Duranie

A few years back my 19 yo American son had a great experience working the summer as a camp counselor here in the states. It is a religious camp (not that my son is that religion) that draws in campers from the states and Europe. Many of those campers as they get older come back as counselors. They get the appropriate visas, make money working the camp for 8 weeks, then take the few weeks after camp before they have to leave and blow that money on traveling the States and their trip home. It was an incredible experience and inspired my son to bust his ass, save money, and a few years later took a self funded trip to Europe where he couch surfed these homes of the friends he made.

I think about those kids this year. There's no way I'd risk traveling back to this shit hole country if I were them.

When I was growing up I never connected that we always had a special "breakfast for dinner" the night before Easter. What was happening is that my parents would carefully crack one end of a dozen eggs to preserve the majority of the shell, and wash them. After lightly baking the empty shells to make sure they were dry/sanitary, my dad would fill them with a candy mix (M&Ms, Skittles, peanuts, mints) then seal the egg with royal icing and dry. These eggs would be hidden in random places throughout the house. Little kid me never questioned the arrival of the eggs, but enjoyed smashing the shell and spilling the candy out.

By the time I had kids, the best I could muster is plastic shells we would fill with candy and toys. My kids still had fun and I just reused the shells year after year.

I work in hospice, and can't describe the anger and sadness I have at moments. I say moments because if I let it fester I'd be of no help.

Like the young woman that recently passed - a few years ago she was diagnosed with extremely high blood pressure in her 30s, so had to go on medication. Shortly after she lost her job and couldn't afford it, so quit talking her meds. Next thing you know she had a stroke. A couple years later she has complications leading to another event, and now she's dead.

Because lifesaving medicine and healthcare is too expensive, parents watched their child die.

If I remember correctly, the money goes to a guardian for the benefit of the child.

20 years ago I knew someone who's husband was on a motorcycle and was run over and killed by a commercial truck driver (I think he was falling sleep or something.) She was a stay-at-home mom of 4 kids at the time. In the end between the settlement and the social security, she was able to continue to stay home to raise the children and college wasn't going to be a problem either.

I haven't thought of that family in years. In typing that out, I'm realizing that the American dream is still alive and well! Kids just have to be ready to sacrifice one of their parents to get it.

I just build ovens for a living, I didn't think they'd actually use them.

The student doesn't pay for highschool, but there are still fees. My income was low enough that they waived the (roughly) $500-700 a year though. They based it off the paperwork to qualify for free/reduced lunches.

As a fellow American, I have nothing but love for our Canadian neighbors!

Whatever happens the next few years, I can only hope we get the opportunity to have an election and vote some adults back in, and start repairing relationships. Yes, I threw up a little with that. 😒.

When I first started dating my current bf, he brought out Kingdom Builder. We played, it was fun, he got excited that he found a game I enjoyed. Excited enough that he went ahead and bought the rest of the expansions.

Next time we got together to play games, I got REALLY confused and struggled because the rules changed. A big lesson was learned in that moment lol. I struggled overall for a while because everytime we played a game and I felt like I was just starting to get it, some aspect of the game would change and I felt like I was starting over again. In time we've found some compromises that work for us though. Legacy games FTW!

One of the things I miss about regularly wearing masks. I could open mouth controlled gasp for air and not make excessive noise after walking 4 flights at work. Eventually I did it enough that it really wasn't bad, then after working more off site I lost conditioning.

I batch cook steel cut oats in a rice cooker every weekend, 50/50 water/milk. The kids previously rejected instant rolled oats, but actually like steel cut!

We have weekly game nights! Unless you're in the Chicago area though, might be a rough commute.

My boyfriend is up to his eyeballs deep in boardgames. He does trade/sell the ones he knows are unlikely to get played again, but he's probably got somewhere in the area of 120-140 games. The vast majority of the games he's collected over the years have been funded by Kickstarter and many have expansions upon expansions to keep some games replayable. Many of the components are printed/manufactured in other countries, and still plenty of the games will run several hundred dollars each.

Once Trump was elected, with the talk about tarrifs he loosened up his budget to buy up what he could from his wish list, just to avoid this added expense.

This level of boardgaming is something I never knew existed till we started dating lol.