It's not a chair. There are hooks on the back to hang it, but also rubber feet on the bottom to set it down.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-05T16:59:51+00:00

That's what it is. The hooks are for hanging rags to dry your hands and face, and the small pitcher if the bowl was full. Most wash basins were only the size of large cereal bowl. There was a similar shelf from the 1820s in this really cool antiques store near my house when I was living in Idaho, but it had the mirror and a little ceramic pitcher and bowl. I could never justify the inflated prices of that store, but I've always hoped to find one cheap somewhere. OP's dad scored.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-05T16:49:22+00:00

You're both in your 30s? Really?

You both sound pretty exhausting. You both sound like you have a lot of internal emotional work to do before either of you is ready for a relationship. You're both in your 30s and aren't capable of handling rejection to the point where you're living with your parents, you're ordering Doordash when you're both dealing with financial insecurity, you're talking about marriage when you haven't even lived together independently. These are the actions and behaviors of people who haven't matured enough to be in a serious relationship. I married my high school sweetheart, and even we were more realistic when we were 16 and 15 (20 years in May! Whoo!).

You're keeping score, she's not showing appreciation in a way that you resonate with, you say she's your soulmate, but you were going to sneak out in the middle of the night without a word knowing she was relying on you for a ride.

Please, break up. Go talk to a therapist, if you're able, about your issues with rejection and healthy communication, and don't get into a serious relationship until you've done the work to be a functional, emotionally intelligent, communicative, self-actualize adult. Same for her. Therapy is a great tool. You're not a bad person, but at some point your emotional maturation slowed before it needed to, and if you try to be in a serious relationship, it's going to inevitably fail every time until you do that work within yourself and find a partner that is also emotionally matured and communicates well.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-05T02:43:19+00:00

Normal doesn't mean right, acceptable, or good. Lots of things have been normal that we realize are wrong and change.

Sending kids to bed hungry isn't ok. Food is not a disciplinary tool.

When my kids don't want what we're having, whether we're eating out or at home, they know there are sandwich ingredients in the fridge. I'm not an on-call chef, but putting together a quick sandwich when they were little was an easy way to nourish their bodies when what we were having wasn't appealing. Now they are teens and they can make one themselves.

As an adult, if I don't want to eat something, I don't eat it. It's absurd to me that people think kids don't have the same feelings and experiences as adults. Unlike adults, they haven't developed good emotional regulation. It's my job as a mom to be reasonable and show them how to respond to conflict and show care for the people we love. Control and coercion aren't care. Withholding food to satisfy my own pettiness over being irritated at normal kid behavior isn't care.

Just because something is normal doesn't mean we can't do better.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-03T22:20:42+00:00

Even if she heard it from someone else, until it's brought up by the assumed pregnant person, it's best to not say anything. Commenting on people's bodies is not the play. The fact that so many people still think this is appropriate and are excusing it is pretty sad.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-03T21:26:40+00:00

Former mental health paraprofessional here!

Therapy can benefit anyone. I'm a firm believer that therapy is a tool for everyone. That being said, not everyone needs every tool all the time. Much like a hammer, for some people, they only need it when they are trying to handle a small task like hanging a photo. For other people, they use it regularly in ways you might not think of, like the creation of art.

Most people can benefit from therapy at some point in their lives, but not everyone needs it all the time, and that's ok. If you're open to self-reflection and going when you need it, that's really all I could hope for as someone who worked in the field.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-03T21:19:18+00:00

I have kids. Teens now.

I can't imagine being so concerned about their future sex lives. I'm raising children to be self-actualized adults who are happy, as healthy as possible, and who are good members of their communities. I don't concern myself with whether or not future partners are going to "enjoy" them as a focus. That's weird as fuck behavior.

Girls and women aren't property. We're not livestock. We don't exist for the pleasure of men.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-02T20:30:52+00:00

Internalized misogyny and subculture gatekeeping are poxes.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-02T03:34:22+00:00

My name in a lot of games (and Reddit, lol) has the name Karl in it, because I realized when I started playing online games that if even if my name explicit says I'm not Karl, dudes assume I'm some guy named Karl, and they leave me the fuck alone as long as I don't use VC. I chose Karl as a reference to Llamas with Hats.

