The lawn guy came over and trimmed back my shaggy shrubs (and my scooby shrubs too), and transplanted a wild thing that we think is a mountain laurel into the back garden bed

If it's a wild thing, I trust you put it in the bed without any supper. According to Ryan's storybooks, it's standard operating procedure.

I will add on, sj, and note that any kind of online hive-mind would be a good thing. Just helps having people go through the same stuff. A lot of parenting is ephemeral - super important at that particular stage but you'll be somewhere else entirely in a month.

Other online groups are scary, but I don't know what I would do without the buffistas. So many spicy brains. What do other people do without buffistas?

sj, the shirt is an old Joe's Crab Shack shirt I got at a garage sale and attacked with scissors. It's all cleavagey and Flashdancey now.

smonster, I KNOW it's too far. Dammit.

I am critiquing a 4 chapter MS sample. How can I say "This is terrible, you can't punctuate, your sentence structure is more confusing than a Rubik's cube and you often use exactly the wrong words for your intended meaning. Don't quit your day job. Here's my invoice." Seriously, my eyes are bleeding.

This person wanted another opinion before a vanity press charged to pub her, and...and...SCAM. NO, NO.

Thank GOD I am not doing line or copyedits. I would stab myself.

I think I need to clean my desk. It's on my to-do list, and I can't look at this thing for more than 15 pages at a time. I'm going to have to finish it in the morning or I will have nightmares of being paper-cut to death by a copy of Strunk & White.

But tomorrow my BFF is coming over to do yoga (2 months it's been! I CREAK!) and then we are gonna pool it with the kiddo.

sj, the shirt is an old Joe's Crab Shack shirt I got at a garage sale and attacked with scissors. It's all cleavagey and Flashdancey now.

Awesome!

oyster sauce

Generally not vegan. Unless you're going by that weird article that came out a year or so ago that argued that oysters should count as vegan. No other shellfish, just oysters. I don't remember the reasoning.

Generally not vegan.

Ooh, fair point.

Though oysters are so tasty and so very stupid that I would certainly make an exception for them. Consider using billytea's cognitive function chart for what's edible? Octopi and crows are right out.

Anyway, the stir fry would work without the Oyster Sauce. But not without the OJ.

If it's a wild thing, I trust you put it in the bed without any supper.

Well, I didn't fertilize it, so I guess you could say, I did.

There is stuff labeled "Vegetarian Oyster Sauce" that's made out of mushrooms. I don't know why they don't just call it mushroom sauce.

There is stuff labeled "Vegetarian Oyster Sauce" that's made out of mushrooms. I don't know why they don't just call it mushroom sauce.

We have a mushroom sauce intended for veggies around the pantry somewhere. It's not bad. (I say this as a person with a deeply conflicted relationship towards mushrooms.)

Anything called mushroom sauce should have cream in it.