I’ve recently seen advertisement for temporary US Forest Service jobs too. National Parks are so much more than the 70 or so big ones with National Park in the title, there are 300+ National Rec sites, National Monuments, etc which are run by NPS. They have lots of temporary positions they need filled seasonally.

That makes me happy! I really hope it works for him.

I personally don’t like the taste of beef that’s 100% grass fed. Breed of steer makes a difference too though.

$100? My in-laws gift us a half a steer whenever they have one ready to process, if we don’t have a ton of meat left from the last one. We only have to pay what the processor charges which isn’t much. It’s a pretty generous gift.

Contact their customer support and see if you can try it for a month, the worst they say is no. They apparently have really good customer service. I don’t really want to pay that much without knowing if it would work either!

Speechify is the app my friend swears by. I believe it has a pretty hefty annual fee though.

When I worked on a dairy farm radios and lights did nothing to deter the raccoons. Raccoons are really smart and determined. If they have access to a food source it’s going to be difficult to get rid of them.

Not sure on an iPad, but on an iPod, under accessibility settings there is an option you can set for a page to be read for you. It’s very electronic sounding with no expression. My son uses that for reading text messages, or brief amounts of text in games. There are also a couple apps like Lexico and Voice Aloud Reader. You can change the voices, and if I remember correctly one is even Australian. One of my friends loves using these (I can’t remember which one she uses, but they have really good customer service. They even scheduled a zoom call with her to understand better how homeschoolers use the app). I last tried these a couple years ago but at that time it was a bit clunky for my son to do on his own, especially if there were different fonts on the page. So we only used it for a free trial period.

He’d rather die than ask his friends what they are wearing. He also didn’t want me to text the mom. I’m obviously more worried about him dressing appropriately than he is. It’s all homeschoolers and a few kids that lifeguard at the community center. I expect there will be a range of dress, I just don’t want my kid to stand out for not following directions.

I’m not sure about the club dress code, flip flops won’t be a problem. It’s way too cold for those even for my kiddo 😆

ETA, he got the invitation earlier, I just wasn’t aware until today 🤦🏼‍♀️

My 15 year old was invited to a birthday party at a local country club (not fancy), tomorrow. Attire is semi-formal. He hasn’t had to dress up super nice for anything since he was pretty young so he has nothing! The family is really low key so I think semi-formal means a tie and no jeans. Again, it’s tomorrow, so I can’t shop online. We have the typical mall stores available. Would khakis and a blazer suffice? Does he need slacks? A suit? Can he get away with wearing his new Jordans or does he need to wear dress shoes? Fortunately he does have dress shoes.

I have no advice but I am sending you a PM.

I love spin class! Some places will offer shorter beginner classes, if you haven’t been riding a bike regularly, that can be helpful so you don’t get quite as saddle sore. There are different kinds of spin classes, I don’t like the ones that incorporate “dance” moves. When I went to a new class and didn’t know it would be that way, I just kept peddling, no one really cares. The nice thing about spin is you adjust the tension on the bike so you can really do things at your own pace. The instructor is just a coach to help you push yourself.

My grandma had colon cancer in her 40’s, my siblings and I were recommended to start having colonoscopies at 40, 2 of us had polyps removed. I had to have a follow-up 3 years later and that was clear so now I’m on an every 5 year plan. The prep is really not that bad, it’s a day (evening really) of discomfort. Then you have anesthesia during the procedure. A barium enema is WAY worse. For what it’s worth, last week my husband found out a 35 year old coworker with no family history has colon cancer. It has possibly already spread to his lung, please don’t put it off.

I lost my sense of smell after my pregnancy with my daughter. It wasn’t the complete loss, but I definitely couldn’t smell a lot of things, especially dirty diapers. That would seem like a good thing, but it wasn’t. I was friends with an ENT and he said sometimes it happens but he had never heard of it in relation to pregnancy. He thought I probably had a virus of some sort and it was a lingering side effect. My smell came back when I got pregnant again a couple years later. When I had Covid in 2021 I lost my smell/taste completely only for a couple days, it was diminished for several days. It was a very different experience.

For reference, I just looked up the model your daughter currently has. One is listed on Etsy for $1300 and one on eBay for $1500, those have been serviced. On a sewing consignment site one was selling for $690.

Your daughter has a very nice beginning sewing machine that she could use the rest of her life if she takes care of it. I don’t think you can go wrong either way with the other machines, you shouldn’t have trouble selling them. If you have the space and want to hold onto them just in case, that’s valid too. Because I enjoy sewing I would lean towards keeping them. But if your daughter is young or hasn’t expressed an interest in sewing yet, it may not be worth keeping them as a “just in case”. Especially since she has the other machine. I completely agree with Melissa on what to keep for the kids.

For a good machine, it’s definitely worth keeping. She isn’t going to be able to afford a Bernina for years. For what it’s worth my aunt purchased herself a sewing machine as a graduation present in 1972. She passed away a couple years later. My mom hung onto it until I took up an interest in sewing when I was in high school. I’m still using it and even had an Etsy shop for awhile. It was a much nicer machine than any beginner machine I could have gotten. It was nice having a connection to the aunt I never meant and a nice tool. If you are only keeping a few things, that’s one of the things I would keep.

I’m glad she’s gotten on the list!

I don’t want to guess price on the sewing machines because some new Bernina’s sell for 5 figures. Used is going to sell for less but that could be a $1000 or $16,000 machine. A widow at our church had a shop full of tools. My husband spent an afternoon over there and helped her sort out the items worth trying to sell online, sell at yard sale, and to donate. If you know any of your mom’s sewing friends or if the local extension office has a sewing/quilting club maybe someone could help. And I’m sorry you are having to do this, I’m sure it’s hard.

I’m assuming if my child was at your house, I would already be semi-aware of the difficult situation and would assume you wouldn’t have invited my kid over if you thought he was at risk of being harmed. If I came to pick him up and the police were there, it would give me pause. I’d ask him what happened then depending on what he said, give you a call later. With my particular kid, if I didn’t see the police, he probably wouldn’t bring it up unless something really dramatic happened. So I probably wouldn’t even know.

There were a couple JW in my class growing up, plus there are a couple that visit my neighborhood on a regular basis. A good friend from high school was Mormon and I’ve met Mormon families through my kids’ activities. I’m actually surprised there are fewer Mormons in the US than Jewish people. My bio-mom was married to a Muslim for awhile. I’ve also had Muslim neighbors from whom we learned about Muslim traditions. I’ve never met a Jewish person that I am aware of. Back around Christmas time I was thinking about this and discovered there are only about 400 Jewish people in the state where I grew up and about 17,000 were I currently live or about 0.3% of the population.

I’m sorry!

When you get to bigger sizes, it is harder to find modern and stylish. DXL is a good option. I’ve ordered from King Size but their return policy is bad (can’t remember details but such a pain we’ve never ordered again). DXL sells name brands, so you can use that as a jumping off point to go directly to brands websites to see if they have more options. Dillards dept store and NFL/NBA fan stores have been options for in the past. Nike, Reebok, Columbia, and Carhart are brands that we have had good luck with as well. Usually for extended sizes I have to buy them online and I expect to pay more. If he needs a tall, make sure to get the tall. They are longer and the sleeves are longer.