Tuesday’s Workwear Report: Classic Shetland Blazer

383 Comments

1. Good Morning Elizabeth and HIVE! I love Talbot’s and this bright RED blazer! The manageing partner loves me to wear red suits in court, but as long as we are on ZOOM, TEAMS and WEBEX, I will tell him that I can save money by wearing just a RED Blazer like this! The only thing we have to worry about is if we have to get up from our chair during our on-line meetings, which happens more often then you think. I had to get up to get a drink, answer the intercom for deliveries, and check on things that are warming on the stove. In these situeations, we MUST remember to make sure that whatever we are wearing over our tuchuses is presentable; i.e. absolutely NO PJs, sweat pants or shorts or underwear. What you can wear are clean slacks, jeans and skirts if you have to. Just sayin’

   I read today that they are vaccinating in the UK already. In the US, Trump turned down extra doses from Pfyzer, so as a result, we will have to wait likeley until June! What was he thinking? I want to get it ASAP, and if I had married a Brit, I could get it now! What is going on here. PTOOEY!

2. Just an update on my cousin’s wedding. Wedding was this past weekend. According to another relative who did attend, about 100 people showed up, including my grandmother (73) and several great aunts (80+). Light on the masks. Dad had been planning to attend, but then came down with COVID-19 and had to miss it. Now, my Dad is also being frozen out by that side of the family. Like, they WANTED him to attend this wedding with COVID on board. Sadly, I am expecting hear that a lot of people are sick and there are no hospital beds in our area for them.

   1. Yeah, you don’t go to a wedding actively sick and contagious even when it’s not Covid – this is all about covid denial, not normal common sense actions.

      1. My aunt is mad because people didn’t attend the wedding that the bride’s family paid $40,000 for. If things were normal, 200 people would have shown up and they would have had their dream wedding. The bride’s family supposedly owed the money to the vendors either way, so my aunt and cousin feel that their only choice was to go ahead. This was not the wedding she envisioned for her kid and she’s taking it out on others.

         1. Wow. There are so many other ways to have handled that situation. I’m sorry for the drama in your family, but happy to hear you and your dad are safe. Hope your grandma is, too.

         2. That’s a lot of money, and she is entitled to her emotions. You are kind even for attempting to understand. But not going saved lives, and lives are more precious than money. In fact, even when economists try to put a price on life to assist health care decisions, I seem to remember that for one person it’s at least $300,000. So even the coldest most unfeeling way of measuring the choice tells you you and your father made the right choice. Thank you for doing so.

         3. usually you pay deposits initially and then you owe additional money a couple of weeks before the event. i almost had to cancel my wedding due to a parent illness and we would’ve lost the deposits, but the final payments weren’t due yet. yes, canceling would’ve still lost some money, but not all of it. or if anticipating fewer guests, you would pay less for food/alcohol, flowers, etc. obviously certain aspects still cost the same (music, photographer, etc.) irrespective of the number of guests, but some things don’t. also, your aunt sounds like an extremely selfish person with mixed up priorities.

         4. Yikes,

            On the one hand, I understand feeling disappointed, if they’ve been planning this for a long time, and sunk a lot of money into the venue that couldn’t be refunded because the wedding could legally happen. I really do feel for brides, grooms, and families that have had to call off these amazing weddings, and either push them to another year or have a significantly scaled-down ceremony, I hope everyone that had a wedding planned for this year can have a big vow renewal ceremony at some point.

            But while I have compassion for those in that situation, it’s definitely not okay to just go ahead and have the giant wedding, and shun everyone who didn’t attend due to safety concerns, ESPECIALLY people who HAD COVID, my God! That’s absolutely ridiculous, I’m so sorry eevee.

            1. Honestly, I don’t feel bad for brides and grooms who have had to cancel or scale down their weddings. I have always had such an aversion to wedding culture that I just don’t feel any empathy here at all. I’ve tried to understand to understand it, but I think I’m missing the bride gene.

            2. You don’t have to understand it if it’s not for you! I guess I empathize because I am one of those silly, vain, bimbos who genuinely does want a big wedding, or at least as big as we can feasibly afford. I like the idea of throwing a big party and getting all my friends and family, and all of his friends and family, especially people we don’t get to see often because they live far away, in one room for a day to celebrate a big milestone. But I also accept that no matter how I justify it, some people will always see it as a needlessly extravagant gift grab and judge me, and that’s okay, because how I spend my money and live my life is, for the most part, no one else’s business.

               But more to the point, I empathize with people who are facing huge disappointment in what was supposed to be a really special year for them and their families, even if I don’t personally agree with every planned aspect of the big day.

            3. I love weddings. This is what I’m most upset about missing this year. I think it’s because in my family, it’s the only happy occasion where the entire family gathers like this. I’m not sure weddings would stand out if there were other happy occasions where I see people I love but seldom see, and where friends and family meet with food and celebrations, but people just don’t travel or spend money over anything else in the same way.

         5. I have represented a few wedding vendors and venues in litigation over canceled covid weddings and have yet to see a situation where rescheduling wasn’t an option. Even if it means rescheduling multiple times. I have no sympathy for brides and grooms chosing to have covid weddings (not including the outdoor, masked, socially distanced, just a few people, weddings we saw a lot of during the summer).

            1. Maybe if they took it to court it would have been different, but definitely my family member wasn’t given the option of rescheduling indefinitely. It was hold the event, or lose all the $. (I did not go.)

            2. Our options were have the event as originally scheduled (a large, Saturday evening affair this summer), reschedule for a Sunday or Friday (or other weekday) this winter, or cancel and lose our money. We opted to cancel. We had a lot of people traveling and I am a professor, so winter would be more challenging with schedules (plus, I hate cold). We considered suing (our contract had language that could have gone either way), but we figured that a few thousand dollars wasn’t worth it. We ended up eloping, just the two of us. It was romantic, but we are sad to have missed out on celebrating with our community.

            3. They were originally scheduled for early summer but then postponed. Their contracts stipulated how many times they could postpone and that they had to have the wedding within the year 2020. I just know they had a lot of high dollar contracts with a lot of vendors who were lawyered up and trying to survive the pandemic. Not sure whether that’s legal or what’s normal.

      2. It’s just too bad that it’s not a matter of “personal choice, personal consequence.”

      3. Right? Like I could kind of understand sucking it up if it’s a mild cold, and maybe this is one of the things we normalize wearing masks for in a post-COVID world, but if you know that someone could get seriously, dangerously sick if they catch what you have, you don’t expose people to that. I don’t care how much the bride’s family paid for the event.

   2. Your relatives suck. And I hope your dad feels better soon!

   3. Yeah, that’s just nuts. I’m significantly less conservative than a lot of folks on this board, but that entire situation is just nuts and way beyond okay during COVID.

   4. Your relatives absolutely suck in every way. I only hope their selfishness doesn’t kill too many health care workers and innocent bystanders.

   5. Can you imagine the Instagram post? “Today I married my true love at sunset. Can’t wait to spend life with you! Oh, we also killed 15 nurses and all my grandparents but it was #worthit #marriedbliss #weddingday2020.”

      I have to laugh so I don’t cry. What even is this country.

   6. Wow — I don’t want to out you, but can you give us an idea of where this was? I feel like we can’t even have indoor gatherings now of >10 (but there are weird exceptions: workplaces, bars, restaurants, transit) or outdoors of >20 (but it’s too cold for that now). Or city / exurb / suburb / rural?

      I was shocked that two people who report to me casually mentioned going to large weddings / wedding events recently and if I could have reprimanded them, I would have. Had I been drinking, I’d have been quite candid that they should have at least had the sense to WFH the next week (not done), but it was 3pm or so. This is in a city that is pretty COVID-aware and pretty mask-compliant (but who in their 20s is not invincible?).

      1. This was in Tennessee.

         1. Ugh, of course it was.

         2. Also in Nashville…. and just kind of assumed this was in Tennessee.

      2. In my state, all restrictions and mandates are caveated that they do not apply to “first amendment” activities like weddings, funerals, etc. We have a strong anti-masker sentiment in my state, however.

         1. Wow, I have not heard of that at all. I’m not following other localities. I have only heard of worship, not weddings and funerals.

         2. In Indiana, church gatherings were identified as a major source of infections … but services were only restricted to 75% capacity.

      3. Not the OP, but a friend in TX just postponed her 200 person wedding and was told by the venue that she is one of very few who has postponed.

      4. This 250 person wedding happened near my Chicago suburb: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/suburban-hotel-that-hosted-large-wedding-issued-2-covid-19-mitigation-citations/2385841/ I’m angry that it’s only the vendors in trouble.

         1. This was Allgauer’s. It’s truly disgusting how the Allgauers acted as though they didn’t know this was happening in their hotel. Shame on them, and shame on the wedding party and their 250 entitled relatives.

   7. Does anyone else feel like social media and even the New York Times are normalizing the “throw caution to the wind” weddings, though? I feel like I keep seeing pictures in the NYT of weddings where there are too many people there and no one is wearing masks. It makes it seem normal and it bothers me a lot.

      1. I had a scaled-down wedding last month and was definitely wondering if I was being overly cautious when I was seeing many photos of weddings larger than mine on social media in September and October. (I wasn’t).

         1. January, you got married?!?! Congratulations! I always thought of myself as very similar to you so mabye I will also get married very soon! I have to find a man first, tho…. and no one is stepping up as of late, (except for causal s-x, which is NOT happening). FOOEY!

      2. Not really. I guess it depends on who you follow, but my social media is mostly people wearing masks, staying home, and trying to lead by example. There was one dude constantly posting maskless group pics in a different brewery, beer garden, or outdoor dining area with a different group of friends every weekend, but I unfollowed him.

         I kinda get the mentality behind some of it though, even if I disagree with it. People think it’s a triumph to find some sense of normalcy, or “find a way to come together even in tough times,” or gather with family to demonstrate the importance of doing so, regardless of “what’s going on in the news” – never mind that this isn’t some overseas war, “what’s going on in the news” is HERE, and it can hurt you and your loved ones.

      3. Yes, I completely agree about how the NYTimes is normalizing big party weddings. I don’t like it at all. There will sometimes be mentions in the stories about how someone took the temperature of guests(!?), maybe that masks were distributed, and maybe that social distancing happened, but the photos usually tell a different story. Grow up and respond to the times, NYTimes. Feature a couple that eloped or had a strictly online wedding, and write the story around what that experience was like for the couple and attenders.

         Gotta say, sometimes the NYTimes pisses me off.

   8. My cousin who had a big, unmasked wedding in august is now soliciting feedback from Facebook on where she and her husband should go for their delayed honeymoon this month.

3. I know I sound obnoxious so please forgive me in advance. I recognize my life is very good and I am genuinely happy with just about every part of it. My job is great and pays well even though it’s not my forever job, I’m happily married, have good relationships, friendships, I have all the money I want to live the life I want and provide for my loved ones, I just….. don’t want for anything on any dimension. and I do feel genuinely content. But like…. something is amiss or needs to change. Something is missing or not quite as it should be and I feel a hint of blah.

   Maybe it’s 2020, maybe it’s burnout, but my gut feeling is that it’s not just those things. So I don’t know what it is. I also don’t really know what I could really want to be different now, and it seems a little weird to fee like things aren’t enough as they are. Anyone dealt with this and can help me process? I’m early 30s, married, no kids if it matters.

   1. Maybe the point about your forever job is nagging at you. If everything is good except your job isn’t fulfilling, that’s something you might want to look into changing.

   2. You don’t sound obnoxious. I think this is a feeling that a lot of people have at one time or another. Three thoughts: first, it really might just be 2020 (and if it’s not due to 2020, you might find that as vaccines are distributed and things open up that it becomes more obvious what the cause is becaues more things are options again). Second, are you familiar with Maslov’s hierarchy of needs? There might be something at the top of the hierarchy that’s missing – looking into what’s at the top of the pyramid might give you some ideas.

      Third, when I’ve felt this way in the past, it often came down to being in a moment where I needed a new challenge. I found success by setting specific goals for things I already did – for example, instead of just generally running for exercise, setting a goal of running a half marathon and working towards that. I think throughout our 20s, it feels like there is a set path that you’re on that presents you new challenges (ex, undergrad to grad school to your first job). By the time you’re in your 30s, there’s less of a set path and it’s a weird transition, especially for people who are used to being high achievers.

   3. Is it that you no longer have goals? We go through so many early adult years with big goals and then all of a sudden there is no roadmap.

      1. This could be it. I often find that I feel this way when I am not working towards a goal. I realized I have a hard time just being. I still struggle with it in my mid-forties but it’s much better than it used to be.

      2. Hmm. Thanks a ton for all of your comments. I think you’re all hitting on something which is that I definitely do have goals (make partner at my firm in the next 2 years) and while I genuinely want to do that, it doesn’t feel like enough of a challenge or all that I’ll want out of my career. I eventually want to run for office but there are so many unanswered questions around that, I don’t think (or don’t know…) if now is the right time to do that, etc. I guess there’s some stress around whether this bright shiny thing will ever be attainable for me, but I’m also not going to figure that out by just chugging along at my current job.

         Lots of other things I could do with my career that would be interesting (like, I talk with startups with some frequency and some of them sound like great opportunities), but I’m not sure there’s a step change difference in terms of happiness with any of those options and where I am now. so, I guess I do need a new challenge and I need to figure out what I want….

         1. There is a great book called Designing Your Life by two Stanford professors about applying design thinking principles to career decisions. One of the key takeaways is that if often feels like we can only make career decisions in big moves, but in reality there are lots of little ways we can test ideas before making big commitments. I wonder if that approach could be helpful as you think through these things? E.g., maybe step one is to volunteer on a campaign or make a list of orgnizations that support first-time candidates.

            1. Thanks for this recommendation! Just requested from my library.

         2. No one else has the guts to say this, but I do, as there is one BIG thing missing — the Elephent in the Room so to speak– you need to take action now (or very shortly) if you expect to have kids! I waited to long and now this possibility is, at best, remote. I should have gotten married in my 20’s and popped out a couple of kids by the time I was 32, but I did neither and am now very close to 40 with no husband, no boyfreind, and obviously, no kids. It is small consolation that I have a great job and make decent money for doing it, but without a husband to support me, I do not think kids will ever be in the cards.

            Of course, 2020 has been a night mare with Covid 19, and that is not helping matters for any of us, so let’s hope for a great 2021 when we can return to normal. YAY!!!

   4. Some people simply do not thrive on an even keel. That’s not inherently good or bad; it’s a thing that you can leverage to your benefit or can really blow up your life.

      One of my favourite work projects of all time was taking over an annual project that people, in a non-swearing company, would refer to as a “sh-tstorm” or a “cluster f–k.” Company bled money on it every year, and the next year it would be the same disaster and five dozen people would spend two months trying to stem the tide. Under my handling, it turned into an easily maintained project that could be done in a week with two or three people. I put in a crazy amount of time throughout the year to build out the infrastructure, almost fell flat on my face when it was done, but got a massive adrenaline high for pulling it off.

      In my ideal world, I would basically do things like that for several months, take a break and watch TV for a month, and then get right back into something else. That job probably doesn’t exist, so I do a “boring” job and try to get my highs elsewhere.

