Today is Friday, the 13th.
Have you ever wondered about your shrink and their life beyond your time together? Emily Maloney writes about the time she stalked her own shrink.
Even now, I adjust the image in my head, the term. Not stalked. Researched, I preferred to say. I knew where she lived and how many children she had. When she got a divorce, and the kids’ names and ages appeared in the court records, I felt a tingle of glee, just for knowing, which made me feel a little sick. My heart sped up as I scrolled through those records or ones from the county recorder’s office online. Available for anyone to see, I told myself. Public records.
There is this intense labor dispute happening at docks and my best friend was telling me all about it and it sounds terrible and here are some pictures of ships just floating in the ocean, waiting to unload cargo.
New webseries: The BFF Chronicles
Here is a soundtrack for Black History Month and here is a reading list I came up with.
Ahh, the ongoing dilemma of Internet comments.
Ta-Nehisi Coates started blogging for The Atlantic on August 4, 2008. His first postwas titled “Sullivan… McArdle… Fallows… Coates???” and it laid down his terms from the start: “My only rule, really, is simple,” he wrote. “Don’t be a jerk to people you disagree with.” He’d been hired to fill the slot left in the magazine’s roster of bloggers by Matt Yglesias, and he addressed how he’d be coming at the role differently. “Matt has a fairly amazing ability to comment, from a left perspective, on a wide range of issues… Knowing my own limits, I’ll take a different tack. On things I’m not so sure on, I’ll state my opinion rather gingerly and then hope my commenters can fill in the gaps.”
The blog would soon be widely lauded for the keenness and clarity of its ideas, the power of its language, and for its unexpected ability to host real, substantive conversations in the comments—an extreme rarity on big-name websites. Coates, then a relatively unknown writer, would go on to win a 2013 National Magazine Award for “Fear of a Black President,” an essay published in The Atlantic’s print edition, while a selection of nine posts from his blog would be named a 2014 finalist in the National Magazine Awards’ “columns and commentary” category.
So how did Coates foster a comment section in which—wonder of wonders—intelligent adults thoughtfully share ideas and knowledge, and where trolling, rudeness and bad faith aren’t tolerated? I asked Coates and other players in the blog’s success—editors, moderators and commenters—to look back on what makes it work.
Looks like “black TV” is a thing now because there is a show with black people on the air doing very well.
Bob Nygaard: Psychic Crimefighter (I wish I had a job title half as interesting.)
It wasn’t something she would normally have done.
Then again, nothing in Megan’s life was normal that year. There had been a bad breakup that triggered a deep depression. Her doctor had prescribed pills, her mother had prescribed time away from New York, and she had tried both. Now, several months later, she was back on the Upper East Side, walking down Second Avenue to meet a friend for dinner. She wasn’t exactly cured, but she was getting there. And then she stepped off the curb, crossed over to 77th Street and walked straight into a woman named Velvet.
Harbingers of disaster are supposed to look ominous, but the most ghoulish thing about Velvet was her bad dye job; other than that she looked utterly unremarkable.
“There’s something wrong with you,” said Velvet, extending a hand, stopping Megan in her tracks. “I see darkness surrounding you.” She repeated variants of this as she tried to usher Megan into a psychic’s office nearby. “A dark aura” … “Something wrong” … “We can help.” Megan made excuses but accepted a flyer from Velvet, and told her she might be back.
Megan had never seen a psychic before. She was a thirtysomething professional with a master’s degree. She didn’t believe in that kind of stuff! But all through dinner the flyer sat ticking at the bottom of her bag like a bomb about to go off. “How could she tell there was a problem?” Megan thought, picking at pasta. The question niggled at the back of her mind and wouldn’t go away.
A few days later, curiosity got the better of her. Megan fished the flyer out of her handbag and went to the address specified. There, Velvet ushered her in to meet the head honcho of the establishment: Betty Vlado.
And so began a series of unfortunate and very expensive events that turned into private investigator Bob Nygaard’s sixth supernatural scam case: the Incident of the Fraudulent Meteorite.
A women’s detective agency in China. Yessssssssssssss.
