maritalbliss86

4 minutes ago, Jibralta said:

He lived to 96 years of age and credited his long life to vaseline. Apparently, he ate a spoonful of it per day. Interesting stuff.

😂 Wow... now that's devotion to one's product!!!!

I feel like we're your cheerleaders... rooting for you to win in this LOL  

Thanks for keeping us updated.  How crazy that Bill contacted you first!!!

18 hours ago, Jibralta said:

The highs and lows at this place are just exhausting. I love it one day, hate it the next day. I thought, if I just email Bill a head's up that I'll probably be looking for work again soon, maybe it will be ok. 

And then you know what happened? He emailed me! 

This is wonderful Jilbralta!  Very happy for you  ...  

I remember reading I think, that you said that you already knew for awhile that your son had autism way before the actual diagnosis... how do you think you knew exactly?  If there's a way you could pinpoint it, what would you say made you feel something was different?

I just got back from a doctor appointment this week with our son who I suspect may have some issues that could fall into autism, but everything seemed to fall within the realm of normalcy and our doctor just thinks he has various quirks about his personality.  Or she explained the issues I brought up as, "behaviors," not, "neurological development problems."  

So as of right now still, he's normal but with a lot of quirks and possible behaviors we have try to continue to correct.

Edited to add... this is hard because if he actually has behavior, "problems," then us correcting them would be different than if they were coming from underlying autism right?  Ugh it's so confusing... but I was just wondering if you experienced the same thing?  Doctors saying the behavior was his own issues you had to correct etc?

1 minute ago, Seraphim said:

My son had been restrained, locked in a room, had his skin zipped in coat pockets. I was bringing his lunch one day and I heard a teacher mocking him in the library and I said to her , “ hey you, yeah you, that is MY SON you are making fun off.” Then she ran out of the library. I said , “ yeah you run chicken sh$t mocking an 8 year old. “

Oh that is SOOOO angering Seraphim!!!!!!!!  Wow that would be so hard to endure as a mom!!!!!!!  

The whole restraining/locked in a room thing, was it in response to his meltdowns I'm guessing?  UGH that is just so sad and so very angering even to read... makes my blood boil!!!!!

8 hours ago, Cheetarah said:

For people interested in vaccine experiences...

 

My husband has known quite a few fellow coworkers who have gotten the first dose, and most of them had some side effects, but nothing too abnormal.  One had side effects so bad she had to take a strong medication (that impaired her ability to do her job) just to control the side effects.  

And the second dose is supposed to be even more powerful in producing more illness/side effects.  But everyone's different.

6 hours ago, Seraphim said:

I get a text from little guy‘s mom last night the one  we walked to school that I wasn’t going to walk to school in the first damn place that it’s policy of the school that every adult wear a mask on school grounds.

Do you think your son could get an official doctor's note explaining why he can't/won't wear them, his autism basically?  Is that possible?

I know a man who got an official doctor's note for his asthma I think, and it works.  Stores get angry but when he shows them his official  note they really can't do much about it.

My first thoughts reading about Simon's response were of the dad in Big Fat Greek Wedding... his ego they needed to make sure was intact when making changes or challenging him, it's a good life skill in a way LOL

I know this is kind of out there... but it's not unlike trimming a bonsai tree and that ancient kind of Wisdom from that culture.

They literally begin with their eyes closed, imagining what they want to SEE in the end.

They Begin with the End in Mind.

It's really cool you found this back then!!!! ❤️  I think it's rare for people to understand that kind of long-term meaning of their life.

On 2/3/2021 at 7:13 AM, Jibralta said:

If I was 80 years old and looking back on my life, what would I regret now?

That's a REALLY good inspiration tool in general.  I think it was Stephen Covey who proposed the same idea as, "Begin with the End in Mind."  And you can apply it to anything in life (like your work situation).

Begin with the END in mind.  

What do you really want to get out of this?  

Ok... so then recalculate your actions to correspond with obtaining that end you have in mind.

....

For me personally, my focus shifted much in the same way your did as far as imaging yourself older (or even passed on) and seeing what people remembered the best about me.  What kind of influence did I have on our children?  On my husband?  On people easy to get along with and people hard to get along with?  Was I loving?  Was I able to at least try to be kind to people?  That kind of thing.

7 minutes ago, dias said:

I don't know what scientifically makes sense but based on common sense it makes sense lol...drugs are like every other substance..like coffee...the more often you drink the less effective it is.

It really seems insanely complicated... sometimes it affects it in a positive way, boosting immunity (positive interference), and then sometimes they've recorded what scientists have termed, "negative interference," where it (the anti-bodies) seem to counter and neutral the immunity from the new vaccines.  And it somehow depends on the genetics of the virus compared to the new strain genetics, then also compared to the genetics of the vaccinations.... 

