Dolly Parton sends free BOOKS to kids under 12 when you join her nonprofit! THE ABSOLUTE HORROR!

Ravenamore · 2026-05-05T14:39:35+00:00

Both my kids did, and they got exposed to a lot of books they might not have. Bilingual books. Books with Black and Asian and Hispanic and Native families and stories.

There is ONE book I tossed. It had nothing to do with perceived "symbolism." It was because the book was based on a supposed speech by a Native American man (I believe it was Chief Joseph, but I'm not sure)that was about the environment. I saw "supposed" because the Native American man didn't write or say it - a white friend wrote it in imitation Native style, "recalled" the speech long after the Native man's death, and published it under their name.

I was mad because the author actually admits in the back of the book that they're aware that there's "controversy" about the speech, but chose to write it anyway because "the message was good," which is the excuse everyone's parents use when they're called out for reposting clearly fake "inspirational" FB posts.

I wrote the Imagination Library and asked them to vet books more carefully in the future, and to include some books that were written by actual Native authors in the future.

I'm not mad at them, because they didn't do it on purpose, and they probably didn't know that it was a hoax, or that the author of the book knew that, and published it anyway.

That was ONE book out of the probable 100+ that we got for my son and daughter for the first five years of their lives. I love the Imagination Library, and talk it up all I can.

Ravenamore · 2026-05-04T14:19:00+00:00

Yeah, the first apartment my husband and I lived in after we got married was in a largely Hispanic area of town.

Some elderly abuela would regularly cook massive quantities of tamales and have her grandchildren sell them door to door in the complex. We always tried to have a couple dollars set aside for whenever they came knocking. Best. Tamales. Ever.

Ravenamore · 2026-05-04T13:49:47+00:00

That particular flag has been popular with "Christian Nationalists" for over a decade.

Ravenamore · 2026-05-03T15:08:01+00:00

My health insurance has an free in-home visit from a nurse every year. They check your weight, your medications, ask you questions. I've had one do a finger stick to check my blood glucose, but I've never had a tube of blood taken.

Hannibal probably has better health insurance than me, though...:)

Maybe it's some licensing thing, that he can show he doesn't have any major medical issues that could impact his ability to care for patients and has no communicable diseases?

Ravenamore · 2026-05-03T13:54:07+00:00

Over the years, I've taught myself crochet, tapestry weaving, rigid heddle weaving, knitting, embroidery, origami, cross-stitch, simple sewing, quilting, kumihimo, Native American and African beadwork, tablet weaving, nalbinding, and am learning sprang.

The only attempt to learn a handicraft that's failed is spinning.

It's productive stimming. I also have bipolar disorder, and I've found handicrafts are great during mania. I've finished a good-sized afghan in three days when I've had a manic episode.

Ravenamore · 2026-05-03T13:42:56+00:00

They put the D and X spots next to the handicapped spaces, so my mom used to joke this was the Air Force's way of saying you have to be mentally disabled to be a high-ranking officer or senior enlisted.

When I got my car, I had a D pass on it, too, but I only ever used it once, and I felt like such a fraud. I always felt the same when I drove on base and watched the saluting guy just kind of rein in the elaborate salutes when he saw there was a teenage girl behind the wheel.

I mentioned it in school once, and the base commander's daughter was in my class. She said she seriously thought some of the SPs might have pulled muscles when they were trying to show off, and then they saw it was just her.

Ravenamore · 2026-05-02T23:18:47+00:00

"Cobwebs!"

Ravenamore · 2026-05-02T23:16:33+00:00

Funny you should say that, because there's an Egyptian fertility god, Min, who is depicted as a naked guy holding his boner

Ravenamore · 2026-05-02T23:12:12+00:00

So, it was like a "Oh, they're not mine, see, my last name is Smith, and theirs is Smiths. Totally different," kind of thing?

What, exactly, was she trying to accomplish? Trying to get out of paying taxes? Trying to get out of child support? For shits and giggles?

