Yesterday morning my kid got carsick en route to a preschool interview and because of my BRILLIANT, TIME-HONORED BUFFER SYSTEM we were able to screech into a parking lot and do some hasty wet-wiping and costume-changing into the OTHER kid’s clothes, which fit…somewhat, and only be ten minutes late for the interview, where my kid basically lay wanly on the floor asking to be taken home, but everyone rolled with it and then we came home and the MINUTE we walked in the door, the DOG puked, so. What a glorious adventure! Now I will go examine the carseat to see what can be done.
I woke up early and saw that Hollande has confirmed the loss of the Cairo/Paris flight that had disappeared from radar late last night:
President François Hollande of France has said that EgyptAir Flight 804 went down at sea en route to Cairo from Paris. He confirmed that there were 66 people on board, including 15 French passengers.
It’s not helpful but the best solution is a time machine to prevent yourself from ever having met your terrible stupid rude misogynist boyfriend:
My boyfriend (29M) and I (28F) found out I am unexpectedly pregnant. Despite the fact that we didn’t plan this we are both very happy about it and are looking forward to our first baby.
Since we’ve known each other my bf always said he dreamed of having a son and naming him after himself. I never agreed or disagreed with this since up until now, we weren’t planning for a baby any time soon. As soon as we decided we were keeping the baby my boyfriend, Adam (name changed for privacy), started referring to it has “Adam Junior”. I didn’t really think much about this at first, but the more I did the more I realized that I don’t want to name my child after my husband, and it bothered me that he just assumed he had naming rights without even consulting me.
It seems really petty, but I just don’t like his name and would prefer to have a say in my child’s name. I told my boyfriend we should talk about it, and he said he has dreamed of having a son with his name all of his life and it would devastate him if he didn’t. He basically said it was non-negotiable.
very, very present for the oral history of MADtv:
Keegan-Michael Key (cast member, 2004–09): The powers that be were not going for social commentary. What’s the outrageous joke? Let’s go for it, and let’s pull no punches. Of the people who say to me “I used to watch your show,” 65 to 70 percent of them would be Hispanic. Based on my own experience, I’d say the main demographic was people of color — Hispanics and blacks — who are middle class. And it’s more about class than race. Sometimes if people do manual labor or jobs of that variety, at the end of the day they’re like, “I’m tired. I want to go home. I want to laugh my ass off. If I’m going to watch comedy, what I really want is to identify with something immediately. It’s not about subtle or intellectual drama. I work too hard. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to laugh.”
Then, also, there was a kind of outrageous broadness about the show that appealed to that demographic. People like to feel stimulated and titillated by seeing something they think they’re not supposed to see. People walked up to me and went, “Y’all is wrong.” The majority of the people in that demographic I’m speaking about are churchgoers, so there’s a moral center to what you’re supposed to do and not supposed to do. In a manner of speaking, you’re “not supposed to” watch MADtv.
Are you in Seattle tonight?? GO SEE JAYA AND MATT AND DAD MAGAZINE.
THIS OLD AUSTRALIAN MAN IS HARD.CORE. (also, a genuine RIP to his friend, I truly wish that both of you were telling this story on TV right now):
The 72-year-old surviving man managed to get on top of the boat and used whatever he could find to fend off the crocodiles as he tried to push the boat to safety.
“He was using spanners and spark plugs to hold them at bay,” Ian Badham, director of CareFlight told ABC News. Badham also revealed the man had used a spanner to hit a crocodile over the head.
The man finally managed to get the boat to the mangroves, but became stranded in the mud as his three-hour encounter with the beasts continued, according to a statement by CareFlight, a medical rescue charity. It was only when the tide came in he could get enough buoyancy to pull his boat into a safer position.
You know we love asking you to help chip in for a Toastie’s sister’s partner’s top surgery, and this is NO EXCEPTION. Top surgeries for all!
this is so inappropriate on so many different levels and this is why you don’t. manage. your. kids.:
I am the director of operations for our practice. I have a daughter who is one of our employees, and I am her manager. She has a seven-month old baby and works part-time from home for our publicly traded company, doing administrative work.
She brought her baby to work recently while she ran by to get some supplies and send an email. A coworker – unbeknownst to us – took a picture of my daughter’s baby playing on the floor at work during this short time and sent it to the HR director at corporate – telling HR that my daughter was bringing her baby to work in the office and that she was afraid to say anything because she feared retribution.
First of all, this was completely untrue – she works from home and does not work in the office. Secondly, no one here has ever experienced retribution. The HR director would not tell me who sent the picture and told this story.
I am concerned on two levels – first of all, what gives this employee any right to take pictures of another coworker’s child and share them with anyone? Is there recourse here? Secondly, without know who has done this, my level of trust for all of our employees has been diminished, as I must now suspect all five of the people in this particular office location of having done such a petty thing. Where are my rights to access of this information?
the most common words in poetry
please be a hoax:
THE GOOGLE DOODLE TODAY YOU GUYS
I KNOW, MY FEELS
Even after switching to Google.com I am just seeing a plain Google. Is it an exciting one?
It pretty swell, though I was not familiar with this excellent lady. https://www.google.com/doodles/yuri-kochiyamas-95…
Hm. I admire her radical activism in many ways but her assertion that Osama Bin Laden should be revered alongside people like Patrice Lumumba or Malcolm X is crazy pants to me. That’s just some bullshit.
That Craigslist ad is TOO accurate and makes me ache for living somewhere that is not DC. (Although my housemates are all awesome and none of us work in politics directly thank the lord).
It just kept getting more awful. (What if you don’t want a ticket to DC burner culture?)
I once went on a date with a guy who was a hardcore burner. I was young and naive (NB: not really, this was, like, 2 years ago I just didn’t know WTF a burner was) and it was just the most awkward thing. He was miffed that he and his burner friends had just gotten kicked out of their rental because the next door neighbors saw people fire juggling and other fire things at one of their parties and notified the owners of the house, who were traveling abroad for some extended period. Dude really felt like he should have been given a chance to explain.
All was well because he subsequently found another burner house where they were planning on having clothing optional parties on the reg.
this is why i want nothing to do with “burner culture”. i just wanna go roll in the dirt for a couple of weeks, spending my days drinking bloody maries and my nights dancing to industrial music. i do not want to spend the remaining 351 days of the year hugging pantless people who spend more money on acid than bath soap.
I don’t even know what that is– do I want to know?
No, not really.
You know these people, you just don’t know them as “burners,” you know them as “assholes.”
Assholes with extremely uneven personal hygiene habits, usually.
Also I love how the two women are basically described as “studies all the time” and “mom,” while the men are wonks, pro chefs, burning man Ezra Klein dynamos. Washington bros seem like maybe the worst bros?
I can confirm that they are pretty bad – mostly because not only do they never recognize that they are bros, they typically think of themselves as anti-bros and have HUGE chip on their shoulder about it (e.g. every woman who rejects them must be rejecting them because they aren’t jocks and not because they are, you know, terrible).
Oh god the anti-bro because he’s too educated/liberal to be a bro is the WORST.
Good-longstanding-liberal-feminist-democrats-who-are-DEFINITELY-not-sexist bros.
It’s been over a year and a half since I lived in a group house on the Hill and I’m still recovering.
A guy I’m kind of seeing is a legit bro (which is so weird for me) but he knows he is and it’s just easier. He’s extremely intelligent, artsy, and probably too damn fancy for me, but he acknowledges his bro-ness completely and it’s fine that way.
See, that’s the kind of bro I can handle/like. A bro who knows he’s a bro! Not all bros all bad. All bros who insist/fully believe they are not bros are bad.
Exactly! I know what I’m getting with him and yet I’m pleased because it’s actually quite different from the type of guy I normally go for and it’s really nice. Sure, there are issues there and this is not going to be a forever thing, but I’m just pleased he’s not a typical hipster pseudo-intellectual.
And right now we’re having a text conversation about Susanne Sundfor and how I think she samples a Kate Bush song (which is great) and he is all on board for this discussion.
A fellow Kate Bush-loving bro! Woot!
He doesn’t actually listen to her — yet — he has an album, which I think is the Kick Inside that he will be listening to soon. I’m trying to get him to go for the Dreaming, which is my favorite and my introduction to Kate.
But he has great taste in music and we spend most of our time talking about music.
I have quite a few friends like this — a whole circle of bros who call themselves bros, who wear sperry topsiders and pastel shorts and YET ARE NOT TERRIBLE, are actually quite lovely and sweet to their girlfriends/wives/kids, are excellent at helping a person move furniture, will leave the party early to put the baby to bed so their wife can stay and smoke a cigar etc. etc.
WHen I was getting cancer treatment, some of my chemo overlapped with appointments for a 20 yr. old bro who got prostate cancer. His bro friends would show up with food for him, watch the ballgame with him on their phones, and say “ball cancer” way too loudly. There was clearly so much love for their friend. I kept thinking that their moms must be so proud of them.
Bro definitely does not equal terrible. Bro in denial, however, is always terrible.
I want to be a bro to these bros.
Yes, this. Liking sports or wearing certain clothes is not what makes you a terrible person. Acting like a terrible person is what makes you a terrible person.
Someone please go inform boynerds
Most of my guy friends (from the military and beyond) are irredeemable, beautiful bros and I love them all. Of course, I also wear sperrys and pastel shorts so maybe that’s got something to do with it…
I was going to be all, “Are you me?”, but I don’t wear shorts.
I don’t often wear shorts…
But when I do they’re generally pastel, madras, or covered in tiny embroidered whales/lobsters/ducks/sailboats/etc.
It’s disgusting.
I love it.
I dated a very bro-y dude in the Army for awhile and, although it was ultimately not a good fit, it was a great education in the potential niceness of bros. But it was confusing: “So you want to date me, but you also want to…exercise? Regularly? That’s never happened before…”
I know, right? I do dance, but it’s mostly for the creative side of it. But he actually goes and lifts with his other bros. And because he lifts with a fairly diverse group of guys (he’s so white) they talk about things like race relations, relationships with women, and then more discussions of lifting. I think he does some type of working out 5-6 days a week.
But it does make him fit, so that’s fine by me.
And also they all think themselves to be the most intelligent man that has ever entered this city. That they alone are better. smarter, than all the other idiots that have come to DC to wonk.
Yes! Can confirm. Yet many seem to get weirdly angry if you want to talk about something outside their particular area of expertise. IDK, I like it here and there are lots of great people, but there is also a huge contingent of the MOST incurious smart people I’ve ever met.
I briefly dated this regulatory lawyer who would go on these long, pedantic monologues (I could not actually get a word in — and I talk a lot and tend to dominate conversations) and I wanted to murder him.
I cannot tolerate men who talk over me. Also he was a terrible kisser.
OH man this sounds like a guy I went on three dates with last year TO A T. (In DC as well)
After I told him I was interested in seeing him anymore, he asked if we could be Facebook friends. So weird.
Luckily this guy and I ghosted each other, but other weird DC guys will add me on Snapchat after one date? Bruh. No.
Yes! Incurious smart people. They’re not interested in your thing unless it can help them climb into the next most prestigious think tank or get them mentioned in a Politico Pro alert. It leads to a very cliquey atmosphere.
DC is like a magnet school for adults.
yes this exactly
DC bros are pretty terrible. I fled Arlington—right across the bridge from Georgetown—for Seattle when that little suburb was completely overrun. And sadly, I still rarely go out on the weekends anymore. Just not worth it.
Have we reached peak bro? Or is this going to get worse, like climate change?
This gif is a brotidote. Bless you.
One of my friends is on her 4th or 5th attempt to put a house together in DC, and she’s sure that this time it’s going to work. And I’m just like, why not get a small place with your fiance and save yourself the stress?
Also how did they have two newest members of their house?
I WONDERED THAT TOO.
Then I realized: it’s because there’s a newest bro and a newest female, non-bro, quasi-person. Different, y’see?
I will just add, in some strange circumstances it CAN work! My GF was lucky enough to move into a group house with two awesome people, one really nice person, and one douche. Over time the douche moved out and was replaced with another awesome person, and the really nice person left to move in with her boyfriend and was replaced with yet another awesome person. So they had just a core group of really great people and it was legitimately a good situation (most of the time, obviously five people in a house is a bit stressful at times no matter how much everyone is a good friend).
YES! I lived in DC for a couple years and, for the most part, was super lucky in my group living situations and made life-long friends with several housemates. It can be really awesome to live with smart and kind friends! But I definitely had a couple hard passes when I was looking for group houses. And then the whole scene got old – sharing living space with lots of people for years and regularly being the cleanest person of the group…basically I won’t be moving back, even though I love – LOVE – the city.
Libertarian-ish version of Ezra Klein is a person I hope to NEVER MEET.
It was so obvious he was the one writing the descriptions too. I would be ashamed to describe myself in terms that glowing in public.
Okay, so I was confusing Ezra Klein with Ezra Miller in my head and I was so confused for a bit. Like: solid actor, seems a little full of himself, weird choice to play Barry Allen…
Never go to Adams Morgan or any of the bars near Georgetown Law.
It’s not the worst out there, at least. The most DC/worst is definitely that post but with more hill employees and lobbyests. eg I’ve found a great place with great roommates and I’m never fucking moving until I die and/or marry I can’t go out into that rental scene again. I dread it more than the dating scene.
It reminds me a lot of when I was looking for a sublet in Park Slope way back in the day. I went to what I thought was a meet-the-potential-roommates thing, and found out that a bunch of other potential sublessees were also there, and that, fuck me Agnes, we were auditioning. We ended up all leaving together and we just looked at each other and were like, yep, dodged that bullet.
Dispatches from Oakland: I looked at a group house the other week, and they had an “open house” and it was not just an audition, it was very specifically an audition for the role of “flirty fuckable burner chick who will cook for them.” They rejected me via email about 12 hours after aforementioned open house after I was pretty much ignored by every dude there.
Uh huh, you’re all into “sustainable eco-friendly cohousing” but only with women you want to fuck, huh?
Even more than nerdbros, I find ecobros to be the most maddeningly obnoxious. And this may be because I live in a fairly hippyish enclave, but the possibility of encountering facile philosophy, white guys with dreads, and people whose idea of sex positivism is stuck in the free love era (free for whom again?) is so high.
And, you know, I do volunteer with a food access nonprofit and I totally was out planting trees the other weekend. The people who show up to do that work? At least 95% women and higher.
Also, what sane woman wants to fill the role of “guys in my house keep hitting on me”? That is exactly what I am NOT looking for in a group house.
Busy methodically scrapping all the skin off my face on the metro right now. Gonna ball it up and throw it at whoever posted that ad.
This is why I live in the damn burbs.
My DC suburb is almost entirely bro-free. It’s a beautiful place.
I don’t live in a DC suburb and it’s largely bro-free. But that’s because I am of the gentrifying scum class so the bros will come and it will be my fault.
Dammit. I never really thought about this and now I feel worse about my role in displacing long standing communities.
The beauty of living in the suburbs is I can afford to live by myself, which means my home is free of both pants and tickets to DC’s burner culture.
One of my great regrets in life is that I did not screenshot the Craigslist posting for the DC group house that needed a roommate for their intentional, vegan, consciousness-raising, inclusive community. But unfortunately, all the current residents are white, so they NEED a person of color!
Was this relatively recently? Because I feel like I’m at most two degrees of separation from whoever those people are. Oh DC groups house, we’re just a great lot all around.
It was a year or so ago, but I would not be surprised if they are still looking.
This is just making me :/ about the whole “looking for work in the DC metro area” thing. I mean, I didn’t choose to be here, but I’m here now and I need a job. And I know that’s only hurdle #1 and the next bit is finding a new place to live/meeting people who are hopefully not from the 9th circle of DC hell.
If it makes you feel better, I’ve lived in DC for about 11 years, many of those in group housing/roommate situations and I have not had to deal with that. Like, I’ve seen those ads, but I just avoid those places.
There are plenty of people who just want someone who will pay their bills on time and not leave their dirty dishes in the sink.
The DC hairpin group has lots of Toasties and roommate ads if you’re looking for like minded folk. https://www.facebook.com/groups/dchairpin/
Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind for when I finally (finally hopefully finally) have a job. 🙂
i am 1. super relieved and blessed that i got to skip all that and move in with my partner because we are both too socially awkward to deal with group housing situations anymore, and 2. spending the rest of my morning going through the DC group house adverts on Craigslist. will report back with any treasures
Same; I was lucky enough to move in with my partner after moving out of my parents’ house, and while I sometimes feel like I might have missed out on independence, or feel guilty for the fact that it’s only an accident of luck that means I can afford not to flatshare (London prices are ridiculous), I am so glad to have avoided the horror of flatmates.
Guessing that’s the white 40% of DC the first dude is friends with. Or do they just mean 40% of the white people?
I have lived in DC for too long. I’m reading it going, ‘yeah, this seems about right for a group house in DC. Where is the extra terrible?’
Before I got to the tweet, all I could think was “most terrible Real World cast ever.”
(Is the Real World still even a thing? I am old!)
Dude a girl I used to work with could have written that name letter. Her boyfriend basically instructed her to name the child after him. Of course she was a nut bar herself and got all upset when her mother in law liked the name they had picked out because “omg it’s like SHE named her!!!!!” ????? Would you prefer your MIL hated the name? I was so confused. And anyway the kid ended up being a girl so they didn’t have to name the kid after her slightly idiot dad.
Ugh, that letter. I think she should just stoop to his level to make him see how dumb he is. “I’m not taking pre-natal vitamins. Non-negotiable.” “I’m gonna take a stroll through some hazardous waste dumps. Non-negotiable.”
It’s insane enough that he’s insistent on this name, but it’s even crazier that other people weigh in on baby names. I have two baby name stories:
1) When my mom was pregnant, my little Italian grandma kept asking what the name was going to be–she wasn’t suggesting anything, but was clearly hoping it would be either an Italian or vaguely Catholic name. Finally my parents just told her “We’re naming the baby Madison.” That shocked her into silence until I was born, and very happily NOT named Madison.
2) My cousin had a baby a few years ago, and when she was pregnant and talking about names, my other cousin (who was named Queen of Greek life in college—or some such title–which gives a quick insight into her character) was making fun of one name they liked. It was alliterative, both names had a lot of “L”s in them, and my dumb cousin was going on about how if she got drunk when she was older and introduced herself it was going to sound like she had a speech impediment because the “L”s would sound like “W”s. I guess the mental image was enough to put them off the name because they didn’t go with it.
WHY is that where your brain goes? And why would you say it?
