I guess there are some questions in my mind: 1. Do you think young people, like your daughter, should be limited in their educational opportunities based on finances, or should they be encouraged to reach for the best educational opportunities they can attain without regard for their family's wealth? 2. Do you really want people who come after you to suffer those stresses you endured? 3. Can you turn your bitterness over your own lack of opportunities into compassion for the future generations of students (your children and grandchildren included)? 4. Do you think the high cost of education and resulting 25 years of student loans stifles the economy (ie. people's ability to attend post-secondary school to begin with, start a family, or become a homeowner), and if so is that a price you think society should bear because you struggled in the past? Personally, I feel like education should be free for everyone who sincerely wants to learn - so free education for anyone who continues to show growth as a student. And I think it was wrong that you were forced to pay for your education - I'm sorry that happened to you. And the past is behind us, so we should find some acceptance, let go, and move on. And continuing to do wrong things as a society because we were wronged does no-one any good while preventing growth. Research in many fields has concluded that society benefits on all measures when citizens are more well-educated. It is my educated opinion that free education (which amounts to canceling current student loans and not creating new ones - gotta start somewhere) is the best way to accomplish this.

Aside from the ability to grow hair and wear it in the way others do, and the resulting psychosocial consequences such as depression and anxiety.

Some people are unwilling to confront their enculturated able-ist biases.

Looks like it is upside-down. A semi-colon?

Will Smith wrote in his autobiography about how he was traumatized as a child by his father's regular abuse of his mother. He has felt like "a coward" since his inaction as a 9-year-old watching his mother spit blood after his father punched her in the head. Perhaps standing up to someone bullying his wife has allowed him to gain more self-respect. Chris Rock made a documentary about the importance of hair to black women. He should have known better. There is a lot more history and context than many people recognize. Will's reaction may not have been right, but it was righteous.

Yes, it was verbal assault that wounded someone, followed by physical assault that probably didn't wound someone. How long do you think the hurt will last for each of the "victims"?

Nope. We travel 25 minutes each way just about every day to extracurriculars, and sometimes longer distances. This too shall pass, and we'll still have our lovely home with no neighbors. If the city is expanding toward you, it is probable that it will continue to do so.

You're amazing! Go You!!

Over the years, my sister's family (NM) and my family (NH) have vacationed together in different places around New England. We agree on a rental house and split the fee. I had always been the one to book a place in the past, and I'm pretty sure I had always used Airbnb but not 100% positive. Last summer was the first time we had done this in a few years, due to Covid. We looked at places on the coast of Maine and Cape Cod. She decided to book it this time, and forwarded links from both Airbnb and VRBO. We settled on a VRBO, and she reserved it by paying the week's rental fee using her credit card. Then she got an email from the owner that they had increased their price, but not updated the website. She contacted VRBO about this bait-and-switch fee, waited on hold for more than an hour to speak with customer service, and they told her it was within their policies for an owner to raise the rental fee even after someone reserved a listing. She asked them to please cancel our reservation, as we were not willing to pay the higher rental rate. She was disconnected by VRBO customer service and had to wait on hold for over an hour again for VRBO to tell her the contract was between her and the owner, and she would have to request that the owner cancel the booking but that he was not obligated to do so. It took multiple contacts over more than a week, and she was in the process of going through her credit card fraud department, for the guy to agree to cancel the reservation and refund her money. I've only ever had (multiple) good experiences with Airbnb, but I'll never use VRBO again.

Avoid VRBO. I'll come back later to explain my opinion.

DH suggests you might try to make sure the volume of water that could come up through your floor did not also undermine your slab.

Yes, it would bother me. Political posturing of any kind at weddings and funerals is wildly inappropriate. No pass for the "didn't think about it" or "came directly from someplace else" - they wore it with pride to provoke others.

AND unless the dissenters speak up, the rest of us only hear the loud ones who are "tainting your brand". It's no wonder all Christians are lumped together when we only hear the ones pushing the fictional Groupthink.

When we moved into this house, 15 years ago, it was midsummer and my kids had 4-H gardens. We knew we would be looking for a house, so they planted in rubbermaid tubs that spring, and we just picked up the tubs and moved the garden. We still got a decent harvest that year of beans, radishes, carrots, and tomatoes. I tried this last year with bags I purchased from Amazon, but the bags I got were made from a tarp-like material and we didn't get anything worth harvesting. The plants grew well for the first few weeks, but I don't know if they got too wet or too hot? I gave up on the idea of doing it again, but now I'm rethinking the type of bag?

If you decide that you need to go the mastectomy route, please look into Sensation-Preserving Mastectomy. It is possible not to lose this part of you.

I think another factor is political. Wealthy people who own the refineries want prices to be low when the guy they like, who does political favors for them, is in office, and vice versa so that people will associate higher gas prices with the political party that doesn't do favors for the refinery-owners.

Speculators

Toxoplasmosis?

Gravel shifts. Try hardpack.

Could the CVS floor be tile over the top of concrete, and maybe the other job had a better/different type of subfloor that absorbed walking/standing impact better? You can quickly google concrete floor impact on the body to see if that lines up with your pain.

Many years ago I started taking anti-anxiety medication to alleviate emotional upheaval which was causing me to be completely dysfunctional during a horrible custody battle. It was such a huge relief to feel that constant adrenaline dump dissipate. A couple of years after the whole thing was over, I stopped taking the medication because the anxiety had been situational. Except I didn't realize that I still wasn't feeling anything until I suddenly "woke up" - like a sudden jolt from a sound sleep that makes you sit up and gasp - about five years later. I realized then that I had actually felt dead inside during those intervening years, but I just didn't recognize it until I finally felt alive again. You can feel alive again too, but don't expect to ever be the same as you were before. In my experience, crises situations, or traumas, make us grow and change faster than smaller, more manageable life challenges. It will take time for you to understand and accept your new self.

I don't review things very often, but a couple of times when I have had serious problems with a product, and the maker's customer service was less than helpful about fixing/exchanging it, I've written an Amazon review to warn other buyers about the problem - and the review was deleted by Amazon every time (like 2-4 times). So, just because they've deleted someone's review doesn't make them an untrustworthy reviewer? And now I don't bother reviewing on Amazon anymore.

I once heard an (NPR?) interview with a woman-mechanic who gave the advice to get a new (different) vehicle when the repairs will be more than 30% of the value of the one you have. But in this market - oof. My 19 year old is ready to buy a car, but he's still driving our old one for a while longer. I'm hoping the chip shortage will let up soon, too!

More like the other way around. We have been isolated and excluded by Christian homeschoolers because they were so "Christian".

Doesn't it make you more pious, thus better than everyone else, if you don't live a "worldly" life?