[Please pray]

My oldest is ND, and when they were going through puberty/teens they sometimes had sudden bursts of emotion/anger that came out of no-where and they didn't know why.  We learned some coping techniques from a therapist:

pounding nails into a board
ripping up an old phonebook (although those might be hard to come by now - you could use an old rainbow resources catalog
screaming into a pillow
hitting a punching bag
playing the drums

or if the kid is older and able they could
chop wood
rake leaves
shovel manure
or some other physical activity that could be as simple as even just going for a bike ride or a jog.

It's just a sudden release of hormones or adrenaline.  Strenuous movement helps.

[My face looks like I'm 12 again (this is NOT a compliment)]

Sulfur soap

[My face looks like I'm 12 again (this is NOT a compliment)]

Sulfur soap clears up a lot of acne as well as rosacea.

My kids had good luck with Differin gel, which is very expensive.  Dd switched to nightly witch hazel and it works just as well without drying her out so much, but her acne wasn't bad to begin with.

[Silly - soap in washcloths after rinsing out!]

19 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

I also put my vinegar into the fabric softener compartment, but probably only about 1/8-1/4 of a cup's worth; not enough to fill it.  

That's all mine takes to fill it?

[Silly - soap in washcloths after rinsing out!]

On 7/30/2022 at 10:30 AM, sheryl said:

Thank you for that.  You and a few others have mentioned this so I will try.  How much vinegar do you put in?

I also have a HE front-loader.  I only ever use vinegar in my fabric softener compartment, and just fill it to the fill line for each load.

[Silly - soap in washcloths after rinsing out!]

Towels are notoriously difficult to rinse soap out of.  In fact, they hold onto detergents which then get sticky when dry, which causes them to collect and hold onto dirt and dust and thus become dingy.  I only use a drop of laundry detergent with my towels, but I do use a full scoop of oxyclean, and then I run them through an extra rinse with white vinegar.

[switching cell phone carrier and getting new phones]

My 24 year old has a Galaxy 21, and my 20 year old has a Pixel 6.  They have been using them for at least 6 months, and are both happy with them.

We just switched from Tracfone to Mint, and upgraded from Galaxy S7 to Pixel 4a.  It's a nice upgrade that didn't cost a fortune, and now we can use wifi calling/texting and international data roaming.

[What do I do? (Another house thing.)]

My dh would make the painter fix it.  If your contractor won't make his guys fix it, then I agree with Katy about your choices.

[Do you have lightning bugs where you live?]

Yes.  We call them fireflies.

[What the heck is going on with the weather?]

4 hours ago, fairfarmhand said:

I’m also from middle Tennessee (I think I’m on the other side of the city from you) and the weather has been crazy this year. And we really need some rain. It’s been over a month since we’ve had a good rain and our fields are dry and crunchy. Our poor cows. The farmers are gonna have a hard year.

Up here in Northern NH, the we haven't hit the dry spell we had in each of the past two summers, so the hay is growing well.  The farmers who own the land around us have sold a good chunk to another farmer downstate.  The new farmer seems to be only growing corn up here - far from their regular fields - which makes sense for low maintenance and fewer trips with big equipment & cost of fuel to go back and forth.  Consequently, the hay fields have gone uncut!  Come on up and do some haying?!

[I had my first “moment” this morning.]

I'm sorry you are frustrated with the building process.

Most of the things you listed that need to be finished look like subcontractor jobs.  The General Contractor you hired is often at the whims of those subs, and there's not much that can be done when the subcontractor doesn't show up as promised or puts your job off to complete another one they are working on. 

I can confirm this is the case for my dh, who is a general contractor.  The company he works for does plans, sitework, septic, framing, plumbing, and finishing, but they hire subcontractors for all the rest of the work.  For instance, he had a drywaller who was supposed to show up this week just decide to stay and finish out another job somewhere else - sub was supposed to hang 500 sheets at place X and then come do dh's job while waiting for X to be ready for the rest - now X has changed their schedule so drywaller is staying to finish and putting off dh's job.  This kind of thing holds up all of the other subs who were scheduled and planned to be there at the right time to make the job complete on date Y (painters can't come if the drywall isn't up, etc!), but now those subs might not be available right away when dh's job is ready for them late, etc. ad nauseam.  I can assure you that it is not just frustrating for you.  DH comes home frustrated by stuff like this all the time.  He builds extra time into the schedule, and he wants to get the houses built on time as expected, but when others don't do their jobs as expected there's not much he can do about it.  He's had a structural engineering company put him off for three months, one day at a time, the electric company put him off for weeks, and his own company's plumbers who promised to order all of the supplies for a job when the contract was signed used them on another job and couldn't get more in a timely fashion when dh's job was ready.  So yeah.

I'm sorry for you.  It's probably not your contractor's fault.

[Quality men’s pajama bottoms that are affordable?]

Do you sew?  Pajama bottoms are one of the easiest things to make!

[UPDATE! Has Anyone Ever Persuaded Their School District to Allow HS Sports Participation?]

