My usual breakfast is cafe con leche.

My favorite breakfast is a big fryup, eggs, good homemade sourdough toast, home fries, and spicy refried beans. There isn’t one best food in there, it needs all of them.

Runner-up grits with butter, cheese, and nutritional yeast, topped with a fried egg.

Average 0.16 USD per kwh if I divide the whole bill by the KWH.

Our bill is pretty high but literally everything runs on electricity in the house, the cooking, water heating, A/C, we have clothes washer & dryer, there is no gas line.

I would be happier if plastic surgery, instead of always being aimed at making people closer to all the same, was used to make us look different. Elf ears, horns, tails, big noses, different shaped faces, neanderthal brow lines, creative changes. That is the style I’d like to see happen.

Also, since I’m in Florida, fancy parasols.

That sounds pretty good to me. Though I would prefer crushed peppers, jalapenos, or Salsa Yucateca, Tabasco is a little too sour. Why do you care? Are you literally gatekeeping her pizza?

Dunno, I think a fake radio show inside a podcast is media inside a different media. But yes it’s the whole thing, and a favorite.

Yes, with a fictional Public Radio host, his show is the podcast.

I agree with knives, love them.

Natural fermentation is a technology I love, that is pretty ancient. The way I make bread, it’s leavened the same way as almost 15,000 years ago. Beer is like that too - it’s commercial now but you can achieve it at home without the industrial tech.

Windshield wipers are so clever.

I have a stepdaughter with schizophrenia, she trusts me more than her mom or dad since I wasn’t part of her upbringing, so I’ve been able to do things like bring her to the emergency room when she thought everyone else was out to get her. But at some points help is not helpful - if your help is only hurting you and not doing much for him, you cannot fix that by trying to help. Wrecking your own life is irresponsible to yourself and to your wife.

I do know it’s hard. Especially here where there is not much mental health funding and they end up in jail (though stepdaughter was calmer in jail for some reason, that is not a good answer). If he is stuck on violence, and crazy so he can’t see his own responsibility in it, just keeps blaming everyone else, you can’t fix that.

Welcome to Nightvale.

Not sure but these are on repeat at my house:

Lord of the Rings trilogy

Hot Fuzz

Into the Spiderverse

Pride and Prejudice, the one with Keira Knightly

So one of them but not sure which.

Have you learned nothing from science fiction stories? I would not change anything.

Wait, you are saying we can have comprehensive environmental restoration and an honest fight vs. climate change if one of the other two is given up?

Gun control for sure for me. Enforce the laws we have, though.

Maybe, actually, my first punk rock show at 14. I still had trouble but pretty sure getting into that scene diverted me from severe alienation in school, and having older people as friends cushioned the blow when my dad died. I think without that I wouldn’t have lived this long.

But as an adult? Having kids for sure. Because I needed more money, went back to school, got a real job, and because my first pregnancy did so much more to heal my lingering anorexia than anything else - feeling like my body was real, and useful, and beautiful, I dunno how to explain it (and I’m sure this could go in the opposite direction for some) but for me it was quite healing. That set me on a different path and again, without them I probably wouldn’t have lived this long.

The last pivot point in my life was my breakup with my ex, that was a fast track to prosperity in a two income household with a guy who loves me for me. I wholeheartedly hope this trajectory holds.

So three inflection points I see.

As others have explained, waking up at the wrong point in a sleep cycle feels crappy. But also as the night turns to morning, your sleep cycles change and sleep becomes lighter - waking up is a process, not a moment. So get up when you wake up naturally and you should be good, but also keeping to a schedule helps, so if you are naturally waking up at 7am or whatever, going past that time can interfere with, well, falling awake.

I get you though - so often I feel like sleep is so close by I just want to go back.

My husband handles this with coffee, he gets up, makes coffee, drinks it in bed (while I sleep through all this) and then either feels awake, or, if he does go back to sleep the caffeine helps him wake back up, like a coffee nap. I can’t do that, prefer to wake up then coffee a few hours later, but it works for him.

This might fit better in no stupid questions.

Gender roles no, it’s not important to assign certain behavioral expectations based on biological sex.

Gender perception? That’s a different question. Are you a man? What do you do to let people know you are a man, and do you care if they mistake you for a woman?

Bwahaha, I had a tempered measuring cup, a big one I used for pancake batter, stuff like that. One day I gently tapped it with a wooden spoon and it exploded. Pancake batter and (yep, not sharp) tiny pieces of glass everywhere! That was the day I learned tempered glass can store energy. It wasn’t that one tap, but every thwack it ever received built up, until it could not store any more and it exploded. Very interesting to learn but very messy.

The stretchy blue ones they make now are awesome. Unfortunately awesome, I buy them sometimes now after years of avoiding them and just reusing whatever bags. The ones that cheese slices come in do seem to have ziplock that is too strong/tight for the bag, I agree. Whether it’s a function of the zipper changing or bags using less plastic, I don’t know.

Kids are so much nicer than when I was in school. Not perfect, obviously, but really just so much nicer to each other.

You are suffering exhaustion as a symptom of your depression? That is what this post sounds like.

Not sure we can help with that.

When I have exhaustion from overwork and cannot immediately adjust my circumstances, giving up (acceptance of what is going on) and more exercise, even if it means less sleep time available, has been the most helpful but it’s a short term strategy. The exercise improves my sleep and raises my spirits.

Then eventually the stress ends and I get a migraine :( and then back to my normal.

But I have never suffered depression.

I bring a picture of myself with the haircut I want.

Husband says tight fade, zero to very short on top and that gets him what he wants, he goes to the same barber lady all the time, she doesn’t speak English and he doesn’t speak Spanish but they still manage to communicate the haircut information.