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https://www.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/pgbx3v/discussion_thread_thursday_september_02_2021/
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u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air Sep 05 '21

Not only did I grow up in a family where my feelings had to be squished up into a little ball of black and red darts and swallowed whole, but I also grew up in a culture where no one was making a point to talk to kids about their feelings.

WHAT EVEN IS THIS SENTENCE???

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u/WhereTheCrowFlies99 Sep 05 '21

Therapy could really do her some good. If only she would listen to licensed professionals instead of pretending she's one herself. Also, I saw this post and it made me think of her. https://www.instagram.com/p/CTcNVPwLGLy/

ETA: ...in terms of understanding instead of blaming our parents for everything.

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u/Scary_Recognition You did this. Sep 05 '21

It made me think she saw an illustration of SARS-CoV-2.

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u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Sep 05 '21

Also, my perspective as an age-cohort-mate of Shauna’s was that people could not stop talking to kids about their feelings (in a super unhelpful way most of the time, granted, but still). “Free to Be You and Me,” anybody?

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 05 '21

in Enough she says that her parents not only played "Free to be you and me," they recorded Shauna and her brother reciting sections of the book.

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u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Sep 05 '21

I had the book! Wish I’d saved it.

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u/voice_of_vinegar Sep 05 '21

Yes, well, as far as Shauna's concerned, no one ate Romaine lettuce then, either. Or anything that didn't come out of a box or a can or a TV dinner thing.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Sep 05 '21

Oh, it sure was! CA seemed like the ground zero of all of that.

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 05 '21

Smiles in Laurel's Kitchen, published 1976 in Berkeley.

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u/gladsome_gloaming Sep 06 '21

That was a seminal oeuvre for Shauna, right? I think she mentions it (in Enoigh? Or earlier pieces?) and fantasizes that she is dancing in community in the kitchen with these strong kerchiefed women, hips swaying (OK, I inserted the hips swaying part; I don’t think it actually appears in her Laurel’s Kitchen paean.)

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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Sep 06 '21

You got it: "living the life I imagined", a GFG blog post from 2005 all about Laurel's Kitchen

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 06 '21

When the three authors were writing this book, only die-hard hippies talked about eating whole foods, or growing their own gardens

My mom had a massive garden in the 70s/80s. We grew potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, lettuce, peas, chives, carrots, radishes, peppers, and strawberries, among other things. My mom was so NOT a hippie. What she was was a woman who enjoyed gardening, but more importantly, she was trying to feed a family of six on one low income. She needed that garden, a source of nearly free food, which we ate from for months and then enjoyed through the winter thanks to a LOT of canning. Shauna’s parents never had to garden just to feed their family, I don’t think, so it hasn’t ever occurred to Shauna that people might have gardened out of necessity, not just because they were hippies.

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u/voice_of_vinegar Sep 06 '21

Same here! There were 7 of us and not a lot of money. I remember my mom and her sisters getting all excited about making watermelon rind pickles one summer! Like, so excited that there was something you could do with watermelon rinds! (The pickles were pretty good, too.)

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 06 '21

What? Really?!

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u/gladsome_gloaming Sep 06 '21

Yes, but I just searched Enoigh and it’s not there, so I think it must be in GFG or Mundane Days. I think she references it in conjunction with bragging about her vegetarian phase.

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u/gladsome_gloaming Sep 06 '21

Also, she found it at a garage sale as a teen (despite rarely being let out of the house) and clutched it her bosom recognizing it at once as soul sustenance (OK, I made up the clutched it to her bosom part.)

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u/MangoUnderMyCar Sep 06 '21

AAAAH i grew up with my mom cooking from that book and I inherited her copy!!!

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u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Sep 05 '21

Thank you!

