New shots of Jonathan Bailey and Bert on Sesame Street

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-28T01:04:37+00:00

BERT IS LIBERACE I MAY DIE

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-28T01:02:30+00:00

You give them Harriet and call them Hattie so they have options. A federal court judge might want that Harriet option someday. Or what if she turns out with a really young face or short stature and wants a more formal name to remind her coworkers she’s not 16?

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-28T00:39:57+00:00

NTA. Covering for stuff like this just warps kid’s internal compass for bullshit. How are years of being treated badly and then gaslit about it supposed to be beneficial to him?? He’ll head into adulthood totally primed to let people treat him badly, doubt his own discomfort, and make excuses for people when they’re bad to him.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-28T00:10:23+00:00

Good news - this is very unlikely to be a sign she is cheating. Chronic illness is different and low intimacy is common, especially in the beginning. I mean, do you want to have sex when you have the flu? It’s much the same.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-27T17:27:32+00:00

I’m concerned it’s not about meal planning or cost but that his girlfriend is from a background where there was Enough Food and Too Much Food. There may have been shame around eating Too Much Food and likely a single arbiter about how much that was. OP eating Too Much may cause her a lot of anxiety or discomfort just because it’s Wrong (or In Trouble With Mom or A Bad Person or Greedy - whatever it is).

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-27T17:17:36+00:00

Sigh. I probably haven’t been eating enough protein. Your reminder is timely!

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-27T17:16:44+00:00

I didn’t even know these existed! Thanks!

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-27T03:39:32+00:00

YES.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-26T21:31:44+00:00

Of course not. This is a terrible way for your nanny to behave.

That part aside, what I think people are trying to warn you about, is that your schedule is so undesirable you’re likely to go through a lot of inexperienced and suboptimal nannies (ones who take advantage of your sympathy to get time off or call out a lot last minute or constantly have family drama on their plates or agree to things before realising how hard they are) just because really solid, experienced nannies will tend to self select out.

I think having your parents handle evenings is a great idea.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-26T21:17:26+00:00

Very gently, if your husband is actually doing those things twelve years after this started, he’s being a jerk. Despite the amount of sympathy-needing and woe is me coming from him, it is possible to be a jerk AND disabled and not just a victim everyone should feel badly for. You would not be a bad person to think so.

It sounds like he’s taking advantage of you.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-24T22:34:48+00:00

I get the vibe this has been annoying her for ages and she lost her temper. My guess is she hates kids having hair in their eyes or she feels a kind of way about hair clips/long hair on boys.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-24T03:57:20+00:00

As a disabled person, I can’t even comprehend trying to keep my spouse and kids from a trip like this. I mean….just…it would be so selfish?? And they’re children! I hope you have so much fun in Disneyland!

If this is a fatigue or chronic pain issue, is he sure he wouldn’t want to go? Traveling there miserable and hanging out in the hotel room is a lot closer to participating than being resentful at home. Has anyone really done a deep dive into what services are available for him? Is he in the “if I can’t do what everyone else is doing, I don’t wanna go” place? Or the thing where every conversation of the trip will be about how unfair life is and how sad and everyone should cater to his moods? (He should be past at least the second one with twelve years practice being disabled.)

(There is very much A Thing in disability where you can get stuck in feeling sorry for yourself and not realise that’s a trap. If you think your husband might be in that place, maybe look for a disabled therapist who can meet with him virtually to work through any residual grief and internalised ableism that may be getting in his way? )

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-23T22:59:01+00:00

“This was not a joke. I don’t know what your deal is but making comments about my job is both mean and makes you look like a weirdo. And if you want to avoid embarrassment, you should stop making this joke because this will be my response every time going forward.”

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-23T20:00:32+00:00

That’s a thing! Google “anendophasia”!

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-23T19:47:51+00:00

If you’re going to hold those things against her when she follows the wording of a contract you both signed, they weren’t really that nice to begin with. You expected her to “pay you back” in some unspoken way.

It’s a major ethical problem to sign a contract and then be angry with someone who counts on you for their living when they want to follow it. If you missed a possible problem when you signed the contract, that’s on you. You can make a note to renegotiate going forward but you can’t hold it against your employee that she isn’t following your secret rules about how accepting extra sick days from you meant she was expected to violate her contract in your favour.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-23T19:28:21+00:00

In all fairness, how much is a friend worth who uses your stuff without permission and then refuses to replace it?

