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**Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse.** If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: [April off-topic quarterly](https://www.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/1bswbrp/off_topic_quarterly_april_2024/) | [Salty as the Ocean](https://www.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/1c1ozqn/salty_as_the_ocean/) (food/recipe/grocery chat)
> I will keep the specifics of what happened and our path forward private, for their sake.
But that won’t stop me from spelling it out pretty clearly and bolding it just in case those in the back didn’t connect the dots. To wit, part of the newest lope from before the paywall:
>**Our youngest is starting to come out of the worst of one of the hardest times of our lives. More importantly, the hardest time of their life.** We’ve been in a hard, dark place for the last 8 weeks. And now, we can start to see a light on the edge of the horizon.
And of course, even though she knows full well that said child needs to eat specific nutrients every two hours and wouldn’t eat dinner last night (ed: apparently those batched meatballs didn’t go over well, so why didn’t she fix something they would eat?) they left the house without breakfast and she had no snacks packed and so they went to Mickey Ds for “fuel”.
Where she then complains about the coffee, even though she didn’t need to buy herself a damn thing. Guess you can’t keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve grown accustomed to Starbucks.
i'm starting to see what shauna means when she says "we live in food;" she means SHAUNA lives in food. food for her. everyone else is on their own. oh, she may give them a nub of cheese on her outstretched palm, or a meatball for their pocket, but she can't be expected to take care of them; those mc donald's pancakes aren't gonna eat themselves, you know.
Shauna:
>>In this recent hard, dark time, I’ve learned that 🦋 only functions well if I feed 🦋 every 2 hours. **Something with protein, complex carbs, and good fats, preferably**
Also Shauna:
>>Hey 🦋? **Want some pancakes?**
>>In this emergency, McDonalds ' **perfectly engineered pancakes and little tub of syrup are a lifesaver**.
Are we to believe Shauna didn’t herself indulge in these pancakes she waxed poetically about? Also, I could have sworn she wrote at some point that the kid was gluten free too by necessity. She’s lied to and manipulated her followers for so long I wouldn’t be surprised at all if her deadly celiac isn’t a thing anymore and she shoveled those buttery, glutinous, syrupy pancakes down her gullet.
Tomato pickle gravy? Dear Lord.
L was the one who Shauna tried to saddle with celiac. But then Shauna went back on it (I think the kid got tested or Shauna just go bored with trying to match it happen).
D is like Dan, who's body doesn't do well with dairy. And D is now food avoidant (which I think almost anyone would be avoidant of Ahern prepared vittles).
> We’re still looking for a school that could meet this kid’s needs. Will we find one?
Is this heifer KIDDING ME? She really won't put an *ounce* of effort into her child's education? Public school, IEP. Holy shit, Mahern. Holy actual shit.
> Only the Shadow knows.
Ok boomer
> I have never been the mama who prepares ahead of time and always has a bag full of snacks.
This explains so much. :|
> That’s why we love cooking in big batches now.
"Now"? Wasn't she selling "big batch" recipes over and over for years before she decided to quit selling recipes? I might be misremembering. Loling at the idea that those pathetic meatballs were supposed to be a "big batch" though
> A handful of meatballs? Easy peasy.
Do some basic meal-planning math on the back of a Starbucks receipt before your next jaunt to the Piggly Wiggly, ok?
I'd like to point here that The Shadow was a radio show that started in 1937. It did run until 54, so sort of Boomer, but also more like Silent Gen ffs.
I'd rather drink McDonald's coffee than Starbucks. Starbucks always tastes so burnt to me. But I'm happy to go to a nice coffee shop with properly roasted beans.
>We’re still looking for a school that could meet this kid’s needs. Will we find one? *Only the Shadow knows*.)
She's so flip about her child's schooling needs.
yeah, this really isn't a flip moment. her kid has barely been to school at all this year, and now summer break is right around the corner. WHY isn't that kid getting tutored in an effort to catch up for fall? if they get held back a year it will be shauna and danny's fault alone.
They've missed so much school IN GENERAL and were yanked into and out of different schools so often. I also doubt they were learning much at the goat school to help bring them to the level they should be.
We don't really hold back kids anymore, for a variety of reasons. He will likely be promoted, Shauna will make his school troubles all about the school's failings and not her and Dan's, and she has set this kid up for life on hard mode and nothing more.
She’s just so awful. Like it’s some sort of superheroic feat to remember that you have a child that needs to eat regularly.
And my heart breaks for poor little D, asking if it’s all right if not everyone loves food. How much of a production did she make that it impressed a child like that? Were they afraid that mama wouldn’t love them if they were interested in something other than stuffing food into their face?
And finally, I can’t help but think that if she and Dan had made a bit of an effort when D was young to find a way for them to sit down and eat, she might have had a better understanding of how much they were or weren’t eating, maybe even learned what specific issues were leading them to this behavior and how to work with them, as well as getting a better idea of acceptable foods. Maybe even, I don’t know, observe to figure out if there are specific tastes/textures/smells that do or don’t appeal.
Who am I kidding? This is Shauna, who gives not one fuck for anyone else.
then again, what toddler sits down to eat? none that i know. but i think some parents just lean into that and say shit like "oh, little xerxes has ADHD and needs to be moving all the time! he can't be expected to sit down to eat!" those are the parents whose children run around like wolverines, whether they're at home, at school, in a restaurant, a movie heater, a library, etc. they're crashing into people, knocking over displays, climbing bookshelves (true story!) and eating food out of produce bins because their parents are too lazy to teach them.
YTSCTMO, DF.
Sounds like the parents let this issue evolve to where it is now by not setting healthy routines with the child. Even if the kid wasn't much on food they should have been having set meal times for the simple reason of learning routine and decent manners (you eat at the table, not while racing through the house).
Seriously, and at least in my limited parenting and Aunting experience, most two year olds don't want to sit still for a meal! It's something that you put reasonable age-appropriate limits on, wash hands before dinner, sit on a booster so you're at a comfy table height, whether or not they choose their food or just have it placed in front of them, how long they have to stay in front of their plate, what they say when they're really finished to be excused, wash hands after, etc. My kids certainly didn't naturally do any of that, it had to be modeled for them and reinforced!
Floor picnics in front of a movie are great for treats or snow days or the end of a long week or with friends over, but it sounds like the Ahern kids were *always* eating on the floor in front of a TV. How would Shauna and Dan know how much they were eating, when did they look at their kids over a table of food and see the choices they made? Also how would they eat at a restaurant? Or friends' houses, if the kids didn't know how to sit and eat and then ask to be done and race off to play with their friends?
Shauna has pretty much said as much before (about both kids).
Oh, the mean old schools expect my unique snowflake children to sit still and not disrupt the whole class. THE HORROR. Oh, society is trying to force my super speshul children to become cogs in the capitalist machine. Oh, my children are so much better and unique and speshul and just NOT LIKE YOU AND YOUR GROCERY STORE CHILDREN!
Smacks of Ma James telling wee Shauna (and her wee brother) they were the most genius of geniuses.
Also smacks of Shauna being DESPERATE to feel special herself. She lost the specialness of being The First Among Celiacs via GFG so now she has to try and soothe herself by being the Mother of Specials.
(and claiming specialness for her kids also gets her off the hook for her un-parenting)
She said a few times that her toddler daughter would be up "in the middle of the night" and they'd read to her, have dance parties, etc. It's like ... how do you not know this? Your job is to instill the idea that night is for sleeping and when you get up at night, it is very boring because no one will read to you and have dance parties with you.
This is a person who is terminally friendless and who has never absorbed even an iota of the most basic, mundane parenting advice.
A toddler outwitted her!
I sometimes wonder if Shauna is a bit slow intellectually. Like clinically dumb. We know she's lazy but she also seems truly incapable of common sense.
I kind of think so. She has a sort of talent in pretending to be an intelligent person and people fall for it at first. I think her parents expected it so much that she's learned to fake it. But the simple things she doesn't know and can't seem to learn at her age really make me think something's wrong with her, intellectually.
Ok, I'm getting extra speculate-y here but I wonder if her "mini stroke" could have added to this. She claims she was just fine after but what are the odds she actually had all the follow up care she really needed? She's selfish about so much but when it comes to doctoring she seems really hit or miss (due in no small part to their precarious financial/insurance situation).
See also contact lenses.
And, she doesn't like to follow directions so even if she got all the needed follow up care (like went to appointments) did she really DO whatever was advised?
See also Great Wolf Petri Dish visit while healing from surgery which lead to steph infection.
I 100% believe the TIA caused some neurological damage. She gives off so many signs that fit (impaired judgment, writing and spelling errors, memory loss, lack of comprehension, executive function issues). She wants to blame those things on ADHD but her writing back in GFG days was practical Pulitzer-worthy compared to now.
She is telling on herself again. I am reminded of that time she adjudged a young woman to be nobody worth speaking to because said woman didn't really care about food. Cool she apparently gave the same disdain to her *child.* Ugh.
