Suit of the Week: Anne Klein

105 Comments

1. The dress has pockets!

   1. I would be all over this suit if I hadn’t already bought some suits during this pandemic…

      1. Agree. This is gorgeous. And another example of what young me thought grown up professional business lady me would wear someday.

2. What would you think of a potential therapist who essentially said that seeing as I have a Masters’ degree and a good job, that’s a sign that my anxiety/depression is not that severe? In some ways, it makes me afraid that she would lowball it, but in other ways it does make sense that being able to have a good job/education/relationships with friends and family means that its not as severe as it could be.

   1. That makes zero sense to me and I would switch therapists.

      1. I agree. Being functional and educated does not mean that you can’t be depressed or otherwise affected by the pandemic. I know alot of people from college and law school who have degrees but who have been churned up and spit out by the pandemic. Even I have been affected b/c I have not been able to pursue a man for marrage in over a year now, as no one wants to risk COVID for the privilege of haveing s-x. In fact, if I could eliminate my need for s-x, I probably would have been married by now, but I do need a man for this and to have a baby, I need to be MARRIED.

   2. Hard pass. I would find a different therapist immediately.

   3. Terrible therapist, find a new one asap.

   4. This seems… off. I would be really surprised to hear a therapist say that and would probably look for someone else.

   5. I mean, obviously it’s true that it’s “not as severe as it could be.” But you’re there because you want to feel better.

      If she’s used to working with people who are incapacitated by their mental illness, then sure, she may just be noting that you’re high-functioning. If otherwise she’s helpful to you I wouldn’t disqualify her on just this one comment, which may have come across the wrong way. But if she seems overall dismissive of your concerns, definitely pass.

   6. I’ll say the same thing to you that I said to the woman who went on one date with a man who wanted to be exclusive and go on long weekend trips with her: run so fast Usain Bolt gets jealous.

   7. Aw, hell no. Hard pass. Sounds like a terrible therapist who would disregard real, serious problems because of her own personal beliefs about what a depressed or anxious person looks like.

   8. Get a new therapist. I would drop a therapist who infered my accomplishments were in anyway reflective of my mental conditions.

   9. Uh, doesn’t that just mean that your coping mechanisms have worked?

      1. (Agree with everyone else. Not a therapist, but huh?)

      2. Yes, the way you present it sounds bad, but I wonder whether you are paraphrasing? Did she say those words or did she say something more like “you are coping well, considering?”

         1. She said something like “your anxiety is not limiting you since you have done all these things, that’s a good start”

            1. So I was seeing a psychiatrist for a while and I will say this. Mine commented that I had good coping skills, and also that some of the behaviors had “served me well” in that I clearly had used some of these things (shutting off, etc.) to get where I was and become successful. But she never implied that that meant it “wasn’t that bad” and I feel like she took my concerns seriously and helped me build additional coping mechanisms. So, I think if you are getting the impression that she is minimizing your concerns or is equating functioning with not suffering from anxiety/depression, then I would look for someone else.

            2. That’s … not great. Just because I have a degree and a job doesn’t mean my anxiety doesn’t make me absolutely miserable. Anxiety can also propel people to perform well in socially-acceptable ways but that doesn’t make it better to live with.

            3. I’m the Anon at 3:20 pm. I also want to clarify that she said this in the context of me lamenting some of the emotional deficiencies I was feeling, and she said it to me in a comforting way of, “it’s natural to cling to some of these behaviors because you have gotten results from them in the past…”

            4. I don’t think with that context it sounds bad, but if you don’t like it you get to decide that!

   10. The evidence based treatments for “can’t get out of bed” level major depression are different from milder forms of anxiety/depression, so maybe she was just explaining why she isn’t recommending a particular treatment approach? I guess I can’t tell what she meant.

       1. This is what I was wondering when she first said that, but it also seemed a little off.

          1. I think you get to have whatever dealbreakers you want. So if you’re not comfortable with her after this, then that’s that.

             If you’re not sure, maybe ask her about it.

   11. Hard pass. Fwiw I had the most success with a therapist who was a working mom in a big job (before getting certified in therapy) and totally got the stress of that lifestyle. I just felt like she ‘got’ me and we made some really good progress. If you’re not clicking, and this was enough to make you draw back from her it’s enough of a reason to find someone else.

   12. I would pass. The fact that you’re posting about it here indicates to me that you already have doubts about this therapist, and that’s not a good way to start off.

   13. I would move on. I don’t voluntarily engage or reengage with medical professionals who discount what I am telling them.

   14. This happened to me too. She said that at first visit and she had no openings in future to see me. I felt so rejected but was probably a good thing in hindsight.

3. Did anyone move from the city to the suburbs during the pandemic? If so, is it a choice you regret or was it the right decision?
   I’m at the point where my current house wasn’t working for me and spouse (no children, still up in the air on that) and the pandemic just highlighted that. We’re considering a large suburb (100k people so its own small city) that’s a 25 min drive from the city in no traffic, great schools, diverse and near family, but up to an hour during rush hour. We’re kind of mesmerized by the land and home sizes (quarter to half acre 3-4k sq ft homes affordable to us), but also turned off by the saminess and less stuff to do nearby. If it helps I’m in a Southern city, so we’re not talking about million dollar old homes, just regular suburbia 10 to 40 yr old homes.

