Coffee Break: Loafer Mule
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I was iffy on this trend until now, but loafer mules have finally won me over — and this option from Rothy's looks great.
What are your thoughts on the trend, readers — solely for casual days at formal offices, or always acceptable? It's funny, but I've never questioned the appropriateness of heeled mules — maybe I'm conflating the boho Birkenstock mules look with the loafer mule look.
In any event: these loafers come in four colors (including leopard!), sizes 5-13, for $155.
(Not necessarily about shoes, but if you're in a leopard mood, J.Crew has QUITE the collection at the moment.)
Sales of note for 5/19/25:
- Nordstrom Rack – Looking for a deal on a Dyson hairdryer? The Rack has several refurbished ones for $199-$240 (instead of $400+) — but they're final sale only.
- M.M.LaFleur – Daily flash sales, and lots of twill suiting on sale! Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off. 5/19's flash sale: Jardigans down to $175-$209, dresses down to $150, blazers down to $250
- Nordstrom – Lots of markdowns on AGL (50%!), Weitzman, Tumi, Frank & Eileen, Zella, Natori, Cole Haan, Boss, Theory, Reiss (coats), Vince, Eileen Fisher, Spanx, and Frame (denim and silk blouses)
- Ann Taylor – 50% off summer-ready styles
- Banana Republic Factory – 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Boden – 10% off new women's styles with code + sale up to 50% off
- Eloquii – 50-60% off select styles
- J.Crew – 60% off sale, and 40% off packing picks (prices as marked)
- J.Crew Factory – New arrivals, plus up to 60% off everything plus extra 50% off clearance
- Rothy's – Up to 50% off last-chance styles
- Spanx – Free shipping on everything
- Talbots – 30% off dresses, skirts, shoes, and accessories
IDK if you’ve seen the reels for 100 Brits vs 100 Americans, but is there a map out there somewhere that explains the UK in terms of American geography? Like this is the Florida of the UK, this is the Brooklyn of the UK, this is the Rust Belt, etc.? I get all of the US references (3 Waffle House cooks, 1 citizen of Texas who identifies as a patriot, etc.) but none of the UK ones. I think that the UK is all basically Downton Abbey with bits of Trainspotting but really have no idea what it is like, culturally. Is there a Waffle House equivalent over there (guessing no)? Or soccer hooligans who are especially fierce (some)?
If by rust belt you mean impoverished area with former industry, you can find that in Wales (mining) and the North (steel, mining, ship yards).
If by Florida you mean tax evading or sun worshipping pensioners, you are looking for Spain (possibly less so post Brexit).
I have no idea what waffle house is supposed to mean.
My best guess at a comparison would be that Waffle House cook = Scottish cook who runs the local fish and chips shop and is used to handling the drunk soccer hooligans/last call at the pub patrons?
I would say you are looking at a Gregg’s for Waffle House?
There is no Florida in Britain or anywhere else. Florida is unique.
Maybe Cornwall? At least you can find palm trees there.
Nooooo
It’s the Gold Coast of Australia
Bingo
If you want input to the reel, though, yes, I do belive 100 Brits would win if they were drunk soccer and rugby fans fighting other drunk people.
Just FYI I got some loafer mules recently (heavier than the pictured ones, they have lug soles) and they tore up the tops of my feet.
I’ve NEVER had a shoe like this be comfortable for actual walking. They are nice for driveway to door and that’s about it. They either feel like they are going to fall off and my toes get cramped trying to hold them on or they rub somewhere like the top of the foot as you describe. I want them to work. But they just don’t.
I think these are WAY on their way out too. Going to look dated next year, if not already.
I feel like I’m failing at adulting / parenting a teen – how do people stay on top of the stupid Remind notifications and ten million unhelpful emails from the school to actually ferret out the important stuff?
IDK but following because for us, it’s Remind and Band and Insta and Groupme and sometimes e-mails / texts, depending on the thing.
I’d try to unfollow, but one doesn’t drive and the one who does doesn’t have a daytime parking space at school yet. And it’s May, so whatever the usual schedule is, it’s all about one-offs this time of year.
The one-offs are the worst. Give me a regular routine, and we’ve got it covered, no problem. The random stuff that I can’t plan for weeks in advance? It’s a problem.
Seriously. My sitter is out for two days this week which coincides with a busy time for me at work and the usual May nonsense. I am running on fumes and caffeine into the weekend and just trying not to lose it.
When I was in high school, it was on me to keep track of my schedule and talk to my parents about when I needed to be where with as much notice as I could give them. Then they would help arrange rides if needed…
Unless you were in high school last year, this is an unhelpful comment. It’s not the same as it was when those of us parenting teens now were teens ourselves.
Yup yup yup. Just stop it.
Do teens not have access to these same notifications? True my high school days were awhile ago, but I had printouts of schedules from my different activities, and had to go through them with my parents, write down schedule changes that were announced, change plans with friends if now that night was taken up with a rehearsal, or whatever. This just seems like the digital alternative?
Right, it’s clear the level of notifications has changed dramatically but why can’t teens manage at least a significant share themselves?
It’s not the same many times. It varies by school and even by how teachers use things. One teacher that puts the field trip/science fair info in the payment app comments section and zero emails and another that updates the g00gle classroom but does not send emails except a last minute payment reminder because he’s always late uploading the payment request.
There’s no more just giving your kid a cheque or cash or a form to hand in to the secretary at the office. The office doesn’t accept anything monetary. All through the app(s).
