Cute sayings for nieces

Sorry for the long post in advance.
My sister 40 is 7 years older than me 33f and she suffers from anxiety, depression and low self esteem issues along with childhood trauma and does not have time for therapy Since she has to homeschool 3 children. Me and the family have advised her to slow down with the extra curricular activities which she takes her kids to from mon-sun on top of the home schooling mon-fri. We are always there for her whenever she needs help however, it’s taking a toll on my mental health and physical health. I am not allowed to say no to her otherwise she will get extremely angry and start crying i feel like she is so toxic and feel like shes using her trauma as a weapon to guilt trip me into submission.
I have tried to stand my ground but she is claiming my time, she forces me to visit her every weekend and sleep over at her house for a whole week despite my arrangements and commitments she says things like “im going through a tough time, i am so lonely, the kids really would like if your here” but i feel like shes is trying to fill a husband role and i now HATE going to her house because i feel forced. I feel so bad for her and help her and visit her when i can but its not my responsibility.
I get overwhelmed by anxiety and experience mini panic attacks every time shes calls me because she never asks how I am and starts every conversation with how she is doing and how she wants a favour from me and when i leave her house i always cry on the way home she always makes small nasty comments about how much free time i have and screams at me for saying “i cant come over today i am not feeling well” she throws a tantrum when i say no and lists all the hobbies I have and say i have prioritised them over her whilst she is screaming down the phone and telling me to not bother coming to her house ( which is a relief for me) and gives me the silent treatment for months and paints me as the bad guy to my nieces that i love.
I dont know how to set boundaries and i feel afraid to do it to avoid conflict but im physically and mentally exhausted at this point.
Tl;dr, i am a people pleaser that says yes to avoid conflict (only to family), need advice on how to deal with a toxic sister who has trauma and a lot on her plate but feels entitled to my time and energy.

I've been with my partner since my daughter was around 4 years old. She is 24 now. We were finally introduced to two of my partner's siblings who live close by when she was around 6 years old, including his mom. When his mom passed away from cancer, I met his other siblings, of which he has 6, as well as his cousins because they all live in different states. It was at that point my partner decided he would take us to the yearly family reunion when my daughter was 9.
She quickly made friends with a lot of her cousins, and because his family is already pretty tight knit all was going well. There was some drama between the girls sometimes, but when you have 7 girls all within a year of each other in age I guess it makes sense. The older cousins all doted on my daughter like she was a younger sister and her cousins that are all the same age became best friends. I did notice she had a crush on my partner's sister's son, who was 2 years older. It didn't bother me much at the time because they were kids. I even thought it was cute.
However, now things are a bit different. Since around the time my daughter was 19, and my nephew was 21, they have gotten increasingly close. They constantly text, are talking on the phone every day, and my daughter has even gone to visit several him times where he lives. I've told her about how this bothers me, but she brushes me off. She's made offhanded comments that they aren't blood related, and because my partner and I aren't married, I can't even say that they are related by marriage.
I've heard some of their conversations and it sounds completely inappropriate for two cousins to talk the way they do. It's nothing sexual, it's just weird because I don't know anyone who talks to their cousin like that. She doesn't even talk to her other cousins like that. The compliments I've heard them give each other are definitely flirtatious in nature, but when I confront her about it she denies that she is flirting and tells me to stop listening to her conversations.
It's gotten to the point where now when I hear her get home from work, he immediately calls and they're on the phone until one of them falls asleep. When I questioned her about this, she told me they share their location with each other so he knows to call her when she's done with her shift. Again, I don't know a single person who would do that with their cousin. She doesn't even share her location with ME.
I have to admit, I've gone into the call logs through our phone provider and they are constantly calling each other back and forth most days. I've tried telling her he doesn't like her, he's just lonely and bored, but she won't listen. At this point, it's hurting our relationship. She doesn't even seem to want to talk to me anymore.
I'm not sure what to do and any advice would be appreciated. I've brought this up to my partner and he doesn't really say much. I can tell that he finds it annoying now whenever I bring it up. I'm at a loss here.

I am taking in my niece for the summer because I think she can benefit from a more hands on approach then she’s getting at home or would get from a school. Her mother is in agreement that she needs help but she doesn’t feel prepared or able to do it (no comments on this, I have my opinions but it’s not my family to say). So since my niece is like other kids her age (6) she is glued to a tablet. I currently hold the tablet away and only give it at nap time, but I want to find good apps to help education that she may find more interesting than the worksheets I’ve printed. I figured working on spelling simple words is what we should focus on, they’re decent at math so I’m not too concerned there.

I like to check what Internet people say about characters from programs I watched, or books I read. I like to check all the points of view and see how much logical sense they make.
So my friend talks a lot about "Jojo's bizarre adventures", I never watched it but wanted to check his favourite character's type. He is not into typology and when I asked him why he likes this specific character he said "because he is fun and very expressive". Fair enough. I never watched it. I have no opinion about this character's type. Internet says estp or entp. Fair enough. Makes sense. But I just love some explanation (it's sarcasm just in case you didn't notice) like "This character totally seems like estp but he is still entp because this one time in this one battle he analysed his opponents disadvantages and he used it to his advantage..." - I laughed so hard! So does it mean that every person who analysed something ones in their life and used this knowledge to their advantage is a xntx? This is how people type themselves too? Seriously? So all these people who have hard time finding their type, including myself, are just making it up and cause their own problems because obviously if they ever analysed something in their life they must be xntx, very possibly intj or intp and if they ever felt something and are cute and energetic they must be for sure enfp, unless they like to argue then they are entp...
Face palm. No comment, just face palm.

