my husband's and my car are paid for, but we have a loan out on my oldest dd's car. Dh really, really wanted a car with high miles per gallon, and the one he wanted was brand new this year, so we owe a bit more than half on it, the other part was cash. It has really saved us money, dd drives the farthest for her jobs and then if I need to go somewhere far I will borrow it. Right now, gas is 4.09 a gallon here. We have always had a policy of not having more than one car payment at a time, no car payments is our goal.

when my tremors stopped while off gluten, I thought it might have had more to do with being full of good proteins and fats and having my sugar levels stablilized, instead of going up and down with my carb spikes. I wasn't really convinced gluten was the problem- though it is an interesting piece of the puzzle and something to think about.

my mom always had shaky hands, so bad she couldn't put a necklace on me. People would often imply that she had parkinsons -which made her mad. She had been checked out, and never found the cause. It did get worse if she hadn't eaten, but didn't go away with food. I have it slightly, is noticable when I haven't eaten for several hours, I did notice that when I tried going off of wheat completely that the shakes seemed to go away -weird. never found a reason for my mom, it was just the way she was. She was also very tiny, I am petite but a normal size.

I have one, it used to be in my siggy, but I took it out...having an identity crisis maybe..but I love making new blog friends :) Home is Where You Start From

I went to public school, and if this happened in my class, I wouldn't have told my parents about it. We had a mindset of not rocking the boat/ not questioning our teachers. In 7th grade Science class, we spent a day looking at slides and made our own- by cutting ourselves so we'd bleed and then putting the blood on slides. No gloves. In 8th grade Science my teacher brought some kind of strong acid to show us, our new school was not build with real labs with the right sort of plumbing, so he took us outside and poured it on the concrete to show us..in a spot no one would notice. He wore protective gloves/eye wear, but none of us did, he just told us to stand back. so yeah, I would believe the story.

Dolphin, let me know when you are out here, I'd love to meet up with you!

I saw him live at at a TedX event, he was my favorite speaker, so inspiring.

glad you are back! It was hard for me to remember the new name :) oh, guess I should mention I have a new name...I just kept the first part of it.. It was hard to do, I remember everyone by their avatar and name, so I hated to switch both, but the photo was old and then I felt I needed to be a little bit more anon

ha! It would make a great blog title!

I like Betty's answer. My reasons would be the why- as to not allowing it, but for good public relations, I'd give Betty's reasons.

I'd say no. That's nice the 15 year old can get a $80 babysitting gig, but sounds like your girls are undervalued. I agree with you, that without an older person their to help, the situation does not sound reasonable or safe for your dds to be in charge of that many kids. In your shoes, I might offer to let my girls babysit at the same house the adults will be at, but I wouldn't agree to the 15 year old being paid $80 while your girls work for free.

wow, crazy times! So glad to hear that your daughter will be okay and that it is not cancer. Hoping you guys will get to enjoy some calm now. Thanks for the update.

I would maintain the distance, maybe send a card, pray for her. You had very good reasons to cut contact, the fact that she is having a sad time right now doesn't change all she did. I get it, my mom was npd. Is she still married to your father? I think that if anyone should be "there" for her, it would be her spouse, not you.

love, love Jeeves & Wooster! We have them all on dvd. I think I'm going to have to get them out and watch them again, it's been a long while :)

I'm in Ca, no shade on that part of my roof and the panels are on the South East side, but more on the South side. I do kind of wish we would have gotten a new electric panel so we could get more solar panels...we just didn't want to dish out 2 grand for that, but we just ran into a problem of not being able to get a second oven, also because of our panel problem. We leased with Solar City and we are pretty pleased with them.

we leased, and put some money down to make our lease payments lower. Supposedly, they can come get them in 15 years, but the rep didn't think they would want them. We don't have the max amount we could have on our roof, because we have a room with vaulted ceiling, but we have enough that our energy use is taken down to the lowest pay tier, so we pay the lowest rates, usually. We save about $100 or so a month, more in the Summer. We pay $38 a month for the lease. We are pretty happy with it. The energy companies here raise the rates often, so we like not being impacted so much by them. I think if we were able to have more panels, our savings would be better- I just remembered that because we have an older house, we were limited on the panels or we would have had to change out our electrical panel- for a few grand, we decided not to.

bumping this thread. Great info! I might pull my dd a senior out of our charter school with only 3 months left, if so, I will be doing a diploma. I knew the hive would come through!

Rebot, congrats on your first post! Fun one to start off with...we sometimes have pretty crazy threads! :rofl: Welcome to the Hive!

I am using coral white - which does not have flouride, the mint kind is okay tasting, a bit different, not sweet...but I accidently bought the tea-tree flavor and it was gross.

my charter school has all things sent to the person's ES who delivers them. I guess it's tempting to pick on a nebulous "school" to blame your poor shipping times, but in our case, it would be a personal slur.

yeah, I kind of feel like we have to do an honor dance/routine like Harry Potter approaching the hippogriff. - approach slowly, bow low, place our package/offering in front of them and then slowly back away, waiting for it to be deemed acceptable... I sent out some curriculum I sold, and I had the reader's guides in a flexible 3 ring binder. I tied myself up in knots trying to decide if the binder would make it forbidden or not. I got different opinions online. I didn't want to put all the papers in there loose, you know? I ended up sticking address labels on everything incase the post office ripped it open. I agree with another poster that I get the feeling they are trying to discourage us from using media mail at all. For any really expensive sets I've sold, I've paid way more and used UPS for piece of mind.

I'd be hurt, too - in context of your relationship. She must be 12...and I'd totally sign all my emails with that, but not confront her. Kind of like taking the high-road, but not...

Derek, you mentioned you are using the smug mug gallery, do you use them for prints, too? I am looking for a lab and having a hard time deciding. From all my looking around, it looked like with smug mug, you got a better lab if you paid more and did the professional memberships, but not with the basic. What has been your experience there? for the OP, I use photoshop elements. I am self-taught with books and video tutorials, though I'd like to take a class sometime. I have played with lightroom, but the normal things I do with PS elements don't seem to be part of lightroom, I'd be frustrated, but I think lightroom is very easy to use and would be a good place to start.