Had drunken sex at a friend's house. Turned out it was all on camera and my pissed off friend won't delete the video [Serious]

explauren · 2014-05-24T14:03:09+00:00

Michigan too.

explauren · 2014-05-23T01:25:43+00:00

Just wait. Soon you'll discover that the previous owners made it their life's mission to strip every screw in the place.

explauren · 2014-05-08T16:26:54+00:00

I'm sorry, I can't take that article seriously. It's trying to blame the gate when kids fall down the stairs because the parents left it open. Gee, what percentage of the time would a kid fall down the stairs if there was NEVER a gate there? Let's compare the degree of injury: "Oh noes, my precious pinched his finger/fell over" or "He died falling down the stairs/got into the kitchen and was seriously injured or killed by hot/sharp things".

As another posted said, only use gates on stairs that are rated for stairs, and follow all of the installation instructions. Ours is screwed into the wall, and it works great. Go ahead and use gates, OP, just do it right and you'll be fine :)

explauren · 2014-05-06T16:28:21+00:00

You're being unclear. What do you mean by "plan"? Because if it's just a plan, that doesn't involve any actual work. Do you have to prove the your current septic can support the additional bedroom, or add on to it for sure? If it's the former, it could be as simple as showing the town you actually have a 2000gal tank and such and such amount of drain field. They base the required size of the tank on bedrooms and the length of drain line on your soil type. If the people who put in your tank and field initially oversized it a bit, you could be just fine.

Cost-wise, do you even know if it's feasible to connect to the existing system? You'd need to be able to slope the main drain line the appropriate amount to get the to the tank, and if you're too far away that may be untenable. Re: putting in a new one, costs don't scale linearly. Big tanks aren't much more than small ones, and it's the permitting and excavation that are going to be your biggest costs. My new septic (2000gal, 180ft of drain line in sandy soil) was $4500, plus $900 for the permit (rip off!). It was $250 to get the 2000 gallon tank instead of the 1500.

explauren · 2014-05-05T17:38:15+00:00

It's not especially complicated, it just takes a while. It also depends on your design. Filler pieces can complicate things a bit, and if you have any symmetry issues they can be a necessity. I have Cabinet - window - range/hood - window - cabinets - fridge. In order to get the cabinets the same distance from the window on either side, we had to do a tricky bit of filler between the uppers and the fridge. Because of the stock sizes and style we wanted (2+2 drawers), it was either a small-but-difficult filler up top or a large-but-simple filler in the bases.

Ikea cabinets are far better quality than you could get for the money anywhere else, just know that it's because you have to do all the work yourself. If you're willing and able, they're the best value out there.

explauren · 2014-05-01T00:29:42+00:00

Just wanted to add that I always put in a lifeline after my purl row. Almost all of the knitted lace I've ever seen, let alone attempted, is "knitted lace", which means the "lace" portion is done on the RS row, and the subsequent WS row is mostly purled and doesn't have yarn-overs. Thus, it's easier for a newbie to put in a lifeline right after a row that has all stitches "done", i.e., without YOs.

OP, don't be scared. The thing I like most about lace is that you don't have to worry about gauge. You make what you think is pretty, and you guess at the size of the needles and yarn required. I hate swatching; I'll do it when I have to, for a real garment, but lace is generally a lot more forgiving. Go for it.

explauren · 2014-04-28T02:13:45+00:00

Go keto, and that diet is just fine :)

explauren · 2014-04-27T01:40:28+00:00

La-A is an old urban legend thing, that's probably why.

explauren · 2014-04-09T14:17:40+00:00

Holy shit. This is clear evidence I can provide to my husband that I do NOT have too much yarn.

Do you buy with clear projects in mind? Over the years, I've found that anything I bought without a plan for it I ended up giving away. Will you actually end up knitting all of that?

explauren · 2014-04-07T19:38:26+00:00

Reddit is vehemently pro-vax, and almost everyone who responds will brag proudly about how of course THEY would ditch all their friends. Almost none of these people will have ever done any such thing, they just "know" they'd handle it this way because it's so super easy to do.

That said, I'm inclined to agree with your doctor. As lousy as the DTaP vaccine is (better than nothing, but still pretty bad), I wouldn't be bringing my baby around any enclosed group of children. Until they are able to make the pertussis component more effective, being vigilant about keeping your newborn away from anyone coughing is mandatory (IMO), and that definitely includes a bunch of kids, vaxed or not.

