Thankfully(?) all of the jars I can find right now are half and quarter pints, lol, so that is not a problem I have at this point. Good to know though, thank you!

Of course! I use this one. https://www.melskitchencafe.com/best-homemade-salsa/ So on the 2 batches I've done this year, when I taste pre-canning I think, "Oh whoa too hot for me, gonna all be Christmas presents." But then when I do a test taste of a sealed jar after a couple days, it's exactly right for me. And 2 weeks later, I suddenly have no Christmas presents left. This probably depends on your own heat tolerance and your peppers. Mine this year have been pleasantly spicy but not too much, even the habaneros. I did do 50/50 jalapeños and habs on the last batch and people were happy with the taste and heat. And I know it was just a cute comment, but you totally made my day, and I like you too! 🙂

So I need to can salsa. I've done it before, I like my recipe. But, my recipe calls for bell peppers, and I have an excess of poblano peppers. Would this be an okay substitute? My brain says yes and the USDA's salsa recipe says that different peppers can be exchanged so long as the proportions to other ingredients is the same. But, canning isn't something I like to mess around with and this would be the first time I'd be going off the trodden path. So, is this safe? And if I roasted the poblanos, would that make a difference?

Well, I don't know if I'm understanding the issue here, but... if people weren't going out as much and pretending life is normal, ie going to malls, multiple stores, parks, restaurants, parties, etc, that would change the difficulties for the contact tracers, yes? So, not only would it be less spread, it would be easier to trace and contain? --- Re what we can/should do, I am feeling a bit defeatist and I can't speak for anyone else, but I would just be THRILLED if we could get people masking. What a low standard to try and achieve, but I think it's sad that this is an "extreme measure" we can't accomplish even now. There is what "should" be done and what "can" be done. We can't even achieve full masking. It is going to take a huge event to make anything bigger than that happen. and if 200K dead isn't a big enough event, I don't know (or want to find out) what it would take to get compliance. I guess my use of "can" isn't entirely correct. Because we totally could achieve full masking and more if we wanted to. But the will is not there, and it's become a matter of political posturing that we won't.

So, this is just insulting to me and anyone else who has ever lied. If you're going to try and create misinformation, do it well! If you're going to be so flippant about it, why even bother? The craft of deception is an ART. You'd think anyone in the political sphere would have enough experience to not be amateur hour here. I mean, I'm glad they were, but it's still insulting. Doubly so because they probably thought people would be dumb enough not to figure it out.

I can agree with that. But again, I think that greed is the motivator, taking away a threat to a multi-kajillion dollar industry is the main goal, and people dying is an "unfortunate" side affect. I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying the timing is incredibly bad, and I'm not saying it's defensible. I am saying, I just don't think they actually care about the people, live or die. Sure some may have a superiority complex and think whoever dies "deserves it otherwise they wouldn't have died", but at the end of the day I don't think they are cackling about how many people they killed, I think they are cackling over their bank accounts.

I think, and I am saying this generally just to answer the question, not ascribing anyone to a certain side: "economy" and "stock market" have been conflated and so some people say "Save the economy!" and are talking about the businesses and jobs, and other people are saying "Save the economy!" but only take actions that save the stock market. And so people get upset that "the economy" (but really the stock market) is being prioritized over the people.

Yeah, I think the issue is not that the politicians/powers that be/whoever we are talking about literally are looking for a plan to kill those on the dole. It's just more convenient and a small detail to them, that's all. "Never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by apathy, stupidity, greed or selfishness." (paraphrasing...) In this case greed and selfishness with a side of apathy for the effects are probably more likely than maliciously wanting people to die. (Personally, the apathy is more worrisome because...well, apathy in leaders seems like a bad trait, yes?, but that's besides the point.)

Every few months my DH goes on a kick on wanting to introduce the kids to Plato and Aristotle and just philosophy in general, and we usually go online thinking *this* is the time we're going to find a good kid intro to their writings. Surely someone by now has put together an introduction to the Categories for kids, right? Or a group of the best kid-friendly Aristotle? Maybe 'On Friendship' and some other excerpts, annotated? We haven't found what we're looking for yet, and DH is already putting time into making his own curriculum on 2 other topics for them, so it falls to the wayside. But who knows, maybe our next search will find it!

I told this one time to someone and they, not jokingly, asked, "So what's the third type?" No, they weren't pulling my leg. I lamely replied that I had already forgotten the third type.

You mean to tell me that 3/5 of adults today don't understand fractions??? 😱 (😛)

So for us, our 6th and 4th grader are being introduced to notes this year. I'm doing a variation on Cornell and outlining, where I have them read a chapter (or section, if the chapter is long), then have them outline it on one side of a divided page, not necessarily by paragraph but ask if there is anything "worth noting" from a paragraph and then moving on to the next. They need a lot of help with the indentation to see the flow still, but my outline is even a variation so I'm not being too picky ('m not going much into the I. A. 1. a. etc format, more big topics and bullets. I'll teach them better outlining after they can parse out the important info reliably I think, maybe next year.) Then after they have their section of notes from the main book, I ask if they have any connections they can make ("Does this remind you of another time in history? How do we use this type of machine today?" etc) and write it on the other side of the page. Then if they have another book on the same topic, I have them read some and write down corresponding facts on the page close to where the "original" was talked about. This is a slow process, lol. I'm only doing it for history, and the book they are outlining is SOTW4, so it isn't very difficult to parse, but I am having them read it on their own, do an initial version of the outline on their own (now, after the first couple chapters), then help them with the indenting/flow. Since I'm encouraging outlining I do have them read it first, then go back to outline it as a separate step, not at the same time. They tried to break the rules a couple times but it was obvious they didn't know what was coming up next in their notes, so they're mostly doing it the long way now.

