. If the student is really talented, there is only so far that they can go with the average neighborhood teacher. I get where parents are coming from on this. And yes, music ed jobs are difficult to find and don't pay well, are the first thing cut when school boards feel a pinch. That is 100% true. The key is to have the student double major in math or science because schools simply cannot find those teachers for secondary ed. Anyone with a math or science degree can make a heck of a lot more money in the private sector with far less stress than in teaching. This is always what I advise along with not going to a tippy top, expensive LAC or university to get this degree. Just pick a lower priced one that has a decent music department and go with that. I get it. The current price and debt related to higher ed makes many parents see college as a means to an earning end without any other considerations which is just sad. But Americans are very "bang for the buck" oriented. I am not sure though what kind of society these Americans want to live in because one without the arts, without humanities, is going to be dystopian. I guess they figure they will "import" it like they do everything else. Our eldest son has a degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and is getting his MFA. He is a published author in academia already, niche field, and will never make significant money at that, but he is immensely happy. His wife, also with the same degree, has a job working remote in editing, and she likes that. Between the two of them, they manage to pay the bills, and dil has poetry published. I would not want them to do anything else unless they wanted to make a change. But they are frugal and practical. There will not be any children in their future unless one of them publishes something that is a real money maker. The key with our kids who want to go into humanities is to help them see the challenges, and make a reasonable plan. Some may never work in the exact field related to their major, but that doesn't mean what they have learned will not greatly enrich their lives, and be applicable in other areas. Our middle son is in grad school for Anthropology. He is never going to do more than keep his head above water in that field. He loves his museum job, very fulfilling. But museums are rarely heavily public funded, and rely too much on donations from corporations and the wealthy. Whenever the stock market has a bad day, those donations dry up, and that puts everyone at the museum except maybe the curator at risk. It takes decades to be the person who lands the curator job. So his plan is live simple, save money, and no family. He doesn't date because most of the women he has met indicate that eventually they will want children. He does not see that as practical from his perspective of adequately supporting them. He shares an apartment with his bachelor, electrical engineer who started out solidly middle class salary, and less than two years post college graduation has had two bonuses and two pay raises because that is what this country and companies value. He loves his brother, loves what P does for a living, and has more than once said he has no problem with them being roommates for life and paying a larger portion of their expenses than P. I think that is really awesome. Dd does not currently use her chemistry degree. She loved the subject matter, but hated the industry. She doesn't regret getting it, and we do not regret helping to pay for it either. But she sure does enjoy being a prenatal and birth educator. So that is great. This career came about because she was so badly injured on the job as a paramedic (a career she really loved), she can no longer work in patient care. The route she took from EMT in high school to chemistry degree to paramedic to obstetrics educator has shaped her in many profound ways. No regrets. As for college debt, this entirely the fault of the banking industry being allowed to lobby state and federal government to eliminate funding for public universities because so much money was to be made off enslaving American students and parents to college loans. Follow the money trail.

That sounds about right! Susan, you will always be our favorite, most esteemed celebrity.

Does reading the article on growing morel mushrooms in this month's "Mother Earth News" while staring at a 6" dump of snow on my raised garden beds and cursing the weather count? 😆

They do this because there is ZERO respect for humanities, and in particular, teachers. What is the first budget cut to any school district bottomline? Music. Yet, it is an academic subject that is a branch of applied mathematics, and every study done on the neuroscience of music has overwhelmingly found that children who learn to read music and play an instrument perform better across the board, and form more connections in the corpus collosum allowing the two hemispheres of their brains to work better together than any other pursuit we can give them in school, and out performing sports in all areas by leaps and bounds. But who gets the money? Sports. Who gets the cuts? Music. And we desperately need music teachers. I am one sitting on the sidelines with years of experience, my music ed degree in tow, who is not teaching because there are no jobs available in my state that are full time. Not kidding. The only openings the past few years have been part time, no benefits, basically substitute teacher status except for a few wealthy districts in city suburbs way too far away for me to commute. Oh, and the local district needs a high school choir accompanist and wants to pay, wait for it, $12 an hour. I can get $15 at Taco Bell. They are insulted that I won't take it. Apparently, my other BA which is in Piano Performance is not worth more than that to them. I disagree with the parents of these young collegians so very much about discouraging them from pursuing their gifts, and yet, I also get it. In some areas of this country, one really cannot get a job teaching music in schools that will prevent the young adult from either living forever with parents until marrying someone with more income or worse, not being able to find a job in their field at all. Whole swaths of this country do not give two figs about music education. It sucks eggs to be the young person in those areas who has a passion for it!

