Cerina

I had the hardest time coming to terms with this in my 20s. Still not that good with it tbh.

Ok look. Purple junk is the best kind of junk.

That walk of shame! I love this show more and more every week.

He'd likely be supportive but confused. Trevor still talks about Jason as Jason was 15ish years ago (which wasn't much different than Trevor himself was 15ish years ago tbh), so in his mind, Jason is still a single dufus who spends all of his time and money on video games and movies and works a dead end job. We just don't get jealous or police each other's relationships with other people. We don't really keep secrets from each other either. And not in a high and mighty, self-righteous sorta way - it's just that neither one of us has the bandwidth to bother. We have each other's emails on our phones, all of our social media stays logged in on the computer, we know the passcode to each other's phone, and we share our location with each other on Google maps, not because of any trust issues, just because it makes our lives easier to navigate. At this point, our lives are so intertwined because of our chosen lifestyle (work-from-home, stay-at-home, homeschool, scouting, etc.) that it would be nearly impossible to keep a secret anyway. We're just always together or with the kids.

If I ever decided to reconnect, Trevor would absolutely 100% know about it first.

Trevor actually knows about my and Jason's entire history, and he also knows how much I miss him. Trevor doesn't know how often I dream about Jason or the depth of the feelings that they cause. Their falling out came apart when their other best friend was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease. Jason straight up told Trevor that he just couldn't handle it, and Trevor's response was "well how do you think Craig feels?" I was sorta caught in the middle there. Jason is a much more emotional person that Trevor, and they're quite unmatched in the ability to "power through" something like the slow death of a loved one. I spent years defending Jason there because I know that his initial reaction was a cry for support, and eventually he could have been supported enough to be as strong as Trevor was through the entire thing. But actually, Trevor did eventually reach a point where he couldn't handle it anymore either. Craig deteriorated rapidly for someone with HD, and it took a HUGE toll on Trevor every time we saw Craig. Trevor actually didn't see Craig the last year of his life, mostly because our own lives didn't provide much opportunity but also because it took such a toll. This also all happened about a year or so after we moved from Austin to Houston, so the physical distance also helped them along. All that to say, my friendship with Jason sorta fell by the wayside during all of this as well. We had no fights. Trevor never asked (and especially did not demand) that I stop being friends with Jason as well. We just drifted apart. And Trevor did apologize to him a few years ago, so they sorta made amends, but they'll never be as close again. The last time I saw and spoke to Jason was at Craig's funeral. I'm the one who called Jason to tell him Craig had died. We actually spent nearly 2 hours on the phone that night just chatting and whatnot. And we all spent a lot of time reminiscing and catching up at the wake. This was back in September 2020. Back during the year or so after Trevor divorced and returned from the Navy, I was definitely deeply in love with both of them and sleeping with them both. I now know that they each felt the same, but at the time, neither one was ready to admit it to anyone (especially me) (or each other for that matter). I had a lot of resentment for each of them back then because neither relationship felt casual until they were pressed (usually not by me) then they would flip out and insist that they each were "definitely NOT dating" me. I still don't know if that was because of their relationship with each other or Trevor's recent bad marriage or Jason's twenty-something ideal of his "perfect woman" (which I was not...physically) (also...that might just be my own insecurities there because I don't recall that ever coming up...ever...). (Scratch that! The fourth member of their little boy group, Ramon, once told me that the 4 of them had all agreed that if I "lost a little weight, you'd be SUPER HOT". We don't talk to Ramon either, but in hindsight, I definitely think he had some delays and is likely on the spectrum because he would word-vomit shit like that all the time.) Anyway, these relationships have been consuming half of my 40 year-old life, but I rarely get to talk about them in depth because I've grown apart from everyone in my life who knows the whole histories. And most of our family friends would be appalled if they knew I was sleeping with 2 guys during the same time period (though, it was more than that because those 2 stressed me out so much with their "do they or don't they" bullshit that I kept dating around...which might have also caused some of their issues since I wasn't so secretive about it...)

