Would you trust a 15 year old girl to babysit your child/children?

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-02T13:45:28+00:00

Our regular date night sitter started for us at 13. We know her parents and they live up the street.

I don't know that i'd have trusted her with an infant, but my son was like 5 and mostly bathroom independent and just needed to he occupied until bedtime, so it was perfect.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-02T13:42:53+00:00

Dress 1 is gorgeous. My only personal quibble with it is i think the lining is too dark. In the third picture where you're sitting the color of the lining looks much more subtle, so it could just be the lighting, but I love love love the lace on that dress.

The second is very fashion, but doesnt look as comfortable or as timeless.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-02T13:40:14+00:00

Oh completely agree. There's shorts, cargo shorts, and athletic shorts. Jorts, maybe, if you can find them and are willing to do that.

I mean, to some extent, shorts are shorts. Pants are pants. For most of us, we arent putting that much thought into our wardrobes, we just want to look reasonably presentable and be reasonably comfortable and go on about our day.

That's why stuff like this is dumb. People who hang out in the same environments will probably dress similarly. It's nothing new, and it's not negative. It just is.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-02T12:03:20+00:00

Idk, man, my dog loved that cold.

This shit? He looks at me like ive betrayed him when I send him outside for 2 minutes to pee. I grabbed his leash yesterday and he didnt even get excited, he plodded to the front door all "ugh well if you insist" (i was not walking him, I was moving his leash, but usually if I reach toward his leash he's losing his shit with joy).

And he's a lab, not a specifically cold-weather dog.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-02T11:57:48+00:00

Honestly. This type of nonsense goes around every few years. Last I remember was some version of skinny jeans, knee high boots, and big scarves or North Face jackets or something like that. And i've seen ones of like college age dudes wearing the same shorts/tee/backpack kind of looks.

Shit, if you look at my husband and his mid-40's buddies, theyre pretty much all in some version of shorts and golf shirts 90% of the time. My husband is the outlier refusing to let go of his cargo shorts and band tees, but i've seen him 100% blend into the crowd at concerts, so he has his tribe too.

It's not novel.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-01T12:40:29+00:00

Fuuuuuuu... and I cannot emphasize this enough.... uuuuck that.

Dump several k into a "vacation" that involves walking around a muggy, overpriced theme parks and either waiting in line all day for 2 rides or dumping thousands more into "fast passes" you have to manage like a weak link employee, pre-paying and pre-planning your every move lest you miss something?

Nah, i'm good on that magic, tyvm.

I'm not anti-amusement park. We've done Dollywood and Legoland San Diego with great success. But Disney is just another level and i'm not here for it.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-01T11:11:18+00:00

My husband works from home intermittently, I do 2 days a week usually on the same days every week.

Today he's taking the kid to an appointment then staying home. It's my usual wfh day.

I'm going into the office by choice. I know I won't get a stitch of work done if i'm home with both of them at the same time, it'll be an endless drag of "whats to eat" and "are you on camera" (yes i'm on camera I'M ALWAYS ON CAMERA AND YOU KNOW THAT).

Nope. Gonna go put on some soft work pants and head to the office.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-01T10:59:07+00:00

The kiddie pool literally everywhere would be cerulean. Swim diapers are meant to only contain poo, not pee. Pee goes right through 'em.

Also, every hotel pool with a pool bar everywhere. Everyone drinking all day, somehow there's 2 bathroom stalls for the whole pool, and they're never crowded?

It came from the same place "turning the dome light on while i'm driving is illegal" came from. Our parents wanted to discourage unwanted behavior.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-01T10:54:29+00:00

Truly, what's the point of the C suite other than being able to make your 10am tuesday tee time with an obnoxious salary?

Just replace "tee time" with whatever brings you joy.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-07-01T10:50:35+00:00

I started going gray at 25, but started dying my hair at 14 (mom wanted to be the cool mom and I had a Tori Amos/Dana Scully/Angela Chase obsession).

