I renewed mine 5mo late once, and while I had to retake the written exam I didn't have to redo the road test. I had been super worried about the whole late renewal thing, but it went very smoothly.

I don't see "being positive" and "being proactive" as the same thing; I think you can view a situation quite negatively and yet still be proactive about dealing with it and/or getting oneself out of it. (I *do* tend to be a "think positive" kind of person, and it's pretty easy for me to just reframe the situation as something I can live with and call it a day - being positive can be a way to *avoid* being proactive, if one isn't careful.) But yeah, I've got a complainer, and the whole "complain how others suck while refusing to do zip themselves" is really annoying. I'm one of those annoying devil's advocate types, and I do try to point out reasons why things aren't necessarily as stupid as one might think - things you don't like exist for reasons other than people-not-you are idiots. When applicable, I repeat what my dad said to me "Different is often just different, not wrong." I get it, lots of people just want to complain to blow off steam, but when their complaints seem unfair to those they are complaining about, I do put my oar in, and I appreciate when people do the same for me. Which makes me annoying, probably, lol. FWIW, I'm coming to appreciate "pray about it" as the answer to all things. There are so. many. things. outside my control, many of which are quite intolerable. I very much do approve of taking small actions within my control, to make my little corner of the world better; I do not buy that just because collective action is needed to make a large scale change, that means there's no point to making changes in my own life unless and until a critical mass of people are making the same change. Examples of what's possible are vital, and it's just seems sensible to test radical changes at the small level before trying to implement them at scale. But that said, my actions are no guarantee of anything, humanity's no guarantee of anything - there's nothing and no one who is except for God. He's either got it, or no one's got it. And I do believe that God's got it - He's our guarantee of goodness and justice and salvation, that good triumphs in the end. And that intercessory prayer's a thing - I don't understand it, it's not a magic incantation, but God both commands prayer and acts in light of our prayers. So, yeah, I don't know what you believe, but the older and more anxious I get, the more I pray - because there's too many problems that need solving that I can't solve, but God can. If it's worth being upset about, it's worth praying about - it's the kind of proactive we can be about anything and everything, no matter how little else we can do.

Spelling You See was the first thing that came to mind. My oldest was a truly atrocious speller; turned out she couldn't perceive the insides of words, not visually or aurally - no wonder she couldn't spell. SYS's visual marking system worked wonders for helping her learn to pay visual attention to the inside bits of words. We actually used the SYS system with any and all dictation we did. Level A (and B, to an extent) of SYS are different from the other levels - they're working on basic phonetic spelling - so him disliking that level doesn't mean much wrt to the rest of the levels. (Although disliking it could be related to finding it very hard; my dd hated R&S spelling for that reason.) I did Level C with my dd, and it was fairly independent. The first day I had her read the passage, and mark it with me watching and correcting, and then I had her do the copywork on her own; subsequent copywork days I let her do on her own. The only day that really required my sustained attention was the dictation day, once a week, and that's about 15min.

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Agreeing with pp to wait till the end of SM 5 if at all possible. I did that with my oldest - finished SM 5 in 6th, started Pre-Algebra in 7th, and am planning to do the same with my youngest (my middle had the time to do SM 6 in 6th).

When I decided to start drinking coffee and set out to buy a coffee maker, I started the day thinking I'd get a Keurig and ended the day getting an electric kettle (stainless steel), grinder, and stainless steel pour-over (equivalent cost to a Keurig, too). It was a combination of wanting more control over the coffee-making process, generating less waste, and cleanliness/avoiding-plastics issues (and, ngl, a bit of burgeoning coffee snob reasons, too). I changed my dripper (to a glass Hario Switch, that can do immersion brews as well as regular pourovers) and now use paper filters (I have a stainless steel one, but it's nice to just be able to toss the paper filter and grounds), but I'm glad I went the way I did. It's not as fast as dh's coffee maker, but I super love having an electric kettle - where has it been my whole life! - and I'm glad I had free rein to experiment with coffee/water ratios and grind size and such.

I am not a purse minimalist, lol. But I've had to switch purses twice in the past year (I'm really hard on purse straps), and the tide-me-over bag in the middle couldn't hold as much as the old one, so I pared down to what is, for me, the bare essentials: Phone, wallet, keys, checkbook; water bottle, a/c sweater (rolls up small), driving glasses, snack bowl (contains trail mix); [extra cash, extra menstrual pad, tylenol/ibuprofen/sudafed, tissues, cough drops, bandaids, just-in-case mask] => all in small zippered compartment; journal, kindle, pens/pencils, headlamp, book This has actually worked out really well; even though I now have a bigger purse, I added very little back in (just a book and headlamp) - just organized it better. I use all the above, but haven't really missed all the rest of the stuff still lurking in my old purse (honestly, I probably can't remember it all): Coin purse, masks for the whole family, book light, snacks for the whole family, "busy bag" of colored pens/paper (really great when kids were little, but they aren't little now, though they used it when not-little, too), and idk what else was there on purpose. There's also three thousand receipts and several greeting cards stashed. I am thinking about adding in a sewing kit, though. ETA: Forgot about the hair holders, safety pins, and thumb drive I keep on my keys - they are all essentials, too, esp the thumb drive. ETA2: What is in your purse that might be unusual but is very useful? *thumb drive - amazing how helpful it is *a/c sweater *headlamp *bandaids What is in your purse that you would have a hard time without? (not really looking for the obvious, like car keys......) *kindle (small but lots of reading material) - I've never gone anywhere without reading material, and kindle's super convenient; *snack/water

