TIL that "King of the hill" was cancelled to make room for "The Cleveland Show"

AntToeKnee · 3 days

Still not as bad as Deadwood being cancelled so that David Milcher could make John From Cincinatti. At least King of the Hill had a good run.

Whirledpeas1129 · 3 days

I think that to some extent those feelings come and go- I'm well past the age and capability (tubes tied) of realistically wanting more kids, but both my husband and I have periods of time where a baby/toddler seems like a very, very good idea.

I've always known that every milestone my kids pass is 'our last'...I had an unplanned triplet pregnancy, and after they were all diagnosed with autism there were practical as well as ethical issues involved in our decision to stop having kids. So every time the last child 'passed' a milestone (nursing, walking, diapers, pre-school, grade 8 graduation etc), I knew that we'd never go through that again. That's been very difficult at times- I still remember the day that the last child stopped nursing, and I realized "this is it".

But parenting continues, and just because you've passed those milestones doesn't mean that there aren't a lot more on the horizon. Three teenagers are more than enough for me, and although I'll probably be a basket case when adulthood comes (which is only a few years away), I'm never going to stop being a parent.

Have you talked at all about being a foster family? There's a huge need for responsible families, especially for very young children, and that may be a constructive way to address the baby issue. Volunteering for your local teen mother program? Becoming a midwife/doula? I know that Children's Aid (in Canada- CPS in the U.S.) is always looking for volunteers/paid helpers to deal with very young children. There are a lot of ways to be involved with and loving children that don't necessarily involve you actually producing more.

And I've learned that if you bake, your house will almost always be full of children, and loud :-) That's a simplification, but you'll find that as your kids get older they are going to have friends who will gravitate to a house that welcomes them. My kids are 16 now, and I can think of 4 peers off of the top of my head that are couch-surfing at the moment, because their home situations are so bad (that's not counting the ones who are just being teens, and choose to leave. And we live in a 'good' area).

kennedr · 3 days

Very rarely these days- I read on a Kindle, so I don't buy paper books nearly as much as I used to. I will buy hardcovers of authors that I really love, or series that I'm still enjoying that I already have in hardcover (there are only 2 series at this point, which helps my bank account). I'll also pick up short story collections if I happen to be in a used bookstore and run across them- I love the Hugo and Nebula collections, and have a good number of them.

But in our area of Ontario a new hardcover is usually around $40, and we have limited storage space, so I think twice before buying one. With unlimited budget and space I'd probably buy more.

SymbolicRevolution · 3 days

What grades do you teach?

My daughter is in grade 10, and some of the books that have made a big impact on her are Speak, The Help, Carrie, The Lovely Bones, The Handmaid's Tale, Into the Wild (that's a great book for talking about decision-making skills). They've done some of the classics as well (Farhenheit 451, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, 'easy' Shakespeare), but To Kill a Mockingbird was the only classic that seems to have made an impact.

They also did Lord of the Flies/Hunger Games together, and that was certainly an interesting week.

kush_domain · 3 days

Originally entitled What is an American, and written by a law professor. Gotta love Snopes :-)

katzirra · 4 days

A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal , just because it still always makes me laugh.

hypnagogicjerk · 7 days

Is it possible that they're just friends? Most of my SO's have been even more clueless about fashion than I am, but fortunately I've always had a couple of friends who I could ask for their opinion if I wanted to.

What are the rest of her interactions with those people like? Is she just asking for help with fashion, or is she crossing other boundaries? Complaining about you, talking about how she hates long-distance relationships, asking for emotional reinforcement about things other than clothes, flirty?

If she really is only asking for opinions about her clothes, then I'd learn to deal with it. Having opposite sex friends apart from your primary relationship is a sign of a healthy person, not a cheater, as long as both of the people in the relationship understand what the acceptable boundaries are.

AphorismMan12 · 7 days

You didn't confront her- you left messages on her FB. It's normal to feel hurt and betrayed, but leaving messages on FB is pretty passive aggressive, and a bit immature. I think that your definition of subtle might be a bit off.

I'd kiss your trip money goodbye, unless you're lucky. If you're right and she was cheating then at least you found out before you got even more deeply involved.

Sorry that you have to go through this- it's never fun.

tossit81 · 7 days

This is my thoughts on the whole thing. I believe that she genuinely cares about me. She might even love me but is scared to say so. But her not looking for a serious relationship when we got together in addition to possibly still wanting to fuck around with other people is keeping her from going all in. Does this seem accurate?

Not from the outside. It sounds like she's got a lot of issues, and you're convenient.

2.) The weed thing. This isn't the first time she's gotten stoned and turned into kind of an asshole on me.

Some people do- while 'common' wisdom says that weed makes you all mellow and does no harm at all in any way, some people are total assholes after they smoke (I'm one of them). If you are determined to have a relationship with her for some reason that isn't apparent, it's fair to insist that she either not smoke it around you, or gives it up. Is she smoking around her kids, and treating them badly as a result?