This is just non-academic stuff. My middle schooler does well and I rely on her to tell me if she has any tests/papers she wants to talk through. I have no clue when her stuff is due except exam weeks so I don’t book vacation then.
A guess: they can’t have phones out in class and many notifications come out day-of or overnight the night before. Huge cluster. I need ideally a week or 48 hours notice and for my schedule not to change when I am work.
They can, but that doesn’t lessen the impact on their parents, particularly when the teen can’t drive yet.
No — that is part of the problem that we’re trying to tell you about! For one of my kid’s major extracurriculars, the parents get emails (maybe). The kids get separate reminders, usually with new and updated information, via Remind. Which parents aren’t allowed to join. It’s an absolute mess.
I wonder if that’s actually something that chatgpt would be able to summarize. Although I’m not holding my breath.
Do not trust AI. My mail app gives an AI summary of each message, and most of them are factually wrong. Like one summary said I was invited to a pizza party today. The message was about a meeting tomorrow and also mentioned that today was national pizza day. Other summaries get times and dates wrong.
If your kid is a teen – why isn’t this their responsibility?
IDK but I feel like I’m losing my mind. I miss the days when it was all email because at least it was in one place.
I’m tired of having a karate app, a music class app, multiple google classrooms, an attendance website and a separate payment website for school events. Then times that by 3 kids at 2 different schools and I’m ready to swap lives with this morning’s lady who gets to live by herself and eat ice cream for breakfast if she wants.
Preach. I want to burn it all down.
The useless attendance app only allows you to mark them ‘full day absent’ no matter how little time they are absent and then the teachers records are suppose to update that at the end of the day for the time they attend, which never works properly.
Our middle school sent out an email telling people to stop doordashing food at lunch times because the office was blocked. It’s not like anything I grew up with in the 1990s.
Oh yeah, if my kid has a doctor’s appointment mid-day, I can count on getting an email, a text, and a pre-recorded phone call that night telling me that he has a tardy or unexcused absence. The fact that he’s turned in a doctor’s note makes no difference. Then one of us has to call the school the next day to get it cleared.
to 3:23 – so true! it’s like the yearbook reminders, which if you pay for the year it should remove you from the mailing list, but noooo you get reminders every month for the rest of the year with threatening headlines
I got an attendance notification when my middle schooler was on a school field trip last week.
I do love that our entire district ostensibly went to Remind for weekly newsletter and ad hoc administrative notifications instead of the hodgepodge of Class Dojo and Remind that we had last year. But there’s still also a WhatsApp, and some teachers send emails through ParentVue (which my Gmail filters to some stupid folder unless I make a rule for each teacher’s name as a keyword to mark as important and put it in my primary inbox).
and then Whatsapp for karate and teamsnap for sports, and email directing me to parent portal for ballet…
my kingdom for a printed-out paper schedule.
They can’t require you to use the apps, because the apps are not accessible to those with disabilities. Demand another option.
I don’t know what world you live in but I 100% do not have the energy to fight the entire school board on their use of apps. I can barely keep it together to get my kids to the right places at the right time and show up at work on time. This is not a one school board issue. It’s pervasive with extra-circulars as well. My kid’s city choir has an app and an e-form to complete if you miss practice because you are sick. There’s no sticking a note in a bookbag anymore.
Don’t you know, it’s ALWAYS the parents’ fault for doing it wrong!!!
What would happen if you just said no? Seriously.
They are marked absent. And the system calls repeatedly starting at 3pm until you enter the absence via phone. But you can still only select full day absence and hope it’s done accurately when the teachers update their individual records.
I agree. It is ableist and classist. It was getting bad before my son graduated in 2017 and I think it is worse now. But was happy to tell them that they are awful and bad people every single time I was aggravated.
Oh god, me too and I only have two kids. Some activities email me, some email us both, some text, some use Remind, some use BAND, some use Canvas, and all of it has some different way to pay or schedule or confirm and it is a never-ending torrent of permissions and events. And half of it is done last-minute or doesn’t quite work right OR (my favorite) if there is an email the blessed child of God who sends it doesn’t use bcc (my favorite for things like awards).
I am not the OP from this morning’s post, but I am a lady without kids and who has been known to eat ice cream for breakfast. I just want to offer my sympathy for you all — this just sounds intolerable and overwhelming. I know I would not handle it well if I had kids.
That depends on what you consider important stuff? Stuff you need or want to attend? Or keeping track of what teen needs to do and where they need to be?
For things I need to do or attend, I found that the school’s website and calendar was more helpful than the 5 million reminder emails they sent. For freshman and sophomore years, there was really no way around reading the emails and notifications and checking the website. By the time she was a junior, I started putting the burden on kiddo to keep track of her schedule and we would discuss it every weekend to discuss the week that was (homework that did not get turned in; bad and good grades, etc.) and the week to come, particularly where she needed to be, when, and how she was getting there.
Some of you must have much more responsible and organized high school students than I did because there is no way she could have handled it at 14-15 and as she got older her idea of “handling” getting to events was to get a completely illegal ride with an older student who was not actually allowed to drive her under my state’s laws. But by the time she was a senior, she could deal with her schedule and obligations herself.
My parents engaged in a heavy duty suspension of disbelief regarding the license status/safety of who we rode with. Probably not advisable now.
My kids’ school’s website isn’t updated and doesn’t have most of the pertinent information, and the powers that be don’t seem to care. I’m a GenX with slightly-better-than-average computer skills, and the resistance comes from administrators of all generations, tbh. I hate it.
Badly, is the answer.