Everybody is super opinionated about other people’s baby names. My great grandma was French-Canadian and all of her kids were given French family names except one. That one? Well, great-grandma wasn’t doing too well after that birth and so the nuns decided “oh, she’ll probs die so we should name the baby” and instead of asking great-grandpa “hey, what name do you have ready?” (because they totally had a name ready) the nuns just went “let’s give this kid some super-duper Catholic name that does not go with the family naming scheme at all!” Needless to say, when great-grandma recovered she was LIVID that the nuns had gone ahead and put that name on the birth certificate without consulting anyone.
That’s a great story, although unfortunate for that poor kid. Similarly, my husband’s grandmother was named Olga, because her mother was very sick after the birth and they sent her uncle to do the birth registration. He couldn’t remember what name they had told him, so he just picked Olga. OLGA. (This was in Eastern Europe, but they were Hungarian-speaking Jews, not Russians. I am told she resented her name her whole life.)
On the plus side it is the most burninatey of names this side of Trogdor?
I’m not actually sure how I got my name. My mom had a boy name she loved (Zachary) and had picked Sarah Jane, after her Great Aunt Sadie, for a girl. I know my dad vetoed Sarah Jane (thank you Dad, I would have been ok with Sarah but I am not a Sadie) but no one seems to remember how they ended up with Rachel.
Are you sure your mother isn’t a Pertwee/Baker-era Whovian? Because if not, going through life named Sarah Jane would have had Consequences.
My name actually is Sara Jane, and I gave my mother some very strange looks when she introduced me to the Tom Baker-era Who episodes she loved in college….
(My first name was actually chosen by my father from a list of names Mom gave him–thanks Dad for not choosing Cynthia!–and my middle name is my grandmother’s first name, so she does have some plausible deniability. It’s still strange.)
If you’re going to be deliberately named after a companion, Sara(h) Jane is definitely The Best, but if you don’t know what you’re getting into, it could be dicey.
I’m really glad my brother and SIL didn’t announce their girls’ names until they were born, since I figure that has cut back a significant amount of my parents complaining about how tricky the names were, and if it’s pronounced the same, why not name her Eileen instead of Eibhlin?
(possibly relevant–my SIL is Irish, her mother taught Irish for years, she and her siblings all also have “hard” names–this wasn’t a hipsterish whim or anything like that.
If you can watch season 2 of “Catastrophe” on Amazon Video, you will SO appreciate the naming of wee Muirinn.
Ah, the quirks of Irish spelling. Even we struggle with it sometimes. Once you accept that pronouncing the name phonetically is completely out of the question, things start to get easier.
I can totally understand the MIL thing. Like, if your baby has your husband’s name, ok, you can at least make yourself feel like you picked it out together. But it’s like the MIL was claiming ownership and kind of erasing the mom’s role in the whole thing. Probably that’s not how she meant it but I can definitely see how a new mom might resent that attitude.
My MIL acts like everything in the entire world is for her benefit so if we ever chose a baby name REMOTELY similar to the long list of names she unsolicitedly “suggested”, we would never have heard the end of it. (She also gave us a list of names of her enemies, with the idea she had veto power over our child’s name!) (She did NOT.)
The fact that she maintains a list of enemies kind of overshadows the rest of this story.
I mean she doesn’t call it her list of enemies – it was a list of names that we “couldn’t” use which just so happened to be the names of all the people she hates. If I had been slightly on board with any of them, I might seriously have considered a spite middle name but no.
My mom is a teacher and she has a list of perfectly fine names that have been ruined by evil children she has taught. I don’t know exactly some David did, but his name is at the top of the Nope List.
I work in the schools, and my mother works in a different school, and some names are just going to belong to certain children forever, and we all just accept this reality.
Was your MIL Nixon?
Ha! She wishes she had that kind of access to secrets.
I laughingly related this story to my mother and she immediately responded with the name of her enemy. So I guess that’s a thing. lol
As my mom tells it, when she and my dad were thinking up names for me, one of their top choices was Grace. It stopped being a top choice when my grandma (my mom’s mom) asked, “What if she turns out fat and clumsy?”
WHAT if the name is the same as their SIL’s dog because guess what popped up on r/relationships when I clicked over to see the full story:
My [38f] SIL [32F] is upset that she named her son the same name as my dog. https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4…
btw the name is Jasper. Which is…kind of not uncommon for dog names? i mean.
I just found out today that my newest nephew is named Owen, just like my dog.
My Nana Bev was upset that none of her four children named any grandkids after her. So my mum named the dog Beverly.
It… didn’t help.
Timothy and Rose cannot BOTH be the newest member of the house.
ugh yes I am glad someone else was bothered by that
These monsters TRY to imitate human life, but they always mess up SOMEhow!
In truth, they are possums.
What are you talking about? These guys are wonks, they CLEARLY know numbers. They can’t be wrong.
yeah WILL F i thought you were a WONK
you can’t be a momofuku style chef without a GOOD EYE FOR DETAILS, WILL
“Where there’s a Will, there’s a Wonk”
but it turns out that I can hate them BOTH as much.
IS THIS A LOGIC PUZZLE IN DISGUISE?
If Rose is on the campaign trail, and Tim is at Burning Man, who is making dinner?
WILL F
DH is less wonky than Will F.
Rose is wonkier than the housemate who works for the Uber of Alcohol Delivery.
Joe is the least wonky of all the housemates.
Is Rose wonkier than Will F.?
(eta: I just made this up, don’t try to solve it, I know you people and you will try to solve it)
Honestly, I did briefly try to solve it before I realized it was not solvable because you never told us who was wonkier, Will or Tim.
There are already six house members and three bedrooms*. Where is the new housemate going to sleep?
*assumed for the purposes of this puzzle
With the Burning Man guy, he’s cool with that, he’s very open minded.
So tempted to draw up a grid puzzle for this: match the roommate to their occupation, wonk level, and when they moved in.
The person who moved in most recently is neither the wonk-est nor Timothy.
Etc, Etc.
This sounds like the answer to a logic problem
this is what i get for not reading the thread before replying to the original comment! d’oh!
I mean, if they moved in a few weeks apart I would still refer to them both as “newest” but then I would be like “newest members” plural. So?
I wonder how Rose would feel about being called “the mom of the house”.
#FreeRose
Yes that’s where my mind went too. God the more I think about it the more angry I am at the fact that all the men have these long elaborate descriptions of what they like to do and talk about (and all sound shitty tbh) and the two women are like ‘Student, don’t see her, who cares’ and ‘the mom of the house’ ‘Great cook’. Gross gross gross.
And there you have DC, ladies and gentlemen!
I just posted something similar above and now that you mention the cooking, it occurs to be that mom gets to be a good cook while Will gets to be a Momofuku style chef.
UGH GOD YES. THROW THESE MEN INTO THE SUN.
Oops just said the same before I saw this.
I thought about what it would be like for me to live in that house and it involves the gruesome homicide of Will. People who describe themselves as chefs without having jobs in restaurants inevitably leave the kitchen a disaster.
This is, thank god, never going to happen, because I don’t live in DC, and I have kids, and the great joy of my divorce has been the ability to keep my kitchen in such a state that I have the clean space to roll out laminated dough *whenever I want*.
“People who describe themselves as chefs without having jobs in restaurants inevitably leave the kitchen a disaster.”
YOU ARE RIGHTEOUS AND CORRECT
UGH. YES. If I could insert like ten clapping emojis right here I would.
“Momofuku style chef”…. UGH.
and like, only a white man would refer to himself as a “Momofuku style chef”.
Great cook but not a Momofuku-style chef!
i mean, poor joe, getting lumped with the women and their boring descriptions
Ugh, they sound like such arrogant hipster bros.
Gee, I WONDER WHY she’s gone all week.
You can’t help but notice that both women are clearly doing their best to spend the least amount of time there/probably only took the place because they need someplace to sleep.
I just heart this entire thread, and had to share that. Basically it’s a distillation of why I love the Toast so much.
Well, you know, she cooks, so.
We were talking about this on Twitter and whether or not she knows (my money was on “knows and resents it”) and I said that probably they had a house meeting to write the ad and she actually responded to my tweet saying that she wasn’t sure who wrote it but she wasn’t a part of it.
Omg really? So, knows and resents it now, I guess.
Ha, I just looked up that tweet and it’s someone I have mutual friends with. At least I’m not connected to the person who wrote the ad… right? I would like to believe I’m farther removed from this nonsense.
I know! I immediately pictured Rose as Mrs. Potts,the sentient lady teapot from Beauty and the Beast. I know that can’t be right, and yet…
Slightly OT but the /r/relationship comment reminded me that any time someone on Dear Prudence or Reddit describes their partner/spouse/significant other/etc. as “wonderful,” I get out the /popcorn because that word only seems to be used in conjunction with what Pee Wee Herman would call a “big BUT” D:
See also: “we are deeply in love” and “I am actually very mature for my age.”
There was a letter on r/relationships yesterday from a 16M talking about himself as an “old soul” with “the mind of a 50 year old” and complaining about his “immature and irresponsible” 15F girlfriend and I was just like GIRL, GET OUT, YOUR BOYFRIEND’S THE WORST the whole time.
Ugh now I can’t find it. But the kid was definitely mashing the “but I am actually very mature for my age” button really, really hard.
I mean, I’m grouchy and tired all the time and scared of cellphones and forget where I am periodically too but I don’t go around advertising it
The latest Captain Awkward is the “very mature for my age” horror show turned up to 11.
Totally read that as Captain America. Oh obsession …
Ha! I love love love Captain Awkward, and I now want a fanfic series where Captain America attempts to give advice. “You deserve better, cripes, please break up with him, even as a guy who has never had a date in the history of ever I can tell you that being alone is infinitely preferable to that guy because he is garbage.”
And then Tony writes in and that is how they reconcile, because fanfic.
Oh my this would be perfection.
Yes please. Someone write this.
Well tbf Captain America is much older than basically any love interest he’s ever going to have at this point. Lol “Older Boyfriend”.
As much as I love him, he is kinda immature for his age. Though I suppose being frozen for 70 years is an ok excuse in this instance.
Yeah I don’t think it counts if he was in physical and mental stasis the whole time. Not only did his body not age; emtionally/mentally he didn’t age because he didn’t have the life experiences that normally contribute to that whole “wisdom” and “maturity” thing.
Except Bucky!
He needs to date Buffy. If anything he’s on the young side for her!
(Having a Buffy bingewatch rn)
I had to take a break like 3 sentences in when I read “claim me as his girlfriend.” ewww
I never even made it through that one. I got too angry and had to walk away.
I hope that girl takes the advice and saves herself. Run!
Omg, I just went off to read this letter because I hadn’t seen it yet, and I’m only a couple of paragraphs in (he’s harassing her about going to the gym right now), and already my face looks like
Eta: Ok, finished reading
Yup. Any relationship question that starts with “I’m 22/21/20 and my spouse of 2+ years….” or “my partner is perfect except…” or “I’m with someone else 7+ years older than me….” are all guaranteed excellent drama.
The giant age gap posts on r/relationships are always the best, because 90% of the commenters are here to set your business straight and tell you that a 30 year old man who’s dating a 17 year old girl is a piece of shit, no buts, FULL STOP, quit lying to yourself girl. And then the other 10% show up to briefly say that “age is just a number, who cares that one of them is a minor!” before getting utterly destroyed by everyone else.
Also this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/3…
from a dude who wants to know how to best explain to his 20-year-old daughter that he has been secretly dating her college roommate. For some reason he was expecting some answer other than STOP DOING THAT AND NEVER TELL HER, EVER, so when that’s what people say he storms off and then comes back with a huffy, fake update about how he told her and she was TOTALLY cool with it because his family is obviously more functional and enlightened than everyone else’s.
I take it you saw yesterday’s horrifying Captain Awkward: https://captainawkward.com/2016/05/18/862-q-does-…
Thanks for your well-wishes regarding my shoulder yesterday – it turns out I have a partial labral tear, which, except for the part where it’s my dominant arm, is the best-case scenario for a shoulder injury according to the doctor. (I’m trying to keep a positive outlook.) I’m under orders to use that arm sparingly for 6-8 weeks and hope it heals on its own. If not…well, then I guess they’ll look into surgery. So here’s hoping that the next 6-8 weeks go quickly and with much healing.
P.S. Give me all your favorite keyboard shortcuts, mousing left-handed has already gotten old and I’ve been doing it for five minutes.
alt+tab flits between windows, and ctrl+number will let you flit between internet tabs. O, and if using a computer that you have to lock, start button+l will lock your compy for you with one swift motion.
These are all the shortcuts I have.
Have you looked into a track ball? I know they’re declasse these days, but you only have to move two fingers as opposed to the whole arm. Plus, basically everyone but you will be baffled and frustrated by it, thus increasing the security of your computer! (I use one, but I promise not to break into your office and mess with your stuff)
Steve had a pec muscle torn in jiu-jitsu (do not ask) and has separated a shoulder and we are very very familiar w ortho injuries of this nature and you are indeed a lucky unlucky woman and I am sending The Good Vibes at you and your shoulder.
A pec tear is one of the most impressively horrifying sports injuries, as it bruises, like, the entire upper body. 🙁
I hope his rehab went well.
Left hand mousing is so hard! I get RSI pain in my wrists, so occasionally I attempt to swap hands to relieve my right hand a bit, everything gets hella confusing. See also writing with left hand, consiously I know how to do it, but my hand just will not co-operation.
My favorite shortcut is ctrl+Z. That probably says a lot about me.
Once, when we had been pulling 15 hour days at the music festival I used to work for, my coworker/our database manager dropped a huge stack of sorted papers onto the floor. He immediately went to hit “control+Z” and then realized there’s no undo function for real life.
I yell “ctrl+z” a lot, it NEVER works IRL 🙁
Ugh, so sorry to hear about the injury, but I guess for a best-case scenario… The Burgomaster had (has?) a grade 3 AC separation thanks to a motorcycle accident a few years ago. He opted not to get the surgery and is okay, mostly. His shoulders won’t ever be even and it still aches and he can’t lie on that side very easily. But there are some common complications with surgery to repair that injury, including permanent loss of range of motion. I would recommend getting a second opinion, preferably from a non-MD (like a sports therapist). Good luck!
Seconded on the second opinion advice. Preferably (as CM says) a physical therapist who treats athletes. There are an amazing number of things you can do to help rehabilitate even very severe injuries like this.
Yes! Physical therapy can make such a huge difference! A couple years ago my mom fell on ice outside my house (sorry mom!) and she tore something in her shoulder when she tried to catch herself (I don’t remember specifically what). She was in a fair bit of pain and had little luck with healing in the beginning until I convinced her to see a doc and get a physio referral and it made SUCH a difference. She luckily has pretty much regained full function of that shoulder. Obviously every injury is different, but there are so many techniques that can help you have a better chance of a good outcome.
control + w closes the tab you’re in unless it’s the only open tab, in which case it closes the browser. Feel better!
Most of my favorite shortcuts are excel-related because I find option menus frustrating. Also I can take and save a screenshot without using a mouse. These are some of my most prized skills.
(I switched to left-handed mousing a couple years ago when I accidentally ended up with a lefty desk at work. It definitely took more than a month for it to feel natural. Get well soon!)
🙁 Sorry about your arm and sending healing thoughts!
Sorry about your shoulder! Two tips re mouse:
1) if you google “keyboard shortcut cheatsheet [name of application/browser/OS]” you can often fine nicely formatted cheatsheets to print out.
2) you can switch the mouse buttons so that they match up with your left hand – I find that slightly less confusing (I’ve been left-mousing for more than a year and I am still TERRIBLE at it, my left hand does not consider itself 100% part of my body, it’s more of an autonomous territory with unreliable communication linkages)
Hi, I broke my dominant wrist this weekend so I very specifically feel your pain. If you’re willing to invest, a trackpad is pretty damn good for left-handed mousing. I have the Magic Trackpad at work and the regular one on my laptop at home. Fast healing to you!
I am left-handed and I still struggle with using the mouse with my left hand (turns out a lifetime of using mice people have put on the right-hand side has unfitted me completely for it).
I don’t get that dude’s line of reasoning at all. “I am SOOOOOOO MANY IMPORTANTS that even my spawn needs my name! No weak girl spawn for me, only MANLY kidlet may bear my many importants name! MASCULINE FEELINGS. “
THIS HAPPENED TO MY FRIEND. In the end they named their baby something that worked equally well in English and Polish (rather than the father’s tricky Polish name) that has the same first initial… The father refused to use it and called him “little [initial]” for the first few weeks until my friend actually stared him down and forced him to call his baby by its name.
People are strange.
It’s stories like this that make me want to have a kid just for the hopes of a girl so I can name her after me. TAKE THAT.
Like Lorelai!
Or Phoebe Junior!
“Thag Junior proof of Thag own prowess!”
Here’s another one if you feel like being angry at another dude today https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4…
Be sure to read his charming replies in comments!
UGH WHY.
It took all I had not to reply with “You two should break up and she should SET YOU ON FIRE!”
I hope he never breeds.
FUUUUUUCK. Fucking men.
“My boy Bill, I will see that he’s named after me! I will!”
If unilaterally naming the baby is “non-negotiable,” you know what else is? Unilaterally ending the relationship.
(Holy cow, I am cranky today.)
Holy cow, I am cranky today
Well, if you send me gifs like that, you’re gonna dissipate the crankery.
FINE, YOU WIN. I AM SIGNIFICANTLY LESS CRANKY, DAMMIT.
Your gif game:
Oh, my. *fans self*
STRONG AGREE
That is not cranky, it’s the only logical decision.
Today in (Feminist) History! [Archive]
This day in 1930 saw the birth of Lorraine Hansberry, an American writer and playwright who was the first black woman to have one of her plays performed on Broadway. She was born in 1930, to parents who provoked ire when they bought a home in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, a traditionally white area. The drawn-out legal fight by their white neighbors– on the basis of a covenant that banned African-Americans from buying or leasing land in that neighborhood– eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court, who rejected that specific covenant while at the same time not ruling on the constitutionality of said covenants in general.
Lorraine’s experiences with segregation as a child directly influenced her and her writing. Her most well-known play, A Raisin in the Sun, is about the lives of black Americans living in Chicago and dealing with the same racial segregation that she did. (The play’s title was taken from the Langston Hughes poem “Harlem”, from a line that reads: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”) Her play was the first written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. At 29 years old, she was the youngest American playwright as of that time, and went on to be the fifth woman ever to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.
Though she married a Jewish man, Lorraine was believed to be a closeted lesbian. This is presumably not just speculation or negative gossip, but rather something supported by her personal notebooks and private letters. She wrote about feminism and homophobia, was a gay rights activist, and joined the Daughters of Bilitis; the first lesbian civil rights group in the U.S. Her only other play to be produced while she was alive was The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, which ran for 101 performances and closed the night she died of cancer, at only age 35.