This is my first update. Bear with me here. I wanted to write this at 300, but now I'm at 450 somehow.
Intro - Why CI Works and Feels Good
On the drive back from a beautiful botanical garden in Mexico, I was the only person able to speak Spanish amongst my white family, and our driver was a very talkative fellow who knew basically zero English. There was no internet out there, so no google translate. I had learned Spanish only from high school classes, and it was a disaster. I think I said "tenga miedo?" at one point. At the end of the drive I apologized for my bad Spanish, but he encouraged me to keep learning since he would try to do the same with English. We bonded through our terrible levels of each other's languages, and I honestly think that conversation motivated to learn Spanish more than anything.
The methods I tried in my journey prior to CI did not work. Do I really need to go into detail? Language transfer? Nope. Flashcards? Nope. Talking to the taqueria cashier in Spanish? Hell no. Watching casa de los flores with Spanish subtitles? Nope. Nothing felt like it was really working.
In hindsight, the dreaming spanish/comprehensible input method makes so much sense you can't believe you ever felt differently. We learn through actively acquiring and being immersed in our native languages. In a class for my education minor, we learned about how exploring a topic on your own is a great way to actually remember what you're learning. The CI method is exactly that: exploring. Like our prepubescent selves, we are actively filing out our mental maps of the language. Each new word, phrase, and structure, adds to this map, clearing the gray areas from our heads.
Part of the effectiveness of the exploration process are the "A-ha" moments that feel so rewarding. I remember listening to Learn Spanish and Go while waiting for the bus and they used the word "sobresalir" and its meaning just clicked perfectly into place. It was a very gratifying moment, and I've remembered the word ever since. Brute forcing a word through looking it up can potentially work, but internalizing it through multiple contexts of immersion cements it better than anything.
It seems like language learning is figuring out which way to make as much vocabulary stick in your head as possible, and CI does that the best for me. Traditional grammar studying and looking up/translating words weren't really working for me. I would just forget everything constantly. And most importantly, that method was BORING. Without some excitement and tangible progress, what's the point?
What works best for me is a mix of very understandable and just barely understandable content. Both help me learn and remember in different ways. Knowing almost every word singles out those words I don't know and helps me get closer to getting them through context. Harder content challenges me, has usually been much more interesting than other stuff along the journey, and acclimates me to the sound of faster Spanish. This is what I do personally, and it might not be the most efficient way, but it keeps me motivated. The content I used along the way follows.
The Content
Dreaming Spanish - Usage
I found the first 50-150 hours of the journey to be quite difficult. You have to make listening a habit, power through some sort of boring content, and generally feel a bit confused a lot. I watched a lot of DS and a tiny bit of cuentame.
I watch DS more now than ever honestly. I really enjoy videos like Pablo's personal stories in that idyllic little park in Thailand. Conversational content is overall still my favorite though. I just feel like listening to a convo is much easier to pay attention to and not space out than solo stuff.
DS - The Guides
Pablo: Not much to say about the goat. Would love to see him play other games (especially dark souls but more on this later).
Andres: He's just hilarious all around. I love how bad he is at spyfall and other games. He also apparently has an insane life. Was a military firefighter who once dated two gals at once (if he wasn't joking about that). His content is super accessible, and I recommend his advanced series on his military experience to everyone level 4 on beyond, since it's actually pretty easy to understand, and it's super interesting. His videos are always a must watch for me.
Shelcin: Everyone needs to be nicer to Shelcin because she's never done anything wrong ever and when they make fun of her my heart turns a little more blackened
Natalia: She rocks so much. I really hope she continues to do videos with the other teachers since she has fantastic vibes and speaks so very clearly.
Sandra: At first I wasn't a fan of solo talking to camera videos, but as I got more input, her videos really started to click. She's a genuine person, probably would be a cool friend. It's a shame she doesn't interact with other guides, but I assume she's off doing other stuff now and we're just watching backlog stuff.
The Rest: Everyone else is great, but I just don't have much to add about them.
Podcasts:
Spanish for False Beginners: This is premium intermediate CI. It's conversational, at a pretty solid but not too fast pace, the topics are interesting, and there are NO ADS. I really really hate when podcasts have like 2 minutes of ads at the start and end like No Hay Tos since I listen to podcasts at work sometimes where I can't easily skip forward. The podcasts is Oscar from Intermediate Spanish Podcast and his boyfriend (not native speaker fyi) riffing on various topics. They're super cute. Big recommend for this level.
Español Con Juan: I started this podcast at around 200 hours. It was very challenging. It's easier to space out when you find content a little too hard, so I definitely missed some of the middle episodes where he talked about kings and stuff. But when I go back to listen to new episodes it's just insane how clear he is for me now. I can understand basically everything he says at 450 hours. So give him a chance. You really just gotta get used to his speaking style, and then it's not as hard as it seems. And of course, the content itself is amazing, but you all already know that. I hope to live to see the day he tells the story about the dog.
Intermediate Spanish Podcast with Oscar: Starts out kind of slow, and is a little harder than ECJ, but it's just such good input. He gets into some great, even very personal topics later on and speaks very clearly. I've grown to really enjoy this one, even though it's a bit dryer than ECJ.
No Hay Tos: Too hard! And I will never pay for Rosetta stone. I'll give them a chance again soon though. I like the conversational style a lot and they seem funny.
LenguaTalk: Pretty short but great lower Intermediate conversational Spanish between a married couple from Spain. Very cute!
Other Content:
Hajime No Ippo The Spanish dub for this incredible anime is on YouTube for free. I've seen this before, so while it was incredibly difficult to watch at around 300 hours, I did get used to the pace and understood the vast majority of episodes by the end. You'll learn a lot of boxing terms if you're ever wondering how to say HE FELL TO THE CANVAS!!! A DEVASTATING RIGHT HOOK!! In Spanish. But really, this show is so good. The characters are excellent and the boxing is just so fun and tense. Big recommend.
Songs: This is a fairly controversial topic on this sub it seems. I've listened to a ton of songs in Spanish. I don't count this as input, but I genuinely think it can be helpful sometimes to remember vocabulary, especially if you find the song good and catchy. Some genres, like hip hop and reggaeton, are much harder to understand on average than others. I recommend folk and rock to start.
Here's a playlist I made of songs that are somewhat comprehensible at my level: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4fKeoBQI76Dc1vt6VhuDgY?si=edh6uxdXS-S3T0k50KRDkQ&pi=bUJOeicMRk64-
How to Survive the Long March - Things I've Learned Along the Way