   What were your considerations when you made the move?

   1. I am in a large SEUS with many suburbs (100K sized). Our city schools (country-run) have yet to go back. Surrounding counties have gone back to school, as have non-public schools. Our city schools will likely face record flight as a result of this as people pull their kids out and either move to charter/private schools or move into the next county. The quality of the schools will begin to suffer and I have a feeling they won’t be able to fix this, as once people vote with their feet they are not likely to come back. It is showing a complete lack of leadership and I doubt people will chose to move here when they have a better choice 5 miles down the road (or less). So I’d look at this — it’s a pretty big choice and you don’t want to buy in to something that people are currently radically re-evaluating the value of. I picked my house based on schools and was pretty ride-or-die public schools and I would never in a million years recommend it now to someone starting out with a kindergartener. It has been disruptive and if I won the lottery today I’d start a charter school.

   2. I’m in a larger suburb of Atlanta. Moved out here with my husband about 2 years ago from downtown because of affordability and family planning. We have a 6 month old now.
      We got a nicer, larger house on a larger lot for less money.
      In the pre-pandemic and pre-newborn times we would still drive 30 minutes into the city for brunch at our favorite place or to go see a show periodically. It wasn’t that different from commuting from in town to an event because Atlanta traffic isn’t great.
      I do get a little bored with the sameness sometimes, but I think that’s the pandemic more than the burbs. I’m still discovering new parks, restaurants, and places out here to enjoy.
      We are lucky that we live in an older development (1980s) where the houses have more variety, even though they are all in the same neighborhood. There are mature trees. It’s not one of these recently clear-cut places with dinky baby trees and identical homes next to each other.
      It’s not for everyone though. If you don’t plan to have kids, you will probably be one of the few dinks in the suburbs. We had a hard time making friends when we first moved because everyone had kid-centered lives.

   3. We happened to move from the city to the suburbs a few months before the pandemic. FWIW, I did not love our city and I was zero percent sad to leave. I do miss the food: people in this ‘burb think Pho is exotic. Things I like about the suburbs: way less traffic, public maintenance is a thing (nice roads, signage is maintained, etc.), good schools, hundreds of miles of hike and bike trails, gorgeous mature trees, huge lot sizes, public pools and our own pool, playgrounds everywhere, and it’s safe (in case you can’t tell, we have a kid). Things that are hard: see this morning’s post about it being really hard to find friends. I feel that in my bones. My kid is literally the only POC on our block. Our house is huge and we’ve been lucky not to need a lot of maintenance on it, but there’s a time cost to house/property maintenance that I had underestimated. Considerations: would you commute into the city? That gets REAL old, let me tell you. Our biggest considerations honestly were better schools and less crime. It’s pretty boring out here and I hope we move to a college town someday, but for now this is good.

      1. Commuting is a very good point. I wonder if a lot of our fields are going to come back to the office only 2-3 days a week post-pandemic, anyway. That seems to be what we’re heading towards. I imagine that’ll make hte exurbs more expensive?

      2. OP. Yes, a big part of my consideration is how the WFH policy shakes out at my employer and the rush hour commute (which varies based on the part of the suburb you’re located). On the other hand I have in the past used that 25 minute commute to get through some really good books on audible.

   4. Not exactly the same situation, but I moved a bit before the pandemic from Manhattan (back) to central Austin. I specifically chose a sort of rundown home in order to be centrally located and able to walk/bike a lot of places (although it’s not a carfree lifestyle like I had in NYC). I had a two year old when I left.

      I visit friends in more suburban areas in and outside of town and I am very glad I made the choice I did to sacrifice on home and lot size (my house is a bit of a money pit and I only have about 20*50 feet of front yard, no back yard). It’s a real *neighborhood*. I know just about everyone that walks/bikes/scoots by, and it’s been a lifesaver during the pandemic to have built-in (outside) social interaction. I also think it’s great for my son to have a couple other kids nearby and the sort of community where my neighbors will talk to my son for ten minutes so I can take a quick call.

      I’m not sure what your living situation is now, but make sure you budget (time and money-wise) for home upkeep, especially if you have a large house or lot. That has been a bit of a surprise, but I’m glad I don’t have more home or land to keep up.

      1. Not sure where you are, but I miss Hyde Park so so so so much. Just seeing people at all different stages of life made me feel like I was part of a community. Walkable bars/restaurants were just icing on the cake.

