Dear Lord - I can accept that! As an introvert, just reading that level of engagement was overwhelming lol.

You say “a few dozen friends.” Do you actually consider all of them friends, or are some friends and the rest acquaintances?

I know many people that I’m friendly with through work and other places, but the majority is consider acquaintances. I also have friends, but that’s a much smaller group.

I saw Christmas decorations showing up (the decorations were for sale, not store decor) last month. Anything is fair game.

Teeney tiny bits over time to allow your body to recover and adapt to create a new baseline.

This was destroy everything to the degree that the damaged tissue contents are now poisoning vital organs and threatening death.

For a moment my brain processed the cursive Flour as Blow. And a metric fuckton at that lol.

I feel both entirely seen and unseen at the same time.

The other commenter already gave you the right answer, but I wanted to chime in that once I got over my fear of making dough, I realized the rest of it is just variations and technique. Bread, pizza crust, bagels - I make focaccia more than anything, but it’s all doable if the time and energy are available to you.

I love my KitchenAid for certain things but for dough I’ll usually use a dough whisk. It’s a simple stick with a couple hard loops on it. Strong enough to thoroughly mix dough, but takes less time to clean than anything else, except maybe my hands lol.

Aside from holiday challah, I probably make focaccia more than anything else. And depending on my mood I’ll load up the focaccia with some dollops of sauce, veggies, meat, and cheese for something closer to a Detroit style pizza.

The best thing that happened to me in terms of bread making was learning that you could chuck ingredients in a bowl, mix them well, then throw it in a large Tupperware container and put it in the fridge. Magic happens overnight, something something fairies, and POOF! The next morning you have a usable dough!

Every Hanukkah I make about 15 loaves of challah for dinner and to give to family. Using the fridge this way has made my life so much easier.

I never previously considered getting the shingles vaccine because my mom told me that I was the only one in my family that managed not to get chicken pox as kid (I was born long after all my siblings ended up getting it and never showed signs.)

Years later when getting a job at a hospital, they went over my vaccine record (literally some dates and notes my mom had written on the back of an envelope in the early 80’s) they decided to run a titer. It came back positive. Their guess is that I had such a mild case that it wasn’t identified. Getting the vaccine is on my to do list now!

Where was this?

Growing up in the 80s I remember hearing about “the gay plague” as people were dying of AIDS. This was also in the midst of Satanic Panic, so the message was that God was punishing gay people. Then I heard about a kid that got it from a blood transfusion, and no one had a great answer for that.

Is it possible to teach them to shit on the lens?

I work in hospice, and was recently made aware of a child who was contacted as their parent’s emergency contact (parent in the hospital signing into hospice, but rapidly deteriorating.) She said she’d sign papers if needed to make sure her parent didn’t end up on the street, but otherwise wasn’t interested in updates/contact till her parent passed.

There’s many flavors of ways this will come back to bite people.

There are many places across the country with staged levels of care offered. I’m in the Chicago suburbs, where based on the facility it can cost $3500-5000/mo per person for independent living (essentially your own apartment/townhome space where support services are available very quickly) $4000-10,000/mo for assisted living (someone is checking on you multiple times a day and potentially delivering meals/helping with meds) or $9000-16,000+/mo for nursing care (full care.)

The devil is in the details though. I know many facilities have different practices, but it’s not uncommon for a facility to require proof that you already have 2 years worth of payments on hand before letting you move in. Also some will just let you sign over your property/home as security.

I knew a man a few years ago that had moved with his mother to an independent living where he cared for her. He was there over 30 years, having “purchased” the unit for $275,000 and paid around $3000 mo in maintenance fees. She had passed away at some point, he continued to live there. When he sustained a fall and hit his head, they moved him into the nursing unit as it appeared he would pass soon. They cleaned out his home and sold it, “securing” the proceeds to pay for his care. He ended up recovering more than anyone expected, at which point he was told he only had enough money for about 18 months of care, then he would be moved to a Medicaid room where he would have to share his room. A friend helped him find a less expensive place, but with his belongings sold he had to buy furniture. He passed alone a couple years later. Through all of this he never questioned whether or not any of this was right or wrong, just shrugged it off and accepted that this is the way things happen.

On the other hand, that was also the time where there seemed to be an increase in the online bullshittiness jumping through flaming hoops to apply for jobs that ultimately didn’t exist because companies had to show that they were trying to hire so they didn’t have to pay back loans, while saying people weren’t taking the positions or weren’t qualified so they could keep the money.

I remember at the tail end of things waiting for my order in a burger place where the owner was working because they were short staffed and he was bitching about “no one wants to work anymore” with a customer. The guy sounded like a dick, and all I could think was that either he’s not paying enough or he’s treating his employees like shit - that’s probably why they don’t want to work for him. Either way that was the first and last time I went there.

FWIW, I’m a massage therapist who works in hospice. Legally, if someone falls I’m not allowed to try to get them up because that’s not an area of training for licensing/my scope of practice does not allow it. Someone working in a nursing home would be trained on safe transfers, BUT if there’s a chance the patient experienced an injury or is unable to assist in getting up themselves, it really is safer for all parties to get a lift assist from the fire department. If I had a loved one that needed to stay in a rehab/nursing facility and they sustained a fall, I’d rather the extra set of eyes assess before just putting them back in bed.

From what I’ve heard the law is written requiring rather Protestant verbage, where 6/9 justices are Catholic. Depending on flavor of Protestant, not all even consider Catholics as Christians.

Depression is expensive. I lost a couple crock pots that way. Finally found disposable liners!

Try having a vagina. When the fart slides to the front, you get to fart it again.