Toasties. Spicy hurts so bad but so good. Red wine with Thai beef. Life is short, enjoy the things. All of them. Tell me about your spicy things. And butter your toast.
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
Toasties. Spicy hurts so bad but so good. Red wine with Thai beef. Life is short, enjoy the things. All of them. Tell me about your spicy things. And butter your toast.
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
This Week in My Horrid, Sexist Boss: We had a meeting at a local college with the new dean of the skilled trades faculty (so: welding, auto mechanics, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, etc.), and she was extremely no-nonsense and curt. Which is fine, because I imagine she has a very low bullshit tolerance when it comes to slimy, gross salespeople like my boss trying to sell her shit.
My boss’s response, was MULTIPLE TIMES, calling her “just a good Irish girl” (she is in her forties, at least, and not a “girl” you fucking fuckhead) and saying “Well, she’s a woman in a male-dominated industry, she probably thinks she has something to prove.” NO, she just has a Bullshit Detector for IDIOTS LIKE YOU and does not suffer fools (and gross smarmy salespeople) gladly! Jesus Christ I hate him. Applying for new jobs is so soul-suckingly awful, and the total lack of interviews is killing my spirit.
Same here in re: lack of interviews and applying for jobs. Also soul sucking: having a bunch of results on indeed from the keywords you searched and then having like, one result max that actually is what you’re looking for and that doesn’t have ridiculous requirements.
Which job area are you looking for? I work in architecture, which is one of the worst fields ever to try to online job search (thanks software architects!)- even if, for example, your husband works at said job search engine and you can complain directly to the people in charge of search quality. I found it was most helpful to search for the software platforms I use most often, as those have more unique names than my actual job titles functions.
I work in/am looking for a new job in data and content management, and talk about a field of meaningless job titles.
Do you have two other female coworkers who could assist you in some 9-to-5-style vengeance?
Seriously though, I’m sorry, that situation sounds awful. This is probably terrible advice and I am a terrible employee/person, but if you are VERY sure you won’t get caught, I recommend using your employer’s time to look for new jobs (like maybe searching for jobs on your phone using your data instead of the work wireless?). It is very satisfactory in a petty sort of way, and it tempers the soul-sucking slightly to know that your employer is (unbeknownst to him) paying you to find other work.
Do not tell A Business Lady I said this. I’ll see myself out now.
I am a terrible employee and I already look for jobs on my employer’s time and have done so for MONTHS. #longhairdon’tcare
Additionally, if we’re discussing food that hurts so bad, please tell me I’m not the only one who has eaten half a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips until the inside of my mouth sloughed off. Or eaten Doritos that actually cut my tongue. (Why did 3D Doritos get discontinued? WHY?)
Let’s talk about Food That Hurts.
Sometimes I eat so many Sour Patch Kids that my whole face starts tingling. That’s… probably bad? WHATEVER SOUR PATCH KIDS 4 LIFE
Agreed, Sour Patch Kids are the best, and the only way to eat them is to eat the entire box in one sitting, even when it starts to feel like the insides of your cheeks and the surface of your tongue are covered in little stinging cuts.
P.S. Also, if you like Sour Patch Kids, then, at some point in your life, you should try Fazer Missä X. It’s Finnish, but you can get it through various channels, including eBay. It’s like Sour Patch Kids, but with less citric acid (sour) and more ammonium chloride (salty licorice) flavor. Most people outside of the Nordic countries don’t like the taste of salty licorice, because it’s very strong on its own – but combined with the gummy Sour Patch Kid base, it becomes this wondrous sweet-salty-sour combo that’s really hard to describe, but really good.
I lived in Finland for two years (I LOVE your name, by the way!) and love salmiakki!!! I miss it SO much. The gray-black ice cream, the Tyrkisk Peber candies with the SPICY part….UGH, it’s not FAIR that I couldn’t live there forever, gorging myself on that and all the wonderful Finnish food. I never had that particular Fazer candy either; I’m going to have to insist that we go through Finland the next time we visit the ILs on the other side of the world, so that I can.
oh my goodness. that candy sounds like it needs to be part of my life. thanks for the intel!
In junior high and high school I used to eat entire rolls of Spree and SweetTarts in one sitting, resulting not only in destroyed taste buds but also in major stomachaches that lasted for HOURS.
(It was so worth it.)
My coping strategy for pre-debate-nerves in high school was to eat an entire bag of chewy Sprees on the trip there. Then when I got to the debate meet and was nauseous, I couldn’t tell if it was nerves or the side effects of eating an entire bag of chewy Sprees, and somehow that made it okay.
Decoy nausea – I like it!
HURTS SO GOOD THOUGH. The roof of my mouth starts hurting just thinking of it but they’re so TASTY.
In elementary school, I would eat Warheads all day and they destroyed the roof of my mouth. Also, Cap’n Crunch will fuck up your mouth.
My hard palate is currently in ribbons from a captain crunch week 🙁
There’s a local burger place that makes a real 5-alarm burger with raw habeneros and it makes me cry. And I love it.
They make these salt and vinegar rice cakes and the flavouring is so strong and I ate so many of them that my mouth was tingly for two days.
salt and vinegar chips are my downful. i eat and eat and eat, even as it hurts so bad it tastes so good
The butter chicken panini I had on Wednesday was spicy enough to make my tongue sore, but it came with a strawberry fruit leather thing, so that counteracted the spiciness pretty well. I think it would have been better if the spinach had been more evenly distributed in the sandwich.
Sour Worms. I LOVE them, they are eternally perfect, but eat too many and your mouth will feel like it has been stabbed all over.
Lollipops! All that sugary tongue scraping!
Tootsie Pops!
there’s this cereal my mom gets- Puffins, I think it’s called? – that’s really good but it doesn’t ever get mushy so my mouth always feels a little beat up after I eat it
I bought Puffins exactly once for this reason. It chewed up my mouth SO BAD.
When my partner and I get pho, I always get the vegetarian version which has yummy veggies and tofu but broth that is … not the most tasty. So I LOAD it with sriracha. However, the slight slurping required to eat pho means the sriracha-ness hits me right at the back of the throat, causing burning and spluttering and eye-watering. My partner always looks at me like I’m crazy when I finish a coughing fit and gasp “Needs…more…sriracha.”
HURTS SO GOOD.
YES. *fist-bump*
Oh my goddd. My brother-in-law eats pho with like 20 megatons of sriracha and all kinds of incredibly hot nonsense. So we’ll be eating dinner and I have filled mine with like, an entire lime of lime juice (mmm) and everyone else is eating pho with an assortment of stuff, and then my b-i-l is eating what is basically a bowl of sriracha sauce with meat bits in it. And sweating like crazy and watering eyes and we finish and he goes “That was so good.” HOW????
Big Red gum is my favorite, and every time I buy it, about 2/3 of the way through the pack my mouth begins to burn and my tongue begins to feel scraped, but god damn I love that fucking gum and will soldier on through a few more days of cinnamony pain. And every time I buy a pack I know this will happen, and I don’t care.
Before they discontinued them, I used to eat entire tins of sour Altoids! They were SO GOOD but the roof of my mouth would feel weird for days afterward.
…I maybe see why they discontinued them.
Yes, yes, sour Altoids! So delicious.
For that matter, I don’t even know whether they make these anymore, but the ginger Altoids were incredible. I could eat an entire tin of those in a sitting. Hurts so good.
More than once in my life, I have called a tin of ginger Altoids “dinner.”
So. Good.
They need to make clove Altoids! Who’s with me? (Surely I’m not the only one who loves clove-flavored olde fashionede harde candye???) I actually emailed Altoids on their customer comment website area once, telling them that clove needed to be the next flavor. I was, as you can tell, unsuccessful. Hmmph.
In reverent memoriam to my favorite malic-acid coated candy, I tote my bookdarts around in an old sour raspberry altoids tin. The pangs of loss are offset by the large number of people who ask for a piece of candy while I’m reading and are then befuddled when I lift the lid and reveal the payload of metal shards.
Never not burning the roof of my mouth with pizza.
Sure, I could wait for it to cool, I guess.
I’m hoping that one day the little triangle of the roof of my mouth behind my two front teeth will be all nerve-less scar tissue and I can finally eat too hot pizza in peace. Dental/Medical Toastrons, please don’t tell me that this isn’t possible. I just want to believe.
Dreaming the dream there. Dreaming the dream.
My friend’s rehearsal dinner was held at a delicious wood-fired pizza place, and they kept bringing out fresh-baked pizzas throughout the evening, meaning that all my conversations were frequently, and liberally, punctuated by ‘ow ow ow hot pizza hot pizza ow.’
No regrets.
Okay good I’m not the only person with mouth-slough-off disorder.
A few years ago Brach’s sold this licensed candy made with soda syrup–Dr. Pepper, 7-Up, Orange Crush, A&W. It had an extremely hard outer shell, jawbreaker hard, and within was a core of a very sticky sort of soda goo, with almost exactly the texture of fresh epoxy.
So you ground down your molars on this candy (it was like chewing a marble), and then suddenly it shattered, sending hard candy shrapnel to every crevice of your teeth, and now your jaws were glued together by the exposed soda goo. You could pull a mouth muscle or rip out a filling if you weren’t careful.
As a bonus, the Orange Crush and 7-Up flavors were extremely acidic, and they raised sores on every soft part of your mouth. Eating half a pack of Soda Poppers meant a week of constant oral pain.
God help me, I loved those demon candies. Thank heaven Brach’s discontinued them for some reason, or I wouldn’t have a mouth left.
I have never heard of these before but want some desperately now.
I know, right?
Me too, so badly.
It’s not a real sushi-fest for me unless and until my sinuses are fried and my eyes water from the wasabi. Mmmm, wasabi…
There is a burrito that I can no longer get (I moved away) but I have had recurring dreams about because I love it so. Spicy pulled pork on a jalapeno wrap with all the fixings including a heap of Izzo’s Illegal Sauce. It is bad news bears 8 hours later (oh god, the pain!) but man, I’m about to drive the 22 hours to the nearest location that makes them just thinking about it.
I once ate so many Sour Patch Kids that the next morning my tongue was peeling. Luckily I had a friend with me, and her tongue was also peeling, so neither of us were alone in our shame and disgust. I have never eaten that many Sour Patch Kids in one sitting again, but I fear I have come pretty close.
I like putting so much sriracha in my pho (and also the jalapenos they give me) that it makes my mouth burn.
Tom Yum soup. The kind so spicy it makes you cough and your nose run.
You stopped after half a bag?
I can’t have those things in the house because it would get all Reality TV intervention, speedily.
FRIDAY CAT THREAD
Bonnys favourite place in the world is currently this box on top of the wardrobe.
And Anne has been enjoying a lot of lap time.
With the colder weather, I have been sitting under blankets a lot. Bonny likes to join me under there, and will sit and stare at me until I lift the blanket and allow her to cuddle up. So cute.
Finally, a picture of Moxie not making a silly face!
I love this picture so much.
aaaaa it looks like greenscreen I love it
Cute kitty on a leash! I love cats who love leashes and outdoor walks.
He adores his leash walks. He starts purring the moment I pick it up. He’s only recently started going on real walks, though. Originally, he didn’t want to leave the yard and I could maybe get him to go a few houses down. It turns out he just doesn’t really like walking along the road. If I pick him up and take him to the wooded area at the end of the block he will walk quite happily.
Just repost this pic every week. Actually, just include it in every comment you make here. Forever. It’s that wonderful.
I am having difficulty coping with how cute your dustbunny cat is. I need to go and lie down in a darknened room now to recover.
She’s so lovely!
This is probably one of the best “lookit my kitten” pictures I have ever seen. SO PERFECT.
The back of the couch is a great place to sleep for 17 hours.
Does your cat ever sleep with its eyes open? Just the weird membrance over the eyeball? Anne and Bonny do that and it’s weeeeeeird.
She doesn’t. Mr Mac did however. I would wake him up if I saw it because that’s too freaky.
god, and then they start dreaming or twitching in their sleep, and you have this cat with white eyes, whiskers, ears, eyes, paws, tail all jerking about… and yeah, I wake them up. They always go ‘Brrrrp!?!’ and glare at me.
This looks like my cat only it’s 17 hours on a pile of pillows on my bed! SO CUTE.
Diesel also does the blankets thing. It is my favorite of his quirks.
Meneer Klaas-Jan Huntelaar in the suitcase I left out, and then under a blanket (he loves sleeping under blankets for a few hours, then getting out and sleeping on the floor.)
Ahahahah the little paw sticking out! Am ded.
he does that a lot and it is ADORABLE.
It’s not exactly cold here, but mine have been snugglier:
Vegas is getting ready for Halloween:
Here’s Kismet on her chair (complete with handmade Toast pillow)
and as a bonus my aunt’s cat Tux inside of his cube
Kismet is a stunner! And the pillow – fantastic.
THOSE CATS. THAT PILLOW. <3
What a *beautiful* cat Kismet is!!
I had leftover prawn crackers for breakfast yesterday and every time I ate one they came galloping over and begged for one.
Saffron went and wriggled under the duvet as soon as I had made the bed this morning and did not come out until it was time for dinner.
I love how dogs try and look sad and unloved when they beg for foods, but cats seem to go for the accusatory, “you are a disappointing human if I don’t get that cracker right now” approach.
Yes, I suppose it’s less ‘begging’ and more ‘demanding with menaces’, isn’t it.
Pittsburgh Toast Meetup Planning Thread, Part Two!
So last week we came up with some great ideas, including some free RADical Days events. I’ve compiled a list of some of the options into this Google document, which should be editable to anyone who has the link. Let me know if that fails to work smoothly for you. My thinking here is that the document will allow for the conversation to happen all in one place rather than over multiple threads, but comments also work too.
Some of these options take place this weekend. We’ll need to decide quickly whether those are feasible!
A PITTSBURGH TOAST MEETUP? Be still my heart *swoon*
katmandu! We are thinking of doing the Natural History/Art Museum tomorrow (=Saturday, Oct 11)! Are you available for that? Alternately we can plan another meetup for a different time as well.
I could do that!
I have added a number of comments to the Google doc with my real initials. Plans changed since the last time we talked and Saturday is better for me after all. I’m probably going to show up at the history museum at some point and it’ll be awesome if someone else can join!
Aha! I was hoping I would be able to edit my comment with updates but I think that is not possible because it has been replied to. So an additional comment it is.
It looks like there’s some interest in the free admission to the Natural History/Art Museum tomorrow, October 11! We are now looking for a time. Plz reply to my main comment rather than this one in case an un-replied-to comment is what makes something editable.
Of course we can plan future meet-ups as well–this does not have to be the only one!
Early afternoon? I will plan to wear my black and white striped shirt with red collar unless it’s too dirty. Can you see my real email address from the Google doc? If so, feel free to email me to work out exact plans. 🙂
(now on a more correct comment instead of in some crazy-ass place!)
Early afternoon works for me! I cannot see your email address from the Google doc, but mine is my handle here at gmail dot com if you (and anyone else!) want to get in touch on this subject!
Drat, I knew this would happen. I wasn’t online for OT and I’m busy today. Have fun! I’ll look at the gdoc for next time.
Sorry you couldn’t make it this week! Shoot me an email at [my username] at gmail dot com and I can add you to the email I’m sending out to everyone who showed up Saturday, because the verdict was that we will definitely be doing it again!
i had a spicy cocktail the other day! it had some kind of jalapeño jam muddled in. it was great. also, buttered bread is one of life’s small joys. it’s so damn comforting.
i’m almost absurdly relieved it’s friday. this week wasn’t terrible or anything, but i’m tired. i spent all last weekend at hardly strictly bluegrass (fun! hot! exhausting! but fun!) and this weekend i just want to be as lazy as possible.
also: i bought bad feminist by our own (!!!) roxane gay this week on a whim and i’ve already devoured half of it and cried on public transportation (and laughed!) and it is so good. so good!
also also: i am also comically excited for the new belle & sebastian album that was announced this week and have watched the “trailer” for it about 15 times already and i don’t want to wait until mid-january, ughhhh.
also also also: i received my first toast post this round! thanks to liz for the beautiful bee poem! i’m sending out my own toast posts this weekend, so y’all better watch out.
tell me what you’re reading and what you’re excited about, toasties!
I just impulse bought Bad Feminist yesterday and I am seriously considering staying in tonight and drinking a bottle of wine by myself and reading the whole thing. Moderation!
that sounds…like exactly what i was planning to do tonight. with a little how to get away with murder and maybe some cheese thrown in.
(How To Get Away With Murder is SO GOOD. I love Shonda)
so far, it’s deliciously good. so much suspense! a diverse cast! and going hand-in-hand with reading bad feminist and the essay “not here to make friends” about unlikeable characters—specifically unlikeable women in fiction and how important they are—i’m really interested in the several unlikeable women in this show and how complex they and their motivations are, thus far!
Chiming in to love all over How to Get Away With Murder!
I have empirically determined that Bad Feminist, as well as being an excellent read, provides effective go-away vibes when trying to have a peaceful glass of wine at an airport bar.
I just read an amazing biography on Frida Kahlo, who is now one of my heroes. I love that she didn’t shut up and sit down about things like sex and pain and depression and racism and classism, in an era when women were expected to suffer silently, even more than they are now. Also she was hilarious,smart and ridiculously talented, and her fashion game was ON. POINT.
Which Kahlo biography, please? And thank you.
This one! http://www.amazon.ca/Frida-A-Biography-Kahlo/dp/0…
I posted below about just having finished Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson (have you read it? come downthread and talk to me!) but I just started Jane Eyre last night! I can’t believe I haven’t read it yet. It is so good, although naturally I don’t expect it to surpass the gloriousness of Villette.
i haven’t read hangsaman but everything else i’ve read by shirley jackson has been delightful and spooky. delightfully spooky!
actually, all of your choices here seem like v. good spooky october reading choices.
I just got Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie… and realized I didn’t really remember how Ancillary Justice ended so I am rereading Ancillary Justice. I am also re-reading the Vorkosigan Saga and just finished Mirror Dance.
Oh my gosh I am going to buy that soon from my local independent sci fi bookstore and I am SO EXCITED.
ANCILLARY SWORD IS OUT???????? You just made my WEEK!
Shiiiiit Ancillary Sword is out already? Time to start harassing the cataloging department!
(Also…Mirror Dance! !!! !!!!!1 Might be my favorite Vorkosigan book.)
My boyfriend found Mirror Dance incredibly distressing because Miles was out of action for so long and Bad Things were happening. I had to assure him that it would all work out okay.
I am reading Lisabeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 for a class and enjoying it fine (although feeling the familiar “where my ladies at?” feeling I get when reading labor/political/economic history because women only Do Culture, apparently, unless they are in a Woman’s Group Campaigning for Something–where did that rant come from?). Also have to read approximately 1 million books before the semester ends and write half a million papers. But! Looking forward to reading Nicola Griffith’s Hild over winter break.
Spicy foot + dads combo story:
One time when I was a little kid (7-8), my dad was making hot pepper jelly. It looked shiny and delicious, so I asked if I could try a bite. My dad says sure, and gets me a spoonful. I put the whole thing in my mouth, and then immediately ask for something to drink, because y’know, hot peppers and what not. After I calm down/get some milk, I ask my dad “Why did you TELL me it was spicy?” His response: “You didn’t ask.”
I want to hear more about the spicy foot.
Aaaaaah and of course it’s too late to edit.
My dad tricked me into trying the hot pepper sauce at Steak ‘n Shake when I was like 9. I was still convinced that I didn’t like spicy food (this is now false) and he swore up and down that it wasn’t that spicy, then handed me a spoonful.
Spoiler: it’s very spicy.
Ugh, this week. My car has decided to need a new battery, which cost means that I’ve had to cancel my trip to rhinebeck. My anxiety levels have been through the roof for other reasons. Blah sucky blah.
In conclusion ,I had a brownie for breakfast. WITH NO SHAME
Noooo, not missing Rhinebeck! If you are on Long Island, I can hook you up with a ride if that would help. I am going with friends on Sunday and we can rearrange cars to fit another crafter.
Aww thankee. I’m much further north though. Which is why it would have had to been a weekend trip. There’s always next year.
A few updates! I made my first full sized pie. Spiced wild blackberry and apple. It was delicious, but ugly.
I was hoping that I’d have good news today about an awful stressful thing that’s hanging over my head but yet again the date it all gets sorted has been pushed back. I don’t want to go into details about it, but I am so frustrated and angry that it gets to lumber on for god knows how long with no consideration for the wreck this is making of my health.
Pie pie pie! Yum.
I hope your awful stressful thing gets a conclusion soon. It’s always so terrible to have things hang around without a seeming end. BUT, your pie looks delicious!! Hooray for baking, at least!
I hope it’s over sooner rather than later, and the result is good. But the worst thing is I’m completely powerless to do anything about it and I just have to wait. And they keep not telling me the date is pushed back til the day of.
Twice, now. It’s been pushed back twice.
I’m so fucking tired.
I went through over a year of that ‘oh well we just pushed it back two months!’ thing and it was bullllllshit but now that it’s over I just toddle along happy as a lark day in and day out la la la.
(Or mostly I do. Life is still life. But it’s aces not having it hanging anymore.)
A couple of times I tried the “stop telling myself it’ll happen on {revised date} & presume {revised date}x3, so I can say oh next fall I will XYZ and THING will be over with” and it helped some. I had to keep reminding myself not to fall for it when they said {revised date} was accurate, so much so that when it finally DID happen, I was in a state of disbelief for weeks.
Good luck. Eat more pie.
I think your delicious looking uglypie just needed some vents cut before you baked it. I hope it helps with the stress regardless.
OMG that is a delightful flavor combination. and your pie is beautiful and golden crusted, not ugly at all!
sorry about the stress thing. hope it gets better soon.
You have described ever pie I have ever made.
I have been a terrible procrastinator lately! I can barely finish assignments on time for school, I’m putting things off at work, and I just can’t seem to get anything done! I don’t have any reason for this.
Does anyone have any tips on not failing at everything? I’m considering buying a helper monkey to follow me around and poke me when I should be working on things.
For me, it depends on the type of procrastination. I seem to have two modes: not really doing anything, and doing a bunch of stuff but avoiding the hard things.
When I’m not doing anything, I noticed that I spend a lot of time thinking about what I should be doing. There’s enough on the list that I’ll think about doing A, but then remember about B. But C is more important. And D has a deadline. And on and on.
I’ve been trying to fight this was forcing myself to work on the first thing that comes to mind, even if its relatively unimportant. If I can get into the mode of *doing * something, rather than just listing things, it’s sometimes easier to keep going on the other tasks as well.
As for avoiding the hard things, I have a to do list of the various subtasks. Then I pick the next items for each project, to go in a Do It Now! list. And I’m not allowed to update that list until they’re all done. (Otherwise I just keep restocking with easy tasks, while the hard ones stay there indefinitely.)
This may have been too complicated for your current state, though. In which case, go do something for five minutes. Maybe you’ll keep going. But even if you don’t, youll have five minutes less work to do.
That’s a great idea! I keep a to-do list, but then I add things and restock things and spend time ordering items that were already in order just to avoid completing anything. I need to make a to-do list and keep it.
And I need to just DO things. Stop worrying and fretting, just do it.
I’m off to do homework right now. I’m not allowed to check Toast again until I finish a section. At least then, I’ll have one section done that I wouldn’t have before.
Thank you! I appreciate the help greatly!
My grandfather had no sense of smell (legitimately, he was born without a sense of smell). As a result, his cooking was always amazing, but cranked up to 11 in terms of heat, because he couldn’t smell the spiciness. I can remember so many times walking in to his house, and the smell of green chile hitting me so hard it made me stagger. And there, sitting at the table, would be my grandfather, happily eating beef and green chile stew and cornbread, sweating buckets, and offering me some. I have only been able to replicate that amount of heat once, and in doing so, nearly killed my guests.
Toasties, I had a real nasty run in with The Man last week and I really need some advice, help, support.
A guy in my counselling course compared getting unwanted advice to rape. He said “It’s invasive, it’s penetrative – it’s RAPE. It’s emotional rape”. I immediately objected and told him that while people bossing you around about your problems is indeed unpleasant, it isn’t rape. Another woman nodded in agreement with me. He kind of nodded politely and we all moved on.
BUT! A few minutes later, this woman apologized to him! She told him she was sorry for reacting to the word rape and that she understood that he meant it. I was super annoyed by this, but then the day was over and I didn’t get a chance to mention it before we were dismissed.
As we were leaving, he stuck his head back in the door to say to her, “I just wanted to say….thanks. I really appreciate your understanding.” She then began apologizing AGAIN. I was right there and this conversation infuriated me, so I jumped in and said “Well, I’m NOT sorry!” and reiterated my point. They staaaared at me, and then he said “I chose that word deliberately. What a great opportunity to agree to disagree”. He left, and the woman stayed behind and argued with me further. Like, raising her voice level of annoyed at me, and insisting that he did not compare anything to rape, he actually MEANT rape and that’s why he used the word. I ended up so distressed that I was shaking sobbed all the way back to my train.
