Jeeves

@Scarlett45 - wow. You've had a LOT to deal with over these last several months (yikes, more like two years!). I have mad respect for your strength of character and depth of caring for your family - immediate and extended - through good times and very difficult ones. I'm sorry that the unpleasant old guy died like that, it's a shame, but as you said, if you push people away consistently that kind of end isn't a surprise. Sigh. Thanks for sharing the Cosmo photo - an instant smile for me. ❤️ @Nysha and @crazy8s - thanks for sharing your good times with us. I'm glad you're enjoying your families, and catching some lovely moments with those kids who as we all know will be grown up in the proverbial twinkling of an eye. My local family will gather for our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday afternoon. That stuff can happen with a couple of first responders in the mix, because work schedules. I'm good with it. TBH Thanksgiving isn't my favorite holiday for personal reasons. I'm fine with the shifted date for the family gathering. May run to the grocery store on T'day for the fixings for the big green salad I'm making; they will be open until 4pm. After quite a spell of mild weather we're gonna get slammed with cold and snow just in time for Friday, LOL.

FIFY.

I'm just home from a 10 day trip that included a social event at a state park, by and for nomads. Full-time, part-time, and weekenders. We talked about favorite apps for the roaming life, and the Life360 app was recommended. Now, the user is a single woman who lives and travels full time in her RV. She has it set up with, IIRC, a few key relatives. I don't recall the details, but she appreciates that they can keep track of her whereabouts with some exactness. If she's out of contact they will know where she (or her phone) is and can take appropriate action. I can see how it could be creepy and intrusive, but also useful for kids and, as noted, folks out there on the road. BTW I had a great time, made some new friends, and am plotting my next road trip. Although it's great to be home. We were at a dusty state park. I'm cleaning up everything I took with me. It will keep me occupied for at least today and probably tomorrow too.

THANK YOU for this. My thoughts exactly - but you said it much better than I would have. It makes me itchy when I read posts (not so much here but elsewhere, including reddit) that assume the kidults are legally bound by NDAs they signed in favor of JB and his production company. Nope. Nada. No way. Because as described by Jill in her book (and also from what's generally known to those of us who've been paying attention over the years), the circumstances are hinky as all get-out. IMO it wouldn't take a genius lawyer to blow up such an NDA in the event JB tried to enforce it.

I don't know how many people beyond her circles (downline, church) would see that post. I suppose someone might have called her on it. But I think most Plexus huns who really care, are probably working hard for their own advancement and are unlikely to come across, or pay much attention to, anything Jill posts. And if she did eventually get a "buddy" spot, then her tinkered-up "invite" would have become accurate.

I have always suspected that Jill covered up some of the original text by overwriting it with "WONDERFUL" and the exclamation points. Someone on Reddit also had that suspicion and googled the words on that post of Jill's and posted what they found. I did that search for myself, and found that someone had posted this publicly (I've blurred over the name): IN MY OPINION it's obvious that Jill tinkered with the graphics of that "official invite" to add her own photo, and the difference in fonts is evidence she tinkered with the text. I think that Jill covered up the words "chance for a" with the word WONDERFUL, and covered up "with a buddy" at the end of the sentence with exclamation points. And dumped the next sentence. (Depending on how the text was spaced on her graphic, she might have only had to cover up "with" or "with a" with the exclamation points, and then dumped the lines below that one.) It's possible that she did in fact land a spot on the cruise as a "buddy," but it's my opinion that she played fast and loose with that message from Plexus. She's such a godly liar.

