Jaya Saxena’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
A baby pug that can’t wake up even after three cups of coffee because it’s raining outside.
A bunny eating a too-large carrot that can’t figure out why “available balance” and “current balance” are different on her online bank statement.
An orphaned otter who spends her mornings cleaning out her Roomba.
A Vine of a little girl in a car seat crying because taxes for freelancers are really fucking confusing.
Mariah Carey in the “Heartbreaker” video when she’s like “What was the deal with the Aaliyah Lifetime movie?”
A picture of a kitten looking confused with “I CAN HAZ STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO SIGNING UP FOR OBAMACARE” written in Impact on it.
A boy falling off his bike who is really skeptical of Uber.
A hippo with a bird on her head who doesn’t understand why she is the only one of her married friends not to change her last name because it’s 2014 and like, statistically it just doesn’t make sense.
A still from Frozen of Elsa underestimating how big of a pot she needed when doubling this soup recipe.
Literally the pink “yip yip” Martian from Sesame Street bored on a conference call that shouldn’t even involve her anyway.
Prince if he were sorted into Hufflepuff.
That scene from Friends where Joey refuses to stop listening to “Shake It Off.”
Katniss Everdeen forgetting her umbrella at yoga class again.
A GIF of a woman getting an idea for a blog post while eating an egg salad sandwich at Lenny’s and typing it out in iPhone Notes.
Tags: humor, identity, jaya saxena
Too real, Jaya.
A bunny eating a too-large carrot that can’t figure out why “available balance” and “current balance” are different on her online bank statement.
Took me ages to work out that my ‘available funds’ included all my overdraft up to the limit and not what I actually had in the bank!
omg is that what that means? i’m seriously almost 40 and didn’t know that. (this is not sarcasm.)
“A hippo with a bird on her head who doesn’t understand why she is the only one of her married friends not to change her last name because it’s 2014 and like, statistically it just doesn’t make sense.”
SERIOUSLY. How is this a thing still? I can’t wait to deal with everyone’s confusion and judgment when my fiance becomes Mr. Dances! One of my cousins had a giant banner at her shower proclaiming “Future Mrs. Husbandsname!” and I am trying to decide whether it would be too snarky to have my own shower banner saying “Future Mrs. Dances!”
If I could have been bothered I would for sure have got a FUTURE MS VINCENNES coathanger for my dress.
Also, no not snarky! It’s an excellent thing to proclaim.
We are hippos together, as I, too, am confused by all-but-a-few of my friends’ decisions to take their husbands’ names.
On the other hand, I am the first of many of my friends to get married, and I appended my husband’s name to mine–a la Laura Ingalls Wilder. So my name, everywhere, is Aravis Maidenname Husbandsname–on facebook, at work, on my business cards, in my email, on my return address labels, etc. And I still have a number of my friends who address me as “Aravis Maidenname” after I’ve pointed out my name change to them. “Ha ha, I’m a feminist so I don’t believe in name changing!”
Okay, but I don’t care what you do with your name, but please address me by my chosen name. This grates on me so badly–I will do you the favour of calling you whatever you wish to be called, but do me the same damn favour. This is important to me and my family, so can you please extend me the same courtesy I do to you and not “ha-ha” me over it? (Not that anyone on the Toast would do this! But it has been grating on my nerves lately.)
tbqh it really grates on my nerves when people (especially other women) get all snide about women taking their husband’s last name, like we’re committing an unforgivable betrayal against the great cause of sisterhood. It’s great that there’s no longer an expectation that women will change their names and that nobody raises an eyebrow if they don’t, but can we just get off it already. I’m aware that it’s 2014 and I didn’t have to change my last name. But I wanted to – not because of any feelings of subservience to my husband (LOL) but because I always found my maiden name to be silly and embarrassing and I cringed a little bit on the inside whenever I met someone new and had to give them my full name. Getting married provided me with a painless way to get rid of it.
Can we just stop mocking women in the name of feminism for the choices they make.
YES PLEASE.
I am very glad that I didn’t have to change my name, and I am very glad that other women can do exactly as they please with their names. But really, I wanted to incorporate my husband’s name into mine. I did. And my friends ignoring my wishes or “Oh, I don’t believe in that, I’ll call you [whatever]” is so incredibly infuriating it makes me want to yell at them. I swear. Just…..please, please get off my back about MY GOD-DAMNED NAME.