Also on this day…
• Google has you covered with their Doodle celebrating the birth of Yuri Kochiyama on this day in 1921. From Google’s post: “Born in California, Kochiyama spent her early twenties in a Japanese American internment camp in Arkansas during WWII. She and her family would later move to Harlem, where she became deeply involved in African American, Latino, and Asian American liberation and empowerment movements.” She was present at the assassination of her friend, Malcolm X, and held him in her arms as he died.
• In 1800, the birth of Sara Miriam Peale, an American portrait painter who painted primarily politicians and military figures, such as Lafayette, who sat for her four times. (Thought you Hamil-toasties would like that.)
• In 1879, the birth of Nancy Astor, the Viscountess Astor, an American-born British politician, who was the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons.
Lorraine Hansberry was so great! She was also BFFs with Nina Simone.
There’s a good BBC Radio 3 interview with the producers of a recent version of A Raisin in the Sun here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tpdh3
If you’re in Chicago you can go see The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window now at the Goodman Theatre.
So there’s an opera adaptation of The Shining in Minnesota: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/201…
The article seems to imply it’s only running a handful of performances, which doesn’t actually seem to make sense when you look at all the time and money they describe going into it. But I’m also unsure how I feel about the concept of a Shining opera to begin with.
(For those keeping score at home, there was a Carrie musical off-Broadway a little while back too; the cast recording is on YouTube, but I haven’t actually listened to it.)
I heard meh-ish things about Carrie, but I did see a regional theatre production of a rock/almost metal version of Lizzie Borden. The entire cast was four women and it was a glorious celebration of misandry and lesbianism. The end.
I would 100% go see an opera of The Shining. What a perfect plot for an opera! For the record, I’d see a Carrie opera too.
I’m just mad I can’t see it.
I’m not into a Shining opera but I do find the business aspect of it fascinating! MN Opera has invested a bunch of money in building its repertoire with new works. However many of these are co-commissioned with other opera companies or theatres, which spreads the costs out. According to their website they are co-commissioning a production of Cold Mountain with Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia. This is the most common practice and it makes a lot of sense when you take into account just how expensive these productions are. Plus, this is a tiny, tiny industry where everyone knows each other so it’s a matter of sussing out which of your contacts is at an organization whose audience and donors would be receptive to your particular production.
Also (and I don’t think I mean this to be a dig), there’s something SO midwestern about making opera versions of a bunch of beloved films. “It’s classical art, but a story you know and love!”
Oh man, that’s fascinating. I knew nothing about how the logistics of opera companies work and co-commission things, so that makes a lot of sense.
Also (and I don’t think I mean this to be a dig), there’s something SO midwestern about making opera versions of a bunch of beloved films. “It’s classical art, but a story you know and love!”
I feel like that’s a lot of what’s happening with musical theatre on Broadway too, now that I think about it . . .
For the record, the opera is explicitly based on the /book/ version, not the film. Also I’m really angry that I didn’t know it was closing last weekend because I would have picked up a standing room ticket and not complained one bit.
The off-Broadway production of Carrie was actually a revival of the Broadway production from 1988! So horror-movie musicals have been around for a bit.
It was, at the time, the most expensive Broadway flop ever – it closed after 21 performances.
Ooooh, you know what, now that you mention it, I think I remember reading that.
I admit that I would have loved to have somehow been at one of those 21 performances. (With a time machine, I guess, not as a one-year-old.)
ETA: I may also sometimes have a thing for potentially dubious musical theatre. I somehow managed to end up accidentally seeing Elton John’s Lestat musical on Broadway twice in its very very short run. And don’t even care about vampires all that much (or read the Anne Rice novels).
And those two performances of Lestat are two of the five things I’ve ever had a chance to see on Broadway. So I have no explanation for my choices here.
Oh don’t worry, I saw the Broadway production of A Tale of Two Cities four times. And it only ran for three months. Everyone’s got their favorite questionable shows.
Well, I judge myself slightly because those two shows make up two of the six Broadway plays I’ve ever seen ever.
But I was also nineteen at the time and it was so gloriously camp and overwrought and took itself so seriously and I got to see various permutations of two vampires guys kissing each other like it was no big deal. (And I have literally no memory of any of the songs, so I probably don’t even get to count it as a favorite questionable show. When I try to remember them, my brain fills in with random bits of Phantom of the Opera and the two songs I’ve heard from the Rebecca musical . . . which was in German. So I have no idea what it actually sounded like. Sorry, Elton John.)
Fun fact: I worked on the very short-lived Broadway run of the Rebecca musical, until it spiraled into financial fraud and an FBI investigation. Vanity Fair summed it up very well in this article: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/06/rebecca…
Oh, wow. I am going to read this immediately. That sounds like it must have been . . . quite an experience?
THERE’S AN ELTON JOHN MUSICAL ABOUT THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES
WHAT THE HECK
HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS
AAAAHHHHH
By my memory, it premiered on Broadway in April of 2006 and closed in June. They claimed they were recording a cast soundtrack, but they never actually released one. (If they had, I would have bought it in a heartbeat and not have spent the last ten years making up vague fake songs in my head.)
But you got Lestat and Louis kissing and Lestat and Armand kissing, so basically, I feel like Elton John just saw his opportunity to get beautiful men to lock lips and live in each other’s personal space and he just went for it.
There were a couple terrible-quality, very short bootleg clips on YouTube back when it came out (which was also not long after YouTub first became A Thing, if memory serves), but I have no idea if they’re still up there and none of the two or three clips there were did the whole melodramatic camp homoeroticism thing any actual justice.
God, I’m so deeply aggrieved that it seems to have been lost to the mists of time, but I really appreciate your summary. I will probably now also spend the next decade making up vague fake songs about campy homoerotic vampire drama in my head.
…or would that be vampy?! Oh, I slay myself.
*wiggles eyebrows*
I traveled to Minneapolis for the specific reason of seeing it this past weekend. The entire production was fabulous, from the music to the performers to the costumes. My only disappointment was that I was very much looking forward to seeing logistically how they would set up the maze scene, but alas that is not in the book so was not included in the opera.
Also, seconding aria_maria in that the set was incredible. A lot of giant sections that had to be constantly moved in and out. Very impressive!
Also, this message was posted just beyond the ticket check: “This performance of The Shining uses simulated nudity, gunshots, theatrical haze, and strobe effects,” which is a pretty awesome PSA for an opera.
My friend used to work for the Minnesota Opera and got an NEA grant for that production! It sounded amazing, I’m so bummed I couldn’t see it. 🙁
DID ANYONE SEE THE LATEST CAPTAIN AWKWARD.
https://captainawkward.com/2016/05/18/862-q-does-…
I think this guy might be on a par with Constant Bathroom Hogger.
Predatory older men and vulnerable younger girls is such a deep, entrenched problem. I’m slightly cheered that there is somewhat more awareness of it at a systematic level now. I just wish there was a catch-all solution that could retrieve young people from the orbits of emotional vampires and encourage self-love. Problem is, it’s so hard to communicate that without sounding condescending ‘You’ll understand when you’re older!’ etc
If you have to ask the internet if your partner loves you, they probably don’t. 🙁
Add this to the list of Toast quotes to needlepoint.
I HATE THIS MAN
Problem is also, by the time concerned others find out about the relationship and go “uh,” the woman in question is usually already deeply entrenched in the “but I LOVE HIM!” stage, which is a very difficult stage to pry someone out of. (Source: was once in that same stage, and was extremely resistent to being led out.)
I got halfway through that and came back here to say that this guy makes me want to run outside and scream to the high heavens. How do people like this EXIST.
He’s almost cartoonishly terrible! Like, he appears to have no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. How awful it is that we live in a society that conditions many young people, especially girls, to believe that monsters like this are all they deserve.
Absolutely. I weep for the future. Also, don’t men like this have mothers?! Aren’t there women in his life that he has positive feelings for and wants to make happy? Is he truly a MONSTER?
These are the things that baffle me. I can’t imagine someone being so, like you said, cartoonishly, one-dimensionally terrible.
as your local representative for Monster Union 666, i would like to assure everyone that this “man” is not on our roles. if he is indeed a true monster, he is unaffiliated and unlicensed. The members of Monster Union 666 do not support nor condone this sort of predatory shitbaggery.
I was discussing this dude with some friends, and we pretty much agreed that if you set out to describe a jerk, this is TOO MUCH, like, you’d come up with it and have to take out a few flaws because you’d think it was not believable.
this was my exact thought. even the words/ideas she attributed DIRECTLY TO HIM were awful. “oh honey, i don’t care about your health, i just want you to have a perfect ass.” like, i thought most predators were smoother than that.
My heart broke at the line: “I wonder will I ever find a guy who can love someone that has all of the flaws he points out in me”
I spit out my coffee at the rest of the very same sentence: “…he acts like he is a bodybuilder or something, meanwhile he doesn’t even have a gym membership, eat healthy, or go to the gym on a daily basis. I have never, and would never try to change him, even though he is 29, doesn’t have a job and has no clue what he is doing with his life.”
Ugh I read that yesterday and I had to read it in pieces because I kept having to pause to be blindingly angry at that terrible predator. I hope that LW gets out of there and then turns around and nukes the place from orbit.
Aaaaaah I was going to link to this. I’m starting to plan out a play that involves an abusive relationship, so I went onto Captain Awkward to look at the Darth Vader boyfriend tag for research and that was right there. I ended up just copy/pasting that whole letter into my research doc because I was pulling out every other sentence. She deserves someone who would ADORE her and she’s got that asshole making her feel like shit all the time instead. Terrible.
I would like to read your play! I half-tried to evoke an abusive relationship in a fiction piece once, but it just ended up too triggering – hated going back to that place, even for art’s sake.
Thanks, I am kind of revisiting some experiences of my own in writing it, so I hope it turns out well but am also not going to feel guilty about bailing on it if it turns out to be too difficult.
This is too broad and on the nose to be believable as fiction, even though it actually happened 🙁
I feel like he acts more as if he is 24/25 than a 29 year old
And then it just got worse from there. That dude is The Worst. I hope LW gets so far clear of him and his emotional abuse.
” … he is 29, doesn’t have a job and has no clue what he is doing with his life”
BURN HIM TO THE GROUND
We went OFF on this guy in the Toastie Slack yesterday hoo boy.
How do I get to the Toastie Slack? I think I might need it.
You do need it!! You can email ppyajunebug [at] gmail and she will invite you to the slack (you have to be invited), and then voila! You are in!
Yes how?? Please advise!
HI!!! You can email ppyajunebug [at] gmail and she will invite you to the slack (you have to be invited), and then voila! You are in! You can access from the web or an app. We have a ton of channels for topics and there’s a slack bot that does funny things when you say certain code words and it’s great, there’s always someone in there.
Oh, that poor girl. I want to wrap her in a quilt nd give her a cookie and a big soft dog.
A big soft dog that TEARS APART any men who approach her for the next few years.
My late LittleBoyDog was small and soft, but wanted to tear apart any man who approached me. It took a few weeks to teach him that it was OK for Mr Rose to touch me. LittleBoyDog allowed it, but never without a low growl. Which earned him a sharp NO! from me, followed by ignoring him for 15 minutes, the worst punishment for him.
Other men, though. LittleBoyDog was ready to put his teeth into any man who stepped too close to me.
I wish I could loan LittleBoyDog to this young woman.
Now that LIttleBoyDog is gone, Mr Rose puts his arms around me and pauses to listen. Then we both weep when he says, “I don’t hear any growling.”
Ohhh, that’s such a sad but sweet story! And exactly why I want a dog someday.
Aww, yes. That’s my Cavall, except instead of being small and soft he’s a mastiff/st bernard. We call him “cockblocktopus” he doesn’t growl when Señor Negroni comes in for the hug, but if any other man tries to get in my space there’s a lot of highly suspicious dog to get through. Last night I got all weepy when I realized someday he wouldn’t be around to enthusiastically dissuade men from talking to me.
I just got misty-eyed thinking about this.
Yes! I linked to this in another thread! And the explanation – that this is a pattern that happens that’s so hard to detect when you’re young – plays right into the hands of the abuser who is telling her, “You’re so mature for your age,” and “You’re not like other girls.”
Also: “claim as his girlfriend.” Ughhhhhhhh.
imagine your ex-boyfriend as a flat piece of paper.
I want you to mentally crumple that piece of paper.
Make it really tiny and dense.
Did you crumple it? Can you feel it crushed very tight inside your fist?
Good.
Now I want you to mentally launch it into the center of the sun.
It’s so frustrating to think that years ago these men weren’t considered predatory.
My great-uncle, who is by all accounts awesome and smart and kind, who is turning 94 soon (and only recently stopped working part-time) and definitely grew up in a different era, started courting/walking my great-aunt home when she was 14 and he was 22.
I only found this out recently and was HORRIFIED. I know it was the culture, but it’s so fucking creepy, and it’s very hard to reconcile it with this kindly old guy I know.
Yes, and plenty of people like your great aunt had long happy marriages with people they met when they were underage, but still, I can’t help but imagine a life for them where they get to grow and flourish as an adult *before* getting married.
I remember reading about a couple like this – I think it was in a newspaper article about couples who had been married for 60+ years – who had started seeing each other when he was 24 and she was 16. I was interested (and encouraged) to read that her family were all INCREDIBLY SUSPICIOUS and VEHEMENTLY OPPOSED at first because of the age difference, and for all the same reasons we point out today (you’re at different life stages, he’s an adult while you’re still developing into one etc.). So while it was more acceptable back then, it wasn’t entirely – or at least not to everyone.
I was amazed to learn that my parents started dating when he was 19 and she was 14. He claims she pursued him, which wouldn’t surprise me. They married when she was 18 and have been happily married for over 50 years. If my 14 year old daughter dated a 19 year old I’d call the police!
“I know I will never be a bikini model, but I am in very good shape, and he acts like he is a bodybuilder or something, meanwhile he doesn’t even have a gym membership, eat healthy, or go to the gym on a daily basis. I have never, and would never try to change him, even though he is 29, doesn’t have a job and has no clue what he is doing with his life…”
🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁
HE’S TEXTBOOK IT’S ALMOST TOO MUCH
The fact that she could type all that out and still be asking Captain Awkward if he loves her and if she should stay in the relationship is breaking my heart a bit, tbqh.
Oh god, I kept going “this is the most ridiculous/horrible thing I’ve ever read” and then I’d read the next line and have to take a rage break because it kept getting worse.
” Problem is, it’s so hard to communicate that without sounding condescending ‘You’ll understand when you’re older!’ etc”
I think part of it is to only make it a little about age. Yeah, it’s an extra layer of creepy that he started grooming her when she was 17, but folks in relationships with more similar ages easily fall into the same kind of dynamics (and not all relationships with significant age differences are inherently creepy). I thought CA did a good job of presenting advice in a way that the LW wouldn’t find as being about her own maturity levels but about the way she deserves to be treated.
Yes, CA is really good at giving needed advice while never invalidating someone’s lived experience. She’s a genius <3
So true about being difficult to communicate with the younger person. Has anyone ever read “Why I Deeply Dislike Your Older Boyfriend” on Scarleteen? I feel like it does an AMAZING job of laying out the true nature of these relationships in a way that is compassionate, respectful, and understandable to a person enthralled. I keep it in the back of my mind, always, in case I ever need to send it to someone in such a situation (my fear is that my nieces might need to read it one day. Fingers crossed).
Link please?
http://www.scarleteen.com/article/abuse_assault/w…
Thanks!
I actually assumed the “terrible stupid rude misogynist boyfriend” link above was to this before I read on. This guy is the worrrrrrrst. And there are so many of him!
There are times when I read something like this — something where some egregiously, obviously terrible dude is dating a woman who’s worried about not doing enough to cater to him — and I think “is heterosexuality a giant con game?”
I mean, I know a lot of perfectly lovely straight people who don’t act anything like this dude and aren’t in dysfunctional relationships! I know they’re not all like this! But there are so many Captain Awkward letters in this vein. (Not to mention the Dear Prudence letters like that one from the woman whose husband refuses to brush his teeth, ever. And 95% of the stories in that epic Metafilter thread on emotional labor.) And one can’t help but wonder, sometimes, if there’s a massive scam being perpetrated by selfish dudes to get all their emotional and sexual needs catered to without having to give anything in return.
As a bisexual I am frequently really sure that heterosexuality is in fact that world’s most malicious con game. I hear you loud and clear here.
This is an extremely plausible theory and I would like to subscribe to your ‘Heterosexuality: Why It’s A Con Game’ newsletter.
One reason I’ve started to really enjoy r/relationships is that dudes can’t help but to realise that the patriarchy exists. Other parts of Reddit may be all like “girls and guys are equally terrible, I was slapped by a woman once which proves that domestic abuse is Just As Bad for men, bla bla bla”. But if you read r/relationships regularly, you’ll notice that the same problems keep showing up. Extremely young women dating terrible older men, women of all ages with emotionally abusive or immature or selfish or violent male partners, sad kids with deadbeat dads. There just isn’t an equal number of men posting about similar problems with women, even though Reddit skews so heavily male (the exception seems to be that there’s a number of threads about bad mothers or mothers-in-law, but they usually aren’t violent).
I’ve seen dudes be almost aggressively surprised when yet another 21-year-old woman creates a thread about her 38yo boyfriend of three years who bosses her around and won’t commit to their relationship, like “how and why is this such a common problem??”. It’s like they never noticed before, but after seeing the same threads day after day after day they have no choice.
I always wonder about the Marvel Normal Civilian Starter Pack. It doesn’t hide your silhouette or most of your face, it doesn’t blend in with large crowds, and it frankly screams “don’t look at me.” You would think that eventually Tony would make an algorithm to go through security cam footage for anyone with aviators, too many layers, and a logo-free baseball cap.
Like, at the very rock-bottom least you could buy a hat from a local team and stomp on it/ run it through the wash/ rub dirt on it until it looks like you’ve had it for a decade, but no logo shows the world you are deliberately avoiding identifying marks.
They also have face changing tech in the Marvel universe. If they really wanted to hide they could, these guys just want to show off how hot they look in ray-bans (very hot. they look very hot.)
Idk. Natasha had face-changing tech when SHIELD was supplying her with spy gear, but Steve and Co destroyed not only SHIELD but their relationships with the only guy they knew who could give them fancy stealth gadgets.
Why can’t they just go into the Face/Off machine and get a whole new face??
(Also this is a universe where you can apply a clingfilm thing and change your face.)
