I'll be hiding under my desk for this entire thread, thanks.
Honestly, I think I feel better at 44 than I did at 34. Chronic ankle pain is easier to deal with than chronic gastric pain. And mostly I've stopped giving a shit about all sort of things that I couldn't not give a shit about before.
My likelihood of thinking "I would like to sex that person" doesn't seem to have changed much either.
So I take it the 19 yo's naked pics were merely 'nice'?
chronic gastric pain
Hang on, how did you get rid of this?
I'm actually weirdly non-decaying physically, for almost 45. I mean, I look 45: graying hair, crows' feet, and so on. But literally nothing hurts: I haven't got a single chronic physical condition that bothers me, other than too many freckles.
When I see an attractive younger woman I think "I bet her mom is hot," not "that's nice." I've got plenty of decay but not in that department.
My likelihood of thinking "I would like to sex that person" doesn't seem to have changed much either.
Mine's way up since suddenly finding myself single. God knows what I'll ever manage to do about it, but it's weird looking at men on the street and sort of actively window-shopping again. (Did I mention that I shut down the OkCupid account? No fun, and really kind of depressing. Not sure if because it's too soon, which I'm sure it is, or just that it's a depressing sort of thing generally.)
4: I have no idea. I spent all my 20s and 30s on antacids and Pepcid and Tagament and whatever else. Then it went away some time in my late 30s. I eat a little better than I did at 20, but I improved my diet years before the pain went away.
That's totally unhelpful, but congratulations!
It was really awful. If I knew anything useful, I'd tell you.
--when you read the NYker profile in which Martha Nussbaum talks about her botox, rather than being FURIOUS with her for getting it (as you would have in your teens) or being furious with the NYKer for deciding this is the article that needs to be written (as you would have in earlier adulthood) you quietly make a note to figure out who does her work.
The third item is such a huge relief. In my 20s it was kind of a kick in the gut every time. I'd see someone really hot and the idea that I (probably) wasn't gonna sex them was a medium-scale tragedy.
Is that aging, or being comfortably coupled up, you think?
in which Martha Nussbaum talks about her botox
I still treasure the conversation in which I explained to Sally what botox was ("Yes, people inject an incredibly powerful toxin into their faces to paralyze the muscles because they're more attractive if they don't have facial expressions,") and it took a really long time to make her believe I wasn't bullshitting her.
Boob jobs are probably easier to understand.
8: My instant diagnosis is that the chronic gastric pain went away as you became less anxious.
Oh man do I feel less anxious or not? I don't know! Maybe!
My gf in college (later to be my 1st wife)had chronic gastric pain, and then it pretty much went away after someone suggested to her it was probably psychosomatic.
Pretty sure recently separated moms and teenage boys are the persons on this earth most distracted and tormented by their own libidos. I found that my type really changed; I still appreciated my former type but in the "that's nice," and kind of baffled by the things I did actually find intoxicating.
Of course the Botox and divorce sex thread would happen on a day I was on an actual, meaningful work deadline.
19: But posting here is such a great outlet for your anxiety that's as if you were less anxious. Have I shown you my medical degree?
in human English 22 would have read: I still appreciated my former type but in the "that's nice," way and found myself kind of baffled by the things I did actually find intoxicating.
Hawaii had a long monologue the other day, looking in the mirror, which went, "This shirt looks so good, but it would look better if I had boobs, don't you think?" (and variations thereof) and "If you squint just right, you can see where my boobs are." (you can't.) (I bet her mom is hot.)
I was not at all enthusiastic to develop, because I'd always been borderline pudgy and it felt like a judgment on that, plus an end of childhood.
Multiple female friends have reported that turning 40 resulted in a large increase in looking at random men lustfully.
15. Both, if necessary.
16. I can still only barely believe you.
To my great delight, I have broken free of that, like a slave who has got away from a rabid and savage master.
I don't think I'm quite on the decay thing yet, but I feel solidly outside the category of women who get attention for being attractive, in a very different way than I did a decade ago. I am not in the category of women who get penalized for deviating from the beauty ideal, though. Mostly ignored.
15: A little from column A; a little from column B? I think it started in my early 30s when I was single a lot of the time.
Did I mention that I shut down the OkCupid account? No fun, and really kind of depressing.
Too many unsolicited cock pics?
but I feel solidly outside the category of women who get attention for being attractive, in a very different way than I did a decade ago.
That doesn't feel as if it's changed much for me, but sort of from a baseline where I wasn't getting attention for being attractive all that much when I was 25. I mean, people who had reason to think about it always thought I was acceptably appealing, but I never noticed much in the way of random people reacting to my looks.
I've been starting to feel old, which I think is mostly that I'm just tired, but is also the feeling of, "I'm starting to look like my dad." It's sobering to realize that when my dad was my age he had two children (17 and 11 years old) and had heart surgery. . . .
When you see an attractive person, you don't think, "I would like to sex that person," you think, "That's nice."
For me it's still "I would like to sex that person," but it's a sad thought instead of a happy thought.
32: Managed not to get any. Did block one guy who mentioned that he was naked and would like to Skype. But just one of those.
Lie back and think of global warming.
What about memory and the perception of time? Here are two changes that I see:
1) events from 15 years ago often seem about as vivid as events from 3 years ago-- the days go slowly but the years go quickly basically.
2) Actively remembering something past as a particular activity, like reading or working out which way to install a replacement part (a particular afternoon, a place I saw daily for years on end which is gone now). When I was younger, memories were like moods, they'd come for no reason that I could identify, or were a consequence of a train of thought.
Last weekend I went out for a couple of drinks and some 70-something guys were flirting (if that's even the right word?) though it came out that at least one thought I was a good-looking-for-my-age woman much older than I actually am. One found my lack of makeup etc refreshing while the other thought I'd be sexier with some lipstick and eyeshadow. It was sort of anthropologically interesting, I suppose. They were certainly plenty comfortable with open lechery.
I have a date with the 25-year-old tomorrow and things are really good. We seem much more compatible than okcupid thinks we would be, probably in part because of how we skewed our own self-descriptions. I'm all swoony and ridiculous. But I don't think there's any way I could date someone that young who wasn't also a parent. In addition to the goopier and getting-to-know-you conversations there's "Oh, so who did you use for early intervention? Doesn't it seem like they have a lot of turnover?" and that sort of thing. It lets me feel remarkably uncompartmentalized.
1 is familar to me. This place is particularly weird for setting that off, because anything Unfogged related seems fairly recent to me, but of course there's over a decade's worth of history here.
40:
Sometimes just physical exercise is good.
Aren't most 70ish year old guys openly lecherous?
For me it's still "I would like to sex that person," but it's a sad thought instead of a happy thought.
When was it ever a happy thought?!?
My back still hurts - but much less, just noticeable today - and I still have shingles.
OK, on appraising strangers changing as the decades fly past: I didn't have much of a handle on reading interpersonal dynamics when I was younger-- in other words, women being interested or not pretty much always came as a surprise; a sea of mysterious fish, so to speak.
Now, I'm pretty sure that if I start some number of conversations politely, one of them will go somewhere nice and I'll be better able to figure that out as we talk. I see right away more of initial expressions of friendliness or the opposite. Possibly also age-appropriate women are less flaky than girls. Also, now I understand that there are lots of people who look nice with whom I really don't want any contact at all.
In closing, may yoga pants never go out of style.
It's going to be really strange when formal yoga pants become traditional clothing for interment.
46: yeah. I'm on acyclovir now.
Are you having exhaustion heebie or just the itching stuff? The bone-deep exhaustion plus being in a relationship with Lee was the worst part for me.
