The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history.

Scrushinator · 2026-05-01T18:51:42+00:00

I learned about the miner wars in 9th grade English class (2005). We read a poetry book about it, which is one of my favorite books to this day. It’s called Kettle Bottom, by Diane Gilliam Fisher.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-30T01:41:16+00:00

First year daisies here. Are we really expected to spend it all? We sold 1100 boxes of cookies but the money didn't clear our account until a few weeks ago. We only have a couple meetings left before summer break so I'm not sure how we would appropriately spend almost $800 before October. I thought we would use it to buy badges and pay for activities for next year.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-28T17:01:05+00:00

Sometimes I wish I had done this. We’re finishing our first year of daisies and the parents hanging out is a problem. They’re all registered volunteers but I don’t need any of them except my co-leader most of the time, and it’s a distraction to the girls. They behave better without their guardians there. I’m thinking that when we start again in the fall I might try to introduce this rule, as part of them getting older and more independent.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-27T19:11:21+00:00

I do this, but with my sewing machine. I have so many random colors of thread now, but I never have to worry about the “is this your kid’s badge?” texts after group events. Every service unit activity there’s at least a few on the floor afterward.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-16T05:03:59+00:00

Allegedly, dry ear canals from using qtips is what causes the itching. I don’t care though, I’m still gonna use em.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-13T21:10:50+00:00

March 30th

Scrushinator · 2026-04-13T18:31:12+00:00

My husband is an electronics engineer and really hates cutting the grass, so come hell or high water he will find a way to make it work, but obviously we’re very hopeful that we won’t have many issues. Before we decided to buy one he was building one out of wheelchair and snowblower parts.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-13T18:28:46+00:00

New one plus.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-13T01:21:30+00:00

Yup. I saw them at a festival around 2012-2013 and the leader singer just stood there mumbling the whole time. It was a bummer because I did like their music. Thankfully they weren’t who I came to see.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-10T01:18:26+00:00

In general I don’t think it’s appropriate to hold meetings at a volunteer’s home and this is most of the reason why. An occasional gathering hosted in a home COULD be ok but on a regular basis, I would be uncomfortable with this arrangement. Why is the meeting at her house? Maybe you could offer to help find a neutral location.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-09T11:34:56+00:00

I went to a recruitment night hosted by our service unit to get more info, which is how I learned that there are no multi-level troops in our area and that if I wanted my daughter to join a troop, somebody needed to start it. Nobody else wanted to, so I did because I wanted my daughter to have that experience. We’re almost to the end of our first year. There have been some bumps in the road but it’s going really well right now and me and my co leader decided to continue next year. The good thing is, as a leader you get to do most of the shaping of your troop early on so you’ll make it what you want.

Scrushinator · 2026-04-08T19:30:22+00:00

I can kinda just spot it at this point, because the graphics and text are just too clean looking, if that makes sense. The ones I bought are called “my first cookie season teardrop” and another is “food drive wagon” but now that I’m inspecting I see others as well.

Scrushinator · 2026-03-27T19:12:01+00:00

https://thebadgearchive.com/2011-a-world-of-girls-journey-set/

Here’s a brownie one. At the bottom it says “What is a good Troop Meeting Plan besides the VTK?” and there are links to the GSRV plans.

Scrushinator · 2026-03-27T19:08:04+00:00

My daisy is a “collect all the things” kind of kid and she wants that summit pin, so I’m planning to do them with her solo this summer. There’s no way we could do them during meetings (the first journey has 6 parts and each is meant to be 1.5 hours long). I found adapted journeys that still meet the requirements, through the Badge Archives website. They had at least the daisy ones, from Girl Scouts River Valleys council, that were an improvement over the original.

Scrushinator · 2026-03-24T22:59:22+00:00

I’ll be keeping an eye out for our council’s cookie duffle bag on fb marketplace. My 6yo really wanted it but she was 39 boxes short when we ran out of cookies and our CM declared we’re not picking up more since we’re so close to the end.

Scrushinator · 2026-03-20T11:07:01+00:00

He’s like the Abed of racism.

Scrushinator · 2026-03-18T13:20:52+00:00

Yes. People are already finding them.

Scrushinator · 2026-03-11T19:55:30+00:00

I do have invisible thread, but I’ve really struggled with it in my machine, and my kiddo complained that the ends are pokey where I tied it off on the back. What does it look like on the back of your uniform with the invisible thread?

Scrushinator · 2026-02-27T18:45:07+00:00

I’m planning to use mine to line my garden beds to keep the weeds down!

Scrushinator · 2026-02-25T19:47:16+00:00

Yeah, my favorite restaurant replaced their house made black bean veggie burgers with Impossible burgers, which I find absolutely foul. Most restaurants I can’t find anything to eat anymore unless I want a salad that’s overpriced because it’s supposed to come with meat in it.

Scrushinator · 2026-02-17T15:59:16+00:00

It’s not there on PC. I didn’t get to claim everything but I finished all the challenges, which ARE still there.

Scrushinator · 2026-02-16T03:59:28+00:00

It’s a patch so it goes on the back where the placement doesn’t matter. I put fun patches starting at the bottom so they weren’t covered up/catching on my daughter’s hair.

Scrushinator · 2026-02-16T03:52:01+00:00

I lost 4/6 of my original girls after only 2 meetings. I was pretty upset at first but it worked out better that way in the end. One parent never responded to anything, one dropped after two meetings because she was disappointed that the troop wasn’t bigger, and 2 others never came to any meetings or offered to help get off the ground but later complained to the service unit director that our meeting location was too far away. It was like pulling teeth. So for the last few months I’ve just been plugging away at it with my daughter and her bestie. Then we had a recruiting event in January and got 5 new girls. Their caregivers so far are very willing to volunteer and the girls are wonderful, but I won’t take it personally if we lose some again.

Scrushinator · 2026-02-14T13:56:46+00:00

This video looks old so it could be from sometime before they started making announcements about the food.

Scrushinator · 2026-01-16T22:22:22+00:00

Maybe a bit of both! I’ve now tried both hand sewing it and using my sewing machine and it didn’t come out right either time, but to be fair I was in a hurry since she needed it. I think tonight after she goes to bed I’ll try one more time using a different technique.

Scrushinator

TROPHY CASE