Oh I was assuming he'd be supervised. I doubt he has any experience in doing anything worthwhile. I mean, this guy paddles canoes (expertly, no less! What a useless thing to devote your life to!) so you can't expect he knows how to do much of anything...
I have to be honest. The rituals surrounding death have been in place for so long that nobody ever questions them. So if there's a "break" in continuity (as there was with Covid) it seems as if it is "abnormal". But I wonder, truthfully, if funeral practices can actually be considered "normal".
Maybe I just have a weird extended family. BUT...the things I saw at funerals (as a child) terrified the hell out of me. I saw one aunt try to crawl into the casket with her dead husband while wailing like a banshee. Several male relatives had to pull her off the casket. Another time one of my male relatives wept so hard at the open gravesite (before the casket had been placed upon the lowering mechanism) that he fell into the open grave and they had to pull him out. Another time a cousin made a dramatic entrance into the wake of his mom such that the whole parlor fell into silence....you'd have had to be there to see how weird and creepy it was.
The point is -- how is any of this healthy?
Because of this kind of behavior my own children were barred from wakes and funerals until their late teens. By that time, I thought they could handle whatever happened.
So I'm thinking that maybe all of these rituals might need to be recalibrated because I don't necessarily think they "help" the bereaved.
Did you ever notice how everyone will be calm and talking quietly in a funeral parlor but then whenever a new person arrives the crying starts up all over again? It's like a scab getting ripped off whenever a new person comes to pay their respects. Is this actually a good thing?
It's not just what happened during Covid that has me thinking about this stuff. I have been asking myself this since I was a little girl. Why are we doing this? It seems to make things worse instead of better. But maybe my family is just a bit more crazy than most.
Democrats are such pigs. This is why we can't have nice things. Their minds are garbage and their bodies and personal spaces are usually monuments to squalor. Whenever they see something neat and orderly, they just have to go and mess it up.
Fine this guy. Thow his butt in jail. AND when they fix the monument -- make him go work on the crew to fix it himself. Sitting in a comfortable jail cell will teach him NOTHING. Let him go out there in the hot sun with a construction crew and that panty waist canoeist (who but a spoiled brat has time to become an expert at canoeing???) might actually learn a lesson.
It goes without saying that I will pray for you.
Regarding "the boyfriend" -- I don't know the fellow so I am not going to try to psychoanalize him and try to determine why he became a weak man. That is really what's at the bottom of his behavior because a man with true strength of character doesn't pull a disappearing act when the going gets tough.
This isn't really about your illness when viewing him and his actions. It's about his inability to cope with pressure and it could have been a job setback or any other thing in his own life that would have caused him to do this eventually. Weak men are weak. So please don't add additional anxiety upon yourself thinking that it was somehow your fault for getting sick and "causing" him to disappear.
It was an inevitable result of who he is as a person and has nothing whatsoever to do with you. PLEASE do not turn this upon yourself and think that this was due a lack of something in you. A man of different character would not have done this to you.
You are not alone. You are more loved than you know. People never consider all of the lives they touch. I am positive that there are many people who carry you in their hearts and you may not even be aware how highly they regard you.
Well...I for one, hope that the United States imposes tolls to collect the entire amount Bath House Barry gave to Iran in those cash pallets.
There's no reason the American Taxpayer should take the hit for that.
And yes, I am a "bottom line" kind of person so I really don't care what other countries think.
It won't change because the class system in the UK keeps the people too divided. The wealthy benefit from the present system and aren't going to change it because it benefits them. The poor -- well those in charge really don't seem to care what they think.
The first thing the UK has to do is encourage the lower classes to put a plug in the booze bottles and sober up long enough to make plans. The chronic pub culture doesn't give rise to clear thinking and leadership. Once they locate their "champion", then they need to give it everything they've got to push that person into public office and into a position of power. Without a piece on the board -- they can't do anything.
These demonstrations get people killed and accomplish very little.
What makes you think they didn't try?
I taught my daughter to lay out patterns and run a sewing machine when she was around eight. I taught her to cook and bake from scratch. I taught her to crochet and knit.
And this was in addition to things I signed her up for that I never learned to do because my parents didn't have the money for "enrichment".
Now I was lucky because she was cooperative. Many of her peers -- their parents would tell me how they would sign their kids up for stuff and the kids would lose interest and quit.
Now I personally wouldn't allow a kid to quit something like music lessons in the early days (when kids get frustrated because learning an instrument takes time). But some parents don't like to argue and let the kid have their way.
But don't assume they didn't try to give their kids advantages.
Actually....if boomers raised the little darlings the way we were raised we'd be in jail.
If I had a dollar for every time I (or one of my classmates) got smacked with a counterbrush for not knowing the answer to a question, or not having our desk neat, or not having a homework assignment, or having the wrong expression on our faces, I could pay off the National debt!
You have NO CLUE! I don't think you really want your child to be forced to stand in a garbage can all day because the essay they submitted was considered "garbage".
I have horrible memories of my childhood school days (as do most "boomers"). So yes, we're "smarter" but we were damaged in other ways.
In an effort to spare future generations the horrors we went through -- they let things become a little too lax. It's gone from one extreme to another extreme. And it needs to be corrected to something in the middle.
But to try to blame "boomers" for trying to be more gentle considering the hell they went through is really not very understanding.
I don't know if I still believe that "The good guys have their hands tied." This is a choice.
This reminds me of the Viet Nam war. They're fighting with one hand tied behind their backs because they are always worried about being "honorable" and the other side isn't. Well... that's why the Viet Nam war lasted as long as it did with such poor results.
