erika, I am so sorry you joined my rotten club-of-the-week. My neighbor lost her pug yesterday, too. Bad week for beloved pets.

Trudy, I hope for the best outcome and easy dealings for you.

Amy, that's a shit sandwich. Sorry.

This woman receives street abuse because she is fat. She decided to take pictures of the people's reactions to her. "Wait Watchers"

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This is a cool owl picture: [link]

Oh, Trudy, how scary, sad and monumentally stressful for all of you. Thinking all the best thoughts I can for your dad, his wife, her care team, and all your family.

Ugh, Amy, and ugh. That sounds so skin-crawlingly creepy. Yes, what everyone else said, six months and start looking, because you need work but oh that particular job sounds like it'll eat your soul, bit by bit. You deserve so much better.

Jury duty's done, and it was an intense and intimate and kind of heartbreaking case, and now it just feels weird and haunted to be out in the regular world again. Has anyone else done jury duty? How long does it take to shake it off?

My friend did jury duty and she swore she would never do jury duty again. The defendant yelled at the jury after they found her guilty and my friend was haunted by that. The defendant deserved it apparently, but the whole thing left a bad taste in her mouth.

I have never served.

I've only been on one trial, and it was a stupid drug case and we were a hung jury, so no lingering effects.

The defendant yelled at the jury after they found her guilty and my friend was haunted by that.

That'd be wrenching. Our not-a-defendant didn't yell at anyone; he just hung his head and looked dejected, and his lawyer patted his arm. He left almost immediately (disabled man hoping to end Dept. of Aging conservatorship and transfer back out into the world; his caretakers felt, and we agreed after an hour of talk, that he may be ready someday but that day is not now), and several of the jurors stayed behind to talk to his lawyer and try to get consoling messages to him.

It was absolutely the right thing to do, but it just felt shitty. He ended his testimony with, "I know I need help, but I just want to work and have my own room and maybe someday have a girlfriend. I don't want to die alone in a hospital."

I had mixed emotions about taking a medical exemption(Not so much about my actual health...constitutionally I'm a hardy peasant.) But I do need an attendant, and my mother needs to, you know, work and get paid. And if the county paid a posse of giggling teens to give me a pee break...hello, mistrial!ETA: Crazy-ironic JZ crosspost. ETA2; "Confidential" might be the only c-word that might not apply in that scenario. sadly.

Oh, that sounds really hard, JZ.

We had our icecream and sent our intern off, it's all terribly sad. It felt like things were just getting started. I swear, give me a skeleton budget, but if we had one more staff member from April to October, we'd be golden. Not an intern (who is either a college or highschool student, which means May to August) or a volunteer (which means they have a life and are unreliable and have short hours), but someone we can train and rely on, things would be so much easier. But that costs at least $5000. But between boss, who gets shunted with tons of administrative stuff, and me, who is tasked with supervising volunteers in tasks that are broad stroke and we are sure are f***-up proof, doing the finer stuff gets lost, and now we're in crazy watering season, so our plants don't die, and that's not something we can pawn off to one-off volunteers.

We had a great girl last year who was very interested in getting into the biz, but got realistic and took a full-time job as a secretary instead. I get it, but it sucks, for her and for me.