When Zhang Yufen’s husband finally admitted to having an affair and left her to live with his mistress, clearing out his possessions and emptying their joint bank account, she felt as though the sky had fallen on her head.
But after a week in which she barely ate or slept, her pain and anger were channeled into a new determination: to find out who his mistress was, where they were living and why he had turned his back on 16 years of marriage — and to force him to provide proper financial support for her and their young son.
There was only one way to do that, she decided — good old-fashioned detective work — and only one person to do it, and that was her.
This is a bit self-indulgent but Ashley Ford and I are going to be co-editing an anthology entitled Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture. Stay tuned for more information and a call for submissions.
Writers are romantic as hell. What is the most romantic thing (that you’re willing to share), that you’ve said or that has been said to you?
Tags: link roundup, the internet
My shrink told me about peeing in a tupperware bowl in her kitchen so as not to disturb her then infant son. I feel like this may be knowing too much about your mental health care provider.
I feel like that might be knowing too much about anyone, especially your mental health care provider.
What? Was her baby napping in the bathroom sink?
Also, how loud are you peeing that it will wake up an infant??
Anyone who has has a real problem sleeper would understand. My kid can be woken up simply by walking next to his room even with a white noise machine blarring away. My electronic toothbrush woke him up without fail across a hallway and two rooms! And then it’s another forty minute struggle to get them back to sleep. Fortunately I never had to pee in a sink, but I get this woman, I seriously do.
And why would peeing disturb them? Unless maybe it was a toilet flushing thing? And even then I’d rather have pee mellowing in a toilet than in a Tupper ware container!
When I was a kid my dad had to undergo some medical tests and I guess either his doctor asked for a HUGE urine sample or my dad decided the optimal delivery method for the stuff was in a big plastic bottle. I saw it on the coffee table in our living room and went, “Oh, you bought apple juice?” and reached my hand out. He yanked it away and yelled “NO DON’T TOUCH THAT.” I was like okay… geez… keep your special apple juice all to yourself if it means that much to you. It was many years before I figured it out.
I am totally hearing this in the voice of TIna from Bob’s Burgers.
Could it be the going to the bathroom that might wake him up? Like, noisy stairs? I’ve been thinking about this for 5 minutes straight.
I still cannot think of any scenario in which the least disruptive choice is to pee in a bowl.
I’ve been thinking about it too. The only thing I can come up with is the baby was physically sleeping on the toilet. Which makes about as much sense as anything else we’ve come up with.
Maybe her baby was the cat from last week’s open thread who sits in the toilet?
I think it was the flushing issue. Which no, does not still fully explain why a bowl in the kitchen instead of deferred flushing.
She’s really a good shrink. Just maybe not someone to accept used kitchen goods from. (Oh god. What if shrink reads the toast? Next week will be AWKWARD)
If it was the flushing issue, why not just pee in the bathtub/shower and let it drain?
IDK man. Next week’s session. ‘Yeah, healing traumas can wait. Tell me more pee stories. The internet has *questions*’
How spooky is Fri 13th right before Vday?! AHHH!
I loathe Friday the 13th and this day is already shaping up badly. I am really superstitious and you better believe I am not going anywhere and I am going straight home after work to avoid too much danger.
Don’t do that 70% of accidents occur near the home! The safest thing to do is to stay AWAY from home and then possibly go on a plan to Sweden.
I have legit changed travel plans to avoid flying on Friday the 13th. I am that Weird about it.
I respect your superstition — people like you are the delightful reason that plane tickets, banquet halls, etc are often cheaper on Friday the 13th! I know people who had their wedding 50% off just because they chose this date. Yay!
My first breakup took place on a Friday the 13th right before Valentine’s Day. I was 15 and had found out through livejournal that my girlfriend was cheating on me with a boy. It was a rough time.
OH BOY :-/
I was born on the 13th (of March) so my birthday will be on a Friday this year! I’ve always told myself that those of us born on the 13th can’t be affected by Friday the 13th shenangians, but I accidentally sprayed myself in the face today with the spray gun thing of my sink and am starting to reconsider this.
