Well, yes, but (1) hotter, and (2) twice as many pieces to have to shop for and wear and (3) sometimes you just want a dress.

Dresses are stupid. That's the only explanation. I'm not sure when they got stupid, but some time between now and the last time I shopped for a non-work dress. A fellow mom of a graduating senior and I have discussed this ad nauseam, and she recommended this one. She got 3. It doesn't do anything for me, but so many people seem to love it. I bought a linen dress from Banana Republic (in black) and wore it to college graduation this weekend with a pair of espadrille wedge sandals. It was fine. Temps on graduation day were over 100, and I walked a good bit and was not ridiculously hot. I've ordered and returned 3 from Boden and a couple from Nordstrom; all were laughable. I'm seeing friends on social media posting pics at their own kids' graduations, and it is clear that most just gave up and wore a ridiculous dress (with an expression that clearly means "I know I look silly," or went with pants and a cute top. Good luck.

It was shocking to me how dirty everything ELSE got. Me, my car, the house, the fence. The driveway, however, sparkles.

I had no idea. My own PSA from the weekend: if you are a novice pressure washer, you may not realize that pressure washing a driveway is not something one should do wearing flip-flops. While readjusting the wand, it is possible to swipe it very close to the top of your foot and GIVE YOURSELF A PUNCTURE WOUND from the water. And it will bleed and hurt and you will nearly pass out and, worst of all, feel really stupid.

I only have 2 uppers, and my dentist advised me to have them removed at every single appointment for 20 years. I never had a day that I didn't have something better to do than have elective, painful, expensive dental work done, so I didn't. And then I was 50 and suddenly had a very sharp pain in one of them. I was in the dentist's the next day, and he gave me 3 oral surgeons' names. I got an appointment for the next day with the only 1 who called me back. Drove myself (alone) to the appointment, got local anesthesia only, he wiggled around and I said "that's it?" Drove myself home, stopping at Starbucks on the way. No pain, no drama. Cheap. Procrastination was the answer for me.

Agree on Land Girls. I've tried repeatedly.

Please don't tell me that the cape Poldark wears to gallop along the sea cliffs, that streams dramatically behind him, was not period perfect.

One of the very first things I streamed and loved, but it reminded me of some other picks from that era: Bomb Girls (Canadian women working in a bomb factory during WW II); The Bletchley Circle (code breakers during WW II; 2 short seasons of 3 or 4 episodes each) and Jamberry (British home front during WW II; only 1 season; I had to read one of the novels on which it was based to find out what happened to everyone).

How about revisiting old mini series? The Thorn Birds and War and Remembrance are all that come to mind now, but surely there were others.

You've probably seen or rejected already the Americans, but it has something like 8 seasons. Russian spies living as Americans during the 80s. There is violence, but mostly to characters who have it coming. Mostly. Not to children or animals. Longmire, a series about a modern-day sheriff in a small town in Wyoming. Minimal violence, considering, but some. One of my favorites. White Collar, about a white collar criminal (a forger) who teams up with an FBI agent. Quite entertaining. Funny. Blue Bloods. Tom Selleck as the NYPD captain. His whole family is involved in law enforcement. The series jumps the shark a bit as the seasons wear on, but the first 6'ish are very good. I second the recommendation for Poldark. It is worth it for the scenery alone.

Oh you're correct. I thought you were the one being asked what "making a promposal" meant.

Not Ksera here, but "make a promposal" means to make the prop that goes with it, e.g., a poster, a bucket of chicken wings + a poster with a punny caption about wings, a Squishmallow dinosaur with a poster about helping save the promasaurus from extinction, that kind of thing. It is very common for sibling, moms, friends, friend's girlfriend, etc. to help implement a promposal. The young man does the asking, but he likely does so bearing a prop that was a more collaborative effort.

Oofos. One caveat is that they are not good for wet conditions--the shoes are slippery when wet. Also, all reviewers say to size up if you are a half-size. I size down to a 7 from my normal 7.5.

I went through On Guard by William Lane Craig with two of mine, and they found it very helpful. I personally would not use Screwtape; I'm not sure she would have the life knowledge to appreciate its message.

I am angry for you, but surely this is not surprising any more. Obviously any restriction on individual liberty is permissible if it is characterized as a public safety measure. There is not even a requirement to prove any connection between public safety and the restriction.

A pain management doctor my daughter saw after nerve damage in surgery suggested, among other things, a couple of OTC supplements: alpha lipoic acid (600 mg) and acetyl-l-carnitine. I ordered them both from Amazon. I do not know if they helped.

