satrunrose

Ew, ew ewww! I really enjoyed Daddy-daughter days as a kid. Dad got me into Star Trek, Indiana Jones and James Bond and my mom wasn't a fan of any of the above so the two of us would get take out, rent a movie (which was the style at the time) and Dad, as the family popcorn popper, would be in charge of snacks. The word date was never used because it wasn't a date, it was me having fun with my dad and him sharing his favourite movies with me. The more I see of Alyssa and John, the more I feel like they're the poster children for a lot of what's seriously toxic about this brand of fundyism and child-rearing.

Agreed, I was just outside of totality (about 95%) and except for the light being slightly dim, you really couldn't see anything without eclipse glasses. (With the glasses it was spectacular). Obviously, I didn't look directly at the sun, but the kind of sideways glimpses you get normally didn't look any different.

Oh man, the "So neat!" in response to the Crucifixion made me lol extra loudly. Hope the neighbours thought I was doing something cooler than following the misadventures of the Rod clan. I would assume if Jill did a mail-in correspondence course for cosmetology, that might explain why her style is very much in the late 80s early 90s era. I can see a godly course not being on top of the Rachel, the slicked down bob and the Titanic-era Leo hair for guys. Jill's special style of eyebrows might be 97-ish, though. On the other hand, if she did in person classes from a state school, I would have thought her style would have frozen in the mid-nineties, which wouldn't be nearly as...interesting... as most of Jill's hair, make-up and style choices.

The (apparent) fact that the boutique manages to support two above-averaged sized families in a fairly swanky lifestyle (2 degrees and no Tesla for me) continues to baffle.

I'm not sure that Jill hasn't been the brunt of some pretty hurtful comments. I mean, she publishes her neglected children all over social media and one of her major activities is chasing people down in parks, laundromats and Walmarts to sell them the "correct" Jesus. I'm sure she has heard things that went well beyond "Oooh, sorry! Can't talk now. Byeeeee!" (Ie. my response to being waylaid on the street by Evangelicals, even if I am running through a list of snappy comebacks and Bible quotes in my head). Then again, we have had Satan attacking via green bean can, so maybe the "hurtful attacks" are just a dirty look and lack of resilience. I think, in the long run, it's pretty hard to say. Jill not at all backwards about coming forward when she has a problem that can be solved, or at least mitigated, by grift. On the other hand, when people are telling her that she is not, in fact, God's extra special chosen one (and feed your kids!), we all get treated to vague booking and fun with FU internet (I took the waifs to the pediatrician doctor and she said they're fine and I am the Best Mahmo evah, so there!). No one ever spills the tea about who said what to whom in these "attacks".

This is a legit post? Oh dear, I thought someone took a pic at the local vintage store and posted as a spoof.

People, people, they make funny faces in pictures, of course they're having fun!

I'm not sure I agree that Josh is being treated unduly harshly. As a counter example, everything I've heard about Subway Jared lately has been in terms of true crime "Jared from Subway, why it was so much worse than you thought" and not "Jared from Subway: Bygones" That being said, I do think the Duggars specific brand of Christianity has affected the reaction here and elsewhere. The Duggars (and sweet friends, admittedly others are worse) have called out about 40% of the North American population for (checks notes) wearing pants, let alone how they've treated birth control debates and LGBTQ+ folks. All the while, they knew that their son had committed (and it turned out was committing) acts that are considered heinous pretty much everywhere on the moral spectrum. I maybe an agnostic/Mainline Protestant, but I know my Bible well enough to know that the New Testament comes down very hard on hypocrites. That's one of the main reasons I snark on the Duggars (well, that and the fact that they aren't content to just keep their hyper-religious bubble to themselves).

The thing is, she doesn't even need to do that. The girls' dorm/labyrinth is down Nurie and Kaylee. A toddler bed for a six-year-old (if you ever needed proof the poor waifs have stunted growth) should fit easily. Thanks to whoever it was who emphasized that BME had a actual almost six-year-old sleeping in a crib until this. My mind, she is blown, even by the usual Rod standards.

I'm so confused. 1- This crew literally goes on missions to convert Catholics and yet they name their kid after a song from a movie where all of the heroes are Catholic. 2- If you want a name from the Sound of Music, you've got Maria, Liesl, Louisa, Brigitta, Marta, or Gretel (I would totally name a hypothetical daughter Liesl or Marta). Heck, you could even do Ilsa (the Baroness) if you wanted to be subversive. 3- There are 0 references to God in the song Edelweiss except for the word "bless" but it's kind of implying that the singer is asking the flower for a blessing, so isn't that kind of sacrilegious?

I'll always think Carlin was a huge victim of the "the only goal of life (for women) is marriage and babies" philosophy coupled with "and that's the only way you will ever be in any way special to anyone". Carlin (and Evan) aren't really doing anything too terribly different from a lot of young influencer wanna-bes. They spend money impulsively, they eat terribly, they make dubious choices about what they put on social media and they "party, party, party". I mean, that describes about 2/3 of the people I went to college with. The problem is that C & E act like they're footloose and fancy free early-20-somes when their actual life is settled with 2 kids, a mortgage and a business. If they had been raised non-fundy (and with some actual attention for Carlin) they could do stupid things and laugh at them in middle age, but because they rushed into kids, this immaturity has real consequences for the two little humans who were dragged into the middle of their parents' arrested development. It makes me sad for C+E (and, goes without saying, even sadder for Layla and Zade).

Man, we should set ourselves up as party planners!

Agreed, I was trying to find a way to distinguish between anxiety/depression/OCD and ED/narcissism/schizophrenia but didn't quite make it. The more I watch Hoarders, the more I wonder if it's not just one disease. Some hoarders do seem more depressed than anything (I find those are the ones that have the most positive end, although the follow-up isn't always so great). Some do seem anxious with a heaping helping of defensiveness (I had plans for that!). Those are the ones I try to watch when I'm trying to de-clutter. I'm not a hoarder, but I do have more stuff than I need due to "but I might be able to use it!". Then there are the Sonias who are sure that they are the superior people and that the organizers are there to bend the laws of physics and get 100% of the stuff that isn't literal trash back in the house and "organized" somehow.

One thing I find interesting about hoarding is that I don't know a lot of other run-of-the-mill mental illnesses (especially OCD and anxiety, which hoarding is most closely associated with) where so many of the patients seem very convinced that they are far superior to the rest of us. Cora wanted to start a community centre to teach people her ways for heaven's sake! I felt really bad for the daughters. They didn't seem to mind that their mom was blaming the whole thing on them and then proved that she was lying when they talked about how the house was always like that and they never realized you could live in a clean, non-ratty house before they started spending time at other people's houses.

It's hard to know, some kids love the classics. I work with 14-year-olds who are glued to their phones and one of the highlights of the year is making ooblek slime with cornstarch and water. Most of the traditional party games that have disappeared are more to do with people realizing that they were wildly unsafe (lawn darts anyone) than kids getting too sophisticated. That being said, if the girls' friends and cousins were all having pricy parties at arcades or indoor play spaces then cake and pin-the-tale on the donkey might not fly, but I don't get that impression from what I've read.