Any reason you can't take it at face value? She had a plan in her head about how she wanted things to go, you unknowingly did something that messed it up, she yelled at you via text because a) that's how she handles her plans being messed up and/or b) she is stressed out of her mind and snapped, you were taken aback and upset b/c you were just trying to be helpful and responded as much, she realized you had no idea why she was upset and didn't deserve her going off at you, so she responds back with an explanation and (sorta) apology. Doesn't have to mean more than, "Please don't think I'm an unreasonable b!tch, I had good caring-about-others reasons for freaking out, but I am sorry for going off on you over it". IDK, it's not like it's uncommon for people to overreact in anger when carefully laid plans are derailed despite their best efforts - it's not good of her, but it's understandable. Now you know what happened - it wasn't the making of the food itself but that she was worried about upsetting the new hire for complicated backstory reasons you had no way of knowing. You can respond "Thanks for letting me know" or just move on without comment. Does mean your closing line of "Won't do things unless you specifically request them" sounds like a reasonable path forward, might even be what she prefers.

I've been on GCM almost as long as here (with the same name). I had an account on the old board in 04-05, and then rejoined in 2006 when I was pregnant with my first.

I've been dropping in here and there since 2000 - it was one of my first introductions to homeschooling. I was in college, had no kids and no spouse, but I've wanted to hs since I first learned it was a thing. I read more regularly around 2003 and started posting around 2004, I think.

I do ours. I used to do it by hand, snail mail and everything, until my mom (who did taxes, and taught me to do ours) said that e-filing was overwhelmingly the way to go. Then she did them for me for a few years (with a friends & family credit, so it was free; otherwise would have been ~$500-600). Then after she retired I used software for a few years (TurboTax and H&R Block) until last year when the $#^&*#$ software had a glitch that I couldn't resolve (and the *other* $#^&*#$ software refused to do clergy taxes properly), and I gave up in disgust. My sister said there was a plain jane way to efile with the government for free - exactly like doing taxes by hand, except using fillable pdfs, so I tried that, and it was pretty sweet. So that's what I'm going to do again this year. Honestly, I prefer to actually *do* my taxes than have to type in every last bit of the forms so the program will do them for me. Especially when the first program I try craps out on clergy taxes and I have to type them all in *again*. Also because I end up doing my taxes by hand anyway to check the program's work, lol. (And the most annoying part of doing taxes - sorting and adding receipts - I can't outsource anyway. I do outsource adding up all the utilities to dh, though.)

I first thought of this in context of my own experience: I was 18 (college freshman) when I started dating dh, who was 23 at the time (grad student), so my gut reaction is that it seems fine. Didn't even occur to me until your post that I *also* have a hs senior (though not 18 yet), and could look at it from that perspective. I do think there's a difference between an 18yo still in high school and an 18yo who has graduated high school. High school graduation is pretty much the American "passage to adulthood" ceremony, so even though hitting one's 18th bday makes one a legal adult, high school graduation is kind of when one is symbolically and socially acknowledged as an adult. So 18yo high schooler dating a 22yo is "legal... but yet still a gap that matters" compared to an 18yo hs graduate dating a 22yo. IDK if I'd object if I otherwise thought the 22yo was a good guy, but it does feel more of a gap than dh and I were. To me, anyway. Maybe my mom (who was a little taken aback at the age difference but didn't express any upset feelings about it) would have a different opinion, lol.

If you've done or would like to do the One Year Adventure Novel, the OYAN forums are well-moderated and restricted to people who've bought the curriculum - my oldest has had a good experience there. Very friendly and encouraging.

FWIW, I use "yell at" colloquially, to mean any sort of raised-voice/projecting-negative-emotion type of thing - like when kids say "my parents will yell at me" to mean any sort of negative reaction directed their way. It does bother my dh (who almost never truly yells), when I refer to him "yelling", so I try to be more precise when referring to him. Otherwise I'm pretty broad in my "yelling at" usage, but I do mean it as descriptive, not as an inherently bad or out-of-control reaction. But if people associate "yelling at" to mean out of control anger, not just raised voices and/or conveying a negative reaction forcefully, I can understand why they would be upset to have an in-control anger reaction labelled "yelling". (Likewise, I think sometimes people use "you're yelling at me" to mean any kind of negative reaction directed their way that is making them feel bad/upset/scared, even if objectively it's not unreasonably loud or out of control or unwarranted - it's just that the person receiving it is very sensitive to negative emotion.)

I take "tell everything" and "confess my sins" as different, though overlapping things. WRT "tell everything", that's spouse/close-friend territory, while "confess sins" is pastor territory. For "tell everything", there's nothing I couldn't tell my dh. While there are things I don't tell him, I certainly *could* without causing problems; I'm just a private person. For "confess sins", I both do and don't have someone - it's complicated by the fact that my pastor is my dh, and while I absolutely could do private confession/absolution with him (I think he'd have no problem putting on his pastor hat), I myself am unable to think of him as pastor-not-dh (instead of pastor-AND-dh); anything I told him-as-pastor would have to be something I was ready to discuss with him-as-dh, because I personally wouldn't be able to compartmentalize like that. I could go to one of the other pastors in the area, but realistically that's not something I'd do without it being really important; so while the opportunity exists, it's not one I'm likely to take advantage of (though that's something I do want to change - I feel the lack - but it's still an aspirational sort of thing atm).