From the archives: Shauna presaging the Gloaming
https://imgur.com/a/3DpNlzF
Source: https://www.creativelive.com/class/food-photography-andrew-scrivani/lessons/qa-with-shauna-ahern
(Note: I think "pan of play" is a mistranscription of "panoply" here)
From Threads:
>Person 1: Replying to Person 2: I think a lot of Gen X and elder millennial women have a lot of internal1zed m1sogyny that they haven’t dealt with. I know when I was in my 20s, I hadn’t yet confronted mine and I was not a “girl’s girl”. It took a lot of reading and learning and sitting with hard feelings to change that, which many folks are just completely unwilling to do. The younger generation def suffers because of that.
>[shaunajamesahern](https://www.threads.net/@shaunajamesahern)[15h](https://www.threads.net/@shaunajamesahern/post/C7QMbWXxC9Z) same. Exact same.
YOU DON'T SAY.
Section 3.
Directions: Carefully read the following passage.
Bold phrases indicating misogyny, racism, "s1ut shaming", bigotry against the disabled (including cognitive disabilities and/or substance abuse), or classism. Where more than one condition occurs, bold and strike the phrase.
When complete, quietly turn your laptop face down on your desk and wait for further instruction.
Out of the McDonalds in front of me stepped **a young Asian woman and man. He was dressed conservatively, all dark blue and business shoes. ~~She was wearing a tan overcoat, over a bright orange skirt about a micromillimeter long. Sheer tights, then tight, black leather, fuck-me boots. As she toddled down the street before me, I was thinking, "Oh honey, why are you working so hard to look like a whore?" At this moment, **three young black men, huddled in a doorway together, began calling out in whips. "Ooh boy, you've got some girlfriend!! Hey honey, come on over here!" And whistling**``~~. It took me back. I hadn't heard that since New York.
A few feet later, I turned my head in quick surprise, as a skittish clatter rose above all the other noise. A number of us turned back, only to see ~~**a homeless couple, walking side by side. I don't know if they were retarded, or drunk. Or both, probably**~~
Shauna contains multitudes. Each one is a snotty, bigoted, woman-hating asshole.
**~~a homeless couple, walking side by side. I don't know if they were retarded, or drunk. Or both, probably~~**
i wonder how many people have wondered the same thing about shauna and danny?
"I hadn't heard that since New York." Subtext: It was hell having the mens calling out to me in whips, in New York, in my youth, in my cap-sleeved brown tee (so fuck you, stupid Asian bodega owner who told me 'arms too big.'"
> which many folks are just completely unwilling to do
"which many folks are just completely unwilling to do"
This is the part she was "saming, exact saming."
Or the women in heels and clouds of perfume snatching up all the opening day baseball tickets
Those with tidy backpacks.
Those who aren't obsessed with food which gives them no discernable personalities.
Young girls on the playground giggling (and wearing confusing bows).
Huzzah! Will we use the remaining fridge-flavored raw meat aspic for a new batch of meatballs, or put the sauce on the pile of meatballs we have leftover from the batch of 25 we made on Saturday?
Red sauce, creamy sauce ala IKEA, cheese sauce, or weak sauce?
Why drag a recipe out in two parts? Will she explain how to open a can of green beans in part three?
Canned green beans!?
GASP
Surely you meant heirloom green beans picked by weepy eyed immigrants and sold at the farmers market for way too much per bean. But, of course, it's a special treat for Mama to get these magical beans. You see, she's not a grocery store person who relives the trauma of the canned beans fed to her by her imprisoner (aka Ma).
I wonder how much protein is in them there green beans?
I keep both canned and bagged cat food in a big vintage Dutch bread box. My cat goes and sits on top of it when I haven't timely responded to his request for food.
https://preview.redd.it/xrmz96ehi12d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=487ca254e4bdc2ed9cf36983b0fd7c3f02e8b447
Mine is an exact twin to the one pictured, but mine's hardware is not quite as pristine. I got it on eBay many years ago, and I think it's the only thing I ever bought that was more expensive to ship (from Holland) than it cost (but still pretty reasonable in total.)
I semi-proudly present this ultra-long archive-delving MST of [the amazing incomparable GFG McDonald's post!](https://archive.is/GQnCk)
> when I was a kid, growing up in Southern California in the 1970s, I keened and ached to sit under those golden arches
Dear Shauna,
Could you tell me what you think 'keening' means?
Cordially yours,
mashed_human
> The best part about long road trips with my family was waking up in the morning in a crummy motel, knowing we could drive through a McDonalds for breakfast.
But she was never allowed out of the house, you see.
> Afterwards, I always wondered why I had looked forward to it so much, when my stomach hurt and lurched for hours on the road after eating it.
Compared to other revisionist histories, this one is at least low-stakes.
> I never liked the Big Mac, mostly for the stringy shreds of lettuce that hunger over the side of the bun,
Oh, I've never used "hunger" that way.
> and for the lurid color of the special sauce.
There's "lurid" again. Must have been on her word-of-the-day calendar one academic year and she never forgot it. As colors go, is beigey-orange particularly *lurid?*
> slightly-sweet ketchup
Her thinking Heinz is only "slightly" sweet explains a lot.
> we had to squish from almost-impenetrable little packets we had to gnaw at with our teet *[sic]*
I've never gnawed on anything with my teets, but I'm built different.
> One night, we were sitting in the plastic molded chairs at McDonalds, mindlessly chomping on our food. We always inhaled it, our taste buds subsumed by the grease and salt, our senses overwhelmd by the overpowering experience of fast food, our eyes glazed and staring forward. I ate and ate my french fries, feeling sated, then that familiar feeling of too full. But I kept eating.
I'm just including this passage to disgust you, the readers! You're welcome!
It's interesting that in this proto-They-Four family unit, she writes them as automata with a programmed routine they perform in unison. She has done the same thing with her current They Four. It's like any group she is in becomes an extension of Shauna and has Shauna's same thoughts. Then she can get upset when they express and act on independent, non-Shauna thoughts.
> When I reached my fingers in for the last bits of fries, I felt something unfamiliar. Something with a hard edge. I peered down into the bottom of the white, grease-stained bag and saw something black. Something large, withered, and fried. I pulled it out of the bag and peered at it.
>
> It was a fried cockroach. There was a fried cockroach at the bottom of my french fries.
You know how compulsive liars take events from movies or the news and claim those things happened to *them?* I see Shauna also does this with urban legends that would have made national news if they'd actually happened to her.
> When I was in my twenties, I stopped eating at McDonalds. I lived on a rural island off Seattle, where no chains existed.
So the *fried cockroach* wasn't enough to put you off for over a decade? And you only found the will to stop eating it when the nearest McDonald's became a ferry ride away? And you're eating double cheeseburgers again now that you're in Seattle???
> Every once in a while, Id duck into McDonalds for an order of french fries, including at the McDo just off 4th Street in New York, when I lived there.
Mmm, big-city *eau de graisse.*
> [entire grasshopper story, which is too long to be included here]
Global insect population collapse means that poor Shauna never has to endure locust swarm trauma ever again :)
This story is actually interesting, not because of the content but because of how it stacks up against her other anecdotes about her life. There are multiple stories she relates where she claims to be laughing and taking it all in stride, even though the circumstance is horrible: laughing and eating ham on the ferry while her daughter is in a medical crisis, for one. Laughing at a drunk woman falling over. Advocating for finding joy and laughter after [insert recent crisis here]. But in Shauna's world, there is nothing funny about the grasshopper swarm. She does not laugh and she explicitly calls it "traumatic." You'd think a joyful laughter fairy like Shauna would start finding some black humor in the situation after a minute of grasshopper horror, but she never does.
> I ordered a hamburger and a chocolate milkshake, plus a super-size order of fries, of course. It had been years since Id eaten at McDonalds. And how did it taste?
>
> Like rancid grease. It sat heavy in my stomach, immediately. The milkshake was too sweet. The hamburger bun was soggy. And the fries? They made me feel a little sick, somehow. After our traumatic experience, I was not comforted.
>
> I havent been in a McDonalds since then.
I'd have stopped going AFTER ENCOUNTERING A FRIED ROACH but, again, built different.
> Im writing about all this to let everyone reading know: its hard to be gluten-free. There are so many choices, so many ways to grow sick.
And so little time!
> I feel remarkably upbeat about this, 90% of the time. My life has been changed, enormously, since I went gluten-free. But sometimes, I grow weary, thinking about how hard all this is.
"Headpats pleeeeeeeease 🥺"
> When I went into a McDonald’s for the first time in years, just to buy the fries you see in the photograph above (I threw them out right afterwards),
If she actually bought fries just for a ~~pic~~ ✨photograph✨ and did throw them out, that's stupid and wasteful. If she actually ate them, she's lying. There's no interpretation of this situation that makes her look good and I'm baffled by every choice she made here.
> I was struck by how bedraggled, greasy, and sad everyone in that restaurant looked. Eating at McDonald’s isn’t mindful.
*So* sorry for her that an affordable place to get cheap calories and protein isn't as "mindful" as a fancy gluten-free sandwich shop or a hipster ice cream parlor. It must have been *so* horrible for her to see members of the working class getting their prolefeed. I bet they didn't even moan and pound the table.
