Wednesday’s Workwear Report: Long Sleeve Belted Dress

429 Comments

1. I do calls from my closet b/c it is the most densely insulated space = less outside noise (the inevitable weed wacker / chopper / siren). I have noted recently the presence of the following:

   1. tan cropped cardigan; I used to wear with structured dresses b/c I used to get chilled when in the office
   2. tan cashmere cardigan; worn with some drop-waist dresses b/c they have short sleeves and I tend to be cold in offices
   3. MMLF wool sweater coat, tan/gray, worn with their dresses in cooler months
   4. BR current wool blend longer cardigan, also tan, on CapHillStyle recently — looks more current; could wear with home-work clothes

   And that is just the TAN family — I have the same thing going with black. And that is also just cardigans. Don’t get me started on sweaters proper. And I do have a turtleneck problem, but that is b/c I get legit cold in actual winter and that stuff is packed up / acting as further soundproofing in a nearby rubbermaid tub. Good R value, yo!

   So much stuff. Too soon to purge, obviously. But I just keep taking it all in from my home “office.”

   1. Why is it “too soon to purge”? Too warm to decide on cool weather clothes? I am confused. I did this early spring when shelter-in-place went into effect and I was forced to be in my tiny, cluttered home for long periods.

   2. That all sounds absolutely beautiful. Keep it. Wear it now if you can!

   3. I lol’d at this-thank you for sharing, and that’s brilliant to take calls on the closet. I 100% support minimizing your wardrobe, but as a chronic clothing-purger, I’d suggest not getting rid of favorites/classics that you’d wear again once there’s a return to the office or just tucking them into bins for the time being.

   4. Are people wearing cropped cardigans? I know cropped everything (with mom jeans or mom jorts) are a thing with the tweens. If you are wearing them in-office (or in-theortical office) or on zooms, what are you wearing them with? I am gravitating to things that are more robe-like, almost to the point of Lebowski dressing.

      1. If I had a trim waist, I’d be wearing cropped cardigans with high-waisted skirts and pants/jeans, or with dresses. On me, a duster-length cardigan creates a better line.

      2. I think they’re good with the wide-legged high-waisted trousers. But the kids wearing them can get off my lawn.

2. Wanted to say thanks for the responses to a sciatica question (pain in glute/leg) I posted about a month ago. I suspect it was the softer chair I’d been using since working from home. I couldn’t figure out what was causing the pain and since switching to a harder chair and standing more during the day, the pain has been lessening and pretty much gone (fingers crossed). Thanks again for the helpful responses!

   1. If it returns, you could try acupuncture. My husband has gotten significant relief from his lower back pain and sciatica through acupuncture.

   2. Great news!

3. Beautiful pick! We found a Williams Sonoma credit from our wedding and want to spend it on a kitchen gadget to make quarantine cooking more exciting. Thinking of an air fryer or sous vide. Would love to hear if anyone has any recommendations for either or if there are other kitchen gadgets they love. Our condo storage is limited so there’s a preference for something compact or multi-functional. We have an instant pot and kitchen aid mixer (both are stored in our coat closet!)

   1. Do you have a food processor? I have a Cuisinart (almost 20 years old) and love it. I also have an immersion blender which is extremely handy for soups, smoothies, dressings, dips, etc. I use it a lot. Those would be my suggestions.

      1. +1 for the food processor. I love my Cuisinart.

         But if you don’t have a blender, get a blender first. I have a Cuisinart but if you can swing a Vitamix that’s the gold standard.

         1. +1 for a blender. An immersion blender is small and great if you soup.

   2. I was skeptical about an air fryer, but one landed in my kitchen as a gift. I use it every single day, often more than once. The one I have is not WS, so I don’t have a specific recommendation but I am glad that an air fryer is part of my generally appliance-adverse kitchen.

      1. +1 for air fryer. You can cook just about anything in there and the cleanup is a breeze.

      2. if your oven has a convection feature, that’s the same as an air fryer.

   3. If you don’t have a blender, immersion blenders are great and small.

   4. I want an air fryer but I also want to throw out that I LOVE having an ice cream maker.

      1. +1 If you already have a kitchenaid mixer, I love the ice cream attachment. And since it’s just essentially a bowl that lives in the freezer, it doesn’t take up any counter space.

         1. Ooh I didn’t know about the kitchen aid attachment!

         2. Oooh, great idea! I used to have a Cuisinart ice cream maker but I wasn’t using it and gave it away. Now, I’m thinking I could use one again. If I could just buy an ice cream attachment for my KitchenAid mixer, that would make so much more sense!

      2. Me too. One summer I made ice cream every day. Rhubarb and rose was my best flavor.

         1. You’re my hero!

   5. Love our air fryer and use it all the time.

      1. Did you used to fry a lot of foods before you got the air fryer? I’m interested in it but I don’t fry food when I cook now so I’m struggling with what I would use the air fryer for instead.

         1. I fried almost nothing except an occasional egg, and I love my air fryer, which is in constant use. It crisps so many foods with almost no fat and also is great for reheating leftovers without microwave sogginess.

   6. I’ve used my brother’s Vitamix and it was life changing. I know it’s large but he often uses his to also make soups, sauces, nut butters, and hummuses. It kicked my Nutribullet’s butt for smoothies, of course. But second to wanting a high powered blender, I’d vote for air fryer. They’re actually really versatile and you can bake/crisp up almost anything in there from what I’ve seen.

      1. My husband and I were just talking about how glad we are that we bought a Vitamix last summer. Yesterday we used it for our morning smoothies, the lemon filling for these lemon bars (https://smittenkitchen.com/2020/06/whole-lemon-meringue-pie-bars/), and some kind of yogurt/lemon/parsley/garlic pasta sauce (not sure what that was – he made dinner). The texture for all of them was really fantastic, and there’s no way we could have done it with any of our previous blenders.

         Also I accidentally made a dupe for the yoplait whips using just greek yogurt, blueberries, and a tiny bit of sugar and milk. (I think I accidentally over-blended it, I was intending to make a lassi… but it was a happy accident!)

      2. Just want to plug Blentec as an alternative to Vitamix – fits under the upper kitchen cabinets but just as powerful for a non-commercial kitchen. I use it everyday for green smoothie, I grind my coffee beans with it, I use it as a food processor and make sauces, pesto, everything.

         1. Yup, Blendtecs are also great. But if anyone is looking at Vitamix and concerned about the height, you can buy stout canisters that allow the machine to fit under the cabinets. I didn’t know about the issue when I (tipsily) purchased from TV a special model produced for QVC many years ago. The brilliant folks at QVC had obviously identified the problem and had Vitamix produce their model with a shorter canister. You can purchase the short canisters separately, too.

   7. I love my toaster oven. It’s great for re-heating foods or cooking small batches without turning on the oven. I have an older Breville model but I use it daily. I think there are combo toaster oven and air fryer models, but not 100% sure. If I was going to upgrade, I would go for something like that.

   8. I’d buy an attachment to the kitchen aid mixer if any of them interest you. We made ice cream with the kitchen aid ice cream kit over the weekend, and it was really fun. We also have the meat grinder and the pasta rollers, and both are fun for “project” cooking on the weekends.

      We have a sous vide and use it several times per week. It makes cooking meat really easy, but not necessarily more exciting. You need a large tub of water to use it, so unless you already have something that will work, the sous vide does not win points for compact. We have used a cooler before for the water. The sous vide also works best with a vacuum sealer (ziplocks work too, but there’s more potential for leakage), but then you actually need 2 gadgets.

      A random suggestion if you don’t have one–an electric pepper mill. At first I thought it was ridiculous, but the ability to grind pepper with a button means you can keep one hand clean and use the other to rub or toss or whatever. So much easier!

      1. I have a sous vide as well, and so far it has definitely helped us branch out to cooking other meats (and having them taste better than normal) but if you are already a pretty good cook when it comes to this (I’m not) I agree that it maybe isn’t the most exciting tool. But I did want to add, you don’t need a tub – a normal kitchen pot is just fine, and it works without a vaccum sealer as well because you can do a water immersion to seal a ziploc – so you don’t need all the “extra” gadgets to use it, and the sous vide itself isn’t very big.

      2. We got a sous vide last year and to be honest after using it a few times, it has just sat. It’s like one of those things that on paper sounds like it should be easy but when you add it all up…like we used ziplocks but they leaked at least once which ruins the whole meal, but I think my husband looked up the vacuum sealed things and they were pretty pricey (??). etc etc

   9. My husband loves our sous vide – it’s like a bougie slow cooker and it itself doesn’t take up much space, although we also have a cooking bucket for it and these little balls that keep too much water from evaporating. Can you get an air fryer lid for your instant pot rather than a separate one? We also use our immersion blender a lot.

   10. We have an Anova sous vide and are very happy with it. It takes up minimal space; we use it with a regular stock pot (and then I use the water on our outside plants once it cools). Before you purchase, measure your pots to make sure that one will work.

       Besides meats, the sous vide also is good for egg bites (we already have a practically unlimited supply of 4 ounce mason jars from my canning to use for this) and veg (sous vide carrots cooked with herbs and then pureed are a revelation); we also use it when we entertain to hold foods at temp (mashed potatoes, gravy, hollandaise) or to warm (ideal for a shipment of Katz’s pastrami). I plan to try it out for sous vide flan later this summer. The sous vide has made Thanksgiving easier for us and that is a Thing in our house.

       We do use a vacuum sealer so that we can customize bag size, but we already had that in the house (see: canning/preserving). I am not a fan of ziplocs for the sous vide, but YMMV.

       1. Tell me how you make the egg bites in your sous vide! I’ve only made them in my instant pot!

          By the way, OP, instant pot is another consideration, and as someone above mentioned, you can buy an air fryer lid for it

          1. The egg bite recipe is here: https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/recipe/sous-vide-egg-bites-bacon-gruyere

             We make a dozen of these at a time (or more), depending upon who will be eating breakfast in a week. We find that a serving is two egg bites (plus fruit, etc.).

             1. Ah you make them in little jars. That makes sense. Thanks!

   11. Pasta maker! You can buy the attachment for the KitchenAid or you can buy a separate pasta machine (I like the Atlas).

   12. I bought an air fryer attachment for my Instant Pot instead of a whole new gadget!

   13. Air fryers are awesome for quick cooking/roasting anything you might bake, even if you wouldn’t deep fry it. We air fry veggies and throw that into all kinds of other things. Also, the Vitamix is amazing. We use it for smoothies, soups, sauces, etc. It is magical.

   14. Gadget wise, I know lots of people are recommending high end blenders, but I have the as-seen-on-TV* Nutri Bullet, and I have to say, it really gets the job done. It takes up a very small countertop footprint so we just leave the base out all the time, which we would not/did not do with the real blender or the Cuisinart.

       Don’t get me wrong, I love my Cuisinart for when I’m doing some Serious blending/processing, but for every day, having that little nutri bullet base sitting there is incredibly handy.

       My kids make smoothies in it all the time. (Yogurt or milk + frozen fruit + spinach). I pop a large can of whole tomatoes in the larger cup before making sauce. I make hummus in it. I made that green chutney you get at Indian places last night, mainly because I have a garden full of mint and cilantro. It took like 5 seconds. Pesto. Breadcrumbs from stale homemade bread.

       It’s just super convenient and convenient wins every time in my house.

       *literally, my then pre-teens wanted to order it after seeing it on TV

4. I got busy after I posted yesterday, but thank you all for the recommendation to get the
   illustrated Harry Potter collection! I love the idea of buying the first book now and then the others when they come out in the future (my best friend never really got into the books much, but I’m determined to convert my future godchild!). I didn’t even realize there was an illustrated version before and really appreciate the rec.

   1. I mean this kindly, but if your friend is not into Harry Potter and her baby is an infant, this is a pretty useless gift to give her. My kids are reading HP now (and I was a big fan) and they are 7 and 9. When they were infants I would have preferred to get a gift receipt to buy baby stuff from Target, or for anything that would help me get additional sleep/rest/ babysitting/household help/a break.

5. Do good yoga mats make a difference? I’ve had a cheap one for years and have obviously been using it more in these current times. I feel like it’s not…comfy? for lack of a better term, and my ankles and writs can hurt afterwords. I’m using it for more HIIT style workouts rather than yoga, if that matters.

   1. I bought an expensive-ish yoga mat and it made a world of difference (a Liforme), but my issues were slipping during hot yoga.

      1. +1 an expensive yoga mat made a world of difference for my yoga practice. Not sure how much it would improve your HIIT experience.

   2. Do you need a regular exercise mat, if you’re using it for HIIT workouts?

      1. Honestly…I never even thought to look into the difference so maybe! I’m a gym person through and through so this workout at home thing is new to me. I like how yoga mats can be rolled and transported, though.

   3. I have never used a mat for HIIT. What exercises are you using it for?

   4. To me a good yoga mat is grippy even when I get sweaty, but I mostly use it for yoga. Wrists hurting is more that you did a lot of poses on your wrists and need to strengthen/stretch them more. If you’re using it for normal work outs vs yoga I would get a thicker exercise mat.

   5. I don’t think it would make much of a difference for your wrists and ankles, unless it’s because you’re slipping all over the place. It’s probably more worthwhile to see if you can adjust your form. For example, if you’re doing a plank make sure your hands are shoulder width apart, spread your fingers wide, and press down into your fingers. Yoga websites might have tips on how to adjust.

      1. You’re probably right. When I workout at the gym, I don’t like doing HIIT type things. I like to do some cardio to catch up on podcasts, then I stick to weights and machines. All these weird plank variations these Instagramers are coming up with are killing me. But my mat does shift a lot, I feel like.

   6. Not sure about the mats, but one of my personal trainer friends just posted on IG that she uses a gardening cushion when she is doing weights on her knees (she works out at home in her basement). I thought that was a GENIUS idea and thought I’d pass it along in case it’s helpful.

   7. Yes. I got the lululemon one for my birthday that has extra cushion for knees and I’m noticing a difference.

      1. +1

   8. I think for HIIT workouts you need a thicker mat (thicker than any yoga mat is going to be no matter how good the quality). Yoga mats are thin so that you can do balancing poses on the mat, so they don’t offer much cushion for other workouts.

   9. I got one of these as a SIP treat for myself, and I’ve really loved it, both for yoga and for HIIT: https://us.byoganow.com/collections/b-mat-strong. One thing to note is that it doesn’t roll up very neatly and it’s kind of heavy, so if I were carrying it to classes it wouldn’t be my first choice.

   10. Yes, at least for yoga. I got a manduka pro for christmas this year and recently let my husband use that while I used my old cheap Gaiam mat when we were doing a yoga video together, and I realized just how much of a difference the manduka made. Mine is 6 mm and I occasionally use it for HIIT and it seems fine, but don’t know how it would do for regular HIIT workouts vs. yoga.

   11. I have been using a mat from Incline Fit that is much thicker for my non-yoga home workouts. Unfortunately, like most home exercise equipment, it appears to be unavailable currently. But take a look — it does roll up and has a strap to carry it, but it provides far more cushion than a yoga mat and has some grip, though less than a yoga mat. You may be able to find one somewhere or something similar.

6. I recently transitioned to a new job that will require some travel when/if we get covid under control. I work in the tech industry, and the site I’d be traveling to is in California, so the dress code is very casual. I typically wear jeans, blouse, and a blazer. Does anyone have any recommendations for a blazer I could wear on a plane? I would like one to have pockets to hold my ID and phone and what not, as well as to keep warm on the flight, but I’m worried that my regular blazers would wrinkle too much. Thanks!

   1. This is silly. You don’t need this now or for the foreseeable future.

      1. I have to say I read this and just thought why would you buy this now, it’s probably going to be a few years before you’ll come close to needing it. I have a closet full of work clothes that are just gathering dust (literally, I just discovered that apparently one needs to dust their clothes, who knew, I usually wear them).

