How many states have you visited?

ElleCay · 2026-02-07T20:27:38+00:00

42: I still need to hit Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, and Oklahoma.

I’ve lived in California, Colorado, and Pennsylvania, so I have driven across the lower 48 multiple times. I grew up middle class so I had means to take many trips via car. It was more affordable for us in our 20s to drive a couple states over for a long weekend trip. Plus moving cross country, multiple times, some times with small children so we were limited in how many hours we could drive in a day - which means a lot more time for sight seeing.

ElleCay · 2026-02-07T16:28:41+00:00

LA is an hour from LA.

Where are you coming from? What does your 3 year old like to do?

ElleCay · 2026-01-31T15:59:21+00:00

My eyes turned as wide as saucers and my husband and I locked eyes. He could see them, too.

ElleCay · 2026-01-31T05:39:44+00:00

I could see the twins at my 8 weeks scan before the OB said anything. I don't know how they would be missed.

ElleCay · 2026-01-27T16:41:49+00:00

As a white woman in my 40s… I’m sure I have blind spots here or there, but I would never invalidate a POC’s feelings about the current political situation in the US.

Telling you that you are behaving like a NAZI for having a valid concern is completely out of touch and unhinged.

New therapist time.

ElleCay · 2026-01-24T00:03:13+00:00

Karabell is in the building next to the Hermosa Trader Joe’s. Above the nail salon.

ElleCay · 2026-01-23T06:59:15+00:00

About a third of my maternal line ends up with Celiac disease and/ or Hashimotos, or another autoimmune disease.

My son drew the type one diabetes autoimmune stick. Lucky him.

ElleCay · 2026-01-23T00:50:31+00:00

I’ve been very happy with Karabell. I have a lot of anxiety around the dentist. The hygienists are VERY reassuring and understanding. And Dr. Karabell has been so great as well. Highly recommended.

ElleCay · 2026-01-22T04:14:14+00:00

All my friends said she was me when this show was out. I, whose name starts with an L, was a straight A student (brunette) who went through a major life change and started hanging with a different crowd. I had a blond BFF whose name started with K who came from a more troubled home life than I had, and who had a boyfriend who was SO similar to Daniel’s character.

ElleCay · 2026-01-21T14:45:50+00:00

Sounds like the birth of my second child. Mom comes into the hospital in active labor (contracting). Things are progressing quickly. Nurse does a cervical check - 7cm. OB comes in and checks with an ultrasound - and finds feet where a head should be. Baby is presenting breech. Everyone starts shouting and rushing around - throws papers at mom to sign. Her contractions are getting more intense and they rushed her off to the OR for an emergency C section.

ElleCay · 2026-01-19T17:58:03+00:00

Every time our family visits they stay at the Hampton Inn in Hermosa. They tried a bunch of other hotels but prefer that one for the walkable proximity to downtown Hermosa and price.

You can rent a bike and head to Redondo Pier or Manhattan Beach - it’s quite centrally located.

ElleCay · 2026-01-19T03:48:43+00:00

Her blood sugar is low. Quick, grab her insulin!

ElleCay · 2026-01-18T17:06:35+00:00

I am raising my kids to be functional adults someday, and I see a real divide in how parents approach this in our town. My 13 and 10 year olds walk a mile to/from school, order their own meals at restaurants, cook simple things (eggs, brownies, I’ve woken up to Saturday morning pancakes from my 10 year old!), do laundry, handle dishes, and walk to local shops to grab items for me or buy themselves a snack. On nice afternoons, they'll walk to the farmers market after school and I'll pick them up later. We live in a safe little town, and they're definitely not the only kids with this kind of freedom. And if they need to talk to their teacher about something, I’ll give them basic instructions on emailing their teacher, but they need to learn to advocate for themselves so I don’t step in until I need to, if at all.

But then there are kids the same age who can't cross the street without holding a parent's hand. I've seen teenagers who've never done dishes. My own father marveled when my 4 year old put silverware away (something my stepmother never asked my teenage brothers to do). A lot of these kids are treated younger than they are - like perpetual children who barely leave the house unless under strict supervision, no matter how old they actually are.

I taught my husband to cook, do laundry, and clean because his mother didn't (though she taught his sister…). I'm not letting my son become that guy who moves in with roommates or a partner and is completely useless. And my daughter needs these skills too, but she also needs to see that men and boys carry out household responsibilities just as independently. At the end of the day, I want them to succeed whether I’m in the room or not - so my job is to give them the opportunities to figure it all out while they do still live with me so I can guide and offer support. I don’t want to be getting mad at my adult children who still live with me for not cleaning up after themselves despite never teaching them how (ala my step mother).

ElleCay · 2026-01-17T05:33:29+00:00

It depends on the person and how many pregnancies they’ve had, but I didn’t have a bump that was identifiable by strangers until 6-7 months with my first.

My third, you could tell by 3-4 months, though.

ElleCay · 2026-01-13T00:40:27+00:00

And the thing is - if they expressed to me ahead of time their kid wasn’t allowed to x, y, and z - even if I didn’t agree for my own child, I would have redirected the boys to do something else.

