I'm so sad that everything is wrapping up, but thanks to everybody for affirming that I'm NOT alone in my weird interests. Many of y'all have given me joy with all your own works and writings, so I figured it would be appropriate to sign off with a nod to my own, a podcast on French history and culture:
http://www.thelandofdesire.com SEE Y'ALL IN SLACK!
<3 a-hoy-hoy!
Nicole, I just wanted to say thanks for writing such thoughtful, eye-opening pieces on adoption. This is an area I haven't thought a lot about, and every time I read your work I find myself confronting knee-jerk reactions and lazy assumptions within myself. So thank you for helping me realize that this is an area where I really need to educate myself!
To be fair, if Blake Lively has been hiding a secret third hand this whole time, I would look at those leaked photos IMMEDIATELY.
All of my childhood memories involve my life-ruining sleep disorder. It took me until about three years ago to finally get a prescription for Ambien, which has been a wonder drug ever since. I was so hesitant to try, because I didn't want to "abuse" it - it took a doctor grabbing me by the shoulders, looking me in the eye, and saying "YOU ARE THE PERSON WE INVENTED IT FOR" before I would take it. Thank god I did, I can't believe I was willing to continue living the way I was - I simply had no frame of reference. I'd never known a life of regular, restful sleep. My most lucid childhood memory involves stacking up a pile of about 30-35 Babysitters Club books and reading my way until sunrise. This continued through college, where twice I managed to go four days without sleep. Four days! The hallucinations begin on day 3. One time day 3 was New Year's Eve and I'd been watching an SVU marathon all day, so when my brain cracked in half I was convinced I had been raped and was just now remembering it. The other, normal part of my brain knew that wasn't true and was worried I was going insane. I wish more people talked about sleep disorders. Sleep and the lack thereof dominated, ruled, and ruined my life for about 23 years.
This is the most relevant piece The Toast has ever published.
At least once a month easily someone sends this screencap to me and says "YOU SAID THIS EXACT PHRASE TO ME."
Every single defensive comment here is assuming that Nicole is anti-homebirth, which is just an insane failure of reading comprehension. If you've got a medically trained midwife supervising you, give birth in the tub in your living room or whatever. If you have somebody who can recognize when you're, say, bleeding to death (hint - you won't!), great, best of luck, hope it all goes smoothly and a chorus of Wiccans gently urge your earthsprite into this mortal realm. But don't sit at home with a rusty bread knife and the firm conviction that the greatest antibiotic known to woman is a steely force of will and a handful of mint leaves. Your unnamed, unvaccinated 6 year old is not the appropriate person to perform an emergency C-section in your bathtub.
Man, I just don't agree, these are women who demonstrably wield the power of the internet at their fingertips. We're only here, having this discussion, because they have the access and wherewithal to get online and do research. It's not like anybody hits "I'm Feelin' Lucky!" and ends up on an unassisted childbirth page. The research they had to conduct getting to this forum is research that could have been spent looking up "how does babby form" and like, I don't know, "death - what causes it?" It's one thing to talk about ACCESS, and get righteously angry that women are in this shitty situation, but damn, y'all have the same internet and free time the rest of us do, apparently, so learn a little about how it all works.
"all the other fish on Xmas Eve"
wtf Minty
1) IT IS A REAL THING
2) it is served by a restaurant around the corner from my house
3) pretty sure google yielded the Chowhound profile of Minty Marchmont:
"A chef I know keeps giving me chunks of Battarga wrapped in wax (some kind of Italian fish roe, I think preserved in salt). The previous chef apparently had a thing for it and overstocked before he departed. I've grated it into salad and rice, and served it on crackers with oil and pepper per his instructions, now he gives me ANOTHER one for Christmas, does anyone have any experience with this stuff?? I don't know if it's some kind of Italian comfort food, personally I'd rather have caviar, but it would be nice to put out with all the other fish on Xmas Eve."
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amativus 
Experiment