my heart, my eyes (when your kid grows out of a diaper size, load the leftovers into the car and take them to a shelter, they will always be so happy to get them):
Mothers would take the diapers off, dump out the poop, and put the diapers back on. They would air-dry the diapers. They’d let their kids sit in wet diapers for longer than they should—a practice that can lead to UTIs and other infections. Other moms have reported potty training infants who are less than a year old—at least six months earlier than is recommended—in order to save money.
I learned more about this study during a week-long training with the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, where I am a grantee this year. Smith presented her work to the fellows and described what she’s done to help these mothers. The women told Smith things like, “My self-esteem plummets. I can’t soothe my baby because I can’t put a clean diaper on my baby,” she recalled.
*
A Toastie who is very dear to me is in need of bone marrow! If you are in the US, here is how to get on the registry, and if you are in the UK, go here. Canadians, the new place is OneMatch. If you are a Toastie from other parts, and want to put your country’s registry link in the comments, please do! I just did it, and it’s really easy, you just have to fill out a very boring questionnaire and then they send you a kit, you swab your cheek, and then ideally you never hear from anyone, or maybe you do, and wouldn’t that be marvelous? If you’re a white person, it’s a nice thing to do, but if you’re biracial or Jewish or any kind of racial minority in the country you donate in, they really really really need you!
*
Jolie and Choire talk cat hair on her podcast, which you can sign up for here if you need a Clean Person fix.
*
the toast became a korean-themed emoji appreciation site so gradually i barely noticed
*
In relation to the above request re: marrow, we’re a tight little community here, so please reach out to me if you ever need to signal boost something like that, or if you have a charitable cause that’s in a tight spot. We want to help.
*
Lindy West’s Big Fat Fat Wedding (mazel tov, kids!):
Choose your rituals, but make them yours. If you want to look like a flower market ate fat Betty Draper and then barfed her up in the middle of a haunted forest (YEEEESSS!), great choice. If you want to get married to a burrito while wearing a barrel with suspenders, I’m cool with it. If you think the very concept of marriage is hot garbage, that’s legit. But regardless, remember that you absolutely do not have to “fix” your body, chase after “flattering”, be somebody’s dark secret, or beg for permission to be happy.
*
Pilot on BoJack Horseman and depression:
BoJack is a miserable man (er, horse), and he doesn’t know how to not be miserable, so he’s committed to staying that way whether or not he consciously realizes what he’s doing. He self-sabotages, repeatedly, to the point where he ruins his career, his friendships, and his relationships. But it isn’t necessarily always his fault; this self-destruction, these mean moments and vile outbursts, the dogged determination to be alone even when he knows, deep down, that he doesn’t want to be alone are all various ways in which depression reveals itself. BoJack’s internal struggles with sadness cause him to react outwardly, and negatively, to those around him.
*
As the mother of two small children, I am struck anew by the loveliness of G.K. Chesterton’s meditation in Orthodoxy on daisies/children/God/life:
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
*
I am now several episodes into UnREAL, and am well-pleased.
*
Me: It’s not illegal to be rude to cops.
Them: Well, if you poke a bear, what do you expect?
Me: That’s why we don’t make bears cops.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) July 22, 2015
*
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Okay the diaper thing. That is AWFUL that anyone would resort to most of those tactics but…can someone explain what is wrong about potty training your kids early? Like obviously if they can’t do it you’re SOL, but if they can do it at a year old, what’s the problem?*
*spoken by a girl who allegedly potty trained herself at a year because she saw her older cousin was potty trained and she got competitive.
Also I’m a bone marrow donor and every time I get an email from them I’m like OKAY HERE IT IS IT’S TIME but instead it’s just about raffles or some shit.
Just speaking from experience, it’ really seems virtually impossible to potty train a kid by 1. At 2, you may have a little more success, but not much. Most seasoned parents I talked to said it’s not worth trying until they’re 3, because they don’t get the connection between the urge to go and the actual going. My oldest didn’t fully train until he was closer to 4. My middle is going to be 3 in December, and she’s not ready despite a lot of talking it up and letting her sit, etc. The youngest is 5 months – maybe he’ll be the one who gets it by a year!
Interestingly, while all the ages you note are absolutely the norm here in the States, in other countries the averages are all earlier, ranging from just a little earlier, to a lot. There are lots of theories why (too high-tech diapers so the kidlet doesn’t feel wet, more families with both parents working, later school start, etc).
“Around the world, over 50 percent of babies are trained to use the toilet before the age of 12 months, according to Barton D. Schmitt, MD, in “Contemporary Pediatrics.” http://motherhood.modernmom.com/potty-training-ar…
And I think this quote really points to our working hours/child care issues being a cause: “In the U.S., until the 1950s, most children were using the potty in the first few months of life and completely trained by age 1. In the 1970s, 18 months was an average age to start. Now, it’s around 24 to 30 months.” http://www.salon.com/2010/07/09/extreme_potty_tra…
ETA: To be clear, I think all kids of any age end up being fine whether they wait or not, as long as they aren’t pressured. It’s just really interesting to see the spread in ages and customs.
I am not a mother (yet), but I do read a lot of parenting blogs. It seems like trying too early can cause problems later–the kid may do it for awhile, then stop randomly. And other issues I can’t recall now. Also, there is a thing called elimination communication, where the kid never wears diapers ever, but you really need to be a stay at home mom or have a great nanny to do it, it seems to me (and some people say it doesn’t really work well, or it can be bad for kids). You couldn’t do that with a kid in day care.
I think if they’re ready at a year, that’s great. But if you try and it doesn’t work, kids can develop a negative association or some sort of mini-complex about potty-training and it can take them longer to get over whatever their hangup is/get trained. IDEALLY you want them to be really ready and excited about it, to feel like it’s something they are doing and not something you’re just inflicting on them. (I mean, this is what many things in parenting come down to, really.) And if they’re not excited about it, you at least want them to be old enough to really understand and get behind whatever incentives you’re using.
(I don’t want to hear ANYTHING from self-righteous people about not using incentives to potty-train, I’m glad your life is so wonderful; goodbye)
Although none of this applies to wonder kids like you, Jaya, because you trained yourself. I think it’s different when it’s the parents’ idea to try it at one, and obviously the money-saving early-training tactics in that article have serious consequences for the kids.
IDEALLY you want them to be really ready and excited about it, to feel like it’s something they are doing and not something you’re just inflicting on them. (I mean, this is what many things in parenting come down to, really.)
This is such a good point. I always feel weird when I hear people saying “we shouldn’t be teaching children to read so early! Look at the Nordic countries where they start school at 7!”, as I (according to my parents) taught myself to read at two and a half, and never looked back (according to his parents, my boyfriend did the same, meaning my ideas about what a normal age to start reading is are deeply skewed), but it definitely comes down to the difference between pushing children for stuff they’re not ready for and leaving the options open for them to do stuff if they are.
Just on the reading thing; I went to a Steiner kindergarten from 4-6 (they don’t start ‘upper school’ until 7) and I HATED it, largely because they wouldn’t teach me to read. At 4 I was literally pretending to write in notebooks and shouting at people TEACH ME TO READ.
At 6 I went to a ‘regular’ school and because I was 6 and couldn’t read they freaked out a little bit and put me in a remedial reading class, I went to one class and learned to read in about 2 days and never went back. So yeah, there’s something to be said about waiting until the kids are asking for it and excited about it, but there’s also something to be said for waiting a little bit and not forcing it on a child that’s not ready.
My nephew is 2 1/2 and has just been potty trained (got the hang of it in about 2 days, with the use of stickers), we’ve all be talking about using the potty and asking him if he needs to go for quite awhile, and he started telling you if he had a poo awhile ago, and now he really hates having a pooy nappy, and he pees such massive amounts that every nappy leaks on him! Like most things with kids I think it depends on the kid and listening to them tell you when they’re ready, but I can’t imagine being forced to push them through something as crucial as potty training early for financial reasons (although the practical person that I am sees the price of nappies and baby formula and has a bit of a heart attack, does anyone ever work out how much each one costs? Like you’re paying that each time they go to the toilet!)
I tell my baby it’s coming out of her allowance when she pees or poops on the new diaper during a change. (Joke’s on me, she’s broke!)
See what you’ve done there is make a very risky investment in a debtor that has a very unstable income. Unless you’re taking a very long term view, you’re not likely to see a return on that for at least 20-30 years, at which point your debtor will probably default because the interest payments are so high.
F- for bad fiscal policy.
Yeah, but if she does strike it rich, think of the payoff! Perhaps she’ll be some sort of elementary school entrepreneur prodigy. $$$!
The idea of not learning to read until 7 baffles me, too! My parents read to me from pretty much since I was a baby, and I taught myself to read when I was 3. Admittedly it was a bit disorienting (and frustrating) to be off in a corner at my own special desk in 1st grade, reading books at several grades above while my fellow students LEARNED to read, but I don’t think I’d change that even if it was a bit socially frustrating, because reading has always been a joy of mine. (Although it was pretty frustrating all through elementary school when I could NEVER talk about books with my friends/other students, because I was reading goosebumps when they were reading about spot, and by the time they finally got to goosebump books I was reading the Lord of the Rings, lol.)
