I took my son to various cultural nights at our local university. Indiana State University has African Global Night, Saudi Global Night, Indian Global Night, Chinese New Year, Hispanic Global Night, etc. These usually bring speakers and performers that are famous in their home country to share their lives with us.

Like most underemployed 40-somethings, I have been submitting my resume to many companies in an effort to improve our situation. I would like to make my application stand out from the others--or, at least, keep up with the younger and perhaps more technologically-experienced. I have been thinking of uploading handouts from psychoeducational groups I have formed and writing samples to a website and adding the link to my resume. Is there a way to do this confidentially? I don't really want my work (and especially my personal information) out there for anyone to see...is there a way to make a blog password-protected? I have seen settings available on Blogger that include a list of specific persons that can see it, but that's impossible to try to guess, and I think they have to be a member of Blogger to be able to do so. Any ideas?

I grew up in Evansville and I now live in Terre Haute. I haven't been to Evansville since I graduated from high school in 1989, but the north side was a great place to grow up. The town had a rich German heritage and everyone (that I knew, anyway) lived the "work hard, play hard, home is the center of all things" philosophy that was welcoming and secure. I had soccer and softball coaches from U of E throughout middle school and high school, but never attended U of E or USI myself (when I was a kid, USI was Indiana State University-Evansville). Most of my family still lives there, and I've not heard any complaints about the city or its residents. I wish I could tell you more about it. I have lived in Terre Haute for the past 9 years, and before that lived in one of the surrounding counties since 1991. There are four colleges within a 15-mile radius: Indiana State University, Ivy Tech, Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. I obtained my Bachelors in Psychology in 2008 and a Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2010 from ISU. I love the campus, and I'm currently trying to get back there (as a counselor in the Career Center). Many people are employed in some capacity at one of the universities, and at the hospital where I work, everyone seems to be either teaching, guest lecturing, or taking in students for internships. I have only seen the St. Mary's campus a few times over the years, but it's beautiful! They have a banquet hall that used to be open to the public for Sunday brunch...don't know if they still do that...they also rent it out for holiday parties and such. When my husband was a bricklayer he worked on the buildings that house the elderly nuns of their order that have come there to retire. A neighbor of mine down the street also frequents the campus, and loves to take kids to see the alpacas and sometimes volunteers at the White Violet Center for Eco-Justice. Mother Theodore Guerin was recently made a saint, and the school has increased in popularity since then. I work at a local hospital in the mental health unit, and we have interns from their music therapy program come in every week to have a group with the patients and encourage them to sing and play musical instruments from around the world--they really respond, and the women are confident, respectful, and really know their stuff. Generally, the students of St. Mary's are a confident bunch--you can almost tell a "Woodsie" by the way she carries herself. RHIT is also a very highly respected school in the community, and if it's an engineering degree your child is after, there's no better place. I don't know a whole lot about the campus, but I have interacted with its students at times and they are very focused, and take their work seriously. They're definitely not your run-of-the-mill, state college kind of student. I feel like I'm rambling...I hope that helps you. :)

I haven't read all the replies, and I don't know your son, but it seems to me that he really doesn't understand AT ALL how The World works. The World is not going to challenge him in ways that he likes. The World is not going to see his less-than-stellar high school grades paired with his IQ and understand that his grades were low because he was "bored" and The World should rightfully feel sorry for him. To get along in The World, dues must be paid. These dues include proving to others (whether he thinks they're as smart as he or not) that he knows what he knows. He can't just look at The World with a bored expression and expect It to read his mind. The World also requires setting your mind and body to work. Real work. Physical, menial, boring work. That kind of stuff is what keeps The World going, and most kids have no clue that The World is much healthier and happier when trash is picked up and dogs are walked and floors are mopped and newspapers are delivered and bathrooms in department stores are cleaned daily. Ask him to find out what his favorite physicist's first job was. ;) The World has--clearly, since you describe extreme financial circumstances which required extreme action you obviously didn't want to take--not blessed Mom and Dad (at least, in the way he is thinking :001_smile:). Mom and Dad have had to--and still--work their tails off for prepaid cell phones and old cars and the possibility of helping their children achieve their dreams. Someday, The World is going to require it of him, too. He will have kids who want the latest holographic/orbiting/shoe tying/nose blowing/music blasting electronic gadget...and want it NOW, with no mind to the cost. If this were my son--and I have an almost-18-year-old, and this scares me--I would have to show him to the local homeless shelter. Mind you, there are rules there, too, like curfews and required job-hunting and helping out in the kitchens or with janitorial duties. While there, I hope my son would meet people who desperately want to work but can't, and who would give their left leg to have his brains and talent. I hope this will end soon for you and your family. Good luck to you.

