Weekend Open Thread

272 Comments

1. Help me parse my feelings? Seeing some of our family for the first time in a year. So many “you don’t even look pregnant!” comments. I am 27 weeks. The comments upset me. I can’t figure out how to explain to myself why or what to say back. Are people trying to tell me I look… thinner than they expect? Is this somehow supposed to be a compliment? I sure as heck feel pregnant, and I’m a size 10/12, so it’s not like I’m particularly tiny.

   1. People are dumb and say dumb things and feel entitled to comment on women’s bodies. Ignore it or walk away or say you don’t want people commenting on your body, but there’s no parsing their intentions – they’re just being dumb. Don’t waste your time.

   2. I totally get it. How about “Well, that’s disappointing because I sure as heck feel pregnant!”

   3. That totally makes sense. You’re supposed to be finally, for real this time, sharing this joy with them, after not seeing them for many months, and they’re like, “I pretend I do not see it so I can make a joke!” I like SA’s script, or perhaps, “Well, there’s definitely a baby in there!”

   4. I think people really project when talking to pregnant women — they say what they would have liked to hear when they were pregnant (or what their spouse / friend said they would have preferred to hear). I know I showed really early and got lots of “You’re huge!” and “Are you sure it isn’t twins?” type comments; my friend said she told me that because someone told her she didn’t look pregnant at 30 weeks and it crushed her. I would assume they are trying to be nice and just steer the conversation to something else. People are awkward and weird, but mostly trying.

   5. You are both right. The comments feel invalidating and so it’s just a matter of reasserting that yes this is a real thing :).

      Also — bodies are weird and I apologize for talking about size / thinness / thickness in any way that might be triggering. Maybe this is part of why this is so weird for me… Feels like my body is on display.

   6. I’ve heard this intended to be a compliment. They really mean something like “You seem very mobile and not sickly, I’m glad for you” rather than “You should be fatter” but people are bad at words.

      1. This made me laugh and feel better :).

      2. This.

      3. Yeah, I’ve probably said it and intended it as a compliment, I mean when you’re not pregnant it’s common to reject an out fit because “omg, I look preggers in this” so it’s a “you look gorgeous” statement.

   7. Yeah…in our weird culture, telling someone that they look thin, under any circumstances, is considered a compliment. There are so many scenarios when it isn’t ok, though, even setting aside the false underlying assumption that smaller is always better. I agree with SA that putting the focus on how you feel rather than how you look is good.

      At some point a few of my coworkers apparently thought I had lost weight, and kept bringing it up. (Again, assuming this was a compliment and that I would want to discuss it.) I said “you know, I’ve heard that a few times, but I don’t think it’s true. Anyway, I don’t weigh myself.” Poof! No one has ever commented again. I think it’s so rare for anyone to challenge this kind of talk, but for most well-meaning people it only takes one hint to get them thinking a bit more carefully.

   8. As some possible help for the “how to explain to myself” – which you totally do not have to do, you can also just say “wow, why would you say that?” to people. They are being rude.

      But a couple of possible explanations:
      Some people change a lot in their faces during pregnancy, and your family may have expected that (either because of family history or friends) and very, very ungracefully express their surprise instead of keeping it to themselves.

      Some people carry their baby weight very much just around the bump, and look just like before pregnancy (whatever weight that is) if you see them walking, from behind or well, anywhere than just at the bump. The person carrying obviously know very well how much their body has changed, but it might not be that visible to others. Still very much not a thing family should comment on, and just as worthy of a “wow”.

      It probably is meant as a sort of compliment, or possibly that your posture and body language is just as before and they have an idea that all pregnant women “waddle” (not the word, but the movie over-the-top movements, I mean).

   9. Yes, some people consider this a compliment. Basically they are saying ‘congrats, you don’t look fat and bloated like I think most pregnant women look’. People are weird.

   10. “Thanks! I’ll take that as a compliment!” Follow with immediate change in topic/question for them.

       1. This is the absolute best way to let people know they are being rude while looking as poised and classy as possible yourself.

       2. I was a legitimately tiny pregnant person, so I heard this comment a lot. This was always my response. No need to draw out the conversation any further.

          [FWIW, this comment never bothered me at all, though I do see why you may feel differently OP].

          1. Thanks to hyperemesis I was also a legitimately tiny pregnant person. No one ever told me I didn’t look pregnant. On the contrary—I had a basketball belly very early on because there was nowhere to hide the baby on my bony, wasted-away frame. In the second trimester I started getting the comments about how I looked like I was going to deliver any day.

   11. One of my friends found the same comment upsetting because it made her worry there was something wrong with her baby. She worried why she wasn’t growing enough. When she later told the person her doc said she and baby were fine, the person who sad it was like oh…. I was just jealous! You will have less baby weight to lose than I did and thought that would be a good thing to you. So, you are not alone!

   12. It’s a compliment. They are saying you look thin. Just ignore it.

   13. It’s meant to be a compliment, to mean that you still look like you. You will get to the point wherein you look undeniably pregnant – not bean burrito, not maybe she gained some weight, not that shirt has a weird bulge. People will give you their seats and hold doors for you. What they are saying is that you’re not there yet.

       Moreover, a lot of women have been deeply insulted people talking about how PREGNANT they looked. It’s really hurtful: aside from the fact that like half the time, you’re not even pregnant, it really makes you feel like any stomach with more fat than 1995 Kate Moss is going to get the gossip chain going. After pregnancy, you almost always have a bit of a pooch. The muscles lose their tone. There’s some fat there that wasn’t before. And people will stare at a postpartum body and be all “BABY ON BOARD!!!’ It’s so, so, so hurtful.

       In light of that, my read is that people are trying to tell you that you look like you, not like you’re a baby attached to a non-entity who used to be a really cool person.

       1. It’s helpful to see the other side of this and that makes sense. It’s almost always women of my mom’s generation who have at least one child who say it, so they probably have endured those comments.

   14. Same size, and I got the same comments while pregnant. It did feel insulting, though I could never quite pinpoint why.

       1. Yes!!

   15. Are you tall? I had this comment a lot. Also about a size 10. In addition to a long torso with more room for baby, I didn’t gain much weight at all because I had gestational diabetes and had to follow a strict diet. When people said I didn’t look pregnant, it was like a reminder I couldn’t have ice cream and indulge in any fun food basically as well as feeling strange like maybe baby is too small??? I would ignore and try to let go but been there, its not easy. FWIW I had a normal sized baby 7 lbs and change.

       1. Yes, I’m fairly tall, and I worry about baby’s size as well. This was comforting to read.

       2. +1 Height matters a lot to how pregnant you look, I think. I’m 5’11”, was a size 10 when I got pregnant and didn’t gain much weight, and to be honest I never got to the enormously pregnant stage even at 41 weeks. I mean, I had a bump, it was fairly obvious I was pregnant especially to anyone who knew me before pregnancy, but no stranger ever commented on my belly or offered me a seat and I never felt like I was disabled or waddling or anything like that. Btw, I gained 16 pounds and baby was almost 9 pounds! You really can be “all baby” – don’t worry about the baby’s growth unless your OB is concerned.

   16. Neither of my daughter’s ballet teachers looked noticeably pregnant until right before the end. And these aren’t women who are super duper skinny. Both are shorter and on the petite side, but definitely over five feet tall. I think both are relatively long waisted and have great posture, so it just wasn’t apparent from seeing them periodically over a few months’ time (my kid is an “advanced” student so I’m not sitting on the bench in the studio right now).

       I try to keep my remarks to, “You look beautiful! You’re going to be great at this!”

   17. I’m 30w this weekend and people keep telling me how they can’t believe I’m that far along or how my bump is so small. It sure as hell doesn’t feel small and it’s putting some serious strain on my 5’0″ body! I don’t take offense to what they say because I think they are genuinely trying to be nice and basically say, “you look good,” but it does feel somewhat disingenuous because I’m very clearly pregnant at this point. On the other hand, this is our first and my husband keeps looking at my stomach wide-eyed and going, “LOOK AT THAT BIG BELLY! I CANT BELIEVE IT” so there is always that to balance out the other comments! hahaha

       1. Hahahaha my partner periodically goes Oh wow you’re PREGNANT when he sees my belly. Leave it to them :)

   18. They’re just being nice and trying to say you look good. Not having been pregnant myself, I had no idea there was so much internal sensitivity about wanting to look pregnant/being worried, etc. I’m not the type to comment on someone’s physicality other than to say “you look great” but that’s clearly the spirit with which this was intended. I don’t reply to well intentioned comments w rude retorts like some of the commenters suggest. Do that only if you want these people to think you’re the rude one.

