u/sai_gunslinger

I found her 3 weeks and 5 days ago at work with a broken wing.

She got to spend 3 weeks and 5 days with fresh picked flowers and sugar water daily, safe from predators or getting squished. She got field trips outdoors and put her stamp of approval on the new flowers I got to support our local bumbles.

The past few days I've noticed her slowing down. She couldn't take field trips anymore because she struggled to hang onto my skin, it was like her ticklish little feet weren't as grippy as they used to be. She started falling unexpectedly just when I thought we were good to go.

I found her nestled into the dried out flowers from the yard, in between her two potted African violets. I always left the dried out flowers and kept adding new, she liked to climb around and use them to get up and down and preferred to rest there instead of in the violets.

Rest in peace, Polly. I hope you got your wings back.

My fiance and I are a blended family. We have stepson 17 and bio son 7 full time.

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There were growing pains and behavior problems with stepson, but as he's coming of age he's showing much more responsibility and respect. He graduates this week and has a part time job in walking distance that he's responsible for getting himself to and from on time. Massive improvements, and we're proud of him.

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Our 7 year old, though, is completely obsessed with TV. Specifically Minecraft brain rot on YouTube. We've caught him trying to get into his dad's laptop (password protected so he was unsuccessful), scouring the house for the remotes whose hiding spots we have to keep moving, figuring out how to get on YouTube through the Xbox so the Xbox went away, trying to get into the tablet, etc. Nothing we do stops him. Grounding him, taking away toys, having serious talks with him, having him write sentences... nothing works.

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For a while, having all the electronics on lock down worked well. But his latest thing is sneaking into his brother's room because his brother never turns his computer off and doesn't have it set to time out. He sneaks in at night when we're all asleep, his brother doesn't even hear him.

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Saturday night I took stepson to a backyard fire to see my friend and her son who's home from college for the summer. Fiance and 7 year old were at home in bed. When stepson and I got home, 7 year old was in stepson's bedroom watching Minecraft. Got him to bed, stepson went to bed and locked his door. Yesterday morning I was outside with the dog and stepson was in the shower. 7 year old did it again. And this morning, at the start of the last week of school, my fiance caught him in there again at 4:30 when he got up to leave for work. Stepson didn't lock his door and fell asleep with the computer on and didn't even know his brother was in there.

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I'm at my wit's end. His cousin is having a birthday party Saturday and I told him I won't be bringing him. His sneaking has been so chronic that he's been grounded from any TV time for a while now. He keeps sneaking and getting grounded longer. He doesn't seem to care. And he's different from most kids. Most kids conk out when they're tired enough, but not this one. If the glowing box is on, his eyes are open and he's awake. He won't even fall asleep with it on if he's sick!

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We do a lot of non-TV related things with him. We go to the beach and playgrounds, play baseball, take the dog for walks, go see friends and cousins when he's not grounded to play outdoors, I teach him about different plants we encounter in our explorations and his favorite thing to find is wood sorrel for a sweet snack. We're outdoors a lot. He sees me doing things like cross stitching and diamond painting and reading, he has his own diamond painting supplies he enjoys. There are plenty of non-TV related activities.

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But consequences be damned, if he thinks he can get away with sneaking brain rot he's going to go for it. I try to get him to tell me why and all he says is "my brain makes me do it." Or "it was an accident." No, young sir, making the choice to go in your brother's room without permission and using his computer is not an accident! He doesn't care. And he'll apologize and say he won't do it again by way of attempting to not be grounded and throw a fit when he's still grounded anyway.

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We've told stepson to turn his computer all the way off when he leaves his room and he doesn't. He forgets. And he forgets to lock his door when he's in bed. I've thought about buying him a keyed entry lock for his door, but he'll probably forget to use the lock.

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I've also considered a door alarm for 7 year old's room that makes a loud sound so we'll know when he gets up, but I foresee issues with that. This kid is up 25,839 times a night at bedtime. A zillion trips to the potty. He needs fresh water. He wants a hug. He can't find some random toy he hasn't even thought of in months. Aaaaaaallllllllll of the excuses to get out of bed and avoid lying still. And with my fiance's job in a factory, he needs his sleep. He has trouble enough sleeping when he has an early morning and I'm playing musical doors with our kid. Because if I sit in his room until he falls asleep he doesn't fall asleep. He just runs his mouth to avoid sleeping and still makes a trillion runs to the bathroom.

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Short of locking him in his own room at night, I don't know what to do. And obviously for safety reasons I don't want to install a lock that locks from the outside. What else can I do?

I'm a left wing bio and step mom of two boys. 10 years apart. I'm cis-female and I don't discriminate. I'm an annoying "white liberal."

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And my bi stepson is dating a Trans man. The boyfriend's parents haven't been accepting and dead-name him. There have been DV charges in the home. Rural red town in a blue state. Our current climate. All of that.

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They've been dating almost two years and are graduating high school this year. I've been accepting of his pronouns and chosen name and have stood toe-to-toe with my cousin who tends to be homophobic and transphobic and we get into *heated* debates. She usually sees the light once she calms down and absorbs information, but she's prone to propaganda and conspiracies.

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Lately she and I have been swapping videos and having productive conversations, which is good. We had a major blowout over the trans issue a year ago and I stood my ground for my kid and his boyfriend without outing them.

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I still haven't told her.

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But as we've been reconnecting, she sent me a video of Buck Angel talking about trans regret. It's still the only video of his I've seen, but it resonated. He speaks on trans regret as a trans man himself through the lens of social media influence and our broken medical system in America with huge empathy.