I, too, learned to read quite early, 2 1/2 or so, and kindergarten was so boring! In first grade I went to a Montessori school, which was great, and then we moved and I transferred to a public school where 1. we figured out that I was failing spelling (“failing,” whatever that means in second grade) not because of any sort of dyslexia or whatever, but because I was and continue to be nearsighted as hell and couldn’t actually see the chalkboard; and 2. the librarian didn’t believe that I could read at at 5th/6th grade level at age nearly-7 and wouldn’t let me check out the books I wanted, which resulted in me getting some anti-drugs (?) flimsy ten-page pamphlet and coming home in full-on hysterics.
My parents were, shall we say, not impressed.
Oh my gosh, I had the same issue! Well not the nearsighted bit, but the librarians. Most of the local ones knew me, but sometimes they’d get a new librarian in, and they’d always REFUSE to give me books at the level I wanted, and I’d end up crying. Thankfully an older librarian usually came in, saw me, and scolded the new one. (Once, a new librarian also accused me of “cheating” on the summer reading contest and lying about having read so many books so quickly. Oy vey!)
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the librarian is right and you’re just showing off. …Who cares? Balance the books on your head! Stare at them stupidly! Why is this worth a fight with a six-year-old?
I think it was even a book I’d already read and wanted to revisit! and she didn’t believe me! but yes, WHY pick a fight with a six-year-old who’s clearly getting more and more upset by the second. It beggars belief.
The only reasons I can think of are a) if you don’t believe the kid will treat the book with respect, but I think if you’re willing to let them check out an “age-appropriate” book, then you should be willing to let them check out any book
b) if you think the subject matter/material is too mature/upsetting for the kid. I can see being reluctant to check out a book meant for 10-year-olds to a 6-year-old if you thought it would be beyond their emotional comprehension, even if their reading level was appropriate.
me too! A librarian made me cry because she refused to let me check out Lois Lowry books at age 5! My mother found out and marched me right back over to pick the books up again and check them out together, but it was so upsetting — I think I experienced it as “you don’t exist the way you think you do”.
Why do some librarians do that with young kids — even if I couldn’t read the books (which I could), what would be the harm in checking them out if I wanted them??
It did make me feel a huge rush of love for my mother coming to my rescue — there is always that!
Ugh, this. I swear the librarian at my elementary school hated both books and kids, and double for kids who liked books. Not a great career choice!
i had the same experience. it wasn’t even that out of the question—i was in first grade and reading through all the anne shirley books and a librarian accused me of faking to read, just turning the pages without reading. i wasn’t. did i understand everything i read? all the vocabulary, all the plot points, all the character development? definitely not, but that doesn’t really matter. i was reading and she was being awful, haha.
If a first grader is willing to sit with a chapter book and turn each page at the pace of reading… then I say give them the dang point for that book. For reals.
One of the things my parents did right when we moved (I was about 7 at the time) was to go to the public library with me and tell both the children’s librarian and the head librarian that I was allowed to check out any book from any part of the library, and that unless they had a check-out limit in the library rules (they didn’t), they were not to tell me I had to check out fewer books. (I knew the rule: the books had to fit in my tote bag, and I had to be able to carry it myself.)
THIS IS ME. Taught myself to read at two, and then books had to be my best friends, as I was too nerdy for a lot of the other kids. Also, going to the older classrooms at reading time was scary.
Oh gosh yes. I had to make myself get into stuff like Baby-Sitter’s Club just to have common ground with the other 5th-graders but then I’d go home and read Stephen King. It scared the shit out of my seventh-grade teachers when I did an oral book report on Carrie.
In 7th grade, I did a dramatic structure chart on The Tommy-knockers. I was a shy, prim little kid. I wish I could remember what I put, because all I remember about that book are the teeth rotting out of her head and crotch tentacles?
My wonderful sister-in-law offered ME a bribe if I could get my niece to use the potty. Unsuccessful!
Yes! I have been on the registry for several years now, and every time I get an email from them I’m like “OK IT’S GO TIME” and then it’s the newsletter or something. Nobody wants my marrow. : (
Well, I feel ya. OneMatch *really* doesn’t want my marrow — says you have to be between the ages of 17 and 35. 🙁
I had a friend who more-or-less successfully potty trained her daughter at about eighteen months, but it was through an extremely comprehensive effort: learning her earliest have-to-pee signals (which, to me, are much subtler than the have-to-poop ones); holding her over the toilet starting at, like, a month; sending her to Montessori preschool where early potty training is part of the curriculum (meaning that the room full of young toddlers is just chilling in identical school-provided underpants all day in order to facilitate easy removal and toilet-use). It involved a lot of at-home nudity and more than a few puddles on the floor. She is a happy, healthy, potty-trained not-quite-two-year-old, but it involved a ton of social support, so I wonder how women without those benefits manage.
I, on the other hand, have a two-year-old son who has successfully potty trained his stuffed owl Hedwig but has not himself managed the same feat. Life is a rich tapestry!
Well at least you don’t have to clean up owl pellets any more!
(I speak at length with my 15 month old about how, if she finds diapers to be so annoying (and she does) she can just start using the potty, but so far she hasn’t taken me up on it.)
Grain of salt, etc, but there is an association with training before 2 and later constipation/wetting problems — there was some study out of Wake Forest I think? not that long ago, I could find a link if anyone cares. The take-away was not to push toilet training early, and it’s a rare 1-year-old who is capable and interested in self-training. Not that I wouldn’t sign up for one of those if they were handing them out.
Yes! If I had access to wish granting fairy godparents for my hypothetical child, I’d tell them to skip “fairest of them all” and proceed straight to “manages own poop much earlier than average”.
I read a thing once about US preschools requiring kids to be trained early and it was saying it was really bad, mostly because kids that age do not have good impulse control. So they were holding for ages because they didn’t want to interrupt what they were doing/playing/whatever, and then getting UTIs and other complications.
I suppose for mothers in poverty the question of “why not potty train early” could possibly be in the same realm as “well, why not just buy in bulk and cook from scratch since it is cheaper” asked of someone with food insecurity. The idea may be nice, but the reality is that time, energy, and resources just may not allow it.
I’m on the registry and I got the email once! But unfortunately, it was a few months before I had to have (unrelated) surgery so it didn’t work out. Plus the email is really just the first step in a process from which you may get rejected at several stages.
Mmm, bone marrow. I am registered with OneMatch! I was very unhappy to find out that racial minorities have a much, much lower chance of finding a match just because of the typical make-up of registered donors. Please register if you are open to this at all! This is also a good time to encourage anyone who is interested in organ donation to also register their consent 🙂
The G.K. Chesterton quotation is very lovely indeed. And I cried a little inside at Ms. West’s wonderful essay (especially in light of a friend’s recent comment that she was “so happy” to lose a surprise five pounds for her wedding … ??).
I thought I’d gotten on the registry years ago, but apparently not–just filled the thing out, because hey, my bone marrow is half Latina and that could be useful for something, right?
ETA: So useful that I just got a nice “thanks, but you signed up years ago” email. OK then, I was on the list. Sweet.
As a registered white lady that makes me sad too.
I also just started UnREAL and MAN is it brutal. I just finished “Mother” and had to go watch two episodes of Key and Peele to recover. But it’s amazing and I want to make all the people on my Facebook feed who host Bachleor/Bachelorette watch parties to sit down and watch it.
Anyway, here’s Key and Peele’s Channing Tatum sketch
I probably wouldn’t fall for that.
is that a meathook?
Kay and Peele aka ‘How to catch a Toastie’
RIGHT? I feel like the Venn diagram of “people who watch UnReal” and “people who regularly watch and enjoy the dating shows they’re based on” is weirdly slim??
I would recommend it to a friend who religiously posts about the Bachelor(ette), whichever is airing, but I feel like she would be offended. So I haven’t, but UUUGGGHHHH.
I’m one of those people who regularly watches and enjoys dating shows but also watches UnReal. I’m a “wrong reasons” Bachelor(ette) watcher- I watch because it’s so completely fake and ridiculous and yet everyone presents it as extremely legit and I find that entertaining. I’m a bad feminist, I know. But UnReal is great and it’s fun to watch the Bachelorette after and pick it apart.
I am HERE for UnReal. I’m getting nervous about the ending though, I mean it’s clear she’s *spoilers* with *spoilers* and vice versa and I just don’t see how they’re going to work their way out of it. Also I don’t really want it to end because it’s so good and I don’t know how they could do another season as well, but maybe that’s why I’m not a TV writer person.
The G. K. Chesterton quote makes me feel bad that, even as a kid, I couldn’t keep doing any one thing for more than two minutes at a time.
