Friday’s Workwear Report: NL Logo Long-Sleeve Jumpsuit

308 Comments

1. Good one! Happy April y’all

   1. Lol love this! Thanks for the laugh!

   2. Finally, some full-length bottoms!

   3. I clicked through to look at the bodysuit, and was surprised to see a review from someone who had actually bought it. Maybe it was Kim Kardashian. The reason for return was that it was too long for someone under 5’10” (Kim is well under 5’10”) :-)

   4. I literally twitched and then I remembered the date. Love this pick!

      1. Ha – same!

2. Happy Poisson d’Avril to you as well.

3. Thank you to everyone who commented on my post yesterday about breaking up with my boyfriend who works in the arts. We broke up last night and it was extremely, extremely difficult. I don’t think the full emotions have hit me yet. He said he didn’t realize the extent of how I felt and if he had, he would have pulled back on work. He said he’d be open to going back to a “normal” job in the future if his artisic career didn’t work out or it was becoming too much of a burden on our future family (which I didn’t know was in the cards at all). Lots of talk of how excited he was for our future together. Basically all the reassurances I needed to hear. I was very close to not doing it but something kept pushing me forward. I have this apprehension about our future that I can’t explain. But he is everything I’ve ever looked for in a partner and if I walk away from this, I don’t know what that means for what I want.

   There is a sense of relief but also immense sadness and the feeling that I am making a massive mistake. I know what a rare find he is and I am so scared that I’m walking away from the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t know what to do–maybe asking for permission to stay despite my doubts. I’m not always excited for the future but I am always excited for the present, and doesn’t that count for something?

   1. sending you hugs.

      can I suggest that you consider setting a therapist alone and together? maybe give a thinking period?

      it is great that you have excitement about the future, either way. maybe there is a short period where you try to work it out, but days nor years but weeks to months?

   2. Hugs from an internet stranger, but you did the right thing. You said yesterday you’d had thorough conversations with him in the past. You shouldn’t have to break up to get him to listen & prioritize you.

      It will be better on the other side!

      1. +1. Also, when you say “something kept pushing me forward” to break up with him, I wonder if that means something else is wrong as well that you just haven’t consciously recognized yet. Maybe in a few months from now, with some distance, you’ll see how he wasn’t as perfect as you thought.

         1. Yeah. I think anyone anytime someone says their relationship is perfect or he’s the perfect guy, they’re doing it because of some insecurity they haven’t figured out yet or feel like they need to cover for.

         2. Agree. It’s important to trust your gut. I’m sorry you’re going through this, but hoping for all teh best in the future.

   3. To me, this speaks a lot: “He said he’d be open to going back to a “normal” job in the future if his artisic career didn’t work out or it was becoming too much of a burden on our future family (which I didn’t know was in the cards at all).”

      Yesterday, his career was a bit of a damper on your life now. How much more of a burden should it be on not just you but you + future family before it gets to his being “open” to change (not promising to change, or changing now b/c it’s an issue now, but maybe just at the thinking stage when there is a problem).

      If you flipped the genders, this would be like an accountant dealing with, IDK, a person who wants to be a river guide and date long distance and really makes no $ but has fun (or if dude were a ski lift operator in season and did nothing else during the year and planned to be OK with that forever). “Doing what I want for fun” is a retiree’s game and a very young person’s game, but it doesn’t set you up to be a fiscally stable adult if that is your career path in your 30s and (it looks like) beyond. And you are entitled to your dealbreakers. It’s like when Fun Bobby in Friends became not-so-fun Bobby (or the guys who were fun dates or even summer boyfriends but were just not going to be long-term relationship compatible when we need to take Great Aunt Sally to her podiatrist b/c my uncle is having a root canal that day) (or why affair partners are rarely good life partners, b/c affairs are fun and relationships involve work and compromise (not just being open to compromise)).

      1. I’ve become pretty skeptical of any multi-year compromise between couples that involves one person sacrificing now, and the other person sacrificing several years in the future. As in “We live in State X for 5 years, and then I’ll give up my job and we’ll move across the country to be closer to your family,” or “you stay home with the kids for 3 years, and then you can go back to work and I’ll stay home for the following 3 years.” Too often, the time rolls around for the second person to do their part, and they don’t want to after all.

         I know that of course this can work, with trust and dedication. But as Cat said, you shouldn’t have to break up with him to get him to eke out some vague offer. I’d be very concerned he’d back out when it’s too late.

         1. Agree 100% to your first paragraph. I have seen it happen too many times. Or change becomes too hard/has too many consequences to one or both parties. It’s a whole lot of wishful thinking, IMHO.

         2. Sadly, this. Inertia is too powerful. In a twisted way, having sacrificed something, it’s now a sunk cost. If you sacrifice your career to raise the kids, your career progression isn’t what it had been before, so why would he scale back so you can ramp up? If you moved to be near his family, MIL and FIL are going to be just heartbroken to not be 10 minutes from the grandkids and after all, your parents are just fine visiting them once a year. And on it goes.

         3. Monday, your first paragraph is perfection – I have also seen this play out to the First Sacrificer’s detriment, not due necessarily to intentional trickery or lack of good faith at the time of making the promise… but out of nothing more than sheer inertia or new difficulties when the time comes.

            OP, it’s ok for something to be hard, and sad, but also best for you long term.

   4. Just found that thread. You did the right thing. He’s not husband material. Hugs to you, because this stuff is hard.

      First and foremost, you CANNOT make a marriage work with someone who puts you in second place to anything. (Asterisk, if there is an issue regarding the well-being of children in your care.) In order for a marriage to work, each spouse has to put the other in first place: before career, before their families of origin, before their friends. I don’t say this lightly; I’ve gone to the mat for my marriage on quite a few occasions, and we got married three years ago.

      Second, you can’t make a marriage work with someone who doesn’t “get” that there is a problem until the other person is on the verge of divorce. Functional, happy marriages involve people understanding that there are problems, and taking steps to solve them, in a reasonable amount of time.

      I remember chatting with a divorce attorney (socially); she said she’s counseled innumerable women who said that their husbands were deaf to their pleas to work on issues in the marriage. Meanwhile, the husbands in question were all eager-beaver, ready to solve the problems and make it work. Call off the divorce, they love her and want to make this happen. Why the disconnect? The husbands didn’t *think* that what their wives were asking for was a problem until they got served with divorce papers. Their wives had, however, used their words for years on end to no avail. It’s not cute; it’s not funny; it’s not an acceptable way to treat your significant other.

      1. Your last 3 sentences, wow, very true

      2. Ooof, this last paragraph is my brother-in-law to a T. And this is despite more than one marriage counselor telling him, buddy, you’re in danger if you don’t believe that your wife is seriously unhappy.

      3. Yep, you’re so right.

      4. I do think this is a far more common pattern with men, but interestingly, this is how my now-husband ended up divorced from his first wife – years of telling her he was unhappy/concerned and even that he feared they were headed for divorce, and she refused to go to counseling/engage on the issues. He went to counseling for 2 years on his own and ended up asking for a divorce – then she was eager to work on things but he was done.

   5. Is it just the job? If his job changed, would you want to stay with him? Can he get a different job or would you be ok with being the breadwinner and him handling most of the childcare/household responsibilities and would he be happy with that lifestyle? If he’s willing to change his job NOW, then giving it another shot might not be totally off the table. I broke up w my current bf for a month or two before we got back together.

      1. also had a break with my now husband of many years and some turbulence before it worked. i think late 20s and early 30s sometimes brains and ears just don’t work right!

   6. No doubt you’re heartbroken, but I think you’re doing the right thing. To me, his promises to scale back at some point are sort of … empty? That is fantasy, not reality. I also think that when push comes to shove, most people who are deeply passionate about the arts or similar calling are not willing to give up a dream for a more typical lifestyle. Your gut told you to move on. Listen to it.

      1. I know so many people who are in relationships where the other person promised to do something “later” or “eventually” and that day has never come.

         As an illustrative story: one of my oldest friends is married to a workaholic who’s had a couple of serious health crises. He keeps promising he’ll scale back when some milestone happens – they have X amount in the bank; he deals with this client or that client’s issue, etc. Several milestones have come and gone and they are financially secure at this point – he could easily cut back to half time or retire (and he’s in his sixties, so he wouldn’t be retiring that “early” at this point). He’s still regularly working 10-12 hour days, 6 days a week, and has had three people he’s hired to work for him quit because he won’t delegate anything. She’s not happy but thinks he just doesn’t know how not to work that much, and figures he’ll cut back when he has a stroke and literally can’t work any more. Or, he’ll die in his office chair. She has said if she knew when she married him what she knows now, she wouldn’t have gone through with the wedding. Not great to live with those kind of regrets.

   7. I’d have to know him a whole whole lot better before I’d have anything useful to say. He could be the kind of guy who needed this wake-up call to say the things that he’d been thinking and a future with him is possible. Or he could be the kind of guy who says what he thinks he wants in the moment, but it’s just an in-the-moment thing. Do you have wise friends who know him well and who know you well who can give you perspective?
      You have this one internet stranger’s permission to put this whole thing on hold for a week to let this intensity of emotion settle a bit.

      1. To your second and third sentences, I think OP knows deep down which type of guy he is. And I think that’s the “something” that was propelling her forward with the breakup, despite all the right words being said by him.

      2. above internet stranger is really smart

   8. Good for you. One of my biggest regrets is that I tried to make so many relationships work that just didn’t in my 20s and 30s. When it’s right you’ll know. I suspect you’ll be extra good at knowing since you’re listening to yourself now.

   9. I’ve had several friends do the hard thing of breaking up with a great guy who wasn’t right for them. They eventually married and had babies with guys who were great AND great for them!

      The wise thing is often the hard and sad thing. Dating an artist (or military man or a host of other careers) is a certain lifestyle, and breaking up when that lifestyle doesn’t match your vision for your future is the best choice. He can find a woman who doesn’t mind the sacrifices.

      1. This is so true. With some people, marrying them is marrying a lifestyle (the same thing with “when you marry someone you marry their family). I know for myself, I wanted to be able to create the life I wanted and live the lifestyle of my own choosing, and not have it dictated by external factors. To that end, I probably couldn’t have married a military person knowing we were going to have to move every 2 years, or married a chef knowing he wouldn’t be available most evenings of our marriage. Going back to Senior Attorney’s “price of admission” thing- sometimes the price of admission for being with people is too high, and it’s okay to say that and want something different for ourselves.