I’m a terrible person, so I would probably come back with, “I don’t believe in YOU, so I’ll call you Asshole Friend.”
Trust me, it’s very difficult not to respond to that with “OK, I’ll just call you Sue, then! Why, aren’t we just calling people whatever we feel like calling them?”
THANK YOU. I took my husband’s surname, I had good reasons for doing so, I’m fully aware of what year it is (although I’ve been married nearly ten years now). I’m glad I had a choice and this is the choice I made.
I also changed my name upon marriage because I hated my maiden name, no one could pronounce it, and it never really felt like mine anyway since I am Korean and my maiden name was Hungarian. Names are complicated for adoptees! (And lots of other people.) Sometimes I think about changing my name AGAIN now that I actually know the Korean surname I was born with. But it would be a hassle, and I’ve published under this name, so…
ETA none of this is intended to say “calm down about your friends changing their names, ladies!!” But because of my OWN background, I don’t assume I know my friends’ reasons for choosing their names. And I want to trust that they’re making the choice that’s best for them?
Why not say “Calm down about your friends changing their names” though? I’m not trying to stir shit up for the hell of it here, but it just seems to me like a strange thing to be concerned about – unless someone thinks their friend was pressured by her new husband to change her surname against her will, in which case that’s a symptom of a much larger problem. I can’t imagine being upset or personally offended by a friend’s decision to change or keep her name; it’s just something that’s not even on my mental radar and doesn’t affect me in any way. It’s like being offended by a friend choosing to wear pink. This is going to come across as more dismissive than I intend it, but who cares and why do they care so much?
(That being said, I do see red when we get cards from my in-laws addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Husband’s-first-name Husband’s-surname.)
(That being said, I do see red when we get cards from my in-laws addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Husband’s-first-name Husband’s-surname.)
This. I had to tell my in-laws this repeatedly, even though they knew I kept my name.
I don’t have a problem with any woman choosing what she wants to so; for me, it’s more the often still expected reaction that you take your husband’s name, period. As if there’s no doubt (and yes, a lot of people still do this!) And when I half-jokingly wonder why the husband can’t take the wife’s name instead, if there’s going to be changing of surnames, people flip out. So.
I guess I’m not really concerned about any individual– it’s more like “how come we live in a society where anyone does that at all?” I mean, my mom wanted to keep her name but changed it because she was living on a military base and at the time it was a bureaucratic nightmare to have a household with multiple surnames. I understand why she did it, but why the #$%^ would they even create a system where giving up your own damned name is the easiest option? And I don’t think we can change that system unless people are willing to point out that it’s unequal.
Yes, exactly. I just cannot get worked up about other people’s names, I just can’t. I think other people are choosing their names in the way they would like–my place is not to jump up and ask if they’ve been Educated Enough. Because I’m on the other side, getting “Well WHY would you do that?” and it sucks balls.
The expectation that this is a choice women have to make, or not, is unequal. And the fact that we are judged by someone no matter WHAT we choose is bullshit. People can and should obviously choose to go by whatever name they damn well please. But it’s also human to wonder about other people’s choices, and to look at them as part of a larger framework in which women are treated differently than men.
Husband and I kept our names and whenever we get wedding invites or holiday cards or whatever that are addressed to Mr. and Mrs.HusbandName I ALSO see red, take a picture of the offense, and rage to my sister. I mean if nothing else my name is the same on Facebook! That’s a pretty big clue that I didn’t change my name!
When husband responded to a particularly offensive wedding invite I forced him to write both of our full names on the RSVP. The name card at my table when we eventually went to the wedding was correct. Small victories.
>>nobody raises an eyebrow if they don’t,
This varies, of course, but unfortunately I do not thi it is true that nobody raises an eyebrow in the US or the UK. I think a lot of eyebrows still get raised.
Women get disapproved of whichever way they go. Hurray for patriarchy!
OH PEOPLE RAISE AN EYEBROW, GIRL. I live in Utah and it is a Big Fuckin Deal. And, statistically, keeping your name is still a real minority choice. I think that it is important to remember that the choice to change your name may get you some snark from progressives on FB, but it is still what most women will do, and American society is most comfortable with. Should anyone get blowback? No. But it is definitely not accurate to say nobody raises an eyebrow if you do not change your name.
