u/N0S0UP_4U

Probably a long shot but wanted to buy some in honor of Mike Ditka.

My guest mattress has finally reached the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced. RIP. I generally have guests 2-3 days per month. I also plan to sometimes sleep in that bed myself. I am on the tall and thin side, as are the people we generally have stay at our house. Right now the mattress that's on that bed is in such poor shape that my MIL the last time she stayed here finally admitted she'd prefer to sleep on our couch over sleeping on it (I don't blame her one bit).

The biggest thing I'm having an issue with is balancing my desire to not spend a lot on this because of how rarely people will use it with my desire to not waste money on a product that will either be uncomfortable from day 1 or fall apart quickly.

The mattress we have in our bedroom is a soft/plush model from Denver Mattress. We love it, but it also cost over $1,500.

So after consulting ChatGPT, reading several articles on sites like This Old House, and watching several YouTube videos, and with the help of my dad and brother who have done this before, I attempted to frame out a 16x14 room in my unfinished basement in East Peoria. Then after finishing up, I called my HVAC guy to come out and give me an estimate on running HVAC into the room. I got no estimate and instead got the HVAC guy showing me around all the mistakes we made and telling me we basically need to tear a bunch of the framing out and start over because what we have now would never pass an inspection. At least he didn't charge me for coming out, I guess.

At this point I think I'd prefer to just pay to have a contractor come and frame the room the right way. Who around here does good framing work for a somewhat reasonable price?

My wife and I have one boy, who's 5. She's also pregnant with our second child, who will be a girl and is due in January.

In our will, we have my parents listed as the people who will take our son if we both die. This is mostly due to necessity - they're basically the only people we both trust with this duty. They will be in their early eighties when our son turns 18 - not ideal, but it was the best we could do.

Now with this baby girl due, my parents don't feel like a realistic option anymore because they'll obviously be significantly older - my dad will actually be 90 when our daughter turns 18. I need to change the will, but I don't have an obvious candidate. It made me realize just how much we rely on my parents for help. My son has spent only one night that wasn't either with them or us, ever. When they're out of town, we don't have anyone to ask to come and help if there's an emergency.

We have a few other parent friends in our area, but for various reasons, we don't see them as viable candidates to be full-time parents to our son if something happened to us. We're really not even at the point where we'd feel comfortable asking them to watch our son. Most of this is because we don't know them all that well. They're all friends we only see a few times a year, or once a month at the most. Conversations stay pretty surface-level. I don't feel like we have "that" kind of relationship with any of them. If you haven't noticed, we're both really bad at making friends.

For anyone else in this type of situation, what helped you build solid, lasting relationships with other parents such that you would trust them to help with your children when needed - or if the unthinkable happened?

In which TNT Sports Bar and Grill on Meadow in East Peoria is the big winner with 10 violations including “pink growth” in an ice machine.

Mayors of other cities take note: This is how real public servants act.

I’ve been using Brave Browser, but I didn’t know about all the problems and controversies, nor about the ties to Peter Thiel.

I just want to browse the web in peace without being tracked or getting malware on my machine.

It’s fine if Brave is still the best option, but I thought it was good to get opinions on what else is out there.

Preface: Don't tell me I need a vasectomy, please. I already know. I’m asking for a referral at my next physical. And I've already told my wife I'm a hard "no" on any more kids after this one and will be scheduling a vasectomy before the baby is born. And I'm also in therapy. God knows I need it.

Preface 2: Please don’t shame me for my poor decisions that got me to this point. I already fucking know. No matter how hard you’re judging me, I’m already judging myself twice as hard. It’s not helpful. Also you’re probably breaking the sub rules.

Preface 3: My wife did not and would never intentionally sabotage or “forget” to take her birth control. She is a good person and does not deserve to be accused of this even by random people online. She’s also extremely Type A and routine-oriented and rarely forgets to do anything.

My marriage to my wife of 12 years has been almost all good. We have personalities that complement each other well; I'm very attracted to her; she's very supportive of me in ways I need; she's just been a great partner to have in life. But the exception has been the issue of how many children to have. She has always wanted a big family; I have always wondered if I even wanted children at all. It's been a constant point of tension in our relationship even dating back to before we got married. In hindsight, we honestly both should probably have married other people, and I should have gotten a vasectomy at 21 or some other young age.