I am not a celebrity by any stretch. I am known within the classical and sacred music realm of the Great Lakes region, but I don't give identifying info on an open forum like this. For a decade after I left college, the video of my master class with Ian Hobson was used as a teaching tool in a lot of piano departments as the right way to approach interpreting Rachmaninoff. But then VHS went out of vogue, and I don't think it was concerted to CD/DvD. I had a few other exploits like stepping in to conduct an orchestra at the very last second for a big fundraiser for children's music education when the conductor(not nationally famous, but regionally quite well known) suffered a medical crisis five minutes before performance time. There were youth players in the orchestra, and it was being televised, and the concertmaster wanted someone to step in who knew some of the youth so they would feel more at ease. I was very hesitant, though I did know a significant number of the youth players. That was a real fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants moment because I was going to conduct while sight reading the scores! I have never been so nervous in all my life. However, everyone was obviously so well rehearsed that they didn't need me really other than to get them going, cut offs, tempo changes, just a few spots to keep the kids from getting off. Not a lot else. They knew what they were doing! My eldest son is very well known on a specific subject of academic writing and has 21 papers published in peer reviewed journals. However, writing about ancient history doesn't really earn notoriety with the general public. Celebrity status is definitely not coming his way. I keep telling him to lay off the "nerd writing" in order to pull a "Christopher Paolini" so the whole family can retire by sponging off him. He just rolls his eyes at me! 😉 😂😂😂 So that all adds up to NOT celebrity! Oh, here. Maybe our daughter is a celebrity. When she was 2 years old, we were invited to a huge Agricultural event/banquet and we didn't have a babysitter, so we took her along since it was advertised for families. She was chosen from among all the kids in attendance to have her picture taken with Orville Redenbacher. He was so frail at that point in his life that Mark insisted on being in the photo in order to support Mr. Redenbacher's arms because he was afraid she would be dropped!

Gently, many a great guy has turned into a wicked opponent when faced with divorce and division of assets. I have seen this so very often, and same for women too. It isn't just a guy thing. So my first piece of advice is that you need to plan on not being in this house. Chances are, if he has been working two jobs to make ends meet, he is going to fight for it or he is going to want 50% of the equity which your sister will have to cobble together by cashing out savings or getting a mortgage in her name. If that isn't an option, it is going to end up sold with the two of them splitting the proceeds. 2nd. If your sister has children, then by moral responsibility and by law, those kids need to be considered first not you, when it cokes to making up wills and distributing estates. I would caution you not to ask her to bypass her children in favor of leaving money to you so you can be independent. It would be better for each of you to work toward financial independence without each other, but then if you still want to live together and enjoy each other's companionship, it is on the basis of mutual affection and not financial need. Make a budget, decide how much each of you will contribute, and then work towards that. Probably that budget should be for a home that is not the current one for the reasons named above.

My daughter is a very recent reminder for me of the trenches now that I am empty nested and generally only Mark's brain. She has three littles, 8, 4, and 1, homeschools, is generally her husband's brain (and he is a very good guy, don't get me wrong, she does not have a misogynistic prick type husband at all), and is trying to teach 3 classes at a homeschool co-op. I.do.not.miss.it. There are days though when I get really exhausted from dealing with the constant short term memory issues of my mother and mother in law. They cannot remember anything for what seems like ten seconds. I try not to get frustrated. I will be old some day too. But with two at once, and them VERY emotionally dependent on me, it is rough.

