Hi, gang! We are not publishing any new content today (I am Wordpressing this on Friday morning, so by the time you read it, I will either have contracted my kid’s illness and be moaning quietly in bed, or not, and I will be reading silently in bed), but here’s a fine Open Thread for you to use for whatever purpose you deem best.
Tags: labor day, open thread
I always forget about these holidays! Well, a cheery Labour Day to all.
Disappointing update on the climbing guy situation, sexy modifier sadly no longer necessary. We ran into each other on the street on Saturday, which was super cosmic considering I’ve never seen him anywhere else but the climbing hall and now right before I go, there he is everywhere? He invited me out and I went, thinking “How cool! The universe is throwing us together!” buuuut, it was a bummer night. He didn’t really talk to me at all, didn’t initiate much conversation (any, actually) and mostly talked to his other friends. At the end of the night, he asked me which train I’d be taking home and wished me good luck with my move. Bah! I thought it was weird to invite me out only to chat with people he sees all the time. I felt I showed more than enough interest, and he just didn’t respond. Boo to him.
Oh well, onwards.
Well you know what that makes you? An awesome grown-ass woman who puts herself out there and and gives things a try. Go you!
Thanks Nancy. So disappointing, but who has time to figure out dudes like these? A friend of mine said “Oh, maybe he’s just shy and really bad at showing interest”, but, NO. Just say no to grown men like that!
And it’s true, maybe he is. But do you want to become his interest coach, training him to talk to you? Yeeeah, I wouldn’t either.
You can be proud that you took the initiative and disappointed he didn’t turn out to be as suitable as you hoped. The disappointment can be transient; the satisfaction of pride doesn’t have to be!
I love your advice so much, Elsa.
Exactly, definitely don’t want to be responsible for socializing a 35 year old man! Besides, there’s a limit to how much effort I’m going to put into getting laid. Do SOME of the work, buddy.
I am feeling both those things, you are so spot on about disappointment being transient. There will be other sexy dudes, and at least I went for it!
You did a great brave thing and it’s entirely his loss!
ew I have done this more than once. It is always a waste of time. It is not my job to interesting enough for a man child. I wonder, is this a problem of hetero 20 something ladies?
I was a hetero 20-something woman more than 20 years ago. Nothing has changed.
That sucks. Oh well, onward and upward and you are the best for trying! He’s reminding me of Roger from Rent (in an uncomplimentary way).
Nooooo, my disaster love life comment is the first, I’m so embarrassed! *climbs into hoodie, disappears forever*
Oh, don’t be embarrassed! I found it very impressive and well, he loses out. Silly man.
Definitely don’t be embarrassed, I wanted to know what happened! Sorry he didn’t turn out as hoped.
btw, this doesn’t read like a disaster. It reads like an example of a confident, capable grown-up who was clear and honest about her feelings, and a guy who was a bad fit. You did great.
Right! You acted on how you felt. That’s pretty awesome.
That is kind, thank you.
Would that your hoodie were a time hoodie.
I love you
A TARDIS hoodie!
Thank goodness! I had hoped against hope. I have that thing where if I attempt to move the baby that is propped on my lap, he will wake up and want to nurse again, so I will be following the Internet in real time today, until I can figure out how to escape.
Oh, I remember those days. So well. I hope you’re able to move at some point soon!
Solidarity in being Trapped by Baby. At least there’s another adult in my house today so we can swap trappedness and fetch sustenance for the trapped one.
Yes, I’ve got another adult home, too, and it is very luxurious, now that they’re awake.
Important update: I made it out of the chair several times, but was summoned back each time. This baby!
Oh my! How old is the imperious baby in question?
This will interest only a small subsection of Toastrons, but John Darnielle likes The Toast!!
Yay! Although I think Mountain Goats fans are more than a small subsection of Toast readers. 🙂
I’m interested. The only time I saw him perform I came up to the stage afterwards to buy his ‘zine and he delightedly pointed at me and said, “It’s YOU!” Being a social mess, I said, “Oh, sorry, no, I think you’re confusing me with someone. Happens all the time.” (This is true. The people in question are just as often male as female) He said, “Well, but you ARE you!” and I couldn’t argue.
I am working on a bigger detailing of my next case study for my supervisor and even though I’m excited about it I don’t want to write this up. And Labor Day means very little Content for me to procrastinate with. (I’m in the Netherlands, so no holiday for me.)
Can I ask you all to read my thing? It is serial story about a woman in a post-apocalyptic world and it is weird because I try to incorporate reader suggestions.
http://lostcitystory.wordpress.com/
Also, it is SUPER GOOD and really awesome to read. Just saying…
(Sorry, I still can’t come up with any halfway decent suggestions. If I ever think of one, I will let you know.)
Thanks! I’m trying.
And please do, if you think of something!
I LOVE IT
It’s great so far! Hard to think of any suggestions with so little idea of what’s going on though.
I have about as little an idea as you.
Suggest ANYTHING. Another toasty suggested the talking cats that appear in episode 1. so it can be anything from ‘Red 87 meets a mutant cow’ to ‘This is one of the enemy actions she will have to work against’ and I WILL TRY TO INCLUDE IT/
I got up the courage this weekend to tell my partner that I don’t trust him with money. Eeek. And also somewhat go me, ’cause I didn’t realise that this was what was (one of the things) at the root of my money worries recently. So now we’re going to try to talk some more about it, and he is (hopefully!) going to start compromising on this. So progress, I think.
Oh, go you! We had That Talk a while ago and made the joint decision that I should be in charge of the money. Mostly, that works out well…
Thanks. It’s hard because we have ‘enough’ (whatever that is) at the moment, so he thinks talking about money is irrelevant, but it’s important to me, so I’m trying to get through.
Good for you! Even if you have ‘enough’ money, it’s very easy for unexpected things to happen and money can disappear very quickly. So I think it’s wise to always be aware of that. It’s responsible!
Yep, that’s pretty much my thinking!
Good for you! That must have been a really tricky conversation, I get freaked out when I have to tell my boyfriend that he doesn’t fill the dishwasher up properly, so I can’t even imagine your situation! Good luck with financey stuff, have you tried budgeting software like You Need a Budget? I’m trying it with my boyfriend at the moment so we can both be held accountable and have visibility over each other’s situation (our accounts are still separate), without me being too controlling or worrying too much about if he’s saving enough.
Our current conversation is whether budgeting is a good idea right now (spoiler alert: yes). So not quite up to your level yet!
Budget is like weather. We always have both, though we sometimes ignore them. Present this reality as a given, not as a question.
Talk in broad categories initially. “We currently spend 60% of our income on necessities like rent, food, gas, and insurance. We spend 20% of our income on debt payments. We spend most of the last 20% on pleasures like restaurants, music, fun clothes and shoes. We use less than 1% of our income to save for the future.” (Not assuming I know anything about your budget. These are figures from my own past.)
Then ask how that squares with his impressions of y’all’s spending. He won’t have any, but asking the question communicates respect and primes him to begin thinking about it.
Give him some time to consider this info. The following week ask him how he would like to change the household spending. Even if he has nothing to say, it allows you to say how you would like to make changes. Get him to agree to percentages. Once you both agree to, say, saving 5% for the future, ask him where he will limit other spending.
My Beloved refuses to think about money, but he has done well when restricted to cash only. He carries a credit card he uses only for agreed-upon categories (gas, dogs, medical). All else he buys with cash. And stops buying when the cash runs out. Until the next weekend when he can have the next weekly installment of cash.
We had to tweak the above routine over the years, until we accounted for areas of overspending. E.g., I put grocery purchases in the cash-only category because he’s a foodie and buys much more than we can ever eat, never mind the very expensive versions of most foods. He gets excited at the grocery store and seems to have no internal controls for spending there. Cash-only is his control.
I also put our savings in an account he has no access to until I’m dead. He saves better when he cannot see the total. Any reminder of money unspent sends him into a spending mania. It took me 15 years to learn to do this. His mother helped me with stories of his childhood spending.
Good luck.
And OH!
I visited a local castle at the weekend and on the way we drove past an abandoned cafe place and I took loads of pictures because I love abandoned places.
(I;m not great at this photography thing but I am learning and getting better – https://www.flickr.com/photos/gingerbiscuit/)
EDIT: there was going to be a question here.
Oh, yes! Please share your flickrs, and post links to any pictures you’re especially proud of.
I just followed you!
If anyone else is interested, I pretty much only do badly-lit, blurry concert pictures.
The halfway decent ones are in the “A few favorites” album.
followed back!
I am pretty big on the abandoned stuff. Flickr is kind of just photo storage now, though.
Here’s Havana:
Here’s Montana:
Here’s Ontario:
I mostly do pictures of cats and ponies, fish in aquariums, old stuff in museums, and also concerts!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lebatihem/
I do like this one – we’re friends, and he always shows off shamelessly when I am in the front row, so I get some great shots of him.
And this one looks like they’re photoshopped on but they were really there!
a) This is a cool photo – well done!
b) I misread your post and thought that you thought of this as your ‘local castle’.
Ha ha, that’d be a pretty shitty local castle.
MY local castle is Norwich Castle
![]()
But I visited Castle Rising because I hadn’t been since I was a kid and my husband had never been. <a href=”https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/castle-rising-castle/” target=”_blank”>https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/castle-rising-castle/
Yet I can’t help feeling that the first “local castle” has that certain je ne sais quoi that this one doesn’t have…
I have to work some today but later I am going to make an apple pie! I like putting a bunch of dark brown sugar in there and slicing the apples really thin. Don’t have a great pie hand yet but I’m working on it. Any Toasties have particular apple pie secrets?
1. Cinnamon.
2. Sauteeing the apples in some butter before putting them in the pie can up the decadence factor. However often this can lead to broken apple bits, or (yummy) apple sludge, so it depends what kind of apple-y-ness you’re going for.
Ooh, thanks! I’ve never thought of sauteeing the apples before putting them in. And I’m into apple sludge, don’t worry.
I haven’t tried the technique but I know Cook’s Illustrated recommends it as a way to keep from (what I think of as) phantom pie dome, where the apples cook down in the oven and leave the top of the big domed crust empty.
I definitely recommend this, especially as a way to keep your apples from cooking down. The key is to only saute them until they’re slightly soft – otherwise they can get a little sludgy and your filling can get kinda runny (still delicious! just a little harder to eat neatly).
Also, my go-to apple pie secret is to skip the top crust entirely and instead do an apple crisp topping – it’s basically butter, sugar, cinnamon, and a teensy bit of salt and nutmeg all mixed up together to form crumbs and then sprinkled on top of the pie before you put it in the oven. It’s SO GOOD.
I like to use different kinds of apples all mixed together, so every bite is different. Now I want Apple pie.
It depends on your recipe. My family makes Dutch apple pie, so the apples are tossed in this mixture of butter and flour and all the cinnamon, and then covered in streusel.
My mother always makes apple pie by grating the apples as finely as possible, then mixing the apple mush with brown sugar and cinnamon. You have to let the mixture stand for a while so that the apple juice can settle at the bottom of the bowl and be poured off (at which point you chug it like a fiend, because fresh apple juice + brown sugar + cinnamon = HEAVEN).
Calvados (in the pie or in you while making the pie).
Or? Both!
Yes! The two are by no means mutually exclusive!
I’m just going to write out my entire apple pie recipe, in case anyone is interested.
For the crust, use two cups flour, two tablespoons butter, 2/3 cup fancy hippie shortening and a teaspoon of salt. Don’t be alarmed by the shortening – it’s what makes the crust foolproof. If you use only butter there is a chance it will get tough. The shortening makes it tender, the butter makes it flaky, and it just ends up tasting like butter anyway. Use your fingers to break up the butter/shortening so that the crust is chunky/crumbly, like a nice streusel topping. Then dash four tablespoons of ice water over it, swirl your hand around to mix it lightly, and press it together into two balls. If you need to add more ice water to make it come together, do, but don’t overdo it – it’s okay if the crust is still crumbly, as long as it holds together. Roll out one ball between two sheets of waxed paper, peel off one sheet, and flop the crust into the pie plate before you peel off the other sheet. Prick the bottom crust all over with a fork.
