If this is in Idaho then LOADS of people are keeping their kids home.

If you take away Tototro then I will forget who you are and that you're a cool mom!

Nope.

G-d I hate these threads. Nothing gets worked out, everyone digs their heels in and nothing gets fixed. Ima go have my Hard Cider now.

Oh booo! But I do like your new name : D

Huh, I might say something along the lines of "Well, if my son gets the flu he'll die and it'll be blood on your hands". Then again my family knows not to cross me.

I haven't read the whole thread because it's huge. IMO, you need to skip this trip for your own mental health. On Saturday you're going to have car trouble from that car. The battery may be dead and not holding a charge, two flat tires, won't start or the like. Poor car. Even worse, your mechanic is all out of loaner cars because a bus load of Nuns had a break down on their way to Africa to feed starving children. Your little family needs to be happy this year. The larger family seems to self absorbed to give you that very basic gift.

Gift card, ideally for a clothing or shoe store online.

Oi, I'd do a cartwheel of joy if someone cleaned my house for me. I have a step-sister I can trade for your sister.

You know how we have the little titles under our names? You change them now! Here's how to do it My Settings General Account Settings Edit My Profile Profile Information There is a field you can change there!

Uhm, Portal 2 related socks. I'm driving my dd crazy with hints about them.

Okay, say you did this. At what age would you tell your offspring where the key is or what the combination is? Would you assume that by voting age someone is mature enough to not go on a shooting rampage at their former elementary? If there is a gun in your home you have a 43% more likely to die by gun violence (I'm trying to find the poll that backs this up). As for those outside of the US trying to understand, let me try and explain the importance of guns in US culture. Back before the American Revolution England tried to limit weapons in all colonies, and back in the UK too from what I remember. Americans are generally taught that the gun limit/suppression was an attempt to prevent any overthrow of the government. When the American Revolution came about people had secret stores of weapons that helped with the fight for freedom. I don't kow if this is true, but this is what I was taught in public school. So because of the gun suppression by the English government there was a back-lash of gun ownership, and over reaction as it were. I think, generally speaking, that the newly freed Americans thought it best for every male of a certain age have a gun. A fair amount of this had to do with how large and spread out the US is. Help might be your neighbors not a local police officer who was a good four hour hard ride away. Then there was the issue of all the frontiers. Not only were the new Americans dealing with native peoples who could be friendly one day but not the next, there were other Old World people that may or may not be at war with you and also was trying to grab land. So we have all these issues of safety in the back of our minds. About the same time the the US Constitution was drafted. It's taken me decades to realize that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are viewed as holy documents to many Americans. I mean, I knew they were important but they are right on up there with the Bible to a lot of folks. So the second addition to this holy document was the right to have a gun as part of the defense of the US. To many it's like... a mandate from G-d to have a gun. Folded into all this is the general US view that more and bigger is better and you have a good look at gun culture as it is in the US. This is a vast simplification of a huge and complex issue and mentality written at 2:30 in the morning. Hopefully it helps some, though.

So when he has to transition/change from one activity to the next your son gets upset? The way he expresses his issue with the transition is to scream?

The new Mastermind is not as good as the old one. Clue is popular here, as are card games like War.

Yes, most websites require kids to be thirteen and up to to the COPA laws. There is more a website has to do to protect children if they are under the age of thirteen. My dd has an AOL account for kids. I monitor it to see who she's talking to, what she's saying, and how often she uses it.

Generally it takes another big event. However, you have Christmas on your side. I expect that the media will be in town until Christmas Eve,, then most will go home to their families. They should all be gone by New Years, though they will come back on anniversaries.

I developed CFS when I was 13. There is a mom on the High School board who has a daughter with it right now.

One year I gave my mom a gift card for clothing hidden inside a car mug with a handle. You could get a travel mug and put a coffee card in it.

Everything that went into the actions of the two boys at Columbine were pretty complex. I had to follow it closely because of a website my ex-husband and I owned and ran. It was aimed at Goths. We got LOTS of death threats and I was followed around by the FBI for a while. The original date for the massacre was April 19th, the same date as the Oklahoma city bombing and the last day of the Waco siege. The attack actually happened on April 20th, Hitler's birthday. Some people feel that the actual date points to the attackers as having Neo-Nazi leanings. It's sad to say that you can generally follow a line of "inspiration" back in history. For example, The VA Tech killer was "inspired" by the Columbine massacre, which in turn was "inspired" by the Oklahoma City bombing, which in turn was "inspired" by both the incidents at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Some say David Koresh was "inspired" by Jim Jones and the whole Jonestown incident. It all just keeps going back and back and back. Sometimes I wonder if violence like this isn't a disease that is spread by view or talking about it.

Until there is an official statement from the POLICE who are actually doing THEIR JOBS I won't listen to IDLE GOSSIP.

