[speaking of lousy tv shows....the new Muppets? WDYT?]

I like it, but I was never into the old muppets.

[spell check for the boards...]

It's part of your browser. It probably just needs turning on.  If you google spellchecker and your browser you should find some directions to get it working again. I have a plugin that can be turned off for specific sites because it plays up, maybe the one you use has got switched off for some sites. 

[Australian History? Other history? Something like Galore Park History for Common Entrance?]

There's a series called Fair Dinkum Histories. They're like Horrible histories. I haven't actually seen them but might be worth investigating. 

[Usborne books - am I missing something?]

I like some of them. Mostly the encyclopedias. I really hate that they republish the same content (exact same pages) in multiple books though. We've ended up with books that all have the same content even though they are different titles. 

[celery tastes like cinnamon? I've read that cilantro tastes like soap]

I love coriander (leaf and seed), it's clean and bright, kind of citrusy and a bit addictive. I did get a bit of the coriander hate when I was pregnant though, we had some growing in our garden at the time too and could smell it everywhere and it totally disgusted me. 

[celery tastes like cinnamon? I've read that cilantro tastes like soap]

I dislike cinnamon but love celery and don't think they taste alike at all. I think celery is more nutty, kind of like an almondy/liquorice flavour. 

[balancing your needs with family's needs]

I'm at a point of desperation with this, so burned out. I still have no idea how to really make it work. I personally find SAHM and home education pretty boring, it's just an endless slog. I've always had a lot more to give my kids when I'm more mentally challenged and engaged in other things, but actually getting the time and money to really give to interests and self-care is hard. Part of the problem for me is that I've got to a point where I can't concentrate and am really run down because I need to recharge both mentally and physically and I've not had the opportunity in years. My kids are 11 & 7. The 7 yr old is very intense and somewhat difficult personality so it makes me quite anxious to leave him with others and my mum won't look after him anymore. My dh works away from home is only home about 4-6 days a month and in practice they're a lot of half days. It's hard when there's no obvious extra resources to make things easier. 

[Sewing people, can you please help?]

There's also creativebug.com which seems to similar courses but is a subscription site.

[Sewing people, can you please help?]

Craftsy has a load of online sewing classes including pattern making. I've only used it for one class but they looked really good. 

[In what context it is polite to talk about politics?]

I think only with close family and close friends. And only if you want to discuss but not steamroller people. I have a friend who can only talk about that kind of thing in a superior manner, so many people hate him because of it as he turns nearly all social interactions into heated situations and leaves people feeling bad.  

[Do you make a really good macaroni and cheese from scratch?]

I make a white sauce and add 1 tsp of English mustard and mature cheddar. stir in wholemeal pasta and bake it. I've never had instant type macaroni cheese though so I don't know how it compares, it's not a popular dish here (UK) in the same way though. 

[Sewing people, can you please help?]

I have a vintage Singer Starlett, it was made in the late 1960s and works absolutely flawlessly. I love it. There are loads of really nice vintage machines around and they are really good value, you can often buy them freshly service for relatively little money. I was looking at an old Husquavarna the other week as I could do with extra stitches, you get so much machine for your money with old machines. 

 

My experience of modern Singer machines has been pretty negative. I wouldn't buy a modern singer. I had Janome Overlocker that was great. 

[Your morning cat chore life - for those with cats of course!]

My cats are all on different schedules. The most annoying one is the nocturnal cat who eats at night, and will wake me up 2-3 times to be fed, she's an outdoor cat and will wake me up to show me her latest catch that's dripping blood all over the hall floor and usually missing its head. She'll also wake me up for a 30-second snuggle session when she fancies it before going back outside. She's loving but very independent, not a lap cat, occasionally she'll sleep between my feet for a couple of hours. In the daytime, she normally comes in at about 10 am and then sleeps until between 3pm-5pm. The kitten and 16yr old are a bit easier they're happier fed morning and evening plus a few extra small meals for the kitten but mostly in daylight hours. The 16yr old has the odd day he wants food at night but not often.

[Taking husband's surname upon marriage?]

I think it's odd that women who focus on the 'not taking a man's name' aspect of things never stop to think that they are saddled with their father's name. In my case that was relevant to my decision, as I figured I'd rather have the name of a man I chose than one who I didn't and who let me down repeatedly. As I child of a remarried mother I also wanted us all to share the same family name.

 

I did stop to think and personally would rather not have my father's surname either, but just taking my husband's name doesn't cure the problem that we're all named in relation to men, it's just continuing the tradition. I have two friends who have created entirely new names, one just the surname and one her full name, both to disassociate from extremely abusive families and really hard stages of their lives. Their new surnames have a strong and important meaning to them. I personally can't think of anything I really want as a surname which stops me doing it and I don't come from a family I really want to leave behind in the same way.

[Taking husband's surname upon marriage?]

I never changed my name and it mostly is because I can't see why I should have to. I personally hate that the norm was for women's titles and names to change in relation to marital status, it makes me angry. Amongst my friends it's really mixed, some do, some don't. I am unlikely to answer if someone was to say Mrs husbands surname, it's not me and I don't associate it with myself. The only people who ever do use it are elderly relatives and only in writing usually. They do it because it's the norm to them. Our kids have my husbands surname because it's a nice name and double barrel with mine is pretty awkward. Where I live is pretty informal and people just tend to use your first name or full name but no title. Using the title seems really old-fashioned to my ears.

