Murphy's Law

My guess as to what could be driving the bottom surgery thing is not wanting penises in the women's restrooms. Remove that and you can come in. Add one and you have to go elsewhere.

My post was actually sparked by the post before yours that claimed that bathroom laws aren't really about wanting safe spaces for women but about wanting "to make it illegal and unsafe for trans people to exist in public." There's something that happens on both sides of the political aisle in the US: demonize the opposition, claim they don't really care about the things THEY say they care about, make them out to be fundamentally ill-intentioned people who want to hurt their countrymen. Turn them into bogeymen to fight against. It's an effective way to leverage fear and create momentum for one's chosen side. And it's absolutely toxic to the overall culture and any hope of productive political dialog and compromise. Neither the half of the population that might vote conservative nor the half that might vote progressive (nor of course the overlapping parts in the middle) is evil. Painting them and their intentions as such is never helpful. Is there an occasional genuinely bad apple in the lot? Sure. Are there lots of folks who don't often think deeply about stuff and are primed and ready for manipulation (such as the afore-mentioned fear-mongering...)? Sure. Are there politicians pragmatically manipulating and pandering and eagerly pointing the finger of blame at the other side? Sure. Most people, however, are truly not motivated primarily by desire to hurt someone. Fear of BEING hurt or of their loved ones being hurt...yes, that's a big factor on all sides. If we ever want someone to listen to our perspective, we have to start by listening to theirs. Not by telling them "you don't actually believe what you say you believe." And if we want compromise--and yes, we should almost always be seeking compromise, not my-way-or-the-highway--we need to start with the assumption that they are coming to the table in good faith. Someone has to start.

Demonizing half the population of the country-- regardless of which half it is in our polarized system--is never helpful. People are complex. Demonization is often an effective way of rallying people for a cause, but it ultimately undermines community--locally and nationally. I'll always argue against such.

I've said it before: the simplest, least expensive, easiest to implement resolution to bathroom concerns that both allows females a reserved space where they can feel safe and ensures bathroom availability for everyone (while simultaneously mitigating the perennial problem of long lines for women's restrooms) is to have designated female bathrooms and unisex bathrooms. Anyone and everyone can use the unisex restrooms without raising eyebrows, and women who need a female-only space to feel safe and comfortable have access to one. Doesn't require significant new infrastructure.

@Drama Llama I think you are doing a fantastic job. It honestly doesnt matter whether anyone thinks you are providing the most ideal situation possible under the circumstances for your children. Life isn't about ideal. It's not even about trying for ideal. I had to come to peace with that a long time ago, out of necessity. We all lived in clinging-on-by-our-fingernails survival mode for most of two decades, before things started to turn in a more manageable direction. I've only barely gotten to a place where I'm up to trying to work with a therapist to address trauma from twenty-one years ago. I'm not at all ready to work on more recent or ongoing trauma. Every step of the way, I've done what I could. I doubt most people looking in from the outside would ever have thought I was doing enough. That doesn't matter. I did what was possible. I'm still doing what is possible. That is going to have to be enough because it's the only actual option. Have I given my kids as good a childhood as I dreamed and hoped? No. But I've given what I had to give. As my parents gave me. And...there's a lot of good. It IS enough.

Some do and some don't. Honestly lots of people dont. I've only had a couple of friends as an adult. One died only a few months after we met, and one moved out of state after a couple of years. I've had lots of friendly acquaintances. I call them friends but I'm not actually close to them. I'm trying right now, I'm part of a book club that is a pretty neat group of women some of whom seem to have genuine friendships with each other and I think there is some potential there, but it's hard to actually break through that border between friendly acquaintances and someone I can actually share my deeper self with. I'm fortunate to have a sister who, although not local, is a good friend and someone I can talk to.

That doesn't sound like health hazard dirty. Pet hair, dust, and grease buildup don't make people sick (absent specific allergies). So--it's just cosmetic. Doesn't meet your standards, but not dangerous.

