AllisonWonderland

Yes, this! I was feeling really strongly about Sean for several episodes, but the players and the commenters here were tepid on him as the Mole, so I convinced myself that I was maybe thinking too hastily. But the task where he removed the photos from the wall seemed to me, not even in retrospect but as it was happening, to be an "Ok, Hail Mary move here, OPE I GOT CAUGHT!!!, Crap, I'ma just say it was because I was *trying* to look like the Mole!!!" move. It was so badly executed that it almost seemed like a botched attempt to attract attention, but also.... I kind of feel like The Mole (the show) has gotten to be a bit like The Circle in that players are trying to meta-game the thing a bit too hard? I love people thinking several steps ahead, but harkening back to the early Mole days, I liked when the Mole just hid behind choreographed flubs and "honest mistakes" rather outright sabotaging a thing to try and deflect/attract/double-bluff Mole attention. I still adore this show and can't wait for more! I'm sad Muna didn't win because she had my earnest-player vote from the beginning, but hopefully we'll see more from her in the future! (she is so gosh-dang beautiful and warm and lovely, especially now that we know she was being genuine; I'd love to see her modeling or commentating or something going forward! LFG Queen Muna!!)

That's so funny, both of the guys are way, way up there for me! Ryan, Sean, Michael are "Absolutely Could Be the Mole" territory for me, and Hannah, Muna, and Deanna all seem so earnest and eager to me! I suppose Hannah and Muna could both just be really good actors, but they seem like they're sincerely enthusiastic about contributing to the success of the team, and Deanna seems to be deeply invested in solving aaaaall of the mysteries. The dudes + Ryan all have big black marks by their names for me from specific, super suspicious things they did. Gah, I love this show so much! It was one of the first reality shows I ever watched back in the Anderson Cooper days, and I was over the moon excited when Netflix resurrected it! I have dreamed about being a contestant ever since the first season; maybe I'll submit an application for the next one? :D

Me watching this episode: "Oh good! I'm so glad they FINALLY FRICKIN GOT IT that this is not a job for one person! These two ladies look like they'd make a perfect team to help with the girls and also maybe some household stuff and..... ....Oh wait, no. Nope, that's.... not what is happening at all. Wow. They are literally only hiring for a single job, but splitting the hours (and pay) across two women. Cool. Super cool. ... Ope! Now they're taking the entire family to Disney World!"

Ooooooooh, the way I absolutely RAN to this thread when I heard Dale refer to Adam participating in caring for the kids as "Daddy Daycare"....... A FATHER PUTTING IN TIME WITH HIS CHILDREN IS NOT "DAYCARE", bud 🤬 Edit: Ok, having watched a bit more, as a Single Mom By Choice, Adam legitimately reinforces my decisions. I know that Adam is Not All Men, but like, I only have a 1:1 child-to-one-parent ratio, compared to their 1:3, and it is really hard trying to balance career and family, but I manage. The concept of a second parent getting equal billing while only being involved as a luxury or convenience (as Adam seems to be) would be SO unfair and insulting. I think I would lose my mind. Adam famously "gave up his career" to "take care" of the quints, but he also has plenty of time to get bulked up at the gym and purchase ridiculous, impractical Jeeps and can't help organize a closet?! Nah, dude, you HELLA have your own life that many parents (of "typical" family-size would dream of. You are not a hero. I very much understand having a hard time giving up one's career and life and dreams when kids come around, but please don't feign that you're the martyr/hero/victim while actively NOT living up to the hype you've chosen to put on display.

Holy shit, I made the mistake of looking up Jake's Instagram and... whooooooboy, it is..... NOT GOOD! Like, every single post I watched was a clip from his podcast, I guess?, railing against the "gay agenda", trans people, immigrants, "boys in tutus" (complete with clip from the animated toddler show, Cocomelon), and that's as far as I got. He was wearing a shirt that said OnlyGuns, and man, I can rarely think of a time I've disliked someone so much. He seemed like your typical alpha-Chad military boi on the show, which is not really for me but I can allow it; his off-show public persona, however, is hate-filled and anti-"woke" and just plain gross. Kick rocks, Sir. Be gone forever.

So, I have an 11 wk old baby born via IVF in New York City. I did it myself, via a sperm donor, with help from a very good private clinic in Midtown. I had worked with NYU Fertility before I found my awesome new clinic and jumped ship on NYU to go with the smaller private group. Regarding the embryo debate, I can say from personal experience that I was NEVER pressured to name a donor. The egg freezing process was its own thing; many women decide to freeze their eggs as a safety net for the future, and have no idea what or who that future might include. The decision to freeze eggs is largely a "Hey, I'm single and contemplating the future. Maybe this would be a good insurance policy in case I don't meet The One before it gets too late!" kind of thing. My own partners never ended up including anyone I'd feel confident parenting a child with, but it was super important to me to be a mother. So, I went for it with the help of a donor from a sperm bank. My daughter is beautiful and healthy and thriving, and while the concept of creating embryos from the jump was acknowledged, it was only presented as an option. I think the majority of women who show up for their consultation appointments alone are understood to be Single Mothers By Choice, and there is a sensitivity provided to them and an understanding that they are probably going it alone and might be using a donor in at some point the future. If either NYU or my eventual chosen clinic had made me feel like a partner/donor was implicit to the process, I would have left. Because I was largely where Brynn purports to have been, which was doing a "safety net" mission to ensure that I had things secured for the future, however that ended up taking shape. Freezing eggs when you know you want kids at some point does not require a partner at the time of retrieval, and to (allegedly) shame someone into giving a donor's name at that juncture would be an unfair and unorthodox practice, if true. All that to say, either Brynn went to a ridiculous and shamefully managed practice, or she's BS'ing. The option to create embryos from the jump was certainly floated to me, but never pressed. I would have been shocked for them to have held me to a future decision of dedicating a donor from the beginning when I was completely unsure where my life would be in the coming years.

