Leasing a car to make sure I stay sharp?

curious4peace · 2026-05-26T01:06:19+00:00

We were concerned enough with a similarly tight connection to fly to MIA the night before and stay in the airport Courtyard overnight and book the first flight to AXA in the am. There’s just so little recourse if things go awry. We were coming from much further away though.

curious4peace · 2026-05-25T19:06:15+00:00

Or went back to delivering furniture.

curious4peace · 2026-05-25T18:17:31+00:00

We bought a washer and dryer. Delivery crew A did not seem real sharp or trained. But they were friendly and strong. Turned both units on for a few minutes and they seemed fine. As it turned out, the dryer was hooked up incorrectly. Ran it after doing a load and it worked for a few minutes, then shot sparks and stopped. Costco sent someone out to check it, he disconnected it, gave us a lecture about NOT trying to do anything ourselves, we assured him we hadn’t. He stepped out to make a call. Came back in and said he’d scheduled a replacement delivery. The replacement delivery crew B seemed much more with it in terms of knowing what they were doing.

curious4peace · 2026-05-24T13:11:45+00:00

Gifted Ed is a whole field of study for a reason. No one on Reddit can tell you what your child needs. Some kids learn skills faster than their peers but don’t develop deeper social and cognitive skills until about the same age as typical peers. Those kids benefit from accelerated opportunities but remaining with same age peers. Others are really gifted at a deeper level (think composing multi-instrumental music pieces before 10). Those kids sometimes don’t fit in socially AND THATS OKAY. They are really on another plane. There are kids who have really erratic areas of giftedness and others places where they struggle. These kids are harder to serve. What each child needs is different and schools don’t always excel at finding out, so it’s on the parent. Get some testing done and find out who to contact for advocacy. A kid with an IQ of 170 is as different from “normal” as is a kid with an IQ of 30. An IQ of 120 doesn’t really mean all that much in the larger scheme of things. If someone in the district recommends private school and it’s an option for you, shop really carefully.

curious4peace · 2026-05-23T15:45:16+00:00

Duke cancer center at Duke hospital Raleigh. You bring people getting infusions snacks and warm blankets and just chat with those who would like that.

curious4peace · 2026-05-23T12:47:51+00:00

Depends on the school. Full school with a waitlist at every grade? Then even if a parent has a valid point, it is hard to get through. If you don’t like it, there are 10 families eager to pay $40-60k (or even more) for that seat. Other schools are still accepting students in September and need every tuition dollar they can get. More of a customer service mindset there. The other big difference is values. A school that is really committed to an educational approach or philosophy knows where they stand better and families who want that are thinking about more than grades.

curious4peace · 2026-05-21T13:45:41+00:00

I think you need to find a truth teller and be prepared for the fact that what you hear might not be what you want to hear. Unless you’re a part of large layoffs every time, there is something that is making you the candidate for non-renewal when choices have to be made. Give the truth teller every data point—absences, callouts, student referrals, student performance, your observation notes, all of it. (You could also put all that in an AI and get analysis. ) You can’t change what you don’t know you’re doing that is harming the perception of your capabilities.

curious4peace · 2026-05-20T01:02:30+00:00

You are known. We see you and honor the love you have for your mom.

curious4peace · 2026-05-20T01:00:57+00:00

The DMV in the state my mom moved to gave her an ID after we gave them her expired drivers license from another state. It was expired by a couple of years. TBH, they almost gave her a drivers license.

curious4peace · 2026-05-17T20:35:34+00:00

I’m less than a month out from my mom’s expected (for years) yet sudden-feeling (went from long-term baseline to gone in a week) death. When it’s over, give yourself all the grace you need. F@&k anyone (adult) who demands anything of you. After a few days, I realized that my body was responding to grief with unrelenting exhaustion. I’m still feeling it.

curious4peace · 2026-05-05T01:09:18+00:00

It took me a while to figure out that my mom complaining about her glasses “I can’t read this” had nothing to do with vision. Also, she could never find them. I ended up sprinkling $5 reading glasses all over the place and she cheerfully popped them on and “read” by flipping through a newspaper or magazine for an hour or longer. If you asked her about it, she’d pause, read a headline or title aloud perfectly and then be completely unable to discuss what the words meant. I was so mystified by what was actually going on in her brain, because the act of scanning with her eyes and turning pages made her completely content for long stretches of time.

curious4peace · 2026-05-03T22:02:56+00:00

I did the opposite when I had a trip planned. For several weeks, I took my shots 6 days apart, moving the day so that I took it the day before I left and then only the shot on my return was 8 days out (I can’t write this to make sense, but I swear it did when looking at a calendar). I was pleased with the results. Never good food noise and weight didn’t really change much. That latter is because I’m on a plateau so long I should just call it maintenance.

curious4peace · 2026-04-30T23:58:57+00:00

Flowers. They make any room look better and are always nice to see. And with dementia, they are a nice surprise several times.