         1. I used to live on 38th and 1/2! But now I’m in Swede Hill. I agree, having a real community with folks at different life stages is great. I also can walk to work, for so long as we keep our location…

            1. Ha! Me, too, on 38th! I remember when I moved in, I thought it looked so familiar, and then I realized I was familiar with 37th from the crazy lights

   5. A few of my colleagues have done that and it’s honestly not looking so great from the outside. Most of them were true urbanites walking to work, errands, the bar etc and did not factor in the suburban lifestyle change which now requires driving, all the time for everything. Plus most of them now have less than ideal (1 hour +) transit commutes since parking is not an option for most in my city. Having a backyard for one pandemic doesn’t seem worth all the bad stuff.

      1. Agreed that it doesn’t look great from the outside. I also feel like a lot of my colleagues basically spend their entire weekend on house/yard upkeep, which sounds awful. My tiny front yard is enough for me, I’d rather take the kid to a park.

   6. I’m really glad that we moved to a suburb in the SF Bay Area before the pandemic, but the Bay Area has some quality of life issues that aren’t really shared in other cities. I don’t miss dodging needles and human waste on my way to work, for example, and I feel safer and more connected to nature where we live now. Before you move, I’d think heavily about what you want in your day to day life. Is nature important? Hiking? Nearby restaurants? See if the suburb can offer you those things better than the city can.

   7. I am also in a southern city. I moved to the suburbs pre-pandemic. I highly, highly recommend a close-in suburb with a walkable neighborhood as a balance between city life and classic suburbia. Before kids, DH and I bought a small house (1100 square feet, 2 bedroom/1 bath) in a neighborhood like that. We had reasonable commutes, saved a ton of money compared to living downtown, and really enjoyed being able to walk to run our errands and eat at local restaurants, etc. We didn’t have kids, so we didn’t need a large house or a lot of land or a good school district.

      Then we had a kid, and by the time he was 3, we outgrew the small house. We bought a bigger (2700 sq ft) house in a more stereotypical suburban neighborhood. It’s only 10 minutes from our old house, but the feel is super different. There are local stores and restaurants nearby, but there’s no safe route to walk to them. The neighbors don’t hang out in their front yards or go for walks, so we never meet anybody. I’m super happy we have a bigger house, especially during the pandemic, but I want to move back to our old house (which we rent out) or at least our old neighborhood when our son grows up.

      1. I feel like you almost exactly described me in this scenario. Lived in a smaller urban walkable house until couldn’t anymore with our kids, just moved to the suburbs. We also used to know on some level everyone that lived on our urbanish street b/c if you went outside you couldn’t help but see everyone just a few feet from you, and here in new spot everyone has a fence or a hedge separating the houses in the front so I feel much more isolated. I have yet to even meet the wife of our house next door 7 months later. It was the right move for us, but I really do miss being walkable to things.

         OP, if you’re not sure you want kids, I’d think really hard about this one (since I feel like that’s the reason most move that far out). Also, this is going to be very person specific, but for me personally at least there is a level of house & yard that is too big and since it sounds like you would be making a big size leap I’d think long and hard about what that would be best for you. 4K for me would be too big I think, even with kids. (Our house is half that size so maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better). But honestly, we spent so much money buying furniture for our current house & there is so much to work to do around it and on it as it is (and it’s not a fixer-upper, just house stuff) that I often think I’m glad we don’t have too much more.

   8. OP here, for further context, the city I live in now isn’t really walkable save one or two central neighborhoods (where you still have to walk half to a mild and a half to get to the grocery store, but there are shops and restaurants along the way). Public transit is nearly non-existent for practical purposes. I’ll be in a car most of the time regardless.

   9. This depends on the suburb. I loved living in one suburb in Massachusetts – walkable, lots of running trails, cute stores, commuter rail – and hated living in a different one (boring, not walkable, everyone’s moms were friends with each other in the 1970s). Likewise, we’re now in the suburb of a small city and I would absolutely love to either get a job in that city or get a permanent remote role so we could live there. It is historic, walkable, traffic isn’t that bad, wonderful restaurants, and a vibrant scene for young professionals.

   10. I’m someone who has never lived in a house ever, and we bought a house in the exurbs? (more like a resort town). We lived in a condo in a very large city before that. We’ve committed to WFH, but we’re fine with that – hate going to offices and my job has gone completely virtual anyways. I love living on a quiet peaceful street, having gorgeous views and excellent weather, having no shared walls, my own garage, more space – enough for two home offices and a home gym, a yard, a pool, fruit trees, room for a garden, etc.

   11. I feel like this consideration is so much different if you are coming from a truly vibrant, walkable city or if you are coming from a car-centric city that’s spread out. Where we live (medium sized midwest college town), nothing is really walkable except rentals and very expensive houses, so we live in a neighborhood (unless you want to walk pretty far, which we did (around 3 miles, when we lived closer to the downtown). We drive or uber everywhere and it’s fine.

       Sometimes I wish we lived in a bigger city (there are a couple near-ish), but it is a more know your lifestyle situation. We rarely do anything on the weeknights, and it really isn’t a big deal to go to the city for big events (major sports and concerts, really). I don’t love living in a cookie cutter house, but it is affordable and has everything we need (garage, yard, three small bedrooms, two baths, etc.) We are in our 30s (no kids), so we don’t go out much, and we both work in town, so less than 20 min commutes even with traffic. Commute for me would be the biggest issue, but ymmv (it doesn’t mind my husband). What benefits do you get from living in the city? What would you be giving up?