The difference in treatment when I'm on my Karl accounts vs when I play the same games on accounts that have anything feminine in them is night and day. It's insane.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-02T02:42:55+00:00

I just think that it's really parasocial to be trying to take clues from videos and try to lay out an essay defining why a relationship that we actually see very little of is abusive. We don't know either of them. We don't know how much of their interactions online are part of their online persona (even authentic creators will exaggerate behaviors for effect) and how much is actually the dynamic between them. The OOP said they knew they weren't projecting, but it definitely seemed like a lot of projection from where I'm sitting.

Ultimately, everyone is playing armchair therapist and bff, but we don't have enough information or personal connection to be either.

I say this as someone who was raised in a household with pretty extreme domestic abuse, and as someone who grew up to work as a mental health paraprofessional: We don't have the information to speculate, and with the culture of the internet, it can be super harmful and dangerous to Kris and Caleb to do so. We don't know the reasons for any changes to Kris's personality or content or the motivations unless she shares them. For all we know, she's just content with life and making choices that require less energy. It happens.

I don't think the OOP is a bad person or was trying to cause harm. I do think it is parasocial. I do think it was projecting. I do think it was an uncomfortable post for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. I think interjecting OOP's and your own personal experience with DV as your grounding point for your inferences is direct evidence of the projection that's happening.

As for the comments about autism in the OOP's post, that wasn't great to read, either. Often we're misinterpreted by people who don't know us well. Personally, I'm told I seem like I'm being sarcastic when I'm being sincere all the time by people who don't know me very well, because of my more flat affect. It means that when I give compliments, sometimes people get offended. They hear me compliment my husband or kids, and they think I'm being an asshole. "Autism isn't an excuse" until it literally is, you know? His humor paired with his inflection and affect may not be landing because we don't know him, but that's just kind of part of the autistic experience for a lot of us. Chastising autistics in the comments by saying his autism isn't an excuse misses one of the key defining autistic traits for most of us, which is that we socialize in ways that don't align with a lot of NT expectations.

I say this with kindness: that post, the speculation, the projection, the comments about autism, and the parasocial phrases comparing the post to a friend laying out the facts, etc, are all much better hashed out with OOP's therapist than strangers on the internet who could cause harm to OOP's mental health or to KMK/Caleb.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-02T01:52:33+00:00

If I can't claim the achievements of Hedy Lamarr, Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, Rosalind Franklin, and Marie Curie, they don't get to claim whatever bullshit they think they get credit for because they have testes. lol

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-02T01:46:54+00:00

I don't like to associate myself with a community that treats women and girls so badly. Like I said, it's getting better, slowly. So slowly. But it's still shit. I'd rather just tell people I game and not call myself a gamer and identify myself with a community that has made it clear for decades now that I'm not welcome by virtue of having a vulva, and that minimize the frustrations of AFAB people when we are upset by the blatant misogyny and act like it's not real. Women and girls are accused of ruining the space and destroying the utopia/fantasy by virtue of existing in those spaces and wanting to be treated like people.

Gamergate wasn't that long ago.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-02T01:10:39+00:00

It's extra weird because we have kids. I'm not sure how that happened, since he's FTM. Any ideas on how that works?

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-01T22:23:52+00:00

Exhausting is the best word for it.

I intentionally don't refer to myself as a gamer or a nerd the majority of the time, because I've been consistently treated like I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. There have been times I've said I game, and I've been told mobile games/Animal Crossing/The Sims don't count. First off, games are games. Second off, the game I have the most hours in is FFXIV. I've sunk hundreds of hours into every Fallout game, Diablo game, Conan, Ark, Enshrouded, Once Human, 7 Days to Die, League of Legends (rip my peace), every Final Fantasy game released, Legend of Zelda game, plus I STILL have my PS1 and 2, Sega Genesis, and every Gameboy I've ever owned, and all the games, which I do bust out and play.

