Weekend Open Thread: Staud
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Something on your mind? Chat about it here.
Ooh: Nordstrom is having more “extra 20% off” sales, and there’s a lot of fun summer stuff in the sale. I’m eyeing this Staud bag — I feel like the fireworks could represent a lot of different holidays, so the bag feels a bit more versatile than the beachier-themed versions.
The bag was $295, then marked to $199… but with the extra 20% off it comes down to $159. Nice!
Sales of note for 10/30
- Nordstrom – Extra 20% off clearance
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase + extra 15% off your $200+ purchase
- Brooklinen – Friends & Family – 20% off sitewide and 50% off select bundles
- J.Crew – 2700+ markdowns
- J.Crew Factory – Extra 50% off clearance
- M.M.LaFleur – Save 20% on suiting and dresses! Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off on other items)
- Talbots – Enjoy 30% off your entire purchase
What is your biggest gripe with where you live? (Home, neighborhood, town, ect?)
Illegal air BnBs. Otherwise I love my house, neighborhood, city etc.
Much of the built environment is very ugly, and the school district administration drives me batty.
In not real people problems as our house is 3000sqft for 2 ppl … I wish I had an extra room for a dedicated project / arts and craft room.
How do you not? My house is only 1400 sq finished and my DH and I both have an office/craft/hobby room. Then our unfinished basement is half wood shop and half chemical hobbies I don’t want to do upstairs.
No basement + open concept results in a lot of square footage without walls.
Midwest college town.
Serious gripe: there are basically no jobs here unless you’re in academia, healthcare or a K-12 teacher.
Less serious gripe (but a bigger annoyance to me personally, at the moment): terrible airport access.
Otherwise it’s a great place to live.
Same on all counts.
Commute. You can leave early enough to bypass it in the morning, but there is no good time to drive home between 3-7 pm.
The lack of a rail line to the airport. (efforts to create one have never gone anywhere for various reasons). Or really any decent public rail. The annoying thing is (like many cities) it had streetcars until the 1930s, on a route that would be very useful for light rail today.
It’s incredibly overpriced, even given the standards of the day. A piece of crap 2-bedroom 1950s ranch next to the interstate should not be $1.1M.
City- cops ignoring low-grade bad behavior, like running red lights, illegal turns, blatant littering (like people pitching trash out of car windows) etc that they are literally sitting at the intersection theoretically witnessing.
“High tech” trash cans that work far worse than the old basic cans they replaced.
The pros outweigh the cons. 95% of the time I’m walking or biking. Airport and rail access is easy.
Street takeovers and groups of tweens and teens riding 2- or 3- abreast in ebikes at 30+ mph with limited ability to do so safely around pedestrians and regular bikes and other cars.
“Special education” or “exceptional children” in public school only actually serves very few flavors of disabilities, so hoping that some other school out there may actually handle our child’s issues well vs poorly or not at all. “Other kids are bullied worse” is never a good response and when I talk about my autistic child and hear “artistic” back, I want to scream and cry at the same time.
School district run by people who like spreadsheets more than they like schoolchildren and/or seem to despise kids who want to go to college after high school.
Honorable mention: “progressive” people who think every issue can be solved with another bike lane or some bollards.
Neighbors. We didn’t realize how red our area was until after we were here.
No natural beauty – mountains or water other than a couple sad man-made lakes. It’s flat-ville. People in my area spend a lot of money on their landscaping, but it’s not the same.
Also, no sidewalks in my neighborhood although nearby areas have them.
Old houses are a lot of work.
The extremely one-sided political landscape.
Elaborate?
Gestures around in the past several decades…
Insane level of wealth prizes size above character. Builders buy up all the $2M, 3k sqft houses that are 50-100 year old and tear them down to build $5M big white ugly farmhouses that are 5-7k sqft and look eerily similar to each other and kind of hideous. And there’s such demand to be in our town (due proximity to the city, great schools, walkable community, etc) that they sell.
Wellesley?
