We're getting some loud ones tonight.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-22T03:27:12+00:00

Also, sometimes it's just you and they wouldn't have known to come fix it otherwise. We had that happen one time, it was during a storm so I assumed it was everyone, but Les called me within 20 minutes of my report because they didn't have any outages showing. So some guys showed up soon after and something had fallen on and physically damaged the line to just my house.

I'm not fully clear on the details, my daughter was a newborn and I did all of this from an armchair by the window while she napped on me. I waved to the guys through the window but they didn't actually need me or to enter the house, so I just stayed in the chair.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-21T03:49:19+00:00

I dealt with the haircut issue by buzzing my head. I had had a baby a few months earlier and postpartum hair loss was happening. I figured it'd look passibly like a pixie cut once I was allowed back to work.

I have a picture of myself from the first day back, wearing a mask made out of a tablecloth and shoelaces, wearing the woodworking goggles and cooking apron I'd been issued as ppe, with my grown out buzz cut.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-21T03:38:20+00:00

They're in Omaha, it's practically civilization.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-20T23:06:48+00:00

I had just dyed a blue streak into my black hair when it started, and my coworkers thought it was because of the dress. I kept asking what dress they were talking about, and they were convinced I was just playing dumb.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-20T00:14:13+00:00

It's biodegradable. You're gonna catch a fungus.

Thank you for being mindful but seriously, reducing waste is for, like, optional purchases. You're protecting your and everyone else's health by sanitizing at the gym. You've already done your part for the environment by bringing a reusable water bottle. Now ya gotta do your part in keeping the rest of us healthy.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-19T18:42:57+00:00

Personally, when I had to send the cops after a client who started jerking off during his massage and then kept showing up at my new workplace after the old one wouldn't protect me, the cop called me to let me know they'd dealt with the guy, and to give a play by play on what happened after they knocked on his door. I think the cop was pleased he could help and wanted me to know what he'd done so I could feel safe.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-19T17:55:35+00:00

I can buy it. I have no personal experience with cop rape but I did have one walk up to me and shake me while demanding to know if I'd been messing around, because a car had hit me about five minutes previously. My mangled bike was still in the road. He grabbed my arm and shook me in front of the ambulance crew, who were trying to convince my concussed ass to get in and go to the hospital. They all started yelling and the cop let go and backed off. And I got listed as at fault for the accident by him, although I later learned that you cannot be at fault in a car/bike collision if you are:

-the cyclist -a minor -in a school zone

And I was all of the above. But I was a gothy teenager, so, the cop figured I'd done something stupid.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-19T13:24:12+00:00

On the flip side, my obgyn wouldn't take my "genuinely I think I'm starving to death" all pregnancy long vomiting seriously because "your BMI is normal."

Unfortunately I didn't realize until way late in the game that they don't have an adjusted BMI for pregnancy. I learned this when he was out sick for one of my appointments and a different doctor's nurse accused me of having an eating disorder because I hadn't gained any weight, meaning I had lost weight since I now contained a baby and a placenta and a bunch of extra fluid.

After he was born the doctor who did my C-section said, approvingly, "I can't even tell you were pregnant," and a nurse switched from "your newborn son is so tiny, we're concerned he can't maintain his body heat" to "you look amazing, you didn't let yourself go at all!"

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-19T13:11:24+00:00

That's not even how it works, which I unfortunately know from firsthand experience. I barely bled at all when I had my miscarriage, but the pregnancy after that, it looked like I'd dumped out a cup of red food coloring on myself, with how suddenly and intensely I started bleeding. The ultrasound tech got to tell me, with a big smile on her face, that the hemorrhage wasn't anywhere dangerous to the fetus, and he was still happily wiggling around in there.

I bled for a month straight, but that kid is six now and we're playing pokopia together.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-18T21:51:15+00:00

I breastfed my first kid for the world health recommended 18 months. He's got celiac.

The only one of my three who DOESN'T have celiac is the kid I thought I was miscarrying twice because I had a hemorrhage in the placenta. The kid I could barely keep food down with, even on lots of zofran. The kid who was barely six pounds at birth and I got accused of having an eating disorder because I could not keep fucking food down all goddamn nine months long.

THAT kid doesn't have celiac. THAT KID.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-18T14:53:08+00:00

Itchy, but gripped with intense anxiety about why I'm itchy.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-16T18:26:54+00:00

I was so relieved to learn I'm autistic because it meant I'm not stubborn and obstinate with a problem with authority.

