my heart, my eyes (when your kid grows out of a diaper size, load the leftovers into the car and take them to a shelter, they will always be so happy to get them):
Mothers would take the diapers off, dump out the poop, and put the diapers back on. They would air-dry the diapers. They’d let their kids sit in wet diapers for longer than they should—a practice that can lead to UTIs and other infections. Other moms have reported potty training infants who are less than a year old—at least six months earlier than is recommended—in order to save money.
I learned more about this study during a week-long training with the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, where I am a grantee this year. Smith presented her work to the fellows and described what she’s done to help these mothers. The women told Smith things like, “My self-esteem plummets. I can’t soothe my baby because I can’t put a clean diaper on my baby,” she recalled.
A Toastie who is very dear to me is in need of bone marrow! If you are in the US, here is how to get on the registry, and if you are in the UK, go here. Canadians, the new place is OneMatch. If you are a Toastie from other parts, and want to put your country’s registry link in the comments, please do! I just did it, and it’s really easy, you just have to fill out a very boring questionnaire and then they send you a kit, you swab your cheek, and then ideally you never hear from anyone, or maybe you do, and wouldn’t that be marvelous? If you’re a white person, it’s a nice thing to do, but if you’re biracial or Jewish or any kind of racial minority in the country you donate in, they really really really need you!
Jolie and Choire talk cat hair on her podcast, which you can sign up for here if you need a Clean Person fix.
the toast became a korean-themed emoji appreciation site so gradually i barely noticed
In relation to the above request re: marrow, we’re a tight little community here, so please reach out to me if you ever need to signal boost something like that, or if you have a charitable cause that’s in a tight spot. We want to help.
Lindy West’s Big Fat Fat Wedding (mazel tov, kids!):
Choose your rituals, but make them yours. If you want to look like a flower market ate fat Betty Draper and then barfed her up in the middle of a haunted forest (YEEEESSS!), great choice. If you want to get married to a burrito while wearing a barrel with suspenders, I’m cool with it. If you think the very concept of marriage is hot garbage, that’s legit. But regardless, remember that you absolutely do not have to “fix” your body, chase after “flattering”, be somebody’s dark secret, or beg for permission to be happy.
Pilot on BoJack Horseman and depression:
BoJack is a miserable man (er, horse), and he doesn’t know how to not be miserable, so he’s committed to staying that way whether or not he consciously realizes what he’s doing. He self-sabotages, repeatedly, to the point where he ruins his career, his friendships, and his relationships. But it isn’t necessarily always his fault; this self-destruction, these mean moments and vile outbursts, the dogged determination to be alone even when he knows, deep down, that he doesn’t want to be alone are all various ways in which depression reveals itself. BoJack’s internal struggles with sadness cause him to react outwardly, and negatively, to those around him.
As the mother of two small children, I am struck anew by the loveliness of G.K. Chesterton’s meditation in Orthodoxy on daisies/children/God/life:
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
I am now several episodes into UnREAL, and am well-pleased.
Me: It's not illegal to be rude to cops.
Them: Well, if you poke a bear, what do you expect?
Me: That's why we don't make bears cops.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) July 22, 2015
