I still don't understand why the stock market is doing so great. Or why the remaining tariffs haven't affected much yet. How much can businesses have hoarded? Are people insensitive to certain kinds of inflation, if it's not just like the stupid eggs or gas?

I know, a better blogger would've etc etc.

This popped up on my substack suggested feed: When Couples Therapy Turns Cruel.

Here's the basic premise:

I first broached the concept of the destructiveness of couples therapy in a conversation with Kate Hamilton about her book Mad Wife. She, in an interview with Gemma Hartley, said couples therapy can be abusive because it is designed to preserve the relationship, not the people inside of it. And wow did that statement ring true.

First, a disclaimer: in a personal narrative about someone's divorce, you can never know the reliability of the narrator, and so let's not get too hung up on litigating things that are impossible to know.

It feels like a good couple's therapist shouldn't be so hung up on the preservation of the union that it displaces the well-being of the individuals? Maybe it's the chemistry of the clients and therapists together that sometimes produces tunnel-vision on the goal of staying together?

Anyway, it's still an interesting notion to me, almost like the personhood of a corporation. I can imagine a conversation taking shape in such a way that everyone is focused on saving the institution, at the expense of the employees.

1. All four kids are out of the house this week. wild.

2. We're switching bedrooms with the boys, and we painted our new (tiny*) room yesterday. I wanted a lemon yellow. I woke up this morning convinced we'd have to re-paint it, because the color is too mustard and saturated, but now that it's light out, I think it will be okay.

I'm sad because I love the color scheme of our old room so much - mint walls and grainy linen faded tomato curtains - but that wouldn't have worked in this smaller room, so I just have to mull over this for a bit and get used to it.

*honestly I have no idea anymore whether I've got a skewed Texan sense of scale. What counts as a tiny room? It seems dauntingly small right now - we haven't moved our stuff in yet - but almost certainly it's just that I have too many clothes.

Mossy Character sending in the international feel-good:

ROME (AP) -- The Vatican on Sunday beatified a Congolese customs worker who was killed for resisting a bribe, giving young people in a place with endemic corruption a new model of holiness: Someone who refused to allow spoiled rice to be distributed to poor people.

...

Kositi was kidnapped and killed in 2007 after he refused to allow rancid rice from Rwanda to be transported across the border to the eastern Congo city of Goma.

As an official with the Congolese government's custom's quality control office, the 26-year-old knew the risks of resisting bribes offered to public officials. But he also knew the risks of allowing spoiled food to be distributed to the most desperate.

That's great! I hope it brings some comfort to his family.

Of all the nightmares involving insurance, this one is not, like, fatal. It's the kind of thing that might just be bureaucracy and persist even if someone waved a magic wand and granted us socialized health care. But I still speak truth to power: Being super strict about the 12 month mark when you cap dentist visits at two per year is bullshit. There should just be a buffer of 1-2 months in either direction, as long as you're averaging 2 visits per year.

It's really fucking annoying when you can't keep a yearly appointment at the same point in the calendar, and instead it creeps later and later over time. Especially when you're trying to squeeze things into school calendar breaks.

This is brought to you by two thwarted dentist appointments last week. The first time, I was just the fucking idiot who brought all four kids on the wrong day. The second time, we got turned away because it hadn't quite been twelve months since the previous summer appointment.