Toasties! This is the best of all salads. It is greens and avocado and cucumber and cheese and bresaola. It brings joy. Which is much needed. Share your triumphs! Open-thread!
Cocktail Hour: Open Thread
Toasties! This is the best of all salads. It is greens and avocado and cucumber and cheese and bresaola. It brings joy. Which is much needed. Share your triumphs! Open-thread!
Friends! What should we do with these, the final six-ish weeks of The Toast? What would you like to talk about most?
Where are we going to go after there is no more Toast? Anyone have website recommendations that might help fill the gap?
It seems like such a shame to lose the (wonderful) commentariat that has formed here!
A bunch of the commentariat has moved to one or both of these places:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs
And the toastieslack channel. To join that one, email ppyajunebug [at] gmail [dot] com and request an invite. The invitation will tell you how to sign up, and the channels you’re automatically subscribed to include one on how to do slack.
I’m really, really enjoying toastieslack.
I’m not seeing channels anywhere. I see Hola annabel at the top of the page, then account settings, notification settings, etc, but I’m not seeing how I actually get to the list of channels. There’s a launch button at the top right, but that takes me to a this site can’t be reached message. HELP!!
I only used the mobile version but if you can click on the T or Toast icon thingy with the crossbones, I think that might work? I was bewildered too.
I’m in a browser window on my tablet and I don’t see a T or toast icon. It seems like the channels should be under the menu icon at the top left but that’s just giving me account profile, configure apps, etc. Guess I should get the mobile app and see if that works.
Ugh so sorry. The mobile app is apparently a bit harder? But I can sort of help you with that. Maybe.
I am having some success with the mobile app, thanks!
Did you email to get an invite from a moderator? If not, email ppyajunebug at the gmail point com.
We should start a Toastpocalypse Countdown. 42 days until VALHALLA SHINY AND CHROME.
This
The Toast lives, it dies, it lives again?
As it was, and ever shall be.
the identity of The Bartender! Will they maybe tell us since we’re at the end?? The mystery must be revealed
Last call for THE VERY LAST Toastie mix CD swap!
Email Figwiggin at (figwiggin)at(gmail)dot(com) with your name/username, mailing address, whether you’re willing to ship internationally, and any info you’d like your swap partner to have (i.e. “make me a mixtape about Dirtbag Teens” or “I hate Eddie Vedder” etc.). We’ll be sending out your matches next week: start planning your mixes!
I put in an offer to make a angsty emo breakup mix CD of shitty pop music PLEASE SOMEONE REQUEST IT.
I am open to receiving unrequited swaps if you have music you are dying to send out into the void, I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE.
I just know myself and I will not actually execute on creating a CD in exchange.
You got it, bb. If someone does request it in the mix swap, I’ll send you a duplicate. Send me your contact info: clevermanka68 at gmail.
I just…I love sad shitty pop songs so much.
ZOMG that sounds terribleamazing. I clearly need it. I realized when I had a dream about The Toast breaking up with me that all my break-up music needed a refresh.
already signed up and all, but I just want to take this space to say I am SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS. I forgot how much I used to love making mixes. I’m already pondering songs to include.
nooo if only I had not lost the external hard drive with all my music on it! Basically all I could contribute is a mix of hannahfish’s favorite Placebo songs (and a little bit of Damone)
Oh man, I too have had the whole “lost all music” experience and it sucks. My condolences.
I have to ask, though: What are your favorite Placebo songs?
Top 5: Kings of Medicine, Infra-Red, Special Needs, The French version of “Protect me from What I Want,” Bitter End
(and the entirety of Black Market Music yes I know that’s a cop out but it is my faaav.)
That’s because Black Market Music is great 😀 (It was the first Placebo album I ever heard.)
(I love the whole album so much, but I also admit that I probably love “Spite and Malice” more than most people should.)
Other than that, I love all the others you named too. (“Protégé Moi” is far better than the English language version.)
I was trying to think of what my top five are, but I can’t actually come up with anything definitive. Other than the fact that “Bosco” is probably in there somewhere. The version of “Without You I’m Nothing” with David Bowie, maybe.
(Spite and Malice almost made the list before I did my total cop out!)
Yesss. I don’t even listen to the original version of Without You I’m Nothing because the one where Bowie features is just so dang good!
I am so glad you feel the same way about “Spite and Malice,” because I had always suspected that it might be a case of me picking the one weird outlier song that only I love.
I heard the version with Bowie before the original, so the original was just underwhelming in comparison. Something about the way Bowie’s plumbing the depth of his lower range and the way that blends with Brian Molko’s voice.
I love making mixes but am bad at getting things into the mail. I usually put mixes up on Dropbox and give people a link to download – is that okay for something like this, or is the mail part a big deal for people?
I have an interview in half an hour.
I… would really like to get this job.
Sending lots of luck to you!
You’re going to kick ass! I feel bad for any candidate interviewing after you because they won’t be anywhere near your level!
You’re going to rock it!
GOOD LUCK!!!!
I had an interview yesterday and I was absolutely terrified so I am sending you all the good thoughts. You’ll be great!
Good vibes from thisaway!
Fingers crossed, good luck!
Good fortune go with thee, smallpistachio!
Good vibes coming at you!
Good luck! I am in the throes of job-searching too, and just lined up my first interview after weeks of sending applications into the void. We can do this!
Good luck, smallpistachio!! You are going to be great I am sure :))
I tried my best. Phone interviews are weird.
Good luck!
How did the interview go?
I have no idea. Still waiting to hear back!
Ah, Toasts. I am stressed to the point of breaking, but I feel like I can’t bring up why because it just elicits a bunch of unwanted “advice.” Ever been there?
Anyways, I’m moving this weekend, which brings out the worst side of sausagedog. I’d appreciate your best dance-y, high energy bop recommendations for a packing playlist– what have you been jamming to? I’m still enjoying CRJ’s Emotion and some mid-2000’s pop punk but could use more.
Some of my favourite cleaning music it It’s Blitz! by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which I would definitely recommend if it isn’t already in the mid-2000’s pop punk section of your playlist.
Soft Shock is definitely a good bouncy song.
Heads will Roll (A-Trak Remix) – I could listen to this song a zillion times
I am also superstressed, mostly with office work, and of course today my earbuds are MIA. I feel you, man.
Florence + The Machine is my go-to for cleaning and house projects!
I find the Jock Jams Pandora station unironically motivating under circumstances like these.
There’s… a Jock Jams… Pandora station?
Be right back.
Trying to think of pop punk you might not already have in your playlist…you’re already familiar with All Time Low and Ludo, probably? I’ve been revisiting RBD lately, but they’re hardly on the punk spectrum.
Best of luck. Moving is such a drag. You will feel so much better when it’s over.
This link has a .gif of Agnes Moorehead accio-ing a martini: https://behindthewhitecouch.tumblr.com/post/14100…
(She was a) gay and b) Christian and c) brainy and would surely have been a Friend of the Toast, right?)
I’m still really (and kind of unexpectedly) enjoying Carly Rae Jepson’s ‘Boy Problems’ for having to do anything boring like tidying or packing!
Also this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfijG7pmMqk
i also just moved– good luck with all of the stressors! it will be okay!
beyonce got me through unpacking!!! <3
I’m all about really poppy dance-y songs for house cleaning. This is one of my favorites: https://youtu.be/vMIy_PNlAcE (Neon Jungle: Trouble)
In the pop punk-ish vein I have been getting a lot of joy from the fact that Spotify has the Give em the Boot compilations. Those were a big deal to me in high school, haha. Spotify also has the Unicorns 2004 release “2014” which is super fun and dancey
WHOA thank you for that blast from the past. I played in a ska band in high school when these compilations were all coming out. YAY! Thanks!
Seconding Ludo! I also dunno if this meets your genre parameters, but Twin Atlantic’s Free is in heavy rotation for tidying-up and packing music with me.
The latest Sia album has some good songs for that!
Rachel Platten is good! Also, sometimes I like to listen to emo music from the early 2000s. All American rejects, mcr, etc.
So mid-2000’s pop punk is my favorite genre. I highly recommend Zolof The Rock and Roll Destroyer! Also, I’m not plugging myself, don’t bother following it, but I have a Spotify playlist called #tb2005 that is kind of perfect for that.
I received a ToastPost, and I think it was from you. It made my bad week better, and I hope yours gets better, too. Thank you!
Oh! I have horrendous handwriting and did send them out a little over a week ago, so they should be arriving around now! I’m so glad you got yours!! Thanks for letting me know, it makes me feel like I accomplished something good this week 🙂
Your handwriting was fine! (I don’t have it with me, but it was perfectly legible.) You did accomplish something good this week!
I am shamelessly promoting Danny Rebel and the KGB because not only are they amazing, but they are excellent humans, too! Think… Sublime, but with old school Dancehall reggae vox, and from Montreal instead of Long Beach. Perfection (for me). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-NUQ01CkL0
I’m not so good with the pop punk, but maybe you’d like some Obscure Canadian Skate Punk? SNFU is my go to cleaning music, but it is less “dance-y” and more “run about in a circle while flailing your limbs”. I like their mid-career stuff (Something Green and Leafy This Way Comes 4life), but I understand that *true* SNFU fans only like their early stuff. FYULABA is their breakthrough album.
O, and I am LOVING the new(ish) Peaches album (Rub), it is filled with sneering disdain, which is an excellent direction for her, I think.
Girl Talk! My favorite get stuff done around the house that I don’t want to do music, by far.
Yes! Mid-aughts pop-punk does not get enough love. The two early Brand New albums always get me stoked (Your Favourite Weapon and Deja-Entendu). Also, there’s a set of great compilation CDs called Punk Goes Pop full of gems like Further Seems Forever covering “Bye Bye Bye.”
You’re moving, so you’re allowed indulgences, now is the time you can let yourself revisit From Under the Cork Tree.
oh man, I used to listen to the Punk Goes 80s compilation ALL THE TIME. I’m always waiting for someone to ask me why I know all the words to Manic Monday because I’d have to be, “well….. see there was a mid-2000s series of compilation albums and Relient K (who are barely even slightly punk!) did a cover version of it, and welcome to my embarrassing teenage soul”
Yes, all the time.
The Daytime Dance station on Slacker Radio is pretty great.
I just moved and it is THE WORST. But listening to Lemonade on repeat definitely helped. It’s angry and sad at the same time and then hopeful at the end, which is kind of how moving is? Good luck!
Katzenjammer! I Will Dance When I Walk Away got me through my move.
Sleigh Bells and MIA are definitely great to listen to if you wanna feel powerful and get shit done. I’ve also been listening to The Coathangers (girl punk rock band).
What the shit, you guys, I detach myself from the internet to observe my birthday with a measly four consecutive days in bed with the Viking and a bottle of nice tequila, and I come back to find the whole place burned to the ground. I just don’t think I can handle this frothing sea of emotions.
So, you know, that in mind, I’m just happy I existed at the same time as the Toast and got to bask in its reflected radiance. Eternal thanks to everyone who ever provided job advice or ADD diagnosing encouragement or coached me through my big stupid breakup, my life is tangibly and measurably better because of your presence in it.
I like to think that it’s the Toast that summoned the Viking into being as a reward for getting my shit together, and maybe someday I’ll tell him about how for a brief sparkling moment he was the beloved virtual consort to a beautiful den of glistening witches, and hopefully he’ll find that charming and not intensely weird.
Anyway, he’s returning to the motherland for the summer and the internet is ruined forever now so my summer’s going to suck ass, but I love you all very very much and will most certainly stick around the community in whatever form it morphs into <3 <3 <3
ETA I ALMOST FORGOT TO SUPPLY YOU WITH THIS WEEK’S VIKING ANECDOTE
So I asked him over breakfast what he’d been whispering to me in his native tongue the night before, and with a completely straight face he replied “just reciting a recipe for meatballs, I know how much you love meatballs” and then obviously I made a childish joke about meatballs, the end.
This Viking is The Best Viking.
He really is, I’m so disgustingly obnoxiously smitten right now and still only convinced he isn’t a beautiful fever dream when he is directly within my field of vision, help meeee
I WILL MISS HIM. *sobs*
Don’t worry, I’ll keep feeding all this excitement into whatever channel you all end up in, if I don’t have somewhere to offload excess feelings I might actually explode
Yes please, which channel is the Viking channel? I need the updates.
I suspect it might be a bit self-indulgent of me to establish a dedicated slack channel for Viking news, but who am I kidding, got to give the people what they want
All in for the Viking channel.
All in favor of a Viking channel, say AYE!
I tried to like this comment twice after I saw the addendum about the meatballs!
He wasn’t wrong, I fucking love meatballs and I sincerely hope he actually does have a recipe memorized that he plans to demonstrate for me
I’m not even being facetious when I say that your stellar gifwork has been a crucial visual supplement to this whole experience
Viking! Don’t go!
…I mean, I’m not emotionally invested in your relationship happiness, don’t be silly, that’d be odd.
Even if he does know how much you love meatballs.
Swift longboats, carry him back to you soon, because your reward time is not over.
I maaaay have threatened to eat his passport to prevent him from leaving.
I won’t really do that
Probably
Once our dog at Mr Daki’s green card and I was like, “nice try, dog, but that only means he can’t reenter the country, which is NOT THE POINT.”
With your higher reasoning skills, you can correctly choose the passport for your repast.
To be honest, I’m really not one to seek out green foods. Red things are just so much more satisfying, you know?
Yes, Marceline, we know.
hmm, triumphs?
well, the boyfriend met the parents this week! it went well. my parents were almost hilariously non-confrontational. i don’t think they asked him one question about himself, just talked to him about other stuff. i think he was actually disappointed.
and now it’s my turn. yikes. tell me your “meet the parents” stories.
When my first boyfriend waaaaaaay back in college met my parents it was the same day that my sister had had her wisdom teeth extracted and she drooled on him.
haha excellent!
The first time my dad met my secondary school boyfriend, he was so fazed by it that he actually left his own house because he felt so awkward.
my dad was also quite fazed. i think he laughed while shaking the boyfriend’s hand. like an awkward nervous laugh. it was pretty cute.
Awwww! My first boyfriend was such a suck-up — he made my mum a cup of tea and bought it to her and stayed chatting to her for ten minutes. Later she was like “Maybe you could be more like him.” I don’t think my dad ever met that boyfriend as we only went out for a month or so!
haha what a charmer! my parents haven’t met any of my boyfriends since i was…like, 14. since i’m 27 now, it’s quite a different game. nerve-wracking!
My father served my previously vegetarian and kosher boyfriend pork shoulder.
(I still think the thing that my father brags about the most is that I turned a vegetarian.)
My college boyfriend stayed with me in my parents’ house for a few days over the summer and barely made eye contact with or spoke to them. You can be sure he didn’t thank them for their hospitality.
Come to think of it, I don’t think any of the guys I’ve dated have been polite/friendly to my parents. That’s horrible.
Good luck meeting his!
yikes, that’s never a good look. how did he think that was appropriate?
i am stupidly nervous to meet his, which is a little silly, but oof.
My most recent ex came with me to visit my parents for Christmas. Immediately after arriving, he had an anxiety thing and went to hide in my room, and then continued to mostly avoid actually talking to them for the rest of the week. He also picked the onions out of the beef bourguignon my dad made. When my mom hugged me goodbye at the end of the week, she whispered “I want you to remember that you deserve to be happy.” At the time, I thought she was referring to my Starbucks job. She was not.
That same boyfriend introduced me to his parents, and I was the first girlfriend of his he’d introduced to them. This was at his doctoral graduation.
When I was introduced to my ex-girlfriend’s grandmother, her response was “Well, at least she’s white.”
yiiiiiikes
wow.
When my now-husband met my dad for the first time, dad cooked a boiled lobster dinner as a special treat. It was husband’s first time eating lobster. “Don’t point the shell at your face when you’re cracking it, babe,” I warned him. Five seconds later, my dad’s face was covered with lobster juice and globules from husband’s lobster.
haha oh man, that’s one way to break the ice.
I was really nervous to tell my dad that my boyfriend is trans the day before they met, but he was just very pleasantly FASCINATED. My little brother was there at the time and described it as “like Mr. Weasley meeting a muggle”.
Now I am meeting his parents in a few weeks and I am TERRIFIED. So, I feel ya.
“like Mr. Weasley meeting a muggle” ahhh
it is weirdly high pressure, no?
Totally. I’ve met previous boyfriends’ parents and not been super nervous, but this is the most serious relationship I’ve been in so it feels like, these people could *knockonwood* actually be my IN-LAWs at some point. Seems important not to eff it up, ya know?
same boat, i’d realllllly like to make a good first impression, since the last girl they met was, uh….his high school sweetheart, who he married and then divorced. yikessss.
I feel like I got pretty lucky with my in-laws. One of the many reasons I came to that realization was the first time I traveled to visit them for a holiday. The table is set for the meal, and I see that they have JFK/Jackie O salt and pepper shakers on the table. At least I knew we weren’t going to have a lot of political disagreements!
http://www.drloriv.com/Portals/0/Images/Topics/Ke…
haha you probably think of those salt & pepper shakers very fondly, now. what a relief.
I met my best-internet-friend’s parents and she introduced me to them as ‘parents, this is [screen name]’. It was P Surreal to be addressed as that through a weekend.
they called you by your screenname all weekend? amazing.
please tell me it was something like xXxbabyangeldarkheart1991xXx
Like I’m sure it wasn’t but I love the image of someone’s parents calling you that with a straight face
Haa my parents knew most of my college friends solely by their rugby names. “how is Rocky doing these days?” they’ll say.
When I met my now-fiancee’s parents for the first time, they invited me (within fifteen minutes of saying hello) on a trip with them to Hawaii. I guess I made an exceptionally good impression.
dang! you can’t get much better than that!
When I met Señor Negroni’s mother, Doña Pera who is a tiny magic Guatemalan pixie who is indigenous Maya and maaaaybe 4″10″ with good posture, the first thing she did was grab me and hug me like I was her long lost daughter. The second thing she did was marvel at my height (6’3″ in heels) and ask me to pick her up. She was not joking.
all these stories are so heartwarming!
Grad School Boyfriend (GSB) is meeting my parents at my graduation (he was to graduate the following year) along with my slightly off center yet lovable extended family. I had told GSB that my father was retired career military, 20+ years in the service but not to push the military thing because my dad didn’t like to speak of it. So it goes…okay. Awkward as hell but not disastrously. GSB and dad spoke maybe 4 sentences to each other and spent all of 3 hours total in each other’s company. Quick note about my dad: he’s extremely introverted and I was pretty proud of his efforts to stay present in the group and not wander off to get alone time even though it must’ve exhausted him. This was right around the time Bush gave the order to invade Iraq which I was not happy with. About a week after graduation, GSB & I were discussing current events and I held my point of disagreeing with the invasion when GSB pulled something out of his ass and said “If your father could hear you right now he’d die and then start rolling over in his grave.”
Me: “what did you say?”
GSB: “Your dad made [military branch] his life and you are throwing it in his face. He would be so ashamed of you if he could hear you.”
Me:… “are you trying to tell me that you know more about my father after meeting him one time for a few hours than I do? You think my mother is the peacenik of my parents?” then I started laughing because my dad is such a centrist and mom such a Republican (at that time) and GSB seriously thought he knew my dad well enough to try to shame me.
This was the last straw for our relationship and I waited a few weeks until I got my own place then broke up with his stupid ass. Fin.
what the butt. what a stupid thing for him to say!!
Ah I have the best story! My current BF had met my parents, but he came over on Christmas Eve to meet my siblings. My brother-in-law was nervous and a little drunky and kept repeating BF’s name to himself to remember, as in “Hi S, I’m R.” OF COURSE when BF arrived, brother-in-law introduced himself as BF’s name!! As in “Hi I’m S” when he is truly R.
It was very much like that episode of Peep Show where Mark goes to an interview and introduces himself with the hiring manager’s name (can’t find the clip). I missed the whole thing because I was in the bathroom but this story has been repeated often. It still makes me laugh.
haha oh god, this has caught me in a giggle loop at work imagining it!
My husband and I got married before either one of us had met our respective parents. Mine didn’t care–they’re pretty low-key. His mom and step-dad were fine, too. But when I met his dad and step-mom, the first question his dad asked me was what last name our children were going to have (I kept my own name, obvs) and how would people know I was their mother if my name was different. So then I told him we weren’t going to have kids. That went over really well.
hoo boy. that sounds like a rough outing.
Well, husband and I are still married 13 years later and FIL is dead, so not something I have to worry about anymore.
Once upon a time I met my partner’s parents and his notoriously gauche father, upon learning that my mother was a lapsed Catholic, insinuated that there had been some childhood trauma in her past.
wowwww. stay classy, partner’s-dad.
Boyfriend has met my parents multiple times already, but he’s going camping with me and my family soon. My parents know full well that Boyfriend has never been camping and that he’s very accident prone/not good with outdoors. Me on the other hand…I was essentially raised on my dad’s hunting/camping property. When I told my mom that Boyfriend wanted to go camping with us, she texted me back saying “Ok. I’ll be sure to bring the first aid kit.”
TLDR: My parents enjoy making fun of Boyfriend as much as I do. This will be fun (I hope).
Oh, bless. The first time I met my now MIL she had four Chardonnays and gave me an extremely vivid play by play of her son/my partner’s birth. Really, no detail was spared.
That was years ago and I still love her to pieces in spite of that day.
My boyfriend’s mom and two brothers came to our city to visit. This was the first time I’d met them. We lasted about eight hours before he got appendicitis. I got to know the family very well at the ER, triage, recovery room….
What happened to you this week that made you smile the most?
A SUPER HOT neighbour blatantly hit on me the other day and I’ve basically been like this ever since:
He introduced himself and said “I’m in apartment ____, feel free to come by for anything.”
FOR ANYTHING
OH HELLO
Pretty sure he means “for peen.”
GET IT
OH I’LL GET IT ALRIGHT
Man, I wish I had a hot, forward neighbor.
I told a stupid joke in an elevator full of people yesterday and then everyone in the elevator gave me a high five… I’ve been smiling ever since.
LIVING THE DREAM
I told my boyfriend he could propose to me. 🙂 (He has been waiting on my say-so for a year. But I still want him to do a romantic proposal, so I did not do a formal proposal myself.)
Exams! As in, I’m almost finished.
I got a birthday card from my nephew! He is three and sent me an Elmo card which included two alphabet stickers (W for him, S for me), two painstakingly drawn letters (S and W again), and an excellent scribble across the interior. I laughed for about five minutes. Being an aunt is great!
Not one, but TWO old friends who have moved away got in touch with me unexpectedly this week to tell me they’re visiting! One of them arrived last night and it is already a blast having him around. The other will be here next week and we have dinner plans and it is great.
Multiple different people complimented my hair and makeup on Monday, and that was really nice to hear. 🙂
I was at Citi Field last night and watched my Nationals have an inning with ten batters and seven runs. That was pretty fantastic.
Reflected on where I was five years ago and where I am now, and realized I am happier with my situation than I have been in a long time.
I found the Snapchat* filter for swapping your face with a photo and managed to meld my face with my boyfriend’s with horrifying and hilarious results.
*not a form of social media I understand at all, but I like the filters
At the NEMO Science Centre in Amsterdam, my boyfriend and I found a mirror-thing that showed the top half of one person’s face on top of the bottom half of another’s. Turns out the top of my face and the bottom of my boyfriend’s face, mixed together, look uncannily like Ned Flanders.
It happened about 30 minutes ago when I finally watched that facebook live video of the lady with the chewbacca mask that apparently went viral. Her laugh is killing me!
http://myfox8.com/2016/05/20/womans-pure-joy-over…
I saw that this morning! She is so genuinely thrilled, I love it.
Her laugh!! Oh that filled me with such joy. Thank you!
It’s senior week. I smiled most when about 20 of my closest friends ended up wondering into my room over the course of several hours, and we ended up with a room of 20 people eating pasta out of a huge pot and shooting the shit for the rest of the night. I’m really going to miss these people and having so many people I love so close to me all the time
Neighbor has piglets and it turns out that if you rub most pigs’ tummies they will fall over. It is pretty much the best thing. I felt like I won a game every time I managed to make it happen. The mama pig would also do this but in 300lbs slow motion.
Also, there is a nest of baby bunnies in my shallots and they are murderously cute (wish I could post pics, but alas). I am trying to convince husband that if mombun does not move them we can raise them as carnivores (so they won’t destroy our garden/crops) and have an army of buns.
My period came with no PMS symptoms and the lightest cramps I have -ever- felt (normally I’m dry-heaving on the floor in the fetal position, so yeah.)
Yesterday afternoon my supervisor called an “emergency” meeting to address some Shit That Has Been Going On and because I can never keep my mouth shut, I spoke up on a number of points. Afterward, one of my coworkers who’d been in the meeting sent me a lovely message, telling me that I was amazing in the meeting, and a true leader, that she always valued my opinion and how calmly and clearly I express myself and how well I speak for all of them…
It is honestly the best compliment I’ve received in ages and I was (and still am!) so touched and delighted that my coworker took the time to reach out like that.
I bottled a very experiemental batch of homebrew. Fingers crossed that the carbonation comes out right, but the flavor was just what I was going for!
My very best faraway friend, my soul person, my platonic forever mate, arrived in my city on Wednesday and will be here until AUGUST for an internship between semesters of law school. I GET LIKE THREE MONTHS OF PURE BEST FRIEND TIME! Anyway when we reunited we basically could not stop hugging and holding hands and all that jazz, my face hurt from smiling, everything is right with the world etc etc YES
<3 <3 <3
I finally made it to one of #3 niece’s school programs and it was PHENOMENAL! She’s 14 and just finishing 8th grade in a tiny town 2 hours away, which means a 4 hour round trip for me, which is a lot for a weeknight. BUT! It’s her last program at this seedy little homemade charter school, and the music teacher wrote an original spoof of The Godfather with fairy tale characters, set at the wedding of Don Trolleone’s god-daughter Cinderella to Prince Charming. The niece played Ursula the Wedding Planner and was also assistant director and helped with the costumes. She sang every number like it was her own. It was the first time I have seen her perform; my tiny heart grew three sizes yesterday.
I GOT A RAISE!!
It’s not exactly happening TO me, but my hydrangea is going totally BONKERS this year! It’s absolutely covered in blooms, with more coming in. The year before last I pruned it too late in the season, so last year I hardly had any blooms, and it is the only nice thing in my otherwise weed-stricken barren wasteland of a yard. I got so many flowers in my house!
i made a new friend, a kissing-type friend, for kissing. 🙂
hmm, I started watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and it is the most #relatable and happy making thing! The only thing I can really say that has actually happened… in my life… I feel good about this week is sending out a bunch of job applications finally.
My husband got a job (after two weeks of anxious post-exam hunting) and it is he BEST JOB EVER and I am so very proud of him. He’s a biology major and still in his undergrad and he’ll be collaborating with the head of the environmental science dep’t at our university to do a big research project, and if that goes well, to co-author papers with her and present their research at a couple of conferences. SO PROUD. I smiled for a whole day straight after hearing the news and we had Chinese takeout to celebrate.
Books! I am listening to Carrie Fisher’s memoir about electroshock therapy, Shockaholic.
Fisher’s humor is very very dry, and quite sharp, perhaps not unlike Rowling’s Licorice Snaps. I love her.
Just finished Everything I Never Told You, it was everything you all said it would be (heartbreaking but perfect).
Lazaretto is up next, I really liked Tumbling and this one looks possibly even better?
Just about to start the second book in the Raven Cycle; I read the first in like a day and I cannot wait!
The Dream Thieves is so good! ENJOY
I’m 3/4 of the way through the first one! I’m loving it. This is a good reminder to send the lady who recommended it to me a thank you email (she called me about fostering a dog, we wound up talking books, she’s now reading the Grisha Trilogy, I’m on the Raven Cycle, and I’m probably picking up a dog to foster next weekend – very productive for everyone).
Carrie Fisher is the best person.
Finished Children of Earth and Sky, which was good, but I had built up way too many expectations for it and thus was inevitably kind of let down. I’m midway through Too Like the Lightning now, and I am loving it.
I actually had mixed feelings about Wishful Drinking but that’s probably because I read it and had a hard time interpreting the humor. I spent a lot of time wondering who the butt of a given joke was. I’m sure it would have worked much better as an audiobook (or the live show it was adapted from).
I’m currently, finally reading Mary Doria Russell’s Epitaph, which is just as lovely as I was expecting it to be. I still kind of wish I’d brushed up on The Illiad first, though.
Wishful Drinking just felt incredibly bitter to me. I read a review that said it works much better as an audiobook because Fisher reads it and the jokes are funnier and in general the humor comes across better. In print it just seemed really scattered and disorganized, in addition the the angry bitterness.
Yeah bitter is the word I was looking for and couldn’t find. I’m glad I’m not the only one who was meh on that book. I really wanted to like it
I’m just about to start the fourth Raven Cycle book, after busting through the last two in record time! I don’t want it to be over, wahhhh.
I’m putting it off as long as I can stand*, because I’m not ready.
*probably that means Tuesday next week
I wish I had your willpower! it was hard enough not reading it last night, haha.
I really want to reread Susan Juby’s The Truth Commission, but I cannot find my copy.
This is the dark side of forcing people to borrow amazing books. They sometimes disappear on you.
I just finished A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl which I got an ARC of last month. It doesn’t seem like it should be good, but it was so good!
Finished up the Welsh Princes trilogy by Sharon Kay Penman this week. All very good; read them in order.
Voraciously devoured The Midnight Watch by David Dyer. Super fast read about a journalist covering the Titanic disaster and how he unraveled the Californian’s presence close by when Titanic sank.
Now I am into Alison Weir’s biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, which I’d somehow never read.
Oh boy that Welsh Princes trilogy sounds great but jeez I know that ends, my people, my people. And my other people are the Scots and that’s not so good either. At least the Welsh can beat England at rugby.
I just (like, today, on the bus to work) finished Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson, which was…interesting? I’m still trying to work out how I feel about it–there was a lot that I loved, but a lot that just seemed like the author trying to be like ‘ooo, I am Serious Fancy Writer Man, look at me’, so.
I’m following it up with Jessica Knoll’s Luckiest Girl Alive, which just seems ridiculous and thriller-y, so it should be a good escape read.
I’m just finishing up Ordeal by Hunger, the classic history of the Donner Party, because apparently I’m in that kind of mood. Next up, Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor, which I bought because my friend wants to talk to someone about it. I expect it to be amazing, of course.
I’m reading Martha Quest for one book group and still in the interminable midst of Infinite Jest they are very different books that give me similar feelings. Both can be very tedious, but also really good and insightful. Sometimes alternating between the two, sometime frustratingly managing both at once.
I just finished listening to Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night, as recommended by that interview Nikki did with him! It was soooo long (took me a few months to finish!) but the story really pulled me in. A bit of it was in French and they didn’t provide translations (a la Jane Eyre) but I didn’t feel like I missed too much. A+
Have been meaning to read this for a while. Glad to hear you enjoyed it.
I’m starting the Neapolitan novels this weekend. I’ve completely cleared my schedule.
Just finished Seanan McGuire’s new book Chaos Choreography, which is about a ballroom dancer/cryptobiologist from a family of cryptobiologists; this one’s set in a So You Think You Can Dance style reality show and is delightful.
I listened to Shockaholic just a couple months ago! Carrie Fisher is a gift to the world.
I’m reading Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari (very funny and very smartly written) and Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire.
I completed my Goodreads challenge last night (110 books) with Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon, which I did not like as much as I wanted but it wasn’t a bad book either?
In recognition of The Toast’s untimely demise, what article were you always secretly planning to write/pitch? I was going to do “If Janelle Monae Were Your Girlfriend.”
I wanted to do “If Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan Was Your Mother” but I could never come up with more than one or two things
You’d be pretty well-adjusted, actually, cause she always believed in you, and in sex ed, and in the power of therapy.
You’d treat women well, because if you didn’t, you’d be shipped off to Beta IMMEDIATELY for some gentle re-education about it.
You’d be pretty well-adjusted, actually Counterpoint: Miles, who could not be considered well-adjusted until some time after his 30th birthday. Though I suppose that was mostly due to things outside of Cordelia’s control
She’d be so warm and supportive towards your friends that you’d occasionally wonder if they were only your friends because of your mom.
Very true. The generic “you” would be well-adjusted. Miles, who I guess is really the only true control in the experiment, is certainly not.
I feel like Miles is actually pretty well-adjusted, all things considered. Imagine if he hadn’t had Cordelia to balance out the rest of Barrayar!
Young Miles is one of the least-well adjusted people in the world*. Which is understandable, but still, even Cordelia’s good sense only goes so far.
*Gregor is also not in a particularly good way. And Mark is … well. I want to see Cordelia raise a child who is genetically hers and has not experienced trauma at a young age, to see how things turn out, because the three sons she has are not models of sound mental health.
I wanted to do “How to tell if you’re in a LMB novel!”
You are a woman who is undervalued by everyone in your life, especially those who love you.
Your god has a vile sense of humor.
You meet the love of your life, and everyone suspects you’ve been brainwashed.
Your wacky hijinks and forceful personality might be deeply annoying from other people’s point of view.
You have a space age solution to a feudal-era problem.
Your space age problems stem from your feudal-era society.
Just when you’re about to give up on love entirely, you stumble across a person who is your perfect match in every way. The two of you live happily ever after.
You are a woman who is undervalued by everyone in your life, especially those who love you.
TOO REAL.
In everyone’s defence, the situation with Cordelia and Aral did seem a bit shady from the outside.
In middle school a teacher assigned us to write about our heroes. I was deep in my Bujold obsession and asked if I could write about a fictional character. Teacher said no. So I wrote about Cordelia and pretended she wasn’t a fictional character.
I would read the hell out of that.
Witches of Bayside
(a photo taxonomy of theoretical witch housing in deepest queens, nyc, bc where I’m from we don’t have tudor-style residential buildings so I daydream what kind of witches live there on my walks)
I was briefly planning to pitch a list of reasons why Windom Earle and Charlie Kelly are the same person, but that…uhhh…never got off the ground once I stopped being incredibly high.
I had mentally written at least half of “If Abby Wambach Were Your Girlfriend.”
A+ would read
loool this is the only thing I ever pitched to the Toast! I share your feelings.
But I had really wanted to write “Biology Lessons for Poets,” it’s something I think about a lot.
I KNEW someone would have gotten to the Abby idea before me.
Well I’m certainly not surprised we had the same idea. Unf, Abby.
I want “Biology Lessons for Poets,” please.
House Hunters: Witches edition.
I even had a pinterest board of witchy real estate listings lined up!
I had been mentally outlining a piece called “The Straightwashing of David Bowie” for a long time but then he died and it didn’t feel appropriate. I still think about it a lot though.
If it’s any consolation, that sounds like a piece that I would probably read a whole bunch of times and have a lot of feelings about.
My confession: The work network I usually check The Toast on during the day blocks all your gifs, so I sometimes just end up imagining what they might be.
This one, for example, is probably David Bowie in a long satin frock, climbing out of a carnival ride teacup and then giving a slightly dizzy double thumbs-up.
Or he’s sitting on the couch in a blue suit, illuminated by the flicker of what might be a re-run of Leave It to Beaver, laughing and crying all at once in a mixture of delight at the sitcom and nostalgia for something lost.
TRAGICALLY, no, neither of those. Just a very enthusiastic Hiddleston with a THIS!!!
This.
(and if someone wrote The Gaywashing and Whitewashing of Freddie Mercury, that would rock as well.)
I’d read that too.
For a while I was working on a satirical thing from the point of view of someone who grows up getting participation trophies and ends up as an adult with a wildly inflated sense of self. Not sure I would have really pitched it, but I definitely had the Toast in mind while writing.
^would totally read this wherever it ends up!
“If Cherubino Were Your Intern” and “If a Talking Bear Were Your Best Friend.”
Also “Signs You Are a Character in a Middlebrow British Police Procedural” (You, your spouse, and all your neighbors belong to the same posh wife-swapping club.)
juwt realizing that there’s a hypothetical universe out there in which Cherubino *could* be my intern has made my day so much better.
He would be so charming, but manage to piss off your big boss so much that he’d hide from your boss in the photocopier paper closet. Then your boss would decide *he* had to hide in the photocopier paper closet, so you would cause a bit of a kerfuffle so Cherubino would be able to sneak out behind you and hide under the stairs where you keep the bubble wrap and packing boxes.
You would deploy him strategically with some of your grumpier patrons because he always managed to be so genuinely interested in them, and pleased to see them, that people you had never before seen smile would smile at you and tell you how great young people are.
If you had a sexual harasser at your office/library, Cherubino would record it on his phone so you had something to take to HR.
(Also, if Cherubino were your intern Marcellina would be your administrative co-ordinator. She would start out disliking you but then you would both snort-laugh at the same inappropriate thing in a meeting. A week later, she would notice you were reading “The Daughter of Time” on your break and mention it offhandedly to you later, and you would have a pretty good talk about it. Soon, she would be coming into your office, shutting the door, and using it as a safe space to talk about what incompetent shitsacks men are.)
Yesssss. This is perfect.
I am so charmed by this. And honestly, after hating this opera so fervently after having sung the Countess, I am finding myself much more kindly disposed towards it.
Thanks! It is my favorite ever, but I can see how beautiful vocal lines would not make up for having to forgive, completely, an abusive serial cheater.
I want that bear piece so much. It sounds cozy and wonderful.
I will finish it and post it on my blog 🙂
Thumbs-upping “If Cherubino Were Your Intern” SO HARD.
How living with an autoimmune disease has actually helped my body positivity.
Ooh I’d read that.
I have celiac which is an autoimmune disorder and I think the main thing it’s helped me with is assertiveness, especially with waitstaff.
This is my first CleverManka gif and I am grinning like a big old goof-ball in public.
Teach me your ways. Thx.
Well there’s about a 100% chance it’ll show up on clevermanka.net, now!
I would read that. I’m having a hard time thinking positively about mine.
It’ll definitely be one of my early posts for clevermanka.net!
I was thinking of writing (actually half did write) a piece about my near death experiences and how they made me finally man up and start honestly thinking of myself as an atheist.
…things got way too dark and hard. But maybe one day I’ll be able to finish it.
That sounds incredible. When you write it, I will absolutely read it.
I would have been so excited about “If Janelle Monae Were Your Girlfriend.”
I really wanted to write up some brief snippets from the lives of women who were imprisoned at the abandoned penitentiary where I give tours. There’s so little known about them and I feel like recovering the lost histories of disobedient women is prime Toast material. Who else would want to publish that?
I also submitted some The Magicians femslash awhile ago, I am not sure whether it will see the light of day. Femslash Friday, you will be missed!
That penitentiary article sounds FASCINATING.
recovering the lost histories of disobedient women is prime Toast material
Ugh that would’ve been so great. Surely, surely there’s someone else who would publish it.
Maybe Rejected Princesses? http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/
I had wanted to do something related to the MCU but then I thought it was too juvenile and then now after it’s too late we got two posts about Civil War this week.
One time I submitted a pitch that was something along the lines of “What if I just drew a bunch of pictures of Romy and Michele?” — I was completely sober when I sent that and I don’t know why I did it, and it was very embarrassing.
Would click!
I really want to know what happened to them, and if they want to any subsequent reunions.
A+ if drawn entirely on post-its
I would have submitted the Femslash Friday Definitive Argument in Favor of the Lesbianism of Romy and Michele. So I would have loved your pictures.
My undergrad advisor said, back when I told him I was thinking of going to my 10th reunion, “Make sure you watch Romy and Michele first. BTW, it is the queerest film I have ever seen.” He’s not wrong.
oh also Shabbat in Şişli, about going to Saturday services in Istanbul in the temple where your dad was bar mitvahed and multiple bombs have gone off, recently enough that death is a real threat. Also involving the life of my elegant, brilliant grandmother and her complicated relationship with a prominent industrialist. That one i’ve actually written a draft of and am working up the nerve to submit.
I would love to read both of those so much!
Would absolutely read both of these, immediately.
Books to read when you are in the mood to retreat to a monastery. I might still write this–I made a list, I just wasn’t sure where I wanted to go from there.
Oh please write this! I get that feeling at least once every six months, and I am running out of Cadfael books.
Yes yes yes
“In This House of Brede,” by Rumer Godden. (And go to her if you want to read about Japanese dolls.)
I love In This House of Brede! Just made my boyfriend read it.
“Theological Inaccuracies in American Top 40 Hits”
Because, dammit, you don’t get a brand-new soul when you get Confirmed!
You do generally get a gold cross, though, so halfway there!
(Would read this.)
I love the cross I got for confirmation from my grandparents- it’s white gold, gold gold and pink gold hammered together. So pretty! Also very small which is important to me.
My parents gave me a lovely cross for my first Communion (Lutheran); it’s very small, with a bunch of grapes at the center, a grape leaf extending partway down each branch of the cross. It’s lovely.
Would read!
A few…”What I would actually say if I said what I thought” (in response to all the internet trolls/certain presidential candidates who seem to think “I’m just saying what I think” is an excuse for thinking really horrible things). “Collective Animal Nouns That Would Make Good Book Titles.” Also, possibly a ranking of the relative moral depravity of Disney villains.
I’m not even going to pretend I’m not *still* co-writing “If Oscar Isaac Were Your Boyfriend” in perpetual chat messages with my partner in fangirling. We probably also could have done an excellent Movie Yelling for ‘Drive’ last weekend, but what wine does for wit, it does not do for memory.
I had a short story about a queer country music duo that I’d kept meaning to polish up more and submit places. I know they don’t do as much short fiction here now as they did when The Butter was still a thing, but it was kind of my weird pipe dream for it to get accepted and published here anyway.
Union-songs-in-which-“worker”-is-replaced-by-“robot” (the political implications didn’t even occur to me, but even after having realised it’s still good.)
Also, perhaps more honestly, about my anxiety and dissociation and how that bleeds into my research about robots in popular culture. Because, y’know, Data? It me. There’s a considerable part of my identity caught up in that thesis.
I was never brave enough to actually pitch any of that, but I would’ve loved to explore the things. Maybe I will write them someday.
Every Comment Ever Written in an Article About the US Collegiate Greek System
I read a book about the daughters of Genghis Khan and how they ruled his empire in varying capacities for hundreds of years after his death. One of the daughters decreed that only a man who could beat her at wrestling could marry her, and I was going to do a list of things a man would have to beat me at (i.e., more tumblr followers) to be able to marry me as an homage to this great woman.
Khutulun, right? The wrestling one was Khutulun? WHO ENDED HER LIFE SINGLE AND WITH A GIANT HERD OF HORSES SHE CLAIMED FROM DUDES SHE BEAT AT WRESTLING?
YES. GODDESS.
I very much would like to read this book! What’s the title?
It’s The Secret History of the Mongol Queens by Jack Weatherford. Kind of a bummer that it’s written by a white dude, but I think he did a pretty decent job.
“How to tell if you are in a late-antique novel”
Uncanny Double Features – a list of movies you would watch back-to-back that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, but would pair well together, like a wine pairing for that plate of microwave nachos you’re eating right now. Examples: Heathers, followed by Reservoir Dogs; Looper, followed by Hot Tub Time Machine 2.
I used to do this in college and it was great.
I desperately, desperately want this list.
Please give us this list!
The late night double feature picture show?
I used to work at my college movie theater, and we showed *many* weird double-features like this (e.g., “American Pie” followed by a documentary about the U.N.)
Also, one of our favorite things was trying to figure out how to combine the names of two films on our marquee (due to limited space). My favorite mash-up of titles was when we were showing Catherine Breillat’s “Fat Girl” and an Iranian film called “The Day I Became a Woman”. We tried both FAT GIRL BECAME A WOMAN and THE DAY I BECAME A FAT GIRL.
On the serious side, I was going to volunteer for the convert series — my change from growing up in an evangelical fundamentalist Christian cult, through Western philosophy-influenced agnosticism in college, to becoming a Quaker and rediscovering my own soul’s faith as an adult.
And b) of all, I also thought about a collection of Odd Houses I Have Known and/or Nearly Leased: the Haunted & High-Maintenance Edition.
I definitely read “Houses” as “Horses.” I would like to read that too
I could’ve written the first and my mom could’ve written the second! She’s had some high-maintenance, and definitely haunted, rescue horses in her time.
*silent Quaker applause in solidarity*
I’ve always meant to write “How to Tell if You’re in a John Green Novel.” (I teach high school English, so, you know.) I’ll still write it someday, just for the sheer pleasure and intrinsic reward.
A meditation on liminal spaces, esp. w/r/t gender, sexuality, and the two edges of “humanity” (the human/animal edge and the human/technology edge).
Probably just as well because now that I have it written out it sounds pretentious AF.
I don’t think it sounds pretentious, but then again I experience a great deal of my life as existing in liminal spaces? Especially my gender…
All in for this.
Not pretentious at all! I’m writing my doctoral thesis on liminality on the human/technology edge as depicted in popular culture (which turns out to be not that much of a sharp boundary but much rather a scale/spectrum; see also comment above) – if you’d like to talk some more about that I’m always glad 🙂 I’m @radiantsquid on twitter and in the slack group…
which turns out to be not that much of a sharp boundary but much rather a scale/spectrum
Yeeesssss that’s what I find so interesting about it. It’s like, the more you try to pin down a defining edge the fuzzier the boundaries become. Same goes for gender.
Yes! And the construction of the binary is kept in place by strongly politicised narratives and charted/marked by speech acts (Being continuously confronted with the speech act “You’re just a machine” is just about the only thing that makes the Cylons in BSG different from biological humans, for example). Also there are strong performative aspect to it, and I will stop ‘splaining now, because I would be here all day and you, of course, know all of this already. 😉
Gender is, in fact, similar, yes.
This essay would include many references to the heavy-handed speeches in “The Measure of a Man,” y/y?
y.
I wrote half of my long-ish M.A. thesis about the speeches in “The Measure of a Man”. I love Star Trek when it’s clumsy think pieces disguised as a TV Show. The other half of that thesis was saying “There is basically no literature about Stargate SG-1 and that show is my way-too-problematic fave” and “I actually enjoyed the ending of BSG, fight me.”
The PhD is a lot of that, but with more and better theory (Thomas Aquinas is my new bff, when did that happen?!), and I do films now, too. Wheeee.
This sounds fascinating and as soon as I am in the slack group I want to hear more! I work with assistive technology and we’ve been talking a lot recently about how the line between assistive tech and tech in general is blurring and the impact of cultural changes on how tech use is viewed in the schools.
I was slowly working through the nuts and bolts of a piece talking about Bobby from “Company” vs. Hoffmann in the Offenbach opera “Tales of Hoffmann.” In hindsight, this may have been too weird even for The Toast.
As an opera and Broadway fan, I would read the shit out of that essay, just saying.
So would I.
Of course you were. (hi)
Hahaha, hi.
(At least I’m on-brand.)
I would have read that!
I’d been considering the idea of writing something about being an Asian American working in Asia and the overwhelming whiteness of the expat community. (Also, how it seems that quite a few white people abroad employ the prejudiced attitudes and behaviors of locals as an excuse for their own racist behavior instead of thinking, “Hey, this makes me feel shitty. Maybe I shouldn’t do this to others.”) Part of this desire, I think, is just that The Toast seems like the only place where I could discuss my ambivalent feelings about this whole experience with others without incurring the wrath of overly defensive white people.
I had most of a “If Anthony Bourdain Were Your Boyfriend” written, based around my theory that he suffers from crippling imposter syndrome re: his actual chef bonafides. It started with him preemptively begging off cooking for you and ended with you coming over one day to find his apartment abandoned and completely emptied except for the pans under the sink, their handles still wrapped in plastic.
“The Public Sculptures of Paris, as Ranked by My Personal Preference.” This would be the shorter and far more amusing version of my dissertation, wherein I could show some semi-obscure art stuff, and say the sorts of things one is not allowed to say in a dissertation.
I want to read this!
I started to write but never pitched an article about how my perspective has changed regarding movies, especially Disney movies, since having kids.
I wanted to pitch a Parks and Rec style show that takes place at the Ministry of Magic. Like a script of a pilot or something.
Would watch x1000
That sounds awesome!
Yay. I had this same idea for open thread. So glad you got here early to post it.
Femslash friday – Beaches. Bette Middler and Barbara Hershey have way more chemistry with each other than with any of those nebishy men.
More seriously I have been writing a piece about my experiences learning to manage my PTSD called “my life in flashbacks”.
