I will mention it to my hubby.

We already have. For the first six months we were still paying our mortgage and $3000 for cobra plus we live in a high cost of living area and many medical bills so basically living at a higher rate than before with no income. We hadn't saved tons yet because we were stilling providing help to our children and prior to that our parents and were just really starting to save for retirement. We had planned on my hubby working for ten more years and then our mortgage would be paid off, we would have ss and medicaid and realistically maybe ten years to left to live at that point. We honestly never foresaw him being unemployed for such a long period of time.

I will check it out. Thanks.

He has been applying for hourly jobs around town but hasn't had any luck getting one yet. We can ask around about fresh food days. What I mean about the house is that we would have to turn over the keys at closing and have no means of emptying the house until after we received the check for the house unless we worked out an agreement with the buyers.

I am disabled and not able to work.

How did you guys make it three years without income?

We don't live in a college town and haven't had any luck finding boarders. Our pantry is stocked with non-perishables it is just perishables that we need and the food banks don't carry that. That's why we are going to apply for food stamps again.

I do plan on going through the house soon and seeing if I can find things to sell on Ebay.

Mostly just to get this off my chest but also open to any suggestions that we have not already tried. So things are still not good. My hubby has been unemployed for eight months now. The contract that he was hired for that was supposed to start on May 15th and then on June 7th has still not commenced and at this point they don't even have a starting date. He has since then accepted another contract which also does not have a starting date. He has been back to full time applying and interviewing but has not found a job yet. He has been driving for doordash and selling our books on Amazon which is not making much at all. He has applied for several hourly jobs but has not been hired for any of them either. At the beginning of May we received our final donations from family and friends expecting to have pay by the end of the month which did not happen. We have really tapped all of our wells and are getting desperate. Unemployment is long since gone. the state is still covering our mortgage for another three months and at this point we are going to reapply for food stamps because we have so little income that we will surely now qualify. We still need to come up with about $500 a month to cover our medical premiums which we can do with his VA money. But we have nothing left for utilities, continuing medical bills, food and gas. We are seriously considering selling the house but we can not do that while the state is paying the mortgage and even if we could we aren't sure how to go about it because we have no money to rent another place before selling or even to rent storage to put our stuff in until after the sale. If we could work out a deal where we rented our house back for a month or two after the sale that might work. My hubby and I could stay with my oldest for a short time but she does not have room for my youngest who still lives at home as well. My hubby has really been hustling to hold things together but he is really starting to worry and that of course is causing me great anxiety and stress. We are completely out of ideas. I am going to tell him to start actively looking for jobs we wouldn't have previously considered even it requires relocation or long term travel. I can't believe that we find ourselves in this situation. If this had happened ten years from now or even five years farther along or even with some warning we would have been able to weather it so much better. Like we could have easily sold our house and downsized a year ago and then still have money in the bank. As it is I think we have both held on as long as we could and are now just overwhelmed. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. And anyone else who has been through this and cares to share how they made it, I would be glad to hear it.