We have ongoing conversations with our teen about what’s going on, and I try to be vigilant about checking messages, but the sheer volume means that sometimes a ball gets dropped. And the kids are on a different app than the parents for extracurricular activities, which means they sometimes have info that we have never received.
I can tell you that my parents did not deal with the onslaught of messages and level of expectations that we are dealing with today, so I really hate the “back in the day” comparisons for this particular thing because it’s just not helpful.
Exactly! Even ten years ago when my kids started, there would be a monthly school or activity newsletter via email with all the info you needed for the next month. Now it’s constant updates and changes because you can just send out a quick notification through an app or text.
YES. It’s gotten to the point that if details change, I actually mark it in my calendar as Event (UPDATED). And the details are changing REALLY close to literal game time, and it is very hard to keep up with. This never used to be a thing.
See my post above about the coach not telling the parents the details about today’s game until 10am TODAY.
That wouldn’t have flown back in the day because email and text weren’t an option and the school secretary would not have called 15 kid’s parents because the coach forgot to announce a game time/location until day of.
Seriously. Back in the day I was a latchkey kid in the city whereas my kid is in the burbs and ‘take a late bus home’ is not an option. Seriously, the amount of stuff parents have to do these days is not on the same level as the 90s and 2000s.
My freshman son is responsible for adding any necessary pick ups or drop offs for band, sports, and clubs to our shared calendar. (A parent does this for our middle schooler) We review it every Sunday as a family, and then check in at dinner every night to make sure everyone is getting where they need to go the next day. The only alerts I pay attention to are the day-of alerts that might tell us a game has been postponed or delayed.
Anything academic is completely on the kids from middle school on. I don’t check their assignments or their grades, and I don’t read the emails from the teachers who feel it is necessary to keep parents in the loop. I do, obviously, read emails that are specifically about my kids, not to the class as a whole.
In practice, this means I use rules liberally in Gmail to filter out allll the emails, and I don’t allow notifications for any of the apps.
This is the way. Clearly it can be done.
This relies on email being sent out in advance primarily by email and far enough in advance. Last week we had a day of change to the track team schedule for one kid and an extra choir practice for another kid that were sent out via the school’s permission form/payment app which I rarely check because teachers used to just use it for field trip payments.
I don’t want to be too millennial about it but my experience is that the Gen Z teachers use apps a lot more and the transition from email to app as the primary method is bumpy because there are so many apps.
THIS. If you bury the information or update some systems and not others, don’t be shocked when it gets missed by half the parents.
I’m sure it can be done for a neurotypical child. My ADHD kid will fail hard at everything if I don’t stay on top of his schedule and long term assignments. it is absolutely something he needs to learn, but it is also absolutely not realistic for him to do successfully right now.
Hopefully by high school he’ll be able to manage as well as a typical middle schooler.
I try to stay on top of it but frankly most of the time the breakdown comes from the school not putting out the correct information/sharing it on time. My kid bugged his coach yesterday about the details of their game this week and this morning at like 10am we finally got an email with the address of the afternoon game and pickup time for a game TODAY. I have decided that the schools still think it’s the 1950s and we all have a SAH parent and/or nanny. At least I still know the parents of my kid’s friends and we’ll all happily ferry another kid to/from a sport or event.
A few weekends ago, my kid was in a volleyball tournament. They changed the start time all of 45 minutes before the first game. It was a message on the app, and because my phone wasn’t glued to me, I missed it. Needless to say, we were late. I was furious. What am I supposed to do with that?
I have absolutely read my kid’s coaches/school the riot act (politely, I promise) about the fact that not all kids have a parent who can change plans on the fly. I’ve also pointed out that giving that little notice is akin to you saying you don’t care if all the kids show up, and guess what – kids with siblings, working parents, and lower income parents who can’t afford sitters to drive their kids are disporportionally impacted – is that the type of school/league you want to be? I can’t say it has worked miracles but I have seen changes to the ‘last minute changes are no big deal attitude.’
Good for you.
Clapping for you.
I will say though, that our area’s sports coaches are god-like in their ability to bench kids for missing practice or being late and can really f*** with things. I had a parent with stage 4 cancer and offered to schedule a flight to see her around try-outs (listed for a week, but really just one day in that week) if he could just tell me which day it would be. Silence. Then a ranty all parent e-mail re people not prioritizing sports over family trips. I booked my trip and went; kid missed the tryouts after practicing all summer with the team; coach was adamant he didn’t care; we are done with sports. Sports were so good for my ADHD kiddo to regulate excess energy and such a mental break and to have someone take that away over legit parental scheduling needs makes me want to scream and throw things still.
omg 3:26, I am so sorry, and so angry at the way this happened for you and your family.
This — no reason to plan ahead when you can push out notifications in real time. But what if I was a pilot or nurse or had the sort of job I couldn’t drop everything for a pickup or extra rehearsal?
I’m glad kid is doing the play-in music for graduation, but that involves learning music and practicing and getting to somewhere at a certain time and not all kids drive.
And if you push out notifications the day of, that flute or violin may be at home. It’s not like there are spares.
Our HS freshman has finals Tuesday through Thursday this week. When did the school send out the information to parents? Monday afternoon. Thankfully, he had clued me in over the weekend, but it did require lots of schedule changes for DH and I because he isn’t going to school full days this week!
Those of you who don’t have a kid this age and are remembering what things were like when YOU were in high school are … really misinformed about how these things roll in practicality.