I was thinking about pitching a women in science piece about working in non-academic/research science since it seemed like the series was lacking a little in applied science. My current job is as a scientific adviser for several indigenous communities, so it’d probably have focused on that.
Both your job and the piece sound fascinating!
I was going to write If You Were In A Poly Triad With Portia De Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres and it would be about helping them play pranks on each other, etc. Sigh.
……
….i need this
I don’t really have ambitions around writing, but I have considered making gentle fun of several major religions with “How To Tell If You Belong To A Late Antique Mystery Cult”.
I never had a thing that I wanted to pitch, I just sort of collected rants/musings in my head and hoped, like what usually happened, someone would write a piece about it and it would be published here.
Articles I have not yet psychically brought into being:
“Acronyms biologists have made up because they are all secret Dad Jokers”
“My passwords, explained, a carefully edited chronicle of my life, as explored through what passwords I came up with”
both of these are amazing
Oh goodness I had three: “Every Craigslist Apartment-to-Rent Ad ever” with little illustrations, because I have been thinking about moving and have spent a lot of time on Craigslist looking over the dire listings.
An article on being part of the Naked Girls Reading troupe in my city, what I’ve learned, and how I love it, though I am at times conflicted whether or not it makes me a bad feminist.
And then the last would have been half art, half text, of alternative Tarot cards for the urban dweller, with descriptions below each card, based on stuff I see. It would have included The Hammer Man (who is a guy in my neighborhood who occasionally knocks down young trees with a hammer); the one, two, and three of birds; The Hound; and The Indeterminate of Rats. I am quietly, deeply superstitious, and whenever I see something even slightly out of the norm I think, “yep, that’s an omen,” though I’m still not sure what exactly the Hammer Man foretells.
I will continue to work on these, but it won’t be the saaaaaaame.
I want this tarot deck. I also tend to assume things are omens. The running cat. The single shoe. The bush that flowers for one day.
Eeeeeverything is an omen. Everything. Also my neighborhood is strewn with litter and rats, so my omens tend towards the dire and rat-related.
Plus side: once saw a hawk eat a rat in our alley. Not sure what this an omen for, but i’m sure it’s significant.
I want this tarot deck too. (I’m still working on my imaginary Opera Lovers’ Tarot Deck, which has all the regular cards but with opera characters on them.)
This isn’t exactly what you’re proposing, but an NYC-centric tarot deck exists:
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/boroughs/
How to Tell if You Are in a Donna Tartt Novel
-and a serious essay about ADD, my mother, and me
Oooh Donna Tartt, that would be amazing. A fertile ground for material indeed!
If the Women in Western Art History series wasn’t exclusively Mallory’s domain on here, I’d pitch “Dandy Butch Gals Mistaken for Dudes in Western Art History”. Because there’ve been a few in past posts scattered about.
I am thinking there is a definite need for this. By which I mean, I need this. Pls to commence work immediately. Mallory will just have to understand.
That genre fiction trope where a guy has a loved one die, totally can’t cope, and starts meddling with forces beyond his ken to bring her back? (The dead person is always a woman. That’s the trope.) And on the one hand, you kind of get it, because death is hard. But on the other hand, dude, quit throwing a tantrum about the basic facts of life, why are you so uniquely sad that you get to break the rules? I’m working on a short story from the PoV of the intermittently dead woman in this situation, and I hoped to pitch it here when finished. Idk why, I just thought Toast readers were more likely than the general public to have an interest in that trope, and/or on giving it a more feminist spin.
I once read a reeeeeeeaaaaalllly disturbing Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic that had that premise. (Tara was the POV character, and the premise was that Willow succeeded in bringing her back to life.)
Orpheus, the Original Thrower of Man- Tantrums over the Basic Facts of Life.
But there’s this British film with the woman with the horse face where the man dies and she kind of does that?
Oh goddess, I need that SO MUCH. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.
Femslash Friday: Strange Empire (Rebecca and Morgan is SO GOOD, but Rebecca and Kat in those first few episodes, also great).
“If Tallulah Willis Were Your Girlfriend” was a lofty dream I always thought about
Fenixdawn and I are still going to do a series of classic book yelling (albeit featured on my blog instead of The Toast). Where we shout/capslock our various feelings about “classic” books we have somehow never read despite so many years in academia. Topping the list are: For Whom the Bell Tolls, Wuthering Heights, and Moby Dick.
For Whom The Bell Tolls is now in my possession. Prepare for some yelling!!!!!!
Neko Case Songs In Which The Natural World Is Not Indicative of Human Conflict
(The tiger has spoken. This was a good episode of Mr Roger’s Neighborhood.)
At least three entirely unrelated semi-serious pieces about library and social justice issues. Because that’s my beat. I might still try to get something in under the wire, because I crave The Toast in my byline, but, such is life.
If the Red Bull from The Last Unicorn Were Your Boyfriend
*shudder*
(I saw about half of the Last Unicorn film when I was five. I screamed too hard and my grandparents turned the film off. The Red Bull took up residence in my nightmares, and stayed there at the back of my subconscious until I found the Peter Beagle book at age fifteen, at which point my jaw dropped hard, because I thought I’d made the whole story up.)
Which is to say, your post would be literal nightmare fuel.
oooooh wow, i can totally see how it would sound like nightmare fuel, and potentially BE nightmare fuel, despite my efforts.
but: i came to the book later (in my late 20s), and haven’t seen the movie all the way through. and the bull never felt like a completely evil force to me. and, sadly, i see a lot of myself in king haggard.
and at the time i read it, i was feeling very unsafe in my own house, and loved the idea of having a GIANT LOYAL PROTECTOR who kept bad people away but otherwise left me alone. so it was gonna be kind of an introvert’s paradise thing? i dunno if it would’ve worked but i might still write it for myself.
Under the heading of actual submitted pieces that were rejected, I have:
– “If the Vermont Country Store Catalog Were Your Boyfriend”
and
– “Jonathan Richman Songs in Which No One Rhapsodizes About Leprechauns, Baseball, or Beach Parties”
Something about brain stuff, neuroscience and such. I have several half-baked ideas but never really worked up an entire pitch. I can’t help writing comments about it though!
And I always hoped that The Toast would still be here in like ten years, when I would finally have studied enough to apply to be the One True Science Gal…
edited to add: Also I REALLY wanted to write a piece on Oliver Sacks and his waxing poetic about the beautiful garden of human neurological variety (doctor nerds best nerds), but then he died and there was a wonderful Toast piece about him the next day. So that never happened.
edited to add again:
Brain articles I wanted to write:
– illusions, and how they work
– what are emotions for, and can you even say that something in the body is “for” something
– “how to build an animal” (about evolutionary psychology and animal behavior)
– the basics of consciousness
The piece of creative nonfiction I just wrote about the time tiny-me confused “foreskin” with “forehead” and embarrassed herself during a discussion of circumcision/baptism. With reflections of growing up a fundamentalist bibliophilic homeschooled kid who thought she knew everything & occasionally tripped up spectacularly over situations like the above.
Dirtbag Music Composers. A rich ore to mine if I could write pretty. Bach’s 27 children. Beethoven trying to wrestle custody of his nephew away from his widowed sister. Berlioz being a creepy Nice Guy. The Schumanns. Poor repressed Tchaikovsky. Handel being all “Big hair, don’t care” on his critics.
Handel = big hair, no heart
Books that don’t exist but should
How to handle being monogamous in a poly/mono relationship without self-combusting (I took this off my pitch list post-breakup.)
Femslash Friday: Enchanted April
Enchanted April is one of my favorite things in the whole world.
How to Tell if You Are in an Edith Wharton Novel. Also, a personal essay about my pet research project and being an academic who jumped over the fence and became a librarian instead of going with plan A and being a professor.
I didn’t have a title yet, but it was going to be a Christmas-themed piece comparing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” unfavorably to the story of Joseph and his brethren.
A post about “upcycled” antique furniture on pinterest, which would basically just be lots of pictures of solid wood furniture painted pastel colors and distressed with sandpaper, interspersed with my “stop doing this to my soul I hate you” commentary.
Did Pitch Very Recently, Was (kindly and encouragingly) Passed-On:
“If Richard Ayoade Was Your Boyfriend” –(I heard someone else submitted this too?? WE NEED TO COMPARE NOTES.)
“Patchwork Culture: finding foreign films as a evangelical teen” — personal essay on how discovering Bollywood & Kdrama gave sheltered Me modern love stories that I resonated with more than the romcoms I’d seen.
A review of Neil Cicierega’s incredible most recent album and a re-cap of his general influence on the internet.
I would read so many of these! A couple I had in the works:
– How to tell if you’re in an E.E. Cummings poem.
– Advice that I will not be taking (basically a rant about overly-specific clothing descriptions in online stores).
If Eddie Vedder was your boyfriend, or maybe If Eddie Vedder was your dad
Can we talk stress-related physical symptoms? I get crazy bad neck ache from tension and I’m so fed up of it. My body used to be a big fan of anxiety nausea but lately as decided to get bloated and gassy instead. I keep having to apologise to my boyfriend for being a fartmonster!
So while I’m sharing TMI, tell me what’s ailing you (relating to stress or just generally!) and we can all commiserate.
Being a human is tough, you guys.
At my last job I developed an eye twitch due to extreme stress and it just reappeared the other day for the first time in a long time. Bodies are weird!
I have an eye twitch, too! It makes me feel like the villain in an inter-war novel about gentlemen adventurers.
(I also get any or all of the following: acid reflux, insomnia, skin rashes, huge headaches and very tight neck and shoulder muscles. Yay.)
My brother was so stressed out by elementary and middle school that he developed a roving array of nervous tics. (Don’t worry, they all cleared up once our parents moved him to a cyber school.)
I get an eye twitch when particularly stressed or tired, as does my sister. It’s so annoying and weird-feeling.
I went 30 years without any sinus problems aside from a stuffy or runny nose, but have woken up every single morning for the last month with a sinus headache.
Not related to stress, but I’ve had what is apparently a throat infection all week after literally YEARS of not being sick 🙁 and now the antibiotics I’m taking for it are giving me a terrific stomachache, blerggghhhh.
BODIES, man. stop acting up.
I wish I was an amorphous blob that didn’t have to deal with stuff like stomachs and necks!
We can also talk about dermatillomania if people like, but I always worry that people will find it gross so I don’t really talk about it 🙁
it sucks
I think I’m a hair puller, but I haven’t talked to anyone about it, or even told anyone. I’m alone most of the time so no one notices and I’ve largely got a handle on it.
But it’s weird because I don’t consciously associate it with stress or emotions. Like I think I did it more during times of stress, it started during a really intense part of my life. I used to be a cutter and that was a really conscious process for me of ‘i feel shitty, better hurt myself’, where as now I just find I’m absent mindedly pulling out chunks of my hair. Before I really realised it was a thing I ended up with a bald patch right at the front from pulling my fringe.
I really don’t do it much anymore, and I avoid my fringe. I think it’s a fidgety/add thing, but I have so much else to deal with I can’t be fucked fixing this as well.
Once my right hand went numb for 6 months from stress and I developed chronic pain in my arms. I maintain its because I had something wrong in my heart (cortisol overload?) That was restricting my blood flow because it felt exactly like having a blood pressure cuff on or having your arm tied off for a blood test. Doctors remain convinced it was ‘just’ stress.
That sounds similar to my experience. It doesn’t feel like the same trigger or associations as cutting, but there’s probably an element of that going on for me since picking my scalp to the point it bleeds is often painful!
Yeah, I figured getting the PTSD, anxiety, and depression in line was more important than sorting out a few gross scabs hidden under my hair. It’s not great, but not a priority.
Doctors are so useless when it comes to stress. I’ve genuinely had a GP say “Just try not to feel so stressed”. Thankssss
Thanks for sharing with me, though. It took my ages to tell anyone about the scalp thing and I think (hope) people don’t really notice it. I don’t know if you feel the same, but makes me feel very vulnerable to talk about it.
Yeah it’s definitely not something I talk to people about, the only person who’s noticed is my mother, but I don’t see her much and she’s always been overly critical of any kind of picking/fidgeting. And her memory is terrible so she won’t notice the pattern.
I feel like the Toast is such a safe space for these kind of things! I’ve only ever admittedly it out loud to one friend and even that was just a joking ‘omg I’m so stressed I’m pulling my hair out lol’
I’ve genuinely had a GP say “Just try not to feel so stressed”. Thankssss
My tutor at university: “Maybe you’d feel less depressed if you got all your work done?” Which was possibly true, but didn’t really take into account the reason I wasn’t getting my work done.
My hair pulling is similar. It started when I was 12 and my parents were divorcing, and you could definitely track my stress levels through the patchiness of my eyebrows, but nowadays it’s more an idleness/fiddling thing. I do have to consciously avoid triggers sometimes, though – I thought I was doing better right up until I was getting laser hair removal on my chin and had to avoid pulling out hairs. I had to hide my tweezers and mirror because I’d apparently just redirected my urges to more socially unacceptable hairs. And I was really doing damage with it too, much worse than the eyebrows and eyelashes.
But yeah, in the grand scheme of things, you could hurt yourself a lot worse than with the hair pulling.
It has been raining/cloudy for three weeks and oh my knees!
My weirdest stress symptom is getting small itchy bumps on the backs of my hands. Never anywhere else, and they always vanish as suddenly as they arrived.
I get little stress blister bump things on my fingers! They sound a bit different to yours, but hand things are so annoying, aren’t they??!
Are the blister bumps on the palm-side of your hand? That sounds kinda like my eczema, and it really sucks 🙁
Anxiety nausea is TERRIBLE and it is unfair that the only side effects from my anxiety meds are nausea and heartburn.
This is TOTALLY unfair.
I also get the tension neck/back aches, a lot of stomach issues (there’s an ulcer in my future I just know it), and I lose hair.
My tremor also gets a lot worse, when I’m really stressed my hands sometimes shake so bad that I can’t hold anything anymore…
Oh man, I’ve gone through enough cycles of “what is this new thing happening to me, am I dying, no it’s just anxiety again” that the latest ones are much less upsetting, but as of a few months ago, if I drink coffee, I get esophageal spasms that make it feel like I’m being *lightly* strangled all the time. I’m in the middle of a career change, so I guess I was due for something!
Irregular heartbeat is still my least favorite, but I sometimes get eye twitches, stomach cramps/nausea, and/or painful muscle tension in random places. Such variety!
Wait, tell me about these esophageal spasms! That sounds kind of like what’s happening to me??
I get twitchy arms and a really foggy headache when I’m stressed. My current stress is having to work this weekend and being utterly unable to unpack after moving. Everything is piles, forever and ever.
Being human is the worst. I want to switch places with my cat instead. Honestly, I think she could do a much better job being me than I’m doing right now.
Early morning insomnia!! Stress and/or hormones related. Waking up at useless o’clock and can’t get back to sleep in time to still get up for work. I should really just put on some shoes and head out for some pre-dawn exercise……..
Ah, I have been dealing with this too! I used to be an *excellent* sleeper, so it’s very sad. I haven’t found anything that helps much, unfortunately (breathing exercises help a little), but just wanted you to know you’re not the only one! Sending happy, sleepy vibes to you this weekend.
I have this and I took a walk at 05.50 AM this morning and it was amazing. Wayyyy better than lying in bed and trying to fall back asleep/hating my brain, which is how I usually cope.
I was just coming here to post about my stress! I frequently have dreams about my teeth falling out (classic stress dream). It happens also to be a fear of mine, independent of stress/nightmares, and I also happen to have really bad receding gums (partly caused by stress grinding! I now have a bite guard), so I feel like it’s something that could actually happen, and my teeth particularly feel uncomfortable this week . . . so my nightmares about my teeth falling out are now also daymares, and so I’m consciously/unconsciously clenching my jaw in a slightly open position to avoid putting any pressure on my teeth, which in turn is causing the muscles in my jaw to ache, which is keeping me from sleeping and stressing me out even more. It’s a synergistic snowball nightmare of stress, where each part is feeding off of every other part and making the thing I’m afraid of (teeth falling out) even more likely to occur.
I’m only laughing because this is painfully close to home. Trying to keep my mouth closed but hold my teeth open, but GENTLY, then realizing I look like I’m making fun of someone for being smug…or eating a marshmallow on the sly. It’s awful.
Teeth anxiety! I have it! (Literal worst nightmare is my teeth being knocked out, they are pretty much the only thing I like about my face!). The teeth dream is so much worse because I get really upset about my teeth being gone. At least the relief when wake up and feel them still there is kinda nice.
For teeth clenching, when I realise I’m doing it, I focus on relaxing my tongue; it’s a thing I learned for releasing tension in my body for horse riding. If your tense your tongue is usually pressed against the roof of your mouth, if you pull it away and make it lie down the rest of the tension will go, at least it does for me.
Woah. I just did the tongue thing and immediately felt so much better
Seconded. This is amazing.
I AM A GOD. SEE MY MAGIC POWERS OF TONGUE RELAXATION.
Thanks, I’ll try that!
Wiggling my lower jaw back and forth used to release the tension, but it isn’t working for me now.
Ooof this hits home. I’m going to the dentist on Wednesday because I have been clenching my teeth so much that I wake up with headaches. My jaw has been locking since February! It is the worst
I get a sore scalp, because obviously it is a thing to rub when I am stressed :c It’s gotten to the point where I can be like ‘oh hey my head is really sore, I wonder – oh, right, I was texting Difficult Family Member earlier’.
On a lighter note, I developed a stutter in Latin I at university because it terrified me so much and I was so terrible at it. Not anywhere else. Just Latin I.
I still get a little bit of anxiety nausea nowadays, but mostly it stops at “I can’t really eat anything right now but am otherwise fine”. It was worst in 2011, for what in retrospect were obvious reasons- my last semester of college, when I had to defend my thesis and figure out what to do with post-school life, and also the first night I spent living and working in a foreign country where I didn’t know the language.
I get canker sores and my tongue swells when I’m stressed. So not only am I stressed by general things, I usually can’t eat anything besides yogurt and ice cream for the week. It is not fun. Dealing with a monster canker sore now that located directly where my tongue hits every time I swallow. WOOF.
Ughhhh I have this, definitely always stress-related, it sucks. I was 90% convinced I had some horrible oral cancer the first time I got one, but unfortunately now the little itch of one starting to form is pretty familiar. I swear by those menthol numbing throat sprays, and for some reason dabbing a little liquid Benadryl on them seems to help.
Ugh I hate when you can tell it is coming, but you can’t do anything to stop it! I haven’t tried liquid Benadryl right on the sore, but I have tried a whole host of things:
1. Mouthwash — not the normal kind, but one called Peroxyl. This doesn’t help with the pain but I think it helps with healing and it makes my mouth minty during times when I can barely look at a toothbrush due to pain.
2. A mixture of liquid Benadryl and milk of magnesia. This numbs the pain a bit but not all the way.
3. Taking Vitamin B complex and lysine every day. I went through a few years where I had hardly any sores because of these two pills (I think, of course), but lately they’ve been coming back.
4. The BEST thing is to get a prescription for a Lidocaine solution. This will numb the shit out of those suckers. I have a bottle that I should have thrown out months ago but it still works. I’m applying it to the sore every few hours and it makes it possible to drink and eat without clutching my mouth in pain.
*hugs* I have had a sore neck this week due to tension (Equality and Diversity training with unpleasant people; I was very tense and hunched in on myself). It’s such an annoying reminder of upsetting situations.
My hands shake. Like, a lot. It is very inconvenient if you need them to complete the task at hand. Last month I was trying to prepare reports before the courier deadline and I had to get my coworker (who was only staying late to keep me company) to take over because I was shaking so badly I couldn’t get the papers onto the stupid comb binding.
Ugh, being a human is tough! Bodies can be the worst sometimes. Also brains. #deepthoughts
I hope your symptoms improve.
I’ve put on a little weight and i’ve been miserable.
Being miserable has caused society to reject me completely, so now I’m super lonely and not feeling well, and I have to use the rest of my energy to get people to like me again.
Or curl up in bed with a good pizza.
Not relating to stress but I’ve got five horrendous words for you: vaginal tear due to sex.
No matter how much foreplay and the like happen first and how gentle the dude is, BAM tearing. Not like a huge one but just enough to bleed and look kinda gross.
My stress symptoms start with insomnia (which has become a habit now and I have slept through the night three times since March 2008), then asthma (cough variant, so I cough until I throw up about six times a day), non-cough-related vomiting, and then my hair falls out.
So now I have been forced to become the Queen of Zen and work really hard to keep my life-stress to an absolute minimum. Which I think we should all do, but my body really forces me into it.
My most favorite (‘favorite’) stress-related ailment was the mystery rash. It started with an itchy spot on my neck, leapt over to my shoulder, and would spread and recede overnight. It recurred something like three or four times the summer I was in a PhD program, flared up one more time after I left, and hasn’t come back since. I tried everything I could think of to get rid of it and nada until I ditched the program that was also giving me migraines, bad muscle tension, nausea, and eye twitches.
Bodies.
It really is tough being a human! My husband and I are about to buy a house, and my anxiety has ratcheted up to 11. About four weeks ago I started feeling like I had something stuck at the back of my throat. The feeling ratcheted up over the course of a week, then subsided, but has now returned full force. It doesn’t stop me from swallowing, and it actually doesn’t bother me at all while I’m eating or drinking. But I can feel it! It feels like something is in there! I had an upper GI series that turned up nothing at all. I read that there’s a similar condition called “globus hystericus” caused by anxiety, and that if the feeling comes and goes, that’s probably what it is. When I first read that, I was finally able to relax and the feeling subsided – but now I FEEL IT ALL THE TIIIIME! I am calling my doctor again on Monday morning, but suffice it to say that wondering if this is psychosomatic or real, is not helping my anxiety!
Thanks for the space to rant 🙂
I get Stress Gastritis, which in high school manifested as crippling pain, but which now mostly manifests as nausea. It means that not only do I have my original stress, but now I can’t eat spicy or greasy food, since those will just make it worse, and I have to switch to light roast coffee for a few days while my stomach calms down.
You might want to try a darker roast, like a French roast. Counterintuitive, but I’ve heard that the darker the roast, the less acidic the coffee. Lighter/brighter will retain more of the coffee bean’s acids.
I normally do quite dark roasts. A dark roast of some beans will work when my gastritis is flaring up, but my usual Asia/Pacific blends make my tummy sad. I’m not sure of the chemistry involved in this.
I don’t know if you like cold-brewed coffee, but I have found that making coffee in this way is much, much less acidic than regular french press/your hot method of choice. I steep it in the fridge for a day and then strain it. one of my friends, who has terrible acid reflux problems (and is looking at an IBS diagnosis 🙁 ) swears that this is the only way she can tolerate coffee.
<3 I get the anxiety nausea. I also get stress-zero-appetite coupled with racing-heart which for me means that I lose 5 pounds insanely fast and everyone in my life notices immediately, which does not make me less stressed.
Yeah, cold brew is easier on my stomach. I just tend to forget to set it up before I go to bed, so I need to use the coffeemaker in the morning (also morning coffee needs to be hot, or it doesn’t have the same psychological effect).
I’m a stress eater, which is difficult when most of my comfort foods irritate my stressed stomach. It’s a fun challenge to navigate! Which, in fairness, does take my mind off whatever other stresses I’m worrying about, at least temporarily.
“I also get stress-zero-appetite coupled with racing-heart which for me means that I lose 5 pounds insanely fast and everyone in my life notices immediately, which does not make me less stressed.”
Me, too–and it really screws with my head when people compliment me on the weight loss but what all the weigh loss means is I’m strung out and miserable.
My God, what a whirlwind this week has been. I had a birthday that I spent traveling. I had a whirlwind business trip. We accepted an offer on our house (!!!! With contingency but still!!!). I made a doctor’s appointment to discuss fertility problems. All kinds of bananas ups and downs and I’m SO READY for this long weekend!!!! Canadians, what are you up to? My weekend will feature yard work.
Anyway that salad looks amazing and I’m so bitter that my allergy to spinach makes me have to question every green salad I encounter to avoid unfortunate vomit incidents. Toasties: what bizarre food allergy or aversion makes your lives hard? (I fucking love spinach and it doesn’t love me.)
I’m allergic to All Of The Things (wheat, soy and nuts), but I also have this absolutely insane aversion to cashews with no basis in reality. I think I liked them once, but now I can’t even think about them without getting nauseous.
Avocados. Not latex or bananas, just, avocados make my stomach hurt like wow.
Ugh. I thought I had outgrown my avocado allergy Nd tried intentionally eating some last week. NOPE.
Also allergic to tree nuts, shellfish, Red wine, apples….
I spent all day yesterday working on the yard, amd have some finishing up to do today. Hooray for lovely weather and a long weekend!
I’m lactose intolerant and get by ok, but I have a huuuuge aversion to most forms of tomatoes (sun-dried are ok, also sauces) and I don’t understand why everyone insists on putting them in everything, they are slimy and gross.
I don’t know what this falls under, but there are foods that I sometimes like and sometimes hate, and I have no idea why. Sometimes sharp cheddar cheese is delicious, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes a spinach and arugula salad tastes awesome, sometimes I can barely choke it down.
Also, some fruits (like apples and grapes) make me burp up which is…unsettling.
I am allergic to mango–an allergy my body cruelly developed after I spent a couple decades enjoying delicious mangos without incident. it used to be one of my favorite foods/flavors, but now it makes my lips break out in a disgusting rash. & even minimal amounts will make it happen (like certain kinds of GUM, hardly known for being replete with naturally derived fruit essences).
even worse, this allergy’s emergence coincided with the trend of Put Mango in Everything, increasing the number of things that sound amazing but which I cannot eat (and also increasing my unwitting exposure to secret!mango).
…then again, a lot of these other allergies sound vastly more frustrating to deal with, so I suppose I should be grateful that my gastronomic achilles heel is limited to a single fruit.
My stomach is pretty chill, but my husband’s makes life challenging. He can’t eat fibrous greens or curry without having severe internal distress and is very lactose intolerant. His aversions include: eggs, most cruciferous vegetables, most stone fruit (except cherries), pears, raspberries, a lot of tropical fruit (mangoes, pineapple, etc.), mushrooms, sour cream, vegetarian meals (meat every supper). Even though he’s really careful about what he eats, he still spends a lot of time on mysterious personal errands. It’s really sucky but of course being a man he will not go to the doctor to seek expert assistance.
Shrimp makes Asian food difficult and I can only do oranges/orange juice in extremely limited quantities. That one is also a contact allergy. I once worked in a restaurant that did fresh squeezed juices, and as the only employee, I kind of had to do it while the owner/chef was cooking. I’d leave with raw and sore hands, gloves or no, whenever we had more than a couple of juice orders in a given day. Grapefruit isn’t much better, but it doesn’t hurt just to hold a peeled one the way oranges do. I swear I even react to the smell. Like I’m all “oh, that smells lovely” and my body’s all “somebody peeled an orange burn everything to the ground, you’re gonna die.” My body’s very melodramatic considering none of my allergies actually are life-threatening. :-/
Oh, also, I think I’m allergic to something in the flavor powder stuff that’s on chips and crackers and such. If anyone has any ideas as to what that something might be, I’d love to hear them. I end up with sores in my mouth if I snack on anything other than plain potato chips.
Turnips. I like the taste, but roughly two out of three attempts to eat them result in stomach cramping severe enough to take me out of commission for a day.
Oatmeal. I was force-fed it once as a child and my body has rejected it ever since. As a broke person who likes hiking, life would be easier if I could eat this. I try every four years, and so far, I still can’t choke it down.
First! Look at my beautiful ToastPosts that have arrived so far!
I volunteered for last-minute additions and didn’t know how many I’d get, so I made several extras and had three leftovers. The lucky three Toasties whose cards arrived to me first get bonus cards from me (thank you for including your return addresses which I utterly failed to do on my outgoing cards sorry. again. whoops.). If anyone wants to see the ones I sent, here’s the original batch, here are the last-minute extras, and here are the last three. I had such a good time making these. Thank you, ToastPost organizers, for the opportunity.
Second, I’m super nervous to make this announcement, but I’m pretty sure nobody will revoke my internet card if this doesn’t pan out sooooo…okay? deep breath
Last week I gave myself a few hours to grieve The Announcement and then I registered clevermanka.net. I might be ready to do Something with an online presence/blog and the Toast’s shuttering was the motivation I needed. My plans right now are modest. One, perhaps two content-related posts a week, along with a weekly post similar to Link Roundup (although not nearly so well-curated, at least not at first). This weekend I’m looking into pre-programmed blog format options since I don’t have the funds to hire someone to program one for me right now. I hope to use IntenseDebate in the comments section (it’s not perfect, but people would be able to keep their usernames and such) so I need to find out how exactly that works, too. It’s been a long time since I did any major online/HTML stuff (as in the late 90s, can you imagine?) so if anyone has suggestions for current learning resources, hit me up please. A local friend volunteered temporary server space.
So anyway, there’s that. I am not ready to lose this community and I hope I can offer something that would interest at least a few of you in a different format than the Reddit and Slack conversations (which I have joined and hope to participate in soon but most of my online fun time has gone to researching this new project).
Whew. Okay, talking about that in public was more stressful than buying an airline ticket (I hate buying airline tickets–such a commitment!).
YOU ARE THE BEST
I received 2 great postcards from my ToastPost matches: thank you UK Toasties!
I am delighted the “Alarming Tales” and the clock combo.
Will there be gifs, though?
MANKA those are beyond gorgeous and you are a hero and I can’t WAIT to become a devoted follower of clevermanka.net!
Hello I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter (…blog).
Codecademy is a good resource to figure out modern coding, although it can be a bit frustrating at times. It’s very big on not letting you progress until your coding is free of errors and not so big on telling you where those errors are.
I’ve learned a lot from Codecademy, but yeah, it’s far from perfect.
If your local library has a subscription to Lynda.com, I have loved their tutorials. It’s a little pricey to subscribe on your own, though.
Ooo! I’ll look into that, thank you!
If you are a member of LinkedIn (I know, I know), they periodically send you offers for month long free trial of Lynda.com
Oh my goodness this is the first time I’ve been tempted to join LinkedIn.
A whole website of CleverManka gifs (and other stuff!)?? Yessssssssss
Congrats! I really look forward to seeing what unfolds!
I don’t know if this is helpful, but I’ve been using WordPress for years and like it fine. There’s the WordPress.com flavor, which can be free or upgraded into a low-cost domain, which is what I use for scenesofeating.com. Then there is wordpress.org, which can be used to manage content for a domain hosted elsewhere. I’ve used that too, albeit a very long time ago. wordpress.org allows for more plugins and ways to manipulate content, which is nice, cause wordpress.com sites have a few annoying limitations–they don’t allow iframes, for example, which makes it tricky to embed content from Tumblr or Instagram.
Hey, I am so delighted you are working on this!! You are the best. All the toast hugs.
I see a lot of stories and interesting links during my week, so if you would like some contributions for the links, I would be very happy to send them to you somehow!
I would love that! I’ll eventually have an email for clevermanka.net, but I am clevermanka68 at gmail for now.
I know some HTML stuff if you need help, but I also offer any design-y, graphic type services. I’ve been using photoshop for like 10 years now, and I’d love to help out with logos or headers or whatever, if you need to.
PLUS, I can totally do that monthly/weekly awesome ladies roundup we discussed before.
And in case you don’t see the comment above, you can reach me at clevermanka68 at gmail.
I’m emailing you posthaste so I can get on your mailing list!
Oh! Good idea! Yes, just in case I don’t get things rolled out by July 1 (an ambitious goal under the best of circumstances) it would be a good idea to have a mailing list for Toasties who want to be informed when the curtain finally goes up. Thank you!!!
I just emailed you!
Can’t wait for this!!! I’m sure the content ideas will get flowing as you start putting everything together.
I hope so! I hope the energy gets flowing, as well! I admit I am a little terrified at the prospect of adding something else to my life, but it seemed like all signs were pointing this way and I couldn’t not at least try!
YES. This is what a post-Toast world needs.
I have a friend who is ridiculously talented and lovely and wonderful, and while usually he is an executive of some flavor involving web development and portals and making money, currently he is without tether of employment and would very likely be willing to assist. He is a wizard of CSS and has helped me set up several professional sites. I will happily put you two in contact.
My skills are much more modest, but they are yours. I was just recently unceremoniously fired so what time I have I will happily volunteer. I have some minimal web skills and considerably more content experience.
Airline tickets *are* stressful. But you did really well. Full marks. 10/10, would read again.
You. Are. An. Angel. I am so so so sorry to hear about your getting fired that sucks and so does the unemployment of your friend! I am reachable at clevermanka68 at gmail.
That gif deserves so much slashfic. So much. *blinks, sighs happily*
I will call him this very afternoon to inform him of his volunteerfulness. (Him, my friend. Obviously, Hiddles will sense it in The Force and need no such antiquated notification.)
That gif deserves so much slashfic.
That is a great idea! I know some basic HTML and have had good luck using WordPress because it’s mostly preprogrammed but you can mess with it to suit your needs. But I’m mostly replying because I scrolled past this post and thought THAT’S MY PLACEMAT!
Awww thanks!! You!
Ooohhhhh idris…. :melts:
I AM SOOOO IN! I signed up for the Reddit group but….that’s it. I just can’t get behind it; I think my preferences run to a more “viewable” blog-style site. Plus, if you decide to stay with IntenseDebate, I get to keep my username, yay!
Seconding all of this!
Woot Woot!
Oh Manka I’ve really appreciated your presence here so much, and I look forward to seeing what you do with your new space.
As a scientist I have no applicable life skills whatsoever, but if I did I’d be offering them to you.
I cannot pay you back in money (at least not in the near future), but if you’d ever like to contribute content-wise, I’ll make you an art card in exchange! Only joking a little! Seriously, burningupasun has graciously volunteered to continue her In Feminist History series as a weekly or monthly thing. I am not above taking creative charity at the mo’.
For awhile I was thinking about starting a tumblr about my collection of weird books, but was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to commit to enough content for more than a few posts. Maybe …
<3
That would be a fantastic guest spot, if you’re interested in doing it for me, bless you!
I would read the heck out of that- weird books are my jam!
Reading that would rock, please do create it 🙂
Bookmarking clevermanka.net immediately. It has been ages since I’ve looked at HTML but you could have a site that looks like it was made on angelfire in 2001 and I’d still read it religiously until I had enough money to be an anonymous patron and sponsor a professional redesign.
Manka, I love you and you’re the best of all possible worlds. Thanks for being you.
I just emailed an offer to donate my modest skills. Delegate to me any routine scutwork.
HERE FOR IT.
And also offering my digital producer skills if that’s a thing you need.
OMG yesssss!!!! I’m going to be there with bells on!
Also I would maybe-possibly like to suggest an interview-chat-protocol-type of article about our mutual love for dueSouth? Pretty Please. *scuttles off* *is waaaay too embarrassed*
Also I’m a very good copy-editor in English and German.
I WOULD LOVE TO YELL ABOUT DUE SOUTH WITH YOU! Ahhhhh!
Thank you kindly.
By this I mean:
AHHHHHH! YES PLEASE YELL WITH ME ABOUT THE MOUNTIE AND THE RAYS AND TURNBULL.
I love that show so much.
If you haven’t already, please drop me an email (clevermanka68 at gmail) with your contact info so I can find you to arrange a YELLING ABOUT DUE SOUTH article at some point. Mention the due South yelling piece!
THAT’S AWESOME. I have emailed you- I don’t know html, but I can draw a bit and editt reil good, and would love to be involved!
and editt reil good
Holy gods, IN THERE LIKE SWIMWEAR. I have few skillz, but could probably fake my way through some editing (Institutions gave me Pieces of Paper that affirm that I can Read and Use Words Responsibly).
Thank you all so so SO MUCH! This is…kind of overwhelming. I appreciate all of you but now I need to get some work done before I leave for the weekend in three hours so I might not respond to any more comments on this thread as speedily as I’d like. I’m also not going to be able to respond to all the beautiful, magical people who’ve emailed me. Apologies! I promise I will let you all know via email when clevermanka.net goes live.
I’ll check back in to respond to remaining comments later tonight or tomorrow morning. But seriously. You have no idea how much this means to me. I am feeling very Sally Field right now.
w3schools.com
Girl, yass!
Will be there with (or without) bells on!
It would be wonderful if you did this. I’m so happy about the slack and Reddit groups that have sprung up, but it would also be nice to go somewhere smaller, guarded by a single beneficent Toastmistress. And I can’t think of anyone better to do this.
What a generous thing to do. Thank you.
You’re welcome! Honestly, I had been thinking about it more in terms of MY needs, but I like your selfless spin on it, thank you! =D
I can’t wait! CleverManka.net sounds like my most perfect new internet home! <3
I really look forward to seeing whatever you come up with! Your contributions to the Toast (even leaving aside the magnificent gifs) are always worth reading, and it’s great to hear that you won’t drop off the face of the earth.
WATCHING WITH GREAT INTEREST. I know some wordpress-y stuff, if you would like any help with that. And if you want any guest posts about public education things or sci fi/fantasy fiction stuff, I could do that?
That would be wonderful, thank you! I’ll be in touch!
Toasts, I had the Big Interview for my dream fellowship on Wednesday and I have no idea how it went, but I want it SO BAD. Fingers crossed I didn’t make an utter fool out of myself…
In other news, three weeks until I have to turn in my dissertation and things are still a mess but I guess I’m going to have to try and pull this off somehow.
I am in the same boat re: my master’s thesis as you are with your dissertation! My discussion section has rapidly devolved into ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and then wild speculation.
That sounds very grown up and I wish you the best
All the good luck in the world! It’s neither here nor there, but I really wish I was Canadian.
Dating thread?
It seems kind of shitty for me to hold shyness and introversion against somebody on a date because I can be shy and introverted but I went out with this guy the other night and had to pull most of the weight in the conversation. That aside he seemed perfectly lovely and interesting and he has a pair of arms that I would theoretically like to get up close and personal with but I think I need somebody to at least meet me halfway conversationally.
I know the feeling. I can’t really give dating advice (it would be like a vegetarian-since-birth teaching someone how to brine and smoke a turkey) but I’d think that if the secret of a shy person is that they stop seeming shy once they feel comfortable with you, so if that’s all it is then you won’t have to pull all the weight on a second or third date.
snaps to this! As a shy and introverted person, sometimes the upside of dating can be remembering that social internaction is a skill and you’re actually really good at it when the occasion calls for it.
Depending on the shy person, sometimes I just let the awkward silence open its gaping maw until they decide to fill it. PLAY SILENCE CHICKEN.
Seriously, though. It can be helpful to give the other person a bit of time to gather their words and/or gumption. Or maybe that person is a genuine Silent Type. And if that’s not your bag, it’s not your bag.
There were multiple moments of silence chicken. But with an uncomfortable amount of direct eye contact. It was very frustrating because it wasn’t like we were having awkward silences for lack of interest in each other, and when he did talk he had interesting and intelligent things to say. I guess it would probably improve over time if we got to know each other better but I find social situations exhausting already without having to be the gregarious one.
No Kidding. I got very tired of doing all the work on dates, even if I was also sympathetic to the shyness. I think this was Emotional Labor 101 for me.
LOL SILENCE CHICKEN BOY YOU ARE BRAVE
Seriously, though, I can be a chatty person and if you’re going to date me you better like to hear me talk (because I will, a lot), and I can do most of the talking, but if you can’t carry on a conversation it’s not going to be a love connection 🙁
For serious. I can basically be a nonstop chatterbox if called upon for such tasks and I have been out with SO many dudes where trying to have a conversation felt a lot like trying to shake hands with someone who hasn’t kept their wrist sufficiently firm.
Sometimes I (a naturally chatty person) play secret Silence Chicken over dinner with my otherwise lovely but less chatty spouse. But then we usually end up just wordlessly chewing our cuds, which depresses me. So my choices are sometimes: rattle on by myself, or seethe in silent resentment over lack of conversational ball-returning. It’s hard.
I feel like I should respond to this as no one does more dating than I do, but… I have nothing interesting to say. I’m losing faith. I’m going to die alone.
SAME. I was really actively dating for a while but I’m taking a break now. The dudes I’ve been meeting have not been worth the low key level of mental anguish I keep getting worked up into over them.
But did he respond, at least? I had a horrible date with a very nice man. He gave me no more than 5 words to my every attempt to get him talking.
“What did you think of the movie we just saw?”
“It was good.”
“What did you like about it?”
“I liked the girl.”
“What did you like about her?”
“She was pretty.”
The whole evening was like this. I checked with mutual friends and confirmed this was typical of all “conversations” with him. Just no spoken effort. He thought I hung the moon, but would not string words together for me.
I can’t seem to even get to the date stage these days! Probably this is exacerbated by the fact that I practically have to force myself to message people, but every so often I’ll send off a breezy, chatty message to someone where I ask questions and say a bit about myself only to get only an answer to my question back in return, usually using 4 words or fewer.
I cannot work with this!
I don’t even know how to put this in words, but I’ve just realised I have crush on a boy from uni (2 years later FYI.) And I think he at least had a crush me then, and I also think everyone knew, APART FROM ME. Seriously, if people could let me know when they want in my pants that would be awesome. There were a few chances back then, but I didn’t take them, because I didn’t realise it was a chance (walking all the way back to my house with me from the pub so I can get my ID before the club means he likes me right?), We did make out one time, but I wrote it off as a drunken thing.
Anyways, I’m going back for old boys next weekend, he’s going to be there and now I’m having fantasies about our wedding.
Question the first, how do I get with him without just being hammered?
Q the 2nd, how do I slow down my stupid romantic brain so this actually has a chance?
Bring up the walk from the club? Oh, gee, I wish I had seized the moment back then. Are you still available for seizing?
(I’m a fan of direct.)
I’m going to DEFINITELY use “are you still available for seizing?” thank you, that is perfect.
Yes! The courage it takes to say something this direct also makes any rejection easier to bear 🙂
fwiw, anecdata and all that, but current bf was *very* shy and quiet when we first met up. Once he started to feel comfortable through additional time together, though, he opened up more. Now sometimes he has to stop himself from ‘rambling’, as he puts it. So this guy could be the same?
I am curious about this, because I’ve had shy/quiet friends before, but in the dating context, how did you manage to stay interested when he didn’t say much on dates? Did you just keep throwing conversational balls to him until he picked one up and threw it back? How did it work? Was he showing you his feelings/thoughts in other ways?
He would chat a lot within okc itself, when we weren’t hanging out, so that gave me things I could easily bring up and discuss more in person. Since we’re both introverts, most of what we did at the beginning was just the two of us going someplace (like on a hike, or whatever) rather than me dragging him to some big social thing. Sometimes I talked more than normal, and he’d just listen. It really didn’t take long, though – maybe a few weeks, and he opened up more.
Okay, that makes sense! I don’t tend to do much online conversation via dating sites, so I couldn’t picture getting to know someone who had a hard time talking on dates. When I’ve made friends with shy/quiet people it has only happened after we’ve been thrown together a lot, usually at work or at school, so we’ve had plenty of low-stakes interactions to get to know each other. Which is the total opposite of online dating!
Makeup thread?
I wear little-to-none (none at all sometimes, sometimes just eye shadow and liner, add in foundation and a bit of bronzer if I’m feeling FANCY). But I’m looking to up my game a bit for special occasions. Also because in two weeks I’ll be shooting something for a regional cable channel and I want to look GOOD in high def.
Where do I start? What would be the essential next steps if I want to to gradually up my game (but not spend hundreds on stuff I’ll wear maybe 2-3 times a year)? Contouring/highlighting stuff maybe?
I’m always a fan of lipstick because it’s easy to apply, a quick way of adding color, and makes me feel super glamorous with hardly any effort.
Refinery29 has some amazeballs lists of recommendations for not super expensive but still good makeup. I have bought several products based on these and loved them all. NYX soft matte lip cream is awesome if you’re looking for any lip stuff. Also just got some Essence color correcting pencil thingies at Target that I really like so far.
http://www.refinery29.com/2015/12/99854/celebrity…
http://www.refinery29.com/hollywood-makeup-artist…
http://www.refinery29.com/hollywood-favorite-drug…
I am trying to figure out much the same thing for cosplay purposes, and despite my intent to do only fairly basic human-looking things, it is… surprisingly involved.
So far my favorite is Urban Decay, which can be a bit pricey on the surface, but they do run some good sales and even have a decent selection of vegan products, if that’s a concern. I like their tutorials, as well.
The r/MakeupAddiction subreddit has some great advice and tutorials, and if you’re comfortable posting your made-up face on the internet they give good constructive criticism.
Ooh, that’s a good idea. I will be nervous, but it’s probably not a bad idea for people with more knowledge to tell me what might work for my face specifically.
Contouring and highlighting plus lipstick and killer eyeliner. It doesn’t even have to be that intense. I just kind of sweep matte bronzer under my cheekbones and on my chin bones, and it makes everything look sharp and powerful.
Oh and eyebrows! Eyebrow pencil, or better yet a gel or powder can really define and sharper your whole face.
I really like the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder I have. I’m kind of hesitant to recommend it because it’s pretty pricy and generally overhyped and it’s hard to put my finger on what it even does/why I think it’s so great. I was on the fence about trying it, and then I found a travel-sized version at Sephora for half the price of the full size and decided to go for it. It just gives me an undefinable sort of glow. It makes me photograph really well, too – the first time I used it, I looked downright radiant in selfies even though in real life, my skin was so dry it was falling off in flakes.
I also find that filling in my eyebrows a bit makes a surprising difference in how put-together I feel, given how low-effort it is.
Make-up is truly so individual. There are no universals. Experimentation is the key. Go to tons of make-up counters and try things, and talk to make-up artists, and feel no pressure to buy anything.
Personally, good skin is the best start, so unless you are 19, dewy, and naturally radiant and perfect, look (which still wouldn’t translate on camera) into a good cleanser, moisturizer, primer, and foundation. Upgrading my primer and foundation game is the best thing I ever did for my face. Especially on camera, that is a big deal. Eyebrows tend to be big-impact, so that’s another place to invest time and experimentation.
19 I am certainly not! I’ve actually recently begun playing around with my skincare routine as well — investing in higher quality products and trying different ones. Although for moisturizer, I found one that works better than what I was using and costs way less. So HOORAY for that!
Getting a better foundation is definitely up there on my list, though.
My ride-or-die foundation is Chanel Velvet Lumiere. It’s kind of spendy but a bottle lasts forever and when I wear it people are always telling me I have lovely skin (spoilers: I don’t).
If you don’t want to spend a bunch of money on new products you’ll use only a handful of times, look for stuff that you can use in multiple ways. A light, iridescent eyeshadow can be used to highlight the face. A mid-tone neutral brown eyeshadow as a contour (and maybe to fill in your brows as well). Lipstick as cream blush. (You can also get tints that can be used for lips and cheeks, but a lipstick may translate better on camera.) Also be aware that you may need to wear more makeup than you’re generally used to so it will be noticeable on camera.
And yes, skincare is key, too!
Oh, this is so personal. I’d skip contouring because it’s SO easy for it to go so wrong. The products that make the biggest difference for me are mascara and tinted eyebrow gel. There are lots of great drugstore options, and once you’ve used them a few times you can slap them on pretty quickly and easily.
I think skin care is the most important thing–including SPF 30 every day, rain or shine. You may be more comfortable in a tinted moisturizer or BB cream than a traditional foundation, but if you’re going to be seen in high def, maybe check out Make Up For Ever (at Sephora). Tint/foundation, lipstick, and mascara are good for everyday. I don’t spend a lot on mascara, because I get a new one every two months or so (I have very sensitive eyes, but mascara should be replaced frequently to prevent eye infections).
You might take a look at Lisa Eldridge’s Web site or YouTube videos.
So I’m all about stuff with built in SPF… UNLESS I know I will be photographed or filmed. SPF can mess with lighting so that you look washed out, particularly in photos!
We made it, pals! Today I could use any and all job hunting commiserations and tips. I’m trying to switch fields, for reasons of not being very good at my current field, and haven’t been having much luck so far. Not despairing yet, but need solidarity!
Have you checked out professional organizations for your preferred field? They’re often a good place to start researching the field/job-search. I also had the most amazing informational interview experience recently, which was really helpful in orienting me to the field I want to explore. I felt very prepared when I actually got a job interview, because I was able to talk about the field as a whole and speak to its specific challenges (and relate those to previous experiences of mine).
Hello OT Toasties!
First of all- I’M GETTING MARRIED THIS FALL! We are very excited.
Second of all- All fans of the podcast “Lore”: Did you hear that they are making it into a TV show? Does this excite or dismay you? I was initially excited, but now I’m a little bit nervous… I look forward to every new episode and this definitely is a shift of dynamics. But I’m mostly excited.
