So much this. I had a friend who I honestly don’t think she ever spent any meaningful time with kids or parents before she had her first in her late 30s, and then it was on and on and on about all the joys and the sorrows, the trials and tribulations, and, of course, the reams of advice now that she was an “expert.”…

Yeah, I get that being a parent is it’s own special experience, but all the people I know who go on about how different it is once you have kids are people who never really took care of kids before and/or had to be responsible and care for other people in any significant way before they had kids of their own.

Hah, I’ve heard of donorcycles, but NLFODs is a new one to me.

no experiences to share, but my favorite kitten rescue/live feeds place just got a new momma and kittens in yesterday, kind of my go-to feel-good thing to watch:

That one set of videos where those 2 girls reacted to the 2nd LOTR movie trailer, and then some of the cast reacted to their reaction, and then they reacted to the casts reaction to their reaction...that was fun because there was so much honest joy and wonder in it all. But, yeah, otherwise in general I agree with you…

And they don’t understand what sports are, or maybe they assume women don’t actually move around when they do sports.

I feel the same way, and I also think about how lucky I am to not have ever had any serious illness, injury, or disability, or family members who were sick or disabled who needed my help. And really, whether you want to call it lucky or some other providence, we don’t actually have much choice or control over our…

Tennis coach.

Me too. And ever since I saw her on a talk show explain how she covers her face like she does because she’s a recovering addict and when she started getting really famous, it was all too stressful for her and she was decompensating and worried about relapsing, I’m now firmly in the leave-Sia-alone camp.

I love the hammocky bits, got this one because of the hammock at the bottom. They never use the hammock, not once.

That’s a lot like the one mine have, though yours looks a bit nicer. They used it a lot more as kittens, but still like to get up and sleep on the top occasionally. Slightly bad lighting on this pic, but this was like the only time that one of them ever got into that round thingy.

These are some of my workout songs from those decades:

Again, I went off and did another long answer to someone else which kind of answers your question, maybe? Rape can be used to generally mean any violation, not just violent or criminal sexual assault. I was defending its use here because of the context of the whole book, which is all about the abuse these children…

My vocabulary is excellent, thank you so much for your concern. I gave a longer answer to someone else, if you care to read it, but as I’m sure you already know, the word rape can be used more generally for any kind of violation, not just violent or criminal sexual assault, and originally just meant any seizure or…

Thanks, though I just realized I reversed the numbers, I think it’s supposed to be 5-7-5 syllables per line and I did 7-5-7, so I probably would have gotten a bad grade in high school :)

I appreciate your comments, and the others, have given me a lot to think about that I will continue to think about. This may be a long comment, you can read it or not :).

Says, “As far as what I did...”
“I pleaded guilty...”
All good, if he’s over it

I’ve replied in more detail to someone else, but, yes, I see them all as victims, and I see the whole event as “kind of rapey” because the lack of consent and the traumatic events and consequences associated with this scene in this story.

As I said above, I don’t see any of them as rapists. The children are all victims to me. I understand rape or even “kind of rapey,” like I said, seems a bit harsh for this event, but consent and capacity are important considerations when discussing sexual assault or sexual abuse, and this story’s depiction of children…

They had to bond because they were lost and Eddie had lost his magic compass ability. They believed they probably would have died down in those sewers if he couldn’t lead them out of that maze.