If we are talking bathrooms (sorry, I am skipping around, I seem to have five minutes here and five minutes there), THEN...I have opinions. At some colleges I visited, they had non-gendered bathrooms, but in cases on non-private bathrooms, they had some that were female and some male and some non-gendered. I think this is a good solution. What really bothers me if the so called over protected mom who brings her 10-18 yr old son in to the women's bathroom and makes him stand there to keep him safe while I am trying to go to the bathroom in a stall where someone can see through the cracks. It angered me to see what seemed to be a 12/13 yr old boy being forced to stand in a bathroom at Barnes and Noble because the mom claimed he needed it to be safe, but my little girl wanted to use the bathroom in the stall and there are gaps. She should not have to use the bathroom, taking her pants off, in front of a 12/13 yr old boy. But the store said they were not allowed to tells boys to not go in to the girls restroom. I do not think that boy wanted to be there and it made it bad for everyone.

That is wonderful!!!

Women are constantly being torn down and we are all expected to laugh and act like it is funny. Drag shows are stupid. They are generally men, dressed up as women, and acting all batty and animated and just dressed over the top. We are living in a time when it is more okay to make fun of, tear down, and marginalize women than it has been in the last 50-60 years. So, those who are doing it because it is fun...it is not okay. Then we have the others who do it because they are trying to make a sexual point. This is not okay for children. There is no excuse at all for this to be done in tax payer supported areas nor are drag shows for children okay. Stop sexualizing the children, keep the sexual content to the adults. And as far as the piggish mocking women content, not okay for any age. Drag shows do for women what black face shows do for black people. But hey, what does my opinion matter-I am just some dumb batty female who just needs to learn her place and shut up. I feel like living in this decade is some ugly surreal spin sending women back in time more than a century.

I don’t think he cared about the race of his employees but rather said that about race to get support when he really just wanted to pay his employees less.

The difference between the submarine and the other ship wreck, which resulted in a huge loss of life, is that right now, the submarine is an on going issue. They are not lost at sea yet and the search is still on for presumed alive people. If the people on the submarine died already and it was known, then the coverage would have ended that day. If the shipwreck were an ongoing rescue mission with the hope of survivors, like in the case of the soccer team stuck in the cave, then the coverage would have continued until we all knew how it ended. It is an ongoing story.

This is pretty much what has been happening. But in this case, first he took it while living off at college and had to drop. Then he tried again this summer, only this time, while living at home with both me and my husband helping. But the software was so bad and the teacher was not helpful. We had no trouble with the academic content, it was the software it 100% relied on to teach the class. And she did have an entire week of getting to know you kind of junk to do when the entire class was only eight weeks long.

For a little more fun post....I have a TV in a spare room, but I have taken to watching it sometimes. However, I am finding that either the Roku or the TV are freezing or being super slow to load or just dropping things or not loading. You get the idea. I do not know if I should replace the TV or the Roku. Both are old. I thought of just replacing the Roku since that is less expensive, but it would be a shame to buy a new one only to have it turn out to be the TV as new TVs generally are smart TVs where it streams things anyway so then I would not need a new streaming thing. The Roku is a 3910x. I know I have a newer one someplace else, I have seen it recently. Does not mean I will see it again soon. The TV is a Philips and says April 2009 on it.

Is this something my son could take from the distance? Okay..I looked it up and I can see it, but they do not have the business calculus. I would need to double check and make sure that what they do have would transfer as well as that he would be up to trying this online class.

The business college requires calculus. To major in something in liberal arts or a selection of other degrees does not. Of the two classes he has taken so far, and dropped, there have been no office hours and no textbook. It is 100% online with only the option of emailing the teacher and hearing back within two business days (meaning, if you are doing work on Thursday, you easily will not hear back until Monday. And for summer session where Friday was not considered a business day, having a question on Wednesday is the kiss of death. You cannot hear back until the next week). It is also very hard to ask a math question via email with no voice, no visual, etc. But the summer prof left only email as a way to ask questions.

Sorry you are having a hard time!

That is what I meant. Don't give her any more photos. I did not think you posted it.

The preschool teacher is clueless. My children with ASD easily make eye contact with people they know.

Report the photo to FB and stop posting photos. Maybe it does not matter much at 4 yrs old, but A will grow up and find out about those photos and there will be emotional reactions. It is not a good thing. The child has a right to privacy. FYI, not to scare you, but I do know someone who was involved in adoption and when her child became an adult, a birth relative had apparently located her, maybe using the photos, not sure, and came in to the adult child's life to cause problems and caused a lot of emotional pain to everyone involved. There is clearly no respect for you as A's parent or for A. Just sending photos.

Son has been planning to earn a BBA in Aviation Logistics. He is in the honors college and his overall GPA is great, around a 3.8. BUT, every time he takes a math class, he panics and cannot handle it and ends up dropping. This has happened twice. I suggested he find something in the liberal arts college so he does not have to take so much math. The business college wants business math followed up by business calculus. He has tried to take Business Math and then College Algebra and dropped both quite quickly. To top it off, the local university keeps it all online and we tried to help him but the software was awful and there was no one to help. (stuff like jumping around between modules and not being able to go back and look at the previous lesson, the grade book counting things as zero when the work was done, etc) My son really thinks that a BA would leave him unemployed when he finishes school. After going through the many offerings, he seemed interested in BA in International Studies with a concentration on business and economy. He started to seem okay with switching to it but then came back with that he is afraid he won't be competitive to get a job, etc. Any advice? I tried to Google for advice on this and did not find much other than articles by liberal arts colleges, and of course liberal arts colleges will say a liberal arts degree is better. So I need a more unbiased opinion.

I did email the company back on the day I received the email from them. They never responded. I have followed up again and they never answered. And then I called and they never returned my call. I called again yesterday. Does this mean I am free to ignore their request unless they bother to reply?