I've been getting mixed up too. Maybe I'll put it in my signature line. Maria from IN = RoseNox208

Friend me! I'm RoseNox208...I was a beta tester, and I'm itching for them to release the second story, so I may not be on there much at first. :D Edited to add: Go 'Puffs!

Is it your modesty and your reticence to toot your own horn? ;)

I could be fingernails that are getting slightly long, or perhaps it's the sound of calluses hitting the fingerboard.

Don't know if this is what you're looking for, but it's adorable! http://www.etsy.com/listing/83157377/pretend-felt-campfire-play-set?ref=sr_gallery_3&sref=&ga_search_query=felt+campfire&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade ...and don't forget the s'mores! http://www.etsy.com/listing/89418920/life-size-smores-set-made-to-order?ref=sr_gallery_8&sref=&ga_search_query=felt+campfire&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade

That's ridiculous! What if the child had food allergies?:glare:

You're going to be 50 anyway...might as well have a degree by the time you get there. Go for it!

All the more reason to teach our children that every person is someone's wife or husband, and we should all keep that in mind and act accordingly. The presence of a future spouse in one's life is too late, in my opinion, do "settle down" and stop any foolishness one thinks is okay simply because they're not committed to someone yet. Yet, we are human, and these things happen. I'm glad she changed her mind, though.

For the past few years we have had a container garden on our 10x10 concrete porch (with 6 1/2 foot brick wall on 2 sides!), and I've decided this year that my table (2 feet by 6 feet and 3 feet off the ground) will be dedicated to carrots and onions...green beans didn't do well at all and didn't yield nearly what we needed. I'm also buying 3 more 5-gallon buckets and devoting 6 total to tomatoes, probably a beefsteak variety. My husband also took 4 more 5-gallon buckets a few years ago and screwed the lids on tight, then sawed them in half. This gives me 8 smaller buckets for peppers and the dill that someone told me I should plant alongside my tomatoes and peppers to keep the tomato worms (tomato pirhanas!) away. I'm hoping that our yield will be better this year...I feel like I've just been playing out there on the porch for a few years, but I kind of needed to experiment to figure out what not to grow there.

I just found this on Amazon a few weeks ago, and I love it! My mother purchased the books when they first came out, and we've practically worn them out...I love the last newsletters that didn't make it in the original books.:001_smile:

Someone dumped a dog at my (then) boyfriend's house about 5 years ago--in the freezing rain--and she cowered under a tree and cried for a few days before she finally accepted food from him. We named her Zoey because, well, she just looked like it. I was ironic, really, that we named her that (since it's Greek for "life"), because we discovered a couple of weeks later that she was gaining rather a lot of weight--and it wasn't the weight of good food and fine accomodations. :001_huh: We think she's a cross between a lab and a Plott hound, and the 8 puppies that came a couple of months later looked sort of hound/lab/rottweiler/pitbull-ish. My son picked out the runt of the litter, who looked more black lab than anything...the deep-chested howl came about five months later. At the time we were reading Watership Down, and we decided to name him Fiver since he was the runt. When we take him for walks around the neighborhood (mostly older people), they ask his name and invariably say, "Why did you name him FiBer?" :001_smile:

I told my son, who was about that age at the time, that sometimes our bodies fail us and we can't do all we want on Earth anymore, but when it's our time, we will go to Heaven where we won't have that tired old body anymore...that's why it's still here and we say goodbye to it. In Heaven she can complete the work she started here, like watching over families and watching little ones like him grow up, as well as be reunited with other family members that went to Heaven before her. Up there she doesn't have to worry about getting tired or sick ever again, and she's happier than she's ever been. Some people may be crying when they're at the funeral, because they will miss her a lot and won't get to see her until they get to Heaven too, not because she was bad or something scary is happening. Later on they will remember all the happy memories about them and they will smile again, but they're mostly sad for themselves because things have changed.

I used to work at a Sam's Club in the early 90's, and just after they instituted the Code Adam policy we had heard of another store that called the code about a 6-year-old girl. She had been in the store with her parents, but someone had taken her when their backs were turned, taken her to the restroom, and had half her head shaved (crewcut) and were changing her into boys clothes in the men's room when they were discovered. Don't know if it's actually true, as it didn't happen in the store where I was working, but it still gives me the creeps. Whenever I see an unattended child, that's where my thoughts go, and I look around for their parents.