         1. Ha – +1 as I discovered a few years ago when I went to pull out an old interview suit. It is making me VERY sad to see all my pretty work clothes just languishing in my closet for now.

            1. If you are lucky enough to have the space, move the work clothes out of your closet. We have a guest room and I put all of my work clothes in that closet and all of my fun casual clothes and vacation clothes (that are often just stored in a tupperware bin until my next trip) in my regular closet. It is so nice to be able to see the clothes I’m actually going to wear and not have to paw around clothes that I am not wearing right now.

            2. Anon at 1135- not space per se, but I could rearrange, I think you just gave Me weekend plans

      2. I know some of you live and work in places that are still very locked down and that quarantine people returning from high-risk areas (like California) but this is not universal. I have already had to make one trip by air for work and anticipate more over the summer.

         A lot of federal court judges are refusing to revise their scheduling orders because of the pandemic and not everything can be done via Zoom (or at least my boss/clients do not think everything can be done by Zoom). And many state courts still have their fall and winter trial dates officially on calendar – although whether they will actually be able to seat a jury remains to be seen. So the idea that some of you seem to have that we will not be traveling for work for the next year is just not correct.

         1. This is also really highlighting a lot of issues with businesses that cross state borders. I represent a business located in state Y that does business in states A and B. State Y requires a 14 day quarantine if coming from State A or B. State A is in mega outbreak mode. State B has reopened and expects my clients to be working on their in State B. But employees from State Y can’t go to State B without quarantining on return and the business can’t deal with employees constantly in quarantine nor do I think you can impose such a requirement as a condition of employment.

      3. So you’ve all just decided you are going to hibernate for years? I don’t have a crystal ball any more than you do, but be prepared for a very rude awakening.

   2. J.Crew Factory had a sweater blazer this winter that I LIVED in. I bought every color and basically wore one every day. Super comfy but you looked put together.

      1. I second the sweater blazer. Looks polished, but not too dressy, and super comfy!

      2. Talbots has a sweater blazer that I really like, as well. I also bought one from here (navy with white polka dots), maybe from Nordstrom, that I haven’t worn yet, although now that I have new AC in my downstairs, I might need it.

   3. Check out the Talbots Aberdeen blazer – knit material, pockets, usually comes in a few basic colors each year, along with a few “fun” colors or plaids.

      1. This. I have about 6 or 7 of the Aberdeens….super comfortable, wears and travels well. Can wear with jeans and dress jeans

      2. I love this blazer and own about 6 as well. I really like that it is a real lined blazer with a tiny bit of comfort / stretch added as opposed to a ponte blazer which at least with my laundering always end up looking sweatshirty after one wash.

         I also own a few of the talbots merino sweater blazers which are also excellent.

   4. JCrew Going Out Blazer is good for this, I think, although the pockets are a bit small for a phone (if I recall… it’s been a while since I’ve worn a blazer of any kind!)

   5. I have a wool tweed blazer and a ponte blazer, both from Boden, which I love for travel, because they both have big pockets and don’t show creases. I have even packed the ponte one in my suitcase and fished it out on arrival without a problem.

      1. Agreed – I think tweed and ponte are the best options for this.

   6. for travel, I always found a scarf was pretty good at keeping me warm on a cold plane and is easy to pack. I think they make infinity scarves specifically for travel with hidden pockets but I haven’t tried that.

      I would caution against using blazer pockets for important stuff like passport / phone. I have had my phone pickpocketed from a blazer front pocket and I have lost my passport in shallow pockets before. Get a bag with a good deep zippered pocket for these things.

   7. I never wear work clothes on the plane. They get all sweaty and covered with crumbs.

      I would not buy anything just for travel now. For all you know, it will be out of style or won’t fit by the time you actually travel.

   8. Caveat that I dont think you should buy this now, even if the sales are good, because we dont know when/if we’ll go back to work travel BUT

      I work in tech and fly a lot of short flights where I need to walk right into a meeting. and my uniform for the 2019-2020 year was blue or black jeans, a white or white print v neck blouse, the j crew open sophie sweater blazer (size down) or a leather jacket, and black flats or boots. This combo works because I can ‘upgrade’ any piece of it to make it more dressy or more casual, or to adjust to weather – by adding heeled booties, switching for black work pants, or moving to a tshirt. The sophie blazer is great for airports- my I’d stick my phone in the pocket and with Clear, I didn’t need to take out my ID.

      If I’m flying coast to coast or internationally, I’d wear the jacket (leather or sweater blazer) over a soft tshirt and black leggings, and change when I arrive.

      1. Old Navy has a ponte blazer that I’ve found pretty flattering and comes in petite sizes. Fabric is on the heavier side, though.

   9. I’m waiting for my first order from Alex Mill … I was tempted by the Paper Cotton blazer but I think it’s probably too long for me, so I skipped it, but it might work for you.The tan color would be really versatile and look great with jeans. It has pockets and seems like the material would weather a plane ride well.
      https://www.alexmill.com/collections/all-womens/products/billie-blazer-in-paper-poplin-in-white

      Athleta’s Interstellar Jacket looks interestingly functional but I don’t love the weird flap on the back
      https://athleta.gap.com/browse/product.do?pid=486226002&cid=1017102&pcid=1017102&vid=1&grid=pds_26_59_1&cpos=26&cexp=1501&kcid=CategoryIDs%3D1017102&cvar=11273&ctype=Listing&cpid=res20070809839179618209218#pdp-page-content

      A little pricey for not-quite classic style but Argent is really devoted to pockets
      https://argentwork.com/collections/blazers/products/straight-blazer-in-chambray

      Finally, you could search out a ponte-type blazer with pockets. I prefer to keep my stuff in a bag though … I’m always afraid of things falling out of my pockets, esp in airports.

      Congrats on the new job!

   10. For traveling, back in the days when I traveled 2-3 times a month, I was partial to a long cardigan and a pashmina type big scarf. I agree with others not to carry anything valuable in pocket.

       I liked the cardigan because stretchy, and because airplanes are usually cold. And the pashmina because I’m sus about those airplane blankets, and a really huge lightweight scarf is easy to tuck into a tote bag.

       For that matter, the perfect tote bag and roller suitcase is more important than what you wear on the plane. For me, after lots of trial and error, that comes down to the Cuyana tote and the Tumi lightest weight hard-side roller. Tumi also makes some very nice totes with the sleeve on the back meant to fit over your roller handle, but I didn’t use the sleeve that much and I like the leather of the Cuyana better for every day use.

7. The one-month countdown to my 40th birthday is on. I’d love to hear from other ‘rettes about what they wish they would’ve known about living well during this decade: anything from health, to finances, to beauty, to mindset, etc.
   Health: I have a good exercise routine in place but if I’m honest with myself, I could stand to clean up my diet. (I have a serious sweet tooth, and I feel like I’m much more sensitive to dietary stuff than I used to be.) I’m probably due for some sort of baseline checkup, for cholesterol and whatnot. Blood pressure is excellent.
   Finances: Overall, the picture is solid. DH & I dream of buying a lake house sometime this decade but we haven’t made a solid plan on how to make that happen.
   Beauty: My skincare routine is basic — moisturizer, sunscreen, cleansing twice a day, eye cream when I remember. I suppose I should do more, but TBH, I find it completely overwhelming. I tend to stick with what works.

   What’s crazy to me is that my youngest is starting kindergarten in August. By the time I turn 47, my oldest will be graduating high school. That seems like a giant shift in circumstances!

   1. You are my 40th birthday twin. And my best advice would be to schedule your mammogram now.

      1. +1 get a mammogram

         If it’s your first one, don’t be surprised or worried if they call you back. They use the first as a baseline, so any areas that are less than perfectly clear they will want to re-image.

         1. Don’t freak, but also realize it is a harmful myth that if you’re under 40, you’re too young to get cancer. You’re definitely not. As a country, we desperately need to change our screening guidelines.

      2. Oh God, I need a mammogram. Thank you for the reminder!
         Signed,
         Newly 40 with the same questions

   2. Sounds like me! My 40th is in September and my youngest is starting Kindergarten. I have noticed the metabolism is seriously slowing down! Bring on the advice, ‘rettes!

   3. For simple skincare that is anti-aging, get a Curology subscription with real tretinoin. Don’t mess around with otc retinol, which takes a minimum of 6 months to even start working a fraction as well as the real rx stuff.

      1. My state doesn’t allow Curology subscriptions, so just chiming in to say that if you’re in such a state, don’t be afraid to go to a dermatologist and ask for this. I did it recently and she didn’t blink an eye.

   4. Super-recommend the book “On Being 40(ish)” It was a compilation of short essays, some extremely poignant. I received it as a gift, pooh-poohed it at the time, and when I finally went to read it, I really enjoyed that it was bite-sized and extremely well curated.

8. Those of you who made exercising alone/at home stick, how?? I think I’m giving up because it’s hard and because I don’t have a consistent schedule. I am happy with my body but want to be stronger… It’s just that apparently I don’t have the drive/remember to for a workout in. I tried a phone reminder, pulled out some old DVDs I used to like – but I’ve probably only worked out three times in the last month. I used to work ot 3x/week about three years ago, then I moved and stopped – now “just do it” is harder.

   1. It is hard. I have a rule that I have stuck to almost every week through this, which is that I do intentional exercise on work days. But I don’t have a routine as to what that exercise is. It can be barre, yoga, a jump rope workout, a run… a project for the coming weeks is to find out which of the parks near me has an elliptical included in its open air gym equipment, because I really miss that for mindless cardio. The nearest park to me has other equipment but not that.

   2. I’m a person that has to attend workout classes in order to actually get myself to exercise (or at least have them sprinkled in amidst runs/solo gym workout), so I’m doing live classes now via zoom. I don’t go on camera or anything, but something about it being live as opposed to recorded makes the difference to me. And usually the classes require you to cancel at least 24 hours in advance otherwise you can’t get a refund, so that definitely makes me remember and make it a priority to attend. I’ve been doing virtual classes from some local studios, but it also opens up the opportunity to take classes from studios in other cities, which is kind of fun.

   3. Gamify it. Pick your program – I like Nike Training Club app (premium is free now) but I have friends who like audio only and use Aaptiv app or others who use Orange Theory At Home. The apps let you pick and browse workouts (I try to make it feel like shopping and “save” the ones that look like they will be good for me) and give you badges for continuing streaks, for 5x a week, and if you really are not feeling it you can still get in a 10-12 minute ab workout or bi’s and tri’s or a really slow yin yoga before bed that is truly 10 minutes.

      The other thing I do is follow a lot of fitness accounts of women who look like me on instagram. They post workouts and form checks for lefting weights and even if I don’t do the workout, sometimes I’m scrolling and seeing it and it makes me motivated.

   4. A few things that help me (I’m lucky to have had a home gym setup for a while now):
      – the five minute rule – do X for five minutes and then I can stop. I’ve always kept going.
      -telling myself that it might be hard to do this today, but it’ll be easier the next time.
      -setting a goal. I hate cardio but I want to get my 5k row time below a certain threshold, so I keep at it.

   5. As always, find an exercise you enjoy doing.

      I’m a bit confused by the phone reminder not being enough. If you look at it and then do something else, that’s not an issue of memory; that’s an issue of avoidance. Often, even a “quick” exercise involves a lot of steps: find FitnessBlender online, put on computer or TV, move exercise equipment into proper location, change into shorts, t-shirt, sports bra, find anti-chafe, go searching for hair elastic, find sports drink if you’re easily dehydrated or sweat a lot.

      You need to find a routine that you like and is easy. My yoga mat, foam roller, and kettlebell live in the living room, right near my laptop and the TV (we can put FitnessBlender on either). It’s not like people are coming over now anyway, so even if my setup is gauche, no one sees it. My exercise attire lives in one easy place. My exercise accessories (iPod, headphones, athletic tape, anti-chafe, water bottle) are all in one place.

      Sometimes, you need to treat your future self like a five-year-old, and that means laying everything out ahead of time and having a list of how to do things.

      1. I do the same thing with leaving my yoga mat, weights, etc. just sitting out in the corner of the living room I use as my workout space. Before, it would have driven me crazy to have it not tidy and put away, but now it makes it a lot easier to squeeze in a midday workout during lunch or a break from meetings.

   6. It can be hard. My advice is to stick to a certain time of day, otherwise, it’s easy to negotiate with yourself to do it later. The problem is, exercise usually doesn’t sound any better when later arrives! It’s less about having drive and motivation, and more about making exercise a daily habit. I have sung the praises of Aaptiv before, and I will again. The audio-only format works well for me, and the coaching helps me on the days when I’m feeling extra tired/lazy/etc. And, I often pick up pointers on form that I never would’ve figured out on my own.

      YMMV, but for me, I’ve found that it’s mentally easier to plan on working out 5 days a week. Not every workout is killer hard, but it’s all about maintaining the habit without burning myself out. And, on weeks when all goes to heck, usually I’ve still managed 3 or 4 workouts. Something is better than nothing; it sounds like you may be succumbing to a bit of all-or-nothing thinking.

   7. I made a rule that I’m allowed to bail after I do my squats, but not skip the entire workout. Once I’m out there, changed and sweaty, there’s not point to not doing bench and deadlift as well, but having a defined sort-of-skip option makes it harder for me to actually skip.

      But it also sounds like you’re thinking of this as a motivation issue, when it’s really a discipline issue — obviously “just be disciplined” is not really helpful but I found shifting my mindset really helpful. From a motivation perspective, when I don’t have the drive to work out I have to somehow talk myself into generating drive, which never works, but if I’m thinking of it as a matter of discipline it’s easier to say “oh well, my feelings don’t matter here” and get moving. https://www.thehairpin.com/2018/01/ask-a-swole-woman-how-do-i-stay-motivated/

   8. I really enjoy podcasts. So my hack is that I work out to Fitness Blender videos (on mute) and I play my podcasts while doing the workout. This only works after you have done the videos for a bit to figure out the moves, but after that you can listen to whatever you want.

      It’s really true that you need to find something that you enjoy, otherwise it’s very hard to stick to. I found a few FB videos that I enjoy doing and work for me, and I stick to those. A mix of strength training and Pilates.

   9. My friend has an “exercise club” over zoom 3 times a week, always the same times…she shows videos over zoom. When I drag myself there it’s the only time I really exercise.

      1. My friends and I have been all taking the same zoom yoga class (a novelty since we’re spread across the country) and then doing a zoom hang afterwords each week. We get to commiserate over all the planks and then catch up – it’s been really nice.

   10. To the extent possible, I try to exercise on the same days/times every week so it is just part of my routine. So for me, that means I run for 20-30 min on Tuesday and Friday (early, since it gets hot outside), and I do a streaming barre type sculpt class on Wednesday and Saturday (usually during my younger daughter’s nap time). I try to go for a walk at some point the other days.

   11. This is how I’ve been sticking to it:
       – I follow a lot of fitness accounts on instagram/youtube and “save” ones that look fun or interesting throughout the week
       – On Sunday, I look through the workouts and plan my workouts for the week checklist-style (on paper) and tape it up on the wall. I organize them according to my regimen, which is Upper Body on Monday/Thursday, Lower Body on Tuesday/Thursday, and Wed/Saturday fun free for all. It’s so satisfying to physically check them off.
       – I have a dedicated time for working out. That is 6-7 PM for me, non-negotiable. If you’re able to do this, recommend it!
       – Sometimes, the only workout i can get in are quick dance breaks during the workday.
       – When I do get to working out, I write down the moves on my whiteboard (unless I need to watch the video), and then put on a TV show I enjoy. Right now, I play New Girl!

   12. I was able to stick with it because my in-gym trainer just became by remote trainer. The accountability to someone else is important for my habit-building and habit-keeping. There are remote training programs available now.

