Fellow skinny minnies, I feel ya. We've probably been picked on our whole lives for being so skinny. (A word I hate, BTW.) Our BMI probably shows us perpectually underweight, but it truly doesn't take into account bone size and I'm definitely bird-boned. My dh, OTOH, has very large bones and is very fit and muscular and he's always shown as overweight. We know what's right for us and I've always felt that your ideal weight is the one your body stays at if you get really muscular or if you slack and get really flabby. For me, that's been between 105 and 110 lbs.

Alright, I just checked and I do have diastasis recti. Two and a half fingers at the belly button and medium depth, one above and below the belly button and that connective tissue is very firm and like silly putty that the video I watched said it should be. Now what?

My problems have been ramping up (middle-aged spread), but last fall some medication really exacerbated it and I gained several pounds (and was the heaviest ever w/o being pregnant/post-partum) AND I gained an inch on my waist. Also, a bit on my hips, but that's back down. And I have lost that extra inch on my waist plus one more that was post-kid normal. I definitely have belly fat. Not just skin, fat. Pinch an inch, no four. Nearly everywhere else on me is what it was before I had kids, even my upper most thighs. I'd have three inches to lose on my waist to get me back. I'm not sure if that's reasonable. Maybe one or two more. But I'm really, really concerned about the belly fat. I'm holding my weight there and I know that can't be good.

Is it possible to get down to one's pre-pregnancy waist size without surgery? I want to know if this is a viable goal for me to work toward or if I should settle for something wider. FWIW, my hips size are exactly what they were before kids.

Not perfect, but adjuncts do well here- http://www.passhe.edu/Pages/default.aspx

It's not all about the teaching, though, so I want to make that point. When universities rely so heavily on adjuncts, the tenure-track and tenured professors become strained because they have to take on the extra burden of committees and research students. When there are more tenure-track and tenured professors, those extra responsibilities get spread out over more people and everyone's happier, especially the students. FWIW, my dh's university (and it's whole system) has a union and that includes adjuncts. They have cap on the number of adjuncts that are teaching classes- 25%- they have a known salary and they have benefits. For those in or whose dh is in adjunct hell, PM me if you're interested in better opportunities.

If so, how did you structure it? Did you use a companion text? Do labs?

Or not being able to afford fresh fruits and vegetables (and I'm not talking about organic, either.)

My bad. I just figured that it would be far better for those who are academically unlikely to do well in a 4-year college (or are uninclined) to go to a CC and get an Associate's Degree for a third of the cost of two years (and no credential) at a 4-year.

But he would be able to get a job somewhere in the US. You can't send an electrician's job to India like they did with all the telemarketers and call centers. That's my point.

Well, this is directly related to continually cutting the income taxes of the very wealthy. The federal government used to give significantly more money to colleges and when that slowed, the states had to take over. They got pressed and tuition spiked and "staffing" suffered. Now, that's not the whole kit and kaboodle, the number of administrators and their obnoxious salaries and the building race (along with Club Med-like facilities for students) have contributed, but lower income taxes for the upper two quintiles are a major factor.

I don't know, I feel like they've been snowed into a Ponzi scheme. They're told that tot "get a good job" they have to get a college education and that's just not true. Plumbers and electricians can't be outsourced and yet so few people are going into trades. We need more skilled laborers in this country. Dh sees that probably a full 30% of his students shouldn't be in college. Between grade inflation and an easier SAT scores, Millenials look good on paper, but they are far less prepared for college than Gen X ever was. Not only that, they aren't graduating. They are taking on five-figure debt (or more) and not getting the degree that was supposedly going to get them the better jobs. It's a mess.

If the 25% mark is considered HCOL, then we're right at that and by most professors' standards around here, our house is a piece of crap. But FWIW, we got NO parental help on that and since I graduated high school, my parents have probably helped out to the tune of $5000 (for college) in 25 years while dh's parents didn't ever give him one red cent even when we were hungry. Yes, we literally hungry our first year of marriage. Mortgage/property taxes/home owner's insurance + food costs = about 1/2 of dh's take home pay. Utilities are about 15% more of his take home. That goes up in the winter because of fuel oil. We only fill up the car once a month, so the fuel is for heating not driving. We live in a high tax state. Between federal, state, local, and some nickel and dime stuff that's not a sales tax or other kind of tax, retirement and very low health insurance premiums, dh is still seeing ~1700 a month taken out of his paycheck. So, yes, our kids not having to pay tuitions (but they do have to pay fees to the tune of $1000 per kid per semester) is a huge benefit. We are lucky and blessed, but we have to make sacrifices despite our "high" income. Also, FWIW, most of the professors in our area have gotten or still do get help from their parents. I know one couple who live in a house that his daddy owns. They pay half of what it would cost them if they carried the mortgage themselves and 1/3 of what it would be to rent. This prof also had college outright paid for and recently prof's daddy went halfsies on a car for them. I think that's really telling among the folks I know. So many of them get or have gotten significant parental help continuously in their adulthood.