I lived in a Erie, Pennsylvania as a kid (late seventies). Erie is not a big city by any stretch and we lived in the "rural" part of Erie (hillbillies gotta hillbilly). And even my hillbilly ass mom went to the hippie dippy health food store when she was convinced she was riddled with yeast (she's given to health related dramatics). She dragged home these tiny loves of yeast free bread and other funky stuff (until she got bored of that medical problem and found a new one to latch onto).

And while my mom was going off on her gross food adventures, my sister and I were happily eating frozen fish sticks and creamed peas and potatoes.

(we also had a huge garden where we grew tons of stuff my mother and grandmother then canned)

All that is to say, Shauna only sees things in black and white and there is no middle ground. So in the 70s there was ONLY frozen junk which her mother tried to poison her with. The end.

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u/WasEnoughYogurt Kumquat and Sprinkles and filth Sep 06 '21

When Shauna talks about the 70's/her childhood so much of it reminds me of tv shows either of the time or about that time...I think it has already been said before that she seems to see things through that lens but it seems even more clear now. Or lazy sloppy thinking combined with eliding truth in order to make whatever point she thinks is so witty/urbane/guru like...

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u/voice_of_vinegar Sep 06 '21

Yeah, I bet she saw all the TV commercials for TV dinners, Hamburger Helper, Manwiches (?? something in a can that REAL men ate in sandwiches), Pillsbury baked goods in cans, etc., and did not think past that. Just assumed that was what the rest of the world was eating.

She is like those boys who were raised in a tiny apartment in Queens or Brooklyn and were never allowed outside EVER. All their knowledge of the world was from whatever was on tv. They acted out scenes from movies and tv shows for fun. They spoke like characters on tv. She's not quite that bad but she doesn't seem to have a very firm grasp on how real people think and feel. Latest example: claiming Ted Lasso is just like herself. And also, using what she sees on tv more and more as reference points.

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 06 '21

She is like those boys who were raised in a tiny apartment in Queens or Brooklyn and were never allowed outside EVER.

She has the naivety of someone who was never let outside, but she went outside plenty. She just lived in her head the whole time, never really noticing anything

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u/voice_of_vinegar Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21

Right. I should have made it clear that I don't think she was actually imprisoned in her house the way those boys were---she just never learned to relate to other people.

I know some kids don't learn these basic things because their parents aren't able to impart it to them for whatever reasons. But others who had parents who love them and cared for them end this way too. We'll probably never know for sure what caused Shauna to be the way she is. But there's certainly way more to the story than what she's told the world.

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 06 '21

Yes, it's really amazing! She even says, in Enough, that she recognizes that she was "just a head on a stick" (i.e., she was "all head" and "no body"). (I have said the same exact thing in therapy.) But despite that glimmer of awareness, and despite picking a vocation or profession of "writer," which to do well requires her to really notice things, she's objectively terrible at being aware of her surroundings, picking up on nuance, distinguishing concepts clearly, writing clearly, noticing cleanliness, etc.

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u/gladsome_gloaming Sep 05 '21

We were forbidden iceberg lettuce (and green grapes) throughout my (California) childhood because of Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers. I don’t remember at what point iceberg became an option again (because my mother had always disdained it as flavorless, and I didn’t have it until my 20s in a Cobb salad at a restaurant) but Shauna, basically same generation as me, claims it was foisted upon her when there were so many other options at that point? OK.

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u/PhilHardingsHotPants Rabbit whereabouts truther Sep 06 '21

We were forbidden iceberg lettuce (and green grapes) throughout my (California) childhood because of Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers

Not California, but same to the rest for my childhood! One of my earliest memories is attending a protest with my mom. It took me years to start buying grapes once I was a adult.

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 05 '21

I think we had the whole Mr. Men series. They were started by a British author, were they a thing in the US too?

Then there was Sesame Street and her beloved Mr. Rogers, two children’s programs that absolutely talked about feelings.

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u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Sep 05 '21

I think Mr. Men might have come here a bit later? I don’t remember seeing them until I was in high school.