       1. I actually am more consistent with my personal trainer now we are on Zoom. No travel time, no forgetting my gym bag, no “I just got scheduled right before it and won’t have time to travel/change” (i work from home now). Honestly I concentrate more on my form with fewer distractions because i’m by myself in my basement. I had a good home set up, though, before the lockdowns — i had a treadmill, a set of dumbbells, a bosu and a physio ball at home, which is more than adequate for my workouts. I added a set of TRX straps which I love… those are still available since dumbbells and kettleballs are seemingly unobtainable.

9. Did anyone see the open letter just published in Harper’s and signed by many prominent intellectuals that calls for an end to sileoncing different viewpoints and for more robust public debate on issues of importance? I know this theme was discussed yesterday and I thought this was an interesting development. The backlash has already begun, though. I find it sad that so many people call for women’s voices and POCs’ voices to be elevated, but then slap them back down for actually expressing non-approved thoughts. I’ll try to be optimistic about the country as a whole though…

   1. Yes I saw it. Clearly their voices haven’t been silenced at all. The whole letter was just a coded anti trans rant. I do think there should be room to advocate for women, not including people born with penises. And, there’s tons of room to do that! It’s the mainstream view! Baffling to me that JK Rowling is making such a fuss on this.

      1. What? How on earth is Rowling’s approach the “mainstream view?” She’s been near universally vilified for her essay and everyone knows you don’t touch this issue with a ten-foot pile if you don’t want the Twitter job calling for your firing.

         1. If you consider more than a twitter echo chamber, hating trans people is literally government policy.

      2. I totally disagree with you. We can handle some differences of opinion. After all, this country was founded on it.

         I really, really hate the shout down/silencing thing. I’m a huge liberal, but liberals as a group can be so intolerant – really, a lot more than the right- and we cause moderate or liberal-curious people to flee.

         Reasoned discussion is 100% always better than cancelling. When you’re name-calling, you’re not persuading anyone to your viewpoint, and it just looks like you’re unable to provide any rational argument to back up your side.

         1. This.

         2. +100 to Anon at 11:38. Due to the shout down and silencing thing, I’ve become less liberal, more moderate, and sometimes agree with more conservative points of view. Posts or comments that simply put people down for being privileged, or fragile, or not woke enough or whatever don’t make me stop and consider that point of view. They make me pause and consider that if someone can’t form a cogent reply, their view is probably not supportable and not worth much time.

            1. It’s sad that your views are tied to who’s giving you the most pats on the head. I have my own principles and beliefs that are not exactly in line with either party. They do not change based on who is nicer to me.

            2. Ah thanks Anon at 12:48 for so clearly demonstrating the holier-than-thou attitude that makes so many Americans hate the Democrats on principle even when they actually agree with most of the policies being pushed. Glad that you can sleep well at night with the knowledge of your moral superiority, but in reality this type of attitude alienates a lot of voters.

            3. Eh it sounds like you’re looking for validation for your choice to jump ship for the party of white supremacy. My moral superiority (thanks, I agree) wasn’t the problem.

            4. Nope, I’m not the person you posted in response to or someone who is jumping ship . I’ll continue to vote blue but people like me aren’t in limitless supply. As someone who wants the democrats to win, I’d prefer you take a different approach because people like you are causing lots of friends and family to decide not show up at all in November. You can continue to insult them but you aren’t going to change their minds that way.

            5. Yeah, I agree with anon and Anon, I’m a blue voter who has moved moderate over the years due to my increasing alienation from the far-left, very vocal wing of the Democratic party. I’d also prefer you take a different approach because I agree, insulting people and touting your moral superiority (even if you are, in fact, right) is not going to change hearts or minds – not in your direction, anyhow.

            6. I’m not a politician, it’s not my job to change hearts or minds. Do your research, vote your conscience.

            7. Frankly, a lot of the time, people are angry. I see that medical providers are now allowed to refuse to treat me because I’m trans, or that an author whose works I love apparently thinks I’m essentially a child who can’t be trusted to know my own mind, or that major political advocacy groups think I should be required to broadcast that I’m trans whenever I need to use a public restroom, and I get angry. I am better at suffocating the anger in the name of needing to be persuasive than many, as you can hopefully tell from the full sentences and lack of swearing in this reply. But what you’re seeing is anger and frustration and pain, and a lot of people who have decided that you can’t persuade people about this over the Internet and just given up entirely.

            8. I did, I do, we’re on the same side here! Your hostility is so weird and so illustrative of the broader point!

            9. And your insistence that I have to be nice to you or you‘ll cast a vote to spite me is proving my point. Btw your assumption that we’re on the same side is wrong.

         3. It used to be that a major strength of the liberals was that it was a big umbrella. Now many liberals are just as strident about purity tests on particular issues as the conservatives are. I am a liberal and I think it is weakening us.

            1. +1

               Sometimes I feel like my fellow liberals will only be happy when it costs us the election, again.

   2. I don’t think you will get any traction here with this post, as we know those who don’t approve of this letter feel that any views that oppose theirs oppress and hurt people.

   3. The letter was from a bunch of over privileged white people who are too thin-skinned to handle any criticism. They call for debate but they don’t actually want anyone to challenge or disagree with them.

      1. Yup. Woe is us extremely widely published well compensated writers.

      2. Geez, talk about literally erasing black voices. Do you not realize or just not care that the letter signatories are a diverse group in terms of race, religion, sex, and profession?

         1. Talk about not tolerating criticism!

            1. It’s not about “not tolerating criticism.” It’s about identifying falsehoods. You want to have an honest debate? I’m all ears.

         2. Not really

         3. Yeah, anon at 10:17, that is factually inaccurate–Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the writers who spearheaded the letter, is Black. I think there is absolutely a robust conversation to be had on the contents of the letter and the cultural moment at which it landed. Reducing the authors and signatories to “over privileged white people”–when this statement is so blatantly untrue–does not advance that conversation.

            I think this NYT piece has a pretty even-handed discussion of the letter: nytimes.com/2020/07/07/arts/harpers-letter.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

            This paragraph struck me: “Another person who signed, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in an effort to stay out of the growing storm…said that the letter, which was about internet shaming, among other things, was now being used to shame people on the internet.”

            1. Awwwww poor baby signed publicly a published letter and doesn’t like that people are talking about it so sad.

            2. Ok then strike the word “white” (though TCW is half-white and white-passing). I stand by over privileged though.

            3. Sure, call the Black male signatory who spent eight years in prison for carjacking “overprivileged.” In the article I linked, he had this to say about the range of views and backgrounds of the letter’s signatories: “I’m rolling with people I wouldn’t normally be in a room with,” he said. “But you need to concede that what’s in the letter is worthy of some thought.”

               Look, this is a complicated question that involves a lot of interlocking layers of privilege and platform. I’m not saying I agree with everything they said (and I am adamantly opposed to e.g. JKR’s transphobia, along with plenty of other positions that some of the signatories have espoused). But dismissing the letter out of hand as overprivileged whining does exactly the thing it is arguing against: shut down discussion.

            4. Agree, emeralds. People clearly have their blinders on and minds closed, though.

            5. Shutting down discussion? We’re literally having one right now. I read it, thought about it, drew my own conclusions. You may not like them but they are mine to have — is that not the point of the letter?

   4. I haven’t posted on social media since February. I suspect a lot of people are doing the same because it’s so much easier to say nothing at all than potentially end up on the wrong end of a witch hunt. I believe discourse is dead. I especially believe the bar for academic or legal proof has died, positions no longer require a factual basis if the mob says so it becomes ‘fact’.

      1. +10000000

      2. Ok then continue to stay off social media. Is that so hard? I’ve never been on it and my life is probably better for it.

         1. I stay off social media, it is not hard. I don’t particularly feel the need to voice my opinion on social media. What I do worry about is a repeat of 2016, where because the only ones speaking on social media or elsewhere are those who pass the liberal purity tests, that we get complacent and assume we have an election wrapped up.

            People still hold the beliefs that famous people are being cancelled for. They just don’t say them out loud. To me, that’s the far more dangerous world to live in.

            1. Ok but that’s literally the world we lived in before social media so I don’t see the problem. Tweeting without consequence isn’t some god given right, which seems to be what these prominent navel gazers are forgetting.

      3. Yep

   5. Is anyone actually cancelled in cancel culture? Maybe I’m missing the examples. JK Rowling isn’t losing much money from her views. Why isn’t “cancel” and call-out culture part of that rigorous public debate?

      1. From the NYT article about it this morning: “He said there wasn’t one particular incident that provoked the letter. But he did cite several recent ones, including the resignation of more than half the board of the National Book Critics Circle over its statement supporting Black Lives Matter, a similar blowup at the Poetry Foundation, and the case of David Shor, a data analyst at a consulting firm who was fired after he tweeted about academic research linking looting and vandalism by protesters to Richard Nixon’s 1968 electoral victory.”

         I’ve also seen the Tom Cotton op-ed incident mentioned a lot in similar discussions.

         1. I didn’t see the NY article, just read the letter—thanks!

         2. Wait, those are the examples? I’ll have to look into each, but other than the firing they seem voluntary based on disagreements with views. But I need to look more closely.

            1. I just read up on the National Books Critics Circle and their BLM statement. Part of the board drafted a statement, then the chair ran it by the whole board. Then one dude replied that he disagreed with any allegations of structural racism or gatekeeping in the association, and the chair wrote back a pacifying ‘dude, your opinion is valued as always’.
               Another board member took this to twitter and resigned, then a whole bunch of members resigned, either over the inability to change the system from within, or over the confidentiality breach or other reasons. The dude himself is still on the board and has promised to sue anyone who tries to coordinate a membership vote to remove him.
               Since the NBCC is entirely volunteer run, I doubt that the board positions are compensated at all. The person with the ‘controversial’ (I’d call it outdated) opinion is still there and doesn’t plan on going anywhere. He has been on the board intermittently since the mid-90s, that’s over 25 years. He has criticized the ideological shift of the organization and said good riddance to the ones who have resigned, hoping to “help NBCC return to its earlier, better self.”
               This is not a great example for cancel culture.

      2. +1. They don’t actually want a debate, they just want their views to not be challenged.

         1. Correction: they don’t want to be instantly fired and excommunicated for expressing views that a decade ago would have led to a productive debate.

            1. Right but that’s not actually happening. And decade-old views belong in the past — get with the times or face the consequences of being a dinosaur.

            2. Yeah I need to see more examples. Maybe the journo firing mentioned above is one good example. But if this is meant in support of people that got fired because they wrote expressly racist things on social media…. Yeah, naw. (I don’t think they meant that, but it seems to be in line with what the letter ultimately suggests.)

            3. If views belong in the past, the way we collectively come to that understanding is through open debate and discussion, not discarding academics and intellectuals in the dustbin for one tweet or email made public. How awful to reduce an entire life’s work to one 140-character opinion.

         2. yep this is it exactly. People that have typically enjoyed a high degree of privelege find any amount of pushback to be oppressive.

            1. They feel entitled to exactly the same kind of safe space they rail against others for requesting.

            2. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the open letter is. It’s calling for open debate for all viewpoints, not pushing any one signatory’s individual viewpoint and getting upset about pushback. I know that the “People that have typically enjoyed a high degree of privilege…” line is making the rounds as an Instagram infographic, but it’s not actually thoughtful analysis.

            3. I suspect they also haaaate that the pushback is coming from people who don’t share their professional credentials. Their pedigrees should absolve them of having to engage with pedestrian POVs from the unwashed masses.

      3. You cannot be serious. Brandon Eich, the CEO of Mozilla, was ousted after he made a $500 donation to a political campaign. The guy at Boeing was just tossed for views on women in combat he expressed 33 years ago. Some no-name woman was thrown out of her job after opining that the Obama girls should have behaved better during a Thanksgiving turkey pardon. Carson King. Kyle Kushav. Scarlett Johansson.

         1. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Jamie Damore. The countless conservative academics who have been no-platformed from speaking engagements at colleges. I don’t agree with most or much of what they have to say, but I do not agree with shutting down speeches that other students want to attend.

            1. I’m not convinced anyone wanted to attend their talks, to be honest.

         2. Dr. Lisa Littman.

            1. what about her?

            2. She lost her job at the RI Department of Health, where she worked (part-time) consulting on preterm birth and pregnant women’s health, after activists wrote to DOH demanding her firing over her peer-reviewed paper that they did not agree. She also had her reputation tarred and feathered and does not have tenure at Brown to protect her. Remind me again how it’s “helping women” to put a halt to important work and research related to pregnancy and women’s health…?

            3. She still has a job at a private university, 2000 followers on twitter, was featured in January in a piece on Quillette, published a research article in Feb, is recruiting subjects for her currently running research study on twitter (which implies she has research funding). Tell me again how she has been silenced?

            4. You don’t think it matters that she lost the DOH job? We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point, but I do agree that somehow, she’s still managed to hold on to her job at Brown despite the incessant abuse she’s experienced and the cowardly backpedaling from the school on highlighting her research. We’ll see how long that lasts. As for the 2000 Twitter followers, that’s a pretty insignificant number, but I guess I’m glad Twitter hasn’t quietly deleted her account like they’ve done to lots of others, including tr@ns individuals, who have ever expressed any skepticism about whether it’s advisable to sterilize children.

            5. I am unable to find anything through google on her departure from the RI DOH, and no mention even on the DOH homepage itself, which I don’t appreciate from a public records standpoint. Her university homepage says she was a consultant with them, which indicates a contracting position to me, not employment. But it’s entirely possible that her contract was not renewed to prevent a potential backlash.

               I am not saying it doesn’t matter, but that this isn’t cancel culture. This is someone experiencing consequences for their own actions, and we can argue about the degree to which the consequences were appropriate.
               Her original research paper stands. She continues in the same line of research today, investigating (I would say questioning) the motives and validity of gender dysphoria. A lot of people don’t like what she is doing, but she continues doing it. I would love people to be more civil in their discourse, but her being twitter-stormed isn’t any different from climate scientists or feminists being twitter-stormed by alt-right activists. This is neither a liberal problem, nor is it a particularly new problem.

         3. Scarlett Johansson? You mean the highest-paid actress in Hollywood? Lol yeah she seems to be hurting from being canceled.

            1. Yeah they lost me fully at that example. Wow.

         4. Brandon Eich resigned a few days after becoming CEO, when a share of board members, employees, volunteers and users said they would not work with him, invest time into developing the browser, or switch browsers. This is one person’s freedom of expression vs. a large group of people’s freedom of expression making it unlikely that he would be an effective leader to this particular community. He could not perform the job because of his past actions.

            1. He was tossed out for supporting a cause that everyone from Barack Obama to Pat Roberston agreed with.

         5. Really I was taking you seriously (and I meant my question seriously, I was unfamiliar with your examples before now) but you lost me at Scarlet Johansson. She’s got Marvel money, and more on the way.

            1. Okay, maybe not the best example.

               William Jacobson is in a fight for his continued tenure at Cornell Law. I seem to recall a few other academics getting tossed

   6. I have never really understood the “this is just a bunch of privileged people” approach to engaging in debate or content. I typically look at the content and then decide what I think about it. The authors matter little to me – I could read something profound about race written by a white person or an incredible novel about a female protagonist written by a male author and it wouldn’t bother me in the least. Characteristics (race, sex, income level) are not credentials and I wouldn’t want to be in a position where I praise some shoddy piece of writing or work ONLY because the author ticks some kind of box. I imagine the author would find that incredibly reductive and insulting as well.

      1. Ok have fun in left field missing the point

      2. The move against credentials in favour of characteristics is highly concerning. We have people with huge audiences uneducated on the topics which they’re speaking about.

   7. LOL at all the people who think that anybody disagreeing with them means they’re being silenced. Especially people who have the ability to get published in Harper’s.

      1. Ding ding ding!

   8. I think much of this conversation is illustrative of what the letter was trying to address. I am fully on board with the idea that trying to shut people up or cancel them out, because we don’t like “x” about them, is not a good way to sustain a robust and healthy democratic form of government. Hear them out, and if they are completely full of shit, substantively address THAT instead of trying to cancel them.