What do I even do at this point? I feel like I can’t let things go as they are, but I’m terrified of further discussion since the last one went so badly. I’m worried about the inevitable debate and getting trounced. Plus, this is a counselling course! I’m expected to be all emotionally honest and shit, and I have to work with these people all year, practicing therapy on each other. I feel so unsafe with these people at these point.
To further confuse things, I googled ’emotional rape’ and apparently it is sort of a thing? But I can’t tell if it’s a thing as in, MRAs believe it’s a thing, or if it’s an *actual* thing.
Wah! I don’t even know where to start, but I can’t ignore this.
I don’t have any useful advice, I just want to say that sounds really horrible for you and I’m sorry and also ban men.
BAN MEN
“What a great opportunity to agree to disagree” is the worst thing I’m probably going to read today.
Ugh for real. The only time that phrase should be used is when discussing the best pizza toppings.
Not if I’m paying for the pizza. Then you shouldn’t bother disagreeing.
True. I was going more for theoretical pizza toppings but actual pizza toppings must be defended until the death. Also, that guy doesn’t deserve any pizza theoretical or otherwise.
The condescending tone he said it in made me want to grab his douchey beard and punch him in the face.
Doooo it.
Seriously, he needs a kick out the door of that program. If this is how he’s approaching training, he is going to be an actively harmful counsellor/therapist.
I am really not good at advice, because I just want you to murder him.
Murder is pretty much the best plan I can think of, too.
Yup, this right here. All kinds of murder. Stabbing, drop kicking, learning to fly and then dropping him from a great height. All the murders.
Just *reading* this is so infuriating that I have that brain short circuit thing going on, making coherent, reasonable advice difficult. I can’t even imagine what it would be like in person.
I had an idea for what to do but it ended up further downthread. Basically I think you should enlist the instructor via email: this happened, we need a shared and accurate way of talking about trauma, we also need to practice the skills for defusing aggressive responses like these, please help your students by building that into the course. Also these people are turds and I am so sorry they smeared themselves on your class situation.
I agree. I think you do need to go up the chain. I can’t tell where the instructor was in this whole conversation- present or not present? But whoever runs the course or is your mentor or whomever, I think you find that person and you tell them what happened and ask how to move forward. If I’m reading this right, this was an argument amongst the students. If nothing else there should be a conversation about how to make that a safe space- if we disagree in a peer conversation, who referees? What’s the appropriate way to talk about things that upset everyone. If people are upset in class, is it off limits to go track them down and keep the conversation going? Are you allowed to call timeout?
The second issue is about using rape metaphorically. If someone said, “when you give me unwanted advice, its a murder”- that’s absurd! Its clearly not a murder. Saying, “no, but it’s an emotional murder” does not make it less ridiculous. You can’t take something physical and make it an emotional thing like that. However I have heard of emotional affairs, and I think those are real, so if there’s some concept of emotional rape and it’s a real psychology thing, then it’s an appropriate class wide discussion topic. If you can bear it, I’d talk about your mentor about that topic and having an actual conversation in an academic way about where the term comes from and how widely accepted it is and what the issues with it would be. Either it is a real thing and you are “wrong” in the sense that people use that term regularly without flinching, or he is, and that’s worth talking about. Also even if you are “wrong” the concept can still be one that deeply offends you and you disagree with and room for that should be allowed in academics.
If nothing else, this internet stranger is proud of you for speaking out. Dumb jerks who stick up for meanness usually get away with it. You at least made his life a bit unpleasant.
We actually had the safe space discussion in the first week, and that VERY SAME GUY laid down the law about giving him criticism. He actually said that using the word “you” is too direct for him, and that if we want to give him feedback we need to use more “I feel” statements. And then he just throws out this rape nonsense? What the ever living fuck!?
OMG he sounds like the worst! He’s going to be a horrible counselor!
Gross! I’m changing my advice to murder now. He doesn’t deserve any more of the precious lovely air. God. It’s interesting how some people become real special snowflakes after being emotionally murdered by use of the word you and emotionally assaulted by other people disagreeing with them sometimes.
WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK INDEED. That man is going to do (more!) serious damage if he starts counselling people.
I agree with the previous advice: go up the chain and enlist the instructor’s help. You are very, *very* much in the right here, and The Internet has your back 🙂
I hate him.
He sounds like a miserable excuse for a human being. Every adult person needs to be able to cope with criticism!! There are no exceptions here!! In fact, that may be one of the definitions of maturity! How is this person not disqualified from being a counselor?
Our culture is so anti-consent and anti-healthy-boundaries that people who don’t often think about consent and boundaries have no idea there is a way to talk about those things other than by rape metaphor.
That dude was upset because he felt that unwanted advice crossed a boundary. Sorry dude, boundary crossing sucks. Let’s all have a conversation about how not to cross conversational boundaries! The first lesson will be: how to talk about boundaries without comparing it to sexual assault.
you are wise and articulate
you’re not the only one – this whole thread is full of great brains saying smart things. I really appreciate it. But your point is fresh and unique and possibly a way of understanding what happened and how to redirect it the right way (no matter how snarkily I would say that last sentence.)
Wait so this guy is training to become a counselor or therapist? Is his plan to start suggesting to clients that they’ve been raped in situations when they have not, in fact, been raped in a therapy setting? I am so confused about how this would be helpful to someone. Is there a teacher or someone in this class with experience who can step in? I’m just imagining my therapist saying to me, “Olgasrevenge, what you’re describing is rape” when like, I don’t know, my mom transgresses boundaries w/r/t talking about my relationship with my girlfriend. That sounds really traumatic.
Here is not the reason but a reason why this kind of discourse is so sick: positing an act called “emotional rape” presupposes that an actual physical rape is not also an emotional event for the victim, does not have equally severe emotional consequences. It’s the kind of thing you say if you think rape is ‘just’ an assault on the body, no different from a mugging or a theft. No. The body isn’t a wallet or an open window. Rape IS ’emotional.’
likewise, you’ve probably heard people saying that emotional abuse can be, or just is, worse than physical abuse — meaning just regular domestic or parental abuse. You can only say this, can only believe this, if you believe that getting punched in the face by a mother or a husband isn’t emotionally damaging. that is: I am not creating my own hierarchy of abuse here, I am not saying a punch in the face is objectively worse than a tirade of insults. I am only saying that physical abuse creates emotional harm, so you can’t oppose them that way as though the knowledge that someone wishes for you to suffer physical pain isn’t itself an experience of emotional abuse.
In summary, it’s all emotional. To set out one type of abuse or assault as non-emotional is vile and ignorant and, I think, bespeaks a deep assumption about a woman’s (usually) body as a blank object divorced from a mind.
So, not to derail, but how do you suggest talking about abusive relationships that are not physical?
PS: I agree with everyone saying to murder that dickhead.
I am not good at this and basically I would cop out by deferring to experts.
But I guess I think it’s useful to be specific when that’s possible — like, verbal abuse, belittling, abandonment, threats, controlling behavior, physical attacks, all fall under the umbrella of abuse, all can and usually do have adverse emotional effects. I don’t seriously suggest trying to reframe casual language to the extent of referring to partner violence as a subset of emotional abuse but that is sort of how I think about it — it is after all the emotional context and relationship that makes it abuse and not just regular assault. So non-physical abuse I just call abuse.
I don’t know, I’m better at noticing horrible things than proposing good ideas.
That’s totally fair.
Kill it with fire. Ughhh men are the worst. Women who side with men against other women are the second worst.
Not your fault. Not remotely. That is a fucked-up thing and those are fucked-up people. Emotional abuse, maybe. Rape, no, unless you can possess another human’s body like an angry spirit.
Thank you for standing up in this situation. It’s hard and it’s brave of you to do so. As others have said, I think it would be a really good idea to talk about what happened with the instructor and explain why you feel that this sort of metaphor is highly inappropriate. If you do, please let us know the response — I feel invested! Good luck with the course and I also am glad that someone with the right idea is going to be a counsellor. I’ve had a couple of terrible ones before and they can be so harmful. But a good one can be so wonderful — one person I had really helped me to learn to deal with things in the right way.
Oh god that’s giving me flashbacks to grad school. I got in this horrible, excruciating argument with a guy on the class message board over whether or not it would be an act of violence to give someone your opinion on a book. According to this class, everything was an act of violence. So I asked – quite mildly, I thought – whether we were using the word “violence” in a meaningful and appropriate sense, and added that if I had to choose between hearing someone’s opinion on a book and being punched in the face, I’d take the opinion. The guy found this to be an extremely offensive and reactionary statement, and went on a tirade in which he accused me of wanting to censor literature. (Incidentally – just to establish character – I will add that he had lines from the catechism chapter of Ulysses tattooed on his forearm, and would carefully position his arm so that they could be read at all times.) Then the teacher, who had been reading the discussion board, brought the argument up again in class and took the guy’s side. I turned red with anger, and the guy announced smugly that it looked like I had been punched in the face. I was very tempted to get up and demonstrate, in a practical and hands-on manner, the difference between an opinion and a punch in the face, but I elected to stay in grad school. In retrospect, it was a poor decision.
Planning a spring break trip to NOLA with law school classmates. They know i lived there during undergrad so I am feeling the pressure. Any NOLA toasties want to tell me cool places they love? (restaurants/bars/clubs/shops/experiences/whatevrer)
I recently went on holiday and I had the greatest breakfast of my life at Slim Goodies diner on Magazine, up in the Garden District end. Everything we ordered was delicious.
I’ve never been, thanks for the rec.
I could talk about this all day, honestly. I liked to take people slightly out of the French Quarter to Frenchman Street. The stretch between Decatur and Royal has a row of great music venues; some of them won’t even have a cover, especially on weeknights. You can just walk and listen and decide where you want to go in.
If you delve even further down Royal, my favorite tapas place in the world is down there, Mimi’s in the Marigny.
If you decide to ride the St. Charles Streetcar all the way down, there is a great cajun restaurant, Jacques-Imos, on Oak Street a few blocks down from Carrollton.
That’ll do for a start. But smee is correct, Slim’s is pretty great, and on a fun stretch of Magazine for exploring shops in the daytime.
If you’re into creepily awesome things, I recommend visiting the cemetery/chapel of St. Roch. http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com/2009/05/st-roch…
this looks cool, thank you!
I am not local, but I visit every year. You probably know more than me, BUT:
The shrimp boil on Sundays at The Maple Leaf Bar. Great music and absurd amounts of shellfish eaten with strangers. Rebirth Brass Band plays there I think on Tuesdays. Also right by Jacques-Imos.
Best breakfast was at Coulis. Get the eggs benecio (eggs benedict on jalapeno cornbread with pulled pork).
If you want fancy, the best meal of my life was eaten at Bayona. I have gone back 3 or 4 times and it’s wonderful every time.
Go to Frenchmen’s Street one night and bar hop for the live music. Three Muses has glorious feta fries.
Seems like all of my suggestions are food-related…fancy that.
Oh, and while you’re there, please pick up some Shadyside Pottery and mail it to me. Thnx!
The Candlelight Lounge in Treme has a really cool Wednesday night show. $10 cover, there’s a smorgasbord that the bar cooks up for everyone to eat, then the Treme Brass Band comes and plays for 1.5-2 hours. It’s a hell of a show.
In terms of food everything is great I seriously doubt you could even be disappointed if you wandered into any random place for every meal because their cuisine down there is amazing, but you have got to get to Willie May’s Scotch House. Order their fried chicken, it’s seriously some of the best chicken ever in all seriousness.
Try and find out where Kermit Ruffins is playing, he’s a local treasure and his live shows are an absolute blast.
Another “not a local” but travel there once or twice a year/ have close friends living there 10+ years: totally echo advice about Magazine St explorations, Frenchman St, and all the music suggestions. Oh wowza does this get the juices flowing for another trip soon!
Last two trips have been about off the beaten path fine dining, and the top three are Dick and Jenny’s and Dante’s Kitchen near Audobon park/ Tipitina’s. In the Marigny, Maurepas Food is outstanding!
That box is Peak Cat Stting. (she says, to OwlQueen)
on a box ON A WARDROBE
HIGH PLACE + BOX
It’s full of leather and cloth scraps too.
Good
Long weekend coming up! We’re going to Vermont to visit a friend and we’re going to do all sorts of awesome fall things. We will drink cider and go to thrift shops and antique stores and go apple-picking*. My friend also threatened that she will forcibly teach me how to ride a bike (yes, I am 20mumble and can’t ride a bike, it’s my secret shame).
Going to dinner and a movie tonight with another friend!
Going to the post office during my lunch break today and mail off my Toast Post letters!
I’ve been very good lately about exercising after work! I gave up on running because it was hurting my knees and ankles but I am a BEAST on the elliptical machine.
*On this note, do any of my fellow Canadian Toasties know if I’ll be able to bring back those apples? The CBSA website says you can bring up to 250 kg of fruit and vegetables over the border but I’ve heard stories about people being forced to leave that stuff behind even though they were within the rules.
Bad
Still haven’t heard back about the job I interviewed for and I’m getting antsy even though they said late October and it’s barely mid-October.
Have another job to apply for but I am intimidated by the instructions they posted for the cover letter:
Candidates must submit a cover letter providing CONCRETE EXAMPLES WHICH ILLUSTRATE, how they meet the education requirement and the experience factors listed in the essential qualifications and asset qualifications.
FOR EACH EXPERIENCE CRITERIA, please provide the following MANDATORY information: Name of the department or organization where the experience was acquired; Title of the position occupied and duration for which the candidate exercised its functions; Specific details of tasks, projects or accomplishments demonstrating the experience was acquired
Like first of all, stop yelling at me. Second of all, the cover letter is my one opportunity to show you a bit of my personality and distinguish myself from the other candidates, which is impossible if I have to stick to this rigid template which only reproduces information which is already on my résumé, thank you very much.
I got a new (digital) scale and it has me at a very slightly higher weight than my old (analog) scale and even though I know that’s normal, I got upset about it and feel stupid for being upset which just makes me more upset. Losing weight is really hard for me so every tiny setback feels like a huge blow. Even though I know it’s not even a real setback, just differences in scale calibration. But there you go.
TOAST POST YAYYY!!
I wouldn’t stress out too much about the cover letter. You probably already have a lot of sentences in your cover letter you just need to add a little bit more detail to to make it fit their qualifications! Do you have a sentence or two about a project you worked on or a skill you developed? You can add “During my two years as Awesome Assistant at WinterByMorning Is BadAss, Inc” to the beginning of the sentence – it’s going to be clunky, but it meets their qualifications. Their instructions don’t disqualify you from writing more about yourself! I would do a paragraph or two with the whole CONCRETE EXAMPLES bs and then do your regular thing.
cough I’m 30 and can’t ride a bike cough Let me know how it goes!
I had training wheels until 3rd grade and finally got them off (sibling ridicule factor was high) but avoided the bike for over a decade. Got one in grad school and it turned out biking was easy, actually, after the learning/relearning curve. And kind of fun. And you can wear scarves that stream out behind you as you ride, as long as they’re not long enough to get caught in spokes/gears.
New scales suck, but you are an elliptical beast which is phenomenal, so try to not weigh yourself for 10 days and then go back to it. (I know you’ll never wait 10 days. I can’t wait 3 days. But try.)
My parents never taught me to ride when I was a kid. My mom said they tried but “you got scared and refused to do it” – which sounds like me, and I do appreciate that they didn’t force me to do something I wasn’t comfortable with, but on the other hand if they had been a bit firmer I would have gotten over my fear and l wouldn’t be in this position!
FOR EACH EXPERIENCE CRITERIA should say “criterion,” if it makes you feel any better about their aggressive and overweening detail focus.
(Pet peeve.)
CBSA apple thing – it seems to totally depend on your officer at the border! Sometimes, they don’t know either. Also, if there are any apple growing areas near where you are crossing there could be quarantine areas and that increases the likelihood they won’t let you across. So, there is my not really helpful non-answer of maybe?
I think it also depends on how they are packaged – officially bagged and sealed is no problem but loose apples covered in leaves or dirt may be another issue. If the place you are going has lots of cross-border shoppers the staff may have useful knowledge.
THIS IS NOW A FALLEN LONDON APPRECIATION BLOG
THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT
This week I found a decapitated head in a bush and decided to make out with it, because duh. My neighbors were appalled and ran me out of town. It wasn’t even a REAL decapitated head guys, it was a MODEL. Anyway, I spent a week drinking wine with dead people and getting letters from sentient rats whom I had impressed by killing a lot of their friends. Finally I came home and the first thing I did after being exiled for making out with a decapitated head in public was to hang out with a member of parliament.
HOW WAS YOUR WEEK
I have finally started Fallen London (I am Cordelia de Havilland) and have broken double figures on my attributes, woohoo!
Question: What should I do with the things I keep earning? Occasionally I have been selling them off to get me new gloves/outfit, but then the next challenge seems to always require Rostygold or Deep Amber or Candles, which I’ve just sold.
Also, so far I’m just randomly deciding which things to do. Should I have more of a strategy in mind?
Rostygold, moonpearls, and deep amber are basically just money, at this level keep maybe 100-200 of each around for expenses and sell the rest for echoes. Everything else it’s probably best to hang on to because eventually you will either need it or something you can make out of it, and they are expensive to buy.
And as far as I’m concerned, “deciding randomly” is the best strategy!
Thank you kindly for your pearls of wisdom
Also, god I love your username.
Nevercold brass is also basically just money, although I did get a card once where someone wanted me to give her 1000 of them. GET YOUR OWN!
I have just started Fallen London this week as well (b/c someone mentioned it in last week’s cocktail hour and I wanted to know what it was). So far I have been using the same random strategy. I also still don’t really know what Fallen London actually is (or is about? I am vaguely confused. I do a thing, and then I get things?). It would probably help if I actually read the texty things after you do stuff rather than just look at the stats stuff. Still, I like looking at those attribute bars increase, even if I have no idea what the point is!
Yeah, reading the texty things helps. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing either, and some cards/actions require X amount of Y things, and then I go off and do something else and forget to earn Y.
What’s your name? There are some ‘invite someone and you’ll go on an adventure together’ options that sound interesting.
I am Lady Lucy Gamble Haughram.
The text is basically the whole game, and the point of getting higher stats and collecting stuffs is to use them to open more stories to get more text! Glorious text!
In short, what it IS is a text adventure; what it’s ABOUT is finding decapitated heads and making out with them.
Hooray! I’m not the only one who immediately signed to anothe r online thingy solely on the open thread mention. I’m really enjoying it and just clicking randomly on actions.
I also just decide randomly – I’m sure at some point I will come to a bad end! (I am angelan there, too)
So I’m super late to the party (Australian, you see) but I too started Fallen London this week and just broke double figures! I am Gwenllian Jones. Mainly I want to become more Dangerous because it seems that all of the stuff I want to do means I need to be Dangerous but … not sure how.
Also I have been amusing myself by seducing both the Struggling Artist and the Struggling Artist’s Model, because canonical bisexuality, yesssss.
Anyway if anyone reading this wants to get Acquainted, feel free, I would like friends. If you’re anywhere other than Australia, NZ and eastern Asia you’ll be waiting around for a reply though because timezones.
I have been murdering people for a spy. Just… murdering them. Oh, and I went mad and ended up talking to mirrors. I wrote a novel. I got a lapidary to make me a jewelled walking stick, and I got some of the bits by flinging lizards in the air. I became an occasional lecturer at the unviersity and got embarrasingly drunk at a student function. I painted a satirical portrait of the royal family.
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/profile/Caitli… I am here
I may have missed the “Fallen London” at the start of this comment and was VERY confused and a bit concerned after the first sentence.
OMG IT WAS JUST A MODEL Y U GOTTA JUDGE
I went to Mahogany Hall and was assigned the task of teaching a louche devil how to behave in polite society, but he kept slurping his soup and making inappropriate comments during tea, so I was also run out of town. When I came back I bought an expensive cat and went to court to write a futuristic novel in order to impress the people at the University. I want to do expeditions in the Forgotten Quarter now, but I want to buy my supplies with appalling secrets instead of echoes and it keeps increasing my nightmares.
I am also trying to make friends with the sardonic music-hall singer, but she keeps asking me to deal with some clay men for her and I fail about 3 times out of 4!
(I’m Vipsania Beauregard there, hit me up.)
I haven’t reached the level where Mahogany Hall is useful to me, yet, but I’m collecting the stuff I need to open the way, when the time comes.
Oh, I opened it with fate/Nex when I got an opportunity card with that option on it. I was too impatient to put in the time to collect all those things!
I lied, I totally opened a way to mahogany hall just now because I realised that with all the lammies I have that my persusasive as at 98.
This has nothing to do with FL specifically, but I love that you used “lammy” to mean “whizzy item that gives you buffs”. Do I detect a fellow LARPer?
Dooooon’t befriend the Sardonic Music-Hall Singer, she comes with like three extra cards and clogs up your deck. But I don’t ever talk to any of my acquaintances so I may not be the best person to listen to on this subject.
omg DEVILS are the WORST
devil: o hai im in ur deck cloggin ur cards with requests for your soul
me: WHY DID I EVER RESPOND TO YOUR DICK PIC >:((((((
I recently sold my soul! It was an accident, sort of. I’d gotten that card so many times and I always got away, and he gave me diamonds besides, which got my guard down. Then the 62847th time I let him try to convince me, he succeeded!
I haven’t suffered any negative consequences so far, though.
Whoever wrote that storyline had the biggest trollface on while they were doing it, I just know it
Some people are weirded out by the soulless – this includes some NPCs. There are a few story options that are closed off if you have no soul.
I know this because I did exactly the same thing, and sweated blood to get the damn thing back.
This has convinced me to finally give Fallen London a shot.
Yes, it is the best.
Also, if you start now, you’ll be a little upstart nobody like me and we can be friends! With similar problems!
oooooh! even better. Perhaps I will start it up this weekend.
I just joined today – want to be friends, fellow upstart nobodies? I’m Cynthia Hawthorn.
Let’s do this! I’m Sylvia Lane. Here goes my weekend.
I gave the tattooed courier her secrets back. Then I accidentally became a lot more dangerous and now I apparently have a reputation – whoops.
Currently trying to boost various connecteds so I can actually do something the next time I end up in the Forgotten Quarter, and trying to accumulate glim for that damn lapidary card I keep having to discard.
Definitely go with the lapidary, after enough glim she eventually gives you a really cool walking stick (you need ostentatious diamonds, venom rubies or whatever they’re called, and sapphires)
Those FL’ers who are acquainted with the Wry Functionary (and I am honestly not sure any more how you get that acquaintance as I have been playing the game for so long): check out a new option on the “A Visit” card, which lets you have a way-cool conversation with him on various topics.
Also, I have one Parabolan Kitten now and should have another 3-5 on Monday. These are only available by gift from someone who backed the Sunless Sea Kickstarter at a certain level. They are +3 Persuasive, +1 Bizarre, and very cute. (Someone said something about nightmare reduction, which may come when you accept it?) Reply here, or send a letter/coffee request/other social action invite *with text indicating you want a kitten* to an_ocelot, and I will put you in the queue.
Other social actions also gladly accepted!
Well. I am considering going mad on purpose, as part of a plan to pursue an abducted opera star, the twin sister of a sardonic music hall singer. This could be a bad idea, but I don’t think there’s any way out of it. She’s already in a state of confusion, and the only way to get her back is if I follow her! I also have been involved in a lot of horticulture, spritzing the strange plant growing up through the floor of my room above a bookstore with various fertilizers, but also designing labyrinths and fungal gardens for an empress. I also got stripped naked and thrown out of the palace once by her chamberlain, but I think everyone’s forgotten that unfortunate episode by now.
You have to have a certain level of Watchful before you’ll find the opera star in a State of Some Confusion. I wasn’t Watchful enough the first time I tried it and went mad for nothing.
oy! mad for nothing! thanks for the tip. I found her pretty quickly once I got out of the Mirror Marshes and into a proper state of madness, but then it turned out she needed F. F. Gebrandt’s Tincture of Vigor and I only had a half-bottle. That’s what you get for stealing your medicinal supplies from drunken cavalry officers instead of buying it like respectable people do!
Now I am just a bit sad to have lost all my dreams while I was insane. Hopefully they come back soon?
I am in urgent need of earning money and so have been working my backside off giving devils etiquette lessons. I also got run out of town after a while of this because apparently being repeatedly seen in public trying to demonstrate Human Social Mores to a denizen of Hell is Just Not Done.
I also finally managed to capture an Impossible Theorem; it is now quietly driving me mad.
(Always open to new acquaintances! My nym is Mnemosyne Lane.)