I have mixed emotions. I really like the podcast, and I’m excited that there are going to be more opportunities for its creator, but I have a really hard time picturing what the TV show would look like. I think that they use the atmospheric audio only approach so well. Is this a documentary? Hokey reenactments?
^^ This sums up my fears. It works so well in a podcast format! I feel like adding visual to that really confuses me.
Ditto. I mean, I have hopes – but I’m not planning on paying any attention to the TV show until I hear it’s at least as good as the podcast.
I really can’t wrap my head around how it’s going to be a TV show. I love the podcast though!
I’ve gone back and forth on the podcast – I’ve enjoyed lots of it, but other episodes have had me rolling my eyes as I feel they’ve kind of fed into the beautiful-dead-woman/exploitative serial killer thing without actually diving any deeper into ‘so what was up with that’ – so a tv show could go… either way? I’m not sure if it’s a niche that needs filling, necessarily.
I went for a walk while listening to podcasts the other day and “The Jersey Devil” episode of Lore came on while I was walking through a woody, secluded area, whereupon I got a case of the willies lightly mixed with heebie-jeebies. I had to jump to an episode of “Ask Me Another” just to settle down.
I hope the TV show will be good (of course) but I suspect it will be hokey, a la “America’s Most Wanted”.
Just wanted to say CONGRATULATIONS!!! I literally just had my wedding on the 15th so sending you all kinds of good vibes as you embark on this marriage mission.
Museum industry Toasts! There has been a bit of discussion on twitter about a toast meetup at AAM since it’s next weekend and some of us are going to be there. Would anyone else be interested?
Hi! I am not in the museum industry but am thinking I would like to be. Do you have any advice? I am in Chicago, so there are a lot of museums I could volunteer at, which I suppose would be a good place to start. (Sorry to thread-jack—but I’m sort of like aaaaaah get as much help from Toast while I can)
I’m unfortunately not going to be a lot of help since I got into the industry more or less by accident, but it depends on what you want to do (research, collections, design, fabrication, etc.). I’m happy to chat, send me a twitter dm @bindavisdraws or an email bindavisdraws at gmail.
If you’re not already part of it, you might want to check out the Facebook group Chicago Emerging Museum Professionals. People post jobs, events, and volunteer opportunities there and it’s geared toward people who are early/mid career.
Toasties of a certain age, shall we talk menopause? Hellish experience or relatively mellow transition to blessed cronedom? Anything that surprised you? While I can sure live without the wacky cycles and night sweats, so far hot flashes are more like minor heat waves and not as bad as I expected….unless that’s just the beginning. What’s the best part of being postmenopausal?
(this week’s triumph was finally getting the apartment cleaned after a crazy-busy week away, just in time to relax over a long weekend. I take my victories where I can find them)
I hope people chime in! My hysterectomy surgeon said my ovaries (which I got to keep) were on their last legs, and since I won’t be able to judge progress of menopause by my cycles anymore, I’m super interested in this topic.
I was thinking about you when I posted this – you of all people deserve a low-key menopause considering all the crap your body’s thrown at you recently. Did your surgeon say how to figure out when you’re through, if you can’t judge it by cycles?
She didn’t…but I didn’t think to ask, either! I’ll give her nurse a call. Thank you for that suggestion!
Had a hysterectomy five years ago, kept ovaries, I’m 57 now. Have absolutely been able to tell every cycle where I get all the usual symptoms, just no end result. Had the night sweats pretty regularly a couple of years ago but don’t get them any more. Was thinking maybe everything would finally peter out peacefully until a couple of months ago when the insane hot flashes and crazy insomnia started, leading to much misery. The hot flashes are often accompanied by heart palpitations and nausea which is super delightful. Also now I get migraine type headaches just before my “period.” Sorry for the bad report from my end. Just went to the doctor about it a couple of weeks ago and she suggested black cohosh which might be helping a teeny bit? We’re also going to try Effexor. Thank you for opening the issue and giving me a chance to whine. Because I’m 57 years old, how much longer can this go on????!!!??! UGH
YOU. POOR. THING. No offense, but wow I hope I escape that particular hell. And I hope you come out of it soon!
Boy I was sure feeling sorry for myself last night, huh? I appreciate the sympathy and hope your experience is not mine! On the bright side, I have a friend my age whose entire menopause experience consisted of her no longer getting periods. End of story. She didn’t have irregularity, spotting, sweats, insomnia, flashes or anything else. #MenopauseGoals
My doctor informed me I was perimenopausal about two years ago. A mirena iud has since lessened my symptoms significantly, but WOW, HOT FLASHES. They are not fucking around, and I got them really consistently in yoga class.
And they aren’t just hot, but accompanied by a wave of faintness, almost nausea. Very unpleasant.
My doc recommended continuous OC to help with the massive iron deficiency and that helped a lot, because man, 18-ish day cycles are the pits.
I don’t get many hot flashes (at least when I’m awake), but yes the faintness/nausea are so unpleasant. And the rapid fluttery heartbeat feels exactly like fear/anxiety, except it is happening for no reason! Unless it’s happening at work or otherwise in front of people, then the fear and anxiety is real, and coupled with embarrassment.
I was so glad a friend had talked about hot flashes making her feel unwell, so I wasn’t completely freaked out by what was happening.
I try to just stop and breath through them.
I get hotflashes more than the faintness but I’ve been surprised how confusing it is. I didn’t realize how much I use body temperature to monitor my emotions. But when I started getting hotflashes I kept wondering if I was embarrassed or upset etc.
Yes,me too! I have to remind myself “I’m not sick, I’m not freaking out, it’s okay, it will pass”
For me so far, the worst thing is the insomnia/night sweats. I changed to more breathable bedding, got a fan, put room darkening shades on the windows. All these things help by, basically, making it easier to go back to sleep, since whatever’s causing the insomnia IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE(MY BODY).
Holy shit, insomnia and night sweats. Perimenopause sucks very much. Argh. Also the hair trigger rage. That is exhausting. I speend a ton of energy just not being awful to my family.
I already have insomnia, night sweats, and near-constant rage at everything. This does not bode well for me or the Burgomaster.
Ugh, the night sweats. They invariably happen on clean sheets night, too, which is super irritating. What the hell, body?
Ugh, YES.
I have to turn the thermostat way down at night during the winter, and sleep with the ceiling fan on the rest of the year.
So much night time awakeness.
I sleep slightly better since I started wearing athletic tank tops to bed. Performance fabric wicks the sweat away.
(Hearing about the best part of being menopausal would be great, as I’m more than likely entering menopause at or before 30 and I am fuh-reeking out. Please tell me it’s not completely horrible in every way.)
Seriously it’s not that bad for me? I mean, I’m complaining about it, but it doesn’t rise to the level of something that I would, like, treat with medication.
And on the good side, I love it when 30-60-90 days go by with no period. I CANNOT WAIT for this to all be over.
That is very comforting to hear, thank you!
I’ve been in perimenopause (menopause’s quirky kid sister) for about 3 years and so far my least favorite parts are the night sweats and the completely irregular periods. I had no idea how regular I was before and how lovely it was that (even as oblivious as I am) I more or less always knew what was going on with my body. And now, I have no fucking clue. Will I get my next period in 2 weeks or 6? Will I have cramps for 2 weeks with no actual bleeding? Will I have a heavy flow for one day or spotting for a week or both? No clue.
I am looking forward to post-menopause. I heard an interview with (the cartoonist and writer) Lynda Barry years ago and she said she loved being post menopause because it was like being 10 again. And that sounds great to me. I’m also looking forward to it being more socially acceptable to not give a shit about what I look like. And no more birth control.
As for surprises – my therapist says that she’s noticed that a lot of women don’t start saying No until menopause. And I’ve noticed that with perimenopause. I think my ability to say no has been growing steadily the past 15 years, but I think it’s definitely easier now.
ETA – the other surprising thing about perimenopause is that I really didn’t expect it so soon. I started getting hotflashes at 43 and my own mother told me I was too young. (She has calmer hormones than me – she never had cramps or perimenopause, and started menopause at 50. She has had hotflashes for 20 years though).
That’s so interesting about saying No, because I’ve spent the last few years watching older women while thinking about how I want my later life to go and a lot of it revolves around saying Yes more often. But that’s more re: saying Yes to new experiences than saying No to people making unreasonable demands of me, so I whole-heartedly support women saying No when they want to.
I just went to the doctor last month to get checked out because I had a bizarrely long period and she basically looked at me and said “yep, right on time.” I know almost nothing about what to expect, any guidance for reading material?
Everything I know I’ve found by either Googling around or discussing with friends who are further down the path, so I too would be interested in reading material.
The Menopause Book. Seriously, that’s the name of it. My mom bought it for me and both my sisters when we first started and we all got tons of useful information from it.
Thank you!
Wait, the three weeks of on and off spotting was maybe related to perimenopause, not my iud? Huh.
I am probably no help here, because the only symptom I’ve had is, no more periods. I’m still the same cold blooded mammal I’ve always been, who needs blankets year round and sometimes uses a sleeping bag in July in the Midwest. It has been great to no longer be borderline anemic, though!
I figure it was the universe’s way of making up for the decades of fist sized clots of blood 8-10 days a month–
So far, I’m fine with the whole process. Many of my friends are having the whole hot flashes thing, and for some it’s no big deal, and others it’s a big pain. Apparently it’s one of those journeys you walk mostly alone–
So far I’m having a relatively mellow menopause: I started at 47 and am 51 now but have yet to go a full twelve months without a period. The worst was the first two years, when my birth-control pills no longer regulated my cycle, and I bled some every day, once for twelve straight weeks, another time for eight weeks. During those years my mostly-dormant fibroids woke up and I had moderate to severe pain every three months or so for 4-5 days at a time. I tried dietary changes, worked out harder and considered fibroid surgery, but for the most part I just gutted it out with lots of ibuprofen, naps and pads/tampons on hand all the time. The last two years, things have ramped down: I’m currently seven months and counting with no period, although I still get monthly PMS bloating, cravings and occasional very light spotting/smearing. My fibroid pain is all but gone, which means my 300-count bottle of ibruprofen lasts a loooong time now.
I’ve been lucky and haven’t had sweats/hot flashes, mood swings beyond my regular bitchiness or any insomnia that’s outside my normal experience.
What I’m looking forward to more than anything is throwing out all my panty liners, pads of various thicknesses and tampons. I still carry a travel bag of period necessities in my purse (absorbent products plus ibuprofen and Excedrin Migraine) and I’ll give away all this ish happily when I’m postmeno. THEN I’ll buy some nice expensive underwear that I won’t have to worry about getting blood stained!
I love how you’re all: “Bleeding for a million days! Fibroids! Moderate to sever pain! But I’m lucky, no sweating or insomnia” . lololollol. Wimmin, we are funny.
And YES to expensive underwear! Except for me it will be white sheets! White towels! Maybe even white pants! (the pants still seem crazy to me but my mom was/is all about them post-meno).
Heehee! Right after I posted, I was questioning myself: “do I still want to term this a relatively mellow experience?” I remember my mom’s meno which lasted for SIX YEARS. She’d mutter “hot flash!” and, within seconds, sweat would be running down her face and dripping from her nose. I thought THAT was my destiny.
Oooo, I forgot about towels! During The Bleeding Months, I felt so guilty whenever I stayed at a hotel because, despite my best efforts, I’d always smear their towels. I’ll be able to invest in LOTS of white linens when I’m postmeno.
Menopause is seriously the worst. Plus if you have teenagers at home, it is even worse than that because everyone’s horrormoans are going in different directions.
Night sweats, hot flashes, up 20 times a night to pee, a more luxuriant mustache than my 15yo son, unruly eyebrows, rouge chin/neck hairs, sore boobs. It’s been a delight.
HORRORMOANS
Chin hairs! I am plucking facial hair fir the first time ever.
How did I not know the insomnia was a symptom? I have that and some night sweats. No daytime hot flashes. The periods are still pretty ridiculously regular for someone 50 years old, but day 2 has become more of a gorefest with the other days slowing to a trickle.
I darkly suspect if I hadn’t taken measures, I would be one of those unfortunate 50-year-old pregnant ladies. I’m still that regular. Bah.
For me, perimenopause (which I knew nothing about beforehand) was worse than the real thing. The best part of being postmenopausal is, of course, not menstruating. The worst part is having to tweeze white hairs out of my chin.
I will say that although I am nearly 62 and ten years postmenopausal, I have not yet experienced what Margaret Mead called “menopausal zest.” Neither has anyone else I know.
I’ve been thinking about your comment for a few days. I wonder if some of it is cultural. If there was a bigger change in Mead’s day – because culturally it was more important for women to fit in, do what was expected of them and then with menopause suddenly being like, I have no fucks left to give, Imma do what I want.
Or not. I don’t think Mead spent much time following cultural expectations. So idk.
Mine was so mellow, I can’t really tell when it started or how long it went on. I’m a very hot person (temperature, not attractiveness) since my 30s when I was having babies. I dunno, the pregnancies must have screwed up my internal thermostat or something. I have no sweaters – even in the winter, you’re usually going to some place with the heat turned up. So when I had hot flashes, I wasn’t sure if it was a hot flash or just the usual. A friend said, “Oh, trust me, you’ll know,” but nope, the hot flashes were only a bit worse and more frequent. Come to think of it though, I’m no longer as hot as I use to be (this time, both temperature and attractiveness).
I did have several months (maybe half a year) of long, heavy periods, and took iron supplements for anemia, but that’s about it. Buying the iron supplements was something else though. I couldn’t find the pills on the shelf at the grocery store so I asked pharmacy dude. It’s one of the things they keep in the back. He said something about safety reasons, which made no sense, since some kid grabbing a bottle of pills and downing them would probably be dangerous for all of the other pills that were on the shelf. So then, dude’s balking at giving them to me, until I finally furrow my brow and ask if I need a prescription. “Uh, well, … no”, and he finally gets me a bottle.
Best part of being postmenopausal? Nomoreperiodnomoreperiodnomoreperiodnomoreperiod. I remember getting my period when I was 13 and one of my first thoughts was, “when’s menopause”. That might have had something to do with my mother being very old-fashioned and behind the times and giving me one of those belts that you attached a horrendously thick pad to, and it pinched.
I feel like screaming some. I finally got the IT cert I needed to get accepted by the school I want to go to, and now they’re dragging their freaking feet over analyzing a transcript that is literally two lines. One says the name of the cert, the other is the expiration date. So it looks like I’m not gonna start until July, rather than June, and it’s intensely frustrating.
I just want to blitz through my degree in six months and get a job in an office not full of blatant bigotry and dust I am horrifically allergic to. 🙁
Oh my goodness- that’s a tragic failure of administration. How hard is it to check the “certification complete” box wherever it needs to be checked?! I hope it gets better for you in a hurry.
Thanks! I sent my enrollment person a message asking for a timeline, so here’s hoping. I’m nearly ready to test for my next certification, for pity’s sake. :p
Are you sure that it’s your transcript that will take two weeks or is that just their blanket processing time? I analyze transcripts for my university and I’ll usually say something like “please allow X time for review” just to give a timeline so students aren’t frantic. If I’m not that busy, I can process transcripts same day, otherwise, they go onto my stack until I’ve finished whatever project I’m working on. You should write to your enrollment person, they may be able to just work up your transcript if you explain your enrollment goals.
I was told they had to process the transcript, but I was also not actually given a timeline. When they did the initial transcript eval with my university classes, it was two days between notice that they had received the transcripts and when I received the preliminary evaluation. With the certification, I submitted the transcript twice – once it supposedly was never received and once to my enrollment dude who hand delivered it to the evaluators or so he claims, and still nothing. Not even an email letting me know they have it.
If my dude doesn’t call or email me by Monday, I’m escalating. There’s already no way I’ll get my loans approved in time for June, but I just want this settled. 🙁
Toasties! I was browsing through the Toast archives today and re-read my two favourite pieces, The Names They Gave Me and Dirtbag Hamlet.
I am here to say I love you. I love the Toast. I love Nicole and Nicole and Mallory and Marco. I love the Butter and Roxane. I love this wonderful community and I want to be a part of the next step for us.
Vive the Toast!!!!
Yes!!!
The one good thing about realizing the-toast is leaving, long live the-toast, is diving through the archives. I spent much of last week reading everything tagged misandry. It was glorious.
On July 1 I’m going to go back to the beginning and start reading the toast over…I figure that should get me through the next three years!
Is there a way to go back to the beginning and read the whole site chronologically? Because I would like to do that too.
I don’t know, but would also like to do it. An article I was reading the very day the shuttering announcement went up actually linked to a Toast piece that I *think* may have been the first one? It was about pubic hair. I never assumed I would cry over an article on that subject, but reading the comment section and the happy beginnings of The Toast on the day I learned it was ending definitely made me teary.
Hm, I hadn’t actually figured out the logistics! I suppose…keep on clicking “older posts” until I get to the beginning? If I start now I might actually make it by July 1!
ETA: If you go back back back it tells you how many pages there are total, and you can edit the URL. That’s gotten me I THINK back to the beginning. Or close enough.
Possibly. Maybe contact the editors and see if they can give us a link to a chronological ordering of posts as sort of a last hurrah? I will say that I don’t think you actually have to be done by July 1st. Nicole said, and I quote, “I’m going to keep the site up until the heat-death of the universe, and the ads will still run so I get fifty cents every few weeks or whatever, and from time to time we might run something just for funsies.” Which means the content will still be here. (Although I do wonder what that will do to the comments section and if there’s a way to preserve the comments that are already here without leaving the trolls and MRAs and MRA trolls free reign of the comments. I don’t know.
Good to know about editing the URL. If you do a search for pubic hair, (haha) you might find that IS indeed the first post. The comment section had a lot of “oh, I’m so excited about The Toast” and “good luck with this new venture” type comments, so it has to be near the beginning.
Europe toasties! the US-ians are talking about having a con and we discussed last week maybe doing a retreat-type thing for people geographically challenged by the large body of water that is the Atlantic Ocean*
So:
Please indicate your interest and share any ideas. Our thoughts run mainly to Eastern Europe, where it is cheaper, rather than London or any other urban centre. We may even find somewhere with a Sea we can Take To.
*Not those, unfortunately, geographically challenged by any other bodies of water
Hello! What a fab idea! Hungary could be good. Or, in western Europe, Portugal. It’s affordable and gorgeous.
Much rejoicing!!! What about Tallinn?
Split? I believe there is sea, beach, and Roman Remains.
Still in and willing to support if someone else gets the ball rolling!
YES. I’m so going to be there (if I don’t need a car to go there)
I like all of those suggestions!
@selma, I will start things more formally next week, when I am less stressed, but I would appreciate any and all help!
@everyone Does anyone have thoughts about what we should do? How organised/not organised? I was thinking a weekend/long weekend but would people crave more? less? Any of the places suggested so far are full enough with art and history and scenery that we easily could fill a weekend just sight-seeing; are there more Toast-themed events?
Generally, I feel like a short meet up over at most a few days would enable people to meet and mourn and if it’s successful and has enough interest it can grow with time.
I don’t know what the timing people are thinking of is, but I stayed at a lesbian resort in Andalusia last year (7 rooms, I think) that rents the whole place out in the off-season for crazy reasonable prices if that would be of interest. It’s pretty self-service, has a pool and barbecue, and several day trip options nearby. It’s called Bambu and they have a website. It’s lesbian only (or maybe just women only) during tourist season, but if you do the booking the whole place thing, you can bring whoever you want.
I’d be a possible – I have various commitments over the summer and time off work isn’t alwyas easy so I won’t say a definite yes but if it is a time when I can make it I’d definitely be interested.
I LOVE this idea! Depending on numbers and how popular this gets, my friend just bought Julia Child’s house in the south of France and is running retreats, starting this week. It might be something to consider for the future, as it can be rented either as a guided cooking and yoga thing, or I believe as just a free-form ‘let’s cook in Julia’s kitchen’ sort of deal.
I like the idea of taking to the sea. Can we rent an island and have like, a wicker man burning thing except, no farm animals are harmed, only MRAs?
BOUGHT JULIA CHILD’S HOUSE. This is the dream I never knew I needed to be a complete person. It fills me with joy to know that your friend is living this best life.
A sea in Eastern Europe? The Baltic is lovely in the summer. Tallinn and Riga are really pretty and also cheap. Visby on the island Gotland is out-of-this-world pretty, but more expensive.
Guys, this is the only place I can say this, but I’m so embarrassed that I voted for Bernie. I’m in a Super Tuesday (the first) state that Hillary was definitely going to win (and did). And I like Hillary a lot, but I find her hawkishness problematic, and I sort of wanted him to keep pushing her to the left, so I voted for Bernie. But now I just really want this thing to be over. I can’t really figure out what he is still doing in the race, but until this week, I just thought he wasn’t really doing any harm. But everything has gotten so ugly in the past few days!
I feel like I helped to contribute to this problem. Ugh, how did I convince myself to vote for someone surrounded by so many bros??
Hi, I am right there with you. When I voted I could plausibly separate him from the bros. I feel hoodwinked.
I did the same thing.
The right is completely imploding and I can’t even enjoy it because of ALL the disunity of the left. It’s frustrating.
I just wish that I could vote for an Obama 3rd term.
As much as I’m unhappy with the absolute lack of transparency of his administration, the drones, etc., very much yes to this. I am going to sorely miss Obama.
As I was voting in my state’s primary this week, I remembered how excited I was to vote for Obama (both times) and wished I had that much excitement for either of the candidates on my ballot this year.
I think this is one of those things where you made the best decision you could with the information you had, and so what you need to do now is forgive your past self for not being able to see the future.
That’s very comforting, thank you.
This is a more succinct and clear way of saying what I had planned to.
I’ve been a HRC supporter throughout the primary, but I was definitely pro-Bernie as well for a while and have soured on him lately. I think there’s been an acceleration in the past couple weeks of the shitty rhetoric more and more being associated not just with his supporters but with the campaign and himself, but early on that wasn’t clear at all. He is not going gently into that good night, but supporting him before shit started hitting the fan doesn’t make you complicit.
Also someone posted this on slack this morning and I thought it was a good read: https://shiksappeal.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/bern…
That was really interesting, thank you! Here is a lighter one, on the subject of the “rigged” primary system: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2…
I LOVED that one. Alexandra Petri has been doing great work lately
This is good advice for…everything, I think.
I still love him, I really do– I lived in his state for several years and I consider him to be a genuinely compassionate and effective leader.
But I also just want the earth to open up and swallow everyone involved in this election, and then maybe a benevolent alien civilization can take over America or something, I don’t care, just please make it enddddddd
As a part of me inside cheered while reading “I also just want the earth to open up…”, I’m wondering how long this feeling that we need a hard reset/restart will persist. Obviously, the “How did we let things get this bad?!” exists on both sides of the aisle (though it manifests in very, very different forms), but that in and of itself is telling to me.
I just keep thinking of Kang and Kodos in the Simpsons.
“It doesn’t matter which one of us you vote for, either way your planet is doomed! DOOOOOOMED!”
I still love Bernie too but would 100% vote for the benevolent alien civilization over anyone else right now.
Benevolent Alien Dictator/Gaping Abyss 2016!!
Lets make tee-shirts!
Cthulu for America! I can’t do a link for some reason (clueless) but there’s an awesome site. With Tshirts.
I used to have a “It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans” thing with Bernie but whether he deserves it or not I kind of hate Bernie too at this point just for introducing so much aggravation into my life and also inserting a lot of weird tension into my relationship with my sister who basically worships him.
It is starting to feel like he is no longer separate from the fans, because he can’t even seem to lead them (away from MAKING DEATH THREATS). It does not bode well for how he will lead people who don’t like him.
It’s extra upsetting how I see supporters claim the nastier bros just…don’t exist? I understand some stories of violence have been exaggerated by the rumor mill, but how do you have a twitter account and not see the yelling and threats?
Oh yeah, they’re all Hillary plants.
#correcttherecord
To me, the whole thing is all bound up with men who can’t ever, for one second, admit that there is a misogyny problem within the progressive movement. We can’t have these problems! There’s no sexism here! No racism! Because we’re progressives! So how about you stop bringing it up you dumb bitch, etc.
Jesus, this is so irritating because THERE IS A FUCKING MISOGYNY PROBLEM EVERYWHERE FFS. It’s not limited to conservatives or evangelicals or libertarians or progressives or centrists or whatever other box you want to put people in. It’s everywhere. (See also: racism).
No, but see, prejudice is a bad thing, so only bad people do it. We’re good people, so we clearly aren’t doing prejudice. If we were doing prejudice, which is bad, we would also be bad, which we’re not, because we stand for good things not bad ones. QED.
*nods*
Sara Ahmed wrote an awesome essay in which she talks about the person who observes and describes the problem (of racism, and/or sexism, homophobia, transphobia) typically winds up being treated by everyone else present as if they themself are the problem. Sort of like the childish retort, re: farts, of “She who smelt it dealt it.”
Having spent time thinking about Ahmed’s argument actually changed my approach to politics: I now place a lot of value on a political figure’s willingness to say “I was wrong” and change their behavior.
I’m not positive I’ll vote for Clinton, but I have been clear for quite some time now that I can’t vote for Sanders, valuing what I value. I just cannot deal any longer with white dudes who respond to reasonable criticism by doubling down and yelling louder. The more a candidate reminds me of my father, the less I trust that candidate in a position of power where some fucking diplomacy and empathy would be an asset. Sanders hits the same button in my brain that John McCain and Newt Gingrich did: belligerent and incapable of taking criticism with equanimity.
YES THIS
I started this election cycle as an HRC gal, but this unwavering support for netanyahu and her support of military interventions everywhere really has me cold.
so I voted for bernie in our primary (which was in april, and I seriously didn’t think it was actually going to matter at that point but then, ohhh it somehow diddd and can this election cycle be over please??) – and I was happy about his more lefty-plans because I am suuuuper lefty, and I was bummed out about HRC’s hawky foreign policy and since foreign policy is where the president’s power really lies, I kind of felt like he was making her a better candidate, especially towards the beginning.
I have so many feelings! I cannot believe that the democratic party is behaving like the GOP! I hate everyone now and am disgusted with the bernie bros/etc and the dismisasdkldfaskj; I can’t even.
see, my trauma re: election 2016 has completely destroyed my ability to write coherent sentences.
I was actually told the other day that I was gullible for not realizing there is a vast media conspiracy that is secretly pro-Clinton and they are just making up all every negative thing that’s been reported about Bernie and his supporters.
I voted for him, too, just before hearing about the stuff in Nevada. I still support him, but it feels increasingly gross to be associated with this noise.
I have a friend who was in the Nevada convention – a smart, chill older lady, her caucus went for sanders – and her reports from the floor were that she felt they were not being heard, that the conv.administration was shutting them down, that she was frustrated to tears. Maybe this is simply business as usual at a convention and they just didn’t know it, but she said it didn’t feel at all like what the Times reported.
There’s been a fact check about whether procedure was followed, and it was: http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/… The resulting delegate apportionment matches watch was originally expected after the 1st round (which is where I’ve got to interject that caucuses are undemocratic and drive down turnout, etc, etc, and this example in particular is a byzantine and awful one).
I’d really have like to see the Sanders campaign prepare its delegates better for the process and I think frustration is a totally reasonable reaction to not feeling heard. The subsequent threats and verbal abuse from others crossed a line, but I get your friend’s frustration! And hope that every state decides to move to open primaries for the next round, because let’s never never caucus again.
Oh yes, she isn’t saying abuse is justified, just that when you’re there for hours in an arena and it seems like the wrong things keep happening — she had been so excited to take part, and it ended up being horrible. And if a sweet grandmother can be that thrown by it, to end up in angry tears, I do get how people can all end up not at their best. :(.
Absolutely agree re caucuses, everyone I know in a caucus state felt it was pretty unfair. I’m in NYS and the closed primary actually seems more fair to me, though the 6-month lead to switch is a lot, but also we have fifteen hours to vote so it’s overall pretty inclusive if you want to take part.
Yeah, I can 100% see where that would be really frustrating, which is why campaigns owe it to their delegates to give them at least some prep, in an ideal world intensive workshops or at the very least lots of reading material to get ready for the caucus process. I mean, if I were boss of the world they’d be gone tomorrow, but in the meanwhile, they really do need to be approached like the unfortunate endurance events they unfortunately are.
Oh! And yeah, I’m cool with the idea of closed primaries if the switching window is closer to the election. Although for new registrants, I remember the NY deadline being pretty reasonable? It’s already floating out of my brain though.
I’m curious about how people in vote-by-mail states feel about their process, cause that seems like a pretty chill, workable option to me too.
I currently live in a vote-by-mail state and it is THE BEST. We have closed primaries, but you can change your registration up to three weeks before (I think it was three–not that far out)–and that’s mainly for logistical reasons so election officials can make sure everyone gets the proper ballot. I think my ballot came two weeks before election day, and so then you just sit down with the ballot, the info pamphlet that the state prepares (includes statements from candidates if they had their shit together and got one turned in on time as well as non-partisan information about any local or state-wide ballot measures), and the internet (for researching anyone who doesn’t have a statement in the info pamphlet or anyone else you want to know more about). Fill out the ballot in one sitting, or over a few days, and when you’re done, put it in the envelope, sign the envelope to certify that you’re you, and either drop it in the mail (you have to put a stamp on it) or in an official ballot drop box (no stamp necessary). All ballots received by 8 pm on election day get counted. It’s really a brilliant system.
I really, really miss vote by mail. It was so civilized, and increased turnout, and I felt like I could hang out with my decisions for a while and it was great. Then i moved states. Vote by mail for everyone!
I volunteered as an observer at a different state’s caucus and the thing is that caucusing is just sort of inherently informal and confusing for everyone, no corruption required. There were plenty of Hillary and even O’Malley supporters who were very angry on caucus night and felt like procedure had been violated or their precinct chair was incompetent or biased or whatever. It happens every year, and it’s a problem that does need to be addressed with the system. But it’s only the Bernie camp that that has kept up this drawn-out argument that things are specifically rigged against them.
I feel like we, as a country, just need to accept that we fucked this one up, and start this election over. One more glorious year of Obama where we can all think about what we just did, and try again in 2017.
Life needs more do-overs.
That is really tempting in some ways, but mostly I just think omg don’t make this last any longer!
“Election called on account of clusterfuckery.”
Early on I figured I should vote for him– he won’t come close to winning the nomination, I thought, but wouldn’t it be great to get a solid minority of democrats in early states to vote for the farthest-left candidate, just to prove that there’s widespread support for things like universal health care? I didn’t end up voting for him, but I did give him some money. It’s hard to predict how these things will go.
That is a good reminder, especially because I’ve been wondering how I didn’t see this coming. Since it never really felt like he had an actual chance, you knew that at some point, the bros were not going to get what they wanted, and when does that ever go well?
I have a guy now-honestly-ex-friend who has gotten increasingly nasty now that it’s clear that it isn’t going to happen, and it’s making me pretty sad because he was always really nice before. But then I’d never seen him not get something that he felt like he ‘deserved’ so I guess that’s the difference.
Yeah, pretty much the exact same thing happened to me. I have the same username on Twitter if you want to grieve over lost friendships together.
See, this is what Nice Guys ™ don’t get when they ask why women always prefer assholes (for this argument, we’re going to accept that premise as valid). With guys who are obviously assholes, you know their flaws and can anticipate them. With Nice Guys ™, you’re always waiting for the sudden but inevitable betrayal.
NB: I feel this can be logically extended to any oppressed group and its non-marginalized allies, which I try to keep in mind when I’m the non-marginalized ally in a given situation.
That was my reasoning at the time, too.
Same! I’m embarrassed to have supported him, and SO fed up with the Bernie or Bust people that keep showing up on my Facebook.
They make me so scared and sad, but not surprised. “Trumps presidency will force people to join the revolution”. Like okay. First of all, not necessarily. Second, if the kind of people who don’t like trump will even be able to vote in Four years. Third, of course you a white cis male are fine with my rights and the rights of other minorities being infringed upon and taken away, a process which LITERALLY RESULTS IN MANY OF US DYING so that you could potentially get a slightly more liberal president than HRC in for years. I refuse to be a tool or a casualty in your revolution.
Exactly!!! For them not to see the huge difference between Hillary (who has her problems) and Trump (who will probably start a nuclear war over someone insulting his tiny hands), and to say that if it can’t be Bernie may as well go Trump, is insane and dangerous and horrifying.
I just feel like, “Bernie, please explain what you have actually done and will continue to do to prevent things like this OK Law RE: abortion rights.” Oh, wait, scorn the DNC and Emily’s List and Planed Parenthood as the “establishment,” even though they’re the ones on the ground fighting this cause at every level while we watch our rights get stripped away and education get cut? Because I see virtue in Big Money support for systematically oppressed groups, because fighting this without their cash sux? Yes, we must be no better than Trump. Yes, keep your millions to yourself, because you need it for your lost cause, not down ballot candidates in OK. Grrrr.
While I’m not dismissing the existence of Bernie bros—because they are, sadly, a very real thing…—I’ve seen enough nastiness (and “my candidate is the best, and every other position is wrong”) from both Bernie and Hillary supporters for me not to let the rise of the bros ruin my initial support for Bernie. There is plenty of nastiness going around, from both camps. Having family in rural Virginia and rural West Virginia struggling to make it, I was genuinely thrilled to have a candidate talking about those kinds of issues, about the struggles of a generation loaded down with debt, talking openly about the corrupting influence of money on politics, and so on. That said, I’ve been excited from the get go that it looked to be a Hillary-Bernie race for the nomination, as I have a ton of respect for both candidates. And their at times “violent agreement” in debates only made me realize that, finally, we had two good choices.
I think the thing about the disunity on the left that bothers me is that it is a symptom of a larger issue that even President Obama addressed recently (at Rutgers, when he chided the protesters who got Condoleeza Rice to cancel her speech). The strange dismissive quality of many people’s worldviews startles me, the aversion to a debate, to a discussion, the need to elevate discourse into a shouting match, to rob a chance of getting to hear someone else’s perspective by escalating the situation, etc. It bothers me when I see a friend on Facebook posting a GIF of Hillary morphing into the Wicked Witch—it’s silly, it doesn’t invite any real discussion, and so what is the point? It bothers me when friends who are Hillary supporters talk down to Bernie supporters, as though they are attracted only to the pageantry and aren’t genuinely attracted to Bernie’s message (which I’m keeping separate from what I hope is a minority of his supporters, the bros). And I remember friends who were supporting Hillary talking down to me about my support of Obama 8 years ago, how I was “on the bandwagon,” and how nasty that contest got. (A friend the other day was even commenting on how short people’s political memories were, as they were fairly convinced the Barack-Hillary tensions were even worse than the Bernie-Hillary ones. And there’s also been an entire generation of people, basically raised with technology and the internet (and what passes for “debate” or “discussion” in many corners of the internet), now in the discussion/disunity since 2008, which I am sure isn’t helping with anyone’s Facebook wall, Twitter feed, etc.)
I think the very vocal “Bernie or bust” group will eventually be seen to be a minority—and I will be very surprised if any large number of people refuse to vote against Trump, even if they still aren’t won over by Hillary. (And to be fair, both candidates have some thorns that I completely understand people being concerned about. But concern is very different than the ugly “Hillary is the literal worst” and “STFU, Bernie bro. Come at me when you have an idea of how America works.”)
Fingers crossed we have a unified party soon. If the Democrats can’t unify in the face of Trump… yeah, I don’t know.
Thanks, I really need that “Bros are a small minority, most Dems will vote for Clinton” posted on a wall where I can see it every time I look up from my phone where all the REALLY POLITICALLY INVOLVED people are yelling.
Yeah, every time I see something on the news asking whether Bernie people will support Hillary, I want to raise my hand and tell them that yes, I can’t wait to vote for Hillary! But there’s no way to put that on the ballot, so right now I feel indistinguishable from those “Bernie or bust” folks. Voting is such a clumsy way to express an opinion.
I was really unimpressed when it felt like the narrative changed from “Oh, guys, Hillary and Bernie had an amazing debate about the issues last night, and it was great, they were both great, aren’t we the luckiest, because they’re both great, and the GOP nomination process is a total cluster, and that’s hilarious/frightening, but who cares, because we have two candidates that are great” to this ugly, confrontational storyline.
All of my friends who are still big Bernie fans, and are impressed with his message, the way he was able to run a campaign without a Super PAC (and what that might mean for future elections, other “outsider candidates,” etc.), and so on… They all plan to vote Hillary. We even once joked it was like a debate about your favorite Shakespeare play, there wasn’t really a wrong answer. Now it just feels like there’s a group yelling “Hamlet is the only acceptable answer” and all the attention is on them, not on what I hope is a majority that is like, “Wait, what? No. Why are we fighting? You can also not think Hamlet is the best and not be wrong.”
Although apparently there is an issue about not having a super PAC–people sending in repeated small donations to him has led to at least 1500 donors who either exceeded the $2700 contribution limit or who may be foreign nationals. Both of which are illegal. Irregular donations aren’t uncommon, but the volume that Sanders has had is pretty unprecedented. The FEC letter to him warning of his campaign irregularities ran 639 pages. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/…
I do miss the smugness about how civil and respectful the process was on the Democratic side. It was so convivial, you guys!
I KNOW
Dems: “Your ideas are impractical! Here are the reasons your ideas are impractical, although your motivations are wonderful.”
Repubs: “Your face is stupid, and you have a tiny penis.”
✔️✔️✔️🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🤒
*follows you on twitter*
Yup. The majority of Bernie supporters, like myself, will vote for Hillary. I think “support” is a strong word. I’m never going to be thrilled about her. But we will vote for her because Trump is totally nuts. I mean, he has said he’s willing to let the country go bankrupt, as if the U.S. is one of his companies. He has no clue how anything works, period.
Beyond unity, we need candidates who are just more appealing, both in terms of proposed policies and temperament. I don’t know where we find them, though.
Yes! Thanks for saying this. It really scares me how averse we Americans are to disagreement *in the political sphere,* where disagreement is pretty much a given. Why so much “my candidate or nothing” from the Hillary supporters as well as a certain contingent of Bernie supporters (and the various Republican ones)?
And already why the desire for “unity on the left” — ? It’s politics, not military engagements between two clashing sides. Let the democratic process work its way out. Sure, I’m not in favor of Bernie or Hillary going negative on one another, but not all the voters have voted, so let’s give them at least the feeling of a choice. Curtailing the democratic process so early in favor of unity is creepy. There is plenty of time for unity once the party conventions have been held and candidates have been officially chosen.
My ideal solution to how irrational this has all become, and irrational in dangerous ways: we need 5 or 6 new parties to muddy the waters and get people out of this polarized state of mind — this “us or them.” Parliamentary democracy. It may be more inefficient but at least it wouldn’t generate this feeling of extreme polarization, being at war with other people in your own country, that leads directly to coarseness and violence and disregard for the law and for the fellow citizens whom you disagree with.
I support this. and honestly, I doubt it would be more inefficient than what we have now – two parties slugging it out over and over, having a pissing contest to see who can do the least and yell the most? parliamentary system would at least allow more honest opinions and coalition-building to get some real governing shit done.
I’ve been saying for a while now that Bernie or Bust reminds me a lot of the PUMAs eight years ago….
You know the thing is, he has a good message. A wonderful lefty message, that is more radical than Hils. But I think there wasn’t ever a real visible investigation of who Bernie the person is. The brand is just lovable Larry David, how can you hate your sweet old revolutionary dad.
However, when I dug into the back catalog, I think a lot of local local reporters pointed out this stubborn “burn it all to the ground” aspect of his whole deal, and “walk away if anyone asks critical questions.”
I was also really really troubled by his attitudes about women from his essays in the 70s and the way he ran his campaigns against women. To me they’re much more damning than the NYT article about Trump and the only defense I ever heard was that it was from a long time ago, but these were his ideas as a 30 year old, his campaigns when he was in his 40s and 50s. He’s never apologized or explained them to my knowledge, and they all happened when he was an adult so I don’t think there’s an excuse in, “well it was the 70s”. My parents also were young then and they didn’t write any essays about how frigid women give men cancer. It’s not a common thing of the time.
My point being, its pretty forgivable that Bernie the message was something people loved, but I think no one spent enough time interrogating Bernie the human person in past scenarios. Whereas Hils is interrogated about that constantly and as a result she no longer even has a personality.
This is so well put.
Could you possibly link to where I can find that back catalog? I thought I’d bookmarked it, but I lost where I originally read it and the “frigid women” stuff is exactly what I was trying to find again when arguing with someone on Twitter who didn’t think the stuff existed. (I should add that this person actually works for the Sanders campaign.)
Last year Shakesville did a four part series on him with tons of sources and links provided. (the frigid women stuff was in part 1 or 2) http://www.shakesville.com/2015/07/looking-for-be…
Thank you!
Sorry for the delayed response, it’s definitely the shakesville pieces and various pieces about how he is impatient with the press to the point of…well, lets just say I don’t think he’d release his transcripts of speeches to goldman sachs either if he had them. Here’s quotes from a piece that is actually really complimentary to the work he did governing, but about how he is with people.
“Exasperating and classic Bernie,” columnist Judith Levine … “Man of the people treating the people like tiresome children, telling them what the issue is, instead of listening to what their issue, our issue, America’s issue is right now.”
. “I admired him for his willingness to take stands for what he believed,” former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank… “He went for the ideal, but he was not part of the legislative process. He chose to be an outsider.”
“Bernie believes that he’s right, and that what he wants is for the greater good,” …Susan Boardman Russ,… “Bernie is so certain that what he represents politically is unquestionably correct, therefore everyone should agree. Not much room for compromise…it was, ‘Play in my sandbox, or get out.’”
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/0…
Thank you!
I cannot vote for any of them.
I muted everyone on Facebook and I refuse to even pick a candidate.
I still have the damn Bernie sticker on my car and ended up voting for Hillary (in Oregon).
The satisfying answer here is to be A GIANT COALITION OF WITCHES, HARRIDANS, HARPIES, AND BANSHEES UNITED AGAINST TRUMP. If women really get out the vote, the Bernie bros will not matter in the general election.
I may hate myself for getting into this, but I see people keep talking about HRC’s record on military interventionism. Sanders himself has even used HRC’s hawkishness as a main point against her. But I see very few people talking about Sanders’ record.
No he didn’t actually vote for war in Iraq (Clinton voted saying that she had major concerns and that she was opposed to unilateralism and has since repeatedly said she was wrong to support it). But despite his not voting for the Iraq war, Sanders has more than once voted for funding that war; voted to support the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act which included a failed CIA plan to topple Saddam and also tightened sanctions on Iraq (estimates range from 350,000 to 1 million children dying during that period and also included the 4 day Operation Desert Fox bombing spree on targets around Iraq); and he voted for the Authorization Unilateral Military Force Against Terrorists which gave Bush the go-ahead for the war on terrorism and the support which led to Iraq. Sanders has never apologized for any of his votes which led to or which funded the Iraq war.
In other intervention, Sanders also: voted for the NATO bombing of Kosovo (his support of it caused one of his top advisors to quit, and when anti-war protesters showed up at Sanders’ office, he had them arrested), he voted for the Afghanistan war, he supported Israel’s assault on Gaza, supported sanctions against Iran which were similar to the ones imposed on Iraq, supported action in Libya, called for expanded intervention in Syria. He has also repeatedly supported arms manufacturing, including the $1.2 trillion stealth fighter which was one of the Pentagon’s most expensive failures, and encouraged Lockheed Martin to open a location in Vermont. As mayor of Burlington, when protesters opposed the local GE plant’s manufacture of Gatling guns, he had them arrested.
I’m not saying Clinton doesn’t have issues on that front, she definitely does. I’m not saying it’s not a cause to be concerned about her. I just don’t know how people can be concerned about her being a “hawk” and ignore Sanders. And the fact that he’s used her war record as a bludgeon against her, is the absolute height of hypocrisy. One thing in Clinton’s favor is that she has actually admitted to being wrong and apologized. Admitting to being wrong doesn’t seem to be something Sanders is capable of.
I nearly exploded at someone on a friend’s FB when he commented that Bernie is “waking the people up.” Oh god, fuck you bro, do you think nobody was talking about income inequality and our rigged social and political system before Bernie Sanders showed up to tell us how unfair it all was? It really crystallized a lot of the stuff I’d been feeling about the savior rhetoric surrounding this whole campaign.
I feel the same way. Literally, the day I mailed off my absentee ballot was the day all the Nevada primary mess kicked off and I immediately regretted not going with my gut and voting for Hillz. I was undecided and it was like a close-your-eyes-and-pull-the-trigger moment when I bubbled in my decision.
Guys, I’m pregnant! It is very early days yet so please send “stay put in that uterus” vibes my way.
That’s wonderful! Loads of good thoughts are headed your way!
Congratulations! Sending warm thoughts and wishing you a smooth pregnancy.
How exciting! That is amazing news.
Congrats! I hope everything is great and easy
That’s so great! 😀
Congrats!! That’s very exciting! I’m right there with ya!
Congratulations!!! Rest up!!!
Super huge congratulations! I am sending all of the good thoughts right your way!
YAY and GOOD LUCK!!! May you have a happy and uneventful pregnancy and birth.
Eee, congratulations on passing the first hurdle, and good luck!!
Apropos of nothing, except that someone mentioned Chris Thile in the link roundup, I’m wondering whether Chris Thile taking over Prairie Home Companion will get me listening to that show again. I can’t quite imagine what it’s going to be like. I listened to an episode he guest-hosted but the theme of that episode was “Today We Have A Mandolin Player Hosting, Let Us Make Mandolin Jokes” and I can’t imagine that will now be the theme every week.
Hey knowing NPR it plausibly could be.
I feel like, if anyone can take over PHC and do well, it just might be Chris Thile. I’ve seen him perform a number of times live, and he’s always very charismatic and entertaining. I always loved how much Garrison Keillor loved to sing with the audience and with his guests too, even if that wasn’t his strongest suit — so I think Chris being a musician will keep that communal appreciation and practice of singing alive. I hope, anyway!!
Here’s a lil twitter conversation Blushingflwr and I had: https://twitter.com/Blushingflwr/status/733492162…
If you were to send a care package to someone who wrote to Captain Awkward or Prudence about their boyfriend who’s “wonderful, but…” full of books and movies and such with Great Boyfriends in them, what would go in it?
(This question naturally skews to good men in m/f relationships, but no reason to limit it!)
Obvious Child!
My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Ian is wonderful–he’s kind, he doesn’t pressure her, and when she says, “Oh I used to be a frump queen” he says, “I don’t remember a frump queen but I remember you” which is 100% the exact right answer.
Anything by Rainbow Rowell but i’m leaning towards Fangirl.
“What’s Your Number,” source of numerous Evans gifs. It’s dumb as hell, but Evans’s character is eventually a genuinely good boyfriend while also being (sing it for typecasting) A Meatball.
Gaudy Night, probably.
Yesyesyes.
My thought exactly! “Disagreeableness and danger will not turn you back, and heaven forbid they should.”
(It’s a little sad how few of these I can think of! Aside from some romance novels that don’t count because they’re too skewed toward drama and new relationship excitement.)
Since we were talking Bob’s Burgers in the LR, I would burn a DVD of all the episodes where Bob and Linda get super competitive about something and then remember that they are each other’s favorite person and team up against the world. Dawwwww.
Books:
Mary Russell Series- Laurie King
Amelia Peabody Series- Elizabeth Peters
Vorkosigan Series- Lois McMaster Bujold
Marriage A History- Stephanie Coontz (not about great boyfriends of history, but man…so good)
Echoing the Peter Whimsy/Harriet Vane series- Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, Busman’s Honeymoon, and there are some short stories about life at Tallboys later.
Film:
The THIN MAN MOVIES, OMG OMG. NICK AND NORA FOREVER
Emma (I am so into Jeremy Northam, and I guess he’s a bit scoldy, but you know what I mean)
The Baxter
In Her Shoes
I feel like there were moderately cute dudes in The Family Stone? I can’t remember I just like all the actors in this movie.
TV:
Jane and Brad on happy endings.
April Ludgate and Andy Dwyer, and Leslie Knope and Ben and Chris and Anne, and Ron and Diane….AND Donna and Joe on Parks and Rec!!! Lots of good dudes on this show.
Jamie Fraiser- Outlander
ooh, actually there are really good boyfriends in several of Jennifer Weiner’s novels (In Her Shoes is based on her book)
Truly Madly Deeply.