      I think cancel culture gives a false sense of empowerment. What has actually been accomplished? Have you changed anything? There are a lot of people who need to make some changes for the better on a lot is issues. Bringing about the change should be the focus. People don’t change because you are dismissive of them. People change when they see something they admire. People change when you make them think. Granted, a substantial portion of the American populace seems to consider the brain an optional accessory not a necessity. You can’t make anyone change. You can give them an opportunity and incentive to change themselves. If you have tried and can’t get someone to change themselves on something important, quit spending your life’s energy to cancel them and figure out instead how to do an end run around them. I am effing tired of purity tests on both sides of the political spectrum. There needs to be more focus on bringing about positive change and less on being ugly to people.

      1. “You can give them an opportunity and incentive to change themselves.”

         I agree. The difference is that your preferred incentive is carrot, mine is stick. Sorry to Michelle Obama but “when they go low, we go high” is not even remotely effective.

         1. But then people who hold similar beliefs see the stick, they aren’t incentivized to change, they’re incentivized to shut up. But they still hold those beliefs. And they still vote. And then you wake up on November 4th wondering what happened because all the polls, and all the social media, and all the op-eds said everything was going the other way!

            1. +100 to this. I wish we could force people to change with a stick, I really do. But my concern is that it only forces these beliefs underground, and people just express those beliefs with their votes.

            2. Fair enough. If only the republican party didn’t provide a safe haven for all the worst people it may be easier to make a difference.

            3. That’s the major problem here. If you shout someone down with “you’re garbage, your views are garbage, and everything else you’ve done in your life is garbage too,” you’ve alienated smart people, convinced no one, and given more credence to the “other side,” which only grows more entrenched when their actual views are left unchallenged. Challenge the SPECIFIC views instead of the person and we’ll get so much farther.

         2. I actually agree with you attitude towards all of this. Individuals change and views develop. I think what some people decry as cancel culture is actually a critical mass of individuals having changed their views on things, so that they make a difference, whether that be as consumers voting with their dollars, or whether there is a sufficient number of people in charge saying ‘these views/actions are harmful to our client base’. By comparison, in a past version of events, the views where just as harmful, but people faced no consequence for that, allowing them to repeatedly act on harmful views and not being prompted to reevaluate at all. That’s the part that is now changing. All these very visible cases are about influential people receiving push back where they are used to receiving approval. How else would you prompt them to think? I don’t think they are entitled to be worshipped by me until they magically have a change of heart and align with my personal values.

            1. This is exactly why the cancellation of people for expressions made in years past and long-ago actions is what bothers me the very most.

   9. ” I find it sad that so many people call for women’s voices and POCs’ voices to be elevated, but then slap them back down for actually expressing non-approved thoughts.”

      Yes, I’m a black woman and this happens to me all the time. People just want their own worldviews to be validated, and I find the more progressive or “woke”a person is, the higher the likelihood of this kind of behavior.

      and this isn’t with any reference to trans issues, btw. I don’t condone any of that stuff, just a general observation .

      1. I’m sorry that you’ve experienced that. It’s complete BS.

   10. A few points that I am probably making too late to do any good but here goes:

       (1) Sure we can all talk about this anonymously on a website where our views cannot come back to bite us. But publicly contradicting the twitter-verse party line can and does have real world consequences and the tendency to completely shut down discourse.
       (2) Want an example? Look at JK Rowling but first go read her actual essay not just what was said about it on social media. Then come back and let’s have a real discussion about whether anyone who wants to declare themselves a woman without either surgery or hormone therapy should have that accepted at face value and given access to spaces that are women-only, including spaces that are for victims of s*xual assault or domestic violence. I do not agree with all of her points but she has a point and it is worth discussing without attacking her personally. But we cannot do that because anything more nuanced that “trans women are women” apparently means you hate trans people.
       (3) Want another example? Try saying that far more Black men are killed in the US every year by other Black men than are killed by the police. All of a sudden you do not care about police brutality and are anti-BLM. Whereas the factual statement is true and needs to be taken into account when we talk about risks. (And to be clear, I think it is possible to be horrified at the disproportionate number of Black men killed by police and to believe that is a result of racist assumptions and beliefs while also noting that the crime rate is higher in communities with high poverty rates (disproportionately Black) and that the high crime rate, fear of the police, lack of cooperation with police, police distrust of communities of color are all interrelated.) Or try defending Woody Allen. Or expressing any concerns that the attempt to address sexual assault on campus may have gone a wee bit too far.

       I could come up with dozens of other examples but the point is the same. We stifle discourse and label anyone who disagrees with us as evil. And yes, Scarlett Johansson still has Marvel but that does not mean that her politically incorrect statements are not preventing her from getting roles that would help her branch out once she ages out of that part of her career. JK Rowling is still a multimillionaire but people are discussing whether to buy her existing books and I cannot imagine it is helping her ability to sell future books. I am not shedding tears for them but they are examples of what happens to people who express the wrong opinions and frankly I think that level of punishment should be reserved for Holocaust deniers and proponents of conversion therapy.

       Finally, Gloria flipping Steinem a and Margaret Atwood signed that letter and I am amazed at how many people here are completely willing to dismiss their thoughts and opinions.

       1. I wish this comment got the attention it deserved.

       2. I mean the “black on black crime” thing is kind of… a red herring? Why is it brought up only when we’re talking about white cops murdering black people? If you want to have a conversation about lowering the murder rates across the board, that’s one thing. But bringing black on black crime up when someone talks about police brutality … it just feels kind of awful? Like you’re saying “black people don’t value the lives of other black people, so why should white people care about the police murdering innocent black people?”

          When black people kill black people we attribute it to race, but when white people kill white people we don’t bring that up as “white on white crime”. 80% of murder victims are murdered by someone they know. We live in a fairly segregated world and the majority of crimes reflect that– white people kill white people, black people kill black people.

          And crimes committed by one random person against another is a lot different than police (aka a position of public trust) abuse of power that is disproportionately harmful to black people.

          1. Because you get people talking about how they are afraid to send their Black sons to college because they might be killed by the police? Without any consideration of the risks those same young men take by remaining in their communities. Because you get people saying and behaving as if their greatest danger to a young Black man in Baltimore is a cop while it is actually another young Black man.

             Because distrust of police in Black communities (often completely justified!) leads to lack of cooperation with police in homicide investigations, which leads to an increased homicide rate/low solve rate, which leads to even more distrust of police and lack of cooperation, which leads the police to both feel like the community is uncooperative (without acknowledging why) and makes them feel like a Black man they encounter is more likely to be armed/dangerous. Because none of these things exists in a vacuum.

             Because most Black people are killed by other Black people and most White people are killed by other White people and so many people get that wrong which has consequences for their actions and beliefs.

             But you just demonstrated the problem. If I point out a true fact, I don’t care about police killing Black men. It is actually completely the opposite. The police represent society in general. They are acting on my behalf and I am completely horrified by the number of unarmed Black men they kill every year and feel very strongly that major structural changes are needed. And part of that is an education campaign to teach them that they are not in any greater danger from a Black man than a White one and that there is a vicious cycle at work here and it is up to them to break it.

          2. I agree it’s disingenuous and a big problem when people only bring up “black on black” crime in conversations about police brutality (and I agree about how no one talks about “white on white” crime), but there are other intellectuals out there who have identified intrapersonal crime as the greater threat (in terms of sheer numbers) to black lives and their work doesn’t seem to gain much traction.

       3. People defend Woody Allen and campus serial rapists all the time. All the time.

          1. And anyone publicly defending Woody Allen is almost immediately forced to apologize. (See Spike Lee)

             Look you can go online and find someone to defend almost anything, including some pretty atrocious people/beliefs/actions. But in the real world, anyone who speaks up for him is going to get shouted down and accused of not caring about abuse victims.

             And Republicans might be speaking up for “serial rapists” all the time – but try being a liberal who thinks that the system needs to be tweaked without being thrown out. If you are very lucky someone on your campus will warn you to keep your mouth shut unless you want to be picketed and/or denied tenure.

             1. No, I’m almost exclusively thinking of liberals. I’ll grant you that the sentence often starts with some disclaimers. My own view is that criminal charges should be filed when crimes are committed and also that there should be many, many things that get you expelled from school that aren’t crimes. But I regularly hear that a pattern of predatory behavior is probably all just a big misunderstanding.

          2. Yep. Sometimes they even become president! If you’re looking to pick a fight and you choose the morally reprehensible side, don’t be so surprised when decent people don’t want to be around you.

             I also love the concern for ScarJo and JK bringing home slightly smaller boatloads of money. Actual LOL over that one.

             PS – I did not have time to survey Steinem and Atwood before posting this comment so I hope this opinion, which does not include their input, is allowed.

       4. I read the essay. The whole essay. There has been one case that I can find – one – of a trans woman attempting to access a space meant for sexual assault/domestic violence survivors and any kind of trouble coming of it. She wanted to volunteer there, as a counselor, and the rape crisis center wouldn’t let her. She lost her lawsuit in 2007 (yes, she lost, the courts said the rape crisis center was allowed to refuse to let her volunteer), and the province stopped providing funding in 2019, so she’s not directly responsible. There was also the lawsuit about waxing, which the trans woman, again, lost. Two lawsuits, both of which the trans person lost, do not strike me as a great threat to women’s-only spaces.

          Getting your ID documents changed legally, at least in my part of the world, takes six weeks and $500 for the court order alone; then you need to pay and wait for all your other documentation to be reissued. I’m looking at about $1000, and probably several months, for mine. Absolutely nobody is going to go through that kind of effort to sexually harass women.

          1. Nixon was the one who forced the city to stop providing funding. I will never, ever defend any assh*le who cuts essential funding to rape crisis centers to settle a personal score over a two-decade period. That is completely unacceptable. As for Yaniv…do I even need to say anything?

             If you broaden your search, you’ll find a lot more cases that I think you’d find troubling. Sometimes they’re reported as “man in a dress” or “crossdresser” or “woman” who is committing crimes in the women’s room. The terminology is inconsistent, but the pattern isn’t. We need to be able to talk about this in an honest way. Fair Play for Women is a good place to look at data.

             1. They’re simultaneously complaining about how offensive “TERF” is and referring to genderfluid people as “part-time crossdressers”. I just don’t trust them to be unbiased about this.

                (I’m also not really on board with the idea that if you have a Y chromosome you’re male, if you don’t you’re female, and that’s the be-all-end-all of biological sex. Is someone with complete androgen insensitivity male, because XY chromosomes? Are they seriously advocating that everyone with serious androgen insensitivity be forcibly socially transitioned to male at 16 or so, when they’re usually diagnosed?)

             2. No, literally no feminist advocates that. They’re not the ones promoting surgery for youth. They just argue that the existence of rare intersex conditions does not mean that biological sex isn’t a thing, nor that there are therefore no observable distinctions between male and female humans. Humans can produce two gametes, sperm (male) or eggs (female), OR neither (people with certain medical conditions or some intersex people).

10. I’m looking to buy a small car. I’m a city dweller and have never felt the need, but right now in the pandemic, I think it would improve a few things in my life. I have a small child, so a real back seat and safety are important, but I really don’t need a huge car.

    I’m looking at Honda Fits online — I like that there’s an option to fold down the back seats in case I do need some more cargo room. The reviews say the engine is “sluggish” — I plan to mostly drive in the city (under 40 mph) with occasional road trips out of town on the highway. Any idea what that means, practically speaking? Does anyone here have one?

    1. I do not have a Honda fit, but we have a Toyota Corolla hybrid (not the prius) and the engine is similarly ‘sluggish’ – basically it means that it takes a while to accelerate and you kind of have to stomp on the gas to do so.
       It isn’t an issue driving around town but I do notice/dislike it when on the highway as it makes merging into fast-moving traffic slower and more annoying, and it is harder to speed up to quickly get away from/around a tractor trailer/aggressive car/change lanes quickly. It isn’t our primary car for road trips so not a deal breaker but if it was my ONLY car I would be much more annoyed.

       1. I’ve had a regular Toyota Corolla for 7 years and I don’t have this problem. It’s a great car.

          1. I agree, but the hybrid seems to be MUCH more sluggish. I love Corolla’s, they’re great city cars, and it’s very peppy around town, but it is quite noticeable on the highway.

       2. Honestly any four cylinder (unless it has turbo boost) will feel like this so I wouldn’t put much stock into it being a little sluggish – that’s just kind of how our four cylinder sedans are. You don’t need that much power. I recommend a few years old corolla. They are compact yet not so small that you feel like a toy on the road, very reliable and last a long time.

    2. Go test drive one! I have a civic and love it. I thought the Fit was slow on the uptake on the highway ima way I found frustrating but I do a ton of highway driving it might be great for you.

    3. Yes, we have a Fit and it sounds great for your needs. I do take it on highways too, and while it’s not the peppiest car, can keep up fine
       Hatchback feature is great for storage/hauling and the backseat is fine. We bought this car primarily for my husband’s commute and now our au pair uses it. The car seats are installed in our minivan but I have used it once for the kids and they fit in the fit!
       My parents and brother also have a fit and none of us have had trouble with it.

    4. My husband has one, and I… don’t love it. It feels like a go cart, and I find it to be incredibly cramped inside. As far as the “sluggish” – I just think they mean that it is a 4-cylinder car that just doesn’t have a lot of pickup. You can literally put the pedal to the floor and it still just takes a while to get up to the speed you want. We live in the suburbs of New Orleans, so use the interstate daily, and it isn’t unsafe by any means, just your ramping up to speed on the interstate takes a little longer I feel than other cars. (I drive a Honda Pilot which has amazing pickup but is way larger than I want – wasn’t in a position to be choosey when I bought it used at an amazing price, and sounds like it would be way bigger than what you want.)

    5. I had a 2015 Honda Fit for four years and I was so sad to get rid of it when I had to fit three car seats. I think it’s the perfect city car. Was it the fastest car to get up to 60 or 70? No, but it was absolutely fine. I primarily drove it around town (some highway) and the very rare longer highway trip. Can’t speak highly enough of it, and I hope to get another one in the future when I don’t need three car seats.

    6. I drove a Fit for 10 years and loved it. Super reliable, fantastic gas mileage, and it felt surprisingly spacious for the size. I do think the back seat is fine for a kid but would feel cramped for an adult.

       In terms of cargo, if you lay down the backseat you can fit tons of stuff – things I carried included my bikes (had to take the front wheel off of my mtb, but my road bike fit without removing it), x-country skis, multiple large suitcases, and a full-sized dog crate. Not all at once, obviously.

    7. “Sluggish” is all a matter of perspective, and in the USA, no car that’s functioning as it should is unsafely slow either to accelerate or at speed. Most cars today are massively overpowered for what they’re asked to do.
       Drive an early 1980’s Mercedes 240D if you want a taste of “underpowered for American roads”. I could get up to 45 on an on-ramp, going downhill. You learn to leave a LOT of room.
       The FIT is an ideal car for your needs.

    8. My brother used to have a Mini Cooper and it was small and fun to drive- very zoomie rather than golf cart like.

    9. Mini Cooper all the way – it’s tiny, easy to park and a BMW with a different outfit. They’re safe, strong and perfect for what you describe. I’ve had them for years (I prefer to lease, but YMMV). And I strongly disagree w the golf cart description below – they’re extremely solid

       1. Oops, realized the golf cart was not what the other poster was saying

       2. I love Mini Coopers — my BFF has one. But I would not feel safe putting my kid in the back seat.

          1. Is the Countryman too big? I know lots of people with child seats in standard Minis but the bigger Countryman might appeal otherwise?

             1. They are definitely out of my price range! For closer to 30k, I would probably get a standard sedan, but I don’t want to spend that much given that I won’t drive it for commuting. The Fit is around 18k new.