I went into this with no skin in the game. I had never heard of this case and had no preconceived notions. I have watched the whole series now. To me it was immediately obvious that she was a child and that her age was more or less correct. Her first pictures showed that she had baby teeth, they had later pictures of her showing her front teeth missing and then finally pictures showing her with her adult teeth that looked like she hadn't quiet grown into them yet like your average ten to twelve year old. She had a passport with her picture and birth date. It is really not that easy to get a fake passport. Her early pictures look like a toddler and then a child. The rest of the pictures look like maybe a ten to twelve year old. She never looks like an adult. Even when they show her as a teen/young adult when she is talking to authorities she still looks very young for her age. I cannot believe that anyone actually mistook her for an adult. She may have had precocious puberty (i.e. public hair and a little later breast buds) but it sounds like it turned out that the part about her already having her period was made up. Even if it wasn't it is possible to be pubescent at six. The youngest age for a person to give birth was five years old. If she was already pubescent that would explain why she didn't grown much in the next 3 years or so. Once a girl is pubescent they only grow a few more inches before adulthood. Also when you see her later as a teen or young adult she has grown a few more inches. If she had already been an adult she would not have grown any more. I do believe that she had some mental health problems due to being orphaned, adopted, shopped around, readopted and eventually abandoned. She probably started with an attachment disorder and then the trauma of the abuse she suffered. Many of the pictures and videos of her show the affect of someone who had been traumatised and abused. I believe that the things she said to other people were drilled into her by her mother. I based some of this on another documentary I watched about a five year old girl who was a sociopath and really did want to murder her parents. Their affects are totally different. As far as the language issue. She was in an orphanage. She was probably not spoken to very much. Then she was adopted to her previous family for at least a year. It is entirely possible that she had language development issues and learned to speak late therefore only speaking her native language for a short amount of time and then forgetting it in a few years. And being young she probably picked up English much easier than if she was an adult. Video of her reading seemed appropriate for her age. She was not reading as well as an adult. Some of her so called behavior issues were not consistent with her being an adult of enough intelligence to scam this family. Very few adult would purposely soil themselves and smear it on others and at other times act perfectly normally. She didn't seem to continue having this problem once she was living alone. Her behavior while living alone is entirely consistent with a ten year old with all of the issues that she had. After she moved in with the final family and was with them for five years she did not continue to have the all of the problems that she had before. They did not fear for themselves or their other children. The father came across as overly dramatic and it became apparent that he was lying and trying to cover his butt. The son did not seem autistic to me either in his younger videos or as an adult. He did seem traumatised and depressed. It becomes obvious that the mother was the primary abuser not only of the girl but of the entire household really. It seems that she took an almost immediate dislike to the girl and was not prepared to deal with all the issues that the girl had. Based on the things said about her it strikes me that she probably had mental health issues as well. I don't see any actual evidence of any doctors saying that she was older than her stated age nor any LEOs recommending re-ageing her. The most unbelievable part of the entire thing is the judge arbitrarily doing so and to such a large degree. That is really the mystery of it all. To me there was no mystery about her age or even her behaviors after all she had been through. I also don't see any mystery in the family's actions or the fact that CPS didn't take action sooner. I am not saying that either was ok or normal just that abuse does happen and often falls through the cracks. If it wasn't for the judge this would just be a story of abuse of a child that is unfortunately all too common, still a dramatic story but certainly not a mystery. I can only hope that Natalia is getting some money from the series and all the other media about her case. And I hope to God that the father is not making any money off this.

No, I was number three of four.

I haven't flown in about 26 years. When two of my dds lived in GA it was about a five hour drive. That is about what I am comfortable driving in one day. I have family in TX and that is about a ten hour drive so we usually overnight in Little Rock. When we are going to FL it is also about a 10 hour drive but the whole family goes so we usually caravan and can take turns driving. I can't drive anymore but I need to take more pain meds to spend that much time in a car. Basically for my family because there are so many of us it is always cheaper to drive.

I used to live in Idaho and we had wildfires every year. There was a ten mile stretch of road between the base and town that had nothing on either side but sagebrush. Every year before fire season they would burn a fire strip on each side of the road so that when the fires started they wouldn't burn right up to or even jump over the road. There was many a time I drove down that road with flames 10 feet high on each side. It felt like I was driving through hell. One year we had fires so bad it looked like we were in a white out blizzard. We couldn't see 10 feet in front of us and the ash was much bigger that regular snowflakes. It was surreal because we were pretty far from the actual fire and in a pretty isolated area. So it was like being in a blizzard in the wilderness but it was hot out. We were traveling so we just headed home and drove until we got out of the fallout area. PS. I just saw that we are supposed to have high winds here today so maybe that will dissipate some of the smoke and pollen here.

I am in middle TN and we have been having bad air quality as well. There is visible smog, near record high temps and high pollen levels to boot. We are running our A/C with the high rated filters 24/7, we have a HEPA air filter in our bedroom and we basically don't go outside.

Three, they are all named Deborah. I am the only woman married into the family not named Deborah.

If we ever had a boy his name would have been James Jeffery after my father and my hubby. We pretty much used up all of our girl names. I tried to give each of my girls an unusual first name and then a more formal standard middle name so that they would have options when they were older. Three of the first names were unheard of at the time but are not so unusual now and two had previously been unusual but somehow became super popular around the time they were born and now are the equivelant of Debbie way back when.

I have three cousins and three SILs my age named Deborah.

