Warrior's Don't Cry or The Story of Ruby Bridges Fahrenheit 457 Brave New World Freedom's Daughters Of Mice and Men Nacht (Night) Hand Maid's Tale Lord of the Flies Twenty Years at Hull House The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales To Kill a Mockingbird Civil Disobedience Uncle Tom's Cabin The Red Badge of Courage The Importance of Being Earnest Source documents like Declaration, Federalist Papers, etc. Scarlet Letter William Bradford's Diary Tale of Two Cities Shakespeare - I required Hamlet and Macbeth but let them choose two others plus some sonnets Canterbury Tales Beowulf Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Illiad Odyssey Epic of Gilgamesh I made my kids read something by Ernest Hemingway. I can't remember what it was. Hemingway bores me to tears, but I figured that at least they would enter adulthood without that particular literary gap. And they all hate Hemingway so apparently I was not at all good at discussing his work without bias! 😂

I feel this so very, very much!

We have a "Love Wins" rainbow plaque on our back door which can be seen prominently from the side road due to the way our house is situated on the corner. I have had people shake their fists at me as they drive by, but no death threats or shots fired yet. I say yet because we live near Michigan Militia country, and these people are basically rabid humans. I try not to be scared, and I do spend time in my yard with our dog. We can't move because our elderly mothers are in poor physical health, and financially cannot afford to move. But if we survive until they pass away allowing us to relocate, it will be with a strong sigh of relief for sure.

I have never in my life heard of an "After Labor Day sales surge".

Frogs are great. If I encountered a snake, I might never garden again! A mile outside of town, there is a field full of Michigan rattlers (Mississauga sp?), and they are not to be messed with. I am terrified of the things. Not exaggerating. If found in our yard, I would scream, run into the house, curl up in the fetal position, and never leave the house again. So it is best I not see a snake. My Monday harvest was big. Unfortunately, last night the garden was drowned again, just epically deluged. We do.not.need.more.rain. SIGH. The tomato plants look so bad. We are supposed to get about five straight days of sunshine and decent temperatures so I am leaving the remaining fruit out there in the hopes it will ripen, but again having to keep watch for split skins. The green bean plants gave me a few more, but now there are no blooms so I really need to pull them. I still have my third planting of carrots, my celery (which still doesn't have wide stalks but seem like it might be okay to harvest but I am not sure since the bases are not peeking above the soil), and scallions to harvest, and the scallions and carrots seem so small. I canned 8 pints of tomatoes, plain, yesterday. I need to do about 18 quarts minimum for the bachelors, and another 12 or so to Mark and I. There is no way I will get that out of the remaining fruit, so I am headed to the farm market next week for whatever sauce tomatoes I can get, probably romas. I have enough tomatoes ripe today to make a few jars of very spicy salsa for honorary son, T. I am freezing green chilies for making verde sauce later - don't have time now, and need to source tomatillos - and stringing up more red chilies to dry. I will get the dehydrator going today with grape tomatoes. I am just not ready for fall. We have had a glorious, comfy Michigan summer, and the garden has been a joy. It is hard to see this time coming to an end. Mark and I really need to put up 15 face cord of wood for the winter, and contemplating that makes me unhappy.

I am so happy that you had some improvement, positive report. I think of you throughout every day and wish good things for you. Hang in there!

Homemade gruyere mac n cheese with red pepper flake (gives it a nice zest), and maple bacon roasted brussel sprouts. Mark asks for it whenever he feels festive.

Barbados. English speaking, very relaxed, beaches are lovely, the public transport is easy to use, well marked.

Wonderful! So glad she is gone. I hope you have a far better year.

Our last was a surprise. We had only planned on three. I nearly died in that pregnancy, and the doctor told Mark, I would not survive another. I was 32 so lots of years left for another oops pregnancy, and the fourth was a failure of two forms of birth control used simultaneously. So he decided to get a vasectomy. That was that. I was just fine with it and have never longed for more. But maybe part of that was also that I had a strong desire to live to see my children grow up.

You are an amazing mom, Tiggy!

Lovely!!!!!!

I can't..I am not smart enough to twist that into a co.plocated.pretzel so it forms a coherent thought. This one is just beyond me! These people! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I give you a lot of credit! All the credit! Bless you. I am running out of filter in my near menopausal state of angst and would have said it. I would a smiled and sounded really passive aggressive sweet. But then it also would have potentially been followed up by eye roll. I am currently not a good diplomat! So I try to avoid these situations.

I love leeks in mine! Also, when I want to get more veggies in at breakfast, I will make quiche. Some frozen spinach with all the water squeezed out of it, red pepper, finely diced leeks or green onion, and eggs, top with a sprinkle of diced cherry tomatoes. Very filling and healthy.

