I was raised in an agnostic home, and we always celebrated Christmas with gusto! It's absolutely the most important holiday to my family. For example, even though my youngest sibling is 23 and there is only one grandchild (who generally can't be with us because of custody issues) stays over at my house on Christmas…

Yup! Sometimes I just have to escape to the guest room. Unfortunately, Mr. Downing Does. Not. Like. It. when he doesn't know where I am in the middle of the night, so that usually results in me waking up to a looming figure in the dark startling me awake. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay" He'll say. And it's…

Oh yeah, we have three cats and in the winter Mr. Downing, Nephew Downing, and all of the cats seem to need to all be as close as possible to me. My nephew doesn't crawl into bed any longer, but there were nights where I think I was actually sleeping on a thin sliver of bed, approximately four square inches. That much…

Sometimes a person really is that awful. I was so relieved when my mother's mother died. She was a toxic, horrible human being who destroyed everyone she could. I'm glad you haven't had that experience.

Man, that still chills me to the bone.

They do in California!

It's true, there are usually reasons why folks act as they do. When I can, I try to delve into the source, but usually they are far too gone.

That makes a lot of sense. About four years ago my then 8 year old nephew and his father moved in with me and Mr. Downing. My nephew had lost his mother (my sister) about a year and a half earlier. Clearly very different than adopting, but the first six months were rocky. My nephew had had a really hard life up until…

Right? Why do some folks have to be so horrible? What on earth do they get out of it? I've never understood why people are willing to treat another human being so poorly. This need a few of us seem to have to stand on another in order to get higher themselves is so troubling. I genuinely believe that most folks are…

That is the perfect way to handle that situation, bravo! You just can't argue with them, once you do the battle is lost. I bet the Insecure Attention Monster says some really comical things when you agree with her like that.

That sounds exactly like our thinking! I only want to go through all of that once. We'll all settle in together. We're particularly well suited to helping children recover from abuse issues, but not medical issues as neither of us has any kind of chronic issue.

Oh, I was biting my tongue frequently. My pride got to me and there was no way in hell that I wasn't going to be taking this bitch down. Just had to use her own delusional thinking against her. I am a master at emotional Jujutsu. Luckily, I use my powers only for good ... or at least not evil.

Completely! I hope your Chmn. Meow sees the light soon.

I detest concern trolling. I'm a big ole girl, and that "I just care about you" bs is the worst.

Good for you! Did you adopt from the foster system? We're seriously considering that. In our class there was some weird weird stuff. So much need and pain and total ignorance.

It's really maddening. It gave so much truth to 'never argue with an idiot, those watching won't be able to tell the difference.' I was getting really upset before she showed her hand. I kept saying variations of 'Baby, this is me, you know I'm not like that. Please just try to step back and see what I'm saying.' It…

Oh I detest that! I am absolutely certain you are correct. Mr. Downing can't see that sort of thing _at all_. His former best friend is a woman. It became glaringly obvious to me that she had designs on him and was doing all sorts of ridiculous things to attempt to undermine me. It would have been so funny if he'd…

Yeah, I've seen it all over the place. In regards to my SIL, the fact she's adopted makes me that much more angry with her parents. They had to go through a lot to adopt her, so for them to then be so hurtful to her when she could have gone to a family that would actually love her, it just makes me so sad.

The same thing happened to my sister in law. Her dad told her that no one would love her "while [she's] so fat." I wanted to punch him in the nose when she told me that. Selfish, shitty parents. She's so damaged from their judgement, no self esteem , very insecure, she's always thanking me for spending time with her…

"Holocaust Princess" struck me as underlining the peculiar commercialization of the Holocaust. There has been some books and articles addressing how the glut of work on the period has created a sort of banal fatigue to the horror. That we can hand wave and say 'yeah, yeah, stripped pajamas, I get it, horror blah blah…