It’s spring!!! Give me all the gin and the ice and the juniper berries and rose petals and spriiiinggggg!!!!! Except allergies. But no one’s making me hike in the pollen. So yay! A friend was lamenting Murphy Brown‘s absence from Netflix. Which made me think of watching endless TV while knowing I could enjoy the weather. So, any recs for awesome fun fantasy shows or movies that are not Harry Potter or LoTR or the Labyrinth? Or books?
We may have done this before, but let’s always do it again! Open thread!!
TOAST I have had a truly godawful week and I know I am not alone. Let’s have a books thread with a theme: what books would you NOT recommend to people? They don’t have to be awful (obviously I would not recommend The Da Vici Code to other human beings, because it would be much better used as a way to train puppies), but just books you really wanted to enjoy and wanted to like but failed you in some way?
Mine would be the entire works of Libba Bray. I keep trying, and I liked the premise of Beauty Queens, and I keep trying to plow through the Gemma Doyle books but they just do NOT do it for me. I wanted to like them! I did! And then….flop. This is also how I feel about the works of Terry Pratchett. I tried! I wanted to! But nope.
I feel the same way about Libba Bray. I get all excited for about the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book and then I put it down and just lose steam. I’m not even sure why.
I am feeling the same way about Terry Pratchett! I’ve been reading Good Omens and I loved it at first, but halfway through the plot is getting kind of muddled and confusing and every time I pick it up it doesn’t hold my attention.
Also, How To Be Both by Ali Smith. I’ve heard such good things about it but I found it alternately incoherent and needlessly depressing. But I’m not alone in that as only one person in my book club actually read the whole thing.
Seconding that re: Good Omens!
Thirding!
Yeah, Good Omens (while I enjoy it) is not Pratchett’s best showing. It’s fun to try to spot the seams between Pratchett and Gaiman, but if you want to actually like Pratchett start with a Discworld book, probably Night Watch, and spiral out.
I feel this way about The Paying Guests. I wanted to like it so much, but it was just awful. It still makes me sad! I was sure I was picking up my new favorite book when I went to buy it.
oh it is awful. i think my brain has allowed me to create a separate category called “absolutely awful, but also GAY, and therefore relevant to your interests and you will do mental gymnastics to like it anyway”
I loved Amy Bloom’s Away, and I adore her writing style, and Lucky Us has such a cool premise, I am such a sucker for a found-family story, but I just did not like it. The characters do big dramatic things and I could never figure out why. And it did a little bit of that epistolary “As you surely remember because you were there, [exposition exposition].”
I’m in the middle of Welcome to Braggsville right now, and it is also falling kinda flat after all my excitement about it. The style is all flowing and reference-dropping like Oscar Wao but in this case I just feel not hip enough to parse it and still understand what’s actually happening plot-wise.
SWAMPLANDIA! by Karen Russell. I loved the setting and premise, and Russell’s a great prose writer and character-creator, but man… too much half-baked magical realism and whacky humor that leads to a grim twist at the end that is incredibly well-written but just does not fit wit what came before.
I’ve also never hated a book more than THE WISE MAN’S FEAR, the sequel to THE NAME OF THE WIND (which I liked a lot!). Just an awful, terrible book. It’s everything bad about the later ICE & FIRE books, but centered on a Nice Guy/Gary Sue protagonist and in an uninteresting world (save the magic system, which is indeed cool).
I tried Swamplandia! because I really did enjoy St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised By Wolves, and I gave up partway through. I think some authors I just enjoy more as short story writers, you know?
Under the Skin by Michael Faber. Maybe it was one of those cases where the jacket description ruined it for me because it emphasized that there was a twiiiist, so I was reading it only partly paying attention to what was going on while the other part of my brain was figuring out the twist. Which I did. And thought it was p. dumb.
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Never has a book I enjoyed so much been ruined so quickly by the last few pages.
Yeah, SWAMPLANDIA! definitely felt like a few different short stories awkwardly stitched together.
Name of the Wind was for me kind of like fairy floss – it was kind of fun while you were eating it, but when you look back there wasn’t any actual substance to it and also now you feel kind of sick.
Thankfully a few people gave me a heads up about The Wise Man’s Fear so I don’t have to read it. The protagonist was pretty borderline insufferable in the first one, I can’t imagine how bad it is once he gets worse.
Geoff Dyer’s Zona. The author walks through a very close reading of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, talking about what he thinks it means and how it relates to his own life and artistic journey. Stalker is an amazing movie, and this is a great concept, with Dyer journeying to the center of the movie in search of inspiration and meaning, much like the characters in the film. In reality, you get a ton of weird snobbery – Dyer routinely bashes other films like Breathless and the Wizard of Oz and the Coen Brothers. Also, a lot of weird masculine posturing – there’s a long passage about the author’s regrets over not having a threesome with two ladies, plus descriptions of his crying at Burning Man. I mostly finished it so I could complain about it in the future.
Great idea! Terry Goodkind, Terry Brooks, William Faulkner (esp. Sound and Fury). One of these is not like the other, but I feel equal hatred for all!
OMG, Terry Goodkind. I was obsessed with Sword of Truth for a few years in high school. Then I rage quite around the 9th book. Years later I went to give it another chance and I just barely made it through the first book. What was wrong with teenaged me?
Right? I had no idea of the truly horrible underlying politics at the time, but I definitely rage quit when I got to the book (Pillars of… something) which was entirely about two characters we had never met before and the main characters did not show up until like 5 pages from the end of the book. Fuck that noise.
I was obsessed as a teenager, too, until one day I was like, “WAIT A MINUTE *suspicious squint* this is Objectivism, isn’t it.” I’m still a little embarrassed that I ever enjoyed Sword of Truth and consider it one of my deeper secrets.
Interview With the Vampire. I wanted to like it! I had never read Anne Rice before, and I wanted to delve into sexy vampires and pretty prose and sort of love-hating Louis, but I couldn’t get past the continued “sexual” descriptions of the little girl (whatever her name is). Discussing how she’s “really a woman who just looks like a little girl” made me feel nauseous over and over again, so I never finished it.
Yeah, there was something really weird about that. Especially considering she’s never actually a woman, just a little girl for a really, really long time which is not the same. I mostly enjoyed it because of Louis whining and Lestat being all, “Whatever, Louis,” but when Lestat became the central character I lost interest after a book or two because he was too perfect, blah blah blah.
I would never recommend John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. though this might be a minority opinion.
oh, same here. August made such a bad first impression on me I could’t get emotionally involved in the rest. I’ve read three of Green’s novels and have concluded that I can’t wait for him to write a buddy road trip comedy or similar with absolutely no romance in it, I will love that hypothetical book so hard.
I find Green does this weird thing where his characters are INSUFFERABLE in the first few chapters, but then he deepens them over the course of the novel into interesting people. And I don’t think it’s necessarily intentional either. I think he tries really hard to make the characters quirky and distinctive and interesting, but at first glance they just come off like repellent garbage-people.
I think there’s a healthy dose of “I’m 30, not 15” in my issues with his books. If I’d read them at that age, I’d be all OH HECK YEAH YOU ROCK ON WITH YOUR QUIRKS AND SPONTANEITY, now I’m like oh you poor kid, are you okay? Gotta remember my kid fantasies about running away from home or finding all-consuming love and how fun those things are when you live them vicariously through a book.
Yeah, same here. And it’s weird* that Green’s become the big mainstream/crossover YA author of our time, since his books more than most seem designed to appeal specifically to teenagers.**
*a product of the publishing industry/media’s sexism.
**I do think it’s impressive how well Green captures the mentality of teenagers
As someone who is generally a fan of John Green the person, I never step up to defend his books when people say they dislike them because for the most part I agree with all of the criticism and I do think he has a lot more popularity than correlates to his writing skill. And I do think it has something to do with the publishing industry’s sexim/racism, but I also think a big part of why he became so popular (and why I know about him), is that he was HUGE on youtube just as that was becoming a thing. He and his brother posted videos every day for a year in the mid-2000’s and during that time his channel went gangbusters, and he went from being someone who wasn’t a super well known author into basically a YA superstar.
tl;dr, I think John Green’s rise to fame is REALLY interesting and while it definitely has to do with being a white man (because how couldn’t it, right now), I also think he found a new way to publicize himself as a person rather than just his books, and that it was super successful for him as a white dude.
to make this more on topic I would like to add that Paper Towns was the book of his that I liked the least, and I get slightly annoyed every time I see something about the movie production.
yeah, his rise to fame is totally fascinating! I’m not much of a youtube watcher so I went into the books without having a predetermined love for the guy. On the other hand, I got the books from my partner who bought them because he loves the videos, and we basically agreed on enjoying them but with plenty of reservations. But I would love to read more than the couple of articles I’ve seen about why he became famous when [other similar YA authors] didn’t.
Whereas I am one of those people who read TFIOS because I love him and his videos (much like your partner). Otherwise, I would never have touched them with a ten-foot pole. The genre he writes in (contemporary?) is my least favourite. So yeah, the youtube thing has definitely contributed to his rise to fame along with his white maleness.
Yeah, I should add that I like John Green a lot! He’s a good writer and seems like a great dude. He is absolutely deserving of his fame and success! Just, so are a lot of other people (women, PoC) who don’t get the same levels of it he does.
I think you’re right that his vlogging is a huge source of his popularity. My point is less about his rise to fame than the mainstream media latching onto him as The YA Author of Our Time. Which doesn’t say anything bad about Green at all (he seems very self-aware about it) but about the media and why it chooses to annoint some people over others.
yep, it is particularly interesting that he is really not participating in being made into The Great Famous YA Author, like, he is very aware (as far as I can tell) of the context that got him there. And his fan interactions seem so warm and genuine but a little bewildered at how he got to this point.
…oh man, he’s like some bizarro opposite-land version of Jonathan Franzen, isn’t he…
I like Terry Pratchett in general but for some reason I just can’t get into the Tiffany Aching books. I like Tiffany herself, but I’m just going to say it: I hate the Nac Mac Feegle! Apparently this makes me a sick anomaly amongst Pterry fans. Sorry everyone.
Sorry about your godawful week too, aravis. Internet hugs if you want them.
I love Tiffany, but I can’t be doing with the wizards!
That IS strange, but I won’t criticize you for it. I can’t stand the wizard books and the later witches books that are not Tiffany, so.
Even people who love Discworld wholeheartedly (and I am one of those people!) have characters they aren’t thrilled to see. I don’t care for the books featuring Moist, even though I usually love stories about con artists.
Interesting. This is actually the first I’m hearing of someone who doesn’t like MOist. His books are usually great entry points into Discworld. Still, life is a tapestry and all that shit. That is one of the things that makes those books so great though, isn’t it. There’s something for everyone and something that’s not for everyone. Perfect!
I am so glad someone else doesn’t like the Nac Mac Feegle! I’ve never liked them, and I thought I was alone.
I really only like The Watch books and a couple of stand-alones like Monstrous Regiment and Mort and I feel like That’s Ok, so I support you.
There’s this beautifully written book “Wash” about an enslaved black man who’s used as a “stud” / slave production written in 1st person and while its historically accurate and the writing is phenomenal its SO HEAVY AND I CANT FINISH IT and it wasnt all that long ago and people are HUMAN GOD WTF WORLD.
ugh I am struggling with giving myself permission to just…not read great novels about heavy/depressing subjects. IT’S OK TO PUT IT DOWN, right?
Agreed on Terry Pratchett. I so expected to like him cause he always seems to be lumped in with a bunch of other things I like, but his stuff just didn’t do anything for me.
My first thought was How Should a Person Be, because I 100% thought I’d be in the target audience for that book, but I found it insufferable. But I actually did recommend it to my brother because I suspect he will also not like it and then we can bitch together. Which is always fun.
Only slightly related: I’m about 50 pages into My Antonia for a book group and really bored. Someone tell me if it’s worth continuing, please. They’re still kids and the storyline so far is mostly “kids play together and admire nature, while parents live a hard life” so basically I’m just wondering if more happens later?
I read it all the way back in middle school, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but I haaaaaated this book. It stays pretty much the same all the way through.
Ugh. It is boring. My dad was so sure it would be my favorite book and that I needed to read it that he gave it to me for Christmas 3 times! He probably forgot that I had a copy each time, but at one time I had three copies. Also a couple copies of Middlemarch and Tess of the D’Ubervilles. Makes me wonder what he thinks of me.
I absolutely adore this book. I think if you push through it, you might too! BUT I’m from Nebraska so I might be biased.
It took me years to like Pratchett – I prefer the newer books, and the ones about the evolution of industry, and sometimes Vimes. They are surprisingly variable in nature and in likableness, and I completely sympathize with them being Not Your thing.
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.
Damn, that book pissed me off.
I really wanted to like Ancillary Justice, but I just couldn’t get into it. It’s told from the viewpoint of a character who (at least in the beginning of the book, I didn’t make it to the end) doesn’t experience emotions, which was an interesting concept but makes it hard to sympathize with the protagonist.
I also wanted to get into China Miéville, but his style doesn’t do it for me. I keep getting distracted by all the elaborate metaphors and never sink into the story. I had the same problem with How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.
ooh, I just finished Ancillary Justice and liked it a lot, but it was a struggle! Having to adjust to characters being so secondary to plot/worldbuilding when I usually read literary fiction…yeah, it took more work than I’m used to.
Exactly this! I kept slogging along, thinking to myself, “I’m not really enthused about this yet, but I’m Very Impressed by the worldbuilding” and the enthusiasm just never happened for me.
I got to the end, but spent the whole time feeling like it was a bit above my reading level. I was the same with A Place of Greater Safety in that I just couldn’t remember who anyone was and kept having to flick back 20 pages to find where they were introduced :/.
I actually think she does and she doesn’t realize it, but that level of unreliability (on top of an entire _other_ level of unreliability in the SFnal setup) is totally not to everyone’s taste, so it’s quite an understandable reaction.
I read How To Live Safely In A Science Fiction Universe out loud to my husband and we loved it. i don’t think I would have liked it as much had I read it on it’s own. Of course, you get to dislike what you dislike, and I support you, etc.
Drood by Dan Simmons. It sounded like it would be perfect. Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins and the seedy underbelly of Victorian London, possibly with supernatural nonsense going on? Amazing. But it just dragged on and the ending was super confusing. Not good.
I just very nearly bought this at a thrift store, and you’ve made me feel better about letting it slide. It is such a fabulous premise, though.
Art and Lies by Jeanette Winterson. She’s one of my favourite authors and I really wanted to like it (Handel, Picasso and Sappho as modern-day characters! Picasso as a woman!) but I just didn’t. I really liked the beginning, but I felt like the plot didn’t really develop and it kind of just turned into a long rant.
Black Flower by Young-Ha Kim. Fascinating premise (Korean laborers go to work in Mexico during the Japanese occupation! and it really happened!) but the first section just harped on the fact that this pretty teenage girl smelled like blood, like DUH, you are on a ship without sanitation, of course she does. Not here for male narrators who don’t understand menstruation. (Not here for male narrators generally, tbh, with rare exceptions)
I am trying to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, on Toastie recommendation so I do want to like it, but that dude is insufferable! And now I am reading the bit where it’s her story and she’s pretty awful too. Does it get better?
I enjoyed Beauty Queens as a cheesy quick read, but could not get into the Diviners.
It gets mildly better? The dude stays insufferable tho.
Big Girl Panties, by Stephanie Evanovich. I liked the idea of an attractive, fit man being attracted to a larger woman and empowering her. Instead the book is about how she finds him attractive, hires him to be her personal trainer, and as soon as she loses the weight he can’t keep his hands off her. totally horrible and not empowering at all. Took it right back to the tiny woman romance novel.
Does anyone have any good recommendations for romance novels with a-typical heroines?
I like everything from Jennifer Crusie, and Bet Me might be Right Up Your Alley. I liked Faking It better than anything, and the rest make me happy for various reasons. You might also Courtney Milan, who has a bunch of historicals out that are more recent than Regency and have amazing individuals in them. She also just finished a novel set now, which I liked a lot.
Evanovich pisses me off because she hasn’t branched out – I was kind of amused by Stephanie Plum for the first dozen or so books, and then just over it.
This is Janet’s daughter. Both are disappointing as authors.
“The Awakening.” It’s sort of like Brokeback Mountain: it’s bringing attention to what was at the time a serious social issue, but given that we’ve moved forward in society, you just want to take each character and shake them by the scruff of their necks until they come to their senses.
I agree on The Awakening, and I also feel a little bit this way about Anna Karenina (even though I love it).
Isn’t it so weird how terribly ethnic that Spanish girl is, though!
“Sunshine” by Robin McKinley. I really enjoyed like 75% of it but then I got to the end and was super disappointed that there was all that world-building for… kind of nothing, and no sequel.
Sunshine is the book of McKinley’s that really made me wish she were more into writing sequels.
On a side note, I recently saw the entry for Sunshine on NPR’s 100 Best F&SF and was torn between WTF and FLAMES:
“All hope for stopping the vampiric elite from controlling Earth depends on human SOFs (Special Other Forces) and the success of their attempt to recruit Sunshine, the daughter of legendary sorcerer Onyx Blaise.”
…I do not think the book you’re describing here is the book that McKinley actually wrote. I mean, it’s ACCURATE, but way to competely elide the female protagonist.
I was trying to like Wicked as a book and I just HAAAAAATED it – it was a bummer. And then I haated hated haaated all the rest of his work as well so clearly I am not mean to read the guy. I have some similar feelings about Libba Bray, which makes me feel deeply guilty because women writers, women subjects, increased diversity, I should be ALL OVER these books and I just … eh.
On the other hand, every one has read Caroline Stevermer’s College of Magic yes/yes? because that one keeps making me happy and mystified every damn time.
I wanted to like Wicked so badly, because I love the musical with all my heart and soul and it seemed unfair to not like the source book. Buuuuuuuut basically the only thing I liked about the book was the years at school, and then I just put it down one day and never picked it up. And I have no idea where the book is.
I’ve never read College of Magic, so I have put it on my to-read list!
I didn’t really like Lorrie Moore, and I don’t know that I would enthusiastically recommend Rainbow Rowell either.
Related to a discussion above, a woman who’s book of short stories I really loved, Claire Vaye Watkins, is coming out with a full length novel this fall and I am SO EXCITED but so apprehensive – what if I don’t love it!! (I’ll probably get over it, is what, but still)
Laurie R. King’s The Pirate King and then Garment of Shadows. I love the Mary Russell series, but those two…I finished each of them and wanted to reclaim the time it took me to read them. They don’t really go anywhere.
OK, so I haaaaaaated the Night Circus. And so many smart women who I admire (maybe some men liked it but who cares about them) loooooved it and I feel like maybe it’s me, maybe I’m weird, but also the writing is awful. It really is. I mean, it would get ripped apart in a freshman writing seminar. “Erin, you rely heavily on props. Try to think of a better way for moving dialogue along that doesn’t involve people interminably picking up, putting down, and sipping their beverages.”
FASHION FRIDAY
The sun has been completely insane this week, and even the rainy days were beautiful. I have excavated a small portion of my closet and rediscovered that I LOVE FLORALS.
Also I got some insane pointy kitten-heeled polka-dot shoes that are clearly delivering untold office powers to my position. I swore at a senior partner last week and he THANKED ME and then DID WHAT I ASKED. Shoooooooooooooooes.
Tell me where your power comes from, Toasties.
The GLORIOUS, PERFECTLY-FITTING tube dress/skirt convertible thing that I picked up for $18 on Tuesday. It is cobalt and black striped in an ideal way, and does not give me armpit chub. POWER.
My butt is my power source. Only half joking.
Recently I have been made aware of how true this is for me as well. Not quite sure how to act on the info, though.
Wear tighter skirts/pants. No, tighter. Seriously. Trust me.
I will report back with the results.
The Perfect Summer Dress.
It is black jersey. It is sleeveless. It is fit-and flare- It can make me look like a respectable adult or a sexy vintage pinup depending on how I accesorise. Every time I wear it I feel UNSTOPPABLE.
Power lipstick. Any color will do as long as it encourages others to look at my mouth and notice how sharp my teeth are.
YAS. Power lipstick forever. I’m wearing dark brown/red today because nobody gets to fuck with me today.
Oooo I love a dark red but I haven’t found a brown that works for me yet. I’m wearing a mauve-y sort of one today with olive green eyeliner and I look like a gentle angel of death.
HEALTH GOTH. Cute spandex and tank tops and sweatshirts give me so much power! I used to wear free t-shirts and old sports shorts to work out, because I thought, “why get nice stuff sweaty?” But now I have seen the light! Doing active things is so much easier when you’re dressed like a futuristic rebel courier or something. Even when you’re pink-faced and puffing and struggling to do even a 15-second dead hang.
I want health gothiness! I WANT.
Ooh what are your favorite sources for health goth gear?? I recently got this great sports bra that makes me look like I have robot boobs and I NEED MORE.
I got a bunch of stuff from Gap, lots of blacks and grays and accent lines. It’s still pretty new, though, so I don’t know how durable it is. Where did you get robot sports bra?? I need new ones, all mine have gotten too small (because of my BLASTED PECS, only half kidding)
Their bras aren’t quite hearty enough for me, but all the rest of my workout gear is from the Gap and it’s held up pretty well over the last year+ of regular workouts and washings.
I need futuristic rebel courier gear in my life so much it’s making me light-headed.
Pincurls.
The only thing capable of somewhat taming my hair while also somehow increasing its overall bigness. I look like a mess at night, but in the morning it is magnificent.
I don’t care if I’m just going out to run to the gas station to pick up some junk food. I will have powerhair while I’m doing so.
Ugh I need to start doing this. Gimme all the hair tutorial vids, you guys.
When I unpacked my (already lamentable) summer wardrobe last week, I realized I had maybe two workable outfits for warm weather. Thanks, new style aesthetic! Hit the thrifts last night with a friend to whom I gave the instructions “Camouflage colors, texture is good but no prints, size small or medium for first layer stuff (camisoles, tees), size medium or large for second layer (vests, cardigans).” Friends, I spent just a hair over $70 and filled my entire front-loader washing machine with the finds.
When I dressed rockabilly-style, I made most of my own clothes so I know nobody will buy them at the thrifts. If you’re a Toastie who might want some repo-retro threads, and you’re a 36″-bust, 28″ to 30″-waist, drop me a line: [email protected]. It’d be great if you can pay shipping, but if you’re strapped for cash and want some new, colorful cotton clothes for summer, we can work something out.
I have lost just enough weight that most of my clothes still fit but my single pair of decent work slacks were falling off me, so out they went. Thanks to various sales at Banana Republic I am now the proud owner of 2 suits (and a cute black lace medallion top). I might be doing some more shopping this weekend since I only have a few tops that would look appropriate with a suit, and I hate to trot them out too often because they’re silk and dry-clean-only.
I have also spent this month so far evaluating my makeup. I’ve worn a different eyeshadow/eyeliner/lipstick every day and I take notes on their performance and how well they hold up. It’s been great – I’ve improved my application techniques, I’ve already tossed out 8 products that turned out to be duds, and I have a lot of useful data on the products I’m keeping. I now know which eyeshadow will hold up through an entire day with minimal (or zero!) retouching and which should be reserved for date night because they crease and fade after 4-5 hours.
Your makeup classification sounds deeply satisfying. Go you!
This should be a publicly-viewable Google Sheet.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q7up1jRStua_u…
HOW DO I FAVE THIS EIGHTEEN TIMES
haha I was just about to ask for her spreadsheet
Right now my power comes from my incredibly dapper deep burgundy red oxfords. These, to be precise. People compliment me on them! And they were on sale, to boot!
OH. BLOOD RED OXFORDS. YES. NEED.
OH SHIT DEM SHOES
I have those!! I love Clarks. Also, they go with absolutely everything and are so comfy. And waterproof! And the sensibleness of them is matched by their beauty. Or makes them more beautiful.
A young lady I admire just told me she liked my style, so, wow. Sometimes I feel frumpy but she said I should have “a tumblr with your outfits and all these comments saying omg so cute”
So apparently my power comes from five-inch dangly earrings and skirts that are too long.
Oh and I’m sortof wearing a cape right now.
When I write it all out that does sound stylish!
I am in tech for a show and thus have been running around in beaten-up jeans and the same flannel or fleece for a week, but today I have meetings with non-theatre humans and have dressed more presentably, and I am remembering that colors are awesome! When I wear things that are not gray or black, my eyes are blue! This is exciting.
Also I am getting a huge confidence boost from all the comments as I carry things that appear to be much too heavy for me. I was happily carryling a sandbag across the lot the other day and one of the crew was like “whoa, isn’t that about half your bodyweight?” so I looked at the measurement on the bag, replied “oh huh, pretty much exactly,” and continued.
I just purchased these babies and I can wait for them to arrive! Got the orange because it’s the best color ever and will look fantastic with all the navy in my closet.
http://www.bodenusa.com/en-US/Womens-Shoes-Boots/…
daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag
Those are GORGEOUS.
MAC Prunella eye pencil and sleeping with my hair in braids for waves the next day. Both my husband and coworker commented on the hair.
Not fashion really, but the crappy elevator in my building has a mirror in it. So every day when I leave I get to look at myself in the mirror and think, “Man, I’m so pretty”. That helps with the power.
Augh I get caught taking selfies in my work elevator mirrors all the time, I can’t help it, the lighting is just so awesomely dramatic in there.
It’s a beautiful sunny day, so I decided to wear a cupcake print dress. Gotta keep the office fun! Bonus; it’s hella comfy.
stage blacks: black pants, black shirt, darkest sneakers I can find, dark gray socks, and the sweatshirt that says CREW on the back
I decided I hated work pants and work skirts and I’ve since been wearing dresses M-Th and I feel unstoppable. I’m wearing black jeans today and while I like my outfit it’s just not the same.
In personal life, well fitting jeans and the perfect casual-but-cute tee. I would be president and still wear outfits like that.
And my jewelry – namely my watch, but most of it generally.
That cocktail looks like something I want in my face NOW.
Hello, Toasts! It is sunny and gorgeous and MrChouffe just got done with a v v awesome job interview please send him all available good juju because things are getting a little stressful. But we had a lovely day on Wednesday for his birthday so it can’t be all bad.
Tomorrow I am getting up at 6am to go running with a group at 7am and then an 9:30am exercise class and then work so clearly there is something wrong with me.
juju: sent! spring = new beginnings, so hoping that spreads to job prospects for MrChouffe <3
[good job vibes!]
Hooray for a good job interview! Good job vibes sent!
TOASTICLES tomorrow is my pole dance competition and my birthday and now I have to figure out if I’m going to take this amazing job offer in Oregon and my Boo has just upped the ante on how awesome he is and I had too much caffeine this morning and life is just fever pitched right now and i’m all like…
That cat’s colour is GORGEOUS, she said to herself.
It’s been so much fun the last two weeks, let’s keep the fanfic thread going!!!
What are you reading? Are you looking for a recommendation? Anyone else been sucked into the dark world of Daredevil fanfic like me?
I hadn’t been, no, but p sure that’s about to change
JOOOOIN MEEEEE
TBH it’s all weirdly fluffy right now. Kind of like Hannibal and the flower crowns- the show is so goddamn dark people want to write about happy shit to make the characters feel better.
I read basically all of Vehlr’s Dragon Age Inquisition fics. I’d read some of them on tumblr, but then I found her on AO3 and went on a bit of a binge.
Ooh, I’ll have to find that one! I can’t read anyone else’s stuff until I finish my own, it just messes me up. But! Now I’ll have a treat waiting once I’m done. Hooray!
Most of her stuff is Cassandra/Varric, which I never would have thought to ship until reading her fics and now I ship them completely at all times.
here is a good place to start.
Also, you should tell us when your fic is done so we can all read it and leave kudos/cheering comments
Awesome, thanks! I have a few chapters up already as GirlNamedJack, if you’re interested! I’ve never written fanfic before. I am enjoying it immensely.
Oh my gosh, thank you for that link.
Thank you. So much.
I am in the deepest Inquisition fandom hole right now. I read 75k of Cullen/Dorian that went bad on me after the first 30k or so but I COULDN’T STOP. I spent four hours on the kinkmeme yesterday. Please send help.
Yeah, I can’t really send help, but if you give me links I’ll join you in your fandom hole once I get home from work.
I’ll be honest, most of the fic I read is PWP. I’m not proud of this but I’ve stopped fighting it. That said, there’s an author called emungere who writes the most amazing Hannibal fic. I’m especially impressed by her ability to take slightly crack-y tropes (i.e “Sugar Daddy Hannibal” or “Will in women’s clothing”) and write these 20-chapter COMPLETELY BELIEVABLE fics where nothing is out of character and I end up totally convinced that yes, this could happen in canon. (True fact: I sometimes forget that little details in her stories aren’t actually canon.)