[Kitten Food]

If the food is high quality then a lot of the difference is just the size of it or how small the meat is. We have a kitten at the moment as well as 1 and 16 yr old cats. The kitten has a several meals a day separately but also pinches the other cats food and I don't worry about it if she is eating well because I know the food is good quality.  There is more of a difference with the lower quality food though, they have extras added to the kitten food. 

[Talk to me about Developmental Coordination Disorder]

Dyspraxia (and SPD & hypermobility) run in my family. My brother is the most severely affected. He struggles with motor skills, maths, things like telling the time, reading a timetable etc, his handwriting is dreadful and he is just generally poor at organising himself. He was undiagnosed until his early 20s, he was repeatedly tested for dyslexia, we're old enough that I guess it wasn't that commonly known about. He has found that he's got better at certain things in his late twenties and thirties. He struggled to get started in the world of work, started and dropped out of uni and floundered for a bit, but then found a job in his favourite field (IT) and has done really well. He's been promoted lots of times and is training other people. He actually outscored the tutor in some in-house training recently, the tutor was miffed about that and I'm not sure why she told him. I think it's really important to exploit the things you are good at and see where it can go. My brother might have done better earlier if he'd had more of a vocationally based training, rather than an academically minded one. He never had issues making friends and has a tight friendship group from school even now in his 30s.

 

I have dyspraxia too but it affects me mostly in gross motor skills, it took me 6 yrs to learn to drive and I'm very clumsy. I do OK academically except maths. I was always someone who did well enough to not be noticeable but never really excelled. It was a shame because I love maths and physics but my need for help was never recognised. I am quite untidy and my mum puts this down to the dyspraxia. There's some stuff that I just don't understand, like things that have a directionality, such as switches.

 

My daughter is similar to my brother but with the benefit of recognition for a long time. She was late to walk, run and jump. One of the best things we did was get a wobble board and balance beam at home when she was about 4. It only took a few weeks of daily use to see a noticeable change and her balance is pretty good now, way better than mine. She can ride a bike/2 wheeled scooter but it's taking her longer than is normal to learn to roller blade. Her maths is really bad but she is strong in language arts areas so we are finding Memorise in Minutes useful for times tables (which is little stories). 

 

My personal experience of trying to teach someone with dyspraxia is that it's really hard for them to pick up things just by watching someone. They don't automatically have the ability to figure out how they make their body do what others are doing. I've learned to always say exactly what I want her to do, not show it or expect it to be copied automatically. It includes where exactly yu place your body, how it feels (like tension or weight of your body) where your body parts are in relation to other parts etc. My daughter really struggled at her gymnastics sessions because they just expected her to copy them rather than telling her how to do it (we didn't go long).

 

All of us in my family with dyspraxia are great with computers, they just make sense and I personally think it adds to my creativity as I  tend to think & problem solve in a slightly odd way that often has benefits. 

[S/o what brands are worth it?]

Land's end. I like the quality of the fabric. I just wish they sold the biggest kids size in the Uk, for some reason they don't.

[Has anyone seen the spam on the General Education board? Pages and pages.]

It's more like an attack to make the boards unusable than the normal spam.

[Do you own a cookie jar(s)?]

We don't at the moment but have done in the past. They don't last very long though, they usually get broken or bent (if they are metal).

[OT: question for British families]

As a New Yorker, that surprises me. Here it's illegal to sell realistic toy guns, and it's illegal to modify a real gun to look like a toy. I just kinda assumed that was the case in most places!

The toy ones usually have a coloured bit on the end. Not sure if that's a legal requirement but they do have something identifying them as not real. 

[OT: question for British families]

Nerf are fine, you'll see them all over the place. Maybe not as a toy you play with in the park or out in the street but definitely a normal kid toy at home. Water guns of that style are normal too.

 

I personally dislike realistic looking toy guns and most of my friends do too, that'd probably be more of an issue if you are thinking about kids sharing toys with other kids. 

[Charged for not attending a wedding reception]

I do think it's quite strange to bill someone for not turning up. There was a similar thing here recently when a family billed another family for not attending a birthday party. People failing to turn up is just a realistic part of running an event and I agree that you should be able to afford the full costs of the event for all the people you invite, it's not like it the cost for pre-planned things is generally any different for those running it whether they eat the meal or not.

 

Not exactly the same but I had an experience of not being able to attend a wedding when a friend got married, the final decision not to come was fairly last minute (day before) but the bride knew the overarching situation, she was just unsympathetic. Sometimes the rules and expectations seem to go against the sentiment of a wedding. In our case, I was pregnant and my daughter was born nearly 2 weeks after my due date and had feeding issues which made her much younger and less leavable than I had planned for on the date of the wedding. My original plan was to leave my slightly older baby with my husband for a few hours and go alone. The wedding was no kids so in the bride's eyes taking my newborn was unacceptable. I saw her once after that but not had any contact since, it can be a relationship destroyer.

[If you were my 2.5 yo, where would you hide... *FOUND!*]

In pots, pans and tupperware? I once found a ton of plastic dinosaurs in the spare pot for my yogurt maker. They must have been there a couple of years.

[Dr. Hive - zero weight gain]

My brother was like this, tall and extremely skinny. He has began to get into a normal weight range now in his 30s but only just. He has zero health problems.

 

My mum was the same and my kids tend this way but my eldest is getting a bit less skinny now puberty has hit. It's still hard to get clothes that fit well though because she's so long limbed and not big around. She doesn't look super thin any more though. My youngest is very thin but short so it looks less out of proportion.