My mom washes hers with rubbing alcohol; if your bleach doesn't do the trick maybe try the alcohol? I'm not sure where she learned it but her father, my grandfather, ran a greenhouse in Santa Fe for forty years... It can be a pain to deal with, I know that!

I am strictly of the opinion that you fall down, you pay for it. She's scamming you.

I read somewhere that teens need as much sleep as toddlers do. some days my son needs more sleep than other days and on the days he doesn't have enough sleep he's terrible. Mostly we try to let him get his sleep when he needs it and give him time to wake up, move around and get outside to do chores before I expect the brain to kick in.

I wasn't impressed either but then I reminded myself that opinions are like a&*#*s. :D

I have a Bachelor of Science in English Literature; I am extremely capable of communicating appropriately, concisely and brilliantly in a wide variety of situations, including the ones where it's thirty below and blizzarding and the neighbors herd of horses just broke down a fence and ate our winter supply of hay. :D

We just cuss and get it over with. :D

I have to admit, at my kids' ages, my daughter the youngest being 11, I think it's great that they encounter all kinds of people in the world as long as they aren't in physical danger. I guess some would shelter her from my crazy lovable artistic neighbor who cusses like a drunk sailor throughout every conversation (F word as noun, verb, adjective and adverb) but then she wouldn't have learned how to make sculptures out of copper wire and rocks... I've instilled a lot of solid values in my kids, they can talk with someone who cusses and hear what they're saying instead of being shocked by expletives.

My DH does the snooze thing too-and we have a young puppy that wakes up on the FIRST buzz so then he wants to go back to sleep while the puppy wakes up and starts looking for a place to pee... :glare: We are just starting our winter schedule now and it involved him setting his alarm to the actual time we're all getting up. No more snooze time-it loses him nearly an hour of quality sleep. that doze time isn't as productive nor restfull as real sleep is...

My daughter and I were running errands yesterday and a lady at the bank asked her "what, no school today?" and my 11 year old daughter very nonchalently answered "homeschooled" and the lady nodded back wisely and said "lucky you, smart mom". :D

Aw kitty cuteness. :) She looks like she has very big snowshoe paws!

No flu shots here and we rarely get sick. We are severe germaphobes so maybe that's why! :D

My kids know all the cuss words, or at least all the ones that I know. They hear them occasionally but know them to not be for them to use unless they're working outside, we call them barn words. and they are usually used in context in the barnyard. lol I don't worry too much about cussing; I live in rural Montana among working people of all ages-they are going to hear cussing.

Like it or not, WTH or WTF are part of common webspeak now, right up there with LOL. You can try to shelter her from it but it's very nearly the same as her using the word "gay" in its outdated context. Language changes and while you might using it in its previous context most other people are not. She might be putting down a very innocent exclamation but as she ventures out in the world she's going to find that other people are picking up something different. She better just say the whole innocent phrase if she wants to not be misunderstood. Now as far as the teacher, I think she's right to make the point but maybe the delivery was off. Unfortunately you don't have a first hand account and by your report your daughter was a little freaked out by the conversation so maybe it didn't come out quite as bluntly as it seems now. I have an 11 year old daughter and she has heard the word... and in fact heard one even worse last summer thanks to a extremely outspoken neighbor. She wasn't shocked or traumatized; she knows it's not for her to use and was a little surprised that someone would say it around her... but in this modern culture it's pretty tough to not run into vulgar language at some point, unfortunately.

Re the table-last year I put our dining room/school table against a wall and put a runner on the table and stacked the books out of the way, against the wall when the table was used for eating. I've also had the table against a wall that had a window and wide window sill that we then used as a book shelf out of the way. maybe that doesn't work with your setup but I thought I'd throw it out there. I've also had shelves next to the table but it takes up a little more room...

spinach (not prewashed) and frozen blueberries, I add them to lots of things for a big nutritional boost. Also flax seeds or oil (put that in your bread) a little packs a punch. Celery actually has a lot of nutritional value and it's inexpensive. Broccoli in everything, I'll shred it and add it to pasta dishes or salads or just rough chop it and roast it. Carrots too for that matter. Or cabbage. When grocery costs went sky high last year I stopped with the prepacked spinach and fennel and went back to good old carrots, broccoli and cabbage. Grow your own herbs too-they're very easy to grow and so expensive to buy!

Same boat here. We raised all the beds to gain the storage underneath-our king size bed is about two feet off the ground and the entire space underneath is baskets and tubs. In the kids' rooms we filled the closets with cubby shelving, their entire closets are storage shelves and we get half the space for our off season clothes. Every closet has additional shelves added, one whole wall of our laundry/porch is shelves, we use a hanging shoe holder for gloves/hats in the winter. I put bookshelves all down the hallway. it makes it more narrow by a foot but I gained 10 feet of wall to wall bookshelves! I have tubs everywhere, by the doors, by the couch, by the bathtub. Look at a farm or ranch store for inexpensive buckets and feed tubs that can be used for all kinds of storage.

