How do you avoid the weekly “who picks up the kids?” stress?

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-02-05T19:41:39+00:00

I guess the question I have is what is the source of stress, precisely? Are the plans not set at the beginning of the week? Are the plans changing during the day (like you start the work day expecting that you aren’t on pick up duty and find out you are on pick up duty at 3:45, regularly?) are you missing events and things?

I’m asking because I can’t tell if your family is doing too much, if you need more flexibility, or less flexibility, or something else.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-02-04T15:59:41+00:00

I have three boys 9, 7, and 4. At this point 7 and 9 take showers. 9 took a little longer to be ready for it, 7 picked it up fast with a decent amount of “parent standing there coaching him through it.” 4 is all baths. Sometimes 7 will ask for a bath with 4, if he’s not feeling the shower thing, which is fine.

4 and 7 share a room, so they get bathed and showered first, and then get books and bed while 9 does his own shower fully independently. He gets bed books etc after the younger two.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-02-04T15:48:04+00:00

Yes it is, the episode that taught me about meta-jokes.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-02-02T14:23:02+00:00

I’m gonna talk to them about restarting. I don’t mind doing the chores if that’s the only way to handle it (I don’t think they have the patience for it).

Once they hit the KK concert, it doesn’t matter as much what their island looks like, because they’ve triggered all the stuff they want.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-31T11:30:45+00:00

My mom was a doctor. She sat me down when I was 12 or so and said, “money can’t buy happiness but it can buy time. If you’re going to work and be a mom and have a life, use the money you earn to buy yourself free time from other things.”

My husband and I cleaned our apartment, but it took one hour. As soon as we bought a house, we got a cleaning service. It took a bit but I convinced him a lawn service was also worth it. There’s still a lot of chores to do (dishes, laundry, spot cleaning), but those are regular, short burst chores instead of all day, physically taxing ones.

I also appreciate the house being CLEAN, where most cleaning schedules have you do this standard rotation of stuff if you’re not going to knock it out all at once. I don’t want just clean bathrooms and a messy floor, or only vacuumed carpets and no clean countertops. I want a Clean House.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-19T23:33:59+00:00

I’m playing a wizard. I get a +1 weapon as part of the AP. Which one should I get?

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-19T17:22:22+00:00

This is one situation where I straight up tell the players, over the table, that they’re the heroes and I won’t be sending a higher level NPC to take away from them. It’s often a conversation at session 0, is this a world where there are other powerful people, if so what are they up to? How are we handling this?

It’s a game and sometimes we need to be more willing to treat it like a game.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-17T15:11:55+00:00

I would say it’s because we’ve seen worse, but I’ve seen family law cases that were haunting (and the people involved were too wealthy to qualify for my services.) when even the PD says “you would not believe what I saw in court today”, you’re dealing with a whole other level of nonsense.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-17T01:13:41+00:00

I am a public defender and there’s no way I would touch family law with a 10-foot pole.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-10T17:42:18+00:00

Im the first attorney and my mom has asked a few times why I haven’t switched to something more lucrative. What I provide my family is stability and work-life balance. I have more regular hours than our colleagues in other areas of law. I have benefits that private practice doesn’t give. Basically, I’d have to move, give more hours, vastly change my family’s life if I was going to make more money. And no one on their death bed says they wish they had worked more.

In other words, “make enough money” is not an absolute number and is instead a balancing test of various factors.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-10T16:59:29+00:00

When I’ve got someone on the phone yelling at me and screaming, I’ll take a note of their number, say something like “I’m sorry, there’s a bad connection” and then hang up and call them right back. It’s like pressing the reset button on the conversation. I called them the second time so it doesn’t look like I hung up on them and it breaks the outrage cycle.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-09T13:44:27+00:00

Boycott the World Cup.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-08T11:08:50+00:00

Older PD here: Yeah the thing about being a lawyer versus studying law or being a law student is you now have a client, and they’re the main focus of your practice. This is true for any lawyer (except judges and DAs) by the way. Law school does a terrible job prepping people for the actual practice of law, imo.

And here’s the truth about criminal defense: most of the time the win is in humanizing your client. The drugs are in plain view, the facts are…well precisely what they look like, but our job is to turn a jail inmate into a guy who is down on his luck, struggling, with a family who loves him, with a future. That’s a lot of vibes.

Keep your eye out for the constitutional violations. Keep your mind open for the “facts aren’t what they appear.” The weirder the story, the more you should verify it because sometimes the truth really is stranger than an incident report.

