Mostly plaster, some drywall. Thanks, that’s the sort of thing I knew I didn’t know.

If a house will be unoccupied for a while during very cold weather (~ 5-15 degrees F), and the water is turned off and pipes drained and left open… Is there any particular danger from letting the house temperature drop below 55 degrees? The small house in question has a mini split system, with the downstairs unit functioning erratically. The unit was inspected and given maintenance six weeks or so ago, and pronounced old but functional. Now the HVAC people say that mini splits aren’t really up to dealing with the low temperatures we’re having now. I can’t guarantee it will stay at 55. I can pretty much guarantee it won’t. I want to drain the pipes, get out, and deal with the heating system in warmer weather, because the longer I wait here, the likelier the pipes are to freeze again. Just spent two days dealing with that, had enough. Temperatures are dropping. What am I risking if I shut the place up and leave?

Ditto.

I’m so sorry; that’s just too much to process and cope with. Sending lots of hugs.

I’m so sorry. My experience is nothing like yours, but we’ve had our share of trauma and anger, in different ways and degrees. I can’t counsel you, but I can say that when my kids have been angriest, they’ve also known we were doing our best, even if the result was still a muddle. The forgiveness comes out eventually. I bet your oldest knows he can trust you to cope with his anger while that’s what’s uppermost. Sending lots of hugs.

Holding you all in my thoughts. I’m sorry; that’s so much to have going on.

Thinking of you all, and hoping for the best results from your transition.

He has asked another doctor about it, and apparently got a noncommittal answer which didn’t reassure him. Talking to the original doctor sounds like the best approach, if I can persuade him to do that. He was thoroughly unnerved by the whole encounter. I appreciate everyone’s thoughts. I had felt he was being paranoid, but it sounds like maybe his concerns aren’t entirely off base. Does anyone know if there’s a legal way to request, and be sure of getting, copies of all notes in his file?

This has been my perspective, but I may be wrong.

No, but the doctor thought it was indicative of groups which have behaved that way in the past. It wasn’t anything of the sort, it was old military surplus stuff from a different time and country.

How would you address it? MR needs to see a variety of doctors. This has become a problem.

Thanks

My mom was thrilled to finally have a grandchild. She and my father lived about an hour and a half from us, and the hospital was in between. We had no space for them to stay in our tiny house, but they were at the hospital the morning after our first child was born, visited a reasonable time, and went home. She was deeply impressed that Dh had arranged paternity leave: not really a thing when I was born. She didn’t want to get in the middle of our efforts to do things ourselves, and as I mentioned, we wouldn’t have had a place for her to stay. She and my father did come for regular day trips, I just can’t remember exactly how often, or exactly who did what. We talked regularly, and she was a loving, supportive, encouraging grandmother, always ready to help when asked.

I don’t know if they’d offer enough protection, but beekeeping gloves can have flexible leather hands and canvas arm gauntlets. No clue how that compares to welding gloves, but the fingers do allow fairly good manipulation. You’d probably want long thick sleeves under the gloves. The welding apron sounds perfect.

There are small display boxes and tables that would let you arrange shells on a sandy base, with both top and sides visible. https://www.icollector.com/Handsome-small-glass-wood-display-table_i10231077 https://www.amazon.com/GraduatePro-Display-Picture-Memorabilia-Keepsakes/dp/B0995JGBHC/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?crid=F0L7P935JDAZ&keywords=table+with+glass+top+display+case&qid=1704735624&sprefix=display+table+glas%2Caps%2C86&sr=8-13 https://www.amazon.com/Round-Terrarium-Display-Table-Reinforced/dp/B07P65GHRC/ref=mp_s_a_1_17?crid=34S57XZI7UBSG&keywords=glass+top+display+case+table&qid=1704735797&sprefix=glass+top+display+case+table%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-17 Or even a terrarium… https://www.amazon.com/HighFree-Geometric-Terrarium-Miniature-Succulent/dp/B09QLXWSDN/ref=mp_s_a_1_16_sspa?crid=34S57XZI7UBSG&keywords=glass+top+display+case+table&qid=1704735886&sprefix=glass+top+display+case+table%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-16-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfYXRmX25leHQ&psc=1

