Here in much-maligned NENJ, there isn't much we can't do, but maybe it's on a different scale. Beach? Yup. Appalachian Trail? We have a sliver of it. NYC? Close but not too close. Being the mutt of a state, and living in our county that is the transition from suburban to rural has had it's perks.

Back in drum corps, we practiced on one field...have NO idea where...but the grass was flat and kinda woven together, like a green scouring pad. It was def living grass, tho. I'd take that for a front lawn.

Front vs back yard makes a difference. I'd like a lush, kid and barefoot friendly sort of backyard, but I live on an ancient flood plain, so there's an endless supply of smooth river rocks that migrate up to the surface, making it perpetually bumpy. In the front, I'm on a street that's just busy enough to make my, "lawn" (used loosely) a very capable trash magnet. There, I'd much prefer some sort series of raised planters and pavers with nothing to mow -- oh and a guy to weed and water it too. DW grew up in Philly with a teeny patch of grass, so our yard feels big to her.

The odd thing about such reports is how they seem to assume all of us with degrees will do our own plumbing. I don't know about your town, but my plumber's house is quite a bit larger than ours. Anecdotal, yeah, but it's moved into policy, so that the local county vo-tec here has morphed to become an an academic "academy," and if you want to go through, say, the electrician's apprentice program, that's only at night. Generationally, it's gonna come back to bite us.

DD has mentioned it, rather matter-of-fact-ly, that she will, or rather, she says "we will," which I do silently gloat over....just a bit....teeny bit. OTOH, I'm really glad she's growing up with backstage access to public school with a parent who loves the job / hates the system, because in a few decades, who knows? Maybe DD will be part of some wave that radically remakes the system. At the very least, she won't think she doesn't have choices, doesn't have some power, and that's huge.

This will sound petty, but it's a peeve of mine. Homeschool dads are not spouses of mothers who homeschool; Homeschool dads are dads who homeschool. Yes, it's semantics, but as an extreme minority, semantics matter. Ok, off the soapbox.... I can teach anything, but DW is the tenured PS teacher with the knack and genuine interest in research, so the bulk of curriculum choice follows a pattern. She'll find the source, I'll field test it with DD, and we'll stick with it or modify year to year. DW teaches the reduced load with DD each summer, plus any school-year days when I'm, say in the hospital, or in recovery mode, etc. It can be rather fluid. Maybe that comfort with fluidity is what lead us to consider our non-traditional roles? Well, that and practical matters of salary n benefits stuff. Is my job easier with one kid? Uh, yup. I often hesitate to post in some topics because it would just be so much easier to take a husband or two and say "Dude, look. Can you just elevate your worldview and move beyond the alpha male crap?" but I know it's futile, as I'm really the oddball. So....yeah. I got nothin.

Do the cakes. It's different enough from what you did to be a creative change. It'll be a slow start, natch, but what isn't? The cupcake craze seems to have waned, but I bet there's a funky niche out there somewhere. IDK...Haloween cheesecakes or something. All it takes is a couple satified customers to start chatting about your product and service.

See???? SEE??? Customers are everywhere! Yes, B is on my summer list. I think you snuck in when I had three slots left. Nice to be needed. 😃

A small school district could still be very good, since you never know how the parent connections work. I get jobs in other towns because one kid knows another from being on the same swim team, or the parent is a customer of another parent's bank, etc. It can be a wait for that to blossom, but when it does.....hold on tight. I'd also wait to retake the test until you've taught it for a year or two. Just knowing the beast will change your score, and you can choose to advertise that result or not. Most tutor's don't, which is why I do.

Dante's Inferno with DD13. Great edition that really flows.

Consider size of the actual trains in terrms of manual dexterity. O guage is bigger, and prob better for that age. 200 bucks will get you a basic set new, or maybe more on ebay. HO is way smaller, and might be too finicky for little kids....but every kid is different. OTOH, there seems to be way more stuff at the HO scale, from models to trees to cars. It's endless.

Yellow when new, but then I'd say dirty canary, which I am reluctant to Google.

"Reasonable." I like that. Others just say I'm too cheap. :laugh:

Starting with a brick-n-mortar mill, like Huntington, Peterson, or Kaplan, is prob the easiest route, if you don't mind making $14-20 of the $75-150 the company racks in from each parent per hour. Turnover was nearly 90% in my year there, but it was a foot into the industry. There are oodles of online services to contract for, and plenty of mom-n-pop shops. Studypoint.com was excellent, and they included onsite training, materials, etc. Pay wasn't great, but they exceptionally nice, professional people who treated me really well. Wyzant.com is more of a referral service, but the only one on which I still keep an account for those rare slow times. Wyzant keeps a percentage of your revenue, and you might need to low-ball your prices at first, but they also do background checks and test (easy) you into each subject you're authorized to teach. Pay is fast weekly direct deposit, and they withhold taxes, which gives you a paper trail. I taught an accelerated SAT course for a couple summers at a local community college -- daily lectures for a week was like training a fire hose on the poor kids, but it was guaranteed money, inside the AC, and good for what it was at the time. Same goes for the course I put up for auction each year to benefit the NJYC. As a service, it's not deductible, but it's a continual source of referrals, and let's me give back to an organization I dearly love. There are LOTS of sources for kids and you just need one parent to talk to another and it kinda snowballs. One thing worth doing, simply because most tutors do NOT do it is.... Take the SAT. Sorry. I did it in 2005, and it was quite a bit different than the one I did for real in 1986. I was also able to bang out a high score, with two 800's, which is important benchmark to some parents, at least around here. Since the College Board is making noise about revamping the test for '15, I'll prob take it again, but I have my doubts about their meeting that deadline. The ACT is gaining market share, so I suspect it's kinda panic mode down in Princeton. I also do a teeny bit of business helping kids with application essays, just because I need to use that English degree for something, and it's a bit of a natural offshoot when you're always talking admissions with so many paranoid parents. It's worth reading up on the game -- Gatekeepers was a great read, as was Admissions Confidential. It might be overkill to read the Chronicle every week, but I certainly peruse it here and there, just to sound like I sorta know what I'm talking about. :huh: Go get all the SAT books from the library and you'll find a favorite. I only use the Chris Black's McGraw Hill Guide for the lesson content, then the Blue Book for additional practice if needed. I also have a collection of bootleg....ahem...photocopied real SATs from my time working for one company that sent every contract tutor out to take the test yearly. I keep saying I'll write my own some day, but the printing costs would most likely be more than buying a few dozen from Amazon each year -- plus I'd have to do more work, and I've got this thing down to pretty much rote. One thing this job will do is greatly increase your confidence about HSing, because you WILL see a ton of kids who, by Junior year, are beyond the help you really want to give them. The flip side is that, so far, each cycle, I get one or two brilliant kids who are really fun to work with. Actually, it's not that much different from what DW says after 27 years teaching public school! My fav kid from last spring HSd K-8, and is now a PS senior. She just got a YES from Harvard...and is making them wait until she hears from a few other little schools. I just think that is so cool, and the kind of intestinal fortitude that you prob can't explain no non-HSers. My worst kids, by far are private school kids whose homes have echoes.

Worth paying a lawyer. Get a living will done at the same time.

SAT prep. I did a year with Huntington (awful) to learn the ropes, then worked freelance for some services for another 2-3 years, and have been on my own for about five years. Now I'm booked solid with referrals and siblings until next September, taking 5 kids a week during school and about 10 a week in the summer, which gives me schedule flexibility. $60/hr for weekly 2-hour sessions (NE NJ, and I'm still a tad on the cheap side). Cash/check only. I turn away maybe another dozen-ish kids a year, and I turn away requests for academic tutoring -- best to be a specialist, IMO. I go to them, so I have control over my area of operation, although when I was working for a service, I did have to accept kids from farther away, which got old quickly. It's been a goldmine.

Skeleton sliders have better helmet graphics, seems to be a slightly warped ethos there I identify with.

DD has the science boxed set, and while it's not primary curriculum per se, I can't count the number of times DD will get wide eyed in science and say "I read about that!" and rush off for the box. At DW's school, I think the term is interdisciinary enrichment. Here's it's letting a lateral thinker pay out as much rope as she wishes, which is awesome.

I know it can be meant as a dig, but I always take it as a positive. You bet we do school at home, academically accelerated, broad and deep, school at home, which is hard work, and totally worth it for us, but might not be for another, which is kinda the point. School at home seems to be a jab from those who do not do as much, or feel the need to explain their chosen approach, for which maybe they feel they aren't doing enough. There are some radical unschoolers we see around us who are big on "we don't DO school." Whatev.

No facebook here. The faculty at DW's school gets this online safety course from the local district attorney and county sex offense cops, showing just how easy, and quickly, it is to be compromised online. Even the owners of DD's dance studio (he's a retired cop) say nope...not worth it.

About 16" in Morris County, NJ. Finally decided to change the belts on my aging snowblower, but didn't get it done in time :banghead: . Shoveled a bit, then a friend came over unannounced....with...his...truck...and...plow!!! Had I not worried about having to be winched back out, I would have been doing snow angels in my front yard right then and there. Round two might give us another 4-6, but they seem a little sketchy on differences in location. DW's off again tomorrow, which means taking away snow days from spring break -- fine by us, although the wealthier parents will still yank their cherubs out to go to Vail, or Italy, or, wherever.

Discovery Streaming has a whole Spanish series through high school, complete with blackline masters. It's put out by a sowthwestern university - Arizona State? - for use in schools with no,bor too few FL teachers. DD went all the way through 9th grade Spanish One with Señorr Morris.

We've done the ITBS (Iowa test) from Brewer Testing each year without drama. The Brewers are great to deal with. We break it up over about five days, which works out to maybe 2 30-minute sessions a day, or less (sometimes a 20 and a 10 -- it varies). NJ does not require testing, so this is all admittedly just ego protection for my own abilities. Start at grade level, or maybe one above, depending on what your gut says. You can always change levels next time. Testing itself is not evil; placing too much stress on tests, yeah, that's evil. If you want another benchmark, you can google your local town's curriculum guide, which is most likely tied to your state guidelines (with lots of numbers and acronyms). It will look daunting, but I don't know ANY PS teacher who realistically believes they get through every state mandated bullet point over a year -- far from it.

I'm just wondering about a certain....inconsistency....but perhaps I'm mis-reading. You mention "girly" behavior up front, then have a list of things that are now usually considered to be women's clothing (although you might want to Google history of high heels), and add in overtly female/girl/women behavior, BUT it's ok to cry and people are more than their genitals (I would agree there). So....What constitutes female behavior in American culture, beyond the cliches? You mentioned crying, but is that the unit of measurement -- display of emotion? Is it the same thing when a male pro athlete cries in public, or is that different? I'm unclear about the gender thing fitting in there. As for imaginative play, in your opinion, what is the long-term effect on a young boy who plays in, say, a tutu, at age 6? I need help connecting the dots.

Def Boy. We know a Quinn.