Gillian like Gil in Gilbert and the Gill of a fish not Jill like, well, I honestly still don’t know why it’s spelled Gillian but pronounced Jillian.

Zero. I have never gotten back together with anyone I’ve broken up with. LTR? Had one 25 year run, one split. Now in a relationship that has so far lasted 12 years I think? Yes we are happy.

My ex got so mad because down here the boy name Don and the girl name Dawn sound about the same. He would yell no it’s not it’s DAAHN and DWAWN! But we don’t have that nasal Midwestern thing, it’s just Don and Daun.

By the first evening by 9pm, when they didn’t get dinner.

I would take that “we don’t care” as an invitation to leave and start a new life with people who do care. Nobody should say that out loud, what assholes, but since they don’t need you, you are free.

My kid got a worksheet on the long A sound. She got through most of them but was stumped on the “lobster”. I looked at it - Lobster, Crawfish, neither of those have a long A sound, what the heck?

Hours later it occurs to me.

OH, Craaay-fish? Who in the world calls them that? Nobody here. Where was this printed?

Migraine. I’ve broken bones, had unmedicated childbirth, nothing has ever hurt as much or as disgustingly as a migraine.

Other than that, any pain to do with fingernails or toenails sqiucks me out, I would cave under torture.

I was around for that time, and yes in many ways the world is better now, it’s a mixed bag but:

My kids were not beat up in school for being queer.

The bay is much cleaner (though that is going in the wrong direction)

Solar power has come down in cost so much that there is hope for the clean energy transition to accelerate.

I was literally paid less than the men doing the same job I was doing, openly, in the early 1990s. And there was smoking in offices.

Violent crime is much less prevalent than it was back then. My kids don’t have to be as careful or afraid as I was.

Overall - I don’t think it is useful to be nostalgic, there are enough changes in a positive direction, sure we had more hope for the future in the 1990s but the reason we needed it was because things were kinda shitty.

I can agree with this. Like entering your dog in a dog show. I did want my kids in sport or dance as part of their education but told them if I ever gave criticism, to tell me to do the sport my own damn self. So they did their stuff as their hobbies, and I did my own art/sport stuff and kept out of theirs.

Y’all have some weird ideas about what a hobby is. Parenting as a hobby cracked me up, that’s just having a family, you presumably grew up in one of those. Religion isn’t a cult-like hobby, it’s a hobby-ish cult.

On the parenting front though, I think those pageants are, those kids do it for a hobby and I would consider it abusive, and hard to exit once they are in.

+3 or so, benign neglect, with unavoidable trauma. My dad died when I was a teenager and that sucked, my mom fell apart, also she was diagnosed bipolar and I didn’t enjoy being a child at all, but do honestly believe my mom did her best, and we were fed, housed, schooled, (ETA including sports! She was big on physical fitness, and that is something that absolutely ended up improving my adult life, once I recovered from my own disordered/restrictive eating) and not interfered with much beyond that.

What score would the over-involved helicopter parents of my kids’ friends land on this scale, though? Those kids aren’t spoiled exactly but certainly not neglected.

Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.

Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.

I’m American. I regularly walk to the shop that’s 1.75 km, won’t drive it because it’s too close.

The closest Real Grocery is 2.5km, that I take electric bike. Same for the Whole Foods that’s much farther (5.5km) but that I consider an adventure ride and certainly not a walk. The groceries would melt by the time I got home if I walked.

All of these my husband drives to, and I think that’s more typical. I have hangups about driving short distances.

I don’t use my car much anymore, so would consider that liquid, and could make the kids pay some rent now they are working (not much), if I sold that and nothing in the house needed repaired or maintained (ha ha ha) I am at almost 3 years. So I guess if I had some fatal illness and was willing to run out all of both my &my husband’s retirement money I could stop working. Well, no, nevermind, I couldn’t, because the medical care would bankrupt us. But we would not immediately starve anymore. It only took half a century to get here!

I have eclectic taste in music. Mostly I give thanks for streaming services and radio - back when we had to buy albums I got literal anxiety because there was simply no possible way I could get even 1% of what I liked, and the thought of cataloguing it also oppressed me.

So -

I do read Brooklyn Vegan occasionally for stuff I might not have heard of, and tours, Pitchfork for live versions of songs.

I also let the streaming algorithm have its way with my playlist often, when not listening to a whole album. And I listen to radio (literal FM community radio) shows I like, and sometimes my kids scoop me on some artist they think I will like. And understand that the universe of music I might enjoy is blessedly so large I will not get to the end of it.

Oh and I go to concerts - often I have found bands because they opened for someone I went to see.

I do have thoughts in words, language. I don’t exactly hear or see it but it’s definitely language based. Often two levels of thought, one superficial and another underneath, thinking about those superficial thoughts.

That whole room is horrifying. Is your dad a sea witch?

Oh this is going to sound like my mind is in the gutter, but there have been a couple of NSFW collaborations between smut posters who met on the NSFW then made some posts together. I find that just delightful.

If we can stop things ending up in the Gulf, instead of polluting it -

Stop fertilizer runoff and disappear oil rigs, move all hotels back from the beach by a quarter mile or so.

If that option is unavailable, Ron Desantis, Rick Scott, Ashley Moody and Beth Bondi, Citizens United, and the gerrymandered voting district maps.

I use plastic produce bags to cover rising sourdough.

Always use the peels of the pineapple to make tepache!

No, political wife is not what I signed up for. Unless I was too afraid to leave, in which case I would try to secretly work against him. Which is also terrifying but at least useful.