Toasties, why don’t we all just eat pumpkin curry soup every day? Open thread!
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
Toasties, why don’t we all just eat pumpkin curry soup every day? Open thread!
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
Fellow toast librarians! This may just be the feeling of seeing one too many instagrams from ACRL talking, but is it too soon to plan an ALA meet-up? I mean, probably yes, but still, show of hands, who’s planning on going to ALA?
(Mallory, if you’re around, are you aware that a rather large meeting of librarians is descending on the Bay Area in about 3 months?)
((curry soooouuuup yes please))
I’m off to EBLIP this summer so I can’t afford ALA! Which is breaking my heart because SanFran is a lifelong dream – I had an obsession with it after watching Homeward Bound 2.
I was once in a lifetime flush fifteen years go and made a few big trips. My friend took me on a Vertigo tour from a guide she got online so I made her be Kim for me. http://jaynagyphoto.com/Jean%20Novak.html
Also it was on that very trip that she asked me “have you ever thought about going to library school?” For some reason I hadn’t.
LIFE CHANGED.
I never stop reminding and thanking her.
Can’t do ALA this year 🙁 but I am doing TLA next month in Austin! Anybody going to that?
It’s finally not in a horribly hot place?
I know, what were they thinking? (I left part of my soul in the desert last year, I am certain.)
“Where’s nice in July?” “D.C.!” NO IT’S NOT. I was there last year to see Nick Cave and once I started sweating I never actually dried off, including several hours indoors.
They stopped paying for us to go in my system but I’d definitely do San Francisco if I could afford it.
Late to this thread, but I AM going ALA and would love to meet fellow Toast-brarians.
Toast! This weekend I am going to watch the women’s Sweet 16 games in Spokane, and then stay at a casino hotel that allows live gaming, like craps. It’s going to be the best people watching weekend of my life.
Ooooh, fun! I can’t really get the appeal of gambling, but I’ve often thought about staying in a casino hotel.
I know, I was with you until we stayed at this very hotel, actually. I only play craps, because it is hilarious and kind of like team gambling. Everyone cheers everyone on, and when I was doing really well, a group of craggy older men kept calling me “Shooter,” as in, “Nice rollin’, Shooter!” and sending me $5 chips because I was making them money. Or, one time we were surrounded by female body builders who were part of a competition at the same complex.
It’s so fun.
I really want to go to a casino some time and buy into some low-stakes (for a casino) poker game, then leave when I lose my initial stake, but I’m kind of concerned I’d commit some kind of unforgivable breach of etiquette. (Casino gamblers are really serious about playing cards a certain way, from what I’ve heard.)
Yes, you are right, some of them can be pretty serious. This place we go, it’s called the Northern Quest Casino, they are pretty friendly at the craps tables and roulette. But yeah, some of the card games can get a little intense, and I’m a bit too goofy for some of the tough dudes.
Eep. I didn’t realize that about casino card players. We’re planning to spend some time at the casino for my upcoming bachelor party, and I was considering giving casino poker a shot. Might have to reconsider that now. I tend to win more on the penny slots anyway!
I mean, I’m sure it’s stuff you can look up or maybe ask the staff, but if you have to be so Serious People Playing Serious Cards about it, it takes a lot of fun out of poker, y’know?
Totally agreed.
Oh, wow, that sounds fantastic!
MMA thread
Proposition: Conor MrGregor is a douchebag, and all I want is to see Jose Aldo beat the snot out of him.
Oh no, I sort of agree with you but also used to go to Straight Blast Gym, which is his training gym. So I feel torn.
I just. There’s something about the way he acts that would make me want to see him get punched in the face, even if he wasn’t in a getting punched in the face profession.
Also, I just discovered the existence by Thrown, by Kerry Howley, and am going to pick it up on my way home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/books/review/th…
I LOOOOOOVED Thrown (although–and partly because–it has a bunch of problems) but I am not really an MMA fan. I’ll be so interested to hear what you thought of it!
Conor has a super punchable face, plus he’s cocky as hell and I hope Aldo kicks his butt. Somewhat relatedly, BJ Penn was on my plane the other day! But this is not that surprising, because we live in the same town.
ONLINE DATING THREAD
Okay, so, Date was had on Sunday, yeah? (I’ve been sitting on this all week you guys, augh) We met up at Barnes and Noble and pretty much took a whirlwind tour of the state accidentally, but I had a great time! And I was afraid that he didn’t but as soon as he got home he asked me if I wanted to meet up again Friday! Meaning tonight! And I didn’t feel pressured into anything weird and conversation flowed freely and I didn’t feel like I had to be defensive about anything!
So tonight we are going to the CHEESE CAVE and I am going to stuff myself full of all you can eat cheese samples for $5 :B
aaaaaah Elyse 😀 😀 😀
omg girl you can best bet I’ll be livetweeting tonight from strategically placed bathroom trips
Yay! I hope cheese cave is a fantastic date!
I honestly feel that you cannot go wrong in life, love, or fortune if you are in a place called the Cheese Cave.
I keep coming back and reading your comment because it makes me smile so much, I need this cross-stitched on a pillow or something.
Um, what is this cheese cave you speak of?
the most magical of places! Every Friday they do a $5 Friday tasting where they put out five different cheeses and you can eat as many as you want. They also have a lecture series that I’ve been meaning to attend but it always fills up super quickly 🙁
HOLY CRAP I was just in Red Bank and had no idea such a place existed. I must return!
OMG NOOOO. Next time you’re down here let me know, if you would want we could totally get some sandwiCHEESES 😀
1) CHEESE CAVE. CHEESE. CAVE. CHEEEEEEEEEEEESE. Tell me more (I gave up cheese for Lent: let me live through your cheesy exploits).
2) What is your Twitter handle because I want to read alllll about this date in real time.
I linked it above to pamplemoussi but it is a magical place of wonder (that also happens to be next door to a tea and spice shop!)
I am @elyseexplosion, feel free to add! 😀
WHY WHY WHY is New Jersey so far away. Also: 3DS friend codes! 2337 5253 3982 if you want to add me. My DS is at home, but I will add you from your Twitter profile later if that’s ok?
Perfectly fine! Mine is at home as well, I will add you as soon as I can! And if I forget, nudge me. 😀
Deal.
No shame – totally ading you, too! My first name is Sarah if you get an add from somebody you don’t know. I want to hear more about the cheese cave!
I figure that any random adds after an Open Thread are almost always Toasties 🙂
I am so excited to see this gif when fun pictures aren’t blocked at work, let me tell you.
Tragically, it isn’t all that thrilling, so I’m putting another here to make up for it.
bless you
Yaaaaay!
I had a WONDERFUL date last Friday with a dude I met on Tinder and I am definitel interested in him. However we have no concrete plans to meet up. Ugh. I got a “I’d love to see you again soon” and several “On our NEXT dates” (during the date) but zero follow through. Texting just about every day. He travels a lot for work and is out of town right now, but I think if by Sunday we don’t have concrete plans I’m just going to bite the bullet and use my words and say “Hey, we talked about this…maybe we should see each other again.”
But I also have to tell him that I am leaving in June and don’t know 100% how long I’ll be gone – I really like him and I want him to be able to make the best decision for himself, but I’ll admit I’ll be sad if he decides not to pursue things further.
Oh noooo definitely use your words there! I find that a lot of the time people are completely oblivious unless you’re perfectly explicit with them (case in point: me) so you go and get yours!
I’m exactly the same! The nice thing is this round of Tinder-ing was to learn how to date as myself. And in my friendships I am very capable of using my words and saying what I would like, so I am learning to do that with romantic stuff.
*fist pump*
That is all hard! But I think your proposed words are good. And it’s okay to be sad.
Thanks. It feel silly to be sad, but I would be. This dude is a good dude.
CHEESE CAVE.
Yay, that sounds so fun and I’m glad you felt comfortable! Aw, I hope all your future experiences go this well.
So this is not strictly online dating but it is Dating In The Internet Age.
I have been flirting with a friend over the internet for aaaaaaaaaages now (like three whole weeks!) and we are gonna hang out tonight and discuss where all of this is going, because those conversations are best had in person.
I thought I had either grown out of excessively long private messaging conversations and having someone message you right when they get out of bed and right before they go to sleep, but actually it is awesome and I feel basically Alive Again.
That is totally the most exciting feeling though! I am keeping my fingers crossed for a positive outcome!
YEAH CHEESE CAVE, that is a fantastic date idea!
So the rest of my comment got eaten, but essentially:
Tomorrow I’m going on a seventh date with someone I met on OKC — he messaged me right after I got dumped by someone I met in person at a time when I was really hurt and unsure about dating. But we’re still seeing each other after six weeks so…?
And I deactivated my OKC account after I asked a different dude out on a date and then procrastinated on setting up the date for over a week. I realized that going out with more than one person/on first dates was too much of a demand on my time/energy/emotions.
I got my first tattoo! It’s been a good week!
(it’s on my sternum, so I’m posting the not-close-up in a comment so that no one has to see underboob unless they really want to)
nvm, here’s a link to Tattoo In Context, as I have an unmanageable amount of underboob that I will not subject people to unwillingly https://flic.kr/p/qStPKY
“I don’t want to see any underboob” said nobody ever. (Tattoo is beautiful, by the way.)
The way that the antlers visually interact with your underboob is actually really well-planned! I think it looks exquisite.
I love it!!! Is it black and white, and if so, will color be introduced eventually?
I got numbers 14 and 15 on Tuesday and sitting down huuuurts. I can’t access the picture of both since work is being wonky but here’s the first one! I have identical ones on the back of both thighs. 🙂
I love this! I can imagine that sitting would be tough. Mine didn’t hurt and isn’t that sore, but I could definitely feel it when I was laying on my stomach for a few minutes.
It’s black and white and I think it’s staying that way! I’d love to do some colored stuff eventually, though. I’m thinking about extending flowers further out and if I can find someone with a similar style who does color, it might be cool to kind of do a greyscale-color gradient with flowers.
Oh, I think that would be beautiful! If you choose to go that route definitely shop around for artists that are as good with color as your current seems to be with grayscale/b&w because I really love the stipple shading you have going on 🙂
this tattoo is also good; I knew a girl in high school who had the death’s head moth tattoo, but that was specifically a reference to Silence of the Lambs. I think it was part of a back panel that had many serial killer faces on it?
I don’t recommend doing that.
Aww it’s gorgeous!
THAT IS GORGEOUS
That is really beautiful and really badass, all at once!
very excellent tattoo, good choice.
Is it in color?
Beautiful!
I got a tattoo last friday! Yours is super lovely and the placement is perfect.
Toasts, it has been A Week.
My parents were supposed to visit (from Switzerland) to see my Tiny Nephew, but my paternal grandmother (in Bucharest) had a heart attack so my dad flew over there to see her and arrange for care, and my mom ended up coming alone. My dad arrived in Bucharest just in time for my other grandmother to have a stroke. It was almost farcical in a very ghoulish way. My mom doesn’t have a cellphone, so my dad called the friend she was staying with, but since mom was on her way to spend the weekend with us, the friend called me. It wasn’t clear whose mother was ill, and by the time my mom arrived and got the message it was too late to call my dad so we had to wait until the next morning to find out what was going on.
And then my mom found out through mutual friends that the stepmother of a very close friend of mine was diagnosed with stomach cancer and was given only a few months to live. They haven’t told my friend yet. I think they’re waiting for my friend to finish her final exams, but that’s not for another six weeks. I hate being in this position of knowing something so awful and personal about someone when that person doesn’t even know, it is beyond uncomfortable. Whenever she texts me about minor annoyances like a book she needs not being at the university library I think, “Well, you wouldn’t be bothered about that if you knew your stepmother’s going to die soon” and I feel horrible.
I have this capacity to not focus on bad news that makes me feel really callous at times like these. Obviously I have to because I need to go to work in the morning and be a functional adult instead of a weepy mess overcome by anxiety and dread. It feels like I should be more worked up about all this than I actually am, instead of going about my business and taking pleasure in frivolities like new makeup and how cute my cats are. But at the same time I don’t want to be more worked up about it because it wouldn’t help at all and I would just be bogged down by difficult emotions.
I don’t really know if any of this makes sense so I am going to stop typing now.
Oh, the insidious feeling of “I am coping in the wrong way”. Gah.
I’m sure you know, but in case you need to hear it from someone else: Coping is coping; and however you are doing it is the right way for you.
Unless it involves heroin, or haunting Heathcliff after your untimely death.
No, haunting Heathcliff is absolutely the right decision. That guy deserves so much haunting.
Seconding both the “there’s no right way to cope” and the “let’s all haunt Heathcliff” assertions.
I am really sorry for all of these awful things that have happened in your sphere! But… as someone else who has a very good coping mechanism of putting the feelings aside until the space is good to deal with them — I think you are just fine doing you. I truly believe there is nothing wrong with it. Sometimes I feel like I suck because OBVIOUSLY there is some kind of contest where the person who has the biggest emotional reaction (or becomes the most dysfunctional because of their emotions) wins the ‘best human being’ prize. But you know what? There isn’t!
Ouf, that sounds like A Week – I’m sorry everyone’s going through that, and whatever you need to do to get through it relatively intact is probably exactly the right way.
Oh I am so sorry all of that is happening, and also that it’s all happening at once!
I also tend to react similarly when things happen like that. I subconsciously sort of put my head down and focus on what I need to do/what other people need, and then later I allow all those emotions to resurface. Sometimes this works really well (I am great at dealing with crisis situations!), and sometimes it doesn’t (I am also great at repressing those emotions for months or years at a time!). I think what is important is to remember that you are allowed to feel. You don’t have to feel everything all at once, and you may not, but I think it’s perfectly understandable to have some sort of reaction to this, even if your practical “I need to function” brain is trying not to think about it.
Compartmentalizing is adult-level coping. Your ability is what we all aspire to. You remember there is no wrong way to cope. I support your methods, no matter what they are, short of harming yourself or anyone else.
And I am sorry for the illnesses in your family and friends. ::hugs::
Oh, what a terrible series of sorrows! I’m so sorry you and yours are going through this.
It feels like I should be more worked up about all this than I actually am
You already know this, but sometimes it’s helpful to hear it from outside yourself: everything about the way you’re coping is perfectly natural and usual, including the part where you feel bad about the way you’re coping. Plenty of us have felt the same way, and you have nothing to feel callous about.
It all sounds so sad and stressful, but being in on the terrible secret of your friend’s stepmother sounds especially taxing. (I’m not objective about this, so forgive me if this isn’t helpful: I kept a secret like that for someone else too long, and it ate me alive.) It might be productive to find a professional you can talk to — about all of the turmoil, and especially so you aren’t keeping that pent up in your head.
Agreed. I felt like a callous jerk while my mother was in the hospital before she passed away, because people kept telling me things like “make sure you eat, even if you’re not hungry!” because I never lost my appetite during the whole ordeal.
I still feel bad nearly two years after her death because family members post to her Facebook account on her birthday and just randomly to say they miss her and love her, but it just… seems weird to me to do that? I don’t like grieving publicly. But then I remind myself that how you grieve is normal, including needing to deal with your own life. Feeling guilty is normal, as is feeling guilty for not feeling guilty.
Thank you for all your kind and supportive comments, Toasts <3
Because we get tired of it after eating it three days in a row, plus the tumeric from the curry powder stains everything.
Or that might just be me.
because sometimes we need (or want) French Onion Soup, or New England Clam Chowder (which has NO TOMATOES) or barley and mushroom…
life is long, soups are many
I learnt that “turmeric is a pig to shift” from an Adrian Mole book, and I think of it every time I cook with it. I think this contant vigilance is why I have so far avoided stains.
Toasties – do any of you read any sites that cover interior design/craftiness/gardening etc.? I only know of Apartment Therapy but I find it quite grating sometimes, and I’d love to find some others!
Also we have a new guy at work who sits near me, and he proudly announced in his company introduction that his dissertation (he is a recent graduate) for university was called ‘Are men the new victims of equality’? So…woo!
Design Sponge posts less often but is similar to AT!
Offbeat Home!
I would suggest a “male tears” mug prominently displayed on your desk, but that may be too antagonistic…
I really like The Jungalow!
manhattan-nest.com is the best and the silliest, but there it’s a one-man show and there’s only a post about once a week.
But the archives are super good and you should read his whole lifelong adventure.
Facepalm about your new coworker. Smart enough to graduate, oblivious enough to do an entire dissertation on that subject. I feel for you.
I used to love Apartment Therapy (and the Kitchn) but it’s gotten annoying with HUGE apartments and really expensive decor, over posting and preachy prose. I’m now reading decor8, Sarah Heart, and Poppytalk, in addition to others already listed.
Yes this is my current issue with it – the sheer volume of content is great because it means there’s new stuff to read often, but so much of it is very expensive and also very very based on a few select narrow and fleeting trends. Also perhaps it’s because it’s the US and I’m in the UK, but a lot of the ‘small’ kitchens and bedrooms are bigger than like…my whole apartment. Also a lot of the posts are getting very click-baity ‘You won’t believe these ten ingenious space saving hacks that will change your kitchen forever!’
Apparently I have a lot of AT feelings.
Thanks for the recs – I knew I could rely on the Open Thread!
Oh man, I read so many of these!
Remodelista & Gardenista: pretty aspirational (although the garden stuff less so?), but beautiful stuff and their shop section does collect items with a variety of prices.
Hommemaker: I love Orlando’s writing voice so much and his DIYs are ambitious but achievable. He grew up IN Yosemite, which I think is super cool and this post on his feelings regarding deer (negative) always makes me giggle.
Curbly: A little bit of everything from around the internet.
Home Design Laboratory: More budget-conscious than most design blogs I’ve found.
Shrimp Salad Circus: Like her DIYs!
My fiancee is a big fan of The Everygirl’s interior design stuff: http://theeverygirl.com/category/living
Ooh, thanks for asking about this! I love AT because so many of the apartments they post are so amazingly wacky, so when I start thinking things like, “should I get a beige rug for the beige room with the beige sofa?”, as is my unfortunate tendency, it reminds me that the answer is always emphatically no. I have a friend who keeps trying to get me into Houzz, but most of the rooms posted there seem to be decorated by stylists and are just super boring. Going to check out a few of these, thanks Toast!
Door sixteen, but it’s been a bit slow lately- she has a pretty good list of linked blogs that I like to check out.
Little green notebook- and a beautiful mess: for both it doesn’t always thrill me but there are lots of tutorials and DIYs
SF Girl By Bay- sort of similar in my “eh”, but these are all good for the occasional check in
Victoria Elizabeth Barnes- amazing, hit these archives hard, she’s going for something antique and excessive in all ways.
The Purl Bee- sewing and knitting
Style by Emily Henderson- lots target style, lots of LA style, lots of color, she employed Orlando, and does a lot of makeovers.
I love Local Milk, Manger (http://mimithorisson.com/), and Flora Forager (that’s her instagram handle/store, but her blog is bridgetbeth.com). They’re more slice of life/cooking blogs, but they sometimes include craftiness and if you like Design Sponge and Apartment Therapy, you may enjoy them! I love their houses.
I have spent the last few days desperately trying to meet deadlines, including for a 4000-5000 word piece of coursework that I, as ever, started too late; I was up all night working on it but have successfully finished and submitted (more than 7 hours early!), hurrah! I am very ready for the weekend, although I’m working both days, so it may not be the most relaxing one ever.
About a year ago I watched the first episode of Community, quite liked it, and thought no more about it until it came on Netflix recently. In the last week and a half I have watched about 20 episodes and developed immensely strong feelings. (I didn’t even like Jeff! And then he just took his clothes off and now I’m very attacted to him!) Thankfully, my boyfriend has too, so I have someone to watch it with and clutch at squealing, “They’re friends! They make each other better people!”. I realise I am many years late to the game, but wanted to share my feelings (because there are a lot of them).
You know the episode where he challenges the teacher to a pool game and then takes his clothes off?
…Yeah.
I certainly haven’t watched that scene in isolation several times since viewing the episode, if that’s what you’re implying.
The first three seasons of Community are so great! The fourth and fifth, to me, aren’t really the same and I decided not to come back for the sixth. But it doesn’t change how great the first few seasons are and I understand why a lot of people still love it in the later seasons.
Also there is an episode where everyone has to briefly strip down to their underwear. If I remember correctly, the women are all pretty well-hidden behind a table and the guys are the ones being a bit objectified for once.
I watched the first two episodes of season 6 and decided not to watch any more, so your choice was wise.
Welcome!!! I had the same experience, caught up, and then realized how many of my friends and family quoted Community ALL THE TIME. It is an awesome experience.
Then again, my siblings and I now watch the musical Season 3 Christmas episode every year now, so we can recite the whole thing off by heart.
WAIT Community is on Netflix now???
I know what I’m doing with my weekend.
UK Netflix – I don’t know if that is relevant to you or not.
Damn! Oh well, I do have a couple of seasons of Boardwalk Empire to get through by Monday.
Toastrons, let’s play Never Have I Ever (drinking optional).
I’ll start: I’ve never ordered food for delivery.
It just seems more complicated than going to any of the restaurants or stores 2 minutes away.
Never have I ever… plucked my eyebrows. I dunno, they’re kind of lightly-coloured? It just doesn’t seem worth the bother.
Neither have I, for the same reason. And then I become convinced that people who care about such things can tell and are judging me, and then I get distracted and go do something else.
I only pluck the few dark hairs I tend to get between the eyebrows. Aside from that, I rather like mine, wild as they are (plus, y’know, laziness).
Me neither. Once a friend told me “your eyebrows are a really nice shape, if you ever decide to pluck them” and I was like … ???
my brain is actually breaking thinking about this. how?! how do you never get delivery?!
never have I ever …
this is hard, I have led a life rich in everything legal.
never have I ever executed a successful cartwheel?
SAME.
DOUBLE SAME.
It’s my perennial fitness goal, but I’m not working very hard at it.
No cartwheels here, either. I once spent many painstaking hours learning how to do a forward roll for PE, but hated every second and have never needed to do one since.
Never have I ever smoked a cigarette.
(But I sure have gotten delivery. I’m a New Yorker, after all.)
Same! (The cigarette thing, not the New York thing.)
I have never smoked a legal cigarette?
I’d happily have almost every meal delivered for the rest of the year though.
Yeah, I’ve never smoked tobacco, but…
No cigarettes here!
Never have I ever been stung by a bee. Now I have built up the event in my head and get unreasonably freaked out when I see bees.
It’s not so bad! (If you’re not allergic.) I have been stung by bees, it turns out, a surprisingly high number of times for someone who doesn’t work on, like, a bee farm. It sucks, but it doesn’t hurt enough to cry – this is coming from an adult with a low pain tolerance and easy crying.
You’re not wrong though! My husband had his first bee sting late in life, and he couldn’t handle it at all. He says it is one of the most painful things that has ever happened to him.
Me neither! I feel the opposite, though; I’ve decided I am completely immune to being stung and have become a fearless bare-handed bee-swatting warrior princess.
bees can sense royalty, you’ll be fine.
me neither! i’m sooo scared of being allergic.
I totally have this fear. Never been stung and secretly worried “what if I’m super allergic and get stung and DIE???”
Same, or a wasp – the lack of knowledge of what it’s like makes me very alarmed when I think I might get stung, because what if it hurts a lot?
Never have I ever cooked a chicken. My mother considers that shameful. She thinks I’m doing womanhood wrong. I, however, am happy as a clam about it.
i’ve also never ordered delivery!
never have i ever…smoked pot!
i was the token non-stoner in the stoner group in high school. they hot boxed a closet once and i think that’s the closest i’ve gotten to actually smoking. i’m pretty sure i didn’t get high, but i DID get super anxious and paranoid. not for me!
Me neither! I feel sort of embarrassed about it and I don’t like to tell people! This is probably a weird reaction.
me too. it feels like kind of a square thing to admit! which is silly.
Not square at all. I’ve tried pot, but was singularly unimpressed. Vastly inferior to a good bourbon on the rocks.
mmm good bourbon. you’re right.
As are SO MANY things in life.
TRUER WORDS.
I never tried pot until I was…28, I think. (I don’t like smoking, and everyone always says you don’t get really high until you’ve done it a few times, and it seemed so not worth it to have to, like, practice first in order to maybe do a drug with friends at a party on a whim.) But then I had just started some intense medication, and it was making me feel all kinds of terrible, and because I am a delicate chemically-sensitive flower none of the potential meds that might help the side-effects I was experiencing seemed like good options and/or I tried them and they made me sick in different ways, so I finally asked my Dr. if she thought pot would help, and she said “Well, it can’t hurt, anyway”. So I tried it. And everyone was LYING — you can totally get super stoned the first time. Also, it was terrible. It made me feel seasick and horrible and I had a hangover the next day. I tried a couple of times after that, to see if maybe it was a fluke, but…blech. I know so many people who smoke lots of pot, and can, you know, be upright and talk and eat food and have fun while stoned, and I have no idea how they do that. I’m kind of envious, actually, because I feel like I would really _like_ to enjoy pot sometimes, but…blech.
I … can’t smoke properly? So when I was attempting to smoke pot I wound up instead swallowing little gulps of air and smoke and burping them back later on. It was hilarious and oddly pointless, so after that people only fed me whiskey instead of working on me to smoke anything.
Does that count?
burping weed smoke sounds hilarious to me, personally.
I’ve never smoked (or ingested in any way) pot either (or any illegal drugs, actually). I am very boring, and have no desire to change that.
oh, man, I would have to take a big swig.
But the closest store to my house is a 7-11 which is at least 10 minutes walking (and I don’t have a car). Delivery means I don’t have to stop what I am doing OR put on shoes. It is wonderful.
Never have I ever had an alcoholic drink.
(Although if I were playing the drinking game along with this thread, I would have had two.)
Never have I ever followed through on a resolution/diet/exercise/religious-giving-up thing.
Never have I ever hovered to pee or flushed a public toilet with my foot. I didn’t even know that was a thing until I was…well out of college.
Same! My thighs aren’t strong enough even if I wanted to.
Mine totally would be (I think?) because of my sturdy peasant ancestry and a history of ice skating, but I’m just like…there’s nothing you can catch via your butt in that way? I have vivid memories from when I was 3 or 4 or so of my grandma, who was intensely fastidious, putting down individual squares of toilet paper if we happened to be in a restroom with no disposable seat covers. I also have vivid memories of my reaction insofar as it seemed needlessly time-consuming.
Had mountain dew, or any energy drink
There is a long list of foods and drinks I have never eaten and drunk, for allergy reasons.
I have a 28-year-old friend who, for allergy reasons, had never tasted lettuce until last week.
Never have I ever seen the original star wars.
(I have also never ordered delivery, but that’s because I do not speak on the phone or answer the door to strangers. My roommate handles all takeaway logistics in our household)
Me too! *virtual fist-bump* (re: Star Wars, not delivery.) It started as a fluke, but it’s become a deliberate Life Decision, at this point.
I’ve never had a manicure or a pedicure.
i had my first last year at the age of 25 and i found it incredibly uncomfortable. the whole dynamic of sitting on this weird vibrating massage-y plastic throne as an underpaid woman kneels at your feet was just beyond me. i did not find it relaxing or enjoyable at all. i’ll continue painting my own nails, thanks.
What if it’s A Man kneeling at your feet?
if it was an overpaid, overly entitled white man, required as punishment to complete community service at a nail salon where the services had cutesy named like “bring down the patriarchy pedicure,” i’d be down.
otherwise, eh.
Yeah. I like having had it done — like I like the outcome — but the whole situation makes me deeply physically and intellectually uncomfortable.
I don’t know if I just accrue calluses at an extreme rate or what, but I got a foot sander on Amazon and it goes a long way towards replicating the outcomes of a pedicure.
Me neither!
Never have I ever… had the flu. I don’t know why. I’ve been sick plenty of times, but not with the flu. I also usually do not get the flu shot (I always forget or run out of time), which is a terrible idea, since I’m a teacher.
Reading through all these like
Me too, holy crap. Lemme know if you need me to hold your hair back when we puke. <3
yeah…I once handily won (lost? we were doing the version where you count down on your fingers, I hit 0 first) a game of Never Have I Ever that took place while naked in a hot tub at a sex club.
So. I have that achievement in my life.
Well that’s the one thing in this thread that I haven’t done, so well played!
Never have I ever eaten lobster or crab – I dunno, they just look really gross so I never bothered. Even though I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific.
Well they’re actual giant sea spiders so…
Never have I ever had a sip of coffee
So many things! Never have I ever:
– broken up with someone/been broken up with (one relationship ever, now lasting six years)
– owned foundation or wore makeup regularly
– done drugs
– been to a spa
Basically, I am very dull.
Toasties!! I have been away for awhile due to life craziness, but things are quieting down now due the fact that I have finally received all my grad school admissions and decided where to go! Which means I will be moving from New York to Chicago in just a few months! I also decided to start a PhD program instead of the MA program I was expecting (gulp)! And I told my boyfriend that I love him, first, which I would recommend because it is a thrill! And he’s thinking about also moving to Chicago to be with me!
