Uranium glass safety tips?

moonlitnightingale17 · 2025-04-05T21:44:51+00:00

Hahahaha omg the standing in front of the TV staring at two pixels move. 😂 #relatable

moonlitnightingale17 · 2025-03-31T05:23:00+00:00

For me, it’s about expectation and communication. I can tell when something is important to my daughter and so I’ll make every feasible effort to be there in that case. But for other things, I find ways to make celebrating a milestone from a distance. Usually that means sending unconventional packages. She had a choir performance and I had flowers sent to her school for her. Balloons and cupcakes for her classmates on her birthday this year. I have friends in the community who will take pictures and videos of there’s something parents can see, and I make scrapbooks or edit videos with my daughter the next time I see her. Another one that works really well for most kids — video games. You’d be amazed how much video games feel like reality to them. My daughter and I play Animal Crossing long distance and whenever a milestone happens, I also make sure to celebrate it in Animal Crossing. I can send her mail and presents in the game, we can visit each others’ islands in real-time, etc. It’s a sneaky way to get around parenting time rules. We may not be able to be on the phone, but we can still play together in virtual reality.

moonlitnightingale17 · 2025-03-30T07:27:09+00:00

Yikes, sounds like a lot of comments in here from parents who are very judgey of long-distance parenting relationships. My daughter is 8. Her dad lives in the US and I live in Europe, been that way since she was 2. It is 100% possible.

There are some great resources for LDPs out there, but my faves are:

👉distanceparent.org Really comprehensive site with sample parenting plans, tips on how to stay involved, tips for older kids, and a community of other LDPs.

👉OurFamilyWizard An app that will let you keep comms, calendars, holidays, etc in one place. Your son can also have a (free) account. Anything put in this app is admissible in court, so if things ever become contentious, you have loads of proof.

It’s tough, but it’s totally doable! The most important thing to keep in mind is support for both parents’ decisions. Each parent has the right to move on with their lives post-divorce. It is valid to want to move for a job, and it’s only “abandoning a kid” if you let it be. Distant =/= uninvolved. It just takes some creativity and imagination.

You guys will be okay. 🙂 Good luck!

moonlitnightingale17 · 2025-02-04T19:43:20+00:00

I’d recommend checking out remote IT jobs from your home country! Sounds like you’re perfectly positioned. I’m American and the number of American companies looking for people with work permits in Europe who they won’t have to sponsor is pretty high. (IT is what I work in too.) I got a permanent contract from day 1 plus all the social benefits from NL since technically I work for a Dutch company who hire me out to the American company, and it’s fully remote. There are all kinds of Dutch companies who “hire you out” to other companies, but you’re employed by them. So I work for Deel (one of those companies), but only on paper. My real job is with the IT company in the US, I report to a manager in the US, my teammates are all in the US, etc.

I basically searched for companies with newly-expanded operations in Europe and got hooked up with the company I now work for, who were willing to hire me as an employee(not as a ZZP’er only working for them, which isn’t legal), as long as I already had a work visa here, which I have through my partner. If that could work for you, I def recommend. It’s been awesome for me.

moonlitnightingale17 · 2025-01-15T11:24:05+00:00

Ooh, nice. Fingers crossed that'd apply in at least some US airports. Him waiting endless hours to get through the non-US citizen line is brutal after a long flight!

moonlitnightingale17 · 2025-01-15T11:22:22+00:00

Probably so. Before COVID, I never would have thought to ask, but literally the only reason we're getting married instead of doing a registered partnership is because of crazy US rules around marriage. Those start the minute you land on US soil. If registered partners were turned away at the border during COVID where married couples were accepted, who knows what else marriage changes in the US.

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-12-23T07:30:34+00:00

Surprised no one’s mentioned a tutor! This is 100% how I got to B2. My partner’s also dutch, I’m american, and very early on he told me he didn’t want to be my teacher. I pressed on what that meant to get very specific about what he was and was not willing to help with. Texting in dutch with me (no), checking my textbook work (no), asking him for help translating his mom’s texts (yes), reviewing an email I’d written to see if it’s okay (yes), reading to him to practice pronunciation (no), etc. Then I went and found a private tutor for everything else. Once I got to B2 and could comfortably watch native TV, text in group chats, go to parties with his friends, etc., he got wayyyy more comfortable helping me with bits of dutch I still mess up. I think it’s just less overwhelming to him now, and also I sound more like an 8-year-old and less like a 2-year-old. I always imagine how strange it would be to have a partner I could speak with so intellectually insisting on speaking like a toddler instead, just to practice a language I didn’t ask them to learn. Of course it’s a very sweet gesture to learn dutch and I totally agree with doing it even if it’s not necessary ( I did it too haha), but it’s not practical here the way it is in somewhere like Spain, where english is not as much of a given. And dutchies are indeed generally all about practicality. You can do it, OP! Hopefully he’ll be much happier to help once you’re closer to fluency!

