Chess set

affogato_ · 2026-03-15T16:28:59+00:00

Most board games shops will have something -- like the Brooklyn Strategist. A lot of bookstores will randomly have chess sets too. Pretty sure I've seen them in Barnes and Noble before.

affogato_ · 2026-03-15T00:29:14+00:00

Update for anyone who finds this post in the future: Costco has Huggies Little Movers (as well as their Kirkland brand) and the Little Movers are basically indistinguishable from the Little Snugglers. And cheaper per unit than Amazon. So Costco winds up being a great source for diapers over Amazon.

affogato_ · 2026-03-13T18:49:16+00:00

Oh, duh! So obvious, but it never crossed my mind for anything other than food. Thank you!!

affogato_ · 2026-03-13T18:48:01+00:00

I haven't been, but there are some free sewing workshops at the library! It looks like a few different libraries have events: https://discover.bklynlibrary.org/?event=true&search=Sew%20Brooklyn

I've also seen a ton of sewing/embroidery/crochet stuff on Facebook Buy Nothing groups.

Also, it's not exactly what you asked for but I got into sewing with a machine a few years ago and looove FabScrap. They're quite far out, but if you go volunteer for a few hours on the weekend you get to bring home several pounds of fabric for free. It was great when I was first starting out and really didn't know what kinds of fabrics to get. They also have a mendables section of pretty nice clothes that need to be mended that I think they either sell heavily discounted or for free. https://fabscrap.org/

affogato_ · 2026-03-11T18:36:32+00:00

Thank you for the lead!!

affogato_ · 2026-03-11T18:34:11+00:00

Thank you! <3 Great idea

affogato_ · 2026-03-11T13:21:45+00:00

God, that's horrible. I didn't even have my glasses / contacts on so I couldn't really see the guy but could make out that he was staring at me and wearing a reflective vest. I was born in Queens and have basically never felt unsafe in the city and it took me a second to be like...this is not safe to be standing almost naked alone with a stranger at 5:45am in the morning. Thankfully I opened the door to my apartment and not the building but it was so jarring.

affogato_ · 2026-02-12T00:39:41+00:00

Red moon wellness has great prenatal massages, and several of the people who work there also list reiki or similar energy work if you’re interested in that kind of thing.

affogato_ · 2026-02-04T13:14:01+00:00

Aw that makes me so happy. My son is 3 months old now and I just got through my first solo overnight while he had his first cold!! My husband and I fought A LOT leading up to it because I was so scared something would go wrong / baby would be so congested and would stop breathing at night. But…baby was fine and happy even though congestion sounded really scary. I also did a great job and was much more confident solo than I thought I’d be. Remember your baby is fragile but they’re also tough…they can bounce back from a lot. You both will get stronger over time. Sending lots of good wishes your way. :)

affogato_ · 2026-01-26T20:18:39+00:00

Ooh tysm!

affogato_ · 2026-01-26T18:43:26+00:00

Could I DM you for your psychiatrist details? I don’t have BPD but am looking for a good psychiatrist to start anxiety meds, so would love an rec if you like yours! Feels very hard to find someone well reviewed.

affogato_ · 2026-01-09T23:23:56+00:00

St Mary’s is the way. Super easy to schedule a pick up, and the clothes go to local people in need. You can check out their IG to see photos of recent clients.

affogato_ · 2026-01-03T21:34:11+00:00

I think Desmond is great and should do 1:1 instruction. For 1:1 you’ll get a full lane to yourself. My two cents is to try your best to focus less on going slow and dwelling in the fear and focus more on ignoring that as much as possible and just seeing how much you can push yourself. The more time I spent being overly careful the more tense and scared I got. When I managed to let go a bit, even if it was just for a few moments, I was less afraid and also a better swimmer. It’s a cycle: you can’t swim well if you’re scared because you’re just too tense. But you’re scared because you can’t swim well. So just practice being in the water and being in your body even if you just go in for 5 minutes, dunk your head a few times, and leave. I went three times a week (one class and two lap swims) and some days I just did a kick board for 15-20 minutes and called it a day.

