Maybe thaw it first and then use a skillet?

When my dh was in the hospital for a serious emergency condition for three weeks, I stayed the entire time. But I had no kids and no job. It was a horrible experience. When he went to the hospital again for ten days, I had kids. He didn't like it at all, wanted me to be there all night and just go home for showers or whatever, but I told him I could not do that again. My family stayed with the kids, but I could not just vanish for ten days. Someone needed to be a parent. When I was hospitalized in several occasions, I told him to go home. Whenever he did stay anyway he kept me awake snoring! He was also in danger of generally being impatient about getting his things taken care of and possibly doing something to injure myself, but he is like that all the time anyway. And very mean on pain meds and in pain. So really I woulzd rather let the nurses deal with it. If he was truly in danger of dying and couldn't communicate what was going on then sure it would be different. But just your basic policy that someone is there all the time, no. eta I stayed most of every day at the hospital.

I agree with you. You could prevent a lot of the common criminal element, the ones who commit crimes out of rage against a specific person who get out of control and shoot them in a bar fight, for example. People who steal for drugs. People who rob banks and kill someone in the process. That's a whole different level of criminal than evil plotting to commit mass murder type situations. I so clearly remember this kid I worked with as a mental health counselor. I worked with many kids who committed crimes, but you could usually see the good child underneath the bravado. You felt sorry for them because of the home in which they grew up, abuse, other things like that. This one kid stole a car from a dealership and led the police on a high speed chase. He was in his mid teens. He had no remorse, would not even say what most kids know you are supposed to tell the therapist. And his mother said that the dealership shouldn't make stealing those cars so attractive to kids. I wanted to smack her! I mean seriously woman. She wouldn't even pretend to say the right thing either. I'm confident that kid is in prison somewhere today, if he's not dead. He was one of the kids who had inherent problems from early childhood although as I recall he WAS the bully, so he probably entered a life of crime in some other way. Clearly his parents didn't help him any though. The other mothers I worked with who had kids in trouble were sorry about it and blamed the kid, blamed the neighborhood, but I never heard someone say something like that mother.

I definitely agree with you. I used to work in the state mental health system where most people had Medicaid or were disabled from their mental illness and on Medicaid. I also worked as a designated examiner to determine whether or not people should be committed to hospitals. So I saw people who had access to services. I realize that there is an enormous population without access. I'm thinking about this current shooter in Florida, where I read that the police were called numerous times to his home, but they couldn't do anything. Someone was even concerned enough to call the FBI on him. I do not know all the details about it. He had been in foster care, so presumably he had Medicaid within the past year or so. When I talk about relaxing involuntary commitment laws to some sort of institution I'm talking about people like him: everyone knows there is something badly wrong, but because it's not bad enough yet, nothing can be done if he refuses treatment.

I agree. This issue has been happening for many years. Decades.

I agree. I think the laws about involuntary commitment of adults and children should be loosened though. Parents can commit their minor children with relatively less difficulty, but it's very hard to get services for older teens/ young adults if they refuse.

I found that you can buy replacement lids. So happy after repairing mine with masking tape!

I think the country is going to have to swing back towards putting more people in psychiatric hospitals. The community mental health movement was a great thing, but many people just don't cooperate with it. If the laws were changed around involuntary commitment to hospitals it might help get people some services. They changes would have to be carefully implemented to avoid reverting to the old way of hospitalizing people for the rest of their lives when they were just a bit odd or something. This will of course require more funding.

Yes, when I said evil I was thinking of the Ted Bundies of the world. There are plenty of antisocial personality disorder people out there that are just manipulators, adulterers, and successful corporate executives or whatever. Not murderers.

To me, one of the differences between conduct/antisocial/psychopath (don't think psychopath is an actual diagnosis) and autism is that people with autism don't understand social interactions. People with conduct et.al. Do have an understanding of it, they just don't care and will use that knowledge to further evil goals.

ETA obviously it isn't always true, and there are certainly some kids who have unusual features that are perfectly normal. It's not a beauty contest and certainly some of the most evil people in the world are physically very attractive. It's just something people who have worked in the field notice as a red flag for further investigation.

I agree, just looked at a picture of him. I used to work in the mental health/social work field and learned to recognize the FLK thing too. Often there would be something that wasn't just quite right, and you might not have been able to put a diagnosis on it right away, but there was some problem behaviorally that brought them to your attention, and then you started thinking there was more going on than a simple behavior problem. He has that look. ETA see below for edit I quoted myself somehow.