Her latest one is “Taken for Rubies” and it is the highlight of my week every time it updates. I highly recommend both “Consenting to Dream” and “Blackbird” for any Fannibals who want some truly excellent Hannigram writing.
THERE IS NO SHAME IN PWP. I have plenty of it on my Kindle. Between them and my beloved romance novels, my reading poker face is unbreakable.
Yeah so this week I found rageprufrock’s Kingsman fics
I have not seen Kingsman, but I have read those fics. Whooboy.
I’ve started rereading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and it may have made me want to write fanfic again for the first time in a decade. I’m not entirely certain how to feel about this development…
I am reading this too, for the first time! I had no idea what to expect, but I loooooove it.
Ahhhhhh that’s one of my FAVORITE books. I’ve been waiting for the sequel for 10 YEARS.
And the long-rumoured miniseries! What about THAT?
The BBC screened the first two episodes! It’s apparently May sometime (what is with their no-notice air dates?!)
SO SOON??
!!!!!!!!!!!
Their FB page says that the BBC’s practice is to only give two weeks’ notice!
oh that is one of my very very favorites.
Link it on here when you do, there is not enough Strangefic!
If you’d like to read some fic for it, I have some recs over at the end of one of my Tor.com posts about it! It’s a really intimidating canon, but go for it!
I am here for Bucky/Steve fic but I feel like I’ve read all the good ones already.
There’s so much out there! Do you have a preference? Pre-serum, AU, post-CA:TWS, etc?
AUs are fine, post Winter Soldier is fine, I don’t like pre-serum or established relationships. Basically I just want to read those two crazy kids admitting their love over and over again in any universe.
So, you may have encountered all of these already if you feel like you’ve read all the good stuff, but just in case!
Post CA:TWS
Notoska’s Every Door Opens Slow burn (with some POV shifts that are occasionally hard to follow), lots of UST for these poor broken soldier boys.
Speranza’s 4 Minute Window If you feel like you’ve already read them all, I kind of assume you’ve encountered this one before. But if not: this is one of the best.
Reccea’s A Piece of Silly Affection Lighter fare with pining Bucky.
Arsenic’s Hard Wired Bucky seeks help at Avengers Tower.
Emilyenrose’s Out of the Dead Land Action and robots and broken soldiers. Oh my.
AU
thebrotherswinchester’s Night Light Rentboy Bucky and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Steve.
OhCaptainMyCaptain’s Is it Pretending if I Already Want You? Fluffy cute fic based on the “pretending to be dating” trope.
rubygirl29’s Not Just Another Auld Lang Syne Coffee shop, ex-soldiers.
thebrotherswinchester’s You Were Standing There Drunk Bucky breaks into Steve’s house by mistake.
Also! A few rec pages from tumblr I’ve bookmarked (and haven’t worked my way through yet)
Part 1 from user kirksspock and part 2.
Sonickitty’s Post CA:TWS recs and ahem smut recs.
I’ve been holding off watching it until my spouse returns from a gig upstate, which is TODAY, so I can finally start watching tonight! Then you know I will be hitting you up for recs because your Steve/Darcy recs were SO ON POINT (Gah the 5 Things one I’ve read twice already, and then I just finished All the Dead Lie Down the other day.)
AHHH YESSS I WILL TALK DAREDEVIL ENDLESSLY
TBH the fic selection is still pretty limited and 50% are variations on the same theme. BUT I WILL DIG UP THE GOOD ONES FOR SCIENCE
yes omg the five things one omg so good except i still don’t love the “they’re aliens!” ending but the rest is so good i don’t even care at all
Yes the ending was so out of left field and I totally skipped the aliens parts when I re-read it, but everything else about that story is gold. Pure gold.
My guilty fandom pleasure is coffee shop AUs. Why do I love them so much? I just don’t know.
Anyway, I read a pretty good Suits coffee shop AU earlier this week if that sounds appealing to anyone: http://archiveofourown.org/works/265877
Avengers/Veronica Mars Crossover: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2857460
Avengers: Steve/Tony/Jarvis Are Poly fic: http://archiveofourown.org/works/278395
I’ve been reading a mass effect sorta first contact AU (I love AUs so much and I don’t know why), where the galaxy has basically been giving humanity a wide birth. Sadly I think it’s abandoned but the first 8 chapters were great! (http://archiveofourown.org/works/509881/chapters/898098)
I keep waiting for the fic-writing sector of the internet (or, like, all of the internet, because it’s great) to discover the Canadian show X Company. It’s about SPIES and WWII and every episode is full of angst and drama and thwarting Nazis but good, and there’s only six fics on Ao3 and I need moooooore
Oh man, my obsessive refreshing of the Toast has finally paid off and I’m not late to the Open Thread!
Tonight I am seeing the artist formerly known as Ke$ha (she just goes by Kesha now). I am ludicrously excited. I guess a lot of people “got over” her after 2010 and Tik Tok but I’ve been an avid fan this whole time and I can’t believe I have the opportunity to see her! I find her genuinely inspiring and delightful.
This is also the third concert I’ve seen in two weeks! I also got to see the Decemberists and the Mountain Goats.
I don’t “go to shows” unless it’s a band/artist that I REALLY love, but over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of artists I really love. Kate Nash, Josh Ritter, Jukebox the Ghost, and Sara Bareilles, to name a few. What are the best concerts you’ve been to?
What?? I didn’t know she dropped the $! I legit still love her, dollar sign or no dollar sign.
Josh Ritter shows: the best or THE BEST? (I have seen him definitely way too many times at this point, no regrets)
I also saw Jeff Mangum a few years ago when he was doing that first weird tiny solo tour, before the whole band got back on board, and I may or may not have cried.
Josh Ritter shows are ABSOLUTELY THE BEST. I have seen him maybe 5 times? And would see him every every single more time.
I saw the first show of that tiny solo tour and I cried SO HARD. It sold out in like half an hour and no one knew what to expect, and then it ended up being a Neutral Milk Hotel singalong in a church full of people who knew all the words, and then he stuck around after the show and was super nice and patient while everyone joyfully mobbed him. There was a lot of happy crying.
I misread that as John Ritter, and had weird Buffy flashbacks of watching robot Ted make mini pizzas on stage.
Oh man, that’s a ridiculously awesome series of concerts you’ve been able to go to!
My best ever concert is probably when my sister and I got to go to the Something Corporate reunion in 2010. We’d both grown up listening to them and I’m still a huge fan of Andrew McMahon (I’ve seen him/Jack’s Mannequin in concert like five times), but we never got to see the SoCo line-up in concert. It was also right when she was going to college and I was going to grad school so there was all this growing up nostalgia happening…and it’s the only time I’ve heard him play “Konstantine” live, so that was the best.
Aaaaah I saw them on their last tour in 2005 and Andrew McMahon played Konstantine and I nearly melted right then and there, ugh, that song destroys me STILL.
I saw him in November and some asshole kept yelling at him to play it and Andrew just kept calling him a douche on stage and it was great. Also, he came out into the crowd to sing “Cecilia and the Satellite” and high fived me and then crowd surfed and it was AMAZING.
Kesha is the guardian angel of my relationship. My fiance and I met at a Halloween party where he was dressed as Kesha, I gave him a stuffed bear who is named in her honor, and the recessional at our wedding will be “Timber.” Have all of the fun tonight!
This is it. This is my favorite story.
WHAT WHAT WHAT Kesha is touring? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH okay off to see if she’s coming anywhere near me. THANK YOU FOR TELLING US! Have a great time at the show!
I’m so sorry to say I don’t think it’s a proper tour! She’s performing at a local university’s “Spring Fling” but that may be the only performance.
Yeah, only three shows. SADNESS.
Oh well, I’m happy to see that she’s performing at all! I haven’t heard much about her since the lawsuit and the hospitalization thing and I was really worried. I adore her and I want her to be happy.
I went to see Devin Townsend last weekend and he was FAB. He played my tiny seaside town in a warmup gig for the Royal Albert hall and it was brilliant.
This week I have also got tickets for L7 and Faith No More in London,on two consecutive days in June. It may kill me but I will die happy.
I’ve never been to a boring Terrorvision gig, or Faith No More, and I have been to an *awful lot* of their shows over the years. I go to shows all the time and love live music; I am debating going out to a gig this evening but I think I am too lazy and need to be up too early. The singer told me to woman up and get on with it when I said I was staying in but I think I am staying in.
Devin Townsend! That must’ve been a hell of a show. Just getting into his stuff.
Me too! I saw him on the acoustic stage at a festival a couple of years ago and was really taken with his stuff, this ws the first time I’ve seen him ‘full on’. He did two full sets, the first was the return of Ziltoid and the second was older stuff he doesn’t normally do live.
If you’re interested in photos they’re here! https://www.flickr.com/photos/lebatihem/sets/7215…
I didn’t know she’d changed her name. I guess I have to stop irritating my daughter by calling her “K-dollar-sign-ha” now
To be fair, she called herself that in the video for “Blow.” (well, had someone else call her that, anyway)
The Pogues at the Commodore Ballroom many, many moons ago…hands down the CRAZIEST. Oh, and another Dore best: The Jazz Butcher. I kinda felt bad for Pat because the crowd kept hammering him for faster songs but he ignored those disco hecklers and soldiered on with his beautiful, soulful and slightly melancholy set.
God, I’m old.
I saw Amos Lee last summer at Red Butte Gardens, and it was amazing. He didn’t do any of the same arrangements as on his albums, and he was very personable. The opening act (local band Desert Noises) was also great. Also fabulous was Adele. Her voice is 10x more powerful live and in person. I have anxiety in crowds and prefer outdoor concerts for this reason, but the sound you get in an outdoor theater is amazing.
The New Pornographers. With Neko Case, who doesn’t always tour with them. The Mountain Goats opened for them.
Sloan was great. I’ve seen them twice. So far.
I also really enjoyed The Tom Fun Orchestra and United Steelworkers of Montreal, though I can’t remember who was opening for who. I do remember that there were a lot more punks in the audience than I expected, which was nice because it turns out punks are better audience members than hipsters. Usually if I back up a bit from whatever dude is in front of me so I can see over his head, another tall hipster dude worms his way into the space. At this show, a tall dude ended up in front of me through no fault of his own, and he apologized and switched places with me. And then the same thing happened a couple years later at a Buzzcocks show, which is why I am generalizing this to all punks.
Back to good concerts! One Hundred Dollars was every bit as good live as I could have hoped, but the venue was full of people who wouldn’t shut up when the band was playing and who stood near the stage for some reason, so the show was both great and disappointing. They were hipsters, which cemented my punks > hipsters belief.
I should get back into going to shows. I haven’t been to any in ages, and I do like it even when it’s a band I only love a little bit. Thank you for the reminder.
Forgot to mention: The New Pornographers had a rock cellist touring with them, who only played in, like, one song.
I saw Neko Case last night. It was a really good show and an excellent set though potentially designed specifically to make me cry. She included the song from the Hunger Games soundtrack, and the one about the tiger on the chain, and she OPENED with “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu” (the verbal abuse one from The Worse Things Get). Plus a bunch of themes from The Worse Things Get really jab me in my tender places right now.
Hoo boy. I haven’t listened to a lot of Neko Case because I heard “This Tornado Loves You” and cried for about a month afterwards, so I’m not sure how much I can handle if it’s all that wrenching. That sounds like…a not particularly FUN experience, but a good one? Hopefully?
Oh yeah it was fun, somehow, anyway.
I love her completely unironically – through much of her stuff, she just seems like she’s having a blast, and that seems incredibly rock n’ roll to me. Also, all the glitter. 😀 <3 <3
Bartender, I FINALLY started the first in the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson (which my friend gave me like 9 months ago) and I am loving it so far.
I read the beginning of it while sitting in the garden at the second-biggest brewery in Golden, CO, and it was glorious. The mountains are wonderful, and I forgot how many stars there are, but now I’m back at work in gloomy New York. At least tomorrow is supposed to be nice…
Mistborn! I really like Brandon Sanderson and his amazingly detailed magic systems and what he’s doing with Mistborn. I can’t wait for future installments. Enjoy!
Mistborn’s the best! It was the last thing I read in grad school before starting to write my thesis, and I enjoyed every moment of it. The magic system would make a great videogame. I also gave it to my 16-year-old fangirl cousin in an attempt to introduce her to (age appropriate) “adult” fantasy, and it was a success!
I also really liked Mistborn! Generally high fantasy is not my favorite but it was such a good, fun read.
Mistborn is great! More like that?!
Try Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson. I also had a lot of affection for Child of a Hidden Sea by A. M. Dellamonica, even though it’s one of those books where everyone is beautiful. (Oh, Fantasy, I love you, but sometimes…)
thanks!
I loved Mistborn! It was total immersion and just what I needed to take my mind off my crappy work and pregnancy insomnia. I now need something similar to take my mind of small baby insomnia…
Mistborn! I have complicated thoughts about it. The premise was cool, I liked the story but….the violent parts gave/give me nightmares. Read the first 3, not sure if I should read any more.
FRIDAY KITTY CATS
MEOW
I got a delivery of shoes today, and of course…
Also, here are how the cats greet us when we’ve been out.
Hello, cats!
I don’t have any pictures this week, boo, but Diesel and Moa have begun nearly playing with one another so PROGRESS.
The snow is gone! The grass is coming up! Time for more cunning hiding spots
While he is “hiding”, Moxie will not respond to being spoken to or touched. He cannot be seen, even if you are currently poking him in the butt.
We actually had a pretty scary weekend with him over Easter. He started going to the litterbox every 10-15 minutes (I recorded it because that’s who I am) and only peeing a few drops, which is a pretty worrying indication of a potential urinary tract blockage in male cats. We were hoping it was just a UTI or something so it was not at all comforting when I called the emergency vet line at 7:30 on Easter Sunday and his response was “how quickly can you get him to the vet hospital?? I will meet you there.” Luckily, if there was a blockage it was a partial one and he wasn’t in any immediate danger, the vet put him on muscle relaxants and an anti-inflammatory and sent him home. The muscle relaxants got him pretty stoned, so we got the entertainment of watching him stumble around over his own feet, try to bat at his toys and miss, eat so much food we took his food away, and roll around ridiculously. By the end of the day he was much better, and he seems fine now.
Moxie has the most fantastic eyes. Glad the health crisis was speedily resolved, and he can go back to being Ninja Master of the Universe!
Phew, what a relief. Captain had several hospital visits for that and is now on a lifelong special diet to stop blockages – he has a weird kink in his urethra that makes him more susceptible to even tiny crystals. There are special foods that alter the pH of the wee to stop it happening, if it starts recurring for Moxie.
I love Moxie.
Ooh I have a great kitty picture this week, he is shocked, shocked I tell you:
Also my aunt sent me this link and I’ve been saving it for the cat thread today:
<a href=”http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2015/04/16/alison_nastasi_charts_the_relationship_of_artists_and_their_pets_in_the.html” target=”_blank”>http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2015/04/16/alison_nastasi_charts_the_relationship_of_artists_and_their_pets_in_the.html
What a face!
The look of disdain is strong in your household.
This week we got 10 inches of snow on Wednesday /Thursday and both kitties took turns making using of the TARDIS blanket on the couch.
I deserved it. She was sleeping happily in the box and I said ‘Bonny! Bonny! Princess Fuzzybutt! Idiot!’ until she woke up.
This is, of course, utterly different to her crawling into bed with me and MRAWWWing until I wake up and turn onto my back so she can curl up and purr on my chest.
Cat pile!
One of your little black and whites has marking similar to Bonnys. Is the top left cat a tuxie?
She is! That’s Roo and she is the wooooooooooooorst and the best cat of them all. She’s very clever and vocal and adventurous, though she has chunked out a bit since we moved and had to take down her climbing wall. One of my New House Projects is trying to figure out how to install a wide diameter, sisal-wrapped pole from floor to ceiling so she can climb again. Her belly sways when she runs!
awww, they could almost be sisters!
It’s Anne who’s my chunk, though, and Bonny is thick as all the short planks you could want.
Awww, I love her little black chin spot!
Sleeeeeepycat.
Pointycat.
Also, after I posted my cat pics last week, they got picked up by a tumblr that alternates proper hardcore filth with cute pictures of cats. My lfickr stats went through the roof and I was very glad I wasn’t checking them on my work computer!! So that ws entertaining, if weird.
Kitties and Titties???? Please tell me it was Kitties and Titties.
Is that a real one? The filthiest was satans kitty but there were about 10 that had then used the pics as well. WHO KNEW that cats & saucy pictures was such a popular combo… Then there were a few that were just cat pictures as well.
I am likewise surprised that this is such a phenomenon! And yet…not surprised.
There are some contexts you don’t want to see your pets in, and underneath a gif of some very enthusiastic shagging is one of those contexts. It’s even weirder than when they jump on the bed when you’re having some grownup cuddles.
Yes indeed. I’m about to move in with my boyfriend and am trying to prepare him as gently as possible for the realities of living with a voyeuristic cat.
Voyeuristic cats are super awkward. Particularly when they have decided they’re happy on the bed, and they aren’t moving from their spot, no matter how much ruckus you are currently causing on said bed.
I haven’t updated on Bella in a while, have I? Boring cat medical talk ahoy! (Nothing gross, though, don’t worry.)
She had surgery to repair her two herniated discs — this was four weeks ago. She’s now had her stitches out and been to a physical therapist (we took the CAT to a PHYSICAL THERAPIST this whole situation has felt ridiculous), and everyone tells us she is recovering terrifically! Basically, the aftereffects of her surgery are that she’s weak in both back legs — her left back leg came back quickly and is almost back to baseline already, but the right leg is taking longer to recover and we have a bunch of exercises we’re supposed to do to help her build her strength and mobility back up.
Until she’s more able to get around, she’s confined to one bedroom most of the time. But this morning she got to go downstairs and hang out in front of the window, and my husband built her a Cat Throne out of her favorite blanket:
(This picture came to me with the caption “I CAN HEAR HER PURRING FROM THE KITCHEN.”)
How on earth do you do particular exercises with a cat? I hope she recovers quickly.
It’s a pain! The vet told us that she very, very rarely refers a cat for physical therapy, because most cats just won’t benefit from it enough to outweigh how much it stresses them out. But Bella is very laid-back, even at vet’s offices, and will put up with pretty much any kind of manhandling, so she thought it would be worth it for us. “Exercises” isn’t really the right word — it’s mainly stuff like putting her leg back under her so she has to put weight on it anytime we catch her sitting with it out to one side, or pinching her toe beans when she’s lying with it straight out to annoy her into pulling it back in (that’s the motion she’s having trouble with, so we want to make her practice it as much as possible) — but we are supposed to build her an obstacle course and make her, like, walk over different surfaces and textures and step up and down and walk up a little ramp and stuff. That’s the hard part. It is super hard to steer a cat.
Poor Bella! Will she follow treats round an obstacle course? Mine would walk through fire for freezedried chicken pieces.
Bella! Yay! So glad she is doing better.
Oh no wait I just realized I can’t figure out how to add a photo. I have a super important cat photo to share!
Make sure you have the link to a photo ending in .jpg or whatever format then put it in this string:
< img src=”image_url.jpg” / >
(but remove the spaces between brackets)
Thank you!
Dolly says hello!
I can’t see her!
All scheduling goes through my assistant. Have your people call my cat
OMG for Friday Felines I have (sort of squicky) news!
My adorable gray tabby had A Thing. It was a sort of Thing that was claw-like, but that grew from his right front carpal pad!
I googled feverishly, and discovered it’s called a “cutaneous horn.” It’s made of keratin, and is benign in itself, but could be a sign of other health issues. I clipped it right off. No pain, no protest from His Kittiness.
At the next Vet visit, we will be discussing Hornèd Paws. (Note the orthography, which emphasizes the poetic pronunciation I am currently favoring.)
I am so excited for bike riding weather. Lasy weekend I rode 12.5 miles with my husband which is a personal record for me! (He, on the other hand, did a century ride last year). I’m hoping to get closer to 20 miles this weekend and then start biking to work (~10 miles each way) assuming the weather cooperates. The rain has put a bit of a damper on it this week, but tomorrow will be beautiful again. And the rain can’t last forever, right? Or maybe I’ll just suck it up and ride in the rain. Any advice on gear that would make that less awful?
Do you have fenders? I ride in the rain sometimes, and I wear athletic leggings, rain coat with some layers underneath, and gloves, because I don’t like my hands being wet. I don’t mind getting wet if I know I’m going home afterwards, makes me feel tough. If I’m coming to work, I leave jeans and a nice blouse here, and just slap on some lipstick and a messy bun when I arrive. My office is way casual though.
I’ve been considering getting a pair of these http://nativeshoes.com/shop/adults. They are all super light weigh, and water proof – I think they would be good if you don’t use clips. I wear a RAINS waterproof jacket, but I wouldn’t recommend it because it gets TOO HOT, but I love the way it looks, so.
Fenders would probably be a good idea. And gloves!
I can shower at work, so I’ll look presentable even if I show up looking like a drowned rat. It’s more the actual experience, especially the rain pelting my face, that I’m wary of. Maybe it’s just something to get used to.
YES!! Mental health improves by 10% with every spring bike ride.
Yes biking! I rode to work yesterday for the first time in 3 months! IT FELT SO GOOOOOOD. As for rain gear, I’ve had my eye on a Cleverhood for an eternity now, but they’re out of my price range at present. If you’ve got the $$ to throw down, you should go for it though, so that you can look like a stylish sherlock on a bike!!
I’m only now getting back to cycling after having all of my mental and physical energy sucked up with the horrible job and depression and anxiety, but I got on my rollers for a bit yesterday and have been doing yoga and although I felt like I was dying at first, I’m definitely ready to get back on my bikes.
Also — yes to fenders. You don’t want that mud stripe up your butt/back 🙂
RAIN PANTS. I don’t bike in the rain a ton (it doesn’t rain where I live a ton) but I got rain pants last year and they are magical. I completely underestimated how fantastic they are. I haven’t figured out a good solution to the wet shoe problem (they have shoe covers and stuff in the world, but I am not riding int he rain enough for that to seem worth it to me) but I would strongly advise bringing a change of shoes and fresh socks. Nothing’s sadder than wet socks.
I’m trying to bike more. I bike into work (about 6 miles each way) a couple of days a week, but it’s definitely more sporadic than not. It also doesn’t help that I have a very secure place to leave my bike at work so it’s very easy to bike in (which is mostly downhill) and then leave my bike here for several days as I stall on biking home (which is mostly uphill).
Let’s turn the online dating thread into a general dating thread this week because I am in a bit of a pickle. How are you doing, single and/or otherwise looking Toastfriends?
There are currently THREE DUDES vying for my attention!
Dude the First is the guy I’ve been seeing through the online dating, he is lovely and lots of fun but not very physical, which is probably good, but it’s been almost a month so I think maybe a little more than a hug would be okay? We hung out and watched some anime on Wednesday which would have been prime opportunity for snuggling on the couch but it just didn’t happen. I don’t know if this is a “yet” but I am thinking that next time we hang out in a similar capacity (I mean, he gave me his Crunchyroll password, this is like giving someone your Netflix password, I don’t think he’s going anywhere) I may just flat out ask “yo where do you see this going because I would really like to cuddle w/you right now but if you aren’t feeling it that’s cool but give me an indication of what you ARE feeling.” Or something more succinct.
Dude the Second is a friend I’ve known exclusively online, we apparently went to the same college at the same time but I didn’t know him then, and he relatively recently revealed his attraction to me and since I am somewhat attracted to him we have taken up inappropriate texting and I swear he is writing erotic friend fiction about me and I am so okay with this. However, he lives across the country, and the likelihood of anything panning out is low. But I feel like he would be most affected if I said “Hey, I’m seeing someone, you gotta knock it off.”
Dude the Third is the same on-again off-again dude I’ve been quasi-seeing for about a year, he disappeared to Mexico for dive training back in February and I hadn’t heard from him since he came back until earlier this week when he asked if I wanted to get together to play some video games (duh yes) and he came by last night and we played games and got Chinese food and ended up smooching on the sofa. He is terrible but yet I am so into him, he is arguably the most attractive and he smells so good and UGH I know he’s bad for me but I am weak.
So I think I may just do that thing where I throw all of them into a cage match and see who comes out the victor.
I think you should – *reads last line* – oh crap, you’ve already made my suggestion. -_-
I was gonna suggest just keeping them in a harem and bring out whichever suits her needs at the moment, but this works too.
Unite them in a ridiculous anime show.
Ooooh it’ll be like a reverse Tenchi Muyo, I can get behind this, bring me the space aliens
Another valid solution!
Cage match for sure. Or just go full on polyandry.
I’m…. back to online dating. I lasted a whole 12 hours after my breakup before reactivating and while I was slightly worried that it might not be the healthiest thing to do I actually feel really good. I’m talking to several guys who seem nice but none that I’ve sparked with so far. The one thing I’m noticing is that there are far fewer dudes my age than I think there should be. Almost all my matches are a good 3-5 years younger. Where do folks in their early 30s date??
I have had a hard time finding people my age on the online dating (I am 28, I didn’t think it would be this hard) but I wonder if it has to do with whichever site you’re on? I set up super strict filters on OKC, but so many young dudes kept pinging me. Are all the people in their early 30s on paid sites?
So, I’m in my early thirties and after I ended my last relationship, decided to try eHarmony at a friend’s urging. I talked to tons of people on the site, but the first person I actually went on a date with, we’re still together after almost a year and will probably get married. I guess I got really super duper lucky. Maybe give eH a try. There were a lot of people my age and older, probably because it’s more of an investment.
I was afraid it was time to switch from OKC to a paid site. Maybe in a few months, I don’t know if I’m into something serious yet…
Yep, I was going to offer advice but it seems like you’ve got this figured out.
Seriously though – you can’t go wrong with being direct and honest. And run far away from the third guy! You knew he was trouble when he walked in!
This week in my dating life…
Went on a Tinder date a few weeks ago, my first ever. The guy was geeky and sweet but I’m not sure if I feel the connection. I’ll give it another date before making up my mind.
Found a boy on OkCupid who’s a 95% match and just seems SO GREAT, so I went after him hard – he’s kinda flaky/shy about messaging, so I’ve just been super aggressive and confident about contacting him. Not sure if it’ll progress beyond texting, but I hope it does!
Aaaand I was recently contacted by the guy I semi-seriously dated for a few months last summer. We broke up under odd circumstances – he accidentally did something to me that triggered a lot of traumatic memories and I didn’t know how to broach the subject. And right after it happened, he kind of dropped off the face of the earth, which turned out to be due to major job stress rather than anything I’d done. And in the midst of all this, I met a girl I was absolutely crazy about (turned out she didn’t feel the same way). Finally, after he flaked on a bunch of tentative dates, I Facebook messaged him and was like “Listen, you did this thing and it really wasn’t cool. Also it seems like you’ve lost interest but that’s fine because I met a girl. Peace out.” He wrote back, apologized and explained, and wished me well. And now he’s back in touch! We have tentative plans to get dinner, so I’m interested to see what happens next…
I am in a pickle called The Great Almost Year Long Dry Spell of 2014/15 and like, I want to maybe have a flirtation/ fling with someone but I am moving to graduate school in September and so I don’t want my last summer in my city with all my friends to be tainted with douchebro.
I have a safe ex boyfriend who I used to sometimes sleep with until he got a new girlfriend last year, but they’ve broken up now and he’s reached out to me multiple times to “get together”, but I just, ugh, would really prefer someone new. I mean, he’s cool and nice and stuff but also I’m kind of like “been there done that”? Blergh. TO TINDER OR NOT TO TINDER? (I live in the Midwest and 89% of dudes on Tinder are holding up dead fishes and no thanks)
I can’t advocate Tinder as it only gave me Really Bad Matches, but maybe in other parts of the country it would work better??
i mean, can’t hurt to get back on the horse with the ex in the meantime, right?
My very dear friend, a Tinder champion through whom I Tinder vicariously, lives in Norway and sends me screenshots of every dude she sees holding a fish. I have so many pictures of handsome Nordic men posing with fish now. The Fishmen are a universal phenomenon, I think.
This would be a good idea for a Tumblr. The Fishmen of Tinder.
All aboard!
(This is already turning into a nautically-themed Tinder Tumblr in my head)
Ahh I have no advice, just
yeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssss
Never has this gif been more appropriate (except that it doesn’t have 3 men)
Toast coming through with the best image replies today A+++
Does missing a potential vacation hook-up count as online dating?
