Yum.

That’s so sad. What is his motivation to give it another go with her? Is it love for her, desire to keep his son’s family intact or is it loneliness?

I start a new job after a shortish vacation- I was recruited by my old colleague and so I have a decent understanding of the opportunities and challenges with the new position. When the other accounting manager had an emotional reaction to the location of the stamps being moved to be where the stamps were actually being used, that should have been my first clue. I really tried but they got 1 year from me and I decided they wouldn’t get two.

Best big brother! My older son is 5.5 years older than my younger and he put so much love and care into playing Santa for him.

I think that letting kids enjoy fun fairytales is ok. My kids were not devastated when they matured past thinking that a man lived at the North Pole, could fly and had an orange grove in a giant green house up there (that last fact they made up themselves to explain why there was always an orange in the toe of their stocking). I might feel differently if I had kids who didn’t enjoy it or were upset when they concluded that it was implausible that a fairy slipped coins (and one time, by accident, car wash tokens 😛 )under their pillows as payment for teeth. I would never consider hearing the truth to be robbing them though, as they both stubbornly refused to believe there was no Santa until they were ready to give him up. We never did any elements of the story that were coercive or creepy though. Santa wasn’t ever spying on them and their loot wasn’t a measure of their goodness. When they asked about things other kids told them stuff like that I told them that every family has their own traditions and beliefs.

The day I gave notice at my terrible job (think super inefficient outdated systems + significant change resistance + being hired to do something (systems upgrades) that no one will actually let you do), my husband made me a big coconut mojito. My last day is next week and I’m definitely celebrating with adult beverages. Taking notes on this thread.

Having picked up kids after both drills and an actual lockdown (there was a man in the neighborhood being arrested- well they didn’t tell the students that the man wasn’t in the building, they just told them that it “wasn’t a drill”), I would say that the mental health impacts of these practices may very well outweigh the benefits. There was a shooting (not a mass one) at my nephew’s high school this last fall. It was scary (especially those moments before you learn that your student is ok). I don’t want to minimize gun violence but I don’t regard the active shooter drills as really engendering safety and I’ve seen them cause intense and lasting distress.

I use the same fake birthday everywhere online except I think Facebook has my real one.

On a light note, I recently gave notice at my job. I am starting a new job in April. My current employer has been a pain the patoot. After I wrote my resignation letter and submitted it, my husband and I had entirely too much fun prompting ChatGPT to write various resignation letters in different tones and formats. We put in my job title, the name of the nonprofit I work for (resignation letter from accounting manager at XYZ Organization) and different conditions. Among the most amusing conditions: in the voice of Kermit the Frog As a Shakespearean Sonnet Haiku incredulous tone Incredulous tone in strictly trochaic tetrameter It didn’t write the correct number of syllables for the haiku and the trochaic tetrameter was close but not quite. It hit pop culture ones on the head pretty well. It would not write in an angry tone and encouraged me not to quit my job without notice or with a snarky, sarcastic letter. We could generate a sarcastic tone with the detail to use “incredulous tone”. I also had it generate a boilerplate resignation from my job and TBH, it wasn’t markedly lower quality than most of the actual letter that I actually wrote and sent. A bit generic but had I used a letter that was straight from Chat GPT or lightly edited, no one one my team would have noticed. A close reading would have left the impression that I was much more saccharine than I am.

If you are ever on the Central Oregon Coast, you can visit the Tillamook facility. They have tasting and beer pairings and you can get all sorts of their black label reserve cheeses. We always get a bunch and live off them while camping on the Oregon Coast.

