Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board: Join the AS Editors for a Virtual Slumber Party!

Have you heard we’re having a fundraiser? JK of course you have! Thank you for sticking with us through it; we know hearing about it constantly can be monotonous, especially for those of you who have already given, and we’re grateful for your patience and your support. To thank you for being here — and getting us to $25K and now well beyond! — we’re hosting a little slumber party.

All the Autostraddle senior editors are here, coming to you straight from our quarantine to yours with love and possibly a small drink. Also joining us is our A+ and Fundraising Director Nicole, who your last fundraiser allowed us to search for and hire! Ask her about her ghost!

Party Guests (+ You!)

We’re here all night long to hang out with you – we have our soft pants on, scrunchies in our hair, and a bowl of popcorn. We’re ready to chat, answer your questions, dish about your personal life, and play virtual truth or dare. Have questions about how the fundraiser is going? Want advice about how to make your quarantine Lex ad? Want to show us a picture of your pet? (Please say yes.) You can join the urban legends and scary stories thread! What spooked you at sleepovers (or were you the one scaring the other kids? we see you)! It’s been a lonely time, and we’re excited to be able to keep you company.

Want to play Never Have I Ever with us?

Here’s the rules: 1) From 6-7pm PST put one statement about something YOU have never done as a comment on this post. Example: “Never have I ever eaten pizza with anchovies” or “Never have I ever lived with a cat” 2) Come back from 7pm PST through the end of the night. 3) Put 5 fingers up, get a pen and paper, get 5 Pogs, an abacus — whatever your preferred counting method and go through each of the Never Have I Ever comments, first to last. Every time you’ve DONE one of the things, you lose a finger / point / Pog, and when you have no more, you’re OUT. Then, comment on the comment that got ya. Person who gets the farthest gets bragging rights.

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The Editors

The has written 146 articles for us.

532 Comments

  7. Truth #5: have you ever played Sims 4 on Mac and found that all of the walls and floors kinda always looks blue regardless of the colors you’ve actually painted it or floored it and what time of day it is? If so, how did you fix it?

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    • I got drunk my senior year of high school after “a boy broke my heart” (we both grew up to be gay, soooo…)

      Anyway my best friend did the right thing, by which I mean she went downstairs to open up her parents “off limits” liquor cabinet, and we spent the the night in her room drinking a bottle of Bacardi. We got pretty wasted and when her little brother (who was about 14?) complained about the smell, we didn’t believe him. BUT THEN HER MOM CAME HOME!!! And she marched right up to the bedroom!!

      The room must have wreaked from the rum, but she played it real cool. We pretended to be asleep and she stood there until we “woke up” — made us look her in the eye and say goodnight! Then she left us to be embarrassed and alone lol.

      The next morning she made us pancakes. Never said a word.

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    • I was 18 years old sitting up late watching Weeds at my dad’s house the summer before college. I had never had a drink before but figured I would “need to know” what it felt like before I left for college a few months later, so I went into the fridge and made a screwdriver with Simply Orange and Grey Goose. It was pretty strong, but I put enough orange juice in it that I couldn’t really taste the vodka. I didn’t realize how drunk I was until I went to stand up to go to bed and realized I was too unstable to walk properly. So I crawled up the stairs on all fours and fell asleep on my bedroom floor.

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      • I was 20 and worked as a security guard at a dorm. (It was a great way to get paid to write papers and crochet, and I also lived in the dorm, so commute was minimal.) I had just worked a 3 pm-9 pm shift and had a couple of hours free before a midnight-6 am shift, so I looking forward to napping. On the way back to my room, I ran into a friend who asked, “Have you ever had peppermint schnapps?”

        I had not.

        The minutiae doesn’t really matter, but what does matter is that I was very insistent that I get back to my room by 9:15 so that I got at least 90 minutes of sleep. I think I *only* had two shots, which was a decision I made, and I remember being thrilled that it tasted better than the keg beer of my youth. I got that damn nap, and I emerged from my slumber still slightly drunk, slightly hungover, and definitely ready to die. I might have implanted a false memory of being ensconced in a blanket until my shift ended when the sun came up. Greenly nibbling away at the leftover half of a chicken cheesesteak from the staff fridge was my only comfort.

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    • The first time I drank (and the time I was closest to being drunk) I was home for winter break my first year of college and my best friend kissed me. It was nice. Yes, I liked the smell of her chapstick. She’s now happily married to a guy and many years later I married my wife.

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    • My parents were sampling a bunch of liquors from my oma’s house, and they might not have realized just how many small tastes they offered to my 16-year-old self. My older sibling and I walked down to the lake in the dark afterwards, and we sure had a grand old time.

