As someone who had an emergency c-section for a preterm breech baby, they are totally available unscheduled! I agree with the wait and see what he does on the day idea.

We have a ton in our neighborhood. Some stale genre paperbacks from the 1990s, but we’ve found lots of good kids books. The good stuff goes fast. I’ve donated too, but most of our discarded books end up at Goodwill. I don’t see a downside to LFLs. They are only adding to the book ecosystem, not replacing bookstores, libraries etc.

Oooh! Just received a lovely response from an archivist at the Wade Center. You guys made the best suggestions!

Huge shout out to Maize for her thoughtful and insightful answers to Dd’s questions! I *love* the Hive! I’ll let you guys know if anyone else gets back to us, but we are thrilled to have Maize’s response!

You are going to *hate* how often I shower and how I stopped wearing deodorant after my pregnancies! These choices are really individual. And yes I’m around other people, people who would say something if there was an issue.

I tried to message you but you can’t receive messages. We may need your services after all!

I don’t brush in the morning. And it doesn’t feel gross. I’m not recommending my choice, but it works for me.

As a kid I was taught twice a day and did that religiously. In the last couple years I’ve dropped the AM brushing. Dentist still gives me rave reviews. I still make the kids brush twice a day. I think it’s a sensory thing for me. I stopped using toothpaste and just use olive oil soap which barely has any taste at all.

I have hEDS and most yoga hurts me. My wrist and shoulder joints just aren’t supposed to support my body weight. COVID absolutely exacerbated my hEDS. I find slow and steady walking to work well for me. Start small. Really small. Maybe walk for 5 minutes. Only walk every other day. See how you feel. Add a minute if you are up for it.

Will do!

How would you feel about him attending Northeastern in the US? I’m not really familiar with the school, but if the US has a reasonable reputation I would think the UK branch would be okay too.

Okay, the link to The Tolkien Professor led me to Signum University. They have a lot of instructors who teach their MA in Tolkien Studies. Just sent them an email, fingers crossed! https://signumuniversity.org

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

One thing that is hard is that my mom *was* aware of intergenerational trauma. She thought she was the one who would break the cycle. She went to therapy, she raised us in a radically more loving and stable household than the one she was raised in. And she was *still* emotionally abusive. It isn’t a one generation problem, and it isn’t a one generation fix. My job is to take the yardage my mom worked *so* hard for and advance the ball with my own kids. And accept that they will someday probably have issues with me….

Encanto was a horror movie for me. My mom was a covert narcissist, like the Grandma in the movie, bad enough to be scary and do real harm, but just safe enough you could still see all her positive traits. I know narcissists can be much worse, but Encanto was a punch to the gut. Way too relatable. The one year anniversary of my mom’s death is this month. I miss her, but more than anything her death was a gift. I can (mostly) stop worrying about her all the time, which is so freeing. I’d love to still have her without her trauma, but that was never an option. I found therapy in my forties, the year or so before her death, to be amazingly helpful. I had done therapy before, but having a husband and kids of my own gave me the distance and insight to really dive into my relationship with my mom. I realize now that I couldn’t have dealt with that stuff any earlier even if I had wanted to. There is a real timing to how we can unravel our own issues. You are ready when you are ready. I think you can choose to engage with your issues when they appear, instead of avoiding them, but you can’t really control when certain issues emerge in your life. Letting go of control has been the big lesson for me.

I would 100% be okay with High School teachers! That’s a great idea.

Thank you all for these great leads!

Dd9 needs to interview an expert for her third grade research project. She has chosen JRR Tolkien as her subject, and drafted 10 straightforward written questions. Now we just need to find an expert. I was hoping we could use the professor at a local college that teaches a course on Tolkien, but so far that isn’t panning out. Help me Hive! Where are our Tolkien experts? A professor would be amazing. A mere grad student would be great. Your dad who knows everything about everything Tolkien ever wrote would probably work! (My own dad would qualify, except they aren’t supposed to interview relatives…) This is just third grade, the term “expert” can be interpreted *broadly.* I thank you all for your ideas, she and I are both Autistic and reaching out to people is just *so* stressful.

I had so much gestational diabetes insulin left over after my pre-term labor. I felt awful throwing it out. Good for you for taking the time to find it a new home!

My best resource is the Body Politic LongCovid support group. Very data driven. A great group. https://www.wearebodypolitic.com/covid-19

Most churches require you to use their officiants, but we have some non-denominational churches that will rent their space for you to use with your own officiant, so you can have a secular ceremony in a pretty building. I looked at a lot of churches when we were planning our wedding, everyone had their policies very clearly stated on their websites, so you can poke around without having to talk to anyone.

Not the same relationship at all, but my mom and my uncle. He was the baby in the family, she basically raised him herself. *Tons* of childhood trauma. They were very close as adults, in a codependent way, until they had a blow-up fight. They didn’t speak for seven years. And then they went back to being close siblings. Sometimes relationships really truly need a reset, sometimes people really do need space to work on themselves.

If you are using professional movers, get a quote for having your movers pack for you. Seriously the best money I have ever spent in my adult life. Doesn’t add that much to the cost of a long-distance move, saves so much hassle. (They provide the supplies! No extra boxes!) And they do a way better job than I would do! (It is their job after all!)

In our neighborhood houses are always emptied and staged prior to sale. I’d hire professionals, have our stuff moved into storage, and we’d be out the door in no time at all. We have some appliances that need replacement, but we’d probably sell as-is. The kitchen is over thirty years old, the buyer would probably want to redo it all anyway. Houses are selling a lot slower now that interest rates are up, but the house has the bones to be competitive. But: Ideally I’d love to do a massive purge *before* all that, so we would have less crap to unpack on the other side. *That* would take awhile!

As a kid growing up in an affluent coastal CA suburb I knew lots of Jewish and Catholic kids. A handful of main line Protestants. Two elementary school teachers were Zen Buddhists, and we had a few white hippy Hindu families. What we didn’t have, or at least what I wasn’t aware of, was any Evangelical Protestants. I didn’t meet any until college, and it remains a group I haven’t had much interaction with in real life. Whenever I hear that people haven’t met Jews, which is totally foreign to me, I remember that I grew up in my own bubble… I’m really grateful to this forum for giving me a chance to interact with Evangelical Protestants. I’ve learned so much.