Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"

[mold]

Mal has been weirdly fixated on child molestation accusations against people close to her in the past and confesses regularly to patterns of manipulative behavior to make sure she is not only loved, but loved more than whoever she sees as her competition. It's amazing to me Lily hasn't pushed her out all the way yet. CNA money isn't worth keeping her around for. What's stopping her from putting her foot down? Some part of her must love having the tard baby around, constantly competing for affection and always, always losing.

I believe I have mentioned free babysitting before.

and for people who don't have kids: maybe "unwilling to give up full nonworking week with baby" coexisting with "perfectly happy to keep tardbaby around for babysitting" doesn't make sense to you but it's apples and oranges. there is a huge difference between having regular help, even overnight, and being away from a baby for a whole week.

and @Anasa Tristis she's not choosing to go wipe old butt over being a stayathome secondary, she's getting a job for money and healthcare. these people are broke.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

No, that's not accurate. Toddlers can and do ride much longer than that. It's little babies who have the 2 hour rule, because of postural breathing considerations.

It's fun to take a toddler on a road trip and I've done it a lot. This idea people have to stop their life and travel when they have kids is a huge part of why people think it's impossible to have more children, but it's BS.

I never said anyone had to stop their life or stop traveling if they have kids, but there are a host of adult things it’s best not bring a toddler along for, if possible. I’d include a cross country road trip just to clean out a house among them.

I wouldn’t want to do that road trip with other adults. The trip seemed like was some pure unpleasant adult obligations shit.

Spoiler

I don’t think anybody of any age enjoys being strapped into a seat for the majority of their day, but that’s me. The road trip they just took would be unpleasant, if not hellish, for most humans at any age.

The age 12-36 months is just a particularly shitty time to force a kid in a car seat for endless hours. They need to move their bodies, they want to explore. They can’t even understand the goal or purpose of traveling like older kids can, so are very frustrated by it. After the first day of driving even the most car friendly toddler starts resisting being returned to the dreaded car seat of immobility. Every diaper change becomes a chance for sweet escape.

A toddler traveling 8 hours on the road to spend week camping, or at the beach or to move to new place is one thing. This was 35 hours on the interstate, then mom spends a few days moving shit, then back in the car for another 35 hours. It’s not something you want to subject a toddler, or anyone, to unless there isn’t another option.

Lots of activities with toddlers are fun, but I’ve honestly never heard any parent describe a long road trips with a diapered toddler(s), as fun, including myself. Toddlers just aren’t good traveling companions for long road trips or flights. Short trips with toddlers can be fun, but not hundreds, much less thousands of miles, of driving (unless an RV is involved which is awesome if you aren’t the one driving it).

My main point is still either Lilly doesn’t trust Mallory or Joe to care for Rocco, and I don’t blame her, or Mallory said gtfo when it was suggested she watched the baby while her and Joe take a road trip to MI. Either scenario is likely. Didn’t Lilly go on a trip to Iceland without 7 month old Rocco??

I’d take my toddler on a hellish cross country road trip with me rather than leave it with Manny or Tranny daddy for a week too, but Lilly chose to live with those freaks and breed with Joe. She signed up for a child experiment with a tranny throuple.

 

[FarmVille]

and @Anasa Tristis she's not choosing to go wipe old butt over being a stayathome secondary, she's getting a job for money and healthcare. these people are broke.

She needs a job *and* she needs to virtue signal by taking a shit, low paying job traditionally staffed by minorities.

There are enough former Toast reading millennials who would toss her an admin job. This shit(literally) is all woke performance and she won’t last a month.

 

[Anasa Tristis]

and @Anasa Tristis she's not choosing to go wipe old butt over being a stayathome secondary, she's getting a job for money and healthcare. these people are broke.

She could work her name and her books and land a much better paying job though. In higher ed, publishing, advertising, PR work, etc. Right away too. So there’s more going on with that CNA career choice than just money and benes. Mal likes mundane but sincere human interaction, providing selfless care to others and to be seen and needed. A CNA job will provide material for her Pooner does Lake Woebegone writing.