This has been my experience. In the 1970s, we spent a lot of time with my grandparents, who had a big garden and canned and froze much of their food. Other than meat, dairy, and starches, most of what we ate there was from the garden. Meal planning was a matter of “Well, we’ve got lots of tomatoes, and we can shell some butter beans, and bring in some ears of corn.” There were lots of vegetable dishes on the table, most pretty simple, and straight out of the garden. I can count on one hand the times we went out to eat there. Doing so was an Occasion. Food was just prepared at home. This wasn’t in a cultural backwater, though not in a major city either. There were restaurants around, but eating at home was the family culture, just as it had been when my mother was growing up in the ‘30s and ‘40s. In the’30s they had had a cow, chickens, and ducks, too, on a big city lot. None of that was unusual for the time or place, though my grandfather sold shares in the cow to some neighbors who didn’t have room for a cow, so they could share the milk (they had to own the cow, legally, to use the raw milk). Foodways have changed a lot since the 1970s. Obviously even more since the 1930s, but a lot just since the 1970s. Some people still live the same way, but a much smaller percentage, I suspect. Even just the fact that the grocery stores are so.much.bigger and have so.much.more.stuff… people are buying all that stuff. Some of it is laudable diversity in our foods, but a lot of it is prepared convenience food which is so highly processed. The changes are enormous.

I’m so sorry, and so angry that this still happens. Thinking of you and hoping things go better than expected.

No, that’s not an Iowa decision, I agree. I meant more how to respond to it politically, which is why I was concerned about crossing the line here. Iowa is the center of the American political landscape right now. How Iowans talk about this can make news, if they want that to happen.

I saw it last night in the newspapers I follow online. It was more prominent on the BBC website than on the two major U.S. papers. This morning the article in the online WaPo is way down the page. Here it is, without a paywall: https://wapo.st/41Oci2T Here’s the story from the NYT, which was similarly inconspicuous. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/us/perry-iowa-school-shooting.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU0.IedL.zeYYpSoDyO4G&smid=url-share All I can really think is that Iowa has a lot of clout right now. They get to choose how to handle this. The NYT piece notes that media was already in the area because of a campaign event. And that’s probably all that I can say, which is why I don’t think there’s much to talk about here. Everything about this phenomenon is political. I don’t think we’re powerless in the least. But individually, our power is limited. We can talk more on the Politics board, but I think we mostly all know what we think. Moderators, I’ll delete the paragraph above if it crosses the line.

Some bowl ideas… I like @Katy’s suggestion of a wooden bowl. Or find something made by a local potter whose work you like. Or there are stone bowls, so you could have stones in stone. Or wander through an antique mall with lots of glassware and ceramics. If you’re dealing with a small assortment of semiprecious stones, maybe an old teacup would work: even a fairly old one without a handle, so it reads more like a bowl, but in scale with small stones. Around here you could get one like that for $25 depending on the store and the teacup, so it needn’t be hugely expensive. Search online for “rocks displayed in bowl” for ideas.

I’m not sure how big your rocks are, but how about just looking for a bowl you find attractive and displaying them in that? Personal taste is everything here, I suspect. We have an old bowl, relatively wide and shallow, that holds all kinds of “finds,” geological, archaeological, shells, and so forth. I believe we got the bowl first, just because we liked it, and then it started accumulating a collection of finds. You can do it in reverse. Decide on size and shape, and then go hunting for a bowl you like.

We had a black rat snake living in our old frame house once upon a time. Given the mouse population before the snake moved in, we were happy to have him as a guest. All we ever saw was a skin he shed, but suddenly there were no more mice.

Appalling. I can understand individuals wanting to go to a nice restaurant without having badly-behaved children spoiling their meal. Some places are more appropriate for learning good behavior than others. But a child-free society in general? That’s a new concept for me. How widespread is this idea?

I’m so sorry.

Oh, wow! Yes, I was picturing it happening in the same room. 😳😁