I used to have straight medium-brown hair with red highlights; post-chemo, it's wavy and dark chestnut (and finally matches my brows) with lots of glinty silver. I used to get highlights before I had cancer, but now my stylist tells me not to highlight nor color my hair. Being (now) frugal and lazy, I am happy to follow her advice.
BTW, my oncologist was very interested in my hair the last time I saw her. She told me that some women want to go through chemo for the hair benefits. I do NOT recommend this.
The point of it is for the bread to taste like cranberry sauce. Besides, canned cranberries are sweetened, at least in my country, and the recipe also contains sugar.
unfortunately i was in this situation and i trusted my now ex spouse. i asked him to close the joint bank account. he lied and said he did. i believed him and never checked. years later i found an old checkbook and called to find it was still open. i closed it immediately and within the 24 hours it took to actually close he charged up the credit line that was attached to it. i never thought he would do that but years later i started getting declined for credit cards and apartments when i was apartment hunting. i got a hold of my credit report and found out he had stolen what now amounts to thousands (after the years of interest) and i am liable for it all.
my advice - divorce can be very ugly!!! do not trust that the other person will "do the right thing". they might be acting out of anger or self righteousness and will not have your best interest at heart any longer.
In the end, I lost about 65K to my x - as he stole all my material items (including my car, my video equipment, furniture, pets, antiques and more) and racked up the lawyer's bills (he was getting his pro bono) and committed fraud on the bank account. the person you might know in a marriage becomes a very different animal in divorce.
but in the end, even though i had to couch surf and eat rice for months, leaving was the best thing i ever did. my advice is to have your ducks in a row, watch your back and do not trust the person you used to love (and i was with my x for almost 20 years) - people change under stress.
Cranberries are way to tart to sub for bananas in banana bread Plus, they are not sweet. You would end up with bread that tastes like cranberry sauce. EEEW! You could mix a few into the banana bread batter, though. That would probably be tasty and add counterpoint to the bananas. Although Blueberries sounds better to me.
When I was a teen, a known friend to the family who had always wanted to be a police officer, was upset & talking to parents about the fact that the biggest drug dealers in the valley were declared to be "off limits" to prosecution as they "contributed" to the police dept & the hospital. He ended up being so unhappy by the bribery & corruption back then, he left the police force. Our countrys bribing Congress to "do it their" way & having predatory capitalism where everything is for Corps & big business & against the people of the USA: re credit cards, usury laws, loan sharking laws, & predator laws ignored re high interest rates which are all against the laws of the USA; yet, our lawmakers when given all the evidence have taken no actions at all to stop them nor even have the "so called" Attorney Generals who are supposedly there to prevent such things done 1 single thing; the homes in foreclosure are due to bribery done so that the qualified for good loans, low interest rates, etc, were deliberately steered into risky, high interest loans, & all kinds of bogus made up fees added to their "loan" as brought up before Congress: who of course had full knowledge & consented to it being done or it would never have happened. There is no justice in the USA; there is only oppression & cruelty beyond measure to it's citizens & will continue to get worse. Laws are not enforced by the supposed & total immunity is given to all except to the citizens. So you tell me: is there corruption here?
... takes me back. When we ran out of milk when I was a kid, my mom would open a can of fruit cocktail and put that over our cereal instead. We LOVED it of course -- what kid wouldn't prefer heavy syrup to milk?
Thanks for the idea, it worked for me. I felt rejuvenated after writing down the items. It gave me some things to shoot for and honestly, there were things I always thought of but felt afraid to admit to myself. I felt either shallow, superficial or boring in my ideas but you know what? If that is what I want to do, who cares! I think the goal is find what you love THEN try to make a living out of it. So unless you're honest with yourself, you'll never feel satisfied.
My (and particularly my son's) favorite thing to do with a can of fruit is to blend it up, add in a few things (light veg and salad is easily hidden, for tart fruits honey and coconut milk sweeten very well) and pour over cereal instead of milk makes a very nice start to the day. 2 cans usually lasts in a pitcher for about a week.
Since you mentioned cranberries, I kept thinking about them while I was reading the article. And I wonder if a can of whole cranberries could be substituted for bananas in banana bread. It could be delicious -- or it could be a total disaster. I'll have to make a note to myself to try it.