I'm surprised because over the past months she's gone so hard into the Plexus pushing on her social media, indicating that her Plexus boss lady role and aspirations are a higher priority than they used to be. But I'm not shocked, because I always thought she'd be challenged to find the funds for the land transportation and other expenses she'd incur in order to take the cruise she "won." I also see a tension, a lurking conflict, between her role as the helpmeet and submissive wife of an IFB traveling preacher and missionary, and her role as a Plexus hun. The IFB Preacher's Wife. I'm so used to seeing Jill as the public face of the Rod Family Serving Jesus, that it's easy to forget that in the IFB world, it's DAVID who's the head of the family and the official Missionary in Charge of the operation. He's the one who is booked to preach at those churches, revivals, and conferences. She's his wife, who because she has the wrong kind of genitals can't preach, but does have her own supporting (cough, cough) role. She can perform music, along with the kids. She can speak to women's groups. She obviously can post stuff on social media, and she can lead that annual women's retreat (that someone else started and Jill grabbed hold of when that person stepped back I think because of health). The role of Preacher's Wife is a high status position in the IFB world, and that's how Jill wants to be seen. AFAIK the IFB frowns on wimmin holding jobs, but it's okay for godly wives to have little sidelines to bring in money. IIRC Jonathan's mom (a real preacher's wife) has some kind of farm operation - goats? reptiles? Side hustles such as MLMs are okay. The parameters of Jill's situation with the Rod Family Serving Jesus include: Staying in her lane as supportive and submissive wife of David who is a traveling preacher and missionary. Organizing and promoting their appearances. Which IMO includes posting appropriate religious stuff and content showing their godly family life. Presenting the family as of modest financial means, having SACRIFICED so much worldly stuff to serve the correct Jesus, and an appropriate recipient of love offerings everywhere they go. Chronicling the family's work to save souls for the Lord Daniel. Including their travails and suffering in this evil world, including the RV breakdowns. The Plexus Boss Babe. Whether it's driven by her narcissism or desperation to bring in money (I think it's both), Jill ramped up her Plexus pushing this year. It's all over her social media, all the time. The highlights of her year were the Nashville convention and the "Gold School" meeting in Austin. She busted her butt, and apparently signed up everybody in sight as a downline (probably including her dog), and "won" or "earned" the "WONDERFUL" cruise. She's humping like mad to move up the Plexus ladder to the next status. And so we get this stuff on the Rod Family Serving Jesus social media, and I'm sure she's doing this stuff offline wherever she can: Sales pitches for the wonderful Plexus products that will keep everyone healthy. Working with her downlines ("team") to push Plexus; she posts publicly their Zoom calls and pics of their meetings. And I saw that she has recently publicly posted the names and sales rankings of her downlines. (Which to me is a WTF moment. Why does the PUBLIC who follows Jill on SM need to know that detail?) Recruitment of new downlines - she's pushing a "business" opportunity, i.e., opportunity to make money. Presenting Plexus as an essential thing for good health, and herself as a successful upline making money from selling the wonderful stuff. I tend to skim over her Plexus stuff on SM, but even if she soft-pedals the money side of it, this is clearly a 100% worldly thing. She's making no secret of her lust to move up to a higher status in the Plexus system. So is she a successful Plexus boss babe, who I should follow by signing up as a downline so I can share in the wealth? Or is she the dogly wife of a preacher serving the correct Jesus, as they live a devout life apart from the evils of the world, and because this has been such a financial sacrifice for them, I should throw love offerings at them? I wonder if the balance of her social media content has tipped so far over toward the Plexus side, that there's been some mutterings and pushback from the IFB world. She can sprinkle the Jesus-y talk all over her Plexus postings and meetings and team calls, but it's a worldly activity to earn money. "So, she's pulling in enough bucks to spend days at a convention in Nashville, staying in a hotel and wearing new outfits every day. Then she brings her skinny raggedy kids to our church and wants us to pile on the love offerings? My grocery bill is up by 40% this year and gas prices are nuts. Don't think the Rods need my money anymore." Would Jill have been wiser to run separate social media accounts for her Plexus biz and the Rod Family Serving Jesus? Maybe. But I think it's probably one of the basic IFB rules that wives can't have their own social media presence apart from their husbands. Hence all the "X Family" and "JohnJane Doe" social media accounts. At this point the mix is even more interesting because one of her downlines is the mother of Tim's fiance: religion, family relations, and Plexus money. Of course, in Jill's world, EVERYTHING is all about Jill, all the time. I see from discussions here and elsewhere that Ellen Covert may not be as easily steamrolled as Jill expects. I'm here for the drah-mah.

OMG. Look what I parked next to just now.

Oh yes! And don't you know Jill is FUMING. Butt hurt so bad. Another photoshoot that she didn't do, or appear in, or direct, or release to the waiting world. The Finger™ not in evidence. Oh, the tragedy!! 🤣

There are links upthread to info about the cruise. One of the FAQs said that you can go on the cruise without a passport (although I think alternate ID like a certified birth certificate is required), but without a passport you can enter, but you can't venture beyond, the special ("resort"?) area on land at the destination that cruise passengers can visit when the boat is docked. Passports are def a possibility, but probably not the deal breaker. If passports were the only reason, she'd have ranted about it as her being somehow Christianly persecuted for not being able to get one in time or something like that.

