Different campuses are playing out very differently.
At Brown, you have protestors and administration who negoatiaged and are actually moving towards both divestment and dismantling the protest.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the situation at UCLA. Violence broke about *between* the protest groups (pro-Palestinian and pro- Israeli students fist fighting and beating each other with sticks) which was separated by police in riot gear.
This was probably already said, but just in case ...
The point is, you don't know if he's a good guy or not. So you're alone, you have to approach every interaction with a strange man as if he could be one of the bad ones.
I guess I’m wondering what people think of as strange for their definition. I live in a city and I encounter strange people multiple times a day. Most recently a very strange one I’ve never seen before was this man dressed up as the devil and saying he was the devil, but not like in a mean/I’m going to harm you way. He was very strange but I didn’t feel any harm.
I think there’s a big difference between strange and a creep that’s making unprovoked sexual advances. Anyway, that’s how I interpreted it and my natural instinct is I def would freak out internally if I was in the middle of the woods with a bear since it’s not something I encounter on a daily basis.
having lived in cities for much of my life, and spent time near psych facilities (on the streets near them, in the parking lots) I’ve encountered my share of people with truly unexpected behavior. They spook me much less than the calmest person carrying a gun or a man acting in a menacing way.
When I first heard this, I pictured myself on a. Hiking trail in the woods, and when I’m there I regularly pass people - men and women - and generally feel fine. There aren’t bears around here so one would freak me out.
But then I saw it posed the way it probably plays out in plenty of the country where men regularly walk around with guns and hunt and all the rest and I quickly switched to bear.
Open carry states freak me out much more than bears.
As long as they aren’t in a sparkleprincess costume complete with tiara and loud plastic dress up shoes, they’ll be fine (and maybe even in something like that if grandma liked to see them dress up). Young kids at a funeral are a promise of the future and the legacy your grandmother leaves so I wouldn’t worry if their clothes reflect that.
I find black is for the people between 20 and 60 who have the clothes and aren’t going to many funerals. The older adults often are more likely to wear something else.
I realized after I got dressed this morning that my shirt was on backwards. So I jokingly asked my kids "do you notice anything wrong with my outfit?" and my daughter responded "yeah, you don't match". Gee, thanks kid. Nothing like a teenager to knock you down a few pegs.
We were just talking about this at work lol. Apparently teenage girls are brutally honest.
I was joking that it’s good thing I have a boy who gives compliments....for now. This mama can't handle the criticism. 🤦🏼♀️
yesterday my teen daughter told a group of adults she doesn’t know that I’m depressed. So that’s great. (She was with DH picking up take out on the way home from practice yesterday and they ran into parents of my little one’s peers.)
The pta rumor mill around here is wild so this will be fun. I’ve already been told so many times by acquaintances that I’m pregnant or getting a divorce. So now I get to be depressed, too. Blarg.
Your limits sound reasonable to me. My 13 and 1o kids will push on any and all limits, all the time. I wouldn’t change it just because they want more or your ex allows more.
Our school district is split into one school K-2, one 3-5, one 6-8. There are no car lines after second grade. The 3-5 has multiple possible approaches. Tthey block off the roads to cars (except school buses) to force kids to walk in.
If you travel for one kid (and it sounds like you do so pretty regularly) then travel for this one thing for your other kid.
I grew up on a dynamic where I was the older sibling whose activities weren’t interesting enough to show up for. And you feel it. I didn’t have as many events, but my mom regularly missed them for my brother’s events or for other things. I can remember accepting awards alone and standing there awkwardly at events while they thanked the parents for their ‘support.’
One thing I don’t see in here: get your own kid help as well.
(1) these are traumatic incidents for him
(2) he has been living with this reality for a while and kids get socialized by their peers at least as much as the adults in their life. This boy has been part of that dynamic for these boys. They need a chance to recalibrate their expectations of normal kid behavior and catch any unhealthy behaviors that they may have built to cope and adapt.
Contacting your kid directly is completely out of line. Suggesting getting the kids together wasn’t out of line. (Not as in ‘we need to make them hash it out and fix this’ but merely offering to host the kids for something fun and leaving it in your/your daughter’s court to accept or not. Sometimes time away from school can reset a kid friendship so if my kid wanted to invite their friend to a movie of something, I’d do it. But the only direct contact my kid has with her friends moms is to coordinate birthday presents - ask if the one she wants to give is okay, ask a shoe size, whatever). What she did is so out of line.