I'm with you. Many years a go my husband's family asked what I wanted for Christmas. I told them a circular saw, doing my best to convince them. "You could all pitch in and it'll cost you only about $10 apiece." Just before Christmas a box came in the mail. It was an UGLY serving platter. What a let down. I was crushed. A few days later another box came. My saw. Oh I love that thing. Mightily useful. (The platter was a joke.)
As someone who works hard, follows the rules and pays taxes, I have to throw my two-cents into this discussion. While it sounds like you are a wonderful and loving mother, I can't help asking "who do you think has paid for you to have your baby and stay home to care for her?" Those groceries you eat, that apartment you are renting for $150, and all of the other benefits you are enjoying come with a price. People like me who go to work every day to meet our financial responsibilities are paying for people like YOU, who take advantage of the system. While there are some who truly need welfare assistance, there are those who have the ability to work, but choose not to.
Yes, being a parent is a wonderful and awesome "job". But, it doesn't pay the rent or put food on the table.
I join the previous poster in saying "you're welcome".
I think this is a great idea all around. A restaurant not having to advertise? Awesome - they only pay advertising costs when they actually -get- a new customer. That's excellent.
As far as grumpy servers? Coupons'll do that sometimes. When I use a coupon, I let the server know up front that I tip 35% on the undiscounted amount, for truly excellent service. That way they know you won't be one of those 'make your own lemonade' tables who leaves a $1 tip and feels generous!
If a server is grumpy anyway? Sometimes you just get someone who is bad at their job. Oh well.
AuPairCare www.aupaircare.com is a fantastic au pair agency that many families in my area have been very happy with. It's signifiantly cheaper and more flexible than any other option I researched. AuPairCare's online au pair matching system make it really easy to view lots of au pair profiles and find the best one to meet your childcare needs. Plus I have only heard raves about AuPaircare's local service/support.
The corruption in US is legalized systematic rip off and day light robbery of the decent people of this country by all those on Wall Street, in Washington and their cronies. This is evidenced by the current economic crisis, made in America and now ruining the whole world. It is on another scale! Capitalism has mutated and hijacked by an evil special interest group that brought us illegal wars, economical ruins, and moral decay. Can there be a better America?
I started finding gray hairs when I was a teenager and started coloring regularly after college. I was always too cheap to go for the salon color, and too busy to do the home color kit very often. I stopped a couple years ago (age 35) when I realized that I looked worse with the roots than I would if I just embraced my gray hair. Some people think I'm nuts and that I should take time to "pamper" myself with regular haircoloring. I'd just much rather pamper myself in other ways.
To claim that a country is corrupt because the taxes are too high or low or that the country lacks free healthcare or other economic system details is not real corruption. Those are differences in economic system. Making money through legal business transactions is not corruption. These things may be unethical or immoral but they are not corruption.
The corruption index pointed to in the article is a good objective measurement and they define corruption as : "Corruption is operationally defined as the misuse of entrusted power for private gain." Individual opinions are very valid and everyone will never agree on a topic. But I think an objective study with a large amount of data is better substance than anecdotal evidence or perceptions people have from watching TV.
There are some great comments here - thanks everybody! What a conversation.
To explore further the need to plan financially for children: yes, kids can survive in financially tough times and being raised in poverty is not a death sentence for the kids by any stretch. In many ways it will build character and give the kids great perspective on life.
BUT: what about the parents? Eventually the kids will grow up, get educated, and move on with their lives. How will you, the parent, who put yourself into a position of financial duress to have children, recover? Financially planning for children is as much about covering your own butt as it is providing for your children's butts.
And yes, I do completely agree with those who say you can overplan these things to the extent that you become immobilized. If having children is your dream, then go ahead and infuse your life with that joy. Where there is a will there is a way. Just don't confuse having a will with being irresponsible or fatalistic.
Some people can juggle paid work and a baby, work right up to the due date and come back at full salary.
And then there are people like me, who get hit with pregnancy like a severe illness, end up on bed rest, and then have a C-section and a preemie baby. When I ran out of my 12 weeks of FMLA leave, my baby was one week past his due date, still having problems regulating his own body temperature, and needing to be fed every hour or two because eating wore him out. Even if I *wanted* to go back to work full time, what paid child care wants that kind of responsibility?