       1. Thank you!

2. I’m dealing with a friend who keeps (in my eyes) making mountains out of molehills. There have been numerous instances within the last several months where we’ve had a minor disagreement about something and it turns into a Big Thing. For example, in the most recent case, we disagreed about a very minor money issue (think a discussion about whether it’s best to invest your money in a high-yield savings account or a CD – seriously not a big issue) and she accused me several hours later of “not respecting her” and “this is part of a larger pattern” and “I don’t feel heard.” I’m open to the idea that there are issues in my own communication that I’m just not picking up on – but why would a “actually, I’m not a big believer in CDs while rates are low, I prefer savings accounts” trigger it? What ends up happening is that she accuses of me thinking I’m smarter than her, I get defensive because that seems absurd over the minor little discussion we were just having, and then she accuses me of being defensive and angry, which is further proof of what she’s been saying. Then she wants to eventually have a huge phone conversation to resolve things, but at that point, I get too resentful about how much time is being spent on what I view as a minor issue and I’m not engaged or willing to hash it all out again.

   It’s become a problem and I can see areas where we are both at fault. I want to do what I can to fix my role in it. Normally, this is a type of friendship I would pull back from because I really want to focus on friendships that bring joy – but we’ve been friends a very long time, she’s going through some personal issues (a job loss and a move although things have turned the corner), and she has also been diagnosed with and treated for depression. I think right now, I’m interested in better boundary-setting. Does anyone have any ideas on how I might go about that? I’d like to disengage before I over-engage and make the situation more toxic through my own defensiveness.

   1. I vote pull back even though you said you didn’t want to. You aren’t going to change her behavior and she is unlikely to respect any boundaries you set so all that will be an exercise in futility and even more exhausting than it already sounds like it is.

   2. No advice but this sounds like discussions I had with my husband when his depression was not well treated. It totally sucked because I felt there was a ton of pressure to agree with him at all times.

   3. I have a similar but not the same pattern of interactions with my mom. She refuses to recognize the validity of my statements, and so I never feel heard and I double down on making her hear me. I try to work on not engaging when she tells me how my common sense approach backed by years of professional experience doesn’t work in her special situation because she is determined to cling to her issues. (yes I am in therapy, lol) She finds me pushy and I am irritated she dismisses my opinion.
      The best thing I could think of would be once you find yourself getting defensive, pause, acknowledge her statements with a neutral response like “interesting, i hadn’t seen it like that” or “huh, I will have to think about that” or “that’s great you have a method in place” etc.
      Then move on to another topic.
      This is the only thing that helps me. I maybe disengage 2 times out of 5, so still working on that, but when i do we both have a better visit/phone call. And it helps me with my need to be right in all situations. Because that isn’t my best quality.

      If you need to step back, do it, but you can also take it as an opportunity to work on the need to be right in your personal relationships. I may be projecting my issue onto your experience, but if this resonates, i hope it helps.

      1. OP here. I like your post and I think there are some great points in it. I do think (mostly in other relationships) that I have a tendency to want to be right. I need to work on it and maybe it’s bleeding into this relationship more than I realize.

         The dynamic I notice right now, though, is that if I don’t agree with my friend entirely, she stays angry – so if I used “interesting, I hadn’t seen it like that” and then tried to move on, she would follow up with “but do you agree that what you did was ____?” I think if I were to say “I’d have to think about that,” she’d take it as “proof” that I “think I’m smarter” and that I’m unwilling to just listen/accept. Ugh, it’s hard.

         1. Well she certainly isn’t making it easy for you to participate in your friendship right now. How unpleasant, no one wants to be the whipping boy.
            The follow up phone calls demanding your submission, ugh indeed. You can’t win there, and my previous post doesn’t address those at all. There are at least three options, you can avoid her, confront her, or appease her.
            Confronting might be “we’ve had this discussion a lot lately, and I don’t know what to say other than I am not trying to hurt you or be anything other than your friend who cares about you. I don’t want to fight anymore, and if that means taking a break for awhile let’s do that. I’d rather be in your life than out of it, and I love you. But if you can’t see that or think I look down on you, I don’t know how to convince you otherwise. I am not going to grovel, so please think about it and let me know what you want to do next. Take your time, I’ll be around.”

            Avoiding would be the gentle ghosting, and appeasing would be capitulating to her demands. Either of those draws out the situation longer.

            Obviously the above is a general idea and not prescriptive, but basically you want to tell her you love her, you appreciate her in your life, and that you don’t want to continue this pattern for either of your sakes, and it’s time to reassess what she wants out of the relationship. You’ll be around, but you won’t be walked all over. A mix of compassion and tough love.

            1. Wow, your script actually sounds PERFECT for the last fight we had – loving, to the point, but not groveling. Thanks so much. I knew this site would help find better words than I’m able to myself…

            2. I am so glad! Wishing you all the luck.

   4. I had an interaction with a male colleague (of course it was a male) where I was counseled to sound less authoritative when I answered questions that I was the resident authority on because it made the rest of the team (male) feel like I thought I was smarter than them. Which I was, in that particular area, and that was why they hired me.

      Some people are too sensitive and insecure. There’s no winning in this situation. Talk to your friend about weather and not important stuff.

      But just in case this is the situation, don’t pipe in unless she’s asking a question, really – make sure she’s actually asking a question and not just informing you about something before you give your counter-opinion.

   5. Once you said that she’s been going through a lot, this all made sense. A job loss and a move can take a lot out of a person, and she’s probably feeling rather beaten down right now. That doesn’t make this okay; it does change how you handle it.

      I am really blunt, so I would just tell her, “Laura, you’re a brilliant and talented woman. Our disagreements about CDs versus money market accounts is personal preferences. Instead of beating this dead horse until we’re arrested for desecrating equine corpses, just tell me what’s really going on. You weren’t like this before all the crap you went through, and this really is not about money market accounts. It’s about something else.”

      1. This is excellent advice.

3. Bookshelves with a back, or open?

   Redoing my office, upgrading from cheap pressed board furniture. Walls will be purple, furniture will be white.

   Also have cats who climb, if that’s a factor. No kids.

   1. Absolutely with a back, so you don’t end up with random things falling behind it and then you’re trying to reach back there and bump your head…

      Not that I have an opinion on the matter ;). I like the *look* of the ones that are open at the back.

      1. Open in back, and anchor to the walls.

         1. SA, how do you deal with the gap between back of shelf and wall due to the baseboard at the bottom?

            Or are you just smart enough to not put small things (my glasses…) on bookshelves?

            1. Haha if you knew me you wouldn’t ask the second question!

               My baseboards must be skinnier than yours because it hasn’t really been much of an issue.

            2. We cut the bookshelf around the baseboard so the shelf is flush with the wall.

            3. SA, do you have those extremely thin baseboards that were common in SoCal in houses built in the 1970s and 1980s? Do they still use them? I grew up in SoCal and was shocked at how thick the baseboards were when I moved to the east coast after college. Also the paneled doors. So fancy.

            4. I guess I did in the houses where I had open-back bookshelves! So funny! In the current house we have very large Craftsman-style baseboards handmade by Mr. Senior Attorney.

   2. Ones with a back. Try and find solid wood ones second hand if you can.

   3. I have white Hemnes from Ikea. Solid wood and very neutral. Blends with both more modern and more transitional styling.

   4. I love ones with an open back! I’ve never had anything fall back there, like how does that even happen?!

   5. I have the helix bookshelves (open back from cb2) and love them.

   6. I like bookshelves with an open back, but that have a little bit of a lip in the back so stuff can’t get shoved off and fall down. Ours are custom built by a family member so I don’t know how easy it is to find ones like that. I like that they are a bit more airy so the books can breathe and also appreciate how visually open the shelves are.

   7. Definitely open back with crazy wall colors like purple.

4. These shoes look so dated to me now.

   1. agreed – the TB logo medallion generally is now about a decade-old look IMHO, but obviously people keep buying shoes like this because they keep selling more colors!

   2. And not even all leather! I cannot believe the prices shoe manufacturers charge for shoes with plastic or rubber soles.

   3. I remember being on a business trip quite a few summers ago and every other girl in the airport had a pair of these on. I felt like both the sandals and the TB flats with the big medallion were way too trendy to be interesting, and I still feel that way.