(Also while I would love to have ALL the Toasties as Protégés, I now have three and am running out of free time. So I am afraid I am not answering Patronage requests right now.)
SPORTSSSSSSSS SPORTZS and things, whatever, sports are terrible, they aren’t doing their job distracting me from how horrible the world is (my god, Sports, THAT IS YOUR JOB) but ugh, let’s do this anyway
Baseball is a thing. Talk about it, if you want. I’ll be over here, hitting myself in the head, with a baseball bat, until the pain goes away.
Hockey is happening, I guess, or something. I mean, is Life even happening? Who knows, really.
Here, look, hockey (I mean, seriously, NHL???):
http://deadspin.com/the-nhl-probably-shouldnt-hir…
Football continues to be awful, why are we still doing this, someone help me, please, I-
/falls down
//quits planet
///resigns self to universe
Ok, if you aren’t completely broken down over them, and how they’ve failed you completely, for decades, let’s talk sports, yes?
I just realized yesterday that there’s no soccer this weekend so I’m pretty much wallowing in a pit of sports despair (all other sports are boring sorrynotsorry)
Don’t be sorry, they are awful.
All is not lost! You can watch Mexico-Panama on Sunday!
There’s Euro qualifiers! They’re even weirder than normal, but they’re soccer! And sometimes surprising things happen! Yesterday Slovakia beat Spain and Germany-Poland today should be at least conceptually interesting. (I’ll end up watching Holland-Kazakstan, eh.)
Oh wow I just looked up the schedule… weird is right. This + USA vs Ecuador tonight will do, though!
I’m going to the women’s CONCACAF World Cup qualifying semis and final in Philly in a couple weeks, so pretty much everything is a poor substitute at this point. SO EXCITED.
I just put on Netherlands/Kazakhstan, it is currently airing on Fox Sports 1.
Uhm. Georgia’s running back is suspended indefinitely because took money for autographs. So, it’s looking like a wrap for their season cause he’s been the core of that team.
But really? Sports have been sleeping on the distraction from the world job. Get it together, sports.
Haha, yes, but you see, the NCAA is a BASTION OF ETHICS, HOW DARE HE VIOLATE THEIR CODE
haha. I’m hoping they do the same thing they did to Johnny Manziel at the start of last season where they “investigate” it and make him sit out for a game or so.
This is the most adorable webcomic about college hockey ever, if that’s a thing you like: http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com
i follow college hockey for about 2 days every year, but that is adorable. Bless you.
I LOVE Check Please! so sad that Johnson the metaphysical goalie has graduated.
But Chowder the frog goalie is so adorable!
so true.
you know, I really feel like the Haus ghosts would totally be Toasties?
Yes, totally. but more importantly Shitty is one of the rare guy readers here.
MY WORLDS COLLIDE! I actually had a dream about Bitty the other night – that’s how much I love this comic! Also the author is super adorable on Twitter as herself and as Bitty. I’d love it even if I didn’t like hockey but I do so it’s double amazing!!
It’s possible I read all 780-something of Bitty’s tweets last night. Possibly. It’s giving me so many college hockey feels (Lynah Faithful at Cornell ’07).
shitty/lardo for life
And yes to this too.
Also every time Jack and Bitty are in a scene together I’m *NOW KISS*
I push their lil heads together with my fingers whenever they are close and pretend. NEEDS MORE FANFIC!
Have you signed up for the holiday exchange?
Still psyched for all you Royals fans out there! And I suppose the O’s too. Sorry though Katie 🙁
(I guess if you’re on the Toast you’re probably a nice Cardinals fan in which case congrats but St. Louis can eat shit in general)
HOCKEY HOCKEY HOCKEY HOCKEY PUT IT ALL IN MY EYEHOLES OH GOD I DIDN’T MEAN COYOTES-JETS NO GET IT OUT
Can’t even believe how bad the Ducks’ away jerseys are.
Unreasonably entertained by every single shot of Ryan Fitzpatrick’s somehow inherently somber beard-mustache combo peeking out of his football helmet.
Will this reply even end up in the sports thread? WHO KNOWS!!!
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE CARDINALS, EVER, IN LIFE
HOCKEY HOCKEY HOCKEY can we talk about GOALIES??
BOBROVSKY why are you so cute?? All the hugs for Bob!
YOU’RE BACK ON THE FORCE, BOBROVSKY!!! <3
HE’S THE NUMBER ONE COP ON THE FORCE!!
also guess what I found a HUG COMPILATION VIDEO my heart just grew three sizes.
Haha, the Ducks new jerseys, hahaha, oh boy.
Actually I heard that after this week baseball is no longer a thing, so we can just burn all those stadiums to the ground. Especially the one in Navy Yard. We can rend our garments and toss them into the fire and then salt the earth beneath those foundations.
/builds flamethrower
//gets on Metro
As a lifelong Pittsburgh Steelers fan and devoted NFL in general follower of many years, yeah, I’m really discouraged to find that what we suspected was happening was, indeed, happening. Better not smoke pot, though! Oh no, that’s just WRONG and sends the WRONG MESSAGE and makes you a BAD BAD PERSON. Beat up your significant other and/or kids, or rape someone, though, well that’s totally fine or even just totally normal, a normal way men and women interact.
I had a reply to this, but it got so rage-y (not towards you, obviously, towards the NFL, and life generally) I fell down and died and I am dead now. Somebody please bring me some pot.
For a long time one of the few things we used our cable TV for was watching NFL games on Sundays. Then we got sick of paying a jillion dollars a month, and canned Comcast in favor of Hulu Plus and Netflix. I was worried I’d miss the football. Thanks to all the bullshit that’s coming out about the NFL right now, I don’t miss it at all. Glad I made the right choice.
LET’S GO OOOOOOOOO’S. That’s all I have to say really. Oh and DC United at going to the playoffs, good sports year for me.
Os Os Os!!!!!!!! After they swept the TIgers, my facebook status was, “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOs. That is all” (because really, what else is there to say?!) . FOUR DAYS later, my aunt commented, “Haha–I just figured out what this post was referring to. duh 🙂 ” Haha indeed. I’m trying not to imagine what she might have been thinking I meant.
Haha, your aunt. Despite being So Sad about my team, I really am pulling for you Balmore people. Go O’s, indeed.
My condolences! I wasn’t rooting against the Nats yet, haha. This whole thing is bringing out the SPORTSSS FANNN in me that had gone into hibernation for a while due to a lack of TV/illegal know-how. Thanks for the link the other day! I watched Game 2 with it, and while I couldn’t replicate the magic of streaming for Game 3, I’m lucky enough to be in range of Tiger radio. (I kind of forgot the implications of that when I tipsily admitted that I was happy with the Orioles’ success at an MSU football watching party. Whoops.)
Sure thing on the link! I’m worth nothing if not my ability to supply illegal sports streams.
Habs are 2-0 to start the season, and Winnipeg destroyed Phoenix (sorry – ‘Arizona’) last night. Life is good. Hockey is good. That Chris Pronger thing is not good.
Seriously the Chris Pronger thing, it’s a joke right? Right??
I know we lost in a goddamn shootout to you guys, but whatever, did you get a load of Burakovsky??
Maaaan, you guys already HAVE a Russian prodigy! Give the rest of us a turn!
I don’t even really FOLLOW baseball, but I was just in Vegas a couple weeks ago, where I drunkenly put twenty dollars on the Dodgers in the first Real Sports Bet of my life. So…that’s a thing. (EVERYONE WAS TALKING ABOUT A FREEWAY SERIES WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED)
In Sports That I Do Care About news, preseason basketball is happening! My Lakers lost by 15 to Golden State last night, because Steph Curry and Klay Thompson are gods, and they rested Nash, because he went to school with Fred Flintstone, but Kobe is actually looking good!
My only tip is don’t wait for / worry about / even consider whether there is a feeling of wanting to do something that needs to be done. Make yourself into your uncaring boarding school study hall teacher (or something) and simply tell yourself, I don’t CARE if you want to [write an essay / sweep the floor / eat your vegetables]. Just do it.
I have had some success with this, sometimes.
(she says, to Alpha7)
(before only the first comment I made on a thread went to the bottom. Now it seems random, and I feel sad.)
To lemonadefish! I have no idea what’s been going on with comments, so I’ll start with that.
Thank you! I’ll try to separate from myself that way. I’m glad this has worked for you, sometimes 🙂
Also I’ve read a trick from an author somewhere where they say, “For the next hour I’m supposed to do x. I don’t have to do x, but if I don’t I can’t do a different thing, I have to just sit here. Doing nothing.” So…a common procrastination trick is like, “yeah I do have to do this huge thing, but I’ll do this tiny thing or fun thing, instead.” if you make it so you just sit still for 10 minutes, thinking ugh, you’ll probably cave and do it.
That sounds like it would work! Thanks! Hopefully I’ll find staring at the wall less fun than my work 🙂
To lemonadefish! My husband needs to learn this, but I am sadly pretty sure that this is not something I can force him to learn.
Vancouver/BC Toastfolk! Don’t forget to find me on twitter (kiranmartin) so that we can arrange more fun Outings and Soirees.
(and if you’re not on twitter, do not fret, I am also on gmail as tindomiel)
can the comments be fixed? Or a new system implemented? It’s getting worse and worse and is so frustrating. Is it worth the webmaster contacting intensedebate? It’s their fuck up.
I survived my birthday, barely, and have God’s own hangover today. There have been two field trips through the museum attached to my office so far today. Very little work has been accomplished, my boss is gone, and all I want is to go home to my new flannel pajamas, drink quarts of water, and eat a horribly unhealthy supper. Mac and cheese from a box, for instance, with red pepper flakes in it. Swoon.
ETA: lunch has consisted of mac and cheese AND beef stroganoff, because adult.
Some days mac and cheese from a box is the best. What do you think of your new flannel pajamas?
They are effectively the best thing in my life right now, not gonna lie.
where did you get these excellent flannel pajamas?
PartnerChouffe has excellent internet-shopping juju.
Am home now to check! They are Alexander del Rossa jammies.
Sent from my iPhone
Any birthday taking place within two days of a weekend extends into said weekend (it’s in the birthday codes and bylaws, section fun, subsection, mine.) Thus, consumption of delicious and decadent food groups is not only allowed but encouraged!
I’ve been watching that Little Caesar’s ad of the Pretzel Crust Pizza being made all week here and I am perilously close to going out and buying one. I know it would be disgusting but the ad makes it look so delicious. Please talk me out of this.
Listen, I feel EXACTLY the same way. Rationally I know it’s awful but I want it still.
Let’s both try to hold off for another week.
Solidarity!
You do not need this, I promise. It will make you so sad.
what is the sauce??? I’ve been alternately grossed out and titillated all week.
I think it’s that weird fake “nacho cheese” sauce that you can occasionally find at movie theaters and sprotball areas.
I feel like it has to be some kind of cheddar sauce? The ad is really taking a toll on me as well. I’m thinking about convincing my husband to eat one (it shouldn’t be hard…he ate that KFC Double-Down sandwich out of curiosity). If he’ll agree, I’ll report back to the community.
I ate a Double Down once. For Science. I even wore a nametag that said “scientist #1” on it while my sister was “scientist #2.”
It was good. 🙁
I cannot stop staring. it’s actually been a high point in my work week.
You totally need to try it and report back. For science. (And because I really want to try it and know I will hate myself for it.)
Book Recommendation!
The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley is so good and brilliant and if you’re a fan of epic fantasy but with agender people and people who’s genders change over time and alternate realities. Also, violent plants and blood magic and all sorts of brilliance. Just really excellent.
Anyone else read it and have thoughts?
Just looked that up, and WOW THAT LOOKS SO GOOD. Adding to must-read list…
Mirror Empire is on my kindle, but I haven’t started it yet (oh, the story of so many books!). I’m expecting it to be amazing but also a bit violent for me.
I’m currently reading her essay (/blog post) collection We Have Always Fought, which I heartily recommend. Hurley really knows how to pack a punch. The titular essay, about false narratives and women fighters, is here: http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/…
Yesss, that is the essay that convinced me to buy God’s War, which is next on my reading list…after Ancillary Justice. Sounds like I gotta add The Mirror Empire too, though!
Dropped my dude off at the airport at 4 am, came home and had a very spicy dream about Paul Rudd. Let the cat have some forbidden spicy sleep on dude’s pillow. Going to the sea with a spicy man-pal this weekend (not sex spicy, just fun spicy friend spicy). Slap my ass and send me to Arrakis, I’m ready for all the spice.
Slap my ass and send me to Arrakis
Ummmmm what if I’m 27 and married and have just decided I want to go to medical school? I’ve been thinking about medicine for a long time, and when I realized that I wanted a health-field job I started exploring every other possible option, because med school didn’t feel possible at this point. Nursing, MPH programs, MPA with a concentration in health systems administration, physician’s assistant programs–they all seemed second-best. But it’s my life, and I don’t want to settle for second-best. So I’m planning to apply for a full-time post-bac to start next fall.
Has anyone been here? Please do your best to talk me out of it!
I don’t think this is a bad idea at all. I know quite a few people who went to med school in their late 20s, and they’re all excellent doctors.
You’ll never know till you try.
Honestly, I wonder all the time if I’m going to wake up one day decide if I want to go back to school with the goal of getting into med school.
Go for it, dude!
My cousin came to a similar realization, at a similar age, about pharmacy school. She is now graduated with an adorable toddler and really happy. Go for it!!
I think there might be some things you have to think about that a 22 yr old could put off or take for granted. I’ve had friends who’ve gone to med school later, and being 30 while everyone else around you is 23 can be isolating, especially if you don’t have the support system you’ve grown accustomed to because you’re in a new place. If you’re in a relationship, that’s another consideration. And depending on what specialty you want to go into, if you’re female-bodied and want to have bio-kids, that might be something to think about. Like if you do a surgical residency or whatever that’s another 4-7 years on top of med school, that could make pregnancy difficult if not impossible until you’re in your late 30s.
I actually really don’t want to discourage you, because it’s definitely NOT too late, but I do think there might be some extra things to think about. It might just take some planning. Figuring out what you want is HUGE though–congratulations! 🙂
I haven’t been there personally, but that’s kinda similar to what my sister’s doing. She graduated college with a degree in History and then decided she wanted to go to med school, so did a post-bac year. Then she’s had a job for the past year and a half or so while she studied for the MCAT and got work experience and is currently applying to med schools. However, she’s going to defer her acceptance for a year and just take some time to chill (because apparently studying for the MCAT and applications are super stressful? who knew!), so by the time she’s actually in her first year, she’ll be turning 27.
Anyway, that’s my super long way of saying if that’s what you want, you should go for it! And while you might be a little older than some of your classmates, there will be plenty of people who will be your age doing the same thing!
A friend of mine is 30 and in med school now. If you want to do it, you should!
Go get it! I am in the same boat, except not married, and have been talking with loooots of people about how this goes. The general consensus has been that med school is kind of inconvenient any time in life (especially when you have to go back for undergrad chemistry), but if it is what you want to do you should do it. If you are motivated and willing to work and you can get in somewhere, you will probably do fine. Also I think the average age of med students is 24 for allopathic and 26 for osteopathic (according to a quick google search), so if having an age gap with your classmates feels like an issue then that might be something to consider. But most people will probably just be awed by your worldly and experienced self.
You didn’t mention anything about previous health-field experience but if you haven’t already got it then definitely take this next year to do some volunteer work at a medical-related charity or hospital, some job shadowing, whatever to get you some exposure to clinical care and health work. It will look great on your applications and might give you some contact with people in medicine/healthcare who can help you understand the field better.
Good luck! That is so exciting and I am certain you will be amazing..
I’m 27 and just starting my second year of med school and I would say I’m in the top ten % of my class agewise, but certainly not the oldest; I think it’s becoming more and more common to come to medical school after taking some “time off” or come to the realization that you want to be a doctor after doing something else for a while. I think that not going in straight from college has been really beneficial for me in terms of both my preparation to do well academically and in my ability to more or less maintain my sanity.
That being said, there are a few things that may be slightly more daunting when you start the process later. First- do you want to have money in the nearish future/how comfortable are you carrying student debt for most of your adult life? Your earning potential/ability to pay off all the exorbitant loans depends on the specialty you go into and where you want to live, but for reference, my mother started med school when she was 33-ish, is now in her early 50s, and “only” has 20K left on her loans. Second – are you and your spouse willing to potentially relocate for school and then again for residency? You can try to stay in the same location, but it makes getting into school and matching into a residency program much harder. Third- yeah, it’s babies. If you don’t want them/are flexible on how you get them/are not the person who will be carrying them, this is a little easier, but med school/residency definitely makes family planning extra challenging.
Having said all this, I imagine you already know about most of these challenges and you still want to do it, but are kind of questioning your sanity in wanting to do this incredibly difficult, expensive, and time-consuming thing. That’s kind of where I was when I was considering applying to med school, all through the application process, and right up to starting. But…I’ve been happier in the last year than pretty much any other time in my life (and I say that having taken a brutal exam this morning that I’m slightly concerned I might have failed).
Gosh, that was a lot of thoughts, sorry to be so verbose. I’ve likely done a terrible job talking you out of it, which is good, because I don’t think you need to be.
My mom went to med school when she was 38! I was 2 years old at the time. She had been an engineer before that. It was difficult and I didn’t get to spend much time with her as a kid, but she’s happy and loves her career as an oncologist. I was the second of two kids, my brother was six, and my dad was very supportive. You can totally do it! It’s hard but there are definitely a lot of married folks in med school.
Crafts! Share!
Almost done with my “fuck off” doily:
This is perfect, you are perfect.
I have nothing to share, but that is perfect, even incomplete.
Fantastic!
That is gorgeous! I’ve got a “Fuck this” embroidery hanging around somewhere, but it doesn’t look nearly as awesome.
I am about to cast on a cardigan! I have only knitted scarves before, i.e. nothing that requires precision, so I’m rather nervous. I have diligently made a gauge swatch, so just waiting for that to dry, and then I can hit the gas. Eeeee!
Gauge swatches + my lack of patience are probably in the top 5 reasons I can’t knit. Good luck! Post pictures!
I’ve come to knitting from cross stitch via other embroidery. So for me, knitting is HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO QUICK LOOK AT IT GO.
If I ever figure out how to post pictures, and/or manage to actually knit something, I will.
(My Mum knitted me a jumper when I was a toddler… it turned out to be a hat. My favourite hat, but still, not a jumper)
When I knit things that would require gauge swatches (socks, for example), I tend to just go with what the pattern says and/or what looks right and let sizing happen as it will. If the socks end up too large or small for me, I just take that as a sign from the universe that they’re meant for some other feet than mine and give them away. This wouldn’t work for a sweater or something else that required actual fitting, but I’ve never yet had trouble finding someone of about the right shoe size who wants a warm pair of socks.
Oh god, socks look WAAAAAY too complicated for me to attempt. Like, they’re so tiny! And you need those weird double needles!
I take my hat off to you.
They’re small, yes, but they’re really not nearly as hard as they look! The double needles are weird, but you only ever use two at once, so they’re no harder to use than regular straight needles. Plus, if you really hate them, you can use circular needles instead. A decently-written sock pattern will also hold your hand through turning the heel, which is the only slightly tricky bit for most patterns. The rest of the sock is just knitting a tube, which is super easy; you don’t even have to purl if you don’t want to!
Since socks are so small and don’t require a lot of yarn, I can afford to buy really nice sock yarn and take a pair to work on anywhere I might get bored/sleepy (8 AM lecture, I’m looking at you). Basically, socks are a great low-investment project, and I wouldn’t let them intimidate you!
I really like knitting socks. Maybe 6 months ago I started my first ones and they turned out a little wonky but perfectly wearable. Hurray for socks!
I love this! I once made a little “Fuck You” cross stitch:
PERFECTION
This is a FORMAL AND OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT that I will seriously consider paying real cash money for any doilies, cross-stitches, etc. that say “Fuck you” or any other type of obscenity. I love that stuff but I am not nearly crafty enough to make my own.
I have a “Fuck this” embroidery I need to get rid of. (Am moving countries in a month, space is limited) Want it?
Send me your address at thecaptainnancy at gmail and I’ll post it to you.
I’d encourage you to try cross-stitching. It’s the easiest thing in the world. I spent five minutes reading about it online and was good to go. The “Fuck You” I posted above is like the second thing I ever made, the back is a mess, but the front looks completely presentable.
a friend of mine from college has actually made a whole business out of this! like she actually now has a real brick and mortar store to sell these at and teach classes, but also this etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PurpleHippoStitches
edited to add the more grown-up actual website store: http://www.thehoopandneedle.com/shop/
This is sort of a craft! My friend came over and we carved pumpkins:
(Spooky bat pumpkin is mine and my husband’s; adorable pirate kitty pumpkin is my friend’s. Both of them are patterns out of one of those cheap carving tool + book sets.)
You totally win.
Crafts! I’m so late to the thread this week, but I’m so excited. I bought my first floor loom this week and am setting it up this weekend. And it’s supposed to rain all weekend and I have Monday off. It will be craftacular.
It’s not exactly decorative, but I taught myself to darn this week, and fixed a giant (moth?) hole in my favourite knitwear!
Moths = men
Hey so guess what I still have no goddamn idea if I have bed bugs because I have been sleeping on the sofabed in another room like a coward since getting bites two times last week
I’ve basically torn my bedroom apart, thrown out half my stuff (which was actually great since I have a lot of junk I don’t need), sprinkled diatomaceous earth around all my furniture and along the walls, vaccuumed, inspected, and HAVE NOT FOUND ANYTHING WHAT IS HAPPENING
I’m also stressed because I work for a digital broadcasting startup and we are doing a show this weekend that is going to be a goddamn disaster. It was super last minute and there’s such a disconnect between everyone involved and it’s a show we shouldn’t even do anyway because there are approximately 35059245 more things we should be focusing our time and money on.
ugghhh HULK SMASH
Thank you for bringing up bed bugs so I have an excuse to vent too. So, I have been dealing with bites for a month now, with an unsuccessful (and I have to assume expensive) attempt to kill them with fire (heat anyway) almost two weeks ago. I kept asking my landlady if anyone else in the building had them, because nothing could have withstood the treatment they did but they were back that same night. She kept saying no, it was just me and hinting that I must have brought them back with me when I returned to the apartment.
Yesterday she sent out a very frustrated email with much bolded text and ALL CAPS to the whole building saying that if anyone had pest issues they needed to report it immediately and not wait until two, three, four weeks later. I feel vindicated.
Well, kind of a good new/bad news thing is that if you do have them, they should follow you to the couch soon, so you’ll know eventually.
Have you tried any detection devices? There are these things called ‘climb-ups’ that you put under your bed legs. The bed bugs climb down (if they’re in your bed) and get stuck or try to climb up and get stuck because of the design of the cups. You could put double sided tape on your bed/furniture legs to catch anything that is climbing up or down. Good luck! I wouldn’t wish bed bugs on anyone.
How necessary is pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner? It’s Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend and I am in charge of dessert for a dinner with a bunch of friends on Sunday. I’m definitely doing pie, but I’m thinking of doing a maple buttermilk custard and either an apple-caramel or a pear-anise pie. Would you feel cheated if your Thanksgiving dinner did not end with pumpkin pie?
I would feel great about it. I never have pumpkin pie. I think you need some kind of fall-ish thing but apple-caramel would definitely do the trick and a pear-anise probably would too.
Oooh, that just reminded me that I could also do a walnut-apple cider caramel one. Maybe I just need to make half a dozen pies?
RECIPE PLEASE.
DO IT DO IT DO IT pumpkin pie is a relic that needs to be retired. HATERS TO THE LEFT.
I would be so excited! We never have pumpkin pie at my family Thanksgiving – usually we have pecan and apple.
I know US southern family that prefers sweet potato pie. The family cook tells me the recipe is the same as pumpkin pie, just a swap of main ingredient.
I am a pumpkin FANATIC and I would honestly not be that upset about it. When you have a potluck-style dinner party with friends, you don’t get to dictate what everyone else will make (allergies or ethical restrictions aside, and even that is more of a courtesy/request than anything). That is part of the fun – being introduced to other people’s seasonal favourites! Don’t sweat it. I am not hosting a Thanksgiving thing this weekend, but if I was, I would not be making turkey (even more of a Thanksgiving standard) because I am a vegetarian. People can deal!
As long as I have all the pie I don’t care what kinds are included in “all”. Those options sound good to me.
If you want the pumpkin pie flavor but don’t care about pumpkin so much, sweet potato pie is a nice option.
I would not mind because I am OBSESSED with pumpkin pie and make it at home so many times throughout the fall I would probably just go home after Thanksgiving and eat the one that’s in my fridge.
If you hadn’t said maple custard I would be sad, but really I think as long as you have a custard pie, you’d be fine!
