BlogHer - Mommy & Family - Comments

my sympathies

Mata H — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:43:47 -0500

After having looked for a year for the right house to buy, my heart goes out to you re moving. It sucks. To be more genteel, "it sucketh".

My best advice:

1. be ruthless when you pack. Give away a ton of stuff that you do not need to a charity. Get receipts for tax write-off.

2, find out if this move can qualify for tax write off. If so, log everything.

3. mark boxes for the room in which the contents belong. This sounds obvious, but in the heat of packing it can be neglected.

4. start a masterlist now of the "mechanicals of a move" - things like "cancel cable" "start new cable service" "do mail referral" "set up forwarding message for phone", etc. When you set up new phone and cable, ask for special deals. They will want new business and may have some deals they are not telling you right away.

5. Get you realtor to tel you things like -- when is the trash picked up? do they do bulk pickup? will they take your moving debris? do you have to divide recyclables?

6. Notify your credit cards/banks/creditors of address changes soon. It gets screwy if you depend on the post office to forward your bills. They can sometimes take their sweet time.

7. Don't pack the toolkit in some bx somewhere -- leave it out so you can find/use it easily.

8. If there is a way to paint walls that need painting BEFORE you arrive with stuff fr the rooms, do it -- much easier and faster that way.

9. Did you know that you can hire UHaul to load and unload your truck if you rent from them? You drive it, but they do the grunt work. I packed myself and hired movers, but I almost did the UHaul option.It seemed to be a good medium-solution between total self-move and total mover-move.

Have fun!

--Mata the mover

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs right along at Time's Fool

I'm guessing they would have

Trisha — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:46:05 -0500

I'm guessing they would have carried them around most of the time, rather than let them lay anywhere alone. Would have been too dangerous.

Ideas For Women blog

Try Target.

Asianmommy — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:30:01 -0500

I've found that Target seems to have lower prices on shelf items than the local grocery store. Whenever I head over there to buy household items, I also make sure to stock up on non-perishables in their food section.

I agree.

Asianmommy — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:22:12 -0500

It does set a precedent, and I'm glad that someone is taking it seriously enough to press charges. In a time when we are exposed to violence and rude language every day on TV, some people seem to lose sight of what's acceptable behavior in this world.

Expensive

Laracolvin — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:41:46 -0500

I've found in our recent move to Chicago that the big city is by far MUCH more expensive than we ever imagined. Prepare yourself for the gas prices...I saw $4.35 a gallon for unleaded today! And the groceries...oy vey!

BUT - it really is a super duper cool place to live. Your kids will have so much to do during the summer, and there is public transportation everywhere. I live in the city (close to Evanston), and I'm always amazed at how much is going on all the time.

I hope you and the fam are very happy in your house. You are renting, right? We rent, too. Home ownership is highly overrated, I think! And good call on the fireplace! :)

Notions of Identity

The House Looks Very Nice

MSmith — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:40:55 -0500

Hi Denise,

The house looks very nice. I agree with Vered that often real estate agents are useless.

When I was looking for my house I took two friends with me and took notes on every house I saw. My friends kept the agent and the homeowners busy while I was able to get a good sense of if a house was right for me without distraction.

After two months and nearly forty houses, I finally walked into the one I'm sitting in right now, and the rest is history.

I hope you and your family will be very happy in your new home.

Megan
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute
Video Runway

Yes, I would pick swimsuit shopping over house hunting

Vered — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:26:46 -0500

A week before the trip, there were still only two possible houses on the page created by the real estate agent... I was not happy so I got busy and found 12 more that suited our needs.

This does not surprise me. I often find that agents – travel agents, real estate agents etc. – are completely useless. Not all of them of course, but it seems to be a trend - do as little as possible for the highest commission possible.

I love the house. I like the floors, and the French doors to the patio, and the fireplace. Are you sure it’s tiny? There seem to be quite a few bedrooms there, which is great. Oh, and that laundry room is HUGE – totally makes sense to use it for more than laundry stuff.

Vered DeLeeuw
www.momgrind.com

Going to toss...

nelle2nelle — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:29:54 -0500

this url on the board, and then ask a question.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24670474/

Are we coming to a time when an online site - such as BlogHer - will have core and equired registration information that is standardised by statute, and wilful misrepresentation will constitute a violation of law?

nelle

the more I realize that

nelle2nelle — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:19:01 -0500

the more I realize that technology is not morally neutral.