I mean, nerve pain that really was like flames on the side of my face was not fun or anything. Oh boy, shingles!
My mom, who is in her early 60s, commenting on my observation that time was speeding up as I aged, each birthday coming faster than the one before said: "don't worry, time gets normal again when you turn 50." I'm not sure if that's a universal (probably has more to do with the fact that kids make time seem fast, and she was 50 when I went to college) but I find it reassuring.
Mmm. College admissions does feel like a rollercoaster, so it's speeding everything up. Sally this year, and then once she's off someplace Newt will be in the pattern.
Wait! We haven't been consulted on where Sally and Newt should go to college?!
54 LB doesn't need us for that she's got the inside scoop from her army of 19-yo swains.
I've hardly been consulted. Sally's handling all her own decision-making, thank you very much.
Deep Springs is supposed to be going to admit women. Just saying.
I'm freaking out quietly in the background and arranging a certain number of college visits, but that's it.
57: She's an urban child. I assume she'd manage interacting with cattle just fine if she had to, but has shown no inclinations in that direction.
A girl who grows up on Manhattan probably needs more exposure to alfalfa.
Make sure she doesn't overlook School of the Americas; it's not just a party school.
OT: Do we have a NATO/Trump thread going anywhere? Because, holy shit, you have to read the full transcript of his NYT interview.
As a failed political scientist, this is also of interest to me. I don't know how it will play out with the voters.
I am more lustful now than when I was younger. Not sure if that is helpful.
What have the Latvians done for us lately?
Despite not having uh recorded any shows on my TiVo for [mumble] the periods of overpowering libidinality I formerly experienced in such intervals seem to be occurring less frequently this time around.
I would say I'm enjoying this bout of mild anhedonia* but, you know.
* pretty sure this is not ataraxia
Obviously Sally should go to Chicago.
67: Mine turned out to be mostly aporia. I assume mileage varies greatly.
68: Despite its many strong points, I did not enjoy my time at Chicago, and developed a settled dislike for the school as an organization (despite liking many of the faculty just fine). I have actively discouraged consideration of Chicago.
Also, she's engineering inclined, and they aren't.
Ok, good. I was actually so upset about this last night that I didn't sleep. Maybe someone can talk me down. Or I can schedule "meetings."
I should probably try to take a nap.
If someone is engineering inclined there is no reason not to go to a relatively cheap and conveniently located big public university. I guess in your case that would be Stony Brook.
I've hardly been consulted. Sally's handling all her own decision-making, thank you very much.
I have actively discouraged consideration of Chicago.
If my Chicago training has not abandoned me, we need to mine these superficially conflicting (though not outright contradictory) statements for an esoteric meaning.
No reason is an overstatement, surely?
73: well, I hope the flippancy of the post title won't put you off, then.
(Upset about Trump, not upset this very second about the University of Chicago)
OH WHY DID THEY MOVE THE SEMINARY CO-OP BOOKSTORE OUT OF THAT BASEMENT
71.2: My anecdotal impression is that the undergrads at Caltech trend somewhat weirder than the undergrads at MIT. Assuming that weirdness in one of her criteria.
No reason is an overstatement, surely?
I mean if money is an issue, that place should be fine. I just said that because I said the same thing to a guy whose son was interested in engineering. Traveling all over the country wondering what place is the best? But the University of Wisconsin is right there, 100 miles away. Consider telling your son that the University of Wisconsin is his default option unless he proves otherwise.
81: This is my precious special snowflake of a daughter and I'm punching myself in the face for this, I promise, but she's not interested in just engineering. She's going to want to take humanities classes as well, and the nature of the student body enters into the educational experience a little more powerfully in that context.
She's applying to a number of SUNYs, and might end up at one, it all depends on where she gets in and how the money works out. But the SUNYs are pretty mediocre schools considered against other state schools: Stony Brook isn't U Wisconsin, I don't think.
The set of SUNYs to which she is applying is not null.
Yeah, OP #3 is not my experience at all. I keep wondering when it'll happen, but as long as some people continue to find me attractive in return, I'll keep enjoying it.
I'm punching myself in the face for this, I promise
I don't believe you.
Stony Brook has a pretty good physics department. A lot of engineering or physics undergrad will be working on problem sets in groups with the other students, peer teaching/learning definitely goes on there.
Maybe just send her here for her humanities education-- she's reading Tooze, right?
The spring I've been having, I haven't been reading Tooze -- read the first few chapters and lost track of the book.
71.2 Montana State. Really. They'll give her a scholarship that means she pays in-state.
I cannot possibly have failed to mention visiting that llama farm in Manhattan.
I don't think this is the same one, though.
CAMELIDYNAMIC SENIOR CONSULTANT: I also offer Camelid handling help. I am a Senior Consultant for Marty McGee Bennett's Camelidynamic.
Frozen Officially a Member of the Ivy League in rural New York State traditionally did a very good job of being a real engineering school with lots of available humanities stuff. I took not one but two humanities classes taught by Engineering or Science profs (on how to make nuclear bombs and the history of materials, respectively, key elements for my training in world domination major).
Lets not bring up safety schools before she even sends out her first application.
89: Originally read that as "Ilana farm" and wondered if there was a NYC school with students characterized as like Broad City characters.
ogged missed 4. You're more interested in offering advice about sending teens to college than about dating them.
89: Originally read that as "Ilana farm" and wondered if there was a NYC school with students characterized as like Broad City characters.
Pace University would probably be the Ilana farm.
For me the "I'm old" moment came when I attended a conference where bright young things presented papers and found myself not to be in my usual role as a not-bright-enough young thing but a person who could offer advice and connections.
Also shiv turns 40 this year.
Anyhow, she should go to the Webb Institute, my personal favorite fantasy-college-league player. It's totally free! They have boats on campus! And you get trained as a nautical engineer! I think the pay/adventure/happiness total package for nautical engineers has to be way up there. Dream job.
Incidentally, Strong Bad's five-word summation of college radio, "dead air, um, dead air", also works well for bad dates!
How do I know I'm old? When I was younger I'd take up going to the gym and get fitter. This time around, I took up going to the gym and [admittedly got somewhat stronger and fitter but] badly hurt my knee and back such that no day is free of knee or back pain.
I am hoping there is something (yoga? new age electrical devices) that will help, but am not sure.
I have mostly realized that I seldom want to sex anybody and that this is probably due to childhood, childhood hospitalization and associated traumas, but now that I am old it seems too much trouble to fix. I've gotten this far, why mess with stability?
97: The daughter of a friend of mine studied at the Webb Institute, and spent her sophomore work term on an icebreaker in Antarctica. Does Sally like penguins?
How do I know I'm old? Because I have tried to explain 9/11 to 8 year-olds.
I've had various kinds of moderate chronic pain since I was in my teens,* although I spent most of my 20s and early 30s largely pain free. These days, I'm not in as much pain as I was 5 years ago, but I'm conscious that's because 5 years ago, despite being quite fat, I was exercising a fair bit and some of that exercise (the Frenchy-boxing) was quite intense. These days, I'm not really exercising at all, so I feel like I'm on a rapid downward slide into old age.
I'm hoping the new job will free up time to exercise.**
* nothing dramatic, or deserving of special sympathy. Just very prone to picking up sports or over-use injurie -- so I had chronic wrist and hand pain when I was first learning the guitar, for example -- and I had some kind of mild developmental arthritis type things that went away.
** if nothing else, because walking and/or cycling part of the commute is a possible option again. But also because I should be home before 7pm most nights.
