Love rosemary with garlic and lemon. I use it on my dry brined turkey under the skin, crushed in quinoa and in herbal bread. So good, definitely my favorite herb.

Sorry basil, I do love you too but it’s not close.

Because as much as they want to claim they’re logical and rational, no logical or rational argument would ever be the thing to convince them. Identity politics prevents people from accepting anything from the “other side”, so they ask for sources so they can point to it as biased and unfair etc. There’s really no point in arguing with someone like that using facts. The things most likely to change their mind is their own personal experience or writing an entirely new narrative about the world.

First thing I would look into is how water is getting into those cracks in the first place. Check your gutters and make sure they’re cleaned out and at appropriate angles, and check the downspouts. Water should be draining away from your home, not into it. You might need to put up some sort of awning or tarp, and fix the angles of those pavers/concrete. If there’s water flowing into the foundation then it’s going to be a reoccurring problem.

It’s one of my favorite movies, and I find the story beautiful. Incredible acting from a child, as well as Lee Pace.

If I have a project that needs doing on a specific deadline, I start thinking about all of the types of complications I might face and what sort of obstacles there might be. What if I can’t find this thing? What if this component breaks? What if I get sick and I can’t do it on this day? I keep thinking of things that would make it take longer, and padding out the time estimate.

If I truly believe something will take four hours, I will talk myself out of it and say “no, something will go wrong, nothing ever goes perfectly smoothly, you don’t even have your tools/resources together, that estimate is wildly optimistic” and then I’ll double the estimate to eight hours. Then, if everything goes smoothly, it maybe takes me five or six total hours and I can get it to a decent point I’m not embarrassed of. Maybe I planned on doing that eight hours of work over two days, and ended up finishing it on the first day. I’m not going to pretend it’s foolproof but it honestly has helped me a lot

Something I managed to do was trick myself into using the “deadline push” to complete things on time by adjusting how long I thought something might take. The shorter it takes the more you push it to the edge of your deadline. So conversely, if you think a task will take longer, you start panicking about it sooner and harness that frantic energy to actually do a decent job.

Love that! You clearly kept an even tension the whole time, your stitches are very even. Cats love being the first to test yarn projects, haha.

Congrats on finding natural fibers from thrifting, just about everything is acrylic so it’s such a thrill to find wool or cotton!

The “laughs” all felt from the outside. There was very little humor aimed at the people who would self identify as nerds and way more “haha look at these nerds and how quirky they are” set ups. Sure there are misogynist asshole nerds but usually they need to grow beyond that to find friends and partners. As far as I could tell none of them did. Sheldon and Howard were still super sexist, Leonard was still passive and whiny, but the story pushed forward foisting “perfect matches” on them.

Throughout the whole thing there was very little actual geek humor, and it felt denigrating to actual nerds.

Something I liked about crochet is that it can be formed and shaped easily, to make 3d shapes or to fit around 3d shapes, and unlike knitting you can just do it. If it doesn’t fit right or look right you just undo it. For a fiber art it’s really improvisational and flexible. Do you have a favorite creation? What’s your yarn stash like?

Everything is interesting and something worth exploring and trying, as long as it prevents me from having to do the thing I don’t want to do

You’re already over my head and I’m envious 😂

Lol I doubt that, I just literally never pass up the chance to say gouache, because it’s funny (sounds like gwash, or gowash… goowash) but I also liked how it was more opaque than normal watercolors so it helped hide all my extra sketch lines.

But yes, something I discovered was that the color you thought something was in your head was never the color something actually is due to lighting and atmospheric conditions so if you’re trying to paint something at all representational and even vaguely realistic there’s a whole new dimension to mess up in. Making a 3d thing 2d is surprisingly hard for our brains because we keep wanting to replace what we see with “symbols” of the thing.

I think I’ve tried watercolor pencils? If I did it was only once. I think the experience is like coloring with the pencil, then brushing over it with water to smooth out the scribbles so you get that soft watercolor look. I seem to remember I used the wrong paper so the amount of water I was able to use resulted in the scribbles just getting blurry so I guess if you try them then make sure your paper can handle a good soak, lol.

I met a person who did these neat Zentangle designs, maybe something like that could be a way to enjoy the medium without the pressure of representationalism?

I used to draw constantly in school as a way of fidgeting and helping myself focus, so I got fairly decent at drawing at the time. I tried painting with water colors and more specifically gouache back then because I liked the idea of adding color to my drawings in a more “grown up” way than colored pencils or markers, but the experience and novelty of it wasn’t enough to push me past the mediocrity of my results

Do you still paint with watercolors? What’s your favorite subject or style? Did you ever paint something you were happy with?