I once posted about how sad it was to see a beautiful, old coastal house in New England that used to be in my family get torn down and replaced with the most butt-ugly McMansion you ever saw. I hope sea-level rise takes it out and it just might.
Does your city have heritage protections? This is very illegal where I live and I routinely report builders for breaking the law.
Not that poster but someone on my street just chopped down three beautiful, old trees without a permit (which is 100% required in our area). Debating whether to report it because I suspect they might have gotten told to do it by their insurance company for wildfire risk reduction, but even still. They were probably 100 feet tall.
REPORT IT PLEASE
Do we live in the same town?
Mosquitoes.
Senior citizens in town don’t want their taxes to go up and so don’t fund the schools, and so our HS has overcrowded classes and terrible facilities.
Hello, neighbor! Pisses me off because they’re sitting on enormous levels of wealth in this area, far more than any generation after – it’s the very definition of pulling up the ladder behind them. I do not support senior citizen exemptions on parcel taxes anymore.
My chief complaint about my state and county is the exorbitant property taxes. Yes we have great public schools but our tax bill is eye watering compared to my out of state friends.
I despise senior tax discounts on homes meant for a family. We shouldn’t incentivize empty nesters to hoard 2500+ sq ft houses in premier school districts. It’s just another way the deck is stacked against families today.
I don’t have kids but broadly agree. No one should be incentivized to stay in any housing, much less inappropriate housing.
I despise senior tax discounts in general, regardless of home size. Why should a generation that’s basically locked everyone out of the property market get any kind of discount on any kind of property? They wouldn’t be able to afford to stay in their homes otherwise? Too bad, so sad, having a home is clearly not a right in the US. They can sell and cash in their massive profits, they can spend down their assets and live in a grim medicaid nursing home, they can get a bunch of roommates, they can go without other necessities to pay their housing costs, or worse case, they can go to a shelter – just like anyone else who can’t afford housing has to do. The generation that CAUSED the housing crisis doesn’t get to be protected from its effects.
People over aged 65 are one of the wealthiest demos in the US – both by median wealth, and % living under the poverty line. Not only should they not get tax breaks, they shouldn’t be getting automatic 50% off at the city rec center, on public transit, etc. I’d literally vote for a city council rep who ran on this as a platform alone.
Cliquey neighbors. I didn’t have mean girl culture on my bingo card for my 40’s, but here we are!
Politics. I’m in a fairly red area of a blue state. My neighbors benefit from exceptional public schools and ridiculously nice municipal amenities, some of which are world famous, our public library is prettier than most of wedding venues I have been to and our area is one of the safest in the nation. And yet they think, philosophically, that they’re entitled to live here without paying their fair share in taxes. Practically, they keep electing corrupt republican officials who raise everyone’s taxes anyway so there’s a disconnect there. But still, it’s exhausting. They need to move to some red state where the public schools are terrible and you haul your own garbage or instead of insisting that anything that benefits the public generally is “socialism.”
Town being left to rot by boomer city council who refuses to consider that it could be better for the town to change and evolve rather than to die with them. (Rural Montana, far from any of the rich tourist areas).
Giant trucks driven by angry, aggressive white men doing dangerous things with those vehicles toward other drivers on the daily.
Mice, chipmunks, and squirrels who magically teleport themselves into our attic every winter, in spite of repeated, robust attempts to permanently exclude them.
what has social media made you buy lately? for me:
– stretchy socks for my mom
– korean mascara
– a posture bra
don’t remember any of the names lol.
Almost anything from Sephora probably caught my eye from a makeup tutorial.
Compression socks
Christmas dog collar and outfits
Ohhh, social media got me hard on compression socks during the pandemic but they’re still holding strong all these years later!
A fancy knife sharpener (it just arrived so I don’t know how well it works)
Christmas-themed aloha shirt for my husband
Bonne Maman advent calendar
Butter Brush for my daughter. Expensive but she loves it, so it was worth it!
This amazing sweatshirt from J Skis:
https://jskis.com/products/apres-instructor-crop-hoodie
A 30 lb. pull horseshoe magnet for manicure experiments.