The new boyfriend is an actual good person. The dead boyfriend (Alan Rickman, sob) is…kind of problematic, and there’s this great conversation where she tells him that his death broke her heart, but eventually she got out the records she had put away because he didn’t approve. It’s important to me. Love shouldn’t mean hiding your records or books.
I haven’t read The Hearts of Horses in a very long time, but I’ve ever forgotten the little tiny love story that shows up at the end. The main character is a notably butch girl that takes over as Resident Cowboy during WWI while most of the men are gone from her valley. The bit where one of the remaining farmhands basically agrees to meet her where she is (i.e., dirt covered, generally unsuited to being a 1910s wife) was mind blowing to me as a rough-edged fifteen year old. I still think about it when I start giving my dude the “okay but are you SURE about ME out of all other girls ever” stare a little too often.
Dream jobs?
My perfect job is “Space Journalist” because it combines my fantasies of “astronaut who doesn’t have to do math” and “kickass reporter.”
My dream job has always been “Book On Tape Reader”
If you’re okay restricting yourself to works in the public domain, this dream can be a reality! https://librivox.org/
I have a degree in rocks but I’ve secretly always wanted to write and illustrate a graphic novel so my dream career is Cartoonist Who Lives In A Cave.
Lady of leisure and independent scholar.
Independent scholar all the way. When Pamela O. Long won a Genius Grant last year, I decided independent historian was the dream.
Beer taste tester?
Or maybe PA announcer at a baseball stadium? (Which I guess might not actually be my dream job, because I had a chance to apply for that last year, but didn’t because it would’ve meant too many summer weekend evenings NOT spent hanging out on patios)
I want to be a professional Toast commenter.
Honestly I think you could sell ad space in your comments and we would all still flock to the gifs.
One of those imaginary literary deals where you get to edit other people’s work and still write your own, and be well-paid enough to live in a Big City where all your friends are Cultured and Well-Heeled, and also you get giant book advances and you can travel wherever, whenever you want for Important Research.
That sounds excellent.
Space Journalist may also edit science fiction novels and have Well-Heeled Space Friends.
And while I’m at it Ray Bradbury is still alive and is my pen-pal.
So basically Jessica Fletcher, but replace “constant murder” with “editing other writing, which is always excellent unless you need something to make fun of to your well-heeled friends.” I support this lifestyle.
In a perfect world where I’m not debilitatingly shy, stand-up comedian who somehow gets a little famous and gets to act in things.
Or maybe get paid to talk/write about feminism in sci-fi/fantasy.
When I was little I wanted to alternate between being a ballet dancer and window cleaner every other day so I’m gonna stick with that.
Honestly, a florist.
Me tooooo
I want to be a business owner of some kind, so I can give people really good jobs with great benefits and create cool things through the business that help people.
Part-time animal behavior researcher who gets all the main work done while my kid’s in school. Perfection, that would be.
Cat-friend to the super wealthy that live in tropical climates or at least California somewhere.
I’d just hang out and chill with their cat.
Mostly it would be napping in sunbeams, or drinking coffee and relaxing outside.
I’m going to go with “freelance photographer/artist who is already wealthy for some reason and doesn’t need to actually sell anything”.
…I mean, that’s stretching the definition of “job” a little with that second part, but.
I imagine the most fun job ever would be acting. The auditioning, not really, but performing would be like, WHEEE! Or a visual artist. I really need to spend less time on cleaning and more time on crazy collages.
Dog therapist. I would both be a therapist to neurotic dogs and do dog-assisted therapy for humans.
artist who has special people to come and take all of the finished work directly from the studio to their new homes and leave $ behind.
note: studio is large and bright and in a fabulous city and periodically relocates to another fabulous city.
I mentioned it in a Link Roundup earlier this week, but I’m pregnant and it’s very new (four weeks?!) and I’m discovering what it’s like to feel exceptionally full and bloated and yet HUNGRY even after I’ve just eaten! This is my newest and biggest news, but there are times where I have to keep reminding myself it’s not a drill!
I basically need and want and crave all pregnancy/labour/general parenting advice or tips because you will not judge and that is very key to me, who feels very much like a newborn baby at 30.
Congratulations and yes someone please explain how to become a parent because it seems unbearably daunting!
Let’s just cling to one another and hope that people are right when they tell you that you’ll figure it out.
That is a more comprehensive plan than I’ve been able to come up with! A+++
I am afraid that anything I have learned about parenting is only applicable to my kid. Or whichever one I tried it with. Sometimes. Parenting advice is a minefield – trust your gut and don’t GOOGLE MEDICAL ADVICE.
I’m out.
but…but…google is all I have!
This is difficult advice to follow, as I just diagnosed my kids with chromogenic staining via Google but, definitely find a friend/family member who is an RN or doctor to be able to call and ask. Better yet, get a doctor who will answer the phone. I guarantee the first major fever, you will lose your shit in a google panic that your kid has meningitis. Baby forums are good for crowdsourcing ideas, but there is a lot of judging and self satisfied twaddle that goes on as well.
As a pediatrician, I heartily endorse this comment! DON’T GOOGLE!!!
The American Academy of Pediatrics has a site called http://www.healthychildren.org which has all kinds of great, doctor approved information on it. They’ve got developmental stuff (how much am I supposed to feed my 1-year-old, when do kids start rolling over, etc) and medical stuff.
The CDC often has good information, especially about vaccines. http://www.cdc.gov
And I also agree with the advice to find a pediatrician who has an on-call system where a doctor will call you back. Most offices will let you do a prenatal appointment so you can interview one of the doctors and ask questions about how the practice runs, who calls you back when you have a question, what do they do about issues that come up after-hours, etc.
Congrats on your pregnancy! I hope everything is healthy all the way through for both of you.
Ugh, food/appetite/nausea/etc was one of the weirdest/hardest/most inconsistent parts of pregnancy for me. My best advice there is to make sure that if you’re feeling bad, try to change things up. For me the main solution usually ended up being, when you’re hungry, eat, and when you feel gross and not hungry, still eat or you will feel worse! :p
My baby is almost a year old now, and looking back I would say the most useful books I read were:
*Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
*Expecting Better by Emily Oster (read this if you’re a person who is worrying about all of the conflicting pregnancy health/food/”oh no your coffee is poisoning your unborn child” advice out there)
*Mindful Birthing by Nancy Bardacke
*Your Baby & Child by Penelope Leach
*Touchpoints by T. Berry Brazelton
*Caring for Infants with Respect by Magda Gerber
One thing I’ve learned is that all of the good advice totally makes sense in retrospect but isn’t necessarily helpful in the moment. :p What’s really helped me is to keep in mind that things just keep changing. The bad parts won’t last forever, so it’s totally possible to get through them, and the good parts won’t last forever either, so it’s important to try to notice and enjoy them.
Also! If you are breastfeeding, it is 1000% worth it to see a Lactation Consultant (or two!) after the baby is born. Even if things seem to be going well they can magically make things better, in my experience. And thanks to Obamacare your insurance will most likely cover it if you can find one who works with your insurance.
That’s one thing my mom said; she had little to no nausea with her three kids, and she attributes it to always eating something (crackers, etc) to not let herself go hungry.
Thank you!
Advice: It is OKAY and SMART and GREAT to say to your partner/whoever “TAKE THIS MONSTER BEFORE I FLING IT OUT A WINDOW.” Sometimes you may want to fling it out a window! You will not be a bad parent for needing a break, you will be a WISE parent for taking one.
I would very much like to avoid as much baby flinging as possible, this is v. helpful thank you.
Definitely don’t Google medical advice. r/babybumps is pretty decent as far as online pregnancy forums go (although the grading scale is…well…).
I’m 20 weeks- for reading Pregnancy for Dummies was my favorite, although Mayo Clinic is handy to have around. Podcasts- Longest Shortest Time is excellent, One Bad Mother is good for pregnancy topics if you start at the beginning, and Sawbones did some good pregnancy related episodes too. (I have even more podcast suggestions but these are my favorites).
Congrats!
Ooh thanks for the recs!
The two pieces of advice I have found to be useful to all parents is
1. have a changing station on EVERY floor the baby might be on. You don’t want to have to go up or down the stairs every diaper
2. as silly as it sounds, learn to pick up stuff with your toes. The baby will drop so much stuff, blankets, pacifiers, toys, and not having to bend over will save your back so much. Especially, when its now fun game, and they drop it 23 times in a row.
I love both these tips! My back seizes up if I spend too much time bending over to pick things up, and we have far too many stairs in our house. Thank you!
The untold reason for the toe one is that it also prevents you from whacking the babies head on the underside of a doorknob. Not that I have ever done that…. since the first time.
This is true… I have heard. May also prevent you whacking baby’s head on table… (said baby is 5 now and seems fine, so…. it’s ok to admit it now right?)
BFF did that to my Godson and I’m pretty sure she was more upset than he was.
Eating and digesting is going to be very weird for you for a while! I’m 29 almost 30 weeks, and I’m STILL adjusting to it.
I was one of the few, rare, blessed women who never got morning sickness or nausea at all. (You are allowed to hate me on principle, I won’t blame you.) So for me, the first real pregnancy feeling was the way I would become STARVING in a way I have never experienced before. Not mouth hungry, actual hunger. Bring lots of snacks with you, wherever you go! I work an office job and ate breakfast at my desk in the morning and usually left for lunch — and quickly found I couldn’t make it just breakfast to lunch like I was used to. Almonds or cashews are good, apples slices and peanut butter, apples and string cheese. (*cough* sometimes chips *cough*)
I still struggle with the intense hunger and the sudden fullness, and I’m not very good at managing it, even still. I try to do smaller meals, or eat half my meal and then come back to it when I’m inevitably starving half an hour to an hour later. But sometimes it takes my stomach a while to catch up with my brain, and I overeat and am miserable until digestion gets a moving.
GET A PROBIOTIC AND TAKE IT!!!! It will help your digestion SO MUCH. I still have issues from time to time but without the probiotic, it would be much worse.
Lots of water — even if you drink other things, make sure you get water in between.
Also, now that I’m third trimester — eating can sometimes make baby girl more active, which is kinda fun. I like to imagine she’s mad at me for taking up some of her precious tummy room with a fuller stomach — but at the same time, I swear she gets mad if I haven’t eaten in a while.
Enjoy! Take it easy, lots of rest!!! Best wishes!!!
Also, not on the subject of food:
Some labor prep that’s really helped me, mentally (I’ve got anxiety bad, and I’ve been working hard not to let my Normal Anxiety ramp up any potential birth fear):
-I love reading the Birth Without Fear website and reading TONS of birth stories. I think this can be daunting at first — but to me, the MORE stories I read, the more it becomes a normal thing women do as opposed to a Scary Thing That is Painful and Weird. Being exposed to a variety of stories taught me a lot about different ways birth can go — and that you can survive and thrive under a variety of circumstances.
-The Birth Hour podcast was another good one, for many of the same reasons above. Being exposed to a variety of birth experiences and stories helps educate — plus something about hearing women tell their birth stories, vocally, hearing them laugh at the silly things or funny things, hearing them tear up with beautiful emotion — it’s been really lovely for me, to start to comprehend the emotional impact, and also that no matter what happens during birth, you’ll come out on the other side of it and be able to talk about it, the good and the bad. And I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of good advice in terms of mantras, mental health state, reminder, etc. that I will use when I birth.
– The Pregnancy Podcast is really informative, but also…it’s not always or even usually interviews, so it can be a little dull to listen to. it’s just a LOT of information. But she takes one topic a week and really gives you tons of details. Very informative.
-I’ve downloaded Hypnobirthing tracks from iTunes, and I love them. I’m not sure (at this point) how much I’ll use them DURING Active Labor, but in terms of early labor and relaxing and getting in a good head space to start the birth process — yes. I’m always SUPER relaxed after I complete a session, to the point where someone called me and when I answered, they thought I had been sleeping. Really helps you focus on your breathing as well. There’s a great track called Visualizing Your Amazing Birth which I love, because it really takes me THROUGH the process of birth but with a positive outlook, leading up to imagining meeting your baby. I always am smiling a LOT when I finish that one.
– Anything Ina May Gaskin. <3
I like the Birth Hour (and podcasts generally) over written birth stories because I feel like you get more of the emotion and asides and funny bits than the written ones cover.
You might like Pregtastic for a podcast if you haven’t found it yet- it’s no longer active but there are 200+ back episodes. It’s women having conversations about their pregnancies around a variety of topics- many of them are on pregnancy 2+ so there’s some birth perspective as well.
I’m 7 months preggo with my first and so have no advice at all about parenting and am pretty terrified of the concept. But my advice for the pregnancy stuff is try to remember to stretch, like a lot. I’m experiencing the fun of really intense pelvic/upper leg pain from the baby pushing on my lower body nerves (not the medical term). If I stretch, it’s bearable. If I hunch over my computer forever and never stand up, I want to die. I think this would be less likely if I’d been a more limber person before getting to the third trimester!
Advice that I was given and foolishly did not take, but which I now understand to be the Best Advice: if you are a reader-up-on-things, as i imagine you are given this question, read the baby books now. Not just the pregnancy/birth books. Because once the baby is HERE, it is HUNGRY or TIRED or GREEN POOPING or whatever and you do not have time or energy to read the books in advance. And I really wish I had a better sense of “this is what to expect in Month 3” “this is what to expect with starting solids” etc, in advance.
This is ESPECIALLY true of sleep stuff. Every baby is different, and every family is different, so it’s hard to know in advance which specific sleep strategies will be the right ones for you. That said, at least understanding, in laypersons’ terms, the basics of baby sleep neurological development/patterns, will help you lay the groundwork for better sleep regardless of whether you cosleep or sleep train or whatever. I really wish I’d read up on what happens with babies’ sleep at around 3-4 months so we could have established better sleep habits early, and possibly not gone back to waking up every 1-3 hours for 3 months starting when she was 15 weeks old.
For general stuff, Baby 411 has been helpful for us.
p.s. Oh, and YAY CONGRATULATIONS!!! 😀 😀 😀
I had my baby 28 years ago, but these are things I think I did the right way:
Exercise: both walking and swimming. Especially in my 8th and 9th months, when the baby pushed against my lungs and I felt like a turtle, swimming was a revelation … I felt light and comfortable in the water, and also, I could take deep breaths again.
I had a midwife, so during labor I could run around and not be stuck in a bed, and I could eat … keeping your strength up is important, and not eating, well. If you don’t have any fuel for what is an intensely physical experience — I mean, that’s just not a good idea, no matter that some doctors don’t want to deal with the … output, I guess.
I had a midwife, and I wanted a natural birth without pain meds, and that’s certainly what I got. However, in my family, we have short labors; nonetheless, at about hour 2, I was wishing for pain meds. Of course, when my labor started it was intense, one minute on, one minute off — I didn’t have the beginning stuff with one labor pain every 15 minutes, for example. Afterwards, I thought, I wish I’d had the option for pain meds and I’m never going to advise that someone “shouldn’t” take them with Reasons and Such.
I have severe anxiety, and I was terrified when I was pregnant that I would never make it through labor; and then the hospital pregnancy classes had me freaked out even more with their “this is what could go wrong during your labor” and I thought, I’m never going to get through this. And I realized, I have to calm down. So I read a book by a midwife, who did midwifery in an Amish community, where women give birth at home; and suddenly, after reading, I felt completely competent and believed in my ability to get through labor, no matter what happened: even bad things. That being said, I didn’t make a birth plan; I just had to trust myself and my midwife; and I’d be in a hospital so if anything did go radically wrong, I’d still be safe. I guess, after I read the book, I felt mentally prepared to do what I had to do to get through labor, while being flexible with rolling with whatever happened. Afterwards, the other midwives talked about how well I did during my first labor, and suddenly I was an “example” or something. So my advice is to read something that empowers you, gives you strength and purpose and calms you down, so that you say to yourself, “I can do this, no matter what happens, I will be strong and flexible.”
My best decision during pregnancy was prenatal yoga. My class was led by a doula and was very, very gentle and slow, which was so perfect for me. I always left feeling stronger (mentally and physically) and more pregnant, if that makes any sense. I also learned that doing cat-cow stretches right before bed totally TOTALLY reduced my need to pee a thousand times every night. This does not work for everybody, but oh my god give it a try at least because it was a miracle from heaven, especially in the third trimester.
On books and reading, my practical tip is to use the library for everything. I checked out stacks and stacks of books, and basically kept the ones I found particularly interesting/useful for the entire nine months. At least in my library system, there are so many copies of “What to Expect”, etc. floating around that renewals are essentially endless. My particular favorite was “Pregnancy Day by Day”, a big, kind of stupid, picture-heavy book. I just liked the granularity of daily developmental updates.
My daughter is now 18 months old. I have no parenting advice whatsoever.
Congratulations!
Also, continual apologies to my Toast Post partners for being super duper hella late, but postcards are coming. They will, unfortunately, be Oklahoman-themed, because I bought them before I left/the Batshit Abortion Bill happened :/
I just mailed mine yesterday! Toasties awaiting post who are in NC, Dallas, Paris, and Australia, you will get yours soon!
Since I was on vacation last Friday and the beginning of this week, I was late to The News. I wanted to jump in and say that I’m so sad to be losing this community and will miss you all. I only commented sporadically, but reading the articles and everyone’s brilliant comments were some of the best parts of my day.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that The Toast, and the Hairpin before it, helped me to become a better person. Thank you all.
Well, it’s the last 6 weeks of OT, we’re getting into the #realtalk, so I’m gonna take this opportunity to talk about S E X.
Specifically, the frequency of same in a relationship. Partner and I (f/m cis het) are averaging about twice a month and I’m ok with this and he is too but I can’t shake the feeling that Something’s Wrong. It’s not for lack of libido, it’s more that for my physical & mental health I schedule my life around a lot of sleep and alone downtime, and it just happens that the time isn’t there. We’ve talked about it & he assures me he’s not frustrated and it’s all fine, but I still feel guilty for not scheduling it correctly or something. I dunno, I feel like I would like it to be more often but the practicalities don’t really work out and I don’t mind the infrequency so maybe there isn’t a problem here???
I think you’re overthinking it! If your partner has reassured you that your schedule, whatever it may look like, doesn’t bother him, then believe him. Your health is incredibly important.
Between the Burgomaster’s nutty levels of job responsibilities and my health issues, we rarely have time or energy for sex more than once a week. But we have a standing (heh) weekend date for S E X, usually Saturday afternoons. Like, we block out the entire afternoon for it and have a great romp that makes up for not being able to hook up mid-week. I think as long as everyone’s happy and satisfied, it’s cool. Full disclosure, I get myself off not infrequently during the week or I tend to get pretty cranky.
I absolutely love me some scheduled sex time. Spontaneity is great too, blah blah blah, but it is awesome to put it on the calendar and then have something to look forward to. And points for weekend afternoon sex, because then you can have an accidental nap and then wake up starving and then have dinner and wine. Wonderful.
you can have an accidental nap and then wake up starving and then have dinner and wine
That’s pretty much exactly what we do.
If you’re both ok with it and genuinely open when talking about it, you’re fine. The correct amount of sex is “the amount the partners agree on happily.” It could be once a day or once every ten years if both parties are okay with it!
I’m going to say probably not a problem if everyone is happy. We’re about the same in frequency for the same reasons. Most of the time it’s fine, but every now and again it kind of festers, and I start to feel really unwanted.
Is there any good way for you guys to have occasional sex bonanzas? Like a weekend getaway or even just a hey, my life in minorly less busy right now and I’m feeling sexy, so lets go nuts? I feel better about less frequency with occasional feasts thrown in that I can remember and feel good about. It’s too hard to make it a regular habit of 2-3x a week or whatever arbitrary figure I think it should be, but I can do occasional sex binges without it being a constant stress.
i have an ex who was was so demanding in this department that it made me think sex had to happen at least 3x per week or something was _wrong_ and probably my fault. so for the first few years after the honeymoon period with my current partner, i started to freak out about frequency, which caused all kinds of unnecessary drama.
ultimately, we had a similar talk, that nothing is wrong, that nobody is sitting around passive-aggressively waiting to explode about frequency. we happen to be better matched in this way and prefer quality over quantity and that’s that!
I second everyone who’s already said there isn’t really a problem here.
I was in a similar situation (felt like I wasn’t Doing It enough and had weird guilt about it even though my husband said he didn’t mind) and at first I thought my libido was just slowing down. Over time I realized that it was more like a bunch of general life stuff that I was unhappy about (shitty job, too-small apartment, stuff like that) and the unhappiness was killing my desire to have sex.
We moved in April and there has already been a marked increase in Performance of Marital Duties because I really love our new place and living here has increased my baseline level of happiness/life satisfaction a surprising amount.
I’m very reassured by everyone’s feedback! I think there’s two issues that are actually separate from frequency 1. I’ve had the experience heather parito describes of a pushy ex who made me feel bad for not being a sex robot, (and who Mr Twiss is nothing like) and 2. Mr Twiss is so gentlemanly he refrains from initiating unless I do first, which is good, but the unintended consequence is I’ve ended up being the Scheduler of Sex which is a bit stressful for me cos I feel responsible for our whole sex life. I’ve told him more than once that it’s totally fine for him to initiate, and I know he would like to, but he still can’t quite bring himself to – he doesn’t want to be pushy. I think I might to talk specifically about this aspect of the issue. We’re both in our heads a lot (can you tell?!) And often find it hard to be physically spontaneous. But we love each other a lot and our sex is wonderful, so I think everything will be fine!
I know exactly what you mean about #2! My partner has long tended to think “well, I am mostly always down with some sex, so it would be polite of me to just be available whenever she wants!” Which is sweet in its way but then it leads to one person being Sex Scheduler. So I had a very direct conversation about how it made me feel like we always had sex on My Schedule, which felt unfair. Fwiw, it went really well and it was really useful for me to direct say “not only is it ok for you to ask for sex, but I also don’t want to always be the one who initiates.” So he has learned to be much better about it.
Like CleverManka, we have a standing schedule- it lifts the scheduler responsibility and adds predictability for us, which can be super helpful as everyone can work on being in the correct mental space
But it sounds like you guys are doing fine! I still check in about frequency every so often, even though we’ve happily followed this pattern for years at this point- never hurts to check in.
see, i had to mention that because i often think that’s the problem [the pushy ex who frequency-shames & no matter what you do it’s never enough]. it can really make you overthink it with actual normal people.
I worry about this too, sometimes, and I usually come to the same conclusion that everyone is suggesting – it’s not a problem unless one or both of us are not happy with it.
For me the key seems to be feeling emotionally intimate – if I feel connected to Mr Cleo, then I’m less likely to worry about stuff like that. And it helps that we usually have really good sex – it helps to remind myself that we may have less frequent sex but it’s much more intense than it was.
I’m in a similar situation now! So thank you for posting this. I am reading all the advice and feeling better.
Likewise, this. Seeing others discussing these sorts of patterns, and with such positivity, is of great help in unraveling my own logically unsound but nonetheless emotionally stubborn hangups about frequency, desire, and external validation.
I’m glad! I’m feeling much better too, my experience is not unusual and that’s reassuring.
If you both feel like there isn’t an issue, I wouldn’t worry. (Or try not to.) I think there’s a lot of pressure to feel like your relationship is only working if you’re having a ton of porn star sex ALL the time, but the reality is all of us need mental health break time, physical break time, down time from work or school or just socializing.
I used to stress about this (and still do, honestly) — but when I felt like I was scheduling Now is the Time to Do Teh Sex, it wasn’t as good. When we waited until we were both rested and it started organically, it’s way better.
Your relationship can be just as healthy and normal without acheiving a certain number of times a week or month. if either of you start to feel unfulfilled, that’s different, but it sounds like you’re both comfortable and this is just an guilty society pressure you’re putting on yourself.
Cat-friend to the super wealthy that live in tropical climates or at least California somewhere.
I am also in a f/m cis relationship (he is het, I am bi), and we average about three times a month (weekends, not during my period). I sometimes feel guilty about it – I feel like I should have a higher sex drive, or like I should be more attractive to my partner so he wants to have sex more often – but, really, it is fine. Neither of us is unhappy with the situation; it’s just very easy to feel like something’s wrong when society and culture are so into “more sex means more love!”. I think you’re fine.
I just bought plane tickets to DC in July for what will basically be a 4-day booty call. I’m very smug about it.
(Also, when the suggestion was first made, I texted my husband to ask if he would mind if I went off to another country to bang a guy, and he responded with only the sunglasses emoji. I really hit a jackpot with this one.)
DC in July- pack natural fibers. Seriously. Not even the air conditioner can keep up with the humidity.
not planning on wearing a whole lotta clothes while I’m there if you know what I mean ;D
Which makes packing even easier!
A+ travel plans!
I just had my annual review and it went swell! (It has not always done so in the past, for some reasons both in and out of my control. Two years ago, I cried during it.) AND, I get to take design classes this year, which I am super stoked about! 50% of my terrifying stress dreams have been for nothing! (The other 50% are about house buying and related commitment issues. I would really like to stop dreaming that I find my dead childhood cat in my new/future linen closet.)
I graduated. Ten years after graduating high school I finally have a college degree.
Now to go and get a job. (I really, really need a job.)
Also I got tickets to Antiques Roadshow this June. Clearly this is the more interesting news.
Congratulations!!!
Congratulations!!
Congrats!
And have you decided yet what you’ll bring to AR?
Congratulations!
Congrats on your degree! And soooooo jealous (and happy for you!) re: AR…so exciting!
Yay congratulations!
My parents went to Antiques Roadshow but nothing they had was exciting enough to be on TV. They said the experts were very nice and very tactful with everyone though, and I think they had a good time overall!
Awesome, congratulations! 🙂
I just wore a chapeau claque. The treasures in my grandparents’ house are bountiful. Someday I will write an odd little thinkpiece about my late grandma and her fondness of horrifying decorative metal insects.
Also my exflatmate apologised for treating me like trash when we lived together. I think this is good.
A really good salad is also blanched broccoli, arugula, avocado, pumpkin seeds, and goat cheese with lemon and olive oil dressing.
I put everything that was green in the fridge into a bowl and added cheese and olive oil. My attempts to do this with other colors have been less successful.
Strawberries, raw beef, red gummy bears, red peppers, and tomatoes sounds great to me!
I’ve been doing arugula, pumpkin seeds, shaved parm with lemon and olive oil all this week and it is so so good.
My biggest triumph of the week is this little lady being home! She was at the vet’s overnight for two days with a dreadfully high fever (107.9 at one point!) and we were worried sick, but she is home and eating and meowing and snuggling. She’s also got a pretty sick gangster lean when she walks from the IV that’s still in her arm – the vet wanted to leave it in just in case she took a turn and needed fluids quickly.
Edit: Sorry for the previous gigantic photo.
Pet stresses are the hardest ones, but I’m so glad that she is home. Also- she is SUPER cute!
Awww, I’m so happy she is doing better – what a cutie!
Well done, cat!
BTW I ordered the same hammock on eBay: does it ever fall off the window? does the cat like it? Because the whole contraption looks a bit unsafe.
So, there’s definitely a trick to it, but the cat LOVES it and it’s certainly one of the more attractive cat window seats on the market. (It also looks more unsturdy in that picture than it actually is.)
The trick to hanging it up is to wash the window really well with whatever cleaner you prefer and make sure that it’s still a bit damp, then take the same paper towel you used to clean the window (that should also still be damp) and rub it on the suction cups for a bit of moisture before trying to stick it on. Something about that little bit of moisture on both sides makes it stay so much better. You may also have to occasionally reform the cups if they get too flat and won’t stick as well.
Also, I’m really glad that all my highly specific knowledge on this is not going to waste, so thank you for that!
What a sweet little trooper!
Yay! Having a pet at the vet overnight is awful. Last time I experienced that I did not sleep one bit. I’m so glad she’s better.
TOASTIE RUNNERS
Training chat time!
I have a question. I run my next long race (10 miles) on June 18th. I took most of last week off because 1/2 and it was too cold for what I packed when I went on a trip.
I want to get faster, and my 1/2 pace was about 11:09 per mile. What should be my goal pace? Also, should I run 7 or 8 miles on Saturday?
Run 8. Goal around 10:30. Race-day energy is a Real Thing.
How was the half? And today’s run that I’m too late to share any advice on?
You can probably shave a decent amount off of your half time, as houblonchouffe has said. Plus your half kinda acts as a training run for the 10-miler. You just need to maintain your strength/endurance going forward. And mentally, it helps that it’s a shorter race! Piece of cake! You can totally do this.
For those HGTV loving Toasties I am developing a drinking game. It is called “People Who Fundamentally Misunderstand What A Craftsman Home Is.” To play you just need an episode that features people remodeling or searching for “A craftsman style home” and a strong liver. You must drink if/when:
1. They say the phrase “I don’t like the dark wood”
2.”I was hoping for a master bath”
3. “I was hoping for an open concept kitchen”
4. They claim one random built-in makes a home “craftman”
5. The voice-over/ real estate agent/ designer subtly implies that the couple is an idiot
6. Someone comes right out and says the couple are idiots
7. The couple paints the beautiful original wood some hideous color
8. They refer to a totally different style of house as craftman (mostly ranches, for some reason, but at least once it was a Colonial)
9. They complain the 100% orginial craftsman home is “old fashioned”
I will play this forever.
As an architectural designer, aaaahahahaha YEEESSS
My parents have(had) some beautiful wooden beams in the upstairs of their house. They were originally a lovely dark brown wood of some kind. My father went on a work trip and came home to them painted a shade of light sky blue. I will never forgive my step-mother for this indiscretion.
If I came home to that I’d leave again immediately.
Noooooooooooo
as a person who bought and restored a fixer craftsman in an historic neighborhood AND loves drinking, i am IN on this!
i guess we go watch a few eps of rehab addict to recover, right?
Yes! I think somewhere along the line people felt like saying “craftsman” when asked about their home preferences made them seem sophisticated and cultured, but they never bothered to do any research a figure out what exactly that meant. So they are then stuck trying to turn a craftsman into something that they actually like, instead of just being like “I want a traditional ranch home. No fuss. Done” and being happy.
And yes to the rehab addict! I love people who are obviously really passionate about the history of the houses, and make sure the updates are as seamless as possible.
it’s happening a lot in our neighborhood, flippers buying 100-yo homes for cash, opening up the layout, modernizing every shred of character, NOT FIXING ANY ACTUAL SYSTEMS LIKE PLUMBING OR FOUNDATION and turning a sickening profit. every single home we offered on got flipped except the one we got. but, there are also historical societies and knowledgeable contractors and a protective overlay zone that attempts to keep things in order. i definitely saw 2 horizontal fences go vertical last year and i think it’s because the historical society paid them each a visit.
there was a marathon of rehab addict on the new years day before we really got serious about shopping. we watched pretty much 24 hours of it and were like WE’RE DOING THIS!!
I should have added “People who don’t understand what ‘good bones’ means.” The roof is leaking, the foundation is cracked, and the pipes have evolution happening inside them. That’s not good bones, those are major issues that require serious fixes. You are much, much better off fixing those things than you are worrying about the fact that there is carpet in the living room. It drives me nuts when people go for the cheap, cosmetic changes.
I definitely do not have the liver capacity for this game.
I am now deeply homesick for the Craftsman I was renting in Angeleno Heights for near eight years. Siiiiigh.
I used to own a craftsman, and we’re considering offering on another, but someone has ripped out the kitchen and put in (gasp) granite countertops. I don’t know if I can see that every day without pangs of grief.
The obsession with inserting granite countertops (or worse, marble) into every home in America needs to stop! The only thing worse is when people ruin a beautiful craftsman fireplace by hanging their ugly-as-sin TV over the mantel. Kill it! Kill it with fire!
Yes. I actually gasped and swore when I saw the kitchen at the open house.
When I was house hunting in 2009 (which may have been Peak Granite), the thing that most enraged my just-barely-able-to-afford-LA-real-estate-near-the-bottom-of-the-market soul was the number of dreary condos with obviously brand-new granite counters, where the owner clearly thought this justified jacking the price up some $10K or more. Why would I pay extra for a kitchen that I am going to have to also pay to redo as soon as I get into the place because the counters give me motion sickness?
I knew I was going to buy the place I did when I walked into it, because the building went up in 1961, the seller was the original owner, and as far as I can tell she had not touched the kitchen since the day she moved in. I had to do some work on it, but at least I wasn’t ripping out brand new counters in the process.
I hate granite countertops with a white-hot fiery passion. We just put new counters into our (1890 mill cottage) house, and they are wood because that’s what they would have been in a timber town in 1890.
ETA: The contractors we were working with kept trying to push the granite counters on us. We had to replace the lower kitchen cabinets because of water damage, and it was a big enough job and involved enough plumbing that we didn’t want to do it ourselves. The woodworker person who made the cabinets did an absolutely brilliant job of matching the new ones to the originals that are still in place, and then the contractor was like–let’s put a granite counter on these beautiful rubbed-oil-finish cherry cabinets and I wanted to set him on fire.
I would honestly prefer people don’t do any updates, because they always go for the most generic, bland, “what is popular now” stuff (like granite) that sucks the soul right out of the place. My grandparents old house had beautiful old soapstone counters and my aunt tried to talk them into putting in granite. Fortunately my grandmother laughed in my aunt’s face.
For what earthly reason would one replace soapstone with granite? Soapstone is so clearly superior in every way!
(Also granite countertops are terrible and if you’re going to be that awful just get quartz in a fun color instead, seriously)
What beakses said–WHY would you replace soapstone with granite??? That makes zero sense.
She said it was “too dark” and we could get something with “more interest.” If I had been there I would have slapped her. The counter also lead to a BEAUTIFUL, enormous soapstone sink that I am determined to get my hands on one day.
i am currently living with them, but they are so damaged and ridiculous that they’ll eventually be replaced. i just had bigger things to fix. if you have the rest of the original kitchen, you can replace the granite. but i know, it seems wasteful.
I like this idea because I am house-type illiterate. I walk around my neighborhood and say “Tudor cottage,” “Victorian gingerbread something,” “Craftsman,” etc., to what are probably an apartment complex, yurt, and RV. Would love to learn, but have yet to find a field guide to houses.
Now I want to live in a Victorian gingerbread yurt. Or possibly a Tudor apartment complex.
I’m not sure if you’re interested enough to buy a physical book on the subject, but since you mentioned “field guide to houses,” I couldn’t help but point out that there exists just such a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-American-Houses…
I picked up a used copy (slept through a few too many architectural history lectures in college) and it is delightful!
I actually just bought that! Lets get a Toastie “walk and see the architecture” tour!
Saved to my wish list as A Field Guide O American Houses, which is also a lesser known Whitman poem. O wigwam, O teepee, don’t let them say you’re just too tense, and so on.
I would like to sign up for one of these walks. They sound fantastic.
OMG, i could do this with a NUMBER of the HGTV shows that I am sadly addicted to.
See Also: “People Who Fundamentally Misunderstand What ‘Mission Style’ Houses Are” which includes:
1. “I don’t like the stucco”
2. “I don’t like the roof tiles”
3. “It looks kind of medieval” (no, it doesn’t)
4. “I’ve been to Spain, so I want a Mission style house” (they aren’t the same thing)
5. “I don’t like the tile floors. I was hoping for hardwood”
This kind of makes me want to cry.
Only because it is true! I swear that HGTV deliberately screens for the people who have the least idea what styles are. Like, sometimes I wonder if any of them have ever seen a house before, or if these are the famous “raised in a barn” people my mom was always comparing me to.
I am late to this but 100% here for this. I scream at people who paint that beautiful clear wood. That wood does not exist anymore.
Also people bent out of shape about paint colors but not foundation issues.
People who fail to understand how important basic things are drive me nuts! The roof, the electric, the water, the foundation- all of these things are very important! Way more important than the fact that you don’t like the carpet in the dining room or whatever.
seriously! we inspected each foundation, because we knew we’d have to have it in the budget or forget the house. we actually got lucky with a foundation with only minor issues, so we celebrated by getting it seismically retrofitted this year [we’re in earthquake country]. we are in love with our solid foundation! ha.
This reminds me of the people who want to buy a Tiny House and then complain that the house is too tiny.
Yes! Tiny House Hunters always makes me question if there is some sort of parallel universe where “square feet” has a different meaning than the one I am using. On the opposite end are couples with one teenage-ish kid who insist that they need a four bedroom house with three different living areas. Or who need a “gourmet kitchen” and have clearly never done anything other than boiling pasta or throwing a chicken in the oven. If Julia Child could live without granite counter tops, you can too.
We may end up buying some enormous Victorian thing with way more space than we need as part of the BIG MOVE this summer, because the other options are boring ranch houses, boring and ugly split-levels, or soulless cookie-cutter developments. Do 2 people need 2500 square feet? No, but my soul would die in any of the other options.
I have a passionate hatred of split levels (something about walking in a staring at two sets of stairs). Ironically, one of my friends has a backsplit house and I ADORE it beyond words. I totally understand that cookie-cutter developments are literally the tools of Satan :).
Toasties who are involved in abortion funds! I want to hear from you!
I’m a PhD student in bioethics and health policy and I want to write my dissertation about abortion funds. Surprisingly, there has been zero academic work on this topic (as far as I can tell– if you know of some, let me know!). Because of that, there’s a ton of different questions and ways I could go about doing this. Ultimately, though, what I want is for this work to be useful to both the funds, NNAF, and the movement as a whole (I know, I’m naive and an optimist about the power of a dissertation, call me crazy). Anyway, I’d love to hear from you about what you think I should study, what questions you think need answering, what kinds of data is or should be available, etc. I’m more interested in qualitative work than quantitative, but part of it can be quantitative. At the moment I’m thinking about doing one portion on quant data (if I can get access to intake data), but mostly I want to focus on the experiences of people involved in abortion funds (on both sides of the equation if possible). I know this is rambling and a bit incoherent, but let me know what you think! you can reply here, or if you want to write privately, I can give you my email address/contact info.
Do you want a contact at NNAF? I’m friendly with one of their board members, who is also former co-chair of NYAAF. Happy to make the connection – actually, could make it on Twitter and she would 100% respond.
sure! two people from nnaf (the official twitter account and the director) reached out to me on twitter and told me to email them about data. I emailed them but didn’t hear back. it’s only been about a week or two but I’m not quite sure how to proceed.
Tweeted! Maureen will totally answer sometime today, she’s fantastic.
I am pretty sure I just talked to Maureen on the phone the other day about a case… She’s still volunteering with NYAAF right?
Yes, she is, but I don’t know if she’s the only Maureen around? I’ve JUST gone through intake training, so I’ll be on the hotline for the first time next week!
Woo! Congrats!! We’ll just miss each other because my shift ends on Sunday night. But EMA and NYAAF work together all the time, so maybe we’ll collaborate someday!
Not sure if your research is US-only, but The Abortion Support Network is a UK-based charity that provides funds and support for women travelling to the UK from Ireland for abortions, and they have a good bit of data and stats on their website: https://www.abortionsupport.org.uk/
thanks! I’m focusing on the US, but it’s really interesting to see a similar network in the UK to give some context!
I have no useful information but this sound fascinating!! I’m a phd in neuroscience but I spent a while thinking about public health/health policy instead of basic research and this stuff is always super interesting to me. Good luck!
Omg that sounds super cool! (also I work in health policy hi!).
I think that NAF/NNAF maintain some internal records, so it might be reaching out and asking what their data holes are.
From a volunteer perspective, we often urge people to ask family members or friends for funding, so I would love more information on whether or not that’s actually feasible for people and why or why not. Also how the experience of working with funds makes patients feel and if they think we’re doing enough to respect their experiences/needs.
I volunteer for the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion fund (I’m actually on shift RIGHT NOW) so AMA! We keep very detailed demographics data for our callers that are granted and hope to keep demo info on all callers in the future. Feel free to email me at sonambulance at gmail!
Related: I’m doing my first intake shift for NYAAF next week! SUPER EXCITED. And will presumably have more thoughts re: questions that need answering after I get through it.
Hello! I have thoughts/experience on this but don’t want to share in public for identifying info. What’s your email?
yes I’d love to hear from you! you can email me at [email protected]. thanks so much!
I am applying for a job at GODDAMN NASA and somewhere in the sands of time five-year-old me is inexplicably thrilled.
AWESOME. I hope you get it.
They still haven’t rejected my job application from a year ago, which probably means that they just forgot to update the status, but in my heart of hearts I keep hoping it’s because their hiring process is supposedly slow, even by fed standards.
Congrats. I’m sure current age you is also inexplicably thrilled! My BF has done contract work for them and every time he gets called back to fix something he gets giddy like an 8 year old boy and i just want to give him a box of spaceship toys to play with.
You are a deity of science and awesome. Five year old me is in your sandbox also being stoked about this. /highfive
Have you seen the American Family commercial with the little girl pretending to be an astronaut? Makes me tear up every time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWtYNpmia-s
I am so unbelievable jealous (NASA!!!!!) – good luck, hope it goes really really well!
Toasties, what do your morning routines look like? Mine has a few variations:
1) Gym days! Alarm goes off at 6:45 and I’m supposed to leave for the gym by 7. I laze in bed scrolling through internet bullshit on my phone. I leave for the gym by 7:15 on a good day. I get home around 8:45 or 9 and don’t get out the door until at least 9:45 even though I need to be at work by 10. Showering and getting dressed and whatnot gets slowed down by internet bullshit (again!).
2) Not gym days! Alarm goes off later – usually 7:15 or 7:30. I need to leave the house by 9:20, 9:30 at the latest. I laze in bed scrolling through internet bullshit on my phone or my iPad and don’t get out of bed until after 9 and end up getting to work late.
3) Breakfast date days! I have no problem getting out of bed and dressed and out the door by 7:30am to meet my friend at a diner at 8am for eggs and pancakes and coffee. But I can’t afford to do that every day, nor do I have enough people who want to meet me for breakfast every day.
What do your routines look like, and do you have any advice re: remembering that the internet will still be there after work?
Actual: Alarm goes off at 6:45. Snooze button until 7:15. Mess around on my phone for like a half hour. Shower. Drive to work.
Ideally: Hop out of bed at 6:45. Shower. Eat breakfast. Do a little bit of art stuff. Drive to work.
When I’m in a routine, I’m TOTALLY a morning person. But I haven’t been able to get back into that routine in YEARS at this point. So maybe I’m just not a morning person anymore?
Mr. Editor gets up at 5:45 to meditate and write. I lounge in bed till 6:45 when he brings me a cup of coffee. I read news, tidy the apartment, have good conversations with Mr. Editor until about 8, then I get dressed & do my morning things. I leave between 8:45-9:15, and arrive at work just before 10. On my commute in, I read my slush pile, sort through emails, make to-do lists, read articles. At work, I read the link round up until 11 & then I meditate. After my meditation, I switch over to Work. My mornings are slow, easy, conversational. It takes about 4 hours for me to become functional.
But a note on breakfasts:
i haaaaaateeee breakfast dates! I never eat breakfast because my constitution can’t handle it. I have to get up super extra early to get there on time, which means I have to leave work early the night before to actually spend enough time away from the office, which means I have to go into work early the day before. One meeting can throw off my whole week, which sounds crazy, but breakfast meetings basically mean I don’t get a full 12 hours away from the work. Not good for my sanity.
Once, after months of back and forth trying to get something on the calendar, I caved and agreed to a breakfast meeting. Then she was like, “Great! Meet me at my office at 8:45” And I rage-stroked so hard that I forgot to actually put in on my calendar & completely blew it off. 100% forgot until I got an email that said, “So, are we meeting or what?” I still feel TERRIBLE for being a flake, and I’m sure this person thinks I’m a total loser now, but gaaahhh breakfast meetings are the death of me.
Ooh that first paragraph sounds like my dream of how I want my days to be shaped! Also I really wish my daily routine still involved a slush pile! Seems like a lot of people dread the slush pile but I used to love it–I’d take it home and spend all night digging through sometimes.
Breakfast Dates are the *only* thing that get me willingly, joyfully out of bed in the morning, without hitting the snooze button.
Haha so maybe the answer is “more breakfast dates on days I don’t go to the gym”?
As someone who is definitely not a morning person I’d say… go to the gym after work? Maybe you can’t do it then for legit reasons, but I feel that the main reason I tend to go on the internet in the morning is because I hate being awake and am desperately trying to escape from the harsh reality of consciousness.
I also do everything possible to get ready for work the *night before*: I find my keys, shower, put together yogurt in a jar so I can grab it and go the next morning, etc. Basically I have given up trying to be up before I absolutely have to and my morning routine involves putting on clothes, grabbing a bag, and leaving. Important shit like the gym can wait until the afternoon when I have re-acclimated to being a human being.
I actually LOVE the gym in the morning. I just hate getting out of bed. And I work 10-6, so going to the gym after work instead of before means not getting home until close to 8pm.
If I have a 10am meeting: Alarm goes off at 8, I either hit snooze once or do internet on my phone until 8:15, shower, feed cats, eat cereal, put coffee in a travel mug, get dressed, check on foster kittens, brush hair, walk out the door without coffee mug, go back for it, ideally hit the train platform by 9am. Usually end up joining the 10am meeting by phone while walking to the office, where I arrive around 10:07.
If I can get to work whenever: Alarm at 8:15, phone internet until 8:30, shower, feed cats, eat something more complicated than cereal, drink coffee from actual mug, get dressed, play with foster kittens, brush hair, pack lunch, ideally hit train platform by 9:30. Get to work around 10:30 unless I’ve just missed the D train.
I could never at all in my life go to the gym in the morning before work. It’s fine on Saturdays when I go at 10:30, but I’m starting to believe I’m incapable of getting anywhere before 10, except maybe the airport.
Solidarity! I cannot get anywhere before 10. Even when I try.
I love this idea and want to know everyones routines in detail.
7:15 – alarm goes off. I usually get up, and if Kitty Fantastic is fast enough to beat me to the bedroom door, spend a few minutes giving scratches. Otherwise, straight to the shower.
7:15-30: shower. If I washed my hair the night before, flat iron my hair into semblance of patriarchy friendly professionalism. If that was done yesterday, just throw it into a ponytail. Then makeup and more cat scratches.
7:30-7:50: Make coffee, drink green smoothie my person makes every morning. Internet.
7:50-8:30/40: Whatevs. My person and I carpool to work, and around now I’m just waiting for him to shower and stuff. I’ll throw together lunch, figure out what to wear, and if everything is set and I’m just waiting…I may just lay back down again until its time to frantically throw on shoes and leave.
My mornings are reasonably lazy, and while I do hate how frantic my evenings are, I just can’t stomach the thought of being productive before leaving for a day of productivity.
I have a lot of trouble getting out of bed in the morning! My mornings aren’t very pretty.
6:15 – First alarm (gets ignored)
6:30 – Second alarm, after which I read the internet with one eye open on my phone
6:58 – “Oh god if I’m not in the shower by 7 everything will get screwed up”
7:30 – I should leave the house now, and sometimes do manage to!
7:45 – If I haven’t left the house yet, I’m in a full-on scramble
Then there’s a mile walk, a 20 minute subway ride, and then a half hour bus ride, and I’m ideally to work a little before 9. Luckily I don’t get motion sickness, and therefore get a lot of reading done every morning! I could never, would never go to the gum before work, but I do enjoy going after some days!
On workdays
6:15am, alarm goes off, get out of bed, go to the bathroom, brush teeth and retainers, go to the kitchen and take some stuff for my stomach that I’m supposed to take 20-30 minutes before breakfast. Brush my hair. Go back to my room and get dressed while reading tumblr.
6:40am, make my cereal, go back to reading tumblr
6:55am-ish, whenever I’m finished eating, go back to the kitchen, take vitamins and allergy meds, pack lunch, get the rest of my stuff together
7:00am-ish, out the door, drive to work
7:30am, start work!
(I have a lot of anxiety over zoning out and losing time, so as soon as I finish eating I shut my laptop and leave it alone. Also, half the year all of this happens an hour earlier because I’m boycotting daylight savings time.)
Thinking about my morning routine has made me a bit disappointed in myself. I’ve always aspired to be a morning person, but I feel like my mornings are rather frantic! Sweet, sweet summer is almost here, though.
1) Alarm goes off at 5:30. Most days I snooze until 5:45 or 5:50 but then kick myself for it later.
2) Traipse downstairs with the dog and cat in tow.
3) Give dog a treat and then let her out. The treat is literally the very first thing I have to do in the morning, or she won’t leave me alone. It’s pretty bad…somewhere we got into that habit and now I’m not allowed to even make coffee first. She’s a brat.
