Decided we didn't need to keep going on and on and on and on and on hahahah :P do you think you could edit in a link to this board on the last post? :)

I believe so, . I've seen it done on other threads that are locked.

Well good that way anyone besides you and me and will be able to find us (not that it would be hard, as they can also hunt down my name as board creator hahaha) if they want to :P

From what I've seen, the group likes to have a place to drop in when they have time, say Hi and mention a few things going on in their lives, and when they disappear for a bit, they know where to come back to.

Yea ;) I enjoy them dropping in, but I do wish they could stay and chat - more often, longer, but eh. It is what it is.

I never heard of salt for fleas, but I have for slugs, so I can see that it could work. Also the game, I am not into raunchy stuff and I probably would be horrible at playing because I'd be like "NOPE" and leave the game instead of doing or saying some of the things. Its been a very long time since they played (like 5yrs?) so i don't really remember but I do recall it being strange, as I said. And I never had friends I would have felt comfortable doing/saying certain things around. Still really don't. I do feel sometimes I am more open with ya'll simply from being a bit more anonymous on the board I guess? LOL But also I think its that I have become close to you all too, and feel more comfortable around you and sharing with you, even though we do not know each other in person. (also maybe its my age??? Lol I don't know) I have only recently begun to open up to the ladies at school I work with, a few of them. Most of the people I work with, for example, do not know I am separated from my husband and planning to be divorced. Just the 3 PreK Ladies. A bunch of those other ladies tho, they do know I am going back to school. I am going to tell the youth group board members of the separation tomorrow, mainly because I feel like I need to explain why I will not be able to afford to pay for things myself when chaperoning/travelling with the younger girls. Besides the fact that I also feel that I shouldn't have to pay for those things as they are not my children and if I wasn't taking them I wouldn't be going at all, so no cost would be occurring. (example being, this next weekend is what we call an "official visit" and we can travel nearly to Savannah (3.5hr drive) to have a meeting in another groups lodge, then afterwards there is a dance being held at Tybee Island (another 30min-ish drive from Savannah), which if we go to those events we would need to have a hotel room and spend the night because that is waaaaay too far away to drive home after a long day and a late night) I cannot afford the gas, hotel and food expenses for myself, let alone myself and 3 girls.

Whew... ok, here's my response to that and it may be longer than what you just posted.

I've definitely noticed a draw to a certain type of people - from work b/c most of the other people I've met a long the way I've lost contact w/ mainly b/c I had a certain type of phone over a decade ago and when the SIM on it died, I lost ALL my contacts. I can't tell you how much that hurt as I had found some truly soul sisters that I have no way of finding anymore.
Starting anew, completely different environment, I was very wary, nervous and timid. I see that you're a very timid person who doesn't like conflict - I mean, you've mentioned it more than once - and while I have an acquaintance like that, we've never been that close.
Anywho - I was drawn to certain people that had the outward personalities and weren't afraid to be bold... whatever. She is like that in certain aspects, not just when she drinks but she has a lot of fun natured things about her I liked until she let loneliness creep in and wanted to "tone down" for a guy she hoped would stay. (Dude couldn't get better if he was rich... maybe.) BUT... while I'm cool w/ a lot of people, I have serious reserves about telling anyone ANYTHING. My gawd there's nothing like white collar gossip! When I worked in factories, which were where I met some of the best people ever, shit talk came and went and wasn't a "water cooler" type of thing. Most of the time it was just sharing in the misery, lol. As an example of white collar shit - b/c of the type of SHIT I heard from a group of middle aged GUYS, I didn't tell anyone but that one chic that my 17yr old had given birth to my first grandbaby. I didn't want that kind of shit-chat they did, spread about me or her. I was happy to meet my grandbaby but I was NEVER happy that she went and did things that I knew she would regret. (babies aren't a regret but they are very hard to take care of when you're not even prepared to take care of yourself)

Just b/c you need to explain why you can't afford this or that doesn't mean you need to go into a full on explanation of things. People will ask and want to know b/c that's how they compare their own lives - by how others live. Keep them guessing and say the minimum. Hell, you don't even have to tell them that much to just say, "hey, can't afford it this year" and be done w/ it. You have no obligation to explain anything to anyone.