At least it wasn’t Lysol, tho.
There is also a Fri the 13th next month too! (it will be our board game night and we will play Haunting on Hill House).
I love it, because it means I get to throw a witch-themed Galentine’s day bash tonight!
Here is a really good article about Bergen County, NJ’s holdout on blue laws (aka being unable to buy anything on Sundays) that I found particularly interesting, but that may just be because I went to college up there and woe unto you if you needed something on a Sunday in that area. They are apparently the only county in the entire country that still has such a ban? I’ve seen places down South that prohibit alcohol sales on Sundays, but this is more widespread than that.
I will definitely be checking out the Black History Month soundtrack as soon as I can access Buzzfeed (work blocks it as ‘tasteless,’ screw you Websense) and I am finding the article about the psychic fraud detective VERY INTERESTING.
Fascinating! In NC you can’t get it before noon on Sundays.
I used to live near a dry city – as in no alcohol, ever, at any time. And it remains that way to this day. It was also the closest city to the rural area where I lived. Made it MUCH harder to find someone to illegally purchase alcohol for minors like myself!
It’s funny/not funny because the biggest mall in the area is there – Garden State Plaza – so on a Saturday, especially around the holidays, you’ll be waiting hours for a parking space if you don’t give up and go elsewhere – but if you swing by the next day, it’s completely empty. Even the restaurants close because if nobody’s going to the mall, nobody’s going out to eat there either. Super eerie.
There are a lot of places in MI that you can’t buy alcohol before noon on Sundays*, and our last holdout on no-Sunday-sales only relented about five years ago.
*technically this is still the law statewide, but retailers and serving establishments can buy an extra permit that allows morning sales on Sundays
I spent my twenty-first birthday on a trip with my family in what turned out to be a no-alcohol-on-sundays county. Of course it was a Sunday. I had never heard of this before and thought they were fucking with me. I was FURIOUS. Luckily my parents have a good Catholic enthusiasm for intoxicating spirits and were willing to drive me into an adjacent county.
I feel so betrayed. My best friend from college is from Bergen Country and I am finding out about the blue laws there from Toasties and not her!!
I lived in northern NJ for 3 years and didn’t know about this law until I moved there and tried to go buy an emergency iron on Sunday night before my first day of work and the Target parking lot was empty. It was so weird!! It also means that Saturdays in December are all a Black Friday-level disaster at any shopping center, because everyone has half the weekend Christmas shopping days.
Ooh, when I was in college in South Carolina (so 8 years ago or so), they had these sort of blue laws. You only buy food on Sunday mornings, so they’d actually rope off the parts of Target or Walmart or whatever that weren’t the food aisles. I guess they must have changed them by now if Bergen County is the only county left! I would not have expected it to be New Jersey. Wild.
Not just down South–I live in a *very* northern state that prohibits retail alcohol sales on Sundays. Fortunately, I am right on the border of another state with much more relaxed liquor laws. I figure that as long as I’m just drinking it myself and not selling it to people on my side of the border, it’s not bootlegging, right?
Ah, I’m a non-drinker so I don’t really pay attention to that – I didn’t realize it was so widespread!
Indiana doesn’t sell alcohol on Sundays at all, except directly from actual breweries and wineries, which is a recent change. One year when I was in college, both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve fell on Sundays and the grocery stores had signs up for weeks warning people to buy their booze in advance.
I’m now in NYC and didn’t know about the Bergen County thing, but it doesn’t surprise me very much considering the people I know from there.
I was a grocery store cashier in Indiana in college. Explaining this to people was one of my least favorite parts of the job.
“I’m sorry, sir, but the computer will LITERALLY not let me scan this six-pack. Seriously. No, I can’t just ring it up as ‘grocery’ and not specify what it is, unless you want to pay my legal bills when excise comes to take me away. I make minimum wage here, mister. I don’t have time for this. There are ten people behind you in line who just want to buy spaghetti and tampons. Absolutely, you can talk to my manager. Here you go.”