5. Talk to me about balance — how do you balance time for yourself/what you want to do (or you plus spouse, no kids) with work with “demands” from parents/inlaws? DH and I are finding that when we are in busier jobs, we are obviously working all the time and then when we aren’t working the vacation time you’re actually able to take is limited. We WANT to take that time to take actual vacations as we haven’t traveled much yet and now are hitting 40 where it’s financially comfortable to travel how we want. BUT we feel compelled to constantly use our limited time off to visit parents/inlaws. I don’t mean to say we don’t want to visit them, we love them, they love us but it’s hard when anytime we can manage a few days or a week off, we end up visiting one side or the other. FWIW one side is 78 and aging a lot and doesn’t want to do much outside their daily routine, and the other side is early 70s and still go go to an extent. Traveling with either side is NOT an option. All have some level of anxiety and/or expect trips to be exactly who they want them to be, so we’re not interested in flying to Europe to do bus tours and then eat at the hotel restaurant every day and/or be out searching for the perfect brand of orange juice someone has to have because the hotel OJ isn’t good or whatever. Thoughts?

   1. We have them visit us for a few days. We don’t take time off but plan to have them say, arrive Thursday, hang out on their own Friday, we spend the weekend mostly as a group, then they go home Monday.

      When we visit them, we also do long weekend visits, so that our “real” vacations (taking a week off) are just for us.

   2. MIL comes to us. She’s in a tertiary location that is a non-direct flight away. When we visit her we sit and do nothing, and I stew because I’ve wasted precious vacation time on sitting and doing nothing in the middle of no where. It’s legitimately not even quality time spent with her. We’re just sharing air. DH feels generally the same.

      Now, she comes to us, sees her granddaughter, shares air on our terms. I go to work or work from home when she’s here on week days (read: don’t take vacation time) and DH takes vacation day on the Thursday/Friday of the week she’s here. Because we have a kiddo, we schedule the aquarium one day, minigolf another day, maybe bowling, just one thing to get us out and about a bit, but that’s it. Our vacation time is for us and we will travel on our own unapologetically.

      We’ve also talked about embracing the 3-day trip in the future. He has family we do enjoy in another city, a direct flight away. We’ve talked about flying late on a Thursday or early on a Friday and seeing family for 2.5 days. I typically like to travel for longer, but if he needs a family fix or if we haven’t seen folks in a while, we figure we can squeak out 1-1.5 vacay days for that.

   3. Extended long weekends with family – usually around a holiday like Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas. That way we can hype up traditions and it seems bigger.

      We had decent WFH options pre-pandemic so often travelled Wednesday night. When visiting my parents I’m off Thursday/Friday and DH does WFH on location, then weekend, then holiday Monday, travel back Monday night and back in office Tuesday morning. When we visit DH’s parents he is off for the Thursday/Friday and I WFH on location.

      This only eats up two vacation days so we can do this with each set of parents and only use 4 days which leaves us enough time for a proper family vacation. Will have each set of parents come visit us as well for a week. They do things like pick the kids up from school which the kids love. DH doesn’t have as much flex but I can generally WFH the week my parents are here so I can have lunch with them etc during the day. We do outings on each weekend on either end of the visit (aquarium, zoo etc) so they don’t mind the quieter days during the week. We’ll often eat out for dinner mid-week as well.

   4. I remember having a conversation with my cousins about how it was so weird to us that other families took “vacations” and didn’t just travel home… as we all live across the continent the norm was always to fly home whenever you could. So, I hear you. As a practical matter, I’ve gotten in the habit of taking late-night Thursday flights – return Sunday late so I only have to burn 1 day of PTO for family trips and then taking one proper vacation a year. If you want to try vacations with your parents, the old luxury hotel chains – Ritz, Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Fairmont, etc. – are all great at catering to the parents, especially on their club floors and provide excellent parent baby sitting services (speaking from experience…) if you wanted to stay in the US.

   5. Unless your parents are on a different continent, you can visit them over holiday weekends and save your PTO days for real travel. And/or host them. That’s what we did pre-kid. Now that we have a preschooler, we (mostly, I) do some travel with my parents because kids limit what you can do on vacation a lot anyway, and having an extra set of hands or two mostly cancels out the annoying travel quirks my parents have :) Not true for my in-laws, so we still mostly visit them over long weekends and have them visit us.

   6. Never leave your hometown, and have the tradeoff of your parents trying to control you your entire adult life? No? Yeah, I effed up.

   7. We have parents and inlaws fly to us. We live 5 hrs away (diff country) and are willing to splurge on business class if need be. Sometimes when we visit, I work remotely to save vacay days, but may take 1-2 days off.

   8. Work remotely when visiting in-laws and save time off for trips/vacations. Sometimes burn a day or two and do a long weekend. I’ll work during the day and see in-laws for dinner/we spend the weekend together.

6. Need book recommendations to escape into during an upcoming long weekend with the in-laws.

   I recently read and liked: Lisey’s Story by Stephen King, Dawn on a Distant Shore by Sarah Donati, Elizabeth & Margaret by Andrew Morton, The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.

   1. The rest of the Cormoran Strike series is supposed to be very good. I also recently read The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley and it was enough of a page-turner to keep things interesting, although it was ultimately a bit predictable. Now I’m reading Maisie Dobbs (recommended here originally) – maybe you’d like that one?

   2. I enjoyed several of the books you mentioned and I am super into Ben H. Winters these days. Read and loved Underground Airlines and then went through his whole oeuvre.

   3. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
      The Bookman’s Tale by Charlie Lovett.
      The Veronica Speedwell books (A Curious Beginning is the first in the series.)
      Red Seas Under Red Skies (the next Locke Lamora)

   4. The only one of those I’ve read is the Robert Galbraith books, so not sure if this will exactly be what you’re looking for, but I just finished Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty, which will be a Hulu series soon, and I thought it was a fun beach read kind of book. And to second some of the other recs above, I always suggest Maisie Dobbs and I’m currently reading the second book in the Six of Crows series- I actually like these better than the Shadow and Bone series.

   5. I tore through the Lions Den by St John in a little over a day. It had a few plot issues but was an easy fun read

   6. The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz. I am halfway through and having trouble putting it down to do other things!

7. Ladies, how does one take off water weight? In the new humidity of the summer, I have suddenly gained about 7 pounds and my wedding ring doesn’t fit. I haven’t been eating great, but not so bad as to gain 7 pounds in a week.

   1. Drink lots of water, and add cardio–cardio seems to help with saline balance. And it is paradoxical, but drink water–the body retains water to keep the saline % balanced. Water helps your body shed water. Also, eating fewer carbs helps, too.

   2. If you’re bloating, you are not drinking enough water and you may be eating too much sodium. Drink way, way more water and watch your salt/takeout.

   3. I just wait a few days. 7 pounds is totally within the realm of possibility for me at certain points in my cycle, no matter the weather.

   4. Low salt diet, <2gm per day.

   5. The same thing happened to me over the weekend–a pound a day for five days. I’ve managed to shed a couple of those pounds already by avoiding takeout, drinking more water, and avoiding added sugar. Watermelon is also supposed to be a good diuretic, so I’ve added one to this weekend’s grocery order.

   6. When I’m bloated it’s normally hormonal (all the water disappears as soon as my period hits) or I have been eating very processed carbs with wheat and weird sugars (bloating disappears after eating better for a few days).

   7. Dairy and fatty meats make me retain water. In hot weather I eat mostly veg and fruit, fish, and clear beverages.

8. We’re going to be flying into Nassau for a 5-day weekend (3 full days, 2 half days) in a few weeks. We’re staying in an Airbnb and will have a rental car (we are comfortable driving on the left). We usually prefer quieter islands but don’t want to spend a ton of time getting ourselves to a more remote island for this short of a trip (like we looked into Eleuthera but that means we basically lose daylight time on-island on the two travel days).

   Long shot perhaps, but we’ve never been, and aside from just looking forward to vegging on the beach and a bit of snorkeling, does anyone have suggestions for (1) non-cheesy day sails or snorkel excursions — we don’t need to swim with pigs or feed iguanas, just enjoy time on the water, or (2) beachfront dining that’s laid back but not in a gimmicky way? We are looking for the oppos-te of Senor Frog’s.

   1. We went in 1980, before Paradise Island was developed, but what I remember is the botanical garden, where the caretaker chased the flamingos around for us, the fort and the straw market. We went in August, so *very* few tourists. Still, a magical time. Enjoy!

9. There is a kid that has always had an issue with my middle school nephew. They weren’t in school together this year because they were shut, but per my sibling, “bullying” was an issue in other years. I believe bullying exists and is an issue, but I don’t know exactly what happened, hence the quotes. However, the kids play a multiplayer video game where they can “find” each other online (not sure how — aren’t kids using aliases?) and sends comments to the nephew. Sibling wants nephew to play the game and not change his profile so that he can find and be found by his friends (but that lets the bully find him). Sibling wants the school to make the bully not play the game, which I think is very unrealistic. My kids are now starting to play this type game, but so far only with one kid that we know who is local and is a good kid. BUT if this gets to be a problem, even though it is caused by someone else, I think I’d just either take it away OR make them change names and go anon (which I get is unfair but I think anything that expects bullies not to bully is naive and I know that bullying can be so severe that kids kill themselves, so if something is that dangerous, stay the F away).