I think I'm pretty similar on here as I am in real life. I don't get the whole "keyboard warrior" type of personality b/c talking shit behind a virtual wall doesn't make me feel superior, at all. I'm very timid at first, then very open, then get afraid of being that open and, well I just go through normal stuff that I do in a person to person setting. Of course there are a lot of factors involved in how I've grown to be and the only one that bothers me about being virtual is that I'm able to communicate better through my fingers (typing) than I am through speech. I mean, I could probably write a medical thesis ( 😂 ) - no seriously... I have a much harder time verbalizing thoughts than writing them out. I think there's a separation between how your brain processes how you talk and how you write thoughts/speech/words that I looked up a long time ago but never knew how to do better at the other one .

Sooo ... yeah, the salt on the carpet is wonderful! One of those home remedies I dug around for that is buried b/c Google is product based, biased and censored. Use DuckDuckGo. ;)

Time to stalk the SubQ for the last time of the day.

Yea....I mean I get that I have no obligation to explain to them....but I am the type of person who understands better when I do have at least a little explanation of a situation rather than just "not happening" - I do respect that, but I always wonder WHY or WHY NOT? even when I know it isn't' my business. So I guess I like to try and give at least a little explanation. And it will probably simply be "hubby and I have separated, I do not have the finances available to travel with the girls unless it is reimbursed by the assembly" Because in the past, expenses haven't been an issue for me to travel where-ever across the state with my daughter.

And I don't really feel bolder or "keyboard-warrior" like - but yea, I think that partly being faceless helps just a little like I said, for me. But also, I really do think it's more that I have gotten to feel comfortable talking with you all. And like you mentioned, communicating verbally is more difficult for me too!!! I can type something or write something out and feel I explained it better than if I try to talk about it. So typing to you all, I guess, makes it easier also??? If you know what I mean? :)

Went and cooked/ate dinner....and about to take son back out to his truck. We enjoyed our day together :)

Kat, I'm glad you had a good day with Shane!

We play cards against humanity with the in-laws.. well, the "adult kid" ones, but normally my MiL and FiL are around and listening to the ridiculousness that happens.

Kat, the salt works, just be careful, because it can ruin your carpet.

WHOO, new board!

Ummmm. I can't think what else. OH. OK. SO. THAT PERSON. Kat, he was one of the first five people inducted into the baseball hall of fame, which is.. crazy! At least to me. Like.. even I have heard of 3/4 of the others. So that's why he's famous and has a day haha.

Also the other day I googled my name and my town and was like... eeeeeks. :P

What else what else what else. OH! I got a job! I'm going to be a substitute cafeteria worker at the girls schools, both of them. It's perfect because it's obviously only during school days, snow days aren't a huge deal, and they're only 4/4.5 hour shifts. Like.. perfection. And I can go full time if I want to, well, at least, 5 days a week.. but I'm not ready to right now, because I still have other stuff. But I'll have two regular shifts a week, and then whenever they need someone to cover.

What the heck have I been doing. Yesterday was the interview, then food share day. I don't know what it was, but it was crazyyyyyy. Also, Alex stopped by to pick ours up for me, so the meat wasn't sitting out in the hot, and he weighed the watermelon we got when he got home.. 39.1 pounds. I lifted over 1200 pounds of watermelon over an hour. Plus ran around and did other stuff too, like two bags were my duty. We just didn't have enough help and we were literally running running. And it was like, 86 degrees. And we ran out of all our bags and food in the first hour, and then we were scrambling to make more bags and boxes out of what we had. Like.. it was fine. And we managed to feed 97 families! Which is crazy.

Today we went to Corning to celebrate Matts birthday. Always a fun time. And when we got our Atlas Pizza, they had FRUITY PEBBLES CHEESECAKE and omg you guys it was delicious, Alex and I shared my piece when we got home.