OMG PEOPLE THE BARS ARE OPEN IF YOU WANT TO GET YOUR BEER ON
I grew up there. If you’ve got access to a car (if you don’t, you’re screwed obviously) and you need something at a mall specifically, you either drive across the border to the big mall in Nyack that they built about 10 years ago, or you go to Wayne, NJ (which isn’t that far) and you go to Willowbrook mall. Yeah, it’s really weird once you get out into the rest of the world, but we all work around things like banks not being open on sundays so i’m not entirely sure what the big deal is.
Also, not for nothing, but I’m wondering why this guy needs so last minute onesies all the time. I mean, I’ve got a 2 year old, and she’s not ripping through them like the Hulk… is his kid?
I grew up walking distance from the mall in Nyack! It used to be chaos every Sunday with people driving over to shop there (meanwhile, we would all go to NJ whenever we could to shop – no sales tax!)
I recently feverishly informed my girlfriend that I wanted a body pillow that looked/smelled like her, to hug on my sick day when she was at work. She seemed equal parts amused and baffled. ROMANCE.
“This is nice. Your hand feels like a pillow that’s been in the microwave.”
If I were going to be a fake psychic, I’d choose a more trustworthy sounding name than VELVET. Like maybe Madame Fraud-lynn DeScamsalot.
Good news, fellow Massholes! Were you worried that our transit system was a little too functional lately? After all, the Red Line was able to operate for three out of five work days this week! Well don’t worry, the legislature just colluded with Baker to cut $14 million dollars from its budget. http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/0…
Oh, excellent, that totally makes sense.
OH YES SO GREAT. Thankfully I work in Alewife and live in Somerville, so I never have to be on the red line more than, like, four stops. It sounds like further down the line things are extremely terrible 🙁
A week ago Monday (which, you will recall, was in the midst of snowstorm #2), I was stranded on the (outdoor!) platform at Charles/MGH for an hour due to a disabled train. It was delightful.
I envy. I’m in Wollaston, and today was the first day when I could get to work without waiting in Russian-bread-distribution-style lines for buses. Fortunately, I could work at home, but…you know, I never thought I could get *tired* of staying in my apartment watching Netflix.
SAME. I worked from home on Monday and Tuesday this week and I was so excited to get back to the office on Wednesday. I’m a bit horrified by that fact but there it is.
Romantic-est thing. It’s silly, but this message, dated 7/12/2011, in reference to our mutual complicated situations:
In the meantime, until exclusivity rears its noble head, I’ve changed my mind about thinking I’d like to see you again: I now know I’d like to see you again. So there.
x
We were living together five days later.
That’s adorable.
“Southern trees bear strange fruit” *shivers*
But the published comic book with a similar title: Strange Fruit, Volume I: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History is giving me life. My hypothetical children will be well acquainted with it. It may or may not inspire casual pop-quizzes/discussions around the dinner table.
Oh that piece on The Horde made me very sad, because of the obvious parallels to the Toast’s comments section. It’s admirable what Coates managed to do with comments, and how he acknowledged their importance, but I also don’t blame him for letting it go. Moderation has to be exhausting.
So, here’s to you, Toast moderators! Thanks for enabling this to be such a nice place.
I agree. I was thrilled to discover the toast, but the comments are as important to me as the pieces themselves. There are so many thoughtful, funny, all around awesome people on here (not to mention, no one telling me that I can make a million dollars a day working from home for google). In my fantasy world, this is because only awesome people visit and comment, but really I know it’s because the mods must be on top of it. Kudos!
Ta-Nehisi’s blog and the comment section used to be just about my favorite place on the internet. The conversation was reliably whip-smart and TNC was never afraid to mallet the hell out of people who broke the rules. I’ve moderated before, and I know how difficult it can be and I loved how serious he was about it, but I agree with you, I can’t blame him for the changes that he’s made. The internet just can’t have nice things.
Seriously. I am so grateful for this wonderful comments section. It’s one of the very few comment sections on the internet that are welcoming to women, LGBTQ folks, and, frankly, folks who find horrible grammar and orthography to be a vexation to the spirit.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been following Charmaine Chua’s ethnography of a container ship on the blog The Disorder of Things. She wrote this about the current labor dispute at the ports, and it’s really good!
