I was thinking maybe 10 day trips. I will definitely only book refundable tickets and hotels.

My parents are still married. He lives in "his" house most of the time. She lives in "her" house half the week and "his" house the other half. He prefers to live in "his" house for reasons I explained in a previous post, although at some point he'll probably have to stay at "her" house most of the time because it's near his doctor, better hospitals, and my brother. Hopefully if you plan four at least one or two happen. I guess I wasn't clear enough. My dad doesn't want to travel. I want to go with DH and my kids on some international trips before they grow up and move out. One thing that annoys me about the idea of dual enrollment this summer or the fall is being tied to the college's schedule. (Although DS could take all the classes for the major he wants online.) Since you bring up disrupting routines, that make me wonder if it would be better to go ahead with dual enrollment in case the following year (first year as a FT college student) is crazy, or should we have him wait because once he's an adult we can leave him home alone in an emergency if needed? DS1 just turned 17 and has ADHD, so there have been some delays in maturity. He doesn't have his license yet, but DH and I are going to try hard to have him ready for his driving test in a few months because we know I will eventually have to go help my mom, and DH may not be able to drive him to work or practice every time.

When I was ten we started visiting my grandma (2.5 hours away) who was in rapid decline almost every weekend. This went on for two years! It was a bit of a drag. I don't want my kids' lives to be as disrupted. I don't think they'll want to relocate. As it is, they split their week between their two houses. Although this may change now, my dad has spent most of his time at the second house, which he grew up in, since he inherited it about six years ago. My mom, who began saying she never wanted to live in that town fifty years ago (!) spends part of the week at the house I grew up in and the rest at the second house. (The towns are over two hours apart.) He likes his childhood home because of all the land it has, his favorite equipment is there, and his friends live nearby. He has a dream of keeping that house in the family, but the economy in that area isn't great, so both my brother and I turned it down. My mom won't want to live there once she is widowed. This is my long way of saying that downsizing would be a good idea for the future benefit of my mom and me, but it would greatly cut down on his enjoyment of his remaining time.

We normally visit twice per year because it is a long drive. We flew up for Easter and will probably fly up more often. DS1 is taking physics, math (asynchronous and self-paced), and one elective online. The plan was for him to take math online next year with the same provider. I was thinking of having him do chemistry online with a self-paced class as well. Everything else for him is with me. DS2 does everything with me. This is one reason why I was thinking I might need to rearrange their school to do more of what they need me for this summer. It would be nice if he would agree to sell stuff off now. In the past (before his diagnosis) he would laugh and joke how great it was that I would have to deal with everything after their deaths. (My brother lives about 45 minutes from them, but I'll probably end up doing the bulk of the work.) My mom told me today that he apologized to her recently for having so much stuff she'll have to deal with.

My dad (early 70s) was diagnosed with prostate cancer that has already metastasized all over his body, especially in his bones. With hormone blocking treatment he may live 1-2 years. We live 13 hours away from my parents. DS1 is finishing up 11th grade, and DS2 is finishing up 8th grade. I'm trying to figure out how to plan their school (and our lives) for the next 1-2 years. Before this news, DS1 was planning on starting dual enrollment this summer and going to community college after he graduates next year. Now I'm wondering if we should rethink that. Maybe he should wait until fall and should try to get as much of his 12th grade courses done as possible this summer. Likewise, I need to figure out what to do about 9th grade for DS2. We just applied for our passports, and I was hoping our family could to do some traveling before DS1 graduates. It's going to be a mess after he dies because they own two houses with multiple buildings of tools and business equipment. They aren't hoarders, but one of them is a bit of a packrat. I know, I know, "Don't borrow trouble.) Any suggestions about how to order our lives for the next 1-2 years?

DS is on chapter 2 of Derek Owen's precalculus course. From looking through the workbooks for both semesters, it looks like he covered about 80% of the material in Foerster's Algebra 2/Trig book. At least I now know why getting through that book took so long! (And that was with skipping the stats chapter.)

I have no experience in getting therapy of any kind, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt. Would someplace like Better Help that offers online therapy help? Their website make it sound like it costs about $60-90 per week.

