Frugal Friday’s Workwear Report: Cropped Cardigan

344 Comments

1. I feel like yesterday’s chat was having major Mariah Carey vibes (“I don’t know you.”), in the best possible way. If you don’t know me, in a formal setting, don’t call me by my first name (I think that this is an issue with some doctors — “I’m Dr. Strong, Nikki” — if I’m in a paper gown, I want maximum formalities given how close I am to being nekkid and don’t really like forced fake social familiarity in those situations). And definitely don’t start making up nicknames for me. “Nicola” is not “Nikki” to you; maybe just ask me how to pronounce it if you don’t know.

   1. I just sent a welcome email to my students and included a casual but direct PS saying “You can call me Cb or Dr Black Fox. I will not answer to Dr Fox, Mrs Fox, or hey!”

      I don’t care if they call me by my first name or my title + surnames, but they can’t just make up names! I’m not Mrs Fox!

      1. But not Bruh

      2. Just wondering, why Dr Black Fox and not Dr Fox?

         1. Because that’s her name! Like you’re Anon not An

            1. Yes but this example sounds like black is the first name and Fox is the last. No one says Dr first and last name.

            2. Like if my last name is Keen Smith, I could be Dr Keen Smith (with the hyphen, many people would do this automatically; sans hyphen, you should tell people).

            3. The way she’s given it, it’s Dr. Cb Black Fox and she want to be called Cb or Dr. Black Fox. So first name or Dr. Full Last Name.

            4. She is telling people- that’s why she emailed her class!

            5. It’s her name. You don’t get to decide what her name is!!

         2. My husband and I combined our names but didn’t hyphenate, just a space, which was an admittedly bougie choice.

            1. Yeah it’s the actual worst choice if you want people to use both names. Like ok but you’re deliberately choosing a life time of people getting it wrong.

            2. Not in the UK. Cb Black Fox is a double-barrel name which is posh here :)

            3. I have a double barrel last name with a space between the two names… inherited from my ex husband. I just use the last part of the name because in the UK people either assume I am posh or its a combination from marriage or having unwed parents, so in effect being a snob. In the US people just get confused!

               As long as I get some portion of the last name, I let it go. It is confusing and it doesn’t matter to me. People who know me, know my name. I am divorced so the Mrs or Ms titles are not important to me. Call me either, I don’t care.

               What I don’t like is people who make assumptions of who I am based on my name. I have an arabic first name and the assumptions people make are insane. Combined with my ex husbands last name, people often assume I am from an ex-soviet country.

         3. I mean, it’s one thing asking students to use the right name for a professor, but socially, I just can’t remember two names for every one of my kids’ friends and I think you just need to be understanding.

            1. It’s her name. Respect people by calling them their names. That is the entire point.

            2. I’m glad you can be perfect but when I’m trying to remember hundreds of my kids’ parents names (I have three kids) and some pick two names or entirely different names than their kids, I just can’t. It is so ridiculous how many things people police right now. I’m a well educated woman and have way too much on my mind to remember which kids’ parents have different names than the kids. What about a person who works three jobs? Is it disrespectful if she forgets that you have two names? If you want to go that way, fine, but it isn’t disrespect that people forget.

            3. Don’t you just call your kids’ friends’ parents by their first names? I’ve never addressed other parents as Ms. So and So, and not sure when I’d ever have an occasion to use their last name(s). And I do think it’s weird and disrespectful to address someone you see regularly by the wrong name. We’re all busy, but most people can take time to learn someone’s name.

            4. Oh I wouldn’t care socially! I care my in laws refuse to use our name because they disapprove of my husband changing his. I also think it’s good practice for students to take care with names before they go out into the world. I write down their nicknames and preferred pronouns etc, they can do the same for their lecturers.

            5. Respect is different from not remembering. I don’t plan to have kids but if you call a kid’s parent by the kid’s last name, it’s a reasonable assumption. It’s disrespectful in a workplace where someone signs their email one way and gets a response calling her something else. It’s in the email. But in general, people aren’t perfect. They have bad days and get overwhelmed and forget things. Everyone, especially on this board, can try to be kinder.

            6. “I’m too busy to bother remembering your name” is not the cute look you think it is.

      3. When I was in grad school I had a hard time with professors’ wanting to be called by their first names. You are not my friend or my peer, so don’t blur that line. Going by your first name doesn’t make you cool, it makes you seem dodgy. I also did not like it when they brought beer to seminars, but I digress.

         1. Eh, it’s very normal in academia for professors to let grad students call them by their first names and it’s not about trying to be cool or edgy, it’s actually a sign of respect to the grad students that they’re seen more like colleagues than undergrads. I disagree that a grad student isn’t a peer – obviously there’s a clear hierarchy in academia and tenured professors have more power than assistant professors have more power than postdocs and grad students, but generally there is a culture in academia that everyone at or above the grad student level is viewed as a colleague and collaborator, and going by first names is part of that culture, not some weird inappropriateness on the part of the prof.

         2. Oh that’s weird! I’m fine with a professor being called Jane or Ms. Doe but she should also respect student’s comfort level. As you said, you’re not friends. I could see a male professor trying to blue the lines between teacher and student for obvious reasons and ewww.

         3. Grad school professors are more like your boss. They’re not your friend either, and you can call them Mr. or Ms. if you really want to, but I’m willing to bet that most people are able to call their boss by their first name and still have a professional relationship. You’re both adults and should be addressed with equal formality, even if there’s a difference in academic or professional status, so formal titles for both of you or for neither of you.

            1. Yup, this is a good analogy. Undergrads are students. Grad students are employees – not at the same level as the boss (prof), but still colleagues, and it’s common and appropriate to address them by first name.

         4. In my doctoral program, we were invited to call professors by their first names once we achieved candidacy. At that point, the presumption was that we were about to become colleagues. As ABDs, our knowledge and expertise was about to be on par with theirs.

   2. It seemed like many of the language pet peeves (using I when me is correct and vice versa, using the reflexive when it isn’t called for) could be solved with more rigorous grammar instruction in elementary school. But for some reason, no one seems interested in that.

      1. OMG this is the bill I am willing to die on. My kids are in public school honors classes and I have Questions given how atrocious their grammar is. I have an old copy of Warriner’s and quote it like The Bible. And an old Texas Law Review Manual of Style, which is great and practical. I used to be a typist at a newspaper where a lot of editors just had high school diplomas and OMG our standards have slipped in just a few generations.

         1. And yet you misspelled “hill.

            1. Indeed. Presbyopia is also the hill I will also die on.

            2. Congrats for finding that I guess, but typos and using incorrect grammar are two pretty different animals…

         2. I’m an intelligence analyst and I take writing skills so seriously. So many applicants’ cover letters are frankly embarrassing.

            1. I agree. We have had to lower standards because of the difficulty of hiring but every candidate who had tons of mistakes in the cover letter ended up being a disappointment.

      2. I wonder if the issues with homophones are from speech-to-text?

         1. I wonder if that is where ‘would of’ comes from!

            1. Nope, ‘would of’ was a very common mistake when I was growing up in the 80s. This was way before texting, let alone speech to text.

            2. My theory is that people who don’t understand contractions hear “would’ve” as “would of” and aren’t aware that it is “would have” then blissfully and ignorantly run with it.

            3. It might – people often make that error anyway, but I have noticed that my phone will do it when I use dictation and I have to manually correct it.

            4. “Would of” is a direct result of not requiring students to learn how to properly conjugate verbs.

         2. Or automatic captioning, a la Instagram.

         3. No. I did a review of millions of pages of corporate communications before that tech existed and regularly had laughing fits from the misuse of homophones in those documents. My current BF graduated college and still makes some of those same mistakes, though not the most egregious and hilarious ones, in texts to me. People really just don’t know.

      3. I know some older teachers who covertly teach grammar because they would get in trouble with their current admin if they found out.

         I know some younger teachers who never learned any grammar themselves (including capitalization norms, sentence boundaries, etc.) even after getting education degrees.

         I think prescriptivism can be ignorant and tiresome and am not enthusiastic about targeting dialectal usage, but the answer to these problems is teaching more, not less!

         1. As a parent, this rankles me. Why would teachers ever get in trouble for teaching grammar?!

            1. There are so many reasons! A lot of education research is unfortunately pseudoscientific and unreliable, and then there are political incentives. I’m not involved enough to know if it’s fair to blame No Child Left Behind and a “teach to the test” culture, but teachers I know complain that they have to teach at grade level even if it’s over their students’ heads, and they can get in trouble for veering away from what will be on standardized tests (because those test results are tied to funding).

               I always think of the one teacher I knew who wanted to drop everything and teach the basics of reading because many of their rural middle school students weren’t truly reading yet, but that wasn’t on the curriculum for the grade level, and there was a requirement to spend a lot of time on computer skills since someone had given the school a bunch of computers. If you ever wonder why teachers accept pay cuts to work in private schools, for a lot of people the answer is that they want the autonomy to prioritize and teach what they know.

         2. Both of these are me! I’m an in the middle teacher. I learned a spotty amount of grammar, and when I first started teaching in the early 2000s, I had to teach myself the concepts before teaching the students. I will never forget my first year when a student said to me, “Shouldn’t that sentence have a comma because it’s an appositive?” and I had no idea what appositive meant.
            Nowadays my district expressly discourages direct grammar instruction. Everything is supposed to be “in context” and students should be assessed based on their application of concepts in writing. However, unless I require a piece to be handwritten, they have full access to grammar check, Grammarly, etc, so it’s not an authentic assessment.
            Last year I brought back covert, old school grammar instruction and bi-weekly quizzes. Spoiler: School administration never knew because not a single parent complained.

      4. Because society looks different today with all tech. Grammar becomes less and less relevant. If we were all willing to die on the grammar hill, we’d still talk like it was 1920. Language evolves.

         1. Evolves but this is like how a lovely house becomes Gray Gardens. Neglect is not evolving. It is just change for the worse.

            1. +1 this is not evolution, language has not been maintained it’s being neglected

            2. I just think it’s another thing that people would learn if they were taught. Like cursive. People are trainable but you have to actually train them.

               I don’t think that people are dumb or ignorant or dont care, just that they didn’t get sent to schools at a time when this was taught (is it taught anywhere now?!).

