Frugal Friday’s Workwear Report: Wrap Skirt Dress

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1. I have a pair of leather loafers that I’ve had for 2 years and have probably worn two dozen times, so basically, they’re as broken in as they will probably get. But…the design is such that the backs are just high enough that they rub badly on my ankle. What is a good fix for this? Moleskin? Some other kind of pad that I should stick on the inside.

   1. If they are leather you could go to a good shoe shop and see if they can stretch that part for you. They probably would have good brainstorms on how to fix this problem.

      1. extra padding in the sole of the heel so it lifts your foot out of the rub zone? I don’t know what stretching the leather would do if the heel cup is aleady too high.

         1. +1

            I apparently have shallower heels than some other people, so frequently do this with boots in particular; it lifts the ankle out of the rub zone.

   2. Yay! Fruegel Friday’s! I love Fruegel Friday’s and this Wrap Skirt Dress. $79 is not all that Fruegel though and I would prefer short sleeve’s b/c Frank always love when I wear sleeveless tops b/c he can see my bra and he says my boobies, but I know he can’t see those b/c I can’t see them in the mirror. FOOEY on Frank. I do NOT care what his crotch looks like either. That is really something NOT to think about, but unfortunately his wife must every day, at least he says so. DOUBEL FOOEY! I have a lot of sympathy for her haveing to be his exercise mat. TRIPEL FOOEY!

      As for the OP, You can take this to your cobbler and they can soften it. My cleaneing lady did this for me with my Fry Boots and they did something so I still wear them. I would not put stuff on me to cushion the leather. I would get the leather fixed or return it to the store, if they will take it, or donate it to goodwill. It is NOT good to have the leather rub against your heel. FOOEY!

      This weekend, I am heading to the Hamton’s and will be with the manageing partner and his wife and baby, but the brother says he is coming. I do NOT like him ooogleing me in the pool. He always swims close and brushes against me intentionally. The pool is big so there is no excuse for that. He is always having s-x with different women in his apartement, so I have to believe he could be carrying something. UGH.

      I wish there were guys my age who want more then just the 2 minutes of huffeing and puffeing they do. That is so tiring and unfulfilling. I do NOT like acting as a repository for those loosers. I want to be MARRIED already! FOOEY!

   3. Honestly IMO life is too short for uncomfortable shoes. See if you can donate them and find some that fit you better.

      1. +1 to this. Shoes that don’t fit right are never going to fit right. These are not the shoes for your feet. They are the shoes for someone else’s feet. Donate them so that they can find that person.

   4. You could try some heel liners from the drugstore.

   5. Heel pad at the top of the heel. Should provide slightly enough cushion so they can’t dig into you anymore.

      1. This. I like Foot Petals; the cheaper line they sell at Target is good.

2. What’s something that you buy/spend money on regularly that your parents wouldn’t ever think to waste money on?

   What’s something that your parents buy/spend money on that you wouldn’t dream wasting money on?

   1. I feel like a walking stereotype, but premium cat food and third wave coffee stand out as spending priorities for me that make no sense to my parents.

      Cable TV and hotel stays are parental generation expenses that I actively don’t want if I can possibly find an alternative.

   2. I spend money on:
      -dry cleaning
      -anything that I pay someone else to do when I could technically do it myself (tailoring, hiring a handyperson, house cleaning, etc)

      They spend money on:
      -Gifts. So many gifts. I don’t get people gifts unless the occasion really calls for it. But my parents are always mailing someone a gift just randomly or giving large gifts
      -Rental Car Insurance – Our other insurances cover us so we don’t spend the money to get insurance when we rent a car but my parents do
      -Tchotchkes – I am very careful what we bring in the house and don’t like lots of knick knack stuff, but my parents love that stuff

      1. +1 to the gifts and tchotchkes!!! I have so much STUFF in my house already, I don’t want more. Yet they keep buying and buying (for me, themselves, others)…

         1. OMG the tchotchkes. My husband and I counted them once and IIRC there were over 1000, and that was just what was on display at that time (there are rotating tchotchkes dependent on season). And some of them are quite expensive – Nambe, Lladro, Lenox, etc. None of it will be worth much when it falls into my lap when they are gone. I’m hoping that the sale of the tchotchkes will cover the cost of the estate sale person I’m going to have to hire to get rid of all that crap. I love my parents, but holy cow, I 100% cannot get behind their love of statuettes. And they keep buying junk for me – I’ll admit (not to them) some of it immediately goes in the trash/donate pile.

            See also: decorators (used for even the tiniest changes to a room).

            I spend on that they wouldn’t – Groceries, wine, self-care stuff – spas, facial, massage, etc.

            1. Fishie, I so hear you. My mother has a large collection of Royal Doulton and Lladro (which I find especially creepy). I constantly tell her that they are going on ebay as soon as they are mine.

            2. OMG that was a thing even way back in the day. My grandma collected Hummel figurines in, like, the 70s and 80s and she paid a fortune for them but they were SO UGLY.

               Just peeked on eBay and they’re not really worth anything much any more.

               Does anybody remember the episode of the Sopranos where Carmela was bragging about her Lladros and it turned out the people she was bragging to were, like, SUPER rich and didn’t care about her stupid figurines?

         2. Oh gosh this is my parents in law. Statuettes, fake flowers, holiday decorations, dolls, vases, fancy picture frames, doilies…

            1. I didn’t even mention the Christmas closet. I wish I was joking.

      2. omg the gifts. My mother in law is constantly buying gifts for random people. Like the children of old neighbors and second and third cousins. And constantly signing our names onto gifts.

      3. Yes to the stuff! My mom especially buys me lovely things from art shows and antique shops, but I won’t know what to do with them when I finally decide there are too many tucked in with my books. (I should honestly probably think about the books as well, since I do so much library reading and screen reading, but I grew up with books so maybe that’s one thing I spend money on that my theoretical children will not understand!)

   3. My parents spend money on NOTHING. They’ve always been exceptionally frugal and I’m grateful for the values they’ve passed on to me in that regard, but it means there is nothing they spend money on that I wouldn’t, because they simply don’t spend money unless it is absolutely necessary.
      Conversely, there are many things I spend money on that they would never. For example- clothes that are not consignment or from the clearance rack. I rarely pay full price for clothing, but I’m happy with a $80 skirt marked down to $50. They wouldn’t touch it unless it was marked down to $20.

      1. Same. My parents surely don’t understand my coffee habit, or why I would ever shop at Whole Foods, but I can’t think of anything offhand that they spend money on that I wouldn’t, because they hate spending money unnecessarily.

      2. This is my family too. It also probably makes a difference that my parents are in a very different socio-economic bracket than I am (I make 5 times what they did combined at my age, adjusted for inflation, and my income is just for me, not a family of four). The only thing that’s coming to mind is meat, because I’m a vegetarian. My parents don’t eat much meat, but my mom does buy the big bulk bags of frozen chicken breasts and thaws a couple for Sunday dinner or other special occasions.

         Things I spend money on that my parents would never: eating out more than a few times a year, having someone else change the oil in my car, new (not second hand) clothes, a phone plan with data, plane tickets, alcohol, going to the doctor or dentist for a check up and not because something is wrong, name brand detergent/tampons/shampoo/etc.

   4. 1. High quality food – like paying three times as much for the really good oils/vinegars or fresh eggs from the local organic farm. Amazing fresh ingredients for simple food makes me so happy. Worth every penny.

      2. buying new cars. DH and I always buy newer used cars. Cars are a necessary evil for us that we hate to spend more than we have to on.

      1. Are you me?!

   5. I get manis and pedis regularly, expensive haircuts, I’m a Sephora junkie – all that kind of stuff.

      They have cable TV with a million channels including all the specialty and sports channels (but mostly watch CNN).

   6. Me: Daily Starbucks or similarly-priced coffee

      Them: so many new cars

      1. My parents LEASE a new car every 3 years which is a mystery to me.

         1. My in-laws do this and it mystifies us too. We buy new cars and drive them until they are falling apart.

         2. We do this. I like having a new car, hate having some random thing break that needs unexpected fixing, and I like that cars are a fixed cost with no surprises when you lease. It’s a little more expensive but not as much as you’re made to think and we can afford it.

            1. Same here. Plus my husband can lease his through the business so it’s tax deductible.

   7. I spend money on takeout, eggs from a local farmer ($7/dozen) and a cleaning lady, all of which are a complete mystery to my mother.

      My mother has, conservatively, 8 down coats plus who knows how many others.

      1. I had to LOL at all the coats. This is totally my mom! In Canada so we have a long winter but no one needs two closets full of coats!

         1. We are also in Canada, but her collection is ridiculous.

         2. My family is in souther OH and my dad has probably 20 coats? He’ll browse the clearance rack and buy one because it’s such a good deal … Dad you’ve got a dozen nearly-identical coats at home! And you just wear your ratty green one all the time anyway!

   8. Me: buying coffee every day. (I’ve analyzed it to death, I assure you.)

      Parents: buying DVDs. So many DVDs. Every week a new, cheap DVD. That’s partially because my parents won’t buy internet.

   9. My mom would never buy a designer purse. The idea of spending more than $150 on a purse is crazy to her. She’s probably right.

      1. Ahh this is sooo my mom too. Except that all her sisters and friends buy fancy-brand name purses and gift them to my mom, so that’s why my mom is currently using a Coach purse.

         I bought a $180 Lo&Sons purse, my sister told my mom about it, and my mom freaked out that I “spent so much on a purse instead of going to Marshall’s.”

   10. A smartphone (mom is still using a flip phone), computer, really electronics generally, vacations (mom doesn’t like to get on a plane), cleaning service (their house is always spotless because mom is constantly cleaning – I swear the woman is a force of nature that tidies instead of destroys), weddings, clothes, shoes, and other trendy/consumeristic stuff like avocado toast and anything from Lush.

       She spends more on her giant-to-me house, groceries (how do you spend $200/week on groceries for 2 people??), ALLTHETHINGS that are always in her fridge (she has condiments I’ve never even heard of and spices that I’m pretty sure she hasn’t touched since before I was born), lots of backups of stuff (why do you need 5 cases of water in your garage at all times? Or 3 jumbo bottles of Tylenol? They don’t even go to Costco!).

       I think we spend equally on skin care and makeup. I might spend more because I get the trendier things like Vitamin C serum. If anyone has seen The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – I CRACKED UP when the mom and daughter had the same routine. That’s so us. Which reminds me, I might have to watch that show with my mom, she grew up in that era.

   11. My parents were basically misers and gave me the impression that spending money was sinful. I now spend on tons of seemingly ordinary things that would horrify them: haircuts, pre-shredded cheese and prewashed produce, restaurant meals with (even more horrifying) drinks, vacations, clothes for my kid that are not homemade, fixing things around the house that need to be fixed, air conditioning. I also plan to spend money on my kid’s college tuition.

       The one thing my parents did spend money on was an insanely expensive house in a HCOL area that they then refused to maintain. That life is not for me. I own a little house in a LCOL area and keep it as well maintained as I can afford.

       1. LOL yes the buying drinks at a restaurant thing. My mom would never buy a drink at a restaurant and she thinks $15 entrees are expensive.

   12. Me: Daily coffee runs and going out to lunch, travelling that involves flights or higher end hotels, … honestly almost everything, my parents are very frugal and have always been comfortable but not rolling in extra spending money (on the other hand, they have tons of money saved towards retirement and their house is paid off because they stayed in the house they bought before I was born rather than upgrading).

       Them: Very little, but I feel like this is a bit of a generational thing, they have a timeshare.

       (If we were doing this with my in-laws the lists would be very different, lol).

       1. OK, now I want to hear the in-law list. : ))

          1. Me: Nice quality shoes/clothes/purses. Nice restaurants when we go out to dinner or travel, especially anything vaguely “ethnic”. Jewelry, especially my collection of everyday jewelry. Basically anything they consider “fancy” (read bougie and/or feminine basically).

             Them: Every technological gizmo and doodad in the world – they are absolutely early adopters while I’m more of a late adopter. Tchotchkes, so many tchotckes. Christmas just as an entire experience but especially presents (even for the adult children). And it’s just bizarre that if one member of their family gets something (for example, when my husband’s sister bought a fancy rice cooker) inevitably everyone in the family ends up with one, even if they have to straight up give it to us as presents (though so far I’ve resisted things like the Apple Watch and Alexa). Annual cruises with the big extended family (which I don’t begrudge them, I just have no interest in cruises or spending my limited vacation time with my extended in-law family). Also, (somewhat cheesy) souvenirs/presents from all their trips, but especially from the cruises. Eating out/take out several nights a week instead of cooking (though to be fair, that’s less my mother-in-law).

             Basically, it’s funny because since I occasionally buy investment pieces in terms of clothes, they think I’m very high maintenance and tease me about it, but almost all of them (not just the parents but the siblings as well) kind of spend money like water, it’s just that they spend it on different things than I would but (as noted above) I was raised by very frugal people so as a general rule, I don’t buy very much, but when I do I try to buy higher quality (something I picked up from reading this website honestly – thinking about things in terms of cost per wear). And yet, despite that, I’m the one in the family who has the reputation as a spender. One of my biggest pet peeves, swear to god.

   13. (1) My dad never replaces his own clothes, I replace my clothes when they wear out or no longer fit. I will go to the doctor and take appropriate medication, my dad doesn’t unless he has a limb hanging off (so medical expenses). I will spend money on nice jewelry, other than her wedding rings, most of my mom’s stuff is from Target, etc. She really isn’t into jewelry other than a pair of stud earrings – fake pearls and fake cheap diamond imitations are fine for her (not judging)!!

       (2) My mom and I have pretty similar spending habits – I’m struggling to think about things other than cars where we differ. My dad is a big fan of STUFF. He buys us junky crap for holidays that my mom and I would never spend money on, e.g. kitschy earrings, socks, etc. They buy new cars, I always buy used.

       1. My mom and I are the reserve of you and your dad. I certainly go to the doctor, but I trouble-shoot a lot of simple ailments at home and know that things like diet/exercise/etc. can fix certain things.. My mom (now and through my childhood) always goes to the doctor ASAP, even for “ailments” that are not ailments and she is always “sick,” which can be so frustrating for me because some of the symptoms sound like she’s a human. But I humor her. :)

          1. Ha! I certainly troubleshoot the basics and sound similar to you in eval of environmental fixes and don’t go to the doctor for things like a cold or anything that will go away on its own. I do go every year for a physical, derm skin screen, and would go after I was in a car accident which totaled my car (t-boned) to get checked out to make sure I was okay (my dad had no interest in this and he is 75).

       2. My parents never spent money on medical care, which caused me a lot of unnecessary suffering during high school.

          I now spend quite a bit of money and time making sure my own kid gets adequate health care.

   14. Me: uber and lyft rides (but that is also a function of the fact that they live in a city where you can drive to everything), exercise classes such as barre and cycle, and steaming services

       My mom: not much, since she doesn’t really spend much money. The only thing I can think of is random stuff for her house. She had so much already and doesn’t have room for new things, but keeps buying them.

   15. My parents are pretty hip. My dad always had a computer, and worked in tech during the 80s and 90s so was always among the most up-to-date as one could be. He’s thrilled with all the new tech and gadgets.

