Dh's company always shuts down the week between Christmas and New Year's so we definitely will be on break during that time. We won't do much--maybe a day of skiing, a day in Seattle. In a perfect world we will start work on refinishing a glass-doored bookcase we bought over the summer, but we'll have to wait and see how cold it is in the garage! Speaking of which, if anyone knowledgeable is reading this thread, the glass doors are STUCK. They barely slide back and forth and there is no question of being able to get them off the track and off the bookcase. Would I call a regular glass guy for help with this? Or is there some other kind of specialist I would use?

Our family has debt--besides our mortgage we have a car payment and an American Express Blue that never seems to get paid off. We have a Visa that's used for recurring payments (like our YMCA membership and my scrapbook club) that gets paid off and a few store credit cards that get paid off within a month or two of being used. If I had my way, we wouldn't have debt. But the dh is an online shopper. Since he's the one who makes the money I can't begrudge him. I try to pay at least 10% on the AmEx every month. And when it starts getting pretty high I tell him to lay off the spending. He has expensive hobbies, that mostly he's got ds involved with, so I can't fault him that either. For the past couple of years his hobby has been converting a 1989 VW Cabriolet to electric. It runs now and he uses it as a commute vehicle when the weather is decent (it's got no heater so he won't drive it anymore this season). Ds has learned a lot working with his dad. Dh spent a lot on amateur radio equipment and ds got his general license last month so they spend time out in the garage with that too.

The summer before my senior year in high school, I was given a reading list for AP English. I read most of the things I was supposed to, but I steadfastly *refused* to read Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky). I read the first few paragraphs, I hated the names, I hated the writing, I hated the whole darn thing. Fast forward to the start of school. It wasn't the first of the books we discussed in class, but it was discussed say, after the first month. I was ignorant and I didn't care that I didn't know a thing about the book. This was just one book I was going to keep my mouth shut about in class. I figured I might buy the Cliff's Notes before we had to write a paper or take a test. But listening to the other students talk about the book...it sounded...dare I say it...interesting! So I gave it another try. And I loved it! It was one of my favorite books ever. I went to college pre-med. Actually, I went to college announcing my major as International Relations because it was even more competitive than pre-med at the time and I was a showoff. But my intention was pre-med. I came out with a BA in Russian Literature. I couldn't stay away from the great Russian writers after Crime and Punishment. It's not a degree that's served me well professionally, but it was a degree I had a great time getting. More generally, when attempting to read the classics, I think it's hugely important to find a version that is pleasing to the eye. So many of the classics are in the public domain, so publishers print cheap copies--small type crowded on small pages--that make the great books *look* more intimidating than they really are. You've gotten some good suggestions here--when you're at the bookstore or the library--look inside the book before you get it. Look for something with a nice typeface and good spacing. It's a silly thing, but it really does make classic reading more pleasant if you're reading something that has the look and feel of a contemporary novel. Also, consider something that's annotated, or has some critical essays bound with the novel. Annotations can definitely enrich the reading experience. Reading a good critical essay before the book can give you things to look for and appreciate while you're reading the novel.

You know, I have many of the same symptoms--belly fat, prediabetes, constant aches and pains, imbalanced hormones, foggy brain. And I know it's stress. But when I look at my life objectively, I don't understand *why* I'm stressed. I have a warm cozy home, food in the cupboards, savings to get through almost a year's worth of tough times if they happen. I have a happy marriage and a wonderful son. Why, oh why, am I a person who gets so wound around the axle (dh's term) over what is basically inconsequential stuff??? To me, this stress stuff is kind of chicken-or-the-egg stuff. Is the health stuff because I'm stressed, or am I stressed because because biochemically, my body isn't working right?

Santa puts them wherever they will fit! Now that ds is older and the gifts tend to be smaller, mostly Santa stuffs them into the stocking with candy.

I love Trader Joe's Eggplant Hummus...though I've always wondered, if it's eggplant, isn't it baba ganoush? I highly recommend it, even though I don't particularly care for eggplant. Otherwise, I really like Sabra brand. Hummus can be found, at my grocery story, in the deli cases with cheeses and deli meats--not the deli case where you're served, but the help-yourself cases. Sabra tends to run expensive compared to the other brands my store carries, so I buy it when it's on sale or when they have it at Costco.

One more thing: Nowadays in the doctor's office they tend to do your blood pressure over your sleeves. It has been my experience (based on winter v. summer readings) that my blood pressure is reads 15-20 points higher with sleeves. I don't know why they think it doesn't make a difference! If I were checking at home, I'd definitely do bare arm.

