That's a really good idea and could probably be extended to some other foods as well to make for some easy "add ons" to meals. I think riced cauliflower freezes well, for example, doesn't it? I would look at it as some days having the "Man Food" with some add-ons to satisfy Quill. And other days having Quill-friendly meals, with some easy add-ons to satisfy the other people (a few baked potatoes? Some grilled chicken from the freezer?). That way it feels like you are all eating the same meal, but are each able to tailor your servings to suit your needs.

That seems like a good approach. Can you have a family agreement that all meals should have some vegetables? Or if the cook doesn't plan any, you can be the vegetable fairy who offers to roast some broccoli or throw together a salad, or ideally both. Because then you can have just a small piece of pork chop and a little bit of rice along with a nice big pile of broccoli and salad.

I have done this often if we're having heavier foods, and it works great for us. I make extra salad and then fill up my dinner plate with it. Then I put a small piece of lasagna or whatever on my salad plate. It makes a good meal for me, while dh and ds eat a more typical proportion with lasagna on dinner plate and salad on salad plates..

That sounds really hard. It makes me have more sympathy for my teenage ds who has always had a hard time waking up. I still have to get him up in the mornings, even though he is 17. I don't know what he is going to do when he goes to college. Anyway, as I was reading the thread, this occurred to me. I don't know anything about sleep issues, so maybe this is a terrible idea, but I'll throw it out anyway. Is there anyway you could do your tv watching in the morning in bed? Doing it at night is bad for getting you into sleep mode, plus you need a long time to wake up in the morning and something to look forward to. Would tv work for that? An hour of tv to slowly wake up, maybe do some stretches, and then get up.

Have you tried going out with your car and then approaching from afar with your headlights on? It would give you a better sense of how visible it is to a moving car. Parking is allowed on our street but people generally don't because the road is so narrow and most houses have decent driveways. But every once in awhile I'll be driving home and suddenly come across a parked car. I have never once come even close to hitting a parked car, even though there is a hill that makes it rather blind in some spots. The danger may not be as much as you fear.

Researching -- healthful breakfast recipes and vegan meal ideas, gap year programs for ds17, craft coffee methods (mostly dh -- I just enjoy the results) Reading -- Plato at the Googleplex by Rebecca Goldstein, Grant by Ron Chernow (950 pages, book group is one week away, and I started it . . . yesterday. Yikes!)

This is so similar to me. Edges then middle, plus using the vacuum to get all the spider webs, etc. I also scrub my kitchen and bathroom floors by hand. And here's something weird. I actually love scrubbing my kitchen floor. Even though it takes a long time and my knees are killing me afterward. I love seeing the water in the bucket get dirty and how it makes the whole kitchen smell so nice (I use Murphy's oil soap). It also takes like an hour, so why does spending twenty minutes with the vacuum make me so much more annoyed??

We are considering using prepaid visa cards for personal allowance funds. Each person gets a monthly allowance for hobbies and personal expenses to use however they want. I think you can reload prepaid cards, so it would be easy to add money each month, but I haven't fully looked into it yet. Obviously this would not be a good choice for money that is accumulating (like saving over the year for property tax or a new car) because they would not earn any interest. But I think it might be helpful for sticking to a budget in certain categories, such as gift-giving or these personal funds. I don't know if that's considered a sinking fund, though. I hadn't heard that term before, either. I'm guessing it implies that you are "sinking" funds into something over time for future use, i.e. saving.

I should use my dry mop more often. I think I wait too long and there's too much dust for it to pick it all up, so I end up having to use the vacuum anyway. Also, there's always at least a little bit of grit (even though we don't wear shoes in the house) and I'm always worried I'm scratching the floors by pushing that around. But mostly I think it's that I'm not in the habit. I only bought my dry mop a couple of years ago and never worked it into my regular routine. If I did, that probably would be easier. I'm not fond of carpet either, except on vacuuming day. I love the patterns the vacuum leaves in the carpet fibers.

So, in complete opposition to my plan to waste less time on the computer this year, I thought I'd start a random topic about something inconsequential. My entire adult life I have lived in houses that have some wood floors and some carpet. Our current house has all wood floors on the first floor, while the upstairs and the staircase are carpeted. So I have had a couple of decades of practice at this. But somehow I have never understood how to vacuum a wood floor properly. Here's the thing. Carpet catches the dirt, so it accumulates in high traffic areas. The places you walk on are the dirtiest, the places you don't walk on are the cleanest. If you've ever moved a piece of furniture after a long time, you may find the carpet underneath is visibly cleaner. So in my carpeted rooms, for regular cleaning I just run the vacuum along the floors. Once or twice a year, I pull the furniture away from the walls and clean underneath and all along the baseboards, etc. Wood floors are just the opposite. The high traffic areas are actually the cleanest because walking creates air currents that push the dust out of the way. All that light fluffy dust and pet hair whooshes to the edges of the space and accumulates around chair legs and under furniture. So vacuuming just the high traffic areas is pointless. Here's what I generally do -- I go around first with my attachment wand and vacuum along the baseboards, around chair legs, etc. All the nooks and crannies where the dust piles up. Then I do the main part of the floor, either with my vacuum (using the hard floor setting) or a dust mop. To be honest, it looks pretty much clean without even doing the second step. Seriously 95% of the dust is in all those nooks and crannies. But it would feel weird to say I cleaned my floors without actually cleaning the main surface. So I always do two passes. I love wood floors, and I hope eventually to get rid of all the carpet. But it is a pain to clean them. It's twice as much work as the carpet. I don't really have a point. I just wanted to complain. Feel free to complain about your own house cleaning pet peeves. Or tell me your magic way to clean wood floors faster.

