Cool and clear, but humid, and then warmer and clear, but humid. Clear is good. The sun is crazy hot though, burning my skin. A can of soda left in the truck will explode it gets so hot. And it’s not even summer yet.
I spent yesterday doing stuff. Meetings, pickups, a bust of an estate sale, breaking down scrap, and then watching the kid and her friends do stuff. Busy busy.
Today will be less active, but still should be full of stuff. I’ve got at least one pickup to do. A scrap run and a trash run. A truck to load, and plans to make. Oh, and I need to buy some marine oil for the boat too, and maybe a couple of marine rated fire extinguishers.
Flags in Texas will be at half staff today for Peace Officer Memorial Day. My pole isn’t rigged for half staff, but I’ll add the ‘Thin Blue Line’ flag to my display. Call it protective camouflage or a sincere hope that some of those honored deserve it.
So I’ll be busy getting stuff to stack, and improving my stacks today. You should be too.
nick
Where is everyone? Snoozing? Hmmph.
I was up all night again. I’m not sure why the high-paying work comes in at such a time as to need an all-night or almost-all-night effort to complete, but the awkwardly timed deadline probably has something to do with the high pay rate. “Eek! The people who were doing it screwed up and there’s only twelve hours to get eleven hours of work done!” Part of it is because the client is in California, but that explains only part of it. As may be, in about 13 wall clock hours/12 billable hours I earned more than I usually do in three days.
Eufy. Four of my cameras are solar powered, one is a wired floodlight and camera, the camera in the house is plugged in, and I have the base station. They all work on WiFi and no monthly fee. I had Arlo but tossed them all when they wanted to charge $5.00 a month for local video storage.
I highly recommend Eufy.
71F and I’m up and moving… lunch is packed. Looks a bit overcast. Oh well.
n
Here, too, if “a bit” means “completely, to the extent that any remaining hopes of seeing a sky are dashed”.
When I lived in EST/EDT and still had AOL IM (!) on my T-Mobile Sidekick, I would hear the alert as my friend at Apple shut down for the night around 5 AM my time, 2 AM Pacific.
AOL IM on the Sidekick was rock solid, and I had complete expectation of privacy plus warrant requirement for the message traffic. We’ve lost something chasing that Pizza Box Dream.
This morning, I was making birthday breakfast for my buddy. Birthday lunch turned out to be incompatible with his family obligations (wife and kids wanted to see him on his birthday, imagine that…).
We had summer berries with Greek yoghurt, followed by pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. Went down well!
Gag gift was a pink baseball cap with an embroidered red heart. I’m sure one of his daughters will love it. Real gift was a Serrano ham and a case of 9mm freedom seeds.
The rainy weather here seems to have passed over. There are cumulus clouds interspersed with blue sky. It looks nice from indoors, but it is unseasonably cold. North wind. Only one degree above freezing this morning. This evening is the last of the open season, so our last chance to bag another roebuck. Fingers crossed!
Have a happy Friday.
Subbing today, basically the last day of school. I wonder why I am here. Seniors last day was Tuesday of last week, graduation was last night, many of of the rest of the students have checked out for the rest of the school year, which is about 1.5 days of next week. Grades are in, nothing more to teach this year. So I am setting in an empty room, and probably will the rest of the day. Oh well, $81.00, for doing nothing. I could sit here, or at home.
I purchased “Project Hail Mary” on Apple TV on Wednesday, watched the movie yesterday. It does not quite follow the book entirely, but no movie ever does. It was a good movie. Worth $25.00? About the cost of a DVD, cheaper than the theatre, I can watch it more than once, pause and go to the bathroom. So, yeh, I guess it was worth it. When I die so do all my movie purchases on Apple TV.
The green is completely gone from the pool, now it is just cloudy. I guess from the dead algae. It will take a few more days of filtering to get that all cleaned up. If worse comes to worse I can flock the water and vacuum up the debris.
Um, diving is dangerous. Deep diving is more dangerous, and deep cave diving is incredibly dangerous.