Yeah – really so long as you have one custard pie, one nut pie, and one fruit pie, you’ll be fine! Or, at least, that’s my Thanksgiving dinner philosophy.
Oh my god make all those other pies! DELICIOUS.
You can buy pumpkin pies for like $6, but nowhere can you buy homemade maple buttermilk custard pies. Sounds amazing.
One thanksgiving I threw at my house someone brought a salted caramel pie, someone else brought a chocolate pecan pie, and
I don’t think there was pumpkin pie, and not a one person complained.
I clearly need to start hosting Thanksgiving pot lucks. No one ever makes me pie. 🙁 Poor me. Poor, pie-less me.
My friend is a genius, because to thank me for taking care of her cats she got me an awesome pie cook book. My boyfriend isn’t really into desserts and I should not eat whole pies on my own so she has gotten to eat a lot of homemade pie as a result. I suggest giving pie books to everyone you know and hope that the pies start rolling in.
I would, but I once asked for pumpkin pie instead of birthday cake so I’m very biased. I think all of the pies you mentioned sound like AMAZING alternatives, though, so you’re probably good.
Pumpkin pie is not necessary but your recipe for apple caramel pie is?? Because I too need to make dessert for a bunch of friends this weekend, and that sounds scrumptious.
I will post it as soon as I get home tonight! It’s from the Four and Twenty Blackbirds pie book (actually, all the pies I mentioned are) and every pie I have made from it so far has been fantastic. The rhubarb and vanilla cream pie is the best pie I have ever made.
Ok, this is a bit of a long one:
1 c plus 2 tbsp sugar
1/4 c water
1/4 pound unsalted butter
1/2 c heavy cream
2 lemons
6-7 baking apples
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters
1/3 c raw sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4tsp allspice
pinch nutmeg
1 grind black pepper
1/4 tsp kosher salt
2 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp flake sea salt
1 recipe for a double pie crust
Whisk together 1 cup of the sugar and the water in a medium saucepan, and cook over medium-low heat until the sugar is just dissolved. Add the butter and bring to a slow boil. Continue cooking over medium heat until the mixture turns a deep golden brown, almost copper. Remove from the heat and immediately but slowly add the heavy cream – be careful, the mixture will bubble rapidly and steam. Whisk the final mixture together well and set aside to cool while you prepare the apple filling.
Juice the lemons into a large mixing bowl, removing any seeds. Core, peel, and thinly slice the apples. Dredge the apple slices in the lemon juice. Sprinkle lightly with the remaining 2 tbsp sugar. Set aside to soften slightly and release some of the juices, 20-30 minutes.
In a small bowl, sprinkle the bitters over the raw sugar. Add the cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, black pepper, kosher salt, and flour and mix well. Add the prepared apples to the sugar-spice mixture leaving behind any excess liquids. Gently turnt he apples to evenly distribute the spice mix.
Tightly layer the apples into the shell so that there are minimal gaps, mounding the apples slightly higher in the center. Pour 1/2 c to 3/4 c of the caramel sauce over the apples (more for a sweeter pie). Sprinkle with 1/4 tsp of the flake sea salt. Assemble the lattice top.
Chill for 10-15 min. Brush pie with egg wash (1 egg plus 1 tsp water) and sprinkle with demerara sugar and flake sea salt to finish. Place pie on a baking sheet on the lowest rack of a 400F oven. Bake 20-25 min until pastry is beginning to brown. Lower temp to 375, move pie to center of oven and bake 30-35 min longer until apples are soft and the pastry is golden brown.
Ahhh whee gonna stay up until 3 am makin’ pie thanks!
Those pies sound delicious.
Most of the Canadians I know seem much more flexible about Thanksgiving. Where in the US, you will all gather together on Thursday afternoon/evening to have Turkey and Stuffing and Pumpkin Pie and then you will watch the Football and/or Argue about Politics, in Canada, it’s like you’ll have a big meal of some sort with family sometime over the weekend, maybe we’ll go out for a fancy dinner or something on Saturday idk.
I just made a pumpkin pie using apple butter instead of pumpkin and it was awesome-sauce.
I’m from Maryland and we do sweet potato pie, thankyouverymuch but all of those sound divine!
Tomorrow, I’m getting on a plane to see my partner for the first time in almost two months. Long-distance relationships remain the worst, but visiting each other is the best!
I haven’t been long distance for a little over three years now but I do miss a ~teensy bit the (positive) feelings surrounding visiting one another. Have a great weekend!!
Yep, me too. It’s weird, while we were long distance it didn’t feel that bad to me, it was fine, whatever. Only now with the gift of hindsight do I see that it did take it’s toll on me, and I am a lot happier now we’re in the same place.
I do miss the excitedness of the visits though, and the postcards. (Though that’s what Toast Post is for, right?!)
Thank you!
As a veteran of long-distance (eight-year relaysch, five of it spent apart), I salute your courage and I hope you have the best time just canoodling and staring at each other.
Apologies if this has been touched on before, but The Bartender truly has the most extravagantly delicious lifestyle.
I am jealous of and impressed by The Bartender!
truth! the bartender spends all her money on food. AND REGRETS NOTHING
I got an IUD last week and it was only about 25% as painful as everyone told me it would be, so that’s pretty great! I think perhaps I had built it up to be Big Scary Awful Painful Thing in mind, so the reality felt like Pretty Uncomfortable Thing That’s Over in No Time At All by comparison.
Tell me more! I’m going in at the end of the month and sometimes I wake up all like “ahhhhhh” in the middle of the night.
I wrote a very, very detailed account of it on my tumblr – if you’re interested, you can read here: http://ohhitumblr.tumblr.com/post/99278299968/thi…
(Not trying to shamelessly self-promote; my tumblr is actually garbage. It’s just… a lot of info to put in the comments section of The Toast.)
okokok I can handle this thank you. I got no prescription painkillers, but DID get a ton of Ativan, so maybe that will level it out?
You’ll do just fine! I highly, highly recommend asking for the cervical block though.
I’m going to a clinic through a sexual health society – I wonder if that’s an option. did you see your family doctor? And just ask for it? I don’t have another appointment until it’s go time 🙁
I went to my gynecologist, who does the cervical block for all IUD insertions as a policy – she told me it was a policy based on personal experience. The clinic should have the medication onsite – you could always call ahead and ask if this is a possibility, or ask for it day-of. If they say no, you have the Ativan to fall back on. You can also take some ibuprofen beforehand to offset the cramping.
No one told me this was a thing that could happen. WELP, in six months when I re-up my Mirena, that’s on the checklist. Thank you!!
IUDs are THE BEST! I am an IUD evangelist. For the price of a few hours of bad cramps, no periods and no babies for five years. It’s amazing.
Ditto. Mirena is literally one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
I’ve been having the hardest time reading The Toast due to shockwave crashes, whatever the hell those are, so I feel silly asking for high fives BUT! I had a phone interview for a job, am waiting for an editing test to be emailed to me, and if it happened it would be weird (I’d be moving right back to the town I escaped from) but also pretty amazing (because maybe I could buy groceries with my own money and get some help for my teeth!). Just wish me luck in SPIRIT, ok? I need it. And the spice must flow: If I get back into my own place I have fantasies of making all the chili in the world. For now? Microwave burritos with jalapenos. So you can see why I’d be psyched to get this job.
High five!
I don’t know what browser you’re using, but searching “turn off shockwave in (browser)” might be a reasonable solution. I keep flash (of which shockwave is a part) disabled in my browser because it keeps videos from autoplaying at me, but it also helps with browsing speed and the like.
@Beakses, SO MUCH BETTER NOW! Please permit me to buy you a cream soda, and thank you thank you for that tip.
High fives! I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
Good luck! Remember to count things in lists! (I took an editing test yesterday with a time limit and only after the time limit was up did I realize that a sentence saying “there are three symptoms…” actually had four symptoms. Been kicking myself for that ever since.)
Ooh, thank you for this. I also have to spontaneously learn geology and engineering, so no pressure!
So many high fives!
Ah, good luck, Heather!
High five! Another high five! Best of luck
@dakimel, thanks! Been meaning to tell you I read your novella and liked it! Posted a review on Amazon and it kind of hilariously corrupted my shopping algorithm. ” Hi Heather, we’d like to recommend all the lesbian things about lesbians that ever lesbianned…and one shaved manly chest.” I can work with that. 🙂
That was you? I love that review, thank you tons!
Hilarious about the shopping algorithms. For a while there, I presume because so many lovely Toasties were buying Ready to Roll, every time the page would give me “people also bought Roxanne Gay” and I was yeah, that’s right, that’s the company I keep. Check me, I’m awesome.
Now it’s mostly waxed oily man chest, but it was fun while it lasted.
Friends, I don’t know if anyone has ever used the new social app “YikYak.” It is a geography based, anonymous service that allows you to just download and participate. No user profile, no identifying information (yet) and no rules. [ETA: So, it’s like Twitter, but without any names.] It’s anonymous nature leaves it totally open to a lot of abuse (so I don’t recommend it), but because I live geographically nearby, I have discovered that about half of the campus of Bob Jones University uses this app.
It has been an interesting and edifying week.
I don’t know why I am surprised, but one of my favorite discoveries is that there is significant number of LGBT students who attend there, and they’re able to use this app to vent, connect/encourage with one another, and go through the motions of “coming out” without having to risk spiritual probation or expulsion. This among other very interesting revelations about what students are really thinking behind the gates of the Fortress.
It’s been a fun week, but another thing I learned is that BJU may have abandoned the sexual assault investigation underway with G.R.A.C.E. I don’t know how to find out more information, but I know that Nicole posted about this investigation in a past link round-up, so I thought I’d throw it into the mix.
I saw ads for that app in my twitter feed and the ad actually said “Hey [local college] students!” so I guess getting the college crowd is their MO?
That is really interesting about BJU students! I’m surprised there’s a significant contingent of LGBT students there mostly because I didn’t think a lot of students went there to begin with??
Yeah, it’s mostly targeted to college age, but it’s not geographically limited to college campuses. They DO geofence all public grade schools that they have coordinates for so that the app is inaccessible for kids while they are at school. (Mainly because the anonymity opened the door for bullying.) I can see posts from BJU, Furman, and NGU depending on where I’m sitting in town, and then there are plenty of old folks like me, or hs students who use it off campus.
The technology is … maybe troubling? Anonymity is a blessing and a curse depending on who uses it, but for now it’s extremely interesting to observe. And insert feminist propaganda at every opportunity. 🙂
I just found out about that app this week! Promptly installed it, and then deleted it two days later. It was interesting but I decided it was ultimately making me unhappier due to the high ratio of (very) sexist and (vaguely) racist content.
I posted one yak that promptly disappeared after getting downvotes (because I used the word “queer” and they have a language screen for slurs even though I used it as a positive identifier? because things with enough downvotes get deleted automatically? Idk.) I’m not sure what happened but I chalked it up to “freedom of speech for straight white people and no one else bye.” It’s too bad, I’m feeling pretty stranded inside a cocoon of compulsory heterosexuality this week and was hoping for at least some anonymous chat.
Spicy foods are amongst the things my witchbaby has forbidden me. Sometimes when I am feeling like a particularly spiteful mother, and she has been a very mean baby (don’t even think that the baby wakes in the night from hunger or tooth pain; it’s just cruelty), I think I might eat some chocolate and salsa and a peanut butter sandwich to get back at her. But I do not, because I am not a mean mama for very long, and more importantly, she’d sleep even less that way.
I wish I had something to say that wasn’t about this baby, but it turns out, when your brain has been melted, there’s just not much room for thought.
I can sympathize heartily. When I was nursing my witchbaby lo these many years ago, I couldn’t eat dairy, chocolate, onions, garlic, broccoli, asparagus, or anything spicy. My meals were generally made of blah, ketchup and soy yogurt.
I had burritos the day we got home from the hospital & newborn stopped eating entirely, thus sending me into a tailspin of frantic melted brain new-momness, and I ate nothing but chicken and bread for the next few months. Well, maybe one or two other things. But my terror of Mad Hungry Baby was too intense to ignore.
I hear you. I miss beans, but they make the kiddo scream.
my favorite thing lately has been this…….thing http://space-bakery.tumblr.com/post/98833565436/o… it’s not exactly fanfiction, but it’s also not NOT fanfiction.
Who’s your favorite One Direction boy? My favorite is fey little stoat Louis.
Alternatively, how do you rejuvenate your soul/body/self? I’ve just been feeling so drained lately and I’m not getting anything done at work.
I prescribe sleep, lots of uninterrupted glorious sleep to rejuvenate.
Do you have some sort of physical activity that you enjoy doing? It can be difficult to motivate yourself to exercise if you’re already feeling drained, but doing something active every day can sometimes help with your overall energy. Plus, on days when you don’t manage to get as much accomplished as you hoped to at work, it can be comforting to remind yourself that at least you took care of your body that day.
I take a sick day at work so I can have a day to hermit alone in my house and clean, cook, knit, maybe go for a walk in the park – the key for me is to be alone and quiet. (Really only works on weekdays because that’s when the people I live with are likely to actually be out of the house.)
I noticed that Niall seemed a little awkward in their mv for…Story of My Life? I think that’s the one. So if I had to choose, it’d be him.
oh Niall, my crispy little leprechaun!
This is a thing I saw on Tumblr last week and I am not ashamed to say I love it. I know the real SMG video will be garbage in comparison (I am not even on board with SMG in general…but I might’ve been slightly mollified by a spaghetti western type video). My favorite One Direction boy is probably Narry. They bring out each others’ best selves. I cannot choose one without the other. Narry 5ever (am I really discussing this on The Toast?).
Lately I’ve been going for walks next to the nearest body of water. (Since I’m in New York, that’s usually the Hudson or the East River, sometimes the lakes and reservoirs in Central Park. Actual ocean would probably work better, but rivers will still do nicely.) There’s something about looking out over water that’s very good for rejuvenating yourself. Probably because you can daydream about taking to the sea.
Two of my dearest darling friends are in town to celebrate the wedding of another friend. That’s bringing me joy this week! What’s bringing you joy this week?
Our weird heat wave is finally coming to an end, it seems (hard to complain about relentless sunshine, but I’m just not equipped for warm weather); I have a three day weekend; and my dude and I are taking a mini-vacay up to PDX this weekend so I have a lot to be joyful about!
Wonderful! I hope you enjoy your mini-vacay!
salt & vinegar chips: damn that mouth-shredding deliciousness.
eventually any kind of candy will start to make my mouth hurt. it’s like actual sugar crystals start sandpapering the roof of my mouth.
Am I early enough to start a book thread this week?? I just read A Land More Kind Than Home, which is about a snake-handling preacher. Will always read about snake-handling preachers. It was actually really good!
What other good books are people reading?
I just finished We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, and it was AMAZING. I cannot recommend it enough. It touches on issues of animal cruelty so it may not be for the faint of heart, but it is such a lovely, heartbreaking, wildly intelligent story.
My book club read it earlier this year and we loved it too. Right up Toast Alley.
“Thunderstruck” by Elizabeth McCracken- just finished it the other night and I can’t stop thinking about it. And, finally, “Wolf in White Van” by John Darnielle– I can hear his voice reading it in my head. It’s chilling and provocative and I LIKE it.
Oh, I just picked “Thunderstruck” up from the library the other day. Can’t wait to get to it! And they notified me that Wolf in White Van is waiting for me, too. Embarrassment of riches!
I’m reading bell hooks’ Communion, which is the first time I’ve ever read any of her work. It’s excellent, and I found an egg chair in the library to read it in, which was hands-down the best part of my day so far.
On the flip side, I’m reading Lean In, because I got as a gift, and I’m less than thrilled so far. Cheryl Sandburg is just so damn privileged, and I’m not quite sure she knows it.
I just started White Is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. Really enjoying it so far, so thank you, Toasties who recommended it a few weeks ago! 🙂 It’s nice and unsettling, perfect for October.
I’m reading The Fitzosbornes In Exile, which came with very high reviews, and I’m having a hard time slogging through it. It’s interesting, just…..I can’t get into it, for whatever reason, and I’m going to finish it up and then move on to Where’d You Go, Bernadette? afterwards. Followed by The Purchase, I think.
I just finished Battleborn , and loved it. It’s a collection of short stories, and I admit that the first couple didn’t make a big impression on me, but it finished really strongly and I’d highly recommend it.
And I got a call yesterday that my book club book, Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore, is in! It was one of my suggestions, so it better be good or I’ll get teased next meeting.
It is good! And fast, but fun, and has enough to chew on for a book club, I think.
Oh yes. I read it in an afternoon, but thought about it for a few days afterward. Lots of interesting stuff about maker culture, technology, books, etc.etc.etc. And the main character is a dude (as is the author, which surprised me– whenever I hear a gender-neutral name I assume it’s a woman) but he’s not a bad one, mostly.
Well, I went on about it up above, but I’ll reiterate that The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley is great. She’s brilliant and won a Hugo for a blog post, We Have Always Fought about how women are written out of history.
I’m reading We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo. I’m only about 60 pages in, but there’s this scene where a white savior NGO type sees a pregnant 11-year-old girl and starts breathlessly taking photos like a member of the paparazzi… it’s fantastic.
That book. I sank into that book & was carried away on its tide and deposited onto new shores and never wanted to leave that book.
I’m reading In Cold Blood as my final spooky read. Truman Capote knew suspense, wow.
I just finished Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter (so good!) and am now re-re-re-reading Persuasion.
Can I talk about a shitty book I’m reading?? I picked up Alison’s Automotive Repair Manual for $1 and it is BAD but I’m still reading it because WHY NOT. None of the characters have any depth, there’s some old guy who’s supposed to be a manipulative compulsive liar but maybe his son is just lying about his lying??? And the author (a man, of course) makes the WEIRDEST things romantic, like “sucking his tongue” while making out, and a string of spit between their lips after their first kiss??
I’m mostly reading it at this point to see where the heck all these characters end up because MAYBE this author will FINALLY put in some character development and motivations which will explain everything. I am doubtful.
Venting about shitty books is almost as fun (or more fun) as talking about good ones! I read a book called The Birth House by Ami McKay recently that seemed to have everything – WWI-era Canada! the clash between midwives and doctors! horrifying twilight sleep births! – and started out promising, but just went nowhere. The characters were all flat, the drama just sort of resolved itself with no major action by the protagonist, there was a lot of name-checking of historical events (like the Halifax explosion), but no real depth. It was so frustrating!
I finished it for the same reason you’re keeping reading, thinking maybe she’d remember to add character development, but NOPE. Does that ever really happen?
I hated that book for exactly the same reason. Nothing HAPPENS! WTF?
I’m working my way through Wolf Hall It’s good, but tricky. I get thrown off my how often it switches times.
I am not supposed to reveal this (my overseers would not be pleased) but Bring Up the Bodies can be read without reading Wolf Hall and it’s FAR AND AWAY more accessible stylistically. Still the amazing psychological stuff, less of the tricksy word/time play.
I just finished Devil in the White City as recommended by another Toastie a while back – it was excellent though I’m very glad that the evil unsettling serial killer bits were balanced out by the beautiful (though challenging) aspects of creating the World’s Fair; it would have been really difficult to read a book entirely about HH Holmes.
A Land More Kind Than Home surprised and pleased me!!
I’m listening to David Mitchell’s Bone Clocks and making up things to do that allow me to go back to the audiobook for extended periods of time. The dog is enjoying my tendency towards long walks. The book is spinning my head in circles, which is fun.
I’m reading one of Susanna Kearsley’s older novels, which I assume will become a time-shift eventually since her others tend to, but it’s set in Italy and is very much a travel-porn kind of book, with gorgeous scenery and enchanting old buildings all over the place, and I’m loving her descriptive talents.
I just read The Enchanted which is the most beautiful book about death row that you can imagine.
Currently working on The Fever by Megan Abbott. Megan Abbott is amazing, she writes about being a teenage girl better than anyone else. Meaning she makes it terrible and confusing and dramatic. Her book about cheerleaders had some of the best prose I have ever read.
I read Fool’s Assassin in a day. It’s the new Robin Hobb book and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I was really happy with how the story of these characters ended, but I love them so much that I couldn’t help but be excited about it. It was good but most of the book felt like intro. The story was very very slow to get going.
I really tried to get into The Fever and I just couldn’t. I really wanted to–there was so much potential–but I got like halfway through and there was just page after page of endless discussion and no action and I felt like I was wading through an endless foggy sea of nothingness, and then I felt bad and returned it to the library so someone else could take it home.
oh no!
I’m still in the first third, I hope it doesn’t do that for me.
I’m reading The Lies of Locke Lamora on the recommendation of a Toastie and it is amazing. Thank you very much, whoever you are.
Locke Lamora!
Excellent choice.
I am reading The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters and Alan Cumming’s new memoir. I am enjoying both thoroughly, though I’ve been warned that The Paying Guests goes off the rails at the end. Has anyone read/can confirm? I’m not sure I trust the person who told me this and I have to finish anyway (book club), so would love to feel more hopeful!
I just finished The Paying Guests, and I would not at all say it goes off the rails. I would say that there’s a genre pivot, mid-book, from romance to crime, which is very tricky to pull off, but I think Waters succeeds. I found the last second half of the book intense, excruciating and claustrophobic, and I mean that in a good way. Don’t want to say more before you’ve finished it!
I’ve been thinking about this since Nicole posted about it ages ago — I want to join the Learned League! Would anyone be willing to invite me? I promise not to cheat! I am a former pub trivia quizmaster and I respect the glory of trivia!
Dilemma: Do I go out to buy wine and doritos despite ominous threat of rain? Or do I continue to sit in my robe and underwear and drink water and read open thread? YOU GUYS.
That’s a tough one. I’m stumped.
Get wine and doritos, but do it in clothing as close to jammies as you possibly can. Open Thread will still be here. Run like the wind.
that’s like the definition of an impossible decision. I’ve been there; I feel your agony. question: can you order food on like seamless or grubhub?
Run out now for provisions! If there’s rain coming you’ll want to be well-stocked.
You will never regret having bought wine and Doritos.
WHEW!
I got two bottles, Doritos and socks, and made it back in time before the thunder got going. You guys always know what to do <3
So jealous of you rn.
Ah, spicy food is my jam. Lately we’ve gotten a wee spice-appreciation group going, we make slightly insanely spicy food. The best story is the Pizza of Doom from March. Someone (not me!) decided that one pizza needed a whole habanero on it. So, we made it, and sat down to eat.
There were four of us.
My partner took a bite and started sweating.
One friend took a bite and took his jumper off, whilst wiping his forehead.
Another friend started sweating and sculled a glass of water.
I took a bite. It was spicy, sure, but not sweating spicy. The problem was, I knew these three people very well. None had a lower spice tolerance than me. So I knew the heat was coming.
One more bite, nothing. By this time the milk had come out for the three.
Another bite.
… and then it hit. The pain, yup there was lots of pain. But yet so good.
I am so with you on delayed reactions to habanero. I like intermediate-level spicy things according to a Thai place I used to frequent (I’d happily order a 4 on the 1=bland 7=presumable agony scale), so when a habanero salsa was accidentally bought, I was game. I was warned it was VERY hot, so when I’d quickly eaten at least an inch of the stuff with no serious effect, I was feeling pretty badass. And then it hit. I don’t keep milk, so a bowl of ice cream was inhaled, and my stomach burned for hours. Still delicious.
I usually do three or four bites as well before the delicious pain/pleasure feeling kicks in. Maybe it just needs a few minutes to coat all my spice receptors? I am a bit crazy for my hot sauce. I live in a bit of a dead zone for sriracha and am now seriously considering ordering several kilos my preferred brand from amazon Germany.
Going home early for the long genocide holiday weekend. Gross, but glad I get to go home early. Totally booked for the weekend, which is a rarity, and makes me remember that not everyone hates me.
Need some input though, Toasties….
I had a small work tiff with a work friend who I was fairly close with outside of work, and it’s been more than a week now and we’re still not, like, back to normal. We’re friendLY, but we’re not constantly chatting and texting and getting drinks. I’m not sure how to approach this, because part of the argument was that I think we both felt like the other was using the outside of work relationship to take advantage of the other person at work. If that makes sense. I was thinking of giving it a full 2 weeks and then sending a text inviting her for drinks with an acknowledgement that she may still feel upset and angry and that it’s ok if she is. I’m on the downward slope of active anger about this myself but other people are different. I also feel strongly that I have nothing to apologize for and I’m sure she is in the same boat. Thoughts? Maybe have to learn my lesson about being friends with coworkers?
Yeah, I’ve found friendships at work don’t tend to work out very well. It’s tough because in American culture after university, it gets harder to make new friends.
My sadder-but-wiser tips: If you truly feel you have nothing to make an amend for, go about your business and treat her cordially when you have to for work purposes, hello in the morning, goodbye at night. Other than that just keep yourself to yourself, short chats with other coworkers about TV and such, nothing too personal.
