Yeah No

So true. Prejudice comes in all colors. I think Mariah is perpetually stuck in that adolescent phase of trying on identities but never really settling on one that is really HER. She is also one of those people that thinks she can atone for her "sin" of being white by shaming other white people into admitting that they're as racist as she really fears she is deep down in her heart of hearts. She can then feel like she's absolved herself of the white guilt she has inherited from her racist forefathers. I don't believe I've ever seen Mariah with any POC. Has she ever even lived within several miles of one? It amazes me how she can push this message when she herself probably doesn't even KNOW anyone who isn't white much less push herself as the voice to defend them. Again with the hypocrisy.

Awwww, thank you Kyan, I pray for you too. 🙏 I wanted to hit the heart plus the "sad" emoticon at the same time on your post. The older I get the more I don't understand prayer either. I was always the most positive "God will protect us" person. I had the answer to the problem of evil all sewn up, and it is a beautiful answer, but knowing that doesn't really help when you're overwhelmed by your problems and can't appreciate the big picture. As the numbers go down I can only pray that the latest comments by Dr. Fauci that a second wave is not inevitable might be a cause for hope for all of us. But I also think the news from Minneapolis lately is particularly depressing. I am angry and sad at the way people are treating each other. This isn't the world I once knew. It was never a paradise by a long stretch but it's really going in the wrong direction right now.

I have noticed this myself. I have been complaining to friends about this and so far no one has noticed it but me - finally someone gets it! All of my weather apps, including local TV stations and Weather.com have been much less accurate for the past year or so than they used to be. I only use Accuweather now. It's not perfect but it's a lot more accurate than anything else, even NOAA. One would think with all the new technology they would be more accurate, not less. What I hate is when they predict a lovely day and then after it's already started raining they change the forecast at the last minute. Like duh, at that point I don't need them to tell me that! I wonder what the problem is. A friend of mine is a weather buff. I might ask him for his take on it. He is actually more accurate than any weather app but he's never divulged his secrets, LOL.

Tea, actually the advice you did give here is worth more than you think it is. I've been wanting to get rid of the place and agonizing about how to accomplish clearing it out and doing all of that now that we have a pandemic. I'm just afraid that the management company is going to be against anything I can realistically do to unload it and I'll be stuck with the place and need a lawyer to deal with them, hopefully before I go broke. The problem with a pod or a storage room is dealing with THAT and paying for it too. It would take a lot out of me physically to handle all the stuff if it were all mixed up in a pod or in random boxes. Most of what is left is junk or not worth anything to me so it's just a matter of getting the stuff I want out and leaving the rest. Unfortunately doing that when the stuff is packed away in a pod or storage room would be 10x more difficult than going through the apartment itself because I already know what I've looked through and what I haven't looked through when the stuff is still in the apartment where it has been forever. Taking it all out and putting it in boxes would make it infinitely more time consuming, especially because of the huge amount of books, most of which are heavy and hard to deal with. If I were even 20 years younger it would be a lot easier to do all this. Plus we have no room for a pod without wrecking up our lawn or blocking our driveway. It's a dilemma. We can't even put a shed on this property - hard to explain without seeing it. So I am left contemplating just when and how to go down there and accomplish this without feeling unsafe. I can't handle thinking about doing it either way, actually. Both options present their own issues. Fortunately I don't want any of the furniture and most of the stuff as it's not worth anything, it's just looking for little bits of treasure amid the trash. You know, photos, books, records, tapes, mementos, etc. Because I've already gotten most of that stuff out it would probably only take me a few trips to go through the entire apartment and then be ready to leave the rest for some organization to pick up, like the "got junk" people. It's unbelievable to me that even doing a few trips there feels like such a big deal. I always end up feeling like I have to risk my life to do anything. I always said that apartment would be the death of me. I am afraid that statement was another one of my unwitting prophecies. I have been known to be prophetic before, and it actually scares me. Everyone here has been very patient with me as I go on about this, and I truly appreciate it more than I can express. I have had the most rotten luck in my life. I've done everything everyone else has but consistently have had one piece of rotten luck and tsunami after another in the last decade - It has really done a number on my optimism about the future. I am fully convinced at this point that my husband and I are doomed to get this virus and die from it or if not, suffer bad medical issues from it and also be destitute in our old age. People tell me to be more optimistic but I don't see myself as being a pessimist when every single worst case scenario seems to come true for us no matter how optimistic I am. My husband tends to be more optimistic than I am but even he is showing signs of not being able to keep that up now. We have just been through too many disasters. Both of us wake up every morning and share the nightmares we had the night before. At this point he is afraid he'll never work again or feel safe to work again. I have always been a strong person emotionally but I fear that I am getting to the end of my rope. I don't know how much more of this I can handle. You know it's bad when your THERAPIST tells you that you've had a very tragic life, and that was even BEFORE the pandemic hit or my father died! Anyway, your advice is most appreciated and I will be thinking it over with my husband. Many thanks and (((hugs)))!

