I’m so sorry. That would make me furious. The cameras sound like a good idea, possibly along with the orange fencing and/or the motion sensor sprayer.

Okay, I want to live in your town now.

If she hasn’t explored the Tamara Pierce books, they might be good. Lots of strong young female leading characters, in a whole constellation of overlapping series in (a single?) fantasy world. Some are more mature than others; I think my dd was a bit older when I gave her the Beka Cooper trilogy about a young policewoman in that world. At some point in those books the main character makes a decision to become sexually active, and acquires birth control in preparation. That’s a subplot, though. Other Tamora Pierce books are for a younger audience. They’re all well written fantasies that put girls in central roles.

Other than the three Harper Hall books which form a self-contained series (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums) you might want to wait on the Pern books. The others have some decidedly mature content. Has she read The Book of Three and its sequels? No dragons that I can recall, but certainly a fierce, intelligent female character.

So, if you have a double oven, is the larger one big enough for, say, a 25 lb turkey? And is reaching down that low to get it in and out a problem? I’d love a double oven in theory, but the ones I really long for are the older versions that were extra wide and had the ovens side by side. Somehow that seems like it would be easier, because neither oven was so low. Usually they had a storage drawer at the bottom.

I think there are just too many variables for absolute certainty about what another person should do in this situation. Kids: temperament, age, number, probably others. Weather: dangerous heat, strong winds, etc. Parking lots and corrals: large or small lots, plenty of corrals or hardly any, lots full to the furthest reaches or spaces available near corrals. I’m sure plenty of people do manage to return carts while multiple kids accompany them; that doesn’t change the fact that one of my kids could barely get through the store without a meltdown, and was a basket case by the time we got to the parking lot. We all know different kids have different tolerances and abilities. As I said before, now I’m the one who organizes the carts others have haphazardly shoved into the corral. But I have a whole lot of sympathy for anyone who’s doing their own personal best.

Victorian bed with a tall wooden headboard, and a footboard to keep the mattress from sliding down. Multiple pillows for comfort when sitting and reading.

Me too! 😁 I do remember the days when I had two tiny kids and felt deeply conflicted about returning the cart. The sequence was: push out heavy load of groceries (uphill!) to the parking place, get small children in their car seats so they weren’t standing in the parking lot, load groceries in the trunk, then… leave the kids while returning the cart? Hot summer, windows open? ::shudder:: Or, try to control two tired small kids while unloading the groceries into the trunk (only one could fit in the cart, and keeping her there was… not easy), and then drag both kids and cart back to the cart corral, then get kids back to the car. This was when I was struggling across a big Walmart parking lot, often heading for the back forty. I often thought that either they should put another cart corral in those further reaches, or there should be special dispensation for parents with little ones. But I did almost always return the cart.

I think what has changed is language, which is constantly changing. I think “mass shooting” has come to have a cultural meaning since Columbine: it’s a language in which people, mostly men, say “This is how angry I am. This is what I think of you.” The ubiquity of guns makes it easy. The rest of the world looks at America with horror when this happens, which means they don’t identify with us. So, mass gun violence doesn’t have the same meaning for them. They don’t adopt the same language. But angry, alienated men see others who have done the same thing and the anger and violence resonate with them. It feels like a language which expresses the degree of their resentment and hatred as nothing else can. It’s like giving society the finger, magnified a million times.

Upper south here… Cheristin has worked well for us too, except for ticks which bite around our cat’s neck where she can’t reach them. They die quickly, but cause a big itchy welt every time which sometimes gets infected. We’ve found this summer that a Seresto collar, worn only overnight or for a few hours daily when she’s confined indoors, keeps the ticks away. We don’t let her wear it outside, because she’s adept at removing and losing collars and it’s too expensive for that. And we’re not applying the Cheristin every month while we do this. We’re going to watch and see how long we can go before we have to use the Cheristin again. But this might not be pertinent for your situation, if over the counter products aren’t appropriate. In any case, Cheristin has been great for fleas and killing ticks.

My father was in charge of two downtown emergency rooms for years. He said the same thing: that when people came in after knife fights, the surgeons could patch them up. Once handguns became common, they couldn’t. The guns just did too much damage. And this was before the AR15s and AK47s came on the scene.

Can you link the article?

So happy for you all!

Hope you can get through the weekend without any encounters with her.

I’m so sorry. That does sound like a genuinely rotten day. Sounds like plenty of good advice has been given already, but I hope you feel better soon.

“Normal courses” do vary, providing more than one acceptable path. In any case your dd sounds like a hard worker. That sort of perseverance will certainly help her, whatever she decides to do. Hope you can find ways to lighten the load.

At that age I was both rereading old Nancy Drews and beginning to read Agatha Christie. I found Marjorie Alllingham and Father Brown later, but agree that they’d be appropriate, as would Josephine Tey. My dd enjoyed The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and subsequent Flavia de Luce novels starting at about the same age. (I should add that I don’t know the Aggie Morton series, so maybe these aren’t at all similar. I’ll look it up.) (Okay, having read the premise, it sounds like an ideal way to segue into Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels. Flavia de Luce might also appeal.)