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There *are* doctors out there who are unethical and will butcher a surgery on a trans 18 or 19 year old who maybe hasn't had the most supportive environment and jumps at the surgery as their adult act of defiance and suffer long term medical consequences because they didn't shop doctors. I've been a defiant sheltered youth of parents who didn't get me and I eloped at 18 and wasted my 20's and got SA'd multiple times over and didn't feel like I could tell anyone. I had the saving grace of no-fault divorce, which is also under attack and didn't become legal in my state until *after* I'd gotten married, but it took me until 31 to get there.

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The only thing that makes me regret those years less now is how reversible it was.

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Most of the trans regret videos I've seen have seemed to be more about our medical system and not fully understanding the risks in hormone therapy and major surgery beforehand than actually regretting transitioning in the first place.

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Unfortunately, in a capitalistic medical system, there are bound to be unethical doctors who just want to get paid.

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And I've heard the boyfriend express the sentiment that he can't wait to have top surgery.

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And I'm concerned.

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There are trans people who have fallen victim to butcher surgeons at very young-adult ages. It does happen.

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Our trans youth deserve therapists and supportive families and doctors who won't butcher them. It *should* be safe. And it isn't always safe.

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So here I am, screaming into the abyss, because I'm scared my kid's boyfriend might go to a butcher of a surgeon due to the background, and I can only do so much.

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The far-right is ludicrous most of the time. But there are gray areas and crossover points. My cousin sees this through more of a social media influence lens and I see it more through a medical concern lens. And the concern boils down to the same question: how are we keeping our kids safe as they come of age?

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I know at the end of the day, my kid's boyfriend will make the choices he will make and I can't control that.

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I'm just...

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I'm conflicted and I'm concerned. And I'm sorry to the trans folk who have to navigate their very existence in this climate.

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And as progressive parents, I think the nuances in this conversation are important.

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Anyone else navigating anything similar? Thoughts?

I got a notice from Discogs that someone is selling one and went to check it out.

Listing is for $1500 and claims it's a signed copy. None of the photos show any signatures and the listing said to message for photos. So I messaged the seller and their response was:

>The photos are from the copy someone else uploaded as the master release, not the specific listing. I can’t upload photos to a sale listing or send over message, but can email you photos if you can provide your email address.

Ummmm..... Obvious scam is obvious?

Discogs' policy is sellers must upload photos they've taken of the actual item itself - not reuse someone else's photos. I did report the listing as a photo issue and tried messaging discogs as well to notify them that someone is fishing for email addresses. So far the listing is still up, so hopefully a human reviews it soon.

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. Seems like Jesse's popularity is attracting scammers. Stay safe everyone!

I've been in peri for about a year and a half and have noticed some weight gain along with the other peri symptoms. Hot flashes, night sweats, smelling like a teenage boy unless I apply deodorant multiple times a day, etc. More trouble sleeping on top of my lifelong insomnia and lately I struggle to stay awake at my desk and find myself nodding off.

I'm not *too* upset about the weight gain as I've always been mostly within a "normal" weight most of my life, occasionally going into the "overweight" category but never drastically.

This year, none of my shorts fit. Last summer I still had a few pairs of shorts I could get into, this year not so much. And I'm down to like 2 pairs of jeans I can still get into and they're getting tighter. Nothing about my diet or exercise has changed, but I'm definitely gaining, and I'm pretty sure I can blame perimenopause. Doing a bit of reading suggests perimenopausal women don't need as many calories as they once did.

So on a whim I decided to skip my usual breakfast eggwich that I get on my way to work. I've been getting an eggwich and black coffee for years every morning, and yesterday I skipped the eggwich just to see how I felt.

I didn't struggle to stay awake at my desk doing my morning duties. I felt like I had *real* energy. The store was short staffed so once I was done on the computer stuff and upstock still had to be put up, I just grabbed a ladder and started doing it. My brain felt clear and focused. Climbing the ladders and moving heavy boxes actually felt *good* when lately it's been daunting just to even track down misplaced inventory. I still ate my regular lunch, it was just the morning eggwich I skipped. I actually made a semi-real dinner for once last night instead of dragging my tired self through the kitchen looking for something quick because the thought of even putting a box meal in the oven was too energy-consuming to do. And while it cooked, I managed to tidy up some of the clutter that's been weighing my mind down.

I felt almost like myself again. So I did the same thing this morning and skipped the eggwich. Again, I have not struggled to stay awake. In fact, I fell asleep a little faster than usual last night and got up 20 minutes before I usually do this morning. It's almost lunch time and I am definitely feeling hungry, but not *starving*. I feel... normal? Before peri, skipping a meal would have me feeling shaky and brain foggy until I ate. But apparently breakfast now takes too much energy to digest and makes me want to go back to sleep?

I tried posting about this in the perimenopause sub but it got removed because I talked about weight. So I found this sub and figured I'd ask here. Are there any other peri women here who have had a similar experience where skipping one meal gives you more energy?

Also, as a (accidental?) newbie, what should I know or do to make sure this is safe? Ideally I'd like to fit back into some clothes that I can no longer get up past my thighs let alone my butt and then maintain, but having this extra energy to actually *do* things is great and I want to keep that. I have no idea what I actually weigh, I don't own a scale and have no history of eating disorders. I love almost all foods so the biggest hindrance to eating healthy is having the time and energy to prepare it instead of going for a snack box.