Nah, my Catholic extended family always had a jug of Carlo Rossi (garbage wine sold in gallon jugs, for those lucky enough to be unfamiliar) at every family gathering. No one was ever worried about there being kids. Evangelicals are just lame.

She’s a rat, the fat is just making her head look shorter than it is.

(Also, for anyone concerned about abuse, she has a disorder that causes her to get fatty tissue deposits, she’s not obese.)

Oh yeah, my next car is definitely going to be an EV, regardless, but it does seem silly to spend the money when A) I drive so little and B) I still have student loans I’m trying to clear out in the next year or so. I’m also secretly hoping that in the meantime Toyota will say, “hey here’s a RAV4 that’s identical to your current one except it’s electric!” because I reaaaally love my car and haven’t found anything to take it’s blocky little place in my heart yet.

Your second paragraph is why I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I don’t WFH, but my commute is only about 10 miles round trip and most of my errands are done within that same area. My Toyota is 12 years old and only has ~80k miles on it, so it just doesn’t make sense to switch at this point.

That said, I’m casually looking for a new job and my commute would go up dramatically for a lot of options in my field, so I haven’t eliminated the possibility.

I don’t have kids, but I’ve dated a few people with kids and my ex-husband had a child. From that perspective, my question is always are you willing to be a step parent? If yes, go for it. If not, stay away. Even if you think it’ll be something casual, there’s always the possibility feelings will develop beyond that, and having to break up with someone you really love because you don’t want to be a parent sucks a lot more than just saying no on the first place.

The other thing to consider is whether the other parent is still around. My ex’s first wife suuuucked. They co-parented relatively well considering how their marriage ended, but she was also a hypocritical bigot (born-again christian, shocker), which caused some friction when my stepkid was being taught things like, “we hate this person because they’re gay.” But like it or not, she was going to be around, so I had to account for that in my decision to get serious with him.

My coworker had a full hysterectomy in her late 30s for the same reason and she’s described it as basically a living hell for about a year. Just a complete nightmare where she felt like her body completely turned on her and she had no control over anything it was doing - hearing about it made my attitude about keeping my ovaries much more enthusiastic. BUT she was pretty much fully through menopause after that year, so the good news is that your wife’s situation is likely pretty temporary. The bad news is that a year can feel like much longer when things aren’t going well, and I’m guessing she can’t do any hormone replacement to ease her symptoms because of the cancer risk. I did keep my ovaries and I’m still having some hormonal nonsense (pseudo hot flashes are not making me real optimistic about the real thing, let me tell you), so I can only imagine how much that sucks.

The thing is, you’re probably not actually doing anything wrong, it’s just a total tsunami of fuckery in her body atm that’s making her feel that way. I would suggest marriage counseling, because it’s possible that a neutral third party can help your wife see that, even though she’s not totally in control of her body or feelings right now, she still doesn’t get to make you feel like shit and she might end up destroying a relationship she still wants once she’s past this stage. There’s no easy solution, though, it’s just everyone putting their heads down and pushing through it, unfortunately.

I’m a mosque. The loud noise is usually, “damn it!” when I do something incredibly graceful, like walk into a wall or accidentally throw my phone across the room.

I’m not big on violence, and I don’t enjoy hitting people, but I’ve done it a couple of times and I’m always willing to throw down with nazis. If we’re not willing to defend ourselves and others, we might as well just hand them the keys and let them do whatever they want. That’s gonna be a hard no for me.

Oh yeah this one. Plus, wear a hat. My hairstylist found skin cancer on my scalp a year or two ago and now I have a bald spot where they removed it because scalp skin doesn’t have a whole lot of excess to close a wound. So cute. Thankfully, I can hide it, but it pretty much requires me to wear my hair up every day.

Eta: I feel like it should go without saying, but maybe doesn’t, that I was incredibly lucky that it was basal cell, not melanoma. A big scar is one of the best outcomes I could’ve had.

I tried a piece of kibble when I was a kid, mostly because it bothered my mom and I thought it was funny. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten. Most of my dogs have eaten pretty much whatever you offer them, except (of course) my chihuahua. She’d eat buffalo sauce but not a carrot. When she lost all her teeth, she’d eat a flavor of wet food happily for like, a week, and then refuse to touch it ever again, so I don’t think it was the food being gross as much as it was her being a picky little shit.

Not mine but my sister’s school - it was the first year the school was open and they had full length stalls in the bathroom. And then a couple months into the school year, a girl gave a boy a blowjob in one of them and of course they got caught. And that’s why the school got rid of the full length stalls very shortly after installing them. There were only a few hundred kids enrolled at that point, so of course everyone found out about it and any time someone mentioned that poor girl’s name for the next 4 years, it was, “oh the one who sucked [guy]'s dick?”

My entire career has basically been an accident. I majored in history thinking I’d be a teacher because it was my favorite subject and I was 18 and didn’t know what else I could do with my life. Three years in, I realized I didn’t want to be a teacher and most history-adjacent jobs didn’t pay a living wage, so I dropped out. A bit later, I started a temp job working for the state because I needed a job and had call center experience, did a good job and managed to get hired full time. Almost 20 years later, I’m doing work I never expected to be doing but it turns out that I like paperwork and I’m pretty good at navigating bureaucracy and explaining it to laymen. Can’t imagine working in the private sector at this point. I eventually finished my degree (in human services this time) but tbh it was mostly just so I’d have one for my resume.

The biggest lesson from all of it for me has been that kids really don’t need to go to college right out of high school, or at all in some cases, and I’m glad the tide is turning on that to some extent. I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything I’ve done in my career and I’ve benefited enormously by not having a “dream job” in mind. Education is great, don’t get me wrong, but so is flexibility and a willingness to learn new things outside of school.

It was almost 20 years ago so I don’t really remember much besides learning that getting a tattoo with low blood sugar is a bad idea, but I don’t think so.

My first was across my spine between my shoulder blades and the next two were small on the insides of my wrists. I don’t think either was overly painful. The only one that really hurt was the part of my side piece that crossed on to my stomach. Fuck that noise. Tbh, I don’t worry about whether I can cover them. No one has cared in years.

Oh damn, I haven’t tried it because I have so much hot sauce that I’m on a no buy. I still have a bottle of the Huy Fong new stuff my mom bought without realizing it wasn’t as good, but I was planning to try the Underwood one as soon as I run out.

Apparently the original supplier for Huy Fong (Underwood Farms) makes their own version now, and it’s how Huy Fong used to taste.

I’m not personally insulted. I just think it’s incredibly shitty to treat dating like some kind of caste system where people “belong” at a certain level. I can see why you said you can’t “score” anyone that you view as more attractive when you view things that way.

To anyone who considers a good personality attractive, I’m guessing dating you would be considered scraping the bottom of the barrel.

No one wants that. Especially me.

I just ended up with what was on top of the pile, sadly.