4) Grind coffee beans, start coffeemaker
5) shower while cat waits patiently on the bathmat, get dressed, run downstairs and get coffee I made, go back upstairs and get ready.
6) Leave the house ideally between 6:30 and 7. Usually this requires moving my husband’s car around the block so I can get to mine, so I get a nice short walk in the morning. For breakfast, I toast an english muffin, put peanut butter on it while it’s still hot and then a super thin sliver of butter on top of that, and eat it in the car.
On Saturdays, I sleep in, watch an episode of Antiques Roadshow while drinking coffee, and then drive to a neighboring town for a late breakfast with my parents and whichever siblings can make it. Dad and I split an omelette with American cheese and hash browns inside. Yum.
Oh my god your Saturdays sound perfect! New life goals
My morning routine is absurdly detailed and efficient at this point. I’ve been working on it for over a decade, and it’s close to perfect
6:30 – alarm goes off, pee, brush my hair while the water warms up, shower
6:40ish – out of the shower, put on pjs, contacts, deodorant, facial moisturizer. Comb and braid hair. Or clip if I’m lazy
6:50 – go to kitchen, put kettle on to boil, put bread in toaster, make sandwich for lunch, refill dog’s water bowl, move dirty dishes from sink to dishwasher if there are any, put peanut butter and honey on toast, pour boiling water over tea bag (These are probably my most efficient 10 minutes of the day)
7:00 – eat breakfast, drink tea, internet <choose outfit>
7:20 – brush teeth, get dressed, do make up, kiss husband, snuggle cat and dog
7:40 – out the door
I am replying to this mostly out of amusement in how different my schedule is. To wit:
~6.15 2 year old wanders into my room either singing or screaming (every goddamn day except days when it is a. 4 am or b. it is the sound of the 2 year old and 5 year old arguing)
6:20 Breakfast for the kids, cofee
6:30 Consciousness
6:45 Attempt to dress children while husband makes lunches
7 some sort of argument (socks inexplicably difficult to put on, emergency pony play means no one is dressed, tangled hair)
7:15-7:20 I shower, dress, eat, put makeup on
7:30 Leave for school/work
God damn I wish I could LOOK at my phone in the am. i am now the paragon of efficiency in getting ready when I am on business trips. Meeting at 9? I will leave the hotel at 8.57.
Ugh. Mornings.
Workdays, ideally I’d get up by 7:45, feed the cat, hop in the shower and be out and getting dressed by 8:15. Then time to putter/eat a small breakfast/make coffee/read some internet/curl my eyelashes and put some product my hair/kiss my spouse before walking out the door at 9 and being at the office by 10.
What actually happens, almost without fail: alarm gets snoozed until 8:30 (sometimes later!), between snoozes the cat helpfully bats at my face and tugs strands of hair loose from my ponytail, finally I get up to feed her, race through my shower, put clothes on while still damp, freak out that it’s already after 9, run a comb through my hair, apply mascara & product haphazardly, dither over which shoes to wear and check weather at least twice to determine the need for a jacket or sweater, leave the apt somewhere between 9:20 and 9:35, feel bad about being late for work even though no one at work really cares.
I think it is clear from our schedules that we work in the same city and also the same industry. Reading everyone else’s mornings is making me SO GLAD to be a theatre person.
SO GLAD
Gym days: alarm goes off at 5:40, I get up right away and wade through the sea of cats (just two, but they make themselves feel like a sea) to get dressed, brush my teeth, and get out the door by 5:55, so I can be at the gym by 6. I come home from the gym at around 7:15, change, put on make up and put my hair up properly, get dressed and either gulp down breakfast while waiting for my ride to show up at 8 or eat it on the drive to work. I do a lot of my morning Interneting at the gym between sets
Non-gym days: alarm goes off at 6:45, I’m out of bed by 7, do a bit of interneting then get ready for work. My carpool ride still arrives at 8.
So, I am terrible at mornings. I work in a time zone 9.5 hours ahead of my benevolent work overlords, so I am often up typing emails at 1am (because this is the time when I get closest to having a real-time internet conversation). Also (why do I feel the need to make so many disclaimers?), I travel about on average about 2 days of every week, which significantly throws off my life schedule. If I have to catch a 6:45am flight, I am up and running on pure anxiety. Otherwise I struggle to leave the comfort of sleep at 9:30am.
7:30am – Alarm first goes off. Snoozing ensues.
8:00am – 25% I pull myself awake on the strength of my own willpower or anxiety, 25% of the time, the cat decides enough is enough, and starts licking my nose.
8:30am – latest time I am permitted to sleep. The doorbell rings. I embarassedly try to compose my hair / features into the guise of someone who has clearly been awake for more than a few seconds, and go onto my terrace to answer the door. It is my housekeeper, who arrives semi-promptly every day.
8:30-9:00am – I flip the switch on the water heater, go to the bathroom, talk affectionately to the cat (who talks angrily back), and go outside to my unattached kitchen to make breakfast. I require sustenance to face the day. This usually includes coffee in a Moka Pot + eggs/toast or overnight oats or yogurt and mangoes. Sometimes I remember to take my vitamins or re-fill my water filter. I try to avoid bothering my housekeeper, who has meanwhile opened the terrace-facing doors to all of my rooms, swept out each room, wet-mopped the floor of each room, and wiped down the hard surfaces of each room. I usually hang out guiltily on the terrace, viewing my neglected plants (I am a bystander; I look, but I do not act).
9:00-9:30am – Once my housekeeper leaves, I take a shower, wash my face/brush my teeth, and pick out what I am going to wear. At this point, I usually have turned on some motivational music on my iTunes (Hamiton makes a frequent appearance). I start to put up my hair and swipe on the minimum required make-up.
9:30-9:37am – inevitable panic when I realize that I have to leave, or when I get an emergency call from one of my colleagues. I quickly put my laptop and phone into my bag, try to wrangle the cat into the house (the cat has its own parallel morning routine that involves watching birds on the terrace, annoying the housekeeper, and trying to escape onto the roof of the apartment building). Then I (hopefully) grab my ipod, lock up the doors to my rooms, and head downstairs.
9:37-10:00am – walk to work through residential neighborhoods.
Notice that I successfully / tragically avoid the internet this entire time. Because my benevolent work overlords are very apt to email me at night with some sort of complicated demand, I have a phobia of checking my email in the morning. Unrelated internet surfing brings too much guilt. Ultimately I feel that these few hours of internet-free life are important to my sanity, but it also is slightly pathetic that I have to psych myself out in the correct structured environment for email each day. It is usually not that bad.
I usually sit lazily in bed on the internet for a few minutes and then get up to take my dog for a walk. It’s her favorite part of the day and I figure it must be good for me to start the day with a 45 minute walk.
My morning routine is in the process of changing, because the beloved cat who used to wake me at 6 every morning, workday or not, passed away a few months ago. However, the kittens I adopted last week seem likely to take over that schedule, so my mornings probably won’t change too much…
Gym days: wake up at 5:50, get dressed, put in contacts, brush teeth, get to gym by 6:10. Home around 7:20, cool down while dicking around on the internet, shower, get dressed, ideally leave at 8:45 to be at work around 9 but usually leave home around 9 (still usually make it in before the partners, but not always) because I’ve forgotten to clean the litterbox/pack lunch/etc.
Regular days: wake up around 6:30, dick around on the internet and eat breakfast until 7:15 or so, set the nap button on my clock alarm for half an hour and crawl back in bed; in shower by 8, then same as above. On mornings where I’ve found too many neat internet links to get in my nap, I skip it, but that doesn’t get me out the door any faster.
In school when I had an 8 am class, I would close my laptop the night before and refuse to let myself open it in the morning to avoid getting sucked into the internet. If I did that now, I could probably sleep a little later/get to work on time, but mornings would be a lot less interesting.
I’m fortunate enough to live within a 20 minute walk to work AND to usually be able to sneak in at 9:30 rather than 9, which is when I should be in. I abuse this power way too much.
On work-out days (basically any day I want to go out after work and thus can’t work out in the evening), I’m up around 5:45, at the workout class around 6 or 6:30, depending on when it’s supposed to start, and then I come back to my apartment and either a) curl back up in bed and sleep until 8:15 and then panic, or b) start getting ready and shower at 7:30ish, eat breakfast while doing my makeup/hair/trying on three different outfits and then realizing that no one will care what I wear anyway, grabbing my lunch out of the fridge and leaving for work by 8:40 to get there at 9.
On days I don’t work out, I just sleep until 7:30 (… or like 8:15 and just shift everything back by 30 minutes. I swear I’m a good employee in every other respect!)
I’m looking forward to a roommate when I move for a lot of reasons, but I will be sad to leave my morning tradition of “wander sleepily around in underwear, don’t get dressed until you’re literally about to go out the door” behind.
Every day:
6:30 – the cat helpfully notifies me it’s almost time to be awake.
7:00 – alarm goes off. The cat gets heart medicine, then breakfast after I’ve confirmed the medicine is gone.
Work days:
7:05 – brush teeth, check weather, get dressed.
7:20 – microwave a frozen bagel. Eat it while I walk to my train.
Arrive at work by 8:30.
Weekends:
7:05 – get back in bed.
~8:00 – wake up a second time. The cat is on top of me, and he seems comfortable. I cannot move him. Submit to fate. Go back to sleep.
~8:45 – wake up a third time. INCREDIBLY, THE CAT IS STILL HERE? I may or may not dislodge him at this time, if I’m hungry enough to bother with breakfast. It is the one variable in this program.
I set my alarm for 7AM on weekdays. My mornings usually go like this:
3:30AM: Cats making noise. So much cat noise. Why. Let cat(s) out.
4:00AM: More cat noise. Also bird noise. Cheep cheep mrow cheep MROW cheeeeep! Hate everyone. Let cat(s) back in. Feed cats.
4:05-4:45AM: Internet on phone, strive for a feeling of sleepiness, feel ruined and bitter.
5:00AM: Get up, make coffee, feel surge of pure hatred for all feline- and bird-kind.
5:10-6:15ishAM: Internet and despair, despair and internet. Also coffee.
6:20ishAM: Shower, if it’s a shower day. Just get dressed if it isn’t. Brush teeth, dry and/or brush hair. More coffee.
7:00AM: Alarm finally goes off. Get kid out of bed, set him to dressing and brushing and chore-ing.
7:15AM: Kid heads to bus stop. Yes. More coffee, don’t mind if I do.
7:30AM: Water garden. Get lost in trancy contemplation of tender leaves, new shoots, bitty seedlings, fresh morning air, etc.
7:45AM: More coffee. Watch TV shows from last night on Amazon. Sometimes I have breakfast while doing this; sometimes I do not, as I am too full of indignation and insomniac gall.
9:00AM: Begrudgingly apply makeup. Pack lunch. Glare at cats, who are festooning bed in various drapey poses of “nyah nyah we’re going to sleep all day.”
9:30AM: Leave for work (which involves a mile walk and some more hating life), to arrive by 10AM.
Get cats, because they will start batting your face as soon as they hear your alarm clock and there is no possibility of lounging in bed arsing about on tinternet before they have had breakfast.
My normal routine is:
1) Alarm
2) Fend cats off
3) Feed cats
4) Wee, shower, teeth etc
5) Clothes
6) Coffee
7) Work (from home)
Alarm goes off at 7:00am. Hit snooze until 7:50am. Sit up in bed and think about sleep. Finally stand up and look back at my bed longingly. Then I brush my teeth, wash my face, moisturize, try to make my hair look somewhat decent, get dressed, and run out the door by 8:20am so I can make it to the office by 9:00.
I hate mornings.
1) Regular work day: Alarm goes off at 6:40. Aim to be showering by 6:45; depending on whether I remembered to check the weather the night before, shower time may be pushed back to 7:00 by the siren song of my computer. Breakfast, tea, and morning prayer with housemates at 7:30. Out the door for work by 8:20, since I’ve got a 40-minute walk to work.
2) Usual non work day: Alarm goes off at 7:30. Breakfast, tea, and morning prayer with housemates at 7:31; they will forgive me my splendidly messy hair. Writing or heading out for groceries by 9 a.m.
3) Occasional sleep-in day, like today, when I am the only one home: No alarm. Wake up when I wake up. Tea, breakfast, cat-spoiling.
I have over an hour of walking built into my work day, and I tell myself that I can catch up on internet bullshit then.
oohh mornings. I have two morning routines, essentially the same but varying by a few hours depending on whether or not mr inkwashed is in a period of working late and consequently we are having dinner at 1030pm.
mornings ideally or when he is out of town:
5-530am: up
drink coffee for a long time
eat some breakfast after having been up for at least an hour
645 get dressed
7am: to work (I am a “permanent freelancer” so my hours can pretty much start when I damn well please)
realityland, aka, not going to bed until way late after having 1030pm dinner:
730-830 wake up, drink coffee for a less long time, maybe eat breakfast
830-930am get dressed, hang out with mr inkwashed, drink more coffee
930-10am to work
my preferred morning is so much better.
re: the internet still being there after work – I tryyyy to not do any internetting until I am dressed and ready to go, at which point I keep thinking, well, wtf if I get out the door I can return to this door sooner, which motivates me…often, however, I will do my internetting during the period of drinking coffee before my day really starts and that always seems to be part of a slower-moving morning so I should probably quit that.
Fun!
Regular work days:
6:15am The baby alarm goes off. This consists of a very cute baby standing in his crib yelling “Eh! Heh! Hay!” at increasingly louder volumes until one of his parents wakes.
6:20am Heat up milk and feed the baby.
6:25-7am Baby runs around the apartment while I read Twitter and periodically steer him away from potential danger
7:10am Baby breakfast #2
7:30am I toss the baby in his playpen so I can shower, where he ignores the 18 toys he has to keep himself busy in favor of chewing on the edge and yelling for me.
7:45am Get dressed, make sure my bag is packed, fish the baby out of the playpen and let him run around some more.
8am Dump the baby on the bed and let him wake his Dad. This usually consists of him crawling over to the Dad-lump and smacking it until he rolls over
8:15am Run out the door to catch the train into work
Busy weeks:
5:15am Alarm goes off. Very cute baby is still sleeping. Hit snooze
5:24am Alarm goes off. Hopefully baby hasn’t heard those two alarms and is still sleeping. Shower, get dressed, pack my bag and out the door before 6am to get to work by 7.
Hi Toast. So last Friday while I was rending my garments and gnashing my teeth for reasons that will not be strange to you, my nurse practitioner called and said they found atypical cells in my Pap test. Clearly atypical cells are not normal, that is evident in the word itself, but have any of you had this occur and are still alive to tell me? During the test I was prescribed a single dose thing for yeast and some pesticide because of all the bats that flew out. Can those things impact the result? They said to come back in a year, and I will, but that’s a long, cold, Toast-less time to freak out in.
I had that, and they did a some more tests, and everything was fine and has been fine since (20 years), including a pregnancy.
Ah yes, here is my anon handle for one last HPV-related comment!
I’ve had atypical cells twice, and both times they were the result of HPV–two different strains, the second one not covered by the Gardasil vaccine I’ve had.
Having HPV cells in there led to some slightly uncomfortable treatments, but no serious threat to my health.
However, since your nurse said to come back in a YEAR, not in six weeks or six months, I doubt they think it’s even HPV, let alone anything more serious.
Yeah she specified I was HPV negative, which I assumed was the case since I’ve been dude-free for life & pretty much asexual for the last 20 years.
Oh hey! I was right there with you a year ago and I was freaking out too. My gyno explained that atypical cells also can be a result of a problem but also of recent menses, recent intercourse, basically anything that occurs in the vagina. So I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the yeast medication or pesticide had something to do with it. I know how scary it is and I’m not gonna pretend there’s a way to know for sure or to feel great about that lack of knowing. But there really are a lot of possible outcomes for this where you’re totally fine, probably more than ones where you’re not. I’m going in for my follow up next week so it’s been on my mind a lot lately. Keeping my fingers crossed for both of us!
Yup, I had that a few years ago — I just checked and it was in 2010. They did a follow-up test six months later, which was fine, and I’ve since had two more completely normal tests.
I had an abnormal Pap smear a little over six months ago. It was really nervewracking to hear that, and my OB-GYN had me come in for a colposcopy, which went fine. (I spent the week beforehand looking at NIH’s website explaining it, which was actually kind of reassuring.) I’m supposed to go back in for another Pap smear, but I’ve …kind of been dragging my feet because I dislike my OB-GYN for other reasons. But bottom line: it was scary to hear, but the follow-up was fine and I am fine!
I’m glad you got a positive result, these things are so scary and it seems like the test is wildly variable which makes it hard to be confident in them.
i had this happen, and they sent me home with a brochure that described every ailment from genital warts to cervical cancer, and a follow up appointment for 2 weeks later. in 2 weeks, my test was normal. nice bedside manner, huh?
you are probably fine, but make a follow up test appointment and make sure.
Yes, my pap about two years ago came back abnormal. I was pretty scared/angry because I’d gotten the HPV vax back in college, not long after I’d become sexually active. My doctor reminded me that 1) the vax does not protect against all strains; just the most common/dangerous ones, and 2) it’s possible I’d gotten HPV before getting the vax and it just didn’t manifest until years later.
I got another pap a year later and it came back totally fine, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Me! I had those! When I was 20, I think?
I went back six months later to a PP in another state to get rechecked and they were like “oh, weird, we don’t even bother doing pap smears so early here, everything’s totally fine”
Everything will be totally fine!
I think this is fairly common with the end result is that you are actually OK. I was told once that having sex too close to having a pap can result in a false positive. One other time mine came up abnormal, I went back in for a second look (colposcopy I think it was called) and everything was fine.
Chances are you’re good. But that time between the result and knowing for sure is harrowing. I was convinced I was going to die of cervical cancer.
I had it! And it resolved itself by the next test, and have had no issues since. Prob 15 years ago for me?
This happened to me. They did more tests, and everything was fine (to the point that I forgot about it until right now … this must have been at least five years ago or so?)
I had an abnormal pap, so they had me come in for a colposcopy, which determined that the abnormality is actually squamous cell lesions. Which sounds terrifying, but as my doctor explained to me, there’s a huge spectrum between “completely normal” and “you have cancer.” So even if your next pap still comes back with abnormalities, there’s a whole bunch of abnormalities you can have without experiencing any illness or difficulty.
I had an abnormal pap about 10 years ago, and a yeast infection at the same time. Treated the yeast infection. All paps since have been normal. Try not to worry. Abnormal is a scary word.
Yup! I’m chilling with some atypical cells on my cervix as we speak. I’ve had them for like 2-3 years? Even with 2 biopsies showing abnormal cells my doctor isn’t worried, the cells often get cleared without anything medical. If they don’t it takes a long time for atypical cells to turn into anything bad, and there are treatments to remove them if they look potentially menacing. You caught the atypical cells early, you’re going to be okay.
This oldschool hairpin post is excellent- I reread when the rest of the internet freaks me out about it too much! http://thehairpin.com/2012/01/a-scenic-guide-to-y…
Thanks, y’all, this is very reassuring and reminds me again why I’m going to miss this space so damn much.
My pap results are abnormal like every other year. So far, nothing’s come of it.
Me too. Glad I’m not the only one.
I just had that happen! Went in for a test, got “you have atypical cells but we couldn’t draw any more conclusions”. My gyno said that because I’m v young and have no risk factors to not even worry about retesting them? So while it’s not at all a fun result to get, it’s not necessarily serious (especially if you’re also young/have few risk factors).
Got a similar type of result on my most recent one, and when I talked to the GP about it she said sometimes it’s even a matter of which pathologist is reading the slide that day, as well as what others have said, that maybe something is going on right now but it clears itself up. I will have to go back in 5 months for another Pap to see if there’s actually something substantial going on or if it’s just a strange temporary or non-existent thing.
My sister had an abnormal smear in college and she had to call all her previous boyfriends and tell them she might have HPV and they should get tested. Then the next smear was normal. That was almost 20 years ago and she’s never had another abnormal one. It’s frustrating that you have to live in suspense for a year, but try not to worry too much.
I had that, down to coming back in a year. That was the nice nurse practitioner who made me feel safe and was very “Oh these things happen, don’t worry” when she followed up with the news (I phoned).
I went back a year later and nasty NP was horrible as was the experience in terms of bringing back a bunch of stuff best left in the past. I got the all-clear and didn’t go back for a smear for 10 years. That was probably not wise, so don’t do that. But really mostly these things clear up in their own.
I’m sorry your experiences were so negative. Why is this so common?! I had two tests in my twenties–the first was a nightmare of fat-shaming and pressure to diet, and the second was just totally confusing. “You seem a little funky down there, but if it doesn’t bother you it doesn’t bother me.” Is that professional? I’m not asking you to go down on me, I’m looking for test results. So I peaced out on health care for twenty years, and even this time I felt like it was very blase’, from taking weeks to call with the results to seeming put out that I was concerned. I’ll retest in a year, but this is definitely never going to be a thing I’m 100% okay with. Blurg.
I went to the ballet last night, and it was amazing! It was the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, and they did Cinderella, and it was just SO BEAUTIFUL. The sets were stunning, the costumes were gorgeous, and Prince Charming was a very handsome Japanese man, and Cinderella was a WOC and she was phenomenal, the whole company was excellent, and it was just so so good!!!! I don’t do that kind of thing enough.
Also, Toastie Twitter is the best! I got fashion advice (it was okay to wear the red dress with the red lipstick!) and people told me I looked great and it was just super nice. Y’all are amazing.
The ballet sounds lovely!!!
I was thinking about going to this before it closes this weekend! Now I think i’ll have to.
Definitely go, it was so good!!!
I am nearly about to finish my degree, and plagued with really terrible Everything is Ending Syndrome, from little things (The Good Wife! Agent Carter!), tragic things (THE TOOOOOOASSSST), and huge things (my degree! I’m moving away! Finishing my confirmation class!). I mean, things are changing in a good way too, I’m going to law school and moving to a big city and getting confirmed, but still.
My exams finish on the 30th: Toastatariat, what should I do when I’m finished and everything is over all at once? What would you recommend to avoid feeling like a deflated balloon?
I also finish school stuff on the 30th. I have to wait a little bit to celebrate cuz social obligations but the first chance I get I’m taking a day off to sleep in and splurging on a massage and all the froyo. Just going to take some time to sit back and look at the literal mess I let accumulate during two years of grad school
I left the country for a month and that seemed to do the trick?
Travel! anywhere you can, for as long as you can, even if it is a weekend roadtrip.
Second this!
I have no suggestions, but I will say that the day I graduated with my PhD was one of the most depressing days of my life, because everything I had loved as a student was over and I had nothing to replace it. Everyone else was all, yay, fabulous achievement, rah rah rah and I just wanted to go home and cry. So a) deflation is definitely A Thing that a lot of non-academics don’t get, and b) definitely have something to look forward to afterward.
That is actually the most helpful thing to hear, that it is a reasonable worry? I mean, I have OCD, so I can worry about literally anything; someone telling me “no this one is OK” is immensely helpful, thank you.
But, yes, lining things up! Or maybe just being OK with going home and crying, I think.
This sure has been a Time in my life. I haven’t been at work, let alone at a computer for Open Thread, in what feels like months. Two weeks ago I traveled to New York to see Civil War with my 3 best friends, which was lovely but tiring, especially because our housing fell through and I had to scramble to book an AirBnB for us.
3 days after getting back from that, I drove to Ohio (from Philly) for the wedding of two dear friends. Cue another housing emergency; the brides initially said I could stay with them, but forgot to tell me when they decided to book a smaller place without room for me. I was stressed/panicked/anxious/ANGRY, and to make things worse, I was their officiant and I genuinely felt for a few hours like I couldn’t officiate a wedding when I was so angry with them. But! I actually talked things through with them once I had calmed down, like an adult, and LET GO of my anger instead of just trapping it inside. That’s genuinely brand new for me. So I had a lovely weekend with them and I’m so honored to have facilitated the wedding of two people I love so much.
Then I drove back to Philly and got in a car accident less than a mile from the car rental dropoff place, because of course I did. I was fine and both cars were drivable but like, really?
Aaaand yesterday my uncle died after a battle with pancreatic cancer. I barely knew him growing up because he lived far away, but I’ve visited his family the past two summers and he was a really great person and I feel so sad for my mom.
It just feels like everything has been upside down or an emergency for weeks and I’m so tired and want to just have a day off, or even to have the time/energy to make a meal. But with my second job I now work 7 days a week so that’s a pipe dream.
I am sorry you are going through all of this. Internet hugs to you!
Hugs? Car accidents + family death + wedding drama seems like a recipe for at least one personal day of fun. I hope you can find some time to relax….
I’m sorry. That’s so much to handle in such a short amount of time! I hope you can find some time to chill doing whatever relaxes you most very soon.
I’m having a lot of work blahs this month. The short of it is I’m feeling rather overwhelmed with new responsibilities/projects given to me by my boss – and I’m eager and grateful for them – but the flipside is I’m getting them partly because no one else can be trusted to do them correctly, or already screwed them up, and the more mundane stuff that I delegate to my support admins isn’t done right either (whether through genuine ineptness or passive aggressive resistance I’ve yet to determine) so I feel like for every task I accomplish I’m adding 3 more and I’m tired.
I’m hoping a weekend with few plans helps me recharge and next week I’ll kick ass again.
Toasties, I want to plug my friend’s upcoming book! She’s a therapist and a fangirl, and her book combines the two – it’s a sort of self-help guide to taking the things you love about fandom and using them to kick ass in your own life. I’m really excited to read it, and wanted to share it with you all.
http://www.amazon.com/Fangirl-Life-Guide-Feels-Le…
I NEED THIS THANK YOU
BRB sharing that everywhere.
Friends, point me to the best sundresses, please! I’m so far down the deep dark hole of online shopping and NEED DIRECTION.
Ooh let me be your online personal shopper. Do you have a budget in mind? If your personal style were a fictional character, who would she be?
Oh, hello! Really? I’d like to spend < $150. And style intersection with a fictional character? Maybe either Amy or Bev in Emily Gould’s Friendship? I’m thinking modern, kinda young, but heading into and through the third decade, clean lines, etc. THANK YOU!
Ok! I don’t know the characters, but looked for modern + clean lines– here’s what I’ve got.
Long:
Love the white/patterned print here
I think this could read either fancy or casual depending on how you accessorize, versatility is nice, and it gets pretty good reviews, which I’ve found pretty reliable on Anthropologie
Mid length/short:
THIS is sooo so cute and summery
This seems like it would be pretty flattering and that you could get 3 seasons of wear out of it– would look cute with tights and a cardigan, you know?
Looks so comfy, and I like the print on this
Did you peek into my brain, because I think you KNOW me better than I know myself. These are great and I want them ALL. Thank you so very much.
A+ fashion detective work
ModCloth. For any and all dresses. (I may be biased, because they fit both my shape and my style perfectly.) I am dying to buy this one. http://www.modcloth.com/shop/dresses/Conservatory…
That is cute! And so summery. I think my breasts would have a ball escaping it, though.
It is SO hard to find sundresses if you’re even just a little busty!
AMEN.
oooh let me know if you get any good advice… I’ve been looking and I feel like my opinion of a sundress is suddenly different from what the world thinks is a sundress. they’re all very starchy, rigid a-lines or empire maxi dresses. i just want a regular sleveless, soft, flowy, drapey a-line in nice colors. preferably cotton. maybe linen.
Thank you for putting words to my dreams. Agree wholeheartedly.
I got this recently and it makes my rack look amazing and its extremely cute. http://www.modcloth.com/shop/dresses/sight-for-su…
Those colors! Thank you!
That is AMAZING
I long for several sundresses on stylewe.com, I have not bought one yet. Sigh.
I would spend my entire paycheck there if I got an account. Holding off so far, but not sure how long I can last…
Me. Too. Same.
Sing to me of your preferred mostly-cotton leggings, O Toast. Esp. those that are not Hue (I know and I love), come in capri or shorter length, and are not black.
not sure if these are the best, but i like the mossimo ones from target. they do come in capri, though a limited number of colors, and have a thick waist band that has a nice control-top effect. and it looks like they are currently on clearance!?
i guess my link isn’t working: http://www.target.com/p/women-s-capri-legging-bla…
you may have to search to find the same leggings in different sizes, but they’ve sold those for years and they’ve been my go-to a long time.
Oh yeah, I have a pair of those, and they’re surprisingly comfortable and well-fitting!
YES. I especially require short cotton-y leggings for a 50 inch hip.
For fun ones — harempants.com has some really cool options that are always breathable and comfy and colorful!
I’m not sure what size market you’re in for, but I always get from their plus section and have always been nervous they won’t fit (it’s one size) but they always have PLENTY of room and are super comfortable.
So, I’m so starved for human contact that this weekend I’m going to drive 6 hours round trip to go bowling with some people, only half of whom I know.
This is fine.
I’m sorry. I’ve been there.
Is there some folk nearer by that maybe you can go hang with? Even just like “Tennis Club” or whatever.
I’m just bad at people. I’ve lived in this current place for 3+ years and I still only have a few casual work friends. Not like I thought friends would just fall out of the sky or something, I know I have to actually *do* the work, but…
I just don’t know how to talk to people. I don’t even know how to meet them anymore, and the anxiety around such things is getting a little out of my control. I’ve thought about joining a crafts class or something–there was even a Toast meetup around here recently that I *almost* made it to, but then I had a panic attack and literally ran the other way. So I don’t know.
Ugh. Sorry. Venting.
I understand.
Cooking classes are always recommended to me as a way to meet new people – they have fancy classes at the art museum.
Twice now I’ve driven an unspeakably long distance (once 6 hours, once 12 hours) to have dinner with someone. I only had a good excuse for one of those.
I once flew cross-country for the same thing. ((hugs offered if you like hugs)) Loneliness is very hard, and not often talked about in our culture; I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself by driving somewhere where you can get some of your needs met.
It can be hard to see where the line is. Because I am very much a solitary, being-alone-is-not-by-default-being-lonely person, but then when you really need it it can be hard to go back to reaching out.
I have two tech questions:
1) My MacBook was water damaged a few weeks ago and it’s dead. Now that I’m over being upset, I thought I’d tinker with it and try to repair (or rebuild it) myself. Worse case scenario it still stays dead and I can sell it for parts. So does anyone know any resources I can check out on fixing or rebuilding a laptop?
2) I want to play around with GarageBand but I have no idea where to start. Does anyone know any sites that can explain or give fun projects to learn?
Googling your model will bring up tons of how-to websites and videos. I’ve used all kinds of different sources, and always managed to get things working again, albeit with a few screws left over. Why so many screws?
i’m assuming you’ve already gone to the genius bar? sometimes presenting them with a challenge will make every nerd in the place voltron-assemble to get your thing undead.
Seconding the genuis bar. Apart from that, are a bunch of forums aimed specifically at mac users, I bet you can find one on repairs. And when you know what you need to repair, check out YouTube to see videos of how to open up your machine.
One note, look for the YouTube videos even if people in the forums have been saying it’s not possible to make your repairs – YMMV, but I tend to run into a lot of people saying THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE when it is merely difficult or mildly inadvisable. It’s kind of the online equivalent of walking into a hardware store and having the staff say, You want to do what? No, you definitely don’t want to do that, here, we’ll sell you this other thing. They frequently have a point, but sometimes *you* are the one who knows what your weird individual situation is and they should either tell you what you want to know or hush up.
(Ahem. It is possible that this has happened to me frequently in both hardware stores and online forums. End rant.)
OtherWorld Computing sells lots of Mac parts and has nice videos about their installation. Worth a look even if you don’t buy.
My triumph is being done my running around by noon today. I am celebrating by avoiding long weekend traffic and drinking a gin and tonic on the patio, enjoying alllllllll the gardening I did yesterday.
This summer’s gin recommendation is Ungava. Bright yellow, super yummy.
Your gin recommendation is A+, for any doubters, this human knows what is going on.
Video games?
I’m very seriously considering getting a 3ds to play fire emblem (and ocarina of time again). I also just realised the toast won’t be here when dishonoured 2/mass effect 4 come out and now I am SAD. my opinions will be shouted into the void, as in the old times.
We can yell about both of them on the toast steam group!
wait there is a toast steam group? will you link me?
we have a steam group? i must join it!
It is here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/toastrons
I admittedly have not checked it since Friday because I have had a ridiculous work schedule this week and haven’t been home but I am sure everyone would be 100% on board with game yelling.
I got a 3DS this year and it was a very good investment! Playing the N64 Zelda games on the 3DS is fun but a little awkward because it wasn’t designed for those controls, but there is a game called A Link Between Worlds that I highly recommend. It has the look of A Link to the Past and it’s not as complex as recent Zeldas but the gameplay is very fun!
Here to agree with all of this. Well, I haven’t played OoT on 3DS, but I have played the Majora’s Mask port. It’s gorgeous and I love it, but yeah, swapping items is clumsy with that button setup. It can be a hassle in dungeons where you want access to more than two of them.
And ALBW is an absolute unqualified DELIGHT. All the charm of the old top-down Zeldas, less of the arbitrary difficulty (NB: I am bad at top-down Zeldas).
I would love some suggestions from the Toastmind! I have a PS4 and a 360. Addicted to Fallout, enjoy Borderlands. I have trouble finding games that fall into this vein, I’m guessing because they take a lot of time and money to make so there just aren’t that many of them.
I played part of the first Mass Effect but didn’t get too far into it, it didn’t speak to me very much, and then my dog ate one of the discs. Could I pick up with the second one without missing much?
What else is in the adventure/RPG-lite category?
the second one got released on ps3 without the first one, so I figure it’s probably easy enough to catch up. ME2 is less rpg-y and more shooty, so I guess it depends which elements you didn’t like from the first one. (ME 2 is my favourite)
you can, but imo the first one is the… best? in terms of world building and plot that’s put-together, anyway. The second one has the best characters and some of the neatest plot moments, but the actual skeleton of the story is pretty terrible, and the third one – bar a few great moments, oh god, Mordin, oh god, my heart – goes kind of off of the rails. The gameplay gets way, way better throughout the trilogy though, and much more fun.
I haven’t played it yet, but I hear really good things about the Witcher 3?
That one has come up in my random googling attempts, so maybe I’ll give it a try! The next DLC for F4 is supposed to drop soon, too.
Ha, and by “soon” I apparently meant “today.”
I endorse Witcher 3 as incredibly fun to play. It gets kinda violent for my taste, but then so does Fallout, so perhaps you won’t mind that part. Witcher 3 is also a HUGE game and thus well worth the money for the hours of gameplay you get.
Excellent, I will pick that one up now that someone who isn’t writing a “20 best games for PS4” blog post and has firsthand knowledge has recommended it. I don’t mind the violence in F4 because the game is so buggy that most of the time the person-shooting just looks silly. And I won’t lie, I love a good headshot (sniper, me).
Wait but is your dog okay or did he spontaneously develop an omni tool over his leg?
No but she developed a pretty serious case of please-dont-be-mad-at-me-itis.
You can skip ME1, I think you can get the ME1 decision importer comic book thing on both systems now. I would recommend, if you think you can stomach it, throwing ME1 on easy and playing at least the main story missions. And make sure you are playing as Female Shep, it honestly makes a ton of difference.
My last gen canon is:
All the Mass Effects
Borderlands 2
Saints Row 4
Halo Reach (although much of the impact of Reach comes from having played the other games)
Portal/Portal 2
The Last of Us
Fallout 3
Skyrim
And if you liked Borderlands, definitely play Tales From The Borderlands. So good!
Ah! I was hoping someone could talk me into Saints Row 4. It was free on 360 last month and I started it, but the intro is sooo long and feels like a bunch of in-jokes I’m not in on, so I went back to comfort-playing Inquisition again. What do you love about Saints Row?
Saints Row 4 is the only one I’ve played too. The beginning is sort of a send-up of Call of Duty-esque tropes but once you become the President, it is all just deeply silly and fun. Most games have you slowly become proficient at skills until you are a killing machine, SR4 starts you around “Superhero” and you end up with godlike powers. Seriously, you will eventually learn to fly. Also, a fun soundtrack that you can make playlists out of including Opposites Attract, This Is How We Do It, and What Is Love.
Also you can change your appearance whenever you want, run around in weird mascot costumes, or completely naked. And the game stars Keith David as… himself. But he’s also the Vice President.
Does anyone play Hearthstone? It’s so hilarious and relaxing! (Or at least I find it so.) Also I want to brag about my new decks from the expansion.
I toy with it, but I will admire your decks if you tell me where the Toast WoW guild is. Would definitely pay for a server transfer to have better conversations during raid nights.
I don’t actually play WoW (#FakeGeekToast?) so unfortunately I can’t help you with that 🙁
but as for my decks: I lucked out at got Yogg Saron in one of the expansion packs and have been having just a fantastic time with that + mage– the whole goal is to stay alive until turn 12 or so and then get 15 random spells cast, which usually clears my opponent’s board (and mine), decks me, and does enough damage that I’m close to lethal. Orrrr it straight up kills me. It’s fun!
I haven’t raided in a couple of tiers, but shopping for a guild for Legion. Considering running one again, but it is such a time sink to actually keep a healthy website going, organize raids, keep multiple toons geared up to learn fights for multiple roles/classes to fill slots, much less recruit enough people who a) are competent enough for Mythic and b) are willing to live by my values because Death to Bro Code.
What are you maining for Legion? Where are you raiding now? Add me! Let us discuss. kittenzerg#1459
I also have a mumble server, so if you want to hang there and do some Legion beta if you have a key (I do not yet but I am shamelessly borrowing one from my partner) or waste some time in Ashran and chat, let me know.
Just sent a request–I’m Shadowgrrl42#something. You can tell I use battletags all the time!
I think I might be shopping for a new guild for Legion, too. As much as I’ve enjoyed raiding with my current team, I’m the only girl and it gets lonely sometimes. And weird.
I occasionally dabble. It’s when all of my other games displease me and I am restless. But happy to admire your decks! I wouldn’t mind cribbing some of your basic decks/strats to play some arena. Add me! kittenzerg#1459
Totally going to add you when I get home (I’m doop2doop, so you know when you get a random friend request). I used Icy Vein’s arena draft guide until I got more used to the draft, and if I’m completely unfamiliar with the card choices– it’s pretty good!
I am really, really struggling with Triple-A pitching in MLB: The Show and the dynamic difficulty thing keeps wavering me back and forth between beginner and rookie difficulties. I have created myself in the game, which is to say a player with no plate vision, little speed, and decent power, and much like myself, it is looking unlikely that I will ever make it to the majors.
When IS ME4 coming out?
sometime in 2017, allegedly.
there will be no shortage of toastie mass effect yelling when the time comes
on the off chance you haven’t been told to play stardew valley… play stardew valley. it has all the heart and soul and character of the original harvest moon games but with modern convenience (villagers say different things! decorate your house! brew beer and make wine and raise goats! everyone is bisexual!)
I finished my community center! But now I’m kind of sad that I don’t have a overarching goal anymore.
I forgot to mention last week that I had replayed a bit of the <Fable series in order to finish up a blog post for Critical Distance‘s food in games roundup. (CD is a site that curates games writing if that’s your jam!)
I really enjoyed revisiting the Fable world and was pretty tempted to start a new playthrough–especially when I saw how much money my old character had racked up, since the game keeps collecting rent even when you don’t play it!–but I don’t think it has much replay value. Have we ever talked about Fable, toast gamers? The games are generally fun and pretty, and have some unique gameplay elements, but occasionally they are precious or goofy to the point of being annoying. Curious to hear what other experiences you’ve had.
[Edited to fix some HTML fail]
Fable 3 was the game that got me into gaming. (Yes, I was late to the party.) I really really enjoyed it at the time, but I think it would not be as fun after Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Skyrim, etc. I do have an ancient copy of Fable 2 sitting around that I mean to play sometime…
Yeah, that’s part of it for me. Fable’s whole thing is that it is irreverent and jokey throughout, and one of the things I like about ME and DA is that they take events and characters seriously. I’m more annoyed by the occasional cheap shots Fable takes than when I first played.
Tell me if you play Fable 2! it looks and feels pretty similar to 3, although there are a few annoying gameplay things that 3 fixes. On the other hand, 2 feels a bit more open and freeform without the frame of having to save the kingdom in one year.
I actually just finished playing Fable 3 for the first time and I really enjoyed it, although I am completely incapable of taking anything seriously so this game happened to be my exact cup of tea.
okay guys: what’s the worst song that you nonetheless love for some reason?
mine is “piss up a rope” by ween. that song is a fucking war crime and yet i know every. single. word.
Oh Ween is great for “objectively terrible songs we love anyway”!
I went through a phase where I listened to “Push th’ Little Daisies” like every single day (why?)
Waving my Dick in the Wind springs IMMEDIATELY to mind.
“Dragostea din tei” by O-Zone, a.k.a The Numa Numa song.
Always and forever.
The best.
So good.
Wonderwall.
Wonderwall is just so terrible.
My ex loved it.
So, now every time that terrible song comes on, I get to be super sad AND annoyed.
“MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris (“Between the parted pages we were pressed in love’s hot fevered iron like a stripéd pair of pants.” And that whole overwrought chorus about leaving the cake out in the rain? It’s a perfect song.)
“Peaches” by The Presidents of the United States
“Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison (This song is not good. This song is hilariously not good.)
OMG, “every rose has its thorn.” i was once present for a guy-with-guitar-by-the-campfire rendition of that. nobody knew any of the words except the chorus, not even the guy with the guitar. it’s a deeply treasured memory.
I have probably listened to this song about a million times (I’m not proud and also have made many playlists of hair metal in my time) and I probably couldn’t come up with any of the words to a single verse right now. I can usually fake it when it comes on in the car, though. It’s really the volume and dramatic hand gestures that count.
(Did the guitar guy know he was playing a Very Dumb Song or did he mean it sincerely?)
oh he knew. he was actually a good guitar-dude because he had a fantastic voice and was good at making up funny lyrics. // he did this heartbreaking rendition of “hurt” (more johnny cash than NIN) and then at the last minute replaced “hurt” with “squirt” and i lost my shit laughing because booze turns me into a 12-year-old.
I am now hearing that REM song as “Everybody squirts…sometimes”
I am pretty sure I know every word to “Macarthur Park,” and it’s one of my frequent song requests when I’m really drunk. Along with “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
Those are both perfect songs for exactly that situation.
I’m realizing here that maybe one of my favorite genres is Songs to Sing Loudly With Dramatic Emotion While Possibly Past the Point of Caring About How Ridiculous You Look.
I haven’t learned all the words to Macarthur Park, BUT I have decided it is what I would pick if I was ever in a lip sync battle. Although it doesn’t really pair well with any other songs. It’s too weird.
It made for one of the greatest ever RuPaul’s Drag Race lip syncs, so I think you have the right idea
I feel that way about The Arctic Monkeys. Their songs sound really good but the lyrics are so douchy. I’m currently obsessed with “Do I Wanna Know?” which I don’t think is as bad as some others, but it’s still kind of gross.
This is me. I really like a lot of their music and then when I catch myself singing along to some of their more douchey lyrics, I am embarrassed for myself.
Same. Their latest album was in pretty much constant rotation for about three months after I bought it. See also: everything ever recorded by Marianas Trench. UGH. So horrible and stalker/rapey but fuuuuuuuck I love their sound.
I am so into Low by Flo Rida. I don’t really listen to that genre of music and I have nothing to compare it to or any idea why I love it so much but damned if I don’t sing it like a crazy person whenever it comes up.
Boots with the fur (with the fuuuurrrr)!
omg, same! APPLE BOTTOM JEANS, BOOTS WITH THE FUR screams the bookish white girl.
Yes!!! Love that song!
“There’s a Good Reason These Tables are Numbered, Honey. You Just Haven’t Thought of it Yet.” (Unless one of the other songs on that album is worse.)
i tried to listen to this and couldn’t make it to the end. that is one bad, bad song. [[slow clap]]
I spite-learned the lyrics to Baby Got Back when my study abroad cohort would put it on in karaoke and only know the first four lines. My mastery of the obscure parts are my slightly-too-drunk party trick
What are you talking about that song is a national fucking treasure fight me.
I don’t want to cause an international incident, I will slink away and leave you as the proud victor
I also know all the lyrics to Anaconda, for a karaoke double bill
Oh, no slinking away for you! JOIN ME ON STAGE FOR OUR BEAUTIFUL DUET, BB!
have you seen sir mix-a-lot perform it with the seattle symphony? it’s maybe my favorite video on the internet that doesn’t involve animals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59e20ijOpE
I love this video so much. I remember the amazing woman in the black dress got a quick bit of internet fame for it. I hope she got to meet him.
the woman in the black dress is my hero.
I am crying laughing with joy and trying so hard not to wake up the toddler napping down the hall. This is so good.
Oh my god, thank you for this. I’ve never seen it and am now adding it to my list of things to watch when I’m having a bad day. I love this so much.
yesssssss i am so happy to share the delight
That damn Butterfly song by Crazy Town. SO CATCHY.
I listened to that so much in college. So. Much.
I have a housemate who has had “Total Eclipse of the Heart” stuck in his head for weeks, and I recommended “Butterfly” in order to dislodge it.
So many really, really terrible-but-very-popular rap/R&B songs, including “Ass Back Home”, “Cheerleader”, and “Replay”.
“cheerleader” is truly terrible.
I saw this “Tournament of Bad Songs” on Deadspin http://sidespin.kinja.com/the-worst-pop-rock-song…
and had a helluva good time filling out brackets with my friends, since half the songs we were like “this is great, though.” Notably: Sisqo.
For a while I would offer to do Thong Song as the awkward first song at 9pm of pub karaoke if someone bought me a cider. This worked out to my advantage surprisingly often.
“Bartender” by T-Pain, if only for the lyric she made us drinks to drink/we drunk ’em, got drunk.
*whispers* what makes you beautiful
OMG I love shouting at that song, much to Mr. Thuja’s nonconfrontational discomfort.
“If not knowing she’s beautiful is what makes her beautiful, telling her makes her less beautiful, right? Isn’t that kind of a dick move?”
It’s still ridiculously catchy.
Literally every song that I like by Zappa that contains lyrics. Bobby Brown, for example, or Camarillo Brillo.
It’s Santeria, by Sublime. I know, the actual lyrical content is all kinds of terrible, but I can’t not sing it if it comes on the radio.
I Want It That Way (even before Magic Mike XXL). It is a perfect pop song. It makes NO FUCKING SENSE. I have spent ridiculous amounts of time thinking about the lyrics.
Shots by LMFAO & Lil Jon.
FOREVER.
Have you seen the Hobbit parody video of Shots? https://youtu.be/qXFQFnUdh5I
I can no longer hear that (glorious) song without thinking of ‘Sharks,’ the… custom goal song… that the San Jose Sharks apparently paid someone to make? It is literally just Shots with some guy yelling SHARKS dubbed over in the appropriate places. It sounds like what would happen if the Sharknado producers were trapped in a recording studio.
I love so many Pitbull songs with my whole heart. I can’t explain it but they just give me so much joy. “Timber” is a special favorite.
oh man, yes, i love “Timber.” now i gotta listen to it.
TIMBER IS A GIFT #FREEKESHA
My Mom was into Eminem when I was a small, so now that’s like nostalgia music for me? But particularly Shake That ft Nate Dogg, which is just terrible but terribly compelling and my brain tells me to sing along and I argue with my brain because I don’t want to sing about date rape like it’s a thing I do/at all really.
I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas. Intellectually I think they and their music are awful, but this song is so great to dance to.
Just out of curiosity, do any other Toasties watch the… semi-terrible shitshow that is DC’s Legends of Tomorrow?
The season finale was yesterday and I just want to know if I am alone in my terrible missing of Leonard Snart or not. Also, Kendra was robbed of a decent storyline the entire season and I’m mad about it.
I’m a couple episodes behind but have been grimly hanging on, mainly for Caity Loitz and Wentworth Miller. Nearly everything else makes me throw up my hands in frustration, and a show that makes me irritated at Victor Garber, National Treasure, is a show with a lot of problems.
I think the first moment of real appreciation I felt for Stein was in the giant robot episode where he was like rip go fuck yourself we’re taking these refugees. And Victor Garber is usually so charming!
I AM SO PISSED ABOUT SNART.
ooh edit to say I haven’t actually watched the finale yet so please don’t reply with spoilers plz <3
ME TOO
They might have done the worst possible set of things in the finale, which are
[spoilers]
no Snart, plenty of Rip, and MULTIPLE FRICKING SAVAGES
Nobody needs that. Nobody needed one of that terrible no-personality no-motivation villain, and NOBODY NEEDS THREE.