       What they buy that I don’t: Newspapers (although this was more when we were growing up so we could practice reading and know what was going on, now they only have the Sunday edition), cable, Blue Apron.

       I think for everything else we pretty much buy the same things. My dad is into ultra-high quality and designer clothes (but for less, he stalks net-a-porter and those sites as well as does consignment). He loves lululemon. My mom is the more frugal when it comes to clothing/shoes. She pretty much only goes thrift shopping and also doesn’t seem to have a bug for fine jewelry or designer purses like I do. But we’re pretty similar. Whenever I need to get a gift for either of them, I look at my personal pinterest since we have the same taste (and my mom loves when I get her something “all the cool girls have now”).

       1. Can I join your fam?

       2. I’m really grateful my parents subscribed to a newspaper while we were growing up! I should tell them that.

   16. My inlaws are more fun to do this for than my parents, so:

       What I spend money on that they might judge me for: a cleaning lady, work clothes for myself that aren’t from goodwill, purchasing an alcoholic beverage out at a restaurant, and groceries that I definitely spent slightly more on because I wasn’t willing to go to 15 different grocery stores for their separate sale items and then subsequently travel 5 towns over to go to the discount grocer that never has anything I want.

       Things they spend money on that I would never: Gas to drive to 15 grocery stores for their separate sale items, tchotchkes, anything that vaguely resembles a banjo (they’ve threatened), purchasing and paying for restoration of music boxes.

       1. They threatened to buy *you* a banjo? That cracked me up.

          My husband’s dad gave us a ukulele. Nowhere near as bad as a banjo.

          1. Worse. They threatened to buy my TODDLER a banjo.

             1. I am dying.

             2. Condolences, but at least it is not a drum set.

             3. My kids are teens now. My sister’s kids are older. She was always “getting even” with me by buying my kids toy musical instruments – a toy trumpet, a little drum set, toy accordion, etc. But we were psyched about these because husband and I are both musicians.

                My kids each play multiple musical instruments now so her joke gifts had unintended positive consequences.

                Take the banjo! That sounds awesome.

             4. I want a banjo!

             5. Another musician here whose kid had many many toy instruments, and the only ones that turned out to have any educational value were some percussion toys and a little toy electronic keyboard.

       2. You have described my in-laws, minus the music boxes. But my father-in-law hoards kitchen equipment. Now that’s he’s downsizing, he’s shocked — SHOCKED — that his collection isn’t worth what he spent on it.

          1. Just wanting to clarify – your FIL deems the items in his kitchen (a frying pan, a spatula) to be a “collection” and that it would…. increase in value? This is a new one to me, unless it’s copper that could increase in value.

             1. He ran a catering operation for awhile, so this is giant cooking equipment that one would never store in their actual kitchen.

   17. I grew up thinking that room service in hotels was the absolute height of luxury – meals for billionaires only! Now I’ve traveled enough that I have an “ugh, I guess I’ll just get room service” mentality. Once I was on the phone with my mom when my room service arrived while on a business trip, and she spent several minutes fretting that I would get in trouble at work for ordering food from the hotel. “Oh, isn’t there a grocery store or a little market near you? Maybe you should just get something from there next time…”

       On the other side of the coin, my parents always hired people to do any home improvement or maintenance tasks, no matter how minor. Neither of them are DIY types so even fairly straightforward things like painting a room were always done professionally. It was actually quite nice, in retrospect – there was never anything that was left broken for weeks/months because “I’ll take a look at it soon” and projects tended to be well done and very quickly.

       1. Ha, my parents also instilled the “room service is for billionaires” mentality in me. I very rarely order it! (Although I wouldn’t think twice about ordering take-out in any other situation.)

          1. I’m the opposite! Growing up, my parents told me room service was for rich people and we couldn’t have it (although they are very upper middle class). Now it’s one of my greatest indulgences! I love ordering room service so much precisely because it was never allowed as a kid.

             1. Yes, room service feels like such a luxury! I don’t have to travel for work often, but when I do I order room service and watch cable TV in bed (I don’t have cable at home and no TV in the bedroom). I feel so decadent!

       2. Oh room service. One of my fondest childhood memories was when my dad and I tagged along on mom’s business trip and ordered room service ice cream. It was the height of luxury to me. My husband traveled loads as a kid but they didn’t stay in hotels so I enjoyed introducing him to the delights of room service breakfast.

       3. I laughed out loud at “meals for billionaires only!”

       4. The first time I ordered room service (and that was paid for by my company) I was like “I HAVE MADE IT IN THE WORLD”!

          I can still count on two hands how many times I’ve ordered room service and every.single.time I’m like “this is so wasteful but OMG I’M SO FANCY”. Seriously, my parents didn’t even believe in eating out when we traveled if they could avoid it.

          1. Ha ha, I feel the same way. Room service isn’t usually even very good, but once in a while I order it just because I can.

             When I was a kid, the few times we stayed in a hotel my mother brought an electric teapot so she could make instant oatmeal for breakfast.

          2. YES! I love ordering room service breakfast just because it feels so luxurious and fancy. Only on special occasions will I do it.

          3. Same here with room service. We got room service breakfast on our wedding day (with champagne, of course!) as we were getting ready and it was so fun and fancy!!

             1. Once on a work trip I ordered a glass of wine (JUST THAT) from room service (we had to pay our own room service tab) and it was totally worth it. LOL

   18. My parents are incredibly frugal. I can’t think of anything they spend money on that I don’t. We all splurge on a cleaning service and regular vacations, and we are all very generally frugal about “stuff” – we all buy cheap cars, don’t buy much clothing, don’t buy knick knacks, etc. None of us drink.

       I think the big things I’ve spent money that they haven’t are a “big” (2200 sq feet) house (my parents are very happy in their tiny house but I need my space) and fancy restaurant meals. I love (occasionally) going to Michelin-starred restaurants that cost hundreds of dollars. My parents don’t understand that – they think Applebee’s is great and I’m a huge food snob.

   19. me: eating out, travel for fun/pleasure

       them: cars, gifts for family, travel to weddings for far flung relatives we don’t even talk to anymore

       1. Me: makeup, skincare, beauty treatments of any kind. My mom thinks it’s all a waste of time and money (she may have a point, but it makes me happy). Also my iPhone – my mother has a Blackberry and my dad has whatever his company gives him and does not care.

          Them: fancy hotels, Michelin starred restaurants, a nice car (all of these may just be a function of being older and having more disposable income. but I’m really not a car person). They also have full subscriptions to several paper newspapers and magazines, whereas I pay for some content (like the NYT) but read everything online.

          Overall, we have pretty similar values and spending habits. They were early adopters of the “eat quality food” trend, so not much to declare on that front – my dad and I trade recommendations for third wave coffee :)

   20. This is cathartic: My parents pass moral judgment on paying for anything you could do yourself. DH and I are lawyers with busy jobs, and I want a cleaning person and maybe a nanny one day. My parents would think we’re bad people because they had full-time jobs but cleaned house themselves and took us to daycare.

       My parents spend so much money eating out. I’m confused why I must clean my own toilet but they’re allowed to eat food other people made. This is where “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a good policy.

       1. This is generational, but my parents and my in-laws (in the mid 70s to mid 80s age range) each spent A LOT of money on “good” furniture, expensive wallpaper and other expensive household furnishings (chandeliers, etc). And now it’s all being downsized and this furniture that they spent fortunes on is worth nothing because no one wants that old Baker, Kittinger, Henredon, etc. style furniture anymore and if they get 10% of what they paid for it they’ll be lucky.

          I would also say that generation spent more on jewelry. A man was judged by how well he “kept” his wife in diamonds and furs. I have nice jewelry, but I have all I will ever want or need so maybe every now and then I’ll get a cheap, fun piece of costume jewelry that if it goes missing, oh well. My mother and mother-in-law kept accumulating “good” jewelry well into their 40s, 50s, 60s.

   21. Me: Fancy coffee a few times a week; cleaning help 1-2 times a month because I love a clean house but I’m a working mom who knows her limits; technology – they don’t own smartphones and are using my brother’s hand-me-down computer that’s probably 10 years old

       Them: Cars (omg, so many cars)

       Otherwise, we’re fairly similar in spending habits. My parents were very frugal for a long time, and now that they’re empty-nesters, they actually treat themselves, which is so nice to see.

       My ILs, on the other hand, waste so much money trying to save money, even though they really don’t need to. And my father-in-law scours the Goodwill weekly for no good reason and buys up all sorts of kitchen equipment. How many food processors and coolers does one person need?

   22. Love this question!

       Me: So much – meals out, more than one holiday a year, make up and accessories, paying for help like decorators, mobile phones, presents…

       Them: Other than their larger-than-needed house i would say their only real expenses are golf (they will happily spend money on the latest “wonder” club, especially by mum) and their dogs (who eat very well but all get hours and hours of exercise each day). My dad used to spend a lot on clothes for work, but neither spend much money on clothes now they’ve retired. Eating out, or even takeout, is considered a massive treat for them!

   23. Me: non-grocery store coffee (that we brew at home), going out to breakfast while on vacation, and farmers market anything. It’s also how we chose to spend money on the same type of household item: I’ll research something to death and they’ll just buy X of whatever (frying pan, vaccum, etc). Some of these things may be a function of DH and I both working full time jobs and having no kids (especially the buying breakfast to have in a hotel room on vacation… they always found (even in other countries) a grocery store/market and got bagels/breakfast bread and juice for us to eat as kids rather than going someplace to eat breakfast)

       Them: starbucks every day (I just don’t like their coffee), sometimes going twice a day to buy a drink, buying snacks to keep in a hotel room while on vacation ( I just find this to not be necessary) and all of the golf stuff (i’m talking multiple lessons with a pro per week, several pairs of golf shoes a year, so. many. golf. outfits….(but I don’t play golf, so that’s just a difference in hobby).

   24. My parents and I live in the same city but in different trendy neighborhoods. We both recently bought 2 bedroom condos. I bought a 2006 gut rehabbed condo in a vintage brick building (extremely solid construction) for $350k, they bought brand new construction with extremely high end finishes for a touch under 1 million. Turns out theirs has all these construction defects and they’re now entrenched in a lawsuit over it.

       Me: I don’t think there is any amount of income where I would be comfortable buying lunch and coffee out daily. I pack my own.

       Parents: Purchased lunch and coffee out their entire careers, think I’m strange for packing mine.

       Me: Really into skincare, spend lots of money on skincare products, prescriptions, facials, laser treatments, etc.

       Parents: Think Kiehls is the end-all of skincare

   25. My expenditures: quality haircuts, good makeup/skincare, quality clothes, fancy coffee (beans, not Starbucks), paying for anything instead of doing it yourself or paying for convenience, (including cooking vs eating out, delivery of anything instead of spending 4 hours to get it yourself, renting for an event instead of scrounging up and picking up mismatched tables, chairs, and linens from your friends and family across town), Audible subscription, Netflix subscription, modern home decor from “fancy” stores, name brand clothes detergent, a hotel that isn’t absolutely the cheapest one available, “fancy” restaurants with $22/plate meals.

       My mom: lots of drugstore makeup that gets thrown away after a season, lots of thrift store clothes that never get worn and are donated back within 6 months, kitchen gadgets, Lladros (I thought my mom was the only one!), fine jewelry (the woman seriously owns a jewelry store’s worth of gold and precious gems), RVs (bought and resold 4 new RVs in 3 years), new cars (but I end up getting the “old” ones so *shrug*), cable TV, fast food, paper plates, fine china and stemware, casual nice restaurants with $18/plate meals.

       Since my mom retired, our spending priorities have actually aligned a lot closer, but she still has the mindset that I’m spending frivolously, despite reality.

   26. Me: Dinner out regularly without a special occasion; stopping to eat when on a long trip rather than packing sandwiches in the cooler for the road (this was a hallmark of car trip during my childhood); massages; picking up takeout after a busy day; contracting out lawn service/snow removal.

       Them: Traveling to multiple supermarkets to shop for specific sales at each one. Growing up, I got dragged on grocery shopping trips that took half a Sunday; paying for a new car in full (hazards of student loans).

   27. Haha if my son were responding he would say:

       My mom and her husband spend money on booze and cars and trips and clothes and eating out and things like that, like the bougie scum they are. I spend money on video games and books and they don’t because they are out-of-touch baby boomers who don’t know what’s up.

       Can you tell I’m a tiny bit over him at the moment?

       1. Whoa.

          1. As the mother of sons I say – Yes!

             Once again Senior Attorney schools us (even if it’s only temporary).

             1. Don’t raise man-children and you won’t feel the need to say semi-anonymous things about how horrible they are.

   28. I spend money on food that is both healthy AND tasty. My mother and stepfather plunk down major money for imported products that look and taste like desiccated cardboard jerky and are only available from their unlicensed holistic healing practitioner, avoid actual vegetables or whole grains, then binge on junk food when they can’t take it anymore and think the resulting GI distress must mean they have developed new and weird food allergies requiring specialized supplements and chiropractic adjustments from their practitioner. I spend money on medical doctors and the necessary antibiotics when strep throat is going through my household; they theorize that their essential oils and multiple vitamin tablets must need to be replaced with fresher, more expensive versions because their throats are still sore three weeks in. I save for comfortable, high-quality shoes that last years. They spend money on cheap Walmart footgear and then complain about foot pain and how nothing lasts these days. I spend money on charities and institutions that help people in need without bashing them over the head with judgement or subject them to hateful religiousy soap box talk. They spend money campaigning against Planned Parenthood and clutch their pearls at the thought of women having options.

       My other parents are much more normal. I prefer environmentally friendly or sustainable products, they prefer whatever is most convenient or least expensive. I will make do with less than ideal equipment if the alternative is to find a place to keep it; Dad has a soft spot for power tools and cool kitchen gadgets and a blind spot about just how much space he has to store them. Stepmom splurged on a fancy sports car and takes in animals; I am fine with an old vehicle as long as it is reliable and prefer not to be tied down by the needs of a pet.

   29. My parents always had luxury cars; they leased and got new ones every year. They came from a modest-to-poor background and my dad’s career took off when I was in high school. So we went from “regular” cars like Oldsmobiles to Cadillacs, Porsches, Peugeot, Jaguars, Mercedes, BMW, etc. I was given an Audi when I graduated college and my sister was given a Porsche.

       To me a car gets you from Place A to Place B. On my own, after the Audi broke down (it was an expensive car for a new graduate to maintain), I got a Honda Civic and drove Civics, Accords, Toyota Camrys, and now a Toyota Prius. My car is 9 years old and I’m getting a new one, another Prius. It’s a perfectly nice / fine car but I value the reliability and the gas mileage, not a “marquee” brand name.

   30. I pay a little extra for the curbside pickup when I get groceries. My Mom thinks I must make millions of dollars because she can’t fathom paying the $8 extra that it costs. Totally worth it to me.

       Growing up, my Mom always told me how expensive paper towels and tissues were (?) and always made me use them very sparingly, if at all. Now that I’m a grown up, I have tissue boxes all over my house and use them as I please!