I think my anxiety during this whole process has finally tipped over into net excitement and happiness now that the decision’s made. Chicago Toasties, tell me things! Am I crazy to be moving to your city after the winter we are all just now stumbling out of? Does anyone else have stories about making big relationship leaps after dating for a fairly short amount of time? (We’ve only been together 6 months!)
Also, happy Friday!!!
Yay Chicago! I love it here.
My girlfriend got pregnant after we’d been together about 6 months! She then immediately moved in with me, and has now been my wife for 11 years. Sometimes big relationship leaps are the way to go!
Yaaay congrats!! I love Chicago and was devastated none of the good schools there had my graduate program, I would have loved to study there (weather notwithstanding).
I miss Chicago deeply, and moving there in the spring is a gorgeous time. Weather will be great until early November, and then be horrible again until April.
I ended up moving across the country to live with my now-husband when we had been dating for…five months? It was scary and petrifying and a very weird thing to be doing for love but also so clearly the Right Decision that my qualms went away really quickly. Sometimes it’s just right to move fast! (We got engaged seven-and-a-half months into dating, got married two years later, and are very happy!)
I moved in with my now-husband after we’d been dating, oh, seven or eight months or so. We got engaged when we’d been together a year, living together for four-ish months, and got married about fifteen months after that. We have been married a year now and are very happy and moved again and bought a house and life has worked out very well for us!
congratulations! And yay to going straight into a Ph.D. program — it really is the best way almost always!
Okay, fellow Toasties with plane anxiety: is there anything you’ve found works particularly well to help you get through flights? I’m willing to try just about anything, including meds once I get back home and can talk to my doctor. I’m just sick of the panic attacks and having to apologize to strangers for making a scene.
A combination of meds and cold, hard statistics. I found the latest ICAO annual report on aviation safety to be very comforting.
I actually have a doctor’s appointment on Monday and I need to ask for a refill on my Ativan since it’s 2 years old by this point. Or actually something that’s not Ativan, because it makes me feel very flat (though it also flattens my anxiety, so it works well enough, I guess).
Have you ever done block breathing? It looks dumb, but it works
Xanax is the only way I get through long flights. Short ones I can somehow handle now, but long ones? Forget it, not happening without a pill.
I read The Survivor’s Handbook section about plane crashes and how to maximize your chances of survival in the unlikely event you’re in one, at the beginning of every flight. It helps settle my nerves.
I don’t know if this would actually be helpful, because it’s just self-talk, but reminding myself that turbulence is Completely Normal and Nothing To Worry About has helped me a lot. Turbulence is the thing that scares me the most, but it’s just like driving over a bump, it’s not a sign of impending doom.
I will issue a huge caveat that obviously this will not work for everyone or even most people with plane anxiety, but I find that watching Air Disasters (aka Mayday) makes me calmer about flying. For me, watching the show made me realize how many things have to go wrong for a plane to actually crash. There are so many redundancies and overrides on airplanes that it is usually a string of bad decisions, mechanical failures, weather, and super bizarre happenstances all working together in a plane crash. That may not be comforting to you, but to me it helps to know that even if A, B, C, D, and E went wrong, everything would have been fine, it was also having F go wrong that pushed it into disaster territory.
It also helps me to learn at the end of every episode how airlines upgrade their procedures or fix mechanical issues in response to the previously shown disaster.
I like to take along a project to plan or work on. If I get sufficiently absorbed in my work, I forget to be worried.
Caveat: I only really have problems on takeoff and landing.
Xanax. Cognitive-behavioral and biofeedback therapy. Statistics, like winterbymorning’s link, although I just wrote down some stats that my therapist cited and kept them in my purse (AT ALL TIMES, for like SEVEN YEARS). Noise-canceling headphones and something to listen to. Something to do that I know I’ll get really focused on, like a very absorbing book or DS game. Sitting in the window seat — I know it’s not everyone’s preference, but being touched makes me more panicky, so it’s the best choice for me. But, ultimately… mostly Xanax and therapy.
Best advice I got (as someone who didn’t get in a large plane until after childhood) was to pay attention to the cabin crew: if they didn’t look worried, there was no reason for you to worry. This helps a lot during turbulence and white-knuckle (for me) landings.
Toast, congratulate me, I am going to actually go see a counselor and try to figure out all of my internal weird stuff and become a better, stronger, kinder, less neurotic person. I am scared but hopeful.
Also, I get such a kick out of my blog I don’t care if it entertains no one but me. http://yahistoricalvault.wordpress.com Read and reminisce with me.
That’s a really great step on the way to becoming the best version of yourself, so congratulations! I have been working on the same thing for a few years and I feel like I’ve made progress, so I am certain that you will, too. Being scared is normal, and being hopeful will help balance that out. I’m proud of you!
And, oh my god, your blog sounds AMAZING and I am going to READ ALL OF IT as soon as I have time!
Congratulations on going to see a counsellor! I hope they are awesome and that it is the beginning of a very good helping relationship.
Congrats!! I’ve been going to one for a year and it has done wonders. I wish you luck 🙂
Oh, wow, YES, congratulations are in order! Getting over that hurdle of deciding to do it is a big deal and YAAAAAY YOU.
Also: Nell’s Quilt! That book made me cry EVERY TIME. It actually came out in the 80s & we got it through scholastic book order and were totally obsessed with it.
Aha! You’re the Toastie that started that blog! I put it in my RSS feed and promptly forgot which Toastie wrote it. But now I am a loyal reader!
I really hope you’re going to do a run of Ann Rinaldi at some point, because hoo boy, that was my life from about 10-14. I’m sad that Sarah Bishop didn’t hold up, I used to love the historical/survival crossovers that Scott O’Dell specialized in.
Also, congrats on the counselor! That’s a big step!
I am! I have a bunch of her books that I’m planning on rereading in the near ish future, they are definitely on the docket!
Congratulations!
If you don’t mind, how did you find said counselor? I’m pretty much 100% internal weird stuff, but Trust Issues and one bad experience have kept me from even beginning to look for someone.
The internet. I googled “therapists [my town]” and looked at a bunch of websites and emailed some people to find out their waiting lists, etc. I have no idea how this plan is going to work out, to be honest! We’ll see in a couple weeks!
Huzzah! I too have just found a person with whom I can discuss my shit and get it straightened out. *solidarity fistbump*
Also your blog is fantastic and I see Indian Captive on that shelf in your header! I was obsessed with that book as a young reader!
Thank you! And I will definitely be getting to that one as well! Along with several others in the “captive” genre, which is oddly productive for such a niche area of interest!
Well done! Good luck with it all.
Shout-out to my brain for waking me up in the middle of the night and making me think I’d overslept! Yet again! It hasn’t been this bad since college and I am not amused.
I am still waiting to hear back about this job in California. I do not understand how I can be expected to function as a human being while waiting for news like this. ‘Oh, ho hum, my entire life might dramatically change ANY SECOND NOW.’ Does anyone actually know how to cope with this sort of thing?
lol nope
And I’m only waiting to hear about something in the place where I already live! So far I’ve been coping (poorly) with alcohol and whining.
I wish I could use alcohol! Drinking more than two drinks triggers my anxiety in a major way the next day, so I just have to go extra hard on the whining. My special stress-relief herbal tea is definitely NOT as fun a coping mechanism as alcohol.
It’s so hard not to hate the people I’m hoping to work for, too. OH YOU HOLD MY LIFE IN YOUR HANDS LIKE A TINY BIRD BUT WHATEVER I’M SURE YOU HAVE SOME SPREADSHEETS YOU HAVE TO GET TO FIRST OR WHATEVER.
Ugh RIGHT? I emailed a couple weeks after my interview because I was going out of town for a week and wasn’t going to have consistent internet, just to be like “I won’t be around, do you need anything else from me” and they were like “HAHA WELL our boss is on vacation until the end of March soooooo we’ll talk to you in April I guess.” NO TALK TO ME NOW.
I’m sorry you can’t distract yourself with a million beers. 🙁
The last thing they said to me was “We hope to be in touch soon”. You HOPE? Do you need to wait for some angry god to give you permission to get in touch with me??
MrChouffe is also job hunting and we have had this exact conversation probably 50 times over the last two months.
Lots of taking deep breaths and focusing on very short-term things, like what you will have for lunch. That is what works best for us. One thing at a time.
No. My phone has been in my pocket for three weeks now. (it’s usually nowhere near me)
I have checked my spam folder so many times just in case they emailed me and it got sent to spam, that I have become fascinated with the contents of my spam folder and am considering writing a series of essays about what the ways spam is targeted says about human psychology.
I would read those essays!
when I was a wee young thing applying to like a dozen colleges, I made plans for what I would do if each one of them accepted me and then went about my day assuming that none of them had. Plan for the greatest possible amount of change, but don’t let worrying about everything every day be a part of it.
This is excellent advice, thank you! I also get so stressed about the logistics that the only thing I can bear to think about is how I will decorate my apartment when I move, so I have spent a LOT of time looking at furniture.
I go through this all the time. So if you figure out how to avoid it making you crazy, LET ME KNOW.
I think grumblyqueer has the best tactic, though. Make preparations, but assume rejection. Excellent advice. I try to do that. Little success. This is an excellent time for short-term anxiety medication.
Ugh that is such a hard situation! Last year I was waiting to hear back from a job I desperately wanted, and they kept being all, “We’ll decide in two weeks,” and then didn’t, then “We’ll decide by the end of the week, and then didn’t. Then they emailed me and said they had called and left a message, so I braced myself for a rejection message, but ALL THE MESSAGE SAID WAS TO CALL THEM BACK. So I tried to prepare myself for a rejection conversation, and googled for advice, and cried, and screwed up my courage and coping powers and called back. And they offered me the job. On April Fool’s Day! but fortunately it wasn’t a prank.
Anyway, it helped that I was already employed at a job I couldn’t slack off on, so I had to concentrate on that and couldn’t totally obsess about the verdict on the new job.
I made a Toast guild on HabitRPG! I am not sure if I can link directly to the guild, but if you search for “toast” in public guilds then I’m pretty sure it will be the only result.
I’ve really been enjoying Health Month with the Toast team, but there are some things that I think I liked better on HabitRPG, so I thought I’d try that instead next month. The one big thing HabitRPG was missing was a Toast guild. I know I’ve seen other commenters mention that they used HabitRPG, so hopefully I won’t be the only guild member for long.
We actually have a party! You can come on quests with us! The group ID is e1b31c34-8270-42c8-af8f-9c6d212cabee but I think maybe one of the leaders has to invite you?
Ooh, Toast quests!
HabitRPG says I would need an invite, and the leader would need my user ID to invite me.
The guild might be a better place to arrange details? Also to have a place where other Toasties can find out about the party, and to hang out with any Toasties who are in non-Toast parties. (Basically I’m hoping that it will be useful in addition to the party, since I already created the darn thing.)
Oh hey! I am going to find this guild ASAP – I’m in a party already so that wouldn’t work for me, but I love the idea of a Toast guild!
Aaaaand there we are! Sir Boots at your service.
Toasties, seen any good concerts lately?
On Monday, I went to see a David Byrne/Talking Heads tribute concert at Carnegie Hall, an irresistible temptation to a weirdo like me whose normal listening consists of literally 98% Talking Heads. It was fun! Good lineup, all the groups seemed really happy to be there, and some of the performances were amazing. Sharon Jones did “Psycho Killer,” and it was incredible–as good as any version Talking Heads themselves ever did. I think this is it, if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLhDGxAr0j4 And Glen Hansard did a really excellent version of “Girlfriend is Better.” CeeLo Green did a pretty straight cover of “Take Me to the River,” but damn can that man sing.
Some of the other performances were marred by sound mixing issues or just an apparent lack of preparation. Amanda Palmer managed to do a version of “Once in a Lifetime” that seemed both half-assed and poorly-conceived (it started off a capella, which is a bad idea for Talking Heads songs generally and this one in particular).
At the end, Byrne himself showed up and did a song with what looked like a high-school marching band. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize the song (presumably something post-TH), so I was more appreciating the gesture than really enjoying the music.
Was it the one with Pete Molinari? I’ve an unhealthy obsession with the guy.
It was! He did a version of “Heaven” that I wasn’t in love with, but unlike most of the performers, he wasn’t just copying Talking Heads’ sound, which I respected. It was clear he’d actually worked on it in advance–maybe it’s something he works into his regular repertoire?
I think that may on youtube too, if you’re interested.
I saw Swervedriver Monday night. Only took me twenty years.
On Monday, I’m seeing the Fathom Event thing for Led Zeppelin. Does that count?
sharon jones doing “psycho killer” sounds amazing!
i have two great concerts ahead of me in april: belle & sebastian and the replacements. i’m so excited!!
Tickets to Laser Floyd a week from tonight! Gotta do something to take Tall One’s mind off Comps the night before.
Quit my not great paying but cushy assistant locksmithing job and I’m moving to Albuquerque on Tuesday, with out a lease signed.
I have a bunch of money (for school but also an emergency) and I’ll have my job stocking shelves at Target when I get there so I’m not in any danger but still.
Locksmithing could have been a career if I wanted it to be, and if I hadn’t basically committed to this plan before I even moved to Texas I might even have stayed…
Well here’s hoping this works (in slow motion… over the course of the rest of my life)
welcome to NM!!
we have locksmiths here, too if that’s something you want to continue.
Thanks, this a return to NM for me I was at NMT in Socorro from 04-09.
And yeah, I mean the Target job is just something so I’m not losing money for a month or two while I try to find something better. I am absolutely going to poke my nose around door and/or lock companies.
I want to talk about comics! Did you guys see the Guardian article about diversity in comics? It’s a bit shallow, but I like how positive it is. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/25/femi…
I am currently enjoying Saga, Thor, Ms. Marvel, Velvet, and quite a few others on an issue per issue basis. I’m very sad She-Hulk is over and hope they reboot it soon (maybe after the Secret Wars kerfuffle?). Oh, and Bitch Planet! That one’s worth buying in single issues especially, there are great feminist essays in the back pages.
I tried Spider-Gwen, but didn’t like it much for the same reason I don’t tend to read Spider-Man much: they’re a bit too smug and sophomoric for my taste. But I’m willing to be convinced! Maybe Silk would be better, I have to try that one.
I also just finished the second volume of Alex + Ada, and am anxiously awaiting the release of the second volume of Rat Queens a month from now.
I was hoping to try Spider-Gwen, but it wasn’t in stock at my local when I went on Sunday. I need to pick up New Thor too but I’ve slept on it for a while so I may just wait for the omnibus?? Captain Marvel and She-Hulk are on my “to pick up when they reach omnibus and I have money” list, same with Rat Queens! And I’m really excited for Lumberjanes too.
Ms. Marvel is great and so is Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, I am in L.O.V.E. with Doreen Green.
I was a bit late in jumping on the Squirrel Girl train, but I’ve heard so many great things I’m picking that trade up sight unseen when it comes out 🙂
Oh my gosh, it’s INCREDIBLE. So many puns! Tippy-Toe! Iron Man owes SG a favor! That’s all you get from me, ppyajunebug sold me on it and I haven’t looked back.
it made me the happiest that they put kate leth’s nuts about butts award on a cover
I have all the spider-gwen but have yet to read it! I added it to my pull right as it was announced cause the one-shot was super satisfying. I will report back once I get around to reading it this weekend.
I can HEARTILY, HEARTILY recommend Ody-C!! It’s amazing and crazy as balls, and if you like ladies, Greek mythology, and psychedelic colors, you will be greatly amused!!
I am looking for Bitch Planet #2, if anyone in the Boston area has it… My LCS is out of it and I don’t think I can buy just one from the Image website!
Let me see, do I like
– ladies? check
– Greek mythology? absolutely
– psychedelic colors? well, I’m certainly not against them
Good think the comic book shop is open until 9 today!
Bitch Planet is sooooo goooooooood. And so is Ody-C, for sure, but Bitch Planet!
It IS, isn’t it? The ending of #3 made me cheer out loud.
I just picked all three issues up on Comixology after starting to follow more comics folks on Tumblr. I’m excited about it! Maybe I’ll read them tonight. And Ody-C sounds delightful.
Yay! (although I would recommend reading Ody-C in hard copy if you can swing it – I feel like I would have a hard time with it on a screen, plus the first issue has a big pull-out map timeline thing that I really had to spend some time with)
She-hulk is gonna be on the ladyvengers! I am pretty excited about that, because I love The Jen so much.
After years of not reading comics for reasons mostly having to do with not having money I have recently gotten into both Ms. Marvel and the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and I cannot stress how delightful they are. Squirrel Girl is especially wonderful because I feel like I could give my old copies to my 7 year old niece without a single worry. I’ve heard wonderful things about Bitch Planet, but hadn’t known about the essays. I will definitely be searching for some copies.
Yay comics! Currently reading single issues of Bitch Planet, Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Thor, Angela: Asgard’s Assassin, Storm, Silk, Lumberjanes, Sex Criminals, The Wicked + The Divine, Rat Queens. Reading the trades of Saga, Hawkeye, and Buffy, and probably Spider-Gwen.
Didn’t love the first issue of S-G but I want to read the first trade to see if it gets better. I really like Silk so far!
I’m going to have to switch to trades of some of my single-issues, as it’s getting a little out of hand! It’s the one reason I’m glad Secret Wars is coming up in Marvel.
Lumberjanes! It’s about a bunch of badass girls at summer camp who fight monsters.
Also, I feel terrible but I have not super loved Bitch Planet. Love the idea, but can’t seem to get into it.
Don’t feel terrible! Not everything is for everyone. I read the first two volumes of Captain Marvel and decided it just wasn’t for me, much as I like the writer and the ideas behind it and the fact that there’s such a thing as the Carol Corps.
I’ve only just gotten into them, but thanks to the Image Comics Humble Bundle ( http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/108093338531/hu… ), I’ve gotten to try some good stuff. I’ve mostly been reading a volume or two between longer books, which has worked well.
I loved Saga, enjoyed Sex Criminals, and was initially unsure about Alex + Ada and came to really like it and want to read more. I have also really enjoyed Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel. As someone brand new to comics, I’ve found myself not really enjoying straightforward superhero comics, but preferring ones like Fraction’s Hawkeye and the new Ms. Marvel. Squirrel Girl is one that I’ve seen highly recommended, so I may put that on the list next.
I’ve heard really wonderful things re: Sex Criminals, but have yet to read any information on what it’s actually ABOUT, just that it’s good.
This is my first foray into American comics as well and I promise you will not regret the Squirrel Girl books. I really can’t shut up about how much I love it.
So basically there’s this man and woman who find out (independently of each other, and in the woman’s case in a very realistic depiction of a young girl masturbating for the first time) that time stops when they orgasm, and then they have sex with each other and realize they have this thing in common, and then they use their power to do crimes to get money to save a library. And then shit gets weird.
Very accurate summary! Also my partner and I appear to be the only two people in the world who dislike Sex Criminals… mainly because we hate the main dude so much and it feels like when your incredible friend has this super lame boyfriend and you do. not. get. it.
The only paper comic I am reading currently is Ms. Marvel. And I only remember to go to the comic shop about once every three months, so I’m generally behind. Not right now though, I just caught up.
I am also reading a bunch of webcomics, of which my current favourites are Magellan Academy, Family Man, Dicebox, Skin Horse, Galaxion, and Girl Genius.
I have stashed the first 2 thors and I’m trying so hard to let myself read them, but I’m like, “If I read it, it will be done, and then it’s all ruined until the next one”–I’m weird like that. I’ve just bit the bullet, though, and I’ve bought ALL the Thors, and will start reading tomorrow, as my kids have spring break and I don’t have to coach next week. I used to practically live at the comic store and it’s been so refreshing to get back into them. I’m going to have to write down all your suggestions for when I have money again.
Hello fellow toasties! have any of you ever tried laser genesis therapy for acne? I had a free consult with a fancy skin place yesterday, and the doctor seemed to think that that, in conjunction with naturopathic care, would make a huge difference for me. I get fairly bad acne around my chin and mouth, seemingly hormonal, and would love to just get rid of it, but this seems like a very $$$ option. Any advice or experience I would love to heard <3 <3
I have no experience with any kind of laser therapy, but I’ve heard a few people say that Spironolactone is really excellent for hormonal acne. You need a prescription, but I’m thinking about trying to see a dermatologist to get some, because I have had the EXACT SAME (hormonal) BREAKOUT along my jaw line for YEARS.
I would like to hear about someone’s experience with Spironolactone, if anyone has tried it. Side effects? How long can you stay on it? Do you take it all the time, or at certain points in your cycle?
I would also like to hear this! I haven’t heard much beyond “it worked for me” and “it’s less insane than accutane”
I took accutane and it wasn’t that bad! I credit my doctor for starting me off on a very low dosage and then slowly tapering it up (to a maximum that was still very low in proportion to my body weight).
I’ve been taking Spironolactone for PCOS – one a day, every day – for a year and a half now. I like it a lot more than other stuff I’ve tried for PCOS. No noticeable side effects, no interaction with the antidepressant I also take, and my skin is much, much better. I still get zits here and there, but most of those I do get are either ingrown hairs (again, PCOS) or small ones that clear up quickly.
I took spironolactone for a few years– it worked for a while, until it just didn’t anymore.
For what it’s worth, accutane was the only thing to ever have truly impressive, long-lasting results for me. I went from horrible, constant cystic acne to nothing at all three months into treatment. But it really is insane. Constant lower back pain, dehydration, crazy fragile skin that would peel off at the slightest provocation. But it really, really worked for me, so it’s easy to say now that it was worth it. Leaving the house doesn’t cause intense anxiety! If you’re in a good place in your life where you can afford to be on crazy meds for six months (and can literally afford it because it’s absurdly expensive without good insurance) then you may want to consider breaking out the big guns.
I haven’t even heard of that! But I can tell you from experience that my terrible hormonal acne (also around chin/mouth/jawline) has been cleared up by a combo of benzoyl peroxide/ethromycin gel and tretinoin .1% cream. My insurance covers them so I only pay like $20 every other month!
Yeah, I have been trying Tactu (epidu in the USA?) and had some success that seems to have worn off. Do you think that’s similar to what you have been doing?
Hmmmmm I think the Tactu only contains the benzoyl peroxide and another antibiotic, which I know at least for me isn’t enough. It works OK on its own, but it was adding the fairly strong retinol that really convinced my skin to clear up. Retinol (for me that’s the tretinoin) isn’t an antibiotic/exfoliator like BP is, so it treats the acne via a different mechanism? It seems that no one really knows for sure how retinol works its magic, but it does!!
Seconding benzoyl peroxide, antibiotics, and retinoids. All were effective for me.
I have read only a little about lasers and would need more info before allowing that kind of heat on my face. The heat of the lasers can stimulate hair follicles, encouraging them to produce bristly hairs as found on men’s chins. But I trust you have done more research on this than my little bit.
I had no idea about the hair thing, thank you!
no experience with laser genesis therapy, but as far as chin/mouth skin issues, especially recurring ones—you may be right on the money and know it’s acne, but consider whether it may be perioral dermatitis? i got that in my early twenties and two different derms misdiagnosed it first as a rash and then as acne.
Toasties, I am having the worst self-doubt and anxiety week-or-so, and I am having trouble shaking it. The biggest part of the problem is that I have a Very Important Test for the internship I’m doing that is hopefully (cross your fingers and pray if you’re into that) leading to a job after graduation! This test is next week! I am losing my damn mind over it!
Any suggestions for calming/you-can-do-it type playlists? Or just general advice/words of wisdom?
I have no wisdom, but my #1 calming songs are “What do I want? Sky” by Animal Collective and “Citizen” by Broken Bells. Especially the first one.
You’re doing great. You got this.
YOU GOT THIS.
I’ve been listening to soundtrack of the original Sims game and in addition to bringing back fond memories, it’s actually helped me concentrate better at work. Very soothing, particularly the piano for the “build” part. And I read (on tumblr, so take with a grain of salt) that video game music can be good for concentration, since it’s designed to keep your attention what you’re doing.
Good luck!
I recommend the more aggressive parts of the Queen discography. I particularly recommend “Don’t Stop Me Now,” “I Want It All,” and “We Will Rock You.”
If I want to make myself feel like I can do something, I listen to “Catch Your Dreams”, Leslie Knope’s campaign song from Parks and Recreation. It works very well!
Good luck – I am sure you’ll do better than you fear.
Tortoise Diet update: My lifestyle change is in week 9, I think. But I’ve cycled into rapid cycling with hints of mixed states creeping in … which I think is a result of my exercise program.
After all these years with bipolar disorder I don’t know how to prevent rapid cycling or how to divert it or stop it. So I’ll just have to wait for it to run its course. It is running like this: I get up in a mania and between 4 to 6 hours later, I dive into a depression; variations are when I go into a mixed state.
It’s exhausting and frustrating and I’ve been in bed a lot. So the uh Tortoise is taking a break and waiting for my normal bp cycle to return.
That sounds really rough, I’m sorry.
🙁 Take care of yourself.
Rapid cycling sucks, and the not-being-able-to-exercise-because-it-makes-it-worse problem is horrible. I have no advice other than to treat yourself gently. Is there a level of exercise that’s just mild, like a morning walk every day or something, that won’t kick you over into cycling? I’m sure you’ve tried that already but I can’t help suggesting it again. But especially being kind to yourself–even if you’re in bed under the covers, don’t let the depression side guilt trip you over it (I should take my own advice).
It took me a while to realize that the rapid cycling had *set in* and it was a Thing and then I started with the mixed states, which scared the crap out of me.
So right now I’m in the “you have to get on with your life” mode, in that, I do need to fit exercise and diet into a routine that will work around the rapid cycling/mixed. I mean, in the past it’s taken months for Things to resolve. Which is why I was in a bit of despair when I wrote the original comment, but now I do feel *resolved* to somehow work with things, even if it’s just doing what I can/doing SOMEthing. I haven’t gained weight back, which is good, because I was beating myself up about that possibility. I need to go forward, without allowing my life to come to a standstill.
I don’t know what other advice you have, but for me, learning about ways other people deal with things is always tremendously helpful;and for some reason, gives me strength.
Hello beautiful ones, I have been living out of a hotel room for the last week for work-related purposes and THANK THE LAWD it is Friday because one more day and I would probably go postal. Flying home tonight. My brain is fried and I’m still working for another couple hours before I drive to the airport.
Talk to me, if you will, about your side projects! Are you doing crafts? Writing novels? Teaching yourself a foreign language? Running a small business that you hope to one day make a main project? My “project’ right now is to get back into the swing of writing non-scientifically, both for personal edification and possible grad school applications. I have no idea how to do this effectively.
Right now the only side project I can afford, energy-wise, is finally getting around to using that sweater shaver on some of my thrift-store finds. WILD TIMES IN CLEVER MANKA LAND.
That’s such an important task, though. How many of my thrift store purchases have gone wasted because I never found time to make the proper fixes and alterations…
I (Cassandra) have just started a new side project of trying to turn my scattered musings (in Goodreads and other places) into semi-coherent book reviews which I may then post on a blog. This is something I have gone back and forth on for a long time, and there are always so many reasons not to (for instance, time is very limited and I ought to be working on my fiction), but I enjoy it so much that I finally realised it is ridiculous not to do it. So we will see if it goes anywhere.
I think a blog is a great idea! Blogs these days are so often “portfolio pieces,” you know? Something comprehensive you can point to when aiming to demonstrate writing ability.
Thank you, that is a lovely thing to hear. It is in my mind, that if I decide to apply to graduate school (for a PhD in English Literature or Cultural Studies) or if I try to publish my fiction, that either way the blog might be helpful. (Also it gives me greater credibility when trying to request books on NetGalley.)
But also I just desperately miss talking to people about what I am reading, and thinking about how books work and what I find in them and — all of it. I really enjoyed getting my BA, I loved the class discussions, and I have no idea how to find more of that in my life. At least I can do it for myself.
What kind of writing is it you are trying to do?
I have been learning how to play basically every single Josh Ritter song on the guitar. Also crafting elaborate fantasies about Josh Ritter being my boyfriend but I’m not sure if that fully qualifies as a “side project”.
God, I love Josh Ritter.
I am using unemployment as an opportunity to start a side hustle as a freelance editor! I have a lot of strong references as an editor and good contacts, and I’m hoping that once I find a full-time gig, I can use the side hustle to fund the fun stuff like vacations. And in the meantime, income is income!
This year, I am committing to writing at least 278 words of fiction per day, with optional break days allowed on Fridays and Saturdays (278 wpd gives me a novel in 6 months, but I’ve ended up with so many Fridays and Saturdays busy that I decided to formalize the break days). I’m giving myself permission to just write whatever I want and skip around novel projects like crazy–in the past, I’ve gotten bogged down in the first draft stage with making sure the novel was Original and Had Well-Rounded Characters and Didn’t Use Any Cliches. In the first draft. So right now, I’m writing a book that’s basically just taking my favorite parts of other novels and mixing it all together. It’s so much fun.