If you’d been promoted or recognized and she wasn’t, it likely would have been bye-bye “friendship” anyway.
In spicy news this week I made some kind of roast belly pork and stir fried kale and ate them in a bowl with rice with half a jar of what me and my brother call “man face chili”. It’s a brand of chili oil you can buy in the Chinese supermarket and we had always assumed it was a man’s face on the jar. He actually bothered going to the website and it’s a lady and she is the Chili Queen of China!
In counteracting the spicy news, for the same dinner with friends, I made meringues, which we ate with CoYo (a coconut milk based yoghurt, that’s dairy-free as one of my friends can’t eat dairy) and raspberries and with the egg yolks, I made limoncello ice cream and that ice cream my friends, is amazing. Possibly the most amazing thing ever.
Where do you find this CoYo?
I live in the UK, but here it is sold in health food shops – I bought my tub in Whole Foods, which I know is an American chain, but don’t know if the brand is, or where you are. http://www.coyo.co.uk/. Ah, it seems to be British and Australian. It is basically just coconut cream with some kind of live bacteria, so it’s also vaguely acidic. It’s really, really delicious. The meringues with that on were nicer than the meringues with normal cream on.
I will keep an eye out for it! I live at least an hour from Whole Foods or any stores that sell a wide variety of non-dairy stuff (yay dairy allergy!), so I knew this was a shot in the dark, but it sounds SO GOOD.
Woohoo, making it to the open thread on time! I, um, don’t really have anything to complain about this week? I think I’m cultivating a friendship with A Coworker and A Coworker’s Partner, we might do A Thing Outside of Work this evening! And this weekend is the friendly neighborhood festival of activist punk brass bands, so that’ll be a party. Anybody else have optimistic plans for the weekend?
Yes! Catching a show with my kid + grandma, then going to a new noodle shop downtown and heading to a party afterwards. And it might be rainy so I get to wear my new purple rainboots.
PartnerChouffe has suggested pumpkins and a haunted house tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be slinging wine all day.
Thought about running a half-marathon this weekend (I am mostly recovered from the full last weekend) but PC made the excellent point that if I do, that’s fine, but he’ll be driving around going to wineries instead, which, even to me, sounds a great deal more fun than running thirteen miles up and down hills.
Bad, but getting better: My grandmother has been hospitalized recently but has been released and is doing much better and getting some help (home health, physical therapy, etc.). I have a lot of feelings about it that I can’t properly express right here and right now, but I am trying to be optimistic and helpful and not live in a low-grade fever of anxiety all the time about it.
Good, maybe even great: In the next week I will be beginning an internship for my dream job as a mortician. I’ve wanted to do this since I was in high school, but my family withheld money from me to prevent me from pursuing it. Now I am Grown and am taking control of my own damn life. I feel empowered and so, so happy and excited for the future.
Congratulations on the dream job internship!
Fuck yes on that internship, and you being empowered, and happy, and all of it. Fuck yes.
My cousin married a guy whose family are morticians, and they are the best, most grounded, practical and compassionate people I know. Plus, Solomon Burke was a mortician and he was pretty great too. Big thumbs up from me on pursuing your dream job!
I did not know that about Solomon Burke, but I’m reading about it now and it’s FASCINATING.
And the family that I’m working with is so so so nice, and like you said, so grounded and compassionate. I’m really excited about it, and the matriarch of the family was sitting in on my interview and told me she thought I’d be a natural, and that meant so much to me. I’ve gone down a long road of getting shut down over and over, even within my college and grad school programs and my current job, and just to hear that…………I have Feelings.
omg omg CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!! I am really, really excited for you. Really really!!!!!!!!!
Oh my gosh I cannot wait for you to become a mortician. SO COOL.
Ugh, fuck this week for many reasons. Man-hating anecdote: was texting a guy I met online trying to make plans to get drinks. He asked me “Would you date yourself?” which I thought was a weird question, but I was like… “Yeah, I think I’m pretty rad” because, dude, if I don’t think I’m dateable, why would I expect you to think I am? But he got all huffy about how that was a cocky answer, and against my better judgment, I engaged in that argument, because MAN does it suck that women are expected to pretend to or actually hate themselves in order to be worthy of dating or fucking or acknowledging. Fuck that. I’m awesome. At some point he said something like “I think men actually have a more difficult time with this” and NOPE, I’m out. I’m glad this conversation happened pre-drinks.
UGHHHHHHh it sounds like you dodged a bullet with that one. what a dick!
Ewwwww that is like 8,000 levels of NOPE. That’s a stupidass question to ask in the first place, but if you expect the person to say no?? He might as well ask, “Do you have sufficiently low self esteem that I can effectively manipulate you?”
exaaaaaaaaactly. gross-a-rama.
If you were supposed to think of yourself as undatable, what would that make your opinion of HIM, dating some undatable woman??
Oh, gross. At least you know he’s not worth any more of your time.
PRE-SORTING, think of it as pre-sorting.
Shit girl, I’d MARRY myself.
Totally! I feel like I want to be the kind of person I’d like to be around, you know? Nothing wrong with that (and that dude does sound like a garbage person).
I’d marry myself, except that I’m not sure I want to marry someone who’s that lousy at housekeeping.
But I suppose I and I would work that out somehow.
Beautiful.
I AM dating myself. I make myself nice dinners and take myself out for nice walks or to see movies or shows. I also curl up on the couch with myself and watch Netflix, and talk about books and food and other things that interest me on my blog (which is more or less me talking to myself, despite a few readers). I enjoy my own company very much! If I didn’t, why would I inflict it on anyone else?
Good riddance to that dude!
It’s so thoughtful/helpful when they out themselves as d-bags before you have invested too much time, isn’t it?
Did you laugh at him? Men fear women’s laughter and I hope you got a good evil cackle out at his expense because I sure did.
On Saturday I finally made the Pear Ginger Sorbet from the recipe E.P. Wordsnatcher kindly provided me with. It was everything I expected and more. Last night I ate too much of it and gave myself a bit of a stomachache. But don’t let that stop you from making it. Tips: chop the ginger candy into dust. Cold ginger sticks in your molars. Don’t maybe add the full 1/4 cup of ginger. It almost overpowers the pear flavor. I used red bosc pears, but I think any would be good.
Next on my list is Creamy Apple Gelato and Apple Pie with Bacon Lattice. I bought expensive bacon for this latter endeavor and I hope it turns out as good as it looked in the photo.
I would take pictures of all this food and post it, but my camera has gone to camera heaven 🙁
Also this weekend is the Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival and I am looking forward to eating a bunch of fruits of the sea. This year our special guest chef is a White House Chef named John Moeller and hopefully I’ll get to see him do his demonstration. If you are local (Puget Sound area) and love seafood and need to get away, this would be worth the trip to the North Olympic Peninsula.
I keep trying to eat your post but the computer won’t let me. 🙁
A festival of Dungeness crabs? That sounds like heaven on earth.
It absolutely is!
OMG I’m so glad you made it! I will write your recipe tips in my cookbook and will make it posthaste.
Also, fair warning, it may be very difficult to not eat the warm pear sauce with a spoon from the pot.
Have you tried his plum ice cream recipe? I found it posted it online and I made it tonight. My tip for that recipe is if you aren’t keen on peel flecks in your plums to peel the plums before you pit and cut them. It might be because I used the immersion blender. Also warning on difficulty in not eating the plum sauce straight from the pot.
I really need this cookbook because these two recipes were fabulous.
ooh, which biography was it? i read one a long time ago that totally swept a bunch of her more radical qualities under the rug, which was…absurd and disappointing, because frida was a BOSS.
This one! http://www.amazon.ca/Frida-A-Biography-Kahlo/dp/0…
I do admit that, as a not-art-history-buff, I found it hard to get through all the incredibly detailed descriptions of her artwork, but it was SUPER FASCINATING anyway
In case anyone has lost track of Ask Polly since it left The Awl, this week’s “Do I Have To Lose Weight To Find Love?” (happy spoiler: answer is not weight-focused) hit me in all the soft parts. Recommended for everyone else feeling kinda “ugh what’s the point” about the whole thing. Almost made me want to try addressing my howling void of loneliness! (The comments WERE fine but they have gotten not-fine over the last couple of days, don’t read ’em.)
“you’re great just as you are but should exercise because exercise solves everything” is not the advice I would have wanted, but that’s me.
I knowwww, amazing as always. She does seem to be picking topics that bring out the terrible comments in droves though. I need to learn to not look.
Thanks for the link, I always forget to check nymag now. I can’t figure out how to put just her column in my feedly…
LOL I commented and things got a bit nasty but OH WELL.
I fell for the pretzel-bunned chicken sandwich at Wendy’s a while back. It was truly terrible.
I used to get pretzel dogs at Whole Foods sometimes, and they were delightful – fake hot dog surrounded by pretzely goodness. I don’t even like hot dogs, and ye tthese were delicious. They have been absent for many years now, but I still always check. And for this reason, I often fall for pretzel-themed bread products, which are generally terrible.
Do you keep getting that horrific dominos ad for the pretzel pizza? They keep showing this weird orange sauce going on and it’s grossing me out, yet I can’t stop being intrigued.
One of the sandwich shops close by makes their own pretzel bread, and it is legitimately glorious. The shop is about to close for the winter and it’s so sad to think about not getting any pretzel bread again until April.
I get pretzel rolls from Whole Foods or Costco.
(I got a Costco bag of them this week. So, that’s a lot of rolls. Bought them Monday, ate the last of them Wednesday. Shared a couple with my family, but mostly it was me. No regrets. They’re amazing.)
Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke at my school last night. It was AWESOME. At the end of the Q & A, a student asked why we should try to press for a dialogue about reparations when most people in power remain unwilling to participate in such discussions. He said that effort put toward a moral good was never wasted, even if the outcome that you seek won’t ever be realized in your lifetime, or never at all (“Was Ida B. Wells’ writing in support of anti-lynching legislation wasted effort?”). He said there’s nothing pointless about setting a course by a lodestar, even if you can’t reasonably expect to reach the destination, because you can’t know in advance what work will have been essential to arriving at the goal.
There were tons of people who have been fighting for reparations for decades in the audience and they spoke a bit about their resilient activism. It was great, he was great, and I was glad to be there.
I am jealous, he is wonderful, you are lucky.
What a wonderful answer!
I was at that talk too! It was SO GOOD! I really liked that last girl’s kind of critical question, because I feel at those kinds of talks you get either reverence or hatred and very little in between, so a thoughtful, caring critique was, I thought, very useful and interesting.
Personal finance! How is everyone financing? I am learning how to use Questrade, with the help of my husband, so I some point I can move my mutual funds out of Tangerine and save some fees. I’m also arranging for the bank that manages our shitty work RRSP program to come in and give a talk on personal budgeting for our office, but I’m a bit concerned with how it will go over – we’re a tech company that maintains a call center on site, and the income disparity in our office is pretty brutal. Thoughts?
I had to make a tuition payment this week and the total due was the Number of the Beast. That’s probably a sign of some sort, right?
Money is good this week! I didn’t blow 75% of my groceries budget on one trip like I normally do, so that’s progress. I’m still eating well, just getting less stuff I want but don’t need. What’s got me nervous these days is my upcoming Master’s- I’m planning to apply for a part-time degree next year, and even with tuition remission from work, it’s going to be a pile. Oof. I’m going to spend some time soon looking carefully for scholarship and grant opportunities I might be able to pull in to reduce the blow. On the plus side, if/when I do get this degree (or maybe even earlier!) I’m in line for a promotion and a pretty solid salary bump at work.
I got a drunken talking-to from a friend last weekend about money. Her point was that I am already better off than most of the country/world, that I compare myself to our richest friends so I have no sense of how lucky I am, and that I need to reflect on some of the good things I have now and not always assume the worst and prepare for catastrophe. She was at least partially right, but it is hard. I need to find some kind of balance.
Huh, that’s really interesting – how did drunk you take it?
I was a little pouty and silent in my drunken state. I think she’s mostly right, I only started saving five or six years ago and I’m nowhere near where I “should be” in terms of retirement goals so I stress about it (especially because I’m single, don’t own a hourse and in my early forties so OH NO DOOM). But it’s still more than most people have done, and my mom and grandma are doing fine and I’m likely to benefit from their good practices and planning. Plus, most of her point was not that I shouldn’t try hard, but that I am too gloomy and don’t appreciate what I have already. So right, yes, trying to look on the bright side.
I’ve spent a lot less so far this month because I’ve been bringing my own lunch in to the office. Although we’ll see if that still holds true after the long weekend of thrifting and antique-store-ing…
I’m using the Mint app and it’s pretty decent, but it has a few little bugs and quirks that annoy me. Like, it includes payments I make on my credit card in my pie chart of expenses. Except it also includes the original purchase, so it’s double-counting it. If I transfer money from account A to account B, it will display the debit from A but not the credit to B, so that it looks like that money just vanished. And it categorizes the monthly interest I’m paid for my tax-free savings account as a tax that I’m paying. Ugh, Mint, get your shit together.
My wife and I are starting to talk about kids (!!!!!!) so I’m re-crushing every number I’ve ever crunched and then re-re-crunching and WHAT DOES A BABY COST
We still have ten years before our eggs shrivel up and blow away (or whatever clinically happens when you turn 35), which is good for our early retirement goals, but now our savings goals have a sense of urgency they didn’t have before. Also a sense of purpose? Talking about saving to be home with a kiddo feels a liiiiiittle different from our former plan of saving to “retire early and hang out, idk.”
Congrats! I read “BABY COST” as “west coast” and was like “sweet we should do a meet up”… haha.
whoa, you have a lot of time if you two are 25. Women are still fertile between 35 and 40, new science shows (and I say this mostly for any other ladies reading through the thread). It’s really only as you veer towards 40 that things really drop off.
I’m trying to do a $100 vacation (not counting the bus ticket down, because I had already paid for that/because reasons and it’s REALLY HARD. I did the math wrong and thought I had way more money than I did at the beginning of the week so I’m scrimping the last few days. I was considering just being like, “fuck it,” but pushing through to at least do my best is feeling really good.
I am currently in a debate with my partner about a vacation. 4 of our closest friends are going, we have been talking about going on vacation with these people for years, and it will be a ton of fun. But it’s also looking like almost double our original cost estimate.
I’m convinced we can afford it, it is months away and he makes buckets of money. 6 digits worth of it. This vacation is barely more than a paycheque when I break down the numbers.
But he is uncertain and it frustrates me. Because money issues are never just about money, I’m bummed out because he takes spontaneous weekend trips all the time, and yes they are cheaper than this week in a really ritzy all inclusive in Costa Rica, but he does it every couple months. The last time I travelled was for a wedding, the time before that was to go watch my grandfather die.
So I want this vacation. And will probably get my way eventually, but in the meantime, bleh.
I am starting to look for part time work, because right now I freelance and it is crazy making. the grind is getting me down and I need something stable to make me feel like a productive member of society. Also I like paycheques.
In super annoying news, it looks like mr ex-noodgeforlyfe did indeed create a light bedbug infestation in my bed this summer when I was out of the house. I’m finding no other possible reason for the groups of HUGE itchy welts that have occurred about 3-4 weeks apart on my body, all timed with daytime snoozes on my bed.
Any bed bug advice? I think it’s limited to my bed, so my plan of action was going to be: 1.) diatomaceous earth on the bed and rug 2.) bedbug bag for my bed and 3) wash all linens and clothes in hot water.
Make sure to dry everything on super hot heat as well – worth taking it to the laundromat if they have industrial dryers.
And indulge every vice you want to. Bedbugs are the worst.
Get some bedbug covers for your mattress and pillows. Never take them off again, because those fuckers can live forever (18 months, which is basically forever.) And make sure you do a really good job of cleaning out your bed frame, if you have one; they were living in it when we had them. Cover any outlets you don’t use in your bedroom because that’s one way they can get into the walls and travel between rooms – we had an infestation in our older apartment building a couple of years ago, and that’s how it spread. Also, lots of wine.
Thirding the advice to indulge. If, like me, you occasionally feel the need to *indulge* in some light screaming or ranting at unsuspecting friends or family, then go for it. Feel its soothing powers.
Thanks everyone. It doesn’t help that I apparently have hypersensitivity to the saliva of these little buggers, so I have welts the size of silver dollars on my back that just itch and throb. UGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGH
UPWARD!
For preventing bites (not killing them unfortunately but just repelling them from one spot) I’ve had some success with dryer sheets laid under my sheets and in pillow cases.
I want to go goth dancing but I don’t think there’s anywhere to go around here/my friends would have no interest in it. Hrumph.
Firstly, these people sound like real turds and I’m sorry they’re stinking up your counseling course.
One possibility: send the instructor an email. Or rather, draft the email, let it sit overnight, and then revise and send it. Recount the incident briefly and clearly, and explain that as counselors you need a shared and accurate vocabulary for talking about trauma. You could, if you like, refer the instructor to the numerous blog posts that point out why rape-as-metaphor is a problem (I know there have been some on Shakesville). You could also, if you like, point out that you hope to use the class to develop skills for defusing or redirecting this kind of aggressive behavior!
I teach college. If this started to happen in my class I would shut it down so fast it would (re)circumcise the dude in question, and if it happened out of my earshot, I would want to know about it. If the instructor is hostile or laissez-faire, that super extra sucks but at least you will know where you are.
Another thing that might help, especially outside of class, is to have something handy to say that reasserts the fact but also refuses further engagement: “I don’t have time right now to explain to you why that position’s dangerous.” “I don’t have time right now to explain to you why that comparison’s misleading.”
Good luck. I hope you never have to hear another sound emerge from either of these horrendous people’s mouths.
ETA: This was in response to Briony_Fields, the nesting thing seems not to be working.
Yes! Seconding this (out-of-place but great) comment. Tell the instructor what happened. Use terms like “problematic” etc. Outline briefly why you feel this is so, especially within the context of the course, etc. We instructors love when our students pick up on this messed-up shit and call their colleagues on it, using terms they’ve learned, etc.
I would immediately leave and go make my own pumpkin pie, were I faced with a pumpkin pie-less Thanksgiving dinner.
Which is not to say that you cannot also make many other kinds of pie. All pie is welcome (maple buttermilk sounds delightful!), but pumpkin is required. Sometimes we make two or three just so there will be plenty for breakfast the next day.
(Also I don’t know how closely Canadian Thanksgiving dinner resembles American Thanksgiving dinner – I know there are significant regional differences even within the US – it may not be at all required at Canadian festivities. Unless you invite me. Which you haven’t.)
You know, I have totally done this and it is actually awesome. And by “this,” I mean been slightly disappointed by a holiday meal and gone home and made the missing pieces. It’s just extra holiday eating, which is some of my favorite eating of all!
Unpredictable waiting is the worst. But pie is the best.
STOP GOING TO THE BOTTOM, all my comments!
I was REALLY proud of the pastry. All buttery and flaky and crisp and light.
I’m good at pastry 🙂
I just had a really nice lunch with two coworkers and then we slightly embarrassed ourselves with weird conversations at the coffee bar. WORK FRIENDSHIPS ARE AWESOME
Toasties, help!
I had to pick up my baby from the nurse’s office this morning cause he got to school late for his 1st period Algebra II test and they JUST moved him yesterday to be with a new teacher and then he overslept and that’s his hardest class (poor baby is only 14; I TOLD 11-year-old him not to take the advanced math track, damnit) and anyway he had a full-on panic attack at his locker and fled to the nurses office hyperventilating.
It was his first actual panic attack, but the writing was on the wall, and the nurse is great and helped him breathe, and I talked him through some of his tears, and he’s snoring in his bed now.
Obviously this was a big pile-on of stuff (late, hard class, new teacher, test, overtired from being up until midnight after marching band practice practically every day, missed the tutorial this morning too so the test will be harder without that, oh yeah his girlfriend/homecoming date is no longer his girlfriend/homecoming date except maybe she is but he isn’t sure) but I don’t by any means expect this will be the last panic attack in his life.
He’s the most empathetic and darling guy ever – I have never known anyone as empathetic as him, from the time he was little (makes me want to make him a mama’s boy because he is inevitably supportive and sweet if I’m the least bit moody or sick or whatever) – but it’s paired with the tendency to go straight into emotional overload. Nerves make him excessively nervous. And apparently we’ve moved beyond – or need to seriously reinforce – the coping techniques that got him through elementary & middle school (oh the bad days of Kindergarten! oh the rages!)
Panic-prone/adjacent people, what works best?
I have a panic disorder and am medicated for it.
Panic attack care is personal for everyone, but for me I’ve found just… letting myself feel it. ‘I am scared. I am scared of this. It’s ok to be scared. Let this go.’ and describing how it feels, physically, emotionally etc, out loud, to myself helps.
Long term, to prevent panic attacks, I found that accepting my limits and avoiding catastrophising thoughts ‘If this goes wrong it WON’T be the end of the world, it’ll just be a disappointment, that I can survive’ helps.
Therapy has been good for me, but he may be too young to be willing to do the work of therapy.
Well, he was willing enough to do the therapy work when he was 5 and it was play therapy and he got to leave school early once a week and go to the place with the computer games in the waiting room and all the toys in Dr Jill’s room. I imagine now it would seem like one more thing in his overloaded life. (Can football season end soon, please, so my kid can be done with school by 3 instead of 6 every day?)
The worst-case-scenario thinking plagues all of us, and this is a nice little wake-up-call for me to start modeling better thinking and helping him realize that going to catastrophe first thing is a pattern worth breaking. (Also for me to make my sister give back my copy of The Optimistic Child which is hands-down the best resource for figuring out how to communicate with the young pessimists out there.
This is great advice, thanks for replying.
Breathing techniques! Obviously this is great alongside therapy/xanax, none of this is mutually exclusive, but learning breathing techniques is the best thing I know for preventing a panic attack. By slowing your breath, you slow your heart rate as well. A huge part of panic attack symptoms are the physical consequences of very shallow breathing (hyperventilation). The person is desperately taking lots and lots of short breaths and forgetting to exhale first, so the air would have somewhere to go.
Therapists will teach breathing techniques like these: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/07/22/…
though I think the best way is to go to a yoga class focused on pranayama (breathing and meditation) so that someone will coach you through the exercises and gauge how well you do them.
Once he has some exercises mastered, he can apply them pretty much instantly when he starts to feel the symptoms come on.
That was really helpful to pass on to him, it made a lot of sense that he wasn’t allowing himself the right mix of air and we talked about all the breathing exercises he used to do when he was having Emotion Explosions as a little guy. Thanks.
I TOLD 11-year-old him not to take the advanced math track, damnit
Hm. If you are still saying this sort of thing to him, I suggest you stop. As I kid, I would have interpretted such statements from my parents to mean “you are inherently incapable and we know it.” Any difficulty with the material (which is a natural part of the learning process!) after that point would have freaked me the hell out and sent me into a spiral of anxiety, doubt, and depression.
If he has test anxiety, it may be helpful for him to remember that the test is just a measure of his skill set on that particular day. It is not a measure of his intelligence or potential or worth. It is definitely not a measure of his aptitude for math. Skills are learned, so even if he gets a bad grade, it only means that he needs more practice or a different study approach.
Oh, I appreciate the message. I just didn’t see the value of super-advanced math for him back in 5th grade when he picked the track cause all his STEM-type friends were taking it, but he was all “I qualify, so I’m taking it” and has been firm on the decision since.
These days it’s much more like, “You realize that you’re taking 3 courses as a freshman that your so-called-brilliant brother [who graduated in June as valedictorian of this same school] didn’t take until he was a sophomore? Plus you have all those marching band hours to do? (Subtext: You must be some kind of genius and if I were you I totally wouldn’t care if bro got straight As and you have As and Bs, because look how much more you’re handling!)”
He does have test anxiety, and that is a really really smart thing for us to remind him of – and not something I remember ever saying to my kids before, despite how true and how useful it is. Thank you for that.
I realize I jumped on you with both feet in my earlier comment, and I want to apologize. I tend to remember the least kind/constructive things adults said to me at that age and then overgeneralize from my experience.
It sounds like your son is a very driven go-getter, and you are a good, supportive parent.
GROSS both of those people are gross and should never counsel anybody ever about anything holy shitballs what insensitive and indifferent bags of poop. Please take good care of yourself this weekend.
As far as what to do next, it may be time for some good old-fashioned repetitive boundary setting. “I don’t appreciate you using that word in that way around me, please stop.” “Yes, I suppose I am oversensitive about this, I need you to stop using rape in that way around me.” “We can agree to disagree but I need you to stop saying that around me.” “I am indeed extremely humorous about this, so I’ll need you to not use rape in that way around me anymore.”
Sigh. This is obviously in reply to Briony_Fields.
Cosign the repetitive boundary-setting. In addition to reinforcing it for the jerk, it reinforces it for YOU — you start to believe in it and feel safer and stronger.