We were lucky enough to have a bloom by our house and I cleaned them, cut them and pan fried them with butter. Truly delicious, intense chickeny flavor and great texture. Would actually prefer to eat them over chicken, but they are so hard to cultivate and very unpredictable as to when to find them.

Sounds like a job for a trailer

It sounds to me like you might have trouble communicating what you need and the behavior you expect from others. There probably needs to be some work done on establishing boundaries and what constitutes healthy relationships before working on the DBT stuff. I don’t think you can fully blame the therapists, because you probably have been going to them and saying “I have trouble with emotional regulation” but not giving the greater context of “people keep transgressing my boundaries and it’s driving me more and more crazy”

Because yes, the only thing we have control over is ourselves and the actions we take, but you absolutely do not have to tolerate being treated poorly. It sounds like you need some tools in your tool box for healthy communication, because we teach others how to treat us. Learning how to assert your needs, your space and “rules of engagement” and then sticking to them is a whole other thing than emotional dysregulation.

I picked up a steel tongue drum out of pure serendipity and I can’t keep my hands off of it. The good quality ones that are hand tuned by an artisan and crafted from the highest quality steel will sound good no matter how you hit it. I started just bopping random notes with mallets, then tapping patterns with my hands, and whatever I do it sounds great and feels zen and beautiful. I don’t really play any songs on it, just patterns, but it’s like the audio version of a warm bubble bath.

There are mass market dinky derpy ones off of Amazon and they’re completely different instruments. If it sounds like a gong or a bell it’s a cheap one. If it sounds like the ethereal thrumming of the deep forest magic it’s a good one.

https://imginn.com/p/DIynnGEI680/

I’ve posted this a few times but here it is again for you:

I have managed to nearly eliminate Amazon entirely from our lives for the past two years. I usually find things by searching what I want to buy on DuckDuckGo and then adding “-amazon”, “-etsy”, “-walmart”, “-temu” and “-pinterest” as search modifiers.

A lot of little shops are perfectly legit, but watch out for:

Things being ridiculous bargains. Small shops will almost always be more expensive due to higher overheads and less bulk

Too much variety in product (unless they’re a marketplace with 3rd party vendors). A legit shop will have inventory that makes sense together in its theme. If they sell everything from bubblebath to uranium they’re either probably not actually selling it or drop shipping it.

Pictures that look like they come from lots of different sources, or no consistency in images. If they don’t have their own pictures of products or standards of presentation that’s suspicious

Some general recs that apply if you’re in the US:

For anything electronic or computer related: B&H Photo or Microcenter

For music stuff: Sweetwater, but there’s a lot of great small music stores, or you can use a marketplace like Reverb

For clothes: if you have any clothes you already enjoy, go directly to their brand website. If you don’t, go to local secondhand shops and touch, handle and try on some clothes to see them in person. I’ve discovered some brands I like by finding something in a thrift store that was well made but not my size or preferred color.

For house repair and DIY stuff: we order from a local building supply store, but there’s also hardwareandtools.com, 1stoplighting, Waysource, Lightbulbs.com, Timothy’s Toolbox etc.

For food items, local grocery stores often offer online shopping and delivery. If it’s a specialty item or imported the import companies sometimes have their own websites.

For cosmetics, skin care and some home cleaning things, there’s Hive or Grove Collaborative which try to prioritize sustainability

For tea, coffee and spices, Adagio and its sister websites

For that “everything store” experience, Costco will ship a good percentage of its offerings for free with a membership in the continental US.

For something hard to find you can’t find another site for, try Ebay.

I do business with all sorts of independent retailers and have only had good experiences with them. These are sites that I’ve personally bought from but there are a lot of smaller sites just trying to make a place for themselves on the internet

I’ve started noticing birds, and worse, I’ve started recognizing them.

My favorite MMO is Guild Wars 2. While it certainly has grind available, it doesn’t require it to play the content. It genuinely respects your time and understands people have lives outside of gaming, and tries to give a lot of options for ways to progress so you can focus on content you enjoy. There’s a lot of communities, guilds and activities to do with others. You can join 5 guilds at once, if for instance you wanted to join a group of friends, a big guild that does events together, another one that does raids, another based on your identity or location etc.

It kind of throws you into the deep end when you start, and suffers from layers upon layers of developed complexity thanks to add-ons and content updates over the years, but for a certain type of person it will really click. It’s free to try so you might as well see if you like it.

I’m a different flavor of neurospicy, but I had an extremely positive experience with a therapist who specialized in it. I think it’s important for a therapist to have an understanding of your mindset, and knowledge of common maladaptive patterns that can be related to the unique ways neurodivergent people operate. I don’t think good therapists are that rare, but finding one that’s a good fit for you can take a few tries.