I once read that you should splurge on the best foundations, concealers, and mascaras you can afford, but you can go cheaper on things like eyeshadows, blushes, and lipsticks. Which makes sense. There’s not a ton of difference between drugstore and beauty counter eyeshadow, ingredients-wise.

So on top of this past week being extremely stressful (baking and decorating Valentine’s desserts for a pop up shop...lots of late nights and long days) and sad (my great aunt passed away after a long battle with stomach cancer...the funeral was yesterday), it was also exciting because I had my first night training to…

Girl, I wish I could send you a vat of mousse. It’s lovely for drowning problems in.

I ask this question purely out of curiosity and not to make it sound like it was your fault, but was there any discussion of the holiday beforehand? Like was the expectation for a gift exchange set? I’m a gift giver by nature, and I will find the perfect gift for every possible gift-giving occasion, but I regularly…

i love stories like yours and they make me hopeful. i try not to be too idealistic about things like this, but i find myself cautiously optimistic that it could happen because it has happened with other people. (to be fair, though, i also feel that way when i buy a lottery ticket...) i mentioned in a response to…

to be clear, i broke up with him. and i agree that we should work on our friendship. which is what i’m trying to do by talking to him. i also know that a lot of our problems stem from his emotional baggage, and i’ve told him he needs to work on that.

at the moment, nothing. which is why i told him we’re not getting back together. and i told him that i’m dating other people, and that first and foremost, i want to be in a healthy relationship and he can’t give that to me right now. he understands and agrees. he has in the last couple of months somewhat curbed his…

yes, i absolutely agree that you shouldn’t wait for someone to change. which is why i broke up with him. but in talking to him over the past few days, he says he genuinely wants to do better and be better than he has been. and i know that doesn’t mean anything without actions, but acknowledging the need for change is…

This week, I decided after breaking up with a guy in November, I’m ready to get back in the dating world. So I sign up for stupid online dating, and who pops up on day one in my search? The guy I broke up with. I didn’t reach out, but he sent me a message, apologizing for boneheaded behavior that led to the breakup,…

I was in a similar position a few years back. After a particular terrible breakup with someone, I refused to date anyone for a couple of years. I don’t know if you feel at all nervous or anxious about sleeping with someone after going that long without, but the longer I went, the more it terrified me to do it. I ended…

I had something similar happen with a friend about 10 years ago. Our lives were in different places. She refused to grow up and stop partying, and her parents were repeatedly bailing her out of bad situations she got herself into. I tried to convince her to make better choices, she called me uptight and boring, so the…

Thank you! Hope you get to feeling better and fingers crossed you hear good news on the teaching positions!

I totally 100% get this.

After a particularly rough couple of weeks, this past week has felt less stressful and more productive, so achievement number one was just being able to calm the fuck down. I’m currently in the middle of a 15 month goal to lose 120 pounds. I weighed in on Thursday, and I’m down a total of 19.2 pounds in two months. It…

Thank you for this. As someone who grew up with an abusive parent who smoked weed daily, the smell is still an emotional trigger for me. I do my best to just stay the hell away from it, but even in my apartment complex, if one of the neighbors is smoking enough in their apartment, I can smell it in my apartment. I…

We made the call yesterday, but there’s absolutely no keeping it a secret. The kids are angry at us, texting their parents, the dad called his mother, who called to scream at all of us. My sister has demanded the kids back, so we’ve told her she can pick them up at school but we’ll be there too in case she doesn’t…

Thanks. I’m hoping this will get my sister to snap out of it and get back to being herself.

We made the call today. I’m so sorry you had to go through that with your mom. It’s the opposite here. My older nephew is very angry at us, and is blaming himself for this happening, but I’m hoping he’ll come to see it as us helping and having his best interest at heart with everything we’re doing.

Thank you so much for the kind words. We made the call to CPS today, plus the police, and tomorrow my sister and I are talking to the proper people at school to inform them of the situation. My older nephew was very angry today when he found out, but by the time I left to come home he was talking to us and smiling, so…

Thank you so much. As this all unfolded, my mom immediately drove in from a few hours away to stay with them until we figured out what was going on. We went grocery shopping with them, and it was heartbreaking that 1) they were as excited as they were about being able to pick out what they wanted for their school…