No, not normal. If you enjoy it, something is wrong. If you just aren’t upset by it, but care, you might make a good emergency room doctor.

How do you feel if it’s someone you care about, or yourself?

Not where I live. “Nice” in our office for men is a button-up tucked into actual pants, and good shoes. Maybe a sweater or blazer if it’s cold (not often here) Just looking put together. Some guys wear that everyday, others are more casual.

Women gave up formal office wear completely because that involves heels and pantyhose. For “Nice” we have a similar outfit as the guys, or a dress or skirt & top combo. Some women dress like that everyday in our office but just like with the men, most of us do not. I wear jeans and a good T-shirt or button-up or a light sweater.

My mom worked as a university professor, then advisor, and what she said about college was “it just shows a prospective employer that you can follow rules and commit to doing something for a few years and follow through on it. That’s why they want the degree. Also cuts down on applicants, fewer to sort through.”

So, from someone on the inside, she didn’t think the main reason was education, in terms of specific jobs. I know in accounting I don’t use so much of what I learned and that’s a pretty specific degree. Anyone with a mind for numbers & systems could be trained on the job to do what I do.

I don’t believe the UFO phenonena are demons but I do think modern people saying they are aliens is exactly as crazy as people of the past saying they are demons. The people of the future will have some other explanation and consider us idiots too.

Like, the past had a whole system and pantheon of angels and demons but have you ever looked at what the alien conspiracy theorists write about aliens? There’s a whole system and pantheon they believe in too.

I am older, and have not found any of that to be true. As a lady, more makes more; more sex makes sex feel better and it’s easier to get off, and sexual frustration does not make me creative at all, just distracted and frustrated.

There is also physical benefit to sex for older women, I don’t know if it’s the same for younger, but certainly after menopause sex prevents vaginal atrophy and prolapse of internal organs, it’s sort of a use it or lose it situation. Penetration and orgasms are good for muscle tone, apparently. Beyond the obvious benefits of pleasure and relationship building.

Not religious but my mom was Methodist and open-minded. Basically she said the Bible was a document from a different time, and the most important commandments were to love your neighbor and take care of the least of us.

The behavioral rules she just thought relics of an earlier time, said many had been solved with science (ok to eat pork, be gay, whatever).

My grandma was Catholic and she just basically wasn’t evangelical, right? So sure, maybe we were going to hell but that was between us & God, nothing to do with her. On homosexuality she (like others I’ve talked to) said, yeah of course gay people were made that way by God, that was their cross to bear, they had to be celibate. “So do nuns and monks and priests, some people are not supposed to have sex, it’s always been that way.”

What the actual fuck? NO. Kids who are little are little kids, they are all potential, you can be somewhat disappointed in their behavior occasionally but not them. Grown kids are grownups with their own lives, they can disappoint themselves I guess but not me, and if they somehow managed it I still would not say that, they don’t exist to satisfy me, that’s not the point of having kids. Had kids to have a family and to grow some independent adults so they could have lives of their own.

A dainty little fork, for most cakes. I make easy cakes not fancy cakes though. Ricotta cake, yogurt cake, pineapple upside down cake. Not so fluffy, more springy. Sort of a cornbread recipe, modified to make different cakes. So often it’s reasonable to cut a wedge and just eat it without a utensil.

I don’t eat avocado like fruit, I eat it like a vegetable. So cut it up with onion and peppers and dress with lemon, oil and salt and pepper. Or mash on toast & top with goat cheese.

The only way i have ever had it sweet is avocado ice cream, and that involves a lot of sugar. It’s not sweet at all on its own.

Jeans & shirts & pants I hang up and don’t wash often. I have lots of them, so not sure of the interval but maybe 10 - 15 wears? Underwear and workout clothes I wear once and wash.

Office job, I do bike in but not far. Merino wool t shirts or loose shirts for work.

Of course if I spill something on them I wash them.

The WaWa gas station near me has more charging stations than gas pumps, and they are always full of cars charging.

And of course they sell beer and diet coke a cigarettes, coffee, snacks. The gas is just to get people in the door, and charging takes longer, I’m sure they’ll be fine.

Oh we have the worst, most starved public transportation, half the buses run only every hour, and on the bike to work - only to work - I do occasionally get there faster if there is traffic but there is no bike lane, I either use the sidewalk if no pedestrians, or the road if people are using the sidewalk. Traffic has to be pretty damn bad before I can move faster than the cars, I still have to stop at the same lights.

We have the most generous annual E bike voucher raffle in the nation, I believe, and the city is working on bike lanes, but really, the road between my house & work has no bike infrastructure at all. The public transportation problems are because that’s funded by the county not the city, the suburbs don’t want to pay for it. But inside the city we need it.

Personally (city dweller) a car is a time machine. I can get where I need to go mostly on a bike or my feet, but if I’m pressed for time - and that happens plenty - a car can get me there faster.

My penultimate child was at university about 10 miles from the house. There was a bus that got within a couple blocks of the sprawling campus, so I told her take the bus, but a year in said she could use my car and I’d walk to work since my commute was so short. That gained her about 3 hours per school day and lost me about one hour. Car is a time machine.

This is the one and only thing that Copilot has done for me successfully. There is a theoretical PDF to Excel function in both Adobe and Excel and they suck. The ridiculous AI tool actually does a reasonable job of it, after a few rounds of back & forth with it.

We are all our own worst critics. Like, when I look at myself all I see is the flaws, right? It’s a kind of dysmorpia.

There are literal good days & bad days of course, bloated or bad hair day, or bad skin day, but they aren’t as extreme as you see them. Nobody else would notice or care.

I was anorexic so I always look fat to myself, it doesn’t matter my size really. You can’t trust the mirror and you don’t see what others do.

Not like red bean ice cream.

Louisiana red beans & rice, chop all of whatever veg you have laying around, saute them, add andouille sausage if you have it, it’s fine without though. Add beans & water & salt, cook them.

On Camellia rice.

Pintos are traditional here not kidney. Kidney beans are for red beans & rice.

Beans. Punch away. I would take the meat out of chili before the beans.

Tomatoes or tomato paste, spoonful of unsweetened chocolate, some red wine. And why the heck did you not start with an onion?

Dogs don’t work like that. A dog gets protective when it’s anxious, and thinks it has to be in charge because you are ineffective. If your dog is relaxed and looks to you to protect it, you are doing a good job of raising your dog.

Dog park, I dunno, but "standing up to other dogs’ just sounds like asking for a dog fight. Playing dogs are not necessarily jockeying for dominance but even if they are it doesn’t mean they can’t all have fun, without being mean.

I agree that even good, happy dogs can have a nose for danger, our awesome shep-akita was pleasant with adults and gentle giant with other dogs but once was so growly snappy with a girl my stepdaughter brought home and she did steal something. The dog picked up on her we did not.

I have a big family and cannot understand thinking everyone else in the world needs to do the same thing to make me feel ok about it. Like, how insecure do you have to be to need that? Can’t you just do what you want to because it’s your preference without needing it to be the only ‘right’ way? Just because something is good for me doesn’t mean it’s good for everyone, and it’s a good thing, too. I figured the only reason I even can have many is because others have none.