I don't know, but the fact that it's about an hour away from me is prohibitive. I'm not a morning person, LOL. Plus the issue becomes where to go to the rest room....So I'm not in any rush to go.

I could drive to a beach although this is what they looked like on Memorial Day weekend in CT. It was packed and not a lot of social distancing was practiced. Now I don't feel so much like going there anyway and fear a spike in cases coming.... The even worse part about it is that the local news was suspiciously quiet and said very little about it.

I will make of this what I will, but sad to say that this squares with my and my female friends' experience. All of us are in our 60s. Until recently my best friend worked at NYU as an admin. in the law school. She was there for over 30 years. She took the subway to work every day. She even saw the first plane hit the WTC back in 2001 as she walked from the train station to her office. Anyway, she was always the most happy, forgiving soul until she started getting older and realized that not only was she invisible, but it's like she was actively being shunned and treated poorly by those in the younger generations. The stories she told me would make you ill, and young people not getting up to give her a seat on the train was the least offensive of them. She doesn't have a car and has been in those situations in stores where no one offers to help her with large items too. Her only saving grace (in her words) is that she was built with strong upper body strength and can actually handle it better than most women her age. I myself am not built that way, in fact just the opposite. I am short and pear shaped with next to no upper body strength. I reached the age of invisibility only about 6 or so years ago. I remember when it happened, it was that sudden and stark. I have always been fortunate enough to look young for my age and attractive, and that plus being fussy about my appearance helped delay the effect for a few more years. But I knew it was going to happen eventually. My mother always warned me about it 30 years ago! She did not take it well as I remember. She was bitter about it. I am just sad. It makes me understand all the more what she and all my older friends have been going through. I try to avoid those situations that would make me feel that way. I remember my first experience with it. A rich client of my husband's invited us to go to a very famous and fantastic restaurant in NYC (Le Bernardin). He invited a few of his favorite support people like his admin. and the maitre d' at a local restaurant and his wife. They were a little younger and thinner than my husband and I and we and another couple our age immediately felt invisible to the other group. They were all having a fantastic time in the limo. bus we shared and segregated themselves away from us "old farts". When we got to the restaurant I had to endure going to the ladies room with the rest of the younger women, who acted like I was not even there. I really didn't know them but they didn't really know each other either, so why were they so palsy-walsy to the exclusion of me and the other woman in my age bracket? They were only about 10-15 years or so younger than us! I suddenly felt old, fat, unattractive. The other older woman looked hurt so I know it wasn't just me. That was new for me back then. I have to say that it has been that way and gotten worse ever since. And don't get me started about how I feel like this is the reason I was let go from my job and couldn't find a new one! Age discrimination is real. My last company systematically got rid of anyone over 50 male or female, unless they had the right connections. They would "eliminate" their job by changing the title and rearranging some of the job duties and then lay them off. They laid me off for no reason when I was collecting workers' comp. after falling and breaking my arm in their parking lot. They thought it was the perfect excuse to get rid of another older person, but it was against the law to terminate someone on workers' comp. I won a lawsuit for wrongful termination but I didn't get all that much, plus no matter how many second interviews I was called back for after that, I somehow never got the job. This was NEVER my experience when I was younger. I finally had to give up looking for a job. I don't think I was hire-able at that point. I had tried everything for 2 years including going for jobs way under my level. I didn't suddenly grow a 2nd head or became a troll or something. I dressed well, not frumpy, and kept up with fashion. My resume was fantastic. It was my age, pure and simple, and I know it. I was lucky enough after being laid off during the recession at the age of 50 to still look young enough to get another job, but it took me over a year then to find one. By the time I was 59, forget it. My best friend was also let go from her job but in her case the conspiracy was more sinister. It seems that she had outlasted everyone in the support staff in her office and was the oldest person there, working alongside people much younger than her. Of course, they all shunned her. I know what that's like. But one day one of them decided they hated her so much (she's the sweetest person ever mind you) that they would make up a lie to get rid of her. They told management that she hit them in the copy room! A bald faced lie! My friend was so shocked when confronted with this by HR that she didn't know how to react. They tried to BS her that they had "witnesses" - what witnesses? It was a small copy room and only 2 people could fit in it at most! Plus there were no security cameras in there. She didn't even remember any such incident happening whatsoever. She went over and over it again and again. She thought maybe she was going crazy! It was like they were gaslighting her! Anyway, they used this bogus accusation to fire her. I told her to get legal representation. She didn't and just decided to retire. She was lucky enough to be able to do that because her family had left her a secret bank account she never knew they had (they lived like they were poor believe it or not). She retired in January, only about a month or so before the pandemic hit in NYC. She actually feels lucky now. If she had been riding the subway in those last couple of months she might have caught the virus. She's cooped up in her apartment now but actually feels fortunate! Sorry to go on so long - this is a hot button issue for me. When people in my generation were younger we didn't shun our elders, in fact we were taught to respect them, make sacrifices for them, and give them a lot of slack. And that was the way they were treated in offices and social situations. Now, forget it, we are treated like crap as if we are worthless. And don't get me started on how this mentality is manifesting itself regarding Covid-19! That's an entire hour's worth of ranting right there!