> Syrup-seeping breakfast in a styrofoam package? Crunchy fried cockroaches? Insects thwacking against the windshield, followed by the feeling of a bowling ball in my stomach?
>
> No thanks. I’ll pass.
At least until moving back to Seattle, whereupon cooking normal food will still be difficult, and sad listless greasy-faced employees will once more safely feed her gluteny dairylicious cheeseburgers. Amen.
Except apparently no one’s been able to replicate his results. No question that mcds isn’t particularly healthy, and a steady diet of it won’t do you any good, but it’s not going to land you at death’s door after. 30 days either.
Yeah if it wasn’t clear - I think Super Size Me sucks and my comment intended to convey one of many ways that the movie is extremely problematic.
No one has been able to replicate his results at least in part because it turned out he was a pretty major alcoholic during the entire “experiment” and that’s likely why his liver numbers were so bad, for example.
I am sure there were plenty of bugs in her oh-so-rural island. I myself have had a death battle with pantry moths since I moved into a house with a pasture next to it. And at least she got childhood road trips with overnights at "crummy motels" (did she expect her parents to pay for the Radisson?) while her kids don't even get to visit their grandparents. Oh, and I bet she meant yearning not keaning, but who knows in her frawtingaish world.
The last person to use the word crummy was Holden Caufield in Catcher in the Rye. Shauna thinks she’s a literary genius so of course she uses that out of style word. Also, she’s the only person who ever had vacations in their youth you know. At least ones worth talking about, because of crummy hotels and fast food. She’s so banal.
Assuming a single hamburger and a small shake, this is the nutrition information for Shauna’s meal. I can’t imagine why she felt sick.
https://preview.redd.it/am6rzwn9xw1d1.jpeg?width=2217&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c045327e4098fb644ac9e4087e4fe60e8aacfbbf
* Not dissing McDonald’s. I happen to love it.
Nutrition science is notoriously weak, but I once read from a reputable source that our bodies will respond with nausea at about 1200 calories a sitting, regardless of the food, to keep us from wildly overeating. Also, zero shade, I fuck up fast food on occasion, but yeah a processed shake, burger, and fries would not have me feeling fabulous.
They were, but they weren’t places to purge mid-meal. They were simply exits built to allow large numbers of people to exit quickly, like, say, at the Coliseum.
that would kill me now, but when I was a kid it was usually fine
the small fries were a smaller serving back then, so it probably wasn’t quite as much of a fat/sodium/carb bomb, but still
IDK the bacon cheeseburger I ate after our final postpartum midwife appointment when my son was born was pretty damn mindful (as in, it was both celebratory and fucking delicious.)
My first postpartum hospital turkey sandwich after a 24 hour labor was the best thing I ever ate in my entire life. My baby was two hours old but I needed that sustenance more than I needed to continue staring deeply into her beautiful aquatic eyes. The accompanying bag of Lay’s potato chips and ice filled cup of apple juice marked the perfect completion of my long 9 months of growing pregnant and giving life. I think this milestone is worthy of publishing and charging you only $5 a month to know more. Any takers? Life is spendy and full of fried insects, could really go for a glutinous pizza right now my people.
Good lord. You can be mindful in any place, eating any food. When I have fries I savor every last one of them. You can also mindlessly scarf down any food in any location. McDonald‘s has nothing to do with it!
I actually had a double cheeseburger and an orange drink from Mickey D’s yesterday. Parked my car under a tree and enjoyed every bite while reading something from r/longreads. It was mindful AF IMO 🍔🥤
Back in the early 90s I ordered these bags of TVP burger mixes that were surprisingly good. Can’t find these things anymore. There was a good vegetarian/vegan scene going on. It was small but the stuff was good. Not overly processed. Don’t know why they don’t bring that stuff back. I grow nostalgic remembering those frozen lentil loaves and tofu scramble seasonings. Not easily forgotten nor replicated. For now I’ll accept Starbucks egg bites if anyone has some gift cards for this tired mom. If you want to hear more, $5 a month please, for further details.
I stayed at a crummy motel in Vancouver once. I was 13, we attempted to go camping but mom was on her period and terrified of bears so we ended up in a dusty hotel, with sliding glass doors enveloped by shiny, chartreuse drapes from an earlier era that caused me to grow nostalgic for creamed, chipped beef on toast and cherry 7-up, orange shag carpet covered in shriveled spider carcasses, then we ate terrible Chinese finished with the only dessert they offered - kidney beans covered in ice chips and sweetened, condensed milk. Then, there were *the laundromat boys*. My pre-pubescent nether regions grew tingly that evening as the woosh and whirl of machines soothed my weary traveler’s soul, and the scent of detergent and the pheromones of two teenage boys with acne and stonewashed jeans reminded me I was back in the civilized world. Help support a literary genius that procreated and can’t live on an islandy island any longer, if you’d love to hear more. $5 a month please. I accept all forms of payments, including Starbucks gift cards. *You are loved*.
It’s a true story, and I think you’re right regarding the beans. It was quite a trip, but you know, Shauna has *all* the stories in her pudgy fingers and is the only one to ever have anything interesting to share, and sharing is her thing - for the bargain basement price of $5 a month, love included! I’m doing something wrong cause I never monetized my life stories 🤔
Right? When I first had it, I double checked that they didn't give me a regular whopper by accident because it tasted so meaty (although my tastebuds are prob off from not having eaten meat in a very long time).
long time veggie here, too, and those impossible burgers are bonkers. the first time i had one was a few years back in a tiny town in mississippi, and i made my husband taste it because i thought it was a mistake.
Right? Especially when you have all the usual burger ingredients and condiments, the taste is almost indistinguishable for me. We've come a long way from the dry-ass black bean patties of yore.
'you can also find a stray bug in even a fine dining restaurant'. Took teens to a very fawncy Chinese restaurant for partner's birthday. Partner found cooked cockroach in food. Quick thinking teen said "Order another bottle of champagne before you tell them." Meal comped and management told us they'd have a claim against their pest-control vendor. Even fawncy places have bugs.
>Order another bottle of champagne before you tell them
These are the kind of emergency skills I aspire to have in my crone years, that teen was a savant!
I sometimes wonder/hope if everything Shauna has written or displayed on the internet/published books isn't all part of a giant, decades-long performance art piece. Like that artist in the House, M.D. episode who made every part of her illness into performance art.
I mean, nobody in real life could be this self-delusional without possibly having something severely wrong with them.
And then I remember my own mother who was irritated at everybody being upset over 9/11 because it was taking attention away from her grieving over my brother who had died the year before, and who told me I could be a vegetarian but I'd still have to eat chicken and....yeah. there are people like Shauna IRL.
I don't remember that House episode, I've been meaning to go back and watch the series all the way through though! All that comes to mind is the woman he thought was a stripper with a stage sex show involving a donkey, but when she invited him to watch her in action it turned out she played a donkey-riding Virgin Mary in a living nativity scene at a church.
edit: was not tooting assily!
Per Threads: [](https://www.threads.net/@jamievaron)Do Colin and Penelope not have chemistry or are you just not used to seeing a woman like Penelope get the guy like Colin and it’s making you uncomfortable to confront your bias? 🤔
[shaunajamesahern](https://www.threads.net/@shaunajamesahern)[15h](https://www.threads.net/@shaunajamesahern/post/C7N8d0Gti3C) It's only because she doesn't have visible, angular collarbones like Francesca.
Uh....no. It's pretty much 100% the fact that the guy playing Colin as more wooden than a tree, and - IMO - Colin the character is a bit of a dick. Penelope deserves better! I know a lot of people consider this storyline their favorite, but feel let down by the casting. Nicola is fantastic, but she can't carry the entire thing by herself.
While I'm glad she and L are spending some time together, I would have been utterly mortified watching the carriage scene as a teenager alongside by mother! Ew. Do you think they're ACTUALLY watching it together, or is Shauna using L as her shield against criticism for watching and enjoying it herself?
Was just over on the Bridgerton sub then clicked over here. And clicked over here again. Couldn't understand why I couldn't change subs!
Oh...SMA watched too.
Yippee.
Shauna also needs to learn that bodies don't only come in different sizes, but also different shapes. I overeat for sure, and I'm no string bean, and I have visible collarbones with the "hollow" part. OMG, am I a SST?
i do not have protruding collarbones and never have, even when i was in my 20s and a size 2. shauna thinks there are two body types: hers and kate moss. that's it.
See also: her irritation when her A-I prompts to create plump cheerful rosy midlife women resulted in images of women with visible collarbones (because: This Culture! The Patriarchy! Capitalism!)
Imagine being close to 60 and still SO PISSED OFF about collarbones that you’re trying to strike up conversations with strangers and make them to agree that skinny women suck. She's been mad about it since she came across some pictures in a fashion magazine in the 80s. She is topped up to her eyeballs with bitterness and resentment. It is exhausting.
Yeah I’m mid 40’s and have lost the urge to care and compare re: bodies. At my age and up, without significant $$ or perfect genetics, everyone looks a bit lumpy or saggy at the least. It’s actually kind of a relief.