ETA: Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I think she’ll stick with it for a while.

 

[mold]

lol guys no it's dire out there, nobody is just handing out fulltime jobs with bennies to white women in the people's republic of commifornia

it's that job or starbucks. anything else with hours and benefits requires a masters. she is not working in university admin, she is not getting a high school teaching job, she is not getting any kind of job in the arts.

now, she could hustle and make money giving writing workshops, doing shows, editing, and just selling her writing, but it's a hard tightrope walk to do that when you need to maintain coverage. people who live that life generally have health insurance through a spouse. which she has. so please enjoy speculating about why someone married to a uc professor is so excited about a job with benefits.

 

[Bookwork]

So why isn't TardBaby covered by Joe's UC health plan anymore?

Easy answer, isn't it? When Lily dumped her tenured position at MSU, she jettisoned MSU's coverage for herself and for Rocco, so Joe swapped those two onto his UC coverage and dropped Mal.

As woke as UC is, their health coverage can't be extended to more than one partner/spouse at a time.

While it's obvious that a baby - or a woman who may have frozen embryos to play with - needs health coverage more than a strapping lumberjack, the shift codifies Mal's lower status.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

Marketplace plans are available. Mal doesn't have a baby and doesn't need to cover a spouse. She's not that old. Plenty of Americans are buying coverage and doing gigs. And plenty of people can get a little training to get a job as an MA or phlebotomist or something that pays better and has more dignity than CNA.

 

[autogynephobia]

She is getting close to looking like a Ginger pedo material, the ones that lead church Cub Scout troops.

Mallory has transitioned into exactly what she accused her brother of being.

 

[Potatis Salad]

So why isn't TardBaby covered by Joe's UC health plan anymore?

Mallory was never covered by Joe's UC health plan.

Their big gross wedding was in January 2020. Joe said they were legally married "a couple of months before that." The legal marriage would have been a qualifying event for Joe to add her to his health plan.

But Mallory said in May 2021 that the main reason she took money from Substack was to get healthcare. She clarified in that same conversation that Substack was not her employer. By "get healthcare", she means she took some of the lump sum she received and used it to buy insurance.

Then in Feb 2025, Mallory said "I didn't have healthcare for the last 18 months."

None of this matches up with Joe repeatedly adding and removing his wife from his UC health plan. Tard Baby and Joe are both TERRIBLE with life admin type stuff, and Joe is a piece of shit who wants an extra $350 in his paycheck every month more than he wants his wife to have health insurance. God knows what he told her, but I'm sure he had some excuse for why he couldn't do it, and Mallory didn't push it because it's all about Joe.

 

[mold]

So why isn't TardBaby covered by Joe's UC health plan anymore?

Easy answer, isn't it? When Lily dumped her tenured position at MSU, she jettisoned MSU's coverage for herself and for Rocco, so Joe swapped those two onto his UC coverage and dropped Mal.

As woke as UC is, their health coverage can't be extended to more than one partner/spouse at a time.

While it's obvious that a baby - or a woman who may have frozen embryos to play with - needs health coverage more than a strapping lumberjack, the shift codifies Mal's lower status.

you can't just swap your legal spouse out like that.

I swear you guys live on another planet

hang on I just read @Potatis Salad 's info - this is insanely weird and if I were presented this fact pattern without any more information I would assume the two parties are not legally married.

given these people I have no guesses but Joe, as a tenured professor, has departmental staff whose job it is to take care of the administrivia here, and with legal marriage in this kind of employment it's very smooth, it's more friction to not have the spouse on your plan, or enjoying all the other myriad benefits.

damn I rely on this thread to mine for the crazy, you let me down. not being on the insurance of the spouse with the hella good job is *wild*

oh I gotta add this is also evidence that they are not part of any kind of trans community, which in the bay area is as normal and stable as trans community can be - not very, but still, for the kind of middleaged employed trans people that aren't sufficiently personality disordered to end up here on the farms, affordable access to health care is a community norm and a major concern. to be legally married and not have your trans spouse on your insurance would be considered *abusive* by these people. damn this is so so weird.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

you can't just swap your legal spouse out like that

I swear you guys live on another planet

But Berkeley is far too progressive to require the person you're partnered with for insurance purposes to be your legal spouse. That kind of thing is for squares. A person an employee cohabits with and shares a biological child with should be peachy keen for them to insure.