I knew you were going to pick up on that line! No, I suppose we can't be sure. I keep thinking of STNG's "Ship in a Bottle". And one of my haunting favorites, "Remember Me".

Timely subjects for me talking about starting cars regularly, losing loved ones and worrying for older living loved ones. We have 4 cars right now. Two are limousines (hubbie owns and operates his own limo., something he's not doing right now or perhaps ever), one is my car, a lease which was due to expire at the end of June, and the other is my father's car, which we luckily brought up here in February when my father finally decided it was time to stop driving (a minor fender bender with his building garage door helped to hasten that decision). I used my power of attorney to manage his GEICO policy and had the car fixed at my local dealership body shop. Then the stay at home order hit. I dealt with his finance company to handle resolving his car loan and returning the car. After several phone calls, faxes and emails, about a month later they told me they would have someone contact me about picking up the car. Meanwhile we cancelled the insurance and registration and mailed the plates back to the DMV in NY. The bank warned me that it might be a little while before we heard from anyone because the pandemic was delaying things. That was about a month ago now and we still haven't heard from anyone. So the car is sitting on our property unregistered and uninsured. We start it once a week and drive it in front of our house a couple of times (it's a very quiet street). Oh well. At least I know they won't be looking for any more money. My father didn't have an estate and not enough money for them to come after. Then there's the matter of my leased car. It was due to expire at the end of June but I have been in a quandary about whether I should buy it or lease a new one or a third option I haven't discovered yet. And no, I can't keep my father's car because he owed too much on it, and it's a 6 year old car anyway and not worth it. Anyway, I decided to call Nissan Motor Acceptance to find out if they had any special option to extend my lease because of the pandemic and they told me I could extend it for an additional 3 months - so I have another 4 months from now to make up my mind and maybe by then feel safe enough to walk into a dealership. I suppose I could handle everything remotely and just have a new car delivered, but I'm not sure what I want to do yet. Because we're not making any money and living off of pandemic relief I feel bad about having to spend anything on this at all. I keep hoping a cheaper but fantastic option falls into my lap before then that doesn't involve me having to go anywhere and do anything that will make me feel uncomfortable. I suppose I could just keep my present car, but there are complications with that too that make that less desirable. Plus it won't be any cheaper than just leasing a new one.

Actually, I don't have this problem at home as Mr. Yeah No is (thankfully) pretty hermit-like like I am, but I have friends who have different views on this. I haven't seen most of my friends in person in months, mostly because I've been sheltering in place due to my age and medical worries, but also because I wonder how careful they're being. One of my good friends is 66 with medical conditions and she has been less than what I think is careful. She goes shopping everywhere all the time and even took her hairstylist up on her offer to cut and color her hair a month ago in the stylist's home. I told her she was CRAZY to do this but she insisted her hair was "driving her nuts" and she had to do something about it. Fortunately that was long enough ago that I'm sure she didn't catch anything, but it certainly gave me a scare. She is actually the only friend I've met in person since the pandemic began, probably because she lives the closest to me - most of my friends are at a distance. We met in a nearby park and sat at different picnic tables wearing our masks. I felt like I was in some weird dystopian sci-fi movie. Then she wanted to take a little walk on the walking trail which was right there, so I said OK, but then she didn't stay far enough away from me - she often came closer than 6 feet and I felt awkward trying to back away from her all the time. It got to the point where I said, "You're coming too close to me for comfort". She apologized and I felt like a big ol' meanie, but at least I was nice about it! Then when we went to our cars she came over after I had gotten in mine and almost poked her head in the window - OK she was masked but I was in an enclosed car and she should know better! Then a week or so later she called to complain that all her neighbors were having barbecues at each other's houses every week and that she didn't feel comfortable going. But then a week or so later she confessed that she finally broke down and went to one even though they were not observing social distancing or wearing masks. The number of cases in her town is alarmingly high for this area, and now I see why. Needless to say I'm not rushing to see her in person again any time soon and pray that nothing happens to her!