Does Sally like penguins?
Sounds like a dream course.
Or alternatively, how do you feel about your daughter being eaten by a leopard seal?
103.3: No one is suggesting that Sally should be transformed into a penguin.
Right, but she could build a personal mini-submarine inspired by the Leopard Seal.
Plus naval architects will be in big demand in our chaotic, climate-change induced waterworld. You could build coastal defenses or littoral strike ships for next-gen pirates and plunderers.
My libido as a near 40-year-old woman is as high as it was in my teens. And in my teens it was very high, rivaling or exceeding that of many teenage boys. The only time my sex drive really dipped was during pregnancy and the six months postpartum.
It feels like a more of a burden than anything at this point, considering my marriage is so-so and the sex pretty unsatisfying. It would be something of a relief to have it go away entirely and not spend hours every day fantasizing about sex.
Some things never change, take two.
106: The New York Post demands you send your kids to summer camp.
111: I bet that 19-year-old could have helped, but noooo.
It seems like 106 is a pretty common experience among women in my dating age range. Not that I'm complaining.
Oh and I did break up with the woman I needed to. We're doing fine at the still-friends piece for now at least. It was a big relief for me and not unexpected for her, so she's being kind about it.
106 seems reasonable to me too, though without the pregnancy bit. One of my other relationship goals is no more years-long droughts. It's one thing while single but horribly depressing when you're not.
106 et al: I'm not saying my libido has vanished, thankfully. And in fact I still check guys out all the time. It's one of the fun things in life: so many men to look at (and I find more kinds of them compelling than I used to.) It's just that in my 20s there was an element of uncomfortable longing in all those gazes and now there rarely is, which is a relief. There was, for some reason, some ripped blond guy with his @$(%* shirt unbuttoned on a BART car I walked by yesterday, and that little old part of my brain was like "can we please go back and lick the window glass?" but that's uncommon.
Please do not lick the window glass on BART.
Just carry a towel and a bottle of that spray stuff they have the gym for the benches.
116: and I find more kinds of them compelling than I used to.
I've found this, too. I'm attracted to a wider range of body types than I used to be, which is convenient. I gather that the tastes of women my own age have similarly slipped expanded or I'd never get laid.
Frowner, if you want to talk about that, I'd be glad to listen though I don't know that there's really anything anyone can say. I've been trying to stomp through and tease apart various aspects of my desires over the last year, but not necessarily in ways I can explain well, and hearing other people is sometimes helpful.
113
Yes, and I've finally realized (stupidly, oh so stupidly) that enthusiasm and knowing what you like is way more important than attractiveness
Other than for the purposes of admiring people as they pass.
enthusiasm and knowing what you like is way more important than attractiveness
That means furries, right?
Do married men possessively rest their arms on the backs of women's chairs at group outings in the normal course of events or does this gesture indicate that they are Trying Something? This is an urgent request.
Do married men possessively rest their arms on the backs of women's chairs at group outings in the normal course of events or does this gesture indicate that they are Trying Something? This is an urgent request.
It depends on the height of the chair back.
I don't think 127 is necessarily true for all men, but in the absence of any other information it's the way I would bet.
Shoulder height. Actually a booth.
Basically, putting an arm around you but just not touching? That's trying something.
Booth? Maybe just resting his arm. Either way, the gentleman takes liberties.
Do you want him to be trying something?
The signal is clear enough that you are ok slapping him or kissing him, as appropriate.
Unless this is at a furry convention.
135: Based on their relative positions, an elbow to the gut might be easier.
134 I want him to be trying to serve as an excellent professional reference for me in the future.
I'd rather have elbow to the gut of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy.
I want him to be trying to serve as an excellent professional reference for me in the future.
Ixnay on the elbow thing, then.
I am forever assuming the worst, but doing this in public in what sounds like a work-related context might be just awkwardly meant to signal support or something. Surely he wouldn't be dumb enough to make a move where everyone's going to see, right?
Also what's the appeal of Botox? For sweat glands and migraines I understand, but I think it would be terrifying not to be able to move my face.
I'd say that he is claiming you, but it'd make me uncomfortable. I'd likely leave the table for something or other, then return and expect that positions had shifted.
Is the person an older lawyer? Because then it's still most likely a signal, but there's a 20% or so chance that he's just power manspreading.
Let's be clear, though: dude wouldn't do this to a male colleague. So he's an asshole whether he's actually trying something or not.
I'd say that he is claiming you, but it'd make me uncomfortable.
At least he didn't pee on her leg.
Unless he did. I should really ask before assuming.
Oh, 145 is most definitely true. But there's at least a chance that it's a power-asshole move, not a sex-asshole move. Of course it could also be a combo.
By the way, my firm actually showed a video at a firm event on how to use power body language, including how to spread out to project power and authority. That actually happened.
144 yes a lawyer, late 40s? If this is sort-of-trying something but maintaining plausible deniability of "I was just resting my arm" if called on it, it is not only intrusive but a total weenie move and I have no more respect for him. But everyone here knows he's married which weighs against finding that he's trying something and in favor of him literally just not knowing how to use an arm? I'm so confused.
Either trying something, or subconsciously giving into the impulse to try something.
re: 110
Ta. Probable first project for the new place is going to be quite a cool/interesting one, too. I'd link to it, but I suspect that lots of links in would show up in logs somewhere and be de-pseudonymising.
Working with native american sources and people, though, and will involve the occasional trip to what I think of as Teofilo's old stomping ground*
* I expect actually thousands of miles away, but the south western US is all the same to me.**
** if I'm remembering right, and Googling right, actually not that far away.
I find the main change now that I'm older is that holy shit are there lots of hot women in their 40s, and how could I have not noticed before now? Plus I assume (based on a sample size of one) that they're all amazing in bed. If I had my 20s and 30s to do over again, I would be following the example of LB's 19-year old.
Also, like lw I can read the signs in a way that I couldn't when I was younger. I periodically think about an interaction I had when I was younger and realize I completely missed an opportunity.
You write 149 as if I could be shocked by the nonsense a law firm will put in its training videos. I cannot.
Lawyer, eh? Has he also unfolded his neck frills?
I'm attracted to a wider range of body types than I used to be, which is convenient.
I have this narrative that I wasn't attracted to guys with my (current) build until I had that build but now that I'm thinking about it, it's not true. When I was 20 and skinny I wasn't, but I think it just sort of happened. One of the benefits of promiscuity, I think, is that you get to road test your assumed attractions.
the power pose thing isn't holding up:
One more vote for 'trying something' -- I'd need to know more details to be sure if 'something' were leading up to hitting on you; not hitting on you exactly but creepily trying to be sexually intimidating/inappropriate, possibly as a weird expression of dominance (e.g., George Bush trying to give Angela Merkel a backrub); or weirdly/creepily trying to show support/affiliation/mentorship. In any case, the dude's behavior is off.
If his middle name is Wayne, odds are 1 in 4 that he's a serial killer.
Looking back, I think was always attracted to a range of body types. I certainly had girlfriends in my teens and twenties who ranged a fair bit thinner than me (at the time), and a fair bit heavier.
One strange thing, is that someone who works for my wife, confided in her, when they were drunk, that she thought I was attractive. My wife immediately texted me to tell me -- "My supervisor fancies you." -- while the supervisor waited on tenterhooks to see how I reacted. Since I couldn't place who that was in my head, I assumed it was one of the women the same age as me. It wasn't, it was someone very attractive, in their early 20s.
That's interesting, because people over 40 were basically invisible to me (sexually speaking) at that age, and by any stretch of the imaging, and even looking at myself with delusional self-regard, I'm not some kind of smoking hot older man.
