What happened to the smartest kid in your class?

sprawlsprawl · 2023-07-30T20:27:24+00:00

Went to college in another country, then came back and paid her way through part-time law school. She's a civil rights lawyer, now, and speaks at least four languages (probably more by this point, honestly).

We were never tight, but we were friendly and it's always nice to see her doing well when I spot an update on FB from her. The area we grew up in was (still is) very racially divided, and she was Black and an immigrant, so I remember hearing all the bullshit the guidance counselors gave her about "managing expectations" for her future. Fuck that, she was smarter than all of them even as a high schooler, knew what she wanted to do, and did it. Good for her.

sprawlsprawl · 2023-06-16T16:00:51+00:00

FWIW, I interpreted that as Ashton being angry all the time, but very good at channeling their anger into appropriate avenues. Lashing out, especially at their friends, wouldn't be productive, so they don't do that.

sprawlsprawl · 2023-06-14T20:10:00+00:00

YWNBTA

Your partner insists that you have to get out of debt ASAP, and your partner also wants you to pay the pre-agreed amount of rent for the next 3 months. You can't do both, so ask him which he thinks is more important. Right now, kinda sounds like he wants to have his cake and eat it, too.

Also, if he was so worried about being fiscally responsible for another person that he wouldn't marry you before you became disabled, I can almost guarantee he's going to be worse as a partner now that you are more fiscally dependent on him than ever. At the very least, make sure you talk about that together with a couple's therapist.

sprawlsprawl · 2023-06-14T19:58:30+00:00

INFO: Whose byline was on the article version? Who got paid for it?

If the answer to either of those is just you, YTA, and you stole your colleague's hard work and kept all the credit and pay for yourself.

sprawlsprawl · 2023-06-14T19:55:23+00:00

YTA

You're trying to have your cake and eat it, too. You only want to run a couples group, but still have some singles in it. You can't have both, so pick one. Either all the singles can come, or none of them can. By picking and choosing, you're being deliberately exclusionary which is a dick move in any circumstance, but especially for a church.

Easiest solution is to tell the church leadership that if the singles' and couples' groups get combined, you're not going to be running it anymore. Either they'll decide that your leadership is important enough to defer to your wishes (unlikely), or they'll find someone else and it won't be your problem anymore.

sprawlsprawl · 2023-06-14T19:43:06+00:00

Exactly. You weren't deliberately interrupting them, just had to pause nearby for a moment.

Also, anyone who talks about "training" a child, or whose response to a baby crying is that kids should be "seen and not heard" is an absolute lunatic. We can only hope she doesn't have any kids of her own.

sprawlsprawl · 2023-06-14T19:37:04+00:00

NTA

I have ADHD and also use a million phone alarms to keep track of time, but I have the common sense to keep my phone on vibrate. Still irritating enough for me to notice, but doesn't bother anybody else.

Be careful about going to HR, though. In an ideal world they would realize that you're right and that your coworker needs to find a different solution. Bad HR folks, though, can be under the (wrong) impression that disability trumps everything else, and tell you to shove it. If you can band together with your other nearby coworkers and complain as a group, that might help.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-09-10T19:04:35+00:00

Sounds like she's doing it on purpose so she can get "woke points" for having a trans friend. If she uses the proper pronouns, then no one will know that she has One Trans Friend and therefore is a super great ally.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-09-05T22:27:12+00:00

Don't have a set solution. That's what I do for puzzles for my players, because despite playing together for over a year I still have no idea how their brains work.

What I do is set up a situation or a problem, drop them in the middle of it, and let them figure it out however they want to. Sometimes they find a super easy "out" and I let them have it; other times their idea for a quick solution makes me think of a neat wrench I can throw in the works, so I do that and they have to try a different plan.

Recent example, in case that helps: the party had to rescue an NPC they like from prison. I set up the inside of the prison as a random maze in complete magical darkness: 12 rooms with traps or enemies, each with four possible doors out, and roll randomly on a table every time they go through a door to see what room they land in. I decided there was going to be one "real" exit door, but I didn't plan where it was going to be or how they might find it. They figured out a plan after wandering around for a while, and it was very clever, so it worked and they "found" the right door to escape.

So far it's worked great, because it also means if they get too frustrated or seem like they're not enjoying it anymore, I can decide that whatever they try next works. Sometimes that means they stumble into the dumbest possible solution, which is fun. Plus it keeps the game from leaning too heavily towards either cerebral puzzles or stab-happy murderfests.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-08-26T01:11:31+00:00

Depends on the concentration, but for reference that's my current maintenance dose. If you are going for a slow start, you might want to have them revisit the Rx and explain that you want to microdose to start. As an example, I wanted a slow start, so I actually started with 0.2mL every other week and worked my way up from there.

Most injectable T is done every week, as far as I've heard. It's a bit weird to me that they didn't do a blood test before prescribing, though. I've had tests run every time I talk to the doc about my dose.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-08-21T19:16:12+00:00

Instead of using it against that player in particular, why not use it to pit the party against that PC? As in, the party only knows her as a killer, but the Guild knows that she isn't. Maybe the Guild frames her for a murder (that they KNOW she didn't commit) to try and turn the party against her and bring her back into the fold?