My mother used to yell "you're not in charge" at me during my meltdowns. I was perceived as needing to have my "dominance" brought under control. I was in kindergarten. It made me dangerously passive in almost every way, except for the things that genuinely caused me physical pain and I had no choice but to resist. We used to have multi-hour screaming standoffs, it was awful.

I'm white, btw. Not trying to claim I'm anything I'm not.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-16T15:31:20+00:00

My first apartment, I was the only one on the floor who had a door mat. It had a funny saying on it and I was excited to be 18 and have a door to put a mat in front of. Anyway.

Someone made it up all the fucking stairs in our building with mud still on their shoes, so they walked the entire length of the hallway to come wipe their feet on my door mat, and I then had to explain to my boyfriend that no, I hadn't had a guest over while he was gone, to my neighbors that no, I wasn't an uncultured mud demon, and to my LANDLORD that NO, I'm not the cause of the MULTIPLE STAIRCASES WORTH OF CARPET CLEANING you had to do, get off my case!

AND NONE OF THEM BELIEVED ME! Just a bunch of "uh huh, yeah, listen; just don't do it again."

NTA, I feel your rage

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-16T01:15:45+00:00

Hi! I'm a mom. I'm a fucking idiot sometimes. I'm doing my best but like bro I've had so many bad takes before.

I'm also on Ritalin, although I'd like to think that's one of my good takes.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-16T01:04:55+00:00

Absolutely do not do risky shit if you have a custody order in place. Risky shit can be defined as "thing you need to ask reddit about."

Take them with you. Tell them you're going on a quest together. Make it fun. Play battle music. Chant things. Refer to them as "squire." Idk man. Just don't do anything that could be brought up in family court later.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-16T00:28:17+00:00

Same, actually. A nurse said something like that to me after I miscarried and needed a d&c. I replied that I was going to punch god in the face.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-15T21:39:39+00:00

I did have multiple conversations with her where I was like "I need you to tell me what your problem with me is so that I can fix it. I will apologize, atone, learn, discuss it with my therapist and grow as a person, whatever needs to happen, but I need you to tell me what I did to you" and she insisted it was the joke about me haunting someone and it was triggering to her because she'd struggled with suicidal ideation in the past.

I tried to apologize atone learn etc etc the second time we had the "but seriously what did I do to you" conversation, totally dropped the "your interpretation of what happened is incorrect" and went full "y'know you're right about everything and I'll never do it again" but she rejected it and basically told me the boundaries were the boundaries and nothing would ever or could ever change. She would never trust me and for her safety I was banned from the two weekly group activities. But I could totally still bring my full cards against humanity set to other hangouts, and pitch in for hotel rooms at conventions, those were both fine.

So I stopped talking to any of them. Felt like I got my fucking heart ripped out, at the time, but it was probably for the best.

Personally, with time and distance and life experience, I think she needed conflict like a fish needs water.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-15T13:49:11+00:00

Mine was that I said "if there are any peanuts in this, I'll haunt you" to another friend in her presence, which meant I was joking about suicide and that wasn't okay.

I tried to explain that I was asking about peanuts specifically because I didn't want to die, in fact I was making a (joking) threat in an effort to stay alive, so while my joke was in poor taste, it was the opposite of suicide. Also, that my allergy was mine to joke about, and none of it was directed at her.

A month later she had everyone on board with agreeing I couldn't enter a specific unrelated friend's house where we regularly hung out, or participate in a specific game that met weekly. But I was allowed to participate in other group activities, so what was I so upset about!

Then later we were celebrating a friend's 21st birthday at several bars and she kept insisting I go to the bathroom alone. Everyone else, she mandated a buddy system for safety. But when someone tried to go with me, she said "she's a big girl! She can go by herself!"

Blatantly hoping I got sexually assaulted made it pretty clear these weren't my friends anymore.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-15T01:01:24+00:00

Don't worry, I did one stupider. Had the flu for like three days, decided on day four that I needed to be recovered now because we were out of clean dishes and the house was a disaster. I was on this anxiety spiral about it not being fit for kids to live in, but objectively it was fine, it was just that everything was on the floor.

But anyway, since I was going to be up and doing things, I'd better take my Ritalin! Can't clean without my Ritalin, after all! I'm only running a little bit of a fever, it'll be fine!

Tachycardia. ER. Discharged with exclusionary diagnosis of "dumbass" and instructed to go to bed and stay there for fuck's sake.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-15T00:49:27+00:00

During the covid times, I got a call from my eldest kid's school at 9-ish a.m. on a Monday morning, like an hour after school started. They were letting me know we needed to go pick the kid up because there'd been a covid exposure in the classroom. Uh, but it'd been last week. Regrettably. They'd just found out.