I'm assuming it was some kind of power thing/Daddy complex.
It may be a power move. It may be an anti-power move - I suppose he's standing and you're sitting, and my management book says that makes the sitting person feel bad so you should also sit down or at least lean on something. If it is any sort of "move" it is awkward and unnatural so who the heck knows what was intended.
161 sitting next to me in a u-shaped booth.
I always had reasonably broad/catholic tastes in who I was actually attracted to in terms of actual people I knew and might plausibly have a shot with, but fairly narrow, conventional taste in terms of who I'd turn my head to look at on the street, and neither of those seems to have changed much with age.
160: Or perhaps it is that men are considered to be attractive when old and women are not (forgive me if I am erasing any bisexual identity - I assume you were paying attention to women in your twenties). You didn't think older women were hot when you were young because our culture says that men should not be attracted to women older than themselves - with the very occasional exception of, like, a fashion model or something.
I often find older women attractive, but I assume that they would be totally uninterested in feeble, immature me. Like, what would we even talk about?
re: 163
Yeah, I guess ditto. I have no strong preference for any particular look, but they'd almost always be people others would also agree are attractive.
162: Wait, he's sitting next to you and has his arm on the back of your seat like an eighth-grader working up the courage to make a move on a movie date? I was picturing him standing and leaning on your chair. That's more extreme than what I thought -- he's either 'trying something' or has a really weird sense of personal boundaries. This isn't advice, just descriptive of what I'd literally do in the situation myself, but I'd get up and leave like Megan suggested, and if his arm is still there when you come back look at him funny until it moves.
166 yes that is precisely what is happening. I got up and came back and he had moved it to pick up a drink but then PUT IT BACK.
Yeah, that's really off behavior in a professional situation, or really any situation between adults. He's either "trying something" or indulging (at your expense) a fantasy of trying something. And it sucks even more in light of 139.
How are you typing all this with him so close?
What exactly to do about it depends on the context as a whole, but yes, that's super weird of him, particularly on a group outing.
Move to a different seat, either with or without commentary about how he seems to need the room to stretch out?
169 you can get away with a lot of being on your phone for work in a group of lawyers before anyone comments on it. Plus I was back in my office for a bit in the middle.
||
Aaargh. My mom is supposed to be driving up today to stay with us (~10 hour drive) and help out with the kid while I'm out of the country. It's 5pm and she hasn't left home yet, so there's no chance she'll arrive before tomorrow. I kind of expect her to be late but this is pathological.
Speaking of decay, isn't a bit of self-knowledge and advance planning something that should get better, not worse?
|>
Nothing necessarily to do about it now, if changing seats isn't practical, but I'd (a) be emailing someone with 'this was super weird' under your real name so you have a dated record if you ever need it in the context of later events, and (b) being protective of my personal space around him from here on out.
(My advice for avoiding sexual contact? Flawless. Infallible.)
174 supervisor at an old job not current thankfully though someone whose general support and goodwill I value(d??). I actually received a "this is super weird" email from someone else present so there is a contemporaneous record.
This all sounds so unbelievably stressful.
OT: I think my neighbor just died.
I'm feeling a bit bad because I can't really go inside and not see because dinner in on the grill.
When you say 'not see', we're talking 'the ambulance coming to take him away' rather than 'the pack of wild dogs finally hamstringing him so he can't get away'?
That's a comfort, at least. It's not like you're failing to intervene.
ok sex advice thread. Advice on ending a seemingly endless hopeless crush on spouse of a friend? Have tried every painless compassionate respectful way to no avail. Pretty sure only way out is suffering: mourning, pain, humiliation, etc. Even typing this makes me want to open a bottle of wine.
On preview my timing is rotten. Sorry for you & neighbors, Moby.
LB if I am doing the math (and catching up here ) correctly I am about 7 months ahead of you on this particular adventure... And agree it's probably too early. But you have to try in order to figure that out. Also, my condolences. It's a wierd process but I hope you find some good in it.
I've definitely had a few 'wait. This 20-something year old is interested in me? Why? " moments, which isn't the same as OP but related. On the whole I've been much happier with dates closer in age, I think.
You're a new "soup", not our old commenter "soup biscuit", right?
And condolences to you as well. I keep on reminding myself that as much as this sucks, which is a great deal, it's still about the calmest, lowest conflict divorce possible.
187: I'm old, and lazy, that wasn't even the original pseud, remember? - this is the thread of being old and decrepit, so I thought it would be ok.
189: I have almost identical thoughts about mine. I can imagine the high conflict ones.
Wait, it is you? Your meticulous punctuation has deteriorated over the years -- you're the one who did weird single quotes like `so', right?
(Trying to recognize someone by how they look through a text-based method of communication is difficult, but not impossible.)
192: tis I, indeed. Meticulous punctuation is suffering because I am on my phone. I apologize to all for the fault.
Anyway, if my neighbor is dead, that means I don't know any living litigants whose case was decided by the Supreme Court. But my sister does.
Does it count if you were a class member in a class action? In that case, Mom counts.
Advice on ending a seemingly endless hopeless crush on spouse of a friend? Have tried every painless compassionate respectful way to no avail. Pretty sure only way out is suffering: mourning, pain, humiliation, etc. Even typing this makes me want to open a bottle of wine.
Since it's the spouse of a friend, you might try thinking in great detail about what acting on the crush would mean vis-a-vis your friend.
191: I *can't* imagine the high conflict ones.
185. For what it's worth: If you know them both well enough and get along well enough, I would talk it out. Maybe that's just me, but it worked in the past.
EMISSARIES FROM OTHER WORLDS, BY KIND OF WORLD:
More perfect: Aishwarya Rai
More mature/sensible: soup
It's over, that was weird, I still have no idea what his endgame is/was. It doesn't matter except insofar as I would like to know (1) where my leverage is (2) if he thinks I'm pretty.
Your world and Rai's world might be the same world, but you visit from that world qua emissary from a more sensible world, and she visits from that world qua emissary from a more perfect world.
185 -- I get the inevitability of mourning and pain but why is humiliation necessary?
Also sometimes when I want to find someone less attractive I think about them eating an egg salad sandwich.
204: I suspect it was largely a power move. I can't really guess (1) beyond that it's a function of how much you want to play it; (2) is probably a yes.
202: Talk it out to what end? 201, obviously, but it's not clear to me how many other ways it could go that would be satisfying for anyone, though we don't know much about this situation.
I did the sad powering-through thing, made little stupid rules for myself about what I was allowed to do and not do, kept a notebook where I could write about the crush's wonderful qualities and another for my sadness. I don't know that this helped but it passed the time and forbidding myself to speak to the crush about it at least meant I was safe there.
I *can't* imagine the high conflict ones.
Oh man, I'm currently watching a couple of high-conflict divorces unfold among friends, and as unhappy an experience as my own divorce was, holy shit was it nothing at all like these flaming train wrecks.
202: Talk it out to what end?
Possibly it would be more bearable if it were a matter of public knowledge, to the crushee in particular, rather than festering as a sekrit. Sort of an "I was crushing on my friend / I told my crush, my crush did end or was at least experienced as less burdensome" sort of thing.
It could also make the crush go away, because you'll never see either of them ever again. Problem solved.
209: 201 wasn't the goal, in that case. It was more "I like you both and I'm in a weird space and this thing is happening, call me on it if I'm being out of line". Result - stayed good friends. But like I said it depends on relationship to both - you are right we don't know enough.
210: yes, this. I am so happy (?) to only have observed from some distance.
