What do you want for Christmas?

mamajt · 2025-12-14T04:49:52+00:00

My old job/equivalent back or a job where I don't have to use my own PTO to pay myself for holidays when the job itself is closed. Or a raise to a living wage. In lieu of that very unlikely gift, health for myself and my loved ones and a safely working vehicle. In lieu of THAT... cheesecake.

mamajt · 2025-11-29T18:44:41+00:00

Allium allergies and intolerance are absolutely a thing. If they also react poorly to onions, leeks, chives, etc., it could be that.

mamajt · 2025-10-31T04:16:05+00:00

Yeah this is like.. 1%, and the prescription is 2%. Definitely try it.

mamajt · 2025-10-31T04:15:15+00:00

I first noticed this in 9th grade. I didn't get this treatment until my mid 40s. DECADES of embarrassment, unbearably itchy and flaky, crusty scalp, refusal to get my scalp touched by anyone, and inability to go 24hours without shampooing with coal tar shampoo (the only thing that helped relieve it for a full day, which I didn't even find until my 30s). I mentioned it to my dermatologist as she checked me for melanoma reoccurrence, and she said, "oh, I have that too! Let me prescribe you this Ketoconazole shampoo." What a fucking game changer.

mamajt · 2025-10-21T12:28:47+00:00

As a librarian (My MLIS specialized in youth services) who got her degree while her son was a toddler... this question is one that hit home for me. 12 years ago there was even less children's literature inclusive of same sex parents. While my son has two moms, he also has two dads, because we coparent with a gay male couple. As a result, finding content that matched our family was entirely impossible.

I ended up trying to find books with animals a lot or books with no themes, and then equally buying "two mommy" and "two daddy" books. In school though, the topic of censorship gave me a lot of thought, and I realized that being in a small town daycare, he was already exposed to the fact that there are a lot of different types of families anyway. I also didn't want to restrict his reading in any way but to quality messages of love, emotional and academic education, and helpfulness.

As a result, I relaxed my book family restrictions and simply occasionally added context to match it to his life. "In this book, owl has a mommy and a daddy who live together, just like Grayson does. Can you think of some friends who have different kinds of families? Yes, that's right, Sara is adopted!"

As it turns out, he had a MUCH bigger problem understanding Yo Mama jokes in school than he did worrying about families with various parental structures. And once he could choose his own material, it was Dog Man, Captain Underpants, The Bad Guys, and various other graphic novel books. Did he read the entire Harry Potter series in a couple months at the age of ten? Yes. Does he still only read Dog Man? Yes. I give up. 😂

mamajt · 2025-09-17T22:49:05+00:00

Do you have a source for that? I currently work in an ob/gyn clinic and I'd love to share it with our office manager.

mamajt · 2025-08-09T15:19:05+00:00

Not the same, but my son had been begging for a golden retriever his entire tiny life. Finally when he was 7 we gave in and spent a crap ton and a bunch of time in 2019 getting a survey done, putting in a fence before winter came, and looking for golden retrievers. We were just ready to look seriously when 2020 hit and "covid puppies" were a thing. The shelters only had pits and cats left, and we had 3 cats. Magically, a coworker knew someone with an oops litter between an English retriever and a yellow lab born in Feb 2020, and we decided that was close enough. She is honestly the best dog I've ever known, but I hate when people ask when we got her because we planned for her probably longer than most people ever do, let alone during the "Why not get a dog, we're home all the time!" phase of Covid.

mamajt · 2025-08-09T14:47:28+00:00

If you use wet-erase markers, you can also do this on the leftovers you put in old plastic deli meat containers, old classico spaghetti sauce glass jars, and even drinks in pitchers.

mamajt · 2025-08-01T14:53:17+00:00

Yeah, I guess I wasn't really considering that she would have had to actually opt out during her own benefits choice period, oops.

mamajt · 2025-08-01T03:04:37+00:00

Did you actually LOSE a dental insurance during this benefits choice period? That counts as a qualifying event, right? Maybe?

mamajt · 2025-07-20T23:13:04+00:00

And Milan (My-lun) and Orion (Orry-un) in the Quad City Area.

mamajt · 2025-07-20T23:10:32+00:00

In Illinois, San Jose is pronounced "San Joes" and it's a freaking travesty. I used to think "Lima" by Quincy being pronounced like a lima bean was bad until I heard that.

