My kids have theoretical public transportation to school, work, we live near the bus routes in several directions.

To work or the high school - that bus runs 1 times per hour. So they can only arrive very early or very late, and it’s about an hour walk to either of those.

The bus route to the university is actually pretty good, runs every half hour, and takes about 40 minutes to get there (vs. 10-15 minutes drive) then you have to trust your luck with the loop runner bus that goes from the transit center around the campus, that adds between 10 minutes and an hour, randomly because it has no schedule, just drives the loop all day and arrives whenever. There is an app that tracks it so you can know whether to risk crossing the huge road between the transfer ramp & the uni.

Not necessarily at 3 weeks, it is so intensely stressful at the start. Crying is designed to make you feel upset, that is what it evolved for, so that you would check on the baby.

I did feel love for the newborns, but they aren’t fun or anything, they are just babies. You were the same at the start of your life.

Can your wife visit a lactation consultant? I remember my kids falling asleep nursing, is that not normal? They nurse, fall asleep, wake up and are happy for awhile, then cry, nurse, and fall asleep, that’s the whole newborn cycle. I don’t think that means they aren’t getting enough, of the baby was that hungry he’d stay awake long enough to eat enough and remember, the milk in the first few moments has the most fat & calories.

Basically - I would not trust your feelings right now, while sleep deprived and stressed. You may enjoy the baby when it is more enjoyable. Like 2-3 years old is blistering cute, and then they are learning so much you can see it happening, and teenagers are fun and keep you aware of pop culture.

I don’t remember my mom being, well, mom-ish, not very nice when we were little, we weren’t neglected at all she was just never close with us. I asked her about it when I was grown and she said “I don’t like kids.” And I was like “WTF, you had so many kids!” And she said “Well, I like you all now, I knew you’d grow up, you don’t have kids to have kids but to raise people.”. And I guess she has a point. It’s nicer to enjoy the ride, I did, but she didn’t and we were ok.

How? Flour here is up to about $7 for a 5lb bag (2.2kg) and I make 2 loaves with 1kg flour, I’m at $1.50 per loaf flour only, not counting the flour that went into the starter, or electricity or time, or other ingredients (brioche uses eggs & milk, pan de mie lots of butter, sandwich bread I usually use whole wheat and some oats and milk, a little butter or olive oil, focaccia lots of olive oil, stuff like that) . I don’t even use packaged yeast and figure my cost is likely $3-4 per loaf.

My homemade sourdough costs more than store bread, but not more than fancy sourdough bakery bread. I can’t buy flour wholesale, don’t make that much bread. But when it’s good it’s better than any bakery bread I’ve had. So, better, probably not cheaper.

Home cooked meals vs. restaurants does save money.

Gardening - most things work out cheaper than buying, though as I am a salaried worker I am not allocating labor cost.

If it were to be compared to doing 1.5x pay overtime, then working more would make more money than we could save by doing cooking and gardening, it would always work out better to spend that time at work. But then the health impact of doing all that work and always eating out would have to be factored in.

In my day.

No idea, you would have to ask the bank. I called that bank the “demon bank”, because the exterior walls were marble and the patterns looked like demons. Those scales still are at grocery stores here, I haven’t been in a physical bank for a long time. Here is the bank. It’s funny to me that a precognitive dream is humdrum but a scale at a bank is hanging you up. I already knew the scale was there, that was not part of the precognition.

They had a big analog scale you could stand on, and a dial would go around the markings like a clock- there are still some of these same scales at grocery stores here. People use them to weigh themselves, or I see people weighing luggage on them. In the dream the dial went backwards but IRL it was just wrong, very wrong.

Google “Toledo No Springs Scale” and you will see them.

The dumbest one that absolutely convinced me it was precog, was:

I was in line at the bank behind 3 women. They had a scale, one of those big Toledo No Springs ones. I stepped on the scale, but the dial went backwards. I turned around and saw this girl Joann, who I hadn’t seen since middle school.

I wrote all this down in the dream journal, and then didn’t think about it.

Couple weeks later, I’m at that bank. 3 women ahead of me in line. I get on the scale, but it says I weigh 30lb, it’s broken. I turn around and who do the see? Joann, that girl I had not seen since middle school.

What the fuck? It kinda pissed me off because I really don’t want to think the future is set to that extent. Like, seeing some big event that might echo back in time, sure. But a broken scale at some bank? Joann? I haven seen her since, either, we were not close, why would I dream her true?

Yeah. Precognitive dreams mostly. Nothing I expect anyone else to believe, but I myself know because I documented them when I dreamed them, then the events occurred and it was such random, little detailed things that I could not possibly have predicted based on knowledge. Maybe everyone dreams the future and just forgets their dreams?