Technology is a tool we use to interact, whether passively (television) or more actively (like here.)

People will always find ways to use the tools developed to suit their own purposes. I would guess Lori was living in the myopia of her child's world, so intent on satisfying her child's wants that she left her brain away from the keyboard and mouse.

Picture a child who is getting beat up every day on the way home from school. If a parent beats up that child in order to protect their own, well... we won't look very favourably upon that act.

Cyberspace carries so many wonders, including the ability to interact with relative anonymity, that it becomes almost like video game abstract/disconnect. We don't see and feel the real consequences of an action that a real time physical presence all of our senses might otherwise trigger in our minds.

And to compound it all, there is no law against internet surfing and consumption of mind altering substances. So who the hell knows if she just had 4 martinis before acting stupid?

We have to remember to keep our brains relatively close to our actions. We have to remember the whole 'it takes a village' thing. (even if you curse the day Hillary wrote it.) I have a responsibility in society to do no harm to a child.I have a responsibility to mitigate disputes between children and adolescents, not fuel them. I have a responsibility to teach my own children how to interact responsibly with others.

And I wonder... is Lori out there now, pondering why she was so damn stupid and dysfunctional? Lord knows I know that feeling.

nelle

This is why

heivilinj — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:13:17 -0500

"Drew's conduct may have been reprehensible, but state prosecutors in Missouri could not conclude that it was criminal."

This is why I tell people I'm not from Missouri, I only live here.

I read of this when Nordette reported it initially and I'm glad this woman will be made to pay for her Evil behavior. I worry for her daughter and hope that nurture will trump nature and she'll turn out to be a decent person.

Jim Heivilin

Makes me think about the ethics of technology

Ronnica — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:38:35 -0500

I hadn't heard of this story yet. So sad. What kind of a world do we live in that a 13yo kills herself? That a mother of a classmate harrassed the girl? Such a petty thing that had huge consequences.

The more time that I spend learning about the moral consequences of technology (I wrote a paper about the ethics of virtual worlds specifically), the more I realize that technology is not morally neutral. Not all of it is bad (I love blogging, facebook, and email), but not all of it is okay either.

Gossip and Innuendo Goes Viral

Writer-Mommy — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:38:30 -0500

I posted about this story here when I was discussing the boundaries we bloggers have to create when sharing our private lives in the very public manner that is blogging.

I'm glad to see that Lori Drew, an adult and a mother who should have flat out known better, will face charges for her irresponsible and slanderous actions.

What will come of those charges - who knows? No matter what happens to Drew, a child is dead because she believed she had no value in this world. A prison term pales in comparison to the loss of Megan Meier and the the suffering her family will endure for the rest of their lives.

My hope is that there will be more discourse and discussion on the power of words. The right words can inspire and uplift us as humans; the wrong words can erode and destroy our very humanity.

Now, in the age of www.everything, everywhere, all-the-time, we as humans can combine those two opposites - one awesome and one fearsome - with the power of the internet to reach every corner of the globe.

We're treading on new ground...

"The big, bad wolf liveth..."

rocksinmydryer — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:00:20 -0500

Yes. Well-said.

Shannon @ Rocks In My Dryer
www.rocksinmydryer.net
BlogHer Contributing Editor, Mommy and Family

Thanks for the links - Added them to my personal blog

amygeekgrl — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:55:40 -0500

Thank you all for posting the links to your Bloggers Unite posts. I added them to a post on my personal blog yesterday.

I finally got my own Bloggers Unite post up late last night: Women, children resort to eating dirt cookies in Haiti: Global Food Crisis

Amy
Crunchy Domestic Goddess
BlogHers Act contributing editor

Thrift stores are the best.

Catherine Morgan — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:10:49 -0500

I love thrift stores...and when you can save money on clothes you have more money for food. :-)

I have a Bealls Outlet in my neighborhood, and everything in the store is 70% off all the time, and once or twice a month they take an additional 40% off. I've gotten shoes for $1 and $3s -- tops and pants for $5. If I wasn't able to buy these things at such a low price, I would just be doing without, and that would be fine.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan at
catherine-morgan.com, The Political Voices of Women, Care2 Election Blog