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15820741/Twist-fate-saved-SIXTH-diver-Maldives-cave-tragedy-woman-flies-home-rescue-teams-hunt-bodies.html
n
I also have and recommend Eufy cameras. The solar ones in the backyard have not needed charging in three years now. The PTZ on the corner of the garage needs charging once a year because of a tree since I’m too lazy to put the separate solar panel high enough. The doorbell cam needs regular charging since I didn’t wire it into the doorbell. All those are moving soon to Vegas
Dragging today, 10:30am and not much done.
You and me both.
I did get laundry folded, showered and dressed…
n
So a 40 yo male driving the boat, three young women on board, and the article blames the dead one for the theft of the boat?
Standout female athlete, 24, dies after boat was taken without permission and crashed into dock near airport
and now obits are coming up for the driver too.
I guess getting dashed against sharp rocks hard enough to rip the console loose from the boat really hurts.
n
Fed the cats, fed the birds (and rabbits), watered tomatoes, emptied litter boxes, had breakfast, did dishes.
Ordered some normal one-piece lids for the Ball jars containing some gifts of home-made canned jam.
No ibuprofen – I was hitting it hard all week and don’t have anything big planned for today. Obviously a bit of overall inflammation going on without it, so it goes.
Almost noon, need to hit the shower.
Same, but add snow for visual effects with rain promised (threatened?) for later.
>>I did get laundry folded, showered and dressed…
Umm, how exactly do you shower and dress laundry?
Since we are talking about weather, it has been another glorious day here in central FL. Not a cloud in the sky, high temp was low-90s, and the humidity was down around 30%. That’s close to bone dry for here. Highly recommended.
GF and I had dinner reservations at a nice restaurant in town last night. We spent some time at their bar by the lake and then went to our table to dine al fresco. We ordered our food, and our waitress returned to tell us they were out of two items (both satisfied specific dietary requirements.) We said it was no problem; the chef could take ingredients from a couple other menu items and put together a lovely meal. She reacted with pure sadness and said that was not possible. I said, “I hate Sysco.” She replied, “Me, too.” They comped us the very nice wine we had ordered with dinner. We finished that, and then headed off to the only other “nice” restaurant that was still open. What a surprise! They had a couple of items on their menu that the last place had had. Since there really wasn’t a choice, we went ahead and ordered their heat and serve Sysco meals, which were OK, but not at all up to the standards of expensive fine dining. I won’t be going back to either place for food, but they are both are still great for having conversations over drinks. I did let them know that they have lost us as food customers.
Enshi77ification.
I guess I have to ask each place now before I even make a dinner reservation somewhere.
@Paul: Have a great time tomorrow with the brisket and company. It sounds like good fun!
I think you simply wear yesterday’s clothes when you get into the shower, so you save on doing a lot of laundry loads over a month time, say.
Doesn’t everyone do it that way?
I was going to say the same but I figure my Stupid Posts Score is more than high enough. But I did have to bite my tongue.
The brisket is on the smoker. Smells good in an incense way.
One kid bailed a few days ago. He has to work. Serving BBQ in Memphis. No problem, he works a lot of weekends. The other kid bailed today. He has to work and he sounded pissed because he never works on Saturday. The grandson? No clue but it was mentioned he’s busy with his son graduating Highschool.
Looks like it’s going to be me, the neighbor, and another friend. No problem. Make fewer deviled eggs. Have much more leftover brisket.
I have to dust the china cabinet. I touched it yesterday. I don’t have to dust the top of the fridge. Grandson is tall enough to see it and teases about it being dusty. Will he dust it? Oh, no. Still need to shake the throw rugs.
Kind of aggravating. But stuff happens. They have their own things to do.
@Paul: Well, that sucks.
Friday. Bedtime.
Roebuck season has now closed. I saw a buck this evening, but at 185 metres with no safe backstop. I barked like a rival buck, on the basis that he would either come closer to investigate the “intruder”, thereby offering me a chance of a shot, or duck back into the woods and disappear.
Apparently my buck impression sounds like a BIG buck, so my intended victim decided discretion was the better part of valour, and headed for cover, never to show himself again before dark. Ah well, it was a fifty-fifty bet, and he won this time.
Bedtime now for sibling and me after mugs of hot chocolate with a shot of something warming (Licor 43). It was down to one or two degrees above freezing before we came in from the cold. Mid-May? Chilly Saint Sophia of Rome.
Sibling is traveling home tomorrow. A pity, as I had got used to the congenial company. I will see if I can arrange a return visit soon.