I miss wearing jeans. Unfortunately because of a skin condition denim and other trousers that are tight in the crotch and made of stiff material are uncomfortable. someone mentioned jeans not made by denim but lyocell should be better. anyone knows about that or have other ideas? thanks
Now that looser and wide leg silhouettes are in, I’d look for softer stretch jeans and pants in those shapes – think they might work for you!
lots of denim has a lot of stretch like wit & wisdom, democracy. i got a brand called mugsy for my husband, not sure if they have women’s also. i’m sure there’s some indie designer out there doing comfort denim in a new way if you google.
rag & bone miramar jeans are actually sweatpants that look like jeans.
Look for looser styles with a higher percentage of stretch in the fabric. I personally love my rigid cotton jeans and know from ordering (and returning) experience that there are tons of options that aren’t snug in the crotch and that are basically soft pants that just look like denim.
I am a working mom with three kids. The older two (twins) just went away from college a flight away and I hear from them a couple of times a week and so far they are both adjusting well and making friends so I’m happy about that. The third one, a boy, is low maintenance and old enough to drive and basically stays shut in his room a few hours a day. I don’t what I am feeling, but I think I’m maybe sad or depressed? It felt okay but I went to see the older two kids at college for parents’ weekends (separate weekends) and it made the feeling worse I think. I feel anxious about them and their futures and whenever they call I’m very excited but I try not to call or text them a lot because they are often in the library or at dinner with friends, etc. I work full time as a law firm partner and have plenty to do outside of that (gym, some volunteer stuff, etc.) but I feel like I’m on the verge of crying a lot. Can any mom readers relate to this? Will this feeling go away?
This sounds normal to me – it’s a big adjustment! Do you have activities you can do that are fully immersive, like rock climbing or maybe some kind of artistic pursuit? I find it helps to have something that really forces you to focus and not ruminate or have time to feel negative emotions too frequently – something like walking or yoga allows the brain to wander in a way that can be unhelpful. But in your case, I actually think time will solve this.
What is your spiciest non political, PG take?
I’ll go first:
Custard/ pudding goes with cake way better than frosting or ice cream.
With the shift to streaming tv has lost the art of seasonal and filler episodes, the ones that often become cult classics.
Blueberries are gross and mushy.
The Modern Farmhouses that are popping up everywhere near me are hideous. Maybe belongs in the first thread too :)
Strong agree. Joanna Gaines is the worst thing to ever happen to design.
Oh man, bonus points for white siding with black windows. They look dated before they’re even occupied.
Most shoes that are in style today are incredibly, shockingly ugly. (Pants, too, but it’s the shoes that really get me.)
Twins’ names shouldn’t start with the same letter or rhyme, especially if they are identical.
It’s better to just switch to formula instead of trying to make it work as a breastfeeding undersupplier. Just switch. It’s so much better.
On the flip side, it is pretty common/normal for it to take a while for your milk to fully come in. Combo feeding is a totally valid option, either during that period or for a longer time, and comments like this discourage it by suggesting that formula is an either/or. Make the choice that is right for your body and your preferences, and that very much can include a mix of formula and breastfeeding.
the third lane is for crime
if you’re not willing to go at least 9 miles over the speed limit, gtfo
also if you’re following too closely behind me i will be slowing down to 5 miles below the speed limit.
-The quality of chocolate candy sold at the grocery store has declined considerably. I’m talking Reese’s, Snickers, etc.
-The shift to streaming tv is a cultural loss as we don’t all have watching last night’s episode of Friends in common, at least.
-Fried food except chips also tastes terrible.
I’m sad that I’m losing my junk food favorites.
My local supermarket chain’s generic Oreos are superior to the brand-name ones.
People who joke about speeding behind the wheel, absent a life-threatening emergency, should be removed from society.
Perhaps, but speed limits should reflect reality.
People who put their recycling out in loose paper bags should be required to do supervised block clean-ups to remove all the scattered cr-p that inevitably spills or blows around. Extra work if you do it on a particularly windy or damp day, which means the bags disintegrate.
I regret getting a smartphone.