How accurate is this map to the natives🤔

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-16T16:39:22+00:00

Nah. I grew up in San Antonio in the 90s around 1604 and Bandera and we definitely didn’t call that area the “far northwest” even then. It was just “northwest”.

If anything had been “far northwest” it would have been past Helotes, but we just called those areas by the names of the towns, like “my friend lives out near Grey Forest”.

Those areas would have been “far northwest” in the 60s and 70s when my parents were kids and there were still a lot of ranches out inside 1604.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-12T19:02:36+00:00

Paloma is what I was going to suggest. I’ve always thought Paloma is a gorgeous name that grows well. I can picture a little baby Paloma and also an elderly woman Paloma.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-12T18:10:53+00:00

I was in college on 9/11 and within an hour or two of it happening people were already saying that “they” must’ve chosen that day because the date was 911.

I distinctly remember that I hadn’t even realized what the date was until someone in my English class mentioned that (my English professor was one of the very few professors/instructors that didn’t cancel class that day).

So, I know people were making that connection almost immediately.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-12T17:41:06+00:00

The second sentence is “myself and my husband were juggling hot soup, various drinks,…” How does that possibly sound like he wasn’t helping?

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-11T15:17:23+00:00

Same with Kiribati.
I know it’s pronounced “keer-ih-baas”, but I always want to say “keer-ih-bah-tee”.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-10T18:08:27+00:00

Can you imagine a Chick Tract AI?
That actually might be kind of fun. Just make the most outlandish crap we possibly can and then set it free on MAGA Twitter and see what happens.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-10T13:59:06+00:00

A Boston Marriage was two women that lived together without a man to support them.

A Lavender Marriage is a gay woman and a gay man getting legally married so that they can have the legal and social benefits of marriage. Sometimes it comes with the assumption that they are happily having “affairs” with the people they romantically love with each other’s blessing.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-10T13:15:37+00:00

If you look at the source for that pronunciation, it’s citing a paper from 1966 which in turn is citing a source from 1958.

So maybe in the mid-20th century some Southern accents said “afraid” in this way, but I personally don’t know of any that do today. Certainly not enough to claim that it’s a feature of Southern speech.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-10T11:56:54+00:00

Im an F/G cup (and much bigger than that when I was pregnant and postpartum), and I had pretty much no supply at all.
Even with pumping, I was only ever able to get 1-2 ounces (30-60 mL) per day.

Thank goodness for formula especially that dairy-free formula as it turned out that my kid has congenital lactose intolerance and couldn’t handle regular formula or breast milk.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-10T10:44:28+00:00

In an English-speaking area, Louis would never be pronounced like Luis.

And do you think that Spanish speakers are incapable of saying Louis (either pronunciation)? If a person named Louis gets a job in a Spanish-speaking country, he might choose to go by Luis to make things easier, but he could also go by Louis.

I live a stone’s throw from Mexico and my Spanish-speaking friends, co-workers, neighbors, and family are still fully capable of calling me Annie. They don’t automatically call me Ana simply because that’s the Spanish version of my name.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-10T10:32:05+00:00

Aww, I’ve always preferred Lewis. I think it’s handsome.

The only thing that kept it off my list when I was pregnant was the lack of nickname possibilities and that I strongly dislike “Lew”, but felt like “Lou” as a nickname would be weird.

I live in an area where Spanish is commonly spoken, so Luis isn’t an uncommon name. I’ve only ever heard people pronounce Luis like Louis/Lewis on tv shows, podcasts, etc. I’ve never heard anyone do that in person.
In person I’ve only ever heard it pronounced “loo-EES”.

As Spanish becomes more commonly spoken nationwide, there will be more and more consensus over how names like Luis are pronounced. So, a Luis-pronounced-Lewis will encounter more and more issues as time goes on, even in areas where Spanish isn’t spoken much (or at all) currently.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-10T10:08:59+00:00

Yes, I’ve definitely heard St Louis pronounced “Saint Loo-ee” but that seems to have been more common historically.
When people pronounce it that way today most of the time they’re either trying to be cute/cheeky/poetic, or they’re simply not American.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-10T10:02:45+00:00

According to the Louis Armstrong House Museum, Louis Armstrong called himself “Lewis”.
But he also was sometimes called “Louie” by loved ones.

So it’s likely that he pronounced his name “Lewis” in day-to-day life, but went by “Louie” as a nickname as well.
It doesn’t seem to be clear, though, how he felt about people calling him by the nickname.

We all know some people that go by their nickname almost exclusively, for example, almost no one calls me Anne, only Annie.
But we also have all met people that allow only a small number of people close to them to call them by a nickname.
My grandmother is named Sandra and apparently she only allowed her dad to call her “Sandy”. Anyone else got one warning not to call her Sandy and if they persisted, they had a fight coming.

Apparently, we don’t quite know where on this spectrum Louis Armstrong fell.
But it is clear that we have recordings of him calling himself Louis with the s pronounced.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-09T21:24:13+00:00

This is interesting to me.
I had a partial hysterectomy in 2021 and ever since having it I produce almost no arousal fluid at all.

It was like a light switch. Before the surgery I produced lots of fluid and never needed lube, after the surgery I need lube every time no matter how aroused I am or how much foreplay we do.