   10. “He said he didn’t realize the extent of how I felt and if he had, he would have pulled back on work.”

       As an Old, let me translate this for you: “I knew you were unhappy about this, but I didn’t think you’d ever grow a set and actually make me change.”

       A man who only stops making you unhappy when you’re ready to walk, is the same as a job that is only willing to pay you what you’re worth after you have another offer in hand. You deserve a partner who doesn’t need to be threatened to pull their fair share of the load.

       1. Oof. Amen.

          1. +1

   11. You did the right thing. As I commented yesterday, when some gives up a passion before they’re ready, it can lead to resentment. In my relationship, I was the resent – er. I gave up a career I loved because I also loved him and months-long stints outside the country weren’t compatible with a normal relationship. At first we were giddy to spend so much time together, but resentments set in after a couple months. The later break-up was brutal, and I was never able to go back to the job I’d left so I ended up with neither of things I’d loved.

       1. +1 – Yeah, he needs to give up this career because HE wants a family and stability, not because you do. If he does it just for you, in 5 years he is likely to leave you and your small child so he can resume his carefree days on the road. This happened to an acquaintance of mine – her husband basically just decided he didn’t like having the stress and responsibility of his life as a boring working father and went back to being a roadies or something. Being a working parent is really hard. You don’t want to do that with someone who isn’t all in, and you don’t want to wait until you have a baby for him to try to figure out a conventional career that will be sustainable – it is not necessarily that easy to just change careers overnight in your mid 30s after 10+ years of doing something else.

   12. There’s a lot of good advice here, hugs to you for doing the right but hard thing. I want to gently push back on the notion that he gave you all the reassurances you wanted. From your description, he didnt actually tell you anything he hasn’t said before. Yesterday you told us that he was passionate about his career and would only leave it IF it didn’t work out for financial or other reasons. Today you say he said this: “He said he’d be open to going back to a “normal” job in the future if his artisic career didn’t work out….” There’s that IF again. He is not interested in giving up this career. He will do it begrudgingly only when he has no other choice, and lord help the woman/baby who precipitates that decision. You did the right thing.

   13. You’ve gotten so much great/wise advice above. My one addition: please clean break this guy. Do not spend years being “friends” and emotionally tied to him. Cut him out of your life, grieve, and then be ready for your actual Great Guy.

       1. Good point. Especially if he moves around a lot, this could turn in to an emotional situationship where you’re only together when he’s in town, but you’re still invested in him and it gets in the way of other possibilities. He may well want to be in touch and keep talking about how much he loves you, since there’s no down side for him. Clean break.

   14. I want to echo the above sentiment about him being “perfect.” I’ve had two boyfriends who I thought were perfect for me and I’d never find anyone like. After we broke up, and with some introspection, I came to the realization that I’d been romanticizing both in my head, focusing on the positives, and ignoring anything that interfered with my idealized vision of them. I think it’s natural to do when you’re in love and it feels very, very real.

       But. I think if he were truly as perfect and emotionally supportive as you feel like he is, you wouldn’t have visions of him missing recitals later on. You’d be able to trust that, no matter what, he’d be there for you and make it work to show up when it matters. If you can’t visualize that, it says to me that he is likely not showing up for you in ways now (or putting you first) that are actually important, but may be easy to discount because you are independent. Emotional support isn’t just listening when you’re crying – it’s being there when you need him and allowing you to feel like there is a dependable, solid person who you can trust to stand up when it’s difficult.

       I think we have very low standards for men, which is justified. But there are many, many men out there who are kind, emotionally attentive, AND will show up for you when you need it. The fact alone that he is ignoring your needs until you threaten to walk shows that he is not the most perfect, emotionally-present guy out there, because there are many, many guys who’d hear your feelings prior to that point.

       Sending you lots of love. You got this.

4. for those organizing and looking for seasonal guides, a great source is apartment therapy whivh alson features houses. they have s free 10 day cure for clutter and lots of other free resources.

   I thought I’d share this as a gateway link for a look at a cool DC property to start the day https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/1344-4th-st-sw-washington-dc-37059721

   1. That’s a great house but I wonder why it’s so cheap.

      1. I think it’s in kind of a transitional area.

         1. Southwest waterfront isn’t a transitional area, unless you also consider U street and Columbia highs (and basically anything east of the park) transitional

      2. It’s a co-op, which isn’t very common in DC. My guess is that it also is on track for some high assessments in the next few years. I’ve coveted these houses for ages though (since my Cantina Marina days, RIP)

      3. The monthly coop fee is $1662, which is over half over the mortgage (and that’s assuming 20% down).

5. Not that I was fooled for a moment by this as an office recommendation… but the mere existence of this … garment? … for any purpose seems like it should be a joke all on its own!

   1. You could wear it to a first FaceTime date, and only stand up on camera if it’s going really well.

      1. Omg hahaha

      2. love this

      3. Monday wins Friday

         1. Snort!!!!

      4. I snort-laughed.

   2. At least it’s only $170? I feel like in past years the April Fool’s outfits have been both absurd AND crazy expensive.

   3. I kinda don’t hate the bottom with a long tuxedo blazer but the bust reminds me of the removable pads in sport bras. I’d rather they be nude or a bit more like a proper bra.

      1. I was thinking that too. If it were luxe/better quality, I could see a daring sort of ingenue wearing it with a blazer to the Grammys or something.

6. Hi everyone, I’m moving to a new house this weekend in a new state. My stuff will reach 5 days later. What all should I be getting for those few days? I’ve already ordered dog food and supplies, and am carrying my basic meds and toiletries in my suitcase. I feel I’m forgetting basic things.

   1. Are you moving into the house right away or staying in a hotel? If the house – do you need a shower curtain? A sheet you can tape up with painter’s tape as a temporary blind?

      1. oh, and scissors or a knife for opening boxes, obvi requires you to check a bag if you’re flying!

         1. ceramic cutting tools for opening boxes are safer and never go dull. amazon to new house

      2. Towels + shower curtain + floor mat if you camp in your house prior to stuff arriving. I can sleep on carpeted floors, but bought a camping cot at Walmart for when there was nothing in my new place but hard floors. Pillow. Blanket. At some point, cheap hotel may cost less?

      3. Go on hotels tonight and get a place to stay, take that worry off your mind.

      4. Pro-tip: Walmart and Target now sell these shower curtain sets that come with the curtain, the hooks, a couple of bath mats, etc. all for $15-25. Just order for pickup at the nearest store (along with a rod if you need one and some toilet paper and hand soap), and you have a functional bathroom for under $40.

         I suggest bringing or buying a basic toolset with a hammer, screwdrivers, a full set of hex keys, and a box cutter. And definitely pack your vacuum cleaner and a roll of paper towels!

   2. At minimum you’ll need somewhere to sleep (air mattress, bedding, and a pillow) and the ability to shower (towel and toiletries). Basic cooking supplies like a single skillet, pot, sharp knife, small cutting board plus plate, water bottle, and silverware is helpful. Sponges, dish soap, hand soap, garbage bags, and toilet paper. If you’re a morning coffee person, think about that.

      Might be easier to just stay in an Airbnb for the in between period if you can swing it.

   3. HOnestly, I wouldn’t worry about it right now. If you’re moving to a new state this weekend, you presumably have finishing up stuff to do in your present location. If your moving & paperwork tasks are truly all done, and you’ve said goodbye to all the people, then have lunch at your favorite cafe, etc. The first day you get to your new place, you can make a store run to pick up the stuff you’re forgetting about now. Breathe deeply right now, and relax into the change. You’ve got this! It’s big, and you’re ready for it.

   4. A lot of stuff will be easier to do at your house before any stuff is in there. If you have space, along with box cutters, I would pack a small tool bag with a set of screw drivers, small drill, drill bits + flat head/flips bits, level and a proper set of allen wrenches. If you don’t have these tools already, it will be in your first of many home depot trips. Would recommend the small Dewalt cordless drill as it is pretty easy to maneuver and half the time I just use it as an electric screwdriver.

      1. Oh my goodness, the Home Depot trips! We sometimes had to go twice a day in our first month in the new place.

         Hold off on buying trash cans until you know what the town service / local provider does. My local trash company will drive out with brand new trash cans the day after you open an account, so we saved a ton by not needing to buy our own!

   5. Toilet paper.

      You will want this in the house even if you’re not sleeping/eating there yet.

      1. And hand soap.

   6. 1) consider new floors/carpets before your furniture gets there!

      2) think about a few kitchen essentials — a pot to boil water for tea, pasta, cook cans of soup, etc, maybe 1 saute pan for eggs, chicken, whatever. Minimal utensils/plates.

      3) flipflops or slippers for walking around hard floors in the house.

   7. Hand soap, toilet paper, paper towels, garbage bags

7. I’ve been happily dating my boyfriend for 1.5 years. We’re late 40s, and while we’ve been married/seriously dated others before, we’ve each been living alone for many years by now.

   My apartment sucks and I want to move. I want to discuss with my boyfriend because his feelings obviously might affect what I choose (I could rent out my place and rent one nearer to him, sell and move in with him now, not move yet but make a future plan to both sell our places and get a place together in X months, etc).

   But uggh, I’m tying myself in knots about the conversation! Worried I’m going to mess up a situation that works well for both of us by bringing this up now (motivated by me wanting to move) as opposed to, like, when we urgently feel we must get married and live together. We currently spend ~3-4 nights a week together, which I’m happy with, but if I ask if he’s interested in living together and he says “no, I like my space/need more time and happy how we are now”…perversely, I might feel rejected and insecure about the same situation I’m fine with today. Yet, I it wouldn’t feel right for me to simply make plans to move without consulting him!

   I’m not a good talker and am not sure the best way to communicate the above in a reasonable non-scary way without getting my feelings squashed. FWIW since I don’t think I was clear above, I’d be happy to live with him and hope we’re heading toward a lifetime commitment, but I’m not on a timeline and ideally we’d have a new bigger joint apartment for that (a huge commitment since we’d both have to sell our current apartments).

   1. First, I’d figure out what you want – do you want to move in together now? Do you not want that?

      Then, discuss with him. Maybe give him a heads up first so he can organize his thoughts? If you know you are going to see each other the next day, could text and say I’ve been thinking seriously about wanting to move out of my apartment and wanted to talk this through with you tomorrow night. That way he can have some space to consider his own thoughts and not just react.