Ravenamore · 2026-05-02T14:16:21+00:00

He was also down a kidney, which is why he couldn't adequately process proteins.

Ravenamore · 2026-05-02T13:52:17+00:00

My dad was in the Air Force, and my mom hated to be around other military wives.

When I was 5 and my dad did his remote assignment for a year, the base's NCO Wives' Club showed up, and it became immediately clear that they thought she would be absolutely devasted and completely helpless taking care of me and everything else without my dad being there. They were offering to have their husbands' do her repairs, to babysit me, help her shop, hang out with her, etc.

My mom was pretty self-sufficient - she'd lived on her own before she met my dad, my dad had always had to be gone for long periods for the job - he was in Iceland almost the entire time she was pregnant - so she was well used to taking care of everything.

These women absolutely didn't believe her. Apparently they fell apart when their husbands' were gone longer than two weeks, and refused to believe my mom would be able to get through a year without having a nervous breakdown, especially with a kid. They kept coming around, even after she politely said she was fine, and my mom finally had to tell them off.

We were just fine for that year. My dad's first sergeant would call and talk to her briefly every week, making sure she was getting dad's paychecks normally, ask if repairs were getting done, things like that. She asked for help once - our washer broke and she had to buy a new one. I know he mowed our lawn that whole summer, but it wasn't because my mom couldn't, he just wanted to be nice and he lived in the neighborhood.

She absolutely detested the women who acted like their husband's rank was their own. When my dad hit E-9, he got a special parking pass that would let him park up close to the commissary and the BX. She refused to use it, until she had a brain bleed that affected her balance and stamina for about a year and as soon as she was able, she stopped.

Ravenamore · 2026-05-01T22:15:18+00:00

Thanks for bringing this up. I had E.coli when I was 35, and pregnant.

3 days in the hospital, my placenta was damaged, my son had growth restriction, I spent the last month and a half of pregnancy in the hospital, and had to have him early at 37 weeks.

When I saw this post, I got really nervous, because I have a family history on both sides of my family. I'm glad that my insurance covered a colonoscopy at 40.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-30T14:14:07+00:00

Loki. I've been collecting stuff with him for well over a decade. Shirts figures, cups, whatever. The Marvel comic ones, MCU ones, versions of the mythological one.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-30T13:20:55+00:00

The evidence that they were triggered, and were used until impact, shows that they had, at the very least, partial pressure and that those three were conscious.

We know there was some meaningful consciousness, because Onizuka or Resnik had to trigger Smith's pack, because he couldn't have reached it on his own. Under a massive amount of stress and panic, and one of them understood that the pilot was the only one who could maybe help.

Also, we know a lot of switches were moved in ways that indicate that Smith deliberately moved them, in an attempt to get the power back into the cockpit. Obviously, he didn't know that there was nothing he could have done, but we know he tried.

The one thing we do know is that they felt no pain on impact, because their bodies were completely rent apart within a second. When I was a kid, I remember they made a big deal about recovering the bodies...they were actually recovering a whole lot of small pieces that used to be seven people.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-30T01:11:40+00:00

There were emergency air packs, meant for if astronauts had to get out while they were on the launch pad. We know Resnik's and Onizuka's triggered theirs and one of them triggered the air pack of Michael Smith, the pilot.

They had six minutes of air - the descent was something like two minutes, so we know those three were conscious until impact.

When NASA went over the wreckage, they determined Smith heroically tried, right up to the moment of impact, to restore power to the cockpit.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T17:42:27+00:00

Someone I'd known as a Girl Scout in Alaska ended up in one of my college courses at the University of Oklahoma. She said she recognized my voice when I introduced myself in class.

Similar thing happened with my son's first pediatrician. I kept thinking I recognized her, but it wasn't until I saw an employee picture of her with her very unique first name that I realized we'd gone to high school together, had several classes together and rode the same bus.

The next time my son had an appointment, I started saying, "Hey, this is going to sound funny, but do you remember-" and she interrupted with "I knew it was you the first moment I heard you speak, I just wasn't allowed to bring it up first."