Oh, I was definitely hoping that on the cruise she would meet, if not exceed, the output of snark material that she produced on the Nashville trip. Although that's a high (or low) standard, when you consider the tacky pink cowgirl hat, the boots, the extravaganza of denim, the fringe-o-mania, and the tacky homemade team T-shirts, and their screeching hymns to innocent passersby in the hotel. Sigh. Sometimes life is SO disappointing.

I think JillR being pregnant again is on the same level of probability as Jessa Duggar Seaworld adopting a child, i.e., NFW. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking because she's such a hellish parent. She's proud to have won the cruise, "even though I can't go." I see these possible reasons why she "can't go." If she only won the "buddy" level. (Meaning that Dave couldn't go and she'd share a room with another Plexus hun, probably assigned to her by the company.) If so, reasons she's not going: It would violate IFB rules for her to take that kind of not-godly secular trip at all (see below re sinful stuff going on), the rules would allow her to go, but not without her headship, Dave wouldn't allow it for Jesus-y reasons, Dave wouldn't allow her to take a trip without him because he's her headship even if the rules would allow it, they can't afford it - which is an embarrassing Plexus FAIL for Jill as she scrambles to climb to the next rung on the MLM ladder of "success," or two or more of the above. If she won the "Plus 1" trip and Dave could have accompanied her. Reasons she's not going: the trip would be too secular, with too much sinful stuff going what with booze, people swimming in actual immodest swimwear, etc., they can't afford it (see above re Plexus FAIL), Dave just didn't want to go for his own reasons, and wouldn't let Jill go without him, or two or more of the above. (Someone with the skilz could make up a fun graphic with all these options, I think. ) If she's been "sick," that's not a great endorsement of all that pink-drink guzzling that she claims will keep everyone in good health. I'm inclined to think her skipping the cruise is down to the money. Their RV is a rolling piece of cr*p, when it's rolling at all, and I don't think she's been able to grift enough money for all the needed repairs or a replacement. They have to make those church, revival, and conference appearances to keep their cred with the ministry clearinghouse; that stuff is actually their "job" (my eyes roll when I type "job" about Jill and David, LOL) and the basis for their being a family serving the correct Jesus and actual real "missionaries." I doubt that Jill has netted much money from her Plexus "business," and there's not enough to spare for the cruise. Edited to add: her post that she was sick and they were attacked spiritually during their "travels" includes a claim that the "family led four souls to Christ." IOW: "see, clearinghouse, we're still on the job as missionaries for Jesus, and haven't abandoned that to push Plexus, which is merely a godly sideline for this devout submissive not-job-holding wife." Anyway, she probably needs to spend more time and energy finding ways to express - indirectly - her butt-hurt feelings about Tim and Heidi, now that Tim has cut the apron strings and the most important woman in his life is no longer Mahmo. I hate to think how much venom Jill must have spewed around the Barndo in reaction to that proposal event. Which not only didn't include her as a planner or attendee, but was shared with the world on someone else's (!!!) social media. And I've given this more room in my head than I should have this morning. Yikes. Note to self: you have a life, so pay attention to it. 🙄

@Turquoise, thanks for sharing those fine photos. I love Yellowstone, and it's been too long since I was there. I'm glad you enjoyed your trip!

Or a super outgoing party chick who keeps the cocktails flowing. 🤣 🤯

But wait! Don't forget: Jessa could be carrying twins. So she'd need two names. She's so sly. 🙄 (Too bad Ivy's taken, because I thought Holly and Ivy would be great for twin girls.)

Okay, folks, buckle up, get ready, and be sure you've stocked up on necessities including your favorite snacks and tipples: We're now just seven days away from the PLEXUS 2023 Leaders Retreat Caribbean Cruise. November 2 - 6, departing from Fort Lauderdale, FL - starring Jillpm Rodrigues!!! I've been enjoying Jill's narc rage at being shut out of Teidi's engagement announcement so much that I nearly forgot. However, no worries. We know Jill will oblige with a deluge of SM posts before, during, and after. (Well, "during" will depend on wifi access onboard ship. If it's an extra fee she'll have to grift a connection somehow.) One thing I'm not sure about: did she "win" two tix for the cruise, so that David will go along, or did she get the "buddy" cruise which means she'll share a double room with another fabulous PLEXUS hun? She doctored up the announcement when she posted it on SM and I have wondered if she covered up the "Buddy" word with another word ("Fabulous" or some such). Will they be leaving in one of the vehicles soon, to drive to FL? Will it be a full on RV all family trip or will she and David leave the kids behind under Renee's care?

