Yay carpet! Pillows and coffee makers are of the good.

I just had the most complicated/adorable passport applicants. Two one month old girls, not twins, born a day apart to (I think) different gestational surrogates, with Swedish same sex couple dads. And one grandma was there, too.

Aww, that does sound complex and adorable!

I do wish I knew the trick to raising motivated children who have focus and interests that they genuinely want to pursue, and who do things like homework without massive crying jags, etc.

Hahahah, I don't believe it exists. Even moreso than ROUSes. Unless by interests you mean like "obsessed with video games" or "can't put down a book to say hello" or "really really thinks horses are so cool and wants to have a pony but hasn't ever actually met a horse" or something. Those are possible.

shrift, gotta say, I'm impressed with the speed in which you pulled this off. I know it was an endless slog for you, but you pulled it off!

I'm sorry about your parents' friends, msbelle. That's hard , in one week like that.

The complicated/adorable not!twins sure make a great story!

I'm so excited there will be a wee Teacup tomorrow! ::hugs sj::

Welcome to SF, shrift! If only Target delivered the way a pizza place does ...

I do wish I knew the trick to raising motivated children who have focus and interests that they genuinely want to pursue, and who do things like homework without massive crying jags, etc.

I don't think anyone could have been prepared for the difference today's tech has on kids. When I was Sara's age, I did nothing but read, but there was nothing else to do for a kid who didn't love sports and wasn't in dance, etc. I read, I listened to albums in my room, I made collages, and wrote letters to friends who had moved away.

Sara has so much input all the time -- TV, the internet, even her friends, via text and SnapChat and all that. So one day she's *obsessed* with fashion, the next she's going to study chimpanzees in the wild, etc. They just don't get that same downtime to sit and daydream unless parents really police their tech, and I know I'm not disciplined enough to do it very well.

Which was a very long-winded way of saying, "Not your fault."

I know mac is a bit older, but the only thing ONLY one that has worked is to take myself out of it and have the consequences be clear, unwavering, and that they be taking away the thing he loves most.

If he is failing any class on Friday, I get a text message and he loses all electronics until he is passing all classes. I will not check the grade portal, so he either waits until the next Friday or he checks the portal and brings me the webpage to show me passing grades in all his classes. If I hear from a teacher that he flat out did not do an assignment at all, he loses electronics until it is turned in.

That policy did not start until the end of last year and it had been almost 2 solid years of near constant nag and yell and check a million places all the time and contact teachers and yell more.

electronics = computer, internet on phone, camera on phone, instagram, video game consoles, and TV (unless it is news worthy or educational and watched with me).

Watching a clip from The Judge, I realized that my current family drama could be turned into a screenplay. I don't know how it ends yet, and there's still juicy shit happening.

Well stage it at my mom's funeral. Dad and little brother and eldest son are still around. Get to deal with issues of being excluded from the family because they continue to enable eldest son and I live in fear of being disowned because I don't support the enablement and am therefore left out of the family bond created in this disfunctional situation. Mom's death forces me to deal with the fractured family left over, because let's be honest, she was the only thing holding us together.

And I finally shoot the eldest son in the face with moms purple 22 THE END

Hi, I'm going to visit the family in a week and may possibly be roped into eldest son's drug counseling as part of my vacation.

Totally unrelated to anything y'all are talking about - I have been trying to read Bloom County on Face book as it is published? Posted? As it appears. Anyway, two thoughts:

1. How do I get it to show up reliably in my feed or somewhere every day? I have to hunt it down all the time.

2. Steve Dallas and Jeff Winger, secretly the same guy?

I think the flan has set.

Do I want to stay awake until 10 to see who it is after chilling? Maybe I will take one to work tomorrow. Or try one for breakfast.

I'm horrible, but I'm picturing sj with one of those plastic turkey timers, and we're waiting for the little red bit to pop up so they can say "Right! Time to take it out of the oven!"