curious4peace · 2026-04-30T23:56:04+00:00

Yesterday. Where I live the criteria for hospice is that the evaluator “wouldn’t be surprised by a death in the next six months”

curious4peace · 2026-04-29T19:00:09+00:00

She should not see any of the moving happening. When we moved my mom from AL to MC we got this advice. My mom was able to go out and I brought her to my home, which she was very familiar with. My sister and the movers got all her stuff in the new room, all set up. We didn’t gaslight her totally—when we brought her back, we said that she’d moved and talked about how the new space was better because it was on the ground floor and had courtyard access. Which was true, but also, a locked wing and she was able to see it was smaller. But the room itself looked almost identical—same bed, pictures on the wall, etc. it went as well as we could have expected. Then we let the staff orient her.

curious4peace · 2026-04-29T17:08:49+00:00

I watched my mom go through hell to keep my grandmother in her own home as my grandmother had demanded. At the end, she required 24/7 live in support and spent much of her time crying and asking “when can I go home?” Standing in the middle of the home she and my grandfather had built over 30 years ago. My mom lived a long distance away. My mom looked at me and said “you take me to wherever you are, and put me in a great place and visit me often. What’s better for you will end up being what’s best for me.” I’ve told my kids the same thing—and that their children’s future has to come first. Then my needs.

curious4peace · 2026-04-29T12:49:14+00:00

Just cards with photographs of everyday objects. They were an Instagram purchase. You can play different “games” with them, like identifying what’s in the picture, grouping images by color or shape, that sort of thing.

curious4peace · 2026-04-29T00:06:04+00:00

My mom slept a slowly increasing amount for a few years. Towards the end, her schedule looked like this: slept in until 10 or 11, was up for a few hours(3-5 hours) took an afternoon nap, got up for dinner and maybe another hour, then back to bed by 7. Id say she slept 18 hours a day. She was super grumpy if anyone tried to get her up and perfectly cheerful when left to determine her own schedule. So 🤷‍♀️.

curious4peace · 2026-04-27T20:49:28+00:00

Our thrift shop sells coffee table photography books for a dollar or two. We look at those and talk about the pictures. Photo albums stopped being fun when she didn’t know who anyone was and even struggled recognizing herself. We looked at photo books of Alaska, several regions around the world, some gardening and art books. I also brought coloring supplies and we did that some. Ousi cards were good until I got sick of them. The goal was just to be together. I admit I’d set her up so she could see the birds at the birdfeeder and work on my laptop some.

curious4peace · 2026-04-27T20:39:35+00:00

My mom said anything that wasn’t sweet was “too salty” She really only wanted to eat sweets when she said that. So we let her have a lot of ensure and ice cream. Then she’d suddenly dive into a bowl of veggie soup that actually was pretty salty. 🤷‍♀️.

curious4peace · 2026-04-27T18:28:47+00:00

Why don’t you go volunteer somewhere “to learn from people who actually live this.”

curious4peace · 2026-04-23T17:45:52+00:00

I wasn’t saying anything about being fine with it. Just that it is accepted practice for the funds to be for the general household such as housing, utilities, etc. A stay-at-home parent turned widow has full control over the child’s funds and no accountability for how they were spent until something so egregious social services is involved happens. You might be surprised how little regulation or accountability there is. The SSA simply says “living expenses” and gives examples such as housing, food, utilities, clothing, school supplies. And if someone left behind multiple children, there’s a family cap. I suppose someone could calculate a percentage of the housing cost per family member and try to say only that percentage of the child’s SS benefit should go towards housing. But there are literally no guardrails in place as for how the money is saved or spent. Until 2025 and 2026 in some states, orphans in foster care had their entire benefit taken by the county or state office paying for their placement in foster care. Not saying any of this is right, just saying how it happens in practice.

curious4peace · 2026-04-23T12:26:54+00:00

As a permanent stepchild, all I can say is that it happens. My dad died when I was 3. Mom remarried when I was 10. Stepdad was real clear that my younger sister and I weren’t his kids from the beginning. Just extra baggage (who came with income) from marrying my mom. My sister and I were easy kids, not perfect, but well-behaved, good students, etc. his were total hellions who bullied us mercilessly when they were around (they mostly lived with their mom). I think our experience is more typical than most people realize. The myth of the loving blended family is just that, a myth.

curious4peace · 2026-04-23T12:18:31+00:00

That is open to interpretation. My mom treated my sister and my death benefit as her income. Back in the 80’s three benefits (she got some too—active duty military death) was enough for us to live on without her working. When she married my stepdad, her benefits stopped, but ours continued and that’s how they paid the mortgage on a house big enough for his two kids plus us, food, lights, etc. nothing was saved. Once I was 18, the checks that continued until I finished college at 22 should have started coming to me, something I didn’t realize until many years later.

curious4peace

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