We are a household of 5 (middle aged couple, elderly man, two teen boys) plus have 3-4 other teens around a lot of the time. I spend at least $400 at Costco, often as much as $700. We go 1-2x a month. My regular items for Costco runs: Vanilla Butter Rotisserie Chicken- I get a few and use it for lunch/meal prep and then make broth. Guacamole, Salsa, Hummus - especially the individual ones Cheese- sharp, extra sharp, mozzarella, feta, cojita, Frigo cheese sticks Berries Grapes Mushrooms Romaine Lettuce Salad Kits Pineapples Little potatoes Russet Potatoes whatever other veggies and fruits look good, often the asparagus and green beans and oranges, grapefruits and apples. Quick Lunch and Dinner stuff (freezer and refrigerator sections)- salmon portions, salmon burgers, ramen bowls, little pizzas for the teens to zap up, Beecher’s Mac and Cheese Eggos Breakfast meats Lunch meat Flowers (2 dozen roses for $17) Rao’s Tomato Sauce Rice Lentils Dishwasher Tablets Snacks - jerky (the Korean BBQ Pork Jerky is amazing), clif bars, nuts, granola bars, apple sauce, tiny naan pieces Cereal- oatmeal, Cheerios, Raisin Bran If I stay away from the non-food items, we can hold our bill to under $500. I often spend a bit on clothes for the kids (recently got great deals on 2 packs of Adidas shirts and shorts for track practice), batteries, cleaning supplies (best price on magic erasers), the gift cards can save money on gifts - I got my brothers nice baseball tickets for $60/2 tickets. These would be for seats that are normally $45-55/each + fees. It’s a great place to get tires and small appliances like vacuums and blenders. My friend who is married to a jeweler says that the jewelry is a good price for the quality. On our way out, we often have the $1.50 hot dog. If you have a lot of people to feed pizza, their whole pizzas are very serviceable for the $10 price tag. They axed the Supreme in 2021 so it only works if you are fine with plain cheese and pepperoni. We used to get a Supreme/no meat as the cheapest veggie pizza + a 1/2 pep 1/2 cheese for the kids.

These are things I love getting. It saves so much to not have a large container go to waste.

At 12, my kids don’t go places where I haven’t personally met the parent or adult caregiver. I would have said no to both. My kids aren’t allowed to stay alone at their cousin’s houses due to mix of addiction, mental health and domestic violence related reasons. My nieces and nephew come over here, always.

Having worked in and around the social services sector my entire career, I totally agree. See also: Having worked in and around the social service sector my entire career, I also know that the entire system is deficient and a social work approach, even when super well meant, can cause serious harm. People are disparaging this nurse as not having boundaries, being unprofessional and even insinuating she could be unsafe. That seems unnecessary and a bit of oblivious to the very real harm that could have come without the nurse, out of human connection, being willing to be a safe place for this young mom to land.

Exactly. Not all tragedies or very difficult circumstances are crimes. It is true that a lot of teen moms were impregnated by adult men but that isn’t always the case, not by any measure. My friend and his high school girlfriend were parents before they graduated from high school. Both sets of grandparents helped them out when their child was young. They both finished high school. The relationship didn’t last but they co-parented ok. He eventually got an associates degree and now works in IT, she’s run a small hairdressing shop for 20 years, a trade she learned from her family. Their son is a young adult. My friend married in his late 20s and he and his wife have two younger kids now. Nothing good would have come of prosecuting either of them for having sex when they were underage. In fact, criminalizing one or both of the parents would have mainly punished the child.

My mom was in a hospice facility for about 2 months before she died. They did take most of her disability check for this but the services and level of care was great.

My hair thickening product (I have very fine hair and use this when I need my hair to look nice for an event or picture) is now like $43/bottle, up from like $28. My husband threw it away because he thought it was empty and I pulled it out the the waste basket because I knew that there was one more use in it by cutting the tube open and scraping the inside with a little spatula. He’d finally, some 20 years into marriage, convinced me that it’s ok to toss toothpaste tubes without cutting them open for the last couple of uses so he was like, oh no, not this tube cutting thing again.

Social work is one approach but it is an approach that comes with many challenges, including racism, classism, insufficient resources and turnover of staffing. I admire the social workers I am friends with. I also respect the reasons why my poor family members and friends regard the overall social work system with, at best, very cautious optimism and more likely with, absolute dread. I’m not saying that there’s a better and realistic alternative but I do wish that more people questioned the assumption that there are always programs and resources and that programs and resources are inherently superior to human relationships and people just doing what needs to be done. I also think that once someone has become a mom, anything that keeps mom and baby (or babies) together and supported as a healthy, thriving family unit is a clear first choice over separating the babies from their mom. Separating the family should only happen when there’s no safe way to keep them together. However this situation came about, it’s a huge leg up to both mom and babies to be together and not parceled out to separate homes (which in the US could be a wildly different qualities- not all foster homes are safe places, that’s just a hard reality.)