Yes, I think they are. I remember a few months ago another Hive member was joking that somewhere Putin's brother was posting about some woman stalking him and her obsession with his lighthouse decoration. There was an old gas station a few towns over that went out of business. They removed the pumps, gutted the building, and added an addition. I thought it was turning into a financial place, but instead it turned into a gas-station themed burger bar and brewery. They left one of the covers over the pumping area up. They also decorated the second floor outdoor patio with an old rusty car. I don't get it.

No, we don't have one. I've been opening the windows this week for ventilation though. I'd like to not get this virus while trying to fend off the end of Covid.

I've never seen so many adults sick as I have this winter. It started the first week of November. Each week I wonder who'll miss soccer. Sometimes it's multiple people. Of course, I've missed an entire month now. I think my teammates may start to wonder if I died and am emailing them game reminders from the grave.

DH figured it out. Somehow we have subscribed to a Virus of the Month Club. The members: Me DH - rarely gets more than the sniffles DS1 - rarely even gets sniffly and never sick for more than for 2-3 days DS2 - our chief virus procurer; allergies and asthma; At Thanksgiving everyone but DH got sick. Then we all came down with Covid at Christmas. Stranglely, DS2 was only sick for about three days, while DS1 took 2 1/2 weeks to get all better. I've been sick for more than a month, and DH is at the four week mark. Now DS2 has picked up something else, and DS1 is starting to get sick again. Can we unsubscribe to this club? This is harder to get out of than those old CD of the month clubs in the 90s!

Does anyone know where I can buy the teacher access for Avancemos 2? It doesn't look like Lamp Post Homeschool sells it anymore. I only see the student version for sale.

On Monday I went for my first walk and went 0.5 miles. Today I went 0.8 miles. Both days I started to feel slightly more tired after about 3-4 minutes, but then it went away. The first day I felt like resting in a chair for a while after I got, but then I was fine the rest of the day (coughing fits aside). Today I didn't feel like I needed to rest after my walk.

I actually had CFS from about 2008-2011 and eventually recovered from it, so I know exactly what you're talking about. I NEVER want to go back to that, which is why I was asking for suggestions here. Thankfully I have tech to help me avoid it. DH and I both have Oura rings, which track our nighttime average and lowest heart rates, as well as heart rate variability. I also have a smart watch for fitness purposes, as well as a chest strap heart rate monitor I can dig out for more accurate readings. We are both looking at all our numbers carefully each day, which is what has prompted us to take things very easy.

Day is day 27 of Covid for me. A few days ago I finally leveled-up into just dragging myself through daily activities. I still have some congestion and a cough, although they are about 75% better than they were a week ago. Before Covid I was playing soccer 3-4 days per week and lifiting weights twice a week. Right now my pulse still zips up to about 120-125 going up one flight of stairs. I have an Oura ring, so I can see that my heart rate variability is about back to normal, although my pulse is still about 3-5 bpm higher at night than before Covid. The brain fog has mostly lifted, although as I said, although I no longer need to bum around all day, my energy is still low. I'd say I can do things like laundry, pay bills, dishes, and cook for maybe about 1-2 hours spread throughout the day. How do I know when it's time to try some light exercise? I thought another Hive member said something about if people try to return to normal too quickly they can end up with long Covid. Online searches suggested the Return to Play protocol, which has about 7 stages of returning to normal training once a person has gone 7 days without symptoms. I'm not sure if this would be a week with zero cough, or a week of feeling totally normal except for a bit of a lingering cough. (For example, I was sick about 4-5 days at Thanksgiving, but I was able to play in a tournament the following weekend, even though I had a lingering cough that was finally about gone when I caught Covid.) DH caught Covid about five days after me and is similarly slow to recover. The last two nights his fever at night was only about 0.5 degrees F after having a real fever almost every night since Christmas. Even DS1, who is never more than mildly sick more than 2-3 days, took 2 weeks to totally recover.

A few random tips: If your hose starts making crackling noises that wake you up, lift the hose as high as you can above the unit to let excess water drain back into the unit. If you start waking up with water on your face, turn down the humidity. If you develop a bit of a cough or other issues after a week or two, try turning the humidity up. Use baby shampoo to wash the mask, hoses, etc. If your jaw starts to hurt, loosen the straps a bit.

I know Clark Howard encourages people to use their miles up because the airlines keep devaluing them. My mom has American Airlines miles through her credit card, and while flights used to be about 25,000 points round-trip, one-way flights are often more than that now. The linked article also mentions that hotels keep devaluing their points as well.