Some synchronicity things too, stepping into exactly the right place at the right time, wishing for something then having it immediately drop into my lap. Those I am minded to chalk up to random chance, but some are so comically obvious, things just appearing where they were not, right when I need them.

Cheating is complicated. Yeah some people just will, they are fooling themselves when they say they won’t. Some people find it sexy, they literally want to cheat, they think it’s hot. Others will if the situation gets extreme, people in dead bedroom situations who want to keep their family together and make the calculation (or miscalculation) that cheating is less damaging than divorcing. I worked with old people when I was younger, my bosses were old Spanish people who married for business reasons but had lovers, they did not love each other in a romantic way.

I’d say that as divorce becomes easier to get, marriage more based on love rather than alliance and monogamy less required, there is probably less cheating. But it won’t ever be zero.

If you are asking is cheating universal? No. It’s not.

I think sort of, yes. It’s funny because I will move somewhere, then it gets gentrified and people can’t afford to move there, it’s happened four times in my life. But doesn’t that mean I am an early stage gentrifier, when I move where I can afford to?

And on energy, I feel stuck, need a car, don’t use it often, with two large and two small salaries in the household we are solidly middle class but I don’t want solar panels because then my roof and house become uninsurable, we are all electric no gas.

In short YES anybody living in comfort is likely part of the problem, but I would love for everyone in the world to live in comfort!

Training. I sold things at a market on weekends and told my kids it was “remedial sales and social skills training”. I’m still not a social butterfly by any stretch, but fake it till you make it helped me to be more comfortable talking to people.

I like it on corn. Cheese grits with cheddar & nutritional yeast; on popcorn OMG like it better than Parmesan (and I say this as a woman fascinated by cheese) and on corn on the cob.

I do not like it on tofu as sub for scrambled eggs. Nope. Mostly use it for grits and popcorn.

How much better of a world? I’d be happy with half of what I have if it meant literally everyone else in the world could have that much, certainly. Move 4 more people into the house and give up half the money, half the clothes, my car, of course I would do that if it brought the same level of wealth to every single person, it would be not great at first but wow can you imagine how fast it would get better, if nobody was terribly poor? I’d bet that by the time I was old we’d personally be better off than before the split.

No, my kids are certainly diverse in sexual preference and one is transgender, but I didn’t have any sort of unacceptance. I grew up around drag queens and “theater people”.

Maybe in the other direction, honestly - I didn’t see the trans one until they literally came out by telling me, my conception of womanhood is so broad that my kid looking like a 40 year old butch lesbian did not ping any trans radar so I was surprised when they said they wanted to be a man. Not mad or anything but it took awhile to process.

Nobody else has had to “come out” or worry about the race or sex of who they are with, they can bring home whoever they are going out with and we don’t blink, it’s fine.

Cook red lentils with collard greens, mustard greens, or kale, seasoned how you like. Grill sourdough on one side in butter on the cast iron; pour lentil stew over the bread on the untoasted side, eat with all the utensils, knife, spoon, and fork or chopsticks. Yum yum.

Or simple cheese toast if not feeling like cooking. Toast bread, add cheese, broil till melted.

Ten? Anyone, if I have it on me. I don’t, usually but have done that for random panhandlers, instead of spare change.

100? That’s harder. Any friend or relative who hasn’t asked me for money, again, if I have it and they don’t.

1000? No. That is “questions asked” territory for anyone.

Hmm.

Honestly John Rys Davies, based solely on Dominic Monaghan’s description of him ordering dinner when filming Lord of the Rings.

"John Rhys-Davies… took us to a restaurant. And it was when we’d only just started to get to know John. And we sat down at this huge, long table, and he said, “I think I will order the food for tonight.” And we said, “Oh, ok, on you go John.” And you know, we were having a conversation, and the waitress came over, and John ordered food that would probably have fed 35, maybe 40 people. And there were about 12 of us. And he just said, “We’ll have nine lobster and 15 shrimp, and 12 red snapper, 15 filet mignons, and some grilled mushrooms. I’ll have 12 onions and a wild boar…” You know? All this kind of stuff - just like, “Pheasants, and grouse, and - do you have partridge? Bring the partridge.”

Standing on the side of a road (a real road here in town) with a group, waiting for a bus, when the ground underneath us starts to rise - it’s not the ground, it’s a giant spider! And as it emerges and starts lumbering down the road we realize it is also our transportation, the bus stop was the bus.

I think that was the weirdest moment I have experienced.

I learned to be cool in hot temperature by being still, in the shade, with a breeze, it’s very hot and humid here but also windy usually.

Trees help so much. It is noticeably cooler at the park than in the city.

In the house when there is not air conditioning, roofed porches and opening the windows with fans pulling air through the house helps.