The experiments probably comprised a good 10 pages of text. If I had pre-read the experiment at home so that I was familiar with it, I could chunk out a flow chart in the hour between lecture and the start of lab. I actually found it much easier to do the flow chart than to write the narrative of what was to happen in lab (which was written during the lab itself). And the flow chart was such a handy thing to refer to over the course of the experiment--I viewed it as kind of a recipe for how the lab was supposed to work. To start with, in writing observations (and this has more to do with chemistry than the biological sciences), I would recommend drawing pictures of the experimental set-up. I wouldn't require labelling as long as a person reading can get a general sense of what's what. Maybe include the capacities of the glassware used. I would be sure they note the important things—what is added in what order, any changes in state, what the final product looks like. My observations had to take the form of a narrative, but initially I’d settle for bullet points. With chemicals I would only require descriptions of anything that wasn’t generally known. Like, I wouldn’t expect Table Salt (NaCl): white crystalline solid, odorless. Though I’d expect the chemical formula. I wouldn’t worry about MSDS data; most things that we use at home for science aren’t going to be hazardous. For the occasional thing that is, I wouldn’t require it be written down, but I would expect that a student know exactly what to do on exposure before using the chemical. I think, as our students get older, their labs will tend to come with more and more complex questions at the end, whether they’re those that are provided in a laboratory text or whether they’re our own questions we have of our students. Those can provide a good guide to what kinds of things they need to be observing and recording in their notebooks. They can gradually work toward being organized enough to make room for a table when it’s part of an experiment (time v. temp., for example) and adding graphs. Writing a narrative while working is a good goal as well. It’s actually, as I found, kind of a challenge to organize thoughts into complete sentences while watching over an experiment.

I thought it might be helpful for me to share what information needed to be in my lab notebook last year when I was taking Organic Chemistry: Materials Used consisted of a list of all the chemicals used in the experiment with a description of the color and other physical properties (including scent), the strength of the chemical and the MSDS data. Before the experiment was conducted I had to draw a flow diagram of every step that should happen along the way. I did not have to list the pieces of equipment used in the Materials section, but their set up needed to be described in my flow chart and my observations had to include pictures of the various set ups, with the individual pieces of equipment labelled (ring stand, 5 mL Erlenmeyer flask, tubing, ice bath, etc.). If we were using an instrument, like NMR, we had to draw a picture of that instrument--nothing fancy, just basic box with where the sample would go, where the various knobs were, etc. I think it's worthwhile to have students build up to that level of description in their lab reports. If nothing else, it's sharpening their observation skills and helping them to realize they should take nothing for granted about what they're doing and what their readers previous knowledge is.

One of my younger brothers asks for money several times a year. Part of it is that they truly *are* struggling; part of it is that my sil goes on shopping sprees. It's frustrating, from that perspective, but I also kind of understand a person getting so incredibly tired of making ends meet that they just want a day, once in a while, where she just doesn't give a crap about money. My brother, knowing him as I do, never asks for enough money to give himself some true breathing room. So I always send a couple hundred more than he asks for. Sometimes it's quick, sometimes it's not, but he has always paid me back. My mom, OTOH, only comes around when she wants money. And then she can't *bear* the feeling of being obligated to me so she ends up behaving horribly and then disappearing. I would much rather she just take the money and disappear again. The end result is the same: I don't get paid back. But I'd rather not hear how beastly and judgemental I am and how eventually my husband and son are going to leave me all alone someday first. And truthfully, I don't judge. You can watch and see how this sense of being beholden to me just starts to wear on her little by little until she explodes.

This one: http://www.amazon.com/New-Annotated-Sherlock-Holmes-Complete/dp/0393059162/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290999210&sr=1-7 And then there's a similar volume for the novels.

You've gotten some great suggestions and the only thing I'd add is to look for cedar. They used to (I don't know if they still do) use cedar in a lot of dog bedding, but I think it's caused so many problems it's not often used anymore. I never used cedar bedding for my dogs, but when we moved into our house a decade ago the back yard was all a thick layer of cedar chips. I thought it was just because a large cedar had been cut down on the property and they were too cheap to have it hauled off so they chipped and spread it...but as it turned out it was there because to keep the rain runoff from our property from flooding the neighbor's house. But anyhow... One of my dogs started breaking out *severely* after we moved here...and it was from tromping through all that cedar. We spent back-breaking weeks shoveling it out of the yard and putting in a brick patio and and the dog's skin cleared up. She was miserable during that time though. We had her on steroids and antihistamines to keep her sort of comfortable, but even with those she was a big itchy mess.