Yes, 212. I . . . would not react well to a friend owning up to a serious, unrelenting longing for my partner.
218 cont'd... not even for reasons of jealousy just, for reasons of "why are you making this my problem?"
Is not seeing them for a while without explanation a possibility? Because not seeing them seems like a likely outcome anyway.
219: I believe the canonical version was 'cry, cry, masterbate, cry'
Several years back one of my wife's longstanding friends started flirting with me, fairly aggressively cumulatively over the course of a few months. (No one event would have been considered very aggressive but cumulatively they were.) My wife ultimately confronted her about it, in a reasonably polite way but just asking "what is your aim here?" At which point the friend denied everything and claimed it was all in my wife's head and why was she so jealous and paranoid. After that we stopped seeing the friend much at all, which seemed to basically a mutual decision (the withdrawal seemed more driven by the friend, but my wife didn't seem to mind). The end.
Advice on ending a seemingly endless hopeless crush on spouse of a friend?
A few weeks ago, did you ask somebody else this question and get the response "Sit next to them at a professional gathering with your arm on the seat right behind them."?
The friend is now happily married. If that gives Bess some hope.
I like how LB can't recognize anyone by their face, but their punctuation style is an easy giveaway.
Of course it is likely I am not as worthy an object of unrelenting desire as Bess' crush. There may be no hope for her.
"Hi, I'm calling you. Are you as worthy an object of unrelenting desire as is Urple? Let me know. Thanks. Bye."
I don't think, when you call someone, you normally need to announce "I'm calling you".
Yes but asking someone to compare their sexiness to Urple calls for more than normal phone behavior.
Yeah, for lots of reasons talking it out seems unwise. It really isn't my friend's problem, so a conversation that amounts to "awkward situation is awkward" would hardly clear the air. The journal idea is interesting. Was it really purgative to write down all that positive stuff? Did it help you to let it go?
219 has been the status quo for ages. But there HAS to be a way to drive it off for good. I think it's tied up with other fantasies of say professional advancement or self-actualization, so in love with the halo as much as the person. Most certainly tied to personal issues of my own & things I'm not getting elsewhere. But it always is, right? Otherwise you'd think "unreciprocated" would be the end of it every time. Which it might be if I ever grew a spine & accepted it as the fact that it is.
Anyway thanks all for the suggestions. I'm sure my crush is nowhere near as smoking hot as urple, & possibly not even as hot as Aishwarya Rai.
Decay ain't just an island off Florida
235: Crush is always the halo, not the person. You know the people, if talking it out doesn't make sense, it doesn't.
You may need a new crush.
Isn't this whole unobtainable, unrequited love thing supposed to lead to poetry?
I'm certainly not recommending that anybody write poetry. I'm just pointing out that if you do write some, at least you have a better excuse than most.
You may need a new crush.
For instance, Urple.
Continuing our sign of decay countdown
235 is making me think; I had a medium crush on a friend's partner once, and eventually, because I was around them enough, eventually I got some sort of v. minor signal from him--nothing necessarily indicating real interest, but like some slightly flirty banter, or a mild complaint about their relationship or something, enough that I could kind of see a way I could try to move forward if I wanted to and that way looked ugly and scary *woosh* the crush disappeared. I don't know if there's a way to convert this into advice, but if it were it would be "coax scrap of approval out of the spouse, and maybe you will have a transformative vision of a cruel abyss."
This thread is reminding of a previous post. Christ, was that really eight years ago? Did we ever hear an ultimate resolution on that one? Affair? Murder suicide? Slow cool off?
Just because it's domestic doesn't mean the murder has to be followed by a suicide. You can just straight-up kill somebody and try to get away with it. You just want it to be easier for the police to solve.
When you see an attractive person, you don't think, "I would like to sex that person,"
You know, honestly, I just don't even remember thinking that way, not even when I was 18, 20, 22 years old. No doubt I was still all Catholic schoolgirl repressed, or something? or maybe I just didn't quite give a damn about the sexocracy?
What makes me feel old, and decayed and decrepit, and from another generation entirely, is looking at my just-turned-15-year-old son, and realizing that it's very, very important to me that he outlive me, and preferably by many, many happy decades. It almost feels like wishing for my own death, but I want that boy to outlive me. To give birth is to realize one's own mortality.
235: I don't know what helped and I don't know that I'm over it or if I ever will be, but it didn't hurt. Time and inevitability, reminding myself that we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. But putting the words somewhere made it easier to keep them out of the places they shouldn't go. I don't mean to imply I did anything right, but that's what I did.
Soup, I'm glad you've delurked for real this time, figured it was you when you didn't want to give your name. Breakup Club here can be helpful, though I'm also reading old posts from ogged's dating days.
Working with native american sources and people, though, and will involve the occasional trip to what I think of as Teofilo's old stomping ground*
Huh. I'd be interested to hear more details off-blog if you're willing to share them.
Continuing updates for those who care: the word "love" has been mentioned while drunk, later tabled but not withdrawn. I'm head over heels and very consciously trying to observe and enjoy as it happens. I've only ever fallen in love once before. This one is going to fucking hurt if it goes south, but she seems as enamored of me as I am of her, so maybe this one might go the distance. Weird to say so this early, but all signs are not just good but rather fucking fantastic.
In other dating updates, I downloaded Tinder last weekend and have already run out of local people to swipe on. You big-city sophisticates don't know how good you have it.
(I have also gotten a fair number of matches, a couple of message threads, and one actual date, so really it's been a tentative success overall. But still.)
And, checking again, there are now a lot more people to swipe on. Maybe I just don't understand how the algorithm works.
Immigrants flooding over the border!
I haven't noticed much of a flood over the Canadian border, to be honest. But then you're a lot closer to it than I am.
And that seems like an odd thing to post in the dating thread, but then I'm not at all averse to dating immigrants, Canadian or otherwise. Laydeez.
Didn't watch it but how bad was it? I heard something about no more immigration from France or Belgium if Trump wins.
His supply of Eastern European models is still safe.
About to depart for Arrakis in a few hours and I'm already at the gate and suddenly feel like I've had an attack of Morgellons disease.
I have a dating-related question. How do you learn to look at yourself and see someone a person might find appealing rather than only seeing flaws? I know my body dysphoria is probably worse than the norm, but this seems like something other people would have dealt with too.
Mostly, this isn't an issue of mine -- I think I look great, it's my personality that puts people off.
But something I've found affirming is clothes shopping with friends who are good at fit/what's flattering, with a focus on what sort of things look good on you, which you can turn to "I am the sort of person that sort of thing looks good on." If someone tells you that you look cute in jean shorts, that's not hiding your flaws, that's showing off how you look good.
Connecting it to other people, too: if you've got a friend who will tell you "Look, you should try to find a skirt like the one that woman is wearing -- it looks great on her, and the two of you are kind of the same type," that can get you to appreciating how someone else looks, and then believing that you've got a similar appeal to theirs.
I don't understand how dating and getting to know people while sober could possibly work. I assume that it doesn't is why arranged marriages were so common in Muslim countries.
I can mostly find clothes that fit and are flattering enough. It's just that I would like to be able to do it without thinking about how sausagelike my torso is and that it looks like my face is made of rubber.
I mean, also maybe I should be okay with showing my legs. Gah.
I think cleavage works better than legs for dating. That might just be me, but at dinner or something, your date probably can't even see your legs most of the time.
Don't let your toddlers run wild at the gate people
I used to find it helpful to try and think of myself as a jolie laide, attractive despite my physical features rather than because of them. After the first few minutes, animation and attention are what people find appealing, anyway - who wants to date a boring narcissist, however physically gorgeous they are?