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    • I think I win this one! I was two years old. Two. My parents had a party the night before and didn’t clean up afterward, and I got up earlier than everyone and wandered around the house finishing off people’s half-empty glasses. My mom woke up to find me standing at the foot of the bed staring at her, swaying gently from side to side, with droopy eyes and a little half-smile on my face.

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    • the first time i had adult-sanctioned liquor (not snuck in secret) one of my mother’s more chaotic friends was trying to offload a seven dollar bottle of cherry vodka she’d been given for free at her usual liquor store as a customer appreciation/we can’t sell this gift

      there’s a video of me doing a shot directly from the bottle, making a horrible face, and gagging loudly

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    • i don’t quite remember the first time I got drunk (seems about right?) but i went to and threw a lot of parties in high school and I remember throwing a big one at a carpet warehouse, where, after wanting to make sure that I got “my share” of the mike’s hard lemonade/captain morgan’s I had paid for, I was dancing wildly and tried to jump on a giant pile of rolled up carpets that were stacked in giant shelving, but i basically just agitated the shelf and the whole pile rolled out on top of me. so i got stuck at the bottom of a carpet avalanche, from which i had to be rescued. and like, i was pretty everyone saw my thong?

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    • I was around 12 and it was drinks of triumph. There were these mean older teenagers (about 16 years old) who lived on my street who used to bully my friend and I . One day I noticed the teenagers stashing a box of heineken beer in an area they used to hangout in so they wouldn’t get caught by their parents. I told my friend about it, and in the end we decided to get back at them and take it. We ended up hiding out near their hangout spot waiting for them to leave. After they left we crept into their hangout spot grabbed the box of heineken that was so big we had to both each carry a side and ran as fast our feet could take us. We celebrated our success like a team winning the championship; shooting beer around like it was champagne. We got not only drunk off of the beer but also the thrill of the win. The teenagers were so pissed when they could not find their beer the next day, and they never discovered it was us. My first time getting drunk is still one of my favourite experiences of getting drunk.

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    • The first first time was when I was supposed to go out and meet a bunch of friends for an event but I found one of my brother’s bottles of terrible flavored vodka and because I didn’t think about what would happen I stupidly got too buzzed and had to stay home. A girl I had a MAD crush on at the time that I rarely got to see was asking where I was and said she was disappointed that I wasn’t there and I’ll NEVER FORGIVE MYSELF FOR THAT MOMENT.

      But the first time I got properly drunk was with a group of queer friends I met online because we all watched Glee, they flew out to LA and we got very drunk in WeHo and it was a beautiful gay time.

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    • Sincerely i was crushed when my wife left me and the kids for no reason, all my effort to get her back wasn’t successful . I had to play the role of a mother and father at the same time, it  wasn’t easy at all for me. So i decided to look for a spiritual help to get her back home. I was so lucky to get in touch with Dr. Joe who helped me to get my wife back in less than 48 hours, i was surprised and  overwhelmed. it was a miracle and only Dr. Joe can do this.Thank you Dr. Joe, for my family and i will  forever be grateful  to you. You need your wife or husband back or you want to do a love spell on anyone you love then hurry now and contact Dr. Joe the great spell caster;  via email:   dr.joespirtualhome@ gmail. com or call and chat him on Whatsapp: +2349048691694

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  10. hi hello, love the truthing with the post-cleaning 80s soft rock, great vibes! i showered for this and I’m trying to decide what snack to eat, i think it’s gonna be cheese

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  11. HELLO everyone I lied in the copy of this post and I am NOT wearing pajamas, I am somehow still wearing my jeans, but I do have some rosé. have y’all kept wearing jeans in quarantine? I saw someone on twitter calling them ‘hard pants’ and have not recovered

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    • babe ilysm but i feel like now that i know you’re wearing jeans in quarantine i will never truly understand you :(

      good news, you don’t have to fully understand your loved ones to love them unconditionally – that’s some FREE CAPRICORN ADVICE from me to all of you!!!!! ;) (extremely important if you’ve ever loved an aquarius, for specific example) (hi laneia)

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    • I’m with you, Rachel. Yes I’ve been wearing jeans in quarantine.

      Not today though! Today I wore a low cut wrap dress that is always at risk of showing, like, my full bra. Because there’s nowhere else I can wear it except in the safety my own nome.

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    • I’ve worn pajama pants so much that I’m now to the novelty Christmas part of the drawer they have robots wearing little scarves and (more importantly) enormous pockets

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    • I put on jeans when I have to leave my apartment but most days if I choose to put on pants, I’m wearing pajamas, sweatpants or athletic shorts. The “if” part of “if I choose to put on pants” is key here.