Ds is reading Sherlock Holmes this year and I got him a nice annotated version. I highly recommend it. It's pricy--they're 3 volumes (2 are short stories and sold together, with a separate volume for the novels), hardback. But the annotations give a lot of really useful historical information. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Ds's bookcase is currently full of fiction he hasn't read yet (I stocked up a couple of months ago), so book-wise I will probably get him some Merit Badge books and he wants a good book on whittling. I will ask one of the relatives to get him the newest Wimpy Kid book.

I have found that it's actually kind of hard to find yoga pants that fit *well*. I'm short, so I have to find a petite and since I'm between a medium and a large, I feel like the mediums look too tight to wear publicly and the larges tend tend to slip too much when I'm trying to exercise. What I will probably do next time I'm shopping for exercise wear is get some heavier weight leggings in a petite medium and wear athletic shorts over them so that I don't feel like everything can be seen.

I admit, I don't like dark meat at all. The dh and ds eat some, but I always end up throwing a bunch of it out. Does anyone have any recipes that specifically call for using dark meat that are so delicious that I might give up my dislike? Or recipes that call for either, but also, are so delicious, that I won't mind the dark meat component? Usually, with leftovers, we make sandwiches, I make up turkey tettrazini, turkey barley soup and tonight I'm making turkey enchiladas. By tomorrow I'll only have a big baggie of dark meat in the fridge.

I did a very expensive brine once--the main ingredients were Guinness and apple cider. I didn't notice any real difference in the flavor, or moisture. It was so disappointing! Now I order a preseasoned fresh organic turkey. In the meat department they slather it with butter and then rub their own spice blend into it. I stuff the cavity with onions, carrots, celery and fresh sage. I cook it at 425 for 30 minutes, then turn the heat down to 325 and cook it until it's done, basting it with a mix of butter and chicken broth. And it's GOOD. I've given up on doing anything else with my turkey. I don't think it can get any better.

A friend of mind published this article a few years back...thought you might find it helpful: http://wondertime.go.com/life-at-home/article/creating-an-inventors-lab.html

Thank you for posting all this! I've been seriously thinking about doing Inquiry in Action with ds next semester--I think you may have tipped the scales for me!

I'm not completely off sugar right now, but I can tell you that when I did go off sugar I dropped 10 lbs. pretty quickly (I was going low-carb too though). The first week or so...I don't know...I *wished* for sugar. I wouldn't say I was crabby, but I was frustrated about having to take the time and care of figuring out what to feed myself. I'd go into the kitchen and want to grab a cookie as usual, and have to make myself grab something like a slice of cheese or some celery sticks. But after that first week it was surprising how I didn't even *want* sugar. It's like once you get over a certain hump, your body just wants other kinds of things. For me, the thing that made it *so* worth it is that a lot of my little aches and pains, that I attributed to just plain getting older (I'm 42 too), went away. I felt so much better. I've done a pretty good job of keeping the weight off--I lost a total of 18 pounds and bounce around in a 5-lb. range of that--and I can't attribute the feeling better to the weight loss. If I have sugar--like if I'm having dinner at a friend's and I'm polite and don't refuse dessert--I'm achy the next day.

Ds (11) became much more enthusiastic about doing arts-and-crafts-type projects once I brought out my bucket of various scrapbooking adhesives (Tombow glue, glue dots, double-stick tape, roller adhesives, pop dots, etc.). I figured, I wouldn't want to use Elmer's glue and Scotch tape on my projects; why would I make him use those on his? I have to walk away when he's using them (because it hurts me to share and I want to micromanage how he uses them), but it makes him happy.

I swore it would be 85%. But ds took a chapter quiz on Tuesday and got 82%. The mistakes were careless, I know he knows the material. So I'm chalking it up to a holiday week and the first snow of the season.

Before ds, I would have said it was great for breakfast! But now I try to set a good example and we save it for dessert the following night.

Could it be from long-term corticosteroid use?

TV isn't an issue. Ds (11) only has a few must-watch shows: Mythbusters, The Colony, Community, The Office. He spends more time on the computer and xBox than I would like, gaming. But much of the time he's doing it with his dad. It's part of their bond. So what can I do? Do I want the ds to grow up to be like his dad? Hmm...his dad is kind, respectful, earns a good living in a technical field. Yup. I want ds to grow up to be just like dad! :)