I babysat for a family that homeschooled. That was my first real exposure and unfortunately, all of the stereotypes were there. I can't say that they were religious but it was clear that the children were very sheltered. They were not allowed to play with the other kids in the neighborhood and they did not have a TV.....which seemed horrifically odd to me in the 1980s. I used to have this small suitcase that I brought to babysitting jobs that had crafts, games, and books to have something "new" to engage my charges with. One "tradition" was making a personalized sticker with their names to slap on the outside of the suitcase. The mom was horrified when she saw it and forbid her children from creating a sticker. She should have searched the suitcase itself because I had a Ramona book that I read to the kids and later that night my mom got a call from the mother "tattling" that I had read an "inappropriate" book to her children. My mom was just as baffled as I was. However, I was hired again and I did not bring the suitcase. The kids seemed well-educated as far as being able to read and do math and such. I stopped babysitting them when they got into a habit of licking each others' tongues. I was pretty open-minded until that moment! I had no desire to be homeschooled myself nor knew that it was an option.

Yes! Itchy I is the most memorable for me. We had the inflatable ones and a new one was introduced each week. I was recently asking people about these and all I got was blank stares. I was beginning to think I made the whole thing up in my head.

I have fun ones! Dd was the first grandchild so my ILs spent a lot of time visiting when dd was a baby. They were very helpful and I did enjoy having them but MIL and I do things differently as far as running a household. I could easily shrug off our differences in cleaning and cooking because any help was better than no help! But two things: 1. She could never understand why we had coffee beans instead of pre-ground coffee. Dh and I are severe coffee snobs. MIL gets up very early in the morning, WAY before us. She would make the coffee and put out breakfast foods. This meant grinding coffee, which is noisy in our small house. To "solve" this problem, she got into the habit of taking the first opportunity during each visit when we were not around, like outside doing yard work or in the shower, and would find ALL the coffee beans in the house and grind ALL of them. We tried to explain that pre-grinding ALL of the coffee....sometimes weeks worth....was not "helpful." She did not understand this. I think she thought that for some odd reason, we could not buy or afford pre-ground coffee here and she was doing us some big favor. I could not politely get her to stop so we started hiding most of the beans before they arrived.....leaving out just enough to cover the visit time. Even this failed! She searched the pantry until she found them and ground them ALL again. I had to start hiding them in our closet! Lol! Dh and I would just giggle when we could hear her tearing apart the kitchen looking for the hidden beans. 2. MIL cloth diapered all of her kids. We also used only cloth diapers. The old fashion kind....prefolds, pins, and simple covers. Pretty much exactly the same that she used on ALL of her kids. When they would visit us or we would visit them, dh and I would jump at the free babysitting to have an evening out as we did not have any sitters. Every time we would come back, I'd find the baby asleep with the cover on first and the prefold on top! I tried, multiple times, to explain that the cover needs to go on top. But nope. It kept happening. So, I'd have to wake a sleeping baby and fix it. I ended up buying all-in-ones just for MIL's use and again, had to HIDE the other diapers because she would root around looking for "what she was used to" even when I set out the all-in-ones.

We have "weather" today and everything locally is closed....except for the university that dd attends and that is my employer. Even the other university and CC in town are closed. Our school, which is MUCH larger almost never closes even though at least half of the students live off campus. Many of the reasons have already been discussed. But this is a significant one for why homework due dates are moot during a school closing. Dd needs to use the campus computer labs for a lot of her work. The software is either not affordable or takes too much power to run on her own laptop. As an instructor (in my former life), I would always work with any student that did not feel safe traveling to campus and that has also been the case for dd. We live in an area in which the local schools usually far exceed their allowable snow days each year. A university just cannot operate that way. If it closed as often as the public schools, the disruption would be unfathomable. Just pivoting to Zoom is not at all practical for many classes, especially labs, exam days, and for people who teach in styles that does not automatically translate to Zoom with little notice. So I expect and appreciate that closing the whole school is not done lightly. In our case, we generally do not close unless the state has closed the highway or the county has pulled the plows. Cold weather is never a reason for closure. Students, staff, and faculty are all advised to use their best judgement and make individual arrangements if needed.

I love the way 2015 - 2019 is considered "older models." By that logic, our cars are antique!

I have had a lot of luck with Express. You will have to pick around the trendier stuff but online they offer almost everything in XXS, short, tall, etc..... I also have an odd size as does dh and this is my go to for not-too-expensive basic work clothing. They are about the only jeans I can find that I can dial in the fit and length without alterations.

