Totally anecdotal but all of the materials that were given to me when I started were developed by male instructors as I taught in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field.

Quoting myself to elaborate a little. I was not "required" to do this but it was strongly encouraged. But for every class I taught, I was given access to the previous instructors' materials. Some I altered and used, others I didn't. But it was super helpful to have insight into how the classes were previously taught. By the time I left, I had developed all of my own materials, metrics, and outcome statistics. I passed them along to the next instructors without a second thought. I mostly taught classes in which I was the sole instructor but in other classes in which there were multiple sections taught by multiple instructors, we always collaborated to some extent. I think of it as intellectual property that I was paid to develop and therefore does not "belong" to me.

In my experience, yes.

Our vet also did not bring up putting our very old and suffering cat down either. In our case, I think he assumed we were in "treatment mode" since we kept bringing her in when really we wanted an honest option of whether it was "time" or not. We finally just decided on our own and the vet said they were glad we "finally" decided to let her go. I was pretty angry as I think she suffered for weeks past when she should have. It sounds like you know it is time.

I have an always-homeschooled 18yo that just started college. She did not have a smartphone until she was 16, never got into video games, and had limits to technology (mostly via lack of access and being busy with other things rather than screen time limits). All of her friends went to public high school so she definitely saw all things social media even when she was not directly engaged. She for sure does not always know what the latest everything is as far as popular culture goes but is a huge music lover (we did allow her to have a Spotify account) so has listened to all things current and past. Time will tell if she truly feels she has missed out on things but so far she seems content and well-adjusted. She did note upon moving into the dorms that many students are glued to their video games. She is baffled and has zero interest. But she found plenty of people who are interested in the things she likes to do and has gravitated towards them. She's seems happy and well-adjusted. If anything, she seems far less concerned with conforming than her peers. I had concerns about homeschooling, just like I would have with any educational path, but "fitting in" was never one of them.

It seems to be full steam ahead here. Dd attends university in our home town so I have a front row seat. We have a very short and fleeting time before LOTS of snow falls so many events are outdoors. Campus is abuzz, which is nice to see after the last year when everything was online. Dd reports that there is not much happening indoors at this time, other than class. I'd say from the outside looking in, campus activity is higher than it was pre-Covid.

Dd's uni is full steam ahead with in-person classes and no distancing. There is no vaccine mandate and they are not asking students so I have no idea what the rate of vaccination is. Masking is required through the month of September, which I suspect will be extended. No routine testing and what testing is available is difficult to access. Dd's roommate is sick and has been for over a week. A FULL week ago dd started trying to find a way to test. It took until this Tuesday to get an appointment. Luckily it was negative but meanwhile she was attending class and other functions, masked. So the "dashboard" shows almost no cases but does not mention how many tests were taken....which I know to be very few. Luckily, the school is well-equipped to go online. They were online all last year. But that is NOT the experience my dd wants. Fingers crossed.

Hugs! We moved our only dc into the dorms two weeks ago and I was a mess. And this is only 2 miles down the road! It is the little things like different meal prep and how much less hair gets stuck in the shower drain that remind me each day. I also have a very sad and lonely cat that misses her person terribly. Even though we are just down the road, we have agreed to not see each other in person due to Covid since the school does not have a vaccine mandate. We might as well be on different continents. But I do know it is NOT the same as launching a kid so far away!

Very true! We used to just make last minute plans to camp. That is mostly not a thing anymore if you are looking for full service campgrounds. State, county, and national forest campgrounds (almost always rustic) are often not reservable and even in the pandemic, you can almost always still find many open sites last minute. So we do plan ahead when there is a specific place we want to go. I literally set an alarm to wake up to hit the opening minutes for reserving at state parks and even then, I often do not get the sites I was hoping to. It is bananas. I am hoping this eventually calms down. It is also obvious in the parks themselves that there are a lot of newbies camping. Most are fine but we have witnessed amusing and sometimes alarming things that we have never seen before the pandemic.