269: Why not? Letting them bounce around as much as possible before getting on the plane can really help.
270 is word-for-word my normal strategy, but it doesn't help me through the selfie era. Maybe a combination of it plus Moby's advice would.
Thorn, since we went out on a date, you should accept my verdict that you are a very attractive woman as authoritative.
Connecting it to clothes shopping isn't about finding flattering clothes, exactly. It's about (with help or on your own) focusing on the specific things about how you look that are worth showing off, rather than hiding. The clothes are just a mental aid to being specific about what there is about you particularly to show off.
There really should be (and prob is) an app where you upload a picture and en expert tells you what to wear.
Thorn, you keep posting pictures of your boobs, and I'll keep telling you how awesome they look.
But seriously, here's the trick: you can find anyone beautiful if you look at them as their (hypothetically ideal) mom looks at them. You're a mom now, and although it's a much harder trick to pull off when looking at yourself, try it. Rather, practice it.
Anyway, you're lovely and fixating on your own looks is just a kind of defeatism, so don't worry about it.
Trump does that with his daughters and everybody says it's creepy.
Trump looks at them like an uncle would look at them.
Oh, ogged, you've never met my mom or you'd know where a lot of this comes from.
Do you find that you look at pictures of yourself from a decade or so ago that you used to think were hideous, but which now make you go "Actually, I didn't look bad then at all"? If so, you can make an executive decision that 10 years from now you're going to think your current selfies look fine, so you may as well just cut out the intervening time and think so now too. (That does actually work for me, and I used to loathe loathe loathe having my photo taken.)
282: I definitely looked better a decade ago, but some of the things I don't like are things I don't like. And all of it is fine and basically as good as it gets. This is all in my head and I'm not going to actually change how I look. It's completely about perception.
My daughters are of course beautiful and I have never said one negative thing about my looks in front of them, though I guess Lee has. Blah. I knew exactly what my body looked like when I was anorexic and had to so I could hide it better, but now that I'm an average size it's all weird and awful to me, which is stupid.
And thanks, people saying nice things about my particular looks. I also have a hard time accepting compliments like that. I do think I look INTERESTING, which is what I'm going for anyway, and that I look better in movement than in mirrors or photos, so that helps.
I actually think comparing myself to other people helps. I've been exercising regularly at a gym with a big range of body types. I'm so much more forgiving about other people's bodies than my own, and the side-by-side comparison if I can see myslef in the same field of vision (like, then I can see both of us in a mirror) helps me orient that no, I'm pretty normal sized. And yes, that super hot chick has a slightly bigger ass than I do (but nicer boobs and a smaller waist). Not sure how to translate that into the real world - reflections in store windows, maybe? If I look at just myself, of course I see every detail I hate. If it's a group, I can sort of convince myself into a little bit of generousity reflected onto my image.
I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Self-awareness is for suckers.
I definitely looked better a decade ago
Well, sure. You and everybody else older than 30.
Thorn, I'm not sure my opinion means much and I have no useful advice for feeling better about the way you look, but I think you're crazy hot. At least in pictures.
One of the things I enjoy about this place is how frequently I think "Damn, Thorn [LB, or other random person] is awesome. Someone is going to be lucky to date her!"
Also, the lurkers are sending messages about how attractive Thorn is.
Wait. Where exactly are they lurking?
I think you have to redirect the energy that goes toward "am I attractive" toward another, more precise goal, that is pick an ethos and strive for that rather than for attractive per se. My current thing is "I want to look like a mean old dance teacher," and I wear this smock, black tights, oxfords and big sunglasses every day. I came to this through weird OCD tendencies about the fit of clothes rather than body dysmorphia but it was a distracting/distressing fixation on the body-clothes nexus that is p much gone.
I wear pretty much the same clothes every day, but it's because I'm lazy.
If this fucker leans his seat back during the flight like it is now I'll kick it all the way to Arrakis.
I think there is something lastingly dispiriting for depressives about being in bad relationships. You're always ready to believe bad things of yourself, and being with someone who thinks little of you physically amplifies this to a huge degree. I was simply astonished, some years back, to find someone who didn't find me repulsive, even though she was sane, thoughtful, clever and aware of at least some of my flaws. Still is, in fact.
But there is an unavoidable catch-22 here: the only way to feel attractive again is to have your brains fucked out and then repeat the treatment until completed, but getting there is much easier if you're not convinced that only a crazy blind desperate person would do it with you. I honestly think that there is a kind of wisdom of the body which will propel both of you over that hump (or possibly into those humps. English, she is hard)
Sorry for the flight commenary on both threads.
Thorn looks hot in pics.
Also I am sure you are as gorgeous as everyone is saying you are, but hey, even if you weren't, I mean, ugly people are fucking literally all the time.
296.last:Agreed. I've met ydnew in person--does it violate the sanctity of off blog communication to confirm that someone's pretty? You're definitely attractive, ydnew.
Clytaemnestra, your fashion sense seems spot on, and sure to provoke a slight but unplaceable sense of unease in people who had mean dance teachers as children.
I guess I should have expected the gender split in responses, shouldn't I? Gender outlier Prince Charming basically gets it right. I think I got my "wtf is wrong with her that she thinks I'm beautiful?" out of the way in my last relationship and can just trust this time around. (I mean, she just sent me this video.) It's mostly changing on the inside that I'm concerned about, but blah blah nothing heals like time and love I suppose.
What is a sausage-like torso? Long w. narrow hips and shoulders?
301: I just meant that I look like a sausage because clothes don't skim gracefully over my curves because of scoliosis (with fat on top) or whatever. I was using it as an excuse to not mention my most-hated feature, thighs like hams.
And I guess the dysphoria isn't recent. I remember in my late teens or early twenties deciding to dress in ways that were more form-fitting, which took about six iterations of going through progressively smaller sizes to get to ones that actually fit, each time being sure that this time I'd done it and was wearing my actual right size. Yay?
If it weren't for the widespread distaste for cannibalism, thighs would be hams. If you look at the cross-sectional MRI of a human thigh, it looks just like a bone-in ham steak.
304: Moby always knows the right thing to say.
That may not be helpful, but I can't eat ham steaks after looking at these images.
Got it. Thighs like hams sound sexy tbh, I feel like there are a lot of thighs like hams in Art History. Ok ok ok back to work, everyone's thighs sound great.
The article about Martha Nussbaum is actually sort of pertinent. Huh.
308: If the person has fallen into a pile of thumbtacks, like a ham with cloves.
Anyway, lunch time. Maybe I'll go for Chinese food since they cut the meat into little bits.
Why did I write dysphoria rather than dysmorphia not once but twice? Now that is reason not to deserve love. WTF, self?
ugly people are fucking literally all the time.
You just made a bunch of Maxim subscribers sad.
312: I just figured I was wrong about what the word meant.
295 is depressing*. I don't think that applies to me, I feel fairly happy, but I recognize that's a dynamic that I could easily fall into.
* And helpful and well-put.
Yeah, that's a very nice description of how I feel under my current circumstances.
I'm a depressive, did my bad relationship time. I am not lastingly dispirited. I claim human responses here are pretty variable. Possibly I am not sufficiently depressive to qualify, but I generally don't discuss my views about other people IRL for fear of being shut out for being too bleak.
Anyway, I'm a believer in bad mental practice being something that can be changed.
My current thing is "I want to look like a mean old dance teacher," and I wear this smock, black tights, oxfords and big sunglasses every day.
