u/CK1277

My troop has its own camp song book because I invariably develop camp song amnesia as soon as I’m put on the spot to remember a song.

It’s time to put out a second edition because we’ve learned a bunch of new songs and I got the bright idea to make a guitar version with chord notations. It turns out that formatting the tab notations so that they match up to the lyrics is a more labor intensive project than I had initially anticipated.

I have access to google products, most Microsoft products, and canva. Ideas?

My preferred camping style is tent camping at a walk in site in an established campground. I get privacy but also shade, potable water, bear boxes, a picnic table, a fire ring, and vault toilets.

My kids are 14 and 19 and while not chronically online, they do like to keep their phones charged (so do I). I bring the iPad with a few movies downloaded because we like to watch a movie together in the tent before bed (it’s the only way I can still get them to do movie night with me). And I have a handful of camping gadgets that are rechargeable.

We end up bringing a few charged battery packs with us, but if I do something stupid like forget to charge the SUP pump, battery packs won’t cut it.

The kids and I stayed at a KOA for the first time. For those who aren’t familiar, this is a chain campground with lots of glamping amenities that caters primarily to RV’ers. For example, you can have pizza and firewood delivered to your campsite. I was in the shower house getting ready for bed and enjoying the music they were playing when I realized: they’re playing music from my childhood because it’s unobjectionable old people music aimed at the people in the RV retirement lifestyle.

I’m a Girl Scout leader and we have an outdoor skills competition coming up. One of the skills is the dinner competition. We have just been informed that even though fire restrictions in the county where the competition is being held allow for propane stoves, the organizers of the event are restricting anything with a flame.

One of my girls suggested we prepare our own dehydrated meals in advance and use MRE heaters which I think is super creative. Not having any experience with them, I’m not sure how hot they get or what’s legitimately possible with an MRE heater. Any words of wisdom to share?

I was SUP this weekend and the wind picked up which made the water choppy which scared my dog and we flipped. My dog (vested) swam easily to shore (we were maybe 30 feet from shore in a small lake), but I was struggling to flip my board and get back on because my life vest did not stay put. It was cinched as tight as I could cinch it, but life vests are hard to tighten with an hour glass figure.

I got a good offseason deal on some pie irons and so OF COURSE that means we’re on a stage 2 ban all summer (sorry Colorado, I jinxed us).

We can have gas stoves, but I experimented and it’s not an even heat so I end up with burn spots and cold spots. Any brilliant ideas?

I took 27 of my 41 girls (DBJCSA) camping and I’m realizing that I need a better system for storing and tracking medications. I don’t really need a formal system for 1 or 2 kids, but this weekend I had 5 kids on meds and I was gone at evening dosing time due to an emergency. Everything was fine, but it made me realize that I need an actual system.

What works for you?

It seems like every time there’s a news story about some outrageous thing some celebrity has done, I
have no idea who they are.

Apparently I live under a rock.

Family law case. I have a pro se OP who is demanding “civility” from my client after sending over 400 pages of increasingly unhinged emails in the past two months since we were last in court (none of which require a response from my client, they are are monologues) and copying me, the GAL, her former lawyer, and everyone she can think of on them. At a status conference, the Judge told OP that if she really wants civility, then she needs to be willing to do her part and set the matter for the next hearing in a few months.

In the 2 1/2 hours since our status conference ended, OP has sent 11 new emails.

I don’t I would know what to do with myself if I ever attempted to transition to a lower drama practice area.

In the US, the answers people generally give are increased medical risks stemming from loss of reproductive rights, lack of parental leave, cost of childcare, cost of health insurance, and general overall cost of living. All of which are realities of the US, but don’t explain a similar decrease globally.

Insight, please?

I needed to establish care with a new PCP. At our first appointment, an MA took my history but the actual doctor spent a good 30 minutes asking questions and listening to what I had to say. There’s nothing specifically wrong with me, I’m just middle aged. Then she ordered all of the bloodwork and less than 24 hours after the results were in, she sent me a message through the app telling me what steps she wanted me to take now (apparently vampires have more vitamin D than I do) and what she wanted to talk about at my follow up.