Paul, wishing you a delicious brisket and a jolly time with your guests. Best wishes in case a birthday or somesuch is the occasion. I love devilled eggs!
Very glad someone else picked the “shower and dress laundry” low-hanging fruit! I was sorely tempted…
Wishing you all a good weekend.
Just had a report from a family member visiting coastal Oregon. Local place looked interesting so they looked it up online. $25 for a “tower” of onion rings.
I’ve seen onions at the grocery for $1.50-2.50 within the last month. If they started with a pound (doubtful) then markup and overhead is 10x. Maybe onions are very rare in Oregon?
I pulled a couple 16-oz ribeyes out of the freezer for the weekend. I’m thinking I will have $50 worth of onion rings, a $20 potato, and a $20 salad to go with my $200 steak. Maybe a couple $10 beers or $25 shots of bourbon to go with it.
I’m feeling pretty good about being able to set a $300 meal on the table. Might have an extra shot to celebrate.
Sysco can suck it. Serving that shiite on a restaurant menu without disclosure is fraudulent. I could see supporting a “Sysco disclosure law”.
Remember Lenny Henry getting the pitch for frozen entrees in an episode of Chef! ?
Based on the price, my guess is that your family member was in Canon Beach or maybe Seaside.
Checking quickly, I see $9 for a plate of onion rings at the restaurant at the main Rogue brewery in Newport, one of our favorite places on the Oregon Coast even though we aren’t big drinkers.
The coastal cities aren’t on islands, but there are only so many highways out to US 1 from the Willamette Valley and other interior locations. Add in that the real tourist season is brutally short and supply chains still recovering from restaurants being shut down during Covid, and it makes for a challenging business environment for any establishment.
Right before we left about a dozen years ago, while we were out on The Coast playing tourist, I overheard someone who I believe was one of the owners of Norma’s Seaside Diner responding to a customer’s comment that running a restaurant out there must be very fulfilling. The table got quite a rundown of the logistics of the place and the pressure the management faces on a daily basis.
Oregon is also one of the last holdouts for state-run liquor distribution beyond beer and wine. This is great if you are a small vineyard or distillery competing against the much bigger players, but it is lousy for the restaurants and, arguably, the consumer.
Nah, that did not hurt. Getting launched from the boat did not hurt. The sudden stop on the rocks? That hurt.
BTW, Norma’s Seaside Diner is now Norma’s Seafood and Steak after several ownership changes starting when we lived in Vantucky.
Onion rings are $13, however.
Friends, thanks to all who recommended the eufy cameras. I’ll probably order some “Real Soon Now”.
Oh, yes…Onion rings? The best onion rings I’ve had recently have been from “Bubba’s 33” here in San Antonio. So good that my wife has said “Go to Bubba’s and bring home onion rings.”
I flipped the brisket an hour ago. Over and end to end in the smoker. Nice, even pretty, grill marks.
The thin deli gloves are enough that the meat doesn’t burn my hands
One more hour and into the oven overnight.
By the way, my kindle sucks. use the google keyboard where spellcheck works,? HHell no jjust do the stupid kindle keyboard and have doubled first letters.
Estimates from the fed are 25-27%. 17% is federal.
Get the base station with the cameras. That provides lots of local storage and is the real connection to the network. The cameras connect to the base station.
I have six cameras, 4 regular solar powered cameras, one spotlight and camera wired to the mains, and one interior camera with pan and tilt that is on house power.
Setting schedules is a little trick in the app. My cameras are armed from 12:00 AM until 6:00 AM. The motion detection light is armed 24 hours a day. The lights have to be armed to have motion detection working. I wanted security lights in the evening during winter and that is outside the normal armed cameras.
The security light stay at 10% dusk to dawn, going full bright on motion detection, only recording in the above indicated time of the other cameras.
If/when you get the cameras I can send screen captures on the scheduling settings which is quirky (to me). Mr. Atoz, being of sounder mind, may feel otherwise.
“Go to Bubba’s and bring home onion rings.”
You’d have to be close. Onion rings degrade in a few minutes.
Eufy has a lot of camera models.
What are you guys using?