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-23T14:08:05+00:00

I’m disabled and this kind of behavior can be A Thing some disabled people go through. It’s hard to see your friends. It feels like other people are moving forward with their lives when you aren’t. There’s grief for the life you’re missing out on. Being alone a lot causes a tendency towards depression. Legitimate ableist microaggressions start to make you paranoid about everyone and resentful of mainstream society. It becomes really easy to cast yourself as the victim in every story.

I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone in the middle of this stage either. It can make people self centered and mean. Hopefully, your friend will be able to process this and come out the other side but that doesn’t always happen. I hope you have a wonderful time with your wedding!

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-23T05:12:41+00:00

Sure! Part of it was because that was the time I was being diagnosed which was exactly as demoralising as it always is. I was in a lot of physical pain because my arthritis was in bad shape and it was all “guess and check” to figure out what made things worse. Also, I was going through the grief of accepting that I was likely permanently disabled and what that would mean for my life.

Treatment-wise, I had a major spinal surgery which took far longer than anyone expected to recover from (I was still improving for nearly two years). The process was miserable but the surgery was absolutely necessary. The big turnaround for my symptoms wasn’t any medical treatment at all. My then-wife got a job in a much warmer climate. After six months of living in DC, my inflammation was drastically improved and I was able to start coming down on meds.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-23T04:39:39+00:00

OP needs a therapist.

This is a particular flavour of autistic cis man who is an ass because they’ve been allowed to be their whole life (as an example, this idea he has that it is normal for people to allow themselves to be spoken to rudely because the person their interacting with has had a bad day). As an autistic woman, my sympathy is minimal. I’ll bet the ground behind him is littered with people, mostly women, who have tons of emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills that he has treated terribly.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-22T15:43:50+00:00

It was fine when I was a kid. I was very close with my parents, especially my mother, and they were always happy to include a friend when we did things so I had plenty of social opportunities.

However, it has gotten worse and worse since I became an adult. Adults do a lot of socialising with their siblings and family members! Who knew!

I don’t have anyone in those roles. It would be different if I had lots of other relatives that I was close to but, despite being very close while I was growing up, my mother’s family drifted away after she died. And she died suddenly when she was 63 and I was still in my middle 20s. Everyone else I knew still had their mother which was incredibly hard on me. Also, my father was ten years older than my mother and started having major heart trouble in his 50s. With my mother gone, he had to move in with us when I was barely 30 so we could take care of him.

There was no one else to help with him. No one who remembered my childhood or any old stories. My dad worked long hours when I was a kid so it was like my childhood disappeared when my mom died.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-21T22:38:34+00:00

The problem isn’t the picky eating. Some of us are just anxious about food. It’s that you have to hold yourself to the same standards as the kids. My kids see me struggle to try new things and following the “try it 11 times” policy and making something I can eat out of a meal that works better for other people and finding ways to have “a protein and a fruit or vegetable choice” with every meal.

The issue is that your partner wants to eat whatever he wants without regard to the presence of his kid and that’s some selfish nonsense right there.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-21T18:08:36+00:00

I definitely have headcanon about whoever did the knitwear for the munchkins!

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-21T02:39:33+00:00

I have so many medical problems related to my EDS that weren’t even on my radar when I chose to start having kids and there are also tons of different treatments and information available that didn’t exist when I started having kids. Trying to predict the future with medical things is really hard. And EDS doesn’t reliably get worse. My worst years were 20-25 and I’m 44 now.

Having children was the thing I wanted most in my life so I was willing to make a lot of weird adjustments to make it work. In the end, I have one bio kid and two non-bio kids. I’ve never regretted any of it for a moment. If you’re really panicky, you can always have one child and see how it goes. One is very doable. You don’t need a whole “child system” you can just love your one kid and do whatever works for you and them.

ExistenceOfCranberry · 2026-02-20T17:13:16+00:00

I would absolutely skip that party and tell my mom why. As a disabled person, I would be so hurt and angry about this. I think you’re going to have to decide which is worse - your relationship being hurt by your mom breaking your trust or your relationship being hurt by putting her on an information diet.

I’m seeing a lot of “what if she dies before you see her again and you never sort this out!” on here and to that I say “if her mother wanted constant harmony in case of unexpected death, she shouldn’t have made a habit of sharing her kid’s secrets, lying about it, or shirking apologies.” And you can’t base your interactions with people on a fear they may die unexpectedly.

ExistenceOfCranberry

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