   G-d, I hope my kids can go back to seeing friends in person and sleepovers and such, but getting the <12 crowd shots looks like it won't happen until fall from what I hear. The virtual stuff just seems so shady (and also seems to addict these kids to something that is actually very bad if not actually dangerous for them).

   1. How is this different than any other form of social media? Are you going to ban your kids from having insta or facebook in case someone is mean to or about them on that?

      1. I think that on FB or insta, you can not friend people (but I guess they can comment) or mute them. Whatever the Kardashians do to mute voices they don’t like. Or grow a thick skin and ignore the haters (haters gonna hate).

         I guess I’d teach my kids to ignore and not engage and make sure I practice that myself (lord knows plenty of grownups struggle with this well past the age where it’s excusable). We are planning to get kiddo a phone for when school starts b/c she will take a bus across our city with no one she knows (yet; that may change by the first day of school), but it’s like a car: in the right hands, it’s a tool; it’s also incredibly dangerous.

   2. I don’t allow multiplayer games where the kid is able to interact with random strangers or people they haven’t directly invited to play with them. My child is only allowed to play with children she knows in real life, in games where the selected group can connect but no one else can join without permission. The only adults she can play with are family members, again in a closed environment.

      1. Is there an easy way to figure out which games are like this? My kids play minecraft with one cousin and my husband set that up, so I know nothing about it other than my kids are probably aging out of this (or will soon be over to friends’ houses where they or an older sibling may have things like Fortnite, which I htink works this way). The good thing about the pandemic is that I am not tech savy so I could always say “talk to dad about that” and that is a final answer from me.

         1. I don’t know how the pandemic has anything to do with this. If figuring out tech privacy is your husband’s job, it’s his job, pandemic or not. They can just wait until dad gets home for an answer.

         2. I make my kid figure it out and explain it to me, then show me after the game is downloaded. I don’t have the mental energy to do it myself. She is a bad liar, which helps.

         3. For Fortnite, you can just have the kids play without mics. So, you still play with a team of strangers but you can’t talk to each other. That would probably work with most games… though I get talking with teammates can help w/ strategy.

            1. My kids set up a separate call via FaceTime or hangouts or discord for this reason. They can talk to their friends and strategize without being exposed to the public.

            2. My kid played without a mic until he was 14 and joined an esports team at his high school. He also does the group call/Discord thing mentioned, he and his friends prefer that because they can chat amongst themselves without worrying about revealing personal details to strangers.

               I know from his experience with his esports team that it is possible to get people banned or “chatbanned” (they can play, but their mic is permanently muted) in almost any game played on the XBOX. He and his teammates had to report a kid who lost to them in a competition match and would not let it go, kept following them around in different games harassing them. They got him chatbanned, then entirely banned, and also somehow blocked him from finding them again.

   3. How about a discussion with the other parent about only the subject at hand (and not prior history of bullying)?

      1. I’m just wondering how that would go. “Please don’t have Braydon interact with Livingston or any of these 3 friends online” doesn’t seem like it would go over well at all and there could be blowback.

         [My daughter was teased a lot before lockdown and I told her that the teasing girl was a jerk, when the girl was acting jerky, tell her loudly “Knock it off, Anna-Marie; you’re being a jerk,” b/c IMO bullies like soft targets and not targets that present any resistance whatsoever, and that Anna-Marie was a jerk to everyone and all the moms know it but no one ever complains to the school because Anna-Marie’s family is rich and is considered very locally important. But she should not be afraid of that because what is right is worth stocking up for and if Anna-Marie can be mean to kiddo, Anna-Marie is going to be mean to others who are not in a position to speak up. Which is all true and maybe TMI for the kid, but kiddo isn’t stupid and I think kiddo was relieved when lockdown happened. I’m sure that Anna-Marie moved on to someone else.]

         1. That’s a really oversimplified view of bullying. Some bullies continue to target even if you “fight back”. Bullies have a lot of different motivations, and there often isn’t a magic bullet. I think it would be better for your sister to go to “Braydon”‘s parents and say “here are the messages your son sent to mine last night. I need to make sure that my son feels safe playing a game with his friends, please make sure Braydon doesn’t contact him any more”. If it continues, I think it’s important to loop the school in (although obviously they can’t control online gaming), just so they have a fuller picture of what’s going on and can keep an eye out when they’re back at school.

            1. Nine times out of ten, going to the bully’s parents will backfire on you. Who do you think allowed or taught the kid to become a bully in the first place? It’s not the school’s place to police off-campus behavior either. It’s best to teach your own kid to block the bully on line, and to prohibit games and apps that give bullies and strangers too much access.

            2. And the whole idea of “bullies like soft targets” is just victim blaming. Some kids are actually both targets of bullies and bullies to others. Haven’t you ever been at the receiving end of mean behavior you felt was unjustified? Was it because you were too “soft”? Didn’t think so.

            3. I agree re soft target (or perceived soft target). They are inherently cowards.

            4. I’m a former teacher. We absolutely took it seriously when parents would contact us about issues like this. While we obviously couldn’t police outside of school behavior, we could keep a close eye on what happened at school and take measures to separate the students when possible. And of course some bullies parents can’t be reasoned with, but at least give the parents a chance to address it.

            5. And (final point, I swear) I think we have a very binary view of “bullies” versus the “bullied” that we need to let go of. Most children will be both the bullied AND the bully (or at least a bystander) at some point in their life. Not all bullies are irredeemable jerks raised by terrible people who don’t care. A lot of them are actually otherwise normal kids who just do mean things.

            6. My guess is that some other kids are friends with this kid and keep inviting him to join. They may be oblivious or don’t get it or even afraid to stand up.

   4. I feel sad that you don’t believe your nephew is being bullied while playing online video games. This type of bullying is incredibly common and it’s real. Virtual gaming is not going away just because kids are going back to school. You do have to learn to navigate it, and there’s lots of help online. I’ve been there with my own kid and it was really, really difficult. There are no easy answers.

      1. OP here — I do believe it, but I cannot describe what happens because I am not even sure what the game is (guessing Fortnite or some first-person shooter game). Like typing comments in DMs that are mean and unblockable? Commenting publicly? I’m not even sure how you play with people so you’d know who a person was (or vice versa) or how to exclude someone you know is a jerk.

         Like IRL, I could say that someone posted a nude and said it was Kid A but it was really Kid B and that mortified Kid A and got kid A in trouble (should have gotten the poster in legal trouble but I doubt that happens). But I don’t have a good sense of what goes on.

         1. My nephew is being “bullied” is not a good look. You don’t need to put it in quotes. A two second google search will tell you this is plenty real.

         2. “I believe bullying exists and is an issue, but I don’t know exactly what happened, hence the quotes”. If you truly believed it was happening, you wouldn’t have a need to say this, nor would you put it in quotes.

         3. https://www.stopbullying.gov/cyberbullying/cyberbullying-online-gaming

         4. https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/fortnite-c75/battle-royale-c93/how-do-i-report-bad-player-behavior-in-fortnite-a3276

            Two easy hits from easy google searches. And start believing your poor nephew.

   5. I think kids need to be taught to deal with bullies instead of hiding from them. Bullies don’t magically disappear when kids graduate, they become adults too and adults are meaner and more vicious.

      1. There’s a difference between hiding from bullies and not deliberately exposing yourself to the ideal bullying environment. I wouldn’t even play one of those games as an adult, much less allow a kid to play one. They are different from regular social media or in-person interactions, or even boards like this where people say mean stuff but hopefully don’t know who you are IRL and you can easily just stop reading.

      2. You can address both ends of this equation. I don’t think it’s appropriate to tell an elementary school kid to toughen up and deal with their bully entirely on their own. Give them the tools and loop in the adults concerned.

      3. I feel like “hiding from” bullies is exactly what I do in adult life? In my pursuit of education, choice of work, region, neighborhood, friends, and associates. As far as I know, the kids who were bullies in school are still bullies now, but unlike a school kid, I have choices.

         1. I’m very happy you’ve never had the pleasure of working with a mean girl or a sociopathic boss but being corporate and educated doesn’t mean someone isn’t a bully. There is no way to entirely safeguard your life from mean people and dealing with them is an important life skill. I have faced bullies at many of my jobs from the first in fast food to NGO executives, it’s not limited to any one ‘type’ of person.