Natasha had the right idea in Winter Soldier: it’s not enough to put on Normal Civilian Wear, you have to make people not want to look at you, ideally by making them mildly embarrassed by your PDA.
I need PDA here to mean Personal Digital Assistant, like she used a Newton to schedule villains’ ass-beatings but the Newton was such crummy tech compared to an iPhone that people found it embarrassing and looked away
My partner’s brother married an Australian woman and lives in Adelaide. He emailed some photos of their recent trip to Queensland (I think? Maybe Northern Territory) recently and one was of a crocodile. Me: “ARE THE CHILDREN STILL ALIVE?” (Nobody got eaten, apparently. I still find the thought of being in a boat with crocodiles swimming nearby horrifying.)
When I was much younger I went on holiday to Australia and definitely swam in waterholes in the outback. I look back at it now and can only think of all of the terrible things that might have happened. My dad was very sensible in his refusal.
Since we’ve known each other my bf always said he dreamed of having a son and naming him after himself.
No offence meant to people who do name children after them, but this is a bizarre and alarming mindset.
Everything I hear about Australia makes me feel much more magnanimous and understanding over how all of my Aussie friends are hard drinking crazy people. Like they are all just seriously WILD partiers, but if my country was constantly trying to poison/eat/disembowel me, I’d probably like ten beers a day, too.
That’s… a good excuse, and one I’m gonna use from now on! But seriously crocs are probably our most dangerous thing, and when you’ve been to the Top End and learnt about them, you’re just a huge pile of nopenopenope. You learn what to do and where not to go, it’s why most of the stories of attacks seem to be about foreign tourists. If you’re ever bored/have a very strong stomach, look up videos of jumping crocodiles, or the death roll…eek!
Hey! Funnel webs are gross as well and there was that time I saw a red-bellied black snake being fought off by a bunch of crows and noped my way quietly back to actual streets…
In fairness, ALL of our native mammals are adorable and benign. Even the mice. (Except for the red kangaroos, those things will punch you in the head.) (And male platypuses are actually venomous.) (That’s it, though.)
Also, can we find Rose and have a gentle talk with her about gendered divisions of labor? And a less gentle talk with her room mates?
My boss and my equal-level-coworker are both gone today, so I’m just gonna listen to the Flash Gordon soundtrack and pretend I’m Brian Blessed with wings.
GORDON’S ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE
FLASH
aaaAAAAAAAAAA
NOT THE BORE WORMS
Flash, Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!
Honestly, pretending I’m Brian Blessed has gotten me through more than one rough day. Not in any particular role, no.
Ugh that fucker with the baby names. If it wasn’t a super terrible idea for the children, I’d want someone to troll him super hard with kid names. Meet Adam Adam Lastname, we’ll call him Junior. Next time we have a kid we’ll also name him Adam Adam Lastname. He can be Junior 2. A girl? No problem. Adam Adam Lastname. Junior the 3rd. FLOOD HIM WITH ADAMS.
Ahh, the George Foreman method.
This is nearly what my cousin’s husband’s family does. Every firstborn male is named, let us say, Jonathan. It’s an endless see of Jonathan, Jon, and Jonny Smiths. They all have different middle names, so no numbers, but still. My cousin insisted she would never participate, and was desperately hoping to have a girl to avoid the issue. Nope. Coming this summer, to a family near me, Jonathan [Whatever] Smith.
My family does this with a different J name. The eldest son of each eldest son is always J___ [Whatever] M___.
It would have been me but I broke the pattern by being a girl. I actually kind of want to revive it if I ever have a son though…
Super traditional naming structure for Greek families, hence the joke in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. “Anita, Diane, and Nick. Anita, Diane, and Nick. Nick, Nick, Nick, Nikki.” Firstborn boys get named after the grandfather (or relevant male grandperson), firstborn girls after the grandmother (or relevant female grandperson). I am one of five first cousins sharing the same first extremely unusual name because we’re all named after my great-aunt. Until last year, we all had the same first and also extremely unusual last name and three of us lived in the same city. So. Yes, this is a thing.
My ex’s family (Italian-American, though) has a similar eldest-son convention! The eldest son of eldest son is named after their (paternal, obviously) grandfather, so it’s an alternating chain of the same two names for many generations. It’s a good thing we didn’t stay together and have kids, because one of the names is cool, and one is decidedly NOT cool, and my ex has the cool one. 🙁
Yeah, my family is a bit like that too, second names are mostly parents or grandparents names.
Except, I’m the first male in about five generations who is actually known by his first name- all the others are called by their father/grandfathers name.
The scope for confusion is huge.
I know someone whose dad WANTED to do that. He wanted to name his second son “histerriblename the third,” when he had already named his first son after himself. Luckily, the kid’s mother put her put her foot down and baby got his own name.
I just can’t imagine the reasoning behind doing that.
My partner’s mother is one of 5 siblings. They are all named Maria. Including the boy.
this is blowing my mind
Super-Catholic Filipino family! Gotta name everyone after the Virgin Mary, of course.
(They all go by nicknames IRL. Two of the sisters both use Maria professionally but have different last names now.)
A devout Muslim family I know named all of their children, boys and girls, Muhammed. Each has their own gendered, attractive middle name. They are each M. [Whatever] Familyname. No one knows they’re all named Muhammed. Everyone knows each kid simply as [Whatever]. The M. in front of their names doesn’t come up until filling out official forms.
Like the Dr Seuss book about too many Daves!
No such thing!
Well, not true. There are plenty of jerk Daves 🙁
I know someone who did this – he’s Fred Leslie Lastname, his sons are Frederick and Freddie, and his first daughter is Leslie. (The youngest daughter somehow managed to escape the trend.)
For those interested in good-looking men: http://www.gofugyourself.com/your-afternoon-man-n…
Oh my word.
A friend sent this to me last night, and I promptly got the vapors. I looked at it again maybe 15 minutes ago and it’s just as powerful.
Oh sweet baby jesus
Goodness me.
Nathan Adrian is the best thing about Summer Olympic years and I’m so happy the media is glomming on to it!
Holy fuck…
Oh man, I hope that couple has a girl. And also is no longer a couple by the time they have said girl.
OT, guys, but I am feeling Conflicted about the news that I am going to have surgery. Like on the one hand – hurrah! no more mysterious abdominal pains because the non-cancerous cyst will be gone! But on the other hand – I am going to have abdominal surgery and that seems terrifying, even in 2016. I am therefore soliciting any calming words, .gifs, and stories you’d care to share.
My surprise hysterectomy last year went fine. I was fine. I wish it hadn’t been the best option, but it was (as far as I was concerned) and now I am at least free from the messed-up uterus (even if it didn’t solve the other problems like I was hoping it would).
Get a woman surgeon if at all possible. Gather a network of friends who will do things for you. Resolve yourself to recovery even though recovery is boring and horrible. Give me your mailing address so I can send you a card (clevermanka68 at gmail).
Thank you dahling! My cousin also just had a full hysterectomy, and she was out shopping the next day. Science!
Also, my mum is a nurse, and will be flying in for the surgery.
It’s not so bad, really. I had abdominal surgery almost 2 years ago. And then a cousin had abdominal surgery 1 year ago.
Cousin had to have her uterus removed (hysterectomy). It was done through 3 one-inch incisions on her abdomen and through her vagina. She was in the hospital only 1 or 2 nights, felt fine in a few days. No lingering fatigue, no pain her meds couldn’t handle.
My procedure was to remove my Incredible Uterine Hulk and was nothing like Cousin’s surgery or yours. A large, benign fibroid had grown in my uterus. 13 pounds was removed from my body. I was cut from belly button down to my pubic hair (sorry for the visual). It’s an ugly scar. I call it my zipper.
But I was in the hospital only 3 or 4 nights. I had pain meds that were so effective that I almost never hurt. The only pain I experienced was riding in the car after leaving the hospital. Once the car stopped, I never hurt again. Recovery was slow, but easy. I felt fine, just very tired for several months.
Your procedure is almost certainly going to be like Cousin’s, definitely nothing like mine. And my experience was no big deal. Cousin’s was almost easy. You’ll be fine.
You don’t have to be scared. But it’s OK if you are. The worst is the anticipation. Once you wake after the surgery, you will feel so much better.
Every time I felt scared, mostly in advance of the procedure, I told the nurse or doctor present at the moment. My fear was addressed every time, with patience, kindness, and sometimes with anxiety meds (they knew I had been diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety years ago).
Wishing you a responsive medical team and abundant reserves of serenity. ((Toasthugs))
O_o 13 pounds!!!
I suspect that my cyst is more like yours than your cousin’s (eight years. I have had mystery pain for nigh on EIGHT YEARS at this point), but I already have so many scars that prolly one more won’t be too troublesome 🙂
Thank you for your story. :toastiehugsrightback:
Wowzers, your giant fibroid! Mine was softball/grapefruit sized so I also had an abdominal hysterectomy. 6″ or so incision right above my pubic hair, 2 nights in hospital, about 6 weeks to really get back to 100%. The fatigue after surgery is suprising!
The 3 best things I did were:
— telling the anesthetist that I got sick from general anesthesia when I had it as a little kid, so they loaded me up with a scopolamine patch and some anti-nausea stuff in my IV. No idea whether I would have had nausea without all that it but it kept me nice and sleepy so I didn’t get bored to death in the recovery room (for some reason it took hours to get me moved into a regular room).
— taking the advice of everyone who told me to take the pain meds regularly & not be a hero. I had almost no pain–the exception was that I got a cold (or something) right after I got home & had a cough. Turns out that Percocet is also a good cough suppressant!
— having my doctor take a picture of my uterus after it was removed. (I am always curious and never squeamish, so YMMV.) It’s fun to text your friends all “Want to see my uterus?”
Xolandra, you will feel tons better without that cyst, I predict! And to echo what others have said, don’t hesitate to ask for what you need (meds, information, reassurance, an extra blanket, whatever). It’s calming simply to have your needs met, and I found it reassuring that what seemed like a big deal to me (abdominal surgery! general anesthesia! hospital stay!) was all in a day’s work for everyone else in the room.
Thank you! You’re right, this is all very normal, and I should really try to remember this. But it did not help that, when i told my mother (who works in day surgery) my diagnosis, she said, “Oooo, you have one of the interesting ones!” and then told me aaaaaaaaaalllllllllll about why they are the interesting ones.
I had a dermoid cyst removed from an ovary a few years ago. The worst part of the experience was having to fast the night before. I was sore, but not so sore that a single Lortab wouldn’t make me comfortable, and I felt better cramp-and-mysterious-pain-wise immediately after surgery.
The one tip I’d give you is this: when they say not to lift anything more than X number of pounds, they really mean it. My surgery was laparoscopic, and I still got surprisingly muscle-sore after grocery shopping a week post-surgery.
10-4. I am already planning my recovery-reading list, and it will not contain any Tomes. Or Russian novels, I guess 🙂
I AM SO EXCITED TO NO LONGER HAVE MYSTERY PAIN, am glad to hear that your surgery worked!
This came up when I searched “Relaxed gif.” I don’t know if it helps, but I certainly don’t think it will hurt:
Maybe they are referring to the hair? That side-eye is not terribly relaxing, IMO. But thank you ^_^
On a relevant, people have surgery all the time without issues note, my bff just had surgery a few months ago to remove a benign dermoid cyst on her ovary that was about the size of a golf ball, and it all went swimmingly and she is perfectly fine and feeling much better. From what she told me the worst part was that there was some pain near the actual site of the surgery for a few days.
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS, thank you!
Hi, I had a abdominal hysterectomy last August, and the recovery was good. It was actually nice to have time to rest, I work full time and have two kids so I just made the best of having to be off my feet. I really felt fine after the first week but I followed my doctor’s advice and really took it easy for 4 weeks. Going back to work after the 4 weeks was ok, I was as gentle with myself as possible and went by how I felt. If I was really tired I would go home a little early.
I feel great now, I did a half marathon recently and I am strong and sturdy. One hundred percent improvement over what was going on with my body before. Best of luck to you and all the hugs if you want them!
YES! Strong and sturdy are some of my favourite ways of (physically) being. (also MAD PROPS for a half marathon. I can run, like, a block before I start whining).
I had my gallbladder out lapriscopically a few years ago. I’m not great at healing, and I was laid out for three or four days, but really in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that bad. (My sister had the same surgery later, and was running by day three, so.)
Advice: if they give you an anti nausea pill with the painkiller TAKE IT. Stock up on really calming things to watch (sunrise earth tv show, very soothing nature documentaries, other things with no plot and very slow-moving graphics). Get a big cup with a really long straw (I could barely lift a glass the first couple days, but your surgery might not interfere with your abs so much). Think beforehand about who you will demand to bring you what treats, because you can totally demand that people bring you things, but you might be to muzzy to ponder it effectively depending on how you feel after.
Oh, and one thing I didn’t do that I wish I had – at the pre-surgery appointment, ask where your incisions will be, and maybe see if there are any options – I ended up with the biggest incision right under my bra band, and that made things difficult when I went back to work and had to, you know, wear a bra and shit.
Good luck!
That is excellent advice re: the anti-nausea meds, thank you. I have nausea issues anyway, so prolly I would not ever say no 🙂 And also about the location of the incision! It did not really occur to me to ask, that is also excellent advice!
I have the old BBC version of P&P, probably I will just watch that on endless loop 😉
I had gallbladder surgery in 2007. It was amazing what having a life free of abdominal pain was like (and oh to eat flavorful food and not rice cakes again!).
Just make sure you take care of yourself afterwards. I got cabin fever and went back to college a week after surgery which was just Too Much. Pain attention to how you feel physically and not how bored you are.
I have generous sick leave, and plan on using a bunch of it to read and crochet with my mom ^_^
I had abdominal surgery twice in fourth grade! The first was to remove my appendix, the second because some tissue got clogged in my intestines and they had to cut some of it out. This may sound bad, BUT IT WENT FINE. I have no traumatic memories of being in the hospital. I got lots of books and stuffed animals and didn’t have to go to gym class for a while (actually, I kinda never went back to gym class that year, just stayed in the library and played Oregon Trail >.>).
I am not jealous of your surgeries, but I am jealous of your year off of phys. ed, because holy balls did I ever hate that class, and every teacher that taught it to me.
Oh yes, PE is definitely a nightmare at every grade level. And yet — I wish now, at 27, that I had had decent PE at some point, or had been allowed to join that volleyball team in high school, because ugh I could really use some basic familiarity with How to Work Out. Everyone keeps saying how important it is, etc.
Holy gods, I AM HERE FOR THIS. I remember reading this xoJane piece and feeling it resonate so hard that I thought I was going to shatter: http://www.xojane.com/issues/its-time-to-abolish-…
And what you say – “basic familiarity with How to Work Out” – is so daunting when you are just starting and have no idea what you are doing! Solidarity. I remember using the gym membership that I got as an undergrad, like, twice, because it was so so daunting. What do these machines do? How many reps? How much weight? Am i doing this right? Does this pain hurt in the good way or the bad? I don’t knoooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww………
If you’re looking for tools, I post about loving this tumblr all of the time: http://the-exercist.tumblr.com/ It is not just exercise tips, it also destroys Fitspo memes, and has recipes. I really like it.
Yeah, it’s cute when you’re growing up and everyone just calls you a bookworm (or, like one teacher did, ask me about that odd growth from my hand) because you sneak out of PE to read, but there was actually an OPPORTUNITY for important skills missed, even though there’s all the usual PE garbage that goes with it.
Ooh yes, I’m following that tumblr! I haven’t gotten serious about practicing what they suggest, but at least I know where to go for non-trash advice.
In PE’s defence, I am really not sure if there would have been a way to get proto-Xolandra to treat PE as seriously as other classes. But I am _pretty_ sure that if there had been, like, goals outlined at the beginning of the year and skills imparted that were designed to achieve those goals, I would have tried harder. But, like, if you’re going to get me to “learn” the rules of badminton, tennis, basketball, bowling and curling but then test me on my ability to do situps, preeeeeeeeeettttttttttty sure I’m going to rebel instead of excel. Jackasses.
I’m not serious about the suggestions either; mostly I don’t have the required strength, but it is nice to have a place to go for ideas when I get bored with my ab routine ^_^
I had two C sections and discovered that my superpower is recovering from major abdominal surgery so I will attempt to waft some of those vibes your way.
Also, if it’s going to be hard to bend, then put something near your bed to help you get in and out.
Gracias. My vegetarian skin needs all of the healing vibes it can get.
My bed is _pretty_ low to the ground, but I will definitely remember this advice!
I tied a soft rope to the post at the foot of the bed and kept the free end where I could reach it. Pulling on that helped me out of bed and also helped me lie down gently without using my abs. Arm strength instead.
*takes notes*
I’ve had three abdominal surgeries (and will be getting another within a year), one to remove my gallbladder, one to remove a cyst from my ovary, and one to remove that ovary and a bunch of other stuff (those last two were done by robots!) and honestly the worst part is trying to sit up from a horizontal position. And even that was abated with my good friend Vicodin. I was on a plane and taking a midterm the week after that second one.
It’s completely normal to be anxious – being operated on in any capacity is scary! – but just think of how much better you’ll feel once the thing that’s in there is gone and you no longer need to worry about it. The relief, I’ve found, far outweighs the worry.
But by all means, get some Xanax. Get it get it get it.
Robotic surgeons FTW! I hope that mine is largely done by robots as well.
I am _so_ looking forward to the mysterious pain being gone, and Very Grateful that I live in an era in which surgery is a (nonlifethreatening) option. And also Xanax 😀
Something to know before you go, too, is that if you are having the robotic surgery, you’ll likely be required to have IVs in both arms. They wrap you up like a burrito – arms included – so they install a back up IV just in case one get kinked. In my case(s) this sucked since I was on a clear liquid diet for 2 days before the surgery and was very dehydrated. So, drink a lot of water up until the point you’re not supposed to anymore!
This is insanely useful advice, thank you! *goes and finds litres of water*
I just had surgery, and I second the recommendations of telling your medical pros that you are nervous! I told that to everyone, and people were super nice to me. When I woke up, and was in recovery room, I told one nurse that I was lonely and he sat and chatted with me a bit which was great.
Also, 90210 on Netflix. Very therapeutic
Yeah, medical staff (especially nurses) tend to be great humans. They aren’t all, but what cross-section of society is uniquely excellent (other than this here commentariat)?
I… should probably acknowledge that Netflix is here to stay and work out how to get it on my TV. *sigh*
I have never had a surgery like that, so I have no comforting, first-hand stories, but I come bearing gifs!
