If your son is still in high school, find out when e-day is at the nearest engineering college (it’s usually in February around here). It will expose him to all kinds engineering, he can meet engineering students, and meet lots of types of engineers. He can see the types of projects senior design students work on and get a feel for some of the engineering jobs available in your area. Most engineering colleges have a co-op program. My husband went to school a semester then worked full time a semester for 3 years. Most of his classmates did something similar. They got real world experience and it helped narrow the type of career path they would follow. My dad, uncle, husband, brother, and sister are all engineers in 4 different disciplines. They have had very different types of jobs, but none have ever had trouble finding a job. All have had a comfortable life style.

My daughter used to do the staring at me until I woke up thing. One night when she was about 3 she came downstairs and I woke up face to face with her. I let out a blood curdling scream right in her face. She burst into tears. It turns out she had come down for comfort due to a bad dream and I “traumatized” her more. We can laugh about it now but we were both pretty upset at the time.

Adding: your daughter has a known bite and symptoms, she should be seen.

Yes, I would get on antibiotics. For what it’s worth, both my son and I have gotten the bullseye rash without knowing if we had a tick bite. We both got on antibiotics, I had a month of doxycycline. He was 11 or 12 at the time, I don’t remember which antibiotic he took. We are both fine. My daughter seems to attract ticks, I don’t take her to the doctor every time we pull one off, I just pay attention to symptoms. She has never gotten a tick borne illness nor needed antibiotics.

A girl I follow on Instagram has parosmia following Covid. There is a FB group “Parosmia post Covid support group” that she mentioned. Some people in the group have had success with Stellate Ganglion Block treatment. Both she and her mom tried it recently after loss of smell since Sept ‘20 and Jan ‘21. It was successful for her mom and semi-successful for her. I don’t know anything other than what she posted but I’m sharing in case it helps you. I lost my smell with Covid for less than a week. But I also lost my sense of smell when I was pregnant with my daughter. I could only smell certain really strong scents. When I got pregnant with my son 2.5 years later, my smell came back completely and now my husband says I’m a super smeller. I’m not sure I recommend pregnancy as a cure though. Good luck, I hope you figure something out!

The blue bird eggs have hatched! I noticed the mama was acting different yesterday but didn’t see any baby birds. This afternoon I caught dad bringing food to the nest and sure enough there are at least two babies. This week I also discovered a robin’s nest in the tree right outside a different window. It’s a Bradford pear that sprouted on its own a handful of years back. My husband has been saying he needs to cut it down because it’s way too close to the house and finally decided this is the weekend. Except now he can’t with the nest there.

Exactly! When my mom left Mother’s Day weekend it put a peg in the memory and now it’s not about Mother’s Day at all, but the loss of a relationship and not understanding how a mom could walk away from her children. If she had left 4th of July weekend or Labor Day weekend, those would instead be hard days for me. If she had left on a random day in March I may not have a strong association with any particular date.

I’m so sorry this day is so hard for so many people. My parents divorced when I was young, mom left Mother’s Day weekend. I haven’t had much of a relationship with her since. My stepmom, who helped raise me, wasn’t understanding about me grieving that relationship. Then a few years ago I had a late 1st trimester miscarriage on Mother’s Day. An already emotional day had another reminder of loss added to it. My family started a tradition of skipping church on Mother’s Day and either going hiking or camping instead. My kids get excited about doing something special for me, but we have always kept it low key and not obligatory. I send a generic card to both my moms every year. My grandma on biomom’s side passed away in March and mom is grieving. I’m trying to decide if I should send flowers or just a card this year. Even though it’s an emotional day for me, I don’t want my actions to turn the day into a dreaded day for them as well.

I’m so sorry, saying a prayer for all involved. In my area hospice has grief counseling for all types of grief. If you aren’t sure where to look for counseling I would check with your local hospice. Even if they can’t help they may be aware of proper resources.

Desmopressin (sp?) worked well for two of my children. The third outgrew bed wetting before the first experience at camp. We did have to use the higher dose and it didn’t work the first night for either of them. But they were able to go to camp without pull-ups. We did the buzzer thing too with 3 kids. In my experience, with two heavy soakers, and one who only occasionally wet the bed past age 7, the kids have to be all in on the buzzer and it works better if they are older. As far as camp goes, chances are your 7 year old will not be the only one who needs pull-ups. My kids were thankful for the meds, but it they don’t work, I’m certain your child won’t be the only one with a pull up. Send some plastic grocery bags with your child to tie the pull-up inside so he can dispose of it more discreetly.

That is so cool!

My kids and I have gotten to do a lot of these! For anyone planning to make a trip of all these add in the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA. I know no books take place there, but it’s still such a neat museum. They had a Paddington Bear exhibit when we were there including the original Paddington!

It definitely feels like an honor. I hope we will be able to see the babies but who knows.

How cool! Our yard is in the territory for a Great Horned Owl but he (I assume) only visits at night and usually in the winter. The tree he goes to isn’t too far from our back door and he “barks” at us if he thinks we are getting too close. In the past couple weeks I’ve been able to witness a pair of blue jays build a nest, and now mama jay is incubating her eggs. I can see her from the living room window and have watched papa bring her worms, he alerts her, and they meet at a branch 15’ away. I’ve also seen her run off squirrels and grackles that she thought were getting too close. I got to see how she handled hail, held her beak up and stayed right on that nest. I wanted to go hold an umbrella over her but figured that would spook her. I don’t know exactly when she laid her eggs but I think it will be at least another week to 10 days before they hatch. This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to witness birds actively nesting, my kids think I’m a bit obsessed. This is a super zoomed in cell photo so not super clear, but you can see her!

