I don't even understand why people felt entitled to "proof of life" — what if she really was dying or was in a coma and her family were desperately trying to come to terms with the situation while shielding the children? Why wasn't "The Princess has had surgery and needs time to recover, but she is expected to resume her duties some time after Easter" not an acceptable statement???

Yup, the athletic program at DS's university not only pays for itself, it generates a surplus of several million dollars per year that gets transferred back to the academic side. Athletic programs generate "brand loyalty" and bring in a lot of money from alumni and boosters, plus there are lucrative media contracts — just the TV contract for Big Ten football brings in more than a billion dollars a year that is divided among the teams. And then there are contracts for other sports, sponsorships deals, etc.

Adorable!

Same here. I grew up dirt poor (like 4-kids-in-one-bedroom-and-not-enough-to-eat poor), had no parental support of any kind, and put myself through college with scholarships and summer jobs. The idea that humanities classes were just a way for rich elite kids to learn things poor kids already knew as common sense is totally bizarre to me. The classes I took at my small LAC were nothing like that, and they had a profound and life-long impact on me.

AI was likely confused by the term "petrified hailstones," because the definition of petrification generally refers to the transformation of organic material. For example, from the UC Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley: "Petrification ... occurs when the organic matter is completely replaced by minerals. ... This generally occurs by filling the pores of the tissue, and inter and intra cellular spaces with minerals, then dissolving the organic matter and replacing it with minerals." The accretion of volcanic ash around the surface of a hailstone is more like what happened to the bodies at Pompeii and Herculaneum than to the process where the cells of a fallen tree were filled with, and ultimately replaced, by minerals.

Charles is 75 years old, not a relatively young mother with three young children, including a 5 year old! This really comes across as victim blaming — if Kate had just accepted the fact that she has no right to privacy and had prioritized the public's obsession with her over the mental health of her children, then she wouldn't have gotten herself into this mess.

In that first post you seem to be suggesting that those who are demanding information and invading her privacy are the ethical, righteous ones here, because they're exposing "lies" and debunking "fairy tales"??? How is not wanting the entire world to know your private medical information "maintaining a lie about a fairy tale"? Are you seriously arguing that it is unethical of her to want the same rights to medical privacy as every other human being?

Given the fact that most colleges grant far more degrees in "less practical" fields like humanities and social sciences, than they do in business or engineering, I would disagree with your claim, just based on statistics. There are far more people with history degrees than working historians, far more literature majors than novelists or teachers of literature, etc., and I don't believe that all those non-historians and non-novelists wish they'd gotten business degrees instead. The vast majority of people I know with bachelor degrees do not have careers that stem directly from their degrees and they're not full of regrets. I certainly don't regret the 10 years I spent in undergrad and grad school, even though I ended up doing something different as a career — the skills I gained in research, writing, and analysis were easily transferable to other areas, and I got to hone those skills while studying something I was passionate about, in an amazing environment full of really smart interesting people who were as passionate about it as I was. I would not have traded that experience for anything, including a more "practical" degree that might have earned me more money. The problem isn't that "impractical" degrees exist, it's that funding for higher education has been cut so drastically that students who want to study those subjects are forced to either go into debt that they will struggle to repay or choose a degree that leads to a higher paying job. But there are only so many jobs for engineers and programmers and accountants and BBAs. Do we really want a society where history, and art, and music, and philosophy, and literature are considered a waste of time? I think certain Powers That Be definitely would like to do away with higher education in those areas, and I think cutting funding for those areas has been absolutely intentional. If people want to treat college as just a job training program and are looking for the best ROI, they should probably look at the AAS programs at the local CC, where they can get excellent training for a good paying job with little to no debt. IMO treating a four year degree as little more than job training ignores so much of its true value.

This. And it's not uncommon for that to go in the opposite way that people think — that is, kids who were pushed into "practical" degrees end up hating that career and go into something totally different. One of DS's closest friends is brilliant at math but was pushed by his parents into engineering, so he spent 5 years getting an engineering degree, but the internships made him realize he would hate it as a career. So now he's getting certified to be a HS math teacher, which he'll be amazing at — he's extremely funny and creative and great at explaining difficult concepts clearly. Unfortunately he will be paying off the debt of a 5 year engineering degree with a teacher's salary, and he would have been much better off if he'd been allowed to just major in math, as he wanted. DS has other friends who were pushed by parents into practical majors like accounting or finance who also hate it, but felt they had no choice since parents were footing the bill. I have a PhD in Anthropology and ended up working as an editor, graphic designer, and director of publications for a large international nonprofit. Of the people I went to grad school with, one went into corporate management, one went to work at a children's science museum, and one became a HS teacher in his home country. My BFF as an undergrad got a BA in English Literature and became a news producer for NBC, and my BFF from HS got an arts degree and ended up as head of children's lit at a major publisher in NY. DS's BA and MA are not in practical fields, but he has zero debt and plenty of time to figure out what he wants to do for a career.