I have a cute kitten
I have Adele and Miranda Hart cracking up together and being adorable (and if that interests you, then I would recommend this old episode of the Graham Norton show, which is basically my favorite)
I have Leslie telling Ann Perkins about all her breakups, plus Ron Swanson dancing, to make you laugh
Speaking of dancing and making you laugh, I have Angel and Wesley
I have Cookie Monster being super happy, to remind you how happy you’re going to be once your mystery pain is gone
And I have lots of comforting hugs
Good luck! I hope all goes well with your surgery.
THAT CAT. If that cat can get under that door, I can get through this!
skywriting isn’t always positive *cackles*
I… feel like I should record myself dancing so that I can add to these beautiful .gifs.
Cookie Monster face = mine yesterday, before the terror set in.
GILES. HUG ME FOREVER, GILES. (also the other hugs are great, too)
Thank you! ♥
I want Giles hugs!
Whenever I am feeling particularly down, I go to Youtube and watch Angel and Wesley dancing, and the world is suddenly a better place.
Sorry to have missed this earlier, but I also had laparoscopic abdominal surgery and it went FINE and I was going for walks with my niece a week later and back at work two weeks later. Don’t be surprised at shoulder pain, for you have a nerve that goes up to your shoulder from your belly. Post-anaesthetic depression and fatigue are also normal, alas, so if they show up that’s what they are. Take your pain meds. My Toast burner email is [email protected] if I can answer any questions for you.
Shoulder pain, depression, fatigue. Check.
Your email! So generous, thank you! ♥
WHAT NO he told her something was non-negotiable about the baby currently inside HER body? Red flags, red flags everywhere. Parenting classes, stat.
She who births it gets to name it.
God look at Bucky in that screenshot with his stupid shirt unbuttoned over another stupid shirt and his puzzlingly plain hat and his scruff and his weird stringy hair. I would bang him like a screen door in a hurricane.
I AM HERE WITH YOU. RIGHT HERE.
I don’t understand you at all, but I like the way you turn a phrase.
i DON’T WANT TO LIKE IT, BUT I DO.
So I watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier yesterday in preparation for seeing Civil War, and although I found the movie itself rather boring, I…. I am SHOCKED and somewhat APALLED at how hot Bucky is. I don’t generally like long hair on my dudes! I am definitely not into emo goths! WHAT ARE THESE PANTSFEELINGS, HOW IS THIS HAPPENING
“…bang him like a screen door in a hurricane.”
God bless.
I’m still signing people up for the Toast Post Summer Care Package Exchange!
If you would like to participate, please email the following info to toastsummerexchange(at)gmail(dot)com:
-Your name and address
-Your username here, if you’d like to share it
-Care package preferences/interests
-Any allergies that might be applicable
-Oh, please note if you’re okay mailing internationally (I am going to try to mostly match people to others in their same country, but I’ll see how it goes.)
I’m thinking a small box of care package items such as snacks, books, fun bath products, stickers. I’m thinking about ~$20 value, but I also plan to pair people by type of care package where possible, ie crafty people with crafty people, food people with other food people.
I will probably start emailing people their matches next week. Also included in those emails will be more info, such as a mailing deadline.
I don’t know if I specified enough in my email — I am definitely not crafty and am open to food items or non-food items!
I also plan to pair people by type of care package where possible, ie crafty people with crafty people, food people with other food people
I work at a quirky, feminist-y gift shop, so I literally do this sort of thing AS MY JOB. * flexes muscles * I’m excited because I don’t have nearly enough opportunities in my life to use my job skill of “create a gift basket for a queer cat-loving librarian type.”
You could make a mint with a quarterly box of that description, methinks
I signed up today! Very excited about it.
Doing the lord’s work.
DC tinder is also a circle of hell. I once saw a profile that read “likes: liberty, dislikes: the government.”
😮
Then why is that person living in DC and not, say, a floating hamsterball in international waters?
He reminds me of the guy I knew at uni who was very anti-EU and now (surprise surprise) works in Brussels. For the EU. Of course.
He’s bringing down the system from within.
this is always how it works.
he likes to keep big government where he can see it: signing his paychecks
or he’s just not of DC’s carpetbagger class (it happens!) and it’s sorta hard to move to the Utah mountains or wherever without money; I’d buy this town turning anyone even vaguely anti-authoritarian full Tea Party if they can’t escape for long enough
I didn’t think of that; I’m always just so confused by people running for public office on an anti-government platform/holding anti-governnment views and working for a government that I don’t think “oh, maybe he’s just bleeding the beast until he can afford to become a full-fledged separatist.”
I’ve seen “don’t tread on me” stuff as part of statehood/ local control campaigns, but then that’s calling for a different type of government as opposed to no government?
iunno neither the Gadsden flag nor listing ‘government’ as a dislike on tinder really suggest any one coherent political vision, to me
I guess the first guy probably has a bunch of guns
I have a Windows Phone and there’s no tinder app for it so while dating in DC is harder without it, I’m mostly glad my phone is here to save me from that nightmare. OKC is bad enough. Windows Phone: the best wingman.
NYC dating apps are horrifying too. I just saw a guy yesterday whose bio was “I’m on here because you didn’t smile at me in the elevator.”
UGH.
WITNESS MY TERRIBLE VENGEANCE
Kill him.
Hah! I linked that r/relationships post on the Slack last night and we were all discussing it. Nicole, are you secretly in the Slack chat? (Or not-so-secretly.)
Seriously though, that guy is awful. Not just the name thing, but the “I don’t wanna have a baby girl for bs sexist reasons” nonsense.
I am not!! I try to avoid joining things like that bc I want people to feel like they can talk more freely about stuff, honestly. It puts a damper on things that are meant for readers to have an Authority Figure there.
Maybe you could join us Post-Toast?
I’ve heard soooo many women who have a boy baby do the whole ‘well, husband is happy now he has a SON’, or ‘it doesn’t matter if the next one is a girl because hubby gets his SON’ or ‘he just really needed to have a SON, y’know, it’s so *important* to men’ and I’m just screaming internally STOP DENIGRATING GIRL CHILDREN STOP INTERNALISING MISOGYNY STOOOOP’
See also: mothers who buy into the ‘boys are just EASIER, you know?’ Maybe that has something to do with the fact that you obviously favour your male child over your female one?
I know, not all mothers (Not most mothers, in fact). But I seem to encounter sooo many of them, and the tongue-biting, it huuurts
Yeah, I hear that a lot at work and it drives me up a wall. (Then again so does the obsession with the gender binary, only tangentially related but we had a double baby shower recently and neither coworker is finding out the biological sex of the baby in advance and numerous people were whining about how ‘hard’ it is to buy gender-neutral things.)
Yuss. See also: a Man I know who told his wife ‘it’d be nice if the next one is a girl so you guys can, you know, go shopping and stuff’. SIR YOU PROBABLY MEAN WELL BUT YOU NEED TO SHUT UP NOW.
What? It’s not hard at all! Get any yellow article of clothing, or something that’s animal-themed. All babies can use a blanket with some cute bunnies on it. Or a book for when they’re a little older–Pat the Bunny! Goodnight Moon! Or even just a teddy bear! Gee whiz, people are dodos.
RIGHT? i think it would be MORE fun but whatever, people are OBSESSED with buying frilly pink things for baby girls and manly blue things for baby boys, like they even care and/or aren’t going to grow out of it in a week.
Tbh if I ever somehow decide I want a kid I’m never telling people the gender, and demanding neutral clothes lol.
Or, they can be like my boys whose favorite colors are purple, pink, and blue with sparkles. Because they are pretty colors. Who cares – they are kids!
Exactly!! Blue with sparkles sounds great, also.
Fun fact: all babies like bright colors and sparkles. It’s just how they are.
My daughter gets called “lil fella” whether she is wearing pink and sparkles or a Ninja Turtles onesie. The worst was when a waiter told us we had a real “ladies man” on our hands. Ugh.
Ugh the weird projection of romantic/borderline sexual behavior onto babies! Why do people do this!?!?!?!?
I hate it! It’s gross, and even if she was a boy, why on earth was that something he deemed appropriate to say? He got a really steely glare and should be glad we were at the “check-getting” part of our restaurant experience. *sigh*
Ugh. I really hope it was early enough in the check-getting process that you had the opportunity to give him no tip whatsoever. I forgive a loooooooot when it comes to calculating tips, but creeper stuff like that is not on the list.
I’m pretty sure he got a tip, but a bare-minimum, rounded-down one. I’m pretty forgiving when it comes to tips as well, but assholery is certainly not a forgiving quality and is a direct reflection of the server.
I don’t knoowwwwww but my eensy nephew was just here for a visit (3 mos old) and they were joking about how all the girl babies caught his eye.
I was like, “He? is three?? months old??? He basically sees BLURS further than two feet away? They are delightful and fascinating blurs because he is a new human and everything is delightful and fascinating, but – BLURS.” Plus also no concept whatsoever of gender, sexual attraction, etc etc etc ughhhhhh.
Even if the parents know ahead of time, I refuse to buy gendered clothes/books/whatever. Won’t do it. Can’t make me. Not forcing a gender on your child.
Yep. The two little girls in my life got pirate ships for Christmas last year.
I mean, yes, there are options,but also baby stuff is so heavily gendered right now sometimes it can be tough. I mean, they are even gendering the animal stuff these days! (cats are for girls, dogs for boys, often owls for girls, frogs still sometimes gender neutral, but sometimes clearly for boys, etc.) I mean, I also don’t think it’s a disaster for babies to be dressed/toweled dry/snuggled in clothes/towels/blankies for the “wrong” gender, but the gendering is still super ridiculous.
Yeah, we knew the gender and told people, but I ALSO told people, “Please, non-gendered items if you can, I don’t want this kid covered only in pink until she’s old enough to choose it herself.” And still people bought pink.
UGH US TOO. COME ON PEOPLE IS IT SO MUCH TO ASK? Ok, sorry for the caps, didn’t realize I am still mad about this til now!
I was the first girl child born in many years on my dad’s side of the family, and his relatives had a pink, ruffled fit of joy at being able to shop for a baby girl. Happily, he comes from thrifty people, who bought clothing that was actually too big for a newborn, so my parents were set for nice toddler clothes for awhile. Mom’s family provided all the hand-me-downs that were actually appropriate for a child who was busy trying to make friends with earthworms.
I, meanwhile, was happily wearing sweaters as pants when I was two, so fashion was clearly not really a thing that mattered to me.
oh my gosh! I tried to get inexpensive stuff from like Target and Kohl’s and Beall’s (Florida version) for my baby niece last December and literally the ONLY things that weren’t gendered were for very newborn babies, and they were white and I was specifically trying to buy things for an older or larger child (SIL was REALLY big! what if the newborn needed 3mo size clothes before 3mo?!), and it was impossible.
my sister has explicitly said to only buy from garage sales or thrift stores for her babies-to-be, unless we enjoy making things ourselves, and she’s looking forward to not giving a fuck what the “gender” of the clothes are, as long as we pay rock bottom prices, which is honestly A OK with me.
Even if I know the gender, I refuse to buy pink baby clothes for girls or blue for boys on principle. I sometimes get blue or green outfits for girls, and red for boys works great.
I once had a coworker whose desk was next to mine for the duration of the pregnancy and I got to listen to this for months. The first time I heard someone react to the news by saying cheerfully, “Congratulations! I bet your husband hopes it’ll be a boy!” I thought it must be a weird one-time fluke, but nope. Luckily(??), she was absolutely one of those people too, so that always got a response of enthusiastic agreement from her.
Then again, a few years back, I had another pregnant coworker who was asked if she knew yet whether it would be a boy or a girl and she replied, “It’s a boy, THANK GOD. Girls are the WORST.”
And I just had a moment of realizing, Oh, okay, that’s how the cycle of thinking like this keeps perpetuating.
It’s so sad 🙁
Oh god I hope if that ever happens to me I have the wherewithal to just deadpan and say “Why would you think that?” over and over until they stick their foot in their mouth and hop away.
I aspire to have that kind of confidence and a modicum of quick thinking, but my past behaviour indicates that this is doubtful.
re: congrats, bet your husband hopes it’s a boy, I heard this a lot all three times I was pregnant, but especially as my number of girl children increased. And every time I was annoyed but also smugly pleased to reply, “no he doesn’t care” (first one) or “no, actually he would prefer another girl” (second and third ones). Suck it haters! Daughters are the best! 2/2 parents in this family prefer them!
Yeah, my mother-in-law still sometimes says this when we talk about our kid’s latest fit. “Boys are just easier.” A. How would you know, you only had the one kid, who happened to be a boy? B. That’s just not true at all. Some kids are easier, some are harder, I refuse to believe gender has anything to do with it.
Boys are only ‘easier’ in the context of a deeply ingrained patriarchy which, when internalized, encourages women to view *all* other females as competition, even their own *daughters*. It’s a horrible con trick, and there’s nothing ‘natural’ about it.
And in which “boy” disruptive behaviors are just youthful high spirits, while “girl” disruptive behaviors are melodrama.
MJoy and I have one daughter, which is precisely what we both hoped for. We are librarians, a profession that is 80% female. We have two sets of close friends – one is a lesbian couple and the other are a lesbian couple with two daughters. He lives on Girl Island and he is THRILLED WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE OTHER MEN COME TO GIRL ISLAND.
I mean, you’re going to need to get through a rigorous screening process before you’re welcomed to Girl Island, but, you know. At least try and stop being ridiculous about the company of women and girls.
Mr Worms was incredibly excited the second we were told we were having a girl. He is a happy resident of Girl Island! He also gets incredibly upset when someone asks if he “helps” take care of her. Of course he does, he’s the other parent…
Spouse is the only dude in our house, and he likes it just fine. Our neighbors have 4 girls and two girl dogs, and while I don’t know neighbor dude that well, he doesn’t seem particularly oppressed or unhappy. Girl Island FTW!
Ugh my dad loves to be like “good thing your dog is a boy, otherwise [your spouse] would be totally surrounded by girls” (we have two female cats). I’m always just like “mmm.” (I’m not very good at confronting my parents.)
My spouse would actually prefer to have a daughter, mostly because he doesn’t feel comfortable with a lot of societal toxic masculinity stuff and thus is mildly freaked out about the idea of parenting a boy. I think he’d do a great job with it, precisely because of that, but I understand his reservations.
But with a boy, he could directly contribute to the raising of a young man not steeped in toxic masculinity!
Girl Island is the best! My husband is the only male person in the family (me, three daughters, and a girl dog) and he thinks it’s great and gets super annoyed when he gets condolences on the subject.
That’s funny because I’ve heard a very strong preference the other way from my SIL and her friend and a lot of parent aimed articles in the UK; ‘girls are so much easier, they’re quiet and entertain themselves, whereas boys are loud and throw things and run around all the time ‘
My SIL will not shut up about how easy their 2nd baby (a girl, 1st is a boy) is and why that’s because she’s a girl. It has nothing to do with how much more relaxed and confident they were as parents the 2nd time apparently, or how they treat her completely different than they treated the boy (he was getting shouted at and told to shut up at less than a year, and then they were confused about why he shouted and screamed a lot, but he definitely wasn’t copying how he was spoken too. Nope couldn’t be that.). Even now I can tell that they find him annoying at times because of the ‘boy’ behaviours that they trained him into and are much more gentle and affectionate with their daughter. It drives me fucking crazy. (Boy has only boy toys, girl is just 1yr and already has a pink box of ‘girls’ toys.)
Ack are there two Toast clubs? I joined Reddit but missed this. Also, am old, what’s a Slack?
I think they got made at the same time? And/or a lot of people don’t like Reddit so are in Slack instead. It’s kind of like a constant big chat. It’s divided into channels so people can talk about all kinds of different topics (there’s a channel for sharing links to discuss, one for asking advice, a channel for discussing advice columns, books, writing, farming, mental health, television, channels for different locations, an open thread, etc). You have to get an invite to join but you can email ppyajunebug [at] gmail [dot] com and she will invite you!
How does one join the Slack?
You have to get an invite to join but you can email ppyajunebug [at] gmail [dot] com and she will invite you! Then you get auto-added to the main channel and you can choose to join any of the other sub-channels (based on topics) that appeal to you!
I’m not thrilled about redditing but I don’t have a work situation where I can really be on IM, and the slack convo is a lot in realtime – so I hope they both persist. The subreddit has more of the “show up and post a response” timing of these comments, at least.
Confession: I am aware that reddit is a thing, but I don’t really know how it works.
It’s just a giant worldwide bulletin board with themed forums – anyone can post a topic, anyone can comment thereupon. The overall community has a deservedly terrible reputation (from true depravity all the way up to cyber-libertarians, where it plateaus) but there are in fact delightful and informative forums (“subreddits”) like those for Asian beauty products, nekoatsume, and toast refugees.
Where oh where is the Toast sub? I need this in my life, as a live chat would be too much of a commitment for my workday.
(I only find reddit tolerable because I follow precisely three subs, two of which are for crafting and one specific to my location, and I never ever view r/all. The incursions of the ocean of piss and bile that is most of reddit into my three islands of nice are pleasantly infrequent, are mostly restricted to the location one, and are usually downvoted to hell.)
reddit.com/r/toastcrumbs!
Yup i hide in 3 subreddits and never venture into the sewer.
So I am on the Reddit and when I signed up I took the opportunity to subscribe to a few other subreddits that looked interesting, but they were indeed horrifically awful trashfires, as promised, and I am sort of an emotional mess now after what has escalated into a fairly personal engagement with an idiotic racist in one of them. 🙁 So I have only myself to blame for running headlong into this fight, but I think I’m going to take refuge in the Slack — thanks for the reminder!
I have been surprised to find that the xxchromosomes (or whatever it is) one attracts way more misogynistic not-all-men types than the relationships subreddit (although I’ve only seen a handful of those).
I was super confused by the thread about Robin Wright demanding equal pay for House of Cards that was full of dudes talking about how she “blackmailed” Netflix and definitely didn’t deserve as much as Kevin Spacey since he’s the lead and way more famous and Claire could die and the show would keep going and still be something people would want to watch.
I don’t know what show they’re watching. I actually stopped watching for a while until someone told me the show becomes more about Claire in the later seasons because she is the BEST part of the show. Who are these wackadoos?
twoxchromosomes used to be for women. It still had its issues, but it was ok. Mostly, the people that were there wanted to be there and the discussions ranged from silly to interesting to depressing.
Then it became a default subreddit and it was a horrible trashfire. Everyone was there, and the space for women turned into a space about women as seen through the lens of your stereotypical redditor and I (and many, many others) unsubbed bc it was clogging my page with crap I already deal with in real life! I do not need that in my internet life, homes.
Basically, all the defaults are terrible (except for r/aww, which is cute pictures). Unsubscribe from all the defaults and join us in ToastCrumbs and find things aligned with your interests.
