I love third party services for this sort of stuff. While I didn’t need them for passports, they have saved my bacon when it came to needing a last minute visa or picking the right itinerary for a complicated international trip.

A friend of mine had to do this. There was a family emergency in the UK and he had to be there ASAP, but his passport had expired. A friend worked for the state department and basically walked over to the passport office in DC, flashed his badge, and said “This guy leaves with a passport today.” It did take all day…

If you expedite and go to the post office, prepare to have the person running your paperwork push back a tiny bit. I’ve had them / heard of them insisting that there’s no need for the rush fee and that it’ll be to you in no time.

“Your vague and mysterious emojis are neither mysterious nor vague. Please stop narcing with trees and snowflakes,” a coworker suggested.

I am now supremely pissed that I didn’t think of opening up a bidding war to my family when deciding what to name my kids.

Our dog park is pretty bleak, and at first, I was pretty put out about it. Then I realized that its bleakness was a feature: People didn’t really want to go to it since it wasn’t scenic, and dogs didn’t care because they weren’t there to marvel at the landscaping. 

TBH, having given birth to both of mine, I would have rather have been at a concert.

Totally classist. A school by me insisted that parents who packed lunches not include any pre-packaged items, like chips, cookies, Uncrustables, juice boxes, applesauce, etc, and that the should include mostly ‘fresh’ items.

I’m not sure if they still do this, but my old school offered graduations for each session, including summer. It’s a huge school, so it wasn’t like you were going to be one of three people on the stage. I actually know a few people who opted to graduate in the summer because it meant it was easier to get their family…

I actually had to scroll up to make sure I hadn’t read her age wrong.

I have never understood this. I tend to be with homebodies, so if my SO wants to go out with friends, I’m practically doing a happy dance. I can watch movies he hates on the TV! I can cook that thing he dislikes the smell of so I never make it! ALL OF THE ECHOS SHALL PLAY MY MUSIC! 

I have dealt with parents like this who are supposedly liberal... but will watch a damn child starve two miles from their house before they’ll give up Miley and Quincy’s after-school STEM program (that could, honestly, be replaced with reruns of Bill Nye and Mr. Wizard).

We’ve seen B happen. We got a waiter a few times in a row who had some habits that didn’t jive with us. I sent an email to the manager, making sure to say repeatedly that I didn’t want to see the guy fired, I just wanted to let the manager know that the guy’s habits were discouraging us from coming back.

Therapy takes time. So much time. I was in it for over a year before I started feeling like I was making inroads to dealing with my bigger issues.

It’s fine to be mad at Gerber, but maybe save your ire for them, and not for a parent just trying to get through a meal without dealing with an upset child. The restaurant is not losing bank because a party didn’t order a tiny tub of mac n cheese. Kids menus are already loss leaders at most restaurants.

*thousand yard stare as she remembers a few meals where she forgot the goldfish crackers and all hell broke loose*

As a parent of two kids, if the mom is breaking out Gerber’s mac n cheese, that means this kid is probably too young to handle the real deal. Baby food mac n cheese is super duper soft and basically unflavored. 

I’ve tasted baby mac n cheese, and it really isn’t the same as the stuff you’d serve at a restaurant. It’s much blander and much softer. It’s basically mush that for a brief second looks kind of like tubes.

I’m actually a bit miffed that they went with Old Bay. The Utz one is already awesome, so why not try something else?

I wish we had barred speeches with my first wedding. The best man resented me for ‘stealing’ his best friend, so his whole speech was basically talking about how terrible I was. I had two uncles ready to rip the mic from his hand and beat him with it.