I was living in an East Coast Liberal City when I got married and people STILL kept asking me “so what will your new name be??” and then looked at me like I had two heads when I said “same as my old name.”
Somebody even said to me, “I guess that will make it easier when you get divorced.”
!!!!!
I hope you killed this person with your laser death glare.
My mother never changed her last name and kind of just owned the “I guess that will make it easier when you get divorced.” reasoning. They’ve been married 40 years, but if you ask she’ll still say she’s keeping her maiden name so it’s less hassle when she leaves my dad for a younger man. I plan to use that answer if I ever have the need, too.
My new name is Death
They do!
I didn’t change mine and I get everything from, “Guess it’s not that serious.” to “Well if you both talked about it and he’s okay with it…”
If. He’s. Okay. With. It.
(at which point I am counting backwards from 20 because one does not yell at little old ladies in public places)
Spouse and I were talking about the MAGNIFICENT confusion your mother could have/possibly did spread, given her maiden name is one letter away from your father’s name. GLORIOUS.
I am sorry to report that there was the least possible amount of confusion because it’s easy and sounds the same, and also because my mother opts for harmony and order over fun 99 times out of 100.
She married your father: deep within her is a desire for chaos.
My mom’s maiden name has the same first three letters as my dad’s name, and she definitely signed a permission slip for me in elementary school with her maiden name.
ABCDEF became ABCLMN, is what happened. Easy to remember, hard to sign to documents properly.
I gave my friend some shit about taking her new husband’s name because she didn’t really care what her name was but he said, “If I pay that much for an engagement ring, you’re taking my name.” Which…he’s not a jerk, but that’s a bullshit thing to say, even jokingly, because it is a PAIN in the ASS to change your name, so it’s all well and good for him because he doesn’t have to spend hours in the DMV and Social Security office and updating credit cards and saved info online etc etc. I give a little side-eye to women who change their names because “that’s what they’re supposed to do” or “it’s important to him that we have the same name [meaning his name because see above for why it’s a pain in the ass]” but whatever, life is a rich tapestry.
“If I pay that much for an engagement ring, you’re taking my name.”
Okay, like spouse and I don’t fight very often, even less often am I the initiator of the disagreement, but so help me, if he ever said something like this, the response would make the list of TOP 5 TIMES I RAINED HELL DOWN UPON OUR HAPPY HOME. Because. Fucking hell.
Well, I think the problem is that there is still an expectation, and people do much more than raise eyebrows. When I told my mom I wasn’t changing my name, she gave me the most shocked expression I have ever seen on her face. Like I’d just announced I was calling off the wedding and joining a convent or something. I still get all kinds of mail from relatives addressed to Becky [His last name]. After my wedding coworkers asked me what my new name was. So I think a lot of the pushback on women changing their names comes from a place of defensiveness.
I would also really like to be able to ask “so, are either of you changing your names?” without it sounding like “please tell me so I can reply with all the ways in which your decision is incorrect.”
I’m sure the rest of y’all reading the name-change comments in this thread are as fascinated as I am by folks’ stories about what & how they decided to do about their married names. Quit ruining them for everyone, judgey mcjudgefaces.
I love name-stories! You get a whole history of the person, and a look at how they make decisions.
Same. I never liked my last name and ever since I was a kid I looked forward to marriage as a time when I could change my name easily. And luckily my husband has a very simple last name, but not super common, so it was perfect. And I did keep my maiden name as my middle name, because my middle name was super boring. My husband was married before, and he and his ex had hyphenated their names, and he said it was super annoying and people were always confused.
THIS IS WHY I TRY SO HARD TO REMEMBER. sometimes i forget and i am sorry. but if a feminist makes a choice, isn’t it a feminist choice?
No. No it’s not. A feminist can make loads of neutral choices, or even anti-feminist ones. Some of those choices are just the result of not thinking, and some of them are concessions to patriarchy, because you can’t fight every battle in the world at once. But no, not every choice made by a feminist is a feminist choice.
I’m so tired of telling the bank teller that NO my name isn’t actually “Paige Husbandsname” even though that’s how my in-laws address checks to us. “Well, we’re married but I kept my last name but my in-laws keep ‘forgetting’ so can I still deposit this check in my account because this is my money even though that’s not my name.”