Tomorrow we have new friends (hopefully!) coming over to play board games. We're smoking two pork butts we had in the freezer, we'll make pulled pork. So we'll eat that tomorrow, and some smoked baked potatoes, and we'll have lots of pulled pork to freeze and eat through the winter. And we're making a cucumber and tomato salad, because uh.. we have.. a lot of them. :P

And E has an eye appointment at 9am, so we'll run and do that. Probably grab a pumpkin spice frozen coffee because I can, do some shopping.. and then we really need to clean too.

OH. AND ON THAT NOTE. I kind of like it when we post our chore lists. It's nice to know that we're all getting stuff done. And when you guys post yours, I post mine (normally!) and then I'm more likely to get it done.

Heh I never googled my own name. Interesting thought LOL

Yaaay for the job!! My first job (as an adult after children) was as a substitute teacher. The best thing about the job is the fact it works around the kids schedules!! Its the best. It lead me to being a parapro. How do you have two regular shifts if you are a sub tho? :P Sub usually means being called in when the regular ones can't come. Are they short-handed already that they really need someone else that often? Its great for you, I'm just curious. We love our cafeteria workers at my school, they're all so sweet! I bet you'll feel ready for a full time position in no time at all, as long as you can make it work around your other activities!! :P The ladies always seem to enjoy what they do.

Yikes thats a HUGE watermelon :o And a LOT to carry otherwise. Busy you!!

I didn't get most of my chores done because Shane came and we played monopoly, but thats ok. I'll work on some of it today, and then today I also have the board meeting for the youth group. So I get to deal with that as I talked about before. See how that goes.

Because one of the full time people has another full time job, so she's only available 3 days out of the week. So I'll have her other two days, and then whenever they need someone :P

Ahh I see :) I have finished all but 1 load of laundry (need to get Nathans towel from last night, and debating waiting til he showers tonight before washing the last load of towels). Clothes need to be put away, but mine are in my room. His are on the couch after being folded. Ran the dishwasher because I forgot to last night, so finished loading it and ran it. Have a few random things that need to be washed by hand. Weed-eated the front area around the porch/grill and picked up all the smashed cans that hubby left that I've told Nathan to pick up and move for the past two months. sigh Need to remember to take a bag of those off to the trash to either recycle in the trailer or just dump in the trash. Whatever I so choose at the moment we take it there. I have like 4 30gallon bags full of crushed cans because hubby decided he wanted to sell them to the scrap people for cash and then never took any anywhere.

Today has been a sleepy chill day, which is exactly what I would be doing for 2 days straight if I moved that many watermelons! Jeez Mieke, that's a HUGE watermelons! Cucumber and tomato salad sounds good but I've just been eating the hell out of my tomatoes plain or with some salt. Grats on the job! Good way not to overwhelm yourself.

Sounds like you had a good time, Kat. Sometimes, quality of life just needs to take precedence, ya know? I think hubby needs to deal w/ all those cans...

Hah yea. If only. It's on me now. Like half a million other things that were left here when he moved out. It's fine. I just keep forgetting to grab a bag full of them and haul them off when I take the trash off. I'm still getting used to having to do those things myself tho. Like weed-eat the lawn (I don't think I've EVER weed-eated the lawn very much)- since grumpy teenager doesn't do it even when I've asked several times. His latest excuse was the vibrations hurt his hand where he cut it/had stitches. I get that, but dude, you got to start doing things again. I mean, he does use it, but avoids anything that makes it feel weird. I do understand that too, but got to move on kid.

Yep a day spent with my kiddo that I rarely see is worth not getting my chores completed. Today tho - I did chores (as listed above) - got the floor vacuumed too. And my clothes hung up/put away. Just told bratchild that it is his week to do dishes and to not forget to take the trash out. His response? "I'll do it after I cook bacon" sigh I forgot I told him he could cook the bacon today LOL But that means BLT for lunch tomorrow! :P I told him to save me some bacon when he cooked it. No, I have no idea why he wants to just cook, JUST BACON. Kids.

