What is funny is that even though my family is very low income right now as we dump everything into our business my kids are friends with very wealthy kids. Because we have many things in common. The stress on education is huge, as well as travel, I have insisted that all my kids travel, and we do eat healthy. Ooops.

This is quite distressing!

I signed. I'm so sorry.

Not only would I report it to the manager, I would put the whole experience on YELP. That is just awful.

I suspect that is where most Americans our age learned this from. In my restaurant I has SUPER manly guys who do that to demonstrate that they don't want their bacon overcooked and it ALWAYS makes me grin.

Clearly no lessons from Penn State will sink in here. There is no emotional depth for lesson learning.

The only thing more disgusting than the actual thing that happened is all the men in authority who think this was peachy. Even the coach is unwilling to admit any responsibility or wrongdoing. Filthy.

Weeeellll, THAT IS BURNED INTO MY BRAIN.

Interestingly this happened with my MIL's brother. As a young man in his mid 20's he completely estranged himself from his parents and never reconnected at all. It really devastated them. They were not perfect parents, I don't believe they were ever as involved as you were, Creekland, but they were very loving parents. The stress of losing a child and not knowing why was very hard for them. In late middle age their son wrote them a letter explaining why he was angry, and my MIL says nothing in the letter was true at all. It was very sad. In their case I think a relative was involved with the discoloration of the past. In the case of my MIL's brother (my husband's uncle) he was an extreme alcoholic and I do wonder if that colored his life. He was a very successful business man though. Had a HUGE construction company.

Stop at a convenience store and get a 5 Hour Energy. It's what I do in similar situations, lol.

Happy Birthday!!!! (resisting the urge to make the little party guys just to show off, lol!)

Well... if you are my sometimes Vegan teenage dd, you just eat sugar to sustain you.

Something like this happened in a good friend's family. My friend's older sister got counseling regarding overeating. The "therapist" did some kind of hypnotic therapy and convinced my friend that that she had "recovered memories" of serious abuse. The siblings in the family had a intervention with her after a year or so of not talking to anyone in the family and made her realize that there were six kids in a 1500 square foot three bedroom one bathroom house. There was no way she had been subjected to the abuse she "remembered" without other siblings knowing SOMETHING about it. But it took a long time to convince her.

This would cheese me off too. Does she want you to pull this when she is expecting her first child and needs your support???? There is no reason to not speak up and say what's bothering you. I might give her one "fair warning", verbally, on the phone, so she doesn't misconstrue it and then not discuss it again. My guess is that since it involves some siblings and not others it has to do with politics in some way... but my own reality may be coloring that. My mother has been known not to talk to us kids when we endorse the "wrong" candidate. You are right, it is middle school behavior. If she wants to act like this as an "adult" she is going to be disappointed with the overall quality of her life. I personally would wait it out. I might not be inclined to talk when she feels like it. I had some issues with my oldest when she was 25. When I was 25 I was taking care of her. I had no patience for her selfishness. The space I gave her turned out to be really good for her. She really grew up a lot. The growing up part was not going to be done for my benefit, evidently, she had to do it for herself. Which is fair. You can only really grow when you do it for yourself.

Well, my auto correct makes mistaken texts seem like nothing. I sent an employee a text that said, "You disgust me." She was traumatized, she was a 63yo woman who is such a people pleaser it isn't funny. It really upset her.

Praying!

I am glad you are getting a grip on the situation. I have been keeping you in my prayers and will continue.

I still see them everywhere. Lots of people wear them with ankle boots, which I thought was dorky the first few times I saw it but now I think it's cute.

Okay, I get it. Yes, you can learn a stringed instrument much easier by Youtube. He could probably learn to play the piano with chords easier than regular lessons and then he would be able to accompany people at church or whatever. I would see if he would get some lessons in chord style playing which will hopefully broaden his horizons.

When my son was in scouts there were no dads with football injuries that could not participate in activities. Several dads had knees that were blown from soccer who never got to go on one hike. I never encouraged my son to continue with soccer after I saw how many grown men were permanently damaged. If I had more kids I wouldn't allow soccer.

A really high quality set of stemware, even if they don't drink wine it is so nice to have something really good to toast with even if you are using Martineli's.

If he can play the guitar there might be hope if he had lessons. My own dh plays the fiddle with no lessons pretty well. I would love to have hours a day to devote to piano practice, I love to play, but there simply is no time.

I have never gotten a migraine, but once something happened when the plane got in the air that freaked me out. I felt like a blood vessel behind my right eye burst. I thought I would die it hurt so much. I collapsed. There were lots of people with me because I was on a mission trip. They did a Pentecostal dog pile, all of them praying for me, and I got it checked out as soon as I got home but my PCP and my eye doctor both could not find anything wrong at all.

I felt this way until boxing. I love punching that bag. Where I live now there are no boxing classes... but I work so hard it doesn't matter.

Do your best to keep the rest of the family cheerful and functioning. I wish I had learned this with my oldest. The girl needs to know that life is going on for everyone else and she does not have the power to put a damper on family life for everyone else. They come around a LOT more quickly when everyone else is happy.