The boy and I rode down to Tuscaloosa today. We got almost all of his stuff in my car. He has a little bit left, which he will get on his way when he moves down south in a month. He cleaned his bedroom and bathroom and I handled the kitchen. It was a good ride down and back. I won’t have many more times like that with him. Cherish the moments.
Senator Bernie Moreno Sounds the Alarm on Chinese Vehicles Entering the US
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/dmitri-bolt/2026/05/15/senator-bernie-moreno-explains-why-the-us-shouldnt-import-chinas-high-tech-cars-n2676015
Yeah, so who’s holding the kill switch now, f’wad?
and who’s training their technical people?
There’s Nothing MAGA About 500,000 Student Visas For The CCP
https://thefederalist.com/2026/05/15/theres-nothing-maga-about-500000-student-visas-for-the-ccp/
Take 500,000 illegal alien renters out of the LA housing market and see what happens to rents.
Take 500,000 Chinese students out of U.S. colleges and see…
I use:
eufy Security 4K Indoor Cam S350eufy Security Video Doorbell S330eufy Security eufyCam S330
And a PTZ with a detachable solar panel, I don’t think they make anymore.
They all link through a base station with an HDD to store local video.
I’m trying to develop cyborg chickens to constitute a flock camera network.
Very glad someone else picked the “shower and dress laundry” low-hanging fruit! I was sorely tempted…
– you guys are so easy. I saw it, and almost edited it … but then I didn’t. No one asked about my normal laundry vs my dress laundry…
——-
Broke down the last of the carts in this load. I’ve got two more next week. Did my trash run, and my auction pickup, then the scrap run. $144 in scrap aluminum. I even kept one of the different style carts as it should work nicely with my 3d printers and laser engraver in the shop. I did pull the battery and inverter, and the heavy piece of cast aluminum holding them.
——
Decided to head to the BOL tomorrow morning. I’m tired and just at a big plate of chicken vindaloo and rice. That will probably put me to sleep shortly.
We’ll have one extra kid this trip. D1 has a sad because she invited 2 others but they had conflicts. I’m just hoping the weather is clear. I’ve got to do the seasonal maintenance on the mower and mower deck, including welding the anti scalping wheels back on. That’s way overdue.
Plans, I’ve got ’em.
n
-shrug- You already acknowledged that, because you don’t smoke your own beef brisket, you’re viewed as a girly man who wears dresses.
True, but we’re only about 10 minutes away. And frankly, they’re too hot for me to eat them on the way home!
The single solar cameras with the solar panel on top of the camera, the S330 module. For the interior I have the indoor camera S350. The floodlight camera is the Flood Light Camera E30. All connected to the base station S380 Home Base with a 1TB SSD. The home base is a wired connection to an access point that is hard wired to the main router.
I am thinking of getting two more S330, or whatever is comparable, to place on the two sides of the house.
The outdoor cameras have been installed for a year with no issues and continue to work fine. The cameras have to be close to the base station for the initial connection. After that the devices connect via WiFi to the base station and can be installed in their final location.
I bought the Eufy C35 camera 4 pack with homebase unit.
It’s $100 cheaper now.
Is there a new Murderbot? Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries Book 8)? or am I just not recognizing the plot tease? Amazon isn’t telling me that I already bought it or downloaded it…
n
Amazon shows the pub date as May 5, 2026.
Well’s site has not been updated in some time and does not show this title.
ADDED:
TOR Books page:
https://torpublishinggroup.com/platform-decay/?isbn=9781250827005&format=hardback
whohoo. Then I’ve got some new reading material.
n
Collar cams for a worms’ eye view of the lawn!
My recollection is that the Feds collect 5.8 trillion in taxes, another 2 trillion on the credit card (deficit/bond sales). Somewhere recently I spotted total state taxes as 1.7 trillion and local another 1.1 trillion. That’s 10.6 trillion altogether. Google says the IMF projects 2026 GDP at 32.3 trillion.
But I’m not going to quibble. It’s too much government, however it is sliced. Discounting the pervasive actual fraud, listening to every voice makes any government project at least twice what a cold business calculation would cost. Government projects are for things we’ve decided we want without regard to cost.
Taxes are a “skim” on the genuinely productive efforts. Doctors don’t bleed patients anymore as a general therapy. Governments do. At some point, the patient dies from the procedure.