We just bought our first sectional from Ashley Furniture. There seems to be several configuration options for every model they sell. We have a somewhat odd space to try to work with so I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could buy pieces to build what would actually fit. Their prices are very low (our three-piece sectional came to $1400 with delivery) and for all I know this thing won't hold up well. But we didn't want to commit a lot of cash as we were not sure we would even like a sectional. And embarrassingly, this was to replace the only new furniture we have ever bought, which was all Ikea and 25+ years old. So our bar is low. We have had it for a couple of months now and really like it!

I 100% agree with this. I taught primarily classes of about 25 but I did have some large lectures and simply had policies that made attendance mostly within the student's control with a set number of dropped quizzes/labs/assignments. In a large lecture, I only expect to hear from people with truly extenuating circumstances and made that clear in the syllabus and in the first few lectures. I mean, you have to do everything with an eye towards economy of scale for a huge lecture class. No matter what, you are dragging along a few stragglers with legit (or not legit) reasons for extensions but that percentage should be much smaller as the class size increases. I would also employ my TAs to keep track of stragglers and heavily rely on the testing center for make-up exams. But ultimately, if I have a student in tears in my office, I will at least try to accommodate even if I don't fully understand the issue.

I have thought about this some since I last responded. I taught at a university for 13 years and my particular department had a policy that I must include attendance as part of the grade. I did not like this at all, but had to do it. So I did. Any time a student approached me about missing class where there was no exam or lab in class, I would excuse them regardless of the reason. These are adults and if they think something is more important than attending class, go for it. If it meant missing an exam or lab, it must be "university excused," which means having your reason vetted by the dean of students and can occur after the event, otherwise, no make-up. These excuses are given to students who meet the very clear excuse reasons stated in the student handbook. I never had a big problem with this and most students who missed anything had reasons I felt were good. A few didn't, but not my problem. I also had a LOT of student athletes in my classes and they miss a LOT of class. I had one student that missed over 60% of my classes due to their sport. These are "university excused" absences so I was required to accommodate them. My student athletes almost always got very high grades and made sure they were caught up with minimal input from me. Based on that, I cannot see that a wedding or funeral is less important than an athletic event so it seems hypocritical to say one should never miss class for something very important in their lives. And speaking of important, just the replies on this thread illustrate how much variation there is in what people consider important. Weddings are not super high on my list. Yes, I think siblings should be able to attend weddings but if one can't or chooses not to, that would not be a big deal for me. I would not expect someone to change their wedding schedule plans to accommodate a sibling unless both siblings came to that agreement between themselves. I feel the same about holidays and funerals, frankly. I am perhaps less sentimental than most, but there is almost nothing I would consider mandatory for a family member to attend. When I was in college, most classes did not involve attendance and most faculty would accommodate a make-up exam or lab or presentation under most circumstances. I did take some Gen Ed classes at a CC during the summer between my freshman and sophomore year. These did have strict attendance policies. My father passed away very unexpectedly that summer. I missed classes the day after and did not inform my instructors ahead of time, as required by the syllabi. Once the dust cleared a little and I was able to contact both instructors, one was understanding and assisted me to catch up once I could. The other was convinced I was lying and would not budge. I had missed and exam and he would not even discuss making it up. I know I could have gone up the chain of command and gotten that corrected but was too exhausted trying to manage helping my mom and taking care of everything. I just let it go. I was transferring the class anyway and as long as I got a C, it would transfer with no impact to my GPA. I had a high A at that point and even with a 0 on that exam, I knew I could still get a C. Which I did and put it in my past. I always thought about that when a student approached me when I was teaching. I know students BS their way out of things all the time but I never wanted to take the chance of calling BS and not knowing that a student walked away with a life-crushing situation only to have another thing to worry about. Giving extensions or make-ups is never going to give an unprepared student a serious leg up so why not have some grace?

I have a college student and we would never ask her to miss class for most family events. I can see it being appropriate when the death of a loved one is involved. I could also see it for the wedding of someone super close, but certainly not for a full week! In fact, dd's uncle got married earlier this year and it was never a question that she would attend even though she is relatively close to him. It was far away and not on a weekend so she would have missed the full week of classes. Even if we had expected her to attend, I doubt she would have agreed since it would have been so disruptive. We did get an earful from several relatives about her absence. Her uncle understood, in fact we told him that the date he was considering would mean that she could not attend, but others were shocked that she did not come and had no qualms with voicing their thoughts on this loudly and frequently. I was quite annoyed.