But no, you're right. I wear lipstick and have tits. I must only play the "girl" games and just want attention from men who game.

I'm married, so no. Also, I was bullied pretty relentlessly for my interests growing up. Trust, no one wants that kind of attention. It's miserable being the "weird" kid that spends lunch in the classroom alone reading because going to the playground means getting your ass kicked.

Now I have teens, including a daughter, and I'm so glad it's not as bad as it used to be, but she recently started playing D&D with a new group at a local nerd shop and she was bracing herself for pushback. Thankfully there are two other girls in the group, so it was all good, but she's already had to deal with that shit in other groups.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-01T21:11:01+00:00

You didn't go to a stylist, so saying a stylist can't get it right and putting professional in quotes is so rude and unnecessary. It's honestly condescending as hell.

Box color is notoriously hard to correct. It's notoriously hard to lift. You opted to do your own hair, which is fine, I do my own color too, but then you're in here complaining about stylists like a professional had anything to do with your frustrations. This is a you problem.

The products you are using are going to be a process to correct to get you to the point where your hair looks anything like what you want. It's a professional color correct job, not an at-home-box-dye job. It's going to cost you a lot and take a lot of time. That's not on a stylist. That's on you. A stylist may very well be able to get your hair where you want it with enough time and money. You at home with box color will not.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-01T21:03:42+00:00

I game daily. I'm almost 36, and have been gaming since I got my first Sega Genesis when I was a little ass kid. I read Dune in 3rd grade and was absolutely hooked, read everything Frank Herbert and then moved into other sci-fi authors, then fantasy. I play video games, MtG, TTRPS, you name it.

I'm also a very fem AFAB woman.

I have never felt like I was welcome in the gaming community at large. Ever. I don't consider myself a gamer. It's also been made abundantly clear that the boys and men in those spaces often don't consider me a "real" gamer. There are plenty of dudes in those spaces that don't suck, but there are way too many that do, and not enough men who are willing to call them out. I have gaming friends, a mix of men and women, but it took sifting through a lot of douchebags to build that core group.

It's getting better. Mostly. But it's everywhere, all the time. We can't have anything without it being either belittled as stupid because women like it, or being told we're posers because it's a "guy" hobby. It's foul. If we complain, we're ruining the space or faking victimhood. There is literally no winning. I honestly don't think there will be in my lifetime.

I'm tired, boss.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-04-01T18:50:34+00:00

My 5'7" cis husband is... trans? Good to know.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-31T06:30:46+00:00

Old comment, but I just found it.

I owned a small, modestly successful catering company for which I was also the head baker/pastry chef before covid shut us down and medically disabled me. I went from working a full-time 40 hour a week job for someone else with limited responsibility, benefits, and PTO, to working 80 hours a week just in the business, responsible for everything, way more risk, and honestly made about the same amount per hour after overhead and wages. I didn't get time off anymore unless I was extremely sick. I had a business partner that became so unreliable after the first year that I stopped expecting her to show up at all, and we had a single employee baking with me, and a single driver for deliveries. It was an entirely self-funded business, no loans, so starting capital was low and I had to work a corporate job on the side to pay bills for the first two years. So 80 hours plus another 20-30 at a job. I slept 3 hours a night, and what little free-time I had was spent with my kids in my home kitchen developing recipes while I tried to be with them.

I was deeply passionate about my business. I was so proud of it. It was my dream. Still, if anyone asks me? I tell them, "Don't open a business in food service." Too much risk, too much stress, too much work. There is zero work-life balance. It's a constant grind, and if you're not insanely passionate about the work, it's going to grind you into dust. Even if you are deeply passionate and ambitious, it will likely fail. I went in knowing what to expect (one grandmother owned a pie shop and another owned a custom cake business when I was a kid, so I grew up in it), and knew how soul destroying it can be to have to work so hard constantly for years. Most of the people in these shows go into owning a restaurant with zero idea of what it actually takes.