We have had trailers for the last 18 years and LOVE them. We were tent campers and backpackers prior to that....both of which we still also do. Our current trailer is a pop-up which is a very different animal than a van, motorhome, fifth wheel, or larger enclosed trailer so there is some overlap in experience but not directly comparable. We love the pop-up because we love sleeping out in the air. We tend to camp at rustic state forest campgrounds (no hookups at all) up to state parks which do have electric hookups and modern bathrooms but no water/sewer. Our trailer does not have a bathroom but some pop-ups do. During the pandemic, we have mostly stayed at rustic campgrounds with pit toilets. Using those is more risky than having your own bathroom but not as risky as using a bathhouse, IMO. People do NOT linger in those. Lol! We do not need any hookups to be comfortable. Electric can be nice for lights and charging stuff but it is not nice enough for that to ever be a factor when choosing where we will camp. Our fridge, stove, and heater run on propane and we have solar chargers for the most essential charging needs so we can be completely off grid. We cook and wash dishes outdoors and just use the campground pump for water and pit toilets for the other business. We even removed the sink from ours because it was far too much of a pain to deal with rather than using a dishpan outdoors. Always responsibly dump dish water and use biodegradable soap! We typically dump dirty water in the fire pit if the campground does not have a drain or dump station. I have noticed that even our friends with much bigger rigs still tend to not use their indoor water, opting instead to wash up outdoors and use the communal restrooms or pit toilets. Since we rarely camp at places with hook ups, this is true of most other campers we see. Only the biggest and best rigs have enough tank capacity to truly sustain normal bathroom and kitchen water functions for more than a day or two. A previous poster mentioned campground help with parking. I have never seen this. I have also never camped in one of the more resort-like KOA campgrounds, so this might very well be a thing. But anywhere I have camped, the neighbors pretty much point and laugh while you are on a fast-track to divorce court trying to park. I kid. Mostly. I am comfortable pulling our trailer but parking it is very hard for me. Dh is much better at it, but even he has struggled at times. You just have to be patient. Hooking it up is easy as we have a back-up camera on our tow vehicle. Even without one, it is not that bad. I have done it solo with a 10yo helping to direct with no problem. Again, as long as you are patient, you'll eventually get it done. We typically camp with a group that has everything from tents to huge trailers and no one seems to struggle much with hook-up. We almost always spend multiple nights at each site so being able to have a vehicle to go do things without securing your whole "house" is non-negotiable for us. If we were doing a more epic, move-every-day type trip, I could see us going with a van or very small motorhome, but that is way out of our budget and likely always will be. We may rent in a situation like that. For those that are grappling with tight spaces, keep in mind you can kick the kids out to a tent. We had to do that when dd turned 8 as she outgrew the bed she was "assigned" to. We set up a tiny backpacking tent up right under my pop-up bed so we could talk easily and I could hear her if she needed anything. By age 10, she was happy to set up further and further away from the rig. This may or may not be why she is now comfortable solo backpacking for days on end at age 18. It was also nice to contain the kid mess to another piece of real estate! That is a ton of mostly-useless info but thought I'd chime in as someone who has spent at least 400 nights in an RV over the years.

Yes. My whole family came down with something that could very well have been Covid several weeks ago. It was a 5 day wait to get testing appointments and they predicted another 4-5 days after that for results. So, we did not get tested. What's the point?

I can totally get behind this!

Honestly, while I am in no way religious, it is nice to know people still feel this way....even if I don't.

This is what I assume since I have never had the oil separate with the home-ground butter. In fact, that is another big reason I make my own.....to not have to deal with the oily mess that always happens when trying to stir up a new jar!

It does clean up well by running it with soap and water as others have said. What is a pain for me is getting as much of the nut butter out before cleaning. It is just hard to scrape out of everything. I too would not use this for preparing anything for someone with a nut allergy. If I had that issue, I'd buy a second pitcher just for allergy foods.

This is me. My dd leans towards no kids anyway, but she is young enough that I know that could change. I would love and welcome grandkids but I honestly don't think this world as we know it is a welcome place for new humans. My worries about the future are bad enough regarding my own adult child. I cannot fathom starting the worry clock over again.

