RBWells

@RBWells@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

RBWells,

Not my weakness becoming a strength, but going away and now I am a different person, my inverse? But my strengths do not become weaknesses?

Disorganization is my bane, and a complete inability to multitask, so I guess I would either be obsessive/compulsive or would be able to be an executive assistant or politician.

RBWells,

Don’t die.

I can’t fault my mom for falling apart when my dad died but it did mess us up, she withdrew and was lost and stupid for years after, and never really got her mind all back. I was 16 and got kicked out at 17, the other kids got more years of that. But all of us are ok now, and again, I really can’t blame her.

Nothing else really, she wasn’t a motherly kind of mom but never felt neglected or like she was not trying her best.

RBWells,

We have used heat pump for A/C and heat in Florida for, well, I don’t know how long but the house I bought in the early 90s had one, and it was old enough we had to replace it, and the replacement lasted 20 years, so it’s not a new technology.

Yes they make noise, especially when starting up, but as someone else noted, your windows are closed when you run it, it’s not that loud. Not as loud as window units were.

RBWells, (edited )

Husband has irregular income. Like you I do a spreadsheet with the dollars all allocated for my income plus what he tells me he expects on average.

Then each month I compare to actual results, and use that information to get a better estimate for the next year.

The black hole is credit card repayment because it was spent on something but goes in as debt repayment but we are working on that.

ETA: also do forecasting bank balance by day in months when things are tight. We do have savings but most of it in retirement accounts.

RBWells, (edited )

Lots of beans and rice. So many different meals with beans and rice.

A garden. Or knowing someone with a garden, at some point we all get an excess of something, I gave a big bag of jalapenos to our yard guys at the end of the summer, they were so abundant.

We do use the Too Good to Go app, but not many participating restaurants here, it’s more for a treat.

Working at a restaurant that feeds you, I used to work at a place you could come for supper (teatime) before the evening shift. Not a chain place.

Set aside some part of the weekly budget for oil, spices, seasonings, chili paste, condiments. With these you can build variety of flavor into a basic cheap diet and they last awhile, you don’t have to buy all of them each time, but always buy some.

ETA: planning the week of meals saves more money than trying to buy cheap foods, for me, but we still have kids at home so the calculation is a little different. I just don’t like to - so I make a loose framework, know about 4 of the 7 meals, and keep dry/canned beans and pasta and rice on hand, and there is usually some veg in the garden, so I can leave some room for improvisation. Even that level of planning does save money.

RBWells,

My appetite is at least 90% based on calories needed, since I was around 25, I 'm over 50 now. My kids laugh at me when I sometimes say I’m still full 6 hours after eating, but sometimes I am. Or eat, then eat ten minutes later. And usually I stay at the same weight unless intentionally bulking or cutting.

One exception - I lose appetite when stressed, and rarely but but sometimes have anxiety around eating still. But most of the time, my appetite just follows my calorie expenditure. Can’t be the only person like that, it seems a normal state?

RBWells,

I remember my first brother coming home after being born. My mom said I could go in the room and look in the crib but not to say anything, he was sleeping. I leaned down and said his name - I was one and a half years old. I know this is a real memory as nobody was there, nobody told me this happened.

Then nothing I remember until my 3rd birthday, I remember the depressing zoo birthday, and then remember learning to read (sort of- I was 3 and memorized a short book, claimed I could read, but after that just could read, pretty much anything - so I don’t remember the actual learning, however it happened, just that book, pretending to read it and that felt like it magically unlocked all books, it was remarkable and memorable).

That’s about all my memories until 5 years old, but after 5 it’s still just a few memories, even now I’d say just a few memories per year just a whole lot more years.

RBWells,

My stepson, the first time I was around for his birthday, asked me specifically for “mashed potatoes made from potatoes”. I don’t think most people would agree with you on this one. Instant pot whole potatoes, mash with milk and butter, salt and pepper. I never peel them. So good and so easy.