      And I hear your concern but I think saying I really like you but I’m not ready to move in yet and sell my apartment is pretty reasonable after only 1.5 years. If you’re not okay with it that’s also valid, but it wouldn’t be a red flag on its own to me.

   2. It sounds to me like this conversation could go poorly simply because of this mismatch of information/processing time going into it. You’ve thought through your options, considered moving in together and determined how you feel about all of it. He….doesn’t know this is actively on the table. You are ten steps ahead of him! Give him some advance notice prior to having the conversation so that he can catch up.

      1. Thanks, I hadn’t even really thought about this but it is 100% correct, I would just kind of be springing it on him.

   3. I’d just start with talking about you being unhappy with your place and looking to move. This doesn’t actually sound like a decision that involves him since you’ve talked before and he likes living separately (really doesn’t sound like this is heading to marriage or living together from what you’ve written). I’d carry on doing what single you wants to do. I’d tell him what you’re up to because people share such things with people they’re dating. If he magically turns into Mr. Commitment, it will come up naturally.

      1. +1 just state the facts and don’t get ahead of yourself. “I’m unhappy in this apartment [because of the tiny kitchen] and I want to move [for more space]. I’m trying to decide whether I should rent out this place or sell it.” Stop there and see what he says.

         1. +1

   4. Honestly, if moving in together were on the table, it seems like it would come up organically without you having to Initiate A Conversation about it. Given what you describe, I would move forward with whatever plans you have without consulting him specifically about how it relates to him. Naturally, you can talk to him about your plans generally, but since HE hasn’t raised it, I would assume he is not interested in living together. If you make a comment like oh I’m thinking about moving, how do you like your neighborhood, do you know any good spots, that’s MORE than enough of an opening for him to say, “Why don’t you just move in here?” without you having to specifically raise the issue.

8. I’m at a doctor’s office. There is a dad (50ish) here in feet and flipflops (I wore a puffer outside just now). I’m neutral usually on the footwear of others, but I can’t help but see them in their full glory b/c he has his feet on the coffee table. WTF is wrong with people?!

   1. tbh I don’t think this is something worth commenting on- presumably dude is comfortable as is, or maybe he’s seeing the dr for a foot related issue…

   2. Hopefully a foot injury and he’s elevating it? Every conference I worked I’d end up in flip flops on the way home because of bunion or back of the heel issues and look like a crazy person going thru ohare with my puffer. Or he’s just gross?

   3. Since he’s at a doctor’s office, I’m guessing what’s wrong with him is something wrong with his feet. (He may be wearing recovery sandals because of a foot injury that he’s supposed to keep elevated.) I don’t really approve of his solution, but look around you in the waiting room: How well does your doctor’s office accommodate people who are supposed to recline or keep their feet up? My experience is that doctor’s offices are surprisingly inaccessible.

   4. OP: it is a pediatricians office; adult is here with his kid.

      1. ok, then presumably he runs hot, or they were running late for the appt and he grabbed the shoes by the door, or whatever. Dude isn’t going to get frostbite walking into an office. Not worth the mental space it’s currently occupying for you!

         1. OTOH feet or shoes on furniture when you aren’t at your home? Ewwwwwww.

            1. This is my take. Little surprised at the people who are saying it isn’t a big deal for people to put their feet on public furniture. The choice of footwear isn’t as concerning to me as someone putting their shoes on a table where someone might later put food or a beverage. Y’all have seen public bathrooms, yes? Keep the soles of your shoes on the floor and away from any elevated surface where someone might, at some point, put consumable objects. I think this is “times a million” given this is a pediatrician’s office and there are likely kids running around there who are still in the “let’s put everything in our mouths” stage.

            2. I see tons of people who put their feet up on the coffee tables at my public library and I’ve never really given it a second thought.

            3. Yeah I think it’s totally normal to dash out of the house in sandals even in cold weather (Midwest here – some people like my husband break out the shorts when it’s above 50). But putting your feet up on a coffee table that’s not your own is weird and gross to me.

         2. Or, again, he has an injury that’s incompatible with shoes and has been instructed to keep his feet elevated whenever possible, AND his kid is sick.

            Or he’s just gross. But the thing about doctor’s offices is that people often have to be there when they wouldn’t otherwise be out in public at all.

   5. Is the problem that he has ugly feet? That he’s wearing flip flops? That he is wearing flip flops and it’s cold? That he is putting his feet on the table?

      I live in the Boston suburbs. There is a dad that does PK dropoff in flip flops and shorts *year round*. Including in the snow. My kids even joke about it because one time they saw him in real shoes and didn’t think he owned any.

      1. Oh hi. This is also me. My real preference would be to be barefoot if I’m being honest.

      2. Such a Boston thing. Does he also drink iced coffee from Dunkies in 0 degree weather?

   6. This is salacious gossip but when I read about bare feet on a table, I can’t not share this story. Used to be in the same social circle as the current CEO of an online real estate search engine (this was before he was in his current position; his wife is a lovely, brilliant, hilarious gem). When our group would gather to play games or watch movies, he would take off his shoes and socks, propping up his bare feet on the coffee table right next to the platters of food. I squirm thinking about it now, and it’s been over a decade!

9. So I had posted a while ago looking for casual shoes. As an update for any fellow bony-footed friends, supergas (even in a size down) can’t be worn for more than a couple miles… so now I’ve moved on to Allbirds.

   1. My skinny, bony feet do well in P448s even with lots of walking.

   2. I have bony feet and I agree that Supergas are terrible (Vejas are also if you are considering them). I swear by New Balance 696 but they are HTF; the 574s are pretty great also. My most recent favorites are Golas from DSW – I bought the Gola Daytona Safari in White/Light Pink with animal print detailing and I’m in love! I keep reaching for them over my other sneakers. I’m typically anywhere from a 9 to 10 in sneakers; I ended up purchasing a size 9 (online from DSW) and they fit perfectly. Highly recommend!

10. I was so excited to get something new for the office and it’s all sold out in my size!

11. I feel like I know who is at a higher risk of COVID complications, but I hear people talking about risk factors for long COVID. That, I feel, I only hear annecdata about. Is there a good source to get some real information about this? I have some work travel coming up, but I think that even if I got a booster now, it wouldn’t be + 2 weeks by my travel time. It might make sense to pause on a booster now (the last one knocked me out for a weekend) and get one in the fall when numbers may be higher. IDK what to do really. I’m not at a higher risk of COVID complications that might result in hospitalization / death (absent some sort of Nick Cordero situation — also does anyone know if researchers have figured out what happened there other than it was early and no one got the clot risks that COVID can pose back then).

    1. Being female, of menstruating age and having an autoimmune disease are all risk factors for long Covid. I just read an article about it.

    2. We’ll probably need a booster in the fall as well, anyway, so I wouldn’t let that deter you from getting one now. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/29/top-fda-official-says-fully-vaccinated-americans-may-need-more-covid-shots-this-fall.html

    3. I work in public health education so see a lot of information. A risk of severe COVID outcomes might be more common than you think—periodontal disease is one, for example. Blot clots are still an issue, especially for someone who’s had them before or has a condition like factor V Leiden. The journal Nature is a good resource for scientific research and has a lot of plain language analysis that’s easy to read. I’m 50 and at high risk and will get my booster in a couple weeks. It’s hard to track positivity rates now because there’s not much reporting. That’s what’s making it look like rates are plummeting. Hospital occupancy and death are two indicators you can watch.

       1. I have Factor V Leiden and my hematologist (who is extremely pro vaccines and cautious about COVID) has repeatedly told me I’m not at a higher risk of complications from COVID. He’s also encouraged me to get whatever boosters I can whenever I can but not because I’m high risk.

       2. I think a lot of this is just generic stuff though right? Periodontal disease makes you higher risk for all kinds of stuff like infections, heart disease, etc. Also highER risk doesn’t mean high risk. If you’re 40 and vaccinated and boosted, your risk of hospitalization and especially death is very very low, so you can double or triple it (which is a huge increase percentagewise) and still have an objectively low overall risk. Age is far and away the biggest risk factor for severe Covid outcomes.

          1. OP is not talking about hospitalization and death. She’s talking about long COVID, which happens to a lot of healthy middle-aged women.

             1. I’m responding to the Anon at 9:58 who said “A risk of severe COVID outcomes might be more common than you think—periodontal disease is one, for example”

    4. I just read a paper that said that 1-2% of people who get Covid will develop diabetes in the year or so after infection (that’s on top of the people who would have already would have been expected to develop diabetes during that time, so overall the rate is even higher).

       1. T1? Or T2? T1 would be very alarming. T2 in a country where many are pre diabetic may just be accelerating the tipping point. Do you know?

          1. I had to read the entire paper to find out and they counted both because it was a database study… but did say that the vast majority in their population (VA or other military) was type 2. In younger populations there has been more type 1, though.

             1. I should add that viruses have long been thought to trigger type 1- I have a sibling with type 1, who developed it right after a viral infection. But in that case it’s more like you say, it’s accelerating something that probably would have happened no matter what. At this point, it’s unclear whether the increase in both type 1 and type 2 is just accelerating cases that would have happened no matter what or triggering people who would not have developed diabetes without covid. But it’s definitely a concern, as both types have life long consequences for the people with them and huge costs for the health care system.

          2. 96 million Americans – 1 in 3 – are prediabetic. Likely Covid infection accelerated inflammatory and metabolic processes that lead to people “tipping over” the threshold from pre-diabetic to diabetic (FYI, on A1c the threshold for diabetes is 6.5 vs. 6.4; using fasting blood glucose it’s the number going from 125 to 126; in an oral glucose tolerance test it’s the number going from 199 to 200. So “tipping over the threshold” for some people can be a matter of one of those metrics changing by one point). For many of the newly-diagnosed T2 folks, they can “reverse” their T2 diabetes by losing weight, limiting carbohydrates and exercising more; still more will be able to control their diabetes with oral medication alone, and never progress to needing insulin as long as they concurrently make appropriate lifestyle changes. As others have mentioned in the past, post-viral syndromes have been around a long time and as Anon at 10:44 mentions below, it’s been thought for some time that viral infection can trigger Type 1 diabetes diagnoses. I would not take the study as “Covid infection causes diabetes.” I would take it as “getting infected with Covid caused people whose metrics were about to tip over into the diabetic range to reach that threshold sooner than they might have had they not gotten infected.” Two different things.