1. Watch content you enjoy. If you can't find that at your level, which I definitely experienced at the beginner stage, watch content solely for the purpose of finding new vocab. It's not ideal, but coming at it from an "exploration" mindset can make mundane content much more tolerable.
2. Be realistic about your capabilities. I was shooting for 2 hours a day months ago. I barely hit that goal. Lowering it to 90 minutes helped a ton. Now I'm at 100, and pretty consistent about it too.
3. Find out what helps you keep going. What content works for you? How do you stay motivated? I personally listen to a ton of Spanish at the gym. Even though it's sometimes distracting, making learning Spanish synonymous with improving myself physically has been incredibly motivating. What's your goal for learning Spanish? I want to be able to communicate better with my Spanish speaking students when I'm a teacher. Being able to actually talk in Spanish would be incredibly helpful for me, so I kind of keep that fire under my feet to keep me motivated and consistent.

Musings
Pablo. PLEASE. please stream elden ring. i need someone to play the souls games with intermediate/advanced CI commentary. this is all i want in life. I will give you 20 dollars personally if this happens. I will venmo you. imagine the DS team playing mario kart or mario party together. 8 player smash bros with every guide. ok that's too far. but gaming content could be really good. how often do we get CI of Spanish speakers getting mad as hell at a game?
This method is going to absolutely blow up one day. People are going to be min maxing the best ways to get input in. They'll be watching 54 level difficulty videos at 1.17 times speed for maximum input. There will be official CI speedruns. This method is so ingenious I kind of can't believe a big corporation hasn't made it as soulless and profitable as possible yet. Get in on the CI train while it's still cool!!
DS has made me think a lot about how little content guys watch that is made from women in general. I didn't watch very many female Youtubers at all when I was in high school, and I think this was true of many friends of mine. I never would have watched something like Michelle's skincare or astrology series in English, so I really appreciate the wide variety of content and diversity one gets exposes to while going through this process.
Future
I'm going to start reading soon, but to avoid the pronunciation thing I'm going to listen to an audiobook as I read along. I have no idea if this will work. That's fine. I'm not a scientist I'm just a guy. I'm doing my best.
No speaking for a while too. I've spoken a little bit, and yeah, it's bad. I don't wanna sound like the Españolistas guy. So I'm waiting like a good boy 😃
Goal is 600 hours by August, when I start student teaching in a Teacher's Credential program. Whether I'll have any time for Spanish at that point, I really don't know.
Conclusion
Comprehensible input is very rewarding and motivating. It's the method that has worked best for me. I can genuinely say I've improved a ton at listening already. Progress is slow, but man it's so worth it. Learning Spanish gives you the ability to talk to so many more people, and that's a beautiful thing.
Good luck on the long march. It's nice to have a very friendly community to struggle alongside. So, thank you all and see you around.
cuídate

Let's try this game again! What were the last five slimes you handled?
Basic info:

• Slime name
• Who made it
• Texture
• Do you like it?

Ideas for more detail (if you want--and add other thoughts too, please!):

• What's the slime smell like?
• How long have you had it?
• How often do you play with it?
• Do you own others like it or plan to get more?

Here's my answers:
1. Glow Scrub by BFF Slime Bakery.

• Perlite+sand+clear glue.
• Looooove this! Scent is supposed to be vanilla and orange blossom (Love, Don't be Shy perfume), but it smells like a woody vanilla with a hint of floral? Crispy, sizzly, crunchy. Puffs up for satisfying crushing experience. Stretches and folds nicely. Sand seems to help with the sizzle. Slightly gritty feel.
• I got this slime two days ago! I only played with it for a minute today and then I will try not to touch it for a few days so I don't kill it.
• I am on a perlite slime kick! So, yes, there will be more.

I'm a sucker for neon, especially highlighter-bright yellow and this thing practically burned through my eyeballs. I'd buy just the topper (hint hint). Added to the sand, it reminds me of the look of yellow highlighter over a grainy black-and-white photo on newsprint paper (I did a lot of "edgy" collage art back in high school lol). The yellow glow is still there, just muted with the sand. neon sprinkles ass a little kick.
2. Huckleberry Pie by BFF Slime Bakery

• Perlite+sand+clear glue--same as Glow Scrub, I think.
• This is a little wetteless activated maybe than Glow Scrub, but otherwise pretty similar. Again, great ASMR and it feels great in my hands when I pull it and squish it. Lots of dry sizzles when stretched, and wet, poofs and crackles when squished. slightly sand-papery feel.
• Got this two days ago in the same order and also trying to restrain myself so I don't kill it!
• Smell is supposed to be huckleberry and vanilla and sugar cane. It does smell slightly of huckleberry (I have family and friends that do a lot of huckleberry foraging), in that it smells like a more saccharine blueberry. I'm not in love with the scent, but it's fine.
• Really glad I got both this and Glow Scrub because this texture is great!

I was on here a few days ago, complaining that sand dulls the ASMR effect of clear slimes (also, just makes for a rubbery texture ime) when u/slimespree suggested I try a perlite sand, specifically recommending this one from BFF.
3. Lemon Tart by Rodem

• DIY clay + snowfizz + clear topper to make a butter snow fizz
• Soft clay piece, as always. Very cute and fun to assemble. It is now a very fluffy, soft snow fizz (I'd say less obviously a butter slime). ASMR is very soft, mostly a whispering sizzle with I pull it. No bubble pops and no crackles from squeezing. It's not quite as soft and airy as other snow fizzes. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it.
• Scent is supposed to be lemon cookie but the scents were just all off on this Rodem order. This one smells like ginger and lemon tea. Not bad!
• Got this two days ago. Not too worried about killing it, since I'm so obsessed with the perlite slimes I got at the same time lol!

