We were told that my husband's work would be back in person this August. In reality, they have everyone coming back 1 day/week and doing the rest remote still for the foreseeable future. One of my good friends just tested positive. She is fully vaccinated and her case is mild. She's been very careful.

Baseball and softball are wildly popular in Japan so it makes sense they would want it included. MLB and MiLB are loathe to send players to play in any sort of other league not just due to it being in their season but also due to the risk of injuries- you don't want your top players or prospects waylaid by injuries that they didn't even get while playing for your team. I will admit that I absolutely don't care *that much* about Olympic baseball. I'll watch it/follow it but I am not setting alarms for it like softball. The WNBA builds a pause into their season for the Olympics because the Olympics are not just an opportunity for women's basketball to rise in profile but also represent an income generator for their players (sponsorships). Women's pro soccer doesn't shut down for the Olympics, they use the opportunity to let their development players get some playing time. This is because women's teams/athletes have a vested interest in the Olympics that don't really exist for MLB. For the women's teams, the Olympics is as big as it gets but for baseball, the MLB represents the pinnacle of the sport. Olympic softball, unlike baseball, represents an opportunity to grow and expand the sport and is the highest level exposure the athletes get. The starting pitchers for the gold medal softball game *were the same* in 2008 and 2021. I think it's a shame that softball players didn't get the opportunity to participate in 2012 and 2016. Yes, there's a world championship for softball but it doesn't get the same media coverage as the Olympics or even NCAA.

Softball and Baseball were in from 1996-2008 and then taken out for 2012 and 2016. The main reason for the removal was that relatively few countries play these sports. I believe that the main reason they won’t be in the 2024 Olympics is so Paris doesn’t need to construct a stadium. That said, I’m not sure why another field couldn’t be used- our triple A baseball team plays in the same stadium as two different professional soccer teams. The 2028 and 2032 games though are in countries where softball is played (US and Australia). The removal of Softball from the Olympic Games inhibited the growth of the game. College softball (which features players that will play for many different countries’ national teams) is a $450 million dollar revenue generating sport at this point though. Honestly, I paid far less attention to the 2012 and 2016 Summer games because for me, Softball is the main reason I sought out a TV streaming plan that would let me watch the Olympics at all.

IOC rules require that a sport be contested on ice or snow to be included in the Winter Olympics. This is why the summer games are so packed relative to the winter ones .

I can find a reason or three to keep pretty much any sport. I totally disagree with those who don’t think shooting events are sports- the level of concentration and training it takes to reach the Olympics in shooting sports is impressive. The archery events were some of the ones my son was most interested in watching. If golf is a sport, sharpshooting and archery are sports. There are some sports that I don’t get into watching but I don’t know that that means they can’t be Olympic sports. Re: skateboarding and other newly added sports like BMX, I think they are trying to appeal to a younger audience. There have been international competitions in skateboarding for awhile now. I was happy to see softball back at the games this year and I am next level annoyed that it is not coming back for 2024. It will likely be contested in 2028 and 2032 though. I can see the argument for taking out sports for which the Olympics isn’t the highest level of competition or the pinnacle of achievement in that sport. At the same time, some of those sports (Basketball, Soccer, Tennis) are some of the most fun for me to watch.

The manager is: -exposing the owner to liability -potentially costing the owner business (no one likes to come back if they see or overhear the manager acting like an asshole) -potentially chasing off good employees (which would cost the owner time and training new people + unemployment claims) I have fired people for less.

Congratulations to her and your whole family!

I have at least a dozen pair of scissors. They still make off with them. Either that or the scissors are holding parties with the lost socks behind the dryer. Yesterday I needed scissors and ended up using the tiny ones on the tiny pocket knife on my key ring.

Yep. When I was 32 and concerned about the sexual side effects of my medication a doctor actually told me “well, that’s probably not an important part of your life now”. I was a 32 year old married woman who was asking about it- it was clearly an important enough thing for me to mention. That wasn’t a life or death issue but it was a particularly egregious example of sexism IMO. That interaction led me to search out an older female doctor I could actually trust to take me seriously. I was also able to find a medication that didn’t kill my ability to enjoy sex. Unfortunately, that doctor retired last year and I had to find a new primary doctor. I dreaded her retirement for years.