       1. I have a friend who thinks paper towels are such a waste of money but uses paper napkins?? Very weird to me.

          1. My mom uses paper plates and paper towels instead of real plates and napkins AND YET owns three sets of china and about fifty napkins in various fabrics and colors. And only uses rags instead of paper towels to clean. The mind boggles.

   31. My parents are both farm kids and are dismayed by the idea of organic, humanely sourced eggs & dairy. Why wouldn’t those farmers want to optimize their output and profits? My mom still talks about the seven dollar gallon of milk she saw me buy three years ago.

       On the other hand, my parents spend one million dollars on gas for the full sized suv they drive everywhere.

   32. My mom spends very little on makeup or clothes -she’s always nicely dressed but has no interest in fashion trends (to her, it’s “in” if it’s available at Macy’s). My folks go on cruises but would never join a gym with towel service. My parents would never use curbside airport check-in (I didn’t know this actually existed as a service until I was in law school). My folks would never pay extra for organic anything, but might buy it if it was on sale and cheaper than the non-organic version. While my mom is probably privately appalled at the amount of stuff I buy online, she likes the fact that I can buy groceries online and have them delivered.

       My in-laws – I don’t even know where to start they are so cheap. They buy very expensive luxury cars and the gas to go with them, but will drive to 10 stores to get a $5 discount on something. They buy the cheapest electronics, clothing, coffee, alcohol, soap, detergent (the towels at their place will almost scratch their skin raw), and food (if you ever wondered who buys the stale chocolate at Ross, it’s my in-laws). They will go to an expensive all-you-can-eat buffet, but would never go to a well-reviewed restaurant at the same price point.

   33. I spend money on pets, lots of vacations, wine and a cleaning person. My parents are frugal about their infrequent vacations, don’t really drink (my dad has a beer occasionally), never wanted the expense or mess of pets and never wanted the intrusion or expense of a cleaning person.

       My parents spend money on cable tv (I prefer my streaming services) and getting new cars every few years (I prefer buying used and keeping the as long as possible).

   34. I grew up quite poor, my mom was a single parent. She loved fashion and movie star glam, but couldn’t afford to buy anything even close to designer fashion. She made many of her dresses – which could be considered bespoke? :) She dreamed of visiting New York – Tiffany especially. Never did. She passed away a few years ago.

       I think I’m compensating. I love designer fashion, shoes, bags. I own several pieces of Tiffany jewelry and have been to NY a half dozen times in the past 8 years. I love being able to experience all the things my mom wasn’t able to.

3. Oh Loft. Your dresses are so pretty and so affordable, yet fit me so poorly. Why do Loft pants and tops fit me great, but their dresses- even a-line and fit and flare!- are too tight on bottom and loose up top?
   Seriously considering ordering this one anyway though. What’s that they say about the definition of insanity?

   1. I’ve never been able to figure that one out. Most women have a smaller top and larger bottom, so you’d think they’d design for the average figure. I’m a 34E and even the XS are too large for me. They must pin them on the models.

   2. Take it to a tailor!

      1. Weird I am busty (34DD) and find everything at LOFT to fit like everywhere else, too tight on top and enormous on the bottom.

         Maybe they are just cut badly for everyone.

4. I’m the poster from yesterday whose new guy said our LGPs are “practically” the best he’s ever had. Thanks to everyone for your perspectives it really helped me. I talked to him about it last night. I told him his comment really hurt my feelings and I’m trying to work through that. He tried to reassure me but kind of made it worse – “I’m sure one day this will be the best, it’s just not there yet!” that sort of thing. I told him I really don’t want to hear any kind of comparison, it doesn’t make me feel good. He asked if we could have an LGP and I said I’m not ready for that yet.

   So here’s why I’m posting again this morning – we had plans for me to meet his friends and siblings this weekend. He asked if I still wanted to go and I said yes. He said he doesn’t think it’s a good idea if I’m just going to break up with him anyway. I said I wasn’t planning to break up I just need some time and he said he thinks it’s best if I don’t come. So now I feel like I’ve totally ruined everything. Idk if there’s anything else to be done here.

   1. You need time. Ok. He’s giving up time. I don’t think this means you’ve ruined everything. You’ve just told him a really not bad comment he made hurt you so badly you don’t want to have an LGP with him. He doesn’t want to introduce you to his friends and family while worrying you’re going to dump him. So take the weekend and see if you can get over it. That’s what is left to be done. Sure it wasn’t great but you’re practically the best he’s had, he likes you, and wants to keep hooking up. Either handle your insecurity and move on or don’t and break up.

   2. I don’t mean to be insensitive here, but I think you’re reading WAY too much into this. Unless he went into a detailed comparison or something, “practically” the best sounds like a compliment, not an insult.

      1. Way way way too much.

      2. I agree.

      3. Yeah.
         If my husband had said that to me when we were dating, I would have been thrilled.
         Also: the best LGPs of my life were not with my husband (although, I have never told him this because why would I?). The best LGPs I ever had were with a boyfriend who was an abusive functional alcoholic who I am glad I did not marry because he would have been a terrible husband and father, and oh P.S. he is dead now, from drinking. Not being someone’s absolute, A-number-1, top choice LGP partner does not mean anything in terms of long-term happiness. Maybe you didn’t want to hear a comparison but he was trying to give you a compliment, and if in all other ways he is a great guy – next time, maybe don’t share every little feeling that you have at the exact moment you have the feeling.
         I think you overreacted. Not sure if you have “ruined everything” but I would be for-sure to let this go, and make it clear to your BF that you have really let this go.

   3. Ugh, I’m sorry. I don’t love his response about “it’s not a good idea…” – that seems sort of manipulative. Does that response shine any sort of light on his LGP comments? Meaning, do they seem manipulative looking back or was it really a foot in the mouth situation? I would think it was the latter, except that his “apology” was pretty garbage, too. It’s easy for me to say this on the outside but those are two things that concern me hearing this.

      I’m sorry.

      1. His apology was “pretty garbage” because she blew the comment out of proportion and has now bruised his ego.

      2. What is manipulative here? I really don’t understand that argument at all. He doesn’t want to introduce his girlfriend to his friends and family if she’s going to be unable to get over an offhand comment and break up with him. This seems like he’s trying to protect himself from embarrassment and/or pain — how is that manipulative? I’d be doing the same thing.

         1. Agreed.

         2. Guys are people too. I feel like everyone on this s*te is eager to jump in and assume bad intentions all the time, but I think he’s actually being pretty reasonable here.

         3. He may be worried someone may say unintentionally say something to offend you. And rightfully so.

      3. The manipulation issue is a concern. I think the original comment was a foot in mouth issue. But the timing of him uninviting me from his friends’ gives me pause. Like, I told him I was hurt, he asked if I still wanted to go to his friends’ and I said yes, then he asked if we could LGP and I said not yet, then almost immediately he said he didn’t want me to come to his friends’. So what are you punishing me for not LGP? Idk maybe that’s too harsh and the other posters are right – he realized the relationship is in trouble and doesn’t want to introduce me yet.

         1. He took your lack of interest in LGP to indicate that you weren’t over his comment and if you’re not sure about the relatinship, why would he introduce you to friends/family?

            1. Exactly. I do not see the manipulation at all on his part. Basically you are so hurt by what he meant as a compliment that you are not ready to have LGP. That seems a bit manipulative to me, particularly since you enjoy it and seem to want this relationship to work.

            2. Yeah, I feel like the relationship is on thin ice at the moment and why would he introduce you to his people if it’s maybe on the way out?

         2. It’s not manipulation.

            Maybe he doesn’t like the outsize importance you’ve placed on LGP in this relationship. He gets to have feelings and preferences and deal breakers, too, you know.

   4. I think you got unfairly piled on last night. I can understand trying to give him the benefit of the doubt when he said the LGPs are “practically” the best (although I would have been hurt too), but today’s conversation makes it much worse IMO. Telling you “aw, you’ll get there some day” is so unbelievably condescending. I would have ended in then and there. Hugs, OP.

      1. I agree one hundred percent. Originally, I thought you might be reading too much into things, but I think this is a HIM problem based on his follow up comments. It is completely gross to compare you to past partners and to make it sound like you are being evaluated and need to work towards being them. No way!

      2. Totally agree. He’s just making it worse and now guilting you into not breaking up with him. Gross.

      3. Yeah, I was willing to give the dude the benefit of the doubt for the first comment, but the follow-up is much worse!

   5. Maybe besides the point, but need to be the “best one” is an issue that isn’t doing you any favor. Relationships are about much more than that. My husband is definitely not the best I’ve ever had, but it doesn’t matter because that’s generally not why you marry someone. Honestly, his comment made it seem like you guys were having a great time.

      1. I don’t need to be the best, but I don’t want to be told that I’m not the best. If that makes sense. That’s something I had to clarify with him too – I didn’t ask if I was the best, I didn’t want to know, in fact if it had occurred to me to think about it I would’ve assumed I wasn’t and that’s fine. But don’t TELL me you’re comparing me to others and I don’t measure up. That’s not “honesty” it’s just being unnecessarily hurtful.

         1. OP I agree with you and would be thinking about this the same way. What he gave you was a backhanded compliment followed by other weird comments. Why not just “I really enjoy gardening with you, it’s great!”

         2. Ok and he apologized. So get over it. It was one comment. Do you want to make this work or not?

            1. eh, it’s one comment, which is fine, unless it starts to become a pattern. OP shouldn’t ignore a pattern in order to “make it work”.

               OP – you have one data point, and you don’t know if its anomalous. I’d move past it by now and try to be a little more forgiving in your future interpretations. It’s okay to decide later, when you have more data, that he is, in fact a dud. It won’t mean you are stupid for giving him another chance right now.

         3. I once dated a man who negatively compared my looks to that of his most recent ex. It was worse because we were the same height and had remarkably similar, very unusual, hair. I don’t need to be the most attractive someone has dated, but to volunteer that I was substandard hurt a lot.

            It was the tip of the iceberg of a very horrible relationship.

         4. By making him clarify his comments, you made him tell you that you weren’t the best. You asked for that.

            1. Yea, it was that or lie.

         5. I think this is an important part though, and I think that it’s being overlooked. (I think partly because you were talking in the post about the comparisons so it made it seem like that was a conversation you were having with HIM at the time) The initial comment was an unsolicited, post LGP “hey that was almost the best I ever had”.

            I would have been offended and hurt by that too, it would be different if it was a response to a question.

            He’s allowed to have feelings and deal breakers. He’s allowed to think he should be able to tell his girlfriend to “Just keep trying” and maybe she’ll “get there”. He’s allowed to not want to take her to meet his family if she doesn’t want to pretend not to be hurt and have LGP when she really doesn’t want to (OMG ARE WE SERIOUSLY TELLING THIS WOMAN IT”S NOT OK FOR HER TO SAY NO TO AN LGP WHEN SHE DOESN’T WANT TO? THAT IT’S “MANIPULATIVE???)

            Anyway, you’re also TOTALLY ALLOWED to have feelings too and you don’t have to be ok with it.

      2. I agree that it’s a good idea to give up trying to the best. Don’t fixate on this in any area of your life! But, also, he needs to stop comparing you to past partners. You are you and you don’t need to be made to feel as if you’re expected to meet standards set by any past person.

   6. He said what he said, but from what I recall, you had the exact same feelings but wouldn’t verbalize that because you know you wouldn’t want to hear that from someone. You’re just getting to know him and learning how each other communicate. You have a communication issue that has blown up unnecessarily.

      Brene Brown has a theory about thwarting joy. I think you’ve done this to yourself.

   7. I’m the poster who insisted that maybe you misunderstood. I was wrong. And I agree that saying something like that is tactless. The fact that he didn’t anticipate that saying this might hurt you would bother me slightly more than the fact that he’s had better LGPs before.
      Ultimately, it sounds reasonable for you to you skip this weekend if you need more time to think. For me, this wouldn’t be a deal breaker. But I happily married the man with whom the LGPs are just good, so YMMV.

   8. I’m guessing your reaction was more severe than “hey, don’t compare me to other folks you’ve slept with because it’s weird, okay?” if his takeaway is that you’re likely to break up with him. It sounds like maybe meeting the family this weekend was coming a bit too soon anyway, so maybe plan to get together on Monday once you’ve had some time to process, and see if you both still feel a spark?

      Also, especially at the beginning of relationships when you are still getting to know someone and they are still getting to know you, it really helps to focus on the person’s *intention*. They might use words to communicate that you wouldn’t, they might think a gift is thoughtful that you wouldn’t, but because they don’t actually know you yet they can’t do any better than that in the early stages. If you think the “practically the best” and “I’m sure it will be the best, it’s just not there yet” were intended to be positive and complimentary to you, then focus on that. If you think those comments were intended to be manipulative and gaslight you, then JSFAMO.

      1. This.

      2. +1

      3. Have to agree with this. I don’t think internet strangers can tell the OP how to read this situation, because those two exact same conversations could go either way depending on intention and conext.

         If it were me, I’d be hurt but I’d let it go for the weekend and see how things felt on Monday. But if the OP feels like he’s trying to manipulate and gaslight her, she should absolutely JSFAMO.

   9. Now he’s ranking you against other girls and you’re always going to wonder how you measure up. No thanks.

   10. Honestly, I think you need to chill out. Agree with BabyAssociate, you took an off the cuff comment about not being the absolute best at something for one guy (which is totally something you can’t control) and went off the rails having a TALK, telling him you don’t want to LGP because you aren’t the best, and going into a massive tizzy to the extent of derailing your relationship. TBH, he probably thinks you’re unstable to take such an innocuous comment to this extreme – I would.

       If you don’t want to discuss or even reference LGPs or past relationships, just tell him that it makes you uncomfortable (Hubby and I have a standing agreement on this – don’t ask don’t tell). But don’t blow up at him over a passing comment when that’s probably not what this is really about.

       1. The initial comment may have been off the cuff, but the follow up wasn’t and makes the situation considerably worse – he’s explicitly telling her she’s not as good as others but hopefully she’ll get there some day. Thinking this isn’t a dealbreaker, but saying it is. You say yourself you have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ agreement w/your spouse. This guy is not respecting OP’s wishes to have something similar. OP isn’t saying he has to think she’s the best, she’s just saying she doesn’t want him to tell her that she’s not. The former is unreasonable, but the latter is totally reasonable IMO.

          1. Is that what he’s saying? I would interpret this as saying “LGPs with new partners can be great, but often improve over time and get even better. I bet as we continue to get to know each other’s bodies, likes and dislikes, develop chemistry, we’ll get to being the best.”

             OP is interpreting his comments as a black and white indictment of her skills and her performance rather than their experience together. I highly doubt he’s thinking of it like she is.

             That said, I do understand not wanting to hear about past partners. God no. Just because I’m okay intellectually with someone’s ex being thinner or prettier or better or they have more chemistry (or even that they existed) doesn’t mean I want to hear about it in detail. These conversations benefit no one, and that’s why you don’t have them. Think about it this way: how would you feel if you said you *loved* his gardening tool, and it was practically the biggest. He gets hung up on the practically part, makes you tell him where he ranked in size, you honestly tell him he’s near the top but not the biggest but its okay because you love LGP with him, and then gets super butthurt about it? and tells you he needs space? and won’t sleep with you? That’s exactly how this reads to me. I’d break up with him for serious insecurities and ego issues, and because I wouldn’t feel safe being open and honest with him.