I use my Vitamix to make peanut butter but the oil never rises to the top.....or we eat it too quickly for that to happen. A quart only lasts a week here. ETA - The Vitamix works very well for this. But it is also a HUGE pain to clean up afterwards. It's worth it because we eat a LOT of peanut butter and making it myself costs less than half.

Unless something changes, I think most homeschoolers are going to have to back away from AP. Even pre-covid, dd ended up just not taking one of the exams because we could not find a site that would host her. Why would they? Extra hassle with no benefit to their own students. I get it. Before that, we traveled 4 hours. Just not worth it. We switched to DE and never looked back. Unless College Board is going to DO SOMETHING (the something being as simple as requiring sites to take everyone) about this, I think it will only get worse.

This was my initial reaction too. But there are some key differences. This is a 14yo with a group of people she does not know well, not "friends." And 14 years old (I felt the need to repeat that). And the parent does not know these people. And the coaches are showing a lack intel about of state driving laws and Safe Sport rules. AND, 1:30 in the morning with new drivers that the parents does not know. That is a far cry from close friends "kidnapping" each other for a sleepover or fun diner breakfast. Or even young adults consenting to group shenanigans.

This would be a hard no for me and I am probably on the far-lenient side for this board. Something is fishy here. No coach in their legal right mind would go along with this. Even 10:30, which I might be technically OK with, seems like a big stretch these days. Also, if the coach is really in on this, I would be very watchful of hazing. The fact that she explicitly stated "no hazing" is a flag for me. My public high school marching band was also "no hazing." I have never witnessed worse or more brutal hazing than I did during band camp.....and I was Greek in college so that is saying something. Withholding food, water, sunscreen, and feminine products, restricting access to the showers and toilets, stealing essential clothing items, filling all shoes with shampoo, super glue in hair. That was just the girls. The boys got it much MUCH worse. Luckily, I was not a target....only because I had some upper classmen friends in high places. Kids are crafty. The adult leaders and chaperones really had no idea what was going on right under their noses. A lawsuit years later finally revealed the extent of the issue and the scars it left on some of my classmates followed them all four years of high school. This was modeled after similar behavior in some of the famous state school marching bands at that time as some sort of character-building thing. Don't assume that just because adults are "supervising" that hazing is not happening.

I am wondering if my house is normal or what is going on? We have several lamps with LED bulbs. These are the plug in kind, not hardwired. Some are touch-type lamps and others are remote control. None have traditional switches or pull-chains. Any time we lose power, which is often but brief, these light fixtures are all on when the power is restored even though they were off when we lost power. This is also true of our stereo receiver. We lost power for a minute or two in the middle of the night last night. I got up for water some time after that to find the house lit up with all these lamps. Anyone else?

Dd's university is not mandating vaccines or doing any routine testing. They are requiring masking indoors except for in individual dorm rooms. This was just announced. They were almost all online last year and I know dd is very concerned they will end up back online if things get out of hand. I think they will get out of hand but I have not shared my thoughts on this. I am at least glad they added the mask mandate. The students seemed to be good with this last year. At least on campus. The off campus parties and bars are a whole different concern. The area as a whole has schools with no masking or testing mandates, very low vaccination rates, and STILL has limited access to testing which means even well-meaning people are forgoing tests when sick. What's the point if it takes 5 days to schedule a test and another 5 days to get the results? I have big concerns and am just hoping beyond hope that dd has something resembling a decent freshman year.

I second the Turkish towel suggestion. They are large but dry quickly. That said, I am in the same boat. Dd's dorm room is TINY and there is literally nowhere for a drying rack. I know they make the over-the-door kind, but her school is in a very cold climate and most students have multiple coats and snowpants that will likely end up overwhelming any door rack/hooks. The "closets" are actually small armoires that are too small to hang coats and clothing along with whatever else they need to stuff in them since there is literally no floor space available for storage. Not to mention stuffing wet coats and towels in tiny closets is not going to end well. I am kind of perplexed how people do it. I guess I will find out!

Mine was pre-insurance. Our insurance did not cover any part of the cost.

If the rooms will have lofts a pool noodle to cut to length and apply to corners can save a few head bruises.