u/UVIndigo

Lawndale strikes me as a Westchester/Greenwich/Brentwood/Wellesley/Marin County/Winnetka type place (tried to hit a bunch of the wealthy suburbs around the country.) The types of people these areas attract are usually insufferable or their families who choose them for the schools/communities so that their kids can have “better lives.”

Artists like the Lanes seem more likely to want to live in Venice Beach or Brooklyn or in the 90s you’d expect them to live in a small artsy city like Portland, OR or Austin or Ann Arbor or Asheville.

What’s your theory on why they chose Lawndale? Did they inherit a house? The rest of the family seems to live far off (as evidenced by the family reunion) so some ancestor leaving them the house seems unlikely. Is Lawndale secretly hiding a bunch of artsy residents that would make it worth it for them?

They present it as 2% of people disappeared, but if that was accurate, the majority of people would have lost someone who wasn’t very close to them at all - maybe their dentist or a 2nd cousin, etc.

Watching it and seeing how many of the main characters lost someone truly close to them (and treating Nora like an outlier, of course) it just feels like a number larger than 2% feels more believable?

Not trying to nitpick, mostly just wondering if anyone else felt like 1/20 would have been a more believable number based on the way the plot unfolds than 1/50.

I’m not going to get into the whole back story but everything is a disaster, I haven’t been able to find another job and I can’t keep lighting myself on fire anymore to keep everyone warm. Before anyone says “you need more leadership training” or “learn to delegate” - this isn’t one of those situations and I’ve had other posts I’ve made trying to fix what is fixable. You know it’s bad when your therapist keeps suggesting you quit without anything lined up.

The situation is no longer fixable and my own manager won’t even meet with me anymore. I’m debating taking a medical leave so that I can extend my tenure and job search while on leave.

So, what I want now are your stories, if you have them, about when you finally checked out, stopped being proactive or even reactive and just let it all go to shit.

One of the most bizarre loose ends for me is that Luke and Lorelai remodel a house together but break up after Luke had been living there for all of, what, 2 months? One month? Did they even officially move in?

So did they have the most awkward conversation in history offscreen about Luke getting “bought out” of his half of the of the renovation costs, which I’d 100% assume Luke would have at least split or Luke would have covered it entirely given that he was ready to buy an entirely different house on their behalf with 100% of his own money. We know he started the renovation process before Lorelai even knew he was doing it, so he must have at least put down some hefty down payments if they were splitting it.

How does that even work legally when someone pays for a renovation of someone else’s legal house with the intention of it being a family home and then they break up unmarried?

So I put $100 into an app and just decided to mess around during the World Cup and with some MLB games. Between that initial $100 (not adding any more) plus some of the “Bonus Bets” I’ve lost $675, have won $768.05 and have $213 I’m about to withdraw while I’m “ahead of the game” because I finally realized I’m screwing up my taxes more than I initially thought.

I now know that despite occasionally talking to gamblers in the past and learning you could subtract your losses that now you can only claim 90% of losses starting with 2026 taxes and I’m sure that between living in Massachusetts and the fact that we’ve always taken the standard deduction, I’ll have regretted this come April. We usually use FreeTaxUSA to do our taxes and my household income likely to be about $180k this year putting us in the 24% marginal tax bracket.

I keep reading threads on this and I still don’t quite understand anything beyond the fact that if I can’t or don’t itemize, I need to treat the full $768 and not the “difference” of $93.50 as the taxable winnings. If I itemize it’s the winning minus 90% of the losses that would be taxed.

Is my math all correct? For MA state taxes, it’s would be 5% on the $768 which is $38. For federal it will be 24% which would be $184.32 meaning that if I take the standard deduction I’ll be in the hole $222.32 at tax time. Considering the initial $100 in the account, that means I’ll have lost or have been taxed on a total of $322 despite “winning” a net of $113 after my initial $100 deposit.

If it makes sense to itemize this year (which I’ve never done and, frankly, don’t want to do since I’m guessing I’ll screw it up.) I’m assuming from what I’ve read that I’d only pay taxes on my winnings of minus 90% of my losing which would be $768 - 607.50 =$160.50 in total winnings.

So in that case, if I take the standard deduction, 24% of $160.50 is $38.52 and 5% is $8.03 which $46.55 total in taxes owed if I did it that way.

Sounds like I’ll walk away having pocketed after $66.45 after initial wager/taxes if I itemize but would be $322.32 in the hole ($100 wager + $222.32 in taxes) if I take the standard deduction?