          2. But she essentially forced him to say that by bringing it up in such a serious way. Like, what was he supposed to say? Should he have lied?

       2. + 1 to the don’t ask, don’t tell

          Would be super surprised if a new relationship would be ‘best ever’.

          DH wasn’t initially the best but three kids later, I can’t imagine being with anyone else. We both feel so comfortable and open with each other in a way that just isn’t possible without a close relationship.

          New guy sounds like he’s being gun shy because you’re making such a big deal out of this. It’s appropriate for him to suggest taking a step back and focusing on the other aspects of the relationship.

   11. That comment would have hurt my feelings too, but I could give the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t intend that or see that it could be hurtful. The problem is that when you told him that he hurt your feelings, he did not give the only acceptable response: “I’m so sorry I hurt your feelings!”

       Then, he followed up with a request for an LGP, and said he assumed you were going to break up with him. He assumed this because you needed a minute to nurse your hurt feelings before jumping back in the sack.

       This person, at best, is not sensitive to your feelings. At worst, they are just mean. I think you want to consider whether you are Ok with living the rest of your life (or at least enduring a relationship) with someone who has demonstrated this to you (twice now). YOU didn’t ruin anything. He is not being nice.

       It’s a little overused, but that quote about believing someone who tells you who they are the first time applies here.

       1. Agreed with your last comments – but as to the OP. I’m with the guy on this one. He’s protecting himself -reasonably – and you’re blowing one poorly-worded comment out of the water.

       2. Yeah, I feel like maybe what this episode is telling you is that you two are not a match. Which sucks but there you have it.

   12. I’m old – 49 – and married 24 years. I really like my husband (MOST of the time) which is honestly a gift because who really knows who to marry at 25 years old. Here’s the thing though – He is SCATHINGLY honest. I asked him how I ranked at LGP about a year into the marriage and he told me that I do one particular thing better than anyone. That kind of stinks, but on the other hand, it is a pretty important thing so I decided not to dwell. It was a silent 5 minute conversation in my head immediately following the conversation and I let it go.

       Obviously feelings are important but not EVERYTHING can be a huge, drawn out deal at the emotional expense of others. Can you meet this guy at home for lunch and make up with a LGP before meeting the friends and siblings this weekend? A little damage control may be in order. The scale of your reaction does not seem to match his infraction.

   13. You a million times over reacted to this and you’re now dealing with the consequences, I’m sorry to say. Live and learn, I guess, but you need to relax a little. To be honest, you sound overly dramatic. Seriously.

       1. Except I feel like OP gets to feel how she feels, and the guy gets to feel how he feels, and sometimes people can both be good and right and okay and it’s still not a match. Which, again, kind of sucks but maybe it’s better to JSFAMO.

          1. This times a million.

       2. I was once in a budding and very promising relationship with a guy. I made a comment one night while were cuddling on the couch. I meant it one way, but he interpreted it in a completely different way and drew conclusions about my position on whether I was willing to communicate about a particular issue with him. He didn’t say anything. A month later, when he broke up with me out of the blue because he didn’t feel like he could talk to me about this issue, he cited this comment. I know the break up didn’t rest solely on that comment, but rather with a host of insecurities he had about this issue, but it makes me so sad to think that a misinterpretation played a role in the downfall of the relationship. I know this is vague, but I was trying to express my vulnerability and insecurity to him, and it kills me that it was used against me. I urge you not to let an otherwise promising relationship get shipwrecked over a miscommunication.

          1. But it wasn’t a miscommunication. Everyone here is assigning a meaning he clearly didn’t have. Yesterday when she said he said “practically the best”, people kept telling her “practically” is the same as “basically” which means, he is telling you you are the best calm down!

             She didn’t feel like that’s what he meant.

             So she talked to him, partly to say, I don’t want to be compared, and he clarified that yeah no he totally meant ‘almost’ the best, not quite there, but maybe with some work she can get there. Doing what she just said she didn’t want to do.

             Then, he says so hey are we ok, you still wanna go meet my family? She says yes . THEN he says, so you wanna LGP? and she was like, not really feeling it right now. THEN he says “Ok well I don’t wanna take you to meet my family.”

             He’s being at best, petulant, and at worse manipulative. His decision she can’t meet his family was only AFTER she didn’t want to have SEX, which she is allowed to decline AT ANY TIME.

       3. +1.

5. I really like the Loft skirt Kat mentioned…except for it basically being made of the same material as sweatpants. Wish it was a work appropriate material.

   1. I looked at it for a loooong time because I like the style and came to the decision that I would definitely buy it if it came in a color other than gray. Gray seems to emphasize the sweatpants association, where a brighter color (red? coral? cobalt?) might distract enough to make it appropriate for a casual Friday in my office.

      1. That’s a good point. It’s not practical for me for a casual weekend outfit, either. I have a toddler to chase, so skirts aren’t my norm.

6. We have a colleague who is out of the office allll the time (does she use PTO? no idea!), routinely comes in around 9:30 and leaves after our boss leaves – which is sometimes before lunch, because we are in a meeting/client/out-of-the-office heavy industry. The other day she came in for less than two hours then left because of “summer hours” (not a thing) and she was tired from hosting visitors during the week, apparently. She has three kids but they are all older elementary and up. I am the only other person in the office with children, and mine is a toddler. She also has a higher title, is our boss’ favorite, and gets paid more than any of us. We’ve been joking about it a bit but I think I’m not the only one feeling bitter about it.

   She’s also a really jarring and difficult personality so it’s just the icing on the cake. Also if she complains to me about money one more time when she makes more than me and doesn’t have any kids in daycare…

   …yeah, not my circus, not my monkeys, but it sucks when she just left the office for the day five minutes ago and I’m stuck inside on a gorgeous day setting up my visits for next week.

   1. Acknowledging that she is incredibly aggravating personality-wise is fine. But tbh her comings and goings aren’t your business or your concern unless it directly affects your work. I had a coworker like you who would always keep tabs on my comings and goings not realizing I was off-site at a client’s office – they tried to report me for not being at work during regular business hours – and she was an ***hole for it. Don’t be her.

      Don’t let focus on her work hours bring you down – you are letting her have way too much control over your mood. Besides, there could be, and often is, much more at play here than you think. People often have different arrangements with workplaces that simply aren’t the business of other workers (a personal or family health issue that warrants flexible schedule, working from home, meeting clients off site, different compensation structure). Focus on your work.

   2. I’d be careful with this. You never know what kind of situation she has. It’s possible she’s worked these hours out with HR or your boss and for privacy reasons, it hasn’t been made public to the rest of the office or your group. I’m not saying that’s definitely the case, just playing devil’s advocate.

   3. Kindly, why don’t you take a look at your own habits instead of focusing on her? Why are you in the office? Are you inefficient? Could you work smarter? Are you being a martyr? I can’t stand the judging from afar over time in chair – that it not an indicator of whether someone is a good performer.

   4. She sounds frustrating, but her coming and going isn’t your business. She could be using PTO. She could be working flex hours. I had a coworker monitoring my time, jotting down my late arrival and asking me about it even though I was at a meeting. For whatever reason, it hadn’t synced on my phone and office calendar, and I was pretty hurt that she was accusing me of coming in 2 hours late and billing for a nonexistent meeting. I want my coworkers to trust that I’m working during my frequent offsite meetings because…I’m doing my job.

      So, try to separate her coming/going and your reaction to that from her annoying personality. I think one reaction is justified, the other…not so much.

   5. OP, I understand your frustration, but tread with caution on this. The only way you have standing on this is if it affects your work (as in, we couldn’t set out the XYZ report last night as requested1 . because we needed Colleague to sign off on it and she left after lunch). But otherwise, coworkers monitoring when you come and go are the actual worst.
      My former colleague took a pay cut to accept a position where she had flex hours, and her boss has been vocal about his support for her flex hours, the ability to work from home, etc etc. Yet there is this one guy from another department who sits close to her who is constantly saying stuff like “Oh, you’re leaving already? Must be nice! I was here until 10pm last night and I came in at 6 this morning because our department works so hard blah blah blah”. Don’t be that guy.

   6. Doesn’t sound like you’re asking for advice so I’m just going to say I feel ya and that really sucks.

7. I recently started a new job and the adjustment has been hard and kind of draining. I’d like to start rewarding myself with something every two weeks to help me appreciate that work allows me to do/buy fun things. Does anyone else reward themselves on some kind of regular, deliberate schedule? What do you do? I’m looking for something inexpensive because this new job came with a huge pay decrease (but other positive attributes).

   1. I’m in a similar position – following for suggestions.

      So far, I did a face mask and hair mask combo evening, and gave myself permission to not think about work or do anything that wasn’t just for fun, so I watched some tv and played a game with my husband. It was fine, but I guess not enough out of the ordinary to feel like a real reward.

   2. Yep, every two weeks on payday Friday I get take-out for dinner. And often I get my nails done on payday too.

   3. We order pizza (or similar) on a Friday night to celebrate the end another work week (my parents did this when I was a kid and it really lifted the mood because no one had to cook and added a little party atmosphere to kick off the weekend), and I get a mani/pedi at the end of the month.

      1. I usually treat myself to lunch at the place next door on Fridays (I pack a lunch other days).

         I think the important thing is to pick something that you really look forward to. We’re planning on doing more events at our art museum, and the anticipation of a good time lifts you up for a few days.

   4. I like this idea of a regular, structured reward! I posted a while back about trying to cut back on little luxuries that had crept into my daily life and turn them back to occasional luxuries, and this sounds like a good way to do it! A Friday morning latte every 2 weeks would be a great way to start the weekend. I’ve also thought about reserving these weekends for fun things I’ve been meaning to do, but have to put on my calendar to make sure they happen. So my internal narrative might be “It’s payday! I’m going to enjoy my latte this morning, then go to the farmer’s market/hiking/museum exhibit/new brunch place tomorrow!”

8. Ever move from a place and not be able to find a good substitute for a business/service/restaurant?

   I miss a lot about London but haha I was reminded again this week how much I miss Cowshed pedicures! They do such a good job: the venue is relaxing, the pedicures lasts forever, they use the electric rotating sander on your calluses which does miracles, the polishes aren’t super toxic, they offer good drinks and food etc etc. I can’t find a place in New York that is comparable. I know this is the most petty thing ever but man how do I wish they would open a branch here.

   1. Yes! I live in a SEUS city with a metro population of more than 1M people yet there is not a decent Thai restaurant. It does not have to be fancy, just good. I have lived in smaller cities and could always find my Thai spot.

      1. I have the same issue with Chinese food in my SEUS city with similar population. We finally found a good Thai place and a decent Japanese place, but no Chinese except for an expensive celebrity chef Szechuan place that is good but not for every day.

         1. You live in Nashville, too? Ha! Why are there no good Chinese places here?

            1. RIP August Moon. It was in Green Hills and was the same old Chinese American menu as everywhere, but the vegetables were fresh and the sauces did not come from a jar. I would trade a dozen or more of the new trendy restaurants in Nashville to get August Moon back.

         2. YES. Chinese! Why does my 1.2m metro not have one decent American-style Chinese takeout place for those Fridays when I just can’t even? I love the celebrity chef Szechuan but it’s not an exhausted-from-work-on-Friday kind of place.

            1. We are in the same city.

            2. Forgot Korean! I have not found one Korean restaurant, good or otherwise. I am not counting the fake Korean Chipotle-bowl-style place.

            3. Ha, I KNEW it :) The Szechuan was a giveaway! I think there’s supposed to be a new Korean place downtown that’s good? Haven’t been yet though (nor have I been to the Korean Chipotle).

      2. Same in my Midwest city. When The Hubs and I go more or less anywhere out of town (but not Nashville – we get hot chicken and good biscuits there), we eat tons of Thai, Szechuan, Cantonese, and Korean because we simply cannot get anything good in those categories here.

   2. Have you tried ten over ten?

      1. No, bu thanks for the rec I will try it! I tried Sundays and it was completely disappointing this week.

   3. I miss a lot from living in Germany. I have just reconciled myself to the fact that the best German things will never be found in Canada (and there are a lot!) BUT I am going to enjoy chicken wings, nachos, and diner breakfasts. My commiserations! I also love a lot of UK food and shopping I can’t get anymore :(

   4. I miss the wider variety of ethnic cuisines moving from DC to a small city (albeit with excellent restaurants). We have great Spanish, Tex-Mex, French, Thai, Japanese, Chinese (legit Chinese!), Creole, Southern, Italian, and South African, but I really miss Ethiopian food, and dang, I haven’t had a good bowl of pho in years. And there was a fantastic Ghanaian spot in my neighborhood, and amazingly, we don’t have good British pub food anywhere in this city.

      1. Hey, how about really good Indian food in SF. Nothing is as good as what I have eaten in London,

   5. FYI — There are Cowshed spas at the Soho House clubs in New York, I believe. I hope this helps!

9. Single ladies – I’ve been fantasizing about the weekend all week but I don’t have any plans, what should I do? A bunch of my friends are out of town/busy so I think it’s just me this weekend. Ideas?!

   1. Every weekend is single lady weekend for me. See a movie, get a pedicure, order take-out.

   2. Pedicure with a rosé, Crazy Rich Asians, can you find a place to swim? Cafe and a book. Got to a bar and have a drink in the early evening.

   3. Get yourself a nice brunch with a book that you don’t rush, then go be a bit of a tourist in your city – maybe make it a picnic in the park. No body ever wants to go to that one museum or park with you? Hit it up! Find the hidden ice cream shop that you can invite all your friends to later.

   4. Know yourself, but this is the perfect opportunity to indulge in something that takes a good period of time to commit to. I would either buy a new book or a new videogame and let myself get immersed for a while.

   5. Ooh, leisurely browse the farmer’s market, luxuriate over a fancy coffee and breakfast bowl and a book at a great cafe, take a run in the early evening, a bottle of wine my SO isn’t into, and a binge of TV/movies.

10. I’m considering taking my drycleaner to small claims court. It ruined a beautiful Etro dress that I loved. I’m not a lawyer and would very much love any advice or constructive feedback from the hive. Here are a few relevant details:
    – The damage was caused by colour bleeding all over the dress
    – After I complained, the drycleaner sent the dress to a lab for analysis. The lab report said that it was a flaw in the fabric and was inevitable with wet cleaning. But I had asked for DRY cleaning and I paid for dry cleaning. So this is the cleaner’s fault for using a cheaper cleaning method, right?
    – The care tag is missing from the dress, probably was removed when I had some alterations done. The dry cleaner is saying that it is not at fault because of this – but if I asked for dry cleaning, it shouldn’t be relevant, right?
    – I have had this dress cleaned many times from the same cleaner in the past with no issue
    – The dress is a few years old, and I don’t have the receipt. It was bought at deep discount at Bloomingdale’s. I was thinking of calling them in the hopes they can retrieve a copy. Otherwise, I have found some comparable dresses online for help in determining the value.
    – I’m in Canada, if it matters

    Would appreciate any and all advice about the process, what are my chances of success, and how much I should ask for in compensation.

    thank you!!