Where are her kids in this? I've been a very sexually active single mom, and I never exposed my kids to any of it. Are you seeing her on her every other weekend off? Is she taking many men back to the house where her kids are? Of course it's possible to have a responsible, active sex life as a single parent, but most of the people that I've seen pull it off (with no harm to the kids) have done it by keeping their sex/relationship lives completely separate from their home life until things become serious. The kids are actually my concern in all of this- 4 and 7 year olds are very impressionable, and can also form attachments very, very quickly. How many 'sleepovers' has Mommy had? When you're a responsible single parent, your first concern has to be your kids. If it's not, then she might not be a great person to get involved with.

FWB is difficult to pull off in the best of situations (even though it's wonderful when it works). From what you've written it sounds to me like you are much more emotionally involved than she is, and that she pretty much has crazy written all over her. Is this really a situation that you want to be a part of?

asd_dad · 7 days

In our area anyone associated with our school board, and most govt. agencies, aren't allowed to communicate electronically about anything specific due to privacy paranoia.

It's asinine- I can communicate with our case worker from the school board over email as long as my daughter's name, or anything specific, are never mentioned. Our emails go something like "Remember that thing we talked about last week with my blonde child in grade 12? We've got that appointment now." Fortunately we almost always know what we're communicating about, but it makes it impossible to do anything online except book meetings. Working with any provincial agency (except for one) is even worse.

I would love to do everything online, but that's just not happening here. I have 3 children with special needs, so they each have their own colour-coded binders and folders. Each child has their own colour of binders, and within those binders, each 'area' (therapy, agencies, assessments, funding, medical) has their own colour coded folders. Everything within those folders is filed by date, so theoretically I can put my hands on what I need quickly. It's going to be even more useful when I finally give in and give each kid their own filing cabinet.

emdeemcd · 7 days

I understand that, but the idea of someone working on a book only to have 25 people read it and then have it discontinued strikes me as disturbing.

It depends on what it is, as well as what the author's motivation is. A local history professor compiled a collection of oral histories of my parents' church in the early 1980s (I did some of the interviews for a first year history project). It sold somewhere between 400-500 copies the first year, and still sells 20-30 a year.

It's never going to be a bestseller, but to people interested in our city's history, or the history of the Anglican church in Ontario it's very useful. The author (from what I know) is happy with it.

Gurn-Blanston · 7 days

But I don't see how that really helps.

I completely agree. The shocking is torture (in my opinion). With a lot of kids (in my experience), they behave the way they do because they have to for some reason...they don't have another way to communicate, have no control over that behaviour, are so overwhelmed that they can't express it any other way, etc. My son's got aggressive and self-injurious behaviours that are as bad as any that I've read about, and I have no doubt that any type of aversive would just make things worse, not better, and even if it did cut down on his behaviours, it still wouldn't be worth it. The evidence that's available from videos and court documents about how the Rotenberg Center uses shocks shows that it's a lot more about torture and a lot less about trying to help their 'clinets'.

Imagine the parents of autistic children 50 years from now finding out this was how some parents tried to help their children.

When my kids were diagnosed in 1997, ABA was still the 'gold standard' among parents (not necessarily professionals). There were still a lot of areas where aversives were used (although electric shocks had been discontinued, fortunately), and the parents were fine with that. And then of course you had the parents who repeatedly injected their kids with Secretin even though there was no information on its safety, chelation therapy, etc.

I'm horrified enough now with what some people are doing to their kids- I have no doubt that in 50 years we'll be considered barbarians.

eslyelesyel · 8 days

It's not difficult to do- if you have a user with more than a superficial relationship with the community and a long posting history, it really just takes patience to put it together, which is of course why witch-hunts are so dangerous, and why they so often spill over into real life (calls to employers, family, etc).

As a moderator and community member I like the advantages of seeing someone's history- it often helps me to make moderation decisions, and as a community member I've found great subreddits through browsing people's histories, made friends, etc. But as a mother and wife I regularly re-think whether or not it's really a good idea to keep this account, because it really only takes a few people getting pissed off at the wrong time and in the wrong place before my family might be affected.

Jaberkaty · 8 days

It is tornado season where I live and I dread the day we have a warning and I have to get 3 kids (3.5 and twins are 21 mo) into my crawl space.

We keep 'special' things in our basement, for when we have tornadoes in the area. Special food treats, and games, that they don't have access to at other times. It makes the "Okay, we're going to the basement for a while" announcement a bit easier for them to take.

Jaberkaty · 8 days

The standard advice is to have an easily available large blanket in each room, and they all go in that. It's not going to be comfortable for anyone, and you may end up with broken bones, but if you're in a real emergency situation, it's about the only way to get them out when you have more kids than arms.

Of course, that only works until they're too heavy to lift. When I was a single mom it was my biggest nightmare, as herding autistic kids may even be more difficult than herding cats, in an emergency. When they were too heavy to lift we started practicing with skipping ropes- I'd run around the house collecting kids, and they'd grab on to the rope with their siblings and not let go until we were outside. I'm not sure that it would have worked in an emergency, but it was the best shot we had. We also had a drill where I would yell 'emergency', and they would run out of the house and sit on the neighbour's front yard. There are obvious drawbacks to that as well, but for the most part that drill went well.

