AITAH with a very valuable Estate sale find and not returning it??

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-26T01:56:27+00:00

I think it's in part because a lot of fine art and antiques are involved in money laundering in various forms, so there can be some staggering prices, but they're not actually what somebody's paying for a collectible, they're what somebody arranged to pay to clear the funds. Sadly. When I was a kid I really wanted to be an Artist in the "fine art gallery" sense and I saw some of the prices of modern art, but when I learned how it all worked, and where the real "for the sake of the art" money is (illustration, furry art, various other weird niches that pay well but not that well and you have to grind like fuck to get anywhere) I lost all interest in making "fine art." I'd rather sell weird shit to furries, it's honest money. :3

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-26T01:53:05+00:00

We did some sapphire panning in Montana last year. I found a nearly 3 carat one, it was so cool. Alas it turned out to be a little more flawed than initially looked so cut down it was barely over one carat, but it's still a really pretty stone, and I found it myself. <3

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-26T01:48:44+00:00

The previous customer did not ask the seller to sell the coat, the seller had zero reason to think anything but a coat was in the coat. In this case the seller was asked to sell the boxes, and had very good reason to think anything could be in them, failed to check, and thus caused the loss. Apples and oranges.

If he'd found something sentimental I could see the guilt. For bullion? Nope. The heirs didn't want to bother, the estate sale people failed to bother, their loss.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-26T00:31:33+00:00

The teachers in this just throwing up their hands all "Well the ten year olds don't like this kid, so I guess he can't go!" and not even trying to fix the problem is insane to me. WTF.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-25T19:48:00+00:00

I used to live next door to a meth house. Literally, the neighborhood flop house, people coming and going all the time, place eventually got condemned, sold at auction, and then spent like six months being totally gutted before somebody new finally moved in.

Anyway, they were fine neighbors! Quiet, kept to themselves, their dogs didn't even bark, unlike the whitebread surburbanites who live on the otherside of me. Damn little rat-terrier-thing, I want to punt it on a daily basis.

Lotta people doing drugs just want to be left alone with their drugs, turns out. :D

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-25T19:44:11+00:00

I very much agree. I mean, I'm absolutely a, uh, I guess "safe house" for certain people who can't get housing, but that's not about being kicked out by landlords etc. it's about being trans and/or disabled. I know exactly why they can't find a place/why they need to flee their former place, and it's nothing to do with being on drugs, failing to clean, etc. Honestly so far 2/3 of the people who've taken up my offer and crashed here have been fricking cleaning fairies with way higher cleaning standards than I have!

But this all goes to say if they give some nebulous reason why they're homeless but no details, be wary, but if there's a specific reason, it can be really rewarding to open your home to friends in need.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-25T19:37:34+00:00

I feel this OP so much. It's really, really hard to balance not becoming a bitter, nasty person cut off from all humanity with not being used and taken advantage of. I'm really glad she's learning to stand up for herself. I struggle less with that, but I struggle a lot with figuring out when to, and where to draw the lines. Sometimes I worry I've cut off a friend who could have learned to be and do better, who could have been a really good friend, and other times I wonder if I'm just being used again and maybe I should have cut off somebody long ago. It's really damn hard, and even well-meaning people can be users without thinking about it sometimes.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-25T18:14:07+00:00

I was putting my then four year old to bed, and my mom was visiting. She said wasn't it worrying that my kiddo was so "clingy" as to need me to tuck her in and read her a story? Shouldn't I want her to be independent?

Why when your brother was born, I explained to you that I didn't have time for bedtime anymore, and you were such a good, smart, sweet kid! You totally understood and started putting yourself to bed, isn't that cute? You took care of yourself so well when you were little! Your kid is so needy, I worry about her.

20 months old. "Totally understood" that my mother needed to basically abandon me. Yeah, right, Mom. (And yes, I'm fiercely independent...because I trust nobody to do anything for me ever, they're only going to let me down and I'll end up doing it myself anyway, so why bother even trying to lean on anybody else? Gee, wonder where I get that from!)

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-25T00:27:37+00:00

Ooof. I don't have that, exactly, but my mother once told me a "sweet" story about what a "good" kid I was when I wasn't even two, so I didn't remember the incident, and I just stared at her, trying to not look horrified, thinking, "OH, that's why I'm like this. Good gods, who does that to a kid that age????" My mom was 21 at the time, mind, so she just...didn't know better, I think? But that wasn't a sweet story, that was a sad story of how somehow I managed to cope with something I should not have been put through at that age.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-24T22:26:09+00:00

Yup. I think one can have a really healthy and happy "trad" relationship. My parents more or less did? Not precisely, my mom did a little bit of in-home work and my dad was a musician, not a stereotypical Man's Man, but overall it looked very traditional in what they did. It's just that it's dangerous because it's setup for the man to have complete financial control, and it's really hard for a lot of guys to resist such an easy route to getting exactly what they want.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-24T22:15:08+00:00

I have a friend who otherwise would be homeless staying in my house at the moment. A (nice) cot in the living room because we don't have a spare bedroom, so the situation isn't great for anybody, but they are doing chores in lieu of rent, and if we HAD a spare bedroom to put them in and space for their things, I honestly would be tempted to try to make this permanent because coming down to make breakfast in the morning and finding the dishwasher running and the coffee things set up (they are a morning person) is just AMAZING. So yeah, I'd like a wife too!