            1. I’ve had to deal with mean girls and with sociopaths, but my view is that it’s still been an advantage to have adult freedoms and options? A lot of what goes down at school would be an HR issue or actually illegal in the places I’ve worked.

   6. If the game is Roblox, they can either report the bully if he is causing problems or block him in game so he can’t contact the nephew. We had to do this with a girl my daughter was playing the games with. Much simpler than involving the school. (Who likely can’t do much anyway since it is outside of school.)

10. Random – can any of you think of boy names that have the same strong first syllable O sound that Joseph does?

    1. Owen.

    2. Noah. Moses. Jonah. Jonas. Owen. Conan. Ronan. Joel. Lowell. Rowan. Otis. Boden. Bowen. Brody.

       1. You are very good at this.

          1. +1 I’m impressed!

    3. Owen or Omar?

       1. Oh misunderstood and thought you were looking for O names, lol.

    4. Corey, Lawrence (depending on your accent, I guess), Morris, Norris, Toby

    5. Ronan

    6. Nolan?

       1. Also: Orin, Beau.

          1. I’m impressed you came up with Beau!!

       2. I’m impressed you came up with Beau!!

    7. Brody, Cody, Forrest, Rowan, Tony?

    8. Tony, Cody, Tobias

    9. Logan

    10. Assuming North American /ou/ for Joseph:
        Cody
        Conan
        Beau
        Owen
        Nolan
        Tobin
        Toby

    11. Grover
        Homer

        1. Grover! Whatever this is, pick Grover for sure!

           1. Ugh, makes me think of Grover Norquist though.

    12. I immediately thought Roman. Been binging Blindspot, and Luke Mitchell is HAWT.

    13. Cole

        1. That’s my name IRL!

11. Does anyone have a solution they like for collecting dirty kitchen rags before putting them in the laundry? I generally try to gather up a few of them or wait until I’m doing a laundry load to put them in, but not sure what to do with them in the meantime? Don’t want to put them in with my own laundry and have them fester and get stains on my clothes. Plastic bag seems kind of ugly…maybe a plastic bin under the kitchen sink?

    1. This probably won’t help you, but we have a sink in the laundry room and I toss ’em in there.

    2. I drape them over the side of a laundry basket in the laundry room. If you don’t spread them out to dry, they will mildew.

    3. I keep a plastic dishpan on or near my washing machine (top-loader) for anything wet or icky.

    4. Depending on when during the week we have a gross one, either (1) toss directly into washing machine wet, awaiting additional dirty clothes before starting the load (only if we’ll be doing laundry within about a day, otherwise they get stinkier), or (2) air dry on the edge of the sink before tossing them in the hamper.

    5. I have a separate laundry basket in the laundry room for random things like this and then a separate one in my closet for my clothes. Or you could get a mesh laundry bag and keep them under the sink.

    6. I have a separate plastic bin, and keep rags there while I collect enough for a rag wash. I rinse them well, and have best luck with putting them in the bin dry – so I leave yesterday’s rag out to dry overnight before I bring up today’s from the drawer.

       I only use microfiber, and would not do this with cotton, which would only make a bin of mildew in my climate.

       If I have handled raw chicken or similar with the rag, they go straight in the washing machine with however many rags are in the bin.

    7. Two small plastic bins, one for dirty rags, one for clean. The dirty one gets gross eventually but I haven’t found any alternatives that work.

    8. We just toss them in the washer until someone does the next load of laundry. If there are a lot in there, we will do a load of towels with it instead of clothes. Anything really gross just goes in the towel hamper or is left on top of the washer to go in at the appropriate time.

    9. I either put it on top of the washing machine or into the machine itself. If it’s in a far place from my washing machine, like my bathroom upstairs, and is wet, I drape it on the side of my laundry basket not touching anything else until it dries. Once dry, if I think of it, I chuck it into the basket.

    10. I have a set of black sterilite baskets (plastic, but with holes in the sides, about 6″ tall) that are perfect for this. I keep one on top of the dryer and drape the wet rags over the side. They dry within a day and then go into the wash with the towels once a week. The rest of the set of baskets I use for collecting misc. clutter around the house (hats and mittens near the front door, masks near the garage door, batteries and tape in a cupboard, etc.). They’re not super fancy looking, but inoffensive enough.

    11. I have a not terrible looking woven basket in the little hallway adjacent to my basement drawer where things like dishcloths go and soccer socks etc (theoretically) are put rather than strewn across the living room. If they are wet, I sort of drape them on the side.

    12. We have a wire trash bin that we use for this! It’s a wide mesh so it lets them breathe.

    13. We have small clean and dirty rag bins in our cleaning supplies closet.

    14. I keep a collapsible wall-mounted plastic laundry hamper thing on the wall in my pantry. I can hang wet rags on the rail and then dry ones go in the basket. Disregard the word salad description, if you search for that on Amazon you’ll find similar things.

    15. I put them on top of the dryer.

    16. We draped them over the shower door in the bathroom. They dry overnight, and then I just toss them in the hamper until laundry day.

        Growing up my mom used to pile them on top of the fridge because the low, steady heat dried them quickly enough that they didn’t get gross. However, the constant damp cloths eventually caused rust spots to develop on the top of the fridge and we were all short enough that we didn’t notice until the spots got pretty large.

    17. We just put a small hamper next to the trash can in the kitchen and run it all as its own laundry load once a week. I started doing this when kiddo was a baby because of the constant burp cloths and bibs, but we still do it two years later and I like it. It makes me much more likely to reach for a dish towel than a paper towel and we go through less disposable stuff.

    18. Our laundry room is directly off the kitchen so YMMV but we keep a mesh pop laundry bag there for “rags and gross things.” Kitchen rag, cloth napkins, cleaning towels and rags, towel used to sop up the spilled whatever, the random socks that we apparently leave ALL over the house, etc. My laundry fairy (Dh) knows that doing rags is a weekly laundry load. Apparently we use a lot of rags! But haven’t bought a roll of paper towels since we moved in ~6 years ago

    19. I don’t wash the dirty kitchen rags with, say, raw chicken juice on them with clothing or bedding. Gross. It may “all come out in the wash” but I don’t believe combining those types of laundry is a good idea – or maybe it’s just not palatable to me.
        We have a bucket (literally one of those $5 buckets from Lowe’s) in the laundry room and I throw the kitchen rags in there until it’s about half full and then I do a load that has just those rags in them, plus the rags I’ve used to do other housecleaning, and maybe the towels we’ve used to give the dogs a bath, and that’s it. Wash on hot, dry on high heat.

12. PSA: I just went to get some Doritos out of the vending machine and somebody had left a bag of Lay’s Dill Pickle potato chips behind (my theory: they pushed the wrong button and thought “ugh, dill pickle potato chips! I’m not even gonna take them!”), and in the spirit of experimentation I took them and ate them.

    THEY ARE CRISPY AND SALTY AND TART AND DELICIOUS. I WANT TO EAT THEM ALL DAY.

    That is all.

    1. Oh my gosh I just had a bag of FRIED pickle potato chips. Highly recommend also – https://www.target.com/p/utz-fried-dill-pickle-ripple-potato-chips-9oz/-/A-79382833

       1. These are the best and I will not accept any other response.

    2. You’re the best!!!

    3. Are dill pickle chips considered weird or bad in California? They’re totally normal where I am.

       1. Haha when I saw them I thought “I bet these are a Canadian thing!” Your potato chip game is way stronger up there. I had to go all the way to Quebec to even find out about catsup-flavored potato chips!

          1. Oh, ick. Dill pickle chips sound interesting but catsup flavoring sounds nasty. And I like actual catsup.

             1. Oh disagree. Trader Joes again, (I’m a Trader Ho apparently) has this bag of chips called Patio Chips that have four different flavors of chips on one bag. One of them is ketchup. Delicious. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

             2. Agree. I was reticent but it’s great. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it, for sure!

             3. It sounds like Trader Joe’s has been stealing the Canadian foods. Those ‘patio chips’ have been around for 30+ years we call them storm chips.

             4. Canadian transplant in America here. Castup chips are wonderful and I miss them terribly.
                Those and Coffee Crisp bars.

             5. There are no Coffee Crisp bars in the US?! I weep for you…

                But then in Canada (Quebec) we don’t get Checks Mix :(

             6. We definitely get checks mix in Ontario!

       2. They’re very much a Canadian thing. Canadians have much more creative chip flavors than us Americans. American chips usually stick to things like salt, cheese, sour cream & onion, sea salt & vinegar, BBQ.