I have had a number of truly appalling interactions with medical doctors over the years. Even now, I have noticed that I get a different level of concern from a doctor depending on what I list my occupation as or if the doctor is aware of my husband and children’s concern for me. My mom was basically told that it was her time to die when she was barely 50 by a doctor who didn’t want to bother treating a recurrence of her cancer (with a second opinion, she lived 6 more years with good quality of life, which allowed her to meet 5 more grandkids.) I know that good care is out there and I’ve had it at times but lately I’ve noticed people pish poshing the very real and very shitty experiences that people have had with doctors that lead many people to be skeptical of medical personnel.

Sounds great!

We cook for a homeless shelter for young adults with a group of other families. My mom and dad used to run a feeding program for homeless people and now I also volunteer to cook dinner at my church for a shelter so I have a lot of experience cooking for large groups. I often think that the desire for “healthy food” is coming *from staff and volunteers*. I focus on appealing, delicious foods as I find the instinct to make people eat a certain way to be a bit paternalistic. IME having both been homeless as a child and worked with homeless people most of my adult life in one way or the other, clients appreciate food where no one is skimping on the meat and cheese and other calorie dense options. Because we have a vegan volunteer and the group we are feeding is younger, we do make a vegan option (10 meals). The other 70-90 meals are not vegan. Here are the menus we have done recently: Jumbalaya Stirfry Burritos (these are a big hit- we make them the size of Chipotle burritos, wrap in foil and box them up with chips, salsa, sour cream packets, veggies etc) tip: get the 12 inch tortillas from a restaurant supply store and fill with rice, meat, beans and cheese. BLTs with picnic salads as the side Baked pastas (always a hit) Bacon Mac and Cheese with roasted broccoli on the side. Hot dogs with picnic salads on the side - get the large dogs and buns, wrap in foil and serve with the fixings in the side. Sometimes we buy fried and baked chicken from the deli and serve that with salads and coleslaw on the sides- everyone chips in money for the chicken. we have been using little containers and paper boxes dying Covid so everything is grab and go. We also always do cans of sparkling water, dessert and often some cut fruit. The group we cook with all preps their portions and drops off everything to the church for serving. We use Meal Train to coordinate who is cooking or buying what. You might find that your friends and neighbors would be happy to chip in either money or part of the cooking.

I don’t let my sons see: -My older brother who is an abusive alcoholic and still very much in the throes of his addiction. If that ever changed, I would probably be in contact with him on my own at first for a long time. As it is, we have a very limited amount of contact. He lives close and we see his kids all the time so this is a boundary that we have to maintain in a real way. -There’s a whole branch of my family (my maternal aunts and all their kids) who I maintain some contact with (social media, phone, cards) but don’t let near my family. They live far away so this is moot. We’d have to go out of our way to see them. My mom’s mom, who was extremely abusive and awful is now dead and I refused to let her come to my mom’s funeral and I refused to go to hers. My mom was physically disabled in two ways (lost most of her hearing and developed a seizure disorder from being hit in the head too often) from the abuse she sustained as a child and my grandmother was in and out of prison/engaged in ongoing criminal activities until she was in her 60s. She was extremely abusive and toxic and she never changed. My aunts aren’t that bad but their lives are very chaotic and full of things that my kids don’t need to be desensitized to. When my younger brother (who I do have a relationship with) was still married, I didn’t allow my sons to be around his husband without a parent present because of my BILs drinking and various behaviors. I refused to let my sons see any of my BILs family (who covered up and excused sexual abuse). Now this is moot since my brother thankfully left the dude. The only time I see him is if I pick up my nieces for my brother since he and his ex share custody. I am all for forgiveness and preserving relationships when doable but I draw the line at compromising my children’s stability and forgiveness isn’t a blank check to continue to be an abusive jerk.

