Cynthia: I finally finished listening to the Remnant from 3 weeks ago with Erick Erickson. I still don't get it.
The whole time they talk about how bad Trump is, the stand Erickson took in 2016, how Erickson calls balls and strikes and is not afraid to displease his audience. He has all kinds of insights and nuanced understandings of what's going on politically to share in the rank punditry. He doesn't seem to be excusing or sanewashing the bad things that Trump has done. Even notices things on the pragmatic level, mentions Democrats who are moderate and not extreme, etc.
If one didn't know some other stuff not mentioned in the podcast, it wouldn't seem problematic. I didn't hear any mention in the podcast that he endorsed Trump for re-election in both 2020 and 2024. But it's true. I looked it up online. It seems like the two parts of Erickson's mind, or the two political positions, are walled off from one another. As I suggested before, it seems like "GOP good, Dems evil, must support GOP candidate no matter what" is an a priori absolute that can never be revisited or changed, whatever else is going on. There isn't any indication that "How can these positions be reconciled?" might be a reasonable question to ask. Someone in the comments to the podcast implied that criticism of Trump qualifies as "distancing" himself, that it's supposed to somehow negate that huge, um, elephant that I can still see, and not in the distance either.
Nope. Trump is terrible and also endorsed, that's it. The contradiction will not even be mentioned. The cognitive dissonance bothers me all the more for being unacknowledged. Perhaps I am supposed to conclude that it must exist entirely in my imagination. But based on what?
I guess I kind of sympathize with Jonah since he's friends with the guy and they are on the same page about a lot. I haven't necessarily lost respect for Jonah. I'll give him credit for being polite and nonconfrontational, because after all it would bother me more to see him play it some other way. But I'm just not going to go "Oh, OK, nothing to see here." Perhaps this sort of question will be revisited when Trump is finally gone?
I voted for Harris because I preferred the possibility of her winning to Trump winning as better for the prospects for recovery of our political system. But if I did not, I still wouldn't have voted for Trump; I'd have voted for someone else or nobody. My ultimate political loyalty is not to a party but to the American system.
When I was a kid, making reference to the number "7734" was considered quite daring and transgressive. It referred to a four-letter word we weren't allowed to say. (For the numeral four, assume it's the version where the two lines at the top both go straight up and down).
The Vanity plates I see around Tucson are pretty benign.
Being a bit wierd and nerdy... I was like 9 or 10 when I would hike over to the famous Route 50. Sit on the edge of the road.
And write license numbers into a notebook!! I had 49 states..no Hawaii. And dozen countries going thru Wood County Wva. Coming as far away as Washington DC over to Ohio and on to California.
Texans would never, ever say or write anything like this, or use hand signals toward their fellow drivers. Wink. Sounds like you and I are of like mind when it comes to some of the things I see on vehicles, though more so on bumper stickers than plates. My grandkids are now reading and I cringe when I think about them asking "What does that mean, Grandpa?" I think it's an age thing but I was also raised differently. Note that the Seinfeld rerun with Kramer's ASSMAN plate still makes me laugh. Guess my offense-taking is situational.
In China, it's a numerology thing. After filling out the paperwork, there's a vehicle inspection that's so rigorous you might think they're going to demand a colonoscopy to complete the process. Once completed, you pick your number on a machine that resembles a 7 digit slot machine. Hit the button, and numbers pop up. You keep hitting the button until a number that can be worked into a positive result...like some combination of numbers and letters that adds up to 8 or a series of 8's...(8 is considered auspicious), or your birthday, or whatever. Some of the math gets deeply convoluted.
Wife kept spinning until we got a combination she could mangle into 666, which is good luck. She was a little taken aback when I said 666 is a devil number in the West, but decided she didn't care because we weren't in the West.
Crowds gather around the machine with a dozen or so strangers all weighing in on the nature of the numbers that spin up.
Here, every day brings some new refreshing weirdness. The crowd thing around the license plate number....the same thing happens in the colonoscopy ward at the hospital. People sit around in the waiting room showing each other photos from their just completed colonoscopy, talking about it and comparing experiences.
Jay, I thought of showing you the 🚪just because of this article title. But my daughter and I kinda like that Carly Simon song. Deftly written lyrics and great backstory about which of her ex-boyfriends she referred to.