If he really isn't lying, I would have to wonder if he wasn't experiencing some sort of dissociative fugue state. They're very rare, but if you say he's had a traumatic past... Just throwing that out there. :001_smile:

I've gone from suburb to small town to condo, and I think I want my suburb back. :001_smile: Small town living isn't for me, that's clear. While I would enjoy the seclusion, I hate driving down lonely country roads in the winter (mostly because I'm so good at wrecking cars on the ice!). Condo life, while fairly maintenance-free and full of lovely neighbors (it's more a retirement community and I'm one of the youngest to live here), is rather limiting. I would love to have a large garden to putter in all summer. I'm happy for the moment being here, because it's a block away from my mother and easy to just pop over if she needs something; also, my husband's eye problems could get worse at any time, and things like lawn care and basic home maintenance would be very difficult. All the same, I think I'm where I need to be for now...though I still dream of having a different sort of life.

I don't wish to inflate an already sensitive issue, but Andrea Yates comes to mind. Postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are not to be trifled with, regardless of one's beliefs. That's all I'll say about that. :001_smile:

The Flash Carrot! Your Superpower is Willpower Your Weakness is Bald People Your Weapon is Your Flaming Bazooka Your Mode of Transportation is Zip-line It seems I am married to my nemesis, The Tall Bald Guy!:D

Actually, the opposite was true in my household. I had been using Purex (the cheapest I could find, at $5 a bottle) for years until I tried the homemade mix--the first loads with the homemade mix had the dingiest, grayest water mid-cycle I had ever seen! My mother had used Fels-Naptha for years on my baseball uniforms. The white pants were polyester, and using bleach on them yellowed them, but simply rubbing the stain with the bar worked wonders.

I have been using the liquid laundry detergent recipe for a couple of months now: 1/2 bar Fels Naptha, grated 1/2 cup Borax 1/2 cup Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda Dissolve the Fels Naptha in 6 cups water in a saucepan on low heat. Don't let it boil, or it will bubble over (not that I've tested this or anything). Add the Borax and Washing Soda to the saucepan and stir until dissolved. Add mixture to 3 gallons hot water (I use a 5-gallon bucket), blend well, and let sit overnight. If I get all my ingredients from WalMart it costs 72 cents for roughly 3 1/2 gallons. I also add a couple of capfuls of essential orange oil for fragrance. Just today I tried a recipe for fabric softener: 4 cups water 1 cup hair conditioner (I just used Suave) 1 cup vinegar I combined this and left it in a container with a few pieces of cut up flannel pajamas. The instructions I read said to either add to your washer in a dryer ball or dip a piece of flannel in, wring out, and add to dryer load. I haven't tried this yet; I hope it works, because I'm allergic to flower-scented dryer sheets and liquid fabric softener. This morning I also tried making my own spreadable butter: 1 stick butter 1/3 cup canola oil Whip cold butter until smooth in a chilled bowl. Gradually add canola oil, and whip for several minutes until mixture looks "fluffy," scraping sides if necessary. Pour in a container and leave overnight.

My guys were thrilled with everything they got, even if a lot of it they really needed. Every year they get socks and underwear for Christmas, and I wrap them and put them under the tree with everything else. They both got video games they wanted, but they always get pens for school and handkerchiefs in their stockings too. My 17-year-old was even thrilled about the gloves I bought him, and really liked the electric guitar and zombie socks I found on the Joy of Socks website. My husband got a pair of sweatpants for hanging around the house in, and he also got a light for his work bench with a magnifying glass attached (eye problems due to detached retina). I think the only real bust was the camo cargo pants I bought for my husband, who really doesn't like pants that are baggy, but are good enough for hanging around the house in.

Perhaps if you sent them a thank-you card mentioning what you purchased with your gift card, like "this really helped me obtain that yarn/scrapbooking/puzzle/cooking item I needed for my (enter new, exciting hobby here)." I know what you mean about "buying for other relatives." My 82-year-old MIL lives by herself, and even though the entire family (except my husband) lives within 20 miles of her--and one daughter even living 3 blocks away--no one picked her up and took her shopping this year. One daughter came and helped her send presents online, but she wanted to go shopping and pick out a present for the newborn great-granddaughter who was named after her. She asked us last week (we live 500 miles away) to pick out some gifts and send them in her name. I got what I wanted this year, though. My husband comes right out and asks me what I want, so this year I said I wanted a new DVD player and a new set of pots and pans, as mine were getting old and the non-stick was flaking off. The only bad thing about it is he sometimes gets things that are too expensive.