I'm really noticing snow fizzes can vary a lot. But, in general, the pillowy, fizzy texture is a win for me and the sizzles are relaxing, so I hope to get more.
4. Butterfly Shake by Rodem

• Perlite+bingsu+clear
• Peach scented, supposedly, and I get that but also maybe a flowery scent as well? It smells nice.
• This texture slapped me upside the head with how good it is. I loooooove a soft, fluffy bingsu, which I've mostly found via Korean slimers. This is just as fluffy, but slightly dryer and doesn't hold as much air, which is probably an effect of the perlite. It might toughen up a bit in a day or two and then it could make bubble pops. Right now, itstretches nicely. It sizzles, it whispers, it crinkles, it crackles, it makes soft crunches, it growls. It is very light to handle, but the perlite is a little gritty on the hands (it's a plus for me, actually).

Ordered this slime before my talk with u/slimespree just to try something different. Was not super into the aesthetic and not terribly interested in perlite slimes, but thought I should expand my horizons. This is now possibly my favorite slime!
5. Strawberry Fat Milk by Rodem

• thick and glossy.
• Strawberries and cream! Delicious!
• This is a softer, fluffier thick and glossy, but it still has nice resistance and makes juicy bubble pops. They aren;t the loudest pops, but they do make whistles sometimes if I fold and pull it quickly. No crackling small bubbles from inflation, but I think it's a good ASMR-handfeel balance. Still poppy like a typical tng, but also soft and squishy and cool feeling in the hands, not tacky at all.

Basically, my in laws and my own mom have been watching my son 3 days a week since he was 3 months old so I can work. Hes now 10 months. It's been a great arrangement and I've been grateful to have it.
My MIL is a great person, she's raised 3 of her own kids plus been heavily involved in raising 3 nieces since they were babies, so she's not exactly inexperienced. But the youngest niece is 8, so it's been some years since any of them were babies.
So, I was a little concerned going in because my MIL has bad knees and is, honestly, pretty overweight so she can't move quickly. Early on, she had my son sitting on the kitchen counter, lost her grip on him and he fell and hit his head on the counter (didn't fall off, thank god). My MIL has been known to be absent minded, so this gave me a brief pause to question her judgment, but we got passed it and she said it wouldn't happen again.
A couple months ago, she was having some pretty concerning lapses in memory which lead my FIL to bar her from driving for a few weeks until they could get some answers from the doctor. She tested negative for any disease that may be causing cognitive decline, but didn't get an answer as to what was. It also came out at Easter that she'd been experiencing episodes where she would fall asleep at random. She ended up having one of these episodes when she was holding my son on the couch and he fell onto their hardwood floor. This lead to me drawing a line and saying I didn't feel comfortable with him being with MIL if my FIL wasn't home with her. I thought it seemed pretty obvious that it just isn't safe right now.
Well, there's been a few times since then where FIL would tell me he's not going to be there, but MIL is and she "should be alright to watch him". Which, I get that he's just trying to give me options, but it keeps putting me in the position of having to be the asshole all over again. It also keeps causing me to have to talk to my husband about it and he's on my side, but not really.... He gets my concerns, but he also doesn't want to rock the boat or hurt his mom's feelings. We're there again now, his dad has to go out of town for a few days and said "MIL has been doing great lately if you wanted to drop him off". My husband is inclined to just go with what his dad is saying to avoid the turmoil. From my perspective, I have no reason to believe that she's gone from "not allowed to drive a car" to "safe to watch a baby" in less than 2 months. But this situation has been now framed in such a way that, again, I'm either going to have to be the asshole or I'm just gonna, essentially, take a gamble with my son's safety. Yes it would probably be fine, but... I don't like those odds.
AITAH if I stick to my boundary of not dropping my son off if my MIL is home alone?

JUNE 14th will be 10 months. It's worse and worse. I'm hopelessly lost in understanding my financial situation other than it's not good. Of course not, 3/4 of the money is gone. I haven't published an obituary. How the hell do I sum up one of the most extraordinarily men who ever lived?
My only child is a very uncaring adult on the spectrum and doesn't even respond for days, and no, it's not from being unkindy raised, Idid my best raising him and modeling unconditional love. He does things like correct my texts instead of responding and says he's sad about a cat that died that I had for many years and doesn't need my sadness, it's boring. All of my family of origin are dead, except for overseas niece and nephew and sibling with dementia. No friends anymore it's like I went radioactive and I had only 3 to start with. It's like, hey, you're not a couple, forget about you! Maybe it's catching! One kind friend but she's disabled, too, and lives 2,000 miles away and is experiencing dementia, too, still kind but can't recall me often. What I want to know is how is this going to go? Is this it? Alone forever in a world with no one to love? Working way past retirement bc of poverty? Scared to death of expenses? At least I am losing weight bc not much left over for food.