However I can’t let go this stinker, which is as old as those ancient Greeks — 🚪
We call them special plates here. I’ve never heard the term affinity plate. I had one promoting junior golf a few plates ago. My husband once had a personalized plate, NOSEMAN. I had one years ago, AGLTEE, as dog agility was once my passion. We’re allowed a total of 7 characters, a combination of letters and numbers.
72, to get to 80 - 🎶& I think it's going to rain today...
when in undergraduate at Greeley, CO, a roommate's boyfriend lived in Denver so every weekend she'd drive down then drive back. To keep herself entertained & awake, she'd make sentences w/ the letters of the license plates she saw. This was before vanity plates...
I've never had a special plate, not on my car, nor in my mouth, but I do have a plate in my leg... One time I had a bumper sticker made "Y R U 2 close"
I’m nostalgic for the good ol’ days when you could ID the state a license plate came from at a distance. Most standard-issue plates from most states are homogenized dark-blue or black characters against a white-ish background.
me too!! I remember CO plate being the green mountain silhouette against white for the longest time. Then when I graduated & left the state I think they started changing.
When I was a kid we took a lot of road trips all over the country & did all the typical car games kids do. W/ my brother, who could spot the most license plates from the most states by the time we got ____ won --- there was never a prize, just WON!
For years Indiana had a plate with the tag line "Wander Indiana". They cancelled it because out of state people wanted to know where Wander county was in Indiana, so many cars from there! 🤦♂️
The article reminds me of the games my college classmates and I used to play on our scientific calculators (this was long before laptops). The one I remember involved getting the display to flash by something like dividing by zero, then entering the number 773440. Fun times.
My first was a Texas Instruments SR-59, then I got a TI programmable in college. Both had red LED displays and rechargeable NiCad batteries. I might still have them around somewhere.
I remember seeing the first calculators, not even a scientific one, in a vast window display in Ann Arbor, featuring a single item, with a price tag that I think was pushing $700...in 1976 dollars.
I remember taking a tour of Argonne National Lab circa 1970, and seeing a large-ish machine with glowing red numbers. It was the first electronic calculator I'd ever seen.
when I was in college, doing undergrad work, we had to do research work learning how to use a computer. It filled the side wall of the room w/ the card slots, spitting out. Probably 1971?
My dad was always one to want to learn the latest technology... he sent me a Valentine's Day card using a rather large computer that used cassette tapes; he programmed it to make a heart w/ x's...
later my oldest son had a job in HS working w/ a guy who was doing a start-up designing webpages - this was in the mid 1990's - the guy would get clients, my son would do the designing at home...
My father worked for an airplane manufacturer in his youth, before he joined the Navy. He said he used a vacuum-tube calculating machine that, in his memory, did nothing but calculate square roots. This would have been in the late 1950s.
I could not get rid of the old HVAC related slide-rule type calculators when cleaning out my parents stuff. One day maybe I will teach math and use them to expand the understanding of my students.
The first day in my first chemistry class the teacher handed out slide rules. The next day, everyone showed up with a calculator.
Good morning. 45 degrees here, maybe reaching 50. It rained last night and is still misty, conditions which eluded the professional guessers. (I bet they still will keep their jobs. Nice work if you can get it). The rain spoiled my plans to rake leaves this afternoon.
The mothership is covering cryptocurrency, which the Trump administration has favored. The FP is asking “Where do the Democrats go from here?”, referring to the GOP’s gerrymandering effort in Texas being struck down by the courts.
The FP also has an article on why young women are staying single. The author, a single woman, believes women are made to feel that they are wasting their potential if they get married and have kids. After all, if you a woman stuck having 10 kids, I guess your life is over. Right? 😉
Opportunity cost. Every decision you make precludes other options and results in future outcomes. Everything from, "Having yogurt for breakfast means I didn't have a fried egg on toast," to, "Having a baby when I was 45-1/2 means I'll have a 14-year-old when I'm 60."
Friends of ours back in PA got up to 9 kids before we moved to WV. Not Catholic, just conservative. I think they they eventually had 10. Acquaintances here in WV (former Catholics) have around 9 or 10, I lost count:) Both women are happy with their choices.
We wanted 6 kids before we married. Uh, I mean we discussed how many we wanted, before we married. Not that we wanted to wait to get married until we had 6 children! We only made it to 5 -- 3 natural and 2 adopted. Although we had many foster kids along the way.