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    • I have still worn jeans, but it feels relaxed because some of them were my scruffier or looser-fitting ones on days that I teach (where before I would be wearing only other pants or sharper-looking jeans)…teaching online is weird and not my favorite, but at least I don’t have to worry about students judging my professionalism based on my clothes?

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    • I have still been wearing jeans but like the comfier ones or when the situation requires it like yesterday I was woodworking and then jeans are necessary. So I’ve been wearing a mix of jeans, leggings, & sweats/pj pants.

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  12. very important comment while riese is on here. when I was out in the real world last month, i found an original copy of the soundtrack from the L word season 1. do you want it?

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  13. Hi!!!!
    I just finished eating the last of my homemade pizza, I made cheese and cheese and pineapple. It was pretty amazing, I did get a fever both nights I made my pizzas (less amazing), but it was overall the best thing I’ve done during quarantine.
    I’m in the weird recovery stage of I’m alert enough to need things to do but need to stay in bed and rest. Brainstorming ideas of chill activities to do with very low energy???

    My cat Sweetums has been really cute and cuddly this whole time (as always)

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  14. Here is where I would REALLY like to start a thread about the scary stories, urban legends and generally ways we both tried to frighten each other as kids at sleepovers.

    I’ll start with a light one: There was a fad at my school for a hot minute that there was a goat-man in the woods? (which now I am like…you mean Pan?) Anyway! Kids were always like “I saw the goat-man last night. For real!”

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  15. this is very cute, hi cuties, i’m about to make TWO alison roman recipes and drink some pink wine! might even fuck around and try to get some sleep tonight! LOVE YOU ALL THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE <3 <3 <3

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  24. Sorry I was late to the slumber party because I was watching Glee. (A thing I probably could have said ten years ago if I was out in high school.)

    NEVER HAVE I EVER……. hooked up with a teacher/professor/TA/tutor.

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  28. what was the weirdest thing you did at sleepovers / slumber parties as a kid?

    mine was that we would cry, we called them “crying sessions,” everybody would talk about their trauma and insecurities (usually body or boy related) and we’d cry together. we did it like once a month for an entire year and we were 12.

    half of us turned out to be queer

    ok WHAT DID U DO

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  34. what song always makes you cry and you are kind of embarrassed about it ok i’ll start

    comfortable by john mayer
    and the version of “a moment like this” recorded live at american idol when kelly clarkson had just won

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  35. hello my dudes how’s your life going today i stubbed my toe on the doorframe and was so put out at the reminder of my physical existence that i went back to bed and slept for another four hours!

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  36. if you have a pet please tell me what they are doing at this precise moment!

    my cat sharktopus is sitting in my lap between me and the laptop aggressively grooming her chest. If i move my arm she WILL headdive off the couch with the force of her bath so i am trapped for eternity

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  39. Beep Beep!! Tell me all about your MIDDLE SCHOOL CRUSHES!!!

    Celebrity or IRL, and you don’t have to give names, just tell me about the butterflies you felt and why 🦋

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    • Mine was a friend who was a year older. She was super smart and pretty and always so kind and supportive towards me. I didn’t even realize it was a crush until she’d already gone to high school but looking back I’m it was.

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    • Carmen! I could not get my crushes under control in middle school. I feel like it was just everyone at some point. The worst one? This hardcore conservative Christian girl who just would rail and rail about how being gay was wrong and I was just like: “I love her hair.”

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    • middle school i was too repressed and nerdy to admit i had feelings about anything or anyone BUT early high school the drill captain for one of the sections of marching band held the key to my heart

      something about seeing this weedy girl in a polyester uniform loading instruments half her weight into a truck was very formative

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    • My middle school crush is MARRIED NOW. Which is a totally reasonable thing for a straight 25 year old to be (yes, yes, straight and slightly younger v off-brand) but I still can’t wrap my head around knowing ALI GOLDRICH IS MARRIED.

      She was in the girl group that was friends with my boy group and she was just the cutest and coolest and loved her so much. The girl group would always wrap each other’s lockers on their birthdays and get each other tiaras and I made a “joke” that I wished someone would wrap my locker and get me a tiara. AND THEN SHE DID. V sweet trans memory looking back.

      I didn’t tell her how I felt all through middle school because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship, but then I found out years later that she’d had a crush on me the whole time too!

      And now she’s… married!

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    • Her green eyes, olive skin and long limbs reminded me of woodlands of what I thought Artemis should be like.
      A maiden swift and lithe as deer with a clear gaze that makes your heart beat faster.