      Some people just need that high. Find something that gives it to you – a different job, a hobby, a sport.

      1. Where do you get your highs? This describes me so well and is illuminating :)

      2. Oh this is definitely me. I think I tried to get that job through consulting, but that’s not exactly it. I have worked enough chaotic/stressful jobs to know that I thrive in that environment even as I see my coworkers are not always doing as well with it.

      3. I relate to this a lot – for me, I get to a point where I feel like my life is on ‘easy mode’ and feel compelled to shake things up. In my 20s, I often did this in ways that were not very well thought out (insisting that we should move across the country, to somewhere my husband and I had never been… which we did, believe it or not, and it made me miserable). When I recognized this trait in myself, I realized that I could channel it in more constructive ways. For instance, I went back to school while working full-time and got an MBA and pivoted to a different career. It was grueling… but also challenging! At my job now, I was having an easy time with my pandemic workload, but there was another area that was clearly a problem spot, and I volunteered to temporarily work on improving things for that team as well.

   5. Have you considered helping others? Like getting invested in some sort of cause, either financially or time wise or both?

      On a small scale, I know I get a big charge out of completing classroom projects on the donors choose website. Or you could be one of those people who pays off peoples layaways at walmart. Or always pays for the person behind you in line at the drive through.

      1. I have really loved volunteering over the last couple of years – it’s very fulfilling.

   6. Different take: I feel like this when my anxiety is acting up (especially the inability to just be). It could be worth checking in with yourself to see if it might be that before taking on more of a challenge. You want to make sure you’re facing anxiety if it’s present so it doesn’t compound with time.

   7. Consider taking on a challenge. A physical challenge would be the direction I would go, personally, though I would not have known until recently that it would do the trick. Alternatively, a service challenge could get you “unstuck.” I alos see that you want to run for office. Perhaps seek out organizations in your area that assist women running for office. It is not too early to reach out and start getting a plan together even if you don’t know when you will want to actually run. Those groups can be amazing resources and perhaps in the meantime you can be involved in fundraising or organizing until it is your turn.

   8. It sounds like you have good life but do you feel it’s boring or predictable?

   9. Like others, sometimes this is a sign that I’m extra anxious, so it’s good to be aware when it flares up so I can properly take care of myself.
      However – and I know that this is not for everyone – I think that getting in touch with our spiritual selves can help with this. For me, this is connected to religion, but I don’t think it has to be. Someone else mentioned helping others/volunteering, which is a fantastic idea. Maybe there’s a way that works for you to examine yourself in the context of something greater than yourself – whether that’s God or a higher power, greater humanity, helping others, etc.
      I find getting out of my own head in this manner – taking the focus off myself – is very helpful when I have these feelings.

      1. If you want to run for office in the future, think about the building blocks to that and work on those. It seems to be that volunteering on a not-for-profit board would be a good thing to do. Also — think about what you can do that involves you doing something (vs. being on a board). Big Sisters, volunteering to help ESL adult learners, etc. — you may not be able to “do” anything for a few months with Covid, but you might.

4. I wrote here a few months ago about how my husband told me he had “doubts” about our marriage early this year (and swore there was no one else, it was an anxiety / existential crisis), only to find out this summer that he had been having an affair for nearly a year. Your comments were all so helpful at the time I learned of the affair, I really appreciated it.

   As an update, I got him to sign a post nup, am happy with the result, and will be divorcing him once our state’s separation period is over. But, December really sucks. Christmas is always my favorite holiday, but I can barely think about it without tearing up. I have zero doubts about the divorce, but have an overwhelming sense of loneliness and sadness lately, compounded by the holidays and social distancing and Covid.

   Also a couple of my good friends announced their pregnancies in the last few weeks. I’m happy for them! But last year at this time, I would have thought I’d be pregnant right now, and it makes me so sad that I’m now in my early 30s, single, depressed, and having to start all over again before I get to be a wife and have a partner again and to become a mom.

   I’m planning to drive several hours for Xmas to see my parents and siblings (after quarantining / testing / taking precautions) – I need that for my mental state. I’ve had lots of walks with friends outside, but harder to do now that’s it’s colder. Have been exercising, going to virtual therapy, trying to take care of myself.

   I’ve got Senior Attorney’s awesome mantra, “the only way out is through” – but do you any advice on how to get through your first post-divorce holiday period? December has been a struggle.

   1. Be really gentle with yourself. You have been through a hard thing and it is okay to be sad and wallow in it. Alternatively, pretend you are Scarlett O’Hara, and repeatedly put off thinking about your ex until tomorrow. Both strategies have worked for me at different times.

   2. I’m really sorry you are going through this. My advice would be to embrace the suck. Embrace it and know that it’s not always going to hurt like this. Many moons ago, I caught my then husband cheating in December (he moved out 7 days before Christmas). I was in my first trimester with our only child. I still remember the horror of that first Christmas and the emptiness that seemed never ending. But every Christmas since has been better. Lightyears better. So embrace the suck, cry your eyes out and know that the only way out is through.

      1. I agree with this. In addition to “the only way out is through,” when I was divorcing I kept telling myself “this time next year things will be SO MUCH BETTER,” and I was right about that!

         But OMG I sure remember that first Christmas and it was just awful. Big hugs to you!

   3. Oh Daffodil, I am so sorry you are going through this. But I also have to say damn girl you dodged a bullet! Imagine if everything were the same, but that you were also pregnant right now. You would be going through the same heartbreak, but also know that you would be connected to his lying cheating ass forever. It is a terrible situation, but you have handled it as well as anyone could, and you will come out the other side stronger and, eventually, happier.

      For me this year, I’m just embracing the suck for the holidays. It’s the first year without my mother, who always went big for Christmas, and I am frequently finding myself in tears. I’ve realized that it is what it is, and I can’t make myself not feel grief. Nor should I. So I’m doing what I feel is important, and giving myself a ton of grace around anything that doesn’t make the cut.

      Sending you all the hugs and/or shots.

   4. I’m glad you’re doing okay & getting through this. One possibility for the holidays is to break with tradition & do whatever you want (that’s safe). We had steak instead of turkey for Thanksgiving, for example. If I were on my own I’d probably line up a whole stack of books to read & spend a whole day reading. Give yourself permission not to celebrate at all this year if you’re not feeling it.

      I want to push back on one thing, which probably won’t surprise you. But please make sure you’ve considered this from all angles. We all deserve to see our families. But it’s also a fact that the pandemic is peaking & some of us will certainly be sick after the holidays. Do you have the mental fortitude to suffer through COVID alone & without hospital access? What if you can’t get food delivery because it’s overwhelmed? Are you prepared for all of this? If your family member gets sick & suffers/passes are you ready to weather that additional concern/grief in addition to everything your going through?

      Would it be possible to at least celebrate Christmas with your family in spring or something? I know you can’t wait forever but you could avoid peak pandemic & still have something to look forward to that’s only a few months out & not indefinitely. Having available health care makes a big difference. So at least avoid the worst case scenario.

      When going through something like your going through, I know it’s a long hard slog even when you’re doing everything you should do & doing everything right. After a while though all your work & patience finally starts to pay off & you see your life has changed for the better … keep hanging in there & don’t lose hope. You are doing great. It’s just really hard.

      1. Can you just get help for your anxiety instead of dumping it on someone already struggling who says she needs family for her mental health and has a safe and sensible plan?

         1. I think it was a compassionate response. We are all struggling with challenges this year and we all want to see our families. OP can disregard it if she wants, as is her right.

            1. She explained the completely reasonable precautions she was taking, so I’m sorry but I have to agree with the other poster.

            2. It’s really not though. It’s not like anyone, especially not regular readers here, are aware that there’s not a pandemic. Obviously OP who has consistently presented herself as conscientious and reasonable, is aware of what the risks are. This is all old news. This poster has not presented any new ways of thinking, any new considerations, any new information, any new options. Caterwauling about whether she’s really really really considered the risks is not useful. I’m sure she has. It does nothing but try to lay a guilt trip on someone who is already struggling tremendously.

         2. I’m not anxious. I’m reasonable. Think this through. “I’m at a weak point in my life and it’s hard” … obviously the answer is not to make a bad decision that has consequences that you aren’t in the best position to weather. If she were going to go on a date with somebody who reminded her of her husband or who just got out of prison for a serious crime (or whatever, let’s not nitpick here) because she’s lonely … I’d advise her not to do that either. It’s not a decision she would make if she was feeling strong or one that she will be proud she made later.

            You need to stop calling people paranoid who are merely behaving sensibly during a pandemic. If you can’t buckle down because you really want to do stuff because (special snowflake) reasons — wake up to the reality of the world we are living in today.

            1. “because (special snowflake) reasons —”

               Ahh yes, here’s the judgment. Someone wanting the comfort of her family while she is going through a fresh divorce after her husband cheated on her is a special snowflake.

            2. No, that’s aimed at you and not the OP, and parenthetical as it may not apply to everyone. All I said was maybe it’s not a good idea. She invited comment on the topic by including it. You might want to explore why you’re having such a strong reaction to something that has been rehashed endlessly already during these times. Let’s not derail this thread further. I know OP is going to come out of this just fine & I’m sure you do too.

            3. Anonymous, you sound completely off the rails. Everyone who is sheltering in place is sheltering in place with the people that they live with. A preceding quarantine is the precaution recommended before combining households. You can ask people to follow public health guidelines, but you can’t chide them for making personal choices within those guidelines.

         3. I’m pretty strict with covid and holidays but even I think it’s fine for this OP to see her family this Christmas

            1. Is this an emotional response because of her circumstances?

            2. Yes, it is an emotional response because of her circumstances. That doesn’t mean it’s irrational or unreasonable.

            3. “Is this an emotional response because of her circumstances?”
               I’m sorry you have divorced yourself from human emotion, LOL. If we could search some of your past posts I am 100% sure we would find some where you are reacting emotionally to something. Probably overreacting hyperemotionally to something that’s not that important. You definitely seem the type.

         4. People with actual health problems don’t effectively treat themselves by engaging in bad behavior. Either you’re well enough to stay home, or you’re sick enough that you need to a healthy way to address your problems.

            People with mental illnesses don’t get to indulge in whatever they want. They have to work harder and deny themselves more than others in order to live well. So stop with this bold-faced lie of my “mental health” requires that I travel, gather, etc. No, it does not. Maybe that’s the lie you’re brain is telling you as a symptom of your mental health problem. Giving in to the lie is not a treatment or a valid solution.

            1. Please get professional help.

            2. Please save this for the people who are truly being careless and irresponsible. If everyone gathering is willing and able to quarantine ahead of time, this could be very low risk and entirely worth it. People combining households after testing and two week quarantines are not what’s driving spread. Your efforts here are counterproductive because they’re demoralizing people who are already following public health advice, and they are encouraging people who really should change their ways to view public health advice as cruel and unrealistic. You sound like you don’t understand how to do risk assessment, and I’m speaking as someone who hasn’t seen family or friends in person since March.

            3. @11:32 and you sound like morale is more important to you than human life. I’m well and happy … and if I can do it so can anyone else frankly. Severe situations exempted— divorce is not one of them.

            4. “Your efforts here are counterproductive because they’re demoralizing people who are already following public health advice, and they are encouraging people who really should change their ways to view public health advice as cruel and unrealistic.”

               YES.

            5. It’s you with the “mental health” worries. Save those is what I’m telling you. Being sad over a divorce is normal. It’s normal. She’s going to be fine!

            6. Hi, I was someone who jumped in on the conversation the other day about how travel (as in leisure travel) absolutely wasn’t necessary for mental health and I feel strongly that people shouldn’t justify their trip to the mountains or Miami or wherever and justify it as a necessity for their “mental health”. FWIW, I say this as someone who has dealt with depression on and off for most of her adult life. But I completely disagree with you here.

               OP isn’t jetting off to a spa in Palm Springs, she is ALONE during an event that is often one of the most traumatic experiences in adult life. Mental health experts would absolutely advise that people going through traumatic events not be alone (whether mental illness is involved or not, which wasn’t even mentioned here).

      2. I think I’m on the very conservative side of things (the only house I’ve entered aside from my own since March is my mom’s for a few minutes one time, and I’ve basically only been to the grocery store and necessary doctor’s appointments since), but man, if someone who has been blindsided by their spouse and is going through a divorce feels they need to be with loved ones so they won’t be alone for the holidays, I think we need to believe them when they say it’s necessary. OP is taking good precautions.

         1. Should she put herself in a position where she can get hurt more when she’s already very low?

            1. Yes, yes she should. Sounds very reasonable to this internet stranger, who has also been very conservative and not entered another person’s house since March!

      3. Single people who are recently divorced and struggling should definitely not see their families this Christmas after quarantining for two weeks and taking precautions. Actually, why stop there? Two adults in a household is greater risk than one adult in a household, so all married couples who can afford it should rent a second house and split up. Come to think of it, if you have teenage children who are old enough to take care of themselves, rent a third house for them and spend Christmas away from them too. #sarcasm

         1. You’re missing the point that almost everyone has a valid reason that they’re struggling and want to see their families. We cannot all continue to do that. I am sure OP is going to go no matter what we say but I hope she will wear a surgical mask.

            1. No. Not almost everyone has a valid reason. I for example, do not have valid reasons to see my extended family during the holidays, so even though we are all local we all are doing the holidays in our own micro households. A woman going through a difficult traumatic divorce that wants to see her family and is safe about it DOES have a valid reason, and is not someone you can lump in with “everyone else’s valid reason”. This absolutism is why people don’t listen to rules. Nuances matter. OP, go see your family.

            2. You’re also missing the fact that there’s no magical safe amount of people who can go see their families. We don’t get to choose a “deserving” percentage of the population to send. That would be impossible to organize and some would obviously get sick. Is that what you’re trying to do here? Wouldn’t that be like … the Pope’s job or something?

               About this “deserving” population—If they’re downtrodden that’s more reason to stay home so that they don’t become more downtrodden with COVID.

            3. Pointing out the obvious here: if both families quarantine ahead of time, they are effectively “podding” or combining households. There’s no rule out there saying that your bubble has to be the exact same bubble it was back in March.

            4. Anonymous at 11:21, I used my common sense skills.

      4. This response is bananas.

         1. Use your banana to call a monkey.

         2. Yep. Anxiety issues, control issues… it’s really too bad that people like OP can’t come here for support in difficult times anymore without having to wade through the pandemic sanctimony noise, no matter what well-intentioned caveats she provides. We are all sentient beings with free will in individual life situations that warrant individual risk calculus, and we cannot control the choices of others, least of all by posting fake-conciliatory, anonymous internet comments. OP has evaluated the situation and will take reasonable precautions to reduce risk, as is sensible to do.
            OP, I’m so sorry you are going through this. It has helped me to remember that negative thoughts can be addictive; in some circumstances, they can activate the brain’s reward centers. It helps me to move on in the moment when I have a concrete answer to the question, “Why do I keep thinking these same painful thoughts, over and over?” Somehow it breaks the spell. That’s the best I’ve got, wishing you the best.

            1. Look, you escalated what was a perfectly reasonable and on-topic response to the OP. So that’s on you. She can take it or leave it. I compared it to going on a bad date when you kind of know you shouldn’t … which in not an emergency, so why are you reacting so strongly? I could just as easily call you hysterical as you are calling me anxious. I actually think that’s much more true.

