This thread make me glad to live in Canada. Here there is only one ambulance service per province. If I call 911 the ambulance will be dispatched and then will take me to the closest ER. If that hospital can't deal with the problem they will stabalize the patient and ship them out to a tertiary care hospital. I don't have to worry about which hospital because our provincial insurance will cover any of them. We do pay for ambulance rides but they're not that expensive. I haven't taken one in a long time but I think that they're about $75 per trip.

I'd suggest human biology because it's the only one that is really useful for a non-science major. He's also bound to have some knowledge of the subject already.

I was just remembering a weird coincidence that happened to us awhile ago. My dh was on an airplane flying from one major US airport to another major US airport. He was sitting next to a woman and started to chit chat with her. He asked her where she lived and she said she lived in northern BC. He was surprised and said that he also lived in northern BC and asked her what town. She said that she lived in our town. This was quite surprising as our town has population of less than 2000 people. Upon further discussion he realised that she actually lived about 1 mile from our house and she realised that she had seen me my children walking around the neighbourhood! How weird is that?! So I got wondering, what are your strangest coincidences?

I use my 9qt all the time. Could you roast a turkey in yours?

Had a driver's license (I'm working on it though). Lived in ahouse with an air conditioner.

I'm fumbling my way through a year of teaching 20th century history. I was good for the first 50 years but after watching an old bbc documentary series on the cold war via youtube (which is very good, btw) I realised that I really don't know the second half of the 20th century very well at all. In may ways I feel that recent history is some of the most important history to understand so I don't want to do a poor job at teaching it. Now that we're almost done this series I've been thinking of trying to find another on the history of the middle east crisis and the gulf wars. My understanding of this history is VERY fuzzy and so I don't even really know what I need to teach. What should I start with? What should I cover? Do you have any suggestions for materials? Documentaries are actually getting done here which is a bonus. We've been watching them together in the evenings when our littles are all out of the way. I'd probably prefer this route but some books would be good too, especially if I can get them from the library.

I'm working on teaching my older dd the basics of algebra. Today she had this problem: 2x-3=7x-58 I can easily solve this problem but what I couldn't grasp was how to adequately explain why the 'minus 3' becomes 'negative 3' when you subtract 2x from both sides. I understand it almost intuitively. It just has to be but that's not a very adequate explanation, iykwim. Can you explain this better? 2x-3-2x=7x-58-2x -3=5x-58

:(

My dc will fight over the cabbage and cauliflower cores.

I think that you should be fine. Oat flour is just ground oats.

One possibility in this situation that I don't think anybody mentioned is that perhaps many of the family have genetic issues that have led to the stunted growth and childlike behaviour of the adult children. Perhaps one or both of the parents are slow (I especially wonder about the mother). Maybe, the parents started out with good intentions (we can be hopeful) but life got the better of them and work of caring for so many children, some of whom are perhaps disabled, just led to mental breakdown and bad choices in an attempt to control the chaos that had developed around them. Maybe this is why none of the adult children took action. Maybe the 17yo was more capable. Who knows, maybe the children that were chained to their beds are so disabled that they would have bolted from the home. I have a friend with such a profoundly autistic 10yo son that she has to lock him in his room every night or he would seriously injure himself. Our equivalent of CPS caught wind of this and without a proper investigation, because of a lack of social workers, they caused her no end of trouble. We just don't know what could have caused this disaster. As far as what could be done by society to help these sorts of families I really don't think that there is a solution. Not every ill is society can be fixed with a tweak. As long as society chooses to remain detached from our physical neighbours these sorts of people will be able to hide. On second thought, maybe a totalitarian model would do the trick. The North Korean model of government probably allows for enough oversight of civilians to avoid this kind of abuse. Be careful what you ask for...

I did this with my two oldest. They are absolute history buffs. When they were in the younger elementary years we just checked out library books. I generally did the picking. I would basically search for books that covered topics that we hadn't hit upon yet. We never really did units. One month we might look at a book about life in Rome and the lives of some of the saints. As they got into their later elementary years they read a lot of historical fiction and I chose a few read-aloud to go through with them with the goal of giving them a better picture of the scope of history. At this point we're still fairly interest led; they get to pick educational library books on whatever history topics they find interesting. I also use R&S history 9 and on the side we're watching a long bbc documentary series on the cold war. When we finish that we'll probably find a documentary series on the history of the middle east crisis. We don't do much writing on history issues but we discuss things all the time. Occasionally I assign some sort of essay. I'm just reluctant to kill their enjoyment of it.

Any way you could give me the FB code since I'm not on FB? This pattern looks really good.

I hate to ask this but are you 100% sure it's not pregnancy?

What? You don't want a litebrite? I always longed for one of those when I was child but my mom held her ground in opposition. She was so mean.

We shake our sillies out here. I don't know where I learned this but basically I sit like a lump and sing this song: "Shake, shake, shake your sillies out. Shake, shake, shake your sillies out. Shake, shake, shake your sillies out. Shake your sillies out now!" and then, "Jump, jump, jump..." "Twist, twist, twist..." "Stomp..." "Kiss..." It just keeps going until they're tired.

Interesting. I didn't know that there was a name difference. I thought that the people up thread were talking about paramedics. I think that it pays better up here in Canada but I'm not sure about that.

I'm so excited I had to share. My ds is making such good headway on his writing skills. We've been slowly plodding our way through WWS1 and just finished week 29, which was an assignment about Julius Caesar. Ds struggles with probable dyslexia and dysgraphia. His punctuation issues are so challenging. This essay definitely had it's syntax issues but it was actually really good in terms of style and organization. This was really encouraging but the icing on the cake was that he used a semi-colon and that he used it correctly! I'm so happy about this because it feels like I may actually be able to graduate him as someone who can write like a literate adult. As a sidenote, I showed ds SWB's picture on here and he was shocked. He said that he always pictured her to be an old, short, overweight grumpy lady. I suggested that we could go to the PNW meet and greet gathering and he was horrified! I'm pretty sure that he figures that her sole purpose in life is to torture him. :laugh:

What about an assistant for special needs children in the public schools? Here it requires minimal education. An lpn or care aid would be another thought. Does he have mechanical aptitude?

Thanks everyone. I've tried coconut oil but the reason I was thinking of buying a commercial moisturizer is that I find it hard to not leave my pillowcase greasy. How do you all deal with that?

The foot moisturizer thread got me thinking that you all probably know just what I need. I have really dry skin on my face right now. I suspect I might be dealing with a rosacea flair up. Every time I've tried to use a moisturizer my face gets all blotchy and red. I need something that is really good for very sensitive skin. What would you suggest?

We're having some sick days here and I wanted to ask for some recommendations for youtube channels or episodes for my 6yo ds. I specifically am looking for educational material that is not banal or silly. I really find most children's programming thoroughly obnoxious. <rant>I find it almost offensive how most people seem to think that unless something is wild and silly that children will find it boring. Children are capable of appreciating well presented knowledge. All the silliness just spoils their appetite for mature material. I've got the same beef with children's fiction at the library. </rant> Back to my original question... I really don't care what the subject matter is as long as it's appropriate for a young child and is soberly presented. We'll probably do Paddle to the Sea this week. Some science episodes would be good, maybe some history. What do you have for me?

Not a chance, but I hate tatoos. All I can imagine is what they're going to look like when the person is 85 years old and it's all saggy and gross.

I'm really not fond of fiction either. In the last couple of days I've been researching low histamine diets and whether there is any merit to them, Rosacea and everything that there is to know about pinworms.

My Mom dewormed us every year after our first pinworm outbreak. I remember that the liquid suspension had a distinct resemblance to blood. I can taste it now...