Great Homeschool Convention, a certain conservative speaker engaging in bad, bad behavior, and a whole bunch of us got banned blocked from his email/blog comments because we supported Susan and Dr. Enns. I am pretty certain that except for the Covid information thread, it may have been the longest thread ever, certainly it was at that time with thousands of posts if memory serves, and Audrey offering all of us "witches" that go blocked, a starter kit with goat. It was absolutely epic, and turned into a lot of fun though it did start out a little heated.

😂😂😂 Awesome! It is so nice when an adult kid acknowledges their mother's unmistakable genius!

I hadn't thought about it before this thread, but yes over 20 years now. Wow! I remember waiting for the board to flip. It was so much fun to see who got in first and posted! My kids are 32 almost 33, 27, 25, and 23 nearly 24 now. 3 grandsons as well, and six honorary adult kids added to the mix. Back then I used to hold my youngest on my lap while posting to WTM. Where did the tike go???? 😜 I also want to say that during the Great Kerfuffle, some of us joined Audrey, who isn't here anymore, in the witch's brew and never got our introductory witch's kit and beginner goat. I am still disappointed about that! 😁😁😁😉 Good grief! How long ago was the Great Kerfuffle! That was an epic time to be alive on the WTM boards. Don't get confused. The Great Kerfuffle was not the Cupcake Kerfuffle. 😂

This is skivvy. 100% inappropriate. The subject matter is too complicate for children, it is making them into little pawns in a public policy debate that they are not mature enough to participate in, and at that age should not be hitting people up for money without an adult right there. If the adult wants the money, they can stop being a coward and come ask for it. Poor kids! I have to wonder what that mother was thinking. We never have anyone younger than about 13 come ask door to door for anything, and when they do, it is the local band kids. We do not have any scout troops in our town, and 4H has different methods of fundraising that do not require this type of soliciting. Thank goodness. I do support the band kids though because funding is so low for their program. One year the band director didn't even have a supply budget and was handing our reeds and valve oil paid for out of his own, bizarrely under-paid pocket.

I communicate Margaret. She is fine. Busy busy busy with ranch and scouts!

Saraha, you received a Non-apology apology which is her way of weaseling out of truly acknowledging how she treated you. It is about as much concession as you are likely to get from her. However, this witch needs to receive the consequences of her actions. Do not do anything of any kind again unless she directly asks you, not DH, and she is kind and genuine in the request, not setting you up. And frankly, be very very picky what you choose take on if anything at all. I would be fairly inclined to leave her hanging. She wanted control, micro-control in order to neglect mil who needs a staffed facility, she can take the consequences for seeking it, and everyone else can wallow for supporting this. You have had far too much on your plate. Her drama is just beyond ridiculous, crappy, and stress inducing so do not feel guilty about washing your hands of the whole situation.

Epic fail!

This sounds like a good plan. Are there any churches in the area that provides meals for people who are confined to home? Some United Methodist Churches have done this in the past. They organize a group of individuals to make meals and deliver.

I am so sorry you were worn right down from doing that! Hugs

Happiness is little sprouts! I am up to 10 pea plants, 9 lettuce, 3 cherry tomato, 3 cucumber, 8 broccoli, but only 1 our of 8 pots of bell pepper has a sprout. Ugh. Those things are taking forever to germinate.

I was babysitting little kids for hours at a time in 6th grade. Dd had her 1st babysitting job at that same age. Our sons began staying home together for a couple hours at a time when they were 12, 11, and 9, our three musketeers. One thing we did do at that point was to disconnect the router for internet. It was kind of that new age of the web, and we already worried about the negative effects of web surfing and inadvertently getting into bad sites. They always had emergency contacts close by. In the case of our sons, it was a retired couple next door who really loved being around our kids and were happy to serve as a helper in time of need.