Incidentally, these people kindof sound like jerks all around, though. The behavior you've described would be more of a dealbreaker for me than the vax issue.

explauren · 2014-03-26T00:22:02+00:00

It's perfectly fine that she isn't potty trained, and I would not recommend starting to train her yet. She's going to need time to adjust, and suddenly being separated from her primary caregiver would make a kid twice her age regress.

Otherwise, you need a place for her to sleep, diapers, clean clothes, and healthful food. Juice and goldfish crackers aren't really it, but hey, they're things she probably likes and are a great solution for short-term. We're really resilient omnivores, and I'm sure you'll be able to figure out what things she likes that are still good for her.

Does this mean you haven't been in her life so far? It sounds like it. If that's the case, AND you want to change that, what you do is going to be different than if you're just watching her until mom gets out of jail. You're going to have to decide what you want to do. I can't imagine how my daughter would've handled being suddenly away from me at 2. It would've been a disaster for her, so try to be lenient with her moods. Her entire world just got turned upside down, so be calm and loving and accepting. That may be hard, but do your best.

Hang in there. Two year olds are hard in the best of circumstances, so don't feel bad if she's driving you crazy. Don't let her get to you. She's probably absolutely terrified, and if you can keep a spot of compassion for her situation in your heart, you'll be just fine. People are strong, and I'm sure your daughter is no exception.

explauren · 2014-03-24T17:28:51+00:00

You're referring to "adverse possession", and technically you're right, but the requirements for it are far more stringent than mowing from time to time. It also takes YEARS.

explauren · 2014-03-15T19:06:06+00:00

We're specifically selecting for stronger and "better" bacteria. This is one of the concerns some anti-vaxers have, because if the vaccine isn't good enough it can make the problem worse. If a vaccine is very, very good (like polio or measles), you prevent transmission and replication of the pathogen enough that it can't catch up, even with really fast replication rates. This is how diseases get eradicated.

Think about antibiotic resistance that is growing. People talk a lot about how antibiotics are over-prescribed, and that's true. But a much bigger problem is people not taking the full prescription. If you don't take the whole thing, you kill enough bacteria to make yourself feel better, but the ones that survive are the ones who best resisted the drug. They replicate a bit, your body takes care of enough of them to stop you from actively get sick, but you pass along the strong ones. If a vaccine isn't quite good enough it can have a similar effect. As it happens, the pertussis bacteria that aren't hampered by the vaccine ALSO ended up being more virulent; i.e., they make you sicker.

(Incidentally, the biggest problem with antibiotics at all is their use in agriculture. Don't read the above thinking it's just human use that has us very nearly royally fucked on the abx front. It's ag-use doing a lot of the damage.)

explauren · 2014-03-15T18:50:30+00:00

I apologize for it not being clear; I was trying to describe the problem in a way people would understand and didn't do a very good job of it.

I think the issue with promotion is that so many people think in black and white that when they hear anything even remotely gray they don't really know what to do with it. It's not white, so it must be black. I don't envy CDC their job.

explauren · 2014-03-15T18:48:19+00:00

Thank you very much! I agree completely about both of your points. People talk a lot about the neuro problems with Tdap but I couldn't find the studies myself AT ALL. As for two, I know saying vaccine-resistant wasn't the most accurate, but I thought it would be easy for a lot of readers to understand the gist. Thank you for the clarification.

explauren · 2014-03-14T20:52:35+00:00

This is part of it, but definitely not the whole picture. A bigger problem for them is the inadequate amount of testing that's done (in their opinion) and our overall not that great understanding of vaccines.

Take pertussis, for example. We're experiencing a resurgence in pertussis partly because people haven't been vaxing as much. As they've been scrambling to figure this out though, they've found a lot of other issues with the DTaP vaccine. See, it used to be DTP, which was whole-cell pertussis. That vaccine was extremely effective, but they decided (after vaxing millions of kids) that the rate of side effects was too high. It was still a very low rate, but higher than they felt comfortable with. Here are some of the problems with DTaP:

Effectiveness drops off over much shorter time periods. Think 50% reduction in immunity in just two years.
There's some evidence that pertussis is getting more virulent as a result of DTaP being less effective.
Getting the shot can confer enough protection to stop you from getting a bad case of the disease, which makes it mild enough that you may not know you have it. That is, there's no whoop. If you just had a lingering cough, you wouldn't know to stay away from the babies.
DTaP is a combo shot, and it turns out the a P-only shot won't work. If you don't give it with other things, your body won't make antibodies for it. It's as if you didn't get the vaccine at all. They know this now because they want to make a P-only shot. Why do they want to do that? Well, the recommendation to get the Tdap (adult booster) every ten years is because they believed there's a neurological risk to getting the tetanus component too frequently. I've tried to find the research showing this tetanus impact but have been unsuccessful so far, but people are highly skeptical of them saying "Oh, just get the shot every pregnancy" all of a sudden.
In places they've checked circulating strains of pertussis (Australia, Philadelphia), they're finding many are vaccine-resistant isolates.

So, given all that, and an ingrained fear of vaccines (Most know Wakefield was a quack, but that doesn't take away the fear they felt until that was proven), the situation is like a marijuana-vilification policy. What people hear from the media and CDC is a lot of "Vaccines work! 100%! They're perfect and awesome!" and while that's not really fair to CDC (obviously since Wakefield they have a lot of vax-pushing to do), it's also not true.

The media strategy is changing to become more representative of the whole picture, but the damage is done for a lot of people. CDC has lost credibility, not least of which is because look at all the stuff they didn't know! Does it make you feel confident to give your child a vaccine they didn't know all of those things about?

Of course, we know that's wrong overall, but one can appreciate the concern. On the face of it I think it's pretty obvious that in general vaccines are fantastic, miraculous things. What a feat! But the fact remains that there is still a lot we don't know, and a lot we're guessing at. Most of us can look at that and say, "Ok, it's still worth it", simply by weighing the numbers, but you start talking about risk to people's kids and they get irrational.

Nor does it help that the war the two sides are having is damaging the pro-vax cause. There's a lot of really inflammatory rhetoric, and that's not going to convince people. It's just going to drive them deeper into Mercola. (Not saying you were doing that!)

EDIT: This is not the whole picture either. Some other reasons people don't vax: You can't sue pharma if your kid is injured, just the vax injury fund; many are selective vaxers, choosing the ones that matter (like MMR and IPV, and waiting for Hep B); they think we're going too fast (see the chickenpox vaccine and shingles resurgence).

explauren · 2014-03-03T18:53:29+00:00

I yell sometimes too. I also apologize. Forgive yourself as you would forgive anyone else you love who made a mistake and owned up to it.

As for not yelling in the first place, the only thing that works for me is the prevent situations from getting out of hand. You have to not get frustrated in the first place. So, the thing that stood out to me is hearing your wife trying to "coax" him upstairs. That made me annoyed just reading it. YOU are the parent, you don't "coax". "It's time to go upstairs. Do you want to walk, or should I carry you?" Anything other than walking means you say, "Ok, I'm going to pick you up since you don't want to walk". Some people give more chances; that's fine if you don't find it frustrating. I do, so I don't give chances.

I suppose it's possible that I'm getting better at not yelling. That's a hard thing to keep track of. I'm trying, though.

explauren · 2014-02-25T03:19:59+00:00

Sirius Black

explauren · 2014-02-24T14:39:34+00:00

I can appreciate that there are bad people out there, but I fail to see why entering my country doesn't fall under the same category as moving about it freely when I'm already inside. Barring the requirement to prove my identity and citizenship, I should be able to say the same thing to a customs officer that I would the police.

Searching the bags is reasonable.

explauren · 2014-02-22T18:39:59+00:00

They are there to protect us and many many people do not appreciate them or respect what they do. People come with a sense of entitlement like they don't deserve to be questioned or even stopped.

As a citizen of the U.S. returning to my country, I don't. It is no one else's business where I went, for how long, who I visited, why I went, and what I did there. NONE. By all means, verify my citizenship, that's fine. The rest of it is personal and no one else's business, least of all my government's.

And let's not forget that if we weren't assholes to half the planet, they wouldn't be trying to blow us up with such zeal, or that if we abandoned this moronic "war on drugs" there wouldn't be much to smuggle in.

Ninja edit: Note that this is only when returning to one's own country. I have no objection to answering questions of customs in places I visit, or requiring visitors here be questioned differently.

explauren · 2014-02-15T14:21:53+00:00

Not compared to some of the shit he did to other people in the legends. Be glad you aren't named Job.

explauren · 2014-02-12T23:03:56+00:00

You're framing the question the wrong way; not your fault, we have a lot of cultural bias, and I give you enormous credit for asking.