I’ve started writing fanfiction again! It’s fun because I’ve become the least creative person ever, even though I used to love writing when I was young. I could never write a novel, but I can write silly 1000 word stories, and people are SO NICE! Someone made a podfic of a little thing I wrote and everything!
(I’m also sewing a lot, and trying not to bankrupt myself on fabric)
I’ve taken up dancing! Poorly, but it’s fun. All in the name of my true side-project, burlesque.
That is an excellent question! I am in the early stages of arranging to have a house built. Not building it myself, but making all the decisions so that someone else can build it for me.
Also self-care seems to have become a side project that’s taking up a good chunk of time and brain. Good, as in, it’s good that it’s happening, and I am enjoying it.
AHHH! So envious! Congratulations on the house plans.
Still spoon carving!
https://instagram.com/p/0to6PVMs8H/
To do: Need to write a new entry for my blog, resume freshening up my French, pick another new recipe to try (I’ve fallen into a rut lately). I might bake, for the first time in a long while?
Doing: Reading from the library again (saves $$), going to start knitting a baby hat for my co-worker. I also bought a starter sewing class that I’ll start later in the spring! We’ll be making a headband, a pillow/pillowcase, and a cosmetics bag.
Wow. That spoon exists because you MADE IT. This blows me away.
Allright, Toast. Sorry to bring this up again (it’s come up in every link thread since Tuesday), but I cannot stop looking at the news from Germany. My mom happens to be from a small town in Westphalia not unlike Haltern, and I had a postdoc in Muenster (the larger city nearby). It’s horrifying to me that something this tragic could happen in a place that I think of as being extremely safe and idyllic. This is bordering on an obsession and I need to stop.
Have any of you ever had an obsession like this, and if so, what helped you break it?
I’ve been thinking about it a lot, too. I spent a year living in the Westerwald and Montabaur was the nearest big (“big”) town to me. I don’t want to think that a Westerwälder could do what they’re saying Andreas Lubitz did. It’s been jarring.
“jarring” is a good way to describe it. I’ve gone with “senseless” ” baffling” and “deeply upsetting.” I’m also pretty convinced that I would be less upset if this had involved people where I actually live (in the SF bay area), rather than in Westphalia (halfway around the world). I’m perfectly fine living with random evil, but I guess I really thought (at least subconsciously) there were places that were relatively free of it. This is hard to accept.
Toooooooast my boyfriend and I bought tickets to the Women’s World Cup in Montreal this summer and I am SO SO PUMPED!
Which game(s)?? I am going to the ones on June 13, 15, and 17!
Aw, no, I’m going to the ones on June 26th and 30th. I figured if I was gonna haul my butt all the way up from Massachusetts, I might as well spring for the quarterfinal and semifinal!
Makes sense! I am going to be in Montreal for work during the ones I’m going to. I actually also have tickets to the game on the 30th as part of the stadium half-pass thing, but I’m not hauling myself back up there from NYC. Have a great time!
I’m going in Vancouver with my girlfriend (and her mom, it’s going to be very cute) and I am SO EXCITED. I’m not even a big soccer fan but live sports are the best and SPORTY AWESOME WOMEN WHOOO
I have tickets to 3 different games in Edmonton including the semi finals! Any other toasties?
That is so awesome and I am so jealous!!!!! Have an amazing time!
Couple of pieces that I just read and enjoyed. This piece by Kat Chow of Code Switch on Dong from “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” is a really interesting look at it, especially given the discussion in the Link Roundup today,
Also, for the sports fans, particularly NBA fans, a good read about Jeremy Lin these days, “Isolation Play” that gets at why he is treated differently as a trailblazer on the basketball court.
I
I really loved that Kat Chow piece, because it steers away from the extremes that are so popular in thinkpieces these days. It’s not saying “X is totally racist!” or “The people who think X is racist are stupid” but “hm. This is giving me mixed feelings. Let’s think this through.”
sorry for the messed up link to the first piece. and now I can’t edit because there’s a reply!!!
here’s the piece again, http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/03/26/39…
Sorry! I recognized the link and I guess my enthusiasm got the best of me (this tends to happen a lot).
lol no need to be sorry at all! The link is still followable from my very bad attempt at html, after all.
I loved that piece by Kat Chow as well. After watching The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt I actually thought to myself, “I wonder what Kat Chow thinks about Dong?” because I read her wonderful analysis of Donger from 16 Candles so I knew she would have opinions. (That and I love Kat Chow, I get so excited whenever she’s on Pop Culture Happy Hour.) I think her feelings about Dong align with mine: he’s not a perfect character, but he’s certainly somewhat subverting cliche’s by being the straight man for many of the jokes. However, I do think he’s a bit blah and I’m curious to see how his character develops as a result of all the criticisms and think pieces after this first season.
That is a great piece. I have not been able to find a full list of the writers for Kimmy Schmidt, and I wish I could because it has a lot to do with how I feel about the race stuff. Everything I’ve seen so far makes it seem like the cast is really diverse– at least two Native Americans and two black women are writers on the show, and there’s a total of 11 writers. And they decided to do the Native American storyline because they had Native American writers and felt they could go that way– they didn’t hire them as tokens to support the plot line. I wonder if there are Asian-Americans or immigrants on the writing staff as well, because that would also really affect how I feel about Dong. Overall, my feeling is that people kind of treat the whole show as if it’s Tina Fey telling the jokes, and that overlooks that she has hired a really diverse team. They’re still all responsible if the jokes come off as racist, but it’s not as simple as “white woman telling inappropriate jokes about race”.
I had no idea there were Native American writers on the show. I knew there were several black women, but that’s really interesting and certainly changes my views of that storyline. I know Tituss the actor had lots of input on Tituss the character and I think it certainly shows.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of people don’t know that! It’s really missing from the dialogue. One of the most prominent articles that was offended by the storyline accused that of being the “I have Native American friends” excuse, but it’s really the “Native Americans WROTE THESE JOKES” explanation, and that is way, way different.
It has also really bothered me when people say that Titus is a gay stereotype when the character is based on him and included input from him. It strikes me as really insulting to him– it’s like, people get caught up in insisting that we break the stereotype that all gay men are flamboyant in a certain way, but forget that it is still totally OK for gay men to be flamboyant if they want to be.
I really enjoyed this piece about Kimmy Schmidt, because as Hedwig said before me, it’s a writer exploring and acknowledging the mixed feelings the show is giving people about its dealings with race rather than taking an extreme view.
Seconding Design Sponge, and adding A Beautiful Mess– they aren’t really my style, if that makes sense, but a lot of their DIYs are easily modifiable to personal preference.
As for The Guy: I’m sure you get this a lot but have you considered lighting him on fire
HR frowns upon that I think – but I’ll double check with our awesome HR director, she may let it pass. On the plus side, when he announced that, the whole business (we were at a big meeting) made a kind of collective :-/ face.
I’m adding the blogs to my feedly, thanks 🙂
It took my friends at least 6 months to convince me but I’ve finally read THE SECRET HISTORY. And now I’m obsessed. Francis, I want to snog you.
Oh man I read it this summer and it was great, wasn’t it? It reads like a guilty pleasure but it’s really not that guilty. Want to talk fancasts for a movie version that will hopefully never happen??
OH NO YOU UNLEASHED THE CRACKEN.
Okay, so: Charles has to be Dane Dehan. I’ve always imagined Camilla as a you Carey Mulligan. Francis is a mix between Caleb Landry Jones and Antonio Gramsci (I am strongly against choosing Eddie Redmayne #NOTMYFRANCIS), Bunny, Richard and Henry are a bit of a mystery to me. Especially Richard, the poor fellow.
Ok, here is mine, copied from a draft I’ve had sitting in my email since a few weeks ago.
Richard – Nathan Stewart-Jarrett
Henry – Joseph Gordon Levitt
Bunny – (???)
Francis – Steven Yeun
Charles – Channing Tatum
Camilla – Kristen Stewart (Emma Stone?)
Julian – Samuel L. Jackson
Judy Poovey – Antonia Thomas (?)
Carey Mulligan would fit in well as Camilla, too. She’s definitely cut from that mold.
We read that a long time ago when it was new and oh yes it is totally obsession-worthy!
The small liberal arts college in Massachussetts that I went to was not the one that the story fictionalizes, but it is strikingly similar and we also had a weird charming classics professor there, so when I read that in college it was super exciting to me.
FRANCIS IS THE BEST, my glorious precious ginger dandy.
I read it years ago and have been basically looking for books that scratch the same itch ever since! I think my very niche media obsession is groups of people who think they’re really really smart/competent and then it all fucks up in melodramatic ways. This also explains my love of haunted house movies that involve groups of very serious paranormal investigators who get, like, eaten by ghosts or whatever. Is that some sort of comeuppance kink? I DON’T KNOW.
The book I’m reading now is described on the cover as a cross between Twin Peaks and The Secret History and IT BETTER BE.
I was reminded of the Secret History a lot when I read Tam Lin by Pamela Dean recently, but that comes with the caveat that its been a long time since I read the Secret History.
One of my favorite books. I loved it so much I took a semester of Greek (it’s very difficult).
I took a semester of Latin, bought a swoopy black coat like Francis’s (Francis’? apostrophes are hard), and signed up for a fencing class. I may have gone too far in my enthusiasm.
I believe I have found my people.
This book showed up on our bookshelf recently (I later realized my husband’s boss had lent it to him – it hadn’t just materialized) and now I think I have to read it!!!
It took my friends at least 6 months to convince me but I’ve finally read THE SECRET HISTORY. And now I’m obsessed. Francis, I want to snog you.
RIGHT? I had the biggest crush when I read this in my teens. Now 24 and it’s not gone anywhere. Please finish soon and help me dream cast.
I have finished it, it took me 5 days to finish the book and one more day to hunt down nice fanfictions (there are none).
All I know is that for me Charles is Dane Deehan, Camilla a young Carey Mulligan, e Francis Caleb Landry Jones (AND NOT EDDIE REDMAYNE! #notmyfrancis)
Even though sometimes I have troubles imagining them as fully humans. They are ethereal, handsome anime characters in my head.
I have finished it, it took me 5 days to finish the book and one more day to hunt down nice fanfictions (there are none).
All I know is that for me Charles is Dane Deehan, Camilla a young Carey Mulligan, e Francis Caleb Landry Jones (AND NOT EDDIE REDMAYNE! #notmyfrancis)
Even though sometimes I have troubles imagining them as fully humans. They are ethereal, handsome anime characters in my head.
I was just asking myself if it was too long past winter for pumpkin soup. I made this one from Smitten Kitchen awhile ago and it was phenomenal, would soup again.
Instead I opted to make pho for a gathering this weekend. I like this because there’s very little to make, per se. I just season the broth and put out the fixins and people fix it themselves.
Toasts, I am so very tightly wound up and irritable at my job right now, but I don’t think it will really help me to talk about it, so I am just going to link to this Toast comic and this Oatmeal comic and then return to talking about which vegetables are seasonally appropriate. My company had an event Wednesday at a fancy venue at the top of a tall building, and one of the staff shared with us some leftover cake from a wedding cake tasting that was going on at the same time. The couple-to-be chose a cake with two layers of lemon raspberry cake (which was delicious) and two layers of sweet potato cake, which was seasoned with fourspice like carrot cake or pumpkin pie. Buttercream frosting on everything. I mean the cake was good, but you know that couple’s elderly aunts are going to throw all kinds of shade about the sweet potato (not that it should matter).
Would soup again. You crack me up.
I’m sorry about your job. Wishing improvements for you. Taking to the sea would definitely be an improvement, if I may offer a suggestion.
Toasties, does anyone else in a majority-female job find it downright weird to see all-male groups? The last time I was in a group of mostly men was months ago, and it was out being social, not in the workplace. I’ve started getting this momentary twinge of “Huh, that’s odd” when I’m walking through my office building and see two or three (or MORE) men walking/talking together.
We now have Three Whole Men working at my library (out of a staff of thirty-odd) and I can’t help the feeling that that is just Too Many.
In one of our department meetings, with five men vs. like fifteen women in attendance, every Man felt the need to say something in that meeting except the new guy.
Until very recently the only man in my office of 10 people was my direct boss (an A++ man so it’s fine). One day a FedEx person came in with a package addressed to him and as I signed for it she said, in a shocked whisper, “I didn’t even know there was a MAN in this office!”
Now we have a second man and he is The Worst. Don’t mess with the ratio!
I do not have a majority-female job, but my oh my would I like to.
I have belonged to an all-women gym for a couple years and didn’t think it was that big of a deal to me until I went as a guest to a coed gym and BALKED at the old dude I saw on the stairs on my way in. What are you doing here sir?!?
I work as an archivist for a company that has the archival contracts of a bunch of schools and religious organisations and university residences and stuff, and while the company is all ladies (and it is wonderful!), one of my clients is a all-male university residence, and it is downright creepy eating in their dining hall surrounded by boys ages 18-24-ish plus the majority-male academic staff. Also most of their office staff and cleaners are women and everyone else (residents, head of college, tutors, etc) is male. This has not escaped me. Ugh.
On the other hand, I also work at an all-women university residence, and all of their residents and most of the staff (excluding bursar and maintenance staff) are ladies, and it is a delight.
Toast, hello! Last week I found out that a postdoc from my old lab with whom I had a quite poor relationship with was interviewing for a professorship at the school where I’m doing my graduate work. For a long time I thought this guy just didn’t like me personally (which, okay fine, not everyone in the world will like me), but it became clear that he was a misogynist ass who acted like a condescending jerk towards anyone in the lab he thought was below him (AKA all the women). I spent quite a few days fretting about whether this was something I should bring up, who I should tell, whether it was considered a personal problem, whether I wouldn’t be taken seriously, whether it was appropriate to bring up, etc etc etc. It was a stressful couple of days.
However, this week I finally talked to my PI and he was AMAZING. He was so receptive and so kind and took me so seriously. He also thanked me multiple times for coming to him and sharing this information, since it’s not something you can necessarily get at an interview. It was such a validating conversation, and I am feeling so grateful I have such a supportive mentor. Yay mentorship success! Yay professors who think that people with a history of treating young women like trash shouldn’t also be professors!
You are fighting the good fight. You rock!
Thank you!
In the coming misandrist revolution, your PI shall be spared. You may tell him he has provisional Toast approval.
You are awesome! Faculty stick around for a loooong time so you have helped make your department a better place for grad students for probably decades to come.
I teach English in Russia right now, but am looking to see if I can find a teaching job somewhere else in Eastern or Central Europe before it’s time to renew my contract. I emailed a bunch of schools but haven’t heard anything positive back. Then this week I got a reply from a school in Bratislava, and I’m having a Skype interview on Wednesday. I have no idea what the salary would be or how the interview will go or whether I’d take the job if they offer it to me. But I am both nervous and excited thinking about it.
I do hate interviews though. I’m not bad at them and people generally like me in interviews. I just do not enjoy them. But who does? Psychopaths, I assume.
Narcissists, since they get to talk about how awesome they are!
And good luck on your interview, I’m sure you’ll do great.
I love interviews because I love to talk about myself and how great I think I am. So satisfying.
Toasties, do you have recommendations for books on pregnancy/birth that treat the reader like an intelligent human being? I have the Mayo Clinic one out from the library and I feel like it talks to me like I’m stupid.
Ideally I want one that’s feminist, scientifically up-to-date, pro-midwife care, and not entirely full of Woo. But that might be asking too much?
Maggie Koerth-Baker did a roundup of evidence-based pregnancy/baby books last year here.
This is excellent!!! Thank you so much.
*Bookmarks for the indefinite future.*
Oh man, in the meantime I really want to know more about that half-parthenogenetic / half-chimera Scottish kid.
Well, I accidentally found out that my SIL’s sister was pregnant well before I was supposed to because she used my Amazon account to send her this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375710477/ref=pe_385040…
And my SIL had a midwife but is very anti woo-woo and a biology teacher so I’d trust her recommendations in general!
Thanks! This one is from 2003, and I’m looking for something a little more recent, but it looks like a good book.
I haven’t looked at the pregnancy chapters, but Our Bodies, Our Selves has generally struck me as feminist, science-y, and not condescending. And they seem to have some pro-midwife stuff on their website, and Wikipedia tells me that the latest version has a six chapter section on child-bearing.
Thanks! I almost added that if it wasn’t 10 years old, I would go with the OBOS pregnancy and birth book. But…yeah, 10 years old. I did get the updated OBOS, but their chapter on pregnancy and birth, while good, was not remotely comprehensive since they rely on the pregnancy/birth book for that.
ETA: Oh wait – the latest edition must not be the one I looked at, since it had just one chapter on pregnancy and childbearing! I will have to check out the actual latest edition, and not the one I thought was the latest.
Oh, that makes sense.
I think their current thing is to put updated info on their website instead of just saving it for the next edition, but obviously website articles are not the same as a book.
The one I really liked so far is “Expecting Better” which made me able to justify my daily coffee with actual studies! I forget if she’s pro-midwife (although I ignored that part and went with a midwife anyway), but she is definitely pro doula?
Thanks! I remember hearing about that one a year or so ago and thinking it sounded great, so I’m glad to be reminded of it now that it’s relevant to my life.
I loved Expecting Better! I like that she is all about: “here is the information, now go out and make your own decisions.”
I love Expecting Better! She decided against delivering with a midwife herself, but she has good information about midwives and was very respectful of it as a decision other women make.
She does a great job of in general of laying out the information for you without telling you that you absolutely have to do some arcane thing or your baby will be ruined.
“Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn” and “The Labor Partner” are very straightforward and factual and exactly what you want. But I also like supplementing the facts with some kind of woo stuff to make sure you process your feelings as well – “Birthing From Within” or “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth” are woo but good, just concentrate on the parts you find useful and ignore the stuff that’s too out there.
Thank you!! I think it would probably be good to get a little bit of woo…I think I tend to overcorrect in the other direction, so a little reminder that this whole adventure is not *just* chemistry and physics and cell division would probably be very salutary for me.
I finally got my Sebastienne Moran cosplay together for 221B Con in Atlanta next month and had a photoshoot for it last Saturday. Pics on my Tumblr here and here. Warning for anyone who might be bothered, I am holding a rifle in several pics, so just be aware.
Atlanta! Let me know if you need recommendations on anything.
Thank you all, you lovely amazing people, for your words of support and comfort last week. I’ve been starting to tell people about my cancer, and it’s kinda good and bad at the same time. My surgery will be this coming Tuesday, and then I’ll be holed up in my bedroom for a few days, probably reading comics and going on the Internet. If you’ve got happy surgery stories (is that weird?) I’d love to hear them!
Also, I’m going to see Bob’s Burgers Live this Saturday! I can’t wait! If I got to meet Kristin Schaal, I would just… I don’t know. Slap her right in the face, maybe?
Threaten to leave her in a Sears.
I had a wonderful surgery. General anasthesia is the best sleep I ever get. And modern medicine impressed my socks off: I never had pain. Not once. Perfect pain control, constantly, expertly adjusted. I had an incision from my navel all the way down, so I expected some pain. Nope. And the automatic leg massagers to avoid clots while in the hospital bed were a pleasant surprise. And nurses are the best. A night nurse talked with me for a couple of hours when anxiety would not let me sleep. She knew exactly what I needed.
Best wishes for Tuesday. It’s going to be OK. If you do feel pain, tell someone. My experience is proof that pain is not a given, that it can be controlled. So speak up. And let us know how you’re doing as soon as you feel up to it. I’ll look for you in the Link Roundups and Open Threads.
I’m so glad to hear that your experience was positive! Oddly, it’s the process of being put to sleep (hard to say without veering into pet euthanasia territory, but I can’t think of another way to phrase it!) that’s freaking me out the most. I am trying really hard to just think of it like a strong suggestion to take a nap, but it’s still scaring me a bit!
In my experience (many surgeries, about 50/50 general and local/heavy sedation), the process of being put to sleep is very short. It often takes them ages to prep you for surgery (doing tests, putting in the IV, asking you the same freaking health history questions 50 times) but then when they add the anesthesia to your IV it’s like 0-60 MPH in less than 5 seconds.
And Rose is right, general sleep is pretty great. You may be a barfer on waking up, like me – ask for some good anti-nausea meds. They may cause a mild hangover the next day, but that is infinitely preferable to yuking your guts out for 3 hours. And they are very good about controlling pain, so do speak up. And be nice to the nurses – they are your best friends in a hospital.
I wrote a piece about my most recent surgery (under general) a few years ago that was published on The Hairpin. It may be helpful, or comforting, or at least give you a good laugh. Thinking of you!
Oh nooooo- barfing!!! They did ask me in my pre-admission interview if I get carsick easily, which I do. When I got my wisdom teeth out I woke up crying so I am going to hope really hard that that’s what I do for this one. But maybe nooottt ohhh nooooooo 🙁
I am heading over to read your piece right now! Thanks for sharing!
OMG when I had my wisdom teeth out it took me 50 years (more or less) to fully wake up, and when I did wake up, I couldn’t see for another 10 years or so. I thought I was blind, panicked and started bawling for my mom. The dental assistant, devil spawn that she was, said, “We’ll get your mom for you when you stop crying and pull yourself together.” THAT was a lovely day.
Does factual info help you? It helps me. If not useful for you ignore this:
Anesthesiologists are MDs with a specialized study above and beyond that required of other docs. You will be getting the best sleep while monitored by an extremely intelligent, knowledgeable, trained professional.
Bad outcomes occur almost exclusively outside of the operating room. Nothing will go wrong! But hush up the worry in your mind with the facts, like 99.9999% of patients exit the OR still breathing. And those other 0.0001% are nothing like you. They were very old. Or barely survived a horrible car crash. Or so sick that surgery was a last ditch effort. Even those people are likely to survive anesthesia.
It’s just sleep. Swiftly achieved, deep sleep. Supervised by your very own specialist with nothing but your well-being as her focus.
I’m not minimizing your anxiety. I just wish I could help you feel better.
Thank you; this is excellent. I love facts! I trust my doctors 100% and I’m not sure if my anxiety is necessarily that I think something will go wrong, as much as it is that I’m freaked out by the fact that all this stuff will be going on without my awareness of it. Like, fairly serious stuff will be happening to my body while I’m not there to “see” it.
Oh also barfing, like Bittersweet mentioned. Sounds awful. My surgery is supposed to only take 2 hours so I’m hoping against hope that that’s not long enough to completely eff up my stomach.
It also just helps to be sharing the experience with you all! You and gingkotree and Bittersweet are so awesome for chiming in and having gone through a similar experience. If you’re all fine then I will be too!
I’m a champion barfer after surgery. My 1990s surgery produced so much barfing, for so long, that I impressed all the docs and nurses.
So for last year’s procedure, my medical team was determined to prevent it. And they did! My anesthesiologist told me there are better drugs for that now than back in the 90s and that he would create a cocktail of drugs to pump into me during surgery that included everything he could think of. “I’m gonna throw everything at you in that IV.” He dosed me up with multiple anti-nausea drugs for recovery, too. AND there was another drug ready to add to my IV in recovery in case allll of that was not enough.
It was enough. I felt nauseous for all of 3 seconds immediately upon waking after surgery. All gone after the nurse adjusted the tilt of my bed.
So, nausea and pain are treatable and preventable. So, you must tell someone when you feel either one.
Yay! I’m so glad they prevented further barfathons for you!! I am going to be sure to mention this to anyone at the hospital who will listen! Give me the drugs! All the drugs!
Good luck for Tuesday! Hope it all goes well and the recovery is smooth.
Thank you!! I can’t wait to get back to my normal, Toast-filled life after this is all over!
Good luck and best wishes on Tuesday!
A friend of mine had her cancerous thyroid taken out, and she explained the scar away as an unsuccessful garroting attempt. And is still waiting for the radiation to turn her into the Hulk.
I am also getting some “nuclear medicine” as they call it, so I can’t wait to see what my superpowers will be!
Laser-powered misandry.
Yessssss. Adding “nuclear misandrist” to my business cards ASAP.
It’s like regular misandry, but with a lower carbon footprint and more rocket fins.
You’re a woman. All women have superpowers.
If we have learned nothing else from Gillian Anderson, it is this.
Hello Toasties!
After much illness in my household everyone is finally hale and hearty and so I can spend a Friday reading the Open Thread instead of going to urgent care clinics!
I am in this weird place where it seems like everyone I talk to regularly is under a crushing weight of life misery and so I feel like I cannot say any of the nice things which are happening in my life because it just makes them feel 100x worse. Some (a lot? most?) of this might just be my own things from my horrible mother, but I hate feeling like if I am happy I am performing an act of aggression against other people.
But it is beautiful out! Our therapist is good even if therapy is really really emotionally exhausting! I found an ice cream place that has fantastic honey lavender ice cream! We went to the enormous university library with our daughter yesterday and got her 2 Rainbow Magic books from the kids section and ourselves translations of classical Japanese poetry because I am obsessed with Chihaya Furu! Also I watched the first two episodes of Mad Men this week and wow I am totally hooked although it makes me want to punch the past in the face.
Does anyone else ever feel like they can’t be happy around their friends?
What are some joyful things in your lives? Bring on the joy!
Good, this is a good plan! I am finally about to sell a house that I have been stuck with for years. (It is a terrible story the upshot of it is I had an extra house that I couldn’t do anything with except pay the mortgage on it.)
Also, I just bought a new sword, and I am pretty happy about it.
!!! Sword? What kind of sword? Please tell me more.
And congratulations on the selling of the house!
It is an Oakeshott type #112 from Triplette — so, it looks like a late 17th century or early 18th century hanger or mortuary sword (37″ rapier blade, clamshell guard, no quillions or ricasso because I don’t like quillions or ricassos). I got a couple of 16th and 17th century rapier manuals and my friend and I are going to go over them this summer and try to interpret them in a useful way (she is training for her Fight Director Certification in Canada [apparently much harder than the one in the US], and we figure this can only help her chances).
It’s not technically period, but I’m betting that the lack of quillions aren’t going to hurt me too much, and it also has a lot more overlap with the Chinese jian, which I also do some work with.
Honey lavender ice cream sounds incredible. I hope you get gallons and gallons of it and enjoy!!!!
I think we are going to go tonight and see if the rumoured maple bacon flavour actually exists and if so how it is. They are really generous with the free samples and very talkative about how they make their ice creams and stuff which I love.
Yes, I’ve had that feeling (can’t be happy around friends) a LOT. I’ve lived with two separate friends that unintentionally made me feel like that. (And I also had the flip side where I felt like since they were so upset, I couldn’t say anything BAD that happened to me, so I just…stopped talking about myself).
But that aside, so many things are bringing me joy! The weather is getting warmer, I have a relaxing weekend ahead, I did cleaning during the week so I don’t have to clean on the weekend, I’m reading a fun book. Oh, and I’m walking distance from a library, so I definitely need to take advantage of that now that it’s getting warm.
I am happy to hear about your joy! What is the fun book?
Walking distance from a library is just amazingly awesome.
And yes, that thing is happening to me too, somewhat, like I can’t say any of the good things because the contrast makes the friends too bitter and miserable, but I can’t say any of the bad things because that is so overwhelming for them, so I just don’t say anything… and then they are unhappy because I am so quiet all the time and not sharing. I am trying to take lots of deep breaths and remember that this is really nothing to do with me, but wow do I want some people in my life who are willing to be happy /for me/ even if things are sucking for them. It’s not like I don’t know that gut reaction of ‘How dare you be happy when my life sucks!’ — I have it from time to time! — but… I do try to sit on it so I don’t spoil the other person’s good time.
tl;dr I am very confused about friendship right now.
Dragonfly in Amber, the second Outlander book.
Yes!! I don’t know yet how good this library will be, but the fact that it’s THERE is so cool.
I know exactly what you mean. I’ve had to sit myself down a couple of times and remind myself, “They’re my friends, they want to be here for me, happy or sad.” I’m not sure how much it’s helped me with actually sharing, but it’s certainly helped with the worry! Hopefully I can progress to the sharing part as time goes on.
Friendship is very confusing.
I found a rear-mount bicycle basket in the basement, and I lined it with landscaping fabric, put ivy in the back and violets in the front, and stuck it in the garden. I’m pretty excited for when the violets start actually blooming.