   12. There are pandemic-specific pros and cons I’ve found:
       I really missed walkability when I lived in more rural places especially during the pandemic just because saying hi to people/ walking around looking at things is kind of one of the only pandemic activities.
       On the flip side, I have loved having a yard.
       My friends who work have had a very hard time making friends in all of their suburbs fwiw, because all the women there are SAHMs who meet during the day. They also have said all the local food is mediocre at best.
       I think there’s no “right” answer but some of what you miss might surprise you (eg, I thought I wanted ALL THE SPACE away from the city but it turns out I just wanted a somewhat quieter city neighborhood that still had local character and a small yard)

4. I wish it were easier to continue to have strong, rich relationships with friends who have started having kids when you are child-free yourself. I’m feeling a little sad that nearly every conversation I’ve had with my best friend since she had her baby has been about the baby. I’m so happy for her and so glad the baby is doing well (and I recognize this is her reality right now), but it’s still an adjustment and it feels kind of hard right now when so many other social outlets/paths are closed due to the pandemic. Not really looking for advice, just wanted to feel sad somewhere anonymous for a second.

   1. It is hard.

      I’m not sure it’s necessarily about being kid-free, though, because my best friend has a newborn and I feel the same way about our friendship and I have a preschooler myself. Babies are by definition all encompassing, but they aren’t that way forever. I think you’ll get her back as the baby gets a bit older and your friend has some space to breathe and think about anything else.

      1. Very true. She probably isn’t thinking about anything beyond the baby, because they are demanding AF. This too shall pass!

      2. +1

   2. I feel you. I honestly just gave my friends who had babies a grace period of 3 years before they were anything resembling the same kind of friend again…like, I just had to accept they couldn’t do it, didn’t want to do it, etc and that was the price of admission for our friendship for a few years. The good news is most of them have circled back to being able to be present in their friends’ lives again and in the meantime, I kept building my childfree friend group and that worked well.

      1. Agree, except with my friends it was usually until the child was middle school aged or so.

   3. I don’t have kids, but for my friends who do, our friendships generally dipped while their kid was 0-4ish. Then it got better and we reconnected on interests/contemporary events/future plans. Years in, I notice I do avoid talking about things that emphasize the fun I am having/sleeping in til whenever on weekends/all the flexibility I have. But some friendships are bigger than the practice of life, and more like kindred spirits, if that makes sense.

   4. My sister cannot have a conversation that isn’t about her grandchildren. She can’t say more than two sentences that isn’t about her grandchildren. She moved a 1000 miles to be five minutes away from them, and they are at her house maybe 40% of the time. I miss my sister, and I worry that as her grandchildren grow up and have independent lives, she will be left with no friends and no connections.

   5. Thanks all. Post was stuck in mod for a long time, but it’s nice to come back and see a few responses giving me hope it will get better.

   6. Oh, so much. I am at best neutral about children (so no oooh-baby-ooh responses), and the sort of sink-hole-situation where every thought has to be about the baby is so difficult.

      I have however found that there is a silver lining to being the non-baby-person. (And of course I’ll listen to baby stuff, but I won’t solicit it in any form.) Some new parents do really, really need to recorm their idenity as an adult person. Some new parents really, really appreciate somebody who’s asking “so, when can we get a drink?”. Some new parents really, really want to talk about ANYTHING but their new role as a parent . Some new parents really, really desperately need regular adult contact.

      And that’s my forte. I will bring cocktails while toddler is sleeping. I will gleefully plan weekend getaways past breast-feeding or pumping (you know, non-covid) to get my friend pissing drunk and feeling like an adult. I will NEVER babysit, but I will do whatever you want while the babysitter does their thing. I will buy your kids presents and make conversation, but mostly so that the kids know that “of course parent will want to visit auntie-presents-yay!”

      But any of these ideas do not work for the “Family Is ALLL” people. The ones who always brings 2-3 random people (kids, grandma etc) to a coffee date. The ones who never act an individual person again. If your friend is one of those, they are lost. I’m sorry, but the “sushi? let me bring five family members to our chat” people are lost. Cut your losses. Everybody else is worth saving. They WILL need friends. Kids are HARD. (*snickers*).

      1. Thank you for being a good friend. I haven’t seen my friends much this year but I posted below – my friends are my break from my kids. I want that cocktail! I want that lunch followed by shopping. I do not want to talk about my kids 24/7, as wonderful as they are. (and sometimes, as horrible as they are.) I am also a person with my own thoughts and interests that are not motherhood-related.

         I think this is why I’ve had a hard time bonding with the SAHMs in my community.

