Just recently used a company for the first time and it was well worth it. They took away a variety of items- batteries and light bulbs that needed to be recycled, box spring and bed frame, water pump that was broken, other various junk. It was easy and quick. Not really that pricey, either.

I'm an oncology nurse. We admit patients with all variety of transmissible illness because our immune suppressed population catches EVERYTHING. And they hold onto it for months and months. It's exceedingly common. We just put them in an isolation room and wear our PPE. End of story. In addition, Covid is, and has been for a long time, a fairly easy illness to get patients through. RSV, metapneumo, paraflu? Awful. Covid? Lingers, but not really severe at all. We will often hold starting the next round of chemo when patients have the other severe respiratory illnesses but with covid we rarely delay. I am so tired of covid being treated like a special situation. It's not anymore.

That's ridiculous. We transfer and treat people with covid all the freaking time. I'm very frustrated for you.

Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough. How life or death are these meds? Can they be spaced an hour apart instead of 2? Sometimes what is written on the packaging is just not going to be reality and the loss of efficacy isn’t the end of the world. Shortening her amount of sleep may be doing more damage to her health than taking the meds off schedule.

It’s not hard. I’m sure the people of Oregon can figure it out. Funny because every time we go up there, our Californian selves are so thrown by having to wait on the one 18yo running the pumps.

Factor are ready-made meals- quite tasty! My only caution is that they are pretty high in sodium, if that’s a concern. Marley Spoon is a meal kit company that also sells ready made meals. I can’t remember how many offerings they have available each week.

Pay attention to your email. I know several people who got offers to purchase tickets after the initial sale. We scored nosebleed for the first leg and it was WORTH IT. It is not silly to travel for this show.

Burbank is a dream to fly into, too

If you're not renting a car, I would just put out for the uber.

Steroids can be vital, if you need them you need them. But yes, for sure with high dose steroids, they should be following your glucose levels closely because steroid-induced diabetes is a real risk. Melissa, I hope you are able to get a firm diagnosis soon. This whole process has been torturously slow. I can only imagine how weary you're feeling.

I love this. Good choice!

Beauty and ashes. Thank you for sharing. It does my heart good to know that you are so loved and supported. Much love from your WTM sisters, too.

Here's one I just saw and totally got wrong- Does Richard Simmons wear a headband?

Ed McMahon?

Watching the video, I'm 100% team Miranda. Sure, it would have been better for her to communicate to her team that this needs to be better handled on an usher level. But Miranda was right, that was super rude, disruptive, and disrespectful to the other concert goers. I looked at the venue map and those VIP seats are in front of everyone. Good for Miranda.

Peds nurse here. The medication has to get in. I would try to sneak it into her food. Ask for an rx for tablets and then crush and mix it into something. I love Dawn's pop tart approach. If that's not successful, a hospitalization would mean someone else will force the medication down, get her to a more stable place and then try to transition to unforced administration. I work in oncology and the absolute hardest is when we have a kid refusing and a parent who wants to negotiate. It's more trauma for everyone. The kid ends up crying and resisting for an hour while the parent tries to talk them into it. Let us hold the kid and pop it into their mouth and this whole thing is over in less than 5 minutes. Eventually those kids either get better about taking it or end up with nasogastric tubes because the medication is not optional. Of course, it's way different in your situation because the resistance is part of the disease and I know you're trying your best to not add more trauma/mental blocks to the problem. Bottom line is that this is a lifelong disease that requires medication. She simply must take it and it's important that you work on your own mental hurdles (fear of a hospital admission, if necessary) so that you can get her the lifesaving treatment that she needs.

Where do you live? Maybe your house needs to be sealed up better? Would diatomaceous earth help with the scorpions? You need a professional.

My husband, two of my daughters (one of whom is unvaccinated), my mom's husband. IDK about the covid immune wipe out but I do think that 2 years of masking did put a gap in the resume of a lot of immune systems. That combined with the natural cycle of many of these viruses created these huge, off-timed waves of infection. In our household, dh hasn't gotten sick at all since 2020. He takes a lot of supplements but once he was vaccinated, he did not mask unless required. Both ds and dd lived in dorms and had back to back viruses all freshman year. Neither had gotten covid at that point. Since then, ds has gotten covid (last summer) and continued to be sick all of his sophomore year, too. I got covid and work around a lot of sick kids but haven't caught anything else since then. So my personal take is that it's more about the prevalence of all of these viruses and our collective (herd, if you will) lack of immunity due to taking a couple of years off the natural life cycle.

I know one person with a failed tubal. Honestly, if you were to get pregnant while on birth control, with a vasectomy and a tubal (even a questionable one)- I would be flabbergasted. I'm not sure how much more a person can do to not get pregnant short of a hysterectomy.

Yes! Multiple canisters of hair are being vacuumed up daily (2 black labs).

1000% I was so weepy those last few months. But then they go and it's actually ok and pretty cool to see the growth!

I would not move just to be near a college-aged kid, especially if that choice would cause a disruption in your younger son's high school experience. I would stay in Poland. It's going to be absolutely fine for your college kid to be in the US without you. I don't consider that to be the same as sending a kid away to a new-to-them country and culture. How will you feel if that kid stops coming home over the summers (a lot of college kids take summer internships or classes) and you guys made all of these big changes to be in the US?

That is a perfectly normal non-fasting glucose level.

That makes so much sense. It's never just a single-layered thing to make these changes.

Love this reframing. This is excellent.