I don’t think people are misinformed, they’re just questioning why teens can’t be the ones to handle the new norm of excessive digital notifications about their schedules. Obviously someone has to handle it in a way that wasn’t happening in the 80s and 90s, but it doesn’t have to be the mom.
What exactly is my non-driving teen supposed to do to ‘handle’ the fact that they are notified of a time change 45 minutes before the game, or if they aren’t notified of a change in schedule until day of? They don’t drive, so in reality they’re reaching out to a parent who STILL has to manage the logistics.
Also, kids (and parents!) should be allowed to not have to check their phones/apps for constant push notifications! It’s one thing if the weather is iffy, but it’s unfair for coaches and schools to be this flaky.
And we’re telling you that even if they’re “managing” it (and I actually think my 15-year-old does a decent job of that), it does not lessen the impact on the parents.
The answer is that they skip the game that has a late breaking time change, and you band with other parents to ensure that their kids miss that game, too. The coach having to forfeit because they suck at scheduling is what you’re going to have to do. Stop accepting the externalization of their disorganization.
OK, you’re right, you’re so much smarter and more resourceful than the people who are in the weeds and dealing with flaky coaches and tournament schedulers and a whole system that is propped up with toothpicks.
Right. My partner deals with this nonsense for his kids. My take is if the school sends something last minute, skip it. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. Ultimately he and his kids need some autonomy over their own time and if scheduling becomes too burdensome, skipping is permitted.
I mean, if you’re continuing to put up with BS, the BS will continue.
… but schools publish the school calendar (with finals on it) at the beginning of the school year. For my kids’ school I can see 2 years out
I wish I had your school. We don’t have a finals schedule two years out. Students and parents got the final exam schedule emailed out last week at our school. The school board wide calendar is available for next year but that excludes any school specific professional development days. My BFF lives in a city where schools all the PD on the same pre-scheduled days.
Our school calendar has “finals” marked on it. That’s it. It does not have the exact schedule marked out, which is the rub. It doesn’t correspond with the normal school times or period schedules. So IDK how I’m supposed to magically know that information.
To clarify – we don’t know the specific exam schedule til about 3 weeks out. But we know what weeks are exam weeks. With that, we have a rough idea of when the schedule will be Wonky and we can know that’ll be a weird week.
That being said – at our school kids can be on campus all day and go to study hall if they don’t have an exam. Plenty of kids take the bus and have to br there for the full day because parents can’t pick them up. They’ll survive if they have to be in study hall!
Yeah, this type of stuff goes in our family calendar in September.
My kid’s school simply doesn’t know the locations of their AP exams at the start of the year because they need special proctors and bigger rooms. There are only so many spaces that work (many are at the local community colleges or senior center) and the start times often reflect the fact that they get wonky room reservation times. I know the dates, but not locations or times until much closer.
For Reasons unknown to me, our school’s IB DP exams are waaaay off campus, at a church with rooms large enough to hold all of the kids. No rides there. No rides back. IDK how this is supposed to work.
I do have a kid this age. And I just opt out. My son finds out at the beginning of the semester what the schedule is for finals. Ie, red day block 1 will be Monday morning, Red day block 2 will be Monday afternoon and so on. If he doesn’t communicate that to me ahead of time (and he didn’t his first semester), he is in the library or cafeteria at school when he doesn’t have a final. If sports change at the last minute, hopefully he can get a ride, but if he can’t and I can’t get away from work, he doesn’t go (I do send a politely worded complaint to the coach if that happens). If he forgot to tell us about a band concert, he finds a ride or misses it and takes the hit to his grade. That also only happened once. He misses swim practices over Christmas break every other year because we go visit grandparents who can no longer travel. It means either that his next few meets aren’t as good or he has to find a pool in another country if he wants to practice. But he’s found that pool, and he’s figured out how to access it, and he’s learning how to prioritize family and balance it with his life.
It hasn’t been easy for my son to learn to do all of this. His brother is 3 years younger and it won’t be easy for him, either. I do wish that there were fewer notification systems and less expectation that we will change our lives to accommodate kids sports. But I’m also trying to raise kids that I can send off to college in a very few years as independent, competent people. If they go to a lesser ranked college but can function on their own, I think we’ve won.
This is so great! Love that some schools are getting the schedules out early and that some teams are still allowing missed practices! I wish we had more options like that.
Your high school freshman should be able to tell you when they have finals.
Since when do parents need to know all the details of finals??
When his finals run from 8:45-noon, and that is much different than the regular school day, you’d best believe I need to know so that I can get him to school!
It sounds like it changed the school schedule. If you have a 9th grader who can’t drive, someone needs to pick them up and take them to school.
Kids can go to the library until normal pickup time
Not at our school. You’re only allowed on campus for the hour before and half hour after exams. It’s a noise issue with 900 kids and multiple exams ongoing, you can’t have hallways full of kids.
Okay, then go complain on a parenting blog? I don’t know why people post here if they only want to discuss parenting issues with other parents.
Very good point.
I say this ALL the time, my kids’ schools run on the premise that it’s 1955 and one parent is available to drop everything and do something school-related on ten minutes’ notice. And there are way too many parents who think like that as well, one of the PTA moms was floored that if she called me at 4:30 the day of, I wasn’t available to pick up food for a meeting at 5pm and serve it at 5:30.
It’s a strange combo of assuming a parent is always available 1950s style but then also assuming everyone is checking their phones constantly.
There would be fewer last minute changes if someone had to manually call everyone to let them know the change. Now it takes two seconds to send an email or update an app and alter a schedule.
YES. And the alterations can be big and/or hard to execute on short notice.