      2. OMG I could not agree more and it is hard! I was the only childless member of a bookclub back in the day. We read a book about WWII. One of the bookclub members told us all with a straight face how it took being a mother to truly appreciate how horrifying the holocaust was. I wish I was joking. Because apparently it takes having kids to realize that genocide is bad. Facepalm.

   7. OP, if it helps at all to know, we have kids that are about 4-6 years old, and pre-pandemic I feel like we definitely hung out with our non-kid friends quite a bit. We got baby sitters a decent amount and wanted to do something fun for those occasions, and honestly finding the stars to align with our friends with kids to also have a sitter is sometimes really difficult.

      I swear we try to not talk about our kids too much on these occasions!

5. Wow — I just read the post from the woman this morning who had one kid stuck at home on zoom school, a working spouse, and she couldn’t dial back any more and just quit. IDK how many school-aged kids there are overall (much less those with working moms), but I think that they are probably having it pretty rotten right now (and that as long as they aren’t starving, no one is really going to care). I think that health-care and other in-person workers probably had nannies going into the pandemic (but boo for anyone relying on an au pair after that got shut down) and office workers just toughed it out day-by-day if they had to stay home with kids, but no one expected this pandemic (or has household budgets they could downsize by 50% and sell a house/move to downscale). I wish I could have some lessons learned so far, but an example of why things don’t work is one parent I know who had a kid develop T1 diabetes and needs management for blood sugars. She can’t really work now and isn’t working and likely won’t work for a while. A real estate agent I know (most flexible profession some times) has a disabled child in a wheelchair who has a FT aide at school but now that there is no school, it’s all fallen apart. No person is an island really, but now I feel that many of us are stuck on islands, very much alone, when we used to not have to shoulder all burdens.

   1. Yeah is it any surprise, given so many of the responses on that thread were to teach your kid to make their own sandwich and eat it alone? I think many of us have at least one or two friends (almost all women) who have come to the same conclusion and quit. It’s not a secret that school-aged kids are majorly struggling right now, and parents are really stuck on how to fix it. Something has to give and most parents feel a responsibility to make sure it’s not their kids’ mental health.

      1. This is ridiculous. No one is saying to neglect your child’s mental health. We are saying cooking lunch during a pandemic is making extra work. I am childless and cooking lunch is not feasible for us either. It’s a huge logical leap to go from kids make their own sandwich (or you all eat dinner leftovers) to neglecting your child’s mental and emotional needs. Give me a break.

      2. I think society is basically demanding this of parents by closing schools.

         I know it’s unpopular to criticize teachers, but in my area they are paid well (90k average for 10 months a year of work, plus 90k average in pension after retirement) and it’s an in-demand job. I really believe in public education, and always voted to pass the budgets, but I’m frustrated that so many teachers feel that screen time is an acceptable long-term substitute for in person learning without acknowledging that they are essentially asking parents to home school. In the last year neither the virus rates declining nor the revelation that young children are not likely to spread the virus changed the position of teachers’ unions. The fact that we’ve abandoned public education nearly completely for a year now was bound to have this effect on working parents. Worse, I’m not sure we can rely on the educational system going forward, even in a post-pandemic world.
         (It’s not great when a public education loving liberal like me is seriously questioning what the kids are getting for my school board taxes that they couldn’t get from youtube.)

         1. I don’t know if the blame is on teachers. Every teacher I know is beyond burnt out from trying everything they know to try to reach all of the kids in their classes. We are asking way too much of teachers right now.

            To me, the real culprit is our society’s lack of concern for education and child-rearing in general. We devalue parenting, teaching, childcare and provide no resources, then wonder why it’s not working. My state has consistently prioritized bars, restaurants, and gyms opening before schools. Who do you think staff those bars? Where do you think their kids are supposed to go, who is supposed to be teaching them and caring for them? Yes schools aren’t childcare but they’re an essential cog in raising a kid, and we’ve decided we don’t care.

            Most teachers are trying their best in an underfunded and under-resourced and poorly run educational system, and there is zero appetite at any level to change that. Private schools get to go back because they can turn away students if they reach capacity, they can raise tuition to cover safety and cleaning supplies, they can do a surface-level job at addressing students with IEPs or other non-traditional needs. Public schools have to cram 30 kids in a classroom with one teacher, make the teacher buy their own Lysol wipes and Kleenex, and ask the teacher to somehow manage the 3 of those 30 kids who have difficulty following mask rules or distance rules or personal hygiene.

            1. I agree with your point, that we as a society devalue childcare parenting and education.

               I do tend to disagree that the problem is funding. My kid had been in a private daycare for years,lovingly looked after by dozens of educators whose main career goal is teaching at a public school in our area. These jobs are hard to get and it’s life-changing for folks who get them.

               It’s frustrating that we have active public school teachers who refuse to return to the classroom when there are so many talented and dedicated would-be teachers who are willing to teach kids in person for much less in benefits and pay. It’s also frustrating that we, as a community, have declared public school important enough to dedicate huge amounts of money in taxes to it, to the point where private school is financially out of reach for most middle class families here and few exist locally. It means that when the teachers refuse in person learning there are few alternative options for families.