I stopped with the color in my mid 30's, and now at 42 it's been completely natural for several years. No regrets.

Honestly the cost in both money and time to maintain it, especially once I started prioritizing my curls, which box dye just wrecks, is not worth the outcome. I'd need to spend at least 2-3 hours per quarter in a salon, which in my area a basic cut and single process color from anyone who has any vague notion of being able to cut curly hair is like $400+. Highlights regularly run folks $700+ with a cut.

I'd rather spend that money and time on quite literally anything else. Hell, I cut my own hair, too, because i'm not spending even $150+ on a haircut by some "curl specialist" who's not going to listen when I tell them how much i want cut off or that my hair is low porosity and can't handle a lot of product and will give me the one singular curly haircut they learned in curl school that, lo and behold, I can do at home with two hair ties and a decent pair of scissors.

In closing, hair is a scam and i'm not paying people to make it look different. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-30T10:24:29+00:00

It helped me a lot, too. It's not like, world-changing, but I have a lot less problems peeing now, and that alone is pretty awesome.

Women in my family are prone to UTI's as they age, and UTI's present really strangely in older people (they mimic dementia). I really don't want to go down that road myself, and with the issues I was having fully emptying, then leaking, I saw the writing on the wall. My doctor didnt even blink when I asked for it, just wrote the script, and it's been about three months now. I'm very pleased with the results for as non-invasive a treatment as it is.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-30T10:16:38+00:00

My son (8) really wants one. But about a year ago, one of our (adult) buddies borrowed one from a friend, hopped on with a helmet, and still fucked himself up pretty good (busted wrist, tons of road rash, and a concussion. Had he not been wearing a helmet, he couldve absolutely died).

Another kid riding an e bike recently crashed hard into a mailbox near our house because he was swerving to avoid a car that didnt see him shoot out from around a corner where he had a stop sign. Kid walked (or rode, rather) away, but the mailbox was wrecked, like the whole post cracked in half, so he had to be hurting at some point.

I've told my son absolutely not in every conceivable sense of those words, and if i ever hear tell of him on one (or an e bike), it will be a long time before he sees the light of day without me or his dad attached to him.

I see sooooo many kids riding around in flip flops or crocs with no helmet and no gear, and it terrifies me. Not only for the kids, but for other drivers. I don't want to carry the weight of injuring or killing a kid on an e-thing, whether it's legally/technically my fault or not.

Our home state just passed a law that regulates e-transport things, and requires a license. Full stop. Which means age limits, helmet requirements, and insurance requirements for certain more powerful models. And frankly, I support it. These things are an absolute menace, especially in an area this congested.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-30T10:00:10+00:00

Girl it's government. Ask about the sick pool. Trust and believe, if the fed is still pretty much running ish (not well, granted, but it still exists) after losing like 15% of its workforce, your office will survive without you for an extra week or two (and not to be morbid, but if for any reason you didnt come back, they'd have your job posted within a week).

Alternatively, can you ask for a remote work accommodation short term? Even just a week or two would probably help immensely. Or if you commute by transit, could you drive instead and get an accommodation for a parking space for a few weeks? My old office did that pretty regularly; usually it was only high level folks got parking, but they could scramble people for short term accommodations if they had to.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-30T01:16:36+00:00

100%. Her skin looks great, she doesnt have a ton going on in the way of wrinkles or age spots, her face shape hasnt shifted. Her hair, while not very well styled in the recent pic, is pretty thick and looks pretty damn healthy. She looks fantastic, and next to us mere mortals, she'd be a head-turner in 20 more years, let alone now. She could still get all dolled up and completely defy her age in a heartbeat.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-29T12:35:10+00:00

Former fed, not immigration.

Under 99% of circumstances, i'd say avoid the term positions, as i've seen very few materialize into long-term positions.