My big sis, who married into a Catholic family had 5 children. her husband was one of 6.
I thought those were big families — until I met my wife, who was one of 11. (A very Catholic family. Cynthia sometimes reminds me of my late mother-in-law).
Due to medical issues, we had to adopt. We adopted our special needs daughter from Russia, during that period when Russia could claim to be democratic, under Boris Yeltsin.
A friend of mine adopted 2 Russian half-brothers. This was around 1990. She was over 40, had lost her husband in an accident & rec'd a great deal of financial $ from that. The oldest was a bit over 3, the youngest was a few months old. They had been in an orphanage & when she brought them home, for the longest time she learned she had to lock up a lot of food because at night they'd go into the kitchen, grab whatever they could & hide it in their room. When I'd go visit, & get on the floor w/ them, they'd crawl all over me, starved for attention. She couldn't take them to the grocery or restaurant for a long time for the same reason of food grabbing. It took her a long time, but she was able to legally get the oldest's age changed to a yr younger so he wouldn't be labeled delayed. He was a bright boy, just delayed due to the upbringing thus far. A few years later, she adopted 2 full Russian sisters.
The family who lived behind me in TN adopted. The mom herself had been adopted. They had a child of their own, then adopted a girl from China, then a few yrs later, a boy from Russia. They were a wonderful family.
in my head I keep thinking I should quit writing negative stuff about my ex --- however, things keep popping up. I wanted to adopt. He said 'no way'. I suggested fostering. He said 'no way'.
I made it to 3: a son with Pam, an adopted girl, a son with Katie.
Pam wanted 3-5. She didn't want to wait to have babies, her biological clock was ticking. I told her once I could hear it ticking at night, but if I placed a pillow over my head I could sleep through it. That earned me a water balloon the next day after work.
Around Pam's birthday I'll share a few short stories of her gift of pranking others, including me. She gave as good as she got. She was a HoF prankster. But she was very good natured in general.
Although I'm not a lawyer, I have gleaned enough from listening to the mothership's legal podcast, that I would say the type of logical thinking that a legal education trains you to do, is never wasted.
As someone else has pointed out, women face choices that men don't. That might not be fair. But OTOH, those choices were generally not available to women 100 years ago.
I see this topic through my daughter. She has a PhD in machine learning from Carnegie Mellon - a highly coveted background for employers today. She also has a 5 month old baby. We talk regularly about the tradeoff of family time vs the top jobs that work your tail off. She's a smart and competitive woman, and also one that understands what is truly important. She will complain a bit about the choices women face that men don't - but she doesn't dwell on it as being unfair. Like Cynthia said... choices - that's life.
I had a huge number of attorney clients. This is a guess, but I'd guess about 89.5% hated their jobs. The other 10.5% were dick heads or the female equivalent. (I had to add that up in my head to make sure it came to 100%.)
to all the lawyers out there I might not be pointing fingers at you particularly, but BikerChick, uh, be glad you didn't join that way of learning how to lie - er, evade the truth, manipulate, etc.
I also quit my advanced degree to raise my 3 kids & never, ever regretted it. That was perhaps the beginning of the "war" between the working vs SAHM...
Later, the home-based business I owned (began when my youngest entered kindergarten) involved working in daycare & preschool centers. During those yrs I saw some pretty sad situations ---
I'll reply to myself to say I opened that business, honestly thinking it was going to be part-time... then it grew & grew... & I learned I was a 'bit' more obsessive than I thought, & it became a full-time business... so I closed it after about 5 years. Then w/in about a week, I grounded my youngest - he needed a 'bit' of discipline he hadn't been receiving while I was 'busy'...
“We’ve spotted a trend!” reporting is some of the more obnoxious reporting, in my book. Even if it turns out to be somewhat accurate from time to time, it’s mainly an attempt to fill a broadsheet while sounding vaguely clairvoyant.
Those gripes notwithstanding, I wonder how much of that is a byproduct of the demographic transition to very small families. There are a lot of developed countries that have single-child households, for instance, and I think Japan has been at the forefront of this demographic shift.
I wasn’t under the impression that Japan’s experience had to do with a cultural trend of women feeling like they were wasting their potential—but I could be completely wrong about that.
