self love is the mommy

fyi Amtrak has a guest rewards program for taking the train now

Yes it includes you can redeem them for travel, either by themselves or in combination with cash

When did they start? No idea. How does it work? They have a lot of details on their site! I just saw this because they sent me a big flashy email about how to redeem my points (which if they were smart is an email they'd make sure to send Often), so saying "I'm just the messenger" is honestly a big overstatement, more like I am leaving a small stack of fliers about on the counter of a public restroom.

I'll just answer with a link to the home page for their guest rewards program

Text from said Amtrak flyer:

Frequently Asked Questions

Credit Cards

SO MANY WAYS TO EARN SO MANY REWARDS AHEAD

LET THE EARNING BEGIN:

Learn more about all the different point-earning opportunities that help you get to rewards faster.

Amtrak Travel Earn 2 points per $1 spent, and a 25% point bonus for Business class travel and 50% for Acela First class.

Amtrak Guest Rewards® Preferred Mastercard® They're yours after spending $1,500 in the first 3 billing cycles of your account opening. Offers vary.

Retail & Specialty Partners Enjoy earning with flowers, gifts and more.

Rail Travel Partnerships Earn up to 10,000 points with a Rail Passengers Association membership depending on the membership level. With an RPA membership, members get discounts on Amtrak, regional trains, hotels and more.

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Please excuse the exhausting definition density of soulless marketing language

But yeah. Turns out, in the United States, Amtrak gives you loyalty points now. And like, an actually, genuinely, extremely reasonable point to money ratio, too, which I wasn't sure was still possible in 2026.

Mammals survived the meteor extinction event (K-Pg) because we are generalists. We could be tiny, we could be big! We could eat meat, leaves, decay, fish, anything! We could stay warm, we could cool ourselves. This broad survival skillset let us survive a nuclear winter that lasted far, far longer than we can imagine.

Birds, on the other hand, were specialists already. They had gotten rid of the hands for wings. They had already developed a proto-beak and teeth, if any existed, were too weak to do ANYTHING teeth should do. They did very specific jobs and did them extraordinarily well, because that is a specialist's job. The key survival factors for birds? Size (tiny to burrow or hide) and flight (acid rain? No problem, I will fly away.)

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.