    1. Don’t bother. Move on.

    2. I would let this go. I would learn from this in the future – keep those tags on, make sure you say dry cleaning when you want dry cleaning and have it in writing, and don’t use this dry cleaner again.

       The dress was a few years old, you don’t have great documentation, and the money and stress you are going to spend on this will not replace the dress.

       It sucks, but its just a piece of clothing. Put your effort into finding a new favorite dress.

    3. I sort of wish more people would do this, since the dry cleaners where I live unnecessarily destroy clothing on the regular. But I would add one more negative Yelp review (they’ll already have a stack of them) and move on.

    4. Dry cleaning isn’t dry, it’s chemical instead of water.

       1. Yes this – it just means clothes are soaked in chemicals, not water. It’s a total misnomer! It should be “chemical cleaning.”

    5. What do you hope to gain from litigation? Revenge? A new dress?

    6. Lol – no, don’t sue. So petty and weird.

    7. That little stub you get when you drop your order off probably has a limitation of liability tag on it.

11. Another alcohol thread- skip if you’re not interested.

    The Guardian just reported (yesterday) on a new major study that shows there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle conducted the research and I trust their methods and findings – I’ve used their data many times before for other issues. This is alarming and I feel mislead with the whole “a glass of wine a day is good for you” rhetoric out there.

    I already drink pretty rarely (1-4 drinks per month at most), but I might knock that down to 1-2. This changes the risk calculus to me and when there is already so much unavoidable risk in life, I want to control the ones I can. What are others’ thoughts?

    https://www.theguardian dot com/society/2018/aug/23/no-healthy-level-of-alcohol-consumption-says-major-study

    1. I’ve stopped drinking as a result of this recent research. I was never a big drinker and very rarely drank at home, but I did enjoy a nice glass of wine at restaurants, especially when traveling. I don’t do that anymore. I see it just like avoiding other risks I can – I don’t smoke, I wear sunscreen/hats when I’m outside for long periods of time, I exercise regularly, I try to stay at a healthy weight. Of course I’m not perfect – I eat junk food, I don’t always get enough sleep – but for me, giving up alcohol is a fairly easy change to my lifestyle that I know is healthier, like wearing sunscreen.

       1. But I have to add that I don’t judge people who don’t want to give up alcohol. I know there are people who feel the way about alcohol that I do about chocolate. And you better believe that if research came out showing chocolate (slightly) raises your risks of cancer, I would still keep eating it. Chocolate is worth it to me, alcohol is not.

       2. OP here and I agree with this approach. Limiting alcohol to a drink or two per month (or not at all) wouldn’t be hard for me, so it seems like an easy lifestyle change that I should adopt so I can continue to take risks in other areas. I already participate in several risky activities (especially skiing, including in the backcountry), and the health benefits I get from that are so worth it to me that I would far rather give up drinking than the exercise, time in the fresh air, amazing scenery, and solitude). That plus a cup of hot chocolate afterward is one of life’s great pleasures for me. There is no real substitute for skiing, but there are plenty of liquids that can sub for drinking, so why not?

          1. Because many people enjoy specific wine, beer or liquors in the same way that you enjoy skiing and don’t think there is a substitute.

             Would you substitute playing soccer or scuba diving for skiing? Probably not based on saying”There’s no real substitute for skiing’. I get it I ski too. I’ve skiied since childhood and in many different countries. But if you ask me to pick wine or skiing, I’m picking wine everytime. I can swim or rock climb instead of ski.

             1. In the same way many people enjoy smoking and don’t think there is a substitute. It’s just that we’ve evolved to make smoking socially unacceptable and that hasn’t happened with alcohol quite yet. (We’ve evolved to make drunk driving socially unacceptable in a way that it wasn’t 50 years ago – think Mad Men … but not drinking overall.)

             2. Can I have both wine and skiing? Because that’s my fave, wine (or beer) in the hot tub after a long day in the backcountry. :)

    2. This is shocking to me. I had no idea there were health risks associated with moderate alcohol consumption. I remember growing up and hearing stories on the news about the benefits of drinking a glass of red wine a day! I am happy to go without time in the sun and smoking, but it would be very very very hard for me to imagine not having a glass of wine on the nights that I cook and eat dinner at home (4 days a week about).

    3. Eh – I kind of want to say “duh” – of course there is no “safe” level of drinking. You are literally ingesting a potential poison into your body, depending on the dosage. Which is what can literally be said about any medication you take. It all depends on dosage. And whether the benefits of taking the thing outweighs the risk.

       What I’m hearing is that there are still benefits (for heart disease, stress reduction, whatever), it’s just that the study determined those benefits don’t justify the risks that are also associated with the consumption of alcohol. Such that you can’t promote consuming any level of alcohol as “healthy”. Doesn’t mean the previous studies were wrong – just incomplete as to the meaning of their findings.

       “In the UK, the chief medical officer Sally Davies has said there is no safe level of drinking, but the guidance suggests that drinkers consume no more than 14 units a week to keep the risks low.” So it’s not “safe” (will never do any harm), but there’s a rate of consumption where the risks still stay relatively low. Because they know people aren’t going to change behavior that much.

       1. 1. “Alcohol Units” will always remind me of Bridget Jones
          2. 14 a week seems like a lot (esp. for a woman)

          1. A unit is a British term and it’s very small. An glass of wine is 2 to 3 units. So this is not saying you can have 14 drinks a week.

             From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_alcohol#Wines): A medium glass (175 ml) of 12% ABV wine contains around two units of alcohol. However, British pubs and restaurants often supply larger quantities (large glass ≈ 250 ml), which contain 3 units. Red wines often have a higher alcohol content (on average 12.5%, sometimes up to 16%).

             1. OMG I read Bridget Jones all wrong then!

    4. Life’s tough, bottoms up. In all seriousness, people have to decide an appropriate risk/reward balance for themselves. Skiing is dangerous but some people love it. I don’t love it so I don’t do it. I do, on the other hand, really enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. I’m okay with the risk and I have no interest in living my life fretting about this kind of thing.

       1. This.

          I ski, horseback ride and rock climb. Being physically active far outweights the associated risks in my assessment.

          1. I don’t think this is a good analogy though. Exercise has proven benefits and if skiing and rock climbing are the best way for you to get exercise, then it may be that the rewards outweigh the risks for those activities. I think the point of all this recent research is that alcohol really doesn’t have any health benefits, and it does have proven downsides.

             1. Happiness and enjoyment are health benefits in reducing stress. For our family, great wine and special liquors are part of a food culture that celebrates appropriate amounts of high quality food. and drink which includes both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

             2. I think you’re missing the point. I don’t drink because it has health benefits, I do it because I like it and it’s fun and that’s worth being exposed to some corresponding risk. Moreover, any health benefits from skiing could certainly be obtained through safer forms of exercise. People ski because they like the speed, thrill, etc. — not just to get their cardio in for the day.

                The point remains the same: if you don’t like it, and it’s risky, don’t do it. If you do like it, you’ll probably do it despite some risk. The idea of spending my life only doing things that have “health benefits” (or similar) is depressing.

             3. You’re here for a good time or a long time.

                Maybe it’s my fatalism talking, but I could walk in front of a truck tomorrow. Not saying you should live EVERY day like it’s your last, but you’ll miss out on some good times if you try to live forever.

       2. +1

          And the study suggests that people consume less than 14 units a week. That’s a big amount in a week IMO so easy to stay under that amount.

       3. Yeah. I mean, there are few zero-risk activities in life. The most dangerous thing any of us do each day is drive. 30,000 people die annually in the US from car crashes and there are over 2 million injuries. We could massively improve public health by reducing how much people drive. But instead most of us get in our cars every day and don’t even think about the risk.

          1. As an insurance lawyer, a million yeses to the above.

          2. I’m the OP and I reduce driving specifically because it’s so risky (in my field, this is a common subject). Plus, it’s healthier for the planet and for me to get more exercise on foot/bike, it reduces congestion, reduces wear and tear on my vehicle, and it’s more convenient because I don’t have to find parking. It’s not possible for everyone everywhere, but there are SO many multifaceted benefits to driving less.

             1. Until I started working in road safety, I had NO idea how unsafe driving was. But if you think about it, almost everyone knows someone who has been killed in a car crash. We could save so many lives, and prevent so many life-altering injuries just by giving people options other than driving. It is honestly an epidemic and people just don’t realize it.

             2. Except that riding your bike in traffic is horrifically dangerous. I’m not saying don’t do it, but don’t kid yourself it’s safer than driving.

             3. I ride 10+ hours/week on the road with cars, and used to bicycle commute. Riding your bike on the same road with cars isn’t “horrifically dangerous” (unless your standard for horrific danger is a lot lower than mine) – there are under a thousand deaths annually. We don’t actually have statistical data on bicycle miles traveled, so we don’t know how deaths and injuries compare to car travel on per mile basis – there are lots of vested interests (auto manufacturers, insurers, fuel companies) that measure car miles traveled, but those don’t exist for bikes.

                Now – that figure is way higher than it should be. I’m heavily involved in bicycle advocacy and our roads should be much, much safer for cars and for pedestrians (note that there are generally over 5,000 pedestrians struck and killed by cars annually). What forces improvements to protect cyclists and pedestrians, however, is generally more people cycling and walking. As cycling and walking go up, drivers become more accustomed to seeing cyclists and pedestrians, and lawmakers become more likely to take actions to protect them. Encouraging more people to get out of the car is how we get to safer conditions for them (with the added benefit of improving driver safety in many cases by dropping speed limits – increased speed limits are related to higher death rates among car drivers).

                Cars have done a ton for us as a society, but we’ve done little to mitigate the human cost of that (much less the environmental cost). That’s what I want to see change.

    5. Do what you want. People have been drinking for millennia. I will continue moderate drinking. We all assess our own health risks ourselves. This makes sense for me.

       1. Actually the habit of women and drinking has not happened for a millennia. It used to not be as acceptable to drink if you were a woman, especially if you were a young unmarried woman. The amount of women who are drinking is on a steady increase. Especially the type of alcohol that they are drinking. Beer used to be the primary alcohol available in this country so if you didn’t like the taste of that you didn’t drink. Now there are many more options.
          https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/did-drinking-give-me-breast-cancer/

          Another thing is that the affect alcohol has on on women’s health is different than it has on mens. Breast cancer seems to be particularly linked to alcohol use. In countries where women don’t drink compared to countries where they do you can see the rate of breast cancer change.

          1. “It used to not be as acceptable to drink if you were a woman, especially if you were a young unmarried woman.”

             I’d like a source for this because I have a history degree and I’ve never come across a statement like this before.

          2. Yes, the culture of women (especially moms) and wine is very new. Obviously alcohol has been around for a long time and people drank at holidays, but the “glass of wine to unwind every night” has not been around for ages.

             1. Why don’t you ask France about that? A period of Puritanism in the US does not negate global history.

             2. ? the last ten years of women and wine culture is newish but you said that women and drinking hasn’t been happening for millennia.

                Just as one example, alcohol like cider and whiskey was a common drink for many men, women and even children during much of the 17th- 19th centuries in the US. Water and milk were actually not preferred because they were more likely to carry disease.

             3. I mean, maybe not on the prairie, but certainly for the last 100 years this has been very common.

             4. *citation needed from Anonymous at 10:53

             5. I am the mother of twenty something adults. ABSOLUTELY the “mommy group having a glass of wine” culture is new (in the US) within the last decade or so. That simply wasn’t a thing for those of us having babies in the early 1990s. Wine was not fetishized and talked about as a thing for moms as it is today.

             6. Right LaurenB. But my statement to which she is replying was people have always drunk alvohol. And that is true.

          3. This is not true. Women thoughout the world have been drinking for millennia.

             But thanks for the smug uptight lecture. I was obviously looking for that.

             1. Right, also, sure, the whole “Mommy juice = wine” thing might be new, but moms in the 50’s were drinking martinis with their valium. LOLOL

    6. I control my risk by being physically active, not being sedentary during the day (additional to exericse, just sitting too much is bad), and maintaining a healthy body weight.

       Given the proportion of the population which is overweight or obese, I think that is the much much bigger public health issue.

       I enjoy my wine and I plan to continue.

    7. Welp, I guess I’m going to die. One way or another, we all will. I’m gonna keep enjoying a glass or two of wine with dinner, and also the long list of high risk sports I aggressively participate in. Maybe I’ll accidentally ski off a cliff or fall off a horse and break my neck. Maybe I’ll get cancer, maybe I’ll die in my sleep at 108. I don’t particularly want to live my life dancing around those sorts of what ifs.

       But you do you.

       1. I mean, taking reasonable precautions isn’t “dancing around what-ifs.” I assume you select terrain carefully and wear a helmet and check the weather conditions before you ski or ride your horse. You do you, but taking easy steps to mitigate risk isn’t paranoid or obsessive.

          1. Why is it so important to you that everyone assess risk in precisely the same way as you?

             1. Ugh, stop with these defensive responses on every drinking post. It’s getting so old. If you want to drink yourself into oblivion, go right ahead. YOU DO YOU.

             2. @ Anon 12:15

                all the judgment is flowing from certain non-drinkers who seem to think that anyone who enjoys a social drink within the bounds of current public health recommendations is engaging is super risky behavior. That other people know and accept the risks is not something that non-drinkers appear to be able to understand.

                Literally no one has suggested at any point that ‘drinking themselves into oblivion’ is a good idea.

                Don’t drink ever, and be careful not to let your weight get a single lb over ideal BMI and heaven forbid you leave the house without remembering to put on sunscreen. YOU DO YOU right back at you. But stop telling us about it ever single day.

             3. I think it’s pretty well established at this point that having a glass of wine every day is significantly worse for your health than forgetting sunscreen on occasion or being a couple pounds of overweight. Regular tanning and being obese are very bad for you, but I bet most of the people who are concerned about moderate alcohol consumption aren’t doing those things either.

             4. Anonymous @ 12:56 – not true. Someone above, maybe the OP, said she’s not perfect & eats junk food. We all have our things. I don’t eat junk food. If I’m totally honest, I think eating processed food is gross and bad for you; I seldom do it. But I like wine. It’s fine. Who cares what I think about people eating cereal for breakfast and microwaved lean cuisines for lunch and calling it “healthy?” Everything is bad for you. Nail polish is bad for you. Gel nail polish is really, really bad for you. BBQ might increase your risk of cancer (enjoy those grilled veggies!). It’s fine. The goal isn’t to never die. It’s to moderate risk in ways that make sense for you and to live a relatively healthy, happy life insofar as you can manage it.

                Whenever I see these kerfuffles, I think of a study about restricted calories diets that suggest that eating the bare minimum amount of calories needed to survive makes lab mice live substantially longer. There are people who follow this plan because they also want to live to 140. But I don’t want to live a life where my dinner is 3 peas and a carrot no matter how long it makes me stick around.

             5. “it’s pretty well established at this point that having a glass of wine every day is significantly worse for your health than forgetting sunscreen on occasion or being a couple pounds of overweight”

                No, it literally isn’t.

