Toasties. Ramen is the way forward. I urge anyone who feels able to donate to Doctors Without Borders. Let’s try to find some good world events to talk about this week in our Open Thread?!
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
Toasties. Ramen is the way forward. I urge anyone who feels able to donate to Doctors Without Borders. Let’s try to find some good world events to talk about this week in our Open Thread?!
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
TOAST. I have a crappy work weekend coming up after a really crappy few weeks. (I feel terrible because all my comments lately to all of my friends have been “LOOK HOW MUCH THINGS SUCK” and everything is terrible, I am terrible, the world is terrible, etc.)
Let’s discuss Things That Creep You Out. What is scary to you? I am scared of everything myself, but I am particularly susceptible to creepy Wikipedia articles about people who have disappeared mysteriously or died suddenly, creepy books about ghosts and possessions, mysteries in general. I am NOT afraid of Stephen King novels or movies, for whatever reason (with the exception of Pet Sematary). Are you creeped out by ghosts, mysterious happenings, exorcisms, lonely roads where no one ever goes, the vast and unknowable depths of the sea, etc? Let’s talk about creepy things!
I am scared of abandoned buildings and houses but I still go around them.
Despite being a sceptic I believe in ghosts, though most supposedly real ghost stories make me roll my eyes. I love horror films and books and I love it when they successfully scare me without using gore or violence. Dark Matter by Michelle Paver was excellent.
Dark Matter, yes! That is the best ghost story I’ve read in a long time and got genuinely spooked.
I do NOT like being creeped out and I get creeped out and scared easily. I also have an overactive imagination, so as soon as something gets in there…I don’t sleep for ages.
I remember reading a book once where a woman had demons in her house, I think, and she was having a dream and woke up and her clock read “Midnight” instead of 12:00. Don’t know why, but that scared the living daylights out of me. I was about 14 and my mom and I were staying at my grama’s, and I went and got in bed with my mom. Could not handle it.
I am always creeped out by ghosts, but when I was a teen we would always go out to abandon buildings and wander around them (this building specifically). It was terrifying, and I loved every minute of it. Once, we saw what looked like a dead/stuffed goat in a hallway and booked it out of there. REAL people also wandering around abandoned buildings was much scarier than any threat of ghosts.
It didn’t used to bother me, but when I swim in bodies of water, I don’t like to be out of standing depth because I am pretty sure my foot will graze a corpse if happen to touch down from floating.
I’ve always been creeped out by ghosts, but I find the idea of them thrilling. I’m quite sure I’ve seen one, and since then, it’s sort of changed how I think of the afterlife. I don’t mind them so much, but it’s more the idea of being watched or not alone that gives me the willies, so that doubles for live people doing the watching too. I don’t like looking out of windows at night from lit rooms for fear of seeing someone looking in ::shudders::
One time when I was swimming in a lake a fish swam directly under my foot, brushing its scaly body all along my skin, and I will not swim in lakes any more.
A GREAT CASE IN POINT OF BEING FREAKED OUT BY SHIT AND FEELING WATCHED: I woke up with a start last night (since writing my comment) and heard a very clear whisper “DO YOU FEEL SAFE?”. I am not sure if it was my partner being fucking terrifying in his sleep or if I was just imagining it. Probably the latter, as I hear voices fairly often as I fall asleep (also whaaaaaaat is that about??), but this was so clear and stage whispery that I really hope it was my dude talking in his sleep in a different accent than his own 🙁
Hypnagogic hallucinations! They’re totally normal, a lot of people have them. If you get the voices when you fall asleep they’re called hypnagogic, if you get them waking up they’re hypnopompic.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogic_halluci…
Ahhhhh! Thanks for this. While I sort of enjoy the romantic idea of ghosts whispering in my ears, this is much more plausible!
I’m scared of things that have no rational explanation – like, if a horror movie is all “oh I found this article on the internet that explains that this guy in 1914…” NOPE NOPE MOVIE RUINED. Unsolved eerie mysteries, Taman Shud, all that stuff. Not knowing is scary! The scariest part of Paranormal Activity for me was not the noises and doors closing and what have you, it was that scene where they sprinkle talcum powder over the threshold of their door and wake up the next morning and LIZARD FEET WALKED THROUGH IT. WHAT.
I am kind of afraid of the ocean (omg the bloop), and space. I was terrified of aliens as a kid and I’m mostly over that now but as an adult I’m just sort of freaked out by the concept of space being ENDLESS, like wtf is out there we’ll never know (consequently, a lot of Gravity was terrifying for me).
The thought of the endlessness of space scares me too. I remember being a kid studying basic astronomy and just being so freaked out at the thought of just…being able to travel forever and never finding the end of it all. Too big!
YES. Things without a rational explanation. I’ll read about unsolved mysteries all damn day even though they TERRIFY me.
Oooh, yes, the ocean. Not for paranormal reasons for me, mostly for slimy-things-with-teeth reasons. And I find something extremely unsettling about snorkeling or something and looking down and seeing all sorts of stuff below you. I can’t really explain it, but it’s like a mix of agoraphobia and fear of drowning.
Yeah my fear of the ocean is like…a fear of deep sea creatures, because WHAT THE FUCK. It’s like, aliens are real, and they’re fish, and we’ll never discover them all. The ocean is like our own little pocket of deep space right on earth. I’m actually a little bit afraid of fish because they’re so weird to me! And slimy, and yeah, basically I don’t think I’ll ever really want to go snorkeling.
Vastness (of both the sea and space varieties) is the most terrifying thing, always. I went to Hawaii a few years ago with my girlfriend and her family, and our rental place looked out on this cove that was great for snorkeling. I had fun swimming around, but I basically had to zoom back and forth across the cove and not slow down, because realizing/seeing the bottom of the ocean so very far below me would make me start hyperventilating.
I’m also freaked out by things that are vast – blue whales are one example.
yesssssss things with no explanation. I was addicted to Unsolved Mysteries stuff as a kid, and you’re so right, the explanations in horror movies ruin everything. (Reason #256 why The Haunting/Haunting of Hill House is the best haunted-house story ever.)
The ocean doesn’t bother me so much, mostly because water pressure and temperature keep all the really nasty stuff far, far away from me, but the vastness of space… just the trailer for Gravity was enough to leave me shaking, I do not want to see the whole movie, no thank you.
The Bloop! So terrifying! That’s my favourite. I refuse to listen to any non-creepy explanations people try to tell me.
Taman Shud yesssss! I will read anything about Taman Shud. Also you’re entirely right about the “no explanation” thing.
I just finished reading Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger and boy did that book creep me out, in the best way. I’ve been reading a bunch of blog posts and such that analyze it and trying to figure out what I think was actually happening in the book, since the narrator is unreliable and also a massive shitbag at times.
I am also creeped out by the idea of living in a very isolated place. I appreciate solitude, but I want to know that there are people close by in case I should want to spend time with them. Anything can happen when you live in the middle of nowhere! How are you going to get help in an emergency situation? EVERYONE SHOULD LIVE IN CITIES.
Just about to start reading The Little Stranger! So excited!
Me tooooo why is work not over yet so I can curl up on my couch with pizza and beer and ghost stories
Don’t ever watch The Strangers, then. Or do, if you’re a masochist like that.
I’m reading The Little Stranger and loving it! things have juuust started to get weird and I’m all 😀 😀 😀 D:
THE NARRATOR IS BASICALLY A SEX CRIMINAL
Man, I hated him by the end of that book.
I was too impatient to find out what the source of the creepiness was to savor the actual creepiness. I regret the way in which I read that book; I wish I had a do-over.
DO YOU THINK HE KILLED HER???
I think his presence in her life was why she died. (Either his actions contributed to her own depression/suicidal ideation or his gaslighting stoked her psychosis and resultant death.)
Spontaneous combustion.
I watched a lot of “Unsolved Mysteries” as a kid and they covered that topic a lot. “And there was nothing but ash on the couch! His empty shoes remained unscathed.”
Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It’s just not really widely reported.
WHAT.
Oh hey that’s cool thanks for sharing i’m going to sleep very well tonight O__O
Hahaha, oh no! It’s just a quote from Spinal Tap!
Oh. But how do we know it isn’t true?!?! Gah.
haha thank god because I ate a grip of beans today and am feeling particularly methane-y 🙁
Zombies. And I love The Walking Dead, which guarantees me at least three graphic, extended nightmares per year.
I can not watch that show. My husband always describes the gross zombies (“One was waterlogged and blue!”) and even talking about them gives me nightmares.
Basements.
When I was little, I would always sing loudly when I went into the basement, so any Thing Living There would hear me coming and know that I meant no harm.
Now when I have a nightmare as an adult, the basement is involved 50% of the time.
My apartment has an unfinished basement which also happens to be where our washer and dryer are, and there was a good stretch of time where I’d watch Hannibal and, after it was finished, realize I still needed to go into the Murder Basement and get the laundry out of the dryer. I made my girlfriend come with me, each time.
I used to live in this building that was like a hundred years old, and the laundry was in the musty basement behind this very heavy, dark door that used to say paint room in stick-on letters but one fell off so when I wanted to do laundry I had to go into the PAIN ROOM.
I have a very vivid memory of a floating spectre in our basement when I was a very small child, probably preschool or kindergarten age. I also have a terrifying abduction memory from about the same time. Made all the more terrifying because there is basically no way it could be true. But SO VIVID. (I know these thoughts have been with me a long time. I wrote stories about them as soon as I was old enough to write.)
Demons, supernatural-ish things. I really hate feeling like there’s something in a closet or under your bed, because my grandparents’ house was SCARY when I was a kid, and those memories have stayed with me. I remember hearing someone turn on a light switch and the lights remaining off. So many scary stories about that house. SO MANY. Mysterious footsteps, the whole works. It’s done me in. To this day, if I don’t have a good “feeling” about a house or apartment, I WILL NOT live there. Giant NOPE.
Wow, that is spooky! My grandparents’ house was scary, not because of weird events, but because everything was SO OLD. Somehow when I was little, all the old photos and antiques and the cracked mirror in my parents’ bedroom and the 19th-century trunk in the crawl space of the basement were just the freakiest things in the world. But now I love old stuff. So go figure.
Ha, I love old stuff now too! That’s the way things go, I suppose.
I remember several times, sitting in what was once a parlor room (now just sort of a living room), playing the piano. While you played, your back was to the rest of the room, and I distinctly heard the footsteps of someone walking in. Sometimes they would sound like they were sitting on the sofa, sometimes it felt like they were standing right behind me. After the first couple of times this happened (this all started when I was a kid, earliest memories of this particular incident started around 7 or 8), I stopped turning around. There was never anyone there.
Oof, I just gave myself the shivers. Maybe I should write up something about this. Yeesh.
Please do!
Have you listened to the Spooked episodes of the Snap Judgement podcast? You will feel validated.
Yes, this sort of goes along with what people are saying upthread about inexplicable phenomena, but the creepiest thing to me is people’s stories about their instincts about a place that are then seemingly borne out by weird stuff happening.
I am ALWAYS interested when people talk about times they were creeped out.
I had a “true” ghost story book when I was a kid, and the creepiest story was about a painting someone bought at an auction, of a castle on a hill. All the windows in the castle were dark… but one night, the new owner sees that one of the windows is lit up! He later learns that on that night, in the real castle the painting is based on, a woman was murdered in that very room!
OK, I lied. The scariest story from that book was actually set in Appalachia. It involved a murder, and talking cats who inform on the murderer, then run up the chimney and are never seen again.
I really wish I had any idea of what that book was called, because I’d love to find it again.
I had (this is going to sound stupid) a book about “true stories about cats” (I know) which for NO DISCERNIBLE REASON, contained a horrid, several-page-long short story. It was about a woman who went to a beach house to get over a terrible breakup, and she found this stray cat who wanted to hang out with her. And she started having dreams about a handsome man on the beach, and every night the dreams got more and more terrible as the handsome man grew more and more gruesome and was actually a sea monster and kept trying to drag her to the sea. And she wanted to wake up–she KNEW it was a dream–but couldn’t–the sea monster man was dragging her into the ocean and she couldn’t breathe–and she was saved by the stray cat biting her on the hand to wake her up fully. And she left the beach house the next day, and the curse there was broken and the cat was never seen again.
It was beyond creepy and I was like, eight, because the book was called like “Fantastic Facts About Cats!” or something else innocuous.
This made me laugh out loud in an otherwise very creepy thread! (genuinely laugh out loud; not internet laugh out loud)
I get really creeped out by bathrooms! I always look behind the shower curtain when I go in (even though the only occupant of my tub I’ve ever found is my cat), and I’m terrified of seeing something in the mirror behind me.
Ooh, yes! What is it about bathrooms?
My great-grandmother’s bathroom had an ominous-looking shower curtain that hid a cavernous shower. Grown-ups and children alike felt compelled to check behind that shower curtain.
She also had a plastic sunflower with a creepy smile and glazed expression, next to the toilet. I don’t know why it was there or what purpose it served, but I always watched it to make sure it wouldn’t move or come alive.
Meanwhile my brother and I thought that the sound of the toilet flushing was the sound of gargling screams from something living deep inside the toilet.
I think one reason bathrooms can be scary is because they are a place where you expect complete solitude and privacy, so any disruption (or threat of disruption) feels particularly uncomfortable. Not to mention, you’re generally doing things that you don’t want people to see, so when that privacy is broken, it’s an unpleasant mix of surprise and shame.
And to go along with your comment about hairdryers below–I hate when I’m doing something that completely preoccupies me. When the hairdryer is on, you don’t hear anyone coming!
That and the woman in room 237 in The Shining is one of the scariest things of all time.
Ok, so I didn’t see The Shining until about a year ago because I always thought I’d be too scared but when I finally watched it, I found that all the parodies of it I’d seen over the years actually dulled the horror for me. Mr. BHam was rather put out that I was laughing at the blood elevator (“That’s odd; the blood usually gets off at the second floor” -Mr. Burns).
Oh, and blow dryers! I associate these with bathroom mirrors. When I was little, a blow dryer I was using started shooting sparks. It also sounded like the screams of a hundred women. (Yes, I do hear screams in inanimate objects a lot.)
YES, mirrors! All those middle school mirror games scared the hell out of me.
I have the mirror fear too. (Damn you, kids in elementary school with your Bloody Mary stories.) I can’t stand to watch any scene in a bathroom in a horror movie, because if a character is anywhere near a bathroom mirror, you KNOW they’re going to look up and see something behind them.
OMG yesss. Mirror horror gets me every time. Did not stop me from watching the movie “Mirrors” though (good premise that went to shit in the end).
I recently read about lucid dreaming and how one shouldn’t look in a mirror in a dream because one is likely to see unpleasant things. What is it about the human subconscious that really hates mirrors?
I wonder if the mirror thing isn’t partly about being seen, especially in dreams. The idea of reflecting aspects that you don’t want people to see…or something like that. A lot of the games are about revealing figures, but I always felt like most of the horror comes from finding out that what you’re afraid of is real and can be seen now.
(I really don’t like mirrors in the dark.)
Possibly the only time I’d ever recommend something by Updike: Mirror
(scroll up a bit, it’s on pg. 80)
I’ve made it a new policy to go off registry for people I’m close to. Otherwise it just feels too transactional, and I feel overwhelmed at having no money and having to give presents to people all the time.
I know you/IntenseDebate put this response in the wrong place, but I’m enjoying the idea that you are creeped out by wedding registries.
Cryptids. Skinwalkers. Home invasion. I used to live way out in the country where I would keep myself up all night worrying about malevolent beings peeking in my windows after reading about things like that, but now I live in a third floor apartment in a secured entry building in London, so I can enjoy all the stories stories about coyotes walking upright and strangers in masks tormenting people in farmhouses and still sleep like a baby. Yay civilization!
I live in a house now and I am abundantly creeped out by ANY story that involves “People or THINGS outside looking in from the darkness.”
Sometimes, just before I go to bed, when I go to check that I’ve locked the door to our apartment, I find myself compelled to look through the peephole to make sure there isn’t anything lurking in the hallway. In the end, I stop looking not because I feel silly about it but because the thought that I might actually suddenly see something is too frightening.
Like, I’m not actually concerned about monsters or axe murderers roaming my building, but every night for about 30 seconds that dread just comes over me.
OH GOOD A NEW THING TO TERRIFY MYSELF WITH
No, but seriously. It’s already discomfiting enough that the hallway vestibule light is always on, so when our apartment’s dark, the door (and the hairline spaces between it and the doorframe) are backlit. Though I guess this means that if I did peep through the hole, I’d have a very well-lit view of whoever/whatever was out there.
That has ALWAYS been something that terrified me. My cousins and I made up a guy with long fingernails and red eyes (“what if you woke up in the middle of the night and [the guy] was just gently tapping at your window?”) that, even though we HAD INVENTED HIM OURSELVES, scared the daylights out of us for weeks.
I do fine with and enjoy getting scared by most typical horror movies, but I am inordinately unsettled by movies where something goes wrong in space.
I’m scared of monsters in deep water. Actually, even if it’s a shallow swimming pool I am afraid of monsters.
Also, at night, in the bathroom for a pee, I will not look in a mirror. I’m afraid of seeing something that’s not supposed to be there, or maybe I won’t see my reflection??
The idea of looking in a mirror in the dark is TERRIFYING.
I never used to be scared of this, until my friend told me SHE was scared of it, and now it completely freaks me out. THANKS FRIEND.
My aunt and uncle live on a farm in Kansas. When I was young, they had a self-playing piano. Which is creepy enough in broad daylight, but one day when I was visiting we got a tornado warning so we went into the basement. The power kept coming off and on which set off the piano. So, as we’re huddling in the dark basement as the storm hit, above the howl of the wind, we’d sometimes hear the piano playing, then stop, then play again. Gave me nightmares for years.
AAHHHHHHHHH
I’m working my way through episodes of Fringe right now. It took me the better part of a year to finish the first season because apparently I’m creeped out by everything in the first half of that season and could only watch episodes in the middle of the day because even having all the lights on in the house wasn’t enough.
I’m still half expecting to turn around and find Michael Cerveris watching me every time I turn the lights off, so I think maybe what creeps me out the most is the feeling of being watched.
Oohh, yes, I’m also creeped out by those kinds of Wikipedia articles. But I…still search for them. Sometimes even at midnight, instead of concentrating on essays. Then I get spooked out so I have to play Pink or whatever jogging song I have. But I still do it. *puts on hat of shame*
I keep reading the Wikipedia “List of mysterious disappearances” AND I DON’T KNOW WHY.
Please do not TEMPT me with those key words.
Please do!!
A few years ago, I identified my biggest fear (in movies, in reading, and certainly if it happened in life) as architectural inconsistencies: when a building doesn’t quite make sense.
It can be explicit, as in the off-kilter angles of Hill House in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House* or the unpleasantly off-kilter room from a C.S. Lewis book (I think it’s That Hideous Strength) that’s designed to drive people slowly insane, or implicit, like the subtle collapse of the hotel’s geography in Kubrick’s The Shining, or as overt as in House of Leaves.
It can be a cheap dream sequence wher someone slides open their medicine chest to find a face staring back at them from a dark room inside it or a clutch of kids finding that the wardrobe goes farther back than they thought. Whatever it is, if a normal domestic space ceases to make sense, I am in.
*I’ll be live-tweeting The Haunting (1963) for The Toast starting at 8 p.m. Eastern on Saturday the 25th — tomorrow! You can find all the broadcast, streaming, and live-tweet info on this Facebook page if you’d like to join in or follow along! You do not need to be on FB to join the live-tweet, of course; you can find me at @emilyorelse or look for the hashtag #TheHaunting.
I don’t know where you live, but if you ever find yourself near Massillon, Ohio, you should check out the Five Oaks Mansion. The architect did some really subtle things with proportions and such that make the place really creepy. Like, there would be a line of columns but one of them would be just different enough to make people uneasy without quite knowing why. Plus, there are carved faces everywhere.
Of all the things in House of Leaves that scared me (and there were a LOT of things), that moment where the book falls off the built-in bookshelf because the house has become bigger inside by just a bit still gives me the wiggins so hard.
Hey, this is weirdly specific but:
I was really enjoying House of Leaves and am a little over halfway through, but the scene with the pomeranian and the woman in the car disturbed me so badly that I had trouble sleeping for days. I’m afraid to pick the book back up in case the narrator revisits that story. Do you remember if it is ever referenced again? Or better yet, is it ever implied that the narrator was being particularly unreliable at that point, and the dog lives happily for the rest of its natural life?
I believe firmly in the total unreliability of all the narrators in that book. I can’t remember the incident in question, and I’m a total House of Leaves junkie (you don’t want to know how many hours I’ve spent on the discussion boards picking out codes) so the odds are good it never comes up again.
Have you seen The Eclipse? (Not to be confused with that Twilight movie.) There’s a scene where the ghost shows up inside of a wardrobe that scared the bejeebers out of me. Actually, all the scenes with the ghost in that movie scared the bejeebers out of me.
YES, and I burst out screaming at that scene! It takes a lot for a movie to make me scream. I loved The Eclipse: so slow and mournful and adult.
It was almost too scary for me, but Ciaran Hinds was giving such a beautiful, sad, understated performance that I kept watching. Through my fingers. And I’m glad I did.
Things I can’t see, just in general. Ghosts specifically. I’m the biggest skeptic int he room, but when I’m alone at home in the winter… ugh, I could never live in an old building. Every pop and creakfreaks me out.
My addiction to the Serial podcast led me to get another true crime story to listen to on my commute. I got Ann Rule’s Green River Running Red. It is perhaps not the most well-written book, but it is scaring the everloving crap out of me. It does not help that my house is within walking distance of some of the places where the bodies were found. (Why did the realtor not mention this?!)
I’m generally afraid of everything (childhood: ghosts in the radiators, the dark yawning maw of my brother’s room that I had to walk past to get from my room to the stairs, dying on amusement park rides – side note, if you’re afraid of that, never read the Wikipedia article for the euthanasia roller coaster, it’s creepy as hell). Recently I have rediscovered, having moved from a safe, secluded apartment complex to the second floor of a house in a much more crowded neighborhood, how terrified I am of break-ins.
SO, our bedroom window faces the house next door, with about eight feet of yard between the two. The yard is full of bushes and tall grass and such, and I was being awakened every night by INSANE rustling out there. For a couple weeks I would just lie there and listen to it and try to slow my heart back down by telling myself it was just a cat or raccoon – by day, I believed it, but in the dead of night I was convinced it was a prowler or someone shooting up heroin or looking for an opportunity to break in or WHO KNOWS. Finally a few nights ago I went to bed with a flashlight on the nightstand so I could get up and catch whoever it was (also a terrifying idea, but I was losing a lot of sleep). This story is super anticlimactic because I did hear it that night, and bravely shined the flashlight on it, but whatever it is, it’s small enough to hide in the sparse bushes so that I couldn’t see it. But at least now I know that it’s not a human, and it hasn’t woken me up since.
I used to live in an apartment in a 19th-century row house. Not long after I moved in, I spotted a mouse in my living room, which led to a lengthy campaign of anti-mouse warfare. It’s not that I’m afraid of mice themselves, per se — but oh dear God, the scritching sound of their little feet running across wood floors in the middle of the night. I never want to hear it again.
I am super creeped out by things with more than four legs. This includes spiders, crabs, every bug ever (including butterflies!), centipedes, scorpions, etc. However, I am totally cool with octopuses and squid – tentacles are fine by me!
(I think it’s the way all those legs join up and move around each other…ugh I’m getting all shivery thinking about it)
Have you seen Absentia? Not super buggy, but (I think) a really smart, creepy little indie horror thing.
NUMBERS STATIONS oh my stars they are the worst. I fall into this trap of thinking about them, and then listening to recordings, and then creeping myself out, and then it just repeats in a cycle auuugh.
Also the vastness of space.
And the future.
Coincidentally enough, there is an episode of Welcome to Night Vale that combines all of these things.
Unexplained noises. Small movements out of the corner of your eye. (I’m convinced this is why mirrors are evil – because it’s harder to figure out what the fuck that was when you catch a glimpse of movement in a mirror.) Things that are maybe supernatural and maybe not and you don’t know which one’s worse.
Also I still to this day cannot do Bloody Mary because I know, with the rational part of my brain, that nothing will happen, but I also feel, with the part of my brain that tells me not to get into cars with strangers, that it might, and what would I do then? (Similarly I would never be that person in a horror movie who reads the evil spell aloud and accidentally summons a demon. THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, PUT THAT BOOK DOWN AND ACT LIKE A RESPONSIBLE ADULT.)
WHY DID YOU POST THAT LINK I WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN
That link was so creepy!
And I totally agree with you about avoiding occult things- for instance, I will never use an Ouija board, even though I’m pretty sure they’re harmless, because WHAT IF I ACCIDENTALLY SUMMON A DEMON? (this fear is influenced by the fact that I went to Catholic school)
Me too. I will never never use a ouija board even though I REALLY WANT TO.
There are things I enjoy being scared by, like movies where murderers jump out and kill people, or haunted dolls, or enormous spider monsters or sea monsters,etc.
This is very different from the kind of fear I feel when, say, I am contemplating my inevitable death and the death of all those I love. That is a bad fear, and it is not enjoyable to feel.
Is there a Toast official position on going off-registry for a shower gift? I’m, um, asking for a friend.
I think it might depend on how well you know them?
Yeah – The Fellow’s best man went off registry and got us a gorgeous handmade tea set in colours he knew we liked. That kind of off-registry is always appreciated, I think.
I always go off-registry. I do consult it if I need help learning the honoree’s taste and favorite colors. Recent wedding of a niece: I saw in her registry that she likes muted pastels (I know) and that she was asking for lots of rather plain-looking kitchenware. Then I went to Etsy and found some lovely bowls of the size she was requesting. They were soft caramel, green, and ivory with no ornamentation. I included a note with this gift: I wanted to give you something unique and beautiful, made by hand with care.
Forgot to mention, I only do this when the couple are adults with no significant material needs. When there’s a registry because a pair of 20-year-olds have nothing in which to cook a chicken and only one cereal bowl, I take it more seriously.
As a general rule, I’d say stick to the registry. Unless you are REALLY sure that your gift is something your friend will appreciate and doesn’t already have (maybe sentimental value relating to your friendship?), go with the list.
Eh, I’m against it myself. I have received many off-registry gifts for both wedding and baby, and almost all of them are just not to my taste, and / or something we already had. (Many, many baby things we already had! There’s a reason I didn’t put a bouncer on the registry, people!) If you must go off-registry, include a gift receipt.
Yes, I will definitely include the gift receipt. It’s a baby shower for one of my BFFs from high school, for her first baby, and I got her the JJ Cole diaper caddy because we have one and are set to have 5+ years of daily use out it. I noticed she had nothing similar on either of her registries, so I decided to take a chance. If she doesn’t like it and wants to return it for something she really wants, I totally understand.
Yeah, i got a ton of lovely things for my bridal shower and wedding that while, lovely, just didn’t quite work for us (duplicates, not to our taste, no room for it, etc). I did get a few things that I do really love that were off registry, but i also have a pile of stuff that is probably going to goodwill. Some of it, I am saving for my friends who are just moving out into their own places, but a lot of it we just don’t have a use for.
I think it definitely depends HOW you’re going off-registry. Stay on the registry for things that are actually on the registry (they likely put a lot of thought into why they picked the particular brands/styles they picked of, say, pots and pans) but I think if your idea isn’t something that’s on the registry and it’s thoughtful and you truly believe the recipient will appreciate it, then go for it!
Yeah, I’m in agreement there. My boyfriend and I recently got some friends some nice whiskey, a book of cocktails, and a set of some bar tools because we knew they’d like them, but there wasn’t anything like that on the registry. I think if they’d had bar tools on the registry, we would have bought the brand they chose.
Yes! Also a good point! Plus if you get something similar to a registry item, but not the actual registry item, then it doesn’t get marked as purchased and someone is going to end up with two similar things and your gift that is not the one that they actually picked that is going to be the one they have to return.
make sure you’re going off registry because you found something meaningful for them, not something that shows your own budget/taste. My MIL went off registry with a very expensive, very ugly something so she could lord about what it cost. We also got some off registry gifts that were immediately consigned because it was clear the giver wanted to send a message about themselves, not give us something we loved/needed.
Seconded! My MIL went off-registry because she thought she could find us cheaper pans than the ones we’d registered for at Costco. So we’ve got a matching kitchen set… except the pans, because they’re the Costco ones. We use them, because I figured they were perfectly good pans and what does it matter, but I have to admit it does bother me that she just decided that she’d ignore the specific ones we’d picked out for ourselves because she knew where she could get cheaper ones.
My friend’s mother-in-law did that, only with towels. They registered for Macy’s; she got them Costco. I’m told it was indeed meant as a snub to the bride (though the groom presumably has to use those towels too).
I tend to do Enhanced Registry, where (when affordable) I get something off the registry as well as an additional something that complements it. Case in point: some friends had registered for fancy gardening tools, which my girlfriend and I bought off their registry, but then we also went to a local greenhouse and got a few packets of seeds to give along with them.
The one thing I will say is that I have actually been thanked for using the registry. The gift-getter ended up with a lot of stuff they did not need or want and were grateful at not having to return everything.
I agree with others who have said that going off-registry works best when you get something that you know will be liked/appreciated and isn’t a different version of a registry item. Case in point: When I got married, some of the best gifts were off-registry — a picnic basket with all the accessories (dishes, glasses, napkins, etc) (almost 20 years and a divorce later, I still have it) and several pieces of art (a wooden sculpture, a couple of paintings) that were very much to our taste. Those gifts were thoughtful and lovely. But I was also happy that my aunt who I hadn’t seen in ages (and whose taste I do not share) just bought us the set of dishes that were on the registry.
This is perhaps a crass attitude, but for myself, if you’re going to go “off-registry,” just give cash or even just a card (no gift). Mr. BHam and I will only be registering for a very bare minimum as both sets of parents feel it’s necessary. What we’d both prefer is money for traveling–we don’t have room for much new stuff; we’ve already outfitted our kitchen almost to full perfection; and we really like travel.
A heartfelt card is better than yet another box of wineglasses.
Thank you all for coming to this place. This is just a reminder that we love you guys.
We love YOU guys.
Thank you for building this amazing place. <3
Thank YOU for making this the only place on the entire internet where I know it’s safe to read the comments.
Not only knowing it’s safe, but knowing that sometimes it will be as good as the article itself! Seriously a rare and beautiful thing.
Thankyou for giving us a place to come to!
It’s a wonderful place! Thank YOU GUYS/GALS for running it!
Confetti and cake for all!
Nick you’re such an astounding human being, love you
<3
[blushing furiously] No, THANK YOU, and all the Toastie commenters who make my mornings just that easier to bear.
You folks are the bestest!
Y’all are adorable rascals that I look forward to hearing from each day.
Echoing all the thank yous for making he best place on the internet. I never talk about The Toast without also adding “my favorite website.”
I have been refreshing the page for half an hour! So excited to be in the OT today. I have missed it!
If anyone doesn’t mind, and has wisdom to share, how did you or someone you know finally get diagnosed with endometriosis? I have been Mystery Ailmenting for almost two solid months, and my doctors are starting to lean in that direction. (Doctor quote: “Well, we’ve ruled out a lot of bad stuff, and all the common stuff. Now we’re onto…” “Weird stuff?” “Well, rare stuff, yeah.”)
I know two people who have it. For one, her mother had it, and so when she started having assorted nasty menstrual issues endo was the number one suspect (it apparently runs in families). For the other, the doctors ruled out pretty much everything else first.
Thank you!
My mother had lots of reproductive-system issues, but not endo specifically. It sure feels like they are ruling everything else it could possibly be out first although I’m sure that’s not really true.
Heredity, and also that whole thing where I bled every day for months at a time.
I have/had it! My unofficial diagnosis came from me describing my symptoms and the doc agreeing with me that it’s probably endo. I have an official diagnosis too, now, because I recently had laparoscopic surgery — this is done partly to finalize the diagnosis through visual confirmation of lesions, but also to go in and remove as much of the rogue endometrium as possible.
The laparoscopy is sort of a last resort, because even though it’s “minmally-invasive” it’s still day surgery, and often the endo comes back after a while. But my pain was definitely impacting my life, plus I am actively trying to get knocked up (and endo really impacts fertility for reasons that aren’t well understood), so I wanted that shiz OUTTA there.
Before I was trying to conceive, I had a Mirena IUD that helped IMMENSELY with the pain. I know that a hormone-infused IUD is not for everyone, but it was the only thing (bar surgery) that worked for me.
I hope your Mystery Ailment, whatever it ends up being, lets you up off the ground soon, slowseptember! Take care of yourself.
Thank you for the reply!
The Fellow and I are planning on Conceiving in the next year to year and a half, and I guess the thought of endometriosis really freaks me out – but the thought of not knowing what the Mystery Ailment actually IS is worse. I’m tired of being in pain.
I take hormonal BCP and have since I was 13 for heavy, painful periods. I wonder if it’s just stopped working, or something.
I keep crossing my own fingers for a diagnosis soon. Thanks for your reply 🙂
Weirdly, BCP didn’t help with my symptoms (plus the damn things nullified my libido, which I am not ok with), but the Mirena did the trick. Maybe try a different brand of BCP? Hormones are one of the few things that actually help endo symptoms, if you can find the brand/delivery mode that works for you.
Hang in there. If your pain is at endo-levels, even if it ends up being something else, that’s still such a miserable and soul-draining burden. May you find relief! And much luck to you when you start trying for a baby!
Thank you so much!
I will for sure bring up changing brands or maybe IUD-ing if this does turn out to be endo.
So sorry, slowseptember. It must be really frustrating not to have a diagnosis.
Doc told me I have it (unofficially–no surgery, but doc said it was likely) and have been on BC on and off to control symptoms. We managed to have a kid (as you know), if it’s any consolation.
That is a consolation. Thank you.
Mazel tov, and thanks for sharing that! It’s good to hear that there’s hope. 🙂
My best friend has it (as does her mother) and it’s well under control and does not have a huge impact on her life. (She and her husband are not planning to procreate so I can’t speak much to that piece.) She does not use any hormonal birth control, but she does use a menstrual cup, which she finds way more convenient and reliable than pads/tampons.
As much as endo sucks (from my understanding), I do hope they are finally zeroing in on a diagnosis because you have been through such hassle and such pain and you deserve better! I hope you soon find relief–from pain and uncertainty both.
Thank you. <3 You are the best.
I am going on a ghost tour tomorrow night, and I am SO EXCITED. I am also now 80% sure that I’m going to spend Halloween sitting at home watching scary movies rather than dressing up and going out. (I really hate getting dressed up in costumes, guys).
Things I would LOVE to talk about today:
– The Serial podcast
– American Horror Story. I am enjoying the HELL out of both of these things.