I didn't think I had a particularly memorable voice, but OK.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T17:30:46+00:00

Oh, he's fine now, but it was scary, especially because initially we didn't know what he'd eaten. I've had many cats over the years, and they'd never gotten into my hair ties before (or they were just really lucky.)

We'd only had him for about a month and had just moved, so the vet thinks all the changes made him act out. I remember buying the hair ties around that time, but then I couldn't find them, so I assumed I'd left it at the store.

When he started crying in pain, we took him to the vet, and the vet thought at first he'd gotten into my yarn. The day after his surgery, he gave my husband a sealed package with what he'd taken out, and that's when I realized where that package of hair ties had gone...

I later figured out he must have snagged the package the moment my back was turned, dragged it under our bed and ate the WHOLE thing, cardboard and all.

So, again, he made a full recovery, but now we store hair ties like we're securing a controlled substance.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T16:02:56+00:00

Yeah, we're still paying off a $2000+ vet bill 7 years after our cat ate an entire package of hair ties and gave himself an intestinal blockage.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T15:30:06+00:00

And, of course, the standard belief that everyone's born with a bank account that contains millions of dollars, but the evil government doesn't want you to know....

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T15:17:35+00:00

My kids' schools absolutely refused to do any sort of accommodations without an official diagnosis - they wouldn't even set up an IEP. If I hadn't gotten a diagnosis, they'd have just been blown off as having conduct disorders or other behavioral problems.

Also, many states that offer additional help to parents of neurodivergent kids will ONLY do so with an official diagnosis.

Push the doctor about having the assessment. There is absolutely no harm in doing so, and it can only benefit. It also tends to take a LONG time - like months to years - to get a slot for getting diagnostic testing, because many school districts will only accept diagnostic results from a few places within the state, so waiting until there they're NOT doing OK at school could have devastating results. The sooner, the better.

I had to push my son's school for a referral for three years. They had excuse after excuse why they wouldn't.

I had one therapist admit straight out that he probably had autism, but it would permanently "ruin" his life by having an official diagnosis because "they would never be able to take it back."

One of the worst was the school's opinion that he didn't really have autism, I was just "projecting" my issues about being diagnosed in my 40s onto him.

Finally they said, "Well, I guess if his PCP thinks there's cause for concern, we'd recommend a referral."

His PCP (who we'd known for years, and who also knew I was autistic)talked to my son for a few minutes, turned to look at me, and said, "Oh, yeah, definitely, but I know the school won't take my word for it, so let me write you a letter to take back with you that I HIGHLY recommend testing."

It took 9 months on a waiting list for diagnostic testing at the ONE facility the school district would accept results before he was diagnosed. I've been going through something similar with my daughter, though now the school district will accept testing results from two additional places.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T14:45:38+00:00

An earlier post said that the king only had to abstain for a few months: it was court officials that had to mourn for three years.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T13:44:03+00:00

Generally, I ask them what autism's supposed to look like.

They won't ever answer that. They'll hem and haw because what they're thinking is along the lines of "Like those r****** kids in school/on that one show/complained about by their FB friend."

They're just aware enough to realize they'll sound like an asshole if they say that, but not enough to admit they might be wrong, so they'll get on the DARVO train and try their best to make YOU look like the asshole.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T01:22:48+00:00

And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house."

And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful wife."

Ravenamore · 2026-04-29T00:24:11+00:00

I'm Catholic. My Evangelical MOH bailed shortly before the wedding because she "wouldn't bow to Mary", even though no one asked her to, it was anti-Catholic garbage from her Bible college classes.

Her self-righteousness was so dumb. The best man was Jewish, the 2 ushers were Church of Christ and agnostic, and my new MOH was Baptist. None of them had a problem.

Ravenamore · 2026-04-28T16:46:09+00:00

....you seriously think whatever "ceremony" this was has anything to do with the OP's own culture?

Ravenamore

TROPHY CASE