             1. I’m the person who posted about the study and the comment that we’ve known about viral triggers for along time. I essentially agree with you that a lot of this might just be pushing forward diagnoses that would happen anyway, I just think it’s not clear that that’s the only thing going on, and even if it is, it underestimates the burden of having diabetes several extra years. Like I said above, my sibling has type 1 diabetes, I have a different chronic illness, and we obviously manage to live our lives with them, but there are real costs, financial and otherwise and I’d be pretty thrilled to have an extra year without that health condition. Not saying we should stay in some sort of forever lockdown or anything, just that there are a lot of consequences to Covid we’re probably not yet aware of.

    5. Your Local Epidemiologist has a series on long covid and is in general a good resource for laypeople to get information on new research coming out. Long covid seems particularly tricky to get data on because people define it differently, it takes a while to get the data because it is something that happens over time, and COVID is still new, while variants and vaccines and other variables are even newer. Anyway, here is an article that talks a bit about what is known for risk factors:
       https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/long-covid19-mini-series-indicators?s=r

    6. I can’t find #4 on predictors but your local epidemiologist just did a series on long covid

       https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/long-covid-mini-series-burden

12. I’m looking for a fiction mystery. What have you all read recently that kept you turning pages?

    1. Magpie Murders
       The Thursday Murder Club
       Eight Perfect Murders
       For Your Own Good

       1. Loved Thursday Murder Club. There’s a sequel now, too.
          I also enjoyed the Miss Fisher Murder Mystery series.

    2. Anthony Horowitz books (Magpie Murders, the Word is Murder, etc)

       For light and fluffy – like the literary equivalent of a Father Brown mystery – the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series

       1. -slaps forehead- Father Brown mysteries are also a book, lol, but I know them from Britbox TV :)

    3. Do you like mysteries that are more serious or lighthearted?

       I love the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny. The first one is called Still Life. They are cozy mysteries

       If you want something (much) more lighthearted, I recently read and enjoyed Finlay Donovan Is Killing It.

       Twenty Years Later was a very good, serious, page turner. It heavily involved 9/11 if that would be an issue for you.

    4. The Verifiers isn’t traditional mystery but I enjoyed it.

    5. Magpie Murders for a classic mystery (within a mystery!). Anything by Tana French for darker/detective focused (the Likeness is my favorite).

    6. The Kopp Sisters books
       Murder at The Mill
       CS Harris’s books
       Andrea Penrose’s books
       None of these are “great literature” but they are page turners for sure!

    7. His and Hers from Alice Feeny.

    8. Razorblade Tears by S.A. Crosby. Not mystery per se, probably more or a crime/vengeance novel. It was really heartbreakingly good.
       I also really liked the Clare Fergussen mysteries by Julia Spencer Fleming.

    9. The Christie Affair. Could not put it down

    10. +1 to Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series and Anthony Horowitz. The Maisie Dobbs series

        This week, I read the first book of Nicci French’s Frieda Klein series, and it was definitely a page-turner. (Heads up to those who are sensitive to child-in-peril plots… maybe just skip ahead to the second book.) It has good characters, the mystery was well done, and the London setting was great.

    11. If you like police procedural mysteries with actual character development, there is the JD Robb “In Death” series. I think we’re up to 53 of them now.

        I’ve been re-reading the Lynn Koslow series by Edie Claire the last few weeks. They are more cozy, but they have decent stories.

    12. The Rose Code is historical fiction (female codecrackers in WWII UK) but has a mystery element that kept me going. Very well written!

    13. Anything by Tana French! All her novels are gorgeously written and un-put-downable. Many of them deal with the Dublin Murder Squad, but you don’t need to read them in any particular order. In The Woods is her most well known but The Likeness is my favorite (big Donna Tartt vibes), but really you can’t go wrong.

    14. The Disappearing Act (young woman in a Hitchcock movie type situation)

        Fortune Favors the Bold (and the second book, Murder Under Her Skin – women detectvies in the 1940s, great main character)

    15. If you are interested in historical mysteries, I love and highly recommend authors C.J. Sansom (Tudor era), Patricia Finney aka P.F. Chisholm (also Tudor) and Ariana Franklin (different eras).

    16. The Plot was excellent

13. Just booked work travel to Austin TX in early May. I’ll be in mtgs all day, but will have the afternoon i arrive for sightseeing. Will probably have at least one dinner free (usually wind up with dinner plans made by others).
    Would definitely love some recs for casual dinner/drinks/maybe a little live music. Or whatever Austin has to offer. I enjoy the outdoors, and would probably appreciate something with a view after spending the day in a hotel ballroom.
    Am attending solo (from my office) so no other opinions to consider. I am trying to hide from my husband and kids how much I am looking forward to this…

    1. My friends and I enjoyed renting bikes and riding around Lady Bird Lake and also going out on a boat in the evening to view the famous bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge (which spans Lady Bird Lake).

    2. I loved Uchi sushi in Austin, it’s a pretty spot, and for me, a solo sushi dinner is heaven.

    3. I haven’t been to Austin for years, but I used to go to a conference there every year and loved to have a drink and some oysters on the patio at Perla’s on S. Congress and people watch. There’s also great shopping in the area.

       1. Loved Perla

    4. Camille Styles blog might have ideas, she’s based in Austin. It’s also pretty to look at if you have internet time to kill while you’re there.

    5. Hi! Texan and Longhorn here. While I know “college Austin” more than real Austin, DH and I went recently for a long weekend and had an awesome time. My recommendations for your time:

       – Mozart’s Cafe on the Lake – not too far from city center and you get views after a long day
       – I’m assuming you may be near downtown. Can I suggest a walk through the leafy, beautiful, 40 acres of UT’s campus?
       – El Arroyo, Trudy’s, Kerby Lane, Magnolia Cafe – SOMEWHERE for Chips, Queso, and a Marg

    6. Launderette on Holly Street (east of downtown). Yum!

14. I will be going to Sicily for about 10 days in late September. Looking for any and all recommendations from people who have been! Should I visit both Palermo and Catania? Is Taormina too touristy, or worth a visit? What about Mt. Etna? Thanks for your help!

    1. I didn’t visit Catania or Taormina, and Mt. Etna was “closed” when I was there, so I cannot comment on those! The highlights of my trip were Morgantina, Agrigento, and Palermo. And also just the trips to get places (so much beautiful countryside to pass through).

    2. Taormina is touristy but stunningly beautiful. I spent a few days there and loved it. We stayed at (very pricey) hotel that was originally a monastery; if you have the budget for it, it was incredible.

       I did not to to Palermo, but Catania was sort of meh for me. My highlights were Siracusa, the neolithic burial sites in the gorge at Pantalica, and Enna. We also took the ferry over to Malta for a few days, which was awesome.

    3. I went about 22 years ago as a college student (on a bus tour, with my grandmother) so take this with a giant grain of salt but…I thought Taormina was the prettiest place I had ever seen.

    4. Taormina is both too touristy and worth a visit. It’s very beautiful, and you’ll enjoy it, but you have to accept that it’s a town that’s full of tourists and that as a visitor you are everybody’s pay check. If you have any sort of mobility issues, it might not be the best place, lots of stairs and hills.

       I would recommend Syracuse over Catania as a tourist destination in that part of Sicily.

15. I have realized over the past few months that I am really bad about vocalizing my needs, especially to my spouse. I think I’m being obvious, and apparently, I am not. I have always known that I struggle to voice things that might make someone else upset or lead to an uncomfortable discussion. I have known for a while that I take on too much and expect too much from myself. Basically, I am very conflict avoidant. I can pinpoint things in my upbringing that definitely led to me thinking it’s OK to squelch my feelings. I know therapy is the obvious answer but given the state of finding an available therapist these days, is there anything I can do on my own to be better at this? DH and I had a really uncomfortable conversation last night where he kept saying, “all these are solvable issues if you let me in.” It was in regards to divvying up household tasks and parenting stuff during his busy work season. And I know, deep down, that he’s right. But I find it really unnerving to know that apparently I’m doing a bang-up job of hiding my stress when I’m actually very close to a breaking point. Or should I be more worried that he’s missing those signals (which he is also worried about)?

    1. So, this isn’t a long term solution to you vocalizing your feelings, but I think the book Fair Play and the accompanying ‘cards’ are a really great tool to visualizing the needs of keeping a household/family running. I had a lot of success having my husband read the book, bringing the cards to therapy, and divvying them up together. It also gave my husband accountability and we had a space to discuss it if he dropped the ball on ‘his’ cards and it gave me the language to say, I’m ok holding more cards for your busy season at work, but then I need you to step it up so I can recover when you’re done AND it was very clear then that I was taking on more work and it wasn’t just ‘in my head’ or ‘making up things that don’t really need to be done’.
       I personally haven’t loved doing virtual therapy but that does usually cut wait times down if you’re open to it?

    2. If you have an EAP call it.

    3. I am incredibly together but have lupus (well maintained, but it takes its toll) and I’ve really struggled with vocalising what I need for support. It’s not a visible disability so people tend to forget, and I tend to let them forget.
       I think the Fair Play idea is a really good one. I’ve also had to challenge my own standards and expectations “what’s the worst that can happen if my in-laws are visiting and I feed them veggie burgers and bagged salad? Will they never come again? Or will they realise I’m a full time working mom?”

    4. I’m also very conflict avoidant. Can you write stuff down – like text or email and use that as a starting point for a conversation later?

       1. +1 My husband works two feet from me and we gchat/text/google calendar/use Trello for anything either of us needs to actually remember or do. There’s no harm in using an alternate communication methods if working up the energy to talk verbally causes anxiety.

    5. It helps me for each of us to share one bad thing and one good thing that had happened during the day. It’s been hard for me to say a bad thing but it’s improved how much I communicate immensely. Also, I feel like it keeps the conversation lower stakes: it’s different to say ‘I wish you had helped me do x this morning’ than to say ‘you never help me with x’.

    6. • How are you at vocalizing ordinary needs/desires/preferences that don’t have conflict attached to them? If you can’t do that, either, start there. Aim to vocalize at least 4 desires/preferences/needs each week. Get used to putting what you want and think into words. Start small. When someone asks what restaurant you want to go to, tell them. If you’re tired and need to go to bed before anyone else in the room is tired or needs to go to bed, say it and then go to bed. If you’re deciding what errands to run on the weekend and you want to do X first so you can go do Y later, say it.

