My 20yo dd and I discovered ThreadUp a couple years ago. We love some thrift shopping.

I don’t know anyone who has started a rescue organization, but I have a friend who is foster pet parent for a rescue organization. She has had probably at least 2 dozen kittens since spring. She cares for the mama cat and babies until they are big enough to be adopted. Maybe there’s an organization already in your area that your kid could work with. Probably easier than start from scratch.

Our youth group is not allow to use phones during Bible class or other spiritual activities. They are to bring a physical Bible. The phones aren’t taken from them. The leaders of our church realize that having a phone out can be a big distraction (for adults too!). They are trying to help them focus and create good habits.

Is he taking the DE at a high school or at a college? That can make a difference. If he’s at a high school, he needs an IEP. If he’s taking classes at the college, he will need to go the the office that handles those kinds of needs, student services or similar. Take whatever paperwork/documentation he has to show need. You can go with him to set it up, but colleges really prefer the student to deal with them themselves. Make sure he has signed a FERPA waiver if he’s 18. If you don’t, the college will not be allowed to talk to you about his grades, classes, etc. Having him sign one even if he’s not 18 can simplify things. The CC my ds is taking DE with requires it for all DE students.

I can follow it, but I really don’t care about football (so of course I married a guy who loves college football). I think the reason I don’t care for it is because there’s too much stopping and starting. It feels like you spend half the game waiting.

It wold be cheaper if the focused more on education than unnecessary amenities. Students don’t need lazy rivers and on campus steak houses to get an education. Here’s one article that tells you about some of them. https://www.insider.com/list-of-colleges-with-the-best-perks-and-amenities-2019-7#high-point-university-has-a-luxury-steakhouse-on-campus-3

There’s a paying for college Facebook group I’m in that has a very diverse membership. The biggest problem I see is that the cost of college has vastly outpaced the pay of most families. Students get stressors out over taking too many AP classes and other activities to look good for admission and scholarships. Parents push this because they think their kid needs it to get into a good college. They think their child can get a full scholarship. Then senior year happens. Once they get through the admissions process and commit to a school, they lean that a “full ride” is a unicorn. Even a full tuition scholarship plus federal student loans leaves most students owing tens of thousands of dollars per year. Families end up making the hard decision to not go to that school (often at the last minute) or parents co-signing huge loans. Loans parents cannot afford to pay back. In my opinion, there are 2 things that have driven up college costs. One is that colleges are competing with each other to have the most amenities and fanciest everything to attract students, instead of looking for ways to keep college affordable. The other is the financial system that allows students and parents to take out huge loans they can’t pay back. You can’t get out of them through bankruptcy. Some you can’t even get out of if the student dies.

We aren’t super handy, so we do hire out for a lot of things. We could take care of the lawn ourselves, but dh and ds have such a bad time with outdoor allergies lately that it’s just better to pay someone to do it. The yard needs a lot of other work that I’m hoping to work on myself once it finally cools down outside.

If you mail it, send it with more than basic postage. Something to give it a high priority usually helps it not get lost. Make sure it’s going to a secure mailbox. You might want to put cotton balls in the bottle so the pills don’t rattle. Next time she needs a refill at school, the easiest thing for her to do is take her bottle to the drugstore and let them get all the info from it directly to transit. She will need her insurance card too. Make sure she goes before she runs out because it could take a day or 2.

Did she take driver’s Ed? Some of the driving schools around here will give you something to take to the dmv to show you can drive after you have a certain amount of lessons. My teens didn’t take it, so I’m not sure of the exact details, but it might be something to look into.

If you decide to stay in the US, I would look at the FL Keys. Hurricanes are not a problem in February or April.

Shipping anything is so $$ anymore, that if I send anything to my college dd, I send if from Amazon. It’s easy to send their favorite snacks and many of the other things mentioned. Bonus is I don’t have to find a box or go to the post office. Edited to add: Her school added the Amazon lockers on campus over the summer, so secure and easy for her to pick up.

I’m not from FL, but grew up on the gulf coast. From what the National Hurricane Center is forecasting, you will probably not be able to fly on Wednesday. You can see if there’s a flight tomorrow. If there’s not, keep the number for your airline handy and be ready for the call that your flight is cancelled. Call the airline ASAP and reschedule. Then you won’t have fees for changing the flight. I did that when a hurricane was impacting a flight several years ago. I called so fast the service agent couldn’t even see the cancellation on her computer yet. Be aware that if you don’t leave today, you may have to wait until Friday, depending on what happens and how long it takes the airlines to get planes back in that area.

We went to Miami Beach for a wedding in October several years ago. We didn’t have a lot of time for sightseeing, but we’re did stay right on the beach, thanks to a generous family member with connections there. We loved the boardwalk along the beach to take walks. I can’t remember the name of the hotel, but it was a little more towards the north end. It seemed a little quieter there. There was more shops/restaurants towards the south. It could be different now, but that’s what I remember.

Another idea along those lines is a football team blanket where you do one color row when your team gets a touchdown and another when the other team gets one. Do it for the whole season. A friend of mine did this for her husband one year and it came out really great.

Air mattresses are the worst for sharing! I refuse to share one with dh because he’s taller and heavier than me, so I end up trying to sleep on a hill while not rolling on top of him or off the side.

Dh gets insomnia with prednisone. I wish he would clean the house! Seriously though. He usually gets the doctor to give him Ambien too. He usually gets 1 or 2 nights of sleep before it quits working. By then he’s at least feeling some better.

Please let me know if you can find it. Although it’s ridiculous that FB doesn’t have a way to deal with this directly. It seems to happen to so many people.

My mom’s FB account was hacked recently. She delayed doing anything at first because she really didn’t know what to do. My aunt and uncle tried to help her, but I don’t think they really knew what to do. I’m too far away to do much. She tried to reset the password with her email as login, but it wanted to confirm her by texting to a number that is not hers. If she tries anything by her phone number, it shows a different email. She made the mistake of creating a new account. I sent her a link for support that I found, but she says she has to wait until September 8 because she made a new account. The hacker changed the profile picture. I would really hate for her to lose the pictures and posts she has on there, because there are many from before my dad died. Please tell me what we can do to fix this.

But if that’s not the mandate, the mask order isn’t doing much. And unless they are giving them to the students, most will buy the cheapest thing they can find, which may not be the better masks.

My dd is a college junior. She would be leading the protests if they tried that at her school. She’s still angry about all the things she didn’t get to do because of Covid. Didn’t they finally say that cloth masks were worthless and surgical masks not much better? So what’s the point of a mask mandate unless they are using N95 masks?

I use Walgreens, unless I’m ordering photo books from Snapfish, then it’s really cheap to add some photo prints to the order.

Not to high jack the discussion, but after the rain and flooding are over, does it look like enough to lift a lot of the areas out of the long drought conditions?

During the night last night my upper arms started itching and felt a bit bumpy. Sure enough, by morning there was definitely something going on, but not severe. I have had contact dermatitis on my arms like this before, so I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. I have taken Benadryl in addition to my daily Zyrtec, plus used hydrocortisone cream. I’m on vacation, so I can’t see my regular doctor. I really don’t want to spend hours in urgent care and I really don’t want oral steroids. Is there anything that will treat it without going to the doctor? When I had it before, I was never able to determine a cause, but hard to take 2 rounds of oral steroids before it went away.

Can you play Superfight with a group? I’m thinking my coop class might like it if it can be played that way.