The bus is more a good thing to have as a backup option / last resort than a deliberate plan - but I'd just say, on the whole, 30k people use the bus every day in New Orleans.

Yes, the child support is generally assumed to cover half of normal living expenses, like daily food, clothing, lunch money, etc. medical, dental, sometimes activities (sports classes or whatever), childcare, etc are often split 50/50 because child support amounts don't take that into account. Heart, it's possible, though, that while the child support is mandated and court-enforced, the other stuff is easier to say "I can't pay this right now but I'll repay it once my job starts" - it's sort of a different category of things. Your lawyer would know. Just in case your car situation doesn't work out well, you might check for apartments nearer work or on the bus line. Since your job starts in a few weeks, it might help to ask prospective apartments what they'll accept as proof of income - explain your situation and see if they're willing to take the job offer instead of paystubs, etc. that way when it comes time to move you'll have an idea of which places are available to you.

Your reasons for not wanting to do the Minnesota trip are valid and rational and justified. But again, you don't need to have good reasons, and you don't need to convince him that you're justified in not wanting to go. You can just not want to go, and so you don't go. If he can't respect that very simple boundary - you don't do this thing you really don't want to do - then you're not in an equitable marriage.

You don't need to have reasons to want to skip the Minnesota trip. You can just not want to go, and that's enough. If your husband really thinks it's important for him and the kids to go, they can go! And since you don't want to go, you can stay. If your husband can't accept your not wanting to go on a vacation, and is willing to ignore your stated desire and insist you go with them, that's a really serious marriage problem.

That's absolutely fantastic news, heart. So you have a job! A 1-bed apartment should be a lot easier to find in your price range. You're doing great! Are you using Zillow to look for potential apartments? I've had good success with it in the past, and they also have a thing where you submit a credit check/app through Zillow and then if the landlord takes it, which many do, you don't have to do separate application fees.

I want to paint my whole house pink SO BADLY. I think it was blsdmama who had a sort of coral/salmon homeschool room and I've been thinking about it since then

You could continue the blue, or a lighter version of it, in the hallway, or you could move a shade warmer from the creamy yellow into like a peach situation. Like this

Like this?

And fwiw I hear you on the difficulty of this process. I had a very similar situation and had to return to the home briefly (thankfully not to live), and it was really really hard. Having family there helped, although I was kind of annoyed by it at the time. It was grounding, sort of. If you have someone like that who can do this with you, I wouldn't hesitate to ask them. This period will pass and your life will calm down, but right now is when you lean on anyone you can.

I think the creamy yellow would be great with the royal blue cabinets.

You're not going off the deep end. You're having a PTSD response. It will pass, but it might take some time. You're still seeing a therapist, right? Make sure you mention how triggered you've been by this moving process; you may need some extra support during this time, of various types. But you're not going crazy; you're not developing bipolar; you're not having delusions. You're just very very escalated in your PTSD, and your anxiety is high. It will be okay. On the paint colors, honestly, I don't think they need to "flow" or have matching undertones, or whatever. I think that's a bourgeois American suburban thing. I just think they need to be colors that you look at and are comfortable with, and then do go a shade lighter than your first guess. Well done getting paint up in the bedroom! That was fast, and you just went and did it. For me, a light neutral (not white but close, in any direction) does great with kid art, because kid art tends toward brights. But I hear you on wanting some color. What's your favorite color normally? Or you can type "kitchen blue cabinets" into Google image search, scroll until you like a wall color, and go with that. I really like Google image search.

Is there any way to split the difference here? Is there a way to transition to a more fulfilling or less stressful area of law?

I can understand where Wendyroo is coming from; I've never been in a situation where I had several very small children who all needed frequent medical appointments (or therapy appointments, which can last much longer), and no possibility of scheduling the appointment when I had childcare. I suppose if I had say a 5 year old, a 3 year old, a small toddler, and a newborn, and I had to take all four of these kids two or three times a week (even once a week) to 30 minute long appointments in a place where there was no childcare, and I couldn't get family or hired help to care for the other kids during the appointment time, and I knew this was going to be the case for years and years on end, I also would try to find a way to make that work, and wendyroo's way doesn't seem like the worst. But it's an extreme case, I think. Other than that very specific scenario, I don't know how necessary any type of blanket training ever is. As far as training a newborn not to wiggle off a table during diaper changes - I dunno, man, I've changed thousands and thousands of diapers and never once used a table. I put the pad on the floor, or on a bed (if I have a bigger pad and I'm feeling fancy). What is the purpose of a changing table? It seems like it causes more problems than it solves. You can't wiggle off a floor.