Thank you for sharing this!
I’ve been texting stanzas from a book of 100 Love Sonnets from Pablo Neruda on days when my gf and I can’t see each other between work and school. About to start Sonnet IV.
My niece turns fourteen today! She’s a huge Doctor Who fan (which warms the cockles of her auntie’s heart) so I sent her a TARDIS phone case as a birthday gift.
A+ aunting right there
Aw, thanks.
Romance seems to be a thing of my younger years (lol, I’m 26). Nothing romantic has happened to me in a long time, and I’ve stopped hoping/believing it’s likely to happen anytime soon. Romantic encounters require intimacy, or that kind of instant electric chemistry that is even rarer in my life. I’m too wary, defiant, independent to let people in easily, now, even if they were to make attempts at sentimental courtship (not to say I’m totally impervious, but you need to find an approach that isn’t a cliche).
I have no intention of being maudlin this VD, though. I’m going to watch that OITNB ep “You Also Have a Pizza” and be glad I’m neither in prison nor a delusional stalker.
Hugs. I know those feels/lack of feels.
Hugs back — thank you.
My therapist lived in my neighborhood, and I felt like I was invading her privacy when I ran into her and we were both in public. I feel too much secondhand embarrassment to even read that Atlantic article!
Romantic things: My husband bought me a card each month for the first year we dated. Month 7 said, “I will love you 7 months, 7 years and 70 years from now (hopefully by then we’ll have our bionic robot bodies).”
The last time I visited my long-distance best friend, with whom I have an aggressively platonic relationship, she suggested we have a spacewitch-themed picnic in the Park of Roses.
This is your bar to clear, prospective suitors.
My husband is a super-romantic guy – as I often tell people, I love him, but he LOOOOOOOOVES me. He doodles cute little cartoons while at work and texts pictures of them to me, he will drop everything to help me when I’m sick, over three years in he still looks at me with what are essentially cartoon hearts in his eyes.
One that sticks out was when I had bought a new dress for some occasion, put it on and was feeling real shitty about myself – I thought it looked unflattering, felt like my proportions looked all out of whack, I just felt crappy. I walked downstairs (he was in the living room) and opened my mouth to say something about how I hated the dress, but he looked up at me, and I swear to god tears literally welled up in his eyes. “You look so beautiful,” he whispered.
I still don’t LOVE the dress, but I feel a little better about it now 🙂
Oh, man. Everyone deserves someone who regularly tears up at your beauty. Lucky you!
Good LORD. I am having a lot of feelings about how lovely that is – I have a coworker with the same set-up and it is so sweet and, NGL, jealousy-inspiring. I want that someday.
Aww this is so sweet. Your husband sounds like a real gem!
Earlier today, I asked my husband if he liked my new turtleneck.
“I like it,” he said with a big smile. “But I ADORE the woman in it.”
*swoon*
Most Romantic Thing: in a letter while we were 600 miles apart for a few months (an actual on paper letter, which is romantic in itself), he wrote:
“I heard the echo of your voice when I read your note and it was almost enough to conjure a ghost of your face.”
Reader, I married him.
DAMN STRAIGHT YOU DID
Romance: my husband proposed to me with a fake ring (glass gem glued to a key ring) inside one of those plastic vending machine bubbles because we had joked about having a vending machine engagement ring about a year earlier when we talked about getting married.
Complication: I have a terrible memory and zero recollection of that conversation, so joke is on him, sucker!
Plot twist: he realizes he actually dreamed the conversation, so there’s now no reality-based context for the fake ring.
Fake ring becomes even better, Y/N? I’m workshopping this here.
I am superstitious about many things, but Friday the 13th is not one of them. My grandfather was born on a Friday the 13th, and I think that had something to do with it. He was the toughest, most resilient person I’ve ever met. He’d be 90 today.
But I think, just to be safe, maybe we should all go back home and hang out in blanket forts. You know, read, drink hot drinks. I mean, you never know…
So would you say you’re just a little stitious??
Somewhatstitious. Yes.