We stayed in an Air BNb in Italy and had to walk to the store every day. It was about two miles away, and it was fun, we were on vacation. We lived like Italians. But walking to the store daily to feed six people would get to be a major ordeal. If you had a small family, sure it would be great. Or if the store was on the way home from the metro stop or whatever. I would definitely walk if I could, but I live somewhat rural. Where we are moving it would be possible to walk to the store, three mins away by car, but it's along busy two lane rural roads with no sidewalks, so it's unsafe. Houses have grown up on what was farmland. Not developments, just single homes. And after I was bitten by a snake in my garden I'm scared to go wandering through the weeds the way I might have before. Definitely, no way to push a grocery carrying device. When we move, we will be within walking distance of the school, but again along the narrow busy roads. I'm thinking that if I put my kids in school I might drive to a nearby road, then walk a very short distance along the road to the school to avoid the dreaded carpool line. As others have said, no one is making me walk. Where we live nothing was really planned. It was all cow pastures twenty years ago, and it's not in city limits. ETA as I type I'm on e elliptical trainer so I'm getting my exercise! And I grew up in a family where slothfulness was greatly frowned upon and you had to eat your vegetables. No one was a couch potato. Dh family was quite the opposite and his family has health problems to prove it. Dh is trying to do better.

Start with the little ones' toys. They have a beautiful ability to not notice when something disappears. Then become ruthless about making the big ones pick up behind themselves, and also help pick up behind the ones too little to do so. Something that consistently makes a mess disappears.

We would get ahead in one thing, and behind in another, and then the folders would be a mess. I loved the concept though. I printed things off and put them by subject in three ring binder, so I could take out what I needed individually by week. That worked much better for me.

This walking to the grocery store thing: how am I supposed to get my $300 of groceries back home if I walk there?

One thing I think Food network and eating out and etc has done to our diets is that we expect so much more out of food than we used to. I speak about my grandparents and particularly what my father remembers eating, from the farm, when he was a child. They killed a hog each year. They had chicken when they killed a chicken. Red meat was extremely rare. They grew corn and wheat. They had a garden and canned everything in sight. So their diet was pretty simple: some pork, but definitely no fancy pork chops, chicken Breasts, or steaks except on special occasions. Green beans, corn, sweet potatoes. No sodas. There were usually desserts in the house, but this is a piece of cake after dinner sort of thing after working all day. Lots of vegetable soup. Most cooked on a wood stove. No pasta. Of course we can't go back to that. But, re cooking, if I needed to make simple and cheap meals, I would eat dried beans and cornbread one night, vegetable beef soup, maybe a taco soup, chicken legs and vegetables, spaghetti, lasagna, and something else along those lines. All simple and easy to make ahead of time. I think people look at food network and magazines and Pinterest and think that cooking needs to be something fancy.

I had excellent home ec classes in middle school. And I imagine we covered diet in both health class and in home ec. I learned a lot from my family, but in my family almost all meals are both made from scratch and often include homegrown ingredients. My parents were born in the late thirties to farming parents, so it was just a way of life that my parents continued. I remember asking my mother to buy microwave meals when they came out and she wouldn't because they were expensive and my father called them "instant leftovers ." Now l didn't learn how to do anything fancy or good knife skills until food network. 😄 But I could cook a bare bones meal. And I was familiar enough with a recipe to figure it out. I am certainly unusual in my upbringing, but it was the way things used to be. I don't know how that helps figure out this problem as a society, but that's my background. I guess the line people have been fed is that both parents work so they will pay someone else to do the cooking, and with all the women's equality stuff there was no longer a expectation that the women should learn to cook, nor the men either, and so no one learned. Not at all saying we need to go back to being a 1950s housewife division of labor, either! 😂😂. As an aside, I gave my younger cousin a cookbook for her wedding. She's an engineer, married to an engineer, and has her kids in daycare. She commented that, "Oh, you think I'm going to cook, huh?" With a smile in her face, not being nasty. I spluttered something about how I figured they had to eat somehow and I really liked the cookbook--it was a 30 minute meal one. I'm not close enough to her to know how meals go, but I've always sort of windered what they do for meals. They are a healthy weight.

I don't get the idea of parents having to co sign loans. Not from the perspective of the lender, but from the borrower. Seems Iike that should be a clear indicator to the family that they can't afford the school.

He does eat a varied diet of lots of things, it's just the calcium that I'm worrying about with the cessation of milk. He is not a picky eater, he just doesn't eat much. A healthy diet is very important to me and I do understand nutrition pretty well. Both of my girls drink milk and eat their veggies. I do not think he has any allergies to anything. No one in the family does and he's never shown any symptoms. I'm confident that he would happily drink a bottle full of milk, snuggled in my arms, right now and love it. Sweet baby!

This is a unanimous vote of don't worry about it! Ordered calcium supplements. Thank you!

I threw away the bottles, finally, (please don't judge, he is my last and he loved to snuggle and have a bottle still with me) and now My 2+ year old will not drink milk. He also refuses yogurt and won't just eat cheese either. Any ideas on how to get him to drink milk out of something besides a bottle? Or else increase the calcium? Vitamins are an option for sure.

Baked beans, maybe homemade if you're willing or doctored up? Lima beans, from frozen. Green bean casserole with the French fried onions.

I'm admin for a FB group and people ask all the time about social outlets for their kids. Our policy is that anyone can post events. I suggest that people do something casual like I'm going to the park Friday from 1-4 or whatever. People will come. If they don't the first time, try again. I'm amazed by how reluctant people are to do this though. :).

I get what you are saying. There are some young men who are nice eye candy in ways a 50ish man isn't though. But actually following through and having a relationship? No. I'm also happily married.