Yes! I was visiting in Finland years ago, and what really made me fall head-over-heels in love with it and end up living there eventually for two years was visiting my Finnish friend at her workplace and listening to her speak to someone over the phone in a deep chest voice and no-nonsense downward inflections. It…

As someone with very large breasts while lactating (G/H), who had to combo-feed due to low supply and got different kinds of stinkeye in public for EACH activity, I can say that people can be absolute assholes when you a) don't use a cover, which my baby wouldn't eat under anyway (he had an undiagnosed tongue and lip…

My son is 15 months old, and we live in a Canadian city with a lot of people from touchy-feelier cultures and/or a lot of inexplicably entitled people. People we don't know are ALWAYS trying to touch (and sometimes kiss!) him whenever we go out in a stroller. It's gotten even worse since I turned the stroller seat to…

I know, right? I always say that my secret is having inherited the skin genes of toxic, emotionally vampiric grandparents who look about 30 years younger than they actually are (around 90—maybe they're actual vampires, I dunno?) I also have a very tame lifestyle and rarely drink any alcohol and have never done drugs…

Le Crap! That is beautiful!

That said, this hobby, like sewing, would lose its charm for me really fast if I had to do it for anyone else. I'm like the Selfish Seamstress in that I only want to do it if it's for me.

Definitely! I have many pairs of socks from over ten years ago that are tired-looking but still serviceable and I only had to mend them once, maximum. I have socks from three years ago that have holes that I tried to mend and gave up on because the quality of the fabric is so low that it's not working. I have some…

I found this book in the library called Mend It Better, and it made me realize that pretty much no garment is ever totally beyond repair. It has me all psyched to embroider discreet flowers over stains and holes on everything. It's a really satisfying and cheap hobby, because all that thread and seam rippers and…

This is not quite the same thing, only related, but I used to work at a giant mega-bookstore chain, and the workers were all invariably a) people like me who were really struggling financially and unable to buy anything they were selling, even with the steep employee discount, because were were paid $7.25/hour with no…

The only working out I do is chasing my toddler (it works because I have a toddler who likes to run very fast), the 30-day ab fitness challenge every few days or so (so it's like the 48-day fitness challenge at this point), and a weekly belly dance class at my local gym. The last one is the most intense, but I only do…

I believed everything and freaked out over everything when I was pregnant, mostly because my doctors were like, "why are you bothering me with this shit? I don't have time to answer questions. If you're worried about it, don't eat it." But that's not helpful when pretty much everything except water is a "bad"…

I would order decaf iced coffees in my third trimester, and then usually be subjected to a lecture by the barista who tries to get me to get regular iced coffee because decaf is insulting to the art of coffee. THEN, when I managed to make it to my seat with my decaf iced coffee, I'd get dirty looks from other patrons…

One of the things that pissed me off the most while I was pregnant was how the main pregnancy book I was using said something like, "you may notice yourself piling on the pounds while pregnant, and that's OK," followed two sentences later by, "don't pile on the pounds!" Or how nutrition books and articles would say,…

Ha! My father (who is a Narcissist in the clinical sense) is always expressing his discomfort over my having a smart "manly" brain (he told me when I was little that men are smarter about intellectual things and women are smarter about "practical things and the world") by telling me that my grandmother, who was…

Oh my, this brings back memories....my first serious adult relationship was for six years with this decade-older controlling Narcissist douche that started when I was an undergraduate and he was a graduate student. He was ABD and had a full-time job but he still expected me to provide meals for him when he visited me…

Ugh, their Canadian stores SUCK. In the US, it seemed to be a mixed back in terms of quality, especially of clothes, and I'd sometimes find cute stuff that lasted, fit, looked nice, and was made of 100% cotton. Mr. Chortcake and I were thrilled that Target came to Toronto, except that the selection of everything is…

"Also, P.S. I'm so sorry that the experience broke your heart - please know that the world is full of happy, healthy formula fed babies. I say this as a pediatrician - the benefits of breastfeeding are real, but over-stated. Few of my colleagues were ever able to exclusively breastfeed either, and many by choice,…

I AM poor, but I do have a sewing machine, and I'm teaching myself to tailor! It's the best! I first tried on my maternity clothes, because I had the same fitting problems but even more so with them, plus a baby bump that the clothing industry considered outsized. Figuring out how to make them fit well at that time…

I think you might be my size twin! Or at least my size first cousin. I'm also sort of a size 18 in sewing patterns, though sewn clothes are still too big in the torso and not quite right in the boob like with most RTW things.

I don't know if this applies to you, and I apologize if you already know, but I wish someone had told me this: Counter to much of the breastfeeding-rerelated info out there, breastfeeding *prevents* weight loss in many women. I was one of them, and felt like a failure when breastfeeding did nothing. I only lost weight…