Lots of stepmoms are more “real” than lots of birth moms anyway. Raising a child is a tremendous task, whether you gave birth to that child or not. (And even if you did carry the child, are you “not really” its mother if you borrowed someone else’s eggs? Honestly! The stupid things people find to be competitive about!)

I wish I could be your friend. No babies for me. No lots-of-things for me. Long-term serious illness just changes all the rules, doesn’t it? I really, really, really understand how that kind of isolation feels.

Yes!

That’s one of the things the internet is for.

I actually LOVED the part where Bella went catatonic. I know you’re right about it’s being over the top. I loved it anyway.

Welcome to the club. We got jackets.

And has gone on to write other stuff. I thought “The Casual Vacancy” was brilliant. Way better than HP. (Not knocking HP, which was a great idea beautifully — mostly — executed. But “Casual Vacancy” is the real thing. I’m not saying it’s “Middlemarch” — but it’s in that solar system.)

I don’t think fictional characters should have to be role models. Even if the target audience is in its early teens.

4. The server was snotty.

You are. You’re, like, an infant prodigy.

Exactly!

What Akat said.

Why?

Damn.

Huge sympathy. I’m getting chills just reading about it.

Bat = five shots of vaccine + RIG injections all around the bite. (Been there, super freaked out because I was on immunosuppressive meds and didn’t know if the vaccine would even work.)

I know a professor at MIT who is really bad at calculating tips. Not cheap, just bad at arithmetic. It’s like she can do all the freakishly hard shit, but the third-grader stuff is beyond her. Weird.

Haha! The one good thing about SLE: husband has to clean the cat’s box!

Same here. And good point about the bean sprouts!

Well said. And sorry about your allergies. Allergies suck and should go dive headfirst into a giant vat of boiling hyena shit and die. And then apologize. And then die again.