    4. trader joe’s has all kinds of dill pickle stuff. The dill pickle popcorn is weird and delightful.

    5. I have fond childhood memories of Swedish Dill flavoured potato chips – always been a thing in Sweden, never seen them elsewhere until recent times.

    6. LOVE love love dill pickle chips. Lay’s has a “flaming hot” version – so good.

13. Do you ever feel that your job has allowed your spouse to stagnate at theirs? My husband has hit the top of his pay band and will never get another raise. This means that his earnings will decline in real dollars every year. He also complains about other aspects of his job, with good reason, but has no intention to pursue a promotion or search for a new job that will allow his earnings to keep pace with inflation or give him any of the non-monetary things he wants out of a job. Meanwhile, I’m busting my a s s for a promotion when I’d really like to be a SAHM, and he constantly complains that even with both of us working we are poor because we don’t yet have several million saved for retirement. I really feel like my working is enabling him to coast. If he were the sole provider, he’d at least be motivated not to have his salary capped, or maybe even to try and move up. Ugh.

    1. Yes, that was our situation until my husband retired recently. Not all of us are cut out for office careers. I never wanted to be a SAHM (and it sounds like you married the wrong man if that was really your goal) but I did feel a bit resentful when I was the stressed out breadwinner and my husband had a strictly 9-5 job he was coasting in and still complained about all the time.

       It made me feel my husband was lazy. But he’s not lazy. He is always doing something for our house or our kids or the dog or working on our cars, etc. He just wasn’t much of an office type.

       It did help that he was always super proud of me and my career, even though he really couldn’t understand how hard my job was (typical worker bee mentality that management gets paid a lot for doing “nothing”)

       1. It wasn’t my goal before kids and for the first several years, but our understanding when we got married was that it would be an option if it made sense.

    2. This is an interesting viewpoint. I personally feel like my husband’s “coasting” (to use your term but really he has a stable job but I far outearn him) has enabled me to lean in more to my career. But then again I have no desire to be a SAHM and am certainly not cut out for it.

       I’d take a step back and think about what specifically is bothering you about the situation. Even if your husband is capped at his earning, that doesn’t mean you can’t take a step back in your career if that’s something you would like to do or even become a SAHM. Yes, your HHI would drop but plenty of people manage to live on a lot less than what I assume your HHI is if he’s at the top band and you’re up for a promotion.

       Also, any time he complains about retirement funding, invite him to remedy that by getting a hired paid job, otherwise don’t engage. He’s allowed to be annoyed by something. That doesn’t mean you need to make it your problem.

    3. Mine quit a career he hated, which I was okay with because his plan was to pursue a passion project. Instead he’s spent the last three years pounding beer while lying on the couch, blaming his laziness on stress from his family’s severe health issues and legal problems. He doesn’t lift a finger around the house, either. I can’t afford to kick him out yet because I’d have to pay him half the value of the house.

       1. I am so sorry. I hope you’re getting some help for yourself. I’d kick him out anyway. Freedom is worth a lot.

          1. +1

          2. +1

       2. DTMFA.

    4. Will his employer not adjust the pay bands from time to time? I was at the top of mine for 4 years at a prior job, but got a 2% or 3% raise every year as they adjusted the band, and that added up well over time.

    5. Does he not get a cost of living increase?
       I often think that there is an idea in the workplace that people have to continue to progress, which I don’t think is really what everyone wants and how you end up with really bad managers and bosses.

       1. Yes! If you enjoy your job and it pays well, there’s no need to always be going for more.

       2. No COLA. The “merit increase” barely covers inflation.

    6. Are you sure he won’t get a 1-2% “cost of living” increase every year? It likely won’t keep pace with inflation, but will help minimize the decline.

    7. I don’t know ….my thoughts are if he’s content where he is he’s content where he is

       if it’s conversation you’re willing to have a therapist could unpack why he feels so insecure about how much money is saved for retirement~ that is a him problem I surmise. The frequent commentary About it would tick me off too.

       in addition , did you know when you got married that he was going to do X job and that X job maxed out at X dollars?
       Honestly, as management I can say that there’s no way I would pay more than X dollars for X role and cola increases in line with Social Security are not high and that’s just that

       even giving a cola irks me sometimes as often times when staff are in a role for a long time they get complacent and why keep rewarding that with a cola?

       1. A COLA is not a reward. It means their salary has the exact same purchasing power as it did before.

    8. I definitely struggle with this. My husband is a teacher and he will only get one raise before he reaches full retirement in 10 years. I have been working really hard to level up in my career and we are finally financially stable thanks to my hard work. His job definitely helped us manage when the kids were younger and allowed me to focus on my career. And he definitely has better health insurance. But now I do get frustrated from time to time. For example, this summer he had the option to teach summer school due to increased enrollment because of the pandemic. He would have earned approximately one third of his salary for two months, but turned it down without discussing it with me because “he would be too burned out if he had to work all summer.” And he will be in his early 50s when he retires with very few skills that will translate to the current job market. He says he wants to keep working when he retires from teaching, but is making no effort to explore other options and resists my efforts to suggest options. I definitely benefited when the kids were younger, but now that we are getting closer to retirement and I see no end in sight to working for me, I am getting frustrated.

       1. I think I’m missing something here. Why is he going to retire in his early 50s & you work forever?

    9. It is really hard to read tone on the internet and I may be way off (in which case disregard) but if you want to stay married I highly recommend couples therapy ASAP because your post reads as contemptuous of him and his choices and contempt and resentment are fatal to marriages.

14. Gut check –

    I’m helping out a neighbor that was in a bad accident two months ago. He has had two surgeries and needs one more. He is home (after a hospital stay) after each surgery. He is someone with prior addiction and legal issues. He can’t drive due to his injuries.

    One of the things I’ve done to help him is to pick up his prescription at his doctor’s office and bring it to the pharmacy for him. I have also picked up prescriptions for him a couple of times that were either phoned in or dropped off by someone else. He is getting a large quantity of pain meds, frequently. One of the times I went to pick up his meds it was too early and the pharmacist was very annoyed saying he kept calling. Eventually his doc called and worked it out and I was able to pick them up.

    I live in a small town and I’m pretty sure the pharmacist knows I’m just a nice neighbor doing errands for my wheelchair bound neighbor and not his BFF or anything but I’m starting to have concerns with the frequency and quantity of his rxs.

    On the one hand, I feel this isn’t something I should concern myself with. It is between him, his doctor and the pharmacy. If they are willing to fill it I should feel no guilt picking it up for him. On the other hand, I see a lot of red flags. He asked me to pick up a script today but I was tied up w/ work so another neighbor is doing it, much to my relief.

    Thoughts? I don’t want to stop helping him entirely (I do other things beyond picking up scripts) but I’m trying to decide if I want to say I’m no longer comfortable picking up his meds. Not sure I want to have that conversation. Being “unavailable” for that task could also work….

    1. This is weird. The doctor’s office should be transmitting the prescriptions to the pharmacy electronically, and the pharmacy should have delivery available. I’d offer to help him set up delivery and then get out of it.

       1. Not for opioids. Paper script only with a valid ID.

          1. Then he needs to figure it out himself with a home care agency, etc. It’s not OP’s job to be his supplier. He can do what he wants as long as it’s legal, but she’s not obligated to enable him or to be burdened with worrying about whether what she’s doing is right.

          2. This is nuts. How is a paper script more secure than an electronic script?!?

    2. Doesn’t the pharmacy offer delivery? I would try to get out of the middle of this. A one or two time favor is different than being this person’s de facto caretaker. It sounds like you’ve waded into the latter.

       1. I think delivery is not an option for scheduled meds.

          1. Correct. I was shocked he was able to get anything called in but I guess they did it under some kind of emergency provision where they mail the original later. This actually shows a real issue with our medical system. He has very few friends and family and none local. There were so many things the hospital system just expected him to find someone to handle. Like putting together a wheelchair that was delivered in a box and left outside his garage. He had OT but it was a good week after getting home from the hospital and by then he had figured out how to open his fridge and microwave…

             One of the reasons I’m concerned is he is filling them the very second he is eligible and needing them right away. If the script says something like take 1-3 up to every 4 hours, where it sounds like he is only supposed to be taking it as needed, he is filling it at whatever 12 pills a day would be, the maximum allowed dose. I’m not purposely trying to track his stuff, I just notice it when I’m picking up the package (it is stapled to the front) and I’m quick w/ mental math.

             1. I work in a healthcare adjacent insurance field so this may only apply to what I do, but if we have someone who is unable to care for themselves, we first find out if a family member or friend can help. If that is not possible, then we are on the hook for home health care. No insurer offers home health as an option up-front if they can avoid it, but if the injured party makes the case that they absolutely need it and have no other options, then the insurer should cover it.

