Geez, this thread is making me feel better about our paltry $800 a month for infant daycare. We live in a small Southern city where the cost of living is low. That daycare bill will be our biggest monthly expense - including rent - by several hundred dollars. But it's still no picnic to try and find $800 bucks in a…

Oooh, is there one for the Pillars of the Earth? Because I have some... opinions about that book. After I finished it, I spent a whole hour reading the one star reviews on Amazon and nodding wildly in agreement.

Applause for you. I could not stand Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, and I'm a big reader. I actually forgot that I hadn't finished Jane Eyre and then realized, several months later, that I still had like fifty pages left. Of the ending. Which is supposed to be the best part of a book, right? But then, after I gave…

I've always cared about American women getting screwed regarding maternity leave, but now that I'm pregnant it makes me ragey. I am due in August. I am an hourly employee and will have no income at all during my maternity leave. I'm planning to go back after 6 weeks because otherwise we will have a serious problem…

This is a lot closer to my experience with the typical Bros in rural Eastern North Carolina. We have Southern Frat Bros too, but they're a less common variety.

I think the school I teach for offers some decent money for veterans because I have at least one current or former military student in every class. They are such nice students, usually, very respectful and polite as you said. And they do definitely push back on conservative critiques but rarely are they completely…

I tutor middle school students with learning disabilities, and in the wealthy private school where I work, a 7th grade student who turned in that paper would be recommended for evaluation.

The method works too well and people forget why it was needed in the first place.

I'm gonna go ahead and blame the education system. For a few years I've taught for a well-known online university named for a mythical bird, and I have had many, many lovely and intelligent students, average age about 35 but running from 19 all the way up into the 70s. (Side note: lots of students were teen moms who…

It sucks that no one can be happy with what they have. But I have to say, as someone who has only been able to wear ugly, industrial bras, has a hard time finding cute clothes that are also acceptable to wear to my job at a school, and cried when pregnancy kicked me up ANOTHER size - the grass looks pretty green on…

I was about four I think and it was also a dead pet scenario. I didn't take it super well - after confirming that everyone I knew would die, and me too, I crawled, bawling, into a kitchen cupboard and refused to come out for several hours. But I do think it was the right time to hear about death. And the other option…

I became friends with my now-husband because I quoted that movie, which happens to be his absolute favorite.

OMG, Lucy Liu would have been amazing.

I definitely don't think most women would prefer to shop in the "plus size" compared to the "regular" section. Petites are a little different because they refer to clothes that are actually for shorter women. They have all the same sizes, but the inseam, etc, will be shorter.

Wow, are you my husband's secret wife? (Or maybe I'm the secret wife?) Mr Luey does the SAME THING and I always thought it was so weird. I've never encountered anyone else with the same level of aversion for it. We have had fights about whether or not I should eat ketchup in the house. People always think he's kidding…

According to this article - which may be a little iffy? - 72% of US Women wear size 12 and above.

I think the more time someone takes to personalize it, the less likely they are to regret it. Some people just seem to want a tattoo - any tattoo - and they pick some flash off the wall. It doesn't mean as much to them. All of mine are personally meaningful, and now that I have a little more disposable income, I took…

Also the spelling errors were always hilarious. I have seen every possible way that letters can be arranged to suggest the user is looking for Abercrombie and Fitch.

I used to have a job where we saw real web searches and the results, then graded how well the results matched the search. There are people who exclusively do this with adult sites. A friend of mine did this, and she said it was kind of interesting for about ten minutes, which then turned into why god why and oh the…

Regret is probably too strong of a word. I have five tattoos, and four of those were agonized over for months or years before I finally went in. One was a dramatic gesture during a time when I was depressed, in a terrible relationship, and prone to dramatic gestures. I chose the hye won hye symbol, which is an Adinkra…