u/pickleeater58

I love kids. I love my friends’ kids, I love the kids in my family, I love seeing little league teams playing baseball on the fields in the spring, I love seeing those lines of preschoolers connected by those leash thingies. I advocate for better maternal healthcare, family leave, free school lunches, universal childcare, etc. I rally for the children of Palestine and Sudan and all nations under siege.

In a spiritual way, I feel that ALL children are my children. I want to leave the world a better place than I found it, for future generations.

But none of this means I want children of my own. In a way, it’s because I love and care about children, that I don’t want any. I get overstimulated too easily. I hate being touched. I need hours of alone time and decompression every day. I have so many hobbies. I have no desire to be a mother and be “on” all the time. I think children deserve parents who really want them with every fiber of their being.

Of course I also find kids annoying a lot of the time, but they are kids and I have empathy for them. It’s just that I don’t want to be the one who deals with said annoyances all the time. I want to come home to a quiet house, chill with my cats and my husband, and get to be myself.

Also, I don’t want to bring another child into this world. There are so many children without families already… if I really wanted to be a mother (which I 100% do not), why wouldn’t I just foster kids or adopt?

Our resident cat is 5M. New cat is 11 months F. Both neutered/spayed. We adopted her 5 weeks ago almost. We did the Jackson Galaxy method of door separation and scent soaking and site swapping and we even tried putting her in the living room in a see-thru playpen so my resident cat could sniff. All went pretty much fine, with the occasional hiss and growl from territorial resident cat.

Now we’re trying to integrate them with passive supervision during the day. Both are allowed to free roam. I work from home so the burden of passive supervision is on me. Sometimes I get glimpses of what normal life will look like— they’re both sleeping in the same room, they’re nose-to-nose, sniffing each others’ butts, playing with the same toy, eating right next to each other, etc. Yesterday and day before, they were fine for the entire work day with only a couple of pounces. Today, we had swatting, hissing, growling, and even a yowl of fear from the little one, after which I separated them.

It is so disheartening when things seem to be going well and suddenly they’re not. And it’s impossible to know what the triggers are for these fights. Sometimes the new cat is being annoying and getting all up in resident’s space and he’s setting boundaries, other times she’s doing absolutely nothing and he’s jumping at her and swatting with a puffed-up tail. I feel horrible because she just wants to be his friend and play.

I know it takes time, but we have been moving quite slowly and doing everything “right.” My husband and I have been sleeping in separate rooms, each with one cat, for five goddamn weeks. Nobody in my life (other than him) understands, and thinks we are making way too big a deal out of this and need to just let them figure things out.

I am emotionally exhausted. I miss my usual routines. I miss when this wasnt my entire life. I love both of my kitties to death and want nothing more for them to get along. This is so hard.

We are on week 3 of introducing our resident cat (5 y/o male) to our new cat (10 mos female). We are at the point where we let them coexist for several hours a day as long as one or both of us can supervise them. Our new cat is young and super playful, so she’s always pushing his buttons, running up on him, trying to get him to play, but I don’t think he even knows how to play with other cats?? We got him when he was 1 and don’t know his history before that.

Despite her constantly annoying him, lately he just walks away and is so good. We reward him with treats when he walks away and ignores her. However, we noticed that there are certain triggers. Today, she went between our couch and the wall and was moving around behind the couch, partially covered, poking her head in and out from behind the couch, moving fast. This seemed to have triggered him. He pounced at her 3 times with a puffy tail, growled, and hissed at her. He was fine for literally HOURS before that, showing no signs of stress through his body language. They even played with the same toys together and ate near each other.

Is this sort of partially-concealed movement-based trigger common? Is it a sign that we’re doing something wrong with the introduction?

We got my new cat (11 mos female) a little over 2 weeks ago. We kept them in separate rooms. I sleep in the living room with my resident cat (5 yrs male) who’s a mama’s boy, and my husband sleeps with the new baby in our bedroom. We switched to a Velcro screen door, and then we let her out to roam the living room.

For the past couple of days, we’ve let her free roam for almost the entire day, only separating at night. My resident cat ate in front of her, used the litterbox while she was right there, and slept in his favorite spots while she slept elsewhere. They have been coexisting fine, mostly just ignoring each other.

This morning, my resident cat chased after the new cat and then hissed and growled, was all puffed up. She wasn’t even doing anything, just playing by herself. Before this, it had been almost a week since the last growling/hissing episode. She (new cat) has never been aggressive, it’s always him (resident cat).

Does this mean we need to go back a step and separate them completely again?

I know 2 weeks is not enough time, I know it takes time and patience, but it’s just such an exhausting and mentally draining process. It doesn’t help that our apartment is really small and the bedroom door doesn’t close fully. I don’t want the new baby to be scared of my resident cat long-term because of this behavior.

I went to the Corner Food Court for the first time the other day and was expecting it to be poppin but it was largely vacant storefronts?? Considering the location, the amount of space, it gave me the vibe of a place that used to be full and lively. I looked up the history and all I could find was that Gilchrist Department Store owned that building until 1970.

Can any long-term Bostonians share stories about what this mall used to be like? Because I feel like it’s well on its way to being a dead mall.

Looking for shirts and blouses that have a cinched waist or a tie that you can use to cinch the waist. I have a big chest that’s not at all proportional to my frame and I always look so much heavier than I am.

I have a couple of sweaters that have a cinched waist, but no spring/warmer weather clothes with this type of waist.

À la Juliet Marilier, Rebecca Ross, and Heather Fawcett. I like spice, but so many books are spice-focused and not ROMANTIC. I want a true slow build where it’s really earned. Where they’re really IN LOVE and not just lust.

I read Sevenwaters and I’m having the worst book hangover.

I (26F) am an Indian-American who was raised by extremely religious Hindu parents. They are extremely orthodox about every single ritual, spiritual practice, and in my family this is often framed in a way that’s like “if you don’t do this right, bad things will happen.”

Don’t cut your nails on a Tuesday/Thursday, don’t step on a book, don’t sleep with your head facing north, etc. I remember being a kid partaking in poojas and picking up a flower with my left hand instead of my right and my parents yelling at me. And then I went to bed and agonized about my “mistake,” wondering if it would lead to something terrible happening to people I love.

The thing is, I don’t believe in any of these things myself. I am a woman of science, I am logical, but OCD and anxiety are not logical. Rationally, I know that God has better things to worry about than me cutting my toenails on a Tuesday. But I have a voice in my head telling me that because I do that, someone I love will get hurt or I will have horrible luck. When I make one of these “mistakes” and something bad DOES happen, my mind will automatically jump to it being my fault because I didn’t “follow the rules.”

I got married recently to a non-Indian, non-Hindu. For the sake of my parents, we had a very traditional Hindu ceremony. I was given a mangalsutram (sacred marriage necklace). I grew up in the US, im a very basic woman, I wear crop tops and baggy jeans and a big, bulky mangalsutram just does not fit with my outfits and also I live in a big city and having a thick, solid gold chain as a small woman feels dangerous. But my family instilled it in me that I HAVE to wear it for the “safety of my husband” (25M) so every time I don’t wear it, I am sick with worry that something horrible will happen to him.

I would like to get to a place where I can practice Hinduism that is rooted in peace and love rather than fear. Has anyone else dealt with this and reconnected with their Hinduism?

Before you ask, yes I am medicated, yes I see a therapist, but my therapist does not have the cultural context to understand these things.