Context: My (22F) relationship with my bf (23M) started falling apart when we started arguing more over little things and eventually, it wore us down and our relationship was on its last legs. I stopped feeling secure that we could survive any conflicts and became really anxious about things I normally felt comfortable sharing with him, even my feelings. Despite this, we stayed together hoping this was just a phase we could get through. Unfortunately, by the time we realized the reason we were arguing and finding a solution to it, so much more happened to drive us further apart.
I became less transparent and my boyfriend became suspicious of me after I blocked and deleted a guy for reaching out to me and didn't inform him. I rarely spoke to this guy, he lived across the country, and he confided in me for advice every once in a while. He only crossed a line when he said he wished stuff could be different between us and I ignored him. Once he reached out again, I blocked him and asked him to never message me again before deleting the texts. My bf saw I was doing something on my phone and I got nervous from the confrontation but told him what happened. When he asked to see my text messages, I didn't have anything to show him and he accused me of cheating.
After fighting his accusations, I offered him to call the guy, offered to share my location, promised to be transparent, gave him my phone to restore deleted texts (and he said this gesture alone was enough for him to trust me more). However, things didn't get better. It hurt me so much because I built trust with my bf and told him everything that was going on in my life and opened up about really traumatic things to him. I had difficulty accepting he had such serious suspicions of me because he had access to my phone all the time, we spent almost everyday together....and most importantly I didn't cheat on him.
I begged him not to leave and I did my best to cope with the way he became hot and cold towards me. When he finally promised he would try to trust me again, he still seemed very unsure of me at times and I guess I felt very worn out by it at that point. We broke up and but got back together when he put in a lot of effort to resolve conflict with me better and opened up about his trust issues/childhood trauma.
I went to my dad's house one day and told him. After I noticed he was more quiet than usual, I asked him if he's okay and he immediately got defensive. He said I am "projecting." He demanded my location after this and I gave it to him....but I felt so tired of this. We were doing so good for almost a month, quickly shutting down arguments, bonding, etc. Unfortunately, this made me feel hopeless again.
After this incident, I went to get coffee with my friend (a guy he met) but I didn't feel comfortable telling him and deleted the calls I had with him after because I started overthinking. He discovered this and said I probably slept with the guy and the shit storm of hot and cold that followed is too much to get into.
I messaged the guy in front of him to show him proof that nothing fishy was happening and he still accused me :(
He unloaded so much vitriol on me and said I'm a bad person for not understanding why he's being mean to me and said I have no remorse. He said if I loved him in the first place I would've never felt such discomfort with him and felt the need to be secretive. I can understand where he is coming from, but what hurts me so much is how he went about it all. He was jumping between wanting to never talk to me again, to proposing we start dating again if we just talk. He insisted on an open relationship so I "wouldn't feel the need to fuck people behind his back." I'm floored. I was in shambles. I'm crying thinking about it
Why didn't I just leave? I really felt like there was still some hope for me from him saying he's open to casually dating and seeing if it works out. I got worried I was being bread-crumbed but I think I've been in denial. We were going to just tough it out for 1 month until we got back from the festival we had coming up.
We just got back from this festival with our mutual friends where we cried our eyes out together during a sad love song. He was very affectionate, called me cute names again, and held me like he used to. I don't know if he has genuinely became more open and he is afraid....but I remember telling him how much I still love him and he went "I know." I felt like I was with the person I fell in love with again.
Things have been good and we mutually agreed that we are together. He has been consistent with me and makes me feel wanted again. But how do I know if this is real? How long will it be before I want more reassurance in this relationship from him about long term? What if he is just here out of convenience? He did mention he doesn't wanna go through the trouble of finding someone new again because he wanted to marry me before all this happened. This all happened within the last 7 months and we have been dating for about 3 years.
If things really are getting better, I'm worried I'll sabotage it by overthinking and not just enjoying whatever good there is right now. I'm fighting off intrusive thoughts that he is only here out of convenience but I know eventually I will want to feel more reassured in my relationship with him.

Okay, so I (25f) live with my bf's (26) family. His 30yr old aunt (let's call her Ella) has a 9 month old baby boy and the baby daddy isn't in the picture, he's in Peru. Back in Lima, she left his 8 year brother in the care of his uncle so that she can stay in the US and work. She found out she was pregnant after crossing the border. Her kids have different dads. This is just stating a fact, I have nothing against single mothers. I for one think society gives them too much shit and they have enough on their plate already but I digress.
We get along pretty well and she's fun to hang around and converse with. However she has this particular habit that drives me up the fucking wall. She's always talking about how my bf and I would be great parents someday whenever we help her with her baby. Don't get me wrong, Ella's baby is cute, but I can just acknowledge that and leave it at that, it doesn't give me the desire to have one of my own. However, this is incomprehensible to her.
We both have told her multiple times that we don't want kids. Ella dismisses this by saying that we're young we don't know what we want yet, "you can't live a life without kids", "you'll change your mind", or even better yet "it's different when they're your own" (in response to me saying that I just straight up don't like children and find them annoying). One time, disturbingly enough she told me that if I had kids with my bf, we'd "mejorar la raza" ("improve the race") because I have a lighter complexion to my bf and would give him fairer-skinned children. It's sad because he has very striking indigenous features and he's so handsome, eurocentric beauty standards are fucked, but I digress.
Last night Ella and her mom Rosa (her main childcare) came home from a trip to NYC. It was nice not having the baby in the house, pure bliss and peace lmao. No screaming for several days and nights, it was amazing.
When we picked them up at the train station, on the ride home, I don't know what possessed Ella to ask us this but she genuinely asked us if we missed her baby living with us. I didn't want to be too rude but I just responded with "don't ask me that" while my bf just said "no". She went into another spiel of how "you'll see how much they cry when they're your own kids" to which my bf reiterated that again we don't want kids. And I guess I low-key lost it and said "I don't give a fuck, when my implant expires, I'll put another one in. And if my bf changes his mind about kids, he'll have to finally a new woman, I don't give a fuck". Ella and Rosa found this incredibly amusing, so I guess that's better than being offended? I guess. But I know she's gonna say some other mombie brain shit again, and I'm gonna start trolling with the abortion jokes next lmao.
To be honest, I'm just really confused as to her motive for these persistent comments? Her relationships (as far as I know) have a tendency of failing and she has never kept a steady job, she had a job working at McDonald's but she hasn't worked there in weeks now.
My bf and I in comparison have a pretty happy relationship where we're pretty carefree, work on our fitness goals, chill together after a day's work, and really only worry about making ends meet financially. I don't want to say she's bitter, but I feel like with the persistent comments, there has to be some truth to it. I also know that within a lot of Latino culture (I'm not saying everyone, just a sizeable amount, my family's Mexican I can speak on this), kids are treated as an inevitability ("they just happen") so it's weird when people deliberately plan against ever having a family.

But not his own. We have a 3 year old and a 3 month old. He yells at our 3 year old, is short tempered with him, snaps his fingers at him and is so rude to him all the time. He micromanages the fuck out of him and tells him ridiculous things like “you’re not even really crying!” He’s really stern with our 3 month old baby. Says loudly “I’m not playing these games with you!” To a baby. I always thought he was bad with kids. That he didn’t know how to talk to them, didn’t understand how toddlers operate.
Y’all. He brought his sister’s 3 year old over to our house to spend the day and play with our 3 year old. He was so nice to her. Didn’t raise his voice once. Was sweet to her. And she is annoying af to be brutally honest. He even fed the baby a bottle without snapping at him for pretty much the first time ever. Like he was on his best behavior in front of his 3 year old niece. I couldn’t believe it. He can pretend to be nice for an entire day! Just not for his kids. For other people’s kids. Or even worse, he’s actually nice, just not nice to us.
I’m devastated. I don’t know what the point of this post is. I don’t know why it makes it so much worse that he is capable of being nice but it does.