Serving on a non-profit board or committee, maybe? I don't know if it helped me get my job, but I put down references related to serving on my church board and was able to use examples from that work during my interview questions. Our town also has several task forces and committees that are always looking for new members. It might be a good way to meet new people and hear of paid opportunities as well.

I would keep it simple. I would classify foods as sugary or not sugary, based on added sugars. Fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, would all be not sugary. Cookies, candy, ice cream would obviously be sugary. Bread made with a minimal amount of added sugar I would probably classify as not sugary, but if sugar was a substantial ingredient, such as in a muffin, then it would be a sugary food. Flavored yogurt would be sugary, plain yogurt would be not sugary. Iced tea with sugar is sugary, plain iced tea is not. Then I would just count servings of foods in the "sugary" category. I guess I'd try to set a goal to limit myself to. Zero? One per week? One per day? I don't know what the limit would be, but if it were me I'd think aobut "servings" and not bother counting grams or anything. But that may be vaguer than you're going for.

My parents are divorced, so we have three families, in three different states. I popped it into google and their three locations make a triangle with 1200-1500 miles on each side (Virginia, Minnesota, and Texas). If we lived in southern Illinois or something we'd be right about equidistant from all three. But we don't! We live 500 miles outside the triangle. We don't see our families very often.

Those of you who don't do gifts with extended family, do you mean you don't buy gifts for your parents and in-laws? Nothing for their birthdays or Christmas? No flowers or cards for Mother's/Father's Day? As Jen said, no judgement. I just find it interesting to see how other families work.

I know you said no detective stories, but I'm going to suggest one anyway -- Psych. All eight seasons are on amazon prime right now and I find it fits a similar niche for me. It's not suspenseful and you don't have to even follow the plots. It's funny but predictable. Good sleepy-time watching.

This is why I can't understand why there are so many white houses in New England. There is snow on the ground for months and months. I would think the aesthetic would tend toward warm colors but . . . nope. I don't hate it but I will choose something different when I have the opportunity.

I just watched The Big Sick last night and liked it quite a bit.

I live in New England, and it feels like 80% of the houses are white with white trim. Ours is white as well, and I don't really like it. I prefer a look with colorful exteriors and contrasting trim. Also, I don't like having every house look the same. Someday when we redo the siding, I will choose new colors. I don't know that it looks dirtier than other colors. Probably it does if you look up close, but from a distance it just looks white. So if you like the look of white, I wouldn't discount it for that reason.

We always have a clipboard to write down who got what from whom, because our memories aren't the best. If we didn't write it down, the thank you notes would say "thank you for the sweater and/or lego set".

Salad greens with toasted walnuts, sliced pear, red onion and goat cheese. Yum!

We just got a packaged delivered this morning that wasn't slated to be delivered until after Christmas. I couldn't believe it! It was a big heavy package too.

My child is 17, so we're past these kind of conversations and I'm trying to remember how it worked for us. When he asked "may I", I think I would answer "sure" or "no" or "not right now but maybe later" or "that's fine with me". We didn't really have a lot of rules and regulations but if I needed to convey that some behavior was not allowed, I would say something like "No tv right now" or "Yelling that loud is not appropriate. Please stop." The construction "may not" to refer to permission just isn't part of my normal vernacular.

It didn't even occur to me that the "may not" meant "is not allowed to" until I read other responses. I assumed it meant "might not" and was scratching my head to understand the message. He might not have it on his list? Or he might not be receiving it? I probably would have asked for clarification, but obviously this person didn't. I would try to assume good intentions, though.

You know, it is actually. We're in the candle portion right now. It's still somewhat light outside but it's dark enough in the house that it is difficult to do anything without light. Reading would be impossible without a candle. I was doing some housework but I couldn't see if I was sweeping anything properly. So we've each gravitated toward quiet work. Ds is researching a paper. Dh is doing some desk work. We each have a candle casting a little pool of light, just barely enough. I actually need to go cook dinner now, though, because people are leaving later for an event so we need to eat early. Cooking, in the (almost) dark! Every year we do this, I realize again how something as simple as electric light has such an incredible effect on our lives. Without it, we have to slow down and adjust our behavior to the rhythm of the day. It's a good thing to contemplate once a year. Okay, I said ds was researching a paper. I just looked over and found that he has turned to studying the flame and melting wax of the candle. "In the Bleak Midwinter" just came on the ipod and we are sitting here in the candle light. This is what the solstice is for us.

Solstice is when we put a star on top of our Christmas tree. We spend the whole day with no artificial lights, using candles when necessary. Then after it's dark we do a little ritual of reading a poem and putting the star on the tree and turn on the tree lights (it looks beautiful in the dark). Then we "chase away the darkness" by turning every single light we can find in the entire house, including the fridge and the microwave and the basement light. It's sort of silly but we started it when ds was tiny and it became Family Tradition.