               I don’t have solutions here. I am a person that always believed my area “got it right” in terms of funding schools well and paying teachers well and I’m not sure our kids and families benefit from that anymore. Maybe bare-bones public schools and private schools for those who can afford it would at least leave less children stuck in front of screens and allow the best and brightest teachers to earn the most money, rather than pay public school teachers handsomely in perpetuity for screen time?

               *i never thought I’d be a person who criticized teachers like this, but hearing a year’s worth of op-Ed’s and local media about how little they think of their students’ hygiene, how little they value in person teaching, and the contempt they have for parents, it’s really hard not to wonder why two to three hours a day of on screen instruction warrants these salaries and pensions.

            2. Well, here’s the thing. Teachers can teach remotely and get paid, while bartenders and restaurants have to work or they don’t get paid. So, it’s not a matter of let’s prioritize restaurants because hey, happy hour. It is a matter that if restaurants are closed, those people can’t pay rent or buy food. Schools can be closed, and teachers can.

            3. I agree with Lilau. You cannot call what most teachers are doing now “teaching,” and it’s a stretch to characterize what our students are doing as “learning.” Remote learning doesn’t work. Teachers teaching in-person is essential. Teachers should be prioritized as such in the vaccine schedules. Schools should reopen immediately – yesterday, last year, the science is there. And then people who refuse to come to work and do their job – teach, effectively – should be terminated. It’s not hard.

         2. I believe the only way my school district is going to reopen for in-person instruction (even hybrid) is for parents to keep up the pressure to reopen. I’m actually more positive on the virtual learning than many people I know, at least for my own kids, even though one of my kids is quite miserable and just wants to (in his words) “shred through this crap so I can go back to playing video games.” They are learning something, maybe not enough, but hey, I read a paperback in the back of class through most of middle school and did fine afterwards.

            To be frank, I don’t think that our district’s administration or the elected school board is going to put rears in seats if they don’t get a constant drumbeat of “we have to go back in person the hot minute it’s possible.” I don’t blame teachers, but their union is overplaying their hand in my neck of the woods.

      3. Yeah – the responses were pretty off base. Even if you can get your kid to eat a sandwich, you want to see them in the middle of a day where they are dealing with remote learning That’s the problem with a lot of the work-life balance – Hire a Nanny! Outsource Cooking! Even if we can afford those things (and mostly, we can’t), we want to be active participants in our children’s lives. They want to see us at meal times and bed times. The answer is not ‘life hacks’, it’s for the system to recognize our humanity and get off our friggin’ backs.

         1. A-freaking-men. I’m floored that people were basically saying, “Ignore your kid, they’ll be fine! Life skills!” I mean, that’s not great as a long-term strategy. They have enormous social and emotional needs that are not being met during the pandemic as it is. And then they’re supposed to deal with a parent who is there, but not really? Whose employer won’t even allow them to talk to them during lunch? Society has completely screwed over parents and kids during this pandemic. It’s sickening.

            1. no one said that. Everyone said don’t have a big cooking production over the lunch hour because it doesn’t work.

            2. Spare me your outrage. No one said their employer wouldn’t let them talk to their kids at lunch. Way to put up a strawman to be outraged over.

            3. That is not what everyone is basically saying at all.

            4. Oh dear lord. “Society” has not “screwed over” parents during the pandemic. THE PANDEMIC IS HARD ON EVERYONE, WITH OR WITHOUT KIDS. Please stop acting like things are only hard for parents with kids right now.

   2. The pandemic sucks for us all. All of us. And yes, if you have kids with special needs, your life is harder in that way. But can we please stop with the suffer Olympics? (I ask, knowing the answer will be a resounding “no.”)

      1. I don’t think it’s the Suffer Olympics. I do think that the pandemic disruption is over for a lot of people in a way that it is not for others (almost like they are long-haulers as if the first lockdowns had never really ended for them). Ditto elder-care issues. Ditto people working in travel-hospitality (not really represented here at all). If you cut meat, you have been in it all along, dangers and all, and yet do we even think of them at dinner? We should.

   3. Yes. This has been a daily theme for months.

      And I’m team no cooking but also team all of this is horrific.

   4. Toughing it out day by day is a good description. We have 3 kids (elementary and middle school age) and haven’t had our nanny since March. I get interrupted 5000x/day by the kids and they really can’t handle keeping up with their remote schoolwork by themselves, and now their grades are iffy. We are lucky to WFH and be able to be an island, but it’s just really wearing.

   5. yea even if this mom does ‘streamline it’ or whatever and makes lunch the night before, it is not healthy for children to go 8+ hours without taking to another human in-person. And this OP aside, depending on the age of your kids they can’t just be left to their own devices ALL day.

      1. No one said leave your kids alone for eight hours! Who are you people and did you even read the morning’s post?!!?

         1. I got the same impression actually from the morning post. If I’m in all day meetings, and then I have to go to a lunch meeting, I will not see my kid for 8 hours.