I’m someone who’s going through a pretty crushing time right now. I can say that I am generally happy hearing about the good things in my friends’ lives, unless they are directly comparable to the things that are making me miserable right now. For instance, I am thrilled to hear about someone’s engagement, their kids doing well, a perfect pie they baked – especially if I know that they are friends who understand and sympathize with what I’m going through. (Selfish, but there is is.) It is harder for me to hear about someone’s success in my specific career field, since that invites direct comparison and prompts me to begin a cycle of self-recrimination and despair. So maybe you could share most of the things that are wonderful? No matter what, your happiness is most definitely not an act of aggression!!! I’m sorry your mom made you feel that way, and I’m glad there are happy things going on in your life. 🙂
Toasties, I made out with my dude friend that I’ve known since high school, and we were not under the influence of any substances. I got into a strange spiral of “am I actually pressuring him to do something he doesn’t want to do??!?!” but I asked if he wanted to stop multiple times, and he didn’t. He actually initiated a lot of physical contact.
The funny thing is that I’m much much less experienced in relationships and physical intimacy than he is (he’s only the second guy I’ve made out with), but I just walked away from it like it was just a fun, strange occurrence and that I’m 100% certain that I never want to date him , though his brain and body are great. He on the other hand had a little existential crisis about both 1) the nature of straight dude-straight lady friendships (“Do all friendships just like devolve into this, given enough time?!?!”) , and 2) how he was unable to actually have sex with me because he was afraid of the aftermath.
I left his space a few days ago (I was visiting and live in a different city), and I’m kind of worried about him and us- I’m actually the person he usually feels comfortable and vulnerable around to talk about lady-problems. I want to broach the topic again, but I’m kind of burned out from analyzing the situation- which we did both during and after several makeouts.
Has anyone ever been in a similar situation? Do you have any advice?
I would advise stop analysing it, and start treating him like your buddy, and keep at it. Tell him: “look, we are friends, we had an experiment, and I think we should put it to bed (so to speak). Could we attempt to be friends for a while and see if we can move past this?”
Good luck!
I think just tell him what you said here about how you thought it was fun and strange and you know you don’t want to date him, even though you think he’s great in other ways. That seems like a great explanation!
His crises sound like he’s a little caught on what “should” be and what “can” be, instead of just what is. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in therapy when it comes to that kind of stuff for me, it’s to focus on how I feel now. Maybe if he understood this didn’t create expectations, etc., he’d be less anxious.
Anyway, TL;DR … communicate with him clearly about how you feel, and let him do with it as he wishes. I’m super glad you recognize your feelings clearly! That is a great gift and skill. Hold onto that. I think this is related to knowing yourself, not experience with relationships. Relationships are much easier when you can see how you feel and can share it honestly and openly (sorry, I may be being a bit proclamation-heavy).
He might be okay with resuming the friendship, he might think it’s changed forever and can’t get over the perceived awkwardness, or he might realize he liked it and would like more potentially in the future! Who knows? No way to know without communication.
EDIT: I also realized I wrote much of this without realizing you BOTH analyzed this situation together … leave it at his feet. If he’s stuck on analyzing, that’s his choice. I think what robotneedslove says is super helpful!
Thank you!! I’m actually so surprised about the fact that I’ve been able to recognize and articulate my feelings, this almost never happens.
In any case, I gave him a call yesterday and he assured me that we’re back to normal. He wasn’t convincing, but I’m going to believe him for now.
Game thread!
I’ve almost beaten Ori and the Blind Forest. Definitely some challenging parts! But overall a lot of fun.
I just found out about an old-school style RPG called Pillars of Eternity which I got. Just played about 30 minutes or so, but I think it will be a lot of fun. It is in the style of Baulder’s Gate / Planescape: Torment (I think a lot of the same people are behind its creation).
What are you playing now?
I finally have a new gaming experience to share, after being on a continuous Mass Effect loop for months!
Bioshock Infinite was free for download on Xbox this month, so I downloaded it. And it is beautiful, atmospheric, pretty fun (although I get killed a lot) and… hella racist. Like, I get that it’s trying to be critical of rah-rah Tea Party patriotism and traditionalism but, like I always say, if your satire is not distinguishable from the object of its critique then it is not very good satire.
Does it get better? I’m not very far in–just got into the Good Time Club–and I’ve been told that the first Bioshock does this thing where it make you play along with Randian principles and then completely blows them apart, so I’m not sure what to expect.
I haven’t played Ori since last weekend, but I have played Tales From the Borderlands Part 2 (awesome) and got the Handsome Collection, so I have started Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, playing as Lady Hammerlock, who is a (possibly overpowered) DLC character. She is a sniper character without any of that pesky melee-ing that the BL2 REALLY wanted you to put your points in for Zer0.
There was a part where Mr. Torgue said that another character had friendzoned him, and I was heartbroken, because in BL2, Mr. Torgue said a lot of lines like “THERE’S NOTHING MORE BADASS THAN TREATING A WOMAN WITH RESPECT!” But immediately after that he interjected again and said something along the lines of “I’M REALLY SORRY ABOUT THAT, I WAS IN A BAD PLACE AT THE TIME. I KNOW THAT FRIENDZONING IS IMAGINARY AND MISOGYNISTIC!”
Naturally, trying to look for the quote led me to a lot of websites complaining that a videogame would dare say that friendzoning isn’t real because the poor menz, etc, often while calling the female characters in the game sluts.
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than a video game forum.
I finally finished the Wolf Among Us! Pretty confrontational, since it definitely felt like killing the baddie would be the best idea… but ended up not doing it anyhow. Murky ethics in that one. I can’t wait until the whole season of the GoT game is out (I don’t want to have to wait months between episodes, so I’m waiting an bingeing).
I got Pillars of Eternity, too! I’d backed it on Kickstarter all those years ago. Chris Avellone <3! He wrote one of my favorite games of all time: Knight of the Old Republic 2.
ooohhh I loved KOTOR 2….but I haaaaate those old school rpgs where everything is dark except a circle around your party and you have to click to go somewhere. maybe I will wait for a sale…
Haha yep I know exactly what you’re talking about.
(I may have followed you inadvertently; sorry about that. Pop-ups on profile pics: NEVER GOOD.)
KOTOR2 is great, and Kreia is the greatest — she’s definitely in my favorite top 10 characters of any media.
KREIA. YES. She’s my favorite Star Wars character by far. And thinking about it now, yeah, I’d say she’s in my top ten fictional characters.
And he was the senior designer on Planescape: Torment too!
Man, I really gotta play KOTOR2 one of these days, since it sounds so amazing.
I totally encourage you to try it! It’s definitely a flawed game – Lucas Arts pushed it out before it was ready, but I still think it’s one of the most interesting RPGs of all time.
As a lover of Dragon Age 2, flawed-but-interesting RPGs are totally my jam! Shall find a slot for it on the schedule, somewhere between Banner Saga, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Alpha Protocol, the first Witcher, and now Pillars of Eternity, sigh.
OK I’m not a proper games player, but I have really enjoyed taking up Sokobond — it’s very calming, you just make atoms into molecules.
That sounds awesome. Also that sounds like the kind of game my mom likes to play too, so I’ll have to recommend that to her.
It’s a fun puzzle game! I also love phone games like sudoku and griddler. I need games that are really chilled-out and don’t need good reaction times — I played a good chunk of Lumino City and quite liked it, until the waterwheel puzzle where it required you to press buttons at the right time in the right order. I have tried it over 30 times, and I can’t get past that level. See also: why I am not a good driver.
Have you played threes! ? That is a phone one I quite enjoy, combining numbers to get the highest score you can.
I don’t like it, weirdly. Also I’m trying to stop myself from playing phone games too much, as I tend to play them while I’m also watching the TV and it encourages me to watch bad TV b/c I’m not actually paying that much attention 🙁
Urrgghhhh, I really want to play Pillars of Eternity, and it’s sitting there on my computer RIGHT NOW. But I’m gonna save it for the future as a reward for good behavior, and when I’ve finished the other massive pile of RPGs on my computer.
I’m playing the new Dragon Age DLC, Jaws of Hakkon, right now. It’s fun! It’s probably not an *essential* DLC (it’s more Overlord than Shadow Broker), but it’s got a good story and a *gorgeous* new region. Lots of Scout Harding, too.
Oh, I’ll have to check that out sometime. I haven’t really revisited DA since I beat it (I started a new character but that’s about it).
I think I remember you playing on PC, but just be aware that it’s only available on PC and Xbox One right now (all other platforms gotta wait an indefinite period of time, due to a silly licensing deal with Microsoft).
Yup! I only have a PC right now, none of the current gen consoles.
I got about ten minutes in before my party was decimated by a rift, so I need to level a bit more before I try it again. But yeah, it was absolutely beautiful. So excited to explore it!
Was that the rift with three Nightmare Demons, or the one with four Pride Demons? Ahahahhaaaaaaa… They recommend level 20 for the DLC, but even with a level 25 Knight Enchanter it’s been touch and go.
I really like sandbox games, so I’ve been playing a lot of Sims 2 and Minecraft lately! Especially Tekkit Classic (Minecraft modpack). I recently read George R. R. Martin’s novella Sandkings and it reminded me of the clay soldiers mod and now I want to play with that but I’ve got GeoDaze coming up in two weeks and a geophysics test on Monday so I probably shouldn’t play Minecraft right now (though I probably will anyway LOL)
Any other Toastfolk who play Minecraft out there?
I played Minecraft (a lot) but got a little burned out on it after a while.
I did have fun making some realistic style maps using World Builder (terrain generating software) and World Painter (Minecraft map editor):
If you want any I made I can give them to you. This screenshot is using the Conquest 32 texture pack (a fantastic pack) and Shaders.
Hello, darlings! I have just completed negotiations with a vendor, it has taken TWO YEARS to get this thing sorted out, and I feel like the weight of the world has lifted. What amazing work-related triumphs are you all having of late?
I came back from vacation; and have reduced the Inbox of Tyranny from almost 400 to less than 25.
I’m dealing with my job dissatisfaction by pretending to like my job so hard until I start to believe it. It’s kind of working so far, so Yay!
Last Friday/this Monday I was basically in a total panic over /all the things/ I had to do this week. I did all of them and kicked butts in the process. Now I get to go on a work trip where I travel by train and eat comped meals and stay in a nice hotel. AW YEAH
I had my employee evaluation yesterday and I got a rating of “fully meets expectations and makes a positive contribution to organizational goals.” My boss said she has no issues whatsoever with my performance, which I have taken as permission to continue puttering around on the internet most of the day and periodically coming in 10 minutes late. It’s a weight off my mind!
(In my defence, there’s very little for me to do here most days. My main responsibility is to deal with client requests and over the past year I got an average of just over one request per week.)
I have gotten a whole pile of people from unusual countries into Canada on very short notice! Also I have learned that I will need to get myself into Canada as well, since my job is changing in a way that will send me to…basically every major Canadian city over the next 18 months. This is exciting and hopefully fun, after six months of being really bored with my job!
Welcome to almost Canada!
I’m very curious about the getting people into Canada part, because facilitating that looks like it might become part of my job in the near future.
Any chance they will be circus performers? Because now I know a lot about the immigration exemptions for those. Not sure how helpful I will be regarding other types of folks, but feel free to ask!
The main thing I’ve noticed about Canadian immigration as compared to the US (where I live/where my company is actually based) is that it’s really expensive! Especially for work permits. But the applications get turned around much faster, and it seems to be less complicated for the actual people immigrating, so I guess it balances out.
Circus performers! *chin hands*
I think we use the “no Canadians can do this specific job” exemption; and have a meeting coming up to learn all about it.
We just were informed about a new employer verification fee ($230?).
And there is a news story circulating today about fewer visible minorities becoming citizens; and people wondering how that is related to policy shifts in immigration. Definitely I would say the high fees are a not-so-hidden design feature to keep non-wealthy people out of the country. Our current federal government are a bit… problematic.
I’ve made a bunch of estimates for followup work for customers, and my boss has given me positive feedback on them! So not only have I learned a new task, but hopefully we’ll be getting some more work, and therefore money, out of it.
Also I’m enjoying my job and my life, and no longer dreading going to work/scratching my arm with push pins to keep from freaking out at my desk. VICTORY
That was…more dramatic than I meant it to be.
Maybe it’s that it is more dramatic than you realized? Is it a nudge to take your stress indicators more seriously the next time they emerge? I trust your judgment. Just a reminder to be kind to yourself. Very happy for your vanished dread and current enjoyment.
The biggest problem depression causes me, at this point in my life, is that I’m very vulnerable to gaslighting. I’m used to looking at a situation and going, “ah, yes, my depression is flaring up, so I’m perceiving things as being more dramatic than they are. I need to take some time and meditate, work on myself, whatever, and then I’ll feel better.” But sometimes, my depression is flaring up because I’m in a genuinely shitty and dramatic situation, and I’ve gotten good at pretending that’s not the case.
It’s a thing I’m working on.
I have had this week off, which is my work-related triumph.
I scheduled 3,000 things (like actually literally 3,000 things) and finished ahead of time so I will be ready to do two jobs for the next couple months while we are short-staffed.
Toasties! It’s been awhile since I’ve been around for an open thread (so much travel…), but I got a postdoc! It’s at Texas A&M and I’ll be starting in the fall. I’m excited for new things in my life, but am sad to be moving away from Boston. I don’t go down there until August, but I know there are some Toast folk in and around College Station and I expect all of you to be my friend once I get there!
Welcome! I am waiting for you in College Station with open arms and a big grin. I was in Massachusetts for a decade until I moved here two years ago. I understand, is what i’m saying. Contact me: rmcd1974 at hot mail dot com
thanks! I’ll definitely be in touch as I get closer to the move! In the meantime I’m making my living in Boston bucket list.
Please tell the nasturtiums at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that I miss them.
Congratulations on your postdoc!
FASHION FRIDAY
I took a bunch of spring/summer stuff out of boxes and discovered that IT DOES NOT FIT ME.
Apparently I have gained 10 pounds and a cup size this winter, partially laziness and partially IUD weight gain.
ARGH.
So I went shopping and got the BEST Calvin Klein dress, and a really pretty flowered Mossimo waif dress that makes me look like an 18-year-old Anthropologie model but I DON’T CARE.
How is everyone dealing with the season change? Comfort me I am sad and have too many clothes.
My wardrobe is so boring it hardly changes with the weather. I have long sleeved cardigans for winter, 3/4 sleeve for spring and early fall and short sleeved cardis for summer. The slacks and flats stay the same, unless there is snow so I wear boots. I have jeans with short sleeve tees for warm weather, long sleeve for cool weather, and hoodies when I’m cold. I hate buying clothes, so everything goes with everything else. I even only own two pairs of earrings and three necklaces. I love looking at clothes, but not for myself. My sisters (who work for Macy’s) have such fab wardrobes with loads of costume jewelry, but when I wear it I feel like I’m playing dress-up, not being myself.
I have never been able to rock a short-sleeved cardigan. I guess now that I have a bunch more cutesy waist-tapered dresses, it would work?
I tend to wear them buttoned up with trousers (sometimes a sleeveless oxford shirt under) or over a a-line dress with waist/belt on Sundays.
I’m dreading pulling out my summer clothes, because my body has changed so much since last summer, too and my style aesthetic has changed even more dramatically. Ugh.
FORTUNATELY, the weather here has been such shit, I don’t think I’m going to bother putting away my winter clothes until I get back from my vacation next month.
Time to go shopping?
It’s always time to go shopping. Fortunately, 90% of my wardrobe is (happily) found at thrift stores.
I was PLANNING to deal with the season change by going shopping (all last year’s spring/summer things are limp with wear), but just found out that the company that owns Ricki’s is closing a bunch of stores though unknown yet if/how many are closing locally. It’s the only place that sells pants that fit me reliably! Trauma! Change! Grr!
The season has not changed yet and so I do not have an answer to your question 😐 stupid Boston. I’ve been out of town for a week but when I left I was still wearing my Bean boots.
I have a fashion inquiry to open up to the group! I have not bought a swimsuit in… 7 years? And although I have several, the elastic is worn out and they’re faded and sad and unflattering. I would really like a swimsuit that is very athletic looking but still 2 pieces. I like the concept of this one but would prefer not having the cap sleeves and having a little more of a crop to the top. (It would also be nice if it were… 50-75% less expensive but yeah, dream big.) Anyone know what I’m talking about or where I should look?
don’t know if this is the route you want to go, but i also had not owned a swimsuit in a decade when i decided to start swimming for exercise. i’m slim but big-bosomed and i didn’t want to spend a ton of money on an athletic one piece, and all the two-pieces i found were…dangerous, bosom-coverage-wise.
i ended up cobbling my own together from non-swimsuit items. i bought a pair of “yoga shorts”—spandex boyshorts, essentially—from forever 21 and a similarly spandex-y “running tank.” then i bought a strappy sports bra from target. not supportive enough for stuff like running, but definitely supportive enough for swimming, and everything was made out of that kind of stretchy, water-friendly swimsuit material. the sports bra and boy shorts make for a cute two-piece, and i can wear the tank over the sports bra for midriff coverage if i want.
i bought them all in black because that’s what i like, but there were so many bright and colorful options available, too.
Athleta–cute suits with hidden bras that actually hold them up, full refund for ANY reason, and made to be active in. They also sell long and short sizes.
My mom bought me a fucking fantastic new dress for job interviews. I want someone to offer me an interview so that I can wear it. It’s patterned and bright and fits me perfectly and will be just toned down enough with a jacket or cardigan to be interview-appropriate while still standing out. And I found it on Nordstrom so I can share the awesome!
Hey, that’s super cute!
What does “scuba” mean in this context though? I’ve seen it a few times and I don’t understand.
Its a thicker fabric, like the kind used to make scuba diving suits. It is stretchy but not clingy, doesn’t show underwear lines and is generally wonderful.
also doesn’t wrinkle. i made a coat from some recently and i had to fell all the seams because it’s impossible to iron a crease into. A+++ for skirts because: no butt wrinkles. woot!
I got a pair of nice sandals yesterday. It was more an act of desperate optimism than anything else because I won’t be able to wear them for weeks. (The forecast for tomorrow is high of -1, low of -11.) I also had my eye on a lovely maxidress, but it had a slit on the front that rode up dangerously high when I sat down in it, so I didn’t get it. That’s a sign of progress because in previous years I would have said, “Surely when I put this on I will somehow turn into a version of me that is comfortable with crotch-baring slits in dresses,” then bought it only to never wear it.
We just got a Nordstrom’s in my city and I sense danger for my bank account.
I’ve been playing around with makeup more and surprised myself by wearing blush and bronzer today. I’m very fair-skinned and don’t tan and my usual aesthetic is ~the marmoreal pallor of the grave~ so it’s weird to have this sun-kissed flush going on, but I like it! I’ve also improved my eyeshadow blending technique but I’m still not sure how far up above my eyelid the colours are supposed to go, or CAN go without me looking like a clueless clown.
Nordstrom is such a dangerous thing. I am kind of praying that by the time the Nordstrom opens in NYC (2018!!) I will be making enough money that I can actually afford to shop there.
They have some collections that are much less expensive than I would have thought. I got a nice hat and a necklace there, each $38. But that’s even more dangerous in a way because you come in for one thing that you know to be affordable and then the next thing you know you’re leaving with 3 pairs of Manolos.
Our store is just so beautiful and shiny and the service so far in my experience has been friendly and attentive. And they have a full service restaurant and bar. And the dressing rooms are super fancy. Basically I want to live there. (This is what one of their dressing rooms looks like, or at least the waiting area within it, and they’re all different! That’s NICER THAN MY APARTMENT by several levels of magnitude.)
There’s no Nordstrom in NYC???
http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/anniversary-sale
(Editing, because that’s not really clear: The sale is incredible. Like, in 2009 I bought these http://www.thefryecompany.com/jane-tall-cuff/d/77… for about $200 less than the list price. Which is still pricey, but I still wear them a lot, so I consider it a win)
Those boots are so beautiful that I sighed in satisfaction when the pictures loaded.
MARMOREAL
WORD OF THE DAY
YOU WIN
ALSO what I have discovered JUST NOW is that leather jackets are the BEST, because they don’t do that staticky ear-shock when you take them off (when you are wearing headphones and the music player is in your pocket).
I have been suffering from that ALL WINTER and now I know (too little too late, sigh).
I really want to get a leather jacket but I’m worried about my ability to pull off the whole look 🙁
Mine is a short-cropped blue leather and it’s vaguely motorcycley without being all spike-studded and etc. I wear it with florals! And sassy hats!
that sounds like mine except mine is bright green! And starting to have wear because I wore it in the rain too much and I am devastated, but have no idea how to take care of nice things.
I bought it at a thrift shop for $40 and it is my greatest thrifting achievement.
Mine is my grandmother’s from the 80s, and the only downside is that the sleeves are slightly too short.
I’m well over due for a major wardrobe shakeup and I’d like to do it in a more methodical way than I have in the past (wandering around stores, picking up things I like, having only shirts of 1 color/style and no pants). I’d also like to upgrade my uniform a bit from jeans+solid colored shirt while still getting stuff I’ll actually wear. How do you get outfit inspiration, how do you organize it, and then how do you execute it??
Maybe when you wander stores you should be writing and sketching stuff down on the first round, then comparing your own notes to see what general stuff you’re attracted to?
I really like picking an era, and then going through online photo archives and patterns and stuff, but that’s just me.
It’s gonna be a lot of work no matter how you slice it.
I’ve always found this style of magazine spread, where they just like cut out the clothing items and show them flat, phenomenally unhelpful. I dunno if anyone else can actually imagine themselves in stuff like that? But I have been known to flip through a few glossy magazines in my time.
I’m just going to plug (again) the Nordstrom personal shopper situation that I did a couple of weeks ago. It was *exactly* “upgrade my uniform a bit from jeans+solid colored shirt while still getting stuff I’ll actually wear.” I am sure I was lucky to get a good … consultant? but it was a really positive experience. I said “I only wear jeans and v-neck shirts with tank tops and cardigans, and it’s all from Old Navy, I work in IT and there is no reason for me to dress up” and he helped me find things that fit, that were still comfy and not weird. Also he did the wandering around and picking stuff up part, and he picked things that I would never have even looked at, and they worked.
So that worked even with larger sizes? Because that’s my biggest turn-off about Nordstrom (well, other than the money, but I’ll spend it if it’s worth it).
Yes! He made a point to mention that he has other clients who are 22+. And there are some not-HORRIBLY-expensive house brands. Again, I’m used to old navy prices, but I did not pass out at the prices on most of the stuff he brought me. (I did reject a pair of $110 jeans out of hand though.)
I can get this guy’s name for you if you want! I would definitely go back to him next time I need a wardrobe refresh or an outfit for an event.
That would be delightful! I think I’m about to tip over from “I can’t spend money right now” to “all my clothes are terrible, I’ll just throw money at this until it’s fixed,” which would probably be more successful with some professional help.
Found it: Brent Martin. At the downtown store. There’s a step in this sign-up process where you can select a stylist by name: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/personal-stylists
I definitely hit that tipping point myself and that is what prompted that visit. I hope it goes well for you, if you go!
Oh man, all of this sounds like exactly what I need. Like even the questions SarcasticFringehead had were exactly the questions I had. I think it definitely sounds worth the drive to get to a Nordstrom.
I made a pinterest board for outfit inspo, and then every time I came across an outfit that I liked I posted it to the board. It made it really easy to see what type of outfits I was aiming toward, which made it easy to keep an eye out for pieces that would help build those outfits when I was out shopping.
i am also sad and i have too many clothes.
probably 99% of my wardrobe comes from forever 21. but more and more lately i want to move away from buying at a “fast fashion” store. i choose my clothes carefully and i like my them besides, and folks compliment me on my style fairly often, so i know i look presentable, so that’s not the issue.
i feel like i should break out of the cycle of fast fashion—i know forever 21 receives new shipments daily and it’s fairly close to my work and i spend too much time looking at their website or going to the store to try things on. i only spend ~$50-100 a month, and that’s within my budget, so it’s not a financial issue so much as a matter of principle. i feel like i’m consuming for the sake of consumption and i know it’s a vicious cycle where i’m always dissatisfied with the contents of my wardrobe, even when they’re totally adequate.
also, i feel like i should be investing in higher-quality pieces that will last me a long time, so i can downsize my wardrobe and have really nice things. but i just have major, major sticker shock. clothes are so expensive. i’m used to buying a blouse for $20, so buying one for $40 or $50 feels like a big deal. buying one for $100 is unimaginable.
ideally, i’d like to have a beautiful closet, pared down to the classics, so i have an interchangeable selection of beautiful, high-quality blouses, sweaters, jackets, etc. i know i can still set aside some budget for bought-on-a-whim pieces and i don’t have to give up my forever 21 habit entirely. but i don’t know how to get there.
how do i reconcile: “liking my clothes” + “feeling superficial dissatisfaction with my clothes” + “being addicted to fast fashion” + “feeling guilty about fast fashion” + “feeling sticker shock over non-fast fashion prices” + “feeling ashamed of not having a classy wardrobe” ???
I do most of my fashion shopping at thrift stores. It takes me somewhat out of the loop of the consumer cycle and it’s much easier on my wallet. I’ve found lots of quality brands at my local thrifts (Ralph Lauren, Ann Taylor, and Talbot’s are all pretty common) as well as tons of cashmere sweaters, etc. Also, when I get grease stains on my $2 shirt it’s a lot smaller of a heartbreak.
i also like thrifting but i live in a college town, so the thrift content is 1) really picked over, 2) mostly from student donations in the first place, so i actually end up thrifting forever 21 castoffs. i also get frustrated by how worn out the clothes are.
in my hometown, however, there are much better odds of finding nice, high quality clothes (rich suburbia is the best for thrifting, really). my mom’s entire wardrobe, like absolutely 100% except for underwear and shoes, is from thrift stores, so i have been taught well! but to be honest, despite having thrifted my entire life, i very, very rarely find pieces that i’m crazy about.
do you like online shopping? Try liketwice.com. It’s gently used clothing, middling-to-upscale brands, mostly at fast fashion prices (they have some expensive stuff too, but it’s mostly extremely high-end brands like Gucci and Prada). I just bought three sets of cropped pants from them (woo spring!): one from Anthro for $30, one from Lucky Jeans for $14 and one from Talbots (shut up, I’m old) for $15.
thanks for the heads up! i’ve never even heard about this before!
also, no hating on talbots! I have a classic black and white striped boatneck tee from talbots that i thrifted in 2003 and it’s still going strong. that’s some good quality cotton.
I love talbots because they have nice looking workwear in petite sizes, but if one more saleslady suggests that I buy a robins-egg-blue mother of the bride ensemble I cannot be held responsible for my actions. I’m also having a very difficult time accepting that my 65 year old mother and I wear the same brand of jeans (different cuts, but still).
I’ve been really liking StichFix (www.stichfix.com) as a way to expand my wardrobe. All the convenience of a personal shopper without having to leave your house! I’ve found that it does work best when you’re pretty specific about what you’re looking for though (even if that is bright colors, or more professional, etc…).
Ohhhh man you just described EXACTLY what I am going through this year (except my weakness is H&M not Forever 21). I don’t really have any useful advice, but…SOLIDARITY.
solidarity, indeed! good luck to us both in achieving our wardrobe dreams!
a good method for upgrading and streamlining is to go through what you have now and see what you have multiples of. the goal is to have one (perhaps 2) higher end versions of that item.
like, i apparently have a thing for a particular cut of gray t-shirt. all of mine were cheap fast fashion shirts that are getting a bit worn. so i got rid of 4 crappy shirts and splurged on a really nice version. it was $40, which is a ridiculous price for a stupid t-shirt IMHO but… it feels *amazing* and fits *amazing* and i LOVE wearing it.
and, yeah, $40 is a lot for a t-shirt but i’m apparently willing to spend $10 each on 4 almost identical shirts. which is more crazy, really?
this is great advice, thanks!
i definitely have a lot of multiples in my closet—for instance, i have at least 5 or 6 versions of a black sleeveless blouse, boxy cut, in a silky fabric. they have slight variations in texture, neckline, hemline, etc, but they are pretty much the same idea. if i spent more money on a version actually made out of silk, it would be worth it.
Does the better version last longer though?
It’s the week before prom, so theme dressing days at school. Today was Formal Day, but I feel silly teaching in an old prom dress, so I went with a tuxedo shirt and velvet smoking jacket with skinny trousers and purple satin sandals. I got a “killin’ it, Teacher Lady Kay Kay!” from one student.
You guys, my life is in complete turmoil.
1) My best friend has essentially broken up with me a couple of months ago and is pretending we were never exclusive best friends in the first place (it’s a TIER, she says, not a PERSON. Ooookay then, “BFF” of 7 years.)
2) I am no longer speaking to my mother, who is emotionally abusive, and had essentially written me an email disowning me in the summer (“I will no longer allow you to bully me and my family”), was then baffled about why I wasn’t talking to her for 6 months, and actually gave me the “I am sorry if you interpreted it that way” fauxpology last week. I told her to go to hell. (Then I cried.) She’s now pressuring me via my grandma (i.e. the only person in my family who loves my unconditionally), who lives with my parents, to be a Good Daughter and forgive and forget (and the best way to forgive, according to my parents, is without expecting an actual apology! duh!) This also means my access to grandma time is restricted, unless I want to spend time with the ‘rents as well.
