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.

Traditional braces, 2+ years, plus retainers, $2600. That was 5 years ago in an average COL area. This includes aftercare, which is still ongoing to this day. In fact, we have a new retainer coming as the old one wore out and that is covered. It seems it varies widely. We only had the option of two providers (both two hours away....sigh) and they both quoted the same.

As someone who does not have cable or any kind of streaming service, I always find myself baffled when it comes to events like the Olympics. I am in the US. After several wrongs turns, I was able to catch the gymnastics olympic trials using YouTubeTV to access a local (if you can call two hours away "local") NBC channel. That was fine, except I want to see ALL of the gymnastics and do not want to switch between sports, which is what that channel is scheduled to show during the actual Olympics. I see PeacockTV is covering all gymnastics "live." This is my question. If I sign up for this service, can I see the streams on demand, after the fact? Or do I have to be up at 4am to watch the live streams? Or if anyone has suggestions on any other way to catch as much gymnastics as possible without cable, I'd love to hear them.

Ugh. We have been trying to opt out. The website is terrible. Our only is turning 18 next month so we are not eligible and will have to give it all back at tax time.

I guess I am failing to see what goes on in a bathroom that has anything to do with gender outside of the individual locking toilet and shower stalls. Looking at dd's university, the dorms are old. There are a handful of suites with bathrooms that are shared by four students (these are typically reserved for upperclassmen anyway) but otherwise, without major renovation, communal bathrooms it is. If that is the default, I cannot imagine how one would police different rules for different bathrooms. And once there are "rules" someone has to enforce them....putting trans people in the awkward position of trying to determine how to offend the least number of people with their bathroom choice. Can a trans man use the men's room? Or should they use the women's room? Do they have to hike to another building that has a coed bathroom? Should we have bathrooms just for trans people? Coed bathrooms eliminates this. Even if you perhaps have the choice of living in a room with the bathroom arrangement of your choice, what happens when you are in a different part of the building? Do you go to a different floor so you can pee in the "right" bathroom. When I was a student in the early 90s, we frequently used the opposite bathroom to avoid hiking to a different part of the building when meeting with a study group or visiting a friend. It was not uncommon at all to see men in our women's only bathrooms. Having them constructed to specifically accommodate this seems like the easiest way for everyone to get what they need. My ideal would be a bank of full individual bathrooms for each house so no one was in a communal situation ever. And maybe that will happen someday. But meanwhile, universities are grappling with a rapidly changing culture around gender while still having to deal with existing buildings.

Dd's dorm has coed bathrooms. It did not occur to me to think this was an issue and dd is not bothered. They still have individual stalls for toilets and showers. I wonder what people think colleges should do? We all know there are many more trans students attending college now. Coed bathrooms eliminates the bathroom wars, which I think is a good thing. I would much rather see that than jacked up housing costs so that everyone can have their own individual bathroom.

On the flip side, I was absolutely shocked to be present for one of these with a person who was still living on their own and DRIVING who 100% failed the test. I knew there were issues but those issues were very well masked. Had someone asked me before the test if they would have passed, I would have confidently said yes. They are not flawless but they do cut through the muscle memory masking that dementia patients often are very good at.

This has not been my experience. At least in my state, medicaid will not pay for AL, period. And I don't know what kind of AL you are referring to, but even with LTC insurance, all we can afford is a small, single room in a dated, but thankfully licensed, AL facility. Apartment-style AL facilities were no less than $10K per month when I was searching two years ago. I cannot see medicaid covering that even if they did cover AL in general.

Dd applied for a new passport in late April. It took 4 weeks. I was shocked as I expected it to take months. We did not expedite. It seems to vary widely. Not that that is helpful......

The person I care for did a really good job of planning. Having long term care insurance, and a good policy at that, has been extremely helpful. And their POA, medical directive, and will was in place. All good. But things still did go off the rails and I am not sure how it could have been prevented. Their dementia was the slow moving kind and they were able to completely hide it for a long time. Meanwhile, they were making very poor financial decisions, due largely to the dementia. Like $500K total in mistakes over a long period of time. Some of it was being scammed. Some was true mistakes (bounced checks, late fees, lost checks/money, tax mistakes). And some was just plain poor decisions like ill-considered home renovations. Even with a good POA in place, we could not take over finances or even know what was going on until they welcomed our help (or was deemed incompetent). There can be a lot of shame and/or denial for some people with health issues, especially dementia. Part of that shame/denial results in hiding planning/financial issues until it is too late to correct them. I don't know how to avoid that for myself or others. I can do all of the right planning but it can all be undone by unchecked dementia, I have learned. Unless one is willing to have their children or other caregivers up in their business well before issues begin AND can maintain a good relationship when the time comes for someone else to take the reins, I just don't know how people can protect themselves.

YES! The person I care for refuses to move to my location and has taken the position that it is our duty to relocate to be close to them. We are business owners so moving is not a realistic option for us. And even if it were, we have other elders in our lives that we will eventually be caring for that do not live in that location. Trying to take care of things from an entire day's drive away is really really hard and greatly limits care options. I think we could have used home health care for a year or two more had we not been dealing with the distance. As in, we could fill in for times when home health was not available or disrupted. As it is, every medical appointment has me scrambling to find transportation and calling in to know what was discussed. It is a mess. But I know it could be so much worse so I count myself lucky.

It is a rare unicorn but there were some good policies out there. My person had one and it was very expensive. But the company has been very easy to work with and has already paid out far more than was paid in. There were some hoops to get it started but has been automatic and smooth sailing ever since. It does not cover everything and it will likely run out well before my person passes, but without it, I have no idea what we would have done. I can tell you that the wait for benefit approval was probably the most stressful time of my life. There is literally no one in my family that could provide the level of care needed not to mention my person does NOT want to live with any of us.