My mom had an uncle named J.M. It didn’t stand for anything, that’s what his momma named him. He went into the army and they were not having it. His paperwork read “Jayem”.

Kitty Kitty oh so pretty, kitty kitten cat!

More likely you just would not have been kept in hospital four months here. Somehow we have the combination of highest cost and also cost-cutting schemes.

To answer your question - $18,000 I guess, if I got lucky and the insurance worked correctly. That’s the alleged max out of pocket for the insurance I pay for at work.

Gillian like Gil in Gilbert and the Gill of a fish not Jill like, well, I honestly still don’t know why it’s spelled Gillian but pronounced Jillian.

Zero. I have never gotten back together with anyone I’ve broken up with. LTR? Had one 25 year run, one split. Now in a relationship that has so far lasted 12 years I think? Yes we are happy.

Well I am on the other side of this, I feel so fat even though objectively not overweight at all (BMI of 22, and pretty lean) because I was underweight a long time so in a relative sense I feel fat. I also feel better than I ever did when underweight, physically, and my bone mass is a little better (which is supposed to be impossible to achieve at my age) and that pisses me off, I want my healthiest weight to be the size I like better.

I don’t think it’s good for you to enable them in losing weight, no. Unless you are 100% sure they are not falling into disordered eating. It’s their body, you can’t control that but it’s fine not to support or help them with it.

As someone prone to eating disorders - the suggestion to work out is solid. I find it much better to focus on athletic goals and just let form follow function. It’s good to be able to feel good about what my body can do.

My ex got so mad because down here the boy name Don and the girl name Dawn sound about the same. He would yell no it’s not it’s DAAHN and DWAWN! But we don’t have that nasal Midwestern thing, it’s just Don and Daun.

By the first evening by 9pm, when they didn’t get dinner.

I would take that “we don’t care” as an invitation to leave and start a new life with people who do care. Nobody should say that out loud, what assholes, but since they don’t need you, you are free.

My kid got a worksheet on the long A sound. She got through most of them but was stumped on the “lobster”. I looked at it - Lobster, Crawfish, neither of those have a long A sound, what the heck?

Hours later it occurs to me.

OH, Craaay-fish? Who in the world calls them that? Nobody here. Where was this printed?

Migraine. I’ve broken bones, had unmedicated childbirth, nothing has ever hurt as much or as disgustingly as a migraine. (ETA kidney/bladder stone came close but at least wasn’t in my head!)

Other than that, any pain to do with fingernails or toenails sqiucks me out, I would cave under torture.

I was around for that time, and yes in many ways the world is better now, it’s a mixed bag but:

My kids were not beat up in school for being queer.

The bay is much cleaner (though that is going in the wrong direction)

Solar power has come down in cost so much that there is hope for the clean energy transition to accelerate.

I was literally paid less than the men doing the same job I was doing, openly, in the early 1990s. And there was smoking in offices.

Violent crime is much less prevalent than it was back then. My kids don’t have to be as careful or afraid as I was.

Overall - I don’t think it is useful to be nostalgic, there are enough changes in a positive direction, sure we had more hope for the future in the 1990s but the reason we needed it was because things were kinda shitty.

I can agree with this. Like entering your dog in a dog show. I did want my kids in sport or dance as part of their education but told them if I ever gave criticism, to tell me to do the sport my own damn self. So they did their stuff as their hobbies, and I did my own art/sport stuff and kept out of theirs.

Y’all have some weird ideas about what a hobby is. Parenting as a hobby cracked me up, that’s just having a family, you presumably grew up in one of those. Religion isn’t a cult-like hobby, it’s a hobby-ish cult.

On the parenting front though, I think those pageants are, those kids do it for a hobby and I would consider it abusive, and hard to exit once they are in.

Licorice is wonderful. When I was a little kid, half the reason Halloween was my favorite holiday was because there were packs of only orange and black jellybeans, the only good flavors.

Panda licorice now, it’s amazing. At our airport there is an all licorice vending machine, all different kinds but of course since it’s in an airport it’s expensive.

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your dad is a racist.

I would say it’s a shining example of my theory. He wants to go back to when he was ignorant of the struggles of other people. They did exist, he just didn’t know and now he does.

+3 or so, benign neglect, with unavoidable trauma. My dad died when I was a teenager and that sucked, my mom fell apart, also she was diagnosed bipolar and I didn’t enjoy being a child at all, but do honestly believe my mom did her best, and we were fed, housed, schooled, (ETA including sports! She was big on physical fitness, and that is something that absolutely ended up improving my adult life, once I recovered from my own disordered/restrictive eating) and not interfered with much beyond that.

What score would the over-involved helicopter parents of my kids’ friends land on this scale, though? Those kids aren’t spoiled exactly but certainly not neglected.

I think people who think the past was better are all white men, and it’s because they didn’t have to think about other people. They want to go back to ignorance.

He literally says that to you? The 1950s? Have you asked him specifically why? My mom had a great time in the 1950s and no way would she ever have wanted the world to go backwards to that time. She recognized, as she became older, how bad things were for her mom, for black kids (her school was segregated), for so many people.

The only reason I can imagine wanting to go to the past, is to try to make this future better, but I know better than to fuck with the timeline and can’t imagine I’d be able to do anything about it anyway.

Hozier

Father John Misty

SZA

Tyler Childers

And oh my God, the juggernaut that is Fontaines DC

ETA I agree with Future Islands.

Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.

Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.

I’m American. I regularly walk to the shop that’s 1.75 km, won’t drive it because it’s too close.

The closest Real Grocery is 2.5km, that I take electric bike. Same for the Whole Foods that’s much farther (5.5km) but that I consider an adventure ride and certainly not a walk. The groceries would melt by the time I got home if I walked.

All of these my husband drives to, and I think that’s more typical. I have hangups about driving short distances.