California teachers (and maybe other government employees) are also exempt from our state pregnancy disability. They don’t pay in and can’t claim it. The rest of us get up to four weeks before birth and six weeks after (8 for c sections) and 6 weeks bonding that both parents can take. It’s only 55% of your pay but the…

I love my Mirena IUD. I didn’t get it until after my second pregnancy (first took 2.5 years of trying, multiple failed cycles with IUI and medications, and an eventual laproscopic removal of endo with 6 months of lupron treatment; second just happened naturally as soon as I cut back of breastfeeding). I didn’t get…

the friends that ghost you when you can’t conceive are the worst. Admittedly, they weren’t the warmest people to begin with, but we have another mutual friend and I avoid his events because they might be there. And this is after I managed to have two children anyway. those 2.5 years where I was struggling and they…

There’s a Starbucks inside our mall, across the street from the mall, in the grocery store next to the mall, and they just added one in the target attached to the mall. 

This is what we use at our office and it’s decent but they only last a year or two before we have to buy another one.

This is what we use at our office and it’s decent but they only last a year or two before we have to buy another one.

I wish we could all be more open about the abortions that we have or our friends have or our co-workers hae. I work in a small office and both my manager and another co-worker have told me they had abortions as teenagers, but it’s still not something that we talk about openly. Another friend told me that she had an…

only on earnings with a roth IRA. You can take out your original investment.

I concur. I happened to meet a magician at an atheist group meeting who got us in when he was performing. We didn’t have access to every part of the castle and we didn’t eat there but it was still a lot of fun. 

I have never negotiated a starting salary and I have only asked for a raise once (did lots of research, talked it through with my manager first). I was basically told that they start low and give good annual raises unlike other companies that start high and give smaller raises so I should just be happy. I’m probably…

I tried so hard to go gender neutral with my daughter, but strangers would give me a hard time just because her stroller was green and grey or her car seat was navy. And now, it just doesn’t matter, the little chica only wants to wear pink, pink, pink. Hello Kitty and Minnie Mouse everything. 

I rarely take advantage of these “free bagel” months because I feel guilty and end up buying a coffee or the cream cheese or both. FYI, they’ll give you butter for free.

My boss’s wife always bring a box back from their annual trip to Hawaii, but they also get made in Gardena, which is like a 15 minute drive from my house. It’s a little more special when she buys us each a pineapple. 

Exactly. Babies want to eat (as do toddlers and pre-schoolers). I’d rather buy a pouch or single-serving crackers and keep them happy than a bunch of grapes that will disappear during the course of our shopping trip. Usually they’ll even take my empties when I check out.

My local grocery store only ever has two real lanes open but there are six self-check out lanes. you can bet I’m going over there and checking myself out.

we take advantage of this every year. You don’t even have to go in the store. I buy $20 gcs for each staff member at daycare and then buy up to $300 for the household to spend during the year. When you pay with a gc, you aren’t using your red card, so there’s a trade-off. You lose that 5% but gain 10%. If we had a…

When I was in junior high, I identified a plagarized story in our high school’s literary magazine. The guy had blatantly ripped off Dave Barry and his “story” was so good that he’d gotten the coveted center of the magazine, where the staples went. I don’t think anything ever happened to him though. Nowadays,…

The southern California ones aren’t like the midwest stores. The menus and service are completely different.

I haven’t thought about this in over 20 years, but it was definitely a fixture on the middle school lunch menu in southwestern Ohio. But I never got to buy my lunch so I doubt I’ve ever done it. And it was probably Cincinnati chili, so maybe the cinnamon actually goes even better with peanut butter.

I’m a little younger than Drew (born in 1978) but I remember the 1984 Summer Olympics and not much before that in a newsworthy way. And we watched the ABC news every night, even before Peter Jennings started in 1983. But those earlier memories are hazy while the Challenger explosion is super clear. I have a 4 year old…

You should also look up “grey shirting” which is a newer phenomenon. Mostly it means taking a semester off after high school and enrolling in the spring, so you have an extra year to get bigger and stronger before college athletics. Disturbingly, it’s also being used in junior high, holding kids back in 8th grade so…