Oh, yes, I'm in this club. Sometimes, depending on the people around me, it makes me feel like a real outsider. But you know what? I was that same person as a student in college and high school; I just never really fit in with the typical crowd and never particularly bothered me that it didn't.

I almost always buy used on Amazon; it saves me a ton of money. Also, if you received books that you didn't order or were not in the condition as described, you can send them back, put a claim in through Amazon and receive a refund on shipping and shipping cost back, as well. As an Amazon seller and a prolific buyer, I can tell you that if you received completely wrong books it was likely that the shipping label was slapped on the wrong package by accident and the seller didn't intentionally mess it up or confuse the books.

I've seen it both ways (parent allowed back and parent prohibited from the back), with most allowing parents in the back. I walked away from the one that prohibited me from the back when my kids were really little. The kids and myself were not comfortable with that, and there were plenty of other dentists that allowed parents to come along. Just find another dentist if you are not comfortable with the policy that doesn't allowed your participation. ETA: Just so you know, your child can visit a regular dentist, so it's easy to find one that is accommodating. For a child with no pediatric-specific tooth problems, a general dentist is perfectly fine. That's where my kids eventually wound up because that's who they liked best.

While I agree with you that the accused needs treatment, the lawyer did his job for his client and the police screwed up theirs.

Nevermind - it was too smart-ass.

I ship when the funds hit my PayPal account, and I ship Media Mail and pay 23 cents extra for delivery confirmation. There is a link in PayPal you can use to ship to those buyers who send cash for family/friends (which incurs no fees). If, like most buyers, your buyer sends cash through the "purchase" option, the buyers address is automatically in PayPal and will be printed on the label automatically. I know Media Mail can take weeks to arrive, but I've not had such a situation happen to me in many years of shipping Media Mail. I would happily ship by a faster method, but most people don't want to pay for more expensive options (we can't ship Parcel Post anymore from the post office I use).

I'm so sorry for your loss. I know from your posts it's just been a hard road for you.

I'm very picky about how my laundry is done (detergent, how it's dried, temperature, etc). But after it's washed and dried....I don't worry about it. Because I am picky about washing/drying details, I don't trust anyone to do it properly and I do it myself. OP, maybe that's your best solution - just doing it yourself like I do.

And after you do that, lift up those puppies and take a cool hairdryer to the area under your b00ks. I hate being sweaty and this is drying on a hot summer day.

I dunno...but I leave laundry in the laundry basket until I have time to fold, and laundry in the dryer because it's out of sight until I have time to fold. They don't seem like big deals to me - I'd just do it myself when I had time or ask him to do it when he has time if you'd rather not.

I love free stuff I need! Thanks!

Thanks for your response to this. I remember you posting to my thread on the high school board regarding grammar for DD. Well, the other day it dawned on me that it is precisely *this* type of grammar/punctuation problem that she is struggling with. So thanks for this help, as well. I'll think I will take a close look at these!

I agree with much of what you said here, but to the first bolded: I agree it takes until grad school to really get good at experimental design and experimentation. But it may be that those students who are good are good precisely because they had the foundational hands-on experience in high school *and* the scientific literacy to do well. Learning what a hypothesis is can be helped along when one sees it in action and has to work with the results of an experiment, even if it's a relatively simple experiment that we all know the answer to. To the second bolded: The lack of being able to ask the right questions speaks more to the excellence of the teacher and the engagement of the student than it does to the value of the laboratory exercise, I think.

I do think there are some labs that are not worth the paper the procedure is printed on, but in my homeschool, I can adjust that and expand the exercise. For example, I aim to have DD become proficient with the microscope, which requires hands-on time in "lab". Sometimes, exercises where the outcome is familiar to the student are useful in teaching the scientific method and experimental design. That's especially true when the results aren't what you expected! Handling lab equipment (such as reading a graduated cylinder at the meniscus or getting a feel for a micro-pipette) can also only be accomplished in an actual lab setting. At any rate, I agree with you that scientific literacy should be the standard for admission, but scientific literacy and being comfortable in a lab, understanding and applying the scientific method, and handling lab equipment/using a scope, etc... are not mutually exclusive. Ideally, if a student comes in with both skills, the lab can function at a higher level overall.