GUYS I’m back from Jamaica! We went to a supermarket and I was taking photos of COCK … -flavoured soup mix and this guy walked up behind me and said, “Some things are funny everywhere.” I laughed and agreed (I think? this part is fuzzy to me). Then he said there was some other seasoning mix called Ram-It-Up and I’m pretty sure this is where my eyes turned into hearts.
My friend showed up and I was way too nervous so I said to her, “I’m taking photos of things little boys laugh at.”
And he said, “I’m a grown man.” That shit was sultry.
THEN I said, “There’s a little boy in all of us.”
Then I messed up the joke by joking to my friend that I meant the wording of that joke exactly. I think he figured I wasn’t interested so he melted away. I wanted to yell at him, “No! I’m just lame! THIS IS MY HOTEL COME FIND ME I’LL BUY YOU A DRINK.”
He had a cute short mountain beard and an ACCENT. Maybe Australian. I’m still shaking my head over myself. It was like the perfect meet-cute.
CAGE MATCH, FOR SURE.
On the subject of Dude One, I feel like I should advocate for the possibility that he’s into you, but shy about making moves (HE GAVE YOU HIS CRUNCHYROLL PASSWORD YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE MARRIED). I know convention wisdom is that dudes who like girls make moves, but Boyfriend, in his [paraphrased] words, “knew that as soon as it got physical, I was done for, so I kind of wanted to wait because I wasn’t totally ready to be super infatuated.” I really thought that was bullshit, but we’ve been together for 4.5 years.
Also, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM DUDE THREE. I mean, unless you’re going through one of those self-destructive phases where you need to make bad decisions about men, because that is totally valid and I’ve been there, sister.
I can’t talk about any of this on Twitter because both Dude One and Dude Two are on Twitter so I’m like, thank god for the open thread this week. I like him but he is very busy but I think that he is the kind of dude that I could like, spend a lot of time with?? We have similar interests? I worry though that I’m gonna find out he’s more Reddit than Tumblr and that’ll just break my heart, man.
I think I may be ready for some self-destruction, because I don’t often do that, and I may be ready and prepared. And Dude Three, ugh, he’s here, he smells good, he’s a major babe JEN I AM SETTING MYSELF UP FOR THIS
Oh, the smell. I stuck with a guy for FOUR YEARS because I was, like, chemically attracted to his cologne or something. It was terrible. I would come to my senses and stop calling him, and then we’d run into each other at a party and he’d be like, “I haven’t watched Dragon Ball Z since you left” and I’d be like “let’s go get some McNuggets” and then we’d have merely adequate sex and then he’d be all not-affectionate and standoffish and I would get very assertive about my needs and he’d be like “I don’t really care about your needs, you’re not my girlfriend” and I’d be like “fine, let’s get some more McNuggets and play some Super Smash Bros” and then I would come to my senses and repeat repeat repeat WE DID THAT FOR THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME THAT SOME PEOPLE GO TO COLLEGE so know what you’re getting yourself into, is what I’m saying.
Personally, I was on A Quest to be a miserable bastard so I could mine it for rock ‘n’ roll glory, and the album that I wrote about killing him was pretty satisfying, but I don’t recommend that strategy as, like, a life choice.
Agreed. My now-husband had me going crazy with the WHY HASN’T HE KISSED ME YET thing for over a month, and he later told me it was because he was afraid that if we kissed, it would be more than kissing way too fast, and he wanted to wait awhile for that, and that is exactly what happened, so.
EXACTLY!
I had a positive discussion with Cutest Boy this week, wherein we decided we were not going to see other people and just see where things go. This makes me happy. *insert floating_bubbles.gif*
Your story about dude 2 sounds shockingly similar to how things started with my now-husband, so I’m biased toward him. But obvi cage-match.
QUESTION!
At some point soon I will be buying plane tickets from LAX to Auckland, New Zealand, for a Feb. 2016 trip. There’s no way in hell I can afford anything but flying coach RIGHT NOW, but I’m wondering if anyone has had any experience purchasing upgrades later, whether just at some point before the flight or at the counter during check-in… would it make any sense at all to wait and see if there’s a special deal (or I win the lotto or something) as my flight gets closer?
Thank you 😀
ETA: I also am trying to figure out how to do the NYC>LAX portion of my trip. Booking on the same airline doesn’t really make sense as far as timing goes (not a fan of layovers that are too short to leave the airport but too long in every other sense), but since it’s a international flight and I’m packing for a 2-week trip, I’ll need something to do with my luggage. If I have to book on the same airline to make sure my luggage makes it to NZ, I will, but do I have any other options?
I have flown from Newark to LAX to Brisbane, AUS before and few coach the whole time! I did not buy any upgrades, but I will say that I managed to get my seat changed on every flight so that I was sitting in the aisle, not the middle, and that CHANGED MY LIFE. The seats in the overseas flight were surprisingly comfortable and spacious – definitely NOT your usual coach seat – so it may depend on the airline as well. Who will you be flying?
Either way, that sounds like a LOVELY FUN TRIP!!
I think I’ll be flying Air New Zealand… the other options I looked at had me connecting through Hong Kong or elsewhere in Asia, and quite frankly as my first overseas flight done solo, I’d be more comfortable flying through LAX. That’s very helpful though! The flights I’d be on are on gigantic planes so I will make sure I get not-middle-section seats. I flew middle-section to Madrid once and wanted to murder everyone, so, lesson learned.
thanks … it is my 30th birthday present to myself so i am really looking forward to it 🙂
Air New Zealand is the VERY BEST airline I’ve every experienced. I flew coach on their flight from LA to Auckland a few years ago and it was, possibly, the most comfortable I’ve been on a flight. You will have an amazing time.
Really?! That is so great to hear, oh wow you don’t know how much that helps. Did you get a lot of sleep? I don’t usually sleep on moving vehicles but I plan on taking a sleeping pill and crossing my fingers.
One of the things I find really useful are airport websites. They have maps of all the terminals with all the shops and services etc – on my first solo overseas flight I had a long layover in Hong Kong, so I checked out lounge options ahead of time and had a shower, a nice breakfast, and a massage; best $40 ever.
Seconded – Air New Zealand is the best. (Also their “safety” video features LoTR characters. Yes.)
Well since LotR is basically the main reason why I’m going, I am pretty pumped for this and may even actually pay attention during the safety portion.
I’ve never flown anything but coach, but on our outgoing flight for our trip last summer, when we checked in the guy at the counter said that we could upgrade to first class for $500 each. We declined since that’s still A HUGE WAD OF CASH but our original ticket price + 500 each would definitely have been much much much cheaper than buying first class tickets in the first place.
I am REALLY hoping that’s what happens. Right now, coach round-trip will be about $1600, whereas round-trip in first class would run me like $7000. I will have more spending money next year (my end of year work bonus gets paid out in early January) so I’m really hoping that option is still available when I get to the counter. Checking in early!!
If you’re flying on a different but partner airline NYC>LAX they will probably just check your luggage all the way through in NYC, but if not you’d just pick up your luggage when you land in LAX and recheck on the second airline right away, so I wouldn’t worry about restricting yourself to one airline.
Yes, that is exactly what I did! I flew Virgin America to LAX, and they just transferred it right from LAX to my Virgin Australia flight.
I guess just make sure to leave tons of extra time to go down to baggage claim, then re-check in for an international flight, right? 2-2.5 hours should do it I should think?
Yes, that should be, especially if you can check in online and get your boarding pass – then you can just go through the bag drop lane rather than the full check-in lane. Much easier!
LAX can be a nightmare. I’d be looking at 2.5 hours at a minimum. My husband used to travel a lot for work, and would say LAX was the worst airport in America, but we never actually had a problem. If you leave yourself a lot of time, you’ll be fine. There’s some nice gardens you can sit and read in 🙂
if your tickets are on a code sharing airline, they can usually check them through to your final destination. Have you ever heard of the Flyer Talk forums? It’s a place where super-travelers and aviation geeks swap tips – my husband uses it to suss out all of our travels.
Good luck!
I fly this route with Air New Zealand every now and then, and they just changed their upgrade policy and it’s RIDICULOUS and (I think) impossible. You have to *bid* on an upgrade, but the suggested realistic bids are for pretty much the same amount as a business ticket would have initially been. I’m not sure if you can straight-up purchase an upgrade anymore.
That said, I always fly Air NZ because the planes are comfy, and food and service very good.
Also — there are direct flights from SFO to AKL that are about the same as LAX to AKL — with Air NZ, at least, and I strongly recommend transferring through SFO rather than nightmare-hellscape LAX. Much easier to get bags, change terminals etc.
Oh, very cool. I hadn’t thought about SFO… I will look into that!
Yay! Last time it was the exact same price as LAX-AKL and SO much nicer. One more bit of advice: I really think it’s better to pay more for the direct flight, if you can. Going with Virgin, through Australia (or Qantas, i guess) makes the jetlag so much worse. This is probably psychosomatic, but there you go. Plus you will spend the extra $$ on horribly expensive airport food in Australia, basically. Fly direct, get there 5am NZ time, have a wonderful b’day trip!!
Oops I see you said above that you’re probably going with Air NZ. Sorry, this is the only topic on which fervent NZ patriotism takes hold of me.
Oh, yeah, direct for sure. It’s bad enough that I can’t fly direct from NYC to NZ, there’s no way I would do multiple stops.
I had to book a trip for my boss once where he wanted to fly in to JFK, leave his luggage at the airport, check in to a hotel for the night, and then return to JFK in the morning for the next leg of his journey. I found that the airport did have a service where you could check you luggage and leave it. So that might be an option if you want to stay in LA overnight but not take all your stuff with you!
That… sounds ridiculous. But good to know that’s a thing! I was considering doing a long layover in LA and staying with one of my friends, but he’s being super weird right now and I used to have pantsfeelings for him and it’s probably just better if I don’t get involved with that again right before a 2-week solo trip. Blerg. Boys are the worst. Maybe Kiwi boys are not the worst and I’ll fall hopelessly in love and get my groove back, etc etc.
Dublin airport also does this. It was a huge help when we came back from England a couple of years ago; we had an overnight layover in Dublin (so much cheaper! considered “undesirable”!) and a frankly shocking amount of luggage, but we just left our big bags at the airport and took a carry-on to our hotel. It was great! And then we drank Dublin dry for a night, so, boo for flying hungover, but yay for the whole experience, A+
I’ve done the leg from NYC to Auckland before, and economy class was fine. I mean I am pretty used to economy, but there’s some anecdotal evidence for you.
I flew Air NZ, and you can book the whole trip with them, which gets your luggage checked right through to NZ. There’s a code share airline they put you on in the US, can’t remember which one it was. Anyway, having done a few long distance flights, I think that booking the whole thing together, so you don’t have to worry about luggage at the stop over, or what happens if you don’t make the connection, is definitely the way to go.
This is really the first full week that has felt like spring, and I LOVE IT. I cleaned my room last night, and made pasta with asparagus. My three little lithops have synced up and are all re-emerging from their old leaves at the same time, and I re-potted a pip from my roommate’s rescued spider plant– we’ll see how it does! It had pretty impressive root growth when I started it in a glass of water. Living with plants is just so nice, I don’t know why I waited this long to get some.
Spring makes me feel very domestic, so talk to me about your habitats, Toastites! Do you have plants? Are you redecorating? Moving?? What is the best thing about your home?
Spring makes me feel very domestic too! I’ve done a bunch of cleaning but I think this weekend is going to be doing all those little projects that need to get done that never get done. I need to re-pot some plants, fix a couple minorly broken things, mend some minorly holey things, etc. Not one them individually will take more than 5 minutes but there are just so many of them!
My apartment has a built in shelf at about waist height on all the exterior walls. It’s so nice to have somewhere to put plants and water glasses and books that don’t quite fit on my bookshelves.
Ditto! I always look forward to the first weekend I can throw the windows open, and I usually spend it going through closest and putting together piles of things to donate or throw away. This past weekend was spent completely reorganizing my library, moving some of the books to the living room for display purposes, and actually finding a stack of books to donate which was scary and a little liberating.
I want to get plants, but every time I have, my cat eats them.
This is the beauty of hanging plants! They provide a lovely vertical visual and the cats can’t eat them!
I’m cleaning off my balcony – getting rid of dead plant material from last year’s container garden, setting up some new solar lamps, dusting off the table and chairs – all in anticipation of another glorious season of Balcony Wine. Soon: buying more potting soil and planting this year’s garden.
Yesss. I’m totes adding that to my list and then having Balcony Beer.
I wish I had a balcony rather than a breezeway. I do have a chair out there, but I feel like i’m in everyone’s way if I sit in it. I’m also figuring out how to hang out there with my dog and not have her be in the way.
I moved in February and am so happy! But I think I am going to Home Depot tonight after work and picking up a little bit of paint for an accent wall in my living room, and I am very excited. I have also been considering getting a couple plants, but I have a black thumb, so maybe not.
Favorite thing about our home (and about spring!) is the garden. We’ve got our seed starts going indoors (still WEEKS until the last frost – boo!), and a few hardy plants going outside. The garlic is coming up, the daffodils are flowering, and the raspberry bush is continuing its effort to overtake the entire ugly shrub that grows behind our house. I love it and I want MORE!
I cleaned my porch (indoor… I guess you could call it a sunroom?) last weekend and got rid of the gross rug so it is much brighter and is currently housing my herbs and tomato plants that are not quite ready to go into the ground yet. We also raked most of the leaves that we never dealt with in the fall and I trimmed the bushes and ivy in front of the house. I still have to do some more raking and plant some flowers (I bought a bunch of wildflower packets… I’m not into the orderly impatiens that everyone else in the neighborhood seems to favor).
The best thing about my house is its water view… it looks out over Narragansett Bay.
I have a new house with a big yard and I am SO EXCITED to garden. We haven’t gotten it together enough to make vegetable beds at this point so I’m probably not going to be able to do much vegetable gardening this year, but there are ornamental beds I can play in and I have parsley and tomatoes sprouting indoors right now for pots. I’m currently impatiently waiting for the perennials outside to get going so I can see what I have. Unfortunately, it looks like the previous owners just grabbed random plants they liked the look of so there isn’t much cohesion/design. I’m trying to figure out what I want to keep and what I want to move and what I need to get rid of, but the problem is that most of the plants are quite nice so I don’t really want to get rid of any of them but I don’t really want to keep them either.
Hey, Philadelphia-area Toastpeople–ICYMI, we now have a Google Group to get in touch with one another and discuss Philly-area events. You can request membership from the group page!
In Texas it is required to go take pictures in the bluebonnets. Here is our foster Roxanne:
Happy spring, y’all!
Dog!
Here’s Leela and Roo (and stuffed pig)
Gertie and tongue!
What a GOOD DOG. (I want very badly to take a bluebonnet picture of my cat! My goal is to grow some in our yard next year, which will make it actually feasible to pose her in them.)
We thought about taking Beans, but I’m pretty sure he’d be afraid of the flowers. Or eat another bee. That guy, I dunno.
I want more Beans pictures though!
Toasties, it was our fifth wedding anniversary (and twelth anniversary of being together) on wednesday, and we went out for a meal. I knit him some socks, and he got me a couple of books and a beginners drop spindle kit. I’ve made a few inches of ugly yarn so far.
Jos took a week off, and we’ve had a great but very cheap stay-at-home holiday. The sun has come out, the gorse is blooming, and we have had a wonderful time.
That sounds LOVELY. <3 to you both!
Tortoise Diet/lifestyle change and rapid cycling bipolar disorder merge and divide.
I might have figured out that I was not actually rapid cycling because of the exercise I was doing for my lifestyle change.
I started taking vitamins and an Omega-3 fish oil supplement back in February, and soon thereafter, I thought I’d started rapid cycling. But it may have been the fish oil. Yesterday, after a week of not taking any vitamins, I took fish oil and then went out shopping. And: I actually had to stop in the store and lay my head down on the cart because a sudden wave of tiredness went through me. (As had been happening … )
It was such a weird thing to do — I’d been in a great mood because *shopping* and then … wow.
So I looked up side effects of fish oil supplements and found “unusual tiredness and muscle weakness” listed.
Oh. So, on the one hand, I’m happy I figured that out, on the other hand, for a few months I’ve been really mad at my bipolar disorder and was hating my life when really, if I’d just looked up side effects to begin with … .
It’s all over now. My lifestyle change lives to see another day.
Congratulations! I’m proud of you, even though I don’t know you. Well done.
thanks! I’m going to start weightlifting again asap — today I’m cleaning house which is exercise enough … but … you know, my bipolar disorder isn’t going anywhere, so *hating it* is just so useless. I’m so glad to have some equanimity back.
Toasties, this morning reminded me that job hunting is on their calendar, as terrible as that may be, and I need to get a little more patient/zen/something. Scheduled a phone interview for Monday for a job that I applied to a full month ago. And that’s how it will be! Anyone else dealing with the terribleness of unemployment-boredom-job hunt horrors?
Not unemployed, but I have been waiting to get answer from a job I desperately want for a month and a half now. They emailed me to say they should have an answer by the end of next week this morning, and I had to be restrained from replying “I hope all your future children are born with six toes”.
Ugh, yes, why does it take so damn long? I had a first round interview for something I really want back on March 31 and they said they were hoping to have someone starting by the beginning of May and are they going to schedule me for a second round or no??
These people told me when I did my first phone interview at the end of February that they wanted someone to start by the end of March. It’s one thing to take forever but like. . .give me a realistic idea of how long it’s actually going to take? I have been jumping nervously everytime I get a new email or my phone buzzes for about a month now. If I don’t get this job I want to sue them for emotional trauma.
EXACTLY. Ugh. I feel like I spend all day just hoping for email, and then the email is just, like, Emily’s List asking me for money.
Oh yeah, or at least, MrChouffe is, so I am too. And this is something he has REALLY struggled with over the last couple of months.
<3 I know your household’s job hunt stuff is just Not Fun these days. Thinking positive thoughts in your direction!
Thanks, honey. <3 Sending them right back to you!
not unemployed, but have been struggling with job hunting in my new career, which I graduated from in December (nursing). My current city is supersaturated with nurses, so I put out a lot of energy for very very few callbacks and even fewer interviews, and then rejections.
I liken it to waiting for a train to come around a bend: it will come. for sure, but waiting for it is super painful and sometimes it’s late and seems like it will never come. But it will. But until you see it it’s natural to feel that stress of “what if…?”
So take time to care for yourself, and know you’re not alone <3
I once got invited to interview for a position I had applied for 8 months previously. Meanwhile there’s a job I applied for back in November that I haven’t heard back from apart from a message saying that I had “passed the initial screening” so… presumably they’ll interview me at some point? The problem with living in a government town is that hiring moves at a glacial pace.
Last time I was doing all of this, I got an interview request three months after I had started my new job. And when I responded with “thanks, but I’m actually happily employed now!” they didn’t take that as a straight-up no!
Ugh, government town job hunting is the worst. I love you, Ottawa, but I need a job now, not six months from now. I don’t know if you’re in the same government town as me, but if you are, do you get the ‘Entry level position that needs 10+ years experience and also you need to be fluently bilingual’ nonsense postings too?
I am also in Ottawa! A few months ago I was actually part of an interview panel for a vacancy in my division. Even from the other side of the table, the process is a nightmare.
We ended up with 12 people in the pool of qualified candidates and because it’s a “bilingual imperative” position, all the candidates have to take the Public Service Commission’s language tests. According to HR, we can’t make anyone an offer until all of them have gotten their test results. Even though there’s a single vacancy, my boss already knows who her top 3 are, the pool is only valid for a year and #12 on the list doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. One of them is scheduled to be tested in June. This is for a position that’s been vacant since the fall and that we did the interviews for in January.
I know a lot of these hiring policies are in the interest of fairness/eliminating liabilities (“You only hired her because she’d already done her language tests, but I’m just as qualified!”) but they are so inconvenient and really hamstring an employer’s ability to run an efficient competition.
This “on their schedule” thing is so hard to remember.
I saw a comment recently along the lines of “Good fit, good pay, good commute, pick two” and I’m trying to repeat that to myself. I’m employed, so I can afford to be picky, but that also means slow progress :/
I’m so sorry; I did this for most of last year, and finally got something that pays 30% less than I was making before, and is boring as hell, really designed for someone 25 years younger than me. So…still looking, but it’s really demoralizing. I hope you have other job seekers to talk to (in real life, not just in comments sections), as it’s way too easy to feel marginalized and solitary. Good luck!!
I hunted for about a year (summarized on my blog), mostly at universities and nonprofits who are all repeat offenders for this, so I saw it a LOT. At the same time, I was already in a uni department with a high turnover, so I saw what that looked like on our end. By the time HR approved and posted an opening, the position would already have been vacant for weeks. Then it would take a few weeks, maybe a month, to read applications and schedule interviews. Then we would wait and wait for HR to give us permission to make an offer. (Meanwhile, the job posting would still be online and receiving applications.) We would make an offer as soon as HR said we could, and by then, the opening would have been vacant for 2-3 months. So yeah, if we didn’t have cause to be aware of how long this process would take, we would have been telling applicants that we’d get back to them very soon, because we’d already been struggling to work around the vacant position for many weeks.
Best thing to do with job applications is to send and forget. Get distracted. Apply to other jobs. Because whatever is holding things up on their end, I guarantee they’d get back to you sooner if they could.
Not unemployed, but I’m waiting to hear back about an ESL job I had a Skype interview for two weeks ago. She asked when I needed to make my decision and I told her by the end of the month, so I should know at least by then. If I don’t get it, I’ll stay where I am, which means that whether I get this job or not determines whether I continue to live in Russia or move to Slovakia.
Partially employed as a freelance writer, but I’m trying to break into content marketing because $$, and it’s so hard to complete the work I have, line up enough to sustain me for another month, and then be perky and ambitious on top of that. There’s not enough caffeine in the world. So I’m trying to structure a schedule that jams in little 15-minute bursts of activity on several goals & hope it leads somewhere good. Best of luck to you, and be sure to treat yourself well while looking. Possibly with gelato.
This is the third day of heavy snow in a row and I would mind less if the university had a snow day. This weekend I’m going to have a fire and make elephant ears and knit because it is suddenly winter again and the roads out of town are closed.
What are your cooking plans for this weekend?
We all get to go home at noon! I’m happy but also annoyed I had to come in in the first place.
I’m going to dinner at a friend’s house tomorrow night and have been tasked with bringing dessert. I’m torn between making rustic apple tarts, or something with lots of chocolate. I have a feeling this afternoon will be spent on food blogs drooling over pictures and deciding.
Both of those choices are great, so you really can’t go wrong. What are some of your favorite food blogs?
I really like smitten kitchen and I love just looking at all the pictures that are posted on foodgawker.
As a chocolate-lover, my vote is always for chocolate. As a baker, I understand how pretty an apple tart with beautiful little sliced apples can look.
(I still vote for chocolate though.)
Chocolate is always a good choice. I might make a chocolate stout cake. Or perhaps the Thai tea roll cake from Pear’s food blog.
I’m having friends over tomorrow and I’m making these (subbing candied ginger for chocolate chips).
I made ricotta gnocchi for the first time this week and it was so easy and delicious I’m debating eating them for every meal ever. Or at least making them again this weekend.
This: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2015/02/spaghetti-…
This weekend I’ll probably eat stale bagels and peanut butter or something oatmeal-ish, but on Monday I’m making pasta e fagiole to sustain me through the week. It’s going to kick butt; I tore apart the market this morning and found parmesan rinds for 75 cents, so, welcome to flavor country.
It’s my kid’s birthday on Monday so I’m making an angel food cake with a fruit/honey-orange sauce topping. Other than that I don’t really know. I’ll probably just make a batch of quinoa and grill various meats so I can be lazy as shit all week.
Fantasy recommendations you saaay? Sexy Fantasy Edition.
For TV Shows, Lost Girl is on Netflix, and is good, trashy fun, at least for the first few seasons. It’s a Canadian urban fantasy TV show about a bisexual succubus who solves Faerie crimes. (No, really.) Perfect for watching on the couch with a drink in hand on Friday night.
While we’re on the subject of sex-positive fantasy, I’m still working on the Kushiel series (just started book 2), and it’s still fucking awesome. This series should be as popular as Game of Thrones, given how good its complex plotting and characters and world-building are. But since it’s about a courtesan and BDSM, it never will be. So, recommending Kushiel’s Dart and sequels!
LOVE Lost Girl, and I love the female friendship between Bo and Kenzie.
A celebration of female friendship, plus some hot werewolf lovin’. What’s not to love?
I forgot I’d started Lost Girl! Thanks for reminding me. Also, Kushiel’s Dart is pretty special to me because I grew up Evangelical Christian, so the books were … I don’t know how to say it. Special.
Oh dang, that must have been quite the discovery!
ohh yes this is me too!! I started it without any idea what it was about, and I felt so guilty for liking it. But wow did I like it.
I also love Lost Girl, particularly the friendship at the center of it. Kenzi (sp?) reminds me of one of my closest friends who is inconveniently living in Indonesia at the moment, so watching it makes me think of her 🙂
Also, it’s one of those rare shows where the casting director and I are apparently 100% on the same page when it comes to gauging hotness. Lots of the shows I watch I think the women are lovely, but the men are mostly “meh,” but both werewolf boy and Hale totally do it for me. See also: Sleepy Hollow. Mmmmmmm.
Yes, sleepy hollow! There are so many shows where I just go “ok, I suppose those dudes must be hot, because the fans swoon over them.” Then Sleepy Hollow came along.
Lost Girl is a great rec!! And I love all the Kushiel books!!
Why am I not watching this?
…Aside from the fact that all of my TV watching time is taken up by Star Trek: Voyager, I mean? I’m sure I can squeeze in a little time away from Janeway et al.
Sex-positive fantasy rec! Tanya Huff’s Enchantment Emporium and its (I think only) sequel The Wild Ways. It’s poly-friendly, queer-friendly, female-power-oriented, and a fun concept to boot. It’s also a little incest-y (cousins), but set in a fantasy culture where that’s normal.
And yes to Lost Girl. I’m at least a season behind because I’m trying to watch it with a friend, but I do love it.
Are you me? I was going to recommend the exact same things! I just reread the first three and actually read the Imriel books this time rather than just pouting because Phedre’s not the narrator and I actually enjoyed them quite a bit! Especially book 3.
I have a question for academic/grad-school going Toasties: how important should problems with the school’s administration be when making a choice about grad school?
I had been getting really excited about going to this school, it looks perfect for me in SO many ways, but then I read about this controversy that’s happening that makes their administration look just awful. http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/295665.shtml
I guess I just can’t tell how much this would affect me if I went to school there. A few professors have resigned which is definitely a problem. But I’d be planning to do the program low-residency so I would really just be interacting with classes. It’s the only school where I can do exactly what I want to study in a low-residency way, which is pretty important to me, so I really want it to be an option but. . .ugh. Thoughts?
Normally I would say not too big a deal for students, but this sounds really coercive and creepy, and with the board actively dragging students in in an invasive way… it sounds like they don’t have an appropriate sense of their role as a board at all.
Right?? Ugh. And this is a school that’s supposed to be all about social justice, so I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around how awful this is. I was so excited when I found the school because all I want is to quit my job and move to the city where my best friends are and still be able to pursue a grad degree and this school looked like it would give me all of those options. So now I am very sad.
When do you have to make your decision by? Is there time to see how this plays out, and how the rest of the administration and campus community respond?
I haven’t actually even applied yet, but I have until July to do so, I think. So I could wait a month or so, or wait till next year. I’m just feeling very antsy with life right now and want to be able to change things RIGHT NOW, so it’s very frustrating. Thank you for your advice!
I sit on my school’s grad student association and what I can say is…it depends.
There are a LOT of people in our GSA that have major issues with our administration and don’t trust them to do shit. There are a lot who are just there to finish their degrees and be done. And this is at a major public research university, so the administration fucking up would be a huuuuuuge issue that would affect 5,000+ students.
What I will say is that there are enough things that will make your grad school life difficult, and if the administration is embroiled in controversy, that could seriously add to the things making your work harder.
Thanks! Ugh. I have a call with their admissions office on Monday to do an intro thing, so I’m going to ask about this and hope I get some kind of actually reassuring answer. But that’ll be hard to trust knowing they are probably being well trained on what to say about this and can’t speak honestly.
Is there some way you can get in contact with a student currently enrolled in the program you want to join? That’s probably going to be your best chance at hearing what’s really going on.
I’m gonna try– I’m planning to get coffee with someone who is a Unitarian minister from a different school, and I saw on FB that she knows the new President, so I’m hoping she’ll have some insight, and I’m gonna poke around among my friends who are in that general realm to see if they know anybody too. It would be creepy to just Facebook stalk a random student to ask them, right?