I think this might be more of a preventative thing. We have to be very careful to dry gloves and mittens fully between uses. We are a ski family so for 6 months of the year, there are sweat-soaked gloves/mittens every day. We don't have a handy gadget to set them up over a heat vent as all of our heat vents are inaccessible anyway, but simply folding back the cuffs so that air can access the inside and them laying them somewhere until they fully dry every single time helps. They do still get funky over time so whenever they go for a wash, I soak them in sport wash (or any enzyme-based detergent) for a good 12+ hours, then wash as usual. I would not put them in the dryer at all as most have materials that probably should not be cooked and even if not, the dryer will bake in any funk and you will never get it out.

Silver explained it correctly. In our case, it only applies to students in engineering majors....which is over half the school. The smaller classes, computing requirements, and lab equipment make upper level classes "more expensive" so they bump the tuition. However, it also make the school look like a better deal on paper and for rankings since they typically use the freshman tuition rate. I would be much more irritated about this if dd's scholarships did not cover the bump because in her case she is not taking junior level engineering classes yet, she just happens to have all of these credits sitting on her transcript that bump her up. The bump up comes to about $4000 a year, so it is not insignificant. For those who recommend limiting what transfers, I can see that with AP and CLEP, but what about DE? You have to submit all transcripts for any college classes upon applying and in our case, there was never an opportunity to request that some not transfer. The ones that were transferrable were transferred automatically.

Yep, free electives. In our case, they are not part of the GPA as grades do not transfer so they just sit. My dd's degree program only has 4 credits of free electives so she has 30+ just sitting there that do not apply to her degree program. They are not useless though! Those extra numbers bump her up into higher priority scheduling slots. They also bumped her up into higher tiered tuition earlier so it did come at a cost. At least in our case, her scholarship covers the increase in tuition so it is not a negative for us but something I would have considered before any sort of CLEP decisions, for instance. They also could be useful, at least some of them, if she changes degree programs to one that either has more free electives or would make use of those classes within the degree requirements.

I am generally a minimalist and not very sentimental but I am a softie for kid stuff. I have an embarrassing amount of Rubbermaid bins in the attic that have select toys, clothing, (home)school work, and artwork. I can justify the homeschool stuff because I was constantly concerned that someone would turn us in for educational neglect. And the only clothing I kept were items that had some special meaning like being hand-made by a relative or a particular favorite. It will all need a big purge at some point but my unfinished and unheated attic is of no other use and nowhere close to full, so I figure it is not harming anyone. If I were to keel over tomorrow, it is all at least neatly boxed for disposal should no one have any use for it. If I were short on space or had a move in the future, I would for sure take a day to go through it all and likely could get it all down to one or two totes. But as someone upthread mentioned, oftentimes you don't know what is "special" until some time has passed. I also think I am sensitive to this specifically because my mom, who is a hoarder, somehow had in her possession every single take-out container, plastic shopping bag, and magazine she brought into the house since 1980 but somehow did not keep anything from my childhood. Aside from medical records and a few random report cards, there was literally no trace that she had children. When I asked her about this, years ago, she just said that since I didn't take the stuff when I left for college, she assumed I didn't want it. Luckily, I have an aunt (also a hoarder) who did keep every drawing that I ever gave her, which was a lot, so I do have those....hoarding for the win!

I am with you on this one, but in my case, there are things wrong with my house that would make it impossible for a private party sale involving financing. I do not live in an area where the land is worth more than the structure so the only likely sale opportunity is going to involve traditional owner-occupiers that need financing or investors that would not need financing. If I listed my house as-is, only people who would not need financing (investors) would be able to buy it. And it would kill me to see my historic 130 yo house go to flippers who would turn it into a cheap rental or flip. We would make out about the same in either case....either spend the money for repairs and list it for a higher price or sell as-is for a lower price. So, it is really psychological for me. None of the updates I feel would be necessary are cosmetic. We cosmetically update DIY-style regularly and keep the house clean and clutter-free for our own enjoyment. I am actually not sure what other local people do. We have saved up the money for the needed repairs. These are major repairs that would total $50K+. I just cannot procure contractors for any of it. I have been trying for years. I had to sell my soul to the devil to get the most serious of repairs done (a new roof and house painting). We had been threatened that our home insurance would be revoked if we did not get the roof replaced and the city had served us multiple notices that the paint situation was violating the ordinance. The city stated in their last notice that if we did not get it painted they would have it done for us and we would be billed. I was like, "Please! If you can find someone who will do it I am totally fine with that!" I literally called in every favor I could and bugged the spouses of contractors to even get a phone call returned. The guy who ended up painting my house (after he was harassed by his wife to do so) explained to me that no one wants to paint an old wooden house in my area. With a shortage of painters, they won't even call someone like me back. There is plenty of easy and well-paid commercial work to keep them booked. The last company I attempted to call about our literally-rotting-off-the-house deck laughed so hard and long into the phone that I almost hung up. He said, "Good luck, lady" when he stopped laughing. So, we just sit here and hope the situation changes before something in/on my house collapses. Most calls go to VM and I never hear back.