Here, there's the single child generation due to government cranial rectal inversion. Amazing numbers of our friends have one kid. Someday there will a growth industry analyzing what it all means...or meant.
One effect of PR CHina’s one-child policy was that China was a great place to adopt girls, as families wanted their one to be a boy. I shudder to think how many girls were aborted.
women here also outnumber men in college so they will be the breadwinners, I suppose, so won't be able to be a SAHM. Altho, imo, having a SAHD isn't a negative. I don't know why that isn't becoming more of an option, unless it's a male ego thing?????
Oh my. I have put 8,800 on my mini that I got in January. That being said, I do drive the Corolla when I can. It's a lot more zippy and I love taking advantage of the 48 mpg. The Corolla was once our son's car but there's a miserable story as to why he no longer drives it. My husband wanted to sell it but we bought it when used cars were ridiculously expensive during Covid and I can't bear to take the hit on it. Comes in handy when other vehicles are out of commission.
?? imo, the dad being home, taking care of the kids would be perfectly fine - in fact, my sons are wonderful parents. My DILs would never choose to stay home. The one in OR has her PhD from Northwestern. She & my son split childcare stuff pretty equally.
The one, w/ 3 kids in CA, has a job that most likely pays zilch, but for some reason it's important for her to say she works full time. She changes jobs relatively frequently. That son does a lot of his work from home & does more than half of the childcare duties, driving, as well as cooking, cleaning...
Son in LA, single parent, full custody, but his daughter stays w/ mom part-time during the week.
My comment about ego is based 'randomly' on the possibility of a guy w/out a degree married to a woman w/ a professional career staying home w/ the kids 'cause her salary will pay the bills better... I'm not at all saying someone w/out a degree can't get a job that's high paying, I'm more focused now on someone staying home w/ the kids...
My bro-in-law was a SAHD for his (and my sis's) daughter. One time they were talking about mommies in preschool or early elementary, I can't recall. She said, "my daddy is my mommy."
I was thinking of getting a "First in Forestry" affinity plate for my Honda, with also "vanity" letters. I think you only get four, so like, CYNW. However, my random-issue plate from the dealer has an easy-to-remember sequence of 3-letters-4-numbers, and I just couldn't be bothered to make a trip to the car-title office.
Cynthia: I finally finished listening to the Remnant from 3 weeks ago with Erick Erickson. I still don't get it.
The whole time they talk about how bad Trump is, the stand Erickson took in 2016, how Erickson calls balls and strikes and is not afraid to displease his audience. He has all kinds of insights and nuanced understandings of what's going on politically to share in the rank punditry. He doesn't seem to be excusing or sanewashing the bad things that Trump has done. Even notices things on the pragmatic level, mentions Democrats who are moderate and not extreme, etc.
If one didn't know some other stuff not mentioned in the podcast, it wouldn't seem problematic. I didn't hear any mention in the podcast that he endorsed Trump for re-election in both 2020 and 2024. But it's true. I looked it up online. It seems like the two parts of Erickson's mind, or the two political positions, are walled off from one another. As I suggested before, it seems like "GOP good, Dems evil, must support GOP candidate no matter what" is an a priori absolute that can never be revisited or changed, whatever else is going on. There isn't any indication that "How can these positions be reconciled?" might be a reasonable question to ask. Someone in the comments to the podcast implied that criticism of Trump qualifies as "distancing" himself, that it's supposed to somehow negate that huge, um, elephant that I can still see, and not in the distance either.
Nope. Trump is terrible and also endorsed, that's it. The contradiction will not even be mentioned. The cognitive dissonance bothers me all the more for being unacknowledged. Perhaps I am supposed to conclude that it must exist entirely in my imagination. But based on what?
I guess I kind of sympathize with Jonah since he's friends with the guy and they are on the same page about a lot. I haven't necessarily lost respect for Jonah. I'll give him credit for being polite and nonconfrontational, because after all it would bother me more to see him play it some other way. But I'm just not going to go "Oh, OK, nothing to see here." Perhaps this sort of question will be revisited when Trump is finally gone?
Did you prefer Kamala Harris to win? If not, then what choice is there? I chose not to vote for Trump, but could never have considered Harris.
Like all other decisions in life, voting involves trade-offs.
