Cerina

I don't mind a 2nd Biden term because I don't believe that he's actually doing much behind the scenes. I'm mostly ok with his cabinet and the people he's surrounded himself with, and I believe that if Biden were to like fall into a coma or something, they would carry on without him and things would continue on their current course. Now granted, I also believe our current course could be a hell of a lot better, but given how we've seen how it can also be a hell of a lot worse, I'm sticking with another 4 years of this bullshit than that bullshit.

Sounds like a classic case of not wanting to take responsibility. We had Luke's ARD meeting last week. They're changing his one-on-one supports. He's now doing well enough in reading/LA to no longer require an aide to be with him every day during that time. Instead, they're going to reallocate that time to having an aide with him while they're doing individual work during stations (where they rotate through several stations and one-on-one time with the teacher). He apparently cannot stay on track by himself. He's easily distracted. Shocking, I know. So yay and *sigh*. Also, Luke received an Evite for another kid's birthday party, so I told him that he got an invite to this kid's birthday and his response was "ugh, no. We're not friends. I don't want to go." Not what I was expecting but ok. But then when I went to decline the invite I noticed that only like 12 invites went out and several look like they're to family members. They didn't invite a lot of people to this party, and somehow Luke was chosen. I also didn't recognize any of the other people who were invited, so I sent a quick screenshot to a friend of mine who regularly volunteers at the school and knows everyone I swear. She didn't recognize anyone either, but she told me that this kid is also in the special education program. So I questioned Luke a bit more (always a fun exercise with a child with an expressive speech impairment). By this point it had been a couple of hours, so I started the conversation over. (Mind you, we do this with Luke all the time. If we get an unexpected response, it likely has more to do with his circumstances in that exact moment than anything lasting. Example, if we ask him if he's hungry when he's actively doing something, anything really, he will say "no". But if we wait until he pauses for a second or force him to break his attention and then ask again, he'll change his answer to "oh yeah!") So this 2nd convo went a bit like this: Me: Luke, you got invited to Max's birthday party! Is Max your friend in Ms. E's class? Luke: This answer is still no. We're not friends. Me: Oh. Why aren't you friends? Luke: Because we're not friends. (Answering "why" questions is one of his impairments) Me: Is it because Max is mean to you? Luke: No. Me: Is Max a good student? Does he get 3s and 4s or 1s and 2s? (Me trying to determine if there's a general behavior issue that's turning Luke off) Luke: He gets 4s like me. Me: Why aren't you friends with Max? Luke: Because...we're not friends. Because...he follows me and I told him "don't follow me!" Me: Does he follow you because he wants to be friends? Luke: He follows me. I don't like it. We're not friends. And then he ran off. That's about the maximum amount of conversation we typically get out of Luke. So I'm thinking given that Max is also in the special education program, he likely could also be on the spectrum and have difficulty interacting and making friends. If that's the case, I absolutely want to ensure that Luke goes to his party. I typically wouldn't force my kids to be around someone they don't like, but I also hate it when special needs kids try to throw parties and everyone ditches them. It's happened to a few of my friends' kids before and it's absolutely heartbreaking. I'm really torn on this one. I'm heavily leaning toward taking Luke to the party anyway. It's not until the middle of next month, so we have time to prime him or things might change naturally. I'm also tempted to email their gen ed and special ed teachers to see if they have any insight into Luke and Max's relationship. I'd hate to force Luke to go if there's always conflict between them. But if they get along decently well at school, then it's likely that Luke is just being a grumpy-ass this weekend, which has already been a thing this weekend actually. So maybe I'm making too much of all of this.

I forgot as well. I'll PM you.

w t a f

Yes. Absolutely. If they want to apologize, Q can accept that apology. But forgiveness is internal and, honestly, for the victim. Forgiveness does great things to one's mental health - letting go of anger and resentment is healing. She doesn't have to forgive them, but she should for her own sake. What she absolutely should NOT be pressured into doing AT ALL is reconciling with them. She's allowed boundaries, and not being around those girls should be one of those boundaries.

Every time I find myself job hunting I tell myself to just go into escrow at a title company and work my way up. And then I don't. I should probably listen to myself. And you.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be looking for a new job this year. I'm not terribly satisfied with the job as it is or with my crazy boss's weird demands, but I'm willing to deal because the flexible schedule allows me to work at home when Luke is out of school but Noah isn't or when I want to go out of town or anything like that. But the real estate market is going through a thing and it looks like we won't be building many houses this year. Without that, there isn't much for me to do. My boss isn't really focused on building a business, which is something I would be willing to stay on for. He's just focused on making money. Most of that money goes directly into his IRA or his friends' and family's IRAs, so it's not like the company is profiting. And I pretty much AM the whole company. So yeah.

And by reading, I also mean listening to audiobooks. I "rediscovered" books this year, and I can't believe how much I've missed reading for my own enjoyment. The last 10ish years I've only really read books for work, parenting, or general self-improvement or reading books to the kids. I've read A LOT of this stuff in the past decade, but not too many adult books. So for 2024 I'm making it a goal to read 60 books. I did 37 from June to now, so this is very doable for me. I spend about 4-5 hours alone in a car each week, so that helps a lot. I'm doing this challenge. And in doing so, I also have a goal to pair 6 fiction novels with a non-fiction book about a topic or theme from the novel and also to read one career/productivity and one health/wellness focused book a quarter. These extra goals can also satisfy the goals from the 52 Book Challenge, so I'm not crazy. Anyway, I'm on Goodreads. Add me on there. Anyone else have a reading goal for the year? Or anyone have any good book recs for the challenge or otherwise?