Exactly. I’m sorry, but we cannot pivot that quickly unless it’s an emergency. And a changed rehearsal because someone didn’t plan ahead should not constitute an emergency.
I’m confused about these comments about coaches not sharing info about games. For us, the schedule is posted on the school website at the beginning of the season. Varsity games start at 3:30 and JV is right after varsity. Games are all home or away – home is on the same field. For away games it says which school obviously and so that’s where it is.
Obviously there are occasional changes but overall we generally know.
In our case, the volleyball tournament was not a school activity.
In our case (notified about a game same day) the coaches handle the emails about field locations and start times as different sports happen at different venues. All that the school calendar shows is a block for ‘sports’. There is a lot of switching (soccer field is too wet for the game so they’re playing on the football field, varsity team now playing away vs. at home because another event took their field time). It’s worse in winter (ice time is a serious issue and there aren’t enough rinks – and we’re not even in travel sports!).
Hmm thats weird. For us every sport has its own field so all sports are at the same time. Theres no juggling of fields and slots.
Like i said – weather stuff happens but that’s always going to happen
+1
Do your kids’ schools just not have schedules on the website or parent or student portal anymore?
We have 2 years’ calendars for big things (school breaks, late starts or early dismissals, exams, etc) available on the website.
Sports schedules are posted on the website before the season starts. Practice is always 3:30-6 after school and on-campus. The schedule says who they’re playing, if the game is home or away, and start time. 95% of the games start at the same time.
Of course there are things that change (due to weather cancellations), but overall it’s set well in advance.
The big stuff is on there, but the details that matter are not necessarily on the big school calendar. Those are handled by the individual coaches or activity advisors.
This year I re-arranged a work trip to attend awards night for one kid. School changed the day of the awards night with one week’s notice. Kiddo obviously knew I tried my best but I was SO angry.
All the empathy. I arranged my work travel to be there for the spring concert which was a fixed date all year only for the school to change the date on two weeks notice.
I remember that post, and I felt so bad for you. You did everything you could, and yet it still changed!
I begged my kids school for the following year’s vacation calendar to make sure we could travel for a family wedding. The admins swore spring break would be the 2nd week of April. Calendar came out in September and it was the 3rd week of April. Thanks guys.
I had zero guilt about asking teachers for extensions/virtual work but man was I annoyed.
Our district’s calendar has the big stuff, but until recently, it was in a nearly incomprehensible format. The problem is that the medium-ish stuff, like when sports practices or tryouts begin (and class registration!), is almost never announced until a couple weeks beforehand, or even less time.
School communication is a huge cluster and there is an awful lot of “mandatory” and “required” as kids get older so I don’t have that much guilt about being a backup. There’s also a safety issue – as a Girl Scout troop leader, I cc: parents as a matter of course and I am happy when other adults do that as well. And that cc: ing means that I know when stuff is happening and might step in.
Do your kids’ schools not provide bussing? I’m not sure why transport is such an issue.
My kids take the bus to and from school, sports, and other school sponsored extra curricular activities.
Our school has a requirement to provide transportation.
Our school does not provide bussing within the district unless it involves more than 100 students. It’s absolutely stupid, but it is what it is. The size of my kids’ groups means that we are always driving or arranging carpools for away activities.
None of the high schools in our area have buses. There are buses that take the kids on athletic teams from school to the high school games, but not to and from school.
Wow! That is so foreign to me!
Chicago Public Schools expects children (of any age) to take public busses to school (or at least did so recently – we just moved and not sure if they’ve fixed it). It’s crazy.
No yellow buses to school, only transportation on certain public bus routes and for certain kids with special needs. They will use buses for transportation to certain sports games, and some field trips.
Honestly, we left a public school for a private school, and a side effect has been more competent communication from the school. (It’s smaller, so less sheep to herd). I know that’s not an option for everyone, but it’s been a relief for us.
Same
Yup. Switched to private and everything is so much smoother.
Things are scheduled and communicated well in advance. Plenty of facilities so no time slots for fields or rehearsal space. Everything has transportation provided.
Plus, the academic fit and behavior is 1000% better.
…and we came from a “great”, well funded district
If I had the $, I’d pick a 5-day boarding school just for this. It’s nutty and it’s useless for boarding school kids. A day student at a boarding school would be the best of all possible worlds.
Honestly it makes me understand why boarding with frequent half term and half term breaks makes a lot of sense for high schoolers. Or even the newly popular option of boarding during the week and home on weekends.
YOU are not failing. The administration at the school is failing. The constant communication is nonsense.
How much processed, ultra processed, or junk food did you eat growing up and what era did you grow up in? And then how often did your family get takeout or restaurant food? What types of foods were dinner usually?
I’m a young Gen-X, both my parents worked, and I grew up in the Midwest so very sterotypical meat+veggie+starch formula with very few snacks/junk. It’s still difficult to find ‘ethnic’ food in my hometown (Old el Paso taco kits were a treat!). My parents bought more cookies/chips as we were teens but if we wanted junk food we mostly bought it ourselves. Restaurants were a once a week thing (local fish fry or a mom and pop place) and takeout was either something like Papa John’s on a Friday or Chinese on a Sunday. I still mostly cook from scratch as an adult and we’re more of an ‘ingredient’ household but we do keep chips/cookies on hand, just not a ton.
