I have large "moderately dense" breasts and do not find mammograms painful. I would think that smaller breasts with less skin "available" to pull the breast tissue away from the chest wall would be more painful. A colonoscopy wasn't nearly as bad as I had been led to believe. The prep isn't fun by any means, but it wasn't painful and I didn't mind having a night off "mom duty" with no responsibility. (That seems pretty sad after writing it. 😄 ) I was asleep for the entire procedure.

I lied. Maybe I do like this game. Nerdle 16 2/6 🟩⬛🟪⬛🟪🟩🟪🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 https://nerdlegame.com #nerdle

I’ve felt like this for weeks now. We’ve had some exposures but have managed to stay negative.

nerdlegame 14 3/6 🟪🟩🟩⬛️🟪🟪⬛️⬛️ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟪🟩🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 I got it, but I didn’t like it. I had to check the rules twice and what a boring solution. Lol I might make my kids do it though.

I play along in the dumbest way possible. For the "I'm from Apple/Microsoft and I can see you have a problem with your computer" calls I insist that I speak to the name they gave on the robocall, argue about whether I have a laptop or a desktop, or pretend I'm spelling "enter" or "return" or whatever, or if they stay on until they get to the part where they want you to connect to Anydesk I pretend I am moving the computer around the house to different desks until I find one that works. One time I read every key off my laptop to the "tech" because I just couldn't find the enter key. It's a way to kill time while waiting in line or on long drives. For the "we want your house" calls I insist that I want one meeeeeellion dollars for my 1100 sq ft house, even after they go through the market analysis.

When I have time and I'm feeling ornery, I take out my frustrations on spam calls and texts. I haven't noticed an increase in calls from answering. If anything, I've seen a decrease. I think I get put on the "this lady is annoying and will waste your time--do not call" list.

Have you looked at I Speak Latin by Andrew Campbell? Oral, scripted, lots of movement built in.

I kind of liked the Salt-N-Peppa "Push It" ad a few years ago when they showed up in the elevator, to the birth, etc. I don't actually remember what they were advertising though, so in that sense I guess it didn't do its job. I feel old every time I have to look something up in Urban Dictionary. And if I ever have any doubt that I'm old, my 14 y/o is always ready to remind me. 🙂

A million years ago, when I was in college in Minnesota, they closed campus twice. Once for a literal blizzard. I remember walking out of the bio building and not being able to see the next building. "Welp, either I get to the cafeteria, or I wander out to the prairie." All I could think of was that scene from the Little House books where the kids are trying to get home from school. The other time they closed was when there was a warning that exposed skin would freeze in less than a minute.

Around here tipping baristas is the norm, especially in local non-chain coffee shops where everyone knows everyone. Take-out depends on the situation. Family business where the owner hands me the food? No. A few bucks for the minimum wage kid who packages the food? Sure. I wouldn't expect minimum wage to decrease because some workers get tips.

I might have assumed they were professionals of another type...did your hotel offer hourly rates by any chance? 😄 My parents accidentally booked kind of an iffy hotel once on a family vacation. They walked in and shook their heads, but they were so tired from driving 12 hours that they just went with it. My brother and I thought the vibrating bed was the coolest thing ever. 😄

My friend who runs a pizza place has been hit hard by supply chain issues. There have been times during the last two years that she has just had to shut down until she can source more mozzarella. Staffing issues are a whole other thing, and something that I don't think will immediately resolve post-covid. That issue has been simmering for years, and covid just brought it to a boil.

Maybe that's why one of the few words I remember from college German is Kuhlschrank.

We have a small menagerie, but the current funniest pets are the two budgies. Before they came to live with us, I never could have imagined so much personality packed into a tiny bird. They recently discovered that if they throw food pellets into the air purifier, they make a delightful clack-clack-clack sound until the fan blades pulverize the pellet. Then they can start again. They like to sit on our shoulders. One of them likes to snuggle under my chin. He's also the bitey bird, so I have to be careful. The other is too active to sit in one place very long. He likes to fly around the room, then return to home base on a shoulder. Or on top of dh's head. They love Sal Khan's voice. Every time ds watches Khan academy they sing along.

I waver between optimism and hopelessness. Our numbers are higher than they've ever been, but isolation is no longer tenable so we're doing co-op in person (masks recommended officially, but all families currently attending are masking) and starting to get back into other indoor activities with N95s. We figure we will all get it, but we are very careful about monitoring any symptoms and staying home if there is any doubt. I had a headache one day this week and we stayed home from an activity. I was fine the next day, so we could have gone, but I am taking the abundance of caution approach to avoid being Typhoid Covid Mary.

My 11 y/o loves the podcast Million Bazillion.

I love where I live most of the time--Pacific Northwest between Puget Sound and the Cascades. I would like to have a free month somewhere sunny and warm when we're in the midst of endless gloom though.

Every time I go to the pharmacy I have a little panic when they ask for my kids’ birthdates. My boys are three days apart but different years, and I’m always afraid that I’ll get it wrong and…I suppose there wouldn’t be any consequences, but I still have that fear of mistakes going into my “permanent record” for some reason.

Thank you for writing about such an important topic. It's great that you are able to speak at conferences about this. Going through this kind of situation as a parent is terrifying and having EMS who are informed is so helpful.

I suspect that the issue is familiar to those whose families/nations are directly affected by it, and somewhat familiar to people who live on land that was traditionally inhabited by non-recognized nations. I heard a fair bit since I spent a lot of time in Steilacoom growing up, but I think that without that exposure I wouldn’t have had a clue until beginning to volunteer at the local historical society as an adult.

We’ve been playing a new set of story cards for Dixit, Santorini New York, and our new favorite, Terraforming Mars: The Aries Expedition. Something about engine-building games is very satisfying to us.

If we (vaxed, adults boosted) are negative on rapid tests on Christmas morning, my boosted parents will come for a day or two. I am kind of expecting us to test positive in the next few weeks. We’re careful, masking indoors, but if Omicron is as infectious as the experts are saying, at some point I’m sure we’ll slip up and be exposed.

You might regret the sniff test. The worst fridge archaeology dig I ever experienced involved rotten tofu.

Was it butterbeer? There are a ton of recipes for hot butterbeer if you google. Cranberry juice mulled with cider spices might be nice.

What made math click for my kiddo with all the labels was the Semple Math program. It’s unlike any other program I had tried, is completely counterintuitive to me, and is dependent on associations and stories. There are lots of visual cues used. You can look up Semple math on Youtube and see a teacher going through the process for teaching multi-digit subtraction. My kid who forgot everything every weekend is now working through prealgebra, and the concepts, which I was afraid he missed because arithmetic was all rote, have started to become more intuitive for him.