[spoilers]
we did get to see him killed three times, though. And I’m editing my reality so that it was definitely Kendra who got the killing blow, not rip fucking hunter.
I’m so disappointed that Rip ended up escaping the sun, because how often do you get to see your least fave actually FLY INTO THE SUN?
EVERYONE IS SO IRRESPONSIBLE ABOUT TIME TRAVEL
AND NOW THEY WANT TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE TIMELINE
LIKE
NO, JUST NO, YOU’VE FAILED AT IT THIS WHOLE SEASON, NO
Day two of my arm in a sling, I am officially over this bullshit. I can do my makeup ok but my hair is a mess and I just said fuck it and scheduled myself for a blowout after work. Weekly blowouts are a little more of a luxury than I want to indulge in, but my hair does not behave unless it’s blow-dried/flat-ironed or in a bun/braid and I can’t physically do that real well right now. Also putting on pants one-handed is hard. Thank you for listening to me complain.
Oh I am sorry. I wish you had a roommate or neice who could live with you and help you with stuff like that! I know how frustrating that is.
Yo that sucks! You get your hair blown out as much as you need to. And pants are overrated.
Maybe get some of those big headband things, the nice soft ones made out of cotton that comes pretty colors/prints to pull it all back and away?
Think of how capable you’ll be after all this though!
You are Arya, blind* but learning to fight**.
*one-handed
**put on pants
Ugh. I had surgery on my shoulder at one point, and it is really astonishing how much stuff is difficult if not impossible. I am wishing I lived closer to volunteer to help. I am so sorry. Take what help is offered, though, seriously. The more you allow yourself to heal, the faster you will heal.
So when I broke the elbow on my dominant arm, front-closure bras were my saving grace. (This may be useful if you, like me, absolutely cannot be braless in public.)
Podcasts thread!
I’ve recently started listening to podcasts while I’m running, and I am absolutely loving it! Which podcasts do you listen to/recommend?
Lately I’ve been listening to The Rex Factor — it’s fascinating to me as a history nerd, and makes me feel…I don’t know…swashbuckling.
SO MANY PODCASTS.
No One Knows Anything is Buzzfeed’s new-ish politics podcast.
Fansplaining, if you’re into fandom as a space, is super fascinating. They’ve just dropped a HUGE two-part episode on racism in fandom.
For Colored Nerds for pop culture stuff – I’m in the middle of their Lemonade episode right now.
Limetown, for crazy out there fiction. Season one is totally done and worth listening to. Sadly, season two is delayed, but for excellent reasons – they’re working on a TV pilot and need to see where that goes before they continue work on the podcast version.
ANOTHER ROUND, which is perfection. Two amazing women talking about cool stuff and interviewing cool people.
Call Your Girlfriend, also perfection, similar genre.
OMG PODCASTS
You Must Remember This – secret and forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century
Strangers – my all time fave, forever
This American Life, obvs
Planet Money – so amazing and great, every time
Radiolab, also obvs
Surprisingly Awesome – I just listened to the episode on insults, and it was pretty good
Dear Sugar – b/c I love advice and eavesdropping on ppl’s lives
Criminal – great podcast about interesting topics around criminality
99% Invisible – interesting podcast about design, etc
Song Exploder
Invisibilia – which I LOVED, but has been dormant for almost a year *tear*
Embedded – in depth exploration of topics from the news
Serial, although I wan’t crazy about the new season
Women of the Hour by Lena Dunham was great
Invisibilia is back on June 17th!
I have a stupidly long list of podcasts I subscribe to, mainly pop-culture related. Lately I discovered the wealth of history podcasts out there and I’m completely in love. They may be too basic for someone more informed than me, but so far I have hung on to every word of The Ancient World and Revolutions (a history of, well, guess what. Starts with the English civil war and has just finished Haiti by way of America and France
Have you listened to the History of Rome? It’s the first podcast Mike Duncan did, it’s a little iffy in the beginning and VERY VERY LONG (but that recommends it really) and it’s great. Likewise, the History of Byzantium is pretty good – I’m not so sold on the guy’s voice, but it’s grown on me.
ETA: the british history podcast is great as well, and the guy who runs it (it’s… kind of all dudes, what I listen to, can anyone recommend some good history podcasts by women?) has gone out of his way to highlight women’s experiences where they come up and he can so far.
They’re not in depth on any one topic, but Stuff You Missed in History Class is hosted by two women, and covers a whole bunch of interesting topics. I really enjoy it!
I used to subscribe, but had totally forgotten once I moved podcast apps! Thanks for reminding me about them! 😀 (we listened to the one on H. H. Holmes on a long drive in the dark. This was a Mistake)
I was going to do that next, but then I spent this month’s audible credit on Mary Beard’s latest, so now I feel like I might become Romed out. Thanks for the tip on British history, I’ll keep it in mind
I looooove The British History Podcast! I have even been known to wear my Sons of Heptarchy t-shirt in public…
History Chicks? It’s about individual women rather than history as a whole but I like it.
I do a lot of comedy podcasts, and in particular Maximum Fun ones.
Never Not Funny
Judge John Hodgman
Jordan, Jesse Go
WTF with Marc Maron
You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes
Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period
Throwing Shade
Pop Rocket
Stop Podcasting Yourself
We Got This with Mark and Hal
The Dork Forest
The Jackie and Laurie Show
The West Wing Weekly
2 Dope Queens
Beef and Dairy Network
Serial (I too wasn’t as taken with the 2nd season, but it was still good)
I love podcasts, especially while running and taking long walks as well. Something about focusing on content makes it all just that much more fun.
1. Welcome to Night Vale–If you like Mallory’s Shirley Jacksonesque posts, this podcast is in a similar vein.
2. The Thrilling Adventure House–Fun, old time inspired radio shows done by some of the best names in comedy. I am especially a fan of the Beyond Belief ones.
3. Sawbones–A fun and funny medical history podcast. I love this show and I have learned so much since I started listening.
4. Still Buffering–A guide to teens through the ages, but really three sisters, one of whom is 15, talk about what it was like to be a teen and also issues facing little teen sis.
5. Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness–Every week has a different theme and Jonathan Van Ness (also known for his Gay of Thrones on Funny or Die) interviews an expert on things like the Romanovs or Agent Orange. It’s fairly new and delightful.
6. Throwing Shade–two awesome comedians discuss issues facing ladies and gays in the news. I learn a lot and the hosts are hilarious. (Language and content warning on this one–it’s not for everyone but I love it.)
7. International Waters–hosted by America’s Sweetheart, Dave Holmes. A team of American comedians competes in a quiz against a team of British comedians and it always makes me laugh and I love it so very much. It also makes me feel even better about the fact that Dave Holmes was always my favorite MTV vj when I was a teen.
I just listened to him on the latest NNF and it reminded me how much I like Dave Holmes. I also need to catch the W. Kamau Bell episode of Getting Curious – I listened to the first few but it didn’t stick with me, but I’ll check that ep out.
If you need another podcast, you might enjoy Paul F. Tompkins’ Spontaneanation. He has a guest on for the first part of each episode and several improvisers on for the second part. They improvise a story. When it’s good, it’s really freaking good!
I love Paul F. Tompkins so I will need to check that out. I subscribe to a stupid amount of podcasts but I still feel like I don’t have enough. Thanks!
If you do try it out, might I recommend Episode 18: A Theme Park Break Room? It’s one of my favorite episodes.
Or the most recent episode, which I was listening to on the bus this morning and made me break my “no lols in public” rule like 8 times.
I discovered Sawbones about a month ago, and it’s been my go-to running/workout/chores podcast ever since. I’m getting close to caught up, and that’s saddening. It’s such a good balance of up-tempo, engaging patter with informative and interesting content.
Sawbones high five! I love that show so much, I’m currently putting off listening to the newest episode until I have time to go on a walk and appreciate it fully. I know what you mean about getting caught up–that happened to me about a month ago and now I chomp at the bit every week waiting for a new one (especially because with the baby/toddler they release new episodes Wednesday-ish).
HOW TIMELY, I have spent the past two weeks bingeing on Thinking Sideways, a podcast where three friends sit around and talk Unexplained Mysteries. They talk about disappearances, unsolved murders, strange phenomena, urban legends, the topics are pretty much all over the map. (Right now I’m halfway through their episode on the 1918 flu pandemic.) But what I really like is their dynamic; they’re clearly all good friends, they know each other and their general opinions, they goof around and come up with insane theories of their own. It’s really fun. Plus one of them is a woman, which I really like; female voices are really underrepresented in the weird history subgenre.
no such thing as a fish! Interesting trivia with comedy bits.
Mystery Show
This American Life
Pop Culture Happy Hour
BBC Radio’s A History of the World in 100 Objects
I love “No Such Thing As A Fish” for exercising- it’s little snippets of trivia (lots of history) by the researchers for QI. Fun accents, doesn’t get bogged down, lots of back catalog.
Bad movie podcasts are my jam, and my favorite these days is “We Hate Movies.” They don’t just go on about how bad it is (though they do a LOT of that). They obviously love film and point out ways in which the movie could have been better. I was put off at first because all their voices sound the same, but got used to it quickly. They just did a bestcast on the AV Clubwhere they picked their own favorite episodes. Also features a lot of bad celebrity impressions.
Many of my favorites have been listed, but a few that come up less often:
The Irrelevant Show – Canadian sketch comedy with comedy musical guests. Delightful.
Under the Influence- history of advertising and some modern stuff too. Also Canadian, but covers a lot of US and global brands. Surprisingly delightful.
I am a member of the Rex Factor Privy Council!
I subscribe to a bunch but my all time favorite is Awesome Etiquette which is done by Lizzie Post and her cousin Daniel Post Senning of the Emily Post Institute.
Also:
Jolie Kerr’s Ask a Clean Person
Taz Ahmed & Zahra Noorkbakhsh’s Good Muslim Bad Muslim
I love Extra Hot Great – it’s a TV podcast by most of the core editors from Television Without Pity (plus also most of the other podcasts in this thread)
Can’t get enough of Judge John Hodgman lately. That is all.
Other favorites:
–A Way With Words (“a show about language and how we use it” — so fun)
–I Seem Fun: The Diary of Jen Kirkman Podcast (feminist comedian weekly diary podcast, worth starting from beginning for long running references)
Okay, any Medievalists out there know a good source where I can do research on Courtly Love? I’m writing a long-form fictional story which involves a modern version of this and I really need to know how it was actually done IRL back then.
I have no advice, but this is the toastiest toast comment that ever toasted and I love it a lot.
<3 <3 <3
I read that as “Courtney Love” and thought “I want to read the thesis that ties her into anything medieval.”
Plymouth State University hosts (used to host?) a Medieval and Renaissance forum. I’m not sure how easy it is to find information on past presented papers but it might be a place to start?
Thank you! I’ll look into that! And the Courtney Love comment was hilarious. I don’t think she could be considered a Troubadour.
Also read “Courtney Love” – imagine the Two Monks listening to a Hole album….
I *very much so* read Courtney Love & was going to recommend that you start with Peri Lyons (her psychic–actually, she’s one of my favorites in the business). And I was like “Maybe she has insight into her past lives?” Anyway…
I think Fordham’s Medieval Sourcebook might have something online for that?
It is somewhat legal/religious based, but if all else fails, at least you can find accurate names for the time period!
Okay, found a bunch of stuff, at least in the search results. Now to get down and dirty with it. Thank you!
Medieval art historian here. Maybe take a look at Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of Love (his writing is usually very engaging and this text should be pretty accessible). For a primary source, try to get your hands on an English translation of De amore/The Art of Courtly Love by Andre le Chapelain. Hope that helps!
Both of these are excellent recommendations. C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (1936), is a classic – now superseded by 80 years of research, but as an overview of courtly love as a concept, it might be worth reading.
Oh wow, I’ve never read CS Lewis before. I found this book on Amazon and ordered it. Thank you so much for your recommendation!
I ordered the Michael Camille book on Amazon, and he has other books on Medieval stuff that look interesting as well.
Thank you so much for your expertise, and sharing it with me!
I was wondering if you’d mind answering a couple of other questions? In my story, the characters also want to build a gothic cathedral, inspired by the cathedral in Cologne, Germany (the floor, mosaics!!) … and they also want to decorate the cathedral walls and ceiling in Frescos (ala Michaelangelo and Sistine chapel, but that’s more Renaissance, right?) … I need hardcore, from a builder’s and painter’s perspective lingo and tradecraft, like I know what I’m talking about. I have some Medieval sourcebooks, of course, which give an outsider’s view of the building of a cathedral … but I think I have to know stoneworking/masonry and I’m not sure if they were called architects back then, maybe engineers — but terms for that as well. I was wondering if you had any recommendations on those types of thing as well. Just saying that I love medieval art and architecture and any book recommendations you have I will love and covet. (Textbooks are so expensive, but I can still put them on my wish list!)
Hmm…there are a couple of artistic manuals that have survived from the Middle Ages that might have what you’re looking for. On Divers Arts by Theophilus, c. 1120s presents a craftsman’s perspective on a whole range of arts, and Il libro dell’arte by Cennino Cennini describes the painter’s craft in Italy c. 1400. There’s not really an equivalent source by a master mason (I’d go with that term for the idea of an architect), so far as I know. Plotting Gothic is a pretty new book on Gothic Cathedrals by Stephen Murray (one of today’s experts on the topic), so that might also be useful.
Oh my goodness, all three of these books were on Amazon! I’ll have to put Stephen Murray on my wish list; the description of this book (the reviews) were enticing, if I can say that about a book.
Thank you so much for your help! I hope to create a modern version of the Middle Ages for my story, with characters who are as fascinated by the age as I am.
Love in the Western World by Denis DeRougement is an absolutely wonderful book on the mythology of courtly love, extending to more contemporary examples. I think it might be perfect for your needs. Also, The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus. Sounds like a super cool story!
Found both books on Amazon, and ordered them! Excited to read them when they come. Thank you so much for stopping by here and offering your wisdom!
Toasts, this week has been a bit of a mess. I had to stay late at work every day but still feel like I’m managing to accomplish almost nothing, I have a bad combo of allergies/PMS, my sportsball team has turned into a tragic tire fire and the PMS is making me react way too strongly to it, and I kind of have an overall feeling that the water I’m treading is slowly rising and there’s not much I can do about it.
My little brother is graduating from college on Monday and in advance of having to spend way too much time with my extended family starting on Sunday I think I’m going to have the self-care Saturday to end all self-care Saturdays. I think I’ve earned it.
So in favor of this.
I saw The Kills in concert last night and it was just one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Guys, they are SO GOOD live. Their stage presence is just off the charts.
The opening act was a trio called LA Witch and they were also amazing. But I chuckled to myself during their set because they were not Too Witches, they were Three Witches (and I deserve to be slapped for that)
Aw man, jealous! Alison Mosshart is my dream woman and she is a phenomenal guitarist!
Was this the show at Music Hall of Williamsburg?
I was there too!
Agreed about The Kills stage presence, they were fantastic. But the crowds were really annoying, I can’t remember the last time I got shoved so much at a show!
No, this was the Paradise in Boston!
Not a lot of shoving but I think this was the tallest concert I’d ever attended. I’ve never had so many heads blocking my view!
Ha, just realizing now that you said you went yesterday, whoops!
So funny you say that, my friends and I were also commenting that everyone at our show was gigantic!
I guess they inspire really tall fans? To be fair, one of my friends who came is a 6’3 dude, so we were part of the problem.
How do you deal with emotional labor at work? In personal relationships I’m all about laying down boundaries, being straightforward and talking about how someone elses behavior makes me feel.
This seems like a less good strategy for my 70+ boss, who has the emotional skills of a toddler and a great deal of power over me. It’s a small law firm, as in him, me and two paralegals. If something is misfiled or we’re having problems getting something from another office or anyone in any circumstance is not living up to his standards, he just goes off about how stupid or incompetent or evil they are. It all seems to feel like a personal attack on him.
I cannot deal with this. It is so stressful waiting for an outburst at any moment, and I personally take no joy trashing some nameless person in another office for doing or not doing something that is slightly inconvenient for us. People make mistakes or get busy or whatever. It’s fine!
Currently my strategies have been to : 1. Give a reasonable explanation for what someone may have thought that what they were doing was fine, or at least how it wasn’t a malicious attack. This just leads to an argument. 2. Agree and try to redirect. This works sometimes, but is also stressful. 3. Smile and nod, but otherwise avoid engagement. This feels nice, and usually leads to a fizzling out, but I can tell it frustrates him.
Any better ideas? Or commiseration? Commiseration is good.
I, uh, well, my 24-year-old-self’s approach to that problem was to quit. I can offer commiseration though! It sucks to walk on eggshells waiting for someone else’s unpredictable outbursts. It’s very hard not to just carry that stress around in your body all the time. I hope you have ways to get away from that.
Ugh, that totally sucks. And I’m sure you know this, but number 3 seems like a winning strategy. Dude deserves to be gently frustrated.
That’s super annoying. I would ignore it. Who cares if it frustrates him?
i’d love to say that simply inserting “well, let’s not go this route, let’s identify what needs to be fixed and give them an outline to improve upon” would work. but it sounds like you’ve tried a lot of tactics along those lines and it just escalates. usually the advice i see on this is to just go to HR.
but as others have said, sometimes personalities are not interested in being toned down, and maybe it’s time to consider shopping around. but if you have HR, go to them just for kicks. this is not boss-like behavior and should be redirected by someone with authority.
Ah, yes. The dysfunctional small office. No HR to appeal to. It’s hell, isn’t it? Been there. For me, unless the small-office job boosts my skill set or my resume *significantly*, I hunt for a better job.
Commiseration and ((Toasthugs)).
My landlady does this (along with being racist and telling mean stories about former housemates) and I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE it, basically we all just don’t make eye contact and foster an awkward silence and then change the subject. It isn’t a good plan but she doesn’t really respond to us denying her reality, except with “But no, really, I’m right, why aren’t you agreeing with me?” Much commiseration.
Stop trying to make excuses for other people and just refuse to engage in his emotional outbursts. There is honestly no way to win if you go that route. Don’t agree with him, either. I would also not even do the “smile” part of option 3. Just wait for him to finish his tirade and move on with business. If he needles you for a reaction, just say something neutral, no agreeing or disagreeing, and get back to the work at hand.
My REAL suggestion is to quit immediately (as soon as you find a new job) though. I quit a similar boss a few months ago and I’m broke now but way happier. Your job will never get better, and your boss will continue holding this power over you, and there is no reason you need to stay in that situation. There are lots of jobs in the world that do not require you to manage your boss’s emotional outbursts and I encourage you to find one of them ASAP.
UGH What do you do when you’re overwhelmed at work and people keep asking you to do more stuff and the only person you could ask for help is just as overwhelmed? And the stuff is time sensitive? And your boss refuses to set priorities and just says everything needs to be done?
I feel like I’m in over my head and the only way to get out would be to spend literally all weekend at the office which is both terrible and above my pay grade.
(Part of the answer is to skip open thread but I hope I can check in later tonight!)
This…might not be the best of ways but I’ve found that people keep asking you to do stuff because they know you’re responsible and will do it at your own expense?
So my own tactic is a bit harsh and risky but I just allow certain things to crash and burn if my boss refuses to prioritise and when he questions me, I will sweetly bring up the fact that there is only one of me and I already told him that we need help and I can only do so much…
I’ve done a version of this (in this case, my boss did prioritize, and was sympathetic, but I stopped putting in 10 hour days and let stuff slip).
Highly, highly recommend sending an email with a) a list of what needs doing, b) a list of how you’re prioritizing it, and c) “I only have enough time to get tasks 1-4 done for sure. Tasks 5-8 might slip out.” and maybe asking for help. That way, when it does crash and burn, you also have documentation, and if your boss is merely incompetent but not a jerk, they have some warning and can theoretically have contingency plans.
Yessss this is perfect! Thanks! (And thanks to everyone else too, jerk brain has been trying to make me wonder if this is my fault so it’s super helpful to reaffirm that boss isn’t managing well)
this is a crappy game bosses play with employees, and it’s making me angry on your behalf. it’s time to ask for a meeting about scheduling. your main objective here is to explain that your work takes time [bonus if you can ballpark what each project-type might take, even in a range of hours] and that it cannot simply be stacked with the expectation that multiple rush jobs will all be done on time.
ideally your boss should be project managing and gatekeeping for you, explaining to whomever generates this work that the department is at capacity, and determining priority [where none can be determined, the first-comers get priority and last-comers get told to redefine their due date]. if this your boss is expecting you to do your own project management, then try to determine that in this meeting, and if that is the case, it’s time to start pushing back when you can see you’re at capacity.
the only exception to this is, say, the job has a budget that would support hiring extra hands, either temp or perm, and you can be the one to advise on whether a full time or temporary person would be the solution.
so, make sure you know it’s not personal, and simply say “we seem to be operating at capacity pretty consistently, and i’m going to either need some priorities assigned at intake of these projects, or given the ability to advise on turnarounds.” depending on whether your boss sees them or you as the project manager, proceed from there. but do not take more work than reasonable hours and turnarounds will handle, that’s a failure of management, not your work.
I did this recently, and one of the things that helped was that I put together a spreadsheet of what I do and how long it takes per month (I went back and averaged three months worth of data). This is … hard to do when you are way behind on the schedule, but for me it was worth throwing my hands in the air and letting tasks be slightly later than the late they were already going to be to put it together. One of the major pluses of this approach is that it makes it easier to see what tasks could be eliminated/reassigned, or what a temp could help with.
That said, my work life has not dramatically improved since that meeting. Mostly I just need to carve out the time to look for a different job. 🙁
I’m really sorry your boss is not doing their job. A manager is supposed to actually MANAGE and help you with this stuff.
Do you and the person who you could ask for help share the same manager? If so, perhaps you can join forces and outline together how much work you have and how overwhelmed you both are, and maybe that would help your manager realize what they need to do.
Otherwise, the only other thing I can think of is to say: There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to accomplish all these tasks at the same time. Here is what I can have finished by X date. Here are the things I cannot do by X date. And then don’t do some things. If you are overworking yourself and still somehow managing to get things done, your boss might not believe that you can’t do everything.
yes to the advice, Just make it clear how long tasks take, and which ones you are prioritizing. Document in emails, so over time you can point out that project 1 was assigned to you 3 months ago, then it got moved to priority 12 on a list where you said you could only complete 3 things in those 3 months.
In your time budget don’t forget to factor in at least an hour of admin time for doing emails, filing, phone calls, etc. No job is 100% projects alone and people slip up with this one all the time.
I’ve worked for a boss who was terrible at time management and he would just keep putting things on the to-do list until you pointed out the hours in the day. He also never gave deadlines then would yell things were late at some random point. He was so fun.
Meanwhile I worked for a great boss, and he was like, “ok this is your priortiy this week. I know that means x,yz, can’t get done, it’s ok, if your client is upset, they can call me.” We failed forward in that job because we were understaffed, but it felt way better because he knew it couldn’t all be done.
Hey everyone! So I am starting an internship on Monday, and I’m dealing with some pretty intense Imposter Syndrome. It was kind of competitive getting the place, and I don’t know why I did get it. So I was just wondering how anyone on here has handled Imposter Syndrome when they’ve had it?
Repeat the mantra ‘These people all think I am the best, so I must be’
REPEAT IT.
At lunchtime, and everytime you feel overwhelmed REPEAT IT.
Don’t know why you got it? BECAUSE YOU DESERVED IT.
This, and also do not be afraid to ask for help. You don’t have to hide your confusion just to prove you are worthy! it’s ok to ask for help when you’ve made an attempt to figure things out yourself first (especially b/c then you have specific questions you can take to someone.) You are there to learn and they are there to teach you, that is explicitly the deal with an internship. It is part of their job to help you, just like it’s part of your job to help them.
Also, let your support network know that you’re having these thoughts so they can tell you that you’re great (or specifically what you’re good at- sometimes vague reassurance does not help so much as actual concrete details to hang on to. Can you ask one of your references what they thought makes you a good fit for the position, or what they think is your best quality?
I have a few things that various people have told me, that help:
– of course you’ll make mistakes. But that’s ok because you’ll learn from them and/or fix them
– if you didn’t belong there, they wouldn’t have hired you
I also find that basic mindfulness techniques can help – ie gently noticing that part of me is doubting myself and that’s ok.
I’m awake for my first cocktail hour since I moved time zones, and I have a waterproof smartphone case and inflatable book stand in my very deep and very warm Japanese bath. This is definitely a version of my best life.
I told my bf I am being Rilakkuma in water, and he very helpfully coined Rirakko
Rirakko wa rerakksu suru!
Rirakkusu shimashita~ It was a grand time, I feel like relaxation technology doesn’t get enough credit
Wait…what is this inflatable book stand you speak of? I MUST KNOW.
I feel I may have willed it into existence? Like I thought “someone must have made this” and then I googled intently, and lo, someone had. I bought mine on Japanese Amazon, but I’m sure there are several sources.
When I was in Japan two weeks ago, I stayed at a ryokan for one night for the first time ever and I am still dreaming about that bath. SO DEEP. SO WARM. SO FRAGRANT. I was in heaven. Enjoy yourself!
I wish I had a bunch of female friends to go to onsens with. I love the essential sitting in really warm water a bunch aspect of it, but I get bored really quickly if I’m alone. So far home bath and smart phone is my favorite. Why aren’t all baths everywhere like this?
What a week. I’ve been sitting here for 20 minutes trying to think of triumphs for this week, and the best I’ve been able to come up with, just now, is that I tilled 1/3 of my garden plot for planting. That’s it. It has been seriously rough having such a blah/bad week immediately following 4 days in NYC that included HAMILTON and FUN HOME and so many great moments. Talk about high/low.
The good news (and I guess my actual triumph) is, I finally made called my doctor after more than a year without going in. I’ve been having some odd health things, and also some troubling issues with memory (forgetting what I was talking about mid-sentence, complete inability to come up with words, completely losing things to the point where multiple thorough sweeps through the house turn up nothing). I also think I’m finally going to make a point of asking about an ADD/ADHD diagnosis and medications. I was on a variety of ADD meds when I was younger, but haven’t been in more than 15 years, and my inability to focus is becoming a real problem. Can anyone make any recommendations of ADD/ADHD medications that have been effective for them? I’m super nervous about medication because of the awful side-effects I’ve had from anti-anxiety pills, so if anyone can provide any recommendations/reassurances, that would be very much appreciated.
I’ve only ever done like 2 comments here buuut I’m looking for a third flatmate in London!
Spareroom is driving me around the bend. HOW DO I KNOW IF THEY ARE GOING TO FIND MONKS INVENTING THINGS FUNNY? How do I know they’re going to find my “Feminist Killjoy” glitter wall hanging charming and not obnoxious? What if they don’t get that I occasionally turn into a jerkbrain hermit who can barely function?!
so I’m turning to various feminist internet communities in search. If any Toasties are looking for a place in London from August, find me or fb at “Holly Robin” or the old twitter at @holbolrob for more information!
If anyone wants to comment with their worst flatmate experience, feel free! I’ve lived with a gaslighting ex best friend and a girl if you asked “do you want a cup of tea” would say no, then scurry off to make her own – purely so she didn’t have to return the favour! Hashtag British sins or something…
I might know someone! My friend (f/26) might be looking for somewhere shortly, depending on how the job search goes. Where are you living?
We’re moving into a place in Oval!
I lived with two girls my last year of college who were very close with each other and kind of ganged up on me. I know the passive-aggressive note left by a roommate is a cliche, but they would do it to me all the time, and basically ignore me otherwise.
Then the last day of school when we were all moving out, they both got all teary and huggy and said they would miss me -_-
I like the sound of that wall hanging!
Holly I messaged you on fb – perhaps it’s gone into your ‘others’ folder 🙂
Love in the Lowlands as a Muslim Lesbian Tomboy
Thank you for sharing this <3
Hi Toasties! I want to soak up as much of your hive mind wisdom while we’re all still here! :sniff:
I’ve been seeing someone new (unexpectedly soon after a big break up! But that’s another story), and I’m hopelessly crushing on him. We regularly go out to dinner, get into a conversation, and are startled when suddenly we realize the restaurant is closed and we’ve been there for HOURS. I’m not chatty typically–It is crazy to have found someone who I can effortlessly have rich conversations with for hours and hours. I feel super spoiled by this relationship and very happy all of the time.
OF COURSE THERE’S A BUT. Have any of you ever dated someone who most of your friends thought was a weird match for you? I’m working on the not-caring-what-other-people think thing, but this guy is unlike other dudes I’ve introduced to my friends, and I’m disappointed in myself because honestly I’m struggling to adjust to the fact that I’m dating someone who ISN’T an emotionally closed off motorcycle-baseball-manly-man. It’s uncomfortable to realize how much comfort I apparently get from being seen with a certain type of guy, and I have to ask myself why I care, and why I think anyone is judging me, when I’m almost certainly the only one that cares!
Even writing this out I feel like a real idiot for caring about these image things. But I still want to share because I wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience of walking down the street with someone and wondering if people think you look funny together, and how you got to a place of “I’m in love and IDGAF.”
I married someone 11 years older than me, who worked with me, who shares not a lot of my interests, and WASN’T a bass-playing douche (as all previous boyfriends had been)
That was 8 years ago. Been together for 13. They will get used to it! ESPECIALLY if you are happy.
Oh! That’s the other part I forgot to mention–he’s almost a decade older than me. And we also work together! Yeah, it’s funny NOT to be attracted to a bass-playing douche! (Which is a really concise way of describing past boyfriends, even if they don’t all even actually play the bass, but you know.)
I am sometimes confused by how happy I am in his company! (“Shouldn’t this be more difficult??”) I guess this is something to be super thankful for. Your story is very encouraging!
But I still want to share because I wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience of walking down the street with someone and wondering if people think you look funny together, and how you got to a place of “I’m in love and IDGAF.”
I’m in an interracial relationship, so yeah, I totally get that a lot. Getting to IDGAF was/is…tricky. I don’t know if I’m actually there yet, even after five years. When I went home a little while ago and introduced her to some of my old friends, there was visible surprise and what felt like unspoken judgment, and that stings. We periodically get dirty looks from people from her ethnic group; she notices that more than I do, but we both see it and feel it. I don’t know if you ever completely stop caring or noticing. But at the end of the day, we have each other, and that matters more than some dickhead glaring at me.
You know what, I almost didn’t post this because as awkward as I feel sometimes with someone who is older & shorter & not a certain type…after all, we are a straight couple and we’re both white. I know that a lot of what I’m experiencing is probably in my own head, as opposed to the actual glares you and your gf get. So, thank you for being compassionate and recognizing the seed of a shared experience here, even though I am mostly just being a vain idiot.
I ended up with a guy after years of being with women, and after five years, I still am a little flinchy about what that means about my orientation and the idea of het privilege, etc. It’s complicated. My best advice is just allowing yourself a compassionate and open-eyed self-inventory. Observe where you are and how you feel. Let it be what it is instead of fighting it and figure it out from a place of “this is interesting” instead of “I am betraying myself/womankind/this person I really like/all of everything”.
Don’t try and change how you feel. Just observe and see where it takes you. Chances are, you stand to unravel some much deeper things about yourself.
Meanwhile, do try to enjoy what’s in front of you for as long as you are enjoying.
Thank you! I am trying to be self-aware, because you’re right–being with this guy is challenging my perception of myself a bit. Like, I always think of myself as so progressive when it comes to relationships, but here we are with the first time I am attracted to someone the slightest bit unexpected for me, and I’m shocked to find out that I care what people think. It is SUPER eye opening. And, like I said above, we’re a pretty normative couple for crying out loud. I stand to learn a lot about where my self esteem comes from and why. Lucky me I get to learn these things while spending time with someone that I think is the funniest, most interesting, hottest, best person around.
Being with someone who gives you an entry to understand yourself and maybe repair some things is such a gift. A tough one that sometimes you do not feel like dealing with, but a gift nonetheless. I really like that you are talking about this with us as well as having your own internal ruminations. It’s valuable to have out there as a reality for everyone to consider.
A good friend of mine, who married someone I had long deemed not-good-enough-for-her, once made the wise point that you can never know what goes on within a couple. Unless there’s evidence of abuse (physical, of trust, w/e) then you have to live and let love.
I have totally felt this feel! But you have to get past it because That Way Lies Madness and breaking up with people to assuage feelings, real or imaginary, that belong to other people. Every time I’ve done something based on the imagined judgement of others that ran counter to my own happiness, I’ve deeply regretted it.
Oof, yeah, I’ve been working with this guy for the past year and for a long time tried to pretend I didn’t have this absolute freight train of feelings for him, so I definitely got a taste of the madness that comes from trying to deny your true feelings. And it was so obvious that he was nuts for me too, even before we addressed it! Working together does add another wrinkle, but now that we’ve started actually hanging out like, ~romantically~ outside of work, we are both MUCH saner and more comfortable.
Guys can we talk NY recs? I got Hamilton tickets (on my birthday! this December!) Any favorite (and not too pricey) places to stay (either a hotel or AirBnB)? Or any other faves? We won’t be there long, but I’d love to hit up some Toastie favorites while we’re there!
(and I’m sure there must be tons of NYC recs buried in other OTs and elsewhere but . . . I do not know where they are, alas)
Bunch of suggestions in this thread (question was asked by christinaemoss):
http://the-toast.net/2016/01/15/link-roundup-492/…
Oh, thank you, thank you! I knew it must have existed somewhere!
When in December are you going? I’m going to the evening show on Wednesday the 7th with one of my best friends from college!
I’ll be there the weekend of December 3-4! We are seeing Cats on Saturday night, then Hamilton on Sunday!
Toasts, I’m having a rough day.
It’s my abuser’s birthday & for whatever reason, 5/20 rolls around and I just…kind of remember it like you remember your childhood phone number.
Also, one of my bosses–not the one who hired me, so we have very little rapport–gave me one of those pep talks in which the subtext is a reprimand.
I’m sorry. Sending you hugs if that’s you’re thing and comforting high fives if it’s not.
Take care of yourself – you deserve all good things.
many many many many many hugs.
Came home from school this semester to learn that my parents have separated. The whole thing is very cordial and vaguely French – they get dinner together and my dad is renting a home in the neighborhood – but still! It’s so weird and sad to know that my fears about my parents’ marriage and my family have been confirmed.
So, people who were adults when your parents split: advice? The whole thing is just… It’s a brave new world and I’m kind of spinning.
My parents abruptly split this week too and it is a particularly bad rough time for us for a gazillion other reasons, but then there’s also never a good time.
No advice, but empathy! And eager for the advice of others too!
My parents’ split sounds like it was significantly more acrimonious, but it happened in similar fashion: “Welcome back from freshman year! We’re getting divorced.” My biggest piece of advice is to refuse to be an intermediary between them. Like anything else, you have to set boundaries and stick to them. I didn’t know that, and spent years doing the “Mom says to say…”, “Dad says to say…” bullshit game. They’re adults. It sounds like that’ll be easier for you, since the split was fairly cordial, but yeah, boundaries. V important.
God, yes, boundaries. My parents were separated for a few years when I was in high school and I wish I had been able to articulate the need for boundaries more. As it happened, one time my mom was trashing my dad while I was in the car and I timidly asked “mom? Could you not talk trash about dad? It makes me feel bad” (as the books instruct you to do!) And my mom flipped out and started yelling at me that I could just go live with him if I wanted to so bad.
So yeah. Boundaries. They are great.
This!
See also: refusing to keep secrets for either of them.
My parents split very amicably and so I don’t think I ever felt like i was justified in grieving for the changes that it created in my life, when it actually affected me a lot- so I don’t know how you find the space to do that, but retrospectively it seems like a good idea. I found talking to other people whose parents had divorced was helpful.
I’m fortunate (er, “fortunate”) that I’ve been seeing a therapist for a few months due to anxiety with some roots in family deaths earlier this year. One of my big tendencies is to be, like, “I AM IN A POSITION OF GLOBAL PRIVILEGE, TRULY WHAT RIGHT DO I HAVE TO FEEL MY FIRST WORLD FEELINGS?” Which is a pretty un-great way to go through life, because even some ~first world~ problems are still real and profound and feelings need to be acknowledged and dealt with. And it’s even ok to TALK TO OTHER PEOPLE about those first world feelings!
It took me, like, 27 years to realize it, but I’m glad that I sought help before I got hit with this. Because, well, WOW! This is A LOT!
yesss thissssss I spent so much time in my therapist’s office saying basically that exact thing – like, why do I care so much? how are my problems even valid? and recognizing that yes, they are valid and real and can provide so much insight has made my life betterx100.
Hi hello this sounds a lot like my situation. I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. About 6 months ago, 3 days after my 26th birthday, my parents sat my sister and brother-in-law, my boyfriend, and me down for pizza and to tell us they were getting divorced after 35 years of marriage. Shock doesn’t begin to describe it. Like your parents, mine still get together socially one-on-one, talk on the phone, and attend family events together with no strife.
I’ll echo what @protocoach said and recommend setting boundaries. For me, that meant not listening to either of them speak ill of the other or share private stuff… I’m an adult but I’m still their kid. Some things I just don’t want to hear. Of course my mom still bucks this with under-the-breath comments but I do my best to enforce the boundaries. They are still close friends so thankfully it’s not like I’m constantly shutting down a shit-talk session.
Give yourself time to grieve. If you’re like me, you’re feeling 900 different emotions and they come and go without any rhyme or reason. Feel your feelings! Let the people around you know what’s going on, so that they can give you space to feel those feelings! Ask for support from your people. Go to therapy if you want to – I’ve been in therapy on and off for a few years, but the post-divorce sessions helped immensely.
You weren’t clear if you have siblings or not. I’m the middle of 3 kids, and it helped to lean on my siblings. If this doesn’t apply to you, you’ll still survive as an only child 🙂 It does help to talk to other people whose parents have divorced though.
Hugs to you!! You will get through this.
To attend one’s high school reunion or not to attend?
WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN, RIGHT?
You’re in the bathroom stall & you overhear that bitch/fake friend who always sat behind you b/c of the alphabet & she’s saying rude things about your appearance.
I mean, theoretically. Or maybe now that happened to me, it won’t happen to anyone else. And on the upside, those twins turned out to be totally gorgeous, and gazing upon them was a pleasure.
edit: he did not look this good in high school, nor did his identical twin:
What a jawline.
To me the worst is that you’ll spend too much money and the people you really want to see there won’t show up. Ask me if that’s what happened at my tenth reunion or not?
Also, that was before FB was a thing and I was able to connect with those people. Nowadays I’d know ahead of time if they were going.
@ my friend’s 5 year reunion, some bros got SUPER OVERLY DRUNK and later in the evening they trashed the men’s bathroom, like, to the point of tearing out urinals. This was at our local Elks club, haha.
the class had to foot the bill for repairs, obvs, but they always had the best fundraising while we were in school so I think it was ok.
luckily my friend had already left and aside from that she had fun, mostly!
Worst that happened to me at my ten year one was I got terribly bored and felt cheated out of the money I’d paid to attend (plus the travel and hotel expense). It was a good educational experience on the dangers of growing up, though. DON’T DO IT, KIDS! Seriously, my classmates were just so boring and old. I mean, I know I’m a little bit outrageous/loud but I had a graduating class of 300 and I was the most animated person in the room. Pathetic.
I didn’t go to my ten year. I used the excuse “but I’m defending my thesis in another state the monday after the event!” but seriously I thought about going and just kind of…felt vaguely ill. you are validating all of my thoughts from five years ago.
Alternatively, the best thing that could happen is that all of your foes have become ugly and terrible and your friends have grown even more wonderful and you get cheerfully drunk late into the evening with people you haven’t seen in ages who apparently became very cool as they aged while the people who did you wrong have trouble sleeping that night. (My ten year is coming up next year and I remain apprehensive, but hopeful that this scenario will come to pass.)
My 20-year college reunion was delightful because there were like three of us who didn’t look as old and defeated as the rest, and we had a grand time going up to the formerly popular ones and acting like we’d all been tight back in the day.
26 years post high school, zero reunions attended. No regrets, a little proud in an obstinate sort of way. YMMV.
To brand-new husband of classmate “Hi, I’m [boy named X]. I’m gay but in high school I fucked your wife.” This was my friend’s reunion. If my father doesn’t throw away the next invite, I’m 100% going.
I have a feeling my experience is kind of an outlier, but my high school reunion was pretty anticlimactic. Everyone just became nice and chill; nothing petty happened. We just had a couple beers and some pizza and caught up on the past 10 years, then everyone ditched early together to go to an 80s dance party at the local bar. It was good to see that all the power our opinions used to have over each other had completely faded away.
Oh no, you never attend!
It could be boring and awkward. That’s managed to keep me away from mine.
I went to mine (10-year) for about half an hour, and nobody recognized me and everybody was like “ooh, I’m a fancy New York fashion designer,” and then the one person who did recognize me (who I’d been friends with but hadn’t kept in touch with) was like, “this blows, let’s go to trivia.” So I did, and drew some extremely inappropriate pictures. A+, would reunion again.
Don’t go, it’ll be boring and terrible. The people who were mean to you in high school are still not going to care about you. You’re going to have to look at photos of everyone’s dumb kids. Everyone’s the same except more boring and they want to talk about their boring jobs and compete to see who’s doing the best.
The ONLY thing I enjoyed about mine (the 10 year) was that a bunch of the hot dudes who were athletes in HS have started balding and gotten beer bellies and aren’t that hot anymore. But finding that out wasn’t worth the rest of the reunion.
I attended, and I began dating my closest friend from high school. We were together for 11 1/2 years after that, after a cross-country move on my part, until it became that he had completely changed value systems and preferences to become wildly incompatible with me, despite not having experienced obvious head trauma.
So, that is both good and bad.
I went to my 10-year reunion and everybody was exactly the same (and not in a good way) except that they all had kids. But I did reconnect with a few people that I liked in high school, and I was in town for Thanksgiving anyway, so I guess it was fine. Wasn’t in a big rush to go to the 15-year one though.
I’ve been DYING to tell you all this story: The property next to mine has been an awful renovation construction site for more than a year. It seems that the owner keeps hiring rounds of craigslist schmoes who just dick around all day and make things worse. But we’re right up against each other and I work from home so I’m witness to almost everything and can hear every conversation. The other day, two guys were cutting up some wood in the driveway (approximately 8 feet from where I sit). I am halfway following their conversation about how the older one met his wife:
“We were on a cruise to Mexico and I met her the first night, we just talked a lot and kissed but we didn’t really hook up… and then when we got to Mexico… I was at the whorehouse… fucking this hooker…”
So I walked over to the window and – from my living room – asked “hey guys, is this a conversation you could have somewhere else?”
They were very obviously embarrassed and I felt very good about myself. AND THEN, that evening they came to my door together with literal hats in hand to apologize. I thanked them for apologizing and couldn’t help but feel some pleasure that they might carry this shame forever.
Hats in hand! Love it.
YOU DID GOOD KID
*hands you a drink*
Ok, but I kind of want to know how the whorehouse plays into how he met his wife. Am I terrible?
So on Wednesday night I went to see Beyonce in concert with my mom, and then last night my feminist book club came over and we discussed Lemonade and drank lemonade with prosecco, and despite some/lots of anxiety and depression lately, things are pretty good.
So, what did you guys think of Lemonade?
Can I be in your book club please?
I was so impressed. I was never a huge Beyonce fan, but the scale of it made me curious and… wow. The direction and production design and editing were just glorious. The music was so far beyond my expectation. The whole thing was just gorgeous and lovely and wrenching and inspiring. I am so happy she did this and extremely pleased at what a zeitgeist it has been.
Some of the BeyHive BS has been aggravating to me, and the attacks on perceived “Beckys”, which has little to no correspondence to the messages inherent in what is ultimately, however biographical it may have been, a work of art, and a work of fiction.
🙂 I buckled down and bought it this week even though I keep telling myself I need to spend less. But then I texted a friend who has not seen it and would love it that she should come over for a viewing party so if/when she does that alone will justify the price.
A question for those who sew (sewists? quilters?):
I want to make a t-shirt quilt of old beloved t-shirts. Some websites claim you need to iron a stiff backing on them to make the quilt functional, because knits are so stretchy, and other websites claim you don’t have to and it just makes your quilt bulky; don’t bother. Which is true? opinions?
Also opinions on design/arrangement/the choice of a solid color bottom side/the desirability of a solid color to frame or alternate with graphic tee squares? I don’t like the look of regular rectangular blocks, so I already know I will cut the t-shirts into different-sized rectangles to make it more visually interesting, but I don’t want it to look hard on the eyes either. I have a range of colors, but blues and greens are probably going to be predominant.
Thanks for tips or even just design musings!
If the shirts are all-cotton, thin with age, etc – the backing is a good idea. When I’ve done them with poly-cotton shirts, I don’t bother, esp if they’re silkscreened, which adds a stiffness already.
Once you have all your squares/rectangles, throw them across the table/floor in the approximate arrangement and see if a framing color jumps out at you. I like a complementary solid or lightly-patterned color, but throw a few colors at it to see if something appeals.
Echoing dakimel on the backing. I’ve seen tee shirt quilts made without the backing and they look great for about fifteen minutes and then they sag quite tragically. I don’t think you’d need a stiff backing. Just lightweight knit interfacing would do. Heads-up, varying your square sizes will make it trickier to piece them together. Just so you know!
Thanks, dakimel and CleverManka! I will go with backing — it definitely makes sense. After all, this quilt must last!
I like piecing quilts and I’ve done it before, but have never quilted and don’t intend to (full respect to those who do!). I’m hoping to find a quilting group or quilting shop that I can pay abundant sums of money to do the laborious quilting part.
Oh yea, if you’re going to have to professionally quilted you’re probably going to want an interfacing. Maybe talk to a couple of the quilters/quilt shop owners in your area to see what they recommend? They probably do a bunch of tshirt quilts and can tell you exactly what works best! (And they may have specific requirements for how the top is made if they take the commission.)
i haven’t quilted with jersey before, but at the very least you’d have to do some adjustments to your stitch length & tightness to get your machine to deal with jersey without stretching. it can be done, but since you’ll be dealing with a bunch of different kinds, worn in different ways, you might save a world of headaches to press to interfacing instead. just make sure to use a pressing cloth so none of the [presumable] screen-printing melts.
ooh good point, thanks
So glad you posted this! I have been contemplating the same but my quilting experience is limited. Totally eavesdropping…
A lightweight iron-on interfacing is what you need! Any big fabric store will have this, it won’t be too expensive, and it will be worth it. It will make the shirt fabrics less stretchy and give them some stability for while you are sewing and longevity after.
Different size blocks will be more difficult to piece together (more wonky seams) but if you can figure out the largest size you want a block to be and then cut up the shirts to fit within that it will be easier. Like this if each colour is a different piece of shirt.
Thanks for these tips! Yes, I thought either I would do this, or i would do alternating rows of bigger and smaller squares, so that the squares in the same row together are all the same size, and the rows are obviously the same length, but the heights of the rows vary.
Any thoughts on dealing with lots of different shades of the same color? Maybe I should intersperse a narrow solid contrast color so it’s less obvious and looks intentional/attractive?
As someone who has tried to cut t-shirt fabric and had it curl up and bunch, I’d definitely suggest you do SOMETHING to the backs, especially for something like a quilt which depends on exact measurements. Maybe there’s some kind of method where you could pin the stretchy fabric to something non-stretchy while you cut it?
there isn’t, as far as I know (and I sew for a living!) – really, a fusible lightweight interfacing is the only way that it’s going to not be a hot mess/epic PITA. the more you handle knits, the more they curl.
You might also want to use a sewing machine needle for knits when you piece it. (I feel like I’m forgetting the correct name for them). The tips are rounded so they don’t make the knit fabric snag or run.
ball-point needles = essential for knits. without them, you may as well skip the sewing and go straight for the swearing/drinking part the day.
Hah, ball point needles. I knew they had a name. Thank you.
Another vote for backing – you can get some really soft interfacings. I recommend using a quilting foot for piecing to keep everything in place, and second the rec for using a jersey needle if indeed machine piecing.
For quitting, I envision stitching in the ditch between the pieces (at the seams) to preserve the t-shirt fabrics. However, if you go this route, if you are using traditional batting, you will have to account for the minimum quilting space (the space between quilting stitching lines) when you decide on the size of your pieces. One way around this is to simply use fleece of whatever weight you want as the inner layer instead of batting – it won’t fall apart no matter how far apart your quilting lines are.
