Thank you!

I'm going to be paying my student loans off ASAP, buuuut your comment made me think all afternoon about maybe a treat would be nice! I was planning to treat myself to a men's messenger bag from Fossil that I've been coveting for years as a bribe/reward for going to the dentist in August, and why not add a little extra just because I haven't bought anything expensive in a while?

So now I'm looking at watches so that I can have a shiny new one for work and also for my brother's wedding in March, since my current "dress" watch is pink and my wedding tux is going to be deep teal. I can't decide which I like best, but it's going to be a few weeks before I head down to the Fossil store/place an order for the bag anyway. :D

You know, I have to say - today hasn't been all bad.
The End of the Toast has coincided with a ton of stress about my job (see my sporadic posts on Link Roundups/Open Threads since May), and mostly getting burnt out on my specific job duties. I enjoy my job, it's just time to move on, you know?

Anyway, last week I was so happy to learn that I was finally getting a promotion to a new role, and today I found out my compensation. I'm going to have $2,000 of take-home pay a month and I am so excited. it's not a *lot* of money when you look at the Trumps of the world (wait, maybe it is, the amount of bankruptcy he's had), but it is definitely enough to allow me to pay rent AND student loans at the same time, and also be able to maintain a lifestyle that includes enough self-indulgence to combat my depression. (also these 3 things are mutually exclusive with my current pay rate)

There are currently 7 pages of comments, so mine is buried, but I have to say thank you to everyone here, because I wouldn't've got the gumption to ask for more or to feel confident in my abilities, or even some of the self-growth I've had over the last few years, without all the commenters and articles and advice here and also the links to Ask A Manager (which I wouldn't have known about otherwise).

Also it's probably a good thing that The Toast is closing up because now I won't be distracted from work by long comment threads...

Yes, that was my thought as soon as I was able to process the impact of this statement of hers and get beyond the emotional tears of "here is this famous, powerful woman writing in my pseudo-home about things that are so precious to me". (Also it reminded me how HUGE the readership of The-Toast is, beyond the commenting community.)

It's not like I wasn't going to vote for her already, but now it's emotional/personal rather than logical.

I was stopped at a redlight at 10am, driving to work, and since I had my phone's browser already attuned to The-Toast dot net I whipped it out and did a page refresh and these are my reactions (and the way they followed through at subsequent redlights):

OH MY GOD
Wait, wait, really?
NO. OH MY GOD.
(actual tears)
"well someone has just tied up the New England Archivist/Librarian vote"
but seriously, holy shit oh crap i need to go to work now :(

(also! the actual tears were because I was so moved by the content of the post, but all I could express was "oh my god")

Wasn't there speculation that Brad was gay early on, or worrying about it, or was that another paramour?

i misread that as "themed monorail service" and was like OKAY YES

please how can we make this happen?

Thank you for linking that! I missed it before (or maybe I intentionally ignored it because for a while I gave myself a moratorium on NK, Communist China and Russia, and WW2 reading, after a heavy period of only reading about terrible dictatorships). I've read a little into it and bookmarked it to read more deeply this weekend.

It looks like a huge grin on my phone! I had NO IDEA it was a grimace for other people until I saw that article that bookwormV mentioned. And there isn't a similar Big Grin elsewhere!

Such timing! John Mcwhorter wrote for the Atlantic today about complexities of language and covers the topic of why languages are different/change over time. So if anyone wants to read more, have a look: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/...

(NB McWhorter is my favorite pop linguist. The Power of Babel is a pretty great book. I just got an ARC of his newest about the evolution of English that I can't wait to have a chance to read!)

(eta: favorite NON-TOASTIE pop linguist, because I adore Gretchen's writing, too! how could i even not think to lump her in with the others. maybe because her book isn't on my shelf? (isn't on my shelf yet))

I am sooooooo lucky that my teeth aren't in bad shape. my dad had been nagging me my entire young adulthood about going (he gave up when I was more or less a regular adult), which only made the anxiety worse, but it turns out his dad and brother both got the bad genetics and had awful trouble, so he was really worried about me compounding the problems by not going. I called him yesterday to tell him the dentist's results and he was so audibly relieved. I hadn't realized how much he was worrying!

I did a lot of therapy when I was a teen and in my early 20s for my anxiety and phobias, so I do have several techniques in place for dentist visits! They just don't really solve the problem of being unable to bear the sensory stimulation or lying back. Sometimes it's hard, too, to figure out if I'm having an autistic meltdown or an anxiety attack. Lots of times they're very similar, but meltdowns are built up by overstimulation (sensory or emotional or social or) which can be aggravated by anxiety.

TBH my phobia has got as bad as it is because the last time I went, I was drugged to the nines with valium and did everything I could to manage the anxiety, and it was still horrible. I wanted to scream and fight but I couldn't because I was such a zombie it was like I was packed in tight cotton and in dreamland, and I could only cry. I had done everything in your list, except the notepad.

(Yesterday was just X-Rays and a visual inspection because we are doing baby steps, and I wanted to give myself the absolute least scary first visit. Next will be a light cleaning, and if that goes well, we'll fix a chipped tooth where the filling is cracked and the sharp edge bothers me. I actually did pretty well as long as I wasn't reclined in the chair, once the initial panic (which was induced by misophonia, so at least in part it was a meltdown) subsided).

Thank you for chiming in with advice! :)