Contact your state representative and have them change the law.  In NH, all students who are educated outside of the public schools have equal access to public school curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular programs within their district under the same rules as enrolled public school students.  You pay taxes to support those programs; your kids should be able to participate.

[Anyone else with no a/c]

We live in the mountains, and usually get only two to three weeks of temperatures above the mid-80s.  For many years we relied on ceiling fans, which I installed in each room.  We also got a whole-house attic fan, and ds & I installed it pointing up into the attic; when it cools down into the 50s and 60s after dark, we open the windows and the attic door, and turn on the fan to draw cool air into the house and blow out the hot air.  After the house has cooled down, we shut off the fan, but keep the windows open , and then close it up tight early in the morning drawing shades and curtains to keep the sun out.  Oh, yeah - before we had the attic fan, we ran window fans in the evening, which aren't nearly as quick and efficient.  It's always stayed pretty cool except for those few hot weeks.  The basement is always cooler, and we could camp out down there during the worst of it.  But we recently (past 4-5 years or so) got a large-room air-conditioner with a flexi-vent hose, and that works great in our second-floor bedroom which gets full afternoon sun.

So sorry you're having to deal with that kind of heat!  I like the ideas about the cool wet towels and fans.  Dd just went to Indiana for a month, and the foreseeable forecast is in the high 90s and humid!  Thankfully, she is in air conditioned space!
 

[The neighbor weed whacked MY property QUESTION ADDED]

I'd get a large PA system - the kind they use for rock-n-roll concerts. 

I'd put it in my window facing toward his yard. 

And every time he goes out to mow and trim I'd blast loud classical music through it. 

I'd rather listen to that than horrible mower noises all day.

[How do you cope with the waiting and the wondering? Update 6/10]

If I'm ruminating at bedtime, I'll take diphenhydramine and then do Sudoku or crossword puzzles until I can't keep my eyes open.

[Spray Mop Recommendation]

On 11/1/2018 at 7:40 PM, Rockhopper said:

I have the red and black one. It's fabulous. My favorite mop ever. I love being able to use whatever solution I want, and to pull a dirty pad off and throw it in the washer and put a new one on. And did you know you can even get a dust mop pad for it? 

I would spray paint it and have a good mop.

Another vote for the red one!  I also love it!! 

And I never thought I'd ever feel this way about a mop.

[Johnny Depp Defamation Lawsuit]

13 hours ago, popmom said:

Those of us here on the boards are not immune to cluster b personality disorders. Statistically, they have to be in our numbers here. Those of us who have been on the receiving end of narcissistic abuse have learned how to spot the traits from 10 miles away. If I see traits, I don’t engage. 
 

plz don’t hear what I’m not saying. This isn’t an attack on the sufferers of this type of illness. Also, traits do not equal disorder. It’s a spectrum. I’m saying that when it’s clear that someone isn’t teachable or intellectually honest…I’m going to take a step back to contemplate why that might be.

Agreed.  There is either a psychological problem, or else they're just purposely trolling.

Don't feed the trolls.  They're making you run in circles for their own amusement.

[Way to display a ton of photos at a time?]

If I wanted to display a lot of photos, I might paint my wall with a few coats of magnetic paint,
and then paint the regular color back over it.

Then, I would buy some photo backer board.  I buy a large sheet, and cut it to size.  The thicker you get it, the less it will warp.

I'd back the photos I want to display, then put a strip of magnet on the back of the board.  Voila! 

[Any options for horrendous periods for teen girls?]

Have you tried red raspberry leaf tea for the cramps?  It is a uterine tonic, and in my experience wipes out the very worst cramps in a very short time.  It must be real raspberry leaf, and not just flavored tea.  I pick and dry fresh young shoots from our raspberry patch, but you can buy it in health-food stores.  It will curdle milk...

[Specialty formula shortage]

People with PKU can eat fruits, vegetables, and low-protein breads and pasta.

Save what's left of the specialty formula for infants who are not eating solids yet?
I wonder if a compounding pharmacy could make a suitable substitute for those infants?

[Come Celebrate with us!]

Felicitations!

[Would you tell the parent?]

I haven't read the other responses.

No, I would not tell the other parents.  I believe that is an appropriate amount of curiosity for a non-NT tween who did not understand how humans feed infants, and I think you were kind in educating him factually and without judgment. 

[Shall we talk about that other variant?]

On 5/18/2022 at 8:47 PM, Catwoman said:

 ...known all along that the purpose of the vaccine was never to prevent everyone from catching Covid...

 there was never a promise that the vaccine would be 100% effective...

I never expected the vaccine to keep us from getting Covid, only that it would lessen the chance we'd get a fatal case.  So I wasn't disappointed or upset when my dd came up positive at the beginning of the week despite having been vaccinated and boosted - instead I was grateful that she didn't catch it until after we'd all had the vaccine because I was not fearing for her life.

I'm sorry for other people who feel they were misled? 

[What can I do about these walls?]

55 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

Put up headboard and paint that? 

beadboard?