Let's move on as this is going in so many circles that I'm getting dizzy. How do you define your socio-economic class and do you feel your quality of life has gotten better or worse in the past two, three, or four decades? I'll go first. By income, my family is in the fourth quintile. By values/interests, we'd be considered upper middle class. While we are no longer struggling, there have been times (like when we have to buy fuel oil) that we don't have the reserves to pay for it outright, so we put our groceries on the credit card and then once we're out of winter pay that down. We have some debt, but less than average. We only have one car. In nearly 20 years of marriage, we've only had one car. A second car at any point along the way, even now, would be a financial burden. I'm worried about affording to get all my kids braces. Yes, a luxury, but something that my mother as a single parent on a PS teacher's salary was able to afford for both my sister and me back in the 80s. We can't afford to send our kids to college away from home. They'll have to go where dad works and we don' have to pay tuition. They'll have to live at home. We buy nearly every stitch of clothing we wear from thrift stores and charity shops. I'd probably do this anyway, but truth is we couldn't afford to buy all retail even if we wanted to. We need a new roof on our house soon. I have no idea how we're going to pay for that. A loan. If the furnace goes, we are also in dire straits. These aren't unreasonable expenses, IMO, but given that we're in the same boat as a lot of middle class Americans- some debt, no savings- it actually becomes one. Not only are we in the fourth quintile as far as income, we're near the middle of that. We'd likely be considered upper middle class based on that. And yet, I don't feel I had it better than my parents did when they were less educated and had "lower" jobs than my dh.

I'm not getting the whole point of SKL's denial about nearly every study, article, etc. we're posting here about food insecurity and the plight of the middle class. So we'll give less feels to the poors and more to the richies? Heck if I know...

No one is denying your right to an opinion, but equating that opinion to "evidence" as stated above in this thread doesn't fly.

USDA's labels describe ranges of food security Food Security High food security (old label=Food security): no reported indications of food-access problems or limitations. Marginal food security (old label=Food security): one or two reported indications—typically of anxiety over food sufficiency or shortage of food in the house. Little or no indication of changes in diets or food intake. Food Insecurity Low food security (old label=Food insecurity without hunger): reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake. Very low food security (old label=Food insecurity with hunger): Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake. So this is what's true where I live: At the cheapest grocery store in my area (Wal-Mart) a bag of Great Value corn chips costs all of $0.64. A 3lb. bag of Fuji apples costs $3.97. You can buy 6 times more chips than apples for the same amount of money. That's a lot of chips and it may lead to a family with low food security choosing the chips over the apples and therefore, "reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet."

Food is our single highest household expense, beating out our mortgage. My dh makes enough money now that it no longer feels like such a hit, but there were times where we tried to reduce our food budget and it never worked. I feel for you and I wish there was something that could be done. It seems wrong that an educated teacher can't afford food for her family.

Save for the one PAC-funded think tank article, she's not providing evidence, just opinions and anecdotes.

I don't know if it's worth it to continuing to provide evidence for SKL.

There is also no reason to exalt the whole group.

What the current 1% looks like...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk5OJBry2ss

I'm wondering if bell peppers grow best in full shade since I've had barely any success with full sun and moderate success with partial shade.

Might be the "logic" (when it comes to Congress, I have to use that term loosely), but I'd like to see the evidence that it has done what it says it intended. Most especially now, since most investments are going into BRIC and then the Next 11.

I'd like to see articles on this, but not ones from PAC-funded think tanks. I saw one article on this thread from Heritage.org and my eyes immediately glazed over. ETA: Alright, saw that you were the one who posted that article. Is that (or some similar conservative think tank) where you got the information on the 15% tax rate?