          2. Oh I 100 missed the real back seat issue. Hmm, I’d probably look at the small BMW then if they still make the 1 series – I think that has more of a backseat. If it’s just you and the kid, if you pull the front seat of the cooper all the way up, the backseat works, but not if you need more people in the car

       3. Also, a mini has nice features and doesn’t give you the bottom of the barrel entry level feels.

       4. I have a 4 dr Mini and the backseat is great for a kid! Although if you are a tall driver & have a big car seat, you’d want to check the space. I bought a 2016 with 10k miles on it for less than $18k. I love it. British racing green with black racing stripes down the front hood!

    10. For me ‘sluggish’ means ‘I won’t be able to accelerate out of trouble.’ I’ve driven various iterations of Mini (One, Cooper, PHEV) and really liked them. They feel more like a go-kart than a golf cart!

    11. From what I know about the Fit, I think it would be great for your needs. I would not love it for lots of highway driving but it’s a good about-town car.

    12. We looked at the Fit and liked it, but ended up with a Civic. We have the smaller engine which I think is fine, my husband would like a bit more power, but men…We have one of the 360 car seats in the back which makes it easier to get my son in.
        The fold down seat is incredible! You’ll love it. We’ve put an adult bike, a pretty big IKEA shop, a big recycling centre run, in the back. So so, easy.

        1. I have a Civic as a city car, and it’s fantastic. Easy to park anywhere, the fold-down rear seat means I can haul big things on occasion, super cheap to insure and fix and gas up, and there are a lot of good low-mileage used ones out there if you want to save some $. Mine is a manual transmission, so if you can drive a stick shift, I do recommend that as it’s got more pep than an automatic, but I had an automatic before this one, and it was totally fine. Hondas are great, but I’d recommend the Civic over the Fit for more room.

    13. If you don’t mind used, the Nissan Juke is fantastic. We can fit us (two tall adults), our baby, and my husband’s tuba in it, all at once. We used it for a road trip with the baby and fit my jogging stroller in it as well as all of the baby gear and our suitcases. Acceleration is great. Just make sure you get the warranty (true of any Nissan with that transmission). The Juke was produced up through 2017; I think there’s a new subcompact crossover out, the Kicks, that is supposed to fill that niche.

        1. On a funny note, “juke” is Hebrew for cockroach. Add that to the list of car names that just don’t translate, along with the Saab (Arabic for “difficult”) and Nova (Spanish for “doesn’t go”). And the Fit is a Jazz in Europe because it’s apparently too close to an inappropriate Swedish word. Would love to hear of others!

    14. I’d look at the Hyundai Kona. We have a Hyundai Elantra Touring (its the hatchback version) which is 10 years old and still going strong. The Kona is the new slightly smaller version. Its perfect for your needs I think (if you want to look at an alternative to the Fit).

    15. I had an Audi A3 and I loved it. I used to say “I want a Honda Civic only with all the bells and whistles and luxuries” and that’s what the A3 is. Very zippy engine. It has a decent sized trunk and the back seats fold down so reasonably good cargo capacity.

        1. Not literally a Honda Civic — but basically the same size.

        2. She’s looking for a car that costs about $18k new, not twice that.

    16. I had a Honda Fit and loved it. I currently have a Honda HR-V and love it. A Honda Civic once saved my life in an accident with a semi. I hands-down recommend the Fit, especially if you will be doing a lot of city driving.

        Re the “sluggish” reviews, if you are used to driving a sports car or honestly almost any expensive American car then yes, the Fit will feel slightly “sluggish” when coming up to speed on the highway. I noticed it but never cared since it didn’t affect either safety or maneuverability (same with my current HR-V). On maneuverability, I actually think the Fit excels here, making it an excellent city car. I owned a Fit while living in a developing country with crazy, often unregulated traffic. My Fit did a great job when five lanes merged into a traffic circle and I then had to quickly cross multiple lanes of moving traffic to exit. It also did a great job speeding down highways and handled well at speeds far higher than generally allowed in the US (nope, don’t recommend trying this one at home).

        I’m also a huge fan of the “magic seats” that fold both up and down into the floor. I’ve gotten bikes, dogs, and furniture back there. Before she got her own car, a friend would install her kid’s car seat in my HR-V for day trips.

        TL;DR Forget the “sluggish” reviews. It’s worth test driving.

        1. We got my daughter a used Honda Fit and wow, I’m a little jealous of her car. Fit is accurate – she can fit more in there than I can seem to fit in my Volvo wagon. And she can park anywhere.

           1. And yeah, I would not say it’s sluggish at all. It feels very zippy to me, and I always have to remind my daughter not to speed. I’m actually quite surprised anyone thinks it’s sluggish.

    17. Check out the Subaru Impreza, I think it might fit your needs.

    18. The Honda Fit two way fold down seats are amazing. I have a Honda HR-V which also has the Fit seats in the back and I love them. I’d also put in a plug for the HR-V. I live in Chicago and drive like you’re describing (mostly city, with some highway trips). I’ve had the HR-V for four years and absolutely love it. It’s big enough to haul anything I need to, you’re sitting a little higher up than a sedan which I like, but from front to back it’s actually shorter than most sedans which makes navigating city traffic and parking so much easier.

    19. I went from driving a Corolla with a manual transmission and a lot of pick-up to a Kia Soul. After renting a Soul, I really liked it, but knew that I would miss the pick-up of a stick shift. I ended up choosing the larger engine and I haven’t regretted it at all. I don’t know if Honda has that as an option, but you might want to check. FWIW, I have really loved my Soul. I can park it anywhere and it has a ton of cargo space and interior space for a small car. It just *barely* fits my bike, so we’re working on a rack, but otherwise, it has hauled a lot of stuff!

    20. No one has mentioned the Subaru Crosstrek, so if you are looking to compare against the Fit I would add that to your list.

    21. Have to give my former car a shoutout – the Prius C! No longer made but maybe you can find one used. Great for city driving and as a hatchback had a lot of carrying space for a car its size.

        It is not great for roadtrips comfort and road noise wise, but gas mileage is awesome. And we had to get rid of it once we had kids because it does not play well with reverse-facing carseats.

    22. I have the most base line Fit and have had it for 7 years. I LOVE it. We have fit all kinds of things into it, including a treadmill. The carrying capacity is way reduced now that we have 2 car seats, if that’s a situation you might be facing. The Fit is totally fine for city driving; I also spend lots of time on the highway and it’s totally adequate. It’s clearly not a powerful engine, Doesn’t rev or accelerate particularly quickly, but that’s not my main interest in a car and is totally acceptable for regular highway driving. The Sport version might be more zippy. A relative drove my Fit cross country and I don’t think it was his favorite car ever for that purpose, but he managed it just fine. My one downside is that it is a pretty noisy car – not a quiet ride. I love the visibility though!!

        1. Should add we also have a Civic and I vastly prefer the Fit. Civic has slightly better gas mileage and is more comfortable with two car seats, but the visibility isn’t great and the ventilation is a little weird.

    23. The Honda Fit, Honda Civic, or Toyota Corolla are all solid and affordable choices for driving around town. The Fit makes parallel parking easy and surprisingly can fit a lot into such a small car. I wouldn’t take the Honda Fit for a week-long road trip but if you’re going on a weekend trip it’ll be fine.

        1. We have a 10-year old Fit and still love it. I agree with other commenters – not the fastest but very nimble. Great commute car for me. But it is easier to get a bicycle into our Subaru CrossTrek, also a great car but just a little larger than the Fit.

11. My parents have this troublesome neighbor and I’m wondering what they can do about her, because they are all aging, the neighbor’s mother had Alzheimer’s (which the neighbor could soon have if she doesn’t already), and the issues that exist could someday become my issues…My parents bought this rural piece of land in NY back in 1982 from a friend of theirs who bought it from the neighbor’s family many years ago (who was ANOTHER neighbor). Their front yard is split by a creek where there is a small strip of woods on either side and about a half of an acre of road frontage which is mostly a field/trees. My parents access their property from a side town road that goes over a bridge, and the neighbor walks on the main road with her dog to walk up said road every day. The current neighbor has lived in the house her entire life, as she grew up there and took care of her mother with Alz until she died about 15 years ago or so. When my parents bought the property, my dad had many fights with the mother because she refused to move a rickety fence that was located 6-10 feet inside the property line (after they had sold the land to the people my parents bought it from) where my parents’ road frontage is, and also insisted on mowing both sides of it. She also mowed a path perpendicular to the fence up on the creek side going from her yard to the road my parents technically live on. My father would then do it, just to keep them off of the property. When my dad neglected to do it, she would then come mow it. The daughter continued this behavior after her mom died, and the silent mowing “wars” continued…Until…the daughter had her nephew start doing the mowing. THEN, my father felt compelled to confront the neighbor and was more diligent about mowing the path because that was the only thing he could do from keeping them from mowing it. All the while, the fence remained until it became so dilapidated it could no longer be considered a fence anymore, and the neighbor replaced it a few months ago. With a plastic snow fence…which she ANNOUNCED she was putting on HER property line…but then still mowed on both sides of it. Most recently, as the path was not being used for many years, my father stopped mowing the path and the grass grew over knee high with beautiful wildflowers, which somewhat obscured the view of neighbor’s unsightly and dilapidated outbuildings. Sure enough, father received a message on landline answering machine (not mentioning mom who is friends with neighbor) AND my dad was asked in-person if SHE could mow the path (which, as said, wasn’t even being used in recent years when dad mowed it…neighbor just insisted it be there). My dad is more easily intimidated than he appears, so he just said she could…which made my mom angry and prompted her to write a letter to the neighbor asking her to not mow their property anymore as she could fall and hurt herself OR get Lyme Disease, which my father recently had. Admittedly, I also called the neighbor/left a message and told her I had observed her and her mother’s aggressive behavior toward my family’s property over the past 35 years, I do not like it, she will not have the opportunity to take over/purchase the land in the future, and I do not think it is appropriate for her to be trespassing on the property anymore, with or without permission, AND I do not like her disrespecting my mother by not acknowledging her when she calls (which I realize I should not have done). What complicates this situation is that the neighbor’s mother inherited the lot on the OTHER side of their property many years ago (yeah, she’s going for the triple lot) which once contained a summer home and a dug well that happens to exist on a 25×25 foot square next to my parents’ house (well over a hundred feet from the shore of the other side of the creek and farther from her house). The well is basically a leaf-filled, probably hundreds of years old, dirty hole in the ground that needs to be pumped out all of the time by my dad because it floods the whole yard. Yet, neighbor refuses to sell it “in case she needs it”. I don’t know why or how she would access it, but she does pay around $15 a year in county taxes for it (likely too much) per public record. Another complication is that the property behind my parents’ home was recently sold and more houses are being built there…some by other senior citizens, some by those with several sons who will be teens someday and who already ride four wheelers up and down the raod. The road they all live on is basically one lane, even on the bridge, and there is also a blind corner on the hill coming down to the bridge. In the wintertime, the road is hardly ever maintained and…now…part of a state snowmobile trail. I once slid all of the way from the driveway to the bridge on a not so icy winter day when the road was actually maintained and hit a car coming up the hill head on when I got to the bridge. Yes, very dangerous and getting more dangerous every day. Someday, if I inherit the land and by some miracle have the resources, I would like to have a driveway going straight from the house over the creek…for safety reasons…but that might never happen. Someday, the town might need to make the road two lanes which would encroach upon the already thinned out piece of road frontage my family owns…What can be done about this neighbor, if anything? What do you think she will do in response to my mother’s letter and the message I left on her machine? Oh, the other thing is that I think the woman has a crush on my father as they both pass often on their daily walks. A few months ago, she called my dad to let him know she was clearing trees next to and behind her house…and as a result of this, my parents can now see the back of her house/outbuildings, and the entire stretch of busy main road hundreds of feet away in the wintertime…which is all noisy and unsightly…What is odd about this is the neighbor made one of her outbuildings behind her home into a small house with a porch and I think she sits in there and spies on what my parents are doing. Not relevant, but weird all the same. Anyway, I guess I needed to vent that more than anything. I suppose we all learned some lessons here from seeing what can happen in certain situations…

    1. Holy cow you spend a lot of energy on something that’s not actually a problem. The neighbor sounds like she’s not the issue…

       1. So, I’m guessing you are of the ilk of said neighbor? Self-important, opportunistic, nosy, greedy…Birds of a feather…

          1. Hahaha yes, all of the above. I would have made that my username but all those adjectives would make it a little too long. Please invite your neighbor to my house for tea. We’d have loads to chat and laugh about.

             1. Haha. Maybe OP can have her own tea party for the long-winded self-important incoherent set.

    2. In the grand scheme of neighbor issues, this is nothing.
       Put up your own fence with a gate. Maintain it. Ignore the neighbors. End of story.

    3. What? Write in your diary for yourself alone if you need to vent, we did not “all learn some lessons here.” If you want help with your problem you need to explain it briefly and clearly.

       1. I can’t even figure out what the complaint is, there’s so much extraneous detail about snowmobiles and $15 property taxes and wells and crushes. If this is the charm of small-town living, count me out.

          1. The point is the neighbor has been very open about taking over the land, mowing/having relatives across and down the side, and saying she wanted the land to be hers, and even asking to buy it. The stupid one lane road which parents use to access the property is getting too dangerous with more families building there and the snowmobile trail. The entire piece of road frontage my parents own is necessary to keep as another road/driveway may need to be built there…even if they sell it, because there is a lot of property to the side of them that is tricky to access via current methods. I may build above my parents within the next 5-10 years.

             Neighbor is aging and mother had Alzheimer’s and she could fall on property and be a liability or make up some story to gain adverse possession somehow.

             1. So hire an attorney and take down the fence. Put up another fence at the property line.

             2. I mean I don’t know if she’d have to make up a story to gain adverse possession. They’ve been pretty open and notorious about their use of the land, to the degree of replacing a fence on it.

                Your parents should fence their property, on the true property line, asap.

             3. It may be worth talking to the local government/township/whoever issues building permits. If it’s a private road they could require the builder to expand it as a condition of building other homes.

             4. “The point is the neighbor has been very open about taking over the land, mowing/having relatives across and down the side, and saying she wanted the land to be hers, and even asking to buy it.”

                People can say all day long they want something or even ask to buy it; it doesn’t actually give them ownership. I really don’t understand why you are so upset. It’s like you take everything that comes out of this woman’s mouth seriously.

          2. Also do not like that neighbor is now sort of spying on my dad during the day and has even given him photos of things he has done in the yard she has taken from the road. And then that she calls about twice a year and pretends my mom doesn’t live there, and then doesn’t answer when my mom calls from a line that she knows only my mom would call from.

             1. I still don’t understand your problem … it’s too much minutia. If the problem is annoying neighbor possibly infringing on your parents property rights, follow everyone’s advice to define the property line and ignore the person with a fence. Phoning the neighbor from a certain line will get a certain reaction … wtf, just hang up the phone & address the actual problem already if there even is one.

             2. What does this have to do with anything?

    4. They can put a fence up. I don’t think any of that really seems like much of a problem unless mowing is some way of trying to take over property by claiming use? The neighbor is free to do whatever she wants to her property like clearing trees, etc and is free to own other lots.

       1. Yes, they both have clearly wanted to claim use. They have said the husband/father once owned the property and they don’t like that he sold that piece of it. They didn’t like that the line cuts so close to the side of their house.

          In other news, the mother once told my parents that she “clubbed” their cat over the head (he had been missing for a year or more at that point) because it was on her property. Prior to this, my parents would always mention their cat was always on my parents’ property…

    5. Yes, I agree that you are spending WAY too much energy on this, especially for someone who doesn’t live there!

       BUT just speaking as someone who is adjacent to real estate law, your parents should get a survey of their property and put a fence on the property line (and I would recommend fencing their whole lot) to stop the neighbor entering onto their property. Otherwise you have a potential adverse possession situation going on here since it has been going on for so long.

