I try to donate regularly, since I am O negative. Which is better for an O- to donate, whole blood or double red cells? Another factor is that I am sometimes turned down for having too low an iron level, even though I take prescription iron. Your thoughts, please. :bigear:

Ugh. And exactly how much would it cost to have a basement dug underneath a pre-existing house? ;)

I was at Left Bank Books last weekend, and saw a book that I intended to pick up for my son, but by the time I emerged from the basement used book section I had forgotten all about it. Can you all help me come up with some nice options? William liked Peter & the Star Catchers, Harry Potter, Eragon, Percy Jackson, and Ranger's Apprentice.

Sorry, I don't seem to be able to find it. But you get the gist: find a recipe for spicy chicken, pack up a ziplock baggie of the spices, buy a package of chicken at the local grocery along with your side dishes, and dump the chicken and spices into a crockpot. Keep the cold side dishes in a cooler or pick some up before heading back to the hotel for the evening. You'll be shopping frequently, but your meals will be frugal and you can do test-runs of the recipes before you leave so you know your family will like them.

There's a website of ideas for crockpot meals in which you pre-package all the non-perishables into a ziplock baggie, label with the items you need to add & measurements, then leave it in the hotel room while you are out and about all day sightseeing and come back to a hot meal. I'll see if I kept it bookmarked.;)

I can't resist sharing this video sent to me by a friend. Talk about small-space living! Woohoo! I imagine it's high-end, but what great design. :D http://wimp.com/spacesaving/

This wasn't what you requested, but I'm going to post it anyway, because 1) it might solve your problem, and 2) others might find it useful. Put small bowls of vinegar around the house where you smell something you don't want to smell. Vinegar absorbs and neutralizes the odor, even fish and garlic. Alternatively, burn a candle near your stove. The combustion does the same office. It's sometimes suggested as a way to reduce strong onion odors and eye-sting while chopping.

Reading a good book really does feed the soul, as well as the brain. Good for you!

Cook a whole chicken in the crockpot, then use the meat to add to salads or sandwiches. I set up the crockpot in the garage or on the back deck. Gazpacho if it's just me. I love it, but no one else in the family will touch it. Heh heh. Tortilla chips, a chunky salsa, guacamole, bean dip, maybe some cheese sprinkled over the top. Heat up the bean dip in the microwave if you like it warm. Some cold chicken on the side. And for the ultimate in kid-friendly convenience: Wheat Thins, apples, and string cheese. :D

Ooh, this means my copy will be arriving soon. This makes me very happy.:D And yes, those Sirens do sing beautifully. I love Martin Cothran's articles, and his lectures on Circe's annual conference CDs. Preach it, Martin! :hurray:

It would be fine. You'll have to explain a lot, just because so much of their work is so far removed from our lives. Well, remembering some of the posters here, perhaps I should say from *my* life. LOL

I learned something from a book years ago called "Parachutes for Parents" where the author talked about how her children drained her dry every single day and so she would try to escape and block them out (not saying you do this, Tara, just to be clear!). She finally realized that by putting up walls to protect herself she was in effect forcing the children to climb over them to get to her. They were locked in a battle that on the children's side was harming their self-concept as people worthy of their mother's time and respect for their reasonable needs. Yet she desperately needed some respite from their (seemingly) insatiable demands. Her insight was that she needed to give them pure and undivided attention for part of the day. But that once that 'love cup' was getting filled up, and they knew they could trust her not to bug out on them again, their demands for attention would become less. So every day after work, she would take some time to sit on the sofa and give her children her undivided attention. They knew that this was *their* time, and she would not be distracted by other jobs or projects or calls. It became a treasured part of their family life, and sure enough, the children were able to tolerate "I'm busy" or "Not right now" much, much better because their love cup was not empty, and they knew she was no longer erecting barriers to them, but would get to them soon. Again, not saying you are erecting barriers, it sounds like you are dropping and running a lot! Perhaps you can feel comfortable saying no to some requests if you and they know that at a definite time soon they will have your full attention? Of course I don't want to tell you how to parent your children, just wanted to share a story that meant a lot to me, when I had a very demanding toddler and I was still learning how to balance all our needs. Blessings,

People who are nice when they want something and unkind or worse otherwise have another adjective: manipulative. I avoid them like the plague, now that I can. And I never, ever trust them with anything important.

I wasn't able to protect my son from injury when a fellow homeschool boy who needed social play came over. His mother needed a listening ear, so we chatted in the kitchen. I didn't realize the potential danger to my own kid from playing out in the backyard unsupervised at 7 years old. My own ignorance led to a very unpleasant situation, and I lost any taste I might have had for using my child as a social skills helper. He has had other times of interacting with and learning kindness for SN kids who are neighbors and kids of DH's co-workers. Ester maria put it well in that I don't 'prepare' him to deal with others with special needs or learn compassion. We just deal with people as we meet them, and try to be compassionate. I don't relate this to denigrate your idea, just to give one person's experience that might be similar to another's and affect their interest in participating.