Well, we got settled into our careers, days turned into months and months into years, and soon we had been married for 6 years without really deciding whether or not we were going to have kids. She brought up the topic occasionally, and I would think about it for a while, but I never could really come to a firm conclusion one way or the other, and life is stressful and makes it easy to not think about it.

Then, despite being on birth control and taking the pills religiously, she got pregnant. I wasn't happy about it, but I put on a happy face to the best of my ability and am a loving dad to our little boy.

She gained 55 pounds while pregnant. I love her with all my heart but I'm just not attracted to large women. I tried my best to enjoy our sex life but it was just hard.

Then when our son turned 1, she left her job (long story but she didn't have much of a choice unfortunately). She wasn't getting rich or anything, but she was making $45K with free healthcare. So now I was thrust not only into fatherhood (about which I was ambivalent at best) but also into being a sole provider, which I had been explicit about not wanting.

Almost immediately after our son was born (I'm not even sure he was a month old yet), she was already on me about having a second one. I didn't react well to that, so she asked me to please not make a decision about it right then. But she'd make these passive aggressive comments every now and then about how I was willing to sleep with her but not willing to get her pregnant.

I stupidly thought there was a chance I might come around to the idea of a second child eventually. I thought about it and just couldn't seem to come up with any reasons why I would want one. But I thought maybe in time somehow I would change my mind. I tried to think about 25 years from now when I might wish there were more people around my table at Thanksgiving. I spent time in communities like oneanddone and fence sitter.

Finally my son turned 5 and was due to head to kindergarten in the fall. My wife started putting her resume out for jobs again. She was getting interviews. My days of being a sole provider were about to come to an end; I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. She'd lost all the baby weight plus another 10 pounds. I myself had lost 45 pounds and had switched to a less stressful job. And I was looking at therapists to help me deal with emotional problems I should have dealt with years ago. Things were finally looking up for us.

And then it happened. She showed me another fucking positive pregnancy test. Because I don't ever get to fucking be happy or have nice things. I think my exact words were something like "I'm going to be in denial about this for as long as I can." Ever since then I don't think I've smiled once, or if I did, I was definitely faking it. I told my boss who gave me a big smile and said "Congratulations". Hard to hear when I'm so unhappy about it.

If I knew I would have reacted this way to another child, I would have told her I was done at 1, period, don't ever ask again. But since I'm a moron instead, here we are. I sit and think about the pros and cons and reach the conclusion of "Well, then obviously I don't want another kid." But then I have to remind myself it's already happening whether I want it or not.

The more I talk and think about it, the more anger and rage I feel about this, among other (all negative) feelings. I feel violated like my choice has been taken away from me. I see attractive women on TV shows and have a mini-panic attack about one of them getting pregnant with another child I don't want (I know that's irrational, trust me). I feel that I have no constructive outlet for these feelings.

I'm just seeing a bunch of downsides with nothing to be excited about. So we're going to spend a bunch of money we don't have on healthcare/labor/delivery. My wife is going to gain a bunch of weight and then take at least 2 years to lose it again. Probably more. I'm probably spending another 6 years in financial purgatory as a sole provider living paycheck to paycheck. I'm going to have greater parental responsibilities. My existing son is going to miss out on time with us, mostly his mom, while she focuses on the baby. We're going to miss out on opportunities to travel the world, a long-term priority of mine. I'm going to have to wait until I'm 55 years old to have an empty nest. All this because of a pregnancy I didn't want to have happen in the first place. And don't even ask about pros because I haven't identified one way in which this will make my life easier or better.

I get on Reddit and look for stuff about this topic and it's almost all people either shaming the husband for not being happy because baby, or offering vague platitudes about how it's going to be OK because baby. I don't even really know what I want to hear to make me feel better anyway. I guess just knowing I’m not alone and I’m not a bad person would be nice.

Worst of all, I know subconsciously I'm blaming my wife for this and feeling resentful toward her even though I know it's not any more her fault than it is mine. I’ve been spending less time around her, though mostly to avoid ruining her mood or getting in an argument.

I dread when it's going to be time to tell other people and they're going to essentially be happy about this thing that I don't think I could possibly be less happy about. Then I also have to pretend to be happy while I slowly die inside. I picture that like the scene in “17 Again” where a woman gets promoted over Matthew Perry’s character and he has to stand in the elevator while she and her besties celebrate, or watching fans of an opposing sports team celebrate their team beating mine.

I've told my wife about my feelings, and even she is starting to lose patience with me. I just feel like I'm never going to be OK ever again. But I know I need to be OK again for my family's sake. Children, even those who weren’t planned or initially wanted, deserve two parents who give them love and attention.