:lurk5:

Yes, but everyone there is paying the increased tax burden, and if it's anything like my hometown, it's because so many businesses and individuals are getting tax breaks or a percentage off their taxes that *someone* has to pay up to keep the town afloat. STAR, elderly credit, combat veteran credit...it never ends. To me, it does matter where a family is spending their money - if it's a low income that, by necessity, must go to food, housing, insurance, then that would be low-income for that area. Spending that takes the kids to Disney (yeah, I've seen that), buys the grandkids' basketball uniforms - I'm not inclined to favor a tax break for that. I am in favor of a credit for people (not just seniors) below a certain threshold, but the majority of homeowners in a town really need to contribute to the tax base or the town financially fails.

I do not believe anyone should be exempt from income taxes because of age or family status soley. Low income seniors - yes, but $90K isn't even close to low income.

This isn't exactly the same, but we have the funds to buy a private school education for our kids and we choose to homeschool. The ability to customize education and give private tutoring to our kids drives us to do this. Not being on someone else's schedule and rules is a bonus, also.

Can you cut school down to 1/2 day just for the rest of this year - English, math, foreign language?

We have these tax breaks for seniors in the town where we have a home in NY. The problem isn't that people with hardship use them, it's that they are not income-tested or have quite high income limits. I will argue that if you can pay for a grandchild's college and sports, tithe 10% to your church, or support your adult children, you are not poor and can afford to pay the taxes so the entire tax burden of the town does not fall on a few families.

We dispute our taxes every time we see a neighbor with a similar house and lower taxes; you have to get your butt down to the clerk's office and check every year, but we usually get a reduction in the years we dispute.

We had this experience, as well. The bank told us we could afford much more than we were comfortable with and the realtor knew that and kept pushing us to look at homes above what we were willing to pay. We wanted a home where the mortgage could be paid on DH's military pension alone, in case one or both of us lost our job. The realtor looked at us in disbelief when we refused to look at homes above what we decided was affordable. Even so, the things I have and my standard of living at 30 was and is far above anything my parents had or were willing to go into debt for. What's even more astounding is that we live in a neighborhood where people have far more "stuff" than we do because we live very frugally. I am amazed and grateful for everything I have.

In the same vein, I was reading this article the other day: http://www.latinpost.com/articles/13965/20140601/carls-jr-and-hardees-fast-food-ceo-says-minimum-wage-increases-causes-restaurants-to-close.htm I do agree that the USA needs change regarding COL, wages, and supporting family, and something needs to be done about these problems. But I don't think most in this country are ready to embrace real solutions because they will require personal, financial, moral, and social searching; in fact, I think we aren't even close to being able to consider what needs to be done.

Same here. My dad's family was an immigrant farm family during the depression - there were few poorer. I'm stunned at what level of deprivation my dad thinks is OK; he really has a totally different perspective from me. That said, I do not feel that the global standard of poverty, in which people do not have flush toilets, antibiotics, and shoes is OK for the wealthiest nation in the world. I do seem to disagree with most on this board how to solve the poverty problem, but I agree that it needs to be solved and our standard can't be the Great Depression and sub-Saharan Africa standards.

DD is 13 and in 8th grade. She reads extensively (both good literature and twaddle), has excellent reading comprehension even when reading complex works, and she does very well in all subjects except writing. Her writing is structurally very good and she makes sound arguments in her essays, but she is weak on spelling and punctuation, although she has improved in the 3 years she's been homeschooling. Tonight I realized that she seems to have trouble identifying run-on sentences, and I realized this is probably why her punctuation is so bad. Even when I point out a run-on, she'll sit there and argue with me about it, telling me that that's the way she speaks (it isn't) and that she sees nothing wrong with the sentence. DD will be going into high school next year, and I wanted to hang up the grammar hat so that we would have time to do other things, like read and analyze literature more extensively and delve more deeply into history and science. She will have completed R+S English through Grade 6, with strong A's on their tests (go figure). I know she is behind grade level, but she came from public school really deficient in grammar, and needed to start in a book that was below grade level, so here we are. Anyway, I don't know what I need to do to help her to recognize run-on sentences and improve her punctuation. Any ideas? Should I even been worrying about this, or will it resolve with more extensive writing throughout high school. FWIW, she has always had this issue; even in public school 4th grade, her 4th grade level punctuation was sad, sad, sad.