I'm the younger sister and from my POV I really wish my older brother would stop with the sporadic, half-assed attempts to connect.Too little, way too late. If you want to be in her life, then say so and follow through. My brother could have written your post, right down to making an attempt ten years ago and not following through because I wasn't responsive enough to make it worth his while. Seriously, you say you tried to bury the hatchet, and that she didn't totally rebuff you. So that's a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:58 AM on June 30, 2008

xetera said: I realize my previous post was a bit angry. Apologies to any and all whom I offended. Perhaps I should ask a question about how to get rid of anger.


Yeah, mine was a bit angry too. But no apologies. Family wounds are deep and I responded to a request for advice by calling on my own experience & offering my subjective thoughts. One way to deal with (not get rid of) anger is to express it in a constructive way. It appears... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 5:29 AM on June 30, 2008

How have your education - room&board - previous adventures been financed up to this point? Will that continue (as in some kind of trust fund or whatever) or will that change (parental support ends, loans need to be repaid, no longer on parents' insurance policies)? As others have said, your question speaks to what you don't want to do, but it doesn't say what you do want to do. So if "nobody understands [you]" maybe it's because you haven't told them anything.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 12:32 PM on June 29, 2008

Jacquilynne's answer seems most in line with the spirit of what she was saying. But I guess I just have a hard time seeing that point of view.

The thing is, you don't need to see her point of view. You need to accept though, that it's her point of view. As cabingirl wrote, If you keep hounding her about it even though she's made her position clear, then you're not respecting her decision.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 7:37 PM on June 28, 2008

city-data.com --- most areas have lots & lots of subjective school-quality discussions; I'm sure SoCal is no exception.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 5:46 PM on June 27, 2008 marked best answer

Eva Cassidy.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 5:30 AM on June 25, 2008

I'm sorry about your dad's diagnosis. One thing to consider is massage therapy (full disclosure: I'm a massage therapist). It can be very helpful for ALS patients because they lose muscle mass as the disease progresses, which means reduced circulation. Massage therapy is not regulated in CA so I would look for someone who is a member of the American Medical Massage Assn or at least has taken relevant continuing education courses. Your local hospice, oncology docs, your dad's docs, even ob/gyns... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:10 PM on June 23, 2008

Mow the lawn, do some weeding, laundry, find out what he needs WRT the child -- babysitter pickup/dropoff, summer camp/karate lessons, anything that can keep the child's routine the same.

He'll have lots of people helping out in the first couple of weeks, but people need to go back to their lives/jobs/families, so especially if he "keeps his life to himself" as you say, he might end up pretty isolated if the situation goes on for a while. The day-to-day stuff... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 9:19 AM on June 22, 2008

The best way to get a kid to love music and grow passionate about creating and performing music ... is for you to love music and be passionate about creating and performing music.

For kids and adults, creative expression is either part of your life, or compartmentalized as something you schedule time to do sometimes.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 9:00 AM on June 22, 2008

Take your pick of lines from Dylan's "Forever Young":

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 12:31 PM on June 13, 2008 marked best answer

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling is a good place to start --- be wary of for-profit credit "counselors." Your question is about one particular debt, but credit counseling will help you get a handle on all of your old debt & current obligations, and start looking forward financially.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 4:26 PM on June 10, 2008

You've only been together 6 months. Surely you have sexual fantasies that predate her and her friends in your life. Recurrent fantasies, long-term fantasies, the ones your imagination comes back to over and over again, whether you're in a relationship or alone. Those are the fantasies she's interested in.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 7:57 AM on June 8, 2008

Forget the books, play catch with him. Help him break in his glove, get a teeball set, go see little league games instead of pro games (watching "big kids" play will make more of an impression on him than grownups).

Books are great, but come on, it's baseball! "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 8:33 AM on June 7, 2008

OP here --- thanks for your responses.