I went on a tour once of a haunted jail in Ottawa. It was one of the most deliciously creepy experiences ever (and I do not like being scared or creeped out!)
We are spending Halloween in our jammies handing out treats.
Serial Podcast! I am so confused by it.
The SERIAL!!!! I am obsessed. I am on Team Jay Did It for sure.
Jay totally did it! I burned through all of the current episodes this week.
Jay totally did it, right? Just…nothing seems to add up for him.
I am starting to think that Jay and Adnan did it together? And then something happened that made Jay go to the police with this inconsistent story about being a hands-off accomplice, and Adnan can’t refute it because he would have to go against his position of total innocence to say he knew what was up or act like he’s wildly speculating.
Yeah, I am sort of leaning toward this myself. I do think Jay was much more involved.
I think it’s particularly interesting that both Jay and Adnan have said that they’re not really close a bunch of times but now Sarah Koenig brought on this guy who was saying that Jay picked Adnan up from track practice with such frequency that it wasn’t even a notable event. Like who gets multiple rides home from high school with their graduated friend-of-a-friend/dealer?
Yeah, that definitely got an eyebrow raise from me.
Same here. The only thing I could think is that Jay doesn’t have a car (this was mentioned in the first episode I think) so maybe he’s borrowing Adnan’s and part of the deal is he has to pick him up? And Adnan lets him borrow it because he’s his dealer?
I noticed that, too! I definitely think they were both in on it, but Adnan had to be the instigator, right? I mean, he actually had the motive.
Jay also had a motive, granted Adnan brought this up, but Adnan was very close with Jay’s girlfriend Stephanie, and he could have been jealous.
Jay is Iago!
I don’t know that this is some sort of give away. I mean if this is the person you buy your weed from/ smoke with and you want to smoke everyday after school, then this makes sense. You aren’t necessarily best friends with your dealer, they just provide a valuable service.I don’t think this fact indicates they’re lying about the closeness of their friendship.
Meee too. The cell phone records (not the pings) are really damning to Adnan’s story of what he did that day.
What I don’t get is why the prosecution/police fixated on the 2:36 call as being the one. If you look at Adnan’s cell phone records there’s another incoming call at 3:15 that lasts 20 seconds. To me, that one makes more sense as being from Adnan to Jay.
If Adnan called Jay at 3:15 and Jay left Jenn’s house pretty much right away, then it makes sense that there’s a call to Jenn listed at 3:21. If Jenn’s reckoning of time is correct (that Jay left her house between 3:45 and 4:15), her story would have Jay calling her house while he was at her house which makes…not a ton of sense. The cell records ALSO pretty much prove that Jay and Adnan were together by 3:32 because there’s a call to Nisha, the girl from Silver Spring that Adnan was hooking up with. In light of that, I really think that Jenn is wrong about the time either accidentally or because she’s purposefully lying.
Even though Adnan has said that he would have gone to the mosque/gone home at night, there are calls to Jenn’s pager in his phone records at 8:04 and 8:05, which would suggest that he and Jay are still hanging out.
I also think it’s really telling that the first call Adnan makes on his new cell phone on January 12 is to Jay. I’d love to see the records for the day after. You’d think that, if Adnan is telling the truth and he really did think she’d taken off for California, he might have tried calling her at some point after January 13.
Yeah, this episode definitely left me wondering why they’re so sure the 2:36 is the one. To be honest I was kind of confused by the whole cell phone timeline, and I need to re-listen. But I also feel like the phone records for the calls that aren’t corroborated by other people actually don’t tell us anything but where the PHONE was. And Adnan is clearly willing to let Jay take it, but that kind of makes sense if the dude also has your car and you need to be able to tell him to come get you from school or whatever (as discussed above).
Ooohh I hadn’t thought of that. Jay’s story is so specific (if shady) about Adnan’s guilt. I wonder why he would implicate Adnan for no reason, but if they were both involved that would be a good reason.
I think that, if you consider that Jay was way more involved with Adnan as the instigator, you can then see that Jay’s weird state park interlude story that doesn’t fit was his clumsy attempt to distance himself from what was really going on during some of that time. If what he and Adnan were doing was talking about what they’d need to bury the body/picking up those supplies/making plans for after sundown then that might seem worse to him than sitting around smoking weed in the park. So he just tacks on a story of what they did on another day to his narrative about THAT day.
Yes. My theory is Jay committed the murder, but Adnan helped. What doesn’t make sense is why Adnan wouldn’t blame Jay. Is Jay blackmailing Adnan?
I also think Mr. S was tipped off to the body’s location by someone in the know.
And I want to shake Jay’s friend Jen. She swallowed his whole story. Or she’s an accomplice. But if a friend of mine showed up with shovels, asked me to dispose of evidence and said he’d helped someone bury a body, I’d probably go straight to the police. And not to help my friend out.
Are Jay and Adnan perhaps drug dealing partners? Their relationship to each other seems weird. They both claim to not be close friends and yet, they seem very involved in with each other. But if they were business partners, it would make sense.
Serial is astonishingly compelling radio/audio! I am so impressed with it. And I still think Jay is shaaaaaaady.
I really thought pretty much everyone listening to the podcast would be convinced that Jay did it based on the narration and arc, but on the Serial facebook page, it seems pretty 50/50 on Jay or Adnan being guilty, which I thought was interesting.
I am here for Serial! Let’s talk!!!
I am just SO CONFUSED by Jay’s crazy story about going to the national park. Like, you’ve already admitted that you know Adnan did it and helped dispose of the body, what is the benefit of that story? Why are his tales so VASTLY different?
And why haven’t the police/Adnan’s lawyer picked up on ANY of this??
Is Jay white? I know Baltimore’s pretty diverse but is there possibly a racial component of the Adnan vs Jay situation?
Also (maybe this was mentioned already, sorry if I missed it) the whole reason Sarah Koenig got involved in this is that she wrote a piece way back about how bad a lawyer Christine whatever was. Can’t find it now, of course …
Super late, looking at open thread for Serial discussion…but Jay is black. I went back and listened to the first episode again this week & that is mentioned.
I KNOW. I liked that they reenacted the drives and made it seem completely implausible that things happened they way the prosecutors claimed they did. I’m also really upset every time they say “Adnan’s defense attorney didn’t really focus on this major inconsistency,” especially when Adnan says that they used the phone records against him but wouldn’t consider the calls that really didn’t add up,
so so frustrating.
does anyone know if they’ve completed all the interviews/shows? I’d assume so, but if that’s the case then it means that there isn’t a smoking gun that can free him [because they family would’ve filed something and the press would’ve reported on that.]
They’re not done! Check it out: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/…
I am so sucked in. And the timing and cell towers really confuse me. Jay confuses me.
Also technology changes in the last 15 years, I feel like it’s such a given now that there are so many cameras and then I was thinking yesterday on my commute how you probably could easily piece together my whole day and just…so much, Serial, so much!
I just posted this above, but I’m thinking that perhaps the whole state park story was Jay’s clumsy attempt to distance himself from what was really going on during some of that time. If what he and Adnan were doing was talking about what they’d need to bury the body/picking up those supplies/making plans for after sundown then that might seem worse to him than sitting around smoking weed in the park. So he just tacks on a story of what they did on another day to his narrative about THAT day.
That makes sense. I think Jay being way more involved also explains the original Best Buy omission. He thought there were cameras there (that would show him potentially being a participant), then when he learns there are no camera, he opens up about that part of the story.
I came here to say thank you to whoever recommended this last week; I have listened to all the episodes this week and I am totally hooked. And I love all the Toastie thoughts on the matter.
We always keep a few packets of “nice” ramen noodles in the cupboard for those (unfortunately frequent) evenings when we don’t feel up to cooking. We just chop some vegetables and crack an egg into the broth and it makes it seem more like a real meal.
A few weeks ago I saw a documentary on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage and now all I can think of is how cool it would be to do it. I’ve never been the least bit religious, but I’ve had the privilege of traveling to Spain twice and I loved it and I keep thinking how cool it would be to take a few weeks off and just spend every day walking until I’m too tired to walk anymore, and see all these beautiful things, and meet all these people, and get the funny elaborate little stamps on my “pilgrim passport.” There’s something incredibly appealing about the prospect of doing something that’s really simple but really challenging at the same time, something that people have been doing for over 1000 years.
I’ve never hiked in my life, and my feet blister very easily, but I’m obviously not going to let that keep me from making vague plans to walk over 800km in a foreign country.
Have any of you ever done the Camino de Santiago (or any other very=long-distance hike, I suppose)? What was it like?
(On a totally different note, it is now almost a month since I had that really great job interview, and they said they would let me know either way “around the end of October,” and I only have 6 weeks of work left at my current job, so FEEL FREE TO OFFER ME A POSITION ANY DAY NOW, interviewers!)
Wasn’t there a Toastie who did the Camino de Santiago not that long ago?
Yes! I cannot remember her Toast username, but she’s usually around the OT, I think.
Aaaah the Camino! I did it two years ago, and absolutely loved it. I did the Northern route (right along the coast – saw a beach about every 3 days) in May and it took about a month. The first week I was with two people I knew, and then I was on my own for the rest of it. One of the best experiences of my life – I met amazing people and got to know myself better as well. As far as hiking, it wasn’t too bad. I did the whole thing in chacos. It’s nice, because you don’t have to carry a lot of weight, so there’s less stress on your body. (No tent, minimal food and water.)
The three biggest pieces of advice I have: 1. Take the Northern route (more beautiful and less crowded). 2. Get the Spanish or German guidebook if you speak either of those languages 3. Pack as little as possible. I am *always* up for chatting with people about the Camino. 🙂
Edit Delete Report
I was thinking of doing the Northern route since I’ve read that it’s less crowded, and I love the sea. Did you have any trouble finding a place to spend the night? I’ve also read that pilgrim hostels are smaller and farther apart on the Northern route due to its being less crowded.
I never had a problem finding a place to stay. There was one night that I spent in a hostel by myself (a tiny one that was only 6km from the next, larger hostel, but I just felt like stopping) and one night where I ended up in a hotel. The night I stayed in a hotel it had been raining hard the entire day and we could *not* manage to find the hostel at all. But it all worked out – some rad French Canadian ladies helped us bargain down the room rate and I got to sleep in clean sheets. That is the other thing about the northern route – expect regular rain at both the beginning and the end.
If you want to email me, you can DM me on twitter: @lemur_niemer and I’ll send you my email address. 🙂
I tried to DM you but got an error message saying I couldn’t because you don’t follow me :C
Just made camino.questions2012 at gmail dot com. 🙂
I am here for stories of long hikes. I really want to do the Appalachian Trail next year but only have experience day-hiking.
I keep reading “Camino de Santiago” as “Carmen Sandiego” and I’m like yes, yes, you should definitely travel the world in a fabulous trench coat.
I have not done the Camino or anything of that length, but I did a very challenging 5-day mountain trek in Peru a couple years ago and LOVED IT (besides the part where our guide was running a scam and we were actually in some pretty serious danger), so I also think the idea sounds amazing. Meeting people along the way and sharing experiences like that is really cool, as is exploring things on your own two feet. It’s such a sense of accomplishment.
I need to hear more about this scam and the serious danger you were in! You can’t just build up that level of suspense and then not elaborate.
Haha okay, well, basically the way it works in Peru is you can sign up for a trek at any of a million little travel agencies, who then pool their people together until they have a big enough group and assign a licensed guide. You pay the travel agency and they give the guide money for campground fees, horse porters, admission fees to historical sites, etc. You’re expected to tip the guide at the end.
Our guide pretended the agency never gave him money for these things and tried to get us to pay for everything along the way. None of us had brought much cash, because…wilderness. Because he didn’t pay for the horse porters, we didn’t have food on a regular basis. One day we arrived to the campground around 2pm and he arrived at 9pm, after it was dark and nearly freezing at 5000km elevation. We only ate that day because another lovely group shared their food. He didn’t “guide” or even stick near the group on any of the days, even though the hike was actually very difficult and injuries could easily have happened. Two of our group got so ill we were afraid they wouldn’t be able to finish. And then when we got back to civilization, he claimed not to have money for the van to take us back to Cusco, so we sat in this tiny town for hours. We found out later that he’d told the travel agency he’d lost the money they gave him.
Anyway, he was expecting rich American tourists who would throw money at all problems. What he got was 5 Americans and 1 Brit, all young women, 2 of whom were very experienced trekkers and 3 of whom spoke fluent Spanish and ALL of whom were very willing to tell him to fuck off in whatever language he preferred. We also threw a fit at the travel agency and got some of our money back and got the guy’s license taken away.
I actually think of it as a great experience because it was so empowering (and there’s nothing like looking at the stars from a campground in the Andes where you can’t even see electricity), but it was pretty scary on the last day or two.
This is the best adventure story I’ve ever read, you are amazing!
My husband and I did the Kumano Kodo in Japan, also a pilgrimage hike, on our honeymoon. It’s not nearly as long as the Camino de Santiago, partly because the long and less interesting part of it from Kyoto down to the Kii Peninsula is now usually done by train. But it’s absolutely beautiful and you stay in these little villages each night and walk through the mountains to three important Buddhist temples and there are all these little Shinto/Buddhist shrines on the way and hot spring baths and it’s amazing. We only planned on four days of it to begin with, and it was cut a day short by a typhoon, but it was a wonderful experience. Very highly recommended for anyone traveling to Japan.
My husband comes from a town along the Camino. In fact the Camino goes right through the old center of his town, so you see pilgrims going by all the time — and they look tired but extremely happy. I hope you do it!
[If you happened to do it in the summer when we were there visiting family, and sent word, I would totally happily take you out for wine and pintxos (Basque tapas) at a good bar the day you’re in his town!]
Mmm, ramen.
I really appreciate everyone’s reassurance last week re: friend breakups. I went through with it yesterday. It’s been less than 24 hours, so this might be premature to say, but…I’m having fewer emotions than I thought I was going to? And the ones I am having lean toward the positive? This is actually pretty great!
So thanks, you guys!
Sounds like you did a tough thing well, logicbutton.
I know you know this, but sometimes it’s useful to hear it from someone outside the situation, so: Be patient and kind with yourself even if you feel good enough that you don’t think you need kindness, and whatever you feel is okay to feel.
Thanks, Emily, I appreciate it! You’re absolutely right, and it’s something I’m trying to keep in mind. Although, hey, if feeling like a garbage person never happens after all, I’m certainly not going to force the issue.
It’s One Week to Halloween!
What are your exciting costume plans?
I have ambitious plans to go as Han Solo, seeing as I have the right hair right now and I’ve already done Leia. it’s a lot harder than it seems like it should be.
I was thinking of dressing up as a pigeon, partly to troll my husband because he doesn’t like pigeons, and also as an excuse to buy one of those full rubber head masks.
I am going to a party tomorrow as a Plague Doctor, or at least a cheap-ass approximation of one which will be less than $30 and doesn’t cover my mouth so I can drink. Long hooded cape, long-nosed venetian mask and goggles, gloves, and black clothing. Would be more elaborate, but I’m traveling for work and had to scrape stuff together at the last minute.
Nerd achievement unlocked: got a cape shipped to a US government physics laboratory!
My sister is helping me with a costume interpretation of one of her art pieces, a character I have tattooed on myself named Charlotte. Charlotte has ram’s horns and when I found them at Target I knew I had something special going on. I am SO EXCITED. Black fabric was on sale for dirt cheap at our local store ($1.99/yard!!!!) so we stocked up and are going to make an epic drapey toga thing.
My bf wanted to do Han Solo this year because our dog looks so much like Chewbacca, but he ran into the same difficulties. I’m going to be a sheep, a costume inspired by the fact that same Chewbacca dog tore ALL the stuffing out of one of my throw pillows. Long-sleeved black shirt covered in stuffing, black leggings, a black nose and a headband with felt ears attached. Goofy, but I’m kinda into it.
I did a Leia bikini a couple years ago, and somehow this is stumping me more.
I will probably thrash around and figure it out last minute, but arg!
Group parents/kids Adventure Time! I am incredibly excited about this.
Nothing too fancy–Batgirl.
I’m going as Professor Umbridge to my villains-themed party. 🙂
Ooh, she’s one of the ultimate villains to me. Nice choice!
I’m going to be Cruella de Vil! More “high-fashion Glenn Close” Cruella, though. I have a giant white fur coat and am lining the hem of my little black dress with spotted white and black fur I bought, and red gloves with fake nails, and a little fascinator, and a super glam long black and white wig!
this sounds so glamorous!!
I’m just excited I’ll have such a warm costume!
HIGH FIVE FOR DISNEY VILLAIN COSTUMES:
Here’s mine:
Yzma is my Patronus.
(I ordered so many feathers. So. Many.)
YESSS I LOVE THIS. Do you have giant eyelashes?!
Boyfriend loves this movie and I have a feeling he’s always wanted to be Kronk for Halloween despite having the exact opposite build. I actually really wanted to be Ursula for Halloween, but had no idea how I was going to manage making a tentacle dress, and I refuse to spend $80 on a prepackaged one.
I don’t have the eyelashes YET but I’m going shopping this weekend and I’m going to get THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY GLAMOROUS DRESS and THE BIGGEST MOST SPIDERY EYELASHES and I can’t wait.
Awww, Boyfriend should go for it and be Kronk anyway! Also, muscles can be faked with pillows and such, especially if he chooses to be Lab Coat Kronk, and you’re Lab Coat Yzma. Maybe for next year?
I was hoping to go as James Bond, but also ran into unexpected costume difficulties. (How hard can it possibly be to find a tux jacket, considering how many Goodwills and other secondhand stores I have access to? PRETTY HARD, APPARENTLY.)
As someone who has been hunting thrifts for a decent (and small) tux jacket for years, I can confirm this is not a rare problem. Tux jackets are super hard to find second-hand. You might need to just make do with a plain old black suit jacket. Good luck.
I’m going as Mary Poppins and I am very excited about it!
I believe I will be a space witch, with a purple with hat from the dollar section of Target, my space cat leggings (If they will fit) and some sort of black shirt. Possibly some outrageous eye makeup if I have a moment. I believe this costume will neither impale nor frighten my baby, or any of the visiting babies.
I am 100% also being a space witch, not sure yet how I’m gonna integrate the space part.
What a coincidence! I am also going to be a space witch! Galaxy leggings, tall boots, black nails with this neat holographic glitter, short black skirt, crochet Lurex vest over black/charcoal long-sleeve shirt, and galaxy eyelids. I’ve worn variations of the space witch costume on four separate occasions over the past year, so this should be a piece of cake.
This has given me inspiration for my costume at last! Hope you don’t mind a fellow Toastie borrowing your toast-licious idea!
Borrow away! All credit goes to @icebergmama.
i’m being edgar allan hoe. little black dress + fishnets, fake mustache, fake raven to perch on my shoulder, parchment titled “creepy poems about my underage cousin.”
I’m going as ScarJo in Lost in Translation, and my husband is going as Bill Murray (I have a pink wig, he has a orange camo shirt and blazer). We’re doing this because we’re going to Japan together right after Halloween.
Dana Scully. I will probably look like I’m trying to blend in with the lawyers, so I have a downloaded FBI badge to wear.
A cute blonde (female) coworker of mine went as Bob Ross last year. I wish I could share the photo because it was truly costume greatness.
No Halloween plans for me this year but I do plan to put on the sartorial dog for this weekend’s Preservation Hall Jazz Band/Allen Toussaint concert at Berklee. Lacy decoish dress, black leather boots. I haven’t been to a biggish show like this in years.
I have no plans to except to hand out candy but you can BET I’m dressing up for that. Planning on dressing as undercover Earth Kingdom Korra from this season of Legend of Korra.
Audrey Horne, and NO IT IS NOT because Twin Peaks is coming back, I have had this costume planned like 8 months in advance, thank you very much! I ordered saddle shoes online and now all I need is a plaid wool skirt and sweater-girl pullover.
I dressed up as the Log Lady for a fan convention! It wasn’t because Twin Peaks was coming back either, but there was a Twin Peaks panel at the con. Not a single person knew who I was and I was very sad. I had a real log and carrying that shit around all day was heavy, AND FOR WHAT.
Aaah, I want to see your costume! If I’d been there, I promise I would have freaked out and insisted on taking pictures with you.
Here it is!! http://instagram.com/p/sVYUrgF3ci/
THIS IS WONDERFUL. So on point! I can’t believe no one recognized you!
That’s excellent! Seriously, who the hell did these conventioneers think they were going to a Twin Peaks convention and not recognising you. People, I tell ya.
I’m going to be Bjork in the swan dress! I bought 15 yards of tulle and my mom is helping me make it into a dress. All I need now is to make an egg purse!
I’m going as a disappointed corporate drone who just had a client meeting scheduled for 1 pm on the 31st in New York, and who will probably not be home to take her 11-year-old and her friends trick-or-treating. High heels are probably optional, but pantsuit, self-pity and a big drink on the train home will all be absolutely mandatory.
Grumpy In New York. 🙁
I decided to go as Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This is 98% fueled by the desire to wear a pink wig, which is being shipped to me as we speak.
I’m coming to work as Varla from Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill.
CAN’T FUCKING WAIT.
I am generally not in favor of store-bought costumes, but this year I am going as a dinosaur.
I was totally going to buy the Owl Kigurumi but I am afraid it would be TOO COMFORTABLE and I will fall asleep in a corner somewhere.
It is SO soft and cozy! It looks even a bit sillier on me than the model, because I am 5’2″, but I don’t really care a whole bunch.
In trying to think of a costume that would work well with the boyfriend’s glorious red beard, in a fit of inspiration I thought of Yukon Cornelius from the Burl Ives Rudolph the Red Nose Reinder. If I had the time/skills I’d be the Bumble, but instead I’m making do as Hermey the Elf Who Wants To Be A Dentist.
I am torn because I actually have a costume idea (Lumberjane!) that would be fun and easy to do, but I have no Halloween plans and I am not sure that I want to make any (I have been very much enjoying my quiet weekends with books and netflix and my cat). And I live in an apartment building with no kids, so no trick-or-treaters.
Some years I can’t come up with any costume ideas so I feel like I should take advantage of having one, but… books… my cat… not talking to anyone… I just don’t know.
I’m going to be as lazy as possible with my costume: the emoji of a cat with hearts for eyes. I already have cat ears from a bachelorette party earlier this year, so all I need are heart-shaped sunglasses and presto, culturally relevant and witty costume with minimal effort!
I’m going as the Paper Bag Princess! I’m especially looking forward to rubbing artists’ charcoal all over my body (which I’ve been doing on Mondays anyway, so I’m well-practiced.)
I’m not dressing up, but I’m helping my son with his Link costume (in particular, Link from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess). He is almost finished his shield, I’m knitting him the hat and have found him appropriate pants and a large green tshirt I will turn into a tunic. Oh, and belts. I got two of those. I still need to find him boots. And gauntlets (or gloves or what have you).
I work at a school and all the teachers have agreed to dress up as literary characters. Therefore, return to your dormitories immediately! I am Professor McGonagall and I am not afraid to dock you House points. *glares over oblong glasses*
Toastfriends! My Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? piece is up! http://non-productive.com/blog/so-you-want-to-be-… for the curious!
Birthday Week has been way, way better than last year’s (this time last year my sister admitted herself into the hospital for serious psychological evaluation, etc) and the festivities will continue into the weekend, and aside from the Disaster Date I had on Tuesday I’ve been way cool with everything. Yay!!
I remember talking to my supervisor and asking for the day off, to which he replied “that’s fine, but you won’t get paid for it.” I turned to him and said “Don’t worry, I will.”
BAD. ASS.
I loved your story, and I’m so glad you had such a fantastic experience. It tickles me so much that being on a game show was something you actually dreamed of, and you got to do it. That is just so so so incredibly fantastic!
that’s such a great story! I had a dumb grin on my face at the end 😀
FRIDAY CAT THREAD
Today I present this small microcosm of my house.
Please ignore the mess and my husbands foot, or don’t. It’s up to you.
Bonny is in the box, and being bothered by her troll of a sister, Anne.
Please, I am feeling weird and BAD today, so post as many pictures of your cats as you can manage.
Sorry you feel bad. ::hugs::
I hope you feel better soon!
Here is a Niece and her cat, and I hope you feel better very soon!
aw, that is a very tolerant little cat
Their eyes match!!
I hadn’t noticed that!!!
LOOK AT HER STRIPES LOOK AT THEM OH MY GOSH
ADORABLENESS
Elfin spacewitch in the making.
Ahh the orange one with its tail sticking out of the duvet! So good!
Feel better! I came home from work yesterday and found this in my bedroom.
So enamored of this cat belly that I barely even noticed how enamored I am of your pillows.
Thanks!
Here’s a Halloween cat for you guys! We let our cats in the fenced backyard sometimes when we’re there to watch them. This is our littlest one, 4 month old Kona, after she saw the neighbor’s dog through the chain link fence.
edit: Ahhh I don’t know why it isn’t working! 🙁 edit 2: THERE SHE IS!
Note: neighbor’s dog is THE FRIENDLIEST and this cat has no fear of anything so she got right up in his face at the fence before deciding it was too much and puffing up
TORTIES! <3
Here is mine:
Both of my cats are super unhappy right now. The one broke a back nail pretty badly and then the wound got infected so we went to the vet Monday where he was treated to a) sedation, b) disinfection, c) bandage on the foot/leg, d) a cone of shame. So now he’s unhappy because: cone and she’s unhappy because there’s a weird looking cat about that she doesn’t recognize.
He also gets a syringe full of antibiotics daily, which is the highlight of my day.
Awwwww, poor kitty!! Having to give a cat meds is truly terrible.
It is!
Although I worked a couple summers at an animal boarding place and I think it’s considerably less terrible than the time I had to rub ointment on this dog’s infected balls every day for WEEKS. P.S. Spay and neuter your animals.
I have a tortie cat, too, but she is a diva and refuses to be photographed. One time, my husband caught her with her tongue stuck out and so I can share this with you all.
Ha! Poor Bonny.
Adele is having none of this waking up business
When Patrick isn’t feeling tabby-ish enough, he settles down into the sun-slats for a nap. The window (hee) of when the sun angles in just right onto the sofa is the only time of the morning I can’t find him instead curled up on one of the spouse’s piles of dirty laundry.
For you, here’s two kitties
This is Moxie’s sort-of friend. She is the neighbour’s cat and usually she allows him to follow her around our yard. Usually. Sometimes she gets fed up with his creepin’ on her and smacks him. Then he just follows her from a farther distance. I think he is the That Guy of the cat world.
This is Momo–sometimes regal, sometimes derpy, always fluffy.
I’m sorry you’re feeling weird and bad. I hope it gets better.
LOOK AT THIS REGAL KITTY
I will do anything this cat tells me to.
How could anyone not OBEY THE CAT? She is awesome.
I do not have my own kitty, but I have been obsessively watching these six kittens for the past week (seriously quality kitten action over here): http://explore.org/live-cams/player/kitten-rescue…
Example of the kitten action (which shows only half of the kittens):
Malcolm and Greyson’s Toast Debut!
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In honor of the garbage Dear Prudence letter writer: what’s your favorite trick or treat memory?
In our neighborhood there was a woman who worked for the Mars corporation. She always have away giant candy bars and stuff that wasn’t even out yet. Kids would have multiple costumes so they could hit her house twice.
My sophomore year of high school, Halloween was really cold. Like, below freezing. But my friends and I were not deterred. We dressed up as Christmas Carolers and went door to door, singing for our candy. One lady told us we had the wrong holiday and slammed the door in our faces. But most people were so excited to get any trick or treaters at all that they heaped handfuls of candy into our sacks.
Also, I always remember trick-or-treating as being an after dark activity. We had to eat dinner before we were allowed to go and gorge ourselves on candy. But in my neighborhood now it starts at 4:30 and is supposed to be done by nightfall. I either have to leave work early or I don’t get to give out candy
My family used to make approximately 1000 candy men – kit kat body, pumpkin-sucker head, tootsie-roll arms and legs all hot-glued together. My mom, my brother, and I would sit around the kitchen table in a little mini-factory setup. I was so excited when I got my own glue-gun to use.
I had not thought of this in a long time, but when I was 12 or 13, my friends and I went trick or treating for the last time. At the end of the night I had my first kiss. With a boy in Frankenstein make-up. It was quite sweet as I think back!
In high school we’d go trick-or-treating for canned goods for the local food pantry (but not so subtly expect candy too, obviously). I remember one particular year we found an abandoned red wagon in the street and went crazy riding it down hills. That’s one of my favorite memories with my then terribly-unrequited-crush, now-gay-best friend.
One house on my street always gave away homemade candy apples to kids they knew (and I was a kid they knew!). I think my only other really memorable Halloween memory is the year I was thirteen and didn’t go out because I decided I was too old (meanwhile, ALL my friends still went and I just joined them afterwards at my friend’s house).
Although, I guess the year my university roommates/friends and I tried to convince the cute pizza delivery boy to stay and talk and have some candy is fairly memorable. Alas, he was determined to continue delivering pizzas as he was being paid to do. Who actually does their job? pah!
I grew up in a strict Evangelical church (actually more like a cult, but anyways) so we didn’t celebrate Halloween the way most people did.
BUT I do remember a harvest festival one year, in a barn, with bobbing for apples and all kinds of fun games.
In later years we would go over to a Jr Pastor’s house and all the kids would watch a movie with NO GROWNUPS (AND WE GOT TAKEOUT PIZZA!!)
One year we were the first kids to ring the doorbell of a new family in the neighborhood. The were immigrants and not familiar with the holiday. We explained that they were required to give us candy. They believed us and gave each of us an enormous ziplock bag of jelly beans. If i was in their position I’m not sure I would have been so trusting.
We had a family in our neighborhood who turned the entire bottom floor of their house into a really top-notch haunted house every year. The front hall was the “time machine” and the dad would be the mad scientist who took groups of trick-or-treaters back in time, and each year you’d get out of the time machine in a different place and era – like revolutionary France or ancient Egypt – and go through the house to get candy and exit through the back door. I especially remember the Egypt one especially, they had the whole thing overgrown with sand and foliage, you had to run past somebody dressed as a mummy to escape. It was so awesome and must have taken a huge amount of time and effort! Lines down the block and they made sure everybody got a turn. What a cool tradition.
One year it snowed on Halloween and that was the year the Disney movie Aladdin came out so all the girls were mad that their moms made them wear winter coats over their princess Jasmine costumes. I, on the other hand, was a dinosaur and was nice and warm. 🙂
[I know this sounds like a jerk-y ‘not like the other girls’ story, but I WAS a pretty smug first-grader]
ooooh, definitely sometime in elementary school, when a house left a giant box full of comics on their porch instead of candy. I made a beeline for the Wonder Woman, immediately became a baby feminist in the making
Fun spooky things! This week I volunteered at a bunch of shifts at Toronto After Dark, Toronto’s horror film festival, and I am SO tired but I saw a bunch of super fun horror movies. Tonight I am off shift so I’m just gonna catch Let Us Prey, an Irish film starring Davos from Game of Thrones as a creepy guy who shows up in a jail and all sorts of weird things happen, and The Babadook, an Australian film that looks absolutely HORRIFYING and is getting a lot of buzz from Sundance as being amazing. Seriously, go watch the trailer, it is pants-peeingly scary.
Also this week my boyfriend and I made each other watch our favourite guilty pleasure Halloween-y movies that each of us hadn’t seen before; his pick was The Crow, mine was The Craft! I hadn’t seen The Crow before and actually kind of loved it – it was way less “dumb goth movie” than I thought it would be, it felt very visceral and real and just so, so tragic (everything about Brandon Lee’s death during this film makes me sad). The Craft was obviously more fun and I will watch the shit out of that movie til the day I die. Best best best. I accidentally told my boyfriend about Robin Tunney’s weird wig at the beginning and then neither of us could stop noticing how bad the hairline looked the whole time.
The Crow is, I think, a Legitimately Good Movie that I should totally watch again soon.
I watched it again not that long ago and was pleasantly surprised at how actually good it was.
It was SO good. There are a few moments that have not aged well and are kind of schlocky but it’s just so full of emotion and heart!
I saw Let Us Prey at Fantasia this summer and it was so WEIRD. It’s in my mental category of “I don’t regret seeing it but I have no idea if I actually liked it or not.”
This is I think a good endorsement? The trailer looks hella intense. I won’t be too mad if I end up hating it because I’m using one of my volunteer vouchers. I think I’ll be a bit heartbroken if The Babadook is bad, though, because it looks so fantastic and I’m so excited.
The Lightbox is showing The Craft on Halloween!
My big party is the day after so I am definitely going with friends. We will wear black and too much makeup and smuggle in flasks and it will be glorious.
Whaaaat I did not know this! I’m going to the Fan Expo Halloween party that night (which will be great, but ALL THE CRAFT EVER)
OMG THE CRAFT.
I saw The Babadook at a horror film fest a few weekends ago and it was so good. Amazing atmosphere, really well done on the horror-movie-as-metaphor front which is totally my catnip. I’m pretty sure I had my hands clenched into fists the entire time because OMG it was tense. Have you seen this version of the website? It’s my favorite.
Also at the film fest: Suburban Gothic, which is a horror comedy thing. Matthew Gray Gubler, Kat Dennings, and Ray Wise (bestill my Twin Peaks loving heart) were all amazing.
Suburban Gothic was really great! I saw that one at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal this summer and MGG was there. He wandered through the seating area for a bit and for a few seconds he was close enough to me that I could have reached out and poked him (but I did not because that would be so creepy).
So excited for The Butter that for the first time in my life I bothered to head out when we ran out of butter. Usually, I wouldn’t notice as I prefer eggs on toast and have a vast loathing for all kinds of preserves, and I only care for tea and coffee.
Uh…the point of all this breakfast rambling is – The Butter!
SO ANYWAY, I’m turning 30 in a few hours. As in, 30-human-years-old. It is by no means freaking me out completely, and my tremendously reckless behavior the last few weeks is absolutely not a reflection of said freakout. I was going to write a whole screed about it, but I’m going to do that next week instead, as I plan on having a BANNER week to prove just how young and kickass I am (I’ll show you, Father Time!)
/shakes fist
Hey guys, while I have you here, let me show you what I am currently looking at (I have actually been meaning to post this for-freaking-ever):
http://toofullforschool.com/
This is my favorite food blog because it’s fantastic, aaaand only partly because, full disclosure, it’s that of one of my best friends. She’s super awesome and so is her blog (You might have even seen her on the TV this summer, whaaaaaaaaat, check out the “About” section on her site, I’m having trouble embedding a link) And just so you know, she’s down with The Toast, so go check her out!
Guys! What are your favorite food blogs??? And 30 is gonna be GREAT right?!?