TL;DR: My wife is pregnant. I don’t think there are words in the English language that are negative and dark enough to describe the way I feel about the prospect of having a second child. I don’t have anyone to express these feelings to other than my therapist. I need to be better for myself and my family.

For anyone reading this, if you’ve reached your mid-20s and have never thought “You know what would make my life better? A kid”, you probably don’t want kids, and that’s fine. Be honest with yourself, get sterilized, and don’t fuck up your and other people’s lives like I have.

And birth control is bullshit and not to be trusted.

My wife and I test drove a 2023 C40 Recharge yesterday. Among the minor annoyances we ran into was the feature that displays the speed limit next to the speedometer and flashes if you’re speeding. Is this something you can shut off such that it won’t pop up again the next time you start the car? (We’re American, in case that matters with the EU’s speed limit laws not applying)

My family and I are looking at buying an electric car in order to stop paying $5 a gallon for gas. We have solar panels, so the car would be basically free to drive except on long trips.

Considerations:

* I am 6’3” tall. I need a lot of leg room.

* We would like to keep the cost under $30,000. Under $25,000 would be great.

* We live in central Illinois. Most brands have a presence here, but notably Polestar does not.

* We hate Trump and his whole posse of enablers. We aren’t 100% anti-buying a Tesla, but it’s definitely not our first choice.

* We would really like leather seats if we can have them. I have a 5 year old boy and a baby on the way. We don’t expect huge messes all the time, but we would like to be able to wipe/vacuum off the seats when they do happen. We are neat freaks about our cars - messes get cleaned up, and we vacuum them regularly.

* We prefer something that sits higher off the ground.

* We prefer something with a range above 250 miles. 300 would be great. Also would prefer to be able to charge to 80% in as short a time as possible. The longest trips I make are generally about 300 miles. I figure if I have a 300 mile range then even in the winter I could make the trip with one charge on the way, or two short ones.

* We definitely need to have level 3 charging. Access to Tesla’s supercharger network would be nice.

* We both use Apple phones. We want Apple CarPlay to be available.

Cars I’ve looked at:

* Polestar 2 - decided against this because of lack of local presence.

* Hyundai Ioniq 5

* Ford Mustang Mach-E - I have historically been a Ford guy, and the leg room is amazing in this one.

* Kia EV6

* Volvo XC40 - I really like the way this one looks, but not in love with the shorter range or the non-leather seats.

* BMW i4 - not really in our price range, might be able to find a few under 30K

I can’t find any info when I search online. I was trying to take my son to the Peoria PlayHouse and couldn’t get into the park to get there. Will it be blocked off all day?

I haven’t worn a condom in like 15 years because my wife has been on birth control. Now she has to stop taking it for a while, so I’m back in the condom game. I’m probably a little more than average sized, about 7” or so.

For those guys who wear condoms regularly, what brand do you recommend, and why?

Looks like another board elected by the people is not listening to the people.

Hey all, I'm looking at potentially buying a 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E Select with about 10,000 miles. The vehicle has a manufacturer buyback title. According to Ford's buyback disclosure, the reason for repurchase was: "Powertrain malfunction, reduced power, door lock inoperative, camera intermittent failure."

The service records show multiple warranty visits for powertrain malfunction and reduced-power warnings, charging faults, and diagnostics involving the high-voltage battery system and Battery Energy Control Module (BECM). Ford performed numerous software updates, module resets, recalibrations, battery-system tests, and consulted engineering. In June 2025, they performed a more significant repair involving access to the high-voltage battery system and replacement or servicing of a battery-related component/module.

Other repairs included replacement of a rear door actuator and a front camera/coaxial cable. The records do not show a full battery-pack replacement, motor replacement, accident damage, or structural damage.

I don’t know anything about manufacturer buybacks and know very little about electric cars. Given the car’s history, my lean is to either make a low offer and plan to walk away if it is countered, or just stay away from this one altogether, but I wanted to know what this community thinks since I could be totally off base with my lack of knowledge of electric cars.

What would you do?

I’m a liberal Democrat too, but Jesus Christ. How the hell are these people still not hearing us? We don’t want these things anywhere in our state, period, and we don’t care if we “lose out” to China or a right to work state.

Tell us exactly what value hyperscale data centers bring to our country or our communities beyond vaguely fearmongering about the scary red states or China. And the “rules” Eric wants are an absolute joke.