Friday the 13th or no, I think that’s a great idea because it’s 10 degrees outside where I am. (Sadly, that did not stop me from having to go to work)
ugh, DITTO, we are going to hunker down ASAP
Freezing-in-order-to-earn-money solidarity. I am not happy about leaving my house today.
Most romantic: my husband proposed to me on the same bench where he told me he loved me for the first time. We visit the bench/park every time we’re in DC now.
Romantic once removed: He also emailed his mother like two weeks after we started dating and said that he was smitten.
He told his MOM about you? That’s romantic.
and he used the word “smitten”! She read the email at our rehearsal dinner 🙂
Romantic Benches! My husband proposed on “our” bench near the pond in our college’s arboretum. When we were in school we used to sneak in after dark (through a bend in the wrought-iron fence), sit on our bench, stare at the moon and stars and talk and talk and talk. It was magical. (And by “it” I mean “all of it.”)
As a child of two therapists, that first link freaks me the hell out.
It’s so disturbing. The story itself, and all the commenters who wanted the stalker to sue her psychiatrist for malpractice. What.
As a therapist with a child, the first link freaks me the hell out.
Dunno if it counts as romantic but I just finished reading Little, Big aloud to the Burgomaster.
AWWWW. Also, that’s a really amazing book!
Yay! It’s always so great to find out about other people who’ve read it. Not nearly enough have, IMO.
I can’t bear to read the first link… My therapist has been MIA for a week (which is super unusual! I’ve reached out to her 3 times to try and schedule something) and I’ve been googling and facebook stalking her and it feels strange.
Wow this is so timely because last night I concluded that my therapist is literally an angel/immortal being. She told me a story from her life that makes it clear that she is at least 37, but she looks like she’s maybe 25 at most. But amazingly wise, and kind and basically all the things that an angel would be. So clearly she is literally an angel. WHAT I’M NORMAL.
Most romantic: An ex of mine noticed that I didn’t have a bell on my bike so he bought me one and installed it while I was sleeping, and I didn’t notice till I was biking home from his house. I started enthusiastically ringing it and everyone around me looked at me like I was insane.
Another one I liked was, my roommate and I were constantly bickering about who had to buy toilet paper, so my then-boyfriend filled the bathroom with like 100 rolls while I was out. Yes, one of my most romantic moments involves toilet paper.
Once in college my suitemate’s girlfriend bought toilet paper for our bathroom for months; the four of us who actually lived in the suite each assumed it was one of us taking care of it. Oh man it was a bad moment when she was like “you guys know…”. Oops.
Last night, in bed:
“You’re beautiful. Not drop-dead magazine beautiful. You’re va-va-voom beautiful, who-is-that beautiful, the kind of beautiful I want to have adventures with.”
I like my guy’s brand of romance so much.
That women’s detective agency is amazing. Clashing with corrupt party officials! Stakeouts! Binoculars! I want a television show about this right now.
I google all my healthcare providers so that I know who I’m dealing with (I do this after blithely trusting many Canadian doctors who turned out to have terrible reviews, and after finding out online that my creepy creepy therapist in graduate school is a creepy creepy fat-shaming hipster). I did find out from some mild googling that my current therapist is 73 or so and signs her full name to the few comments she’s posted on the internet with the innocent confidence of someone who is elderly and/or who has never had to hide electronically from a threatening person. My old job involved getting the Internet to cough up any and every kind of information you could possibly want in various languages, so I have those skillz, but I’m going to stop there and not use them because then I WOULD feel overtly stalkerific.
Nygaard is a fucking fabulous name for anyone, let alone someone who fights psychic crime dressed like a classic gumshoe.
Not exactly a most romantic line ever, but some of these quotes made me recall something from my romantic past. Before my spouse and I were dating, we were friends that emailed back and forth a great deal. In one of her emails, she finished a long paragraph made entirely of various questions with the following:
Why aren’t there more hours of the day we can spend talking? What does your mouth taste like?
I had a huge crush on her, but I didn’t think she liked me romantically, so I had no idea how to take this. I was sure I was just projecting my feelings for her onto something that was just meant to be funny or weird.