If I’m massively misunderstanding, please definitely let me know! I feel dumb as hell thinking I’d only be out $100 from fooling around with sports betting and might have to throw something at taxes if I won big, but it never even occurred to me to think much about how it doesn’t matter what you ended with, it just matters what you won along the way, how much it adds up, and how little it’s worth it even for the entertainment.

So I put $100 into DraftKings and just decided to mess around during the World Cup and with some MLB games. Between that initial $100 (not adding any more) plus some of the “Bonus Bets” I’ve lost $675, have won $768.05 and have $213 I’m about to withdraw while I’m “ahead of the game” because I just don’t have that gambling gene and because I finally realized I’m screwing up my taxes more than I initially thought. I also now know you can only claim 90% of losses and I’m sure that between living in Massachusetts and the fact that we’ve always taken the standard deduction, I’ll have regretted this come April.

I keep reading threads on this and I still don’t quite understand anything beyond the fact that if I can’t or don’t itemize, I need to treat the full $768 and not the “difference” of $93.50 as the taxable winnings.

So instead of being 5% tax for MA state taxes, for instance, on $93.50, it’s actually 5% on the $768 which is $38. For federal it will be 24% which would be $184.32 meaning that if I take the standard deduction I’ll be in the hole $222.32 at tax time. Considering the initial $100, that means I’ll have lost or have been taxed on a total of $322 despite “winning” a net of $113.

If it makes sense to itemize this year (which I’ve never done and, frankly, don’t want to do since I’m guessing I’ll screw it up.) I’m assuming from what I’ve read that I’d only pay taxes on my winnings of minus 90% of my losing which would be $768 - 607.50 =$160.50.

So in that case, if I take the standard deduction, 24% of $160.50 is $38.52 and 5% is $8.03 which $46.55 total in taxes owed if I did it that way.

Sounds like I’ll walk away having pocketed after $66.45 after initial wager/taxes if I itemize but would be $-322.32 in the hole ($100 wager + 222.32 in taxes) if I take the standard deduction?

If I’m massively misunderstanding, please definitely let me know! I feel dumb as hell thinking I’d only be out $100 from fooling around with sports betting and might have to throw something at taxes if I won big, but it never even occurred to me to think much about how it doesn’t matter what you ended with, it just matters what you won along the way, how much it adds up, and how little it’s worth it even for the entertainment.

Job A:

-A managerial job that has felt like it’s perpetually been in a state of falling apart for 2 years, but really accelerated last year. I manage 2 very difficult people I can’t fire and it’s burning me out.

-Pay will be $111k in a few weeks (COL raise.) It has the unusual perk of a small tuition reimbursement for my son’s private school worth roughly $4,500 but tuition has been paid for this year and next year will be my son’s final year at the school so it’s only relevant for next year’s $4,500 or $5,500 or so with fee raises if that happens.) Additionally, my job provided an automatic 9% deposit into my 401k, so that is another nearly $10k after my COL raise.

-We may be starting to restructure in a month or so, I’m not sure. Seems likely as there’s a big leadership change and several roles that have been purposefully held open in an anticipation of the leadership change.

-This job is hybrid (2-3 days a week) but I like the people I work with and having an office to go to every week. The commute is very short and near pick up for my son, my doctor’s office, therapists office, etc.

-There are a lot of disorganized aspects, poor lines of communication. It’s an extremely gossipy place and it’s hard to stay neutral while everyone seems ready to throw everyone else under the bus. But, at the same time, “the devil you know” is a real thing and I know I can navigate anything other than my team being outright laid off if there is a huge re-org. There are a handful of people like me who don’t engage in that shitshow and we’ve gravitated towards each other so I do have some solid coworkers who I hope I could stay in contact with after I leave since we live in the same area.

Job B

-Individual contributor, no management aspect. Feeling 100% OK about letting go of the leadership responsibility.

- Pay is $125k. No other real perks and similar benefits, other than retirement. 3% 401k match at $3,750. I’d be losing $6250 in retirement benefits next year and the one time discount of around $5,500 in Spring 2027 when tuition for my son’s final year of school is due. So for the first full year I’d actually be earning around $1500 less but then as long as I’d get at least COL raises, I’d actually end up ahead the year after. There is a possibility my son’s grandparents would make up the gap as well in which case I’d end up “ahead” right off the bat (but trying not to operate under that assumption.)

