I KMd during the prep and unpacking from a cross country move last fall. My home is 300% better than it used to be, but it's getting ready for a yearly tune up. I need to KM the homeschool stuff and pantry/cleaners because that's stuff that just keeps coming in, KWIM? Other than that, we're happy with where we are. It's the first method to have lasting results for us.

Yeah, I've done it. I had to be a bit rude, especially as I was a female buying a Mustang. I wanted a specific red in a middle of the road package without the performance package. Performance package came with summer-only tires and I have no interest in swapping tires twice a year. I found 3 dealers who had what I was looking for. The first one was really patronizing and told me to ask my husband to explain to me why I wanted the performance package. Crossed him off the list immediately. The second had it in stock and waiting but it was an hour away and they weren't fantastic about returning calls or emails. He was in the hunt but not really into selling a Mustang to a woman. The third one was completely unaware that Ford was sending them that car and had to call Ford to ask about its arrival and would email me when it arrived. It was a 3-day wait. Nice guy there. Would have bought there had the following not happened. In the meantime, I had put in an inquiry on Ford's website and a 4th dealer cold called me. They had a Ruby Mustang with the interior color I wanted but it was the highest package and had nav...two things I wasn't interested in. The sales guy was polite but insistent and finally gave me the internet sales price on the car and the negotiated starting point was lower on it than the other 3 dealers with the lower package. I went to the dealer, drove the car, realized it had been on the lot since December (thank you, lojack card!) and still had only 3 miles on it. I played hard to get and got it for a steal because no one had even asked to look at it in 4 months. Always at least look at the numbers when they offer a higher package because sometimes you luck into a nicer car simply because it lost at car shopping roulette and they are desperate to get it off of their lot. I've done this with cars twice. But all in all my advice is to know what you want and do the hunt for your specifics online, not in person. It saves a lot of time, headache, and needing to explain why this car needs to be the perfect hue or you won't buy. Don't be afraid to cut them off. Bluntness is your friend.

This is why our wills leave everything to surviving spouse. Everything.

I'm sure it's comfortable for you to think that way. I am not opposed to helping people with child care after school. There are many programs in existence just for that. They should be funded better than they are. What I disagree with is making it a part of the school system because it may be optional at first but won't stay that way. K was once optional. Now it's not. Pre-K is headed the same way. Education and child care are vastly different endeavors even if there is some overlap in that you don't want harm to come to children while they are being educated. Having grown up poor, I can say that the people here do a good job of pitying the poor. Newsflash: The poor don't want your pity. They don't care about what internet do gooders type on the internet. What am I for? More help with affordable vocational training. There are lots of jobs looking for votech grads and they pay living wages. People tend to ignore them because they aren't traditional degrees or they don't want to be a welder or electrician or LPN. It's not forever. It's a step up from Walmart. It's not always easy to get aid for these programs. There is a program in my hometown that pays rent and utilities on a 1 or 2 bdrm apartment (depending on number of children) for single parents who were attending the community college half time and maintained at 2.5 gpa. There was a daycare that offered childcare "scholarships" to the children of these students. I would LOVE to see that go nationwide. This wasnt a craphole apartment, either. It was one of the best complexes in town. Basically, I support programs that help people stand on their own rather than encouraging surrender to the whims of government funding. My position comes from growing up hungry and sick and knowing what it took for my brother and I to dig out. The current "war on poverty" is like handing out Lortab indefinitely for an abscessed tooth instead of making a plan to treat the underlying cause. My little sister took the Lortab and went down the rabbit hole of government programs and issues with drugs and hanging with the wrong crowd. She's now 1 semester away from graduating with honors at 30 because she finally saw that my brother and I weren't being cruel when we laid out a difficult path in response to her request for help and advice. We were laying out a path that would be difficult temporarily so she could have a good life after graduation. Due to health issues she can't be at school full time as her scholarships require and work enough to pay the bills without her health crashing, so my brother and I are helping her make it financially until she can graduate. She already has 3 job offers to start within a week of graduation. So basically, I'd like to see programs advocate working smarter not harder because frankly the poor people I know are for the most part working harder than anyone I know. But no pity from me, because pity is the bs of people who don't actually care.