In other news I have a Kevin Bacon number of 3. I know David Sch0w, who was in the film "The Lost Skeleton Returns Again" with Faye Masterson who was in the film "We Married Margo" with Kevin Bacon. As a weird aside, generally my nickname is "Eliza". David is close friends with my ex-husband. When I was going to meet David I told my then-husband to call me by my full name. He asked why and I said "He's likely to have a negative reaction to the nickname of "Eliza". Then I had to explain that Brandon Lee was engaged to a woman named Eliza, and the original comic book version of The Crow was inspired by the comic book authors fiancee's death. Wanna guess what her nickname was? Yeap, Eliza. David never really warmed up to me, though he did try. He's a good guy.

Oh let me fill this page with funny stories. #1 - I was in a coma in the summer of 1992. One time, when I woke up, the nurse asked me who was president. I responded "Bush". Then I paused for a moment and did my reasoning out loud routine - "But it's an election year. Which means I get to vote. For president. Oh sh!t - I DEMAND A RECOUNT!!!! I HAVEN'T VOTED YET!! I ! DEMAND! A! RECOUNT!". By the time I had finished the nurse was curled up in a ball on the chair laughing so hard tears were running down her face. She patted me and said "Don't worry honey, it's still July and you'll get your say". I've often wondered how many times that nurse has recounted that story. #2 The World's Most Expensive Dime - My mom had knee replacement surgery in the winter of 2007. My dd was six and home schooling still. Mom would wake up around 3AM and need me to help her start her day. My dd would normally fall asleep around midnight. Two weeks this had been going on and I was a mess. So this one Thursday I had to go out and mail things for mom and took dd along to get her out of the house. She found a dime on the sidewalk and was SO HAPPY to be SO RICH. It's a dime, finders keepers. So I come home from errands and get the kid settled in with a DVD. Mom is laying down and I tell her that I need an hour to nap. No problem, she says. I tell the kid to wake me if she needs something and promptly pass out in my bed. An hour later I hear mom yelling at said kid. I get up, stuble down the stairs and find out that my dd had put the dime in her mouth. I told my mom it's pass through her and we had done this once before with a nickle when dd was three. No, my mom informs me, the dime is stuck to the roof of her mouth. I look in and dd has wedged the flat dime along the roof of her mouth and pushed it as far forward as she could. I tried getting it out. No luck. My mom tried getting it out, again no luck. I said let the kid suck on cold liquids to take the swelling down and if the dime wasn't out by bedtime we'd go to the ER. You see where this is going, right? Bedtime came and the dime was still there. My mom was hysterical that blood was being cut off to dd's brain ans she would have brain damage. So, I load up the kid in the car and drive to the ER. There a nurse tries to get it our, followed by three doctors, two more nurses and a handyman. No luck. Everyone that looks in and sees the olive branch says "Yeap, that's a dime alright." Eventually it's one in the morning and the doctors decide that the kid needs to be transported to the ER in the next largest city, an hour and a half drive away. So I follow the ambulance at breakneck speeds across rural South Dakota. Did I mention that they had given my dd a sedative? Well, they had and she was randomly quoting Madeline books. So we get to the new ER and the paramedics look a littlle shell shocked when the get out. My daughter can talk paint off a wall about nothing in particular. My daughter is rush into surgery, because it turns out that there is a concern about blood flow. She is dressed up in a surgery gown and has a cap on and a new stuffed animal to take in with her. I'm too tired to be hysterical at this point, plus I don't normally freak out until the crisis is over. In comes the surgeon to assess the issue. He looks in, says "Yeap, that's a dime all right!" and pokes at it a bit. He explains that his specialty is repairing cleft pallets. Then he says to my dd "Can I measure this dime for a moment? I need to make sure that the dime is the standard American size. Look, this is the special ruler I'll use." and he hols up a thin metal ruler with rounded ends. My daughter, always ready to keep a doctor happy, agrees. He takes the end of the ruler and gently slides it under the dime and popped it out. There is an impression of FDR's mug on the roof of my baby's mouth but there is no surgery. It's about four in the morning, I'm delirious with exhaustion, and I have to drive home. I call mom to update her and she points out there is no sense in me driving home because I have a car appointment in the morning in the town I am in. She made reservations at a near by hotel and I can sleep in. The kid is WIRED from all the fun she's had in the past twenty hours. We go, check in, and I again fall asleep but this time only after the kid is out. The next Monday I enrolled dd in public school. About a month later we got the bill in the mail for what we were calling The Dime Incident. It was over 20K and all covered by insurance. We now call it The World's Most Expensive Dime and gave that thing to the church in the offering plate. So, yeah, dimes. Tricky little buggers.

Clearly you haven't read the books. No, there is nothing worth delving into with that bit of information.

Guess where I was living when I joined! Yes, wonderful, urban downtown Wenatchee. I MISS that ward so much. There was a group of single mothers who looked out for each other, traded child care duties, and were just plain great. My RS president from there warned me about becoming a Midwestern LDS person as she had only heard stuff like what I just posted. I couldn't stay in Wenatchee due to the air quality. I feel a lot better coming here and seeing that there are great LDS members and that sometimes a branch/ward just gets stuff wrong. I know it's not the whole of the church. There are issues that need addressing but we're getting there.

Generally speaking I'm me in all places. It could be that I am more.... vulnerable online. I'm more willing to talk about hard things online than in real life.