@TexasProud, I do understand your point of view. I felt the same way when I was younger: the baby, or fetus, was clearly human, because DNA. It was clearly alive and growing. And I listened to the descriptions of *how* abortion was accomplished, and just couldn’t fathom doing that, largely because of the pain I thought would be inflicted. This was in the eighties, mind: early abortion by pills wasn’t available. I couldn’t fathom treating an animal like that, and so I couldn’t fathom doing it to a developing human. I was uneasy and unsettled about the legality of abortion, but I didn’t find arguments that abortion would happen regardless of legality fully convincing, because that describes lots of actions we outlaw. I was troubled by the dangers of illegal abortions, and aware that women often lacked any good options. So, I didn’t have a firm position, just lots of concerns. And life happened. I had two children, watched my parents grow old, had pets. One dog made me think hard about life and death issues, because he was reaching senility as one of my parents struggled with it also, and my other parent approached death with eyes wide open. This dog was fine, loving and loyal during the day, but wandering the house at night, getting stuck in corners. He was beginning to lose control of his bodily functions. He looked miserable when that happened. But the vet I was seeing then pushed medication which *might* improve his cognitive function. At that point paying for the medication was a stretch, and I had two elderly ill parents dependent on me, and an undiagnosed, highly reactive autistic preschooler. I was stretched to the breaking point. And I thought: look at this situation. If I were pregnant and wanted an abortion, I would find help and support. But I was being pressured to keep this dog, which still was undoubtedly more cognitively capable than a fetus, alive. And it made no sense. (I found a new vet, btw.) So: do we value human lives less than dog lives? I see how you can look at a kitten, and say “if I wouldn’t do this to her, how can we do it to a developing human?” So let’s look at animals and humans. Pigs are awfully smart, every bit as smart as dogs. They’re also fairly self-aware. I once had a conversation with a friend who had grown up raising and slaughtering his own meat. Killing chickens wasn’t too bad, he said; pigs were harder. “The pigs look at you and know what you’re going to do.” And, of course, we still euthanize thousands of dogs and cats because we don’t have enough homes. Horses are slaughtered in large numbers, too, even those who have been loved companions, let alone the unprofitable racehorses. The truth is we don’t value human lives less than animals, in general. In general, we’re pretty cavalier about the lives of even the most intelligent, charismatic animals. All of these creatures have some degree of sentience, probably far more than a first or even second trimester fetus. All will experience more fear and pain: we now know a developing fetus doesn’t feel pain until, what, around the twentieth week? So what makes the fetus the one people want to protect? DNA, right? It’s human? People have already used different analogies in talking about DNA and human development. I think DNA is like a recipe. It’s a set of instructions for assembling a human. DNA on its own isn’t a human, any more than a recipe is a cake. The ingredients to assemble the human are literally pulled out of the mother’s body. Just like a cake, a human isn’t done til it’s done. I wish I were able to say I was a vegan, but I’m not, nor am I likely to be. Like @Tanaqui, I eat things every day which had higher brain function than a fetus before viability. I haven’t needed to have an abortion, but I have experienced being stretched to a breaking point, and unable to manage one more thing. Knowing what I know now, I have more sympathy for a woman who decides she needs one than I could have when I was younger. I think eating pork is more morally questionable than having a first trimester abortion, cute babies and kittens notwithstanding. While the fetus is completely dependent upon the mother, she must be able to choose what to do about it.

I agree with @freesia that how I handled this would depend on the student’s goals. I have an 11th grader in public school who also has ASD and has a great deal of difficulty with math. She’s not interested in college at this point. It was clear to her teachers and counselors, as well as me, that trying to push her through more after she earned three credits was pointless. She’s happy, skilled, and productive on her own terms; math sufficient for personal financial needs will work fine for her. If your dd’s heading to college, she’ll have different needs, of course. But my personal inclination would be to avoid schools which would require more than she can comfortably handle.

A Yorkie loose in traffic is too awful for words. So glad you could help her.

At some point the ordinary funding which supports other vaccines should kick in, shouldn’t it? I’m not clear on why this is still different, though it’s probably obvious to anyone with a better understanding of the system. Surely it’s in insurance companies’ best interest to fund vaccines, just like for flu or polio or whatever. Is the difference that these new vaccines are still being developed? I could get a fourth dose now, based on age. I’ve been watching case numbers start to increase, but thinking I would wait until it looked like we were heading for a wave before I went for the next shot, anticipating that would be in the next month or two. If no more shots are coming in the fall, I may wait until then.

This. Is there someone else in your dh’s family, whom he trusts, who could make this point to him? Someone who could speak up and counter what she says with sanity, reality, and compassion?

Ours is literally murder on a variety of small critters, mostly voles and skinks, but also the occasional bird or butterfly. I do feel guilty, but there’s not much to do about it, between dh’s allergies and the cat’s demands. We have a nice screened porch we could confine her in during the warmer months, but she makes herself so obnoxious that she gets released. At least she’s getting older and less active.

Huh. Well, I feel for Obama, whatever they are.

Okay, not that it matters to poor Obama, but for those of us who get pedantic and obsessive about this stuff (me)… You might be seeing mockingbirds. These are the ones I notice the white patches flashing on most often. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Mockingbird Or maybe they are magpies! It’s happened, they just aren’t common throughout the U.S., though they are in some parts. Magpies have noticeably long tails and dramatic contrast between the white and black parts. They’re very flashy birds. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-billed_Magpie Some woodpeckers have white patches which flash when they fly, too, I just don’t picture them being as likely to harass a cat as the other two. Maybe others have other guesses. I wish we could confine our own cat to a catio, not for her sake but for the birds’. She’s another who grew up outside before she adopted us, though, and she goes bonkers if she’s restricted. Personally I might put up with it until she adjusted, but I’m outvoted.