I was working in a volunteer tutoring program run by the university where I was getting my second undergrad degree. This meant that I was a good 15-20 years older than most of my fellow students. I was paired up with this 18-year-old boy, and we went to tutor struggling elementary school students in reading. This is…

This was about 20 years ago now. It was my first week teaching at a new school. They had stressed to us that they were putting in a system of hall passes (they previously had just been letting kids use the bathroom on the honor system) and that we HAD TO use them. We had a hall pass and two bathroom passes, and the…

I will agree that the experience of being a cis woman is not the same as that of being a trans woman. But the experience of being a lesbian woman is not the same as that of being a bisexual woman, or of being a straight woman, or an asexual woman. The experience of being a white woman is not the same as that of being…

We rarely saw people dumping. I lived on the very edge of a small rural town. Behind my house, for a few miles, were fields, criss-crossed by drainage ditches and the occasional narrow dirt road. These asswipes drove out of town, presumably to the stretch of road where there were fields on one side and orchards on the…

Not really? I mean, we paid attention to the music for our first few dances—the one where MrsPye and I led the dance, the one where we each danced with our fathers, I think maybe the last one before we left? After that, the only things we cared about were that people could dance to it, that it was music that at least…

A lot of people here do have yards—there are a lot of duplexes, where the bottom unit also has yard access. If the landlord lives in the neighborhood, they're generally in the bottom unit, but a lot of them are also rentals. And most people with dogs walk them, on leashes. But again, like I said, I don't know about…

There probably is a better use for that $40. (I don't know what I'd buy for $40 that wasn't actually pet food—MrsPye has decided that her mission in life is to turn all the [non-toxic] recycling from her job/our house into rabbit, guinea pig, and gerbil toys, so we don't really buy a lot of stuff.)

I know! Okay, we had to stay in some very grudging motels when we were moving, because we had to find a place to sleep (and I CHOSE a place that said it allowed pets, and then found out it meant "we only allow small dogs, not cats or rabbits [which was what we had].") but for a vacation, where I actually have time to…

Dammit, Kinja won't let me edit, and I published too fast.

I live in a low-income neighborhood. There are no free-roaming dogs. (And almost nobody has a yard, either. I see my neighbors taking their dogs for a lot of long walks, though.) There are a few free-roaming cats, but they all appear to be stray or feral, not someone's pets.

I'm glad someone else's pet did that. My former cat (I lost him a few years ago to old age) considered all toys to be "spider" ever since he, as a kitten, claimed a stuffed spider from the Halloween decorations to be His Special Toy. Eighteen years later, "where's your spider?" would send him hunting for the favored…

Yeah, we refer to ourselves as our pets' moms, but we don't actually think of them as our kids. (We do, among ourselves, refer to the menagerie in general as "the babies," but they're not our babies, or equivalent to human babies. We just didn't like the sound of "the animals" or "the pets," and we have four different…

Yes! Some of my friends have kids, some of my friends have pets, some have both. (Oddly, none of my friends have neither.) And when one of us starts sharing stories about the goofy shit our pets or kids do, we all feel free to chime in with stories, and nobody gets pissed off about it.

I really can't imagine going through life being that afraid MrsPye would see images of someone she found attractive. (Or, gasp!, seeing actual people she found attractive.) It must be really stressful.

Yeah, ugh. I am very sorry you're in that crappy situation.

Eh, produce is just expensive here, is all. But I will make sure to buy a few!

That's a really good point. Look at Children's Services (whatever that department is called in Texas) and see if they have guidelines, and follow those. That would probably strengthen your case in court, if you're following their guidelines. It kind of sucks, because you know your kid, but if you have an ex who might…

That's part of Nephew's problem, too. He has three older sisters, all of whom talk a lot, and all of whom worshiped the ground he crawled on when he was a baby—so he can point and grunt and get what he wants. It's not the whole problem, though; his youngest sister has been in school for three years at this point. He…

Red Delicious are terrible (even when they're not mealy, they're so bland). Golden Delicious are slightly better, maybe decent 30% of the time instead of 20%. Those two were the only apples available year-round when I was growing up, which I need to remind myself every time I ask myself, "Why do I always think I hate…

The thing I remember most was litmus paper, and learning about acids and bases. Then I got to 7th grade science and was shocked to find that not EVERYONE knew about this stuff. (Or the types of rock, or how to use a microscope—yes, my parents sprung for the 3-in-1 science kit.)