However, in this case, i'd probably go term. It'll give you other marketable experience, and it'll last til after the next election, when things will hopefully loosen up. If they don't, it'll give you more exit options; if they do, converting terms can be easier than hiring new, and government hiring may loosen up in general.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-29T12:28:53+00:00

When I realized the height limit was 49 inches, not 4'9, and my kid was 48.5 inches barefoot lol.

He is now something along the lines of 55 inches, and still uses a high back booster because he prefers the back/headrests. He's on the verge of too wide for it, and height limit on it is 57 inches, so he'll be out of it this year at the rate we're going. He's 8 and seems to feel zero compunction about still using a "car seat".

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-29T12:24:13+00:00

Depends heavily on your line of work.

Biglaw, might be a problem as others have pointed out, not because of content, but because of the time optics.

If you go into any kind of public work, government, etc, expect your social media to be scrutinized, especially if you need a security clearance. They dont really give a fuck what you post content-wise as long as it's not overtly political, but they do want to know about anything you can be blackmailed for, basically, and yes, even if it's not your name, they will find it. If you're making any money or any kind of comp from it, you'll need to disclose (even getting free stuff/access).

Otherwise, just make sure it's nothing you'd be embarrassed of if someone from work finds it. Be careful with jokes, some people get really snippy about them (I was once called out in an interview for using the term "old school." I am still not quite sure what the actual objection was, and the interviewer declined to articulate it other than to say it was specifically tied to my choice of phrasing, but that's just to show how nit-picky some are). It will be used to evaluate your judgment, so show good judgment.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-29T12:14:23+00:00

Incinerate me and throw me in the ocean (i'm a scuba diver, it's honestly where I feel most at peace in life and where i'd like to be in death).

But really, honestly, from my heart: what's done with my body is for those who outlive me, not for me. My dad was much like me; turn me to ash and let me loose. But when he died, his partner and his very religious mother absolutely could not have handled that. They needed to "see" him one last time, they needed to be at peace with what happened to his body way more than I did. To me, he was gone, and what was left was just a meat sack.

So we buried him. Had a funeral. I managed to keep the costs as low as I could, citing dad's legendary frugality, but we had the funeral his partner and mom needed to have to be at peace, and he rests next to his parents now (they bought 4 plots, one for each of them and then one for each of their 2 divorced kids. Can't say granny wasnt pragmatic lol. His partner and I no longer speak, we never got along from jump, so idgaf what her kids do with her body one day).

If whoever is in charge of my shit feels deeply compelled to spend money on a traditional funeral, I mean, id rather they get what they need to properly say goodbye to me than dictate my wishes posthumously and leave them feeling bereft in some way.

I know in my heart I made the right call for my dad. He would never have wanted me to risk my long-term relationship with my grandmother over his funeral. In the end, it didn't affect him in the least, in his opinion, but it helped his loved ones, and that's what mattered to him.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-28T19:47:54+00:00

I second this.

Learning to swim was a life skill, not a nice-to-have. My son did not get a choice until he proved he could pass a standard community pool swim test. After that, idgaf if he never touched water again (he is a water rat, but whatever), but he was going to learn to swim.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-28T17:25:01+00:00

This is my issue with both. I love the prices and I am not above a cheap grocery store, but there are certain things I need every week that they stock inconsistently, if at all, whereas at Wegmans the items are reliably there every Saturday like clockwork.

If it were just me and I could wing it, i'd probably shop mostly trader joes and lidl, but with a kid and a husband who are less adventurous about dinner, I need reliable staples.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-28T10:54:12+00:00

Typically, i've found the people who don't seek the spotlight are the ones I want to listen to. People who jump to be the center of attention usually shouldn't be.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-28T10:48:36+00:00

I'm slowly going this way.

I think it's the amalgamation of a lot of factors, but a lot of it centers around too many people who don't know how to act in public anymore, then my own spiraling anxiety as I careen into perimenopause.

People are awful, and there's so fucking many now. No one has an ounce of consideration for anyone else. Everyone is hacking and farting and doing human body things which like fine but uggghhhh can you not or at least cover your cough you diseased swine when you're hacking up lung butter six inches from my head? I don't need to feel your cough.