          2. Why are you so bothered that drinking has been revealed to be Not as Healthy As Previously Thought? I think a lot of women rationalize their drinking by the “healthfulness of red wine”. Yeah, I’d like to think that there’s a lot of Healthfulness in Dark Chocolate too but it just really isn’t the case, and it’s more intellectually honest to say you’re doing something because you enjoy it and don’t care if it’s bad for you.

             1. I’m really not. I’m just bored with this conversation happening EVERY DAY and the non-drinkers being totally unable to let it go.

          3. I never said not drinking was paranoid or obsessive, maybe you’re projecting a bit. I know people who don’t wear helmets while riding (both horses and bikes), and while that is not a choice I’d personally make, hey, not my head. I view this the same way, I’m just falling on the “risky” side of the coin in this instance (and I mitigate by not drinking every night, and not bingeing as a habit).

             Btw, I’m the anon at 10:32, and not the anon at 12:01. A glass of wine at dinner is far from drinking oneself into oblivion, but I’d maybe reassess who’s being the defensive one here.

             1. As a (general) non-drinker (just don’t like the taste), I do find that people do think that I am judging them when I choose to order a soft drink or iced tea. And I have had situations where I’ve had to say – I have no moral objection to alcohol (because I don’t), I just don’t care for it very much, that’s all, but I certainly don’t care if you have your glass of wine or whatever. But I do feel – and am made uncomfortable by – the part of drinking culture that is very much “oh, I want you to do it too.” I think it is a mechanism by which people who DO drink more than they really “should” justify their drinking – because everyone does it with them so it can’t be all that bad. It’s sort of the equivalent “watching your weight, but if you get cheesecake for dessert, it’s ok if I get it too” mentality. There’s nothing wrong with having cheesecake for dessert but don’t pretend that it is calorie free.

    8. I think it’s an important study and am glad it’s out there, although I had long been convinced already that alcohol was more detrimental to health than beneficial. Having said that, I will continue to drink alcohol (3-6 units per week in my case). The article notes that if you drink one alcoholic drink per day, your risk increases 0.5%. I also eat red meat and donuts (um, not at the same time), drive in a car every day, use plastic, stand in front of my microwave, and spend too much time at my desk or on my couch. I do have a personal history of non-invasive breast cancer (me personally, not family risk). On the other hand, I do not smoke, I do: exercise moderately, am not overweight, breastfed kids for a combined total of 3+ years, eat a balanced diet, and get regular screenings. For ME, this is an acceptable level of risk. For others, it may not be. I don’t judge anyone who chooses not to drink, nor those who drink more than I do. Classic case of YMMV.

       1. Ha, yeah, I guess the people who are horrified by the idea of people continuing to drink in moderation despite the OMG HEALTH RISKS of it also probably think that every woman should get pregnant and breastfeed because that is a health benefit vis a vis breast cancer.

          1. Nah. It’s a perfectly rational position to do what you can to minimize risk, without going overboard or doing things that would dramatically change your life or harm other people. I’m not going to have a child I don’t want just to decrease my cancer risk, because that’s a terrible idea for about a 1,000 reasons. Cutting back on my drinking doesn’t impact my life the same way, doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t involve anybody else. I don’t think anyone is “horrified” about others drinking in moderation, we’re just saying that for us the risks outweigh the benefits and we’ve chosen to stop/cut back as a result of these studies.

          2. Having a baby is the most dangerous thing most women will do in their lifetime, especially in the US with our terrible maternal mortality stats. Nobody thinks you should have a baby for health reasons.

          3. “Ha, yeah, I guess the people who are horrified by the idea of people continuing to drink in moderation despite the OMG HEALTH RISKS of it also probably think that every woman should get pregnant and breastfeed because that is a health benefit vis a vis breast cancer.”

             No, no one thinks that at all, because having a baby is an inherently risky thing for the mother health-wise, and the day on which you give birth is one of the riskiest days (health-wise) of your life. Analogy fail, sorry.

    9. I think the important thing is look past the headline to the actual numbers. Like this sentence: While the study shows that the increased risk of alcohol-related harm in younger people who have one drink a day is small (0.5%), it goes up incrementally with heavier drinking: to 7% among those who have two drinks a day (in line with UK guidance) and 37% for those who have five.

       So yea, it’s never drinking is the “safest,” but a half percent increase in risk is not enough that I’m never going to drink. My horseback riding habit (and driving to get to my horseback riding habit) is way more dangerous than the glass or two of wine I have on weekends, and I’m not giving that up either.

       1. I was a little confused by that sentence. Does that mean if you drink ON AVERAGE one drink a day, your risk goes up 0.5% or is your risk higher if you binge drink all seven of your daily drinks on one occasion?

          1. I tried looking at the actual study to figure out where they got that number and then decided I didn’t have time to sort through all of it right now, but my guess is if you drink on average one drink a day the risk increases 0.5% from no drinking. For those who are bored, full study is here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltext

    10. The study says this: Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero.

        What you said “there’s no safe level” and what the headline says “there’s no healthy level” are both _not_ what the study finding says. If you’re going to cite a study, don’t distort it when you cite it.

        1. Um, I’m not distorting it – the study literally showed that no level of drinking is considered safe. Any possible benefits of low levels of drinking were far outweighed by the harms. The study did conclude that people can stick to certain levels of drinking to reduce risk to what many would consider acceptable levels. That is not the same as those levels being “safe.” Don’t accuse me of distorting a study when you are misreading your own quotes from it.

           1. Safety is a factor of risk tolerance. What risk you’re willing to tolerate is your choice. I guess if you’re defining “safe” as zero risk, your interpretation is true. I consider “safe” to mean within tolerable risk levels, because literally everything has some risk of harm attendant to it.

        2. ” the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero.”
           Doesn’t that mean that no level of drinking is safe, though? Of course it doesn’t mean if you have a drink you’re going to keel over and die on the spot, but it’s saying that even minimal drinking is not good for your health.

12. I’m not trying to restart the alcohol/cancer debate. But I saw an article on CNN that said 56% of American women have had a drink in the last year. That seems stunningly low to me. I drink less than almost everyone I know, am currently breastfeeding so I’m drinking even less than I normally do, and even I’ve had a drink in the last year (champagne at a wedding). Of course I know there are people who don’t drink for religious or other reasons but I find it really hard to believe 44% of women drink so rarely or never. Do you think people are lying to the survey? Or do you believe that almost half the women in this country haven’t had a drink in the last year?

    1. Abstaining from alcohol is not a Christian thing, but there are a lot of religious Christians that don’t drink, even in places you wouldn’t expect. I used to live in Denver (this was a while ago) and even there, where you wouldn’t expect it and people weren’t the typical southern evangelicals, I met numerous people who were religious and didn’t drink.

       1. This, also I suspect the percentages of non-drinkers are even higher outside of cities. Heck, a decent number of dry counties exist (mostly in the south) as well. Just because we all drink in our coastal cities doesn’t mean the rest of the country does. :)

          1. I live ‘in the south’ next to a dry county and have friends who live in that same county. The dry county’ simply means you pre plan and buy your alcohol to bring to the friends house when visiting before you go visit. It doesn’t slow anyone down from drinking, it just means people go other places to drink or stock up before getting home. Not to say that everyone in a dry county drinks, but certainly not everyone in a dry county abstains.
             Also, some of my Baptist friends drink, just not around their church crowd ;)

             1. Oh, I know, I’ve visited a dry county before and we just brought in all the booze! But I think the fact that they exist is indicative of at least some of the people there not being drinkers, no?

             2. The entire Baptist half of my family drinks. They just refuse to drink in front of each other, and judge the h*ll out of anyone who has the temerity to openly admit to drinking (aka me and my mom). It’s hilarious to watch the contortions.

       2. It’s definitely a thing in some Baptist and evangelical traditions, even when there isn’t an explicit rule (especially for women). I had hardly ever met a Protestant who drank until I went to college and met Methodists, Anglicans, etc. (who struck me as very wealthy and cultured with their fancy wine!). I knew Catholics, so I knew adults who drank, but some of the evangelicals were very sheltered from drinking culture and had odd beliefs about how much it takes to get drunk, or even what being drunk is like (basically the pink elephants sequence from Dumbo).

    2. It does seem a little low, but not preposterously so. There are a ton of religious people as well as immigrants from countries where women don’t typically drink.

    3. It seemed low at first glance, but then I considered all the people who don’t drink for medical reasons/interactions with medication, the elderly, disliking the taste, etc and it didn’t sound impossible.

       A friend works in an alcoholism-focused non-profit. I forget the exact statistic but something like half of alcohol is bought by the top 10% of drinkers.

    4. I cannot believe the number is that low. But maybe that is just basing numbers on my own personal anecdata and the circles in which I live. I have known literally one person ever in my life who never touches alcohol. One.

       1. I would say probably 3/4 of the women I know haven’t had a drink in the last year? My mom and MIL don’t drink ever (just don’t like the taste). Most of my close female friends abstain completely while pregnant and nursing and most of them are in that phase of life now and will be for the next 5 years or so. I’m the big drinker in my social circles and I have maybe 6 drinks a year.

          1. If I had written this when I was in my mid-thirties and all my friends were having babies, it might have been slightly different. Even then though, I am not sure anyone abstained completely for an entire year. Caveat, OBs in Canada tend to give slightly more relaxed advice about alcohol during pregnancy and nursing than those in the US based on previous discussions here.

          2. Where do you live?

             1. Toronto.

             2. I’m in the Bay Area – highly educated and in tech/finance/consulting. Mix of Asian and white. DH and I are white and not religious and basically no women in either of our families drink (except me). My parents live in the Midwest and in-laws in New England.

          3. My friends are having babies now and they all drink and breastfeed.

    5. Does it say the ages of the women surveyed? Because if it simply counts females from 0 to 100, there’s a good chunk of the population there that’s not drinking.

       Otherwise, my mother has had maybe a handful of drinks in the last decade. Just doesn’t like the taste. My grandmother hasn’t had a drink in at least 15 years, and even then it was only a couple a year. My husband’s family is Baptist and they don’t drink for religious reasons.

       1. In looking at the appendices for the study, I’m thinking that’s all ages. For 2016, for women ages 25-29, it lists the prevalence of current drinkers as 79%, for example. The US numbers for women are around pg. 912 of appendix 2 if anyone is interested-https://www.thelancet.com/cms/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31310-2/attachment/6629b8e6-b97d-4d4a-b7ea-65699abc610f/mmc2.pdf

    6. I am in biglaw and I don’t drink for health reasons. I grew up in a household/religion in which drinking is not allowed. Also, I do not enjoy the taste (particularly of wine).

       It’s not that rare.

    7. The above number seemed so low to me that I had to go and look for some Canadian research. The Canadian Addiction survey from 2004 surveyed three panels of approximately 2700 women each (aged from 15 upward but the the majority falling between the ages of 20 and 65).

       Over three quarters of all Canadian women (76.8%) and men (82.0%), reported they drank in the past year (Table 3.1). When controlling for all demographic characteristics, having drunk in the past year varied with age, province, marital status, education and income adequacy for women.

       As education increased, so did the prevalence of current drinking. Women with a university degree had almost twice the odds of current drinking (81.9%) than those who had not completed high school (63.4%).

    8. I used to belong to a religion in which alcohol was forbidden, and I didn’t have a drink for 10 years or so. And nobody I hung out with drank, either, and it didn’t seem weird at all because that was the water in which we were swimming, as it were.

       So yes, I believe the study. Even though I kind of drink like a fish these days and so do most of my friends.

    9. I’m not terribly surprised by that statistic. I think women (especially older to elderly women) are more likely to belong to religious traditions that don’t allow or heavily discourage drinking and/or abstain for health reasons. Most of the women in my family (pretty WASP-y family but not very high-class) might have a glass of wine or a cocktail at dinner, but they aren’t going to have a second drink. Some of them are on medications where you aren’t supposed to drink, and they abide by that restriction.

       My maternal grandmother didn’t really drink at all, and would actually get uncomfortable/almost upset if anyone had a drink in front of her at a social gathering. She was brought up in a religious denomination (Brethren) that was very much against drinking. Some of my relatives are Very Outwardly Pious Baptists, which means that the weddings are dry and if you’re a woman, you’ll get a tongue-lashing for joking about bringing a flask. However, the guys sneaking out to their cars for whiskey shots are A-OK.

13. For those are married (or in serious relationships), what has been the biggest pet peeve about your in-laws that you’ve had to learn to deal with? Also, what has been the biggest positive that you maybe weren’t expecting?

    For my in-laws to be, I was taken aback at how snobby they were about my family background (working class). They such a sweet son that I did not expect that attitude to come out of the woodwork. On the positive side, they have totally accepted that our wedding will not be the extravagant affair that South Asian weddings normally are and are letting us plan a smaller (by South Asian standards) wedding that fits our needs/budget better.

    My bff thinks they’re ok with the smaller wedding because they’re not as thrilled about my family/SES background. That’s possible I suppose, but I’m going to choose to view it as a positive because my fiance and I do not want some huge affair.

    1. The biggest thing I’m learning to deal with (also South Asian, but our families are from different parts of South Asia – same religion though, which makes things easier) is that my mother-in-law generally expresses very little interest in learning about my family’s culture but is constantly on me about doing things the Bengali way. Like, she’s been in America for 35 years and worked outside the home for a while, so she speaks decent English, but she deliberately chooses to speak in Bengali to me and then mildly complain about how I don’t speak Bengali (with all my free time to learn it).

       An unexpected positive is that outside of that, his mom is very sweet to me and really likes me a lot, and his family on a whole has really welcomed me (I especially like all of his cousins, who all around our age).

    2. That should read “They raised such a sweet son”

    3. Biggest pet peeve: they feed my son garbage food and drink at every possible opportunity.
       Biggest positive: they otherwise respect our parenting decisions and are very generous and supportive (both emotionally and with time).

       I call it a win.

    4. My petty pet peeve – they make a massive deal about presents. Long-time readers will remember our sage of being sent a request to transfer money to pay for the television that my BIL had already purchased.

       My real pet peeve – I don’t think there is a sense of security or unconditional love there. We went on holiday with my MILs and BIL and his family and one night, I just gave my husband a long hug because I realized it must have been so hard to grow up in a household where everyone talks about each other and is hypercritical.

       1. I am so there with you on the second thing. On the surface it’s all ‘we are a normal family that does everything in the proper way’, but then they will jokingly say stuff about DH ‘oh, he was never very athletic, or he was never very musical, he is too soft, he is too this or that’. Meanwhile he’s a lovely human who made a good career in his chosen field with hardships along the way that really scarred him and that were completely unnecessary because his parents are very well off but he didn’t want to ask them for help ever. Annoys the heck out of me.

    5. My biggest pet peeve, that I never anticipated, was how differently they would view our parenting choices, which are honestly pretty mainstream and not remotely extreme. My FIL has become a grumpy old man, and anytime our children are behaving less than perfectly, he is very critical of them. And trust me, we are intervening appropriately when the kids are acting up. But they’re kids, and they’re learning — he doesn’t get that at all. If they’re anything other than prim, proper and perfect, they’re acting “disrespectfully.” My MIL is far more reasonable, but FIL’s attitude has permanently affected my relationship with them.