I use Granny Smiths for pies because they have a lot of flavor and stay firm-ish when they bake. Slice them very thin and layer them with brown sugar and cinnamon – a layer of apples, a layer of brown sugar and cinnamon, then repeat. Mound the apples as high as you reasonably can, because they will sink down in baking. Top the last layer with brown sugar and cinnamon, then roll out the second crust into something approximating a rectangle and cut it into lattice strips. Some of them will fall apart. Don’t worry if you have to squish some of the crust up and reroll it – it will still be good. Weave a lattice on top of the pie, crimp the edges, and sprinkle the top with a mixture of white sugar and cinnamon. Bake at 425 for ten or fifteen minutes to brown the crust, then turn down to 350 and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until it looks done.
Never in my life have I wanted apple pie more than now – this post and its replies are excruciating!
I’ve heard but can’t verify that Chinese Five Spice powder absolutely kills in apple or pumpkin. I think it’s the star anise that makes people say, “Ooh,” and assume you have magical powers.
Oh god. At the risk of being really self-serving…I entered an apple pie in the state fair this year and got my ass kicked by old ladies. But the pie is still good. It’s a sour cream apple. It’s the only reason my in-laws put up with my liberal, loud mouthed ways. I FEED THEM. LIKE A WOMAN. Thanks for nothing patriarchy. But if you need to feed the patriarchy. This is pretty good. http://www.lyzlenz.com/2014/08/the-pie-that-loved…
Nicole, please delete this if this is too obnoxious. Obviously you will. You don’t need my permission. Hitting “submit comment” now.
This is late to the party, but i start macerating the apples with brown sugar hours before I assemble the pie. The apples become smaller so you can fit a lot more into the crust which = great fruit:crust ratio.
Grains of paradise are delicious in apple pie. A wee bit of cardamon is a pretty good sub. if you can’t find grains of paradise.
Dear Toasties, no update on the Humanist Dude in my class for I was out-of-sorts all week and most probably looked like an unshowered zombie, but I shall make progress in discourse this week!
Currently, I’m finding myself in a discussion with a religious yet reasonable friend of mine about gender and sexuality and the Bible. With the Daniel Pierce video as the springboard. I’m a bit nervous, I was already quoted with the Sodom and Gomorrah.
Also, I just read how Mallory once trolled apples. She may be a goddess but I am not sheep: come closer, my apple strudels and my apple juice!
Yikes! Anyone who busts out Sodom in the first round does NOT meet my qualifications of reasonable. I’m a serious, devout Christian, but I don’t go around pretending I know what’s up with pre-historical Hebrew oral tradition. If I were you, I’d find a nice older episcopal lady to have this conversation with.
Related: I’m reading a book right now called “Misreading the Scripture Through Western Eyes” and it’s really good. It’s basically texts/contexts for beginners but it has some great scripture-specific examples and a long bibliography. You know, if you need some ammo. 😉
I confess: I’m a Catholic (vaguely, legally), and have only the dimmest idea about Sodom (something about salts, and not looking back – I think?!)
Oh, and thank you for the book rec! It’s interesting and it struck me, along with your comment on Hebrew oral tradition, that of course, the Bible is a translation.
So, uh, if I happened to remember my username from a long-deleted livejournal account (like, active from 2003-2007 and deleted in ’07) is there a way I can hunt down old posts? I know the official answer from LJ is no, but I’ve been warned so many times that “nothing is ever truly deleted from the internet.”
I guess I’m a masochist or whatever, and I want to see what I was writing about in middle school.
Ugh, I’ve got all my journals from middle school and it’s so awful to read through them. There’s not as much angst as there is disgustingly chirpy optimism. Haha. I kind of want to simultaneously kick and hug my younger self.
I’ve got (handwritten) journals going back to when I was 11 and I haven’t been able to read through them in years because it’s such a horrendous experience. It’s interesting, because I tend to think I haven’t actually changed all that much, that I’m essentially the same person I was at 15, just with boobs and more money, but I go through my old journals and it’s like a complete stranger wrote them.
Oh jeez the very thought of looking at mine makes me shudder.
And yet…
and yet…
….
the wayback machine!!!
It looks like it didn’t crawl Livejournal blogs.
Yeah, I think the same thing they did with robots.txt to prevent Google from searching the journals (which, IIRC, was an optional feature that most people had turned on) would have prevented Archive.org from crawling them.
If you had any friends with paid accounts that commented, and they’ve saved their email from that time, then their email is likely to have comment notifications that contain the whole contents of the posts. But that — or if they were persistent archivers and hand-saved copies of things they found interesting — is about the only way it would be saved at this point, I expect.
Ok, I think this may be as good a day as any to de-lurk. Hello all! I’m generally reluctant to join comment thread but the Toast comments and commenters are basically the best.
As to open thread stuff: was feeling crappy because my supervisor at work is, as ever, impossible to reach and I have some pretty big questions for him. But then Ryan Adams favorited a compliment I tweeted about his new (and pretty great) album and my day got slightly less crappy. I’m happy he took some time for this album instead of tossing it off like he did a few years ago. It actually reminds me of Heartbreaker, aka 16-yo Hedwig’s soundtrack.
Hi welcome!
Boo to your supervisor! Hurrah for Ryan Adams! Welcome for Hedwig!
Hi! *gleeful wave of a recent delurker* Isn’t the Toast the best?
Your id does things to my heart, as well as what I can see as red hair to my heart. I hope you’ll have a better work week!
It is indeed the best. Unfortunately I don’t currently (or naturally) have red hair, though I have dyed it red in the past. It’s a part of a fantastic poster for one of my favorite movies, Jules et Jim, featuring the fantastic Jeanne Moreau. You can buy the poster… for 2500 pounds Sterling, which is just not an expense I will ever be able to justify to myself, alas. The avatar thingie will have to do.
This weekend, while at a restaurant w/my person:
Tiny girl waves at other tiny girl.
Me: THEY ARE SO CUTE I HOPE THEY GET MARRIED IN 20 YEARS
Person: stop imposing your sexuality on small children! You don’t know her life!
Tiny girl blows kiss at other tiny girl as her father picks her up and carries her out of building
me:I REST MY GODDAMN CASE
I believe in our future generation
Haha. I love this.
Awwww! I have a story like this! Or, well, my mom does: She works in a pre school, and a few weeks ago one of the little girls said to another, “Girl B, I’m in love with you.”
My mom: *just observes*
Girl B: I love you, too.
Girl A: No, but I’m IN love with you.
Girl B: Oh, okay. ‘
Girl A: Are you in love with me too?
Girl B: *ponders this, nods*
And the two of them run off to make a block fortress [of love]
People are constantly imposing heterosexuality on small children, if we can’t stop them doing that we might as well assign other orientations to them just for balance.
Yes! It makes me RAGE when people call my 3yo a flirt because she talks to men. Honestly. She is three. THREE. She isn’t flirting. She has confidence. Don’t even get me started on the “Oh your son is a boob man!” comments I got when I was having trouble giving him a bottle. I mean. DON’T PUSH YOUR GROSS HERTRONORMATIVE IDEAS ON MY INFANTS.
I’d be much more open to queering it up. Much, much more.
This is great. It drives me nuts how often people map straight romantic attraction onto small children’s interactions (e.g. posting a pic of your baby with someone else’s baby and captioning it “Sammy’s playdate with his girlfriend Ella! He’s such a little ladykiller!!”). Obviously the solution, should I have children, will be to just queer it up a whole bunch. At least, that sounds like more fun than being the dour mom who glowers and responds STOP SEXUALIZING MY CHILD.
I dreamt that my alter ego Tina Fey and I were co directing a high school play. It was glorious.
Oh, you guys, it is September and therefore I have two weeks to write 26000 words so that I can get a draft to my proofreaders, and they can get back to me, and I can incorporate some of their suggestions into a better draft. And then I have to write that better draft and have a halfway decent manuscript ready by 3rd October to enter this mentorship competition I’m going for.
I have no idea how I am going to do this. No idea at all. Obviously not being on the internet when I should be writing is perhaps one solution. Maybe I can give my children away for a month (although knowing me, that would just mean I’d fritter away all my new-found spare time on the internet, or in the garden. Did I also mention it’s spring here, and the garden is basically calling me, siren-like, whenever I sit down to write?)
Sigh. I hate writing. I love it when I’ve written something, but the actual writing sucks (except when it doesn’t, but that happens very infrequently).
I know how you feel.
Honestly, the only thing to do is to set a word goal every day and DO NOT internet until you’ve reached it.
Such good advice. I already know this, but of course, it’s good to hear from someone else 😀 I just calculated what I need to do per day. Surprisingly, it’s achievable. So thank you for that!
Also, have you heard of Self Control? (I realize this makes me sound like a dick, but I’m not being a dick! It’s an app!) You can black list sites for a specific amount of time, and it won’t let you access them until you’ve done your time-quota of writing! (If you, like me, sometimes need an extra kick in the butt to stay focused and away from the internetz.)
HA! It did seem like you were being rather abrupt, but I figured I deserved it 😀 But now I think of it, I have heard of this (I just didn’t know the name of it). I do turn the internet connection off, but… it’s very easy to turn back on again. I may have to do this.
A site I moderate used to have a facility where members could ask to be temporarily banned during exams or whatever!
Ha! That’s an excellent idea. I mean, though, really. I’m 38 years old. Could I possibly just grow up and sit down and do the work already (I think we all know the answer to that).
Let’s make this this Writing Thread (or, according to the typo I just did, the Writhing About Writing Thread).
I am handing in an article for scholarly publication TODAY and it is something that has been converted from a school essay and I am having an incredibly hard time figuring out what’s actually good writing and what’s just “gonna get published eeeeeeeeeeee” … So I am just formatting into Chicago Style instead, until I have the guts to actually read the thing.
Oooh! Writhing about Writing thread!
Last night I wrote/edited for SEVEN HOURS until the story that I’ve been agonizing over for the past month was done and as publishable as it was gonna before the August 31st deadline! I don’t usually leave things until the very last minute like that, but this story was being impossible. It’s a lesbian retelling of The Little Mermaid! The mermaid lives in the East River! I submitted it with two minutes to spare!
Somewhat related: What is everyone’s stance on places that say they don’t want simultaneous submissions? I always think this is kind of a lot to ask, given how long places generally take to get wrt submissions, and how frequently the answer is “Sorry, but no.” A LOT of places say they don’t want simultaneous submissions — do y’all generally abide by that, or take your chances and submit to a few places, and withdraw a piece if it gets accepted elsewhere?
I’m generally not huge of Rules in most of life, but I don’t want to become a pariah of literary magazines, so I’m being pretty Hermione Granger about submission guidelines…but I also want to give myself the highest chance of being published!
It’s really unlikely that they’d know, right? But I’m a bit like you 🙂 I do tend to do one at a time, if that’s what they ask.
Honestly, I’m not organized enough to keep track of simultaneous submissions from my side of things… I only ever submit one thing to one place at a time. (I use Scrivener and have a ‘project’ that I use to keep track of where, when and to whom I have submitted each story and whether it was (eventually) accepted/rejected.)
The thing about this one that I’m doing is… it doesn’t need to be perfect, but it needs to be good enough to show potential. And right now, oh, wow. It’s awful. Heh.
This month, I have to finish a conference paper, write another one, finish the first chapter of my dissertation (which I’ve been working on since JANUARY aaugh I am never going to graduate), and start some funding applications for next year. None of it is going well right now. D: I worked on paper #1 for six and a half hours yesterday and got basically nowhere…
My own strategy for this, which I use almost daily, is based on (ripped off from/just straight-up is) the pomodoro technique: I set a timer. Until the timer dings. I am JUST WRITING. No just-checking-my-email-quickly, no getting-a-quick-glass-of-water. Just. Writing.
When the timer dings, I reset it* for a brief span—say, 15 minutes. During that break, I do anything but write. Maybe I check email, check the weather, pee, refill my pitcher of water. Maybe I make and eat lunch. (This might means setting a longer break time.) Maybe I step outside and soak up sun. Whatever.
The instant the timer dings, I close every extra window and get back to writing. Just. Writing.
