Yes — please ask the shelters about their specific guidelines before donating! Ours couldn’t take open/used hygiene/cosmetics items, and weeding through them actually took away resources (employee time) that would have been better spent elsewhere.

Don’t listen to the people judging you for rehoming them. You asked for useful tips, and those are neither useful nor tips. Your life has just changed in sudden and unexpected ways, and you don’t need that guilt on top of the rest.

Really? My Ken’s heads came off — and went back on — soooo much easier than Barbie’s. Which made him great for when I wanted to play Scarlet Pimpernel and needed a temporary guillotine victim.

Saaaaaame. I probably had a half-dozen Barbies but only two Kens (well, technically an Aladdin and a Prince Philip). Ken was an accessory player to whatever Barbie’s story was that day — ground control to her astronaut, first gentleman to her President, coach to her gold-medal Olympian, the prince who would dance with…

I’m still pissed off at how my body changed after pregnancy (I know it’s a miracle/natural/etc — I don’t care; I miss my old wardrobe). It’s not even about weight so much as weight distribution -- no matter how much weight I drop, my hips will never again fit into my old clothes.

Except there kinda is. She’s worshipped by the same sorts of tribal Christians* who’d vote for Trump — they love her wholesome Hallmark persona, and she is still tweeting things about how God is sustaining her through this horribly unfair trial in her life.

While I’m sure plenty of Protestants celebrate Good Friday, none of the ones I’m friends with (even the ‘high church’ Protestants — a few Episcopalians, a couple Lutherans, a lone Presbyterian) seem to observe it to a noticeable extent. I’ll ask them if their congregations have any special Good Friday services, but I’v…

It’s not a federal holiday, so it’ll depend mostly on your boss’s religious affiliation and/or how Catholic your larger community is. Do you live in Utah? Unless your boss is super Catholic, you’re probably not getting it off. Live in Boston or Baltimore? You might get it off, even if your boss isn’t Catholic.

“Any alternative to filling your body with more chemicals is a net win.”

Oh, for sure. I will say that I did go in the burger place once and, given how fine they were with the front of house being obscenely filthy, I can only imagine what the kitchen looked like.

Yeah, but don’t courts usually decide based on replacement value, not resale value? 

Absolutely. And not just restrictions-by-choice — twice in my life I’ve ended up an expat in vastly different food cultures with no access to ingredients I was familiar with. Learning to ask a seller “What is this food item, please, and can you tell me how it’s best prepared?” did more for my cooking skills than the ye…

A Chinese place in my city failed their health inspection (I think they were keeping raw meat on the second-from-bottom shelf, or something like that) and it made the news. Meanwhile, a burger place failed the health inspection for multiple violations almost ten years in a row (they always passed the re-check) and no…

ding ding ding

I don’t think it even has to be a “big” city — I think you just have to be willing to look! My on-the-smaller-side-of-medium-sized city (but definitely ‘city,’ not ‘town’) has at least a half-dozen traditional Chinese places (plus a couple Vietnamese, a few Thai, and at least one Korean).

When I was easing into vegetarian cooking (I’m not veg, but I always hated vegetables and finally decided to learn how to cook them well) I was surprised to discover that Indian food is hella healthy, despite the gorgeous sauces. They’re the recipes I pull out whenever my MIL is dieting, and she refused to believe…

Oh, Rhonda’s not even truly worried about her caloric intake. She just wants to make sure you’re reminded that she’s the type of person who would be concerned.

I first read that as “6-year-old” (which kind of fit with mistaking “Sansa” for “Salsa”) and I was starting to worry about what kind of parents would be chill with their kindergartener powering through GoT.

Childbirth was the worst pain I’ve ever gone through. Mastitis was close, and lasted longer.

Beardless Chris > Bearded Chris.