3) My work is trying to drive me insane and largely succeeding (my university has been on strike for a month, which makes planning for a 50-person symposium and a 700-conference tremendously stressful). I have been waking up at 5am a few times a week over the past 3 months and having panic attacks in the middle of the night. It’s also just my boss and I in my Department, so we are both under immense pressure, and there are huge political ramifications for her if shit hits the fan (to her credit, she said she would wear it if it does, and no one would blame me – and I can’t let that happen, obviously). I have cried on the phone to my boss AGAIN because I cannot deal and am having teary breakdowns in the office and working mad late nights without any pay (lieu time my ass). This probably also means I am crossing major professional boundaries with her and being way too informal (along the lines of “welp, time to drink myself to sleep tonight! Just kidding, it’s normal drinking”) and snapping at her and UGH.
4) … and I got into both the History and Political Science grad programs at my school, which means that I have to choose the program I’m going to start in the Fall within the following two weeks, but because we are on strike, it is not possible to schedule meetings with Professors (and it would be impolitic at best, considering my affiliation with students and critical programs). I will also still be working while studying (one of the perks of being a uni staff is a free degree), which means the mess happening at work this year cannot happen when I’m a student next year. And the symposium I am organizing is for a Professor who will be my MA supervisor if I go with Poli Sci. The pressure to have everything go well is huge.
SO. Basically. I don’t even. I am doing relatively okay with all of this as I am in mad therapy (blessed be my therapist’s name), but I just need April to be over.
Internet hugs. <3
What ginkgotree said. Make dates with your grandma to take her somewhere. Time for just the two of you. Y’all can audition restaurants to find a favorite. Or have a standing weekly shopping date together.
Thanks for the encouragement – I call her on the cell I bought for her often, but I definitely miss in-person gran time. I will stop being lazy and actually go see her today.
OH MY GOD HONEY
Right? My life is kind of hilarious right now.
Big big big hugs.
HUGS! Glad you are in lots of therapy- that’s a lot to deal with all at once!
Wow that is a ton. I am sorry about your former friend and your ugh mom situation, and I am very glad you have the therapist to support you through all of it.
Gosh, I wish I could make things better. Since I can’t do that, please have my sympathies. (And isn’t it the worst how people who are aggressive and bullying are the first to hypocritically accuse you of that just for not letting them walk all over you? It’s like a preemptive strike! Urgh.)
Right?! It’s so ridiculous. I have a friend who was accused by her mom of being verbally abusive when she was TWELVE. I have so had it with this “you are abusing me by standing up for yourself against my abuse of YOU” bullshit.
How long do you feel like you have to know someone (this specific someone is a dating-someone, but I think this applies to other someones) before you’d feel comfortable calling them out on something mildly sexist (or racist, or otherwise rude)? For me, I’m much more comfortable having those sorts of conversations in a non-confrontational way after a certain level of trust and intimacy is established but I’m wondering if I should have said something to this guy last night (what he said was not terrible and I think I was clear that I didn’t agree with him, but didn’t get into the deep end of ‘why’).
How long do you feel like you have to know someone…before you’d feel comfortable calling them out on something mildly sexist (or racist, or otherwise rude)?
About ten seconds.
Ding ding ding.
I’ve only felt bad about calling someone I didn’t know well a couple of times – once, it was an intern in my office so I wondered if maybe I was abusing the power dynamic but a) I wasn’t his supervisor, b) I did it in a jokey way, c) another intern thanked me for it later. So now I feel maybe 10% bad and 90% secure in my choice. The other time, which I TRULY felt bad about, was at a party and this guy was very drunk and started yelling at me. It was actually pretty scary – I just kept thinking, man, I don’t know this guy, I don’t know if he’ll just yell while drunk or if he’ll get physically aggressive or what.
You are a better person than I am. Having been emotionally crippled as a result of childhood bigotry aimed at me as well as observing bigotry aimed at others, I cannot be still in its presence. I am not proud of being often unable to respond with kindness.
But you made it clear at the time of the incident that you were not supporting that attitude. You did right.
Decide what you want. Do you want to never hear that kind of shit again (my kind of reaction)? Then find a way to say so. Do you want to know where his attitude comes from? Ask for a discussion.
What *you* want. That’s the key.
Broach the topic sooner rather than later, but be very diplomatic about it if you can afford to be.
I like the “no big deal” call out personally. You gotta do it right at the moment.
Like, “wow bro that was totally sexist!” with a little laugh. or “excuse me? What did you just say about women? Bullshit.” It’s hard for me to type out the tone, but there’s a way to say it which is sort of both good natured and also not putting up with it that I find pretty effective in shutting a comment down, because it tends to sort of imply like, ” I get people say garbage stuff I don’t hate you, but also do not say that garbage stuff because I will point it out”.
It’s the tone I’d suggest if someone across the room says something like “Well this sports team is the best” and you are on the other sports team, the same way you’d be like, “Oh my god, did you just say the your team is a GOOD TEAM? You are CRAZY. My team will destroy you.”
Yeah, I tend to take the more light-hearted approach, especially with coworkers’ ‘mildly’ sketchy comments when I have the resources to do so. The response will also be revealing. Either the person will double down and reveal himself to be a bigot or he’ll reflect and thank you for saying something in a friendly way.
Certainly it depends on who you’re talking to. With coworkers of either roughly the same age and/or seniority as me the “dude, not cool”/”you guys are being gross” approach has served me well.
With friends/acquaintances/gentlemen callers I’m definitely more blunt than that.
I’m more comfortable doing it the less time I’ve known the person. Because if I’ve invested in their friendship it always stuns me that somebody I care about would say something racist. Like somehow me caring about them makes them immune to bullshit? I am not that magical, I am afraid.
Yeah, I’m MUCH more comfortable calling out people I don’t know than people close to me.
I’ve told a co-worker whose friendship I value that I was very uncomfortable with him making jokes or “noticing” people’s body sizes in front of me. I didn’t want to get into a debate or change his lifeview, mostly because of the confrontation, but I recognized that I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to, and it was more stressful to me to contemplate than was worth it. He immediately stopped. I thought that was worth something.
I remember somebody sharing a strategy for questioning people whose views upset or anger you … asking them “why do you think that or feel that way?” or “how did you come to this conclusion?” Make *them* question their own views for you. I haven’t tried this yet, but it seems promising.
I also think you did right by making it clear that you didn’t agree. You should definitely always call them out on it in some way. In terms of going for the non-confrontational vs confrontational approach, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. i find that people tend to change their minds more readily with the non-confrontational approach *but* the problem with that is that you’re kind of also making it respectable to say that kind of crap in society without much fallout. And in the long run maybe making it beyond the pale to say certain things if you don’t want people to think you’re a massive arsehole is a good thing…
Since I was last on a Toast open thread I have been laid off and I just had my first phone interview of this round of job-hunting and I WANT IT SO BAD. Techniques for pulling the “forget about it until they contact you again” thing that I know I need to do? I’ve been unemployed for a week, the likelihood that this is The Job is very low.
I don’t have any techniques for that, but I did see this video on my Tumblr dash this week. Here are the questions if you don’t want to sit through the video:
1) What do you like most about working for this company?
a. They can tell you what they value most and see if you value the same things
2) How has this position evolved?
a. Their response will tell you if the job is a dead end
3) Can you give me examples of how I would collaborate with my manager?
a. Their response will tell you how staff members are used and if you can showcase your skills.
4) What are the first priorities for this position?
a. Helps you know what to focus on if you get the job and how to make a good first impression.
5) What are the challenges of this position?
a. So you know what you’re facing. And if they don’t list anything be very suspicious.
6) What have past employess done to succed in this role?
a. This gives you an idea of how the company measures success
7) Do you have any hesistations about my qualifications?
a. Shows you are secure enough to discuss your weaknesses
I’ve seen this before and I love it so much. Bookmarking for reference while I’m job hunting, because I always lose it. On the phone interview my questions were just about timeline, because as I said to him, “I have some questions that it probably makes more sense to hold until we’re further along in this process” because most of these questions are silly when you’re dealing with a first round phone interview.
My strategy for “forget all about this place” was to send out another job application (I know, I know, but it helps) and then spend several hours planning my perfect new life in Scotland/Spain/New Zealand/somewhere delightful where I could buy a cottage and write and raise chickens and never need to work for money again. I find that kind of fantasy highly relaxing; ymmv, but researching impossible things is always kind of fun? And sometimes you discover they’re not as impossible as you thought. (I cannot live in the country and write forever, but I *could* take a sabbatical and write for six months, etc.)
FRIENDS! My non-the Toast-friend (ha! imagine such a thing!) wrote what I think is a very good piece about a local production of The Taming of the Shrew. Some of it is Inside Philadelphia Theater Baseball, but much of it is about the play in general and our preoccupation with it.
Here, please enjoy!
http://threatquality.com/2015/03/26/the-taming-of…
wow wow wow wow. That is PHENOMENAL.
I played Bianca once as a 14-year-old and once as a 28-year-old. The experiences were… not the same. Mostly because of exactly what your friend wrote about.
Man. That hit me really hard, dude. Thanks.
She and I were talking about that framing story, and about what it would do to the play if it were about the players like grabbing a strange man and forcing him into the role of Kate, and it slowly turns into a kind of horror black-comedy show like that part in the Twilight Zone movie where Vic Morrow becomes a Vietnamese refugee.
I kind of want to do that now.
Please film it, if you do.
Oh wow! I am going to see that production next week and have been very curious how they were going to manage the suuuuuuper sexist tone of the play. Apparently the answer is: by embracing it! That’s disappointing. At least my tickets were half-price (Funsavers holla!).
I feel like there is no good way to do this play in the twenty-first century. I saw one production (in a lovely green square inside one of the Oxford colleges) in which they freeze-framed the ending and had Kate and Petruccio run off, giggling, leaving their frozen-in-time castmates behind–so, literally, the only way to make this play not be emotional torture porn is to pretend it was all a joke.
Huh. that ending sounds weirdly familiar to me. Can I ask the circumstances of when you saw it? Like, what year, was it a student production, &c?
I believe it was a student production, and it was in the summer of 2001 in Oxford, UK. Can’t remember which college. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a common escape route from the play–I mean, it just ends so horribly, how can you possibly play it straight? I’m trying to remember what happened in the BBC version with Shirley Henderson and Rufus Sewell–I think it had them giggling together after Kate’s speech, like ha ha they bought it.
Hah, well, I don’t think I could have seen that one. I guess someone else must have had the same idea, which makes sense, because you’re basically 100% right that there’s no other good way to do it.
Though frankly, at that point I’m not sure the play hasn’t become more trouble than it’s worth. What is the actual value of doing a play if you’ve got to work so hard to pretend you don’t mean everything it says? If you want to NOT mean The Taming of the Shrew, wouldn’t it be easier to just do a different play?
Right? And if you really want to use the tango-dancing conceit, it’s not like the more mature end of Shakespeare’s oeuvre lacks for bantering/bickering couples.
It’s weird, I think Shakespeare in Philadelphia always seems to be the same five or six plays. I am really not sure how many more Hamlets, Macbeths, Midsummers, or Henry V’s I need to see these days.
DUDE this totally appeals to my interests thank you for sharing!
Oh man I wanna hang out with your non-the Toast-friend.
That is Cara, she is pretty great, but she is MY friend, so you can just back up.
Noooo, Lantern! I saw Arcadia there last fall and it was so great–I’m disappointed in them.
In my experience, the Lantern does consistently technically good work, but it’s often thoughtless. Also, Arcadia was directed by KC Macmillan, who I think is usually very good, but the Shakespeares are usually by Charles McMahon, who’s the Artistic Director there, and I think he tends to be more on the thoughtless side.
This is also making me think about my town’s summer Shakespeare, which last year was a very good interpretation of Hamlet, but this year will be placing Measure for Measure in ancient India… which… all I’m going to say about that is that this town is extremely, extremely white. And that I had previously been at least somewhat interested in auditioning for it, but now, not.
Hahaha, a couple years back I was in an Indian version of Midsummer Night’s Dream. We all did a Bollywood dance at the end.
Philadelphia is not actually THAT white, but our cast sure was!
Errrgh.
Ugh, indeed.
My honest-to-pete fear is–what if no one involved with the production team saw anything wrong with asking their actors to use a whole lot of bronzer? Because I think that is a thing that could happen in this scenario and ugh x10000.
but this year will be placing Measure for Measure in ancient India
wow. wow. I mean, I have a weird fascination with random stagings of Shakespeare that are neither faux-Elizabethan, faux-period-in-which-the-play-is-set or modern, and especially with random stagings that pick a time period *before* that in which the play is set (that just seems especially strange, for some reason. HOWEVER this seems like it crosses the line from “such stupid idea that it’s hilarious” to “such a stupid idea that it’s offensive”…
Well, I just spent the last five days hiking through theme parks, airports, and the world’s longest hotel corridors. And now I have to work tonight, which involves spending five hours walking around a big box retail store. The very real danger of my legs tragically falling off is a reason to call in, right?
I won’t call in. But that whole thing about needing a vacation from your vacation just gets truer as one gets older, doesn’t it? My poor stiff legs.
There are definitely (at least) two types of vacations… and one type, while fun, does not make you feel very rested and recovered when you get home!
So very busy right now! Just wanted to pop on here to say my copy of Pioneer Girl finally came and I will start reading it this weekend. Yay! Have a great weekend everyone.
TOAST. Man. Last week was the best week- my best friend from elementary school flew thousands of miles to visit me, we stayed up all night watching the aurora by a campfire on a mountain, we soaked in hotsprings, we ate good food and drank good beer, and I got a tattoo. It was completely splendiferous.
But last night my car freaked out on the way home- multiple warning lights came on all at once- and my husband and I had a giant fight because I am not a responsible adult about car maintenance. It was horrible and I still just want to be curled up in the fetal position under a giant pile of blankets, instead of awake and dreading the news that will probably be something like “you ruined your car, it is now worthless, you can never have another ever again now give us one million dollars.”
Being bad at cars is completely normal, and I am sorry your husband is being an ass about it. There is probably an aspect of being an adult that he does not excel at either. Glass houses.
I myself do not know how to maintain a vehicle beyond gas and oil changes. I essentially do those things until something fails (last week it was the fuel pump) and then while the thing is being fixed, they notice all the other things I have not maintained and fix them too. It costs money, but i figure it would have cost money anyway if I had fixed them sooner. And this way, I have used the thing until it was really, truly used up. It is Frugal to drive until it breaks, dammit.
I am also bad at cars, but speaking from experience there are some things you really should check on before they break, like transmissions. My husband, who I put in control of our cars, mis-identified the date we needed to replace our transmission, and it died on the road, which meant my car was totaled–the transmission costs way too much to replace. Now I’m trying to be more adult about my car issues.
If he’s more responsible about it, could he just help you be on top of it? Like you synch up oil changes and whatnots and he’s the person who reminds you? You go on the same day to get it done? It doesn’t have to be some character flaw it could just be like, “this is my adult thing I hate doing so can you help me remember?” I bet you do something like this for him too, it’s a standard marriage/couple kind of approach.
I really hate when I feel that all caps GUILTY, remember it’ll pass in a bit, you learned something, you are a person who made a mistake and guilt is a feeling that just is about knowing you should know better, so since you can’t go back and undo it, the only thing you can do is try and think about what to do different in the future. That helps me, to think, “ok I screwed up, I feel like twerp, it’s going to last about 2 days or so, and then it’ll fade and I guess I know to do it better next time.
Yeah, he’s not that much more responsible about it than I am, but he did say, “honey, it should not be making that smell, please get it in to be looked at,” for about three weeks while I continued to promise him I would, and continued to forget. Being responsible adults TOGETHER is something we still struggle with, so every example that comes up is a bit loaded for us both.
The guilty feeling part is great advice- I’ll be repeating that to myself all weekend long. Thank you!
Being an adult is something i struggle with too. I’ve been doing this minimum weekly adulting sticker chart thing that I invented this year, and it’s been going kind of great. In fact this is going to have to be my last response for a few hours because of getting through today’s chart, but I got the idea of from the jerry seinfeld calendar thing http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-prod…
Basically there are categories for adult things I need in every week: doing chores, taking care of life business, working out, being social, working on hobbies, etc, and a weekly minimum for each. I make a list usually on sunday or monday of the things I need to be doing, and then i chip through the minimums for those and give myself a sticker in each category on a calendar that shows the whole year. I also note anything else that is above and beyond in a separate area.
The idea being that i get overwhelmed easily thinking about the gap between me as a person who does all her chores and works out 10 times a week and regularly emails my grandma and so on, and then that turns me into a couch slug of guilt that does nothing. But if I have a minimum I need to do, then I somehow turn into, “look I just need to spend 15 minutes doing this and I’ll be done for the week and feel fine” and then there’s no crippling guilt making me feel behind.
This sounds really odd and obsessive probably, but I really did have to find a personal system to be able to get focused on my to-do list, and now that I have it I’m sort of proud of it and into doing the things on it? Being able to see the weeks behind you is a huge part of it, it helps with the backsliding to get that reinforcement of, “oh well I backslid for a week, but look at all my good work, am I really going to keep sliding?”
And now to the to-do list!
That sounds like such a great system! Thanks for sharing it!
if making a sticker chart is too much of a hurdle for you (ahem not that i know anyone like that) check out http://www.chains.cc which does the work for you!
Sweet!
stickers!! I realized not only would my children do many things just for stickers on a calendar, so would I. They’re old now (well – 21 and 17) with pretty good life skills, and I am still giving myself stickers for exercise and riding horses. And making art.
I love your stickers! I love that you applied them to the kids and yourself as well.
One of my stickers is just “doing good”. It counts regardless of if I send a card to someone, or volunteer or donate or whatever, just the reminder that every week i should do one good net positive, no return expected thing for the old planet. It’s kind of a win-win-win- you get the sticker and you also do something you like doing or something that makes you feel good about yourself.
Figuring out how to be responsible together is HARD – me and hubby are still working on it too!
Maybe once he’s calmed down a bit you can talk about how he reacted?
Usually it seems like the one who is not directly responsible for whatever has gone wrong has the more emotional/dramatic reaction to the thing going wrong, which doesn’t really help (you probably would have felt bad about your car trouble even without him getting all upset). If we talk about it later we can figure out a) how to avoid similar things happening again b) how to talk to each other in ways that are better/nicer when we make a mistake the next time. I think this is slowly working for us.
It’s hard in the heat of the moment though!
But this will pass! It will get better! Also I am bookmarking eegghh’s advice about feeling guilty. Words of wisdom!
He knows he reacted badly- he knew it even while it was happening- so mostly we just both feel bad and guilty. This type of irresponsibility triggers him (whereas I tend to go blithely along in a land of sunshine and rainbows) and we both know it. Relationships! If I didn’t love the stupid guy so much I would be a passionate subscriber to Spinsterism.
Guys, my fiance and I are touring some wedding venues this weekend and I was never a person who thought about my wedding until recently but it’s getting to feel really exciting. Is anyone else wedding planning? How are we feeling about the wedding-industrial complex today?
BURN IT
FIRE FROM SPACE
HATE KILL DEATH
is how I am currently feeling about the wedding-industrial complex, thanks for asking 🙂
noooooo I hope it gets better! or ends!
The best wedding reception I ever attended was at the Boston Aquarium, in the main lobby, which houses the penguins. I knew one person at this wedding and he was in the wedding party getting his photo taken for most of the reception, so it was really, really awesome to be able to have some feathered friends to keep me company while I drank and tried my damndest to be a social butterfly.
Anyways that’s my only thought on wedding venues– animals are great! Hope you find a wonderful venue that suits your needs and fulfills all your wedding aesthetic wishes.
Guuuuuh I’m kind of wedding obsessed right now. My brother is newly engaged, my bf and I can’t stop talking about weddings…
So, I’m excited for you! Have fun!
Now that we’re in the final stages (ONLY 40 MORE DAYS!) and past most of the infuriating, crying together in the car after the meeting, how in the hell can any of this be so expensive stuff, I feel totally excited. RSVPs and early registry gifts are coming in, last-minute details are being lined up, and my brother (who up until recently wasn’t sure he would be able to make it) has finally gotten permission from work to take the time he needs to attend. I say all of this not to rub it in to anyone not there yet, but as a sort of “it gets better!”
Me! Sort of, anyway, and I am also someone who never really thought about weddings beyond what I didn’t want. I haven’t done much more than send feelers out to a few venues that I liked. I was under the impression that they would each come back and say “these are the only three dates available between now and 2017” and that would make it easier for me to choose a date and venue but they all replied with “thanks for thinking of us! Here is our pricing sheet and you tell us what date you want!” So I guess it is time to buckle down and making appointments to go see the places.
FWIW, we have toured two places and are about to tour three more, and so far they have been entirely pleasant experiences! The appointments took about a half hour and we weren’t at all pushed to decide right then. I do not live in a Big City so I guess it might be pretty different there, but these have all just been pretty fun.
Now that I’m 99% done planning, it is excellent! It is also excellent because my hairdresser’s husband matched his medical residency at the hospital he wanted so they will not be leaving town and I will not have to find another hairdresser! (My closer-friend’s husband did not match at the same hospital and is moving, though, so it’s bittersweet).
As I said to my godmother “Planning becomes 100 times easier when you just say no to something. You never have to think about it again!” We’ve said no to a lot. (I mean, a lot. Like even cake.) I highly recommend it.
(I am slightly stressed about writing a ceremony, and choosing readers, but bridge – cross – later).
I know I can turn to you, Toasticles. I know you will help me out. I am doing something I have never, ever done before, and indeed once promised myself I would never, ever do: I am getting into fanfiction. (Thanks, Obama.) (Not Obama fanfic, that would be weird.)(I mean it would be weird for me. If you’re into that, I won’t judge.)(Ok I’ll judge a little but I’ll be quiet about it.)
So right now I am writing a bunch of stuff, but where does one go to find more, or post what I have? Where does one dip their toes into waters everyone else has been bathing and drinking and pissing in for decades? What do I need to know? HAAALP.
You gotta get on Archive of Our Own. I’m not sure if you still need invite codes or not, but if you do, let me know. AO3 is the best.
You know I saw a post to that site on one of the sub-reddit’s sub-reddit for the fandom, but I’m wary of just clicking through from there, even if I am promised some amazing Lavellan/Cullen Dragon Age fic.
Grumblyqueer has good advice, below, for navigating AO3. Sorry I don’t have any Dragon Age fics to recommend you, but if you’re interested in recs for due South, Sherlock, The Eagle, Inception, and even a few for Harry Potter, Merlin, War Horse, and Breakfast Club, lemme know.
OTW (they run AO3) is a great place for fandom in general! I second (third?) the rec for AO3 – I pretty much do all my fanfic’ing – reading and writing – from there.
And there are also the beloved kink memes! The Dragon Age one on LJ is huuuuuuuge.
There is so much Lavellan/Cullen. It is why I have to filter the Dragon Age category for F/F tags! Come on over, you’ll like it.
I only have recs for DAII but there’s SO MUCH dragon age on A03.
Tumblr and AO3 are the big ones I frequent. It’s pretty easy to search through the tags in each.
There are probably archives out there specific to your fandom, as well, which you should be able to find with a google search.
OH MY GOD ME TOO, I have two (2.5??) fanfics in the work and I’m so super embarrassed by them, which is dumb because I don’t think other people should be embarrassed by writing fic… anyways, let’s be fanfic newbs together?
Find out where people are posting the kind of fic you both a) like to read and b) are writing. That’s where you need to go. You find those places by searching for things that would probably embarrass you if someone looked through your search history. OR you can go to Archive of Our Own, which is like fanfiction.net, only a little more personal–it has a commenting system, so there’s a little more community there. (You can also put an author’s note in and request people point you to places that would be good for your thing!)
I like to lurk a bit in new spaces to see if the dynamics are good. Also a good idea: commenting on other people’s fics with your username and being nice and friendly and specific–it makes it MUCH more likely the people you think might like your fic will take the time to click on yours and give it a shot. If there’s a livejournal community specific to your fandom (that’s still active), you can post a notice there–they usually have a guide for how to do that. I see people post things on tumblr, too, but I’m not entirely sure how that works.
AO3 for posting your work and for reading other people’s stuff, definitely. And if you want to keep away from the vast seas of bad writing out there (of course you do, you’re a Toastie), the process is very simple: Filter everything by kudos, subscribe to authors/series you like, and once you’ve read the popular fics, check out the stuff your favorite authors have bookmarked.
Thank you! I respond well to direct instructions. My fear has been that, in just blindly jumping in the pool, I’d be exposed to such utter crap that I would lose all faith in humanity, or worse: my fandom would be tainted. Can’t have that.
Sort by kudos is the absolute best feature. And stuff your favorite authors have bookmarked can also be a great way to get into other fandoms you’re not familiar with yet.
Yes! Bookmarks and recs from my favorite authors are pretty much the only way I read new fic.
Ahhh me too! It’s vaguely embarrasing because of 50SOG normal people now kinda know about fanfic and are all ‘gosh! what nerds!’ and I’m sitting there thinking ‘yess….terrible nerdery….shocking….’ and hiding my Ao3 account.
https://pinboard.in/popular/fandom = Another good place to get fanfic recommendations. You can do a Search All with your pairing’s name! They tend to be from AO3 as well, but sometimes Pinboard has those hidden treasures that didn’t get a ton of kudos/are newly posted.
Toasties, do you ever have those songs that come up on shuffle and remind you why you loved them so much? I was just pleasantly surprised by Finch and I haven’t thought of them in YEARS, even though they were one of the first band shirts that babby!Elyse ever owned.
Because of an unfortunate iTunes related accident, I’ve been re-listening to a lot of the stuff I listened to in high school and kind of dropped since then, and it’s just the best kind of nostalgia.
Finch! Oh, I used to love Finch.
This happens to me a lot with Me First and The Gimme Gimmes. I’ll get sick of them and then like two years later come across one of their songs and then listen to ALL of them until I get sick of them again.
… and now I have to go listen to some Finch.
I’ve been listening to What It Is To Burn on repeat all afternoon, I definitely recommend this plan.
Me First! Oh, man.
Thank you for your well wishes last week, Toast!
This week I am a complete mess, unfortunately… But it’s not work-related. Basically, it’s because Internet drama has reignited. The summary is that ex-friend hates me in a very vicious, scary, intense way and she has enlisted others in her hate. I’m in therapy and considering leaving the site.
I’m trying to think of new hobbies that involve me being 40000000 miles away at all times from her and her clique. Running a half-marathon, perhaps? Cooking? Knitting?
But for real. I nearly lost my mind this week. I had to take a sick day off work. I’ve read one too many diatribes about how much she hates me. Reasons given for her hatred: a) because I “abandoned” her, b) because I’m “self-righteous,” and she “wants to spit in my face,” c) she just really, really, really hates me?? ummm I’m trying to think of other actual, concrete reasons she’s cited for her hate but I can’t think of any because my brain and body are numb.
I told her (sort of, in a PSA-style public posting) that I don’t think she would physically threaten me but that I don’t want to wait around and find out. And I don’t. Lord, I do not.
Are there nice people in the world? I hope so. I have forgotten what that feels like. But I think I’m going to call up my other friends this weekend. That, or stay in bed curled into a ball for two days, which sounds good to me right now too.
Sorry for being a huge downer this week.
oh, honey. I am so sorry. That sucks a lot. Friend breakups are hard already, but the added Internet drama is so unnecessary and unpleasant.
If you really are looking to take up a new hobby, running or other forms of exercise are great for helping clear your head and also have the added benefit of a) endorphins and b) being generally good for you. Cooking, knitting (and other forms of fiber arts) are also great – they engage you creatively and can be very meditative, there are different levels of challenge involved, and you end up with either tasty food or warm things when you are done. Knitting/crocheting might also help you find new friends – if you live somewhere where there is a local yarn store, they probably have a group of people who hang out in the store and knit who will have nice friendly chats with you and help you as you learn.
Friend breakups are hard! Particularly if there’s a fight involved and it’s not just two people drifting apart.
Thanks <3 I run (or at least I do now that the snow is thawing) and knitting actually sounds really appealing. Thank you.
That sounds awful! I hope things get better for you soon!
Thanks. It’s been awful for a while but I hope we’ve hit rock bottom and she will move on.
YIKES. The more you post about her, the more I think you were totally right to bin her friendship. There are nice people in the world, and a lot of them are on here.
^^^ this
It’s been a journey. Honestly I am hoping I will learn to make better friend choices in the future, because you’re right, there is a whole world out there.
Oh I am so sorry this is happening. There are definitely nice people in the world!
Thanks! Thank you for being one of them 🙂
Oh god I’m so sorry this is happening to you. I know this won’t make it go away but can you block her feed in some way? Also, whereabouts do you live? Maybe there are some toasties around your area to remind you of the good people of this world!