Well if it makes you feel better Chesterton also famously said “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly”. He didn’t see anything wrong with fliting from thing to thing going only as deep as you feel at that moment.
Chesterton is so weird because I generally feel like my vision of the world is more like Shaw’s, but deep down I am certain that I’m more like Chesterton.
I prefer the saying “Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.”
Chesterton’s whole rhetorical style is also based around saying some ding-dong thing and when you reply “moderately well said but not at all true” he whirls around upon you and says OH ISN’T IT? isn’t it in fact ALL THE MORE TRUE for being WHOLLY UNTRUE? THINK about it. ever heard of a little thing called a PARADOX?”
so many of his faults are also mine that I find him mostly intolerable
oh my god that is exactly what his style is, no wonder he drove Shaw insane.
“OBVIOUSLY NOT YOU FOOL BEING UNTRUE IS LITERALLY THE DEFINITION OF FALSITY.”
A friend had a diaper-themed baby shower – she was like, this is it! This is all I want! So people got creative in that diaper cake, diaper basket way, and there was a prize for best presentation. It was surprisingly novel and fun.
She stored the diapers, and then didn’t buy a single one before her daughter was toilet trained – which was great, because she had no money, and the dad abandoned them. At least she didn’t have to worry about buying diapers on top of everything else!
Also, Lindy West really articulated something I’ve been feeling – the idea that fat people are to be diminished. Like, my whole life, I was a big personality who was constantly being squashed. There’s a lot of reasons I ended up fat, but I think I was eating feelings and energy and enthusiasm, etc; I was eating because everyone wanted me to shut up. Now I’m fat and society wants me to take up less physical space, too.
I just feel very – diminished is the best word – and losing weight doesn’t make me feel better because it’s just another restriction, a lessening. “You are too much person” is a shitty and damaging thing to hear about your spirit AND your body.
That said, I WAS a super annoying kid. *shrugs*
I am sorry people did that to you. It’s terrible when people try to make you less than who you are.
I hate that somehow kids go through this phase that lasts most of their teenage years where they’re not supposed to care genuinely about anything or have any enthusiasm or deep feelings. I felt like everyone around me went through that and I couldn’t shut off my feelings. Now caring and emotional intelligence is supposed to be an asset in the workplace or something. Whatever…
Yes, that teen ennui phase is pretty terrible. I wonder how much of it we bring on, as adults – is it part hormones, part they finally figured out how bad (some of) their parents/teachers/etc just want them to shut up?
I feel bad for the kids who don’t break out of that stage and become boring, bored adults. Caring ferociously about things in the world is rewarding and fulfilling, it turns out!
I feel bad for the kids who don’t break out of that stage and become boring, bored adults. Caring ferociously about things in the world is rewarding and fulfilling, it turns out!
THIS TIMES A MILLION
Yes, this. I always always felt ‘too much’. I always felt like i was failing at making myself acceptably palatable to the world, in a variety of ways, mostly involving want to talk and experience and be.
I still react VERY NEGATIVELY to any suggestion that I might be too much. One of the biggest fights I ever had with my partner was when he made a very throwaway comment that I can’t even remember now what it was. I knew he didn’t mean it that way but it made me feel like everything I was was wrong, and I flipped. Out.
On the plus side, part of the reason he made that comment in the first place is that he genuinely doesn’t understand, because the things I was taught over and over were too much are exactly the things he loves about me. I still can’t comprehend this, and he can’t comprehend that anyone wouldn’t like them, but we’ve both accepted that these things are true, so he doesn’t make infuriating comments and I… well ok I still totally respond to him saying ‘I love you’ with ‘even though I [am so silly/make dumb jokes/talk a lot/whatever I’m fretting about that day’ but, like, only maybe 70% of the time. That’s good, right? Progress!
(I hate that I do this but I can’t stop because ~~~deep seated insecurities~~~)
The only evidence I see in this comment that you are not actually me is the dude partner. But my wife is the same! She loves the goofiness and also the fact that she never has to guess what I’m thinking/feeling/going to do, because I always discuss it. Also, she finds my jokes vastly entertaining. We are fortunate to have found partners who like us, and not the squashed-in versions of ourselves.
My secret theory is that there are a lot of funny women who are fat for this same reason. Like, they don’t fight their fatness by being funny; the world fought their personalities, and it had an impact on their bodies. One day, society will let girls be loud and funny and energetic without pushback, right? Right?
SOMEDAY. For sure. Even if we have to banish all the men to the tundra first.
Sometimes I feel like I/we actually had a (real shitty) advantage. For me, I HAD to learn to be ok with myself, to be ok with being loud and men (and certain kinds of women) not liking it. As a matter of survival. I see a lot of my peers who were pretty enough or something else enough to miss a lot of that pushback, and now they are hitting their 30s and they are starting to struggle. I feel like, ok yes, it SUPER SUCKED and continues to suck a lot sometimes. But I also feel like I got to skip right to the part after menopause-ish where women start to not give a shit, and to just live their lives as themselves. I’m not saying that’s easy, either, and there’s a lot of privilege in being middle class and white where I can do those things and still (mostly) feel safe.
But then that makes me madder again because… the alternative to being squashed early in life seems to be being squashed later in life and it’s NOT OK.
When my sister-in-law had her first baby, my wife’s dad (SIL is my wife’s half-sister; my FIL is neither her dad nor her stepdad, just her older siblings’ father) bought her literally all the packages of diapers he could fit in a mini-van, in varying sizes, and (since she lives in a small apartment) stores them for her. Her second baby is due in December, and he’s planning to restock for her. It has made a huge difference for them.
That’s incredibly thoughtful of him!! I had to read the sentence twice to figure out their relationship and now I’m even more impressed. Very kind. When people make the effort to understand and remember things like that – diapers were probably a big stress point for him or someone he knows, and now he’s attempting to alleviate that stress for someone else? Love it.
Bone marrow! I am on the register, and I have my card from the Anthony Nolan Trust in my wallet to say so, and even if I never end up being a match for anyone I am glad I am on it, just in case. (Although I disagree with the “really easy” thing – when I did it I had to spit into a tube, and I just could not work up enough saliva and it took forever. It was embarrassing.)
(On a related note, I try to give blood regularly, and last did so two weeks ago; I was considering changing my appointment time because it turned out to be really inconvenient, but having just see Mad Max: Fury Road made me weirdly enthusiastic about it because of all the imaginative possibilities if offered. I feel that blood donation services are missing a massive opportunity to get donors by not producing posters with pictures of Max and Furiosa from near the end of the film with the “Save a life: give blood” slogan underneath. They would just have to sit back and watch the appointments flood in. Why has nobody jumped on this bandwagon?)
Or “You too can be (are) a blood bag.”
Honestly, if they had provided post-donation “Blood bag” stickers, I would have been thrilled.
(Clearly there needs to be similar bone-marrow donations things in popular media, in order to whip up more enthusiasm for that, too.)
This got me thinking about a factoid I heard about how George Miller was in fact a doctor in his early career, so he could really have had that in mind. What to people need? More incentive to donate blood. How do we give the people what they need? Tom Hardy.
It’s so much less ethically-dubious than my idea for getting more people to donate blood, which is to bring back the idea of the four humours and tell people (who are eligible to donate blood) that their humours are out of balance and they need bloodletting. Pretty sure the GMC wouldn’t go for that, sadly.
Free Tom Hardy with each marrow donation! Or at least you get to cuddle a puppy that Tom Hardy had once cuddled while you are donating. So many ways to go with this.
Full disclosure – the first time I ever donated blood, it was because I was 16 and I had a giant crush on the boy who organised my friends group to go. In the end, he and I were the ones willing to go through with it, and mine courage was primarily driven by hormones.
I did donate every three months from then until health issues got in the way, so good work horny past self, but I never got to pash the boy. :'(
I might make my own ‘blood bag’ sticker for next time I go. I’m registered to donate everything.
You can also do plateletpheresis if, like me, you are very close to being anemic and tend to faint or get weak/dizzy after blood donation, because the platelets get separated out in a centrifuge and then the blood gets circulated back into your body.
Thank you. Thank you all who donate. Like I say below, it feels very personal once you’ve watched two pints if a stranger’s blood be pumped into the thin white arm of a man who just weeks before was big and hale and hearty.
Just finished watching the new season of BoJack horseman and it hit me right in the existential feels.
I guess I’m just trying to make you understand
That I’m more horse than a man
Or I’m more man than a horse.
Yeah as some one who is mostly coping with chronic depression everything from the half way point of S1 has been some of the most relateable writing in TV. Definitely the longest-sustained.
I finished S2E4 last night and Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter’s fight just slayed me. I can’t stop thinking about it.
There are so many sublimely dumb jokes on this show, but “Why is there a ball pit here” “When you were a little girl, you dreamed of living in a house with a ballroom.” KILLS me.
Wait until you get to ep7 and beyond. The ennui keeps building.
I think Diane is probably the most real female TV character I’ve ever seen.
