Coffee Break: Recharge Gel Cream

59 Comments

1. I want to get my husband a silhouette print of our son for his birthday. Any recommendations for Etsy shops or similar?

   1. no suggestions but it’s a great idea. i did them when my kids were small (we live in NYC, a fancy little toy store had someone come in to do them a few weeks before xmas) and all grandparents were pleased and i have them in my hall and they touch my heart when i see their little curls and snub noses.

2. DH got promoted at the end of last year, which is obviously great, but I learned that his firm now has ransom insurance (or whatever it’s called) in case he is kidnapped while on a business trip? I realize this is unlikely, especially since he primarily travels to Western Europe or places within the U.S., but between that and the likely increase in lone individual or sleeper cell attacks, i’m now super anxious about his business travel. i realize this is a me problem, but i really prefer when we are all sleeping under the same roof. any tips to get this out of my head?

   1. Therapy

   2. Does he work for an evil company? I think the risk analysis is very different if he just works for a video game company vs banking or healthcare actively destroying the world.

      1. This is the right answer.

      2. most banking or healthcare companies are not actively destroying the world

         1. + 1 – not to mention that foreign countries/foreign nationals don’t care about our banks or healthcare companies.

      3. I wouldn’t worry about banking or healthcare or PE; is he a defense contractor?

         1. also, long shot, but are you the poster who commented that you feel less secure in your husband’s love because he’s not a big texter when he travels?

            1. Nope, not me

   3. It’s another type of insurance. Having health insurance doesn’t mean you expect him to get cancer; having life insurance doesn’t mean you expect him to die; disability insurance isn’t a sign he’s going to break his neck. This, if anything, means that the company is serious about keeping their traveling employees safe.

   4. If it helps your anxiety, this is just an add on to the travel insurance they already have for him for rental cars, medical evacuation, etc. It is way more common than you think (especially once you hit the level that the company flies you business class). I only knew about it at my old law firm because someone looked into if our travel insurance covered personal travel, and we all got a good laugh when we found out about the benefit. Now, if it is something that is causing you a lot of distress, that’s a great topic for therapy.

      1. +1 – the joke at the Big 4 firm I used to work at was ‘hey, at least if the plane goes down and I’m on a work trip I get 3x my life insurance paid out!’
         This is a very, very common ‘perk’ and is intended to give families a bit more peace of mind, nothing more than that.

   5. I don’t know if this helps but a lot of companies have insurance on these kind of people for tax or other financial engineering purposes. It doesn’t necessarily mean they think they have an excess risk.

   6. Any APDA alumni here remember when Yale used to run the case “abolish ransom insurance?” Saw some good rounds with that one.

      1. I don’t remember that case but I’m an APDA alum and love the shoutout!

3. Low stakes question of the day: do you take a multivitamin?

   I do sometimes, but especially if I’m tired — I’m never sure if it’s low iron or another vitamin but I figure it helps get them back up in general.

   1. I do – taking vitamin B seems to prevent/heal my persistent canker sores. I figure I might as well just take the multi in case I need a “boost” with another one too.

   2. If I’m tired without a good explanation I get myself a cheesesteak for dinner under the guise of eating more iron

      1. This is the health and wellness advice I needed. Thank you.

      2. Charcuterie board with pate and a glass of bubbles is also a good prescription.

      3. My husband could time my cycle to my lunchtime Jersey Mike’s philly cheese steak runs.

   3. I take a prenatal when I’m pregnant and after until the bottle is gone. I keep potassium and magnesium pills if I’m doing anything where I want some extra electrolytes but don’t want to drink a Gatorade or something. Vitamins and supplements can very easily veer into pseudo-science territory and they are very poorly quality tested, so I tend to be conservative about them.

      1. Same here.

      2. There’s never been anything unscientific about supplementing an inadequate diet. It’s just the same concept as fortification in public health, but individualized. They can really help people who are on restricted diets for whatever reason.

   4. I take iron/B12 and vitamin D. I’ll go through phases where I slack on taking them and weeks- months later will wonder why I feel so tired, low energy and overall blah. Then I start taking them again and seem to feel better.

   5. I take iron and B12 because I tested low and my doctor told me to stay on it. I took a prenatal during TTC and pregnancy, because #science. Apart from that, I think taking vitamins for the sake of taking vitamins just yields expensive pee.

      1. Yes, I will caution that feeling a lot better when taking a multivitamin can be a red flag of medical conditions that lower absorption. My family used to laugh about our placebo effect vitamins that we were taking for expensive pee or whatever while imagining they boosted our energy.

         This is less funny after one delayed diagnosis of Celiac and another of Crohn’s more than adequately explained why vitamins would have been legitimately needed. The symptoms were so vague that we never connected it in our minds to why vitamins were such a lifeline.