I’m so sorry that this is happening. Friend break-ups are so hard.
I think I remember that this is all going down on Tumblr? Fwiw, I had a friend in a similar-ish situation a little while ago (well, without the threats of violence, what is that even?) She made a new sideblog, followed the people she liked on there who weren’t involved in the drama and inboxed us to let us know she would be blogging primarily with the sideblog for a while so we could follow her back. It seemed to work better than deleting her main blog since it kept her under the radar, plus it meant she could keep up with a revised version of her dash without having contact with the people she wanted to avoid.
None of that will help with feeling so hurt though 🙁 I hope you can see other friends this weekend and be kind to yourself. We’re all on your side here <3
Thank you. Yes, it is on Tumblr. That’s a good technique your friend used- perfect for tidying up drama before it gets out of control. I actually just moved to a side blog too, but only after unfollowing her and everyone connected to her. This past week I posted a warning on the main blog though saying I didn’t like what she was doing and wanted her to stay away from me. It was probably overkill, but the idea of her and her friends creeping around there was just really unsettling to me. Although I guess I can’t talk since I’ve been on her page.
The worst part of this is the way other people co-signed her hate, which has made me wonder if she’s right about me. I don’t think I deserved it, but I still feel gross and damaged and a little crazy.
It does help to hear that people are on my side. This community has been a good help during this, I would have felt very alone otherwise. Thank you <3
Who wants to see a picture of a happy corgi face?
Ooh! Ooh! I do!
HELLO THERE. 😀
HAPPY CORGI THREAD!!
I always want to see pictures of happy corgi faces.
I never have celebrity sex dreams and I randomly had one with Chris Pratt and it was amazing – thank you kind sex dream gods!
Toasties, share your best dream experiences @_@
I once had a terrific sex dream about Spider Jerusalem.
Once I had a (platonic) dream that Obama and I went on a road trip. We had a cool van and a dog. It was awesome.
The only celebrity sex dream I’ve ever had involved Edward James Olmos. It wasn’t too shabby though.
As I reported last week, Clive Owen (while under the influence of Melatonin). Then my alarm went off and I was very disappointed, as neither of us had finished.
Also, Dirk Nowitzki once pled for sex at the end of my bed. Not quite sure why I was holding out on him.
I had a dream the other night that my husband and I were renting a beautiful and very old stone mansion with stained glass and heavy carved wooden doors and my entire family came to visit and it was lovely and we went to a bunch of cool beautiful places in our city and one of my sisters was pregnant(!) and then a whole bunch of people (like, 30 people) showed up because apparently I had posted one of our extra rooms on air bnb but I must have screwed it up because like, 30 people had all reserved the room for the same night but it was okay because there was enough room for everyone and so we kind of had a house party that we weren’t really hosting or attending but it was nice and people were friendly and then when we woke up in the morning there was a whole family of bears lounging in our enormous backyard. I’m not sure where the bears came from. The end.
Not my best, but it’s celeb (or at least historical figure)-related: My very first sex dream was with JFK. In black and white. While I was coming off of morphine after shredding my hand in a boating accident. It was strange.
A few nights ago I had a non-sexual dream about Spike and Buffy, just holding hands and being happy and relaxed with each other. It was really great.
This week has been proving Murphy’s law. I have no in particular order, found out my health insurance dropped me without notification, locked myself out of the house and had to climb in through the top half of a precariously placed window, broken multiple plates, had a henna incident, and broken a tooth. This morning alone, I had the privilege of trying to get an emergency filling (read sitting freaking out as only a major dentalphobe can for 90 minutes before getting an xray and being told that they can’t even fix it today. And learning that 1 and half xanax is not enogh). Then I had a physical and pap. At least the NP didn’t get on my about my weight.
The only bodily cavity that has not been poked at by alleged professionals today is my nose, which is randomly bleeding. I’ll leave that one for TSA tomorrow.
FALLEN LONDON THREAD! What is everyone up to?
I am trying to accumulate enough souls to move to the Brass Embassy, and also working on Gaining a Criminal Reputation. I posed nude for the Repentant Forger and somehow this damaged our friendship? Ungrateful swine.
I also did The Gift and while I thought it was very interesting, it also felt like it ended much too quickly. Like “Wait… that was it? That was the whole storyline?” I wish there was a possibility to go back and investigate all the options. I didn’t feel like I got my Nex’s worth out of it.
I am now a person of Some Little Consequence 8, so I’m making strides! I’m currently spending some time in the Clay quarters, and I only just realized that the reason I never saw the other profession options is because I still have a basic profession (I tend to only look at the options I can play on opportunity cards and ignore the other ones), so I plan to remedy that soon.
I’m saving up supplies to do the Cave of the Nadir currently, so I can get rid of these stupid Eyeless Skulls. I also Have a fighting plant that is capable of competing, finally, after feeding it so much.
Mine is currently incapable of competing because none of my acquaintances have plants at the same level 🙁
I love that I can feed vicars to it without my Connected: The Church suffering, though.
Hah! I’m still at the level of feeding it candles and clues, your must be quite advanced if you can feed it vicars!
I finally got enough Antique Mysteries to get a reservation at the Royal Bethlehem and am waiting for the Merry Gentleman shows up (side note: anyone who’s trying to get their Nightmares down, feel free to hit up Theoretta Rizing for menace reduction).
The Gift was really interesting but I think I tore through it too fast to really appreciate what was going on. My alt did the Blemmigan Affair and deliberately took my time with it, which seemed to be a better approach.
Next up: trips to Polythreme and the Iron Republic. Any recommendations for things to pack?
Same with The Gift! I was trying to savour it but still was a bit disappointed.
You have the safe conduct pass for the Iron Republic, right? I’ve never been there so I don’t know what else you might need.
I am on a zubmarine quest, but still have to get 16/20 of the whirring contraptions. I’m fighting wars of assassins for dramatic tension, and then converting that in wilmot’s end to whirring contraptions. I’m also trying to get scarabs — I have a good bunch of memories of light from doing the implacable detective’s business card again and again.
Lately I got myself a salon, and finished a classic short story — was quite proud of that.
(I’m BaronBenas)
BB! Your surprise packages are the BEST!
I finally nabbed a third Mark of Credit page so I’m all set for the safe conduct pass. Apparently the Iron Republic is a super weird place so that should be fun, as long as I don’t have to give up my soul to get home again or something.
Yay! I’m glad they are fun for you.
Have fun in the Iron Republic! And try to keep hold of your soul — although I believe you can get it back later? But my character is by nature soulful, she doesn’t ever want to lose hers.
Also this http://saint-arthur.tumblr.com/post/71587650551/i… says not to bring souls with you.
ooh good advice, I’m a spirifer so I usually have a bunch of souls kicking around. Will unload before I go!
I always trust spacemarine9 and his blog (I’m a Candle)!
I have a Zubmarine! I’ve been zailing around. I went to Hunter’s Keep and got a twisted skeleton key, so I can (finally!) continue my Ambition once I get back. I”m now on Bullbone Island.
I’m jels! I just knew the zubmarine was so right for my character, she could accept no substitutes. So I’m slowly grinding my way up.
I am pursuing a voyage of scientific exploration with one character, getting to important revelations re: my ambition with another, and have just killed the snuffer-rat-face-thing with my third. Such fun!
Dear The Toast:
I would like to light a cake on fire. Does anyone have advice on flambe?
Douse it with booze and stand well away from the flame source!
For me cake+fire=smores cupcakes. I don’t have the recipe on me but you can find something similar on the internet: graham cracker crust on the bottom, chocolate cake, marshmallow/meringue frosting, kitchen torch to toast (or burn) the frosting. Delicious. Plus kitchen torches are fun and easy.
To make a volcano cake:
1) Shape cake into mountain shape.
2) Place empty tea light cup at top, filled with sugar
3) Douse in rum, allowing the rum to overflow the tea light and run down the sides of the cake.
4) Stand back and light the cake.
My dad made this for my brother’s 13th birthday party. If you happen to have a cake stand, you can put the cake inside a bowl of dry ice, which enhances the effect nicely.
So … I found out this week that my ex-husband passed away, and I’m having very complicated feelings about it. There were very good reasons why I needed him to not be part of my life, but I certainly didn’t wish him ill. I am tremendously sad for his family, but beyond that, I can’t even quite find the words to express how I feel about the news.
I had a really complicated reaction when my (former?) father in law died. Brought up waves of still angry feelings I didn’t know I had.
And I have a friend who has also gone through the death of her ex (and father of her kids).
I think complicated might be the norm, there.
Thought y’all might be interested in this drawing by Max Beerbohm:
It’s a caricature of W.B. Yeats from around 1900. Beerbohm apparently regarded Yeats as some kind of proto-goth devil: he described him as a living “fissure of blackness.”
He is like a pre-incarnation of Robert Smith
I like this more than words can say.
I love Beerbohm but dude was kind of a troll by nature. Have you seen his caricatures of Kipling? It was a sickness; he just HATED Kipling and couldn’t stop attacking him.
Toastrices, my ex-boss sent me a letter from jail. Foolishly, I thought it might be a personal letter, perhaps including an apology for putting us all through this a la a 12-step program. But no, it was a description of the company email campaign he thought I should write (the trade show we went to, off-season sweeping rates, etc). His instructions included printing that email off and sending it to him so he could approve it. He also wants to see copies of the FB posts I’ve made since his arrest. He somehow also wanted this done by the end of the week. And y’know, I’ve been doing really well lately, feeling happy, enjoying my job, not being depressed, and then the last couple of days, since I got that letter, there’s been a marked increase in my stress levels. Fuck you, micromanaging not-actually-my-boss. If your business partner feels like humoring you and taking your “suggestions” for running the business, fine, but go through him, rather than talking to me directly.
This is, of course, coming after weeks of finding more and more things that he just didn’t tell his business partner about, terrible business decisions he was making without consulting anybody, and discovering more customers he’s alienated. So I don’t feel particularly motivated to listen to his ideas in the first place, even setting aside the rest of the being in jail shit. I’m alternating between “well, this is surreal” and “fucking ripshit pissed,” with most of my feelings landing firmly on the “fucking ripshit pissed” side of things.
I mean, that’s kind of hilarious, if you can see past the whole “horrifyingly stressful” part.
You didn’t ask for advice, but I would definitely take the stuff to the business partner and say “please let me know how to proceed”.
Oh, I did. He looked over the actual suggestions for the email campaign and said that they’re solid, and to go ahead with them. I let him know that I wasn’t comfortable taking instructions from this man who is no longer my boss (he agrees that his business partner is no longer my boss), and he said that’s fine, he understands, etc. I’m trying to decide if writing a letter to ex-boss would be cathartic, or would just keep this whole sorry business on my mind for longer.
And it is kind of hilarious. It’ll probably be more hilarious in a week, when I’ve stopped being so angry. Part of the anger is because I’m thinking back to how little I got done when I had to print out everything for approval before I could post it, and how poorly that meshed with his insistence that we stop wasting ink and paper by printing backup copies of everything (which would have come in handy when we lost our accounting software for 3 weeks). So this just brought that all back to the surface, and I’m pissed that he seems not to have learned anything so far, or realized that he’s no longer an authority figure. It’ll probably be really funny later, though.
I don’t want to get to “lawyer-y” but this whole thing REEKS of a potential lawsuit (likely between your boss and your former boss, and with who knows who else). I would definitely hand over all letters to your actual boss and in no way write to your former boss.
Fun fact: a previous employee, after being fired for being terrible at his job, sued for wrongful termination and sexual harassment. He’s also ex-boss’ former son-in-law, having begun a relationship with ex-boss’ son when said son was underage. OH GOD SO MUCH DRAMA.
I’m just going to hand the letters straight to my boss, and try to stay out of everything completely.
This is amazing! Like he thinks he’s some kind of mafia capo still running things from his jail cell.
I mean, that would be in keeping with his overall authoritarian, micromanaging, yelling-at-everybody approach, so he probably thinks that.
I mean this might be terrible advice, but if you see one in the future…you could just throw it in the trash ??
I feel like if any mail in America does routinely get lost, it’s a letter from jail.
And then if he wants to tell your actual boss about it, he can go through him. Like he should have done in the first place.
It’s pretty hard to prove you actually got a letter unless you had to sign for it or it was certified mail…
Unread letters prey on my mind, though, so I’d forever wonder what it would have said. I will, however, refuse to act on any instructions he gives me, and get my actual boss to communicate this to him the next time they speak.
I mean, there’s no reason you can’t read it before it is “lost”. I totally would. But then i’d be like, “mail from jail? Nope, never saw any…weird.”
Maybe instead of reading it or discarding it, you could just give the letter strait to your actual-boss?
ok I mean, that’s probably the ethical approach.
I wasn’t going for “ethical” but ok yeah I guess that is kindof boring…
Unlike letters from jail…
Next letter: unopened, marked REFUSED, your address struck through, return address circled, dropped in nearest mailbox.
I am so sorry you have to go through all this shit because of this fuckwad. I think of you often.
Hmmm, the emphatic nature of this does outweigh my hatred of unread letters…
Pretty much every time you write about this boss-in-jail situation I’ve just got my hands slapped over my open mouth and my eyes watering from being so wide open. Just in case anyone is trying to make you feel this situation isn’t super bizarre and deeply fucked up: IT IS.
Fortunately, nobody is trying to make me feel that this situation is anything less than terrible. I’m actually, in a twisted way, enjoying the narrative excitement. What’ll happen next? Who knows! Which files will be corrupted after being taken from the server (which is still in police custody) and set up temporarily on the warehouse computer? Which password do we need to get into this website we forgot we might need to use sometimes? Life is full of endless mystery!
Your troubles are horrifying. And entertaining. I’m torn.
The best entertainment is often horrifying. We’ll all just pretend this is a dark-ish comedy.The film version of me is played, naturally, by a 30-year old Emma Thompson. She has the necessary sarcasm for the role.
‘my ex-boss who is currently is jail” sounds like the punchline to a wide variety of jokes that I cannot at the moment think up.
Pissed sounds to me like a completely legit response. Fucking ripshit pissed is descriptive and sounds almost cathartic just saying it.
When I realized all communications from a particular person gave me the shakes for a day, i started blind forwarding them to someone else, who would very kindly read them for me, and tell me if I had to do anything.
It’s always fun when what should be a tragicomic punchline is actually the necessary background information for a story.
I keep wanting to pre-emptively apologize for the inadequacy of my work, and then I’m all, “wait, no, my work is fine, and if there’s a problem, my boss will simply tell me what it is, rather than berating me in front of my coworkers.”
Grad school toasties!
I am deciding between two cities for grad school, both 3000 miles away from where I am now. School A has a slightly more relevant program to what I want to do; school B is located in the same city as my long-distance partner of 6 months. Both programs are solid, well-respected in the field and similar in cost (School A is $4000 less than B overall). How much of this decision should be made with my brain vs my heart? Is it OK to factor in personal needs/wants when considering a professional decision? Help!
It is absolutely okay to factor in personal desires when considering a professional decision. Your job is your job, not your whole life. And it sounds like you’d still be going to a good school if you went with the second option, so it’s not like you’re sacrificing your career for a relationship. The choice is up to you, but you shouldn’t feel bad if you decide to go with the school that has the added benefit of making your personal life better.
This is exactly what I needed to hear, thank you!
I would say … if that partner was not in the city or your relationship went sideways, would you really dislike having gone to School B? Is it still a decent program and suiting your professional needs (just as not *quite* as well as School A)? $4000 is a significant difference … will you be making financial sacrifices or putting financial pressure on yourself that you wouldn’t be able to handle emotionally without this promise of in-person time with your LD partner, or is that amount still something that would be okay?
I don’t think these questions should make or break your decisions, but it might help clarify your decision-making. It might also have the benefit of ensuring that emotionally you are not attributing a commitment to School B JUST because of your partner, that it doesn’t create some kind of debt on their part because you made this choice on their account, if that is important to you. I think you could be happier with your decision if you know School B is a solid choice under whatever circumstances, if not your ideal.
These are all really good questions and are super helpful. I have a few good friends that also live near School B, so I wouldn’t be without a support system if my relationship were to end. I wouldn’t have applied if I didn’t like the program, as well. Thanks for helping me work through this!
That’s awesome! It sounds like both are good choices for their reasons. Good luck!
Heart feelings played a huge role in my grad school decision. While it took me a while to get there, I’m really happy I let myself choose the school I thought would make me happier (and it has made me so happy) than the school that I thought was the “right” choice. Obviously the brain plays some role, but it sounds like both schools are of good quality so it wouldn’t be a huge sacrifice. Good luck! I also moved 3000 miles away for grad school and moving was scary and grad school is hard, but overall it’s been fantastic.
I’mma just open with what my guidance counselor told high schoolers about applying to the same college as their high school boyfriends: are you okay with going to the same school/city as your ex? Because that is a distinct possibility.
I know nobody wants to think about break ups when there are other major life choices to be made, but it does happen. Making this major decision to move could very well change your (still pretty young) relationship, and if you make the (entirely legitimate) decision to give up $4K a year and better programs for romantic proximity, that could well become a source of tension and fights. And if you do break up, you’re stuck in the same city with the partner for whom you overturned your life.
If you choose to go to the first or the second school, that’s perfectly fine. It’s only 3-ish years either way, and you know you a lot better than the internet does. </DebbieDowner>
Make it all with your heart. If you can get the professional experience in either place, go with the place you are also going to be happy. I would give different advice to a high schooler going away to undergrad (where college is often much more about THE EXPERIENCE) but grad school is essentially a job and it’s only a fraction of your overall being/life. Do what makes you happy and where you can be with your partner who you love.
(If you wanted an excuse to leave your partner, or if you are still not that sure if you’re into them, feel free to disregard this advice!)
((Feel free to disregard it regardless!! -Internet Stranger))
So I saved up a buttload of money and moved to a brand new city because I was very unhappy in my previous city/job/social life. It’s almost been two weeks and I already have a place to stay with decent rent and I maaaaay get a job sooner than I could have hoped for. I’m cautiously optimistic but still a little anxious.
Please share stories of moving and starting over. I know in my gut this is the right thing for me, but I would love to ready happy stories from all of you.
I have never done that, but I’m jealous that you have! I am considering doing it but feel too scurred, so props to you! It sounds like everything’s gonna work out fine 🙂
Restaurants! I moved halfway across the country a year ago, and finding new favorite pancakes/pizza/coffee/whatever has been lots of fun. The meetup groups I’ve tried have been hit or miss, but I joined an exercise class and that has been an okay way to meet new people. Also, look up the cheesy touristy stuff in your new area (the stuff the locals scoff at) and go and have cheesy touristy fun.
Good luck and have fun!
P.S. I wish we had a map of where Toasties are, so we would know there were allies wherever we go.
Oooh, Toasties meet-ups?! I’d so be down.
I also haven’t actually done this, but I’ve thought about it many times! Good on you for going after what you need!! Everything will work out great.
I grew up in the US South and Southwest. Moving to the Northeast was the best thing I ever did. That is where I was no longer the only person I knew who read books for pleasure. That is where I got to know enough healthy people to realize I needed to be screened for, then treated for, depression. That is where I discovered the joys of port cities, where I am never the only one not-from-here, where variations in personal traditions and tastes are not only tolerated, but expected.
Good for you for giving yourself what you need.
Not me, but a close friend just moved from Boston to Seattle by herself and has never been happier. She’s transitioning, and wanted to change her environment. Two months later, she has a studio apartment, a full-time job with benefits and some cool trans friends who play board games together a few times a month. It’s definitely been difficult for her, but completely worth it.
Thanks for your replies! It made me feel a lot better.
To those who have never done anything like this but want to, know that it will be scary and hard at first no matter how much you prepare. However if you know it’s the right thing for you then cautiously go for it!
I just want to hear what y’all are reading this weekend! I just picked up Refund by Karen E. Bender (on the strength of Nicole Dieker’s recommendation at the Billfold!) last night and I will probably finish it, oh, tonight. It has this super hard edge, and I can’t figure out it’s because it’s actually edgy or because it confronts money so directly.
Also sitting on my bedside table: Station Eleven (one-third of the way through and loving it), Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (about halfway through and it hasn’t really grabbed me yet) and Middlemarch (still only three chapters in. I’m an abomination who doesn’t deserve the Toast).
Share your reading materials with me please!
Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett! Other than Good Omens I hadn’t read anything of his while he was still alive, and it sucks that this is what it took to get me started, but all the Toastie stories about what his writing meant to him was very inspirational.
Also finishing up Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, which is a beautiful and difficult read so I tackle a section at a time and let it sink in.
I’m reading Good Omens right now! It is SO MUCH FUN. Somehow I thought that Douglas Adams was the only person who wrote hilarious sci-fi.
I just finished Small Gods and am now reading Nation.
I just got the first Discworld book! My favorite line so far has been “It is embarrassing to know you are a god of a world that only exists because every improbability curve must have a far end.”
I am supposed to be reading “How To Be Both” and I freaking HATE IT 30 pages in and cannot bring myself to pick it up. But I can’t quit because it’s for my book club and I suggested it.
So I’m reading “Good Omens” and an old copy of a Boondocks comic book I took from my parent’s house, and putting off getting back to it.
I’m reading David Moriss’s The Evil Hours which is about PTSD, and is fabulous. It’s similar to The Emperor of All Maladies in its extremely broad take on the phenomenon. However, it’s also extremely heavy reading, so I’m interspersing it with the latest steampunk silliness from Gail Carriger, Prudence.
I’m reading All My Puny Sorrows. It hasn’t grabbed me yet, sad to say.
I’m reading A River Runs Through It on a whim (the book I ordered from the library hadn’t come in yet, needed reading material, grab random book from shelf) and I really like it! some lovely writing there. I think I’ll take a break after reading the title story and read Men at Arms, though, since that’s a library book and I only have it for so long.
I just finished The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, and just started The Outsiders. I’m trying to read lots more books by women this year, but most of the ones I’ve got my eye on are either not stocked in the library’s e-book system, or are currently on a long wait list.
Started Station Eleven last night, am 60 pages in, they keep mentioning my hometown and the hometown of a family of friends and both places are teeny little Great Lakes towns and that’s fun, but the book is scary and also incredibly great so far.
I read the whole Divergent series last week and it was weird, though I have to say I appreciate an author that isn’t afraid to kill off a protagonist.
In preparation for acquiring the HBO streaming service as soon as it’s available and the subsequent catching up on Game of Thrones, I’m re-reading the books as well. I’m about two-thirds of the way through A Clash of Kings at the moment.
Finished Bossypants and immediately moved on to Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me. Also Dear Sugar came in at the library so I have that too, and Brown Girl Dreaming. On the iPad I am in the middle of The Luminaries and Outlander.
Also I started reading Running on Empty by Jonice Webb which is about emotional neglect and how to handle it as an adult. My previous therapist was always very direct about my mother having been emotionally neglectful and I always had a hard time hearing/accepting that. I’m only at the beginning of this book but it emphasizes that the emotionally neglectful parents weren’t doing it out of malice, and may well have been emotionally neglected, themselves — which is making it easier for me to swallow.
I think I need to read that emotional neglect book.
Let me know if you pick it up and want to talk about it. lauren at my username dot com.
Reading Ancillary Justice and not loving it, but intrigued enough to press on.
Finished Station Eleven this past weekend and wept. I loved it! Still working on several nonfiction books, sometimes I get on a nonfiction kick and other times I just can’t stand it. It’ll cycle back around and I’ll finally finish Jill Lepore’s Wonder Woman history someday.
Finally reading the second Outlander book, Dragonfly in Amber. Partially because I am avoiding finishing Birds Without Wings.
Fun! The beginning made me throw the book across the room, but damn I love that series!
I just finished Where Monsters Dwell by Jorgen Brekke, which I quite liked. On deck this weekend is The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbol (I don’t know how to do special characters). I’m waiting for the latest Jo Nesbo audiobook to come in from my library, which will jump the queue whenever it shows up.
I just read Days of Abandonment and HOLY COW what a good book. I read the first Neapolitan novel and really liked it, but this is way more intense and focused and it just totally bowled me over. The way Ferrante writes feelings, it’s like she has a red phone that connects directly to my heart.
Her name is EVERYWHERE in my sphere all of a sudden; I think it’s a sign.
I read Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests on vacation and also The Teenage Brain by Frances Jensen.
Both were great!
So much to read!
I’m working on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles right now, with Nevada, Station Eleven, A Brief History of Seven Killings, and Never Let Me Go up next (in no particular order). Also my friend’s horror novel that he’s in the middle of sending to agents. It hasn’t gotten a good bite yet, so we’re trying to go over it and tighten it.
We are reading a collection of things Marc Chagall wrote, translated into English, and also Sofia Samatar’s amazing so far novel, A Stranger in Olondria, which is densely written and very beautiful.
Also we got a subscription to the New Yorker and people are revelling in our ability to read it on the ipad, so we are devouring issues like crazy.
I am reading Ancillary Sword. Next up is either Good Omens or Shadowscale (the sequel to Seraphina; I have waited almost three years for this book!). Despite having read (and loved) about 90% of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s various novels as a teen I never actually picked up Good Omens. I also just remembered this week that the third book in Marie Brennan’s Lady Trent series is out very soon and so I am tremendously excited.
I’m reading the second book in the three Kristin Lavransdatter books by Sigrid Undset. They’re books from the 1920s about a Norwegian woman in the early 14th century. She won the Noble Prize in Literature for them. I like them, but it also makes me very glad to not be living in 14th century Norway.
I’m really excited because a) today is Friday b) this is the first weekend I get to spend in my new house without unpacking or moving and c) I am going to the library on the way home! What I’m sad about is that I have no cake. And also, Mondays exist.
Have fun in the new house! Pretend Monday doesn’t exist until it does!
Pshhh, Monday doesn’t exist until Sunday afternoon. Enjoy your new house!
GO BUY A CAKE! You deserve it. The upscale grocery stores sell nice itty-bitty single person ones around here.
London (uk) toasties. Where are you? And when is our meetup!?
I am currently experiencing the daunting new world of adult friend making and want to connect with some like-minded toasties
I am London-based! (Wood Green.)
I’m nearish to London and would be up for a meet up!
Me! Me too! I am nearish to London (well Brighton) and would love a meet up!
Bah. Checked my flight status and it is delayed an hour and a half. This means I’m definitely going to miss my connection…
I have never had to miss a connection before, do they usually rebook you effectively or am I going to be sleeping in LaGuardia tonight? I just want to go home. Delays during work travel are the worst because you didn’t even get a wonderful tropical vacation to make the delay worth it.
I’ve had good and bad experiences. Interestingly/annoyingly, in the cases where the desk couldn’t or wouldn’t make reasonable arrangements, calling out for help to the airline’s Twitter account has managed to get things done in a much more satisfactory manner.
Check about the airline’s policies, too. In the event of mechanical delays or anything on the airline’s fault, they’ll frequently provide vouchers for hotel accommodations. Weather delays, they tend to be less generous though.
They’re definitely more on your side if it’s not your fault. “They’re already not.” Oh, it gets worse.
You’ll be fine. You might want to go to the gate agent at your current airport and ask them to rebook you on a new connection from there, if they can. Otherwise, just talk to the agent at LGA and they’ll put you on a new flight. You’ll probably only get stuck if there are weather problems at LGA (which there shouldn’t be, as I look out my Manhattan window and see no significant weather occurring).
Call your airline now and ask! They might be able to go ahead and rebook you to a new flight.
This will likely be buried but I wanted to crowd source this!
Does anyone use a commercial deodorant that’s slightly less bad and WORKS? I’ve tried every single natural deodorant ever, including Soapwella and Tom’s and Lavanilla, and I am allergic to ALL of them! Grrrr. And yet all the normal ones are fine. I used to use Degree anti-persperant but decided that I wanted to wean myself off of the aluminum.
I have had absolutely 0.0% luck with any deodorant labeled “natural.” I used Tom’s for a while but it totally didn’t work, and I have returned to the land of the How Could You and I use the Suave spray stuff. Nothing has worked as well!!
I used Tom’s for like 3 days and I think it actually made me smell WORSE than using nothing.
I use Herbal Clear http://amzn.com/B000GCLDOO
It works– the only time it doesn’t work is if I forget to put it on!
Have you tried the mineral crystal stuff? I use it and it works great for me (I can’t use antiperspirant because it blocks my sebaceous glands which is GROSSSSSSSSSS). The only catch is you have to put it on when you are fresh and clean, and I don’t shower every day. On those days I use a tiny little bit of whatever spouse has and hope my armpits don’t go all infected and explody.
Seconding the crystal stuff. It works well for me for everything except working out. And I sometimes shower at night and put it on in the morning, or just take a washcloth to my pits first if I didn’t shower the night before, and it still works fine. I definitely know people it didn’t work at all for, though, so I think you just have to try it and see how it does for you.
I feel like I fail at adulthood because I legitimately don’t own a washcloth. What even am I doing with my life.