I'm the captain of three adult teams for my sport. Two of them are in one league, and the third is in the different league. A few months ago I changed what category of team we are (for reasons unrelated to cost), and now as a result I am in charge of making people pay their registration fee every two months. Previously everyone had to pay the same amount no matter how many members we had. Now the fee is a set rate split up among all of us, which makes it cheaper most seasons. One team has a more stable roster, so I was able to know exactly how many players there would be before registering. The second team has had multiple roster changes, which means that I've had to recalculate what everyone owes multiple times after some players had already paid. Should I go through the hassle of trying to have everyone pay the same amount, which would involve: I pay the rest of the team balance. New additions pay me directly. I give small refunds ($5-7) to players who had over-paid. Or is it okay to just give up and accept that some people will end up paying $5-7 more than others? ETA: I've been the captain of one of the teams for six years. I didn't change our category before so I didn't have to deal with the money. However there were other valid reasons for changing. ETA2: Thankfully for team number three everyone has to pay the league directly to even get on the roster.

DS16 is in 11th grade. He doesn't generally like doing school work, unless it's just reading. It looks like he may have been cheating on many of his algebra 2 problems this chapter. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!! I just discovered right now that he cheated on his physics test for his online class. He had gotten a C on his last test, so we reduced the amount of time per week he can spend video editing for his YouTube channel from 7 hours to 3 hours. He was told his hours would be increased once he improved his study habits and got his grades up. This is infuriating! Asking him about this won't do any good because he'll just lie, like he usually does about anything screen time related. Help! What do we do, about this round of cheating and dealing with him and his attitude in general? Normal consequences/punishments have never work well for this child. Parenting books haven't been very useful because they are all aimed at normal kids. The type of advice they give would work well with DS13, but not DS16.

Has anyone had low testosterone that they treated? My first set of test results came back and my doctor said my testosterone is low and that I can treat it if I'm interested. My other test results aren't in yet, and my appointment will be in a few weeks. Depending on my other results, I suspect she'll suggest taking DHEA or something rather than trying testosterone directly.

Monash University has a low FODMAP diet app that is helpful. DH and I both had SIBO last year and used the app. You can search for a food and it will give you a red, yellow, or green light for the level of multiple different types of FODMAPs in the food. You may be able to use the app to figure out which specific FODMAPs you need to limit or avoid, rather than having to avoid all of them. DH and I both wound up having to do two rounds of Rifaximin as well.

The last time I wrote a paper for a class, I used an online website that let me make digital notecards. If I remember correctly, there were multiple columns. One column had each "stack" of cards sorted by subject. Selecting a stack would make the relevant cards show up in the third column, which I could then rearrange easily to change the order I wanted the facts to appear in my paper. The benefit of this multi-column system was that I could easily see the order of the paragraphs in the second column and the order of the details in each paragraph in the third column. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the website. All my web searches are coming up empty. Does anyone have any recommendations for digital notecard apps for DS to use in writing his first paper? Most of the search results I get are either aimed at making flashcards or are aimed at people writing novels.

We first became interested in Invisalign after my MIL had it a few years ago and lost about 40 lbs because it kept her from snacking as much. I took DS1 to three orthodontists last year for consults. At all three Invisalign was the same price as traditional braces. For DS1, they said Invisalign would work about as well. (The specific comment I remember from one was that it would give about 95% of the benefit of traditional braces.) The price gap between the cheapest and most expensive of the three was over $1000 (and the cheapest had a bigger sibling discount), so we went with the cheapest. Part of the savings was $500 off if we used the newly available ScanBox system. With this system, you use your phone to submit photos every week, and the orthodontist says if it's time to move onto the next tray or not. DS1 started his treatment last August and has had about 3-4 weeks where they told him to wait another few days and rescan before they said to move on. When we took DS2 in for a consult this winter I asked how the ScanBox system was working. The orthodontist said it was working great because he gets to see the patients' teeth every week and can spot problems much faster. For example, if DS1 is sloppy about wearing his trays for enough hours one week due to a crazy schedule, the orthodontist can see that the teeth haven't moved enough and tell him to wear them another few days. With the system patients only come in about half as often. I think DS1 has only been in four times in ten months, and two of those times were to rescan his mouth for the second set of trays and then to go pick them up when they were ready.

I don't suppose you know of any links for similar free products but for math?

Thanks!