- I’m really interested in the job and the industry, it aligns more were my own personal interests, my interviews felt like easy, natural conversations vs. my interview with my current job that often felt very tense and almost…snobby? People at this job at least come across as being much, much more relaxed. Feels less performative and like a better personality fit.

-Job is 100% remote except for travel, but I also have to travel for my hybrid job. One of my territories in this role would be where my best friend lives so that’s a huge personal plus for me.

-A negative is that I’ve only been at my current role for 2.5 years and my resume really needed a long stint after a lot of job hopping during and prior to Covid. Worried I’ll be unhireable if this job somehow falls through.

Using my own family as a starting point, I’d assume their great-grandchildren would range from 30-60 years old and their great great grandchildren would be children or teenagers today.

I think as an educated (if not relatively wealthy) family for the time period, they’d have descendants who would include mostly professionals with advanced degrees, maybe some artistic types, and a few very wealthy branches (like the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Ken and Rilla.)

I think they’d likely be all spread out around the world but would have an extremely strong sense of family. There’d be a small family compound on PEI - either at Green Gables or in Four Winds/Ingleside that would welcome huge family reunions. There would be a scholarship, prize or even a building at Queen’s and/or Redmond named for either the Blythes, Fords or Merediths and an annual football game at Redmond that the clan attends. Maybe even a descendent sitting on the board of trustees.

Easier to keep that sense of clannishness when you consider that two of Anne’s children married two of the Manse children, which would mean double cousins for their children.

What do you think?

At the start of Rainbow Valley when Rilla is 6, Anne mentions that Marilla is an old lady of 85. In Rilla of Ingleside, Rilla laments that no one calls her Bertha, and instead calls her Rilla, and she notes “She had been named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables, but Aunt Marilla had died before Rilla was old enough to know her very well.”

Rainbow Valley takes place over the course of a year and a half or so according to online sources and Marilla dying is never mentioned, which I assume it would be if it happened. So sometime between Rilla being 7.5 and 14 Marilla dies, but we never get to see Anne process it, which honestly is one of those moments I feel a little robbed of. Was she in Ingleside when it happened? Were Davy and Dora with her? Is Rachel Lynde still alive at the end of Rilla?

Not saying this as an insult to anyone who puts thought into the characters and I understand that’s kind of the point of a tv subreddit, especially for one that ended so many years ago.

But it does often feel like to me that the Palladinos, who cared more about giving Rory the same Season 8 she would have gotten at 23 at 32, and cared more about “full circle” moments than what actually made sense for the characters they grew over time, would read most of these threads and just think “wow, no, I just thought X was funny” or “it’s not that deep.”

It’s fascinating to me that compared to a lot of other TV shows where the discourse would have died by now, this one keeps going and the dissection of each character and storyline feels like Gilmore Girls has entered some new realm that’s usually only reserved for classic literature like Shakespeare, Austen or the Brontes.

I won’t go into all the nitty gritty details here but I think these are what it boils down to:

1. My husband’s boss has turned on a dime on him due to some other pressures. It’s feels like his boss is trying to cover his own ass or is trying to get my husband to quit. At the start of this phase the manager was acting like a complete asshole (I could overhear their check-ins.) Their check-ins are now recorded and his manager is using a lot of HR/PIP type speak that sounds supportive but is really performative - he’s still putting the blame on my husband on camera during these check-ins for things that if you look at emails/Teams messages are actually his boss’s fault. When husband tries to advocate for himself, he struggles which makes him sound guilty but it’s because he’s been put on the spot. He keeps realizing later that, like, 80% of the miscommunications weren’t actually his fault. I’ve seen the examples and it’s true.

2. Husband’s mental health has deteriorated over the past 2 months due to this. He’s feeling gaslit but struggling to fight back.

3. He started a new med (medical not psychological) that I think is causing anxiety, depression and mood swings as a side effect IN ADDITION to what is happening at work.

I had to beg him this morning to take a sick day and the weekend instead of outright quit. His mood this morning was the worst mental state I’ve ever seen him in. If it wasn’t for our son’s birthday party tomorrow and him being worried they’d put him in an involuntary hold, I would have driven him to the ER.

What we have done:

1. Talked to his doctor. He is getting on Zoloft prescribed from his primary doctor. He is pausing the other med he was on that may be impacting his mental state.

2. Got him an appt with a psychiatrist.

3. Sent his resume to our network last night. He has one lead already but we want to make sure he’s in a good mental spot to interview.