I voted for Harris because I preferred the possibility of her winning to Trump winning as better for the prospects for recovery of our political system. But if I did not, I still wouldn't have voted for Trump; I'd have voted for someone else or nobody. My ultimate political loyalty is not to a party but to the American system.
"First in Aviation"
I guess "First in Flight" couldn't go unaddressed. Understandable.
tbf, there were numerous birds that beat Buckeyes into flight! 😀
This is true.
When I was a kid, making reference to the number "7734" was considered quite daring and transgressive. It referred to a four-letter word we weren't allowed to say. (For the numeral four, assume it's the version where the two lines at the top both go straight up and down).
The Vanity plates I see around Tucson are pretty benign.
Being a bit wierd and nerdy... I was like 9 or 10 when I would hike over to the famous Route 50. Sit on the edge of the road.
And write license numbers into a notebook!! I had 49 states..no Hawaii. And dozen countries going thru Wood County Wva. Coming as far away as Washington DC over to Ohio and on to California.
Texans would never, ever say or write anything like this, or use hand signals toward their fellow drivers. Wink. Sounds like you and I are of like mind when it comes to some of the things I see on vehicles, though more so on bumper stickers than plates. My grandkids are now reading and I cringe when I think about them asking "What does that mean, Grandpa?" I think it's an age thing but I was also raised differently. Note that the Seinfeld rerun with Kramer's ASSMAN plate still makes me laugh. Guess my offense-taking is situational.
"Seinfeld" isn't real.
In China, it's a numerology thing. After filling out the paperwork, there's a vehicle inspection that's so rigorous you might think they're going to demand a colonoscopy to complete the process. Once completed, you pick your number on a machine that resembles a 7 digit slot machine. Hit the button, and numbers pop up. You keep hitting the button until a number that can be worked into a positive result...like some combination of numbers and letters that adds up to 8 or a series of 8's...(8 is considered auspicious), or your birthday, or whatever. Some of the math gets deeply convoluted.
Wife kept spinning until we got a combination she could mangle into 666, which is good luck. She was a little taken aback when I said 666 is a devil number in the West, but decided she didn't care because we weren't in the West.
Crowds gather around the machine with a dozen or so strangers all weighing in on the nature of the numbers that spin up.
That's fascinating!
Here, every day brings some new refreshing weirdness. The crowd thing around the license plate number....the same thing happens in the colonoscopy ward at the hospital. People sit around in the waiting room showing each other photos from their just completed colonoscopy, talking about it and comparing experiences.
I was awake enough during my first to watch & be amazed --- hahaha -
My gastroenterologist doesn't give out photos, but my husband's did.
Good stuff, Jay.
My wife's license plate on her truck is 'EQUSTRNS'.
In the middle of doing the footnotes to my history thesis, I thought I would get a vanity plate that said: IBID
So did IBID come after the Iliad and the Odessey? I see it does get cited a lot!
Jay, I thought of showing you the 🚪just because of this article title. But my daughter and I kinda like that Carly Simon song. Deftly written lyrics and great backstory about which of her ex-boyfriends she referred to.
However I can’t let go this stinker, which is as old as those ancient Greeks — 🚪
I absolutely love her "Live at Martha's Vinyard version of it". Outstanding!
Jay, when you say things like that it makes we want to gently squeeze your hand and speak to you softly...
My favorite vanity plate was one I saw on a red Corvette: GR8D8B8.
i bet that was an occasion for great mirth down at the state pen sweatshop.
We call them special plates here. I’ve never heard the term affinity plate. I had one promoting junior golf a few plates ago. My husband once had a personalized plate, NOSEMAN. I had one years ago, AGLTEE, as dog agility was once my passion. We’re allowed a total of 7 characters, a combination of letters and numbers.
NC allows 8 characters on a standard vanity plate: letters, numbers, or symbols.
7 in Ohio for cars, but I don't know about symbols. I'd love to have emoji on a plate! 😀
72, to get to 80 - 🎶& I think it's going to rain today...
when in undergraduate at Greeley, CO, a roommate's boyfriend lived in Denver so every weekend she'd drive down then drive back. To keep herself entertained & awake, she'd make sentences w/ the letters of the license plates she saw. This was before vanity plates...