You should absolutely update us with pics!
that’s sweet — I will update with pics! Probably on reddit, though, since by the time I’m done it will be well past July. I’m planning to hand-piece.
My grandmother started me out on embroidery at age 5 under my great-grandma’s supervision, so I am pretty good at maintaining good tension and making even stitches…it was my mother who specialized in sewing with the machine and she’s no longer alive to help with that, but besides, for a memory quilt, even a t-shirt memory quilt, there is not much wrong with going slow and hand-piecing, I think. While listening to podcasts! It even makes it easier to do a complex design because you have plenty of time to make sure you’ve got it right. Really looking forward to the project.
That is so awesome! I love hand quilting, but have never hand pieced. So looking forward to seeing your creation. 🙂
I love hand sewing. I’ve never hand pieced a quilt, I am hand piecing squares for a crazy quilt.
I have no sewing skills at all, but I am the proud owner of a beautiful and serviceable t-shirt quilt, so I can report back from the perspective of What Worked!
My mom made this quilt, and before she got started she talked at length with a neighbor lady who had made such a quilt and also owned a quilt shop. The neighbor lady recommended her favorite sort of interfacing, so all the t-shirt squares have some sort of backing so they don’t roll or fray. They are not stiff, just sturdy. Mom decided to use a bunch of same-size squares, although she did end up frankensteining together a couple of squares when there wasn’t enough fabric (as with a tank top) or if there were holes or other damage to the shirts. Then she sewed everything to a soft but sturdy blanket.
The shirts are all different colors with a navy blue background, and I think it looks great. It’s wonderfully warm in winter but not terribly heavy, and it is highly washable, which is great because my cats get their fur all over it. I’m happy that I can use and wash this wonderful gift without undoing my mom’s handiwork, so that may be a vote in favor of all the support structures–interfacing, background blanket–that you can put in there!
Reminders of where to find toasties now and once this haven is gone from us:
A bunch of the commentariat has moved to one or both of these places:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ToastCrumbs
And the toastieslack channel. To join that one, email ppyajunebug [at] gmail [dot] com and request an invite. The invitation will tell you how to sign up, and the channels you’re automatically subscribed to include one on how to do slack.
But Reddit is so ugly to look at, I just can’t. Or am I doing it wrong? I find it visually depressing. Help!
No, it’s rough. We have some CSS wizards who are doing what they can to make the Toast corner of Reddit a little prettier.
I am in the Slack channel and it’s like a big internet party with only awesome people.
I know I didn’t get invited, but Reddit is just… so… full of terrible young men
Wait, to Reddit? Everyone’s invited! Come join us. I can pretty safely promise that the Toastie bits will not be full of terrible young men.
Thanks!
People are so nice here!
And if you mean to slack, just follow the directions above!
Thank you!
I received a Toast Postcard from electric_indigo. They wrote a compliment, but that’s not even the best part. Y’all, electric_indigo drew flowers for me!
electric_indigo drew a rose and a camellia. For me. Aww!
that’s so sweet!
I loved your yellow rose – of course I’m too insane (DID I MENTION? Oh, yeah, like 90 times) to take the time to email you and say so. But your Toast Post for me was excellent.
That’s delightful!
Lovely!
My relator just stopped by for paperwork & mentioned they scheduled the photographer to come on Wednesday, and I thought I had until Friday to deal with the rest of the visible piles of clutter and repaint that wonky wall and all those other things.
Unhappy.
On the up side, my kid is playing Schroeder in the high school production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and opening night went great and he was over the moon. And my other kid returned from college and is actually doing all the moving-related tasks I’ve assigned to the rest of the family.
It took me a while to join the Friday open thread, because seeing a thousand comments in just an hour or two was pretty intimidating.
I am glad I joined these last couple of months, though, and I will miss you all (in this space, anyway, I know we’re moving to new spaces). It’s been so moving to check in every week and see the different life changes we’re going through: school or work troubles, health queries, graduation celebration, job searching or acquisition, marriage and pregnancy and babies, and of course death too.
I was really looking forward to someday talking about an exciting date I’d had, and maybe something more serious, or just working through relationship issues, but that’s all quite unlikely now in the next month and ten days. 🙁 I hope to be able to have those conversations with you all in our new spaces. (I’m on Slack, same username, haven’t quite gotten into the subreddit yet.)
I completed my fruit bowl collection much to the peril of the fridge! (they were a free gift when you bought 2 cartons of juice)
Those are wonderous!
I love them!
Very important Toastie Tattoo idea right here. Everybody gets a Toast tattoo like the Dark Mark, so when the Toast rises again we can all gather together like the misandrist witches we are.
NGL I’ve thought about getting a little toast tattoo with “a willing foe, and sea room” somewhere on me.
But where?
Hello, yes, I also am planning to get “a willing foe, and sea room” tattooed! I’m also unsure of placement, though. I have a bunch of random shit on my right arm that I’m hoping to tie together with a geometric background soon, so I don’t want the text to get lost in that; I already have a full chest piece so that’s out. My left arm’s saved for a sleeve in the planning stages. Augh, decisions…
I’m chuckling at the thought that’d you’d call other toasties the same way the dark mark works. MY TOAST! IT BURNS
YES
I’ve been seriously considering getting a tattoo of “misandry” in the most beautiful script imagining in a haze of post toast grief.
Add in magic toast calling powers, and I’m sold.
i am thisclose to getting a chestpiece of a ship name MISANDRY.
“a willing foe, and sea room” is yay good, but I’d probably go with “Remember that you always have the option to take to the sea”
This is amazing though
Alopecia advice??
Any other Toasties have experience with your head being covered in bald spots? With feeling intense fear every time there’s even the gentlest of breezes? With neurotically touching your scalp and tenderly caressing said bald spots, hoping that somehow, someway, during the last 5 minutes you haven’t touched them, a tiny bit of stubble has somehow inexplicably erupted?
It’s been two years since I started playing whack-a-mole with my cranium – I get cortisone shots every 4-6 weeks, did a round of oral steroids, and now the doc has prescribed a super expensive topical thing that may or may not work. I drink a spinach smoothie every morning (yum.) and pop supplements like they’re peanut-butter M&Ms… All after covering my shining patches with makeup. With every spot that starts to grow in, presto! Two more magically appear.
Please somebody tell me something that worked for you? Even just for psychological aspect? If I could somehow stop thinking about this EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY that would be super! (Oh, and also grow more hair. That would also be super.)
Hair was the one thing I always had. Now my antidepressant is making it fall out. You can see my scalp all over. I wish I could say I had something that worked but I am in the same boat and it’s no fun.
Ugh, I feel you! Well, the one thing that’s given me peace of mind so far is make up – I went to Sephora and they gave me an eyebrow powder that matches my hair colour. I just merrily blend it in every morning, and it gives the illusion of more hair.
But, like, wigs are so hot right now, right? RIGHT?!
I have lost all the hair on my head twice and I’m happy to discuss all things alopecia! Both times around I just shaved my head and wore a wig. A+ would recommend.
Feel free to email me at kellrowland [at] gmail [dot] com if you want to chat!
Paging the Toast librarians! (Which is everyone, right?)
Is it totally crazy to be thinking about getting an MLS in a couple of years? I’m currently a SAHM and am hoping to have another child, but am trying to figure out a plan for going back to work when they’re a year or two old. I worked in a library in college (where I got a Bachelor of Music degree), and more recently worked as a legal assistant. I have the kind of very organized mind that remembers everything, makes connections quickly, and I’m also pretty adaptable. I think I’d be very well suited to work in the field of information science. I’m doing a lot of research and am starting to fall in love with the idea.
I’m very aware of the dismal job market for librarians right now, and it looks like it probably won’t improve by the time
I get there. My plan would be to do an online course and try to work or volunteer in a library concurrently to get some experience and maybe network. Since I’d like to stay in my area (Portland), I would be very flexible as far as the type of job, and
I think I would be happy with/good at a variety of positions. However, I’d love to be able to advance eventually, so I believe the MLS would be essential for that. I’m lucky enough to have a partner who works so that could be a “buffer” while I’m trying to get that elusive professional job.
What say you, Toasties? Should I try to beat the odds?
So dismal! Try to get a job first, even if it’s low on the totem pole.
You can invest in an MLS *eventually* but you don’t need it now. If your workplace suggests that an MLIS is a good idea, get them to support you, pay for part of it, give you an accommodating work schedule, and bring you back to full-time after you graduate / give you an immediate promotion.
Without a workplace commitment like that (or VERY trustworthy contacts who are promising you a job elsewhere), I wouldn’t invest in the degree.
If however, by “professional” you’re thinking “academic librarian,” understand that that is *quite* elusive and will probably require multiple Masters degrees, in your job’s subject area, or in education or technology. You will want other library experience first.
Get to know some other librarians first (try Twitter, Tumblr, etc). Drop a line to the Oregon Library Association and ask if you can be introduced to some Portland librarians who will take you out for coffee and/or let you sit in on their meetings and events. It’s important to get exposure to the breadth of information work and get some concrete goals and skill-lists down before you pay any money for any education or professional development. Go in knowing exactly what you want to get out of it.
There are also lots of free webinars and online chats you can attend! (My group, for art librarianship students and new professionals, is hosting one such webinar tomorrow!)
Thank you for your reply! This is exactly the kind of information I’m looking for. Luckily I am not in a hurry and can consider this carefully.
By “professional” I just mean any job that requires an MLS. It’s my understanding that there are many jobs in the library that do not require one, but most of the more involved ones do. It does sound like getting a job first will be helpful no matter what.
I am going to try to get in touch with others in my area (like Meredith Farkas of the Information Wants to be Free blog) and see what kinds of information is available. I just went to the library and got a few books as well (lol). The OLA has a mentorship program but I think it’s for library school graduates. It won’t hurt to try!
Thanks for the information!
Meredith Farkas will absolutely give you the straight goods. Excellent choice.
(Also remember that you can a technician’s diploma and be set for a large portion of those “professional” jobs, especially school librarianship and a lot of metadata jobs. It will cost you less and get you into some indispensable job where you can then negotiate for all that workplace support in MLIS-getting that I mentioned before.)
I’m actually in Portland and in the last semester of my MLS. So I can’t really help on tips about whether it’s worth it or how to find jobs. As far as schools, there’s really only a few options I know of if you stay here:
-U of Washington does a mostly online program with one weekend a semester in person, but you have to pay out of state tuition.
-Emporia State University (which is the one I’m doing), they are also mostly online but twice a semester you do weekend classes and they rent space out of PSU for those. I haven’t been completely thrilled with some of the things about the school (there was a recent racial discrimination accusation by a husband and wife professor duo at the Emporia location, in the end the school investigation said there was no wrongdoing, but they also told the professors to retract or they’d be fired. Which is really shady to me. They wouldn’t retract and have left.), but the academic advisor here in Portland is fantastic. They also have a really great study abroad program for visiting libraries in other countries (I did two weeks in Serbia) where basically everything is paid for but your meals. It’s a full two years, even if going summer semester. They’ve got three tracks if you want to do a concentration in a specific area: management, archives and young adult/children’s. (I’m doing archives, which kind of surprisingly so are most of the people in my cohort)
-San Jose State University in California is all online. I’ve heard several librarians here who say they went there, but don’t really know anything about their program or cost.
As far as places to try for volunteering, both Washington and Multnomah county libraries takes volunteers. But I’d recommend trying Cedar Mill library (in Wash co) by St Vincent’s hospital. They are a nonprofit library and are in an unincorporated part of the city and as such, they rely heavily on volunteers (they have only 35 paid employees at their two branches, but something like 700 volunteers) as they don’t have city funds supporting them. So they always need volunteers in just about any kind of capacity. Generally they just ask for a commitment of two hours a week. I’ve been volunteering about two years in both the Circulation department and in Tech Services, and really enjoy the people I’ve worked with. If you do work in Circulation, the volunteer coordinator there is great, she has been really encouraging and helpful, and always passes along any info she hears about job openings. If you have any interest in archives at all, Oregon Jewish Museum is where I’ve been doing my practicum/internship. They’re small so may not always need people (although they often have a backlog on transcribing interviews from their oral history project, which some people have been able to do from home), but it’s been really fascinating. Oregon Historical Society supposedly takes volunteers, but I’ve never had their volunteer coordinator respond to an inquiry.
Thanks for all that great information! I’m definitely going to try to see what kind of volunteering or part-time jobs
I can do to get a feel for different types of work and institutions.
Best of luck with your job search! Are you hoping to stay in this area or are you willing to relocate?
I’d absolutely love to stay in the Portland area; but if I can at least make it work to stay in the PNW, I’ll be happy.
Hi Toast, I have a question. At what point should I start being concerned that I don’t have a lot to do at my new job? I’ve been here 3 weeks, and everyone is lovely and it’s super fun, but it’s starting to weird me out that I can barely fill the day, even with *cough* reading the Toast throughout. I’ve seen no signs that I’m missing anything or slacking off, but…why are they paying me money?
On a completely unrelated note, I finally got a binder that fits and I’ve been wearing it for a couple days and I am uncertain what I think of it! I dunno, more thoughts to come after I’ve had it longer, maybe. Does anyone else have thoughts on binders? (Not the office-supply kind, as cool as those are.)
It’s totally normal to not be busy yet. You don’t know enough yet to fill your own free time when you have it, and no one who can assign you specific stuff has the time to do that. Keep asking for work and observing what the office’s baseline level of slackitude is!
We hired someone for a role six months ago and she’s had very little to do, and is constantly asking myself and another colleague if this is normal and what tasks she can do. We hired her because she fulfills a role that we need during busy times (which in my industry aren’t at consistent times), but there isn’t always a lot to do. Because of the nature of the job, we can’t just hire someone when we need work done and need to keep someone in this role on staff at all times. Her job is certainly not on the line even though she has very little work, and it is 100% expected that she will slack off but will perform her job when needed.
So all I’m saying is this could be totally benign and nothing to worry about.
Thank you for confirming that this is a thing, as I am in that exact situation myself!
Oh, Toasties, I said an embarrassing thing to my mother-in-law and I keep remembering it and feeling really dumb. I’ve known her less than a year and don’t know her super well, for context. Mr ZNF and I were visiting his parents and I eas showing my MIL some photos, and in one, I forgot I was talking to my husband’s mom and pointed out that in the photo my hand is in Mr. Z’s back pocket. Like, I’m sorta grabbing his butt. I laughed over that detail when lookig at the photo with my sister earlier, so without thinking I pointed it out to MIL and then immediately almost died of embarrassment. I don’t know what to do and I feel very silly about it. Is reminding my MIL that I am (obviously) attracted to her son weird? Is she going to think I am a ridiculous person? I could use advice/commiseration/stories of when you did something similar with your in-laws. Please?
If she is usually a lovely person, she probably found it charming and encouraging!
She is! I just don’t know her well & am still tryingto make a good impression. 🙂
She probably suspects you are attracted to him already.
Personally, I would be charmed by a daughter-in-law confiding in me how much she loved my offspring.
Regardless, if you let it ride, your future behavior will work to shape whatever impression that gave.
Thank you!
I don’t think that’s weird! He is your partner and you are presumably attracted to him; if I were her, I would find it endearing and not weird at all. (In the first few years of our relationship my partner and I were constantly touching each other in public, and my parents gave us a lot of good-natured teasing, but nothing more.)
My triumph this week was reading that AAM letter about the boss that crumpled cups and rolled eyes when meeting something of even the slightest inconvenience, and……………………it me.
I’m working, through mediation, to stop with knee-jerk comments that I regret. So, now I’m extending that to paying attention to my nonverbal reactions.
Hooray, self-improvement?
I read that wondering if someone had written in about me too. I will work to change too! Thanks for the encouragement!
I got toastpost yesterday! The llama card has a pop-up llama inside. Neither of these people are commenters, but I hope they see this! Thanks!
Today’s mail just came and now I have more! Both NYC themed! I will write back to you all!!
Toast friends, I had a baby! He is my second;with the first I was awestruck and kind of passive, but this time I was prepared to be fierce and powerful. I recognize that my body is amazing and part of who I am. I grew a human being inside of me and pushed him out through a hole that’s usually the size of a quarter. Now my body is making milk to feed him. Amazing.
Here’s a quote by influential midwife Ina May Gaskin:
“There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ, they would brag about it. So should we.”
Congrats! Your body is amazing! Uteri are amazing! Well done. Now.. SLEEP WHENEVER YOU CAN.
Congratulations! i’m so glad you had an empowering experience. I love that quote by Ina May!
I am due with my first in August, and am really hoping I can channel the fierce and powerful when it’s my time.
Congratulations to you! Also, welcome, Small Human!
So I just got home from work and my front door is broken. It looks like someone smacked the lock through to break it and my housemate was home all day, and heard someone in the house but assumed it was our other housemate. Other HM says she hasn’t been home since yesterday.
However nothing is gone? My room is right by the front door and full of laptops and tech, but nothing was touched.
So instead of coming home and having my usual weed and wine and forgetting about the world, I have to deal with my landlord and also can’t leave my house.
I am so sorry, that is a very disturbing experience. I hope your landlord sorts things out quickly and you can get back to your world-forgetting.
Oh my god HONEY WHAT. That is terrifying and I hope it gets resolved soon. I shall attempt to do my best W&W indulgence in your stead when I get home this afternoon.
So apparently I’m the only one not worried about this, beyond the hassle of getting the door fixed. I’m still not really sure there was some in the house, I think the door just broke cause it’s shitty and old.
However my housemates are freaking out, one has called the police and the other is insisting the landlord fix it tonight or she’s calling an emergency locksmith. The landlord is a bit crappy, so he might not be able to fix till tomorrow. Obviously it’s not ideal, but I’ll be here all night anyway, so I’m not super worried.
I don’t know if it’s cause I’ve been in a lot worse situations or cause this is just crisis overload, but I’m just not bothered by this. Like if we’d actually been robbed I’d be pissed, buy since nothing is gone, let’s just get the door sized and get on with our lives
Oh that’s awful. Hugs and hugs.
I’m so glad you’re safe.
That’s so creepy. That happened to me once in college (my roommate was home, I wasn’t) and it felt like a huge violation even though nothing bad happened. Sending you internet hugs and hopes for a good locksmith to come and fix things up.
Oh MAN that is so so so scary and weird. I’m glad you and your housemates are okay, and nothing appears to be missing.
Something similar happened to me at my old place – I got home, door was wide open, roommate not home, nothing missing but my CAT and it was so so so freaky. (Cat was found at my downstairs neighbor’s apartment, very confused but okay). We never learned anything more and nothing else happened, so :/
Hopefully the business end of things will wrap up quickly, and you will be able to get back to your evening routine posthaste. It’s an unsettling experience no matter what else happens though, so please take care of yourself in the meantime.
You poor thing!!! What a hassle, at the very least. I am glad it is not upsetting you beyond the aggravation of getting things fixed, though. Considering the possibility of the broken door as a result of age/treatment is very pragmatic of you.
It was my brother’s birthday this week. He’s been gone ten years now, and his birthday is still harder than his death anniversary. Then had one of those godawful rip-the-band-aid-off therapy sessions with my partner. We have been really distant of late so there was zero connection or support once it was over. With processing The Toast closing down as well, I have been in an all-around bad spot. This is all on the heels of being fired (without cause, thanks) and my grandmother’s death. I am just over it. I want a vacation from life. My ability to cope using humor and gratitude and focusing on new goals is faltering a bit.
Plus, sheesh, I broke my big toe, and it sounds like not a big deal, and it should be not a big deal, but wow is it annoying. I will not give gory details but it was a bad break and I managed to sprain it *and* do nerve damage *AND* destroy my Prince inspired pedicure while I was breaking it, and it is rendering me much less mobile that usual. It’s causing all kinds of issues with my other joints because it screws with my gait so much. And the protective boot is about two inches off the ground so my hips are just in agony after even a short while walking in it. I have jerryrigged an alternative, but, man, it is frustrating and annoying and painful and not improving my overall state. Then about a week in, I was going without the boot and my toddler stomped on it accidentally and, wow. Literal seeing of stars.
Blargh, is my summary.
In triumphs, though, I did make my way to Twitter. Many lovely Toasties and interesting things. It’s a little like watching a thought river go past and occasionally there are magnificent bits of beauty, lots of random, everyday humor and connection, and the occasional dead body or bit of toxic waste. It’s an interesting phenomenon. I don’t think it’s a long term home for me, but it’s been interesting and something I’m glad I saw up close. I’ve been reading a lot lately about MMORPG gaming, and it’s fascinating to look at common patterns and connections in internet behavior and online cohorts.
Oh honey that is a LOT of unhappy shit going on for you right now. I’m glad you’ve found some happy places, even if they’re temporary.
I am a Weeble. Wobble, but don’t fall down. Moments this week have felt close, and even a little tempting, but, in the larger scheme, life is still darn good and this will pass and challenges are an opportunity, etc. Once I offer up a few more lost souls to Hecate, I am sure the ship will right itself.
Honestly, I just lose track of how much chronic pain and health issues mean less bandwidth for emotional processing and get massively impatient with myself for not feeling better/being better faster. I am used to just ignoring not feeling or doing well and continuing so I fail to do the part of self-care where you actually check in and assess and take appropriate steps. Live and learn, though. I like to think I am getting better at it gradually.
You’re halfway there just recognizing that you need (and deserve!) the self-care. Gradual change is frustrating but still good.
You are lovely. Thank you.
<3
The trick to the boot is to find a shoe that is the same height, then your hips will hurt a lot less. Foot trouble sucks!
I saw something like that on Amazon but i keep telling myself it’s a waste of money because any second now i will be 100% better, right??
When I’m in those situations, I ask myself, what would I pay to feel better right now?
Maybe get something cheap from Payless? It’s worth it, I promise.
That’s incredibly practical. My capacity for logic and practicality go right out the window when considering my own pain and well-being. Thanks for suggesting that in those terms. Brilliant. *hug*
When you get out of the boot, your muscles may have adjusted so that one of your legs is shorter than the other. (This happened to me after two months in a boot post-ankle break.) Massage and/or physical therapy can help with that.
All of that sucks, but I can really relate to the problems with your hips and gait. Due to an undiagnosed staph infection many years ago, part of the sacro-iliac joint in my right hip has been eaten away, and now is also filled with arthritis. I always always limp a little bit and “compensate” for that. I do yoga and have learned that I HAVE to have a massage at least once a month because otherwise my body gets so out of whack. It’s not permanent for you, but you should maybe talk to a doctor or chiropractor about things you could do to help you deal with the lopsidedness you are dealing with right now. Many hugs.
Ohhhh, bless you. That sounds positively excruciating.
I’ve been downplaying the hip and back and knee issues, thinking of this as temporary, but that’s a really good idea. I actually am madly in love with Feldenkrais work and think I may pursue some of that if i can find someone local. I would recommend it to you as well. I have had a lot of luck improving pain due to long-term joint issues. I have no idea why I didn’t think this was worth it for myself, now.
I am glad yoga and massage have been working for you. Hip pain is really disruptive! Sending you good thoughts for ongoing wellness.
Ooooof. I am thinking of you, Miss Catherine, and sending you warm, gentle Toasthugs.
That is so kind. Sending you those lovely, appreciated, much-needed hugs right back.
Long-time lurker hoping to get some excellent Toast advice!
I was unexpectedly diagnosed with a relatively rare disorder about 2 months ago. While my prognosis is unclear, it’s possibly chronic and this episode will likely take 6-12 months to resolve. Now that the super scary symptoms are managed, I’m still trying to adjust to all of this.
Toasties with chronic or long-term diseases, is there anything you wish you’d know when you were first diagnosed? Tips for being your best advocate?
One thing I need to be better about is tracking my symptoms. Before all this I tended to ignore things as “just being human.” Now I need to actually pay attention to all that! I’m struggling to develop a good system to do this. I’d love something that could live on my phone and a cloud.
I’m also considering replacing one of my doctors. Any advice on knowing when to do this and managing that process?
I’m American and have…not great insurance (but at least I have insurance!) so any advice on navigating that nonsense is also greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
I don’t know what your medication situation is, but if you see more than one doctor or if dosages change periodically, I definitely recommend keeping those written down. I keep an index card in my wallet with the current dosage of every medicine I’m on just in case I get into a situation where I need it.
I take Many Meds (tho less than a year ago scoooore) and keep a document on a computer at home w/ all my meds. With my husband’s help, I update it after each doc appt to ensure it’s accurate, then stick a copy in my wallet with the date and MEDS LIST scrawled on it. (Doc phobia means I don’t always remember, hence assistance.) It makes it a lot easier.
Ditto here, though I keep the list on Dropbox and look it up on my phone when I’m at a doctor’s office. It’s really good to have it in your wallet, though, if there’s any chance you may end up in an ER without it being easy for you to do things like mess about with your phone.
Probably the best thing I did when I was first diagnosed was listen to my mother. She told me to go out, buy a three-ring binder and some tabs and to compile every piece of medical paperwork/test result/referral letter/dvds of scans/literally everything in this binder. You can organize it however makes the most sense to you, just make sure to have everything in there. And bring it to every appointment with every doctor you have (or at the very least, to the initial appointments with new docs.)
Not only has this helped me remember the timeline of everything (brain fog really zaps that kind of memory) and help me keep track of patterns in my illness, but my corral of doctors is always very impressed and thankful to have everything in one place. It’s kind of clunky and definitely not cloud-based, but I’ve found the medical sphere isn’t really caught up to the cloud and will likely give you paper reports anyway.
As for replacing a doctor, do it as soon as you can. It’s important – especially if this is a chronic thing that won’t resolve over time – to be in the care of people you trust and who have your best health in mind. If that’s not what you’re getting with your current doc, that’s more than enough reason to explore others. Your health is important and deserves the best and most thoughtful care you can find.
This is SUCH a good idea. I think I have a project for the weekend.
Your mother is genius! I will definitely be doing this.
Change your doctor as soon as you can, if you have any feeling that they’re not qualified enough, or that you don’t have a rapport. If your condition is chronic, this is a doctor you may be seeing regularly for quite a while. Also, pay attention to their staff – if the staff is difficult, uninterested or unresponsive, that can be a problem. If you live in a major metro area, see if any of the big teaching or research hospitals have specialists in your condition.
I’ve been logging symptoms for multiple autoimmune disorders for several years now. After several stops and starts, I’ve settled on Evernote. I’m a huge fan. While I do keep paper records as well, Evernote is where I keep a running log of symptoms, reactions to meds, emotions, notes from my doctor’s visits, etc. Evernote has a lot of capabilities, and is on just about every platform out there.
If your doctors have it, I’d also recommend signing up for their version of the online medical portal (MyChart, etc.). My doctors are scattered across two states, and being hooked into those systems not only allows me to communicate with them by email, but allows me to print out summaries of visits, lab reports, etc. It also allows you to save a copy of your medical record to pdf. When I travel, I have a USB stick with that pdf in my wallet, and label it “medical records.” My travelling companions know where it is, just in case.
As for insurance, read everything. I get overwhelmed looking at medical stuff on a daily basis, so I set aside time every few weeks to go over everything the insurance company has sent me in that time period, and tackle any issues then. Reading those explanation of benefits reports that they send is critical. Often, if insurance won’t cover something, you can ask your doctor to re-code the procedure and try again.
Good luck with everything.
Oh, bb, that stinks. I’m about to be offline for probably the rest of the day, but my best advice is take it easy on yourself. Don’t overdo it. Don’t try to push yourself thinking if you mentally ignore the problem your body will come along for the ride. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES! The last thing you want is chronic fatigue piled on top of something else.
I document all my shit on my LiveJournal because I am old and set it my ways and that was easier than finding something new. But as long as you get in the habit of documenting everything (and I mean everything), it doesn’t matter. Consistency is more important than method.
Best wishes!
#1 – When you think of something you could use help with, write it down and bring it up when you have a friend asking if there’s anything they can do to help. Some people say this just to be polite, but many people mean it, and I know that many of the things on my list are not onerous: come have dinner/watch tv with me at my place and don’t judge the mess, give me escapist reading recommendations, give me tv recommendations.
#2 – If at all possible, find a group of people who have this condition/similar conditions to talk to, either in person or online. Sometimes this can be pretty generic: for example, I’m in group for people who have chronic pain, and while we all have pretty different conditions, it is so incredibly helpful to talk to them, and they frequently have practical how-to-cope-with-symptom-x suggestions that the doctors just don’t have.
#3 – If this hasn’t come up yet, talk to your medical team about exercise/movement/how you can be active while this episode is going on. This may mean something completely different than the sort of exercise you do when you’re not having an episode, but whatever it means for you, physical activity can help with your brain and your mood as well as your body, so it’s good to try to figure out what that’s going to look like while this is going on.
#4 – Be very kind to yourself, and consider keeping a list somewhere of ways to be kind to yourself that you can reference on bad days. When you feel terrible, it’s hard to think of things that might help at all, so sometime it’s nice having a little checklist that includes things like “put on your favorite music/comedy show” or “read this webcomic” along with some logistical things like “make sure you have taken your meds, and have you eaten a reasonable meal today?”
Sorry to hear that you’re having to deal with this. Jedi hugs if you want them, and best of luck.
Keep thorough notes. Every doctor visit, all the questions that occur to you between visits, any changes. If it is not too stressful or overload, even having a daily journal to quickly assess you condition and any major things happening or changes so you can track how different things interplay.
Be kind to yourself. Living with lowered expectations because I can accomplish less is something I still struggle with. Personal value as a human has always so been performative to me that having to deal with being capable of so much less was almost harder than the illness itself. I wish I had had the perspective to start at the beginning in developing a different system of self-worth, and learned patience with myself. You can only do what you can do, and it has to be enough. So finding ways to make that work are important. Find someone in your life who is willing to be that voice of reason that keeps you both realistic and self-loving. I found it hard to forgive myself for being sick, so having someone there to do it for me has helped.
There is a book called How To Be Sick and I do not recall the author but it might be worth a read. Especially if you have an inclination towards Buddhism in any way, philosophically or religiously. I do not, but it was still valuable to me.
As to swapping doctors, I have never felt like I left anyone’s care too early but I have definitely left some too late. I swapped OBs at 36 weeks, so, all kinds of things are possible. I recommend getting your records before you switch so no one jerks you around about it. Doctors can be really arrogant and fragile about that stuff.
And to add to that, if you keep a journal of your symptoms, make sure you give a copy to your doctor. Don’t give anyone the original. My doctor asked if he could have it to make copies and would give the original back to me next visit….and they threw the original away. Without actually getting copies. Apparently it wasn’t important.
Very belated thanks for all this excellent advice! I realized I especially needed the reminders to be kind to myself; I have not been doing a great job of that lately!
I lived through my interview and I hope I did well enough to make it to the next round and uuuuugh
Well done!! Now treat yo’self!!!
Good job!
Triumphs this week:
Yesterday, I correctly identified the NPR music choice as Boccherini (tbf, Boccherini is quite distinctive, even if I was briefly thrown off by the Spanish flair). I had a driveway moment in the office parking lot to make sure, and yup, I was totally right.
Having learned from last Friday’s #ToastWake problems (god, was it only a week ago?), I bought two bottles of wine this week, so I am prepared for all future Wine Forts.
And then the sun came out yesterday! It was seriously starting to get like an endless Bronte novel, and the excitement of the rain had definitely worn off. But now my body will be able to synthesize adequate amounts of vitamin D again!
Oh, well done on the music! I’m not very familiar with Boccherini but I really like what I’ve heard.
I have a CD of his cello sonatas. But yeah, I felt pretty good about myself.
Do you perchance live in DC? Because THANK GOD THE SUN.
Central VA. I genuinely feel at least 60% better today than I did yesterday.
Toasties, this week has been really shitty and for the first time in a long time I’ve felt like I need to leave non-profit work and the social services all together. I’m finding it incredibly difficult to handle my functional role and my programmatic role this week–I work in fundraising but also serve as a mentor/coach to a group of students enrolled in our program–and have been disappointed and saddened by the lack of support for staff. What we do is hard and emotionally draining and I hit my cap on emotional labor output by Tuesday. I reached out for help, didn’t get any. It’s just tough to be told all the time how important our work is, how we have to take care of ourselves outside of work so we can do our best for the students, and then when you finally reach out for help you’re told to “deal with it,” as if reaching out for help isn’t…dealing with it?
And my manager, who I usually respect and like, has been so incredibly unhelpful and mean this week. Repeatedly telling me I’m not meeting deliverables that weren’t communicated to me, telling me our ED doesn’t like me (how is that helpful???), and just making snarky comments about dumb shit all week. She was on my ass this morning and I had to walk away because I felt like I was going to cry. I love this organization and I believe very strongly in their mission, but I’m starting to think I’d be a much better resource if I had a private sector job that paid well and I could just be a mentor on the side and donate money. Has anyone else dealt with this? I feel so conflicted; like I’m doing really great, important work, but I also feel like I’m being taken advantage of in some way and that I am burning the fuck out.
In happier news, I’m an aunt now! Baby is perfect and adorable and I love him dearly and can’t wait to meet him. That has been the highlight of my week and my one savior. Every time I got sad I stared at his picture for a while and felt at peace.
That is a sucky work week, lady. Damn. I am so sorry you are feeling unsupported and unappreciated. I wish i could help. You’re doing hard work, and it’s impossible to do indefinitely without major support. And what is UP without your manager this week? Maybe she was also having a bad week and hopefully will be back on track and taking care of things next week?
Oooh, that sucks so much. In my experience this is a real problem in non-profit work in general, the belief that because staff are committed to the mission they should be willing to make ridiculous personal sacrifices for it. I really hope things turn back around for you next week, but if they don’t and this is a pattern, it sounds like you’ve thought of ways to continue supporting something that is important to you while also taking care of yourself. I hope your weekend is an oasis for you! And congratulations on aunt-hood!!!
Toasties, I need your help!
I’m looking for some ideas on feminist 101 articles to share in a professional setting. I recently had a conversation with a coworker who “struggles” with the idea of identifying as a feminist. There are valid critiques of feminism to be made, of course (lack of intersectionality, inclusion, and recognition of varied identities/experiences etc.) but the concerns expressed by my colleague were primarily about alienating men and/or ignoring their needs.
I wouldn’t be so bothered by this were it not for the fact that thinking and talking about gender equality is very relevant to what we do on a day-to-day basis. My colleague’s heart is in the right place, so I think a solid article or two on this topic might do the trick. Any suggestions?
What about “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”? That ones about privilege but I think it’s generally helpful. John Scalzi does some good bits about feminism from a male perspective, which in my experience works better for people who are struggling because they feel like men are ignored.
That’s a great point. Looking up the John Scalzi pieces now – thank you!
Jessica Valenti’s books are pretty good feminism 101.
Oh, good idea – thank you!
So I reacted to last week’s news in the way I always react to bad news, which is hiding and pretending it isn’t happening, and I am sorry for leaving you all in the past week, I miss The Toast already, I will see you in all future Toast-derived venues.
BUT. It is one week until WisCon40, the intersectional feminist science fiction and fantasy convention, and I am SO PSYCHED. There’s going to be a Hamilton singalong! The Vid Party! TWO separate panels on asexuality! Readings! Speeches! Desserts! Fancy drinks! Sumana Harihareswara hosting the Tiptree Auction! Please tell me there are going to be Toasties there, it is going to be awesome.
(Also they just announced that Friday and Monday admission, the con’s half-days, is going to be ZERO DOLLARS, so if you’re in the Madison, Wisconsin area over Memorial Day weekend you should definitely come to the Concourse Hotel and check out some of the awesomeness.)
WisCon has been one of my goals for like ten years now. Sigh. One day, one day…
Is it always Memorial Day weekend, I assume? I need to make it one of these years; I’m not that far away.
It is! Which I know is hard, there’s a lot going on that weekend for everyone.
The Burgomaster has mentioned us going to WisCon. If we make it next year, perhaps we can have a Toastie meet up! (I refuse to say “ex-Toastie” since I will never be an ex-Toastie)
do eeeeet and absolutely tell me when you do, I would love to meet you in person!
Holy shit-snacks, that sounds amazing! Do you know what day the Hamilton sing-a-long is going to be on? I can’t swing the whole weekend, but I could definitely drive up for a day trip. Are any Toasties doing a meetup during the con?
IT IS AMAZING. The Hamilton sing-along (and panel discussion!) is on Friday night at 9, so you could definitely drop in. (You do have to pick up a badge at registration, but they can tell you where to go. Other fabulous Friday panels: Nonstandard Pronouns in SF/F and Real Life, Body Positivity and the Disabled Body, Let’s Judge a Book By Its Cover)
Hot damn! I am definitely going then, those panels sound awesome and right up my alley! Thanks for the 411 🙂
Yay! I hope you have fun. And if you want to meet up there, feel free to drop me a comment or an email at this address at gmail.
I’d love to meet up! I’ll drop you an email and we’ll figure it out from there. Yay for meeting real life Toasties!
My super amazing writing friend has a story in the current issue of Apex magazine! It is creepy sci-fi and I feel special because I helped her with the initial workshopping of it! http://www.apex-magazine.com/the-behemoth-beaches…
She’s a seriously amazing person irl and she never makes me feel bad for slacking on my writing because grad school.
I am extremely sad that The Toast is closing? slowing down? in July. But it has given me the opportunity to follow a lot of kickass Toasties on twitter! #silverlining
In Dad-related news, I’m going to see Bruce Springsteen again in September!! This’ll be my…. 5th Bruce concert, I’m pretty sure, and 100% of them are because I got all my obsessive fannish genes from my father. I love it.
My dad’s entire family is from the NJ and he grew up spending summers basically in Asbury Park, so I definitely grew up a fan of Bruce and with a healthy respect, but now I’m dating a superfan (he has the truest dad music taste) and it’s a whole new world. I went to my first Bruce concert with him a couple months ago and it was like his 6th? 7th? It was a lot of fun!
Also we live in CA and he’s seriously considering going to the Chicago show in the fall and trying to convince me to fly to Chicago with him to see Bruce.
I didn’t see one yet so I’m going to go out on a limb and start one off – cat thread!
Sometimes Nathan cat naps like a tiny old French Canadian church lady & it’s objectively the best.
[edited to fix accidental sidewaysness]
I left Klaas-Jan on the couch under a blanket, as he does, and I came back to this:
oh! my! goodnesssss!!! [whole row of heart eyes emojis]
I may have squeaked a little when I came upstairs. He is always adorable (unless he’s yelling at me hours before I want to get up in the morning) but that was just the most adorable.
Also my parents recently adopted a stray and he’s the MOST photogenic, it’s unfair he had to live away from cameras for any portion of his life, no matter how insignificant
No pictures, but we’ve been letting Toddler Cat roam free at night and aside from her thinking we want her to sing to us at 2am she’s been very good. She has not been stealing My Cat’s food, and both of them have been snuggling in bed with us. I think seeing that TC likes bf the best has made MC calm down a little. MC now knows no one is gunning for her position as little spoon.
Parent’s Cat though… things are not good and she is so stressed and unhappy living with us and she must stay in her room (actual literal full-sized room… not like a euphemism for cage or anything) because she eats everything she can rip into. She has started gaining back the wait she lost when we fixed her constipation and she is always angry at the other cats. My parent’s refuse to take her back though, and I can’t find anyone interested in giving a healthy 14-yr-old cat the quiet life she deserves =(
Oh no, that’s so rough with your parents’ cat, I’m sorry 🙁 One of my former roommates had a sweet older lady cat who didn’t jive with the other cats in the house, it’s so sad when you just can’t give them the environment they need. Here’s hoping you find a good home for her soon!
I posted this in the Toastie reddit, but if anyone else wants to see, this is a (very) short film starring my cat Clio:
lt;Kitty Gets High
in my apartment, messing with your perspective
silly html
Gosh, this is so delightful!
(Where is this Toastie reddit you speak of? Certain people [me] may not have stuck around long enough last week to find out…)
Here!
Toast Crumbs
I think more than half of us have joined reddit just for this!
Oh thank you! *joins reddit*
I’m still deeply confused about the fact that I’m now a redditor.
Are those *extra toes*? nom nom nom
Indeeeed. He has far too many toes :3 :3 :3
Oh Toasties, my old man cat (18!) Rudy is in his final days. He will not eat. I am in the awful state of wondering whether to let him slip away on his own or take him to the vet and help him go. He doesn’t seem distressed, just very tired and done with everything.
Here he is making his best silly face while I scratch his head in better days.
Edited for image embedding incompetence
I am so sorry. This happened to me over the winter with my beloved 15 year old baby. I ended up taking her to the vet after giving her tremendous (and gentle) cuddles, and was worried the entire time that it was too soon, but when we got in the room (which was dark and carpeted), she struggled out of my arms and then lay down on the floor like she was ready. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done and I have tears in my eyes right now remembering, but I also know it was the right decision.
What a great cat, omg. All the jedi hugs and good thoughts your way <3
aw, what a cutie. so sorry you’re going through this right now.
:hughughughughug:
I’m so sorry. It’s so hard.
And on a happier note, here is my neighbor’s very handsome cat Stanton, who likes to sit on my car when the engine is warm.
wash is very comfy:
edit: well crap. apparently I don’t know how to work the HTML magic for images. but I do know how to link… I hope.
What a cuddly kitty <3_____<3 I hope this is the kind of cat who’ll let you pick them up, because he looks like he’d give the best hugs.
(There’s a good set of instructions for the image HTML here – all you need is the direct link to the photo and you’re good to go)
he is indeed an excellent pick-up-ee/snugglecat:
(thanks for the tip! editing multiple times to fix image embedding weirdness!)
eeeeeeeeee what an adorable small bundle :3 :3 :3 :3
i’m getting on the road for the day, but: LA Toastie Group!!! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/toasties-…
I work at a bakery now and get up at 4:30AM but I actually really enjoy it. Today I made cinnamon rolls, muffins, scones, CC cookies, frosted sugar cookies that look like penguins, hand pies, and key like bars.
Also I officially sent off all my Toast Post so hopefully everybody gets everything. I’ve enjoyed my toast post received so far!
I’ve been rewatching all of Dawson’s Creek, and damn, Dawson is everyone’s worst ex rolled up into one blonde white man.
All those baked goods sound amazing and on that basis alone this sounds like the Best Job, congratulations. And huzzah for liking getting up early! I spent one winter break working from 8-4 at the college library and with early sunsets and no one else around, my schedule gradually shifted earlier and earlier until I was going to bed right after work and waking up at like 3 in the morning. I got a ton of writing done, but I don’t think I could do it now.
one blonde white man with hideous hair and awful necklace/vest combinations, iirc.
haha Dawson’s Creek was basically my gateway drug to internet snark and fandom.
And after his role on Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23, I’ve more or less forgiven James van der Beek. (He’s playing himself, so there are a fair number of Dawson-meta jokes, if you haven’t seen it. And Krysten Ritter is hilarious in it.)
I know there are other Toasties that like horror, so I’d like to recommend a great movie I watched last night: Hush. Super suspenseful, centers a very independent, capable woman with a disability, great direction, great acting, great sound design (which isn’t something I normally notice). All around good.
I also watched The Guest last week and it has been a good couple of weeks for horror for me! That one’s got the dude from Downton Abbey being both extremely charming and also sociopathic and the final third has a super fun setting. Hard recommend (but not quite as hard as Hush)
Both are on Netflix.
I would also like to recommend that Toasts do NOT watch The Darkness, which is currently in theaters. I did not read any reviews or really even a synopsis before going, which was a mistake. There’s ~~Indian demons~~ which are released when the kid* removes the Magic Rocks from the Secret Cave! And they can only be banished by Wise and Witchy Latina Grandmas! Ughhhhh
* The kid also happens to have autism, because autistic kids have a closer link to the spirit world, obviously
Ugh. Good to know.
I saw the trailer before The Boy and realized it looked like it was something about a white family in India releasing scary Indian ghosts for some kind of personal tragedy and then the Scary Indian Ghosts torment the Nice White Family who really probably brought this on themselves.
And I went, “Oh. Okay. No. Not gonna see that.”
Is the Boy a good time? It’s on my list.
I’m . . . actually not sure. I’m not sure I’d be willing to call it a good movie, but at the same time, there was something pretty watchable about it? So I guess I would recommend it if you are intrigued enough by the premise and okay with movies that might not be all that great in a lot of ways. (I think they use the “vaguely scary thing turns out to be just a nightmare” suddenly-waking-up-in-bed thing either three or four times. It’s that kind of movie.)
And there’s a third act twist that it seems people either find really dumb or somehow kind of actually like. (I’m in the second camp.)
I’ve had some conversations about all the things that make it a not-great movie and how you could fix them to unearth the actually-maybe-pretty-interesting movie hiding underneath a lot of the superficial mediocrities.
. . . This is not a ringing endorsement, I’m realizing.
I saw the trailer before The Boy and realized it looked like it was something about a white family in India releasing scary Indian ghosts for some kind of personal tragedy and then the Scary Indian Ghosts torment the Nice White Family who really probably brought this on themselves.
And I just went, “Oh. Okay. No. Not going to get within a mile of this thing.”
I watched Hush a couple weeks ago and pretty much loved it. Hands down one of my favorite protagonists in a horror film ever. I also really appreciated the fact that it built up tension and fear really effectively without resorting to the easy jump scare methods of doing so.
I looked it up afterwards and realized it was co-written by the director and lead actress and the director was the writer/director of Oculus, which might be one of my favorite horror movies on the basis of its narrative structure alone. (The lead actress is also in Oculus as Marisol and they met there and are married now. And can keep making movies together as much as they want.)
The Guest has been on my instant queue forever, so I need to get around to actually watching that soon too.
Right! And how impressive is it that they manage so much character development in so few words. It’s definitely a good example of how sometimes adding a limitation can give creativity more room to thrive (like how directors that have to work on a tight budget often deliver better work than when they’re given a pile of money).
I don’t remember that actress being in Oculus. Damn, guess I’ll have to go re-watch it now 🙂
I didn’t either–She’s the main mirror lady, though, so I’ll have to rewatch it again soon. Yet again.
I agree about limitations and creativity. We watched Ava’s Possessions when it turned up on Netflix about a week ago and it’s by no means a perfect movie, but it’s a much more interesting movie than it probably would have been had it been a bigger-budget studio movie instead of a smaller indie film. It’s got its flaws and weak spots, sure, but it was a movie I hadn’t already seen a dozen times. (It’s about a young woman who’s just been exorcised trying to retrace what she might have done while possessed and attending an AA-style support group for formerly-possessed people. It has a really nice neon 1980s-neo-noir quality to a lot of the lighting.)
This is really making me want to go home and start making a dent in my to-watch horror list now . . .
Netflix has been recommending that one to me. I’ll add it to my list now.
I specifically watched The Guest because Dan Stephens was so damn hot in all the press surrounding it. I’ve been eyeballing Hush for awhile so I’ll have to add that to my queue.
This is one of those cases where I didn’t find him sexy in Downton, but boy did I in this movie. See also: Matthew Goode in Stoker. I thought he seemed pleasant and cute in the Good Wife, but Stoker was the first time I found him really sexy.
It probably does not bode well for me that I mostly find kindly actors hot when they’re playing charming sociopaths. Although I do also think Goode is sexy in that ad for the show all about wine he’s in (too lazy to Google it, but will if you haven’t seen it).
Yeah, Matthew Crowley wasn’t my jam, but this awful dude certainly was!
Um, the actress in Hush is actually a hearing lady who is pretending to be Deaf. She could have cast an actually Deaf or hard of hearing actress in her role, as she wrote the screenplay, but she decided it would be better to make herself look more capable by not speaking in a role.
So, sorry to be Deafie Downer here, but, uh, no, not a great example of disability representation in horror.
Yeah, that’s a big disappointing missed opportunity.
I am moving for a job to Kentucky — relatively close to Lexington and in doable distance from Louisville. I have no prior experience of Kentucky other than my fly-out job interview. The area seems very pretty, and surprisingly southern, and that’s all I know so far. A complete Kentucky newbie! Does anyone have Kentucky recommendations or even simply good Kentucky memories/stories/experiences?
Feeling trepidatious about this life-change I just signed a contract to do.
Hi! I grew up in Kentucky and have lots of family in both Lex and Louisville. Lexington is one of my favorite cities. Obviously University of Kentucky is a huge cultural influence there (especially basketball), which I am not really interested in, but there’s a decent groove of alternative culture as well. If you’re ever in downtown Lex, check out Alfalfa for lunch or dinner, and get some Bourbon Ball coffee from Coffee Times. Oh, and be sure to spend some time at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.