Different plans work for different people: I find the reward and distraction every hour or two keeps me fresh and focused, keeps me from worrying about what might have popped up in my email or wondering if I’ll ever go outside again. Some people are better served by the no-internet-until-you’re-done mode, but it doesn’t work for me.
*I typically use an online timer, which means I can preset two pages, one for an hour or two and one for a brief break, then just hit start over and over until I’m tapped out for the day.
There is such thing as an ONLINE TIMER? The internet never fails to deliver, does it?!
I used to do this while doing NaNo. And really, there is no reason why I can’t do it now. I have about an hour most days during the day when the two youngest are sleeping/quiet and I could do a couple of ‘sprints’ so to speak. This could potentially get my wordcount up by a lot, because currently, I’m writing at night and often I fall asleep at the computer.
And I do spend a lot of time online which is not productive. I need to cut that down and just focus on the really good stuff.
2,000 words a day: Sounds monolithic, but break it into four chunks of 500 or five chunks of 400. Pretend to drink a mason jar full of raw eggs and just Rocky Balboa it into completion. You can absolutely do it.
No, no, it’s basically what I need to do to get to my goal. If I can even do 1×500 during the day, it would make a nighttime 1500 achievable.
Not sure I can manage the raw eggs but I’m definitely up for singing along with ‘Eye of the Tiger’ 😀
Oh I did this. Sort of. I spent the past two months editing a 55k word draft of a manuscript. Some was original writing, some was editing from old drafts. It was hard. I have two kids and could afford like no babysitting. So I worked mostly at night. But it got done. Last night at 2am. Actually, I finished at 10, but then I did a dumb thing and saved another version of the draft over the complete version and lost all my work. I had to redo it all. I also wept and gnashed my teeth. But dammit. Sept 1 was my self-imposed deadline and I’m kind of Type A about these things. Even in my mind.
On thing that helped was installing the “Stay Focused” app on my browser. It helped me limit my amount of time I spent on websites.
I will say that the daunting task of writing is more imposing in your mind than in actuality. When you sit down and get messy with the words, you’ll find your way.
Woohoo! Congratulations!! And wow, I would have wept and gnashed my teeth if I’d overwritten a new save! ARGH!!
I’ve been dawdling along with this novel for three years, really. And I decided this year that this was The Year. And then I saw this competition which requires a completed manuscript, and that gave me two months to finish it. Even though I don’t really know if it’ll be good enough to get through the competition, at the very least I’ll have a completed manuscript which I can then polish and decorate, you know?
Ooh, another app! Thanks for that 🙂 And you’re right. It is the sitting down and doing it. I’m so easily distracted. And I know the problem of not getting a lot of time during the day–the two oldest go to school during the day but I still have the two youngest at home, so I’m the same, I do most of the writing at night. Obviously I like to spend time with the Handsome Sidekick then, as well, but he’s pretty understanding (and has deadlines of his own, which helps!).
Good luck with final edits and submitting (if that’s what you plan to do)!
I also do Pomodoro. I just use the timer on my phone. I am not as good as Emily/Elsa. But It works. I also schedule writing time. I teach in a “teaching” college and am writing a book so, this will make it happen. One day. I hope.
Does anyone have any wisdom on how to support a friend who keeps being sucked back into a shitty and emotionally abusive relationship and keeps giving him ‘one more chance’, when you are really getting sick and tired of having said ‘he’s a shitbag, he’s not going to change’ for the last two years, and she keeps telling him ‘I’m leaving you’ and then he says ‘no no, I’ll change’ and she keeps believing him?
I really thought she’d done it this time, she’d gone as far as getting legal advice on splitting up their house and getting the house valued for sale, and then suddenly they’re going to counselling and that is magically going to change his personality entirely and make everything fine. I’m horribly afraid he’s going to move from emotional to physical abuse because he keeps on getting away with worse and worse emotional abuse, very aware that she is a grownup lady and if she wants to make bad decisions that’s her prerogative, and also losing patience with constantly being the one picking up the pieces.
You can’t make her make good choices. All you can do is not cut her off, so she knows she has a safe place to go.
Women often perform the leave-return cycle quite a few times before they are able to leave for good. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but you are helping.
The fact is, she knows where he is and has some coping measures in place when she’s with him. If she breaks it off, her partner could go straight to stalking, assault, or even suicide or homicide. If he’s that emotionally abusive, who knows what he’s been threatening her with?
All of that is horrendous, of course, and she would definitely be better off without him, but you can’t rush these things. Just be there for her.
Oh, how awful. Your poor friend, and poor you too! Honestly, there’s very little you can do other than be there for her and of course, take care of yourself if taking care of her is making you suffer too.
Keep inviting her out to do healthy, joyful things with healthy, kind people and maybe she’ll see the contrast between her home life and how other people can (and should) be.
Thankyou everyone! He is just horrid. She is convinced he won’t hit her – but as I said last time she told me that, how many women *do* think the man they love will wallop them before it happens? I see massive red flags, he is controlling, loses his temper with her when the world doesnt’ arrange itself to his liking, chooses when she needs support to bring out his asshole side – a week after she lost their baby halfway through pregnancy, he said she shoudl be over it and was attention seeking by still being upset. When she was losing the baby (who had a very severe chromosomal disorder so she had to have a termination – and had to give birth, as she was so far along), he turned up after work when she’d been in labour for the last three hours, and then spent the evening sat in the corner reading PG Wodehouse while she held *my* hand through the contractions. Which I think says everything anyone needs to know about him, really.
NOOOOOOO can we toss him into a pit of hungry cobras please? ANIMAL.
What a waste of humanity. Usual turns of phrase, ie. “dick” just don’t cut it with this POS.
A friend suggested “Why Does He Do That” by Lundy Bancroft to me, and it opened my eyes like whoa when it comes to shitty emotionally abusive and/or manipulative behavior. Maybe buy it, read it, gently suggest that she read it too? She can even read it at your place if it’s not safe for her to bring it home…I don’t know, I found it incredibly helpful/illuminating and maybe, since the “he’s a shitbag, he’s not going to change” is not coming from you, but from a professional who has spent years working with abusive men, there will be enough distance for her to really consider his actions and take steps to leave for good? Like, she’ll be able to recognize that his behaviors are not just idiosyncrasies of his personality, but actual, well thought out, well planned tactics aimed at undermining her and keeping her in his control. It sounds like she knows a lot of this already, but maybe reading it and having actual professional terms for it will help? It definitely helped me feel stronger and more sure of myself.
There are also resources in the book that give women a game plan for getting out.
Ugh. I’m sorry she’s going through this, and you, too. I hope she gets the help she needs and gets out!
Thankyou, I will look for that book. I am hoping that the counsellor they are going to will tell her something along the lines of ‘you can’t change people and it’s actually not reasonable to expect them to change, even if the version of them that you want would objectively be a better one’.
I’ve also heard numerous recommendations for “The Gift of Fear,” by Gavin de Becker. Haven’t read it myself, but I’m told it’s an eye-opener, esp. for people in situations like your friend’s. I’m so sorry she (and you) are going through this, and I hope her partner takes a long walk off a short pier on the double.
Although the chapter on domestic abuse is actually pretty problematic. De Becker grew up in an abusive household, and it colors his views on things like “if you stay after he’s hit you, you’re giving him permission to abuse you.” So it’s great for everything except this specific situation.
Oof, I didn’t know that. Thanks for informing me – I will stop recommending it now!
So it’s really great on stuff like “listen to your gut, if that guy is creeping you out, you have every right to get away from him, your instincts are real.” He makes good points about the ways in which society trains women not to trust themselves, not to enforce boundaries, and to prioritize other people’s comfort over their own. He just has this one huge blind spot, which starts to make more sense once you realize that his childhood involved his mother remaining in an unsafe situation, and both of them suffering for it. The recommendation I’ve heard from almost everybody is to just skip the DV chapter entirely, but that the rest of the book is solid.
But that does mean that it’s the exact opposite of helpful for DV sufferers.
Something I’ve got really into is saying, “What do you think is the best possible outcome that you can negotiate for here?”. I’ve found that it tends to just open out the prospect of the long term a little bit.
Also, hullo, I know you! Nice to see you again, sorry it’s because your friend is having a rotten time.
Ooh, how do you know me?
I know you from London – and I guess you never knew this one of my internet names? I’m Ms Bracken on Flickr and you spend a couple of new years parties at my then home. Also I should have uploaded a picture now in case none of that makes sense.
Oh, hello! I did indeed not know that one of your internet names, but I do follow you on flickr still!
A good book is “To be an anchor in the storm”– it’s for friends/family of abused women. Author is Brewster.
Unfortunately it’s pretty well out of print, but you can get a copy for ~25 on Amazon. (I bought my copy at least 5 years ago and it was shipped from New Zealand!!)
There is an adorable girl in my speech class with a Tegan and Sara haircut, a martial arts habit, and big chunky glasses. The eternal Queer or Hipster debate goes on.
the way to check is ask her out for coffee then smirk at her a lot
even hipsters will eventually catch on or mention their boyfriends within fifteen minutes
grammar is beyond me today
I have never in my life drunk coffee
nor alcohol
not even once have I snuck into the one gay bar on campus
I have no way to buy drinks for cute girls
my life is a ruin
Surely coffee shops sell something you can consume?
and if you ask her for coffee but don’t drink coffee that makes it even more obvious that she should clearly mention a boy or interest in boys if there is one.
They have juice and tea! Or just bring water and get a muffin.
I think this Hannah Hart video on How to Ask a Girl if She’s Gay is relevant (although it’s probably more funny than helpful).
http://youtu.be/DmwovO9C3lI
Despite my liberal university oasis, I’m stuck in a Heartland Red state, and she’s lived in said state all her life. It’s no Wyoming, but high-school kids never asked after your sexuality before loudly speculating for weeks, and the habit proves hard-to-break for native Cornstate college students.
Ugh. I went to college in Ohio in the late 80s/early 90s, when it was more of a red state, so I relate. I was lucky enough to stumble into a peer group of queer women (partly through the college Lamba group and partly through sheer dumb luck – I went out of the country for one semester and when I came back to campus, I learned that three of my good women friends had come out while I was gone).
Today, toasties, I would like to talk about what I have realised are my quite SCREWED ideas about People of the Past.
With the past, I obviously mean 1940-1960, for that is the only proper past. Instead of a swift clip around the ear, or being sent to bed without dessert, it’s the Past People that have been used on me most as a child-raising tool/guilt-trip (I’m looking at you grandma…)
So, without further ado, I present to you People of the Past who:
…were always grateful (unlike you)
…obeyed authority
…knew their place
…had clean homes
…were quiet and unobtrusive
…were always calm (unlike you)
…knew how to milk a cow (sign of proper-hardworkingness)
…went to bed early, and got up early (a true sign of moral superiority)
…were serious and responsible
…always chose duty over happiness (contrary to your spoiled generation of wimps who only strive for ‘a good feeling’)
…lived sober lives without frills & frivolity (calvinistic orgasm)
…never talked about (or even had, really) feelings, because they weren’t invented yet.
As a result I HATE people of the past, with their superior superness.
Now, I realise this is not realistic AT ALL, because people are people, always.
So, do you have
a) either the same experience/hangup/frustration.
b) or stories of Past People who were just as ‘shit, lazy and immoral’ as ‘we are today’?
Much obliged, frustrated child of the now.
Gladys Bentley and Emma Goldman. A blues-singing bulldagger and a queer anarchist women’s rights activist.
I think we might have similar ancestors – yours sound more dutch or scottish calvinists, mine are mennonite. but the hardworking farming ish is just too much sometimes. I try and never do manual labor beyond cleaning and weightlifting, but then I am like, but in the past my grandmother was on x of 12 kids plus miscarriages and she still liked babies. i am a failure. (That grandma, however, would never have made me feel like it when she was alive!) It just is like that sometimes.
My grandfather once set my mother’s hair on fire, while drunk, in an attempt to give her a pixie cut. (Because getting things to look artfully uneven was difficult, why not use a burning rolled-up newspaper?)
My father once fell down a fifteen foot hole while playing at a construction site and was not missed until bedtime – seven hours later.