I actually enjoyed today's episode a lot, including AJ's house cleaning, probably because my own husband spent today doing just that - a truly wonderful and rare sight. It only took a pandemic to make it happen, LOL. Both of us are really identifying with some of the situations these couples find themselves in in the "new normal". Every decision is a gut wrenching one. Plans were completely upended, everything postponed until we don't even know when. One person working, the other one bored and feeling like a drain on the other one. One person using the time to get better at cooking or whatever pastime they devote themselves to. I also thought the babies and dogs were quite adorable. And Keith is a total sweetie taking care of his grandma like that - and she looked great! Greg and Deonna - the doll thing was funny but I just wanted to see the double ovens, LOL. Jamie and Beth? Same old thing with them, different state and different day. I don't know why but I wondered if that spat was staged for the camera because that's become their shtick for the show. It should be interesting to see how Jessica handles working in the Covid-19 ward next week. The preview of her driving through the mobile testing unit gave me the chills.

Same for me. My bookcases alone would need more space than an entire tiny house could provide. Same for my cooking equipment. Nope, sorry, no can do. We were OK in our 600 square foot apartment for a few years, but at least that was temporary and it came with a large basement storage room. I did amazing things in a kitchen so small it had zero counter space. I used the flat top electric stove when I needed to chop vegetables. We live in 1500 square feet now and that's just fine other than there not being enough closet space. But we have a huge oversized 2 car garage lined with those great heavy duty Costco shelves for storage. Plus, both of us need our private, personal space. In a 3 bedroom house we each use one bedroom as our own personal office. We would probably get on each other's nerves too much if we didn't have that private space. I don't think we would be celebrating our 40th anniversary next month if we didn't have that!

I think the problem is that Mariah has bought into what I think is a racist point of view that labels all white people as privileged based on skin color whether they know it or not and because she has absolutely NO personal experience with anything different, she doesn't know any better. When you grow up poor or lower middle class and in and live as a white person in an area that's predominantly made up of minorities and YOU are the minority it's simply not possible to have much of that white privilege even knowing that some white people with more money and social standing do have it. Plus even if you wanted to take advantage of any privilege you would have no way of isolating yourself in some societal ivory tower of whiteness in order to reap its benefits, and the privileged white people would recognize you as "lower class" and not let you into their "club" anyway. I realize that my experience may be less common but it's the reason a lot of people who grew up like me feel the way we do, including many of my oldest friends and my husband. We accepted people of color all our lives - we didn't have to be guilted or shamed into it.

Was she defending herself to someone that was telling her she should put her money where her mouth is about racism and that just speaking out against it is not enough? It looked like the person was getting on her for being "all talk and no action", something a lot of us here have noticed with her. It's very easy for her to pontificate and "white shame" people when she does absolutely nothing to improve the situation for any of the minorities she supposedly defends. I don't mind anyone speaking out against racism but from someone like her who probably has never even lived in a neighborhood or until recently a STATE that wasn't predominantly white, shouldn't SHE be the one heeding her words before she heaps the "white guilt" on anyone else? Hypocrite much? I love how the woke crowd talks about "white privilege". Speak for yourselves, don't presume all of us have enjoyed that much of that privilege despite being white. Maybe YOU have, but as for me, I haven't had all that much of it. Certainly not even a fraction of what she has enjoyed so far in her young life. She has no idea what it would be like to (like me) grow up of limited means in the Bronx around people of all races and ethnic backgrounds and feeling like as a white person you're in the minority and hated by a lot of people just because you're white. Never mind that you're not a rich white person and was brought up to accept people of all races, that doesn't matter. I was a sensitive person and this stuff hurt me, but I suppose my feelings don't count to her. I'm not asking for sympathy, just stating that she and many of these other guilt heaping white people have no clue what they're talking about. They presume that their privileged, segregated and yes RACIST experience is true of every white person, and it is not. I grew up very close to people of all races. I never even thought about color. I had 3 races represented in my wedding party 40 years ago. I never even noticed that until last year. My classes were always at least 20% non-white and sometimes more. My parents' best friends were black, and they attended a community center with many other black and hispanic friends. And I'm not just saying that like the old platitude. We lived in the same building with them and in the same neighborhood with many others. I worked in offices that had many people of all races represented. I never even lived in a non-integrated neighborhood until I moved to CT, and when I got here I thought all the "white people" were weird, LOL. Seriously! I never really got used to living in a mostly white area. When I moved to another area of CT I chose to live in an integrated neighborhood because it felt more like home. Yes, I met white people of privilege and knew there was still a lot of validity to the arguments exposing and criticizing white privilege. These were people who turned their noses up at me when they heard what neighborhood I lived in. So I know the racism still exists and has gone underground, plus I notice all these same privileged white people falling all over themselves to appear "woke" and unprejudiced when in fact many of them are just big racists trying to convince everyone, including themselves that they're not. And I do think Mariah is one of them. So I myself will always bristle at some young rube who comes from a lily white, "comfortable" background trying to make ME of all people feel guilty about my "white privilege". Walk a mile in my shoes, you twit. You have no idea how stupid you look to someone like me.

I had forgotten that in 20 years but now remember how that always perplexed me. That entire episode always annoyed me.