UGH.
Oooh I’ve definitely just called in-laws and tell them I can’t deposit it and they gotta send me a new one. We’ve made it clear, they should know better.
Funnily enough, I’ve deposited checks where it is my wife’s name and my last name (even though she didn’t change it) using our bank’s phone app, and never had an issue. So, that may be an option (maybe they are too lazy to fight it when it isn’t in person).
I know it’s entirely irrational and idiotic, but a small part of me takes it as a personal affront when acquaintances change their name to their husband’s name after getting married. Of course, I would never say anything to them, and the majority of my brain says “you do you, I’m very glad you’re happy.” But there’s still that tiny part of me that’s pouty about it.
Same here. Several of my Facebook friends (that is, women I was friends with in high school or college but don’t talk to anymore) have gotten married in the last few months and they ALL changed their last name on Facebook as soon as they were married, or even a little before. Of course it’s their choice, but it still bothered me a little that out of 5 or so women, not one chose to keep her maiden name. It’s like they just erased their former identities completely (and it caused me lots of confusion as I suddenly was seeing posts by people whose names I didn’t recognize!).
I wish people would just keep their old names in parenthesis. Not judging people excited about the name change, just legit confused and frightened by change.
At least a compound-hyphenated von something. This is America, sentence-long geneological titles are open to all.
Conversations with drunk botanists:
“I HEAR YOU’RE GETTING MARRIED BEFORE YOU GO TO GRAD SCHOOL.”
“Yes.”
“I DISAPPROVE.”
“OK?”
“ARE YOU CHANGING YOUR NAME?”
“No.”
“GOOD. WOMEN; LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT WOMEN. THEY GET MARRIED, AND THEY CHANGE THEIR NAMES, AND THEN IT’S MRS. HUSBAND SURNAME ALL OVER THEIR COLLECTION NOTES, THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE THE COMMON DECENCY TO USE THEIR FIRST NAME AS A CLUE, AND YOU HAVE SOME APPARENT NITWIT BURST ON THE SCENE WITH COLLECTION NUMBERS IN THE THOUSANDS WHEN THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND WERE BLANCHE THE COMPETENT BOTANIST.”
“I’m not changing my name.”
“GOOD. DON’T HAVE KIDS EITHER; THEY ALWAYS GET BORN DURING THE BLOOM SEASON OR HAVE SOCCER OR SOMETHING.”
I wish I was born in the spring so I could tell people I was born during the Bloom Season. I asked a friend what her due date was this week and she told me “about the same time as the deer”.
That is such a good line: I am envious.
I love this entirely. Thanks for sharing!
This is the only time someone has started a sentence with “LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT WOMEN” and ended up somewhere not completely terrible.
Alternate perspective: not including my maiden name, changing my last name, and having a non-face Facebook pic all means I *never* have old acquaintances friend requesting/inviting me to reunions/judging my life choices. It’s paradise for not dealing with awkward social interactions from the past.
Me too. And it bugs me extra when they change their name from something I really like the sound of to something more boring. I’m never going to say anything to them about it, but it makes me a tiny bit sad.
I recently found my second grade yearbook and went on a binge of facebook-adding all the people I had forgotten about, and an incredible number of female classmates were difficult or impossible to find because of name changes. It’s such a little thing but it reminds me why that expectation pisses me off so much. I don’t want bird_internet to just stop existing in the public record when I get married and bird_husbandsname to pop out of nowhere. And I hate that I even have to think about that when dudes don’t.
Yup. Every once in a while I’m reading my facebook feed and I’m like “who the fuck is Katie [Smith]? *clicks through to photos* oh I guess Katie [Jones] got married.” (For some reason it is always someone named Katie.)
And never mind the TWO friends I have who have gone from their maiden names to their first husbands’ last names to their second husbands’ last names, all before age 30. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pleased that they are both in happier relationships now, but it is going to take me forever to remember their current last names.
And I hate that I even have to think about that when dudes don’t.
This.
So much yes. I mean, we’ve never gotten a piece of mail that was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. MyLastName, is what I’m saying.