So me and this girl met a few times 2.5 months ago, got intimate a few times. Last 2 months we have been doing long distance. Initially we used to talk 4-6 hours a day. Both of us used to call each other equally. Sometime in the last 3-4 weeks, she reduced responding a bit, but we still spoke at least 2 hours a day. I realized in her tone too that she wasn't communicating as much and I would text and call her first all the time. I didn't know what to do, whether to cool off like she did at the risk of it dying out or ask her what's up. We have discussed that we are exclusive.
Today I saw that she unmatched me on bumble so I decided to ask (I didn't tell her that i saw bumble) and she said she has been trying to hint me into this for so long. I don't give her a chance to miss me and text/call me first. I also keep saying all cute stuff when she's not in the mood or in a rush. She said my image and respect got damaged a bit by being too available. She sounded angry in a controlled and mature way. I am also the same way as her because I like communication but don't like overdoing it and also don't do a lot of cute stuff either, but I had to change myself because of some past relationships where I was asked to communicate my affections more. I told her that, apologized and said we will not text trivial stuff because even I hate that.
She did say that she still wants to talk to me and we have a trip planned in a month but I'm scared of losing her because of this stupidity. How should I proceed from here? Just continue texting at a rate she is comfortable and hope for the best or I need to do some damage control with something specific? I'm mainly asking because she unmatched me on bumble which typically means she wants to swipe again, but it might also just have been in anger.
tl;dr: girl is angry that i've been calling/texting too much. still wants to talk but should I try to fix the damage and how?

I want to start by saying this is a me problem and I do not blame women for their experiences that shape the way they feel about men approaching or complimenting. This isn’t a big deal that affects my life negatively but I guess I’m just curious after finding this community.
I tend to be very shy with women I don’t know regardless of attraction. And the women I want to approach or compliment I usually don’t have any intention of “hitting on”. In fact my romantically interested move is to never look in their direction at all or speak in front of them 😅
I think that I can compliment without being sleezy or rude or demeaning… but I also ultimately feel the risk of being misinterpreted by someone who is prepared to take me a certain way based on my age (30s) or appearance or how random my compliments can be… your shoes are cute though!
I don’t want to bother them because I assume that many of them are harassed by men enough that having me approach them is a nuisance. And that’s okay. I am just curious if my people pleasing problem is on point or off with this.

Can anyone give me some advice for a situation regarding in-laws? Basically, I (25F) and my husband (24M) have 3 children together. (7,3, and 2.) Long story short, one of my husband’s female cousins (my mother in laws niece) and I got into an argument about a year ago and she said some really really nasty things about me and my children (her blood relatives, might I add). My mother in law, who I thought I had a close relationship with, said something to her for talking about her grandkids and essentially went no contact with her. She said that she didn’t need to have a relationship with her family if they were going to say stuff like that. Fast forward, I started noticing her going to family functions/attending more stuff, even though she said she wasn’t going. Now here’s where I need advice. We went to a birthday party, and when we got there, she went and hugged that niece and kissed her on the cheek and they exchanged hello’s. I was honestly very upset. Nobody in that family advocated for my kids except for my husband and I and I THOUGHT my mother in law. Anyways, I haven’t been able to look her in the eye or talk to her because I feel as if I can’t trust her because she’s basically friends with/okay with that cousin. I feel like in some ways, I may be overreacting but she literally talked about my children, her son’s (my husbands) kids. (Btw, she never apologized for what she said. we were arguing in the first place because she told me that nobody gives a fuck about me or my wedding, I was planning our wedding at that time, and basically said nobody in their family gives a shit about me.) Any advice would be appreciated, I have no idea what to do.

Cora Grantham love post! 😍
She’s always been my favorite for so many reasons, she’s such a cute little survivotiny badass helping her dispose of Turkish men’s bodies from her daughters room or almost dying and then living a bunch of times.
I just heard her say a quip to Robert in S3E8, she mocked him saying “Whats the matter Robert, afraid you’ll be converted while you aren’t looking?” In front of everyone lol
Love her, she’s a badass lady!

I am currently living in a nightmare! After a miscarriage at 6 weeks last year, going through the TTC for almost 10 months I saw those perfect two pink lines on HPK. Overjoyed that it was finally happening, announced it to my husband had happy tears together. Fast forward to 12 weeks( I literally counted each and every day to reach this 12 weeks milestone, had two private scans at 7 weeks and 10 weeks where they confirmed the heartbeat is perfectly healthy), I went for my dating scan with full confidence and happiness to see the baby once again on the screen but we weren’t prepared for what followed next. The lady who did the ultrasound started with “ohh so active baby, see those cute hands, legs. Baby is so wiggly” and then straight went saying well I see something I should flag here. I see a possible case of cystic hygroma/ hydrops. I will have to refer you to our Medical expert. My husband and I in utter shock went to the first floor where Medical expert sits. They repeated the scan, confirmed the initial diagnosis with additional comment “skin edema”. So the baby was diagnosed with septate cystic hygroma/ hydrops with skin edema. The expert explained it to us and then she used the word “termination” or “let nature take its course”. It was too much to process for me and my husband. We knew nothing about these conditions before and never heard of. As per the experts recommendation we booked for CVS next day. We came back to home in shock , researched it, saw so many posts/ photos of the babies survived with this conditions but were suffering with the physical disformation. We took our lives hardest decision to let the baby go free. We went for the CVS test and are still waiting on the results. Since I live in Ireland , as per their termination law I can’t proceed with termination here as I am now more than 12 weeks. So my option is either to go to UK or Amsterdam. But as I am an expat living in Ireland I need visas to visit both these countries for the treatment. My husband rushed and did everything to get the visa process started for UK. We applied for it on medical emergency ground but still waiting for the visa decision. We are still in limbo as in when we will get a visa and when we will be travelling to get this very much planned, wanted and loved pregnancy terminated. I might have something certain in coming 1-2 weeks.