       1. Yup. This. Get a survey. Put up a fence on your property.

       2. +1000.

          You keep going round and round about extraneous details, but the answer is get a survey, put up a fence. Unless your folks want to lose part of the lot they paid for.

       3. This. Fence their property. Stop complaining about unrelated issues like her cutting trees on her own property. That makes you seem as cray cray as she is.

    6. I can’t actually tell what your question is, but this would be the kind of thing redd1t would either love or tear you apart over. Hard to tell, it could go either way.

       So if you go that way, just know that when you hit the enter or return key twice, it makes a new paragraph.

    7. Can I get a TL;DR here OP?

       1. Yeah definitely didn’t read this because of the length, my goodness…

       2. Yeah congrats to everyone who made it through this screed.

    8. “A few months ago, she called my dad to let him know she was clearing trees next to and behind her house…and as a result of this, my parents can now see the back of her house/outbuildings, and the entire stretch of busy main road hundreds of feet away in the wintertime…which is all noisy and unsightly…What is odd about this is the neighbor made one of her outbuildings behind her home into a small house with a porch and I think she sits in there and spies on what my parents are doing.”

       This is all a big so-what. Is your father obligated to answer phone calls from her? She’s allowed to clear trees on her own property. She is also allowed to sit wherever she likes on her property. You seem to think that she owes your parents “protection” from the view of the road. This is just really none of your business.

    9. Sorry, but I am not reading all that. Happy for you. Or sorry this happened to you.

12. Back in early March, right before the quarantines started, I had the wood floors in my apartment re-done. Ripped up and replaced, altogether. They finished much faster than I expected – it was right when things were starting to get a little hectic and anxious – so I was glad, but now I’ve discovered they didn’t do a good job. Within a few weeks I started to feel like there were places in the apartment where the floor felt like it was “sinking.” I kept telling myself I was imagining it, and tried to ignore it given the enormity of everything else going on in the world. But in the past week, as the humidity (or heat?) has really racheted up, it’s been cracking. I walk across it and it’s like snap-crackle-pop. I feel like they must have cut some corner, perhaps in anticipation of trying to get done more quickly before the lockdown started, perhaps just because they do shoddy work. Unsure.
    My question for the hive is, not really knowing anything about how wood floors are installed, what could this be? Has anyone had a similar experience? I’m so dreading this because I can’t move out NOW and have them re-do it, but I have to address it.

    1. Did the new flooring have a chance to sit in your apartment and become acclimated? If not, that’s likely your problem.

       1. I assume you mean sit before furniture was put back? no… they moved furniture as they went and worked around it. Told me it wasn’t ideal (because it was more work for them) but never suggested it would compromise the finished effect.

          1. No, she means they should have brought the wood floors into your house for a couple days/week to let it acclimate for the environment.

             1. Agree. When they installed mine the flooring sat inside in boxes for a week or two.

             2. ah yes, they actually did do that. It sat for about a week.

    2. It’s kinda hard to say exactly what caused this without knowing all the details or seeing it. I’ve done some construction litigation and have seen all kinds of random issues with wood floors – the wood being over-milled and splitting down the middle after being installed, being stored prior to installation with too much humidity and starting to bow out, whether it is tongue & groove and nailed down or whatever else. You probably need to call the people who installed it to come back out (because I’m sure you need to give them an opportunity to cure the issue in the event you have to pursue this through legal action) but you might *also* want to get another contractor/flooring installer to come check it out as well if you don’t trust the original contractor’s work.

       1. yeah… this sucks. thanks.

13. Any good sources for clever t-shirts? Nothing offensive, but good puns or sayings would be appreciated. #Idonthaveenoughcasualclothes

    1. Amazon!

       1. No, anywhere but Amazon.

    2. TeePublic. So many prints to choose from and I like that they give you different t-shirt styles to choose from. Ordered one for myself not long ago that says “When There Are Nine.”

       1. +1 for TeePublic. Lot’s of unique stuff and the money goes to the artist.

    3. Evereve. They have a lot of graphic tees.

    4. Chummy Tees.

    5. Thrift store.

    6. Etsy? You could probably even find an artist who would custom screen print (or something) for you for relatively cheap.

    7. OMG! Finally a question I know the answer to!

       BustedTees dot com has what you are looking for. I guarantee it.

       Source: have teenagers

       1. Oh wow thanks for this!

    8. Dallas/Texas-centric, but Bullzerk.com is great.

    9. I like Redbubble. Also this is very specific but outofprintclothing.com is great and I get tons of compliments on their tees.

       1. Love Out of Print!

          I just ordered a tank from ErryB – it’s a Deaf- and Black-woman-owned shop that sells BLM and ASL items. You have to search for it on SpreadShirt.

       2. +1 to out of print! also saturday morning pancakes and shirt.woot

    10. Oh I don’t know where but every Christmas my dad goes too hard on the punny tea shirts…

        My brother is into it, my mom grins and bears it and wears them on occasion when she’s staying around the house, and I donate them the next day.

    11. Threadless. Tons of masks, too.

    12. Teespring, m00nshot, Sheshow, The Chivery, Codeword (for area code or city). My m00nshot are my favorites for comfort (and they’re pretty hilarious). I love my 504 baseball shirt from Codeword and they donate to local charities. All of my gym tanks are from Look Human. I haven’t bought t-shirts from them.

14. Let’s talk mother daughter relationships — is yours super close/best ever or have you “distanced” a bit. If distanced — how so?

    1. My mom and I were closer in high school and college, but eventually I saw that my mom is not capable of being emotional support for me– she only wants to hear about the good and can’t take anything negative– she then blows up and makes it about her (and how I’m “ungrateful” for the life I have). So I distanced myself from her, set some strong boundaries, and now she’s back in my life more as a fair weather friend. She’s fun to hang out with, and we follow the same blogs and talk about the same TV shows and things, but will she ever hear my true self or true problems? No. She’s not capable of it and I suppose we’re both happier now with the current arrangement.

       1. Same. Except I have not set the boundaries.

       2. Wow, I feel so seen Veronica. I have stopped looking for emotional support or validation of my choices from my mom. She’s fun to hang out with – to watch movies we both love together, share great skin care tips (the best), and to share some subset of good news. But looking for a true signal of approval or a “good job” on something I share with her? Nope, don’t look for it and so much happier for it.

          1. Are you my sisters?? Omg.

          2. x1000

          3. Airplane – spill the skincare tips!

    2. Distanced. My mother has always been very self-centered and it keeps getting worse. We are something more than civil, but I don’t rely on her for emotional support and I don’t confide in her. I don’t have that warm fuzzy mom thing. I am trying very, very hard to ensure my relationship with my daughters is closer.

    3. I was extremely close to my mother and considered her my best friend until we had a massive fight the day before my wedding. Emotions were running high and everyone was stressed out, but she said a few things that could not be unsaid and it kind of clouded the day for me, and honestly the shock and hurt lingered for months and I went into a bit of depression. I have since realized that she has struggled with anxiety and depression for years, but thinks therapy is for “whiny people” and instead she is the nicest person until she has the most emotional blowup ever. I have found new compassion for my dad, who isn’t the touchy-feely kind but is always there and has survived a few of these screaming outbursts. We are still close, but I took myself to therapy and tried to set better boundaries after that.

       1. “I have since realized that she has struggled with anxiety and depression for years, but thinks therapy is for “whiny people” and instead she is the nicest person until she has the most emotional blowup ever.”

          A suggestion: try communicating to your mother that therapy isn’t for her; it’s for everyone who loves her and wants her to live her best life, and everyone who loves her and wants to be able to help her resolve problems as they occur, not after she can’t handle it anymore and explodes.

    4. My mother is my rock, my lifeline, and my inspiration. I can’t stress enough how sappy I want that to sound LOL She would be working 3 jobs and we’d be on and off food stamps but she would still buy cans to donate when they were 10/$10 and make homemade mac and cheese for the soup kitchen (it’s easy and cheap!). She is the most kind, hardworking woman I have ever met, and I was able to accomplish every one of my goals from her cheering me on and accepting who I was as a young adult.

       But as I get older and work out some things in therapy, I realize that not all my trauma comes from my father. There are things there that my mother never dealt with that projected on me. My parents split up when I was 2 and my mother never remarried. She dated, and has had the same partner for many, many years now. But I can see how her past experiences are also now hurting him. Some things she always told me: me never to trust anyone, never let anyone in, and the more people know about you the more they can hurt you. I started hearing this from a very young age. So that attitude, coupled with abandonment from my father, mixed me into this off self righteous and confident yet broken at the same time young woman. I’m learning from it now. Learning how to be painfully vulnerable and not scared to open up in relationships while also accepting that I may be seeking out people who make me feel like my father always made me feel. I feel my emotions POWERFULLY. My mother taught me to be kind, giving, and loving of all people but I’m now “fixing” myself to understand romantic relationships don’t have to be treated any differently. But also…move on when someone can’t accept all that good love I have to give.

    5. I would say close – we talk just about every day, but it’s been a bit weird since I became a mom myself last year. I’m the only girl between two brothers. My mom was a SAHM, and I’m a senior associate in big law. I’ve always been more like my dad, personality wise, and I went to the same college as my dad, so he and I share a unique bond (and our college experiences are very different from what my mom’s was). I think to some extent, my mom feels unsure about what to say to me sometimes or how to act around me because she’s concerned/worried that doing it her way is not the way that I do something and that I’m offended/mad, etc. What I’ve tried to relay to her is that yes, I am particular about basically everything, but she’s also my mom, and I trust her, so whatever she does works great. I don’t think she believes me, so it’s something I’m continuing to work on.

    6. my mom and i were super super close. i called and emailed her multiple times a day. loved planning my wedding together (DH wasnt interested). things changed when she was diagnosed with an illness, which made her kind of bitter and not the mom i’d always had. i still called/emailed often, but the relationship changed and then she passed away two years ago. i really really miss the mom i had before the illness.

       1. I’m so sorry for both your losses. This sounds very difficult.

    7. She died when I was young and I never got to have any relationship. My stepmother and I have a troubled relationship (the age-old story). I used to get upset when my cousin (who is also my best friend) would complain about petty things about her mom, who was pretty much the best mom ever and a second mom to me, but then she died too. My cousin now regrets the time she spent complaining.

    8. In my mind we’re distanced but my mom would probably say we’re close. We talk daily but I keep the conversations as superficial as I can because she lacks emotional maturity and sees everything in black-or-white terms — no room for nuance or shades of gray.

       1. This describes our relationship well. We are superficially close, but I don’t rely on her for emotional support or advice. Not only are we really different people, but she just does not have the capacity to see outside her point of view.

       2. This. If you saw her FB, you’d think we are super close. She’s super judgy and I don’t talk to her about a lot of stuff.

    9. Well, she’s dead now, so be careful what you take for granted, but I would say close with boundaries. Fortunately, she was good about the boundaries once I established them, even though I could tell they stung her a bit at the time.

       Here’s my tip as an older reader around here: give your mom (really, your parents) the benefit of the doubt you would want them to give to you. Remember that your mom is a product of the environment she was raised in. If she falls short of your ideals, ask yourself if you are holding her to higher standards than you hold yourself.

       I find it sad moms seem to be demonized more than dads, and suspect the patriarchy has a lot to do with it.

       1. I’m a lot closer to my mom than my dad, but the competitive pettiness (“Oh you can’t fit in my jeans? None of my girls maintain their figures like I do”, etc.) definitely seems gendered.

       2. It’s also tough to judge whether someone else’s mother is just a person doing their best and making mistakes like any other person, or if their mother is emotionally ill and/or abusive.

          And yeah, I stay emotionally distant from my mom. We speak a few times a week on the phone, which is nice, but I don’t lean on her for any emotional support anymore.

          I am aware that her patterns of abuse come from her own upbringing. She is somewhat aware that it was abusive, and somewhat aware that she abused her own children in turn. She has regrets. Sadly, that does not give her the skills to process her emotions in a healthy way rather than unleashing them as weapons upon her children. Which is her main m.o.

          Finding the balance between accepting her limitations and keeping myself insulated from her crazy while maintaining a relationship with her is a lifetime’s work.

       3. No. My mom severely abused me, and people whining “but she’s your MOMmmm” exacerbated the problem. Moms are not demonized and are in fact too worshipped.

       4. And another tip from an older reader (and one whose daughter is now old enough that she could be participating in a board like this one), give some thought to what your children would say about your imperfections before you judge your mother for hers.

          My mother is a wonderful person and we are very close. I could certainly write about her flaws (she has them and part of growing up is realizing that your mother is not perfect) but she loves me absolutely and without condition and would walk over hot lava for me or my daughter. That is not something I am ever going to get from anyone else and I value it immensely. Could I talk about things she did that had an impact on me that was not 100% positive? Sure. But we are both doing the best we can as mothers and daughters and perfect is not achievable. And yet somehow mothers are expected to achieve it.

       5. I wrote a longer comment that is awaiting moderation. I’ll TL;DR it here – I agree that we as daughters need to move beyond the expectation that parents must be perfect. However, there needs to be a caveat that some parents are emotionally ill and inflict emotional and/or physical damage on their children that goes beyond “disappointment that mom is less than perfect.”

          1. +1

       6. I’m sad that I’m not close with my mom but if you think I made this decision lightly, you are mistaken. I have tried to give her the benefit of the doubt but at some point, the toxic behavior becomes too much to bear.

          Call it patriarchy or whatever you want, but my dad’s biggest concern has always been my personal happiness, whereas my mother prefers to fixate on how my behavior, accomplishments, etc. reflect on her (and her ideas of how I should be living my life).

          I still love her because she’s my mom but I don’t particularly like her as a person. I have felt immensely guilty and sad over this realization but I can’t change who she is. Keeping a good amount of distance is the only way she can be part of my life without causing (additional) mental and emotional harm.

    10. My mom and I are very close, but as I’ve gotten older (shortly turning 30) I have realized that some of our dynamics are not always the best. I still struggle to assert my adult independence and ability to make my own choices – I feel I have to be the “good kid” still. She sometimes wants to know more about my life than I want to share, setting those boundaries has been a learning process. Growing up I felt like I was the mediator between the arguments between my mom, dad, and little brother, and it’s my “job” to minimize conflict, which leaves my needs and issues out. Still frequently feel I’m not “allowed” to have major disagreements or open frustration, even though she does, which I feel limits our closeness. But also, I know the Best Friend Mom dynamic is not something I necessarily want or need. It’s been a journey!

    11. My mom and I were very close when my son was little but when I was married to my bad husband she broke up with us (refusing to come to our home or have us at their home) because she didn’t like him and our relationship never really recovered even after I split from the bad husband. I took charge of their care when they couldn’t live alone any more but it was out of duty at that point.

        I did throw a nice memorial service for her when she passed away.

    12. I think my mom and I have a better relationship now that I’m an adult and living on the other side of the world than when I was a teenager and living in the same house. I wouldn’t say we’re close, but I appreciate all that she’s done for me growing up and how much she sacrificed her career to raise me and my sibling. I couldn’t see or appreciate it as an emotional self-angsty self-centered teenager, but I do now as an adult and the respect goes both ways now. Also, emotional PMS runs in the family and before menopause she would have days where she was crazily emotional and any tiny wrong move sent her screaming and crying, but now she doesn’t blow up at small things (i.e. I didn’t put the house slippers back *exactly* the way she wanted them at the front door).

        I don’t really talk to my mom about my issues, but she somehow always knows when I need to go home and just be taken care of for a little bit.

    13. More distanced than close, to be sure. We rarely talk, although they watch my dogs when I travel. I don’t visit except for one major holiday (usually Christmas). We never had that mother daughter bond that people talk about. She was a bit judgy, but I am not close with either of my parents or my sister. They are my family, I would help them if they needed it and they are fine people, but I do not feel any particular bond with any of them. Not sure why, but it doesn’t bother me.

