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).

SAD bites :hugs. Until I lived up north, I never understood why people were so down on February - it's my birth month, it's a *great month* - but going on month three of gray & cold, yeah, I came to understand <sigh>. I dreaded the ending of daylight savings time; those four/five months from Nov to Mar were just so viscerally dark&cold. I ended up dealing with it by a) putting in daylight LEDs in all my fixtures and opening all the blinds and turning on all the lights the moment I got up, b) religiously walking outdoors every day (most of my winter walks were in twilight but it still helped), and c) using a lamp (getting the equivalent of 30min of 10,000 lux at 16-24in away). I had to buy the lamp in the summer, though, because I had several years where I thought about getting one once SAD had hit, but couldn't function well enough to actually research and buy one <sigh>. I'd hoped that moving back south would solve it, but it's still an issue (plus reverse SAD). Plus a few winters ago I just could not get warm, all winter - it was so awful. I now have an electric blanket (kept on the couch), electric socks (that I wear when out and about), and down booties (that I wear to bed - ensures that no matter how cold they are when I go to bed, they will be warm when I get up). The ability to warm up reliably, esp my feet, has helped so much. And regular(ish) exercise helps me keep from tipping over into the "can't get warm no matter what" state. (I also invested in some base layers, both to stay warmer and to overcome the mental block of "can't go outside, too cold" - I could be confident that my gear was good enough that I *could* stay warm.) And after reading here about how coffee can help with mild depression, I started drinking coffee in Dec 2022 - one daily cup - and it has really helped. I didn't collapse into crying goo come February/March last year, and so far so good this year. Hope your area can be unseasonably warm soon <hugs>.

I'm not sure it's fair to say that I *bullet* journal, but I was inspired by the last bullet journal thread a few years back to add page numbering and an index at the back of the journal. It's super bare bones: I just add the title and page number to the end of the running index if it's a new topic, or add the new page number if it's an old topic; I already dated and titled my pages, so the only addition is recording the info in the index. Otherwise I don't do anything fancy, or even any planning at all, just date and title each entry. It's my everything journal, so it has me wrestling with theology cheek-by-jowl with dates for piano recitals and planning for trips.

At first I thought I was just a bit too old for the reference. When I was at college, computers were standard and the Internet was absolutely a thing (college was my first experience with the joy of an always-on high speed connection), but while the Internet was huge socially and took up a giant chunk of free time, it wasn't really relevant to our actual education. Other than communicating with profs by email and turning in programming projects online, I didn't use the Internet for school stuff. Computers, absolutely, but taking advantage of an Internet connection, no. Despite being a computer engineering major, my professors simply did not give us projects that required or utilized the Internet, nor did I do school-related research online or otherwise supplement my education with online resources (I went to the brick & mortar library). But when discussing the video with my sister, she said she thought AI was just way too new for it to be having *that* significant an impact on education *right now*. And I realized that might be exactly where my college experience was wrt the Internet's influence on education. The internet was huge, but it was still new and hadn't yet materially changed how education was done; in retrospect, my college experience was probably *just* before those changes started happening on a large scale. That said, having seen the effects of the internet on institutional schooling, I'm mostly glad that I *did* get a largely pre-integrated-internet education. The internet's been a huge boon for auto-didactism, but overall I don't think the influence on institutional education has been a net positive. In addition to ooh-shiny "anything on a computer is better than the non-computer alternative" do-it-because-we-can approach to computers in school, I think there's also a strong "don't bother learning things that the computer/internet can do for you" way of thinking, and I think that's a net negative. Even in my computer-centric college experience, we learned hand-drafting before we learned autoCAD. Why? Because experience showed that, even though no one hand-drafted anymore, people still needed to *learn* hand-drafting before they learned computer-aided drafting - it built necessary skills that were missed if you jumped straight to autoCAD. I think that goes triple for AI-assisted tasks - that it's essential to have a thorough grounding in thinking *without* AI help before bringing in AI assistance. For example, one "responsible" use of AI that a lot of people, including here, find useful for themselves is letting the AI do the information gathering/organizing. That's our current bugaboo in writing, here - both my middle and oldest find the brainstorming/information gathering and synthesizing stage to be the hardest part. Minus philosophical objections, they'd otherwise probably *love* to outsource that part - it would make the writing task way easier to have an AI gather information for them and organize it in an outline. But as frustrating as that stage is for them, I think it's important to be able to *do* that - to get from the blank page to ideas to organized ideas themselves. (And I realize that doing so using non-AI internet resources is both more helpful and also easier than doing so with no Internet resources.) If AI is doing it because I *can't*, then the AI is a crutch, not just a help. (I'm not all the way through the video yet, but in general I do have principled objections to outsourcing things like translations and commercial art to AI; it's one thing for a person to use AI to help themselves to accomplish a task (itself fraught with potential issues) vs. a person outsourcing a complete task to AI where previously they'd have outsourced it to another human. I don't like the trend of having AI make decisions for people, of having AI do things without people directing and overseeing. And I don't like AI *replacing* trained humans, both because it disincentivizes people to learn those skills and because it removes people from involvement in those tasks.)