Annnnnd it’s too late to change “humorous” to “humorless.” YKWIM.
5:45 is far too early to have dinner, yeah?
Even though we’re having really good steak with peppercorn sauce?
damn.
but i’m hungry nooooooooooow
Pfff, if you start cooking now it’ll be 6 when you’re done, and that’s practically almost dinner time.
DOOO IT
Jos doesn’t ant to start cooking till at least half six
I may consume him alive
That ought to sate your hunger.
‘i think 7 or half 7 is a better time to eat’
I bit him, but it just got him frisky
It’s now 7.30 here, and Mr Captain should have been here FIFTEEN minutes ago, and is instead going to arrive after 8, because roadworks are fucking up the buses . And dinner is in the oven and smells so fucking good and I am torturing myself to not eat it all right now.
Nope! It’s Friday, you’re hungry, and you’ve got a bangin’ meal planned. Why wouldn’t you want to have dinner as soon as possible?
In my books, so long as its past 5, one can have dinner any time. The idea that 5:45 is too early for dinner sort of boggles my mind. But then again, I did spend my childhood doing extracurriculars that started at 6, so I often HAD to eat at 5 if I wanted dinner before 9pm.
Ever since college, where the dining hall was open from 5 to 7 but would get busy fast and eventually all the good food would start to run out, 5 has seemed like a totally reasonable dinnertime to me.
DOG THREAD. Post yer dogs here.
Here is a snap I helped my dog send to my friend this morning
Vizsla?
Yes indeed!
Aww, what a cutie. I still miss my childhood Vizsla a lot. They are such incredibly sweet dogs.
Hello Toasties! Has anyone here read Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson? I just finished it and I have a burning desire to talk to someone about WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED IN THE ENDING. I feel like this: !!!!!!!! But also very much like this: ???????????
I HAVE AND TODAY OF ALL DAYS I AM KIND OF BUSY AT WORK.
best I can do for you is that what happens in the very end is about what happens in the very beginning. sorry, that is pretty obvious and not actually an answer, is it
edit: I feel like the book makes it as impossible for you to describe to others as it is impossible for Natalie to communicate with any other human beings inside it.
YES.
Tell me though, I can get on board with the theory that what happened in the end is about what happened in the beginning, but what the HELL did Tony want with out there in the first place?
oh my god, just reading this made my blood pressure go up. and these people are in a counseling course? i am so sorry that what should be a safe space has revealed itself to be…not that.
as for “emotional rape” being a thing—i can understand the desire for a term to describe the trauma of longterm, repetitive emotional abuse. but i think rape is so tied up in the trauma of having your bodily autonomy taken away from you, it doesn’t make sense to qualify it with other terms to mean other things.
also, even if this guy is operating under the idea that “emotional rape” is undoubtedly a thing, his choice of words was still extremely suspect. getting unwanted advice =/= longterm, repetitive emotional abuse. nowhere even near.
Personal favorite hell-raising spicy bloody mary ingredients: pickled jalapenos, horseradish, tiny thai chilis, black pepper, tabasco…
Other stuff I like in my bloodys: worcestershire sauce, celery salt, celery stalks, candied jalepenos, bacon, olives, gherkins
Stuff I DO NOT WANT in my bloody marys: ham (seriously, what the fuck?), gochujang (fishy), BEEF STRAWS (someone please explain beef straws)
CANDIED JALAPENOS? ooh mannnn.
I liked pickled everything in my bloodies (olives, okra, green beans, carrots, etc.)
So my workplace just did a community survey on people’s perception of “unnatural hair colors, piercing and body art” and we got the results yesterday. To say that they are fascinating is insufficient. You could teach semesters of undergrad sociology on just the verbatims, let alone the aggregate.
The big surprise was that most people are basically decent and recognize that other people’s appearances have nothing to do with them and are pretty much none of their business.
I think one of the most interesting threads was several people saying (unprompted) that tattoos and piercings were a health threat and unsanitary and that tattoo parlors are giving everyone who goes there hepatitis and HIV.
I also sort of wish we had a way to challenge people’s assumptions. One comment said that having employees with tattoos made it look like we had hired a bunch of homeless people. To which I might ask: what’s wrong with homeless people? (And then there would be uncomfortable silence, I hope.)
I work at a nursing school association (I’m not a nurse, btw) and manage some of the listservs where faculty can ask questions of other faculty. One faculty member just posted a question about tattoo / piercing / hair policy in their classroom and clinical portions, and EVERYONE — literally, every single one — requires that any tattoo must always be covered, all hair colors must be natural, and you could only have one piercing in each ear lobe (and no other piercings). It’s so silly! Like, damn, I bet this nurse is super unprofessional! Why, look at the tiny stud in her cartilage!
I was surprised how many people threw around the word “unsanitary” when talking about (for instance) an eyebrow stud, but then were totally OK with earrings. Or somehow, an earring in the upper part of the ear is more likely to be a safety hazard for getting caught on things than one in the lobe, so it would really be in our employees’ best interest not to have them. Seeing people desperately trying to justify their person prejudices in the name of safety and hygiene is amusing/sad.
I filled out Mr Daki’s US Citizenship papers last night (I mean.. he did. Totally not me. Because he would never have put it off another 20 years or anything.) Telling him he had to select ‘gray’ as his hair color was fun enough as it was, but then I got to the eye color section:
I think you should pick “other” just to keep them guessing.
… what?
I’m guessing pink and maroon are to account for albinism and similar conditions?
I am going to a happy family event this weekend (I’m going to be a godmother! Yay!), and I have a cute shawl I want to wrap over my shoulders/upper body, mostly for warmth (wearing a sleeveless dress). So how can I wear a shawl without looking like my grandma? It’s oblong, off-white, no pattern- I’m thinking of using a brooch on it, I’m just not sure how. Thoughts?
Can you maybe pin it on/by your shoulder instead of at the middle?
Shoes and earrings. Make those as far from granny style as possible. You rock and the kid is lucky to have such a cool godmother.
Congrats on your godmothering! With scarves/shawls, I like to do that thing where I put it over my shoulders and upper arms, but then tie it behind my back. I feel like it looks a little more “stately ice queen” and less “wolf dressing as a grandma in a fairytale.”
This YouTube video has some good ideas.
If the shawl is big enough, I also like to tie two corners on the same long end together to make a loop, put my head through the loop with the knot at the base of my neck, twist the shawl so that it makes a figure 8 with my head through the top of the 8, and then put the bottom loop of the 8 up over my head. Wrapped this way, the shawl keeps my shoulders warm without falling off or keeping me from using my hands.
“How wonderful, she’s going to be a godmother,” said Margaret Atwood, sipping her tea.
::deflates into limp heap of delight::
Anybody else watching Rebecca Sugar’s cartoon Steven Universe? It’s getting so good! I was sad when she left the Adventure Time team to make her own show, but it has become clear, to me at least, that that was an excellent choice on her part. Everything that made her episodes of Adventure Time great – the musical numbers, the focus on interpersonal relationships, the tantalizing hints of backstory – it’s all here. And its art style is fantastic. And I want to talk about it if you do.
it’s really good, and I’m loving it.
Let me start this off by saying that I don’t believe in ghosts, and I know that what I saw wasn’t a ghost, and was instead a trick of the light combined with sleepy grogginess. With that caveat out of the way, let me describe an experience I had two nights ago that I believe is thematically appropriate for the season.
I had just woken up from a dream and opened my eyes. It was dark in our room, with only the orange LED power-off indicator light from the television casting any light. I saw my fiancee [still getting used to using that word!] sit up in bed, then slide to the foot of the bed and sit there on the edge. I figured she was getting up to use the bathroom. I didn’t think much of it until I looked over and noticed, nope, my fiancee is still sleeping soundly next to me. I glanced back and yep, still shadow figure—distinctly female-seeming—sitting at the foot of the bed. Next, the figure stood up for a few seconds, then knelt as if in prayer beside the bed.
Now, during this time, I was telling myself in my head: You don’t believe in ghosts. Ghosts are a physical impossibility given known laws about natural world. This is a trick of the light you’re creating patterns out of shadows. And yet, I couldn’t make myself not see it in the moment. I couldn’t blink it away.
With my mind still racing and my heart beating pretty quickly at this point, I shifted my gaze and noticed another, taller, male-seeming shadow was standing next to the mirror on our wall. And then they were just frozen like that. They didn’t move, but I couldn’t make them disappear or figure out what exactly was casting these shadows or what shapes were contributing to their darkness.
I laid there for several minutes, heart racing, telling myself that ghosts aren’t real, closed my eyes and ignored them, and finally fell back asleep.
Again, these were tricks of the light and my own sleep-addled brain, but it was absolutely one of the creepiest things I’ve ever experienced.
I’d recommend Oliver Sacks’ “Hallucinations” in which he describes the various types of hallucinations we can fall prey to. He also very gently debunks a lot of ghost-sighting stuff. Our brains play tricks on us all the time.
(Part of me actually wants to believe in ghosts, BTW, but it’s probably healthier and saner that I don’t since I own a 100+ year old house. Boo.)
Was going to say just that! There’s one chapter where he explains just this. It happens to me all the time, and it’s terrifying.
aaaaaaaaaaaaa
I see shadowy figures like that before I have migraines. So far I’ve seen a man in a hat standing behind me and a cat run across the room. Usually I see the more classic black zig-zag lines though. It might sound scary, but for me, it’s comforting to have a warning sign.
But yeah, that sounds creepy!! Definitely thematically appropriate.
The Open Thread is as good a place as any to report this. (Who you gonna call? Toastbusters!)
That’s creepy as heck, man. Wow.
(also, hi! *waves* it’s been a while. –elitza)
What do you do when you are paralyzed by the amount of stuff you need to get done? [realizes posting on The Toast is not getting that stuff done] Practical tips appreciated.
Only just do one thing, then have a snack as a reward. Snacks are key.
Baby steps. Little things. What is the easiest, quickest thing you can accomplish right now? Just getting on a roll starting the little things usually helps me gear up to tackle the big things.
To-do lists–sometimes exhaustive, outline-like to-do lists–are the only things that help me.
Make a list. Figure out the things that are easy/quick to get done and do those first, so that you have crossed some things off and can focus on the bigger things. Look at deadlines and prioritize. Make sub-lists for bigger tasks so that you can take them one step at a time.
http://www.mytomatoes.com
It’s free, you can keep track of your tasks, and the timer only lasts 20 minutes. You can do almost anything for 20 minutes.
My dissertation would never have been written without mytomatoes.
Thanks – I just used it to work for 75 minutes, and I can see it being a life saver. I need a break longer than 5 minutes now, tho.
Write EVERYTHING down. I use the Getting Things Done method, but obviously you don’t have time to read about that right now so just do a to-do list. Don’t worry about “booking” it to a particular day unless it’s like, a meeting that has to be that day or anything. Put everything down, even the small stuff like “find that paper I filed somewhere”. I find that once everything is written down and I don’t have to worry about keeping them in my head or that I’ll forget them, I can relax and focus better. So put everything on the paper, pick one, and work on that and try not to even think of the other items until you finish it.
Make a list, and once the list is made (and you’ve checked ‘make a list’ off the list you have made), pick one. Maybe the most urgent, maybe the one that annoys you the most, whatever and very gently say to yourself, “Why don’t you do x for a little while? You just have to do it for five minutes and then you can stop if you want.”
Usually an hour later I have a clean kitchen. Or laundry sorted. Or whatever it was that I didn’t want to do.
I finally made an executive decision about the holidays that I feel like has taken a huuuuge weight off my chest. It might not make people happy but it makes my partner and I happy and doesn’t completely kill my bank account so I….don’t care?
Have you done Alone Christmas? What traditions did you keep or make? What food did you make?? (I just really love hearing about food)
Also tell me all about your Toast Post! I got a Nancy Drew card with a RECIPE on the back AND a message, which just impresses me because my handwriting could never be so neat and small.
I am having a horrible decision-making-time about the holidays right now and it is making me feel so awful and anxious! My boyfriend’s mom is working in New Zealand and has offered to pay for us to visit for the holidays which of course I absolutely want to do, but I cannot bear the thought of what it will do to my parents if I am not with them for Christmas (in Florida). They will be so sad. I don’t know what to do!
Can you visit your parents another time, but close to the holidays? Maybe MLK or President’s Day? That might help mitigate it for them! Will they be alone if you can’t visit? I’d also recommend other people they could visit or things they could do/places they could travel without you, so it feels like they’re doing something special too and not just celebrating in an empty house.
I am doing my first along Christmas (well, with my spouse) this year, so I’m stalking recipes online. It’s so strange to invent new traditions. The only one we have now is watching the Charlie Brown Christmas each year. But do I want to be the sort of person who buys Christmas decorations? Or have a tree? I’m still not sure!
We already have a (fake) tree and some ornaments we’ve bought over the years together but I am really excited to go ALL OUT with the holiday decor.
(But yes! Do I want to make pie? What kind of dinner will we have? Do we open PJ’s Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?? So many options!)
I have never done Truly Alone Christmas, but last year my husband and I did put out foot down about spending Christmas morning together. We didn’t do anything special, but it was triumphant to have that time for just us. And we had plans to go out for Chinese for lunch and make that a tradition, but my grandmother ended up having her lunch on Christmas Day, so we did that instead.
I haven’t done Alone Christmas but I’ve done Alone Thanksgiving a lot and I love it. I watch all 3 Lord of the Rings (minus the spider parts) movies and knit like the wind and drink hot beverages and maybe also wine and pie. If I finish LotR too early in the weekend, I move on to Harry Potter (minus the spider parts). This year I’m pre-gaming Lord of the Rings weekend with Mockingjay part 1 and so I’ll watch the first two to prepare. I love my dorky plans and I don’t even care. Do something all about you and your partner and forget the rest!
My partner and I are doing our first Alone Christmas this year, also after an executive decision that is not making my family happy. I don’t know what we’ll do, but I really want to find some way to make it still feel like Christmas – at least for the part of the day that we’re not traveling to/waiting at the airport.
Will be checking back for other people’s suggestions…
Toast Post! I got the most amazing BINOCULAR POSTCARD with a scene from Florence and it was so incredibly perfect and brilliant. Thank you, Toast Poast Pal!!!!
I can’t believe that it made it all the way across the continent already! 😀
It did!!! It is so perfect, thank you! Brings back beautiful memories of Florence plus it is just so super cool… I keep grinning every time I think about it!
I did Alone Christmas a couple of years ago. My boyfriend and I were living in a shoebox of an apartment across the ocean from either of our families, so we did a small scale version of the Polish Wigilia (Christmas Eve) party that my family does every year. I made a traditional (maybe just traditional to my family) stew and some sort of main course, but my most vivid memory of that meal is of the pierogi that we made. We made some pierogi with smoked chicken and cooked cabbage and some with cheese, but we had to use a wine bottle to roll out the dough for lack of a rolling pin. Fried up in butter with onions and sour cream, they were super delicious!
We do this with either Thanksgiving or Xmas every year, period, full stop.
Our first alone-Xmas was Cooking A Duck, and it was good but not epic. The following year we hosted Friendsgiving and it was incredible. We brined a fresh turkey in an onion-bacon-Guinness-salt soak for the better part of a week, then wrapped the whole bird in bacon strips. Seriously the best turkey I have ever had, let alone made, and the drippings resulted in an absolutely ridiculous oniony salty gravy. I had a minor panic attack making the stuffing but it turned out really well (staled bread, appalling amounts of poultry seasoning, eggs, chicken broth). It was super, super, super great.
Last year for Thanksgiving we ended up going out. A friend of ours owns a really high-end restaurant in town and he does a free Thanksgiving potluck every year. He and his crew make turkey and stuffing, everyone else brings side dishes and a bottle (or box) of wine or whatever, and it’s a ton of fun. I think we’re going to take my mom this year and have Xmas to ourselves again, which is just the best. It’s so relaxing and easy and you can lay around in PJs all day and not worry about a got-damn thing except watching the Queen’s annual address and various BBC Xmas specials (oh, just my house then?) and wondering if 10am is too early for a mimosa (hint: no).
I had a lovely Alone Christmas one year in grad school when I didn’t have money to come home. I ate huge amounts of clementines that week, made a different cookie recipe every day or two (halved or quartered so I’d be able to try more different ones), and cooked a chicken and cream cheese potatoes on Christmas day. I went for a long walk around my neighborhood and looked at everyone’s decorations and called my parents.
TOAST POST REPORT!
I received ponyalong‘s most excellent “Hey, Mona!” card and, faced with the glory of that plus clevermanka‘s stamp/art card have decided I am the least artistic person in the world, though I did do something a little crafty that will probably not travel well in the postal system. Alas.
Toast Post: pushing me to attempt creativity, but not yet upping my penmanship game.
I’ve received the best cheerful fish postcard from someone whose toastname I could not quite read, but I *did* need a cheerful fish for my office, and the fish is sitting happily on some flowstone that I found in a Missouri river.
I’ve sent out my Toastcards, and hope the recipients enjoy them as much as I enjoyed the fish!
I did Alone Thanksgiving a couple years ago and it was AMAZING! It was a lovely day out, so I went on a bike ride. Because it was Thanksgiving, there was no one around (I stayed away from grocery stores) and I felt like the only person in the city. I wanted to do it again last year, but it was too cold. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for this year though even though it will not be an Alone Thanksgiving (one of the pitfalls of having a significant other’s family nearby).
I’m trying to do an Alone Christmas this year but we shall see if that works.
OOhhhh yes I am really excited for Alone Christmas because it means we can do a bike ride! I may have to buy an antler head band for the occasion (for wearing on top of my helmet, of course)
I did last year! It was partly due to circumstances (I had to fly to India on the 27th of December, and wanted to be at home to pack, rather than dragging Christmas stuff and India stuff to my parents’ house and travelling from there), butit was also nice because it was the first Christmas my partner and I had spent together in our flat. We had a delicious chestnut loaf and pre-made roast potatoes (surprisingly good) and stuffing and other nice things, and went for a walk in the local park and watched Christmas television. It was really nice.
Job-search rant here. I recently got my PhD in a STEM field and have applied to over 150 jobs in industry. I’ve networked with everyone and their mother, contacted HR people on linked-in, applied to temp jobs along with all the regular jobs. I’ve had one job interview and HR said they would get in contact with me last Friday and I am sick of staring at my phone 🙁 Being unemployed and single and spending the past 6 years in grad school means I’m going to have to move back in with my parents very soon as my bank account reaches negative numbers. Please complain about job searches with me or post cute/funny things.
Job searching is like living inside Satan’s butthole. It sucks. How long have you been searching?
If you’ve had an interview and HR said they would contact you a week ago, I’d say you’re well within your rights to follow up with them. Just to say “Hey” and reiterate your interest in the job. (This is the gospel according to askamanger.org)
Since January! Yeah, I contacted them once before about the timeline and they said they would contact me last Friday. I’m googling “ask a manager” now about this!! She is the best.
If you search “following up after an interview” she has tons of suggestions on exactly this. You are totally OK to contact them! It’s been a week past, you’re in the clear.
I do not understand all the internet commentors who seem to think “get a degree in a STEM field!” means automatic employment. It can be a nightmare trying to find a STEM job. I’m sure you’ll do it eventually, though! I don’t know which STEM field you’re in, but in mine (biology) one of the best places for job postings is job boards associated with professional designation groups. They might not be posted publically, but if you know someone with the designation I’m sure they’d be willing to look it over occasionally for you and send you anything that might work for you.
It’s the media! I think even Obama recently said something about how we need more people in STEM. STEM as a conglomerate doesn’t help because there are differences in the job markets for CS and for bio/chem people. Yeah, I’m looking in biochem/engineering and it is rough.
Even aside from the variation within STEM, it’s not like there’s any area that has enough jobs for all the unemployed people. If everybody magically got a CS degree today, there would still be tonnes of unemployed people, so it’s ridiculous to blame people for not having had the foresight to get the “right skills”.
Yup, exactly.
ugh, I’m in a completely different ‘desirable’ field that still, tons and tons of applications and a very small handful of interviews and so far nothing more than “well thank you for coming in” and argle bargle! Do you also have people being like “but your field is in such demand!” like what, is that supposed to make me feel better that my field is supposedly in demand and still I can’t find work in it? (especially when I don’t really want to get into a discussion of why my subsection of the field is not really in that much demand so then why did I go into it etc etc etc)
A SEASONAL TALE:
So a few months ago my husband and I bought a townhome, and we found something slightly odd about it — there’s a concrete… object of some kind, a block about 2′ by 2′ and 1′ high, on our back patio by the gate. Not attached to anything, just sitting there. “Huh,” we said, and proceeded to put our potted plants on it.
This week one of our neighbors stopped by to chat as my husband was watering the plants, and told him a little bit about the previous owners of our place, all the way back to the original owner, who apparently bred championship huskies. She glanced down at the concrete object and said, “That’s still here! Do you know what that thing is?”
According to her, it is a DOG’S MAUSOLEUM. It is the tomb of a championship show husky. We have been putting our potted plants on a many-years-dead dog.
I feel weird about this, but also oddly reassured, because I’ve been having trouble adjusting to the various House Noises and convincing myself that the place is haunted, but this suggests that, if our house is haunted by anything, it is almost certainly the ghost of the husky whose mortal remains are still on our property. And I’m okay with being haunted by a dog ghost.
Oh my god. If nothing else….flowers are a nice way to memorialize things? And most dogs love nothing more than to snuffle around plants and dig, so the doggie would probably see it as a nice thing?
And also if you leave an enormous 2x2x1 concrete block in your yard after you move….I don’t know what that’s all about. It’s like that episode of House Hunters where the previous owner put up a wooden catwalk in the backyard because they wanted a clothesline but apparently not to walk on grass.
The idea of a ghost dog is weirdly comforting.
Dog ghost sounds like a great children’s TV show.
Oh man, it DOES.
“When little Keisha finally moves to a house with a yard, she’s heartbroken to find out that the landlord doesn’t allow pets. But Keisha doesn’t know that her new house already has a dog… the sweetest, bravest and most loyal dog in the world (and the underworld), GHOST DOG!”
“Who is Ghost Dog? Why is she here? What past tragedy has made the landlord such a jerk? Can Keisha help Ghost Dog finish her mission… even if it means that Ghost Dog has to leave? Find out on the exciting season finale of GHOST DOG!”
Once my brother/sis-in-law were cleaning up a rental house they were about to move into & their dog wouldn’t go into the house’s bathroom & sis-in-law (now ex) said it was because the dog could sense ghosts and had found a ghost in the bathroom. And even though the dog told her it was a friendly ghost, they still broke the lease & refused to move in.
Guys I think I made a huge stride in Learning How to Intimacy this week. I had a second date with this dude who I’d slept with on the first date and established that we were both in for something sort of casual, but when we started to hook up I started feeling kind of freaked out and anxious for a variety of reasons, among them feeling like I can’t stand to hook up with one more guy who I’ll then never hear from again. So I stopped things and explained myself as best I could and it seems like we’re going to slow down on the benefits parts of being friends. This was an incredibly foreign thing for me to do, because in the past I probably just would have drank some more beer to get past the anxiety and not said anything or done anything to prioritize or communicate my own needs.
The only problem is he handled everything so well and was so nice that now I’m starting to Feel Feelings a little bit, and he’s not in a place to have a serious relationship at the moment and I think needs reliable friends way more than he needs romance so. ..more difficult communication ahead.
It sounds like you have a lot of group discussions in class, so why not take it up in the group setting, Here’s what I would do in this situation. Bring it up in class and acknowledge that while if a patient chooses to describe something as emotional rape you would of course understand that to mean that they were expressing a feeling of receiving severe emotional abuse, you feel that as clinicians the phrase “emotional rape” is inappropriate first because rape means a very specific thing and using the term emotional rape instead of the widely accepted term “emotional abuse” just muddies the waters, and in addition that using that term around patients could be highly problematic and in fact triggering if you are dealing with a patient that has been raped. While of course some patients who are rape survivors might associate the loss of control associated with the emotional abuse with their rape, they also may not, and a clinicians use of that term might actually create such an association in their head which could in fact be damaging.
Listening to my new Bert Jansch CD now, which I should have purchased directly instead of renting the repellent “Squid And The Whale” just for the soundtrack. And hoping I have enough energy to get out and do something this weekend; the cold I caught last week is dragging on and on.
I will also now take the opportunity to recommend “The Skeleton Twins” starring Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, and Luke Wilson. What a treat to see a lead female character who isn’t just a satellite to the lead male – and whose imperfections are handled without judgment from the filmmakers.
I am half-heartedly rooting for the Os because Mid-Atlantic represent, but I am worried that Os fans will become rather (more_ insufferable when they play the Nats in inter-league play.
I am so mad at Matt Williams for pulling JZimm and I hope they launch Gio into the sun (I would say trade him, but I don’t know that anyone wants a completely inconsistent starter who doesn’t even know how to field a bunt).
