Thank you, Debet. I will check with my local knitting peeps, but I don't know if any of them are quite up to it. Mom was kind of our local sock queen.

Jilli, those are gorgeous! What color are you going to do them?

Well, I have black yarn for them, and variegated black/pink/white yarn. Ideally I'd like stockings in both colorways.

I went into Fred Meyer (the chain Mom worked for) yesterday and looked at the Halloween stuff that was out, and got a little sniffly because I was identifying things she would have set aside as presents for me, or things she would have told me about.

Eh. I can see what people are saying about the pile on but really, I don't think it goes over the line very often.

And even less often do I see people come in with a rant that's not either a) clearly a get-it-off-my-chest temporary thing or b) full of self-examination about what we did to contribute or how we might be reading it wrong.

If anything, we generally tend go too far on the b) option to begin with. (I've been holding back an FPC rant myself recently but I'll save it.) So a first chorus of "Yeah, fuck that noise!" and creative cursing and you-know-we-love-yous that by and large winds down into more of an advice/analysis place anyway - yeah, I got no problem with that.

{{{Jilli}}}

ooh! I made myself a pair of Halloween earrings! small rock crystal skulls (about 3/4" front to back, 1/2" top to bottom and side to side) hanging from silver ear wires with black lace ribbon bows.

Toddson, those sound lovely.

I hope I didn't come across as saying people shouldn't feel free to rant or get hairpats or any of the wonderful things that Bitches provides. I did not want to suggest that at all. I just feel that sometimes we get mad instead of offering support or trying to figure out solutions. I am not talking about the brilliant and hilarious invective that many bitches specialize in--that stuff is funny.

Just something to think about. Or not.....

What do you think, Bitches? Am I off the mark?

Unsurprisingly, I concur with Scrappy. I'm not big on hairpats and brackets anyway, and definitely don't default to validation. I haven't noticed it in particular lately (though I was a little taken aback by the mildness of smonster's roommate's actual note which seemed pretty different in tone from how she interpreted it). (Let me amend that by saying that's not a critique of smonster as I definitely think there were some passive floppy boundaries and odd communication issues with the roomie.)

On this hand, I certainly value the "your enemy is my enemy" dynamic but the other hand is bigger and it holds all my discomfort with reflexive validation.

Happy birthday, Nora!

I think that support in Bitches sometimes spills over into demonizing whoever or whatever makes a Buffista feel bad, and that can hinder getting to a healthy place. I think we all need a reality check sometimes and sometimes it seems to me that we (Buffistas) fail to do that.

It's hard, I know, as lots of times a person just needs to vent and a reality check is the completely wrong thing. Sometimes, though, people are struggling with emotions or figuring out a situation and simple validation may not be the most helpful choice.

What do you think, Bitches? Am I off the mark?

I don't think you are off of the mark at all. And I've tried to bring it up before but never could get the wording quite this clear.

Validating our friends by demonizing people who are sometimes just being flawed but not evil humans twigs me. It's not the validating our friends that bothers me but the demonization of other actual humans. Most people have accidentally cut someone off in traffic or made a bad choice in a relationship or said the wrong thing at work. I find the demonizing off putting, personally.

Sigh. Confusing girls are confusing.

Truly.