       Find concrete ways to externalize what’s been going on inside you. For now, stop relying on those “signals” you think you’re giving and get concrete. Example: Set a daily or weekly stress check with your husband: on a scale of one to 10, how stressed are you? Tell him the number. If you need to, get a little stress meter you keep in the kitchen and move the needle to the appropriate place every day.

       1. These are great ideas. Thank you.

          1. One more idea. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, and for me it rises to the level of panic, I will map out my life on an Excel spreadsheet. I put each distinct element of my life on the top row as a column and then underneath that write all the feelings I have about that particular item below it. Things like my house, my job, my husband, my kids, my mom, my dad, my volunteer work, my friends, etc. on top, and “angry at coworker”, “sad about Mom’s cancer” or whatever. It all gets dumped out and it helps me figure out what’s really causing me stress.

    7. To your last question, it is not fair for you to expect him to be a mind reader. It is on you to learn to express your needs. Just start with your words. He sounds open to hearing them.

       1. No, I know that’s not a fair expectation. That’s why I’m trying to learn how to better express my needs without feeling bad about it!

          1. Well that’s good, but it’s just as unfair to expect him to pick up on signs, etc. just start using your words!

             1. Can you not read?!

             2. No, I’m illiterate. Seriously sometimes the solution is actually quite simple. You can get lost in your head or you can just do the thing that works and stop agonizing over it.

          2. Why are you feeling bad about expressing your needs? No judgement at all.

             I can tell you why I used to feel bad about expressing my needs: horribly dysfunctional family wherein I was expected to be the peacekeeper and the responsible one. If my needs inconvenienced someone, that was seen as a very bad thing. Finally figured out, thanks to lots of therapy, that these aren’t safe people and the problem lies with them, not with my very human needs. Also figured out that the behaviour just hurts genuinely loving people who care about me, because they don’t like to see me suffer needlessly.

             1. Yes, OP, if you think it might be relevant to you, do think about how your FOO may have negatively impacted your ability to express your needs. I was often called selfish for expressing perfectly normal needs to my family. It takes a lot to unlearn that and determine what is actually normal/ acceptable/ necessary in a healthy adult relationship.

             2. It comes from a few places. The first being the old trope of the woman picking up all slack around the household. My dad was seriously unhelpful in that way. He was the breadwinner, and my mom did all the things. Despite my best efforts to not end up that way (because even as a kid, it seemed messed up), I am doing that very thing. My DH is not a slacker who expects me to do it all, by any means, but I sometimes put that on myself.

                The other thing is flat-out mom guilt. Especially as a working mom. I’ve come a long way, but it’s still there at times. I feel like I should be able to handle my kids on my own. They’re not even babies anymore so I feel like I don’t have a good reason for feeling overwhelmed and over it when DH is less available during his heavy work season. I put it all on myself to find solutions.

             3. Oh, and there’s a third thing. When I expressed needs as a child, it usually didn’t go particularly well. My parents are well-meaning, but there were four of us and two of them, so they were stretched pretty thin at all times.

             4. Imma gonna save you some therapy here. The reason for Things One and Two is Thing Three. Children aren’t able to handle adult responsibilities. (I don’t mean stuff like doing chores or occasionally getting dinner ready; I mean, they can’t handle the responsibility of determining what needs to be done and managing other people’s emotions.) When they have those adult responsibilities put on them, it really messes up their internal calibration of what is normal and reasonably can be expected of a person. Those unrealistic expectations get carried into adulthood; after all, if they could handle it all as a mere child, they should be able to handle it all as an adult.

                Also, having never felt safe expressing needs as a child, despite the fact that children are definitionally needy beings (if anyone has the right to express a need, it’s a child), they certainly aren’t going to do so as an adult (because adults are supposed to be less needy than children).

                You’re still trying to take the entire household’s emotional load on yourself, even though there’s another adult there who is perfectly capable of handling his share. Some of this is quite admirable: you don’t want your kids to have adult emotional responsibilities as a child. But your husband is there to do his share of all of the emotional load, and part of the emotional load includes your needs.

       2. I used to try to solve all problems for my partner and myself without actually checking in with my partner. Sometimes I couldn’t handle everything I assigned myself and broke down. Other times I resented that he didn’t notice everything I did for him. It only got better when I understood my part of the problem: I wasn’t talking to him about any of it before I took it all on. It turned out that not everything I thought had to be done was truly important, and that he was more available and willing to help, but he didn’t know what I wanted or needed. It’s been a process, but I’ve learned to ask for what I need, make space for him to tell me what he needs, and negotiate how we take care of it all.

          If this sounds familiar to you, then absolutely therapy can help. But in the meantime, you can keep reminding yourself to talk about it and make sure you’re truly asking for what you need. It’s scary at first when you’re not used to it, but I promise it gets easier.

          1. I can relate to this on the flip side. Pre pandemic I was traveling every week for work and honestly probably pretty checked out at home because I was exhausted and distracted. One night my boyfriend I live with burst out with a very frustrated “I do everything around here!” I was defensive at the time (didn’t he notice I had scrubbed the toilet just yesterday? Etc) but we had a conversation about what he needed, which turned out to be, for him, me taking on more work of meal planning and cooking. I’m more than happy to do it, but I had no idea that was one specific area of frustration until he told me.

    8. I just want to chime in with encouragement, because you sound a little overwhelmed at recognizing the need for change, while not being able to envision what that change looks like right now. That’s ok! You can take a few steps without seeing the whole staircase (I forgot where that line is from!).
       It will get better, too. It will take some practice, but it’s so worth it!

       1. Agreed! I’m also all for therapy, but the goal is to just figure out what’s going on so you can fix it. You can spend 5k to dissect patterns from your FOO to realize you got shut down when you expressed a need, and you no longer live in that family and do exercises practicing expressing yourself. Or you can just read what you wrote here, come to the same realization, start expressing yourself and spend that 5k on a lovely vacation with just you and your spouse and carve out time to talk.

16. I bought a house. It’s become clear that I overpaid probably to the tune of 7-8% of the value of the house and the house will have additional unexpected frustrations and costs. These frustrations are things I thought about in advance, asked about, did my best to mitigate… and because my realtor did a bad job, my efforts were for naught.

    There doesn’t seem to be a solution to remediate the damage. Suing would cost the value of anything I’d earn back, even if I was successful, and take time I don’t have.

    But this situation makes me SO MAD, in a way that is not good for my mental or physical health. I makes me livid about the realtor every time I think about it and angry with myself for what feels like blowing the most expensive transaction of my life. How do I let it go?

    1. Did your realtor tell you your concerns over the inspection report were no big deal?

    2. No advise. I’d be upset for a while. I would also make several expensive purchases (that I would otherwise not have) to make myself feel better. Kind of like rebound dates after a breakup. I can’t explain the logic behind that.

    3. Not to minimize your issues, but honestly, welcome to home ownership. Unexpected frustrations, even back in the day of a full pre-sale inspection, are just kind of part of it. If you otherwise like the house, stop thinking how much you paid or the value. It’s a home, not an investment. If there was something that was actively hidden from you, do consider talking to an attorney about at least sending a demand letter. You may be able to get some resolution without filing a lawsuit.

       1. Yes, this is just how home ownership goes, especially in today’s market. It never ends, either. We spend $10K a year just keeping our cr@ppy house from falling apart.

          1. I fully relate to this amount for keeping a basic home functioning. Just when you think things are under control…hello $10k of plumbing expenses in a 3 month span!

          2. I’m learning that I do not like a single thing about home ownership. Is there a way to delegate this whole hassle the way I used to delegate to my landlord?

             1. I hate it too but other than being a celebrity with a house manager? I haven’t found one.

             2. Ha, you probably could actually hire a “property manager” for your own home, the same way a landlord would for a property they rent out, for a few hundred bucks a month. Might be something to consider if it would actually make your life easier – what are the aspects of homeownership you want to outsource?

       2. Amen. Homeownership is stupid (source: spent $12k replacing the orangeburg sewer pipe that collapsed, the interior drain pipe at slab bc it was rusted and cracked and leaking). Last night the storms brought water into my back hallway even though I had it resealed recently (flippers didn’t seal it at all). Discovered during the first winter in this house that there was no AC or heat in the bedroom I use as my master, the middle light in my full bath has never worked, the flippers used cheap everything so it will all eventually get swapped out, BLAH BLAH BLAH.

       3. Yeah, you are mad because you are making an assumption that this was preventable. But maybe it actually wasn’t. Maybe someone else would have been willing to pay more for this house, regardless of the issues it has. You did the best you could under the circumstances, including by hiring this realtor. Forgive yourself for not being perfect and move on with your life.

    4. You need to fix what’s wrong with the house and move on. I’m sorry you feel you got ripped off. Can you get your incompetent realtor to make a contribution?

       1. Why would a relator make a contribution to someone thinking they overpaid who agreed to the amount (in a seller’s market)? Did they ask to see comps before making a bid? And how is it on the realtor to be responsible for a repair the buyer was made aware of but didn’t investigate further? A realtor isn’t a home inspector either.

          Something like suing a previous owner for something that wasn’t disclosed like a known mold issue makes sense–but again, that’s not on your realtor.

          You don’t get to ask for contributions just because you have buyer’s remorse.

    5. The previous owner of my home did some shady things and had a less than truthful realtor. I seriously considered reporting the real estate agent to the licensing board after we bought out home. I also think we over paid at the time for our home at the time. I was taught, rule of thumb wise, buying a house really only mathematically works if you keep the house for 10+ years. Luckily with the recent market, my home has appreciated by 50% of the original price we purchased it for 5 years ago. We recently were able to obtain a HELOC on that value growth and it provides us more investment options. An 8% over payment of my home would have been a wash by now. Also, if you factor all of the people who bought homes in 2007 and 2008 time frame before the crash. It took a while before their home values came out to the same amount now. I know you’re mad now and I’m sure it’s justified. But what I’m trying to say is that if your planning on staying in your home for a good amount of time and keep it maintained. Statistically it should work out in the end. Even if you over paid now.