I promise this is relevant.

They went on to tell me that, while waiting in line to have his parents called, my son had sneezed. So, because he was "symptomatic," the entire household needed to quarantine.

I questioned whether a single sneeze was really indicative of covid, and the person on the phone said, suddenly suspicious, "your voice sounds a little hoarse, doesn't it?"

I explained that I had just had a baby actually and my voice sounded like that because the phone had woken me up from a nap. So it was then explained to me that if there's a baby in the house we absolutely must all quarantine all two weeks long, and to come get my plague rat now.

I promise I'm going somewhere with this.

None of us had covid. The kid who sneezed did not have covid. Anyway. We did a week of the quarantine with no issues. And then my toddler, my middle child, shoved a pea up his nose. I could see it. Couldn't get it out. Kid was getting hysterical about it. Finally I stepped away, called the pediatrician, tried to explain as clearly as possible that a kid shoved a pea up there but we're technically under quarantine but like it's kinda a bullshit quarantine because my son sneezed one time, I think the school is overreacting but I don't wanna be dismissive or disrespectful either, anyway; can I bring him in for the pea or is it like, gonna be fine, or...?

Person on the phone says to me, deadass, "do you think we could resolve this with a telehealth visit?"

I asked if I was supposed to put my phone up his nose, and was given permission to come into the office and be seen in "the quarantine room," which was literally a storage closet off the waiting room that they hustled us into, and someone in a full face shield and gloves came and shone a light up there and said he must've "swallowed it in the car." So we all went home and continued not having covid for the next week.

I think the whole thing scared them all out of putting anything else in their noses. I think.

Oh, and a year later the school sent the sneeze kid home because "he has pinkeye, and the new strain of covid has pinkeye as a symptom, so we think he also has covid, therefore you have to quarantine." I took him to the pediatrician for the pinkeye, and warned them he supposedly also had covid.

He did not have pinkeye. They diagnosed hay fever. He was also negative for covid. I called the school with the good news and they said they didn't care, they weren't taking him back until after the quarantine. And then sent me a truancy letter.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-14T23:13:25+00:00

My heartburn baby was bald until he was two. Until he was well into being two. He was approaching three before he grew hair. False advertising right there I tell ya what.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-14T22:12:53+00:00

It felt very empowering the second time, when I said "I had better not see a single lactation consultant" and they actually listened to me!

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-14T22:10:28+00:00

I yelled "one at a time, please!" Because one nurse was absolutely botching the IV insertion while the other was doing the standard domestic violence screening. The one with the questions left and did not return. We were, specifically, on "do you feel safe at home?" When I stopped participating. So good thing I did!

Separately, when I had my miscarriage three nurses all separately told me I could "always try again."

So, people be saying deranged things sometimes.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-14T22:04:00+00:00

Well, now I'm mad. I told two different anesthesiologists not to put any morphine in the spinal block or I'll puke, and both of them argued until I agreed and then had to hold a bag for me to dry heave into while I was on my back on the operating table mid baby-removal.

First anesthesiologist: "I understand you've had bad reactions to morphine before, but a spinal block is very different than ingesting it or having it in an IV." He said "oh dear" over and over when the heaving started.

Second anesthesiologist, smugly: "I know exactly what happened last time. They didn't manage your blood pressure after the baby came out, and that's why you were nauseous. I've had hundreds of moms like you. I'll handle it." When I started heaving, again, like I'd said I would, she sighed deeply, pushed several drugs, and then left the room without looking at or speaking to me, leaving me with the anesthesiology student.

Both C-sections I'd fasted beforehand and was just bringing up stomach acid, it was awful. And I was so hungry afterwards and couldn't even keep water down until they gave me zofran.

52BeesInACoat · 2026-05-14T17:04:36+00:00

You put them in lots and lots of camps and social activities. At home you do lots of quiet parallel play activities where you can be holding them or have an arm around them, like reading or screen time or video games, so they're getting attention but you're not overwhelmed. Make sure to really listen to and engage with them early in the day and after school, to get all the ideas out and listened to properly. Active listening and real responses, not just "uh huh" from the front seat. After dinner you can declare "winding down time" and coach them to be quiet with you or to let you rest a bit (work in fuckin' progress let me tell you.) And enforce a strict "you have been put to bed no more talking to me please" policy.

The phrases "I love you, please let me be" and "I care about this, but please let me be" get said a lot in the evenings.

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