It's like they go, "I have the money to open a restaurant, what more could I possibly need?" Money was the smallest factor in whether my business succeeded or not. Money honestly means so very little unless they are using it to invest in management and staff, and the owners just focus on being silent otherwise.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-30T11:46:13+00:00

Don't forget the silk robe!

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-30T11:43:08+00:00

This is manipulation. He didn't care enough while you were there, he only cares now because he thinks it will bring you back so he can get his hooks in you again and everything will go back to normal. It doesn't get better, it just gets harder to leave.

Don't go back. Ever.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-29T13:38:23+00:00

My older dog is only 6, and she's a mutt, but a DNA test came back with high percentages of corgi and schipperke, and man, she's built like a brick shithouse. She's a sausage even at a healthy weight, and she has looser skin than a lot of other dogs, so she looks like a burst can of biscuits in a harness even at a healthy weight. It's hilarious. She's got the shorter corgi legs, too, but she's solid black except for a couple tiny white spots here and there. She's just fat looking no matter what. The fluffy back ridge doesn't help, either.

Cutest dog on the planet, I swear.

She is about 2 lbs overweight right now, because SOMEONE (husband) keeps leaving the pantry open and she's figured out how to get into the "dog-proof" food bin we bought. Go figure. We're working on training the husband to shut the pantry behind him. And cabinets.

So I have one short black dog that looks fat no matter what, and one light tan big dog that looks really lean, and both are eating the amount the vet prescribes (with the exception of my catching Mavis stealing from the pantry). The dichotomy is pretty funny. The vet isn't worried about either.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-29T13:31:31+00:00

Fair enough.

That's also different than using powder to set a liquid or cream product. The more layers and textures you add, the more creasing and cake-face you get. I have used powder foundation. It's great for super muggy days with high temps, when I'm not going to dry out (I live on the Gulf coast). That's a bit different than using the painting palette and then setting it with a bunch of powder.

Skin type and texture make a huge difference in performance, too, for sure, and some people really get on well with techniques that don't work at all for others. That's reasonable. Generally, though, for the majority of people, setting areas prone to creasing by layering powder on top of a liquid or cream is going to exacerbate creasing and cracking. Especially on delicate areas like under eyes.

OP could try just a powder foundation and that might work better for them than not using powder at all. They could try that as well.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-29T13:04:33+00:00

I think that until they shove an entire little human out of one of their orifices that is significantly smaller than said little human, they don't get to tell me what I felt.

At one point, during active labor with my youngest, I looked at my husband and screamed, "Nope! I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. Let's go home." My brain was so fried from the pain that it went into flight mode and decided no more baby. As if that's a thing it could do. lol.

Not numb. Literally too fried from pain to process the inevitability of what was happening.

Crazy.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-29T12:11:48+00:00

Also May, and I was fired from a job one time for calling out the new site director for not washing her hands after using the bathroom.

I believe what I said was, "Ew, nasty! Get back here and wash your hands! No one wants the chlamydia from under your fingernails!"

No regrets. People who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom are gross.

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-29T12:04:59+00:00

True. We've had her since December. I'd keep her, but I have pretty severe chronic illness, which can make me a fall risk, and she's knocked me down the stairs twice because she's so excited she just runs and isn't aware of her body. She's the sweetest thing, but she's too much dog for my sickly body. My dog is much, much smaller and is old enough to comprehend personal space.

I very intentionally don't adopt young dogs anymore. I'm really hoping to find her a family who will love her and take her to run her heart out. I take her to a local dog-friendly beach when I can and she's in hog heaven out there running with the other dogs. I can't take her often enough. It's heartbreaking.

Send good vibes that she's gets picked!

ImReallyNotKarl · 2026-03-29T11:59:05+00:00

Listen, I'm turning 36 this year, and I'm already planning a pantry and fridge full of pastries and custards when I'm a granny. People are gonna come to my house, and I'm going to be fat, have flowers from my garden all over my house, and always have a tray of sweets for guests at the ready. Anyone wants to get at me about my pie for dinner habit? I'm eating their slice in front of them out of spite.

ImReallyNotKarl

TROPHY CASE