Ugh, pic isn't working. Dang it.

Ok, so I think Rebecca (is that the filter one?) is totally adorable even without the filters, especially for 46! I think she's done herself a serious disservice by digging in on the "Wook at me, I just a sweet baby foxy woxy!" thing, because where he very likely *wouldn't* have been disappointed before, now he very possibly will be. Sucks, bruh* *bruh = both of them.

So, Dr. Lola was deeeeeefinitely flirting with ol' LB, right?

Oh fantastic! My next step is DHT blocking shampoo that my endocrinologist recommended: https://www.amazon.com/PURA-DOR-Prevention-Premium-Packaging/dp/B0079R6BD2 There's a, like, all-botanical-y version.....? of this same brand that doesn't have the DHT blockers in it, but this one actually has the magic crap that is supposed to treat the follicles rather than just "creating a healthy scalp environment" or whatever. The bullet points on the back label will include "DHT Blocking" in the top item if it's the right stuff.

Ooof, I am hella sorry to hear that. Mine is just vanity but yours is actually related to a real illness. Sending positive, healthy thoughts over to you, friend.

Yuuuuuup. I just lost 60 pounds, and about half of my thick, gorgeous hair. I've been binging on Viviscal and biotin trying to get it to start thickening back up again but nothing is really happening yet and I'm starting to get despondent :(

We did it a weird way--we were long distance for the duration of our "courting" relationship and changed our plan at the very last second. He lived in the UK and I was finishing college in the US, and every school break I'd go there for a few weeks or he'd come over to stay with me. When we decided to get married, he had originally applied for a K1 visa to come to the US, but the process was taking So! Long! and I was all ready to graduate and we still hadn't been approved, so we applied for visa with the UK as well, just in case. We decided we'd make a little race out of it--if the UK came through first, we'd get married here and pick up and move to London, and if the K1 came through first, we'd carry on with the original plan. Well, lo and behold, the UK one got approved almost immediately, so he flew over with his mother, we got married at the courthouse, sent my passport off for my visa processing, and packed up all of my crap and sent it off to London! We lived there together for a few years, so by the time we decided to come back to the US, we were well established as spouses, so it was a piece of cake to get him all set up with his paperwork--and you're probably right, that was probably a huge factor in his staying, because he came over as a spouse, not as a finance. As someone who has been through it as well, though, I'm sure you go through the same annoyances that I do about how the people on this show seem to understand the 90 days as a continued "trying on" period, when that is NOT the intention. The point of the 90 days is to give couples a teeny bit of leeway with wedding planning so they don't have to get straight off the plane and run right down the aisle! It isn't an extended trial to make sure you really want to go through with it, friends; you should have absolutely 500% decided that well before you've filed the paperwork and done all of the interviews and begun the 90 days. The three months is a little wiggle room to allow for things like sleeping off jetlag, getting acclimated to your new home country, final wedding arrangements, etc, before one of the biggest days of your lives. It also gives the couple adequate notice to provide friends and family who may be travelling to attend the wedding; can you imagine if they got their approval and then had a week to get married? That would be insane, just logistically speaking. It makes perfect sense that there is a little time built in before the deadline, but the purpose is being misconstrued by this show. The way these people treat the process--like this is one last chance to feel things out and decide if they want to bail--really rubs me wrong because it just shows a fundamental (and possibly willful) misunderstanding of the way it is intended to work, and their abuse of the system is what made things take so freakin' long for the rest of us who were doing it right. Grumble grumble.

My ex husband is British and we separated not long after we moved back to the US. We remain good friends and he was able to stay because we filed a no-fault divorce (or something to that effect, I forgot what the exact terminology is) and proved that it was a marriage made in good faith with the expectation of full life together when we moved. Maybe it was easier because he wasn't from a typically scammy country, but it does happen and he's still here 7 years later!

I wonder if their shared religious/cultural heritage has something to do with that. They and their families will already "speak the same language" in a lot of ways, more than, say, a Muslim man from Tunisia and a divorced mother of 4 (?) from Ohio. There was probably a lot less "in MY culture..." to have to explain between Loren and Alexi, and even when differences were present, I imagine it was less of an obstacle because the differences were not as foreign and overwhelming as the differences that Nicole and Azan would have encountered, for instance.