    6. Umm, your feelings are pretty common and that’s how it goes? You overpaid likely because you’re in a hot market (everyone is, and see all the posts of people who haven’t gotten a place). Overpaying shakes out over time. And all houses have things to fix that you didn’t realize during the buying process. All of them. I’d advise finding some gratitude for being able to own your own home and enjoy your purchase. Bitterly thinking of suing someone over the natural way of things is a miserable way to live.

       1. I made this comment below but it’s driving me a little crazy because it’s come up in a few places on this thread – If the market is hot, which is driving prices up, paying the price it takes to get the house isn’t “overpaying”! What am I missing?

          1. You’re not missing anything. I was trying to be a little kind to the OP by even conceding the “overpaying” point. Which I doubt she did.

    7. Depending on the amounts involved, maybe a lawyer would take it on a contingency. Or consider hiring a lawyer to write a letter to the realtor and negotiate a resolution short of litigation. Presumably the realtor has insurance and if the carrier becomes involved that could facilitate a resolution.

       1. This is so crazy. No. This is just how things go – the impulse to litigate is just a bad one.

          1. Not always. I have family members who bought a house and, a few weeks after closing, ran into some acquaintances who said they’d been under contract on that house and backed out because a test came back with an asbestos issue. The previous owner had not remediated and had not disclosed. They hired an attorney, who either sued or threatened to sue, and got enough money through settlement to remediate the asbestos (more than 6 figures, and about 25-50% the sale price).

             But the previous owner was sketchy about a lot of other things. A planter in the foyer had been boxed over, and there was standing water in it. Water was leaking under the windows, and the previous owner painted over the water damage. Overall, they’ve had another $50K in repairs that showed up after they accepted settlement on the asbestos remediation. That’s just part of home ownership.

             1. Actively hiding something like unabated asbestos is downright fraudulent. Shoddily done repair work or normal wear and tear are totally different.

             2. Undisclosed asbestos is a whole different ballgame.

    8. Eh, I was you when we bought in 2015. we probably overpaid by at least 10-25k. I wouldn’t use my realtor again because of that BUT I will tell you that our house is now worth easily 250k more than it was then so it’s not that much in the long run.

       Do you like the house? Will you be there a while? Time to move on.

    9. You have three possible options in any given scenario: accept; change; or leave. Here, the two most available are accept and change (through improvements), but accept is what you need to do.

       The facts are what the facts are and there is nothing you can do about it. The energy you are wasting on timings you cannot change is unhealthy for you, as you know. I wish I could tell you exactly how to let it go, but you just have to decide to honestly.

    10. I was in a similar spot 18 months ago when we bought. The seller demanded an extra $5k in closing costs due to attorney error and we had $5k in repairs on a new house due to seller’s faulty construction. It was beyond stressful and we were really concerned we had made a huge mistake.

        Now? The house has gone up 33% in value over those 18 months. I’m sure the seller is now kicking himself for not holding onto it for another six months and really cashing in. The real estate attorney we had to fire midway through has given up practicing property law and our agent had to switch agencies. This all without us saying a word (and I did look into lodging a complaint with the state bar but didn’t go through with it). Sometimes things just work out and if the realtor is as bad as you say – it will catch up with them.

    11. I’m not sure that I have any helpful advice for how to let it go and move on, but I will say that I bought my house in a much more rational market and I still felt like that. I also came to loathe both my realtor and the seller’s realtor. I think that this is probably a fairly common feeling coming out of one of the largest purchases you will ever make. In my case, I found that it just took time to move past it, and getting settled into my house certainly helped too. I think it’s useful to put some thought into what lessons you’ve learned that might help you do something differently the next time, and then try to just recognize that how you are feeling is pretty normal and it will pass with time.

    12. This all sounds like everyone’s experience buying a house in a seller’s market.

        1. Yes. I agree. It’s sadly a sellers market and not much wiggle room for buyers. You have my sympathies and commiseration.

           We are going under contract on a house soon and I am sure we are over paying and will have around 10k in repairs we have to do immediately. The sad thing is that we’ve lost out on so many bids we are ok with moving forward on this house because we need to move. Things I never thought I’d be ok with are now totally fine because this market is so terrible.

        2. Right, but in a seller’s market, how can you be “overpaying”? The house costs what it costs. If OP had to pay 7-8% over what SHE thinks the house was worth in order to close the deal – obviously it’s worth more than she thinks!

           1. Exactly.

    13. I feel your frustration, as we had a terrible Realtor when we sold our last house, who did such an abysmal job we seriously thought about suing (we didn’t). I wrote out about four different scathing reviews for the online Realtor review sites, but never posted them. I did tell several people I knew, who asked me “oh, how was so-and-so as a Realtor” that we hadn’t had a good experience and I didn’t recommend her. I didn’t get into gory details but was unequivocal that she did not have our stamp of approval. That was somewhat satisfying.

        Otherwise, I think time will be the best healer here, and I would also do some thought exercises about what you love about your new house. Instead of walking around thinking about the problems you wish weren’t there, try to find beautiful things or things you appreciate about your new place. I love the way light filters into our breakfast nook in the mornings and every time I see that, I am grateful to be in our house, even if it meant going through the maddening experience we did in selling our old house.

        I am sorry this happened to you. I am hopeful in the next few years, disruption will occur in the real estate industry similar to what’s happening in the car industry, where we’ll be able to cut out salespeople who get paid commissions for not doing much and be able to buy and sell real estate without Realtors. I will confess to still feeling flashes of resentment about the commission we paid our Realtor, who made quite a chunk of money off of us after causing us no end of frustration, anger, disbelief and despair over a number of months. But I take a deep breath and let it go.

    14. Sell the house to someone else at a small profit and go back to renting. I have spent the past 17 years regretting home ownership.

    15. Do you otherwise like the house itself? Do you otherwise like living there? Can you afford this house? If yes to all, can you try to reframe your issues with the situation as they are simply the price of admission?

        It’s hard to let go of a fully justified anger, but it harms only you. If I had answered yes to the first three questions, I would make a list, timeframe, and budget for what the house seriously needs (water intrusion, foundation, electrical, and/or HVAC issues). And a list of other things to take care of at some unspecified future date. Plus I would immediately buy something nice or do a home improvement project that is something I would just love living with as a sort of a sop to my feelings! I’m sorry you’re going through this. I dealt with a purchase last year where the home inspection missed things like a leaky dishwasher and a hairline crack in a toilet bowl, so I sort of feel your pain.

    16. This was me when I bought my house. The realtor actually lied to me about some stuff. I made the mistake of asking them to fix one of their mistakes; they got a contractor to do a bandaid repair that I found years later and by that time created an even bigger issue. I would’ve been better off if I’d just handled it myself. So, learn from my mistake. Don’t give these jerks the power to make you feel negatively about your home. It is YOURS and you will make it right.

    17. It’s not really clear from your post – how is it the realtor’s fault? What did they do or not do that directly resulted in your overpaying? These days with Google and Redfin, I’d think we have free access to all the information we need to make decisions about things like how much to pay for a house, so I’m having trouble imagining how a buyer’s realtor could have this much impact. A seller’s realtor, sure, because they can definitely leave money on the table by doing a crappy job, but the buyer’s realtor is basically a go-between, especially once you’ve identified the house you want.

    18. I think this is a really common feeling. I bought my house in 2018 (before the market got extremely crazy here), had a full inspection, bought the house for a decent price, was in love with the house when I originally looked at it and had SERIOUS buyers remorse for at least a year.

        For me, I kept feeling like we bought a lemon whenever I found out something needed work. I kept feeling like I had made a huge mistake and was stuck with a house I hated, that it was a terrible investment and I’d never recover financially, the works. In truth, all houses need work basically all the time it seems, and just maintaining a house takes a lot of money and time.

        I think these feelings are natural when you’ve just spend a mountain of money and committed to a mortgage. Four years later I feel completely differently– I love the house and never want to leave. If I were you I’d stick it out for a year or two and see if your feelings change.

    19. LOL you don’t get to sue because you have regrets.

17. I have a question about professional bags!

    I’m getting a shoulder bag made of fabric (the Tom Bihn Pilot), attempting to replace my current cross-body bag with something a bit more professional. The current one has a lot of enamel pins on it. I’m wondering if I could move some of them over to the new one and still have it look okay for work – not the obviously fandom-y ones (some are symbols from a video game I play) or the ones with political content (some have pride flags or pro-vaccine messages), but ones that are, for example, replicas of classic works of art, or a stylized state flower. Thoughts? (I can provide images of some of them – I got a lot of them on Etsy – but don’t want to seem like I’m advertising.)

    1. This is know your workplace thing. My stodgy industry wouldn’t consider pins on a bag professional. I carry it to clients also, different if perhaps it was just to/from office for only coworkers to see.

       1. +1. I work in higher ed, carry a backpack, and have three pins on my bag: one with my pronouns, one of the school logo in rainbow colors, and a small flag-shaped pin that just says “oof.”

    2. Lots of pins on a bag give off a very ‘young’ vibe. If that’s advantageous for your industry, sure, otherwise, proceed with caution.

    3. Nope, save them for the weekend.

    4. Nope, I wouldn’t do it. It’s too juvenile for the office, imo.

    5. If you’re in an art-y or tech-y job, they might be fine. But this board skews formal and stodgy (the industries, not the individual posters) so the most likely answer is that you should probably leave them off.

       But, are you starting a new job? Or is the bag the only thing that’s changing here? Just wondering if you don’t have a read on what’s okay based on the current bag’s reception, or what?

    6. Depends on what you do and where you work. For most professional jobs, I wouldn’t want to be the girl with the pin bag. I find it the bag equivalent of a ton of bumper stickers and would think of you as a mega virtue signaler, which I find a complete turn off.

    7. Agree with all the “know your setting” answers.

       You want to be “more professional.” I’d put some more words to that, if I were you. What does professional mean to you? More serious? polished, older, formal, trustworthy, authoritative, skilled, etc.? When you know what you want to look like and why, you’ll have a better sense if “cloth bag with enamel pins” fits that image for you.

    8. You don’t have a question about professional bags–because any bags with pins on it isn’t “professional.” I work in a creative field and it would totally fly. But I also wouldn’t call it a professional look if that is what you are seeking.

    9. No comment on the pins but just want to say I recently got my first Tom Bihn bag recently and am obsessed with it. So functional, so well-made!