            3. Lol about language being neglected. What does that even mean? The purpose of language isn’t to follow random rules; it’s to communicate in a way that others understand you. Sometimes grammar is necessary for understanding. But very often, it’s not. English is a language that doesn’t have gatekeepers, which is why vocabulary and grammar change as society does. You can dislike it, but that doesn’t make it wrong or bad.

            4. HEAR HEAR!!

            5. well put 11:03.

         2. People who are fully fluent in written English still have advantages over people who are semiliterate at best.

            As technology advances, I would love to see a society where literacy is more optional, but it’s not what I see around me.

            1. Right? Like how are you helping people who rely on education to help move them along (vs families with high SES and lots of connections) by not teaching them fundamentals of the language they’ll have to live their working lives in (and if not English, teach them that in the relevant language).

            2. Completely agree. Students would learn it if they were taught it, especially if we used modern teaching methods and games to make it much more fun than it used to be. Strong communication skills and a beautiful essay will never go out of style.

            3. Idk bro, I was never taught formal grammar and I am fully literate. Like I don’t bother being so here because why but trust I am fully capable of excellent English.

         3. My MIL still sounds uneducated when she says things like “him and me went there” or “he won’t never try” or “where’s that at.” Catholic school education in the 1960s and 1970s when in theory, grammar was taught rigorously.

            1. She sounds regional not uneducated

            2. Agree with 1:41.

         4. Anon at 11:03 – neglecting language means that when a person submits a form or complaint or request to the public agency where I work, we cannot help that person because we cannot tell what that person wants or needs or experienced.

            I am not talking about non-native English speakers (I live in a very diverse state in the US). I am married to a non-native English speaker and work with many non-native English speakers. They make different mistakes, mostly having to do with verbs and prepositions. I am talking about people who were born here, whose parents and grandparents were born here, who cannot express themselves clearly enough for someone else to understand them.

            1. Right! I noted that some grammar is essential for understanding. But much comma usage, “would of” instead of “would have”, the rise of the verb “gifting.” Even errant capitalization. Some of that stuff is basic but doesn’t affect understanding.

               I just really dislike the way a lot of people act like all change to language is terrible and shows the downfall of society.

            2. Also there’s truly no such thing as a language without gatekeepers being “neglected.” It changes, but that’s what language does. We aren’t in Iceland with a committee of people who decide what is and isn’t part of the language!

         5. But there are still many, many areas where correct grammar is necessary. I’m a lawyer. Incorrect grammar or an improperly used word, or unclear writing can have actual negative consequences ranging from confusion to losses of millions of dollars. If kids aren’t learning grammar in school, they’re not going to be able to have the skillset to succeed in professions that do require the ability to communicate clearly and precisely.

      5. I actually think learning proper grammar and writing with proper grammar is so important and I will ruthlessly judge/edit/revise written work with the best of them.
         But speaking? I love dialects and idioms and accepted mistakes and regional differences. For some reason “errors” against proper grammar in speech do not bug me at all and I am loathe to correct someone if their “error” is more of a dialect issue and not an ignorance issue (even though I realize they can get conflated).

         1. Yes, standard English is really helpful in writing (and makes writing more accessible to international audiences), but I’m fine with spoken English diverging. It’s kind of sad how regionalisms vanish when standard English is forced on people (I’m sad, anyway, that I can’t “pass” as a local anymore in the place where I grew up).

            I would be fine with a lingua franca that no one speaks natively though! That kind of levels the playing field.

   3. NYT did an article a year or so ago about untitling and how it impacts women and especially WOC. As such, I am really big on being called by my title with students. My email signature line has my full name and credentials, then underneath it says “firstname to colleagues, Dr. lastname to students” and I link to the NYT article. I wish we did that.

      As for medical professionals, I use a shortened version of my first name in my life. When someone doesn’t read the form where I wrote the name I use or they don’t ask what to call me, they end up calling me by legal name which puts a wall up for me because it feels like they are speaking about someone else. It’s odd to hear them call me a name I don’t use and then ask for personal details about my s3x life or ask me to get nekkid.

      1. Totally agree. I also think it is detrimental to students when male professors insist on being called by their first names. Of all my professors who went by their first names, only one was not at least a little creepy, and he did not object when I chose to call him “Professor.”

      2. Can you please link the article here? I think reading it might help me stop being annoyed by and be more sensitive to a practice I find within sectors of my professional community.

         1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/health/doctors-first-names.html

      3. I am Nesprin to colleagues which I define as my grad students, postdocs, colleagues and staff, Dr NesprinLastname to grad students I don’t know and undergrad students until they graduate.

         Now if only I could get my admin to stop referring to me as “Hey There Miss Nesprin!”

2. I have a family member who has spent some time in and out of the hospital over the past months. They’ve been getting a bunch of phone calls and letters from someone who says they are a case manager for the insurance company asking if they want to work with a case manager. I know what case managers in the hospital do, but I’m suspicious of one from the insurance company. They’ve been pretty aggressive in reaching out, offering vague things like “helping to meet your health care needs.” The letters make it seem like calling this person back, even to ask questions, will be taken as agreement to participate in the program. For all I know they could actually be helpful, but is this weird?

   1. I had a temp job when I was in college that basically consisted of enrolling people in a similar program. Most people were baffled as to why the program existed, but there were some people that seemed confused about managing their medical diagnoses. I think it’s for those people, so that they don’t have a bigger or more expensive medical issue down to road from lack of follow up. I personally wouldn’t enroll in one but for some people it could be helpful.

      1. Right — like why diabetics need to have their feet checked, things like that. Some things don’t come with instructions, even from doctors who you get 3 minutes with, so it can be helpful to have some guidance and a person to go to with questions. My nurse cousin does this for our family, but not everyone has that resource.

   2. I have a case manager with my insurance company. They have been extremely helpful in coordinating care, I have a rare chronic disease and lots of seemingly odd health care needs. The patient could call the insurance company and see if this person is legit and what the advantages are to contacting them.

   3. Master’s in Health Policy. These are designed to improve quality while reducing costs. Some things a good care manager will do is coordinate testing between facilities to minimize duplicative testing, coordinate appointments and follow-ups, and be a single point of contact for any issues or concerns or pre-approvals needed.

      So, like – using the example of somebody with diabetes. They will likely follow up and make sure you have your appointment with a CDE, a dietician, your regular A1C checks, your regular endocrinology updates, eye and foot exams, etc. This is something that got a ton of traction about 10-15 years ago.

   4. Sometimes this happens when it appears to the insurer that a patient’s care isn’t being successfully managed.

      Years ago I was contacted by a case manager when I was prescribed a medication for a condition I hadn’t been diagnosed with (because the doctor said I’d tested negative for the condition but could keep taking the med anyway if I felt it helped). I was too suspicious of my insurance company to take their calls. I regret this now because my symptoms got worse, and I now understand that the tests I was given have a 20% false negative rate! The insurance company was probably aware that patients who end up in this kind of diagnostic limbo are more likely to end up hospitalized and costing the insurer more money than if they’re carefully followed and treated, so they were incentivized to intervene.

   5. I was contacted by one after three separate ER visits in a month for intractable migraines. By the time I was contacted, I had established care with a new neuro and identified the trigger, so I didn’t need the assistance, but I got the impression they were trying to get on top of extraordinary issues from both a cost and care perspective. Interestingly, I was not similarly contacted by one when I had a cancer diagnosis and treatment the year prior. So…

   6. I was required to use a nurse case manager to access my company’s fertility benefits. It was helpful upfront bc the case manager knew what my company covered and could talk it through with me in detail, including considering some options (like that cash prices for drugs were often much cheaper than the price charged to insurance, so that once I exhausted my pharmacy benefit I should consider not having the claims submitted to insurance; same with IUIs and some testing).

      They keep calling us to offer the case manager for my daughter, who has IBD, and we haven’t used it bc we have case management through her GI doctor. They also offered it to us for maternity care (I’m currently pregnant) but I looked at the program and a lot of it is basically nutrition advice and stuff like that, which I don’t feel like I need.

   7. This is a thing insurance companies offer as a hopeful win-win – the patient gets better care since there is a coordinator helping, and costs are lower since better care means improved health, fewer hospital visits, etc.

   8. Medicare pays the insurance company generously for this service. That’s why they are doing this

      1. That doesn’t make sense. I don’t have Medicare, so why would it impact my insurance company offering me this service

   9. One of my mom’s friends was assigned a case manager from her insurance company when she was diagnosed with a rare form of neuroendocrine cancer and the case manager got her in to see a specialist at MD Anderson in Houston, who was doing a clinical trial. It bought my mother’s friend some more time, which was obviously something she and her family were grateful for. The case manager also helped coordinate testing and imaging across multiple facilities, and as you might imagine – when you have a rare tumor hardly anyone has ever seen before, there were a lot of demands from various specialists for images and bloodwork, and I think my mom’s friend would have had to do a lot of duplicative testing, if the case manager hadn’t been involved in sending things around to the different specialists who wanted to see records. So I think if your family member has a serious or complex diagnosis, it’s worth it for them to at least speak to the case manager.

   10. OP here, thank you for the responses. It’s a new complicated cancer diagnosis with multiple different physician sub-specialties involved. So what I think I’m hearing is this person is actually in a position to be helpful and isn’t going to start second guessing recommended care or deciding certain tests aren’t needed and just cancel them or anything? I had imagined they would just start cancelling appointments or telling family member what they could and couldn’t do now. But this has been a hard time and I realize my thinking is not the clearest right now.

       1. No, the insurance company doesn’t have any authority to cancel tests or appointments. Your insurance company can decide not to pay but neither the company nor anyone who works for them can actually cancel that sort of thing. And the case managers are not involved in determining your coverage or what gets paid for – they can help you understand the decision, but they are not involved in it.

   11. I had a child with cancer. The case manager was so so helpful in getting things approved quickly and seamlessly. It just took several steps out of the bureaucratic process. I’d go got kt.

       1. *I’d go for it

3. Low stakes question – can you make breakfast strata 24 or 48 hours in advance? Suh as this – https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/sourdough-breakfast-strata. I am not worried about food safety, but worried about it not getting soggy.

   1. I assemble it the night before and bake before serving. Overnight is the right amount of time for the custard to soak into the bread. You can also bake it ahead of time and reheat but it isn’t quite as good.

   2. I don’t know about 48 hours, but I make a strata (bread, mushrooms, Swiss chard, and cheese, pour milk and egg mixture over it) that sits in the fridge overnight. The recipe says to let it sit at room temperature for about half an hour, then bake. It is sublime, not soggy at all.