Interestingly, today's mail brought a "notice of hold" from BankB that references Regulation CC --- they're going to hold on to more than $1k for EIGHT DAYS because of reason code 5n: paying bank will not guarantee funds. The "paying bank" in this case is the USPS and the funds are money orders that were bought with cash! How much more "guaranteed" can you get?! So I'll call them... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 8:20 AM on June 7, 2008

My 14-year-old sk8r punk wears a helmet when he rides a bike, no convincing is necessary because if he doesn't wear it, he doesn't ride. I choose my battles and this is a big one for me --- I don't know how effective the scared-straight-type suggestions would be, but sometimes "because I said so" is just how it is. This is one of those you'll-thank-me-for-it-later deals.

I don't insist that he wear a helmet while skating though. As long as he's using it for... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:27 AM on June 7, 2008

You are his pedestal girl. He has probably put girls up on pedestals before, and been "friends" with them in the hope that they would eventually recognize that he was the right one for them ... and unfortunately while he silently adored them and while he silently adores you he is keeping his distance from perfectly nice (but not perfect) girls who are available to him.

It's not your job to save the friendship. As long as you continue being... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 7:34 AM on June 6, 2008

Subsidized housing means her options are limited --- you can't just move, if your subsidy is attached to the apt. where you already have a lease. She needs to talk to the local public housing authority to find out what her options are. They have definitely dealt with situations like hers before. She may not be able to get him off the lease or have him evicted, but he may be violating the housing authority's rules & landlords tend to respond to the housing authority differently than they do... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 5:08 AM on June 4, 2008

Another thing to consider --- if she can't change her living/working situation to be in a better position to help her younger son, and the 18-year-old isn't changing his living/working situation and is a negative influence on the younger son, maybe the most effective change would be to get the younger son out of the apartment and into a living situation with friends or family that have some stability and oversight and relative calm, until your friend can sort this out.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 5:21 AM on June 4, 2008

you've got mefi mail. =)
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 9:44 AM on June 3, 2008

I have two boys ages 12 and 14. We don't have video games and until recently didn't have cable either, so fun activities for us have always been the old-school things like board games & road trips & hikes in the woods etc. So my boys are pretty self-sufficient & imaginative WRT dealing with boredom. Their friends are very very different though. We went through a couple of dry years, at about 10-12 sorry to say, where my boys were invited places but nobody wanted to come here. Having... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 12:15 PM on May 27, 2008

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction ... Newton's 3rd law of motion applies to kinesiology as well. Every muscle has an antagonist muscle --- when you hunch your shoulders over, you're contracting your pectorals, which results in your rhomboids being overstretched. When you tilt your head down, you contract your scalenes & other neck flexors, which results in your neck extensor muscles being overstretched. This happens throughout your neck/shoulders/upper back and all of your... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 5:16 AM on May 21, 2008

I would take them hiking in the Delaware Water Gap and camp that night at the Lakota Wolf Preserve. 2nding the Pine Barrens too (go blueberry picking there!)
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 2:18 PM on May 19, 2008

I can't deal with people who never felt pain, only college frats bmw's. And so to them, little details are a big deal. All these product managers on web projects, it just sickens me hearing them be so serious about it when people are dying out there. LIke, WHO CARES. I'll do this job, code the friggen html, just be happy. But they're so college frat "go get em" personalities drive me insane. I just want to laugh at it.

1. Don't assume that... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 4:03 PM on May 12, 2008

There are plenty of apartments right in Germantown, and all the basics are there for shopping/eating as well. It's kind of a sprawley suburb though, in fact the whole 270 corridor is one big sprawl-fest. Just south of Gtown is Gburg (Gaithersburg) and you might want to check out the area around Rio for a place to live. Plenty of apartments, Starbucks, happy hour, etc. plus a pretty nice gym too. I used to work near there & used that gym for lunch. Living in Gaithersburg would be a very easy... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:46 PM on May 10, 2008

I used to live in Silver Spring (Georgia/16th just inside the beltway) and commute to Rockville. SS was great and I really miss living there -- in fact moving away from there just might have been my biggest bonehead move. I had kids though, and SS is a little more family-oriented than Bethesda. It has an urban-park, more suburban feel to it. Living there was great because I was going against traffic in the morning ... but in the afternoon there really is no "against traffic" --- the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 1:38 PM on May 12, 2008

