mamadrama

I don't give her a pass even if she IS acting. There's not enough publicity in the world, and my livelihood depends on my publicity, to get me to pretend that my kids' existence needs to be hidden.

Same. I pay $55 for my coloring (bleaching), cut, shampoo, and style. I don't think I've ever paid over $60 for hair stuff.

My husband has a BA and MA from the University of Wales and an MA from Oxford. None of those were sufficient enough for him to sign up as a substitute here in my state (despite our sub and teacher shortage). While you don't have to have a degree at ALL to be a sub, only a certain number of college credit hours in any subject, since none of his degrees were from American universities they didn't qualify. (The qualifications say you have to have X number of hours from an accredited American institution). In order for him to be a sub here he has to pay a company around $1,000 to take his British degrees and more or less transfer them over to the American system. Meanwhile, a girl down the road is a substitute teacher and all she has are 15 hours from an online for-profit school that was eventually closed down for offering fraudulent diplomas. Ironically, he did get a job teaching Anthropology at one of our state's biggest universities. So he can teach college-level courses, he just can't fill in for half a day at our daughter's elementary school.

Yep, he did. It's too bad that this is on TLC and they're so focused on the (mostly fake) drama. The immigration process and the settling in as a married couple with two different cultures is really interesting and complicated. It would make good material.But, of course,most of us are just too boring so they wouldn't want that. I mean, don'tget me wrong. I love this trash as much as anyone else. It's entertaining. It just isn't representative of the actual process.

I used to think that Darcey went obsessively after Tom, but now I think it's the other way around. I think he watched her other seasons and then watched how Jesse was able to capitalize on the celebrity and thought "I could do that." I would almost bet money that, at that time, Tom started writing cozy messages to Darcey and snuggling up to her online. He knew he'd get to film. Didn't matter if they had a relationship or not; he was just in it for the fame. (And she probably is,too, at this point.)

Ha ha, now that I've shared a picture of Dad's house...Here's a view from our farm. I don't want you all to think that my life is basically trash heaps and rotten boards...

And we're so culturally diverse, too. We have a summer house on St Simon's Island in Georgia and the low-country culture is so different from the culture of the Appalachian Mountains in northern GA. My own state has 4 distinct geographical regions and Region 1 is completely different (landscape, food, demographics, sub culture) from Region 3. The Appalachian south is a lot different from deep south. It's all good! 🙂 A writer friend of mine co-produced a documentary called HILLBILLY last year. He wanted to talk about Hollywood's portrayal of us. It's a good film. I think it's on Hulu. Should we take up an offering and buy that little angel some disco shoes? That was, by far, my favorite part of the episode. I could just eat him up.

I think it's his way of maintaining "control" of the situation. She is younger, attractive, and has a bit more personality than him. He constantly has to assure everyone that she had a poverty-riddled background and that he was the rich American who swooped in to save her. It's a way of keeping her in her place, less people start thinking more of her than him.

With very clean anal. I don't actually live in WV. Right across the border for a long time (all our utilities came from out of there) but I've never lived there.

To me it felt like they were just pulling random numbers out of their hineys. Or maybe they're smarter than we think and they knew a sucker when they saw one.

To be fair, he seems like someone who might need detailed instructions.

I think that's an excellent idea and it's something I tell my daughter, too. Never willingly put yourself in a situation in which you're dependent upon another person for your complete livelihood. I had a friend who was a nanny for a Pakistani couple and they wanted to take her on a vacation back to Pakistan with them. They were a lovely couple, she'd known them for a while, and she didn't have a lot of money. They were going to pay for everything and she'd be staying with their family while they were there. She and I got into a fight because I said I wouldn't do it. I told her that the idea was nice, who doesn't want someone paying all their expenses to go abroad, but they would've been in total control on that trip. If it had been me, and if I'd wanted to go, I would've thanked them for their offer but I would've purchased the airfare myself and would've held onto my ticket. I'm not super paranoid, but retaining SOME autonomy is good. In this couple that I referenced in the other post (you know, Grangela and Mukuhl), there have been some things written online about how the young woman has grand ideas of being a professional in the medical field. I believe there were some classes that were taken, or at least some that were signed up for in a community college kind of thing, but I got the impression that this was more along the lines of a fantasy. The general education of this person is not great. It wouldn't be up to the standards of most of the western world. I think that now that she is in a place with more stability, she feels like the world has opened up a bit more and now she wants to try things that weren't possibilities when she was younger. In that sense, I feel like she is more along the lines of Syngin and his smorgasbord of career options. It's like living your whole life being told "you can't do this", "we don't have money for that", "you can't be a (whatever)" and then suddenly you're faced with a future in which those things ARE possibilities so now you want to do them all.

When I read that book I cried because it felt like someone finally understood my life. She is amazing. (And the movie wasn't bad.)

And maybe some new steps. That would probably help. 😊

Re: my post about growing up and my dad hving an outhouse This is my dad's house. I took the kids up there during Thanksgiving to show them. Nobody has lived in it for 10 years, and it looks like something out of HOARDERS, but here it is. The porch has been removed, but it otherwise looks a lot like it did when I was growing up.A bathroom was added in 1989 when I was 9. The only heat was from a wood burning stove. It was so dark in the mountains that we all slept with flashlights in case we needed the bathroom.