Read anything about Julia Child–she knew how to have a good time, took shit from *no one*, and worked in the precursor to the CIA during World War 2. Her memoir My Life in France is a fun read, and my mother just gave me a pretty good biography called Dearie. Also check out the Toast series on Lee Miller, another amazing Woman of the Past.
My grandmother was a pistol–mostly a good girl with strict protestant parents, but she learned to drive at 14, wanted to become a fighter pilot during WW2 and got engaged to a Jewish guy eight years her senior–when she was 18 and her parents wouldn’t let her even date Catholic boys in high school. So I guarantee there is something in your grandmother’s past that she has never let slip to mar the ‘back in my day’ facade she shows you. Though I know that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with her attitude.
My grandmother, while in high school, dated her college-aged tennis doubles partner and acts as if this was totally normal. I would have been killed for doing anything similar. She then went on to write a series of romance novels. Racy ones.
My grandmother and grandfather on the other side got pregnant at the respective ages of 17/18, probably in the back of a car (although they were at least using birth control- just didn’t work, I guess)
My stepgrandmother has tales of adult trick-or-treating through their neighborhood with a martini glass, which the neighbors obligingly filled.
Someone mentioned Fallen London last week in a Link Round-up and this inspired me to start playing! If anyone here who also plays wants another acquaintance, I am Vipsania Beauregard over there, an alluring and shadowy lady.
Caitlin Brede Blanchard. Send me a letter, or invite me to chess, or something.
I tried to invite you to loiter suspiciously, and then to play chess, but in both cases it said you weren’t eligible for that action!
Oh, I’m on Mutton Island right now, so I won’t be available for actions till I’ve stopped fishing for strange catches, dancing with drownies and getting weird stuff from the villagers. I forgot.
I look forward to the day when you and I will be able to loiter suspiciously together.
It’ll probably only be a few real-life days.
Yes hello I (Rosencrantz) sent you a calling card.
O. C. Watkins.
This game is delightful!
EDIT: Or it may be under my usual username of OCWut. Try both?
I’m late to the party (and am a total lurker around here) but would very much like to make your acquaintance in Fallen London! I’m The Lady Bradford and will send you a calling card forthwith. Or as soon as I get home, as my work computer blocks me from playing here.
Clara Tiddlesworth! Please let’s be friends!
I am encatted. I would take a picture if I could, but I can’t get to the camera. She’s so heavy. She refuses to move. I just shifted my legs and all she did was resettle herself. I am thirsty and I need to go to the bathroom. Help me.
Help.
I’M FREEEEEEE
she got up to eat something and I IMMEDIATELY went to the loo and got some more water
Tickle her feet until she moves.
Hey Toasties. What are your suggestions for Netflix binging on this Day of Labor? I’m thinking about trying Happy Valley, even if I may come out of it hating everyone again. (Thanks Top of the Lake!)
Binge-watch either the 1995 or 1980 Pride and Prejudice miniseries with me. It’s writin’-time.
XENA!
(That is what I will be doing, if I don’t melt into a puddle in my humid disgusting apartment first.)
Happy Valley is brilliant, but bleak.
Lost Girl.
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries! It’s about a fully emancipated badass flapper solving crimes in 1920s Australia.
To the guys who thought hacking women’s phones and posting their private photos online would be awesome, and to the people who keep circulating those photos, and think that grossly violating someone’s privacy is okay because they’re celebrities and they have to deal with it:
I just wanted to second, third, fourth, and millionth this comment:
My god, second!
(May I ask: from which movie/show was this gif taken?)
You may, and I may answer that it’s from House of Lies. Though I have no clue which episode.
Oh! I thought this was from the Veronica Mars movie. She does a similar thing IIRC.
Who else here lives in England? And if so where?
I am in London. I just searched ‘meetup’ on this site and found out there is going to be one in London in Autumn 2015! Excited for next year.
I am in Norwich! I hope I can make next years meetup in London. It’s a bit of a trek for me, but not impossible.
I’ll be living in Bristol as of next week. 🙂
I am in Dorset down on the south coast. London is sometimes doable for me – in theory I work in London two days a week but am broken at present so working at home all the time.
I’m in London.
I’m in London! I’m jealous of the fun bank holidays the US people are getting – this morning I looked up our next bank holiday and it’s Christmas. Christmas.
Ooh maybe we should arrange an unofficial meetup before Autumn 2015….?!
Autumn 2015 is quite far away… I’m all for forward planning but we could maybe manage something earlier!
I am in Oxford! I would be super down for an UNOFFICIAL MEETUP in ldn (preferably on a weekend)
Yaay! Well I’ll either try to organise one in about a month’s time after my thesis hand in or someone else could just go ahead and do it if they want. If I do it, I’ll post on another open thread and reply on here too.
London too! Autumn 2015 is a long time in the future! I would be into meeting up sooner. (Although I am terrible at checking The Toast on time and rarely comment because I’m always about 5 days behind.)
I’m in London! Let’s all meet up way before 2015
I’m in Cambridge and would happily meet up in London before autumn 2015.
Hiiiii in London 🙂
Always up for a meet-up!
I’m in Manchester! Do we have any other Northern Toasties?? (Not that I am at all Northern, having spent 24.5 years down south and a mere 5 months up north…)
I hope I’m not the only person who wonders if there are people I know in Toast/Ye Olde Hairpin/other websites, just being themselves and not having any idea that Someone You Used To Know is out there. I live in dread of being someone’s “This girl was SO MEAN to me in middle school” story and reading it and recognizing myself in horror. (This makes it sound like I was a dreadful teenager with tons to regret, but really I was not a dirtbag, just an ordinary girl who was mean sometimes because 14 years old, what is even going on there.)
I do that too! Actually, I KNOW there are people I know in real life who read some of the same websites, and it makes me uncomfortable. (oddly enough, I have this same problem on tumblr. Bestie and I share a lot of fandoms, and that’s fine, but every once in a while I come across what I know is the pseud of a girl we knew in middle school, and somehow that’s SUPER awkward.)
I worry about that too, especially with the Toast because I’ve referred several people to it, including my roommate. But as my name suggests, I mostly lurk, so I think I’ve avoided recognition.
Someone on my thread just above does know me!
I actually have identified one occasional Toastie as someone I went to middle school with, hence my paranoia!
When I was in high school, The Whole School Found Out About My Crush because I didn’t friends-lock my LiveJournal, and it Ruined My Life for the rest of the year. More than a decade later, I’m *still* afraid to say anything about my life in public Internet spaces, even if I’m extra-vague about it. And so I lurk a lot!
I worry about that too. I never ever want to know what people “really think” about me! Although, it’s more than that, because I’m also troubled by the idea of people knowing things about me without me knowing that they know. I guess I’m more bothered by the latter, which explains why I usually lurk…
Also it has occurred to me that I should start exercising more. Right now the most I do is walk home from work (which takes about an hour) but soon enough it will be too cold to do even that. Does anyone have advice on how to exercise when you’re not terribly motivated and your baseline level of fitness is pretty low? (I tried to do Couch to 5k a few times but always gave up around week 4 because I would get these terrible calf cramps that nothing could assuage.)
I am hopping onto this thread because I have the same question! I am thinking about trying yoga with youtube videos but need to get my mitts on a yoga mat first – I have tried the Butt/Ab month-long challenge but could never follow through (trying to embed image to show you all what I am talking about because I must learn how to do that at some point) http://30dayfitnesschallenges.com/wp-content/uplo…
What are things you can do at home that aren’t too stressful on the low fitness level body??
ETA: dear lord that is a huge picture I have changed it to a link because no one needs a picture that takes up that much space
I recommend craigslist for yoga mats! I got a brand-new one with a bag for just $30, and there was also a lightly used one for $5. Spend a little money to have it sanitized and you’ll have a nice new non-germy mat for a lot less than new.
You can do yoga without a mat, too. Especially the sun salutations and standing poses. I do it all the time when I don’t feel like rolling out a yoga mat — and people in India don’t necessarily use yoga mats either a lot of the time. Just find either a nice hardwood floor surface, or go to your kitchen — kitchen tiles can be a wonderful surface. It might take a little more strength to do Downward Dog that way, but not much, and it can be a lot more comfortable than an improperly sticky mat.
For anybody who wants to do yoga at home, just start out doing sun salutations and you’ll already have a very complete practice. There are a number of different sun salutations around, but the basic ones are googleable and usually referred to as Sun Salutation A and Sun Salutation B.
If anyone does I’m all ears as well! I find classes motivate me quite well, I need someone telling me what to do otherwise I won’t do it. My boyfriend does this 7 minute one: http://www.7-min.com/ which he says is quite intense but it’s over in 7 minutes so that’s good!
ooooo thank you for the link, I’ve heard about this before and you just reminded me of its existence!!
Have you tried Nicole’s own Feel The Burn: Your First Challenge? My first few times, I had to break up the three sections, not just allowing myself a few minutes rest but a few hours, sometimes even performing the three sets over two days. But every bit helps, and apparently I am completely absorbed into the Cult of Personality because thinking how pleased Nicole would be motivates me when I’m doing my hellish wall-sits.
In fact, this week is the end of my month-long surgical recovery period forbidding any but the lightest exercise, so I’m going to have to start all over again. I remember finding it rewarding how quickly I improved both in form and capacity.
note: I omit the Burpees on doctor’s advice, which is great because Burpees are loathsome. I still saw ready improvement in my strength and energy.
An hour of walking five days a week (assuming you have a regular 5-day-a-week job) is a great start! Many people don’t have the stamina or willpower to do that. If there’s a way to keep walking during the winter (hand and foot warmers? good hiking boots?), that’s a good option. If not, a couple other thoughts:
If you don’t like running or have trouble with it, don’t run. In my experience, trying to run for several years despite hating it just meant that I fell off the wagon a lot. I would feel really great about how fit I was when I was training a lot, but then I’d do a race and “take a rest from running” and end up not running for months.
If you don’t love exercise in general, I’d recommend staying away from home video workouts and instead trying to identify something that’s fun and social, but also active, like a dance class or a meetup group that goes on hikes. Rock climbing is also really fun (but tough at first!), and if you can find a friend who’s also interested in trying it out, you can make your weekly (indoor) climbing sessions about seeing and hanging out with that person. (Same goes for any type of class, really.) If you want to do cardio without the leg pain, swimming laps is super good for you. I like swimming (indoors) in the winter because it feels like a summery thing to do, and also swimming pools often have hot tubs or saunas for afterward.
This is terribly vague, but as someone who has been in a similar situation… find something that you actually love to do and are willing to work to get better at, then use that as motivation for all the other less-fun stuff. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that I just didn’t like rock climbing as much as I liked playing on circus/arial apparatuses, and that biking suited me much better than running… and now that I have found things that I actually want to get better at, it is so much easier to motivate myself through strength training or whatever.
So my best advice is play around, take lots of classes in lots of different things (as much as time and $ allows), and give yourself time to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.
Yes, this! I did basically no fitness for all of college/grad school and was pretty sure I hated running, but then I joined a coed soccer league, which I loved and which made me want to get better at it really quickly. Now I go to the gym 3 times a week for strength/speed training and play soccer at least once. (But I still hate running, unless it’s in order to chase a soccer ball.)
Also, aerial stuff looks so fun, but I work with acrobats and would never be able to stop judging myself if I tried it. I will just live vicariously for that one.
Watch TV and elliptical. If you have an elliptical or a gym membership. If not, I really like Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred. I do it when I need a quick 30min work out. I download it on my phone (though the Amazon Prime app). So it makes it easy to run to the basement, work out and then, come back into the light. Also, maybe try and get some weights and do reps while you watch TV. I don’t know.
I make TV my motivator. I love TV, but I have such little time to watch it. If I couple it with working out, I get two good things in one blow.
I agree with the others who said to find something you really do enjoy doing. My main exercise is running (5k a few times a week, 10k once a week), but I also take a ballet class that I love. I hadn’t taken ballet in about 25 years (I quit when I was 16) when I started again, but it has been great and technically challenging (in a good way!).