The answer isn't more government mandates. The cure for creeping socialism isn't more socialism. At some point adults have to start behaving like adults and taking personal responsibility for what has or hasn't happened in their lives and figure out what they are going to sacrifice to be the type of parent they want to be for their kids. I sacrificed my dreams of my own career because it wasn't compatible with the hands-on parents we wanted to be when combined with my husband's career. And don't lecture me about not understanding being poor. We clawed our way out. I know what it is to be hungry and know there's nothing in the house to eat. I know what it is to live with permanently damaged joints because my mom couldn't afford medicine and my state was so poor we were waitlisted for medicaid. I also know that the hardest part of clawing out is losing almost all of your friends because they've given up and every step up you make challenges their perception of how the world works. Basically, we as a nation have given up on teaching people to fish. We have gone so far as to rename hard work, perseverance, and ambition "privilege". It's now "privilege" if your parents give a crap and participate in your upbringing or even read to you. My husband entered his industry as a temp grunt making $10. They offered him classes in his small amount of time home. He took them. Other guys didn't. Those guys are still in the Gulf barely scraping by. They ask my husband how much brown nosing he had to do to get where he is. He went to classes to pad his resume and never used the phrase "that's not my job". Never once do they credit him with working hard. Never once do they admit that foremen love having a guy that has the PNIDs for the entire platform in his head. It's always something else...brown nosing, privilege, a boss that has it out for them. It's never their fault. We've become a nation of people that never think they are at fault for anything. We do more harm than good creating a system to just hand out fish.

How about we reword it. People are having children and expecting schools to raise their kids. It's not the job of the schools to do this. They can't even educate decently for all the distractions they already have. They don't need to be totally responsible for every aspect of a child's wellbeing. That's the job of the parents. School from 8-3 is already a massive waste of time. What this country needs is more parental involvement, not less.

First, 4th, and 5th: Homeschool category says I've spent $4500 this year.

"They don't personally contribute anything to the common pot." This pretty much says that somehow in our one income family that I'm taking from the government. That's probably why people are a bit riled up. The tax system is built on households and families, not individual incomes. Yes, he gets a deduction for being financially responsible for me. It's also impossible for me to get a job that would replace that $65,000, and that's not even adding in how much a nanny would cost for the time I'd be working. I have a shot at a remote tech support job that pays about $15 and 20 hours a week, but I'm only considering taking it because I can work from home and it pays 100% of very good insurance for the whole family.

That's a remarkably uninformed idea. My husband is able to make what he does because I stay home...more even than if both of us work. There's no worrying about coordinating schedules or limiting his ability to travel because I am dedicated to our home and children. You'll never see my name on a paycheck, but he makes $65,000 a year more in his current position than he would in the same industry on a schedule that would allow us both to bring home a paycheck in our own name. No, I'm not freeloading or shirking my responsibility. If you want to be angry about something, be upset that because it's all foreign income we have virtually no tax responsibility. If it weren't for cashing out an ancient 401k to make an emergency cross country move we would have gotten a sizable refund.

I can homeschool and keep a company ready house thanks to the KonMari method. The book has a silly title..."The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" but it has helped me go from chronic messiness to a house I'm always fine with having guests over. Flylady was a failure here before KM. After, I don't need it.

Louisiana is actually broke. It's not a drill. They are something like $1.5 billion short this year. They get most of their money from petroleum in one form or fashion. My sister was set to graduate in December from ULL. She needs ONE class next semester because the requirements changed and they refused to allow anyone to graduate under the old criteria. They are holding financial aid refund checks at ULL, too. They keep saying tomorrow or next week, but it is never released. As to the mention of football, that was political genius frankly. LSU football is a religion unto itself, and there's no way the governor or legislators could survive the political fallout from LSU having to forfeit the season. It's absolute genius for the LSU president to make this clear to the football fans. Yes, the priorities are wrong, but he's using those wrong priorities to try to protect LSU.

My brother had an Acadia and had all the problems others are listing. He sold it after 18 months, and he usually drives a car until the wheels fall off and puts them back on a few more times after that.

The lady who sponsored me into the Church (and incidentally taught the RCIA classes) and I have had many conversations about this. It's a cultural thing in the South. If you're Catholic down here you've got to have a pair of brass ones. You're outnumbered and many denominations preach the typical anti-Catholic stuff as fire and brimstone gospel. Nothing will change their view. With the right people, I'll discuss it but generally it's just a good way to get told how deceived you are and possibly even have issues with demons and such. It costs you friends and status to decide to be Catholic in the South, especially in my home state of Mississippi. I don't know about TX...I'm mostly hooked into the Catholic community here so if I'm missing out I am not as aware of it. Our relationship with my husband's family exploded after we converted. We had been atheistic pagans before we met, but when we converted and it was not to their denomination, everything went south in a way that ended with assaults, restraining orders, and a cross country move. It ended up being a blessing, but what a ride. I remember my sponsor telling me that when you're on the right path the Adversary panics and redoubles his efforts. It certainly happened with us. Be strong. Oh, my first priest had a story he liked to tell. When he was in seminary in Ireland, they had discussed what sort of ministry each priest was interested in. He told them mission territory and that he wanted to tend the flock where the Church was challenged. He was thinking third world countries. The day he got his assignment he went to the person in charge of the assignments and was angry because they sent him to America of all places! This person patiently explained that he was being sent to a rural part of Mississippi and that less than 2% of the population was Catholic, therefore it was mission territory. He told him he would be more challenged in MS by Protestant influences on his flock than anywhere else. After 50 years as a priest, he is still there and quietly admits that he got more challenge than he ever expected. This is the mentality you're dealing with. It is my experience that meaningful dialogue and a change of behavior is just not going to happen.