Happy Birthday! I am *not* young but I still kick ass. Ain’t nothing I can’t do. Including believing the same of you.
A great many thanks! I will agree that we do both, indeed, kick ass.
Happy, happy birthday!
You’ve probably heard of most of these, but I like Orangette, Sunday Suppers, Sassy Radish, and My New Roots. Too Full for School looks amazing, thanks for sharing!
Thanks! I’ve only heard of Orangette actually, so, thanks for these!
Happy Birthday! You’re gonna kick 30’s ass!
Your friend’s foodblog looks good. Such pretty food.
She just got a new camera and has been rocking it.
Thanks for the birthday wish, pal!
I like onlyhereforthefood.ca
Happy birthday in a few hours!!!
Sweet, and thank you!
smitten kitchen is my favorite food blog.
you’re going to crush 30 because you are so good at everything else already.
Thanks a million, friend!
Dude, life after 30 is wayyy better than life before. My twenties were fun, but lousy with bad jobs, bad boyfriends, insecurities, messiness. My thirties brought increased financial stability, confidence, refusal of bullshit in many forms. In general I like myself far more at 33 than I did even at 29.
I am going to recommend my own food blog like an asshole. It is not even a recipe blog. I mostly talk about food in art, books, culture, and so on. Although if you want recipes, I post some of those on Pinterest.
Your friend takes beautiful pictures!
Thanks for that, it really does make me feel better! And your blog is great, thanks for sharing it (you are not an asshole)!
Smitten Kitchen is my big ~aspirational~ food blog — I will never ever in my entire life have my shit together enough to regularly cook like she does, but the pictures are so pretty and the recipes that I’ve done are tasty.
Yeah Smitten Kitchen is great.
30 was legitimately awesome for me. I think turning 30 allowed me to get off my own case. Like, if I was me and I was 30, then that must mean I’m me, an authentic Human Person, and I started letting myself do a lot more things I’d always wanted to, or felt the need to do, rather than trying to force myself into a place or role that didn’t suit. Possibly related to this, 30 was the age that I came out as bi.
eta: 30 will be AMAZING for you. Happiest of days!
Thanks you so much! I’ve been feeling a lot of the things you’ve mentioned in the past year (including that last note 🙂 ) so your words are giving me a little extra faith!
Happy birthday!
Thank you!
My 30s are so much better than my 20s that every time a friend of mine tells me they’re about to turn thirty I want to go WOO HOO! YAY FOR YOU! LET’S GO OUT AND HAVE A PARTY! GOODBYE TWENTIES AND GOOD RIDDANCE!
It sounds sarcastic, so I don’t do it, but really. Your thirties are great. At least mine have been so far (I’m 32). Enjoy it and happy birthday.
My favorite recipes come from serious eats and the kitchn, both have gotten a little precious lately, but their archives have some real gems.
Thanks for the heartening words, dude.
Happy happy birthday! 30 is going to be glorious!
I will most definitely check out that blog. My favorites are Love & Lemons, The First Mess, Local Milk, Joy the Baker, and Top with Cinnamon.
Thank you! Joy the Baker is awesome, and I barely ever bake.
I am meeting Joy next month! I’m so excited.
Happy almost-birthday! I had a massive meltdown on my 30th, but actually my 30s have been hilariously entertaining. Caution to the winds and fuck it; why the hell not, have been my watchwords and I’ve had a marvellous time.
Yeah, I’ve been losing it pretty good this week, and there is a good chance I lose it tomorrow, but your words give me hope that it’s all gonna be okay!
DUDE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I’m sure you will continue to kick ass as always, just with an extra year on the odometer.
(I’ll be 31 in a few weeks. 30 has really kicked shit up a notch in generally awesome ways!)
THAT’S WHAT I LIKE TO HEAR!! Thanks, pal!!
Happy birthday! I’m only just 29, so I can’t offer assurances about 30 from my own experience. But I hear tell that it’s awesome…
Thank you you young whippersnapper!
30 *is* GREAT!
I’m gonna hold you to that!
Welcome to Club 30–I’ve been here since Wednesday, and things have been pretty okay so far. 😀
Thank you! Glad to know that it’s so far, so good.
Happy Birthday! As almost everyone else has said, they are wonderful years.
On to the serious stuff: food blogs. I have many favorites that you probably visit too (David Lebovitz, Lottie + Doof), but the one I actually cook from the most is Rachel Eats. It’s not a glossy-blog, but the food is simple and delivers. The Wednesday Chef is a close second for me. Oh, and What Katie Ate.
Thanks! Never read The Wednesday Chef, so I def will check it out!
Happiest of birthdays! I turned 30 a couple months ago and it’s 90% great. (90%, because life is going well and everything people say about your thirties being better than your twenties in terms of having your shit together seems to be true, BUT I do still feel for the first time that aging is actually mandatory, and oh shit it’s actually going to happen to me and not just other people.) When I’m feeling bad I listen to Dar Williams’ “You’re Aging Well.”
In addition to many already mentioned, I like the “Food Lab” section of Serious Eats. Food science! And I hate-read 101 Cookbooks. Good recipes, but pretty annoyingly rich-white-lady tone. (The store she runs is fun to hate-shop, too. Like $200 linen towels and $80 jars of honey and shit.)
Thanks! Yes yes yes to the “aging is mandatory thing” being a mindfuck.
30 is so awesome. I’m a bit past it at this point but it is sooooo much better than my 20s were.
Food blogs: may I recommend http://www.mennonitegirlscancook.ca and also http://www.budgetbytes.com
Mennonite Girls is a lot of comfort food and also a great resource if you ever need a recipe that serves, like, 20-30 people.
Budget Bytes is good if you’re broke (as you might expect from the title) but it’s also just GOOD.
Thanks for the supportive words and the links!
Four months into it, I can assure you that 30 is fucking fantastic. Happy birthday!
My favorite food blog is the tragically defunct Tigers and Strawberries, where I learned both Chinese and Indian cooking, now two of my absolute favorite cuisines. (I am the Official Curry Adviser at work. One of these days I’m going to have to print out her keema mattar recipe and post it in the breakroom, because everyone keeps asking for it.) (Hmm…keema mattar…*makes grocery list*)
Thanks a bunch! I definitely need a site like Tigers and Strawberries, so thanks for that too!
Happy birthday! My 30s have been pretty sweet so far; at 32 I ditched my soul-destroying job, went travelling down under, came back, moved to a new city with much better career opportunities, made new friends, bought a house and work somewhere I actually like. Overall, much better than the angst and uncertainty of my twenties (though I had some good times then too).
As for food blogs, I’m a fan of A Girl called Jack–good budget recipes with a healthy dose of anti-poverty and queer activism. And a friend of mine has an Indian food blog called Food Mela; I’ve eaten her cooking and it’s delicious.
Thanks so much for the words of encouragement. It sounds like, if anything, I should be looking forward to 32!
A Girl Called Jack is great, thanks!
I am on my third sick day in a row. By the end of the weekend I’ll have watched every television show known to man.
I’m watching Harsh Realm right now — it was a late-90s short-lived sci-fi drama about a soldier stuck in a virtual-reality land.
I am missing basically everything. This whole week was full of social opportunities I couldn’t be part of. Also yesterday I almost went to the ER because I had an adverse reaction to the codeine cough syrup I was finally prescribed after a month of being sick. It was like my brain was going to explode out through my eye sockets.
Tell me your prolonged-sickness-misanthropy stories!
Prolonged sickness, UGH.
I have basically done no chores in seven weeks. My husband is a saint, but our house is slowly becoming more of a dump.
What other shows are you watching? I basically go to work, drag myself home and fall into bed.
My roommate has been off-and-on sick as well, and her boyfriend is being our saint. He brought me hot and sour soup last night, and babysat me when I was afraid of fainting. *heart emoji*
I’m starting Peaky Blinders today. All of last weekend was Daria, and then I caught up some new stuff (Selfie! I don’t hate it!). And Dexter, season six, because I have a crush on Colin Hanks.
I loved Harsh Realm so hard when it was on. I’m still pretty bitter about losing that show.
I can’t believe I forgot about the soundtrack! I’m hunting down a copy of Prodigy’s Fat of the Land now.
UGH. You poor thing.
My worst stay-at-home sick time was probably right after my tubal ligation, which was when I discovered I am allergic to opiates and had to suffer with nothing stronger than ibuprofen no more than four hours post-surgery. Good times.
I hope you feel better soon.
I’m on my third bout of flu this winter, and I am feeling pretty fucking low now. Also struggling with an ongoing chronic pain condition (which may explain complete lack of immunity). I feel your pain for missing social events recently. I’ve been doing that for a few years now, so have managed to distance myself enough from my friends so that I don’t let them down by RSVP-ing and then not being able to attend…so I guess maybe it helps to think “It could be worse”? I do that myself. There’s always people worse off (a shitty way to think but it can help combat the negativity of a shitty situation in times of illness)
As to what i’m watching- trying to find a place to stream the rest of Parks & Rec, and failing. LOVE Leslie Knope et al! Otherwise…Louis Theroux revisits. Unsure what current shows I should try watching.
I’m working on breaking out of my lifelong aversion to socializing, which is why I feel it more keenly now. A bunch of out-of-towner friends came into town this week, including a lady who I’ve been meaning to get to know a whole lot better, and I missed them completely (despite her conviction that “we will definitely hang out before we die”).
oh that does sound annoying, if you don’t know when you’ll get to see them again. But don’t beat yourself up about it.
I used to very social and so the stark contrast now is getting me down even more. I keep thinking “Once I feel better” and then never seem to feel better enough….ugh. Hugs! We will be more sociable….soon.
also, recommendations for TV shows to watch? 🙂 preferably strong female lead as I like to counter all the films without any SFLs that society churns out at a rate of knots.
Aw man …. I take it you’re not a pirate?
There’s a ton of great British comedy shows on Youtube. My personal favourite is Never Mind the Buzzcocks, both the Mark Lamarr years and the Simon Amstell ones.
Fiction series with SFLs, that’s harder. What’s your poison: anime, BBC Austen adaptations …. I have seriously enjoyed Daria this past week. It’s still so relevant – they mock tech startups, high school students with tech startups, gender and race disparities at tech startups …
Hey, I love Buzzcocks, although recent series have gone downhill (I’m British, not that that means I’m more likely to have watched it though). Those presenters were the best.
Buffy is maybe the ultimate SFL series but have watched that twice, so taking a break.
Havent watched Daria before, will check it out! Watched all of OITNB and loved it…
Have you seen any Veronica Mars? Keep hearing about it, on and off.
Also what’s a ‘pirate’? 🙂
TRANS REPORT
Due to Real Life Things, I will no longer be posting to The Toast’s comments section. I just wanted to tell all of you how much I love each and every one of you, and that I wouldn’t have made it to this point in my life without your help and support. If you want to keep track of me, I will be posting my weekly Trans Reports to my Tumblr (ocwut.tumbler.com, tagged #transreport).
Again, thank you all so much. Good luck, and may your sails (or capes <3 ) always catch the wind.
We’ll miss you!
I’m just off to follow your tumblr now.
I’ve really enjoyed reading about your experiences here and I’m now following you on tumblr
Oh jeez, I was totally not crying too much to spell Tumblr correctly.
ocwut.tumblr.com
There, that should do it.
!! I hope everything is OK, and I look forward to keeping up with you on Tumblr! Best of luck, ocwut.
I’ll miss seeing your posts! Good luck out there with the Real Life Things.
I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts! We’ll miss you, but I totally get that you need to do what you need to do. <3<3 !! Smooth sailing!
I trust you to know what you need. I’ll miss you here and I’ll try to check your Tumblr. ::hugs::
Aw, will miss you here, but will see you on tumblr! <3
You are a darling. Love you too & will miss you & may even start opening my dusty tumblr account once in a while now that I have you to follow. Sail on, and know that this harbor will always have a dock for you should you need or want it.
Hi Toasties,
I’ve been a reader here since day one, but don’t comment often. Today though, things are fucked up and I’m spinning out and thought some stranger internet love might help. Last night, my significant other of 10 years, husband for 5 and the father of my 3 children (the youngest of whom is 4 weeks old yesterday(!)) told me that he isn’t sure if he loves me anymore, came out to me as bisexual, and told me that exploring the masculine side of his attraction is where he’ll be spending his emotional energy from now on. I am floored, and at a loss as to what happens now. Anger and sadness and shock and depression are all fighting with each other and I’m not at all sure which is going to win and I’m really not rooting for any of them but really don’t know a healthy way to deal with this. I guess the marriage counseling idea we’d been tossing around for a few weeks is pointless by now? It seems pretty clear that the question isn’t “can this marriage be saved” but “should this marriage be saved” and I’m really struggling to see anything worth saving. But the thought of re-entering the dating scene as a 35-year old single mother of 3 is …not appealing, nor is the idea of never again being in a romantic relationship.
Has anyone been through something similar and have words of wisdom for me? Or even just well wishes to get me through the weekend?
I’m so, so sorry he’s just dumped this on you. I have no good advice for your situation, I just wanted to reiterate that however you feel about this is valid and OK.
I don’t have any words of wisdom, but many, many, many well-wishes!
Lots of people here will have a nice numbered list of things to think about, but here’s my two cents:
My boyfriend will never be monogamous with me. It’s kind of heartbreaking when I think about it. There is definitely a sense of not only “Why isn’t my making the request a good enough reason for you” but also “Why aren’t I good enough for you?”
But I think that those questions are both really reductive. In your case, it’s not that being in a relationship with you isn’t good enough for him, because it’s probably still something he needs in his life. It’s just that this Great Unknown question has probably been eating at him for years and blown itself totally out of proportion.
Your relationship doesn’t have to end. But he needs to try out something new, and you will probably be required to give him space to do it whether you want to or not. So, you can go the way of being totally insulted and taking it as a personal affront, or you can work out a way and a period of time for him to think about his options and his needs. Either way, the form of the marriage needs to change.
It’s gonna feel unhealthy and dependent if you put his needs before your own. It’s gonna feel selfish if you put your needs before his. I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry you’re going through this. My sister has been through a similar situation as yours. It’s been a couple of years out and she realizes she’s happier and healthier (and so are their kids) than they ever were as a couple. I wish you the same.
I’m so sorry to hear that. I don’t have anything particularly wise to say, but you definitely have my well wishes. My mother-in-law came out to my father-in-law (and everyone else) this summer and left him, after 35 years. It wasn’t a good marriage regardless of her sexuality, but my father-in-law was resentful, above all, that she hadn’t left him decades earlier, when he could have built another life with someone else. So….there’s that? When you’re ready?
ETA: Re-reading your post and am floored that he sprung this on you with a four-week-old. I’d be like Motherfucker, I don’t give a shit about your masculine side. Change this diaper and talk to me in eight weeks.
Hahaha, yeah. Right now anger is winning for sure! I guess I can put my still-surging-with-the-crazy pregnancy hormones to good use.
Oh goodness, I’m so sorry. I don’t have any wisdom, but I do think no one should make any life-altering decisions when they’ve got a four week old baby. Counseling is certainly in order, whether it be to save your marriage, or to dissolve it gracefully.
you have my sympathy and internet-support, for what it’s worth. This is truly a wild thing to deal with, and it’s a good time to know who your support system is, including a good therapist for yourself. HUGS.
Oh man, I’m sorry things have gone sideways for you. That’s a huge revelation, and it can’t be easy. But maybe this is a situation where marriage counseling could really benefit you. You would be in a safe place with a person helping moderate and lead the conversation between you and your husband, and a counselor could help you answer “should this marriage be saved?”
Again, I’m so sorry you’ve been put through the ringer. I’d offer to hang out or give you a hug, but we are Internet strangers so this will have to suffice for now:
That’s ever so tough.
One thing I would say is don’t jump ahead of yourself – there is a long time to think about either dating/not dating/taking to the sea. I’ve never been on a date in my life but there are plenty of other viable ways to find a new other half if that is what you end up wanting to do in the fullness of time.
Another thing I’d say is go to the counselling anyway – either on your own or together. It got me through it when my OH of 10 years dropped the ‘I need to find myself, bye’ bombshell on me – not nearly as dramatically as yours but it was still a hefty wallop. The counsellor was a massive help in seeing me through it.
So many well-wishes. All your feelings are fair and OK. Best to you and the kiddos.
I have no great words of wisdom, as the time this happened to me ended very badly. But I will say, maybe ask Dan Savage, because he knows what’s up. And take care of yourself and make your needs clear. Are you ok with him exploring this side of himself? Are you ok with an open marriage of some kind? I think the ‘worst” bit is his remark that his “emotional energy” will be going somewhere else. Many people are able to be emotionally supportive husbands AND explore their alternative sexualities. If he can’t, that’s an even larger issue than his coming out as bi. If he’s not willing to be supportive of you, that’s a very negative thing, and he should recognize that that may end his marriage. Does he want that? I will also say, it does suck to re-enter the dating scene. But it’s better than being with someone who makes you sad and isn’t willing to be a supportive partner. That’s the point of marriage after all.
This. It’s totally possible to figure out a relationship that will work with his revelations, but not if he’s already emotionally moved on/completely bailed on you. I get that he feels the need to explore this part of himself, but to do it in such a destructive way, and a such a time is major league assholery.
Best and warmest thoughts coming your way. Get through your days, stand up for yourself, and give it a little time to see if it’s worth investing your emotional energy in the relationship.
DON’T ASK DAN SAVAGE. He is a known biphobe–he doesn’t believe bi men exist, let alone could possibly stay married to a woman. I think you should definitely ask *someone* who is an LGBTQ expert, but Savage is (weirdly) the worst possible person to ask this exact question.
Have you listened to him in the last few years? He’s actually changed his stance on a lot of beliefs that were problematic.
I kinda think he’s the worst person to go to on this because his answers tend to assume that sexuality is and always should be the most important thing in someone’s life– holding off on a desire you have because it would hurt someone else seems unthinkable to him. This husband is in need of a reminder that no matter what realizations he’s just made about himself, his ’emotional energy’ should be expended in the direction of his FOUR-WEEK-OLD BABY right now.
This has always been my problem with Dan Savage. Sexuality is, of course, an important part of someone’s self–but desires don’t always trump everything else in someone’s life. Especially when you are ONE MONTH after your wife having a new baby.
He’s getting better about that–I think having a kid and a husband has way mellowed him. Honestly, my biggest issue with him is his fat phobia–something that a friend of his confronted him about on a recent show, and you could totally see where his issues come from.
You know, I haven’t–I’m glad to hear that he’s improving. I like a lot of his advice, but he’s been outright harmful to bi people in the past in huge ways.
I’d argue with that–he clearly believes in bisexually, and is in fact very out-loud about telling bi people to come out of the closet. His general stance seems to be that people THINK being bi isn’t real because not many bi people are out. He’s given some very good answers to people in similar situations as the author, though I don’t think answer would necessarily be very different from mine (well, he’s probably be more in-your-face about it).
The beau and I are both bi, and knew this about each other within an hour of meeting. I have no problem telling people that I am, but he’s much…quieter. He doesn’t tend to volunteer any info unless asked, but is always completely honest. I think culturally it is harder for guys to be out about it.
This has been my experience, too. The one bi guy I dated came out to me, but the girl he dated before me was SUPER bi-phobic about it in a really vile way (SHE was bi herself, but told him that his attraction to men was repulsive, and even though they were in an open relationship he was strictly not allowed to be with me, with her or otherwise). We ended up making a joint OKC profile so he could explore this in a safe, low-pressure way, and almost to a one every dude we spoke to was also really skittish and ashamed, and it was just really sad.
THAT SAID, Kerowyn, I’m so sorry that your husband threw this grenade at you. There are definitely ways for relationships to grow and evolve after a partner comes out as not-straight, of course, but it is difficult and requires so much communication and care and he 100% did not go about it the right way. I think he’s being incredibly unfair and selfish to you and your kids. Sexuality is a huge scary thing to grapple with, especially for bi men, but while that’s maybe a reason explaining his behavior, it is definitely, definitely not an excuse! Hugs to you, my dear. I hope things get better 🙁
ETA: I don’t want to sound like I think all is lost, though! And it’s definitely up to you to decide if you want to try to stay together — and if you don’t, that is also valid. I think the counseling wouldn’t necessarily be pointless — it might offer you both a space to talk to each other without things like “all my emotional energy is going to my own needs” being lobbed about all willy-nilly.
UGH I’m sorry I’m bad at advice and I feel like this is coming out wrong. Please just know that I truly feel for you, and I’m wishing you all the support in the world right now.
I have no advice, but I sincerely hope things turn out for the best. It will be difficult sometimes, but you’ll be okay. One little minute at a time.
Marriage counseling is *not* pointless. It’s not something you do with the goal of Staying Together. That can be an outcome. But the goals are Understanding Each Other, Communicating Better, Coping Better. These goals are exactly what you need. And you probably need to go to counseling on your own. Counseling together with your husband would be an optional addition to having your own sessions, imo.
This is so painful for you, I imagine. Wish I could help. Keep coming back here, please. We want updates and more chances to support you.
Have you heard of Straight Spouse Network? It’s support for married people whose spouses come out.
My impulse is to suspect that he’s gay and trying to break it to you gently by saying he’s bi. In any case I’d say marriage counseling is even more important right now. You still have children to raise together, at the very least.
Take care of yourself! You are wonderful and I believe in you!
Oh, mama! I’m so sorry this is happening to you. I don’t have any particular advice except that I think counseling is a good idea, separately or together or both.
Also I don’t have a baby, but seriously, springing this on you with a 4 week old is the dickest of dick moves. Is he pulling his weight to take care of the kids? I would be tempted to suggest that he put his emotional energy into taking care of his children and their mother, regardless of his bisexuality, until such time as your baby sleeps through the night and you both can get enough rest to do some real emotional work. But I don’t have a spouse or children so perhaps that’s not the best advice.
Anyway, sending you internet hugs and I hope you work things out however is best.
This happened to me in a multi-year relationship (minus the marriage and children, so not as serious as your situation) and I was *furious* that he’d gotten to middle-fucking-age without having had the sex and relationships he needed to have and committing to me as if he was a fully available partner. I felt lied to and duped.
I’m esp pissed at your husband for the “emotional energy” comment. It’s bad enough that he said that to you, his wife and partner, but it also makes me wonder what the hell he’ll be giving his children from here on out.
I am so sorry that he sprung this on you, and I hope that whatever happens, you find a way to make yourself happy.
That being said, I’d definitely take this as a moment to consider your feelings for him, instead of his feelings for you. He said he isn’t sure if he loves you anymore, and you’re worried about dating and not being in a romantic relationship. Maybe try to see if, worries and relationship structure changes aside, do you still love him? No wrong answer and no judgment! It’s just definitely a moment to reevaluate things.
Also, I don’t think counseling would be pointless! That can be a way for you to navigate this, or for you to perhaps discover that it’s not something you want to do anymore. But often it helps to have that third party there. Good luck and all the hugs!
Couple of things- 1. Your husband is probably in a pretty scary place right now and some people, when they get to that place just push the people closest to them away or hurt them. I think it’s somewhat telling that he dumped all this on you before you have gone to counseling- someone being careful of your feelings would have worked this through more carefully. I think this is particularly strong in men- if they feel vulnerable or confused their instinct is to push their romantic partners away and be like, “just gotta go find myself”. Be careful that you take care of yourself- in the name of “honesty” he might ask you to help him process really hurtful things that he should process with a therapist or support group instead of you, and you might want to help him. It’s ok to say, “I need a little break, I can’t hear this right now” or ask him to talk to therapist instead or talk to you only in the presence of a therapist.
2. Therapy is a great idea even now, just to help you get from point a to point b wherever that is. You just had a baby, you are having a huge crazy thing happen to you, having the support of someone to help you process everything is a good idea.
3. I am very familiar with the feeling of, “I don’t think I can just start over again. How would I even…..” It’s overwhelming at first and it’s really common. Just know that in a bit, it will turn out that you aren’t completely starting over. You are going to change no matter how this works out, but the other parts of your life are still there for you, there are lots of other things out there that will come fill any vacuums. You can’t see them right now, but humans are resilient and they adapt faster than it seems like they’d should. Right now, you need to grieve- it hurts and it’s horrible and it feels unending for a bit, but every thought and feeling that comes up right now is like throwing up when you have food poisoning, and if you think if the crying and the hurting as processing pain out of your system it helps.
You are capable of getting through this. You don’t know yet how strong you are, but you are strong. Also my friend had something similar happen to her and she told her husband he needed to get out of the house then, if he was abruptly bailing on huge family like that, he couldn’t stay there while she processed and I think that did them a world of good- once he was out of the house on a couch he started to understand more what he put in motion if she wasn’t in his life., and while he was gone he stopped telling her all this thoughts and feeling which she really didn’t need to hear right then. It might be worth considering- even just for a week or two, asking him to stay somewhere else so you can wrap your head around things.
So much sympathy, it’s a completely shit thing to have happen, and incredibly unfair.
People have given good advice, and I echo the idea of focusing on yourself and your desires now, regardless of him. Counseling is a great idea, whether you’re going through a break-up or a change or a rebuilding, because bombshells lead to collateral damage regardless.
And in your case, I’d feel free to remind the hell out of him that no matter what happens with his sexuality and your marriage, the two of you are parents, and the needs of the kids trump his needs. The older two are already adapting to the presence of the baby in their lives, and he needs to be careful about what else he asks them to change about their worlds right now.
Also, a friend of mine whose husband (finally) came out after their 3rd was a couple of years old – they were in their mid-30s, as well – is over the damn moon happy with her new husband now, who is so into her and making their family happy with her and parenting their collective 4 kids with her and taking her on fancy dates when she’s stressed out. It took 3-4 years post-divorce before they found each other but they’re not letting go now they did. And the sex is way better with the new man, too. (Friend is not shy about sharing details.) (I’ll spare you.)
Well wishes and hugs and a reminder that this is a process, no one has to know all the answers by later today or anything, so if it gets to be too much to deal with, call a time-out and revisit later.
I agree 10000000% with your second paragraph. Tell your husband to step the fuck up – he can deal with his crisis of sexuality (or you can deal with it together! if you want!) AFTER he’s stepped up and acted like a father to his children.
Leaving you or whatever other dickholery he’s attempting here is one thing, but he has a newborn in the house, he contributed 50% to its existence and the existence of his two other children, and taking care of one’s family is more important than whatever existential issues he’s having. You make the decision to have children, you accept that that decision comes with consequences such as a lack of freedom.
Yeah, if he’s saying he can only have ONE central focus for all of his emotional energy, then it PRETTY OBVIOUSLY has to be his family. Dropping something like this on a woman who’s still recovering from childbirth, I just ……..!!! Flames. Fla– burn— flames—
Yes, yes and more yes! Children, especially a tiny newborn, should be the main focus.
Oh, no. I have many, many well-wishes for you and lots and lots of sympathy. Please do allow yourself anger at this. It doesn’t mean you have to stay angry forever or that you can’t cope in other ways — but in my experience of relationship betrayals (none as serious as this!), that trying to repress your anger is more harmful than allowing yourself to feel it.
With 3 kids, you probably know this, but call on all the help you can get to take care of them. Don’t focus on the hypothetical future dating scene for now. Get that counseling, for yourself if nothing else. You will get through this, and this internet stranger will be thinking of you.
I was trying to figure out what advice I could offer you from my own dissolved (queer) marriage and also as someone whose parents divorced. Here’s what I came up with
1) Couple’s counseling is fine but my experience is that the therapist acts as kind of a mediator, which can work for certain issues, but probably not if you feel like your spouse has treated you unfairly. Then there’s really no “middle ground” which meets your needs. If you opt for couples’ counseling make sure you *also* have a therapist that you see all on your own.
2) Even if you don’t know what’s going to happen or what emotionally will be best for you (not unusual!) you can use the couple’s counseling to talk about what kind of arrangements you can make when you two do come to a decision: whether the two of you divorce and have separate residences, stay together in a non-traditional relationship or continue living together but not as a couple. If your husband has been the main or partial support of the household, he needs to figure out how he’s going to support that household and his own if he moves out. Don’t be afraid to bring this up during therapy: you have three kids and emotional stability is impossible without financial stability.
3) Think about what you want to do–and not just with the relationship. My mother went back to school and became a computer programmer (after years of being a secretary) before she and my father split up. It made her life a lot better to have that extra money coming in. If you want to go back to school, talk with your husband about making arrangements for it (including in therapy)–and don’t forget about child care. As in any negotiation always ask for at least a little more than you want, so if you have to “compromise” you are still getting most of what you want.
4) Get in touch with the straight spouse network mentioned earlier in the thread
5) Get to know some single parents whose interests you share, if you don’t already.
6) I know you’re not going to believe me but being single is so much better than being in relationship with someone who doesn’t have your best interests at heart. My spouse and I separated when I was 44, six years ago. I’m still single (and happy that way, though I think I will settle down eventually), but that divorce set me free to pursue avenues I wouldn’t have considered if we were still together. My life is infinitely better now. Divorce can be both really painful and then really wonderful.
I hope this helped!
(Replying to Kerowyn, in case IntenseDebate puts it somewhere else)
As a poly person, I am of the opinion that it is totally possible and reasonable to maintain your marriage and coparenting relationship while also allowing your husband (and you!) to explore other romantic/sexual interests/desires.
BUT the way he broached this with you strikes me as shitty and uncool. I mean, on the one hand, honesty is good, but on the other hand, there is a way to broach this that isn’t shitty. On a third hand, being charitable to him, living in a society that defaults to monogamy means that people often think that being attracted to person B means they are no longer attracted to person A, and that isn’t necessarily true. You can still love your partner while simultaneously craving something new/different or being attracted to someone else, but for many people that new attraction makes us doubt the old one.
I think that marriage counseling at this stage is still a good idea. Even if you ultimately decide to get a divorce, I think working through this with the help of a counselor can help lay a good foundation for better communication as you move to being unmarried co-parents. He is the father of your children, so you can’t launch him into orbit; I think getting some help on your relationship with him is a good alternative. Additionally, a good marriage counselor can help you decide whether or not your marriage should be saved. You might also want to get some counseling on your own (because counseling is often helpful, especially for people dealing with major life events).
I think you should let yourself feel what you feel; all of the feelings you have described are perfectly reasonable things to feel (not that feelings are required to be reasonable). Come vent to us, write in a journal, call your best friend, etc. Try not to let your feelings have a negative impact on the way you treat your kids. Decide whether or not you would be willing to be in an open marriage with him (not just in general, but with HIM), and if you would, what boundaries and guidelines you would need (regular date night with him, STI screenings before sex with new partners, condom use, is it okay if his other partners come to the house, etc).
Everyone,
Thank you so so so much for your hugs, well wishes and thoughtful comments. Not long after I posted the baby woke up and then the day got kinda crazy so I’m just getting back to this now, but reading your responses is giving me tears of the good kind and the very helpful feeling of people having my back.
I spent a good chunk of the day reaching out to my local support network and got the number of a well-recommended counselor and am working to set up an individual appointment with her. I think you guys are right in that marriage counseling will help us get to the other side of this situation (whether we come out together or not) with better communication and (hopefully!) no more emotion grenades, but I’ll get started with one-on-one.
Thanks again for all the supportive words – it really means a lot to me. xoxo
Oh man, I have been out of my mind this whole week. I pulled some kind of muscle in my upper-back/neck, and it’s been a regular agony circus over there. I don’t know what caused it, because it happened when I was asleep, and, WORSE, I don’t know if every time I go to sleep I’m not doing something that is injuring it further.
It is terrible! I can’t do kung fu or yoga or anything, I have to just lie around on the couch moaning!
EVERYTHING IS RELENTLESSLY AWFUL
I managed to hurt my arm somehow, so for the past month I have been babying it all day, so by the time I go to bed it feels pretty ok. And then in the morning when my alarm goes off I inevitably wrench it all to hell swatting at the snooze. Rinse. Repeat.
Right? Bodies are stupid.
When can we just be downloaded into the Matrix already?
In the movie they make it out like it’s all terrible but I don’t see what the big deal is.
I fell over taking my shoes off and sprained my thumb. Who does that.
Man, some muscle in my back just decided to seize the fuck up this week, and it was terrible. I wound up being able to squeeze a massage appointment in on my lunch hour (the one day I took lunch this week :/), and even after having an entire massage therapist dig into my back (I think she, like, climbed onto the table and threw her entire body weight into her elbow? It was kind of absurd) it was still a mess- better, but not awesome.
Those stick on heating pads they sell now (like giant handwarmers but with adhesive) are a miracle, though. You’re not supposed to sleep with them on, but I did and everything is sooooo much better. Back pain is the worst.
Oh, hm, that’s a good idea, I forgot that they had those.
DISASTER DATE STORIES! I have one now that I have been waiting all week to share with y’all. (This is copy/pasted from an email I sent to a friend, I tried to make sure it was coherent but if there are little gaps I can try to fix them)
Met this guy on OKC. I knew going in that I was not particularly interested in pursuing a relationship, but he is good conversation and nice enough. After a week of talking, he asks if I want to meet up, I agree with the caveat that I’m necessarily looking for anything serious (he is) and that I’m not sure of what I’m wanting.
I leave straight from work to meet him at a diner by his place. I am in work clothes which are surprisingly like my regular clothes, so – dress, tights, heeled oxfords.
He is wearing a Super Mario shirt, jeans and sneakers with a hoodie. Also, he looks like a cross between Mr. Bean and my first boyfriend so I am already internally recoiling in horror.
When the hostess asks us how we are he like, jumps up and says “just ducky!” which, hi, if it’s someone I know well, sure, but…
I’m not super hungry because I went out to lunch with work friends bc I’m stuck in the office today. Order French dip. He gets French onion soup and a burger of some variety, I’m already tuned out.
My sister calls (bless her) and I excuse myself to take the call. I tell her that I won’t be out long. Go back inside.
Not ten minutes later, my mother calls (also, bless her) and I’m like “mom this is terrible what do I do” and she says “you’re smart you will think of something oh yes thank you for wishing me a happy anniversary” and the lightbulb goes off
Get back inside and apologize profusely, I forgot that it was my parents’ anniversary and I promised I’d go up to spend some time with them, family is very important to me (not a lie) and I’m sorry I can’t stay later
His soup shows up. You know how onion soup has that cheese coating on the top? He like…stretches it to his mouth and like, has strings of cheese hanging out of it. Complete turnoff. Physically removes them with his hands. I have begun to not even.
My meal arrives, it’s…okay. Just kinda eh. I don’t know who the fuck uses prime rib for French dip but that’s not something you should do ever. His burger has a knife in it because I assume you are supposed to cut it, I mention that and he looks at me weird and then licks the knife while looking at me. I tell him to knock that off because it’s fucking creepy.
Finish half of my sandwich, have the other half wrapped up. He demolishes his entire meal, then belches loudly. I have to prompt before an “excuse me” is heard.