       I don’t get it. DH hasn’t indicated that his dad was overly critical when he was growing up, but it makes me wonder. Because DH is much harder on our kids after spending a day with his dad, for example.

       An unexpected positive is that in some ways, I can relax more with DH’s family than my own, because they’re more open about disagreements and problems. In my family, you push that stuff under the rug.

       Also, his family allows drinking at family dinners and mine does not.

    6. My in-laws are awful. My FIL is nasty and what I would consider verbally abusive (and I grew up in a loud immigrant house where people yelled a lot so I’m not in the “yelling is automatically verbal abuse” camp). He is particularly cruel to my husband, but has also been very nasty to me. We have a baby and I’m terribly worried about what his interactions with her will look like when she’s older.
       My in-laws also don’t give gifts or say “I love you” which is so weird to me, because even though my parents yelled occasionally, they were also very effusive with love and attention. My husband told me when he was growing up, they would forget his birthday to acknowledge his birthday at all about half the time. That just blows my mind – I knew some very poor kids growing up who didn’t get lavish gifts, but their parents always acknowledged their birthday.

       1. Do not let your baby around this man if he’s abusive.

       2. Please take your child and leave if he is abusive.

          1. That’s my plan – to never have him around my kid without me there and to remove her from the situation if necessary. Fortunately they don’t live locally, and they only visit once or twice a year so interactions are limited.

    7. I have several grievances that are all pretty much related to the fact that I feel that they take advantage of my DH’s very generous nature, and give very little in return. Gifts are very transactional and extravagant. They tell him what to buy, and it always shocks me, every single time. A $500 phone. A $700 bracelet. When its his birthday, they give nothing. When its Christmas, they give him a tie. By the way, he’s 27 years old and not exactly rolling in money. Whenever anyone in the family has an issue, they call him, expecting him to take off work and help. (He does every time). But when its him who needs help, I’m the only one he can rely on. I’m not bitter because its a burden on me, its not at all, I just hate how uneven it is with his parents.

       1. My MIL is the same. She routinely ASKS specifically for gifts that my parents would never, in a million years, accept.

          She also just generally doesn’t like me, and thinks I’m an interloper in his son’s life. We’ve been together for five years and she’s never really been warm to me. This summer, the first thing she said to me at our wedding after the ceremony was “You win.” I have tried to be kind to her, and to save my capital with my husband on issues that matter. I don’t like to make him choose between us — because it’s unnecessary and because I don’t want him to feel pain or discomfort. But that wedding one was rough, and I have a hard time being around her since then.

          1. Holy Cow! “You win”!!!!! That’s just nuts.

    8. Pet Peeve: Complaining about being poor (they are not). It’s a pet peeve of mine generally, since I actually *did* grow up poor and know what it feels like to choose between food and bills, but they bought their house with cash, sent both kids to private K-12 and paid for college, and they have millions in the bank for the remainder of their retirement (I know because we pay their bill when they’re out of town.)

       It wouldn’t bother me as much if they didn’t weave this quality into judgment about totally reasonable choices that my DH and I make. “Wow, vacation? We never did that when our kids were young.” “You’re getting take-out again? It’s so much cheaper to make things from scratch at home.” Etc. Etc.

    9. Biggest pet peeve: My MIL was a very traditional stay-at-home mom and the adult children still revert to basically teenager status whenever they’re at the house and just sit around and seem to expect MIL to do everything (which she does….without asking for help but then getting sad and crying about how much work she has to do especially now that there are all the grandkids to accommodate … because of course she feels she must accommodate all the picky grandkids in addition to the picky adults). But then when I step in to help on holidays and stuff, she’ll be kind of judgy about the way I do things and it frustrates me that I’m frequently literally the only one helping (though I’ve gotten my husband to help more by basically being like “go help your Mom now”).

       Biggest plus: Both my MIL and FIL are just super duper caring people who really would do anything for their family. And while sometimes it frustrates me to see their good natures being (in my view) taken advantage of, it’s nice that they care so much. They’re even very attentive to little things, like they know the kinds of juice I like to drink and always stock up before we visit.

    10. My biggest pet peeve? That they didn’t save at all for retirement and are thus either planning to move in with us or have us pay for a home for them near us. I did not see that one coming.

    11. They support Trump. (on the plus side, Trump was the impetus for their son to join the democratic party, so there’s one good thing he’s done)

    12. Pet peeve: DH is expected to pay for things for his younger siblings and parents. For siblings, he’s expected to help pay their college tuition, and for parents, he’s expected to keep them in updated electronics and accessories. Because he’s the oldest, nobody helped pay his tuition and he’s still paying off loans, but because he has a job in an industry they regard as very high-paying, he’s expected cover for the rest of the family. He has a good job, but paying for all of this has really held him back from other goals he wanted to achieve. For example, we want to buy a house. With both our incomes, we should have been able to save enough to do that within about 5 years. However, his actual income is about half of what it should be because of how much goes to stuff like his dad “needed” a new gold watch and his brother took a semester abroad in Italy. So the house plan has been pushed to 10 years, with the caveat that his income changes frequently based on these demands so it may be longer. It’s very cultural and DH and I have separate accounts so it’s not my money involved so I try to stay out of it, but it’s really annoying.

        Plus: They’re a very loving and close-knit family and they’re very kind to our kid. They were much more accepting of my cultural background than I expected and have had surprisingly few problems with our decisions not to raise Kid in their religion.

    13. Biggest pet peeve: They think my husband poops gold. The man is a saint, the love of my life, and super sweet and caring. He also makes (and made, particularly as a teen), some poor life choices that results in him wandering about for a bit, quitting jobs and school, and debt. To this day, any idea he has is met with unbridled enthusiasm and it’s the greatest idea ever. While I appreciate that they are supportive of him, sometimes it leaves me as the only person to talk some sense into him and it has caused issues in that we are still paying off that debt. I have no clue how they expected their [low paying/creative job] son to pay off law school level-type debt. Oh and they voted for the President and think he is doing so well (I come from an immigrant family and some of these “policies” are directly impacting my family and they know it and totally feel super sympathetic about it/helped fund some of the issues we are handling).

        Biggest plus: They adore me! They think I am the best thing that happened to their kid. He got his life together and will be debt free shortly. They also appreciate that my white collar job is super fancy and they like bragging about it to their friends. Even with their cognitive dissonance (especially when it comes to politics), I love them because they funded some of my education and made some of my dreams come true. They’ve also treated me as a daughter and I acknowledge that in many ways the biggest pet peeve made my life easy in many ways (we’ve always got someone to support our ideas/encourage us).

    14. I am extraordinarily fortunate to have wonderful future in-laws.

        They are very good people anyway, and, as all their other children married a long time ago, they are “broken in” for children-in-law. They’ve watched their kids have happy marriages with people from different family backgrounds, and with different personalities and different parenting styles.

    15. I’ve been married three times but I’ve only ever had a total of two parents-in-law: My first husband had a mom and my second husband had a dad.

        From my MIL I learned how to be a great one in three easy steps:

        1. Give great gifts (she had a son and a son-in-law, and a daughter and a daughter-in-law, and the in-laws got the same gifts her own children got)
        2. Love the baby (enough said about that, right?)
        3. Mind your own business

        My FIL was quite old when I knew him (he passed away at 95 some years ago) but he was pretty great because he minded his own business and when he died (suddenly and with no fuss) he had all his affairs in order.

        I am very fortunate because no pet peeves about either of them. And current Lovely Husband is a childless widower orphan with no siblings so I hit the jackpot there!

    16. The most surprising thing is how my in-laws continue to make excuses and allowances for my husband’s poor behaviour in a way that does not happen in my family of origin. The other primary tensions with my in-laws are around scheduling and sharing family time, which I would have expected with any in-laws.

        I have been most surprised by how generous my in-laws have been – they gave us a large gift towards a down payment on our house with no strings attached.

    17. My father-in-law really freely expresses his contempt for everyone whose opinions he disagrees with, and our opinions are very different. When I venture forth to say that “I have a hard time believing that everyone who thinks [whatever] is stupid. I think that, and I’m not stupid.” he gets incredibly hurt and defensive I could possibly have thought he was calling me stupid.

        On the other hand, he absolutely has my back in same way my actual dad does. If I needed him to do anything for me, he would do it without question and as quickly as possible.

    18. Two pet peeves:

        1) I grew up in a family where kids and marriage were considered great things, but there was no pressure to do either one, and no rush. I’m amazingly spoiled in that regard. His family is the stereotypical “when are you getting married? when are you having babies? WE WANT GRANDCHILDREN!” family. My boyfriend and I are moving toward marriage, but not rushing to the altar, and no plans to have kids, and I wish he’d tell her that so she gets off my uterus.

        2) The things they post on Facebook. It’s not all bad, but his mom posts a lot of “well I guess I should get up for work now” or “I’m hungry, what am I having for dinner?” type statuses, and his dad posts a lot of “kids these days” crap: pictures of stuff commonly used in the 50’s but not used now, with the caption “I’ll bet no one knows what this is, share if you know”; and “we’re the best generation because we _____ and kids these days won’t understand.” He can feel however he wants about kids these days, but it’s like he doesn’t know he raised two millennials, or that the women they marry will probably also be millennials.

        1. “Gets off my uterus”.

           I am totally stealing this phrase or a variant of it to use when the ILs and my parents complain that The Kid is the only grand on both sides.

           Heh heh heh.

    19. 1) They’re very advanced in their careers and all of their kids went straight to high-paying, benefits-heavy careers, so they blithely assume everyone has the same access they do to luxuries like lots of vacation time, flexible schedules, and disposable income. Twice now, they’ve planned 5-day family vacations in the middle of the week, not using any weekend days, so I either use half my year’s allotted leave on one family vacation, or I’m the grinch who won’t take off work.

        2) His stepmother is obsessed with Christmas, and particularly, giving her children many, many gifts. Unwrapping presents at their house takes hours because there are so many freaking presents. And I am actually a grinch about Christmas. I hate the commercialism, the cheesiness, and the imposition of a religious holiday onto every aspect of my life for the entire month of December. Also I’m Jewish.

        3) They refuse to be upfront about money. They’ve offered to cover certain expenses for us, and then give us a check that’s either well below or well above the actual cost of the thing. My SO has no idea how much his parents have in savings, what their income is, or what will happen to any of their accounts or possessions when they die. How is this a good strategy?

        However, they are fantastically loving people. They are incredibly supportive and closeknit, easygoing, and very kind. And they raised an amazing set of kids.

        1. Your third point is the thing that bugs me most about MY parents! Their salaries are public record (gov’t) so I have a good idea of income and retirement, but no idea about savings or a will or any other financial details. Sometimes they’ll pay for fairly significant expenses without question and I’ll assume they’re doing fine, other times they skimp in areas that make me concerned about their financial stability. As a rule, they don’t talk about money. Ever. Siblings don’t know any more information than I do. It’s weird and I hate it.

    20. Biggest positive: my mil and dh’s several problem sibs live 1000 mi away
        Biggest negative: my lovely fil passed away 14 years ago and him being alive would have had a nice impact on that circus.

        If you asked my dh this about his family, he’d say the same…I’m not just being cray.

    21. My inlaws live in Ohio so our visits typically coincide with school holidays.

        Biggest pet peeve: My MIL expects my boys (4 and 7) to play inside during their visits. However, they live on a working farm with all the exciting equipment that goes with it. The weather is easily fifteen degrees cooler than our Texas heat and when it snows you can’t drag them inside for chocolate cake. My FIL loves being outside and will cater to their every whim. (Raking leaves, tracker rides, building forts – basically my sons’ dream come true.) My MIL sulks that the boys don’t try to bond with her in the house despite their pleas for Grandma to join them….outside.

        Biggest plus: Our trips to visit them are truly a vacation. The kids crash after dinner and my husband and I can sleep in. I set out pop-tarts in the morning and brown bag lunches on the front steps. My feral kids come back happy….and dirty.

14. I’m telling my boss and team today that I’m pregnant. I feel as good about this conversation as I can– keep it short, be positive, their own reactions are their problem– yet I’m still nervous. The practice group head isn’t in yet so I’m basically sitting here waiting for him to get in and just overthinking while I wait.

    Distract me or send positive vibes, please?

    1. It will be totally fine.

    2. Good Luck! I did this yesterday (after having a very unsatisfactory reaction in the past), and got an amazing reaction. My boss was under super pressure and said he only had two seconds but then was genuinely delighted and my director and team were down right giddy. I haven’t even been here a year and it is my fourth (in Canada where I disappear for a year). So it was a huge relief and a nice surprise.

    3. Sending the best of vibes! It’ll be fine. And, congrats!

    4. It went great! Thanks for the vibes. And Seafinch, glad it went well for you too!

15. I like to wear shift dresses with a collar to work – sort of a half shirtdress if that makes sense. A shirtdress that doesn’t have buttons all the way down. I don’t know the name of this style and it’s making it hard to shop for. Does anyone know? Is it “henley shirtdress”? Thanks!

    1. I don’t know what it’s called, but I think Banana Republic Factory has several of these if you are looking.

       I find their quality to be fine, FWIW. Fit is similar to regular Banana.

    2. Is the the style?

       https://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?pid=820933002

       I have this dress in a dark denim. Maybe others can steer you towards more “work appropriate” options.

16. Does those of you who wear one color of eye shadow (and not the multicolored sets), what kind and color do you wear and is it shimmery? I’m thinking about adding this to my routine and the Laura mercier caviar stick and Bobbi brown cream shadow are my favorites so far but I can figure out what color makes sense for work. I am pale with dark brown eyes and hair (east asian heritage).

    1. I have bright blue eyes and pale skin, so I look weird with multi-coloured shadows. My eyes stand out on their own. I love the Laura Mercier caviar sticks! They are so easy to use and so pretty.

    2. When I only wear one color of eye shadow, it’s close to my skin color with a very subtle shimmer.

       1. This is what I wear to work also. It’s a slightly shimmery taupe color. I love it and it’s almost gone and I can’t find it anymore. :( (It’s a drugstore brand.)

          1. Try taupe from Eyeko. It’s slightly shimmery taupe and I wear it constantly

          2. Urban Decay Sin might be similar and worth a try. I wear it to work every day – usually on the inner half of my eyelid, sort of as a highlighter, with a lighter matte brown in the crease at the outer half and blend where they meet. I also wear it on its own across the lid when I’m going for a more minimal look and on the weekends.

    3. I rarely wear eye shadow, but when I do it’s usually just a swipe of the Maybelline color tattoo in bad to the bronze. It’s got some shimmer but I use a pretty light hand and think it’s fine for work. (Pale with blue eyes FWIW).

    4. Creams tend to crease if not set properly so I would focus on pressed powders. Tbh anything one or two shades lighter or darker than your skin (and in same warmth/cool territory as your skin) with some amount of pearlescent or shimmer (NO GLITTER) will look great for daily wear and easy application. I’m a fan of MAC or ColourPop for these.

    5. I wear a non shimmery eye shadow base / tr1sh mcev0y eye base essentials in Bare. It lightens up my eyelid area and stays un-creased all day.