I will probably just have to slow this whole process down, see what happens and do an actual campus visit before I decide to apply, but that’s just frustrating because it will likely mean putting off grad school for a whole year and I’m very grouchy and antsy with my whole life/job/city I’m living in situation right now. Sigh.
Are you interested in other seminaries besides this one? If you aren’t already, it might be good to pay them visits in person too and see how you feel at each of them. I feel like nothing is quite as good as a visit in person for giving you a sense of the feel of a place. You’d presumably have a chance to talk to some lower-level administrators, students, etc.
The phrase “Within what parties on all sides agree is a longstanding atmosphere of mistrust at the school” did give me pause.
There are, but it’s a little complicated. There are only two Unitarian Universalist seminaries in the country, and this is the one that seems far more political and social justice oriented and just all around cooler. There are other seminaries, but they all seem to be rooted in some kind of Christian faith (whereas UUs are not Christian and draw from a variety of spiritual and philosophical traditions), and as someone who is distinctly Not Christian I would prefer to avoid that. But they do have very cool degrees at other places that do encourage multi-faith study, so it’s doable. And this one allows low residency degrees which is big for me. But yeah– I think you’re right that I will need to take this slow and visit to make sure I don’t end up in a weird and bad situation at this school.
Hmmm. A friend of mine studied there, I’ll have to check in with her about this. I echo the other folks who have suggested visiting other seminaries and programs to see what kind of vibe you get.
Oh wow, I would really appreciate that a lot, thank you! Very interested to hear what she has to say.
Last night my coworkers and I smelled smoke in the library, so we called security and wandered around until we found it– someone had lit a book on fire and put it back on the shelf on top of other books. If it had gone a few more minutes the sprinklers would have turned on.
Also, I’m the auntie of a brand new baby– yay!– but she failed her hearing test 🙁 Other than that she is healthy, but the dad situation is far from ideal, and baby and mom live with grandma, who is one of the worst humans ever.
I am so drained I don’t really know what to do with myself. I think I’ll take my dog out for some nature tomorrow, I love to see her happy.
… someone… lit a book on fire?
I…
what
Congratulations on your niece! I wish her all the best. Give her lots of warm hugs from us here on the Toast!
It sounds like someone was trying to be a Lemony Snicket villain.
(The library arsonist. Not the baby. Babies are Lemony Snicket heroes.)
someone had lit a book on fire and put it back on the shelf on top of other books
Oh my god, what was the book?
Hunger Games: Catching Fire?
Bonfire of the Vanities?
Burning Bright?
Pale Fire?
The Blazing World?
Dante’s Inferno?
The Poetry of Robert Burns?
That was everyone’s first question!! Unfortunately it was just some old English history book. Guess the arsonist figured the old ones would burn nicely.
A history of the Great Fire of London by any chance? They should have at least stuck to the theme!
JFC they found two more fires today!! SOMEONE IS TRYING TO BURN MY LIBRARY DOWN!
That is so creepy! Do they have any security cameras?
Just on the library entrance…
It’s Hangfire I tell you! He wants the library to meet a Very Fiery Demise!
…the fuck is wrong with people?
You need to make your users sign a form like the one at the Bodleian:
“I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.”
I was snooping through my sister’s child education related materials (as you do) and came across a helpful list of vague affirmative compliments to give children. ‘I appreciate you as an individual.’ ‘Your work is valuable.’ ‘You contribute to the team.’ Etc. And it made me start thinking about a) the sort of compliments I would have liked to get as a child (why yes, small bighairnoheart, if you ever went to Narnia you’d TOTALLY be queen/Reepicheep’s bff material’) and b) the sort of compliments I like now (usually shallow ones about my hair or cheekbones and the relative height/sharpness thereof.)
So. What’s the best/strangest/[insert adjective here] compliment you’ve ever received?
Hands down my favorite was from when I was in the military. I worked in a pretty physical, labor intensive job with nothing but men as far as the eye could see. After a pretty rough day, physically and mentally, a coworker asked the supervisor if I needed help with a task when it was thought I was out of earshot. The supervisor replied that no, I could handle things myself because I was ‘a tough bitch.’ I want that on my tombstone. Right underneath a winged skull and a creepy poem.
I think the best was ‘are you an art student? You look like an art student’.
I’m still not sure what they meant, but I’ll take it.
A small child once said that I looked like an artist, and it was one of my proudest moments. Right up there with the time another small child pointed at me and yelled “Look! It’s Velma! From Scooby-Doo!” Which is pretty accurate as far as cartoon characters that I look like.
Tough bitch is a perfect compliment. In a similar vein, I was freaking out over some work problems to a friend recently and she said, ‘You consistently underestimate your own badassery’ which was just what I needed to hear.
Once in high school, my best friend told me that I was a good listener and “jewel”. The jewel part is a bit odd, but obviously it has stuck with me.
When I was finished walking the West Highland Way my pack and I were catching a bus in Ft. William, and as the bus driver hefted my pack into the baggage compartment he looked at me and said, “Ach, you’re a hearty lass!”
complete with stereotypical highland accent. Do I repeat it to myself regularly, even ten years later? Yes, yes I do.
Understandably! That’s a great compliment.
I was swimming laps on vacation once and the ridiculously fit ultramarathoner who was swimming next to me told me afterwards that my pace was fantastic and my form was perfect. “Your left arm is perfect”, he said admiringly, and do I use that to motivate myself now when I’m having a crap day in the pool? I sure do.
What’s the best/strangest/[insert adjective here] compliment you’ve ever received?
“You look like a Disney Evil Queen.”
Nothing will ever top that. Ever.
Damn. I aspire to get that sort of compliment one day.
The closest I’ve ever gotten to that was being compared to eighties Brigitte Nielsen when my coworkers were playing the You Look Like Game. (You pointed at someone in the room and said who/what you thought they looked like. It was just as horribly offensive as it sounds like it has the potential to be.)
I aspire to get that sort of compliment one day
90% of it is attitude, I assure you. Also, that sounds like the worst game ever oh my god.
I get intimidating a lot. Also scary. But I want that exact phrasing.
And yeah, it was vaguely horrible. Apparently I can turn off my ability to be offended? And most of my higher-reasoning skills? Otherwise I don’t think anyone can survive in the military. Just go with the offensive shit and when someone tells someone else that you have a larger penis than them take it as a compliment. (Because they meant it as one in their own strange way.)
I essentially spent four years mothering big, dumb, good-natured, but highly non-pc guys.
YOU ARE A SAINT.
Which is the opposite of the compliment you were hoping for, but…
I’ll take it if I can have Olga of Kiev as my model. I’d like a bit of firey murder first before the sainthood part.
I love this whole train of thought because I’m bad at giving compliments and bad at receiving compliments, and I think about this a lot.
I have a document on my phone containing the most uplifting compliments I have ever received, for “self worth” emergencies. One of my favorites was from a 6-year-old: “Why is everyone sitting in a room talking when we’re having fun in here?”
Someone once referred to me as “secret sexy”. As in, “you’re just talking to her and whatever and then you realize how sexy she is.” I still don’t quite understand that but I’ll take it.
My favorite was from a friend of mine who is about 6’5″ or so (I am 5’2″ on a good day) and he said, “PJ, I know you think of yourself as a tiny grasshopper and small or whatever, maybe even more than physically, but you’re not. Dude, you’re a giant.” I have never felt so awesome. I still think of that when I need a mood boost.
Files “you are a giant” in my memory for future pep-talk sessions with self and others.
A romantic partner man once told me that I was a force of nature. It was strange but also best.
Someone told me in college that I would have a fat husband. She meant that I’m a good cook/baker, but was super weird.
The dentist who pulled my wisdom teeth said “Wow, you’re TOUGH!” in an admiring tone when I didn’t flinch at any of the, like, 8 Novocaine injections! For some reason that one has really stuck with me.
my family dentist and dental assisstant always go on and on about how i have really good teeth.
it’s a weird compliment, but i love it! i mean, they don’t say it to my mom or sister (i’ve asked) and they’re dental professionals do they should know, right? leaving their office always makes me feel super accomplished in the tooth department.
I was too drunk to remember the exact phrasing but “it’s not possible for you to have that voice without a clove cigarette habit”. I don’t actually smoke anything, but I do love the smell of cloves and cigars, and I love that he observed my voice precisely enough to imagine my bad habits.
On a related note, does anyone *remember* getting compliments as a child? Compliments that really meant something?
I remember people constantly complimenting my looks or what I was wearing, but I didn’t care at all. The people who gave those compliments were the sort of people who would give them to literally every child they met, because they didn’t know what else to say.
And I remember getting compliments like “You’re a genius!” or “You’re really smart!” or “Are you going to college yet?” (when I was clearly too young to be going to college), and those just made me uncomfortable, because what was I going to say? There was no good answer that didn’t make me sound like an asshole.
I think the only compliments that really “stuck” were the ones that made me want to be a better person. Like, “You’re such a good big sister,” or “You’re so good at sharing.” The ones that made me think of myself as one of the good guys, and made me proud of doing things like letting other kids have a turn. Even though I sensed that these compliments were vaguely manipulative at times, and once I got old enough I started to feel insulted by them.
Is there a *right* way to compliment children?
I would get compared to my great-grandmother (a fellow tough bitch who died three weeks before I was born) as a child and that always stuck with me. I think it was mostly meant in a ‘you may be too smart for your own good and a future spinster’ sort of way, but I took those compliments and ran with them. I was kind of a smug asshole as a child.
Now I spend a certain amount of time each week hanging out with an eleven year old boy (he has Asperger’s and it’s half-babysitting/half-mentoring?) and I just tend to try to talk to him like I would to an adult. And compliment him as one too. The same goes for pretty much all of the children I encounter. Generally I’ve found that if the patronizing bullshit is kept to a minimum they tend to respond well?
The “you’re so smart” comments ended up giving me SUCH a complex that I am still crippled by fear of disappointing anyone who believed in my potential as a child.
I’m no expert, but I kind of wish someone had just told me I was a good person and not to worry so much about being perfect at, you know, any point in my childhood.
The best compliments (in retrospect) were when I’d worked really hard at somethings I found difficult. They were always more genuine than any of the ‘what a pretty girl’ shit and more helpful than ‘oh, you’re so clever’.
‘I know you don’t enjoy maths but you got your results up one grade! Well done, we are SO proud’ was amazing.
My teacher told my mum when I was ten that she’d never met anyone that read as much as I did. It meant a lot because I respected her and it felt good to have it validated. Gives me the sads a bit that I have so much less time for it now.
I think kids don’t need to be told things they might sort of already know like smart or pretty, but something that suggests you’ve noticed something that matters to them can be pretty memorable.
the following have worked well for me:
That looks like you had to practice a lot
you worked hard for that
I like the way you do that
I like the way you used the blue in there
I like the way you work at a problem/project
Thank you for your help
I’m so glad you could come
tell the absolute truth, as much as possible
My favorite compliment I ever received was when my then-girlfriend/now-fiancee told me after we had been dating about a year, “I just think you’re a really good person.”
I used to take portrait-drawing classes and sometimes when we needed a model I would sit for the class. It’s amazing the types of things people will say when they are really, closely studying your face. Apparently my skin has “very interesting green undertones, but not in a bad way.” And people like the angle of my chin!
Also my mother always tells a story about how a man on a bus correctly guessed that she was part Irish because of her “long Irish teeth.” I have no idea if this is a Thing or not but I think about it sometimes.
When I was getting my nipples pierced the guy told me I was “a fucking champ” in a suitably awed and humbled tone as I failed to flinch during the procedure.
Unfortunately, dazzled as he was by my fabulous confidence/pain tolerance/breasts, one of the piercings turned out crooked and I had to get it redone, and then they just never seemed to heal properly and constantly snagged on things in the most painful way and I ended up taking them out a couple years later.
Nipple piercings: do they actually work out for anyone or are they just an elaborate prank?
The weirdest compliments I received were both from teachers. My 6th grade English teacher told me I “had a bit of the devil in me.” When we were trying to figure out what was going on down the hall, my 12th grade English teacher elected me to go because I was “sneaky and quiet like a snake.”
Both were said appreciatively, but I don’t know what it is about me that makes me so admirably shifty to English teachers.
A girl at summer camp when I was a teenager told me I had a “cute schnoz.” <3
I love this thread a lot.
Last week RoseCamelia told me “There has always been a bit of glitter in the aura around how I imagine you” and I have been carrying that around all week.
When I mentioned to a former boss that I don’t like public speaking, he seemed really surprised and said “I wouldn’t have thought that there was much that could scare you.” I’m inordinately pleased by that one.
The mom of one of my students once told me I reminded her of Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon…in their roles as the NPR Ladies (Schwetty Balls).
As a preschool teacher, I do tend to speak in very even tones, especially when I’m saying things like, “What a beautiful mud pie,” “That’s the biggest spider I’ve ever seen,” and “I can see that you’ve pooped all over the floor.”
a list of these would make a really fun article to read!
According to a middle school teacher, I’m an encyclopedia with legs.
Walking past a drag club in my old neighborhood, one of the beutiful-glitzy-patrons standing outside complimented my outfit and told me I had a whole Jane Russell thing going on. It was the greatest day of my life.
In high school I was very self-conscious of being “the quiet one” in class and in social situations. Senior year my English teacher described me as someone who “thinks to speak, instead of speaking to think”. It stuck with me enough that I put it on my online dating profile.
that is awesome!
On the evaluation form for a college class I was teaching, in the section for evaluating the teaching staff, a student left a one word comment: “Badass.”
I have never been so proud.
“Are you a dancer? You dress like a dancer.”
Toasties, I weigh more than 230 pounds, and the fact that a stranger thought I looked like a dancer makes me happy for humanity.
Possibly the compliment I got today from the lady in the checkout line at the cafeteria, which was “You are a scholar and a gentlewoman” and it made my day/week/month
“You could be a girl on the radio!” from one of the regular customers (a very nice older gentleman who was a pastor and also an amateur author) I had at my last job. For someone who’s always been a little self-conscious about her voice, it was nice to hear.
A child in an elevator with me once told her father that I was “fancy.” I was wearing pearls with jeans, so….?
This has been such a fun thread to read! I’ve gotten a couple of unusual compliments that I loved–once, in the college dining hall, a younger friend told me, “You’re so good at knowing how much food to take. I always waste so much!”
What’s a good way to find out about museum exhibitions? I just learned about one that happened in Cleveland in 2011 and I’m really sad I missed it.
Just get on their email. They will spend so much time asking you for money you’ll never miss another exhibit, ever. I signed up for the MOMA email 11 years ago to get access to their online stuff and they are STILL sending me info.
(I’m upset, because I really wanted to see the mammoth and mastodons exhibit, but it ends this weekend, and I’m swamped, so I think I might lose my chance–especially since I have to coach in an hour and a half)
Mirrormask! It is a fun fantasy movie. And it has a Stephen Fry in it, so, y’know. Watch it.
So, I have been pretty absent from All Things Toast for a while, but for a good reason: I’ve been writing a lot and it has taken over my brain. I would like to say I’m writing something more worthwhile than fanfic, but then I’d be lying.
In other news, I dumped my fella last night. It was time. His status has been downgraded to “really good buddy”, so it’s not a terrible thing. He is a wonderful guy but an objectively terrible boyfriend. It happens. We’ll see how it goes!
Has anyone just kind of… taken the romance out of the equation? I’d love to hear how it worked out. So far it feels like the right thing to do, but it has only been a day.
Mirrormask also has Rob Brydon in it, and I had a major Old Guy Crush on him for a while – it is a delight, do watch it!
I am interested in responses to your other question, though. There have been a few instances where I have wanted to push the “downgrade” button but not sure how to go about doing that.
Yesssssss Rob Brydon! Please tell me you saw The Trip and The Trip to Italy and loved them as much as I did.
I did! SO GOOD. Also, Rob Brydon singing is a joy forever. When he has to sing one song to the tune of another on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, it’s the best thing ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJX9LV5IBZQ
Oh god, him on ISIHAC is my favorite thing. Any time they make him sing Tom Jones I just melt.
Also, somewhere out there in internet land is a version of him singing Dancing Queen with Frank Turner and it’s beautiful.
Aha, found it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg3l0v2NS0U
YES! Hi. I am listening to this now and my heart is full. Thank you x a million. One Friday night while drinking gin, I made a friend listen to all the Rob Brydon singing on ISIHAC compilations on youtube and we had a blast. I did anyway.
I have seen The Trip, but not The Trip To Italy yet! Is it on Netflix? I really, really want to! I love him so much. I actually bought his audiobook because he narrates it and I surprisingly related to it a lot??? (as much as one can to a small Welsh man that is in love with Bruce Springsteen)
It was on Netflix last I checked but that was a while back. Sometimes things just disappear from Netflix and that drives me insane.
The Trip!! My boyfriend and I often get into the “when he gets loudly, HE GETS VERY LOUDLY INDEED” whisper-shouting bit. And the CEO of my company looks/talks like Rob-Brydon-as-Michael-Caine, so that’s great.
I have some friends who did that. They were good friends for at least a year, dated for about a year, and then she broke up with him because he is a fantastic friend but not a very good boyfriend apparently. They remained good friends after that.
I dumped a guy when the relationship just wasn’t turning my crank anymore. It took us about a year to be friendly again, but three years after that, I was a bridesmaid at his wedding. We’re still friends, but his wife and I are especially super tight. Happy Story!
There is a company we work with that has an ad campaign that says “Let’s make beautiful data together.” This has become a recurring joke at work and the other day I replied to the question “should we make beautiful data together this afternoon?” with “seems to me I make the most beautiful data by myself.”
Bragging about my pipetting AND making an awkward sex joke at the same time = win
Tell me your best/worst work jokes!
Tell me your best/worst work jokes!
I could give you a list of previous supervisors…
My boss emailed to say she’d left something for me “in the S & M room” and all I could think is “I’m wearing the right boots” (knee high, witchy toe, black leather tassel on the zipper pull).
Apparently that’s how she abbreviates Sales and Marketing.
Toasties, I am having some boundary issues with an ex and I feel guilty for enforcing them. I feel like I have to be nice and accommodating and let him have All The Feels and I have to be in this uncomfortable position talking to somebody I do not care about because he is having problems. So last night I enforced the boundaries I’d been trying to draw and I wasn’t very nice and now I have a mix of guilt for being rude about it and relief that he’s maybe gone away and raaaaaaaage that he even came to me in the first place. And super flamey rage that when I first started saying, “I don’t want to talk, you’re upsetting me, please stop” his reaction was “No, it’ll just take us a while to figure out how to talk again, it’s fine, itll be okay.”
Toasties, does it get better? Will the guilt go away? Please tell me stories of setting boundaries and how free and wonderful you feel now.
If you’re saying “you’re upsetting me” and his response amounted to “no you’ll just get used to this”, just no. He’s telling you he doesn’t really care about your feelings. You can just leave All His Feels in a pile on the floor. You can even set them on fire if you want. They were never your problem to begin with and his insisting on dumping them on you despite your objections is a serious violation of friendship.
Sorry about the lack of stories! Just dudes who want the ladies to do their feelings homework for them–HACKLES RAISED. I highly recommend a jaunt over to http://captainawkward.com/ if you want stories, though. SO MANY.
It will get better. The more you don’t talk to him, the better it will get! That will even make it better for him, eventually, but that does not matter to you.
If you’re on the phone, hang up. If you’re in the same building, leave. You don’t have to say anything more than, stop talking to me. (If he calls you, just don’t answer.)
Just remember, he is “somebody I do not care about.” So you owe it to yourself not to get involved with his problems. He needs to go have feelings somewhere else.
I’m SUPER BAD at boundaries and it is actually the main thing I’m working on in therapy right now. So, I don’t know if this helps, but: in the past, when I have failed to enforce boundaries, the results have been absolutely terrible. I got dragged into unhealthy, toxic relationships and couldn’t escape. So while I can’t say “I set boundaries and it was great!” I CAN say “I didn’t set boundaries and I was miserable!” DON’T BE LIKE ME.
3 years ago (I know because of Timehop) I’d been split up with my toxic on-and-off boyfriend for a few months. He’d started contacting me again, largely to whine about his problems and how lonely he was. I told my best friend about it, and how I wasn’t sure what to do, and her response was “Well, [ex’s name], if you weren’t a godless snootchwrangler with an attitude problem, we wouldn’t be in this predicament, now would we?”
To this day it is my favorite thing I have ever heard. Your ex is a godless snootchwrangler with an attitude problem and his issues are not your issues.
SNOOTCHWRANGLER
He’s an ex. You have no obligation to concern yourself with his problems. He needs to fuck off already. I bet dollars to doughnuts the guilt will go away when he does.
this is why i do not understand how people stay friends with their exes. i break up with people because i no longer care about them. i’m not hanging around to deal with more of their shit once we’re over.
I am friends with one, but there were extremely extenuating circumstances. Current jackass keeps citing this when he argues that e should be friends. Previous ex and I talked about this two days ago for no real reason, and he said, “Look, next time, tell him to call me. I will explain that you are friends with all of your long-term exes who you were friends with prior to dating, who moved to a different city and took a shitty job to be with you, who worked such terrible hours that they we not able to build a good support network, and who then found out the father was dying less than a month after being dumped.” <— pretty much what it takes for me to be friends with an ex. (He is also a good guy who was just not right for me, unlike Mr. Jackass.)
First I totally agree with everyone saying that this dude needs to fuck off, and his issues are not your issues, and the way he responded to your boundaries is absolutely not okay.
Unfortunately in my experience lots of people react to boundaries this way. If people respected boundaries better you wouldn’t need to set them so carefully and hold them so tightly.
Nope. It might be a sad situation and literally everyone else in the world can coddle him. You are actually the singular one person who doesn’t have to do that or be there for him.
Oh, it does. I once wrote something along the lines of the following to an ex:
“I wish you all the best in [plans you’re making]. That said, I was realizing after our meeting earlier this week that I’d rather not make any plans to meet in the future. It’s just been so long since we knew each other well, and it really does feel like part of the past for me. I have to admit that I don’t always feel taken into regard as a person when we meet, and that also has demotivated me from arranging to meet again. All best wishes to you in the future, [myname].”
He responded immediately with a brief yet passive-aggressive comment, which made me feel highly justified, and then that was it! Like a breeze of fresh air to no longer have to take into consideration running into him or getting entangled in conversations/situations I don’t want to be in. When you’re ready, being kind but clear and giving as *few reasons as possible* works well — it gives them nothing to hold onto.
IT GETS BETTER AND YOU ARE AWESOME FOR DOING THAT THING.
You should celebrate your newfound assertiveness with a bottle of wine and some dancing music.
(In my experience the relief will stay the same, the flamey rage will get bigger before it gets smaller, and the guilt actually becomes self-reproach where you’re like “WHY DIDN’T I DO THIS AGES AGO, I SHOULD KNOW BETTER BECAUSE I AM NOT TWELVE YEARS OLD.”)
I once had to write a letter to an ex and ask her to just not try to talk to me again. Writing it down, in no uncertain terms, helped immensely– because then I didn’t have to feel heartbroken and confused and guilty when she tried to rebuff me.
But yes, it will get better.
You aren’t responsible for anyone else’s feelings, and you are not required to be the emotional caretaker for your ex. And one clue about that is that he certainly doesn’t feel responsible for yours. When you break up with someone you are saying, I do not want to be involved in your problems anymore, and that’s ok, it’s allowed. He should have other people to turn to. If he doesn’t, that’s also not on you. You aren’t even required to be polite to people all the time.
After about a week or two of space, you are going to feel so good. Guilt is one of those emotions that feels really strong and horrible for a short period of time, so you’ll feel guilt for a day or 3 and then it will fade away pretty quick. And you learn a lot when you have a guilty moment about what kind of position you don’t want to be in in the future. That’s what i tell myself when I feel guilty, “augh, i feel lousy, what’s the damn lesson for next time?”
I was in the same position. I dumped an ex with what was probably not the best timing (but of course it never was for that guy) and he felt like it was out of nowhere and he didn’t have much of a support system so I let him keep talking to me despite not really wanting to talk to him. He would contact me literally at least once a day, he kept trying to Facebook chat my sister etc. Eventually I told him to stop contacting me so much and stop talking to my sister. He stopped talking to her and cut his emails to me down to…once every second day instead. It was too much. I am not good at enforcing boundaries either so I just blocked him on all chats, stopped responding to his emails other than very occasionally, and he kind of backed off and it was wonderful. After a couple of years (YEARS) I unblocked him on Facebook chat and immediately got a message from him! But it was mostly isolated except that he contacted me a couple of months ago to tell me he has a girlfriend. We broke up 5 years ago, I have no idea why he thought I’d care but there you go.
Y’all are the best. Thank you.
I boundaried my last ex right into a restraining order. Even the unpleasant clusterfuck of lawyers and court dates and testimony could not ruin the glorious feeling of NEVER having to talk to that asshole again. I do not recommend restraining orders for all purposes! But I do recommend making manchildren deal with their own feelings instead of laying them at your feet and expecting you to fix them.
Boundaries can be really, really hard, but so worth it!
I am usually a dutiful work doormat, but I’ve been setting boundaries this semester like I’m trees and they’re fire, and it’s worked out pretty great. The thing is, people just keep on walking all over you while you let them because it’s easy and convenient, and when you stand up for yourself, they perversely start to treat you better because suddenly they realize that you might be worthy of respect.
Bartender, read Hild! Then go back and read all of Nicola Griffith’s sci-fi and everything else she’s written. It’s so good!
Multiple choices of topics this Friday.
Anyone watched the new Don Hertzfeldt short World of Tomorrow yet? It’s only 15 minutes long and it’s fantastic. $3.99 right now
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/worldoftomorrow/122913…
Any Toast folks who saw It Follows want to talk about it? I loved it. Great year for suspenseful horror movies so far.
Can we talk about Hild? I want to talk about Hild.
SPOILERS
What was that ending? Like, I know she’s going for a sequel, which I will 100% read, but I was kind of taken aback by the bizarre, semi-out-of-nowhere “yes! I get to marry my brother this is perfect!” ending. I just can’t fathom why she chose to write that.
It was unexpected and deeply out of left field, but I thought it was ingenious and also kind of hilarious to end the book on that scene. That takes some serious gumption.
Fun story, courtesy of my friend who went to the World Fantasy Convention. Someone asked Nicola Griffith what the hardest part of writing this book was (this amazingly well-researched and meticulous book), and she said, “writing a protagonist who was attracted to men.”
Ooh, I just saw It Follows a couple of weeks ago. I’d forgotten how fun it can be to cocoon myself up inside my local classic & indie theater and watch a couple movies in a row on a random Sunday.
The thing I absolutely loved most about the movie was how supportive the sister and the friend group were of the main character. It was kind of an anti-final girl situation and it was SO refreshing. A little borderline Nice Guying on the part of that one dude, but not so bad overall.
Yes, absolutely. Really refreshing.
Also this movie is un-spoilerable. “There’s a thing, it follows you. That’s it.”
It was such a head-slapper of a moment for me because I watch SO many horror movies, both good and not good, and I was like…why have I never wondered about this inversion of the trope before? For some reason I think it would make a good double feature with Absentia.
I’ve read some comments where people think it’s a zombie movie? Uh…
Absentia didn’t really grab me. I dunno, maybe I should watch it again. I did really like The Descent which is an all-female cast IIRC. And I think we’re going to watch The Babadook this weekend. I love horror but so much of it is really disappointingly bad.
I pretty much love every Neil Marshall horror movie (Dog Soldiers!) in part because I think that a key ingredient in a good ensemble horror film is depicting the relationships between the people in it. I know there are horror fans out there who like seeing unpleasant people who kind of hate each other just get picked off one by one, but I find it more terrifying and engaging if the relationships seem realistic.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen Absentia, but I remember liking the relationship between the sisters and thinking it seemed believable. Plus the bug thing creeped me the heck out.
I’m finally going to get around to watching The Guest this weekend, which came out last year and also has Maika Monroe in it. She’s great.
I loved that aspect of it too. They totally bought it and supported her even before the scene at the beach.
Why did she sleep with Paul? That was the one thing that bugged me. I’m not sure the underwater shot to the head killed it. The ending was very ambiguous.
Having said that, there should be no sequel. Please god let it just be a one-and-done movie.
That was weird to me too. I figure it was either because they’d decided to become a couple or that they’d done it so they could protect each other and always have someone watching the other’s back. I tend to think more of the latter on Jay’s part. I also think there’s an implication in that final shot that the figure behind them is It.
I totally thought that It was right behind them at the end as well. The thing that bugged me is that now that they have had sex neither of them will be able to know whether or not people they suspect are following them are invisible to everyone. Unless they still go everywhere with their entourage when in public.