I am like 10000% mortified at this point and as the bill arrives, I make a polite “how much do I owe?” statement…I end up paying for myself. I know that I am all for going dutch or whatever but this is usually something that is discussed in advance, especially on the first date isn’t it usually implied that the asker is the one that pays?
I head out to my car. I give him a hi five then leave.
I will not be pursuing this in a romantic sense. Friends…from a distance, sure. Romantic interest? Hahahahahahahahahaha NO
Is it terrible that I’m now brainstorming ways to work “Just ducky!” into a conversation?
I’m sure if you said it in any way other than how he said it, it would probably be 100% okay.
This story really made me want French onion soup AND a French dip
At least you got a good story out of it!
Several years ago, when I was on OKCupid, I got messaged by this guy who looked exactly like Dominic Monaghan. I about died he was so cute and we agree to meet for dinner one Friday evening.
He was late, and when he got there he told me that he didn’t actually have enough money for dinner. But I had been expecting to eat out, and I was starving, so I told him I’d pay for him. He went to the bathroom three times during the meal, each time returning with more bloodshot eyes until it was obvious that he was super coked out.
It came out that he didn’t have a job, but was hoping to get something soon in the “food preparation or delivery industry”. But probably not for a few months because he and a friend were planning to spend some time camping in the mountains first. He started disparaging my choice to have a steady job and live in an apartment because this was such a confining lifestyle and I wasn’t truly living.
After dinner I was ready to head home, and he asked if he could come over and play video games (something we actually had in common). I said no I needed to get home. He kept pushing and it eventually came out that he had nowhere to stay that night and had been hoping to crash at my place. He’d even sleep on the couch if I really felt our date hadn’t gone that well!
I basically just left him in the parking lot and as I was leaving he shouted after me to look him up if I ever got tired of living in my box. Funny how I haven’t
When I told my mom this story, she was mostly offended that he hadn’t offered any cocaine to me.
That is soooo rude.
ya know, sometimes I just like to revel in how vast and varied humanity is.
while I live (not truly) in my confined box.
I don’t know how you can stand to live in that box (which I rely on a certain segment of the population to live in so that I can sponge off of them to survive).
D:
In solidarity, may I just say that my first date with a dude once was to Golden Corral (YUP), and when we got to the counter to pay (you pay before you eat, they are tricksy there), he didn’t have enough money with him to even pay for himself. I was kind of mortified. On top of that, I had been the one driving.
But even my story does not begin to rack up enormous number of red flags in yours. Good Glob.
Hahahahahaha wow. I assume “friends … from a distance” means you check out their social media feeds every now and then to make fun of their terrible choices?
My worst date was actually with a dude I’d known for a while and really liked. This is all more cringeworthy than straight-up horrible or creepy. This date did not dissuade me, but a lot of things went wrong, several of them fuelled by mutual uncertainty that it was not definitely a “date.” (Hindsight: 100% A DATE.) The date was dinner and then a show he was playing. I intended to eff off in between because load-in sucks. Unfortunately for both of us, he insisted otherwise. Anyway:
– Almost immediately, compared me to his aunt and then told me she spent most of her life institutionalized for mental illness
– Insisted on driving me to load-in and upon starting his mom’s minivan, his latest CD blared out of the speakers in mid-song
– Spent much of the drive to the venue complaining about a girl who’d posted a (frankly adorable) missed connection for him in his city’s alt-weekly section for such things and how it was “creepy,” told him I’d posted several Craigslist missed connections
– At load-in, he initially left me outside on the street “guarding the equipment” for 15 minutes. Eventually I did get to go inside, where I was left alone at the bar, for half an hour, with the venue’s legendarily drug-addled and unstable show promoter. (There was a hockey playoff game on the shitty TV, I managed to just get him talking about his admiration for Jaromir Jagr at length.)
My best/worst disaster date story was with an OKCupid boy who scheduled the date between a relative’s funeral and the reception dinner because he “thought it would cheer him up”!!?? He showed up 20 minutes late in a full suit and gave me the funeral program to read while he went and got his drink, as I was had already bought and almost finished mine. Also, we were the only people in the bar besides a huge group of college kids playing a beer pong tournament.
AHH HE SCHEDULED THE DATE BETWEEN THE FUNERAL AND THE RECEPTION? That is HORRIBLE! That sounds like one of those made-up disaster dates in Cosmo magazine! (Not saying you made it up, but REALLY)
Had a quick coffee date with a guy from OKC. We didn’t have the slightest bit of chemistry and the conversation wasn’t particularly stimulating, and then he made a rape joke – while bragging about how physically fit and strong he is. After we were done with our coffees he asked me if I wanted to “go see a movie or something.” No, all I want is to get the hell away from you as fast as I can and never, ever contact you again!
My last date with my former FWB (who broke things off with the old “going to ignore your messages and texts forever instead of having the guts to tell you I don’t want to see you anymore” routine) wasn’t a disaster but it was pretty disappointing. I had bought us tickets for a music show. He arrived late and the first thing he said was that he had to leave in 45 minutes because “I have to get up early tomorrow to go to church.” When he saw the look on my face he said, “Hey, at least I didn’t cancel this time” (because he also had a charming habit of canceling dates at the last minute, like just minutes before I was going to leave my apartment to meet him). Upon leaving he promised he would plan our next date. Instead I never heard from him again.
My conclusion is that all men are horrible and should be shot into space on a rocketship.
My only horrible date story was actually a Dating Ring date (these startup weirdos who set people up on group dates, and also for some reason shipped a bunch of girls to San Francisco to meet guys because there are more of them there??) I signed up because I thought they’d let me do dates with my friends, but they do not, they make you meet up with three random guys and two random girls who they have ‘carefully matched’ you with. For one thing, the second I got there it was apparent that these matchmakers thought I was one of the least attractive people on earth, ever– I mean, I RARELY find people actively unattractive but the group they had matched me with was just all. . .extremely odd looking. I had told the matchmakers my biggest priorities were feminism and progressiveness, yet when I told the group about my nonprofit work in a very low-income neighborhood they all looked horrified and one guy asked “Do you have a conceal-and-carry permit? Then nobody had any idea what else to say to each other, so someone asked “So. . .have any siblings?” and literally, all six of us went around in a circle and listed our siblings. Then I died, was reincarnated and left after 30 minutes which was as polite as I could bring myself to be.
Don’t mind if I join this chorus of Terrible Date Stories!
I was a freshman in college, single and recently out of my first long term relationship, but mostly looking for friends and mentors at my new school. Went to the library to study, and on the way in, a guy stops me and says, “Hey, have we met before?” I was pretty sure we hadn’t, but he persisted. “No, I saw you at that [co-ed hippie frat] party the other week. I told you I liked your shoes.” So I had met him before, if you can call drunkenly thanking someone for a compliment on your boots “meeting.” I kind of just sidled off at that point to go study.
About 10 minutes later, he’s at my side again, this time the excuse being he “needed an SD card reader for some photos, but the library computers don’t have them.” My laptop did have an SD card reader, so I acquiesced and got his photos off. While they were transferring, we talked about typical college stuff: what year are you, what’s your major, etc. He thanked me and left.
Five minutes later– I get a friend request from him on FB. Which is the first red flag, because I had not told him my name at any point. But I’m a dumb freshman looking for as many established friends as possible, so I accept, and then get back to studying. About an hour later, he messaged me: “Hey, thanks for your help with the photos. You want to hang out some time? We could get coffee or ice cream.” Now, nowhere in here is the word “date” mentioned, so after an hour or two I write back, “I’m pretty busy with midterms right now, but I could probably do with a short study break.” Marking out exits, right? (Oh god I should have known better.) And then he writes back:
“LOL I guess I just kind of asked you on a date? Cool, see you for the date on Friday!” And I’m like WHATT noo but I felt a bit like a dear in headlights, and my friends thought it was hilarious and goaded me on, so I just didn’t respond.
“Date” night comes and we meet up for ice cream, which I insist on paying for separately. He had brought along a tote bag, which he said was for “adventures,” but wouldn’t explain further. We walk around campus, eventually getting to a low, stone wall on one of the quads. He stops, and says, “Hang on, I’ve got something here.” He goes over to a nook in the wall and pulls out an empty tea packet. From the dining hall. And then smells it. His explanation was that he liked keeping secret things in that spot for himself. And I’m like oh fuck oh fuck he’s going to chop up my body and hide it in all the cracks in this wall.
The rest of the “date” was similarly awful/disturbing. He mostly talked about himself. He asked if I had any tattoos (no) and then said “I have a couple on my back, but those can wait for a second date!” He turned out to be like 25, even though he was an undergrad. He talked about fractals and Adventure Time and how he loved “trippy” stuff. The contents of the “adventure” bag were revealed, and they were… crayons, and paper. Because he liked coloring. He asked if I wanted to color, at which point I was all, “OH look at the time! Better go study!!! I HAVE SO MUCH WORK SEE YOU NEVER” and hightail it out of there. I ended up drinking in a friend’s room the rest of the night, because if I went out, “He might see me.”
Anyway moral of the story is: I ignored his FB messages for a while and then he went away. He turned out to be an MRA and I guess finally graduated? But I’m bad with faces so I may have just been ignoring him. Freshman year!!
This is a thumbs up of empathy. Oh my god.
Sounds like he was trying very hard to be “quirky,” which no one should ever do.
I just cringed with my entire body.
The only OKC date I’ve ever walked out on was with this dude who I tried to engage in conversation every conceivable way (one or two word answers every time) before I just gave up and waded hip deep into a discussion about ~film. He had exactly the same tastes as every single other annoying ~film dude of my acquaintance (Kubrick, Scorsese, Tarantino, Polanski) and I fully poked the beehive in the middle of some long ramble he was taking on the subject of how the shot where cream swirls in Travis Bickle’s mug in Taxi Driver was held for the “perfect amount of time” by saying that art is subjective and that there’s not really any such thing as the perfect amount of time. And then I said, “For example, I find Kubrick to be incredibly slow and boring.” I actually left after he kept trying to discuss Polanski after I’d asked him if we could avoid the subject. I told him Polanski was a garbage human being, put down my money, and left the bar.
Otherwise, I am the QUEEN at listening to/engaging with people’s weirdly confessional first date patter and then realizing, at LEAST several hours later, that it was really fucking weird that someone who’s basically a stranger would unburden themselves like that.
My favorite online-dating horror story never even made it to the first date. Guy messaged me, I was in a very “sure, why not?” mood so even though he wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, I figured it’d be good to put myself out there, so we tentatively make plans to meet up at the beer garden the next week (this was on a Friday or Saturday I think). We exchange numbers and he promises to text or message on the day of the date just to confirm plans. He’s not very chatty – when I ask him what he does, he’s like “I’d rather talk about that on our date.” Cool, done, talk to you later.
Flash forward 10 minutes and I get a message from him. He has apparently JUST decided to actually read my profile, and has some opinions about it. Short story is that I am a pretty devout Catholic and do not personally want to use hormonal birth control. Like, ever. That’s one of OKC’s quiz questions, and he basically says “u are going to get pregnant or an STD how dare u.” I calmly explain to him that I do use condoms when I have sex, and I am not sleeping around to begin with, and my views on sexuality & birth control are complicated and I’d “much rather talk about that on our date,” as he put it.
Of course then it turns out I have fed the troll and he sends me a couple more ignorant messages before I say “Look, again, better discussed in person, not on OKC messenger. If you don’t want to go out for a beer and conversation, that’s cool, here’s your out.” He says he still wants to meet in person, and apparently I had a very high tolerance for nonsense back then, so I say “ok let’s stick to you confirming plans on Tuesday” and sign off for the night (to show my roommate the whole ridiculous thing).
Quttin’ time on Tuesday rolls around and no message from him, which I was expecting and also fine with.
9pm on Tuesday rolls around and I get a text message from an unknown number that was obviously him that was like “excuse you, why didn’t you follow up, hello?” I politely tell him to go check his OKC messages, this one was on him, sorry, nice talking to you, bye. He then asked me if I want to go on a walk with him. A perfect stranger. At 9pm. That was the end of that.
I am super curious about your birth control views now – please write about them for the toast kthanksbye.
Ooh, recently (this will totally out me to any IRL friends), I went out with a guy from OKC who’d messaged me first. It had taken a lot of prompting to get him to suggest date plans (I love planning things, but if you’re asking me out, I expect more effort than “So, what do you want to do?”). He chose a random mediocre hole-in-the wall. The bill came, and he said, “Do you want to split it?” It turned out to be cash only. He had no cash, so I paid for both of us. The conversation had been fine, but I couldn’t tell if he was actually interested me or not. When we went our separate ways, he said he’d had a really good time and abruptly kissed me. Since I wasn’t at all expecting it and am pretty slow-moving on physical stuff, it was awkward. He ghosted after that, even though I texted him about a week later and asked him to find a way to pay me back. (I didn’t really expect him to, but I wanted to remind him that he was an asshole who’d basically stolen money from me!)
I went on a date last year with a guy who was legitimately properly obsessed with Ronan Farrow. He kept bringing up Ronan Farrow for absolutely no reason and then told me (I hadn’t asked) that he didn’t believe in God because he couldn’t imagine anything or anyone better than him. I said ‘except for Ronan Farrow, right’ as a JOKE, and his face kind of darkened and clouded over, and he looked away and said ‘right. Except for Ronan Farrow.’ He then jammed his hand down the back of my trousers and said he wanted to make love to me.
We’re married now.
wait, what?
Just messing. I ignored all further contact.
phew
There are so many things that are not functioning quite right in my life, but the nearby cafeteria in my office has switched from a bunch of food options that I didn’t usually enjoy to basically just be Mexican food all the time.
It’s amazing. Guacamole for days, delicious pork, and on Wednesday there were CHURROS.
If you had to pick your favorite cuisine, what would it be?
Japanese. Oh my god give me all the sushi/sashimi/tempura/teriyaki/ramen/udon/shumai and I’d be the happiest ever.
100% on board with Churro Wednesday though.
Japanese as well! Growing up in BC’s Lower Mainland, sushi restaurants were always my first pick and now, alas, I live in a semi-remote industry-based town and there is no (good) Japanese food to be had.
Good, authentic Chinese food and local venison, though, so there’s that.
Can I choose a mishmash?
YES
Mexican, so your cafeteria basically sounds perfect.
Also German, because potatoes and pork products and all sorts of pickled things.
Indian/Pakistani, followed by Thai and Chinese. My most frequently used cookbook is one of Madhur Jaffrey’s.
I love Indian food, and doubly so since I’ve never seen an Indian restaurant without tons of vegetarian food. Give me all the spicy chickpeas!
Churro Wednesday sounds amazing, though.
Just picking one is cruel.
Korean and Indian and Mexican, yummm :9
mmm, I would have a hard time choosing between Mexican, Vietnamese, Thai, and Japanese. ETA -forgot Indian and Ethiopian. I am so hungry now.
oh man, mexican food.
if i think about it though, probably classic american breakfast. which is kind of weird since i don’t eat meat, but: eggs. pancakes. waffles. lots of toast with jam and butter. home fries with lots of ketchup. more eggs.
GUYS TODAY THERE WAS “DRUNKEN CHICKEN”
magical and delicious
How is it possible for anyone’s answer not to be Mexican?
Mexican. But not so much real Mexican as the kind of Americanized, cilantro-free, flour tortilla and sour cream kind of Mexican.
I also love sticky, sweet, deep-fried Chinese-American glop.
Thai food, all day every day.
My girlfriend and I went to see Whiplash last night, and it was so good. The ostensible story is about jazz drumming with a familiar “talented youngster/demanding mentor” frame, but it plays like a horror movie. One of the most suspenseful, intense films I’ve seen in years. People in general, but especially J. K. Simmons fans, owe it to themselves to see it.
I’m excited for this movie and I’m glad to hear such good reviews of it. Sadly, it’s not coming to my area until the middle of January.
This has been a garbage week for me, so let’s have a dog thread:
This picture makes Bill look much more calm and thoughtful than he actually is.
I am in love with Bill. That face!!!
That face is his moneymaker for sure, especially when he’s been very naughty. (Let’s just say it’s been a naughty week.)
Oh yeah he’s definitely composing poetry in this pic.
Indy got a new collar this week! He has also grown a lot since I last shared a photo on the OT.
So handsome!!
Happy hiking buddies. Goodbye, summer 2014. You were good for outdoorsy pursuits.
Eve, enjoying an autumn afternoon:
Every time I’m surprised like THAT DOG IS SO BEAUTIFUL and then I remember … oh yeah, that’s dakimel’s very beautiful dog.
I don’t have any photos right now, but my dog was just SO SO EMBARRASSINGLY NAUGHTY in obedience/handling class last night. She’s so full of piss and vinegar, and I LOVE HER, but when she decides she’s done working, she is 10000000% done with all ur human shit.
My mom and I are taking my dog and her pup to a novice field trial thing tomorrow, and I’m super anxious about how Kira is going to behave. DOGS!
Edit: Here is a picture of her at bedtime a couple months ago!
Aww your dog looks kinda like one of mine. He is a massive troublemaker.
Case in point:
Eheheh, his faaaaaaace! I want to play with him.
He would love that! (you would also have to put up with a bossy corgi barking and nipping at your heels and generally being grumpy)
She is SO PRETTY!
Chihuahua, like a boss:
One of our buddies, Fry (as in Philip J.), hurt his feet last week. He was limping and clearly in pain and it seemed like more than just a pulled muscle so we took him in to the vet. They did an xray and found that both his back ankles were basically sprained pretty bad. He can never play fetch again 🙁 and he more or less on bed rest for the next 2-6 weeks, with a dose of an NSAID every day.
He seemed to feel better with the anti-inflammatory right away, but then a few days later he seemed worse, and was lethargic and sad, so we went back to the vet in case something had gotten worse.
The mister and I were sitting on the bench in the patient room at the vet and Fry really did not want to be there. He wormed his way between us and went to hide behind mister. I got up to take a picture because it was so great.
No dog here! Nothing to see, move along. No dogs in this room and definitely no need for the vet to come in, nope.
(He is fine, we thought the lethargy was because of the drug but after a day without it he was WAY WORSE yesterday and was very clearly in a lot of pain, didn’t want to put feet on the ground, so we put him back on the drug last night. We woke up today to the sound of him getting up on the counter to look for food. So he’s a lot better.)
What a sweet pup! I hope he feels better soon.
Do you like zero-budget indie slasher movies? Do you live in NYC? Please do yourself a favor and go see Lake Nowhere tomorrow. It’ll be at Cinema Village at 11:15. It’s an hour of 80’s VHS gory nostalgia.
Full disclosure: I know about half of the crew and cast, although not very well. The folks who made it (Ravacon Collective and Ursidae Parade) are from my tiny town, although a bunch of them are now down in Noo Yawk Sitteh, plying their trade. I saw it last night, and OK, yes, part of the thrill is knowing the people on the screen and being in the audience with them, but honestly, these guys are super talented. I’m so in awe of what they accomplished, and so happy to be living in a wee little city that allows such talent to thrive! Look, now I’ve gotten all sappy.
I’m scared of things that have no rational explanation – like, if a horror movie is all “oh I found this article on the internet that explains that this guy in 1914…” NOPE NOPE MOVIE RUINED. I love not knowing. The scariest part of Paranormal Activity for me was not the noises and doors closing and what have you, it was that scene where they sprinkle talcum powder over the threshold of their door and wake up the next morning and LIZARD FEET WALKED THROUGH IT. WHAT.
I am kind of afraid of the ocean (omg the bloop), and space. I was terrified of aliens as a kid and I’m mostly over that now but as an adult I’m just sort of freaked out by the concept of space being ENDLESS, like wtf is out there we’ll never know (consequently, a lot of Gravity was terrifying for me).
Yes, it’s like the movie Signs, how it was so goddamn terrifying until you actually saw the aliens.
Yes, the not knowing! I love those WTF moments, and neat explanations just kill everything.
@Rianne (reply got unstuck from the comment!)
I was going to go as Beast, but then I realized there is a high possibility that covering myself in cheap blue makeup may have unfortunate consequences.
So now I’m going as Clara Kent, which is just genderswapped Clark Kent, not a Doctor Who/DC mashup.
But… Clara Oswold… in a button-down shirt… WITH A SUPERMAN SHIRT UNDER YESSSSSS
Going to see “Dear White People” on Saturday night and am very excited.
Friends, I am feeling weird about a death.
Recently a person I knew died. As in a couple of days ago.
Now, I never liked him. I thought he was creepy and gross and potentially predatory and I found his company unpleasant. I was never cruel to him, just politely distant, but I did make fun of him to other friends of mine who also didn’t like him.
And now he’s dead and I feel weird.
I’m not sad. I didn’t want him to die, but I’m not sad. I’m sorry that his friends and family have lost someone they loved. I’m glad he (apparently) didn’t suffer when he died. I feel a little guilt for being so mean about him in privacy, but I was never mean to his face. I’m feeling a bit contemptuous of the people I KNOW hated him joining in on the ‘oh gone too soon, a great man lost’ grieving. It’s fine if the people who loved him feel that way, but I kind of think that if you privately called him names that you shouldn’t be doing that. I feel weird because he was within 4 years of my age, and I’m not 30 yet It’s a shock that someone who I knew, who was such a familiar sight around the places I spend time won’t be there any more.
And obviously I won’t be cruel or dismissive to the people who are grieving. I won’t go up to them and say ‘actually, I thought he was a slimy little turd and I never liked him’. That would be cruel.
But I feel strange and conflicted and I don’t know what to do.
We’re not meant to connect and bond with everyone we meet. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with not feeling anything about his loss, other than the confusion and guilt you’re feeling for not feeling anything. Especially if he was predatory.
Death is weird though, you’re right, because it changes a lot of our daily routine. It sounds like he has people who did care enough for him to mourn, so don’t worry about that, they’ve got it covered. I wouldn’t advise trumpeting your indifference to everyone you know, but yeah, I think you’re fine.
I think I mainly feel odd because its made me aware that in the next ten-twenty years or so I’ll start losing actual friends. People my age, or only a little older. You know, the first early deaths from undiagnosend heart conditions or aggressive cancers. I already got through the young deaths stage – the age where you lose a few to suicide or tragic accident and I wasn’t expecting to start losing adult acquaintances so soon. I was expecting to have till my mid 40’s.
It’s always strange to be reminded of your own mortality.
The way I feel about this death has everything to do with me and nothing to do with his place in my life which was preferably far away from me and only talking about the most general things.
Uuuuggghhh mortality is the worst. But sometimes when someone my age dies – I’m almost 30 – I get really productive in my writing and start focusing on the relationships that matter to me. Not to be cheesy, but it can have a silver lining.
I know that feel. A truly awful guy, homophobic bully, from my high school died after getting struck by lightning last year, and my first thought was “fuck, I feel like at some point in high school I definitely said ‘if there’s a God then why hasn’t this asshole been struck by lightning?’ But I tried to focus on having empathy for his family and people who did love him, and sort of maybe think they saw a side of him that I didn’t.
Oh man, that’s exactly what I would have thought, re: God and striking down.
That’s reassuring, because I kind of suspected that thought made me a sociopath, but still thought it was kind of funny.
I’ve actually asked my therapist about the possibility of me being a sociopath, especially after I read about them, and she was like, “Since you’re asking me and you care about my response, no, hugpunch. You’re not.”
Haha likewise, the fact that I expressed this thought to only close friends and the anonymous internet rather than say, the guy’s mom, probably means that I am not one.
I’m going to Japan (Tokyo) for two weeks starting Nov. 1. It’s a last minute trip (my husband’s job is sending him over, and I’m tagging along. I’m very excited and a bit nervous (I’ll be spending a week’s forth of days on my own, since my husband will be at work, and I speak 0 Japanese). Anyone else been to Tokyo? Do you have any tips for me? My main goals will be to eat as much as is humanly possible for cheap, and to collect as many omamori as I can.
I’m also just coming out of (or, trying to come out of) a bad anxiety/depression slump. I had to drop an activity that I had been interested in and excited about because it was giving me panic attacks and making my whole life too busy and hectic. That plus job and financial stress… blah. Anyone else with anxiety issues here?
I am going to BE in Tokyo from November 1-3 and then on the 14-15. I’m traveling solo with no Japanese either, so I’m pretty anxious about the trip (but excited! Very excited!). If you want to talk more about the trip, email me at megmuoio at gmail dot com.
Tokyo is crazily fast and crowded. Lots of people speak some English though, and it’s a pretty safe place to be, so you’ll be fine!
I straight up have long vivid dreams at least once a month about going back to Tokyu Hands, which is somewhere between a craft store and a hardware store, so I recommend you go there. Also make a little flashcard for yourself with the kanji for men and women on it, so you do not have to worry about which bathroom to use.
TOKYU HANDS FOREVER LOVE
The only thing besides meds that helped me w anxiety was Cognitive Behavioral Therapy type questions (I haven’t done the whole 12 week course, so these are very generalized). Of particular benefit to me was, “Is this terrible thing true? What would this moment be like if it is not true? If it is true, is there something I already know how to do that will help?” Best of journeys to Tokyo!
CBT helped me too. Especially considering I have had nothing but negative experiences with psychiatrists, I think my plan of action is going to be to find another good therapist.
I’m also coming out of a depression/anxiety slump, but feeling like I’m slipping back again. I think my mood improved so much that I went overboard trying to get things back the way I want them. I need to scale it back, but I need to start assembling a social life again. It’s probably going to be one step forward, one-half step back, for awhile.
Have fun on your trip 🙂 Wear big sunglasses and do all the people-watching!
Yup, I got anxiety issues, too. Manifests itself as a manic “in your face” personality because it’s my brain’s way of coping with acute shyness; “do the opposite” seems to be it’s strategy.
(That’s why I hate parties, or any gatherings for that matter, because it sends me into overdrive. And unfortunately, when alcohol is present, I’ll sometimes self medicate and drink too much just to depress those panicky feelings. I’m getting WAY better at that, thank God). My horses and my dog are my salvation, no exaggeration; I can totally relax with them and boy, that feels good. Animal therapy is simply the best (for me, anyway).
Here’s an internet hug for you (if thatz okay!)…life with anxiety can be really tough but you’ll survive!
Tokyo is one of my favorite cities, ever. You can totally have a great time by yourself even if you don’t speak a word of Japanese (though you might want to familiarize yourself with the subway map beforehand, as I found it a little confusing).
For wandering on your own, I thought the Akukasa Kannon temple/shrine/market area was great (even though a little crowded/touristy) as well as Harajuku, which is fun for shopping/people-watching/cultural appropriation after you leave No Doubt. The tour of the Imperial Palace is also worth it – super beautiful and interesting! There’s also a really nice botanical garden by the university.
I realize none of these are even remotely off-the-beaten path suggestions (like, they’re prob the first ten pages of a guidebook) but I just wanted to echo that the’d be great to do on your own, especially if you’re not super familiar with the area. Have fun!
My brother lives in Tokyo so I visit as often as I can afford! (Not very often still.) Here’s my two cents:
1) It is very nearly cash-only. GET LOTS O’ YEN BEFORE YOU GO. And invest in a coin purse– they have higher coin denominations, first of all, and second of all people actually make exact (or close to exact) change.
2) Get a PASSMO card. It’s an RFID card for subways and other trains, yes, but you can also use it to pay for vending machines and even some food! There’s no deposit or anything, so there’s no reason not to get one. You can buy them at kiosks that have very helpful English translation buttons.
3) Yakitori (grilled chicken skewer) is cheap and plentiful. Don’t be afraid of giblets, they’re actually pretty delicious. Great snack for walking with, like if you’re going to a restaurant but too hungry to make it all the way there. Or takoyaki (fried balls of octopus and batter), or tayaki (red bean paste filled pastry fish), but those are a little more money.
4) If you want a fun way to spend a whole day by yourself, and you don’t speak Japanese (like me), go to Shinjuku and head to any of the Marui malls. You can recognize them by the logo, which is OIOI. They’re about 100 floors with compartmentalized little shops with all different price points. Hours of fun. Great gifts.
5) Speaking of great gifts, head to Kappabashi– the restaurant supply street. There’s a giant chef head at the entrance, you can’t miss it. But head in a ways and you can get adorable rice bowls with animals on them for Y100 each– and I’ve seen these exact same bowls for sale at Anthropologie for like $7. You can also buy the disturbingly realistic plastic food items that restaurants display in their windows. They’re pretty expensive, but my parents bought a single plastic tayaki once and hung it in a frame. It’s pretty cute.
If you want my email for specific questions or anything, let me know! Anything I don’t know off the top of my head I can ask my brother about.
I enjoy in Tokyo: adventures based around restaurants and their locations; Disney Sea (THE GREATEST THEME PARK EVER EVER); the shopping centre under Tokyo Station; the Mori Art Museum.
Has anyone else been rewatching Gilmore Girls and having lots of feelings? I watched it semi-regularly when it first aired, and vaguely fond memories + the desire to watch something light on Netflix now that I’ve seen Parks & Rec about eight times has meant rewatching all of it. It’s doing very well for the “watching something light” gap in my life, and it’s also surprisingly interesting to reflect on how I interpret it now vs. how I did when I was younger.
I HATED Dean the first time I watched the show, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Watching it again, I’m like — oh, it’s because he is manipulative and borderline abusive and has no redeeming qualities. Every nice thing he does for Rory comes with an expectation. Every time she asks anything of him he rolls his eyes and makes sure to hold it against her later. UGH. And how does Lorelai not step it?! He’s creepy as fuck and she just lets it happen. And I can now see that Jess is an asshole in ways that I couldn’t when I was younger, but I still like him more than I should. He IS good for Rory when they meet. No one else had ever ask what she sees in Dean. I don’t think she’d ever thought about it. I’m not saying she should have ended up with him, but man, at least she met someone who challenged her worldview a little bit.
And poor secondary characters! Sookie is great and Lane is great and they just get steamrolled by Lorelai and Rory (Lane especially, because I think Lorelai is a better friend than Rory is).
yep, i got sick last weekend and i’m already almost through the first season again.
sookie and lane are both amazing and they totally get steamrolled—and lane even calls rory out on it, so the writers must know what they’re doing, but it just keeps happening. and i can’t get over how selfish lorelai is.
one of the most recent things that made my eyes boggle is when rory and lane go to the chilton party after rory gets dumped (and rory is actually a good friend to lane, for once) and lorelai gives rory the cell phone and the car and tells her to call her if she needs anything? she then promptly leaves the house, borrows sookie’s car without telling sookie where she’s going, and goes to see max, leaving rory (who is fairly unstable in the wake of her breakup, if we’re supposed to believe the whole rest of the episode) with no way of contacting her or knowing where she is—to the point where when lorelai returns from her impromptu trip, rory is sitting on the couch distraught. way to BE THERE like you promised, lorelai.
YES DEAN IS THE WORST. I just got past the bit with Tristan, and there’s a whole scene in which Rory basically tells her mom she’s afraid to talk to her boyfriend about kissing Tristan while broken up because he will FLIP OUT and MURDER TRISTAN and etc etc, and instead of anyone being like, “whoa, he dumped you, you were single and emotional about it, he needs to deal with his emotions in a healthy way instead of making you feel shitty”, everyone acts like Dean’s wild overreactions and control issues to everything Rory-related is totally understandable and a-okay.
Basically every romantic relationship on that show was weirdly terrible! Pretty much the only men on that show who weren’t varying degrees of terrible were Kirk and Dave Rygalski; everyone else needs to go in the garbage where they belong!
Jess was also terrible, but I always thought he was salvageable as a person, especially once he became an adult and had control over his life and couldn’t be shipped off to live with a relative whether he wanted to or not.
I always thought most of the boys/men were just kinda normal shitty person terrible but Dean was like life-destroyingly terrible. (and I like Luke also, grumpiness aside)
Jess was horrible in a way that a lot of teenage guys are horrible. Selfish, pretentious, combative, not sure where to put his frustrations. He was horrible in a way that seemed normal to a younger me, and still kind of rings true to my older self–I remember kids just like him, I know guys that were like him when they were younger and (like Jess) grew out of it. I think the best thing the show ever did for him was let him grow up in the later seasons. He’s still pretentious, but we all know plenty of pretentious people in life, it’s a definite type.
Dean, on the other hand, is horrible in a way that needs to be addressed as it could be legitimately dangerous to others. It’s the kind of horribleness that needs adjustment, that needs attention, that needs to be FIXED. Whereas Jess was the type that you can see was “oh he’s just a terrible teenager, a teenage dirtbag, etc,” Dean was actually dangerous. It’s not behavior you excuse in ANYONE to be possessive and controlling, it’s not “normal teen behavior” to scare the shit out of your girlfriend to the point that she’s afraid to tell you about something because she thinks you’ll freak out. Dean was horrible in the way that he exhibited the telltale signs of being someone who is capable of emotional abuse and has a serious potential for physical abuse. And he only got more scary about it as he aged.
OMG I remember being a child and thinking Dean was cute and sweet, and now I want to hit him over the head all the time.
Lorelai likes him! Which is weird to me because he is a controlling asshole. He gets mad at her because he springs an ‘I love you’ and she doesn’t instantly respond the same way? Dick. Total dick.
Jess is pretty terrible until he grows up, but he’s good in that otherwise Rory would probably have complacently stayed with Dean forever.
And poor poor Lane.
The Toast Stance is entirely correct. She should have had an abortion and continued to rock out. Also, not marrying Zach would have been smart. But that might just be me, since I have this weird thing about guys who fly into jealous rages and fuck up other people’s lives when someone is kind to their partner.
Zack is garbage.
I’m watching it now for the first time and I’m halfway through season 4. I guess I see how I probably would have liked it when I was a teenager, but I find almost all of the characters insufferable! Rory is still a teenager so is somewhat excused. But Lorelai is the most immature person on the planet and all of the male characters are soooo terrible, except Luke. Dean is definitely the woooorst.
Yes! I remembered Dean as being a typical first boyfriend, but as I’ve been rewatching it–dear Christ, the sheer amount of times he yells at Rory.
I’m rewatching Season One right now and Rory is the worst friend ever. The woooooooorst! “Oh hey, ostensible ‘best friend,’ let me just completely ignore you sitting next to me on this bench as I make out with my mushroom-haired boyfrand”
I can’t stand his mushroom haircut. Or his angry, controlling, sub par personality. DEAN.
I’ve been watching it for the first time and having feelings! I’m so addicted that last night I was biking home I noticed that the theme song was running through my head in anticipation of watching it, it’s that bad.
At first I didn’t get why people thought Rory and Lorelai are so terrible, but as the seasons progress I do, though I still like them alot in the end. I think the characters are really, really well done– I find Emily, Lorelai and Rory very believable in that they are all very different characters but possess many of the same character traits and flaws.