RBWells,

I am not peeling nor boiling, have never peeled a potato. Boiling them in chunks I agree won’t yield something so much better than dehydrated powdered potatoes - that puts too much water into the equation and makes them similarly gluey. You can microwave chunked potatoes and mash them if you don’t have a pressure cooker or instant pot.

Yes it takes longer than boiling water but in the context of cooking other things it’s easy and potatoes pressure cooked whole are so fluffy and easy to mash.

I have used the flakes for potato bread, they are useful like dry milk is. But just like dry milk, or instant coffee, something is lost in drying and rehydration.

This is a very subjective prompt though - if the marginal time savings are worth it to you, they are. I don’t usually have an urgent timeline for mashed potatoes so letting them cook while I do other stuff works out.

RBWells,

Oh God you are right I am just conflating all those movies I avoided so successfully. I just mean until then he played characters so straight and gung ho and active and shiny. No way I could have cast him, whoever did saw something that nobody else did and they were right.

I still want to hate him. But do think he’s a gifted actor.

RBWells,

I’m oldish GenX and maybe atypical but was a very early adopter of tech, on Usenet as soon as I could connect to anything, and was tech support for the older kids (but both got very tech savvy boyfriends) and of the younger set only the 19 year old has outpaced me. But I do think, if generalizing:

I can work computers because I had to fix them and like to mess with them. So everything now seems so easy in a way - I set up a network in my old house, wires everywhere, testing testing fixing, blah. Was dreading doing it when we moved - nope, mesh system, scan a code, boom done! Amazing!

Millennial kids don’t expect everything to work but seem stumped when it doesn’t. This may just be my kids because I fixed stuff for them.

The younger ones are used to everything working seamlessly and it does for them. That mesh network setup did not awe them, they expected it to be that easy!

how similar are other North American countries to USA??

I mean the other 2 countries, Canada and Mexico, how similar are both of them to United States?? Both countries have a similar economy and democracy etc, and I think those two countries share things like supermarkets, stores, etc. I suppose the cultural differences are not a lot, that is very nice.

RBWells,

I think yes we are all more similar than different but as you move north, there is less income inequality and better social services, less graft and corruption.

Supermarkets in the US are like nowhere else, they are incredible.

RBWells,

I am a working mom and will tell you - if you don’t schedule time for yourself you won’t get it. I prioritize sex and exercise into the schedule because if not, life and work will eat every moment. For 2024, schedule in 3 hours every weekend, or an evening or morning but every single week.

Realize that everyone is accommodating everyone else, they aren’t doing it to annoy you. You aren’t the center of the universe. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need time to recharge, plan it weekly in 2024 and let the schedule fit around you too. It will.

RBWells,

Henry Cavill? The guy who played Superman and Geralt of Rivia? Nobody can possibly think he got that body by sitting around. That’s like saying guys don’t think Lady Gaga wears makeup on stage. He’s not just fit, he’s built out.

Any actor is someone who is selling their looks as part of the package. However they look, it is a choice and they put effort into it. Even Jack Black.

RBWells,

This is such a funny thread because I am only barely tall, only as tall as an average man and it always seems the world is designed for someone around 5’2". Kitchen counters just a little too low always. Mirrors too. Door handles, everything calibrated just a little shorter than I am. Except those stupid over the refrigerator cabinets, which are made for someone 7’5".

The tongs trick I have used though - no matter how long your reach, something is too far. And when my kids were short we had to arrange things for them, mostly just making sure there were stepstools around.

RBWells,

Yeah boycott may be too strong a word, it’s more like they are at the bottom of my list in what I look for in a restaurant, and I live where there are other options. I do object to them but on grounds of being a chain, generally shitty to employees and not good or interesting food, I will not give them dollars but don’t hate them like I hate BOA or Cracker Barrel. They just seem like something that doesn’t need to exist.

RBWells,

Google Play Music still stands as the best commercial music app I’ve used, I miss it, and whatever marketing person got them to change the glorious branding of Play Music, Play Movies, and Play Store for YouTube music, Google TV and Play Store should be fired with extreme prejudice.

