I’ve had great success with drawings, including a fairly complicated burger order delivered as a diagram in Thailand. And if you know ahead of time, you can get a Point It book (or app)!

God, I know this is totally beside the point, but imagine being able to fill out an expense report in 10 minutes... I put a whole afternoon or day aside every few months to do it because it’s such a demanding bureaucratic task involving many pages on a cranky system. And anyway I can only do it from an on-campus…

The “risky behaviour” is driving your young children to daycare before you go to work, while you yourself are tired. If you drive your young (still in rear-facing seats, liable to fall asleep even during short journeys) to daycare before you go to work, and you are tired, you have a risk of going on autopilot and…

I think sometimes the self-awareness that comes with knowing we’ve got a neurodiversity can make us susceptible than someone who trusts their brain (as long as we’ve come up with a suitable system to “manually” remember something). I have ADHD and whenever I leave the house I go “phone wallet keys inhaler” and…

My partner (American) had the extreme privilege of (middle class) parents who value education so much they committed from before their first child was born to straight-up pay for university for their kids, so he and his siblings have no college debt. He decided to move to Ireland to go to university, so he had to pay…

I’m very sorry for your loss, and that your mother never got to come visit Ireland. This is a bit weird but I’m dead serious; if it’s more important to you that it happens than you get to do it yourself, you could ship her ashes, or some of her ashes, to me and I will scatter them somewhere beautiful or somewhere…

Just make sure you’re wearing polar-bear-safe and biodegradable clothes! Or nothing, I guess! 

This is something my mother tried to instil in me, and it’s not her fault that I am a notebook-hoarding anxious perfectionist anyway! But I can just about create things I know won’t last (although I do usually try to take photos of them) and I can credit her with that. I vividly remember her explaining that we can’t…

Sidestepping the whole legalisation-of-surrogacy thing, which is a topic that’s very interesting but which I am not qualified to speak on (except maybe to say those payments seem low for the work and risk, and that especially in the States the prospective parents should definitely have to pay for serious health…

Congrats on finally once again having a Home Secretary who isn’t afraid to threaten the Irish with food shortages! (We’re ready for ye this time though.) 

Nah, my midwife said that the thing They don’t tell you about epidurals is it’s amazing at dealing with the contractions but you get payback during the pushing stage. If you don’t have the epidural, your contractions obviously hurt, but the pushing stage is typically faster and less painful. Your nurses were probably…

Well that’s why I say in this case you need more, the anti-gun-control lobbyists have outsize influence. You’ll always have a few people who will never ever budge, but most politicians will be swayed on most issues by sufficient pressure, which will include a whole range of stuff from professional lobbyists to a…

The study itself is important too though, because “this seems obvious” isn’t enough evidence to influence policy. Without a study, there could always be arguments of, well maybe not, well maybe domestic violence is a crime of passion and perpetrators use their bare hands and the presence of a gun doesn’t have an…

Yeah, I’m REALLY hoping baby doesn’t arrive early cause it’ll totally mess up my work situation, but what will be will be, so I’m going to start putting the hospital bag together in the next couple of weeks!

Oh wow, that is getting close! Good luck with your last month!

I actually bought one set of 3-6 just in case, cause my partner was such a big baby when he was born he went straight into 3 mo clothes!! But that’s a good idea to be generally prepared.

What a cutie!! Thank you so much for sharing. She (?) looks very thoughtful.

Oh my god, yeah, I would also honestly be terrified of that. I’m trying to convince my partner we should just change the baby on the floor cause I don’t even like the precarity of changing tables...

Fingers very crossed for you, ME! I hope you’ve got a little something stuck in there!!

That’s a great idea! I have been baffled by changing bags honestly. They’re so expensive and weird, and either boring/ugly as hell or a sad mimic of a fat designer handbag, neither of which is my #aesthetic. I’m gonna find a decent black backpack with stars on it!