Humor, not targeted:
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/brain%20cell.jpg
Is there a new Murderbot? Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries Book 8)? or am I just not recognizing the plot tease? Amazon isn’t telling me that I already bought it or downloaded it…
n
Yup, I just finished MB #8. Excellent as usual.
Well, crap…
https://twitter.com/i/status/2055318786425733291
I spent more than an hour this evening talking myself into junking a very nice 4800×4800 HP scanner that I will probably never power up again and is too darn heavy to list online and there are no sales anyway.
How many American Picker episodes featured some kid showing building after building that their old man filled up with crap and hadn’t opened for ten years before he died? Then they go in an muck around for an hour and Frank buys a couple oil cans and Mike buys a fender for a project bike that now only needs
4746 pieces?The US Treasury is the best of the fiat currencies, widely held and trusted as redeemable in any commodity or goods worth having. It is the major export of this country, better and larger than airliners or chip designs. It allows us to paper the world with IOUs at interest while we receive actual, physical goods. Quite the privilege.
Most everyone has skin in the game, therefore self interest in continuity of the system. Domestically: Social Security, Medicare/aid, “defense” contracts, school stadiums, whatever depend on the current system and their numerous beneficiaries. Internationally, oil, priced in dollars, the lifeblood of industrial prosperity, mostly keeps non Americans in line.
The value of the Treasury comes from the mafia like “skim” tax payments of a third of a billion most economically productive population on the planet. At 30(?) + % of GDP in federal, state and local taxes, the remainder of actual productive folks subsidize all the “public” expenditures.
At $2 trillion per year or so expansion of the “skim” for the perceived nefarious actions of the Feds there is considerable self interest in finding a replacement of the fiat system or at least a sidestep mechanism.
My suspicion is that gold, a gold derivative or a blockchain enabled gold exchange product will gradually or not, replace fiat currencies of every flavor.
Estimates from the fed are 25-27%. 17% is federal.
I count both sides of the federal skim, employee and employer. That is around 30%.
I count both sides because as an employer, I pay both sides. That is the true cost of an employee to me. And as an officer of my main business, if my business does not pay both sides to the IRS, then I am personally responsible for those payments. Many a business person has found this out to their extreme unhappiness.
I’m trying to develop cyborg chickens to constitute a flock camera network.
Yeah, somebody beat you to that name.
“Conroe residents say city is stonewalling their requests for information on Flock Safety cameras”
https://abc13.com/post/conroe-residents-say-city-is-stonewalling-requests-information-flock-safety-cameras/18953584/
Apparently Flock is stating that they own the IP of the videos that the cameras have recorded.
Somebody has managed to steal one of my corporate checks for almost $5,000 to American Express, relabeled it to themselves, and put it into their checking account. I cannot believe this.
After the fraud on the corporate check that I reported to my bank on Wednesday, the bank froze my corporate checking account today. My banker brother tells me that they will force me to open a new account with them and keep the old checking account closed forever.
So, many of my customers wire money directly to my checking account. And I have checks written on the account. I cannot check any of this because my corporate checking account is frozen.
I spent an hour on the phone with the fraud people on Wednesday. You could think that they would tell me that they were going to freeze the account.
Unhappy, me?
All I want to do is live in a high trust society.
At least it can be traced. It will be pulled out of the account in which it was deposited. Hopefully putting the account in the negative. The account owner may now be on the hook for bank fraud, interstate, which is a felony. The cretin was probably hoping you were a megamillion corporation and would not notice.
Mail fraud is a federal felony too. I mailed that check to Amex.
“Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries, 8)” by Martha Wells
https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Decay-Murderbot-Diaries-8/dp/1250827000?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number eight of a eight book series of science fiction novellas, short stories, and full length novels. I read and reread the well printed and well bound hardcover published by Tor in 2026 that I bought new from Amazon. I look forward to new books in the series.
Murderbot and Three are sneaking onto a huge old toroidal space station surrounding a heavily mined planet. They are going to rescue some people but, as usual, Murphy changes the rules and makes things more complicated.