I grew up in the 90s and ate ultra processed foods maybe once a month? Boxed mac and cheese was a special PA day lunch, and canned tomato soup with grilled cheese was a special snow day lunch. We got restaurant food maybe once a month. My mom made dinner every night the rotation included ham & pea fettuccine, a variety of soups, chili, hamburgers, stir-fry, fried rice, spaghetti, baked ziti, pierogies and sausages, pizza, fajitas, most meals were served with a side garden salad. Breakfast was either toast, oatmeal or cereal, with weekends being like pancakes or bacon or something. My mom worked a full 40h week job.
Sausage is ultraprocessed, so are most cereals and a lot of breads and pastas. Your mom was cooking but I guarantee you that you were eating ultraprocessed foods quite frequently. That doesn’t necessarily mean the foods were unhealthy, but some were.
My mom was an Italian immigrant who made all our breads, pastas etc from scratch. The woman still has a tortilla press in her 70s
To head off any other ‘gotchas’ the chilis and soups were batch cooked from scratch and frozen, and sausages were from backyard deer.
We ate a lot of pasta, potatoes, casseroles. This was the late 90’s and early 00’s. We hardly ever ate out, mostly for affordability reasons. Wendy’s or McDonald’s was a treat you’d get maybe a couple times a year, any sit-down restaurant was subsidized by “kids eat free” days or reading program coupons. During late summer/fall we would eat a lot more produce, since it was more available/cheap.
Plenty of junk… it was cheap. Bakery thrift stores were a godsend.
Going out was fast food, maybe 1x/month. Being allowed to get a soda rather than a water cup was a BIG deal.
Im late genX
I was eating at home from the late ’80s to the mid-aughts.
We seldom got restaurant or take-out food (less than once a month).
My mom is a nurse whose job involves diet and nutrition education. So we ate what was considered healthy at that time, but influenced by the culture of the rural midwest.
So in the winter, a lot of casseroles made with canned cream-of-mushroom soup, a block of cream cheese and tator tots, and then she would add an iceberg lettuce salad with fat-free dressing on the side. My dad raised cattle so we ate a lot of beef.
In the summer we ate out of my mom’s huge garden: tons of greens, new potatoes, green beans, sweet corn, melons, with chicken or burgers on the grill.
She never allowed sugar cereal, sweetened yogurt or packaged snacks like chips/crackers but we did eat plenty of those things at grandparents and friends houses.
Also lots of my immigrant culture foods: white bread with chocolate sprinkles, ham buns, rusks with cheese, almond banket, ring baloney, and bars.
This is so familiar to me from growing up in the 80s in the midwest.
same! We were invited to someone’s house shortly after we got married and I asked my non-Midwest husband “should we bring a pan of bars?” He was mystified by the question.
A lot, I grew up in the 90s which I think was peak kid junk food era. Lunchables, McDonald’s, Dunakroos, Gushers, etc. It was glorious as a kid!
My teens asked about Dunkaroos at dinner the other night which reminded me that my mom forbid the other moms at softball from bringing ‘unhealthy junk food’ like dunkaroos to games as team snacks (she was team mom). I was SO mad and we were stuck with oranges, carrot sticks, and babybell cheeses all season.
There was a vending machine at school and I’d get a honeybun and a Mr. Pibb almost every afternoon as a treat.
Honeybuns and the Little Debbie Fudge Brownies were my afternoon snacks for years!
Xennial here, in a rural area. 99.9% of our meals were homemade and made at home. Takeout was not a thing. However, we also had plenty of access to packaged snack foods, cereals, etc. With as much as my mom was cooking the rest of the time, I can’t blame her for having a box full of Fruit by the Foot for snacks.
Same – I grew up in the Midwest in the 80s and 90s. Every single dinner was homemade by my mom, and was from scratch. She was a really good cook, so I never minded. Breakfast was some kind of cereal, lunch was a cold cut sandwich, apple, bag of chips, and a cookie, and after school snacks were Snackwells and bagel bites.
Starting in high school, we probably ate out once a month at a TGIFridays, ChiChis or similar strip mall fast casual spot. No takeout that I ever recall, except maybe – as a HUGE treat – pizza.
Born in 1982 and had lots of very processed foods pretending to be healthy—low fat yogurt, rice cakes. Low fat cookies. Dinner was a rotation of spaghetti and meat sauce, baked potatoes, tacos, pork chops. Sweet cereal was constant (no one really understood sugar was a culprit). We ate fast food probably once a week. Lunches were lunch meat sandwiches and a bag of chips, maybe a capri sun. Snacks tended to be chips and salsa.
I think my parents did the best they could while being lied to about what was good for you.
Almost never. I grew up in an ingredient house where you were going to have to do some level of food prep to make something to eat. We had shelves of rice, lentils, dry beans, etc. and the refrigerator was full of produce. We ate a lot of soup, pasta dishes, homemade pizzas, salad, etc. My parents did not believe in kid food and adult food; they believed that kids will eat adult food if they get hungry.
My parents, sibling, and I cooked dinner together every night – no one played sports or did other after-school activities, so we were all at home. I would guess that we went out to dinner less than 3x per year.
I’m 45 years old and grew up in a large southern city. My parents were financially well off and could have afforded a different lifestyle, but they liked to cook and considered it more economical and healthful. Needless to say, I loved eating at friends’ houses.
Do you cook a lot now? Curious if that experience as a child impacted your habits as an adult.
DH and I eat at home almost all of the time, but we tend to batch cook rather than cook each day. We are DINKS who both work late a lot, and so we prefer to have dinners ready to go when we get home. I usually take my lunch to the office if I don’t have a lunch meeting and eat some combination of salads, veggies and hummus, yogurts, cottage cheese, etc.