The problem is I don’t really enjoy anything that involves elevated heart rates and sweating and muscle soreness. That’s the source of my struggle 🙁
Ah, I see. Hmm. How bad is your winter weather? I actually walk to work through the winter (I bike when there is no snow). I live in Ottawa, so the weather is seriously crappy (often -20C in January/February) and the snow stays well into the spring. However, I also live downtown, so the paths and sidewalks remain (largely) passable.
I also live in downtown Ottawa :O
Oh my. How weird is that?
Walking is most of my exercise too. I bought Wii Fit U this spring, with the plan that it would be most useful in the winter, but it hasn’t been winter since then so I can’t tell you if it worked out.
I can tell you that several of the games in it are basically walking in place. I like the orienteering and the cycling, and I enjoy them enough that I end up pushing myself a bit and getting a little sweaty even if I hadn’t really planned to. The scuba diving and obstacle course are also mostly walking in place, but I haven’t played them as much yet.
I don’t like the part with strength exercises as much. I should probably do the Feel The Burn workout or something as well.
Currently I only use it occasionally, but I still hope that it’ll be more useful in the winter.
I want to try the Wii Fit too. I haven’t bought it yet. How much room do you think one needs for wii-fitting? I hate exercising so much. 🙁
It always tells me to clear away stuff within one metre so I don’t trip, so I guess I should have a circle two metres across? But in practice I don’t bother to clear that much space most of the time. It depends a fair bit on which game/exercise I’m doing.
and may I just say TOASTITES YOU ARE ALL THE BEST BECAUSE YOU ARE FULL OF GOOD IDEAS ALL OF THE TIME.
*genuflects*
yes try everything! I used to hate all fitness and now it’s like my life, but it’s been about 5 years of half assed efforts, plus 5 years of pretty consistent but random assortments of things, to the past year of injury recovery, to where I am now. I think that you are already ahead of the game – walking is super good for you. I would see if you can try zumba (hilarity, often with post-menopausal ladies), or yoga, near you (try and go somewhere community-oriented over somewhere beautiful fit body oriented, the approach I find less helpful, personally). 20 min yoga from yogadownload is my go to. Try any and every free fitness thing. I think probably I have intense paranoia of my bones deteriorating (genetics and existing feelings in joints predict this) so I do strength training and yoga for that. I got a trainer when I started, which was good, and I used her program for years. Often university gyms are open to the public, (if it’s a big school), and are cheaper, and less sketchy about memberships, if you want to try that. Or the RA center in Ottawa, definitely full of old people (which I somehow find less intimidating).
Late arriving, but I love Neila Rey’s site. Her workouts can be done entirely indoors, and most don’t need equipment. The 30 Days of HIIT looks pretty easy, but it left me panting on the floor almost every day, and I felt like I got a lot fitter really fast, albeit not without some effort. There’s enough variation in her routines that you’re unlikely to get bored.
I also did a 100×100 challenge that helped me develop discipline: Do 100 reps of situps, squats, or pushups each day for 100 days. I broke most of them (especially the pushups) into sets, but it was really helpful to have a sense that I had do to that one thing every day regardless of whether I did other exercise. Something like that might work for you too.
The only thing that works for me is doing things a) with other people b) that I enjoy c) where I am learning something. Judo I love, running makes me want to shoot myself in the face, it’s sooo boring. I’m capable of a certain amount of suffering if I’m not bored.
If you find something you enjoy enough to do it semi-frequently/ continuously, your fitness will get better. You are not actually required to be the best (or even particularly good) at any fitness activity, especially when you’re just starting.
The other thing that helps me is to turn workouts from an option to a default- e.g. “do I go to practice today” vs. “It is Thursday, I go to practice.”
The bad: I had big Labor Day plans of hiking a mountain and enjoying the beach, but I’ve been holed up sick instead.
The good: I got a cat on Saturday! Her name is Lucy, and as soon as I get the photos on my computer I’ll participate in the next Cat Thread. She is all legs and tail and it’s hilarious.
For now, I’m watching Thelma and Louise, because I am a bad misandrist and have never seen it before.
YAY for new kitty! The other day I was at a pet store which partners with the local humane society and houses some of the cats up for adoption. There was a gorgeous lady-cat with a sign on her cage which said “I am scared and may bite!” and I fell in love. (Un?)fortunately my husband was there to remind me that we already have 2 cats and 2 rabbits.
My Humane Society was offering an adoption special on adult cats who needed to be the only pets at home. How can you say no to that? I feel guilty about all the ones I left there.
Getting a cat just in time to be stuck inside sick is some next-level planning. I hope you feel better soon, and think what good bonding time this is!
Me too! Meant to hike a mountain, instead caught one of those colds that just doesn’t go away. I have been lying in bed watching the X-Files on Netflix. When I was fifteen that show always sent me into a feminist rage over the way Scully was treated, but now I just don’t care. Also Mulder is really cute. I have become jaded and shallow in my old age.
.
i’ve been in berlin for a week
send water
i think I’m entirely made of glitter and club music
but the Toast’s ads are dramatically better on this side of the ocean
so that’s something
Hey! I’m starting a Masters course soon and I was wondering if you Toasties had any tips for studying and focusing. Or any recommendations for study tools/apps etc. that help you in your studies/more academic areas of life.
I’m planning on taking my notes with Evernote, and recording lectures as well using a dictophone, and using Scrivener to help with essays and research. (Has anyone used Scrivener before? It looks interesting)
Do you guys have any tips for academia and being organised? I only graduated 2 years ago so I’m still quite fresh, but I’ve always been quite disorganised and I find focusing quite difficult when I study on my own.
Dextroamphetamine. No, really. I’m 32 and for the first time in my life, I’m completing tasks on my own.
I use Scrivener. (I write fiction.) It’s awesome. There is a lot to it — so many ways of organizing and arranging things, but you can easily ignore the parts that you aren’t interested in.
I especially like that I can import whatever images or files or what have you that I have collected as research and keep them all together. Also, that you can very easily rearrange segments or merge or split them.
Yeah I see that a lot of fiction writers use it! I’ve seen some examples of it used for academia and one of the key reasons I’m interested in it is because I can keep all my research together, plus lecture notes, and plus comments on the research (I think Scrivener allows you to annotate and write notes, I haven’t fully played with it yet but I saw it mentioned) so I think that’ll be really useful! It’s a bit daunting though, like you said, there are lots of parts to it.
make a system and stick to it. I make term goals (I am a prof now, but the same things apply), and 5 year goals, and them break them down by week, and then break them down by day. The key is to under-goal yourself, so that you will be able to achieve them. And sometimes even surpass them.
I used Pomodoro for task-timing, and various Chrome add-ons to control what sites I can visit when, so I didn’t spend paper-writing time on Tumblr.
I think there’s been a recent study (vague enough for ya?) that says that taking notes by hand is a much more effective method of actually processing what you’re hearing in order to synthesize instead of merely transcribe…of course, the latter may make later studying easier, so, maybe it all balances out?
And good luck!
That sounds really exciting! I would also recommend going to the office hours of all your professors to introduce yourself and to find out if they have any advice on how to succeed at the program, beyond the formal requirements (and doing well in classes). Like how to think about and choose a thesis, whether and how to meet other faculty (besides those who are teaching you), etc.
I just moved back to Chicago and have resolved to actually leave the apartment and meet some people this time. Are there any Chicago Toasties out there who’d like to have a meetup? If there are ~12 of us, we could try to escape from a zombie.
Chicago toastie checking in! (Recently moved here, and really trying to get out of the apartment and meet people, with limited success.) I would definitely try to escape from a zombie.
We’re meeting tomorrow in a small group to plan a larger meetup in the near future. Rogers Park Social, 6 pm, Tuesday, Sept. 2. Check my profile for FB info, and message me!
I will be there! I spoke to liis on FB earlier, but I’ll message you, too, saintemarie7.
Toasties, this is my first ever comment, I’m so glad to finally be here. 😉
I was wondering if any of you lovely people know (or perhaps are) photographers whose work (occasionally) deals with gender and sexuality. We’re putting together a list of photographers like this so we know whose work we might consider using in future exhibits. (Sorry I’m being deliberately vague here.) We do have a lot of names on the list already (it’s a looooong list), but I’m just wondering if there’s any people we’ve missed. 🙂
So… any recommendations?
Welcome! Are you thinking of living photographers or any photographers? Genres, styles etc?
I built a lightbox and downloaded an app and now I can actually take decent pictures of my polymer clay minis!
This remains wonderful.
Wow! I thought that was real before I read that’s it’s polymer clay.
Yeah, that’s impressively/disturbingly appetizing.
I want to eaaaaat it!
I’m so hungry now.
I LOVE MINIATURES. This is fantastic. Oh my gosh, this is so great.
This is the most beautiful thing I have seen all week
Great job!!!
Toasties! I am usually a lurker here but I’m in a situation that could really use the advice of this sensible crowd. Basically, in college, I was bullied by this mean girl, two years older than me, who hated me for no apparent reason and enlisted all her friends to mock me publicly everywhere I went, no matter what I did, until I was too scared to leave my room, let alone make friends. Eventually I dropped out of school because of it. That was about eight years ago.
Now, though, I’m finally re-enrolling in college. Last night, after thinking about it for a long time, I girded my loins and contacted my former bully over Facebook — and she was incredibly nice, and readily agreed to have a conversation with me about what happened! She even suggested we do it over the phone. I just have to pick a time.
So…uh…WHAT SHOULD I SAY??? What should I tell her? What should I ask her? What would YOU ask your former bully, if you were in this situation?
Depends – what are your goals for the conversation? What were your reasons for contacting her?
And, CONGRATULATIONS on re-enrolling!! I hope the rest of your college experiences is as wonderful as your previous one was terrible.
Thank you!!
I think what I really want is validation that it was real, you know? I rarely tell anyone about what happened to me in college, because it’s such a weird story and there’s just no cultural context for it. Everyone was bullied in middle school or high school, but who ever heard of bullying in college? Where’s the It Gets Better video for that? (Yes, “dyke” was one of her favorite insults for me.)
From her reaction on Facebook last night, I get the sense that she’s ready to apologize, which is great. But my main worry is that she’ll be so nice, I’ll be disarmed and charmed into reassuring her (“Oh, it’s okay, no problem, we’re cool!”) and find myself unable to talk seriously about how much she hurt me. It will be tricky to keep my head about me, and not automatically go into people-pleasing mode, you know?
I encourage you to let the silence be awkward and let her scramble for your reassurance. She should be on the back foot, the whole thing is her problem. In the same vein as Miss Manners’ suggestion to respond to offensive people with “Wow.” and nothing more, practice a nice, blank, self-assured “Really.”
Oof. I’m so sorry that happened to you and congratulations for re-enrolling! I just want to say– you do not need her to tell you that it was real. I haven’t been in your exact situation, but I have talked to a former abuser about what happened. I expected that he would apologize. Instead, he said “you believe you were mistreated?!” in this incredulous tone of voice and proceeded to gaslight me. So I hope that your bully does apologize, but in case she doesn’t, don’t take it personally. She bullied you because of her own personal shit, you did nothing to deserve being treated that way, and that’s the truth whether or not she’s self-aware enough to admit it.
Oh, that’s a horrible story! What a jerk. Yeah, I’ve been optimistic, but you’re right — I should definitely prepare for the possibility that it won’t go well. I just have to remind myself that I am, like you, UNSTOPPABLY AWESOME now and she can’t bring me down no matter what.
I would plan for a few different situations, then.
* She is genuinely appalled at what she did and offers an unqualified apology.
* She doesn’t remember how she behaved and is bewildered (or pretends to be) by what you’re accusing her of. (I’ve had that happen.)
* She apologizes, but in a half-assed, “I’m sorry if your feelings were hurt but it’s not really my fault” kind of way.
* She denies everything, and/or starts bullying you again.
If I were you, I would write up a plan for how you want to handle each of these scenarios. That way you won’t feel so uncertain going in. Good luck!!
ETA: I agree with susan_calvin about. Even if she doesn’t admit it, IT WAS REAL. It happened to you, and it was abusive. You are not imagining things. Hold on to that knowledge, no matter what she says.