Background info: My husband Trevor and I started dating in May 2000. We moved in with each other that summer and stayed together until October 2001. He moved out, we broke up. He eventually joined the Navy and married some random girl moments after she turned 18. I started a friends with benefits sorta thing with one of his closest friends, Jason. Jason and I kept this up for years. Real feelings developed but we never upgraded our status beyond friends with benefits. Trevor eventually left the Navy and came home, wife in tow. They divorced. I balanced a friends with benefits thing with both Trevor and Jason for about a year, but it was tumultuous to say the least. Eventually, Jason was slowly replaced by Trevor, and in 2007 I got pregnant with Noah. Trevor and I married in 2011, and things have been pretty solid with us ever since. Trevor and Jason had a falling out not too long after, and we've only seen him a small handful of times since. Also of note, about 8ish years ago another mutual friend of all of ours told Trevor and I that Jason had told her that he regrets not taking things further with me back then and that he feels I'm "the one that got away". I had always assumed that my feelings were stronger than his, and if I had known this at the time, there's a very real chance that I never would have started things back up with Trevor. Ongoing issue: About once every 2-3 months, I have a dream about Jason that brings back all the old feelings. They're insane. The dreams are never sexual but always very intimate, usually about reuniting or finally breaking down and admitting feelings or something along those lines. Now during the normal course of my life, I don't spend any time thinking about Jason at all. And under normal circumstances, I can admit that I miss him and our friendship (we had a very close bond beyond all the sleeping together), but I don't carry any lingering feels other than that. Trevor and I even talk about him every so often as he was a huge part of both of our lives for many years and so many of our good-ol'-days memories include him in some way. However, when these dreams happen they seriously throw me off. You guys ever have dreams that feel so real that you keep the feelings with you for hours or even days after you wake up? This happens every time. For a day or so after these dreams, I basically float about in a daze of longing and heartache. Like I said, I don't really think about him normally, but for a good 24-48 hours these feelings are very real. And then I start thinking about reconnecting - I still have Jason's number (it hasn't changed in so long that I actually have it memorized from the early '00s) and know where he works (head of security at the outlet mall). So I start envisioning myself finding him and sparking up a friendship again. (I do actually miss his friendship. He helped me deal with my and Trevor's breakup in so many ways. I would have spiraled into a much deeper depression without him.) So I don't know what to do with all of this. I had one of these dreams last night, so today I'm sitting here in my office trying to concentrate on work but instead keep thinking about what might have been, how much it feels like I have a hole in my life from the loss of his constant friendship, and fighting the urge to text him. Like I said...the feelings are very real right now despite everything I know about my normal feelings. Somebody tell me that I'm not crazy.

I cannot get past your first paragraph. Like...I'm not sure if we have booze in the house at the moment, but I'm going to need some to keep reading. Holy shit.

Most patches are $2-5. I believe the World Crest Emblem is like $2.50. What the hell did they charge you for?? Was it all pre-sewn? You need the shirt, World Crest, council patch, numbers for your pack, Bear neckerchief (blue), and the belt. If your pack requires it, then you also need the pants, but most packs don't require it. The cap is not needed. We switch Luke to a pack closer to our house. Last year we joined my ex-boss's pack to help them out. But then she let me go, so I don't feel the need to drive 30 minutes to stay on there. Trevor volunteered to be the Tiger den leader, and our new Cubmaster seems desperate to find people to fill positions. I've offered up my assistance wherever they need it, but nobody has really acknowledged it yet. Unlike in Houston, most of the packs in this area seem to be run almost exclusively by men. I can't help but feel that they're ignoring me because I'm a woman. Most of these men will be moving on with their kids in the spring, which is why they're so desperate to fill volunteer positions.

People in general have very little regard for children and their voices. They're consistently dismissed simply because they're children.

I'm enjoying this show so much! And I can tell you, this show was written for women. If you don't feel "connected" to it, that's probably a partial reason why. I know my husband and son are both enjoying it as well but not like I am. I wanna be friends with Jen and Nikki! And I can't wait for the return of Matt Murdock.

At this point, I'm just like "well of course he does". They're not hiding anything anymore.

Finding a way to keep the Cubs engaged during a pack meeting is one of the hardest parts of running a pack. We've done so many different things with mixed results. **PEDANTIC SCOUTING NERD ALERT** You helped a "webelos", not "webelo". It's a word that ends in S, not a plural. I know, I know. It sounds wrong to us. But "Webelos" stands for WE'll Be LOyal Scouts, and if you say "webelo" you leave off the "scouts" part. That said, this is EXTREMELY common to hear, and I'm sure I'm universally despised for correcting people.

After all these years and only one person had Queen Elizabeth? Seems weird.

The realtor lady who let me go back in January has been living her best life all over social media, and frankly, it irritates the fuck out of me. She let me go with the excuse that she screwed up and couldn't afford me. Since then, she's been on like 4 major vacation trips and over a dozen smaller trips all over the country. And apparently now her new "company" is doing all of the things I kept trying to get her to start doing in the 6 months I worked for her! Just...ugh. I mean, good for her and all that, but wow. The new guy I work for has his own annoying tendencies as well, but they're fairly manageable. My biggest issue is getting him to stop doing the things he's asked me to do. He'll literally be like "can you reach out to X today and ask about Y?" and then 15 minutes later email X and ask Y.

I'd go for something more generic like Target or Walmart or a straight up Visa gift card. If he's about to be jobless (and paycheckwise, he's already there), then getting food and food stamps is generally way easier than figuring out how you're going to pay for things like toiletries, new socks, household cleaners, etc. But that's my advice from being poor. If you're just going for a nice gesture, then anything works. Just make sure you include a note explaining the difference he's made in your lives and how you appreciate it.

So I feel this on a primal level almost. For most of the past 8ish years, we've been around (almost exclusively) families that share our core values. A good part of that is luck tbh, but we've been able to develop really good relationships with people who are trying to raise kids in much the same way that we are. I've almost gotten to the point now where I dread being around "other" people. (That sounds so bad omg.) Any time we're in public with a lot of kids, I'm appalled by the things that go unnoticed or, more often, unacknowledged by parents. Trevor and I joke a lot that we're raising our kids by "benign neglect" (basically, free range), but we still keep an acute eye on them when in groups. We intervene when necessary. With Noah it was mostly intervening on his behalf so he could learn to advocate for himself. With Luke we have to intervene because his neurodivergence requires more direction, modeling, and supervision. But holy crap! The number of parents out there seemingly unconcerned with how their children are interacting with others or their environments is unsettling.