                I say this because a home health provider would work with the doctor’s office and monitor usage of the meds in a professional capacity. That shouldn’t be on you.

             2. @4:04 – thanks.

             3. People have different pain tolerances and physicians write the script to accommodate that. Are you qualified to assess his level of pain control? If not, stay out of it and leave it to him physician and pharmacist (and him) to determine the appropriate amount of meds get needs.

             4. @4:19 – I’m staying out of it in the sense that I won’t tell anyone my concerns. My involvement is I’m the one picking the meds up at the pharmacy and bringing them to him and dealing with the pharmacy. I guess so long as I have no liability, I shouldn’t care.

             5. and @4:19, I appreciate your honesty. I needed someone to say it’s okay to keep doing this, if I’m going to keep doing it.

             6. I’m going to disagree with @4:19. OP is not comfortable with this. She knows he has a history of addiction. She knows he’s trying to get more medication than the doc prescribed. The pharmacy has suggested to her that it’s inappropriate.

                You seem to know about tolerance, so you must know that a lot of long term opioid users build up a tolerance that is just below the line of mortality, and that these users commonly overdose just by taking a dose early or accidentally taking a dose twice. How would OP live with herself if that happened? This is a lot of responsibility for a neighbor/friend.

                The opioid crisis has had a lot of attention paid to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s over:
                In 2019, an estimated 10.1 million people aged 12 or older misused opioids in the past year. Specifically, 9.7 million people misused prescription pain relievers and 745,000 people used heroin.
                https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/opioid-crisis-statistics/index.html

                She doesn’t have to do this for him, particularly if she’s uncomfortable with it.

             7. to OP, long comment in m0d, please check back

             8. What liability would you have if the pharmacy is allowing you to pick up the meds? That’s on them to follow the law (same with everyone else), not you the gopher.

             9. That said, I agree with Anon @ 4:37 pm – if you are uncomfortable with it, you certainly do not have to do this.

             10. OP here – I appreciate and will consider all comments. Thanks.

15. Floridian here with the dumbest problem ever. We’re in the market for a portable generator. We’d obviously only use it after hurricanes or other major events. This purchase makes total sense on many levels. However, I can’t seem to get over how loud generators are and how much our neighbors will hate us for the noise pollution while they’re sweating and we’re watching tv with the ac on. But passing on this purchase because we might bother our neighbors sounds insane to me too. Thoughts?

    1. A portable generator is not going to power your A/C. If you’re lucky, it will power your fridge and TV.

       Whether your neighbors are annoyed depends on whether they have generators of their own.

    2. During an emergency where your power is off, you do not need to be concerned about noise pollution. Your neighbors, if they don’t also have a generator and haven’t evacuated or moved into a hotel or a friend’s house with power, will deal. You may even feel gracious enough to invite one over to share in the blessing of AC. Passing on this purchase because you might bother your neighbors if you actually had to use your generator is banana crackers.

    3. Southeast Louisiana here. We got a generator after the last season, even though I was slightly against it. (I’ve managed to live here my entire life.) Back to back storms and being repeatedly out of power I just couldn’t take it anymore. I would say get it. Your neighbors are not going to hate you for it. You can also be neighborly and nice and offer to let them charge devices and stuff like that, our neighbors did that after our last storm before we got our generator. PS – your generator is not going to be running your a/c unless you get a really big one; ours does not run our a/c unit.

       1. *Managed to live here my entire life without one.

       2. OP here- we are getting a really big one

          1. Good choice! i live in Hurricane Central too (Houston) and no one complains about people’s generators when the power is out. Be a nice neighbor, help people charge their phones, and get your generator!

    4. Are you sure your neighbors don’t have emergency generators? Where we live on the coast everyone who can remotely afford it has a generator. It’s even standard with new builds around us.

       And yes, it’s insane to worry about that. Invite them over for a couple cooling hours, ask to store their food for them, etc and they won’t care about the noise.

       1. This is the right answer. Offer support to your neighbours if they don’t have one and all will be okay.

    5. Yes, that’s insane and why do you think your neighbors wouldn’t have their own generators for the same purpose?

       1. This. The minute the power goes out in my neighborhood, you can hear the generators all immediately get cranked up.

    6. Honestly – this smacks of weird anxiety. Put your own oxygen mask on first–FL is hot, your family needs AC and power. Do not worry about what the neighbors think. They could get a generator too. It’ will be temporary if you use it. Do not think about others’ perception of this again, other than to know that generators are high theft targets during times like this, so find a way to lock it down overnight.

    7. Just get it if you want it, some of your neighbors probably have one as well. A dual fuel one is nice so that you can use propane (gasoline is smelly and higher maintenance). You may want to carefully consult an electrician though to make sure you have one that is sized for your needs. We have a pretty big portable generator and we don’t use it to power our AC although we could (many smaller ones cannot). If I wanted to do that I’d get a whole house generator.

    8. After the hurrricane let your neighbors plug an extension cord into your generators. They won’t mind the noise.

    9. Californian here. Electricity can be turned off on high fire risk days so a downed line doesn’t start a massive fire. These days are also the days one is most likely to need electricity to power air purifiers or a/c.

       My solution is solar + house battery. I didn’t want to subject my neighbors or myself to exhaust, especially when neighbors are likely to need to have open windows to deal with the heat.

       It’s expensive, but well worth considering if you have the budget. Also, no need to purchase/store fuel! If you drive a truck anyway, the new electric Ford F-150 can also power a house for cost of a new truck + some electric work on your house.

    10. Fourth Gen Florida now living in LA. Buy the generator. If just to power the ‘fridge. They have all kinds of generators to explore. They are not all loud (but the quietest mobile ones do run quietly (somewhat) from 57 db to 68dbish. I think you can buy non-portable ones that are a bit quieter possibly. Many are CARB compliant (so not “dirty” air polluting type of generators (to some extent). I think you absolutely need one. The neighbors probably have one in their garage. Or may get one at any time. Or maybe buy them together.

    11. Floridian here who has ridden out plenty of hurricanes.
        Do you have essential medical equipment? Yes? Cool. Get the generator.
        No? Then it’s a convenience and you don’t actually need it. Storms don’t sneak up on people and you can cook down your fridge/freezer ahead of time.
        If you insist on having one, do everyone a favor and spend the money on a whole house generator. Those actually have a bit of noise reduction built in.
        Whatever you do, don’t be that a$$hole who runs their generator all night. That’s just obnoxious and your fridge will be fine as long as you don’t open it.

        1. FDA says the fridge is only good for four hours without power. Even if you’re lax and double it, you’re going to have to throw out food. That may be fine if you don’t have kids but if you do, it’s not a great situation.

        2. Not about a generator, but it would take me a month to “cook down” my fridge and freezer. Do you keep so little on hand? True I am a singleton, but even i not I think it would take a while.

           1. Most of what’s in my freezer doesn’t actually have to remain frozen- nuts, flours, etc. I don’t eat meat, so it’s really just a few frozen veggies and some ice cream. The fridge is also stuff that either doesn’t really need to stay cold (condiments, hard cheeses), or gets used up quickly (salad greens, yogurt, etc). I bought dry ice once because I was storing meat for a friend, but it’s not normally a big deal to cook through what I have. I do it at least once per year in an attempt to avoid any mystery Tupperware of leftovers lurking.

        3. Second the whole house generator. My dad got one the year before SS sandy after a hurricane left us without power for weeks. It works great. He actually convinced most of his neighbors to buy one from the same company and then negotiated himself a big discount. The power goes out for days at least once a year in his area these days so its really necessity. I can’t image dealing with multiple day long outages every year in the Florida heat with just the gas powered portable generator. Also, now that everyone is expected to wfh through everything, I can’t imagine “the power has been out for a week and I only have a portable generator” will fly at anyone’s work in the next few years.

    12. Not sure if this helps… I rented a generator for an outdoor event and was provided a Honda brand generator. It was really quiet. Everyone was checking out the generator because they were so shocked at how quiet it was.

    13. I have experienced a week-long power outage in an area where many people used those noisy generators. It was maddening that I could not sleep because of the noise. For people who must use one, minimizing use and particularly night time use is a thoughtful and neighborly way to proceed.

16. Has anyone bought some sort of air conditioning unit for just one area of a house and found it good? I live in the bay area and we don’t have A/C, but changing weather patterns mean our southwest facing master bedroom gets unbearably hot for too many days of the year now. I am thinking window unit but I know that’s sort of old tech and wonder if any of the newer options are better.