I’m probably just overthinking it.
Hild is so great I love it so much.
Also It Follows which is nothing like Hild but also really good. Yes I would like to talk about it.
I really loved Ammonite just so, so much. It was perfect misandrist science fiction. <3
sadness. a very nice person has been my work neighbor for 3 months now, but she is a temp and is leaving. irritating work neighbor comes back next week and after transition training will resume all her old roles. and resume her spot in my fourspace cubicle pod. fellow cubiclemate to my right is also not happy about this.
on the plus side, i guess it is good that this tiny petty thing is what i’m concerned with? on the unplus side, it’s remarkable how much an accumulation of tiny unpleasantnesses can reshape your day. it’s never anything reportable…just…for the last 3 months i have been actively less stressed at work and these things are directly related.
Toasts, I got the job I interviewed for last Friday! Huzzah! I got the call on Monday, so it was super quick turnaround. Alas, all the materials I have that prove I have the right to work in the this country are with the Home Office at the moment with my citizenship app, so actually starting the job is a whole ‘nother story. I’m just happy that I get to keep working in libraries!
Congratulations! That’s so great.
Thank you! The selfish side of me is also royally excited to continue not paying reservation charges.
This is PERFECT.
YOU’RE THE GIF GOD.
Toasts, my husband has been a bit… off lately.
Last Saturday evening I was tidying the coat closet (I lead an exciting life) and saw that he had 3 almost identical black coats that he hadn’t worn in recent memory, so I asked him if there were any that he wanted to donate. He seemed to just snap – I don’t know if snap is the right word because there was no anger or anything. But all of a sudden he was very agitated at the idea of keeping those coats one minute longer (when they had been existing peacefully for years in that closet, ignored by the world). He stuffed the coats as well as a particularly hideous sports jacket of his in a bag and practically ran out of the apartment in his hurry to get to the clothing donation bin down the block.
Then he came back and started ranting about how he was “tired of looking like a bum from the Ford administration” (???) and demanded that we go shopping the next day. Sunday morning he made us get up early so we could go to a tailor and have him measured for a custom-made suit, and then he dragged me to 2 department stores and bought 2 more suits, a bunch of fancy shirts and trousers, and a leather messenger bag. This is a man who once, when I pointed out that his shirt had a hole in it and he should throw it out, said “Don’t worry, I’ll just put a sweater over it when I wear it to work and nobody will notice.”
He’s worn a suit and tie to work every day this week (his only concession to Casual Friday this morning was dispensing with the tie). He’s started shaving every day instead of twice a week. He actually moisturizes of his own free will. He went to the bank and got mutual funds. I have no idea who this man in my bed is anymore.
Obviously I think these are all positive developments – suits are hot as fuck so I’m hardly going to complain that he’s suddenly wearing them – but it’s just weird in that it seems to have come out of nowhere. I’ve known this man for almost a decade. We’ve been together for 7 years. In that time I’ve gently hinted that maybe he should invest in nicer clothes, or spring for a nice pair of leather dress shoes once in a while, or put some face cream on because his skin is clearly dehydrated. And he just brushed off my suggestions, which I was okay with because he was still neat and clean, just a bit rough around the edges. Now it’s like he suddenly decided to implement all my advice all at once and take it several notches higher than I had intended and I can’t figure out why. All he’ll say is that he was tired of looking like a slob and finally decided to be a grown-up. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get to the bottom of his transformation because sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get him to talk about his man-feelings.
So, yeah, this is all good overall. Just weird.
(Have I mentioned how hot the suit and tie thing is? I am going to climb him like a tree tonight.)
That’s an interesting development- his pre-suited self sounds a lot like my husband, so I can imagine it being…surreal? In a good way. But different.
That said, “tired of looking like a bum from the Ford administration” is probably my new favorite description of anything and hope to implement it accordingly.
Maybe he read an article recently about people falling out of love after seven years, and when you mentioned the coats his brain put the two together and came up with the idea that in order to keep you, he had to get his suit game in gear? Which was then promptly reinforced by being climbed like a tree?
Who knows, men have illogical and confusing brains, but it sure is fun to speculate.
I was just worried that he thought I thought he looked like a bum or that I had somehow given him the feeling that I was ashamed of him, which is 100% not the case.
Also, I got your package! Thank you so much. It was a lovely surprise to come home to after a long day 🙂
Yay for successful mail delivery!
Suddenly getting new clothes and/or increased care with appearances is a traditional sign that they’re cheating, but the mutual fund thing is, like you say, more of a realization that he’s trying to BE A GOD DAMN GROWNUP!
Also i remember when I was having depressive episodes, I’d suddenly be all I NEED TO STRAIGHTEN MY HAIR EVERY DAY and buy a flat iron and then only use it once or twice. Has he recently had a medication adjusted or something?
This. I’m not saying he’s diagnosable, but that this behavior is reminiscent of manic-phase.
Haha, I doubt that he’s cheating because even if he were the type, he is not so devious that he would enlist his wife to pick out fancy clothes to wear for seeing his mistress!
I know he’s been frustrated at work lately because his boss is a micromanaging jerk who second-guesses his every decision. Maybe that has come to a head and he’s trying to show his boss that he’s a competent adult and/or is preparing to apply for other jobs.
It could also be a personal control thing as well. Like, if he feels that he’s not in control at work because his boss is trying to control everything then his clothes are something he CAN control. Doesn’t even have to be particularly a conscious decision as it’s a fairly common coping mechanism.
Hahah I wrote my comment before I saw yours. But yeah, this happened to me.
This seems most likely to me. Like, maybe he registered three comments in a row from you about needing to be more grown-up (gentle stuff like the Goodwill thing; I am not suggesting you are nagging him) and then at work registered three different comments in the same vein (how’s YOUR mutual fund doing, WinterBy? Oh, you don’t have one) and it was just one of those weeks where everything piled up until he was like FINE I CAN ADULT I CAN ADULT SO HARD LOOK AT ME ADULTING.
Bingo-Bango, you nailed it with “trying to show his boss…” My partner went through something similar and it was a totally work related issue. Micromanaging bosses are THE WORST.
That would make me hella nervous, but fast and radical change always makes me uncomfortable. Awesome for you that he’s ready to start looking all spiff, though! GET IT GIRL.
I can imagine how off-kilter you must feel when you look at your husband now! But at least it’s “good” off-kilter (with a side of “confused” off-kilter). Maybe he’s thinking about getting a promotion or a new job or maybe upgrading to a nicer apartment/house… or pets/kids??… at some point in the near-ish future, and this is his way of mentally and physically preparing before he talks to you about it?
Your reluctance to badger him about this is natural, but he does need to talk about his feelings and motivation for the change, because this kind of sudden and drastic transformation is both unsettling for you and difficult for him to maintain without you being fully on board and clued in as to what his thought processes and feelings are. It sounds pretty much 100% positive so far! The sudden snap part of it is the oddness (honestly, if he’s old enough to remember the Ford administration, it’s even worrying), triggered by an innocuous question about old coats.
A lot of things can kick a person into that kind of drastic self-makeover. My STBX had a kind of moment a few years ago in which he began preferentially wearing shirts with collars (which he had lots of, and good ones, because I had kept buying them in part because he’s very hard on clothing); his change was associated with reading a piece on men’s fashion lamenting that grown men were going around dressed like six-year-old boys (T-shirts, sneakers, shorts, sloppy trousers). And possibly by listening to me and others rag on couples seen in expensive restaurants, in which she is Dressed and he is Ready For Outward Bound. Is it possible that your husband had a road-to-Damascus revelation of a similar sort? (I envy you the suits, it did not go farther than shirts with collars and cuffs over here.)
You should certainly both be talking about the mutual funds buying.
Women do these kinds of changes more gracefully and I think more typically than men. We are bombarded with advice about makeovers, new you, reboot your life, all kinds of self-reformation and reinvention. Men are less so, I believe.
By the way, on the shaving, a good electric razor can make that easier and might be a good gift? I have such a lot of sympathy for guys being reluctant to scrape their faces every day. Ouch, ouch, ouch. I do not think I’d do that if I were a guy, myself.
Weird, butttt I kind of did the same thing about a year ago. I’m in my, ahem, mid to late 30s, and I suddenly just got FED THE FUCK UP with all of my work clothes and embarked on a project of revitalizing my style, buying new clothes, etc. I started reading FASHION BLOGS. I mean, this is wildly out of character for me. I think part of it was just genuinely that I was tired of looking in the mirror and being unhappy with what I saw, and part of it was I was trapped in a job I hated with no way out so I was taking control over something I could take control over. Having said that, I’m now out of that job, but I am still pleased with my wardrobe now, so I think it was a win-win.
Those bums from the Ford administration, am I right?? That really made me laugh.
When I read your post I immediately thought of this Concessionist column so… does he sometimes read The Awl?
Toasties, mine is a big-ass liberal college in an uber-conservative state, and so screaming political squabbles aren’t all that uncommon. I’m used to playing the devilish leftist atheist homosexual* baby-killer, etc, and I can take apart plenty of right-wing idiotic falsities without calling them such to people’s faces. This is not a skill commonly shared among liberals on my campus, however.
How do you defuse an infantile argument as an impartial third party when you actually agree that one of the arguers is a complete idiot, politically speaking?
Pointed questions. Require the idiot to make the effort to formulate a response, to explain his own idiocy. That’s my favorite technique.
Remind people that no one has ever, in the history of ever, changed another person’s mind by yelling, mocking, or generally being an abrasive asshole to them. Hell, rarely has someone ever changed a person’s mind in the course of any single discussion of any kind. Ask them why they’re even expending their energy picking fights when they could be taking real-world action or, almost as good, drinking beers. Offer to buy them said beers on the condition that they will talk about something else.
Try to get one of the participants to just leave. There’s not much else you can do before it gets to the point of two screaming monkeys throwing shit at each other. (Or so I’ve found. I have to mediate those things a lot, usually at family dinners, and in my middle of the political road experience both sides wind up looking like idiots eventually.)
Dog thread:
Here is a turkey leg. It may look like a corgi butt but really it’s a turkey leg:
Someone wants table scraps:
Chunky borgi version:
She’s lost at least six pounds since this photo! Much less like a land manatee these days.
Aw, chunky borgi! Our corgi is getting more sausage-like by the day which is weird cause she doesn’t even like food that much, so I dunno where it is coming from. Needs more exercise I guess (now that it is getting sunny again we can go for longer walks).
If she ever plays with other dogs, is she super bossy? Gertie, being this unholy combo of corgi and border collie, steadfastly refuses to be chased by Leela the mystery spaniel. She will treat Leela as a practice sheep all day long, but the second Leela tries to turn the tables and give chase, Gertie refuses to move. Leela just starts barking directly into her face and they wind up wrestling and once in a while Leela just takes off sprinting, but man, Gertie is dedicated to her herding instincts and she will NOT be herded herself. Weirdo dogs!
Oh man, so bossy! She is the boss of our two dogs for sure. We don’t get to play with other dogs much because we have some rudeness issues with our two. When we do she is very standoffish at times, and other times she likes to instigate trouble.
But she will jealously guard anything on the floor that she wants and sometimes takes playing too far too. She definitely thinks she is about a 10 times bigger dog than she actually is.
We got hit with the most snow we’ve had all year last week (6 inches!) so Trixie decided to bury herself in the clean laundry to keep warm. I was working on stuff and turned around and didn’t see her, called out to her and saw the laundry move. I had to move towels to take the picture. It’s back to 70F today so we’ll probably go to the park and she will run from other dogs until they go past us and then turn around to chase them.
Aww, our corgi did this the other day with a towel we had out, carried it to her bed and buried herself under it.
(whispers) If you read DWIL Nation… what’s your take on the % of threads that are made up? I know the depths of depravity to which husbands and relatives can sink are boundless, but every now and then, come on.
Also, the new Janelle Monáe/Jidenna song is totally open to an interpretation about pegging, y/y?
ALSO ALSO, I need a new bed. Not a forever-bed, since we’ll want to upgrade in a bit, but one that will last a year or two without falling apart or getting hella squeaky. It shouldn’t cost too much because of the aforementioned impermanence. Recommendations?
I regard DWIL threads with a certain amount of skepticism, but only the same amount as I would give to, say, a Yelp review. They’re not the same, obviously, but I figure the people who want to anonymously vent have really reached a breaking point… most people do not have truly terrible parents or in-laws, but I know from experience that the bad ones can be Really Bad sometimes, and I sometimes need the validation of saying something about it and getting advice/sympathy.
In your situation I would try Tuft and Needle. About a year ago I splurged on a quality, locally-made mattress and I do not regret it, but sounds like that will be you in a few years.
Re. DWIL – I’m gonna say probably there are more true stories than I would LIKE to believe there are but there’s no way they’re all real. Let’s say 40/60 fake/true?
How do you know when it’s time to get rid of your pet? Not because he’s in pain, but just because he’s too annoying?
I know it sounds terrible. But it’s been almost an entire year (50 weeks tomorrow I believe) since Cat 1 could be relied upon to use the litter box. He’s been to the vet many times, and some of his issues were caused by a genuine medical problem, the surgery for which (and the antibiotics after the surgery) caused more different-yet-related problems. He seems now to be on a cascading cycle of UTI – antibiotic-induced diarrhea – diarrhea-induced UTI, etc. But also the vet seems to think it’s partly psychological, so he’s also on Prozac. Also he’s now on cat probitoics. His fancy-ass prescription cat food is $50 a bag.
For months we’ve been keeping him in the little powder room in the garage, where at least he could only poop and pee on the floor, and letting him out in the evenings to hang with the family.
A couple weeks ago, when I was home alone with the baby, he ran ALL OVER THE HOUSE shooting poop. Like, I didn’t know a cat could hold that much poop. He pooped in the garage, all up the (carpeted) stairs, through the dining room and living room, and into the (also carpeted) bedroom. I had to clean this all up while my baby screamed from her pen. It was terrible, and so I sent the cat to live on the small concrete patio. He doesn’t much like it out there, and I still end up cleaning up poop he sprays around.
He does not appear to be in any pain or anything, and is basically his happy old self when anyone pays attention to him, which is not often, because he isn’t allowed to hang out inside. But, he doesn’t like living on a little patio any more than he liked living in a little bathroom, and it’s not like we’re getting any pet-owning joy out of this either.
Is it time to put him down? (No one is going to adopt an 11-year-old black cat who won’t use the litter box.) I feel terrible guilt about this, but I think my cat is ruining my life, and his life isn’t that great.
This is crazy tough. I can’t tell you that it’s time (I just feel weird about it) but I can definitely tell you that I wouldn’t judge you for it. You have a to make a decision for yourself and your family, in line with your own ethical and moral obligations. But under your circumstances, eventually, I might make the decision to put him down.
(I just this morning paid $280 for a DEPOSIT for my cat’s dental care and haircut this year, which led me and my beloved to have in interesting conversation about what we will do in the future when our cats inevitably get actually sick. It’s tough! My friend’s cat has breast cancer! Jeeze!)
Morally, I feel like “causes inconvenience” is a terrible reason to get rid of a pet, but practically, he’s about an inch away from being strangled…
(Also I just happened to land a freelance assignment while on maternity leave that exactly paid for his dick-removal surgery, so that’s what I would recommend for pet-related medical expenses) (just kidding) (mostly) (They do sell pet insurance I think, though i’ve never really looked into it)
Spreading poop throughout your house is not “causing inconvenience”. (My little male dog has “inconvenience” covered with far-too-frequent barking.) Your cat is dispersing disease agents through your house, spreading ecoli. In your child’s home. That is serious risk, not inconvenience. Whatever you decide to do, you have my support.
No judgement or particularly great advice, but a friend had good effect with her cat’s diarrhea by putting pumpkin puree into the food.
At this point it can’t hurt! I’ll give it a try. Thanks!
He is an 11-year-old cat and it sounds like he and you are both having a terrible time of it. I don’t have any great answers, but I can definitely understand having him put down. He is an animal. Sometimes it is the kindest thing.
Another option, if he has the temperament to be an outdoors cat, might be finding a farm that would take him, which they might as long as you don’t expect them to give him prozac, etc. Or even a person who lives in a rural area who might take him. He might be happier as a barn and outdoors cat.
You’ve probably already thought of this, but it sounds to me like he might have gotten PTSD from one of the surgeries.
He’s pretty much scared of everything outside, like squirrels and birds and things, so outside is not the best for him. I don’t think he’d last. His problems started after a random bout of diarrhea before any of his peeing problems, but I’m sure the surgery didn’t make things any more relaxing for him…
I’m sure you will get other good advice but I just want to tell you that I would be equally as unhappy as you are and I would not keep that cat. (I have no doubt that there are people who think I am a monster.) Do you live in a not-city area? Could he be converted to an outside cat who you feed but not ever let into your home?
That’s kind of what he is now, on the patio, but that’s the only outside space that we’ve got.
I had to euthanize my beloved kitty when she lost bowel control, too (she’d had urinary problems due to diabetes for two years before that). For a while, we did the lock-in-the-room during the day sort of thing until I realized it was the equivalent of shutting someone up in a horrible, friendless nursing home. She was always happy to sit on my lap when I got home from work, but unless she was under constant supervision, she couldn’t be allowed out of the downstairs bathroom. It was a horrible life for both of us. I felt awful about it (which is good, I think, because if you don’t feel awful about making such an awful decision, there is something wrong with you). But it’s a part of the responsibility of pet ownership. You have to make the decision when your pet’s quality of life has deteriorated enough.
It’s been four years and I still miss her every day (and I’m tearing up just typing this out), but I know I made the right decision. I hope you find peace with whatever you choose to do.
Thanks.
This is very tough. One thing that I would wonder about is whether the “shutting in a small room” aspect, while necessary, is making things worse, since I know cats do use urinating to express disapproval etc. Have you considered seeking out a behavior expert? I know that is extremely costly, but it could be worthwhile. 11 seems awfully young, to me, to euthanize (my eldest cat is 17 and in reasonably good health although suffering with some arthritis).
I’m not sure we have any cat whisperer types locally, but that’s an idea I hadn’t thought of… I also think he’s fairly young to give up on…
My parents had to get rid of our cat after I went to college – he was always a little neurotic, but then he started peeing EVERYWHERE, all over the house. My parents tried everything they could think of, including kitty prozac (which is saying a lot considering the “people don’t really need medications” stance they still often take), and nothing worked and Kelly was miserable, my parents were miserable, and the house smelled like cat pee no matter how diligently my mother cleaned (and she is a cleaning fanatic). Eventually they decided they just couldn’t do it anymore and surrendered the poor dude to a no-kill rescue org. (or, at least, that’s what they told me…). This happened probably 15 years ago, maybe more, and my ma still gets upset when she thinks about it (and refused to ever have another pet), but it really was the only call they could make if they wanted to preserve their own well-being. (Also, Ma says that on really warm days, she can still smell cat pee in some spots of the house. Considering they’ve painted and re-floored the entire house, I think she’s nuts, but who knows.)
I have been trying to figure out if there’s any sort of rescue around here that would take him… I kind of think there isn’t, but perhaps there is.
Like I said, I’m actually not sure if my parents did take our cat to a rescue, or if that’s what they told me to make me feel better – but regardless, they did they only thing possible in the situation. I’m sorry you’re struggling with the same decision, and I really do hope there is somewhere that can take him and let him live out his natural days. Regardless, please try to take it easy on yourself – there’s no easy answer, and you have to think of your family’s well being and quality of life.
This may be controversial, but I’ve always felt like quality of life should be an important factor when considering putting your pet down. My family put down our first dog when the surgery she would have needed would have meant she’d have no bowel control and almost no bladder control and have difficulty eating, and our second dog when we realized she was in constant pain with no hope of relief. Honestly, your cat is probably in constant discomfort from the UTIs and stomach issues, is isolated in a concrete box, and on Prozac to keep his anxiety at bay. That’s not a nice life, and it’s not like he’s a human who can comprehend why his life sucks and I don’t know, think philosophical thoughts or something to give his life meaning. He’s just sad and uncomfortable and he doesn’t know why. There’s no point in prolonging that, and you’re not a bad person for considering it.
Yeah, if it were more clear that he didn’t feel good, I would not be so conflicted. He is just so happy to see me when we do hang out though…
How old is the baby? How long did you have the cat before adding the baby to the mix? Cats are not hugely known for being great with change, and (I am so sorry making SO many assumptions about your life, please tell me to stop if this is not how things are) cats are notorious for acting out when–for instance–they go from being the primary center of affection and attention to… not being that anymore. He knows at this point that he’ll get attention if he poops and pees (not great attention but attention nonetheless), AND he probably feels miserable and isolated from being in the little rooms alone, and like he’s being punished for something that was initially vastly out of his control due to physical health issues.
The medical issues are concerning, but I think your vet is not wrong in also believing there’s a psychological aspect.
Could you consider re-homing him if you have a friend or family member that would be able to provide him with the attention he wants?
I had the cat for ten years before the baby came. She was home for a month before the cat started pooping on the floor (initially there was a terrible diarrhea incident which frightened him apparently). He is probably jealous, but I don’t think that’s the only thing that’s wrong.
I would love to rehome him, but I have yet to find anyone willing to take a chance on his toileting issues.
There may also be a rescue/shelter in your area who would take him in? The one I used to volunteer with had several cats with bowel or bladder issues who were living out their days there.
I hope there is. I will try harder to find one.
I encourage you to look around for possible places for him. Talk to your vet’s office. They might have contacts. In my city, there are shelters that would find him a foster home. Do keep trying. If you happen to be in Chicago or nearby, contact me directly, and I promise to help! (I am a Kitty Helper Lady, which is only a self-designation, but I do try to live up to it!)
If you do like Harry Potter I heartily recommend “The Dark Is Rising” by Susan Cooper (if you’ve not already)
Toasties! Regular commenter, new username, because what I’m about to go into I don’t want connected with the rest of my posts and…well you’ll see in a few.
Long story short is that my dad tried to kill himself a couple weeks ago. That’s not even the most stressful part, if you can believe it, but rather his refusal to see his deep need for mental health & alcoholism help, the way he’s treated my mother the past two weeks, and a few other awful terrible things he’s done to her (and indirectly to my siblings & I) over the past 3-5 years that culminated with his suicide attempt. It doesn’t help matters that in my family I’m really the only other one who also suffers, although very mildly, from depression, and I’ve also been the only one already in therapy to deal with all these issues I saw coming but couldn’t stop. So I’m often stuck “translating” what his brain his thinking or making excuses of a sort for him, because I’m the only one who can look at what he says and say “Yeah, I kind of get that. It’s [selfish, fucked up, wrong, resulted in bad decisions, etc], but I get it.” and I feel like….I’m spending a lot of energy trying to remind my family to be a teensy bit sympathetic to him, and the rest of my energy being so so angry at him.
So the next few…years? are going to be rough for my family. Rouuuuuggghhhh. And did I mention I’m getting married this fall? And my mother’s family have also been major assholes over the last few years? And her friends (and my friends, and my siblings’ friends) have been the most amazing people throughout all of this? I haven’t lost faith in the institution of marriage, amazingly, but in family being the be all end all? Absolutely. I’m so over it.
On the plus side, I always said “I would get a tattoo but have no idea what I’d want forever!” and have now found it. Exact specs and location tbd, also on a search to find the ovaries to go through with it. (It’s a take to the sea variation, obviously, but I always knew any tattoo I’d get would likely be nautical anyway).
I’m so sorry. That’s crazy hard.
Hope your tattoo is AWESOME.
I hope so too! We’ll see if I ever go through with it but even just thinking about it makes me happy. Maybe I’ll just order mass quantities of temporary tattoo versions of it.
I’m so so sorry. This all sounds really tough. Please remember to take care of yourself first. And maybe suggest that the rest of your family might also find therapy helpful. Just because they don’t suffer from any mental ailments doesn’t mean they wouldn’t benefit from having some expert outsider input.
Oh TRUST, when I wasn’t trying to convince my dad he needed help I was telling my siblings to all get help too. Mom is in therapy and siblings are working on it (some have good reason to pause before seeking help, sadly).
Jedi hugs for you.
On a different note, has anyone used NerdFitness? I need to get swole AF (not really, but sort of) to find some side work in a brewery, and also throw men, and it seems like a good place to start (along with Feel the Burn, but that scares me). I tried their beginner’s body weight workout yesterday and as a result of the squat and lunge reps, I really, really wish I could pee standing up. My quads are in complete revolt. However, I am finally feeling motivated to start doing this regularly, and learned that RuPaul’s Supermodel of the World is my new favorite thing to play while doing jumping jacks.
I haven’t used any of their workouts, but I read the blog and have done so for years. Pretty awesome people. Hooray for getting strong! Don’t forget to pay just as much attention to your post-workout mobility stuff as you do the actual lifting. That’ll help with the soreness, as will just using your body to do strong things on a regular basis.
YES I actually totally have the Nerd Fitness forum open in another tab! I love them. I’ve found the community extremely supportive and friendly, and there are lots of different people with different goals (weightlifters, crossfitters, runners, boxers, etc.). I never actually joined the “Academy” (the $99 thing)—I just use their free forums. They actually just started a new six week challenge there, which helped me figure out my fitness goals and provided a really good base of support as I was starting out!
Good to know! I will also check out Stumptuous. I need all the encouragement I can get and was happy to find what seems like a really nice community at nerdfitness (because basically every internet place other than the toast automatically freaks me out and makes me wary).
Yes, I’ve only encountered a handful of threads there that weren’t 100% Approved for my Delicate Toastie Sensibilities, but on the whole they have a good attitude about getting where you need to go (whether it’s building muscle, losing fat, running a marathon, or passing your belt test) in a safe, healthy, and actually achievable way. There also seem to be a fair number of women members… or at the very least it’s not full of aggro bros arguing about how many days there are in a week. If you join the forum, let me know and I’ll give you my username there!
I have not! I’m going to go check it out now, though. My intro to lifting was Stumptuous, which is a great website and Krista is great, but there isn’t a community there and I think it would be nice to have that.
I love Nerd Fitness! I really got into it doing the workout ebook he had before the Nerd Fitness Academy. I lost a little bit of weight but mostly bulked the fuck up and spent a lot of time last summer in tank tops imagining that everyone was admiring my lats. I love the focus on consistently building habits rather than dominating one WOD and then hating your life and quitting. I also like that I can do the whole thing at home with some adjustable dumbbells, and never have to talk to gym bros. I am only on hiatus from lifting right now because of pregnancy-related blood pressure weirdness and my workout abilities are limited to like 5 minutes of a yoga video, but I will be right back on my Nerd Fitness workout as soon as I can.
That looks interesting and tempting; been trying to figure out a workout I can do to get somewhat swole (the throwing men is a tempting goal as well, but really I just want my biceps back again.)
Would anyone be interested in like a support/cheerleading sort of group for Toasties just starting with weights to kind of keep each other motivated? Perhaps weekly-ish?
I would! I have so much trouble staying motivated, even when I have clear goals, so could probably do with having people to report progress.
Also that cocktail looks amazing.
What IS the cocktail?? I want it.
TOASTIES WHO HAVE SUCCESSFULLY MOVED TO A DIFFERENT STATE/COUNTRY: How far ahead of time did you start planning? How did you go about finding and securing employment in your destination city? Any general advice? I’m currently single without children, pets, or any other attachments, which I get the feeling makes it easier, but any advice would be helpful.
I moved from North Carolina to NYC about 2 years after college, with basically no money in my pocket or safety net. A rough timeline:
–Christmas Eve 2009: Decided to move
–Boxing Day 2009: Posted on FB asking if anyone knew anyone in NYC that needed a roommate in late spring/early summer 2010. An old supervisor from work-study emailed me and said his roommate was getting married and moving out, and would I like to live in the East Village for $1250/month? (YES.)
–Spent January-May cleaning out my closets, packing, and saying goodbye. I was on (f)unemployment and trying to squirrel as much as possible away, but not much luck there. Also started submitting resumes in April to a couple well-reviewed NYC temp agencies with my future roommate’s address on them, and lining up interviews for my first week in town.
–May 14: sold my junker to Carmax for, like, $2500 maybe, which was then all the money I had in the world. Rented a big white cargo van and my friends helped me load it up.
–May 15: woke up at 4:30am and started driving.
This was in 2010, when the job market was still pretty terrible even in NYC, but I was temping within a week or so. I struggled along with temping for 1.5 years before landing a TERRIBLE permanent job, getting canned 7 months later, started temping again and landed a great job that I’m still at today.
