:iagree: This has my narcissistic mother alerts all going off. She wants to be the star of the show. If the birthday party happened before, your son would have been the star. By doing it half a year past his (her) birthday, she gets to be the star as the surprise party thrower. Literally, the story of life with my mother.

My 11 y.o. got contacts when we couldn't find over-the-glasses lacrosse eyewear. So, she has corrected peripheral vision on the field, wears regular sunglasses, etc. We had to help her get them in for the first month or so, now she slaps them in while standing in the middle of the kitchen, talking to me.

Hmmmm... Well, can you give us more details? Will you each be contributing individual items for sale, or would you each be doing part of a single sale item (like each contributing to a gift basket)? Because the logistics would be totally different given what the end product is. It IS possible. I think the questions is more whether it's logistically feasible.

It's very difficult to out maneuver the determinedly crazy. Sigh.

Why would it not? I'm just thinking through the logistics of an etsy shop. You post listings of what you've made, people order them & pay through PayPal (so payment is tagged to an order, making it easy to see who gets what), the person in possession of the item ships it out... Unless Etsy has rules against shared endeavors (and I don't think they do), I'm not sure I see a problem.

Well, I assume you have locked down your account so that only actual friends (not friends of friends and so forth) can see your stuff? And, if you just outright block him, he can't see your comments on mutual friends' pages, etc., unless he creates an entirely fictitious account and re-friends people through that... But I would think friend requests that say "shhhhh, it's me. I'm in disguise!" would totally set of people's nut-job detector. Right? :grouphug: I'm sorry you're going through this.

Sounds good to me! I'm not a huge fan of frozen potatoes, and mixed in with other frozen veggies seems weird to me, since they would all seem to cook at different rate, at least in my mind... And if they don't, it's from some magic of processing, which I wouldn't care for. There is nothing wrong with frozen veggies, nutritionally. (as in, not with sauces and whatnot) They're flash frozen straight from the field so they don't even degrade as much as fresh grocery store produce, which is often gassed to be more "shelf" stable. :ack2: Of course, nothing beats your local farm market, but ours have just opened with decorative plants at this time of year. No local produce here yet. So, there you have the nitpicker's opinion: Good meal, decent price (based on our local prices).

Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry Touch facial sunblock (cream) is SPF 70. I've used it a few times and it's non-greasy, doesn't melt into my eyes, etc. (I've only used it a few times because I usually just use the spray, since I have it in hand, not because I don't like the cream.)

Yep, all that! And once you import everything (and if you have soft copies of recipes, you can just copy & paste in bulk import, then tweak things by line item), it's drag & drop for planning. The only annoying thing I've found in the grocery list is that imported recipes don't have a good convention for listing ingredients, so I often end up with multiple listings for, say, onions.

I can't say with any certainty why you're not realizing weight loss - there are so many factors that can be in play there - but are you saying you're also not seeing any change in body composition? So, muscles adapt pretty readily to doing one thing over and over again. If you're running at the same pace,more or less, all the time, they've adapted. You might want to try interval training - flat out sprint for x time/distance, then jog for x time/distance - or simply switching up your cardio: bike, take a cardio class, use an elliptical, etc. On strength: I always tell clients it's a moving target. You want failure. If you can finish 2 sets of 10-12 reps, it's time to up the weight. Likewise, in a strength training or sculpt class, don't use weights that are comfortable the whole time. You want to be challenged. I encourage students in my classes to take 2 sets of dumbbells to their spot, one to challenge them when we do biceps curls, chest presses, etc, and one to use when we're working smaller, less-used muscles, like when we do reverse fly. Your biceps are just stronger than your rear deltoids: they're bigger, used more and to carry heavier loads in daily living. And I work them hard. We do supersets of three or four exercises, 8 reps each, 4 rounds through the set, and everyone struggles at least with the last round of each. (yes, they do call me unflattering names)

Mine has a younger sister and younger brother. He isn't in regular contact with either of them. In fact, though he talked to his brother a couple weeks before Easter, I found out about the birth of his niece quite by accident when I logged onto FB for something entirely different. I have no siblings and choose not to have contact with my (highly toxic, narcissistic) mother. My dad and I talk pretty much every week, or at least play phone tag.

Black here. As you mentioned, it is not the optimal choice. I hoard lint rollers like a crazy person.

I agree with all of the above. By the time the boys night weaned (2 1/2) and transitioned to their own bed (3 1/2), I was a woman on the edge from the sleep deprivation, and I was not physically getting out of my bed at night! 8 is plenty old enough to be able to self-entertain when one wakes in the night. If he can come to your room and fetch you to keep him company, he can jolly well choose to turn on the light and read a book instead.

Yes, and you have to be sure about those, too. We've gotten calls selling tickets for the "firemen's ball" fundraiser. My fireman husband had no knowledge of a ball. We have turned off the ringers on our home phone, but the answering machine kicks on at least 6 times while we're in the kitchen every evening. All robo calls, almost never one that could legitimately ignore the DNC list (even during election season, though there is one state politician who calls multiple times and fills our mailbox with several pieces of campaign ads each day... If I didn't already dislike him, the invasion of my personal space would definitely get him knocked off the voting list.)

I cook 7 nights a week. We cook lunch about 6 days a week right now, because we have games on Saturdays (though we usually pack food). And we cook breakfast at least 4 days, only because the kids actually like to have cereal fairly often. I love to cook, though most of the meals lately have been of the "quick and dirty" rather than the inspired variety because of practice schedules. Thankfully (?) it's gotten cool again here - from 80s back done to 50s this week - so its mostly been soups, salads, and some sort of GF baked good. I spend a lot of money on food, but we would spend quite a bit more, with lesser quality, if we ate out regularly.

You can get Bluetooth speakers, pair your phone and listen away. Staples has them on sale this week, and they generally run in a better price range than anything specific to iThings.

I think the real honor was that Jean was wearing trousers and not just the tighty-dingies.

Me, too. And I iron them. :D (well, I iron ours. The kids don't care.)

Full disclosure: unless you are in Rachel Ray's time machine, it takes longer than 15 minutes.

:lol: snort snort :lol: It's only funny because it's so true.

It's happened on this board as well, but our awesome troll sniffers figured it out before it went on too long. Homeschooling parents who teach logic, no less. :D

:iagree: Yup, me, too. It's awesome. I laminate anything that's not moving. I haven't found the pouch sizes particularly limiting. I've never had to laminate something super long, though.

Given thumbs and forks, or lack of both, I don't think either is messier. But soft tacos are easier than either.

AHA!!! (pointing my finger a la Dick Solomon) :lol: I almost actually choked reading that. .... And now my guffawing has reached ridiculous levels. :lol:

That must have been an interesting paper. (and I, for one, hope your life becomes extremely pedestrian soon!)