Ugh. Months? Years? Our house could be in showing shape within a day or two from a cleanliness/declutter/staging aspect but the major repairs needed would be a big problem. We have the money to do these things but cannot get contractors to even answer my calls, let alone give a quote or do any work. Major things that would block anything but a cheap as-is sale. For instance, we have a very large and complicated deck that needs to be replaced, the front enclosed porch needs to be ripped off and rebuilt, there is currently standing water in my basement..... I could go on and on and on......

My dd attends a school in which 5 years is the norm. Some do manage to finish in 4, but it is hard and there is zero wiggle room. I attended the same school and graduated with a BSME in 4 years and it was hard. If I could have done it differently, I would have. Which is what I keep telling my dd. She is freaked out because her scholarship only covers 8 semesters. But I happen to know that you can apply for an extension and most are approved. And even if she could not, one year of loans is really not the end of the world. She is an engineering major, with a minor in ecology. To graduate in 4 years, despite coming in with 36 credits, would require 18 credits a semester. While that is "do-able," I want her to enjoy this time, feel free to take classes outside of her major, and have room to mess up. So far, she has ignored me and is trying to finish in 4 years but I feel like she might cave soon. She has an internship this summer that could turn into part-time research work during the school year. There is no way she can juggle that and 18 credits along with her other activities and interests. And no, I don't think anyone looks at how long it took for someone to get their degree. There are just too many factors to consider....co-ops, internships, family issues, course availability, financial issues, minors, medical issues, changes in degree program, covid, etc..... Even back when I went to school, everyone was graduating at different times. For an engineering major, what math class you got placed into as a freshman could mean a whole additional year!

I had an uncomfortable but likely not terrible case on Covid last May and I learned the hard way what happens if one does not follow the low and slow advice. I did not have brain fog and I'm not sure you could call my lingering symptoms "long covid," but I had a relapse that lasted for weeks that I believe was due to jumping back into exercise too quickly. I run, bike, swim, lift, hike, and ski at least one hour a day, often much more. I was training for my annual half marathon when I got sick. I took two full weeks off until the cough went away and I felt mostly normal. Having missed the two weeks, I was eager to get back on my training plan to make up some ground. I did a couple of short, slow runs. They went ok but I did notice, and should have heeded, that my heart rate was much higher than normal. So then I tried my first on-plan run and not only felt terrible fatigue after 30 minutes despite an uncharacteristically slow pace, but managed to fall (this was a trail run) and ended up taking myself out for weeks due to the resulting leg injury. I think that was a blessing in disguise. I did not enjoy the pain but it kept me from making the situation worse. The fall happened far from the car and like a lot of fresh injuries, it was not obvious right away just how bad it was. So, I ran the 30 minutes back and was alarmed at my heart rate and difficulty breathing even though I was running much slower due to the injury. The next day, in addition to the injury, the covid cough came back worse than ever and my resting heart rate spiked. This all lingered for WEEKS. I have to say that it made me feel super low. I was able to do some very mild exercise in the pool and that was about it. I still didn't learn my lesson and insisted on doing the race I was training for....except I dropped to the 5 mile event. That went terrible and it was way too early. Again, I was red-lining it with heart rate and still running at a slow pace. I believe that set me back even further. I am *still* not back to any of my pre-covid metrics, my heart rate is still running high, and I feel like my lungs have been compromised. I have had two colds since covid and in both cases the cough was out of control and lingered for weeks. All that to say that I think low and slow is for sure the way to go and to make sure you are keeping it low and slow enough, wear a heart rate monitor and pay attention to how you feel on all levels. I should have started with a solid two weeks of walking only. Sadly, I am not sure I have the discipline to follow my own advice should I come down with covid again, but I sure hope dh would tackle me, hide all my equipment, and threaten to lock me up if I don't. Exercise is my best anxiety mitigator so it is very hard for me to leave it, even when I should!