    We are not in the market for whole-house air conditioning, yet. We have an old brown shingle, and the downstairs stays nice and cool for something like 363/365 days of the year.

    1. Perhaps a ductless A/C is the answer?

    2. I know nothing about the specs, but my dad just upgraded to a mini split from a window unit for his lake cottage and said it works nicely.

    3. Yes! My parents got this very cool (ha, no pun intended) portable AC unit. So it’s not the kind that hangs out a window. They are old and can’t lift that kind of thing. It’s smaller… maybe the size of a medium household trashcan? It has a hose that goes out the window. The piece you place in the window is more similar to a fan than an AC. The unit isn’t particularly attractive but not ugly either. Perfect for the few days per year they really need it.

       1. Oh, we had one of these at the air-bnb we stayed in in Europe (pre-Covid) and it worked really well to keep things cool!

          1. Yes! We went to Lowes and bought one for $200. We set it up in five minutes. Not only does it keep our master bedroom nice and cool, it has a “fan only” setting that works like magic white noise. We thought we would only use it during summer, but we run it most nights. It’s also like a very small nightstand for my phone and water.

       2. We have one of these in Seattle for our (less rare lately, but still infrequent) hot days, and it is very effective in a small ish space (10×16).

    4. We have mini-splits throughout our house and adore them. You do need to install a condenser somewhere though (typically the roof).

       We had a portable AC (the kind that you wheel around and has a tube that vents out the window) in a rental once and hated it. Maybe it was just that unit, but it had the noisiest drain and it woke us up every time it emptied. Sounded like someone peeing in the room.

    5. I have one that sits on the floor and is maybe 2.3-3′ tall, with a hose to exhaust out the window. It’s made by Honeywell — similar in style to “Honeywell MO08CESWB Compact 3-in-1 Portable Air Conditioner w/ Remote Control, Up to 350 Sq. Ft., White/Blue” (if you search on Amazon) but not that exact model. Used to use it in my home office that would get blasted with afternoon sun, and now we use it in our master bedroom for the few hot nights we get in our Seattle summers. It works great, and we can easily store it in the basement for most of the year when we don’t need it.

       1. Thanks! I ordered this one and will give it a try.

    6. Just get a window one. They work. I haven’t heard positive things about non-window ones.

    7. We have a two portable ones (on wheels) for each bedroom. They take up a good amount of room in our closets most of the time and have ducts that go out the window. I (a light sleeper, sensitive to noise) find them to be loud. However, they’ wonderful in SoCal at the end of summer. They make the hottest days bearable and we run them right before we go to bed to get the room cooler. We block the cracks below the door draft blockers. We got them 1) as we have vertical windows that won’t easily fit a window unit and 2) we don’t need A/C most of the year.

       On the hottest days, I’m happy to have them.

17. I was late to the conversation about Parkinson’s.
    My mother began to fall 4 months ago, after one of her falls, in ER they did a scan and the neurologist diagnosed a possible beginning of Parkinson’s. They began to medicate her while they did more tests. We were almost happy bcs you know, you dont die of Parkinson.
    She kept falling which was interpreted as not working the medication and with further tests this morning we have been told that now the most likely diagnosis is ALS. The most worrying thing is that the deterioration is progressing very fast.
    She is 72 years old and she was always in very good health and was a very active person. She is completely depressed and my brothers and father devastated. I feel totally lost right now.
    Thanks for reading me.

    1. I’m very sorry and wish I had words to make it better, but I don’t think they exist.

    2. No advice, just hugs.

    3. I’m sorry, I lost a family member to ALS and it’s a really hard and terrible experience. *Hugs*

       1. Also if you ever need someone to talk to feel free to post a burner email. I found it’s such a different disease that people didn’t really ‘get’ it the same way as something more common.

    4. So sorry. All the hugs and support:))

    5. I am so, so sorry about this. ALS is just a mind-blowingly unfair, vicious disease. Hugs.

    6. Just seeing this. One relative died of ALS and a second has something that acts like ALS now. It totally sucks. If you’re a Redditor, there’s a good sub there for ALS patients and their families. Reach out for help (emotional, financial, logistical, medical) early – you’ll want it later.

    7. Thank you very much for all your kind messagges. I am trying to learn as much as possible.

18. I’m the poster who asked earlier this week for advice on my first work trip, including first time flying. You all had great tips and now I have more questions.

    For a carry on, is a regular old backpack okay? That’s what I would pack for an overnight car trip. I have a hard-sided suitcase that is supposed to be a carry on size but I don’t usually break that out unless I’m looking at being gone a week or so. Either way, do I need a lock of some sort for my bag if I’m just carrying it on?

    If your bra sets off the metal detectors, what happens? And what about pants zippers, or metal in hair clips?

    1. We normally carry on a backpack and a roller bag and don’t check bags. You can put the backpack under your seat on the plane if it fits, and that gives you access to reading material etc.

       To decide, consider what you’re bringing and what your backpack looks like. If it’s an old groaty Eastpak (like my old one), will you be comfortable with colleagues seeing it? Will it allow you to keep your clothes unwrinkled?

       For security — you may go through a metal detector, or you may go through a different scanner. In both cases, if it bings, you’ll get a same-gender security agent with a wand to scan and they may place a hand in the binging area to make sure they do not feel a weapon. I’ve never had a problem with an underwire bra, only the metal in boots and belts.

    2. Comment in mod — check back!

    3. For the bra question, I’ve had bras beep several times. Usually I then get a manual check (arms out) at the side with a manual scanner, or once or twice a pat down, once or twice a 3-D-scanner. Have never had a zipper or hair clip beep.

    4. For the bra question, I’ve had bras beep several times. Usually I then get a manual check (arms out) at the side with a manual scanner, or once or twice a pat down, once or twice a 3-D-scanner. Have never had a zipper or hair clip beep.

       1. But to answer your question, if by some crazy chance your zipper or whatever sets off the metal detector, they’ll pull you aisde and wand you. Shouldn’t be a big deal.

    5. Backpacks are fine. I usually bring one as my “personal item”, so one would be totally fine as your main carry on if that’s what you wanted. You don’t need a lock.
       The detector only went off because of my b r a once about 15 years ago. They just used the metal detector wand and isolated it to that area and probably patted it down to make sure it was just the strap there. I would assume it would be the same for pants. Hair clips they would probably make you take out to make sure nothing was trapped in your hair.

    6. Trying again:
       We normally carry on a backpack and a roller bag and don’t check bags. You can put the backpack under your seat on the plane if it fits, and that gives you access to reading material etc.

       To decide, consider what you’re bringing and what your backpack looks like. If it’s an old groaty Eastpak (like my old one), will you be comfortable with colleagues seeing it? Will it allow you to keep your clothes unwrinkled?

       For security — you may go through a metal detector, or you may go through a different scanner. In both cases, if it bings, you’ll get a security agent with a wand they run over your body to scan it. They may place a hand in the binging area to make sure they do not feel a weapon. I’ve never had a problem with an underwire bra, only the metal in boots and belts (which you then just remove).

    7. Thanks again, all of you! I will definitely report back after the trip.

       It is my old college backpack, but it’s in decent shape and I carry it to work daily anyhow so it isn’t as though my colleagues have never seen it before. I am comfortable with how to pack to avoid wrinkles.

       Thanks to all of you, I’m looking forward to this trip with more excitement than trepidation!

       1. Are you saying you are only bringing one bag total (this backpack)? Just so you know, most business travelers have two – a small bag (sometimes a backpack) that holds laptop etc, and then a separate bag for clothes, toiletries, etc. While you don’t *have* to bring two, sometimes you’ll go straight from the airport to the office (or if you have meetings on the last day of the trip, you’ll go from hotel to office to airport). That means you’d need to be able to get your “office stuff” (laptop, notebook, whatever) out of the backpack without your PJs spilling out of the bag.

          So – if you want to stick with just the backpack, I might suggest picking up some packing cubes to keep everything else concealed & contained nicely.

          1. Good points. If you bring two bags, does that mean you have to check one?

             1. No. Unless you are flying a super cheap airline – unlikely for business travel – you can carry on two pieces. One small bag, think a work tote or regular backpack – this is the piece you keep with you in your seat and store under the seat in front of you. The second bag (still not huge, check the airline webs-te for dimensions) goes in the overhead bin near your seat.

                If for some reason you are on a super small plane and so wheeled bags are too big for the overhead bins, they will announce the need to ‘gate check’ at boarding, in which case you’ll leave the wheeled bag at the end of the jetway and get it back typically at the same place on arrival.

             2. Thank you! This is all so helpful.

Comments are closed.