   6. i do. i take a women’s gummi, whatever is on special when i’m at cvs. i’m not convinced it does anything but i also take magnesium because i get cramps in my feet and liquid vitamin d because my doctor always tells me i need to.

   7. Yes. So many ailments are caused by low vitamins; it’s a cheap insurance policy.

   8. yes, a one-a-day or generic.

   9. No because my doctor has always stressed diet for most things. I take b12 shots because I have a deficiency but that’s all.

      1. I thought most people who needed B12 shots were higher risk for other deficiencies. That was the explanation I was given when I tested positive for half a dozen other deficiencies despite adequate dietary intake.

         1. I’ve never tested positive for any others.

   10. No, but I specifically take magnesium (prescribed by my neurologist for m*igraine), a B complex (riboflavin is also suggested for m*graine and I’m close enough to vegan that some B12 is necessary), plus vitamin D a couple times a week because I was once actually deficient in that, though I feel no different whatsoever before or after supplementing. The magnesium really does help a lot for m*graine, though, and that’s backed by research.

   11. Yes. I felt so much better on a prenatal that I after I was no longer TTC, I realized it wasn’t consistent with my values to prioritize a potential pregnancy over my daily quality of life and got a recommended multivitamin for women my current age.

       1. Though apparently I still can’t type. But I definitely notice the difference if I skip my multi for even a day or two.

   12. I only take Vitamin D because my doctor told me to after I was always tired (I also have Hashimoto’s but my labs were good on that). She gave me a large prescription dose first and then told me to keep taking a lower dose.

   13. I take specific vitamins as directed following blood work with specific follow up testing to monitor impact. Vitamin D3+K2, Heme Iron+Vitamin C and a cortisol supplement are my current cocktail per my bloodwork.

   14. Yes, a gummy. Would consider NAD for more energy

   15. I used to, but I felt zero difference and don’t have anything in my tests that would indicate I need to be on a supplement.

   16. my girlfriend is a pharmacist and HATES supplements. I try to only buy USP-verified ones for that reason.

       1. The product category is underregulated for sure, but ultimately we rely on the same manufacturers for prenatals and tube feeds and baby formula. So it makes sense to look for verification, but not to just fear the whole concept.

   17. I have anemia so take iron supplements, plus calcium and d3 on my doctors rec, plus prenatal when necessary.

4. What is the good airline-employee-worthy line at Travel Pro called? I need a new and slightly larger wheelie bag that my old Away one.

   1. Travelpro Flightcrew is what to search. Though I’ve found the consumer-facing products to hold up extremely well as it is. My checked bag is from the Maxl-te collection (2 wheels, not the spinner) and has barely a scuff after 5+ years of relatively heavy use.

5. Is there a good book out there on civil service type history, like Mary Roach but for government bureaucracy? It is wild to me that with Joan of Arc, we don’t know when she was born or what her actual name was. I had thought that churches recorded that and later governments, and I get that maybe no one cared as much when girls were born, but at some point we started keeping records. I mean, the Gospel of Luke has Ceasar Augustus having sort of a recording / census of people.

   1. AFAIK the best records are the Mormons, they track everyone.

   2. ?? Are you looking for a book on the history of record-keeping in Europe?

      1. Im not the OP but that’s how I understood it and I want it too!!

      2. Or just generally. I can only trace my family in America. There are so many forms here — title for your house, title for your car, taxes to the city, taxes to the state, taxes where you live, taxes where you work. Some countries are known for their bureaucracy and yet we didn’t always have this as humans. I get that we didn’t always have paper or written language but what were they counting on the abacus?

         1. I mean if you’re using car titles you’re not tracing back very far. Anecdotally, my great grandfather changed his name by just using a different one. That’s here in New York a bit over a century ago. It was extremely common in an age before social security numbers and photo id. Names, even surnames were much more fluid at that time. He’s in the census under several iterations of his name. So we don’t know his “real” name either, even though census data exists.

            I’m not sure why you’d expect consistent naming records for a peasant in fifteenth century France, but I strongly suspect naming conventions were even more flexible in that time and place.

   3. I don’t think it’s that surprising that paper records from 600 years ago haven’t survived.

      1. +1. Some did. Most didn’t.

         1. Especially in France, where large numbers of church and government buildings were burned down at various stages of unrest. Church buildings, including their archives, were destroyed in many French cities and towns during the reign of terror.

      2. And yet we have the full transcripts from the trial that condemned Joan of Arc to death.

         1. The trial was of significant public interest, which made it more likely that records would be maintained.

   4. Medieval historian here. There are plenty of records of various sorts. But they tend to record families with enough wealth and/or clout to require legal documents around property (wills, transfer, etc.). It’s much harder to find documentary evidence of non-aristocratic family. Parish churches and synagogues often had records but not all, and those records don’t always look like what we might think of as full records.

Comments are closed.