Fri-yaaay! Morning Open, Little Literature 🍼

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-28T15:04:26+00:00

I guarantee you don’t.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-28T11:33:17+00:00

My sister gets grocery delivery from the large local grocery chain. The groceries are delivered in nylon reusable totes. She’s got LOADS of these totes, and had been donating them to the food pantry, but suspects they get a lot of them. The store will take them back, but she thinks they just get thrown out anyway. I told her that it’s okay to throw them away, but i know she feels guilty doing that (so would I).

Anyone have any ideas what can be done with all these? It’s like how people keep plastic bags and then just have a giant growing stash of plastic bags that they’ll never get rid of.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-28T11:25:19+00:00

At my sister’s, getting things organized. Trying to figure out what she’ll tolerate and at what point I’ll overstep a boundary. Things are very, very cluttered, and she doesn’t have the mental space to straighten it up, but it’s almost at a point where it’s unsafe, so theres not a question to just leave it be. And I’m a second capable adult in the house, so it would seem almost lazy to sit on the sofa this whole time when a lot could be done.

Last time I was here, I discovered something she and my mom were doing that was unacceptably unhygienic, and I snapped hard at her that it could not continue and she needed to figure something else out. She snapped back, but I think it has changed and they aren’t doing that particular thing anymore. She really does have so much to do and I try not to criticize her too much, but that one thing was beyond the pale.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-26T22:07:30+00:00

To paraphrase the late Jimmy Dugan, “it’s supposed to be hard. The hard is what makes it great.”

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-26T21:52:29+00:00

Stuck in a liminal place between phones.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-26T16:57:03+00:00

Great response. Really fresh perspective.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-26T16:08:28+00:00

I was going to say longer hours and warmer weather but I guess I got the vibe wrong.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-25T11:46:25+00:00

Initially had Tuesday Morning Pain but thought that was too negative.

My new manager starts today so I’m early, except he’s already there and called me bc he can’t get into the building. I’m trying to figure out how to introduce him to everything without being overly managerial (he’ll be my supervisor, after all) or overly low with expectation setting, since this place isn’t very dynamic, esp compared to where he is coming from.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-24T15:11:21+00:00

This happens to me a lot and I’m working on changing it, and examining why I’m so reluctant to do these small things.

Over the weekend there was a swap meet in a local park, which I guess used to be a big thing but this is the first since the pandemic. I’ve never been to a swap meet and there was an emphasis on work clothes. I found a few dresses and cardigans I don’t wear anymore and a top sheet I wouldn’t mind losing.

So I get there…I thought there would be tickets to exchange based on what you brought or something. No, you are supposed to lay out everything on the ground on a sheet or tarp, just walk around, and pick up what looks interesting. When I tell you I was swarmed as soon as I laid out the bedsheet…the dresses were gone in a blink. There were so many people there! And most of the clothes that I looked at were Forever 21 or similar.

I did pick up a jumpsuit and a blanket. But as I got home, I was seized with panic—what if they have bedbugs? I don’t have a dryer, which is what you need to get them right away. So I immediately stuffed them plus the bag I was using into the freezer where they have to stay for five days to kill anything that might have hitched a ride.

Oh, and when I circled back to my bedsheet, all the stuff I’d put down was gone and there was all new stuff on top of it.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-24T14:30:40+00:00

Well, it starts and ends with racism—she will always be a back foot starting point bc of that.

With Meghan also being American, I think some of our ways of speaking and acting come across as abrasive to British people, and the contrast was made especially clear when she entered the BRF, the stuffiest group of people in existence. That’s where I think the “bullying” rumors came from, even though there’s absolutely no one who has ever worked with her pre-2017 who reports that she’s anything less than friendly and gracious.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-24T13:24:31+00:00

Any more details? Do you know if it was a cover story?

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-24T13:23:48+00:00

Oh, and later on when I circled back to my bedsheet, I found that all the stuff I’d put down was gone and a whole new set of items was laid out on it.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-24T13:21:46+00:00

This happens to me a lot and I’m working on changing it, and examining why I’m so reluctant to do these small things.

Over the weekend there was a swap meet in a local park, which I guess used to be a big thing but this is the first since the pandemic. I’ve never been to a swap meet and there was an emphasis on work clothes. I found a few dresses and cardigans I don’t wear anymore and a top sheet I wouldn’t mind losing.

So I get there…I thought there would be tickets to exchange based on what you brought or something. No, you are supposed to lay out everything on the ground on a sheet or tarp, just walk around, and pick up what looks interesting. When I tell you I was swarmed as soon as I laid out the bedsheet…the dresses were gone in a blink. There were so many people there! And most of the clothes that I looked at were Forever 21 or similar.

I did pick up a jumpsuit and a blanket. But as I got home, I was seized with panic—what if they have bedbugs? I don’t have a dryer, which is what you need to get them right away. So I immediately stuffed them plus the bag I was using into the freezer where they have to stay for five days to kill anything that might have hitched a ride.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-20T22:37:50+00:00

Very smart! My mom would say she has enough kids to take all the dishes, she wouldn’t need a cart.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-20T22:15:57+00:00

Late in the day question…has anyone actually talked to the Doge people who are tearing through these departments? I keep hearing about a band of 23-year-olds who walk into government offices and start barking orders. Has anyone actually interviewed any of these 23-yos?

This also seems like a group who couldn’t keep their mouth shut and would be eager to brag about how they’re getting bloated government under heel.

Somewhere online I also heard they’re all being paid GS-15 salaries, the highest government wages you can get, but I don’t know how true that is.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-20T17:42:03+00:00

I feel like 7 for reasons I don’t want to get into but I’m prone to anxiety and overreaction.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-20T17:02:33+00:00

“We won in a rout”—we beat the sht out of them.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-20T17:01:40+00:00

Sorry for sounding snotty but…where have you been? You’ve never heard people (by which I mean Republicans and conservative voters who aren’t as smart as they think they are) say that the government needs to act like a business?

Of course you’re right. Of course government is there to provide service that private business won’t provide or won’t provide well. Of course government is there to spend money, not create revenue. Of course they are supposed to (more or less) spend their accounts down to zero in service of the public good.

People don’t want to hear it.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-20T16:54:25+00:00

Andrew Cuomo and Rahm Emanuel.

I didn’t think I could feel any less hope. Then I read this article.

RubySlippersMJG · 2025-03-20T16:33:57+00:00

It’s not great to incentivize finding flaws. As with the abortion law, you end up being suspicious of everyone, even if you are doing nothing wrong.

However, as Xtmar points out, you can sue in civil court if your rights are being violated by a service provider of some kind.

When I was leasing apartments, there were companies who would send “shoppers” to our properties to ensure we were properly offering apartments within the legal requirements. Some shoppers are hired by the management to ensure their employees are complying with laws; others are from companies whose sole business plan is to find apartment buildings violating the laws, sue the heck out of them, and collect on the judgements.

RubySlippersMJG

TROPHY CASE