How come Mr Dakimel gets mail addressed to Mr. Dakimel’s maiden name:
I didn’t change my name until we’d been married for 15 years or so. When we got married, he had no credit record (I imported him from Ireland) so all the utilities, etc, were in my name, and then my name went first on our first mortgage. So a lot of his finance stuff pulls up him + me MaidenName.
Now, personal mail, no, that’ll never come to him that way.
“I imported him from Ireland.” I love this!
That has actually happened to me, and I’m not even married. My (now ex-) boyfriend and I went together to the SPCA to adopt my cat, and a few weeks later, the SPCA sent a letter addressed to Mr. and Mrs. MyFirstName MyLastName. It was a beautiful moment.
So you’re saying there’s hope 🙂
Possibly. Maybe.
I’m a lawyer, and you can literally go onto internet legal databases and put my name into the search box for “counsel” and see all the cases I’ve argued. I cannot fucking IMAGINE changing my name professionally for that reason alone. And I have a bunch of lady lawyer friends whose husbands are so INSISTENT that they change their names. DUDE. RAGE.
My colleague came into my office one morning several weeks after her wedding all mean mugging and I asked her what was wrong and she told me she was going to the DMV to change her name on her drivers licence so she could give him her new licence as his birthday present, and she was mad/sad about it. And I mean, she’s a colleague and not a close friend, but all of a sudden I was like “close the door” and I said to her serious-like “you know, you don’t have to do this”. And she kind of shook it off and said “it’s ok! It’s fine. He wants it, and I don’t mind.”
But she did mind. And she did it anyway.
Yep. I remember reading something about how scholars struggle to follow women in the historical record because they get married and suddenly it’s impossible to tell who’s who from existing documents. Even in the internet age, if you don’t know someone well enough to know when and to whom they got married, how would you know that those two names in the database belong to the same person?
I can’t see myself marrying someone who would insist on a name change– current boyfriend and I aren’t even close to the point of having that discussion, but I can’t imagine it would be an issue– but I would have to say “okay, if it’s important to you that we have the same name, you are welcome to be Mr. bird_internet. But it’s not that important to me, so it’s your call.”
Scholars also sometimes struggle to follow female scholars in the literature because they got married. 😛
D:
HIS BIRTHDAY PRESENT
HIS BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!!!!!!!
“Happy birthday. I buy you nothing. You deserve nothing. Also now my credit card gets declined sometimes because they don’t believe I’m who I say I am, so thanks for that.”
It just…it makes me think of BDSM, somehow. Like giving your dom your own collar as a sign of submission.
I have a bunch of scientist lady friends, and they have so far all changed their names when they got married. They have degrees, publications, professional designations, reports etc. all under a name that is no longer theirs. It’s their choice, so I’ve never said anything and never will, but a name is a hell of a big thing to throw away.
I also had one contractor I really liked that I had trouble finding when I wanted to hire her again because she got married and changed her name and I had no idea what her new last name was and I had lost her phone number. Luckily I found her through a mutual contact’s Facebook, because otherwise she would have literally lost a job over changing her name.
I have accidentally defriended people on Facebook because they changed their names and I had no idea who they were when I scrolled through my friends list. “Michelle Smith? I don’t know a Michelle Smith.”
I mean, I understand why other people might change their names to their spouse’s name on getting married, and I’m not going to slam them all automatically or anything, but when people are SHOCKED and CONFUSED that my husband and I have different last names, I want to shake them and ask where they’ve been for the last however many decades, because this is not some wack-ass idea that I had out of the clear blue sky.
I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this, which I won’t share at this time, but I will tell a story about this weekend when I was staying at a hotel with my beloved, to whom I am not married. I called the hotel reception at one point, can’t remember why, and at the beginning of the conversation she called me “Mrs. Beloved” and at the end she called me “Ms. NeedsLove”. And also at one point someone called my boyfriend “Mr. NeedsLove” (which I adored) and the whole thing was very hilarious and confusing. We have different names! Stop trying to not only marry us but also change our names against our will!
I did tell my boyfriend that I thought “Mr. NeedsLove” sounds pretty great and I couldn’t wait for him to change his name. He will not do that, I don’t think, but neither will I.
I’m pretty sure our dog trainer thinks my boyfriend is Mr. Emlorark because she thinks we’re married but they only have my full name and his first name. I like it, makes me feel weirdly powerful.