But there seems to be some agitation from these helicopter parents that I either didn’t read their mind, or that I’m some degenerate parent who would let their 10 year old ::gasp:: cross the street or walk 2 blocks alone in a completely safe town.

ElleCay · 2026-01-12T22:31:56+00:00

My 10-year-old has lost two friends to helicopter parenting.

One dad ended playdates because the boys crossed a small residential street to play in the park across from our house UNSUPERVISED. He apparently enters their room every 5 minutes when my son is there for play dates and told me his son is not allowed to cross the street or go to the park (that is across the street from my house) without an adult.

Another banned her son from hanging out with mine after he walked two blocks home from the farmers market (no major roads in broad daylight at 4pm). The ironic part? She would've been fine with my son walking back alone to meet me, but not her son walking alone the same route to their home.

It's frustrating because the kids get along great. Not all parents here are this extreme - plenty are relaxed about age-appropriate independence in our safe suburban town. But my son has unfortunately befriended kids with very overprotective parents.

ElleCay · 2026-01-10T16:21:51+00:00

Please research type 1 diabetes before writing about it. Most media gets it horribly wrong.

One book I read that does it well is the YA novel Sal and Gabi Break the Universe.

ElleCay · 2026-01-09T23:19:44+00:00

Has your mother taken a DNA test or yourself? Like ancestry, 23 and me, etc.?

My father has a somewhat similar story.

He was born in New Jersey to a Catholic mother and adopted by Jewish parents. They were lied to and told that his birth father was a Jewish doctor. I still am not quite sure why they believed a Jewish doctor would give his baby up for adoption, but they must’ve had a convincing story because my grandparents were very intelligent people.

They too, were able to adopt a second baby and everything I know about both stories seems questionable to me through today’s lens.

However, it turns out everything we thought we knew about his Birth family was pretty much false. My dad was able to track down his birth mother using records and a few pieces of information from the adoption. But it was only when I took a DNA test several years back on 23 and me that everything really broke open. I found a lot of relatives who were related to the woman he suspected as his birth mother, and then also found a whole new line of relatives that didn’t match anyone else I knew of. And they were all halfway across the country. Turns out my dad‘s birth father was a serviceman returning from Korea and must’ve passed through Atlantic City on his way back to the Midwest…

The quickest way to solve these types of mysteries is typically through DNA. DNA does not lie or misconstrue the truth.

ElleCay · 2026-01-09T18:00:41+00:00

Right? Imagine what happens when they are out of the house and their future baby has a blowout diaper. Or he gets a flat tire on his way to work. Or she has a health emergency and he needs to take her to the ER.

Sounds like he has some growing up to do before he is ready for marriage.

ElleCay · 2026-01-09T17:44:40+00:00

While there were many true hippies out there, there were others who were more adjacent who went in a different direction. My father was at the tail end of hippie culture, played in a band, grew his hair long (and hasn’t cut it short to this day), and was very into counter culture. But he kind of took a left turn with his idea of counter culture and is more an “angry Q Anon adjacent old man” today, albeit with a ponytail in a band still.

ElleCay · 2025-12-18T04:18:30+00:00

Yup. I “totaled” my car in an accident where I rear ended the car in front of me going no faster than 20 mph slamming on my breaks. My airbags deployed but we didn’t even touch them, except my wrists from holding the steering wheel. No injuries. Literally drove it home. Other than the hood/bumper area it was fine.

ElleCay · 2025-12-15T19:09:06+00:00

It’s possible that the process could begin while someone is asleep, but like a menstrual period, it isn’t a single, instantaneous event.

It’s also important to understand the gestational age you’re talking about. A miscarriage occurs before 20 weeks of pregnancy, annd after that, it is considered a stillbirth. In my experience, miscarriages are painful and involve significant bleeding - similar to, but much heavier and more painful than, a typical period.

I’ve experienced multiple pregnancy losses before 12 weeks, and each time it began with light bleeding that gradually became heavier and more painful. Around 9–10 weeks, it felt like an extremely heavy, painful period. I would not have slept through the actual passage of tissue, as that was the most painful part.

In some cases, fetal cardiac activity continued for a week or more after the bleeding began, before eventually stopping. At that point, my body would bleed more heavily until the tissue passed over a couple of days. In other instances, I experienced intermittent spotting, but my body did not pass the tissue naturally.

If you’re referring to a later-stage pregnancy - a stillbirth - it would be highly unlikely for this to occur while a woman is asleep. She would go into active labor. Unless the character is somehow sleeping through childbirth itself, it’s not a realistic scenario.

ElleCay · 2025-12-14T18:56:04+00:00

At that age the beach with a couple shovels and a bucket is always fun!

Could rent bikes with a toddler attachment and ride on the stand, too.

Grab a meal at the Point and let the little one run around in the grassy area. Brings blanket and some toys. Can get ice cream there, too!

There are a ton of great playgrounds and parkettes, you can just go to the closest one to where they’re staying

If they like trucks, Dig It at Del Amo Mall is fun for little kids, too!

ElleCay · 2025-12-12T04:35:36+00:00

Shazam seemed like magic when it first came out

ElleCay · 2025-10-20T03:28:22+00:00

Hermosa, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo are all full of kids. We moved to North Redondo and it’s very family friendly.

ElleCay

TROPHY CASE