First of all, this was in direct response to a post that was included in my response. Not that hard to figure out. But besides that, what the heck are you talking about? I'm a proud woman, my daughter is a proud woman. My non-binary child respects that other people can be male, female, or something in-between. No one is saying we need to erase sex. But there ARE people who exist that do not identify with either sex. What you really seem to want is to erase those "inconvenient" people.

You are so, so misguided on this. My child was sexually abused, and I am sure this is where some of the gender dysphoria is coming from. It IS in fact very traumatizing for them to be called a girl. You should stop talking so much and try to learn something.

Is it really that hard to say "them" instead of "her" or "him?" How in the heck is this one little change an unreasonable approach? Do you realize how unempathetic and uncaring you are coming across? How is this even related to phonics?

But you can't change the culture without changing words. I imagine your coworkers are glad about that as well. No, it really has not become popular to do this. Not at all. There are no litterboxes in school bathrooms. Sneezyone-It's short for non-binary, as in NB spelled out.

Try telling that to my 11 year old child. It may not matter to you, but it matters to a lot of people.

Well, I believe you. Someone close to me divorced someone I learned was probably a narcissist. Honestly I always thought she could do better, but whatever, she seemed happy enough. Turns out she'd been struggling for years. I remember him going MIA when their baby was born, so she was basically a single mom the first month of the baby's life. He acted like such a child, but eventually came around and decided to be a dad. Then, years later, she found out he bought a car behind her back and that was the final straw. I'm sure there were tons of other things between those events that I never heard about. But after 10+ years of him pulling stuff like this, he was completely blindsided by the divorce papers. She had to get a restraining order because of how he reacted. He went on FB and complained about how his wife wasn't willing to work on repairing the marriage. That's when I blocked him. I am sure there are people who think he was the victim, and it makes me so mad. All she ever did was work on the marriage, for over a decade. He just wasn't willing to participate until he realized his easy life was coming to an end.

Really soft throw blankets are always a hit around here.

I work from home. Once or twice, I've forgotten to disconnect from a Teams meeting after meetings with my boss (and I guess she did too?). Meetings with her are very intense, usually she gives me a long list of new things to do, so once they're over I'm relieved. I know one time she might have overheard me expressing my relief to one of my kids that the meeting was over. Another time I think I might have grabbed a snack after (eating to cope with the stress) and started eating with the camera on me. Fortunately I don't think she was actually paying attention but it's still embarrassing to think she might have caught something. I'm much better at actually leaving a meeting now.

There are different reasons for evictions. There are good and bad landlords who take advantage. There are good and bad tenants who take advantage. I would feel bad if another one of my neighbors was evicted, even though he gets quite loud with his friends on his porch and someone (not me) calls the cops on him at least once a week for being so loud. But he's just loud, not threatening. The evicted neighbor I was talking about trashed her house and yard from Day 1 (not merely in response to eviction), but I'm pretty sure the reason she was evicted was not paying rent for over a year. How long is a landlord expected to let someone live rent-free? I am sad for my ex-neighbor's kids, who deserve a stable home life. But I will not feel bad about being relieved that a dangerous presence in my neighborhood is gone.

I grew up in the suburbs. When I turned 13 I chose to have my birthday dinner here: https://www.eddebevics.com/ I have no idea if that would be appealing to y'all but it just popped into my head when you asked for suggestions.

No, I don't think all landlords are bad. I think there are landlords who are only in it for the money, and there are landlords who do what they should and take care of problems in the spaces they rent out. As a potential source of income, I'd have to bow out because I would want to be conscientious and I just don't have it in me. As a student I had both types of landlords, and I have very positive thoughts about the good ones.

I don't live in a great neighborhood and evictions are pretty common all around me. The latest, I have to say, made me happy. It was a single mom who smoked weed all the time (legal here), stinking up the neighborhood. She let her kids run wild all day and would occasionally yell out at the top of her lungs for them to come home. One of her kids was very nice, but the other caused major chaos all the time. I actually just called the cops on the mother when I saw her beating up some guy in their driveway. It makes me sad to think about what she probably did to her kids, if she was willing to do that to a man bigger than her. CPS was already involved. I'm with you on owning rental property. Whenever I hear someone say it's passive income I think, are you crazy? I know some landlords aren't on top of things and don't put any work into it, but I can't imagine being like that. And then yes, the cleanouts when disgruntled tenants leave. No way!

Personally, I would just quietly put it back in the box. But I'm afraid of confrontation. Sorry you're dealing with this.

I recently switched from Farmer's to Geico for car and home insurance. I think premiums are going up everywhere but Farmer's is simply out of control. I switched auto first a few months ago, and my agent actually gave me a guilt trip because I didn't ask him for ways to lower my rate. Except I HAD done that a year ago and he said all I could do was install their stupid driving app, so I did that. Then when I saw how much they were raising my homeowner's insurance a couple months ago, I decided to switch that too. Farmer's has made the homeowner's switch an absolute nightmare. They made a typo or something about my cancellation date being 3 weeks earlier than I told them (which I had in writing) and I've been having to provide documentation to my mortgage company to show I WAS insured that whole time, I've had to wait for refund checks, then apply them back to escrow multiple times. If I asked my agent a question he said to ask corporate, and guess who corporate told me to ask? I have no idea why Farmer's is so high but if it's because they have local agents, it is 100% not worth it. They are useless. As far as savings, I have the same level of coverage. I added a teen driver and a second car when I switched to Geico and it's about $10 more per month than when I was the only driver with one car with Farmer's. I'm saving 40% on my homeowner's insurance.