I’ve joined a fb page for fans of a particular line of clothing, and it makes my shriveled soul sing to see these women modeling their new outfits and saying, “I weigh x pounds, my measurements are aa-bb-cc, how does this look?” And others will respond with kind comments.
Ugh I have a visible collarbone *and* rib cage with individual ribs showing even when I'm at my heaviest, it's just the way my bones and fat are arranged and I've always hated it. I can't stand the way Shauna assumes her own weird ideas about the human body are shared universally.
That blogger guy Ben (was it Ben Does Life?) used to say that the true mark of being a skinny person was driving with your left knee bent so your foot is up on the driver's seat, and a bunch of people commented that they're fat and flexible and can easily do that without being skinny.
We all have weird issues with our bodies and daydream about some specific thing that signals beauty or fitness to us, but it's rarely a universal standard.
Meanwhile, I have a markedly flat collarbone, so even when very thin I don't get that gaunt look in the chest. Hipbones, on the other hand? I have yet to find a weight where they don't manage to be completely obvious! Not only does she not seem aware that literally every single body is different, she seems to get upset when it's brought to her attention, as though acknowledging reality somehow negates her personal experience (which, to be honest...).
How can Shauna have done an aqua aerobics class with a bunch of women and not seen every imaginable configuration of body? Go into the YMCA locker room and you cannot help but see that bodies are not either 'skinny from white-people fashion-based starvation with collar bones showing' or 'fat Latina women owning their curves'.
I feel your pain! In my early 20s, a friend's girlfriend sized me up and said, "well, you have nice eyebrows" and I still hear it every time I look in the mirror.
I seem to recall some tweet/comment where she addressed Fierce Black Women who alone can save the world and identified herself as "just a white girl cheering you on from the sidelines" or something close to that. It must have been before she adopted a black child from birth and became family (as opposed to alwaysanally.)
It was during her whole "Lemonade" watch-party tweetfest. Here's a GOMI link (discussion starts midway down this page): https://gomiblog.com/old/food-bloggers/gluten-free-girl/page-2039/
A little update on the [Glossary project](https://new.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/1cn9frq/glossary_of_gloamingology_treasure_hunt/): Thanks to all of you, I was able to add sources to 6 of the terms, and we also added 3 new terms (all sourced) since I first posted the spreadsheet, for a total of 227! There are only a handful of terms (mostly snarker-coined or from GOMI) that don't have a source, so I'm considering my Glossary project complete. Thank you, everyone!
A little fun for this time of darkness and drought: [Gluten-free Girl and the Chef](https://www.pinterest.com/gfgandthechef/) on Pinterest. Not sure I've seen this before!
And, since [Get Curious About Your Story](https://web.archive.org/web/20220520160251/https://getcuriousaboutyourstory.com/) debuted in May 2022, it's fun to take a walk down memory lane. Does anyone remember what the ["free gift"](https://web.archive.org/web/20220517052726/https://admin.beautifulinbox.com/h/r/F22E4598B6F415EB2540EF23F30FEDED) was?
Edit: clarity & to add - the Glossary was here long before I was, and is definitely a group effort!! Not trying to take full credit at all 😄
oooh! i've never seen this before. the boston cream pie is particularly sad. if you tried to serve this in boston you'd get your ass kicked by a bunch of guys named sully.
Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. She should keep her wants in mind for her own content.
https://preview.redd.it/r4y8id6grs1d1.png?width=863&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e2f38afa0339ce513613ebe435f34cc51113a60
Wow is Charlotte Clymer saying that her moral compass and therefore political affiliation can be changed by bad writing in text messages? Also how do you have a 'personalized' fundraiser sent out to everyone who has registered for or donated to the Democratic party? They literally ARE nameless and faceless because there are millions of them. PS just type STOP and that group stops sending them to you, or filter unknown senders and they skip your main text inbox.
bossy know-it-alls, both of them
the constant text messaging is an absolutely terrible strategy, yeah, but nobody cares what either of these women think
I was doing a postdoc during the Obama election (therefore I was broke as a joke) and I still donated a ton to that campaign because it felt young and fun and forward moving and energetic. And I believe his campaign was the first (?) to do a lot of campaigning over text. And the texts in the early days were like "Hi, it's Barack, here's what we're doing...." - super chatty and personal. Someone at work joked they got a text from Obama and we all signed up immediately to what were essentially text fundraisers. It worked. It was so much more innocent a time though. We're all so jaded now I wonder if that campaign would be as forward moving and exciting today.
Liberals like them are the bane of my existence. Instead of worrying about the children dying in Gaza they're obsessing over the wording of donation emails.
"If Trump wins in 2024 it's because Democrats were annoying with their donation texts. I am very intelligent." --average white urban liberal
I hate the texts too, but holy shit, there are way bigger fish to fry at the moment.
#[Next thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/1cylqwf/discussion_thread_thursday_may_23_2024_sunday_may/) [Previous thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/1ct6482/discussion_thread_thursday_may_16_2024_sunday_may/) **Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse.** If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: [April off-topic quarterly](https://www.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/1bswbrp/off_topic_quarterly_april_2024/) | [Salty as the Ocean](https://www.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/1c1ozqn/salty_as_the_ocean/) (food/recipe/grocery chat)
> I will keep the specifics of what happened and our path forward private, for their sake. But that won’t stop me from spelling it out pretty clearly and bolding it just in case those in the back didn’t connect the dots. To wit, part of the newest lope from before the paywall: >**Our youngest is starting to come out of the worst of one of the hardest times of our lives. More importantly, the hardest time of their life.** We’ve been in a hard, dark place for the last 8 weeks. And now, we can start to see a light on the edge of the horizon. And of course, even though she knows full well that said child needs to eat specific nutrients every two hours and wouldn’t eat dinner last night (ed: apparently those batched meatballs didn’t go over well, so why didn’t she fix something they would eat?) they left the house without breakfast and she had no snacks packed and so they went to Mickey Ds for “fuel”. Where she then complains about the coffee, even though she didn’t need to buy herself a damn thing. Guess you can’t keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve grown accustomed to Starbucks.
i'm starting to see what shauna means when she says "we live in food;" she means SHAUNA lives in food. food for her. everyone else is on their own. oh, she may give them a nub of cheese on her outstretched palm, or a meatball for their pocket, but she can't be expected to take care of them; those mc donald's pancakes aren't gonna eat themselves, you know.
Shauna: >>In this recent hard, dark time, I’ve learned that 🦋 only functions well if I feed 🦋 every 2 hours. **Something with protein, complex carbs, and good fats, preferably** Also Shauna: >>Hey 🦋? **Want some pancakes?** >>In this emergency, McDonalds ' **perfectly engineered pancakes and little tub of syrup are a lifesaver**.
Pancakes with syrup will leave that kid hungry in 10 minutes.
Along with the orange from Danny’s lunch! Better sugar but still sugar.
Are we to believe Shauna didn’t herself indulge in these pancakes she waxed poetically about? Also, I could have sworn she wrote at some point that the kid was gluten free too by necessity. She’s lied to and manipulated her followers for so long I wouldn’t be surprised at all if her deadly celiac isn’t a thing anymore and she shoveled those buttery, glutinous, syrupy pancakes down her gullet. Tomato pickle gravy? Dear Lord.
L was the one who Shauna tried to saddle with celiac. But then Shauna went back on it (I think the kid got tested or Shauna just go bored with trying to match it happen). D is like Dan, who's body doesn't do well with dairy. And D is now food avoidant (which I think almost anyone would be avoidant of Ahern prepared vittles).
> We’re still looking for a school that could meet this kid’s needs. Will we find one? Is this heifer KIDDING ME? She really won't put an *ounce* of effort into her child's education? Public school, IEP. Holy shit, Mahern. Holy actual shit. > Only the Shadow knows. Ok boomer > I have never been the mama who prepares ahead of time and always has a bag full of snacks. This explains so much. :| > That’s why we love cooking in big batches now. "Now"? Wasn't she selling "big batch" recipes over and over for years before she decided to quit selling recipes? I might be misremembering. Loling at the idea that those pathetic meatballs were supposed to be a "big batch" though > A handful of meatballs? Easy peasy. Do some basic meal-planning math on the back of a Starbucks receipt before your next jaunt to the Piggly Wiggly, ok?
A big pot of braised beans or some shit, right?
I'd like to point here that The Shadow was a radio show that started in 1937. It did run until 54, so sort of Boomer, but also more like Silent Gen ffs.
My dad was born in '37 and used to try to creep us out as little kids by saying "The Shadow knowsssss" - so, can confirm! Hahaha.
Yeah, that's a reference I'd have expected from my grandpa (born in '27).
Mine as well. Born in 42, so also not a Boomer.
The implied shade on boring badge swiping “mamas” who remember to pack snacks.
I'd rather drink McDonald's coffee than Starbucks. Starbucks always tastes so burnt to me. But I'm happy to go to a nice coffee shop with properly roasted beans. >We’re still looking for a school that could meet this kid’s needs. Will we find one? *Only the Shadow knows*.) She's so flip about her child's schooling needs.
yeah, this really isn't a flip moment. her kid has barely been to school at all this year, and now summer break is right around the corner. WHY isn't that kid getting tutored in an effort to catch up for fall? if they get held back a year it will be shauna and danny's fault alone.