   3. So you’re supposed to assemble it all ahead of time and let the egg soak into the bread at least overnight, then bake it when you want to eat it. When you bake it all comes together. It’s my favorite make ahead for company item. They take about an hour to properly bake up. I cover for 45 with foil and then uncover for the last 15 or so.

   4. It’s supposed to be soggy when it goes into the oven, and if you cook it all the way, will not be soggy when it comes out.

      1. (But I would stick to 24 hours, not 48)

4. I can’t break this cycle:

   Commute home. Get home hungry and anxious. Eat. Look at screens right until bed. Constant stimulation, no real relaxation.

   Resolve to change my ways but don’t. Repeat cycle the next day. I know exactly what I need to do but for some reason I find the twin dopamine of food and screen time more appealing in the moment. I want to meditate, work out, paint, read… but it’s like I become possessed by another person whose actions take on a life of their own.

   Help?

   1. For some reason, once I reenter my house after commuting home, I am unable to leave again until the next morning. But I can do stuff on the way home. Would changing into appropriate clothes and walking before you get home (either near work before the commute or near home, but before you actually cross the threshold) help?

      1. Same. Not going home is key. The couch has the gravitational pull of a black hole.

         1. +1000 – bring a snack with you if you get hungry on your commute.

      2. Oh man leaving my house after I get home is haaaard.

   2. I’ve been there. Combination of burnout and exhaustion and (actually) depression.

      What helped was making really firm goals and weeknight plans. I started signing up for weeknight workout classes that I pre-paid for. IDK if I’m cheap, but the idea of losing money on a class I didn’t go was a strong motivator. Also – my dog. I will go for long walks every day because of my dog.

      I’ll add that – not for everyone – but I find that an afternoon coffee helps me. I grab a big cup around 2:30, sip it for an hour, and find that the caffeine motivates me through the evening.

      1. I couldn’t have coffee that late in the day, but was going to suggest an afternoon snack, so when you go home, the hunger is less acute and distracting!

   3. Other commenters are giving good suggestions but I want to add the phone apps are designed to keep you engaged. For some reason the knowledge of that really helps me to step away from it, at least to go easy on myself when it sucks me in. Tons of money is being thrown at keeping you scrolling forever and ever.

      1. good point, there are two things you could try if you want to use screens during dinner but help yourself put them aside afterwards- set your phone’s bedtime mode to activate much earlier, e.g. an hour after you get home.
         You could also set an alarm that plays a Spotify playlist whenever you want to interrupt yourself from scrolling.

   4. Start off with plans that you have paid for, like six weeks of tennis lessons three times a week. That will help break the cycle and then you can also incorporate free plans into the process.

      1. Uh, three times a week is a lot. I would try to break this habit more gradually, OP.

         What worked for me this summer is having a standing plan for Friday evenings. The whole evening is mapped out – workout class, then dinner at a favorite local seafood shack, then home to watch a new episode of a British mystery. At first doing all this in one evening would wipe me out, but it didn’t matter since the following day was Saturday. But after a few months, I’m not as tired and can fit in that third exercise class or that weeknight baseball game without being too exhausted the next day. The point is to create new habits that will stick, right?

         1. I like your idea of a Friday night. Sounds perfect!

   5. Sign yourself up for a fitness class and then you’ll have to get out of your house or lose your $$.

   6. Agree with the do things before you come home.

      Also keep your painting materials ready and visible. It’s much harder to go into some other room, set up the paints etc when Netflix is right there. But if the painting is also right there its more of an option.

   7. One suggestion I have is to take some small steps and don’t expect your behavior to change completely overnight! I get into that a lot where I say I want to transform several aspects and then I’m too exhausted to do it all, so I fall into my old habits.

      Others have some great suggestions like an exercise class or lesson. I have a couple of special shows that I’ll only watch one episode at a time, and no phone usage during it. It has to be something I need to pay attention to. Right now it’s “Shrinking.” That satisfies my screen time itch but I’m not doom scrolling, and then I have time for other things in the evening as well.

   8. Late afternoon snack so you’re not starving when you get home. When you walk in the door drink a full glass of water. Then set a timer for ten minutes of stretching and quick exercises. Even on bad days I feel like I can wait 10-15 minutes before watching tv. Once I’m hydrated, not too hungry, and get some physical activity I usually feel much better and don’t want to melt into my couch anymore.

   9. Can you reward yourself? For example if I paint or workout or whatever x days in a row or per week instead of screens I get a favorite food or new nail polish or whatever is a treat for you on the weekend?

   10. Step one: before you leave work eat a snack!

       Step two: pick one night a week where you don’t go straight home and instead do another thing

       Step three: start small- eat dinner at a table not the couch and walk ten minutes after dinner.

   11. Try to eat more earlier in the day. A few years ago I realized I was eating about 1/2 my calories in the evening. My weight was stable but, man, I felt awful. It made a huge difference in my energy levels throughout the day as I made supper more of a snack and ate the bulk of my food for breakfast and lunch.

   12. I have a 3 or 4pm balanced snack on days I work out after work. It helps avoid the overly hungry, need to eat everything feeling and also gives some fuel for my workout.

       My gym is also on my commute home, so I have to drive past it on the way home. It is much easier to work out when it’s literally on the way home.

       I have certain shows that are my treadmill shows. I only allow myself to watch them on the treadmill, so if I am wanting to watch the next episode, I need to go get myself on the treadmill. There have been times when I’ve forced myself to walk because I wanted to watch a bit and ended up walking for three full episodes.

       Sometimes I just leave my phone in my bag when I get home and don’t even pull it out. Those nights are nice.

   13. Intentionally ditching my phone has been helpful. Either I plug it in somewhere inconvenient or leave it in my car or something like that. If I’m bored watching TV and happen to have a book within arms reach, I’ll pick that up. A charged up Kindle also hits different than my phone.

   14. Eat a snack right before you leave or on your way home!! Something satisfying. And the activities you want to do really appealing — leave your current book and a fluffy throw blanket on your couch in the morning, buy a cute new workout set and an audiobook for an late afternoon walk. I would ease into it and am not above bribing myself with treats! And lastly, remind yourself that you deserve to feel good.

   15. How about a new hobby you’re excited about? I suggest an electronic keyboard and piano lessons.

   16. When I stopped drinking, I learned that every time you do the same thing to get nice feelings, that neural pathway gets reinforced. It is possible to change behaviors and get just as much pleasure from other activities, to create and reinforce new pathways and let the old ones fade. Your brain is just taking the path of least resistance in its current architecture; know that it’s not some moral failing on your part, or a reprehensible lack of willpower, it’s biology! As you do new and different pleasant activities, your brain will learn and it will become much easier to avoid the old default.

   17. Everything I’m suggesting others have said too, but maybe an extra vote for them will help you choose what to do! I would have a plan with a friend to meet up once a week or every other week, to get that habit started. At least twice a week, have a spot where you put your phone out of reach for the evening. I put my in a kitchen drawer for a few weeks and it really helped me end scrolling for hours in the evenings. Set up your hobbies so they’re waiting for you and look cozy. I like books, puzzles, and gardening, and I’ve laid out my supplies for the first 2 in a cozy spot or I’ve prepped my gardening tools, there’s no barrier to just diving in. And have a snack before you go home! I am STARVING at 5 every day and it was leading to me eating a ton while I cooked dinner on top of eating dinner. Now I make sure to eat something with protein at 4 and it’s amazing how much more energy I have.

5. New job, first one with access to company credit card. Weeks ago, I booked a round-trip flight for a conference. Now I am finding out I have a ride with a friend I’d like to catch up with for the way home so I no longer need the flight home. Airline says cancelling the flight home will result in an ecredit in my name, valid for up to a year. I only work travel once every few years so I wouldn’t be able to just put the credit toward the next work trip.

   How do I handle this? As someone new, I don’t want to seem like I am difficult or annoying, nor do I want any sense that I was financially dishonest.

   1. idk, this seems like a situation where you just take the flight.

      1. Yeah, I agree. Call the friend and catch up that way!

      2. yeah, I wouldn’t go through the effort when its a new job and could cause a T&E headache.

   2. Take the flight and catch up with your friend another time. Or use the air credit for a personal trip and reimburse your company (but this may be against policy or really hard to do).

   3. Take the flight

   4. Go ask whatever department issued you the card how they want you to handle this.

   5. Just ask your company.

   6. You take the flight home. It will come off as weird and unprofessional to ditch a work plan (and yes, the travel component is still part of your job) at company expense to catch up with a friend.

      1. This. And I work in a pretty casual, laidback environment (higher ed).

      2. I agree with this. OP, it’s not a great look at work to create a lot of questions and/or logistical headaches for your finance or travel department because you want to ride home with a friend instead of taking the flight home.

         One of my cardinal rules for management of my own career is: don’t be a headache for other people. I know how I feel about the people who are headaches for me in my work life and I don’t feel kindly towards them or want to help them out when the chips are down. I want to be seen as someone who is not trying to make problems for other people, because I can rely on that social capital when I need it. Don’t burn capital in your new job just because you want to have fun with your friend; you can figure out another way to do that.

         1. This is good advice. OP you could also just not get on the plane and ride home with your friend. Either way this is low maintenance.

         2. Agree. In my workplace it would be no big deal for an established employee to cancel the flight home and apply the credit towards future work travel or reimburse the company if using it towards personal travel, and it would also be fine to tack on personal stuff at the end of a work trip (at your own expense). But for a newbie? It reads as high maintenance and makes us leery of whether the person understands how to figure out office culture.

   7. Take the flight home, catch up with friend another time.

   8. I had an employee who was always doing stuff like this with her travel and it gave her a reputation with management for being difficult even though I didn’t care as long as she showed up where and when I needed her and complied with the travel policies. Don’t be that person.

   9. Take the flight and catch up another time or just don’t get on the flight. It should matter if you just don’t get on it. It wont make a difference to the company’s bottom line.

      1. Doesn’t OP run the risk of the airline’s trying to charge her extra for a one-way flight if she skips the return flight?

         1. Yeah, don’t do this. It’s a great way to get kicked out of frequent flier programs and lose all your miles.

6. Just hit the OOP max for the year with my health insurance. Now I want to book appts for anything and everything to make the most of this before Dec 31. What appointments would you book? What do people tend to skip due to cost that would be covered now? (If it matters, I’m early 40s, no pregnancies)

   1. any tests or lab work your PCP would recommend? if your preventative care has co-pays, be sure to hit the derm for a skin check, gyn, mammo, etc.