You’re lying on the sofa, hoping for a doze
when all at one once you start to sneeze-
something’s up your nose!
Your mom-in law is here for dinner, the veal is soft and young
all at once she starts to gag
a hair is on her tongue!
The interview that haunts your dreams at last is finally here
it’s over and done; you thought you’d won
but you’re covered in cat hair!
At home your puss sleeps in the sun,
but has a secret smirk;
Though his touch you shun
his will be done
you’re carrying his mark
All cat owners surely know
though you use duck tape
your choice of pets will plainly show
from your pant-cuffs to your nape.
One Match being Canadian Blood Services, I expected then to have a homophobic restriction like they do with blood, but I haven’t found it yet… And I’m a smaller fat so I’m probably under the height/weight restriction…. So maybe.
Suuuuper late to this party, but. Blood and other tissue/organs have different regulations around them. For blood, most countries’ fda equivalent is the final arbiter of donation rules, and they’re the ones to lobby about male to make sex policies – the local blood service probably do not like it and would rather take the donations. For transplantable tissue like marrow, there are a LOT more compatibility factors and matching algorithms. While certain blood groups are always in need (O neg! AB dude plasma), generally you can stock what you need for any patient with the current donor panels. Bone marrow and organs are so much harder to match, they can’t afford to turn away less than perfect donors. You’d be surprised how many lung transplants use donor lungs from smokers, for example.
Apropos of nothing, this is the most amusing ad I have seen on the toast other than the Russian brides one.
No ‘catch and release’?
In a trap-neuter-release way?
/former cat rescue person
I was thinking like a too-small trout.
What’s funny is that almost all the guys I’ve dated have turned it into an instant relationship, and I’ve had to reel them back from that.
I “broke up” with a guy who was doing that (I say broke up because he really wanted me to be his girlfriend for real right now, omg, this just just so right, can’t you feel it), and then he was FB official with somebody else, like, two weeks later.
Haha, yes! Like that OKC question that asks if someone saying “I love you” after a first date is sweet or scary… there is only one right answer people!
barely…resisting…urge to get red pen and correct punctuation….
DON’T WRITE ON YOUR SCREEN. Trust me on this one.
My current ad is a woman happily proclaiming that ANYONE CAN BUY AND SELL CARS LIKE A PRO! which was obviously inspired by Nicole’s writings on the same topic.
“an insider’s view into the male mind”
that sounds terrifying
gosh, when I think of a demographic that wants to know more about what men are thinking, I immediately think of Toast readers.
It’s just that we get to see so few things from the male POV okay.
ARE YOU GUILTY
GUILTY
GUILTY
(sobs, instantly breaks down and confesses) IT WAS ME, I MURDERED THOSE DRIFTERS
Wait, what were we talking about…?
Hah, I’ve got this one today
OH! Is THAT what men want? Wow, they’re SO DIFFERENT from us women!
Wait, hold up, they need to be attracted to their partner? Dang, men sure are mysterious and weird.
Lindy’s dress was extraordinary. I have serious wedding dress envy. She looked really good.
Those flowers!
She looked FANTASTIC. I wanted to see more pictures. Lindy if you read this, submit to Offbeat Bride or something, pretty please?
As usual though, I recommend avoiding the comments.
She’s posted a ton on Instagram and Twitter.
right??? Actual mermaid. I clicked through to the story when I saw the image preview on twitter, thinking I needed a better look at those flowers, and then she went and got me crying dangit Lindy!
I checked out/stalked her photographer’s website, and there are a few more here!
I cannot get enough of that dress! Just beyond awesome.
After reading that story I was moved to donate to a diaper drive here in my city. If you want to donate money or send them diapers (via Amazon would be super easy!) info is here: http://www.capitaldiaperbank.org/how-to-help.html
Also completely unrelated. Got A Girl: I Love You But I Must Drive Off This Cliff Now is an excellent album. Similar sound to (previous Dan The Automator joint) Lovage, but about 50% less kitschy.
I saw a link to that when they were streaming it before release, came via one of the many Mike Patton pages I follow on FB. Totally unlike my normal tste (which is more weird Mike Patton shouty than anything else) but I love it and didnt’ listen to anything else for months.
Ooooh I loved Lovage, may have to check into this!
I prefer Lovage but that is my Patton fangirl talking. This is brilliant. And the video for did we live too fast is HILARIOUS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lKh8OoMPjU
Mary Elizabeth Winstead! Didn’t know she was in a band.
If you’re already registered for any of the marrow orgs, please take a moment to make sure they have your updated address and contact info! I have a client who got “the call,” but it went to the wrong place and he missed his chance to potentially save a life.
this post reminded me to do just that! It was very easy and I didn’t need to use the phone 🙂
I just tried to register for the bone marrow registry, but because I’m a gay man they wouldn’t let me. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth? Gonna make myself a t-shirt that says “Too Gay To Cure Leukemia”.
I believe that they may still want your stem cells, if you are in the UK and under thirty.
I hear you. I’m too fat to donate a kidney and too gay to give blood. 😛
Presenting the greatest non-toast thread in exsistence: (more than) 100 reasons R Kellys Ignition Remix is so damned great: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedController…
Its amazing, it spans 15 years and it is gloriously meta.
I just registered to be a bone marrow doner! I’ve never registered for anything like that before, mostly out of sheer laziness; I keep meaning to give blood, but thought I’d be exluded (tattoos/peircings), this has motivated me to do it though and I just checked http://www.blood.co.uk/ and I can actually donate and they are doing sessions around my house! Woo giving body fluids!
I love that he says it’s a great “weekend song” and then gives reasons to prove it
And then they get into analyzing the influences on the song, and picking out specific beats and notes. For such a simple song, its apparently very complicated
Yeah, I had no idea!
JD is a scholar, as well as a musical genius.
I schedule my tattoos for just after I’ve given blood so the three-month gap post-tattoo more or less coincides with the three-month gap between donations anyway.
I’m planning a new tattoo soon, so I think I’m going to give blood first; its only a 4 month wait in the UK, I had thought it was a year! So provided I don’t get one when I’m in Berlin next week (which is a possibility, I’m am a Bowie fangirl afterall) I’ll be doing it as soon as there’s a weekend session near me!
Do you know if being on birth control or anti depressants affects your ability to donate at all?
Definitely not birth control (I’m on the pill), not sure about antidepressants.
Thanks 😀
Yes, definitely birth control is okay. Phone them up to ask — they’re super nice Irish people and they’ve always helped me out great when I’ve wondered if xyz will prevent me from donating.
Thank you!
I’m on both, and it’s no problem. They will ask you if you”ve started taking any new medication since your last donation (or, if it’s your first one, will presumably ask you what you take), and if you say yes a nurse will come and ask you what it is, just to check it’s nothing that could cause problems. But I have been taking contraceptive pills and antidepressants for most of the time I have been giving blood, and it’s never been an issue.
“I am not seeking validation from a partner, I am seeking partnership in that partner.” Absolutely beautiful words.
Re: Diapers
The amount of poverty in this country is a national shame, if we had any shame as a nation.
My brother did a medical mission to Ukraine in the early 1990s and the reuse of disposable diapers was something he saw there, both because the recipients didn’t understand that one COULD throw out diapers, they just thought it was a super-fluffy type of reusable diaper, and also because even with an influx of disposables to supplement what they had, they just didn’t have nearly enough for the kids that needed them. This was the same trip that he watched a heavy-set surgeon press down with all his weight to make the first incision for open-heart surgery because the scalpel was so dull it would barely cut skin.
a friend of mine got confused about the route to the bathroom and walked into my mom’s bedroom naked
Okay, but: why was this friend naked in your parents’ log cabin during your wedding in the first place? Not judging, but nobody was naked during my wedding, as far as I know.
You didn’t have a traditional Betazoid wedding?
I just did a coffee spit-take. 🙂
Maybe he’s just one of those people out there who have to be entirely naked to poop. That’s a thing! I see it on Buzzfeed so it must be real and true!
But even if that were true, why would he get naked BEFORE walking into the bathroom??
Greater bathroom efficiency?
Wow, I knew that African-Americans were in short supply on the marrow registry, but I didn’t know the same was true for Jews. Now I feel even better about having registered! *pats self on back*
OH yeah girl we have all kinds of fun genetic diseases, especially if you’re Ashkenazi. Yay inbreeding!
Oh, indeed. I just had the fun of getting the special Ashkenazi genetic screening a few months ago, since I’m currently pregnant with my first kid. I’m half-Jewish and secular and have always felt uncertain about how I “fit” in Judaism/Jewish culture, and then my genes were like “haha you are a carrier for Tay Sachs!” so I feel like I definitely count now. 😛
I wonder if mishlings are any use? I’m only half Jewish.
Yes. I mean, they need everyone.
That said, my extremely unsophisticated understanding is that people with a rarer racial/ethnic/etc genetic makeup are harder to match. People of mixed race/ethnicity/etc are especially difficult to match, although I’m guessing that half-Jewish half-WASP may be easier to match than other sorts of mixed race people(maybe?).
