For those that have audible and are frugal. Check out the Plus catalog. When it first came out, I was like, "Meh" after I looked at what they had. Then I joined Scribd because they had most of Dune and I was re-doing to the whole thing in chronological order. But that got annoying because after you listened to something in demand, they restricted you until the next month. So, the unlimited listening was only theoretical. At one point, all I had access to was Librovox stuff. But, then I went buy something on Audible and it was free on Plus! Some exploring found some good stuff. Right now, I'm listening to all of Thomas Sowell on Plus. I've bought some good books, but I'm waiting until my annual membership expires to listen to those.

I completely love and adore audiobooks. But there is one narrator that gets on my nerves. So, much that I don't like the author anymore. They are both huge deals, but I can't remember either name. What grates is that she pronounces k's as their own syllable. So, "Back" will be pronounced Bak-k I've been listening to audiobooks from back when I listened after my dad who got the unabridged books-on-cassette from the library back when that was limited to those with sight problems. It was always feast-or-famine with the books, so we had 100+ cassettes that we'd record the books onto and then keep circling around. My dad and I still share our audiobooks. We are in different libraries, and we'll download each others audiobook borrows. I've found that with stuff that is really dense, like a lecture series, I listen twice. I've also found that with stories I'm more likely to catch stuff in the audio version.

Soooooo true. DH has to do things things like dig holes that he didn't have to do in the suburbs. Near our previous house the city had a Day Labor Center. It was funded with permit money. During the day you could drive up and tell a city employee what work you wanted, how long it would take, what you were willing to pay and if English-speaking was required. The first person on the list that was a match, got in your car.

Walking to things: One thing that surprised me about the small town life is that I can walk to things. I'd always lived in large suburbs. In the house I had before this, there was one small shopping center with a 7-11, one crappy restaurant and a library 3/4 mile away. I only did the walk when DD was a baby and the real purpose was to take a walk. The library was a bonus at the end. At my childhood house, there was only the junior high within walking distance. Now the two block center of the small town is a 0.5 mile away. It has a drug store, auto parks store, our doc, a dentist, 5 restaurants, misc other stores including an awesome yarn store, library, park and also a splash pad in the summer. Another nice thing is the view. Our backyard view is a hay field. We have a standing offer to buy it. An older guy owns it and rents it out to the farmer. He promised the land to his kids.

We moved to the exurbs and love it. I had to be within a reasonable distance to my work. We moved to a small town of 3K people. It had been remote, rural. But, when a closer-to-civilization rural town turned into a large suburban city, our town became an exurb. We live IN town, but we bought a house on an acre. None of our neighbors have that much land. We'd leaned toward unincorporated land, but God meant us to have this. We have 12 chickens and two Diary Goats, and two dairy goat babies. DH had wanted elbow room, i.e. land, and I wanted neighbors. The standard lot outside of the city fulfills that. With the lots being a great deal deeper than the street frontage would lead you to believe. DH mows with a pusher mower because he likes to mow. I think an acre is perfect for a sitting lawn mower. There is a nearby community college for DD to do dual enrollment when she is old enough. One thing to consider is internet service. Many of the more remote lots don't have any internet service except satellite. Also, going off-grid is very expensive. The batteries aren't quite there yet. The inverters are getting much smarter though. eta: If you get enough land to free-range chickens they can be done easily. You of course still need a coop for nighttime and nesting boxes. But no-mess feeders can be built by attaching PVC elbows to a large container. Water is handled with chicken nipples. You can build something to open and close the coop door with an automatic antennae from a car and a solar panel.

I think the worst is this year. I worry that DD will be crushed, since she loves this aunt. The trouble is my aunt puts much thought into gifts, just not the right thoughts. Child's lefthanded gold clubs bought at an estate sale. Yes, DD is lefthanded. I have not been on a golf course ever in my life although 30 years ago I did go to a driving range about 5 times total. DH went golfing once about 30 years ago, got a hole-in-one and declared that he was done with golfing. We live in the exurbs. Rural exurbs about 40 minutes away from the nearest golf course, and an expensive one at that. We have no interest in golfing. DD is 10 and therefore can't go herself. ------------------------- Another example of lots of thought leading to a bad gift. I tell people that I like plants too much to have any. I kill them. I remember once an ex-bf bringing home a dying flowering plant from work to get it heathy. I said (seriously) Oh Good A Pre-Dead plant so I don't have to deal with the guilt of killing it. In casual conversation I mentioned to her would be nice to have herb plants growing. She bought me a dozen books on growing herbs. Nice books with hardbacks and pretty pictures.