I've never had a special plate, not on my car, nor in my mouth, but I do have a plate in my leg... One time I had a bumper sticker made "Y R U 2 close"
I’m nostalgic for the good ol’ days when you could ID the state a license plate came from at a distance. Most standard-issue plates from most states are homogenized dark-blue or black characters against a white-ish background.
me too!! I remember CO plate being the green mountain silhouette against white for the longest time. Then when I graduated & left the state I think they started changing.
When I was a kid we took a lot of road trips all over the country & did all the typical car games kids do. W/ my brother, who could spot the most license plates from the most states by the time we got ____ won --- there was never a prize, just WON!
The license plate is now a white mountain silhouette against a green background. It was reversed several years ago.
ooooo, so glad to hear that the silhouette came back - it was gone for awhile, wasn't it?
No, ma'am. Just a quick reversal. But we have a ton of other plates for an annual fee. The latest all-black plate has been a huge seller this year.
thanks - if I was still there, I'd still choose a silhouette.
For years Indiana had a plate with the tag line "Wander Indiana". They cancelled it because out of state people wanted to know where Wander county was in Indiana, so many cars from there! 🤦♂️
♪♫♬ 'Indiana wants me, Lord I can't go back there' ♪♫♬
https://youtu.be/2p3OfHP5Hmo?si=mSCxAwzesY32BieS
🤩
Great video!
If Santa was a Hoosier what would Christmas be today,
Would he have a beer gut
And a gun rack on the sleigh
Instead of saying Ho Ho Ho would he belch and scratch all day.
If Santa was a Hoosier what would Christmas be today?
Yeah...Wander Indiana. I remember those. For anyone familiar with Indiana, it's appropriate.
The article reminds me of the games my college classmates and I used to play on our scientific calculators (this was long before laptops). The one I remember involved getting the display to flash by something like dividing by zero, then entering the number 773440. Fun times.
TI80?
My first was a Texas Instruments SR-59, then I got a TI programmable in college. Both had red LED displays and rechargeable NiCad batteries. I might still have them around somewhere.
I remember seeing the first calculators, not even a scientific one, in a vast window display in Ann Arbor, featuring a single item, with a price tag that I think was pushing $700...in 1976 dollars.
I remember taking a tour of Argonne National Lab circa 1970, and seeing a large-ish machine with glowing red numbers. It was the first electronic calculator I'd ever seen.
when I was in college, doing undergrad work, we had to do research work learning how to use a computer. It filled the side wall of the room w/ the card slots, spitting out. Probably 1971?
My dad was always one to want to learn the latest technology... he sent me a Valentine's Day card using a rather large computer that used cassette tapes; he programmed it to make a heart w/ x's...
later my oldest son had a job in HS working w/ a guy who was doing a start-up designing webpages - this was in the mid 1990's - the guy would get clients, my son would do the designing at home...
Did you go to Michigan? There is a cool restaurant inside I think, an old train station there. The Gandy Dancer https://www.gandydancerrestaurant.com
Nope, I was selling furniture at the Ann Arbor Arts Fair.
My father worked for an airplane manufacturer in his youth, before he joined the Navy. He said he used a vacuum-tube calculating machine that, in his memory, did nothing but calculate square roots. This would have been in the late 1950s.
The other day, I was trying to explain slide rules to a kid.
Logarithms.
I could not get rid of the old HVAC related slide-rule type calculators when cleaning out my parents stuff. One day maybe I will teach math and use them to expand the understanding of my students.
The first day in my first chemistry class the teacher handed out slide rules. The next day, everyone showed up with a calculator.
I don't remember costs, but Radio Shack was "the" place to go - loved that place!!
You could get a calculator and a TRS-80 (aka, "Trash 80") PC!
Good morning. 45 degrees here, maybe reaching 50. It rained last night and is still misty, conditions which eluded the professional guessers. (I bet they still will keep their jobs. Nice work if you can get it). The rain spoiled my plans to rake leaves this afternoon.
The mothership is covering cryptocurrency, which the Trump administration has favored. The FP is asking “Where do the Democrats go from here?”, referring to the GOP’s gerrymandering effort in Texas being struck down by the courts.
The FP also has an article on why young women are staying single. The author, a single woman, believes women are made to feel that they are wasting their potential if they get married and have kids. After all, if you a woman stuck having 10 kids, I guess your life is over. Right? 😉
Opportunity cost. Every decision you make precludes other options and results in future outcomes. Everything from, "Having yogurt for breakfast means I didn't have a fried egg on toast," to, "Having a baby when I was 45-1/2 means I'll have a 14-year-old when I'm 60."