Your DH already drew a good line-no more tires! lol We drive ours into the ground and when ours no longer actually go down the road and the repair bill is higher than the value of the car then we stop. DH will drive his cars even if they break down now and then but I won't. If I get scared of a break down then I give the car to DH and he usually gets another 10K miles on it. :D Major things like engine replacement or transmission problems are not negotiable. If it really costs too much to keep fixing you have to stop at some point. DH commutes two hours a day on rural roads so we go through a lot of cars. We sold one last night that had a blown cylinder. It's amazing how long a car can really go when you're determined to drive it to the end. we have three cars with over 200K miles on them

I've lived this too, still am to some degree. My DH had some sort of epiphany and started doing better. I know it didn't start after a fight but I think he saw how badly the mess was affecting me. So in one way, he's doing a lot better. But in another he's not cured and we still have issues. I had to give up "zones"-he has a garage area that is all his and it looks like an industrial hoard. It's scary and ugly but I never go there-if I need something that is out there I send one of the kids or he goes, I just pretend it doesn't exist. I have some zones in the house too, his side of the bed (out of the way so I can ignore it), his closet. I just make it so I can avoid them and not have people see them. Right now we have scraps from a wood project in the yard and yes, in the livingroom so I totally get you there! I have found with my DH that if I ask nicely and directly he'll clean it up. Even if I'm screaming on the inside I put on my fakey nicey kid voice and ask him to pick up after himself and there he'll go. So asking for the obvious and hiding my anger has helped me also. And I've had to accept the obvious. You have a laundry problem and it's always going to be there. I have one too, he does the same with doing his own laundry and doesn't put it away. He works out of two laundry baskets of unfolded clothes and the dirties are on the bathroom floor. But I'm able to kick/shove his dirty clothes into the bottom of a linen closet so they are out of my sight and way. Maybe there is a way that you can kick his clothes under the bed or shove them into a heap or do some deliberate laundry basket placement that he can't avoid. He's not going to do it right but maybe there is a way you can make it acceptable. tolerable. Mine leaves beer cans everywhere-you can imagine how attractive that is! All over the property and house. As unfair as it is, it's one of the kids' chores to pick them up for me. They then help me police him b/c if affects us all. We don't do it with a mean spirit but it's no less unfair or fun for just me to be picking up after someone else that much. So see the problem and instead of wishing it would go away, find a solution that fits the reality. It's very very difficult. I'm lucky I have kids that are drawn more to organization than to be messy like he is otherwise I would be in a real tight spot. And my kids are old enough to compensate for him too. Good luck-you can see here that you aren't alone, if that's any consolation.

I've seen several dogs recover from parvo-it takes a lot of care and fluids but it is possible.

DH just had his last year-he stayed in a hospital room for the night. When they checked him in they hooked him up to a lot of wires and machines. He said it was difficult to fall asleep and was only able to get a few hours of good sleep but it was enough for them to see he was choking out about one minute out of every five. He came home with a CPAP and even though it took a little getting used to he is much more rested and comfortable with it. He's thin too, weight isn't what causes his problems-the doctor said he has big lungs and small sinuses so basically he is a human bellows. lol We just put our bed on a frame and now we can feel just a little movement. While we were building the frame it was on the floor and then we didn't feel anything at all. Had we not gotten this temperpedic I was going to go the twin beds side by side route.

yep it's the temperpedic. Depending on the frame you can still feel *some* movement but when we had ours on the floor I couldn't tell if DH was over there at all. Heaven after 14 years of getting tossed and turned...

Two beds or a temperpedic style mattress. We got the mattress and you really can't feel the other person move, it's wonderful. And a CPAP for you until you lose the weight and/or stop snoring. DH was the one keeping me awake for years and years; I still have to sleep with the tv on or earplugs in to block out noise but finally his thrashing around doesn't wake me and he's much more rested too now that he has the CPAP.

Understood, there is reading and IRL research to do still for me, obviously. For me, everything that I've read and thought about and prayed about so far absolutely leads me away from the concept that Christ died for my sins. :confused: I've never heard it explained nor read about it in any way to resonate with me. But I am having revelations and breakthroughs about God and religion, confirming ideas and thoughts that I have never had before... so I'm not sure what to do with that. Maybe God is taking it slowly with me. :D ETA I appreciate all the info here too, it's quite possible that though I asked a Christianity question I may not be pulled toward Christianity for my religion. I need to learn more about Judaism.

Thanks everyone, lots to read with my cup of coffee this morning!

No you're not critical.. it's a little frustrating I guess. I am wide open, curious for an answer but from a critical/logical background... maybe there isn't a <go this way> sign for me...