Your friend messed up. She might not know what to do or say but you aren’t wrong that her lack of doing anything is hurtful. I do think it’s ok to bring it up- if she’s a real friend, she should want to know when she’s hurt someone.

Ideally, sure. And I wish that were the case everywhere for everyone. In reality? What is *supposed to happen* doesn’t all the time. There’s a significant number of unhoused people in Vancouver and as far as I am aware the problem is increasing steadily. Seattle and Vancouver have very different governments but very similar housing crises. Shelters and residential options for homeless families turn people away all the time. Social work systems can and do only do so much. People do fall through the cracks.

Not present. Absent. Rationalizing looking away as having good boundaries. Thinking that social services and society has it taken care of so there’s no need for us as individuals to take any action or do anything to help. When it’s everyone’s job, it’s really nobody’s job. The social services that people think exist are often either insufficient or entirely not there. I once called our local 211 crisis line seeking help finding housing for a household of 7 with three special needs kids and was told that I should look on Craigslist. Super helpful, thanks. Another time, I was trying to help a homeless pregnant 15 year old girl and the social worker had no housing residential care options but really wanted us to take some brochures about breathing and meditation exercises. Wow, thanks, very helpful. I’ve spent my entire career in the non-profit sector, working for and with social services agencies and even in a state that does fund social services, it’s not all that great. Foster care is often an untenable situation for teen moms, with some foster parents caring more about trying to adopt her baby than really support the mom. Quite often I have seen CPS refuse to do anything at all to help teen moms. Sometimes I’ve seen them do more harm than good. The odds are that if these 3 kids went into the system, they wouldn’t have the opportunity to grow up together. The loss of their mom and their siblings would be a real harm to each of them. The young mom might end up losing a relationship with her children. Sometimes it takes someone willing to step up and help personally, even if it means having strangers assume that in doing so you might be a boundary-less abuser. I’m not without sympathy to the argument that a teen in this situation is vulnerable to abuse and we need to be aware of healthy boundaries. That said, when I think about my own life (grew up in poverty, was homeless as a child more than once, very dysfunctional family), I probably only ever graduated from high school and college because a teacher was very involved in my life in ways that would alarm people now.

Depends on how much the family can save and where those funds come from. Most of the families I know with college funds at the point of paying in full even for private schools have had regular gifts from relatives. A friend of mine who comes from a middle class background and is pretty affluent due to getting a great tech job and getting fortunate with stock options asked his financial planner how much he should set aside a month for his then hypothetical future children to go to top tier private schools (at this point, he wasn’t married and no kids on the way, he just had extra funds and thought he might as well start saving in case he was ever in a position to send his kids to a private college). He was thinking $100-250/month total. The financial planner was like “assuming two kids going to college in say, 25 years from now, you need to make that more like $500/each kid and you need to start yesterday.” He now has 1 toddler and 1 kid on the way. He did start saving but not at the level his financial advisor suggested. He now thinks state schools sound like a great idea.

I have a couple of friends who are family law attorneys. A phone call apparently isn’t enough to create a conflict. A consultation in person is a different story.

Don’t call their financial people. Call CPAs and tax attorneys who specialize in services for high net worth individuals and ask them who they themselves would use in a divorce or recommend that their daughters use in a divorce. Eventually, a few names will be repeated. Call those lawyers and set up consults.

Buying a new (or even used) truck when you just sold a car to save in upkeep costs seems like a waste of time. There aren’t trucks that are fuel efficient enough to use as commuters if you don’t actually need to be using it as a truck for the job. I wouldn’t go financing a new car if the goal is saving money. I’d say this is a three car situation- one for him to drive, one for you and let the truck sit rarely used. The second car could be either for you or him and just be an older Prius or something else like that.