My youngest has a pair of crocs that are glittery. Like the glitter is inside the plastic. Glitter still gets everywhere she walks. They're still utterly fabulous though. I know it gets everywhere and is terrible for the environment, but I am on team pro-glitter.

Not even remotely. Heck, even the wood that is built into our house does not all match. Of course, our general design motif is charitably described as "cheap and distressed by cats."

I don't know how it holds up with Delta, but while the original covid virus is definitely spread by aerosols, even health care facilities used only droplet precautions for most circumstances, and while covid is definitely spread by aerosols, droplet precautions seem to make a huge, huge difference. Droplet precautions, in fact, were sufficient for most circumstances even in hospitals to prevent spread. Not perfect, at all, but the evidence was pretty compelling that thinks like surgical masks made a huge difference. I was struck by the covid positive hairdresser who didn't infect anyone other than the other hairdresser, who was the only person she was unmasked around.

I find it baffling that people do not understand that "you do you and I'll do me" works for some things (low carb diets, training for marathons, homeschooling) but that it just does not work for public health with infectious diseases.

I can't read this...can you give a summary of what deadly condition is poised to return?

I bathed Obama when he was a five week old kitten covered in fleas. He was only five weeks old and I still pretty much needed stitches. It was awful. I would never, ever bathe a full grown cat unless something was super duper wrong.

I thought I had clicked to "save it to my amazon cart" to show a friend and ask what he thought, but I'd accidentally added it to cart and when I bought some other stuff (covid at home tests, shower curtain, some vitamins, couple of other random things), I purchased it. Oh. My. Goodness. This stuff is AMAZING! I cannot recommend it highly enough! Put it on those little Hawaiian sliders with some butter, and it's like food straight from heaven. Sweet and salty and spicy all mixed together.

Plus Sturgis is going on. Sigh.

How horrific!

Last year, I recall there being a fair amount of speculation that virus could sort of "clump" onto particulates in the air, like smoke, and enter into people's lungs more effectively that way?

I wish I liked beets and cabbage. I also wish I liked Brussels sprouts, but I haven't tried them prepared many other ways other than boiling. I need to try them roasted.

At the risk of sounding political, I find myself wondering what would happen if the people who are so strongly against mask wearing in school put as much energy into keeping guns out of schools.

Yeah, you definitely should not volunteer. It's possible they won't be able to play soccer, but that's not the end of the world at 4 and 7. You have entirely too much going on.

I think it's the MATH Protocol?

Despite me spending literally all summer rearranging our schedule so that my kid could take and complete 10th grade health and PE (which she did), the school has put my kid in both 10th grade PE/ Health and 9th grade PE, because for some reason, they don't think she took PE last year at the virtual school. Which she did. She hates PE passionately, and this means she gets no electives. They also will not put her in Pre-AP World History, despite my begging them all summer. They seem to believe it is completely impossible. I hate this school. They completely broke and destroyed my oldest child, and I am desperately afraid they are going to break my youngest. But she does not want to be pulled, and nobody at school is willing to talk to me. No guidance counselor, no administrator, not her special ed case manager. They have a system, and they MIGHT fix her schedule three weeks in, but she needs an accurate schedule before school starts and to practice finding the locations. But.....they won't fix it.

When I was talking to the driver's ed people, I finally did say, "Lyr is non-binary. Will that be okay with your instructors?" because, well, we live in southwest Virginia. They said it would not be an issue but continued to use he/ him pronouns.

I had a hysterectomy in 2019, and I recall people discussing anesthesia related vision changes on a forum I was reading. I vaguely recall it was a temporary thing? Calling and asking a nurse line would not be out line. Heal well!

I have had a couple friends who have had this, but I would also want second opinion and genetic consult. Removing ovaries has pretty major implications. Surgical menopause is super sucky.

Yeah, it seems very clear to me that covid is less like SARS and more like other coronaviruses that grant short term immunity but not long term immunity. Whether that's because of mutations or because of the nature of immunity, I do not know, but at some level, it does not really matter. I DO think that infection conveys some immunity. Possibly even more than vaccine induced immunity, though a number of epidemiologists seem to indicate that probably not. It's tricky because we don't know how long either one is protective.