4. Initially we made a plan last night for a conversation on the record with his boss on Monday and what to do if that goes poorly (bring in HR rather than quit.) I’m hoping that if he can power through a little we can at least negotiate a severance/unemployment. There’s some pretty damning video evidence already where we’ve written down some timestamps from previous check-ins for HR to look at. Bringing in HR is really the last ditch effort in my mind rather than have him quit since I know that rarely goes the employee’s way.

I am considering suggesting he asks the psych or his doctor for a stress leave rather than go with the HR plan. It really just feels like it dependent on how quickly we can move on getting paperwork for a stress leave.

I think the overall goal at this point is for him to leave this job as it doesn’t feel reparable to him and he doesn’t think he can work with this boss anymore. I want him to help him leave in the least spontaneous and most strategic way where we may able to get some financial help while he searches for a new role.

With my current reread, I’m trying to take my time and actually look up some of the references and read the original source material. Sometimes it takes a while to even find the original reference since it may be a work that was popular when the books were written but seem a little more lost to time in 2026.

For instance, there’s a line in Anne of the Island where Dora goes on cutting her bread and butter referencing a calm character named Charlotte who seemed unbothered by her frenzied lover being carried by on a shutter. It took several Google searches for me to finally track down that it was a reference to either a satirical poem called the “Sorrows of Werther” or the original novel by Goethe “The Sorrows of Young Werther”

Curious if anyone has successfully listed all the references - and if you’d discovered any interesting gems. This poem I found is hilariously dark considering it was being used by Anne in reference to an 8 year old girl being unbothered by her going to Redmond. Poem below:

William Makepeace Thackeray

1811 – 1863

WERTHER had a love for Charlotte

Such as words could never utter;

Would you know how first he met her?

She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady,

And a moral man was Werther,

And, for all the wealth of Indies,

Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sighed and pined and ogled,

And his passion boiled and bubbled,

Till he blew his silly brains out,

And no more was by it troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body

Borne before her on a shutter,

Like a well-conducted person,

Went on cutting bread and butter.

Other shows I’ve enjoyed or have already seen:

Nine Perfect Strangers

The Diplomat

The Gilded Age

Gossip Girl

Downton Abbey

The OC

Big Little Lies

I saw a photo of Jamie Lynn Spears with her high school graduate daughter and immediately my bones turned to dust. I’m several years old, more of an elder millennial, and my kid is still in 3rd grade. It occurred to me that it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for her to be a grandmother by the time she’s 45.

I could just be living under a rock, though, and maybe someone else prolific I haven’t considered or didn’t know about already crossed that particular threshold.

For the sake of conversation I’m going to say - let’s try to keep it to real celebrities, not influencers or people who did 3 reality shows.

I feel bad about it every so often, because they completely bought it having never seen Sophie’s Choice. It was pre-smart phone so they couldn’t fact check me at the time but I made up a whole story about how it was 10 years after Kramer vs. Kramer and the daughter was now a teenager and had to choose a parent to live with. They completely believed me. I even managed to really play up Meryl Streep’s performance and got a random other party goer who wasn’t paying attention, but overheard me to talking about Meryl Streep to help solidify my story by asking them if they had seen both movies, and by saying something like “Wasn’t Meryl Streep amazing in Sophie’s Choice? Like, almost better even than she was in Kramer vs. Kramer?” and they agreed and I still didn’t get caught in the lie.

I still don’t know what possessed me to fabricate this story as every other lie I’ve ever told in my life has had an actual purpose, but this was probably the only lie I ever told just for the fun of tricking someone. Every once in a while, I think of that person and wonder if they’ve ever seemed really stupid for repeating what I told them.

As an elder millennial, I always thought it was so weird when people would recommend Gossip Girl to people who watched Gilmore Girls because other than middle vs. upper class and private school aspects, and the fact that one character wants to go to Yale, they are drastically different shows. Gossip Girl is so much more like 90210 or Bridgerton to me. It’s such a soapy show compared to Gilmore Girls, which is more quirky/comedy than soapy.

For me, Gilmore Girls reminds me of Northern Exposure, The West Wing, Parks and Recreation, or, weirdly, Mad Men. It’s more of a vibe or tone thing. Fast talking, witty, smart pop culture or historical references that may go over your head.

Other shows that get kind of close if I have to recommend a show focused on young people specifically are some parts of Felicity, My So-Called Life, some seasons of Dawson’s Creek. Maybe some of the shows from the late 80s/early 90s like Picket Fences or 30something.