But even if my understanding is woefully inadequate… they need everyone.
Lindy’s fiance’s reply to her bemused question, “why did you do the big ol’ public proposal?”
“One time when you were drunk you told me, ‘If you ever propose to me, don’t do it in the bullshit way that dudes usually treat fat girls. Like it’s a secret, or you’re just trying to keep me from leaving you. Thin girls get public proposals, like those dudes are winning a fucking prize. Fat chicks deserve that, too.’”
I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING IT’S JUST REALLY HUMID IN HERE SPECIFICALLY AROUND MY EYES.
DAMMIT WE TALKED ABOUT THIS YESTERDAY YOU’RE CRYING I’M NOT CRYING IT’S JUST ALLERGIES TO EMOTIONS
I literally can’t tell if it’s the “he cared enough to remember one drunken rant on proposals,” or the “he wants you to feel as special and loved as anyone else on this day, thin privilege be damned” that is starting the waterworks or MAYBE IT’S ALL OF IT.
I am stealing this explanation for all my tears from now on.
Lindy West is a lucky lady; that is A Man Who Listens and when you find one of those you don’t give them up.
One of my former profs (who also happens to be the former Chief Historian of the National Parks) wrote an excellent (and short) article for our local paper titled, “No Such Thing as an Honorable Confederate Flag.” In it he quotes a bunch of the secession conventions directly and highlights exactly how much the Civil War was about slavery, thank you very much. So you can save those quotes and bring them up whenever anyone hollers, “IT WAS ABOUT STATES’ RIGHTS!” at you. (Also, this is a man who happily gives presentations on this topic to Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy Groups. He once said that he delights in such opportunities to quote primary sources in these spaces. He’s a great guy.)
http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-opinion/ci_2…
When we were busing back to Toronto, I saw the flag flying in Canada:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/confe…
THIS GUY
I still don’t get the “lots of people died defending this.” Well, people have died defending all kinds of terrible things. The point is to examine the things and their merit and virtue. Honour the dead, perhaps, but just because they died defending a cause doesn’t mean the cause was automatically just.
Exactly! People died while perpetuating genocide, because they thought they should own the world, and other lots of awful reasons. It was an awful part of American history, and should not be wiped from memory BUT it should also not be glorified.
I also don’t get the whole ‘It’s about southern pride” excuse, either. I mean, there are loads of way better symbols for the south than a racist flag that represents a racist war that they lost. All jokes aside, the Southern United States has a lot to be proud of: food, music, etc.–things people of all races contributed to and can appreciate.
New Southern Pride flag: banjos, ribs, wildflowers, and the best damn whiskey you ever tasted.
EXACTLY what I keep saying. YAS.
I CANNOT SAY HOW RELIEVED I AM THAT NO ONE IS ON HERE WITH THAT CLOTH DIAPERS BULLSHIT.
Every place I’ve seen that study linked has had heaps of “if you’re broke don’t have kids” which OH MY GOD I will not even start here with that, but also “just do cloth diapers!” like cloth diapers don’t cost $200+ to get into and like everyone has a washing machine and unlimited time to scrape shit out of diapers and LINE DRY THE COVERS and money for special detergent and can make their own baby wipes and will never have a baby with diaper rash because you SURE AS SHIT can’t use Desitin with cloth diapers. OH AND A BAJILLION DOLLARS to pay to send baby to fancy day care where they will accept your cloth diapers.
Don’t get me wrong, I have cloth diapers I use for my very own baby and I fucking love her little fluffly butt in them and feel a wonderful sense of smug self-satisfaction with every disposable I don’t send to the landfill. BUT I also slap a disposable on her every night because in cloth she will wake up every. time. she. pees. and I also use the disposables when ever we go run errands and shit because FUCK hauling a wet bag of shitty ass diapers around and I also use disposables JUST BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE IT and I ALSO send her to daycare in diapers because I am not a fucking gagillionaire who could afford that fancy day care and you know what? THOSE PEOPLE WERE JUDGMENTAL ASSHOLES ANYWAYS with their organic lunches and essential oil therapy. YOU KNOW WHAT? your daycare smells like industrial cafeteria food and baby piss and sadness JUST LIKE THE REST OF THEM so fuck your $300/week tuition, fuck your in-class webcams, FUCK ALL YOUR NOISE I LOVE DISPOSABLE DIAPERS
I can verify that your baby is very cute in whatever diapers she wears!
It’s because of that faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace
SO CUTE
Oh my gosh I love chubby baby arms! And that face is darn precious.
Blue eyes!
don’t get me started on those, when I was pregnant I was all “I hope she is blue eyed and blonde like her father because white privlege” and now that she is here yes she is beeeeeeaooooootiful but DAMMIT why doesn’t she look like me AT ALL?
Apparently first babies always look like the Dad, at least that’s what I heard. Even if its not actually their kid too, its some evolutionary quirk where we all pretend the baby looks exactly like the Dad so that he won’t reject it *nods sagely* *throws salt fucking everywhere*
We all have blue eyes in my family, and I very selfishly check the eye colour of any guys I date, partly because blue/green eyes are hot, but also I’m very aware that brown is dominant and I don’t want that in my gene pool. My brother has the most amazing blue eyes and massive eye lashes, but since his partner is Italian the babies have brown eyes, his son looks EXACTLY like him, literally we constantly mistake them when looking at photos, except he has brown eyes! Don’t get me wrong, his kids are so good looking it hurts and I kind of hate him for using up all the pretty in the family, but I want babies with blue eyes. If I have to have the second prettiest kids in the family they will at least have pretty eyes god dammit.
Hey, my dad’s eyes are brown, but all of his kids’ eyes are blue because there’s also a history of green and blue eyes in his family, so also check family eye color history! If, y’know, you really like the brown-eyed guy.
Haha I don’t want children for about a million reasons but one teeny tiny reason is “my fiance has brown eyes and I would be really mad if I went to all the trouble of having a kid & it didn’t have blue ones like miiiine”
Um….brown eyes are pretty too.
Yeah, I have been kind of staring at that comment like, “uhhhhh.” I know everyone has their own personal preferences about what they find attractive, but the idea of “not wanting that in my gene pool” is maybe a liiiiiiittle bit problematic?
Yeah, especially since that criterion excludes most members of quite a few ethnic groups.
Better to call a spade a spade – it is a racist, kinda eugenic-y comment that they wrote.
The Toast commentariat does skew white, and that kind of comment is the sort of thing that falls out of white mouths when they feel safe to do so (aka not mixed company). Thing is, she is welcome to have Views on having the perfect white baby be her offspring, such is her right as an autonomous woman, but it’s definitely one of those things you keep to yourself and not on a public board community that prides & pats itself on the back on being inclusive and self-aware.
Really I’m disappointed not more Toasties pointed it out.
I have kept reading down in hopes I would find the commenter noticing this herself…
I’m a white lady from a family of brown/green/blue eyed people, with green/hazel eyes myself and married to a blue eyed man who *did not realize* until quite recently that blue eyes are unusual – they are super common in Ireland and the UK, it seems.
I’ve been quietly mourning the fact that none of my kids will have brown eyes as a result of this.
On that note – I’d normally not bring up something like this in an open forum, but just to mention: while it did not start out racialized, the phrase “to call a spade a spade” does have a troublesome history. http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19…
I’m not American so I was entirely unaware of how its usage has changed in such a way – thank you for the link, it was very illuminating.
I just can’t wait until she goes on a date with a blue-eyed Jew and espouses her desire for beautiful blonde blue-eyed babies. And by “can’t wait” I mean I hope she does it early enough that he can grab the breadsticks on his way out.
Obviously this is one of those instances where my (very hyperbolic and deliberately OTT) tone hasn’t come across in text very well
I do personally have a preference for blue eyed guys, but obviously there’s a whole lot more that goes into what would make me want to have babies with someone and I would love my babies regardless of eye colour!
I agree with everything you said here, except this: “Really I’m disappointed not more Toasties pointed it out.”
I actually like that the Toastie way is to point out ONCE (or just a few times) that a post is bad. People who agree give thumbs up to those posts instead of swarming the person who posted bad stuff. It’s easier, less stressful and less confusing to talk between a lower number of people.
I’ve only rarely seen a swarm work out well, but the Toast Method works out pretty often, as far as I’ve seen. And the point still gets through, because anyone can count the thumbs up.
I think most of us read it as a joke.
They really are. I’m from one of those countries where almost everyone has blue eyes. It’s super uncommon for white people to have any other eye colour than blue or blue-ish. But my father and his family have brown eyes and dark hair, and I got the hair but not the eyes, and I always wanted that lovely brown colour. For me, BROWN eyes are rare and special. I’m going to be poetic here and say that brown eyes look like a tiny little forest lake, when you peer down into the water and watch the sun play over the sand. That golden brown colour is beautiful to me and I wish everyone was happy to have it!
