I had an old Mustang and used to say I could cuss start it.

Oh I believe in precognitive dreams, because I used to write down my dreams and had some that happened later. And I don’t mean big things like deaths or pregnancies. I mean piddly details that meant nothing and can’t have been foreseen. Once dreamed that I was at the local bank, three people were in line, I got on the scale they had there to weigh myself but the dial went backwards then I turned around and saw this girl Joann that I’d not seen since middle school. Wrote all this in the dream journal.

Couple of weeks later went to the bank. 3 people in line. I got on the scale but it was broken and said I weighed 30lb. I got off the scale and turned around, and yep, Joann from middle school, turns out she’d moved away but had moved back to town.

That’s the one I remember and I would have just thought I had dejavu if I’d not written that dream down.

And honestly it pissed me off pretty bad. I want to believe in free will, that we can choose, that the future has not happened yet. The dreams kind of broke that.

Mind-body. That you can think yourself sick, or well. Not like magic, but a lot of the time. Like how people won’t get sick until vacation a lot of the time, they say “don’t have time to get sick” so then on the day off, the mind tells the body “ok now you have time!”. All of my kids were born on a day off or weekend, same thing in a way. And once I read a book where the protagonist’ hands were burned, very vividly described, and got blisters on my fingertips.

I just really believe a lot of physical illness, and health, comes from thinking.

We do? At least where I live I see mango trees all over, saw a longan the other day, there are loquats all over too, and until citrus canker there were orange trees in most backyards. At my old house we had loquat, tangelo, lemon, lime, carambola and bananas, and a papaya tree.

At this house we have lemon, lime, Valencia, and sugar bell citrus trees, a fig (all of these are dwarf trees) and a vegetable garden but all are in back. In front a small lawn, a few ornamental plants and sometimes I plant bulb fennel out there.

Any homemade card is more thoughtful than a purchased one. So I don’t think it matters if you are a good artist or not. It’s a thoughtful message and you created it yourself.

Everything that has to be individually worked like that is a drag. Each one rolled out and cooked by itself. And it’s never one, right? The only time we do that is for a party so it’s at least two dozen.

I love homemade croissants, and make them, mostly because with sourdough starter in there the flavor is incredible but while I am a reasonably neat- handed person, you are understating the difficulty of laminated dough. It wants to tear, the dough and butter have to each be at the perfect magical temperature, can’t overwork it, dough is delicate and butter is tough. It’s fussy as fuck.

My first one didn’t last, but my second try, made with regular all purpose flour from the grocery and tap water, has been going strong for over a decade now. I do ferment other stuff too. Wondering if he could seed it with starter from someone local, I’ve shared mine before and it helped people.

I just made that this week and think I may agree with you, or at least I’d not try on a workday again. I didn’t have the right peppers and used dried ancho, jarred roasted red pepper and a little fresh red pepper and it came out really good, sorta new world /old world delicious fusion but my God, toasting, grinding, processing, tasting, resting the paste. Started in the morning and let it rest while I was at work. Also started sourdough naan in the morning & of course made a vegetable dish to go with the meat - everything was good but I was exhausted by the end of the day!

Well if money is no object then a world tour that lasts the rest of my life, thanks (or if I can use this magic purse on behalf of others instead, stay home and buy up all the world’s debt, sponsor a jubilee year.)

Performing Arts. Dancers can be great without becoming choreographers, singers & other musicians can be great without becoming songwriters. Interpretation of existing works can be very creative, and technical proficiency and stage presence are also impressive skills.

Like a medieval peasant, I’m living now less than a mile from where I was born. The US is too big to feel culturally attached to it, but my city, yeah, I am very “from here”. Like when I was a kid we’d wander around the ghost town of a weekend downtown, and as I grew up the city became populated and revitalized, it grew up with me.

In another country I usually say Florida, and if it’s a Spanish speaking country then people start speaking to me in Spanish.

I have done sous vide steak and sous vide egg cups. Both very good but I can reverse sear steak and get as good a result; the egg cups though were incredible and I don’t know another way to get the low and consistent temperature. It’s like a warm water bath for them.

I have made some fussy dishes, including sourdough puff pastry. I’m pretty motivated to make food homemade.

Baklava is the one I’d like to make but never will, even if I bought the dough - layering phyllo sheets one by one would kill me.

Temp to perm, I started as a temp and was hired on.

When my younger kids were little, one of their older sisters used to play with them as the anti-hero The Nuisance. She would just get in their way, turn them around, open cabinet doors if they closed them, or close them if they opened them, gently grab them and lay them on the floor, move objects to block them, nothing violent or mean really she just kinda followed and jammed them. It was really funny.

Well I’m certainly not having any more of them!

I dunno, it seems way more possible to set up some solar charging arrangement for an electric vehicle than to somehow find and pump gas into a gas powered car!

When I was nursing my first kid I squirted some milk out into a cup because the guys I lived with wanted to taste it, and it didn’t seem like a shockingly odd request. Also squirted it across the room into my ex’s mouth, like why not have fun with it while you can?

Would NOT have wanted my ex nursing like a baby though. No. Not wrong or anything just a turn off.

I always drive manual but my husband likes automatic. My kids learned on his car but my penultimate daughter drives mine to school now. I dunno, shifting seems easy to learn once you know how to drive in general - I learned it because everyone else was drunk one night so I had to drive home, when I was a teenager, and the drunk kid’s car was manual.

ETA: I let the school kids use the car and got myself an e-bike because their commute loop is much longer than mine. I have an enjoyable ride in to work. But tell them to baby the car because it may be my last gas-powered car and I will miss the stick shift. Have not had an automatic transmission car for 30 years now.