That's because I made a typo. Fixing it!

Poverty leads to crimes of poverty... which tend to be punished more harshly than crimes of affluence. For that matter, even those crimes which have nothing to do with income (spousal abuse, drug use, drunk driving) tend to be punished less harshly if the perpetrator is wealthy. It's disgusting, really.

I don't stand right over them to supervise - the stove is right next to the sink, so I wash dishes or wipe down the table while they stir the eggs.

How on earth is adding more guns to the situation going to help? Sure - but if you have stricter gun control, you reduce access to *illegal* guns, many of which are stolen from people who bought them legally. Compare the shooting rates anywhere in the US (even if you take out accidental shootings) to places like the UK or China, which have much stricter gun control laws. If the argument here is "well, criminals don't obey the law!" you would expect the rates to be similar - after all, criminals in the UK or China or Spain or wherever have no more incentive to follow the law than criminals in the US. But they're not. Also, don't forget that many shootings are committed by people who consider themselves law-abiding, but who draw their gun at the wrong time, thinking they'll be a "hero" or that they're in "danger" or that "they only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun". Consider Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman's defense was that he thought he was legitimately in danger. Well, I don't know what he really believed deep in his heart, but let's go with that. Sure. But if there had been stricter qualifications for owning a gun, or if there had been stricter restrictions on where he could carry it around, things would not have shaken out the way they did. George Zimmerman would not have shot Trayvon, he probably would not have even escalated the situation the way he did. Odds are, Trayvon Martin would be alive today.

You know how we got the "less and fewer" distinction? Some dude, a Mr. Robert Baker, got it into his head that it "sounded nicer" to use less for mass nouns and fewer for count nouns, and that everybody else should say it the way he liked. And from then on it went, in a very short time, from one man's personal preferences to a CORRECT RULE OF GRAMMAR (that hardly anybody actually follows in natural speech). Betcha a dollar that's exactly what happened here. Some third grade teacher or accountant or style guide blowhard got it into their fool head that this is how it worked, and they were so adamant about it that they convinced lots of other people. It's not a real rule, it's what linguists call a made up zombie rule. Sadly, in this world you are often judged on how well you follow the arbitrary shibboleths that are made up zombie rules, so you may find it beneficial to teach your kids to say numbers a certain way, just like you teach them not to say certain words in public or to not wear bathing suits to a wedding. (Although given the level of dissent here, I doubt this is one of those times where it even matters that much!) Edit: Twice in one day I find myself apologizing, I didn't mean to rant. I should get off the internet until I get some food in me. Sorry about that!

Not so! Five is old enough to make scrambled eggs (with supervision), smoothies, toast. Eight is more than old enough to make pancakes, french toast, muffins (with help for taking out of the oven). And of course, yogurt, fresh fruit, and cereal aren't "cooking". And I bet, once the luster came off, they'd stop wanting so many extra dishes with breakfast :)

Are they old enough that you can say "If you're so hungry, fix it yourself"?

Seems reasonable to me, although there may be a few toys you want to keep longer, just in case they have a sudden interest in, say, Legos or whatnot.

We're gonna buy ALL THE THINGS!!!! I'll probably overbuy. But I don't want to ask for input and end up secondguessing myself, so, as I said - ALL THE THINGS! Pens, check. Notebooks, check. Graph paper... probably. I don't know if we ever used up the reams of graph paper we bought when *I* was in school. I think it ended up shoved in the front room somewhere.... Crayons, markers, colored pencils, paint, paper, glue? Check, check, double check, aaaaand - check-check-check! Gonna buy everything! Except pencils. We have a surfeit of pencils, which is annoying because I freaking *hate* pencils. Every year, I'd look at the school supply lists and say "okay, this is it, they're going to say the kids need pens" and every year it was more flipping pencils. (And no binders. Apparently, schools around here have decided it is less confusing for the kids to juggle a bajillion marble notebooks and folders than to have one, neat, organized looseleaf binder. I don't get it. Maybe they start using looseleafs in middle school, but as our local middle school is so awful it reeks of sulfer and brimstone (not to mention farts), we'll never know!) Disposible fountain pens? These exist?

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Because the idea is that you read them to your children, many many picture books are written at a third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade or higher level. Stick with picture books.

What if it turns out they're from Pakistan? (Wait, are there international scammers working out of Pakistan? There must be, right? They can't all be centered in India and Nigeria, can they?)

Why would they stop calling? They're just playing the odds until they get somebody to fall for the scam.