I always thought “hazel eyes” meant very light brown, like the shell of a hazel nut. But then I googled it, and now I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with that eye colour.
What’s wrong with brown eyes? 🙁
FYI, green eyes are recessive and can pop up unexpectedly no matter what color eyes your partner has. (I have green eyes and two very brown-eyed parents).
My mother has green eyes. My father has brown eyes. My mother is a nurse, and so theoretically took biology and was taught about mendel inheritance.
My mother NEVER for a MOMENT thought that MAYBE my eyes would be brown. She was SHOCKED when she found out I had brown eyes.
Um. So. This is awkward and unsettling.
It’s called “jokes.”
This commenter is clearly unfamiliar with the song “Brown eyed Girl.”
Also you need to put a warning on those cheeks. They’re indecently pinch-able.
Nice work there, baby. That’s an A+ face if ever I saw one.
I love. Every. Word. Of this.
thank you, I hit submit and was like “shit, I think I may have lost it a little there”
Oh God, this. We were very poor when I had my son. And I WANTED to use cloth diapers because I knew they’d be less costly in the long run. But in the short run, I did not fucking have that kind of cash. It’s like the “Save money by buying in bulk!” bullshit. It only works if you HAVE the money to start.
PREACH SISTA
I didn’t even get started on the people who were like “go to the salvation army and get towels and cut up towels and use those as diapers” because WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, are you familiar with the function of diapers?! How is a fucking CUT UP TOWEL wrapped around my baby’s ass going to function as a diaper? are you fucking insane or are you a FUCKING IDIOT?
Back in the olden days people did that. Olden days (60s/70s, probably earlier, maybe later? apparently still?, but my personal knowledge is of my siblings’ diapers) diapers were a rectangle of absorbent cloth that was doubled up and wrapped around the baby in as best a fashion as one could do, and then pinned with giant safety pins. Then the baby was wrestled into ‘plastic pants’ basically giant underwear made out of plastic, to contain any spills. Sorry to overexplain if people still use plastic pants, but it seems like modern babies have those cover things?
For the people who couldn’t afford the fancy packages of cloth diapers, old towels, old shirts, and other types of cotton things would be made into diapers. Not only that, but my mom usually still had to wash diapers *every* day! In a sink. Because regular laundry was a bus ride away with a basket of laundry and two children in tow, and that wasn’t possible until the weekend, since she worked a FT job. And she still didn’t have enough diapers to go for more than a couple of days at best. Disposables did come into use by the time my youngest sister was born, but they might as well been sold on the moon as far as we were concerned (and could afford, ha!)
Not to get all walking to school uphill in the snow every day, but people had different solutions to things then (and now), and old towels worked. Looking back, I don’t know how my mom did it, but she did. So it’s not completely wacky, just not a modern thing to do.
Oh no, I totally get that – I was one of those babies with the pins and the plastic pants. But the plastic pants are pretty fucking key to making that situation work. These people were just like CUT UP T SHIRTS BOOM DIAPERS and I was like… No. Not if you want to go anywhere with that baby ever.
Funny kind of related story: my husband and I had talked about cloth diapering and he was weirdly strongly against it, but I was like fuck it, I’m getting some anyways. When they arrived I opened them up and showed him and he was like “they have snaps?!?” Turns out he was imagining old school cloth diapers with the diaper pins and was TERRIFIED of sticking the baby. Rightly, I think, I wouldn’t trust myself in the same room as my baby with a safety pin.
‘Oh you’re poor and you can’t afford even the cheap disposable stuff? That’s stupid anyway, don’t you know how much money you’ll save if you use this artisnal, organic reusable stuff! It only costs £1,000 to get started and then you make back the money in like 5 years! It only takes 3 hours every day to assemble and maintain! its just a god send!’
How about you fuck off. Most people (who aren’t living in their own special middle-class bubble) who find that money is tight, or they’re just straight up broke, do end up spending more money overall but that’s because you priorities paying for things based on urgency (car needs fixing again! No i can’t afford a new one that would be cheaper to run/maintain) and conveinece (if I’m working minimum wage and studying, or caring for children/family or whatever, I don’t have time, or money, to buy a whole bunch of raw ingredients and spend 1-2 hours every day cooking, even if it each cheaper over all)
It must be hard for people who’ve never truely been broke (like I don’t know where my next meal or rent payment is coming from broke) to understand just how much money and time you need to have in order to save money and time!
OTOH once you break out of that poverty cycle its really hard to break a lot of the bad financial habits you’ve picked up. Cracked has a few great articles from John Cheese about how growing up poor affects you even after you get a stable income
Those suggestions are all for and from people who have historically had servants, slaves, wives, and/or abuelas who magically take care of the pesky labor inputs.
OH MY GOD I will talk forever and ever and EVER about time poverty being the thing that no one BUT NO ONE takes into account. It drives me fucking batshit. Like, yeah, clipping coupons and price matching and getting what’s in the grocery flier on special is great, but when I had to take the bus to get places and was working two jobs, I could not go to three grocery stores to get ingredients for something that would take an hour to cook, you gotta make do with what’s on the bus line and you have to do it frequently because carrying groceries on the bus is a huge pain in the ass so pantry-stocking is totally out of the question, and fuck it, why *not* just get a $5 Hot-N-Ready from Little Caesar’s because fuck, man, that’s 2-3 meals and I don’t have to delay my sleep for it or spend forever washing up my cooking pans and plates.
I have a friend right now who’s doing a “food-stamp challenge” which is fine, and she’s buying a bunch of raw ingredients which is also fine, but then she appends “and when I go home and spend an hour or two cooking!” and I go RAGE because an hour to do ANYTHING when you’re trying to get from 8-hour job to 6-hour job six days a week is too damn much. Like, when I could walk to a Rite-Aid and was totally broke, I could get two meals out of a box of Kraft Deluxe that was $5 at Rite-Aid and 2/$6 at the actual grocery, but getting to the grocery took two bus exchanges so fuck it.
I could only do the “extensive meal preparation to save the absolutely maximum number of pennies” thing when I was unemployed, because I had all the time and none of the money. Then when I got a job (barely above minimum wage, thank you), I was so tired when I got home that no, I didn’t have another 3-hours to slow-cook my dried beans, and I was stressed enough that I wanted something a bit more comforting.
EXACTLY. yes yes YES.
Fuck you, this off-brand mac ‘n’ cheese and I need to spend some quality time together, and you’re NOT INVITED.
p sure I said that exact thing to lots of people at that time in my life, though
I’m so excited to 1) live on a bus line that gets me to a grocery store in one trip, and 2) have a scooter. Fuck yeah, spontaneous quick trips for last-minute grocery needs!
I love you. I am part of a pretty hippie mom group on Facebook, and all the ladies there are constantly like, “Cloth diapering is easier than disposable diapering!!!” And I am like no, there is literally nothing that is less work than taking a diaper off and throwing it away, I am sorry.
And in theory cloth should be cheaper, but I see these ladies selling their $25 diapers to each other because that brand happened not to fit their kid and I just do not have the bandwidth for that kind of complexity in my life. If I have a 3rd kid I miiiiight consider a cloth diaper service due to slight landfill guilt but I might also just be horrible and keep using Pampers. I mean, I’m having American kids, they’re going to be fucking up the environment for hopefully 80+ years to come, so the diapers are just the start of it.
wait, are there still cloth diaper services? I thought in the modern age you were just on your own with the diapers — you had to make a little spray attachment to your toilet for cleaning (which, let’s be real, I would use on myself too because it is way way cleaner than toilet paper and this is one place where Western culture it totally backward) and clean them all yourself between that, and your washing machine. But if there was an actual service that came to your door and collected and laundered diapers, the way there was for my great-grandma and grandmother, that would be a whole other thing — that would actually be doable!
There are, at least in big cities! Theoretically, it comes to about the same cost as using disposables, though I haven’t run the numbers on actual usage. It’s also supposed to be better environmentally than doing it on your own, because it’s more efficient to wash huge industrial-size loads versus doing it yourself (and destroying your washer and sanity).
And I can only imagine the disaster that occurs when you have one of those spray-things in your bathroom once your kid becomes a toddler.
But, if I recall my little sister’s infant-hood, you better have a basement for your diaper pail because it gets pick up once a week and HOOO BOY does that thing stink.
As a teen, I was babysitting for a mom who said, “I know you always make my children’s safety your top priority, and their happiness your next priority. But just for today, put happiness aside and MAKE SURE YOU DON’T MISS THE DIAPER SERVICE TRUCK.” She said to watch for the truck and when I saw it, to dump the baby in the playpen she had moved next to the window with the best view. And then I was to grab the preschooler by the hand and stand outside the front door with the oh-so-smelly diaper pail she left out there. I was to drag that child into the street and wave down the truck, if necessary.
Yes, so stinky after a week. I can’t imagine how it would be after *two* weeks. Apparently, that had happened to this woman once before, but NEVER AGAIN.