Context:
My (22F) relationship with my bf (23M) started falling apart when we started arguing more over little things and eventually, it wore us down and our relationship was on its last legs. I stopped feeling secure that we could survive any conflicts and became really anxious about things I normally felt comfortable sharing with him, even my feelings.
Despite this, we stayed together hoping this was just a phase we could get through. Unfortunately, by the time we realized the reason we were arguing and finding a solution to it, so much more happened to drive us further apart.
I became less transparent and my boyfriend became suspicious of me after I blocked and deleted a guy for reaching out to me and didn't inform him. I rarely spoke to this guy, he lived across the country, and he confided in me for advice every once in a while. He only crossed a line when he said he wished stuff could be different between us and I ignored him. Once he reached out again, I blocked him and asked him to never message me again before deleting the texts. My bf saw I was doing something on my phone and I got nervous from the confrontation but told him what happened. When he asked to see my text messages, I didn't have anything to show him and he accused me of cheating.
After fighting his accusations, I offered him to call the guy, offered to share my location, promised to be transparent, gave him my phone to restore deleted texts (and he said this gesture alone was enough for him to trust me more). However, things didn't get better. It hurt me so much because I built trust with my bf and told him everything that was going on in my life and opened up about really traumatic things to him. I had difficulty accepting he had such serious suspicions of me because he had access to my phone all the time, we spent almost everyday together....and most importantly I didn't cheat on him.
I begged him not to leave and I did my best to cope with the way he became hot and cold towards me. When he finally promised he would try to trust me again, he still seemed very unsure of me at times and I guess I felt very worn out by it at that point. We broke up and but got back together when he put in a lot of effort to resolve conflict with me better and opened up about his trust issues/childhood trauma.
I went to my dad's house one day and told him. After I noticed he was more quiet than usual, I asked him if he's okay and he immediately got defensive. He said I am "projecting." He demanded my location after this and I gave it to him....but I felt so tired of this. We were doing so good for almost a month, quickly shutting down arguments, bonding, etc. Unfortunately, this made me feel hopeless. After this incident, I went to get coffee with my friend (a guy he met) but I didn't feel comfortable telling him and deleted the calls I had with him after because I started overthinking. He discovered this and said I probably slept with the guy and the shit storm of hot and cold that followed is too much to get into.
I even messaged the guy in front of him to show him proof that nothing fishy was happening and he still accused me :(
He unloaded so much vitriol on me and said I'm a bad person for not understanding why he's being mean to me and said I have no remorse. He said if I loved him in the first place I would've never felt such discomfort with him and felt the need to be secretive. I can understand where he is coming from, but what hurts me so much is how he went about it all. He was jumping between wanting to never talk to me again, to proposing we start dating again if we just talk. He insisted on an open relationship so I "wouldn't feel the need to fuck people behind his back." I'm floored. I was in shambles. I'm crying thinking about it
Why didn't I just leave?
I really felt like there was still some hope for me from him saying he's open to casually dating and seeing if it works out. I got worried I was being bread-crumbed but I think I've been in denial. We were going to just tough it out for 1 month until we got back from the festival we had coming up.
We just got back from this festival with our mutual friends where we cried our eyes out together during a sad love song. He was very affectionate, called me cute names again, and held me like he used to. I don't know if he has genuinely became more open and he is afraid....but I remember telling him how much I still love him and he went "I know." I felt like I was with the person I fell in love with again.
Things have been good and we mutually agreed that we are together. He has been consistent with me and makes me feel wanted again. But how do I know if this is real? How long will it be before I want more reassurance in this relationship from him about long term? What if he is just here out of convenience? He did mention he doesn't wanna go through the trouble of finding someone new again. I want to be loved :(

So me and this girl met a few times 2.5 months ago, got intimate a few times. Last 2 months we have been doing long distance. Initially we used to talk 4-6 hours a day. Both of us used to call each other equally. Sometime in the last 3-4 weeks, she reduced responding a bit, but we still spoke at least 2 hours a day. I realized in her tone too that she wasn't communicating as much and I would text and call her first all the time. I didn't know what to do, whether to cool off like she did at the risk of it dying out or ask her what's up. We have discussed that we are exclusive.
Today I saw that she unmatched me on bumble so I decided to ask (I didn't tell her that i saw bumble) and she said she has been trying to hint me into this for so long. I don't give her a chance to miss me and text/call me first. I also keep saying all cute stuff when she's not in the mood or in a rush. She said my image and respect got damaged a bit by being too available. She sounded angry in a controlled and mature way. I am also the same way as her because I like communication but don't like overdoing it and also don't do a lot of cute stuff either, but I had to change myself because of some past relationships where I was asked to communicate my affections more. I told her that, apologized and said we will not text trivial stuff because even I hate that.
She did say that she still wants to talk to me and we have a trip planned in a month but I'm scared of losing her because of this stupidity. How should I proceed from here? Just continue texting at a rate she is comfortable and hope for the best or I need to do some damage control with something specific? I'm mainly asking because she unmatched me on bumble which typically means she wants to swipe again, but it might also just have been in anger.

In a negative or positive way. I accept life and i dont hate my parents no matter how bad i have it but i still see them as narcissists. I have both my parents and even tho they was toxic in my childhood cuz of drugs they do better now. Not here to yap about my life but just to say that even if i have a bond and love them no matter what they put me thru, i still see them as narcissistic.
Now lets see the definition or narcissist.
a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves.
In my eyes being narcissistic is not a bad thing per se. Its first a self love thing.
The thing is it gets bad when the ego gets involved and its the case for the VAST majority of people. They only swear by themselves and everything they do is for their own gain or happiness. negative narcissism is not about love anymore but about gaining everything for one self own benefit, no matter how bad things can get.
Well look at parents, aint thats the perfect example ? Trapping a sentient being in a meat trap in a dystopic world where we have to slave away to survive. Its not like they completely oblivious of the world around them. THEY KNOW. And this alone make them evil in my opinion. Knowing all this bs about society and life but still have kids. And this is exactly why its narcissistic behavior. They do not give one single fuck about the child. They care about what the kid will bring them on the short or long term. It can varies from having a cute baby to play with to having someone to take over the family business but since ALL reasons to have kids are selfish, therefore all parents are narcissistics unconsciously or not.
My parents sometimes still treat me like they own me and its a perfect case of unconscious narcissism. Saying shit like I made you so i can touch your hair and acting like im her property just because i came out her womb. its like they see you more as a alive toy than a unique human being. Idk this is stuff that they dont even realize themselves but again it proves well how all parents are narcissistic even in the slightest ways.