A giant spider might make me crash my car! I actually had a car spider encounter last year--I got bit by a black widow spider while driving. It was dark and my eyes were on the road; I felt the thing bite my arm and slapped it, didn't actually know what it was until I got home and discovered the rather flattened critter down by my feet. My arm was all achy and tingly so I had the joy of spending an evening in the ER but fortunately it didn't get worse than that.

I don't kill harmless bugs if I can possibly avoid doing so. I wouldn't kill a beetle ever, though if I knew it was upsetting someone I would likely be willing to relocate it outside. Most spiders I prefer to just leave alone where they are found; killing them seems like such a gruesome, unnecessarily violent thing to do. They tend to be more beneficial than not. If it's a black widow I will squish it. Someone demanding that I kill a bug for them would bother me and I would definitely refuse *see the exception above regarding genuinely dangerous types. Someone politely explaining they have a phobia and asking me to relocate the bug I would accommodate. Oh, and I don't at all mind swatting mosquitoes.

Toes were my key to rope climbing! I have a rather wide space between my big toe and second toe (makes most shoes unwearable...) and a rope fit between them--I could grip it and use leg strength to climb. Knotted ropes were especially easy this way. When I was in the Air Force doing training obstacle courses I would take off my boots and hang them around my neck to climb the ropes with my toes. The only other people I know who climb ropes this way are some of my own children 🐒

It is very, very rare for a woman to be able to do 100 pull-ups, even a very fit woman! Kudos to you--and yeah, definitely unusual genetics at play!

Yes, there are many women who can't do standard push-ups. We don't have the natural upper body strength of males. Knee push-ups let us build more strength when we're not up to standard push-ups. For women who can do a couple of regular push-ups but not more, working on upper body strength with knee push-ups is also helpful.

Yes if she elects to take it now the amount will be permanently reduced; it is dependent on her age not his.

It looks like it only goes through 2014. https://www.ancestry.com/c/family-history-learning-hub/ssdi#:~:text=Ancestry ® has a Social,has over 90 million records.

Divorce papers often include SS numbers for both spouses.

Regarding your second question, I think if he has passed away a surviving spouse (even divorced) should be able to claim 100% of his benefit. She can only claim.the spousal benefit or her own earned benefit, whichever is higher--not both. https://www.aarp.org/retirement/social-security/questions-answers/ex-spouse-survivor-benefit.html#:~:text=As with widows and widowers,when he or she died.

If we want to minimize punishment of innocent people, we have to err on the side of letting some guilty people go free. That's how our legal system is intended to work. Scrutinizing guilty verdicts is part of that.

I still use paper. I'm afraid my phone will die on me or something, so even if I use the phone I like to have a paper backup!

This will only work for the first instance of .pdf in a row; if there is more than one you need to find in each row it gets more complicated.

for the value instead of the address: =INDEX(A2:Z2, MATCH(TRUE, ISNUMBER(SEARCH(".pdf", A2:Z2)), 0))

Try this (replace A2:Z2 with the range you need) =CELL("address", INDEX(A2:Z2, MATCH(TRUE, ISNUMBER(SEARCH(".pdf", A2:Z2)), 0)))

Also, do you actually have to use their curriculum at home? A couple of my kids were in a twice-a-week program last year and while they gave us curriculum to work on at home they didn't require anything from home to be turned in and I mostly just kept doing what we had been doing before. As far of the program went, my more social kid loved it and the more introvert kid hated it.

If you enroll him, is there anything that would prevent you from pulling him back out if it isn't working? Trying things that *might* work often makes sense to me if there isn't a long-term commitment.

Have you read Georgette Heyer? Very clean and she wrote lots of books. I'm a fantasy/Sci fi lover myself and very fond right now of Brandon Sanderson. Most of his books are pretty profanity free, though mild curse words occasionally show up. He prefers to make up his own in-world profanities which serve the purpose of allowing characters to express emotions without feeling like offensive language to readers from our world. Unless you're offended by "storms!" or "colors!" or "rusting!". They're intense books though with lots of war and fighting themes.