II’ve never felt this seen by a doctor.

There are a number of anti-bullying resources available and I’m trying to identify one that will be impactful for CSA level Girl Scouts.

Let me know what’s worked for you

If you are going to make changes to my proposed document, then FUCKING REDLINE THEM! I will even accept making changes and highlighting them even though that’s such a boomer move for someone who graduated from law school in 2007.

What I will not do is incorporate a 3 page typed document of your suggested changes (in note form, not in actual suggested language that my assistant could at least copy and paste). This may come as a shock to you, but as it turns out, I did not go to law school so that I could time travel back to the 1950’s and be your typing pool.

I have a mandolin, an air fryer and a dehydrator at my disposal. Any experiences to share about which works better?

I love the nutrition benefits of steel cut oats (and oatmeal generally), but the flavor and texture is off putting. I would love to get some ideas.

Name the practice area and the red flag:

Family law: Grandparents calling either for themselves for grandparent visitation or on behalf of their grown children and referring to themselves as “mom” or “dad”.

Related: Adults who bring their parent to an initial interview with an attorney and the grandparent does most of the talking.

I’ve been a leader for a long time and over time, I notice shifts in how people parent. I don’t know if this is one of those shifts or if this is just my troop, so I’m asking here.

My troop is based in an area where there’s not a whole lot to do locally, but there’s just about anything you could possible want 1-2 hours away in any given direction. Mountains, lakes, big cities, theater, cool museums, zoos, aquariums, everything. We’re a large multi-level (40 girls, DBJCSA, 24 families) and we arrange carpools when we do things that are out of our immediate area (which happens about 6-10 times per year).

10-12 years ago, I had to prod parents to volunteer to chaperone (they weren’t unwilling once prodded, they just didn’t volunteer unless prodded because they were totally comfortable with their kids going off on adventures without them). Now I have a small but growing number of parents who enthusiastically volunteer to chaperone (because they want to shadow their kids and/or because we do cool things), but who don’t want to drive other people’s children.

I make it very clear: If you aren’t willing to carpool, I’m not picking you to be a chaperone. But I’m honestly taken aback by the “oh…you want me to deal with other children?” attitude because this is new to me.

Is this an actual attitude trend anyone else is seeing or am I just blessed with a handful of parents like this at the moment?

We lost our long term meeting space (a church basement) and just wrapped our first year at the new meeting space. It’s a different church basement and they have been lovely.

When we first met with them to work out the details, the conversation about whether they were going to charge us to use the space was a little awkward. I got the impression that they could probably use the money, but didn’t want to ask the Girl Scouts to pay and the facilities guy joked that his wife had told him he had better not make the Girl Scouts pay. We agreed to do a community service project for them (we did) and called it good.

Fast forward 9 months, we did a lot better with cookies than we usually do and the girls are in a position to make a donation, but I’m not sure how much to suggest to them. So I’m doing market research into how much we probably saved by them generously allowing us to meet there for free all year.

I noticed when I logged my dessert, my fiber macro jumped. Turns out Halo Lite salted Carmel ice cream has 6g of fiber. You know what else has 6g of fiber? A serving of steel cut oats (1/3 c pre cooking).

There’s a lot more that goes into what makes a particular food item nutrient dense or not, but I just found that surprising.

I am a Girl Scout leader. I enjoy/am indifferent about 95% of my parents. The 5% of my parents who I don’t enjoy, make me want to beat my head against a wall. Or their head. Either way.

If I tell you when/where something is in three ways (hard copy, email, calendar invite) and you start a text message to me “I know it’s in an email somewhere but….” to ask me information you already know but are too lazy to look for, just know that I am picking out a place to hide your body the next time we go camping.

Sometimes I pretend to be out of cell phone range but really I’m intentionally ignoring people who ask questions they could answer for themselves if they put some fucking effort into it and stopped treating me like I’m their own personal Alexa.