I also use the word hit when I mean hit (when other people might say spank, or smack, or pop) - because it is, straightforwardly, hitting. I've had people say, "I didn't hit him, I spanked him!" which just sounds insane to me.

No, people in that thread were also really upset at the idea of making a kid leave a phone in their backpack (next to their desk) or in a certain place in the room. The reasoning given (by lots of people! and pretty vociferously) was that because of school shootings, kids needed to be allowed to have their phones in their pockets at all times. We can go back to that thread and ask about collecting everyone's phone in a basket - I don't think people are going to be okay with it. I just think it's a very interesting difference.

This thread has a remarkably different general tone than the thread about making kids put phones away in public school

$57 is really really cheap for the work done 🙂 I can't get my car looked at in the shop, much less driven the time it would take to use even 1/4 tank of gas, for less than a couple hundred. Sometimes with older cars you just wait and hope the issue doesn't get worse too fast. If it's still running, and not smoking or clanking loudly, etc., you count your lucky stars and keep on driving.

Awesome!

Ouch, a 52 minute commute is super long. I know, the fan doesn't lower the temperature, it just makes sweat evaporate easier (or something like that? I know it feels cooler for me when I'm keeping the thermostat higher in the worst part of the summer to save the air conditioner). Hopefully once you know what you'll have, you can find something closer to whichever one you end up taking. 84 degrees at night I could live with; an hour commute sounds *miserable*.

If you start work soon, you also might not be there during the heat of the day. At that point, once you have regular income, maybe you could offer $50 extra/month if they'll let you put in a small room-size air conditioner? Or you could do what we did when I was a kid in the south with no A/C: spend the hot part of the day in public places with air conditioning and sleep with a box fan.

Online classes? I know our local community college (yours might be different) offers several fully online associates degrees, and many others that are mostly online with just one or two classes (for the entire degree) in person, generally practicals for healthcare or other professional degrees. Graphic design might not be an option, but anything helps, and since it's free, you might as well.

Free tuition is a very big deal. You can get a variety of different very useful degrees from a community college; get a practical, well-researched degree and you could have much better job security in 3-4 years.

She probably isn't allowed to give you legal advice (which the "will they care" question asked for, essentially). You could probably contact the prosecutor/court and ask, though. Alternatively, you could call a local traffic violation attorney for a free consult to see what the cost would be to have them negotiate on your behalf - it can save money. Depending on your car insurance, it might be worth it to take the class even though it doesn't eliminate the fine. $10 is a lot cheaper than an extra $15 a month for the next couple of years, kwim? There should be an online class option.

It's frustrating, but just being able to pay the room rental plus all of your bills without going farther into debt is a good start; it's definitely better than adding to debt. Plus, if you manage to scrimp and save for six months or a year, you might have a deposit/first month's rent saved by the time you do find a better job, so you'll be able to move into the $800/mo townhome (or a cheaper apartment, if you get off the waistlist for the income-restriced ones). It's been kind of a disastrous few months, but you're definitely moving in the right direction - room rental is cheaper than the hotel; job is definitely more than unemployment; paying down debt instead of adding to it, etc. At $15/hr, the $800/mo. townhome is just about 1/3 of income, which is often the requirement for approval, so that's good! It's a start. If it's debt that is causing the bills to be too high, have you considered filing for bankruptcy?

Google says that under Biden, transgender people must be placed in a population on a case-by-case basis, but also that something like 99.5% of transgender people are housed according to sex at birth or by current genitalia. So I would guess that if he hasn't had bottom surgery, he's very very likely to be housed in a female facility; even if he has had bottom surgery, he may be housed there.