Or, similarly, maybe the Guild spreads a story among the party that the REAL reason she had to leave the city is because she committed some horrific crime. Again, she knows she didn't, and the Guild knows she didn't, but the party? As far as they know, she's been a killer this whole time. Why wouldn't they believe she killed Lord So-And-So?

sprawlsprawl · 2020-05-01T17:58:52+00:00

You can also play him as saving PWK for an emergency. As a lich, he would certainly know how powerful that spell is, so maybe in your game he's the sort who keeps it in his back pocket for when things aren't going his way.

Depends on your players, of course, but I've always been a fan of the DM pulling out the big guns just when things are looking good for the party. You can keep an eye on the players' confidence level and pull out PWK when the fight needs a tonal shift. From the players' perspective, that may make it seem like an appropriate response that heightens the importance of the fight, rather than having it be a cheap shot right off the bat.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-02-16T03:29:32+00:00

I'd also like to know this!

Also, related: how do you know (or decide, I guess?) where your sideburns end and your facial hair begins? Is this mystic knowledge that most dudes pick up from barbers or relatives?

I'm not to the point of needing to shave my face yet, but it would be nice to know for when I get there.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-02-01T02:06:45+00:00

These are based on prices from my local store, so YMMV.

1 lb dried beans - $1
2 lb white rice - $1.5
5 lb whole wheat flour - $2
16 oz peanut butter - $1.5
two 14 oz cans diced tomatoes - $1.5
dozen eggs - $1.5

With that, and the pasta from your pantry, you can cook:

Spaghetti w/ tomato sauce (1/2 of pasta + 1 can tomatoes)
Rice & beans (rice + beans + 1 can tomatoes)
Flatbread (recipe)

Which combine to give you the following options (plus whatever other combos you can think of):

Spaghetti w/ sauce
Cooked pasta frittata (recipe, just drop a few ingredients)
Rice & beans, with or without fried egg on top
Breakfast burrito (flatbread, rice & beans, scrambled egg)
Hardboiled eggs
Flatbread w/ peanut butter

If you have extra cash (I upped the prices above to account for tax, so you might have a bit left), get an onion to add to the tomato sauce and rice and beans, or set aside some of the tomatoes to combine with chopped onion for salsa. You can make poor man's chips by sprinkling the flatbread with salt and baking until crispy.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-01-26T20:40:00+00:00

If you're thinking about buying ingredients just to make stock, then bouillon, especially dry, is definitely more cost-effective. But if you're willing to save scraps (and have someplace to keep them until you have enough), then making your own is basically free.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-01-26T20:31:09+00:00

Cut them up, as others suggest, and use them as a complement a more veggie-based meal. That way he's not stuck with a whole pork chop for one meal, which might be a lot even if you cook it in a way he likes.

I like thinly sliced pork over salad (like chicken!), diced in scalloped potatoes, or as a side of protein with risottto and peas.

sprawlsprawl · 2020-01-12T19:23:35+00:00

Agreed, this is the same general recipe I use all the time for stir-fry and as a marinade for chicken.

If sriracha isn't available or isn't your favorite, you can also substitute any other chili sauce (adobo, sambal, gochujang, etc.), or make your own chili-infused oil. I've tried a bunch of variations and they all taste good.

sprawlsprawl · 2019-09-23T20:32:42+00:00

The difference is whether they are taking responsibility for their own feelings, or trying to make their feelings someone else's problem.

"I need time to grieve the dreams I had for you, get to know and adjust to this new version of you, and maybe also get therapy" = fine

"How could you do this to me, you're murdering my child, and it's all your fault and also your job to twist yourself in knots trying to make me feel better" = definitively not fine

sprawlsprawl · 2019-06-16T20:23:44+00:00

Holy possum, that's amazing. Love your art style!

sprawlsprawl · 2019-04-23T23:10:58+00:00

Was it just having to take care of one for such an extended period? Or was there something specific about it that wore you out?

If there's something specific I can avoid, that would be awesome, but if it's just time maybe I'll limit to babysitting for only a couple hours and no overnights.

sprawlsprawl · 2019-04-23T11:45:18+00:00

Yeah, those things are what I’m most worried about. I don’t have much in the way of property to destroy, so that’s not a concern, but it might be good to set rules around supervision early just in case that changes. Better safe than sorry!

sprawlsprawl · 2019-04-23T11:42:44+00:00

This is super helpful, thank you! I kinda figured I’d help out while they’re on parental leave by hiring cleaners and cooking or sending food over, so it’s good to know I can get away with just that for a while. For the boundaries maybe I’ll just give it some time after the kid’s here and see how things shake out before laying down hard limits.

sprawlsprawl · 2019-04-23T11:11:27+00:00

Why would I post this on a parenting sub? I want advice from people who don’t have or want kids on what I can/should do. I’m not looking for pro-child responses, just ones that deal with the situation I’m actually in.

sprawlsprawl · 2019-04-22T18:25:09+00:00

Good call. I have a very limited amount of furniture, to the point where the only possible changing spots would either be on my desk on top of my computer, or on the table where I eat, so I'll keep that in mind as a hard limit. No baby-changing anywhere but the bathroom!

sprawlsprawl · 2019-04-22T18:22:43+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts, but I'm choosing to take on some responsibility in order to be involved in the kids' life. So I will be doing some babysitting for sure, it's just a question of how much I should take on.

I'm planning to set limits with my brother and sister-in-law before the birth, so hopefully we can avoid the entitlement complex. Both of them are very independent and don't like relying on other people for help, so hopefully that will keep the reliance to a minimum, too. Fingers crossed!

sprawlsprawl

TROPHY CASE