SamanthaCarter
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Posts posted by SamanthaCarter
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$5 each sounds right. I’d opt for the PPs suggestion of take out pizza and a batch of homemade choc chip cookies.
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1 hour ago, Liz CA said:
Interesting point you bring up. Will large companies have one fairly small headquarter / hub for conferences, etc. while people are otherwise working from home? How will the workforce-from-home be classified in terms of taxes? Hopefully people will be able to deduct office supplies unless they submit for reimbursement. When part of my work was done from home, I was able to claim a home office.
Some people may miss the office interaction component while others will consider themselves blessed in the words of one very happy "homeworker" "Living my best life." 🙂
I wish our department would allow us to work from home.
I think the irs/Congress is going to really lower the bar on claiming the home office deduction in the next year or so. As it stands, you have to have dedicated space in your home for work, but so many people just don’t have the space to dedicate work-only areas, yet were expected to work from home for extended periods of time. I’m watching this with interest.
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My dh went through two at work, and then back to paper. I'm not sure if he still uses one at work for certain things or if he just retired them outright.
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Just as a suggestion, cost generally goes down per night the longer the rental, so if you choose one slightly smaller than needed and staggered people's arrivals and departures over two weeks, you could get away with a smaller house. My mom and dad do this. They have 5 adult children and 4 sons-in-law, and 6 grandchildren. They can get away with a five bedroom house by taking the master suite themselves (they pay!) and letting the rest of us stagger our trips. This way, there are only a couple of nights where the overlap requires someone to sleep on a couch or floor. Usually there is one couple/family that never actually sees the other, because they don't overlap. This is not a downside to some, since there are some who prefer to be on vacation without nieces and nephews.
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For a week, I'd be willing to chip in up to $1000 for my family, plus cost of food. I'd want beachfront, no pool, because I'm not gonna get stuck as lifeguard.
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I happen to know this as former bookkeeper and then treasurer. Church members or regular attendees may contact a pastor, elder or deacon about needs. The Diaconate takes care of this from their fund, and the fund is used to pay for specific requests, such as rent or utility payments, health care costs, etc. These are paid directly to the vendor on the members behalf when possible. The church office also has a stockpile of $25 grocery store gift cards. There is is a second small fund, closely guarded by pastors for privacy, to help needy members pay for outside counseling. These are the official monetary helps through the church.
Additionally, like most churches, there are members that arrange meal trains for families with new babies, illness in family, etc.-
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I have:
a pair of sneakers
a pair of flip flops
black flats
brown heels
a pair of light snow/heavy rain boots
heeled boots for with skirts
(I used to have slippers but I hated them, I like slipper socks better)
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My yard/garden.
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I don’t know! I haven’t filled my tank for a month! 😳
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My overwintered spinach is bolting, kale already bolted. I’ve got a nice patch of spring lettuces coming along, so mostly we’ve been using spinach and some nice heads of volunteer lettuces that came up mid winter (it’s been a weird winter and spring). My peas are about six inches high, and I have chard, sprouting broccoli and carrots making their emergence. Peppers, tomatoes and basil are living indoors until May. My garlic is dying. I have no idea why. Possibly a fungal infection.
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I’d toss the frosting, it was made with inexpensive ingredients and has no nutritional value.
Make a pilaf with the barley.
Rice flour -no idea.
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1 minute ago, Ktgrok said:
Hounds are amazingly sweet, and gentle, just don't expect them to be easy to train. At all. As puppies they are into everything and have zero concept of right and wrong. BUT...if you survive to adulthood they are the sweetest most amazingly great dogs.
Oh, except for the noise. Ours is a coonhound/bloodhound mix, and only barks at night, at things on the fence or in the trees. Because, well, that is what coonhounds do - they chase animals up into trees and bark at them for the hunter to find. Which means every night i'm yelling, "knock it off and get in the house!!" to my coonhound who is alerting me to the presence of a possum, or just the possibility of a possum - what we refer to as "possumbilities".
He was a nightmare to obedience train, but part of that was because he was already 3 months old and had been in half a dozen places already where he learned bad habits. If you'd asked me back then I'd have said I would never ever get a hound again. But now? Now he is SO sweet and loving and gentle.....I could see me having amnesia and getting another 🙂
I agree they are great kid dogs. Mine LOVES my little boy. And we learned later that coonhounds are actually great watch dogs and very protective when the situation warrants, but very sweet and not aggressive at all.