When in my twenties I was a guest at a wedding. The sister of the groom had bullied me for years in grade school. I had no plans to ever speak with her. But she sat down next to me and started making small talk. I gave her the coldest stare the entire time. Never once smiled at her. I gave her the shortest, coldest answers to her questions. Asked no questions of my own. Made her do all the work. She started sweating but kept at it, trying to be a good host, I guess. She was very uncomfortable. I was relaxed and reveled in having all the power.
Had I known I would get to talk with her, I would have prepared some questions. “How would you describe our interactions when we were in school together?” “How do you think I felt every day walking home from school while you and Donna shouted at me?” “Who mistreated you so badly that you thought it OK to be cruel to me?” “How do you feel about it now?”
I would allow long silences after those questions. And my cold stares would have been no different.
But you are probably not as vindictive as I am. You are probably a nice person. You probably have more kindness in your approach.
Oh man, those are fantastic questions. I think I might use them, especially “How would you describe our interactions?” and “How did you think it made me feel?”
And I am actually the most vindictive motherfucker on the planet, at least in my imagination — I’d go to prison if I ever enacted some of the revenge fantasies I’ve entertained over the years — but since this girl is willing to talk to me, I figure I might as well seize the opportunity. (I would not extend the same mercy to her then-boyfriend, who liked to send me late-night IMs threatening to beat the shit out of me. There are limits.)
I cleared the air with one of my high school nemeses on graduation night, but never got to confront the roommate who forced me to move off campus in college. Deeply convoluted situation–the administration accused me of racism and wouldn’t intervene . If racism is defined as not wanting to have the shit beat out of me by the boyfriend-du-jour of someone of a different race, then yes, sign me right up for some of that. I left, and the boy did end up getting into a physical scrap with the girl who replaced me! Roomie was kicked out of campus housing, and the silence around me was deafening. No apology, no admission of fault. If I could talk to the school it would be all in comic book profanity, but my roommate? I still just want to know where her head was at. Why was she so mad? What would a good roommate situation have looked like for her? And to this day I have no idea.
Goodness, I have no idea what I would say but I’m so impressed that you’re doing this. That takes real strength. I hope the conversation is a positive thing for you. Good luck!
I am SO GLAD for a thread today because I am behind in Toasting and the Friday Open Thread made my browser choke and cry.
So you guys. I have a 3-month-old baby and until last week I had Grand Plans to take her to work with me two days a week. I work at a university, my day is mostly answering e-mail and talking to students, this was going to be great! It was not great. She will not nap. She will not be put down. She will not go in a carrier unless I am standing and/or walking. She is a very messy nurser. So now I’m scrambling to find other places to park her twice a week, which is possible but a pain that involves very long commutes and pumping at work and argh. I know I’m lucky to have options other than daycare but I’m still feeling complainy. And I can’t even really complain about maternity leave policies in my case, because I had the option to take the semester off but decided I couldn’t practically do that, since I’m the one person running my program. Part-time is the most I could do and still feel like we could continue to exist.
Please come complain to me about babies and jobs and daycare and whatever else you’ve got.
I do have a student babysitter lined up for my teaching day, though. Because what are undergraduates for if not cheap and convenient labor.
Can you use or do you have a wrap or sling as opposed to a carrier (some feel like they offer more coverage for nursing)? May be more comfortable for the baby? And I always used a handkerchief or washcloth when nursing to help with the messiness… And could you move your computer around so you could stand for a bit? Maybe try another week or two and see if you two can fall into a routine?
I have both an Ergo and a Moby and she turned on both this week! And the messiness is just an annoyance–she smacks and dribbles and pops off and there’s spraying everywhere. She’s my second, so I’m pretty comfortable with nursing during meetings with a muslin thrown over her. Really, it’s the lack of naps that’s killing me, so maybe we’ll try the office again one she sorts that out.
Oh, Madge, I’m sorry parenthood is so hard right now. You’re still a very fine parent, though. This you know, but a reminder in case you forget: this stage will pass. Babies change their habits every two weeks or so. I hope you’re not over the edge with exhaustion by then, but try to grit your teeth for two weeks. I’ll keep you in my thoughts.
Thanks for the sympathy. I’m so, so much better prepared this time around, because I remember just how short these stretches are, even when they’re crappy. And I have local family to help and some money to throw at the problem right now. I’m just annoyed at myself for being annoyed at the discrepancy between my Grand Plan and the Actual Baby.
Babies love Grand Plans … and foiling them. It’s the only power they have. Make a Grand Plan and watch your infant gleefully shred it.
I also had a Baby Who Would Not Nap or Be Put Down. The most frustrating thing about it was that everyone assumed I was doing it wrong, and that if I just tried X, he would sleep. Guess what? Some babies are just more difficult than other babies. Parents who think they have the right “technique” are actually just parents with easy babies. Based on how you phrased your comment, I think you have a firm grasp on this concept, but I wanted to say it on behalf of my past self. The only thing that helped me was working from home while living with my sister, which is not an option for most women.
THANK YOU. My son would not nap and he still needs very little sleep and I had a judgmental friend who was always very smug about her “skill” at getting her daughter to nap until she had a second who was the AVENGER and who would never nap. And she actually was gracious or stupid enough to admit that she had had feelings of superiority over her parenting skills with her first child.
TRUTH.
A wonderful cousin of mine had a baby after a lifetime of ignoring babies. She was so delighted with her adorable infant that she told me she wanted to have another. I carefully explained that it was almost guaranteed that the next child would be a Difficult Baby. She thought all babies were as easy as hers, sleep anywhere, never cry, eat anything, wait quietly to be fed, no routine required. No, my dear, your child is not typical.
Suck. It is sucky. And hard. I’ve spent the summer trying to work with little to no childcare for my kids. Which means I spent most of my time working at night and now my husband is all, “Wife, what wife?”
School is starting tomorrow and I have the baby in a two-day a week thing. And wouldn’t you know it, a new mom friend, who is new to town needs someone to watch her baby, for almost the entire time my kids are in childcare. I freelance and have some regular jobs. So, I make money, dammit! I’m working. But I also love this lady and I know how much it sucks to be new to a town with no childcare and no family. I gave her the numbers of all the college students I know, but they are all busy. So, I said, “Yes.” BLEH. On the one hand, look at me martyr myself. I could say no. But on the other hand, us ladies gotta help each other.
Ouch. I understand both the urge to help and the urge to protect your work time. I hope some better arrangement presents itself.
Happy Labor Day, Toasties. I hope you all do something festive and seasonally-appropriate: like throwing a brick at a strikebreaker or sabotaging a piece of industrial machinery!
I like you.
We should go caroling door-to-door!
“Now bring us the means of production,
Now bring us the means of production,
Now bring us the means of production,
And bring them right here!
We won’t go until we get them” (etc.)
I’ve already listened to this twice today. Happy Labor Day! http://youtu.be/DwbzxemJZIc
I saw a teenage dirtbag lurking outside a florist and as I got nearer I overheard him telling his friend that working in a nursery has made him appreciate how exquisite the acacias were. Awww!
Also I didnt comment in Mallory’s post about “Which Media Image Expresses Your Sexuality” but I have decided now (ages later) to go for this one:
Im a buffon and it was called “Your Gender Expression In Art”!
D’aww!!
When I went back the other day to visit the local florist where I used to live, I found that she’d hired a really macho-looking young black guy with big muscles and a buzzcut who got super-excited by my drawing of the florist’s dog that I gave her and then spent the entire time showing me pictures he’d taken on his phone of the dog wearing his sunglasses. Tiny bit in love now.
Job hunting in general: bleh (at best)
Job hunting in a city you don’t live in yet but desperately want to move to: A void of hopelessness (at best)
Hello! Happy Labor Day! I’m a mostly-lurker, but I just moved to the Twin Cities and realized this weekend, after moping around pathetically, that I’m not going to magically make friends by smiling at friendly-looking women as I bike past them. Are there any Twin Cities Toasties meetups planned this Fall? Does anyone have any groups, etc. they can recommend?
I don’t live in the Twin Cities, but when I moved to where I’m at now, I went to a Stitch n Bitch. I ended up meeting two of the greatest friends I’ve ever had plus lots of other rad ladies. Mind you, I lucked into an SnB where we sometimes discuss yarn, but we mostly tell dirty stories and are generally unruly in a pub. Maybe there’s a cycling club of some kind you can join?
Yes! I started looking on Meetup.com but was quickly overwhelmed Too Many Choices, and also maybe Feeling Old, both things I need to get over.
We have a facebook group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/530207480428344/ There’s a meetup actually going on RIGHT NOW at Bohemia (that I am not at) that you can check out!
Thanks! Not sure I can make it tonight, but the next one, for sure.
I am probably never going to be a comics artist, but I did more work than usual on my semi-annual “what if I draw so much that I BECOME a good artist?” self-delusional binge, and I am kind of proud of this work!
(Oh, wow, I just looked at the dates of my first posts and it turns out that this is an annual compulsion.)
Anyway. Riot Girl is going to be the best comic ever, in a hundred years when I am good enough to make it.
http://threatquality.com/tag/riot-girl/
I want to read this now please.
Hee, umbrella shields! I would say you’re good enough to make it now, and I would definitely read it.
Happy Labor Day everyone! I was wondering if i could draw on the Toast’s collective wisdom in this thread. I am trying to plan a thru-hike of the Appalachian trail for next year, and I am short on cash. What sort of short term part-time jobs are out there that you guys have tried? I’ve applied for tutoring positions and craigslist jobs to help people in their Etsy shops. I’m trying to get into focus groups and clinical studies but with little success. I already have a full time job so I can only do evenings and weekends, which makes the search a bit harder. Any advice is appreciated!
Get a couple landscape maintenance contracts? Lawnmowing, leaf-raking, pruning, garden weeding etc. If you don’t have a truck to take away debris, you could pay a friend to do it, and work that cost into the contract price. Just have everything tarped on the edge of the property, and make sure it can be picked up sooner than later.
Happy Labor Day, US Toasties!
In honor of the day and of the Ferguson protests, I offer this song. It’s a lesser-known protest song, but I love it, and it seems somehow particularly right for this crowd.
“It Isn’t Nice”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swZGbG7_e3s
Wow! I had the lyrics to that in a songbook I’ve had since I was a teenager but never knew what the melody was like. Excellent, thanks for posting!
Do you guys have any advice for a summer cold? As in… normally I would have tea and soup and rest, but it’s in upper 80s and humid here today and I live on the 3rd floor/attic so my room heats up pretty quickly… right now I am posted up in front of a fan, but that’s not helping the sore head/sore throat/coughing issue.
Also I did take Dayquil but it hasn’t helped yet! Grr
My mother always used to give me lemonade for sore throats. I think the reasoning is that the acid will disinfect your insides and the vitamin C boosts your immune system. I have no idea whether it actually works because my mom is big on old wives’ tales but you can’t go wrong with lemonade during the summer.
Throw in some ginger and honey, and you have something to sooth the sore throat and boost the immune system!
That’s a recipe for a “tea” I love during the winter: a small jar of honey, layered with sliced ginger and sliced lemon. A tablespoon of that in a cup of hot water makes a delicious and very fragrant drink.
I think this is all a sign I should head over to the bookstore for their ginger lemonade… 🙂 Thank you!
Alka Seltzer makes a cold remedy I find more effective than Dayquil. It did the trick for my recent summer cold. I’m sorry you’re sick. Be kind to yourself.
Did my comment get deleted because I included a link? Did I just imagine posting it? Is it going to reappear and make me horribly embarrassed now?
I just moved back to Chicago and have resolved to actually leave the apartment and try to meet some people this time. Are there any Chicago Toasties out there who’d like to have a meetup? I suggested the Trapped in a Room with a Zombie room escape as a potential activity in my last comment attempt, but I’ll let you google it this time, in case the link blocked my comment.
There were some people talking about a possible Chicago meetup at the end of last Friday’s Open Thread if I remember right…
Thanks! I didn’t read all the way to the end of that one.