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      • Oh that’s right Nicole, you don’t know me that well yet, I talk about it all the time but it was ANGELINA JOLIE!!

        I don’t think i had any irl crushes in middle school, I was very very busy shoving all my gayness back deep inside.

        But Angelina was the first time I remember feeling something, going “whoa buddy NOT THAT” and then quickly loved to hide it while also obsessing about her every chance I got.

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      • In high school I had a MASSIVE CRUSH on the girl who sat across from me in AP Government. She has the prettiest curly hair, and her older sister was gay so she talked big game about being “an ally” and she wore a metal choker made out of pop can tabs with our catholic school girl uniform… she also wore it with doc martens. I was forever in love.

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        • My biggest (just out of) middle school crush was also a girl with the prettiest curly hair!

          She was a senior, I was a freshman, she was the lead in the school musical and had the most beautiful voice. We also walked in the same direction from 4th to 5th periods and I would always find myself walking behind her admiring her beautiful hair.

          The greatest moment of my 14 year old life was when she noticed my Wicked hoodie I got from seeing it in New York (this was 2004/2005 so it was VERY COOL for California kid me to have this) and brought her other theater kid friends over to admire it.

          I never saw her after that year and have since failed to find her on the internet but I hope she’s happy whatever she’s doing now.

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    • DEVON SAWA – Ana he responded to me on Twitter a year ago and to this day it’s my fav and only celeb Interaction.

      Also Harley Quinn (a love for unhinged girls) topanga (my actual root) and Armando West from my elementary school who blocked me on AIM

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    • Carmen, one of my middle school crushes was my 8th grade English teacher. She was fresh out of college and I loved her with the intensity of a thousand suns, as teenagers are wont to do.

      Imagine my surprise when she (now married and close to retirement) showed up on my nephew’s 6th grade class schedule…AND (!!) she still remembered me.

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    • Annie Lennox was my first crush and fashion icon in the 80s, and I used to imagine that I was in her band and I was her “special friend,’ in that we had a closeness that went beyond normal friendship. (I was like five.) When she released her first solo record, Diva, I was just going into middle school and was at an age where I could begin to really appreciate her music videos that were on constant rotation on MTV, and an interview with her was the first time I heard about feminism.

      Honestly, yesterday I fell down an Annie Lennox rabbit hole and binged a bunch of videos, and the crush is real and I still want to be in her band.

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  41. Does anyone have new quarantine crushes? People you’ve met on dating apps, friends you’re seeing in a new light now that you’ve zoomed together, etc. etc. etc.

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  43. Random question for The Editors/The Powers that Be: Will the Friday Open Thread ever come back? That was something I looked forward to every week, but I don’t think there’s been one since late last summer.

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  44. Any body got stupid human tricks they wanna brag about/ confess to?

    I’m hyper mobile, I don’t actually understand normal range of human motion.
    My heel can touch the top of my head, my thumb can be bent to my arm. I can pick clothes with my feet and toss them with some degree of accuracy.

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  48. all right where are the rest of the nocturnal gremlins with no sleep schedule! tell me your favorite thing you’ve done in quarantine/pandemic/shelter in place/etc!

    my college theatre friends and i are doing weekly zoom reads of shakespeare. next week is twelfth night and i am v excited for my disaster butch viola!

    also i impulsively dyed a lot of my hair neon green

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    • Ooh how fun!!! Love the idea of a zoom read! Um funnest thing done so far would be… tie between cutting my wife’s hair last weekend and inventorying all our cupboards, fridge, and freezer. 😂

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    • Had a remote group watch of Portrait of a Lady on Fire with my group chat

      Did an exchange by mail of cute/fun/surprise items with a friend I was supposed to meet up with

      Made an anniversary treasure hunt around the house for my wife, complete with cryptic clues

      Have been overall sleeping better than usual because we don’t have to get up so early

      (This was a helpful exercise in lifting my mood, thank you!)

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    • Oh man twelfth night is my favourite Shakespeare play. It is the only Shakespeare play that I have ever laughed out loud while watching. My favourite thing I have done so far during quarantine was buying and eating whole pack of multi flavoured donuts. I have always wanted to do that and thought quarantine was the perfect time to do it. Carpe diem.