One of my best friends just moved from NYC to Seattle this past summer, and she did basically the same thing… lined up a place to stay and a little bit of cash, and got a temp job (she’s actually temping as a receptionist at a temp agency, which I find funny for no real reason). It just seems easier to move and then figure out employment, if you’re starting all over and not really in a high-demand job like nursing or something like that.
Is it always so easy to get a temp job? I was thinking of doing this, but I was looking at temp agencies in the city I want to move to (LA) and I saw so many comments on yelp along the lines of “I sent this place my resume and they said I’d hear from them but I never did”. I might just not be the kinda brave person who can move with no money and no job, but I really want to be. 🙁
Temp agencies can be awful. And they can be the ticket to a good job. They can be both simultaneously. You want to sign up with the very best agency in town, first. To determine which is best, call HR at the biggest employers and ask who they use. Also lean toward the bigger, national names in temp agencies. And never forget that the agency works for the client, not for you. You are only a commodity to the agency. No matter how nice they are to you, protect yourself and present yourself as their solution to what their clients want.
My husband and I planned for 6-7 months for our move from AZ to NYC after we found out he got into grad school. We aren’t great at saving, so we instead put our efforts into earning EXTRA money to put toward the move. (I highly recommend this strategy! We had over $10K when we moved.) That meant everything from garage sales to tax refunds to throwing monthly art openings/ parties to creatively (illegally?) earn some extra cash. My husband did a recon trip to NY about a month before our move to find an apartment, so it was waiting for us when we got here. We subletted a furnished apartment at first, negating the need to drag a bunch of IKEA furniture across the country. I didn’t have much luck searching for jobs in NY while still in AZ, so I just waited till we got here and hit the ground running. I had a full-time, permanent job in a month that I still have now, five years later. But if you don’t have savings to get you through that first period, temping seems like a great alternative. Good luck! Moving away from my hometown is the best decision I’ve ever made in my life!
I moved from Oklahoma to Alberta, and then from Alberta to British Columbia. Both times it was because I already had a job. The first time, I did all of the applications, etc online. The second time, I flew out there one day for an interview. The OK-AB move, my job paid for me and Mr. Floridagal to have a hotel room for 8 days, so we basically just threw all our shit in a uhaul and drove up there, then stayed in the hotel until he found us a place to live. The AB-BC move, he found a list of potential places to live online (kijiji, I think?) and we again threw all our shit in a uhaul and drove to the first place on the list, liked it, and stayed. Neither of us are much for planning. We don’t have kids but do have 2 rabbits so no planning – no big deal.
I moved to Chicago from Pennsylvania, about six months after finding out I’d gotten into grad school, so I had a decent amount of time to plan. Some tips that worked for me:
1. If possible, visit the new city ahead of time to scout out neighborhoods or meet up with realtors/people looking for roommates, and just generally to get a feel of the place.
2. YES to applying for temp jobs–I got a temp job at a major university that turned permanent, but I realize that university temp pools are probably run different than smaller, private ones. Not sure if that would be an option for you, but.
3. Have a yard sale! Both to make some extra cash and get rid of stuff you don’t want to move.
4. Let people help you, to the extent that you’re comfortable with. I was so annoyed at first that my dad rented the moving van, drove me all the way to Chicago, and helped me find my way around for a few days (Daaaad! I’m a grown up now!), but man. It really did help.
Toasts, can you suggest examples of awesome spinsters I should be modelling my life on?
My relationship of 4 years came to an end earlier this week. I had never really thought I wanted marriage or kids before I met this guy, and then all of a sudden it seemed like everything I wanted. Now I’m 36, single and can’t imagine children are ever going to happen for me. I feel ancient. I need to reboot, but at the moment I just can’t see how. Offer me inspiration? Please?
The Baroness from the Sound of Music!
It is a long time since I’ve seen that film. Rewatch this weekend y/y?
Read Kate Bolick’s Spinster! http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22889766-spins…
:O
This looks perfect! I have just downloaded it. Friday night with this book and a nice glass of wine seems like exactly what I need. Thanks for the recommendation!
Just recommended this to my library so I can read it!
Jo March! (YES I AM PRETENDING PROFESSOR BEHR NEVER EXISTED). Or Louisa May Alcott, who is my favorite real life spinster.
She was who I wanted to be when I was growing up! (Professor Who? NOT IN MY VERSION OF THE BOOKS.)
I recently ended a relationship and am now 35 and single with no kids and while spinsterhood is a promising option, I also want you to remind yourself whenever you want that really 36 is not so old and people find love in all kinds of remarkable and unexpected ways – and that women 40+ are having (or also adopting) children every day!
Thanks, this is a good reminder. It’s too early to say whether I actually want kids in a general sense or if it was some accident of circumstances/chemistry that I wanted them with him, but I know I have time to think all of that through. In the meantime, spinsterhood definitely seems like a less vulnerable option, that’s for sure!
I hope you’re enjoying the single life. I’m definitely looking forward to being pretty selfish for a while.
gallimaufry, I love your handle. I just added this word to my glossary of obscure food terms a few weeks ago and now I feel like I see it everywhere!
I can’t think of a famous spinster role model off the top of my head, but I feel like I know a great many people living the childfree life quite happily, with or without partners. Some travel, some focus on careers and friends at home. Some are gloriously eccentric and some quite normal. The neat thing about not having a family is that your choices affect fewer people.
On the other hand–and you still have some time in to make this decision–I also know a few women who said to hell with it, I’m having a baby myself if I haven’t settled down with someone great before my window closes. It can work.
One important thing to remember is that, even though it’s natural and respectable to grieve this long-term relationship, you’re not burying a last chance. In fact, if you and the partner stayed together to have a family even though your time together had hit its expiration date…. that’d be pretty miserable. Now you can do anything. You have so many options. Overwhelming, maybe, but awesome.
You’ve heard of The Red Cross? Created by spinster Clara Barton.
Ok for solace: Auntie Mame (The Rosalind Russell one, no others will I accept) and maybe also buy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Live-Alone-Like-It-Classic/… . Also after my relationship ended in similar circumstances, I found watching The Good Wife was very comforting. Alicia Florick has to start over and it puts thing in perspective. Also I recommend this book to everyone: http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Past-Your-Breakup-D… . It’s very practical, a lot of steps that give you a place to reboot from during the first weeks.
You know what you want now. That’s a good thing to learn. You can’t get started on getting to that without knowing what you want. I thought of myself as a person who didn’t care that much about marriage and family until my last relationship and learning that was good. Even if it feels late, you can have the things you want. But you might have to be open to pursuing them out of order or in different ways and you’ll have to be conscious of not wasting time. That’s what I learned, I’d never do another 4 year relationship without being clear from the get go what I was expecting to come of it. In my relationship now it’s scary but we’ve talked about things like kids and life plans from the get go. We both know what we’re ready for even if the steps aren’t clear. We’re having talks now at 4 months in that I was a wuss about for 4 years in my past.
For some reason I got it into my head the I was going to learn to make a dirty gin martini last weekend and bought the ingredients last weekend and holy shit, so good. I’ve had vodka martinis before, but NOW I see why people drink these things. Unfortunately, since discovering my taste for them, I’ve had a few unscheduled naps.
Podcast recommendations! I tore through many episodes of the Dead Authors podcast in the last couple of weeks, which is hysterical. Paul F. Tompkins plays HG Wells, who uses his time machine to bring other dead authors to the present and interview them. Ayn Rand as played by John Hodgman was wonderful, as was Roald Dahl (Ben Schwartz) and Ian Fleming (Matt Gourley). There was a new episode this week and it was L Ron Hubbard, which was so amazing that they will be doing a second part.
I also love Stuff You Should Know and Stuff You Missed in History Class, How Did This Get Made, and The Indoor Kids.
Have you listened to Invisibilia?
Also, I LOVE Strangers, but I’m not sure it would be your bag in light of the other stuff you’re into. But give it a shot. I love Lea Thau.
I have not, but I will check them out!
GOOD GIN IS SO GOOD.
If you want to try a super-crisp summer G&T, splurge on a bottle of Hendrick’s, pick up a cucumber and some tonic, and say goodbye to your afternoons.
Yum! I was off G+Ts for a long time after overdoing it with Bombay Sapphire G+Ts in my early 20s, but then I discovered that Hendrick’s.
The only two podcasts I listen to regularly are the Nerdist (depending on the guest) and the X-Files Files. I want everyone in the world to watch the X-Files and then talk about it with me, so maybe watch the X-Files and then listen to the X-Files Files and then come on the Toast and talk about it?
X-Files! We are currently in between seasons 5 and 6, need to watch the movie then we can continue on (but have been binging Daredevil lately so it is a bit on the back burner).
I have just caught up on the podcast and also just bought the box set. Am here!!
Yay! I don’t really have anything to share about the X-Files except that there’s a new Instagram account dedicated to X-Files tattoos and today they shared one that’s the version of Mulder’s badge from the X-Files Simpsons episode. It’s an A+ tattoo.
I have listened to a couple of X-Files Files, usually in the car with my boyfriend. I love Kumail, but I never watched the X-Files so the episodes don’t really hold a lot of meaning for me.
Yeah, I imagine it would be hard to get into without knowledge of the episodes. Which is why I don’t listen to the Indoor Kids even though I also love Kumail: no video game knowledge to speak of.
I normally decide whether or not to listen depending on the description. I hardly ever play games, but I’m a huge fan of Kumail & Emily’s chemistry.
I’m in the middle of the X-Files! Will check the podcast out. Scully is amazing in every possible way, but Mulder seems like such a jerk more often than not. I’m kind of amazed that people like him and spent seasons wanting them to get together, but ah well, people who aren’t me apparently find David Duchovny much more attractive than I do.
Have you listened to No Such Thing as a Fish? It’s put together by the QI elves and is full of useless and interesting information, kind of like stuff you missed in history class.
I will add it to the list!
I’ve been listening to a lot of Put Yours Together if you like stand up (a UCB podcast hosted by Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher). Also I recommend Aisha Taylor’s podcast Girl on Guy.
I listen to Girl on Guy on and off depending on the guest… I just listened to the one with Corey Stoll yesterday and I was so, so charmed by him and his admission that he has struggled with his weight and eating correctly in the past. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an actor admit that who was not, like, shilling for diet products.
Meant “Put Your Hands Together” for that first one. Yeah I’ve only listened to a few of the Aisha Taylor (so many podcasts not enough time). Mostly my priorities go Night Vale -> Xfiles (when listening with my wife) -> Indoor kids, then others.
I mentioned on the British History Podcast facebook page that I’d found it through a recommendation on here (after he had posted one of Mallory’s tweets) and he reads the toast and is a fan!
Crossing the streams…
OH GOD I LISTEN TO SO MANY PODCASTS. Here are my favorites:
the memory palace- beautifully written podcast that’s basically short history vignettes. So so SOOOO good (my favorite is “Mary, Mary and Mercy” but they are all stunningly good)
Strangers- seconding this recommendation because Lea is the shit
Criminal- podcast looking at different criminal-related things. Includes a fascinating episode about a Venus Fly-Trap crime ring and one on a mother-daughter forensic team
99% Invisible- podcast about the design of the world around us, which means just about anything and everything (the most recent one was about lockpicking). It’s pretty much the best.
Imaginary Worlds- I’m currently listening to the backlist on this one, but it’s about sci-fi, fantasy and fandom and it’s wonderful.
I like 99% invisible but I find Mars’ voice really irritating, so I only listen to it in small doses.
CALL YOUR GIRLFRIEND is the best of all podcasts
My favorites are mostly on the Max Fun network, including Judge John Hodgman, My Brother My Brother and Me (comedy advice podcast), and the Adventure Zone (MBMBAM hosts playing D&D with their dad).
I also recently started Gilmore Guys, which is two twenty-something guys (one a long-time fan, one a newbie) going through the entire run of Gilmore Girls. They are surprisingly thoughtful about the show’s strengths/weaknesses and social implications.
I’ve been listening to Gilmore Guys too! Even though I haven’t watched the series in years, it used to be my go-to comfort show (and then background noise show when it was in syndication) so I can still remember enough to get the gist of each episode. It’s become my new favorite commute podcast. I’m currently halfway through season 2 and it definitely gets better as they progress. The first few episodes were a little rocky but now I really look forward to my little commute ritual.
I really love MBMBAM but some of their humor can be a bit problematic, alas. The podcast Justin does with his wife Sydney is great (“Sawbones,” about olde timey medicine), but I kinda wish Justin would stfu.
A few that I love:
Call Chelse Peretti! If you are a fan of Peretti I cannot recommend this enough. It’s a call in podcast, so it can be pretty hit or miss depending on the callers, but when she is just so funny that even when the callers are boring it is amusing. Bonus for doing an amazing impression of her grandma and just generally being a delight.
With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus. Also depends on the guest, but Lapkus is always reliably hilarious (see my avatar). The recent one with James Adomian as Tom Leykis (sp?) might be the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while.
I Was There Too. Matt Gourley talks with people who were in one or two scenes in a major blockbuster/event movie. He manages to wring almost an hour out of DC Pierson about his 26 seconds of screen time in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Interesting stuff.
Ack, I am on a deadline at work and thus don’t have time for the EXHAUSTIVELY DETAILED list of fantasy recommendations that I normally give right now, but top picks:
Stardust (the movie. I am indifferent to the book, but the movie is the best sort of whimsical fun.)
The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud (please read these books)
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay (most things by Guy Gavriel Kay, really–my favorite is Tigana, my dad’s favorite is Sailing to Sarantium/Lord of Emperors)(less Fun and Whimsy than my first two recs)
I will comment underneath this with much more later today.
As promised, a lengthier list of awesome fantasy books! In multiple comments, because intensedebate cuts me off.
The Wind City, by Summer Wigmore–Urban fantasy set in Wellington, NZ, Full of witty banter, lovable and original characters, heaps of pop culture references that warm my heart (because who -hasn’t- wanted to have a legitimate chance to say “I am not left-handed!” mid-battle?).
Digger, by Ursula Vernon–Technically a webcomic. But if you like Terry Pratchett, you will love this. A fantasy epic with a no-nonsense wombat heroine.
The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker–Set in late-1800s NYC, with a Golem and a Jinni that are both accidental immigrants to America and have to explore how they fit into their respective immigrant communities.
Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson–Set in the Arab Spring (but eerily, written slightly before the Arab Spring started). The protagonist is a jerk, which is sort of the point, but every other leading character is amazing, and I can only hope to one day be maybe half as awesome as Dina. Lots of cool things to say about the relationships between technology, religion, and fantasy.
The Lies of Locke Lamora (and sequels), by Scott Lynch
The Mistborn books, by Brandon Sanderson
City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett
(I’ve run out of steam for the descriptions)
Wedding planning is hard, y’all.
I used to watch some of those terrible wedding shows on TLC, and the bride would say, oh, I had to quit my job to plan my wedding, and I would think, what kind of crazy person are you?? But then I planned m (relaxed,laid-back, no-frills) wedding and nearly went insane. So.
Aaaaah – I think you’re getting married in the fall? Good luck and hope it’s all going well!
We’ve been engaged for less than two weeks and I’m already kind of….. freaking out. We actually had a really good check-in/reconnect last night. There’s so much going on in our lives right now that things feel insane, and I let this wedding thing get out ahead of me.
Congrats on your engagement! If it reassures you, I found the first month or so of wedding planning to be the most consuming and difficult, even more so than the last few weeks before the wedding. At least then I was fueled by anticipation and dealing mostly with details that weren’t going to make or break my wedding. Starting to plan, though—working with your partner to figure out a budget, a guest list and a venue (while also possibly navigating family expectations) means a lot of emotionally charged decisions right off the bat, even for the world’s most low-key wedding. After that, I found my yearlong engagement punctuated by a lot of breaks where I occasionally wondered if I should be doing more (nope!)
Wait no, I’m just continuing to go a bit crazy, it’s not you getting married in the fall is it?
Anyway, good luck with your cat and baby! That’s way more intense than a wedding.
I am getting married in the fall! Things are coming together! Our invitations arrived this week!
You are! You are! Hooray!
We got a wedding planner. I just couldn’t even. Best investment we made.
TRUTH. The first few weeks/months when you’re making big decisions I think are hardest – don’t let this time get you down.
*deep breath* it’s SPRAAAAANNG! Finally!
So, I figured I’d ask the Toast commenariat: I’d like wear sundresses, and many of them have unusual strap configurations. I’ve categorically disqualified unusual-strap dresses in the past because I know I’ll never dig out my (wacoal! $$!) strapless bra to wear them. It just never feels like it provides quite enough support! I finally started wearing correctly-fitting bras a couple years ago and I just can’t go back to that inadequately-supported feeling.
Does anyone have suggestions for really supportive strapless bras (especially ones that come in, say, 30 DD or so)? Maybe a longline or strapless bustier option? Or maybe I’ll just wear sensible t-shirts all summer, like last year, until winter descends once again??
I don’t have any brand recommendations, but a longline will fell more supportive than a regular strapless bra.
I personally would just go for the bra-with-cute-straps option, because I am a fashionslob.
If anything, coordinating bra-with-cute-straps with a dress is a level up! My other weird clothing rules (“nothing you’ll need to wear a camisole under,” “colors that can be put together in any combination”) are 100% based on unwillingness to think beyond “top present, bottom present.”
Really, I love that sundresses look more put-together but in fact allow me to go about my day sans pants.
Any day without pants is a beautiful day.
As a 32DD person, I’ve recently thrown out the window my fucks about visible bra straps. If you can’t find straps that match either your skin tone or the garment, perhaps look for those invisible elastic straps?
Visible bra straps are becoming increasingly appealing; I usually go for beige, which often sadly reads as “unsettling flesh-toned crayon” on me, but one of my favorite bras was just on sale in red/white/blue (very Wonder Woman) and magenta/orange polka dot colorways. I bought them, reasoning hardly anyone will see them, but perhaps the bug is a feature? And I hadn’t even considered invisible elastic straps, great idea!
I just ordered these camouflage bra straps from Etsy. I’m not kidding when I say my entire wardrobe is now camo-colored (NEUTRALS 5EVAH) but also the notion of camouflaged bra straps is fucking hilarious.
If people are scandalized that you, a large-breasted person, are clearly wearing foundation garments, maybe they need to pause and re-think their life choices.
I have two strapless bustiers. One is black and from Victoria’s Secret, but I’ve had it forever and I don’t think they make that style any more. The other is white and from a brand called Tiffany. It came from http://www.figleaves.com. I’d recommend taking a look there. They have a giant range of sizes and will probably have a few brands that you could try. Though they’re in the UK and I’m not sure what shipping to the US costs.
Thanks, I will definitely do some research! UK shops in general seem to have such a wider range of bra sizes available– blergh, _what_ is the hold VS has over American shopping malls?
Panache specializes in larger cup sizes at most band sizes. They do carry long-line bras, but I’ve never tried them. I’m a 34G and swear by their regular and under-wire sports bras. Best ever. Next purchase will be a bathing suit.
yessss I love their underwire sports bras– I have a poach-it alert for their periodic discounts on Amazon. Amazon is… not great, but they do often allow free returns on clothing, which was super helpful when I was trying every heavy-duty sports bra I could find before getting into Couch to 5K a couple years ago. I will check out the long-line stuff there…
I try to look for them at Nordstrom Rack. If someone orders from nordstrom.com and then returns it, they often end up at the Rack for half price. I’ve never seen the sports bra there, but I like the porcelain bra and find it there occasionally.
I am a 34 FF/G and have had a good result from the Gossard strapless. The underwire in it is shaped a bit like a supportive hand? It stays up, gives great cleavage, and only a little redness around the backstrap.
One thing that I find really helps is to look for dresses that are a bit more supportive in the bust! That way your strapless bra doesn’t have to do alllll the work.
a convertible strap bra. i go one last summer and it is Teh Awesomeness. it can be regular, racer back, halter, single strap diag, low back. combine all those options with different colors/styles of straps and you’re all set. even if your straps show, they’re part of your look.
Hello Toasties! I’m a regular reader, but only occasional commenter. I’m hoping I can make use of the ample reading experience of the commentariat to crowdsource a decision I’m trying to make.
I’m planning a spooky road trip for my 30th next month that will involve driving through Louisiana for a couple of days, staying in some haunted hotels or B&B’s and ending up in New Orleans for a weekend. I’m trying to figure out a good book I can get in audio form for the drive that will fit in to the general theme. So what I’m looking for would be: Scary (obviously), possibly a ghost story cause those seem the best at creeping me out, ideally written by a lady (although I can be flexible on that), bonus points if it’s a story that takes place in Louisiana.
All suggestions will be appreciated and probably read at some point, if not the thing selected for the drive itself. Thanks!
Not quite ghost stories but I feel like the collected works of Flannery O’Connor would be perfect here.
Shirley Jacksonnnnnn. Just…everything by her.
Your road trip sounds AMAZING! I’m soooooo stealing your idea, as well as the Flannery and Jackson recommendations.
Thank you! I’ve actually already read both of those though (maybe not all the Shirley Jackson, but most of it. If only I could listen to Haunting of Hill House for the first time on this trip, it would be PERFECT! But, alas.)
Hmmm. Edith Wharton has some ghost stories along those “creeping dread” lines. Roald Dahl’s anthology of ghost stories is pretty legit as well.
The DC Toast book club just read Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching and really enjoyed it.
Ooh, and I recently finished Edith’s Diary by Patricia Highsmith and loved it! That’s less supernatural and more psychological horror, which I don’t know if that’s what you’re after or not. Or The House Next Door, which is also amazing.
(sorry to keep editing, I’ve been going through my Goodreads history and reminiscing about great scary books)
Please, go as long as you want! These are pretty much all new to me, so I’m gleefully adding them to the list.
The House Next Door pleased me SO much (although it was written in the 70s so the standard disclaimers apply regarding stuff that would not be written today — there are some uncomfortable opinions about homosexuality, not a huge part of the book, but I thought I’d let you know if you want to steer clear). The main character’s name is Colquitt! The main couple routinely prepares pitchers of martinis to drink on the patio! It’s just intensely WASPy in a way where it felt like it was written about an alien species and also a creepy house. I also like that the creepy house was a modern construction and not a mouldering ruin.
Dismantled or basically any other book by Jennifer McMahon that sounds good. Love her.
Not a lady, but George RR Martin has a book called Fevre Dream set in 1850’s Louisiana with vampires who fund steamboats. It’s pretty good, not sure about audiobook availability. I live in Nola, so I’m interested to hear about your trip. Are you going to stay the night at the Myrtles in St. Francisville? There are some pretty awesome French Quarter ghost tours. I have a friend involved in theater who runs his own now!
Not a ghost story, but “A Free Man of Color” by Barbara Hambly is a mystery that meets all your other criteria, and is, in addition, a wonderful book.
Its springtime, and all jobs are nonsense but I planted an herb garden and GAME OF THRONES IS BACK and so is the final season of MAD MEN so all and all, life is moving forward.
Additionally, I really want to hike the PCT despite no real long range hiking / camping experience! In lieu of going all Cheryl Strayed about it, Im starting w wkd trips to see how it goes/ how I feel. Any people into these things have thoughts or advice?
START with light/ultra-light gear. You will save money and have less stuff in the long run. Especially for long distance hiking, keeping your pack weight down makes almost everything else easier. But–L/UL stuff tends to require a bit more practice to get right, so your training/working up to it is especially important for getting out the kinks. I could talk about this forever, so in lieu of boring you to tears, um, AMA? If you want!
Carrot Quinn has done the PCT twice and blogged very poetically about it: http://carrotquinn.com/
Erin Saver has done the Triple Crown and blogged a bit more prosiacally but more practically about it: http://www.walkingwithwired.com/p/home-page.html
Balls and Sunshine hiked the PCT the same year as Wired: http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpacki…
A+ agree, buy the lightest gear you can afford. Also, buy a hiking backpack at actually fits, the people at any decent camping store will be able to help you try on backpacks and find you one that fits. I’d say just go do it, especially if you’re generally healthy and at least vaguely fit.
Camping and hiking do not need to be the crazy intense stressful over-scheduled events that people can make them out to be. Do you like hot food? Ok, bring matches. Are you not very good at starting fires, or not allowed to build fires where you are going? Maybe bring a small jetboil instead. Get a tent, ideally a small one. Get a sleeping bag-you can squash it up inside a compression sack and make it fit in your camping backpack. What do you like to do in the evening? Read, probably because you hang out here 🙂 So bring some books. Probably not a lot though because they are heavy and anything you bring will probably get wet at some point. Bring more food, underwear, and socks than you think you need. Get good hiking boots and wear two pairs of socks with them (bring two pairs of socks with you when you go to try on hiking boots)-again the folks at the hiking/camping store will be able to help. Bring 2 1L water bottles, and have a way to purify water-either a lifestraw or a pump filter or some iodine tablets. If you know how to read them, a compass and a few topo maps will be helpful. They aren’t hard to read-again bug the hiking store people and they can teach you.
Finally-a lot of people say that your backpack shouldn’t be more than 1/3 of your body weight. Well, that may be a good guideline for giant men but if you’re a tiny woman who weights 115 lbs, it’s not always practical. So I’d say just pack up what you need and see if you can carry it for an hour or two, then reduce as necessary.
Toasties! Bought this beauty on Etsy the other day and, frankly, am p. excited to receive it.
In unrelated news I am also running out of wall space for art.
THAT IS SO GREAT. How did you find it? I’m about to live alone for the first time ever and I have a mighty need to see my apartment decked out in misandrist decor, but I don’t know where to look.
Thanks!
I’ve had an Etsy account forever and go pretty much every day to check out the main page you see when you log in. They’re always presenting either shops that sell items similar to items you’ve favorited or people who have favorites lists you might enjoy.
The shop is here, with many fine wreaths to choose from: https://www.etsy.com/shop/gracedchin?ref=l2-shoph…
I am also always happy to offer shop suggestions if you like!
Link to the store? I remember seeing and loving her stuff awhile ago. I’m debating dedicating a wall to various feminist/misandrous art…
Go for it! I recently had a custom “Misandry” necklace made by this lady: https://www.etsy.com/listing/114046927/personaliz…
The wreath is from here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/gracedchin?ref=l2-shoph…
Toasties, my daughter made her high school theater debut last night as Enid Hoopes in Legally Blonde, and she was awesome!!
Also, I finally managed to squat 500 pounds, which is a weight that has been a mental barrier for me for a long while!
HOLY CRAP CONGRATULATIONS!
Thanks. It has been one of those things where I’ve known I had the strength, but couldn’t seem to put everything together. But persistence (esp. in the face of various non-lifting-related injuries) paid off eventually.
That is a lot of weight. Congratulations!
:O :O :O
that is *amazing*. congrats!
congrats on both fronts!
hs musical theater is so much fun, i hope she’s having an awesome time.
and, you can now pretty much lift a tiger.
Fantasy recs: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor — the latter of which a friend recommended to me when I was dealing with a bout of impostor syndrome, and it was one of the aptest recommendations ever.
I’m feeling like the semester’s running away from me and there are too many things I’m probably forgetting to do. But: it’s finally warm in New York, last weekend’s recital (Sarah Connolly singing Schubert, Mahler, Copland, and Elgar — SWOOOOONNNNNN) was utterly fabulous, and this weekend I’m going on a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and it’s supposed to get up into the 70s. So under the circumstances it’s hard to fret.
Also, in other news, I’ve been trying to readjust my relationship to clothes and the acquisition thereof. I’ve never liked shopping for clothes; I tend to go to stores, not see anything that looks appealing, and go home frustrated and empty-handed, or else just end up with boring but functional pieces to wear to work. But I did the Marie Kondo thing with my wardrobe a couple of weeks ago, and it led to the realization that — while “joy” is not really an emotion I feel in connection with clothes — I definitely have stronger feelings about some clothes than others, and it actually felt pretty good to ditch a bunch of ill-fitting boxy t-shirts, worn-out pants, shirts I’ve never enjoyed wearing, and even a couple of things I’d knitted that never really worked out. Which in turn has made me want to only buy new clothes that I think I’ll really like to wear. So, Toastrons, how do you all go about finding a sense of style and/or places to find clothes you like?
One thing that really helped me to figure out what looked best on me (thereby helping me develop a sense of style) was to take a picture of myself in the mirror every morning in the outfit I was wearing that day. Not posed or smiling or for anyone else’s consumption. Just a full length picture to see what I looked like in that outfit. It helped me to figure out a lot of things, like what length of skirt looked best on me and whether or not certain pieces of clothing I already owned were actually that flattering (they were not). The only reason I stopped doing it was because I moved to a place without a long enough mirror, though at that point I already had a pretty good idea of what did and did not look good on me.
that is a great idea!
Oh, I like that idea! I lack a full-length mirror, but I can still take a bathroom mirror selfie that captures about 3/4 of any given outfit, so I’ll try it — thank you!