Verging on TMI, but I’ve had a sinus infection for the last week or so related to a previous one which I was just getting over when my nose was fractured. So, all the swelling from that led to the sinus infection coming back. And today, I’m sneezing and my nose is running and I couldn’t be happier because all the junk that’s been clogging my face and making me miserable is moving! I feel human again. And all the crunchy people I know have converted me to saline sinus rinses.
Saline rinses are the best! I use the squeeze bottle one and it really gets stuff out and moving. Glad you’re feeling better…sinus infections are the bane of my existence!
I am not at the beach today.
This isn’t as bad as it sounds, because I gave up on lying on the nude beach watching an airshow in order to attempt productivity so that I can justify going to a far away cottage for the entire rest of the week. So, productivity! I can do this, right? Maybe?
Arg. I wish my brain understood willlpower and how work leads to rewards.
The air show is sooooooooooo louuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuud though.
I am also working hard today instead of going to the island. Although it seems to have been everyone’s plan, so it’s probably crowded, so I’m probably better off here, crying in front of the Purdue Chicago Style guide.
I can only sort of hear it from my air conditioned bunker.
i’ve been to Hanlon’s for the air show a few times, it’s busier than that beach usually is but not too bad. Though apparently there’s an all day rave on the island too? Which might be making the ferries awful.
Today, toasties, I would like to talk about what I have realised are my quite SCREWED ideas about People of the Past.
And when I say the past, I of course mean 1940-1960, the only proper past. More than a swift clip around the ear, or being sent to bed without a dessert, the magical People of Then have been used to raise me right/send me on an epic guilt-trip (Yes, I’m looking at you grandma…).
Now, without furter ado: People of the Past:
…were always grateful (unlike you)
…respected and obeyed authority
…were serious and responsible
…knew how to milk a cow (cornerstone of society, obvs)
…went to bed early and got op early (#1 sign of moral superiority)
…were always calm
…always chose duty over happiness (a calvinist just came)
…never talked about feelings because they weren’t invented yet.
Now, I know this is nonsense, because people are people through all the ages, but this stuff has still influenced me a lot, to an extent that I always feel inferior to them 🙁
Can anybody
a) either relate to the above feelings
b) or give an antidote tale about Past Dirtbags?
Yours in Spoilt Weakness, E.
I can milk a cow (well, I say that, I can milk a goat and how different can they be, really?), and I never talk about feeilngs and like going to bed early (because I’m a lazy arse). Have I become a historical personage?
I think you better start respecting and obeying authority 😉
That is very much not one of my strong points.
What you describe is the *public persona* of *dominant* portions of society in their time. That is, white Christians above the poverty line. Even those folks experienced ingratitude, disrespect, anti-authority, panic, hedonism. They just didn’t talk about those feelings. Or let any related actions be seen in public. Left out of the discussion are cultures of color, and the very poor. Those were seldom the subject of sermons or literature, so seem invisible at this 21st century vantage point.
Very true, very true indeed.
Yeah bad stuff happened but it was very much hushed up in order to keep up appearances.
I, for one, am extremely extremely grateful that I live now and not in 1950.
Historian of the mid-20th century, reporting for duty!
First of all, the white people of that past were mostly terrible racists, and the ones in the American South embarked on a murderous campaign to put down the civil rights movement and preserve Jim Crow/white supremacy. The ones in the north embarked on a slightly less (but only slightly) murderous campaign to establish residential segregation called “redlining.”
Second of all, the teen pregnancy rate was super high – but the girls generally had to get married, find an illegal abortionist, or give their babies up for adoption in a terribly painful way because of how they were shamed by their families and communities. See The Girls Who Went Away, by Anne Fessler, and almost any book by Rickie Solinger.
Third, most Americans would not have known how to milk cows – the US was well urbanized/suburbanized by 1940.
Re: “serious and responsible” – see all the meltdowns about rock-n-roll, comic books (there were federal hearings about whether comic books were turning The Youth into terrible delinquents, hand to god), and youth culture in general during that time period.
Re: never talked about feelings – mixed. Some feelings (romantic love, for instance) were talked about all the time. Others were expected to be repressed. But this was constantly challenged – see Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl,” for example. When he writes that “the best minds of [his] generation” were destroyed by drugs and despair, that’s the 50s he’s talking about.
Re: “were always calm”: see the internment of Japanese Americans (but not German or Italian Americans) for an example of the results of racial panic among the ruling class.
Re: “Past Dirtbags” – Rebel Without a Cause is the classic, I believe.
Hmm…I just realized by your spelling of “realised” that you’re probably not from the US. Apologies for the US-centric nature of this list – that’s what my academic specialty is. But if you look up stuff on Global ’68, you’ll probably get good background info on the simmering tensions present in other parts of the world in the post-WWII period.
Western Europe here indeed, but still super happy with what you wrote there, much not exactly transferrable, but the intent & intensity definitely is. Now let’s go eat our Brussel Sprouts with gratitude & without complaint 😉
And in a further example of how The Past Was Terrible (my motto as a historian), I’m thankful that now we get to roast our Brussels sprouts (yum) instead of boiling them to within an inch of their lives like they used to, which I’m pretty sure now constitutes a violation of the Geneva Convention.
p.s. Depending on where in W. Europe, 1940-1960 had some first-rate genocide, collaboration, and then denial going on, so there’s that. There was some excellent rear-guard colonial violence happening too.
On the bright side, many W. European states were building robust welfare states during those years (at least post-WWII), so you’ve got that going for you!
Second the suggestion for “The Girls Who Went Away.” It made me understand that whole “We don’t talk about certain things” attitude my grandparents (who I describe as “still live in the 1950s”) have.
Reporting in a little late – but I highly recommend “The Fifties” by David Halberstam. It’s a broad look at what was really going on in the fifties… and how it bears almost no resemblance to our mental image of “the fifties.” Also recommend “Sex in the Heartland” by Beth Bailey.
Thank you, will get on that 🙂
Another humble request: your favourite easy eye makeup tutorials! I’m pretty good at liquid eyeliner but I am mostly useless when it comes to eyeshadow. I can apply a single colour just fine, but the moment I try to blend more than one shade together I fall apart. I have all the brushes and stuff, I just have no idea how to use them.
I don’t watch a lot of tutorials but I will say that Jane Marie taught me everything I know about makeup. Here’s her cat eye, eyeliner, and eyeshadow tutorial videos. They are super easy to understand and now I can put 3-4 colors on my eyes at once and walk around looking like a glamorous bird of paradise (before these videos I couldn’t even do one color properly).
I get the l’oreal eyeshadow quads and follow the diagram on the back of the box, which generally turns out pretty okay, I think.
I am using my day off to drink beer and panic about health insurance. But I am doing it in the huge, beautiful Victorian I am house-sitting, so it could be worse.
P.S. If anyone knows anything about advocating for yourself when dealing with health insurance companies, your assistance would be greatly appreciated.
My technique usuallly involves procrastination and a lot of tears, so I’m hoping someone has a more useful suggestion that I can implement.
Learn the key words. These are the phrases you must use to unlock the benefits and approvals. Here’s how to find the magic keys.
Call the insurance company’s 800 number. Do not identify yourself. You just have general questions about their policies. Maybe you’re shopping after getting a new job. Ask what is and is not covered for [insert your diagnosis here]. Write down the phrases they use. You must use these same phrases when pursuing benefits.
For instance, a woman who wants breast reduction knows it is sometimes covered by insurance when it is a solution to back pain. Learn the phrasing used by the insurer and get your doc to write those words in your chart to describe your back pain. Complain about that pain every time you see the doc, even for unrelated stuff. Now you have a medical records trail to support your claim.
Yes! RoseCamelia’s advice is spot on: You want a record of everything. To continue her example of breast reduction, get documentation of any skin disturbances, and get prescription treatment for them. Know what your insurance company’s guidelines for the procedure are, and compare them to national recommendations (back pain, skin disruption, bra strap grooving, removing enough tissue to meet the Schnur guidelines).
The insurance company will have its own definition of medical necessity; know this and use it. If the insurance company continues to jerk you around, you can request an Independent External Review (depending on the state, the insurance company can be required by law to grant you this). This means your claim will be sent to be reviewed by an independent physician. The physician can provide a recommendation that is not binding, but may help your case. You can continue to appeal any adverse decisions up to the Federal External Review level, which is binding.
Basically, just make a nuisance of yourself, be familiar with the plan language, and threaten to escalate if you are not getting what you want.
I climbed the easiest ascent possible at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary this morning in the hopes of seeing hundreds of raptors soaring southward with the thermals. Well, it wasn’t very birdy – migration season has just begun – but I did manage to amuse myself anyway:
Group #1 at overlook: “We flushed two ruffed grouse on the way up!”
Group #2: “we startled a doe and her fawns!”
Me (to myself): “i think i heard a chipmunk…”
Despite my city girl spotting skills, and thanks to the great HM staff and trainees present, I did manage to see a merlin. Yes, a Merlin.
Merlins are pretty!
There’s this young woman I’m friends with — not really close friends, we’ve occasionally met up to go to things of mutual interest and we’ll have a coffee together when we run into each other at the same university. But we have always got on and I like her. Anyway she’s getting more and more successful and influential as a right-wing columnist and TV pundit and I’m really struggling with the idea of continuing to be friends with her when she keeps posting links on her facebook to her articles in which she argues that the concept of human rights is stupid, that zero hours contracts are not exploitative, etc.
She is from a very wealthy family with strong links to the political and social elite and lives in a big flat in one of the most expensive parts of London which has been bought with family money. I can’t help thinking that — whatever her intentions — she’s just an incredibly privileged person with no real wish to understand the daily struggles that face so many people and is using her career to consolidate the position of people of her class. I do have conservative friends but the way she is having such a direct influence in spreading views that I think are fundamentally irresponsible makes me really uncomfortable. I knew that she had political views that opposed mine and was nevertheless able to compartmentalize and be pleased for her that she was starting to make a success of her career. But the louder her voice becomes on such matters, the less I can compartmentalize my friendship with her.
Anyway…I guess…I am just really troubled and sad about all this.
I’d appreciate advice or comments from people. Particularly if they have had an analogous experience.
As far as cutting off relationships with people who are not great goes, this is the best advice I’ve been given: if you were meeting this person for the first time now, as opposed to whenever you met in the past, would you be friends with her?
Oh, oof. I also have conservative friends and our general policy is to just not talk politics except on the topics we agree upon – of which there are several – but this sounds like she is fundamentally opposed to you on moral as well as political issues. I would probably just do a slow drift away from her. If you already don’t see her often, it sounds like it would easy to just not invite her to those things of mutual interest and cut down on the coffee dates. And you can unsubscribe to her on Facebook (as opposed to unfriending her) so you don’t have to see her posts, if they’re making you too upset.
Alternatively, you could transform your friendship into one where political discussions/arguments are central, and try to change her mind on some of these issues. It sounds like you don’t think that’s possible, but maybe? It would definitely be the more open thing to do and if she was a close friend, that’s definitely what I would do, but since she’s more of an acquaintance it seems like it would be high risk for little reward.
Thank you v much to you both for the advice. I guess the answer to EPWordsnatcher’s question is ‘Probably no’.
I do have several v good friends who are conservative and one of them in particular – we have lots of political discussions and I really enjoy them because I think we both really help to sharpen each other’s critical thinking. It also helps that I think our principles our not all that dissimilar, but we disagree on how to achieve them. Something I feel is less the case with her.
You’re right, safvn, I think unfollowing her on facebook will help because I won’t then be constantly confronted with her political views and how far she’s managing to disseminate them. It would be impossible to change her mind in any meaningful way — she is too ensconced in that world and is a fully paid-up member of it. I think yeah it’s definitely possible to deliberately lose touch with her if I wanted to. As you say she’s not a close friend. But nevertheless the loss of any friendship is painful and I’m loath to do that. Perhaps if I unfollow her and avoid her media presence, I could still be friends with her. But I guess, truth be told, I feel a bit differently about her now that I think she has a direct and negative influence on the lives of vulnerable people. I’ve generally always managed to maintain good friendships with people of opposing views and felt I was the richer for it — it’s a bit of a shock to find I’m really struggling with it in this case.