The better financial shape you are in before you start, the better prepared you are for the things you *can't* plan.
I have two young children. People act like they will break. I don't worry about germs...we just don't get sick. I wash with gentle soaps, and water. Very rarely anything else. I breastfed the first for a little over a year, and will do the same for my daughter. My son has had two minor colds, and a short bout of the flu, the flu being strong enough to get my husband and I sick for the first time in eleven years. We grew up on dairy farms and I'm sure we injested a certain amount of dirt, and manure...kids don't wash as well as they should all the time. We think if that is why we don't get sick when our friends do it was worth it.
It's certainly true that the US has exported a lot of the injustice and inequality that would otherwise have manifested itself inside the United States.
Even so, I'm inclined to quibble about some of the examples you provide.
I'd suggest, for example, that coming from a family where both parents read for pleasure gives a child a bigger leg up in achieving a top-notch education than any institutional bias in favor of their family. It's possible for almost everyone in the US to go to college, and what the prestigous colleges provide is not a better eduction but contact with the people of your generation whose familes are already important--valuable, but not determinative. To me, that makes the corrupting influence of family preference seem less important--at some point you just say, "Yeah, and the girls everyone likes get to be homecoming queen," and let it go.
What happened with housing in New Orleans is evil. On the other hand, a lot of gentrification is the result of individual preferences rather than corrupt influence. I don't think it helps to lump them together.
So, I guess you're right that I've misunderstood. I think of "corruption" as being related to using improper influence to get advantages under color of law. If the influence isn't improper (voting for example) I don't think of it as corruption. Similarly, if the law isn't involved--landlords improving their apartments and raising the rent--I don't think of that as corruption either.
I used to have straight medium-brown hair with red highlights; post-chemo, it's wavy and dark chestnut (and finally matches my brows) with lots of glinty silver. I used to get highlights before I had cancer, but now my stylist tells me not to highlight nor color my hair. Being (now) frugal and lazy, I am happy to follow her advice.
BTW, my oncologist was very interested in my hair the last time I saw her. She told me that some women want to go through chemo for the hair benefits. I do NOT recommend this.
offer free babysitting - for an evening out or a weekend lover's getaway - great way to keep a couple together !
The point of it is for the bread to taste like cranberry sauce. Besides, canned cranberries are sweetened, at least in my country, and the recipe also contains sugar.
Neat ideas. I got this great deal on whole cranberry relish and now we're going away for the meal. Now I know what we can do with it.
unfortunately i was in this situation and i trusted my now ex spouse. i asked him to close the joint bank account. he lied and said he did. i believed him and never checked. years later i found an old checkbook and called to find it was still open. i closed it immediately and within the 24 hours it took to actually close he charged up the credit line that was attached to it. i never thought he would do that but years later i started getting declined for credit cards and apartments when i was apartment hunting. i got a hold of my credit report and found out he had stolen what now amounts to thousands (after the years of interest) and i am liable for it all.
my advice - divorce can be very ugly!!! do not trust that the other person will "do the right thing". they might be acting out of anger or self righteousness and will not have your best interest at heart any longer.
In the end, I lost about 65K to my x - as he stole all my material items (including my car, my video equipment, furniture, pets, antiques and more) and racked up the lawyer's bills (he was getting his pro bono) and committed fraud on the bank account. the person you might know in a marriage becomes a very different animal in divorce.
but in the end, even though i had to couch surf and eat rice for months, leaving was the best thing i ever did. my advice is to have your ducks in a row, watch your back and do not trust the person you used to love (and i was with my x for almost 20 years) - people change under stress.
Cranberries are way to tart to sub for bananas in banana bread Plus, they are not sweet. You would end up with bread that tastes like cranberry sauce. EEEW! You could mix a few into the banana bread batter, though. That would probably be tasty and add counterpoint to the bananas. Although Blueberries sounds better to me.