It's possible to tell children that a parent is ill without telling them the specific diagnosis — especially when dealing with a disease that many people find terrifying and which is often fatal. I've had two siblings, a step-sibling, and a BIL who were diagnosed with cancer when their children were quite young, and although their kids obviously knew that mommy or daddy was sick, they were not specifically told it was cancer when they were little. In the two cases where it came back when the kids were teens, they were told at that point. Louis is only 5 years old, and Charlotte is 8, William 10. Does a 5 year old really need to be told that mommy was diagnosed with a specific disease that often kills people? And shouldn't that choice be left to the parents, instead of the tabloid press and a baying mob forcing it on them?

I wonder if they were trying to avoid telling the children she had cancer, but the relentless obsession and speculation finally forced them to go public, and they had no choice but to tell them. So now the trauma that William and Harry endured due to the press's insane harassment of their mother is being visited upon the next generation. I wonder if everyone who was obsessed with their right to know Kate's private medical information feels that traumatizing her children was a small price to pay for that?

This is scary: "We found significantly reduced grey matter in whole-brain analyses in patients with an acute COVID-19 infection in the left inferior frontal gyrus, the insular cortex and the basal ganglia compared to healthy controls. This decline could also be retraced in recovered patients compared to healthy controls in similar regions suggesting persistence of these changes over the period of acute illness. A decline in executive function and especially verbal fluency was found in acute patients, partially persisting in recovered. Changes in gray matter volume and white matter tracts included mainly areas involved in networks of executive control and language." Obviously there's a lot of concern about the increased risk of long covid from repeated infections and the potential effect on the economy of increasing numbers of workers being disabled by chronic fatigue. Now imagine the potential impact of those repeated infections also causing permanent (and possibly cumulative) brain damage and a reduction in executive function skills in a wide swath of the current workforce! And with children likely to be infected at least yearly, if not more frequently, that really does not bode well for the future.

The link just goes back to this thread

Agreeing with what everyone else has said about Lukeion. DS took classes with them for 5 years and all their courses are absolutely top notch — the content is deep and rigorous, expectations are clear, the online course materials are extremely well organized, and while the teachers do hold students to high standards they are also extremely supportive and encouraging. It's not an exaggeration to say that Lukeion courses were life-changing for DS. The only downside is that their courses are so well done and so well organized that students may be spoiled — when DS got to college he was dismayed to find that a lot of his intro courses were taught at a much lower level, and by much flakier and more disorganized instructors, than he was used to with Lukeion.

You really can't decide what form this will take, let alone set it up, until your sister's divorce is final and their property is settled. If your sister is counting on her soon-to-be-ex moving into his father's house (which, if it was an inheritance, may be his sole property, not joint property) and just "giving" her his half of the equity in a house he spent 30 years working two jobs to pay for, she may be in for a big surprise. And if he does agree to do that for some reason, then the house needs to be retitled either in her name, with you having right of lifetime occupancy and the remainder being distributed according to her will after your death, or some other arrangement (e.g. joint owners with right of survivorship, or titled to family trust with both of you as joint trustees, with specific provisions about distributions after your deaths, etc.). You'll need to talk to a lawyer for that anyway, so I'd wait until the divorce is final, all joint property is settled, and then sort out how you and your sister plan to own and manage your living arrangements, as well as whose kids will eventually inherit any remainder.

It sounds like you're thinking you should have some right to remain in the house for the rest of your life (or at least as long as you want), even if your sister passes before you, because of the contributions you've made? And/or do you feel you have a right to part of the equity if your BIL were to sell the house that he has owned and worked two jobs to pay for, for the last 30 years? I would just be really grateful that they took you in and would consider the payments you've been making to be equivalent to rent. I think if you try to demand some kind of legal "protection" that gives you the right to live there forever and/or to get part of the equity, you are likely to cause hard feelings and may find that you're asked to leave sooner than expected.