But UGH, Dean. He’s so bad that I’m almost #Teamtristan just because that guy knows he’s an asshole. Also, this may not be fair but I get a little annoyed with the whole ‘Rory is just this gorgeous girl who doesn’t even think about boys much but they’re always falling all over her, and everyone else is super jealous’ thing. It doesn’t seem that realistic to me that a 16-year-old girl would apparently have no insecurity or unrequited crushes or heartbreak beyond a guy just being way too in love with her.
I think that’s why Jess is a necessary character. He keeps her on her toes and exposes her insecurities (for better or worse) in a way that Dean didn’t. And when she kisses Jess even though she’s still with Dean, she has to deal with the feelings of guilt for not being the perfect little person she’s always been. I’m not a huge fan of Jess, but their relationship is at least a little intellectually challenging for Rory.
Also, my husband has taken to calling this show “The Gilmies” as in, “Are you watching The Gilmies again?”
Oooh interesting. I’m just getting to the Jess stuff (though I figured she was gonna kiss him so no spoiler-worries, this is odd territory with everyone who hasn’t seen it before watching it for the first time and everyone else re-watching).
I am up to Season 6, and yeah, I am having lots of Feelings. I still love the show, and the writing definitely had a major impact on my speech patterns, but it is definitely interesting to see what I remembered and what I forgot and how being 32 colors how I feel about the characters differently than being 22 did. (and also how knowing how each story turns out affects how I feel about things when they happen)
I said somewhere the other day (I think on Twitter) that part of the problem with the boys that Rory dates is that they (like so many teenagers) want what Rory represents to them, or their idea of Rory, rather than Rory as a real complete person. Dean definitely puts a lot of expecatations and burdens and strings on Rory. Jess definitely thinks of Rory as his manic pixie dream girl. And even Logan has some expectations of who Rory is and what it means to be with her. Additionally, Luke and all of Rory’s boyfriends get jealous WAY too easily.
Yes to all the Dean comments! I’m watching it for the first time at age 28. I’m halfway through season 3 right now and I’m kind of amazed it took them so long to break up. The only time Dean wasn’t being incredibly boring was when he was being borderline abusive. I feel like this happens a lot on TV. Someone doesn’t want to tell their male partner about some incident because they’re afraid of how violently he’ll react and everyone around her treats it as totally normal and not at all frightening. I was amazed at how Lorelai acted when she found out that Dean and Rory had broken up because he said “I love you” and she didn’t say it right back. How about respecting the fact that your 16 year old daughter doesn’t want to get too serious yet about love instead of worrying that it means she’ll never be able to love anyone?
READING.
So, based on seeing some other Toasties and Toastie-esque folk doing this, I decided this would be my year of reading nothing but female authors. And I’ve been doing well! Susanna Clarke, Ursula LeGuin, Jane Austen (two different books, because they were free on Google Books), etc. I had already made an exception for Walt Whitman (because he’s my favorite, among other reasons), but I was just starting Flight of the Falcon (Daphne duMaurier), when I left my book at work! And so…I started reading The Picture of Dorian Grey. I realize that of all the things to talk about in Life Crises, this might not be the biggest, but oh How The Mighty Have Fallen. Sigh. Does it count less because it’s Oscar Wilde? At least he’s not a dickish male?
Because there are not-shitty men who write not-shitty books, my rule is “no two men,” as in, the autor and the main character can’t both be a man. I guess I broke that rule when I read Into Thin Air, though, although arguably Mt Everest/Mother Earth is the main character…anyway, don’t feel bad!
I’m doing something similar, and I also cheated a little for no particular reason–once with a newly published memoir I found in a Wee Free Library, and once with a reread. I’m not a big believer in 100% purity in anything, really (I was already reading stories and essays and poems and journalism by men, just not whole books), and the fact that I’ve taken initiative to choose books by women is more important to me than the fact that they have had a tiny bit of male company.
I’m doing no-white-men this year, but I have definitely cheated for reasons similar to yours! I gave myself an exception for David Sedaris because at least he’s not a straight-white-male? Ugh, that might be reaching but you could use that exception for Oscar Wilde, too, if you’d like!
I have made the same lapse in my no-white-men regimen. I read the Secret History by Donna Tartt, which was engaging and I’d love to discuss it. The Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, which was great. Then picked up A Tale for the Time Being and… I can’t read it. It is truly awful. I would also like to discuss it with someone who managed to get more than a third of the way through. And then John Darnielle’s book arrived in the mail and I broke down and now I’m reading that instead.
Any suggestions with which to get back on the wagon?
I’m reading Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and it’s deeply absorbing so far. Hoping to get through Home and Gilead before I go to a reading she’s doing here in a few weeks.
I love The Secret History and it’s AU twin, The Likeness by Tana French, which you should definitely read. You might also like Tartt’s most recent, The Goldfinch; I enjoyed it almost as much as TSH. Looking at my bookshelves, there are lots of other women writers you could get back on the wagon with–Sylvia Plath, Sarah Waters, Audre Lorde.
The Secret History is one of my favorite books ever. Tana French is also very good. I really like Kate Atkinson – I started with Life After Life and then moved on to her crusty-cop mysteries.
I have not read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese but I swear every time I read a “suggest me a book!” thread it comes up. He was born in Ethiopia and his parents are from India.
I loved A Tale for the Time Being for the most part, but I listened to it on audiobook so maybe that makes a difference. It was read by the author which made it feel special.
My ladyfriendfianceeperson just texted me from NYC, saying she found her wedding dress, and it’s Vera Wang and she bought it in Manhattan and she feels “fancy.” I cannot wait to see her in it, but I have to wait til August. Yaaaaay and boooo at the same time!!
CONGRATULATIONS HUGPUNCH ON YOUR FORTHCOMING NUPTIALS
HEAR, HEAR!!!
I AM ALSO VERY EXCITED and i have sent multiple text requests for photos and she keeps teasing me about it. But I can’t see it til the wedding. Our colors are green and gray; think aspen tree against a thundercloud. She’s going to be so beautiful it hurts.
<3 Many congrats.
I started a fine art photography course last night. The instructor, who is of grandpa age, recommended a single book to us: On Photography by … Susan Sontag.
I think I have found my photography Dad.
Delurking a bit to happily crow. First of all, I’ve gotten so much Toast Post, and it’s very exciting. Another person with my name in my building got some of them by accident, which is kind of fun too.
I started volunteering with an organization that runs guided creative mentorship programs for local 5th grade girls (most of whom come from immigrant and/or low income homes) and last night we finally met the mentees and it was such a blast. I was very nervous at first because I’ve never really hung out with kids like that, but as the evening went on, my thoughts turned to “Oh. Oh, I get it, I can TOTALLY hang with 10-year old girls. I just drop the entire facade I put on throughout the day that makes me feel less like myself!” I’m so pumped to spend a year with these girls, and with the other 11 lady mentors.
And now I’m highly motivated to learn all the words to the “Frozen” soundtrack and placing bets on whether or not I’ll be able to get “Shake it Off” out of my head before the holidays.
TOAST POST! I love Toast Post so much. I love hearing about other people loving it too.
Speaking as a Brownie leader (do you have Brownies in the US? Here, they are the smaller version of Girl Guides – 7-10) I can confirm that hanging out with small girls is great. It sounds like your volunteering programme is fantastic and I wish you all the best with it.
One thing I’ve found with my Brownies is that at that age – just on the point of transition out of the “little kid” stage – they’re just starting to engage with the wider world in a way that they can properly articulate, and it’s by turns uplifting and sad. It’s wonderful to hear them chattering away about rugby and Horrible Histories and their lofty plans for the future (I have one who wants to be a famous mathematician, and another who wants to open a wolf sanctuary). It’s kind of heartbreaking when they start to talk about how grown-up girls have to wear makeup and boys can’t (I set them right on that one) and diets. At 10.
I hope you have an amazing time with them.
Toast Poooost!! I like your neighbor got in on some of the fun too <3
How do I get into the Toast Post game? I’ve started seeing mentions, and I’ve love to make little random packages and also to send them!
Hi Toasties, I have a question. Have any of you ever decided to stop living with your partner to help your relationship? My girlfriend and I have lived together for about two years and we just decided we can’t live together anymore of mental health reasons, but we’re going to try to keep dating. I’m feeling pretty anxious about this so anybody’s personal experience would be nice to hear about.
Yes. After living together for a year, my now-fiance and I got seperate places for about a year. The only reason we moved back in together is because a good deal on a beautiful two-bedroom fell into my lap and I knew he’d be a better housemate than any random I’d find on Craigslist. It will be 2 years in that spot in April, and we recently got engaged, but I highly doubt any of this would have happened if we hadn’t gotten out of each other’s hair for a few months (or if we were stuck in a one-bedroom breathing down each other’s necks all the time.) There’s so much to be said for a bit of personal space.
Ah yes, this is my hope! Thank you!
My boyfriend joined me in another city when I was doing grad school, and it kinda sucked. He works weird hours and we weren’t really having cozy-sleeping-hours together, dinner together, etc. So when we moved back to Toronto (and he moved back first, for a job, while I was finishing my last semester) it was easier to get separate places.
It was weird at first when I got back, because I was couchsurfing around and staying with him about four nights a week anyways. I’m not sure if that was a nice transitional period or if it would’ve been better to just stop entirely. As it is we see each other two nights a week.
I don’t plan to move back in with him anytime soon. The main thing is the job thing, and then there are some other relationshippy issues to work out. But we’re doing okay.
Not to help the relationship. For me, that would be a poor priority. I would try living apart to help each of us gain health/happiness as individuals. Then see what that does to the relationship. If one of us (or, ideally, both of us) is happier/healthier, then it was the right thing to do. If a happier/healthier member of the couple hastens the end of the relationship, it was meant to end and it’s all to the good.
Good point, it was actually more in hopes that by helping ourselves individually it would improve our relationship.
I don’t have anything reassuring to say. Everyone I know who has done this broke up for real within, say, six months at the longest. Living apart ended up being sort of a trial run for being single again: Can I pay my bills? Do I mind coming home to an empty house? Do I have enough furniture to function?
Not specifically to help the relationship, but because I need to live alone, as opposed to with a significant other. Relationship is still going a year and a half later, and things are much better. Solitary witch-caves forever!
Is anyone else consistently mistaken for the opposite gender on the Internet? Like posting on a forum under a pseudonym or leaving an Amazon review, and then people below you refer to “what this guy says” or “I agree with what he’s saying”. This happens a lot to me. And the perverse thing is that my first instinct is to feel flattered, and then immediately feel ashamed that I feel flattered, because how horrible of me.
Yes, but I got annoyed and changed my forum signature so people would stop doing it. =>
I have a bunch of nebulous thoughts about how/why progressive communities rally around abusers who know the right buzzwords and the right phrases over victims who do not, and the frankly pretty toxic way internet progressives deal with even conflict with other progressives and how abusers exploit that to get their abusive kicks, but every time I start to type I get too upset to keep going (and frankly, even if I did write it, I don’t really want straight-up lies told about me, so there’s that too). Hooray :c
On a happier subject, HALLOWEEN IS COMING, I am excited and also stressed out, because WOW I’m going to be busy! Gonna watch scary movies today, and more scary movies tomorrow, and then maybe I’ll be going to the Adler Planetarium for a Halloween thing on Thursday?, and then a Halloween party on Friday, and then I’m running a LARP on Saturday while hopped up on sale candy.
HALLOWEEEEEEN
If you live in an apartment, how do you decorate? I would love to carve a pumpkin, but I think that’s not going to fly with my landlord.
We have Halloween garland and tiny jack-o-lantern ceramic pumpkins and spider icicle lights and that spider web stuff. And by we, I mean my husband, who is powerless in the face of seasonal decorative items. There are certain months he is not allowed into Target without supervision. (But let’s face it, Halloween garland and spider icicle lights, etc. are totally good times).
Toastettes! I was looking for a job AND THEN I FOUND A JOB! Huzzah and hallelujah.
LIVING THE DREAM. Please forward me your job-finding mojo. I will give it a good home.
Sending it your way as I type, along with lots of best wishes and an internet margarita.
Seconded! Can I have the spare? It would be put to good use 🙂
Also congratulations!!
Hearty congratulations!
…and heaven knows you’re not miserable now. Congratulations!
I may, however, be happy in the haze of a drunken hour. (Thank you!)
CONGRATULATIONS ON JOB that is the greatest. 😀
Posting twice because I need some crowd-sourced advice from people on two fronts:
1. I went on the world’s most awkward date this weekend. Shortened version: fifth date with a lady I met on online (previous dates had been going out to get drinks, this one was going out of town to a ren fest) and she brought a bunch of her friends and they spent the entire day isolating me and having what they called “heart-to-hearts” (I had met these people hours before, mind) about how good I am for her and how they’ve never seen her happier and how they couldn’t wait to see where our relationship goes. They were talking about how much I was going to like her parents and she was making plans for late spring. I was so overwhelmed. We have never had a talk about exclusivity or seriousness. Just the aforementioned drink dates, and I went back to her place once but did not spend the night. My question, I guess, is how do you break up with someone who you didn’t know you were in a relationship with? I would feel weird doing it over text, but we also really haven’t gone out much so I don’t know what to do.
2. I recently moved to a new city and am subletting an apartment until December. I had promised before this sublet that I would move to a new apartment with a friend in the area (she currently/has always lived with her parents). I recently found out I can sublet for another roommate in my current apartment (which I adore) until March, and I want to take it, but I worry about bailing on my friend, because she really needs someone to live with if she’s gonna move out. What’s the etiquette in these situations?
1. I never found a good way to say, “I can’t see you any more. Thanks for giving me your time. I wish you well. Goodbye.”
2, And I never found a good way to listen to the response to the above.
3. And I never found a good way to just leave after the response wound down or began to repeat itself.
But remembering the 3 steps got me through it often enough. It always sucked. But I got through it. And so did they.
Oh gosh, awkward date solidarity. In this instance, if she is not the type of person that would react well to the “what do you mean we’re breaking up” conversation, text or email might be okay. I fully plan on doing that with the guy I was talking about above because honestly, I don’t need the dramatics that I can tell will go with an in-person thing. I’m not sure if that makes me a bad person. 🙁
It definitely does not make you a bad person. The obsession over methods of breakup communication is primarily displacement from the shock and hurt that comes from receiving the message “I do not/no longer like you in that way.” There is no method of communication that makes that a good message to hear, but people want it to be the case that there would have been no pain if only the break-uper had done in the Right Way.
(But anyway, first dates are nothing, no one deserves anything more than the courtesy of a definite “No second date, thanks,” delivered by literally any medium of communication (including carrier pigeon, semaphore, or mutual friend) after a first date.)
Okay, I have strong feelings about number 2, having been your friend in a similar situation. Those strong feelings are mainly, 1) don’t do that to her and 2) if you must, tell her AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, like right now, so she can start making other plans. Honestly, the etiqutte in this situation is that you don’t screw over a friend’s living situation for an adorable apartment unless you can help your friend get a place. This will almost definitely hurt your relationship with your friend, and you need to balance whether that’s worth 3 more months in a cute place.
/caveat: I was screwed over in college, an admittedly less mature time for everyone involved. /other caveat: Are you going to move with her in March, then? If so, I would tell her that and I would also make some effort to show her you mean it (share listings, talk about neighborhoods, I dk), because you’ve already backed out of your plans with her once now.
Eeesh I dunno but I have been seeing this guy for like six weeks and hoping to introduce him to my friends this weekend and you’re making me nervous!! (I’m fairly confident none of my friends would want to have heart-to-heart with him though.)
No shhh, do not suggest ramen to me right now. I have already eaten out enough this week, but I’m getting a massage tonight and the ramen place is like three doors down from there. Shhh.
Also I feel like I’ve been fucking pissed off about everything this week, which may be a result of (a) birth control or (b) adjusting to this birth control (different in that maybe it will even out in the next two months) or (c) birth control not really changing much of anything and me having normal PMS symptoms or (d) there’s a lot to be pissed off about like GamerGate and manipulative churches and realizing the religious environment that I grew up in has shaped the way I respond to things, not necessarily for the better.
I’m with you on the religious childhood environment fucking up one’s responses. It’s been a long re-education effort.
::solidarity fistbump::
*fistbump* I’m only just recently letting myself know that something was wrong with it, so I’ve got quite a journey ahead of me. Whither it will lead, I do not know.
I’d love to hear more about your journey. If you want a sympathetic ear, type to me at [email protected]
Thank you for the offer! I’m currently trying to balance “processing” with “thinking so hard about this that I get miserable” so I don’t think I’ll be taking you up on it right away, but if you want to read some of the thoughts I’ve had so far, I’ve been tracking them on tumblr under the tou and church and tag this later tags! Eventually “tag this later” will probably have a real tag but right now it’s functioning quite effectively so I’ve been too lazy to come up with something.
I’m with you on the anger front. Last week it was hormones, this week it was people at work and various terrible things in the world (Pistorious sentencing, gamergate, etc). I am getting a massage tomorrow and looking forward to it so much.
*fist bumps*
*fistbump* Enjoy that massage. Mine has helped enormously.
LET’S DO THE SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS THING GUYS! (LAST SPORTS THREAD OF MY 20S, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT SIGNIFIES, BUT THERE IT IS)
Really glad to see the Royals bounce back in game 2, game 1 did not bode well for them, and it gave me a really bad feeling. Let’s go KC.
Joe Maddon just opted out of his contract with Tampa Bay…uh oh…
THERE’S A QUARTERBACK CONTROVERSY IN DC, well, if you’re an idiot there’s a quarterback controversy, but most of us are idiots, so!
Steve Nash out for the season, which, that’s gotta be it for him, right? Nerve damage + 75 years old has got to = retire. Damn he was fun to watch.
Also, NBA is almost here!
Other things! I’m rushing around for the next couple hours, so how bout you guys fill in the numerous blanks! Talk to me!!!!
It wouldn’t be DC without SOME sort of controversy. If only they could get a new owner. (sigh)
I think Steve Nash is done, which is too bad. I’m always rooting for the old guy in sports. He was really fun to watch.
My husband has been following the Celts in the pre-season and says they’re pretty good, but generally pretty young. Not expecting much out of them this year.
Having a great time ignoring the NFL and all its garbage this season.
I really like Brad Stevens, and I think he’s got a pretty sweet future ahead of him, so that bodes well for the Celtics.
Yeah, sucks about Nash, but it was fun while it lasted.
You guys are being weird today, where are you
ETA: NEVERMND
The big sport I follow is soccer, especially La Liga, especially Barca. I am always sad that America isn’t more into soccer. But Barca and Real Madrid play each other tomorrow, and hopefully Messi and Neymar can pull off a win!
I would watch so much more if it wasn’t on at 6 in the goddamn morning for me. Might get up for that one, though.
tomorrow’s going to be my first clasico in AGES. Hope it’s a good one – though I’m definitely rooting for the other team! 😉
Whispers *but I like the San Francisco Baseball Giants*
Oh, we know you people are out there, we know. What’s the latest on Lincecum, he looked pretty good out there the other night, until the back tweek.
Going to Philly this weekend to watch CONCACAF finals! I don’t know if I’ll go to the 3rd place game or just the championship – depends on friends’ plans – but either way I haven’t been to live soccer in forever (or…a few months) and I am excited.
(Happy 30th! Mine is in just under 6 months…)
One time, like more than a year ago, I texted Mallory inviting her to my baseball team’s game on a nice sunny Sunday afternoon and she rightfully responded with something like, “It’s hilarious that you think I would enjoy a sport.” I’m paraphrasing but you all know, that’s a close/classic Mallorism.
And this is why we keep the sports hidden in the recesses of the open thread once a week.
(Also, hi whizzdumb, I feel like I haven’t seen your name pop up in forever!)
Your observation is accurate, I just came out of a self-inflicted 6-month timeout from commenting because I messed up a little and rambled inappropriately back in April or so. I’ve been working on censoring my own vulgarity in real life too. Just because I have no shame doesn’t mean people want to hear about my gross thoughts. (Can we keep it vague?)
ANYWAYS I’m looking forward to this WS game 3 tonight. Also excited about watching BULLS and Blackhawks games and seeing how their seasons pan out.
Ah, gotcha. Well, it’s good to see you back.
Rose looked good the other night, god, did you see everyone FLOCK to him when he hit the floor at one point?
I’m back like DRose!! *makes similar comment-ending inappropriate rant (much like his season ending knee injury last year)* I heard about that, against Cleveland? but I refuse to watch preseason games.
Preseason is trash, but I’ll watch the highlights, if you can call them that.
I am kind of sickly so I took this afternoon off and had a leisurely lunch on my way home because I had to give my friend her spare key before she moved out, so I’m both not sober and not feeling well.
ANYWAY
So I have to tell you this: I’m not proud of it but as an Os fan I am so full of salt that right now, I want the Giants to beat KC. I know, KC is the underdog, AL bros, 29 years without a WS BUT I WANT THEM TO FEEL DESPAIR.
We’ll see how I feel again in a few games.
Also, lol, Colt McCoy is Washington’s starting QB, can you even imagine if you guys had left Sexy Rexy on your roster? He’d be starting!
Haha oh, I get the hate for the Royals, RK, were I an O’s fan I’d probably be in the same damn, angry boat. And I hope you feel better!
I WANT THE SEX CANNON BACK, SLINGING HOT PASSES, BABY
Here to represent the midwestern football-lovin’ contingency:
Packers were TOO BEAUTIFUL last week, beautiful enough that Fox cut off the game to show the Seahawks getting drubbed. Fortunately I had a friend at Lambeau texting me pics. But oof, Seahawks. You guys. I love you but that was hard to watch.
Aaand SAINTS, you were supposed to beat the Lions, thereby cementing the Packers in their rightful spot, (i.e. first in NFC North) but you choked. And so we are still second in NFC North, despite having a better point differential than the Lions. How do they even decide that stuff?
Sigh. I know football is terrible but I love watching it so much…
Aaron Rogers: on his way to greatest of all-time? I’m starting to really, really buy that.
Hi, people. I have a gift question. In a few weeks I’m getting married and some family friends are very generously hosting a small get-together after the ceremony. Or, it was supposed to be small and has gotten big. I feel like these people need a proper thank you gift but I’m not sure what that can be. They are an active couple in their 60s who live in New York City and already take full advantage of everything the city has to offer. Additionally, they are very wealthy and have well-connected friends, so anything that I would normally give as a nice gift (great theater tickets, night out at fancy restaurant, etc.) they either are already doing or could get a better offer from one of their well-connected friends. (i.e., backstage pass and opening night tickets from their actor/theater friends, their own table and tasting menu from chef friend, etc.) Even if we did take them out to a nice dinner and told them we were paying, they would probably find a way to slip a couple hundreds in one of our pockets on the way out, cuz why the hell not. They are also the type of people who have everything they need and more, don’t want more THINGS, and would tell us frankly if they thought we wasted our money on something dumb. Oh also we’re not in a position to, like, spend a whole lotta coin on this. Whattttt to do help please.
Maybe something handmade/personal? A framed photo collage? Or something rare-ish but not expensive?
Example: for my dad’s birthday several years ago, I found an old magazine advertisement for the motorcycle he rides (1985 BMW R-65) and had it framed. Didn’t cost that much, but it did take some digging around ebay to find it.
Good thinking! What a great gift that must have been for your dad. Going to do some EBay/Etsy scouring this weekend.
Are they local enough that you could have them over for dinner?
They are, although we’ve already had them over a few times just for kicks. Maybe we’ll do it again and up the fancy a little. Thanks!!
Oooh, or get them a gift certificate to do something appallingly touristy in New York. Like one of those Statue of Liberty ferry rides, or a trip to the top of the Empire State.
Have flowers delivered. Extra points for telling the florist the colors of their decor.
OOoo good call.
Or even better, you can go to the NY flower market, pick out some amazing flowers (it’s wholesale prices!), and arrange them yourself and bring them over. Then you have the personal touch AND the flowers (which to my mind are the perfect thing for situations like these, because they are beautiful, emotional, and ephemeral, so people always can use more flowers! Also they mark occasions so well).
How about a photo album of pictures from the party? If there’s a pro photographer or you just have a friend with a nice camera, make sure you get at least one photo of all of you together and take several more throughout. Then later you can make them into a little book with maybe a handwritten letter about how much it/they mean to you.
I like the ideas of getting flowers delivered and also having them over for dinner, but also sometimes really people are happy to be doing these things and really all you owe them is a timely, hand-written thank you note. If anyone is giving a speech/toast at the party, and you have any influence with them (e.g. if there is a best man or something), make sure they thank/praise the hosts of the party.
After several terrible weeks, had a pretty great one:
-Met more Toasties in SF at Alexis Coe’s “Alice & Freda Forever” event at Booksmith! (um, Hi Kate and Pamela if you’re reading. Wish I’d gotten some contact info.)
-Finally getting into the groove at the internship, and mostly not perfection-procrastinating everything
-Decided to blog, will be asking Toasties for advice on platforms at some point.
-Accepted/ realized that a lover has transitioned into Friend, even though neither of us explicitly called it that. Grieving but OK with it all.
Hi! If this is Dorothy you can tweet me @anotherkate_sf
I haven’t had time to start Alice & Freda yet, have you?
Things that appear to move independently of human intervention. Toys that blink and beep, talking dolls, animatronic things, those sliding van doors that move on their own when you start to push them. I was once in a mall where the garbage can thanked me and I almost peed my pants. By the way, IntenseDebate, this is for aravisthequeen’s “creepy things” question, ya bum.
Creepy things: comments that are just random lists of things with no context
🙂
Oh, I enjoyed it as its own standalone comment. I was reading along like, “All right, all right, I’m with you so far…”
I posted for the first time in the last open thread, but thought I would ask again (earlier) in this one…does anyone happen to live in Madrid?
Life here is getting better and better as I settle and meet new people. I wake up in the morning every day and can hardly wait to see what the day will bring, which is definitely not how I felt over the last three or four years. I am so thrilled that I was brave and decided to move here.
What are you doing in Madrid? It sounds absolutely lovely.
I’m here on a fellowship as an English teaching assistant. It’s one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been! I never expected to love it this much.
about 10% of me is dedicated to wanting ramen at any given moment though obviously this can ramp up to 100% when circumstances arise. I have been watching Mind of a Chef this week wherein David Chang talks about ramen at least once per episode so I’ve been operating at a fair clip of 30-40% of me wanting ramen all week.
I’ve been thinking recently about how glad I am to work where I do, where all my bosses (all the way up) are women and the majority of my coworkers are women and like half of my team are queer and half of us (a different half) are also mixed race/not-white, and I am really happy that these spaces exist.
Please may I have a job in your office?
The other day there was a consultant working in my office and he left the seat up on the (only) toilet. I was stunned, and then thrilled that I could be stunned, and then very very grateful to be working in a place where all full-time employees are women and dudes only occasionally come in. I am with you in office appreciation. (Though we do have some race representation problems.)
I’ve been watching Mind of a Chef this week too! And I was so pleasantly surprised that the second season finally brought in more female chefs; it was so annoying to me that David Chang didn’t have any female chef friends. But then it got all Orientalist and that ruined some of it.
more female chefs! aah that would be awesome. There are definitely parts to the show where I’m like “…why are these two dudes here talking about this stuff” and for some reason it really bugs me that part of the show is David Chang going around trying things and then he cooks these dishes and most of the time DOES NOT TASTE THEM whyyyy.
Hey Toasties! A few threads ago I offered to do one card draw Tarot readings to any interested parties. I had great fun, but couldn’t get to everyone because that very day my heart was broken by the lies of a cruel and callow man. I’m now at the point where I can write that sentence without tearing up, so WHO WANTS ONE CARD DRAW TAROT READINGS FROM THE RIDER-WAITE DECK?? I’ll get to as many of you guys as I can. Also, if you have a specific situation you want insight on, feel free to leave a brief general descriptor – it won’t ruin the ~*~*~sacred energies of the cards ~*~*~ or whatever.
I would like one on my love life!
I drew: The World, reversed
The Tarot is ostensibly designed to tell the archetypal mono-myth of the various journeys we take in life (referred to under the term The Fool’s Journey.) The World, when drawn, speaks to the end of a particular journey – everything coming to fruition and falling into place, with all your effort and struggles paying off and you getting everything you’ve wished for. Normally when this card comes up it is cause for kicking back, relaxing, and waiting for the awesome to kick in. However, in this draw the World is reversed – which means that unfortunately you’re going to have to wait just a bit more and try just a bit harder before everything finally starts coming up roses. For anything other than love life I’d say this card is telling you to double down your efforts to achieve your goals – you’re almost at the finish line – but since the affairs of the heart are mysterious and inscrutable (even for occult divination tools) I’m tempted to read this card as a hopeful message telling you to hold on just a bit longer before you give up on whatever ideal picture you have of what love means to you. All the joys of The World are still out there waiting for you – just *not quite yet.*
Hmmm. Interesting. Thanks!
I don’t know if this question is too specific, but “What should I keep in mind as I start therapy?”
I drew: The Reversed Two of Cups
For all the mystique and hype, sometimes Tarot draws can be obnoxiously, bluntly on the nose. This is one of those times. The Cups are, as an arcana, preoccupied with the dealings of emotions and the subconscious mind. The Two of Cups, in particular, speaks to a happy mind, and stability and health in interpersonal relationships. When the Two of Cups is reversed, it – SURPRISE, SURPRISE – tells of an imbalanced mind, interpersonal strife, and a problem overall mental health. Basically, the reversed Two of Cups is reminding you of what you already know – that you need, for your health, to work on the things in your mind that are causing you strife. However, the card also carries another facet of meaning – one shared by all the Two cards, which refers to actionable choices a person can make in order to either carry out the meaning of the card or render the card meaningless. With this in mind, I’m tempted to read this card as saying this: Yeah, you have problems – that’s why you’re in therapy in the first place. But you’re also, in going to therapy, making the exact right choice you need to have made in order to eventually make this card devoid of meaning for you. Keep your mental and physical health at the forefront, and you’ll reap your own rewards.
Thank you! I’m looking into learning Tarot, so your explanations are so wonderful. 🙂
This is, in fact, especially on the nose because I keep going back and forth between “ugh I don’t even need therapy” and “it’s not like therapy is actually going to help you, you’re too mired in your own problems” and sometimes hold these two thoughts simultaneously. so. I guess I will keep with it and try to keep the hedgehog-prickly skeptical me soothed.
I know those two thoughts held simultaneously. Here’s to soothing the hedgehog. (not a euphemism)
I would like one!
I drew: The Page of Wands
Hooray for Court Cards! When upright, they tend to bring good news. This card in particular bears the good news of – good news! I like to imagine this card as knocking on your door, excited beyond belief, just waiting to tell you that HI YOU’RE AWESOME THINGS ARE AWESOME OH MAN I CAN’T SPOIL THE SURPRISE BUT JUST WAIT THINGS ARE GOING TO BE GREAT!!!!! and then bounding away excitedly into the night – like the sort of friend who plans you a surprise party and then can’t stop awkwardly asking what kind of cake and presents you hypothetically like, if you were to like such things. If you happen to be the sort of person who doesn’t anthropomorphize individual tarot cards, basically just get ready for some very delightful news about something that will be positive for you. Just make sure to open the door when it knocks and give it a listen, is all.
Woohoo!
I would love one if you are able to get to me!
Hi! I would like one on my extremely shaky romantic relationship if possible!
I drew: The reversed Six of Wands
Okay, with the standard disclaimer that I’m a random person on the internet who knows nothing about your personal situation and who is telling you things only based on the guidance of a glorified deck of fancily illustrated playing cards so TAKE ALL OF THIS WITH GRAINS OF SALT – this card is bad news. When the Six of Wands is upright, it is about a team or partnership working fantastically together – firing on all cylinders, completely in sync as a unit, with the same dreams, wants, and goal. However, the reverse of this card speaks to the direct opposite. What used to be an easy partnership is now full of strife, with betrayal, disappointment, distrust and disharmony on all sides. The reversed Six of Wands is working as a counter to whatever part of you wants to make excuses or pretend things are how they used to/should have been – things right now are messed the heck up. This, however, does not mean that your relationship can’t or even shouldn’t be saved. But normally when this card appears it means that there needs to be a long hard look taken at if you even want to put in the effort.
(For the record, I feel you on this – Cruel and Callow Man and I were in something of that place for a while. It sucks, and I hope that I’m totally off base.)
Ah, unfortunately for me you are totally on base 🙁
Me, please! My question: how do I cope with loneliness?
I drew: The reversed Eight of Pentacles
The upright Eight of Pentacles shows a person in a situation where they are perfectly content – satisfying job with decent enough coworkers, nice enough friends who they see on weekends, and reasonably adjusted dreams and goals, the card equivalent of the sort of person who orders the exact same steamed vegetable combo from the exact same Chinese restaurant every Friday as a treat because it isn’t that expensive and isn’t that many calories*. This is the sort of person the upright Eight of Pentacles represents – the person who has let their contentment and vague sense of satisfaction metastasize into a life where even indulgences have to be tempered and rationalized. Fortunately, you got the reverse. The reverse Eight of Pentacle is uneasy and unhappy and feels alone and discontented, which is FANTASTIC because those are the exact feelings that help get a person’s rear in gear. This card is telling you that it is totally okay to be lonely – without feeling lonely, there is no impetus to get out there and fix the loneliness. You aren’t the boring, beige, self deluding upright Eight of Pentacles – you are a wild and wonderful person who can fully admit to themselves that they hurt, a skill that not enough people have. This card tells you to give a big middle finger to upright Eight of Pentacles and to push yourself outside of your comfort zone – take all those social and romantic and culinary and work related risks which, when people don’t take them, push them into tiny awful steamed-vegetable boxes. The love of yourself and from others will only follow from there.
*I use this metaphorically – if in your heart of hearts you lust after inexpensive steamed vegetables feel free to substitute whatever entree you feel would fit this mirror universe self.
I would love a reading if you’ve got time!
Interesting! Me, if you have time?
(I’m sorry to hear about your heart. I hope you are feeling better <3)
I drew: The reversed Five of Cups
The reversed Five of Cups is a fascinating card, and speaks to an equally fascinating emotional state. When upright, the Five of Cups is the moment when something has just been lost or broken beyond repair – the second that the priceless vase falls off the table and time completely slows down as it shatters on the floor. There isn’t a clear directive in the upright Five of Cups beyond just “realize this is happening.” The reversed Five of Cups, on the other hand, is the moment right after the loss happens when you have to decide what to do. Do you lunge forward to make it look like you were trying to catch the vase? Do you blame it on the dog? Do you get out your checkbook? Or do you realize that sometimes beautiful things just break for no fucking reason because the world can be shitty and uncaring and you apologize and move the heck on? The reversed Five of Cups just says this – you’ve lost something. The choice of how to move forward is up to you, but you need to realize that, no matter how great the loss, you *can* move on.