            2. Oh great, more projecting. This is my second comment here today, I doubt you can say the same. Posting your extreme position ten times is what comes off as hysterical. I said “It’s too bad” and pointed out that your tiresome admonishments are pointless, using language to underline how basic a recognition I think it should be. Others further up have made a good argument that the scolding is in fact counterproductive. The only reason I’m posting at all is to add another voice to those pushing back against the need of a few people to derail every discussion with pandemic-related social abstinence evangelism, because I want to be able to discuss weightier topics than skincare and Christmas gifts here again with the tiniest bit of nuance, and it’s not fair to OP that half the comments on her thread are barely related to her difficult situation. Ignoring comments like yours apparently doesn’t help, as evidenced by the last nine months of relentless, near-daily derailing.

      5. I appreciate the concerns re Covid. I’ve discussed extensively with my family, we are all taking precautions on a normal basis, and will take even more precautions and will get tested before I go home. I’m WFH and only really go to the grocery store and outdoor walks. The thought of being by myself for Christmas simply is not something I can fathom this year, and need my family to lean on.

         1. You’re doing the right thing. Being with loved ones will be good for you <3

            1. If she comes back and reports that someone got sick, will you feel good about this encouragement? Will you give a speech about how she had to go? Because she doesn’t.

            2. I promise it’s possible to leave your house without getting sick. Try it sometime — it’ll do wonders to help you stop catastrophizing.

               But seriously can you all take one fucking day off from the finger wagging? It’s not changing hearts and minds.

         2. I understand. Can you fathom someone getting sick though? If you can, proceed. If you can’t, your emotions are getting in the way of decision making.

            1. +1. Be honest with yourself on this one. You can’t ignore the fact that you or your loved ones may get sick as a result of this visit. If you can handle that possibility, you don’t think it will make your tough situation any worse, and will do everything in your power to reduce your impact on others who have no part in your decision, then go ahead – if it’s legal in your state.

            2. She’s quarantining, though! Do you not believe it works/believe in science or do you think she’s lying?

            3. I hope she is quarantining! Most of the people I know are “quarantining,” though, and the term has been egregiously abused since day 1 of this nightmare. It’s not a quarantine if you’re walking with a friend while distancing and going to the grocery store.

            4. Do you really need to accuse her of lying about it without any basis? Let’s not kick people when they’re down.

         3. Remember that the poster above is saying what she’s saying from a place of her own motivations. It really has nothing to do with you. I think your plan sounds fine, and in your shoes I would be doing the exact same thing.

            1. What would those motivations even be? Social consciousness?

            2. “What would those motivations even be? Social consciousness?”
               Selfishness. Insecurity. Looking at her own life and seeing a lack of meaning and satisfaction, and so wanting to tear down others who have those things because it makes her feel better. The pathology there runs pretty deep.

            3. If the motivations really are “social consciousness” (eyeroll) then why are you wasting your time on this person taking this degree of risk instead of browbeating people who are *actually* doing completely unjustifiable, risky activities? I mean, surely your social media has folks who are greater risk takers. Go brow-beat them!

   5. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this, especially at the holidays. Sounds like you’re already doing all the right things. I would indulge in the things that bring you comfort with no compunction all month long. Hugs to you.

   6. I remember your story and am glad to hear that things are moving. It does suck. I would give yourself permission to not know what kind of holiday season you want as the person you are now, and to know that you will figure that out along the way. This year is a good year to not know what the hell is going on, because you’re in good company. You’ll start to get a sense of how you want your life to look over the next year, and that can inform your next Christmas season. I’m rooting for you.

   7. Your feelings seem completely normal given the situation. I am so sorry you’re dealing with it, but I have to say — as much as this sucks and is terrible, you dodged a bullet. You will not be forever tied to this a**hole. I would say: go easy on yourself and don’t expect to feel happy this holiday season, and do whatever is going to bring you peace and joy. Maybe that’s listening to Christmas music with a bottle of wine. Or driving around to look at Christmas lights. Call your friends/have Zoom meetups. Watch the holiday movies that make you laugh, not cry.

   8. Just sending a big virtual hug your way. This is just a really tough thing you’re going through and you will get through it to happier days. I’m glad you have support and good self-care. Take care.

   9. Oh, Daffodil. I’m so sorry. This strikes a chord; it approximates my holiday experience two short years ago.
      As others have said, I would lean hard into whatever FEELS good for you right now. I decorated my house exactly the way I wanted to that Christmas, which included an obscene amount of homemade garlands and wreaths from fresh greenery. I did the things I wanted to do–ice skating! cookie-making! went on a ski trip! listened to Advent and Christmas carols constantly!–and found that my friends and family were more than happy to follow my lead. Obviously some of that has to be Covid-adjusted, but if Christmas is your favorite holiday, I bet you can think of some things that will work even in this time.
      Also, think about what feels good right now in a really sensory, concrete way. I knew nothing was going to make me “happy,” per se; that was too big a task. But I identified things that felt good to my body, made a list of them, and game-ified doing as many of those things as I could in any given day. I lit candles. I took hot baths. I ate lots of molten cheese. I had really good sleep hygiene (going to bed at the same time, having a nighttime routine). I wore soft clothes. I did lots of yoga, including on demand at home.

   10. Hug? That sucks so hard.

       This has everything to do with him and nothing to do with you.

   11. My 30th birthday was right after my ex-husband left. So not a holiday, but a big milestone birthday I’d been looking forward to, in part bc (like you), I had thought I would be pregnant or at least happily planning and trying for a family around that time, and instead I was having sad cake with my parents because he was gone. For me, letting myself lean into the suck for a little bit really did help – I basically gave myself a short period of time to really indulge my unhappiness at an operatic level, and then after that, told myself that I was going to be eyes forward until it was all over.

       I’ll share with you the advice someone here gave me all those years ago: you will feel better, and it will be sooner than you think. There will be a day you’ll walk down the street and look at the blue sky and your heart will be full, and you’ll realize you are happy – truly happy – again. It won’t mean you never feel sad again, but you’ll be on the other side.

       1. Cbackson – you gave me this advice a few years ago. It was 100% true. I am happier in my post-divorce life than I thought possible.

          1. Oh, yay! I am so glad to hear that.

             Honestly, my divorce was like being dragged backward over broken glass, but it also forced me to become my true self. I would never have had the happiness I have now if I’d stayed married.

       2. Thank you so much for this. cbackson I think I also read your advice at a time I needed it (also before a milestone birthday and holidays!). I want to say I really appreciate the support and words of the women here who have gone through this.

          1. The person who originally gave me that advice was Seattleite, for those long-timers who remember her.

   12. I’m so sorry. You’ll get through this with time. It’s the only real way.

   13. Hi Daffodil. I think I was one of the people who replied to you last time. I am so, so sorry. This is very similar to where I was for the 2016 holiday season, when instead of Covid I was additionally wrecked by the election results. I can repeat what cbackson said.

       I got a kitten on 12/23 that year, who remains the light of my home life. I’m now in a serious relationship, but a photo of her from that early time is still the wallpaper on my phone. I love her to pieces, and also liked knowing that she was “all mine” and had never known my ex-husband. I strongly recommend a pet if you like animals.

       I was alone on Xmas and went on a long run. I remember seeing a little kid on the sidewalk who immediately asked me “how old are you?” apropos of nothing, as kids do. I said 34, and then asked how old he was. (7 I think?) Even then I could find some hint of joy in life from things like that. I spent the rest of the day watching TV and eating whatever I felt like. It really wasn’t bad.

       I didn’t date at all for over 2 years, and think that was a great choice for me. I pretty much shut down anyone who brought it up. Eventually I felt ready, and while my story at this point includes a man, it doesn’t need to. Being ditched by your husband has a way of making that concept real in a way that way nothing else quite can.

       Sending big warm hugs from someone who has been there.

   14. Just a virtual hug from this stranger rooting for you. You’ve already taken huge steps. Try to remind yourself of that. Everybody grieves in their own way. When things are too raw, I prefer avoidance. If it were me, I’d skip any normal holiday traditions. I’d do something outdoors and hugely physical during days while listening to audible books or podcasts and wallow at night eating favorite foods and enjoying long bubble baths and maybe doing something busy and self-satisfying with the TV playing like paint by numbers or organizing drawers/cleaning or deleting emails. I’d give myself permission to celebrate Christmas in July (or not at all) if it’s feeling overwhelming right now. Goal is just getting past the next tough few weeks.

   15. Thanks, all – I do appreciate all the advice. Sounds like it’s going to be a ‘lean into the suck’ kind of year and just get through this month!

       1. I’m so sorry Daffodil, but yes, you may just have to lean into the suck this December/January. A lot of usual coping outlets aren’t available anymore because of pandemic reason so… if you want to lie on the couch, eat chocolate, watch terrible movies and cry, then do it and don’t feel guilty about it. But then maybe in late January or February you may have to tell yourself it’s time to start moving on and thinking about the future. It’s going to be hard (I also went through a hard breakup from a long term relationship right before the holidays two years ago) and I spent most of January crying every day after work. I think it’s fine to stay with family over this time, as long as precautions are taken and no one is super high risk. I don’t know if you live alone, but if I did and had a breakup at this time, it would take several days before anyone realized I was sick/hurt/super drunk/couldn’t function so I’m in favor of being near people who can support you.

          1. In this vein, there’s a new book out along these lines of hunkering down and getting through tough times, whether literally in the winter or not) called “Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” by Katharine May. I haven’t read it, but I heard an interesting interview with the author on NPR the other day.

             I like this quote from her: “Wintering is my term for a period in life when we’re frozen, cast out in the cold, those times when the ground seems to drop beneath us for whatever reason. It’s this incredibly painful time when we feel very isolated and cut off and when we lose hope. I wanted to join the dots, really, between those events across the course of our lives and across different lives, to say that this is actually a deeply human experience.”

       2. I’m sorry you are going through this. My only advice is embrace the cold and see if you can still get out and walk with friends (socially distanced, etc) in the winter. For many years, with some breaks, my best friend and I walk once a week all year long. I live in winter territory — we walk unless it is colder than minus 20. A good warm coat and boots make all the difference. Both the walk and a chance to catch up with my friend are good for the soul.

   16. Hi, I was you last year. I remember decorating my tree alone in my little bachelorette loft and feeling a mix of exhilaration (for getting out of a bad marriage) and overwhelming loneliness. I’m also in my early 30s and part of the breakdown of my marriage was that I wanted kids and he didn’t (despite claiming he did) so every time my friends get pregnant (which is happening a lot these days), I can’t help but scream inside a little. That being said, I am now dating a great guy and we are talking marriage and kids. My career has never been better. My friends rallied after the divorce and I was rarely alone. It gets better, I promise, and anything is better than being in a bad marriage. Also, therapy.

   17. I was in a similar situation and what made me feel better was that I don’t have to have a man to have a baby. I can go to the sperm bank and have one on my own. I can have my own family of pets, a child whatever. Would it be nice to have a man? Yes, but my life and my desire to have a family are not going to be dependent on it. Changing my mindset about where I’m supposed to be at what age and looking at things in a less traditional way helped tremendously.

       1. I’ve said it before on here, but my friend who has two via sperm donor seems very smart to me. No custody battles ever. There’re hers and hers alone.

          1. I think it’s a pretty great choice. The women I know who are single mothers by choice do not have to deal with deadbeat dads who disappoint kids by not showing up on their birthday. They don’t have to worry about money, always waiting for a support check to show up. They don’t have to deal with some woman showing up in their kids’ lives insisting the kids call her “mommy” and then disappearing when their dad dumps the woman after a few months. Having seen the lives of the women I know who are SMBC, and contrasting that with the women I know who had kids with substandard partners and then broke up/got divorced? I’d choose to do it on my own, 100%.

             1. Most of the women I know who have done this were relatively well-off, and it’s worked out really well.

   18. I am on the far more cautious side around covid and I don’t agree with the, I think just one poster, above about not seeing your family. If you quarantine for 10 days before seeing them and they do the same, and if you can get to them reasonably safely, then go for it.

       I went through a very sudden divorce several years ago and spent the first single Christmas with a guy I met online, getting over it by getting under it as they say. We did not celebrate Christmas at all. I am not recommending you do that! At least not right now. But getting over it by getting under it might be very helpful to you in a post-vaccine world!

       1. “I went through a very sudden divorce several years ago and spent the first single Christmas with a guy I met online, getting over it by getting under it as they say.”

          Haha, that is an awesome story! Thanks for sharing that!

   19. As someone that has gone through this around Christmastime too and also thought Christmas would never be the same, let me just tell you from the other side – you will love Christmas again! I promise. Thank you for sharing your story, I’m so glad you got the post nup signed and you’re happy with it and you are SO ready to move on!

   20. I think it’s great you are going to see family! Please don’t pay a bit of attention to the OMG!COVID brigade. Everything has risk, and it sounds to This Internet Stranger that you are making a right and careful choice. To be honest, this argument reminds me a bit of the sort that people engaged in when my kids were tiny and I wanted to sleep-train them. How could I? Their brain development! They won’t be attached to you! It worked out fine.

5. Does anyone have one of those yoga mats with the alignment lines? Do you find them useful?

   I’ve been practicing a lot at home and my 10 year old mat has seen better days so I’m considering replacements.

   1. Ask me in a month’s time – it’s what my mum requested as her Christmas present.

   2. I do, as a pretty infrequent yogi.

   3. I have one and I don’t really use them. I am a very novice yogi though, and like all of my concentration is spent on just trying to survive the class, so maybe more advanced people would use and appreciate them.

   4. I have a mat with a center alignment line. I think it’s a little distracting and not necessarily helpful.

6. Any gift ideas for first time dog owners? My bff is about to get a golden doodle and lives on the other coast (California). Something easy to order and ship directly would be awesome. TIA!

   1. yay! dog toys and treats are always welcome. A large comfy dog bed? gift certificate for grooming? Not sure if golden doodles require a lot of grooming, but it is not cheap!

   2. Chew toys! We generally love anything Kong or Nylabone.

   3. A BarkBox subsription! Or you can probably just order one box as a gift. You usually get 2-3 toys and 1-2 bags of treats.

   4. Safety gear: Lighted harness for the dog, reflective leash, lighted vest for the human, headlamp for the human.

      1. I’ve had dogs for 30 years, and never needed nor even thought of any of this gear. Totally unnecessary unless you’re hiking in pitch darkness/fog.

         1. We live in the suburbs with no sidewalks and no street lights, and in winter it’s pitch dark by 5:00 p.m. Lighted safety gear is necessary if you want to avoid getting hit by a car when walking the dog after work.

            1. I live in a small city with sidewalks and streetlights and lighted safety gear is still a good idea. Will you probably be ok without it? Sure. Is it safer and a good idea? Definitely, especially now with Covid where the etiquette is to step out into the (not busy) street/cross the street if there’s someone else on the sidewalk.

         2. Really depends on your specific neighborhood. Walking a dog at night without at least a light and a reflective vest is really dangerous in my neighborhood.

            1. Ditto. I mistimed things last week and ended up walking home on the (paved, urban) trail in the dark, and the bicyclists couldn’t see me. The reflective gear is key if you’re slow-moving.