      1. +1

         Agree with this.

         Get that colonoscopy!

         Physical therapy or occupational therapy for that problem/pain that you have been not addressing for months or years.

         Is it time to try some therapy for the mind?

   2. Full body skin check with your dermatologist, eye appointment (if you have vision coverage), appointment with a neurologist if you get migraines, Ortho and PT sessions for any unaddressed areas of weakness/old injuries that were never properly rehabbed.

   3. Mammo for sure. If you have any family history of colon cancer, get an order from your doctor to get an early colonoscopy done (if you’re early 40s you’re not far off from needing one at 45 anyway). Routine bloodwork, if you have not gotten that done.

      1. Just FYI – without any symptoms and no family history, I’m having a hard time getting my doc to order a colonoscopy for me at 43. I could “lie” and get one most likely saying I had concerns, but without any, I can’t seem to get one.

         1. The lack of family history is probably playing a part here, which is why I told the OP, “if you have any family history.” I have a family history of colon cancer and had no problem getting my PCP to write a note so I could get a colonoscopy at 44, and my insurance even paid for it.

   4. I am in the same position and have a skin check, PT, full physicals, gyno appointments, cholesterol screening, routine recommended bloodwork, and hearing screenings booked. For me, my spouse, and all our kids as applicable.

   5. Allergy testing.I second PT/OT for any less than fully functional body parts or balance.

   6. when this was me I scheduled a sleep study and my kid’s ear tube surgery. mammo? eye doctor visit? dentist stuff?

   7. Skin cancer screening (which should be annual), allergy testing if applicable, blood tests for vitamin deficiencies (vitamin D in particular), any specialist appointments who usually have a higher co-pay.

      Of course you should get a mammo and colonoscopy as others are mentioning, but copays for those shouldn’t be high as they are encouraged preventative care.

   8. I had my leg veins treated after we maxed the OOP due to DH’s hip replacements.

      1. Did you have varicose veins with pain? Or what was treated?

         I have very prominent veins all over my legs, with thrombophlebitis. But I don’t think they are called varicose veins. My doctors basically ignore this, but I have wondered….

   9. Dermatology, physical therapy for any reason like knee pain or stress incontinence, and if you don’t have a vision plan many health plans will cover a periodic eye exam.

   10. Isn’t the entire point of the Obamacare requirement that insurance cover those ten points that preventive care (mammograms, skin check, colonoscopy) have no co-pay?

7. We’re looking to buy a Nespresso machine. Any comments on the Pop+ (the small one) vs. the other models? Or any opinions on machines you might like better that are still around the under $250 Nespresso price point? Thank you!

   1. I’d get any of them that use the verturo pods – they have the most flavor options and the smaller ones are likely to get phased out.

      1. Gosh, I hope not. I dislike the flavor options and would be so sad to consign my Nespresso machine to the trash.

         All the hotels I’ve been to still use the classic pods, so I can’t imagine any phasing out is that imminent.

         1. To be fair, when I got ours about 7 years ago, that’s what the store said at the time. Hasn’t happened yet!

         2. The Vertuo is still on patent, which is why Nespresso pushes it.

   2. Visit the Nespresso subreddit. It was very helpful for me when I made my purchase. I ended up getting an original model with a frother and I’ve been very happy with it but it’s higher than your price point.

   3. I got rid of my Nespresso because of leaks. Reviews on their website include a lot of complaints about it. It would leak coffee water, really gross. Switched to Lavazza.

   4. I had the Next and it broke all the time. The company ended up sending me three new machines over the course of 2 years. Eventually I got so frustrated I convinced them to send me a different model (which they did for free), and they recommended the Plus. Apparently it’s the one they get the least calls about. We haven’t had any issues with the Plus, and it’s been about 1.5 years now, so I highly recommend that one. While the faulty machines were extremely annoying, I have to say their customer service is great.

   5. I have had the Pixie for about two years. No problems at all, small and easy to clean. I love it.

   6. We have the Next and love it, haven’t had any issues. I drink espressos or make them into lattes daily and my DH drinks two regular coffees each day. The ability to switch between the two in one machine with no fuss is key for us. He prefers Melozio or Odacio, I prefer the Peru and Orafio.

8. Favorite songs by female singers about being successful/making lots of money? I’m up for a big promotion and songs like Work B!tch by Britney Spears are really hitting the spot lately.

   1. Lizzo– Like a Girl is one of my faves.

   2. Ariana Grande Successful,
      Rihanna Bish Better have my money
      Kasey Musgraves, Breadwinner
      The Man, Taylor Swift
      Feeling Myself, Nicki & Bey (this is my absolute anthem)
      7 Rings, ariana
      Money, Cardi b
      You should see me in a crown, Billie Eilish

      1. The Man +++

         It’s sort of my imaginary walk-on song when I’m headed into certain work situations.

   3. Some guilty pleasures:
      Moment 4 Life by Nicki Minaj
      Fly by Nicki Minaj and Rihanna
      I Like It by Cardi B
      Hell on Heels by Miranda Lambert
      X’s and O’s by Trisha Yearwood

      & the entire Hamilton soundtrack (not exclusively female, but too good for this not to mention)

   4. “Most Girls” – Pink
      “Independent Women” and “Bills Bills Bills” – Destiny’s Child
      “I Like it” – Cardi B
      “B**** better have my money” – Rihanna
      “Bejeweled” – Taylor Swift
      “Bossy” – Kelis
      “7 Rings” – Ariana Grande
      “Run the World”, “Suga Mama”, and “6 Inch” – Beyonce
      “Money Honey” – Lady Gaga

      Also I know you requested by women, but “Independent” by Webbie is my fave song with this theme.

      1. in that vein, Prince – P Control

      2. Excuse me, I must interject to say that Webbie song is delightful, thanks!

   5. Destiny’s Child, Independent Women

   6. Paper Planes by M.I.A.
      Girl On Fire by Alicia Keys
      Stronger by Britney Spears
      Stronger by Kelly Clarkson
      Work by Rihanna
      Just Like Fire by Pink

   7. Get Up, Get Out by Born Dirty
      Maybe not exactly the vibe you’re going for, but King by Florence and the Machine

   8. BO$$ – Fifth Harmony
      Confident – Demi Lovato
      Woman – Kesha
      So What – P!nk
      Overcomer – Mandisa
      Torpedo – Jillette Johnson
      Can’t Hold us Down – Christina Aguilera, Lil Kim
      Hit me with your best shot – Pat benatar
      Sisters are Doin’ it for themselves – Eurythmics

      thanks for the great suggestions! Gotta expand my playlist!

      1. Bo$$ by Fifth Harmony was the first thing that came to mind! Something about needing Michelle Obama arms to carry the purse heavy with Oprah dollars haha.

   9. It’s not a “money” song per se, but I also like “I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan

   10. This calls explicitly for Megan thee Stallion.

9. Good morning – can anybody comment on the quality (and just general description) of the Quince tencel dresses? I’m traveling soon and it’s looks very packable, but I’m trying to envision what this tencel material is like.

   1. I ordered one of them (the vintage wash dress) and thought that the quality was good.

   2. I have a tencel shirt that I like a lot. Mine is thin, breezy fabric that’s held up really well for over 5 years.

   3. I have two of the tencel fit and flare dresses. They are soft and very comfortable, and have held up well in the laundry so far (cold wash plus hang dry).

   4. I really like the tencel dresses I have from Quince.

      P.S.-thoughts on the quality of their jewelry, especially the white gold pieces?

      1. I bought gold hoops there for about $50 and they were my favorite, go-to workhorse piece, as they were intended to be. Got many compliments. I did break them, but due to some mistreatment on my part and after a lot of use.

      2. I have two gold hoops from there– the thirty dollar ones they sell individually. I’ve had them in my cartilage piercings for almost two years and they’re going strong. Haven’t come unhooked, still look good, and haven’t bothered my sensitive skin. They fit right in with my other earrings from places like BVLA that cost ten times as much. One of the best deals I’ve ever gotten on jewelry, TBH.

   5. I spotted those same dresses and agree they look really nice. I really like this sweater, too. I can’t tolerate wool and love 100% cotton sweaters.

      1. I really like this sweater, but unfortunately it wouldn’t work with my proportions (short waisted with extra fluff in my stomach). Took me years to stop buying these types of tops/jackets.

   6. Quince is the epitome of almost perfect but not quite. It can be fine for a layering piece but that’s about it.

      1. Haha ++++ 1
         I have kept literally 5 items from them and they all have something juuuuuust slightly off in the fit and/or in design choice of a component.

         This is after trying/returning dozens of other items. I’ve vowed to never be seduced again by their ads (which follow me everywhere )

   7. Piggybacking, any thoughts on their leather jackets?

10. Should I finish or no?

    A while ago, I realized I’d been applying for jobs in my field for 6+ years and not landing the right job. I decided I should plan to pivot and went into a competency-based masters program. (That’s when you pay for 6 months at a time, take one class at a time, and when you pass it, you move forward. You do this for as many 6 month terms as needed to finish the degree.)

    I am 6 classes away from graduating but they are the ones toughest for me (and would likely require tutoring time which is free in the program but is a lot of extra efforts). I would need to finish by Thanksgiving to not have to pay for another 6 months which would be the goal for me. This means significant time investment weekly on top of onboarding for my big new job.

    I just landed a new job in my field!! The company is preparing me to be someone who is with them for a minimum of five years, but talks about the role I may have in 20 years, so it is intended to be indefinite. In other words, I’ll likely not need this new degree. It won’t increase my salary here if I earn it, though the general skills in it are obviously generally beneficial. If I went into another company, I’d be basing that move on having held this new job, so the new degree may never earn me more money or be something that would be heavily weighed by someone deciding whether to hire me, however the skills could come in handy.

    I am now trying to figure out if I should push hard and devote the time to finish (because I always finish what I start, I already paid for it, it’s not a bad thing to have another degree, what if this job isn’t as forever as we are all planning and I have to pivot into a different field, etc.). I also am trying to learn self-care and balance and I wonder if it’s silly to push myself to finish something I may never use and won’t guarantee earning me more money, and if my being Type A is pushing me where it shouldn’t.

