It varies, but when I was younger I saw more women keeping their married names if they had very young children, but mostly just returning to their maiden names. Over the years I’ve noticed less women changing their names when they get married, or instead hyphenating their married name. But this is just observations from one socioeconomic viewpoint, so I can’t make sweeping statements about the majority.

Not trying to be weird, but to understand - roughly what age range and location are you talking about?

I’m a divorced 52yo woman living in the Chicago suburbs and this is news to me.

Not sure of the ages of your children, but as a 52yo who grew up in the States, I averaged 2-3 hours of homework a night in grade school. They’d tell us “oh, it’s only about 15-20 minutes per class” which doesn’t sound terrible, except that it was more like 20-30 minutes of work x 4-6 classes. By 7th grade I burned out and realized that the world didn’t end if I started skipping homework, and my test grades remained about the same. I just had to live with the stifling anxiety over getting in trouble for not getting my homework done.

Thankfully by the time my kids came along schools started pulling back on the volumes of unnecessary homework. I also never pressured them to get every assignment done, but instead asked them if they understood what they were doing. As adults having completed further educational programs, they did just fine. I’m glad that as time goes on, kids are getting more of a chance to be kids.

If you spend time (often years) + money (tens of thousands) + putting your body through treatments (hormone therapy to harvest eggs) + significant emotional investment to achieve any very personal goal (to carry a child into your family) only to have that taken away, heartbreak is one of the most appropriate descriptors.

I’m assuming that housing and utility expenses are being paid on their behalf, so yes. That should count.

Crazy thing. You don’t have to put any effort into “following people around”. Just click a person’s username and you can scroll right through their comment history to get an idea what you’re dealing with.

You’re so close, but I was actually able to follow that story as it wandered.

Either you need to make less sense or I need to embrace my impending dementia.

Today’s neglected and unwanted children are tomorrow’s prisoners? 🤔

Yep - Garmin Venu 3 here. I just charged and it’s telling me 15 days of battery, but with my use I’ll probably charge it in 12-13 days.

I mean, it’s hospice lol. I work with some of the most compassionate, respectful, and caring people I could ever hope to work with. We also tend to have a macabre sense of humor. 🥴

The hospital provides phones and has us use Teams for remote meetings and other communication. Official patient information is always recorded through Epic/Haiku. Since the majority of the staff is in the field, they’ll use Teams to communicate throughout the day for staffing updates and to notify us of deaths - particularly helpful if you’re me driving to the patients house and planning on giving them a massage lol.

I work in hospice making home visits, and yesterday was a bad day. Sucks when you’re out making visits and missing notifications about change in patient conditions and death notifications. Before Teams they used a paging system that was glitchy, but everyone understood it was shit so there was an additional level of contact to ensure workers got relevant info when needed. Yesterday half the day went by before people realized the system was fucked.

Thank God that responsible people who only have the number of children they can afford never experience unexpected life changes! It’s almost like an invisible dome protects them to keep them healthy and financially stable until adulthood. /s

Shit happens. Being less judgemental of others makes life easier and happier for those around you AND yourself, plus it’s free!

“to my understanding most cards in the US are credit cards”

This statement confuses me a bit, but I guess that adds to the misunderstanding? Debit and credit cards are tied to different types of accounts. Which you’re using depends on if you have the money and want it immediately removed from your checking account, or if you want to “borrow” and pay the total once a month.

When I helped my sons open their first checking accounts and got their debit cards, we had to “opt in” to not allow overdrafts and to have purchases cancelled, but that option would expire once they hit a certain age and would have to select it again. The backup to that is if you have a savings account, the accounts can be linked so that if you were to overdraft, the extra would be taken from savings to prevent overdraft fees.

These are all great things, assuming you have money in the first place. If you believe Americans are using credit cards more often than debit, it’s probably 1) because CC companies incentivize us to do so, or 2) people just generally don’t have the money to meet their needs in the first place, so juggle and borrow funds as they try to keep their heads above water.

Keep in mind that for a number of people, places like Starbucks and Dunkin create an accessable entry to something beyond a home made pot of Folgers.

I grew up smelling my parents coffee and enjoying the smell, but the taste was horrific so I swore off drinking coffee. Fast forward many years and I dipped my toe into that overly sweet and milky Starbucks and found something that actually tasted good to me. Many years later I have my own grinder and espresso machine, and numerous other coffee gadgets, and might only darken the door of Starbucks/Dunkin a few times a year for convenience. Can I make something at home I enjoy more? Yep. But there’s nothing wrong with other people having other tastes along their coffee journey.

Fwiw (I live in Illinois) over the years our system was updated with materials and redundancies to counter loss of service during storms. There’s been a number of times over the last few years that a bad storm hits and does damage that previously would have created a loss of power, but you can watch the power flicker for a few seconds while the system tests alternate routes that are able to continue to provide service to the most residents. There was a time that power outages were expected a few times a year during bad storms, but I can’t recall the last time we had a weather related outage of more than a few minutes.

Obviously local to the damage there nothing to do but wait for the infrastructure to be repaired, but that happens far faster when there’s redundancies supplying the majority and fewer repairs that need to be addressed.

I’m assuming you’re talking about handling a dry powder form, to which I have zero experience so I can’t comment on. BUT fentanyl is absolutely administered through the skin with patches, used for slow release pain control. They’re incredibly helpful for people who aren’t getting medicated regularly or have difficulty with oral medications.