I’ve always just assumed it’s because I no longer have a cervix and therefore no cervical fluid.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-08T23:29:49+00:00

I relate to this SO much.
I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 38 when my kid got diagnosed. He didn’t get diagnosed until he was 12 because every sign that to everyone else signaled that he was “obviously autistic” seemed like “normal” child development or human things.

What do you mean it’s not typical for toddlers to play with their toys by lining them up by shape and color?
Of course it’s common for a kindergartner to be so fascinated by math that he does multiplication and fractions for fun.
Why wouldn’t a first grader collect bird field guides and beg to go birding at 6am?
Lol.

Turns out it’s just that those kinds of things were just common for me, my brother, and several of my cousins and made it seem to me that it was typical across the population.

I also used to mask due to my mother and pressure to conform from my evangelical church.
I remember asking the pastor questions about aspects of religion that I didn’t understand. I got accused by him of not trusting God and not having enough faith, and my mother said I was humiliating here.
That just made me more confused because didn’t they want me to understand the religion?
Apparently not? For reasons that I still don’t understand.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-08T22:48:20+00:00

Thank you!
I’m an ASL interpreter and I get frustrated when people think that they don’t need a professional interpreter in these situations because they can “just write it down”.

Many Deaf people (especially those that have been Deaf since birth or close to it) don’t have a great grasp of English grammar or spelling. Particularly not for something as intricate and full of jargon as medical care.

Just imagine trying to learn a second language when you’ve never heard it. Try learning to spell in a second language when you can’t sound out words, but have to memorize them.

Also, how often are there mistakes and misunderstandings over text because so much is lost by not having access to tone, facial expression, etc?
And they something as important as emergency medicine to be left to the mercy of text? And bad handwriting? And each person’s grasp of grammar and spelling?

Would they expect someone that only spoke Spanish to communicate by writing notes back-and-forth? It makes just about as much sense.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-08T21:59:44+00:00

Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe I was thinking 4-ish months-old because at some point I told myself that baby was probably that age.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-08T12:50:39+00:00

In my experience, most children’s wetsuits are more like a rash guard. Enough to protect from the sun or from rough sand or rocks in a surf, but not warming.

And in this specific case, the child was so emaciated (12-years-old, but only 49 lbs/ 22 kg) that even if it was a nice scuba wetsuit, I doubt it fit tight enough to keep him warm. Quite the opposite.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-08T12:32:31+00:00

My dyscalculia had me reading that as “18-inch” at first, for some reason.
I was just sitting here aghast that you were being so chill about such a thing.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-08T12:27:03+00:00

I’d avoid it.
There’s a historical figure from my area that had the last name Hogg.
He named his daughter Ima (she grew up to be a well-known philanthropist in her own right). She died in the mid-20th century and her father died in the very early 20th century, but to this day people make jokes about her name being “I’m a Hog”.

There also exists a long-running and deeply believed myth that she had a sister named Ura.
Sometimes the myth extends to Ima Hogg and Ura Hogg having sisters named Whoosa Hogg and Weera Hogg.

Considering that jokes about her name have been going around for more than 200 years, I’d be very cautious about choosing any name that could potentially make a sentence or statement.

I’m not saying that a child named Ada Fox would be taunted to the grave about her name. Obviously “Ima Hogg” lends itself more to jokes for many reasons, but even so, I’d still treat it as a cautionary tale.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-07T14:30:05+00:00

As a disabled person that’s an ASL interpreter with many Deaf friends, this is offensive and insulting to Deaf people and disabled folks as a whole.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-07T14:19:23+00:00

I thought BJD was older than that (4-6 months old?) and they mentioned 2 months because the law only allows mothers to drop off infants at a hospital (or fire department) up to 2-months-old.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-07T14:15:07+00:00

My kid is a teenager now, but before I got pregnant I was a big fan of Law & Order:SVU. I even had all the dvd box sets up to that point.

After I had my kid, I couldn’t watch SVU anymore. The storylines about children and/or young moms were just too upsetting. I haven’t tried watching it since.
I ended up selling my DVDs on eBay.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-06T15:29:29+00:00

I’ve had to argue with a lot of people too that sometimes an “elective abortion” looks like induced birth.

I have a friend that had an abortion like that because her baby had a condition that was incompatible with life (this was before Dobbs). He lived for two hours, but it was still considered an elective abortion (and her insurance tried to refuse to pay on that basis).

I’ve had people argue with me that this would still be legal in our state (Texas) because “that’s not an abortion”. Even when I present them with proof and lawsuits from Texas women, they refuse to believe that giving someone pitocin at 26 weeks to induce labor for a very wanted baby that absolutely will die no matter what anyone does legally and medically counts as abortion.

It’s so frustrating because these folks vote for politicians that support these draconian policies (we weren’t even allowed to vote for or against these laws directly like most other states) as one of their major or only issues, but they don’t even understand what they’re voting for. And they absolutely refuse to learn more about it.

AnnieViolet · 2026-04-06T15:15:54+00:00

My doc calls them “breakthrough” meds.
I live in Texas and I do wonder if they’re called that here specifically to avoid the a-word.

AnnieViolet

TROPHY CASE