Okay, I’ll give the caveat that ours was one when we got her. I didn’t want a puppy. 🤪
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A big hound. The only real drawback is the bay. Coonhound, foxhound or the like. I had no idea how perfect they were for children til we got one. I’ve been around a lot of breeds and mixes, so I feel like I have a good sense for how they compare.
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The freezer is your friend, but keep things moving. The food shouldn’t go there to die. 😉
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4 hours ago, Laura Corin said:
We would have a piece of meat on Sunday (a roast chicken, piece of lamb, etc.) then would eat it in various guises for the rest of the week, stretched with pulses, dairy, grains and vegetables. By Friday it would be used up and we would often have sausages and beans.
See, to me that’s not leftovers. The cooked meat became raw material for entirely new meals.
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The only difference here is that DH doesn’t dash to the grocery store when he sees that something is running low, and come home with that and several other items. I’ve always been a “we can do without until next grocery trip” kind of shopper/food preparer. I’m still operating under the assumption that the store will have what we want, or a suitable substitute. We are not in a hotspot.
OP, I grew up in a family of big eaters, 6 of us. Over time I’ve adapted my sense of portion so that my family will have few-to-manageable leftovers. Ive eaten way too many meals of the other half of the casserole or the other third of the pot of soup all by myself. Nobody helps eat up leftovers unless it was the rare, highly prized dish or I force the issue. It kind of sucks that I don’t get much break from cooking, but little scraps of raw materials prepped and squirreled away in the freezer helps. Chop up that ham and freeze it in 1 cup portions. Use the rolls for breadcrumbs.
ETA: yesterday I made zuppa toscana that included the rest of the too-big portion of braised kale from earlier in the week. No one noticed. Monday I used the rest of the chicken with creamy sun dried tomato sauce by tossing it in with a small batch of Alfredo sauce and stirring it into fresh pasta. The sun dried tomatoes were not that, they were cherry tomatoes (from my kids government lunches) tossed on the grill after the hamburgers came off last time we cooked out.
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We do spring lacrosse and children’s choir. We will return to both next school year. We don’t have many other away activities apart from church and youth group.
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Garbage in, garbage out.
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I know this sounds crazy, but this whole episode seems to me like an opportunity to step back and really assess what we are doing with public K-12 education. To really think deeply about whether some of the trappings/routines are really the best we can offer or if it’s just the way we’ve always done it. Harness the change in the air.
1. MidAug through MidMay school. This is a vestige of a bygone (pre HVAC, and when mom or grandparent at home was more common) era. Working families would arguably be better served if the summer break became several-weeks-long quarterly breaks over the year. Childcare easier to obtain/budget while trips would still be possible for those who can afford it.
2. Gigantic fancy school buildings that are still overfull. At some point we lost sight of what a school building needs to be. We made them so fancy and expensive, we couldn’t afford the needed square footage. Maybe we could rethink small neighborhood schools, like 20 or less per grade small. This would scale down to the point where bussing isn’t even needed in a ton of urban and suburban areas. Some would be so close to each other that they could presumably share a central playground, ball fields, meals delivered to classrooms.
I don’t know. I’m talking out of my hat. I have a tendency to question the way things have “always” been done, distrust economy of scale having the last say, etc. I’m a homeschooler after all.
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It’s not much different than status quo for us. Sure, there are things unavailable, but not to the extent where there’s not some alternative protein, or side dish I could make. Fruit and veg is plentiful, if a little limp. But in the best of times I forget to buy and ingredient or three from my plan, so then my plan becomes more of a guide.
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We don’t do pranks as much as silly. I’m making turkey and dressing for dinner. 🙃
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7 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:
...it makes no sense to me that a man, who the vast majority of you guys have been gleefully waiting to be impeached for the last four years for numerous reasons, are suddenly 👍with the whole scenario without even asking a single question to push back. What is making you take this at face value when previous decisions weren't? Explaining that would go a long way for me to understand where many of y'all are coming from.
In all fairness, those folks ARE questioning Trump’s handling of this. Their lack of questioning is at least in part because people in power with whom they happen to agree (politically) are pushing for more drastic intervention.
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2 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:
Hey! Remember when they wanted to quarantine people with AIDS? History has been super kind to that idea.
https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1560&context=hlr
My 13 year old was just talking to me about this today, as his 20th Century class just reached the 80s. (Don't get excited! It was a Zoom meeting!)
Fall clothing?
in The Chat Board
Posted
I went in Belk last week to return some wrong sizes from my order. Store inventory was crazy low. I’ve never seen a department store look like that, that wasn’t having a liquidation sale. I wonder if that is writing on the wall.