At work. Kids at camp. @Junie big hugs

I don't believe you. He'll have to come to our place and prove it. We'll be expecting him around 8 pm PST. DM me for the address.

Thanks for the reminder, @Farrar@Margaret in CO. One of the trails we use to get to the beach in my mom's town was an Eagle Scout project. They made it accessible to all. The project was completed a few years ago and it has persisted thanks to community maintenance, that this one scout inspired.

My daughter is allergic to smoke and now we can't vacation in CA because of this. In fact even the Northwest is hazardous in summer. ? Hell indeed. Fires in Finland now, I'm not sure ALaska is a good future plan.

I do want to say that we absolutely pay for activities and pay taxes. We haven't yet found a totally free activity. Materials, space, licenses, training, software and admin all take money. If we truly paid for the whole thing our soccer would go from $250 a season to $500. There is no doubt in my mind. Some activities are truly all paid--you know by the price. It's usually breathtaking. Most are combination, pay, subsidies, volunteer.

Instead of thinking about what we want / don't want to do, I wanted to take some time to share a time of gratitude. Volunteer coaches coaches soccer and lacrosse to provide instruction to a small group: about 80 hours of instruction subsidized by my neighbors. Volunteer officials, timers, cooks and others provide my kids with swim in a volunteer league, cutting the cost of participation in swim by about 80% compared to an all-paid league. The PTA provided, at NO COST TO ME, approximately 20 hours of free activities, 100% of the curriculum enhancement (field trips), science fair, multicultural fair, art walk, talent show, harvest festivals, running clubs, art clubs, chess clubs, and programming clubs. We participated in the all-volunteer Julia Robinson math festival for eight hours. Scores of volunteers put together a welcoming environment at the local U. Math Olympiad was run by volunteers, including coaching. Thanks to the church that organized it as a service activity for all faiths and backgrounds. Our family joined several 5ks, all volunteer run, so we could raise money that went 100% to a charitable cause. To pay for all those volunteers would be staggeringly expensive. My bike trail is maintained by volunteers. Our hiking trail is maintained about 75% by volunteers. Our highways are cleaned by the Lions club. The Rotary puts on an all-volunteer Oktoberfest we enjoy so that admission is free. Hundreds of volunteer hours so adults can get drunk and play, lol. My kids are at a camp which is hosted at very low price thanks to church facility volunteers. Thanks unitarians! Seattle hosted the special Olympics with an army of volunteers. We benefit from living in a world where this can even happen. We have a free garden patch where I get free gardening advice. Oh and scouts. Low cost camping, camps, horseback lessons, archery with donated equipment, I could go on. And that is off the top of my head. If we did not volunteer and of our neighbors did not volunteer our lives would be irreperably diminished. Oh yeah, animal shelters. That is where we got our cats. And they cared for the bunnies we found. How did you benefit from volunteers today? This week? This year?

Well, there is the po It's not ever required. You always have the option if your child not getting the services. What strikes me in these conversations is that you rarely hear about all the amazing services scouts, rec leagues, FFA and 4H provide. Our entire society is built on this free labor pool. We get out what we put in. If you just want to get, you'll get nothing but promises. You have yo be willing to give. Or to be a burden on others.

Well work is nothing like school in the sense that you are allowed to have downtime. Take walks, rake breaks, take an hour lunch, do your focus work at 10 pm. Etc. I don't know what you mean by "language issues"--Dyslexia? Not performing as well on standardized comprehension questions as his IQ would predict (those tests are pretty dumb IMO)? Just getting a whole essay out? Or more basic like, it is a struggle to formulate a two sentence email? He will be thrilled to know I have never written an essay for work in 20 years. Even at Amazon where whitepapers are de rigeur, you don't have to write them on things you don't care about. That solves a lot of problems for people who hate defending opinions they don't hold, on topics they don't want to deal with, about things that, if it were up to them, don't even need to exist. Not to mention, 10-16 year old boys are not known for their high verbal ability and enthusiasm for writing about, say, history. My stepson loves to write. I would not say he excels at expository writing. Their brain don't develop that way. On the contrary sometimes the best writers have trouble letting go of the fact that nobody will read their email if it takes up more than one screen. I have seen so many girls interns' faces fall (and a few boys) when I point out that people are going to spend 15 seconds on their mail so keep it simple.