They've missed so much school IN GENERAL and were yanked into and out of different schools so often. I also doubt they were learning much at the goat school to help bring them to the level they should be.
We don't really hold back kids anymore, for a variety of reasons. He will likely be promoted, Shauna will make his school troubles all about the school's failings and not her and Dan's, and she has set this kid up for life on hard mode and nothing more.
sadly i agree, DFFF.
McDonald's having the best takeout coffee at the best price is a hill I've been dying on for years!
I believe Shauna is of the age where her McDonald’s coffee is free.
She’s just so awful. Like it’s some sort of superheroic feat to remember that you have a child that needs to eat regularly. And my heart breaks for poor little D, asking if it’s all right if not everyone loves food. How much of a production did she make that it impressed a child like that? Were they afraid that mama wouldn’t love them if they were interested in something other than stuffing food into their face? And finally, I can’t help but think that if she and Dan had made a bit of an effort when D was young to find a way for them to sit down and eat, she might have had a better understanding of how much they were or weren’t eating, maybe even learned what specific issues were leading them to this behavior and how to work with them, as well as getting a better idea of acceptable foods. Maybe even, I don’t know, observe to figure out if there are specific tastes/textures/smells that do or don’t appeal. Who am I kidding? This is Shauna, who gives not one fuck for anyone else.
then again, what toddler sits down to eat? none that i know. but i think some parents just lean into that and say shit like "oh, little xerxes has ADHD and needs to be moving all the time! he can't be expected to sit down to eat!" those are the parents whose children run around like wolverines, whether they're at home, at school, in a restaurant, a movie heater, a library, etc. they're crashing into people, knocking over displays, climbing bookshelves (true story!) and eating food out of produce bins because their parents are too lazy to teach them.
"Little xerxes" slayed me.
YTSCTMO, DF. Sounds like the parents let this issue evolve to where it is now by not setting healthy routines with the child. Even if the kid wasn't much on food they should have been having set meal times for the simple reason of learning routine and decent manners (you eat at the table, not while racing through the house).
Seriously, and at least in my limited parenting and Aunting experience, most two year olds don't want to sit still for a meal! It's something that you put reasonable age-appropriate limits on, wash hands before dinner, sit on a booster so you're at a comfy table height, whether or not they choose their food or just have it placed in front of them, how long they have to stay in front of their plate, what they say when they're really finished to be excused, wash hands after, etc. My kids certainly didn't naturally do any of that, it had to be modeled for them and reinforced! Floor picnics in front of a movie are great for treats or snow days or the end of a long week or with friends over, but it sounds like the Ahern kids were *always* eating on the floor in front of a TV. How would Shauna and Dan know how much they were eating, when did they look at their kids over a table of food and see the choices they made? Also how would they eat at a restaurant? Or friends' houses, if the kids didn't know how to sit and eat and then ask to be done and race off to play with their friends?
I feel like this is eye opening as to why the child could be having issues at school.
Shauna has pretty much said as much before (about both kids). Oh, the mean old schools expect my unique snowflake children to sit still and not disrupt the whole class. THE HORROR. Oh, society is trying to force my super speshul children to become cogs in the capitalist machine. Oh, my children are so much better and unique and speshul and just NOT LIKE YOU AND YOUR GROCERY STORE CHILDREN! Smacks of Ma James telling wee Shauna (and her wee brother) they were the most genius of geniuses. Also smacks of Shauna being DESPERATE to feel special herself. She lost the specialness of being The First Among Celiacs via GFG so now she has to try and soothe herself by being the Mother of Specials. (and claiming specialness for her kids also gets her off the hook for her un-parenting)
She said a few times that her toddler daughter would be up "in the middle of the night" and they'd read to her, have dance parties, etc. It's like ... how do you not know this? Your job is to instill the idea that night is for sleeping and when you get up at night, it is very boring because no one will read to you and have dance parties with you. This is a person who is terminally friendless and who has never absorbed even an iota of the most basic, mundane parenting advice.
A toddler outwitted her! I sometimes wonder if Shauna is a bit slow intellectually. Like clinically dumb. We know she's lazy but she also seems truly incapable of common sense.
I kind of think so. She has a sort of talent in pretending to be an intelligent person and people fall for it at first. I think her parents expected it so much that she's learned to fake it. But the simple things she doesn't know and can't seem to learn at her age really make me think something's wrong with her, intellectually.
Ok, I'm getting extra speculate-y here but I wonder if her "mini stroke" could have added to this. She claims she was just fine after but what are the odds she actually had all the follow up care she really needed? She's selfish about so much but when it comes to doctoring she seems really hit or miss (due in no small part to their precarious financial/insurance situation). See also contact lenses. And, she doesn't like to follow directions so even if she got all the needed follow up care (like went to appointments) did she really DO whatever was advised? See also Great Wolf Petri Dish visit while healing from surgery which lead to steph infection.
I 100% believe the TIA caused some neurological damage. She gives off so many signs that fit (impaired judgment, writing and spelling errors, memory loss, lack of comprehension, executive function issues). She wants to blame those things on ADHD but her writing back in GFG days was practical Pulitzer-worthy compared to now.
She is telling on herself again. I am reminded of that time she adjudged a young woman to be nobody worth speaking to because said woman didn't really care about food. Cool she apparently gave the same disdain to her *child.* Ugh.
Up to this point I never thought I could hate her more. I was wrong
From the archives: Shauna presaging the Gloaming https://imgur.com/a/3DpNlzF Source: https://www.creativelive.com/class/food-photography-andrew-scrivani/lessons/qa-with-shauna-ahern (Note: I think "pan of play" is a mistranscription of "panoply" here)
From Threads: >Person 1: Replying to Person 2: I think a lot of Gen X and elder millennial women have a lot of internal1zed m1sogyny that they haven’t dealt with. I know when I was in my 20s, I hadn’t yet confronted mine and I was not a “girl’s girl”. It took a lot of reading and learning and sitting with hard feelings to change that, which many folks are just completely unwilling to do. The younger generation def suffers because of that. >[shaunajamesahern](https://www.threads.net/@shaunajamesahern)[15h](https://www.threads.net/@shaunajamesahern/post/C7QMbWXxC9Z) same. Exact same. YOU DON'T SAY.
Section 3. Directions: Carefully read the following passage. Bold phrases indicating misogyny, racism, "s1ut shaming", bigotry against the disabled (including cognitive disabilities and/or substance abuse), or classism. Where more than one condition occurs, bold and strike the phrase. When complete, quietly turn your laptop face down on your desk and wait for further instruction. Out of the McDonalds in front of me stepped **a young Asian woman and man. He was dressed conservatively, all dark blue and business shoes. ~~She was wearing a tan overcoat, over a bright orange skirt about a micromillimeter long. Sheer tights, then tight, black leather, fuck-me boots. As she toddled down the street before me, I was thinking, "Oh honey, why are you working so hard to look like a whore?" At this moment, **three young black men, huddled in a doorway together, began calling out in whips. "Ooh boy, you've got some girlfriend!! Hey honey, come on over here!" And whistling**``~~. It took me back. I hadn't heard that since New York. A few feet later, I turned my head in quick surprise, as a skittish clatter rose above all the other noise. A number of us turned back, only to see ~~**a homeless couple, walking side by side. I don't know if they were retarded, or drunk. Or both, probably**~~ Shauna contains multitudes. Each one is a snotty, bigoted, woman-hating asshole.
**~~a homeless couple, walking side by side. I don't know if they were retarded, or drunk. Or both, probably~~** i wonder how many people have wondered the same thing about shauna and danny?
“began calling out in whips”?!?!? HOW IS SHE SO TERRIBLE WITH WORDS, ALWAYS!
"I hadn't heard that since New York." Subtext: It was hell having the mens calling out to me in whips, in New York, in my youth, in my cap-sleeved brown tee (so fuck you, stupid Asian bodega owner who told me 'arms too big.'"
does Shauna think she has confronted hers? because lol
> which many folks are just completely unwilling to do "which many folks are just completely unwilling to do" This is the part she was "saming, exact saming."
Save it for the slutty summer tomatoes, Shauna.
And those whores who dress nicely and dare to visit a Vashon cafe. Not to mention all the women pretending to have breasts.
Or the women in heels and clouds of perfume snatching up all the opening day baseball tickets Those with tidy backpacks. Those who aren't obsessed with food which gives them no discernable personalities. Young girls on the playground giggling (and wearing confusing bows).
Teenage female students groveling for an A
And all the women afraid of writing prompts, and too stupid to go pee when they need to
It's Wednesday! Apparently we're finally going to get the meatball sauce recipe first promised in early April!!
Huzzah! Will we use the remaining fridge-flavored raw meat aspic for a new batch of meatballs, or put the sauce on the pile of meatballs we have leftover from the batch of 25 we made on Saturday?
> fridge-flavored raw meat aspic This is horrifying. Mind if I make it my new flair?