No one can ever say that we have learned from our mistakes.
Not that I support Chicago politicians because I think they are all crooks...
BUT don't believe those team owners for one moment when they cry poor.
My brother (a massive idiot in this one area I think) has season tickets to the Bear games. These cost a lot. And they are not easy to get. From what he told me there was a lottery system and you had to win the right to buy these season tickets.
Now obviously, if they have to have a lottery to allow crazy people to spend enormous amounts to freeze their butts off to watch a sportball game -- they are not hurting one bit.
BOO! HOO! They can't get a larger stadium so that they can get even more crazy people to give them enormous sums to freeze their butts off? Oh those poor team owners! One less new yacht on Lake Michigan this summer! My heart bleeds peanut butter for them.
So they are running away to Indiana! Well...fans of the Chicago Bears-- if the team doesn't care about you -- why do you care about them?
It depends. There are areas where the houses are falling apart so stripes on the garage would not be noticed (or might even be.considered a cosmetic improvement if the door had previously been a mess of peeling paint).
However, there are such things as "property values" and a garage door with purple and lime green stripes would affect the resale value of homes in a well kept area. And if the homes are considered luxury homes -- certainly you have to have some rules for people with absolutely no taste.
I don't approve of biddies getting goofy and irritating their neighbors with unnecessary rules. Forty years ago, the biddies in the "walking club" (who traipsed around the neighborhood every morning presumably to exercise) noticed one homeowner had a satellite dish hidden from view by shrubbery. (These dishes were relatively new and very few people had them at the time). Personally -- I believed this walking club trespassed on this person's property because this dish was not visible from the street. Still, the biddies took him to court and.he lost his dish. I personally felt if it couldn't be.seen it wasn't a problem but I am more flexible.
I would, however, be the first person to complain if someone were to do something outrageous. Property values are a real thing to consider and although I have no intention of selling my home anytime soon -- I would not like to obtain less value for my property because my neighbor had a purple and lime green striped garage door!
Ah....yes and no.
I've been living in my area for forty years and depending on how many biddies sit on the board -- that determines how much trouble you'll have in any given year. When the development was first created we had nutjobs walking around with rulers measuring the size of shrubs. As the decades passed it became sane -- until last year when the board hired some eager beaver "manager". Within a week this idiot went driving around writing up people for things that had been done for decades that were technicalities that nobody ever paid attention to. The next HOA meeting had practically everyone in the neighborhood show up calling for this eager beaver's head.
So I suppose you need a HOA so people don't paint their garage door in purple and lime green stripes. But you don't need people measuring shrubs with rulers or trying to fine you because you've paid extra to have your garbage picked up an additional day and some newbie eager beaver doesn't realize you can have this done.
Live and let live as long as it doesn't get purple and lime green stripes!
Of course, a woman with hatred in her eyes is not objectively beautiful. BUT...President Trump is always a gentleman and he attempted to say one nice thing to this lady amid the deserved criticism. Our President is a class act.
I understand your frustration. And I hope things will get easier for your family as you navigate the system. Try to make acquaintances among parents of older handicapped children in your area. They may be able to guide you toward additional resources.
I will keep you in my prayers.
Seriously -- as an "autism mom" this enrages me. My son is grown and we've everything in order to take care of him. But I am thinking of the young children who are being diagnosed daily and the newly minted "autism moms" who have to go through all the hurdles before them. There are so many handicapped children that are in need of services that this theft disgusts me.
You are going to think I am terrible for saying this but I don't just want this money returned. I want these people executed. Understand please, that there are handicapped children who have no family to advocate for them. There are handicapped children in the system who live in run down homes sleeping on mattresses on the floor. And these animals have stolen from poor children who basically have next to nothing! Their greed is sickening! Prison is too good for them. To steal from God's most helpless human beings is a crime that genuinely deserves the death penalty.
The fact that he is obsessed with Columbine gives you his motive.
Columbine was, to my knowledge, the only shooting where there was a written document stating why the shooters did what they did.
The Columbine shooting was a direct result of an unaddressed culture of school bullying.
In the effort to emphasize with those who died the cause and effect relationship was pushed to the side and ignored. I am not saying the shooters addressed their frustration in the proper manner. But I am saying that bullying is allowed to go unchecked by school administrations across the country.
So yes -- this kind of thing is going to keep happening because kids don't have the maturity to know what to do when they are being tortured on a daily basis and their teachers and the principal pretend they don't see. DO NOT for one moment think that parental involvement will help!
My daughter was consistently bullied in middle school (around the same year Columbine took place). I was in the Principal's office almost every week complaining about various acts of physical abuse. He smiled to my face and made all kinds of appropriate remarks and did absolutely nothing to stop it. (Twenty years later my daughter told me he pulled her on the side and told her to stop me from coming to see him. Apparently, at the time she was too afraid to tell me.)
It finally ended when the bullies made the mistake of calling the land line phone in the middle of the night to say crude things. We had the phone company put a trap on the line and reported them to the police. After the police got wind of it (our community has a fantastic police department) they went to the school and talked to the principal. Finally -- the bullies got punished and that was the end of the problem. But it took the intervention of the police.
So yes -- this kid may have had an inappropriate response to whatever was happening to him at school. And I'm betting that if he mentioned Columbine It's because he has been bullied. Believe me when I tell you schools are battlegrounds where some kids suffer daily. And this shouldn't happen if school administrators would do their job.
Edited to add: I just noticed that in the graduation video the kid is wearing a gold "honors" cord. So he had a level of high academic achievement. That might be one reason why he may have been less "popular" among some groups of peers.