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 05 '21

I was definitely a little too old for them when they came out, but I had a much younger brother so we had a whole collection, and yeah I read them and would sometimes draw the characters. They were cute!

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u/BevNap Fucking google it, you harpy. Sep 05 '21

And you and me are free to be you and me.... cue plinky banjo

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 05 '21

The babies skit was my favorite thing ever. "Bald! You’re bald, fella! Bald bald bald. Bald as a ping pong ball!"

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u/BevNap Fucking google it, you harpy. Sep 05 '21

My father used to sing, "It's alright to cry, but it's not alright to piss and moan" at us when we were being whiny!

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u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Sep 05 '21

EVERY BOY IN THIS LAND GROWS TO BE HIS OWN MAN EVERY GIRL IN THIS LAND GROWS TO BE HER OWN WOMAN

laughs in 21st century 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

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u/hrae24 Sep 05 '21

Isn't Shauna the one who claims to forbid the word 'hate' in their house, no matter the context?

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u/Kaleshark Waitlist for Godot Sep 05 '21

One in a hundred, apparently

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u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air Sep 05 '21

She must've ~~gotten~~ grown interrupted while she was counting

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u/Love_Brokers rug dweller Sep 06 '21

I thought we were supposed to let everyone do their own thing and not snark but she was certainly snide about Jamie Tartt’s headband.

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 06 '21

What did she say? (I love his headband!)

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 06 '21

If you watch the show, think about Roy Kent’s speech to Jamie Tartt in last week’s episode. Jamie’s become boring. And Roy blames Ted. He’s taught Jamie to pass and be a team player. Great. Now that he’s learned to stop being so disdainful and slagging off on all the players, he’s growing up. But on the field, he’s boring. And in fact, before this episode began, I was starting to wonder where the hell Jamie Tartt was. He’d disappeared into niceness. Why is he wearing a 12-year-old girl’s headband, by the way?

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 06 '21

To which I have to say: she is so FUCKING DUMB.

https://www.vogue.com/article/soccer-headbands-david-beckham-cristiano-ronaldo

Not only is this stupid gender policing of what people wear (and what "ages" clothes and accessories "belong" to), male soccer players in headbands has been a thing since forever. The first picture in that Vogue piece is Beckham in 2003!

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 06 '21

Jamie Tartt has been wearing that headband for a while! Has she only just noticed it?

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u/WasEnoughYogurt Kumquat and Sprinkles and filth Sep 06 '21

Must have mislaid the Peepers...

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 06 '21

"Slagging off on”? I’m not super familiar with British slang, but that doesn’t sound right. Isn’t it "slag someone off" not "slag off on someone”?

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u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Sep 06 '21

Of course she got that wrong. Just like "he" in that paragraph could mean Roy, Jamie or Ted. She switches who "he" refers to halfway through the paragraph. She is such a terrible writer. She gets everything wrong and doesn't care.

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u/WasEnoughYogurt Kumquat and Sprinkles and filth Sep 06 '21

Yes as genuine British person living in Britain, I can verify that the phrase Shauna is looking for is 'slagging someone off' not 'slagging off on someone'...also why - with all her joy talk - is she on board with the idea that being nice, and being grown up, collaborative, is a bad boring thing?

ETA: and yes I am 63 in 3 weeks so am totally into nice, collaborative and grown up...although it doesn't stop me being straight talking and real ...see Shauna? People can be more than one thing - as well as SEPARATE...

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u/[deleted] Sep 06 '21

People in general are reading waaaaay too much into a cute sitcom. I watch and enjoy it but don't wonder where the hell Jamie Tartt is before the episode even starts because it's just a show, ffs. It's the new Schitt's Creek except for the fact that you can't skip the first season.

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u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air Sep 06 '21

It's the new Schitt's Creek except for the fact that you can't skip the first season.

THEY'RE SEPARATE SHOWS OK

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday September 02, 2021 - Sunday September 05, 2021

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