This is hilarious. I will admit I haven't seen that particular auto correct, but it's possible my mind mentally corrected. I'm going to have to watch for it now!

I'm going to have to request some of these to read from the library myself.

I agree. I do not like the term nibling or pibling myself at all. It sounds stupid and infantilizing somehow. I know I come at top surgery from a different place than most people, because I was a K cup for most of my life. Super duper large br*sts often do not have much sensation, and that was the case for me. I had reduction surgery because of actual, physical damage that was occurring. You can see on x-rays the damage that heavy boobs caused to my vertebrae. I had 11 pounds of br*st tissue removed, and I'm still a DD, but of course, removing that removed function. I had resisted reduction surgery until I was pretty sure I was done having kids because nursing was so important to me. Doctors started pressuring me to have the surgery done when I was 12, so I knew early on that nursing was important. My oldest currently has no desire to have children, although I hope that changes as they get older. I do not really expect it to, though. My youngest doesn't like small children. My oldest has long expressed a desire to remain childless because of climate change and worries about what sort of world having kids would bring them into. Anyway, as someone who did have function removed, I don't have the same aversion to it as others might. I was okay with binder use for short term periods, but I agree, they are concerning for long term usage. My worry about surgery is that it is so permanent. I don't exactly feel like this is a phase, but I do feel like their brain has not fully developed, and they haven't maintained the identity through changes in social environments. I'd really prefer them to wait at least a few more years, but I also do not want them living with continual distress if it can be easily avoided. It's just a dilemma.

I am fine with asking. I always appreciate it when people use they/ them, but I know a lot of people here remember my child as my daughter, too, so I am not upset when they use she/ her pronouns. I don't get upset about he/ him pronouns either. It's more that I find it interesting from a linguistic and sociological assumption.

Yeah, it really is challenging. My understanding is that nibling is the gender neutral term for niece/ nephew. My trans parent group says that Pibling is the term for aunt/ uncle, but I would have a hard time using that as a replacement for "Auntie Jess," for instance. I kind of get the top surgery thing for my kid. They have major dysphoria that is specifically br*st related. I think that's the primary driver for all of this. I have actually wondered if it is specifically body dysphoria rather than gender dysphoria, and I feel like the pendulum has swung from too much gate keeping when my friends from college were transitioning to not enough gate keeping now. I've decided that 1) we don't take any steps on surgery until they talk to a therapist who actually specializes in gender issues. We are on a waiting list. And 2) I have decided that I will not make any surgery related phone calls. I've done all the heavy lifting on the name change, even though it's been incredibly hard for me. Surgery couldn't possibly occur until next summer, and I think they need to make the phone calls to facilitate it. My kid is very top heavy....a DD on a slender frame, so binders and sports bras don't really help all that much, plus they have major sensory issues. (I am also very intrigued by the correlation between ASD spectrum and gender issues. My oldest does not have an ASD diagnosis, and in their younger years I would never ever have suspected it, but their sister does, and the older they get, the more I wonder if it's possible that oldest might be on the spectrum as well.) It was odd for us, because growing up, this child was heavy duty pink/ purple, frilly dresses, ballet, playing with Barbies and makeup and fingernail polish. Just pretty stereotypically feminine, which surprised me as a young mother who assumed nurture had a lot to do with such things and I am...not stereotypically female. Mostly in the sense that I'm lazy and have no interest in a lot of things that are typically stereotyped as female. I had a strong identity as mother, but gender had never seemed particularly important or relevant to me. It all seemed sudden and dramatic. And even now, kid has a fairly gender neutral haircut, but still really likes makeup and fingernail polish and pretty dresses, but the dysphoria and anxiety about boobs gets in the way. I agree about "guys" being a pretty gender neutral term, although I'm trying to replace it more with terms like "folks" and "peeps" in my conversation.