SCISSORS I want scissors that shock anyone who picks them up who isn’t me. 🤣

My dad is a much better grandfather than he was a dad. He wasn’t abusive like your mom but he was neglectful and erratic in ways that did endanger my safety. Like you, I have decided to let my dad have his own relationship with their grandparent without weighing it down with my own issues with my dad. Grandparents don’t grow on trees and my dad happens to be the only living grandparent they have who they get to see more than a few times a year. I think there’s value in letting people do better than they did before and in modeling forgiveness my sons.

Some subreddit or another had my niece *convinced* that my brother is transphobic. My brother transitioned two decades ago.

What they report looks good but honestly, who knows? My school district vastly under reports the number of times they use restraint or isolation with special education students. They point to their good numbers but since they generate the numbers themselves and have redefined most forms of restraint and isolation as not restraint and isolation no one who is up close and personal with this issue puts any stock into it. I don’t think China’s reports are necessarily accurate.

I’ve seen estrangement where it made perfect sense and I’ve seen estrangement where it seems like an over reaction or an adult child holding their parents to highly unreasonable standards. My younger brother confabulates a large amount of his life. He believes things happened that just didn’t happen. There are things that happened to me or things that I did that he believes happened to him or remembers himself doing, and at ages where he is old enough to remember what happened. He was kind of a ratfink to our mom, not seeing her actions and choices in context and he was very harsh and unforgiving with her when she was alive. Now that she’s dead tho he has practically sainted her. Don’t get me wrong, my mom was a pretty amazing person on the balance but he was embittered and nasty to her when she was alive and accused her of shitty things like favoring one grandchild over another that simply were not true. I know other people who do this as well. I have two close friends who had very decent childhoods recast their parents as being abusive. While I know that abuse can be well hidden the things that they are describing as abuse…aren’t abusive. What they point to as egregious abuse doesn’t sound like abuse at all. One of these friends started going to Al Anon which surprised me a bit because there are no alcoholics in her family. It came out that she decided that the 2 glasses of wine her mom drank every night were a problem. I slept at this woman’s house a lot…it really was 1-2 glasses at most and not every night. I asked my friend if she ever knew her mom to drink more than that. By her own admission, no she had never observed her mom drinking more than that. But she was going to Al Anon and saying her mom had a serious problem with alcohol. In both of these friend’s cases, I know the parents well enough to know that they aren’t perfect but they aren’t horrible abusers either. In one, I think that friend with mental health challenges she is loathe to address is adding a feather to her hard life narrative. In the other, I think the friend is being highly critical of his mom largely because she has different opinions than him about a lot of things. I pointed out that his mom is entitled to her own quirks. Lately, he seems to have dropped this narrative a bit.

My sons are both autistic. I suspect that at least one of them will be living with us well into his 20s so that will be a bit different than being an empty nester.

On top of being a highly driven perfectionist, former foster kids and SA survivors are often full of self doubt about their worth/value. As are many people with ADHD, which I had seen that she’d been diagnosed with. She has a perfect storm of contributing factors for severe anxiety and depression.

My MIL remarried right after her divorce. The first marriage had been dead/bad for a long time and in some ways it felt that she stayed with him until she found someone else to be with. Her second husband and her have been married for 20 years now. My parents were separated for a decade before my mom died and neither of them filed for divorce or remarried. My dad briefly dated a woman after my mom died. I suspect that if my dad had more financial means, he likely would have remarried. But old broke men aren't exactly good marriage material.

Can you consult a CPA? Perhaps Married Filing Separately for those years is a good option for you.

If he stays at the house without internet can he use his phone as a hotspot? I am so sorry!

It’s hard to imagine me doing so. While I can’t know the future, I can’t stress enough how little interest I have in forming a romantic relationship with anyone other than my husband. While my husband is exceptional in many ways, my reasoning is not that he’s irreplaceable- it’s mainly that I don’t think I would be inclined to put in the effort to form such a bond again.

Yeah, my dad will walk to the post office and stand in line just to have something to do. Bonus: if there’s a long line, he has something to grumble about for the rest of the day and into the next, which is also entertainment for him. 🤣