Grew up in the 80s and 90s and ultra processed or “junk” food was a sometimes thing. When we were little, dinner was usually meat, a starch, and vegetable (my younger siblings were picky and wouldn’t eat anything with mixed ingredients). As we got older and less picky, dinners got more diverse, though I became a vegetarian at 13 and started cooking a lot of my own meals, so I’m less clear on what everyone else ate. We didn’t eat out much (a few times at year?), unless we were traveling, and takeout wasn’t a thing, except for sometimes ordering pizza. We were only allowed to have soda on special occasions, same for sweetened cereal or snacks, bread was always whole wheat, etc.
That’s still more or less how I eat, in terms of the amount of processed food, though I think I eat a lot better, both health and tastewise than we did when I was a kid. The availability of produce and food from around the world is just so much better than it was in the 80s
I’m a 1980s baby and while we almost always ate at home (getting fast food was a serious treat), what my mom was actually cooking was not “whole” food and likely counted as processed – boil in the bag broccoli with cheese sauce, casseroles made from canned soup, hot dogs with mac and cheese. I didn’t realize cheese could come in a slice that wasn’t individually wrapped and would actually melt until the 2000s.
I know it is a memory better left in the past, but I’m kind of craving that boil in the bag broccoli cheese right now that you mentioned it.
Dinner was healthy as it was homemade Indian food six nights a week so lots of lentils, overcooked vegetables, meat curries, rice, and wheat roti. One night a week when my mom was understandably over cooking was a rotation of restaurants – always Chinese, pizza, McDonald’s. So we had McDonalds once a month.
The rest of it I shudder to think about. Breakfast 6 days a week was some form of white bread or cereal or both. Cereals were any junk we wanted so Apple Jacks etc always around. 1 day a week was eggs because this was the 90s and eggs were the enemy. Always brought my lunch to school – more white bread w a single slice of cheese or PBJ, a bag of chips, an apple, some junk drink like Hi-C or something. I hated all of it so I’d eat 2 bites of the sandwich and apple, drink enough of the juice box to not be thirsty and eat the chips. Luckily those school lunch bag of chips were tiny – like 8 chips – not what is considered individual sized now.
After school all junk snacks – chips ahoy, Oreos, soda, tastykakes. I guess the only lucky thing here is there was more moderation back then than now. So yeah prob ate chips ahoy or Oreos daily after school but it’d be 2-3 cookies per day, not the 6-8 pack of Oreos that are individual size now. Same w tastykakes, even if it was a 3 pack, we ate 1 “cupcake.” And then certain things my parents didn’t allow usually having to do w processed meat so lunchables, deli meat etc.
I was born in ‘85 so elder millennial. Probably once a week restaurant meal and not that much ultra processed food but lots of sweets (my mom was a good baker).
Solid GenX, so childhood family dinners were in the 70s & 80s. My mom was a home ec teacher and environmentalist, so what we eat was not representative of the time or place. Almost every meal was home-cooked. For a while in the 70s, mom baked all of our bread from whole-grain flours from a food co-op. When fruit roll-ups became a thing, she figured out how to make them from scratch from apricots from our backyard tree (it was delicious, but also brown and thus embarrassing to pull out of my lunchbag at school!). We had a wide variety of dinners, but vegetables were always the bulk of the food. Even our cookies were homemade and frequently whole-grain.
There weren’t a lot of restaurants where we lived, so meals out were rare except on vacations. The two things we always had on hand as junk food were potato chips, which we would eat at lunchtime with a sandwich, and ice cream.
As a child of the 90s, we had purple and green ketchup and Ive lived to tell the tale
I had a snack in my lunch and an after school snack that was typical packaged snack food (tastycakes, fruit roll ups, Oreos, the like). But also, lot of fresh fruit
Our meals were all home cooked and nutritious though. We didn’t have a ton of Mac and cheese, but when we did it was homemade. Never ate chicken nuggets or frozen meals at home. Weren’t allowed sugary cereal (but Entemanns pastries were ok?).
We had dessert most nights. Pizza and soda on Fridays for family movie night. Got fast food or Wawa when running between activities maybe once a week. Ate out as a family maybe once a week.
Dinners were almost always some sort of beef, chicken, or fish; a salad; a steamed veggie; and a starch (rice, potatoes, pasta – often a Knarr or rice a roni side). We always had a salad + second veg. And always had to have a glass of milk.
My family had a rule that sweets for breakfast were only ok if they were homemade (sugar cereal was a no, mom’s apple pie or sheet cake was ok?!?). My son was introduced to this rule one family holiday at my parents house and has embraced it with glee.
I also follow this rule!
Elder millennial here, so grew up in the 90s. My situation was somewhat unique in that my dad owned a restaurant, so we got “take out,” by which I mean he would bring dinner home from the restaurant, probably about once a week. This also meant he usually wasn’t home for dinner. Sunday night was pizza night. Other nights Mom cooked, but it wasn’t particularly healthy food. She freely admits she was not a particularly good cook until she started watching a lot of the Food Network, which wasn’t a thing until we were teenagers. So we had a lot of easy and/or basic Southern recipes–We had a lot of poppyseed chicken made with cream of mushroom campbell’s soup, spaghetti (though she did make the sauce from scratch), decent amount of frozen stouffer’s lasagna, etc.