(and thank you – every day takes me a little farther away from him emotionally, which I used to be paralyzingly afraid of but which I now realize is actually not so bad. Very Five of Cups!)
Yes! “Long-term job prospects.” Plz + thx.
I drew: Reversed Temperance
Okay, first off – what the heck is with Toasties and reversed cards? You guys are crazy for alternate and obscure meanings of straightforward icons, apparently! Secondly – the card of Temperance is one of the Major Arcana, which, as I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread, directly speak to a journey or quest that you are on. Since Temperance upright speaks to balance, Temperance reversed in the context of long term job prospects serves as a warning of unbalanced and un-harmonious situations in the workplace – coworkers bickering, supervisors who are out to get you, Denise in the break room who always loudly complains about how she’s on a diet and can’t eat any of the brownies you brought in but the second you turn your back half the tray is gone, DENISE I SEE YOU DON’T ACT LIKE I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON. It is important to remember that this card, as a Major Arcana, is a predictor of one possible outcome of future events, and can be changed at any point as you progress through your journey. With that in mind I’d read this draw as giving you a heads up to keep an eye out for future jobs that might have red flags speaking to these situations. If you’re in a situation like this now, stepping up to be the peacemaker can only lead to positive work results. Also – this is a long shot, but one archaic reading of this card is that if you’re a priest it is time to leave the priesthood and, I guess, not do that thing? Putting that out there in case it helps.
This must take so much time and energy! Thank you for doing it.
OH GOD DO ME DO ME! Oh I would love one.
I drew: The Nine of Wands
The Nine of Wands, which features art that can only be described as “college student at the peak of his acid trip totally freaking out in the bamboo forest behind the rec hall,” is a card about fortifying your defenses. Much as how this medieval french acid case would have really benefited from having a spotter, you’re about to enter into a situation where you need to do as much prep-work and defense as you can before engaging. Is there a part of your life where you feel like you’re flying by the seat of your pants? The Nine of Wands is pointing directly at it, telling you that this is exactly where you’re going to need to be the most strong, Fortunately, as this card is upright, you’ll breeze through that complicated situation no problem once you’ve taken precautions. But get on shoring up your defenses, and also don’t do Medieval French acid.
Heck yes, if you’re offering! Thank you!
I drew: The reversed Three of Cups
The reversed Three of Cups speaks to the aftereffects of overindulgence, and the guilt and regret associated with decisions made on impulse. When this card appears, it is a warning to be mindful of how a lack of self discipline can go very quickly from “too much fun” to “too much” to “oh god no mistakes were very much made.” This card is by no means an OMEN OF DISASTER, however. Think of the reversed Three of Cups as a worrying mom reminding you to not drink too much at the party and to bring a sweater in case you get cold.
Me, please! Also on love life. Ladiez, right?
I drew: The reversed Queen of Swords
Hah! So this is pretty neat – the court cards always talk about specific people that you either know or are about to meet, and the Queen of Swords is actually about a lady! The fact that the card is reversed means, unfortunately, that this lady is Bad News and All Kinds of Drama. When upright, the Queen of Swords is a lady who is very open and honest, who is good at communicating and uses her communication skills for the benefit of others. When reversed, the Queen of Swords is a lady straight out of the Real Housewives, willing to say anything to anyone as long as it gets her airtime. I’d keep an eye out for someone in your life who may be spreading rumors or who seems to be telling you things that keep you running around in circles. In the context of your love life, this card may refer to either a potential partner or someone who wants to sabotage you for their own gains. One very literal interpretations (which I normally steer against, but which I’m adding because who knows, it might help) is that of a woman who loves you in secret, using the trust you have in her to keep you out of romantic relationships that could otherwise prove satisfying and fulfilling. Anyway, just keep your wits about you as you travel down the journey of your love life – ladies, right?
Me! On how 2015 will go.
I drew: The Magician
WHAT’S UP MAJOR ARCANA! So as mentioned, the major arcana tell us where we are on our Fool’s Journey, and the Magician is a card that appears right after you take your first step. The card before the Magician is the Fool, who sets out with a goal in mind but no plan beyond just “getting started.” The Magician is when things start to get serious. Your goals are moving from abstract to concrete, and you’re figuring out exactly what you need to do to get there. Bear in mind that in this process you might realize that you were less prepared than you thought, or that you had thoughts and dreams which were extraordinary naive. That’s completely okay, because on the other side of those revelations lies a clarified sense of who you are and what you want, and letting go of the parts of your dreams and goals that can’t or won’t work out helps you move forward even faster. This is especially important because the Magician is also the card of forging the self, and self delusion will only hold you back. This will be a year of very important changes, all for the good. Congrats!
Thank you!
Oh my there are so many replies already…
But that sounds fun!
I drew: The Seven of Swords
The Seven of Swords features, as art, a man who is sneakily stealing some massive swords. Only five though! He left two behind! Why would he do that? Because, if you take the card at face (hah) value, the Seven of Swords is your reminder that it is okay to be just a little bit sneaky in order to get what you want. Just like how stealing all seven swords would severely slow the sword dealer’s surreptitious shenanigans, you breaking the rules in a way that is beyond the pale would only lead to bad results. However, if just breaking the rules a litttle bit or telling a tiny white lie is standing between you and something that would both really benefit you and not hurt anyone else? Go ahead and sneak off with those five swords.
I would like to know if my continued traumatic haunting of OK Cupid is going to pay off at some point, or should I just embrace misandry and many cocker spaniels as my life partners?
I drew: The reversed Ten of Pentacles
First off – I could draw any card in the deck but there will never be a single one that would ever caution you against the sheer joy of cocker spaniels. The card that I did draw, the Ten of Pentacles, speaks to a side of love and dating that places you in the context of both your family and the generations of family that will come after you. When the Ten of Pentacles is upright it places you as the proud heir to, and upholder of, a family legacy. The reverse Ten of Pentacles indicates a rupture with that legacy, and of abandoning your birthright to forge your own path. This doesn’t at all mean that you’ll never have a family or kids or anything like that. Rather, it means that when it comes to romance and love and family you are on a path that differs from that of previous generations. The standard white picket fence models of Being In Love and Having a Family just aren’t ones that you are suited for – you have to think about what it is that *you* want in a relationship, rather than what is expected by society. On a more literal note, if you come from a family that has a lot of divorces or failed relationships, you can take comfort in the fact that that won’t also be your legacy.
I’d like one on my attempt to finish grad school, if you’ve got time!
And I am so sorry to hear your heart was broken 🙁 I am sending internet cupcakes your way!
I drew: The reversed Page of Swords
The swords, as a suit, deal with communication and the intellect. In general, if a sword card is reversed it speaks to difficulties with the two, and this is very much the case here. The Page, as a court card, speaks to an interpersonal relationship, and the reversed Page of Swords tells of an intellectual relationship which is – pardon my french – effed the heck up. This is an unbalanced relationship where one person has assumed all of the intellectual control, and has made the other person feel stupid, childlike, and unable to express themselves clearly via the spoken or the written word. *Made* is the key word here – outside of this dynamic both parties are intelligent and positive – but inside this dynamic both parties are so settled in their roles that they almost forget who they are outside of it. You can read this as about a specific person (your advisor or a classmate, maybe) but I’m leaning towards thinking of this card as about grad school itself. Remember who you are outside of academia, and hold onto that sense of self very tightly. Don’t let yourself be defined by other people’s desire to make themselves feel superior. Also, in a literal sense, this card warns against errors in important written documents – so, uh, pay extra attention to proofreading for the next few weeks.
That’s… remarkably spot on, in a number of interpretations/aspects :/ And good advice, too.
And, incredibly, the other major source of stress in my life is based around a bunch of Official Paperwork for an organization I’m a part of. I’ve spent the last couple weeks urging caution and care about drawing them up, to reluctant ears, so, hrm. Even tarot cards from a stranger are confirming my continued insistence on “we have to do this properly!”
Thanks for doing this! 🙂
me too! “am I going to find a job before I run out of money and have to move in with my parents?”
I drew: The Four of Wands
Hooray! The Four of Wands is a card of prosperity and material wealth – a card of being able to relax, content in the knowledge that your harvest is bountiful and you aren’t faced with want or need. If you want to run out of money and move in with your parents, unfortunately this card suggests that you’ll have to put that dream off when faced with the reality of a job and financial security.
There are many people, but I would love one if you can! I’m sorry to hear about CCM (cruel & callow man) but I am glad things are looking up for you <3
I drew: The reversed Six of Cups
Ah, the cups. The cups are some of the most fascinating cards to get in a reading, because unlike other suits, the cups are exclusively about the weird, often wildly complicated matters of the heart, emotions, and mind. The Six of Cups in particular is a card that deals with the intersection of memory and current emotions. The upright Six of Cards is a warm, positive memory that moves you forward – the reversed Six of Cups, on the other hand, is a negative memory holding you back. This could be anything from lingering resentments to (on the extreme end) memories of trauma – whatever these memories may be, they have you almost unstuck in time . You live in the present, but your mind and perceptions keep getting stuck in the past. However, the reversed Six of Cups also carries with it the message of renewal and strength. Shake out those negative memories for any positive aspects or messages, take those with you, and lock the rest in the Brain Vault where they belong.
Thanks! This was, uh, not incorrect, for sure.
I would like one about the Big Huge Horrible Overwhelming Legal Issue that is Out Of My Control.
Tell me about my looooooove life?!?
I’m sorry to hear about the broken heart! I am making dagger eyes at that guy in my head.
If you have time, I’d love a card. My current puzzle has to do with how to get better at being myself.
I would love one about which direction I should be going in: I’ve hit a rut with my job, I need to find a new apartment soon (probably on my own!), my love life is sort of non-existent, and – because it’s nearly winter in NYC again – I am halfway considering moving around the world just to escape the cold and boredom. I’m halfway to my 29th birthday and am apparently having a mid/quarter-life crisis.
I would love one, about career/.work things
If you get this far into the replies, I’d love a reading on NaNoWriMo.
Exceptionally late reply, but if you’re still at it by now, I turned 30 this week and would love some sort of guidance for the coming year.
Yes! If you get down this far! On whether I should Open My Heart to The Whims of a Man or Take to the Sea, please 🙂
I too would like one on my love life! Thanks in advance 🙂
Yay, me! (If you get the chance)
Finances/future property owning stuff. Ugh am I just going to rent forever.
I would love one – understood if you’ve got too many responses as it is, though! I can always catch you next time.
i would like one if possible on my love life!
I’d like one! Specifically for insight on a new job situation that’s come up.
I’d appreciate any insight on the near future of my professional life, whether it’s my next positon or what! Things are uncertain for me now and I’m having trouble figuring out what kind of position I’d like to have next, or ever.
I do! I do! “Next year”
I have not gotten to my Annual Halloween Tarot Reading yet, so I would love one!
(p.s. I actually usually do my own, so if I notice tomorrow afternoon that there are still stray people down here at the bottom of the list, I could chip in? Unless that would be poaching on your tarot readings, in which case, never mind.)
Oh please, my career. Thank you!!
Elaine Stritch. And the best part is I already own all the clothing for it, which means that I am living life right.
ETA: S’posed ta go in the Halloween costume thread!
Life has been accelerating at the speed of “awesome” for a couple of months now, and I’m so stoked and grateful and feel like the fuckery of the summer was like a baptism by fire to transform me for all the incredible stuff that was waiting for me. YAY! But simultaneously, there has been an unusual amount of wild, unplannable and random negative stuff happening to me. Thankfully there has been so much positive that the bad stuff is pinging off of me relatively easily? Maybe it’s a way for me to learn that the negative stuff really is NBD? or “the universe” is trying to keep me humble? or… I don’t know.
Regardless:
– graduating from nursing school in like 49 days. H alleluia.
– unexpectedly, blessedly, amazingly have a new boo who is right in every stinking way. wasn’t looking for it, actually didn’t want it, but am so glad to have it. WILD.
– find myself transforming into the person I always thought I could be. It’s like my divorce was an experience that pushed me through a last stage of development. I am a person I can love, or I always was and now I can finally love me? not sure which came first but the sense of peace and joy is overwhelming.
– MY BOSS BOUGHT US PIZZA TODAY FOR LUNCH.
GUYS, IT GETS BETTER.
This is so lovely to hear. You deserve so many amazing things.
We all do!
YOU deserve amazing things….
….and YOU deserve amazing things!!!!
EVERYONE GETS AMAZING THINGS!!!
That all sounds amazing! I’m glad to hear that things are turning around for you in such spectacular fashion 😀
I am so happy to hear this!
NYC Toasties, fellow Toastie christinatesoro and I are hosting a Halloween party in Astoria next Friday! I posted it to the Coterie page; also, you can message me on Twitter @thecaitd if you would like to attend! There will be a wine fountain and a giant jello shot shaped like a brain!
Hi, have fun in Tokyo! I hope you have a lovely time with few anxious times for you. My two favourite things were a. wandering about the ‘geek mall’ in Nanako (get the JR to Nakano and exit the station and walk towards the shopping complex – it’s easy to find) and b. going to bars in the Golden Gai (it’s quite near Shinjuku station) – there are lots of really, really tiny bars in one block. Some of them when I was there (years ago!) had ‘no foreigner’ signs, but others were welcoming. La Jetee is cool – it’s named after the film, and lots of film people have drunk there and you can see their whiskey bottles around the bar. It’s pricey though, but nice for one or two drinks.
EDIT: Man, this was for switchinggenres.
I haven’t been watching them on Netflix, but on ABC Family and they just showed the Rory/Jess car wreck episodes and man, I do not like Lorelai at all in those. I get that Rory is perfect and beloved and Jess is the moody badboy and Lorelai knows all that. But she’s so mean to Luke about Jess.
And Dean seems especially borderline abusive in the episode where Rory is home alone and Jess and Paris end up coming over. It’s no surprise that Dean ends up being a bitter, unfaithful husband.
The thing I don’t totally get is that Jess kinda represents within-the-limits-of-normal teenage rebellion (which Lorelai should totally understand!) but Dean is SCARY and awful. (and, okay, I do get how Lorelai doesn’t see that because Jess draws Rory away from her while Dean doesn’t, but there’s a difference between the character not getting it and the show not presenting the narrative in a way that gets it).
I think you’re exactly right. Part of it has to be that Lorelai knows that the likely scenario is that Rory & Dean will run their course and break up after her freshman year of college. She knows he’s just going to be her inoffensive first boyfriend.
And not that Rory is some doe-eyed child to be lead around by a boy (I think her mom sometimes treats her like that), but in terms of influence – Jess is by far the least objectionable.
Jess treats her pretty terribly, but in typical teenagers are awful ways.
Dean is jealous and controlling, which is so much worse.
Guess who has two thumbs, speaks limited French, and has front row seats and meet and greet access to see Neil deGrasse Tyson speak in June?
Good thing I just saw this now, cause if I’d seen it 10 hours ago when you first posted it, that would have ended what turned out to be a really productive day.
Ugh I put off going to my podiatrist for a while because it’s expensive and I finally went last night and he FREAKED OUT AND SCHEDULED ME FOR EMERGENCY (non-invasive) SURGERY ON MONDAY. Apparently I’m at risk of permanently damaging the bones in my toe and had no idea!
The moral of this story is: take care of your health issues right away if you can!
Augh! Scary! Hope all goes well on Monday.
Holy crap! Hope everything goes well on Monday. Glad you’re getting it taken care of now!
I have been negged not once but MULTIPLE TIMES this week by mall salespeople trying to sell me beauty products. Aaaand now I remember why I don’t go to the mall.
Am I benefiting from middle-aged-white-woman privilege? Those people never pester me beyond the initial request for my attention. Of course, I never break stride for them. My only response is, “No, sorry” and a head shake as I continue away from them. Do they pursue you? Want me to glare at them and ask them nasty pointed questions for you? It is *not* OK to neg you. Tell them Rose said to straighten up and be nice to you. But I’m sure you have some fine tactics of your own.
You are awesome. I think my problem is just being too people-pleasing to say no, ugh. I was browsing Lush and reluctantly let a pushy employee try a shower gel sample on my hand and she grabbed my other hand (which I already felt insecure about) to compare with the one she had used the sample on and went “JUST LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!” Which would be fine if I had come in asking for help with my dry skin or something, but I didn’t.
The other one was one of those horrible people selling hair straightening products at a kiosk. They always yell things at me like “Do you ever straighten your hair??” (I have pretty wild curly hair and no, I have no wish to straighten it) and “Do you *always* wear your nails natural?? Here, let me give you something!” Nopenopenope.
Negging is so gross, and I’m sorry you’re getting it. The mall *is* the worst. For the mall/ downtown SF buskers, I’ve developed a combo of resting bitch-face and a vaguely non-focused gaze so they can’t ever make eye contact. My growing deafness probably helps avoid the initial request for attention as well.
Try always wearing headphones, even if not really on? It is a much bigger barrier for them to overcome and they may reconsider shouting at you?
I have pin-straight hair and one time I got negged into buying a straightener because the guy made my hair look incredible, but then failed to show me how to replicate it. $140 blown. Ugh.
Ugh, I feel like those mall salespeople have gotten pushier than they used to be?
They’re most likely also on my lawn.
OH MAN, I hope this doesn’t get lost in the +200 comments that have already been posted because I really just wanted to know if ANYONE ELSE gets the hiccups whenever they eat bread or bread-y products (e.g., bagels, naan, &c.). This sort of thing is what the internet is for, right?
Only when I eat it too fast, which is most of the time. So, yes.
I have this exact same issue as well. Eat a bready thing too fast, here come the hiccups.
YUSSS. I try to keep a big chaser of water nearby, but I don’t have a better solution. But yeah, bagels, man.
Because it happens so often when eating bagels and bread, I am training myself to take a sip after each bite. And to make my bites smaller. These two changes reliably keep the hiccups away.
only when i’m super hungry/excited and take huge honkin’ bites without chewing that much. but then, always, haha.
So, the fundamental problem is that bread is too delicious…? Is that what I’m getting here?
Also, I learned the word “vagus” from that Reddit thread, pahahaha.
YES. Constantly. And then my husband LAUGHS AT ME.
(My sister has the same problem. Genetic?)
Fresh bread and carrots. And it’s the same for my sister.
I am getting cross at work about ridiculous footage requests – I work in a footage library and do client archive footage request research. Most are fine, but these are the types that irritate me:
a. Things that happened before the invention of the moving image, eg this week ‘New York docks of the 1850s’
b. Really giant topics, eg this week ‘the history of the train, from steam until the present day’
c. Ones that are racist! eg ‘Robert Mugabe looking African’. Wait, what do you mean? Do you want me to send you every single video of him? No, what they mean is ‘ie him not wearing a suit or meeting other heads of state’. OH. Or, ‘Ebola in Africa’.
Most of the time it’s fun though. I found this one of an English witch in 1967 being interviewed about witchcraft: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/view/87a23dfac6…
Look at her cloak!!
Oh my goodness, another film archivist! Hello, fellow archive-working, Toast-reading film person! Please know that even if clients don’t realize how crazy complicated and important your job is, I do.
Omg hi!! I am a film archivist in London, hi! How great. Thanks for your support. I’ve only been a client-facing person for 3 years and while I like how many people I get to speak to now, sometimes I wish I was just winding 16mm of trains (whatever job it is there are always trains) in a room by myself. Just for like, a day. That would be enough and would give me the strength to give someone footage of ‘all airports around the world through the ages’.
I am a film archivist in Los Angeles! Hi! I *am* lucky enough to spend every few weeks to just inventory and wind through old 35mm mag (there is always old 35mm mag and as a result I always smell like vinegar), so that is my zen time. Our clients are lovely people, but I feel bad when after a lot of work we have to say “Well, this movie came out 60 years ago and I’m guessing from the looks of things that for 40 years you stored these rusted cans in a shack in a rainforest. Odds were against the film surviving.”
I’ve been getting some annoying research requests at work too (I am a toastbrarian). Most often it’s people who want some obscure, mundane files or paperwork from 20+ years ago, and then they get mad at me when I tell them that our policy is to keep files for 10 years and then either shred them or send them to Library & Archives Canada if they have historical value. I understand that it’s frustrating when the only potential source for the material you need tells you that the material was destroyed, but is it really that hard to understand that we can’t keep every single scrap of paper we ever produce, just in case someone might need it decades from now?
Toastbrarian. I love that!
Heh! No but everything is of equal value forever and always! Ha. We have the same kind of thing at my work – a news archive – and I have to explain that we can’t keep the rushes of every news story ever as we would be drowning by now and also penniless from the storage costs. BUT WHY.
I recently went to the New Forest village where that witch lived! Despite the fact that she hasn’t lived there in a long time, they are doing their best to capitalise on the fame. I saw not one but two witch-themed shops (and it was a very small village with very few shops). One had various figurines of “sexy witches” in the window (witch bending over to stir her potion, exposing her thong! Witch riding a broomstick in her corset and stockings!); also sexy teachers, firefighters and police officers. I was very cross. “Willow and Tara wouldn’t stand for this!”
This is for Kerowyn.
Whoooooaa shit that is WAY too much for you, or anyone, to process all at once. So don’t try to process it all at once. Try really hard not to let your thoughts race ahead (to things like, for example, re-entering the dating scene) — that can happen because what’s happening right now is so big and sucks so bad. Keep track of how you’re feeling. Be incremental. “How am I feeling right now? Scared.” “3 pm: furious and thinking about how good his favorite shirt would look if it was on fire, on his body.” “3:15 pm: scared again.” You can tell him about this or not, but it’s mostly for you.
If you have a four-week-old, your hormones and sleep may well be fucked as well as your body being exhausted, which is a bad time to try to think about anything. Think about what you need from him in practical terms, as co-parent and cohabitant, and tell him that he needs to do these things while / until you both figure out the next steps.
Think about how your friends, or family if you have family you’re close to, could best help you. By helping you plan your revenge fantasies? By taking the older kids to the zoo while you pace / cry / sit with the baby? By listening without a single particle of advice? By taking on some cooking and cleaning chores? This is a great time to call in every favor from everyone ever.
Sending strength and internet stranger love to you.
Toast Post report!
I got the best witches making a misandrist toast card from Lila in Massachusetts, and a glorious recipe for kettle corn on the back of some Edward Gorey art from Rebecca/Beakses, and everything is BON. (I do have two more cards to share but don’t have them on hand, so they’ll have to wait.) Thanks, polka_stripes, for facilitating all this wonderfulness.
i have received a lone toast post so far, but it was lovely and had a poem about a bee.
i was inspired by it and sent my toast post matches poems about burritos. i hope they arrived safely!
Poems! This is an excellent idea. Also, I’m completely here for poems about burritos.
TOOOOAST POOOST!! Those are awesome!
I *finally* sent my last two cards out yesterday. Weirdly creative block/ perfectionist/ procrastinating around it all, because Toasties are the kindest folks I’ve ever known online, so that bears some reflection & self-kindness.
Thank You, polka_stripes for organizing it all for us.
I got a great postcard with SEALS on it! They are smile-riffic. Thanks, toastpostpal!
I got a beautiful card from a girl named jack. AMAZING.
Glad you liked it!
Yay! I think I made kettle corn approximately 3 seconds after finishing writing your postcard, so it is well tested 😛 So fun to see where it wound up!
My Toast Post has taken up residence on the model for my master’s thesis in architecture- I am running out of room, and it is awesome!
Toastfolk! I am trying to clear out the last of my etsy stuff so I don’t have to pack it when I move. Do you know anyone who is an HP fan who might like a little tote bag? I have a few left I’d like to sell. I don’t anticipate getting back into making more as they’re pretty labour-intensive.
etsy shop link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/perianiel?ref=hdr_shop_… (hopefully that works!)
Toasties! Toasties, for the first time in ages, I will actually be decorating my home for halloween and preparing for the arrival of tiny adorable trick-or-treaters, because I finally live in a place where I believe we will actually SEE TRICK OR TREATERS! For the last decade, basically, I’ve been living in apartment complexes where trick-or-treating just didn’t happen and/or in places that just didn’t have a lot of kids generally speaking, but now I live in a neighborhood close to an elementary school and there are tons of little kid and I’M SO EXCITED TO SEE ALL THE LITTLE CUTIES!! I’m going to Costco this weekend for candy. Mmm, giant bag o’ candy.
SO JELIS!
I’m hosting a big dance party for my graduate students later that night, and we rarely get kiddos in costumes, but I’m getting a bag of candy JUST IN CASE and if the kids don’t show, I know the grad students will eat it. Which is fine, but I would really rather see a bunch of little boos in costume.
ME TOO ME TOO
You might need more than one bag. We live in one of Those Neighborhoods and regularly go through 4 or 5 of the 50-100 piece bags. I mean, some of that is leftover on purpose so we can eat it for the next month, but still.
Also, if you are buying “good” and “less good” candy, put the less good stuff out earlier, lest you be stuck with all the banana Laffy Taffy leftover instead of the Reese’s Cups. (Preteens love Laffy Taffy, which is why I buy it, but I don’t.)
Have fun! The toddlers are my favorite, even if it’s totally obvious that their parents are going to eat the candy.
My birthday is on Sunday! I’m gonna be 30 and I’m counting on everyone’s comments on how much more awesome your 30s are to be absolutely 100% true. Sadly, I have to work Sunday, so I’m trying to figure out how to just claim the entire weekend for myself.
Also, I love the Toast Post I’ve gotten – a card with witches! Local stories! I’ve not been having the best month and they’ve given me something to smile about, so thanks, guys.
<3<3 toast post!
Happy birthday almost birthday twin!
Happy almost birthday! I’ll be 31 next Sunday, so I haven’t been in my 30s for a very long time but they are already like 80% better than my 20s.
30s were awesome. (God I’m old now. I’m 44! Doesn’t that sound old? It doesn’t feel that old.)
30s are about power and being right with yourself and ditching some of the anxieties of youth and giving just the right amount of damn about things.
30s are about laughing.
30s are about deciding what you want, you get.
Enjoy them. They’re 100% great.
(40s ain’t bad either. Yet.)
a million +1s.
It’s been a pretty good week. I got the seasonal gig, the weekend event that’s been stressing me out looks like it will go off fine, and I got to sleep in today.
I am out of coffee, but you can’t have everything.
My elderly dog has been losing weight like crazy, is constantly ravenous (but can’t really eat a lot because nothing other than eggs and rice agree with him anymore). He spent a couple of hours throwing up this morning. I’m taking him to the vet’s tomorrow. Best part? He’s been fired by past vets because he’s a bad patient. The new vet is good, but we haven’t made it past the lobby yet. I am not looking forward to tomorrow morning. To do a full exam, they’ll have to sedate him. Tricky little bugger can remove all models of muzzles.
At least his energy level is still high. And he’ll be thrilled to go on a car ride without his fat dog coming along.
best wishes for your elderdog! I hope he’s OK.
Thanks! Me too. Me too. I mean, we’re admitting to ourselves that we probably won’t have him next summer. My husband and I have had the dog since we first moved in together. The old guy is 13, maybe 14. It’s in the last few months that he’s really started to look frail and just old.
Pets! They take your heart and then they break it.
it’s been a really tough week. law school is kicking my ass over and over again and I can not seem to get ahead ever. Taylor Swift’s new album just leaked though and I am just going to grind my wokr out while listening to that all weekend and try not to cry in the library
Sorry for the tough week. Do find time/space to cry, though I understand avoiding doing it in the library. Hope you feel better soon.
thanks
law school solidarity. are you in 1L? best piece of advice i got in first year: when you get behind on your readings, abandon them. pick up where you’re supposed to be for next class.
you’re meant to be there. it’s ok to cry in the library. make sure to get some sleep.
I’m actually a 1e which is a fake thing meaning i work full time and then take 11 hours of classes in the evening. 4 years instead of 3. yeah, i think i just have to trust i’ll be able to catch up and learn whatever info I am missing right now in the week or two before finals
ugh, I spent so much of grad school trying not to cry in the library! SO terrible. Sometimes crying helps tho! Feel better soon.
Hi, and Hugs.
First of all, this situation absolutely sucks, and as to that healthy way to deal you mentioned: please find support in the form of therapy, counseling, coven, really awesome book club, etc.
My first husband left in a similarly abrupt manner, and there’s no way yours is being anything but a dick. Resist the urge to be supportive of his Queer identity at the expense of your own needs for a partner you can trust. Whether this ends in divorce or you resolve to stay together, you’ll likely be co-parenting with him for a long time. His need to explore the masculine side of his emotional energy will never trump his utter failure as a parent for springing this on you at 1 month post partum.
Regarding dating: 1. It is early days yet; consider taking a lover or friends w benefits, not a relationship 2. When you’ve healed a bit and are looking forward to it, 35+ is a marvelous time to be dating, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one.
I haven’t seen a Fallen London thread so far, so I’m starting one.
Which of the storylines that cost Nex/Fate are worth it? I’ve been thinking of doing the Trade in Souls one to help the Regretful Soldier. I also keep getting an opportunity card to steal a painting (it’s the Uncovering Secrets Framed in Gold plotline), but then once you do that, your only options are to sell it (thereby losing your Uncovering Secrets… quality) or spend Fate to continue the story. Should I?
Considering the amounts involved – twenty Nex is about the price of a coffee? I think? this seems to be a commonly accepted metric but I don’t drink coffee – I’d say nearly all of them.
I have played and very much enjoyed the following Nex-locked storylines: Trade in Souls; Secrets in Gold; Extension to the Labyrinth of Tigers plot; Flute Street (there is some amazing lore in the Flute Street plot if you like lore); and the Foreign Office. Possibly a couple of others.
Everybody always seems to be having such a good time in Fallen London threads, so this week I finally thought I’d give it a try.
I am now a private detective living over a bookstore. Thank you all for making my dreams come true!
Among the big nex content pieces, I’ve only tried the Rubbery Murders. A bit linear, although I have the nagging feeling I missed a stat check somewhere and locked off the most rewarding storylets. Pity you can’t replay it.
Agreed! I did the Rubbery Murders and I’m really wondering how it would have shaken out if I’d done things differently.
(Oh, and I’m Tobias Coiner in FL.)
There’s a thread on the FL forum about the Fate-locked stories people most enjoyed: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic87-fate… (It’s quite old so maybe read the more recent posts) I haven’t played any of them so I can’t comment but the Soul Trade one seems to be hands-down the most popular.
My week in FL: This week I was stabbed 4 times in a row. 🙁 I was feeling bummed so I decided to attract karma from the universe by sending out requests to help a bunch of people with their wounds. Then yesterday I pickpocketed an item worth 230 echoes off a drunk rat.
…KARMA IS REAL
Ohhhh also I have a question for people who’ve played through Mahogany Hall: does anything bad happen if you decide to explore both Shroud and Glass before you pick a side? The game is asking me if I wanna go back to the Flit and do stuff for the other faction too but it will “risk” my current connections and I’m wondering if that’s just flavor text.
Also does anyone need this stupid Eyeless Skull? (You will definitely know if you do, because there’s only one way to request one. I’m trying to be vague here b/c I accidentally got spoiled on on some stuff I wish I hadn’t.) IT IS SO ANNOYING I HATE IT UGH PLEASE TAKE IT AWAY
Oh good, maybe you can tell me – I’ve been grinding MH forever and got my Embroiled in the Wars of Illusion up to 6 but I CANNOT figure out what’s supposed to happen next. Do I need to just keep doing the days of the week? Is it a card? Will it show up once I hit a particular number on some quality?
Sidenote, if anyone needs more connections I am playing as Artura and happy to get involved in a Moon League duel or assist with any and all maladies.
Keep doing days of the week – have you got to Sunday yet? ISTR that’s when something big happened for me, but a) it might have been a couple of week-cycles, and b) that was probably a couple of content-revisions ago.
So, Saturday says “You will need Connected: Glass (or Glass and Shroud both) at 6 or more and Embroiled in the Wars of Illusion at 20 or more to participate in your own show. Otherwise you’ll see someone else’s. If you’re about to hold a grand séance, you must do that first.” But none of the other choices anywhere in MH seem to have anything to do with those.
Maybe I need to go poke around some other places and see if there’s anything there.
Looks like you need to be hanging out with bats & cats in the Flit.
Oh, did I stab you?? And did you reciprocate by tending my wounds like a magnificent angel? Because if so, I am sorry and thank you! (I have a really hard time keeping track of who I interact with).
Ha, I have no idea, I can’t remember what my acquaintances’ Toast names are! (I’m Cordelia Blackburne, everyone be my frieeeeend I will only stab you once in a while) Anyway it was only annoying because it was 4 stabbings in the form I was strongest in so it was just some truly bad luck.
Ha, yes! I am among the guilty (I’m Fayezer).
The only Nex/Fate-locked storyline I bought was Flute Street, and I really like it (but I love Rubbery lore particularly, so I might be biased) and it was helpful in regard to grinding Watchful. The FAQ on this tumblr blog also has some opinions, and their comment makes me intrigued about Secrets Framed in Gold.
Hello, delicious Toasties!
I have two Parabolan Kittens at the moment, which 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. I should have 3+ more on Monday. I am happy to give you one if you don’t have one already! Comment here or send a letter/coffee request/other social action to an_ocelot (make sure to say you want a kitten). It’s getting to be kind of difficult to acquire kittens, unfortunately, and I don’t know how consistently I will be attempting it from now on; but for now, please, ask away.
Also, very soon we should see Hallowmas in FL. Last year, people could pick a Destiny (as in the recently-concluded Fruits of the Zee Festival) and engage in social actions to gain Making Waves and other items; a dev says all that and more will be on tap this year. So keep an eye out for that!
Ooh, I would like a kitten!
Sure! Is this your username or did you just send me a request through FL?
Sorry, my username is Renata Mangiafuoco. I sent it along with a request to help reduce Scandal (apparently everything I do is scandalous this week).
It’s so cute!
Then we are all set! Yay.
– My favorites are the Labyrinth of Tigers and Flute Street. I like the Trade in Souls, too. I did not enjoy the Rubbery Murders. I have not tried the Long-Lost Daughter storyline because there’s no way my character would ever think that it had a long-lost daughter.
– I would say go for the Secrets Framed in Gold story! Following a certain course of action on that one opens up an alternate, very good, Destiny.
– The Foreign Office is a good storyline yeh but it’s more in the style of Wilmot’s End. I’m not a big fan of Wilmot’s End so it was meh for me. It also requires you to be Unwelcome at Court, which I wish I were not.
I did both of those and think it was worth it, for no other reason than to get that stupid painting to stop appearing. I have also recovered my Aunt for the same reason, and I went Shroom-hopping once, which was fun but not a huge deal. Worth trying it once if you’re curious, but once you leave you can’t go back without paying again.