IBLP had a big membership, but there were, and are, lots of fundamental evangelical Christian homeschoolers who were not in IBLP and didn't use the IBLP materials. And some who, if they were, didn't limit their homeschool curriculum to the Wisdom Booklets. IOW, IBLP is part of that picture, but by no means the whole picture. I'm no expert, but as I understand it, there are homeschooling parents whose kids participate in sports leagues, and there are some homeschool coop efforts. I don't live in a particularly conservative state, and I've noticed that a local nonprofit that operates a butterfly pavilion hosts occasional "homeschool days" events where the kids can learn about insects first hand. I suppose there are many other such activities out there that homeschool parents can get their kids into. I doubt that a kid kept isolated from the wider world 24/7/365, and taught only out of the nutso Wisdom Booklets, would ever get a bachelor's degree, much less be admitted to Harvard Law.

@CalicoKitty - Yikes. Such a terrible event, and scary. I'll give a wide berth to any sealing work I encounter. @BetyBee, I'm glad you're getting your walks in. We're having some great fall colors here in town, and I've enjoyed wandering through some of our parks over the past several days. On another subject: kids' images online. We've snarked about it on some of the topics here. Are the Vuolos being stupidly coy about not showing their daughters' faces? Has Jill D been hypocritical by first posting her kids' full photos on social media and now not showing their faces? Is Joy being reckless by sharing her kids' images as she does? I'm all for good snark. But on the serious side of this issue, I found this article today. I'm sharing a link so it can be read without a subscription, but I think the link only works for a couple of weeks. It's about the dangers of "sharenting," i.e., putting your kids' faces online. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/technology/artifical-intelligence-children-privacy-internet.html?unlocked_article_code=1.40w.-IS6.VmNsLwl28kye&smid=url-share. A few photos from my recent forays around town:

Thanks for all the kind words. I need to correct one thing in my post: it's a gypsum cave that I toured. "Alabaster" is the park name. Whatever the cave is made of, it's very interesting and some of it's pretty. BTW the green areas are algae, the result of the cave having openings to the outside. Here's the park info: https://www.travelok.com/state-parks/alabaster-caverns-state-park#listing-menu-tabs

Facebook algorithms are hilarious. I'm seeing ads on my FB feed for run-proof pantyhose. As if I will ever don another pair in my life. Been there, done that, over it forever. I don't even own a dress or skirt anymore. 🤣 I'm just home from a ten day roadtrip. Had a great time, visited folks and roamed around. I went on a Ranger led tour of the alabaster gypsum [edited to correct that] cave at a state park in Oklahoma. It was so interesting! Here are a few photos I managed to get (can't use flash in there), thanks to a very good camera.

Or to me.

I'm late to the party, and happy to hear that you had a good birthday, @Scarlett45!

Thanks to @Porkchop for mentioning deafness and hearing aids, and to everyone else who posted about that. Per my intentions shared here earlier today, I stopped by the hearing aid center at my Costco store today. My rechargeable hearing aids (bought there) now have much shorter battery charge life than they did when new. I'd thought that because they're a bit more than two years old I'd be SOL on any warranty. But - I was wrong, yay! The batteries are guaranteed to keep working well for three years. So I left them there to be sent in for service, I assume battery replacement, at no charge, and have an appointment in a few weeks for a (free) hearing test, by which time the hearing aids should be ready for pickup too. Sweet! Life without hearing aids is - quieter, LOL. I don't have serious hearing loss, but definitely have the TV sound turned higher when I'm watching without the hearing aids. I really notice it in the morning when I'm getting dressed. I put the aids on after I'm done with the shower, hair, makeup, etc. If the TV is on, the first thing I do after putting the hearing aids is? I reach for the remote to turn the TV sound down. Reminds me of something a co worker said years ago. His mother lived in a 55+ condo community. He said that so many of her neighbors were hard of hearing and had their TV volumes turned up loud as a result. He knew it because he could hear the TVs through the closed condo front doors as he walked down the hallway to his mom's condo. He got used to it and got to know what people watched. "Joe's got Fox News on, Gladys is watching Jeopardy . . . " 🤣

