u/LumpyPeople4

I am looking for a whole home solution. I have NG and a pretty easy going crawlspace, so electrical/gas work should be straight forward. Obviously I'll need to get some quotes, but I was wondering what you all thought would be rough estimate for the cost difference between a standby solution and a portable solution.

I have a smaller 1500sqft home with a single 2.5T AC and a gas furnace (only gas appliance, everything else is electric). My electric panel is out back, we have no garage, and I am a single parent of toddlers. I'm not really interested in finagling breakers/appliances/devices to try and get by with a 4kw generator or anything. I don't mind going out in the storm to hook stuff up and let it rip though.

If I were to get equivalent sized generators in either situation, does anyone have a rough estimate on the cost difference between an installed standby system vs a portable w/ gas/electrical hookups? I'm in central NC fwiw.

Other than adding up all my systems individually, is there any way for me to determine my whole home wattage needs? I have a smart meter from the utility, think they'd give me or tell me my peak wattage use? Is there some rough rule of thumb? We don't have anything crazy at our house, just standard run of the mill stuff and no specialty devices or anything.

I know I need the quotes, and those are coming, but finding time to get those done is difficult for me, so I'm hoping to just get some rough ideas on to be focusing on. Thanks for the help!

I have a 7yo frenchie. Late last fall he started limping a bit, but due to life circumstances we were not able to get him evaluated until the end of the year. We figured it was his ACL as our English had TPLO done in both knees over the years and it looked very similar. At the end of the year he was diagnosed with an inconclusive pull test on the ACL. It felt loose, but wasn't fully ruptured, so they figured it was a partial tear. We got the referral to our specialty surgeon who did the other TPLOs.

Again, due to life circumstances, we didn't get to the specialty surgeon until mid March. He has his eval and had anticipated surgery scheduled for the following day. At the eval, surgeon said his ACL was just fine, but based off the muscle loss, it appeared to be neurological. They have a neurologist in the office as well, talked to them and we ended up with an MRI.

"DIAGNOSIS: L5-6 disc herniation on left causing ~25% persistent compression"

The neurologist said it was a bit odd that the herniation was on the left but the complications were on the right, but the thought is that the spinal cord is pushed over from the left and is then pinched/impacted on the right. She said she had personally seen this occur and surgery to clean out the herniation solved the issue. She said it is rare, but isn't unheard of and is confident that is the issue.

She was hesitant on surgery, as was I. She said she didn't think the issue would get much worse and that our boy was probably as healed up as he would be and as he didn't seem to be in pain or be bothered too much, it was up to me if I thought that was a good enough quality of life. We did some therapy, underwater treadmill and some laser therapy stuff. It seemed to help build up some strength, and even before that, other than just limping he didn't seem out of the ordinary in any real way. Therapy ran 8 weeks I believe, ended mid June.

Everything seemed fine since then, he has had a sedentary lifestyle due to the heat, so I think he has lost more muscle in both rear legs now. But same deal, didn't seem too bothered by it or in pain. That was until maybe 3 days ago. He had been in boarding 3 weeks back or so for a week, but came back up looking no worse for wear. But 3 days ago, when going to bed he started acting a bit off.

Normally we go out back for the bathroom and then head to bed. He goes into his bed and I go to the bathroom, brush up, and go back out into the living area to get a few things and check the doors. During this all he just stays in his bed. A few days ago he did not, he followed me into the bathroom and back out of the bedroom. Once I got settled, it took a good amount of convincing for him to get into his own bed. In the morning (yesterday) I get up early and usually have to beg him to get out of bed to go out and pee. When my alarm went off, he was already standing up and out of his bed. I figured he maybe threw up or pooped somewhere (has had issues since the spine), but couldn't find anything. He didn't want to eat his breakfast and wouldn't leave my side which normally he would follow me around but just lay on someplace comfortable nearby within eyesight. Now he wouldn't leave my side. That evening he eat his breakfast, and I was thinking he was maybe just not feeling good so I didn't want to push his stomach and have him throw up so I didn't feed him the dinner.

Today he has seemed more like himself. Lazying around wherever within eyesight, eating fine again. Figured his stomach was a bit off maybe yesterday. He acted a bit weird outside, not wanting to get down into the grass. We have raccoons around that dig in our trash near the side door we leave out of, so I figured maybe he smelled them and just didn't want to deal with it. This happens from time to time (even when he was healthy). The kids are upstairs (master is downstairs and his bed is in my room) and he has started shaking upstairs. I figured it was because the kids (very young) are starting to get more attached and play with him more. They aren't aggressive with him at all, just like to lay next to him and pet him and stuff. They will try to hug him which he tolerates, and will pet his face not too gently, but he seems to also like it. He will lick them a lot and wag his stump of a tail at them 1/2 the time. I figured him shaking up there was a sign of him getting more anxiety around the kids and their increased interactions with him. They are toddlers, so they are clumsy and do sometimes roll on him and stuff. The dog is never with the kids without me around either, so I don't think they have stepped on his back or done something to his injury or anything.

Just now, which pushed me to post this, I was in the bathroom and he was in his bed and he just yelped. I came out and he ran to me and looked kind of like a stereotypical halloween cat; legs locked outright and hunched back, head tucked into shoulders. He slowly relaxed a bit.

With all of these new symptoms over the last few weeks (seemingly decreased muscle mass in both rear legs, change in behavior, not eating, pain) I wonder if the disc has herniated more or is shifted or whatever. I suppose I could get another MRI to see if that is the case, but obviously there is a hefty price to that and not sure if it would really give us any info that would change any decisions that have to be made.

He used to be very active until about 1.5yr ago when we lost the english. Shortly after that, our lifestyle had to change and he didn't get as many walks as he used to. I think we are in a place that we can finally get back to more activity (weather/heat permitting) if he is able.

We all know spine surgery is not a trivial thing. I can eat the cost of the surgery, but obviously I just want the best quality of life for him. What are everyone's thoughts on if the surgery is worth while or not? Or at what point in his decline (hopefully it doesn't come to that) do we think it is worth pursuing that option? I don't think we are anywhere near this point, but if it ever came down to having to debate if his quality of life is getting to low, I'd rather do surgery to give him a fighting chance at a good life. But of course I don't want to put him through that if the odds of a successful/uncomplicated surgery are low.

Thanks for any insight you all may have.

I have an Airsense 11. I've had it for about a year, but have only started using it about a month ago. I feel like my pressure is too high, or airflow is too much, idk if that is a thing. Anyways, a month ago I had an appointment with the doc to get new masks and stuff as the prescription was expired. She again reiterated that they can adjust everything on their end and have it sent wirelessly to the machine. I know the CPAP has a cellular signal and is supposed to send data to my doc and they can send programming to the machine.

After asking to turn down the pressure, my doc now claims they are not receiving the data. Not sure why the hell they're telling me now, seems like some kind of notification should go off on their end. They want me to bring the machine in to find out what pressure it is at currently. I can just tell them that, so presumably I figure they just want to manually program the machine in the office. It is hard for me to get the time to bring it in, so at the point I'll just mess with he settings myself.

Airplane mode is off, it's got 4 bars on the screen. I'm not sure if the CPAP decided to just not transmit anything because it's been a year since it's been issued and hasn't been used. Or if the docs turned off the feature on my chart or something on their end since I wasn't using it and want to save face, idk. Is there any way to tell if the CPAP is transmitting data?

I have merged my late wife's library with my own. I imported hers into an album of her own name, so I have hers separated. I wasn't smart enough to put all of my own into an album with my own name prior to importation though.

Is it possible to do album subtractions? Essentially I want to add all existing photos into a new album and remove all photos in the wife's album. Is that possible?

I have ~10 year old peach tree that is very sentimental to me. I have been trying to get the seeds to grow for years without any luck at all. I had been given the advice earlier this year that grafting would be my best bet. I know there are some general rules for this. When is the best time of year to do this, and does anyone have recommendations on how to find someone to handle this for me? The plan would be to be able to bring this tree with me when I move, so I am looking to have something done that is high quality and long lasting.

Any other recommendations for getting a new tree to grow are also welcome. I've tried rooting clippings unsuccessfully as well as various ways of getting the seeds to germinate.

I have seen various sights that will process the extended streaming history json files into most played / least skipped / top artist / etc. I am looking for someplace that can just convert the data in the json file into a csv or excel file. Does anyone know of a service like that?

My late wife had a bad habit of making our roadtrip playlists as just queues, so I am looking for a database of our playing history to identify our roadtrip playlists and rebuild them as true playlists.

I'm in central NC, but further west so we get a bit colder in general, and it occurs a bit earlier. But overall, still a long growing season. I have some mophead hydrangea cuttings that are needing to pot up from smaller 1/2 sized solo cups of soil into something bigger. I'm currently debating when to harden them off and leave them outside long term, but I think that'll also depend on when they'll be able to survive the winter. They're about 1.5mo along now and have another 3 months to go. Think they'd survive a winter by that point? I have 6 of them, so if I need to keep them inside, I'll need to get a bit creative as my house isn't that large.

Zone 7b with average first frost at late Oct.

I'm in central NC, but further west so we get a bit colder in general, and it occurs a bit earlier. But overall, still a long growing season. I have some mophead hydrangeas that are needing to pot up from smaller 1/2 sized solo cups of soil into something bigger. I'm currently debating when to harden them off and leave them outside long term, but I think that'll also depend on when they'll be able to survive the winter. They're about 1.5mo along now and have another 3 months to go. Think they'd survive a winter by that point? I have 6 of them, so if I need to keep them inside, I'll need to get a bit creative as my house isn't that large.

Zone 7b with average first frost at late Oct.

I have just started using my CPAP and I have the F20 full face mask. I am traditionally a mouth breather mainly due to just difficulty breathing through my nose. I can breathe though my nose but any minor congestion of restriction cuts off a lot of airflow as my nose is fairly small.

I presume due to the mouthbreathing they gave me the F20. I have found that the bridge pushes on my nose enough that it cuts off any nasal breathing I can do, so now I am forced into mouth breathing 95% of the time. If I get lucky and the mask is in the perfect spot and I do not move, I am able to breathe through my nose for a bit. But I have also found that the F20 pushes on my chin enough that it just forces my mouth open as well so I end up drooling which makes the mask disgusting and awful. I wear glasses and the bridge portion of the F20 is causing me to have a lot of skin irritation on the bridge of my nose I think due to just always having that area covered with something now (mask or glasses vs previously I would have all night for my skin to recover from the glasses all day). So I think the F20 is done for anyways just based off that to begin with. I don't think its worth persevering through the other issues to see if they resolve as there will always be the skin irritation issue.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a mask? I sleep in all positions, but I would say like 90% side and back, 10% stomach. I think I mainly mouth breath due to just my small nose, nasal strips increase my airflow like 100%, so I am kind of wondering if a nasal mask may work for me because with the pressure I wonder if it will keep the airflow open. My supplier through insurance doesnt seem particularly interested in helping me find a mask, they just said to find what I want and let them know and they'll get it, so I'm kind of on my own with trial/error.

Im in the triad and it was my understanding that Catawba brewing had pretty much ceased all operations. I was at actually looking for a peanut butter jelly time replacement and saw a few cases of white zombie. Are they still manufacturing? Is there any help of peanut butter jelly time coming out this year?

I have gotten an email from my estate attorney asking if we are looking to file for DSUE (Deceased Spousal Unused Exclusion). Google says the prep for the documents runs $2.5-10k or so, I'd imagine ours would be on the bottom end as she has not used her exclusion at all.

Other than the upfront costs, is there any downside to this? If I get remarried, does this go away?

I have been out of the Ascent game for quite a while. We had an early year Ascent, 2020, when the wife and I started trying to have a family. We kept it for a while and loved it. It was the wife's car and she had a very short commute, and we wanted to keep miles off it so we drove the Outback most of the time when we were together in one car, so we didn't have a ton of miles put on it.

That changed when she got pregnant, we started driving it more as it was easier for her to get in/out of. That is when we noticed a gas smell issue, this was in mid 2022. I looked on the forums and it seemed to be a known issue. Some people complained that they couldn't park theirs in their garage due to making the entire house reek of gas. We didn't have a garage, so that wasn't an issue, but I could smell it in parking lots. The bigger issue for us is that it got pulled into the cabin. I presume somehow it was leaking out of the engine bay and getting sucked into the cabin air intake. Driving there were no issues, when stopped at a light you could smell it, with recirculating on it goes away. The worst time was when you start the car after a fairly short park after warm. Like you're going into UPS to drop off a package, when you come back out and start it, you'd get this massive poof of gas straight to the face.

We figured this was not ideal for a pregnant woman or the pending baby to be. We ended up trading it in for an Odyssey. Life happened and we are no longer anticipating the family size requiring a van. I hate the Odyssey and will never buy another Honda, but I'll keep it until it dies for sentimental reasons. But if it gets totaled tomorrow, I'm not sure what I'd replace it with. I have a newer base model Outback, but for the kids I think having the captains chair is nice and helps keep the peace a bit, so I'm thinking I'd maybe get the Ascent again.

Is the gas fume issue still a thing? I can't imagine it is. I even bought a combustable gas sniffer and it could sense something coming in through the air vents.

I am recently widowed and the registration is running out on my wife's car, I am unable to renew it. The registration will run out at end of August. The family van is in my name, it's newer, but is getting close to 60k miles on it and so things are starting to wear out. Its worth fixing as it goes, just how it is, but that means its in the shop for a few days from time to time.

I work full time and have two toddlers. I have the 2nd car for right now, and when the van goes into the shop, we can just use the 2nd car (newer crossover). To keep my wife's car I'd have to pay it off which I can do, but just seems like a bit of a waste. I could keep both cars and just alternate them to just keep the miles off the van and keep the suv's fluids pumping. What are you all doing when your cars are in the shop? Do you get a rental? Borrow from someone (I don't really have anyone close enough to borrow a spare car from)?

I have the Amex Delta Platinum. We haven't traveled in quite some time due to covid and having kids, and now I have recently lost my travel companion. So the usefulness of the Delta Platinum card is fairly low for me now. Really the only benefit I get from it now is just the cellphone protection it offers.

I have had the card for quite some time, so I do not want to cancel it and lose that history. I am looking to downgrade it. Unfortunately as a now single working parent of toddlers, I do not have a ton of time to research things as I once did. Does anyone have any recommendations for lower fee (or free) Amex cards that I can downgrade to? My main card I use now is the ever exciting Costco card. I don't mind paying annual fees if it is worth while, but we are limited on airplane travel now (probably wont fly for another few years at least), but if there are other non advertised benefits (such as the cellphone protection on my delta card) I see them as big perks, if they are useful of course.

Any recommendations? I just hit the $350 annual fee on my Delta Platinum, so I need to downgrade it shortly and see if I can get that fee back, if not I guess I'll wait another year.

I am new to any of this. I have been water propagating some mophead hydrangea. I have 8 clippings going, and about 50% of them have roots 1"+ in size. The others don't have anything. Should I let the rest of them still sit in water, or are they just not going to succeed at this point?

I have a straight forward but seemingly uncommon question for qualified children tests. I would ultimately like a formal written response from the IRS on their stance. I know that I can go to my local TAC and ask them, but I am a single parent of toddlers so that is not an ideal situation. I have tried calling the individual tax help phone number but I cannot get through to anyone, I've held up to 1.5hr without answer.

It is a straight forward question, so talking face to face or even just over the phone is a bit overkill. Is there any way to email/write the IRS and receive a response?

I had asked this question in another tax subreddit and it was a bit hotly debated, so I figured I'd ask here as well.

I am a young widower, I have two toddlers. They receive sizable social security child survivor benefits. I have debated a few scenarios where I would be using significant portions of these funds for their benefit. If I do so, do these funds count as the child providing their own support?

From what I can find within Publication 501 there is no explicit inclusion of survivor benefits for qualifying children, though I have not found any exclusion anywhere. The support test for a qualifying relative explicitly states a child's social security benefits are considered as the child providing their own support, but that statement is not provided for qualifying children.

Is there any publication giving clear guidance on this?