That’s what I’m finding. Will probably unsub it, cause it seems about half women being supportive of women and half men making sure they don’t get left out of the conversation – whether they have anything valuable to add at all.
For you or anyone else overwhelmed by reddit at first– you can hide ALL the garbage parts and JUST use the toastcrumbs sub!
I have joined both, and while reddit generally needs to be cleansed with fire, I find the slack too overwhelming to try and keep up with.
Welp, now I’m glad the Toastcrumbs community got me to sign up for Reddit, so I can upvote all the “run, girl, run” and “who is he, Henry VIII?” comments in that thread.
Um, the edit at the bottom of the post about the baby names is the worst. Who says that? Who dates someone who says that?
OH MY GOD. THAT EDIT. My brain is melting down right now.
OH MY GOOD GODFATHERS. *Something* tells me this guy is fan of sending unsolicited dick pics
OH DEAR LORD, and it’s too late to sterilize him…
‘His worst nightmare” is to have a girl, huh? I really envy people who live in that much of a bubble, because boy can I imagine about a billion worse nightmares for my children.
1) A+ user name
2) yeah my face literally rage-melted at that edit. literally.
Please note that the OP of the baby names post has been coming back to comment within the last 15-20 minutes. A happy morning to us all.
Any motorbiking Toasties out there?
I am thisclose to just buying myself a bike. I can’t justify it in anyway, but I bloody want one. Did anyone just jump straight in without ever having ridden a bike? What were your start up costs like? Every time I think its looking affordable, I do more research and realize I haven’t counted something like gear or insurance (There’s an cheap ‘icebreaker’ course I saw that I’m def gonna do, and then I’m hopefully gonna get the provisional licence and spend lots of money I don’t have on a 125cc bike and tear it up around Kent at the weekends.)
How much does it hurt coming off? (I am a wuss and this is my biggest fear.) Is life harder as a ‘Lady Biker’? (I’m already a bit pissed at the ‘womens’ section of the bike gear websites. I do not need high heel boots, thanks, just something to protect my precious ankles.)
(Sorry about the OT, but time is running out and I am very far down to motorbike hole today.)
It is incredibly, incredibly dangerous, especially as you are learning, but also very fun. Hurting coming off is not the issue, it is DYING coming off, but the stats on injury for a woman who is not drunk or high and not doing stupid shit are not as dismaying as the stats overall. Steve is a very careful rider but was in a brief (like, hours) coma when he was 19-ish from cresting a hill and interacting with a truck that was about two inches over the line and now that we have kids the bike gathers a lot more dust than it used to, bc of not wanting to orphan our children. But you are a horse rider and obviously know your own risk comfort levels and if it is your dream, go for it. But it is something to take with GREAT SERIOUSNESS bc I do know a scary number of people who have died/seriously injured/brain damaged themselves on motorcycles.
Yikes for Steve! I completely understand the children thing too, and that its good he’s able to make that kind of decision (I know a lot of men who wouldn’t even consider it.)
I am under no illusions about the danger of it, and that is the main thing (apart from money) that has held me back so far. Part of the reason that I’m struggling to justify buying one, apart from the fear of dying, is the amount of gear I’d have to wear might make it un-feasible for commuting/socializing (It might make me sound shallow, but I’m not doing my hair and make up and then putting a helmet on over it, how do other bikers manage travelling to work or events? I imagine its easier for men right? just like cycling to work.), but I’d also never get on a bike without at least the minimum (helmet, jacket with armour, gloves and boots.). I’ve seen the pictures of what road rash does to unprotected body parts, and when I see the boys out in tracksuits and trainers with exposed ankles I wince. I like my ankles just the way they are right now and enjoy having skin on them
This might change, but I’m not really a speed demon in cars, and I don’t have much interest in the bigger/faster bikes. I feel like once I get a 125cc starter bike, I’ll probably stick with it, since I only want a fun run around, and also its slightly safer because I won’t be tempted to high speeds or dangerous riding. I’m more interested in having a bike, partly because I love driving but can’t afford a car, and for the potential adventures I could take because I love travelling, I don’t even know if I’d be brave enough to ride to work in Central London (I won’t do it on a push bike.), so it will probably sit outside my house 5 days a week and I’ll pull it out for food shopping (Another reason I can’t justify it, but I’m also young and feel like I should be doing more ‘stupid’ irresponsible things like spending money on motorbikes.)
Until my new scooter fucking died on me (it’s fine, unless I need to go up a hill, and then it just fucks off), I dealt with the helmet hair issue by wrapping a scarf around my head Grace Kelly-style. You don’t get as much of the rubbing of your hair by the helmet that way. Also, you can then take off your motorcycle helmet and look like a Classic Hollywood glamor babe.
A headscarf! Now there’s an idea I had not thought of, thanks! I’ve been experimenting with wearing a headscarf to bed to keep my insane amount of hair from kinking after I’ve straightened it (because I am too lazy to straighten my hair in the morning, so I do it at night.). I totally stole it from WOC articles about natural hair though, and it never occurred to me to try it under a helmet! I guess that’s why bikers wear bandanas?
It’s mostly the hair I’m concerned about, I don’t wear foundation often enough for it really to be a problem! Maybe I’ll get an open face helmet down the line for those rare occasions (I do like my chin the way it is though! Women’s problems!!)
SAME SAME SAME. I have a friend who lost his leg at the knee in a motorcycle accident, another who has had two ankle transplants after a motorcycle accident. My brother is a semi-professional motorcycle racer and he flat-out does not ever ride on the street anymore; he trailers his bikes to and from events and rides on the track only because it’s so, so, so flippin’ dangerous and car drivers simply do. not. look. around.
As usual the most dangerous thing about being on the road but not in a car (motorbikes, push bikes, horses), is not your vehicle its the other assholes on the road. I learned defensive riding for horses on the road, and now use it a lot on my bicycle (Yes I am in the middle of the lane, no I will not move over, you sit their in your big car and seeth prick.), I imagine that will also come in handy for motobikes!
Ahhhh! I have never had my own bike, but I have ridden on the back of many (partners, friends, parents of partners and friends). I even took a four-state road trip on one! Wow do I love motorcycles! I do not have good balance or reaction times, though so I don’t drive them myself.
When you say “coming off,” do you mean just laying it down from a stop (or moving really slow) or do you mean being projected off the bike at speed? I’ve been in two fairly minor falls and they weren’t horrible (bruised on one fall, burned on the other). Certainly didn’t keep me from getting back on. Even with riding armor, though, a fall at anything over 10mph is gonna hurt.
I don’t know if you’ve checked them out, but Cycle Gear and Revzilla both have good women’s boots selections with minimal high heel options.
Life is harder as a Lady Anything. But you can do this! How fun! I’m really excited for you!
Riding on the back of a bike for longer than a few minutes sounds like hell to me, don’t you get bored? But I’m also annoyed that the motorbike having boyfriends of yore never let me on the back of their bikes (too ‘dangerous’. I give you sex, let me ride your bike.) so I’ve never been able to give it a go.
I more mean the early learning falls, like if I loose my balance and lay it down at a slow speed, like will the bike land on me? That sounds sore. I’ve fallen off a lot of horses, which is a big height to fall from, but also there’s an independent creature trying to keep you on and not land on you. I’m pretty good at falling ‘correctly’ and getting limbs out of the way, although I generally land on my hip/ass in some way, but I have a vision of laying down the bike on top of my leg and that seems like it would be painful.
I am really excited about getting a bike and buying all the gear (finally a real excuse to spend a lot of money on motorbike boots instead of buying cheap knock offs!). Plus my bank is gonna love me, cause I’m gonna need a massive loan to cover bike and insurance. And I have fantasies of Ewan Mcgregor Long Way Round style trips (I cannot stop re-watching that shit.) that will probably never happen, but a girl can dream right?
I don’t get bored, no. I like the quiet, to be honest, and watching the world fly by at 60mph with nothing around me. Sitting on the back for hours was physically uncomfortable but I don’t know that I ever got bored.
WHAT THE FUCK those guys not letting you ride on the back? Fuck you, dudes.
Laying your bike down at a slow speed probably won’t result in more than a few bruises but there’s always the chance you’ll land at a bad angle and do more serious damage. If you’re driving instead of riding, that lessens the chance of the pipe hitting your leg. When I got burned, I was wearing jeans and chaps but the foot peg caught my pants leg and hiked it up just enough for the pipe to get me–such is my life. To be honest, anytime I get on a motorcycle I ask myself if I’m willing to take the risk of permanent injury. It’s just something you gotta understand. You’re taking a chance on not coming home safe and sound, but you’re also taking an opportunity to do something that makes one feel alive in a way that few other things can!
Yeah I was thinking, doesn’t it get uncomfortable? At least if your the driver you can move yourself around and adjust without loosing your balance, but if I was pillion I’d be terrified to move in case I threw us both off balance!
I know right! I mean in fairness, the one guy who was a real stickler about it had a massive sports bike and he had taken the back pegs off completely and wouldn’t let anyone on (He did this after dropping his friend off the back at high speeds on the beach one day.) and there was a big age difference, so he was a lot more ‘responsible’ like that. But I had to put up with The Fear everytime I heard about a motorbike death on the radio, so like I deserved at least a little ride.
I am a granny driver, and although I do enjoy speed and risks at times, I’m also a massive wuss about it, so I don’t know if I’ll even enjoy riding a bike; which is why I’m hesitant to drop money on anything before I’ve had a go. I have a strong feeling I’ll love it and be broke for the rest of my life between horses and bikes, but there’s also a chance it will scare me shitless and I’ll never want to sit on one again.
Maybe you could borrow some gear and take the instructional course before you lay down (heh) a bunch of cash for something that might not be your thing? Surely they have options for that at the driving school…
Yes that’s what I’m thinking too; you have to do a basic skills course in the UK anyway before your a road legal learner and can buy a bike, and they rent you all the gear and a bike, but its still a chunk of change.
I’ve found one place in London that does a 1 hour taster course, they give you everything and teach you a few bits so you can see if its for you; its actually not expensive at all (£35), but it is a trek to get out there. Hopefully next month I’ll be able to do it and then see if I want to keep going (I do, I do want to keep going!) and then I have to do a whole load of paper work and posting off passports so I can get a licence!
I’m so excited for you! Please do keep us posted!
I’ll try! I have to get a new job before I can actually afford a bike (I’m waiting to hear back from a place on an offer and I think that might be why I’m going a bit crazy and falling down motorbike and Africa internet holes.), but once I get there I probably will never shut up about it again.
Go for the trips! My dad has done a few big trips (most notably Arctic Circle to Ushuaia and a circumnavigation of the world, starting in Vladivostok) and the amount of single women he has met with doing similar trips is amazing and inspiring!
The training course is great! I haven’t had a bike for years, but I think it made me a safer driver, even.
I find the thought of a motorbike extremely appealing. I will probably never get one, because I am a wimp who hates spending money and making decisions, but they still sound great. When I was younger my aunt had one and after family picnics she would give my older cousins a ride home on the back (taking turns as to who got to go with her. I was never old enough before she stopped having a bike, sadly). I might start out with a moped or something, though – less intimidating.
They make a lot of sense (although I’m struggling to figure out how one does shopping with a motorbike, panniers maybe?), Especially in London!
You should try an taster lessons or something, that’s what I’m gonna do, its much cheaper than the CBT!
Panniers and a large backpack.
I am a former motorcyclist. I started with a scooter (the gateway drug), then upgraded to a 250cc (Suzuki tu250) and then to a big proper bike. I like many things about it, but I am also a nervous and physically wimpy person so I never go really brave about steep roads and super curvy corners and such.
Gear is hellishly expensive (in the US, and I’m guessing moreso in the UK) but you can get decent deals on gently used gear from folks like me 🙂 If you can wear men’s sizes you will have an easier and cheaper time of it. I am very curvy and men’s stuff doesn’t fit because if it goes around my boobs/butt it’s too big in the shoulders and long in the sleeves. A lot of women’s gear is designed for ladies who are going to look decorative on the back of a man’s bike, and that’s bullshit. So it takes some work to find actual functional gear.
It hurts A LOT when you come off. I had a scooter wreck involving a car turning in front of me, in which I broke a finger and sprained both wrists. I had a couple of very low speed or full-stop topple-overs for stupid reasons (tried to put foot down in a pothole, etc.) and those are just embarrassing. Then I had a big crash on the highway, in full gear. I was going about 55 mph and then-husband in front of me decided to turn left into a restaurant. I was hot, tired, and dehydrated. I saw his blinker (there was plenty of space) and aggressively grabbed brakes in a startled fashion. Old tires, hot pavement – I locked up the brakes and went barrel-rolling across the highway. It is an absolutely terrible feeling. I more or less walked away (well, limped). Nothing broken. Lots of sprains, missing skin on one leg where the road burned through the mesh pants I was wearing. Spectacular bruises. The emergency room said (actual quote): “Oh, you’re the motorcycle wreck? We expected you to be a lot worse.”
I got another bike (mine was totaled) probably largely due to pressure from other riders to “get back on the horse”. I rode for about another year, but the joy was gone. I’d periodically have a visceral memory of what it felt like flying off and my stomach would lurch. Divorce and financial problems became an excellent reason to stop.
When riding is good, it’s fun as hell and very zen. It takes your whole concentration, so if you’re a person who suffers from hamster brain, it’s a good way to pause the wheel. And you go exploring backroads, which is a fun thing. But when it’s bad it’s miserable and dangerous and hurts a lot.
Thanks! I’m already thinking most of the ‘ladies’ jackets are not going to be long enough for me! I do not like cold kidneys! I’m also curvy so it’s going to be an adventure, but I do fit men’s shoes and gloves, so that should be ok!
I hear you on the joy thing, once it’s gone or your confidence goes, you have to really work to get it back, and even then you have to want it and do it on your own schedule. I am very hamster brained, and so far horse riding is the only thing that has ever made my brain be quiet, so I’m hoping bike riding might give me some of the same peace!
Did you ever hang out with other women bikers? I’m kind of hoping I can find some badass women to hang out and ride with, cause that would be awesome!
“preschool interview”
Really, Nicole? REALLY?
Well, yes, if your kid has a disability you have to meet with the school to see if they can accommodate you. So, really.
I do not want to snap at you but it is very very stressful to have talked to preschools that will not let your kid have an aide, even if you are willing to pay for it, and to have to advocate for them, and it is not about trying to get into a fancy place.
Wow… this is none of my business so don’t feel like you have to respond, but: Why on Earth are preschools not allowing aides that they don’t even have to pay for? I mean, what the hell.
I bet it’s some bullshit about making other children feel inferior for not having an aide, creating a “class difference” or something. A lot of schools are completely inflexible about anything different or new, which is bullshit to disabled kids, of course. “Why start accommodating disabilities NOW, after our longstanding tradition of making them suffer?”
Also, from my experience, the most “creative” and “flexible” and “educationally experiential” preschools are the least flexible about having weird kids messing with their programming. And are the most likely to have parents who don’t think their little darlings should be exposed to kids with problems.
In my state, there are actually rules about which preschools are allowed to accommodate children with aides or other needs. That’s obviously not the same as being unwilling to accommodate, of course, so I’m not trying to defend that particular answer.
You’ve likely done a ton more research than I ever have on all of this, but I thought I’d mention that my daughter has gone from pre-K through 12 in a Montessori school, and they’ve been pretty good at accommodating and advocating for their neuroatypical students. My daughter is neurotypical but several of her friends aren’t, and the way the entire community embraces them has been inspiring.
(YMMV on Montessori schools, of course.)
My niece has full time support and recently they were due an assessment. All the staff told her parents to get her jacked up on sugar/no sleep so that it went badly, or the funding would be pulled. Apparently successful intervention should be stopped. I sympathise with the stress!
Also OT but a friend linked to a ‘hilarious’ series of messages where a dad had to deal with a barfing baby in the car and his messages to the mum (who had been allowed to go off and meet friends) was ‘you owe me big time’ and it gave me all the rage. So well done for handling it like a pro
Yep. We were told by at least two preschools that they were not interested in our twins attending because one was receiving services for cerebral palsy and they didn’t want his therapists coming in and disrupting their flow. Thankfully we found one that was excited about our boys and they have been there for two years. We did two interviews. One without the kids, and one after hours with no other children there to gauge how the boys would react to the staff.
I went on preschool interviews for both of my kids. You want to see if the place is a good fit. Not all preschools are the same;every child has different needs. It’s just due diligence.
I can confirm this is a thing, even in non-coastal, Waldorf-heavy areas – disability or no. Part of it is helping to work out if your child will need interventions, assistance etc. The best childcare professionals are able to help parents work out if that is something that is needed and the very best preschools (not like some NYMag ridiculousness, but ones run by sensitive, experienced folk) like to expose kids to school gradually.
This was also a bit of a shock to me, but when you have a child with developmental delays or other neuro-atypical behaviors, it is a GODSEND when preschools normalize observations/playdates as part of working out the needs of each child and educating families on these things
Feeling quite compelled to pop in and say that, when she started at her current preschool, my daughter was having some p serious misadventures with her neuroatypicality, so hell, yes, a preschool interview.
She’s doing much better now, partially because we made sure to be really careful about where we were spending thousands of dollars to leave our one and only darling baby for eight hours a day.
I feel like this interview was to see if the school was a good fit for their family, not if the kid was a good fit for the school (as are many nutjob competitive East Coast places). So, actually, pretty cool.
That housemates post is the bro equivalent of a “Hey Ladies” opening e-mail.
Which reminds me that if we don’t get a final Hey Ladies before July 1 I am going to be even more sad than I already am.
Is there any Hey Ladies fanfic (yet)? Point me out to some pls (and if not I will write it).
I mean, there is in my BRAIN, but in real life I’m not sure.
Mine too. Mine always feature Broke!Nicole doing outrageous things.
“Sup bros”
SnortLOL.
I thought preschool interviews were one of god’s gentle punishments for 1% Manhattanites, never say they’re actually a thing elsewhere too?!
You are interviewing the preschool as much as they are interviewing you to make sure you fit. It’s usually a sign of everyone trying to do their due diligence, not a sign of exclusivity.
I replied above, but I think it is one of those word choice things. Lots of schools have ‘playdates’ which are not like intense quizzing on ABCs and color recognition, but more of an observation for both parents and teachers to work out if a child has additional needs. Or this is what it should be. Anything approaching testing a child at age 3 or 4 for ‘intelligence’ is BS.
Nicole has replied to someone else above explaining that it’s to do with establishing how they’ll accommodate her child’s disability.
