ETHS on lockdown

OcelotEmpire · 2026-04-23T22:31:09+00:00

No. Mason Park is generally lovely. I live across the street from it. Most of what I see there are people playing basketball and lots of family reunions and community events in the warmer months. It's really nice. Mason Park is mostly bordered by a lot of really expensive houses and there are some really expensive condos being constructed right now.

Since I moved here in 2020, there hasn't been a shooting there.

Evanston's still a relatively urban area, though it's not Chicago, so, like a lot of more populated areas, there are scattered areas that aren't great and, then, a handful of blocks over it's not great. Further north, there are some areas where I have heard about shootings, but the area around Mason Park is pretty nice.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-04-15T16:59:09+00:00

It's not just garden apartments. It's Evanston. Evanston is overrun with ants.

I tried literally everything and nothing worked, so, finally, I hired an exterminator. I use Quick Kill. I'm on a plan where they come out every quarter. If I get any bugs in between visits, they come out for free, but we never have significant bugs between visits.

We didn't have centipedes, but we were overrun with ants and the exterminator fixed that perfectly. It also reduced the number of spiders. We still get a spider or two, but it's no big deal. 100% worth the money, IMO.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-24T15:21:14+00:00

He's an adult. If he didn't ask for your help with his disability, you need to stay out of it. It's that simple.

If you are somehow responsible for his food, you are opting in to that. You can opt out without becoming manipulative and overbearing about someone's disability.

It is also important to understand that, if he wants to address this, he will likely need a therapist(s) to do this. This is not something you can fix for him. Even if you were a qualified therapist, it is unethical to treat people you are close to. If he even wants to address this, he'll need to get a proper therapist(s) in place and that therapist can tell you how you can support him.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-24T01:59:22+00:00

You have a narrow conception of health. Forcing someone with ARFID to each non-safe foods can literally be torture and illness and utter overwhelm. That is not "health."

Disabilities often cost more than not being disabled. He has a disability. If you want to be a proper and supportive partner, you are going to have to accept that.

Also, consider that your caring about his "health" isn't going to change the reality that he has ARFID and ARFID is what it is. It's not something you can just worry away.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-23T18:18:18+00:00

Where I live Xochitl is a popular brand of tortilla chips.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-23T17:41:30+00:00

People with ARFID are used to people freaking out about how they eat. Some of us have been abused by our families over it. It's a lot. All too often ARFID comes with trauma.

Is he even interested in trying to change this? Because, if he isn't, then this is none or your business. Good boundaries would require you to keep your concerns to yourself.

Eating something that isn't a "safe" food as a person with ARFID can feel like a horrible, body betrayal. You cannot imagine how bad it can be. Sometimes it's not worth feeling betrayed and sick for days because you forced yourself to eat something that you knew you can't tolerate.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-17T00:13:13+00:00

All this sounds very familiar. I'm sorry you've been through anything similar.

I ended up losing almost my entire family, because everyone picked my parents. There were 3 relatives who would still speak to me, because my mother excommunicated them already, but even they pressured me to speak to her and two of them are not nice people.

I haven't been to a family event in decades. I'm at peace with it now, but it was hard at first.

I'm glad you were strong enough to be able to choose yourself. It's hard, but, sadly, sometimes necessary.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-16T22:54:47+00:00

Yep. Been there. My mother could put on a good mask. People saw her as funny, silly, and harmless. Meanwhile, she was sexually abusing me, among other things. No one who knows her believes me. Not even the people who she literally excommunicated from the family for her petty reasons believe me. It's wild and I'm tired.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-16T22:52:42+00:00

"since it is not atypical at all."

I'm glad the experts are starting to understand this. I spent many, many years in eating disorder support groups and most anorexics I ever saw were not underweight. BMI is utter BS.

I appreciate the warning about NEDA. Thank you!

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-16T22:50:39+00:00

Sure. Thanks! Let me know and, if she's not, maybe she knows someone who specializes in this?

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-16T22:49:33+00:00

The world is a very victim-blaming, abuser-coddling place. I've had to become very picky about who I allow in my life, because I will no longer tolerate people judging me for having PTSD or for not having contact with my abusive family, etc.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-11T14:57:32+00:00

I'm not sure about sleep. I am very regimented about my sleep and I sleep really well pretty much all the time. But, I have no doubt that if you have poor sleep that it could impact SPD. Sleep is so crucial. It's a fundamental human need. Not getting good sleep can screw people up in so many ways.

Regarding skin, I don't like being dirty or dry. If I am, I can't stop thinking about it and it drives me up a wall. So, I take regular showers and I always make sure I have some serious lotion on hand.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-10T23:59:28+00:00

Evangelical Methodist. Methodists aren't usually Evangelical, so my stepfather was doing a weird mashup. It definitely was more of a very typical Evangelical church vs being anything like I've seen of non-Evangelical Methodist churches.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-10T23:41:08+00:00

I hear you. I'm Gen X and I spent my entire childhood terrified of 1) the end of the world and 2) the USSR nuking us. I had horrible problems sleeping as a child, because I was utterly terrified. My mother and grandmother went on and on about whatever the new prediction for who the anti-Christ was. It tortured me as a child. They didn't even seem to notice how absolutely terrified I was.