When I was a teen, a known friend to the family who had always wanted to be a police officer, was upset & talking to parents about the fact that the biggest drug dealers in the valley were declared to be "off limits" to prosecution as they "contributed" to the police dept & the hospital. He ended up being so unhappy by the bribery & corruption back then, he left the police force. Our countrys bribing Congress to "do it their" way & having predatory capitalism where everything is for Corps & big business & against the people of the USA: re credit cards, usury laws, loan sharking laws, & predator laws ignored re high interest rates which are all against the laws of the USA; yet, our lawmakers when given all the evidence have taken no actions at all to stop them nor even have the "so called" Attorney Generals who are supposedly there to prevent such things done 1 single thing; the homes in foreclosure are due to bribery done so that the qualified for good loans, low interest rates, etc, were deliberately steered into risky, high interest loans, & all kinds of bogus made up fees added to their "loan" as brought up before Congress: who of course had full knowledge & consented to it being done or it would never have happened. There is no justice in the USA; there is only oppression & cruelty beyond measure to it's citizens & will continue to get worse. Laws are not enforced by the supposed & total immunity is given to all except to the citizens. So you tell me: is there corruption here?
The cereal thing blows my mind. I learn something new every day! Thanks for sharing!
Linsey Knerl
... takes me back. When we ran out of milk when I was a kid, my mom would open a can of fruit cocktail and put that over our cereal instead. We LOVED it of course -- what kid wouldn't prefer heavy syrup to milk?
I haven't done the kielbasa, pineapple and green pepper thing in years. Thanks for the reminder, Linsey. The compote idea sounds interesting too.
Thanks for the idea, it worked for me. I felt rejuvenated after writing down the items. It gave me some things to shoot for and honestly, there were things I always thought of but felt afraid to admit to myself. I felt either shallow, superficial or boring in my ideas but you know what? If that is what I want to do, who cares! I think the goal is find what you love THEN try to make a living out of it. So unless you're honest with yourself, you'll never feel satisfied.
My (and particularly my son's) favorite thing to do with a can of fruit is to blend it up, add in a few things (light veg and salad is easily hidden, for tart fruits honey and coconut milk sweeten very well) and pour over cereal instead of milk makes a very nice start to the day. 2 cans usually lasts in a pitcher for about a week.
Since you mentioned cranberries, I kept thinking about them while I was reading the article. And I wonder if a can of whole cranberries could be substituted for bananas in banana bread. It could be delicious -- or it could be a total disaster. I'll have to make a note to myself to try it.
I'm with you. Many years a go my husband's family asked what I wanted for Christmas. I told them a circular saw, doing my best to convince them. "You could all pitch in and it'll cost you only about $10 apiece." Just before Christmas a box came in the mail. It was an UGLY serving platter. What a let down. I was crushed. A few days later another box came. My saw. Oh I love that thing. Mightily useful. (The platter was a joke.)
As someone who works hard, follows the rules and pays taxes, I have to throw my two-cents into this discussion. While it sounds like you are a wonderful and loving mother, I can't help asking "who do you think has paid for you to have your baby and stay home to care for her?" Those groceries you eat, that apartment you are renting for $150, and all of the other benefits you are enjoying come with a price. People like me who go to work every day to meet our financial responsibilities are paying for people like YOU, who take advantage of the system. While there are some who truly need welfare assistance, there are those who have the ability to work, but choose not to.
Yes, being a parent is a wonderful and awesome "job". But, it doesn't pay the rent or put food on the table.
I join the previous poster in saying "you're welcome".
I think this is a great idea all around. A restaurant not having to advertise? Awesome - they only pay advertising costs when they actually -get- a new customer. That's excellent.
As far as grumpy servers? Coupons'll do that sometimes. When I use a coupon, I let the server know up front that I tip 35% on the undiscounted amount, for truly excellent service. That way they know you won't be one of those 'make your own lemonade' tables who leaves a $1 tip and feels generous!
If a server is grumpy anyway? Sometimes you just get someone who is bad at their job. Oh well.
AuPairCare www.aupaircare.com is a fantastic au pair agency that many families in my area have been very happy with. It's signifiantly cheaper and more flexible than any other option I researched. AuPairCare's online au pair matching system make it really easy to view lots of au pair profiles and find the best one to meet your childcare needs. Plus I have only heard raves about AuPaircare's local service/support.