   5. Bandana/bow ties from Foggy Dog (small business based in SF) – my dog looks like a mini-golden doodle and the bandanas are just unbearably cute on them!

      1. +1 for foggy dog, their stuff is beautiful! Also, in CA, I don’t think you need safety gear – i can’t envision ever using this with my dog, it’s light and nice enough outside to walk without it

   6. One thing I recommend to ALL dog owners is a Tuffy ring. I bought one on a whim in 2018, and it ended up being shared by two dogs, both were aggressive chewers. Two years later, it’s seen better days for sure, but it’s still in tact and has outlived countless other toys in the house.

   7. A Soggy Doggy doormat. They are amazing for keeping the doggy mess down and something she won’t think to buy herself. Plus it’s a great small business but you can order online from Chewy.

   8. Agreeing that having many things they can chew is paramount! Especially with a young pup who will want to chew. And you never know what the dog will like so having a variety is good.

   9. A holiday dog outfit for whatever size the dog will be when she gets it. This way you will receive adorable pictures.

7. I really, really love this blazer. A lot.

   1. If you love it, and it is in your budget, and especially if it is discounted this season, this is the kind of piece I would pick up despite WFH. Personally, I currently wear jackets on camera for court proceedings and certain meetings and I find a bright color helps define me on camera. I also have found over the years that Talbots suiting pieces stay in my closet despite changing trends, which I cannot say about other brands. After some weight loss, I pulled out a lot of older clothing to see if I could put it back into rotation and consistently the Talbots pieces still felt in good shape and classic enough to wear again.

8. I usually wear traditional link-band watches (metal). I’m thinking about purchasing a mesh band Skagen but worry it’ll pinch arm hair. Any experiences?

   1. Yes — had no issues with that (and I’m pretty hairy). It did fuzz some of my sweater cuffs though — maybe watch what is next to it. It was a great watch and still my fancy watch.

9. Can anyone shed light on the sizes of Apple watch bands? I wanted to get my DH a new one for Christmas but was unaware that they come in various sizes. I have no idea which generation of watch he has; I know that he bought it secondhand, so it’s not one of the new ones. He has an average-sized build. Would a 40mm or 42mm do the trick? Or should I completely scrap this idea, as I clearly don’t know what I’m doing!

   1. You need to know which watch size he has (larger or smaller) in order to figure out which strap to buy.

   2. I recently bought an Apple Watch and had to research this. The latest generation of watches are either size 40 or 44, so yes you’ll have to figure out which gen he has and the size. Bands that are 38 or 40 work on the 40 watch, and 42 and 44 work on the 44. I ordered a strap from Amazon not realizing it was a 42 and it didn’t fit my 40 watch.

10. I think people have recommended cookie deliveries here before, where just one or two cookies are mailed to friends/family for maybe $5 or so. Does anyone remember any of the recommended sites? My searching isn’t yielding anything other than those large cookie bouquets which is more than I want to send. Thanks!

    1. Cheryl’s cookies is the one I think people normally recommend for that price point.

    2. It is Cheryl’s Cookies.

       Just as an FYI – I did a bunch to various family members in the fall, and while they were cute and delicious and well received, there were major issues with the shipping. Like I sent them to five people in one household and they arrived on different dates, up to a week apart. I mean I know there are shipping issues across the board with COVID, but it’s definitely a little awkward for one kid to get their cookie while the others have nothing. This happened to several households. So when I realized that was happening, I reached out to them and just said hey I sent everyone cookies, but looks like they’re arriving on different days so just FYI everyone will get one. Also, the gift message is located in a very weird spot on the package – not inside the cookie card where you would think it would be, and literally no one got the gift message, and I only figured it out because I shipped one to myself and had to search for it.

       1. Thank you for this! This is what I was hoping to do – send to a couple different families that we would normally see during the holidays (and let the kids get their own mail) but the different shipping dates is giving me pause. Maybe I send a cookie bouquet after all and then mail handwritten letters to the kids…

          1. I mean the cookies WERE really delicious (I did ship one to myself, after all so I got to do a taste test!) I know Cheryl’s has platters/boxes of the cookies as well, so you could still use them to do a box for the household.

          2. Insomnia cookies sell boxed cookies with individually wrapped full-size cookies for another tasty option.

    3. I love sending Cheryl’s cookies, and they are always well-received when I do. I haven’t had any issues with shipping times during the course of COVID on my end, and have sent several deliveries. If you are flexible on whether what you send has to be cookies, another company under the same umbrella as Cheryl’s that I will make a plug for is The Popcorn Factory. I sent my BFF a cute popcorn delivery when she was having a hard week and she raved about it so much I wished I had ordered one for myself.

    4. Schmackary’s cookies in NYC is great if you want to send a larger box. They are individually wrapped within the box. It is a small business in Hell’s Kitchen/the Theatre District and I’m guessing they could use the money right now!

11. Any recommendations for soft, cozy socks with grippers on the bottom that I can buy online?

    1. I reapply like the bombas grippy socks

    2. Search for mukluks cabin socks – kohls often has them

    3. Heat Holders!

    4. I bought a 3 pack of slipper socks on Amazon called “Rative anti-slip hospital socks” and they are very comfy and grippy. They aren’t fluffy, but they are warm enough for me. They are the grippiest non-slip socks I have

    5. Consider supporting a local yoga/barre/pilates studio that may be closed by seeing if you can buy from them and get a contactless delivery.

12. My 3-in-1’s zipper had been not working well (nothing like having to climb out a coat that won’t fully unzip) and finally died today.

    I was looking at the Girl on the Go and think that while the insulated version isn’t a real 3-in-1, it will do for walking the dog and as a casual coat in a climate that is currently cold but rainy year round. [I have a fancy office coat, should I never need one again. And a real raincoat with pit zips for more active times.]

    Questions:
    If I’d usually get a M coat, and am layering up casual clothes this year, will a M do or a large? I have hips, which usually make things quite lumpy; hard to tell b/c this is a shorter length than I get for dress coats.
    Also, I’m 5-4 — petite length? I think I’d have no trouble with vigorous fast walking in a regular length, but I’ve been unpleasantly surprised with parkas before and have had to rely on a 2-way zip to give me some stride room.

    And, finally, any other recommendations? I was hoping to get another winter out my prior coat, so not really planning to e-shop this morning.

    1. If you read the product specs, it says the fit is designed to be over “midweight layers” and the petite is only 1″ shorter than the regular. Maybe call or chat them to get the specific measurements?

    2. I feel like Eddie Bauer runs large, but I prefer to get a couple sizes and return what doesn’t fit.

    3. I tried on and returned this coat (I’m petite and sizing didn’t work for me) but I just wanted to mention that it is in no way a real winter coat — I would be cold in it at 40F, even with layers. I would say 48-60 F and raining is the range for it, unless you run really really hot. Not sure what your climate is, but just FYI.

       1. Did you try on the non-insulated version? The insulated one says it is rated to -25 in moderate activity (to me: brisk city walking, definitely walking my dog but maybe not all dogs).

       2. The insulated one definitely is good below 40.

    4. If you like your 3 in 1, maybe see if you can get the zipper replaced inexpensively? It can be somewhat fiddly depending on the coat’s construction, but I think it is worth asking at your dry cleaners or somewhere like that how much they would charge for it. My husband sews and has replaced zippers in our son’s coats.

       1. If the only problem is the zipper, definitely get the zipper replaced. I bought my wedding dress used from craigslist and got the zipper replaced at a storefront alterations place for $18.

          I love my girl on the go insulated trench. I wear it all winter unless the temp drops below 20 degrees. (I wear fleece lined tights or leggings as well.) I like having a large instead of a medium because it lays nicer that way. I am 5-5, have the regular length, and have done lots of vigorous walking around downtown Chicago in this coat.

    5. I have this coat and have owned it in a large and a medium. I’m 5’3″, 160lbs very pear shaped, wear an 8 in AT on top and a 12 curvy on bottom in AT (waist is a bit big still, hips are a bit tight still). The medium doesn’t fit me comfortably with the insulation in and a medium weight sweater. Also, I run warm and this coat isn’t great below 40F even at a brisk walk. I have the regular length and its just above my knees.

    6. I’m 5’4″, 135 lbs., and my Medium (regular length) Girl on the Go is perfect, even with layers. I think the name of this coat is unfortunate but I love it and it was worth the money. I often wear it to walk the dog in my upper Midwest climate; in DEEP winter I wear a North Face jacket, but I still use the GOTG when it’s down in the 30’s. Plus it’s actually waterproof!

13. This is kind of a weird story, but I wanted to share it somewhere. I am a young woman, and I really am and come across as a nice, quiet person. Possibly in a bad way. I also prefer to be very direct and I am somewhat impatient, but I’ve toned that down a lot for the workplace, and did so starting from internships in college. I started working with this guy who everyone find obnoxious and difficult to work with, and who thinks he is brilliant and isn’t interested in playing well with others. I let a little bit of my actual self out and set him straight, and told him (in nice words) not to BS me, and wow, our working relationship is now great and he is respectful or at least polite and its going well. I don’t know what I should learn from this, what I should take away, but I feel like the “politeness” I was told to have in the workplace doesn’t always actually serve me well.

    1. Yes. Please read Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office. It’s illuminating, even if a little big of it is post-feminist BS (don’t bring cookies to the office lest everyone thing you’re they’re mother. Umm, no. They will just think you have good taste in cookies). But this book really does help level-set your work life.

       1. I do think the baking thing is a good point, though. The men in my office don’t bring cookies to work and neither do the female VPs. I also don’t plan parties or clean.

          1. I’m a VP and regularly bring in cookies and muffins.

       2. Yes, I don’t get this criticism of the Nice Girls book. It’s very valid advice. I read it early in my career and looked around at my consulting firm. The people bringing cookies were the office manager and legal assistants. The managing partner who was a woman wasn’t bringing cookies. There really are some gender entrenched norms and it’s good to highlight this, the real message is YMMV/Know Your Office.

    2. It’s situational. Nice and quiet (or as some might frame it, tact and thoughtfulness) are absolutely skills you need in your career. You also need backbone and assertiveness. The trick is learning when to wield each. You’ve found one situation where the latter is the right call. You’ll likely spend the rest of your career honing the balance (and it will change by role and workgroup).

       For more on polite assertiveness, consider reading Crucial Conversations. It changed who I am in the workplace for the better.

    3. At work, you should strive to be professional. Not nice.

       1. Ding ding ding!

          OP, if you take one thing from this thread, let it be this!

    4. good for you!

       i hate that we are always told to be polite. it has resulted me being walked over more than if i was just myself.

    5. I report to a similar personality who the majority of the office is “scared of.” I have never had an issue with working with him, never had him raise his voice to me, and 6 years later, can say that while he can be gruff, sarcastic, and swears during casual conversation, I don’t know why he is considered so intimidating. I think he is just not as interested in “being nice” as getting things done. People know that I work well with him and often ask me how to “handle” dealings with him or if I will get a question answered for them, to which I have just responded that you can’t work with someone if you are afraid of them and to just ask him the question like you would anyone else. Each time I have done this, the person will call me back after meeting with him and say, “I can’t believe X was so nice. He answered all my questions. It wasn’t bad at all.” All this to say, being direct is not the same thing as being impolite, and when dealing with a strong personality, you might have an easier time with that than “killing with kindness,” as is often the advice.

14. Saw this survey and thought it’d be interesting to see what people here say — are you better off than your parents when they were roughly the age you are?

    It’s meant to be financial but I think both financial and life are interesting. Also would be interesting to know where you live vs them as it’s my impression that many people hear grew up in suburbs but ended up in HCOL cities or their metro areas which often explains disparate savings or home buying. Will add mine below.

    1. My parents were happily married with two kids and had recently relocated around the world. I’m sadly single and childless and live 20 minutes from where I grew up.

    2. We are better off than my parents were at our age because my parents had been unemployed for several years by that point. We are not nearly so well off as my husband’s parents were at our age. His dad was a lobbyist who made twice as much in nominal dollars than the two of us make combined at real jobs that require actual education and skills.

       1. Ummm. Being a lobbyist requires education and skills.

          1. Yeah, it’s obvious OP is insecure and trying to feel superior by comforting herself with her “actual” education.

          2. No it doesn’t, I work in government and lawd the vitirol spewed at me by lobbyists is something else.

          3. Ummm. Dad barely managed to get through college and his only skill is schmoozing. I have three more degrees than Dad does and my husband has one more.

             1. The kind of person who obsesses about number of degrees is not the kind of person I like to be around.

             2. Schmoozing is a more valuable skill than the ability to collect degrees is.

                You don’t build yourself up by putting others down.

          4. It’s also a real job. This person seems pretty jealous. I guess it can seem more glamorous than it is to an outsider, but there’s a reason they make good money.

             1. I do feel this way about some successful people though. I can respect that they have real skills, but if they are proudly dishonest and treat their families the same way, it can be very hard to live with as a family member.

    3. Huh interesting. Well by my age my mom was (arranged) married and had just given birth to me . She had also immigrated from another country to the US. She and my dad were on track to buy a house in 5 years (although I’m not sure if she thought about that at the time).

       I’m not married and actually not dating anyone – something she is definitely nagging about. I’ve lived in 3 different cities in my life (in the US), went to grad school I was very interested in, and had some truly unique and interesting jobs that will be a part of my life story. I try to explain this to my mom, but she’s like “where are the husband and kids”.

       My mom did give up a version of her current career path that she would have found more intellectually challenging, made more money, and she talks about it enough that she definitely would have liked to do it. She keeps trying to compare us and it just doesn’t make sense any more because we have such different lives. I think she, wasn’t forced, but conformed to what was the norm for people from her community and who she knew, and it a little unsure with how to deal with people being happy outside the norm. She also is becoming more and more like that as she gets older for sure

    4. Nope.

       When my parents were my age, I was 23 and out of college that they largely were able to pay OOS tuition in another state (I worked to cover room and board). My sister was halfway through a small private college that was inexpensive b/c it was church-affiliated.

       My kids are only in middle school and I am scared that I can’t afford anything but state U, but the demand for that has spiked as they are reasonably-priced compared to other choices, and I don’t think they will likely get in (vanilla white kids from the largest city in the state). And they will be in school when I am close to retirement age, so I am sure I will owe on the house when I am that age (my parents paid off their house). Also: both parents had pensions (one from teaching, one from a private employer) and employer-sponsored medical insurance upon my dad’s early retirement (took a buyout before he was medicare eligible).

       I’ve lived richer (restaurants, vacations), but ultimately I am poorer. At least we have some good memories.

       1. Serious question, if you had lived less richly, aka taken fewer vacations and eaten out less and had saved/invested the difference, do you think you would feel differently about your life now?

          I’m in my early 30s with a small child, and I tend to be pretty frugal and a saver, and I’m struggling with balancing saving and spending.

          1. No — at most, vacations were <$5K/year, which is spendy by the standards I grew up with, but still modest and unlikely to change things.

             I think that the issue is that college costs have shot up since I was in college. And I had kids very late (38 and 40), so I hadn't really planned for the math I'm living now. I'm not living high on the hog, but I had to get a family house in a good school district when the market was pretty hot, so starting a 30-year mortgage when you are 45 is . . . daunting math. I think it will be OK, but tight.