My birth year is at the tail end of the boomer era. I grew up on garbage food. It was the era of convenience foods, and my mother hated to cook. When she did cook, meat and canned vegetables were “flavored” with salt and bacon grease. I went off to college underweight, labeled “not much of an eater”. Turns out I just don’t like that food. Once I got my first apartment I started cooking, with the assistance of The Moosewood Cookbook and my best friend’s mother. I was eating near vegan, Whole Foods back when that was really weird. Largely still maintain that. As for eating out, it was weekly on Saturday to an officers’ club on base. There wasn’t much else available for eating out then.
Weekly take out on Fridays and junk food for at home movie night on Saturday. Sugary cereals on vacation and holidays. This was 1980s/1990s.
Mostly simple home cooking – roast meats and veg with rice or potatoes. Bread was a mix of homemade or store-bought depending on how busy things were.
Definition of UPF is more than 5 ingredients? I think? So most store bought food we used would have been processed not UPF.
Now as grandparents they are constantly feeding kids UPF snacks and it drives me nuts .
Xennial, so child in the 80ies and teen in the 90ies. Full-time working parents, occasionally communiting.
Takeout food: none
Restaurant food: maybe twice a year
Ultraprocessed: things like frozen pizza, fish fingers, jarred sauces and powdered sauce mixes were novelty items introduced in the late 80ies where I live. Taco kits became popular in the nineties. I think they might have been part of dinner once every week or two weeks, as treats.
Jello, puddings and custard powder were part of the menus for desserts, for parties. Homemade cakes, sweet pastry, fruit salad or tinned fruit salad with fresh fruit added with whipped cream or custard were more common.
Tubed cheese for sandwiches was a thing, mayo, and chocolate spread. Real cheese was a lot more common. Fruit yogurt.
Cake mix, pancake mix or similar was not a thing, I didn’t taste that until I was a student (exotic imported American food). Same for marshmallows.
Some typical dinners, homemade from scratch:
Fish (pan-fried or steamed) with rice or potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, salad, pickles.
Beef mince with tomato sauce and spaghetti
Kale and chicken soup
Homemade pancakes with jam
Baked chicken thighs with salad and vegetables
Homemade meat balls with feta cheese, baked wedges and salad
Coq au vin with rice
Quiche lorraine with salad
Mushroom pizza with salad
There was always fresh vegetables, and always fresh fruit.
Weekly 1 small glass of cola (half a small bottle) and 1 candy bar or similar. Any other candy from own money. Occasional orange juice.
Breakfast and lunch sandwiches from bread (processed or home madee) with brie, ham, cured meats, fish roe, tinned fish, tomato and mayo, nutella, boiled egg or jam, with vegetables on the sandwhiches, and fruit.
Adult:
takeout: twice a month
restaurant: twice a month
ultra-processed: next to nothing
from scratch: almost everything
sweet drinks: no
Is anyone else’s doctor’s office incredibly extra about appointment reminders and check-ins? I made a same-day appointment and then had to do an e-check in, facility check-in on arrival, and then front desk check-in for my doctor. I got emails and texts reminding me of the appointment and telling me to click a link when I arrived. They constantly pester me to arrive 15 minutes early and then keep me waiting for 14 minutes and 55 seconds after I check in. Just…enough. I’ve never been late to an appointment in my life because I’m way too obsessive for that.
Yes. In fact, I left a dentist’s practice because they were borderline harrassing me about confirming and re-confirming.
Talk to the front desk. The automated crap is incessant.
I might have to. I’ve already changed my communication preferences in MyChart to send as little stuff as possible and it’s still an absolute onslaught.
YES. I had the misfortune of scheduling one appointment per week for 4 weeks in a row with various doctors in a certain group of clinics. The reminders were neverending. It didn’t matter if I confirmed or not or did the pre check in or not. Just multiple reminders via text and email every day. I know people are flakey, but I wonder how much this actually helps.
I’m convinced offices do this so the patient doesn’t have a valid argument when they get charged for a no-show.
I mean, duh. That is exactly the reason. It’s not some kind of conspiracy.
Unfortunately, it helps a ton. On the patient end it annoys me as much as everyone else. But on the physician end- our clinic’s no show rate is like 15% without harassing and 5% with harassing (the 10% usually are the ones who cancel so therefore we can offer urgent appointments).
Yeah, but lots of people do blow them off. It’s not hard to ignore the notifications and at my doctors office they don’t actually care if you do that check in.
People who have blown off an appointment in the past should be the only ones getting extra reminders. This wouldn’t be hard to program.
Uh huh, I’m sure it would take no extra time or effort from staff to make work. That’s totally how computers work.
Do you work for some automated reminder company?
No, I just know how to use the delete function in my email.
YES! Experiencing this right now. My annual is tomorrow and I’ve lost track of the number of texts, calls, and emails I’ve gotten about this. It’s way way too much.
Yes, and in addition a couple of them constantly nag to “update your patient information.”
My phone number hasn’t changed in 25 years, my email in 20 or so, and my address in 10. I realize I may not be representative of everyone, but I promise I’ll let you know if I move and you can’t find me to bill me for my co-pay.
I got three emails, three texts, and two voicemail confirmations for my last annual checkup at my normal doctor. Some of them AFTER I confirmed and completed all the paperwork. That was my last time visiting that facility. No thank you.
I’m the one who posted yesterday about how I was waiting to hear whether I moved forward in an interview process (had a phone interview with the recruiter last week). I got the interview! Interview will be Thursday afternoon, will be a panel, and will be virtual. Hiring manager intimidates me a little – she was a prosecutor for many years (I’m not a lawyer, role is in banking). Feel free to drop any interview tips!