My youngest is similar - he found/finds it very difficult to handle getting something wrong (it does seem to be the fact of being wrong more than the correction pointing it out, though the two are highly related), and gets upset and tries to escape the situation (whether by leaving the room or hiding under the table or hiding under a blanket, etc). He's always been this way, and in fact has been getting better each year - he reacts badly less often and the reactions he does have are shorter and less intense. It doesn't really impact our ability to get school done anymore, whereas in early elementary dealing with it was our main school task. I never had much luck avoiding triggering him - there wasn't much I could do to avoid the reaction other than avoiding the correction altogether, which I worked very hard to *not* allow myself to do. I made sure I was calm and matter-of-fact about the correction - no big deal being wrong here, it's part of learning, we'll just try again - but while I assume/hope it has helped in the long run, it was of limited use in the short term. I mean, if I injected negative emotion into the situation, he'd get even *more* upset; but nothing I did could *prevent* him from getting upset if it was going to happen. Proactively doing all the toddler HALT stuff (making sure he wasn't hungry/thirsty/tired/etc.) helped - always easier to not lose it if you aren't also thirsty - and addressing it first after he melted down was helpful to a point. When a meltdown happened, generally I tried to deal with the big feelings first. He's a snugglebug, so in addition to the HALT stuff, I'd offer snuggles - nothing is so helpful in calming him down as snuggles. It helped for me to go to him (instead of have him come to me), and even to gently tug him over or pick him up (as long as he wasn't resisting) instead of waiting for him to make the first move to come to me. Once he was calmed down, I'd offer to do the dreaded corrections (or "too hard" work) with him sitting on my lap. As he got older, sometimes the offer of sitting on my lap to work was enough to side-step a meltdown. Now that he's older (though still a snugglebug), I'll offer a hug and he usually takes me up on it. He also likes to work snugged into me on the couch when it's "hard". ETA: In your case, do whatever calming down things help your dc, if snuggles aren't their thing. IDK, I don't feel like I have any magic anything. I just tried really hard to *not* avoid correcting him or asking him to do "hard things" because of his reactions. And I tried to not let his meltdown allow him to avoid the thing, while also working to keep myself calm during the meltdown. We weathered the meltdown, got him calmed down and ready to face the task, and then I cheerleaded him through the task. Lather, rinse, repeat - for years and years and years. But it has borne fruit. It's really not the all-encompassing issue that it used to be anymore. ETA: Anxiety is definitely at play with ds. He comes by it naturally <sigh>; in general, I've found the more I allow the avoidance, the worse it gets. For myself, every time I avoid the thing I'm anxious about, the stronger the urge to avoid the thing gets. Every avoidance just increases the anxiety, making it harder to not avoid the next time.

ITA But also, when my depression acts up, I feel crushingly lonely despite being in a good marriage. It's a pretty reliable sign of depression in me, actually, to feel desperately alone regardless of actual human contact, and I do fixate on romantic physical touch as the only thing that will help. It does help, some, but when depressed I build it up in my head way too much, pin hopes on it that are too much for it to bear; aka my depressed self feels like romantic touch is a silver bullet to make me feel better, stop the depressed feelings - that's why I want it so much. So, even though I totally agree it's completely normal to prefer being in a long-term relationship to being single, I also think depression can intensify and warp it, give it a desperate "this is the one-and-only-thing that can make me feel better" sort of feeling that makes living without it seem a worse prospect than it would seem otherwise.