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      • live your dreams!

        this is a group that managed to turn rehearsals for the scottish play into high comedy so i’m very much looking forward to the levity of next week. this week we did hamlet which was less cheerful

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        • when we did mackers it was live! but yes, plenty of technical issues to go around.

          it took us a while to figure out the right video platform, but we finally caved and did zoom since half the group are students using it for classes is still. the biggest issue is laggy sound, so sometimes we just have really. long. pauses. between lines

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    • I often go through a list in my head of all the good that’s occurring while staying home! I’ve foraged salads from my yard of violets, dandelion greens, and henbit. I’ve gardened with my kids and we got baby chicks! I’ve gone hiking with my kids and we found tadpoles.

      And the best is that we’re going to get to adopt two of our kids! I’ve always wanted to be a parent, and my greatest wish in life is finally coming true of being a forever parent!

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    • Good morning!
      I just walked in on a wood dove on my balcony.
      I’ve been feeding the birds since winter and put out all of the rest of the sunflower seeds to get sunflowers a few weeks ago, and now everyone, the sparrows and the dove, is absolutely appalled and shocked when I dare set a foot out onto the balcony that I pay rent for, mind you.
      Something tells me that I will probably loose all rights to said outdoor seating area when someone starts nesting there.
      Hope you guys have enough coffee!

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        • Thank you @shewasnice!
          It’s all just been very..emotional.
          I don’t think most people realize what the lack of PPE means in reality.
          It‘s like sending us out into Verdun in a bathing suit and a party hat, with a clap on the shoulder for „working on the front lines“.
          So, let’s face mortality without being able to hug anyone or have a good old face to face talk with a friend.
          My twitter timeline is made up of people trading things on animal crossing and residents mourning their classmates. It’s very surreal. Especially what’s going on in the US. It’s like watching a disaster movie parody, with the president joking about banging models as he talks about death predictions. Absolutely surreal.
          I mean, everyone talks about numbers and absolutely everyone has an opinion on those numbers, but I have patients that I am just very scared for, whose loved ones I talk to on the phone, people who are old and hurting, who hold my hand and speak in scared whispers.
          In the meantime, with the lockdown having gone on for many weeks, all of the lost people keep washing up in my ER, especially at night.
          The drunk homeless no one gives money to anymore, those with the cancer symptoms they didn’t dare get checked out for weeks, the scared, the depressed, those with a beginning psychosis..and the young women.
          I mean, I‘m an internist, I haven’t been trained for this „expected rise in domestic violence“ and with the rest of the chaos all around it‘s really hard to pull myself together and quietly ask whether everything’s ok and then patiently wait for an answer. I’m an old ICU doc, I‘m used to a lot of bad things, but this kind of crap really gets to me. The ER is the one point of intervention most people have and if I don’t find the right words, they go back to that hell they can’t find a way out of by themselves.
          But no one gave me those words.
          I was just on the phone with my trauma friend, who was stalked by her ex a couple of years ago and managed to get a woman to call the police on her boyfriend tonight.
          She cried in the on call room for an hour after that.
          My friend the trauma surgeon who doesn’t bat an eye when someone has been run over by a car.
          It’s just really hard.
          But, amazingly, there’s been a lot of good, too. Everything’s a lot quieter, friends whom I haven’t seen nearly enough in the past years have popped back up with a message or a phone call and I have a lot more time for the little things, like feeding the birds (with restaurants and cafés closed they‘re pretty much moving in by now) writing cards and sending gifts to friends, cooking food, going running, that sort of thing. I‘m also interested to see how the world will be after this. Lots of Airbnb’s are closing down and freeing up inner city living spaces, there are a lot more bike lanes in my city to accommodate social distance commuting, there’s a lot less travel and a lot less social pressure to do so, I really hope this will be the reset button we needed.
          I hope you’re well and hanging in there!
          Take care!
          xoxo

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          • @amidola, thank you for sharing more about your reality! I’m trying to do my part by staying home, working from home, keeping my kids home. I cannot imagine the surreal world of going to work in an emergency room. I appreciate hearing your stories, and knowing that you are out in the world doing your best to be a listening ear and a hand to hold. Providing physical and other resources to the best of your ability.

            I’m a foster parent with a house full of kids (who for the most part are doing impressively well), and I worry about those people in unsafe homes, with limited resources. I do hope that our world as a whole takes some time to think about how to take care of others and of our world. We got baby chicks and are doing more gardening and less comsuming.

  51. I’m sad I missed this, but me and my girlfriend smuggled my Christmas tree into the park and planted it among its cousins, and then smoked a joint and watched the satellites zoom past the constellations, and we saw a hedgehog, so I had a pretty good time too :)

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  52. This was really cute and fun. As a woman who has only transitioned in middle age, I never got to have a sleepover like this when I was a kid. So I just wanted to say thank you to the editors and everyone. Love you all! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

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