 

[mold]

But Berkeley is far too progressive to require the person you're partnered with for insurance purposes to be your legal spouse. That kind of thing is for squares. A person an employee cohabits with and shares a biological child with should be peachy keen for them to insure.

absolutely not. domestic partner eligibility requires that the employed spouse is not married.

 

[Bookwork]

Mallory was never covered by Joe's UC health plan.

Their big gross wedding was in January 2020. Joe said they were legally married "a couple of months before that." The legal marriage would have been a qualifying event for Joe to add her to his health plan.

But Mallory said in May 2021 that the main reason she took money from Substack was to get healthcare. She clarified in that same conversation that Substack was not her employer. By "get healthcare", she means she took some of the lump sum she received and used it to buy insurance.

Then in Feb 2025, Mallory said "I didn't have healthcare for the last 18 months."

None of this matches up with Joe repeatedly adding and removing his wife from his UC health plan. Tard Baby and Joe are both TERRIBLE with life admin type stuff, and Joe is a piece of shit who wants an extra $350 in his paycheck every month more than he wants his wife to have health insurance. God knows what he told her, but I'm sure he had some excuse for why he couldn't do it, and Mallory didn't push it because it's all about Joe.

100% Thank you for the correction.

absolutely not. domestic partner eligibility requires that the employed spouse is not married.

Yep. From https://uhs.berkeley.edu/insurance-ship/insurance-dependents

I think I even posted that some while ago before my erroneous phase became so intense.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

absolutely not. domestic partner eligibility requires that the employed spouse is not married.

Well knock me out with a feather. I would have thought Berkeley of all places would honor and respect the equality of poly relationships. But I suppose people would declare themselves married to everyone to get universal coverage.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

Probably has as much to do with the policies of the actual insurance companies as anything else. Given there are federal regulations involved, they probably cannot legally allow what amounts to bigamy.

 

[mold]

why would the university of california want to spend money like that

if you allowed people to play insurance musical chairs everyone would swap around so the people with the most dependents and highest medical needs got matched up with the people with the best insurance

note that people like Joe don't advocate for this kind of worker control

it's not bigamy, no one cares. it's not pro or anti poly, no one cares. it's just cost control.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

Probably has as much to do with the policies of the actual insurance companies as anything else. Given there are federal regulations involved, they probably cannot legally allow what amounts to bigamy.

It's not a matter of allowing or accepting "bigamy." Domestic partners (sometimes even more expansively phrased, iirc) are covered by nearly every organization of any size. The question is how many adult (non-ward) people are able to be a covered person. Pricing tiers are typically 1) the worker or 2) worker + adult partner or 3) worker + adult partner + children up to age 26 (my policy has no pricing increases based on number of kids, but in the past I had some that did).

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

It's not a matter of allowing or accepting "bigamy." Domestic partners (sometimes even more expansively phrased, iirc) are covered by nearly every organization of any size.

Multiple """""domestic partners""""" would in fact be bigamy.

 

[mold]

Multiple """""domestic partners""""" would in fact be bigamy.

you have to be married for it to be bigamy so by definition no. to get even more granular, bigamy requires a person to publically present as married while legally married to somebody else. if you are publically presenting as in a domestic partnership that's not marriage.

 

[FarmVille]

given these people I have no guesses but Joe, as a tenured professor, has departmental staff whose job it is to take care of the administrivia here, and with legal marriage in this kind of employment it's very smooth, it's more friction to not have the spouse on your plan, or enjoying all the other myriad benefits.

PL as either not from burgerland or never having held a job. Shameful either way