Going to disagree here. Something that the Bible calls a *curse* is in fact something that the Bible is calling *bad*, not promoting as a good. And if you are talking about Numbers 5:27 (part of the order of bitter water laid out in Num. 5:11-31), while the NIV has "miscarry", the Hebrew itself has "womb will swell" and most English translations (as well as the Septuagint) have either "belly will swell" or "womb will swell" - nothing at all suggesting miscarriage. Combined with the next verse ("But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children"), the clear meaning is infertility, not miscarriage (especially since the test was for women suspected of adultery, not of being pregnant). As well, the Mishnah (first collection of Jewish oral tradition) talks about how women who are pregnant or nursing are not to drink the bitter waters.

It sounds like she might be judging your actions solely by their effect on *her*, with no consideration for the intrinsic nature of the action or your motivations - a sadly common issue these days. Also, it may be that when she sent the initial text she was feeling upbeat or strong or otherwise able to handle the task of rekindling your friendship, but by the time when she received your response, she'd lost whatever energy she'd had when she sent the original text. Or that her desire to reconnect was stronger than her ability to deal with complicated emotions. When I was seriously depressed, I was a rotten judge of what I could handle - in optimistic moments I was forever writing checks that my depressed self was in fact incapable of covering when they came due. It took years for me to gain enough perspective to make realistic judgments about what I could *actually* do. The fact she tried at all to reconnect is a sign she *does* care about you and her friendship, even if her (immature) attempts at reaching out are hurting you instead of helping <sigh>. None of that makes her current behavior any easier to live with, but it's highly likely it's not about your actions but about her (lack of) ability to deal with life.

Sounds like my kids. My oldest, in particular, exited phonics-only teaching as a visual reader, and couldn't distinguish the insides of words, either aurally or visually. Naturally, that made her a really awful speller - she couldn't spell anything past CVC words. I ended up doing a lot of things with her (and my other kids) to build her ability to pay attention to the insides of words, and to sound out words. We ended up doing three passes through phonics: once to learn to read, once as part of learning cursive (an intensive process for my kids, but one that helped their ability to read and spell a lot), and again as part of learning to type. We also did a lot of studied dictation, as well as morpheme-based reading and spelling programs (once their ability to sound things out was solid). I ended up having her work through every combo of one-syllable words and syllables in common use (or as close as I could manage - over 1,500) - both breaking the one syllable down into individual phonemes and building them up from phonemes; she had to work through each combo individually, because she couldn't generalize from her "this spelling says this sound" phonics knowledge very well. And then we did a lot of work learning to break words into syllables and build words from syllables. But in the end she could do it adequately enough to pronounce new words not in her oral vocabulary correctly, and to spell most words correctly. How old are your kids? And what have you done for phonics? When you say "can't sound out", what does that look like? And what does their spelling look like? Can they spell CVC words? Words with blends? What does it look like when they attempt to spell multi-syllable words?

Had no idea, but just calculated it: about $150 a year (plus another $20 for filters). That's one 9oz cup a day, with HEB's Cafe Ole brand (store brand, but a more premium-ish store brand - I like it, and my dh wouldn't be super impressed if I wanted to go more expensive).

1TB SSD looks good wrt storage, and while it looks like you couldn't crack the case and upgrade the internal hard drive, she could certainly buy an external SSD if she ever needed more space. ~*~ Size-wise, we went with a 13.5" for my eldest's college laptop, which is the same size as the laptop my dh uses now (dd's used it and thought it was a good size). It's a convenient size for taking back and forth to work, and for using on one's lap at home. Dh has a laptop sleeve for transporting it - aka, it's not just put into his messenger bag, but has a nice shock-resistant and water-resistant case to travel in. It wouldn't fit into a purse like my tablet does, but laptop+case leaves plenty of room in dh's messenger bag, and would also fit well into decent-but-not-huge backpack. ETA: Dimensions are 11.6"x9.0"x0.62"; compared to the 15.6" laptop above, it is 2.5" shorter in length, a quarter inch shorter in width, and a little thinner; compared to the 17.3" laptop above, it is over 4" shorter in length, over 1" shorter in width, and a bit thinner. Maybe plot out the dimensions on a piece of cardboard and test out how it fits in whatever bag she'd want to carry it in (and if you are going to get a sleeve for it, which I do recommend - you'll need to test out the sleeve dimensions wrt fitting into bags).