sj, my mother wanted me to tell you that it doesn't feel like the holidays till she sees F's new pic, but I didn't remember till I phonebanked another F tonight. (rolls through Bitches with half-price mistletoe and "hint, hint" look on my face...)

Awww, that’s so sweet, Erika. I’m glad she enjoys them.

She really does. I do, too, but as another mom, she can be hard on other people's pics.

ita might have made me move this here, so let's pretend she yelled at me for being off-topic(a not-totally unfathomable event, but I swear I needed to be more concise about proving I was on, but you know) I would have moved it if she wanted me to. [link]

chex mix: Truly the greatest finance article I ever read. [link]

erika, that's a good article! I just subscribed to her Substack.

That's great...I thought people here would like that. I've been thinking more about money, since I have a bit more now(Beyond how annoying it is that my dad thinks that a bit more means, idk, a residency on Big Rock Candy Mountain, but I digress)Anyway, much like she describes, budgets have never worked for me either because, among other things, a lot of experts think that if you don't have money for a birthday present, that means you know how to...say, make soap. which, no.

Two things that seemed relevant to post here:

ltc has declared Hot Topic to be her “happy place”, and she just found out the song she is doing for her musical theatre class recital is from the Beetlejuice musical. I don’t know which song, but she is super excited.

sounds like a junior Bitch.

Truly.