I actually started The Goblin Emperor over again as soon as I’d finished, that’s how awesome that book is. Fingers crossed that it wins the Hugo award this year.
Re: clothes – once I figured out that texture and proportion are the most important things for me to feel comfortable about wearing a piece, shopping became a lot easier. I’ve also become more ruthless about sticking to a palette of colours so that I don’t buy anything that won’t work with anything else I own.
I hope that eventually clothes can give you joy! Some things that have really helped me with developing my style and shopping better: 1) find a tailor you love, the kind that has you put the clothes on and stand on the platform in front of the mirror. This way, you can buy sale stuff that’s too big or vintage stuff and have it altered to fit you perfectly. Tailoring also allows you to keep clothes you bought but don’t quiiiiiite love. 2) Don’t buy anything unless you can imagine at least 3 ways to wear it. The exception is for ridiculous clothing that you fall head over heels in love with and just need to have, but that kind of stuff is rare. 3) Pay attention to what looks best on you and makes you feel best. For me, I’ve got a minimum length for dresses, a “no cap sleeves” rule, and a fondness for tunic-like shapes.
Good luck! Keep us updated!
These are all really good suggestions, thank you! The tailoring thing is something I haven’t tried but have been meaning to. And I’ve already got an iron-clad rule “NO POCKETS, NO SALE” rule for pants and most skirts, so that’s a start, at least.
I second the suggestion about tailoring! I used to wear skirts and dresses at just whatever length they came in, and then I realized that I’m not that tall and should be wearing things at a length that is (for me, in my opinion) more flattering for shortish people.
I have started on medication to manage my depression. I am not entirely sure how I feel about that.
There is something I know how I feel about, though, and it’s every single person who feels the need to have an opinion a) about the fact that I’m taking medication, and b) which medication it is. “Oh, that’s a horrible medication and coming off of it is going to be the worst, you may think you’re okay now but HAHA JUST U WAIT” is not helpful, so cut it out!!
Why do people do that?? Medications affect everyone differently! There’s no such thing as a “horrible” medication. Well, ok, some of them are more apt to have horrible side effects, but I don’t go around telling people “Abilify made me anxious so you shouldn’t take it.”
Anyway, best of luck with the new meds <3
Agreed! I have made a point not to tell people when they’re being put on a medication that gave me weird side effects because the doctor specifically said, “This is a super rare thing to have happen.” The last thing I would want is to discourage someone from making a positive choice about their mental health just because I had a weird experience.
I have restrained myself from any histrionic, “WELL I GUESS I JUST WON’T TAKE THESE THEN” tantrums when people do this, but — I feel conflicted enough about having to take medication that every time someone says something about how terrrrrible the medication that I’m on is (which, for the record, gave me all sorts of weird side effects for about a week and then stopped entirely), I am kind of tempted to just stop.
UGH. RUDE.
Everyone’s experience with medication is different. I had to try a couple different ones but eventually I found one that A) treats the depression effectively and B) does not give me side effects. It improved my quality of life 1000%. I hope yours does the same for you! And if not, that you find one that does fairly quickly!
I started Monday. I feel… weird. Kind of mildly hung over and withdrawn.
I had all sorts of weird side effects for the first week, and then I guess my brain got used to it and nearly all symptoms stopped dead overnight, which was really exciting! There’s still one mild side-effect, but it’s not particularly a problem imo, so I’m pretty happy about that!
same here. i started about 2 months ago. the first night i felt like i was on shrooms, the first week was weird, the next week was slightly less weird, and by week 3 i was back to normal. well, not *normal*. not MY old normal. a new, better, improved, less fucking crazy normal.
congrats on taking steps to take good care of yourself. i wish you all the luck!
Hi, me too! I’ve been at the full dose for a week and am seeing my psychiatrist this week. Solidarity on the opinions xoxo
hello Philadelphia Toastrons! I am apartment-hunting in your fair city. Next year I am moving to Philadelphia part-time — I will be spending 3 days a week there and 4 days in Boston. Is there any chance at all someone is either a. looking for a rarely-present and laid-back housemate, b. able to recommend listings sites beyond craigslist, or c. can simply recommend pleasant affordable neighborhoods in Philly?
I’ll be a post-doc of sorts at U Penn, so neighborhoods within easy reach of the university or Amtrak’s 30th Street Station would be great.
Many thanks!! I am excited but feeling slightly overwhelmed by logistics too.
I think I found my (tiny but nice) Philadelphia apartment through Craigslist when I lived there as a library school student, so I can’t offer apartment-site help. But I did very much enjoy living in the Spring Gardens/Fairmount neighborhood: it’s close to Center City but far enough away to be quieter and more residential, it has a lot of great little shops and restaurants, and it’s not that super-far from 30th Street Station, either. Plus, every Bastille Day, there’s an absolutely hilarious neighborhood celebration.
Hmmm, I was using Trulia to look for apartments for a while, but if you’re looking for somewhere with housemates it’s probably not ideal. If you’re moving next year it might be a little too soon to find available places! (I totally understand the impulse though; I was apartment-hunting six months in advance of my lease ending.)
As far as neighborhoods: There are lots of affordable places in University City, and you’d obviously be super close to Penn (though you would also be surrounded by undergrads, I don’t know how you feel about that). I don’t recommend going too far west, say, west of 46th street, because it’s less gentrified and crime is higher out there :/ Graduate Hospital is another nice neighborhood, and my friend walks to Penn from her apartment in that area (there are also buses for when the weather sucks). Queen Village: also super cute, though farther from Penn and a little pricier.
I don’t know if you’ve joined the Philadelphia Toast group yet, but here it is if you haven’t! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/phillytoa…
If you don’t mind my asking, what do you consider affordable? There’s plenty of housing around UPenn (and it’s an area with a TON of great food options), but the thing is that apartments within UPenn’s campus police patrol’s radius are going to be more expensive (and the area more safe) than those outside of it. I have a friend who lives in the area I could ask about details/housing, if you’re curious.
Other than that, I have a bunch of friends who live in the Northern Liberties area and like it a lot. It’s on the subway line you’d take to get to UPenn (the Market-Frankford Line), which would get you closer to campus than 30th Street Station.
I live in Cedar Park, about 10 blocks west of UPenn. I love my neighborhood, and it’s relatively affordable.
I would recommend checking out west philly too – anything east of 52nd, south of maybe chestnut, and north of the R3 tracks is safe IMHO, and anything east of maybe 43rd is not too full of undergrads and weird Penn stuff. I lived there a few years ago and absolutely fell in love! It is very affordable and friendly and full of stray cats. Everyone feels comfortable in different places, but tbh I felt less safe around the drunk Penn bros in University City than I did around the poorer* people a little farther west.
*poorer than Penn undergrads obviously = a wide range of incomes
I’m in a happy place. Everything is starting to work out. My clients like me, I have enough work coming in. My relationship is good and we’re in a weird run of extremely high sex drive for no particular reason. I’m getting enough exercise. I write every day. I’m happy all the time.
Even getting a letter from my Dad last week asking me to reconcile with abusive mother couldn’t shake me. I . . . might be healthy? Maybe? I definitely smile a lot.
Last night I had a dream that my and my… fiance (that is a word I find almost weirder than boyfriend) went on a trip to Mars, and when we got there, we were in this kind of convention centre space and it was full of sex toy booths and they were giving out samples of lube.
Any Jungians out there care to take a crack at that one?
Well, not like you can go outside on Mars, so what else are you gonna do?
Ooh I had an odd romantic/sexual dream last night too! But with an old friend I’ve always had a thing for (and who for some mysterious reason I turned down when he asked me and college boyf to have a threesome with him) and have recently reconnected with over snapchat.
Must be something in the air… perhaps the aliens are sending us signals that they want us to get busy! 😉
I still call my partner my boyfriend from time to time, and we’ve been married for 3 years. Mind, we were together for 15 years before that, so.
Is the switch from boyfriend to fiance recent? Have you been consuming a lot of media about plans to colonize Mars? Because it sounds like… like marriage is a long journey to a strange place that you can’t necessarily return from, and on the other side everyone (EVERYONE) acknowledges that you are having sex and encourages you to do so. I like this metaphor; this is not a bad metaphor for what marriage is like.
regional food talk, Toasties!
i was born and raised in southern Indiana, spent my teens and 20’s in Michigan, then moved to Arizona 12 years ago. i primarily lived with other Midwestern transplants and continued eating the same diet until 5 years ago when i started dating a native Phoenician who comes from a Spanish and Portuguese family.
he made me paella for the first time and taught me how to cook my own Mexican food. tortillas and rice are staples in my house now instead of potatoes and bread. my go-to food is enchiladas (great for day #4 of thanksgiving turkey), i can fry my own taco shells, and i am currently enamored with sopes. i still rely on him to make Spanish rice for me, though because I can never get it as good as his.
in return, i’ve introduced him to the hearty fare of my people: meatloaf (of all things!), biscuits with white gravy, turkey & dumplings, and what he calls my “down home cookin” (bbq chicken, hand mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and biscuits with apple butter.)
one food I REALLY miss that I can’t get or replicate here is paczkis. we lived in a polish catholic area of Michigan and on Fat Tuesday all of the bakeries made them and my dad would go out super early to score a dozen. i was partial to the sweet vanilla cream filling. i start craving them as soon as lent and mardi gras discussions begin creeping up.
so, fellow Toastie transplants… what are some of the regional foods of your new homeplace that have you come to love and reply on? have you shared any of your own regional recipes with you newfound friends? are there any dishes that you miss from back home?
I moved to South Carolina a few years ago. I now enjoy good shrimp and grits. I always thought they were gross before I moved here, but I’d never had creamy, quality grits with local shrimp.
i miss good grits. (miss you, grandma!) any time i order them at a restaurant out here, i’m sorely disappointed.
I miss morning buns. They’re a midwestern thing, sort of a cross between croissants and cinnamon buns. They’re tiny and flaky and covered in caramelized sugar and cinnamon. I should try to find a good recipe now that I’m far from any bakeries that sell them.
We made morning buns at a bakery I worked at in Palo Alto. So good, croissant dough sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, rolled and cut like a cinnamon roll, and baked until puffy, crunchy, and delicious! We baked them in silicon molds (kind of like muffin tins only more shallow and with straight sides).
Thank you! I think I can do that.
Paczkis! I miss them too! I went to grad school in Michigan, and one of the admin assistants in my program would always bring them into the office for Fat Tuesday. Mmmmm, paczkis.
Also from Michigan! I haven’t lived there since I was 18 and went off to college. I think the two Michigan things I miss the most are bumpy cake and Faygo Rock ‘n’ Rye.
Now I’m in Russia and I miss so many foods that it’s just too long to list, but the one major thing is good cheese. It is very hard to find cheese with flavor in my town, aside from some good, salty, feta-like cheese. I miss smelly cheese.
omg I desperately miss bumpy cake and Faygo and Vernor’s and Better-Made potato chips.
better made chips! i would happily skin the roof of my mouth on a bag of salt & vinegar right now.
OMG, you sound like you spent some time in Hamtramck.
The very best paczki I have ever had, including in Hamtramck, are from a Polish bakery in Suttons Bay. They are sublime–light and crisp and soft and filled with fresh jam or custard and oh my god I want one right now
The best I’ve been able to do is an Italian bakery here in Lansing, but I dream of taking a Fat Tuesday trip to the Polish bakery my fiancee’s family always used to go to in Chicago.
Mind sharing the name of this magical paczki source in Suttons Bay?
ROMA?! Roma is sooo sooo sooo amazing, I love that place 4eva.
Chimoski is the place in SB. I have to drive by it twice a day and it is a daily struggle every morning. No, you CANNOT eat a custard-filled chocolate long john for breakfast every day, no matter how delicious they are.
Now that I think about it, my drive to work involves several outstanding bakeries. Leelanau Pie & Pastry makes these croissants with asparagus and gruyere and capicola, holy shit, again with the daily restraint.
You’re in Lansing? Is it Roma Bakery?
After a lifetime in California, I moved to Atlanta and learned to make Sweet Potato Biscuits with a Paula Deen recipe Two Ingredient Biscuits from Nathalie Dupree. Last thanksgiving my Texan friends’ ten year old son told me the Sweet Potato Biscuits were better than Popeye’s biscuits and I hugged him so hard!
I’m from Chicago/Grand Rapids and I really f-ing miss real, good coffee cake. The nonsense “coffee cake” you can get here in NYC is just sad. But the street food almost makes up for it.
As a Michigander who has only lived in three states (all Great Lakes region), I don’t have much to contribute except YAY, PACZKI! and also how much I love the Michigan love-fest going on in the comments.
I didn’t know there were so many Michiganders around! Mitten high fives!
*high five*
I constantly dream of proper New York bagels (and pizza as well, but bagels are my true love). There is much to love about California food (so much produce) but their bagels are terrible.
San Francisco has made considerable progress in the pizza department, but proper bagels are still a rarity. On the plus side, local crab and oysters, guacamole, and a devotion to burritos are ok consolation prizes.
It is very true that the burrito devotion is a pretty fair trade off.
The current Cooks Illustrated has a recipe for what they claim are authentic bagels — could be worth a look? Seems like a bunch of work, but I’m sure they freeze well.
I have actually made bagels before! They turned out well, but it is a pretty massive undertaking. It’s a fun baking project though!
Salt potatoes were a new discovery when I moved to upstate NY and they are DELICIOUS and I don’t know how I ever got along without them!
Foods I miss — well of course Primanti’s.
RUNZAS
New home food: wild Alaska salmon, and smoked salmon
Desperately missing: lobster rolls and Italian sandwiches from DiPietro’s (you might know them as grinders or subs, but a proper Maine Italian sandwich has the most perfect soft yet substantial bread, oil and vinegar, various cold cuts, cheese, tomatoes, green peppers, and olives, and I have never tasted a sandwich-type item to match it).
So after being reminded of the existence of Nursery University, my favorite documentary about people putting about ten times more effort into finding their kid a preschool in Manhattan than I did in finding a grad program for myself, and then spending way too much time searching for reviews about it, I fell into a blackhole of wealthy-mommy-in-Manhattan blogs.
I think I’m addicted now, guys. I neither have nor want kids and I’m a broke student/retail drone in suburban Tennessee, so these people might as well be Martians as far as how much I can relate to them. Why are these blogs so hypnotic? (Does anyone have any links to other ones that I can boggle at?)
I’m more obsessed with the Mormon mommy blogs, but try getoffmyinternets.net for a lengthy list of mom blogs of all varieties. Mind-boggling.
Ooh, thank you! For some reason, the Mormon mommy blogs just annoy me (too similar to the mommies who grate on my nerves around here, I suspect), but there is something about mommy blogs in general that have some sort of magnetic pull.
I’ve been wayyy too into GOMI lately. Where do all these people get the money? What the hell do your friends think when they show up to your totally over-the-top baby shower with a bazillion dollars worth of pastries and handmade decorations and then are asked to pose for ten million pictures? Why are all these twentysomethings disguising themselves as middle-aged WASPs?
I also have a thing for blogs by fundamentalist Christians, alternative-medicine cranks, and any other kind of weirdo who is willing to spill the bizarre details of their personal life all over the internet.
I feel like GOMI is The Toast’s dark twin.
I like reading things about actual Martians, so I can relate.
Reading about actual Martians probably makes more sense, really.
Related to my job hunt stuff: does anyone have any advice on starting a freelance/consulting/something like that thing? I do copy editing and digital communications and I’m trying to figure out if it’s a viable thing to do freelance, but I feel like I don’t know where to start. I’m picking up a copy of The Freelancer’s Bible at the library today, which was recommended by a friend who has been totally freelance for a few years. Advice would be greatly appreciated though.
It’s definitely do-able! I’m tweaking my current freelance writing to try and get more content marketing gigs, and that’s just a matter of writing letters of introduction and sending them out like a house on fire until some people respond, then parting my hair and trying to sound like a rational adult human. Should be roughly the same for you. Feel free to drop me a line (heatherlseggel at gmail) if you have any specific questions I might be able to help with.
Phew, just handed in a big-deal application 5 minutes under deadline — I thought it was due at 5, but no! it was due at noon. Anyway, that’s done, plus or minus a last-minute typo or two.
I’ve had a startlingly shitty week in terms of emotions/dealing with things, so am about to eat a grilled cheese sandwich, leave work early, and drown my sorrows in the MSP International Film Fest.
Ooooo, Twin Cities Toastie concert long shot. I have two spare tickets for the Sufjan Stevens concert next Wednesday (at Northrop). Does anyone want them?? I will sell them on line if not, but since they are seated tickets, would rather they went to someone I know/a Toastie.
I’m at the end of Week 2 out of the terrible job with the Catholic church! I’m feeling so much better. I have a blog post and a half written for my upcoming Criminal Minds recap project, plus one started for what I hope will be a great body-positive, feminist cooking blog. I also dyed my hair green again! I feel more like myself than I have in a while. Still having nightmares about going back to work, though 🙁
body-positive feminist cooking blog
I don’t know which of those words I like better! And your hair is back to normal!!! I put some pink back in my hair because, well, they didn’t say I COULDN’T in the employee manual, and nobody’s said anything…I don’t know if I can go full, knowing this environment, but it’s already made me feel so much better.
I did up some makeup and took a pic the other day — I’ve since done another coating of the dye because I missed some spots 🙂
GET ITTTTTTTT. I love it!
ooooh that recap project sounds really interesting!
Aw Toasts are the most supportive ever! I’ll let you know when my blogs are live!!!
This is frequent-ish commenter whittingly, it’s just such a bother to change accounts: I’ve recently started a food and recipe blog about dealing with my weird food allergies, so if anyone’s interested in such things, it’s here: https://milkpocalypse.wordpress.com/
It’s just getting started, but there will be updates every Tuesday and Thursday, and it’s eventually going to deal more with the social and emotional aspects of dealing with food rather than recipes. If you’re interested in allergies, #nondairylife, GF, veganism, etiquette, or are just interested in all food things, you might like it!
Toasties! Tell me about your best ideas for celebrating big birthdays! I’m turning 30 this summer and am greatly tempted to say to hell with financial responsibility, I’m going to turn 30 while walking long distances in Scotland or Ireland, because otherwise I don’t even know who I am anymore. There are many epic hiking/backpacking opportunities closer to home, but they lack that sense of magic.
I went to England for my 30th. I’m hoping to go back for my 40th next year! I’m all about birthday adventures.
England would be brilliant, too. Birthday adventures are the best!
For my 30th, I took myself on a lovely fiber art retreat on a lake in New Hampshire; it was not inexpensive but worth every penny. This year, I’ll be spending my 35th birthday on my first Proper GrownUp Vacation (no visiting family or friends, no social obligations, nothing educational – I loved the retreats I’ve been on, but there’s always work involved even if it’s fun work) in Cozumel but I don’t know if it counts because we didn’t plan the trip expressly FOR my birthday, as that just happened to be the week with the best flights.
ETA: I’m a big fan of finding/creating magic for milestone birthdays, so I support your Scottish/Irish hiking expeditions! Maybe you’ll find a lucky birthday leprechaun.
Oh, that sounds lovely too! If I were you I would definitely co-opt the Vacation to be Your Birthday Trip.
Oh, I definitely plan on that. It’d be SILLY not to.
fiber art retreat on a lake in New Hampshire
now that sounds fantastistic. i wanna go there even if it isn’t my birthday
I’m going to keep that in mind for my 30th – that sounds like an awesome trip!
My best friend and I are seriously considering doing the Overland Track in Tasmania (or something similar in New Zealand) for our 30ths next year.So I support your idea completely!
We went to the Isle of Skye for my 30th, it was lovely. We did a hike while still on the mainland to the Falls of Glomach (roughly between Eilan Donan castle and the village of Plockton, if memory serves) and saw no other humans the entire time. Glorious.
This year we’re in Iceland over my birthday and I highly recommend it.
Oh, I love Iceland so much! We went the year before last and it is one of my favorite trips of all times. I haven’t been to Skye yet, and in my imagination it is the most amazing magical place on the planet.
My best birthday present to date (well, second only to the pickle-grabber, anyway) was a book-making workshop at SF Center for the Book. Especially because now I can make cute little books and send them out on holidays. But I’m pretty boring.
That sounds fabulous! I understand that Ireland is quite friendly for cyclists, if that’s an option for you; I know a fellow who went to do just that after having lost a job, and he loved the Aran Islands so much that he stayed for four months.
I have often dreamt about walking a part of the Compostela when I’m in my forties. I recently indulged in attending a screening of “Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago”, and every other audience member in attendance was a woman between the ages of 40 & 70, so I feel like I’d be in good company 🙂
Also, for my 33rd birthday I took 4-day weekend in New York City (I’m on the Pacific coast). It was magical, and I’m now convinced that birthday-ing alone in a strange place every few years is healthy & beneficial.
Tostones! I’m going to be studying with Roxane Gay in Germany this summer! I am SO EXCITED and also kind of freaking out because I went part time at my job to Pursue Writing (which, yay! I have been doing!)
I felt kinda funny about setting up a GoFundMe for it, buuut then I started looking up how much flights costs and weeping so here is my GoFundMe, if you’ve got some spare pasta that you can throw my way. 🙂
With deepest gratitude, I will repay you in post cards and letters and drawings. Naked mermaids. I am really good at naked mermaids!
thanks to you both for the neighborhood advice! I may have to go with a studio anyway, or maybe some kind of long-term AirBnB arrangement, so neighborhood advice is most welcome. And no, being surrounded by tons of undergrads is not super-appealing for a home environment. I’ll look into Spring Gardens & Grad Hospital!
Anyone going to the LA Festival of Books this weekend? I want to go to the Writing With a Smirk conversation that Mallory’s in but I’m having trouble getting tickets through the website…I’d love to meet any Toasties there!
OH GOD I can’t believe I didn’t bring up Game of Thrones. GAME OF THRONES. Let us talk!
I was not ready for that shot. Nope. I was not ready. That shot caught me off guard!
RIP http://asongoficeandlolz.tumblr.com/post/24336236…
Hello toast! I have been dating a guy for 3 months and all is going well and he seems pretty fantastic so far. His birthday is next week, and I am entirely overthinking this. What scale of thing is appropriate for a birthday present for someone you’ve been dating for a couple of months, where it’s going well but it’s not super serious because 3 months is really not all that long? I am terrible at picking out presents in general, especially for dudes, and I am am worried about undershooting (it’s your birthday? who cares!) and overshooting and seeming entirely too clingy and attached.
I like the consumable small item. Like a single cupcake, one you asked the bakery to put his name on. Extra points if you know he loves red velvet or lemon, etc.
Something edible/drinkable is pretty foolproof – I bet you know a favorite beer or cake flavor you could give him.
Perhaps a small art print or other cute thing from a craft fair/art museum shop? Something small enough to sit on a desk or bookshelf.
Or next time you’re out and about, tell him “I want to get you a birthday present! Let’s go in this [book, game, comics, fancy kitchen things, etc]store and find something awesome.”
Also acceptable: ask him! “Hey guy I’ve been dating, your birthday is coming up. How would you like to celebrate??” It will give you an idea if he’s a big birthday kind of guy or if he’s a no thanks on the birthday kind of guy.
What about saying “I would love to take you out for your birthday!” and taking him somewhere nice-ish within your budget? Maybe not on his actual birthday, if he has family plans or a party or whatever. You *could* also give him a tiny little token present, like, I dunno, a funny fridge magnet or second hand book something.
A nice night out is good, because its experiential and you get to do it together, but also can be generous without being like “I got you an AMAZING PRESENT LOVE ME”.
I was just thinking back to when my now-fiance and I had been dating 4 months, and he was turning 30. We had, in the fourth month, very suddenly started to fall in love very hard. But it was crazy new. Anyway, I lost my mind trying to figure out a birthday present for him, and ended up buying him a cashmere robe (I have one that he was obsessed with). I will never admit to anyone what I spent on a present for a very new boyfriend. It all worked out in the end, and he just gave me a diamond ring, so there, but try not to do what I did. It is a bit crazy and also you will go broke, like me.
Hm, this story is really making me realize how much I was raised to try to buy love with presents.
Ditto on the nice dinner thing! It’s a nice present for him, but it’s also a nice present for you.
Agreed! My boyfriend is not into presents– he was embarrassed that I bought him something for his birthday after we’d been dating almost a YEAR! Whereas I will buy things for just about anybody on any occasion, just because it seems like the right thing to do. But a couple weeks ago I took him out to a fancy dinner to celebrate a job offer, and he thought it was the greatest thing ever. The downside is that I spent far more picking up the check that night than I ever have on a material present.
yes, thirding this advice. experiential stuff can be awesome for everyone involved, builds new relationship memories, and is a wide enough thing that it’s not all suddenly hinging on “I got you OBJECT(!)…do you like OBJECT?”
buying some food or drink, doesnt have to be too fancy.
i will say, i go through cycles of gifts i like to give people (a while back it was the Garlic Zoom. whaaat? they’re perfect) and right now it’s whiskey stones. they’re great for they’re job, they’re unusual, and they’re aesthetically nice and not all that pricey.
feel free to ignore the consumerist end bit of this advice, though!
I had the same dilemma and went with a handling scarf and tickets to a thing.
Tickets is a great idea!
The guy I’m seeing had a birthday about two months after we met, and I knew he was looking into buying a new suit. I got him a nice white linen pocket square (classic and simple). I also wrote him a limerick in a birthday card. He seemed to really dig it!
I second the suggestions of books, liquor if he drinks, tickets to a show, or just a nice dinner. If you guys have been on dates to special places like museums, art galleries, or whatever, maybe something from their gift shop!
I am a first time commenter, but a long time lurker. Just commenting because I have had a really crummy week this week, and hoping for some words from fellow toasties to cheer me up. My family’s dog of 15 years was put down yesterday, and I was pretty much rejected from a variety of funding sources I had been waiting to hear back from this semester. All in all, just ready for this week to end 🙁
I’m sorry it’s been a shitty week. Give yourself permission to do self-care stuff this weekend, even if it means some weekend chore doesn’t get done.
*big digital hugs, if they are wanted*
I’m sorry you’ve had a crummy week. I hope you get to do something fun this weekend. (Your user name is perfect, you fit right in here.)
Oh, that is terrible. Take care of yourself this weekend.
🙁 I’m sorry, that does sound like a discouraging and sad week. Internet hugs for you. Hope you have a relaxing and restorative weekend.
What a rotten week, I’m so sorry. Hope your weekend involves something good and cheering.
Poor dog! Cursed lost funding! It sounds like losing a constant star in the heavens AND a railing on your path. If you would like to share, I would like to hear a story about your dog.
Hello, Toasts! On the last open thread, I wrote a several paragraphs long comment about how bummed I was that my birthday was coming up and it felt like a total afterthought. With all the wedding planning and showers and trips and the half-marathon and feeling exhausted by everything, I literally forgot my birthday was happening until, like, a couple of days before. I mentioned it to my fiancee in conversation just to be like, “weird, huh?”
And then she threw me a surprise party! We were just hanging out at home watching a movie when suddenly friends started arriving all at the same time with all sorts of delicious food and drink. It was a total delight and a wonderful way to spend a birthday that seemed like it was going to be completely boring and kind of a downer.
What’s the most fun birthday celebration you’ve had OR what would be your ideal birthday celebration?
Best birthday ever was my 30th, because of being on the Queen Mary 2. Hard to top, honestly.
Oops! Left out a sentence there and can’t edit now. Meant to say:
On the last open thread, I wrote a several paragraphs long comment about how bummed I was that my birthday was coming up and it felt like a total afterthought – and then I deleted it all because I thought it was dumb.
Oh man, that sounds awesome!
I think my favorite birthday was last year– I had a Kids Party themed party, so I had a pinata full of both candy and little bottles of alcohol, and we did three-legged races down my hallway (which is not a wide hallway so it was really quite painful) and played “bunny bunny” and I think maybe some weird drunken version of pin the tail on the donkey. I love birthdays because you can make all your friends do whatever weird goofy shit you want them to do.
What a fantastic thing for your fiancee to do! <3 <3 <3
For my 40th, I had a big party–invited a whole bunch of folks, figuring (at best) half of them would show up. Nearly all of them showed, though, and we somehow stuffed nearly fifty people in our (not large) house–thankfully they came in stages, but at one point, I counted 39 people at one time. It was the last time I had cake, too, which a friend made for me. It was amazing cake.
It wasn’t a birthday but the best party I ever threw was for my husband’s grad school graduation. I told him there would be a party, and that he had to be at home for it, but wouldn’t tell him how many people said they could come. So we had a day long deal with amazing food, and ALL THE FRIENDS and just as he’d think it was over, new people would show up and more talking would start. It was excellent, and low stress, and pretty much perfect.