@ChiCricket - I'm so sorry for your loss. Sending hugs. ^^Absolutely agree about Costco. I'm on my second pair of hearing aids from there. The first ones lasted about 3 years. The current set is rechargeable but just lately the battery life is a lot shorter, so I'll make an appointment for another hearing test (last one was 2 years ago) and a consult about the current set. What I've been told, is what @lookeyloo said in the bolded sentence above. Your brain gets out of practice at processing sounds you can no longer hear. So if you let a hearing loss develop for awhile, and then put on hearing aids, your brain has to process noises it hasn't "heard" for awhile. It can be uncomfortable, and rather than try to adjust to life with the "new" noises coming in via the hearing aids, people just quit wearing them at all. An audiologist at my HMO told me that years ago at my first hearing test; she said that's why a lot of older people give up on hearing aids. They don't like the experience with the "new" noises, and they don't have the patience to get used to wearing them, including going back in for adjustments at first. (That conversation was a dozen years ago, when hearing aid tech was just taking off, and I don't think the modern-tech hearing aids need adjusting as much as they used to.) My hearing loss was subtle when I first got my hearing aids, and TBH it's still not awful. But even just adjusting to the boost in audio input, so to speak, felt odd in a way that's hard to explain. I think getting hearing aids when your hearing loss is more serious, would definitely take some time to get used to.

Bringing this over from another topic here. It's standard practice in the TV biz to have cast and crew sign nondisclosure agreements concerning the show production, to avoid premature disclosure of show contents, and to protect other sensitive or confidential business information they are exposed to in the course of their participation in the show. Sometimes people sign separate NDAs, and in other situations it's handled via "confidentiality clauses" in their overall contract for the shows. Those are just different ways of getting the same result. It makes sense. It's business. Even when it's a reality TV show about families. But, there are limits. Here's an intriguing article from three weeks ago, about another network - not TLC, but Bravo - taking a public stance on what is, and isn't protected by the NDAs its shows' cast and crew have signed: Reality TV Participants Can Break NDAs To Reveal “Unlawful Acts". Bravo issued this statement: "Confidentiality clauses are standard practice in reality programming to prevent disclosure of storylines prior to air. They are not intended to prevent disclosure by cast and crew of unlawful acts in the workplace, and they have not been enforced in that manner. To be clear: any current or former cast or crew is free to discuss and disclose any allegedly unlawful acts in the workplace, such as harassment or discrimination, or any other conduct they have reason to believe is inappropriate. We are also working with our third-party production companies to remind all cast and crew that they are encouraged to report any such concerns through the channels made available by the production company so concerns can be promptly addressed." Obviously that's not TLC and not applicable to any Duggar show. But I think it's significant, it's only common sense, and Bravo is getting out ahead of the issue. The article says lawsuits are "looming" over some Bravo show and clearly the network wants to show clean hands. Courts will not enforce NDAs to prevent disclosure of crimes, and the "MeToo" movement following the Weinstein criminal case, brought some of those issues to the fore. Here's an ACLU article from 2018 on NDAs and survivors of sexual assault or harassment: https://www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/nondisclosure-agreement-silencing-you-sharing-your-me-too And about Duggar family in-house NDAs. I have some thoughts. But my thoughts as I tried to explain them were hard to boil down into a concise comment here. Sorry, but this is as short as I could make it: In Jill's book beginning at page 152, she says that in October 2016, JB offered the "older" kids a payment of $80,000 each. On the condition that they sign a contract with Mad Family Inc., and also an NDA that would be effective "for the rest of our lives." We don't know who signed - except we know Jill did not sign - or what the NDAs say, except that as proposed they had a lifetime term. The kids didn't know in 2016 that over the years JB's CPA had filed tax returns for each of them reporting income from the show, and certainly JB had never paid that income to them. I AM NOT A PRACTICING LAWYER AND THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. I'm saying that real loud for the people in the back. Just based on the available facts, it occurs to me that any NDA signed by a Duggar under those circumstances in 2016, if attempted to be enforced, would be vulnerable to a defense that it was procedurally unconscionable, given the unequal bargaining power/position of the parties relative to each other and potential issues of coercion and deception. (The kids had no idea at that time that the IRS was told they had received income from the show.) There could also be challenges to those NDA on other grounds; we just don't know enough about them to have an informed discussion about that. Although the lifetime term raises my legal eyebrows pretty high; just saying. Also, as mentioned above, NDAs make sense, and are legitimately used, in business. The situation as described in Jill's book about the show and the kids and the money, is an unholy mix of family and [show] business. I can see how incredibly seductive it would be for control freak JB to want to control people in his life with NDAs. I suspect he may have severely overreached in legal terms with any NDAS - but OTOH he has probably been successful in silencing most of his kids. I would be surprised if any Duggarling goes publicly against JB, or if JB files a lawsuit to enforce any of those NDAs. He has the lifetime indoctrination of his children working in his favor, and the NDAs are just a scare tactic to reinforce that and keep them all in line.