    If it helps to know, I am early 40s, living alone, so I wouldn’t necessarily be taking time or focus away from my family but I’d be adding stress and taking time away from relaxation, hobbies, friends, etc.

    Please tell me if you’d finish or not and please share your reasoning. I am back and forth on this!

    1. Finish it. Don’t throw away all your prior efforts. Especially if you can finish this November! You’re so close!

    2. How much would another 6 months be? What is the degree and what field are you in? This job may not be forever so the degree may be valuable.

    3. I did something similar in my early 20s when I wasn’t happy with a current job but then got a new role with more growth/development offerings. I was only 9 credits into a masters but it was with NYU so…not cheap. Plus it was a ‘prestigious’ program and I’d already paid for GMAT courses/etc. However….it was making me miserable. The ‘I’m not a quitter’ mindset kept me going but a therapist helped me reframe ‘not a quitter’ into ‘I’m chosing to allow myself time and energy to devote to new opportunity AND to my own rest/personal goals’. It’s classic sunk cost fallacy but I was placing all the weight on ‘you can’t quit!’ vs. my own happiness/rest/friends.
       Long story short – let yourself quit! Devote that time to learning your new role and nourshing your rest and social network – the stuff that feeds your soul – it doesn’t sound like this program does.

    4. I think a masters is useless unless it is from a very top top program, and what you’re describing doesn’t sound like that. I’d quit and not waste my time that would be better spent making a good work impression. Nor would I throw good money after bad and extend the time to complete this program.

       1. I think this really depends on what field you are in. May be more widely applicable to an MBA.

       2. “I’d quit and not waste my time that would be better spent making a good work impression.”

          What does this mean, exactly?

          Also: I don’t think brown-nosing the boss and having a master’s degree create equivalent impact for people in the workplace. LMAO.

          OP – everyone I know, including myself, who has started a master’s degree while working at some point wants to quit their program. Because graduate school sucks. It’s just awful for most of us, and trying to manage grad school and a full-time job and a life is really hard. However, it seems like you are not that close to finishing – 6 more 6-month terms is a lot of time – and so it’s okay to give yourself permission to quit, if you really want to. But think about this: the time will go by whether you’re working on the degree or you’re not working on the degree. In 36 months, will you feel grateful you quit, or will you have regrets? What do you think your future self would say to your current self about choosing to quit?

          I’m excited for you about the new job, and think it’s great they’re making all these long-term plans for you, etc. I will also tell you, in December of 2020 I got a new job that I was really excited about, and they had long-term plans for me and it was so exciting to think about being with the company for the long-term and growing my career with them, etc. etc. It turns out the company was a hot-a$$ mess; the leaders had no idea what they were doing or how to run a company; and last year, after a long period of indecision about what exactly they wanted me to do for them, I was laid off in a “restructuring.” I was glad at that point that I had my master’s degree under my belt as I went out looking for a new job, and was able to land one in less than two months.

          It’s a real mistake to put your fate into the hands of any company, and leave your future up to someone else’s determination of how valuable you are to their operation. Always look out for your future self, regardless of what is happening in the present.

          1. Sorry – I misread the post. If you can finish within a year, just finish it. An additional six months is not that much time if you can’t finish by November.

    5. My recommendation is to finish the degree, but pay for an extra six months. The master’s degree is yours for life, and you will always own that accomplishment. It is very possible that you will always regret not finishing it. Unfortunately, jobs will come and go — your new company may be acquired, you may get a boss that hates you, your role can change in a way that you don’t like, and so on. Then you will be back where you are now.

       I suggest paying for another six months to relieve yourself of some pressure. School is not only about finishing, it’s about learning. Give yourself the time to take the courses, get the extra help you need, and finish for good. If I understand correctly, you’ll be done by next summer!

    6. I would finish. I’m an actuary and I know how it feels to be on your last leg of an arduous educational certification journey, believe me. But you will always kick yourself if you don’t finish. Get it done.

       The transition to a new job is actually a great time to get schoolwork in. You generally ramp up pretty slowly.

11. Tips for planning a milestone birthday? My mom is turning 70 in late December, which is already a tricky time. Nailing down a venue, a menu, and a photographer. What am I not thinking of?

    1. When I read “venue and menu” my brain instantly finished it with “the seating” if that tells you what is still on my everyday playlist, lol.

       Is she the type that would appreciate a (not too long) tribute slideshow? Or you reaching out to guests ahead of time to share a fun memory that you could assemble into a booklet?

       1. My concern with a slideshow/lots of photos is that it’ll seem like a funeral. My dad’s a semi-pro photographer, tho, so he will probably be able to put something good together.

          1. not if you include some candid shots or memories that get laughs from the audience…

    2. A lot of elderly people indoors in December – virus protocols and backup plans.

       1. Oh, for God’s sake. Not everyone is still living in mortal fear of the virus.

          1. Eh, it’s not a bad thing to keep in mind. Thankfully our family+friends are vaccinated/boosted.

          2. My thoughts exactly. I’d plan no differently than for a holiday party.

    3. Live music makes everything better.

    4. Oh, and also? When my husband turned 70 we had a 1970s-themed disco party and people are still taking about how great it was. Everybody dressed up in disco gear and we had a disco DJ and we danced and danced and it was the best party ever!! I was VERY worried that it wouldn’t work but it was a huge, huge success. So I’m just putting that out there if you want to go crazy.

12. What dishwashers are people happy with these days?

    The budget Amana our house came with has been just fine for us (so I doubt we really require a high end dishwasher!), but it is at least 15 years old and starting to show signs of age. When the door latch finally breaks all the way, it may be repairable, but I am thinking I should probably have a replacement in mind.

    1. We got a new dishwasher last year (Whirlpool from Costco) and the installation guy told me dishwashers on average are meant to last ~7 years assuming 4 runs a week. He also claimed that expensive dishwashers don’t get your dishes any cleaner or last any longer – most of the time the price either gets you more kinds of wash cycles & a quieter sound. That being said, we are very happy with the one we got – was around $800

       1. Omg I run my dishwasher 4x a day some days. Fingers crossed that stat doesn’t apply to my Bosch – which I love, especially the top silverware drawer. That’s going on 3 years with no problems.

          1. My Bosch is 11 years old and problem free. I didn’t plan on spending for a Bosch when I replaced the old dishwasher but it came with free installation. The lower end brands at the same store were $200 less but you had to pay $175 for installation. I’m no dummy so I jumped on the opportunity. I hope yours holds up as well as mine has!

             1. Funny enough the one we were replacing was a Bosch! No idea how old it, but we inherited from old owners of our house who abused it.

       2. Thank you! Spending $$$ rather than $$$$ sounds great to me.

       3. I agree that fancier dishwashers are generally just quieter, not better or longer lasting. Our Bosch is virtually silent but does not get dishes that clean and we’ve had many repair calls about error codes and other problems. I would never invest in a pricey dishwasher again.

    2. Bosch. We got one with the AutoAir feature, which pops open the door at the end of the cycle so steam can escape and dishes can finish drying (plastics mainly), and I absolutely love it.

    3. Miele. Specifically the three-drawer style with the silverware tray at the top. At least 15 at this point and no issues.

       1. Can’t speak to that brand but we got a 3-drawer when our 10YO one died and fixing it was almost the cost of a new one. Life changing in a good way.

       2. +1 Miele. reputation for lasting a super long time.

       3. +1

    4. Hate my Bosch. It is higher end model. Quiet, cleans well, it the layout makes no sense. Lots of wasted space if you use anything but flat plates – bottoms rack I can fit about 40 plates or 6 bowls. The top silverware rack is good.

       1. This is a real issue! My dishes fit fine in mine, luckily, but honestly next time I’m bringing a box of my dishes to the store and loading the floor models.

    5. we had a bosch which we loved and upgraded to a miele this past year when the bosch died (it was 17 yo according to the previous owner). the miele is supposed to have a 20 yr lifetime which makes it a better deal per dollar according to DH but we do run it like 2x a day and i love that thing

    6. My KitchenAid is still going strong 10+ years later. I have had to repair the rolling mechanism for the top rack, and sometimes I need to “reboot” the electronics on the control pad, but other than that, still functioning. When I bought it, KithenAid brands all had food disposal; now (in order to reduce noise) they have filters that you have to manually clean out each month, but they still seem to have some sort of grinder to keep the recirculating wash water as clean as possible.

    7. We have a Samsung and I really like it.

    8. We have a GE bought last year and it is fine. The silverware drawer at the top is nice and I love that the middle rack can raise or lower to fit different dishes.

       I don’t like that the rack configuration doesn’t fit our bowls very well so they never load in a neat line like they did in our old dishwasher, but at least they come out clean.

    9. Thanks for the testimonials. I’m hoping that any modern, new dishwasher will be quieter, but it helps to hear when people are basically satisfied with reliability, maintenance needs, and actually getting the dishes clean. With work from home, we cook most meals, so our dishwasher gets a lot of use!

13. I just learned that there is such thing as “wild pregnancy” where a woman deliberately chooses to have no prenatal care and then goes for a “free birth” with no attendants except for maybe a partner and/or the firstborn child. Honestly, I can understand why some women are nervous about the medical system and not being respected, especially black women, but this is insanity, isn’t it? It’s dooming a small share of those moms and babies to die and larger share to preventable complications. Apparently on some of the Internet forums and communities where you can find like-minded women, you will get deleted and banned from the community if you tell a woman there that she should go to the hospital or see a doctor if she reports a problem. 🤯

    1. As someone who just learned during a routine prenatal appointment that she has placenta previa, this seems…inadvisable.

    2. Yeah that’s complete insanity. Any knowledge of history or maternal outcomes in places with less medical care will show that this is insanity.

    3. Terrible idea, and they are romanticizing the past and choosing to ignore how many women and babies used to die during childbirth. (Not saying there aren’t problems today, but I’m talking about before prenatal care was much of a thing.)

       1. +1. It’s an outgrowth of the “crunchy” mindset and spreading like wildfire due to social media.
          And the crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline is a real thing: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-left-alt-right-share-beliefs-white-power-movement/672454/

    4. My firstborn is 20 months older than my second child. Yikes to that idea.

       1. Huh?

          1. I think because having pregnancies close together is riskier but it was a bit of a huh for me too.

          2. I think she was responding to the part about having an older child in attendance instead of a midwife or other qualified professional.