I own a few only because I think adults should; not because I’ve ever ever used them.
I mean, if you never use them then not owning them is probably the smarter and more adult option. I only own washcloths because (a) my mom bought me some once and (b) I tried the oil cleansing method briefly.
Oooh tell me about your OCM experience! Spouse’s skin is awful and we’ve tried everything…..
Mostly it was too much work for me, so I don’t think I stuck with it long enough to know if it worked or not.
It does make the washcloths really gross. I mostly used disposable expanding ones like these, except a different brand that I bought at the dollar store. They can each be used several times, but they’re a bit thin for the whole steaming your face part. I did eventually buy a bunch of washcloths so I could use a clean one each day, but that was right before I quit, so I don’t actually know if real washcloths used only once and then put in the laundry would work out better.
Thirding the crystal stuff (the actual solid crystal, not the liquid spray or roll-on, because those don’t do it for me at all). In fall/winter it’s fine just by itself, and in the summer or when doing something especially sweat-inducing, I usually dab a couple of drops of sandalwood or rose essential oil on my pits after applying the crystal — this is weirdly effective. (Or sometimes I don’t and I just stink a little by the end of the day, which I’m totally okay with, but I realize not everyone is.) Also, a dab of raw virgin coconut oil rubbed in post-crystal has much the same effect, if the crystal alone isn’t cutting it for you.
Oh man I have tried like a billion natural deodorants on my quest for The One. It is an uphill struggle. I recently discovered Herban Cowboy (I think they might be newish?) and the honeymoon phase is going great, we are very much in love, though summer will be the true test of our relationship. They sell it at Whole Foods and assorted other overpriced “natural” grocery stores. http://www.herbancowboy.com/
Have you tried the crystal whatever brand? It works, it’s probably alum, I can’t remember of the top of my head, but it works. Not as well as degree, but I sweat a LOT and can still get away with using that if I’m out of Degree. Also, it’s one of the sort-of natural ones that is easy to get at mainstream stores.
YES. Almay. You can get it unscented. It has aluminum, but a different kind of aluminum than most of them and has a better safety rating on Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetics Database. I’m a pretty robust sweat-er, but Almay works well for me, except during super hot/humid days.
The trouble is, each of us is slightly different, chemically. Sweat, particularly the smell of sweat, is varied throughout our species. What works for me may not work at all for you.
You have a better chance with products that work for a close relative. My sister and I used to compare deodorants. If it works for one of us, it works for both. But that was not guaranteed. There’s enough genetic variety even between sisters to make them respond differently to the same product. My sister and I just got lucky. Well, not so lucky, since we both sweat heavily and smell … powerful.
I… just don’t use anything anymore. Except in potentially sweaty or high-stakes situations (important meetings/presentations, special occasions) when I just bite the bullet and use Secret, which is not great for you probably, but it’s only once every couple weeks, so I don’t worry that much about it.
Honestly I feel like I smell better when I don’t wear anything most of the time, but that might depend on personal body chemistry stuff.
Toastfriends! My half-marathon is in EIGHT DAYS and I am feeling a little bit of everything right now, including tons of anxiety about getting to the damn race start.
However, I ran 10 miles last weekend and felt fantastic afterward, so I think I’m ready to do this thing. Just have to keep it all together for another week.
Anyone have any race-week advice to give? How is everyone else’s running/training/fitness going?
Start hydrating now!
Eat lots of carbs!
(I am so off the wagon with running and my half marathon is in seven weeks and lololol it’s going to be a DISASTER.)
Drink so much water! If anything weird starts hurting it’s almost definitely phantom pains (whenever I am about to run a race some weird part of my body starts twinging and I panic. Do not be me.)
I have not been running a whole lot lately, for reasons that are a little unclear. I did just sign up for a half in July so I’m giving myself a little more time of just sort of running when I feel like it and not worrying about hitting certain mileage before getting back into a real training groove somewhat soon.
I am up to the dreaded week 5 in C25k and am alternating with Zombies, Run! I always dread my C25k days even though I am probably running less those days than the Zombies, Run days.
I’m FINALLY going to see Jupiter Ascending this weekend!! Just heard from a friend that it’s at the $2 theater.
Have so much fun!
YESSSSSSSSSS
I saw The Kingsman yesterday and was rather disappointed, basically by all the ways it wasn’t Jupiter Ascending. I blame the review on (I think) The Mary Sue that compared them.
I haven’t seen it yet. It’s still in one of the full-price theatres here, but the only showtime is 9:45 pm, and I need my beauty sleep. I’m hoping it will show up in the cheap theatre eventually.
Dear Toasties, is anyone watching Elementary? I’m behind but I just watched “The One that Got Away,” which is from the end of January. I’ll put spoilers in a reply.
I live for Joan Watson’s outfits. And JLM is just a dream. His rendition of Sherlock is fantastic.
Joan Watson is amazing. I just wish they’d had enough room in this episode for more of her. And JLM’s inhabiting of Holmes is fascinating; the body language choices he makes are so interesting to me.
YES. I love his hand gestures, the way he holds his body, everything.
I had the wonderful chance to see a broadcast version of the Frankenstein play, where he played the Creature (and Benedict Cumberbatch played Dr. von Frankenstein), and he is a great physical actor.
Also, more Joan, forever. I’d love to see more of her family too.
+1 to all of this
I actually bought a giant sweater to wear around my apartment after reading an interview about Joan’s giant red sweater where the costume designer was like: bathrobes are largely kind of a PITA and I was like, AGREED and bought some XXL dude sweater from Target that was on sale and haven’t looked back.
I’ve had a thing for JLM for years and own a copy of Hackers which I still totally watch on the regular.
Although, let’s be real, Clyde is the real star of the show.
I love that the AV Club’s reviews (which I find largely quite good) have a regular Clyde watch in every one.
SPOILERS for “The One that Got Away,” a.k.a. the end of Kitty’s arc (for the foreseeable future).
I was so relieved with how Kitty’s story played out. There were so many ways it could have gone wrong but I, at least, thought it was very satisfying and threaded delicately through a lot of pitfalls. And the strength of the acting and the slow build over the season made me genuinely unsure what Kitty would do. I’m just sad that she’s off the show for now, because I really liked the emotional room another person in the Holmes-Watson dynamic brought and also her as a person.
(I’ve been vaguely spoiled for subsequent developments, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep them out of replies to me, or at least ROT13 them.)
Toasties who wear full-bust bras! I bought a black Paramour in size 30FF from the Claudette Encore site (it’s new and it’s RIDIC: past-season Claudette bras for $20; undies for $10, AND, through April 3 with the code “launchpromo,” bras are $15 and undies are $5 what even is this magical underwear utopia?!!). Alas, all sales are final, and the Paramour runs large in the cups. This bra will probably fit someone who wears a 30G or possibly a 30GG. I would like to give it away to a busty lady in need! Are YOU that lady?
Also, if you do not wear a 30G or GG, but would like past-season Claudette bras for your very own, the site is here: http://www.loveclaudette.com/shop/. Claudette’s early season sizing is a bit inconsistant, so read reviews before you purchase, or you, too, will be giving your bras away to Toasties.
My two cents on sizing: the early Dessous bands run large, so that’s the American Tan and Mauve. All the Cool Cotton bands run large, and Cool Cotton is tight across the top of the cups. I think the neon Dessous and Dessous Sucre should be pretty standard full-bust sizes, in line with Panache. I’ve heard the Dentelle sizing is tricky. Maybe the cups are super wide-set? Godspeed, fair sisters.
I may in fact be your lady! I typically wear a 30G in Freya and I have one Panache bra that is a 30GG.
This site looks AMAZING.
The American Historical Association has just posted a portrait and an Edison film of Annie Oakley! Yay! http://blog.historians.org/2015/03/flashback-frid…
that is SO COOL! I was Annie Oakley for Halloween two years ago and it’s one of the best costumes I’ve ever put together. Love it!
Hey Toasties! I wasn’t sure this fell into “online dating” so I’m putting it separately. I am still dating the man in an open marriage, and it’s been good, with a few ups and downs more lately, and I’ve been learning to use my words more, useful in all arenas but quite critical to non-monogamous relationships. I had an issue with him mentioning his other dates, and after much anxiety, asked him not to discuss them in front of me; he was okay with that.
So now, during a conversation, I made a joke about how he gets to work out at home with all the stairs and gym, and he made a joke about his sex life contributing to that. Well, that made me pull up a bit. And I feel bad. I think it’s about insecurity … I’m just not sure about insecurity about *what.* He loves his wife and he likes sex; of course they have a sex life. Yet having always known this in my head and including an acknowledgement of it in casual conversation about it makes me feel weird.
What is this? Am I just anxious about sharing this feeling with him and being afraid he interprets it as some kind of serious problem? Am I feeling anxiety about whether I’m doing non-monogamous stuff “right” again? I’ve been reading a book about non-monogamy, and it’s been a huge help in seeing real people with all kinds of different boundaries and rules and what helps make their relationships work for them.
I do not know if this is very helpful, but when people I’m dating mention their other relationships in a casual, matter of fact way, I feel reassured that they are secure in non-monogamy and not trying to hide anything, and that they feel okay sharing their whole self with me. I find it more suspicious when they are obviously going out of their way to self-censor, because then I get stuck on wondering what they are censoring. What crosses the line for me is when they want to discuss their partner’s flaws or problems in the relationship (hi, I’m not your therapist) or they do it in a way that compares me to their other partners (that feels icky to me). Everyone is different though, I think the important thing is figuring out what you’re comfortable with and articulating it.
Oh, I think putting it in that perspective does help — seeing it as an expression of how they feel okay sharing with me (and perhaps not just because I’m one of the people they’re dating, but because they feel genuinely safe around me?). My default setting and instinct seems to be less sharing than not, and expecting the same from others … while I’m okay with that, I also want to look at it closely to see if there’s something different I could also be comfortable doing.
Thanks! 🙂
It might also be possible that since it is so culturally unusual to be in this situation that maybe you have things marked as red flags that aren’t actual red flags in this situation? It has taken us years of being poly before we can really hear that one of our partners is having sexy fun times with someone else without a kind of reflexive anxiety/jealousy reaction in our gut, no matter how much we want to be ‘Oh good for you!’.
Ah, thank you! I think I’ve been unconsciously putting myself on a schedule … like “why aren’t I not reacting at all by now?”
Genuinely, it’s helpful to hear people’s experiences. One of my friends has been encouraging me to find a poly support group, and perhaps I should seek that out more actively. Even if I myself may not end up in a poly relationship, it’s been incredibly interesting and useful to learn about this.
Any long distance relationships out there? I’m in a cross country relationship and it’s been about 4 months now with about 1 visit a month and we’re head over heels and we need to start having a PLAN and it’s destroying my brain to think of all the possible plan permutations. Anyone in the pre having a plan stage? Anyone in the making a plan or implementing the plan stage?
I’m 31 and I’m ready for a serious thing to get hella serious with all the marriage and kids and stuff. I’ve been ready for that since I was 25 in my last two relationships. And one of my friends is i the exact same boat as me (EXACT SAME: guy she knew from her college, and he lives in the same city as my beau with the same name) , except she started about 2 weeks later than me but she’s actually got a plan for when she moves and even how long it will be before they have babies. They used to go out before so it’s slightly different in terms of things, but it’s pretty hard to hear her just racing to the finish line, it makes me competitive and I’m never laid back to start with, so that’s not great.
So I’m going a bit nuts. He knows about it, but as he’s working back to back shifts to cover for the other manager’s vacation we only talk to each other for about 15 minutes a night while he walks straight home from work and goes to bed, it’s not really the ideal time to have the long talk about it.
And I’m not in a rush for all the things to happen RIGHT now, but I just kind of want a sense of where to focus my energies. and flying back and forth is expensive and time consuming and I dunno. It’s all just so many things to hold in my brain. Anyone else there? I’m really happy, I’m having that total inexplicable, “when you know, you know” thing and I just want to pounce on it and pin it down.
I’m in the “implemented the plan” stage, and it’s wonderful! The almost-year I put into implementing the plan was stressful. But it was entirely worth it. In my limited experience, the place to start would be to decide where you want to end up. Will you be moving, will he be moving, will you both be moving to somewhere totally different? Then work forward from there.
Anyway, good luck! I’m very glad you’re happy.
when did you guys end up deciding to have a plan? Was one person the bringer-upper?
Also did you have your serious talks over the phone or did you save them for the in person weekends?
Okay. WHAT is the deal with AirBnB/VRBO?
I’ve been looking for a place for MrChouffe and I to spend our wedding night, and we live in/are getting married in a tourist town so there are a LOT of VRBOs and AirBnB places available. So I’ll find one that looks nice and is reasonably priced, and ask about it, and the quote comes back two or three times as much as the nightly rate quoted. So, for instance, I asked about a place that’s listed at $125/night with $60 cleaning fee. For two nights, with sales tax, that’s $325. Fair enough. But the quote is $519. WHAT. HOW. This is the second or third time that this has happened and I’m starting to think it’s just a huge scam.
this has never happened to me, and I’ve used Airbnb lots. Maybe you are having bad luck?
This sounds super weird. I’ve used AirBnB a ton and never had this problem. There is a booking fee, I think, but it’s never been that huge. Are you searching your exact dates? A lot of places are priced differently depending on the date…
Is there maybe some other event happening in your town at that time that is causing the rates to be jacked up?
Are you looking at listings in a currency that is not your own? I’m Canadian, and I see some funny fluctuations when looking at US listings.
I don’t think so. The listings are for my own town.
That really sucks, I love AirBnb. Some places have taxes charged, and with the listing fee, that could jump it up? Usually there is a breakdown of all the fees associated on the right – maybe that can shed some light?
I dunno, you tell me?
https://m.airbnb.com/listings/4099150
I am getting sick and I went home early (hooray!!!) and I really really hope I don’t have whatever it is that is going around because it seems really bad. My work friend hasn’t had a voice all week, poor thing. Hopefully it’s nothing and I can enjoy my weekend, which I won’t even feel bad about because I’m not getting paid out for any vacation time when I leave because their rules are insane, and I kind of need a mental health day.
What are your home remedies, self care routines, etc. for when you are sick? Spouse is bringing home delicious cheesy burritos for dinner, and I think some cat snuggles and Netflix are on tap….
Whenever I have a crappy throat, I take a coffee mug, fill it with water and a bouillon cube (chicken, preferably!) and microwave it for like two minutes until it turns into the saltiest chicken broth ever and then throw in some club crackers. It is squishy and warm and delicious and doesn’t hurt to eat.
How long until you get to peace out?
April 7 is my last day and I cannot wait.
bubble baths and tea. though not together because overheating.
If I feel a cold coming on I make myself ridiculous homemade tea by simmering ginger, garlic, lemon, cinnamon & a wee bit of pepper flakes. Drink in large quantities with liberal amounts of honey and whiskey in the mug.
Crackers!
Also red wine mixed with orange juice and a dash of cinnamon.
Omg that sounds delicious. Do you drink it warm?
This is going to sound gross, but last time I had the beginnings of a cold I kept eating slices of raw garlic cloves every hour or so and drank as much ginger and lemon tea as I could handle. And ate a lot of whatever made me feel good, and SLEPT. It was kind of amazing for being sick.
Hot water with lemon, honey and ginger, or lemon, maple syrup and ginger, with bonus added alcohol if you do that sort of thing.
Spicy pad thai is my favorite “feel a cold coming on” remedy. Also, if you’re someone who likes naps, I’m a big believer in lots of sleep when you feel you’re coming down with something. (I do not typically nap, so I lay on the couch and watch mindless tv or very familiar movies–sounds like with Netflix you’re set on that front.)
I have had the shittiest week, Toasties.
On one hand, my hair is blue and that is the best thing ever.
On the other hand, when I came home with blue hair my partner of 8 years sat me down to say that he’s not really sure if we’re still compatible and doesn’t know if we’re still working as a relationship. He says he loves me and wants to work on it and figure it out, but he is also surprised that I did not see this coming. I thought we were in a bit of a slump because of outside things giving both of us hard times.
So, yeah, shitty shitty week. I am confused and sad and also angry. And torn between being angry and not letting slide anymore the little things I was letting slide when I thought he was being absent and depressed for non-me reasons, or trying harder to be pleasant supportive awesome girlfriend person. Because I want this, I want him in my life and I don’t want this relationship to go anywhere but FFS.
So that’s where I’m at this week!
Oh no! I’m so sorry! That sounds awful and heart-wrenching. Is couples therapy an option?
maybe? I don’t know if we’re there yet? It is hard because he is bad at saying what is actually the problem, right now he says he feels really distant from me and my response is ‘duh, because you have been busy and full of angst and also legitimate stressors for the last 9 months, and also for all of 2014 I was clinically depressed and unmedicated and unemployed.’
So basically right now we are making an effort to spend more time together doing fun things and trying to talk out some little things that have built up in the daily grind of an 8 year relationship between very different people.
I think he is interpreting a temporary slump based on reasonable circumstances as a horrible relationship decline. But, hard to convince him that his feelings are wrong. Augh.
I think that often once you feel like you’re “there” for therapy, you’re already too late. I would suggest it sooner rather than later.
Seconded. Everyone can benefit from therapy. Even when they are happy, well-adjusted, very fine communicators. Therapy is like rest. The minute you think “Maybe I need some”, you have evidence that you needed it long before this and get to it already.
Thirded, while nodding vigorously.
Absolutely agree with Momthra. Although my life now is (with hindsight) a lot better for me than when I was in my last long-term relationship, for a long time I wished with all my heart that we’d gone to relate when he first started having doubts – also at the 8 year mark. As it was we talked about it and it turned out we both came away with totally different ideas of what we’d said and what we were going to do from then on, and then 2 years later he left for good, and although we did do relate then, he had made his mind up and I felt he was going through the motions rather than really trying to fix things.
We did the opposite I think – both tried to convince ourselves that it was external influences and daily grind, when in fact there were some real things that needed sorting out. If we’d done it properly then, who knows what would have happened, but I don’t think it would have ended like it did.
Ohh noo, that’s terrible! (not the blue hair part, the other part). I had a similar experience almost exactly a year ago (April 4th! Mark your calendars!), but I don’t have really any advice to add except, as Momthra said, get thee to counseling sooner rather than later, if you can. Regardless of whether he comes with you, it could help you deal with (what sounds to me like) the betrayal you’re feeling, and how to deal with how to work at it without feeling resentful that he would just spring this on you and then just make you deal with it (…or maybe I’m projecting).
ha, nope. not projecting. Those are pretty accurate feels.
…I guess some sort of counselling is a thing that should happen. I have a shrink, but he’s more ‘let me suggest the appropriate drugs for your issues’.
Ugh, I had the same response from my own psychiatrist – the first thing she said when I told her what was happening was “I think maybe we should double your antidepressant dose” and I was like, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be sad right now? I understand that it shouldn’t take over my life, but I still want to feel some feelings. So then it made me feel like I couldn’t trust her to tell me what feelings/behaviors were normal and which ones were warning signs. Plus she was super-judgy about drinking. So I stopped going. So…do as I say, not as I do? :/
Oh no! It sounds a bit like you needed a different psychiatrist/psychotherapist? You should totally have one that you feel you can trust to share with.
oh that wasn’t even really a criticism…I went to this guy, said hey, this is what’s up in my head how do I fix?
He asked if I was willing to try medication and my response was a resounding Hell Yes. I am on an antidepressant and an ADD drug and it is glorious and my life is infinitely improved.
I like him, and he has also given me practical real life help, but he just is not who I would go to for relationship counselling stuff at all. Not really his wheelhouse, I don’t think. I was referred to him specifically because he is familiar with adult ADD.
Well, that’s a much better experience! Yay! (relatively speaking).
I’m so sorry! (not for the hair, the hair is amazing)
If it helps, my SO and I went through something similar around year 7/8. I ended up going to therapy to deal with a bunch of shit I wasn’t dealing with and we talked, A LOT, and things are going well. Sending you all my hugs and love.
Yay blue hair! Boo SO suddenly breaking this news… although I am very glad he broke the news as a ‘We need to work on this’ and not as a decision he had already made. But confused and sad and angry, oh yes.
For my own personal reasons I get a little nose-wrinkly when I hear the ‘I feel distant from you.’ Because that is not an actual issue or a concern, that is a feeling. I definitely second/third/fourth the suggestions for couples therapy.
Oh that is rotten. I’ve been there in the past and one thing I wish I had not done was when I became the lawyer for our relationship’s defense. I spent a lot of time defending our relationship when my partner had doubts and it was exhausting and I don’t know your partner, but mine was looking to me as the person to hold his hand and solve his doubts and maintain the closeness and so on- like…he feels distant and you don’t and so you become the person trying to push your confidence across the table to them. If your feelings haven’t significantly changed you aren’t really going to be able to talk the other person back into your space, they have to bring themselves back.
It was SO rotten being asked to try and convince him I was the “one”. And this is not what I hope for you at all and I’m not even sure if it’s the right thing to say, but it hurt a lot less getting over the break-up than being in the winds of ambivalence (it was basically six months of “oh yes lets look at engagement rings, oh wait are we compatible? Maybe I am not the marrying kind, J/K, lets plan to move in together.” and it was HORRIBLE.). He’s allowed to have feelings, of course, but I have strong feelings about the kind of person who comes holding their distance in their hands to you and is like, “solve it for me!” instead of them just being like, “I feel distant so I’m going to do something nice for them and get back in connection.” My ex was the one who stopped trying to do things for our relationship and then he was also the one who was like, “why isn’t this awesome anymore?!” and I think those things are DEFINITELY related (better to give than receive, etc). So just… be wary of that urge to talk the other person into staying or being the person who does all the work. It’s better not to have a great argument for why they should stay being the only thing keeping them with you.
You want him to realize what he’d lose. In fact, it goes counter to what you probably feel right now, but my friend whose husband was like, “I think I need to leave you!”- she kicked him out of the house. And having to be out of the house for 2 weeks made him realize how much he’d been failing to appreciate the family he had it. It was a real wakeup call and he came back to her like, “oh shit I was dumb.” Going on a “rekindling” trip is the other option, but it puts a lot of pressure on you both and I would definitely not recommend that without therapy first.
I’m not the OP, but I just wanted to say thanks for your comment – it helped clarify some things I’ve got going on at the moment.
I’m sorry about your shitty week, Rianne. I have no useful advice, I am in this thread learning from what people told you! But…solidarity, I guess?
Toast-related question: has anyone found an extension for firefox that blocks video/slideshow ads and works? I’ve tried loads and none stop the ads bogging down my Toast experience.
Does AdBlock not work for Firefox? It is very effective for Chrome. And I use it while making a monthly payment to The Toast. It’s only fair.
You can just turn off Flash on The Toast. Click the little lego block button to the left of the address bar, then click “Block Plugin.”
I agree with RoseCamelia that a monthly payment is a nice thing to do to compensate.
Thanks! Making contributions was the plan. Adblock doesn’t always remember to block the Toast if I refresh or something, which is annoying and possibly related to my office firewall? Turning off flash worked great!
Ad block plus should do it. There is also Flash block, or the nuclear option, Noscript (which you will have to allow a bunch of things to see things like comments). With some of those, you should be able to right-click a web element and block it individually.
I love adblock plus, I have it and haven’t had any issues on Toast.
yes – I use Adblock Plus and Ghostery – between them they make the internet much quieter! Ghostery is easy to set to allow the comments to work but basically nothing else. I def throw money at things I love.
I had food poisoning last night and threw up on a sidewalk…as people walked by. As a non-drinker, this is the first time I’ve vomited in public since the age of 8. Please share your embarrassing vomiting in public stories to make me feel better.
I vomited in a children’s playground. It was a nice playground, the kind where people are affluent and communal enough to leave toys in the playground deliberately. Although I did not throw up on the toys.
Sorry, children.
While I was studying abroad in college I got drunk and puked all over my bed, and because I was too drunk to deal with it I just threw away all my bedding. It was very difficult to explain when they did the post-semester dorm inspection at the end of the semester.
Oh god this happened to a friend of mine while we were studying abroad except that my program placed everyone with host families and also it was like our second night in the country. I still don’t know how he explained the situation to his nice Italian host mom.
I sang in a fairly well-regarded chamber choir in high school. Usually we had 45-50 performances a year, lots of clinics and competitions and stuff. High stakes, or at least they certainly seemed that way at 15.
One clinic that we did every year was across town at Michigan State. Usually 8-10 schools from the region would show up. The university choir director would work with each group in front of the others so we could all take lessons from each other. It worked, mostly.
So it’s 1997, I’m a junior in high school, I am NOT part of the cool kids’ club. We show up for clinic an hour or so before it’s supposed to start and I grab an egg biscuit thing and orange juice from the Wendy’s in the MSU Union and scarf it down. I don’t think we were in uniform that day–probably just our sweatshirts and jeans rather than full-on formalwear, which is lucky!
It’s our choir’s turn. We file up onto the risers and get through our two or three songs. I am feeling distinctly ill at this point, I’m not one for stage fright or performance nerves so it’s really kind of fucking with me, but I lock my knees and stay upright. I make eye contact with the accompanist and her eyes got really big. My director, cold bitch that she was, did not notice that I was turning a remarkable shade of green. The MSU director finally nudged her, pointed to me, and whispered “Is she all right?” At that point my director motioned to me that I could sit down, and I gratefully sank to the riser…
…only to leap up thirty seconds later as the projectile vomiting started. I managed to nearly make it to the side hallway before it really hit badly. Nearly.
One of the other high school’s directors found me in the bathroom ten minutes later, sobbing, and handed me a little bottle of Listerine, and I think that was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me at that point in my life. My director did not acknowledge me for the rest of the day.
I once had to stop at a Walmart for emergency tampons (road trip problems) and waited in line for the bathroom. It smelled so bad in the room, and there was only one stall, so a 9 year old girl and I stood in line with our shirts pulled over our faces waiting for the stall. About 10-15 minutes later I heard a toilet flush (finally! the only sound we’d heard) and when the woman came out of the stall she said “something is wrong with that toilet” and walked out, no hand washing or anything. I went to go into the stall and found it covered in shit. Walls, toilet paper dispenser, everything was covered in runny poop. I was so grossed out I ran out the front of the store and vomited in the doorway. The security guard asked if I was ok and I told him to check the women’s room.
Pretty much everything gross makes me vomit, but I’m not usually in public when it happens.
When I was 13 I spent the summer in Romania to visit family. My godmother worked as a tour guide during the summer and she was going to take me on a trip to Greece. I was so excited, but the day before we were supposed to leave, I came down with a mysterious stomach ailment – I threw up everything I swallowed, even water, and every now and then even though I hadn’t eaten anything lately I would randomly barf up some bile. Apart from that I felt perfectly fine.
That evening my mom took me along on a social call, and on the way she said that maybe I shouldn’t go on the trip to Greece since I was sick. I was so upset at this prospect that I decided the best thing to do was to start skipping down the street. Nobody who is skipping merrily down the street can possibly be sick, right? I made it a few feet before I had to stop and barf all over a parked car.
This was the first of many instances of me being nauseous before trips – turns out it’s just psychosomatic. Thanks, anxiety!
Did you get to go??
I did and it was great!
I got norovirus on the way home from a ski trip once and made my then-boyfriend pull over so I could vomit into a Wawa bag on the side of Route 287 as people drove past and honked. It was definitely peak embarrassing. 🙁 I hope you are feeling better!
I’m definitely feeling better! But man oh man was it a rough 8 hours. My mom brought me ginger ale, Jello, plain boring white bread, AND a coloring book! I love moms.
I was flying into Seattle and for whatever reason got motion sick on the flight. I think it was because the plane was really hot. Anyways, I held it together valiantly the entire flight, but then I had to get on the light rail to get to Seattle proper. Held it together the entire train ride, got to the destination, and then the train shuddered. Violently. To. A. Stop. That pushed me over the edge and I started puking into a bag that I thankfully had emptied earlier. The worst part was I was still heaving when the conductor came over and was like, “This is the last stop, you have to get off NOW.” as I continued to expel bile. So I staggered off the train and finished my business in a trash can, in front of all the people who had just gotten off and were getting on the departing train. Fun!
I got food poisoning once in sophomore year of college– I had gone right from the dining hall to the library, where disaster struck. I spent 20 minutes vomiting in the library bathroom, then leapfrogged from trash can to trash can, vomiting in each one on the way out the door. The worst was that it was a Sunday early afternoon and I was so sure everyone thought I was hungover/still drunk. There were certain library employees I could never talk to ever again.
I have also rolled down a car window to vomit, but that’s just courtesy I think.
When I was a little kid, I once got motion sickness and threw up on the sidewalk as soon as I got out of the car. Then bees swarmed me.
Help I can’t stop laughing. Your poor child self!
Ugh. Poor thing! Food poisoning is the worst.
