:lurk5: Me too! This very discussion came up the other day while we were opening a new checking account at our credit union. The assistant branch manager doing our paperwork said they are legally required to provide the reason for denial whether it's for a loan or an account. (and then she went on to mention Chex Systems issues, so..)

I have nickel and wood dpns - love them both! And I love the nickel interchangeables. I had a few issues with unscrewing in the beginning, until I learned to remember to really tighten them with the tool. I've never had trouble seeing stitches. Knit Picks has great customer service, too. I have both dpns because I ordered the Harmony and they sent the nickel. I called them & had the Harmony sets I'd ordered in a couple days, and they insisted I keep the nickel. (this has been the single error I've ever encountered with them)

My youngest has been a lolligagger since, literally, birth. He laid around in there for an hour and twenty after his brother was born. :glare: If I had to get him on a bus, Bloody Marys may not be strong enough.

My 10 year old has a Google calendar. And her own schedule on our shared Cozi calendar. I put appointments on them (she doesn't have a smart or other phone) but...

No, but I did get annoyed with my husband when he kept asking me which (grade based) lacrosse group our daughter should be in. :001_huh:

Is $5000 the petty theft fine over there in DE? That's crazy!

Yes. And no, don't bother to thaw

I would see a therapist. If the therapist thought medication was appropriate while we began working on the psychological stuff, I would consider it. I would never, ever take psychotropic medications instead of therapy. I see St John's wort has been mentioned. As a practicing herbalist I will put out the general caution that, while somewhat effective for mild depression, St John's wort is known to affect a liver process which is responsible for the clearing of other medications - blood pressure meds, hormones, anticonvulsants, etc - as well as increase sun sensitivity and, really, it does not work nearly as well as cognitive behavioral therapy (as is true for SSRIs). For clients, I would use it for chronic pain management; for depression, I would refer for therapy. Just my 2 cents.

:rofl:

That's me, too. But I work also because I enjoy it.

I painted my kitchen in Olympic no voc (from Lowe's) this winter with all the windows shut. It was great. I was very impressed by the coverage, depth of color, etc. As for color, I'm never the person to ask; I love deep, rich colors and every room of our house is a different one. :)

We don't subscribe to predetermined gender roles. My husband and I - but for his glaring refusal to learn to lactate - do all the same parenting and household stuff. My boy children play dress-up in frilly things. Or pirates. It's the spirit of dress-up: they are putting on the identity of something they are not. No biggie. Not wearing dresses in public... Well, that falls under the same header of cultural tradition that prevents me from wearing a sari. We don't hit people, regardless of gender. It has nothing to do with being gentlemanly or lady like, just being civil.

I think there might be. :001_smile: We order household supplies like dishwasher detergent, toilet paper, etc. I ordered petri dishes, beakers & flasks for science this year, and games of all sorts. Looking for a basket for my bike rack currently, and waiting for my new phone case to arrive. Amazon has everything!

Aren't those the ones Carrie's psychotic mother used in the Stephen King novel? Maybe they're not but the first time I saw one, that was the association I made.

Football is why we kept Comcast (cable and internet) until the bill was over $200 and I threatened to climb the pole and disconnect it myself. We got a new antenna (looks like the old antenna, but no rust), and amplifier and converter boxes and we get about 50 channels (we're an hour from DC & Baltimore, 90 minutes from Philly and mostly get all those). Actually, we get a lot of CBS channels. :001_huh: Sometimes, the DC Fox channel chooses to go out when the Redskins are playing so I tell my husband to walk down to the pub or go to the Y. The Y threw him out when they closed one night. At 10. He had been running on the treadmill for 2 hours. :lol: OP and others: please keep us posted on how Hulu Plus works out for you. I keep waffling about it... not sure that there's much that I can't watch with the antenna, though I would like to be able to watch a couple of things we don't get and aren't available on Netflix.

I use KA Special (for artisan baking, higher protein than AP, lower than bread flour) and the no knead recipe on the KA website. ;) eta: and I don't spend 5 minutes a day on it. I just mix it up, throw it in the fridge and it gets baked off as needed. No daily intervention from me.

:iagree: I try to conduct my life mindful that my actions (or inactions) affect others. I find it stressful to inconvenience others or let them down by not meeting the commitment I've made to them. Now, as others have said, if I'm meeting friends to play, we set the time for x-ish. No sweat if anyone arrives before or after that time. If I am invited to a social engagement at someone's home, I will not arrive early because I assume they would still be readying themselves for guests (we've parked around the corner at times to avoid that). "Professionals" do not get a pass at being habitually late. If there is an emergency, I completely understand, in the same way someone I was meeting socially would have my understanding with an unforeseen delay such as a flat tire. Otherwise, I expect my doctor to more or less run on time. And I am clear with the receptionist what I am coming in for, so she can block out appropriate time. Our electrician calls to tell me exactly when to expect him, even though I already know he has breakfast with his granddaughter and takes her to school before beginning his work day and that he will be along shortly after. The Verizon guy has, for the past 11 years, called my mobile when he is about 30 minutes out, as have the guys who service our furnace and the plumber. (Though the plumber was found sitting in front of the house 30 minutes before his 8 am scheduled arrival one morning because he didn't want to mess us up.) We appreciate that, especially since we live in an area where people seem to have a very fluid relationship with time... and day of the week. :glare: ETA: Ester Maria - my annoyance with lack of timeliness does not apply to situations you have described. Knowing a lesson is happening in my home, the prior and following 30 minutes would be blocked out anyway, for prep and finish. You obviously can't arrive, conduct a 60 minute lesson, pack up and take your leave in an hour.