And then we know people all have individual immune responses (and genetics that determine those responses) that vary to seemingly minor differing degrees (it seems at least... we know that some people who had ancestors exposed to the Bubonic plague have actually shown mysterious resistance to certain illnesses, and none of that is exactly understood... my theory is that it probably comes from the DNA in their mitochondria that we know is passed down for centuries).  

Even scientists really don't understand what was happening, and then it was deemed, "unethical," to probe more with the necessary long-term studies to figure out why on earth negative or positive interference seems to happen with yearly vaccinations causing them to be less or more effective, so we may never really know 🤷‍♀️.

Right, Seraphim, I'm so sorry 😞  that's why it's always been encouraged for people over age 65.   If they get it, the pneumonia (or virus itself) can turn deadly very quickly.

This article was looking at the necessity (and encouragement) of vaccinations from 6 months old babies to 65 (yearly vaccinations built up overtime in these people) and finding it to cause potential, "severe," long-term health crises (and financial expense) for the elderly in those populations.  It's interesting...

Quote

The possible benefits of vaccinating children after 5 years of age, and otherwise healthy adults – particularly over a long period and mainly for economic reasons – could be outweighed by severe clinical consequences and increased costs in the elderly.

This is solely due to differences between vaccine-induced immunity and naturally acquired immunity, and not to declining immune responses to vaccination in old age. These findings may have important implications for influenza vaccination policies and encourage long-term survey of annually vaccinated individuals.

Of course they usually deem it, "unethical," to perform the necessary long-term surveys and studies to understand this.  So even though this was shown in this NIH study back in 2005-2006, it was never studied further that I can find.

This is straight from the NIH (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870374/) explaining how naturally occurring infections are known to provide much longer lasting immunity (years or even decades), compared to the problem of vaccinations only providing 6 months to up to only a year of immunity:

Quote

A major drawback of influenza vaccination lies in the fact that the immunity it elicits, mainly based on neutralizing antibodies directed against the surface haemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins, declines rapidly. The inactivated influenza vaccine provides protective levels of serum antibodies specific to the vaccine strains and lasting between 6 and 12 months [15, 16]. The live-attenuated vaccine also enhances local IgA responses [17, 18] and human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-restricted virus-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) activity in healthy [19] and older adults [20]. The live-attenuated vaccine has been shown to provide a substantial degree of protection against a variant not closely matched to the vaccine antigen [21]; but how long this protection persists is not known. Vaccination must be updated yearly, in order to take into account the genetic/antigenic evolution of wild-type influenza viruses.

Contrary to immunity elicited by influenza vaccination, naturally acquired immunity can provide long-lasting protection against subsequent infection by the same viral subtype [22, 23]. For example, when the A(H1N1) virus re-emerged in 1977 after 20 years, people who had been exposed to the virus before 1957 were much less susceptible to infection than those born after 1957 [24]. This long-term protection against influenza viruses of the same type or subtype may be partly due to selection of cross-reactive CTL targeting epitopes on a wide variety of internal proteins [25–27

There's just a lot of conflicting studies showing different results though... 

Here's this one that contradicts what you'd think would naturally happen in the body's immune response (but kind of makes logical sense that pumping oneself full of synthetic vaccinations each year, may actually backfire in ways not understandable yet):

https://www.statnews.com/2015/11/11/flu-shots-reduce-effectiveness/

Quote

The evidence, which is confounding some researchers, suggests that getting flu shots repeatedly can gradually reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines under some circumstances.

That finding is worrying public health officials in the US, who have been urging everyone to get a flu shot each year — and who still believe an annual vaccination is better than skipping the vaccines altogether.

 

Dr. Edward Belongia is among the scientists who have seen the picture coming into focus. He and some colleagues at Wisconsin’s Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation reported recently that children who had been vaccinated annually over a number of years were more likely to contract the flu than kids who were only vaccinated in the season in which they were studied.

“The vaccine was significantly more effective … if they had not been vaccinated in the previous five years,” Belongia, an epidemiologist, recounted in a recent interview with STAT.

26 minutes ago, Seraphim said:

I have had influenza A but I am not sure how long natural immunity lasts . I am gathering not long if we are immunized yearly

I can't remember all the details, but I believe studies have shown that you have some boosted immunity once you've had it (the flu).  But the reason why we're vaccinated yearly is due to how fast it mutates and how it can be a totally new strain that's unknown.  Largely the vaccines are actually based on guesswork, hoping it will fight the newly mutated strains.  It's insanely hard, that's why so many people continue to get the flu, even after getting vaccinated in prior years.  But again, immunity is more like a spectrum in that it really has shown that even just having it boosts your immunity (to some amount of degree that varies to none or a lot) when you're exposed again.