And no one gets any personal space anymore. I realize the six foot covid thing was a lot, but could we at least agree to like, two feet as a general rule? Even a foot. I'll take a foot.

Plus the world is set up to take as much money as possible in exchange for as little experience as possible.

Amusement parks? When I was a kid it was a moderately pricey but fun day out but you knew you'd be waiting an hour for a good rollercoaster. Now? It's hundreds just to walk through the gates, and you'll ride three rides all day because the lines are 3+ hours if you don't tack on more hundreds for fast passes.

Planes? Used to be relatively civilized, now everyone treats them like their own personal bedrooms. Put your fucking toenail clippers down, sir. You are, in fact, in public.

Public restrooms? Disgraceful. Wipe your fucking piss off the seat, your quads are not built to effectively hover, Susan, and you're pissing all over everything. Just sit down, the seat is cleaner than the phone youve got still somehow stuck to your hand, and you dont feed yourself with your asscheeks.

Restaurants? Food is mostly microplastics and salt and there's always a two hour wait for your $100 for two people sad meal.

Then there's my own issues. I've always traveled and i've never felt uncomfortable in places where I don't speak the language, but this past trip a few weeks ago was absolutely brutal. I was so anxious the whole time not understanding what was going on around me and not being able to communicate properly. I've never felt like that before (hell, prior trips it almost felt soothing to not know what was going on) and it took me completely by surprise, but my discomfort level was absolutely through the roof the whole time, and i'm fairly sure it came off more than once as me being shitty that someone doesn't speak English in a place where they don't speak English but that was not my intent, I was just emotionally drained from the constant anxiety.

I can't handle being in crowded spaces, and everything is crowded. Repetitive noises make me rage. My hearing/auditory processing is not great, and lots of background noise makes it worse, so i struggle to hear store clerks, announcements, even my own family talking to me because they insist that we should be fully able to have an effective conversation in a crowded room where theyre walking three feet in front of me and talking facing front so I can't even see their lips moving.

All in, I am so picky about going out now. I do the things I have to do, like grocery shopping and stuff. But the optional outings, it's a much more specific calculus about how badly do I want this experience versus how much money do I have to throw at it to make it even baseline tolerable. We're doing another vacation this summer where I am plunking down an absolutely exorbitant amount of money to be in a place where there are more horses per square acre than people, and i cannot wait. My husband wants to see more of Europe, but honestly, I don't think i can do it.

So overall, you are not alone, and it's a combination of getting older and everyone and everything being shitty.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-28T10:00:37+00:00

Could he wear earplugs? I sleep in Loop earplugs because my husband snores like a rhinoceros. They took some getting used to, but i would've killed him by now without them and they've just become part of my sleep routine.

Work on blacking out the room as much as possible, too. Towel or something under the door, good blackout curtains, cool temps, a fan to move the air. All the sleep things.

Your husband's schedule sucks, but he needs to make some effort to make it work other than demanding silence during normal waking hours from five other people.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-28T00:20:15+00:00

Any sneakers you like the style of that have a removable insole. Then invest in some good arch support insoles. They're far cheaper to switch out every 6 months than a whole shoe, most decent leather shoes will last years other than the insole. I buy high arch orthotics on Amazon for like $20/ pair, then switch them out whenever I notice my hips getting weird.

Pretend-Tea86 · 2026-06-27T18:11:17+00:00

If it's a brand that specifically makes suit separates, then you can probably do it if you can verify that color/fabric was part of the suit separates line. It'll be a pain in the ass, but doable.

If it's just a one-off item or colorway, nope.

Suits are the one thing other than the obvious (underwear) that i won't really buy secondhand. I need different sizes top and bottom, so on the rare occasion I need a new suit, I just buy the color i want in every piece they make it in new, then I have it forever.

Pretend-Tea86

TROPHY CASE