I have lived in this house for 16 yrs. Now, we have a new neighbor who moved in maybe 5 years ago. Her only children (2 of them) are the same age as my younger children and attend public school. She works, which she has made a point of telling me. She thinks I am a lazy unemployed person rather than hard working and busy like her. She brags about her vacations, which she takes monthly, which she feels she "deserves" because she "works so hard." And how nice it must be for me to not work, snark snark-coming from her. I am always super nice to her anyway. I never show any reaction to her snotty remarks. I have always been super nice. Now she is president of the HOA. And she has hired a management company to do what would normally be her job as the president, and pays for this company out of the HOA dues. AND, she had a letter sent to me stating that my fence color is not okay and I need to re-stain my fence. She further went on to say that I need to get a color approved from the architectural committee and only use earth tones and then, after approval, restain. I called her. In the conversation with her, she informed me that I just need to submit approval to the architectural committee and get approval. I told her I do not, this is the original color and it is brown wood stain and is the same color as half the neighbors and does not require approval to continue on with the same color. She got angry at me and informed me that I have to do this and then started in again on how she works and is raising children and I have no idea as to how busy she is and so I need to just do this. She totally chewed me out. I stayed calm and nice anyway. I get off the phone and ten minutes later, I get a text from her chewing me out and telling me that she did not appreciate being yelled out. Well, my husband was right here and I asked him if I was yelling and he said no, in fact, he was impressed at how nice I was being when he personally wanted to jump through the phone and punch her for how she was speaking to me. Yet, despite this, i sent her an apology and said I did not mean to come off as yelling. ANYWAY, all this to say, do I have any legal rights? Or can she just bully me and turn me in to her personal playthings to smack around because she simply does not like me? There is NOTHING in the HOA rules that says the HOA board can randomly pick neighbors and demand different colors on the fences. Also, I started knocking on other doors, and no one else has been told that they have to change their color. In fact, here is the specific wording she used, saying it is in the HOA document, to claim that she can order me to change colors....(since I cannot seem to add text after the section I copied and pasted, my fence is already an earth tone, it is a brown wood color, the same as most of the houses in the neighborhood, and is the original color from when we bought it)

The Betty Crocker classic cookbook covers the basics. I would get that and use it. In fact, this is what I do. It even tells you how to boil an egg.

What is Occam's Razor?

So they found the biological mom and a birth certificate, but do they know for sure that it is this girl’s birth certificate and not a different child born to this woman?

My 11 yr old wants to learn to play the cello. I want to say no. This is because there is nothing social or group activity related where we live for homeschoolers for orchestra. There is stuff 45 minutes plus away. She could get private lessons here and then when she is older, play for a community/church orchestra, but that would be a ways off. Our local schools do not have dual enrollment so that is not an option. Would I be a terrible parent if I said no? Or told her she has to wait a year? She will be 12 this fall so waiting a year would mean waiting until 13. Edited to add: She has a habit of getting excited about something, for some reason, usually related to a movie or youtube video. She then starts it and quickly realizes it takes effort and drops out. She already insisted she wanted to take Spanish this fall and art in an outsourced class, which I have already deposited for and will lose the deposits. She also wants to do archery, which I found the class but registration does not start for that until August. Now, she suddenly wants to drop all that, and theater, just to do cello, which she saw on Wednesday Adams TV show, a show she was not even supposed to watch but she snuck around and watched it by sneaking up in the middle of the night to watch. I am betting that while I drop all the other classes she is in so I can put the money in to cello, I am betting that within a month she is getting upset and saying she hates it.

Thanks! I will tell him TMI again and let him know how serious I am. Thanks!!

On the ASD, reading your post without reading the replies struck me as ASD. I would get the eval.

He maybe could use a neuropsych eval. He might be sensory seeking. Also, look for an OT eval for sensory issues. Or DIY working on the sensory issues.

11 yr old daughter has severe social anxiety and ASD. She also watches shows on TV that are about kids at camp and always thinks it seems so fun. She always says she wants to go. However, in real life, every time I get her going on an activity, even Sunday school and church choir, shortly after she arrives, she’s sitting in the corner with tears in her eyes, and saying how much she hates it and how much she wants to leave. Now at church last night, after being antisocial for almost the entire time, some girl she ended up standing next to told her that she was going to summer camp. Now my daughter says she really wants to go to that summer camp and I told her it was likely form. I looked it up and it’s not. They actually still have openings. I have not told my daughter yet that they still have openings. And she is begging and begging, including telling how much she loves me that she really wants to go to camp. She swears she will love it. I am very worried that she simply does not understand how heavy her social anxiety is and that this will simply become yet another situation where she is desperate to go, and then she ends up miserable when she gets there. I my first reaction was to have her try the one night church retreat and if that goes well then she could do summer camp. But the one night church retreat is in the fall and then she’d have to wait until the next summer to actually go to summer camp. What would you do? Also, this is not a summer camp specific to her church. It is one that some kids from her Church are going to, but she is not friends with anyone at her church and nobody from her church, so nobody working there is actually ever met her before. So this is gonna be a total stranger situation if she goes

When I say 4000 square feet, I should add that I live in an area of the country where there are no basements or other uncounted footage. It always surprises me when I see that the home I grew up in is listed as 1500 square feet, but I know it was at least as big as this and even had storage space that is not counted in that. Where I live, every nook and cranny is counted. Sadly, a neighbor just added an outdoor shed for his lawn equipment and the county has counted that as taxable square footage! My last house was half the square feet but actually had much more useable space for storing things. Now, I struggle even with art supplies. I have a cabinet in the kitchen for it and use part of the pantry. I have several shelves of books and even use space under the dressers for books.