Zombie Based Geography. If that's anything as good as the title would suggest, I'm gonna get that for *me*. And, uh, the kids. Even though I already have a nagging suspicion I planned too much for our first year.

Hachette in particular does not intend to "be included", and given the way Amazon has been treating them lately that's no surprise.

If you'd gone and assaulted that guy with the kittens, I promise, no jury in the world would convict.

It looks like some publishers don't intend to work with Amazon on this. No surprise, the list of publishers who won't participate includes Hachette.

The advice given to people who do TNR is as follows: 1. Feed the cat regularly so they know where the goods are. 2. Put out a trap, but one that's not set. Start putting the food in there so they are comfortable going in there. 3. Leave the unset trap out, don't put out any food for two days. You want them good and hungry. 4. Set the trap, put some really stinky food inside so they KNOW it's a feeding day, wait patiently. When the trap is set, make sure there's a cat in there instead of a raccoon or possum. Then you can take the trap and cat to the vet, provided you've already sourced a vet who works with feral animals. The procedure for cats with kittens may be slightly different, this is for grown cats. That's rough. I'm sorry to hear that.

And I'm pretty sure you don't get to keep the books. There are some book subscription services, such as entitle, that do allow you to keep the books, though their selection is highly limited right now.

It's very common for cats to have two families - or for so called "backyard cats" to have so many people feeding them that nobody feels obligated to take them to the vet or get them fixed or check up on them if they disappear. So with a friendly cat like this, it could go either way. She might have another family, or she might just be a well-socialized stray. It was very kind of you to give her a dose of flea meds, I know how pricey those are! I do take in strays, but only occasionally. More often, I arrange to have them fixed and then either rehome them or expect one of the other cat-friendly families on the block to feed them. We're very lucky in my neighborhood, we have two people who both feed strays and will provide antibiotics free for eye infections or respiratory infections if they know the family in question won't take the animal to the vet, so our backyard animals and most of the strays do pretty well for themselves.

That's normal for many kids, though not all kids. The younger kiddo spent her first grade year wrestling with the concept of the start of the world. She could grasp religious explanations from any religion you threw at her, and she had a good enough understanding of a non-religious explanation, but she just couldn't get her head around "but what happened BEFORE that?" (Neither can I!) Of course, you have to intersperse this with questions about what makes belly button lint to get the full picture of what's going on in their heads at that age.

The type that's had its first knuckle joints removed because it was scratching the couch and thus should never, ever be allowed outside. Cats can be taught to acclimate to a new kitty, I've done it, I'm in the process of doing it now (with some success - over a period of three months, not counting the confinement period, they've moved from snarling and attacking on sight to growling slightly and averting their gaze because if you don't see the other cat it's like he's not even there, and I've occasionally caught Newbie Cat and the other boycat snuggling like they're friends, but only when they're outside the house). But it's not *easy* by any stretch of the imagination, and I wouldn't want to try it with one that's already injured. Also, I'm told cats are, on average, more territorial in rural areas than in urban areas due to both less food per cat and also less cats around that you have to share with.

Reading leveling systems vary immensely, and if you do a little research you'll see they hardly ever align. One book might be "third grade" in one system and "fifth grade" in another, a different book, same two systems, might be "fourth grade" and "second grade". The AR program levels books using the ATOS formula.Another link with more information. Then they use the levels to determine points, with more points going to higher level books that are outside the "zone of proximal development", that is, just slightly harder than easy reading for the kid. AR isn't the only way to ruin reading for your kid, but it's a big one, right up there with having to write "reading reflections" every day.

I don't know what it's like in your area, but over here no kill shelters and cat rescues are usually full up, with a backlog. You call them to say you have a rescue cat, and they say "Any chance you can foster him for a few days/weeks/months? We'll get back to you when we have space!" No, I cannot foster him for a few days/weeks/months, that's how I ended up with four cats in the first place! (And the other three don't yet like newbie cat.) There are shelters that HAVE to take your animal if you show up with it... but of course, those are all kill shelters. They have to be! Leaving a cat in the country. Stupid. There's less food in the country!

Spiral notebooks, but write on the OTHER side of the page.

Whatever you decide to do re: camp, please go to the doctor to get her checked out for any physical issue. I have a young friend who started having accidents at the age of 8, and her parents at first chalked it up to stress due to a pet dying. After a few weeks of this they brought her in to the doctor to have her tested for a bladder infection, and they were lucky they did because the doctor had her rushed to the hospital. At that point, she wasn't far from entering a diabetic coma, and it took several days to get her blood sugar regulated. Obviously, that's the long-shot outcome, but a bladder infection is still pretty likely.