    5. Who checks for things like rH incompatibility? Because I had that twice. Glad I got rhogam and not some weird home brew tea to help or whatever.

       1. Nobody checks. Which is why before we had modern science/medicine, more people died or lived with preventable disabilities.

       2. Refusing rhogam is also a “thing” among some of these groups as well. There is a super problematic fundmentalist family blogger who has lost pregnancies due to refusing rhogam.

          1. Who is it?

             1. Karissa Collins. She also has mixed race children and whitewashes her photos – she is problematic on many, many levels. And somehow Shaq is somewhat involved with the family and buys them things? Its odd.

    6. I had an ex-coworker go deep into the sharing milk people. No thanks!

       1. Just jumping in to say that there’s a pretty wide gap between most ‘milk sharing people’ all the way to ‘free birthing and having a totally un-medically monitored pregnancy’. Will share my experience – I had a NICU baby, a TON of extra milk, and actively donated to a Medical Milk Bank. They had incredibly high standards (like, if I had half a glass of wine a day before or Advil or certain types of tea I couldn’t donate) and even though I donated hundreds of ounces to them, I had extra. Like… think a deep freezer full extra. I was connected with a woman who was a breast cancer survivor who really wanted her younger baby to have some breastmilk. I had gone through all the testing to ensure that my milk was safe and shared that with her.

          FWIW, we both gave birth in hospitals, both are fully vaccinated and follow our doctors’ recommendations. But I’m glad that my ‘extra’ milk got to help this woman reclaim something that she felt was taken from her and help feed her sweet baby girl.

          1. Yes, milk donation is legitimate and medically needed.

             1. This was free-range milk sharing. Waaaay different.

          2. What a wonderful thing you did. It made me happy cry.

             I hope your baby is doing well, and will live a long and healthy life.

    7. I don’t understand this thinking either. Most people in the world have a wild pregnancy because they have no other options – what possible benefit is there if you live somewhere with the option for care and monitoring?

       I only know one person who did this, with disastrous results. Yoga teacher / vegan verging on raw-foodist; anti-vax; lived mostly off the grid; had a home birth with her partner and their otherwise healthy, full term baby didn’t survive the birth because he had a cord around his neck. So tragic.

       1. Yes, I had a friend who had the same thing happen with a home birth and only a doula present. No time to get to a hospital for help to revive. Such a sad, sad tragedy.

          The father was a scientist, and my friend….. I just never understood why they made this choice, as they were actually not extreme at all. A little “crunchy”, but smart seemingly reasonable people, who wanted something less sterile/hospital, more natural.

          Such a tragedy.

    8. I am extremely suspicious of the medical establishment and of maternity care in particular, but I still gave birth in a hospital. Even though the modern system is broken and treats the baby as the candy and the mother as the disposable wrapper, it’s still safer than going without medical care at all. Under the current circumstances the best things an individual mother can do to protect her own safety are to train her partner or another loved one to advocate for her, to hire a good doula who has an established working relationship with the hospital staff, and to learn to demand a robust informed consent discussion. I credit my doula with saving me from an unnecessary c-section and with catching a nurse who was about to administer a narcotic against my clearly expressed wishes.

    9. Yeah. This is not for me. That said, I did give birth in a hospital with an epidural but under the care of nurse midwives rather than an ob. I do think I might have had an unnecessary c-section with my first child had I been under the care of an ob. Absolutely, some c-sections are necessary and life saving, but I think of ob gyns as surgeons. And surgeons like to cut. So I thank goodness there was an ob on hand had I needed one but I’m glad I had a midwife to let me know that it wasn’t necessary yet. Or ever as was my case.

       All this is to say, I think there is nuance in medicine and life that these people and the anti-vaxxers-don’t get me started- ignore to their often tragic detriment. I’ve really grown to despise most of the wellness and crunchy movements, especially when it comes to children and babies’ health. Modern medicine is mostly an amazing privilege and I really dislike the notion that we’re better off without it.

       1. +1 million to your second paragraph. It is willful ignorance and hubris. And I am so over it.

          1. I agree. I get especially irritated with people who prize “not being on any medication” as if it’s something to brag about. Medications save lives, including mine.

             1. There is a reasonable view of not being on medications: when you are fortunate that your problems can be solved with diet, exercise, and yoga, and you do all those things to avoid pills.

             2. “There is a reasonable view of not being on medications: when you are fortunate that your problems can be solved with diet, exercise, and yoga, and you do all those things to avoid pills.”

                Eyeroll. You are not a better person because your genetics enabled you to do yoga and avoid being on blood-pressure medication, and my marathon-runner aunt was not so lucky and has to take a pill every day. My grandmother (her mother) had HBP her whole life that was always poorly controlled and my aunt got crappy genes; it’s not her fault. Check yourself; you are not a more virtuous person because you’re healthy. You are, however, more annoying than most people.

             3. Anon at 3:13 pm, you are a whack job. I literally said the word “fortunate,” and you quoted it, then pretended that I said something completely different. Your bs doesn’t fly.

       2. Completely agree.
          I came to despise the “natural” movement when someone smugly told me that all babies born at home had better outcomes, and that my “claim” that my mother would have died had I been born at home was just “fearmongering and false”. These people just have no idea at all.

       3. This. I would be dead many times over without modern medicine (just counting surgeries here, not even immunizations!). People who think this way have either been SUPER lucky, or are living in deep denial. There are many things wrong with healthcare in this country but deliberately opting out is insanity.

    10. This has been a thing for many, many decades, it’s just that we have social media and like to give things fun new names. Another one is ‘ten month moms’. This is where women will wait to go into natural labor no matter how far past the due date they are.
        Sadly, some of them will find out the hard way why this is a bad idea.

        1. It’s different now though, because medical standards have changed and they’re choosing to ignore the overwhelming medical consensus. I was born at 43 weeks in the 1980s even though my mom was under the care of an OB and gave birth in a hospital. They just didn’t have the same awareness back then about the stillbirth risks in late pregnancy. Now we do and anyone who wants to go to 43 weeks today is ignoring the science and likely not under the care of a doctor.

           1. Yes, that’s true. I obviously wasn’t clear…
              “Ten month moms” are similar to “wild pregnancy” in that they ignore/forego medical care.

    11. Yeah this is an extreme offshoot of the crunchy off grid mom scene. The same ones who are glorifying homesteading and raw milk and acting like formula is child abuse. I know this is a mean take but….I say they get what they get. If someone chooses not to receive medical care and things turn out really badly for them, my sympathy is limited.

        1. They get what they get and I have very little sympathy for them if something goes wrong – but their baby is an innocent victim in all of this. I rarely advocate for punishing women for their choices during pregnancy/child birth, but someone is going to get prosecuted for homicide and I will not be shedding any tears for them.

    12. I’m currently 33 weeks pregnant, and this is crazy. I’m high risk, so that may impact my views. But putting aside the medicinal risks, I love seeing the baby during ultrasounds. I feel so much better afterwards and less worried

    13. I have so many thoughts on this. I do not think this is smart. I do, however, wish the medical establishment would take concerns about women’s autonomy during childbirth more seriously (along with concerns about maternal health generally, especially for POC) so that people would feel safer seeking medical care, and that medical care would, in fact, be safer. I think a lot of people get sucked into these extreme alternate approaches because they do not see a readily available middle ground. If your only options are a highly medicalized birth just because that’s the way the hospital does things, or a water birth at home, where you think you have the hospital as a back up if something goes wrong, you might pick the water birth if you feel really strongly about avoiding medicalized birth with little autonomy. You’re also more likely to trust someone who is taking your concerns seriously, and then you start taking in information, which may include misinformation, and then it snow balls from there.

        1. Right. Every woman I know wants to deliver under the care of a midwife at a birthing center physically attached to a hospital where transfer is quick and easy. Hardly anyone gets to. I don’t want to hire a doula! I’d rather have a trained midwife by my side the whole time. But that isn’t an option at any hospital within a hour of me, and that’s a dozen hospitals.

    14. Yes, this is a whole thing, it was happening when I was pregnant with my kid in 2006. It’s absolutely bonkers to me because I had a complicated pregnancy and then developed a serious complication right before my due date that led to an early c-section delivery. Had I gone into labor, it’s possible my baby and I both could have died. I believe that for the most part, pregnancy and birth is a natural process and there isn’t a need for a ton of medical intervention into either. However, I also agree that women who engage in this “free birth” process are, as another poster said, “over-romanticizing the past” and are really taking risks they may regret. One of my great-grandmothers died in childbirth. That used to be a thing that happened so frequently people just accepted it as part of life. FYI, there are stories out there of babies dying when their “free-birthing” mother doesn’t know how to handle shoulder dystocia, or a nuchal cord, or the cord gets compressed in the vagina and it wasn’t evident because there was no monitoring of the baby’s heart rate. There’s a reason why women have used midwives for centuries – while it’s technically possible to give birth on your own, and some women do it and are fine, it’s also good to have an experienced person there who has some experience and can help you if something goes wrong. The wife of one of my closest friends is a licensed midwife and she has some pretty harrowing stories of situations she encountered that went wrong at the last minute, and the mom had to get transported to the hospital so she wouldn’t die or the baby wouldn’t die.

        I agree this is insanity but this is the consequence of living in a free society – people are free to make dangerous and irresponsible decisions. I do believe women who engage in “free birthing” should be held legally accountable if something goes wrong and their baby dies or is born disabled, same as with the cuckoo people who don’t take their kids to the doctor when the kids get sick because “if God wants to heal the child, He will.”

    15. Yes, insanity. The risk assessment simply does not check out. The upsides matter, but the potential negative outcomes are absolutely catastrophic – dead mother, dead baby, severely disabled mother, severely disabled baby. I hear a lot about how the medical establishment is bad for pregnant people from these circles (and I agree) but I hear very little about whether these women have truly considered whether they want to risk having profoundly disabled child and what their plan is if that happens. Sometimes, it’s suing the hospital because the hospital couldn’t save the baby who had been in distress for hours by the time mom showed up.

        1. I agree with that and it is also like they are willfully ignoring that there are in fact women who will definitely die without intervention. That has always been true in the entire history of humanity. But they seem to be OK with that despite claiming that they’re better for women? Make it make sense.

