Ignore or try to, the fact that this older couple is friends with her. She's 19 and will soon be out on her own and then you won't have any say at all anyway. The sure way to have a teen stick with freinds or a boyfriend is to criticize them to the teen. Many a teen has made big mistakes just to thwart their parents. I would stick with my guns regarding the car and tuition but I would make this contingent on her moving out rather than the couple. You could make this a rent and car issue instead of the real reason. Then I would call a family meeting. You and your husband have to present a united front. I would tell both girls that you will no longer tolerate disrespect. I would make a list of chores for each of them and tell them that you expect them to be done or priveledges will be taken away for lack of chores and disrespect. Telephone, Tv, music, and for the older one the use of the car for anything but school, are examples of priveledges that can be taken away. I know this will be hard on both you and your husband but stick with it. I wish you luck

As far as we know, she is not attending college. DH found her after an extensive search a couple of years ago (the mother would move everytime DH found out where they were!) and at the time she had no intentions on going to college, she was barely making the grades to pass HS. Anyway, we live in AL, the case is thru LA, and the wires always seem to get crossed on who is supposed to do what....could our local agency help us with it? like you suggested? or do we continually have to try and get some kind of info out of the LA office? We are just in a mess with all the confusion these workers seem to bring into the picture! No one wants to give us any answers, we can't afford an attorney! I'm so angry with the way the system works! Not to mention, he also has 3 kids here that he has custody of, their mother wife#2 hasn't seen them in 2 years and is not made to pay a dime in support or medical and will not ever pay if she can help it. The way the system works, she never will! But, of course, if they had to try, that would mean that they would have to take time away from their manhunt for all the so-called "deadbeat dads" of the country to even begin to fathom the idea of there being a deadbeat mother out there! Heaven forbid! Sorry, just so disappointed in the way things are going with our situation right now! We have no money for an attorney, so I am trying to find out all we can do for free, which is: stop current CS and get the arrears paid, get bio-dad of the child he has legal guardianship over to pay CS, get the mother of all 3 to pay CS, get them all to help with the medical or something, geez!!! He/we raise them, emotionally and financially, the BM#2 (and bio-dad of the girl for whom we are legal guardians) are allowed to come and go and call as they please, but they want nothing more than contact, no obligations and so far they have not been made to have any! Ooops, this has turned into a horrible rant, I apologize.

Well, the Heritage Roses Group will be at both events, so do stop and say Hey. As for Celebration info, here's what is out on line: http://www.celebrationofoldroses.org/celebration-of-old-roses.php

Hi, all! My own garden is winding down, as I'll be moving the old roses to the cemetery when places for them become available. My landlord had to have work done in the front "yards" of my house and next door -- we're on the same lot, both owned by him -- and that meant ripping everything out from there. Roses went to the cemetery in Autumn, and I've been waiting for him to replace the sidewalk before putting things back together there, but then all the COVID-19 stuff happened, so it's just sitting there looking barren. The back needs attention and simplification, because spending so much time and energy on three gardens is wearing me down. Again, because of the COVID-19 stuff going on, I haven't been able to get it mulched, and it's not "picture-worthy" at the moment. Eventually, as the last of the roses move to the cemetery, I'll be making it a simpler garden, probably filling the gaps left by the roses with edible things. Since I'd like to move in the next couple of years, I want to leave nothing behind that I can't easily replace, and also leave it simpler for the landlord to maintain. The cemetery is moving along slowly now, being as I changed jobs and don't have overlapping time there with Mark, who would drop wood chips for me to spread in the garden areas. When I was starting this, I had off on Mondays and Tuesdays, so we were better able to coordinate things. But this will be changing, since Ellie has asked if I'd be interested in working there part-time, and leaving my one-day-a-week restaurant job. This would mean that I'd be listed on the cemetery's employee insurance, and that would allow me to use some of the equipment to get things done when I'm there on the weekends, while Mark is off. Once the paperwork and finances are finalized -- again, delayed because of COVID-19 concerns -- I'll be able to do things like use the Kubota cart to move mulch myself, or use the pick-up truck for moving other things. Over Winter, I ordered many, many packets of seed for date-appropriate perennials and self-seeding annuals, but, again, COVID-19 has delayed me getting that started. It's not for lack of time -- it's more because I'm leery of venturing into stores, but I found someplace nearby that carries the seed-starting mix I want, and allows for requesting and paying for it over the phone and drop-off at my car in the parking lot. I will be doing that tomorrow. In the meantime, bulbs planted last Autumn have been blooming in the beds I made in 2018 -- if you're on Facebook, I posted pictures in the album for the cemetery, and took some videos which seem to all go into the same "videos" album regardless of subject. I haven't uploaded them to the cemetery thread on the "other forum" -- maybe I should get that done this week. Last year I started working at a public park, taking care of the rose garden there. That's my "work garden" -- 1 acre fenced, in a formal layout, with HTs, Floribundas, and Grandifloras in central beds, and various species, OGRs, and shrubs in the outer beds. One of my tasks at the end of 2019 was updating and reorganizing the garden's inventory, which is linked as a PDF on the rose garden page. I also put everything onto the HelpMeFind listing for the garden as well. If you look carefully, there are a handful of discrepancies -- the PDF file contains everything actually there, whereas the HelpMeFind listing reflects a few things that will be replaced, and a few new things that were ordered for this year. Since the latter is easier to update, I use that as a reference for the annual update of the PDF on the park page. Working at the park has been a joy, even if also a bit exhausting. There are about 3,000 roses in there, and because my position wasn't filled for a couple of years, some big old species, OGRs, and shrubs in "the back forty" were in need of some work. They looked fine from the public's perspective along the paths, but when I'd get up close and personal with them, I saw things I wanted to clean up. My boss is amazing, and she had my job before me, but after being promoted to supervisor, she simply wasn't able to be in there as much as before. She did a great job of keeping it beautiful, but one has to prioritize when one isn't able to spend eight hours a day in there because there's so much else that needs to be done as supervisor for the team. And so now that there's one person dedicated to the garden again, those lower-on-the-list things have been getting checked off, bit by bit. I'm actually rather proud of several areas in there which I've attacked, but unfortunately COVID-19 has come into play again -- the park was closed to the public as of last weekend, and the annual Rose Day Festival for June was cancelled, along with all other programs. On the one hand, this means that I have more time to focus on the picky stuff that might otherwise be lower on the list because I have to do things like keeping the paths clear after a storm, planting and tending to the annuals that won't be coming now because the park commission lost revenue from the closed golf courses and cancelled programs, or other considerations I'd have when I know people will be walking through the garden every day. But on the other hand, it means that what I get done won't get seen by the public for the big first flush, since it's possible the garden will stay closed until well after that. Right now at my "work garden", the first of the early roses have buds that will probably start opening when I return on Monday -- things like the Spinosissimas and 'Canary Bird'. All the bedding roses have been pruned, thanks to the rest of my team and our one dedicated volunteer helping me out. I, of course, still want to be my fussy self and touch things up as I have time, but in terms of being "ready", the garden is there. Since I finally updated my cell phone, I'm once again able to take pictures regularly -- and they're much better quality now. I'll make another album of my "work garden" on Facebook and post them there. Posting pictures here has still been a bit of a headache for me. Sorry to hijack the thread with this post, but I just wanted to answer what was asked about me. :-) ~Christopher