As for the subject in general, I am also a lawyer (although a baby one) and I am getting to the point where I couldn’t imagine changing my name for professional reasons, quite apart from feminist ones. I didn’t go to all those stupid law school mixers so that people could no longer find me on LinkedIn! I have friends who changed theirs right before graduation, which makes sense, but I think it gets harder as you move into your career.
I’m sorry – are you a lawyer … for babies? Or a new-ish lawyer?
please answer, I am for real confused about what a baby lawyer is
I am a brand new lawyer, but I desperately wish I was a lawyer for babies. “Well, Ms. Baby, I think we should accept this settlement offer, it’s very generous and your odds at trial aren’t great.” “Coo, gurgle.”
I have very good friends who are marrying each other next month, and the woman is taking the man’s last name (which to be fair I would probably take his last name too; it’s a good name). He regularly gets called Mr [HerLast], even though they’re not quite married, because she’s more well-known professionally, and he absolutely does not mind and embraces it.
My husband has been Mr. Beakses at one grocery store chain since we moved in together several years ago. He was always kind of tickled about it- I told him he could make it permanent, but something about being “so and so the third” made him want to keep his name. We have the same initials- that’s matchy enough on the name front for me.
Back to add that this thread is making me itch for another “Comments from every article about X” piece. I mean, no one is being obnoxious here, but I do love those pieces so much.
GET EXCITED. I have one scheduled for the 17th.
Woohoo!
JAZZED!
STOKED BRAH
My maiden name is/was shared by a celebrity who pronounces it differently than my family does. And no one had ever said it correctly, even before this person became famous. Let’s just say it doesn’t conform well to English spelling. So I took my husband’s (fairly common, phonics-friendly) last name and have not regretted stealing it.
I share a last name with a celebrity that is pronounced the same but spelt differently. Nobody ever spells my last name right the first time.
I don’t plan on getting married, because it confers no additional legal benefits over a de facto relationship where I live and negatives in terms of cost to get married and possibly get divorced if it doesn’t work out, but if I did, I’d want to be getting married to someone that’d choose a new last name with me. Maybe we’d hyphenate our individual last names to our new name or maybe we wouldn’t, depending on how we felt about our individual relationships with our families. I guess I just don’t see the need to be identified as a son or the occupation of a person that lived hundreds of years ago, because my relationship with that person is very tenuous compared to the relationship I have with someone I’d be willing to marry.
Me and husband both kept our names, but imagine my gleeful anticipation at introducing the world to the impending Baby Hardapple..! We have lots of good reasons, but I’m not gonna lie, part of it for me is just an excuse to feminist at people.
I changed mine in part for the sweet, sweet anonymity of Mr. Hydra’s surname. Good luck wading through the millions of people that share my namesake, potential stalkers.
This works for me because I am a curmudgeonly nobody, though. Not sure how advisable it would for women with actual achievements and qualifications.
It took me almost a year and a half to change my name, part indecision, but mostly laziness because it really is a pain in the ass. My mother went the hyphenated route back when she got married and passed it on so I was Alice Middlename Mothersname-Fathersname and she told me her one regret was not switching the order to Fathersname-Mothersname so that when she makes reservations and stuff they get filed together. I’m also the last of both lines for names so when I did decide to change it (after dealing with the reservation hassle our whole damn honeymoon) I didn’t want to drop anything and wound up with a new ridiculously long name that I love because no one can figure it out. They had to take out vowels to fit it on my driver’s license. Now I’m Alice Middlename Mothersname Husbandsname-Fathersname. Since I work with my husband (and his brother) I just drop the second part and it looks like half the damn company is ours. (This also had the added benefit of un-linking any information about me online from before the name change. Now the odds of creepy ex finding me are significantly lower!) All that said, if his name hadn’t been shorter and easier to spell I wouldn’t have bothered. TLDR- names are complicated so you do you. If you want to screw with the DMV and have 17 names go for it.
I feel the yip yip Martian is me during conference calls. and meetings. and actual conferences and basically fuck stupid office jobs.
I have a Yip-Yip costume. It’s blue, not pink, but maybe I’ll start wearing it during conference calls and meetings. Truth in advertising, and all.
Someone should make a snuggie that looks like the Yip-Yips only with a tie so it’s business-appropriate.