I have this issue with a person I care for that has dementia. There is almost nothing I can do to stop her from giving out any/all information without taking her phone away. And she will answer any call and is not able to remember to not give out her info. I can see her call log and she regularly talks to scammers for up to an hour at a time! She has even given out MY personal information to these people. I took a different approach of basically shutting down her everything so that scammers cannot get to it, even with her info. I froze her credit with all three agencies so no one can take out credit or loans in her name, replaced her normal CC with a pre-loaded one that I only keep $200 maximum, and I only keep a small amount of money in her bank account and transferred the rest to a POA account that she does not have any information for. I also changed all her (and my) security questions on everything to have bogus answers that only I have the answers to so no one can use personal info to hack into accounts, We have lost the $200 on the CC once so far but other than that, scammers cannot really get to anything. I think she enjoys talking to them and I kind of enjoy that they are wasting their scamming time while thinking they have hit the jackpot of data mining. It's like free therapy for her. I'm sure it is not 100% foolproof but so far, so good.

I actually do find that a bit odd. Yes, heat rises, so some variation makes sense but usually the upstairs of older houses have less insulation so the heat is lost after it rises. That is the case with our 1880s house. We now have normal forced air ducts but then the house was built, it had a coal furnace in the basement and holes in the floor for gravity feed to the upper floors. The rise of heat was necessary to adequately heat the house. The insulation has never been upgraded so whatever was used in 1880, is mostly broken down and has settled into the lower half of the walls. Even with (not-zoned) ducting and all of our vents fully open on the second floor, it is at about 10 degrees cooler (give or take) when he heat is on. The colder it is outside, the less the heat difference between floors. We call this "too much delta." (dh and I have mechanical engineering degrees....). When the difference in temp from indoors and out if high, the heat moves out the uppers floors making it warmer at any given time. So, ironically, the upper floor is colder the warmer it is outdoors. We are in the middle of this crazy blizzard, like everyone else, and out upper floor is more comfortable than normal (as long as you are not leaning against a wall). OP, your house might have insulation updates on the upper floor? Or your delta is high enough that you are pulling more heat to the upper floors than normal.

We have the opposite! We got 10 freaking inches yesterday and we weren't supposed to get any! The snow accumulation today has matched the forecast. The "Real Snow" does not begin until later tonight but we have had about 6 inches since I last shoveled at 8am. I am going to heroic measures to get my dd to the dentist later this afternoon. They are scheduling out 6 months so we will go even if we have to ski there!

TomTom makes one and you can even download some podcasts/music onto it from a computer. Dd has a smartphone now but did not when she first started using it. It also came with bluetooth headphones to listen to the music.

Funny how that works, eh? Every winter calamity I have ever had has happened when dh is in California or some other annoyingly warm place. Sigh. We use Mr. Buddy in our camper. We have a carbon monoxide detector and have never had it go off. I still don't like it but would not hesitate to use it if we lost power. Unfortunately ours is currently sitting in our camper, in storage, off site, and buried under feet of snow so......not helpful for us this time.

It is totally normal in my area. We can get anywhere from 1-6 blizzards a year. A normal storm can dump 12+ inches and that is not considered a blizzard or a big deal. Actually, "blizzard" is more about wind than the amount of snow. Because it is a holiday weekend and people are trying to travel and do their normal holiday things, it is more of a "topic" than it normally would be. We are supposed to get 36 inches but most things will still be open. School is already out so that is not a factor. The roads will be cleared enough but visibility will be a problem. We are not planning to go anywhere we cannot go on foot until the storm ends. We do volunteer for the senior citizen Christmas dinner and we will do that no matter what. We almost never lose power and if we do, it won't be for long so I am not terribly concerned. If we do for more than a few hours, we will drain the pipes, pack up the cats, and walk/snowshoe/ski to friends that have wood heat about a mile away.

We are already at negative wind chills here with wind speeds increasing each day. We will be dealing with whiteout snow conditions. But the cold temps mean the roads won't be slippery, at least. We deliver meals on Christmas day and will do so no matter the conditions. We should not lose power for long but for those that might, be sure you know how the drain your pipes. And I second the tent recommendation. If it gets cold enough, set one up inside and fill with every blanket in the house.