This is great information. Thanks so much for sharing. I had not thought of taking a pain pill before my follow up appt. but I will definitely do that. Thanks for suggesting it. I am really relieved that I don't have to worry about the packing. Hopefully the follow up visit won't be too bad. I will just be so glad to get it over with.

Wow, that is interesting to know. I will have to keep trying. One way or another, I have to learn how to use it effectively over the next 24 hours, since I will have to use it multiple times per day after surgery. Dh said he thought the netti pot was more gentle than one of the products I purchased. I might try that tomorrow.

Some of you may remember that I posted recently about having been sick since January and not able to kick this sinus infection. I am STILL on an antibiotic and have had to stay on it until surgery. If I stop taking it, I get sick again and the sinus infection never completely goes away even while I am taking the medicine. So, anyway, I am scheduled or sinus surgery on Tuesday. It should be pretty straight forward, I think, because I don't have a deviated septum or anything like that. Still I am so dreading this and have been pretty anxious about it....not the actually surgery itself but more the after care and the pain associated with that. This doctor does not do packing so I won't have to deal with that. The two things I worry about the most are rinsing my nose out with saline and going back to the ENT for a check up after surgery. I have already purchased everything I will need after surgery. So yesterday I decided I would go ahead and try to rinse my nose out with the saline so I would know how it feels without my nose being sore and bloody. It was not good. It was that really bad feeling you have when water goes up your nose in the swimming pool. One side of my nose bled a little and was sore for a while afterwards. This was from using a spray-mist kind of saline solution. I also tried another thing that sends the saline up your nose with a bit more pressure and it was really bad about making me feel I had snorted a swimming pool. Dh tried that device and he thought it was pretty rough too and he has successfully used a netti pot before. So I won't try to use that one anymore. But I think just rinsing out my nose (which I will have to do several times a day) is going to be a challenge for me. Then there is the ENT visit afterwards. Part of my problem with this is I just don't have enough information so I don't know what to expect. I have read/heard that some docs will remove any scabbing to prevent scarring. This sounds very scary to me. I have a very low pain tolerance and the thought of this just brings a lot of anxiety to me. Have any of you had this surgery done? If you have any experience to share, I would appreciate it. I will be checking in and out, while I am cleaning the guest room and guest bath for my sister, who is coming to stay with me for a couple of days.

ah, yes, that is it! Thanks so much!

Can someone remind me of the name of that website where the mom uses c-rods to teach math? I used to have it bookmarked but ended up losing my bookmarks. Anyone know which website I am talking about, where she sometimes teaches her little girls a math lesson and records it?

Hey, that's the same kind of lifestyle we have:). It must work well for people like us.

If your credit has been frozen, nobody can check your credit at all. You would have to unfreeze it in order for someone to check your credit. We don't have an issue with an employer. I don't know how much it costs, as dh always takes care of it and he is not home right now. As for how easy it is, I think it is pretty easy now that it is online. Before my mom passed away, I used her information to log in as her and freeze all of her credit reports. It was very easy. I never unfroze it though but I think it is probably pretty easy these days.

Dh takes care of it but I asked him and he said he had tried to do it for our two sons and he wasn't able to for some reason that he can't remember now (they were too young or something he said). He checks their credit reports every now and then. He was just telling me that at one of the credit agencies he had a fraud alert on his credit report. They reported it to the other two agencies so they all had a 90 day fraud alert so someone must have tried to do something with his information at some point. It is reassuring to know we are protected.

We keep our credit frozen with all three of the major credit agencies. The pro is that nobody can take out a credit card in your name or purchase a car or house or whatever in your name. Basically it keeps someone from stealing your identity. The con is that you have to unfreeze it if you move and are renting or purchasing a house or if you want a new credit card or purchase anything on credit. It has become easier to unfreeze and refreeze it over the years though. I think you can do it all online now where we used to have to send a letter to at least one of the credit agencies. It has worked well for us. We have never had any issues and it certainly helps us feel safer.

I have a very old cat who likes to be outside when it is warm out so I leave food out for him. This summer I was feeding a baby skunk and a baby opossum on our front porch, just beside our front door. We have one of those long skinny windows next to the door so we got a very close up look at them. One evening I opened the door to feed the cat and surprised both myself and the baby skunk (he was really cute). Fortunately he took off and didn't not leave a bad scent behind. We see lots of deer here and once in a while we see a coyote. One day I was driving on a neighborhood road nearby and saw a huge tarantula. I stopped and took a picture of it because I have never seen one around here in the wild. Scorpions are also big around here.

Wow! I had not checked this thread in a couple of days because it had seemed to slow down but, Wow! You guys are great! Thanks for all of this wonderful wise advice. This is good stuff! You guys could write a book! (And I would buy it:). Thanks so much. I can't wait to show it to dh. And I have signed up to follow this thread going forward so I will receive emails if anyone else updates. I should have done that from the beginning.

In my state (OK) we have no oversight at all and I know many homeschoolers here would not want to receive anything from the gov't if it required oversight. I personally would be OK with some sort of tax credit or a tax-free savings account or something to help off set the costs, and we would probably be considered upper middle class that doesn't really need it. It would be nice to at least have a choice.

This is great information. You have all been very helpful and given us a lot to consider. Thanks so much for your help. I'm still checking in and 'listening' in anyone has anything to add.

Thanks for the feedback/advice. We appreciate it. I think we have decided to stick with finding something in our town, rather than the neighboring town. We also really liked that "discount rent" idea so we will definitely be using that. Thanks! Anyone else?