A second candle is nice too; the House of Chimes isn’t a huge deal (on purpose, so everyone can play without feeling obligated is my understanding) but I think I got one or two storylets out of it. Having 40 actions at a time instead of 20 was fun though. You can play your whole hand of cards and still do stuff.
Fallen London is fun! I have two pets (Scooba the hungover terrier and Twinkle the cheerful goldfish), always carry brass knuckles, and live dangerously while getting wasted on honey and hanging out with orphans and rubbery people.
No idea where this is all going, but I am collecting secrets like they’re going out of style.
My name is dangerflakes (I thought it was going to be my account name, oops) and I am always down for a drunken brawl, or just a drunken.
I’m late but would like to add in by asking – is it worthwhile to be an Agent of the Cheesemonger?
I keep doing jobs for her, and nothing ever seems to change (although she does give me prisoner’s honey). It is sort of boring — does it get more exciting at any point?
As for things that cost Nex, I’ve had a good time shroom-hopping in Bugsby’s Marsh and even ended up seducing Dr. F.F. Gebrandt one evening after I won a footrace with a really big margin and she wanted to give me an athletic sponsorship (and a lot of bottles of her goods), so that was fun. The shroom races are not groundbreaking but I have found it really helpful to hobnob in the crowds after I put on a pirate’s hat – great for connections at the Docks.
I did the Agent of the Cheesemonger story and it ended up in a weird situation where my options were (spoiler alert, I guess):
– arrange my own murder (and no longer be an Agent)
– kill a whole bunch of people involved in the Great Game
– kill the Cheesemonger (I think) and replace her with her daughter
– blow up the Cheesemonger and her daughter (and no longer be an Agent)
– sell out the Cheesemonger
So I guess that’s exciting, if you like murder! I picked option #4 and got a new twist in my tale – I am now a Bringer of Death. Pretty badass, huh?
We all love Madeleine Albright, yes?
How about now?
Best. Thing.
I straight-up cackled when I saw that. AMAZING.
This spring, I got an acceptance FIVE YEARS after I submitted. Unusual, but apparently not impossible.
Edit: In response to Amphora. Still don’t understand why it does this 🙁
Also, who is listening to Serial? I have theories. And episode 5 only reaffirmed some of them. No one I know in the flesh is listening and I am dying to discuss.
tell me more
SPOILER ALERT At this point, my theory is Jay did it. But I feel like Adnan knows more about what happened than he is letting on.
Right – I’ve been thinking that re: Adnan too. What’s Jay’s motive though? And was the streaker conclusively ruled out?
I think the streaker was tipped off to the body’s location, but couldn’t say how because it would implicate that person and, well, the streaking makes him inherently unreliable to the police.
And then Jay is just a sketchy teen? I don’t get Jay’s attitude at all – talking about his pretend police records to the police? I want to know more about him.
We are talking about it on the first page! The thread expands from my post!
Okay this will be my last post. WHO ELSE LISTENS TO SERIAL?
Aw, MAN, I’m conflicted! Everyone seems shady and I want to know what actually happened.
wait, what, did this really happen? or are you the same person with two accounts?
Me! I’m listening. And I am dying to see (hear) how it all turns out. I want to believe Adnan is innocent, but something’s not quite right. And then there’s Jay, who is so shady and weird.
I have Sleater-Kinney tickets for the Riviera!! I love my sister, who bought them for me because I had a meeting at 10am.
Also, I am completely going to be the weakest link in my team for the Door County 50 this weekend. Hoo boy pray for me.
YOU WILL BE AMAZING. How long is your leg?
Legs #1 and #9, 4.8 and 4.0. I am from Chicago, so I am worried about this “medium” difficulty bit. I bought a runner’s MP3 player so keep me grooving. Chromeo and Hold Steady.
Are you in, by chance?
I am not, sadly, and 2015 will be very light on events due to the whole getting married thing (boo-yay?); nothing requiring travel or longer than a half. Is the difficulty referring to the hilliness of the course?
Good luck getting married! Remember, you can always forfeit the deposits and elope!
I assumed difficulty means hilliness, but I guess that’s not necessarily true. Perhaps it refers to the propensity of spectators along that leg to pelt the runners with gravel. If you have experience, perhaps you know?
IF ONLY. If it wasn’t for a) this being my first marriage, and b) literally half our guest list (my brother/SIL/nephew; his mom/dad/stepmom) having to travel over 1000 miles for it, we’d already be married guaranteed.
Hilliness seems to be a reasonable thing, I think, rather than gravel-pelters, but it could just as easily refer to “terrible live music” or “too much cowbells.” Hills might be your best bet! (In any event, I trained totally flat this year and still managed to run a few obnoxiously hilly races, so I think you’ll be fine. 8.8 miles total, walk in the park.)
This is a reply to Kerowyn.
So, I feel a little weird responding, because I’m on the other side of this. I’m a bi woman who’s been out forever (since I was a teenager) and was more or less happy being monogamous… until I found myself in a wonderful relationship that has (happily) lasted for years and years. My partner and I decided to open up our relationship, and I feel like I’m in touch with myself in a way I haven’t been in ages. I’m happier than I have been in years, and it’s a bit like a valve was opened and a lot of inchoate anxiety was allowed out of our relationship (especially sexually). For me, it was not about being with a partner of one gender and “needing” a partner of a different gender: it was that I discovered that the “default” version of our relationship, which seemed natural enough when we met, was not what I wanted a decade later. It has nothing to do with loving/wanting my partner; it has everything to do with me and how I understand my own heart and my own body as a queer lady.
All of this is to say that I agree completely with “Either way, the form of the marriage needs to change.” Kerowyn, your husband did this in a really shitty way, with the worst possible timing and the least sensitive framing. I don’t think that’s justified at all. But as a person who also had serious, potentially dealbreaking things to say to my partner of more than a decade, I can tell you that I decided to be open about my desires and fears because I did want to stay. I am so sorry you’re both going through this, and I hope it plays out in a way that works for you both. *jedi hugs*
Also sorry I meant to post that as an add-on to the other poster, didn’t mean to talk down your suggestion. Maybe not an appropriate thread to vent about Dan Savage, in retrospect.
It’s fine, didn’t take it that way, and I respect your opinions.
Regardless, OP’s husband is not behaving in an acceptable fashion. Bringing up the issue when the family is at its most stressed moment – well, maybe that’s what brought it on. He’s scared, and wants to run away, and is using info that should have been declared WAY before now as ammunition.
when is it not appropriate to vent about dan savage?
Figure skating fan here! The major competitive season kicks off today with the Grand Prix series! It’s the start of a new Olympic cycle, and I can’t wait to see all the breakout stars and the dark horses and the skaters you just gently want to usher out of competition (Jeremy Abbott, I love you, but can we please end on last season? It was a happy one!)
This is the one sport I really follow/care about so hooray!
EDIT @katiemcguillicudy Re: SPORTS
Hey, cool! I only ever watch during the Olympics but oh boy do I ever watch the hell out of it when I do! It’s a point of pride to me that I went to the same orthodontist as Michael Weiss. Do with that what you will.
So excited about Tara and Johnny being made permanent announcers! I loved them so much at the Olympics – it was nice to have announcers that knew what they were talking about. Plus their awesome costume, er, outfits.
Shame the people in charge of televising gymnastics can’t find similarly talented crew.
Still feeling low from the spinsters almanac post.
I was doing pretty good for the last month or two too. And then oh that’s right I haven’t made more than small talk with anyone not immediately related to me AND under the same roof as me in 5 years except for my friend Sarah who lives on literally the other side of the planet.
And never in my life have I made an active attempt to meet anyone. So yeah, this is pretty clearly the rest of my life.
And then I read a post full of people saying it never gets better, even with friends.
Fuck.
I’m sorry that that article made you feel that way. To me it was about how to find peace with yourself when you aren’t in a romantic relationship at a time in your life when you feel like you should be, without the usual platitudes of, “oh I’m sure you’ll meet someone soon!”
I do think having enough friends local to you that you can make sure you see friends at least once a week is really important and probably healthy for most humans. I have been working on my goal of being social which includes inviting someone to do something at least once a week and also saying something to a stranger at least once a week- even if it’s just, ” i like your bracelets!” to the cashier at the grocery store. Last night i said to my seatmate in an airport waiting area, “what time is it.” He replied, asked if I was on the same flight, and then we turned out to live merely blocks away from each other in the same neighborhood, and he’s new to town and offered him a guided neighborhood tour. Now, statistically speaking, maybe 75% of the time if you ask someone what the time is they’ll just tell you and you don’t make a potential new friend at all. But it’s for sure if you say nothing and they say nothing it’s a 100% that they won’t be your friend, so I’ve been vowing to take low stakes risky conversational gambits.
I read a thing on captain awkward that was about making friends and it was basically like, “we’re all standing there waiting for the other person to make the first invite so we don’t get rejected.” And getting rejected is not going to kill anyone, but we’re all more alone because we feel it might.
Anyway, I hope that’s not pushy, but it’s just to me the point was, if your life isn’t doing it for you right now, try changing the parts you can control.
yeah, Onymous, if you’re not reading Captain Awkward yet, you should start. She will help so much.
@Onymous I tried to reply to that piece and it almost posted in How to Tell if You Are a Character in a Jack London Novel, which, huh?! But the upshot was something I’d read and been upset by, then wondered if that wasn’t my own resistance shooting down a good idea. The idea: Without letting go of a desire for whatever kind of companionship you want, make an effort to find the platonic romance in your existing relationships. Like, love your friends with a little more openness and admire them more fully if you can. Be present with your barista or sales clerk. See if you can be more open with your family. And obviously do this with your own health and safety as job one. I think the idea is to get you away from straining that bottomless desire to its breaking point (and this has been a long-term battle for me with no friends IRL, and currently living with a family member who openly cuts me out of her life at every opportunity), and instead building muscles that will serve you when you attract more companionship, since sometimes being primed for it brings more of it to you anyway. It’s all a tad metaphysical for my liking (like, just shut up and deliver me a girlfriend, stupid universe!) but it does make a kind of sense, too. Hope it helps a little, or maybe gives you something to rebel against.
So, I wouldn’t normally post about a tv show, but Grey’s last night? Hit just a leeeeetle bit too close to home for me. :-/ Kinda awkward watching with my ex & seeing some of the same patterns/dialogue…it was almost creepy.
There was an awesome Captain Awkward thread about self care this week, and I noticed while reading it that almost everyone has more success reaching their goals when they stop beating themselves up about them all the time. So I made a list of Things To Stop Beating Myself Up About. And I would like to hear yours!
Mine:
Not always being 100% productive all the time at work, as long as I’m still making my deadlines.
Watching too much TV (I’m trying to watch less because it affects my sleep, but beating myself up over it helps. . .not at all)
Not always having the energy to read a Serious Book and just wanting to read comics or Harry Potter
Saying awkward/embarrassing/accidentally inappropriate things sometimes
Not always eating perfectly/sometimes probably drinking too much still
Not wanting to hang out with some people I used to want to hang out with
Copying your list, as it perfectly encapsulates Things I Would Like To Stop Beating Myself Up About. Except instead of HP, rereading all the Outlanders.
Haha, lovely! The “not always reading serious books” thing is like. . .how does my brain even have the CAPACITY to judge myself for that? You would think that as mortal beings we would have some innate concept of ‘life is obviously short and there is no reason to force yourself to sit around sadly reading about WWII when you would rather be doing something that makes you feel happy’. But nope, guilt. Over Harry Potter.
I no longer beat myself up about:
Being an asshole to almost all of my ex-boyfriends.
Not drinking eight glasses of water a day.
Calling in sick the first day of my period every month.
Admitting that I like the way I look and that I have fucking awesome hair.
Not exercising every day.
Oh, god, I could go on for days. Good for you, not beating yourself up over things!
That 8 glasses of water thing. I thought it represented all the day’s fluid intake, including what we consume in wetter foods like apples, yogurt, cooked rice, etc. Are you sure *drinking* them is something we should aim for?
Seriously! And even if it was, that’s just SO MUCH WATER. Ugh. No thank you.
Spending a single day, any single day, not working out
Worrying excessively about whether I become terrible and self-involved every time I get a little too drunk
Getting a little too drunk period
Returning my library books late, even though through some magical mistake I never get charged any fines, ever
Being a Bad Friend whenever I prioritize self-care
Spending money on anything that isn’t food or directly related to a social event (ie, drinks when I’m out with friends) (I am a fan of absolutes)
That if I die alone and unloved, it will be my own fault for not Putting Myself Out There 24/7/365
The worrying fact that I’m pretty sure my increasing dislike of my nice-enough city is not due to unhappiness with certain factors in my personal life, but has to do with valid and near-unfixable dissatisfaction with the city itself and the people who live here.
The drunk thing! You’re adding stuff to my list. I’m actually experimenting with not or barely drinking, partially because I realized it makes me second-guess myself. I’ll go from “I was having such an interesting conversation and people thought I was funny and insightful!” to “you were just drunk and rambling and everyone was wishing you’d shut up””.
Haha yeah – this is basically me all the time …
I spend a lot of time trying not to beat myself up about how much I beat myself up about things. 🙁
But also:
Canceling plans when I really don’t want to go (usually group things, group things exhaust me to no end)
Occasionally saying something stupid while trying to be funny
Having popcorn and beer for dinner once in a while
Popcorn is an official dinner option in my family. If you want to get fancy I HIGHLY recommend purchasing cheddar cheese powder (and smoked paprika, if you are so inclined). Good stuff.
You have just reminded me I have a jar of Penzey’s Brady Street Cheese Sprinkle in the cupboard. I know what dinner is tonight!
Ugh, I have a bad case of Impostor Syndrome. I know deep in my logical brain that everything is fine but the rest of my brain is screaming “You are terrible at everything and everyone is going to find out and you are going to lose your job/boyfriend/social group/etc.” Normally I would pick something I was feeling un-impostor-y about and focus my energy on that until I felt better but right now that doesn’t exist. (See also “Everyone on the internet thinks you’re the worst too.”) My other instinct is that if I don’t do anything I can’t be bad at anything which is a terrible and self-defeating idea. Does anyone have more productive ways of dealing with this??
I don’t know how to deal with it but I am feeling the exact same way.
I try to talk myself down by reminding myself the people I love are awesome people and wouldn’t hang around with someone who didn’t deserve their awesomeness, my employers hired me for a reason and I don’t need gold stars to validate myself (although I still like to get gold stars).
Ugh, logical brain is no match for the Impostor sometimes. My therapist helped me come up with a talisman for when Impostor Syndrome starts veering into a panic attack. 1. I chose a time when I felt very expert/ accomplished (organized a kick-ass study group that was so awesome everyone in our doctoral program wanted to join) 2. Picture a moment of that expertise very concretely (playing frisbee between study sessions indicated we were on track, had time to take breaks) 3. Choose a symbolic image or feeling to pull up as shorthand for that moment/ feeling (I feel the sun on my face and the rough texture of the frisbee in my fingers)
When the Impostor starts getting chatty, I rub my fingers against my palm and instantly feel that rough frisbee edge, and then the sun on my face, and most of the time Impostor shuts the fuck up. May you find a talisman to quickly remind you how awesome and capable you are!
Spoken quietly, gently: This person on the internet thinks you’re pretty great.
You read and appreciate The-Toast.net, right?
Thank you to Simone and Emily for your postcards! Yay!
So with all the Dad Magazine and Most Mom Thing Tweets, I’m coming to the realization that my parents never really…well, parented? I’ve kind of been aware that I pretty much raised myself on some level, but seeing all these common experiences of other people and their parents is really driving it home. And it’s fine! I’m fine, I enjoyed my (solitary, independent) childhood. It’s just so strange and I’m feeling less ambivalent about my…well, ambivalent feelings for them as I age. I basically have these people who are my parents, but they don’t feel like Mom and Dad, I think like most people have Moms and Dads.
Is anyone else in this boat with me? Just curious.
Right there with you. My mom actually apologized for neglecting me; I was the oldest and she had three others and some shit went down with my dad… I know she did her best. But it is lucky for everyone that I didn’t get into any trouble.
Oof. I’m glad things turned out okay for you.
Definitely, yeah. All of my Mom Moments and Dad-Isms have come as an adult. Both were notably absent through my adolescence (my dad because he left; my mom because of the resulting depression/alcoholism/anorexia). They’re much more parental now that I’m 33, weirdly, than they ever were when I was 13. As Goomaly said, she did her best, she tried, but it was awfully hard for my mom especially. It was weird building a relationship with my dad as an adult and he still doesn’t really feel like Dad in the way that I think my friends have a dad. Anyway. Yeah, I get you.
Wow, that’s rough. It sounds like things are better now? I hope so.
They are.
But! (there’s always a But!) I don’t think I’ll ever feel about them the way I see my friends feel about their parents.
Me, kinda! I was a super independent only child, and while my parents weren’t neglectful and I actually am totally fine with how they raised me, they were never really sentimental or emotional with me. I’m really close with them now and my mom is one of my best friends, but I think we started relating to each other as adults much sooner than most people start feeling that way about their parents.
Yes! I’m a super independent only child, too. Now that I think about it, I wonder how much of their benign neglect was rooted in my basic disinterest in being parented. Hmm.
Oh man. I will be in therapy (or in need of therapy) for a long time… my parents were not terrible 100% of the time, but there is so, so much that they did wrong. Granted, it made me self-sufficient and independent and strong in a way that my younger brother is not, but at a cost. I was walking home from work a couple days ago and came to the realization that, while I love my Mother, I love her because she is my mother – I really actually despise the person that she is. If I were not related to her, if she had not raised me, I would not want to know her. I’m fine with this (or at least I think I am – again, therapy) but it really is sad.
I kind of have this with my dad. He and my mom split up when I was 4, then he moved away when I was 6. We talk regularly and I love him, but I don’t think he’s ever really known how to relate to children, and didn’t have the opportunity to learn as he only saw my sister and I twice a year. Marrying his second wife has not helped things. Our interaction has always felt like two adult relatives who get on reasonably well.
Oh yes. I always thought my parents were just, you know, the way they were and we didn’t have anything in common, but whatever. But my partner (together almost 6 years now) is absolutely appalled by the lack of actual parenting me (and my sisters) received. It has been a bit of an eyeopener for me, to try to look at it objectively. I don’t hate them or anything, though. I, too, feel ambivalent. They live a fair ways away now (about an 8 hour drive) and they come visit 3-4 times a year and I’m good with that.
We’re in the exact same boat. I never thought anything about the lack of general parental interaction. In fact, I kind of liked it. It was my partner who pointed out “You know that’s not normal, right?” And yes, I am pleased to have them live 9 hours away and I see them twice a year (on their birthdays, not the holidays).
1. I got one from Simone too, does anyone know who she is or how to reach her?
2. Yes, definitely me. My folks split up when I was very wee, and I think my dad would have been a Dad if I’d seen him more often, but my mom definitely didn’t Mom. Overall, I didn’t really have a family, in the way so many of those folks did.
Things about mom and her momming abilities have come up in therapy throughout the years and been dismissed by me because I wasn’t ready to deal with them, but I think I am getting close to ready. Though, it sounds exhausting.
She didn’t put a return address on hers, but I didn’t think to do that with my first batch, either.
2. Best wishes dealing with the mom stuff in therapy. *hugs*
Personal fiance! Anyone making any changes with the holidays upcoming? We decided to cut back our savings amounts for this quarter, in order to free up money, but so far I have spent everything on myself 😐
I am! I am!
It doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve been putting $50 of every paycheck into my savings account. It’s adding up shockingly fast.
Another $50 to each check goes to my credit card bill, which, I only have one and it has a ridiculously low limit so that’s paying down fast, too.
Have been paying twice monthly on my car note (half the rounded-up payment amount each time) and that is making life SO much easier, plus the rounding-up is starting to impact how much I actually owe.
By Xmas I hope to have a good lump of cash for gifts plus a dent out of my credit card for flexibility, and possibly be ahead enough on my car payment to miss a half-month.
Then the wedding shit kicks in oh god
It adds up so fast! Right on 🙂
Well my savings are back on track after a crap September.
And I’m being hired full time at my warehouse job, though I can’t get any of the other recent hires pinned down on whether or not their paychecks grew or shrunk after being hired (raise on one hand insurance on the other) so I’m a not more ambivalent about that than they think I should be.
Huh – that’s a funny situation, but really understandable.
I wouldn’t care but I’m moving and going back to school here in march so for the next while I need to be more concerned with liquid.
I asked for a loan from the Bank of Mom, to pay down my credit card.
I hit the bank first but the best line-of-credit/loan rate they would offer was like 8-10% and there was a risk of them cutting off my credit card entirely. I think my mom’s LOC is a home-owner’s, so its rate will be like 4-6%.
I’ll be paying it back with interest as soon as I get my tax return, so that’s all pretty swell. Thanks mom!
I’m still waiting to get the promised letter from the student loans people. I’ve decided to give them about 50% of my income from November forward, so I’m a little antsy. But now that I’m done all the mid-size purchases (shoes, home furnishings) that come with new apartment / new job / etc., I think I’ll be okay living back near the poverty line.
I did that with my mum and it was great. I took her out for dinner and gave her the cheque to pay her back and she cried. Mums!
I’m trying to be more responsible with my money. Part of that was signing up for the 401k at work, and the transit benefit where you can buy a metrocard with pre-tax money. For Christmas, I decided to spread out buying gifts so that it won’t feel like a hit to my bank account.
OH and since I know it’s you, I ended up buying another bike! It’s a nice road bike, bought used via Craigslist. I got a great deal & love riding it!
What did you get?! I was so apprehensive about Clist, because I didn’t feel like I knew enough. I am slightly unhappy with my bike right now. There’s a grinding sound that the bike shop doesn’t seem to believe me about from the front chainset in high ranges and I need to play with the seat position.
A 2012 Cannondale Synapse. One thing I learned about seats recently that may be helpful: tilting it a few degrees up/down can make a huge difference. I had no idea! I just assumed it was supposed to be level.
I had been looking at my seat set up and wondering if that would help. The nose? of the seat is a bit too much in my lady business.
That is a beautiful bike. Can I ask what you paid for it?
Definitely try tilting the nose of your saddle down! My bike was $650, and that included clip pedals & shoes and a helmet. I got lucky.
Well, my parents never emotionally parented me that much. They provided for me and were very attentive making sure I had what I needed, and they want me to be happy. But whenever my mom scoffs at boarding schools saying “I would never let someone else raise my child!” I’m like, okay, but…I emotionally raised myself. I taught myself how to talk about my feelings and needs, stand up for myself, and identify what is and is not a reasonable emotional reaction to any given situation. That was never modeled for me, so I’m still working on it in my twenties. I know that’s not rare, but it’s still frustrating and feels weird to complain about.
ETA: reply to Clever Manka.
Ugh this sounds really whiny now that I think about it.
I don’t think it’s whiny, maybe because YES I understand this exactly. My parents were (and are) emotionally distant. We never talked about feelings in our house AT ALL and I don’t think it’s ‘cos they were neglectful, I just honestly think they’re not very emotionally deep. I had to learn how to talk about my feelings when my partner and I got together because man we had some rough early years together and it was Learn or Split Up and talk about baptism by fire but hey, I’m really good at it now?
This though: They provided for me and were very attentive making sure I had what I needed, and they want me to be happy. Yes, I get that exactly. They are textbook good parents at the surface stuff, but I learned to be a complex-and-decent human being all on my own. So yeah. I hear you, bb.
Knowing someone else has the same experience makes me feel better. I think the real crux of the problem is ‘identifying what is and is not a reasonable emotional reaction.’ I had no
idea how to do this upon entering adulthood. And I knew it, so I didn’t trust or value any of my emotions because I had no clue if they were appropriate for the situation. My family just does not display emotions. And this makes it hard to feel a connection to them beyond ‘you provided for me and I am grateful’ because I have NO IDEA what’s in their heads.
There are at least 3 of us. My parents never ever talked about feelings- it took me until my mid-twenties to figure out sometimes when things didn’t go well I wasn’t feeling tired (physically) I was feeling sad. I still have to ask myself if I’m tired or sad sometimes. Learning to have and name and talk about feelings as an adult are hard.
My family just does not display emotions.
I basically am a Vulcan. I have emotions, but they very rarely come out in real life. I do fangirl giddy and progressive activist rage on a regular basis, but when I am actually affected by something directly, I play my emotional cards real close to my chest.
identifying what is and is not a reasonable emotional reaction
Oh my gosh, so much this. I allow myself to instinctively emotionally react to something, but then I have to take a step back and determine if that is a logical reaction. If it’s not a logical reaction, I can actually stop feeling that way like 90% of the time. It’s very convenient. This is how I know when I’m chemically depressed (the 10% when I can’t control my feelings) which is just incredibly helpful.
At this point in my life (I’m in my mid-40s) I no longer have any interest in having a deeper emotional connection to my parents, which is a good thing since they’ve becoming increasingly x-tian and show no signs of slowing down. Ugh.
Yes, my family is also pretty devout Christian. I wonder if that has something to do with it.
Having also come from a very devout Christian family, I think that it definitely does.
True here.
Congrats to you and your fancily-attired lady! 🙂
So, everything is fine, but everything is not fine, and the Toast and Toast Twitter and Toast Post and Mr. Polka Stripes have been lighthouses in a very foggy 6-8 months so thanks for that, everyone. Every week I set remarkably low expectations and at best meet like, 50% of them, and then when I’m on a roll something comes in and knocks whatever progress I was making off track. But I am 100% meeting my goal of staying in bed and tweeting every morning instead of getting up, so that’s something 😉
In unrelated news, should you ever find yourself needing to take a half day off to run errands, I highly recommend mid-fall Friday October mornings. No. One. is around, the weather is delightful, and you discover fleece lined cable knit leggings, velvet leggings (patterned and black) and METALLIC SPACEWITCH LEGGINGS at Target.
WHAT. METALLIC SPACEWITCH LEGGINGS COME TO ME
How would you even find them though? Just locate the nearest Target employee and whisper, “I hear there are spacewitch leggings about?” 🙁
They are near the underwear section, by all the tights and socks, on a partition separating ladies sleepwear and exercise clothes from the little boys clothes (ha)! The partition also has shapewear on it. The fleece lined ones aren’t on that wall but on a different little thingy with lots of tights nearby.
I know Target’s layout too well :/
BRB GOING TO TARGET
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
<3<3
I love you, Polka_Stripes. I think you are amazing and wonderful and I’m sorry things have been rough for you! I hope stuff gets better right quick and I am jealous of your SpaceWitch leggings.
I didn’t buy them yet! I am jealous of my future self though.
My only horrible date story was actually a Dating Ring date (these startup weirdos who set people up on group dates, and also for some reason shipped a bunch of girls to San Francisco to meet guys because there are more of them there??) I signed up because I thought they’d let me do dates with my friends, but they do not, they make you meet up with three random guys and two random girls who they have ‘carefully matched’ you with. For one thing, the second I got there it was apparent that these matchmakers thought I was one of the least attractive people on earth, ever– I mean, I RARELY find people actively unattractive but the group they had matched me with was just all. . .extremely odd looking. I had told the matchmakers my biggest priorities were feminism and progressiveness, yet when I told the group about my nonprofit work in a very low-income neighborhood they all looked horrified and one guy asked “Do you have a conceal-and-carry permit? Then nobody had any idea what else to say to each other, so someone asked “So. . .have any siblings?” and literally, all six of us went around in a circle and listed our siblings. Then I died, was reincarnated and left after 30 minutes which was as polite as I could bring myself to be.
Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes. Yikes all over the place.
Oh my gosh I forgot it was Friday and thereby open thread day bless.
Toast related thoughts – Someone told me yesterday that there’s an Icelandic airline that, starting next spring, will be offering flights from Boston to Reykjavik for like $150 round trip. This is severely enabling for me, as Moving to Iceland has recently become my personal Taking to the Sea.
Where are you all seeking your hypothetical isolation?
Vermont!!
There are no billboards there, it is a perfect place
My brother is working on this farm/homestead in upstate NY and ever since I visited I’ve been fantasizing about quitting my job and joining him there. It was so quiet and beautiful and I slept so well and there were two amazing dogs and a handsome bearded man. I’m pretty sure if the handsome bearded man had expressed any interest in me I would still be there.
Whoa! I’ve been wanting to go on a knitting tour of Iceland (these exist! and they sound like they’d be fabulous!) for at least a year now. If round trips to Iceland get to be that cheap, I’m THERE.
We went to Iceland last May (Direct flight from Alaska! It was awesome, but not that cheap). And it was so fantastic.
And my hypothetical isolation is in the outer Hebrides. Oh man, you guys, I want it so badly. North Atlantic, take me home.
That sounds so awesome. I’ve wanted to visit Iceland since seeing it on The Amazing Race (some years back, when it was still a good show).
My fantasy spot is a little cottage on Skye. We took a family vacation to Scotland one year and I fell in love. It’s the most gorgeous place I’ve ever been.
I’m feeling Montana after some people sung Helena’s praises on the Billfold’s post about mid-sized cities. I generally have been thinking about moving to a smaller city a good bit lately, but then I remember that I would need to buy a car, then any enthusiasm disappears…
Oooh, good question! I sent the link to those cheap fares to PartnerChouffe yesterday. There are a lot of catches, unfortunately.
Ummmmm I live in a pretty rural area as it is. It’s vastly gorgeous and full of open spaces and I can see the Milky Way from the driveway, so my hypothetical isolation is, like, NYC. Which is a totally different sort of isolation and also something I have never experienced (my childhood home was a two-house farm in the middle of a national park, so… pretty isolated). Does that count?
If not, then probably Shetland.
Paradoxically, London. Millions and millions of people and none of them will ask anything of me.
I have purchased tickets to Iceland this very morning! Extremely excited about going, it’s been on my list since I was about 16.
I’ve often fantastized about being in splendid isolation. The closest I’ve ever come was a four hour hike to the falls of Glomach in the Highlands. We did not see another living creature the entire time. So I would go for Scotland or New Zealand.
Over a week ago I tried a new exercise called TRX, where these straps are hanging from the celling and we all do modified-body-weight stuff. It was a free class and the instructor didn’t even bother to cool us down. Plus I always forget to take it easy doing a new thing, so I am STILL recovering.
Also had a migraine yesterday and went home sick, and now I’m still home because I don’t know why. PMS means I’m super low energy, and I’ve done too many social things and I have another one this evening, and I have so many sick hours saved I figured what the hell.
Also I am having weird feelings about my relationship that I am having trouble understanding. I need to go back to therapy and/or start journaling again. But I’m also kindof scared to? That’s probably normal, though.
I don’t want everything, I just want everything I want.
Ooooh I have a migraine today, also in coordination with PMS. AWFUL. *hugs* to you.
Also I am terrified of TRX. You are brave!
It was alright actually! Group classes are not generally my thing, but I’m not sorry I tried it. It will be rough if your balance isn’t so good but there are modifications.
TRX is intense. I have one and MAN it’s tough.
I hope you feel better soon and GOOD FOR YOU using that sick time.
I don’t want everything, I just want everything I want.
Yep.
Toasties, I’ve been waiting for this. I have THREE different Men are Garbage stories to share with you, all from YESTERDAY.
I’ve been reading The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma by Brian Herbert, and Toasties, it’s terrible. I’ve been counting the number of times a female character is referenced without regard to her good looks or her sexual activity/partners and so far I’m up to 0 and I’m over 100 pages in. It made me spend a half hour at work yesterday looking up SF/F books by women authors to recommend next time it’s my turn to pick for book club… read only women, indeed.
ALSO, the girls’ engineering camp that I went to when I was in high school is no longer girls-only and when I looked at the picture from the Computer Science part of the program it was ALL boys hunched over the computers. COME ON. We sit here and scratch our heads about why women aren’t getting into computer science and then sell out their few safe spaces???? <flips computer desk>
FINALLY, I got into it a little bit on Facebook over that Pretty Princesses in “Fuck Misogyny” video — which I totally loved. But my (male, of COURSE) friend was all tone policing — “Oh, I just think if they were really serious they wouldn’t go for shock value and would have a substantive conversation” and I WAS LIKE UGH MEN but I replied “well actually there ARE a ton of substantive, serious voices saying the same thing. They don’t tend to go viral like this.” (but y’know, ‘grats on totally derailing)
In summary, men are garbage, burn it all down, etc etc.
Yo, I just proofread Mentats of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, and the beautiful women thing was driving me NUTS. Everyone is beautiful! Even big women are handsome! No uglies here in Dune Universe!!
Right? AND I’m just coming off of Ancillary Justice, which was so amazing. And this goes and *reinforces* the male default by saying things like “the female officer” instead of just “the officer” and letting it become clear from say, names or pronouns or, y’know, it generally not mattering?? Nope. Not that.
Also realized that the only major female characters were all introduced in a POV by their male sexual partner. Because, y’know, if she’s not banging someone important… <headdesk>
I have this NY magazine article on “The Most Feminist Moments in Sci-Fi History” tagged as “add to reading list!!!” in my email. It’s not all lit, but lots is.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/07/most-feminist-mom…
Haunting of Hill House thread!
I’ve fallen far behind thanks to playing hostess this past weekend and a busy week, but I wanted to point out this small but seriously creepy moment from Chapter 4:
“Nothing in this house moves,” Eleanor said, “until you look away, and then you just catch something from the corner of your eye. Look at the little figurines on the shelves; when we all had our backs turned they were dancing with Theodora.”
IT’S A HOUSE FULL OF WEEPING ANGELS. RUN AWAY, ALL OF YOU. RUN AWAY.
D: D: D:
Yep, I totally think they’re in it together. Why else would Jay help him bury a body (either by actually helping dig, or just by providing shovels–his story is inconsistent on this point), if he had absolutely nothing to do with it? Your sort-of-friend says he’s going going to kill his ex-girlfriend, then does actually kill her, and you’re like ‘okay, let me get the shovels.’? I don’t think so.
I’ve been eating those $0.89 bags of instant noodles for lunch all week because, as of now, I have $67 to last me 8 days. I don’t think they’re technically ramen because I got the Indonesian ones. Pretty good actually.
Cpl. Cirillo is going to be passing by on my route home from work just as I am leaving on my shitty business trip, and I’m really confident I’m only barely going to be able to hold it together. I am just going to try to avoid weeping profusely while driving 110km/h because I’m going to be faced with flags and signs the whole way and it’s bringing up so many horrible feelings. Oh god.
I’m going as Ilana from Broad City in the dog-walker episode: green crop top w/ strappy bra under, blue boys underwear poking out of ripped up jeans and two puffy buns on my head! I think I may also be Robyn because I have a similar haircut and the appropriate clothes for the call your girlfriend video.
eta: ugh this is supposed to be in the costumes thread
but you made the top of p3, so congrats!
That is a great costume idea. Great show, great character.