18. I’m hosting an outdoor sports-ish event (think kickball type of thing) for the PTO this weekend and volunteered to bring casual snacks. I won’t have a plug or anything. I want to make it easy. Any ideas?

    1. Fruit platter, crudite and dip platter, tub of guac, jar of salsa & a bag of chips, and add on some hummus for protein and cookies/sweet option? Basically do a Trader Joes or Whole Foods run and buy whatever looks good, shelf stable, requires the least amount of prep and have some moderately healthy options.

    2. Are these snacks for adults or kids? In these (post-ish?) COVID times, I would be leery of any shared dips and would probably stick to prepackaged things: granola bars, small individual bags of chips, little baggies of pre-sliced apples. You could add on some fruit like bananas, clementines, pears, or those cheese-and-cracker-type packs of carrots and ranch. If you wanted something heavier, you could do mini bagels with individual cups of guac or cream cheese. Lean into the grab and go aspect – Costco will be your friend here.

       1. All of this. This is where individual packages are the best choice.

19. I love holiday cards that I receive but what do you all do with them? Recycle them or store them somewhere? Recycle prior years but keep the most recent year? Or only keep ones where a significant life event happened (i.e. a marriage, divorce, birth of a child, career change). I need to do some major de-cluttering but when I go through them and see the cute pics and messages and the stages of their lives, I also feel kinda bad just chucking it.

    1. I just toss them, I love them, I keep them around for a few months and hen toss around Valentines Day. I’m not especially sentimental though and toss most everything. I hate clutter.

    2. Maybe I am heartless, but I just toss them.

    3. Toss. Don’t feel bad! They served their intended use and are now done.

    4. I display them during the holidays and then recycle.

    5. I keep the ones from my closest family and friends and store them with the Christmas decorations. It’s kinda fun to take it out the next year and see how much people have grown and changed. Mind you, I don’t do that for the whole stack. It’s FINE to just recycle them after the fact. I send cards, but I do not expect people to hang onto them for long.

       1. I do something like this but I take pictures of the cards of our closest friends/family and then put them on our holiday slideshow on the digital photoframe. then i trash.

    6. I am sentimental to a fault. I keep them. I punch a hole and string them together like a flip book. The “books” live in a tupperware in my closet.

    7. I love kids and seeing people’s kids grow another year so some years I’ve bundled the cards up and saved them. This year I had a stack of cards I from about 5 years ago that I got to compare to the current years’ cards along with my own kids, and they really thought that was fun. But then I threw them away and I also didn’t save this year’s cards… so I guess it depends on my mood the day the cards come down. Regardless, I’m delighted to receive them.

       1. This is my method :)

    8. I keep a select few from closest friends and family and pitch the rest. I get photos from people where I’ve never even physically met the kids (college roommates living across the country, for example) so while they’re interesting to glance at, I don’t have a vested interest in storing them.

    9. Your future self will be glad you allowed these to be free. I used to save them all for years and now I’ve realized the chances that I will ever want to spend my time looking at them are nil. Now I recycle them a few weeks after Christmas except ones from close family/friends.

       1. I have cards from now-deceased family members and I treasure them as a reminder of people I lost. I have told my daughter she can keep or trash once I am gone.

          Which is not to say I save every single card! But the ones from my parents and grandparents with little notes and a few from aunts and uncles as well as a few from very close friends. I trash the majority but keep those and enjoy looking at them years later.

          But then I have a card my grandfather sent his mother during WWII so maybe it is genetic.

    10. I cut bits and pieces out of them and use these for gift tags over the next year.

    11. We take photos of them and then make a chat book out of the photos. I am sentimental and my husband hates clutter, so this is really the perfect solution.

    12. I put cards in a binder using these photo sheet protectors that fit two 5×7 cards to a page. To be honest we don’t get that many- maybe ten or so a year, so it hasn’t been a big deal. I like flipping through and aeeing how each family grows from year to year. And I always put our family Christmas card in the front.

    13. I save them – I only get maybe 5 every year, so it’s not taking up a lot of space. I like seeing the changes in people’s lives over time, especially in a printed out copy of photos vs digging thru the constant stream of social media photos.

20. Any resources on how to be more succinct in spoken conversation? I am really wordy and it makes me feel unprofessional.

    1. Practice.

    2. Just stop talking once you’ve made your point. I have a hard time with this when I don’t get a response from the person I’m talking to and then I then to start rambling as I wait for them to say something back. I think I much prefer the cooperative overlapping conversation style!

    3. I try to think about it as a “mini essay form”. Very mini! Have a topic sentence or thesis and get it out immediately. Make sure each of the following sentences is supporting the main argument. This helps me at least.

    4. try to do an outline in your head so you know your 2-4 major points.

    5. A big thing for me in learning to be more succinct is trusting my authority. Instead of feeling like I have to make a case for my opinion before I state it, I’ve learned to just say my opinion. If asked, I can always back it up, but often I’m not asked, which was a surprising lesson.

    6. My response is biased because I just met with a friend who I like very much, but try to meet only 1 on 1, because she has a tendency to derail group conversations with verbal diarrhea, as you put it. She makes great and important points and is very informed, but I’d wish she’d pause and show a bit more interest in what others might say in response or hear additional viewpoints. It comes across as her being more interested in an audience than a conversation, when I know her well enough to know that’s not actually true.

       1. This is such a hard habit to break. I was like this as a child (probably something to do with ADHD), but grad school did not help at all. I felt like I was making progress before the pandemic, but the months of isolation did not help either. I really appreciate better conversationalists who somehow provoke a more natural conversational flow that I can then just follow.

          Your friend may seem oblivious (because she literally is oblivious while it’s happening, or she wouldn’t be doing it), but if she notices later it probably torments her. (Or she’s just oblivious to the end, which may honestly be preferable if it’s not going to change either way.)

          1. Aww. This is my MIL. Verbal diarrhea, torments herself later. It drives me nuts but I love her so much I could never bring myself to say anything.

21. Any other biglaw senior associates here struggling with junior associates who appear untrainable? Is it just because the market is hot and they feel like they’re invincible?
    I feel like I’m spending 30-40 mins either typing up line by line instructions or on a call explaining everything and still having to answer questions that were covered on the call or email. I feel like searching for precedents on the system should be a fairly simple ask given that they’ve spent 3 years doing legal research in school? Are my expectations just too high?
    I guess I’m asking for tips on training? Or just venting?

    1. Right there with you except ours are now 3Ls and I just with they’d take the $ and go elsewhere and let us restart with new green hires. Too many bad habits at this point. Let Cravath fix or fire them. I’m giving up.

    2. A phone call is faster than a meeting. Tell them what they need to do, I was funny but firm – ie, literally never walk out of your office without a notepad and a pen, write this down, yes, take notes right now, etc. relate your experience being junior and explain what senior associates and partners are looking for and what they need to do. It can be overwhelming and we all started there.

       1. +1 on the advice that they should be taking notes during a conversation.

    3. Would also love tips on how to deal with this same issue (I’m small law, but a senior assoc who’s been given responsibility over mentoring/training/hand holding juniors). I am happy to take on the task and I really want these young attorneys to be good because I love my job and what I do, but sometimes it feels like they just don’t use their heads?

       Ex: Asking me questions before they even give it a thought to problem-solve – which makes me wonder if it’s the way I’m “leading” them badly that they feel they have to ask before coming to their own conclusion.

       1. Yes! I feel like no one is thinking at all. I know these are smart people but they just ask me to sign off on everything and it is disrupting my day in 50 different ways and making my job so much harder

       2. Honestly, the skill of coming to a senior attorney with a problem/question AND a possible solution is a skill that takes a long time to develop. I don’t think I started doing this until I was maybe 4-5 years into practice. First year associates have no idea where to even begin. They can’t propose a solution because they don’t know what they don’t know. It’s a great thing to train on, and can even be done subtly, i.e., if appropriate ask, “What do you think the best approach would be?” But to expect first year associates to try to solve a problem before bringing it to you – no. That’s not realistic IMO.

       3. You can retrain this – instead of responding with your answer say good question, what do you think our options are here? Or what have you tried already? And then talk about why their ideas would or wouldn’t be the best option or what they missed. The key is to not make this a test but to say directly I think you have good judgment and I’m curious to hear your approach / feel confident about your ability to take on more leadership in the case / whatever.

    4. I’m finding similar things with my first-year undergrads. You expect them to be dumb little puppies, that’s why they go to uni, but they are bad (20/150 plagiarised on an assignment) and belligerent. I’m chalking it up to the last few years being so weird.

       1. My husband who is a biglaw partner and my bff who is a university professor are reporting the same thing, and likewise attribute it to the pandemic. Interrupted schooling (a lot of his current first-years did almost half of law school virtually), lack of access to in-person internships (since internships and summer associate programs went virtual in many cases), sometimes limited in-person contact with teachers/professors…a lot of students/recent graduates are just behind.

          1. I think that is a part of it but many also resist going in person. I don’t really know what the solve is there.

             1. Yeah, it’s fascinating. The students here have demanded in person, but then barely show up. My colleague had my class last week and 5/30 students were present, 2/15 in the seminar.

    5. If there is a specific example of prior work product you have in mind, give them the client so they have something to start with. At least when I was an associate different partners had very different preferences on the same type of document so looking for examples on the system wasn’t foolproof. I also think you do have to leave a bit of time to do what to you may feel like over explaining but is not obvious the first time or two a newbie does a task.

       1. Agreed. The instruction “look for precedent on the system” sounds so simple and obvious to us senior lawyers, but that’s with years and years of training on what appropriate precedent looks like, what keywords to search for, what makes something inapplicable. Much better for YOU to provide a precedent for them to go-by. Then they learn what a good precedent looks like. Or, tell them to search for an hour and come back to you with 2-3 examples that they think are appropriate, and you confirm which one works best and why.

    6. No longer in biglaw, but my work focuses on professional development training for young lawyers, so I have lots of thoughts here!

       First, I am hearing similar complaints from many senior associates/partners, and I’m hearing from junior lawyers that they feel disconnected from their workplaces (particularly those who work remotely most or all of the time). I personally enjoy working remotely, but it does have its downsides, and it can make it more difficult to get integrated into a law firm environment, especially as a brand new or very junior lawyer. You learn a lot just by observing and being around other lawyers in the office, and those natural learning opportunities don’t happen as often when working virtually. It takes more effort, especially by the more senior lawyers, to train and integrate the juniors into their cases so they feel part of the team and often, feel more ownership and investment in their work.

