Well, fair enough. You can say a lot of things about Alexis Colby Carrington, and the b-word is certainly one of them.

Seriously. I last used those kinds of terms when I was 20 and knew nothing at all about how actual relationships work.

The usual advice is to wave your arms around - even stampeding cattle are often frightened by this. BUT, it sounds like something else was going on with these animals. What a story!

I just googled him. Half of those images could be on Preserve.us.

True. The thought of that is the spookiest of all.

That was lovely. I'd hope to be able to communicate in such a way with my husband and daughter if that were me.

I don't mean to star your frightening experience, but that is creepy.

I wonder if that's a common dream with deceased loved ones. I have similar dreams all the time about my dad being back for a limited time to celebrate with us (usually eat Christmas dinner or something like that). I've never paid attention to the real date of those dreams, but maybe I will now.

Last year it was a super-rainy and dark West Coast day when I read these. Just me, my little dog and my 4 month-old. Who was lying there sleeping with her eyes half open.

I kind of love the surly 15 year-old girls that roll up to my door at 9 and hold out their purses. We make them sing or tell a joke. Half of them can't be bothered and the other half love it.

Tons of kids come to our (middle-class/nowhere near upscale) neighborhood because it's self-contained and with quiet streets. There are also lots of apartment buildings nearby too. We love it and so do our neighbors. Everyone gets 300+ trick-or-treaters and in the last few years everyone has gone whole-hog with…

I'm glad I read this article and disappointed because I usually love AHP's writing. She really needed the background info that Kara provides here and could have had something more interesting to say about how the term was appropriated and misused in service of a groundless anxiety.

BING BING BING!!! 100% correct! (I am borrowing this to use when people say "relax, that's how edgy humor works." It's not edgy if it's just repeating the status quo.

Which is about 95% of the advice you get as a new mom: "X worked for me so it should work for you, too". I like hearing what works for other people but cannot stand when it is presented as the only viable option.

I remember seeing those types of signs on campus when I was pregnant and found them very alarming (as in, shaken for the whole day). Not because I believe in their side at all (100% pro-choice), but really couldn't shake the images while thinking about my own baby. It opened my eyes to how little they care about…

The worst, but also the best, relief-wise.

I could not love this thread more if I tried. I must have done all of the above at least once.

I absolutely have a professional voice and it is fascinating to me how my young female colleagues and I change our timbre, tone, etc, when we're behind closed doors together. But I do keep quite a few of the "feminine" qualities even when being professional. Lots of slow speech and melody, but I'm either teaching or…

So true. We just don't recognize where the mistakes and successes are until way down the road. I don't regret the foolish things I did as a kid, because they made me who I am now.

It's the super-shitty end-game of that kind of logic. The "she just needs to be convinced and if it doesn't work I'm entitled to her anyway" BS. Those poor kids.