My kid is now 3, and we used disposables, but early on in the pregnancy I was considering cloth diapers. I read somewhere (do not recall the source, sorry!) that the environmental costs of disposables vs cloth is pretty much a wash. It’s like landfill vs water usage/cost of washing and wastewater treatment.
I’ve read similar things – I’m on a well and my wastewater goes into a septic tank where it leeches back into the aquifer our well taps into, so I feel pretty good about that? Except for drinking my baby’s poop a few years down the line, that’s not so great.
But you don’t even have to feel landfill guilt, because according to Ask Umbra on Grist, there is not really any environmental difference between cloth diapers and disposable diapers once you account for electricity, washing, growing cotton, etc. She always comes down on diaper options are so similar in total environmental cost, better to do what works for you and focus on choices that actually make a noticeable difference. http://grist.org/article/wee-wee-wee-all-the-way-…
Thanks for the link! I have wondered about water usage since we live in a pretty drought-prone area.
I got literally the cheapest cloth diapers off Amazon. I’m pretty sure they’re made of 100% formaldehyde in China, but you know what? they work JUST FINE. Those cloth diapers have a bajillion snaps on them so you can customize fit to waist and thighs separately so anyone selling a cloth diaper because “it doesn’t fit” is full of LITERAL SHIT and just wants newer fancier cloth diapers because they are addicted to their own self-righteousness.
UGH THE WORST are the women who take those $300+ woven baby wraps (cultural appropriation) and CUT THEM UP TO MAKE CLOTH DIAPER COVERS. lsdk;ahtoytonwasdbn32ug5082y23todihsoeht2389ytsoigleht0293u02y30hdsoihd0230t
I was introduced to the lunatic world of baby wearing awhile ago. JESUS CHRIST WHY ARE YOU ALL CRAZY. Apparently any new parent who turns up at a baby wearing class (probably petrified) with their newborn and a baby bjorn carrier instantly gets told that they are killing their child by ‘crotch dangling’ or some other shite.
And getting competitive over who can buy the most $1000 BITS OF FUCKING CLOTH. Why. Why do you do this.
If you want to be disgusted and amazed at the same time, join the high end babywearing swap group on Facebook, or The Pavo Society. It’s fucking siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick
I’m good thanks, I’ll stick to getting it second hand through a blog from a baby wearing instructor (this is apparently a thing now.), I need to go find it again, she had some great thoughts about the different perspective from POC about it, and I think even had a few guest bloggers around that topic
Also just on the ‘baby wearing’ 1. its a stupid fucking name, stop that. 2. Its not some new magical thing that was just discovered, its been around in other cultures for literally forever, and its definitely been around in the west since the 80s at least, maybe people just didn’t use their parenting styles as status symbols and swallow ideas whole back then.
I truly do not understand the concept of “baby wearing” as a lifestyle identifier. Like…what? I have a couple of carriers and sometimes they’re useful, but defining oneself as a baby-wearing parent seems as arbitrary as defining yourself by whether you use a high chair that stands on the floor versus one that clips on the table. (Or, hell, by what kind of diapers you use.)
You know, I’ve never run across a rumble of floor vs. table high chair moms, but now that you mention it, I’m sure there probably are several message boards devoted solely to this argument…
I’m always baffled by explanations of baby-wearing that go beyond “this is super-convenient.” Because hey, it’s cool that you can carry your child and also have your hands available. That’s…pretty much it, though.
Your baby-related commenting is hilarious. I would read your baby-related blog.
All the articles I’ve ever read comparing cloth vs. disposable diapers say that the environmental impact is pretty much equal (since you’re using X amount of water and energy to machine-wash and dry the cloth ones). So no one should feel bad either way, really! Whatever works.
Cloth diapers are fantastic! I bought a 12 pack when Thing One was born, used one on him, threw it away, and used the other 11 as cleaning rags. They lasted for years and years. In fact, I still have a couple, and Thing One is learning to drive this summer.
oh my god they make THE BEST cleaning towels, I cannot WAIT until she is out of diapers and I can fully justify moving them from her closet to my kitchen cabinet
My mom (second of eight kids, there were always babies and diapers around) has often said that the grab-it-bandage of choice in her household growing up was “whatever diaper was closest,” which, hey, they’re absorbent, why not.
The cloth diapers/nappies my mum bought when she was pregnant with me were used for *years* to wrap up our dolls. And never once actually used as nappies.
But then again in the last year I’ve become a cloth menstrual pad person, and while yes it’s more expensive and more work, it is so much more comfortable. I appreciate not everyone wants or can get to Paddiction (addiction to cloth pads), but it sure is fun here.
I’m really glad I got into cloth pads a couple of years ago, when I had a *way* better paying job than I do now. It’s pretty sweet having that stash handy now that my disposable income is not what it used to be. But yeah, it is one of those situations where Step 1 is Have Some Money.
Especially the nicest ones in my stash — some of them were legit expensive! (I love obv and windpro) Although they are definitely more hack-able than cloth diapers, you can supposedly sew them by hand even, and you’re likely to be able find cheap second-hand polyester fleece, flannel and cotton, and maybe buttons for closure.
In my experience babysitting, cloth diapers are *great* for throwing over your own shoulder to catch baby vomit. Rather less effective on an actual human child’s behind.
we had tons of them around when my sister was a baby (lord knows why, my mom used disposables iwth all of us, parlty because they had now washing machine and lived 40 minutes away from the laundromat) and we used to use them as burping cloths – throw one over your shoulder before you handle any babies, if when baby spits up, change cloths.
I’m always amazed when I’m with other people’s families and they don’t do this, but wait until the mess has started and then grab a cloth.
I was cloth-diapered as a baby, and my parents had a diapering service, and when I potty-trained (apparently with relative ease, the summer I turned 2), they ended up with a clean batch of cloth diapers that they did not use, and we used those as rags for dusting and mopping for the rest of my life. They are soft and absorbent and will not scratch your furniture!
I’m mainly just jealous and in awe of the fact that the fancy daycares where you live are only $300/week. I’m starting to look into child care and you can’t find basic in-home day care care for that, and the chi-chi day care is $2800/month for infants. TWENTY EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH. But I live in Massachusetts, where we have literally the most expensive average child care in the nation. (On a state-by-state basis; I’m sure in Manhattan and San Francisco you could find higher.)
(I realize this was not the point of your PERFECT and ON POINT rant, but that’s where my brain is these days.)
Oh my god! I am feeling the pinch at paying $750 a month for the nice-ish-est daycare that is very conveniently located. On the one hand, they don’t accept cloth diapers, and they feed the kids corn dogs and pop tarts, but on the other, I can still afford to pay the electric bill. Can you maybe sneak your baby to work and keep it in a filing cabinet? Also I hear St. Bernards make lovely nannies.
Rottweilers also, if the book Good Dog, Carl is to be believed.
I thought Nana was a Newfie?
You’re probably right. (I played Nana in a community theater production once! My species was ambiguous though. I got orangish fur to match my strawberry blonde hair. Many audience children were quite convinced I was real! It was the high point of my acting career.)
I’ve only seen the 1924 silent movie version, so I’m pretty sure she’s actually a man in a terrifying dog suit.
Noooooooooooo why
oh my god I feel you, I live in southwest Missouri where everything is cheaper because 70% of the people around here don’t make a living wage. I was looking into daycares and couldn’t really afford that and managed to find an AMAZING private sitter who only charges $100 a week (A WEEK!!!), and during this search I was bitching with my sisters-in-law who live in Houston, TX, and they were basically like yeah, shut the fuck up, we pay $3K a month.
THREE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. A. MONTH. I was working a good marketing job at the Girl Scouts and I didn’t even MAKE $3,000 A MONTH.
essential oil therapy
Wait, what? Like it’s not hard enough to hold on to a squirming, wriggling baby in normal circumstances, these people go ahead and coat them in oil?
So the lady who ran the daycare recommended putting thieves oil on the soles of the feet of a toddler who had PTSD because HER FATHER SHOT HIMSELF IN THE FACE IN FRONT OF HER and who had also been diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder.
That was the exact moment when I said FUCK EEVVERRRYTHING and gave up on life.
I worked in a mountain-hippie daycare and they would mist lavender oil over the 3-5 year olds during nap time.
Didn’t seem to negatively effect anyone and the squirmers still squirmed so whatevs, I guess. Aw, now I’m recalling one of my favourite ECE moments:
During nap time time, I was assigned to one little guy who had trouble adjusting his mind and body to be still. To help him out, I would lightly rub his back until he calmed himself into resting. As I was sitting beside him, bent over to reach his back, he gently poked my belly roll and whispered “Are you going to have a baby?” I smiled and whispered back “No, but if I did have a baby, I hope he will be just like you.”
The smile on that kid’s face as he FINALLY settled off to sleep made my fucking day, honest to God.
It makes the baby brawls more exciting.
I freaking LOVE your diaper POV…Brah-fu@@ing-O!!!!!!