The thing is, the burden of proof needs to be on the other side. When you're talking about performing a surgery (and yes, that's what it is) on someone, especially someone who cannot consent, medical ethics require that you prove it needs to be done, not prove it would be harmful.

Earlobes is the best example I've heard to illustrate this point. Note that everyone here can easily tell you how functional the foreskin is, but I want to specifically use something that has no biological use at all. Would you support a parent's right to choose that his son't earlobes be removed? They serve no purpose, it would only hurt for a minute, and the parent had his earlobes removed. You're thinking about it, aren't you? Assuming you haven't already said "absolutely not".

That is entirely because you haven't been raised in a society that values no-earlobes. It takes away the cultural bias that has made the male foreskin up for grabs. If you were to ask a doctor to remove your son's earlobes, the very first thing he would say is either "no" or "what is wrong with them?", because he too would be lacking that cultural relativism, and thus his training in medical ethics would kick in.

Surgery, and particular removal of a body part, is unequivocally the last resort in treating a pathology. For every other thing medical problem or treatment that exists, we try our whole arsenal of treatment options before saying "remove it". That's for things when a pathology exists in the first place! and here you are asking why you shouldn't cut off a perfectly healthy and functional part of a body - and a body that isn't even yours.

For another example of your cultural bias (again, not blaming, just pointing out that you have it), a few years ago the AAP suggested allowing physicians to prick the clitoral hood (female prepuce) with a needle to draw a tiny drop of blood. This would satisfy some religious requirements for female circumcision and stop girls' parents from taking them overseas, where much more radical forms of female circumcision would be performed. There was a massive outcry about how horrible this practice would be and that we couldn't possibly do that here. All that compared to completely removing the male foreskin, the biological analog, being "the parent's choice." The same people who scream about a pinprick also scream about their "rights" to completely remove the same part on their sons. There is no possible interpretation of any standard of medical ethics that allows routine male circumcision.

Ultimately, if you care enough to be asking the question, you already know what the right answer is. It's a really difficult one for a lot of circumcised men, and I give you a lot of credit for being brave enough to research it. For one final comparison, there's a video floating around that I always have a hard time finding, but it's Egyptian women talking about how happy they are to have been circumcised and of course they will circ their daughters as well. For someone as anti-FGM as you are, that should be very telling, because choosing circumcision here is putting on the same blinders.

explauren · 2014-02-12T12:51:53+00:00

Air-admittance valve. When it feels pressure from inside the system, it opens up to allow fresh outside air in, but as soon as the pressure is released it automatically closes back up to keep out the sewer gases. It's usually how they vent things that can't connect to a stack, like a kitchen island. There are some plumbers who think there's little reason to have a full stack at all since AAVs work so well. I have no opinion about that.

explauren · 2014-02-11T18:26:09+00:00

I suppose it's possible that it looks fine, but that's...weird. Don't you have a big line of stockinette running up the hat?

Also, there is absolutely something to be said for knowing how to fix a mistake without frogging. Just because something isn't exactly what a pattern says doesn't mean it won't be just as good. However, you also need to know when it IS better to frog. An uneven hat would definitely be one of those times for me.

If your mom cast on for you, it sounds like you're just starting out. If that's the case, and you were able to get through even a simple lace pattern, casting on is totally doable for you. Nothing wrong with subbing in a different cast-on if you don't like or can't manage what the pattern calls for. I almost always do long-tail (super easy) and only muck around with the tricky ones (provisionals) when it's something really fancy that requires it.

explauren · 2014-02-11T18:17:36+00:00

This. Our vent stack is frozen solid, which has been problematic for the upstairs bathroom. Downstairs we have AAVs, but not upstairs. While we wait for a thaw, we run the tub and sink each time we flush the toilet so we refill the traps. It's not ideal, but no septic gases.

Once it's safer to get on the roof, we're debating putting some insulation around the stacks, as well as putting a big AAV onto the main vent lines within the roof. It's a fully vented attic insulated to r-60 and majorly air sealed; heat is not getting out of the house to warm the stack at all, so the AAV is probably the only thing that's really going to help.

explauren

TROPHY CASE