Not exactly the same thing, but I've been on continuous birth control for almost 10 years so I can avoid PMDD and wanting to kill myself every month. By some miracle I found a pill one that didn't make me crazy, and it was amazing. Then a few months ago the insurance company decided to switch me to something cheaper. Sure enough, it made me crazy like almost every other pill I've ever taken. I thought at my age (almost 50) I could just go off BC and be normal (hahaha). Nope. It was definitely in my head that I was giving them what they wanted by just going off of birth control completely, so they wouldn't have to pay for it. I'm not a big conspiracist except when it comes to basically any kind of insurance coverage. I decided to go back on the good pill and just do self-pay. There is a savings card associated with this, which makes it affordable. Otherwise, there's no way I could pay for it every month. It might not seem like birth control is life or death but I think when it prevents you from wanting to kill yourself, it can be. But they never care or ask why you're taking a particular medication, just switch you randomly to save a penny.

Oh and FWIW, I appreciate when I visit and someone's home is clean. No judgement if someone doesn't have a clean house-we all go through rough patches etc., but a clean house shows a level of respect for your guests. You knew they were coming, so you made it nice for them. And in truly messy homes, I can't help but feel a bit "dirty" sitting on their furniture and touching their belongings and eating their food if offered. Maybe that's a bit of a "me problem," but I can't help it. I prefer to visit clean homes.

You've been subjected to a lifetime of being put down just for existing. Of course it's triggering. Imagine if you let the cleaning slip and they came to see your house then. Suddenly they'd be on your case for not being neat enough. There is no pleasing these people, and it's a very hard thing to accept because you're conditioned to be a people pleaser (me too). ETA: I just remembered something with my own mom and how nothing would please her. I used to drink, ESPECIALLY when she came for a visit. So of course she expressed her disapproval about me drinking. Years down the line I decided to stop drinking. Guess what, she thought that was a bad decision too. I mean, in what universe would anyone think that their daughter not drinking is a bad thing? There is no logic whatsoever.

I'm wondering if the people making these comments are the same as the people Indigo has come asking for help in dealing with in the past. Because if so (and frankly even if not), this is absolutely the only way to deal with it. Those toxic personalities ONLY say things to get a rise out of people. There is nothing you can say to change their opinion. Likely they're unable to deal with the fact that their houses are not clean so they have to put you down and act like it's a bad thing. Do not JADE-Justify, Argue, Defend, or Explain to narcissists. It's just not worth it. I think if anything, I'd say something like "I like it when my house is clean. Please pass the bean dip."

Funny that this came up today, because I was marveling about how I had an old couch to get rid of, so I scheduled an appointment with Got Junk this morning, and they just left with my junk. I was married to someone like your DH. He refused to get rid of anything. And he insisted that we collect recycling, but there were no recycling pickup services available to us at the time. He promised he would run it to the recycling center regularly. He got all this stuff to create a recycling system in our garage. The recycling collected, and collected, and collected. Our garage became a literal trash heap. (I'm pro-recycling, but I was the one dealing with small kids most of the time while also working, so this was *his* project). It wasn't just that. For instance, he bought a beat-up pickup truck behind my back and paid for a storage unit for, well, I don't have a clue how long. Despite not being a mechanic, he was convinced he could fix it up. Actually, there was always a spare pickup in our driveway too that barely ever worked. I only learned about the secret truck during the divorce, when I noticed a bill for the storage service that he wasn't there to intercept. He also would never let me call someone to get anything fixed because he was going to do it. But of course, instead of fixing things around the house, he went out and bought trucks behind my back. The nice house we bought together a few years into our marriage was a wreck 10 years later because of all the unfinished projects. So you see, it can be extremely freeing to be able to call a junk collector to pick up old stuff you no longer have a use for. I also found some other things in the garage to get rid of-things that were potentially usable but when I thought about it, I hadn't used them in years and probably never would. Similarly, it sucks to have to call a plumber, but also it's nice to have a constantly running toilet fixed in a timely manner. Our divorce was for very serious reasons and I understand your reasons for not getting a divorce, but I love the idea of you separating and having your own space about which you can make your own decisions. Best of luck.

I agree, and I find the drivers in Kansas less troublesome than the drivers around Dallas.

I'm from near Chicago. I usually parked at Midway and took a train into the city, rather than having to drive into the city and fight for parking. I had several conferences at the Palmer House. It's been a decade or two, but IIRC that was a nice area with lots of shopping. I have a pretty big phobia of driving just about anywhere in Chicagoland these days. Even the interstates out by the suburbs are crazy. People drive like maniacs, crazy lane switches, and they don't think twice about cutting you off at 80 mph. So just have your defensive driving hat on, go with the flow (be prepared to drive well over the speed limit), and stay calm. And the following is just QFT, because more people need to accept this fact.

OMG same! I've heard people say someone was diverse. A single entity cannot be diverse.

Occam's Razor is a thing.

Why do doctors give out antibiotics when they know something isn't a bacterial infection? Because they want to shut the parents up. This is not a scenario most doctors would ever encounter even once in their career. How could they even consider the child would be thrown out on the street, when we're watching this after it all happened and can't believe that it happened? And the parents are likely narcissists (wouldn't want to do any arm chair diagnosing here, but come on!). Narcissists are by nature charming and convincing when they want to manipulate others.

This was not a business arrangement from how I read it. I saw it more as a friend helping a friend, using unique expertise from their profession. Then, a friend gifted his friend a bike as a thank you for the service provided. Like how you'd buy someone pizza for helping you move. If you gave someone pizza after they helped you move, you wouldn't ask for that pizza back a month later. There is no entitlement here and this is not a business transaction.