So naturally, I showed the email to every one of my friends to get a second opinion. They all told me that I was an idiot, but I still wasn’t sure. Thankfully she kissed me the next time we met, which cleared the whole thing up.
If you have any stories about being awkwardly confused about whether someone liked you, share them!
All I can think of re: Nygaard is Dr. Richard Nygard from Parks & Rec.
Also, adorable story!
Shortly after my partner and I first met, we spent practically every day for an entire month together.
We were both students, so after classes, around lunchtime, I would text him (AND ALL MY OTHER FRIENDS) and see if anyone wanted to hang out by the river. None of my friends were really into it, but this new guy seemed super keen, and would come down whenever I asked. We would meet after lunch, hang out ’till dinner, get something to eat, head to our respective flats way past dark. He was really nice, but I was pretty sure he didn’t like me like me, because come on, who does that? And what I have learnt now is he thought exactly the same about me.
The best (worst) bit is we went out with some of his friends one weekend, all who could see that we were both completely smitten but not doing anything about it. So (let’s call her) Madeleine decided to give me some encouragement.
Guy is really nice, isn’t he. Isn’t he so lovely to be around She was talking him up massively. I was non-committal.
Me, in my inebriated state, decided that SHE LIKED HIM, THANK GOD I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING. Days later I realised she had a boyfriend. And thought the conversation was weird.
Postscript: The only reason we got together is I decided I was a grown up and was going to have a summer fling and was definitely adult enough to make a move.
Well, this was neither written by me nor said to me, but every time I read Mallory’s love letter it just knocks me on my ass. I printed it out years ago and it lives right above my work computer so I can weep at how wonderful it is.
“How easily you now live without me; how awkwardly and clumsily and foolishly I live without you. I hope this does not embarrass you to read; it does not embarrass me to say. The pain, anyhow, is past. To love you without hope or expectation feels expansive. There is nothing that I need from you, nothing you can say or do in response to it – only know that there is nothing about you that I find unlovely. That I cherish you, deeply and profoundly and without reservation. That you should exist in this world – that I should have been with you – that I have been able to know both suffering and joy at your hands – seems like an extravagant gift, one for which I am forever and unutterably grateful.
I am not sad; I am not lonely. I have found myself capable of love that is unaffected and unassailable by circumstances and I am forever better for it. If this seems overwhelming or simply odd – well, I have unquiet thoughts, a disordered heart and an anxious spirit and I can only apologize for them.
If there is anything coherent or sane to be taken from this it may be that whatever hurts I have felt are all passing, and cannot outweigh or contaminate the hugeness of my happiness. You are a remarkable man. I love you unrestrainedly. I will still have to guard myself with you, practically speaking. But I have nothing left to fear; I have gone through the worst of it now and you were worth all of it.”
Most romantic thing that was ever said to me? “I wanna do right by you, baby. I want to take you out to [ a club in Greensboro, North Carolina].”
Mm, romance.
My boyfriend is not given to being romantic, but two years ago I was living in an apartment with no balcony or anything and really really missed being able to garden. Then I had to be out of town for work for two weeks, during which I was slightly annoyed because he seemed like he was never available to talk on the phone/online and was “busy” all the time. When I got back, I found out he had constructed a bunch of raised beds in his backyard so I could garden, and he hadn’t been able to talk because he’d been working on them almost every evening I was away.
That first article disturbed me. Although it seems obvious that the author was misdiagnosed and overmedicated and deserved better care than she received, the whole article seemed a bit like an attack on the psychiatrist for being…a person? I’m hardly a fan of medical practitioners but this was unsettling and not very reflective, it felt.
agreed! so what that she has quilts and a new husband.
My boyfriend made risotto while I watched The Trailer the other night, and then I performed a dramatic reading of “If Channing Tatum Were Your Boyfriend”.
That’s some romance right there!
Eugh, I love Mr. Hydra passionately but due to the oppressive glumness of winter and finally realizing I am well on my way to becoming an Old, blech to this Valentine weekend.
Poor man, he asked me what I wanted to do for it and my response was a decidely unromantic ‘Noth..oh, erm, what would YOU like to do, ha ha?”