The corruption in US is legalized systematic rip off and day light robbery of the decent people of this country by all those on Wall Street, in Washington and their cronies. This is evidenced by the current economic crisis, made in America and now ruining the whole world. It is on another scale! Capitalism has mutated and hijacked by an evil special interest group that brought us illegal wars, economical ruins, and moral decay. Can there be a better America?
Myth America: A Stand-up Tragedy
by Mickey Z. / September 19th, 2008
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/09/myth-america-a-stand-up-tragedy/
I started finding gray hairs when I was a teenager and started coloring regularly after college. I was always too cheap to go for the salon color, and too busy to do the home color kit very often. I stopped a couple years ago (age 35) when I realized that I looked worse with the roots than I would if I just embraced my gray hair. Some people think I'm nuts and that I should take time to "pamper" myself with regular haircoloring. I'd just much rather pamper myself in other ways.
To claim that a country is corrupt because the taxes are too high or low or that the country lacks free healthcare or other economic system details is not real corruption. Those are differences in economic system. Making money through legal business transactions is not corruption. These things may be unethical or immoral but they are not corruption.
The corruption index pointed to in the article is a good objective measurement and they define corruption as : "Corruption is operationally defined as the misuse of entrusted power for private gain." Individual opinions are very valid and everyone will never agree on a topic. But I think an objective study with a large amount of data is better substance than anecdotal evidence or perceptions people have from watching TV.
There are some great comments here - thanks everybody! What a conversation.
To explore further the need to plan financially for children: yes, kids can survive in financially tough times and being raised in poverty is not a death sentence for the kids by any stretch. In many ways it will build character and give the kids great perspective on life.
BUT: what about the parents? Eventually the kids will grow up, get educated, and move on with their lives. How will you, the parent, who put yourself into a position of financial duress to have children, recover? Financially planning for children is as much about covering your own butt as it is providing for your children's butts.
And yes, I do completely agree with those who say you can overplan these things to the extent that you become immobilized. If having children is your dream, then go ahead and infuse your life with that joy. Where there is a will there is a way. Just don't confuse having a will with being irresponsible or fatalistic.
NOPE!
Some people can juggle paid work and a baby, work right up to the due date and come back at full salary.
And then there are people like me, who get hit with pregnancy like a severe illness, end up on bed rest, and then have a C-section and a preemie baby. When I ran out of my 12 weeks of FMLA leave, my baby was one week past his due date, still having problems regulating his own body temperature, and needing to be fed every hour or two because eating wore him out. Even if I *wanted* to go back to work full time, what paid child care wants that kind of responsibility?
The better financial shape you are in before you start, the better prepared you are for the things you *can't* plan.
I have two young children. People act like they will break. I don't worry about germs...we just don't get sick. I wash with gentle soaps, and water. Very rarely anything else. I breastfed the first for a little over a year, and will do the same for my daughter. My son has had two minor colds, and a short bout of the flu, the flu being strong enough to get my husband and I sick for the first time in eleven years. We grew up on dairy farms and I'm sure we injested a certain amount of dirt, and manure...kids don't wash as well as they should all the time. We think if that is why we don't get sick when our friends do it was worth it.
It's certainly true that the US has exported a lot of the injustice and inequality that would otherwise have manifested itself inside the United States.
Even so, I'm inclined to quibble about some of the examples you provide.
I'd suggest, for example, that coming from a family where both parents read for pleasure gives a child a bigger leg up in achieving a top-notch education than any institutional bias in favor of their family. It's possible for almost everyone in the US to go to college, and what the prestigous colleges provide is not a better eduction but contact with the people of your generation whose familes are already important--valuable, but not determinative. To me, that makes the corrupting influence of family preference seem less important--at some point you just say, "Yeah, and the girls everyone likes get to be homecoming queen," and let it go.
What happened with housing in New Orleans is evil. On the other hand, a lot of gentrification is the result of individual preferences rather than corrupt influence. I don't think it helps to lump them together.
So, I guess you're right that I've misunderstood. I think of "corruption" as being related to using improper influence to get advantages under color of law. If the influence isn't improper (voting for example) I don't think of it as corruption. Similarly, if the law isn't involved--landlords improving their apartments and raising the rent--I don't think of that as corruption either.
Thanks!