How old is your son? The strength of this job is the flexibility, constant analysis and critical thinking. The challenge for someone with special needs is that you must be able to work in a team, compromise, and be able to work in a larger organization and meet deadlines. Depending on whether this is something he is having trouble with completing some meaningless tasks at 6, 10, 14 or 18 would make a big difference. Of course all children push back on their parents and teachers, some much more than others, but many of those same kids will be just fine at a job in which sucking it up is accompanied by stock options, prestige and a blue ribbon at their employee review. I'm one such kid. My mom thought I would be homeless because I didn't compromise with her. Well, for one thing she is my mom, for another I was only a kid, and finally, her expectations of me were way out of whack in terms of what "compromise" meant. As I went through college I learned that she just had really high expectations from books. That however does not diminish the real difficulties faced by adults with ADHD and autism in the workplace. It would be hard to say without meeting your son.

I definitely remember them and I still get lost about every time I leave the house.

Finnish fiddle tunes sound amazing. I need to get back into guitar.

I bought so many girls hairs for our Lego sets. The kids fought over them until I pointed out...you can change the hair. Problem solved. We are naturally spatial thinkers. Lego is pretty easy. I never knew Lego was a boy thing until I was like 35 and they made "girl Lego". But it bores them. They are quick. It is not hard to complete a set. That's the thing with girls. Hard to stick to just sets. They moved away from it when it was all boys at Lego classes. Those classes are geared towards male development so they go pretty slowly. Rockets for years, no math. Urgh. But the boys could repeat and repeat and repeat ("faster! Faster! Higher! Higher!") and it was a little mind-numbing. No "why". Which is my whole problem with the sciences in general. Oh I get it, after 40 years you are allowed to ask why and that's nice and all, but not really. Now we do engineering at home. They are allowed to ask "why" without boys mocking them.

You guys, I hope this isn't political but... Even when I benefit from it, it just sickens me how much more stuff rich people get from the same amount of work, than poor people. Like I KNOW I am not more important than a nurse. I just am not. And yet. Because I can make rich people richer and I decided to use my power... I get so much crap. So. Much. Crap. At the same time, yay! Free crap! Stuff that took 10% of my salary when I worked to give hard working adults a better future is now free because I work to sell rich people stuff they don't need! Yay?

We're listening to the Pretenders, so, better than that. ?

That is okay. Health is long game and constant improvement and forgiveness is the best strategy. Did you do better than yesterday? Are you able to believe in yourself for tomorrow?

You are not obligated to support them in Texas or Washington State. They can apply for Medicaid and deal. Speaking of Texas.

@prariewindmomma i am.sorry. we are also in that phase of life, hitting hard now.

Sounds legit. That would help me rest after memory work as well.

The best part of new jobs is waiting for everything to get set up.

Wide range. Data science, business analysis with a CS concentration or stats concentration, statistics, economics, anything but make sure you get a BS in whatever you do and major or minor in math, stats, CS, data science, or engineering. Right now analytics is going through huge changes and a lot of new jobs are appearing to deal with all the data. So I used to do systems, data engineering, data analysis, stats, visual analysis and business analysis. Now most big companies have those roles broken out. Nobody really knows what Data Scientists do. The job at this point is "whatever the rest of the data team can't do". In some places it is setting up machine learning algorithms. In others it is closer to a big data statistician, in others it is more like a principal analyst in the stats division. Everyone has their own JD for these people. It's not IT though. That is hardware. CS is software. Data is all the stuff that produces and what happens with it. Happy to chat with your son if he's interested.

I definitely am in that "not attending religious services" group. I wouldn't expect to be comforted at a celebration of life in the short term. I mean, they died and that's sad. But you get to share what you loved about the person. You're not there to listen to what you already know, but to find a new side of that person. Like, "look, this is how much this person impacted everyone". It's comforting because you see how you're all part of the branches of the tree of life. How everyone is connected. That brings you together through this person even though they are gone, their presence, their impact over time, isn't diminished. For me, I'm much more familiar with this type of end of life celebration than I am with a traditional funeral. I've never been to a traditional funeral. All the old people I know were atheists, or hippies, or both.

I got dehydrated today, like legit dehydrated with dizziness and nausea and chills. It is TOO HOT IN HERE. Also, I am drinking more water now.

Need a SIGH smiley.

Wow, great service and awareness.

Oh no. Well, great.that she owned up to it. Honesty is the best policy.