I used to eat just slices of tomatoes, but now I just can't do that. I do still like them on a sandwich or chopped up on tacos/tostadas. :) Grilled cheese w/ tomato is yum!! This fancy sandwich place does that, with croissant instead of bread and I fell in love with it. Now a plain grilled cheese is just.... plain~! :P

Mmmm I LOVE grilled cheese and a tomato bisque. I'll be looking into that recipe since some of my beefsteak tomatoes are ripening up. I don't envy you dealing w/ the bratchild, lol. Yay for the accomplishments, tho! 😸

Good Morning!

I mean, bacon is yummy. I love bacon. But to just cook and eat just bacon? A little strange.

Half a day for me today. I printed up some sub plans and notes. I really hope everything goes ok, because we have 2 kids that can be real handfuls and I'm the one that usually deals with it - it seems my lead teacher has no patience with them this year - I think she had enough last year and just doesn't feel up to dealing with similar issues again.

Nathan has an orthodontist appointment at 3pm, also have a virtual meeting with his counselor at the highschool at 1pm (senior meeting, basically makes sure they are on track for graduation. Which, he is and isn't being as he failed 2 classes, but he has time to make it up and is redo-ing those classes this year so...he's good as long as he PASSES.) At this point, I'm like, whatever. If he ends up taking another year to graduate because he fails classes and has to repeat them, thats on him. All I want is for him NOT to quit school just because he turned 18 (like his dad did - and his dad has told him not to do it either, that HE regrets doing it). And then we have an appt tomorrow at the regular doctor to talk about Nathan NOT taking his medication, he says he feels better w/o it. So he hasn't been taking it for nearly 2 months now, but I wanted to touch base with the dr anyway. He's still doing therapy sessions, especially now that we switched therapists....tho to be honest I have no idea if they ever talk about any actual ISSUES Nathan has, or if they just talk. He only ever tells ME the fun stuff they talk about like anime and video games and movies :P I hope somewhere in there is some talk about whatever made Nathan upset or depressed or whatever. Or how to deal with anything that does bother him. But he is happy going to talk to this guy, so thats a plus in my book and maybe just having someone like that to talk to about fun stuff is enough to help with the depression anyway. I don't know.

Just being able to talk will help sometimes, I think!

I forgot to say we went to Corning on Saturday too, so.. we did that after the watermelons :P But it was a good day!

AND YOU GUYS. YESTERDAY. NEW FRIENDS CAME OVER. AND I LIKED THEM. AND THEY LIKED US. AND WE ACTUALLY MADE PLANS TO HANG OUT AGAIN. LIKE.. CONCRETE PLANS.

I think I found a unicorn or something!

And it's all because I actually put myself out there.. I joined the civic club, and then she showed up two meetings in, she talked about how she just moved here and had a 2 year old, then afterwards I was like "Hey, I promised my kid I'd tell people she was available for babysitting" and she was like "WE WERE ACTUALLY JUST LOOKING INTO THAT" and it's been a few months but E has been babysitting for a while and then we friended each other on facebook and I posted a thing about games and then last week she was like "So, when can we get together?" AND WE ACTUALLY DID IT AND WHOOOOO.

I'm very excited. About this whole.. possible.. friends thing. VERY EXCITING.

Ooo Mieke, that DOES sound exciting!! Very happy for you!! ☀ And yeah.. you do have to kinda put yourself out there but to be fair, it's pretty challenging finding people you can have long lasting relationships with anymore. No one seems to want to communicate - as in talk about things that they disagree with, bring knowledge or facts to the table or have a healthy debate that doesn't turn into an argument over who's right or wrong (ego).
Wishing the best for you!

I found this article today, Kat. Home remedies for pet and carpet care. Now there were other ones that listed both salt and baking soda (not at the same time) but I still haven't seen anything that showed the salt would ruin carpets and by my personal experience w/ the cheap carpets they used to replace the old ones before I moved in, it had no effect on them. If you're worried about it - which I wouldn't blame you w/ all the shampooing you do (that does actually ruin the padding underneath the carpet and THAT I would know personally about!) - go w/ one of the remedies on that page.