    14. Mine is complicated. My parents live an hour from me, so before this, we saw each other fairly regularly since they moved here about 10 years ago. I have visited them a couple of times during coronavirus, too. And she shares a lot about her life, especially now that my stepfather (who is closer to me than my father) has been ill and declining mentally and physically over the last couple of years. But she is not particularly interested in my life. She does not know my SO of a year (even his name) and doesn’t ask about anything except my work generally. She hasn’t noticed that I’ve lost 40 lbs in the last year. So I guess it is just very one-sided. She will be moving in the next year or two and I feel both relieved and surprisingly sad, but also frustrated because it will make dutiful daughter expectations much harder (my other siblings do nothing), and disappointed that she will likely never see me as a whole person now.

    15. My mom has had a comparably hard life and I feel for her. But when I was a child she used me as her emotional support. When, in my mid-20s, I finally stopped catering to her emotional needs, and stepped way back in my availability/helpfulness, her reaction was anger, accusation, and extreme unpredictability. This drove me further away and we didn’t speak for about 8 months. I did a lot of therapy and we now have a relationship that is not ideal but works for me – there is a lot of good and love but it also is like walking a balance beam all the time.

15. The internet is telling me all sorts of things, so I am hoping this informed group can help.
    We are house hunting and have a buyer’s agent. Our agent is also the seller’s agent for a house we are interested in. Do we now look for another buyer’s agent to show us that particular property? If we love it and want to make an offer, we wouldn’t want to have the buyer’s agent also represent the seller.
    How does this work – really? In NJ if that matters.

    1. Oh, and we haven’t signed an exclusivity agreement with the buyer’s agent. So we are free to do whatever. Just trying to anticipate potential issues down the line.

    2. Two ways to handle this: 1) you sign a document acknowledging that the agent is a “dual agent” and will work to serve the best interests of both parties or 2) you ask your agent to hand you off to another agent in their group/team and that agent serves as your buyer’s agent. I’m not familiar with the buyer going and finding a new agent on their own, but real estate is so local, that could be how it’s done in NJ.

       I’ve bought more houses than any normal person should have (life curveballs…) and I’ve done it both ways. I’m comfortable with dual agents, but I’m also an experienced buyer and know what’s going on.

       1. Oh, but I’d say your agent can SHOW you the property, you’d just want to consider one of the two options above if you want to put in an OFFER on that property.

          1. +1 – but this is also really market dependent. If you need to get into a bidding war, I’d want my own buyers agent. If it’s a situation where price is pretty easily agreed on, you’re the only prospective buyer, and it’s more of a paperwork deal, then you could use the same person. It is a good idea if it’s competitive to have your agent hand you off to someone b/c they’ll likely have a good relationship and that can help you get the place

    3. Best thing you can do is disabuse yourself of the notion that a real estate agent represents anyone other than herself. Consider her your agent solely for purposes of pushing paper back and forth, and not for advising you or advocating on your behalf. Poof, “dual” agency problem solved. I’ve bought four and sold three houses and, in every case, sold my homes for significantly more and paid significantly less than “my” agent said I would. In the cases of homes I’ve sold (2 were flips), I’ve made none of the changes the agent recommended, e.g., “Spend $10K more on this bathroom,” and still sold all three for more than the respective agents said I would.

       1. This. We kind of fully learned this sort of late, after we had already bought something with an agent and now trying to sell it. At the end of the day, they both want to get the deal done for the highest price. If you either want a low-ball price and/or a quick sale at a lower price, they do not necessarily have the same incentives as you.

          1. This. We just bought, and initially made an offer that was ~$30,000 less than listing because the house needed work. A few hours later, our agent called to say another agent in her firm was putting in an offer too (even though house had been on the market for almost a year at that point…) and that we should increase our offer. We ended up doing that and got the house, but spent an extra $10,000 and it totally soured my relationship with the realtor.

       2. Yup. Bears repeating: “The agent wants to get the deal done for the highest price.”

          1. But they don’t want to waste time, and often would rather take a lesser deal in order to move on to their next deal. 6% or 3% of $20,000 isn’t motivating to a lot of agents.

             1. Yes both halves of the equation are equally important, I think: Get the deal done, for the highest price consistent with getting the deal done.

16. If you’re long term single do you feel like you have a “home”? That doesn’t necessarily mean having bought a home though certainly that’s a commitment but do you feel overall committed to your city, your job etc. or do you feel more like — well it’s just me, if a great job came up 50 miles away or 3 states away, I’d go. I have always felt the latter (move for opportunities) and lived with the — a rental apartment is a rental apartment, who cares attitude. But as I get older (40 in a few weeks), I’m realizing I have NO roots. Like I still feel like I’m living in that limbo of college dorms or something where you pack up your stuff every June. To be fair though it’s not like I move apartments or cities a lot — I’ve had 2 jobs in my 15 year career — one for 10 years and one for 5 and have lived in 3 apartments in that time. But I’ve always been “hesitant” to put down roots because it’s always that feeling of the moment you do that, some good opportunity will come up and now you can’t take it because it means a 2 hour commute or you can’t sell a house that you just bought 4 months ago. Yet this feeling of last time I had a “home” was my parents home also doesn’t feel good anymore.

    I find myself wanting more “permanence” yet while I like my location (Virginia), I do NOT want to stay in my job at all. And for those of you who live in NoVa you understand that it’s a problem of — buy a house that works with your current (pre pandemic) commute, great. Then get a different job and oh look that reasonable 40 min commute suddenly because 80 min because your job is 5 miles in another direction. This can’t just be a DC issue, I think it happens in places like NYC and SF too esp if you don’t live in the city but are wanting to live in NJ etc. (which for me is a must — not looking to buy in the city itself, for the long haul I need to be in a suburb). How did you handle some of these issues?

    1. I am single and live in NJ. I have tons of roots. I rent but I’ve fully settled I have friends and family and community. If a job comes up that is too far I don’t consider it.

    2. I’m single but a good bit younger than you. I’ve definitely put down roots in this city – I’ve been here four years and own a flat – but am thinking of moving abroad for a 6-18 month period and then coming back here. Pre-COVID I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to come back here or if I wanted to move to the area my mother’s family comes from (other end of the country). The last few months have however really cemented why I love living where I do and that I do want to come back here afterwards. I do sometimes feel that rootless feeling – especially compared to friends who are from here or who went to university here.

    3. Not single, but I have the exact same feeling, and am starting to struggle with it as I’ve gotten older (late 30s). Even though I have a spouse and kids, we’ve moved several times for my career. And even when we stayed put in one city for more than 3 years, we moved apartments/houses/neighborhoods often. So I too don’t feel like I have roots, and have started to crave them, even though this same flexibility was a point of pride just a few years ago. We just did another move right before the pandemic, and I’m hoping this will be the last one for awhile. I’m trying to meet the neighbors and make the friends and paint the walls and create the hobbies and build a life that isn’t easily uprootable, whatever that means. So no answers, but commiseration.

    4. In 15 years, you’ve had 2 jobs and 3 apartments. Your career does not appear to be one involving a lot of change. Maybe ask yourself why you are still so attached to the idea of flexibility.

    5. Yes, I do. My home is here because this is where my friends, barn, and life are. I have contemplated moving, but I wouldn’t do it unless it was for a once in a lifetime job or I couldn’t find a job here and I needed it to pay my bills.

    6. I share your mindset. I change jobs or move within a company an average of every 3 years, sometimes internationally. I’m an inhouse lawyer, and I usually have to change jobs or roles to progress. But you seem to be much more geographically stable professionally so just bite the bullet and buy a place. If you end up needing to move within the area, it’s not too big of a deal to rent it out if you need to recoup the investment before selling it.

17. For anyone making a bed for/with a sleeper who hates tucked sheets — how do you keep it neat? I like sleeping in a “pocket,” my husband does not. If we use one king sheet he untucks his side and then I somehow end up wrapped in it entirely in the middle of the night and he wakes up with no sheet. So we gave him his own twin-sized sheet to untuck, which is working fine… except somehow every morning now it’s completely untucked and sitting on a pile on top of the sheets.

    Is there any way to keep it untucked but “rooted” somehow to the middle of the bed, so he can still stick his feet out? Like a clip or some other technique?

    (Or is this just a Shamu-train-your-husband kind of thing?)

    1. Ugh, my husband and I are the same way, and also using the two-top-sheets solution. To my knowledge there is no way to keep it neat. I would have to totally have to remake the bed every morning if that is what I wanted, and I am done with that. My side stays pretty neat so I can just pull it up and get back into my ‘pocket’ the next night. He is on his own to untangle his sheet pile when he gets back into bed. Someday, maybe… separate beds!

    2. I am fairly confident I could not share a bed with this person (and I’m only sort of joking).

    3. Train your husband is kind of offensive, no? How would you feel about a group of men saying you need to train your wife?

       I see you think your way is the right way and any other way is wrong. Think about whether this is the hill you want to die on.

       I am a restless sleeper. I am covers on, covers off, covers on, hot/cold/hot/cold. My husband, bless him, loves me, and doesn’t get after me about any of this. Even when I notice I’ve woken him up and offer to move to a different room (because I do feel guilty about it) he says no way, and cuddles me until I peel his arms off me because omg hot hot hot.

       If I heard him telling a group of friends he needed to “train” me, I don’t think that would bode well for our marriage.

       1. The OP is referencing a famous article from the NYT probably a decade old at this point – something about How Shamu Saved My Marriage.

          1. Yes I am! Also I meant “train him to make his side of the bed when he gets out like a big boy not leave your wife to do it”… not “train him to sleep in a pocket.”

    4. So our bed has a footboard which hides the solution, but we have a queen and I tuck the bottom corner of my half in and husband leaves his untucked. This way, neither of us can burrito ourselves in the middle of the night because it has a tether point on my side. The top half gets pretty crooked and has to be straightened every morning when making the bed, but we aren’t remaking it from scratch and getting tangled. I don’t tuck my half tight because I don’t like it snug, but it is tucked in some. In the summer we sleep with a light cotton blanket untucked over the sheet, and it stays pretty well in place due to the footboard.

    5. Shamuing while sleeping can be a sign of greater health problems. So I might want to make sure my husband was healthy, but otherwise I’d just live with the mess.

    6. Easy solution! No top sheet. I cannot stand top sheets!

       1. But then don’t you have to wash your duvet all the time?

       2. what? you sound unsanitary.

          1. I’m not the person you’re responding to but duvet covers were originally meant to replace the top sheet. And yes, you wash the duvet cover. I also wash my down duvet pretty frequently.

18. Question about GI function that may be TMI for some. If so, just skip and move on.

    I have diarrhea probably once a week, maybe once every two weeks. Sometimes longer in between, but at least every 4-6 weeks for as long as I can remember. It occurs over a single bathroom trip, maybe two within a couple hours. Bloating, gas, general discomfort always accompany. Sometimes I also have an upset stomach or nausea, but not always. I’m fairly regular the rest of the time, going around the same time of day 5-6 days a week. So…how normal is this kind of schedule?

    I generally assume that this is a reaction to something I’m eating or drinking, but the relationship is not very clear. If I had greasy fast food for dinner and then the next day feel crappy (haha), that’s pretty obvious in my book. Most of the time there is no clear culprit, but I don’t even know how far back to look (8 hours, 24 hours, longer?). Pretty sure I’m not lactose intolerant and don’t have Celiac disease. Crohn’s is present in my family, but I’d have more severe symptoms if it were that, right? I’m not eating undercooked meat or eggs and I’m fastidious about avoiding cross contamination in the kitchen. I have had GI viruses in the past but those go on for days, not a couple hours. And I’ve also had anxiety cause GI issues, but that presented in a very different way and was easily addressed with medication.

    So is there something I’m missing? Do I need to go on an elimination diet (if so, resources greatly appreciated)? Start a very detailed food journal and see if I can spot patterns (have tried and failed this in the past)? Should I go in for a consult with a GI doc or nutritionist, or is that not necessary? Eat more yogurt (have never found that to help, but willing to try again)? Make a regular yoga practice to chill out? Chalk it up to getting older (mid 30s) and things not working as great as they did 20 years ago? I think this has gotten to the point that it is disruptive enough in my life that I need to do something, but I just don’t know where to start.

    1. I would start with your regular doctor and see a GI doctor if that warrants it. You can also develop lactose intolerance with age, if you think that is a factor.

    2. IBS?

    3. This is me too and I don’t worry about it. I just have a sensitive tummy. For sure too much alcohol, ice cream, or red meat gives me issues but that seems not unreasonable. An elimination diet is a huge undertaking for gross poop one a month or so.

       1. The goal is to avoid long term complications that can be much more severe.

          1. From occasional diarrhea after eating garbage? I’m not concerned

    4. Could it be related to your period? that happens to me sometimes. If it’s once a week, though, that’s probably not it.

       1. Yep, Jen Gunter has an article on how hormones effect GI symptoms. I didn’t know it wasn’t just me who experienced that until I read it!

          I also have what could maybe be described as very low grade IBS – when I’m very anxious it shows up in my gut first. I try to use that as a warning alarm that I need to change something rather than get worried about that itself. Doesn’t always work, especially now in a pandemic with GI symptoms!!

    5. I had many years of worse but similar issues to what you describe and eventually developed/recognized a dairy issue in my late 20s. I’d recommend that you see a GI doc but in the interim, you might look into the FODMAP diet. I followed that strictly for several weeks (was doable but a drag, I’ll be honest) and then added back things to see what was triggering my issues. I keep no dairy strictly but eat other FODMAPs (and recognize and anticipate the effects of a heavy FODMAP meal). This sounds crazy, but I now understand lots of people don’t just live with GI issues all the time; I thought my experience was normal, which it wasn’t. There’s also a strong mental health/stomach health feedback loop. I feel SO MUCH better than I did years ago and I encourage you to dig deeper.

       1. “This sounds crazy, but I now understand lots of people don’t just live with GI issues all the time” -this is totally why I wrote this post! I was just realizing that other people must not deal with this all the time. One other thing I noticed once was a notice at the public pool that you weren’t supposed to use the pool if you’ve had diarrhea in the last 14 days and I was like, wait most people regularly go 14 days without it? Huh. I certainly go months without an episode that I can reasonably assume to be pathogenic in origin (what they’re worried about), but not often 14 days without any episodes.

          I’m going to look into the low FODMAP diet, as well as the carrageenan mentioned below (never even heard of it). I’m fairly certain I’m not lactose intolerant because I’d be having way more issues way more often if that were the case!

          I am well aware of the gut-brain axis and the impact of anxiety on gut issues, having experienced it myself. However, that manifested itself with a very different pattern of symptoms, so I’m not ready to jump to that conclusion quite yet.

    6. Everyone in my family has problems with diarrhea after eating certain processed foods, including most chain restaurant food. After lots of label-reading, we are 99% sure that the culprit is the thickener carrageenan. We quit eating at the offending chains and buying foods that contain carrageenan (mostly ice cream), and haven’t had an issue since.

       But of course I’d still call your doctor before assuming it’s a dietary intolerance.

       1. This is interesting. We eat a fair amount of frozen food from Trader Joe’s (for convenience) and I’ve noticed that some items really seem to bother my stomach and some are totally fine. I’m going to go read the labels more closely and check for carrageenan.

       2. This also bothers me– I use a lot of almond milk, and once I cut out the brands that used carageenan, I felt so much better.

    7. Are you me? Same problem. I’ve chalked it up to mild IBS, as I haven’t found a clear trigger, but I probably should see my doc about it.

    8. well, the only way to narrow it down is to keep a food diary for a few weeks or months, and after you’ve had several episodes you should be able to see what triggers you. now, why they are triggering you could be many things- an allergy, a sensitivity, IBS, even diverticulitis. If you’re also having bloating and nausea, that is actually how my allergy to avocados and bananas presents- bad heartburn, bloating, and then inevitably diarrhea.

