You have much deeper reserves of patience than me. I would have seriously smacked her with the searing-hot danish pan.

Also, while we're on the topic, can we talk about this vaunted "high road" and what it is that makes it so fucking special and desirable? Because I've stayed quiet A LOT about things that happened to me, both as and after they happened, and I've never gotten single scrap of inner peace or enlightenment or enhanced…

This is why I'm so glad that I'm an only child. My father and mother have both been explicit about their wishes, and I am wholehearted in my desire to see them carried out. Many people have asked me if I don't miss the support of having siblings, and sometimes I do, but at least I know I'm never going to have to fight…

What it comes down to is, you can write me War and Peace about your specific circumstances, but it doesn't give you any knowledge about me or what I should do with my circumstances or how I'm going to feel about it. Full stop, that's it, end of story.

People who advocate taking the high road to total strangers whose circumstances they can't possibly know about are only proclaiming the fact that they have never really been brought low by another person when they had no ability to fight back. It's the ultimate "sit down, shut up, you don't know what you're talking…

I could not possibly speculate on what makes people both ignorant and proudly noisy about that fact on the internet. Several people informed me that it was because I hadn't mentioned in the very first instance of talking about it that my mother was abusive, while I maintain that you don't need total knowledge of…

I already answered to someone else that I can't remember, as it's been half a decade, but I'm sure google holds all the answers you seek.

It doesn't require magazine articles, this exact thing will be happening in the comments within the half hour.

It's hard to maintain maturity when the people who abused you as a child are involved. Everything they have contact with turns you back into the immature helpless person you were when the abuse was happening. Being objective is borderline impossible.

I don't remember, as it was at least 4 years ago, but I'm pretty sure a google search will reveal all.

Not only that, he gave rollerblading at least 1 more shot after the hip-breaking incident. I think realizing that doing it scared him, and that he probably wouldn't be able to do it anymore, was literally the first limitation his health ever set in his near-century of existence up to that point. He was such an…

I had the singularly unpleasant experience of watching my grandfather suffer through the last two years of his life. There is something to be said for the long, slow decline into decrepitude - it allows you time to get used to your limitations. This is the situation my mother is in, where she's been sick for many…

This reminds me of the time my mom floated the idea of building a "niche" into a wall of her house, but instead of saying "neesh" like a normal person she really went for it with the ch-digraph and produced a sound heretofore unknown to human speech patterns.

I want to make clear here that I haven't been warm at any point in the last ten years. I long for hot flashes. I have lived in Saharan Africa and still felt a bit chilly. Bring it on, menopause! I am ready!

I still can't sleep unless I have a pillow over my head, because when I was living at home and my mom was going through menopause, she kept the house at icebox-like temperatures. I mean, my bed had two wool blankets and the thickest comforter we owned on it year-round. I was convinced I was going to freeze to death.…

I would wear Levi's if they stocked their more interesting jeans in longer inseams. I think it was last year they released a line of bold-colored jeans, and I really wanted some, but they all came in some ridiculous inseam like 28 that would literally be pedal-pushers on me. If I want plain blue or black jeans in…

Still unclear on how to cover up this gnarly bruise I got from running into the doorknob.

I... don't get the reference in the sense that "They made this joke once on (insert TV show here)", but I do in the sense that I know twenty in French is vingt, so I suppose in Italian it's probably venti? Do I get the cookie?

Right. Like, I have some actor friends, like a Brit who does the most. perfect. midwestern American accent ever. In fact, it's so good that I've asked him never to do it in my presence because it makes me deeply uncomfortable. And it took him YEARS of intensive training to manage it. Conversely, I had a professor in…

My cousin went with one of those gift registries that cuts things up into "shares" you can buy - like, you can put down $50 which is 1/4th of their dining room table, that kind of thing - and it included helping them put a down payment on their house, in small shares. I think my dad and I jointly bought the whole of…