I recently had a mother insert herself in my kid’s social life, but very differently. My kid was starting to develop a new bestie. The mom found out my kid was gender non-conforming rather than born a boy (they present masc and so is their chosen name) and told her kid he was forbidden from associating with my kid. I did send a simple text in case either kid had misunderstood since English is a second language for that family (we’d previously talked about me taking the kids to the science museum. So I threw out a specific invite date. If she said yes, I’d know something had gotten confused. When she responded with ‘he’s busy all afternoons and weekends’ I stopped communication. I certainly didn’t contact the kid. I comforted my kid while they cried and I talked to my kid about who else they could spend time with or alternate recess activities.
let’s also normalize believing other people know what they want/need more than you do. ‘I’ll just ignore what you say and go ahead anyway because I know better’ is such a running theme among annoy and problematic behavior.
Clearly I’d make a terrible dog mom because my first assumption was that a weekend with someone they know and someone else who loves dogs would be much better for them than being sent to a dog boarding situation. Not knowing better, I was pissed at the original plan (if he had dumped them at a Kennel just to have a sleepover). So I was reading all indignant for the wrong reasons,until I got to the end. 🤣
Executor of O.J. Simpson's estate plans to fight payout to the families of Brown and Goldman
“It’s my hope that the Goldmans get zero, nothing,” he told the Review-Journal. “Them specifically. And I will do everything in my capacity as the executor or personal representative to try and ensure that they get nothing.”
let's all remember Brown's family is probably mostly his own kids at this point, and those legal fees for that executor are coming out of their inheritance from him. So he's a special kind of asshole.
I just put my 4th grader on a bus for a week away. It's days, 4 nights with kids from many other schools whom they've never met before, as the only gender non-conforming kid on the trip and possibly the first trans/gnc person the other kids have ever met. After a weekend with some gender dysphoria incidents, and then layer in their neurodiversity.
It's a school trip and they really wanted to go. So we let them. But I'm silently freaking out over here. Please let this week go well.
ETA: Apparently I jinxed things it sounds like their bus is stuck because protesters have shut down the Golden Gate Bridge.
My Nephew Emmett gutted me. I don't know where it's currently available. (20 minute short film). (I had missed the title which made it all the worse because I was able to feel the early ease and joy without yet dreading where it was going.)
In general, things where the fiction lies within a larger, real narrative. You feel the moment, but also understand the bigger implications. That is what makes the Derry Girls end of season one so hard.
One thing left out of this conversation is the pipeline effect of highly exposed uniforms and expectations.
To become an elite athlete, they’ve already weathered the body shaming and expectations put on girls long before they get here. How many of us know women who as girls either dropped out or developed eating disorders because of the appearance expectations of her coach or others when she was competing? Because of what she was expected to wear and how she was expected to present? If we only talk about the dozen or so who made it through that and still thrived, I don’t know if we are having the right conversation.
I’m particularly mindful this week as a mother whose daughter just dropped out of her sport because of the shit girls get about their bodies and how so many people within these more exposed sports act as if body shaming is okay and relevant to performance.
I know why they did it but I’m not sure it’ll be effective. Those of us who have any empathy at all have already heard the stories and are on their side. The rest don’t give a shit about others and their experiences and it isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.
everyone here knew for years that designating an embryo as life would completely shut down IVF. And yet, a few months ago that became reality and we watched how quickly so many people turned on a dime? I really think the right has its head in the sand and ‘abortion’ is anything a teen mom or BIPOC person needs but anything they need shouldn’t count. In all those stories you read there is always someone in the equation who never thought this could apply to them/their daughter/etc, .
This is going to be controversial. Unless you want a different distribution of your assets than the intestate laws, a will doesn’t matter so much.(absent minor children). What what does matter is leaving specific evidence of your assets, debts, SSN, etc. If you do everything online and have no paper trail you are setting up a mess to sort out. The other biggest factor is the people involved. People get ridiculous around death and money.
I probated my dad’s intestate estate at the same time as we were trying to resolve my grandfather’s previously revocable trust. Probate wasn’t fun, but he kept good paper records and things were smooth. In contrast, that trust was a disaster for over a decade.
*thos does not apply to POA, etc. those are important. I just see so many people get caught up on the idea of the will itself when that is often the least necessary part of a smooth transition. In theory a trust should do what most people want a will to do (ie, transfer assets more smoothly) but only if everything is successfully put into it and there is proper upkeep.
Tomato soup with oven grilled cheese. ‘Antipasto pasta’ (I slice up some Italian sausages, after sautéing them, I take them out, deglaze the pan with white wine or chicken stick and throw in whatever we have on hand - usually marinated artichokes, tomatoes, olives, tapenade, pesto, roasted red peppers, whatever, simmer while the Sara cooks, then toss it all together to coat and serve. It’s a family favoritw). Sheet pan roast broccoli and chicken. Tacos, maybe.