I have family members who espouse truly hateful beliefs. Every time I see a such a post on FB, I make a donation to counter it. Planned Parenthood got 2 checks from me last month because Drunken Uncle insists on posting his opinion on what women should do with their bodies. The local human society got a check because my cousin declined to spay and neuter her new *outdoor* kittens, even after I offered to pay for it. ::sigh::
So if you keep in touch, you could use her as a reminder to support the good guys.
I like your style!
I asked for advice and thoughts on a couple different things in Open Threads over the last few weeks, and here are updates in case anyone was wondering:
My sister’s boyfriend doing a crappy “I’m going on vacation and when I get back I’ll tell you if I decided to break up with you or not” thing: apparently his concern was that they hadn’t talked about whether it was serious or not. And it turned out that they both want it to be! So all is well there.
My Man I Live With fiddling with his brains meds: the one he’s on now seems to be doing well, with neither assholish nor lethargic side effects. Doctor is responsive to feedback and they are meeting regularly to discuss and refine. This is also good.
Yay for things getting better than they were.
Glad things are looking up! (And may I just say how much I like your username.)
These are nice updates indeed. 🙂 May things continue in the general better direction!
I have a super awesome and abundant CSA full of All The Summer Produce so I made Dad’s Ratatouille last night and it is delicious and highly recommended.
Please share other delicious summer produce recipes!
Fridge-Clearing Minestrone:
1. Swear that this week you will exhibit self-control at the farmer’s market.
2. Fail to exhibit even a modicum of self-control at the farmer’s market and stagger home with 15 pounds of vegetables
3. Eat nothing but corn on the cob for dinner for three days straight.
4. Look in fridge, panic. Clean and chop everything (in this case onions, garlic, carrots, new potatoes, green beans, kale, pattypan squash, kohlrabi; YMMV).
5. Saute onion in olive oil until softened, add garlic for a minute or so.
6. Add remaining veg and pour broth over top until covered. Open a can of beans (I like little white ones) and throw them in. Find a parmesan rind in your cheese drawer and throw that in too. Season with salt & pepper to taste.
7. Turn heat up and DO NOT WANDER OFF TO CHECK FACEBOOK as you let it come just to a boil. Turn heat down and partially cover, let simmer for about 45 minutes or until veg are tender.
8. Find the tail end of a jar of pesto in the fridge, throw that in and let sit for a few more minutes
9. Serve with wine and crusty bread if you prefer, something else if you don’t.
10. Return to farmer’s market three days later, repeat.
Fail to exhibit even a modicum of self-control at the farmer’s market
Eat nothing but corn on the cob for dinner for three days straight
Are you me?
The soup sounds delicious! Good call. Kohlrabi is interesting, I hadn’t considered that. I haven’t ever had it cooked. But I have been LOVING it raw in spring rolls, which are another good recipe for using up produce. (That’s my farm blog!)
Kohlrabi is great in soups and stews as it retains a nice texture when cooked and doesn’t have an overpowering flavour. I always forget about eating it raw though, and those wraps and that grilled pork look superb! That’s definitely going on the meal planning list.
I just got tickets to go to the Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin in November. So excited! Anyone else going or thinking of going? I only have passes for Saturday because the only reason we want to go is to see Gary Numan. Yay!
RED ALERT: Natalie Dormer has been made aware of the Toast: https://screen.yahoo.com/yahoo-ed-myself-natalie-…
This makes my crush on her awkward.
Hi, Natalie! Call me! My husband doesn’t mind.
How do I get to Bondi beach?
I love her so much.
My god, that woman.
I have been sitting here for awhile trying to think of something not inappropriate to say but I’m at a loss.
Hope everyone’s having a sweet and nonproductive labor day. I had a great morning yesterday, walked to shopping and did biceps curls with my groceries on the way home, did a load of wash, and then learned that my computer’s dying. At this point I’m resigned to the fact that there’s a sort of cleansing going on in my life, things and people shifting in their placement and quantity, but I really want to work, to have a safe, very small home with the teeniest garden, and to have some friends to occasionally visit and have a cup of coffee with. Without those things I’ve begun to really hate opening my eyes in the morning. I’m raising a glass of grody Crystal Light iced tea to the notion that this will all come to pass in September, and going back to do more biceps curls.
Tried to go to bed early and get up early and be productive. Instead was up until 3 am having revenge fantasies about someone who did something malicious and destructive to me fully a year ago.
Am a terrible person.
What? There are people who get over things like that in just one year?
I’m definitely a terrible person, then. 😉
It’s not so much the not being over it (fine, reasonable) as the revenge fantasies that are so strong I can’t go to sleep (seems creepy, also kind of horrific.)
I aspire to be the kind of person who lets shit go when it happens. I think Nicole’s spiritual teacher probably would just move on and never look back. I wouldn’t be mad at myself if I weren’t over it, though. I’m pretty mad at myself that I am – mentally, at least – actively participating in keeping it alive. 🙁
To truly let shit go, you have to truly feel it first. Otherwise it’s just spiritual bypassing. I’m not saying to wallow or cultivate hurt feelings, but in my experience, it works better to acknowledge my feelings first, before trying to get over it.
I’m a big fan of writing a letter that I’ll never send (ritual burning optional) to the person I’m mad at. Something about putting all of my pain and grief and rage, etc, on paper helps me to let it go.
One more thing – if you’re having revenge fantasies, maybe try doing something to get them out of your head and into some kind of form, so your subconscious doesn’t have to keep rehearsing them. Write them down, make art that represents them, destroy something the person you’re mad at gave you, etc. For me, ripping up the photo of an abusive relative was incredibly cathartic, and it lessened my nightmares.
I think it’s only natural. I’ve done similar things before. Maybe forgiving yourself for doing that might actually help you to let these feelings go?
Also, this is kind of a weird and maybe a not un-problematic way of thinking but I find it helps sometimes saying inside: “I won’t let you still affect my mental well-being you bastard!”
I think you need a dartboard. Do you have a dartboard?
I struggled a LOT with revenge fantasies this year, and my therapist and I worked out some techniques to help me deal with them. Besides the usual like writing, sports, venting, and the simple passage of time, I ended up printing out some pictures and throwing sharp things at them. Eh, it helped. What also helped was allowing my revenge fantasies to exist for a time. I told myself that I don’t care if revenge is never a healthy solution, I am going to plot these horrible things anyway because it makes me feel better! Eventually, the worst of it passed and the urge to commit terrible acts slowly disappeared. There was really nothing to do but suffer it for a while, much as I wished I could just move on. I did eventually, and so will you.
All available evidence (i.e. my memory of your comments here and on The Hairpin, could probably confirm if I went and looked them up) suggests that you are, in fact, great, smart, and brave.
Is it possible that your brain is doing something to you again (something different / newly shitty) that should be looked into?
Oh, Toasties. It seems like there isn’t enough sleep! There are so many things that I need to do; thank God today is a holiday here in the states.
What do Toasties do when it is difficult to get out of bed and do things, both important and not-that-important?
Stay in bed, eating Pop-Tarts and reading.
(sorry, not that helpful)
Luckily, I can’t eat gluten so Pop-Tarts are right out.
But your response did make me have a wry smile.
I make a list the night before of what I have to do, in chronological order, and in as much detail as possible. When I wake up in the morning, I leap out of bed and slap myself in the face. Then I cross that off the list and move on to the next item.
Spend the day open-threading on The-Toast.
I got up early, drank coffee and read the new InStyle, then spent 45 minutes at the car wash, cleaning the minivan inside and out. Then I came home and did yard work for two hours, all of this done while wearing my Toast shirt.
What I’m trying to say is that I’ve picked up a lot of life tips from Dad Magazine.
Of the good: I’ve done limited socializing all summer due to most friends being away, and now I’ve been out 4 nights last week and already plan on 4 this week. I’m enjoying saying yes more than no and liking it while it lasts (my budget maybe likes it less so).
Of the less good: Yesterday, my friend heard some terrible news about her family that left her in tears at our coffee shop. I was worried because she is a very ‘go with the flow’ type of person, so I didn’t want to try distracting her if she really wanted to just go home and be alone for a bit. I don’t know if I did the right thing because she would never say otherwise, but it seemed like she felt better after we went back to mine to have carry out and watch a silly vampire movie (Vampire Academy is perfect for mocking). She went to class today and is planning on going to a cookout with me tonight. I feel so bad and want to make her feel better any way I can. I’m bad at letting people cry on my shoulder and instead crack jokes until they stop crying, so I just hope distracting her is enough for now.
I know everybody deals with it differently, but during tough times I far prefer hanging out with the friends who crack jokes than the ones who just look at me like they think I’m going to collapse in tears at any second, so the distraction tactic gets a thumbs-up from me.
Dating question: I’ve been going on lots of dates via okc, and there are a fair number of guys that I have some things in common with and seem kind and moderately attractive, but whom I just haven’t found to be very interesting (Murphy’s Law, of course these seem to be the guys who are most interested in me). I’m shy myself a lot of the time, and empathetic to a fault, so I hate to say no to further dates with these men, because I want to give them a chance to come out of their shell. But how many dates is enough of a chance? 2? 3? More? I don’t want to lead anyone on either!
I think the common rule is 2 dates, as the first one is just a “meeting” to make sure the other person isn’t a murderer, and then the second is a “date”.
Do you enjoy this person? Is it likely you will enjoy this person on one more date? I would quit after 2 dates. But I’m not known for patience. But the right person for you will not require patience. Rubbing my patience the wrong way is a reliable indicator of future incompatibility.
I agree with RoseCamelia that two dates seems fair. Three tops. If it’s still not clicking after that it’s just time to move on.
Here’s the view from where I’ve been swimming most warm mornings (including this morning) this summer. Today was the last day. God, I’ll miss it.
My outdoor pool of the summer just closed, too. Tears. That was the best part of the summer.
Sooo…Bill Clinton is going to be in town tomorrow for a political thing. I signed up for a ticket, because generally the rest of the country forgets we exist up here. But I’m undecided about actually going. I shook the dude’s hand once when he was still president, and this would be an awful lot of standing around in a crowd to har a stump speech.
What say thee toaters, go or stay home?
He’s a very fine speaker. Entertaining. Riveting, even. You will have a good time. Can’t believe a word he says, though. But you will have a good time.
I just got my first “Smile!” from a dude on the street. The first, in my life!
I was biking by and he was shouting something at someone else, so I looked over, and then he was like “Not you, miss,” and then immediately followed it up with a “Why the long face? Smile! You should smile more!” at which point I was already biking through the intersection and just shouted something non-committal over my shoulder about not being there for his fucking entertainment.
Rite of passage! Achievement unlocked!
My housemate thought she was about to get catcalled, late at night walking home as a guy slowed his motorbike and yelled ‘hey! nice-‘ but it ended with ‘NICE GLOCKENSPIEL’, which she was carrying, so that was nice.
ACCEPTABLE
I have a shirt that says “Rock out with your glock out”, with a picture of a glockenspiel.
Just thought I’d mention it.
I am a bit late here, I know, but I just read the Guardian online and thought it might be interesting to read Will Self’s article on Crossrail (http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/02/-sp-crossrail-will-self-london-railway-bankers). However, I stopped being interested when reading “the grands projets of the built environment have a tendency to be pushed forward by a distinctively masculine combination of grandiosity, obsessive single-mindedness and either brute or mechanical strength”, just after the author mentioning that, yes, he had seen several female engineers, but “I suspect these are the exceptions that prove the rule”.
I am a female engineer working on that sort of project. My colleagues, my generally non-reflecting, narrow-minded, male engineer colleagues, do NOT treat me, or the other females, as exceptions (not the least since a third of us are female). I don’t live in the UK, but nothing makes me believe that this isn’t just a way to get in a few “amusing” lines about how the whole thing is very “phallic” (they have drills with female names! so a female phallus?). End of angry rant. Back to engineering.
We discussed the teachers' union negotiations for my city and the fact that they've been in a wage freeze for almost a decade! And we discussed my very ineffectual union! Solidarity.
But I forgot to sing my union organizing songs.
Oh gosh, me too. It feels pretty bad in the moment, doesn't it!
Clara Tiddlesworth! Please let's be friends!