So Bob Nygaard is surely related to Parks & Rec’s Dr. Richard Nygaard in some way, right?
From the longreads: “the Horde may not be what it once was but the Khan is still going strong” is such a weirdly sweet sentiment (and Ta-Nehisi deserves no less)
My apologies, I’m sometimes rather prone to oddly pithy comments like that. But I also love puns, so…
Most Romantic Thing: When Spouse and I very awkwardly, tentatively, adorably began officially being an Item, his birthday rolled around almost immediately. We were broke grad students, and it was winter, so I made him chipotle fudge and gave it to him in a little cardboard takeout container festooned with snowmen.
Fast forward a few years later: we were long distance and unhappy about it, and I was back in Gradschoolville to help him move. As we were packing things up, I found said container. I held it up to him without a word, and we both began crying. He’d kept it. It’s on our bookshelf in our home together now.
Dude, seriously. AND we’re supposed to get a goddamn blizzard this weekend.
I’m like one dropped Internet connection from going Most Dangerous Game on the chick downstairs.*
*Honey. While I celebrate human sexuality in all its varied and beautiful forms, a) not at 1:30 on a worknight I don’t, b) not at 7:50 AM on a Sunday either, c) what kind of voting adult fucks to “Teenage Dream”? d) I don’t want to tell you how to live, but if *I* sounded like a distressed spaniel during intimate moments, *I* would take steps.
No one has ever said or done anything romantic towards me. I’m holding out for “The Boy Done Good” by Billy Bragg, though.
Friday the 13th can do nothing to me, because we have a copy of our accounting software back, and life is getting better, little by little. Also, yesterday sucked, so today is going to be better by default.
Now I’m afraid I have incurred the wrath of Friday the 13th.
I dated a boy who did hearts and flowers and fire-and-ice roses for Valentine’s Day, and that’s how I found out that standard romantical gestures are not my style. Then later I dated a guy who, when we were going to go hiking on a cold winter’s day, put my wool socks over the heater while I was in the shower (and who looked surprised that I was surprised: “Well, you have cold feet, it seemed natural”). We didn’t work out in the long run, but he helped set the standard.
I’ve received two valentines so far, from my grandmother and from my antivirus software. One contained pictures of a dog and the other contained a discount. I’m okay with this.
I love that Valentine’s Day this year is Saturday the 14th. I’m always amused when the day I loathe coincides with a movie I loved when I was a kid.
For those of you who don’t know, Saturday the 14th was a movie. I watched it about 50 times on HBO.
I love that Valentine's Day this year is Saturday the 14th. I'm always amused when the day I loathe coincides with a movie I loved when I was a kid.
For those of you who don't know, Saturday the 14th was a movie. I watched it about 50 times on HBO.
Earlier today, I asked my husband if he liked my new turtleneck.
"I like it," he said with a big smile. "But I ADORE the woman in it."
*swoon*
Romantic Benches! My husband proposed on "our" bench near the pond in our college's arboretum. When we were in school we used to sneak in after dark (through a bend in the wrought-iron fence), sit on our bench, stare at the moon and stars and talk and talk and talk. It was magical. (And by "it" I mean "all of it.")
The most romantic thing anyone can ever say to me is, “Babe, you never have to do chores again.”
The most romantic thing anyone can ever say to me is, "Babe, you never have to do chores again."
At least it wasn't Lysol, tho.
I actually worked for the Mills Corporation (the original developer) on the Meadowlands Xanadu project back in 2004/2005 when they were developing it, and even then, I was like . . . . "you sure you don't want to reconsider this name? This seems like a terrible idea."
Not even a year later, the Mills was gone. Poof.
honestly, the most romantic thing my partner has ever said to me is, “man, i LIKE you.”
i know we love one another, but for me like =/= love. it’s important to me that we are still friends, and still like being around one another after all this time.
Seriously. I am so grateful for this wonderful comments section. It's one of the very few comment sections on the internet that are welcoming to women, LGBTQ folks, and, frankly, folks who find horrible grammar and orthography to be a vexation to the spirit.