I was thinking the same thing. It seems like most houses in Texas are brick and that brick in general is more common in the southeast. I always thought it was because of the clay in the soil, it’s easier to make bricks in that region. Now with more modern materials, brick is expensive so in my region it’s not uncommon to have a brick front with vinyl on the back and sides.

This is pure speculation on my part, if you are only seeing two at a time, I would think it’s the same two. We get lots of cardinals in our yard, I counted 20 in an approximately 20’x20’ area the other day. It is more unusual for me to only see 2-3 at a time than somewhere around 10. I can’t tell them apart anymore than male, female, or juvenile though. Occasionally when they are moulting I might recognize that it’s the same bird from the day before.

I’ve never tried one but what about Stepbet? I think it’s an app.

Not Duke! I didn’t even live here then but since most people I know still hold a grudge against Christian Laettner for “The Shot”, I can’t root for Duke. And you know that clip will be shown 100 times tonight.

We only did the show and it was plenty. I would love to do a tour sometime but we couldn’t fit it in on that trip. I think it would really depend on your kids, mine wouldn’t have cared at all, but they aren’t huge country music fans. We have toured the Ryman in the past and that is really cool too. Nashville is a fun place.

Biscuit Love or Loveless Cafe would be good places to check out. Just a warning, you will wait 1-2 hours for Loveless. There are little shops, cornhole, and picnic tables setup to help make the wait more bearable though. Definitely visit the Opry. Even if you aren’t huge fans of whoever is playing, it is still a great experience to attend a show. About an hour north of Nashville (depending on where you are staying) is Mammoth Cave NP. You need to reserve any tours in advance. If you can’t get a tour, check out Kentucky Down Under. They have a cave that is part of the Mammoth system. You can also feed kangaroos (or maybe it’s wallabies). My niece and nephew were there last week and absolutely loved it.

Don’t be too hard on your 13 year old. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment. An adult was in charge and kids are taught to listen to adults. Wrecking the car was plenty of punishment. Grandpa was wrong. Teach your kids how to handle the questionable situations that may come up as they get older. It’s impossible to predict all the ridiculous situations that may come up. I was one of those kids that legally drove at 14, as did my 5 siblings, we weren’t farm kids. As far as I know there are 10 or 11 states that still have some provision for 14 year olds driving. I know by the time my youngest brother was driving you could lose your license until 18 if you had an accident or tickets (don’t know all the parameters). My husband and his sister were farm kids. They were helping drive the farm truck in low gear before they were big enough to both see out the windshield and reach the pedals. They weren’t allowed to drive on roads until 16 though even though they were allowed to drive on the farm. When my kids were little, I was fearful the grandparents would allow them to drive the ATV, gator, or tractors. So I drilled into them absolutely no sitting in laps, no driving until older, no riding in beds of trucks, told the grandparents it was a quirk of mine. Coached the kids on how to handle it if situations came up. Cousins the same age who lived closer were allowed so it kind of made it bigger deal that my kids weren’t. Coaching has been effective with two of my kids, they just reminded the grandparents they aren’t allowed and it’s no big deal. Third child lives in the moment. He remembers when older siblings are around, not when he’s visiting alone. He once apologized later for driving on grandma’s lap when he wasn’t supposed to. Now if he’s visiting alone I remind him of the rules in advance. It is a pain in the rear doing some chores without the gator or truck but my rule is all kids in a proper seat. Now that my 14 year old is 6’ and has demonstrated responsibility, I don’t mind him driving on their farm. But the grandparents often take the road between their two properties because it is easier. It’s 100’ but he knows they are not allowed to drive or be riding in an atv on that stretch (it’s not busy but people speed). Because of his personality I trust him. The same may not apply when my other kids are the same age. Lastly, I’m glad all your kids stayed safe despite what could have happened, it’s normal to feel livid. I would probably wait a few days before making declarations about spending time with the grandparents.

Formal reference check, I would think this is company specific. HR is definitely only going to verify dates and possibly if the employee left in good standing. The individual actually hiring for the position may or may not call listed references. Informally references are definitely getting checked. LinkedIn is being examined and people you know in common are getting called. The informal reference could keep you from getting your foot in the door or be the only reason you are hired. Jobs involving children should involve a child abuse/neglect check in addition to a background check. That usually doesn’t happen until an offer has been made or is about to be made. In my state that’s a requirement for any job working with children including volunteer jobs.

I’m so sorry. Unfortunately there are no parental controls either. It sounds like your son handled the situation well and wasn’t afraid to approach you about it, good job! Just an FYI, the Libby app (often used by libraries for Kindle book checkout) can be just as bad. It is possible to filter books by recommended audience but it isn’t perfect. Our work around is that my daughter uses my account. I tag books I think she would be interested in reading, and she chooses from those.

I definitely agree. We had a 16 year old dog from the time he was 8 weeks old and a 14 year old dog that we had from age 7ish. By around age 12 they slowed down a lot and spent much of the day sleeping and had playful moments but didn’t mind being left alone. They definitely needed more frequent potty breaks though. We were at home when both of them were elderly but it wasn’t uncommon for them to hide out from us as opposed to hang out with us as they got older. We currently have a 4 year old lab, he could tolerate being left home for 10-12 hours, but would hate it. If I suddenly had to go back to work, we would likely get a second dog as a companion.

One of our cats recently went through something similar. The wet food has helped a lot. I can’t remember how we got a sample, I’m assuming the vet must have handled it. When our dog got a UTI, the vet tech recommended we use a ladle to catch the sample. It worked really well. I bought one from the dollar store, caught the sample, then poured it onto the provided container. Just sharing in case anyone else happens to need this idea in the future.