In random bizarre news, I have two dresses that were hanging in my downstairs closet go missing. They are expensive rent the runway dresses for an event next week and I cannot for the life of me imagine what happened. They were there yesterday morning. But I’m not going to go accusing my son’s friend that was here of stealing my dresses.

It’s my son’s friend’s neighbor. They’re about 30 miles away from us. My cousin the trooper says he can’t imagine anyone is going to do anything but maybe take a report from the neighbor. He said he’d touch base with some of his friends in that county’s jurisdiction though just in case. She did call the cops before when she accused friend’s stepdad of stealing her wallet. Then it was found right in her house. I wouldn’t allow an interview and I greatly doubt any police officer would push it once I pushed back. But the other mom is very much freaking out—but they are a black family, low SES, and son is autistic with mental health disorders. So I get where she’s coming from.

I am at work overnight so I can’t go over and talk to anyone and it’s a good 30 minutes away anyway. So I’m getting this all from son’s friend’s Mom. Money was in the bedroom but lady claims the kids were the only ones alone in the house with the money. I think the cops would roll their eyes and tell the lady to look harder for the money that she probably misplaced. It sounds like this lady might be a little unhinged. my own kid won’t physically touched money because he heard once that it’s contaminated with cocaine and he’s scared to death of drugs. My cousin is a state trooper here and a lot of my friends are cops, so my son isn’t afraid of cops. But I texted my cousin anyway to see what he thought.

Apparently the neighbor kid was outside playing cornhole and asked the kids over. It’s basically a trailer park and the yards don’t have boundaries. The kids went over in the yard and played. They went in the house for a drink and the neighbor kid and my son’s friend say they never left the kitchen. For the record I am not really neurotypical myself; plus I was homeschooled and rarely went over to anyone’s house without my parents. Play dates and complications are way outside of my comfort level.

Some of this is probably my fault. DS11 went on his very first play date with a friend from school. Both boys are autistic and high functioning. I didn’t know parents but talked to Mom for about an hour the day before. I don’t let the kids over where I don’t know the parents, but he was so excited and literally does not get invited places. Mom let the boys go to a neighbor’s house to play cornhole. Neighbor is now accusing the boys of stealing $150–even though she admits that she is pretty sure the boys were never in the room the money was in. I am 1000% sure my son didn’t steal. Part of his autism is life and right/wrong are very black and white for him. He doesn’t take a quarter out of my purse without asking. Other Mom says neighbor has accused her husband of stealing a wallet in the past that was subsequently found misplaced. She says there’s no way the boys took anything, but neighbor wants to involve the cops. If it matters, there is a pretty significant socio-economic difference between this family/neighbor and us. I could give the neighbor $150 and it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But I don’t think I should do that. I have not asked DS, because his anxiety would go through the roof and be uncontrollable. I clearly didn’t vet this situation enough and had no idea they’d go to a neighbor’s house anyway. I was so excited he had a friend, to be honest. Ugh. Help. I don’t know what to do. And everyone in real life will just ask me why on earth I didn’t ask more questions before letting him go.

So far no luck in finding the owner. Two houses down and across the street is a cat lady who runs some kind of informal cat rescue. We think someone dumped this kitten off there and it made it’s way to my house. I don’t know how to integrate it with my older grouchy cat though.

Almost everyone I know has gas containers in their car. It drives DH nuts that I won’t do it. I wouldn’t give it another thought either. He honestly probably wasn’t going to do anything shady to you but was trying to get close to the house where subject who has the order of protection against him is. There’s a gas station across from my job. Last night after it closed there was a guy out there for about an hour, singing, banging on the windows of the gas station, scratching his arms, making strange noises. Finally we asked the cops to come over. He was just high but had warrants so they arrested him. So if you have warrants, you probably shouldn’t get high and walk around town acting weird. People like this are everywhere. Honestly most just don’t ever see it.

I am definitely not a cat person. We only have one because it got dumped on my best friend’s farm and was too young to be sent out to the barn without a mama. She’s allergic to cats so I offered to foster it while she found a home. that was six years ago.

I have friends who just cancelled a cruise because their passports didn’t come in. It’s been six months since they applied for them.

Then this showed up this morning. I’ve posted on all the local FB sites and hoping someone claims it before my kids do(plus my older cat doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t like anything) We really are a zoo here.