Thank god someone said it. Best Star War scene of the 21st century.

My sister, her sister-in-law, and I all got AirPods from our significant others. I was highly impressed with the coordination between the guys until I found out that they didn't coordinate at all. It was a coincidence, but one my brother-in-law noticed when he saw all 3 under the tree, so he made us all open them at the same time after covertly confirming that the other 2 boxes did indeed contain AirPods. This made me even happier because this means that Trevor actually heard me mention that I'd like some AirPods and he executed this without me knowing. I didn't get much else. Noah bought me some Friends themed booties. "Luke" picked out this massage thingy that fits over your hand (and the first listed benefit on its fairly plain packaging is that it "Reduces the appearance of cellulite!"...so hopefully Luke did actually pick that and neither Trevor nor Noah actually intervened). My mom gave me cash without making all of us play a silly game for her amusement this time. And my dad and stepmom gave my siblings and I our usual stockings with the staples - toothbrush, Lifesavers candy book, candy canes, Reese's PB cups, and other random dollar store trinkets. However! I went ahead and filled my own stocking with mini bottles of booze while I was at the liquor store getting Trevor's gift and I bought myself a planner sticker book I really wanted. So Merry Christmas to me! The kids made out like bandits though. Between the two of them, they got a PS5 (from us), 5 PS5 games, 6 LEGO sets, 8 board/card games, $120 cash, and probably 20+ other things each. Bandits. Starting on Saturday, we had 7 rounds of gift opening/receiving (that does include Christmas morning from Santa). I'm exhausted from just watching them be spoiled by everyone else.

The dog always gets new toys and a stocking full of treats. Last year he got cookies and a turkey flavored turkey chew.

Definitely! We've had plenty of trees that were only decorated on one half! And that half has changed through the years. We had years where we could only decorate the top because toddlers. We've only done the front part of a tree because of walls and corners. We've had trees that are only decorated on the bottom half because the children insisted on doing it all themselves. In my experience, children don't give 2 shits what a tree looks like as long as one is up.

Scotch. And lay it on me anyway. I might forgo another gift idea to add money to the budget.

Is anyone here a whisky connoisseur? I want to buy Trevor a nice bottle of whisky for Christmas, but I don't really know what to get. Budget is roughly $50-60 a bottle. Typically he'll drink cheaper stuff.

Dark floors, like dark cars, show ALLL THE DIRT. Keep that in mind. All the dirt. All the dog hair. All the people hair. All of it.

AI does not understand this wasteland.

And also 13 Going On 30

They don't actually mention it again in the books either. She turns it in because she doesn't want to take that many classes anymore, then they aren't mentioned again until a later book when I believe Ron suggests one for a different solution and Hermione mentions that they were all destroyed at the end of the 5th book. The rest is just supposition from knowing the plot and characters. They left a lot of little details out of the movies, as one would expect, but they also left out some pretty major things that were big oversights.

I didn't even get pics. Luke was Mario to go with his cousins - Peach and Toad. Noah was a character named Sans from a video game named something I don't remember. He's like a skeleton who dresses like a teenager in fuzzy pink slippers. Now those fuzzy pink slippers are Noah's favorite shoes.

Free.

The movies don't cover this very well, but there's fairly simple explanations for the time turner thing in the books. They used it in PoA because Hermione had one already. The time turners are all held at the ministry and it takes a LOT of convincing to get them to let anyone use one which is what makes it remarkable that Hermione even got one. By the end of GoF, when they realize they'd need one, the Minister was firmly anti-Dumbledore and anti-Potter and any of their known allies, so getting their hands on a time turner would have required stealing from the ministry, which would have been possible but not something Dumbledore would have been willing to do and he was the only one who knew how to actually kill Voldemort and was beginning to formulate a plan for it (however flawed that was). And then at the end of OotP, they're all destroyed. Also wanted to add Meet the Robinsons and Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

I use Chat GPT now for spreadsheet help. Then I just copy and paste. And if you don't get the result you wanted, you can ask it to modify it or just tell it the issue and it'll self-correct.

You missed the part about coming back to marry the little girl who always had a crush on you. And then watching her be killed as well.

Jesus. Agreed. Get those parents out of here. A 2nd grader still having accidents of that kind has to be a sign of something else.

Meh, her part in the scheme was over. Thrawn obviously considers people disposable as soon as they've served their purpose. She served her purpose - basically as just an intergalactic receiver. Baylan's obviously being reserved for the next series and/or movie that I haven't confirmed is on the horizon. His story is going to be bigger as he looks for the World Between Worlds or whatever the blinky light was indicating. I hope they recast. They should also think about recasting Luke and Leia (possibly Han again) as well, but the fanbros might explode. Also, I wonder if Anakin's force ghost is spending this much time with Luke/Leia or if he's only haunting Ahsoka.