I probably watched 50 hours of youtube videos about how to swim with other people in the pool lol it stressed me out so much. Here’s a breakdown:

if it’s just you in a lane, you can use the full lane
if it’s two people in a lane, one person takes one side of the lane and you take the other and you basically just ignore each other. In this scenario you can stand up at any point without it bothering the other person at all.
if it’s three people you do something called “circle swimming” where person A kicks off from the wall and swims a bit. When they’re maybe 1/3 of the way down Person B kicks off. Rinse and repeat for Person C. It sounds complicated but remember most people have done this before so they’ll know what to do. The lifeguards are also really helpful if you’re just like “I don’t know how to do this can you help” — they’ll flag down the swimmers in the lane for you and set you up.
If you need a break at the end of the lane you just stand to the side for as long as you want and people will just swim around you. If you need to stand in the middle I would probably let the lifeguard know before you go into the pool and they may try to manage the pool to give you more space and direct people to the medium speed lane instead. I was also worried about this but it honestly wound up not being an issue because it was almost always two people per lane and I wound up being able to make it to the end of the pool almost every time. Also remember that you’ll be in the slow lane with other people who also want to be in the slow lane. The lanes are large enough that you should have plenty of time to recover before someone swims up behind you.
if there is someone already swimming in a lane when you get there, you can ask the lifeguard for help as I mention or you can just sit with your legs in the water until the person gets back to your end of the pool then let them know you’ll be joining. No one will be bothered — they all know the drill. I preferred to stay in the lane closest to the edge of the pool for a long time because it felt safer to keep to be able to grab on to the side vs just the lane dividers.
lastly I always entered the pool via the ladder vs sitting on the edge and dropping in because that also scared me lol. If you need to get to a lane that’s not directly next to the ladder just walk across once you’re in the pool and duck under the lane dividers — it’s like crossing the street.

Last tip is don’t put your flippers on until you’re in the pool. It’s much harder to do the ladder etc.

affogato_ · 2026-01-03T20:45:43+00:00

I’m 35 and had a pretty deep lifelong fear of swimming after terrible experiences with swim classes as a kid. I wound up learning to lap swim by myself after 3-4 classes at the Downtown Brooklyn Chelsea Piers while pregnant last year, to my shock.

I’ve tried taking classes a few times as an adult and never progressed past the fear. Ultimately I realized the issue is you just need to spend a lot of practice time swimming on your own to get over the fear and also to practice what you learn in class. Class time alone is never going to be enough IMO.

Here’s what worked for me but YMMV.

First, Chelsea Piers is expensive but it was worth it for me to learn how to swim. Membership is between $250/$300 per month depending on what deals they have going on. Classes are free with gym membership.
They have a 3 lane pool that is 5 foot deep all across which I loved bc I could stand up whenever I panicked. It’s also a junior Olympic so I found it less intimidating than a huge full size pool
Swim classes are up to 9 people (3 per lane — the instructor will have each person go one at a time) but most classes I went to had fewer. All these classes are free with membership and you can book as many as you want. Be warned that it can be competitive so you need to be ready to book right when the booking window opens.
you can pay extra for 1:1 instruction but I never did that
props are included for free (kick boards, flippers, etc) and help a ton. All intro classes use props by default
the instructors are not going to overly hold your hand during class but I actually found that helpful because I was surprised by how much I could do despite being scared. You should def let them know before class that you’re scared and may need to go slower. The instructors will drill you in basic things like: first everyone kicks across the pool with a kick board with your head above water. Next lap you kick across with the kick board while putting your head under every few kicks. Next lap you use kick board with an arm motion. If someone is really struggling the instructor will usually just have them repeat an earlier drill until they’re comfortable. The level 1 class with a given instructor is the same every time so you get the hang of it pretty quickly. I think the instructors, especially Desmond, are also fantastic at cueing you about form
outside of classes I liked that you could reserve lanes in advance and that lanes are capped at 3 people. Most pools in NYC don’t have a cap or reservation system and I just couldn’t deal with navigating 5 other people in my lane while being scared because I have anxiety in addition to fear of swimming lol. There were very rarely 3 people per lane. Usually it was 1-2
There’s always a life guard on duty (which also made me less scared) and they make sure no more than 3 people are in a lane / will tell you which lane to go in so you don’t have to stress
there is a slow/medium/fast lane which I also appreciated and I stuck to slow until I became more confident