Friends of ours back in PA got up to 9 kids before we moved to WV. Not Catholic, just conservative. I think they they eventually had 10. Acquaintances here in WV (former Catholics) have around 9 or 10, I lost count:) Both women are happy with their choices.
We wanted 6 kids before we married. Uh, I mean we discussed how many we wanted, before we married. Not that we wanted to wait to get married until we had 6 children! We only made it to 5 -- 3 natural and 2 adopted. Although we had many foster kids along the way.
My big sis, who married into a Catholic family had 5 children. her husband was one of 6.
I thought those were big families — until I met my wife, who was one of 11. (A very Catholic family. Cynthia sometimes reminds me of my late mother-in-law).
Due to medical issues, we had to adopt. We adopted our special needs daughter from Russia, during that period when Russia could claim to be democratic, under Boris Yeltsin.
A friend of mine adopted 2 Russian half-brothers. This was around 1990. She was over 40, had lost her husband in an accident & rec'd a great deal of financial $ from that. The oldest was a bit over 3, the youngest was a few months old. They had been in an orphanage & when she brought them home, for the longest time she learned she had to lock up a lot of food because at night they'd go into the kitchen, grab whatever they could & hide it in their room. When I'd go visit, & get on the floor w/ them, they'd crawl all over me, starved for attention. She couldn't take them to the grocery or restaurant for a long time for the same reason of food grabbing. It took her a long time, but she was able to legally get the oldest's age changed to a yr younger so he wouldn't be labeled delayed. He was a bright boy, just delayed due to the upbringing thus far. A few years later, she adopted 2 full Russian sisters.
The family who lived behind me in TN adopted. The mom herself had been adopted. They had a child of their own, then adopted a girl from China, then a few yrs later, a boy from Russia. They were a wonderful family.
in my head I keep thinking I should quit writing negative stuff about my ex --- however, things keep popping up. I wanted to adopt. He said 'no way'. I suggested fostering. He said 'no way'.
None of us is going to tell your ex-.
This joint is a free fire zone. Blast away, if it gets weird, someone will tell you.
That having been said, I’ve spotted relatives on Substack, offered as potential people to follow. So some discretion is not a bad idea.
Lots of discretion is a good idea. I was just trying to free up anyone wanting to vent (while hoping things don't go off the rails too badly).
Oh no. That's so sad from my perspective.
yep
I made it to 3: a son with Pam, an adopted girl, a son with Katie.
Pam wanted 3-5. She didn't want to wait to have babies, her biological clock was ticking. I told her once I could hear it ticking at night, but if I placed a pillow over my head I could sleep through it. That earned me a water balloon the next day after work.
Well deserved!
Beats a kick in the pants.
Pam must have been exceptionally kind and forgiving. Only a water balloon!
Around Pam's birthday I'll share a few short stories of her gift of pranking others, including me. She gave as good as she got. She was a HoF prankster. But she was very good natured in general.
And not a baseball bat.
Or a door!!! 😮
I wasted my law degree by quitting to raise my kids. All that knowledge just left my body once I tapped out. So much potential.
Although I'm not a lawyer, I have gleaned enough from listening to the mothership's legal podcast, that I would say the type of logical thinking that a legal education trains you to do, is never wasted.
As someone else has pointed out, women face choices that men don't. That might not be fair. But OTOH, those choices were generally not available to women 100 years ago.
And -- I hope you don't regret raising your kids!
I see this topic through my daughter. She has a PhD in machine learning from Carnegie Mellon - a highly coveted background for employers today. She also has a 5 month old baby. We talk regularly about the tradeoff of family time vs the top jobs that work your tail off. She's a smart and competitive woman, and also one that understands what is truly important. She will complain a bit about the choices women face that men don't - but she doesn't dwell on it as being unfair. Like Cynthia said... choices - that's life.
I had a huge number of attorney clients. This is a guess, but I'd guess about 89.5% hated their jobs. The other 10.5% were dick heads or the female equivalent. (I had to add that up in my head to make sure it came to 100%.)
I loved doing divorce law (not.)
to all the lawyers out there I might not be pointing fingers at you particularly, but BikerChick, uh, be glad you didn't join that way of learning how to lie - er, evade the truth, manipulate, etc.