I was involved in the Hopkins gifted program back in the day, and my son is involved in it now (it's a longitudinal study). There are partner programs in other parts of the country. What I like about it is that you can get as involved as you like, with camps & courses etc. Early on I made the mistake of turning one of his interests into academic exercises & just about educated the fun out of geology =(

My other son is not gifted, in fact has a 504 plan for... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 11:57 AM on May 9, 2008

I'm a massage therapist too and to complement the bodywork, a bit further down the line I want to start a nonclinical eldercare business that helps seniors stay independent ... google shows me this website as a short&sweet overview of the kind of company I'm thinking of. They don't offer massage though & mine will =)
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 4:30 PM on May 7, 2008

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the fact that service workers in question are doing their own bit to get by, get ahead, get through school, etc., whereas divabat is upper-middle-class because of her father's money-job-actions rather than her own. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I didn't qualify for an on-campus job either, but it's a good thing sometimes to acknowledge that we're not born onto an equal playing field and some of us just have... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 5:16 AM on May 7, 2008

meerkatty that's so sweet!

keep it tight, consider giving your mom tickets to something going on in her town. Over the years I've given my mom symphony tickets, minor-league baseball tickets, tickets to Bill Cosby (she liked that one a lot).
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 4:53 PM on May 6, 2008

If you're letting it roam free, without supervision, aren't you kind of giving up power over who it hangs out/goes home with?
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:36 PM on May 2, 2008

Cheap prescription meds?

There's plenty of good beer made in the U.S., and many Canadian beers are on U.S. shelves.

How about ketchup chips? We've got dozens of chip flavors here but I've never seen ketchup chips, & I'm not too far from the border. Also HP sauce? Gravy & curds for your fries? (ick)
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:00 PM on May 2, 2008

These are interesting answers. I have a couple of data points to add. We have 3 vegetarian experiences in our house, and 3 different reactions to meat.

Mr. headnsouth is a vegetarian for religious reasons --- every once in a while he'll order pot roast or salmon or whatever at a restaurant, with no ill effect whatsoever.

Headnsouth junior2 was vegetarian from age 6 to age 11 for love-of-animals reasons --- extended family members tried on... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 9:07 AM on May 2, 2008

Zolton Cohen is a home-fix-it columnist for a paper in Michigan who contributes regularly to its online home repair forum. Lots of good archived stuff & timely responses to queries.

Also, for entertainment value & to learn what not to do, catch Mike Holmes's show on cable.

Have fun with your new-old house =)... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 11:38 AM on April 25, 2008

Pay for a manicure (even if you're a guy). Your hands will feel good & they trim away all the loose bits & biting/picking will mean you've wasted your money, so you'll resist. Also, pick up a hand-habit like coin manipulation --- that'll keep your hands busy and also make you a hit at parties =)
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:00 PM on April 24, 2008

I'm a massage therapist and I've definitely seen worse. Don't worry about it. Since you'll be at a fancy schmancy spa, you can probably also get wraps & skin treatments that will help slough off your scabby-flaky bits and soothe any tender spots, but only do that if you want the additional pampering. If they offer aromatherapy for your massage, you can ask for a tea tree / bergamot / eucalyptus blend --- that's great for acne (my son uses a spritz of it blended in witch... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 2:48 PM on April 24, 2008

Couples massage with two really good therapists.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 5:39 PM on April 14, 2008

The existence of my own ignorance is the most alarming.

Why should it be alarming? I would think it more alarming to encounter someone who believes he knows everything! Will Durant said "Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." No matter how much you know, you are still going to be ignorant of the vast majority of what there is to know. And that's a good thing --- lifelong learning is one of those things that makes life worth living IMO.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 4:53 PM on April 14, 2008

Try Vinalhaven Island in Penobscot Bay in Maine. I spent a summer week there a decade ago and would love to go back. You drive to Rockland and take a ferry out to the island. There's hiking on the island, swimming in quarries (brrrr!), you can walk down to the docks in the afternoon and buy lobster right off the boats, and you won't use your car even once the whole time you're there.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 2:32 PM on April 14, 2008