DH is the SAHD while I work FT. He does most of the homeschooling and works on the house (on the second addition now) It is what works for us. I was glad that both my parents worked outside the home, and I am a better person for it. Just because she would have nitpicked me to death. Having her not there forced them to leave a list of what I needed to get done. If it was done, then they had no reason to complain. So, I had to take responsibility to get stuff done before I relaxed. I would have loved to have been homeschooled though. I'm the type of kid that could have gotten a superior education by just having someone throw books at me.

One thing I would keep in forefront of your what-if plans, is that if you won't have DH's income, you will no longer be tied to the HCOL area. You could move anywhere. Anywhere. So, I wouldn't toss out the idea of, for example, a home daycare because your current lease doesn't allow it. It is a lease. States are different, but death usually allows you out of a lease. If you hated the idea of running a home daycare, that is different. You could also start a pod homeschool. With the school shutdowns, they became very popular, and I expect that they'll stay an accepted thing. You accept three or four kids at your child's level, that they get along with. And you homeschool the other kids along with your own. We live in an exurb in a small town on one acre of land. We also own and rent out the house next door. We paid less than 200K for both houses and if we had no income we could survive on the rental income + food stamps, etc. No loans is what would allow us to survive. There is no one nearby that smokes. In fact, it is on the lease that they can't smoke. And we have dairy goats and chickens! I don't know what the life insurance is, but the amount of rent you'd pay in rent for three years in a very HCOL area, would buy outright a 3/2/2 in a LCOL area. ---------------------------- Someone else mentioned nursing as a possible idea for themselves. My bestfriend who also homeschools works as a RN at night on weekends. She takes care of disabled former NICU babies who need round-the-clock care. Since it is 12 hour shifts she works 3-4 nights a week. Of course she has a DH who is home during that time.

Overkill?!? With History. I really don't understand that concept. I have a STEM brain and my History education in school was worthless, and I went to a 'good' school. For example all I needed to know for world history from the 20th century was which country fought with us in one world war and against us in the other. So, I've spent a good part of my non-fiction reading as an adult on history. I think the rigorous history eduation is what first attracted me to WTM. Reading the physical books, that might be overkill. But the audiobooks shouldn't be too bad. The first three books are 120 hours. That shouldn't be too hard to finish in a year. We could probably mostly finish one book during the drive for the vacation each year.

That is so helpful! I used to be good at searches back when I had to use the library. That skill apparently completely atrophied.

That is so helpful! I forgot that we need to Texas History and I insist on doing American History. So, she'd probably be 11 or 12 before we start on the Heroes book. She does love love love audiobooks. Before I saw the updates I googled Durant and Homeschooling thinking that someone else might have blogged about it. Nope. Too much clutter from people homeschooling in Durant, OK. On her maturity-level. The words should be fine. Subject matter, I'm not sure. For example, she cried through SOTW slavery. She was appalled at SOTW Incas, or was it the Horrible History Incas? She'd declared herself done with history for awhile after "Women in Medieval Times" (or something like that) Some of 20th century was glossed over. So, what she knows about the Nazis is that they "Were worse than the Incas and your great-grandfather fought against them"

That is so helpful! I forgot that we need to Texas History and I insist on doing American History. So, she'd probably be 11 or 12 before we start on the Heroes book. She does love love love audiobooks. Before I saw the updates I googled Durant and Homeschooling thinking that someone else might have blogged about it. Nope. Too much clutter from people homeschooling in Durant, OK.

On work friends. I've always been leery of work friends when it is your career. When I was a teen it was fine. But, friendships can cause drama at work, particularly female-female friendships.

The Civilization series audiobooks look reasonable for high school. 11 volumes, so figure 3 per year. The first three are 50-something hours, 36.5 hours and 32.5 hours. They are taking forever and a day to download, but then our computer and internet aren't that great. My thought right now is to have DD take history at the local community college and then listen to these as balance and more comprehensive. A brilliant friend of ours took a college course on the entire series. Even he fell behind in the reading. We were reminded of Durant when he offered us his books. I hope someone here has read the Heroes book.