    6. I’m in a more casual work place, but I often wear more brightly colored shadows. I wore green on Monday as the event my dept was doing required wearing green t shirts. When I’m going for a more neutral look a lighter brown is easy for my pale skin and blue eyes. Pink, purple, blue all feature regularly in my makeup – I love eye shadow and since I also wear a lot of color I think it works for me.

       I even have a 256 color palette for when I need just the right shade. My favorite is the Anastatia Soft Glam that I got at Sephora this summer.

    7. When I use just one color, it’s a gold crayon style one. Can’t remember the brand name. I don’t do this for work though. I’m much too lazy to do that in the morning.

17. I want to buy a colorful rug for my bedroom – everything is neutral (white walls/dark wood floor/ gray trim with white bedding, light gray bed, black end tables, slightly metallic copper dresser). I would love to spice up the room with a pattern / colorful rug. I was thinking a purple safavieh style rug, but am open to suggestions and other ideas!

    1. I love Ruggable. They have really great patterns and the rugs are machine washable (the whole point of the business)!

       1. What do these rugs feel like?

          1. Very soft, there are some plush varieties, and they come with a thick back no skid padding.

       2. omg thank you for this!

    2. I’ve been lusting after this rug: https://www.luluandgeorgia.com/ede-rug-orange-and-pink?utm_source=73861&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_content=affiliate&utm_campaign=product&source=pepperjam&publisherId=73861&clickId=2303718262

       (I pinned it from some blog so sorry if there’s an affiliate link, I don’t know how to make it go away)

       1. For future reference, just cut off the URL from the question mark onwards; those are just appended parameters that help track advertising/referral campaigns.

          1. Thank-you! It drives me crazy!

    3. I’m always in favor of a traditional Persian rug. You can find these used lots of places. I like the tribal styles. And various color combinations are also easy to find. I’m partial to red bases, very traditional, but in my bedroom we have a huge size rug handed downfrom my husband’s parents that has a cream base and a paler red/blue/gold pattern.

       I also highly prefer natural fibers to acrylic and these rugs are all wool.

    4. I’ve had great luck with rugs usa dot com (all one word)

       1. Me too!

    5. Thanks for all the suggestions! I have so many to go through now :)

    6. I love the rugs at the Tufenkian online outlet store. They are really good quality, and there’s modern as well as traditional choices.

18. Anyone have any favorite shapewear? I have a protruding belly and not much waist, so I know all about Spanx high-waisted shorts; just curious if anyone has any favorite cinchers or other things. Looking for a light, comfortable option for dailyish and a super suck option for fancy times. Thanks!

    1. To be honest I hate it all but in a pinch will wear a high waisted shorts style shaper from lane Bryant, which I ordered online. Even if you’re not plus sized the smallest size would work because it’s shapewear, and it always makes sense to size up. The lane Bryant is much more comfortable and less likely to roll up in the legs than the Spanx

19. For those of you who have bought children to Hamilton, does anyone show up in costumes?

    My kids (school aged) love it and know all of the words to all of the songs. And we have costumes from school talent shows. Would it be weird to have a Peggy and Eliza (and/or possibly a George Washington) in the crowd?

    In case it matters: not orchestra seats. Cast probably won’t be able to see us. Costumes don’t include hoop skirts or obtrusive wigs.

    I used to live in NoLa where costumes aren’t really eye-raising (maybe in my crowd???). I’m inclined to vote yes.

    1. Didn’t see anyone wearing costumes when I went in Chicago but this sounds ADORABLE and I think you should definitely do it!

    2. Do it! What jerk would possibly judge kids for getting super excited about their favorite musical and dressing in costumes?

    3. In NYC? I would not do costumes there. When we went in NYC, our 11-year-old wanted to wear her Eliza costume and my husband vetoed it, which I was glad of because absolutely no one in the audience was in costume. (What really shocked me was that most people were dressed like they were going to the grocery store, but whatever.)

       We have seen a few kids in costumes at touring productions of other shows in our SEUS city.

       1. Not NYC.

          It’s funny, I can’t wear my LaCannadienne Passion boots (1″ heel riding-style boots) anymore b/c it feels #TooHamilton

    4. They’re kids! Everyone will think it’s adorable. I vote definitely and firmly yes (and if you bring them to cast door I bet the cast would love to take pics with them).

       Signed possibly the world’s biggest Hamilton fangirl….and cosplayer (though not a Hamilton cosplayer but still, very supportive of costumes lol).

    5. I would LOVE it if I saw dressed up kids in the audience and I’m betting the staff/cast would as well. (Not as cute on adults tho)

       Definitely do it.

    6. I went in Chicago. I think costumes for an adult would be a little weird, but costumes for kids sounds very cute.

    7. I went in Chicago and did not see anyone in costumes. I’ve never heard of showing up in costume, but if they’re having fun, why the heck not.

20. I am having a real issue with my mid-30s, post-kids wardrobe. A lot of my go to clothes in my twenties don’t really work anymore, I can’t find a ton of new workwear that I like and I’m finding that I feel best when I’m dressed in head to toe black. Can that be my work uniform? Is that too weird?

    1. Why would that be weird? you do you.

    2. Not weird! Do it! Feel good about yourself!

    3. I was pretty much head to toe black or gray in my 30s and 40s. Go for it. No one ever thought I was goth or unprofessional in any way.

       1. +1. Most of my non-work clothes are black and gray, too. The only time it gets weird is when I go to say, a baby shower.

       2. People get picked on enough – does goth have to be used to derogatorily?

          I’m goth. I wear tons of black, I’m in senior management and look super professional.

    4. If you only feel comfortable in black, wear black. But, if you are not in NYC/SF/LA, people might start to notice. It would be really weird in my office if someone only wear black, and I would notice but not care.

       1. No, really, no one would notice or care in Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, etc. either. It’s pretty normal.

    5. Just as long as there is variety in your silhouettes, no one will ever notice.

21. I’ve had orthodics for plantar fascitis in my sneakers for a decade or more now. When a hurricane flooded our house last year, I “lost” all my sneakers, flip flops, and hand-made Canadian boots – in terms of footwear. Since then, we have mostly been in limbo and “camping” in our flooded home. This continues to mean shoes all.the.time 24/7. I immediately ordered a pair of teva flip flops. Those or new LLBean moc slippers have been de rigueur. Doing all the work ourselves, it’s also been new sneakers with inserts. After a year of the tevas, I can tell the plantar fascitis is coming back. Splurged (as we are now in a spartan lifestyle and financial state) and got a low and a wedge Vionic flip flops… after less than ten minutes, I can tell the difference.

    Thanks SO VERY MUCH, Hive!

    1. Wow, so sorry about your house!! Glad to hear the vionics flip flops are working for you. I have those too.

       FWIW my go to when the PF flares are inflexible soles shoes, so dansko clogs basically. I don’t wear them to work but I wear them evenings and weekends till I feel better. Just in case the magic of the vionics wears off for you.

    2. I am terribly sorry about your house. However, so glad you love Vionic flipflops as much as me–PF is the worst. They’ve been a total game changer for me too. And the flip flops are the only Vionics that come in Giant Size 12 for me! They are sometimes on sale at Rack and 6pm now that you know your size. All the best to you–when I am going through a tough time, I tell myself things can only go up from there!

    3. Thank you both so very very much! It’s a difficult time with the “anniversary” of the flood here and all the news and videos of (1) what happened and (2) all the people building new large homes, or elevating theirs, or moved back in with repairs and renovations. We only just installed our own sheetrock two months ago… But that’s forward progress. And so far, no flooding this year!

       Thanks again, Hive, for all you do to guide and lift each other up.

22. PSA. I got the MMLF Jardigan in the new Charcoal and I feel like my wardrobe is complete.

    1. I had that in my shopping cart but was hesitating. You just pushed me over the edge. Ordered!

23. I’m relatively new in a management role, and I’m finding that my time management skills need an overhaul. What worked for me as an individual performer isn’t working now that I have other people to oversee, more meetings, more to-do’s, etc. I feel like my team is relatively organized because we have a project management tool, but I’m struggling on an individual level because I’m pulled in so many directions. I feel like I can’t focus on anything!

    What has worked for others in management positions? Do you try to block off time every day for your own personal projects? Set aside a specific time to go through emails and other things? My office is a very email-heavy culture, which I loathe, because it feels like a constant interruption. My own team is good at using Slack for stuff that needs an immediate answer, but that doesn’t apply across the board!

    I’ve always prided myself on being organized, but I’m feeling serious anxiety about my inability to prioritize my own tasks, in addition to assigning work, approving others’ stuff, plus getting the management stuff done.

    1. I think the biggest hurdle to get over is thinking about management activities as being “work” which is just as important as execution was when you were an individual contributor, with the difference that no one really hounds you about it so it can often get deprioritized. Think about how you best manage to accomplish other things in your life like that (exercise, etc.). For me, I set aside 2 hours on Friday afternoons and I have a checklist that I go through about management stuff – e.g. our weekly team meeting agenda, my 1:1 meeting agendas or things I need to follow up on, hold a little “buffer” time in your calendar each day so you can accommodate team requests. If I have my own deliverables, I do set aside time. Also, if your company offers management training stuff – take it! So many people don’t and it’s not always great but there are definitely best practices and even doing some of them puts you ahead of many managers. Do stuff like Goals and Development Discussions for your team. Also, I am in camp “scan your email but you will never accomplish your goals if you allow your inbox to be a dictator of your time and attention”

       1. This was really helpful – thank you.

          I work in higher ed and there is pretty much zero management training here, sadly. I’ve pieced some things together by sitting in on webinars and such, but I really, really wish there were a formal management training session.

    2. You might find the Getting Things Done methodology helpful … it’s honestly not the easiest to implement just by reading the book, but the David Allen company offers consulting to get you set up and trained and it’s a really great opportunity to clear the decks, reflect on goals and what’s important to you and then the metholodogy itself is really easy and intuitive to use. I just find the book kind of heavy on “why” and less prescriptive on “how.”

24. any ladies in private equity here? I’m in consulting and seriously considering and exit to PE. wondering if anyone has any thoughts, especially how you feel about it as a culture fit (I’m a WOC, for example, but have been really successful in other almost entirely male professions.

25. I am thinking of ordering a pair of LK Bennett pumps. I have narrow heels and usually have to buy narrow-width shoes to keep them from falling off, but I am not finding anything good in narrow widths these days. Will these work with narrow feet? And what size to order? I am typically a 7.5 or 8 narrow in US sizes, 39 in European sizes, but the LK Bennett size chart says a 39 is equivalent to US 8.5 and I fear it would be too big.

    1. They are the best pumps I have found for my feet, which sound similar to yours (narrow heels, regular width in the toe area). I usually wear a 7-7.5 in US sizes, and I buy 37.5.

    2. Yes they run narrow and I would get an 8 in US size equivalent.

       I have a narrow-ish size 9 and the 40 fits me nicely.

26. Wise ladies of the internet – are there any books or resources out there for non-lawyers on how to talk to lawyers? I am not a lawyer, but my boss is and he whenever he says something, it’s very commanding and authoritative, and I have a difficult time pushing back. I was just wondering if there were any tips I can employ for providing my own commanding and authoritative stance when I don’t agree with him or when I think he needs to consider additional information. He has a tendency to make me feel like an idiot sometimes (I don’t think that’s his intention) because he’s so confident in what he’s saying I have a hard time responding.

    Side note – he really is a great boss, but I think he speaks before he thinks sometimes. Also note, I am not his assistant or a paralegal. We do not work in a firm.

    1. I don’t think that’s a lawyer thing, it’s a jerk thing. Law school just happens to attract a lot of jerks.

       1. +1

    2. Yeah, lawyers are just people. In theory we’re trained to think about issues in a certain way, but that personality type is decidedly not uniform across the profession. Lawyers’ styles- interpersonal, communication, management– are so varied you can’t make generalizations like that. There’s no manual for teaching non-lawyers how to speak with us like we’re a different species.

    3. I’d reframe your question: How can I develop more confidence so I can feel OK even when I’m talking with someone who intimidates and who does not listen to me?

       Two issues: a) how you speak and what you think/feel and b) whether he will ever listen. You can only control A) you.

       1. Yes, ok, this is phrased much better and I think you hit the nail on the head: I need to work on building confidence. I tend to over analyze and question everything to the point of being doubtful and I need to work on that.

27. What are your thoughts on leaving negative reviews on sites like Yelp? I’ve only ever posted reviews if I’ve had a good experience. I recently had a horrible pedicure though–think aggressive stone-rubbing over my ankle bone (ouch) and polish all over my skin. I did alert the staff that I wasn’t fully satisfied, but there was a language barrier and I don’t think it really got through. I wasn’t about to make a scene in the salon, so I just paid and left. On the one hand, I feel kind of petty complaining about such a first-world problem. On the other hand, I’d like to prevent others from having the awful experience I had. What are your thoughts on this?

    1. I leave Google reviews (I think Yelp is kind of scammy) if I had a really, really bad experience.

       1. Interesting – I feel the total opposite. Yelp tends to have a broader range of reviews which I appreciate where I find that Google is full of star reviews with no text, or people complaining.

    2. I used to write a ton of reviews, both good and bad, because I get a lot out of Yelp reviews and wanted to contribute to the community. Lately I’ve cut back and I think twice before writing a bad review. I still do it sometimes, but I want to make sure it’s really a problem and not just that I had a one-off bad experience.

       1. But how do you know the difference between a problem and a one-off bad experience? If 10 people all have a poor one-off experience, wouldn’t you like to know that as potential user of a service or product?

          In talking to Yelp management and other Yelp Elite, consensus is to leave the bad review (or mediocre review, calling out specific things that are good and bad).

          1. I used to be Yelp Elite, but I “resigned” (lol) because I wanted to be a little more anonymous and not have my face up there with my reviews. It’s not that I don’t leave bad reviews. I still leave some when I’ve had a really terrible experience. It’s just that I try to be a bit more thoughtful about it, because I don’t want to trash a business that doesn’t deserve it. One example is that I used to review restaurants after the first visit. Now I try to visit at least twice before I write a review, so that I have a better sense of the food and service. I do this for restaurants I like too, fwiw. But if I really hate a restaurant on the first visit, I’m unlikely to go back. And if I never go back I don’t generally write a review, so that limits how many negative restaurant reviews I write (exceptions would be for something like a dirty environment or terrible service from multiple people and/or management, because those are less likely to be a one-off experience). Part of it is also that I moved to an area where most businesses don’t have many Yelp reviews. If a business has 4 reviews and you write a 1 star review, it’s going to change their overall star rating. I feel worse about doing that than I do about writing a 1 star review for a business that has 300 yelp reviews.

    3. I think it’s fine to leave a factual negative review – so, stay away from statements like “worst pedicure ever!!!” and stick to the facts of what happened and why it didn’t work for you.

    4. The whole point of a review site is to provide honest feedback. If people have negative experiences and don’t post about them, how will others, or the vendor, know?

       I’m a Yelp Elite, and people often comment how much they appreciate my negative reviews. I have hundreds of reviews published on Yelp, and maybe 10-15% are negative. Negative reviews should be like good positive ones – very specific and detailed. Also include pictures as appropriate.

28. Accurate. He didn’t learn that in law school; he went to law school because he was already that way.

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