And you are correct about the daycare smell, says I, a former ECE worker.
I’m trying to imagine having to use cloth diapers and washing them at a laundromat and my brain is basically a 404 error screen.
If you were talking about my mom, it’s also amazing that she considered having the choice to use a laundromat as a luxury. I am not kidding. Her mom did laundry in a washtub with a washboard, set in the bathtub when they lived in town. Speaking of that, I think we probably washed the diapers in the bathtub, not the sink, though I remember diapers being washed in the sink too. You ‘rinsed’ them out in the toilet, flushing solids, then put the diapers in soapy water in the bathtub, then rinse and hang on chairs and towel racks to dry and bleach out the tub.
I tried to get her to tell me more details about the days when my brother was a baby and I was a toddler and she took laundry on the bus and went to the grocery store on the bus, with two little, little children, but she just texted me back that ‘oh, that’s just what people did then, and the towel diapers were just for emergencies’. Uh, emergencies that lasted the whole time my brother and sister were in diapers? I remember the ‘real’ diapers, but I remember the towel and undershirt diapers too, ha!
My dad washed my cloth diapers in a ringer washer, with water hand pumped out of the ground. They weren’t pre-washed in the toilet, either, as there was only an outhouse at that point. But that was poverty as an intentional lifestyle choice (back-to-the-land hippies), so one mustn’t feel too sorry for him. Still, I do like to tell the story!
I bought some cloth diapers on ebay for pretty cheap while I was pregnant, and got a few more as hand-me-downs. They look real cute stacked up on the bottom of the changing table!
my mom got to the “rinsed the poop off in the toilet” part of telling me about diapering me and i was all
D: D: D: D:
and she was like “well, i couldn’t just leave you in a shitty diaper”
and then i was all “you obviously love me more than i could ever love anyone because i will never wash anyone else’s poop out of anything”.
moms <3
Um HELLO you Neanderthals with your baby-bum covering have you not heard of ELIMINATION COMMUNICATION. It’s so much easier to just teach your drooling eight-month-old to signal when they’re about to poop and then take them outside and let them do it! It’s how our ancestors did it! And you save so much money on diapers and never have to clean shit out of the carpets or be terrified of taking your baby out in public. Are you all literally so detached from your own flesh and blood that you can’t take the time to intuit the inner workings of their excretory systems? If you don’t want to spend all of your child’s waking hours feverishly staring at them for signs of bowel movement then you should not have had children.
If you don’t want to spend all of your child’s waking hours feverishly staring at them for signs of bowel movement then you should not have had children.
Great, that makes the decision so straightforward!
(I mean, I was fairly sure I didn’t want children anyway, but going by that metric I definitely don’t!)
Daycares smell like sadness?
It’s not that we wouldn’t make bears cops, it’s that no bears are applying because bears don’t have that thuggish aspect to their personality.
I feel like they would also have a hard time passing their firearms proficiency, what with the lack of opposable thumbs.
How often have you seen a cop pull a trigger to a good end, though?
Well, you could say they already naturally..bear arms.
(i’m sorry, i’m so sorry, i’ll go)
But the right to arm bears is written into our constitution!
That Chesterson quote brought me to tears; it was so beautiful.
That’s all I got, just wanted to give Nicole a shoutout for posting such lovely literary lines.
ETA: will definitely be checking in with my local women’s community hub to see if anyone needs a diaper donation.
I am on the mend, thanks, and hope to be back soon! The interval has definitely changed since I first started donating twenty-mumble years ago, down from – 72 days? That still seems shorter than your intervals, though. And our platelet donation interval is 14 days! Does the UK have the same kind of ever-expanding list of exclusion criteria we have here in Canada?
(actually, it occurs to me that one of the Canadian exclusion criteria is “having spent more than 3 months living in the UK between 1980 and 1996” which is some cognitive dissonance right there – none of you UK donors would be eligible in Canada!)
The US has the same restriction; I believe it has to do with mad cow disease. Since you can’t test for it in an asymptomatic person, there’s really nothing you can do to control it within the UK donor pool, but since the US and Canada have not (supposedly) had any vCJD cases they don’t want to introduce it via UK donors.
So, yeah. You may remember I posted on the Open Thread a couple of weeks ago that I thought I was going mad because I was so convinced my boyfriend has leukaemia, and it turns out no, he does have leukaemia (or lymphoma: we aren’t sure yet). I am the Toastie who needs you. Some of you know me. We need blood, and we hope to need bone marrow. Bone marrow, I’m told, is where the cures are. We hope to need bone marrow, we hope to be part of the cancers that can be cured, but we won’t know that for a day or so.
And blood- well, he needs a couple of pints a day we think. It does bring it home, the point of donating blood, when you see it being fed into the thin and ghost-white arm of a man who just weeks ago was strong and big and fierce and ruddy cheeked.
Please donate your blood, and register to donate your marrow. He is only 25. I am only 22. We have a whole life to do, and this is a bit inconvenient.
<3 <3 <3 I’m so sorry you are BOTH going through this. Hoping for the best treatment, the most stalwart friends, all the love and support you both need, and a full recovery. Please let us know what else we as a community can do to help and support you.
I don’t know you, but I am so sorry you’re facing this news. All my best wishes for successful treatment and that whole life ahead of you two.
Thank you for the reminder to donate blood–I’m sure I’m not the only person to make an appointment after reading this.
PSA: Inked US Toasties, take notice! I thought I was ineligible because I keep getting tattoos, but no, they’ll still take my sweet, sweet blood. Since my state regulates tattoo parlors, if you choose a licensed and clean tattoo parlor, you’ll only have to wait a week afterwards, not a year like I thought.
Fuck fuck fuck I’m so sorry. I do already give blood on the regular (well, I did before I was pregnant) – type O, woo! And I’m registered as a marrow donor. But I will nag my friends to do same.
Sending fervent wishes for competent and empathetic medical personnel, a robust support system, and a speedy and complete recovery.
I am so sorry to hear this and very much hope that each of you have the support that you need for this fight. We are always here for you.
I’m so sorry. If he’s B+ (I presume you’re UK by how you spell leukaemia) then he may have already had some of mine and he’s welcome to more!
FIERCE HUGS
I remember reading that and hoping it was nothing. My friend’s husband had a very similar experience a decade ago. He’s alive and well today – I mention in case stories of healthy life after are at all comforting. I’m so sorry that you guys are going through this and I wish you all the best!
I am so sorry; this is awful and scary. The urge to seize the nearest white-coated figure by the lapels and shake them while pointing at your boyfriend and growling, “Fix. NOW,” may be overwhelming.
It’s little consolation to hear that the survival rates are improving steadily overall when what you care about is the n = 1 in front of you, the person who is N rather than n. But I hope that you’re supported and cared for and are kind to yourself when you can be, and of course I wish you a donor fat with healthy cells to bring back the roses in your man’s cheeks.
I am so sorry; that is awful for you both. I hope very much that a match is found and it provides a cure.
I bought a pack of diapers to donate to a diaper drive a few months ago, and I felt so weird bringing it up to the checkout, like everyone would know that I am clearly not qualified to be caring for a child, so why would I be buying diapers? (I am thirty-three years old.) No one said anything though?
I really need to get over this feeling that only people who are older than me have kids, people my age have been having kids for well over a decade and it won’t be long until only people younger than me are having kids.
I had this exact feeling while buying Pedialyte for a sick foster kitten a few months ago. Like I obviously look too irresponsible to be a mom (I’m a boring-looking 31) so people might think I kidnapped someone?
That G.K. Chesterton quote moves me to my bones.
Oh man once I flipped a cop off by accident (to be fair to me, he was tailgating me like CRAZY), but luckily he was busy rushing off to some kind of crime emergency.
I know this isn’t the Open Thread, but I felt compelled to share with you all that I dreamed the History Channel was airing a TV special entitled “I Ate Hitler’s Bunker”.
I would 100% stay up past my bed time to watch that.
Did…did you watch this TV special in your dream? I kind of want to know what it actually entailed.
I was just about to ask that.
Sadly, no– I think I just saw it in the TV listings…
How are your lucid dreaming skills? Next time, see if you can put it on and watch it!!
Terrible! Which is unfortunate, because I really want to see it now.
(I almost never remember my dreams at all, so that stood out to me as particularly amusing/ weird).
I haven’t read all comments yet, and I’m hella late, but I gave bone marrow a couple years back. It is seriously not a huge deal. If anyone has any questions, holler.
Nicole, I know we say this all the time, but I just want to say thank you to you and Mallory ETA and Nikki (how could I forget the wonderful, glorious Nikki?!) (and all the commenters) for the wonderful community you have built here, and for the way you engage with and care about your readers.
Pilot’s article made tears stream down my face in the middle of my commute because it said something about my depression that I’d never been able to put into words before.
On donating diapers: I did a little research for an article and found that many places will NOT take single diapers or opened packages. So you may want to call ahead if you’re looking for somewhere to take those.