It’s my birthday! Unfortunately, as seems to happen every year, I put off planning anything for too long, and all my friends are doing other things this weekend. Plus, my roommate decided to have her birthday party at our apartment tonight (her birthday was last week), so it’s a little weird. I think I’m going to celebrate by myself with a really delicious dinner tomorrow, and then try to get some people together next weekend.
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
I’m terrible at planning birthday things in a timely fashion too, so I feel your pain. Delicious dinner and stuff next week sounds lovely.
Happy birthday! Throw a self-party, where you get to do stuff your friends never want to do?
Well, I’m planning on making either brisket or lamb stew, and most of my friends are vegetarians, so I think I’m set there.
Good for you too! Oh man, the sick day thing. I was raised with the idea that ‘if you’re not vomiting you can go to work’, which I guess was sort of good when I worked places where not showing up would screw other people, but now that I have a regular office job I just cannot bring myself to take a non-dire sick day without guilt. My therapist encourages me to all the time, and the one time I took one for a terrible hangover she was so proud until I mentioned that I also worked from home that day. Good for you for taking one a month, why are they there if not to be taken? PMS is real shit and even if it’s not that serious Mental Health days should really be a built-in thing, anyways. It doesn’t help that everyone I work with, and the ex-Director who now works from home, lives in the same neighborhood for some reason so I’m terrified to leave the house if I ever take a not-that-legit sick day.
(This is supposed to be in response to winterbymorning re: Santiago di Compostela and long distance walking): I did the West Highland Way (Glasgow to Fort William, 100 miles) alone when I was 19, and it is to this day one of the best and most formative experiences of my life. Every day, all you need to do is walk and decide which village pub to stop in for food. You can see how the countryside changes mile by mile, especially working your way up into the highlands, and when you get done you can eat multiple servings of sticky toffee pudding (which is the best dessert in the entire world- I will die on that hill gladly). If you’re lucky, a bus driver will tell you, in a big broad accent, that you’re a hearty lass. You can drink whisky at a crossroads with other hikers who are also limping terribly, but are just as happy as you are to be limping in this particular place. You might decide to hike on, rather than stay at an adorable inn in Glenn Coe, because a man is making you vaguely uncomfortable, and you will climb The Devil’s Staircase as darkness descends, and come over the top into the Rainiest Town in Scotland, where a group of middle aged firemen doing some bonding thing at the hostel will feed you an entire pot of spaghetti.
In short, long distance walking is the very best way to travel and I recommend it to everyone all the time and yes yes yes go.
Oooh, I want to walk the West Highland Way too! Whisky and sticky toffee pudding and the Devil’s Staircase and all. Does one have to be in really good shape to do it? I’ve heard it’s one of the more demanding routes, as far as distance and elevation go.
I was in fairly good shape at that point, although I did have a thing going on where my kneecap gets pulled out of its socket when it bends (hence the limping around day 4). I was aiming for 20 miles a day, but scaled that way back at the end because of all the limping. But you could easily do 6-10 miles a day, and they do have a bag service you can use that drops your stuff off at the next place you plan on staying, so you can carry only a light day pack if you want- a lot of the other hikers I met did that. And there were definitely some people over 60 walking along! None of it is technical- the Devil’s Staircase was the only part that was steep, and that is over pretty quickly. I did it in April, so things were muddy. You should definitely do it!!!
I am also really intrigued by the new John Muir Way!
I haven’t seen a crafty thread go up yet; hope nobody minds if I start one! What’s everyone working on this week? I’ve started knitting a scarf for my ladylove using this pattern, and am very much enjoying losing myself in the rhythm of the stitch and seeing all the stripes and colors blend together. I’m using a random number generator to determine how many rows of each color I do, and B gets to pick the yarn each time I make a color change, since it’s her scarf, after all.
In other crafty news, I also got a $50 gift card for my birthday from B’s parents, so I’m investing in my very own yarn swift! No more stretching skeins across two chairs to wind them (and inevitably having them tangle), I’m so happy.
I made two new polymer clay minis this week! One is a hedgehog, which came out pretty cute although I got lazy/sloppy and didn’t fully cover him with quills so he definitely looks better from certain angles, and one is a goldfish in a bowl. I’m super pleased with both of them, although sadly I don’t have pictures yet.
The next thing I want to do is paint some details on some of my existing minis (faces for various animals, mostly) and see how that works — up until now I’ve been using a Sharpie to draw them on, as one of my books suggested, but I haven’t been that happy with the results and especially I haven’t been happy with how, if you fuck up, you can’t take it back. I’m hoping paint will be easier and more forgiving.
I am envious of your sculpting (polymer claying?) abilities! I attempted a sculpture class in high school and failed miserably, so anyone who can bend clay to their will is a sorceress of the first order. I hope your painting experiments go well!
Sewing patterns are dirt cheap at Joann’s this week – all Vogue patterns are $5, and McCall’s are 3/$5, so I picked up a few in hopes of piecing them together to make my Queen Beryl costume.
Also, my bff/cosplay partner got me a bunch of great sewing stuff for my birthday – a cutting mat! A rotary cutter since I can’t cut in a straight goddamn line! FRAY CHECK! A SEAM RIPPER!!! so I hope to use them pretty soon. I have some lovely fabric with a bunch of multicultural matroshyka on them and I want to make a dress out of it real bad.
ooooh, that fabric sounds awesome! I hope you get the chance to make something cute with it soon!
Since getting my rotary cutter I have not touched my fabric shears. Those things are the best. However (I don’t know if you’ve used one before?) they are murderously sharp and can do nerve damage if you e.g. drop it on your foot or the back of your hand.
Best of luck with your matryoshka dress! Pics when it’s finished?
Naturally!
Crafty gift cards are the best!
I’ve been very uncrafty lately but a friend was going through some shit and needed a costume asap so I sewed her a dress in like 4 hours. The seams aren’t finished well and a lot of it was slap-dash but it turned out surprisingly cute and got me out of my slump. Which is good because I haven’t started any holiday anything yet…
Sometimes, the unexpected and slapdash projects are what you need to get out of a crafting funk–glad it worked out for you.
I sold three pairs of my bloomers at a craft show Sunday, which was great. I’m thinking I might not renew my Etsy store, though, because sales there have been non-existent and I don’t understand why. =/
Yay sales! I hope if you decide to keep the Etsy store around, things pick up, or you’re able to find another venue for them where they’ll sell better/faster.
That’s a really cool scarf! I’m making the hat part of this set for a friend’s baby shower. It’s going to be white with stripes in primary colors.
That’s an adorable hat! I hope your friend (and soon enough, the baby) like it!
And I’m so sad I didn’t discover this scarf pattern sooner–I now want to make scarves for everyone and burn through all the odds and ends of my yarn stash. I mean, the holidays are almost upon us…
I am knitting a bag to hold all my plastic bags (I want it to be open on both ends, but we’ll see if I end up having enough yarn – it’s a leftover ball from my Doctor Who scarf, so I’m not sure how much there is other than “less than what’s on the label”) and cutting up some old t-shirts to hopefully make shirts I might actually wear. Probably not until spring, but you know, it’s good to be prepared.
That is going to be a gorgeous scarf.
I am finishing off a jacket that may be destined for the costume box as it’s a wee bit over the top (even for me) but dammit, I’m still going to finish it properly. Currently this involves handstitching 9000 yards of bias binding, mostly while watching I, Claudius. I did not know that Brian Blessed could actually act once upon a time!
I need to finish knitting my daughter’s hat before it gets cold enough for her to need it. It is EXTREMELY NEON.
What do you recommend for a crafty outlet for someone (me) who has arthritis hands?
Not literally arthritis, but they get very crampy and achy doing anything very precise.
Have you tried knitting? I know it sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but I actually find it not bad at all (I have bad arthritis in my fingers). I don’t hold the needles tightly and the movements don’t irritate things but YMMV.
Ooh. I am jealous of the yarn swift. My son and I were in a yarn store the other day and he was telling me I should get one (and a ball winder) so I didn’t have to put the yarn around my knees (I always sit cross-legged). His grade 1/2 classroom had both (they did knitting as a class activity and got to turn the skeins into balls first — they also made their own needles. I wish I had had such a teacher in school.)
Beautiful scarf pattern! I bet it will look great. I’m working on the “Totally Autumn” throw in a mustard Cascades wool. Tomorrow’s my first full day off in a couple of weeks, and I can’t wait to snuggle up in bed with yarn and some movies and a large mug of hot drink! 🙂
Toasties, I went to the New York sheep and wool festival in Rhinebeck last weekend with three friends (one of whom was visiting from out of town for the occasion), and it was glorious and full of lovely fleecy animals. Including angora rabbits, and llamas, and a couple of sheep that were getting sheared and were expressing their disapproval of the process in a series of loud “MAAAAAAHHHHH!”s. And I was very very good and only bought a couple of skeins of yarn. (And some spaghetti sauce from a company called Grandpa Pete’s, which makes delicious marinara and vodka sauces.) And then the next day my out-of-town friend and I went to the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, then stumbled across an excellent ice cream place. It was a fantastic weekend, all in all.
Now I’m looking forward to spending Halloween at a local museum listening to people tell scary stories. As one should absolutely do on Halloween.
Rhinebeck! Jealous 🙂
I am going to Chicago! This is a very spur-of-the-moment trip – my mom really wants to see the David Bowie exhibit at the MCA, so last night my siblings and I decided to take her for her birthday. We’re only there for three days, but give me your Chicago musts – ESPECIALLY restaurants! Where’s the best deep dish pizza? We’ll be staying in the Magnificent Mile area, about 8 minutes from the museum.
IMO, Giordano’s has the best Chicago style casserole pizza. Also, the last time I was in Chicago, I went to the Indian part of town (around Devon St.), bought a giant box of Indian sweets at a grocer, took it back to my hotel room, and just ate that for dinner. Total sugar coma afterward, but worth it.
Have fun!
Oooh, that does sound totally worth it! Thanks!
Giordano’s also has an outrageously good harvest salad, if you prefer something green to go along with your cheese-coma.
In my opinion (and the opinion of many other people in Chicago, I’m not like, an edgy trendsetter) the best pizza to be eaten is at Pequod’s in Lincoln Park! It’s at Clybourn and Webster and it’s just like any other pretty good deep dish pizza except the outer crust is made of caramelized cheese. I don’t see much of a point to eating other deep dish pizza that does not have that modification.
Yeah, I was sold after caramelized cheese crust…
So, there’s this bakery. Hendrickx. At 100 E Walton St. It is up near the Drake Hotel. And it is fabulous. Please go and get crusty, fabulous bread and eat it while it is warm and dammit I’m hungry.
Will definitely check it out! Thanks!
Eat at Wishbone (1001 W Washington Blvd.), http://www.wishbonechicago.com! It is not pizza, but fuck those silly pizza wars. Wishbone bills itself as “southern reconstruction cooking”, and it is SO GOOD.
That menu looks amazing! *adds to list*
Cannot help with the Chicago recs, but the Bowie exhibition was magnificent at the V&A, so I hope you all enjoy it.
Thank you! That’s great to hear!
Since you’re going to be in the Magnificent Mile area, I would recommend stopping by the Vosges Haut-Chocolate shop. They are local chocolatiers who specialize in weirdly wonderful truffle combinations. Also, their La Parisienne chocolate chud is AMAZING. It’s basically molten chocolate masquerading as hot chocolate. Highly recommend it if anyone in your party is a chocolate lover.
ETA: Here’s their website: http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/
Omg, I’ve had some Vosges before and it is amazing. I will definitely be stopping there!
GAAAAAAH why is it only 3:20 p.m.
At least you’re an hour ahead of me. Really feeling it for the poor saps on the west coast right about now.
it’s not even 1pm here aaaaaaaaaugh!!!!! 🙁
OOPS I forgot to announce upthread that I just put up a 20% coupon in my Etsy shop. 20AUTUMN15. It’s only good through midnight on the 26th ‘cos my listings expire on the 27th and sales have been so dismal I’m not sure I’m going to keep listing stuff there.
My bloomers are really cute, y’all, and they launder incredibly well and the lace is super soft, and…I just don’t understand why they’re not selling? The beloved suggested I start making bloomers for babies because people ALWAYS are buying stuff for babies. Thoughts?
Those are cute and look so comfortable! I wonder if people aren’t finding them because you don’t use many tags. I think Etsy only searches in titles + keywords, so “cotton bloomers” doesn’t turn up your items. I have bought underthings on Etsy before and I usually search for ‘handmade cotton,’ ‘printed underwear,’ etc.
I frankly have no idea how bloomers look under clothes, and I bet other people don’t know either. Can you wear them under skinny jeans or are there weird lines? Are they more for skirts? I love the multiple pictures on different models, but it might be helpful to show them wearing the bloomers under something too.
And finally… as a personal taste thing, I don’t like any of the prints. They’re all in the same sort of busy-prints family, so if you don’t like that, there’s really just not any variety. I do like the plum motif that already sold, though, so I would probably try a pair out if there were more like that (or other subtler patterns) and I could see how other people wore them!
(This is a reply to CleverManka in case this enormously frustrating comment bug reoccurs)
They definitely would not work under trousers. Under skirts or as summer PJ things. I do have the pic of me lifting my skirt to show them off. Perhaps I should highlight that more.
Thanks for the comment about the patterns. I hadn’t considered that! I was hoping to use them as a way to get rid of all my novelty print fabric so I don’t anticipate purchasing any more sedate fabrics. =/
If you decided to go the making-stuff-for-babies route, I think a lot of those prints would disguise stains well, so maybe bibs?
If you decide to continue on Etsy, I second the tags thing. I’d totally go wild on tags with these – pajamas, steampunk, bridesmaid gift, vintage, sleep shorts, suffragette, modesty, bicycle commuting (that is totally what I would use these for – biking in a skirt) etc. – anything even remotely associated.
I also, personally, find the photos of models more compelling than the photos of just the bloomers. I’d mix it up and make those the main image, at least for a few of them?
(Also hi, I bought some.) 😉
Oh, bless you!!! Both for the sale and the ideas for tags!
Definitely agree with the photo comment. When I look at the photos on the main page, I can’t really tell what they’re going to look like on a body, and since they’re flat and sort of triangular laid on a table, I feel like they might look flat and triangular on me. They’re not, the model shots are super cute, but if you can I would definitely use the model photo for the main picture on each item.
It would also help differentiate them from each other- when I’m browsing, I don’t really want to see “this is the same item in many different prints.” even if it is. I want to be like “ooh that one’s cute, or maybe that other one? They look good on this person but that photo is different and posed interestingly so my eye is drawn to it… etc.” They really are cute so I hope your luck changes soon!
This is a reply to CleverManka re: Etsy.
I’ll third the comment on photos, but since I know model shots can be time-consuming (and sometimes expensive), I’ll just say maybe just stop photographing them on your rotary mat? The color is not very attractive on my screen, and it tends to make the photos look dark and dingy. :/ I’ve actually got several underwear stores in my favorites, though I haven’t worked up the courage (or budget) to order any of them yet. And lots of them only have a handful of model shots! But the plain, sitting-on-table shots generally have the underwear photographed at an angle (not straight up and down; sideways), in bright light, and with a cutesy prop that helps the design tell a story. One shop I’ve been following for a while has vintage designs, and pairs them with packs of vintage letters or ropes of fake pearls (so love letters or boudoir props). (Since these things are generally artfully arranged in the sides of the images and I’m more of a cook than a crafter, I can’t help thinking of them as “garnishes.”) You’ve got a lot of directions you could go with this! Steampunk stuff, Victorian hairbrushes/hand mirrors, vintage perfume bottles, vintage bicycle ad imagery, fresh flowers for some of the busier floral prints, fans (or, yanno, something less stereotypical*) for the Asian prints… these things are so versatile you can easily get a huge variety of alluring images just pulling stuff out of your craft drawer and photographing in a bright window for a few hours.
Good luck! I would totally buy some of these, but it looks like they’re a touch too small for me. :/ It always makes me happy to see an Etsy shop get off the ground though!
*oooh, Japanese woodcuts!? Or vintage Japanese ad art, but I think that’s harder to find.
If you happen to use Reddit, try going to reddit.com/r/etsy the people there generally have good advice about how to make your store more visible and how to optimize tags.
Hello, am I late to the party? Am on UK time, or ‘Greenwich Mean Time’. Just wanted to ask for any anti-depressant success stories from you lovely Toasties. I have been feeling depressed for a while now and battling it on my own, along with a chronic pain condition (that is slowly resolving itself but has frustrating relapses).
Have decided, since crying in the shower with my third bout of flu in a month, that I am going to the Doctor on Monday morning to hopefully start a course of something that can help me over this hurdle. Have been scared to do so until now for some reason, as if part of me thought I would then permanently be on them or something, which is just stupid. But now I realise something needs to change so am going to be proactive, to help myself.
Anyway, your Anti-Depressant stories welcome. (Love theToast and especially the Women in Western Art posts, they are hilarious!)
You’re not too late at all! I don’t have any particular advice for you since I have never taken antidepressants, but many of my friends have and their lives have improved tons. It is a HUGE step just to make that doctor’s appointment and decide to do something about it. So, congratulations on a really big step forward! I hope you can work with your doc to find something that will work for you, and don’t be afraid to speak up if the first thing you try doesn’t work — sometimes it takes a few attempts to find what will really jam for you. Good luck!
Making the appointment is a HUGE first step. Well done, you.
PartnerChouffe resisted the idea of SSRIs for… ever, I think; for years before I met him and going to about the last six months. He is now on a very, very low dose of a fairly old medication and it’s just right. He compares it to having a ladder when he didn’t actually realize he couldn’t reach a shelf.
I was scared to start anything, too. Tried just about everything I could think of. There were some things I could think of that I didn’t have the energy/motivation for because, well, that’s what depression is, right?
I’ve been taking anti-anxiety/depression medicine for about a month now. The first few weeks were a bit rough because they made me angry! But my adjusted dose is great. Now I just have to put my life together in little steps instead of OH MY GOD I FEEL GREAT NOW I CAN DO EVERYTHING AGAIN
So yeah, try it! It will probably help. Watch yourself for awhile to see how things change, because it’s impossible to get the dose right right away unless they’re lucky.
Thank you all (how do you reply all?) for your responses, it’s nice and reassuring that others have been here before- which I obviously know, looking at stats and stuff, but noone I know IRL ever talks about it openly, or not in detail.
A big plus is that my other half is a doctor and knows about all the different meds. (Admitting I think I need some ADs to my other half was also a big deal, but he was very calm and said he thought that was a good idea, I guess he’s seen me struggling the past year). So Other Half has told me which types he thinks would be a good idea to try at first….hopefully the Doc I see on Monday agrees, otherwise unsure if I should mention it. In the UK some GPs get annoyed if the patient is too proactive and has done their research! Anyway Thank you again for replying.
I’m also wondering how long is normal to start feeling a bit more ‘on the up’, but I guess it varies a lot per person and dose/medication etc….Apparently a 6 month course is the normal minimum which somehow sounds long, but isn’t compared to the length of time of my feeling down & in pain. So I guess I owe it to myself to try for that long!
Ask your doc to screen you for depression. That keeps the expert role in his hands. After a diagnosis, ask your doc to run down possible treatments. He still gets to be the expert. After he gets to have his say, you can ask for any drug you have a preference for, whether he mentioned it or not. He will have spent enough energy on his expert role that you can take the reins.
I took fluoxetine for a few years. It saved my life. I will take it again without hesitation the moment I need it.
You’re going to be OK as long as you don’t ignore your depression. Keep us Toastfolk in the loop. I want to know how you feel next week, please.
Thanks for advice that’s v helpful.
Yes I will let the doctor do his diagnosis thing first, I don’t want to be seen as the possibly-not-depressed type who walks in and demands medication. But I do think I really need it now, as I have waited so long to improve without it…if I think about going in to see him and being told ADs are not the way to go, I think I’d be upset. I don’t want my desperation to improve to come across as demanding ADs though. Difficult. Will try and stay calm and just describe my symptoms (insomnia for nearly 3 months, feeling low for past year or more, low appetite and energy, have lost a lot of weight and struggling to put it back on, feel hopeless etc).
Will let you know how I get on – is there an Open Thread every Friday? I read the Toast all the time but don’t comment too often.
On a positive note, today I found out I got Distinction in my course for the past year! I feel no reaction but in theory this is great news…maybe it will hit me later on.
We’re here every Friday. Some of us live for Friday’s Toast open thread. I will look for you next week.
Congratulations on your course Distinction! Feeling no reaction to a significant achievement is a common symptom of depression. Please add it to the list you will give your doc.
When I got up the courage to address my depression, I wrote out a list of symptoms to hand to the doc. It was the only way I could communicate, I was so deeply depressed. That is to say, do whatever you need to do to get the help you deserve.
You are brave. Depression is a liar. Don’t believe anything it tells you. Insist on help. I’m in your corner.
Yes, there is an open thread every Friday. Rose is right about living for it; I basically start anticipating the next Friday Open Thread when it’s still currently Friday.
OK Great I will be back.
Btw I’m not having self-harming thoughts if anyone was worried, I have done in the past but that was due to being in real pain, whereas I am virtually painfree now (a plus but still got a way to go, physically, to rebuild my muscle strength). Now I just feel low & have no reaction/ feel neutral all the time. Yes I will add that to my list of symptoms.
Prob gonna spend part of this weekend writing it all out and getting it clear in my head- which is a pretty cloudy and confused place most days, so I can’t just talk it through without a list, a bit like you Rose!
Thanks everyone x
That’s a good idea about writing it out. I did that myself and just got more depressed lol… but it did help and it showed me I was doing the right thing asking for help.
PC’s GP advised at least a month to even begin thinking about adjusting the dosage and almost that long to feel the effects,
Thanks. A month isn’t too bad to wait to feel the effects. I’ve been feeling low for so long that it has become the norm, but I think just knowing it will change soon (during that month) would help. Although I guess I shouldn’t rely on it having a huge transformative effect. I just want to sleep better and have more energy, and mood will come along when it comes along….fingers crossed! Love the name Chouffe btw
I just recently (like had the 2nd appointment yesterday morning) upped my antidepressant prescription and it is amazing. I feel smart and capable and when I decide to do things I can almost always actually do them, and when I can’t I can figure out why instead of feeling like a miserable lump. I know it’s not for everyone, but proper medication has saved my life, and I mean that literally.
Caveat: getting the proper medication took a little bit of trial and error, which is exhausting, so make sure you have someone with you (ideally your doctor, but also your therapist, or even a good friend) who is totally on board with the whole “medication is amazing” thing because when #2 doesn’t work out and it’s been two months you are going to want to give up. Do not give up. Brain meds are weird; there is almost certainly one out there that will work for you. If you’re closely related to anyone who’s been on meds before, ask them if they had any good or bad experiences.
Thanks for reply. Your response sounds like exactly how I want to react…bit scared of reactions to the meds that don’t work for me though. What kind of thing happens during the ‘trial and error’ part? No reaction at all, or can you feel worse? I dont really want to feel worse….
Just remembered my brother has used them in the past so have texted him now to ask about it (we’re not very close hence haven’t seen him to talk to him about it, but I’m sure we can chat about it now I’ve remembered!). My boyfriend is totally on board (and a Dr so knows a bit about it) but probably won’t want me to solely rely on talking to him about how I’m feeling, so I need to get a therapist I’m guessing (not a big thing in the UK, but I’ll see what my Dr recommends).
I didn’t feel emotionally worse, but I did have one medication that made me so twitchy I stayed up all night vibrating in my chair. Unpleasant. (When I came in as soon as the clinic opened, my doctor gave me the stink-eye and said, “This is what the emergency line is for.” So, you know, it’s OK to call the emergency line for unpleasant side-effects.)
My sister, who was being medicated more for anxiety than for depression but under the same category of SSRIs, got a kind of manic-depression reaction where she’d be rocketing back and forth from one emotional state to another way, way too fast. Again, keeping your doctor informed of side-effects means they can get you off of them as soon as possible, but SSRI withdrawl is not fun (for levels of “hungover for a week” kind of not fun) so sometimes it’s better to ease off of something than to quit it cold-turkey, and that’s the doctor’s call to make.
Make sure, too, when you’re looking for a therapist that you tell them you’re trying out medication and what your goals are for it (plan to stay on it forever, want to use it just to get over this particular hump, etc.) Some therapists Do Not Like Meds, and they would not be terribly helpful in this situation.
Yes, I was coming in to this thread to make sure someone mentioned this caveat. It can be really exhausting to try to get the right medication/combination of medications/dosage(s) figured out. It is a process that takes time and can have spells that are truly awful. But do not give up.
(My husband has been going through a truly awful spell of the medication dance in the last ~6 weeks but has begun to come out of it, and I am so relieved.)
I have a family history of depression and have been dealing with it myself since puberty, basically. Didn’t try medication until a bad patch in college, and they made a HUGE difference. I was also doing talk therapy, which was helpful too. I’ve taken meds at other periods in my life when I’ve been depressed and it’s always helped me. Honestly, since I’d been dealing with untreated depression for so long, it wasn’t until I was on an SSRI for a while that I realized how much of how I saw the world was a result of my depression. Using medication has helped me be much better at recognizing the signs of a relapse too, instead of just feeling like the world has gone to shit; this makes it much easier to get help before things get dire.
Someone from one of my other internet communities started this Tumblr that I think you all would enjoy.
http://feminismruinedmylife.tumblr.com
Favourite so far:
Making fancyish ramen tonight for dinner! Got my flu shot today and cut off all my hair both to donate to Locks of Love and relieve me of dealing with how much it was shedding everywhere. So give me a week and I can sneeze on you with no harm done! This felt like a good first day of the rest of my life-type day. I hope to keep that momentum going. Sadly I have no good world news to offer, but you have motivated me to look out for some this evening and try to balance out the bad, so thanks for that. P.S. Holy MOSES my arm hurts. Will be taking a gap week before I go get all my other shots up to code (but I’m gonna do it, promise).
I had a flu jab (British version lol) and had to sleep on my other side/arm for about 2-3 nights, as that arm STILL hurt. Like my bicep was solid. Sorry, not too encouraging, but I feel your pain.
(Also I have flu again. so be careful out there! There is so much going around!)
When you say ‘cut off all my hair’, how ‘all’ do you mean? I’m bored of my longish hair and using a hairdryer for so long…hmmm
@AlisonDB, “flu jab” sounds both more tidy and kind of butch. Louise Rennison was right all along about British English, said the citizen of Hamburger-a-gogo-land. “All” as in, put it in a tight ponytail, lopped off said ponytail, am now a less cute version of Rachel Maddow. Your ears get a tiny bit cold as a result, but having dry hair with one swipe of a towel? Genuinely priceless. Do it do it!
Tell me more about your ramen making – I want to find a good veg version, if there’s a chance you are doing that…
@loren-smith, oh god, glad I didn’t see this until the next day because I made something called “GreeNoodle,” a wheat and moroheyta miso ramen. It was really tasty! And the broth was mildly spicy in that ‘perfect for a fall evening’ kind of way! So I was totally on board. Then three hours later my stomach noticed it was there and emphatically voted no for the rest of the evening. Obvi YMMV if the first M is Movements, but next time I’d go for any basic hippie noodles (once I live near a health food store again) with broccoli, carrots, mushrooms and maybe a little dried seaweed. I like tofu, too, but need to have more fridge space to eat the way I like. Meh.
This was my first thought, too…but then I realized that they hired a photographer for the ceremony and party and will be the first to see the photos. [insert angry face emoji]. BUt maybe I can get some pictures that our friends take and you’re right, the handwritten note would be a great touch. Thanks!
Well even if they see the photos first, they’re probably not going to make them into an album, are they? Maybe. I dunno. But the handwritten note alone or with any of the other things people suggested would be great too.
hiiii Toasties! After a long few months of terribleness, things are looking up and I wanted to happily share! I am coming up out of what has been a somewhat debilitating bout of depression, and I feel good for the first time in a long time. I got a job offer that I’m so excited about after months of searching, applying, and interviewing. The unemployment plus constant rejection was really wearing me down, and I feel SO RELIEVED to have gotten an offer! I’m turning 30 soon, recently made a big move, and things seem to be turning around for me. sighs of relief all around. 😀
Yay! That all sounds wonderful, congratulations!!
congrats! What kind of job is it?
(Above I started a thread asking about people’s anti-depressant stories- just wondering if you used them to escape depression, or tried other things? I’m going to the Dr on Monday about mine…)
Really pleased to hear your good news. I hope the new job is wonderful and things keep turning out well for you.
No, *you’re* tearing up at your desk when you saw some pictures of the 401 shut down and lined with people and cars as far as the eye can see pulled over to let Cpl. Cirillo by.
Riiiiight? God, and previously I’ve rolled my eyes at some of the jingoism that our military inspires. But gaaaawd, he was doing something ceremonially. Don’t shoot people who are just standing there trying to prevent drunk dirtbag teens from peeing on the memorial.
Toasties! Some good things in my life:
I had a one-year performance evaluation this week, and it was fantastic, and I love my boss, and every part of my job that I like best I get to focus more on, and the parts that are dull I get to let other people deal with! And she’s recommending me for a bonus, which is aces.
Mr.Imogen and I have started watching Twin Peaks. YOU GUYS, this show is so flipping weird, I love it. We are three episodes in. Talk to me about Twin Peaks!
Husband has the flu, which actually makes him adorable, and he keeps trying to tell me things while taking flu medicine, inspired by Twin Peaks. Two nights ago it was “People with green words!”
Friend and I are going to write a ridiculous time travel story for NaNoWriMo where a modern day executive and a regency spinster(ish) swap places, and use their savvy and acumen to be brilliant successes. I get to write the modern day executive part and I’m so excited.
I doubt anyone will see this all the way down here but I just want to say hi! I’ve really missed the open threads lately, but work is craaaaaaazy and it only going to continue to be crazy for the foreseeable future. We’re moving three of our warehouses in the next 6 weeks and it’s going to be fucking bonkers. So I probably won’t be around very much, but I’ll be Toasting in my heart.
Hi!
Bless your Toasty heart.
Hi! We’ve/I’ve missed you, but good luck with all that moving! I’m looking forward to having you back 🙂
Game thread: Civilization: Beyond Earth just released. I’m not a huge civ fantatic but have played some of the older ones. I’ve found this one an interesting new twist on the series (you are establishing a new colony on an alien world, instead of starting from pre-history). Anyone else get this? Thoughts?
Guys. Another school shooting, another round of No Such Thing As Misogyny.
blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/10/shooting-reported-at-marysville-pilchuck-high-school/
My coworker just stole my idea in a meeting (well, he said we “came up with it together” when we most definitely did not), but I don’t care because my week is otherwise going great! I got my end-of-probationary-period assessment at my new job from my boss, and it was three sentences about how great I am with a 60’s revolutionary slogan tacked on. I gave an well-recieved presentation yesterday, my family is coming to visit me in a few hours, and I am baking a pie!
I just started reading Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer, and all I want to do is keep reading it. I’ve been sneaking glances at it all day at work, because I am the worst employee and it’s really very good. It reminds me a lot of Stalker, except the stalkers are government employees, not trespassers.
I also discovered that there was a new, more accurate translation of Solaris done recently?! There is unfortunately no paper version available yet (I love my e-reader, but I like to keep the books I like the most in physical format), but I fell upon the e-book version and am very excited to read it again! Terrible translation or no, Solaris is one of my favorite books (and I love the Tarkovsky film version, too).
Also, someone finally pointed out to me that the reason I am so fond of all parts of 2001: A Space Odyssey is because the last bit is listening to Ligeti and also some visuals, not a story that includes some Ligeti — perhaps unsurprisingly, if you’re not into microtonality, the vortex bit and beyond might leave you a little cold, heh.
The Solaris news is very exciting; I read it years ago and remember almost nothing except that I thought the book was good and the translation not so much, so now I get to check it out again, yay!
It has been a mostly good week; husband made some damn fine chocolate covered bacon brownies. I went to yoga twice. And we’ve bought tickets to go to Iceland next spring. It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to visit for years and even if the weather is appalling and we don’t get to see much nature, we can still hang out in Reykjavik and it will be awesome.
The general atmosphere at work has been driving me nuts; partially it’s certain people whose attitudes I can’t control, but partially it’s the realization that despite loving the team I’m in, my job is not going to get more interesting or stimulating. So I’ve applied for a new role in another team that will be a step up and hopefully a lot more interesting. And happily, both managers I work with have been supportive of my desire to progress. So we’ll see what happens, but I’m in a good position either way.
I would go back to Iceland in a heartbeat, congratulations!
The catacombs of the Capucin monastery in Palermo, Sicily. I will not traumatize you all with a photo here- just do a google image search. It is full of dead bodies with skin still on them wearing fancy clothes, hanging on the walls, looking like the bad dude did in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when he drank out of the wrong cup. And it is dark and dank.
Reminder for CHICAGO TOASTIES — coming up soon!
Meetup at Rogers Park Social, 6ish to 10ish pm, Saturday, November 1.
For any DC Toasties who are late to the thread or aren’t in the Google group (I know there were a few people in the last few weeks who’d been wanting to join–hoping you all got linked up): Trivia at Politics and Prose tonight (Saturday) at 8! You should come! Grilled cheese specials start at 7.
I’m late to respond to this, because I wanted to check facts with my mom. She was diagnosed young and went on to have four kids, in spite of worries about it affecting her fertility. When I told her what you were going through with Mystery Ailment she said “oh poor girl, tell her she can email me if she has questions about endo.” So there you go, internet mom empathy via the Toast (I’m sure she’s 100% serious, too).
(this was meant to be a response to slowseptember OH WELL)
Thank you so much, and thanks to your empathetic mom! If this does turn out to be Endo, I may just take her up on that.
Envoyé de m
I am jumping in super late because I got myself together and joined the Y and went and did a trial session with a trainer and did a ton of lunges and this weird kinesis wall thing and kettlebells and hauling on giant rope things and now I am very tired and sore and I kind of want to do it again. I thank Nicole and The Toast for making me aware that working out can be something other than jumping around in a Zumba class or trying to keep myself from falling off an elliptical, that it can be lifting heavy things and that is awesome. I have never belonged to a gym in my many years of life. so this is all very new and very not-normal for me, but I’m hoping it can be my new normal.
Also, because I am very vain, I’m hoping my cutest clothes will fit well again soon.
As a very late OT reader, let me say: that is awesome! Congratulations on your soon-to-be SWOLEness.
Grown-up girls' lunch! My nanny used to have an annual slumber party for her multitudinous little girl relatives and my sister and me. We would get to try on makeup and perfume! Her relatives were all pretty intimidating but her apartment was the epitome of adult glamour, from the smell of cigarettes to her silver-backed hairbrush set.
Thanks! This was, uh, not incorrect, for sure.