I fell and hit my head on a sharp edge last night and jesus the amount of blood that can come from a scalp laceration is AMAZING. I looked like Steven King’s Carrie by the time I made it to the bathroom.
Yeah, I did that on a TIE Fighter wing. They should put a warning on those boxes for adults.
You guys, I had a baby! She’s perfect of course. 🙂
She IS perfect! Good job 😀
Smooshy cheeks! Adorable nose! You’re right, she is perfect.
Oh she *is* perfect! And of course. That last photo hints at her future strength in misandry somehow.
Yay!!!
You made a human being! That is a really weird and amazing superpower. Congratulations and I hope you don’t use this ability for evil!
(But seriously, she’s beautiful. Yay baby!)
That is a SUPER CUTE baby! Congratulations!
For people who are into birth stories, you can read mine on reddit here: http://www.reddit.com/r/BabyBumps/comments/32hrca…
Oh and I almost forgot to mention, her name is Penelope. 🙂
She is so tiny and sleepy and squee!
YOUR BABY IS PERFECT. AND YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL. SHE’S SO GORGEOUS. CONGRATULATIONS!! AND WELCOME TO THE NEW TOASTIE BABY
I got mine at TJ Maxx, but it’s from Jockey! Here it is.
It is way more sports bra than I need (I’m a smallish B-cup) but it looks so cool!
(this is in reply to sausagedog above)
Oh dang that is super rad. I need it in both black and gray. Unfortunately, small/medium/large sizing = I need to try it on in person before purchasing. Nooo idea what size I’d be.
YOU GUYS I went to see Kingsman last weekend and now I just want to think about men in really nice suits forever
I just wanted to thank everyone for their advice about breaking up with my boyfriend this week. I talked to him last night and it did not go at all like I thought it would (very awkward and fast and quiet), but it was drama free which is good.
This is the jist:
Me: Blah blah blah [breaking up]
Him: …
Me: Ok, well then I guess I will go.
Him: I just don’t know what to say.
Me: Me either. [leaves]
We are talking some more tonight (probably going over logistics of things we had planned and also some rehashing). Throughout this whole thing, I didn’t really think about how we were friends first and that kind of hit me today. I will really miss his friendship if we decide not to be friends (after we’ve gotten over everything) which I guess is to be expected, but still sad.
In terms of the relationship, the relief hasn’t hit yet, but I went over my reasons for doing it and still agree with them so I don’t really feel regret. Which is good.
Anyway, thank you so much for listening and responding and being there for me this week. I really appreciate it. 🙂
You did it. It was hard. But you did it. I am proud to know you. It all gets better from here. Please believe that.
Make sure you give yourself time to process. Having sudden random regrets, grieving for what could have been, etc, is all normal, and doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake. Sometimes it can be a big, weird thing to end a relationship. I’m glad you were able to do what you needed to do. 🙂
This. Also, I find that when I do really difficult or scary things I sometimes don’t feel anything either.
When I do difficult or scary things I usually have so much built up stress and adrenaline that I feel the same for awhile, then worse for awhile when all those chemicals crash, then better after everything has calmed down and I’ve gotten some sleep. Bodies are weird and emotions are weird and whatever response you have is normal and good.
Haha, yes, I think that’s me. I made plans to go out with friends tomorrow night (as you suggested) and I plan on taking a long leisurely bike ride tomorrow morning to sort of re-start and clear my head.
Thanks again for all the support. 🙂
I was hoping you’d check in today. I know that must have been incredibly tough but you were brave and you did the kindest thing possible for both of you. Breakups suck even when you’re the breakup-er and you’re sure of your decision. Please be good to yourself this weekend especially. Give yourself some alone time to feel and process but schedule stuff with your friends too so you get some distraction and normalcy.
Fallen London thread? Fallen London thread.
What do you all think of the new “Plans” feature? I haven’t really used it yet because pretty much maxed out everywhere, but I can definitely see it being handy.
I think I’ve clicked on one plan thing, but dunno if I will use it much.
I got my notability up and upgraded my profession from Trickster to Conjurer. Now I’m trying to raise more notability, though it will need to be 5 for my next promotion.
I think it’ll help when they do the next chunk of Ambitions or seasonal content, helping me remember what’s where.
Notability to 5 isn’t super hard, from what I recall. Good luck!
My plans are: secrets framed in gold, final 5 whirring contraptions for my zubmarine. I quite like the plans feature so far, although I also refer to my trusty excel spreadsheet for my planning.
(BaronBenas in Fallen London)
Excel spreadsheet, wow! You must do much less mobile playing than I do.
I am SO CLOSE to 200 Persuasive so I can finally become a Legendary Charisma!
I’ve been a bit bored with Fallen London this week. I can’t think of anything to do that could hold my interest for very long 🙁
Aww, I hear you–it can be hard to keep motivated when you’re maxed out of content.
This week I’ve been running the Fidgeting Writer, having absolutely SHIT luck, and trying hard to keep trusting in the law of large numbers. Cider is a really long-term goal and some days it’s more motivating than others, but weirdly the uncertainty of the Fidgeting Writer is more appealing in this mood than more predictable grinds.
I’m always running around getting distracted about what I was planning to do next so this should be pretty handy. Also I leave storylines behind for a bit and then forget where I was – for example, this week I spent a bunch of time in Mahogany Hall but all the Wars of Illusion options seem to have vanished, and I can’t remember if I played through to a stop point or what (I’m embroiled 25, connected Shroud 6, connected Glass 16).
I’m also embroiled 25, so it’s possible you’re out of content? It’s been ages since I did it, though.
I just checked and there’s a Saturday thing on the weekly variety bill I haven’t done, so maybe my tales of Mahogany Hall just aren’t high enough for the next step to kick in.
Hmm, worth a look, though I really thought I was as far as that went and I’m at 25. Maybe there’s some other quality that comes into play. Report back, if you’re successful!
Roger that!
I’m trying to become a Person of Some Importance by romancing someone in the court. Does the game start feeling less grind-heavy again once you’re past that point? I seem to be running across few stories, just a lot of clicking on the same task over and over.
POSI is a pretty tough grind but it does open up, let’s see, getting your own ship and thus really exploring the Zee, which is cool. and probably some other content that I can’t recall because I’m stupidly tired at the moment.
I’m writing a novel! Mostly because I keep getting the God’s Editors card and want to be able to do something with it.
My big achievement this week: I’m ready to buy a ship! Now I just have to choose WHICH ship, which is proving so difficult that I bailed on the decision entirely and went to court to write a novel instead. Anyone have advice for me?
The tramp steamer is relatively quick and easy, and will take you where you need to go! The others are a LOT more expensive, and as far as I can tell don’t offer too much else- one or two options on cards when you’re out to zee. But I will gladly defer to zailors of greater renown!
If you want to make Notability easier, the Yacht provides the most of the Bizarre/Dreaded/Respectable collective stat (known on the forums as BDR) that reduces the amount of Making Waves you need to be notable. I used to like the Zubmarine because it has a couple of faster-travel options, also, Zubmarine. But if you just want to get moving, totally okay to stick with the steamer.
OK so you know how people always say “I want that embroidered on a pillow?” Tell me what you want embroidered on a pillow! It can’t have any swear words because I’m going to submit it to the Iowa State Fair and they’ll disqualify it for swear words.
Kill everyone. Take to the sea.
Because it ‘s wrong.
Because I Said So!
Big Hair No Heart
Captain Awkward has a lit of things that should go on t-shirts – these are probably related, yes?
http://captainawkward.com/should-it-be-on-a-t-shi…
There is more than one correct answer.
I second Big Hair, No Heart.
(not that I’m biased or anything…)
well, somebody told me my facebook post needed to be on a hoody today, so here goes:
If I hold the coffee close to my face maybe it will keep the snark from escaping.
I doubt this is what you’re looking for, as it’s an obscure reference to an episode of Homicide, Life on the Street, but: “We’re men, Munch, not mice.”
There is this company that sells kits to hook your own shag pillow based on close-ups from 70s porn – I think one is just these awesome natural 70s porn boobs, and the other is two dudes with their dicks out wearing tube socks, from the waist down. I’ve ALWAYS wanted to get one.
I don’t know what that says about me.
So I think it’s possible that I have mild PTSD from my old boss. I had a meeting on Monday with my priests to talk about ongoing mistakes in the bulletins (I do the church bulletins), and I held it together, but then freaked out in the bathroom afterwards. And I still occasionally have that dream where he’s out on bail and back working at the company.
Although he did finally send me money for looking after the dogs, so that’s cool.
Also! I have a date! We’re going to choral evensong at church, because we are ridiculous.
Are you looking into counseling for the PTSD? I think you would benefit. And you are not ridiculous. I would go to choral evensong, too. OK, maybe we’re all ridiculous, you, me, your date. No, we’re *interesting*.
Yeah, I need to look into that. I also have some other emotional things that could do with some work, so counseling would probably be a pretty great idea. I could also see if I officially have C-PTSD, rather than reading lots of websites about C-PTSD from office bullying and going, “yeah, that makes sense. Oh man, that makes even more sense.”
We normally go to evensong, but that’s because we’re both singing in it. Because he sits behind me in choir. So it’ll be nice to attend as congregants, rather than singers. And then we’re going for coffee and he’s promised to give me snippets of church gossip he’s been hearing from people.
I second the recommendation of therapy for this. My therapist concluded that the ONLY reason I don’t have “proper” PTSD is because the DSM criteria require physical violence or threats of physical violence, but otherwise I fit the criteria. Some of the exercises she has given me are really hard and awful, but they have worked and I got to a place where I no longer had panic attacks when my boss asked me to close the door. I was even able to take criticism well!
I’ve had a couple of moments where I almost cried when thinking about how lovely it is to be able to do my job (and even make mistakes!) without being berated, humiliated, or made to feel like an idiot.
hanging where you love to hang and then getting some coffee/conversation sounds like a great date plan to me.
and yes, therapy sounds like a good thing to investigate. my mother is an mft, and i highly highly highly reccomend talking thimgs through with someone like her who can help you tease out the threads of thought and emotion that may be all jumbled together now.
Just popping in to complain/gloat that my lil’ movie blog is apparently visible enough to have gotten its SECOND pedantic comment from an old white man! Trying to hit that perfect balance of “justifiable clapback” to “you’re-lucky-I-even-deigned-to-spend-the-time-typing-this-out” in my reply. ^___^
The last couple of weeks have been like some sort of bizarre punishment by the gods. My step-dad broke his leg and I’ve had to care for him. My best friend has cancer. I’ve got a book to edit that just keeps getting pushed aside, because everything is in constant, terrifying upheaval. My partner left me in the midst of all of this.
BUT. My BFF is supposed to be coming home today from the hospital! And I’ve had other wonderful friends–both old and new–supporting me through all this. None of this has been very easy or pleasant, but I’m getting by.
Thanks, Toasties. Y’all have no idea just how much this place and the lovely people here have helped keep the despair at bay. ❤
<3
Terror, upheaval, and despair be gone! I command it! By the mighty and awesome power of the collective Toast Commentariat I command it!
Wishing you more wonderful support, more ease, more pleasure.
OH! OH! OH! The Artemis Fowl books!
And, uh….are you familiar with Doctor Who?
I second the movie recommendation of “Stardust”.
Hellboy!
Stranger Than Fiction!
And the Batwoman comics that J.H. Williams III did.
Okay I want to throttle that book just from your description alone. UGH.
‘
Edit – this was supposed to go in the book thread, ack!
I looked at a house today. It’s further out in the suburbs then I was planning, and needs big time cosmetics inside (unless I decide to like floral wallpaper). But I’m kind of in love with it.
What am I even doing looking at houses and making a notebook of paint colors? Those are adult things. Crap. Does this mean, I’m an adult?
Does anyone have experience with going to the ER for mental health stuff? The thing is that I’m not suicidal, so I’m afraid that if I go they will like give me an Ativan and send me home. This would not be bad per se, but it would be an expensive Ativan.
I am not in crisis in a suicide way, but I have barely left my bed for weeks due to anxiety and depression and am on the verge of failing all my classes this semester because I’m too sad and afraid to go (or do my assignments, or talk to my professors…)
Parts of the internet tell me that if I’m this non-functional I should go to the ER, and others say that if I’m not suicidal there’s no point. I have a new patient appointment with a psychiatrist for a week and a half from now, but I don’t know if I can stand to wait that long to get real treatment going. I had been prescribed SSRIs by the nurse practitioner at my college’s health center, but both meds I tried made me feel worse. Now I am off of them and feeling the most miserable I have in my entire life.
What to I dooooooooo?
Hi Blue-
Some communities have a Crisis line that can provide support and help make next day appt’s. As a Doc, I can tell you the ER is unlikely to be very helpful (unless as you already addressed, you’re concerned you might hurt your self or someone else. If that’s even remotely true- GO!)
I’m sorry it’s been such a struggle for you lately. I’m really glad you’re reaching out for some help and support. Hang in there!!
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
Would it help to call a crisis line? The counselors there might be able to give you good advice for your area about whether it makes sense to go to the ER.
You could look into some online therapy options just for the interim? Sites like betterhelp and talkspace can usually set you up with someone within 24 hours. It’s not medical care but if you think having a trained professional to start working with now would help, that’s one way to do it.
If talking to a stranger on the internet that has been there would help, let me know and I’ll give you my email
Thank you for the kind offer, I have several close friends in person who are being very good at checking in with me and just talking about nothing a few times a day. I feel like I have really good community/family support, but am lacking in the professional help I need right now. Luckily my psychiatrist appointment is a week from Tuesday, so help is on its way, but it is the waiting and staying miserable that is the very hard part.
Could you try calling the psychiatrist and see if they can get you in before that? I know counselors and psychiatrists are very different, but when I was setting up my new-patient appointment with my counselor she asked if it was ok for me to wait until then or if I felt it was an emergency and I had to see someone sooner.
I haven’t ever gone to one of them, but I would maybe look into an “urgent care” type facility if you can—my area has some run by the county, so maybe yours would too? They are generally much less expensive and should be able to prescribe short-term medications, at least til you get to your new psychiatrist. My experience with the ER has generally been… well, if you’re not like, in immediate need of medical triage, you’re on the lowest rung and it can be stressful to wait around among sick, panicky people. But of course of course of course—if you do feel in immediate danger, just go to the ER, and you can figure out the rest of details later. Toasties are sending you love and power!
my county has a mental hotline that is connected to a all-services mental health clinic. there is also a 24 hour walkin clinic. Try looking up your county job and family services site, then click around and see if your offers anything like that. Mine is helping both my younger kids and me at no cost, and my meds are covered free, also.
Thank you for the advice, everyone. It seems like the ER is not the choice for me, but I will poke around at the other resources y’all have suggested until my psych appointment
From one blue to another —
Do you have anyone who can email your professors for you and communicate with them on your behalf? So they know what’s going on but you wouldn’t have to talk to them?
I receive disability accommodations for mental health, and it had not actually occurred to me until you suggested it that this is something that one of the deans of students who coordinates disability stuff at my college (and ends up serving as a kick ass mental health advocate for a lot of students) could do for me. Thank you for suggesting it.
Hey, you can go to the ER whether you’re suicidal or not. I went there and they helped a lot. I’ve found 7 Cups of Tea (an online therapy thing) to be really helpful. You can set up times to talk to them, they have movie nights – it’s sort of like a facility but not really. It’s just to say that I didn’t feel alone after that.
Toasts – please tell me about your experiences with relationship counselling!
So last Saturday I pretty much walked out on my partner of 11 years. It’s probably been coming for a while, but the kicker was that he made a multi-thousand dollar purchase for the house without telling me, even in passing. This is not the first time – a couple of years back he also sold off all our shares ($300k) and put the profits onto the mortgage without telling me.
None of this is unaffordable, or even necessarily a bad idea. But I’d like to be told! Or preferably, consulted! So I told him that I was really unhappy and he brushed it off. I pushed again, and he told me I was being naggy and controlling and it wasn’t a big deal. I told him that even if it wasn’t a big deal, could he at least just do me the courtesy of giving me a heads up. He said no. I said this was probably a dealbreaker for me and he told me that sometimes in relationships large purchases just happen, and expecting a relationship where people check ahead of time are unrealistic.
I brought up counselling because his expectations seem to be so out of whack to me, but they also kind of make sense in the moment so I would like a third party to help mediate when one of us is getting ridiculous. He said that he wouldn’t go because ‘as a man’ he feels he would be discriminated against in a relationship therapy session. A few days later I was still upset and brought up counselling again and got shot down so I walked. After some pretty angry texts, accusing me of isolating him and torturing him into something he doesn’t want to do by refusing to come home until I see some serious progress, he has agreed to go to “your fucking counselling” as opposed to splitting up, but I’m beginning to think this is something that can’t be saved.
Toasts – have any of you tried this? Has it worked? This is the heavily abridged version – there’s a whole side story about how mentally ill and neglectful and unsupportive I am despite I’m the one holding down a good job to support us (he doesn’t work), with a great group of friends (he doesn’t have friends), and a good relationship with my family, how I’m too crazy for us to have kids, and some maybe-manipulative-maybe-not invocations of childhood trauma. Is there any hope that therapy can address something of this magnitude? Or should I stop stalling and put in applications for some of the adorable apartments that are available at the moment?
Alternatively, tell me your favourite ‘don’t need no man’ powerful women break up songs. I think I need them.
I’d check out a book I read called “Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay” by Mira Kirshenbaum. It gave me some help in figuring out whether I could salvage my last relationship. It gives some anecdotes of people who went to counselling, but mostly focuses on how people chose which factors made them stay or leave, and whether they later felt it was a good or bad decision.
*hugs* This sounds super rough. Good luck.
So to be clear, he spent money from your *joint funds*, that *you earned* (I’m assuming bc you said he’s not working), and then had the nerve to say he didn’t need to consult you?
And on top of all that he tries to gaslight you into thinking that you’re the one who’s too demanding in the relationship?
I know I’m just a stranger on the internet and all I know is what you’ve written here, but…girl, run.
It’s not right, but it’s ok. You’re gonna make it anyway.
Counseling really only works if both parties are looking to change. It doesn’t sound like he is.
You are correct. However, counseling, solo, would be good for saffie.
Oh boo, this sounds very stressful.
I have to agree, though, given what you have written here … get out. What would you tell a friend in this situation? Good luck, and know that we’re all here for you.
I’m so, so sorry this is happening and that it all is coming to a head. I want to tell you that I do not think it is normal or ok for one partner to make huge financial decisions without consulting the other ETA – regardless of “whose money” it is. It is certainly not out of the ordinary for couples to collaborate on how to spend money or household budgets or things like that, and it’s not out of line or unrealistic to want or expect that. That seems like a very very normal thing that a couple or partnership should do together.
The follow up that your partner had after you left leaves me with a very bad taste in my mouth, too. In abusive situations, we know that abusers often accuse their victims of abusive behaviors to garner sympathy. That is what it sounds like your husband is doing by accusing you of isolating him and torturing him. Not that I am saying he is abusive, just that this is a pattern I’ve heard before.
And frankly, aside from that, I wonder how useful any counseling will be when one partner doesn’t even think there are problems to be solved, let alone being actively hostile to the whole idea.
Since you asked our opinions — I think you’ve done a good thing and you should get your own place. It doesn’t have to be forever, just for a while so you can figure out some things with some space. I hope it all works out ok for you.
I’m so sorry you’re in this spot. Therapy saved my marriage. I think at the very least, therapy can set you up to have a good divorce.
I say this very carefully because I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way: I do think it can be helpful to find a male counselor if at all possible for hetro couple’s therapy when the woman is the catalyst simply because he’s already adversarial about the idea of going and a female counselor can be easily dismissed as “taking your side”.
It’s imperfect, the gender of your therapist should NOT fucking matter but it’s something that has been a roadblock for a lot of friends who try couple’s counseling.
Therapy, both couples and individual, changed our lives, saved our lives, saved our marriage. I am a big, big, big fan of at least giving it a go.
saffiedarling, please talk to a therapist/counselor AND to a family law lawyer. ASAP. Sooner than that if possible. Seriously. Lawyer first. A lot of them will give you a free consultation over the phone, fifteen minutes or so, which is enough to sort out immediate questions and concerns; the way they answer your questions will help you figure out whether they are a good fit to work with.
In a relationship, large purchases do not “just happen,” you are right. Money does not spontaneously move around, flying out of the account to transform into a fridge or stereo or sofa. His financial tricks raise a lot of red flags to me. Get hold of copies of statements tonight and keep them in a safe place, and if you can change passwords on bank accounts and investment accounts and lock him out, do so! This will keep him from disappearing resources that are very probably joint property. Don’t move anything yet. Don’t cancel credit cards, but you could put a watch on his in case more large purchases “just happen.” Try to freeze what you can.
You should know about your property rights (to the house, to the money resources accumulated during the marriage, to other things like the car if you have one). Information is power. In the meantime, it sounds to me as though he is the one who should be getting his unemployed ass out of the house your paychecks are going toward paying off.
If I had listened to my brain when my h did that to buy a motorcycle, I would not have my kids, but I”d have had 15 less years of abuse. Don’t go to counseling with him. He will team up with the counselor against you. ANd read “why does he do that?” by lundy bancroft. I know you aren’t saying that he’s abusive, and i’m not trying to say that, but it gave me a LOT of insight into the ways passive aggressive men can manipulate a person. That helped a lot.
This is late, I know, but perhaps some fellow stragglers to Open Thread will appreciate it. I just overheard a young woman in a restaurant describe someone she knows as a “super first wave feminist.” I am given to conclude that her acquaintance strongly favors woman suffrage.
Pants! Property rights! Prohibition!
Mothers’ pensions! The ten-hour day! Repeal of the Comstock Law! (That last only if we’re talking *really* radical first wave, natch.)
Vinegar-soaked sea sponges! Custody rights! Bank accounts!
So, for months and months now, someone has been using my email address to sign up for things. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or if they’re misspelling their own address and entering mine, but it’s incredibly annoying. Well, they just signed up for Verizon satellite with my email, and so now I have their home address but not their phone number or their actual email or anything useful. I’m not entirely sure how to go about telling them to knock it off. Is it super creepy if I send them a letter with no return address (because I’m not convinced they’re not doing this on purpose for some reason) telling them to get their own goddamn email?
And more importantly, should I confirm her appointment to have satellite TV installed tomorrow afternoon, and when I get a hold of her can I demand access to her new HBO account as payment?
ACK someone has an alternation of my name/email—like, if my name were Amy Dunne, my email would be ADamy@gmail.. and this lady is something like Amber Damy. So it’s semi-understandable but also annoying. PLUS she recently signed up for some investment website, which kind of freaks me out because the info I see would probably be enough for an unscrupulous individual to empty her of a bunch of money.
What I did was email the company those emails were coming from, to ask them to remove the address from the account and get in touch with her to correct it. The letter would be super creepy but also maybe good? You definitely deserve their HBO though.
Oh god, someone in France thinks my email address is their email address, and I periodically get sign-up notices for their new cable (or whatever), their car dealership, etc. etc., and it makes me batty. I wish there was an easy way to do it!
If I ever saw a good reason to give a kid a really weird name this is it.
TILDA SWINTON WROTE A POEM FOR AMY SCHUMER:
Amy’s got your back.
She’s in your corner.
She’s an honesty bomb.
And she’s coming for you.
http://time.com/3823137/amy-schumer-2015-time-100… for the rest of the essay thingy.
That is all.
LOVE.
Does your school have support for you? If you live in a dorm an RD might be able to help you find resources, or evaluate what is a good immediate step.
http://wittybitches.com/2015/04/gop-fashion-advic…
I wrote this, and I’m proud of it, damnit!
I’m happy to announce that roomie got his bills sorted out.
I also turned a bunch of people in a feminist group on facebook onto The Toast. It was on a post about Fairy Tales. If there is an influx of MRA trolls, I apologize.
Oh good, I was thinking about you this week. I am sorry if I sounded unkind towards your roommate last week. With more context, my understanding of the situation changed significantly. I’m really glad it’s sorted out!
It’s okay, he’s not really that nice and he has a way of being an unsympathetic character. I’m sure he feels the same about me. :\
Toast Folk! I think it is almost time for Shark Week. And by Shark Week, I mean time for my uterus to shed its lining and expel it and blood out of my nether regions. I’m a little worried because I’ve been super-emotional lately and I normally don’t get that before a period unless its going to be a heavy one. Ugh.
Luckily what I’ve been emotional about is really not important life-stuff. I binge-watched Mawaru Penguindrum all this week and cried pretty much through the last two episodes yesterday (plus some gross loud sobbing during the last ten minutes). Before that, I’d been crying at least once a night about Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, or Star Wars. Today I’m still dealing with the residual feels from Penguindrum because that last scene wITH THE NOTE IN THE BEAR OH GOD NOW IM CRYING AGAIN
Maybe crying about cartoons and anime is how I deal with stress. Idk. Anybody else got a show/movie/book/fandom they’ve cried about recently?
I will be at AAG from Tuesday through Friday! Chicago!
I will miss my girl’s concert though…that makes me sad.
I haven’t written my powerpoint yet. I haven’t packed.
I have a lacrosse game to coach tomorrow.
This week we got slaughtered 3x, there have been three more “I should have worn a cup” incidents–one during a game. My diabetic team member nearly went 911 low yesterday, and there was a concussion on Tuesday that was pretty bad and also would have been a 911 call if mom and the high school’s physician hadn’t been on site.
I’m exhausted. It’s also my shark week. I’m better than usual, but still have major depression and really don’t like my body or weight. I’ve been crying because my best friend got her black belt.
The boy broke up with the girlfriend so he’s feeling better. The girl seems better this week, there was no crying after counseling yesterday. I wish there were three of me, because my house is a wreck and my car fell apart yesterday and is in the shop. At least it didn’t happen while I was in Chicago.
Can intensedebate do private messages? I guess just post here if you want my contact info so we can meet up at AAG.
I wish you had three of you, too! You’ve got so much going on! I’m in awe. I don’t know about you but travel and conventions/conferences really drain me, so I hope you get some rest when you get back!
Oh dear lord. Today was BEAUTIFUL spring weather. And we TIED our game! (the last three were like, 13 to nothing, we lost). But then….we ran out of water in our team water bottles and went into overtime. The bus broke down and we had to wait for another one, but we were in the opposite end of an entirely different county, an hour away. Most of the kids went home with parents but the three of us and other kids had to wait (thank god one of the moms brought us lunch and gatorade). Then we got back to the school, 1 1/2 hours late, and the door was propped open (there had been stuff going on in the morning, it wasn’t just us). Well, when my kids went to put their stuff in the locker room, the alarms went off, and the police showed up, and we couldn’t get the principal on the phone. THEN after I went home, I ate a warm chocolate chip cookie and the entire back of my molar fell off. I can’t open my mouth without pain. I really hope the dentist can fit me in on monday, but that probably means I won’t get my grey hair covered before the conference…
I’m just doing nothing else until tomorrow!!!
I've been listening to Parov Stelar on Pandora. I'm conflicted because I can get housework done, but my favorite is a reggae-themed version of "rum and coca-cola" which I should totally not condone but is absolutely impossible to keep still when it's on.
I CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT IT WAS FRIDAY YESTERDAY. I THOUGHT IT WAS TODAY, BUT IT’S SATURDAY AND I MISSED THE OPEN THREAD. 🙁
I’m sorry! I felt the same way when I came home at midnight!
It’s the most awful feeling ever! How are you?
I’M STILL HERE because I’m so bored and I love toasts
HEY LAUR!!! *tacklehugs* CARE TO SHARE?
I typed up a thing then I spilled all the wine and my phone (on which I had typed up the thing) crashed, and now after cleaning it all up I no longer remember what I was going to say 🙁 🙁
Ugh, is your phone okay? I had the most awful week – I require hugs. Make ’em double.
well, if you’ve read above, you can tell I’m in the same boat. Hugs all around!!
I don’t think I have! My computer’s being weird so a lot of the comments are here and there. *infinite hugs*
Yeah, phone is fine, as is the computer, which took the brunt of the wine, actually. (hooray for silicone keyboard covers!)
We watched Magic Mike last night and it was way better than I expected it to be. Who knew?
SILICONE IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD. I swear a lot of my friends aren’t even using paper cupcake liners anymore. I’ll have to watch it! All I’ve heard about Magic Mike is Channing Tatum’s hot bod from one of Mallory’s posts, was it?
you did give the perfect header post to page 3, though 🙂
THANKS!
well, if you've read above, you can tell I'm in the same boat. Hugs all around!!