From "The Uninhabitable Earth", pg. 113, excerpt of Lancet articles pertaining to air pollution, particularly high CO2 but other contaminants as well: " The public health damage is indiscriminate, touching nearly every human vulnerability. Pollution increases prevalence of stroke, heart disease, cancer of all kinds, acute and chronic respiratory diseases like asthma, and adverse pregnancy outcomes including premature birth. New research into behavioral and developmental effects is perhaps even scarier: air pollution has been linked to worse memory, attention, and vocabulary, and to ADHD and autism spectrum disorders. Pollution has been shown to damage the development of neurons in the brain and proximity to a coal plant can deform your DNA." I think it is ridiculous to dismiss air quality as one of the reasons in the bucket of issues that leads to the executive function problems and general apathy we see with many (but not all by any stretch) students and young adults today. Water quality as well. My own eldest grandson, while academically brilliant, is having behavioral symptoms related to lead exposure in gestation and infancy. The impulsivity is real, very real though the lead exposure was diagnosed at 12 months of age, a whole house reverse osmosis filter put in place immediately, and steps taken to ameliorate the effects. This could very well be a lifelong problem for him. At the time of dd's pregnancy with him, and during his infancy, they lived in a very middle class neighborhood of Schenectady, NY on city water. It was the city water, not the pipes, that was the source of the lead. It was a very well known problem in the capitol region of NY, and nothing was really being done about it. It was found on routine bloodwork that nearly all the pediatricians in the area were doing on infants and toddlers. Dd and husband could not afford that filter and installation. We paid for it. And there is such a huge difference between he and his younger brother, born in Huntsville (to a rental home that we had installed that same filter system to the minute they moved there just in case) that it is startling. Anecdotal yes. But the reality is we have known about lead exposure and its effects on child development, adult neurological and behavioral issues for decades. NRDC.org. 2021, 61 million people experienced long term exposure to lead levels well beyond the 5ppm established by the EPA. That is 1/5 of the population, roughly, and this had been going on for many years. Coming to a classroom near you..... I truly believe that when added to the digital age issues, pandemic school shut down disasters, and especially high rates of depression in the US, less sense of well being (we are so far below the Scandinavian and most Western European countries, Japan, etc. for general wellness), and the absolute travesty that passes for foundational education, it is no mystery really why we have a lot of students/young adults who are not functioning well at all. If we don't clean up this crap, it is only going to get worse.

This. And in times past, children who had trouble learning were just labeled dumb and lazy. It is entirely possible pollution was negatively affecting them. Lots of kids, particularly those in urban, industrialized areas were labeled this because school wasn't easy for them. But of course, it is just easier to call negatively label people. We actually can change things. We can find out where the complexity of issues lies and tackle them one by one. However, mostly, society doesn't care enough to boot out the leadership and the money controllers who clearly don't give a crap. Anyone who would dismiss lead in water and what it does to developing brains when the science is so incredibly settled just makes my brain twitch. I also do not understand this glowing view of the past as if these problems did not exist. They existed aplenty. History is written by the victors, usually the white, rich victors, or those seeking to paint a rosy glow over the reality of millions and billions. Have we forgotten the abject pollution of workhouses, factories, inner cities, the smog alerts that kept children from being able to go outside and produced lung damage in small children in L.A. schools? Do we honestly think those kids didn't have major problems in school living through that? They did. But they were the forgotten children that no one seemed to care about. Just because the smog could be seen, doesn't make unseen co2 of today, heavy metals in the air from exhaust, etc. less dangerous, less of a major issue for the development of children.

Still doesn't excuse the flagrant, stalking behavior or the security concerns that the paps create. Many more do not invite them to come, they are just already there, like the twat that hiked through forest, climbed privacy hedges, and stalked Megan Markle in British Columbia in order to get a glimpse of Archie. He wasn't asked onto the property. No excuses. Personal responsibility to be a person, a decent human being.

I think so. I have no expertise of course, but this adds up to me.