RBWells,

YouTube not Spotify but top 0.01 of Janelle Monae and 1,257 different artists so far in 2023.

Why do most people refuse to accept that they are wrong

I have come across a lot’s of people like these. like 99% of them. Sometimes it makes me think twice if what i am saying is wrong? What’s wrong with them. Is it so hard to swallow your pride and acknowledge that the other person is speaking facts? When they come to know they are wrong they proceed to insult/make fun of...

RBWells,

It depends. Some people will relentlessly mock you for being wrong, no matter how you handle it. At work I have no problem admitting I messed up something, there’s no point and always it’s better to just fix it, right?

But with my ex, he was just dead judgemental. Might as well double down if I wasn’t sure since my accuracy rate was higher than his.

With husband I can just say I don’t know and it’s fine. On the occasion I send him something not factual I do send correction there is no penalty, for lack of a better word.

RBWells,

My own? Or that of others? Ignorance is usually fixable, learn what you need to. Incompetence can often be remedied through practice. Nobody starts out knowledgeable or competent.

If it’s someone else’s incompetence and it’s affecting me (like we had an A/P person at work who could not get one vendor paid at the right amount, ever, and it was making my job harder) I usually look at the systems around the person, thinking things should be set up to avoid human error - people are often asked to do things that don’t make sense. For example, to keep the same example - “make sure you don’t pay an invoice twice if it’s sent to us twice”. I mean, sure, but the system should be preventing that, people are always going to fuck it up.

Long answer but I generally approach it thinking people aren’t trying to do bad work, and certainly not doing bad work to annoy me, there is something in their way.

RBWells,

Bad, as a % of annual gross pay is about 25% of one year’s pay. Mostly the deficit accrued from when my ex was not working. It’s smaller than it was, but not by much. But moving in the right direction at least.

Plus mortgage on the house and a separate loan for the roof we had put on when we bought it.

RBWells,

I have a 108 song Halloween playlist!

Agree with the Misfits Halloween.

Some you may not have considered:

If You Were Still Around - John Cale

Vampire - Claudia Schmidt

Careful with that Axe, Eugene - Pink Floyd

What’s he Building? - Tom Waits

Rockin’ Bones - The Cramps

Zombie - Maitre Gims

RBWells,

In real life people trust me, even if they don’t know me. It’s the middle aged white lady superpower. Apparently we are the group of people who are deployed to do surveys about personal habits, health, sex, because people trust us.

When younger (and still to some extent) I also seem to get picked out of crowds way more often than statistically normally for things where performers are choosing someone from a crowd. My mom thought it was remarkable, there could be a thousand kids in an audience but always I was picked out to go on stage. And no, I am not exceptional looking, it was not due to looks.

RBWells,

Normalnudes

IntermittentFasting

NoSleep

Written erotica, any of them.

The general “Music” and “Movie” threads because I did discover stuff on them as well as being able to suggest stuff.

But have been satisfied with some of these that are still small but growing - curlyhair, science fiction, cocktails (mine now), fermentation and sourdough. And overall happy to give up the faster moving subs and be here for the beginning time.

RBWells,

This reminds me of two similar incidents - My mom never advocated for me in school. Like never. Until one day in high school I wore a miniskirt on a game day (on game days the cheerleaders were in really short skirted uniforms). I got in trouble at lunch for the outfit, but just pointed at a cheerleader and said "her skirt is a lot shorter than mine.". Got sent to the office, my mom picked me up, I figured I was in trouble but no. She told the principal she agreed with me and no she didn't bring another outfit. We went home.

And at a job, we got a dress code because people were showing up in pyjamas. One of the rules was this weird "4 fingers neckline" no deep necklines? One of our accountants was an older, very old school black man, proper and nerdy and nice. He heard the 4 fingers speech, started grumbling. Later when I passed his desk he had printed out 4 copies of Johnny Cash giving the finger right at the camera, and he just looked at me and said "four fingers!"

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • localhost
  • All magazines
    •
    Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #