This item, Jack's Creepy Castle, it's 300,000 bells + either 30 timed limited materials or 23 leaf tokens, so I wanted to use a complete ticket for it. But, I don't see it in the Creepy Candy Castle area in the Complete Item Catalog. Am I missing it? I thought you could use a complete ticket on any item, other than cookie items?
Can anyone tell me where it is or what I'm missing?
A rant. I am doing my bills and noticed the rate of increase in Medford is brutal.
1/2023 to 9/2026
Sewer $24 to $35 = 46% increase
City of Medford $30 to $50 = 67% increase
Pacific Power has gone up 28% (per their own posted rates)
Rogue Disposal $101 (bi-monthly) to $111 = 10%
Over the same period of time my income has gone up 6%.
I'm not even going into more personal expenses, like housing, food, pet care, cell, cable, insurance and transportation.
I am in my 50's. I understand inflation and that it will keep happening, but the increases in the last few years are brutal.
This sucks.
PS - Shout out to Avista, because their rates are actually around 2% less than they were in early 2023. Unfortunately, that was the ONLY personal bill/agency I could find that went down at all.
Edited - just fixed a typo
Tip...
When crafting Limited Time items, if your out of Timed Materials (TM) it will cost 2 Leaf Tokens (LT) for small (5,000) items, 4 for medium (12,000), 9 for large (60,000). If you have them, Timed Materials needed = 2, 5 and 12. So you lose LT if you use them to get more from quarry.
Example- you spend 20 LT on quarry, you get 16 TM (2 gold nuggets, 3 silver). You then use all 16 to craft craft 2 medium + 3 small items. To get those TM you spent 20 LT when direct crafting would have only cost you 14. So... you lost 6 LT.
Note... although you can get more than 16 LT in a Quarry dig, I usually get 13 or 16. I think the max would be if you found 5 gold nuggets and got 25 TM, but that's extremely rare, you're usually getting 13 or 16, sometimes 19, rarely 22, extremely rarely 25. By my math you'd have to get 24 or more to get "your money's worth" out of the quarry vs just using LT to craft directly.
I was given 15 pouches of Chicken of the Sea, pink salmon. I generally like Salmon (although previously I had had it cooked in filets, not this canned-like stuff), and I also like tuna, so I figured I'd like this. So far, I don't.
I've tried it (1) "as in" in a green salad with an Asian dressing I like, (2) mixed up like Tuna and put on toasted bread, (3) I tried it mixed with a little mayo and hot sauce and on big leaf of green leafy lettuce, topped with black sesame seeds. (That last one, a recipe off the internet - those are all generally good flavors for me, so I thought that would be it - but it looked and smelled like cat food and it was not very good.)
I like to cook, so now the challenge is on. It's a decent ingredient, there's nothing wrong with it (it's within dates and looks like I think it should), and so I'd like to figure out how to turn it into something I like.
Anyone have any favorite ways to make this stuff? I thought maybe a fried fish cake of some sort, but I eat low carb so not sure how to go about that, and don't want to waste a lot of ingredients if that doesn't work out. I can't just mix it with rice because I'm low carb (for medical reasons).
Hi all. I need to host an event (smallish, around 12 people). I am looking for a good (or decent) sit down dinner restaurant in Medford or CP with a full bar, or at least one that serves more than beer and wine. We cannot go to Ashland or Talent. I don't eat out much, I only know of Tap and Vine and Kaleidoscope.
This season... they just don't seem to care about the participants or their "marriages." It was really kind of gross that they put all the couples together and asked them to answer questions about each other like "most likely to get the ick in their marriage" and "most likely to opt for a swap if they could." That game was designed to hurt feelings and start drama. As Devin said, "I don't like games designed to stir the pot," (or something similar).
To watch them all call out names and hurl insults in the form of a "game" was icky... and that the show created that environment intentionally was obnoxious. I can only imagine how Dr. Pepper and Pastor Cal feel watching this kind of thing... they really tried to support the couples and help them work through their individual issues. This is the opposite. I hate the turn they took with the show.
Hi all. I'm sharing because this recipe came out great and had very little effect on my blood sugar.
🎶 Happy birthday to me! 🎶
Recipe for cake in photos.
The frosting is a simple 2 parts cream cream, 1 part butter, a little vanilla - creamed together with mixer. Then your favorite powdered sugar substitute to taste (I used Lakanto).
I was doing a homeschool unit on kindness. My kid is a visual learner, and trying to show him videos that teach by telling doesn't work - he does better when it's demonstrated through clips with actions and either no or very few words. But I couldn't really find anything I really liked for him until I found this video. Not only did he LOVE it so much he's been watching it daily, but it helped him understand what it means to be kind or "kindness." He doesn't use a lot of words, but when I say, "you need to be kind" he's smiling and thinking of this video. It makes me smile too!
I have NO association with it, I believe it was made my a production company in China and I think you can find it as "Joy and Heron" on several different formats/services.
If you have not read/seen - There is a currently an 11-yo non-verbal boy with ASD missing in Calgary Canada. He eloped from his day home (a specialty child care center) 5 days ago. Staff discovered he was gone and called very help very early on... I believe they said they he could not have left more than 33 minutes before they called authorities. About an hour later he was captured on a business camera, then another one like 15 minutes after that... by that time he was 2.5 miles away, had taken off his shirt, and was walking quickly. That was the last sighting. It's like they are looking a human needle in a haystack.
I'm really struggling to not let my emotions get overwhelmed by yet another disappearance of one of our babies, and one that I can't do anything about. If I were possible for me to travel there and help search, I would. I couldn't sleep last night imagining what may have happened to the boy and what the family is going through.
Here are pictures of the best deals I saw on 7/12. Medford store.
*Chocolate. Side note that chocolate has gone up everywhere! I bake, and finding simple chocolate bars or chips at a decent price is almost impossible lately.
*Spectrum shortening - FYI that if you bake and care about health/healthy fats, Spectrum shortening is one of the only products you can buy that is non-hydrogenated, expeller pressed (also organic). Because of that it's usually hard to find and usually $12+ a tub at health food stores or online. (Walmart has it for 14.99 right now, Amazon $13.99.) So, I bought like 6 of them - I use it for a healthier frosting and in other baked goods that really need shortening to come out right, but I don't wanna use crap like Crisco. For storage - you need to put it in the freezer; otherwise, because it's all natural, it will only last for like six months (in a freezer, it will last for a few years).
My daughter started working (yay)! She was only given 1 shirt... is that normal? (Portland division. Hired as a general clerk, being trained as a meat clerk ATM). Can you buy more? She usually does laundry 1x a week but wearing the same shirt all week without washing seems kinda gross... and not what the company would want. She does have an apron to wear, which helps.
Update: thanks all. She asked them about buying extras and they said they'd give her a couple more next week.
.35 an item! The clothing prices at regular GoodWill stores on have gotten too high to hold my interest... but if you have a GoodWill Outlet, it's kind of unbelievable. They have a lot more than clothes, but I went yesterday looking for clothes and got a good haul. They charge by the pound. I got 26 pounds, over 80 items, for $28.34 (about .35 an item).
The clothes have now all been washed and hung or folded. No stains or rips/holes. These are all clothes that fit the style and size of someone in my family, and will get used. There's a nice small adult winter jacket in there and some little kid snow pants that basically paid for the whole trip. Also lots of name brands, including: Nike, Adidas, Columbia, Carters, Oshkosh, Guess, Land's End, Spyder, Chico's, REI, Old Navy, Gymboree and Toesox. (Bonus, all the socks I got appeared unworn - they had a bunch that still had tags or still in packaging.)
If you have a GoodWill Outlet, it's a very different thing than the regular GoodWill stores. They sell by the pound. I got 26 pounds, over 80 items, and that came to $28.34. It's a poor/frugal parent's bargain dream (or resaler's) - as long as they are willing to do the work. There are tables upon tables of goods. (It can be overwhelming; a lot of it is junk and the clothes are not separated by size, gender or season, so you have to sift through it to find the good stuff.)
Side note that it's kind of sad to see many donated things there that have parts/pieces (like puzzles, games, kids toys) come apart as people look through them, and then they end up being trash.
All the items I grabbed have been washed, sorted and folded or hung. None stained, none ripped. I have several kids in my family, and I only picked up items that met their style and size, so these are items we will wear/use. Hell, there's a nice winter jacket and snow pants in there, and just those two pieces pretty much pay for the whole haul.
Items included sizes women's, teen and little kids - a couple of dresses, lots of individual tops and bottoms, many sweatshirts and zip-up hoodies. Even a bonus mermaid skirt, bath towel, beautiful lace scarf, and a handful of good quality reusable shopping bags (not pictured).
Brand names included: Carters, Guess, Adidas, Nike, Columbia, Land's End, Spyder, Chico's, Old Navy, REI, Oshkosh, Gymboree, and several pairs of cute, never-worn socks, including Toesox, that still had the original price tags and packaging. Plus a lot of your basic WalMart and Target brand clothes.
My kid is 10, lvl 3 with limited verbal skills. He has a significant ID as well.
Sometimes he will have meltdowns, actually they have decreased a lot, but I'm
noticing a new behavior. As he is getting older, he is starting to be physically defiant. It's different than a meltdown - because he has more control, it's more deliberate.
Example- (1) He wants a chocolate bar. The rule for sweets is to ask and if he ate his healthy food we will give him a bit. But he tried to retrieve it without asking. When he was told to wait and ask, he got mad and literally tried to wrestle it from my husband's hands. (2) He's riding his electric car in our yard, and putting his hand on the ground. We want him to stop before he runs over his fingers. We give him the stop hand signal (which he knows), but drives around us and when we block him won't stop.. keeps trying to get around us, physically tries to remove our hands from the brake. Ends with him jumping off, throwing his helmet as my husband, running into the house.
This is new for him. Before if we asked him to stop and he was at baseline (I mean not upset or over-stimulated) he would. Meltdowns and aggression are not new to him/us, but if at baseline he would have paused to ask for the chocolate, he would have stopped his car to hear what we wanted to tell him. This seems like a more mature rebellion. He's a big strong kid, so not good.
My general approach to discipline is to "let the punishment fit the crime." So, he doesn't get the chocolate and he gets the car taken away for some amount of time (until at least the next day and until he can calmly listen and agree). And we did that - easy enough.
But my concern is that's not going to stop this behavior. It seemed like that was enough of a deterrent, but now that he's maturing and he's just flat out rebelling (and getting pissed off over small requests), it seems that he needs a little bit more than that immediate response.
Like... being physically aggressive should be its own, separate thing as a hard no- right? Throwing oneself on the ground, crying and throwing things (his typical meltdown) because he is out of control is very different than trying to bully his way via a physical altercation.
While a little grabbing/pushing may seem like a small thing compared to dealing with a full meltdown, (which can include hitting/biting, etc), it's actually kind of a big thing because he definitely has more control over it.
Any ideas on how to curb that behavior? He goes to an ABA program a few hours per week and we will work with them. I am thinking I may go on a whole campaign this summer about safe hands and being kind... it would be a repeat of a toddler lesson, but it seems like he needs it.
Long story short- 10, lvl 3, he's been kicked out or we've pulled him out (for safety) of many programs (OT, speech, adaptive swimming, music, academic programs...), mostly just for non-cooperation/no progress and/or trying to elope. The ones he's participated in, after 3-6 months he starts to lose interest and it's a fight to get him to focus. Over the years he learns and progresses, just in jumps and starts.
Then comes Sandy. A new SLPA, (like she had just become certified). She just intuitively got him. She stays in motion the whole time she works with him. They do things like go through obstacle courses as she says "now we're going *through* the tunnel, should we go *in or around* the ball pit." He loves her. It's almost been a year and he still wants to go to their weekly appointments, and it's the ONLY place/person he wants to bring things (like toys) from home to show her.
Two weeks ago, no other warning, she tells us that this next week will be her last week there. She's moving out of state. I can tell she's trying not to cry, so I can't really be mad at her. But my guy has an ID, and he won't understand. I've been telling him, "this next week, this will be the last time with Sandy, and then you're gonna have a new teacher." And he nods and says "unh ha," but he doesn't really get it. I don't know how to do a social story around the fact that he will just never again see this woman he's become attached to.
I feel lame, but I'm crying right now. He just generally doesn't make friends or get attached. There won't even be cross-over with his new therapist because they had a hard time hiring and she doesn't start until a week later. And what are the chances he will even like her? He's had SO many prior speech therapists that he didn't... none of them ran and played with him. They all want to sit and have him do activities, and he can't stand that. And I will tell her what worked and so will Sandy... but there just are not many adults willing (or able) to run around through obstacles for 30 minutes while teaching speech.
I'm very sad for him over this loss that he doesn't even know is coming. Over the years it upset me that he didn't like any of his therapists (even really nice ones, we've always stayed and observed), and I was sad that he seemed happy to move on from his teachers... but now I kind of wish he had never met Sandy because I don't know if the speech progress he achieved with her did more good than the abandonment trauma he's going to feel with her being gone.
Has anyone else had something like this happen and have any thoughts or suggestions on how to prepare or support him through it?
Please stop putting stickers on art and other surfaces they damage. I cannot use soap and water to get these off, or chemicals, because it will ruin the art. Theses pieces are not just paper, they are coated surfaces, (but not glass), so I bought because I thought the stickers could be removed fairly easily... but whatever kind of super-glue adhesive is on those stickers is ruing the art I bought for my kid's room. The price stickers could have been placed on the side or back. Please stop.
In the Planner there are these two stickers, and I didn't know what the heck they were supposed to be. So I looked it up and wanted to share. Apparently they are items related to the Japanese New Year.
As a US girl (born and raised), I had not had been exposed to/learned about the Japanese New Year.
According to the net:
The one on the left is a kadomatso - a decoration placed outside, often made of bamboo and pine, to welcome the New Year spirit to bring blessings for the coming year.
The one on the right is a kagami mochi - which is two rice cakes topped with citrus, with some traditional decoration (the red squares are... I believe... are shide). These are usually displayed inside, then broken apart, cooked and eaten after the holiday.
My only source for this information is the www, so... Dear Japanese AC friends or experts: if I have anything wrong or you have more to add, please comment!!
This is the first month I was able to complete ALL the cookies!
Hi all. My fasting numbers are often higher than I want. (130 this morning, usually closer to 115.)
I've been able to get them lower, on average, than they were years ago - with meds, diet and exercise. But I'm wondering what your general fasting numbers are (if willing to share) and/or what your goal is (or what you think demonstrates good control).
Also, if there was anything specific you did that you noticed improved them. For me, all around low-carb eating seems to make the biggest difference.
Thanks in advance.
I was given a $50 Costco card (sweet!). I am on a family membership, but don't usually go in, I have a few things I regularly buy online, but I need to spend this on groceries and will be going to the store. $50 doesn't get a lot of items at Costco due to the bulk pricing, but they do have some good deals. What do you think are the best deals there? Preferably things you can buy for under $10.
I know the rotisserie chicken and eggs, I'll get both. I don't want/need raw meat even if you can get it for under $10. What else?
Edit/update: This post turned out to be super helpful. I checked what I had in my pantry (which included a lot of staples like flour, yeast, sugar/salt, rice, dried beans/legumes, dry pasta and sauce, canned tuna/chicken and frozen chicken) and ended up going with fresher items we needed and were still a good price: 10 items - Rotisserie chicken, Eggs, Tofu, Oats, Frozen blueberries, whole wheat bread, Bananas, Apples, Potatoes, Greek yogurt.
It ended up being a couple dollars over the $50 (I believe $53.xx), which was perfect because I brought a few extra bucks just to cover a little overage as I didn't want any balance left on the card. I feel good about what I ended up with. Thanks to everyone who commented!!
Cross-posting in r/povertyfinance