I had the same reaction Danae had to your snarky comments about mints (a sub-par snack? you know a ton of ladies reading this comment had these mints, and possibly not much else, at their own own church basement receptions), but this comment really describes the tone of most of this thread. The bride and groom are damned if they do, damned if they don't. If they want a destination wedding? How selfish! If they want mints and punch in the church basement? How tacky! Some of y'all just need to stay out of other people's business. If you can't find it in your heart to be a joyful witness to the joining of two lives because the venue/dress/caterer/bar/pre-wedding celebration is not what you would have picked, please do the couple a favor and promptly decline your invitation.

Google Sever's Disease and see if that matches. The 12 yo is the right age for it. Girl gymnasts tend to get it at 11. The treatment is (at least used to be) something called a Tuli cheetah, essentially a heel cup. The cheetah means it is on a sock of sorts so you can wear it barefoot (important for gymnasts, of course), but it can also be used to hold the cup in place when he is wearing flip-flops, crocs or barefoot around the house. If it is Sever's, it will go away eventually, but the Tuli can let him keep running.

We have lots of Gray Owl (color matched by SW) in our house, and we once painted a flip house entirely in Gray Owl. It is a fabulous color. You could always paint a horizontal stripe in their purple or whatever to jazz it up.

We are working on a house plan as we speak that would be a good bit bigger than the traditional 4/3 in which we reared our children. We want everyone to be able to come home and have space in our house. We have 3 actual kids and 2 long-term exchange students that I think of as my kids and I hope will keep in touch and come back with their eventual families. The new home is probably 5 years from completion, but it should be at least that long before we have kids and grands willing to make the trek to visit us. This is irrelevant to the space question, but my bio kids are white, but my son is dating a Black girl; my middle daughter is Chinese (we joke that she is the whitest of all my kids); my two exchange students are Latino. I cannot wait to see the many hues of in-laws and grandbabies gathered around my finally big-enough Christmas tree.

My daughter (the one whose two quarter-sized spots at age 3 made me panic) also had eczema. That eventually resolved, but she still has super-sensitive skin. Did you know a millipede bite can cause your entire forearm to swell up? Yeah, neither did anyone else at urgent care. Ant bites produce red streaks that look like (and have been mistaken as, by ERs--twice) cellulitis. Mosquito bites not treated immediately swell, weep and scar. Lord help us all if she ever comes into contact with poison oak. OP, I truly hope this is a one-time thing. I just remember being in your shoes 18 years ago, googling and seeing only the worst outcomes. The fact that worse things can happen to your kid is completely irrelevant.

When my now-21 yo was about 3, her babysitter called me to tell me she'd been brushing her hair and a patch the size of a quarter fell out. I left work immediately, went home to see it (and found another one, also quarter-sized) and called the pediatrician begging for a same-day appointment. Shockingly, the front office did not quite see it as the emergency that I did. It is funny now, but it was very much NOT funny at the time. We adopted her from China at 15 months, and she came to us with a host of issues that did not faze me. Attachment? Got it. Rickets? Yep. Multiple cleft repair surgeries? NBD. Positive TB test? Bring it on. But this was HAIR! Hair is important! The dermatologist diagnosed alopecia, offered no treatment options and dismissed my thoughts, which was that it was due to some medication she was on. I took her off of the medication, it resolved and has never returned. All that to say that I completely understand your concern. And also, is the girl on any kind of medication that could contribute?

My perimeter cabinets are solid black countertops on black-stained cabinets, and I like it, so I wouldn't rule out solid black. But, my island is huge (same cabinets) with a walnut countertop, and I love love love my island top. We flipped a house once and put a sapele mahogany countertop on the island with basic granite on the perimeter. I lucked out on Craigslist and found the countertop, which exactly matched my island's dimensions, for about $300. A guy bought it from the cabinet shop where he worked intending to make it into a table. Anyway--the island top was the most-loved feature in the house and looked good with the perimeter cabs. So, I vote for solid black or wood.

We also had the Container Store design an Elfa closet for our small'ish walk-in. Every day since, I've thought, "This was worth the money." You send them closet measurements via email, and they work with you to draw up a design that meets your needs. At the end, they spit out an order list, and you can have their installer do it (we did), or you can pick it up and do it yourself.

Probably not for nutrition, but they will taste better. I bought eggs from my "egg lady" for years before getting my own chickens. We did blind taste tests of her eggs versus the top-of-the-line eggs from my grocery store, and everyone in the family could easily taste the difference. I recently fed a visiting student from Central America (I have 2 CA high school boys who live with me; it was one of their friends) some scrambled eggs from my chickens, and he declared them the best eggs he'd had since he'd been in the U.S. He's been here since August, so that was pretty good. ETA: Even now, when I am running low on my girls' eggs, I use cheap grocery store eggs in things where taste doesn't matter (meatballs, for instance) and reserve my girls' eggs for things where it does. You can taste the difference even in baked goods that have a lot of eggs, like pound cake.