             Also, our city has had such rapid growth that I don't know how our kids would ever afford to live here without substantial parental support (which happens a lot) or living very very far out unless they are very in very high-paying jobs and very savvy.

             1. Also, I work FT and my mom worked 3/4 time, so it was much easier for her to get dinners for kids / have time to recharge a bit / not be run totally ragged, so it is sort of the cost of doing business. If I’m running late, I can’t not have dinner and pizza / takeout / etc. is just how we get by (now that we are eating 14 non-breakfast meals a week at home). I cook 2 meals a day most days, but sometimes I can get the kids to do their own lunches but I’m working up until dinner. Roasting a chicken is easy (no stove to attend to), but sometimes we’re tired of leftovers and just dinner to appear.

          2. I’m not the person you’re asking but reading the post above and understanding finance and markets, I highly doubt that taking 2 less vacations and investing that money would have put her in the same position as her parents — esp given that her parents have pensions and employer healthcare post retirement which is HUGE. Now I’m not saying holding down lifestyle makes no difference esp if you’re the type of person who eats out 5 days/wk and vacations once a quarter, but I wouldn’t skimp on the big memories/the lifetime trips because it’ll make retirement better or paying for college easier.

             1. It’s more like 20 years of vacation & restaurants … not 2 vacations. 5 k a yr on vacations … so 100k. Let’s say go ahead and take half the vacations … so 50k. Add in the restaurants … probably it is a down payment for a house or a bachelors degree at the local state school. Nothing will ever live up to a pension/lifetime benefits. But that’s not too shabby.

             2. “It’s more like 20 years of vacation & restaurants … not 2 vacations. 5 k a yr on vacations … so 100k. Let’s say go ahead and take half the vacations … so 50k. Add in the restaurants … probably it is a down payment for a house or a bachelors degree at the local state school. Nothing will ever live up to a pension/lifetime benefits. But that’s not too shabby.”

                If you want to live a life where you never eat out and never travel, go for it. Key question for me when people comment like this, do you actually have children or a spouse? What is your life like? I don’t envy people who have tons of money in the bank but no family or close friends, and also no experiences to look back on where they can say, wow, that was a really good time. We take a couple of vacations a year, one flying and one driving. We might spend $8k on both. Could we have put that money in the bank? Sure, but some of the greatest times we have as a family are on those trips, and then later looking back on old vacation pictures, or telling stories about the crazy stuff that happened on various trips. I do the same thing when I visit my parents and my brother; we have awesome stories about the things that happened on family vacations. Money can’t buy everything, much to some people’s chagrin.

          3. Caveat that my son has the option to go to my husband’s university for free. It’s not a great school, but “free” is a pretty amazing price.

             I ran the numbers on a college calculator to figure out what we need to save to pay for the flagship state university. It works out to about $250 to $300 a month. Some of the assumptions are that we do not need every cent saved by the time our kid is 18; we can pay more, even a lot more, during the time our kid is in college. Also assuming that we do not want to save for the entire cost of private school; although I went and loved it, the inflation-adjusted price is double what my parents paid. I simply do not think that is worth it and do not want a university emptying out my life savings.

             1. Sorry for posting again; this is missing the conclusion.

                I look at how much money we need to save and we save that. I’ll happily give up $4,000 vacations to put our kid through flagship state school; however, I’m not going to give up absolutely everything to put him through private school or to retire at 50.

             2. I posted above and am thinking that my creative options include something like this.

                I also run #s like: what if my kid did the local learn-a-trade-and-an-associates-degree-for-free-in-high school and I just gave them a $100K downpayment on a condo/house — would they be better off than spending multiples of that for a job that pays about the same and have a higher COL? Maybe they finish 2 years at Local State U at a nearly-paid-for-condo? Are there any accountants who are unemployed (vs literature majors)?

                The woman who cuts my hair has been solvent and working since she was 19 and owns her own place. Not sure I can say that about people I know who work in NYC/SF — they have so much debt or can never save. Their cities are great, but it’s not like they went to the opera/ballet/ etc. back when that even happened (and the woman who does my hair previously travelled to those places each year).

                I think I question a lot now. Do you need to go to college just to read Sartre? Can you not read Sartre in a MOOC? Or on your own? I’m not saying I take a total trade-school mentality, but I do wonder why we need to send kids on a 4-6 year 250Kish party if they aren’t prepared to adult at the end of it.

             3. “Some of the assumptions are that we do not need every cent saved by the time our kid is 18; we can pay more, even a lot more, during the time our kid is in college.”

                I got gently reminded about this by our financial advisor during our last check-in. I was fretting about the balances in our son’s 529 accounts and he just asked, “So are you trying to have the entire four years’ worth of expenses sitting in the account by the day he starts as a freshman? Because I don’t usually think that’s a realistic goal, and also not necessary unless you’re planning on retiring as soon as he starts college.” I will not even be 50 at that point so no, I won’t be retiring before he’s out of college. Our advisor pointed out we can continue to fund savings and pay costs through household cash flow as he goes through college, which means we do not necessarily need $80k in a college savings account right now. Our State U is pretty good and will be an excellent choice for our son given what he wants to study, and we could fund that out of the current amount we have saved + cash flow right now. It was a good reassurance.

             4. I’m 50 with a 10 year old. I’m glad I was able to have her. But I wish I would not be 60 with a kid in college. Like if you have kids and have a choice about when, I’d rather have had her at 30 and be 50 with a kid in college. If I am asked to fund a wedding at 70 it may not be compatible with a retiree’s funding ability.

             5. Anon at 11:55, can your financial advisor please explain this to my husband? He thinks we need to have $300K for private college plus everything we will need for retirement saved by the time our daughter graduates from high school. I will be 47.

             6. I’m also betting that private colleges will undergo a radical shift in expenses. We’re probably 5-10 years away from the first batch of kids going to college whose parents still have educational debt (and not in the sense of “doctor earning $400k per year pays her med school loans over time because the interest rate is low”), and who therefore really question the value of these degrees. Maybe it will be even more of the same: inflated sticker price combined with absurdly heavy discounts for students whose families can’t pay it all. Or maybe the entire system will get flipped around and colleges will work very hard to become affordable for the comfortable middle class.

    5. I think about this all the time because at my age, my mom had just gone through her second divorce, was working on her bachelors, and had an 11 year old (me) and a 9 year old (brother). We were definitely relying on my grandma to help with things (from my perspective it was mostly child care and being the second parent, but I’m sure there was some financial assistance that I’m unaware of as well). I don’t have any children, but I also wonder how much help my grandma gave with a down payment for a house when I was in high school, which my mom definitely doesn’t have the capacity to do.

       1. Why do you think about this all the time?

    6. I am absolutely 1000% in a better place than my mom was, because she broke the generational cycles for me. But, I do think at around the same age we both found a place in the world, with stable jobs, community, and generally a little peace with our choices.

    7. I’m better off than both my parents and my in-laws, irrespective of ages and life stages. They lived in MCOL cities and I live in a different MCOL city (population of about a million). However they don’t seem to know that and it results in some pretty awkward situations when they treat me and DH like poor college kids and not professional adults with high salaries.

    8. No — when my parents (modest-living, no real vacations ever, just trips to see relatives and weekend museum visits) were my age, I was through OOS State U debt free and my sibling was halfway through college, also with no debt. They had a mostly-paid-off house in NJ. School teacher and engineer.

       My kids are younger, so I will get hit with college cost and needing to pay off my house before I retire (or have it much more whittled-down than the scary # it is today; house in good area for us costs less than the 50K+ annual tuition we’d need for private school in the MCOL city I live in now). No pensions. State U might be affordable but it is so competitive that it will not likely be an option for us, so we will need to get very creative to pull all of this stuff off.

    9. In terms of income, yes, we make more than my parents did when they were our age (mid-30s) – but adjusting for inflation makes the difference less significant. Oddly enough, the house we live in is very similar to my childhood home, and again with inflation, would have cost about the same as what they paid in 1985. Beyond that it’s hard to compare, as we don’t have kids and my parents had 3 under 10 by then.
       I will say that my dad’s pension and retirement package is incredible and that’s something I will never have.

    10. Yes and no. My husband and I certainly earn more than my parents did at the same age, but it took us longer getting grad degrees and getting out of student loan debt to get here, so milestones like buying a home and starting a family were somewhat delayed because of it. My parents definitely had less overhead, especially with no student loan debt, lower housing costs (even with the crazy interest rates), and if we’re lucky enough to have kids, daycare is far more expensive now than it was for them in the 80s. We actually bought in the same suburb my parents did, so it’s pretty easy to make a housing cost comparison.
        In terms of life milestones, my parents were 24/28 when they married and bought their first home together (the second one for my dad, who bought a condo around 24ish), and 26/30 when they had their first kid. I remember thinking how young that seemed (especially for my mom, who was younger) for each of those milestones once I hit those same ages. We were 28 and 29 at marriage, 32/33 for buying our first home, hopefully 35/36 for getting pregnant.

    11. Fascinating question!

        My husband and I both are. Our respective families were middle class doing jobs you could do with an associate’s degree or less (teacher’s aide, flight attendant, construction, etc). Suburbs of southern cities. Money was often tight growing up, and they still have to be careful now in retirement. DH and I have an assortment of graduate degrees and are DINKs with a HHI of $300k in the DC suburbs. We are comfortable by DC standards and exceedingly comfortable compared to the rest of America. To the extent education and wealth are an indicator of success, we’re the most successful of our respective generation (our cousins). Quite a few of our cousins are not in a better place than their parents would have been…but they’re not the target demographic of this site.

    12. By a nose.

        My mom was in a weirdly similar place to me at my age – married for almost the same amount of time, at her job for almost the same amount of time, living in a house that she was hoping and praying was just a step on the way to something better. Adjusted for inflation, my starting salary was still more than hers.

        My dad was drifting at my age. I think he spent most of his time messing around with horses and dogs. He was probably just about to get his sh!t together and figure out something to do with his college degree, as he started working and met my mom within two years of being my age. I make about as much now as he ever did in his 30+ year career.

        Both in smallish towns in (different) rural states, so not a lot of difference there.

    13. Yes though it’s a lot because of immigration. My parents immigrated here at ages 37 and 44 with the 44 year old being 80%+ of the income earner; it took a year or two to even get situated in the US. So it was around age 46 that they bought their first house here, started saving for retirement, started saving for college and generally started saving and savings took a hit every 2-4 years because they’d be buying 4 plane tickets back to Asia to see family. In comparison I started saving for retirement, down payment etc. at age 25 right out of law school so that 2 decade advantage is huge. Yet it was all just luck.

        Part of it is planning in that I grew up in a home with dad in a STEM field. Nightly dinner conversation from 4th-12th grade was OMG I’m going to get laid off because the company lost x project. This was STEM (mech eng) in the 90s where companies were outsourcing work left and right to engineers they could hire in other countries for cheaper. So hearing this nightly plus seeing just how frugal my parents were (I didn’t understand that they were saving for layoffs and for retirement etc.), I decided by middle/early high school that I was going into a field that paid $$$ and paid it while you were young — so that narrowed it down to banking and biglaw with the goal of make all the money you can upfront because who knows when you’ll be laid off; I think I was interested in FIRE (at least the RE part) before I even knew it was a thing.

        1. That’s wild… when I was in middle/high school, “banking” to me was the teller at the local branch, so not something that projected money and I had never heard of BigLaw. My family didn’t know any lawyers, so all I knew was law school was expensive. My family and school never talked about careers. At best it was “get a degree and it’ll all work out” and there were weird mixed messages of “You can do whatever you want to do!” with “here’s what you need to do to be a teacher, nurse or secretary” (Of which I didn’t want to be any of those things, but how on earth do you do something else? Get a degree, it’ll all work out! It’s the career planning version of the Halting Problem, LOL).
           So, I joined the service and got the hell out of that place. Got out and had to bounce around a bit to find mentors and jobs willing to take a chance on me, but am in a good place now.

    14. I think my parents were slightly worse off at my age but about to become a LOT better off than I ever will be. My dad had finished grad school and was working full-time, but in a job paying a relatively low salary. My mom had finished medical school and residency and was doing her fellowship. That was a hard year for them, and apparently a financial strain, but she started making substantially more once she finished her fellowship and went into private practice. My job/career is stable and relatively well-paying (low 6 figures, MCOL city) but does not have the same income potential.

    15. I am better off, for obvious reasons (mom mom didn’t go to college or really work and I do), but also because my parents had kids a decade earlier than I did. It’s easier to save when you don’t have kids.

    16. I definitely am, but my life trajectory has been very different as well. I’m 40, a lawyer with 2 youngish kids, and live very comfortably financially. My parents did not go to college and had kids in their early 20s – so when my mom turned 40, she had 4 kids from 5 to 17 (me). We were in that acceptably comfortable but struggling position through most of my childhood (not a lot of extras and worried about bills a lot, but never a danger of going hungry or losing our home or anything). It’s hard to imagine how different that was then my/my kids’ life, and that my parents were so much further along in parenting when they were my age! Hard to even compare.

    17. Yes, I am. I grew up in a rural area and now live in a mid-sized college town. When my parents were my age, they had four young kids and my dad was in the phase of building his business, so while we weren’t poor by any means, finances were tight. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was in high school, but the jobs she was qualified for did not pay well. In contrast, DH and I are dual earners and have been fortunate to have stable jobs that pay relatively well for our area.

        I sometimes feel guilty about how much easier we have it, comparatively speaking, but I know my parents don’t look at it that way at all.

        I’m not sure what things will be like for our kids, though. Will their relative privilege now continue through their adulthood? I really don’t know. I hope they have lives equally comfortable to what DH and I have now, but there’s no guarantee of that happening.

        1. Also relevant — we have two kids, and the first didn’t arrive until I was 29. By contrast, my mom was 24 when she had me.

    18. Financial – way ahead – but we’re DINKs and my mom was a SAHM, so that’s not too hard to achieve.

    19. Financially, I am better off by orders of magnitude – my parents were solidly upper middle class and my age (40), but my HHI is in the low seven figures.

        In terms of “life,” well, it’s hard to say what “better off” means, isn’t it? My parents married young and had their kids in their early 30s; I got married at 39 and just had my first child. I think they were better off in terms of having already had many wonderful years of marriage and parenting by this point, but I’m better off in a different respect – I’ve got some really deep, close friendships that developed because I was single for so much of my adult life and my friends became my family of choice. Those friendships are an amazing source of love, happiness, and strength for me and I can’t imagine being without them. My parents’ really close friendships really developed in their 50s after my brother and I were out of the house.

    20. Financially, my father and stepmother had dream situations: employed straight out of college in professional jobs, never unemployed, continued to move up, never faced discrimination. It is the incredible good luck of avoiding bad luck. Around age 40, their household income was about $600k a year in a HCOL area.

        My husband and I both got clobbered by graduating (PhD/professional school) into the teeth of the recession. It happens. The important thing, I think, is that there’s two kinds of income: ‘enough’ and ‘not enough.’ We are finally, after a lot of pain and effort, in the ‘enough’ column.

