Latecomer--but here's my plan for the week: Monday--steak fajitas Tue--Spiced couscous with chicken and carrots Wed--Pork chops with apples & onions, rosti potatoes Thurs--pasta w/ sausage and slow-roasted tomatoes Fri--tomato soup and grilled cheese (lunch), pierogies with caramelized onions (dinner) Sat--shredded pork tacos Sun--roasted chicken w/ veggies, grain tbd (will use from freezer/pantry) I don't always plan vegetables because we almost always have a first-course salad before our meal. Most days we eat leftovers for lunch. My problem is that I have a lot of stuff in my freezer, like slow-roasted tomatoes that I froze from the summer, that I always forget to use. I hope that making a thoughtful plan each week will help with that.

In addition to increasing the storage in your shower as a pp suggested, maybe add an etagere over your toilet to squeeze in more storage?

Steak fajitas for me! Our local Mexican restaurant has (had?) the best fajitas, and we found out when we got there yesterday that it had changed ownership but the menu was the same. Sadly, the fajitas were nowhere near as good as they had been. I hope they're just getting the kinks worked out because I will be so sad if this restaurant changes for the worse. New things I've tried--2 new recipes today. Eaten and enjoyed by the whole family, so success! Lunch was http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipe/thai-pork-wrap-ups/ and dinner was http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/spiced-couscous-and-chicken-recipe/index.html Both were quick, easy, and had minimal clean-up (i.e. almost everything could go into the dishwasher)--definitely keepers for me.

Vosges sells a chocolate-bacon bar--I've gotten it at Whole Foods and other high-end grocery stores.

I'd try to do something all the girls could participate in, not just your DD. If you can't afford to have all the girls do the hair salon, I'd find something else to do. Even if she's the birthday girl, it's expecting a lot of her friends (especially at 5 or 6 years old) to just watch while her doll gets special treatment .

I'm so sorry for your loss, amana. my condolences to you and your family.

I make and freeze breakfast sandwiches. Here's my recipe, which makes a dozen (but is easy to scale up or down). Cook 1 lb bacon in oven (425 for about 10-15 minutes, depending on thickness. Turn once when top side looks done, pop in oven for a few more minutes to cook underside. Line your pan with foil for quick and easy clean-up). Fry eggs over-medium or hard in a large skillet (I can fit 4 jumbo eggs at a time this way) or griddle (could probably fit more). Toast bread for sandwiches (I like to used the round Deli Flats because the fried egg is about that size). Assemble sandwiches: egg, 1.5 slices bacon, slice of cheddar (I do half with and half without cheese, since my DH doesn't like melted cheese). Wrap sandwich in a paper towel. Freeze everything on a cookie sheet. Put frozen sandwiches in a ziptop bag. When we want a sandwich in the morning, we just microwave it in the paper towel for 1 minute (could be more or less, depending on your microwave).

Burn Notice--only show I have followed religiously.

If you have Netflix, your daughter might enjoy the documentary Harp Dreams, which follows harpists at a prestigious harp competition. It's also available on DVD, so you could also see if your library has it.

I picked up the harp in high school when I was 14 or 15. I had played the piano since age 5, and I continued with both through college. You might be able to rent a harp to try it out for a while. I rented from a store that applied up to six months of the rental fee towards the purchase of an instrument. I was only able to rent a folk harp, though, and I eventually got a pedal harp. I also know people who have rented out their extra or unused harps, so you might ask a local teacher if he or she knows of anyone willing to rent. Lyon and Healy (the major harpmaker in the US) has a 40-string harp (full size is 47, sometimes 46) that costs a bit less. You could also try looking at their used site: http://www.lyonhealycpo.com/ Lever harps are a lot cheaper, but if she wants to play seriously, I think you eventually need a pedal harp. I was older when I started, so it wasn't a big deal to play on a full-sized pedal harp. I'm not sure what size is recommended for a smaller child, and you'd probably want to ask a teacher about this. I was old enough that I had saved up some money, so I put a chunk of my savings towards buying my harp (my parents covered the rest, and I am very grateful for that). Also keep in mind that if she joins an orchestra, moving a harp back and forth is a bit of a pain. My parents always envied the parents whose child played the flute, since it was so compact. Best of luck to your daughter!

Schoolhouse Rock!

I like Thomas Keller's roasted chicken recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/My-Favorite-Simple-Roast-Chicken-231348

Basically Turn It In has an archive of student papers (and now I think also internet available stuff) and checks new papers against papers in the archive. I've been out of the loop for a few years, but you can check out the company's website at turnitin.com. Colleges and universities then pay a subscription fee that allows their instructors to submit papers. On checking student work along the way--it's a deterrent of sorts, but I have personally received plagiarized final drafts that hardly resembled earlier drafts that were presumably written by the student. Sounds like a really dumb thing to do, but I've encountered it! At least it makes it harder for a student to defend the plagiarized paper. It's pretty disheartening to deal with plagiarists--they certainly did their best to make me feel terrible about reporting them, telling me things like how they planned on going to med school or it was unintentional or the first time they'd done it, etc--basically, I was the one who was going to ruin their future. On a logical level, of course, I know that they were at fault, but I found it pretty draining.