I kind of want to fire Matt Williams, and not just for the Zimm pull. But oh my god, the Zimm pull. That game will haunt me forever.
Should have had Roark as the #4, not Gio, just what the fuck was with those postseason roster decisions?
I mean, on the other hand, if DSpan had gotten on base and Werth had hit a single fucking fair ball, that would have helped too. Bryce can’t score all the runs (though that home run into the bay was pretty great).
I have a lot more faith in Tanner than I do in Gio. When Gio’s good, he’s good, but he isn’t consistently good, and in the post-season, you need a guy you can count on, and Gio is not that guy.
I am also hoping that we trade away LaRoche, even though he is a good player, because I hate his walk-up music and his stupid beard (some of my feelings towards players are quite shallow).
But I only hate the Yankees, not the Nats! #notallOsfans (Seriously, though, sorry about any future insufferability my fellow fans inflict on you and others as a result of this postseason!)
Dude, I can’t see your last comment because of course I can’t, but in response to it, LaRoche is def gone. Zimm will play at first, there’s nowhere else to put him.
Tea length wedding dresses: why does no one make them?! You can go to the bathroom by yourself, and wear huge petticoats, and party hard, and yet no one seems to be selling such a thing right now. I have spent most of my morning looking for a salon in my city that might carry one, but no such luck.
I wanted a tea-length dress too, and I tried some on at David’s Bridal but on me, maybe because I’m so short, they made me look like a little girl in an Easter dress. Not what I was going for.
I am about 5’4 and was honestly expecting a similar situation, but it worked, somehow! David’s was also the only place in town that had any, and I loved the first one I tried on there (a tea-length Oleg Cassini) but the whole David’s Bridal experience was so offputting that I would like to avoid buying from them if I can hack it.
Oh, I totally get that. I had one good salesperson personally dealing with me, and I was in a begging-not-choosing situation, so it worked out for me. I did almost slap one of the alterations women, though, and kind of regret not doing it. My dress experience was the one part I would go back and do differently. I didn’t want a train, got a dress with a train, tried to get it altered off, was talked out of it, ended up carrying the damn train all night. I’m holding it in all the reception pictures. I wish I’d just worn a normal dress. Oh well.
I’ve been wondering the same damn thing and it turns out that there are a couple of Etsy stores that do, or! I have actually stopped looking for wedding dresses altogether in favor of looking for bridesmaid’s dresses. 1. they are so. much. cheaper, and 2. they come in a startling diversity of styles and lengths.
I’ve been thinking about the Etsy thing (I’ve found some beautiful, perfect ones on there), but my parents are buying my dress and my mom is Very Suspicious of ordering things online. A couple of people have mentioned the bridesmaid’s dresses thing as well, and that might be my next point of attack.
Ah. Yeah, I can understand that.
Would it be possible to buy a longer dress and shorten it / get it shortened? Hemming might be annoying if it comes with the petticoats attached and they all need hemming, too, but it might give you more options.
The only thing about that is that most tea-length dresses that are designed that way usually have a certain fit to them and flare in the skirt, with crinolines or what have you, and shortening a full-length skirt won’t give quite that same effect. If you want just a straight dress, you could probably make it tea-length without any problems, but tea-length with an A-line fit can be a much trickier gambit. A lot of A-line full-length dresses won’t have the right proportions if they’re hemmed to tea-length.
That’s a really good point, especially since GlowCloud sounds excited about the fuller skirts.
Mmmm, I don’t know! I think those would be the kind of fairly serious alterations that would put me over budget pretty quickly.
Have you called in-person? Because most bridal salons are notorious for not having their inventory online or giving any reasonable expectation to be able to search online. So if you call them up and ask “Hey, do you have any tea-length dresses in stock” you’ll have a much better idea, because the actual person will be able to tell you if they do or don’t have any in stock. Bridal fashion is so weird and all over the place that the internet is ridiculous.
Sincerely, a former bridal clerk
I called one and was told no; another place did a very good job of making clear what was on the floor, and booked blind with another. But I will remember to call in future, thank you!
I had one! And it was great! You get to show off your amazing wedding shoes. I did get an Oleg Cassini from David’s, but I also HATED the experience. If I remember rightly – BHLDN might have some? Or did when I was looking? You might try there. Also Ruche has some good options (get this one! A bit shorter than tea length, but so cute! http://shopruche.com/leila.html ).
Good luck! I will say one thing in favor of getting a dress from a big box store – I am not sentimental about these things, so after the wedding, I crumpled up my dress and dumped it on the floor of my closet. 10 months later, I pulled the dress out to see about getting it cleaned and perhaps re-sold or donated, and it has zero wrinkles. Polyester forever!
I had one! I got mine at Alfred Angelo and it was very cute. I also looked at this site a lot: http://dollycouture.com/
good luck!!
Like these? http://dollycouture.com/collection/pink-label.htm…
To GlowCloud: have you checked out BHLDN? they have a lot of different dresses
I have so been there! Only thing I can say IT DOES GET BETTER. Love to you and the witchbaby.
Spicy foods make me want to DIE. Why must we put jalapeno in everything? (Like crab dip?) I just have no tolerance for the spicy side of life, despite trying to build up to it. 🙁
Work has been a beast a week this week, but I am listening to my Halloween playlist and in less than four hours now my weekend starts. I’m spending it with old college friends at the wedding of other college friends and I just cannot wait. We’re gonna drink, and dance, and gossip, and maybe go to breweries and it will be awesome!
Happy weekend, Toasties!
I’m the same! I really try to eat spicy things, but it’s literally painful. As in, my mouth hurts so much that it makes no sense to keep eating the spicy thing.
One of my housemates in Madrid was out one night and in order to thank a friend-of-a-friend who had bought a round of drinks, she asked if he wanted a shot (un chupito), but it came out as “quieres una chupita?” In Spain, “chupita” means a BJ. He brushed it off in good humor and she did not realize her mistake until a few days later.
Also in high school Spanish classes so many people used “embarazada” to mean embarrassed, therefore embarrassing themselves more by accidentally announcing they were pregnant.
(this was supposed to be in the Language Mishaps thread, aaaargh)
SPOOOOOKY
i don’t know if this is any reassurance, but i have had dreams where i would…wake up in my bed and have a really surreal experience, and then fall back asleep. in the morning i wouldn’t be sure if it actually happened or if it was a dream?
like, once, i woke up and absolutely had to send an email to someone, but then in the morning there was nothing in my drafts or sent box. so, it must not have happened? but there was nothing in the dream to distinguish it from real experience, really.
so maybe you just had a spooky spooky dream.
UGH STOP GOING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE, COMMENTS
Huskies are super helpful too, I think? Maybe the ghost dog will help protect you from other ghosts.
That’s my hope! That he will scare off burglars, less-friendly ghosts, etc.
Timers help me, sometimes. One timer for how long I have to actually work on stuff before I get a break, and then a timer for how long I can take a break before I have to go back to working. The most popular twist on the is the pomodoro method of 25 minutes working and 5 minutes break, with a longer break periodically, but if I’m having trouble focussing then sometimes it’s helpful to do smaller intervals, such as 5 minutes working and 2 minutes break. My favourite app for this is 30/30 for iOS, but I’ve recently been trying Timer Loop for Android, which is a mostly adequate substitute.
Also, break things into tiny steps, and then be all “good work, self!” every time you get one tiny step done.
Edit: This is for Allpha7. I have other thoughts which are for IntenseDebate, but they aren’t very nice.
Edit again: Wait, I think I actually was responding to themegnapkin. But I would recommend the above to Allpha7 too.
Last night, I dreamed again that I’d had a baby and kind of forgotten about it. As I was getting used to the first baby, I discovered that I’d had another baby/was pregnant but forgotten the second baby and accidentally run it through the washing machine. So I spent much of the dream panicking, taking an expensive pregnancy test (which said I wasn’t pregnant, but I was also pregnant?) and also trying to fix the baby I’d washed.
I can’t decide if baby/pregnancy dreams or dreams in which a loved one dies are worse. The internet gives mixed views on what unwanted baby dreams mean, but I’m definitely taking the fact that all my baby dreams are nightmares as a sign that I really need to schedule an appointment for a IUD!
Oh god, that sounds terrible. I am constantly having dreams that I’m back in high school or college but have kind of forgotten about it and now it’s time to take a big test, so I feel like that baby dream is gonna start happening as I enter new life stages.
cosmia noooo. I had bedbugs on and off for two years and it left me a shattered, itchy, shell of a person. I must implore you NOT to sleep on your couch because the bugs will follow you there.
I’m sure you’ve done your own research, but the best and clearest sign of bedbugs is multiple bites in a line formation. They’re pretty OCD little creatures so they almost always leave 3-4 bites, always in a line. If that doesn’t sound like the bites you got, you’re probably in the clear. If it DOES you need to put everything you own through the dryer and bring in an exterminator right away before they ruin your life. It is not possible to overreact to bedbugs. Trust.
I finally gave up and deactivated Flash and Shockwave in my browser and The Toast is so much better. Just a little grey window in the top right, my fan doesn’t start up and my browser doesn’t crash. Ahhhhh.
I got my first Toast Post in the mail and it is delightful and I am now intimidated.
It came from Paris, and the entire text is a strange story and it also contains cat magnets. I am assuming it is Toast Post, or it’s a lot weirder.
Anyways it is wonderful and I am suddenly concerned about my paltry offerings that I will totally send any day now.
Aahhh, that must be mine! The text is the first page of one of my favorite books. and the magnets are just an A Softer World comic.
I did recognise it as a Softer World comic. It is delightful, thank you!
What’s this toast post thing everyone is talking about? Is it too late to get in on it?
I never signed up for round 2 and it makes me sad! 🙁
Every so often (twice now in 3 or 4 months?) polka_stripes will put out a call for Toast Post matches & you can sign up & get a pen pal (or several) to send postcards to. I started out sending just like, normal postcards with stupid ‘hi how are you Texas is hot is it hot where you live duuuuuuu’ messages, but now everyone is upping their games and it’s creative and inspiring and intimidating and fun
(And I love the normal postcards, too! Normal postcards are aces!)
I think my favorite thing about Toast Post is that I am SO EXCITED about it and all I do is find a set of postcards and write the same “hurr durr” message! But some people are really going all out on theirs and I love seeing THEIR excitement and their recipient’s excitement.
I sent mine out with the “yay, this is fun! I live in Virginia!” message on a postcard I found at Walgreens so you’re not alone. Where is everyone finding these magical postcards?
My city is so boring there aren’t even boring postcards in Walgreens. I looked for postcards (I do know they exist, just not where to find them) in a bookstore & a drug store & a grocery store & came up empty each time.
Your delightful boats arrived today! I love them! I am going to put them on my desk at work and fantasize about sailing away. Thank you!
It’s a postcard exchange! For a couple of weeks I posted a sign up form in the open threads and a couple of link round ups and then matched Toasties with each other. Depending on how my life goes this spring I’ll do another but I can’t make any promises (but let’s be real, I love Toast Post, I will do my best to make something happen!).
Maybe you could get someone else to help manage it?
I got my first reply to my Toast Post today! Which means my cards were received by at least one person, so that’s good. Yay Toast Post!
ahhh, the cinnamon gum pain. so good and cinnamon-y! but also so burn-y! my mouth actually gets a little numb first and then, wham—pain.
Cat news: New season of My Cat From Hell starts tomorrow. This show should really be called Clueless Cat Owners From Hell, because some people have no idea how to relate to animals.
Good god, you’re right! Some of those people are truly inept at cat-friending.
I’m of two minds about Jackson Galaxy. He’s very good with the cats, but the stuff he sells (“spirit essences”) is, well, quackery.
Yes! I was so on board with that book for the first 2/3 and I genuinely don’t know what happened in the end.
(This is about Hangsaman)
I got engaged! Last week!
Also, I am already totally overwhelmed about money, weird sexist comments, my mom’s several dozen emails about tablescapes, etc. Help!!
Congratulations!
Run, do not walk, to the nearest book place and buy A Practical Wedding. The website has gotten more bloggy lately, but the book is chock-full of amazing, solid advice, starting with You Don’t Have To Do Anything You Don’t Want To Do. Use this book as your life preserver. Well worth it.
Congratulations!!!
Congrats!
yay! congratulations! lots of weird sexist comments and ring grabbing for sure. We dealt with this by refusing to plan anything for five months and people got used to us blowing them off when they asked planning questions.
Congratulations!! I got engaged about a month ago and can totally relate to all of the above. We have dealt with it by not changing our relationship status on facebook and also completely shutting down any planning talk with people who aren’t the two of us (well, and my sister, but that’s because my sister is amazing). Aravis’s suggestion for APW is a great idea; you can also search their website for their helpful info and not their blog stuff (they have a WHOLE bunch of stuff on writing your own ceremony, DIY’ing, budgeting, etc). Good luck!!
Yeah, weddings can be terrible for those and other reasons. But also amazing because you can throw a huge party for people you love who love you! My mother drove me nuts so I delegated Mom Duty to my fiance and it ended up great. Can you delegate anything to anyone?
Congratulations!
I already plugged Offbeat Bride (offbeatbride.com) to someone upthread but I will do it again! Disclaimer: I am not married but like looking at other people’s happy pictures, and OBB has a LOT of pictures of happy couples of all varieties doing their wedding thing. And a lot of really sensible wedding planning advice.
Give me all of your Gone Girl related links, Toastfriends! I am going to see it next Tuesday, and although I usually consider myself spoiler-proof and looove reading thinkpieces and related media even before I’ve experienced a thing, I have been avoiding it all until I can make up my own mind. My mistake, though, is that I haven’t been bookmarking anything for later, except AHP on how there’s no “Cool Girl” in the movie. So if you’ve read anything good, holla at me.
I enjoyed the book when I read it a few years ago (on a destination wedding weekend, which I think is a telling detail) and I’ve been a little surprised at how much the book and movie have become this divisive cultural watershed about gendered violence, so I’m looking forward to catching up.
Npr’s Monkey See podcast just did a spoiler-free review (http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2014/10/10/355094138/pop-culture-happy-hour-gone-girl-and-what-pop-culture-can-teach). I’m planning to watch the movie next week as well, but I thought their discussion of the music in Gone Girl was really interesting.
Elif Batuman wrote a FIRE piece about Gone Girl that’s up on the New Yorker website. It’s less of a review and more of an essay, and it’s just so amazingly good.
Oy. I am having an intense post-breakup week. Officially got through 4 weeks. Went to yoga last night which was a big deal because we have the same gym, and I get anxious I’ll see him. Yoga was so good I felt defiant and went to the bar (my gym is an old -timey club style gym, with dining rooms and bars and a pool with a chandelier, which is why I cant let my ex have it) to have a drink and a snack on my own. There was a man opposite me and he kept catching eyes with me and smiling. And long story short we talked for a while and I agreed to let him take me to dinner the next time he was in town.
It was perfectly amusing. I enjoyed his company for about about exactly 1.5 hours, which is about how long I have in me for any encounters with anyone. I think I would go to dinner, but I have zero interest in going any farther than that. But it’s also in several weeks, so who knows.The thought of being physically intimate with a human male right now feels entirely pointless. I’m noticing whenever I go out and do a fun thing, it feels SO GOOD while it’s going on, but then afterwards I feel really rough.
I did a calculation and discovered since I was 18, 80% of my life has been in one of 3 relationships. And this recently ended one is about 50% of that. I thought I’d been single more- its only maybe 2-3 non consecutive years, and even during that time I was seeing various people. I’m trying to stop looking, just focus on being with myself, and yet, I basically couldn’t hold back for 2 hours at a bar. To be fair, he really was going all out with the eye contact. And I didn’t hook up with him or anything, but still…not sure if last night goes in the good or bad column.
Good luck! You deserve to go to yoga, to have drinks in a bar, and to chat with dudes and feel pretty as much as you want to. Anything that feels good is right. You can also enjoy male attention while remaining decidedly focused on yourself, your needs, your life outside of relationships. I mean it’s possible; you may or may not pursue it. Either way, good luck.
I wish you many exless gym visits. I shared a gym with an ex for several years after our breakup and I really, really hated it; cancelling and working out at home was one of the best things I did for myself. But it does sound like you’d be losing out on a great package, so good luck with that too.
I find the only type of work conversations outside of discussing work things are completely bonkers and totally perfect.
There is some kind of vampire jalapeno blackberry cocktail I had at Library Bar in LA that was so good. Sad I don’t live there any more.
And in the bay area, Cho’s dim sum in Palo Alto closed, but I loved their chili sauce so much.
Other than that, I’ve been pushing ye rock up ye hill all week. After faculty senate I’m hitting the library and then buying some gin. LIKE PROFESSOR LADIES DO.
Library Bar! I sadly discovered that place right before I moved from LA, otherwise I probably would have lived there.
Cho’s is gone? AW. I lived in Palo Alto for like a year and a half and that was one of the few restaurants there I actually liked. Booo.
I’m applying for a scholarship to journey to Parts Abroad this summer, and I’m having the worst college app flashbacks.
Toasties, I am REALLY SICK OF MY HUSBAND’S BOSS. He is a micromanaging loon who is driving everyone up the wall with his unreasonable expectations. He nitpicks and criticizes people over the smallest, most insignificant nonsense. For example – my husband was out of the office on Monday, so the Friday beforehand he sent his division an email saying “I will be out of the office on Monday” and his boss sent him a passive-aggressive email like “Um, do you mean Monday, October 6th? This is confusing. You need to specify that it’s the 6th. Send another email clarifying that it’s this Monday, October 6th.” One time, the night before the division had a report due, he spent so much time nitpicking and tearing apart every sentence because of imaginary issues that they were all at the office until THREE IN THE MORNING. And it turned out that the boss had gotten an email saying the deadline for their report had been pushed back, but he hadn’t seen it because he was so busy micromanaging and yelling at people for mistakes that weren’t actually mistakes. That is not okay!
He is now mad at my husband because we’re going to Vermont over the long weekend. Husband didn’t have to take time off work for this – Monday (October 13! don’t get confused!) is a national holiday. Turns out his boss was expecting him to come to the office over the weekend. Even though he had never mentioned this. Even though they have no deadlines coming up and there is absolutely 0 operational need for him to be in over the weekend.
I am just… so sick of this shit. Boss grew up in a different culture and maybe this kind of attitude is okay there, but it’s definitely not here. It’s like he genuinely has no understanding of the fact that people normally like to spend the weekend doing fun, relaxing things, because they have already spent the entire previous week working hard, and that nobody is going to go to work over the weekend unless there’s something really urgent to deal with.
Husband is now all anxious and insecure about work because he’s convinced his boss thinks he’s incompetent and lazy (because he doesn’t do stuff like RANDOMLY GO TO THE OFFICE ON A SATURDAY) and it doesn’t seem like there’s anything I can do or say to make him feel better. I hate this.
Your husband’s boss sounds like a nightmare. That sucks and I am sorry.
(I first typed as “your boss’s husband” which….may be true, I have no idea!)
What a complete arse that guy sounds. I’m so sorry.
Super seconding this. You are ALREADY brave for speaking out. I think bringing it up one on one with your tutor is a great idea, and I’ll be thinking of you and wishing you access to the strength you already have.
Re: spicy things: I’m making kimchi this weekend! Thanks to the internet, I have a plan — I asked my mom for a recipe, and her input was a) “well, Atalanta, I’m not very good at this”, and b) “just use the proper amount of spices”. What the heck, Mom, what is the proper amount? “Well… the proper amount. You know.”
So.
I’m also making homemade pasta for the first time this weekend, and I’m SUPER PUMPED. My new stand mixer has been a huge help in the kitchen, and I love it.
Finally — do you home brew? If you do, how did you get started/what did you read ahead of time to get prepared? I am very interested in making my own beer, but I have nooooo idea where to start.
I learned from being press ganged into it by my house mate but the best book is Radical Brewing by randy mosher.
Alternately just ask around some one you know knows some one that brews and they are always happy to teach/show off.
Toasties,
I lost my paragard IUD last week (RIP), and my doctor has recommended going back on the pill, specifically Yasmin. I’m reluctant to go back to hormonal contraceptives, mostly since I like being without, but I will have to wait another year or so before I try a new IUD. Does anyone have positive or negative experiences with this pill they’d like to share?
Listen to your body! I went around feeling nauseous every morning on a pill until I brought it up with my gyno and she was like, “Why don’t we try you on a different pill with a lower dose?”
Ahhhhh I was on Yaz and it was so awful I stopped after two months. Just constant depression and irritability. But I have a Mirena IUD, so maybe our hormone needs are different and you’ll be ok.
I was on Yaz for about two years. It started out good, cured my PMS and my skin looked AWESOME! But after the first year or so my PMS symptoms started coming back (irritability, depression, bad menstrual cramps, etc) and I switched to a different pill. So I guess I have both positive and negative experience with this one! Like others say, if it doesn’t work out for you, switch to a different pill.
I am on the world’s most boring 1/35 birth control and it works totally fine for me (not pregnant! lighter periods! generally slightly more even moods!) and comes in, like, a zillion generic formulas. Unfortunately the current generic my pharmacy stocks is called Cyclafem and I really just can’t with that name. I want my Nortrel/ Necon nice innocuous not trying to say anything generic name back.
I was on Yasmin for a couple of years with no problems. But then I moved countries and my new doctor here told me they don’t prescribe it any more because apparently it comes with a higher risk of blood clots than other pills? Or something? Then they put me on Celeste which made me BONKERS and now I have given up on hormonal contraception altogether.
Late to the party, but I loooooved Yasmin. Good skin, not too nutty, even moods. I’m going the IUD route to try to lessen hormones, myself, but I was totalllllllllly fine/great on Yasmin.
I have a generally very healthy and positive body image, but MAN, I’ve been getting mad at my forehead wrinkles lately. I feel like I’m way too young for forehead wrinkles. It is not fair that I have wrinkles and (admittedly mild, but still annoying) acne at the same time. Vaguely considering Botox or fillers, and vaguely ashamed of that consideration, despite the fact that I have enough disposable income to do that (and I work in a very looks-based field, so I can kinda justify it?).
Have you tried Retin-A? I used it last year and it made my skin crazy crazy smooth.
I’ve tried nothing, because jumping to drastic solutions is fun.
Did you use a prescription or something over the counter? Does Retin-A even come in a prescription? Enlighten me, as I know nothing.
My crazy stepmom bought me a couple of rounds of botox in my early 20s (!!!) for my frown line, and tbh I really liked it. Nobody and I mean nobody could tell. I could still move my face and make normal expressions, but just a little less intensely. And my permanent frown line went away (for a while, I mean I got it back, but less so than before).
I don’t do it any more because fuck it who cares. Also I’m a lawyer and I feel like looking a bit angry all the time gives me more gravitas which offsets having long hair and a glib personality. Also I’m working on my personal finance hygiene, and expensive vanity was first on the chopping block.
But yeah, botox can be pretty cool, if you’re just getting a bit. Definitely my stepmom looks a bit nuts sometimes, I think when her derm uses it to lift her eyebrows.
@samburgers No solutions, but I would like to commiserate on having wrinkles and acne together. It is totally not at all fair.
ALSO, if you get allergy shots, how much did they help you, really? How pricey are they?
I am thinking about getting treatment for my cat allergy (even if I don’t actually ever get a cat, it’s gotten to the point where going to someone’s house when they have a cat is sort of fraught), but I don’t want to spend a bunch of money if it’s not really going to do anything.
I am leaving a kitten picture here for the Toasties who have been helpful and supportive this week while I was Figuring Things Out on a Link Roundup comment thread.
You are all fantastic and I am so glad this place exists. <3
WHO RECOMMENDED HOMEWARD BOUND: WHY WOMEN ARE EMBRACING THE NEW DOMESTICITY????
It is GREAT and hits me right in my lifestyle choices. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s about this big cultural shift away from careerism and toward a “new domesticity”–raising chickens and attachment parenting and ~*hipster mamas*~ and the Pioneer Woman and etc. Emily Matchar argues, basically, that the economy/environment/work world is scary as shit, especially for women, so we’re dropping out and finding our stability and fulfillment at home. In the ’90s, we read Vogue and went out on the town and worked 60 hour weeks, now we can jam and knit.
I didn’t think of myself as part of this trend until I read this book? I’m a CORPORATE POWER DYKE with a similarly corporate wife and a six-figure salary, but we’re doing this in the service of retiring in our 30s. We’re going to blast through the corporate ladder for a total of ten years, amass fat stacks, and then become stay-at-home moms. Can you get anymore pro-pinterest, anti-careerism than that???
ANYWAY THANK YOU, MYSTERIOUS BOOK RECOMMENDER YOU ARE GREAT
I support this plan and would also read your memoir!
My eyes went all misty at the thought of you and your wife sitting in rocking chairs with babies, making jam and chopping wood. Two thumbs up.