If using chicken, I am a big fan of generous amounts of rosemary and thyme. Red pepper or even a bit of heat from a jalapeno is nice for a change. Maybe try alternating between a savory/sweet and spicy/heat if the spicy versa n does not bother your digestive track. I have been known to make egg drop soup for breakfast. You can leave the scallions out, and add more celery and some peas.

I just checked my middle son's alma mater. Their meal plan for this fall, the three meals a day one, is $2966.00 for the fall semester. 105 days for returning students (freshmen come in a couple of days earlier than that) and from Tuesday evening the week of Thanksgiving until Sunday evening which is a limited meal students can get it they arrive back on campus before supper, it comes out to 90 meals offered. Roughly $33 a day or $231.00 per week and of course no personal care items. Toilet paper must now be provided by the students in the dorm bathrooms, but it is still provided in the public restrooms in the other buildings. Apart from a fairly decent salad bar with basic fruit, the food being offered is basically fast food fare, not really a lot of healthy options. So if a student is committed to grocery shopping and cooking their own, a lot of money can be saved giving a food and personal care allowance if financial.aid and scholarships are not large enough to cover the food plan. And as usual with their illogical administrative stupidity, the walk in no meal plan people spend about $1 less per meal than the students buying the meal plan. Sheesh. A double, no frills (and I mean no frills) dorm room is $2990 per semester, no custodial provided of any kind, and an $89 per month internet fee PER student! Nearly $200 a room! I swear colleges are run by mafia these days. Though the students are not on campus for a full four months in the fall semester, they charge for four months of internet. $336 per semester. So two semesters with meal plan is just over $12,000 for the privilege of sharing a 10x12 space with another person. Boy if I could get $24,000 a year renting a single bedroom...... We really should have bought a fixer upper 3 bedroom house in that city years ago. We could have undercut the college, charged $1400 a bedroom per semester with shared living spaces, and the house would have paid for itself in no time, students would have been happy to save money and be able to cook their own food. Internet in that town, fast and reliable, runs about $75 a month. A whole house and only three people, private sleeping space, I am pretty sure we would have had droves of students applying. Good grief! At any rate, I was at Aldi yesterday and frankly, getting students off meal plans is probably pretty wise financially. They can buy a lot of produce, healthy proteins, and non name brand personal care items for much less than $33-36 a day. Sorry for the bad news to all of you facing a future of putting kids through college. I thought we had it bad, but it looks like it is getting even worse.

We gave our now 24 year old $110 a week when he went off the meal plan back when he was still in college. In his town, groceries were VERY expensive compared to here. Astounding price difference, and at that time, no Aldi he could get to with public transportation. That said, the meal plan was only 14 meals a week, and $2500 a semester so when taking out the holidays when the cafeteria was closed so at only 2 meals per day and several holidays when there was no food offered, it came out to 199 meals for $2500 or $12.56 a meal regardless of what meal. They charged $8.50 for breakfast, $10.00/for lunch, and $12.50 for dinner is you chose to pay cash. He also did not have the choices he needed for his medical needs, and no amount of trying to get them to do it was ever going to work. So he moved to a dorm with a full kitchen, and we gave him our camping fridge which was about 7.5 cubic ft, and a tabletop freezer. Since I could buy high quality ground beef at a much lower price here, I would make numerous beef patties, and freeze them individually. We also could get chicken breast and other items half the price of the grocery store walking distance from campus. I made barbecue chicken, chicken taco meat, and chicken salad for him, froze it, and sent it along as well as home canned veggies. Since he came home for the summers thus we only paid out the grocery/personal care budget when he was on campus, we saved a lot of money. His weight also stabilized and he stopped losing weight he couldn't afford to lose. I suspect that given the inflation on groceries and personal care items in recent years, if he was still a college student without a meal plan he would need $150 a week.

Ouch! I am so sorry Tiggy! Is there any chance she could do her hybrid classes at your mom's house so she has a break from both? She sounds like she is probably a conscientious, independent worker.

I really hope the sixth grade teacher does well with the situation. I just feel so much for your dd. Is there an option for just hybrid school where she attend part time and home schools part time just in case she needs a break from her cousin?

Oh my! I don't know what to do. But, I feel so bad for your dd. My guess is that since the school is not remotely capable of dealing with your foster niece, she will not be there long before the school tells the parents she cannot stay. Unfortunate, but likely and probably for the best because she needs to be in PS with an IEP. I would probably go express my concerns to the teacher and principal. It is important for them to know up front that your Dd is distanced from her cousin, and you do not want the school to try to interfere with that or judge your Dd for it. I wouldn't go out of my way to present niece in a super bad light, but I would lay out that the children do not have a close relationship outside of school, and that it would be highly inappropriate for the school to try to facilitate one from inside or assign them to team/group work together, etc. Maybe since you know more what the issues are, you could file play some potential situations and help Dd carve out dialogue and responses in advance, make sure she gets to invite other girls for fun days and what not without her cousin so she can continue other relationships. I am sad for the cousin. She needs parents who know what they are doing, trauma therapy intensively, and an IEP. It doesn't sound like she is going to get any of this right away.