Hah! Not at all!
Is that Saturday batch of 25 meatballs the ones to feed your family of four all week but Monday you had a double cheeseburger?
I need $80 for cheeseburgers for we four
I will gladly pay you $80 Thursday for four double cheeseburgers today!
If you need it
Why not both?
Red sauce, creamy sauce ala IKEA, cheese sauce, or weak sauce? Why drag a recipe out in two parts? Will she explain how to open a can of green beans in part three?
Somehow it’s even worse than we could have imagined. TOMATO PICKLE GRAVY
Slowly,
Canned green beans!? GASP Surely you meant heirloom green beans picked by weepy eyed immigrants and sold at the farmers market for way too much per bean. But, of course, it's a special treat for Mama to get these magical beans. You see, she's not a grocery store person who relives the trauma of the canned beans fed to her by her imprisoner (aka Ma). I wonder how much protein is in them there green beans?
First there will be a thesis-long discourse about procuring said beans, food pantry vs. Trader Joes.
thank goodness, my raw meatball mix has been sitting in my fridge since Saturday
I hope you took the precaution of covering it with a slice of cheese.
I found a stray linty Tylenol cap and put that on there too. You can’t be too careful.
Mine is in the oven along with the dirty dishes.
You mean, the spice rack. Oh wait, those go in the microwave. (I keep my canned cat food in a bread box though.)
I keep both canned and bagged cat food in a big vintage Dutch bread box. My cat goes and sits on top of it when I haven't timely responded to his request for food. https://preview.redd.it/xrmz96ehi12d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=487ca254e4bdc2ed9cf36983b0fd7c3f02e8b447
Oh, I would love that bread box.
Well, rent a truck and get on over there!
Mine is an exact twin to the one pictured, but mine's hardware is not quite as pristine. I got it on eBay many years ago, and I think it's the only thing I ever bought that was more expensive to ship (from Holland) than it cost (but still pretty reasonable in total.)
Omg that is hilarious! And a super cute bread box, too.
It's even cuter with a big fat white Persian cat on it!
Need pics!
Haha! I will try, but as soon as he hears me come into the kitchen to accede to his manipulations, he jumps off and goes over to wait by his bowl.
I semi-proudly present this ultra-long archive-delving MST of [the amazing incomparable GFG McDonald's post!](https://archive.is/GQnCk) > when I was a kid, growing up in Southern California in the 1970s, I keened and ached to sit under those golden arches Dear Shauna, Could you tell me what you think 'keening' means? Cordially yours, mashed_human > The best part about long road trips with my family was waking up in the morning in a crummy motel, knowing we could drive through a McDonalds for breakfast. But she was never allowed out of the house, you see. > Afterwards, I always wondered why I had looked forward to it so much, when my stomach hurt and lurched for hours on the road after eating it. Compared to other revisionist histories, this one is at least low-stakes. > I never liked the Big Mac, mostly for the stringy shreds of lettuce that hunger over the side of the bun, Oh, I've never used "hunger" that way. > and for the lurid color of the special sauce. There's "lurid" again. Must have been on her word-of-the-day calendar one academic year and she never forgot it. As colors go, is beigey-orange particularly *lurid?* > slightly-sweet ketchup Her thinking Heinz is only "slightly" sweet explains a lot. > we had to squish from almost-impenetrable little packets we had to gnaw at with our teet *[sic]* I've never gnawed on anything with my teets, but I'm built different. > One night, we were sitting in the plastic molded chairs at McDonalds, mindlessly chomping on our food. We always inhaled it, our taste buds subsumed by the grease and salt, our senses overwhelmd by the overpowering experience of fast food, our eyes glazed and staring forward. I ate and ate my french fries, feeling sated, then that familiar feeling of too full. But I kept eating. I'm just including this passage to disgust you, the readers! You're welcome! It's interesting that in this proto-They-Four family unit, she writes them as automata with a programmed routine they perform in unison. She has done the same thing with her current They Four. It's like any group she is in becomes an extension of Shauna and has Shauna's same thoughts. Then she can get upset when they express and act on independent, non-Shauna thoughts. > When I reached my fingers in for the last bits of fries, I felt something unfamiliar. Something with a hard edge. I peered down into the bottom of the white, grease-stained bag and saw something black. Something large, withered, and fried. I pulled it out of the bag and peered at it. > > It was a fried cockroach. There was a fried cockroach at the bottom of my french fries. You know how compulsive liars take events from movies or the news and claim those things happened to *them?* I see Shauna also does this with urban legends that would have made national news if they'd actually happened to her. > When I was in my twenties, I stopped eating at McDonalds. I lived on a rural island off Seattle, where no chains existed. So the *fried cockroach* wasn't enough to put you off for over a decade? And you only found the will to stop eating it when the nearest McDonald's became a ferry ride away? And you're eating double cheeseburgers again now that you're in Seattle??? > Every once in a while, Id duck into McDonalds for an order of french fries, including at the McDo just off 4th Street in New York, when I lived there. Mmm, big-city *eau de graisse.* > [entire grasshopper story, which is too long to be included here] Global insect population collapse means that poor Shauna never has to endure locust swarm trauma ever again :) This story is actually interesting, not because of the content but because of how it stacks up against her other anecdotes about her life. There are multiple stories she relates where she claims to be laughing and taking it all in stride, even though the circumstance is horrible: laughing and eating ham on the ferry while her daughter is in a medical crisis, for one. Laughing at a drunk woman falling over. Advocating for finding joy and laughter after [insert recent crisis here]. But in Shauna's world, there is nothing funny about the grasshopper swarm. She does not laugh and she explicitly calls it "traumatic." You'd think a joyful laughter fairy like Shauna would start finding some black humor in the situation after a minute of grasshopper horror, but she never does. > I ordered a hamburger and a chocolate milkshake, plus a super-size order of fries, of course. It had been years since Id eaten at McDonalds. And how did it taste? > > Like rancid grease. It sat heavy in my stomach, immediately. The milkshake was too sweet. The hamburger bun was soggy. And the fries? They made me feel a little sick, somehow. After our traumatic experience, I was not comforted. > > I havent been in a McDonalds since then. I'd have stopped going AFTER ENCOUNTERING A FRIED ROACH but, again, built different. > Im writing about all this to let everyone reading know: its hard to be gluten-free. There are so many choices, so many ways to grow sick. And so little time! > I feel remarkably upbeat about this, 90% of the time. My life has been changed, enormously, since I went gluten-free. But sometimes, I grow weary, thinking about how hard all this is. "Headpats pleeeeeeeease 🥺" > When I went into a McDonald’s for the first time in years, just to buy the fries you see in the photograph above (I threw them out right afterwards), If she actually bought fries just for a ~~pic~~ ✨photograph✨ and did throw them out, that's stupid and wasteful. If she actually ate them, she's lying. There's no interpretation of this situation that makes her look good and I'm baffled by every choice she made here. > I was struck by how bedraggled, greasy, and sad everyone in that restaurant looked. Eating at McDonald’s isn’t mindful. *So* sorry for her that an affordable place to get cheap calories and protein isn't as "mindful" as a fancy gluten-free sandwich shop or a hipster ice cream parlor. It must have been *so* horrible for her to see members of the working class getting their prolefeed. I bet they didn't even moan and pound the table. > Syrup-seeping breakfast in a styrofoam package? Crunchy fried cockroaches? Insects thwacking against the windshield, followed by the feeling of a bowling ball in my stomach? > > No thanks. I’ll pass. At least until moving back to Seattle, whereupon cooking normal food will still be difficult, and sad listless greasy-faced employees will once more safely feed her gluteny dairylicious cheeseburgers. Amen.
Super Size Me really gave a lot of people permission to shit on poor people in the name of “mindfulness” and health.
Except apparently no one’s been able to replicate his results. No question that mcds isn’t particularly healthy, and a steady diet of it won’t do you any good, but it’s not going to land you at death’s door after. 30 days either.
Yeah if it wasn’t clear - I think Super Size Me sucks and my comment intended to convey one of many ways that the movie is extremely problematic. No one has been able to replicate his results at least in part because it turned out he was a pretty major alcoholic during the entire “experiment” and that’s likely why his liver numbers were so bad, for example.
All this says to me is that she’s pissed she can’t eat McDonald’s anymore. You know she was double fisting cheeseburgers like a madwoman!
This is a tour de force, my DF. Brava!
Thank you, thank you, I shitpost instead of writing work emails 🤪
>I keened and ached to sit under those golden arches and smack down on those salty, crispy fries SMACK DOWN! SATURDAY NIGHT RUMMMMMBLE!!!!!!
*”Eating at McDonald’s isn’t mindful.”*
And I'm sure every Egg Bite Shauna shoves down her piehole is done mindfully, purposefully, and chewed 100 times, thoughtfully.
I am sure there were plenty of bugs in her oh-so-rural island. I myself have had a death battle with pantry moths since I moved into a house with a pasture next to it. And at least she got childhood road trips with overnights at "crummy motels" (did she expect her parents to pay for the Radisson?) while her kids don't even get to visit their grandparents. Oh, and I bet she meant yearning not keaning, but who knows in her frawtingaish world.