(My answer to everything is “snuggie with a tie!”)
A still from Frozen of Elsa underestimating how big of a pot she needed when doubling this soup recipe.
Truefax.
Yeah but if you don’t make enough soup to last the week, is it really soup?
I am using this next time my husband makes fun of me for accidentally making too much soup.
I recently lost a cardigan at yoga class and it’s like the yuppiest problem ever, but man I really liked that cardigan. Katniss would probably track down her lost item at the black market at hold someone at arrow-point until she got it back, though, whereas I just feel cranky about it.
its very very difficult to find a perfect cardigan. I had to retire 2 recently due to holes and I’m dealing with a void.
A friend of mine had her car stolen with her favorite cardigan in it, and I swear she mourned the cardigan more than the car. I don’t blame her.
I had my favorite cardigan in the trunk of my car and they’re both black and I forgot where I put it and it took me way long to notice it when loading groceries in there one day and it was the best day ever that I had it again.
“Two girls ride the blue line
Two girls walk down the same street
One left her sweater sittin’ on the train
The other lost three fingers at the cannery…”
The first time I heard that song, I was like, “Oh no, losing a sweater is terrible!” in the split second before Neko got to the next line.
Same.
That song makes me have feels. TBH could be said about at least half her songs, though.
I’m the pug who can’t get out of bed because sunrise is at fucking 8:30 in the morning, why is this happening
EVERY MORNING I’m like, I can’t, I can’t :'(
Waking up, seeing a dark grey sky, thinking “Oh it must be like 4 AM or something, I have many hours of sleep left before work!” and then glancing at the clock and seeing that it’s actually 7:30 is by far the worst thing about winter in my book.
it took a few years into living in the Netherlands before I had to be awake before say, 9-10 AM, which then caused me to realize that throughout the winter the sun doesn’t actually rise until 8:30. If I get up at 7:30 it is super dark and I can’t deal with it.
I actually sleep much better for it! In summer I have to sleep in an eyemask and if it comes off or slips I am WIDE AWAKE at 5am and furious and tired all day. This time of year it’s getting light just before my alarm goes off (I work at home so don’t have to be up until 7.45, and it’s light by about 7.30) and I’m so much cheerier for it.
Here actual sunrise is 8:30, so it’s not really “light” (in quotes, it’s Holland, it’s just shades of grey) until about 9, which is insane.
Normally the cat demands breakfast around 5 or 6, and if I feed him them I can sleep peacefully until the alarm goes off (it’s a small price to pay). Recently he’s figured out that it stays dark for longer, and that if he asks for breakfast about 2, I won’t be able to tell the difference – then he’s been pulling off second breakfast at the normal time. I AM ON TO HIS WILY WAYS NOW THOUGH.
I am fortunate in that my Klaas-Jan is not particularly greedy, so I can leave dry food out all the time and he won’t bug me about needing his breakfast.
Oh, he usually has lots of dry food while all this is going on, but the two little servings of wet food in the morning and evening are the delights of his day. And he’s such a generally sweet fellow it’s hard to begrudge him this one obnoxious behaviour.
Prince if he were sorted into Hufflepuff.
This fanfic exists, right? It must exist, but I’m not getting any joy from AO3’s story search.
Be the change you want to see in the world (and then send me the link plz?).
OMG. One of my colleagues was telling me the other day that her students were irritated that they couldn’t find the perfect source for their paper. Her response was, “Be the source you want to see in the literature.”
Literally the pink “yip yip” Martian from Sesame Street
always
(excellent, Jaya)
“Literally the pink ‘yip yip’ Martian from Sesame Street bored on a conference call that shouldn’t even involve her anyway.”
I feel this so strongly. Some days, I can’t even muster the willpower to put in my two yips.
“The field where I grow my yips is fallow.”
Yesssss
I can respect individual choices, and honestly feel there’s no wrong choice so long as it’s a decision made thoughtfully. What disappoints me is seeing things staying so overwhelmingly tilted in favor of name changing, when I would expect to see things a little closer to 50-50, or at least 75-25. But no. Still more like 90-10.
That partly depends on where you live – I’m in Ottawa and while I haven’t carried out an exhaustive survey on this, I haven’t noticed that significant a tilt. And I grew up in Quebec, where changing your last name is a really complicated process and people can only adopt their spouse’s surname “in an exceptional situation.”
