Not OP, but we have a bidet and a basket of cut up t-shirt cloths next to the toilet that are single-use and then go in the wash every week. I wouldn’t personally reuse washcloths for wiping out of fear of UTIs, but I’m extra paranoid.

I freeze soups, curries, and sauces in those plastic deli containers. If you’re freezing something that goes with rice, freeze a container with a portion of rice too.

Then just take the frozen container(s) and put it in your lunchbox- voila, ice pack plus food.

You can freeze nuts to make them last longer. Also bread. Also hot peppers like serranos. If you have lemons that are going to go bad before you use them, juice them and freeze the juice.

Some leaves and spices that you get in large quantities, like curry leaves or kaffir lime leaves or lemongrass you can freeze the extras in bags until you need them again.

Agreed. We have kept wearing masks in specific places (public transit, crowded events, airplanes) and it really does make a difference. I never get sick from airplane trips any more, which used to be a fairly regular occurrence.

I will say, I was never able to figure out how to stop a properly fitted mask from giving me a terrible headache after 8 hours of use so I’m glad I work from home and don’t need to make the choice of mask vs comfort at work.

Thank you for letting me know this was a thing!! Total game-changer.

Can’t quote the lyrics without sharing the awesome lyric video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbQSzs11euk

Used to sing this song to my kid at bedtime but he hasn’t asked for it lately. Maybe I’ll try to work it back into the rotation.

I have a white Prius named Shadowfax so if I need to go somewhere fast I can yell “run Shadowfax, show us the meaning of haste!”

Local takeout ftw. I haven’t eaten at a pizza chain in years and don’t miss it at all!

Now the real question in New England is Italian-style vs Greek-style pizza

Another vote for mindustry! That game is a blast.

I have a child and I’d be the first to recommend not having one. It’s expensive, it wrecked me emotionally and physically, and I worry every day about what kind of world my kid will grow up into.

But all those things are worth it in the end to me because I really wanted to be a parent. My kid is an absolute treasure to me and I put up with the suffering because I do genuinely love parenting and love seeing him grow up. If I was any less enthusiastic about the process going in, I would have either run away or killed myself by now. That’s how demoralizing and traumatic parenting can be. Granted I have a special needs kid but so do probably 10% of parents so do you want to roll those dice?

All that aside, the fact is that parenting these days is filled with societal obstacles. With both parents working, you’re rationing sick days and constantly running out, leaving no time for vacation or personal days off. This leaves the option of either taking unpaid days off or reducing one’s working hours. Since no one is home doing housework all day, working parents spend their evenings and nights doing housework. If you need to run an errand or take the kid to a doctor’s appointment, that comes out of either your paid work time or your free time. Childcare is both expensive and hard to get, with wait-lists for daycares in some cities of several months. And once your kid is in public school, you have to find after school care, which is not guaranteed for every kid at every school.

And don’t even get me started about summer. Three months of cobbled-together summer camps and asking/begging family members and friends to watch your kid when their busy schedules permit. If your kid has special needs or requires trained caregivers, you are out of luck.

These are fixable problems, but they require massive government-subsidized investment in childcare and parental leave structures and the government is not doing that. Childcare salaries are so low that the supply of daycare teachers is basically dried up. Same with public school teachers and afterschool caregivers. Why work as an afterschool teacher when you can be an independent nanny and make twice as much per hour? As for parental leave, there is no requirement that parental leave cover anything beyond the bare bones of the time needed to give birth, leaving most new parents to burn through their entire year’s worth of sick time during their babies first month of life when there is a doctor’s appointment just about every week. Then blow through it again next year when the kid gets sick twice a month in daycare. My kid is six years old and this is the first year I haven’t run out of sick days before June.

Our society was designed for families with at least one full-time caregiver, and now that is basically impossible but the system has not been updated. This game is not designed for us. So why would anyone choose to play?

Sparse on details but she was with an older man who was not her relative so I’m not hopeful it’s a good reason. 😣

Found safe and alive! I wish they’d put that in the title of the article but of course they want you to click on it.

I didn’t know I needed Andy Serkis singing the songs in the Hobbit until I heard it, but it turns out I did. Dude has an amazing singing voice.

cries in working parent

My employer gives us 8 sick days a year. When we run out of those we are supposed to use vacation time. It’s downright depressing how fast we blow through the sick time in a bad winter season.

I’m very very lucky to work from home, so I can neglect my sick kid at home while getting work done and thus avoid having to burn through my vacation time as well. Others aren’t so lucky.

Pretty sure the shelter paid us to take our current cat lol. Or at least all the chipping and medical fees were waived. She’d been there for months and months and had already had one failed adoption.

She’s ornery as hell and never wants us to pet her but somehow mysteriously happens to be in the same room as us all the time. And she sleeps on us at night. Deep down it’s clear she loves us in her own cat way. 🥲

Also despite her…odd… temperament she is a beautiful cat! No clue why anyone would pay for an expensive breed when there are so many cuties like ours just wasting away in shelters.

This is the pet food equivalent of Dr Bronners.

Highly recommend IGNEA if you like melodic metal. A few faves:

Jinnslammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF_qqeXzM4g

Disenchantment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnV9vpEit6E

Mermaids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU9WFEwsQQw

But gosh their stuff is just all awesome.

When watching eagle nest cams, I’ve seen little birds and mammals hanging around eagle nests and scooping up scraps of leftover prey. I think in many cases a large raptor isn’t going to go chasing around a little birds when they’ve already caught something bigger and the little birds play clean up crew and take away scraps that would be too small for the larger birds. Not sure if that’s the case here but it’s a cool little cooperative situation to notice. You’ll also see little birds nesting under osprey nests, probably for the same reason.

They help significantly to combat the heat island effect in cities and provide shade and cooler microclimates for people to shelter in when it’s hot.

Just try going to a shady tree-lined path vs. a paved treeless path on a sunny day and you’ll be pretty clear on the meaning of this meme.

So yes we can’t stop global warming with trees alone but we can mitigate the local effects of it all while providing habitat for birds and shade for people and lots of other benefits besides.

This article has a pretty good review if you want to take a look at some of the benefits! https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/12/4371

And here’s a more plain-language website about urban trees: https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/the-power-of-urban-trees-2023

Aw damn thanks for fixing that! Yes I wrote it as a list and yes I forgot the double space. Still haven’t figured out bullet points in lemmy

Advantages of bras:

• Look nice (if you’re into that look, which many people are)

• Keep your nipples from chafing

• Support/containment for larger boobs

• Keep prudish people from being mad at your nipples

• Can be worn without a shirt for sports if they cover enough real estate

• When breastfeeding, help catch/absorb leaks

Disadvantages of bras:

• Uncomfortable if not fitted right
• Sweaty as fuck on hot days
• Expensive
• Many have to be hand washed if they are fancy

I would say I wear bras about 30-50% of the time and it’s usually for either support/chafing prevention or looks. The rest of the time I can’t be bothered. I’m also lucky to not have super large breasts. I know women who do may find a good fitted bra to be more comfortable than no bra.

When I was breastfeeding I wore them all the time though because it is super awkward to leak through your shirt in public.

Edited to add bullet points bc I suck at lemmy formatting