Super General Advice (the thread for advice without making a thread)

Sometimes people go with something like: Mr.j.jones or ms.j.jones in case of common names.

If you were so inclined you could always give yourself a second middle name with an unusual initial? :P

 

gonna avoid giving out real deets but for my professional email I could not for the life of me set it up and I decided on going with an equivalent of "keltkamakerspace" kinda? so it had a vibe of "this is what I do professional + firstname"

 

Book res for 14 year old autistic girl struggling with reading comprehension? She loves stories contained within books but Absolutely cannot stand reading

 

a Lot of pratchett books are set up to be audio books too

 

Jacqueline Wilson’s books might be good for what you’re looking for

 

Try Diana Wynne Jones. Howl's Moving Castle is her most famous book (very different tonally from the movie; my description was that the book is a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of fairy tales, and the movie reverse-engineered a straight fairy tale from it), but she has a pretty long bibliography. The reading level mostly isn't too high, but the plots are really twisty and unpredictable, which helped keep little me on board. The stories are also mostly self-contained within individual books even when they're arranged in a series, which might be a plus or a minus depending on her personal taste.

 

The problem itself seems to lie in processing written word to information her brain understands. Listening to a story or instructions, she can retain and comprehend much more easily.

We went to the library yesterday and I helped her choose a few books of an easier bite, ones family might have made fun of her for picking at her age. A goosebumps, a wayside school collection, and Charlie and the chocolate factory. Also managed to find free audiobooks on YouTube to accompany.

Thank everyone for the help and recommend.

 

belated, sorry: i asked my little brother what he might recommend. he's 12, so a bit younger than her, but Proper Novels with lots of words and no pictures were hard for him - he's very into books that are like.... a cross between a comic book and written text - some sections are written out, but usually have doodles in the margins, and every few pages there will be one or two comic spreads

the one he's most into right now is danny dragonbreath, but i know there's another book like this that's about some kid who works as a PI?

he says he likes the books with text interspersed with comic panels, because the comic panels "give [his] brain a rest" and help divide the text into what he feels is more readable/tackleable text chunks

 

what i'm reccing isn't quite a graphic novel - it's a regular novel and a graphic novel spliced together

this is clipped from one of the danny dragonbreath books

so it has comic panels and walls of text

but yeah, graphic novels are also good!

 

The W.I.T.C.H. books were a lot like that, and I enjoyed them at that age--they were a little more dense visually, and I don't know if they're in print anymore? But that might also be something to look at. (They're also very small books, like most kids' serials.)

 

I don't know if this is the right thread but I can't find a gender-advice-specific thread; mods, please move it if there is one. I've set my birthday, in a month and a half, as a deadline to come out to at least some family members. What would people who've done it advise I do specifically?

 

this might belong more in XX/XY - i'm gonna reply now, but stating for the record that if it gets moved, i'm cool with my response being moved along with

i came out to my parents in an email, i came out to my grandmothers during a visit they made to my family, privately and in person, and i came out to ~most of my family and friends/people who knew me in high school via a facebook post

i think... for people that you're close to, whom you want a positive relationship with, that coming out in person is a good idea, or a phone or video call if there's factors like distance that make that unrealistic. i regret not coming out to my sister personally, in large part because of how it hurt her - she felt that finding out from a facebook post addressed to the family at large was ... emphasizing distance between us, particularly given the rough nature of our childhood relationship. it felt like i didn't trust her with the private details of my life - which, to be fair, wasn't untrue and... i absolutely would have waited longer on coming out overall had i chosen to come out to her privately, because she... she thinks some shit, and she really didn't bother interrogating any of it until after i came out, and it's still a major work in progress, and i don't think i could have held her hand through my coming out at the time that i did

the nature of it being in person is... actually, i take it back, i think it's less important but like... people can be weird, my grandmothers definitely would have been shocked and hurt if it hadn't been in person. anyway, what i think's more important is the ... personalization? no, the intimacy - being told privately, and perhaps not strictly individually, but directly, is an implicit assumption of intimacy and closeness

even if you choose to do it privately for some people, picking options with a certain degree of distance (personally, i like sending emails) is totally legit - it gives you a greater degree of control of what and how you say it, for example, and (a bonus for me) it means you don't have to deal with someone's initial, knee jerk reaction, but their (hopefully) considered, more thoughtful one

and if there are people who would "need" a certain method of coming out (my grandmothers, needing it to be in person, for example) but for whom you're not comfortable doing that with - honestly, don't bother if you're not comfortable. it might not feel like it at the time, and they might... respond horribly, with offence and hurt, but this is about you and your comfort, and ... personally, for me, it helps to frame coming out to people as a gift, always, of trust with vital, often private information (no matter how publicly you choose to do it) and it is not your problem if they don't like how you did it

how much or how little you come out is also up to you - you can choose a select few (i told my parents almost 18 months before coming out on facebook; i told my grandmothers a few weeks before the facebook post; i am choosy about what friends and coworkers i come out to irl and when even now), you can stagger who you tell, and it is information that can absolutely be context determined - aunt so-and-so is very understanding of things, so you come out to her, but not to her husband

if you want to take a "ripping the bandaid off" approach, or an approach that tries to shut down arguments before they can happen, something public and addressed "group of people at large" isn't a bad way - facebook is... i mean, anyone who has access to my facebook can see that post, so it was a very broad, to-the-world post, even if specifically addressed at my family and high school friends. my family has a custom of emailing all the "branches" letters of yearly update, which i could have done to both broadly come out to my family, especially extended ones, without as much of the public spectacle that facebook invited

that was all very broad, because it really really is a highly personal, and subjective, decision. explicit advice - i would recommend making a short list of all the people you positively want to tell (rather than, say, feeling like you have to for whatever reason), if you don't have one already. and then, however you ultimately decide to come out, writing a coming out letter to them (as a group, individually, whatever configuration makes sense) can organize your thoughts on what is important to you to tell them. do you just want it to be a statement of facts? do you want to offer some form of q&a? (note, i think that's an advanced coming out method and... not recommended in pretty much every case) do you want to share stories, illustrating your [insert identity]? do you want to tell them about your private journey of learning or realizing this about yourself? do you want to focus on what this means for your future - plans about transition, or the types of relationships you will be seeking out? do you want to do all of these, with which one you do depending on who you're telling, or something totally different?

even if you opt to do it in person, or on a video call or w/e, having an idea of the shape you want your coming out narrative, essentially, to be helps a lot, and you can repurpose your coming out letter(s) to suit whatever context you choose

 

Thanks, this is helpful. I already was thinking I might use email/PMs as it's easier to consider responses that way, and also I think it would work better to do it on an individual basis with my family. Mother has specifically said to me that if something's difficult to say she'll understand if I use PMs. This'll help me work out what precisely to say.

 

I need Advice(TM)

My partner’s birthday is tomorrow and the only way I can go to get them a cheesecake is if either I

A: pay $20 worth of Uber’s to get to Safeway and back (note: cheesecake is $12 and I have $37)
B: wait around for a LONG TIME and take the bus to Safeway (note: I’d then have to wait to take the bus back, another long ass time)
C: walk a half hour in 98° weather, then a half hour back still in 98° weather (another note: I’ve been having Walking Issues(TM) recently)

What do

 

How severe are your walking issues? Can you walk there, then bus or Uber back? Or bus, then Uber?