I thought of the same Chronicle article when I started reading this thread. I found a follow-up article--he ended up revealing his identity and writing a book about it: http://chronicle.com/article/An-Academic-Ghostwriter-Comes/133904/ Hiring someone to write a custom paper has come about due to the Turn It In computer program (that's the name I knew for it when I taught) and because many professors/instructors will give less generic paper topics. With regards to plagiarism, I absolutely believe that the student is ultimately responsible. However, I worked as a teaching assistant as a grad student and found that some professors didn't care enough to design assignments that would make plagiarism harder (or then were annoyed that their TAs reported cases of plagiarism because that created extra work for them--this was only one professor that I worked for). But I can believe that the rate of cheating is pretty high. Just to give you a real-life example, I found a 25% plagiarism rate in a class where I was a TA (and I did not have Turn It In at my disposal at the time). My guess is that I found the papers that lifted passages which were clearly too sophisticated to come from the student (this was a low-level, nonmajor course). If there were papers plagiarizing another student's work from another year or a mediocre purchased paper, there was really no way for me to know or prove that. In case you're wondering, the plagiarized papers I found didn't just have a plagiarized sentence here or there--plagiarized material often made up 50-75% of the paper. Sometimes it was from an online encyclopedia or an article from a newspaper's archive. Basically, I entered random phrases from these papers into Google if I suspected plagiarism. I did have one student who was remarkably unlucky--he had lifted passages from a book (an academic book meant for a scholarly audience, not a textbook). Unfortunately, for this student, I had done my undergraduate thesis on this topic (but had moved onto a different area in grad school) and the writing just seemed terribly familiar, but I couldn't place it. It bugged me for a day or two, and then I finally had a eureka moment. So I tend to think that if I caught something like that just because I happened to have randomly read a book, how much stuff did I not catch? Sometimes there would be an obvious shift in style, but I couldn't do anything if I couldn't prove plagiarism. (And, if I remember correctly, Turn It In compares papers to papers turned in by other students, not to books, journals, etc.)

Another Lyra fan here (we use Lyra Ferby)--it's worth it to spend a little more on better pencils, in my opinion.

Having done freelance writing (and knowing many people who do freelance writing), I think that people who make a living at it have certain expectations for compensation, regardless of the market they are in. They are willing to work for less in the beginning to get established, but many of them will drop the lower-paying work if/once they have better options. Perhaps some homeschool authors will experience a rude awakening when no is willing to pay the prices they expect, perhaps consumers will find the price fair--I think it's hard to make a blanket statement.

I have to respectfully disagree with this. My time is worth something to me, especially if it means having someone else watch my kids. I commend you for tutoring below cost, but that's not something that would work for me and my family. Because I've had experience teaching (and grading) at the college level, I offer occasional free seminars when time and energy permit. I've been asked to tutor and am upfront about my rates being quite high to reflect my education and qualifications--that's the rate that I've figured is worth it to make the time in my schedule for a student. Some people find it too high, and that's fine with me. It's the same with writing a curriculum--I'd like it to be worth my while (not that recouping one's costs is a guarantee). When people ask me for my thoughts about my field, I'm more than willing to share. But if I'm going to sit down and write something more involved, I think it's fair to expect some compensation. And, of course, it's up to the consumer to decide whether something is worth the cost. Maybe this is not what you mean, but I feel like you want/expect authors to take a loss on their time and effort for a greater good, and I don't think it's realistic.

Background: I grew up in a warm climate and now live in the rural midwest (which I love!). But even after several years, I am still terrified to drive if there's snow on the ground. My one and only car accident happened when I was in college and driving through snow, so I'm sure that doesn't help. Since I'm a SAHM, I check the weather and don't drive if there's a chance of snow. I've been caught by surprise a few times, though--managed to calmly talk myself through the drive home but then started shaking uncontrollably once I pulled into my garage. I know some of the basics, like don't slam on your brakes, drive slowly (believe me, people hate being stuck behind me when the roads are at all bad), but how can I learn to get over my fears? Unfortunately, we live in an area with hilly and curvy roads, too. I would love to be able to safely practice snow driving but don't know how to go about it. I don't have a 4WD vehicle, but our car is newer, and my husband (a midwest native) has no problems driving it in the snow.

The Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries by Lawrence Block are a fun, light read (I wouldn't say that about most of his other books, though). They blend together after a while, though, so I wouldn't read a bunch of them all at once. I enjoy one every now and then, though. An essay collection I really like is David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

I also mainly use vinegar and baking soda. Ideally, I do quick maintenance cleans with either vinegar or baking soda and once in a while do a deep clean with stronger stuff. With young children, though, I like cleaning with vinegar, water, and baking soda because I can do it when they're underfoot. But if I get lax and go too long between maintenance cleanings, I'm not happy with the state of things until I do a deeper cleaning.

I'll chime in as someone who has been developing a curriculum that I'd eventually like to sell (not something I see happening soon, since I have enough to keep me busy right now). Considering that I spent over five years in graduate school for a PhD in my field and have an expertise that I see lacking in existing curriculum, I'd want to price a product in a way that would 1) take into account the time and effort it took to produce the curriculum and 2) reflect the fact that it took a lot of time (and sweat and tears) for me to know the field as well as I do.

Michael Ruhlman--he has written some excellent books as well.

Has it been very hot in your area? Where I live, some animals get desperate when there's extreme heat--and I know a lot of people who have recently lost chickens to raccoons and the like.

If you must buy packaged food to save time, I found the Eat This, Not That book series helpful; there is one dedicated to supermarket shopping. I personally avoid Walmart for produce because it's often cheap but not very good, plus it frequently spoils quickly. This was confirmed for me after reading The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebees, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table. The produce often isn't very fresh (i.e. limp greens that have been rehydrated to look fresh).

so sorry about your job--and how terrible that your town is cutting library funding so drastically.