    21. At my age, my dad was making more in non- adjusted dollars than my husband and I make combined now. And his earnings had peaked years before that. We also have two law degrees between us whereas my dad has an undergrad degree and my mom has a high school degree. At my age, my mom was parenting teenagers and I’m currently pregnant and have a preschooler.

        It’s hard not to feel like I’ve massively screwed up when I think of it that way. But, I think our earnings have some room to rise and our careers are generally stable whereas my dad’s career was really prone to boom and bust, so he may have been making a lot of money but he had to save most of it for inevitable lean years. I would say our standards of living are similar, except my husband and I work much longer/harder than my dad ever did.

        I think the two working parent dynamic is generally better; it prevents the lopsided power dynamic where only one parent works. My parents were always arguing about what to spend on what and it was stressful as a kid.

        Being an older mom is something that makes me really sad though. I’m so grateful my parents are young enough to still be young grandparents and I feel crummy that I will never be able to do that for my grandkids. Also, I remember thinking my mom was ancient and I’m about to have a baby at the age where she dropped me off for college.

    22. At my age, my mom was just starting to think about rejoining the workforce after staying at home with young kids for 10 years. I am working full-time with littles because I’m not built to stay home full-time with them. My parents were watching the farm economy get destroyed and barely scraping by some years. My husband and I both have stable jobs at multinational organizations and are able to save for retirement and do lots of fun things.

        My husband and I make multiples of what my parents (and his) made and have significantly more financial comfort. We’ve lived in 4 different cities in 3 different states and lived more extravagantly than they did. My parents have lived within 15 miles of where they were born their entire lives with the exception of 4 years of college. But we’re also not building a business of our own and live much further from family than they did.

    23. Yes and no. It’s hard to compare finances without taking into account that my mum was married to my dad by this age, whereas I’m single. I’ve had the opportunity to live alone for nearly 4 years now, which she never did – but also the costs of doing so.
        My parents both grew up in other parts of the country and moved to the capital after university, so in that sense I have followed a very similar path – except that I moved to a different city (one which is expensive compared to everywhere other than where I grew up). Also unlike them, I am in the corporate private sector – I very definitely out-earn what they did at my age, but it probably buys less?

        There’s also a much smaller sense of possibility for the next 30 years of my life than for the 30 years they’ve just had – in about three weeks’ time I lose the right to travel and work across the continent, and the climate crisis is beginning to feel very real.

    24. I am 1000% better off than my parents. I wonder sometimes about their life choices. My mom grew up middle-class in a small city. Then she married my dad and they moved across the country to the rural south. They had a variety of jobs over the years, and our lifestyle ranged from struggling to comfortable. By my age (40) my parents had divorced, and my mom would soon go back to school to become a teacher. My mom is now comfortable, but I don’t think she has any retirement savings. My dad lives off social security and disability payments. My parents have a lot of resentment towards each other, so they can’t objectively answer questions about why they chose to move, or about their life’s plans.

        I’ve had the same job since I graduated college 18 years ago. I live in the suburbs of a MCOL city. My current income, retirement savings, and net worth are numbers my parents could never dream about. My marriage is a lot stronger than theirs was. My husband and I have paid off our house and student loans, we have a college fund for our daughter, and we travel regularly. But I don’t think my parents see much difference in my life and theirs – I think they consider their lifestyle to be typical of most Americans, and that I’m just comfortable, as they were sometimes.

    25. I would say I’m in a better position based on the numbers, though that’s heavily because I went for a high paying straight out of undergrad job (tech) while my parents both and at least one graduate degree (JD/MBA for one, MBA for the other). Additionally, I had a full ride to college (merit-based) so I had no student loans while, even with the lower cost of school, my mom had to take out some student loans. HOWEVER, they had careers in fields that allowed them to live in a MUCH lower cost of living city, and seeing now when my mom (now divorced) makes a little less than what I make but is able to achieve a much higher standard of living really hits home to me how much HCOL vs. LCOL affects the choices you are able to make. I will need to make significantly more than either of them did to achieve the same standard of living, just based on that factor alone (without computing in the lack of local family or increased college costs).

    26. at my age, my parents also had two kids, though my dad was a bit older than my mom, and owned in a very HCOL city. My mom had a decent job and worked full-time, my dad did well and I am not sure if he still had student loans to pay off at that point, but school was so much cheaper then. my parents later moved to the suburbs of a different HCOL city, and that house is now paid off, but worth more than twice what they paid for it. DH and I don’t own yet, and got married much younger than my parents, but also waited longer to have kids. we’ll be fine and we are lucky that we graduated undergrad without loans, grad school with minimal loans and both have parents who we will not need to support as they age and will likely leave us money, but housing and education are just SO SO SO much more expensive now than they used to be. My dad’s parents were Holocaust survivors, so my parents were much better off than their own parents

    27. Hmm, interesting, and hard to quantify for me. I think we’re about even, but probably doing worse on the savings end of things. If you asked my parents, they’d probably kindly say we were doing fine but wonder why we didn’t live in a 5 bedroom colonial in a fancy neighborhood and why we travel so much.

        At our ages (35+37), my parents: had owned 2 homes and were on the way to custom building their forever home (where they still live, 34 years later); had adopted my older sister after 10 years of infertility and were about to find out that surprise Pompom was on the way a year or two later; my mom had earned her MEd to take her education career to the next level and my dad was working up the ranks in his career with a BS after 5 years as an officer in the military during Vietnam. Mom had a little student debt, dad had none. They traveled a lot around my dad’s work travel, and had a rich group of friends from all ages, income brackets, and family styles. They lived within 10-15 miles of where they grew up together, never having lived out of state (and it’s a small NE one). Dad is famously “thrifty” so spending was pretty tight, but we never wanted for anything.

        We (35+37) are in our second owned home, married 10 years, in our 3rd state we’ve lived in together farrr away from where we grew up. We each have advanced degrees and no student debt (…anymore). Solid careers that we enjoy and that pay well…though we’re both in public service and a classically low-paid end of it, but still, doing ok. We knew very early on no kids in our picture, so we’ve been able to plan and live in a way that doesn’t ask “what if?” or “when will this happen (this will happen)?” which my parents and may others heartbreakingly have to do. We got the saver genes/advice from my dad and DH’s family (more than a handful of kids on a single teacher’s salary): we save a buttload for retirement, have a home and cars that are much cheaper than we “could afford,” and focus a ton of actually enjoying our lives, even if that means spending some cash. I have more CC debt than I’d like (oh, younger self….) but I’m close to snowballing that away on a small-for-this-place site. But wage stagnation, the rising cost of healthcare, and other factors have made it hard to save and advance much beyond where we are. We’re happy where we are, all in all.

    28. I have no idea. My parents are, were, and will probably continue to be, completely private about their finances. They’ve made it clear it’s not my business.

        (I do know, based on their personalities, that they are incredibly frugal and organized, so I’m not worried about their estate planning or anything like that.)

    29. Waaay better off. At my age, my mother, who was brilliant but only had a high school education, had been married to an emotionally abusive husband for several decades, had 8 children ranging in age from 4 to 26, had lost one of them in a hit and run incident then lost her house and all her belongings in a house fire 18 months later, and had just been abandoned by my father. He left her with unpaid debts and bad relationships with most of the businesses in our small town and she had to begin welfare. Her health had started to deteriorate, and that accelerated when she lost a second child two years later. I have been married to an amazing man for 24 years, have a PhD, one amazing teenager, and we are financially stable. I am thankful every day.

        1. Wow! Clearly she did something right since you grew up educated, stable and successful. Can you share more of your story?

    30. Interesting! We are worse off. My parents (dad) inherited a significant amount of wealth. And that meant they never had debt and never had to save for retirement. DH and I make quite a lot (high six figures) – DH makes much more than my Dad ever did – but it’s amazing what a difference a big inheritance makes (and I realize that’s obvious!)

        We save significantly for retirement and for kids’ college. I do expect to inherit some money from my parents, but hopefully not until I’m past retirement age! So that really doesn’t enter into our planning at all. I knew I grew up very lucky but I don’t think I realized just how lucky my parents were until I was an adult (mid-thirties now with three kids, same as they were). And it’s funny but I think watching us – and knowing just how hard we work and just how much money we make and how we still aren’t nearly in the same position as they were – I think it’s finally hitting them that their situation was not normal. Part of this is definitely that everything is more expensive now in our large city than it used to be. They helped me out hugely by paying for college, but otherwise don’t assist us and I’m good with that.

        On the other hand, DH grew up lower middle class in a terrible rural town, so he’s definitely better off than his parents were. He took out a lot of loans for undergrad and business school, but we’ve paid them off. His parents actually make plenty now and are comfortable, but we still end up flying them to see us and paying for family vacations with them. He’s the head of household on that side of the family despite having parents who are in their early 60s and very with it, which is an odd dynamic.

    31. Financially, Yes. I was raised in an upper /upper middle class suburb in CT but we had one of the smaller homes in town. My dad worked really hard in NYC and worked long hours in sales; my mom was SAH. We went on beach vacations and to Disney, but on a budget. My parents paid for some of my undergrad and I took out loans for the rest. My parents are now in their early 60s, divorced, and my mom has $400k in her retirement fund, owns a condo outright and has $100k or so in savings. My dad owns his own business and is in a much better place from a retirement standpoint*.

        I had a totally happy childhood!

        But DH and I own a bigger home in approximately the same sort of town. We each have the earning power that my dad did, but DH works full time and I work part time so we have 150% (or more) the income. We are not really ever stressed about money and have a LOT saved for retirement compared to people our age. We plan to pay for our kids’ college.

        Really, honestly, my mom never finished college and never had a career (she did and does have jobs, just not a “career”) and that has made all the difference in her finances. A lot of it is her overall attitude about money. She does not know what DH and I make and I think she would act very differently around us if she did.

        DH’s parents were a dual working household as well. They were in about the same spot as us financially but worked. Lot harder and DH was an only child.

        *when they divorced they split their retirement assets. My dad managed his investments and kept adding to it; my mom kept hers in cash (??!) And prioritized vacations and bought a time share vs putting more away.

    32. Isn’t this a fairly subjective question in some respects? My parents may have valued family over money in a different way that I do. The prime example is that parents wanted kids, whereas I do not. My parents wanted to be married, whereas not being married doesn’t bother me a bit.

        Salary-wise, not accounting for inflation, I make more money than either of my parents did at any time in their life. However, I also have student loan debt so my spending power is diminished in that way. I am not aware of either of my parents having student loan debt. On the other hand, I don’t have kids and have no plan to have them, so my spending power is greater in that regard. I am on house no 2, and so are my parents. However, they live in a HCOL, while I live in an LCOL.

        It’s hard for me to say whether I am better off than they were at my age because our wants and needs out of life are different. I love my life and while I wish I didn’t have large SLs, I also have a job that allows me to pay them and still live very comfortably. My parents were able to live comfortably while paying for two kids to go to undergrad (one in state and one out, which probably would amount to one state U out of state tuition at this point). None of us want for anything, and all of us seem/ed to be happy at this age. Both of my parents have higher ed degrees, as do me and my sister. So I think it’s a wash?

    33. I am an Old, so my parents were part of the WWII generation, born in the 1920s. They raised us in a world that just plain doesn’t exist any more — they both had union jobs (my mom as a teacher, my dad as a carpenter — interestingly he always out-earned her), they were able to buy a new tract house in the suburbs and send us to world-class public schools including university for me (my brother was a failure to launch, alas). They always had newish cars and by the time they were my age or maybe a little older they were doing international vacations every year, mostly mid-range cruises. They were dealing with elder care issues with my grandmother, similar to what I have with my dad (my mom passed away last year).

        At this stage of their lives my dad had quit construction and was flailing about with various unsuccessful career changes including real estate sales and being a minister, and my mom was still teaching kindergarten. Their marriage was VERY rocky and my mom spent a lot of weekends with my husband and me, helping with the baby, who was born when my mom was the age I am now. Later on, after they retired (both with union pensions), they seemed to reach a rapproachment and their marriage seemed to be happy for the last 20 years or so.

        I live in a pricier suburb than I grew up in and I spent much more on my son’s education and daycare than they did on mine. And I am twice divorced but the third time is turning out to be the charm. ;) Generally I think I am in a much better place than they were when they were my age although I’m not gonna lie — I would love to have a daughter in law and grandbaby to spoil!

    34. As my mom died when she was a couple of years younger than I am now, I am regularly amazed that I made it to the ripe age of 45. And although I was a very late starter careerwise (also due to my mothers death) at this point I have made more money than my mom ever did – adjusted for inflation.
        Comparing to my dad, eh. I guess I make more money than he did when he was my age – also adjusted for inflation – but my savings and investments aren’t up to par.

        No kids, happily married, living in a house in a very desirable location, a reasonable career earning reasonable money. And alive! And happy! So much ahead of my parents:-)

    35. No. When my parents were my age (56) all three of us kids were out of the house and married. Mom and Dad, although still working, were enjoying frequent travel and season tickets to the local baseball and football teams.

        I’m divorced, no children, and living alone. I live three miles from them. It’s a HCOL, so although I make a good salary it’s eaten up by my mortgage and other expenses. My parents bought their house in 1974; I think their monthly mortgage payment was around $375/month. In any event, it’s been paid off for years.

        On the plus side, I am in an LTR with a fellow and we are very active socially with a large friend group. My parents don’t have a friend group, or even friends really, for that matter. It worries me what will happen when one of them passes on.

    36. Yes – because each set of parents partially paid for my college and DH’s college. Tuition in my case and living expenses in DH’s. I’m glad it wasn’t 100% paid for because it was good to have some skin in the game earlier. Made us smart with finance choices. We have zero credit card debt. Lived on one salary until student loans were paid off. Drive older but serviceable cars and live in a comfortable neighbourhood with excellent schools and very steady property values. Parents gave some help towards house (think contribution towards downpayment, not whole downpayment). Not house poor, can afford the mortgage and basic living expenses on one salary. My kids travelled more in their first 5 years than my Dad did in his first 40. Parents have verbalized that they are proud of the financially responsible choices we made and know that we don’t take their assistance for granted and have been responsible with it.

    37. Yes, absolutely. But I’m not sure my kids will be better off than their parents.

        My parents were just above the poverty line but emphasized college from day one for all three of us. I mentally thank them every day.

    38. No, my parents were married, had established careers, owned a house, and were having kids in a larger and more expensive metro area than where I live. I got enough scholarships that I don’t have student loans, so I’m a lot closer to where my parents were than my siblings and peers are, but still quite a bit short.

    39. DH and I are in about the same position financially as my parents were at our age, we live in the same city they did and in extremely similar fields as them. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story IMO. For example, my parents paid for their own college and grad school with student loans and still were able to buy a condo by this age (30), of substantially similar value to mine. I had school 100% paid for, zero debt, which should be, and is, a tremendous financial advantage in life, and yet it seems we are no better off than they were. I project that over the course of our careers we will make substantially less than my parents did, however.

15. OK, wise ones. We’re about to start a major kitchen reno in our small/oddly shaped space. I love to cook (not sure I’ll win any awards, but it brings me much joy — and in non-COVID times we entertain friends and family quite a bit) and we have a family of five. Our contractor is great and has found clever ways to maximize the room we do have, and I now need your help sourcing a 36″ gas stove.