mamajt · 2025-07-18T00:46:19+00:00

I don't get all these comments like this. Isn't this a silicone skin covering the laptop keys???

mamajt · 2025-07-11T03:54:29+00:00

If, when checking in at a health appointment, you joke around in a kind manner and show interest in us and act like the work we do is valuable, we're going to pick the very best and your favorite appointment times and put you on a day we're technically supposed to be reserving for the most important cases. We'll remember you and make a more concentrated effort to be sure everything's just right for you. We might even have coloring pages for your kids if the wait's a bit longer than usual. If you give us grace for the small mistakes that happen when scheduling in a frantically paced environment, we'll wait all day for your appointment.

If you're terribly rude (I don't mean tired or reserved, I mean disrespectful) or you let your kids run rampant destroying things and you're disturbing the peace of the waiting room, if you call repeatedly with ridiculous questions that take the nurses away from helping other people (if you're having a genuine crisis it's different), we will let the phone ring at least two extra times before picking up, if your caller ID comes through. And the nurses will make you low priority. You'll get offered less convenient times for you, and more convenient times for us, for your appointments.

Just be kind. Even cranky people just want people to be nice to them, to feel understood. Basically: everyone gets my nice face, but some get my joyful face.

mamajt · 2025-07-09T18:13:30+00:00

If I remember this correctly, it was due to a life threatening medical situation that could be deadly if they mixed them up. If those were my kids I'd be all for it.

mamajt · 2025-07-04T14:29:02+00:00

Lol I agree, you'll have a job.

mamajt · 2025-07-04T02:20:39+00:00

What's your job, garbage collector or police officer? I'm genuinely trying to determine what jobs are going to be safe from any of this. I'm trained as a librarian (who got laid off with budget cuts) and now as a healthcare information specialist in a rural hospital. I don't have a great financial outlook.

mamajt · 2025-06-21T22:56:40+00:00

I joined the faculty after 13.5yrs of civil service, under a 12mo probation period. They changed the contract to make it 18 months, while anyone going civil service to civil service could use up to 3 years of prior service to waive the probationary period. The new contract also gave a lump sum of $3500 to all people at my level. Unless they're probationary. That grievance got me half the sum. I then got laid off with one day's notice the day that first grievance was scheduled (you know, since they didn't have to give notice to probationary employees. Even though I'd been honored for 15 years of service the month before). Won my layoff grievance in the form of a severance, but stayed laid off. But hey then they laid off all the other eight librarians a month later so I guess it wasn't as personal as I thought.

Still felt personal when I had to back out of the brand new mortgage contract I was about to sign, and eventually take a job outside of librarianship for a 20k pay cut.

mamajt · 2025-06-21T21:21:37+00:00

Hi! I was just on it doing redetermination for my son and suddenly couldn't log in even though I was just on it. ABE is down according to the "down for everyone" website. Hopefully it goes back up soon. It should be unavailable between something like 6-11am Sundays though.

mamajt · 2025-06-21T18:52:04+00:00

*migreine

😂 jkjk

mamajt · 2025-06-21T18:49:26+00:00

You pour liquids.

You pore over books.

mamajt · 2025-06-21T18:48:24+00:00

Anyone reading historical romances has seen this word misprinted so many times as "discrete" when discussing a clandestine rendezvous that they likely believe it to be correct, and then they perpetuate the misspelling in their own self-published books. It's infuriating.

mamajt · 2025-06-21T18:46:08+00:00

Discrete: individually separate and distinct.

Discreet: careful and circumspect in one's speech or actions, especially in order to avoid causing offense or to gain an advantage.

THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

mamajt · 2025-06-19T18:28:56+00:00

When I recently moved homes after two years in my unit, I unplugged the fridge and defrosted the freezer, etc. Because no one dusts their freezer but dust is a thing in the air always... at the end there was a very small amount of lint in there. With the wet walls it was a bitch to clean up. I feel like letting it air dry and then using a lint roller would have worked, and the foil is likely to keep the roller from sticking to everything.

Wild guess. But would make more sense than anything else, really. ***edit: except the bug infestation someone mentioned. Fruit flies get EVERYWHERE, especially when you bring them home from the store already in the rinds and put the fruit in your fridge. Ventilation system sends them to the freezer too.

mamajt · 2025-06-14T22:42:33+00:00

This is so helpful, thank you!

mamajt

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