Between this and the strigil thing I'm starting to think you're trying to seduce me.
I was just thinking this morning that "hamstrings" has got to be high on the list of "oddest names for body parts in current use".
We've been eating ham. Soylent Green is ham!
In German every name for a body part is something like "hamstring". The word for the cervix means "Mothermouth".
298.1: That's very kind of you (and charitable, adds my brain). Really, I think for me (and most people), it's a complete lack of objectivity. It's foolish to keep a running list of all my physical flaws, but I'm always a little thrown hearing compliments. I'm fine, it's OK, I just assume that's what happens to girls with perfectionist tendencies as they grow up and realize their $whatever isn't perfect (and therefore terrible).
I suppose if it would help, I could give women more compliments about their bodies, but it seems like a really awkward thing to do.
"If I said you had a beautiful body would it raise your self esteem or lower your opinion of me?"
"It's not harassment. I'm a feminist."
295 is right. Really that sense of self-esteem recovered pretty much immediately on finding someone who thinks I'm attractive. Just one, that's all it took. But until then, you can be stuck in that catch-22 for quite some time. The answer, of course, is to immediately have sex with the first person you meet who is not a total creep. The rebound is a time-honored tradition for good reason.
Bizarrely, I can only think of one occasion in my life when I have been complimented on my appearance by someone I was romantically involved with. (Colleagues saying "nice tie" or whatever isn't quite the same thing.)
You should post a picture of your nipple, ajay, if you want affirmation from internet friends. Or perhaps that's not quite the same.
Bizarrely,...
Healthy ego there.
It doesn't seem that egotistical to expect more than on compliment from people you are romantically involved with.
I suppose that means that the women I've gone out with are above caring about mere surface detail, and a bloody lucky thing too.
I have a reputation to maintain here. If I stopped insulting the commenters, where would we all be?
336: So, no compliments on your appearance, but they've been appreciative of the quality of your viscera? Unusual, but whatever works for you.
334: well, yes. I didn't say I was expecting sincere compliments.
In that case, let me retract 'healthy'.
339. I guess it's ethnic stereotyping, but IME the giving of compliments and saying of nice little things varies a lot culturally. That is, Mexicans and south americans really do say either kind or mean things more readily than gringos, Scandinavians are deeply understated and generally indirect, Americans pleasant and insincere, etc. I do not think of Brits as particularly inclined to saying nice things to other people-- you're better with small talk and good at being polite, but direct personal kindness I don't think I've ever heard.
I take exception to being characterized as 'pleasant'. 'Insincere', sure.
341: I thought the problem with Americans was that we were too sincere and didn't have any irony or sense of humor? I've been relying on this to console me ever since I was informed that I was, even for an American, relatively un-British. I'd rather be cool, humorous, distant and ironic, but I could live with being too sincere, and now my perilously-negotiated self image is at risk again.
On topic: maybe this is why no one wants to go out with me, I am neither ironic nor sincere.
You're Schrodinger's Date? Neither ironic nor sincere until someone collapses the wave-form?
Is that what the kids are calling it now?
I take exception to being characterized as 'pleasant'. 'Insincere', sure.
As a white New Yorker you count, I think, at least as much as "Jew" as as "American" for these purposes.
343: So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither ironic nor sincere, I will not date you!
346: The Brits already drafted LB.
It's too late for we Jews to claim her.
347: The original actually works pretty well in a dating context too, depending on translation.
I've told the story of having to explain to my housemates second semester my freshman year of college that I wasn't Jewish, right? I don't use that much Yiddish (really, hardly any at all, and nothing that's not in mainstream American English), but apparently more than non-New-Yorkers are used to hearing from a gentile, and it threw them off.
"And I can prove it. Bring me a Palestinian and watch as I don't beat him."
So I was born in a fairly Jewish milieu, as Catholic enclaves of Westchester go, and then lived in stereotypically Jewish Miami (it was becoming much more heavily Hispanic while I was there, but we still got the Jewish holidays off). But it was still weird moving to NJ (not esp. close to the city) for HS and hearing girls with flagrantly Italian names & faces saying "oy vey" all the time.
261: the wisdom of my matrilineage is "There will always be someone better-looking and someone more intelligent than you, so just be neat and clean, dear." So when nervous I iron my clothes and am taken for a conservative. Hijinks ensue!
You can get a full-body scan and get a really accurate dressmakers' dummy now; for that matter, a half- or quarter- scale modelnis just ad easy and you can design by draping without ever taking measurements. You could go on for "art to wear" and be confident your clothes were novel as well as fitting.
C Stabby's smock is a lot faster, of course.
178 was right. Confirmed with neighbors.
Still surviving. He's moving to go work for Rutger's, so maybe he can already hear the dead calling.
Hey now. There's nothing wrong with Rutgers.
Since I have never been to Rutgers, I think I'm justified in using crude stereotypes about New Jersey to evaluate it.
Sorry, Moby, I went with an above-the-knee dress with minimal cleavage. If I ever need to seduce you, I'll change my ways.
I guess maybe that's premature. Good luck, though!
And shoes, underwear. Eyeliner, even, though smudges up not to look obvious. Even a purse. She'd better be worth it.
359: it must have been pretty high above the knee to be showing even minimal cleavage.
I want to look like a mean old dance teacher
What an excellent plan.
Eyeliner, even, though smudges up not to look obvious.
GOOD MOVE
She did the undereye eyeliner, so I'm totally outmatched. All good otherwise. People wanting to liveblog should try having kids/babysitters, as it makes phone time natural.
Not sure I really understand 369.last, but glad it went well!
Just means you're already checking texts that claim this heatwave is a natural time to make hot chocolate, so you might as well tell your blog friends that the girl you're with is gorgeous. You wouldn't know because you're not a parent.
But you did not in fact liveblog this date, so.
Sorry, I'm a little slow on the uptake here.
If 373 is true it indicates that the date has gone on until well after midnight, which would be awesome.
It did go past midnight after starting about 8, but I'm back home with the kids who snookered their babysitter into letting them stay up that late. I paid her for six hours even though she was only here five and a few and it's a little depressing to find home to two kids awake. But the date was good enough it makes it all worthwhile.
Glad you had a good date. You deserve to be happy.
Yay Thorn! I also had an excellent date tonight. Also didn't show much cleavage. Coincidence? I think not!
I'm still, somewhat unbelievably, making a living performing. The decay is manifesting in three ways I've noticed. 1. A few more aches, but not a big deal 2. I'm tending to play roles in which by the end of the play I'm sick or exhausted or wiped out somehow, and I solve this in the cheesiest laziest way by taking my makeup off early and that reads as "holy shit look how life has treated her". Then I get to go home without washing my face, for bonus lazy 3. I never was called upon to take my clothes off that much in my youth, but writers are writing a lot more of the older woman getting naked-ish now. That's fine, but on the last project I was starting a disrobe and some teenage male voice called out a horrified, "no!". This was not a heckle, mind. Just a genuine not wanting to see someone his mother's age taking her clothes off. Fair enough, but ow. That's the first time I've run into that reaction, in life or art. I thought, "yeah, getting older here".
Ugh, it's one thing to play the babysitter so she lets you stay up past midnight but quite another to trash the kitchen while you do so! Maybe I'm not ready to date after all.
I'm sorry you had to come home to that, but that's the fault of the babysitter, NOT your dating. It sounds like apart from that it went well?
The date part was lovely. At 1:25, two of three kids are now asleep. Ugh. I'm up for trying with a better babysitter, but mostly I'm sad about how annoying it is to not get a break from dealing with deranged kids in the middle of the night. I don't think it will talk me out of dating, but if she has any reservations then maybe this will be it for me.
