Heh—I would use the heck out of that perfume!

Whoa, it's pretty tremendous to see that someone else's experience/feelings are so similar to mine! Sorry you had to go through that too, but thanks for writing it.

Damn, that sucks. It's terrible how teachers have the power to do that—I let my 11th-grade math teacher push me out of Honors math because she didn't like Jews (I was underconfident in math, though doing fine, and she wouldn't let me make up tests that I missed due to holidays, but just averaged my test scores for my…

I forgot to mention that I love how you quit! Much more to-the-point and no silly agonizing. I wish I'd stomped on that stupid crap.

Ohh! I used to work for Barnes and Hurrrgggh when I was trying to finish my Master's thesis, and we always had this fantasy that it was slightly better at Borders. I guess not! I worked there for three months or so. I actually liked working in the children's section and the literature section, where I was originally…

Sadly, it seems that many art teachers are like that, at least in my experience. Most recently, I took a life drawing course with a relatively well-known (but not, like, super-duper famous) nature artist, and he gave some very important pointers that still stay with me several years later, but he was also a complete…

I heard this a lot when describing to Finns the racism my non-white husband experienced and that I (ambiguously white) sometimes experienced with him when we were living in Finland. I still don't entirely understand the mental gymnastics that allow one to arrive at that conclusion.

I love you. And yes, Toronto IS the worst for me too! (Worse than New York, D.C., and Istanbul.)

Things are going too far, at least where I live. In my prenatal class, someone asked how much alcohol is permissible while breastfeeding, and the public health nurse said firmly, "the same amount as when you're pregnant." (So, none?) "Yes, none. You never can tell how much you've really had." Then she made a pissy…

AMEN. This goes for food too. Weird ideas proliferating on the internet, plus impossibly draconian newish rules from the medical establishment (and seriously, pregnant women from my husband's country are only told to avoid booze, and they're much less anxious as a whole), mean that pretty much most food is suspect or…

As the mother of a toddler, I love all of you. This is awesome.

Thanks for this advice! It's very timely, because I was about to start on some serious projects, and with this measurement I'm apparently a couple of sizes smaller than I thought, plus a serious full-bust adjustment and a slight larger-waist adjustment. I can't wait to make something that actually fits!

Yes! This was made obvious to me when I was pregnant, and crossing legs was painful and medically inadvisable and all. I made sure never to take up more than my allotted seat space on the subway (this is in Toronto), but I'd still get incredulous looks from dudes on either side of me who were trying to air out their…

My sister and I (2.5 years apart) used to babysit a boy from age 1.5 to about 3, separately. One night we babysat him and his baby sister together while his parents went to an all-night party. His parents left, he woke up from his nap, he took one look at us, and he Freaked. Out. We couldn't calm him down for several…

(Because it's not letting me edit:) I feel like I should add that he was the kind of guy who never washes or uses deodorant and firmly believes that women "love" a man's "natural" smell. And who was scornful of elderly women in their late 20's who work out, in his mind in order to attempt to look younger and more…

The guy I lost my virginity to was my ex, a creepy decade-older (male because the graduate school was coed) Narcissist graduate student in my women's college. He was house-sitting for a professor. It was a bizarre, cold, and weird experience. He complained in a toneless, matter-of-fact way about my lack of experience…

I'd love to know how you overcame it, because I now have health anxiety as a result of having no family doctor (GP)/a very bad family doctor in the Canadian healthcare system for two years, while having undiagnosed/ignored thyroid issues and going through a pregnancy. I was honestly never like this before—I'd be like,…

I feel for her too, because I had a brief bout of delusional pregnancy a couple of months ago. I was waiting for my periods to normalize after giving birth so that we could plot out Chortcake #2, but it didn't happen, and they outright disappeared. After doing some tests and seeing slightly elevated prolactin levels,…

Damn. I love that! I actually liked being a manager, but I eventually had to leave because I was not a mincing sociopath and the expectation that I be one drove me so crazy that I thought a Ph.D. would be a better idea. (No.)

I actually have extraordinary superpowers in that regard, or, like an iron bladder or something, but as a migraine sufferer who is supposed to get over my whiny self-indulgent "little headaches," I sympathize completely, and would judge the shit out of anyone who dares give you a hard time for that. WTF is wrong with…