We only one-up each other over stupid shit around here.

I always kinda knew that I wanted to raise my kids almost the exact opposite of the way my parents raised me. My parents aren't bad people and they certainly could have been way worse, but they weren't what I would call "good" parents. It was no secret growing up that my siblings and I were all accidental pregnancies, and my parents just sorta committed to doing what they needed to to get us across the finish line. But we weren't exactly neurotypical either, especially me. I could write a whole essay about this tbh. But it basically boils down to the fact that I'm gifted but low achieving - this isn't a combination that people accept very well. Most people, especially parents and teachers, don't (didn't?) have an understanding of how or why someone would be super duper smart but not a perfect student. This in turn caused mental health issues that I'm only just now (literally this year) starting to get help for. So I always knew that my likelihood of having similarly neurodiverse kiddos was high, and I absolutely never wanted to make them feel the way I felt through much of my childhood. My husband was an extreme latch-key kid with his own absentee family issues - single mom working multiple jobs, no dad, parade of stepfathers and boyfriends, grandparents who were somehow miraculously both avoidant and overly controlling. And I absolutely refuse to hit my children. Neither of us had an good examples to follow necessarily, so when Noah was born I just read a lot of books and did a lot of research on how parenting was supposed to work. Somewhere in there I read a snippet that said simply that we should treat children like full people and not potential people, and this really impacted me. When I started staying at home with Noah (he was 6), I fell into a pretty solid gentle/respectful parenting method. Since neither Trevor nor I have many (any?) big life goals that we've always wanted to achieve, we've thrown everything we have into raising our kids. This has resulted in a lot of sacrifice (mainly a 2nd income) on our part, but prioritizing our kiddos is something we both knew we wanted to do differently from our parents. On the whole, I feel like an excellent mom. Part of the reason I feel that way is actually because I do occasionally worry that I've done something to screw them up in a major way. My biggest worry is that we haven't set a good example for things like career ambition or success. That's sorta the opportunity cost for the life we've built. (And I fully acknowledge that our way isn't the only or best way to be an excellent parent. I actually think Nicole and her husband are a great example of ah-mazing parents who are giving everything that we aren't in that regard.) My kids are great. They have their flaws and challenges like any other humans, but they're also a good reflection of many of our values. My favorite thing about them that I attribute nearly 100% to deliberate parenting choices is that both of them have zero problem admitting when they've done something wrong, made a mistake, disobeyed, hurt someone, broken anything, etc., and they take responsibility for those actions. It's not unusual for Luke to run upstairs to tell me that he got mad and hit his cousin or that he broke something of mine that he wasn't supposed to be playing with. Noah used to be the same, but he's 14 now, so he's not quite as forthcoming if he can help it, but he doesn't lie to hide things and he freely admits when he's done something that he can't undo and knows we'll find out about. And frankly, Noah doesn't have a personality that leads to much mischief. Luke on the other hand...eesh. Aside from cases of obvious abuse and neglect, I think that the defining characteristic of simply "poor" parenting is treating your children as anything other than their own full person.

I'm really enjoying this series so far. I think I just really like Jen. I want to be her friend. The boys nearly lost their minds at the Shang-Chi connection in the 2nd episode.

I would kill for a minivan! Cargo space, cup holders, doors that can't slam into other cars, mucho seating for hauling around children and teenagers...*sigh*. I would kill for a minivan.

I would kill for a minivan! Cargo space, cup holders, doors that can't slam into other cars, mucho seating for hauling around children and teenagers...*sigh*. I would kill for a minivan.

It's cute that you think I know how to do this

I'm disinclined to enforce perma-bans in general. So I don't really care.

My mom has literally ONE box of "sentimental" saved items. It's old schoolwork, pictures, and report cards from her 3 kids. She keeps trying to get us to go through it and take our own stuff home, but we keep dodging this. Other than that, my mom throws things out pretty darn regularly. When she dies, it's going to be soooo easy. My grandparents on the other hand...eesh. But we can't just set the place on fire because there is literally tens of thousands of dollars in jewelry and cash hidden in their house. One time my grandma gave me a bunch of purses to put in a garage sale, and I found like $2000 in cash tucked in their pockets. And my grandpa told me like 10 years ago that he's hidden $10,000 in a lockbox in the air return so to be sure we look there after they die. My husband's grandparents were the same way, except they were hoarders on top of that. It took over 2 years for my mother-in-law to fully go through this house to get out everything of value. She found something like $5,000 cash hidden in the couch, no bills newer than 1992. We're still pretty sure that she had to have missed a bunch anyway. We'll never know what was actually in here as we finally gave in and hired some junkers to come clear it out. It took them 4 days, 8 dump trucks and cost $8,000.