Been having dreams/nightmares about fucking fleas and it's driving me nuts. Turns out you can add ACV to your dogs water, not just their coat! Gonna try that out... and HE LIKES IT! :P I swear, tho. Every little hair brushing across my legs I think is a bug and I'm freaking myself out at the potential costs.

My electric bill last month was $335...................... The extra was from my daughter being here for only 3 weeks and because her room has the worst ventilation (even in the living room, that side of the house barely gets a good air feed) and has to use an outdated AC window unit during the summer and an electric heater for the winter. She also loves her electric blanket.... 😔 Now my central air thermometer doesn't work correctly so when it's freezing cold in here, it will say some stupid shit like it's 78 so I literally have to manually adjust it multiple times throughout the day, every day. Just replaced the batteries too and that did nothing.

Ok.. enough complaining for now.

Oohhh yay for in person friends!!! Very exciting! I just got rained on. Left work, ran to get gas, stopped at the bank, and the library and I got rained on when I came out of the library. I left work at 1115 but Nathan's lunch isn't til now, so I'll get him at 1230 when he's done. Then we'll do the virtual meeting and run off to the orthodontist.

Ooh ouch on the electric. And I complain because mine is $150ish per month. Sometimes a little more sometimes less. Yea I hate when I feel fleas or bugs( or just hair ) crawling on me!!! What's acv? I had one friend swear by putting garlic powder on the dogs food to get rid of fleas. My stomach turns at the smell now tho so I couldn't try that

Thankfully w/o Duncan peeing on the carpet all the time, I won't be shampooing as often. But I will have to look into fleas remedies!!

Did I miss s/thing w/ Duncan?? Omg I'm really sorry if I did!

Most of the remedies help w/ adult fleas and not the larvae, although the salt dries them both up. I left mine on for about a week, but it wasn't a high traffic area and I don't know if that contributes to what Mieke might be referring to as damage? The other rooms I usually swept up after a few days, and it says to leave on about 2 days.

I'm about to dunk a kitty of mine in the bathtub to see if any fleas float off. That will be a tell all. If not, then he's getting weird bumps on his hind legs for nothing and even though he isn't itching them or they're surrounded by redness, it still seems like s/thing I would need to take him to the vet for just to check out.

ACV = apple cider vinegar. Sorry. Think it became popularized by a cooking show and now that acronym is all I see and just automatically think everyone knows what it is.

Uhh, forgot to mention this b/c I was in my self absorbed rant - I agree w/ Mieke that s/times just having an outsider to listen and talk to is therapy enough, but if you're paying stupid prices and not seeing results..... well, let's just say I've been a victim of that and many others have as well and it's really turned my head the other way when it comes to those types. This may seem very extreme but it's an example of what is happening - this morning I saw a news clip from a "doctor" of pediatrics saying that "newborns know if they're born the wrong sex". WHAT???!!!!
Just be careful who Nathan talks to.... Kids, the schools and their curriculums and the whole "woke" nonsense is getting out of hand.

Well right around when I went back to work (end of July-ish) I decided to put him down. I just couldn't take the stress of him peeing all the time and his health was declining anyway and I can't afford a vet so I just put him down.

Welll to be honest I am not paying anything. I am sure his insurance is, but I personally am not. His insurance is state funded (its called peachcare) its like medicaid but for lower income families who don't qualify for medicaid to help with insurance costs. Up to Covid, I was paying like $50 a month for 2 kids, with co-pays of like $2 at the dr office, but then they cancelled all premiums and made it free for all, and then Katie aged out. I'm waiting to see if/when I'll need to pay premiums again for Nathan.

Your cat lets you put them in the bathtub? Or is it a fight? Its always been a fight with cats for me. TIger (mama cat) REALLY needs a bath or something tho, she rolls in the dirt outside and she is VERY gritty. Ugh. Ooops time to get ready for the virtual counselor session for school.