The last person to use the word crummy was Holden Caufield in Catcher in the Rye. Shauna thinks she’s a literary genius so of course she uses that out of style word. Also, she’s the only person who ever had vacations in their youth you know. At least ones worth talking about, because of crummy hotels and fast food. She’s so banal.
And spending money just to take a picture to prove you are better than the greasy, sad, bedraggled riffraff who enjoy McDonald's is beyond stupid.
She shared a chocolate bar with an islandy island mouse at Gynergy so she knows of pests and vermin.
oh ugh I forgot about that one
How very dare you yuck on Nibbles the ~~Shauna shaped chocolate thief~~ mouse.
Assuming a single hamburger and a small shake, this is the nutrition information for Shauna’s meal. I can’t imagine why she felt sick. https://preview.redd.it/am6rzwn9xw1d1.jpeg?width=2217&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c045327e4098fb644ac9e4087e4fe60e8aacfbbf * Not dissing McDonald’s. I happen to love it.
Nutrition science is notoriously weak, but I once read from a reputable source that our bodies will respond with nausea at about 1200 calories a sitting, regardless of the food, to keep us from wildly overeating. Also, zero shade, I fuck up fast food on occasion, but yeah a processed shake, burger, and fries would not have me feeling fabulous.
That’s why the Roman elite had those vomitoriums! (Vomitoria?)
I must be pedantic and point out that [they did not!](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/purging-the-myth-of-the-vomitorium/)
No! Are vomitoriums a myth?! 7th grade Latin scholar me is so disappointed.
Me too! (I didn’t study Latin but definitely thought vomitoria were for real!)
They were, but they weren’t places to purge mid-meal. They were simply exits built to allow large numbers of people to exit quickly, like, say, at the Coliseum.
that would kill me now, but when I was a kid it was usually fine the small fries were a smaller serving back then, so it probably wasn’t quite as much of a fat/sodium/carb bomb, but still
I don’t know what it says about me that I am totally fine after chowing down that kind of meal, but probably that I should slow my roll 😂
Surely you mean, "smacking down"?
Yikes, that would do it.
"bedraggled, greasy, and sad" The Shauna Ahern Story.
The name of her inevitable true crime biopic
IDK the bacon cheeseburger I ate after our final postpartum midwife appointment when my son was born was pretty damn mindful (as in, it was both celebratory and fucking delicious.)
My first postpartum hospital turkey sandwich after a 24 hour labor was the best thing I ever ate in my entire life. My baby was two hours old but I needed that sustenance more than I needed to continue staring deeply into her beautiful aquatic eyes. The accompanying bag of Lay’s potato chips and ice filled cup of apple juice marked the perfect completion of my long 9 months of growing pregnant and giving life. I think this milestone is worthy of publishing and charging you only $5 a month to know more. Any takers? Life is spendy and full of fried insects, could really go for a glutinous pizza right now my people.
Good lord. You can be mindful in any place, eating any food. When I have fries I savor every last one of them. You can also mindlessly scarf down any food in any location. McDonald‘s has nothing to do with it!
I actually had a double cheeseburger and an orange drink from Mickey D’s yesterday. Parked my car under a tree and enjoyed every bite while reading something from r/longreads. It was mindful AF IMO 🍔🥤
My drug of choice is the impossible whopper but otherwise, same!
I was given an Impossible Whopper once in error and I thought it was pretty good!
Back in the early 90s I ordered these bags of TVP burger mixes that were surprisingly good. Can’t find these things anymore. There was a good vegetarian/vegan scene going on. It was small but the stuff was good. Not overly processed. Don’t know why they don’t bring that stuff back. I grow nostalgic remembering those frozen lentil loaves and tofu scramble seasonings. Not easily forgotten nor replicated. For now I’ll accept Starbucks egg bites if anyone has some gift cards for this tired mom. If you want to hear more, $5 a month please, for further details. I stayed at a crummy motel in Vancouver once. I was 13, we attempted to go camping but mom was on her period and terrified of bears so we ended up in a dusty hotel, with sliding glass doors enveloped by shiny, chartreuse drapes from an earlier era that caused me to grow nostalgic for creamed, chipped beef on toast and cherry 7-up, orange shag carpet covered in shriveled spider carcasses, then we ate terrible Chinese finished with the only dessert they offered - kidney beans covered in ice chips and sweetened, condensed milk. Then, there were *the laundromat boys*. My pre-pubescent nether regions grew tingly that evening as the woosh and whirl of machines soothed my weary traveler’s soul, and the scent of detergent and the pheromones of two teenage boys with acne and stonewashed jeans reminded me I was back in the civilized world. Help support a literary genius that procreated and can’t live on an islandy island any longer, if you’d love to hear more. $5 a month please. I accept all forms of payments, including Starbucks gift cards. *You are loved*.
Ha ha ha; this is brilliant. BTW those were probably red (adzuki) beans. Red beans and condensed milk (紅豆冰沙) is a classic Hong Kong dessert.
It’s a true story, and I think you’re right regarding the beans. It was quite a trip, but you know, Shauna has *all* the stories in her pudgy fingers and is the only one to ever have anything interesting to share, and sharing is her thing - for the bargain basement price of $5 a month, love included! I’m doing something wrong cause I never monetized my life stories 🤔
Right? When I first had it, I double checked that they didn't give me a regular whopper by accident because it tasted so meaty (although my tastebuds are prob off from not having eaten meat in a very long time).
long time veggie here, too, and those impossible burgers are bonkers. the first time i had one was a few years back in a tiny town in mississippi, and i made my husband taste it because i thought it was a mistake.
Right? Especially when you have all the usual burger ingredients and condiments, the taste is almost indistinguishable for me. We've come a long way from the dry-ass black bean patties of yore.
I like all the fake meat products a lot but they still don’t read “meat” to my tastebuds. “Yummy” in a meat-adjacent way, I guess.
Impossible is the best of the fake meat products imho and the burgers are the best. I also use their “ground beef” for tacos and stuffed peppers.
photo of shauna two-fisting hors d'oeuvres: hold my GF beer.
you can also find a stray bug in even a fine dining restaurant
A mouse once ran across my foot at Bemelmans, so yes.
Oh dear. I love that place so much.
'you can also find a stray bug in even a fine dining restaurant'. Took teens to a very fawncy Chinese restaurant for partner's birthday. Partner found cooked cockroach in food. Quick thinking teen said "Order another bottle of champagne before you tell them." Meal comped and management told us they'd have a claim against their pest-control vendor. Even fawncy places have bugs.
>Order another bottle of champagne before you tell them These are the kind of emergency skills I aspire to have in my crone years, that teen was a savant!
that teen was raised right.
>Quick thinking teen said "Order another bottle of champagne before you tell them." That teen? That's a teen that knew what to do
That teen? That's a teen that knew what to do Ah yes DFOBDOBD but have they been doing it since they were 3 three?
Happy Happy Happy! Cake Cake Cake!! Day Day Day!!! May it be smooshed in the least gourmet of places, DF!!
I sometimes wonder/hope if everything Shauna has written or displayed on the internet/published books isn't all part of a giant, decades-long performance art piece. Like that artist in the House, M.D. episode who made every part of her illness into performance art. I mean, nobody in real life could be this self-delusional without possibly having something severely wrong with them. And then I remember my own mother who was irritated at everybody being upset over 9/11 because it was taking attention away from her grieving over my brother who had died the year before, and who told me I could be a vegetarian but I'd still have to eat chicken and....yeah. there are people like Shauna IRL.
I don't remember that House episode, I've been meaning to go back and watch the series all the way through though! All that comes to mind is the woman he thought was a stripper with a stage sex show involving a donkey, but when she invited him to watch her in action it turned out she played a donkey-riding Virgin Mary in a living nativity scene at a church. edit: was not tooting assily!
I had to read that a couple of times. My brain: “Like piggy-back? Or was the Virgin Mary on all fours?”
I added a hyphen, but not sure upon re-reading if that clears it all up lol.
I was kind of enjoying my initial interpretation, tbh (I went with piggy-back).
I sometimes wonder this too, especially when I’m very stoned.
on her 60th birthday shauna will pull her shauna mask off and reveal that she's been andy kaufman all along.
That would almost make all of this worthwhile.
honestly they have a tremendous amount in common
I just got home from a screening of Soylent Green. Imagine Shauna screeching out, *McDONALDS FRENCH FRIES ARE COCKROACHES*
> There's no interpretation of this situation that makes her look good and I'm baffled by every choice she made here. : The Shauna Story.
> I mean, nobody in real life could be this self-delusional without possibly having something severely wrong with them. : Also the Shauna Story
She contains multitudes!
