WBDaddy

Depending on the state you live in. New Hampshire, for example, is fine with you not having insurance - as long as you can self-pay if you get into a wreck that's your fault.

Not by law. Lender demands you have home insurance because they're the ones most exposed if your house is wiped out by a hurricane/tornado/fire/etc.

I feel you, very acutely here. I live in north central FL, and we're just getting absolutely fucked on homeowner's insurance. We pay 3.5k/yr on our place. Doesn't help that everything in our state is by default litigious, whether it be a car accident or a house damage, where a lawsuit is the only way to solve shit. No-fault is a horrible way to run things.

This afternoon, I walked out of the liquor store with a bottle of Jim Beam. And I thought about how I expressed a desire to my wife a few weeks ago about getting treatment of some sort. Except all that treatment is for an actual addiction to alcohol (or substances more generally) - and I realized, I'm a fucking hedonist. I have zero impulse control. If there's no alcohol in the house, I'm fine, I stay sober. Just like with cigarettes. I have panic attacks about not having any cigarettes, but that's not an addictive response - fuck, a doctor literally stared me in the face and told me that's not a symptom of nicotine withdrawal. And I wanted to punch him about it. I had a vision of me showing up to an AA meeting on my way home from buying that bottle. And I could hear myself saying, "Hi, I'm (WBDaddy), and I'm a drunk. I used to joke that I'm not an alcoholic because y'all go to meetings, but here I am at one of your meetings, so now I don't know anymore. But I know that, if I make my mind up, I can stop drinking for however long I feel like I need to prove to myself that I'm not an actual alcoholic. Except I have no fucking impulse control, so eventually I'll still drink because I enjoy it. So what's Bill W got for me that I haven't already read through?" And I can also hear someone in that meeting fire back, "Well, you haven't hit rock bottom yet, and there ain't shit we can do for you here until you do." Diapers, or more generally my Daddying instinct (they do nothing for me personally, it's the act of caretaking that fulfils my spirit, even though I have a hell of a humiliation kink) are a source of frustration for me, because my life with my babygirl right now doesn't have much room for that caretaking outside of bedtime, and it makes me feel like I'm only a part time participant in our relationship. Even though I know she loves the all of me and I love the all of her, not just the babying parts. So I drink. A lot. And I don't know what to do with that other than raise my glass to Jim Morrison and say, "Yeah, I'm the fucking lizard king now, motherfucker."

Wild prediction: Harley finds out that Paul and Savvy are romantically involved, and Harley threatens Savvy with the video evidence to leave him alone. What happens after that? Well the author knows, but I don't.

OK, this is a great big warm fuzzy made of words. If I may be so bold as to offer an editor's critique - I think the one misstep here is that you made Lucy a lot more mature than any 6-year-old would be, mentally. She's thinking more like a tweener than a 1st-grader. Kids that young are generally not nearly as self-aware as Lucy is unless they've experienced some serious trauma. But it's not hard to set that aside and enjoy the warm fuzzy aspect. It's funny how 80's Huggies commercials were so unabashed about showing older kids, girls and boys alike, wearing nothing but their diapers in their print and TV ads.

A video where she drugs someone and humiliates them like that isn't as much of a "gotcha" as you think it is. If anything, it contains its own plausible deniability for Paul - she drugged him - he wasn't in control of his actions at that point.

Who said anything about humble?

Just saying, I had her pegged from the beginning.

Yoon. Same answer to the next question.

Show don't tell is always the correct answer with any question like this. Your dialogue and blocking should make it apparent to the reader why he suddenly switches from "mommy" to "mom" to "mother".

This. Emphatically. I give Lilly credit for her redemption arc, although the more she gets Paul involved in the podcast shit, the more she's likely to get hooked on those likes and clicks and all that shit and forget the Momma Bear persona she fell into when she finally figured out that Paul was a broken human who needed someone to help support him.

That is completely fair.

Man, that must have been some clean acid. I ate way more than my fair share of tabs and paper in my 20's, and a lot of times it felt like there was more speed than LSD in it. Peak lasts for 2-3 hours, shakes last the whole damn night and into the morning.

I and my black, cynical heart am 100% here for that.