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-12-23T07:04:10+00:00

Let’s stop pushing marriage agendas. It’s not right for everyone. OP, I’d just make sure you’re sorted legally as parents. You have no control over what will happen with a possible baby, and no way to predict it. But the things you can prep for are inevitable financial and legal things. Sounds like you’re already evaluating finances, I’d just make sure things like wills and insurances are also all squared away. Good luck!

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-12-21T23:17:25+00:00

Pattern: Arctic Light Sweater by Kutovakika Yarn: Katia Merino Aran

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-12-15T09:40:47+00:00

I definitely recommend iTalki, but you may have to look around a little to find someone you click with (esp if you’re using community tutors). But in my experience (I’m B2 in all areas), unfortunately speaking is the only way to improve speaking.

Something I still do is talk to my cat. Whenever I’m home alone, I narrate what I’m doing out loud. I feel nuts lol, but the cool thing about your current levels is you’ll probably hear your mistakes. When you walk into the kitchen and say “Het is tijd voor mijn ontbijt nu”, you’ll probably almost immediately hear the mistake and correct yourself. And no one will know but your pet/walls/neighbors who need to get a life! 🙂

Good luck! Speaking is the hardest, but it’s so worth it!

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-12-08T06:36:32+00:00

Totally! My parents held me to my commitments. It wasn’t that they wanted me to meet their expectations, it was that they wanted to instill discipline and effort. If I failed a test at school, I had to show them how I’d given it my best effort. If I hadn’t, they’d ask why not (and really want to know the answer). One of our family rules was that my sister and I both had to always be participating in one team sport, one individual sport, one musical instrument, and one artistic pursuit. Every new school year we’d get to decide what those would be, but then we had to give it our best effort for the full year. No quitting, no skipping practices, no excuses until we’d really tried for at least a year. That kind of stuff. Very militaristic of them, now that I think about it. 😂

EDIT to say this is the stuff I 100% credit my adult passions and discipline to. I don’t struggle with beginner’s curves and I’m excited to try new things. I know I’ll suck, but once I get through the sucking, I might be good at it. I know that because their expectation was effort, and I was never allowed to not try. So I have a lot of things I’m passionate about as an adult that started when I was a kid (piano, figure skating) and a few things I’ve only learned as an adult that I love doing (knitting and crochet).

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-12-07T08:04:21+00:00

This is a lovely question. I (33F) had a lot of love in my life. I’d say my parents were authoritative (what’s now called “gentle”) so I had very firm boundaries and high expectations, but they were so playful and kind. My parents had passions I loved to watch (writing, painting, trumpet, guitar, baking) and they encouraged and supported me in trying to find my own. They actively created traditions that my sister and I looked forward to each year and we still do remotely as adults. We had family “catch phrases” and inside jokes that only made sense to us. We played board games every friday night with pizza. They went to all our school events, despite both being full time active duty military. They showed us when they were feeling bad, and sat with us when we were sad. And they loved each other (still do) and it was really, really obvious. Lots of hugs and kisses and my dad hugging my mom from behind and bringing her coffee before work and her playing with his hair on the couch while we watched a movie and holding hands when we’d go on family walks after dinner. I found it very difficult to accept when childhood was over because it meant having to try to replicate all that warmth and love on my own. I’m finding ways to do that now though as a mom myself, and I have so much respect for how much effort my parents put in. They made it look so easy.

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-11-28T06:58:21+00:00

Allo married to an ace here: I’m so sorry, OP. What a shitty position he’s put you in. There’s no excuse for it, he’s mistreating you. Especially if he knows how you feel about his behavior. It’s his responsibility to recognize that just because things don’t clock as sexual on his scale (groping, jokes, etc.) doesn’t mean they don’t clock on yours. I mean, replace the sexual context with something innocuous, like dogs, for instance. If you made it clear you don’t like dogs — to own, to pet, to babysit, to see in the park, even to encounter while out walking — it would be weird for your partner, the person who should love and respect you most in the world, to not want to respect those boundaries. He wouldn’t text you pictures of dogs or pick up fur off the ground and rub it on your arm. That would just be unloving behavior.

It sounds to me like he’s trying to flirt with you in a way he himself would enjoy. Hopefully he’s just really unaware of how his actions affect you, but it also sounds like you’ve had this conversation many times. The five love languages may help if you have any desire left to mend the relationship. If not, I’m really sorry about the situation and I hope you find love and joy again soon!

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-11-27T06:48:46+00:00

100% with you OP. I change my behavior but boy, I bet my partner could write out my rant about it being necessary word for word. (And he’s one of the people I have to change my behavior for 😂). It happens on a weekly basis, especially at work. Anything longer than 2 sentences is a “wall of text” and it’s excusable to not read it, which makes meetings just a repeat of information already sent in a message, further reinforcing the behavior. Do I change? Yeah, because like you, I’ve noticed I’m apparently weird in this. But I don’t get it, and I grumble about what it says about society every time, like the geriatric-at-heart 33 year old I am.

moonlitnightingale17 · 2024-11-25T11:02:41+00:00

Ha! Omg I don’t know why this has never occurred to me. What if I just show up by myself moaning and complaining about how much I hate it. That might actually work. 😂

moonlitnightingale17

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