I don't make my own, but Pennyroyal herb (steeped as a tea) is supposed to be very effective. The essential oil (as most are) is extremely toxic if ingested, though. Not that one would potentially absorb enough over a season to lead to toxicity, but... If you're looking for a natural alternative, I like HOMS BiteBlocker or BioUD (but not the BiteBlocker Extreme... smells like Depression-era soap. Blech)

Why do you "need" him to be potty trained? Your sanity? I've BTDT, but my boy children could not have cared less about using the potty and weren't solidly using it before they were 4 1/2. I swear, I had conversations with friends that went, "I know, intellectually, that no normally functioning child has ever gone to college still nursing, sleeping in their parents' bed, and in diapers... but deep down I'm beginning to have visions of them taking diaper breaks between classes!" Sorry, I don't have any advice on what would work (though I do have a huge list of what didn't inspire them), but I feel you. Times 2. ;)

We started our homeschooling with twin toddlers, too. In the beginning it was, to say the least, a comedy of errors. (Note: a certain popular DVD and manipulative based math program becomes completely ineffective when your DVD player is in the gated "twin proof" area and they spend the majority of math instruction trying to climb their older sibling and eat the manipulatives.) You do not have large periods of time to devote to focused activities. You will do better - mentally and in productivity - if you admit that and work within the confines of living with two toddlers. Really. We gated the front of the house as the safe play area. If we reached a point where one or both of them were being disruptive to the current lesson, I would evaluate how much time I needed to finish and would either put on some sort of brain sucking entertainment (Baby Einstein video, preschool cartoon, something) to buy us time, or I would defer the remainder of what we were doing to later in the day when they were napping or I had another grownup to amuse them. "Including" them by giving them something to do at the table (we used boosters strapped to dining chairs, rather than high chairs) seemed to increase the time we had for lessons, simply because their relative inclusion in the activity going on helped their attention span - much shorter when there's activity going on in another room that seems more interesting than the stuff in your own area than when you're in the middle of all activity going on in the house, know what I mean? Giving your olders more independent tasks so that you can break up your hands-on time into manageable chunks helps. Maybe reserving the read-alouds for evening when the littles go to bed would help. Mostly, though, looking at the organic structure of your day and fitting the learning into that saves your sanity, your energy, and allows you to get it done. Of course, this changes from stage to stage, but not that much. (Of course, I should note here that this has taken me 15 minutes to type because one or the other of my twins - now 6 1/2 - comes around the corner every 2 minutes to bug me about something so I'll have to admit that it is entirely possible that I have been assimilated to their attention span rather than they to mine. :D)

I once got one that was addressed to me and just about every abuse mailbox in the cyber world. It's nice when they just report themselves. :tongue_smilie:

Elderberry (like Sambucol, but it's cheaper to buy dried berries from Mountain Rose Herbs and make your own syrup) is very good for warding off / shortening the length and severity of viral illness and has been studied pretty extensively in flu. It also shouldn't interact with any other medication/herb/supplement. Echinacea has had mixed results in studies. Garlic is a really powerful antimicrobial (though we joke that it could just be that the stench of garlic keeps people - and their germs - at a distance). I make an usnea based throat spray for winter that seems to keep us free of colds. What sort of illnesses are you having?

We have it and love it. The only issue *I* had (total operator issue) was finding a book to keep it in. I ended up finding a nifty scrapbook of the right size (after the clerk and the lady behind me in line showed me how it works... I don't scrapbook). You can definitely add your own images! We plan to do that next year as needed (not a lot of images for the ancients). Whether you decide it's worth their set is entirely up to you. :001_smile:

I did that once watching TV. I watched for about 10 minutes, waiting for the old guy on the bicycle to show up. :tongue_smilie:

Oh, dear. I hate those obnoxious pop-up ones. :glare: I guess the pop-ups are somewhat useful, since they tip you off that there's something going on, though. Ok. So, to boot in safe mode, power down, then power back up. As the computer is just starting (before the Windows screen appears) start tapping the F8 key. You'll get a screen that looks like DOS with startup options on it - normal, safe mode, safe mode with networking. Use your arrow keys to highlight the safe mode and hit enter. (by the way, everything looks... "off" when you're in safe mode. It's ok. It'll go back to normal when you reboot in normal mode) The problem here is that you can't surf in safe mode. I would advise downloading (but not installing) SpyBot on your husband's computer, then transferring it to a flash drive or disk. Then you can install on the afflicted computer and be on your way. This is absolutely NOT a $200 fix. It would take them all of ten minutes, except for letting SpyBot run.