Well it started with this Post by AmyLovesBud: Doran, we're about to redo our kitchen and we've been talking about all the cool things we could do to upgrade. For example, we once lived in a house with instant hot water. We were so excited about that feature when we moved in, and we made several cups of hot tea with it right off the bat, but it soon lost its allure. So we won't be investing in another instant hot water tap. It's a lot like that. 😉 And then Nicole hit it home with this: Hold the phone, people. Are you saying that some of you can make hot tea without the instant hot water do-hickey? Like, how long does that take, to get her up to a... rolling boil? I mean, why boil water by starting a fire rubbing two sticks together if you're going to have to wait 2 hours for the freaking fire when you could have hot tea in, say, two minutes? In fact, I didn't even know it was possible, that any dear man had that kind of stamina. I thought the electricity-free hot cup of tea was a myth. I thought ladies said, Oh, my! Oh, honey! That's a wonderful cup of tea you made me, dear, but they were really just thinking, isn't he done yet? Where's my tea? Maybe I'm revealing too much about my hot tea history here, but boy, howdy, do I ever wish I'd found the instant hot water tap for hot tea before I was 31! And we tried our darndest, no kidding, but the tea was not... forthcoming. Because, cripes, yes, I wholeheartedly agree that a hot cup of tea, administered regularly, is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. Really, how long does it take to get to hot tea if you're going there without electricity? I'm serious. I want to know. [ETA: When I wrote this, I had only two little green boxes, 199 points. Now, you'll notice, I have three! And you've also offered me plenty of very helpful information along with that rep. You are so good. Thank you! So many ways to make hot tea. I had no idea....] It wandered far and wide after that. I took an hour to reread it again last night and it is just as amusing and educating as it was when we wrote it 15 years ago.

Yes, this was the thread, started by Doran. I also have it saved and have had to post it a few times over the years. As far as the kilt pictures that was before the copyright issue and they were posted frequently on many different threads. That is one of the things I miss the most.

It was here and it was Joanne.

Me and all of my children who have ADHD/ADD were diagnosed by my PCP. He prescribed our meds and then referred us for counseling in the beginning. He still prescribes our meds. Most people I know who have it start with their PCP.

I agree that it is the money issue that is throwing everyone off. People cheat, men cheat and women cheat. Statistically more men than women but it is not unusual. As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon at all. But most people in their right minds do not give away their financial information to strangers on the internet. There are con men who trick women into doing so by playing on their emotions but that is relatively rare. Most often when you hear of something like that happening it is to elder or mentally ill people. Therefore, a lot of people considered this possibility. That does not make it ok it just makes it make sense. Which is what people are looking for, to make sense of the matter. I know that not everything people do makes sense but that doesn't stop us from trying to figure it out.

No longer working so honestly these days it means I intend to get to it as soon as I am able. If it is something that has to be done today I will let the other person know if I really think I can accomplish that so they can make other plans if necessary.

I had one of these escape artists. We found them asleep in the snow in the front yard once. Luckily they were fine and we put bolts on the top of the entrance and exits doors so they couldn't reach them even with a chair. I thought the rest of the house was fairly safe then one morning I woke up to find them on top of the refrigerator. I never thought of a lock on their door though. Certainly reversing the door knob would be fine.

Ok, I think I figured out where I went wrong. I was looking for a practical guide for adults with physical disabilities. I went to Amazon and put "$ex and disabilities" in the search bar and most of the books that came up had to do with teaching or parenting teens or young adults who had autism or down syndrome or other disabilities about $ex. Some of the books dealt with the intersectionality of these disabilities and LBGTQ issues. Some of these books had very non-specific titles like "$ex and Disabilities" and when I would click on them the author would say written by a queer person for queer people or something to that effect. I can't even find the exact same books tonight or at least remember which ones they were. But that was obviously not what I was looking for and I didn't realize what a broad subject this could be (probably because I had one specific thing in mind) until I read some of the posts here. I guess I was not specific enough in my search terms. I went back and looked for "$ex and physical disabilities" and came up with a few more books, some of which were ridiculously expensive, others written specifically for healthcare workers and some about disability studies and awareness. I picked a few to look at a little deeper but at first glance it does not seem that what I am looking for is available. But at least I am somewhat less confused about what I was looking for compared to what I found.