       Also, not food related, but diarrhea is a huge anxiety symptom for me. Is it happening on days when you have an important meeting or event, when you’ve had a fight or argument, or when you’re traveling? It took me years to understand that my anxiety was actually *very bad* and *very pervasive* once I realized diarrhea and nausea were symptoms. But, food diary first lol.

       1. +1 million to anxiety being a trigger.

          I’m also pretty sensitive to xylitol, an artificial sweetener.

          1. Oh – one other piece of anecdata. I used to have this issue more frequently and I would also just have a lot of BMs. They weren’t necessarily loose, but I was in the bathroom 5-8 times a day. I had gum surgery and pretty much ate nothing but yogurt for a week, and my digestive issues stabilized somewhat. It was sort of a reset.

    9. Make sure your doc knows you have Crohns in your family. I’m mostly in remission but still have minor episodes once/month or so. It’s worth ruling that out to prevent long term damage if you should be on a maintenance med now.

       Is there any chance the issue is tied to your caffeine intake? If I drink too much caffeine I get that problem too!

19. Curious if anyone on this site in their 30s uses OkCupid anymore? If so, what has your experience been on OkCupid if your goal is finding a guy and settling down? I hear that most users on OkCupid now use it for kinky stuff + it’s a ghost town due to apps. Not sure if this is accurate though.

    I last used it about a year ago, and could not find any quality guy despite an hour of searching around. It kind of makes me sad because OkCupid used to be a more serious dating website compared to the apps, since you can read more about someone‘s interests and intentions, and there were at least some quality people.

    1. I’ve met two long-term boyfriends on OKC – one i met in my late 20s and dated for 5 years, and my current BF of a little over a year. Mid-30s in large East Coast city. I’ve never had any luck on the other apps; lots of swipes but no real engagement or too many people looking for hook-ups. Current BF and I are living together and talking long-term future plans, so there is hope!

       1. Similar experience. I met both my ex-husband and my current partner on OKC. I’m 38.

       2. I would not want to meet a guy for a hook-up with all of this virus going on, even if it is on OKC. If a guy wants to put his thing in me these days, I need to be sure both that: (1) he is virus free and (2) he intends to have a relationship, not just meaningless s-x. I worry about #1 and have had more then enough of #2.

          Lately, I have been working from Dad’s study b/c our office is shut for the pandemic. I do my breifs on line and have had conferences with the opposing counsel via the ZOOM app, which is better then Webex. I do not know when there will be in person trials, but the judge says mabye soon, tho he is thinking of retiring (he is over 70), and does not want the virus in his courtroom.

          Grandma Trudy is still trying to get back on her feet after a serious bout with IBS. Dad thinks she does not get enough sunshine, but Grandma Trudy is very fair skinned and does not want to get skin rashes or melonoma. Rosa just got a boil removed from her tuchus by her deramatologist after weeks in agony so that she can sit down again. Ed had one too, tho the doctor said that boils are very common these days, but NOT contageous.

20. Bear with me. I’m asking a question I should ask a doctor, but what I really need to know is WHICH doctor I need to go get an appt with.

    I had poison ivy in April. It took over a month to go away but it was peak COVID in Boston so I just rode it out. Three weeks ago, I was moving heavy furniture and I got a medium sized scrape on my ankle. It bled, i put antibiotics on it and a band-aid. I woke up the next morning to find a popped blood vessel in my eye and a scrape on my hip I hadn’t noticed the day before (presumably from moving the same furniture) that was INSANELY itchy. Like as if I had been scraped by poison ivy. i put antibiotic on it for a few days and it kept itching. I put hydrocortisone on it and it stopped being quite so itchy. It never looked infected and was never painful– just itchy as all get-out.

    Those things eventually healed and a week later (about a week ago) I had a crazy itchy yeast-infection like thing going on, but it wasn’t my v*gina. It was in that general area but seemed to be more on the skin. I had a bunch of yeast infections during pregnancies and it was the same feeling, but in the wrong spot. Put antifungal yeast infection stuff on it, and it cleared after a couple days.

    Since last weekend, I’ve been getting what I thought were bug bites, but can’t be, on my legs and arms. They are dots, like bug bites, but not mosquito type welts. They itch a ton and come and go. I checked for bed bugs. DH and my 3 kids have NONE of this stuff, so I’ve mentally ruled out highly contagious stuff like mites or bed bugs or fleas (we don’t have pets, but, whatever). I woke up today with poison-ivy or eczema-like spots on my stomach and chest and they itch like crazy.

    W the actual F is going on? Do I call a derm? An allergist? A Gyn? I don’t really have a PCP and it seems like going to urgent care is just going to refer me to someone else so I’d rather just go to one place. My working nonmedical theories are: some kind of internal infection that needs antibiotics (maybe the poison ivy never left my body? is that a thing?), shingles, stress, or heat-induced hives/eczema. I’ve never had the latter but my youngest kid has always had it and is in the midst of an outbreak for the past couple weeks. I tried her steriod cream and seemed to help a bit on the rash stuff, not the dots/bite like things. we have central AC and it’s not all that hot out, but since my kiddo is breakout out maybe I am, too.

    I’m up to date with my tetnus shots. I have never had allergic reactions to anything other than extreme pollen before.

    HELP! All wild conspiracy theories welcome, but really, I’d like to know where I’d have the most success with a call or visit.

    1. For an issue like this I, personally, would start with a PCP. They are the ones who will be able to tell you who to go to next if they can’t diagnose it themselves.

       And for what it’s worth, I’ve gone to urgent care for what I thought was a “weird skin thing” that hit a bad point on a Saturday, when my PCP was closed. Urgent care was able to correctly diagnose it and it ended up not being a skin issue at all–it was a very rare post-strep reaction.

    2. Question: does the itching’s timing correspond to getting more sun? There’s a rash you can get when you suddenly get more sun exposure (aka, all of us who are no longer trapped in high rise offices all day long) and it itches and looks just like poison ivy. It goes away on its own after a few days/week. Discovered this early this summer when I was DYING from constant itching – turns out I was just briefly allergic to the sun

       1. This is one of my working theories. I’ve been spending a lot more time outside. If it were all rash-y, that would make more sense but some of the stuff is more like small bug bites.

    3. Maybe derm or infectious disease, knowing that the latter is busy right now due to COVID. Honestly, can you get yourself a PCP internal medicine MD ASAP? Does your husband have a PCP – if so, beg their practice to see you.

    4. I would say a derm (and sorry you’re dealing with this!).

    5. Poison ivy is an allergic reaction so it’s definitely not a systemic poison ivy infection. Is it maybe heat rash/prickly heat?

    6. I had similar symptoms before (itchy rashes all over body). I went to urgent care, which told me to see an allergist/ENT specialist. I was first given over the counter anti-histamine, which was not strong enough, and then stronger prescribed version by the allergist. They also did a bunch of allergy tests and concluded that it was likely stress related. I was told that where it was not apparent that bugs caused the small dots, it was likely my own immune system attaching skin cells. This can happen when you are stressed. Although I was a little stressed looking back, I did not realize that I was stressed until I thought more about it. Also, as you get older, your body is not as good as before when dealing stress, and this kind of symptoms can flare up more frequently without you realizing that you are stressed.

       1. Also forgot to add that the steroids are only to make you feel less itchy/numb the skin. It’s the prescription strength antihistamine that tells the white blood cells in your body to stop attacking the skin cells and make the dots go away.

    7. Yeah, this is really why you need a PCP. Where I live, it takes 4-5 months to get an appt. as a new patient so it might not help you for this, but I really encourage you to make an appt. so you have someone to see for things like this. For now, I think you’re stuck with urgent care unless a family member has a doctor that will see you on short notice (some practices might be pretty open right now so more willing to do this than normal). And for what it’s worth, I’ve also had the sun allergy thing one of the other posters mentioned and it could be that, though it usually goes away pretty quickly. I’d go to urgent care, but don’t expect much. Most of these skin things are weird and may be stress related and eventually go away on their own, but it’s good to make sure there’s not something more serious going on.

       1. I would not want to meet a guy for a hook-up with all of this virus going on, even if it is on OKC. If a guy wants to put his thing in me these days, I need to be sure both that: (1) he is virus free and (2) he intends to have a relationship, not just meaningless s-x. I worry about #1 and have had more then enough of #2.

          Lately, I have been working from Dad’s study b/c our office is shut for the pandemic. I do my breifs on line and have had conferences with the opposing counsel via the ZOOM app, which is better then Webex. I do not know when there will be in person trials, but the judge says mabye soon, tho he is thinking of retiring (he is over 70), and does not want the virus in his courtroom.

          Grandma Trudy is still trying to get back on her feet after a serious bout with IBS. Dad thinks she does not get enough sunshine, but Grandma Trudy is very fair skinned and does not want to get skin rashes or melonoma. Rosa just got a boil removed from her tuchus by her deramatologist after weeks in agony so that she can sit down again. Ed had one too, tho the doctor said that boils are very common these days, but NOT contageous.

    8. Is it possible that you touched the furniture when your skin was contaminated with poison ivy, before you washed it off, then came into contact with the contaminated part of the furniture when you moved it? The oil that causes irritation can remain on surfaces and cause a reaction for a very long time.

    9. Minute Clinic for a round of prednisone.

       1. More detail: I have had this happen twice. Once was stress-related; the other was postpartum and stress (right before I went back to work during the pandemic). The first time was hives from scalp to knees. The second time was these awful, oozing things that looked like bug bites, with big welts the size of the palm of my hand underneath. They would ooze through bandaids and there was literally pus running down my leg.

          Round of prednisone took care of it both times.

    10. Going to a pcp is so old-fashioned in my mind- if you’re on an insurance plan where you don’t need a referral, go to a derm first, then an allergist. A PCP is just another stop on the way and will do you no good. Also, this might seem super obvious, but like someone else suggested are you sure there is no poison ivy oil anywhere in your house? It just seems odd this all started after that… did you wash all of your clothes and bedding on hot? Is it possible it’s on your furniture? Related, could you be allergic to whatever you wash your clothes with?

        1. I did wash everything. and given the current state of the world, heat or stress are my two most likely suspects with the rest being red herrings. Benedryl has been somewhat helpful so maybe there is something to the prednisone angle.

           1. I use topical benadryl. My dx is either “anxiety” (it doesn’t happen when I’m anxious though) or vague mast cell issues.

           2. Dad says it is stress. After being holed up for months, you are getting out, and there may be bugs that are causing the itch, tho he says stress. He is not an MD, but he knows alot about medicine b/c he was on his own for months behind the iron curtan, so he knows. Talk to your counselor about it, if you can’t see an MD.

    11. I’m going through something similar — hives all over! I did a predinose treatment (prescribed by PCP) and it helped, but they are still coming back. I kept a food diary and cannot identify what’s causing them. My PCP did a blood test for environmental allergens and I’m awaiting results. Meanwhile I’m taking Benadryl as needed for the hives and it helps. I think ultimately it’s stress related.

    12. So sorry you are dealing with this. We had something similar with my son – it took forever to figure out what it was. The dermatologist prescribed a low steroid cream to help with itching and avoid scarring. She said that if it persisted she could take a biopsy. We eventually figured out it was fleas. I am assuming that you have carefully checked your bedding to rule that out? At one point, I thought it was our laundry detergent (there are a lot of cases involving Tide pods – not sure if you use that). Anyway, good luck!! I know it feels so frustrating not to know what is causing it.

    13. I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this! I’ve had stress-hives before that sound similar to this, but they weren’t as widespread as yours.

        About eight years ago I had a pretty itchy rash on my trunk and legs. I was stressed, I had a rash; the rash made me more stressed! The doc at the urgent care told me it was pityriasis rosea and prescribed a short course of steriods. WebMD says it’s not stress-related, but the doctor told me nearly all the cases he’s seen were triggered by stress.

    14. When I had itching “dots like bug bites” but not mosquito bites, they did turn out to be fleas — I’d walked through a yard that had fleas in it. If you’ve been outside more, is it possible you were around an area that weekend where animals were present?

21. To a couple of posters here wondering about some medical stuff, I just want to say that now is a great time to go to the doctor. I had something that could finally no longer wait, and I reluctantly went in. I was pleasantly surprised. Empty waiting rooms. Temp checks as soon as you walk in. Everyone is masked.

    AND the providers I saw spent more time with me than normal. I really think because they’re less busy right now, they finally spent the time to figure out what has been going on with me for the last few years (yes, years.) So while I wouldn’t say I’m happy about the diagnosis, I’m happy to know what it is, and I’m happy to have a treatment plan.

    Go now. Don’t let COVID keep you from addressing other parts of your health.

    1. Thank you for saying this. I am terrified, but know that it’s important to get my mammogram (no family history, had one last year which was fine). In fact, my GYN mailed me a reminder letter that I am 6 months overdue.
       In hotspot (northern NJ) so that’s been my hesitation. Plus, the technicians have to get really really close to position patients in the machine for the 3d mammo.

       1. As someone in a nearby hotspot (NY, just north of NYC), the fact that your GYN is sending you a reminder is a good sign. My OB-GYN stopped all visits for non-pregnant patients for several months, and is just now starting back up b/c they feel that they can do so safely. I’d go for it.

          1. Well, they also want to bill for this….

       2. I went for my annual Pap exam a couple of weeks ago. I was the only one in the waiting room who wasn’t pregnant. I felt safer than anywhere else.

    2. Agree 100%. I even went to the dentist yesterday for a routine cleaning and checkup. I was nervous about it, but I ended up feeling very comfortable because they thoroughly explained what precautions they were taking and why. Nobody was in the waiting room; I saw maybe one other patient at the end of the hallway.

    3. I would be cautious in giving this blanket recommendation as conditions vary across the country and between providers. Someone could just as easily go to their local dr and have a terrible experience & catch COVID. Why are you giving medical advice?

       1. Why are you?

          1. You consider “don’t give medical advice to strangers on the internet” to be medical advice?

       2. Ah yes, suggesting that people go to the doctor for medical advice, the epitome of giving medical advice…

22. What’s a good dry eye solution? Visine seems to help very temporarily and maybe even make it worse over time. No contacts. Thanks1

    1. Systane

    2. Visine is the wrong thing. It will dry you out over time, as you note. I like Systane for OTC dry eyes.

    3. I think it depends on what the cause of your dry eye is. I was told by my optometrist that my dry eyes are caused by clogged oil ducts and the treatment is not eye drops but using heat to sort of loosen up and unclog the ducts. (sorry if that’s gross, I think it’s gross even though it’s happening to me but I never knew this before!)

       1. +1. I thought I had dry eyes for years, but it was mostly blepharitis. I do warm compresses daily and the symptoms have almost entirely disappeared.

    4. Visine is the devil. It feels good when you use it but you get rebound redness and dryness and you easily become dependent on it, needing more all the time. Talk about brilliant marketing.

       Try over the counter preservative-free lubricating drops. If you use them consistently they should work. If they don’t work, that’s a good indication you need to see an Opthamologist.

23. I have realized that eyeliner makes me look much better over Zoom. But I wear contacts and my eyes get irritated easily. Any suggestions for eyeliners for sensitive eyes? (Both upper lid and inside lid)

    1. I would stop applying inside the lid; that is a very likely source of irritation. The Sephora house brand seems to be OK for my eyes, as does Clinique.

       1. +1 for Clinique; their Quickliner is easy to apply. But I don’t do lower lids – mascara on lower lashes gets a similar definition without the eye irritation.

    2. I have extremely sensitive eyes and I use Almay kohl pencil. It may have been discontinued (the i-Color one in dark brown because I have green eyes) but I still order them from Amazon.

    3. Don’t do inside the lid. That’s an unhealthy trend that needs to die. You’ll get 99% of the way there just lining on the outside.

    4. If tightlining is causing too much irritation, you can mimic the look by smudging some eyeliner right at the base of your lashes, and then using a small eyeliner brush to work it in further.

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