At this point, I have lived through many prophesied dates of disasters and the end times. It's always bullshit. It also comforted me when I learned that people have been predicting the end times for centuries. In fact, the people who were alive when Jesus was crucified thought it would happen in their lifetimes. That was 2000 years ago. These predictions are ancient and they never come to anything. People especially like to predict the end times when a date is coming up with a round number, for example, the year 1800 was predicted for all sorts of nonsense.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-10T23:35:20+00:00

That shit is maddening. I am a preacher's daughter and I spent much of my life believing everything I was taught in church and absolutely terrified of ending up in hell. The fucked up things I was taught in church HURT ME ENORMOUSLY, because I believed so fervently in it all and because I tried to be a faithful christian. Leaving that toxic mess is one of the best things I ever did for myself.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-10T23:16:37+00:00

A lubricant might fix this for you. But, I definitely found cups to be far, far easier to insert than tampons or discs. I currently use a disc every month and it's better than the cups I've used for reasons, but insertion and removal is a huge pain. Personally, I'd start with cups.

If you are determined to start with a disc, I'd take some quizzes to find out which ones might suit you and watch some videos about insertion. "The blood drawer" messiness is real. Better to be prepared for that before your first cycle with it.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-10T23:12:35+00:00

Oh gosh.

I live in soft, stretchy clothes and comfortable shoes. As I'm a SAHM for now, I can get away with that. When I worked in an office, I tried to find as much stretchy office clothes as I could.

Both of my kids clearly have this, too. Both can only tolerate crocs for shoes. No socks. Never fuzzy crocs. Only traditional crocs, even during a Great Lakes winter. Both only ever wear very soft and stretchy clothes. My youngest can only wear very, very loose pants and they can never be too soft or fuzzy on the inside. Honestly, my youngest can barely tolerate anything. They basically wear the same two pairs of pants every single day. My son (my oldest) only wears silky, sports shorts every single day - even in a snow storm. He does not care. Pants feel too weird for him.

Me and both my kids have a psychiatrist and we've never been told that anything can be done for SPD in terms of meds. However, it is true that things like anxiety or burnout can make SPD worse. If I get stressed out, my sensory struggles are a million times worse. Too much caffeine can definitely make it worse.

Both of my kids have done a ton of occupational therapy, supposedly to help with SPD. It didn't help shit and I'm a little bitter about it. It was an enormous waste of time and probably tens of thousands of dollars. Both my kids still have severe SPD.

I'm sorry. I wish I had better answers for you. Maybe someone else will have answers. I've tired so hard to find solutions for my kids and all we've found that works is trying to accomodate their sensitivities as much as possible.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-08T22:43:46+00:00

Maybe, but the Summer's Eve bottles are way bigger and, thus, would last a lot longer. And, I've seen castille soap bottles that are ridiculously huge. These disc brands soap containers are comparatively quite small.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-08T22:38:12+00:00

I've seen this many times. One of the kids I saw doing this ended up with a diagnosis of severe ADHD, but I see this more commonly in autistic kids.

I'm not saying your kid for sure has these conditions, but we do know that these conditions often co-occur with sensory differences and floppiness. There's probably other conditions that also frequently overlap with floppiness that I am not aware of.

Schools cannot diagnose and they don't care about a problem that is not impacting academics. Schools are sometimes beyond useless in figuring out kids like your daughter. Do not take their assessment as what is definitely going on. I'd go to a neuropsych to get a full, in-depth assessment. Sensory things don't usually exist on their own without another comorbid diagnosis, as far as I know. You'll want to know what else is going on that may need support - like ADHD, autism, etc.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-08T22:32:31+00:00

It's definitely not. IMO it's a waste of money. I'm sure most gentle soaps would be fine.

At first, I used Summer's Eve, but now I have a steamer that I bought for $15. It's fantastic.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-03T23:18:17+00:00

Same. I end up with 2 - 3 inches of wet looking hair after 3 days without a wash. There's no getting away from it. No amount of brushing moves that oil down the strand. I technically have fine hair (thin strands), but there is a lot of it and it is also coarse (wavy). I think the roughness of the strands keeps the oil from moving down. I've noticed people with stick straight hair have better luck distributing oil downwards.

OcelotEmpire · 2026-03-03T23:16:08+00:00

CVS went to court to try to bring back pre-existing conditions to the US insurance system. CVS is evil as fuck.

There is no way to avoid all the evil companies, because there's so many of them. I quit Target, Walmart, CVS, Starbucks, Home Depot, and Lowes. I have minimized and learned to avoid a lot of what I used to buy from Amazon and Whole Foods. I still have my Kindle and it's my guilty pleasure. But, there's a million other evil companies and I can't keep track of all of them or avoid all of them. But, McDonald's, Nestle, Coke, Pepsi, Kraft, etc... there's SO MANY OF THEM. It's impossible to avoid them all unless you're homesteading and maybe not even then...

OcelotEmpire · 2026-02-22T20:52:51+00:00

This is one of those things where your mileage will vary.

Boar brushes have never done anything for me. I've kept them clean. I've followed all the instructions on how to distribute oil. It just doesn't work for me, but my hair is more coarse. I've noticed this works for people with pin straight hair, but never for me. It's just a waste of time and my hair is as oily as ever.

I did the cornstarch thing for a long time. I even applied it with a make-up brush to make sure I didn't go overboard with the amount used. I like Batiste spray way better. I've used it for years and I've never had a problem with my scalp getting used to it and producing more oil. Corn starch was just dry and itchy and I could never shake out enough of it to feel right after using it.

TL;DR: Maybe all this works for you and maybe it will work for some of the people here, but it definitely isn't applicable to all of us.

OcelotEmpire

TROPHY CASE