    In my perfect world I’d get a Thermador, but that’s sadly not in the budget — I need to spend $4K or less. I want it to be gas (dual fuel doesn’t really matter to me) and to have 5-6 burners. I’ve done a ton of internet research but it’s been difficult to find reviews of mid-range ranges. Do you have any ideas for me?

    1. I’ve been happy with Kitchen Aid.

    2. First of all, I have a Themador that previous owners put in and I hate it, if it makes you feel better.

       I’d look at GE Cafe lines and see if you could find one on sale for your budget. Same with Bosch.

       1. Way out of my price range unfortunately :(

       2. i like our GE stove/oven quite a bit!

          1. I had a GE Profile in my last house and was very happy with it.

       3. My GE stove was in no way anywhere near $4k. We remodeled in 2008 and it’s the only appliance I haven’t had to replace since then. I love it so much. It’s a gas slide-in model. Please make sure you’re looking at slide-in styles if possible. The stand alone ranges have the controls at the back and they take up valuable burner space.

          Mine is gas with a convection oven. I will never have a non-convection oven again if I can help it.

          I have a griddle burner in the middle that I’m eh on. It doesn’t get a lot of use.

    3. The new gas ovens do this clicking thing when they constantly re-ignite that I found annoying (prescient, as the kitchen island has been my workspace for 9 months). I went with an electric oven for the sweet, sweet silence.

       See if you can hear one at a showroom or in the wild (Wolf has test kitchens rigged up that work, so otherwise I would have been unaware).

    4. Scratch and dent sale at your local appliance store maybe? I would look there and see if you can find a Thermador or similar.

    5. Honestly, we have a fairly cheap (<$1000) gas stove that we adore, so you don't necessarily need to go fancy. One of the main things we focused on was the power of the burners–being able to rapidly boil a pot of water is key for my family.

    6. Just as a biiiiiig heads up, appliances are seriously backordered right now. We ordered a new range at the end of July to replace a broken one, received it October 3rd, the cooktop stopped working October 4th and we’re *still* waiting on a replacement, which is estimated to arrive in January or February. They keep sending repair people out to try to fix it to no avail (we’re up to our sixth visit, number seven should be next week). We’ve looked at getting different models from many different stores, but we have fairly specific specs and virtually everything is delayed by 6+ weeks.

       1. This. I needed a black dishwasher and there were very, very few in stock, regardless of model or price. I wasn’t interested in ordering or paying $1500 so I just took the only one available.

       2. Yes. My parents’ neighbor’s fridge broke and they are waiting a ridiculously long time for a replacement. My parents gave them an old beer fridge they had to cover some day to day essentials and are offering space in their fridge and freezer for the longer term stuff. Both my parents and the neighbors are high risk and shouldn’t be going to the grocery store multiple times per week. They live rural and don’t have a grocery delivery option so sharing a fridge it is. The neighbors leave food on my mom’s porch and then call her and she puts it in her fridge. They call again with what they want that evening and my mom leaves it on their porch. It’s cute but I’m sure super annoying. They have one purchased and are waiting for it to come in but it’s been a month at least. They even tried buying a floor model at Home Depot and the store wouldn’t see them it since they are still taking orders and need a display. Even the high priced rental places were sold out!

       3. Yep, I don’t need it until Q1 of 2021.

          1. That’s in a month

             1. ….or March?

             2. This is why people should just say what they mean instead of corporate speak. “I need it in [month]” would have been more clear.

    7. We have been very happy with our Frigidaire. Good quality, but it didn’t break the bank.

       1. I loved our Frigidaire Gallery 36″ range in our previous house, and I just bought a Frigidaire Pro 36″ cooktop for my current house. I tried looking up how much it cost, but it looks like the 36″ ranges with 5-burner cooktops have been discontinued? There may still be some out there, but I’d be wary.

    8. When our old refrigerator recently died at like 15 yo (maytag), the repairman said he thinks the Whirpool and KitchenAid appliances are generally very good. He said he does tons of repairs of Samsung and LG because the electrical components bug out a lot.
       We replaced our refrigerator with a Whirpool and have been pleased so far and will replace the rest of the kitchen appliances with the same brand as they begin to fail from age.

    9. At Costco, there is an industrial brand that seems like a Thermador or Viking competitor – NXR -PRO. The price is well within your budget for a 36″ stove. It has 6 burners and is priced right at $3K. Reviews seem good and I’d trust Costco’s customer service for anything that might go wrong.

    10. We have a Thermador wall oven, it was in the house when we bought it. It’s an oven. Honestly I don’t know that it is any better or different than the Frigidaire Gallery wall oven we had in our last house. I do know it was way more expensive for the previous owners to purchase, and much harder to repair.

        We have a Wolf (I believe same manufacturer as Thermador?) gas cooktop and that thing is pretty amazing, it’s a five-burner and I can always find a burner and a setting that works for what I’m cooking.

        I would honestly look at the higher-end ranges of mainstream manufacturers (Frigidaire, Maytag, KitchenAid, etc.) before getting high-end boutique-brand kitchen appliances. We have a Sub-Zero fridge in the house; it’s a fridge like the oven is an oven. When it dies I’m not replacing it with another $9,000 fridge; we will buy a $3,000 “counter-depth” fridge. I used to covet high-end kitchen appliances until I lived with them for awhile in this house. Now I think the extra money you spend on the label is wasted.

    11. Just got a GE Profile before Thanksgiving that we are very happy with so far.

16. Has anyone else lost a lot of respect for a loved one due to their behavior during the pandemic? I found out that my dad (and multiple relatives) attended Trump’s rally over the weekend. He wore a mask, but many attendees did not, and it was crowded. My parents are at higher risk of complications if they get COVID, and it was so stupid and reckless for him to go. We had planned to see my parents at Christmas because they live within driving distance and have assured us they are taking precautions. Now I no longer feel comfortable seeing them, and it is going to prompt a huge fight with my mom. All of this could have been avoided if he had just used some common sense.

    1. No offense, but I also question his judgment attending a campaign rally for a candidate who lost and is actively trying to overturn results against the will of the voters (and who has disastrously downplayed the pandemic)

       1. None taken. It upsets me greatly that he supported, and continues to support, Trump, but I’m trying to separate my feelings about his support for 45 from my feelings about his reckless behavior in a pandemic.

          1. In my experience, they are very highly correlated.

          2. Those are not two separate things. The first one causes the second.

       2. Yeah, I’d be more concerned with that at this point. What made you think you could trust someone like this to “take precautions”?

       3. If OP is in GA, the rally was technically for the senate race, but was very much a pro-trump event regardless.

          And to the original question, no I haven’t really because surprise surprise, most of my family who isn’t taking covid seriously are also pro-trump folks. We only socialize digitally with that family. Much like I know I can’t change their political opinions, I can’t change their covid ones so I just protect myself from them.

    2. We are having the same issue with my FIL and step-MIL. They are constantly sending us photos of unmasked parties and restaurant dinners with “new friends,” and then they wonder why we don’t want to go visit them in the COVID hot spot where they live. It’s particularly irksome because MIL died of COVID this spring. My husband feels like his dad is selfishly driving a wedge into their relationship when there isn’t much time left (Dad is in his mid-80s and is in declining health).

       1. Wait, MIL died in the spring, he’s already remarried, and being careless going out and about with the new wife? This is bonkers.

          1. FIL and MIL divorced 30+ years ago. Step-MIL has been a member of the family for quite some time.

          2. …or they might have divorced years ago?

          3. I understood this as MIL and FIL were divorced prior to her passing. FIL and step-MIL may have been together before that as well.

          4. Agh, sorry, my mind is not working today. This was silly of me.

             1. I thought the same thing lol

    3. um, yes. in April during the national stay at home order, my in-laws had another couple over for dinner. my MIL came to visit us after quarantining and testing, but due to the regulations in her home state also had to quarantine upon return, which she did not do. My FIL (who is a doctor!) just had covid and while he completed his quarantine, my MIL did not. They’ve been eating in restaurants, gathering indoors with people, and encouraging my SILs (one is a PICU nurse!) to do the same. A close friend who is pregnant (her husband is an ER doc) is flying with her toddler to visit her parents over the holidays. Another friend is flying halfway across the country with her two kids to visit her brother (an ER doctor) because she just can’t go so long without seeing him. I am really struggling with their decisions. They seem so so selfish to me, but presumably all know the risks/don’t care? when i spend too much time thinking about it, my blood boils, which is not helpful for my own mental health, so i’m being a bit of an ostrich and putting my head in the sand

    4. Oh, I have absolutely lost respect for members of our extended family, who act SHOCKED, SHOCKED that they’ve gotten sick even though they’ve carried on with life as normal. Meanwhile, all of us have actually lost one of our loved ones to Covid, and he took every precaution he could. I low-key hate them for “getting away” with behaving badly, while their brother & uncle died because of people like them. I always knew there were value differences between us and them, but the pandemic has highlighted that in the worst possible ways. I don’t think I’ll ever see them the same way again.

    5. I try to separate “has a different risk tolerance, though within the bounds of appropriate” from “behaving like there’s no pandemic”. Going to a massive rally (for anyone!) falls into the later. Going out to dinner outside at restaurants (assuming they’re taking appropriate precautions) falls into the former. I try not to judge the former, but yeah, definitely lost respect for people doing the later.

       1. +1

    6. To the point that I don’t want them in my life anymore. My BIL said that if a colleague was allowed to have a public funeral for their child, he doesn’t see why his favorite bar can’t have their weekly poker games.

       1. Jeebus. My jaw literally dropped.

          1. People are awful sometimes.

       2. Like is his brain too small to understand that we give up the unnecessary stuff (poker game) so other people can do the necessary stuff (bury child supported by family).

       3. I’m sorry he said what….? I’ve read this 4 times and I still think I read it wrong…

    7. Yes, and friends. One particular group of women I know just flew across the country country for an extended weekend vacation with a group of girlfriends to celebrate a birthday. And I’m just so floored. I don’t know how I’m supposed to move on from this, because to me it is so far beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior and is really influencing my opinion of that group.

    8. Yes I have lost SO much respect for many family members, including two anti mask covidiots who work with the elderly. I’m actually done as in DONE with those two.

       1. I should add, I have a college aged daughter who has lost friends over this. Her school has been online all year so she’s at home with us, but some of her friends moved back onto campus (which was an option) because they wanted to party. And they do party, and post about it all over social media.

17. I think some folks on here have done music lessons by video-chat. I’m considering it, but what equipment would I need? Just a phone/laptop? A good bluetooth mic? A proper musical pick-up on my instrument?

    1. DH has piano lessons just using facetime on his macbook. I think the teacher has the same.

    2. I’m taking cello lessons using FaceTime. It’s not ideal, but works well enough. I have made progress!

    3. I’m taking guitar lessons over Skype and I don’t have anything special —- just my laptop.

    4. My son until recently was taking zoom bass lessons. It worked fine in terms of learning. The age old problem was that he didn’t practice between lessons.

18. I have a good friend who has gotten seriously into baking this year and I’d like to get her some small but splurge-y ingredients that she might not buy herself. So far I have some prism powders from Fancy Sprinkles but interested in other ideas (and other sprinkle purveyors since she already has some from FS). Ideas for where to look? Thanks!

    1. Flavorings, like vanilla, lemon, etc or Viatnamese cinnamon from Penzeys.

       1. The double strength Penzey’s vanilla!

    2. King Arthur Baking has all sorts of fancy supplies.

    3. If you got her prism powders (which are awesome! I love putting that stuff in prosecco and watching the glitter swirl around), you should also get her some decorating brushes if she doesn’t already have them, they make applying said powders very easy. If you’re just pinching and sprinkling, it can get very messy and you waste a good bit of the stuff.

       I’ve also seen ads for Sprinkle Pop. I’m a FS girl all the way but they might have some other decent options.

    4. What kind of things does she like to bake? If she does a lot of cookies or muffins (or meatballs), a set of cookie scoops would be great. They are more expensive than they should be and it is useful to have multiple sizes. If she doesn’t have a kitchen scale, that would be a great addition. If she is doing pastry or rolling dough, a nice rolling pin with thickness gauges could be handy. A good instant read thermometer is invaluable too – I think the Thermopen is the standard recommendation. Country Kitchen Sweet Art, NY Cake sell a lot of supplies.

       1. I discovered the other week that cookie scoops are also great for making falafel!

       2. Omg YES to a thermopen and cookie scoops. I use the thermopen multiple times a week for meat, and the cookie scoops (2 sizes) almost every other time I bake.
          If you want a consumable, black cocoa powder is delicious!

    5. Kitchen scale? Bench scraper if she makes doughs? Offset spatula?

       1. I’m a bread baker and the digital kitchen scale and bench scraper are my best friends. These are good suggestions.

    6. Vanilla bean paste!

    7. Sweetopolita for sprinkles?

19. I’ve noticed a particularly troubling pattern with my mom lately (probably more so because I haven’t seen her in person since March). She takes even benign comments (hey mom, I really don’t want to talk about work) as insulting. Basically because I’m asking her to not talk about something, or do something slightly differently, it’s critical of her personally. I’ve said over and over things like “hey, I love talking to you, but work has been really hellish lately and I’d rather not talk about it (I’m in medicine, so it’s just…not pleasant), let’s talk about how your Christmas shopping is going!”. There are other examples, but that one came up yesterday. How do you navigate it? I don’t have any other relationships where you can’t really express any even light preferences without it being perceived as a personal criticism.

    1. I just change the subject without announcing why I’m doing it. Mom asks about work? Say something short about it and then ask her for advice on quick dinner recipes (I’m so tired when I get home, need some variety!) or whatever. Less confrontational.

    2. Honestly? I wouldn’t spend much time on it. Basically you’re setting boundaries by telling her you don’t want to talk about things and she’s upset about the boundaries. When you set boundaries of any kind, you have to hold them and not worry about the reaction of others. Presumably you set them for a reason. Explain your boundary one time, and that’s it. But, I’m pretty unapologetic when it comes to shutting my well-meaning but nosy, critical type mom. I know it hurts her feelings but, honestly, I can’t control her feelings so I’m resigned to the fact her reaction is not my problem to manage (btw took me a while to get to that place). It sounds cold, but it works for me.

    3. I’ll be honest, I think it’s a bit rude to tell someone you don’t want to talk about something they’re interested in discussing. I listen to people talk about a lot of stuff I’m not particularly enthralled by, so they can do the same. When someone says that to me, I usually end the conversation.

       1. Boundaries are not rude.

          1. But the way you convey the boundary can be.

             “Not much new at work. Was the mall busy? Did you find that tea set you wanted for Aunt Sue after?”

             vs.
             “I don’t want to discuss my job with you. Please don’t ask.”

             1. Neither is rude. What’s rude is to force people to talk about things they don’t want to talk about.

       2. The mom wants to talk about the OP’s work, not her own, and the OP doesn’t want to. I think it’s reasonable for the OP to decline that topic.

       3. I get what you’re saying, but I don’t think that’s quite the case OP is talking about. OP is not declining to listen, but to actually be the one talking.

       4. Found OP’s mom.

    4. My mom is gone now, but she was a bit sensitive. I could always divert her with gossip.

       Her: how is your diet going?