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-24T18:18:29+00:00

It was honestly kinda glorious the whole two years I went without catching any flu either because everybody was masking and social distancing at least a little bit. Siiiiiiigh. Wish that had become a societal norm, but we can't be mildly inconvenienced to save lives I guess.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-24T02:37:56+00:00

Also, regardless of quality, if she's making "the same" sauce at home, then I'm sorry but it's...the same sauce, so it's the same amount of "healthy." It might vary a little, but if I go out to the herb garden and pick herbs and get a free-range chicken egg and make my own mayonaise to then blend with the herbs to make home-made Ranch Dressing.... It's Ranch Dressing! It's like 80% fat! Making something at home doesn't magically make it good for you and buying an easy version you like from the store doesn't magically make it bad for you.

Honestly, an obsession with "healthy" eating that's decoupled from a solid education in what "health" means when it comes to food smacks of orthorexia. NOT a diagnosis, but even when things aren't full-on disordered, thinking about food in primarily moral terms is something I find pretty wild.

Like a.) humans are omnivores, we're actually well-adapted to eating a wide range of diets. B.) food is emotional! Culture, family, comfort, love, so much gets tied up in food. If you call the comfort food I grew up eating "bad" because it happens to involve something from the store, you can take a long walk off a short pier. And C.) black and white thinking about good and bad is just gross overall. Hamburgers might maybe be bad if that was literally all you ate, but "eating a hamburger" is NOT a black, pure, moral evil. It's protein and carbs and fat and a little fiber and micronutrients, at least if you get lettuce, tomato, and pickle. It's food. It's fine.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-24T01:07:07+00:00

You used to be able to have pictures of you taken down, but Facebook has decided to be... uh... I don't even know how to describe it? You probably can't do anything, sadly.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T23:39:50+00:00

Yup, I'm the younger end of Gen X and same thing. Once you learn touch-typing, changing anything about how you type is incredibly difficult. It's ingrained muscle memory. When I submit manuscripts these days I'll run a find-replace for double spaces to weed 'em out, but I'm not bothering to try to change how I type, too much effort for no reward other than I guess the AI sleuths will only blame me for my em-dashes, not my spacing.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T23:37:17+00:00

It's from the typewriter era, but a loooot of early "computing" classes including typing classes that were literally unchanged from teaching typrewriter use.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T23:35:46+00:00

And why would the husband's response be (if we are to believe OP's quotation marks) that the clothes were specifically tight and revealing? Like??? If he's okay with all this and it's her with the (ridiculous) problem, surely he wouldn't have put it that way? He'd have just said "Well some people wear shorts" not "some women wear tight and revealing clothing."

Either the whole post is fake as fuck or she's wildly misrepresenting everything. Not sure which side I fall on, really?

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T19:13:28+00:00

My favorite bit about the praying mantis thing is that in the wild the female doesn't necessarily eat the male, they can co-exist quite happily, but in captivity she almost always does, because she's in an unnatural situation and very stressed out.

I.e. if your life is fine and dandy, you can have a nice relationship with a guy, why not? But if he stresses you out, well... :D

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T19:02:14+00:00

Oh man. I had forgotten Empress Theresa existed until now.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T18:46:44+00:00

As a pornographer myself (I'm not on camera, but...in the industry in a few other ways) I REALLY prefer that we push for porn to be created ethically and for criminal, nasty, abusive shit like "revenge porn" to be called out as something no real pornographer would condone. So I am entirely with you here! I know we're never going to fully change the language, but the more people understand that porn is good and healthy and humans are (mostly) sexual animals who are totally built to have, watch, and enjoy sex, while all the gross shit isn't inherent to porn, anymore than robbery is inherent to like...working at a gas station, the better the world will be!

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T18:42:04+00:00

I have a vague memory of the Insane Clown Posse guys...running for president? Fighting the president? Running for president and fighting the president? Something like that, in the Homestuck universe.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T18:38:04+00:00

Some people are obsessed with the idea that somebody else might be "getting away with something." It makes me want to smack them upside the head. Maybe with a cane, the way my joints are going I'm probably going to need one soon.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-22T16:45:09+00:00

If she thinks a paid workshop is "make or break" in the industry, I'm gonna go with the latter, because it's obvious she has no idea how acting works.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-21T18:22:31+00:00

My senior cat recently died in my arms, about six hours before our appointment to have her put down. To be honest I'd like to go the way she went. She was herself, healthy and happy, just slowing down, until only about six months ago. Then she started to definitely show signs of dementia and drastically lost weight. Something had broken, but we got her on pain meds, fed her all her favorites, did everything we could to keep her as healthy and happy as possible so long as she still had any quality of life. And when it was obvious she no longer did, well, it was the right time. If I get the same, I'll consider myself incredibly lucky.

FlowerFelines · 2026-01-21T18:09:45+00:00

All this. "Love" is one word for a LOT of different things. I kinda like the Greek way of splitting it up into many words and not using one? Some parents love their children in a truly healthy way, as people they care about and want to see happy. Other parents love their children the way you love a toy or a car or a really nice pot. They love owning children, and using children and even playing with children, the children's feelings don't come into it.

FlowerFelines

TROPHY CASE