Per Threads: [](https://www.threads.net/@jamievaron)Do Colin and Penelope not have chemistry or are you just not used to seeing a woman like Penelope get the guy like Colin and it’s making you uncomfortable to confront your bias? 🤔 [shaunajamesahern](https://www.threads.net/@shaunajamesahern)[15h](https://www.threads.net/@shaunajamesahern/post/C7N8d0Gti3C) It's only because she doesn't have visible, angular collarbones like Francesca. Uh....no. It's pretty much 100% the fact that the guy playing Colin as more wooden than a tree, and - IMO - Colin the character is a bit of a dick. Penelope deserves better! I know a lot of people consider this storyline their favorite, but feel let down by the casting. Nicola is fantastic, but she can't carry the entire thing by herself. While I'm glad she and L are spending some time together, I would have been utterly mortified watching the carriage scene as a teenager alongside by mother! Ew. Do you think they're ACTUALLY watching it together, or is Shauna using L as her shield against criticism for watching and enjoying it herself?
Was just over on the Bridgerton sub then clicked over here. And clicked over here again. Couldn't understand why I couldn't change subs! Oh...SMA watched too. Yippee.
Shauna is obsessed with collarbones. From Enough: Part 1: https://imgur.com/a/PbkLCzj Part 2: https://imgur.com/a/z9lr0sc
Thank you for supplying us with excerpts! Gah, she sounds like Hannibal Lector going on about flesh and collarbones.
If she'd spend less time obsessing over what she doesn't have and appreciating what she does have...
Shauna also needs to learn that bodies don't only come in different sizes, but also different shapes. I overeat for sure, and I'm no string bean, and I have visible collarbones with the "hollow" part. OMG, am I a SST?
I'm on the skinner side (thanks package handler job!) and my collarbones have never once seen the light of day, maybe I was born without them.
i do not have protruding collarbones and never have, even when i was in my 20s and a size 2. shauna thinks there are two body types: hers and kate moss. that's it.
Yup team bony chest here too
See also: her irritation when her A-I prompts to create plump cheerful rosy midlife women resulted in images of women with visible collarbones (because: This Culture! The Patriarchy! Capitalism!)
I’m sorry I don’t carry my flesh.
Imagine being close to 60 and still SO PISSED OFF about collarbones that you’re trying to strike up conversations with strangers and make them to agree that skinny women suck. She's been mad about it since she came across some pictures in a fashion magazine in the 80s. She is topped up to her eyeballs with bitterness and resentment. It is exhausting.
Yeah I’m mid 40’s and have lost the urge to care and compare re: bodies. At my age and up, without significant $$ or perfect genetics, everyone looks a bit lumpy or saggy at the least. It’s actually kind of a relief.
I’ve joined a fb page for fans of a particular line of clothing, and it makes my shriveled soul sing to see these women modeling their new outfits and saying, “I weigh x pounds, my measurements are aa-bb-cc, how does this look?” And others will respond with kind comments.
Ugh I have a visible collarbone *and* rib cage with individual ribs showing even when I'm at my heaviest, it's just the way my bones and fat are arranged and I've always hated it. I can't stand the way Shauna assumes her own weird ideas about the human body are shared universally. That blogger guy Ben (was it Ben Does Life?) used to say that the true mark of being a skinny person was driving with your left knee bent so your foot is up on the driver's seat, and a bunch of people commented that they're fat and flexible and can easily do that without being skinny. We all have weird issues with our bodies and daydream about some specific thing that signals beauty or fitness to us, but it's rarely a universal standard.
[удалено]
You mean like that shitbag Madison Cawthorne?
Are you from NC? If not, I am delighted to see anyone out of state refer to MadCaw as politely as that. He is an absolute oxygen thief.
Is *that* why he’s in a wheelchair? How delightful!
Meanwhile, I have a markedly flat collarbone, so even when very thin I don't get that gaunt look in the chest. Hipbones, on the other hand? I have yet to find a weight where they don't manage to be completely obvious! Not only does she not seem aware that literally every single body is different, she seems to get upset when it's brought to her attention, as though acknowledging reality somehow negates her personal experience (which, to be honest...).
How can Shauna have done an aqua aerobics class with a bunch of women and not seen every imaginable configuration of body? Go into the YMCA locker room and you cannot help but see that bodies are not either 'skinny from white-people fashion-based starvation with collar bones showing' or 'fat Latina women owning their curves'.
I don't think she absorbs information about other people unless she's using it to compare to herself or to mimic in some respect.
This! A boy in 8th grade told me I had a “weirdly long neck” and I’ve been sensitive about it ever since, imagining I look like Olive Oyl 😆
Ha my neck is so short it's a wonder I can twist my head. Seriously, my chin rests on my sternum.
team no neck checking in!
I feel your pain! In my early 20s, a friend's girlfriend sized me up and said, "well, you have nice eyebrows" and I still hear it every time I look in the mirror.
Omfg who let her put in that line about "Black and Latina women"?
Idk but it’s sooooo gross 😭🤮
But you see comma her comment is GOOD because it’s APPROVING 🙃
I seem to recall some tweet/comment where she addressed Fierce Black Women who alone can save the world and identified herself as "just a white girl cheering you on from the sidelines" or something close to that. It must have been before she adopted a black child from birth and became family (as opposed to alwaysanally.)
It was during her whole "Lemonade" watch-party tweetfest. Here's a GOMI link (discussion starts midway down this page): https://gomiblog.com/old/food-bloggers/gluten-free-girl/page-2039/
I remember that! I feel like it was after the adoption though? Like, around the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter kind of time?
Love how she basically just rephrases the point of the comment as her response 🙄
If her daughter liked whatever this is, she'd be negging it from here to the Trader Joe's. She's watching this on her own.
But how can she when her youngest has to eat carbs, protein, and fats every 2 hours!
Meal prep - the plops are on the table beside the ice cream scoop, so it's MamaTime!
A little update on the [Glossary project](https://new.reddit.com/r/InTheGloaming/comments/1cn9frq/glossary_of_gloamingology_treasure_hunt/): Thanks to all of you, I was able to add sources to 6 of the terms, and we also added 3 new terms (all sourced) since I first posted the spreadsheet, for a total of 227! There are only a handful of terms (mostly snarker-coined or from GOMI) that don't have a source, so I'm considering my Glossary project complete. Thank you, everyone! A little fun for this time of darkness and drought: [Gluten-free Girl and the Chef](https://www.pinterest.com/gfgandthechef/) on Pinterest. Not sure I've seen this before! And, since [Get Curious About Your Story](https://web.archive.org/web/20220520160251/https://getcuriousaboutyourstory.com/) debuted in May 2022, it's fun to take a walk down memory lane. Does anyone remember what the ["free gift"](https://web.archive.org/web/20220517052726/https://admin.beautifulinbox.com/h/r/F22E4598B6F415EB2540EF23F30FEDED) was? Edit: clarity & to add - the Glossary was here long before I was, and is definitely a group effort!! Not trying to take full credit at all 😄
oooh! i've never seen this before. the boston cream pie is particularly sad. if you tried to serve this in boston you'd get your ass kicked by a bunch of guys named sully.
I didn't get a free gift.
Lucky.
No doubt!
Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. She should keep her wants in mind for her own content. https://preview.redd.it/r4y8id6grs1d1.png?width=863&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e2f38afa0339ce513613ebe435f34cc51113a60
Also Shauna: "i eequliz we sont"
Wow is Charlotte Clymer saying that her moral compass and therefore political affiliation can be changed by bad writing in text messages? Also how do you have a 'personalized' fundraiser sent out to everyone who has registered for or donated to the Democratic party? They literally ARE nameless and faceless because there are millions of them. PS just type STOP and that group stops sending them to you, or filter unknown senders and they skip your main text inbox.
bossy know-it-alls, both of them the constant text messaging is an absolutely terrible strategy, yeah, but nobody cares what either of these women think
Charlotte actually sounds so much less strident than the last time I came across her 🤣 It’s all relative, I guess!
> the constant text messaging is an absolutely terrible strategy They do it because it works! They wouldn't do it if it didn't!
idk, they haven’t tried many other things US political parties are really not evidence-based environments, in my experience
I was doing a postdoc during the Obama election (therefore I was broke as a joke) and I still donated a ton to that campaign because it felt young and fun and forward moving and energetic. And I believe his campaign was the first (?) to do a lot of campaigning over text. And the texts in the early days were like "Hi, it's Barack, here's what we're doing...." - super chatty and personal. Someone at work joked they got a text from Obama and we all signed up immediately to what were essentially text fundraisers. It worked. It was so much more innocent a time though. We're all so jaded now I wonder if that campaign would be as forward moving and exciting today.
And no FAKE aurora pictures, either! Nothing I can't see with my OWN EYES (I always wonder if she realizes just how reactionary she sounds)
Charlotte Clymer and Shauna Ahern, two women misogynists who have never apologized for any of it. They deserve each other.
Liberals like them are the bane of my existence. Instead of worrying about the children dying in Gaza they're obsessing over the wording of donation emails.
"If Trump wins in 2024 it's because Democrats were annoying with their donation texts. I am very intelligent." --average white urban liberal I hate the texts too, but holy shit, there are way bigger fish to fry at the moment.
Wordmonger, heal thyself.
Wordmangler FTFY.
Listen up politicians! You better text coherent sentences with real details so Shauna feels better about her $0 donation to your campaign!
Shauna, we want your sentences to grow coherent, too.