Day lilies look nice, Bush out a bit, the blooms are on tall stems, and they seem to be about unkillable. I did give mine a drink this year, a couple of times, during the drought. But in previous years I have never had to do that. I think Yarrow would grow well in the conditions you describe.

When it comes to home improvements, most of them fall under maintenance, and if the home is going to retain its value or appreciate which is super important, then it is a need not a want. It isn't about contentment but protecting investment. But, also, quality of life is a thing. So it is really good to be willing to be content and happy with what you have while also acknowledging that some improvements would make things more relaxing, less stressful, encourage family life. For me, that meant building the raised beds so I could garden and has resulted in me spending more time outdoors this summer. It has meant a better lawn table and chairs, replacing our fire ring for backyard barbecue, and the storage was getting so tight that Mark was really frustrated with how hard it was to get equipment in and out of the sheds, so a new metal shed was purchased which had made his life a lot easier. I think these things are in balance when one does not have a "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality, but a "keeping up with our home investment and making things cozy for our family" outlook.

I was gone Friday, Saturday, and most of today. So the first thing I did on arriving home was run to their gardens. I harvested 13 red chillies, an entire basil plant (it was hanging over on its side so it was time, tons of good basil leaves all over it), 9 lbs of Amish Paste tomatoes, some grape tomatoes, and several of the oversized cherry tomatoes, plus one green pepper. I just got all of the basil cut and frozen. I still have some tomatoes in the freezer to use, so tomorrow I will be making two kinds of salsa. One of my honorary sons begged me for HOT taco sauce/salsa. I made medium heat peach salsa, very mild taco sauce, and medium heat taco sauce, and made two kinds of tacos while visiting our sons and had them invite their close circle of friends for dinner. Everyone loved the food - fajita vegetables were also put under the broiler with my mild sauce - but T desperately wants heat. This guy ate some of my jalapenos like he was eating a piece of celery, seeds and all. He apparently has lips, tongue, and stomach of steel but his wife, our very special honorary daughter, wants mild mild mild sauce. So I am going to source a very ancho chilli as well as a habanero from somewhere, and add use just a few seeds from them along with the chopped chillies plus my red chillies and jalapenos. Thankfully, I still have green peppers in the garden. I am making the no heat for A with just bell peppers, one jalapeno but no seeds, garlic, onion, cumin, and lime juice. I need to remember to have my labels handy because if the jars got mixed, dear girl will NOT be happy it's with me. That peach salsa was a hit with everyone! So even though I felt unsure and wasn't certain I had created a good flavor profile, apparently it was a home run. We took two green tomatoes, and fried them. Our boys were the only ones who had experienced fried green tomatoes before. They were well received. I also had tomatoes, jalapenos, green peppers, cucumbers, and carrots for each couple or single person to take home. I also took local farmer's market locally grown sweet corn for them all, and grabbed some Michigan red haven peaches for them to take as well. They loved all the fresh produce. I have another basil plant to pull, and a cucumber plant that I hadn't taken the time to yank. There are some baby eggplants but the plants themselves look really done. So I think I need to harvest them, and pull the plants. The peppers are still healthy and going crazy. The tomato plants actually look they are waning. There was deluge last week followed by cool nights and not enough sun so they stayed wet too long. My hope is that since the sun is going to shine for a few days here, the fruit will vine ripen. I though we would go a lot longer after Labor Day, covering at night if necessary, but I really do not think that is going to happen. I need the fruit that is out there so I can put up quarts of plain tomatoes for me to make into chili and marinara sauce this winter. What is out there still will not be enough so I will have to go to the farm market and get a half bushel of romas. I can't buy Amish Paste locally. Romas. It is going to feel like settling! More carrots yet to harvest. I have grapes about two weeks from.being ready to be jelly. Apples are two weeks to being fully ripe. I have decided that after pulling all the plants, weeding where needed, I am going to plant radishes. If they mature before the big freeze, great, we will eat them, but if not, the plants can just do their thing, die off, and get turned under the spring. I needed a cover crop that would aerate and loosen the soil, and this was a recommendation in one of my gardening books.

Oh my goodness, I was out of town for a couple of days and look what pops up!! Gorgeous! Oh, and I love the contrast of the milk glass vase. Very pretty.