       Second, with respect to the specific issues you called out in your post, here are some ideas:

       1. If they ask a question that’s covered in your email, it’s OK to direct them to it, even while on the phone with them. Do it in a helpful, not scolding, manner: “Sure, I believe my email from Tuesday covered that. Let’s pull it up and talk through the instruction together and see if you have additional questions.” If they forgot something you covered on a call, not ideal, but it happens to all of us. I would adjust your expectations slightly.
       2. Agree with the other commenter that they should be taking notes and you can tell them that.
       3. If you tell them to look for precedent and they cannot find any, ask how they are searching. Show them some tips for searching your doc management system or ask them to set up a training with your support staff. In the meantime, if you know of a particular template or useful sample, just send it to them or tell them specifically how to find it (e.g., it’s Doc #12345 in the system).
       4. Consider breaking up your assignments into smaller projects; 40 minutes to write an email suggests to me that the project is very complex and would be better suited to a call/meeting, or should be broken up into multiple tasks.
       5. Related to all of this, be really clear about your expectations. Schedule a check-in call with them to talk about how they’re doing generally and to give them specific tips for success in your workplace and group.

       1. I’m not far removed from being a junior, in a boutique firm that wasn’t oriented around training, and the above is all good advice (and things I wish people had done with/for me when I was new). To add to the above, try to think about a project from the perspective of a person who knows nothing about being a lawyer and then give instructions and advice from that perspective. As an example, searching for precedents on the system: your juniors don’t know enough to know the slightly different ways the same basic type of document might be titled on your system. They don’t know enough about legal terminology in practice to know how to run a good search in a huge database (a search for “lease” in a document’s title brings up virtually every lease and lease amendment my firm had ever drafted; it’s hard to drill down to just the leases). They don’t know that they really should be looking only for docs done by Partner B and really your system has them filed with Partner B’s assistant as the author. It’s also OK to ask them about how they’d approach some of this stuff to talk it through and help them solve problems on their own; I mostly mean to say that as a junior, I had very little information or idea about the best way to solve problems and actively working with your juniors on this stuff will pay off for you.

       2. And on #3, FFS, if you direct them to a specific doc number, please GIVE THEM THE RIGHT DOCUMENT NUMBER. I recall so many instances as a junior person where a partner would impatiently be like, ugh, it’s doc number 123793 just pull it up what is wrong with you. I’d spend an hour plus in the system trying to no avail to find that document, only to tentatively and sheepishly circle back that I couldn’t find it, only to be told, oh sorry it was actually document 123739.

          1. To add – yes, as a more seasoned lawyer I would probably now assume the partner had screwed up and try a few different permutations of the number, but again – junior lawyers don’t know this!

    7. The caliber of students in law school has declined appreciably over about 10 years. The legal profession did it to themselves by making the profession unappealing. In addition, the generation who raised the current crop of 20 and 30 something’s has some apologizing to do.

    8. I’m late to this thread, but this is literally every person I deal with these days. It seems that over the past year every single person I have to deal with requires me to hold their hand all the way through the task. I’m not talking about co-workers. Insurance company? Haven’t managed to issue a single check in the correct amount; I have to read every statement of loss like I’m auditing their books. Contractor? Can’t remember that I already gave them a check for 20 grand. Pharmacy? I might as well go fill my own prescriptions. I am constantly following up, providing the same information over and over, etc. I feel like everyone’s job is my job now and I’m starting to get pretty ragey about the whole thing. There seems to just be a collective inability to do one’s job these days!

       1. Truth.

       2. I have experienced this too and I have developed a theory that is kind of scary: as we’ve all bought into the idea that work isn’t the most important thing in life, family/personal goals should be more important than your job, etc. I am seeing a general detachment of people from being invested in the details of things. Like, if work isn’t really what matters, it doesn’t matter if this letter doesn’t go out on time, or that number in the spreadsheet is wrong! Don’t sweat the small stuff, right? Unfortunately, when we’re dealing with things like pharmaceuticals, safety engineering for vehicles and airplanes, or people’s bank accounts, the details do matter. I am watching it happen in our own staff, where I’m getting reports on key metrics that are incorrect and when I ask why they’re incorrect, the answer is (seriously): “well, I realized there was an error somewhere but it was 5 o’clock and I needed to go home and so even though I knew you needed the report for a board presentation the next morning, I figured it would be better for you to have something vs. having nothing.” The idea that she could have stayed a little later and found the error, or at least sent me an email with a heads-up about the problem, did not occur to me. I just got the report, no commentary and thank goodness I reviewed it and fixed it before the presentation. I think it’s not so much that people can’t do things or can’t use critical thinking – they just don’t care enough to do so. Their real life isn’t their job so who cares if the job isn’t done well? In this hiring environment, it’s not like we can be quick to fire people anyway, because replacements can be so hard to find. So a lot of folks are coasting, getting by with doing the minimum and experiencing no consequences from it. And I’m honestly not sure where that’s going to lead us, long-term. Not everything is of critical importance but some things really are.

          1. Did not occur to HER, it definitely occurred to me she should have done that, LOL

          2. Ya know, this is a really solid theory and it’s horrifying.

          3. I honestly think the social contract is slowly breaking down.

             1. I believe it too.

       3. Yes, literally every person. My hubby has been in hospital for 36 days so far this year with massive problems (and my father for 8 days) and every single appointment, test, nurse, doctor, administrator and insurance company has had or caused errors, delays and detours. It has been hell.

          1. I’m so sorry. I’m not at all surprised. I’m glad someone has been able to catch so many of the errors.

    9. At the end of the call, do you ask them to recap next steps? That’s a good way to pin down whether you understood each other or there was some gap.

    10. I really appreciate the feedback and perspective and I will try to have more patience…

        but i also just need to share this very concrete example of what i’m just fed up with:

        I wrote: stet the deletion of _____

        I just got back a document and the words “stet the deletion of ___” are typed out in that paragraph.

        1. I have been a lawyer for 14 years and I have no idea what stet means. I would have Googled it, but not as a first year!!

        2. That doesn’t surprise me. I’m 12 years out of law school, and I never learned that in school. the first time I saw stet in an edited document in biglaw, I had to ask a midlevel who I was friendly with what it meant. Given the current environment where everyone is working from home, It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t know who to ask.

22. Ugh need some commiseration. I’ve been doing IF/WW/more workouts since February and have lost a whopping…4 lbs. I definitely feel better, have lost inches, etc. but I really want a better # on the scale after massive COVID + Pregnancy weight gain (my baby is 15 months now). I don’t know if there’s anything more to do or if this is the reality of trying to lose weight in a busy season of life at age 38.

    1. 4 pounds in a month is a pound a week or so and pretty normal. Sorry.

       1. Pretty normal + more sustainable than faster weight loss.

          1. Agree! You’re moving at a good clip. Maybe set smaller goals over a longer time so you don’t see a discouraging number in front of you. Or look for other measurements, such as looser pants or more pushups. You’re making good progress so now get your spirits in the right place.

       2. +1 A pound a week is a lot. You wouldn’t want to lose any faster IMO.

    2. It’s taken me since January to lose 5 pounds, so I think you’re doing great.

       1. Ugh I guess this is just how it is now. I started in earnest in early February, so it’s been 2 months and 4 lbs…neat.

          I don’t miss my 20’s but man I miss the metabolism (and the benefits of living in NYC and walking everywhere on top of the time/energy for 5x/week workouts)

    3. I’ve also lost about 4 pounds despite an enormous amount of effort. But I’ve really focused on building muscle and getting strong, so even though the scale has barely changed, I look noticeably better in clothes. I’ve lost 4-5 inches from my waistline, and I bought myself a few new clothes. And I love how strong and fit I feel.

       Is there any other thing you can focus on while you lose weight?

       1. Wow, I’d love to have this outcome. Good for you.

          1. Thanks! Lots of Les Mills programs in person and online. My mental image is that I am sculpting a strong body out of my current version.

             1. How do you like Les Mills? Been thinking of an online sub.

       2. Thank you for this.

          Yes, I’ve focused on buying jewelry and accessories, some designer. That helps. I also got a mani/pedi this week after a LONG time and man it makes me feel so pulled together and cute!

       3. That’s inspiring!

    4. You’re on track for a significant weight loss. That’s great! Consider this a success and keep doing what your doing until you get to where you want to be.

    5. I’m going to change my name from “Anon” to “Body Composition Matters.” Pregnancy, especially when you’re older, really changes your body composition. You lose muscle and gain fat; you don’t just gain fat. It takes a long time, especially when older, to regain that muscle. Muscle mass changes your metabolism. You have to rebuild the lost muscle before you can see sustainable changes. If you’ve lost “inches” but the scale isn’t moving, you are setting yourself up to lose both weight and inches in the coming months.

    6. I’m right there with you, only I’m slightly older. I started logging food and working out 5 days a week in February. The weight is coming off but it is painfully slow compared to the effort I am putting in. There’s no magic advice. Keep doing what you are doing. Be kind and patient with yourself.

    7. 2-3lbs a month is a really good rate! Muscle also weighs more than fat.

    8. You should be tracking measurements as well. Depending on your lifting to cardio ratio, you might be losing inches without seeing the scale move that much.

    9. You’ve lost weight. You’ve lost inches. You’ve feel better. You’re building good habits.
       You are succeeding.

23. I have been learning about the history of indigenous boarding schools in North America and the horrific abuses that took place there. Does anyone know of a book they’d recommend on the topic? I am having trouble finding anything

    1. Here is a comprehensive list

       https://bookriot.com/indian-residential-schools-books/

    2. Posted a link that went to Mod.
       In Canada they were called “Indian residential schools”.

    3. I haven’t been much of the content yet but this project received recent visibility in the local media in Nebraska: https://genoaindianschool.org/

    4. See John Milloy’s book “A National Crime” as well as the reports of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (https://nctr.ca/records/reports/).

    5. I would recommend the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Reports. They have several for free on their website, including two or three that trace the history in Canada. A lot of people don’t know that the last residential school in Canada didn’t close until 1996!

    6. Five Little Indians by Michelle Good. It’s CBC’s Canada Reads winner this year, too. Fantastically educational, but also (expectedly) hard to read. Worth it though.

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