Anyone else keeping going to the Butter to watch the ticker, or is that just me?
Have a great weekend, everyone!
i L O V E jacques-imos, that’s definitely on the list. It’ll be crawfish season too so probably we’ll spend an afternoon at the fly. i know they’re excited about bourbon but hopefully they’ll get over it after one night. that’s about all i can do there especially there are so many bars that are way better
I gotta hand it to Buzzfeed – their Misandry Coverage has been pretty great lately. This gem posted today might help you get your weekend started right (my favorite is the Misandrai Tai). Wednesday Adams, Misandrist Rolemodel was also pretty delightful.
Gold.
Yes, I’ll have all of these, thank you.
I just got a travel itinerary email from a man who has confused his daughter’s email address with mine. Dads!
Will is be a fun trip?
Dads!
Newark to San Francisco for a week? This time of year? I hope they remember to pack an umbrella and make sure to get to their flight a couple hours early, because you know how those lines are these days.
It’s been nice, though!
Ugh I accidentally deleted this comment. LET’S TRY AGAIN.
Being fair, the husky breeder owned the house until his death, so whoever moved his stuff out may not have known what The Object was or that it was meaningful. You’d think our neighbor would have informed them, though. (She seems like a lady who loves to inform people of things. Which is not to be taken as an insult; I’m the same way.)
And yes, I’m trying to think of it as being nice for the doggie ghost to have flowers and (since we’re out there watering and tending to them) attention. We’re the first people to actually live in the house for a while — we bought it from a house-flipper, and before that it was vacant for a little while — so if he is haunting the place, presumably he’s happy to see us, although maybe not thrilled about our cat. Also, there’s a dog who lives across the street who’s always gazing plaintively toward our house, which I now can’t help thinking of as “He’s looking at his little ghost buddy.”
Not that you’re looking for audiobook versions, but it was Elizabeth Klett’s flawless reading of Jane Eyre for librivox that made me fall in love with it. Also, librivox is free!
Edit: Argh, this was supposed to be in response to someone upthread talking about Jane Eyre.
I found this gif today and loved it so much, I needed to share it.\
Congratulations, you literally made me LOL.
#BigEyesNoHeart
Aaaaaaaaah!
This gif is my favorite. I’M STILL LOOKING AT IT.
I got excited about my dog ghost story and forgot that I have something else to talk about: TONIGHT my friends and I are starting a D&D 5e campaign and I am SUPER EXCITED!!!! I plan to play a tiefling barbarian, with a backup option of “gnome rogue who is basically a Borrower” in case the barbarian doesn’t fit into the party composition we end up with. Anyone else looked at the 5e books yet? What do y’all think?
OOH. I am interested to hear about 5e, please report back! My group considered starting a 5e campaign but the DM decided there weren’t enough resources yet, so we’re doing Pathfinder instead.
Also, coincidentally, in one of our previous campaigns I was a gnome rogue and my partner was a tiefling barbarian.
I’ve only briefly looked through 5e (my regular GM bought it and we had a flip through before the Tuesday night game) and haven’t looked closely enough to actually comment on the mechanics. Except advantage/disadvantage, it’s a much more sensible system than infinitely stacking circumstance bonuses.
But I am considering buying at least the PHB just for the art. The art is amazing, and full of PoC and women in sensible armour and all-round badassery.
Let us know how it goes! I will be watching with interest.
i looove pickled herring. i buy it every time i go to ikea.
Dear Toasties, if any of you are fans of Susanna Clarke’ (amazing) fantasy novel _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_, I have just started a reread series of it over at Tor.com, and would love to hear your thoughts! (Tune in next week for misandry as we meet Sir Walter Pole and Emma Wintertowne.)
Ooooh. Do you know if the audiobook is good? I read it in book form and loved it, but was planning on trying the audiobook for my re-read.
People speak highly of it, and I did try it, but it’s narrated by a man, and I can’t take the dissonance.
Also IIRC , it just inserts the text of the footnotes wherever the reference number was, without marking them as footnotes, which I had trouble with in a Terry Pratchett audiobook–especially on returning to the text in the middle of a sentence or a character’s dialogue. Most people don’t seem to have that problem, hoewver.
I’ll try not to inject too many of my personal feelings/problems into this. I felt compelled to reply to you because I went to med school after giving up on my first sort-of career (music). I wish I had done a lot of things before I took the plunge. Forgive me if you have done these things and you’re still 100% completely convinced you can’t imagine doing ANYTHING else (because honestly, I think the only reason to go through this is that you can’t imagine enjoying any other career). I would interview and shadow a bunch of doctors (not just one specialty) and ask about their favorite and especially least favorite parts of their jobs, what their good days and their bad days look like, how much their decisions are dictated by insurance companies and defensive medicine practices, how they feel about the corporatization of healthcare, etc. Many physicians wish they had done something else, and physician job satisfaction is at an all-time low. However, none of that matters if you’re passionate about your field. If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel (obiovusly I couldn’t), you’ll be fine.
Tl;dr Few medical students have any idea what they’re getting into until it’s too late.
UGH I’m so fucking angry at one of my professors for saying some really insensitive and offensive things in class that have nothing to do with the material. The first day of class he told a story about how he insulted a ‘redneck’ by telling him he was ‘sub-simian’ aka you are not human because of your class. I tried to brush it off but he keeps getting worse! He told a story that involved rape that was not relevant at all to our class, and he talked about slaves for some reason, using the phrase “cross-breeding” in reference to enslaved people having children with each other like they’re cattle or something. AND TODAY he made some really insensitive remarks regarding intersex people. He said the Jamie Lee Curtis has XY chromosomes so “she is actually a he” and then he continued to call her “he” the rest of class and was laughing. WHAT THE FUCK. ALSO that’s totally a rumor and not confirmed and why the fuck does it matter??? This is the second time I’ve left that class feeling physically ill because of his comments and I’m going to report him somewhere. I emailed an old women’s and gender studies professor for advice so hopefully I can do something about this. But the shitty thing is he has a research lab and tenure so this probably won’t do anything. But I’m doing it anyway. Also I have to take this class for my focus and he’s the only one who teaches it. What a great start to my weekend.
When dudes like this have tenure, the only recourse is cleansing flames
>:( is the face I actually made while reading this. He is terrible.
Go to his department chair. If students don’t complain about his idiocy, nothing will ever happen. Tenure isn’t complete protection, either. Depending upon the university and its governance, the professor can be censured. The more students who complain, the better.
I’m a professor myself, and I think that contacting your gender studies prof for advice was very wise. S/he will know something about the way things are best handled at your particular university, and will probably be able to provide you with some valuable guidance..
Above all, don’t let this unfortunate jerk mess with your academic interests!
Hey I got my first toastcard today! Thanks shumacumlaude! Such a pretty statue, and I had no idea there was a nifty art museum like that in Norfolk. I wrote you back and it should go out tomorrow.
In other news, I tried to eat a caramel apple from the grocery store at my desk, and now there’s caramel all over everything. I am a 32-year-old toddler.
Aha! I was hoping I would be able to edit my comment with updates but I think that is not possible because it has been replied to. So an additional comment it is.
It looks like there’s some interest in the free admission to the Natural History/Art Museum tomorrow, October 11! We are now looking for a time. Plz reply to my main comment rather than this one in case an un-replied-to comment is what makes something editable.
Of course we can plan future meet-ups as well–this does not have to be the only one!
edit: nice. very nice. 😐
Let’s talk times for tomorrow! Morning, afternoon? I am free all day!
Also, how to recognize each other. I can wear the red hat in my icon, but I’ve chopped my hair off recently so my hair will be considerably shorter than it looks there.
A belated thanks to Nicole for putting Jenny Diski’s LRB article about Doris Lessing in a recent link round-up.
Yeah, the full DMG isn’t out yet, so if you wanted to run an original/homebrew campaign I can see why you’d steer clear. They do have a published campaign out, though, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and supposedly between that book and the free PDF of the “Basic Rules” or whatever they’re calling them, the DM will have all the material they need.
I am STOKED for 5e. I don’t know if you’re looked at the Player’s Handbook at all, but my favorite thing is that there’s now a “Background” feature built into character creation that’s basically just RP hooks — you get a couple of minor in-game benefits from it, but the main point of it is to push you to write down, like, two personality traits and a motivation on your sheet, and I LOVE it. It’s such a huge improvement from 4e, where you were so strongly discouraged from thinking about your character as anything other than a collection of stats.
(My least favorite thing is that the amount of detail goes wildly back and forth between “not enough, I have no idea what I’m supposed to put on this line on my sheet” and “way too much, I don’t need to know right now which elven cultures in every single published setting count as ‘moon elves’.” Also the picture of the owlbear in the Monster Manual looks stupid and I’m offended on the owlbear’s behalf.)
I am in the middle of packing to move and I don’t even know where I’m moving to yet. Right now I’m looking at at least a week of homelessness (okay I’m sure I can find a couch to sleep on) before the place my mom put an offer in on is ready for possession. If that all goes through! Eesh. I’m super-stressed out.
On the bright side, packing is going okay. I’m nearly out of boxes but I have ten boxes full of books and most of my bedroom is packed except my closet which is… a thing unto itself. Anyway, at least the packing feels like I’m a useful human being.
You can definitely sleep on my couch for a week, if need be.
Thank you so much! I will let you know if I have to, and I really really appreciate the offer.
Glad to help. You have my email address, right?
I think so? But I’m not sure.
I seem to have yours, so I sent you an email, so now you should have mine. Unless you’ve changed email addresses or something.
My partner and I are without-a-roof-of-our-own for the next 6 weeks, so I feel your pain. Here’s hoping your couch surfing won’t last that long.
It seems like Amanda Taub of Vox is a Toastie! Hi Amanda!
Also it’s a good piece. http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6952227/rape-cultur…
Oh, thank you, Incompetent Coworker. I’m sure your desk really need 15-20 aggressive sprays of Lysol in our small, unventilated office. What are you doing over there during the day, performing surgery?
And don’t fucking take it on yourself to clean vacant desks and then bitch about how you have no time to do your work.
And stop fucking Lysoling the FILING CABINETS, THEY DON’T FUCKING NEED IT, I CAN TASTE THE DISINFECTANT AND I’M GOING TO SCREAM.
I am at full-on bitch-eating-crackers mode with this woman. This is not helping.Or eaten Doritos that actually cut my tongue. (Why did 3D Doritos get discontinued? WHY?)
CHICAGO TOASTIES MEETUP! Saturday, November 1, Rogers Park Social. Glenwood Ave, near the Morse stop on the Red Line. 6 pm ish to 10 pm ish.
Tell his department chair and the dean of the faculty. Do this in the form of an email to both at once. “I am writing to express my concerns about language used by Professor Trucknutz in my section of …” Get a friend to read it over before you send it.
What’s the prevailing climate of your school like — are a lot of people equally vile? If not, and if your school has a newspaper or news site that people actually read, invite someone who writes for it to sit in on your class.
Keep track of each and every thing he says that’s bigoted and aggressive. Note the precise language if you can, and the date.
If you have an academic advisor, ask them if it would be possible to take this course literally anywhere else for credit (a community college near your hometown, in the summer, for example). Depending on what it is and where you live, this may be possible or not.
Good luck.
thanks this is excellent advice
Has anybody heard from ocwut lately? She hasn’t been around in a couple of weeks and I’m wondering how it’s going. Is anyone connected with her on twitter or elsewhere?
She’s on tumblr under the same username; I haven’t seen any personal updates from her recently, but she’s been actively reblogging stuff, so you could probably reach her there with a “missed you at Cocktail Hour” note 🙂
Well I tried to reply with a comment via email but who even knows anymore with IntenseDebate.
But it said: Thank you!!
Spicy things: I recently made a chilli and threw in some tiny dried chillies a friend had got me from India, not having a sense of how spicy they were. Accidentally bit down on one while eating and felt my mouth go on fire. I tried drinking lots of water, holding water in my mouth for as long as possible, and desperately eating a yoghurt. Nothing helped. I am very wary in how I use them now.
I heard once that spicy molecules (science! ?) are only soluble in fat or alcohol, so water doesn’t work. High-fat milk products are good. Or, if you’re me, a shot of vodka.
Yeowch, my sympathies. Next time try eating white rice, soft white bread, or drinking milk.
Ugh that guy!! You have all my support! Do you want to be my counselor?
I don’t know if it’d be even remotely feasible, but it would be neat if a say, local sexual assault prevention/victim support person could give a talk of some kind, with the essential “and look, DUDEZ, going around saying things like ‘ugh I was totally raped by that parking ticket!’ is not a supportive attitude, it is trivializes the experience, brings up an horribly violent crime in a context where it is unwarranted, and is just plain obnoxious. This is the actual effect of sexual assault on survivors, this is entirely different from a parking ticket or how your recent fantasy football draft went or whatever.” Then maybe your stupid classmate (s) would get a clue, the problem wasn’t in the doubted sincerity of his belief that unsolicited advice is rape, it is that it is a ridiculous, callous position to have.
I mean, riding home on my bike today from the gym, some dude felt the need to “heeey! heeeey!” and when I finally turned “I don’t think black is a good color choice for riding” (neither is distracting me from oncoming traffic with your opinions stupid man!) now, I was also wearing EYE-SEARING pink, and it was broad daylight, so really the whole idea that I had been rendered invisible by some black was just stupid. A definite example of unsolicited and unwelcome advice. Annoying? Yes. Rape? Nope! Definitely not! I’m horrified that anyone would compare the two! Or sincerely believe they’re equivalent or something!
But here, consider it like this, you’re going to get some clients with terrible opinions. You’re going to have one like one my patients, who tearfully confronted her father about his incest and his response was “so? What are you going to do, cry about it?” while her mother HELD HIS HAND. TO SUPPORT HIM. You’re going to have terrible dudes who just want you to understand that they’re not a bad guy, kindly ignore those recent sexual assault of minors charges, those are all lies and she was totally asking for it anyway. And you will want to cry (and maybe not just want to cry) but you will want to be firm in your convictions too. These are not things to concede, to find a middle ground on, you can work with them in acknowledging these are wrongs, not in rationalizing. With your classmates, I think even if you have to go a route of “look, labeling things that are not assault as assault hurts me, I AM hurt by this, I would appreciate it if you would consider my feelings in the future on this” since that seems to be the way your class operates, maybe would work?
Erm, also supposed to be a reply to Briony_Fields
Dude how fucked up is it that I was relieved about how your bike story ended?
Not to minimize that it was annoying and unwelcome! Just, you know, “Oh good, this is NOT TERRIBLE. I won’t feel a little sick every time I think about this. Hooray.”
Haha not a problem! It was a minimal incident! and see, how it is not equivalent to sexual assault! Honestly the whole idea of someone describing that relatively minor, albeit irritating, interaction as “penetrative and intrusive” is really eww. Sexual assault is not a minor irritation. Maybe it is a dude thing? The concept of micro-aggressions being so alien there is a need to label them equivalent of macro-aggressions because of how terribly hurtful they are?
Toasties! I spent all afternoon running around doing things, but now I’m home with a glass of wine in my hand and vague plans to make this braised endive recipe. I have no particularly entertaining spicy food stories to relate, but today I made a phone call I’d been stressing out over and it was (as such phone calls usually are) anticlimactically easy. And I made a friend a few days ago, via the magic power of “We both watch Doctor Who and we both want Steven Moffat to go away.” So it’s been a good week.
In other news, several of us were talking in the Thematically Appropriate Books for October thread about starting up a quasi-reading group for Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. I’ve just found a copy at the library (thank you, Library of America edition, for including a whole bunch of Jackson’s short stories in the same volume, for added unease), but I would be totally up for talking about it in next week’s open thread with anyone who’s interested. I’m already caught up in Eleanor Vance’s imagination and I’m not even done with the first chapter yet.
In! Shirley Jackson is just about perfect and I love Eleanor Vance and her lions.
My friend’s 40th birthday “mid life crisis” was quitting a job teaching history to go back for a 2 year post bac and apply to med school. He just got accepted to two DO programs and I couldn’t be happier for him. He compromised by only applying to local programs, feeling it would be easier to be the oldest in his class if he kept his social network largely intact.
And remember that even if you’re 5 years older, you’ll be 5 years older than 22 year olds who have their shit decently well together or they wouldn’t have made it into med school.
sooo. I am kind of burning out in my particular chunk of humanities based nonprofit, and starting to revisit a semi-shelved dream I’ve always kinda had to work in science and with plants and maybe soils. I love being outdoors, I love problem solving, I love minute details. I’ve been starting to think about maybe doing a distance course in soil science or plant science or agronomy.
I was not “mathy” in hs. It’s not that I didn’t like math, it just felt like math didn’t like me. So in college I never pursued any science interests and just did a bomb ass job in my humanities majors. which was an amazing time. but now I’m kinda feeling like looking in a new career direction.
I’m still very nervous about the math involved, though I just found this video, and this charming little man has made me feel a wee bit better: http://www.pathsource.com/previews/1899-environme…
My work study position in undergrad was at the university greenhouse and it was totally one of the most restful, regenerative parts of my entire undergraduate experience. Plus now I am an expert at repotting geraniums.
In a “paths that are not entirely school based,” have you ever come across the idea of Master Gardeners? I only have vague impressions based on drive-by readings of programs on ag. school websites, but I think the gist is that they are bad-ass normal people who know a ton about plants and share that knowledge with the public.
No, I’d never heard of them before but I’m totally going to look into it, thank you.
I think our society tends to imagine that mathematical ability works the same way as magical ability in the Harry Potter universe: from the day you’re born to the day you die, you’re either a witch or a muggle.
This view used to tear me apart, and I struggled with my math classes — even though I thought of myself as “mathy.” My internal dialog was “This chapter is harder than the last… and the next one is going to be even harder. Will I even be able to learn this? Maybe I’m just not mathy enough! Maybe I’ve been kidding myself all this time and I can’t really math at all!!! Oh god, I’m going to fail horribly miserably terribly shamefully, the math chair will arrange to personally push me off a cliff, the carrion birds wi-” (cries, procrastinates starting math homework).
I’ve ditched this line of thinking and I’m doing much better now. I find that learning and getting good at math is like climbing a very big hill: your legs feel sore as you hike, but so do everyone else’s. It’s just part of the process. You’ll get stronger as you work your way up, and the perspective you win the higher you hike is worth every step.
You did a kick-ass job the first time through college? Then you’ve made this sort of climb before and you will be able to do it again. Soil, plants, and agronomy all sound awesome. I wish you the best in whatever you decide to pursue.
I love this comment so, so much, and would like to say that I think we feel the same way about writing. As in, you have it or you don’t. Some people are born Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni or Walt Whitman or Margaret Atwood, but the rest of us have it in us to at least be able to craft a readable paper–we just need to work at it a little bit harder and more consciously.
I’ve honestly never approached learning this way at all, but it seems a safe and sane and solid approach all around. Thank you for sharing this wonderfully usable metaphor, I have a feeling it’s going to help a great deal.
Hi Toasties! I know I am very late to the party this Friday thread, but are there any of you in the Cleveland/Northeast Ohio area that would be up for a meet up? I went to Akron for school and now live/work near west side Cleveland and I am trying to EXPAND MY SOCIAL HORIZONS so. Hopefully there are enough of us to organize something!
This week: tomorrow is my 6th anniversary of being married to Mr. Floridagal 🙂
Late as usual…but on the off chance that any knitty Toasties see this: anyone have a good recommendation for a fairly simple, slouchy-but-not-too-slouchy hat pattern? I want to get back into knitting for fall and start a project I know I’ll actually finish, and I love slightly slouchy berets, especially cute cabled ones. However, my online searches for slouchy hats have turned up a lot of weird hats that look like they are trying to engulf the wearer’s head, so I’d love to hear if you have a pattern that worked well for you!
pix!
seriously, how slouchy are we talking here?
I made this one when I first started knitting and I really enjoyed it: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/slouchy-c… I found it not too challenging, but a good change of pace from the simpler hats I’d been making. I didn’t think it was overly slouchy, either.
Ooh, that is totally perfect! Thanks!
This has nothing to do with FL specifically, but I love that you used "lammy" to mean "whizzy item that gives you buffs". Do I detect a fellow LARPer?
Some people are weirded out by the soulless – this includes some NPCs. There are a few story options that are closed off if you have no soul.
I know this because I did exactly the same thing, and sweated blood to get the damn thing back.
I'm guessing pink and maroon are to account for albinism and similar conditions?
(Please take this post with a huge grain of salt, as I a) am not married, b) do not wear dresses. But I am c) a sucker for happy pictures on the Internet.)
Have you visited Offbeat Bride? They have a huge archive of posts about brides with tea-length dresses – http://offbeatbride.com/tag/tea-length-dress – tbh they have huge archives of posts about more or less any wedding-related subject – and they usually make a point of listing where the couples involved got their clothes, food, photographer, etc. Maybe you could look through them for something in your area?
Congratulations!
I already plugged Offbeat Bride (offbeatbride.com) to someone upthread but I will do it again! Disclaimer: I am not married but like looking at other people's happy pictures, and OBB has a LOT of pictures of happy couples of all varieties doing their wedding thing. And a lot of really sensible wedding planning advice.
I've only briefly looked through 5e (my regular GM bought it and we had a flip through before the Tuesday night game) and haven't looked closely enough to actually comment on the mechanics. Except advantage/disadvantage, it's a much more sensible system than infinitely stacking circumstance bonuses.
But I am considering buying at least the PHB just for the art. The art is amazing, and full of PoC and women in sensible armour and all-round badassery.
Let us know how it goes! I will be watching with interest.
WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND IS MEETING HILARY MANTEL NEXT WEEK.
THIS MISANDRIST.
I have a version of the Paragard. First time IUD, first time doctor inserted one, I have not had any children. There is a brief moment of sharp discomfort but it passes. I can't remember if I had cramps so they must not have been bad if I did. FWIW I have stubbed my toe with far far more pain than getting the IUD in. Your period may be a little wonky or heavy for awhile but I just started buying the larger bottles of ibuprofen/Aleve.
One thing though – make sure someone knows you have one in case something happens and you're in the ER and not in a state to inform staff. I guess you could put something in your wallet.
These concerns are all a bazillion times less than the abject panic of forgetting pills, forgetting to take pills, wondering if the ring slipped out, and not realizing the last time you smiled was several months ago.
Wow, "degrade" sounds much worse. Good job, Cambridge!
Random weekly essays and leaving things to the last minute were horrible. I ended up writing so many essays overnight, and it was so unpleasant. I am hoping that this year will be better.
What MA are you thinking of, if you don't mind sharing? And what did you do at Cambridge?
I'm really glad my comment was useful. Please feel free to ask stuff whenever you like! I'm also glad it's not just me.
Also, fair warning, it may be very difficult to not eat the warm pear sauce with a spoon from the pot.
Have you tried his plum ice cream recipe? I found it posted it online and I made it tonight. My tip for that recipe is if you aren't keen on peel flecks in your plums to peel the plums before you pit and cut them. It might be because I used the immersion blender. Also warning on difficulty in not eating the plum sauce straight from the pot.
I really need this cookbook because these two recipes were fabulous.
I made this one when I first started knitting and I really enjoyed it: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/slouchy-c… I found it not too challenging, but a good change of pace from the simpler hats I'd been making. I didn't think it was overly slouchy, either.
@samburgers
Babies cost all the money there possibly is, and then more.
I will tell you what we did, which almost worked:
-Decide I’d like to stay home for 12 weeks (all unpaid, because America); set savings goal A for 12 weeks of my salary.
-Find max out of pocket fees under my insurance; set savings goal B for this number.
-Find out daycare costs, stare dismally at the wall. (Luckily, recently we’d been saving for a down payment (paid) and an emergency fund (funded), so we were able to just use that money to pay for daycare. And baby’s insurance. And diapers, kind of. We also both took a reduction in our fun allowance (which we use to buy bicycles and lego and fabric and such things). I have no idea how this part works if you don’t already have some significant wiggle room in your budget. It costs us just about exactly $1000 a month for daycare, health insurance, and diapers.)
-Step four: have a preemie, who is cared for by an out-of-network neonatologist; despair over $40,000 bill that no one else wants to be responsible for. (Six months and change later, it is still unresolved. I don’t think we’ll have to pay all of it, but it doesn’t seem to be going away, either…) (Also I ended up staying home for 19 weeks, which wasn’t really enough, health-wise, for my tiny baby – daycare is kicking her ass, sickness-wise.)
And I will add that you do have time at 25, but it really does get harder to conceive once you are in your 30s, and you have a much higher chance of birth defects as you crest 35… Also the younger you are, the better your body will heal after, and the more capable you will be of dealing with the unending sleeplessness.
Ooh, that is totally perfect! Thanks!
I have never in my life attempted jello with any kind of fruit in it, but even still, this blew my mind. Thanks for the info!