I also quit my advanced degree to raise my 3 kids & never, ever regretted it. That was perhaps the beginning of the "war" between the working vs SAHM...
Later, the home-based business I owned (began when my youngest entered kindergarten) involved working in daycare & preschool centers. During those yrs I saw some pretty sad situations ---
I settled a dog bite case and did not take the 25% but instead opted for my hourly rate. I couldn’t do it.
I'll reply to myself to say I opened that business, honestly thinking it was going to be part-time... then it grew & grew... & I learned I was a 'bit' more obsessive than I thought, & it became a full-time business... so I closed it after about 5 years. Then w/in about a week, I grounded my youngest - he needed a 'bit' of discipline he hadn't been receiving while I was 'busy'...
“We’ve spotted a trend!” reporting is some of the more obnoxious reporting, in my book. Even if it turns out to be somewhat accurate from time to time, it’s mainly an attempt to fill a broadsheet while sounding vaguely clairvoyant.
Those gripes notwithstanding, I wonder how much of that is a byproduct of the demographic transition to very small families. There are a lot of developed countries that have single-child households, for instance, and I think Japan has been at the forefront of this demographic shift.
I wasn’t under the impression that Japan’s experience had to do with a cultural trend of women feeling like they were wasting their potential—but I could be completely wrong about that.
Here, there's the single child generation due to government cranial rectal inversion. Amazing numbers of our friends have one kid. Someday there will a growth industry analyzing what it all means...or meant.
One effect of PR CHina’s one-child policy was that China was a great place to adopt girls, as families wanted their one to be a boy. I shudder to think how many girls were aborted.
It's an extremely dark part of history. Infanticide was absolutely a thing, even 15 years ago.
women here also outnumber men in college so they will be the breadwinners, I suppose, so won't be able to be a SAHM. Altho, imo, having a SAHD isn't a negative. I don't know why that isn't becoming more of an option, unless it's a male ego thing?????
Help me out...SAHM and SAHD?
Male ego is a thing? Are you sure?
SAHM: Stay At Home Mom. SAHD: Stay At Home Dad.
As the former, I can say we're not at home much. I've put 5,000 miles on my Honda since September 1.
Oh my. I have put 8,800 on my mini that I got in January. That being said, I do drive the Corolla when I can. It's a lot more zippy and I love taking advantage of the 48 mpg. The Corolla was once our son's car but there's a miserable story as to why he no longer drives it. My husband wanted to sell it but we bought it when used cars were ridiculously expensive during Covid and I can't bear to take the hit on it. Comes in handy when other vehicles are out of commission.
Categories are ineffective at describing reality.
?? imo, the dad being home, taking care of the kids would be perfectly fine - in fact, my sons are wonderful parents. My DILs would never choose to stay home. The one in OR has her PhD from Northwestern. She & my son split childcare stuff pretty equally.
The one, w/ 3 kids in CA, has a job that most likely pays zilch, but for some reason it's important for her to say she works full time. She changes jobs relatively frequently. That son does a lot of his work from home & does more than half of the childcare duties, driving, as well as cooking, cleaning...
Son in LA, single parent, full custody, but his daughter stays w/ mom part-time during the week.
My comment about ego is based 'randomly' on the possibility of a guy w/out a degree married to a woman w/ a professional career staying home w/ the kids 'cause her salary will pay the bills better... I'm not at all saying someone w/out a degree can't get a job that's high paying, I'm more focused now on someone staying home w/ the kids...
My bro-in-law was a SAHD for his (and my sis's) daughter. One time they were talking about mommies in preschool or early elementary, I can't recall. She said, "my daddy is my mommy."
My affinity plate is for the Museum of Natural history, and it has a dinosaur on it. That’s all the vanity I could muster.
Is that a Maine plate?
NC
I was thinking of getting a "First in Forestry" affinity plate for my Honda, with also "vanity" letters. I think you only get four, so like, CYNW. However, my random-issue plate from the dealer has an easy-to-remember sequence of 3-letters-4-numbers, and I just couldn't be bothered to make a trip to the car-title office.
We can do most things car related online these days. You pretty much only need to go in to get a new license issued. Amen!
Here, you have to go physically to the office to surrender the old plate and pick up the new one.