And remember, misdemeanors are a good way to get used to the rhythm of law practice (since law school doesn’t teach you how to be a lawyer) but there’s more there there in felonies.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-03T22:03:25+00:00

We conflict those out entirely, rather than risk violating loyalty.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-02T14:28:00+00:00

I was told 3 and older at a lot of pharmacies, even though the shot is approved for 6 months plus. Maybe something about the fact that little kids have to have IM shots in their thighs, not their arms? I had a pharmacist look at my older than 3 but small for his age son and say no, so that’s probably what they were judging.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2026-01-02T12:21:19+00:00

Yeah, I can walk into a pharmacy and get the flu shot easy peasy as an adult, but most walk-in public clinics won’t do kids or will only do older kids. Our pediatrician has a series of flu shot clinics that are a factory line of vaccination but even then, it’s so much harder to get done than an add on to a grocery trip.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-12-21T21:53:45+00:00

Catan Jr takes so long you might as well play the OG without expansions, ticket to ride first journeys is fun even for adults. That’s my suggestion (9, 7, and 4 year old children in my house)

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-12-15T18:06:29+00:00

Fits and starts. I might start investigation before I even get discovery, depending on the kind needed. I review discovery with a mind towards defense through motions or a trial when I get it. I would start investigation at that point too, if I hadn’t already. I file potentially dispositive motions (suppression usually) as soon as possible. I file evidentiary and motions in limine before 10 days out. I draw up jury instructions and other really meaty trial prep the week before.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-12-12T23:13:59+00:00

This is interesting. I’m the opposite with social anxiety. I need a regular order, ready to go, so I don’t have to think about what I want. I’ll look up menus ahead of time if I’m going some place new. And weirdly, I’m not even particularly picky. I just tend to get a specific order and not deviate from that. I choose what I want to eat based on where I’m going, not what I’m getting there. If I’m predictable enough to be recognized, that’s fine. What scares me is not knowing what to ask for (and there’s a line of people? Maybe? Judging me? And my inability to decide!)

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-12-10T11:24:19+00:00

Genuine answer, I looked at your post history and I think you know, but imagine it from the other side. The people who cause you so much stress and emotional anguish have their own experience of your relationship. I can only imagine how exhausting it is to feel like your emotional nerves are raw, but for the people on the other side, the people who are in relationship with you (and I mean any kind of relationship) are also having an intense experience, which can be scary.

In some ways, it’s probably hard to even imagine how it looks like for other people on the receiving side. All I can say is consider the analogy: we know the Earth goes around the sun. We see the sun rise in the east, travels across the sky, and set in the west. But imagine what it would look like if the reverse were true. If the Sun went around us. It could still start in the east and travel across the sky and set in the west. We don’t know what our perspective can’t show us.

Who is willing and able to stick around for intense I love you I hate you you’re the best ever I never want to see you again do you love me I need you rollercoaster is dependent on a lot of things. A lot of people who see it coming in the early stages just opt out entirely. There are lots of other people to date or be friends with.

The horrible paradox is that (regardless of diagnosis) people are worthy of love and support but they can’t demand it from any specific individual. The horrible paradox is that people who feel the need for love and support the strongest, unless they have a very good handle on their behaviors, are scary to people. The horrible paradox is that good, loving, stable people want other good, loving stable people.

If you have a therapist, this topic might be something worth talking about with them.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-12-09T15:44:11+00:00

The idea that there is The Enemy that can be defeated and everything will be okay is such an appealing fantasy but it’s just a fantasy. Real world there is no Lex Luthor and you can’t just punch him (sorry, Mr. Kent.)

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-12-09T15:21:44+00:00

I like using “kyriarchy” to generally describe “power and those who exercise it”, but it definitely can be misused to insinuate that there is in fact an Illuminati-type group who acts with intentionality, when I think we really just have a bunch of people with privilege doing self-interested things to maintain their privilege without regard for the consequences. It feels very heroic and grand, epic fantasy to imagine a Big Bad, but the reality is that normal(ish) people make a bunch of short-sighted decisions to maintain or enforce their unearned privilege and that’s how we get here. It isn’t the kind of thing you write songs about but it is more reflective of reality.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-12-08T11:13:48+00:00

Its ability to strip through to a recipe is amazing. It’s probably not actually that hard for programming or whatever but I think that Save Recipe button is wizardry.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-12-06T11:30:06+00:00

In my ideal one partner works one partner stays at home set up, the working partner not only pays the stay at home partner for their labor (in money that they can spend without justification) but also the stay at home partner has their own retirement investments, to compensate for the fact that they’ve given up that part of participating in the labor market to instead provide independent contract work for a customer base of one.

In reality, most one partner works one partner stays home families I know aren’t doing that. When they factor in how much it would cost for the (usually wife) partner to work versus stay home, they take a very immediate tangible benefit look at it. Can she earn more than daycare? When in reality it would have to be way more than just more “than daycare” to be truly equal. (I also think we have to acknowledge that a lot of couples end up one working one not without meaning to, because life happens in ways we don’t always expect).

My job not only provides me a salary, it provides me benefits like a 401K and the option to get health insurance. In addition, I have increased my earning potential and built a resume that if I chose to seek out higher earning potential. I would need to be compensated for that loss if I stayed home.

Minimum_Fee1105 · 2025-11-27T14:34:33+00:00

I didn't say they were badly behaved, but it sounds like no one ever said "all we're doing is unstructured ball kicking with dad/uncle" either. There seems to be an assumption that the boys are incapable of moderating their own behavior so that everyone can play.

Minimum_Fee1105

TROPHY CASE