There is no proof whatsoever and every source that reporter used has disputed what the reporter wrote AND the original source wasn't even at the clinic at the time period he claimed. There is so much less evidence than spy cams and deflated balls. A Brady fan is the LAST fan in all of sports who needs to be talking about cheating. Four rings with asterisks around every one. If football had the balls of cycling when it comes to dealing with cheating, he wouldn't have *any* rings. Notice that the only SBs he went to without any asterisks attached he lost. Enough said. And yes, he looked bad considering what you expect of Tom Brady. Even Denver PD tweeted they were sending a missing persons unit to find the Pats. He got hit a lot, and in usual Tom Brady fashion, he doesn't do well when the defense touches him. That's what got Eli his 2 rings. Win or lose, though, it's time for Peyton to retire. I don't want him to totally tear himself up.

I was having a horrible time with Prime since moving to Texas. After they completely screwed the pooch with a TV for my kids, I told them I was going to severely cut back on my spending with them. I guess they didn't believe me. About 2 weeks ago, I received a call asking me about my service. I told them they had started using ground-level shipping for my 2-day packages and 2-day for overnight and nothing was being delivered as promised, so now that I'm in a metro area I simply go to the store instead. They are no longer using USPS for my packages except for weekend delivery, and my packages are arriving on time again.

Who are these 2 QBs widely considered to be cheaters? I only know of one, and he didn't look so great throwing fully inflated footballs without his spy cams. If you're insinuating it's Manning, those sour grapes must be awful. No one believes a word of the Al Jazeera report...desperate reporter looking desperate.

What a game! Emotionally drained today. My Fitbit thought I was exercising the entire second half! Lol. Roll Tide!

A Biblical Walk through the Mass was very helpful for me. It's not historical but does goes into the why and sources it back to the Bible.

But of course! Roll Tide!

I agree. Also, the "illustrated" part is cartoonish line drawings. If you need help figuring out the folds, youtube is a better resource. I KMd that book already. Funny story: I preordered it on kindle, read it in 24 hours, and sent it back for a refund as it wasn't the reference I was hoping for. That afternoon the hardcopy showed up on my doorstep. DH had preordered it for me. LOL

I completely understand where you're coming from. We just, as in the last few months, cut ties with my truly NPD ILs. At this point they could be magically cured and beg forgiveness and I would feel nothing. I'm not capable of feeling sympathetic emotion where they are concerned. The things that keep popping out of my kids' mouths horrify me...I had no idea the extent of what they inflicted on the kids, mostly the girls. :( It takes people talking to expose and nullify abusers. I have really benefitted from the people here that have been honest about what it's like to deal with truly narcissistic people. I'm debating finding a therapist. I'm having anxiety issues and some symptoms of ptsd. I've been watching some of spartanlifecoach's videos on dealing with narcissistic abuse and so much more is making sense.

Amen. People need to know and understand how narcissists work. Narcissists are on the level of psychopaths to me. They ruin lives and leave emotional scars that last for years. Silence enables them because people spend years trying to be peaceful with people who are completely and utterly disinterested in being peaceful. I do not believe they have a conscience. They will do whatever it takes to cope with what is broken within them. I refuse to even consider a narcissist's feelings any more because that is how you get abused again. Frankly, we don't talk about them enough. And no one that actually fits the clinical definition of a narcissist believes they are a narcissist, so the odds of offending are low.

It depends on your area and service providers, unfortunately. I have fantastic cable here, but AT&T is known to throttle.

I tried United Front, but when the abuse got physical and quite dangerous, I basically told him that hill to die on they never see my kids again. At first he thought I was overreacting, but once we moved and they got out of his head he was able to see how much more joyful they were and that it was an absolute necessity. I think the degree to which people like this get into their son's head is greatly underestimated.

This is true, but I don't think she's ready for no contact. the kids and I are both full no contact. They don't have our numbers, emails, or addresses. They have DH's phone but since I read them the riot act and he didn't condemn me they text him maybe twice a month. He responds basically only to let them know he's alive. I dearly wish there wasn't such dysfunction in his family or that I didn't spend so much time thinking that if I didn't go along with their demands I was being rude and unforgiving. Oh at the years I wasted trying to keep peace with people who weren't interested in peace.