DS is home from his summer program; we have a big family event this weekend and after that it's game on. Yikes.

We did Middle Eastern history as a half-year 0.5 credit class. The GPS program includes suggestions for supplemental reading, and one of my kids did most of those. We also added in quite a bit of Israeli history, for both kids, and they each did an independent research paper on a topic of their choice as their final project.

How wonderful!!! Congratulations!!! They are adorable.

What grade is your daughter? Our board's own Farrar designed a wonderful history/English program that includes a unit on the Middle East. I've used it as a jumping-off point to build a Middle Eastern history course with two different kids. It's more than worth the $25, IMO.

We stopped at a Buc-ees on a recent road trip and wow! Rows and rows of toilet stalls, each one with a door that goes all the way to the ground. Two thumbs up! Many years ago when I lived in a small rural town in Japan, the nearest bus station had just one mixed-gender public bathroom. Urinals in the front and stalls in the back, so women had to walk past a whole row of men using the urinals to get to the stalls. Today I couldn't care less but as a young woman I found it awkward. This was a pretty old-fashioned setup even thirty years ago; I can't imagine it still exists.

I did various versions of intermittent fasting for a number of years. I found it quite helpful for weight loss/control but unhelpful for my personality. i am just not as good a mom when I'm fasting. I finally decided not to try it again until my kids are out of the house. In the meantime, I am focusing on limiting carbohydrates.

I think that the song, and especially the video, are a cynical ploy for relevance from an aging star. Jason Aldean -- who is still a huge star but not nearly as hot as he once was -- has been undoubtedly watching the much younger Morgan Wallen rocketing up the country charts with hit after hit. And Aldean and his managers decided that what his own career needed was some "anti-woke" energy. (And they might have been right, sadly.)

Agreed.

Like, spiral notebooks for use at school?

I need to buy three smallish (about $15 each) gifts for teen girls whom I don't know very well -- two of them are 16 and one is 14. Any ideas? My three teen sons are of no help.

I am mostly finished with my transcript and course descriptions. I'm going to try to crank out a draft of the school profile this week. And I guess I have to finally tackle the Common App? DS made an account a while ago but I haven't even looked at the site. DS gets home from his summer program in 2 weeks, then a week later we have a major family event, and then we start school immediately after. It is going to be a busy fall.

I have ClassPass and have been to lots of different Cyclebars over the years. It's a fun, efficient workout, IMO, and I like that it's pretty consistent across locations so I know what to expect if I'm traveling. The teachers and staff are generally very friendly and enthusiastic, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily social. Most people, including myself, are in and out. I almost always go to an early morning (6am) class, which tend not to be very crowded to begin with, and certainly nobody is there at that hour to chit chat. Spinning is somewhat past its fitness fashion heyday, and the scene is a lot more varied than it used to be. I am almost always the oldest person in the room, but there's a much wider range of fitness levels and body types at your average spin class than there was in, say, 2003. The bikes are very adjustable and you can do the workout at whatever level you want. The music is definitely loud -- there are always earplugs at the front desk, and I'd recommend snagging a pair just in case. I have my own shoes but they will lend them to you. Bring a water bottle, no need to bring a towel. If you find competition motivating (I do!) there is a "leaderboard" up front that shows everyone's stats a few times during the workout, but it's easy to opt out of that when you check in. Oh, and be aware that for the first couple of times, your rear end will likely be sore the next day. Cyclebar also runs sales all the time; you can expect to get offers over email after visiting a studio.

In the show Rough Diamonds (Netflix) the characters speak in Yiddish, English, Flemish, and French, with a little (Ashkenazi-pronounced) liturgical Hebrew sprinkled in. It's one of the most interesting aspects of the show.

We are also in TN. DH tells me that he requested our new tags online and that there was a box to check if you wanted the Christian ones. He got the ordinary plates, there was no charge, and we received them in the mail.

My son attended a summer program at the Yiddish Book Center last year -- they have some resources for learning Yiddish. Yiddish is closely related to German, albeit written in Hebrew letters. So it's more unlike English than German is, but there are a lot of foreign languages that are much more dissimilar to English. I agree with Freya that learning a language without exposure opportunities is hard. Most of the people I know who speak Yiddish either have Yiddish-speaking family or are intensely interested in prewar Eastern European/American Jewish culture. The Yiddish Book Center that I linked also has lots of examples of Yiddish poetry, literature, etc; your DD may want to poke around and see if that subject matter interests her at all.

I would write a card or letter about the memories that you have of her husband.

That's not nothing! My DS wrote a draft of a Common App essay before he left for a 6-week summer program, but I strongly suspect that once he comes back he is going to want to trash it and start over. This fall is going to be crazypants busy so I am trying to get at least my transcript, course descriptions, and school profile done within the next few weeks, but it is taking me forever and a day. i didn't quite realize that writing out the course descriptions over the summer would mean that I would need to have ALL the school planning done first. How bizarre.

I listened to a fabulous podcast on this topic.

Ready, set, go! Why are these course descriptions taking me so long to write? Am I going to feel like I'm about to cry for the entire year? And how on earth are we here already?

Who was that early homeschooling advocate who said that the way to think about this sort of situation isn't "quitting," but "graduating"? (I vaguely recollect he lived maybe in Vermont? Somewhere up there? I think he had two sons? Possibly William something?) Anyway, I no longer own his book, whatever it was titled, but I do remember his description of setting up a "graduation concert" when one of his teenage sons decided to be done with piano lessons. It struck me as a wonderful idea.

I don't think anyone -- including your colleague -- actually believes that change is always good. "Change is always good"(or what I'm guessing is the American version, "Change is good!") is the sort of thing people say to convey that they are trying to be open-minded about a potential change over which they have no control.

I enthusiastically recommend Robert Alter's new translation of the Hebrew Bible. It is an entirely literary/secular translation and interpretation, and it is phenomenal. thetorah.com also features a remarkable collection of modern biblical scholarship. Here is an article on child sacrifice in biblical time.

FWIW, I think that American history is one of the easier classes to do at home. We did APUSH at home, which sounds like overkill in your situation, but IMO the APUSH framework is a very solid approach for a high school American history course, and there are loads of materials available. We used The American Yawp as a spine, which is very usable and includes all sorts of free supplemental resources, including a collection of primary sources.

Apparently the realtor picked up the cost of the staging. My friend paid to refinish the floors, paint the kitchen cabinets, and spruce up the outside of the house. Her DH hates to spend money and was very resistant to spending anything at all, but that house has some serious drawbacks and they needed it to sell fast and for as much as possible, as they want to buy a new house in the higher COL area to which they have moved. It sold within 3-4 weeks. Of course there's no knowing how much the staging and sprucing helped, but it all sure made the house look a lot bigger and brighter.

Do you like the sort of furniture that works for staging? I would never buy a light gray (or beige, or cream) couch so I would expect to rent what was needed to sell the house, and then later purchase what I actually want to live with. But if you like neutrals, perhaps it makes sense to just buy what is needed to stage. My friend recently sold her house and I could not believe how different it looked after it was staged.