I read once that scientists with earlier alphabetical last names got cited more often, and therefore paid more. So I vowed I would only change my last name if my spouse’s last name came before mine.
Now I have realized that paper authorship is ordered by role in the research, not last name (at least in engineering papers), so there’s no reason to change.
But if my students’ bibliographies are any indication, folks who show up at the top of alphabetically ordered search results get cited earlier in undergrad and grad papers. Make of that what you will.
There have been cases where I approved of name changes because dude’s last name was just so much better. Quality of the name has to count for something. Is dude’s last name “Smith”? NO FUCKING WAY.
i have a very feminist friend who said the best part of getting married was swapping out her comic last name, which is all she wanted in life as a child.
I have multiple friends whose distinctive maiden names seemed like professional assets (if you’re a performer or a writer or an artist, it’s probably a GOOD thing that you are the only person who comes up during a google search of your name, right?) but who changed their last names into something super generic after getting married. WHY. Now you are one of approximately 15 thousand people with that exact spelling, why would you do that.
Agreed. A while ago I was talking to a friend who was dating a guy with the last name Fire and she told me normally she doesn’t want to change her name, but she might have to if she married the Fire guy because that name was too good to pass up.
Fire is great! I would be hard pressed to change my name, but Fire would make me consider it (of course, I’d also be hard pressed to marry a dude.) I went to theatre school with a dude whose last name was Rose and *obviously* an arts career was gonna work out for him, being born with that great of a stage name.
See also, Lucy Lawless (née Ryan).
I have said that I will only change my last name if my husband has a super cool last name like Bullet or something. Sadly, my partner’s name is not going to make the grade. My dad considering changing his last name to my mom’s but the result was a kind of hilarious vegetable pun so he decided not to.
I would seriously consider changing my name if it resulted in a good pun, is that bad?
SO CURIOUS
#gpoy
Is it weird to worry about last name changing as it relates to implied ethnicity or religion? Like I don’t have super strong feelings either way regarding changing my name (pure and simple laziness makes me favor keeping mine), but my boyfriend has a very typical Jewish last name. I kind of worry about people looking askance at me at the doctor’s office etc. if I changed it, particularly since being a “shiksa” is apparently a thing. Is this something I would have to go back in time 30 years to worry about or no?
Well, it depends totally on your situation. My husband’s name is ethnically much different from mine–consequently I get weird looks and someone once asked me “You’re not Asian!,” which was bizarre.
Don’t fret about other people looking weird at you. Fuck other people. Take the name you like best and is best for your life.
Jews look like all kinds of possible ethnicities, so it would generally not be A Thing. I say this as a pretty Jewish looking Jew with a very non-Jewish last name. That said, don’t take some man’s last name if you don’t want to take it.
You know who shouldn’t have changed her name when she got married? Hermione Granger.
Is it canon that she did? I will never believe this.
CANON SHE DIDN’T.
all the Toast articles are related to each other, some obviously, some in more arcane ways. It’s witchcraft. Mallory and Nicolex2 are planning something… something big… a global takeover, perhaps.
She would have had to change it to Dumbledore, anyway – which I would be in favor of, because then she’d have a last name that complemented her awesomeness.
When we married, my spouse got added to a lot of my accounts and memberships – we get a lot of mail addressed to the “Bittern Family” and “Mr. and Mrs. Bittern”.
It’s like Julia Sweeney said: it feels pretty good. It’s a good feeling.
“A still from Frozen of Elsa underestimating how big of a pot she needed when doubling this soup recipe.”
Samesies, only with dinner leftovers and containers. ALL OF THE TIME.
This was amazing Jaya.
“A hippo with a bird on her head who doesn’t understand why she is the only one of her married friends not to change her last name because it’s 2014 and like, statistically it just doesn’t make sense.”
THANK YOU. Confession – because it was important to my stepdaughter, I DID change my name. I was Red Minerva for 11 years, before finally saying THIS ISN’T ME. I explained my reasoning to my family, including stepdaughter, and legally changed my name BACK to my maiden name (stayed married to Mr. Red!), and we’re a happier family because I’m a happier person this way.
me tbh
me tbh