Medicare only covers 1 colonoscopy every 10 years unless there are polyps (and it sounds like her last colonoscopy was clear?), plus they are not recommended past the age of 75 since research shows that the risk of complications (perforations, etc.) outweighs the benefits at that point. Has she considered the possibility of IBS? In addition to a low-FODMAP diet, she could also try eliminating alcohol, dairy, carbonated drinks, chocolate, artificial sweeteners, and fried foods. She should take a good broad spectrum probiotic. Fiber can be good for some types of IBS and make things worse for others, so I'd be careful about ramping up fiber.

Great article! As the aunt of a nonverbal autistic adult with a lot of medical issues, I really really appreciate everything you do to educate first responders. ❤️

I use a small crossbody that holds glasses, keys, hair tie, phone, and a card sleeve for my DL, insurance, and CCs. The only thing that might qualify as unusual-but-useful is that I have this teeny tiny pocket knife (about the size of my pinky) on my keyring; it has tiny scissors, screw driver, a nail file, tweezers, and a toothpick. I keep masks, tissues, and hand sanitizer in my car, but generally don't carry them around with me.

If the main reason you want to give him an extra year is maturity/executive function, and he doesn't really need more coursework, have you considered just doing a gap year instead of an extra year of HS? My DS has ADHD and executive function issues and wasn't ready to go away to college after his senior year, so he did a gap year. It allowed him to really focus on his sport that year, plus made recruiting easy because he was talking to coaches in spring of his senior year and after he graduated, so they had all his final stats, test scores, etc. When you say "memory issues," do you mean poor working memory? Were there also issues with processing speed (those often go together)? One very good reason for continuing to pursue testing "late in the game" is the potential need for accommodations in college. DS definitely needed that paperwork to get extra time and a distraction-free space for tests, plus I think the fact that he was registered with the college's disability office made his profs more sympathetic to lapses in executive function.

Seconding this recommendation. Renee Lopez has been a college coach, HS coach, and done NCAA Compliance work, and she knows her stuff.

College Confidential has an excellent forum specifically for athletic recruiting: https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/c/athletic-recruits/ I joined the Homeschooling & NCAA Eligibility FB group when I was going through the process with DS, and found it both depressing and unhelpful. There was so much misinformation (people would just repeat things somebody's cousin's husband told them, or assume that the laws in their state were the same in every state), and I spent so much time correcting other people's misinformation that at one point the group owner asked me to be a mod (which I declined). The vast majority of posts are just asking what curriculum will be NCAA approved, and it was kind of eye-opening how low the bar is for a lot of homeschoolers. I had originally uploaded some of my Core Course Worksheets to the Files section, but ended up deleting them because (1) it became apparent that many people intended to just copy other people's CCWs and submit them as their own, and (2) some people freaked out because their kids were doing way (way way waaaaay) less than DS and thought they might not get approved. And then someone else uploaded their approved CCWs that were so minimal it was crazy — like a full year's credit for English for reading 2 novels and writing 4 essays — and everyone relaxed. So many people there just wanted to know what was the bare minimum they could get away with, like their only goal was getting past the eligibility screening, rather than actually making sure their kids were prepared for college level work.

I hope things greatly improve in all five areas ASAP! (((hugs)))

There's such a huge variation in colonoscopy prep recommendations and a lot of it is simply not evidence-based. For example, this study of 400 patients compared the minimal prep of 1-day clear liquids to a prep that included 2 additional days of a low fiber diet plus 1 day of clear liquids, and they found no difference in the success of the prep (in fact, the shorter prep had a slightly better outcome, 95% vs 92%, possibly because those on the longer prep ended up cheating, but the difference was not statistically significant). And this study of 276 patients found that one day of a low fiber diet instead of clear liquids was even more effective than a day of clear liquids (96% vs 89%). So even requiring clear liquids instead of just a day of normal low-fiber foods seems unnecessary, and two days of low fiber plus a day of clear liquids is total overkill. I don't eat meat, eggs, or dairy, and the recommended low fiber diet is literally the polar opposite of the way I eat, so when the prep instructions for my most recent colonoscopy included a "low fiber diet," I just made smoothies and pureed soups out of my usual fruits and veg, with soy milk and some protein powder for extra protein. My colonoscopy went perfectly — but so did my previous one with just 1 day of clear liquids. Other than avoiding nuts and seeds, I'm not going to do the low fiber thing next time, because it seems at best unnecessary and at worst counter-productive.

I joined almost exactly 15 years ago (March 2009), but I first started reading the boards the previous year when I was debating pulling DS out of public school. He's in grad school now, but I still hang out here because it's such a unique online space, filled with really smart, well-educated women, from so many different places and backgrounds, who are almost unfailingly kind, supportive, and helpful. It's really rare to find a large online group with so little snark, trolling, and spam (thank you Mods!).