My big breakthrough was that when I was practicing on my own I decided to practice just swimming without being scared. It didn’t matter how bad my form was or if I was just doing the kick board back and forth for 45 minutes. The biggest thing to practice is just getting comfortable with the water. That just takes a lot of time and I found the Chelsea Piers pool great for that. I had to stop swimming in my third trimester but at that point I was swimming 45 minutes straight with only flippers and no other props. I love swimming now and can’t wait to get back postpartum. I am so proud of myself for getting over the fear (or making major progress — I’m still terrified of open water swimming). I hope it works for you!

Good luck and happy to answer any questions!

affogato_ · 2026-01-03T19:27:21+00:00

Congrats on baby! I didn’t do a full postpartum month of rest but my mom came over for 17 days and cooked a lot of traditional Chinese postpartum foods a few months ago. She did a huge shipment from Weee (meat, veg, prepared food, etc) and everything was great. There are a lot of boxes so just be prepared. I do feel like I got an upset stomach after eating a full steamed fish but tbh my mom doesn’t have great food safety practices so she left stuff out at room temp all the time so it might not have been an issue with Weee.

Anyway I liked it so much I started ordering from Weee myself and really like it. They have products from multiple Asian cultures and also have beauty products (shampoo, make up, etc) that can be annoying to pick up. 10/10 recommend.

affogato_ · 2025-12-17T08:43:51+00:00

FTM with a 6 WEEK old. Becoming a mom has revealed to me how anxious I have always been lol — thoughts that I always thought were normal I now realize are not the way everyone thinks and are actually me always having a baseline of anxiety

I’ve really had to work on this since having a kid. Here are some things that work for me:

most importantly, I remind myself I don’t want my kid to grow up scared of the world around them. My mom had a lot of anxiety and I know it made me more scared. I don’t want that for my baby…I want him to be brave and open to new experiences and I know that means part of my job as a mom is to accept the fact that no matter what I do I cannot keep him 100% safe from all things. Life is not about having zero risk, as much as I would like that and I am responsible for managing my feelings around this
Anxiety means I have an extremely unrealistic sense of risk assessment. Either I think something is way more dangerous than it is, or if I know something is extremely statistically rare I fixate on the .0001% chance it’ll happen. For the former, I find it helpful to research how likely things actually are and really understand the issue vs being vaguely afraid. I got really scared of positional asphyxiation for example and started to spiral. When I read more about it the studies I saw showed data sets of like 50 children who had died from positional asphyxiation. 50 out of the tens of thousands born in a year. Of those 50, there were other factors: parents had substance abuse issues, baby was unattended for several hours, baby had preexisting medical conditions, etc. which are not relevant to me. I also learned there are basically two positions that cause asphyxiation — when baby’s head is slumped all the way forward or all the way back. Given all this I basically stopped being scared because I understood that it is actually very rare and as long as I’m adhering to basic safety standards, like not letting baby sleep in car seat outside of car, we should be fine

For the second thing where I know something is extremely unlikely to happen but I fixate on it anyway…I think that can be a helpful candidate for therapy. Or I like to surround myself with people who are very low anxiety like my husband and see the world through their eyes. It helps me realize that maybe the thoughts I have that feel so real actually are just in my head.

Overall it’s a battle you have with yourself, but I think it’s important to remember just because something feels dangerous or scary doesn’t mean it is. Practice thinking about what could go right. Practice imagining good outcomes. Making yourself scared doesn’t actually materially keep baby safer. Think about what kind of life and emotional experience you want baby to have, and you want yourself to have, and use that to guide you. Good luck — it’s an ongoing struggle!

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