           1. This is probably related to the prosperity gospel. Among other things, it holds that if you are good and deserving then good things will happen to you and that poor health and other bad outcomes happen to sinners who deserve them. So these wackos think that if they avoid modern medicine nothing will happen to them, and that anyone who does die or suffer disability brought it upon themself. It is a big reason why conservatives are opposed to universal health insurance. They think that sick people deserve to be sick and that the virtuous shouldn’t have to pay the bills.

              1. +1 – it is. Your health is directly related to your intake of kale, running, and thus virtue. You do “everything you are supposed to do” and thus nothing will happen to you because you deserve it.

              2. I do not know a single person who believes that kale and running solve all health problems; I do know a lot of people who believe that Americans’ high health costs and low life expectancy (relative to other developed nations) are partially caused by unhealthy lifestyles. Those are different things. (The only people who don’t believe they are different are people who are wrecking their bodies and want to pretend that their Type II diabetes and joint damage are totally unrelated to mainlining a bag of potato chips every night.)

    16. Late to the thread, but this makes me so sad. I served in the Army in Afghanistan, and I “adopted” an Afghan family last year that was evacuated. The mom of the family is a midwife and hearing her describe the care available at her hospital – the crown jewel of the Kabul medical system – is chilling. There is minimal anesthesia available, minimal clean gloves, etc, etc. There are women over there suffering and dying every single day in childbirth and these IGNORANT crunchy idiots are turning down medical care for kicks? I’d like to tell those women seeking a more authentic life to step out of their middle class American upbringing and go see what real life looks like for the rest of the world. Places where even Tylenol is a precious resource. Ya want clarity on life? Go visit a war-torn country and see their suffering.

    17. There was someone like that in one of my birth support groups and it seemed like she had had a pretty traumatic hospital birth with her first child. We can sit and judge people, but this is a pretty tiny number of people out there. It is sad that what some people think of as excellent care has failed many women.

        1. Yeah there are some people who are ideologues or just very ignorant, but there are also people who have accepted that they would actually rather die than go through what a hospital put them through previously. That is something for modern medicine to be ashamed of.

           1. But not a situation where babies should have to die so moms can make a point about our broken healthcare system. I have no problem with what adults decide to do to themselves. When you start making choices for a child that has no awareness of the consequences or agency in the situation, the calculus changes completely.

           2. I don’t think a lot of them understand that they might actually die. Some of these groups advocating free birth are outright lying about risks.

    18. Privilege at its worst. And yes, definitely insanity.

14. Between the kids starting school last week, a brutal heat wave, and a busy season at work (higher ed), I am absolutely fried. The worst part is, other than the heat wave, I don’t see this letting up anytime soon. I know I should be taking advantage of these last weekends of summer and planning small adventures and activities, but the fatigue is so real. And yet I know I will feel disappointed if I spend the whole weekend in the house. It’s such a vicious cycle.

    1. I’d try to let go of the idea that you should be trying to make the most of summer right now. Summer ends when kids go back to school IMO. Even the outdoor pools in our town shut down for the season. It’s good for kids to take it easy the first few weekends back to school.

    2. Can you spend the day at a local pool? An adventure doesn’t have to be hard to execute to be worth it.

    3. “summer” is over when your kids are back to school- just enjoy low key warm weather stuff like bike rides or ice cream outside after dinner or whatever.

    4. Reframe! My big family plan for tomorrow is a pajama day. We will wear pajamas, watch movies, play video games. Maybe I’ll cook. I’ll read. We are all very excited.

       It has been over 100 degrees for too many days. I will live it up outside when outside stops being mean to me.

    5. If the fatigue is really as devastating as you say, there’s a chance you are sick with the newest strain of COVID. It might be worth taking a test.

    6. I’m in a similar boat. School has started, it’s hotter than heck, and I’m going to lose it if I spend all weekend in the house. I also have a spouse who would love nothing better than to sit in a chair all day, every day. At least he had the good sense not to probe further into *why* I felt like my MIL was sending me passive-aggressive texts. I’ve known the woman for almost 20 years, I know passive-aggressive. MIL is grumpy because we did not drive through the CA hurricane for the second day of her 2-day anniversary party.

       1. Oh I remember that party! Glad Hurricane Hilary got you out of part of it :)

          1. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I was expecting, especially because we only had to be there for half of the party.

             The one thing that was so cringe-inducing it was almost funny was their neighbor’s toast. I’d never seen the woman before in my life, but she was “helping” with the party and is apparently my 80-something MIL’s new BFF. The woman (who is in her thirties if not younger) did a 10-minute monologue about how wonderful it was that my in-laws had been married for so many years, how terrible divorce was, what a tragedy it was that half of marriages end in divorces nowadays, etc., how it was so amazing that they hadn’t divorced, that marriage is a lifetime commitment and divorce is the easy way out, etc. Standard megachurch claptrap, the same stuff I’ve heard my whole life and ignored.

             Here’s the thing: my MIL and FIL’s marriage is the second marriage for BOTH of them. Both of them divorced their first spouses, have kids from prior marriages, and didn’t have kids together. So ALL of their children are “children of divorce.” It was just delightful in its cluelessness.

    7. I always lose interest in outdoor activities this time of year. I used to feel bad about it but now I know it’s just part of my rhythm and I will be just as excited about fall and spring and next summer activities as I always was.

       These are the dog days of summer. Someone else came up with that term for the same reason!

15. I am going to Puerto Vallarta next week and would love any off the beaten path food and drink recommendation as well as any shopping recommendations.

    We will be staying in the Romantic zone.

    1. How nice! I have friends living in Nuevo Vallarta, so kinda locals and we tend to visit places where locals go. I remember we had amazing dishes and great service in Campomar. Beware, the portions are big. We thought we would order a mix of starters to share between two people and we were full before our main dishes arrived. But all was delicious.
       I also remeber we went to La Leche, it was recently open then and the food was great, it just had a completely different vibe. It does not feel cozy, but rather modern and cold. I am just sharing it as an example, as you might want a change of scene.
       Give Campomar a try.

16. Just found out that my husband got a job in another state. He has to be there October 1st. We’ve never done an out of state move. We own our home and will sell it. What are the most important things we need to do asap? Contact a realtor, get a storage unit, what else?

    1. You haven’t mentioned the impact to your own job, if you have one.

       1. This is more than likely something the OP has discussed with her husband. She is asking for logistical tips on moving states, not input on her life from random people who have no insight into it.

          1. No need to be obtuse; obviously the advice differs if she has a job that is impacted by this.

    2. What will new company pay for as far as relo expenses? Given you’re only 5-6 wks away will they cover a short-term rental for him while you stay home to sell the house?

    3. Hi! I did this last year, in about the same timeframe. I survived and you will too!
       – Call a painter and slap a neutral coat on everything. Kitchen cabinets, too, if they’re not brand-new.
       – Ask the realtor how quickly homes are selling and what you can do to speed things up.
       – When it gets tough, throw money at it.
       Good luck!

       1. Did an out-of-state move in similar time frame. This is a great list! I’d start purging anything you can now.

    4. You may want to setup a rental in your new town for the first year- it’s not a great market+ figuring out neighborhoods +traffic etc may be worth the cost.

    5. Hire movers. I’d pay them to pack too. But figure out what the relo package covers first!

    6. Book movers now, even if you end up finetuning the packing and delivery date. Get cost estimate. Ask them to pack, move and assemble big pieces of furniture (ideally unpack, if you will have furniture in new place already).
       I would also rent first, as buying a new home is stressful even if you have the time and extra bandwidth to deal with it. You can rent your current home to offset the rent you’ll be paying.
       Contact realtor.
       Husband needs clarity on what relocation support he gets: movers cost, rental, or a budget? Does the company help with school search for kids? Tax support?
       Pack everything you think you will need to stay in new place for a month and take tjose bags with you. My movers were always late, or new apartment wasn’t ready on time etc. And I was very happy to have that first-month luggage with me. This includes clothes, basic cooking equipment, few plates & cuttlery, few towels, cosmetics that would be too expensive to just buy in new location (eg I would buy a bottle of shampoo in the new location, but I packed my perfume and expensive foundation etc). Also a box of tools you will need for unpacking – as there is nothing more frustrating than opening boxes to find your box cutter.
       If you have trouble falling asleep in new places – sleeping mask, earplugs, sleeping meds or whatever works for you.

    7. I’d think about slowing the roll and see if he can go first in temporary housing and then follow when you have more time to get everything together.

    8. Thanks to everyone who responded. I knew others could relate, and I needed to hear that I can get through this. :)

       I’m fully remote in my position, so there won’t be a job impact on my end. Unfortunately he is in higher ed, so there will be no moving expenses. We will start “neutralizing” our house asap and we’ve talked about him moving first and doing an extended stay while we sort out the house logistics.

       I’ll keep breathing in the meantime and take one step at a time.

       1. You’re doing well. You already have a general plan. Nicely done.

          Send out emails today to your local facebook group/block where you live/friends for recommendations on a mover and on realtors that are local specialists on your specific neighborhood/type of house.

          In my area, it is actually a great time to sell if you live in a desirable area. Even though interest rates are very high, there are people very very eager to buy because so few houses are on the market. I might consider doing no work on the house at all, talk to a realtor, and get a feeling for what the house could get selling it as is. Why knock yourself out trying to move/re-paint/fix a house ALONE while your husband moves first and is focused on establishing his new job? Because you may not even make back what you put into the house. So get an estimate from a Realtor or two and look on Zillow in your area to see what comparable houses are selling for…. as is.

       2. Higher ed pays moving expenses all the time, although perhaps not all institutions and not for all positions. Have him double check (and look on the institution’s website for its policies nd see if there is some thing on moving or relocation expenses).

          1. Moving expenses are standard for faculty (my husband got $15k when he started as an assistant professor almost a decade ago), but I’ve never heard of staff getting them.

             1. At my institution, moving expenses are common for staff at a certain level. Any position with regional, national or international recruitment would likely get moving expenses.

    9. I would first find a realtor because they can be helpful in advising you on how to get your house ready to sell and in giving you a timeline for how long everything will likely take. They also usually have people at their disposal who you can hire for painting and so on at reasonable prices.