I had bad reactions to birth control pills when I was in my mid-20s but I didn’t want to deal with stopping them, so I suffered through nausea the first three to four days of every new pill cycle for several months. I got pretty used to vomiting in public. I only missed the toilet, once, though, thanks to nimble feet, some rude shoving, and timing my pill-taking so I knew I would be getting out of class just about the time the worst of it hit.
I actually created a new username to share this slightly related embarrassing story. But over Christmas I had food poisoning, or who knows what. I woke up at 2am, and was vomiting for hours. My boyfriend came over in the morning, and while half asleep I seriously shit myself. I had to go take a shower to wash my own diarrhea off me. It was a frontier I wouldn’t have minded never crossing in my relationship. So girl, don’t feel bad about the sidewalk.
Hope you are feeling better!!
Wow, that’s intense. I pee my pants every time I throw up. I was rapidly running out of underwear/pajama pants by the time it ended.
I got amazingly, epically drunk at a Proclaimers show. (They put on a great live show! I’m serious!) There was a cute Scottish boy that I started talking to at the show — which I *never* do — and my friend who was the designated driver agreed (offered? was coerced by me? I don’t remember) to drive him home too. He sat in the back seat and somehow I ended up sneakily putting my hand back behind my seat and holding hands with him? Then suddenly I had to barf out the window. I was very embarrassed and disappointed to have lost the chance to see the Scottish boy again.
In retrospect, he was from Scotland; he was probably used to drunk barfing people. I did check Craigslist Missed Connections for a few weeks after, just in case.
OMG. I had just finished a great dinner with my parents in Charlottetown, PEI where I had a glorious spinach salad, and I began to feel kind of iffy. We got in the car to drive back to the hotel and I was visibly white and trembling and sweating, my dad thought I had appendicitis or something, and we were driving through downtown Charlottetown when we stopped at a light and I had to vault from the backseat and vomit onto the front steps of a huge Baptist church. Oops.
My dad got out and handed me a bottle of water. Luckily itw as night and there were no churchgoers around, but…..worst.
I barfed in front of my now-husband in a parking garage stairwell, shortly after a full meal at Fresh Choice. The jicama in particular was still distinctly visible.
At age ten, in church, on Easter Sunday, standing behind the altar with the rest of the choir at 9AM Mass, facing a congregation of some 700 people. I mostly remember the incident for my complete lack of embarrassment and the fact that I felt fine the rest of the day and was allowed to eat my chocolates.
I got drunk (seriously drunk, involving vomiting and a hangover) once at university (at my college’s annual English Society dinner; I was grumpy, and had far too much wine/port). Upon getting back to my house, I found myself feeling ill enough that I threw up in the kitchen bin, in front of various friends, while one held my hair back (and my boyfriend just stayed on the other side of the room making porridge, damn him). Not my proudest moment.
I cannot find my keys anywhere. The set that has my car keys, house keys, and desk key on it. This is especially infuriating, because while I’m not the world’s neatest person I very rarely lose anything, and because I KNOW THEY MUST BE IN THE HOUSE SOMEWHERE. I went grocery shopping on Sunday (while my boyfriend was also out, so I know that I had to have had my own keys), and therefore must have had my keys in order to drive myself back from the grocery store and let myself back into the house. I distinctly remember having them in my hands as I walked up to the house because I locked the car door remotely. And now they are just gone. I haven’t been able to find them since then, and it is driving me crazy. They must be in the house. I checked the trash, the refrigerator, the grocery bags, the couch cushions… I’m baffled.
Coat/pants pockets? My boyfriend loses his wallet approximately 17 times a day and it is always in the pocket of whatever pair of pants he was wearing the last time he left the house.
Sadly, I was wearing a skirt and the same coat I always wear… they are definitely not there.
Freezer? Cupboard, behind something you put away from the store?
Is there shrubbery outside your door they could have fallen into while you were walking in? Is there any way you could have left them in the door?
I once found missing keys hidden in a boot. Did you take off your shoes right away?
“Tony, Tony, look around, something is lost, and it must be found”
3x.
It’s Catholic St. Anthony mojo, and it always, always works (and I’m not catholic anymore by a long shot).
I have decided just in the last hour that tonight is going to be a treat myself night with thai delivery and a new book (my local feminist bookstore/sex toy shop is having a sale and it’s my pay day, so it’s perfect). This feels like a good decision.
Toasties! Anyone ever been to Aberdeen in Scotland? I just got accepted to graduate school there and I am wondering about what it’s like.
Also, I have a phone interview with another school in the UK on Tuesday! What should I be doing to prepare? Also, I think I should have some questions prepared to ask him, but I don’t even know where to start. Grad school interview tips and tricks anybody? Thank you!
Congrats!!
Ahh, congratulations! I have no useful advice but I am just starting out on the path of applying to grad schools in the UK and Ireland so it is very exciting to hear that someone is succeeding in that goal! What are you planning to study? How did you research programs? I know you wanted to get advice rather than give it but I would love to hear any tips you might have!
Yessss do it! I’ve been working for three years and contemplating going back to school, and then this past Fall I visited my friend in London who went to UCl for his Master’s and he was like “COME HERE!” I’m applying for international relations programs, and I basically just googled the best ranked universities in the UK, and looked at all of their IR programs, and came up with a list of schools. The great thing is you don’t have to take the GRE, and in most cases, don’t have to pay an application fee. It also seems like they get back to you rather quickly; I just started submitting applications two weeks ago and I’ve already been accepted into one program and have an interview with another. Good luck!
Ahh, that is a very similar situation! I just got invited to chaperone a university literature class trip to Ireland with a former professor and when I got there it was like HOLY SHIT WHY AM I NOT LIVING HERE AND WRITING ABOUT BOOKS?! So I decided on the spot that I needed to get over my insecurities and make that dream a reality. 🙂 I want to get a PhD in *probably* Anglo-Irish literature and then use it to TEACH and inspire young humans as I have been taught and inspired.
Are you applying for Masters or PhD programs? For Fall 2016? or this fall? Because if there is hope of making it this fall instead of having to wait a WHOLE YEAR I want to know!
GOOD NEWS: I’m applying for programs beginning this coming September! The application deadlines aren’t normally until July, but I would encourage you to start applying NOW if you want to go this year. The earlier you apply, the better chance you have of getting in. Start now! Do it! Applications have been pretty easy for me: just uploading transcript, degree, and a personal statement, and providing two academic references. Easy peazy!
Excellent! Are they for Masters programs or a PhD? Are you looking at scholarships at all or trying to get funding? I AM A BOTTOMLESS WELL OF QUESTIONS.
But this is very exciting! Looks like I might have to get everything together a little faster than I though! 😀
I’m looking at Master’s programs, because I’m not trying to get into academia as a profession. I definitely plan on applying for scholarships once I decide what school I’ll be going to- but I have some money saved up from working for three years, and whatever else I need, I’ll take out a loan for. Master’s programs are normally only 1 year, so I’ll be back out in the working world in no time!
Ah yes, a literature PhD is not such a sound financial investment, so I might have to wait after all. All the scholarship programs I’m looking at operate on frustratingly long timelines!
But that is so exciting that you will definitely be going! This year! One of my best friends is finishing up a Masters in Creative Advertising in Edinburgh now and she LOVES it. I am sure that no matter where in the UK you end up you will have a blast! Keep us updated. 🙂
No experience, but I just moved back from Edinburgh in January and have tonnes of friends from Aberdeen! I can crowd source info for you if you’d like.
Congrats!
That would be great! The internet is telling me mixed things. “It’s beautiful and fun!” and also “it’s a depressing shithole”. I trust Toast internet more than the regular internet 🙂 I love Edinburgh! I applied there for school too, but am still waiting to hear back.
If you get in, gooooooooo and I will tell you everything. I miss it every second of every day.
I have heard both of those things. There is a lot of money floating around Aberdeen because of all the oil, but it is grey. Like, constantly. However, everybody I know from there is lovely and good fun and enjoyed their time there immensely, so there’s that.
JEALOUS!
Oh so jealous! I have been to Aberdeen (specifically to see Ladytron at The Tunnels). If there’s ever a band you like playing there: GO. You will feel like some variety of hipster hobbit.
The train ride up the eastern coast is absurdly gorgeous. If you don’t care much for the town there are a bunch of places within an easy train or bus journey. I went to St Andrews, but I’m putting in a plug for Dundee instead as I ended up spending more of my leisure time there anyhow. If you’re ever inclined, you can go to an indie dance night in a semi-rundown Victorian library building.
I’m replying super-late (an early evening reading of the OT with a mimosa in hand) but I know you’ll get an e-mail notification about it nonetheless! I actually did a semester at the University of Aberdeen in 2010. I loved it! The university is gorgeous and the city itself has some really beautiful areas. It’s a fairly wealthy town (oil money!) so it’s been spared the depression that a lot of Scotland has been hit with in recent decades. I loved it – it’s not as shiny and touristy as Edinburgh, but it’s honest and hard-working and still has lots of beautiful areas (of which AU is definitely one, if that’s where you’re headed). It’s also an easy spot to access both Edinburgh (two or so hours by train and tickets can be as cheap as 6 pounds if you book in advance) and the highlands. I would definitely seriously consider it!
Oh also! This week I went to a workshop at the above-mentioned feminist sex shoppe about the art of feminine dominance, and one of the exercises was to list all of your power femme icons (sexual and non-sexual, basically any powerful/strong women) for inspiration. At the top of my list were Beyonce´, Ursula from the Little Mermaid, and Black Widow. Tell me, open-threaders who are still around, who would yours be?
Definitely Beyonce and the Black Widow. Ooooh, and also the Woman from Sherlock and Stella from The Fall.
Miss Fisher, Granny Weatherwax, Maleficent (from a fashion/sexy point of view).
I was waiting for the sports thread for this but as I don’t see a sports thread, I’ll just do it myself.
National Women’s Hockey League!!! Coming this fall to the US north-east! There’s a team within easy driving distance from me! I am very excited! I had been hoping for a CWHL team in New York, but this is even better, particularly as they have plans to actually pay the players.
(Also, the timing for this is perfect as my men’s team is running away from home this fall to go live with hipsters in Brooklyn. I’ll still have a Long Island hockey team!)
This is great! Thanks for sharing! I hope they’re able to expand, as the teams are all at least a several hours drive or a flight away from me.
I’m SO EXCITED. I am no longer in the northeast, boo, but will be following from afar!
All the feminist hockey ladies I know want a Riveters shirt real bad … and I am no different.
Why is there no team in Chicago?
<sniffle>
Hello Toast! So I just decided that I want to throw caution to the winds and go to graduate school (to get a PhD! in literature!), since all I have ever really wanted to do is teach and I am tired of trying to deny that to myself. Since I missed all the deadlines for this year, I would be applying for Fall 2016. Any advice or words of wisdom and encouragement to share?
I am a little worried about the whole endeavour because 1) I have been working in the highly non-academic field of software marketing for the past 3 years, 2) I never did any major research as an undergraduate, and 3) I fear I won’t be able to come up with an original thesis (I want to write about Villette I think and the Bröntes are all so Written About it’s very intimidating). So tell me your stories! Impart your wisdom!
Almost everyone in my grad school class (not literature) did something else before coming back to grad school, mostly unrelated jobs, and it was fine. Honestly, having some experience of not-school made it a little easier in some ways because you have experience that not everything has to be A+ perfect always and you know how to be more self-reliant.
You are going to have to write about what you want to look at for your thesis in your application, so I would suggest reading some recent articles about Villette and the Brontes now, so you can see what people are saying about it now and think about why what you want to say about it is different and important. I have found, in my experience and in talking to friends, that if you have a good reason for doing the degree and you can write about it well, you will do great!
Thanks so much!
You are VERY inspiring. We would also love to go to grad school for a PhD in literature and teach, but we have so far been too frightened to try to commit to it, especially with small children. So go you! I hope you share the process!
Aww, thank you! I am currently feeling less inspiring and more in need of inspiration. 🙂 I have been wanting this for a long time but have been too frightened to commit until just a few weeks ago when I realized it’s Just What I Need To Do. And I don’t even have small children to contend with! I will do my best to share!
Like I said earlier, a friend’s subtle suggestion made me instantly realize I SHOULD go to library school and get my master’s. I realized that I WAS a frustrated librarian and had been for a good long while.
Most of my classmates were older people changing careers. I was in my mid 20s and my journalism BA had been a bust, but I was still there for a change too. And I often felt like I was the one person not getting it, the one person struggling or doubting themselves, and NOPE! And when you’re in the middle of it you might feel lost, so…keep going. You’ve set out, so finish the damn thing. After all–this is what you know you’re supposed to be doing with your talents!
Oh man, I identify with that so much. I decided I needed to 100% for sure go to grad school when one of my former professors invited me to chaperone a trip to Ireland and let me teach a book while I was there and after leading the discussion I just felt more…alive…than I had in a really long time. There is totally a frustrated teacher in me waiting to be let out!
Thanks so much for the encouragement! It’s so exciting to finally have a direction and a dream again. I’ve been wallowing in marketing for too long.
I don’t know if you already have a master’s in something but my practical advice for graduate school for everyone is that it’s never too early to start any of the processes, all the bureaucratic stuff.
Nope, just a BA! Which bureaucratic stuff? I have been starting to talk to former professors about recommendations and such, and doing lots of research into scholarship programs and the like, but is there something else I should start on this far out?
Studying for the GRE! That was the most terrifying aspect for me, because I’d been out for 10 years, and high school had been 20, and I failed trig then. Passing the GRE was such an accomplishment. Also find out what the averages are for the schools you want to attend, so you know what scores you need to earn to get into the schools you want, and can set a goal.
Also, grad school is all about picking who you want to work with in the department of the school you want to go to. Start researching professors you’d want to study under, that makes a huge difference (at least in geography, which is what I did). And I was an undergrad english major., so switching majors is totally doable.
I was gonna say getting the recommendations because they can be anywhere in the world when you need them to send you a letter to complete your application. Yes, looking at your funding too. I’d add transcripts. You might need to prove you have up to date immunizations and yes, the GRE. Now, I took it in 2001, I have no idea what it’s like now, but there are certain dates you can take it and you can end up in a bind if you haven’t booked an appointment yet while another deadline is approaching (your school might require that a new student start in the fall semester, for example).
Basically you’ll multitask a bunch of pains in the ass on the way to your first class, but you’re not gonna hurt anything by having a head start.
http://grooveshark.com/s/Like+Spinning+Plates/4g7…
“since all I have ever really wanted to do is teach”
Agggh, please don’t get a Ph.D. for this reason. The job market is horrific.
Maybe get a Master’s in your spare time and teach some community college courses? Unless you are top of your class at Yale, seriously, you’re going to spend 6-10 years poor in exchange for a less than 1% chance of a reasonable job.
If you have to do it, only do it if it is fully paid for by others.
@catoclock, I would LOVE to give you this bra! Hurray! How can I get in touch with you to get your address? (I’m assuming you don’t want to post it publicly on the internets). I don’t have Twitter (I know, I know). What’s the best way to do the address exchange? I can put the bra in the mail on Monday!
Email me! catoclock.toast at gmail. If it doesn’t fit, I’ll try to find another Toastie to pass it on to!
This will get super buried and I don’t care because I have to say it: I am temping with my old job and suddenly not giving a shit what people think of me and focusing on “Just get my shit done because it needs to be done and I don’t care if you whine” has made me SUPER EFFECTIVE but when I’m not making people do things my way I’m still friendly and there is a great balance of “packedsuitcase means business” and “packedsuitcase is awesome and will help if she possibly can” and I love it.
UGH Can we talk about the totally bullshit Kleiner Perkins/Ellen Pao verdict? “Oh, so, we had meetings where we didn’t invite any women, and we had meetings at strip clubs, and we had a dude who regularly showed up at his coworkers’ hotel rooms and tried to rape them, but we definitely didn’t discriminate against Ellen Pao specifically.” Please share your rage with me.
FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
YES I SHARE YOUR RAGE
Oh godDAMmit. Fuck.
Toasts! I need help. Two weeks ago my grad school advisor and supervisor (2 different people) pushed me to commit to helping with a big project this summer that is tangentially related to my dissertation, even though they knew I really wanted an internship but did not have an offer for one yet. I agreed to help with the project, but today I got an internship offer after a great phone interview and I really want to take it. Now I need to have a meeting with my advisor and supervisor and explain why I changed my mind and beg them to let me do the internship instead.
Do any of you have stories of a time when you stood up to your boss or advisor to do what was best for you, even though it might go against what they want?
Yes — I mean, I don’t want to raise false hopes in case your advisers don’t respond as nicely but I’m also hoping that this story will help you feel less nervous about it.
I was desperate for a part time job to help with my last unfunded year of PhD so I ended up working a bit for my old boss (an antiquarian bookdealer I’d worked for before when I was younger) and then out of the blue, a university called me up to teach a class* — a job that would actually be helpful for my career. But I couldn’t hold down two part-time jobs and finish my thesis. So I asked my boss if he could release me from his job I’d signed up for and he was all ‘Of course! The job I offered you was just for money. You should definitely go for that. If you could just do the days you’ve already signed up to do, I’ll find someone else to take your place.’ If they care about you (which as supervisor and adviser they should do) then they should be fine with you going for what is better for you.
Also one thing you can do to feel less nervous about it is find someone to replace you yourself and say ‘Look I’m sorry I can’t do this job now but here’s someone who can and I can vouch for her as being good.’ I think it will be hard for them to be that pissed off with you if you presented them with an alternative.
*I was the second choice for a post they advertised and another came up.
Speaking as a PhD supervisor, I feel super sensitive about putting my students’ needs first. I would be disappointed if I was your supervisor (as presumably they could use your help on the project) but would totally not feel that my student was wrong to take the internship. So don’t feel you have to grovel, even though it’s right to aplogise, of course.
Wow, only 2 pages, but TONS of comments, and I’m not too late this week.
Lacrosse: I have some email troll threatening to “report me to my IP provider as spam” because apparently his provider is sending him emails meant for someone on our team parent list. It’s incredible how horrible a totally meaningless threat can be even when you know it can’t actually amount to anything.
The team: no more NEW injuries. Some pissy bitch MS teacher (one of the ones all three of my kids have had and I hate) is also the track coach, and snitty, and tattles on us if we use the high school turf because (insert mean girls voice) “you’re not a school sport and we are”. A male basketball coach asked me why we weren’t on it and went ballistic when I told him. He was all like “Go over their head! Call the superintendent” but I can’t. We are like the orphan child of the sports program in that we use the school but the school board hasn’t made us official yet, so we rate last in facilities privileges. He’s the one who clued me in on who was tattling, though. I am just astonished every week at how much support I get from the male coaches.
And I remember why I hated going to an all-girls high school and why I always hung out at my cousin’s all-male one. (not for dating, just for relief from backbiting mean girls crap–the boys would just beat each other up and be good the next day). We have a week off for spring break so no coaching, which means I have to catch up on chores, house repairs, and my feminist archaeology presentation for the AAG in April.
My 14 year old boy is going to break up with his girlfriend, and is pretty sad about it. I think he’s doing it for the right reasons but it’s his first girlfriend so, awwww. Mom will take him out for consolation hot fudge when it happens, I think. (that’s what I did when he fought the school board and lost, too).
The 11 year old is testing for her brown belt soon. She is determined NOT to quit at brown like both her brothers. She’s in 6th grade, and worried that “I won’t have time to be done, there is so much to learn and I want to get my black belt before college, mom”. I’m not worried, nor is sensei.
18 year old got a LOT of aid for next year. SO cross fingers he does well this semester and he keeps his honors scholarship. I think this school is really good for him, he’s just having a tough adjustment, I think.
I got my first grad school loan bill. $344 a month? ha. My kids are on free lunches, I make so little!!! I will be calling and working out a different payment plan because that’s not possible.. Does anybody here know the difference between the two income-based payment options on student loans?
Are there any toasties going to AAG in Chicago in April?
edited to add: I love love love all of my kids’ teachers, I know teaching is a hard job, but this particular teacher has butted heads with me with every.single.kid of mine and really, if you could have heard her voice when she came in and stole the gym away from our team (and in front of my team, instead of warning me ahead of time or in the locker room), you would understand why this particular teacher is getting that designation, and not in the “I honor the bitch I am” sort of way.
I’m paying just slightly less on mine and, yeah, it’s kinda….holding me in place. Single, childless, but I sure ain’t buying a car that needs payments. Or, you know, moving. I’m not sure what’s better and I’ve seen the offers lately on changing the payment structure, which made me nervous like those “lock in your gas rate now……or take what the market decides…..CHOOSE NOW!”, but, you know, on the scale of thousands and thousands of dollars.
So, I don’t know either yet, but if anyone *else* here knows…. I know that right now I can’t afford the next level, whenever that kicks in. “Surely you’re making much more money by now, you’re so old!” Honey, I ain’t. So tell HR at (county redacted) to throw me that offer I’ve been waiting to hear…so I can fucking stop hearing Soul Asylum’s “Somebody To Shove” in my head, because I don’t like that.
I wasn’t fighting with my mom at 14 but I wasn’t close with her either. It’s nice you’ve got that rapport.
Thanks. I’ve tried hard to let my kids know I’m safe to talk to but still a grown up. With an abusive dad they need to that know I’m safe and I will listen. Today I was thinking a lot about how the next time he’s arrested for beating up his girlfriend I want to be able to support myself and not have to be dependent on him for anything, ever. I’m nowhere close.
I understand about the holding in place. I’m stuck in this place until the above happens or they turn 18, and it’s cost my in my education and career (were it not for him, I wouldn’t have these loans in the first place, because he kept me from attending the school that would have given me full funding). Anyway, I’ve paid off loans before, just, never alone. And not on what I’m making now with rent this high.
And the car…yup. I’m driving my dad’s hand-me-down and it has a bad starter and no antilock brakes.
Holy crap. Take out spousal support and I’m making less than I did when working retail in the 90’s when I was 25. I should not have done that math.
Now, are you working in what you went back to school for yet?
I got a job within 2 weeks of graduation in my field (GIS) but not in what I would really dream of doing (geoarchaeology or GPR). Unfortunately the job is only half time with promises of full time, and it’s a government job, which means minimum tech and software upgrades. My bosses are great, though, and I keep networking with lots of local professional groups. I’d have a zillion more job options if I could move even 2 hours south, though.
I just want to share this Teletubbies-as-Joy-Division version of “Atmosphere” http://www.ifc.com/fix/2015/03/teletubbies-nightm… Perhaps you can picture the BabySunFace singing “Candidate” too.
I LOVE THAT! so creepy, so awesome.
What would he do with Sisters of Mercy?
Are you saying that the soundtrack for “The World’s End” scratched you behind the ears too?
“All music that isn’t score in World’s End was released between 1987-92.” I read that little preview from Simon Pegg and got a bit faint.
I own half that soundtrack already in dying cd’s, lol. I’ve been know to make my kids listen to Sisters of Mercy on long car trips. But yes, that soundtrack!
fun note: I told my kids when they asked why I wasn’t dating after my divorce, that I didn’t know what kind of guy I liked, I hadn’t dated since the 80’s. Then I saw young Gary King. I remember my type.
He’s definitely a type.
Yeah, doesn’t work so much at 40+, as the movie emphasizes! I guess I better go window shop…..
Late to the thread but…
Some of you know that I was really worried about how few hours I was working at my job because I find it difficult to motivate myself at home without external pressure if I’m not that interested in the work. So I decided to go to my boss (who is about 30 yrs older than me but nevertheless is also a friend) and say to him that I’m sorry I haven’t been doing many hours and is there any chance I could come into the office because I’m finding it hard to work at home. And I had the BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME. Conversation went like this:
Me: Listen I feel I owe you an apology.
Boss: What? Why?
Me: Well I haven’t been doing many hours so I’m being quite slow. I mean I’m fast when I’m working but I’m not doing enough.
Boss: That’s good for me. I’d rather pay you over a longer period of time than pay a lot at once. There’s no hurry.
Me: Oh okay, well thank you so much that’s good to hear. But I was just wondering whether I could possibly come into the office. I think I’d be more productive then.
Boss: Of course — if that helps.
Me: Are you sure? It’s just you asked me to work from home.
Boss: Well that’s because I thought I should pay transport costs. And it takes a while for you to get in. Right so shall we go for dinner?
Me: But…we haven’t had our meeting yet.
Boss: Oh, well do you have anything to report? I just wanted to catch up over dinner.
I HAVE THE BEST BOSS. So relieved and happy.
Yay for excellent bosses, and for having the gumption to approach them about things that aren’t working! Well done!
He sounds amazing!
Clone him! Don’t be selfish. Think of the rest of us.
This is late enough that I don’t know if anyone will see it, but I am filled with impotent rage. My dear friend in the process of extricating herself and her toddler from an abusive marriage. She is a fucking ROCK and is handling things with more strength and aplomb than I ever hope to have. But her loathsome shitstain of a husband is making things as difficult as possible, including counter-filing a restraining order against HER on the basis of lies, in order to prevent her from being the presumptive custodial parent. She has evidence of his threats and abuse, and he has jack shit, but apparently that didn’t matter to the court officer, who was like “Oh, you both want restraining orders? Sure, you both get them.” RAGE. She’s going to appeal, and hopefully that will work. But I do not have abundant faith in the courts.
She’s far away and I can only listen and tell her I love her and send her care packages, and I wish I could do so much more. Put her husband on a rocket into the sun, for instance.
Keep listening to her.
Buy her “Why does he do that: Inside the minds of angry and controlling men” by Lundy Bancroft. Not because she needs to know she’s being abused, but because it gives her a tool to understand what’s motivating him and helps second-guess what’s coming next. If you let your guard down mentally, ever, they fuck you over. Ask me, 4 years out. They will do it with a smile but it will still keep happening. THis book helps shut that down. It is also very good at going over every lie they say in order to manipulate you, and why, and how to remind yourself your experiences are what is true, not their words.
Buy and send her grocery gift cards. Buy her a job-hunting outfit online if she needs it. FInd out where the shelters are for free counseling…and make sure she goes.
The best thing anybody ever said to me (well one of the most helpfull) was: Of course he’s pushing all your buttons, he knows what they are, he installed them.
Also, reading from this site (now defunct, but still VERY helpful) helped me a lot. I sent the article on emotional abuse to a friend, with examples for each one typed in between the lines, and told her that if I EVER believed words coming out of his mouth again, to shove it in my face immediately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embe…
Another one: http://www.youarenotcrazy.com/
Intellectually she knows all these things. But she is dealing with the immediate abuse, the threat of losing her kids, the trauma of realizing he can’t love her–and the guilt she will be piling on herself for making choices based on lies, even though nobody could have said they were lies, liars are good at what they do. These sites will help her in those nights when she can’t sleep and can’t eat and wants to blame herself.
Get her computer(s), phone, etc diagnosed, my ex had remotely logged into mine AND had a keylogger on my mac, and read all my emails and knew what my arguments were before I made them, hired lawyers out from under me, etc.
If they are still on a joint account, have her take out the “cash back” option, $20 here and there, every time she goes shopping for ANYTHING, so that she can build up a slush fund. Have her take out half immediately and put it somewhere else. Have her get a financial temporary order immediately.
If you can help her at all with money or know friends that can, open a secret account for her. Yes, secret, as in, in somebody else’s name at a bank she never goes to. But you have to have a close family member or very trusted friend to do that (my mom did it for me).
Warn her that people will believe his lies, she has to pre-empt them and ALWAYS has to be the one who appears 100% rational and without blame. No more phone conversations with him. No replying to texts. He never shows up without someone else (like a black belt or cop) being there. Every conversation email only for documentation, or better yet, lawyers only.
Do not go to mediation, do not do counseling, he will turn them against her. Abusers are charming, because that’s how the reel in victims in the first place. The thing for her to remember is that he is an accomplished liar, is used to it, and she should always assume that first.
(If she is anywhere near cleveland I can help)
Also, she never yells, throws things, or slaps him, EVER, my friends ex got his girlfriend (who my friend came home and found in her bed with him) to testify against her when she slapped him, and he was 6 ft to her 4’9″, had her thrown in jail, she didn’t see her kids for weeks, she lost everything including a house she had just bought in her name.
If she is married, have her open a credit card NOW, in her name only. They will still base it on both their credit history, and she will need it for emergencies. Once you file for divorce they turn down your credit applications.
Thank you so much for this hard-won advice, and I’m SO sorry and angry that you have it to give due to personal experience. Congratulations on getting out.
Hi Toasties! I hope everyone’s happy and healthy!
Hi! Hope you are too! <3
Thank you so much for this hard-won advice, and I'm SO sorry and angry that you have it to give due to personal experience. Congratulations on getting out.
Why is there no team in Chicago?
<sniffle>
Me! Me too! I am nearish to London (well Brighton) and would love a meet up!
oh man I hate it, jello salad seems to always have mayonnaise in it and I just think that's disgusting