Learn rock climbing and you will get instant friends…you are only a few hours away from a really big climbing destination (Red River Gorge). That is, if you like camping and blisters and ticks for a few hours of fun and sore muscles. I miss climbing…
see, this is the problem. I do not like these things at all, though rock climbing could be interesting. But I am a city person, a city person who already has gone through a full treatment for Lyme’s disease once when living in MA and doesn’t want to get it again. The most rural I get is that I like to forage wild plants. Usually urban foraging. Will the local farmers object? Hm hm hm.
oh hello, and thank you for these wonderful sounding recommendations! I definitely will. It sounds like I may do once weekly grocery shopping in Lexington since I will live 60 minutes outside it, so I will probably be there semi-regularly.
I am a little paranoid that, especially in the town where I’ll be, people may react badly to my accent. The locals in the town I’ll be in sound very southern and nasal to me, and god only knows what I sound like to them. (I have a mid-Atlantic accent with some strong foreignisms mixed in). Obviously I can’t change how I talk to fit in better because that would also be messed up — but is this a thing that gives rise to judgments that I should be prepared for? Or am I over-thinking it?
I think it’s wise to be prepared for a little bit of unfair judgment, unfortunately. I grew up in another small KY town that was super Christian, and my family was agnostic and kinda crunchy, and that caused some considerable tension. I don’t think anyone will pick on you for your accent, though.
Ooh you are gonna be right in the middle of bourbon country. Hit up all the distilleries! My favorite ones to visit are Four Roses, Buffalo Trace, and (surprisingly) Jim Beam. The Kentucky Horse Park is also well worth a visit.
I grew up in Indiana but have spent some time in Kentucky and I actually really like it. It’s so beautiful and calm and not too cold or too hot. I have a pipe dream of moving there if/when I retire, and having a cute house with a couple horses and working part-time at a distillery. If only the politics were different…
Weirdly I was literally just in Louisville for work this week! If my very short experience us anything to go by, they have some damn fine restaurants.
HELLO WELCOME TO KENTUCKY!!!
I do not Lexington as well, so I can’t comment as much there. I love Louisville, and of the Kentucky cities, it’s a pretty cool one. Definitely has a lot more going on and a lot more artistic, liberal culture I think than other KY cities, so it shouldn’t be as jarring to adjust to. I visit there usually a couple times a year, for the past several years, and always enjoy it and find something new to do.
Areas of town I love:
-Bardstown Road, everyone will probably tell you this — cool shops, thrift, vintage, boutiques, etc.
-Frankfort Avenue – more cool shops and great restaurants
-NuLu — bars and shops and galleries
-Old Louisville – pretty houses and fun to walk around
May I also suggest Western KY for your BBQ and quilting needs?
thanks to all!
yes, I really wish I were in Louisville — it has a lot of the things I’d want in the place I live. But I’m going to be 1.5/2 hours away, in a rural area. So I’m a little worried about fitting in. We shall see! But thanks for all these specific recs! I am also interested in the mysore-style yoga in Louisville — just wish I weren’t going to be so far away!
I grew up in Kentucky! And went to school in Lexington! I loved it and echo all the comments here! Lexington and Louisville are both great cities (and I love UK basketball, tis in my blood). Western Kentucky has the best BBQ. If I could do the job I do in Kentucky, I 100% would. Summertime in Kentucky is truly a delight.
This week at work we had Equality and Diversity training – it turns out they’re meant to do it every year, and the last session was five years ago. Whoops. All the staff needed to do it, so I was in a session of about 20 people. I was looking forward to learning useful stuff, but really dreading the group aspect, because I feared that it would involve a lot of people saying ignorant and awful things and not being able to contain my rage. Sadly, that was how it worked out. Very few people were taking it seriously – there was a lot of giggling. One person, on walking in, immediately announced upon seeing where people had chosen seats “”I’s boys versus girls! P, you’re sitting on the wrong side!”
Some moments of particular note:
– Coming back after a break, two women were talking about a woman who had apparently been wolf-whistled at/harassed by a scaffolder near our workplace: “She must have been giving out the wrong signals with her body language”. I reacted with blind fury, but as I was a few seats away, I don’t think they really noticed my shouting.
-“Are ethnicity and religion the same thing?”
– A colleague talked about the stigma of mental health problems and why people might feel uncomfortable about disclosing them to employers. Head of HR: “That’s not true! We’ve got a line in our policy that says we are inclusive to staff with mental health problems.” I tartly pointed out that having a policy doesn’t stop there being a stigma, and it’s ridiculous to pretend otherwise, sharing the story of when a colleague described an interview candidate as needing to be under the care of his mental health team, and I mentioned that I was under the care of my mental health team and it didn’t make me unemployable.
– An extract from a study about women in the legal profession included the line “men prefer to socialise with men”. One man argued that this was sexist, adding that he would much rather socialise with a woman. Much laughter, and a response of “That’s because you’ve got more in common with them!”
– We were given a set of Diversity Dilemmas to consider. One example: “A colleague says: “I can see the point of having a Disabled Workers Forum for support but people’s sexual preferences are private and I don’t see the need to highlight them in the workplace by having a Lesbian and Gay Workers Forum.” The two staff members who had been asked to think about this one said that it sounded perfectly reasonable to them, and they couldn’t see a problem. I shared the fact that, as someone who is non-straight, if a colleague said they didn’t want sexual preferences to be highlighted in the workplace, I would feel like I had to hide part of who I was, and that it would suggest that my identity was shameful. Another staff member shared that at an old workplace she had done that, referring to her girlfriend as her housemate for years, and it was shit. The response: I’m a very private person! I keep my personal life to myself! I don’t see why this should matter to you.
– An impassioned argument that banter was very important and it was how people made friends and communicated; he didn’t mean anything bad by it, and if people were hurt then they were just being sensitive.
Anyway, I just felt generally like people Didn’t Get It and didn’t want to; the general feeling seemed to be more that all the legislation and guidelines were just pointless rules designed to get people into trouble. I felt like I antagonised people, and I outed myself as having mental health problems and being queer; as soon as I left I cried, and the next day at work when a colleague who’d been in my session said we should talk about it i broke down and had to go and sob in the toilets. It’s not that it was that bad, really, but the general atmosphere just didn’t feel welcoming, and I was very badly reminded of similar situations at school (sitting in an environment where everyone else is laughing and joking, not feeling able to connect at all; feeling completely overwhelmed by the noise and people and the fact that people aren’t taking Important Things seriously, and digging my nails into my skin to distract myself and not start screaming). So, it was not great.
Has anyone been in this sort of training that they felt worked well? Or, conversely, anyone want to commiserate?
Also, I have a cold. I was very sneezy and runny-nosed yesterday afternoon, but assumed it was a response to crying in the morning. Nope, cold.
I have commiseration – one “staff retreat” featured HR coming to talk to us about their People Strategy, and when they were done, asked how we, as employees, felt about it. I piped up with the fact that I thought it was so much hot air, at which point the VP of my unit asked how that could be? and I said “look around, there are literally 4 people in this room of 30+ people that are not cis het white ladies. I’m not complaining; it is working for me! But don’t tell me that you are committed to hiring diverse people and just happened to wind up with a homogeneous workplace”. After that, i became known as the person that you “have to be careful” around. You don’t have to be careful! You just have to not be a dick!
It’s not just you, though. The latest research suggests that “diversity training” is not just not helpful, it actually creates resistance to diversity policies: https://hbr.org/2012/03/diversity-training-doesnt….
*toastiehugs*, you. This is some heavy shit, and you are not alone.
I think I just developed an eye twitch. “the person that you ‘have to be careful’ around.” @#$%^&*
Or. OR. Act like decent people to everyone maybe?
That is interesting about diversity training. But it makes sense. You don’t wipe out institutionalized social training with policy; it takes individual change, from personal experience, with creation of a stake in things being different.
After that, i became known as the person that you “have to be careful” around.
This is what I’m worried about as well; I feel like lots of people are going to see me as an over-sensitive type who is always complaining about nothing. It’s shit. Thank you for the hugs.
I’m sorry you had a crappy experience with the training. It’s similar to our organization-wide training earlier this year where the overwhelming sentiments were “we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t required for performance evaluation” and “why am I being punished for being a white guy I’ve done nothing wrong,” so I’m here to commiserate. I couldn’t bring myself to speak up during our training as an Asian American woman because one guy was basically steamrolling over everyone in the discussion group, so thank you for being brave and discussing your experience. Sending you internet hug now and hope you’ll recover from the cold soon.
Aw, man. Yeah, I would like to think that some of this training seeps in somehow, but mostly it just highlights how people (even people we like, generally!) can be awful. *hugs*
This is awful. I’m sorry this has happened to you. I respect your speaking up. It was brave.
Would it be helpful to relate your own experiences as something that happened to some (fictional) person you know? That way you can inject some real alternate perspectives without sacrificing your privacy at work.
It’s important to protect yourself. You deserve protection. ((Toasthugs))
That is a terrible feeling and I have absolutely been there. It is a misery. But hopefully the changes that are happening in the world, however slowly it seems, will eventually ice age the circumstances that you had to deal with today. Hang in there, okay? It’s going to be alright. *hug*
That is awful, I am so sorry. I had a very similar reaction to a lot of the “mental health awareness” trainings we have at work, which…do not consider that someone in the room might have a mental illness, or that statistically, more than one of us probably do. I haven’t had to out myself in fury yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
Toasts! Does anyone else use henna to dye their hair? I’m looking for something that will basically do exactly what LUSH’s henna does (I use caca brun for the most part, sometimes mixed with marron, so nothing SUPER RED) without me having to spend $30 on a brick, any recommendations?
I use Lush henna right now, and can’t remember what brand I used to use. But all of the Lush bricks that are darker that caca rouge will be a mixture of henna and indigo – there are some other brands that also do this mix. It’s best to check the ingredients cos sometimes they put random chemicals in as well, and apparently that can lead to weird hair results. (Henna does unpredictable things when mixed with chemicals).
Indigo on its own will dye your hair greenish gray, but mixed with henna it makes a nice reddish brown.
Edit – I think this is the one I used to use: http://www.hennecolor.co.uk/
It’s significantly cheaper than Lush (unless you get it from Holland and Barrett where it is ridiculously overpriced).
I order from mehandi.com every 2 months. My hair is naturally dark with some gray. So I get the reddest, highest lawsone content henna. The result is a dark auburn with bright-but-natural-looking red highlights where the gray was.
A blonde friend orders henna and cassia from mehandi.com. She mixes the two to create a warm dark blonde to hide her gray and condition her dry hair. She sometimes adds more henna for a strawberry blonde tone.
Before I went purple, I used mehandi.com and they are very reliable. And in fact, taking a look back at the site now, I’m thinking “ooooh, ‘woad’ body painting ….”
I wish there was a site where you, the renter, could put in your price point and things you want in a unit and then landlords said “hey, I have something suitable!” I am sick of calling places, asking about the pet policy, and then getting ghosted on.
Goin on a Toastie date today!! Hoping that she doesn’t see this post! Wish me luck!
I’m in week 8 of a 10 week quarter and dying constantly but TOMORROW DAYTRIPPING TO SEE TWO OF MY FAVORITE PEOPLE!!
Does anyone have tips on where in Portland(OR) IS ~~haunted~~? I love visiting places that have ghost stories attached!
Mcmenamin’s White Eagle is supposedly haunted, but we did not see any ghosts when we stayed there!
i think I’ve heard that! Sorry about the ghostlessness but people say thats a great place to stay.
I thought it was a pretty terrible place to stay (not because of ghostlessness), tbh, but overall I think the McMenamin’s chain is pretty fab for restaurants and hotels
Somewhere off of Old Cornelius Pass Rd in Hillsboro (so, Portalnd adjacent?) is an old school. Blackberry bushes have completely overtaken everything, including the boards that try to cover up the gaping window holes. There is no way in or out any more, but somehow there is always noise and movement, as if the school itself is still breathing.
It was probably just raccoons…..and I have no idea if it is still there.
Sounds spooky! Thanks!
In downtown Portland there’s a restaurant called Old Town Pizza; there’s a booth table near the back that’s inside an old elevator shaft. This elevator shaft happens to be the site of a woman’s gruesome death back when the place was a hotel frequently used by sex workers. They say the ghost of the dead woman (Nina) can be seen wearing a black dress, observing the guests or wandering the basement.
http://www.oldtownpizza.com/haunted.html
I always sit in that spot when we go, but I’ve never felt anything otherworldly; still, it’s a fun place. 🙂
Oh my god, everything I could have dreamed of!
I’ve heard claims of: the underground tunnels, Lone Fir cemetery, both Hollywood theatre and Bagdad theater. They do haunted walking tours in Hawthorne and there’s a haunted pub crawl.
Hey Toasties, I’m planning to move to Philadelphia at the end of the summer and am looking for recommendations. What are your favorite neighborhoods? Where are some cool places to hang out and meet people? I hope to live close to a park and public transportation because I’m tired of driving everywhere. Any other tips about apartments, city life, living here as a single woman, etc. welcome. Thanks in advance!
I live in Queen Village, and it is v cute, and it’s easy to walk to a bunch of parks and food and venues. I lucked out with a courtyard full of people my age (late twenties). My neighborhood is right near Society Hill and Old City, both are full of gorgeous old homes.
molly_dev, we’re neighbors! I can second a recommendation for Queen Village. There are so many amazing coffee shops, indie book stores, locally-owned craft supply stores, etc. South Street and Penn’s Landing are also home to tons of festivals, concerts, and pop-up events, and there’s a lot of transit nearby.
Honestly, though, I think it’s hard to go wrong. Two of my favorite things about Philly are that it’s easy to get around and that there’s cool stuff everywhere you go.
Awesome! I will check it out. Thanks to you both!
Seems like West Philly might be a good fit for you; there’s loads of studios and 1BRs along Baltimore Ave, which goes by Clark Park and also has a trolley line.
You may also like to visit some Philly Toast threads on similar topics.
Mount Airy doesn’t come up often on these lists, but it’s reasonably priced, friendly, and has easy access to transit and culture.
I live close to Clark Park and heartily second the West Philly recommendation! There’s lots of public transit within easy walking distance, or bicycling if you’re into that, and good coffee shops, restaurants, even a non-chain bookstore.
I’ve liked Fitler Square/Graduate Hospital a lot.
You’d be near Fitler Square park, Rittenhouse, and all the big parks and community gardens by the Schuykill river.
I think all of Philly has great transport, though, don’t worry too much about that — there seems to be a bus or trolley line on every other street.
Great! Thanks everyone for your suggestions! 🙂
oscar isaac: CAN HE BE STOPPED?
a few weeks ago i had a dream that we were undercover spies who were fake married. like, i can’t even tell you how thrilled i am that my subconscious went with that trope. it is so great. i am so proud of myself. tbh i don’t even remember which parts were the dream and which parts were me waking up and being like OH HELL NO, I AM GETTING BACK IN THAT DREAM. but i am pretty sure the dream included a part where he started being extremely handsy with me in public, pulling me aside, keeping his hands on my waist, etc etc, to the point where i had to be like “sheesh, tone it down a little, they already believe we’re married!” and he was like “well if we were actually together i would never be able to take my hands off you.” and i just.
I am in it So Bad for this man now. it is so terrible. please send help.
ummmmm would watch this movie 1000+ times
oh no/oh yes
If by “help”, you mean this sort of thing, here you go.
ETA: I have no idea why Intense Debate isn’t taking the href tag. Sorry. Here? http://clevermanka.tumblr.com/tagged/oscar+isaac
You have to close the tag! If you want “this” to be clickable, you write as you did and then put < / a > after “this” to close off the tag. (without spaces of course)
I cannot help, for I am entangled as well and REALLY JEALOUS ALSO OF YOUR DREAM. The one time my subconscious came through for me on this, it was in a Mojave context, which… I mean, yeah, my subconscious *would* go for weird scruffy loner desert artist guy, it’s A Thing with me, but there’s that whole murder issue, too, which… can’t be healthy? Right?
And yet.
Anyway, yeah, I’m not so much here to help as to commiserate and maybe be around if someone else sends help.
There is a woman with my same Firstname Lastname whose email account is also the same Firstname Lastname EXCEPT hers has a middle initial, and mine does not. She forgets to include her middle initial All The Time, so I have been getting the Barney’s receipts and nail salon appointment confirmations and thankyous from many nonprofits and her hotel reservations for July and so on, and I am annoyed. I have corresponded directly with her to no avail.
Anyone else dealing with an internet doppelgänger? What have you done to manage the nonsense? It’s not like I want to be rude to her preschooler’s principal, but this has gone on long enough.
I get alerts for my internet doppelgänger’s cell phone bill. (It is an Irish company, and I do not live in Ireland). I tried emailing the company’s customer service, which got it to stop for a while, but it’s back now. Hopefully she is paying her bill despite the lack of email reminders.
I suggest composing a form email that’s neutral enough to deploy in all situations, something like “Hi, I think you meant this email for someone else! I am an [occupation] in [metropolitan area]. Please remove my email from your contacts. I hope you’re able to get in touch with the [Firstname Lastname] you meant to contact. Best wishes, X”
I have one of these who I think is a middle-aged/older woman and I have no idea what her real email is but I get lots of talbots credit card offer emails and emails from her local Nissan dealership. Luckily none of them are important enough for me to have to take real action.
Also my aunt and I have the same name, and while we don’t have a similar email we get lots of mismatched email from the rest of the family since the name the different emails are the same and no one can ever remember who is who.
I wish there were a solution- I have the same problem with the added wrinkle that her middle initial is the same as the first letter of her last name, so it is invisible. And explaining that she could use periods to separate the address as first.m.last in Gmail and have it go to the same place didn’t catch on at all. So sometimes I get Canadian church bulletins and pictures of other people’s children.
I have so many internet doppelgängers. If it seems like something personal, I’ll reply that they have the wrong email address. I’ve had arguments with a few people who refuse to believe me. I did log in and change the password for a hookup site some other Beckie had signed me up for. If it’s something automated that comes often enough to be annoying, I’ll set up a filter to delete it automatically. I replied to the recent chain of racist forwards by complimenting Obama and that seemed to stop them.
I have a similar but more infuriating problem, which is that my email address is a very popular rhyme with my last name. I have just the rhyme at gmail, but there are MANY other folks with my last name who apparently have it with numbers, or other letters, or at yahoo or something? So I have a constant rotation of 5-6 other people’s emails, but I do not know where any of them should be directed.
If it’s an automated receipt or something, I ignore it. If it’s an email from an actual human, I will respond with a quick “You have the wrong address,” which takes less than 30 seconds. (But once I forgot to delete my email signature, which includes my phone number, and I got several irate phone calls from someone confused about where his emails were supposed to go.)
The most frequent offender recently ordered something online and I received a confirmation listing her street address, and I’m almost tempted to send her a paper letter telling her to SPELL HER FREAKING EMAIL CORRECTLY. I have no other way of contacting her.
It me!
Send her a letter! Do it! Some woman in my hometown nicked my email address – not even the one with my name in it, the one with the username I use most places online that absolutely could not be confused for her email – and signed me up for random spam and service reminders from the Toyota dealership and if I could find her address to send her a letter, I would in a heartbeat. Don’t want mail from strangers, double check your email address, I say.
Ugh! I am here for this. The whole situation just seems so annoying. Why would you want your receipt emailed to you if you didn’t give them the right address?
As an early adopter of gmail I managed to snag initials+common lastname. However, due to common lastname I have multiple doppelgängers. My most common ones are two ladies in the midwest US, a man in Montreal and an English woman living in France.
Like other commenters, I write back if it’s a personal email or a community newletter. I thought I was polite and generic, but English lady’s husband said something about I was grumpy once. One time I got a birth announcement from someone’s very best friend and how they were only going to tell her and no one else, since it was so early.
I just unsubscribe from all the newsletters/corporate emails. The exception is stupid fucking Wells Fargo who emails me every month with Kansas lady’s points balance (0- they send me an email to let me know she has no points). They don’t have an unsubscribe button, and the only way to contact them is to CALL ON THE PHONE (I am in Canada and also don’t have time for that shizz) or via their web portal, which you can only log into with your bank card. Wells Fargo makes me so mad.
My only solace is that it could be worse: my cousin’s email address is very common first name+common last name @ gmail. She gets literally hundreds of emails from other people. She deletes most of them, but also has one of those stress-inducing 1000+ bubbles on her iphone
There is a highly intelligent and successful person with my same first and last names (neither of them common names at all) who is into amazing things like falconry as well as a pretty major career with “growth businesses” and a series of books coming out. She’s fucking superhuman. Because of her, I go by Clever Manka everywhere on the internet. It seems kind of cheesy to always use an online handle, but god it just makes things so much easier and less embarrassing when people find out I’m not her.
At least she’s never gonna accidentally give someone the wrong email, though. Good luck dealing with yours.
And I would’ve thought my pseudonym here was unique–I’ve been using it for more than a decade–but someone else has it on Twitter @ yahoo instead of gmail and I got so sad. Like, what’s HER story?
I think it’s a miracle that the only place I haven’t been able to get clevermanka so far is gmail.
This happens to me too! I have SO MANY email doppelgangers who don’t know their own addresses. I don’t understand how people don’t remember their own email addresses. I have a “this is the wrong address” canned message that I can send, but that doesn’t help with the mailing lists they get me onto, or the confirmation emails for things I never signed up for. I just do a lot of filtering and unsubscribing. Also, I save some of the emails so I can someday write a horror story about meeting one’s online doppeganger.
I get constant emails for a certain Luke Chiccione. I’m not male and my real name is not even remotely close, and I’ve had that email for 15 years or more. Further, my email has my last name as part of it, which again, is nothing like Chiccione. As best as I can tell, the numbers in our email addresses are one off from the other person’s and that’s why the confusion. But I do know he’s got a Toyota 4-runner that they are really alarmed by how overdue it is for maintenance.
yes! I have at least two: a scientist at Bayer, and a younger woman who gets invited to an awful lot of bachelorettes and hen parties with my email address (wait a second, does she do that in purpose? It’s very “Hey Ladies”!).
Sometimes it can get me cranky, especially the time a male scientist who wanted to collaborate with my doppelgänger refused to believe I wasn’t her. Also often the emails are not in English but in the language of my ethnic ancestry, so I can understand them but I can’t write back in it, which is frustrating. I used to be good about redirecting correspondents but I have become less good about it with time, mostly because they have never redirected anybody back to me, which makes a person wonder, you know?
It would be sort of nice to exchange a friendly email or two with them, except that our name is SO common back in ancestral homeland that they probably find the coincidence boring.
I’m glad to see we are definitely not alone with this!
I get at least four other people’s email. I try to correct real human people if I know the right answer, but dear god, if I get one more online signup for something…. (Seriously, the most recent one had poop and pee in the website title and *nobody* hates me that much.)
Other things: Credit card overdue (and lady, you are a doctor, I have googled, you have money, just set up autopay)
Many, many things from the Mormons
Also some other church (denomination forgotten)
“Your car is ready” from a service place (in same state; tempted to go get car)
AN ENTIRE SET OF BRIDAL SHOWER RSVPS. ENTIRE. SET.
Can we talk about dating after ending a LTR?
My ex and I have been over for about a year, were together 5. I’ve been struggling with connecting with people. Or not so much that, it’s just I have really high standards now and the second a guy doesn’t conform to any of my Major Needs, I kick him to the curb. It feels kinda cool and powerful but I wonder if I should be more willing to compromise. I would rather be single now than put up with a shitty dude again.
Anyway, I have my third date with a guy tonight! It’ll be our first (intentional, lol) Adult Sleepover and I’m excited but nervous. He is sweet and sarcastic and gives me just the right amount of space, conversationally. You know how some guys text you either constantly or not at all? He texts me only about once a day, when we don’t see one another, just to say hi and ask how I am. Thrilling! Our age difference is huge (13 years), but he’s been letting me control the pace. We’ll see!
I am also dating a male model. This is NYC, so duh, but it’s still hilarious and surreal. He did an advertising campaign for a brand that is plastered ALL OVER my subway station and, on his walk of shame this week, took a bunch of pictures of himself fake crying and trying to fight his own image, and sent them to me. He’s great. I love dating. I guess I also love feeling sexually desirable again, too.
Is there anything y’all wish you’d done or known when you started dating again after an extended break? Any advice/wisdom/platitudes? Tell me your dating stories!
I would rather be single now than put up with a shitty dude again.
I think you are answering your own question about whether you should be “more willing to compromise.”
My triumphs for the week: I cooked a huge salad of my own, which had: roasted brussels sprouts; raw, chiffonaded brussels sprouds; dried cherries soaked in water and rice wine vinegar; fresh apple, chopped small; wheat berries; and hazelnuts. All of this goodness tossed together with salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon zest & juice. An excellent source of fiber and brassica-farts.
I babysat a two-year-old, my first time babysitting in a while. He had discovered the word “no” and used it a lot, and he did not care for me at the beginning but we found an accord. Plus I got paid mad cash, as it was last-minute.
I wrote two followup emails for side-gigs: one for the babysitting job, because the kid is really very sweet even when he’s shouting “NO”; and one to express my interest in leading an erotica-based book club or erotica writing critique group. Erotica is not my favorite genre, but a cool feminist sex-shop mentioned they were looking into starting something up, and I have a fair amount of experience with the genre.
My weird music-related OCD thing is flaring up a bit, but not as much as it has in the past (if I listen to or think about music, I get tiny bits of it stuck in my head to the point where I am unable to think or sleep). I am controlling it with Gregorian chants. Very soothing. Now I swear I will go back to working on the world’s worst, longest powerpoint.
That salad! Sounds delicious.
Meh.
Between the full moon and…well, the full moon, yesterday was an exercise in futility. I hate that school will be out for my kids and I’m stuck at this horrible city job. I should be happy that they’ll let me do whatever I want with my schedule.
But here’s the thing. I took this job on a prof’s recommendation, within a week of getting my MA, it was supposed to be full time, I was supposed to “improve and update and get everyone on the same page” and “organize our data and get it so everyone can access it”—and yeah, no. Not with a tea party mayor I’m not. For 4k more a year (double what she’s paid, I’m sure, to unneccessary consultants to do things that I am trained to do, because I never get asked because she treats me like an intern) we could do all that. Everybody would be happy except the two luddites who retire next year anyway. Oh, and it was supposed to be full time. Not only is it NOT full time, NOT anything more than what an intern can do (except when they expect miracles from me), it’s a walking-on-eggshells people don’t even know how they sound talking about this woman like a despot environment. And –well last week the office woman who’s my age was making jokes about what her uncle said about women selling themselves in Vietnam and how funny it was.
Please kill me. Because my son and his girlfriend are living out of my ex’s basement, neither is going back to college, and the girl is making $30/hour acting as a zombie in one of those experience-play things.
I’m making half that with 2 degrees. Today that feels like, as my mom put it, “crawl into a hole and die”. I know I will need this job next year, I will need every cent I can get. But I don’t think I can last at it. I can’t quit because my parents would be angry that I wasn’t doing everything I could to earn money, and they currently make up the slack in my budget so that I can have health insurance and buy groceries.
Tell me ways to make this bearable. (streaming Pandora is blocked off the work network–so are ESRI training videos). Because not spending summer with my kids for this is …ugh.
It hasn’t helped that I’ve been staying home working on school stuff while my mom cleans around me, which I should be grateful for but makes me feel even worse. I usually deal with this by gardening but there is no sunlight in this lot so I can’t plant things (and also it snowed last saturday, 3 inches).
ETA: this is not a money rant. This is a “how do I disengage and not take these idiots personally” rant.
I am writing this still a little shaky with rage, but maybe this will help me move on… I was just walking my dog in my DC neighborhood, where there are tree boxes lining the sidewalk. My dog walked into one (did not pee or poop) and man came up behind me and very rudely told me “get your dog out of there, I’m planting in there!” I was so shocked by his reaction to my small non-peeing terrier (and the fact that the tree boxes are not his property and so he has no right to tell me not to be there) that all I managed to say was “Okay, sorry! No offense meant!” which was NOT WHAT I WAS THINKING. Anyway, we walked around the block and when I came back, I walked up to him and said, “I am one of your neighbors. If you don’t want my dog to go in the tree box, you can ask me politely, but it is not your property.” He became really angry and basically pushed my dog out of his way (as the dog was starting to walk on to his lawn) and started yelling at me again about not allowing my dog to “piss and shit” all over the place. He definitely became so much more angry than the situation called for. In an effort not to have a screaming match with the guy, I basically ended it by asking him to be polite but that he had no rights to the tree box. I was getting pretty mad too and sorta hating myself for having a fight with an old man, but DAMMIT. Why does he get to say where my dog pees? His lawn is his business, but no where else!! It doesn’t help that I’m 7 months pregnant and feel a need to fight all injustices in this dumb petty world so that my kid doesn’t have to. I also hate that I can’t stand up for myself in the moment when stuff like that happens, and then I stew on it forever.
Maybe confronting him/writing it all out will enable me to move on and, you know, not encourage my dog to take a dump on his newly planted hate bushes.
not encourage my dog to take a dump on his newly planted hate bushes
1) A+ adjective use there b) whyever not? He clearly deserves excrement. Just do it while he’s asleep so he cannot shower you with his rage spittle.
What an asshole. I hope your dog burns a pee hole in his lawn, in addition to spite poop.
This is probably not helpful, but I grew up in DC and OFTEN had people policing me. Don’t talk too loudly in a bookshop! Don’t scare my kids! Don’t push in the metro line! The policers were always older upper middle class white people. I am a young white woman. It always made me burn with shame and also rage. I don’t know if this is exactly your situation, but it definitely doesn’t make me miss DC. I feel like it’s a cultural thing. I don’t know. I really admire your reaction and I am so happy you went back and confronted him, I usually just melted away.
Yes, EXACTLY. Older white man, filled with entitlement. I am trying to train myself not to automatically apologize to jerks for simply existing, but I am having to re-learn some automatic behaviors!
People like that cannot be argued or reasoned with.
I would recommend rolling your eyes and doing the jack-off motion at this kind of person.
I hope writing out helped! I hate situations like that and I always get more riled up than they’re worth.
Ah well, as you already know, you’re right and he’s being a dick. And my dog does pee on other people’s lawns because they’re in easy reach of the sidewalk no one who’s basically decent cares cause what does a dog peeing on a lawn hurt? (and I pick up after her when she poops, so no harm, foul).
Toasts, my apartment manager is not responding to my messages about renewing my lease and it’s stressing me out. My current lease runs out at the end of this month, but the lease document also says it’s automatically renewed month-to-month if management doesn’t tell me to move out, so I should be covered, right? I’m still freaking out every other day and googling Seattle/Washington tenant laws like crazy, and I hate how my brain keeps jumping to the worst scenarios possible about why she isn’t responding.
I think you should be covered! I have a lease like that–I signed up for a year, and after that it automatically moved to a rolling two-month renewal with absolutely no action needed from me.
Oh man, I know that “google all the laws immediately” feel. Hopefully the manager just isn’t prioritizing it because she’s assuming you’ll continue living there and it’s a non-issue, but (as I’m sure you’re aware by now) you’re well past the deadline by which they’d have had to tell you to get out, even if your lease was already month-to-month, so legally you’ve got some protection. (Also unresponsive apartment managers are the WOOOOOOOORST).
If the lease actually says it rolls over to month-to-month, the landlord is probably ignoring you because he/she thinks it should be self-evident. (I don’t know about Seattle, but that’s how it works in LA and I would think the terminology would mean it works the same. So the landlord would have to give you a certain, reasonable amount of time [here it’s 4-6 weeks, I think, depending on circs] to evict you, and if the lease runs out the end of this month, they have already blown it.) They may actually not want to talk to you because renewing the lease would mean both of you are committed to the lease term, and they want the flexibility of month-to-month. But for the time being, I think you are okay. (Seattle-area Toasties may have different takes on this.)
That’s not cool about them not responding, but if the lease says that it automatically switches over to month to month, you are definitely covered. It’s only when it doesn’t say that where you would have to move at the end of the fixed term. And even once moving to a month to month lease, the landlord has to provide 20 days written notice before they can kick you out. If you’re still worried tenants union has some good info http://www.tenantsunion.org/en
Occurred to me late in the open thread that you guys might appreciate my ex story from this week. I dated a guy on and off for three years who was emotionally abusive and generally shit to me, but I was hooked on him and found him hard to quit. I broke up with him a couple of different times, but for various reasons when he would pop back up in my life I’d fall back into things (I’m sure none of you have ever heard of someone doing such a thing).
Anyway, about a year ago he crossed a line that I knew was finally it – I was done. Period. The End. But I didn’t block him on gchat cause I expected he’d inevitably pop back up again and I wanted to feel the power of explicitly ignoring him when he did.
Sure enough, every two months or so, he sends a “hey” and other than rolling my eyes and laughing about it with a friend, I just ignore it. All it is is a “hey” super lazy. Typing three letters has to be the laziest form of a communication possible for aiming to reconnect with an ex, right? Wrong.
Last week he sent me one of those generic messages on LinkedIn – yep, you read that right, LinkedIn – complimenting on a work anniversary. Like, literally, all you do is press a button and LinkedIn sends the exact same message out however many times lazy people choose to click the button.
Dude actually found a lazier form of communication that three letters in gchat
I would not have thought it possible, but here we are. Of course, other than rolling my eyes and laughing about it with a friend (and sharing it here), I ignored it.
I ended a casual thing with a guy, and he proceeded to text me “What’s up” exactly every three months for about a year, like clockwork. The iMessage thread was pretty hilarious.
Maybe he scheduled it?? Ha, now I’m imagining a set-it-and-forget-it option for incredibly lazy, misguided dudes/exes. Who wants in on my new business venture?!
I am not surprised that this is a thing dudes do! And yeah, I’ve taken screenshots of the one-sided conversation to send to my friend for us to cackle over witchlike.
That is genuinely amazing.
I would not be able to stop myself from replying, “Who is this?”
I’m forcing myself to take a break from work.
It turns out that a life of joyless solitude and endless work has made me miserable.
Management sent out an anonymous satisfaction survey, and people do no like me, citing that I’m sad/depressed/angry all the time.
I could not even get a hug if my life depended on it.
I’m going home and praying that Monday never comes.
Wait, they took a survey of what people thought of you and then they TOLD you?!
And this isn’t considered bullying, but management?!
Go eat chocolate and take a nice walk.
Hmmm other people I told said that it was cyberbullying, too.
Of course, I can’t say anything about it because that would be the negative behavior of an ‘Energy Vampire.’
Energy Vampires are strictly prohibited in my workplace by the Positivity Police.
Oh, jesus. I had a boss who would say things like that (mostly to a coworker who had opened up about mental health issues). Those words are still full-body-cringe-worthy. In retrospect she was way, way too involved in our personal lives, on top of a pile of other issues. Good bosses can manage even when staff need to vent; if they’re that worried about negativity there’s probably bigger problems they don’t want anyone to talk about, IME.
Please take care of yourself however you need to, bud. Your health is the most important thing. I found that I really didn’t realize how stressed & burnt out I was until afterwards, when I didn’t have to put a face on at work anymore. Let yourself take the time you need to recoup, seriously, even if it’s longer than expected. It might take a while to find a job situation that works for you, but there really are places out there that will treat you better than this one does.
Oh, man. Cool, useful move, management. Maybe Monday will be cancelled due to lack of interest.
“anonymous satisfaction survey”??? Seriously? So not okay. Can you talk to HR? or see about getting representation outside the company? Because that is a toxic environment.
And hopefully a Toastie hug is okay:
Toasties! I stood up for myself this week and said I am not comfortable doing X right now because of Y to a doctor’s office and now a procedure that I was dreading is being rescheduled for the distant future. This is incredibly uncharacteristic of me, and while I am feeling pretty good about the medical decision I made (60% sure it was the right call), I am feeling AMAZING about having gone ahead and said no. For my next trick, I shall hop over some nearby sky-scrapers in a single bound and outrace the next train I come across.
Did we all see Trudeau* on the Daily Show being interviewed by Hasan Minhaj**????
*you can pry my inappropriate crush from my cold dead hands
**ditto
I just realized that today is five years to the day that I split from my wife.
I’ve had one bad date since then, but nothing else.
Just getting ready for 65 million years of solitude and loneliness.
Ditto on the post-divorce dating wasteland. Not the exiversaary day exactly, but I should take my own advice and go for a walk or something. Once a guy flirted with me a trader joe’s but I was so out of practice I didn’t realize it for several days.
Reading open thread late, as usual, but I am concerned because of your crappy job thing and now this. Hope you are okay and getting through the weekend. Hope there is someone you can call if you are feeling less than good. Internet hugs.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
I hope you are doing well
So…I get therapy from a graduate program in my city, which is great because it’s sliding scale, and my experience has been really amazing there. I had a great rapport with my therapist, and we got really deep into a lot of things. She is graduating, however, and she couldn’t be involved in picking a new therapist for me. I had to reregister impersonally.
I got a voicemail yesterday from the person assigned to me…and it’s a guy. I did not know that I wasn’t okay with that until I heard his voice. I also didn’t know that I could have requested a woman until I talked to my partner (he requested a woman, because he didn’t think he could talk to a man).
I feel really bad about this. I feel like that visceral reaction I had to hearing that he was going to be my therapist was borderline sexist (because women are supposed to be good at emotions and stuff) and borderline racist (he…had an accent? And I thought “Oh god I don’t know if I can talk about the sexuality and gender and possibly poly stuff I’ve talked about with the woman I had before. What if he judges me and has cultural biases against all this?)” I feel like that’s a really bad and not at all fair reaction to have, so now I’ve dropped into self-loathing for not wanting to accept this guy as my therapist.
I just don’t know what to do. I can’t believe I didn’t think about this possibility before (hello, internalized sexism), and request a woman. I also don’t know if I can reject him before I’ve met him, or I have to wait to meet him and see if it works out. And again, I feel like I don’t have a legitimate reason not to want a male therapist (like trauma or something), I just had a Wave of No sweep over me when I heard his voice.
Has anybody had this problem before? Or good or bad experiences with male therapists?
I think therapy is hard enough that it’s okay to do whatever makes it easier to talk, and a Wave of No is definitely a legitimate reason to request a different therapist.
Thank you. That’s good to hear. I wasn’t expecting to feel that way at all!
100% agree with what Beckie said. If you feel like you want to give him a chance, I will say that I was assigned a male student therapist for my exposure therapy for OCD. I was apprehensive at first but he turned out to be *great*. You could always interview him and then request someone else?
that’s a really good idea. there’s also a chance that I could get my previous therapist (if she hasn’t graduated completely yet), to sit in on the first meeting and try to help things along.
I’ve never been in a situation where a therapist was being assigned to me rather than me choosing, but I am definitely not open to a male therapist. I haven’t seriously interrogated the reasons for why, but I don’t really think you have to, because it’s an intensely personal thing that you’re doing for yourself and you have no obligation to be open to doing it with someone you don’t feel totally comfortable with for any reason. I have a similar “nope” reaction to male gynecologists, and, well, even if my reasons aren’t good I don’t feel any obligation to let a man near my bits if I don’t want to.
Also, I’m assuming you’re also a woman here, but I think even without any specific trauma to point to, we all have reason and a lot of life experience to make us have a little bit of a higher bar for trusting men.
that is a good point! I have never ever had a male gynecologist and do not ever want one. I’m not sure I want a man up in my psychological business any more than I want a male gynecologist up in my private bits.
I also cry a lot about even small stuff (it’s unfortunately just A Thing with me), and there’s nothing like Crying In Front of a Man to make you feel terrible and like you are contributing to sexism.
I specifically only wanted to see a woman for therapy, and when I got a call from a guy I told him that and he completely understood it and they reassigned me to someone else. I also vastly prefer women to be my doctors for physical health purposes as well. It’s ok to have preferences when it comes to sensitive stuff like this.
I do think questioning your reaction to the assumptions that came with hearing the accent is good to do though. But you’ve already recognized that and examined it.
Upon seeing me (a single and child-free youngish woman) with a baby in my arms, an older man says: “Boy! That sure looks natural!”
The best in-my-head response I’ve been able to come up with is, “Yessssss, suspect not what my child-bearing human-suit conceals…”
But I suspect readers of The Toast can do better! Go! 🙂
My first thought was, “Actually, both this baby and I were produced chemically”
…but I like yours better
1. “Nope. Turkey baster.”
2. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to do that thing where you “innocently” pretend not to understand and make them explain further and keep explaining. “What do you mean?” “What’s natural?” Until you get to the subtext, which in this case is, “Women’s purpose in life is to raise children and not take jobs away from men and I want you to acknowledge that I am correct”. Keep looking confused until he’s honest or gives up.
What an ass. If only we had the power to naturally shoot lasers from our eyes.
Hmmmm… “they’ve gotten really good at making these robot babies, haven’t they?” comes to mind…
See, I knew the Toasties would come up with some good stuff! I am armed with some good comebacks for next time. (There will be a next time, oh yes, of this I am positive.)
I have just made a jumpsuit and I am incredibly pleased with myself. I was terrified I was going to screw it up because I was using fabric that was a) expensive and b) a present, but it fits well and looks good and everything! It is making me rather happier than one item of clothing should.
Ahh! That sounds amazing! Can you share a pic??
Instagram post just for The Toast! https://www.instagram.com/p/BFpVchyqR_G
AAAHHH the pattern designer reposted my photo and now I’m freaking out like a COMPLETE dork
AAHHHH! I’ll dork out with you 🙂
(You look fine as hell, btw, and I love the jumpsuit. Sewing is awesome.)
How cute! Good for you, those seams are perfect! I never can sew nice things for myself, I always mess them up.
So rad! I love it!
So cute!
Oh DUH
Thank you Andre Skyles for jogging my memory. It IS the anniversary of my horrible accident and it is poorly timed in that everybody starts thinking ‘yay summer’ and I go into a cloud of doom. Ptsd is so fun.
But at least now I know why I crawled into bed crying at 4:30 today. ETA: Once I recognize the trigger life gets much easier, so I really do mean thank you, not sarcasm.
So sorry. Toast hugs if you want them. I hope you can take an hour for yourself this weekend.
Aw. Hope you are taking care of yourself. Internet hugs.
I’m sorry. I hope you are well
SO LATE to the Open Thread.
Last week I was in a series of concerts.
Bex– the guy I dated for 11.5 years, who broke up with me in December because I couldn’t adjust to him dating other people– showed up for the second of them. I saw him– not his face, just the back of his head– and my throat closed up. I couldn’t get any sound out. My throat has continued to feel weird since then. It’s at least partly muscles in the front of my neck that are responsible. I just want it to feel okay to sing again.
Also, it is clear that not being in contact with him is the right thing. When I see him, even briefly, I forget that there are things I’m good at. 🙁
Hugs if you want them. Remember that there are things you are good at, and things that are good about you, and you deserve the space to let those things be big.
I am sorry he’s still hanging around. You can probably ask the club/bar owners to keep an eye out for him, if that would help.
Also, super-late, but I wanted to say that the Toast has been here for me through some pretty rough times, and the commentariat has been an amazing source of support, inspiration, and friendship. I’m glad so many people are unwilling to let the community just go away when the Toast itself does, because you witches are the best.
yes! and hi um apparently I’m replying to multiple layers of your comments today. but yes, this has been such a great place during some pretty rough times in my life the past few years.
too witches to die, we are.
Unreadaethel, I think of you so often and I hope you come to one of the new toastariat places so we can still be in touch. You are too witches to lose.
I’m going through the spreadsheet and gradually twitter-following everybody. I’m also now on reddit, under this same name. I thought I was too witches for reddit, but I am apparently not. Too witches 4ever!
I went to prom and I’m still at an afterparty and I betrayed all my ideals by going but I survived and it was okay.
cheers, girlinterrupte – may the night have provided you with much fodder for future entertaining tales. 😉
Super late I know, but The Toast is the best place I know to crowd-source ideas–
My boyfriend of 2 years has been having some distressing long-term health problems for the last year. Over the last few months the symptoms have gotten significantly scarier, and multiple doctors & lab tests have failed to reveal anything too helpful.
There are some very alarming and debilitating diseases with suspiciously similar symptoms. Every few weeks there will be some either new symptom or recurrence of an old one, and it is so unsettling–like there are these little chinks in our pleasant life through which this unknown fear blows in.
I read and appreciated the comments earlier on about living with a chronic illness. Does anyone have advice on what to do or not as the partner of someone with a chronic, occasionally debilitating, as-yet-undiagnosed illness? I really want to make sure I don’t make this all about me (when I am with him, at least). I know that it is much, much harder on him than on me (obviously) and I don’t want to do anything to make that worse. It is also really scary and sad for me, though.
Thanks in advance, folks.
I haven’t been in exactly this situation myself, but I’ve been around people who were. I’d say it’s important that you have at least one person you can talk to about how you’re feeling WITHOUT having to add the caveat that it’s harder on him. It is, of course, but it won’t help if you aren’t able to discuss how it’s effecting you without reminding yourself and the person you’re talking to that it’s worse on him. You’re allowed to feel sad and scared. It won’t help to try and guilt yourself into happiness/never complaining. (Not saying you’re doing that! But it’s a thing that happens, in my experience.) Along the same lines, don’t feel guilty and make comparisons if you need to take some time to process and de-stress yourself. Serious illness is hard on everyone involved, and if you’re going to support him, you need to have your own support system as well. It’s 100% okay to need that and it doesn’t mean that you’re making it all about you! I hope that’s helpful (and not condescending! I hope!). Sorry you’re going through this. Best of luck.
Have you come across the circle theory? The gist is this: Draw a circle on a piece of paper. That’s your boyfriend, the person with the illness. Draw another circle around it to represent the person closest to him. That’s you. Draw another circle further out to demonstrate close friends/family, still more to demonstrate less close friends, coworkers, acquaintances, etc …
Your boyfriend’s health problems affect you and everyone else that you just drew. It affects him most, and you absolutely don’t want to lose sight of that, but it ripples out to affect everyone else in his life to some degree another, and as the first ring out, it’s affecting you a lot. Make sure that you’re taking care of yourself, that you have people who are not him to talk to about how it’s affecting you, that you’re resting and sleeping and eating and doing fun things and regularly taking some time for yourself to give yourself a break. If you need to set up a weekly date with yourself at a coffee shop to make sure that happens, do it. The classic cliche for this is those messages on airplanes about making sure that you have your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. Being the primary support and/or caregiver for someone with big scary medical things going on is incredibly hard, so do what you need to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.
The other thing that I’d suggest is to try to set aside some time to do fun things together with your boyfriend. It’s really easy in a situation like this for absolutely everything to become about Big Scary Health Things, or to feel like it somehow invalidates the fear and sadness and anger and all the big feelings about the illness to take a break and just do something fun and silly. Make a regular date to watch a ridiculous tv show, or go see a movie, or in some other way give yourselves a little vacation from thinking about big things and just hanging out together and enjoying yourselves as much as you can. When you’ve got something big and bad coming into your lives for the long haul, you’ve got to make sure that you’re giving yourself permission to take a break now and then, and you want to make sure you’re doing that as a couple as well as individually.
So sorry that you and your boyfriend are having to deal with this, Chai Party. Many jedi hugs to you! The diagnosis process is especially hard because there’s just so much uncertainty and so many possibilities being thrown at you. There are caregiver support groups in many areas, and caregiver resources online can be helpful even if they’re not specific to your situation, like this guide for caregivers of cancer patients.
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful response 🙂 Yes, I am trying to keep circle theory in mind–I think it’s a really helpful metaphor.
I think we do pretty well about still doing fun things together. Altho just the other day I realized that we are coming up on the anniversary of the first time that this illness kept him from doing a social event that (I think) he wanted to, and that was a sad moment. I know it makes him sad too, to feel like it’s hard for him to go out and do things that we enjoy. I hadn’t really thought before about how illnesses that interfere with people’s ability to do things can really affect the sufferer’s sense of self, too. Then recently I was talking to someone who, when she was fairly young, had a time when illness prevented her from a lot of physical activities that were quite wrapped up in her identity. Very sad.
Thanks for the caregiver resources, too. I don’t think things are quite at that point yet, but without a diagnosis it is hard to avoid thinking how that may change as things progress.
I am really struck by how oblivious I have been to the pain of people who have or love someone with a chronic or severe illness. I don’t mean to compare our situation to that of people with really more severe things going on, but I definitely have a new perspective now. Somehow it is the last thing you think will happen to you or your loved one.
Thank you again.
I'd love to meet up! I'll drop you an email and we'll figure it out from there. Yay for meeting real life Toasties!