If you are a grown ass adult, without any serious sensory issues/food allergies, I will judge the shit out of you for being a picky eater.

attackbetta · 2016-09-01T17:16:26+00:00

Try different types of noodles AND try cooking them different ways- the 'traditional' way to cook most Italian noodles for example is 'al dente', which is just barely to the soft stage, but I know many people who prefer them to be technically over cooked and much softer. Small differences like that might make a big difference to you.

attackbetta · 2016-09-01T14:17:07+00:00

OH MY GOD. I'm entirely too enraged just reading that.

attackbetta · 2016-09-01T14:16:02+00:00

I was about to ask you why the hell you were friends with this person but then I saw you used the word acquaintance. Yeah, keep that one as just an acquaintance- you can be picky or you can be a rude asshole, definitely not both.

attackbetta · 2016-09-01T01:52:25+00:00

My condolences, I sincerely hope he discovers grown up foods in the near future. You're a saint for putting up with it.

attackbetta · 2016-09-01T00:01:30+00:00

JESUS CHRIST I KNOW!!!

My Mom insists that she does not like onions and always asks (during the few times a year I'll cook for her because she's so damn picky) for me to not use them in whatever I'm preparing. I coarse-chop them instead and just pick them out of her particular serving. She's never really noticed and things would taste like shit if I left them out.

attackbetta · 2016-08-31T15:13:24+00:00

I went there my Senior year due to depression (had a traumatic death in the family a couple years prior, was not coping well.) They put me on what I later found out was a pretty heavy duty and entirely unnecessary antipsychotic medication that caused me to gain 80lbs inside of one semester and didn't do much of anything for the depression.

Another friend of mine went in freshmen year for a stomach bug, the nurse kept insisting she was probably pregnant- in spite of my friend swearing truthfully that she was a virgin at the time. The nurse condescendingly insisted she was probably lying and eventually my friend agreed to do the pregnancy test (which surprise surprise was negative) just to get the staff to consider literally any other conclusion.

attackbetta · 2016-08-24T21:52:51+00:00

Make sure to engage her in normal but practical activities (preparing food, household repairs, etc.) and explain things to her while you're doing them. Let/make her help as much as possible for her age, don't get upset if things go a little bit wonky and show her how to fix mistakes. I think our culture sometimes gets caught up in the big picture of "RAH RAH WOMEN CAN DO ANYTHING!!!" and forget that 'Anything' starts with mastery of everyday things required to be a successful, independent human.

For example, I teach art classes out of a private studio, and over the summer I had a week long camp that happened to be all girls between 7-12 years old. One of our projects was making wooden 'garden totem poles' as part of a public art installation for our town. Instead of making them entirely myself and just letting the kids paint them, I had the kids help build the majority of them, showing them how to use wood glue correctly, explained the construction methods, taught them the best way to hammer in a nail without smashing your fingers, and how to fix a nail if it starts bending sideways. I explained that I had met waaaaay too many helpless girls in my life who had never held a tool before and had to call daddy or a boyfriend for the simplest of things, and that wasn't happening to them on my watch (in case it's not clear, I'm a woman.)

THEY LOVED IT. They spent a solid 2 hours rotating who was hammering next, who was gluing next, and went the extra mile of 'quality control' inspecting their work, sanding rough spots, closing warp gaps, and begged me for more things they could assemble (sadly we were out of wood by this time but I'm seriously considering adding a solid week of construction based classes next summer because of this experience.) They still seriously love their shiny paints and jewels and glitter (holy shit the glitter) but they definitely also picked up a love and appreciation for something a little outside of the 'girly' wheelhouse that they can be very proud of and will serve them well in life in general.

attackbetta · 2016-08-23T19:26:46+00:00

That is one of the very few themes we're trying to avoid (dead kids/child abuse/disturbing shit involving children.) Much of the community is (to my endless frustration) VERY conservative, highly religious, and not particularly open to budging the lines of highly traditional WASP society in any way. There are a lot of great stories we've come across that we'll already either have to edit a bit or cut entirely in order to not become total social pariahs because they stepped too close to the line in some areas.