I have friends who can look at a mechanical googly-get and UNDERSTAND what will happen, and I am completely clueless. Maybe it turns? Maybe it putters? Maybe it makes pancakes? No idea. And I'm grateful my friend will patiently show me each moving part of the machine and explain its function, even though I will promptly forget it after he closes it back up. I think he'd internally wince if he had to TEACH me mechanics, but I hope he wouldn't think less of me for wanting to learn.

My mom, poor mom, is so bad at singing that each grandchild, around the age of 2, once she starts to sing to them, they tell her to stop. And before they have words, they'll cover their ears. The first time K asked her to stop, she just put her hand on top of my mom's mouth and said, "please no". My mom teased her and said, "Louder?" And K immediately clapped her hands over her ears and said, "Run! Run!", and ran out of the room.

This is why in the comments box you write "One of the best meals I've had at a Chilis." The ol' backhanded compliment for the win! I find, in response to the idea of discussing the philosophies, that I love the education boards and READING the educational philosophies, but since I don't keep up with the home school industry or culture or influential people, a lot of it is lost on me. I don't have a grounding in the history of the "great leaders and protagonists of the homeschool movement" so quoting to me that Dingleheimer Schmidt says the most important part of a curriculum is blah blah blah doesn't hold authority. Which maybe it should. But, basically, I can't really converse on the same level even if I have an opinion. DH and I based most of our own conclusions on more general books/authors about thinking, skills, and performance. Which has served us well but leaves me in the dark about a lot of terms/ideas bandied about. So I usually keep my posts there very practical and "here is what I did/do" or "here was our approach." And I really do use the educational boards, but I search and pull up threads from 4 or 5 years ago and read through them, usually, since starting a new post hasn't always served me as well.

Okay, so this is coming from someone who has very little experience with cold so my "suggestion" is actually a question. Have your rock salt grains ready. Would an electric blanket on him keep him comfortable and able to watch wherever (assuming a cord can reach him) but not be a danger to the kids and flying soccer balls? It would make it so that HE is the only beneficiary, true, but it sounds like a lot of these options don't cover many bodies/space. Or maybe you can have a fleet of blankets available so that way whoever is visiting can be comfortable and also distanced. GG can have his special blanket so cross contamination isn't an issue, and other "frequent visitors" maybe have their special ones too.

I have had been having issues uploading images the past 2 weeks. Today I was able to upload 2, but the 3rd would not. It said it exceeded the Max file size. The page says Max file size is ~2MB, my image is 1.5MB. Error says that max is 1.27MB allowed. When this happened 2 weeks ago, I continually made my image smaller and smaller (got it down to 56KB) and it still told me it would exceed the allowed file size. Each time I tried to upload the file, the "max file size" would change again. I didn't get a screenshot of this because I thought it was my issue, but now after other issues after the updates and it has happened again, I thought I should report. Here is a screen shot from today. It did let me upload this one (86 KB). You can see in the image that the original stated max file size is ~2Mb.

So, re: societal expectations: I know that after my last kid, if I became pregnant again (especially in my current financial situation), I would be under a lot of pressure from certain people in my life to "do the responsible thing." I know that regardless of my financial situation, planned pregnancy or not, even if I had a cool $100K sitting in my account right now, 3 immediate people pop into my head that would encourage me to "think about the environment" or "what about the kids you already have and how unfair this is to them." And, there would be just a lot of general disappointment in my being so irresponsible. And I'm not in overly liberal circles. I'd have to rekindle some old friendships, though, to feel accepted socially. It would be worse if I was still working. This all being said: There would be just as much social pressure on me to get fixed or grilling about my birth control or "cool it a little bit" or whatever. After kid #2 everyone thought they had a right to an opinion on my final number of kids. Heck people wanted to chime in on names and criticize waiting to find out if #1 was boy/girl. Basically, this is less a problem from abortion and more a problem from nosiness at best and misogyny at worst. Abortion being legal didn't start the judgement on my reproductive choices and if it was made illegal it wouldn't stop it, either.

Yes, I've found many politicians are much more "pro-life" August-November of election years. But of course then more immediate issues seem to somehow shove it off their docket during their actual office time. Almost as if it's more convenient to have the issue continue than have it be solved.

Mason jars!! Can't find them anywhere. I bought all that was left at the few stores I saw them at back in June and July. It's going to take me 3x the time to can things because these are half or quarter pints (!!), but at least I have something! But after this last batch of salsa I don't think I can do anything else. I'd normally give these as Christmas gifts but I'm oddly wanting to hoard all this food I won't eat just to keep the jars, lol. I'll be calling people up on January 3rd, "How are you doing? Did you like the jam? Oh you haven't had it yet? When were you thinking of eating it? Do you need me to bring crackers, or bread? Did you know that gifts taste best within the first 2 weeks of receiving them? Scientific fact. It will take you approximately 16 servings before the jar is empty, do you think you could commit to that by January 20th?"

I'm thinking that after the car maintenance, doing the car detailing (along with the fun parts of tons of soapy water and big brushy thing and the armor spray stuff and vacuum and wax ) could extend the activity time and be exceptionally safe. You can stretch this out to hours as necessary.

For those of us reading this that don't have a dishwasher or do mostly hand dishes, sink sanitizer! I use the Steramine tablets, but have used Masters (?) liquid sanitizer as well. Keeps all smells down on cloths and sponges.