            1. And how would this differ if you were in the office?

      2. It is so not the “you go with your parents to their restaurant and work in back and sweep the floor and they all chat with customers” enmeshment of work and life and family. It is the worst of all possible worlds. Everyone tied to a screen. No one talking to the live people who are there.

         Honestly, my kids (no school since March) would have been so much better off with last spring’s joke of 1 zoom weekly + YouTube videos + fun screen time 24/7 vs 7 hours of zoom school + homework + grades. 7 hours of screen time is fine for me, but I get paid. Failing school means they can lose magnet school placements and “continuation school” seats as one kids moves from elementary to middle school, so they are actually stressed and worried they they will all need to repeat the year b/c standardized testing was glitchy and half of them have Fs on key high-stakes tests.

         Is gap year not an option? It would be better in that they’d be happier and probably not be learning less.

         1. I don’t have kids (never happier eith that decision than now) but I wish everyone had gotten on board with a gap year. I know it was hard to predict, and there are kids in bad situations who might have floundered more, but most kids would have been better off.with a year in which they could Montessori-style pursue their own interests and regroup next year. I am.flabbergasted by the number of people who sent their kids.off to college when they could have had a gap year. But like I said – no kids.

   6. I have my own small business now. Before this j always worked on the west coast for east coast based firms. The ideal of a lunch hour at 12 seems quaint and old timey to me. That’s 3:00 on the east coast, prime meeting time. I worked in the corporate world for decades and the only time I had a lunch hour was when I got my first job and was paid on an hourly basis.

      I realize it sucks during the pandemic, but a lot of stuff sucks right now. If OP of the post wants to skip regular meetings because she doesn’t like what time they’re held, she’d better be prepared to be among the first let go if things go south for her company (or even if they don’t.) It’s just reality.

6. As a lifelong resident of a major city (not in the south), I was fascinated (and saddened for the woman who couldn’t break in and wanted to) by this morning’s discussion of SEUS suburban mom cliques. I am 40something, single, and childless and have friends in the same demo as me, married w/no kids, and married w/kids. Social circles seem much less stratified here, or maybe it’s just that I am naturally an outsider by not having a partner and kids so I don’t have a clique to break into.

   I am realizing I’ve always assumed that getting a partner and kids would make it easy to fit in because you’re… societally accepted? Following the prescribed path? It is interesting to hear that it doesn’t necessarily solve for that, and it can sometimes create its own challenges.

   I hope the SEUS moms who posted on that thread can find each other, because it sounds like there are a lot of people out there who are looking for something beyond the cookie-cutter cliques!

   1. “I am realizing I’ve always assumed that getting a partner and kids would make it easy to fit in because you’re… societally accepted? Following the prescribed path? ”

      Sure, if I give up being a lawyer to sell Scentsy and pop out another kid or two.

      Was that sarcastic? Sorry. The sarcasm wasn’t directed at you.

   2. I am an SEUS mom and my theory is that I work FT in BigLaw and that is not typically anywhere, much less in a MCOL city where people tend to have kids 10 years younger than I did. So it was always going to be a slog. What I didn’t think of was how much it matters if you do boy things vs girl things (or if you are a soccer family or a football family or year-round swimmers or just go hiking) — people are micro-sorting and some people disappear into travel tennis or whatever and I swear they only see those people and no one else. I do terribly miss all of my mom-acquaintances — those friendly people you meet along the way and now maybe haven’t seen in a year and may never see again. No one is mean. Everyone is too busy. I can’t wait to the retirement villa part of life — I want a Golden Girls life so bad with nice people who have time for each other.

      FWIW, I did get a pandemic puppy and have found that it increases the odds that adults talk to me during the day, so that alone is #winning.

   3. Nah, you aren’t necessarily socially accepted because you’re married with kids. Even in places like the SEUS and the Midwest. I have two kids in elementary school. Kindergarten is a huge pain point when a lot of women who worked during the “littles” years drop out of the workforce. Aside from my coworkers, I know almost no other women who work full-time and have school-age kids. So my family is left out of stuff pretty constantly. Luckily I have a few close friends, but I am completely left out of the school-mom scene and have to ask careful questions of the few friends I have to figure out how all this works. Ironically, the pandemic has helped this some: there are fewer things going on, and I’m around during the middle of the day to walk down to school to pick up my kids. As soon as I am back in the office, all that will evaporate.

      1. Also, I completely agree with Anonymous @ 4:39 that in my town, you’re sunk if your kid isn’t heavily involved in something time-intensive like travel sports or dance. The parents’ social lives revolve around that stuff. Although that’s not my idea of a good family life and we don’t play that game, it is also the reality that choosing a less scheduled existence will also lead to not having much of a built-in social structure. You have to work much harder to connect and find your people.

         1. Yes, but it is also hard to have a kid do a sport and not devote your life to it. I want sporty kids b/c they have 500 hours of screen time a week over the past year, but it was very hard to find the slacker swim team (show up at meets; practices are if you can make it, only April-June) vs the one you have 6 hours of practice a week for plus meets 12 months/year. And last year: no slacker swim team, just Olympic training. So we became People Who Pandemic Camp.