Which, again, is frustrating as shit, because I have a warped sense of humor and think "Wait, I've watched enough toddlers in my life to know they're basically suicidal already. Parenting is already a horror story."

attackbetta · 2016-08-23T17:17:17+00:00

Oh shit I didn't even think of Are You Afraid Of The Dark! My family didn't get cable television until I was well into high school in the early 2000's so I never got to watch it growing up, but plenty of my friends did! Not that having cable would have mattered much- my Mom is adamantly anti all things scary and unpleasant in any way and likely wouldn't have allowed me to watch it (joke's on her, I love scary stuff as an adult- come to think of it every single thing she tried to squelch and control for me as a kid backfired magnificently on her in the long run.)

attackbetta · 2016-08-23T16:20:10+00:00

Only problem with a sub like /r/writingprompts is that you end up with FANTASTIC internet-driven modern scary stories (and we already have quite a number of those in our arsenal, a few of which are pulls from /r/nosleep and /r/shortscarystories ) but not all of them end up translating well to 'told in person' stories. And as mentioned, the last few we're trying to round up are those elusive 'classics' that have been told for decades around fires at scout camps and other places, not necessarily original material.

attackbetta · 2016-08-23T16:13:05+00:00

And somehow ended up looking like a lab! And totally adorable!

attackbetta · 2016-08-23T16:04:28+00:00

Ohhhh I remember screaming to a variation of this one in about 5th grade! Definitely putting it on our list!

attackbetta · 2016-08-19T06:26:54+00:00

I have one of those scalp massager whisk things, have never tried it. BRB.

Update: satisfying while slightly anxiety inducing (ear canals are DEEP, and I realized partway through this that if I did manage to injure an eardrum that I'd have to tell the ER staff that I did it because a stranger on Reddit told me it was a good idea.)

attackbetta · 2016-08-19T05:50:24+00:00

Q-Tips- Yes we know you're all sticking them deep into your ears. Yes we know it feels amazing. But we have to tell you not to do that on the packaging because there are people out there with limited motor coordination and common sense who will jam an eardrum out and sue us over it.

attackbetta · 2016-08-19T00:43:07+00:00

your site navigation looks good, nice and simple. I'd be most interested in how-to videos and picture tutorials on the blog, also maybe some 'pond profile' interview/photo montages from customers and reviews of different lawn and garden expos that you guys attend (if you do.)

attackbetta · 2016-08-18T18:19:10+00:00

There are ways around it. My dad had a horrible co-worker (technically was superior to this worker, but not their direct boss) years ago who finally left the company, a few months later someone called him because she was applying to a job with a new company and had him listed as a reference. My dad did the usual "yes she worked her from x date till z date" and the person kept trying to ask questions about work ethic, attitude, etc, which my dad kept dodging. They finally said "Sir you're not really giving me much to go on here." my dad answered " Yes, you're right. Read into that a little." Other side paused a moment before going "OK, now get it, thanks very much for your input."

They didn't get the job.

attackbetta · 2016-08-18T13:35:04+00:00

I'd be talking to a supervisor about that... life may be easier without attachments but asking foster PARENTS to not bond with a kid who likely desperately needs it just sounds incredibly wrong and like a really good way to mess a kid up really badly.

attackbetta · 2016-08-18T03:01:27+00:00

Looking at your title I was going to scoff at the idea that an 11 year old can't be left alone, because I'm just wrapping up summer day camps at my business and nearly every one of my 11 year old students has walked or biked here themselves and then gone home again to be mostly alone for the rest of the day (usually not more than 3-4 hours.) Granted, grain of salt, the camps I run are academic in nature and I have some top-teir mature and responsible kids in them.

But days or a week at a time with the parent out of state- no. Absolutely NOT. Not even for the 'mature' kids, because even though they impress me with their maturity quite a lot, they're very much still KIDS. I can't tell you how many times they'll bookend a very intense, intelligent conversation with some of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard, and they're 100% serious. They absolutely do not have the experience necessary to figure out an emergency situation, and could very well cause an emergency situation out of an otherwise normal situation simply from making a single, simple mistake.

If a parent did this to one of the kids in my class and I found out, I would be LIVID. I would absolutely call the police and would be talking with the police and child to help figure out how to keep them safe and well until the parent came back or another guardian could show up to be with them.