The first mr. headnsouth gave me a silver locket when we were dating. Inside he put a picture of my niece and nephew, who I just adored, and I loved him for it. I think it meant so much to me from the beginning because my then-bf put pictures in it of my favorite people on the planet --- it was truly a gift for me, and not about him. We eventually got married, had 2 kids of our own, and I inserted their pictures over the niece/nephew ones. Second baby, now age 12, used the locket as a teether... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 2:21 PM on April 14, 2008

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. Reading them has made me a little bit weepy and a little more at peace about this move. I just love MeFi =)

I am fortunate enough to have a great relationship with my kids and we've talked a lot about the move & what it will mean for us individually and as a family. I can't predict all the consequences though, positive or negative --- that's what this question was about, I guess, trying to foresee & maybe prevent damaging... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:44 PM on April 11, 2008

Also I'd like to mark pretty much all of the responses as "best answer" but I marked thinkingwoman's as "best answer" because of what it said about me which it will be good to remind myself of from time to time:

i'm guessing you lived in one place for your entire childhood and are just having trouble imagining how your kids will cope, which is leading you to feel guilty. don't.

I only... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:53 PM on April 11, 2008

Another grain you can try is quinoa --- high protein content, has all the amino acids a growing breakfaster needs, and can be made sweet or savoury. I like oatmeal but it can become a big gummy glutinous mass --- quinoa is gluten-free so its texture doesn't overwhelm all those fruits & nuts you toss in. I'll second plain yoghurt over milk, yum!
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 1:29 PM on April 9, 2008

I'm torn between wallowing in resentment, or thinking I'm taking things too personally and selfishly.

I don't think you're taking things too personally --- graduations are a big deal, especially ones that, as in your case, follow hard work & obstacles & all that. So you deserve to have your loved ones there to support and congratulate you.

Sometimes, though, families just plain suck. Everyone has their prescribed... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 3:20 PM on April 5, 2008

This could just be social awkwardness. It's no different than saying you're from Australia and the person you've just met saying "oh really? Do you know my friend Bruce? He's from Australia too!" Or saying you like pickles and them saying "I like pickles too-- we have so much in common!" You're a stranger and they're trying to connect with you based on the little they know about you.

Racism is about keeping things separate --- the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 6:08 AM on April 5, 2008

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson --- from the big bang to extinction, with plenty of biology mixed in. A great read.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 7:36 PM on April 4, 2008

You mean like the song Hate Me by Blue October?

Pretty condescending IMO. It's not enough to do the damage, now you (generic) get to tell the hurt person how to feel about it?

There was a period in my life when I relied pretty heavily on something George Washington Carver said: I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 4:03 PM on April 3, 2008

Your local Parents Without Partners might be a good starting point -- they may be reluctant to make formal referrals as an organization, but more than likely they'll have anecdotal recommendations from members. (Joining that group or one like it might be good for your dad too.)

There's another --very active-- group in Mont.Co. called SPARK (Single Parents Raising Kids). It's more family-oriented than individual-oriented, but their members might have recommendations as... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 8:54 AM on March 29, 2008

Could it be that you're not really waking up due to thirst but out of habit, and that waking up completely in order to sip water before going back to sleep reinforces that habit? The normal sleep cycle gets pretty shallow at times, & how we respond to those parts of the cycle can mean the difference between good sleep & crummy sleep. (Assuming no pathology.)

Mr headnsouth tends to wake up several times a night, and each time he gets up, maybe goes to pee, might... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 1:18 PM on March 27, 2008

Unfortunately, he is very focussed on oral, so I rarely get an orgasm whatsoever, which is making me feel poor and stupid - after years and years of a sex life which I experienced as rich and mostly happy.

I'm inferring that you're feeling some pressure to orgasm the way your partner wants you to orgasm, whereas you were perfectly happy up to now orgasming a whole different way. Is your partner very focused on oral because it's fun &... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 9:20 PM on March 26, 2008

Not in MC but the Smithsonian has all kinds of classes. So do the National Gallery & Kennedy Center, but a lot of theirs are one-day workshop-type things.

The weekly Gazette and the Post's Weekend section (Friday's paper) both have community calendars.
posted to Ask Metafilter by headnsouth at 1:03 PM on March 26, 2008