    10. We did a coast to coast move last year. Rented, so didn’t need to sell home, but here are other steps we took. We had about 6 weeks between finding out and moving:
        Not in prioritized order:
        – Find a place to live in new city. Employer offered to pay either first month’s rent in new area or corporate housing for 4 weeks. We found a place via Zillow, did a video tour and signed the lease. Fortunately it worked out very well
        – Schedule utilities to be taken out of our name and into landlords name for current place and schedule utilities to be in our name for new home
        – Inform employers, banks, insurance companies, medical offices, credit cards, investments, magazine subscriptions, alumni organizations, etc of our new address. This was tedious and the list was much longer than what I anticipated
        – Set up mail forwarding
        – Make arrangements for week between arriving in new city and our stuff arriving. We bought a nice air mattress from REI, new linens from Pottery Barn, and chairs from Ikea (have a kitchen counter) and arranged for those items to be picked up once we arrived. We then made a large Target/ grocery run right after.
        – Home cleaning — this one wasn’t scheduled until the day after we arrived and regretted not having our landlords arrange this / show proof of a professional cleaning. It wasn’t atrocious, but not my level of clean when we arrived
        – Send moving announcements to friends and family
        – Ongoing process over the year of replacing eye doc, dentists, medical docs, hair salons, barber, waxer, etc. If you can/have time, I’d recommend getting in with your current folks to give yourself more time to find what you’re looking for
        – A week before we also searched for places to eat nearby and I was very glad we did that beforehand. Arriving tired and hungry and then figuring out where to eat is such a pain
        – On the more sentimental side, doing any of those things you’ve always meant to do at your current city, but haven’t gotten around to and/or saying “goodbye” to favorites. We had dinner at our favorite restaurant the night before we left and brunch the next morning at our then usual spot for past ~10 years
        – Research and knowing the steps we needed to take to register our car and get our driver’s licenses when we arrived
        – Figure out what you need vs what you’ll pack. We packed everything except for meds, a few toiletries, very important small keepsakes, jewelry, contacts and spare glasses, important documents, small cash stash, and checks. Plus clothes for 2 weeks, which for me included work clothes because I am often asked to travel for my job. Basically bring with you anything you absolutely need or would be absolutely crushed if it doesn’t arrive/ gets damaged in the process of moving
        – This was a great opportunity for us to purge items we rarely used all throughout the house
        – Make sure to spend time with people you may not see as much. We spent a week with our parents before flying out and caught up with friends throughout the 6 weeks before the move

        1. This is an awesome list!

        2. Thank you so much for this detailed list!

17. Hi – PIP/Toxic workplace poster here. Would like to get the wisdom of this group.

    I’m now on a new team in my department and they’ve extended my PIP to give my new boss time to assess. In many ways it’s like getting a new job – I’m onboarding to new projects, getting to know what’s going on, etc. I have gaps in my awareness/knowledge regarding projects that I hope fill with time/experience – I just don’t know if these gaps are going to be seen as performance issues or just normal getting up-to-speed at my level and at this point.

    Outside of that, I’m a finalist for a job that would be great experience, seemingly good people, more/different work (there is an expectation of some weekends when there are various client-facing summits), and unless anything changes on their end, would be a decrease in salary and benefits (we could get on DH’s insurance and I *think* we could keep our current provider, which is super important for reasons I won’t get into here). I’m not thrilled about the salary cut; it would truly be a fresh new start, though.

    I also have an interview scheduled late next month for a role that is a step up from where I’m at currently, will meet/exceed my current salary, similar benefits. It would be a great opportunity, but it’s just an interview – no idea when the deliberation time frame would be, how I’d stack up against other candidates, etc. There are a handful of folks that go from my current org to this place, and if needed, I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to have anyone from current employer as a reference for me that’s senior to me (old boss is out, new boss – TBD) so who knows. I do have references from other jobs and lateral ones from this one I could leverage. Maybe I’m borrowing trouble.

    I’ve been burning the candle at both ends and I’m just so exhausted. I know starting somewhere new requires a lot of up-front time and investment, and I’m still giving so much to this current place.

    What should I do? Part of me thinks I should think about quitting current job and focus on job searching, the other is telling me to hang in there with the devil I know so I can evaluate all options and be safe. I’m worried about the – not unlikely – scenario where I say no to the offer I may get, stay in this job, get booted out, and don’t get the other job I have an interview for.

    Other factors: I’m often the primary parent for our 2 kids – Kinder and preschool-aged (yes, we have help and are booking more); DH is in BigLaw and travels often. He may be making a change soon, but we won’t know until later next month if he will go in that direction. Obviously I will talk all of this through with him (we’ve talked about me quitting) but he is on travel until Saturday.

    1. If you get the job you’re a finalist for, take it. The interview job is speculative and your reputation will follow you from current company if there’s a lot of cross pollination, as you suggest. Your current job is a time bomb. They are just waiting to fire you. Get out and get a new job. Pay is irrelevant at this point.

       1. Agree 100 percent. You need to leave your current organization, and soon.

       2. Totally agree

       3. +3 take it and get out. The PIP transferring is not a good sign!

          1. Agree. It’s a very bad sign actually.

       4. Agreed.

       5. Agreed

       6. Agree, and I will add that if at ALL possible, take a week between jobs. Give Old Job notice, hand things over, and take a week to decompress. Sleep. Clean the kitchen. Sleep more.

          1. This, but take a trip instead of doing chores.

             1. She is the primary parent for two children, who presumably are in school and can’t go with her.

    2. I say this gently, but it’s time to move on. I don’t even read this site every day and I feel like I’ve heard your story dozens of times now. That tells me that you’re spinning your wheels and that a change is the right step. Take that fresh start.

       1. +1000

       2. +1. GTFOutta there.

    3. – Don’t quit your current job. You seem very close to getting a new job, but not across the finish line yet. Don’t quit within sight of the finish line; that doesn’t make a ton of sense.

       – Take the new job if it’s offered. You have too much baggage at your current company and it’s going to follow you around as long as you’re there. Starting over does take time and energy, but it’s time to start over. Also, regarding the pay cut – gently, if your spouse is in BigLaw and the paycut isn’t like 50%, you should be able to restructure expenses to absorb the hit. It’s more important to get out of an untenable situation where it will likely take years to fix your internal reputation, if in fact that is possible (and I’m not saying your internal reputation is justified.) FYI, if you’ve been with your current employer for some years, and you take the new job and in a year you want to make a move, that won’t look weird – it’s pretty typical these days for people to have a mix of longer and shorter stints.

       That whole thing about “the night is darkest just before dawn” thing always proves true for me – right about the time I realize I’m exhausted, I’m at the end of my rope and I can’t do much more of whatever I’m doing – there’s a change and things get better. I think you’re on the cusp of things getting better; you just have to hang in there. If you do get the new job, see if you can negotiate time off between jobs, like at least a week or so – say you have a pre-planned family event, or something – so you can decompress and marshal your inner resources before starting the new opportunity.

       1. Thank you for this.

          You’re right – I have 0 in the bag, so no need to leave yet.

          And yes, I’d absolutely need to take at minimum 1-2 weeks off between jobs, even to get logistics, clothes, etc. sorted for new job, let alone the mental break.

    4. Thanks all. I’m concerned about the benefits piece but if there is a way to keep that through DH AND I’m lucky enough to get this job, I know what to do. It’s been a hard time. Appreciate all of you.

       1. I don’t get this at all. Your husband is in biglaw. He has good benefits they all do and you leaving your job is a qualifying event.

          1. Oh my goodness, her husband is in big law? Please…. OP leave ASAP with the lower offer.

    5. If you get that offer, I’d take it. I’ve come back from a bad performance review (not a PIP, to be fair, but a genuinely bad review) to be reasonably successful at a particular company, so I get that it’s possible, but I’m now in a new job at a new place and the sense of relief is just wonderful. It’s hard to make a change but I think a new job–almost any new job–will be such a significantly better place from which to approach your future, *even if it turns out you don’t love the new job and want to look again for something else*.

    6. If your husband is in biglaw why does your salary matter so much?

       1. It is likely an ego thing, but it matters to me. However it wouldn’t impact our HHI a lot, so it’s something I may just need to get over IF I get offered the role.

          1. But wouldn’t getting fired be a worse impact to ego?

       2. Yeah this. There is like zero percent chance I’d be working if my spouse was a Big Law partner.

          1. I am invested in my own career, but I have to say – same here. And that would go double if I had two small kids.

             If I was the OP I would be thinking about how I could take a couple of years off, or work only part-time or as a consultant or something, and then maybe go back into the workforce full-time at a later point in time. There is no reason to work full-time in a high-demand job just for the sake of it, or because feminism, or whatever. Especially if her husband travels all the time. My $.02 – OP is playing life on hard mode, and also maybe underestimating the impact her home life (2 small kids + spouse with high-travel big job) had on her job performance. And I’m not trying to slam her or anyone in the same situation. It is a tough, tough balance and it’s okay to step back from a career for awhile and then go back later.

    7. Take the new offer! Idk why you’d quit and be unemployed when you have an offer on the table.

18. I am looking for a new backpack for work and personal travel. I know this is discussed a ton, but I haven’t found the perfect fit and everything looks different online than in person!

    I need it to have a water bottle pocket and a pass through for my suitcase. I would like it to be medium size so I can easily fit it under the seat on a plane, but still hold things. I want it to look good enough to bring to a customer site, but also look fine if I use it for a personal trip.

    Any recommendations??

    1. I got a travel backpack at Target (of all places) that actually ticks all your boxes. I have the 35L Open Story Travel Backpack. Husband has the slightly larger version. It’s incredibly well designed, I just took it on a weeklong trip as my only bag. Looks totally nondescript (which I think is what you want in this case). It was $50 and I’m very happy with it.

       Has a laptop sleeve and also opens like a suitcase so it lays flat and is easy to find things inside.

    2. Have been happy with my Lo & Sons Hanover backpack. Looks like they’re now on an updated model, but mine has the water bottle pocket and pass-through you want, and I find it holds a lot because of its shape – not as tapered at the top as many backpacks.

       1. +1 for the larger Hanover.

    3. My Tumi Carson fits all those criteria.

    4. The Everlane Transit backpack is the answer! Love mine.

    5. Smaller sized Patagonia black hole. It converts into a backpack or can be worn on your shoulder. Has a sleeve for sitting on your carryon. I can fit so much in it and it fits easily under the seat on a plane. Has a padded laptop sleeve and I like that I can tuck the straps away on a plane or train.

19. Has anyone tried a styling/shopping service they liked? preferably not $$$. I have the closet full of clothes but nothing to wear conundrum. Thanks

    1. https://www.bridgetteraes.com/

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