We went on interviews to day cares with a fetus, and in a small and very dull city… Are there really places you just pick out of the phone book and send your kids to sight unseen?
Are there really places you just pick out of the phone book and send your kids to sight unseen? Well, personally I am more into the free-range parenting thing, so I’m planning on just locking my baby outside once it can walk. I’ll give it a spare diaper and some cash of course.
(Foreal though I think this is a word choice thing – “interview” sounds bizarrely formal for me in this context and conjures up images of private schools intelligence-testing three-year-olds, when clearly Nicole, and you, and many others are using it to mean something entirely different and more relaxed)
The only problem is, it’s really hard to teach toddlers about currency denominations. You send them out with a $20, and they come back with a packet of peanuts and six nickles…
Not to beat the dead horse, but almost all preschools in our very non-Manhattan city have interviews even if they don’t have waiting lists. It’s to make sure everyone is on the same page upfront. We have some friends with a kid who thrives on routine and structure, and I don’t think they realized how loosey-goosey our kid’s preschool is until they did the interview (and ended up sending the kid to a preschool further away with a more traditional curriculum & schedule where he is very, very happy). I think the circle of hell for the 1% is interviewing for slots at highly selective preschools where your kid’s chance of getting in depends on a double-whammy of your own social currency and a 3 year-old’s standardized test scores.
I remember going for test days at elementary schools before I switched schools in third grade, in the midwest in the early ’90s. How is it weird to make sure a place is a good fit for your kid before actually sending them there?
Same same, I (very vaguely) remember my kindergarten interview and that was 1989.
I have a vague memory of going for an introductory thing at my soon-to-be primary school in 1994. (All I remember is getting to investigate the toys on offer.)
Timothy is a veterinarian working in mortgage refinancing? What?
Dude, right? What? Unless they mean he’s a veteran which….there is a better way to say that.
I assume they mean vet as in veteran, but I also had to think it through! And then wondered, am I supposed to think that’s a selling point? It seems like a neutral to me, and also probs pretty common in DC metro, but I am a gutless Boston liberal soooo.
I don’t think vet is an uncommon abbreviation for veteran?
People join the armed services for all sorts of reasons — and plenty of us are liberals, too, FYI.
I had to stop and think about it, too!
I’m going for veterinarian- the whole house has a “creative “-dude-bro-who-is -still-finding-himself-at-50 vibe about it.
At 50 they usually get pissy at minorities who aren’t sufficiently respectful of caring ,creative,special snoflakeness, and join the Tea Party.
My current plan is to freak out everyone who asks what we’re naming the baby by saying THEIR name.
Everyone except Adam. Screw that guy. Remove his name from the list of potential baby names from now until the heat death of the universe.
Oh my gosh–that is brilliant. My husband and I were planning on using the code name Lou Diamond Phillips to refer to our hypothetical baby but your plan is so much more delightful.
Oooh that’s also a good plan! Combo: meet Lou Diamond Phillips and beg him to ask. 😀
That is absolutely genius, I hope you don’t mind if I shamelessly steal it. I’ve been telling people that we let my colleagues vote and they decided on Baby McBabyface, but this is so much better
I am absolutely and with no guilt stealing your line about Baby McBabyface. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, you have made my day.
Do it and report back! Although I also love Baby McBabyface. I could pretty much guarantee that joke would slowly morph into a real thing and my kid would end up with it embroidered on their onesies.
Yeah, that actually happened with two of my family members.
We went with Obi-Wan, but your plan is definitely creepier, which I fully approve of.
Can you imagine the moment of panic when I deadpan, “oh, we’re naming her after you, Bob.” I’m really looking forward to it!! Gotta make your own terrifying fun, I always say.
That is brilliant, I hope I can remember that if ever I wind up gestating an inappropriate questions-generator.
Tattoo it on your wrist? 😀 I feel like this is the least-awkward question we are likely to be asked? But I still like to have a vaguely unsettling answer prepared. 😀
Just had to lol at “inappropriate questions generator”! So accurate. So, so sadly accurate.
LBR, being visibly female is already an inappropriate questions-generator: are you single? don’t you want to get married? where’s the ring? how did your spouse propose? why aren’t you having (blank) sort of wedding? but when will you have children? who’s taking care of the baby? what is your family’s entire schedule for the next three months? what does your husband think about that, little lady?
I ran into a (not close) college friend I hadn’t seen/spoken to in years with my husband and literally the second thing out of her mouth after “hi” was “so when are you having kids?” And this woman’s a self-professed feminist married to a nonbinary person!
But I feel like the added visual of being preggo seems to invite people to completely and totally remove any filter they might have had otherwise.
I have different backstories for different strangers on the bus, depending on what I think will be most likely to get them to stop asking me questions. My mildest deception was when a middle-aged gentleman mistakenly assumed that I’d just graduated from college, which was why I wasn’t ready to settle down and have kids, and I let him believe that.
Our default is Bort Broseph. Girl or boy.
A friend used Gravy Brains which was alright too.
(I’m still not fully cognizant of the hubbub surrounding baby names, but am beginning to become aware of how Other People like to offer the Opinions and how that could negatively colour perfectly good baby names. And I am therefore thinking of not telling anyone.)
Not telling anyone is the only option. But it’s nice to have something to tell them, so they go away.
Yeah, my sister didn’t tell anyone, but then she would get pushback from people about keeping a secret. It might have been helpful to have something to get the really nosy ones off her back (especially when it was coworkers and she couldn’t just walk away).
One of my friends answered that question with “Bubbles, or Fang if it’s a girl”.
I had planned on stealing that, but I like your idea, too…
My parents let me and my brother come up with the names for our baby sister, BUT they exercised veto power… but she would have made a great Shredder.
My boyfriend ate
the sliced pineapple
(I purchased
with my money)
from the fridge
sometime yesterday
and which
I was definitely
saving
for breakfast
today
Forgive him?!
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
he left no note…
(ban all men)
YE GODS
<3 u, eegghh carlos eegghhs.
I have some minor revisions (with thanks to the writers roundtable at our NYC Toast Coven on FB)
My boyfriend ate
the sliced pineapple
(I purchased)
from the fridge
sometime yesterday
and which
I was definitely
saving
for breakfast
today
he left no note
Forgive him?!
I banned him
so sweet
and so cold
A+ edit
*table flip*
WCW MAKES ME SO ANGRYYYYY
but this is great! I love the ominous ellipsis at the end…
Excellent image usage today!
I am the lizard queen.
I can do anytheen.
Nicole, if it makes you feel any better, I once was vomited on by one of my kids as our flight was landing. Had to wash my shirt in an airport bathroom sink, PUT IT BACK ON, and get a connecting flight. And thus was born the extra clothes for kid, extra shirt for me, rule of traveling with Period Eye. Cleaning vomit out of a carseat is like the nth circle of parenting hell. Why are there so many crevices? Why?
At least these days the padding is machine-washable? I had to hand-clean one that wasn’t, several years ago.
Once my daughter vomited in the middle of a restaurant; my reaction was to cup my hands and try to catch it. We were having dinner with one of my college roommates, who remarked, “You know when you REALLY know you’re a parent? When your kid barfs and you try to catch it.” So true.
My aunt and uncle remarked on this very thing. (They have three kids, all of whom had various degrees of car-sickness).
My dad once successfully caught my barf when I was little (maybe 4 or so). It is the ultimate trump card in almost any conversation we have where I’m asking him to do something.
I barfed on my mom at the very beginning of a 7 hour flight to Honolulu when I was a toddler. We were meeting my dad on leave from the Vietnam War and she wore a pretty pink suit because she had not seen him in months. It was covered with dried toddler puke by the time we met him at the airport. I’d like to take this opportunity to retroactively apologize to her.
Hypothesis:
DH is “studying 24/7” because she doesn’t want to hang with y’all.
She’s the Grace to their Hey Ladies, clearly.
She is counting down the days until she gets paid enough to get the hell out.
Sympathy and solidarity on the kid puking in the car/dog puking anywhere. That is a bad day.
>.<
– OK, I really liked a lot of the things on MADtv-I mean, liked them as in would actually quote them to people who had no idea what I was referencing–but even though there’s some recognition that they used to do really gratuitously cruel celebrity impressions, I get the feeling that they don’t realize just how cruel they were. Sometimes I would wonder if Kenny Rogers had cut off Will Sasso in traffic or something, and there was one that they did around the time that Ellen Degeneres was going out with Anne Heche that implied that Heche was just using Ellen to further her own career and was banging Charlie Sheen on the side. I think that it’s small wonder that you don’t see many of the MADtv alumni doing other things, aside from Alex Borstein and Key & Peele. (Speaking of someone who you do see (or hear, since he does a lot of cartoon voice acting), Phil LaMarr, he wasn’t interviewed for this, but he did mention it in a Random Roles interview on the AV Club; he said that he had a couple of great years on MADtv… but that he was on the show for five years.)
– That Bob’s Burgers Live movie is just a joke, right?
…damnit. Stop teasing us with parody things that should be real, Hollywood-or-wherever-you-are!
I went to the last Bob’s Burgers live tour! It was…weird!! And very funny in parts, and not very funny in other parts. But there were also a lot of children there, and it’s definitely not a Safe For Your Kids show, kind of like how BB isn’t always Safe For Your Kids either?
I heard much the same about the one in Portland, and also that apparently it got kind of hijacked during an audience Q&A and got incredibly awkward and uncomfortable and embarrassing for many of the audience members involved.
http://www.pdxmonthly.com/articles/2013/5/13/revi…
Ugh, audience Q&As in Portland, I’ve witnessed the same dynamic at certain other events. Why do we do this?! Just be cool, guys!
From that article, it sounds like the crowd was terrrrrrible, and I am definitely feeling some secondhand embarrassment for the blog lady.
Whenever there’s a bad crowd at an event, it’s a wonderful reminder of why I try not to leave the house. C’mon people, show some respect!!
I feel this a good time to revisit: http://the-toast.net/2015/05/01/every-question-in…
Pop Culture Happy Hour did an interview with Loren Bouchard a couple of weeks ago, and he said he’s been really surprised, and occasionally a little uncomfortable, with really little kids watching it.
FREE DANIELLE
AND ROSE
poor kid and dog cliffe, though
I would totally buy a Kondo-style book about your buffer system
Content warning for mild body horror.
I just went and looked in the mirror and I have a pimple in the middle of my lip. Like, the part of my lip where I would put lipstick. This is unconscionable. I am cancelling today.
Oh that’s dreadful!
I am so sorry. D:
I have oral allergy syndrome and, delightfully, this season it seems particularly sensitive. My mouth has been a fucking horrorshow off and on for like, a month, so I feel your pain.
For Baby Name Guy, I give you a poem by Dr Seuss:
Too Many Daves
BY THEODOR GEISEL
Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave?
Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one and calls out, “Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!
This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves’
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
And one of them Shadrack. And one of them Blinkey.
And one of them Stuffy. And one of them Stinkey.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Ziggy. And one Soggy Muff.
One Buffalo Bill. And one Biffalo Buff.
And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed.
And one Paris Garters. And one Harris Tweed.
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate …
But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.
THIS IS MY FAVORITE and altogether underappreciated Seuss poem! That whole book is just the best.
“I said, ‘I do not fear those pants with nobody inside them.’
I said, and said, and said those words.
I said them. But I lied them.”
I say, “There I was, caught in the snide” all the time 🙂
Okay but no lie, those pants scared the shit out of me as a kid.
But you were just as strange to them as they were strange to you!
Too Many Daves: a Dr. Seuss poem and also a description of my dating history
I can’t remember which book it’s in, but my fave Dr. Suess quote ever is from I Had Trouble In Getting To Solla Sellew: “I’ve bought a big bat/ I’m all ready, you see/ Now my troubles / Will have troubles with me.”
brb saving this for when we start having kids and arguing about names.
Soggy Muff!!!
Ok but can I just say that it sounds like all her boys are obedient and eager to please, so I kinda feel like having TOO MANY well-behaved and helpful children is the lesser problem to have…
SUNNY JIM
Listening to this story on npr and weeping discreetly at my desk. What a life!
That was the first story I listened to upon waking today, so I cried off my eye makeup while in the process of trying to apply it.
I’m gonna guess Will F. wrote the ad.
only a libertarian-ish version of Ezra Klein would bother inflate ‘jackass’ into five words
‘I am SHOCKED that one of my employees would act like I might retaliate against them for complaining about my daughter-subordinate, how can I ferret them out and retaliate against them?”
Maybe it’s just me but I was kind of surprised that the comments on that one devolved so much into people being mad about people taking photos of other people’s kids. Like… people taking photos of kids are not automatically planning to do nefarious things with them. And also, your kid isn’t that special? I mean, yes, kids are special. But as far as privacy goes, there are millions of children and babies in the world, and a random photo of a random anonymous child existing on the internet is really not at all the same thing as establishing a huge online presence for your kid by attaching their name to hundreds of photos on social media. Your kid is going to grow out of looking like that, and the chances of actually identifying any random internet photo of a child are almost nil.
the comments are amazingly insane, especially from the ones who simply will not accept that it’s not some kind of sex crime to photograph children in public, but I’m not sure I’m surprised that internet comment section parents are a buncha loons
i kinda wonder if people manage to live in some kind of furious denial that they’re being recorded by one or more parties basically any time they do anything involving other people in the USA of 2016 or they just find this singularly restrained and appropriate use of photography objectionable in ways that being surveilled and datamined by professional snoops who will give that information to everybody except you is not
This isn’t really something you can do at work, but I love playing The Great Language Game. I’m really curious how easy or difficult other people might find it. The website has clips of people speaking different languages in a natural way (like, conversationally, or as part of a radio broadcast). It gives you several options (German, Thai, Tamil) and you choose which you think it is.
Admittedly, I am a USian and my auditory processing is NOT GREAT, but I was still floored as how much difficulty I have identifying basically any language I haven’t taken classes in (which I recognize by picking out words) or lived with someone who speaks it (so I am familiar with how it sounds conversationally). Please tell me how it goes for you!
I got 600 – I only speak a bit of German so I didn’t recognise most of the languages. Apparently I am bad at identifying Portuguese.
Portuguese is a total wildcard! I’m surprised by it every time.
Looks Spanish, sounds Russian, Portuguese is keeping something from us.
I got 600 (on my 5th try :P). Thanks for the link to this game- it’s so difficult, but fun. And now I really know how limited my language abilities are and how many languages I realize I haven’t actually heard. Will be playing this the rest of the day..
I got 600 too, that was super cool!
Look, if the guy on the other side of the wall from me can be playing a hammer dulcimer, I can definitely be listening to languages. (My office is weird.)
I got to 900 and then it made me choose between two types of Chinese, and sorry but I am not that up on dialects of a language I don’t speak.
Ooh I was a language major in college and I also tried out some things I don’t remember much of, but I can recognize the sounds of things I’ve studied even without the vocab, so this is fun 😀
Ooh, that sounds like fun. I feel like I’m pretty good at identifying languages I see written down, but hearing them sounds trickier.
OT – any Toasties watch Survivor? Anyone else Team Aubrey? Thoughts on the ending?
I got sucked into watching this season (I stopped watching years ago because the backstabbing upset me too much, delicate flower that I am) because of Aubrey and Debbie and the brain team. I was so upset by the ending that I woke up at 3am this morning thinking about who voted for Michelle and not Aubrey and I couldn’t get back to sleep for 2 hours.
Team Aubrey here, and super befuddled about the winner. The only thing I can think of is that given a choice between voting for a person they like and voting for a mad strategist (even if they also like that person), the jury will almost always go for the likable choice.
It was a weird edit, though.
Yeah, Mr Cleo and I were SURE it was going to be Aubrey.
SO MAD. I’m blaming Jason and Scot.
Aubrey, come hang out with us. I feel like you would fit right in.
Me too. I’m surprised by how personally I’ve taken this.
Part of it is that it goes back to my adolescent baggage / damage about the pretty girls getting chosen before/instead of the smart girls. Especially by tools like Jason and Scott.
I’m blaming Jason and Scot too. I’m convinced they voted for the person who bested them the least, because they couldn’t admit that others (especially women) were better players. Did you see them when Michelle said she was voting out the juror who she thought would have influence over the others, and Jason saying, “that’s me”. Just unbelievable level of hubris. Or Scot doing a double take when Tai said he thought Scot and Jason would be voting him out? As if we don’t have video evidence of them discussing that very thing? What horrible people.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry at Nick’s mansplainy speech. It was so ridiculous.
So many terrible men this season. Let’s petition to have no men on future seasons.
Surely “can wonk out with the best of them” is not selling point, even in DC. Surely. Also haha re “DC burner culture.”
Yeah I’m wondering where that might be found…
Just move in, and you’ll have a ticket to it!
Poor DH. Poor Rose.
OT, but has anyone ever seen a “business casual” dress code guide for women that has not been both really vague and also condescendingly slut-shamey? My friend just sent me one from her company (a Summer Business Casual guide), and I raged, and it looks exactly like every other business casual dress code I’ve ever seen: condescendingly yelling at women that “skimpy clothes are inappropriate” and “if you worry that it might be inappropriate, it probably is” [ok so like wtf would I do since I constantly worry that my clothes are inappropriate ALL THE TIME].
And the part for dudes says “wear a polo shirt and slacks, but keep a blazer and tie handy for more formal meetings.” Crystal clear.
Actually really any dress code? I’m remembering a particularly horrifying one at a conference I went to, where there was a formal, and there was a lot of vague yelling about what kinds of dresses were [not] ok for the formal, which included the phrase “Remember, modest is hottest!” (My age group at this conference was 21-29. Meaning they were saying this shit to 29-year-olds.)
I physically recoiled at the phrase “modest is hottest.”
This. Never have i heard a better reason to dress “sluttishly” in my entire life.
I haven’t seen a general dress code for my office, but every summer they send around a reminder of what summer clothing isn’t appropriate. It seems pretty gender-neutral, though.
Hmm. Curious about what it says? I just want to know that such a thing can be done non-sexistly and non-offensively, because I have literally never seen it done well.
It has items like no short skirts, no low-cut blouses or shirts, no see-through clothing, but it also has items like no muscle shirts, no jean shorts, no baseball caps, no shirts with the sleeves removed. Also, no clothes that appear to be pajamas. Basically, it assumes that both men and women don’t know how to dress themselves appropriately for work.
Yeah, most that I’ve seen are like… no thong-style sandals, no bare shoulders, no athletic wear (fuuuuuck that, my black exercise capris are bought in bulk for a reason, that reason being that they are comfortable and are work-appropriate), stuff like that.
also, even if “modest is hottest” (which, gross), work conferences are not about being hot? so that whole dress code is confusing.