       Me: fine. Hey I meant to ask you about your friend Glynnis? How is she doing?

       (Glynnis left her husband for a woman at age 70. My mom could talk about Glynnis all day.)

       1. Ha! My mom loved to gossip about her friends, too!

       2. Popping in to say I LOVE the name Glynnis.

20. I know people here like updates, so I will give my super benign ones. This summer we moved houses triggering a few posts from me for big purchase recommendations, and based on those responses a) we bought a pull out couch from Room & Board (the Allston!) and love it; and b) we just bought a Honda Pilot so we could have a third row (with captain’s chairs, based on the responses I knew to insist on that) and are so far super happy. So thank you, all!

21. Thoughts from those who are following closely? Does anyone else feel like vaccines are going to end up being a free for all after they are done with healthcare workers and nursing home residents in the next 2 months? I know after that it’ll go to elderly who don’t live in group settings and those that are higher risk — but how do high risk people PROVE that? (Elderly can prove it just with ID or looking at them that they’re someone in their 70s or whatever.)

    I have an underlying heart condition. I live in Va, and don’t have a primary care dr. (I have gotten one cardiac test done at Medstar but didn’t see any dr there, that result went to my cardiologist). I go to a cardiologist at a bigger health system in another state — at UPenn. How do I even go about figuring out if I fall into a group that can get the vaccine before the general public? I don’t feel that calling the UPenn cardiologist does anything because I’d be shocked if those non primary care practices even get the vaccine plus I live in a different state; given that this is state allocated is Pa really going to want to use a dose on a non Pa resident?

    I am not looking to jump the line as I can continue to work from home, can go out for groceries once every few weeks etc. But I’ll be honest as I KNOW there are people already calling up their concierge practices (neither elderly and they say they have no underlying conditions) demanding to be higher on the list and I KNOW a few people already starting to say — well I had childhood asthma, no one can prove that it’s been ok for 30 years etc — I find myself being like wait why should I be left just standing here because I don’t have a dr on retainer or an established PCP.

    1. So.. unfamiliar with how your state is handling, but in my state, they are working on making a very firm list of conditions that make you eligible to be higher up on a list for a vaccine. Priority is given to people with three conditions, then two, then one (childhood asthma is not on any list of conditions I’ve seen). This makes it harder for someone to just get a doctor’s note saying they have one condition and takes into account the idea that a large portion of the population is high risk. Right now, they have not released details on how this will work, but I actually have confidence that this will be done competently. My red state is very into freedom and has managed the pandemic terribly, but overall, we are very good at logistics/organization. I think overall this will be managed well, though admittedly, I’m pretty much last on the list to get a vaccine.

    2. Start with your cardiologist. Call/email and ask for advice on whether you fall into the high risk group. If so, ask for the doctor’s help in finding somewhere to get the vaccine when it’s your risk group’s turn.

    3. I don’t know the answer to your question, but maybe this is the push you need to get with an established PCP? I didn’t have one and then had some major medical issues come up this year and ended up on a waiting list for months just to see a doctor, so now I’m really encouraging people who can afford it to go ahead and get an appointment set up just in case.

       1. +1, I finally found myself a PCP a few years ago because of an unpleasant experience with urgent care. It can take a few months to get in for the “well woman” exam (which is often fully covered by insurance, no copay) but then you have a doctor!

    4. Each state will have it’s own allocation and plan. Check your state health department website.

    5. I do think it will be a free-for-all, but not exactly as you describe. During the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, I had to get my preschooler vaccinated. No one was giving the vaccine to anyone not in a high-priority group, so as an adult I couldn’t get vaccinated myself no matter how much I begged, but vaccine availability for people in the eligible group was extremely patchy. For each dose I had to call around to multiple providers including the health department, there was a long wait in a cattle-call type of environment once I found a provider that had the vaccine in stock (which would be terribly dangerous with COVID), and I wasn’t able to get both doses from the same manufacturer as was recommended. I foresee these issues being magnified with the COVID vaccine because everyone needs it, most people want it, the transport and storage requirements are more exacting, and getting both doses from the same manufacturer will be absolutely critical.

    6. Yeah, I’m between PCP’s as well – my old PCP left the practice earlier this year, and with COVID it just doesn’t seem necessary to book a physical with someone new until after the pandemic. But your medical records exist, yes? If you’re seeing a doctor for a condition, maybe that doctor can provide documentation you can give to whomever you go to for the vaccine?

       I know states are playing a big role in determining rollout practices, and I’m also wondering if beyond that, individual practices are setting rules about who gets priority, as I’m sure schedules will fill up quickly and people may end up on waiting lists. I have mild asthma but I’m kinda fine waiting until May or June to get my shot.

       I guess I just have a lot of faith that, despite some imperfections in the system, everyone who needs the vaccine will get it in the next 6 months, and everyone who *wants* it (which, tbh, should be most people, even though I have no control over that) will have both doses by this time next year. Besides, I’m not really sure to what extent, if any, an early vaccine means early access to “normal” activities, seems like a lot of aspects of our pre-COVID lives may not fully resume until we have herd immunity.

    7. I have RA and take immunosuppressants, and I’m over 50. I kind of secretly hope I have some priority but I’m not counting on it.

       I basically don’t leave my house. My doctor said I’m more likely to catch it and more likely to have a bad case, so I believe him.

    8. I am in my 30s, very healthy, ran a half marathon pregnant and another seven months after giving birth, and am full-time WFH. My husband and baby are very healthy; my husband is half-time WFH.

       There is no way in hell I am getting the vaccine until everyone who really wants it, has it. Am I “invincible?” No, but I’m at a substantially lower risk than a huge portion of the adult population, and people at a lower risk than me (kids) want to get back to school. Aside from a few random hermits in their 20s, I’m not really sure who should beat me out for the vaccine.

22. The Toyota Sienna is the only minivan I know of with AWD (or maybe it is 4WD). If you have this, have you ever used it? We moved to an area where monthly we will need to go to an area that has roads cut into a forest, but the roads aren’t paved and the area can get muddy. There are some rocks, but I think a van could clear or avoid them usually.

    Will the Sienna be able to handle? It is hilly, but not like the Rockies. There is a real winter (and also: wet shaded spots stay icy). We have 3 giant kids, so the minivan is what the whole family is comfortable in.

    I currently have a front-wheel drive minivan that is quite old. Also, even though it has a towing package, we’ve found that the hills don’t agree with the rotors and I’m annoyed at having to re-re-re-replace them. I don’t think I’m an SUV driver (which for 3 rows would be too big for my around-the-city driving), other than this one unique need (where I will have the kids with me and for which AAA would be a long way away).

    1. Hi! We live in a house with a steep driveway. We asked friends with an odyssey and a sienna to drive it in bad weather. Neither one could do it (Honda in snow mode, sienna in AWD).

       We got the odyssey but only drive our Acura MDX with AWD (which we already had) in the snow. It’s a beast.

       I preferred the odyssey all along but the sienna tempted me with its AWD. Turns out it’s fairly useless.

       If you really need an excellent car in the snow, do not get a minivan.

    2. Yeah no to the Sienna handling that type of scenario. In your case, if it’s monthly, I’d look into the possibility of two cars. One is the minivan for the rest of your month, the other is an SUV or even a that can handle your monthly forest trek. The giant kids can hopefully handle the trip once a month even if it’s not the most comfortable. The Grand Cherokee is the standard in my rough roads hometown area, for good reason. We used to fit 5 teenagers in there regularly, with all our gear, to go hiking and river tubing.

    3. I had a Dodge Caravan that I took on a lot of forest service roads. No AWD but similar ground clearance. I’d say tires are 50% of the solution, I’d look at getting good mud tires (talk to your tire service center) and then toss in a shovel to dig yourself out just in case. AWD is helpful but it doesn’t help as much as really good tires and picking a good route on the road for your tires.

23. Ughhhhh my cat just did a very stinky poop

    1. This made me laugh out loud. Thanks for the update! ha!

    2. Lmao mine did too, solidarity.

24. My husband and I made a fantastic pandemic purchase I’ll share here in case anyone has the money and space to get one too.

    We got a NordicTrack treadmill with a free one year i-fit account. I had never heard of i-fit before this. I mostly use the treadmill for walking and I can take walks all over the world virtually with this account via the treadmills built in tablet screen. Some are more vigorous hikes and the treadmill adjusts to match the incline/decline of the terrain you are watching. Others, a leisurely strolls with a tour guide through various tourist spots. There is a whole series that tours the historical sites of Jordan. I’ve actually been to those sites but not with a guide so I’m loving learning all the things about the places I went. I think you can get a similar account for your tablet if you already have your own treadmill but I’m not really sure.

    Even without the account there are still good built in features like picking any place in the world on Google Street View to walk. The technology blows my mind.

    We initially tried to buy through Nordic Track but it was back ordered. I had a credit card fraud issue and they wouldn’t let me swap the old card for the new card so I was going to have to re-order. We found that Nordic Track also sells via Amazon which had them in stock with no shipping charge. We were able to use the money we were going to pay Nordic Track to ship to buy a maintenance plan for the treadmill. It came via freight. There were a couple hassles, it came two days late, they didn’t call before arriving, and the thing took my husband FOUR HOURS to assemble, but I love it.

    We just had an ice storm where it would not have been safe to walk outside and I happily strolled around Hawaii on the treadmill. I have a CLE at noon and I plan on watching it from the treadmill, getting some steps in as I go.

    I hope this doesn’t sound too braggy. I have learned about all kinds of cool things from other people here so I wanted to share. This was my husband’s find and I couldn’t be happier with it.

    1. Wow, that sounds great! Thanks for sharing!

    2. That sounds so cool! Thanks for sharing.

    3. I have one of these designed for incline work and I love it too.

    4. Thanks for this recommendation! My husband and I have been on the hunt for a treadmill all year, and had to just cancel an order that never arrived after 2 months.

    5. Oh my gosh, I got a Nordictrack treadmill with iFit and I LOVE IT. It has saved my sanity during the quarantine. I’m so glad you’re enjoying it!!

       (And yes, you can use it without a NordicTrack treadmill.)

25. Does anyone know anything about buying healthcare coverage on marketplace? Trying to get through to anyone official is taking years off my life.

    It’s a super nuanced question so if it makes no sense, please scroll by. I figured it was worth a shot asking:

    In the healthcare MarketPlace, if you’re getting a subsidy of some kind for your insurance premium it’s based on your estimated income for the coming calendar year (in Dec 2019 we projected MIL’s 2020 income). Turns out her 2020 income is materially different, which we only realized yesterday thanks to some investment income, and she now qualifies for a bigger subsidy. We’re about to report the change in the MarketPlace system (significant income changes qualify as a ‘life event’). But, will there be a true up at tax time and could she get the subsidy retroactively (aka premiums refunded to her) when she files her taxes?

    1. and by subsidy, I mean the “advanced premium tax credit”

    2. I’m almost positive the answer to this is yes. I looked briefly but in my case I’d gone outside the Marketplace (lifetip: don’t do that! it’s the same policy, same companies, different method of purchasing that disqualifies you for a retroactive subsidy). So, I didn’t actually pursue it and couldn’t say 100% whether that’s the case but I do think she’ll get a subsidy bump in her 2020 taxes.

       I think you can find a likely answer to this online–I’d look more at the IRS pages and publications for help first and just a google search in general.

    3. Yes, the software asks how much the full premium was, how much the subsidy was and how much she paid out of pocket. The program crunches the numbers. I’ve usually found that I over-estimated my income, so I get a bit more of a credit at tax time. Reduces what I owe.

       1. Thank you.

          She was making below the poverty line ($0 reported income the last two years), just living off a modest amount of cash savings/FIL’s life insurance premium, which actually means zero subsidy. She’s too young for Medicare. But if you break the poverty line and earn between $14k and ~$25k, you get 100% subsidized health care for most plans, including hers. After some unrelated convincing, we got her to work with a financial planner in February and, wouldn’t ya know, she made some modest investments and has now made about $15k of reportable income. So had we projected that income a year ago she would have had 100% free health insurance for all of 2020. I’m guessing she gets a $10-11k refund of her monthly premiums.

          Thank you hive. You’ve showed me it’s worth the headache of figuring this out the right way if she could get that kind of return/refund.

    4. Many brokers are specialists at navigating the marketplaces and stuff like this. If you are in CA, recommend Stephen Griswold of Griswold & Griswold. (There’s a Vacation joke somewhere in there, but he’s great!)

       1. She’s in Alabama (which adds another layer of major complication – such dysfunction at the state level), but thank you!

26. Can anyone recommend an eBay seller who sells pearl jewelry? I have an eBay coupon and want to get myself some pearl earrings in the $50-$75 price range.

    1. It might be worth searching for a particular brand you know and like, vs a specific seller.

    2. I can give you some advice. If you want pearl studs, make sure they’re Akoya and not Chinese freshwater. I’d buy from a US based seller. Most coming out of China are mislabeled.

       For instance, those look good and are a good size.

       https://www.ebay.com/itm/14k-Solid-White-Gold-10-11mm-Genuine-AAA-Akoya-Pearl-Stud-Earrings-Gift-Boxed-/224254021092?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49292

       1. It’s not possible to get 10-11mm Akoya pearls for that price that are of good quality, and Akoyas generally don’t grow that large. That’s likely stolen photos / not what you’re going to recieve. You’d likely get some freshwaters in the mail that are not perfectly round with good luster as shown. I’d recommend looking for Pearl Paradise or Pearl Source, Pearl Source sells on ebay I believe and has reputable products.

27. I’m waiting to hear about a big promotion. If I don’t get it I won’t be immediately fired but it likely means I need to find another job in the next few months. I should hear this week and the anxiety is very hard to handle. I alternate between tight chest feelings and feeling sick to my stomach. Between general work stress, family health issues that are stressful, the pandemic, and child care difficulties, my reserves for dealing with stress and anxiety are pretty much zero. In the meantime I have tons of work to get done and I’m having a very hard time focusing. Any simple suggestions? Or just commiseration? I’m normally an I can do / bear anything type of person but this is paralyzing.

    1. Commiseration from here! Maybe set a timer for 15 minutes and force yourself to work until it goes off, then worry for a minute or two, and repeat?

28. Any gift suggestions for a secretary who is very into gifts (like it is her love language). Will also be giving her cash, but I want to make her feel warm and valued. I don’t really know her personally that well. Willing to spend up to $100 on the actual gift(s).

    1. A splurg-y version of something practical? A really luxe throw blanket? This one has good reviews https://www.nordstrom.com/s/nordstrom-bliss-plush-throw/3564757?siteid=QFGLnEolOWg-awy84d7NIYpu1MaJNt6Y_A&utm_source=rakuten&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=QFGLnEolOWg&utm_content=1&utm_term=747642&utm_channel=low_nd_affiliates&sp_source=rakuten&sp_campaign=QFGLnEolOWg
       paired with fancy chocolates or something else cozy (hot cocoa or mulled wine kit)

    2. If you want to do consumables, Olive and Cocoa does LOVELY gift baskets and they’re packaged amazingly well and look amazing.

29. Has anyone been in a truly open relationship marriage here? My SO are talking through some points for deeper consideration. Would like to hear some honest talk about jealousy and accountability. Thank you

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