Jaberkaty · 8 days

One thing that surprised me was that they would stack themselves. Instead of one baby gate we had to have two (one on top of the other), because it only took one kid being motionless near the gate for a few seconds to let the others use it as a climbing block and be over the gate. It also hadn't occurred to me that once they started walking they would purposely use each other as climbing tools- the first time I found a child sitting on the stove was a surprise. We'd done the 'normal' babyproofing thing of crawling around the floor and getting rid of everything dangerous/breakable under 3 feet, but I'd recommend going from your eye level instead. My kids loved the dishwashing soap on the back of the counter, until I learned to lock it up.

I would strongly suggest bolting anything free-standing to the wall. 3 kids trying to climb a bookshelf, TV, or dresser can pull it over much more easily than one child can. We had a lot of books as well, and I put all of our heavy books on the bottom shelves of the bookshelves, so if they did pull a shelf of books out they weren't likely to harm themselves. I probably should have just packed up my books completely, but that would have been difficult. My 'oh shit' baby-proofing moment wasl when they all decided to climb different bookshelves at the same time, and I was the only one home. We got out of it all right, but that was when I learned about bolting things to the wall :-)

We picked an area (in our case, the main floor living room/dining room/kitchen) that we made as child-safe as possible, and that was where they spent the overwhelming majority of their time during the first few years. You'll figure out what type of cupboard/fridge/door locks work best, and you will get used to dealing with them. Things like my china cabinet went into storage- I didn't want to drill holes in it, but it certainly wouldn't have survived.

And I'd really never considered just how much trouble they could get into with a Christmas tree. We'd done the normal hang the decorations on the top thing, but they still destroyed it very quickly. We hung it on the wall out of reach one year, and then put it in a playpen after that.

Good luck- my kids are almost 17 now, and we didn't seriously injure anyone.

Gurn-Blanston · 8 days

The information about the shock treatments, court proceedings, and more than a few videos have all been available online for a number of years now. The first results that you get on google for it (with the exception of the school website) are all negative, and very disturbing. It is beyond me how any parent would choose to put a child there.

I can understand the desperation those parents feel (my son's been in a group home since he was 8, because he needs more support than a family can give), but there's no excuse at all for not doing due diligence.

And how it can still be supported by taxpayer money is beyond me.

dabeezkneez · 8 days

Great read. Melatonin has been a miracle-worker for 2 of my kids.

evolon · 8 days

MoodGym is an excellent free program based on cognitive behaviour therapy. PsychCentral has a lot of great resources, and also some very useful forums. Nothing online can take the place of an actual therapist, but at least it's a start.

There are also a lot of things that people find helpful in dealing with depression- eating well, exercising, meditation, journalling, gardening, volunteering etc.

I'd really recommend getting a full physical if you can- sometimes physical issues (eg thyroid, or hormonal difficulties) can look very much like depression, and it's always a good idea to rule them out first.

APretentiousHipster · 10 days

What type have help have you gotten?

darkainur · 10 days

I wouldn't say that the Bible's a 'good read' in terms of sword/sorcery etc (some books are filled with excitement, others are excruciatingly boring), but having a decent familiarity with it will deepen your understanding of almost all Western literature- the same goes for Shakespeare. If you're focusing on fantasy, Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell are also very good reads. Tolkien had a lot of Norse influences, but you're missing most of it if you focus solely on Norse influences.

aenea · 10 days

Wow- that's great. Thank you!

klkreuk · 10 days

I'm showing my age :-) Blondie's Rapture and GrandMaster Flash's The Message were my first introduction to rap, which later evolved into hip hop. Considering the number of 'iconic' songs that Glee has done, it boggles me that they haven't yet tackled that. I'm also baffled as to why they haven't covered Walk This Way, as it was the first really mainstream exposure to hip hop artists when it was broadcast during the SuperBowl.

It still baffles me that they don't utilize Mike and Brittany more. I had high hopes for the Saturday Night gleever episode- I detested Saturday Night Fever when I was in high school, but if there was ever an episode made to highlight the dancing strengths of Glee, Mike and Brittany should have been front and centre on it. As a whole I don't think that Glee is really interested in dancing.

ANewRedditAcc · 10 days

You don't give a lot of details- how old are you, is your husband upset, how much weight did you gain through pregnancy, etc?

I think that a lot of us have unrealistic expectations of what our body is going to look like after birth. A lot of the things that we see in magazines/newspapers about 'celebrity moms' neglect to tell us that they had access to personal trainers, plastic surgeons, and nannies as soon as they popped the kid out. I had triplets at 31, and my body definitely shows that. My friends who had a child or two in their early 20s definitely had different bodies than I did, immediately post-partum.

Is this a perception that you have of yourself, or has your husband commented on it as well? I was thrilled when my boobs went from 32AAA to 38C while I was nursing- not so much when they deflated later.

Is it possible that you're being too hard on yourself?

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