It is hard. I think because most adults aren't looking for a friend. Then those that are, aren't a good match for you. The only friends I've made as an adult came from two locations: One, I joined a social club and regularly attended a couple of weekly events. One event was a bargain night at a brewpub and we'd eat and drink beer. Another was a lunch group. People are sort of forced to sit and talk. Particularly in the lunch group I grew to treasure some people that weren't my cup-of-tea just because we'd verbally shared so much of our lives. I haven't been involved in either group in at least a decade and many are still friends. Two, when DD was K-1st grade age I actively reached out to other mothers of that age. I'd tried when she was younger but nothing clicked. I think the difference was that we moved from a suburb with ~400K people and mostly Upper-Middle-Class, to an exurb of 4K people and middle-middle-class. You keep running into the same people, so it is easier to make friends. Even then, I only have one close friend, the others are people that we invite to parties and vice-versa. Note, I was terrified socially of moving to the small town. My parents noticed that they needed friends when Dad decided to throw a b-day surprise party for mom about 20 years ago when they weren't quite 50. The question was, "Who do we invite?" They knew enough people to make a respectable party, but he realized that they lost all their close friends due to live changes. They ended up joining the Elk's Lodge, and that seems to have worked for them.

No, and I don't know anyone who has. I think that fact is at the core of juries awarding outrageous amounts of money in lawsuits. Everyone on the jury doesn't trust the insurance company.

I found this amusing. The manuscript was found in his Granddaughter's garage.

I just noticed that there is a posthumous book "Heroes of History" by Will Durant. Just one book written as a summary of his Civilization series. Our library has the audiobook that we can stream. I recently got his Philosophy book and the Civilization series from Audible. DD is 10, so too young, but DH and I are going to listen to those now and have them for her high school. But what about the Heroes book? I am looking for an all-history book to use as a review before we start the logic stage of history. Would the audiobook be too old for her?

The Texas pledge floored me too. I lived in Minnesnowda until I was 8. I look forward to actually learning some Texas History. I think the books mentioned in the first two posts will do for this go-around. Well, and another book that jumped into my Amazon cart all on its own. We will probably skip doing another Texas History study and just include stuff here and there. I am well-traveled internationally, less so domestically and embarrassingly un-traveled within Texas. So, we'll look into places before we visit them.

DD declared it the prettiest city ever and she wants to live there as an adult. Of course, she's seen maybe 5 cities. We did a walking tour there that was awesome!

Why are we doing it? Well, I guess I could say it is DH's requirement. He was born in Dallas and might be a Texan before an American. Since DD is in 5th grade, and he's never requested anything that we weren't already doing, I am going along with it. I'll buy all these books. That gentle guide looks like an ideal spine. I look forward to doing field trips. We did one long weekend in San Antonio (pre-lockdown) that will be hard to top. We lucked into watching three wedding ceremonies from one water taxi trip. DD was enchanted.

Ok, we just finished up the first four years of the History cycle. I have a shelf of books for a year of American History before we start the second history cycle. DH just reminded me that we need to shoehorn in Texas History now. I don't have a problem with that, but I'm caught flat-footed. We like the format of a spine book or two, with many other books as read-aloud and some activities. My Texas History experience exemplifies why DD is homeschooled. I don't remember the elementary-school version. But the middle-school version was horrible! We spent three months on the Spanish explorers. three weeks on the Alamo, including watching the movie, and three days on the civil war just before school ended. He made an exciting subject sooooo boring. DH won a state-wide Texas History contest for his diorama. He won the contest for accurately showing the peacock general dressed in a skirt running away, and it was later pulled from display for the same reason.

I think people NEED to get outside at this point, get some Vitamin D, breathe some fresh air and build up their immune system. This is coming from a practically sun-phobic, indoorsy person, so that is saying something. Last year we did the Grand Canyon, the lake at Page, AZ and then highlights of the national parks in AZ. That was an awesome trip and totally do-able right now. My personal opinion is that taking a flight or a cruise right now is totally insane. But, then I think that in the best of time, both are hot beds of disease.

I assume this is national (check first) but where I live if you donate blood they'll give you your antibody test results. Win-Win. Literally. I couldn't give because of my iron. Both Carter and Red Cross are doing this. Maybe donate, and if you decide that the test wasn't worthwhile then no harm, you gave blood.

I dry-shaved too the first time. My hair is very light so it was never an issue. My first date was at 16 to a prom and I got it in my head that I should shave. Why, I don't know because that was the time of hoop skirts. Good thing because I had several band-aids on my legs. I don't know why I didn't say something to my mom beforehand One thing on waxing. I tried it once. One stripe. Extremely painful and that hair was black for about 20 years.