HERE is a sign of decay yall. I am btocked. I have two jobs. One is the respectable university jobb I've had for 1.5 years. The other is a job with a small business that we used to pretend was a "startup" so as to get a day trader to invest in it.
We have to keep the "startup" nominally viable because it makes about $3K a month thru the Mac App Store, all of which goes to repay the loan to the day trader.
The "startup"'s server failed about 24 hours ago. I sent a "we are working to restore service" email to our handful of customers. I am now trying to copy files off the failed old server onto the replacement server
and get the Apache config copied over and working right
and restore all the rubygems
and whatever else was on the godfucking computer
but I am btocked on account of drinking bulleit rye + cointreau earlier this evening with my titular boss from the university job
DEVELOPING STORY
I should probably just quit now because they're not ready. We'll see. Dealing with middle-of-the-night tantrums puts my worries about my looks in perspective at least. It doesn't matter if I am attractive if I come home to screaming and kicking. If they're not ready for me to be gone for a few hours, I don't really have other options.
Yikes! Hope you can figure out a way to make things work out well. (To both 385 and 386.)
386 is surely more important than 385, but here we go
Feel free to provide updates as needed to maintain sanity. It's only 9:30 here so I'll be up for a while.
OK, Christ, where are the MySQL files. lurid says, "the my SQL?" I say, "Yes, it's Italian, il mio SQL"
I had rye too, but it's not improving my attitude much. Once this last child goes to sleep I'm sure I'll feel better.
Ours is asleep upstairs. IT GETS BETTER.
I have a file in this directory called "craplog." I guess I called it that because I wanted it to log some crap. It isn't helping.
Oh man. I assume the mineshaft will weigh in on the tech situation. On the dating situation, I have a question, would this (kids not sleeping) have been happening with *any* situation that took you out of the house past their bedtime? It's a leading question, I admit. I just remember so well (because it was not that long ago) equating "I got a night out" to "all hell broke loose" and that really does get better, with practice on their parts (and maybe experimenting with sitters.) Sorry I'm a bit btocked myself, just want to emphasize that while your absence may have been unusual, you will occasionally need to have nights out with at least friends, and the kids will, with some practice, be okay. I recognize this is a much heavier issue because of their histories.
Tech: the stuff I wanted was in /usr/local/var/mysql and not /usr/local/share/mysql. Because only suckers share?
Nights out: yes, it's notable how much the kid resents this even in our heteronormative two-parent house. Sometimes mom or dad needs to take a notebook to the pub, but whichever parent is left at home with the kid is insufficient, and there will be hell to pay the next day. I agree with 395 that it should be possible for kids to acclimatize and understand that caregiving adults too have needs, but not sure how long it takes.
I'm quite glad Thorn's date was a reportedly good date, though.
If they're not ready for me to be gone for a few hours, I don't really have other options.
I tend to agree. Given these kids' backgrounds and the current changes in their lives, they are signaling loud and clear. OTOH Lee would probably also say that you have no business leaving these children. So...
It's hard (for me over here, Thorn will know) to tell whether the kids were feeling anything more than what kids are going to feel when they manage to con the babysitter into a late late night and are wound up and tantrumy and tired (which is a totally normal thing for kids to do and then feel).
I was deliberating asking about Lee's attitude to sitters. Sometimes I project my situation onto Thorn's too much. Ex definitely felt that a sitter was out of the question, practically abusive. Ex felt free to go out, however. That worked out neatly to keep me home.
lurid went to bed and I need to install mod_xsendfile.
The new server is running. I think. Confidentially, mineshaft, I'm satisfied with me; I'm not really supposed to know how to do this. But also not much more sober than I was four hours ago. Bed.
Congratulations Lourdes. You have performed another, attested, miraculous healing
This time I think it was just that they conned their way into getting what they wanted from the babysitter and it was not actually good for them, not that they were expressing major frustration about my being gone. Mara is the one who's always struggled with that and she didn't seem surprised at all that I came back. I'll see what they're like today.
I don't think Lee has used sitters yet when they're with her, though she tries to have a friend there as backup pretty much all the time they're awake, which is similar. Lee thinks it's unhealthy that I don't go out more than I do, but also hasn't thought about and doesn't care about what that would mean for the girls. They didn't know I was on a date and I said I was going out with unspecified friends, so I'm not sure whether they suspect anything. I did use babysitters a couple of times when dating the other girl and they never figured it out. I don't know.
Now my bed is painfully full of kids but I've fed the cats and may be able to get back to sleep soon.
403 excels. And so do lk and his server, and Thorn and her gorgeous squeeze, and Chopper and his! Excellence all round!
Thanks, Mossy. I'm feeling better after sleeping. One of the girls even tried to clean up the worst of the mess they made and Selah apologized for her tantrum. I guess I can chalk it up to bad fit with the babysitter. I'm hoping to have another date Tuesday when the girls are all going to be elsewhere and won't know or be bothered. We'll see.
some teenage male voice called out a horrified, "no!"
This is such a great story. I think we can rule that kid out as the guy messaging LB.
Woo gorgeous dates/drunken system administration!
Yay dates with both parties rocking sexy eyeliner! Is there any chance of getting a sitter one night each week? I swapped childcare on Thursdays with another trampy single mom for a while and the same person coming at a predictable intervals definitely helped me get some breathing room while minimizing toddler indignance/general chaos. And then you have that night for whatever, dates or going to the movies by yourself or just lying on the cool tile floor in the bathroom.
Yay dates with both parties rocking sexy eyeliner!
So much better than dates where one party is visibly making no, or even anti-, effort to look as if (let's say) she cares at all about the proceedings! Ask me how I know.
Yay dates with both parties rocking sexy eyeliner!
Objectively pro-Glam rock and KISS.
410: That's part of the longterm plan once I'm moved. (Supposedly closing Wednesday but probably actually Friday, and I'm very afraid it will move to the following week and I won't get the weekend to do it.) I also need to know when/if Lee is going to have parenting time in the evenings once her semester starts, because then I have to be available to do reentry or else everything is thrown off course. But if this relationship continues, that schedule gives her time to settle into her new place (moving today in 1 million degree heat) and her child's new school and finish the season with the sports commitment that eats a lot of her time now. But in theory we could synchronize something.
The eye makeup (and lipstick so subtle I didn't mention it) is just about all I can do to break ogged's appropriateness rules, I think. I should check them again.
This might be a little late, but I've always dealt with insecurity about my looks by imagining/pretending that I was insanely beautiful. It allowed for me to be like, "well, if I imagine I'm very good looking, it doesn't matter what I look like in real life," which somehow allowed me to have good self esteem even while not actually finding myself attractive. Also, after hating the way I looked and wanting to look completely different, I decided to accept that the things I disliked (coloring facial features, overall body shape) weren't actually changeable, and I just needed to adjust my standard of beauty. It's worked, and now I'm ok that I have my nose or my hair color, but it was a process.
The one thing I haven't accepted is that I have disproportionately short and stocky arms relative to the rest of me, and I really dislike it. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), there's nothing I can do about my arm bone length and width that is not totally insane and dangerous, so I just have to accept that I will never have long willowy arms.
I had a weird situation where I received much more affirmation on my looks from strangers than my family, especially because once I started puberty my grandmother made it a point to note all my physical flaws pretty much every time I saw her,* and no one in my family is all that forthcoming or effusive with the compliments.
*For her it was just a matter of fact reckoning of how far off I was from her beauty ideal, not meant to be malicious.