I think it’s great news! my maternal family has just weird reactions with vaccines. For instance, I’ve had two chicken pox vaccines and still don’t have it when the titers are drawn(and was exposed multiple times as a child). I also don’t have measles titers despite fully vaccinated. One of my sisters and this cousin did not have rubella titers when pregnant despite full vaccines. I have to wonder if there are other vaccines that just didn’t work for us for some weird genetic reason. Its conjecture but interesting. No vaccine, including Covid, is 100%.

Everyplace has its pros and cons. I live in an extremely affordable area that has zero weather related incidents. We might get a foot of snow every two years in a storm but that’s it. However, if you want culture, it’s not here. I live here because we can afford it easily on what we make and we love the plentiful outdoors stuff. For culture stuff with my kids, I suck it up and drive.

She wasn’t two weeks after her last dose when she got sick, so we assume she wasn’t fully covered. It’s also confirmed she got the delta variant.

She is at the large city hospital now being evaluated for possible liver failure. The pneumonia and breathing issues were clearing up but then she turned yellow, so they’ve sent her two and a half hours away for more evaluation. Im getting all of this third hand at this point, so I don’t know specifics. It’s such an odd illness. We’ve had multiple family members with underlying and even sever conditions who breezed through it and a couple extended family members who are young and healthy get very ill.

My plans for tomorrow is to drop DS11 with a friend for a picnic and send the younger two to church, then my husband and I are going to spend a few hours on the lake just us. Then he goes to work for the night and we are going to skip fireworks and go to bed early because DD8 and DS6 leave for camp. Its boring but I love it. 😂

Tonight at dinner; DH: We’re really getting a third dog? Me: Um, yes. DH: I bought a Roomba today for the new house just for the dog hair. Even though I don’t know how much more dog hair we could possibly clean up every day. 😂. So I get a puppy and a Roomba.

It’s the lighting. The older one, who’s 8 now, is dark coated and the younger young, age 2, is mediumish. The lighting in that room is terrible. I am honestly not a dog person, but I truly love goldens. When my oldest son was 4, he had a sleepwalking problem. Before we realized what was going on, he went outside one night in just his pajamas into the snow. It was freezing cold. My oldest dog, now gone, came upstairs and woke us up. The middle dog that you see there was just a puppy but she followed him out and cuddled him to keep him warm(he lay down in the snow because he truly was not awake at all). We found him quickly because Riley had woken us up and led us out to the door(I thought he had an emergency bathroom issue) where we found Zoe already outside and curled around our son in the snow. After that I decided I love golden retrievers.

I honestly don’t think DH will be too unhappy once she actually comes home. 😂😂 He wasn’t crazy about getting either one of these either but here we are.

She had four unclaimed so I let my kids choose one. It’s our fourth golden(one is deceased) and both parents are extremely well tempered so I wasn’t overly worried about temperament. My kids wanted a light colored golden as we have one dark and one medium lol.

Two weeks. She won’t come home till August. A friend had an accidental litter of purebred goldens(her vet told her that her male was too young to impregnate her female and not to worry about it yet….nope….he’s fixed now) and Rio is from that litter. So we get to visit her often. 🙂

Meet Princess Rio(my kids came up with the name lol) of my Zoo. DH still isn’t thrilled, but he’ll survive.

Derick has indicated that he is writing a book, per his IG comments. His hatred of Jim Bob is palpable and I don’t know if it will be an actual tell all book vs 200 pages of JB bashing. Amy, the cousin Duggar, has been posting on social media asking if anyone can help her get out of her NDA.

Gently—there’s anxiety and then there’s your body and mind trying to alert you that this situation isn’t the best for your family. Five beers a night is not a small amount. Living in a camper is not the easiest. Living 45-60 minutes away from everything is very difficult once your kids are teenagers, especially if they are homeschooled(I was a homeschooled teen in the country 45 minutes away from my friends and all our activities. My mom has frequently said she would not do that again). Honestly, I think you’re reacting normally to some red flags. None of them may be deal breakers, but your “anxiety” may be your instinct trying to tell your something.

Update: she is still on bipap and her sats are low but stable. Sequencing has confirmed she has the delta variant.

We’re moving from around 2300 square feet to 1600(though the new house has a full basement and closets; we currently don’t have a basement at all and just two closets we’ve built since moving in). I am ruthlessly getting rid of things. I’ve also given up on free cycle and things like that because no one ever shows up. There’s a little guilt throwing things that still work fine, but I’m not taking much with me and I have to just let go.