My husband’s grandmother passed away overnight. She was in her 80’s and had Alzheimer’s, and my MIL had been keeping her alive against her wishes for the last three years (she stopped eating then). It’s sad, but also a relief. There will be no service.
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I feel for you, girl.
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I just found out a friend of mine died last week. He was 61, and was married and had a teenage daughter.
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My spouse randomly brought up divorce the other day but didn’t mean anything by it. But now thinking about it my stomach hurts.
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There’s an older woman here at the sbux brought in by a health care aide and another lady I am assuming is her daughter. The older lady has that look in her eyes that she’s not 100% there.
It brings back memories of taking my dad to Panera on occasion that was just down the road from his LTC home.
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His number stopped working, and once he turned 18 he basically stopped trying to do anything school-related (other than using school to get benefits). 
I guess I really do suck as a mentor.
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Nah. It’s disappointing, for sure, but you’re not the one who failed here. You were a part of the solution, and you can only do so much.
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Thanks. I know I can’t save em all, but at least it isn’t for lack of trying.
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Friends’ dog just passed away.
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That was kind of you.
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A friend of mine’s husband died unexpectedly last night. He was only 66, and they’d been married over 40 years. She’s devastated.
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Two photos popped up on my phone tonight of our 5th foster placement. I feel pretty good about all of them, except for him. When we lost our first placement, it was really hard and traumatic, but I believe he was where he was supposed to be and now I can think of him fondly and I have happy memories. For the others, I know we helped.
But for #5, the little guy who was our longest placement, who came to us right at the beginning of the pandemic and who couldn’t go live with his dad for over a year because a paternity test couldn’t be scheduled, I just have a lot of pain and regret. He was nonverbal and autistic, and he was clearly traumatized when his mom died suddenly, even though he was so little. I never really felt that he bonded with us. It was really hard to see him struggling and not able to express himself or even understand himself. He had no concept of himself as a person. I really hope that he’s getting the love and care he deserves. I hope his life is going okay. I wish we could have done more for him.
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Alex Navalny has died.
The usual excuses were made about his “death” during a walk in sub-zero freezing weather in a Gulag-type camp.
I really do wish the US (GOP really) would take the Russian threat more seriously.
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There was a little boy in my city whose foster mom* murdered him Monday night or Tuesday morning and went on the run. An amber alert was issued, as they weren’t sure he was dead until yesterday when they found his body in a sewer drain. The foster mom was found in a city a few hours away.
This poor boy was probably being killed right around the same time I was having some very hard thoughts about my own prior foster son, who looks a little too much like this little boy and is around the same age as him. My heart just breaks for this boy, his family. He deserved a lot better.
*She was a family friend who was raising this boy without any kind of licensing or agency oversight. The grandparents were raising him and gave him to this friend because they couldn’t deal with him and thought he would be better off with someone they knew and not a foster family. Children services was not involved. I only mention this because a lot of people locally have been lashing out at the foster care agency and foster parents in general as being neglectful.
The foster system does fail so many people and this could very well have happened with someone who was licensed, but this kind of event really highlights the need for qualified people getting licensed and having case workers and GALs and CASAs involved, so that maybe some of these little children aren’t in this situation at all. I just keep thinking, if he’d come to us, he would have been loved and cared for, he wouldn’t have been killed and left abandoned in a sewer.
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That’s just devastating. 
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heartbreaking. that poor kid
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I read about that. I hope she gets a good room at the Nitrogen Hilton.
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My superintendent just told us that one of my colleagues passed away from a cancer. 50-ish so relatively young. Worked from a different lab location so I didn’t interact with her that often, but she was nice. Vita Mutatur, Non Tollitur 
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My 11 year old son is gender fluid. He prefers male pronouns, but also likes to wear skirts and sparkly clothing sometimes.
On days he wears skirts (with shorts or pants underneath), he refuses to ride his bike. He’s been harassed while riding to school, by adults in cars driving by him. It’s scary, and creepy. As a woman who was cat called a lot as an adolescent while I walked places, it’s terrifying, but it’s extra terrifying because of his gender identity as well.
He doesn’t feel safe at his middle school bathroom, where he uses the boys. He tries to use the single stall bathroom on the first floor, but in between classes he doesn’t have time to. Other boys in the bathroom have made rude comments to him before.
There was a story recently about a nonbinary child in Oklahoma who was bullied and died. The cause of death is still being investigated. Stories like that are so tragic, and hit close to home for me too.
We have talked with our son about what to do if he gets bullied in the bathroom. Obviously we want to him to be safe first, and get out without incident, and get to a teacher. But if he can’t, I don’t care if he gets suspended because of a zero tolerance policy, we are ok with him fighting back if he’s attacked.
It sucks that these conversations even need to be a thing.
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The Oklahoma case is infuriating. The police have said that the autopsy shows that the cause of death was definitively not the severe beating that Nex received the day before they died, but have declined to offer an alternative cause of death. Which doesn’t at all convey the feeling that they are covering for the school, which didn’t report the assault to the police, or the hospital, which treated and released Nex the day before they died.
I tried to explain transphobia to my middle school aged daughter last night. On the one hand, she understands prejudice because she has seen kids in her school be racist. But on the other hand, she doesn’t understand why someone would feel that way. (She said you wouldn’t be mad at someone for being right handed, so why would you be mad at someone for some other characteristics that they have?)
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