Dh and I are considering purchasing or building some rental property. We are thinking of possibly purchasing a duplex in a neighboring town or building a duplex or quadplex in our town. We would rather own rentals in our town because the school districts are better and we believe there is probably a high demand (we need to research this further but when we were building our house here a few years back, we could not find anything to rent at all) and several other reasons. There are none available here to purchase, which is why we are considering building. Never having been landlords before, we are looking for some general advice from those with experience. Any advice about what has worked well for you in the past, things you have done and wished you hadn't, etc. Do you use a management company, if not, how do you screen prospective renters, do you maintain the lawn/landscaping and price it into the rent? I am sure I am not thinking of many questions that could/should be asked, since I am a total novice at this sort of thing. So anything else you can think of would be great. ETA: Dh's parents owned a small apartment building (11 units) so he grew up helping with maintenance/repairs/painting, etc.

To add to all of the above symptoms, I started running a temp on the day I went for the tubes in my ears. The tube placement was a little painful in one ear but it was totally worth it, even though my hearing is still not quite back to normal. The next day I went for a CT scan and it showed infection in the spenoid and ethmoid sinuses. The Augmentin was not broad spectrum enough to kill it so I am now taking Bactrim and am finally starting to feel a little better. I am scheduled to have another CT scan in a week or two and visit the ENT again to make sure it is all cleared up. It was such a relief to finally know what was wrong with me! Thanks everyone for your feedback and ideas. Clear proof that Dr. Hive knows what's what!

I have a male bengal cat like this. He has always seemed part dog. He loves anyone and everyone and has never scratched or bitten anyone on purpose. I once lived in a townhome with a front courtyard that had an iron gate that creaked when someone opened it. When he heard the gate creak open, he would run to the kitchen window, stand on his hind legs to look out the window into the courtyard and he would be growling the whole time. It was the funniest thing. He is now around 15 or 16 years old and still acts like a kitten at times.

That is reassuring, thanks. Hopefully it won't be too painful. Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I am definitely looking into them.

Wow, thanks for all the replies and well wishes. It sure seems like a lot of stuff is going around right now. I am going to look into these suggestions and see if any of them help or give other ideas. My ENT did tell me to start using Afrin to see if that would open my ear and I am using it but, so far, nothing. I am scheduled for having the tubes put in tomorrow afternoon in his office and dreading it because I have a very low tolerance for pain....but if it helps me to start feeling better, it will be worth it. So sorry so many of you are also feeling sick. Thanks for the well wishes and I hope you are all well soon also.

They XRayed my lungs at the urgent care and also did a blood culture which came back normal. Dh is a doctor (general practitioner) and we were just talking about possibly doing some additional blood work but he couldn't talk long because he had patients to see. Not sure what he .was thinking of looking for This is just so frustrating and, really, downright depressing. Thanks for your thoughts though.

Update in Post # 32 I have been sick now for over 4 solid weeks (probably 4.5 by now) with what appears to be some sort of head-cold virus that also makes me have bad broncial spams, where I cough and cough until my muscles are sore. My sinuses and one ear is full of fluid. The other ear is messed up too but does not have as much fluid. After the second week, we thought it must be (or must have turned into) something bacterial so I started Augmentin, which didn't help at all. I have been to the urgent care where they started me on a steroid, which doesn't seem to be helping either. I am also having to use a steroid inhaler to help control all of the coughing. I went to an Ear, Nose, Throat specialist yesterday and he confirmed the bad fluid in the ears and said I must just have a bad virus. I have never been sick for this long, ever. My frustration level is through the roof. Add to all of this that I feel very weak and tired, am not sleeping well and basically feel that I am living under water....plus my tongue feels like it is covered with fuzz and food does not have any taste. I am scheduled to go back in to the ENT tomorrow and have him put tubes in my ear drums in his office so hopefully that will help me to feel a little better and maybe start on the road to recovery. My family has a vacation to take our sons to Florida (Disney and Universal and whatever else) for the first time and we leave on Thursday....actually, they leave on Thursday. Dh is taking our two sons and I am staying home because there is no way I could do it. At this point, I will just be relieved to not have to take care of anyone except myself. But I can't help but think we are missing something. I should be better by now! What are we missing? Any ideas?

Great, thanks for your help!

Can someone tell me if there is a separate physical guide book for writing aids or is everything accessible online? I purchased WA a few years ago and was thinking there was a separate physical book but now I can't find it....but I also do not see where I could reorder it either. ETA: And also, where does one go to find the MP3 files for pop quiz? I can see the printable file but do not see any audio files. Thanks!

I feel your pain and could have written this post, with the exception that mine are two nine year old boys. In the years before I had children, when I was still single and I knew everything there was to know about children;), I used to think (as I watched my sisters two kids bickering) that MY kids would never act like that because I would not tolerate it. Funny how I was such a perfect parent before I had children. I have been telling mine two that they are going to start cleaning the baseboards. I need to follow through with it now because the baseboards really do need to be cleaned:). I have been sick with a cold and bad cough for two weeks now so I have not been very good with discipline (or anything else) during this time. I am not looking forward to getting them back into a normal routine, once I am feeling better.....and then we will be leaving for a week vacation in two weeks so, just when we get back into a routine, we will get back out of it again! AAHHH! Calgon take me away!!

Thank you so much for telling us about the free downloadable journal/notebook on the publishers site. I was in the beginning stages of making my own when I ran across your post. This one is so much better and it is done! Thanks so much! You saved me so much time and effort.