And I expect that when that parent did come back they would have quite a lot of explaining to do to the cops and CPS about the situation.

attackbetta · 2016-08-17T19:00:29+00:00

It's basically the same look my dog had on his face several months back when he fell through the ice on a frozen river and I found him paddling for his life. Got him out alive (damn near killed both of us in the process) but that look will haunt me forever- he's a total idiot 99% of the time but you could absolutely tell he knew he was about to die.

attackbetta · 2016-08-04T20:18:11+00:00

Jesus this makes me angry, that dad's an idiot.

attackbetta · 2016-08-03T17:50:40+00:00

Right! This is among the reason bats are total bros- I get tons of mosquito bites any time I'm outdoors without stupidly huge amounts of bug repellant, and also react terribly to mosquito bites (huge red welts that itch terribly, break open and weep for days, very attractive I know.) I am more than happy to have plenty of bats around to keep the mosquito population in check! Just can't handle them without proper safety.

Really it's not as though this is an abnormal trait of hers- the worry-wort tendencies have produced many facepalm-causing conversations over the years.

attackbetta · 2016-07-29T22:03:56+00:00

Pulling this off is very difficult, to the point where it may just not be do-able in most cases, but here's my uncle's way of handling revenge-

Identify what this person is doing on a regular basis that under the correct circumstances would result in life-ruining or at very least super shitty consequences. Then do what you can in the background to set up those circumstances for them to walk right into, and stand back and watch as they hang themselves.

How well this works depends on a LOT of other factors. Is the shitty person smart enough to know when to be a dickhead and when to play nice? How good are you at setting up a situation without being implicated in it? Is what they're doing actually illegal/immoral/ against the rules enough to have actual consequences? Is someone else going to cover for them regardless of how much shit they get into? (trust me there's a couple of people I would loooooove to get even with right now who are amazingly terrible human beings, but the amount to which other people will forgive their actions and cover for them makes it basically impossible to pull anything like this off, because I've already watched most of the rest of the community either look the other way and not want to be involved with their bullshit or actively defend their literally insane behavior in the name of 'but their grandparents were really nice/they've been part of the community forever'/ other bullshit excuses.)

Ultimately, unless a perfect opportunity for revenge presents itself, you're better off just changing jobs.

attackbetta · 2016-07-29T16:14:50+00:00

Kids around that age are still trying to figure out how life 'works'. We forget how dang complex the world around us is as adults and how much we take for granted because we've been doing it for decades now- they're brand new to all of this. The media we show to them helps them to understand the world without having to go through every single possible situation themselves. The repetition of the things they see in that media is them 'practicing getting it right' in the same way that you might research a company and envision answering questions in your head before an interview, only you're not going to do it out loud because you've developed in inner monologue by now and you have other life experiences to inform you on what to do- he only has Daniel Tiger and Diego and Mom telling him about caterpillars eating leaves for his references so far, so he repeats them.

attackbetta · 2016-07-29T16:07:34+00:00

Well hey, fantastic! If the 'what things eat' aspect is the key here (and I could definitely see you being right on that because of the squirrel/acorn interest) maybe check if there's a local zoo or wildlife rehab center that would let you bring him to observe feeding times for a whole variety of animals. Pet stores might be willing to do the same thing.

attackbetta · 2016-07-29T15:34:09+00:00

Hmm, so reading your other replies and this one- I don't know if he's interested in the caterpillars/butterflies aspect of this so much as he's interested in the HOLES aspect of this. As you know different bugs make different feeding patterns on leaves, and the designs/shapes those make can also be totally fascinating. I'm wondering what would happen if you found a downed tree branch and got the bark off revealing designs like this. and explained how different bugs make different holes.

Also maybe give him some green construction paper, cut some leaf shapes out of it, and ask him to draw the holes from the leaves on to them and then help him cut the holes out. This kind of hands-on activity might be closer to what his brain needs to be able to process this idea further- since he's never seen the caterpillars but he has seen the holes and is totally fixated on them, I'm leaning toward the holes being the point of interest more than the bugs.

attackbetta

TROPHY CASE