On 1/24/2021 at 3:56 PM, Seraphim said:

Surely they had immunity from getting the disease in the first place. 

Herd immunity used to include a certain number of the population being exposed to the virus (and either getting it or overcoming it and not even knowing their body was exposed to it).  I noticed they changed the definition recently to mean only a certain population vaccinated.  This one virus is different in that it mutates like the flu does (rapidly) so even though someone has had the flu one year, they can have another strain at a later time, even during the same year. 

I think some studies have shown though that you can have a better immune response to some strains when you've been exposed to another, so immunity should be thought of as more of a spectrum.  But yes, once you're exposed you should have some immunity (and possibly total immunity) to that specific strain, although it may vary and I don't think anyone really knows yet.

Something else could be music lessons maybe?  I know a woman who makes her sole income just being a piano teacher.  You can come to them, or they can come to you... or in pandemic restrictions, you can zoom music lessons (that sounds extremely hard to follow though). 

It may be financially less than you'd make with daycare, but it may be more rewarding or less physically demanding?

On 1/31/2021 at 9:55 AM, Seraphim said:

I am not sure I want to carry on with daycare . At the same time I can’t stop working. What does one do?

Daycare sounds very hard... just based on my limited knowledge of watching only our children mostly.  It's like never-ending things to do, very demanding and you have to do so much physically for babies and toddlers, which does get exhausting.  I feel like I'm young and strong, but it's still a lot of physical work!  And mental work in a way, trying to figure out different problems they encounter.  I love it ❤️ but wow is it, "work!"

Do you think maybe you could provide a tutoring service for afterschool kids?  Tutors can charge a lot more generally (at least in our area... I did this a couple of years ago).  And it's far less physically demanding work.  Basically just an hour a few times a week, for $25 per hour or so... I was making close to $150/week which isn't too bad per child.  And it's only afternoons and you'd basically help a couple of kids get their school work done and help solve any issues they're having with understanding it.

This one would be better probably (or else it's disguise?)

Or this one below lol

You may have to try to see it bigger though to understand.

1 hour ago, Jibralta said:

I wish there was a crazy person emoji!!

 

I've tended to use this one 🤓, somehow it captures a kind of demented/happy/psychopathic look LOL  

1 hour ago, Seraphim said:

I think it is mostly that she is two just turned two moved 1.5 months ago and is going to be a big sister. She is also learning 2 languages at once. Her family is Francophone and we speak partial French to her and partial English. So trying to learn two languages at once moving and becoming a big sister at two years old is a lot. A lot of big emotions and not enough language skills to explain it. She is also incredibly bright and knows what you say in either language. She kind of reminds me of myself at that age. I learned two languages at once and was bright and high maintenance. 

Aw she really is just a baby/toddler.  Sorry if I implied she had severe behavior issues like the child I had briefly watched (he was elementary age)!  Not my intention at all, more just frustrated at having to deal with parents who think their kids are angels when it's obviously otherwise lol.  

1 hour ago, Seraphim said:

You have that right. She knows something is up with mom because mom told me they talk about mom’s big belly. The baby dolls here right now she throws them on the ground and body slams them. 😳🤯They think it is “daycare influence “ hahahaha um no. Because they take everything she does or doesn’t do as a reflection of them and their pride , especially dad. 

Oh that makes sense.  Yes I briefly watched a child that had severe behavior issues (I think he actually had oppositional defiant disorder... when I explained all of his behavior to my psychologist, who has over 30 years experience, he thought it was probably that because his behaviors were that rare!).  

Anyway... with that child, his mom never believed it was actually him and tried to blame OUR kids for his behavior.  Our kids were really freaked out about him, so it only lasted a couple of weeks, but it was a horrible experience dealing with parents who couldn't admit their child has severe issues.

And you're right that it's because it's too tied in to their own self-esteem as parents.  If these parents weren't so self-absorbed and viewed their kids as an extension of themselves, they would take the behavior more seriously and parent better to correct it!

Boy are they going to have a wake up call LOL  Wow!

4 hours ago, Seraphim said:

True 2 is a time of big feelings and she is going to be a big sister in a month but I fear for that baby. 

Yikes!!  Do her parents talk about it at all with you?  Are they freaked out?  

We were totally 100% freaked out with our oldest... but he ended up becoming very sweet and kind and even extra gentle.  Back when he was in school his teachers praised him for his character being so kind... so hopefully she changes and it's just some odd baby phase going on.

We've known some really mean kids though!  Like aggressively mean and unnecessarily cruel!  Makes me wonder what they were like as babies... if there was any indication they'd turn out that way?