TLDR i loosely planned a cross country vaca for my small family and my MIL. now my BIL has interest and wants to change the dates, bring his kids and stay with us. now i have nil interest in going.
we live across the country from my fiance's uncle and his children, and they haven't seen each other for five years. i suggested that we (me, my fiance and our baby daughter) and my mother in law go visit, because it's been a long time for them, i want to share the experience with baby, and my fiance is graduating from college this summer so i thought it'd be a nice celebration because he loves it out there. not to mention we will stay in their condo for free, no extra hotel expense.
and today my fiance's brother says he's interested in going. my MIL told him about the prospect. this was pretty shocking to us because the brother barely does anything. then he says he wants to go 2 months earlier than i planned, which would mean we'd be leaving in less than a month, because he wants to watch a soccer tournament over there. my anxiety is like through the roof instantly. now i'd have to pay extra for plane tickets (the weeks i planned were $200 less), we'd have to share the condo with extra people, including my fiance's poorly behaved niece and nephew, i'd have to notify work like now, we'd have less time to save up spending money, less time to plan baby logistics (she'd be 5 mos old).
please don't get me wrong, i'm not anti-family. and i know my fiance would like to watch the soccer too so i'm sure i'll just have to adjust and accommodate for that reason... i already feel like the a-hole despite having originally planned this with minimal self-interest.

I don't consider myself to have been a "classic roblox" since I only joined once it started really taking off in popularity, but I was able to recognize a lot of the content used for this event- which did make me happy.
I'm going to go through some of the games used for the event and group them based on the worst, the best, and the just okay. Just a disclaimer this is entirely based on my own opinions about how fun I thought they were as well as how much I thought they actually engaged with the theme of classic roblox.
The Worst:
Dragon Adventures - While this is a decently-made game, the event objectives were tedious and incredibly boring. I could not bring myself to complete the whole thing since I knew I would just be searching for eggs for hours and hours.
Livetopia - I've never played Livetopia before, but I get the feeling it's essentially a Bloxburg clone. This was another set of boring repetitive objectives, but at least it was pretty simple and I didn't have to spend hours dwelling on it.
Dress to Impress - I was pretty disappointed with this one as I was kind of expecting an emulation of its older fashion game predecessors like Design It or Top Roblox Runway Model- which would have put it in "The Best" category for me easily. Instead, it was just a standard Tix hunt and a "classic roblox" themed obby- which you could pretty easily tell the developers probably did not really try to recreate an accurate old roblox feel.
The Just Okay:
Restaurant Tycoon 2: I did enjoy this one but I felt you had to be playing it for wayyy too long to get all five tokens. I'd played this game a lot back in its beta phase so I already had a decent setup to start with but it still took me about two hours to feed every customer I needed. But I did like that they added a completely new menu and customer models for the event- I thought that was cute.
Blade Ball: I am pretty ambivalent on this one, I can't lie. It was another fun game but with event objectives that were either pretty hard or pretty time-consuming. I spent the most time on this game by far trying to get to every classic map to collect all ten tix. The "classic" maps didn't really register as old roblox to me, and there wasn't much that did other than the boss fight. The boss fight wasn't too bad, just a bit generic.
Tower Defense Simulator: The whiplash I got from the difficulty between the first four maps and the last one was insane. I didn't push myself too hard, but I did eventually give up trying to beat the last map for the final token. I did think everything else was very fun and creative- especially the map design.
The Best:
Clip It: I don't really have too many complaints about this one other than the vague (sort of misleading) instructions for the objectives. The scavenger hunt for classic and iconic roblox characters was very cute and I did like that, but I especially loved the use of the one old Mad Murderer map which really took me back.
Gunfight Arena: This was a really fun play and I enjoyed the use of classic weapons and he old school maps. The first part of the objectives was easy and fair with the tix scavenger hunt around the map, and the second part was pretty challenging and fun with the kill quotas for each classic weapon. Weapons like the slingshot were pretty awful, yet ones like the paintball gun were OP as hell- but I'm not complaining, there's nothing that says classic ROBLOX more than an extreme disparity between weapon efficiencies.
Arsenal: Another game that put you up to a challenge if you chose to accept it. The utilization of classic weapons, the old-school map design, and the idea for noobs, guests, and zombies to be used as enemy NPCs were all great. The tix hunt was also fun and there were some pretty clever hiding spots as well.
Bee Swarm Simulator: I absolutely loved this one as it reminded me of classic zombie games like Build to Survive Zombies, Zombies are Attacking McDonalds, Call of Robloxia, etc. This was one that actually did a great job of capturing the essence of old school zombie games.
Driving Empire: The design for the classic area of the map was pretty amazing, incorporating much of the iconic and original roblox starter place "Happy Home in Robloxia". The houses on the map also were pretty similar to those you could have made with the stamper building tool, which was popular when I first joined- so this one was the most nostalgic for me personally.
A Dusty Trip: This is exactly what all the games should have been like- the actual normal game but adapted into the old roblox style. This was personally one of my favorites from the event and the most genuine in capturing the spirit of a roblox game from back in the day. The simple structures, buildings, enemy NPCs, and car were pretty spot-on and I loved seeing the old haunted house repurposed for this game.

Apologies if there were a few games that I didn't list, but I did find much of the rest to be boring or unremarkable (or I just didn't really play them).