Enjoy. They are one of my favorite companies in the world. :grouphug: I'm listening to "American Ideals: Founding a Republic of Virtue" and "Greece and Rome" with "Science and Religion" on the bookshelf, awaiting its turn. :D

Plaid Dad wrote a great book of stuff that one might want to use for memorization that I'm enamored of. (Of which I am enamored? -- lol) Living Memory: A Classical Memory Work Companion, by Andrew A. Campbell.

Most cultures in most times are not curious about other cultures, if they aren't decidedly xenophobic. Why did some cultures develop an interest in other people and places? Trade for luxury goods makes you interested in the smaller questions of how to get silk and spices from point A to point B, but Marco Polo was a man of larger vision. He 'went native' and lived in Mongol-ruled China for many years. When his memoir was published in Italy it caused a sensation. Most people didn't believe it and assigned it to the category of encyclopedias of monstrous beasts and catalogues of bizarre tales that were extant at the time. But people talked about it. Debated it. Read it. Learned from it. It roused something new: curiosity about a civilization far, far away, and immeasurably rich and sophisticated. The search for profit fueled the Age of Exploration, but Marco Polo's memoirs planted the seed that grew up alongside the greed: curiosity about the wider world and its many people.

Oh I am hopeful now, reading your post, teachermom. :001_smile: I was worried that my post would be seen as too harsh or blaming. Of course that wasn't my intent, but I haven't been on these boards in a long time, so my 'street cred' isn't going to be that high around here, eh? lol It sounds as if you are ready to be as tough as you need to be to get out of the rut and Make It Happen. Shake up his happy little hidey-hole and let him see the lengths you are willing to go to in order to get your point across. He has to see that getting better is going to be painful, but less painful than staying where he is. Bring it on! :D

The workaholic is not so much enjoying work as he is avoiding intimacy. He lacks the skills to feel successful and competent with people. Or he had such a cr*ppy childhood that intimacy feels scary and overwhelming to him. Work acts as a socially acceptible buffer for him. Cognitive-behavioral therapy can work, but so far what you've described the only one with a problem that is motivated to change the situation is you. Until *he* is uncomfortable enough to change, it won't happen. You can go to therapy by yourself and learn how to keep yourself sane and how to cope. But you may need to stop making his life as easy, because you're [wierd to say it this way, I know] enabling his workaholism. I don't mean you haven't had to live this way . . . you have to do what you have to do in order to provide a loving and stable home for your children. I get that. I approve. I'm just pointing out the reality. He's happy with things the way they are. He manages his anxiety and emotional issues by hiding behind a laptop and piles of papers. My DH is one who cannot handle being home for long, and so he breathes a sigh of relief when Monday comes around. His unhappy childhood gave him few skills for long-term intimacy. But he's working on it. It's a slow process, but he is starting to communicate with me about how he's feeling and allowing us both to brainstorm solutions. He is beginning to see me as his ally instead of his problem. I have learned to be a Kick-*ss Wife who loves him enough to pull the rug out from under his coping mechanism. :D

Brain power is elastic. Like a muscle. The more it is stretched, or challenged, the stronger it gets. And in younger children, the faculty of memorization is . . . strong. heh heh. Who knows the names of all the kinds of dinosaurs? Who knows all the words to every blankety-blank jingle on the television? Who knows the names and functions of every type of large mechanical device on the road? A four-year-old boy, of course! So we put that childhood superpower in classical training and use it only for good. (Instead of selling junk food, eh?) Knowing a lot of poems, Latin chants of verb declensions, and the list of prepositions won't do much for them as little kids, but putting all of that into long-term memory storage is invaluable in later years. Memorization is fun and easy for little kids, so we feed that enjoyment with things they will find useful later on. And then we listen to them reciting their poems and chants in the car, and like that a lot better than listening to them singing "Dora, Dora, Dora, the Explorer!"

I witnessed public school teachers at an open community forum about the possibility of a charter school who had very strong opinions but had never done any research to back up those opinions. Our state required all districts to look into setting up a charter school. The people who did the research and made the proposal (at the request of the school board, mind you) were attacked left, right and sideways by ignorant boobs with teaching degrees. I decided then and there they would never get their hands on my children. Little did I know it would turn out to be the best job I ever had. :D

Sounds very 'mathy' to me! Intuitive grasp of the concepts. Good going, kid! Some children can make inuitive leaps like that, bless their hearts. :001_smile:

We keep seasonal books in special bins in the basement and pull them out at the appropriate time. Extra reading for the season is handy, and we get to know and remember old favorites as we rediscover them each year. The boys have never lost their fondness for Jan Brett's winter-themed books after the Thanksgiving books are put away, and we esteem the Gennady Spirin books as especial friends. One Christmas baking book from the 1950's has more cooky recipes than you could make in 10 years of Christmases, and the browsing in it is always exciting. We like to sing from the books of illustrated carols, too. Lovely memories.

Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom, and others in that series. Adorable, and the drawings are so rich with loving connection between the members of the family. Angus and the Ducks, by Marjorie Flack and the other titles in that series. Millions of Cats by Wanda Ga'g.

Parochial people are . . . parochial. ;) You'll probably meet a few in Richmond, but not at first. They don't go out of their way to meet 'strangers' (i.e., people outside their circle of friends-since-kindergarten).