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Carol in Cal.

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Everything posted by Carol in Cal.

  1. I was here before Y2K. Not sure exactly when I started!
  2. I have less on my head and more everywhere else. Long eyebrows, more whiskers, more cleavage and belly button area hair. Very annoying.
  3. My kid was like this. She concluded that she was never taking a bottle again, and she made it stick. Unfortunately, she arrived at this decision during the church service where she was being baptized, which was also the only time in her life that I wore something that I absolutely could not nurse discreetly in. This was so bad, but it became a favorite family story.
  4. IME in three places, caregivers have a minimum charge of 4 hours whether they stay that long or not, and the nicest, most reliable ones are the ones who are contracted for 6-8 hours or longer. Also, they don’t always show up, so you cannot be entirely dependent on them—there always always has to be a backup plan. Do you have a friendship circle that would set up a meal train for you? People sign up for those online and bring over a hot or reheatable meal. That way you have a built in ‘check’ on you every day, so if you don’t answer the door they would know to call for help. You could ask, if someone does this, that they include a sign up to come by and assist with a load of laundry, maybe every 3 days or something. Get your groceries and meds delivered automatically, and hire a cleaning person to come in once during that period.
  5. SKL, I feel the same way about teaching environmental issues to kids too young. Better that they learn to love the outdoors, and wild nature, and not to associate it with depression and hopelessness during a time of life when they can’t do much if anything about it anyway.
  6. I agree, but then again, most than most kids I lived what I read. I remember thinking about this a lot. There was no hope. It was inevitable. Sci fi projected WW’s 3 through 17. On the Beach described the aftermath of total nuclear holocaust as the radioactive cloud gradually approached the last remaining people. My only consolation was really that at least my entire extended family would die at once, so we wouldn’t have to go through individual bereavements. I don’t think my classmates thought this way but I certainly did.
  7. Yes, I understand. I was talking about West Germany though. The other thing that was very notable about Germany at the time, to me, was this absolute confidence in a set of cultural norms. I had never been around that before, and it gave some strength to the community and the people that I think they were largely unconscious of unless they lived overseas where it did not exist. There is so much history there, too, and historical greatness—Roman walls, very old cathedrals, the castles. And there were these basic, sensible assumptions that children and frail elderly needed care, and that society should be structured in such a way as to make that easier to provide. Nobody seemed to question this, and I found it amazing.
  8. I remember the first time I visited Germany how striking it was to me that there was so much guilt about WWII among people who were not even alive when it happened. I thought that that would probably morph into something pretty bad at some point, if people rebelled against that and started to glorify it, but thankfully it didn’t.
  9. I distinctly remember believing that an atom bomb could land At Any Moment on our city, and we would all instantly be gone. And I remember reading about how nuclear bombs are so much worse than atomic bombs that atomic bombs are obsolete. So that was a relief.
  10. When my DD was in high school, her textbook (which was not cheap, and we had to purchase it) did not have the actual theorems in it for geometry. She was supposed to figure those out in class exercises, note them, and apply them without a reference book. When I stepped in to help her study for her final I was appalled to have to look things up through google searches to be able to figure them out, because her book literally did not include the material that she was supposed to learn. It’s so stupid.
  11. Do you find that coffee helps? I have heard of people trying that with children that don’t have a diagnosis yet.
  12. Fan shaped shoes I love: Altra Lone Peak running shoes. (I hear that the waterproof ones don’t hold up well so I have not tried them.) Earthshoes has a specific pair of boots that is like this, and they are currently on sale: https://earthshoes.com/collections/sale/products/fleet-cold-weather-lace-up-casual-booties-in-black-r-fleet-blk01 Also, I found it interestingly consoling to read in a volume of the Foxfire books that people used to have their own lasts, and bring them to a shoemaker to have shoes made for their specific feet. I think that is brilliant!
  13. When I was little, if I complained about a problem with a teacher, my parents would say, You need to go talk to her about it, and then if that doesn’t work we will talk to her, too. It pretty much almost always worked without their intervention. And I picked up an abiding habit of trying to straighten things out directly, which has been very helpful in life. Also of asking questions, which usually (at the college level) people wouldn’t do, but were glad that I did. Having said that, I can’t figure out everything on my own. I studied STEM in college mostly because I wanted to be well rounded and employable, and knew that while I would also always read on my own, I would never teach myself tech stuff that way. Also, although I am a mostly self taught weaver, initially I did take a short introductory class, and then was self taught for quite a while, and then realized that I would never teach myself a couple things I badly wanted to learn—chemical dyeing (extensively) and complex multilayer structures, so I took specific classes in those. I think that there is value in being able to teach yourself things but also value in being taught or at least scaffolded at times.
  14. I wonder whether the beige colors are indicative of organic, undyed fibers? Because chemical inputs reduction is a value that some hold, and cotton, most wool, and linen, if undyed, would fall into that color range.
  15. I find Neutragena sunscreens the most sweat stable I have tried.
  16. The documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” won a well deserved Oscar tonight. Here is the acceptance speech:
  17. Or the folks that go to watch tsunami waves come in. PEOPLE! These are 1) unpredictable in height and 2) unimaginable in force. This adds up to not a spectator event!
  18. But still turning out to be a good one.
  19. When my daughter went to high school downtown, the school was filled with kids who had never walked anywhere, or taken the bus, as far as I could tell. I chaperoned a freshman volunteer work/community service introduction day, and part of it was walking a few blocks from the meeting location to an elementary school where kids were shown several kinds of things they could volunteer to do. And guess what? Those kids were so oblivious. We were walking a couple of blocks along a one way, 3 lane commute road. Cars were speeding by at 45-50 miles per hours, and the kids were not staying on the sidewalk! They were casually drifting into the road as they were walking along, not even noticing this! I was so embarrassed for them! I felt like a herd dog with a bunch of really dumb sheep! Same way of thinking, for sure. Quite remarkable.
  20. They were raised in cocoons where everything was Disneylandified and so they basically think that if something is open to the public it is safe. They never had to be careful, and so they are not in the habit of doing so.
  21. Well, they ARE buying books and workbooks so I have assumed that it’s not online, but I guess I might be wrong about that.
  22. What I’m seeing around here is a lot of use of all in one curricula but not online—Memoria Press is very popular among people I know. I try to encourage them to branch out, but they sort of listen politely and ignore that input.
  23. I will say, I was absolutely wild to get out on my own. And so were all my friends. (70s, ish). I think that this was the cultural norm, but also kind of the expectation even in fairy tales, where heros always ‘went out into the world to seek their fortune.’ I knew kids whose parents told them that once they were 18 they were on their own, too, and that was a really tough thing as most of us didn’t have the wherewithal to support ourselves locally without any college education. Oddly, both of my parents lived at home well into their 20s. I don’t know why that knowledge didn’t influence me the way the fairy tales did. It’s funny.
  24. Microschools usually meet 5 days per week, while cottage schools generally met 2-3 days per week. We have a classical microschool at our church and it covers grades 1-8, with 2 1/2 teachers. Cottage schools that I have seen usually were homeschool hybrids with 1 or 2 teachers covering all subjects in two days per week with assigned homework and homeschooling for the other days. They tended to be focussed around either science or history IME.
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