This was actually a religious conference, not a work one, and like 90% of the people there did speed dating. I think many people there had at least a secondary (if not primary) objective of trying to meet someone they could bring home to Mom and Dad without a fuss.
My office dress code is “shoes must be worn at all times.”
I work at an architecture firm- the rest of the time it’s assumed that you’ll manage to dress yourself appropriately for whatever you have going on that day.
I’m pretty sure we don’t even have that. After years of slut-shamey dress codes or just outright-awful “You appearance IS your job” kinds of places, it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
I just started working a side job at a yoga studio and it is extremely strange to go to work and . . . take off your shoes.
I had a work study job at the university greenhouse- my boss made a point of telling me that shoes were optional. Best work study job ever.
Yeah mine is literally “no shorts, try to limits jeans and T-shirts to fridays.”
Um…I totally fail this one. I live in my office barefoot. I have four pairs of shoes under my desk for when I need to leave my tiny box. The first publisher I worked for, all the male editors from the UK used to wander around in their socks with their shoes under their desks somewhere–I don’t go that far, but oId habits die hard. I dress very Business Appropriate or Business Fancy otherwise, but my toes will be freeeeee.
We have that rule specifically because of one intern. I assume that an intern is to blame in all circumstances where that rule exists.
Not the point, but I’d love to see a guy in a polo throw a tie and blazer on with it because of a formal meeting he wasn’t prepared for.
I was just thinking that. If I was the kind of person who cared all that much, I’d probably judge a guy in a polo with no tie in a formal meeting less than I would judge a person wearing a polo shirt with a tie.
(Actually, the more I think about it, the more I do judge polo-shirt-with-necktie as an outfit.)
I have seen a wide range of fashion choices in my day, and yet never a polo + tie… But now I want to.
if you worry that it might be inappropriate, it probably is
I have the opposite problem; it has never occurred to me in my life to worry about my clothes being inappropriate.
Specifically at work, though: you want me to dress appropriately for the office? Make it an appropriate temperature. Until then I will wear ALL OF THE LAYERS, and some days you will see me in mittens and earmuffs and other days it will be my “modesty tank” and no shoes or socks.
I hate flipflops at work though. I don;t know why, it fills me with irrational anger.
I didn’t used worry until one day my boss pulled me aside to tell me, “I think it looks fine, but someone else on this floor [we sublet space from a law firm] complained that your skirt is too short.”
And ok, it did not pass the arbitrary fingertip test, but 1) I was wearing it with opaque tights, and 2) there were shorts BUILT IN UNDER THE RUFFLES, in the same fabric. There was literally no way to see anything!
I am still, two years later, mad about it. And now I have to compulsively check my skirt lengths and VPL risk before coming into work.
Ah, glorious work environment that i have was like 90% ladies and when one of the older ladies approached our male manager to “talk to” the division’s “girls” about “the inappropriate amounts of cleavage” they were showing, our (unionized) manager physically recoiled and was like “i will address many issues with my staff nevereverever this one, no”. But then he told us about it so we all got to cackle about it anyway. So maybe this shaped my idea of how these convos will go?
At current workplace, someone called me on being able to see my bra strap under my modesty tank when it was LITERALLY 30 degrees in our office, and i said “yes, I am an adult female, I do wear the proscribed undergarments, would it be better if I did not?” and then blinked on purpose, twice. Said person has never spoken to me about my attire – professional or not – ever again. I am angry for you! That person was Out. Of. Line. and your manager should have told THAT person that they thought your outfit was fine not you #harrumph
I’m assuming 30 degrees celsius… that’s outrageous if someone’s going to be whining about seeing bra strap in that temperature.
The thing that gets me about the whole “oh no I can see your bra strap” thing is that 9/10 you can totally tell whether a woman is wearing a bra or not regardless of whether straps are peeking out. So why is it a crime against humanity if you can see my bra strap but not if you can see the outline of my bra band across the back of my shirt??
Ugh I have such issues with this… I feel like with opaque leggings or tights, anything over it that covers your butt should be “appropriate” for work, right?
Flipflops in general fill me with irrational anger. On anyone. Anywhere.
They are sooooooooo baaaaaaaaaaaaad for you! And fugly! Why do ppl wear them? Why do people wear them and then sneer at my lovely, fashionable, GOOD FOR MY FEET Birks?
I don’t know, I don’t get it!!!! But I am relieved to find one other person in the world who understands. I mean, they are terrible for one’s feet and they make THE MOST ANNOYING SOUND when people walk in them.
I irrationally hate them purely based on the sound they make.
Hooray, I am not alone!
THANK YOU.
The thing is, for me, I’m not usually worried about showing too much skin. I’m worried that the things I have put on my body to cover my skin are inappropriate in some other way… for instance, I love A-line skirts, long flowy hippie things, brightly colored jewelry etc. I don’t know if any of this is “inappropriate” as in unprofessional (also I really hate wearing blazers or button-downs so I mostly don’t do it). Or that wearing tight fitting tops (that aren’t low cut and don’t show anything but arms) is also less professional. It’s distinctions like that that would be valuable to me, but instead what I get is a lot of condescendingly obvious advice (“no midriff baring, ladies, it’s just slutty and inappropro”) or generalized yelling.
YEP. Because it is not even really about you and what you are wearing, but about control. *spits*
Maybe you will like this article? http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/02/professionali…
YES. Thank you! This puts into words SO many things I’ve been thinking, and some new ideas I’d never considered.
I do wonder though: are rich, white men even comfortable in “professional” clothes? Do they feel like their authentic selves either? I’d had the impression that absolutely nobody felt authentic in professional garb, and that this was part of the point of it?
Well, a properly tailored suit can feel really great. Like comfortable work armour. Buuuuut I think the general point is the clothing is a little stiff and restrictive and upright, to remind you to take on those qualities too…
“Just remember that what’s appropriate for the club isn’t appropriate for the office.”
So…my ankle-length tie-dye is ok, then? Because I do not go to the discos, so that’s not really a concern. Should I not wear the long skirt with the velvet insets? TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, NOT WHAT YOU DON’T WANT.
In the course of three months temping, I was admonished for wearing a skirt that was too short, *and also* a skirt that was too long.
I would wear– and have worn– both clothing items to church since then, and no one said boo.
The lengthier a dress code is, the more sense I get that people in charge dislike what they’re actually supposed to be doing so much that they’d rather spend time enforcing a dress code than WORKING.
I totally interchange my work and club clothes. I just add more layers.
So much this. I am worried that I never learned to dress myself properly and people are smirking behind my back about my overly colourful scarves or secondhand-shop striped sweaters.
I once worked at a place that had “no patterned socks” listed on the dress code. We really wondered what schoolmarm invented that rule (which no one followed).
saddest rule ever
Bless their little plain socks.
Yes, I know when I need to dress up quickly, buttoning up my polo and tying a tie on it is my go-to.
(I did image search before posting, and apparently this is a (rare but existent) sartorial choice. It a is dumb looking thing, and I will brook no argument.)
This is actually very strange to me. I’m at my first ‘real’ job, and my office has no apparent dress code. People wear everything from T-shirts and shorts and hoodies to full suit + tie apparel to skirts and high heels. I guess the implicit agreement is that if you have to deal with customers you have to dress “professionally”, otherwise no-one cares? How common are office dress codes actually?
SEATTLE TOASTIES!!!! I am all in for Dad Magazine tonight!!! I don’t care if I only got 5 hours of sleep last night, I need me some Jaya and Matt.
Also, the reason for only 5 hours of sleep is I went and saw Beyonce last night. IT WAS AMAZING AND TRANSFORMATIVE AND I AM A STRONG POWERFUL WOMAN who needs more sleep and can’t party with the kids like she used to.
I did not go to Beyonce! But I’m going to work today and then rolling over to Third Place Books for DAD MAGAZINE! I saw Jaya post a picture of a hummingbird on Bainbridge Island on Twitter yesterday and was like “why the hell is Jaya on Bainbridge?” and then snooped a bit more and immediately made plans.
Also feeling the day-after effects of Beyonce, also planning on being there for Dad Mag. Bless Sound Transit for running the extra trains, even though we still didn’t get home until 1am.
My partner and I are bringing her REAL LIFE ACTUAL DAD to the reading, as a surprise. We’re telling him we just want to go for dinner at the pub downstairs. (Which everyone should do, anyways, it’s great)
More self-regarding share houses NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
“Joe works alongside Tim producing films.”
Joe and Tim are filming everything with secret cameras. Joe and Tim are orchestrating this entire apartment scenario. Joe and Tim will document the breakdown, the explosion, the blood.
Joe and Tim are the housemate Jenny and Shane had that one time.
TBH, all of the toasties would end up hatewatching it.
Hey, Toasties, thanks for the thoughtful advice and support yesterday. My tech for my circus performances both went really well and my partner made us a really good anniversary dinner and then we ended a bedroom dry spell and I’m feeling a lot better about shit in general today, even though my bus was delayed by fifteen minutes because the public transit in this city is a joke.
Glad to hear it, you sounded really burnt yesterday. My final bit of advice would be for both of you to go to bed early at least two nights a week and get a little cuddle time in before falling asleep. I’ve been fried from work lately and I’ve gone to bed at 9 am a few times and it’s like a freaking miracle cure.
We’re trying! We’re also aiming for more cuddle time on the couch while we watch TV. It’s a busy week to start making these changes but they’re happening.
Also this weekend we’re ACTUALLY celebrating our anniversary by going to a nice brunch (at a place where they just smash and fry entire tiny potatoes instead of making hashbrowns and you can get tiny doughnuts with mascarpone) and then the opening of a Star Trek costume exhibit because we know how to live.
That sounds like an amazing anniversary celebration! Congratulations.
Spocktacular!
If you ever wondered why your favorite tv show had such a low IMDb rating, it might be men: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/men-are-sabot…
This was really interesting! And bears out my lived experience, in that cis men are the LEAST likely to be able to acknowledge that things can be Good and Not For Them at the same time.
Yep.
I’m kind of wondering what other demographic information IMDb collects on users, because I bet breaking down other kinds of privilege would show similar trends (white people rating Empire? that could get ugly).
No doubt you’ve heard about the recent kerfuffle about Nancy Drew being passed on by CBS, because it skewed too female. http://www.businessinsider.com/cbs-wont-host-a-na…
Let’s be serious. Sarah Shahi is good for everyone.
I did. Didn’t really care about the whole Nancy Drew thing until they cast Sarah Shahi, would’ve watched it for her, was pissed over the “too female” bullshit.
It looked especially bad coming in with “6,741”, for which a just world would award Shahi a damn Emmy.
IME the best thing for getting vomit off of car interiors is Nature’s Miracle (the pet mess cleaner). My sister in law, who has no pets but two kids under 5, buys it by the gallon. Good luck!
I have a dying pet (she has digestion issues, so this is about cat, not kid vomit), and it works SO WELL.
Yes! It’s amazing. Both Mr. Delperro and I managed to bleed on our sheets this week (me from my period, him from shaving cuts) and a wash + spot treatment with nature’s miracle, and they’re back to their former glory.
Yep, when we had a dying kitty with digestion issues this was out go-to (and still is for the dog vomit).
Fourthed; Nature’s Miracle (the enzymatic formula) is amazing.
Also don’t try to get a similar product; all the others are rubbish.
THIS. There’s a reason that I always recommend it by name.
UGH. USGS, why are you fighting me today?!!! I stayed home to be productive. I have now spent 45 minutes on Earth Explorer and STILL haven’t been able to even submit my order. You keep erasing my shopping cart. I just want TWO landsat images! TWO!
MAGICAL TOAST POWERS! after 2 hours my order is visible! All I had to do was whine to the toast commentariat!!! Thank you!!!
re: the naming thing. There are twins on my team. Dad wanted to name his kid after himself. Since there were two, one is “Dad name” and the other is “Irish version of Dad name”. The kids just roll their eyes when explaining.
Omg my partner’s kids are this! He named one Sean and then his ex named the other one Jack!
This description of potential uses for a face recognition app is one of the creepiest things I have ever heard: “It also looks for similar people. So you could just upload a photo of a movie star you like, or your ex, and then find 10 girls who look similar to her and send them messages.” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/1…
Like literally shopping for people: “People who liked this also looked for…”
That was the less “creepy opening gambit”, too.
Tech bros: Inventing things without really thinking through whether the use cases are a good idea, example #1,000,000,002.
I know a woman who believed she was named after her father. Not until she was middle aged did she learn the truth. No one told her; she had to figure it out on her own.
No, this is not a false paternity story.
Her great grandfather named his son, her grandfather, after himself. Let’s call them Jackson Throckmorton and Jackson Throckmorton, Jr.
Jackson Junior had a hard childhood and changed his name as soon as he was of age. He lived his entire adult life as John Throckmorton. Not a junior. But he named his firstborn, our protagonist’s father, John Throckmorton, Jr. You’d think he would know better, that he’d want to spare a son growing up with his father’s name, since he had hated it so. Nope.
So John Throckmorton, Jr. also had a hard childhood, also grew up hating his father and being a junior. His firstborn was this woman, our protagonist. He named her Jackie Throckmorton.
So of course she assumed she was named after her father. Until she asked her father, in her middle-age, what her great grandfather’s name had been. Jackson. Then she remembered.
John Jr did not introduce her to her grandfather, John Sr, until she was 12 or so. She remembered her father pointing at her and saying to her grandfather, “You know what her name is? It’s Jackie.” She remembered the looks on their faces. Her grandfather looked sad, angry, and defeated. Her father looked smug.
Her name was for her great grandfather, a Fuck You to her grandfather.
This… This is a terrifying story. Children are not your weapons to use against your parents, people!
MAD!!
Oh man, my sister and I loved MADtv when we were kids. We still quote it to each other, and it was the hands-down pick over SNL every time. When I saw Mo Collins on Parks & Rec for the first time, I flipped out and forced my husband to watch a bajillion Stewart skits followed by a bajillion videos of every other skit on MADtv. He did not get it, even a little.
But my love for Will Sasso and Debra Wilson and the rest will never die.
Danielle is by far my favorite housemate.
WTEverlovingF is this shite???
http://bzfd.it/1WFpfGS
I am really confused by this, and i hope that it is not just because i am An Old, but it may be…
Jumping off the “primal urge to name one’s offspring after oneself” topic — wouldn’t Gilmore Girls have been so much funnier if they called Rory, “Lorelai Junior” instead?
Years ago someone did a study and found that men named Junior are more likely to commit crimes 🙂
Re DC hellhouse post, notice how Rose, the only female roommate, has been instantly relegated to “Mom” and “cook” of the house. Reminds me of the dreadful obit of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill that began: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. Her son, Matthew Brill, called her “the world’s best mom.” Her rocket science was not mentioned until paragraph 4, after the important woman stuff. Yeah.
My first comment on the Toast, and I just want to thank you SO MUCH for posting my partner’s top surgery fundraiser here! Nicole actually told me to leave him a few days ago because of his negative comments about Steve Rogers (“goody two-shoes”, “so annoying”), which is fair. But THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! <3
I just realised that while I’ve frequently heard of a boy being called “dad’s name Junior”, I have never. once. heard of a girl being named after her mom that way. Patriarchy is gross.
My mom is named after my grandmother! Birth certificates had identical first and middle names. My family tends to recycle names, although more of the men have Father’sFirst Father’sMiddle and more of the women have Relative’sFirst and Mother’sMaiden as their names. There were no original names in the family tree until my cousins started having kids.
Although this is definitely a story where A Man Ignored A Woman.
For the sake of the story, let’s call my mom and grandmother Elizabeth and my grandmother’s grandmother Mary. (Not their real names.)
When my grandparents had my mom, and they saw she was a girl, my grandmother wanted to name her after Mary. My grandparents had already named their older daughter (my aunt) after my grandmother’s mother. My grandfather agreed. My grandmother was asleep (because she just had a baby) when they came by to do the birth certificate. Instead of naming my mom Mary, like they had agreed, my grandfather named my mom Elizabeth.
My grandmother was Not Happy. She had never liked her name and though it was old fashioned, and didn’t want to saddle her child with it. But it was too late.
So then when I came along, my parents named me Mary. My mom liked the name, and she wanted to do it since she was cheated out of the name by my grandfather.
They used to, though. Ann Putnam of Salem witch trials fame was actually Ann Putnam, Jr. Lots of women were in that era. Not really sure when the shift happened. It would be an interesting research project….
My grandmother gave her name to my mother as a middle name, which she in turn did with me, and which one of my siblings did to their daughter. So the name has gone four generations now. As a middle name, mind you.
My first name is my mom’s middle name, and was her mom’s middle name before her, so that’s sort of inherited. But no, it’s not the same.
Frank and Nancy Sinatra named their kids Frank and Nancy.
And then there’s Will, Jada, Jaden and Willow, which is awesome.
I am named after my mum but in a more subtle way, in that my name is the Big Book of Baby Names meaning of her name.
So if my mum’s name were, for example, Margaret (which means ‘pearl’), then my name would be Pearl.
This is not the only reason for my name but it’s my favourite reason.
(I’m replying to this way late because someone linked to this for the DC bros and then I kinda forgot I was in an old post. Oops.)
The one place I’ve ever seen a Mom Jr. is on the Instagram account for Sseko, which employs women in Uganda to help them go to college. It seems to be fairly common in Uganda. One example: https://www.instagram.com/p/BCVo1jjGYTc/
As someone who has spent HOURS scanning DC’s craigslist postings, I can tell you that this is pretty normal. People overshare. People make themselves sound *terrible.* My personal favorite (keep reading after it gets boring, the surprise makes it better):
“Large, freshly painted bedroom (12×14) will soon be available on noise-free and semi-private third floor of huge, handsome and renovated Columbia Heights/Adams-Morgan townhouse just off 14th Street. DUDES preferred but willing to consider women as well… Washer/dryer and some basement storage available. Off-street parking available too on as-needed basis. Street parking is normally not that hard to find. We prefer to share with another hombre/dude/brutha man. A dog and cat also live in the house.” https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/roo/55908…
I’m so glad they’re accepting of a range of forms of traditional masculinity!
Sorry to have missed this earlier, but I also had laparoscopic abdominal surgery and it went FINE and I was going for walks with my niece a week later and back at work two weeks later. Don't be surprised at shoulder pain, for you have a nerve that goes up to your shoulder from your belly. Post-anaesthetic depression and fatigue are also normal, alas, so if they show up that's what they are. Take your pain meds. My Toast burner email is [email protected] if I can answer any questions for you.
O no, it is not in the summertime when it is 30 degrees. It is in the winter. When the heat is on.