   4. The truth is, as a mom with kids in a very urban area, your friends are not necessarily other moms when you work full time. Most of my closest friends are friends I met at work, and the majority of the time we spend together (or did, in Before Times) is time away from my kids. Which I’m fine with. We are a two parent household and we both recognize that everyone needs a break sometimes.

      I have friendly relationships with some of my kids’ friends’ parents but those tend not to be lasting friendships. My daughter used to have some away sports tournaments and I had some great times with fellow parents who were all stuck at the same crappy motel over Memorial Day weekend, but those aren’t the friends I’d call during a personal crisis or the first people I’d think of to hang out with sans kids. We hang out precisely because our kids have to be at the same place at the same time, and that’s about it.

      Your kids’ friends change over time too. I can think of three people (one dad, two moms) who I was hoping to have a better friendship long term but our kids have drifted apart and hanging out with the parents would be awkward (especially with the parent of the former friend who turned into an awful mean girl bully).

      And a thing I’ve heard about the south in particular is that “people are so friendly but I have no friends.” A lot of that friendliness is superficial.

      1. Southerners can be Minnesota nice.

         1. +1! Huge overlap.

   5. That was me on the earlier post. Thank you! Just reading the empathetic posts is helpful. I feel like I make “work” friends easily and make friends easily within my industry when I travel. I don’t understand why it is so difficult for me to make real mom friends and truly don’t understand the point of the cliques. I think I would be much happier socially where the cliques are not the norm and where common interests and kindness prevail. I see the direct impact on my kids and wish I could just do my own thing. I feel compelled to make a real effort on the part of my kids and objectively understand how absurd it is to care whether I am invited to x event. But feeling like I am falling short for 3-4 years now is wearing on me.

      1. I really relate to this. Although I’m from the north east, I think a lot of the same things apply. Towns are small and insular, people don’t tend to leave. I grew in a school district where the parental clique controlled so much of a child’s social and scholastic success. My mom wasn’t in it and I definitely missed out because of that. My husband and I avoided that school did because the same kids we went to school with are still there, and I doubt we’re good enough as parents to join the clique now. It’s hard to admit, but if my kids’ (two towns over) school district functions like that I imagine they’ll be in the same boat as I was as a kid.

         My mom has even expressed concern that I won’t fit in or make friends in the new school district. I’m sure she’s right. Still, I feel like it’s too much energy for me to focus on being in the “in” crowd. I’d rather have a few great friends and teach my kids the importance of the same. All this to say, I totally relate.

7. Holy f*ck. The impeachment trial today has done me in. Such magnificient lawyering and such a shocking tale.

   1. Today’s videos have been very thought-provoking.

      I’m from Norway, and almost 10 years ago one single man made a terrorist attack on government and politics that was so massive, devastating and destructive that we will still be dealing with it the next 10 years from now. In a single day he (one person) killed 77 people at government and a youth politics’ camp by a big bomb (government) and single person shooting (youth camp).

      I guess compared to the US it would be like bombing the Capitol (literally to powder, in terms of the security people who died) and a Democrat (well, realistically Bernie, which is mainstream here) youth camp.

      I remember 22. July 2011. I still remember the feeling of massive relief when it was certain that there was 1 – just one – terrorist, and he was Norweigan and blond and a fucking massive fucktard and this massive, awful, awful neverending terror attack was at least domestic.

      I don’t, watching the footage today, feel that the reactions in the US are going to be anywere near parallell.
      You can see these people. A mob. A massive mob attacking every democratic foundation. They are so scary. They are so many. Okay, they didn’t kill as many people this time, but the fierce, aggressive impression is so bad. They were so close to consequences nobody wants to consider.

      I’m so sorry for you, please accept the condolecence and encouragement of somebody who’s government had a different loss but who is rooting for your.

      1. Ymanon, I remember the nutbag who did this in Norway. I was just a freshly minted lawyer and Dad could not believe he was just put into jail and coddled. In the US, we would probably do the same thing but I remember thinking that maybe the death penalty should apply. What does the hive think? I saw the videos today and was shocked that 5 people died and the police did not really have the ability to fight back. We look like idiots again b/c the rioters were not smart, but we were even dummer.

      2. What massive mob?

         A guy in a shaman outfit walked between the velvet ropes. A guy took a photo with Pelosi’s podium. Otherwise, a hundred thousand people were far away, protesting voter fraud.

         1. Yes a massive mob.
            For the norwegian. I saw UTOYA movie last year and I literraly leave the cinema crying. I agree that in USA you dont see the same reaction in the people, like for that trump suporters nothings has happened.

8. i just wanted to share the good news! This week both the Swedish and Norwegian Miitary decided that tampons and sanitary pads are not a luxury but a necessity, and soldiers will from now on recieve menstrual products free of charge and a matter of course. Yay!

   1. Yay!

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