Murderbot is a SecUnit, a cyborg with a cloned and severely modified human brain. The brain is supplemented by the AIs in the cpu embedded in its body. There are lungs, there is a blood mixture with a synthetic, there is human skin over the entire body, there is a face, there is hair on the head and eyebrows. Everything else is machine. Somehow, the blood is enriched with electricity as there is no stomach or intestines. But, there are arteries and veins to keep the skin and brain alive. It has a energy gun in each arm and several cameras. The SecUnit can sustain severe damage to everything but the head and still survive.
There is a personal MedSystem that continuously monitors the health of the SecUnit and gives constant updates to the SecUnit. And controls the clamps on the various arteries and veins throughout the torso and extremities of the SecUnit in case of damage. And shuts down the SecUnit in case of total system failure. Or reboots the SecUnit if needed.
There is a personal SecSystem that has a threat awareness module that continuously updates the SecUnit on any and all threats it perceives. And monitors and controls up to thirty drones that the SecUnit carries in various pockets as most of the drones are rather small and stealthy.
There is a Governor that monitors what the SecUnit is doing versus the current orders (verbal or embedded) and punishes it using pain sensors in the human brain until it complies. And the governor will fry the brain of the SecUnit when if it leaves the vicinity of the controlling authority or the controlling authority leaves vicinity of the SecUnit.
Murderbot is a self named SecUnit due to an unfortunate circumstance with 57 miners on a remote moon. It has hacked its governor and no longer allows the governor to give it orders or inflict pain. It prefers to internally watch its 35,000 hours of downloaded media such as episodes of “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon” and “WorldHoppers (aka Stargate)”. Even though it has a face, it does not like to interface with humans, yes, very introverted. It will follow human orders if it sees fit to do so.
Murderbot is an incredibly interesting character. It handles horrible situations easily and personal interactions difficultly. Like I said, interesting.
There is a much better review at:
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/all-my-empathys-a-disaster
Warning: There is violence and death in the books. Books one through four are a series of novellas, not regular length books. Book five is a regular length novel, book six is back to the novella, and books seven and eight are full length novels. If starting the series, I would start at book #1. You can buy a collection of the first four hardbacks at a nice discount.
https://www.amazon.com/Murderbot-Diaries-Artificial-Condition-Protocol/dp/1250784271?tag=ttgnet-20/
The author has a website at:
https://www.marthawells.com/
I suspect that Martha Wells is still affected by her breast cancer due to a comment at the beginning of the book about this being a difficult year. I wish her the best.
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars (903 reviews)
Lynn
Had a tiny little fire by the water feature while I read. No wildlife or gunfire tonight. D1 is home from her party. Apparently she had fun at this one. Most parties she’s gone to have not been particularly fun.
Everyone else is in bed so I’m headed there too.
It’ll be hard to get anything done this weekend with new books to read just sitting there, unread, pressuring me.
n
It’ll be hard to get anything done this weekend with new books to read just sitting there, unread, pressuring me.
I have 400+ new books / books to reread in the bookcase next to my bed. Even closer are the 50+ new books / books to reread on my nightstand. Lots of pressure there.
Consider sleep a weakness.
The spousal unit has been staying at a friend’s house for the last four days and may return by Monday.
Not what one would think. The friend, whom we have known for 35 years, whose husband was my best friend for 29 years and passed away suddenly 10 years ago of a massive heart attack in the Cayman Islands, needed significant back surgery. She had a choice of being placed in a nursing/recovery facility or having someone at the house to help her. She has a dog and that presented problems for the dog’s care. The wife volunteered.
The wife said she would take the friend to the surgery, take her home, and stay at the house for a few days to help with the recovery. The friend’s two children should have stepped up and helped. The son, who lives less than 10 miles away, had more important things. Could not visit a couple of times a day. The daughter, who lives in Richland Washington and is a professor at a local college, could not be bothered. Even though almost all of her instruction time is done remotely, and the daughter rarely goes into the actual college. She could not be troubled to fly in for a week to help her mother. Even though her mother flew out to Washington state to help the daughter for a week when the daughter had shoulder surgery.
The friend is afraid to fly alone. We made the trip to Washington state with her, drove to Atlanta, flew to Spokane, dropped her off in Richland, and the wife and I visited my brother and traveled around the area, then made the return journey.
I think it is time for the mother to remove both kids from her will and instead leave her money to her church, the animal shelter, the school where she taught, a local charity, anything other than the two kids who would not help their mother for a few days.