How do you do, fellow humans?

I’m confused. When I lived in apartments, I never built them myself. Can you explain how one builds one’s apartment?

Bus stops on the main road(s), placed so everyone has a stop within a 15-20 minute walk.

Sort of agree with others suggesting getting rid of the neighborhoods in the first place, but sharing walls is hell. When the only way to speak confidentially in your own home is to whisper, it’s impossible to wfh or have a telehealth appointment (or, worse, a teletherapy appointment).

Elder Millennial here. I think I just have that “eww pedostache” reaction because, when I was young, such mustache styles were common among middle-aged men who hadn’t updated their styles since the '80s. Some of those men were creepy, so the mustache style became associated with creepy old men. And of course, teenaged giggling among ourselves about “eww pedostache!” really cemented the association.

I’m pretty sure our parents had the same initial reaction when we brought aviator glasses back into fashion. We’ll get over it, the cycle continues.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with mostly-male and mostly-female groups. I think it has less to do with the actual gender of the group, and more to do with: (a) the manner and extent to which group members are invested in performing their gender, (b1) whether the group embraces deviation from that performance, or (b2) whether one’s own performance of gender is similar enough to the group’s.

I’ve often described myself as “not very good at being a woman.” My weirdness and difficulty with hidden meanings has gotten me shunned by fellow women and usually bullied out of all-female groups, particularly when I was young. But as I discovered a few years ago after adopting a more active lifestyle, I get along fantastically with most women who play sports.

All-male groups were usually not much better. I still had to keep LARPing a persona, it’s just that the “cool girl” persona came easier to me. The main advantage was that mostly-male groups didn’t tend to say one thing while meaning the opposite. (For example, “stay as long as you like” actually means “you should probably go home now” and that is absolutely nonsensical to me.) But all-male groups never accepted me either, so the best case scenario meant being tolerated instead of shunned.

When it comes to work environments, it’s only been women who played the game of psychologically tormenting me until I have a breakdown and quit (although one of those was a woman boss in a mostly-male small office). So mostly-male groups have been somewhat better because I usually don’t have to waste as much brainspace on LARPing the correct persona. I still tended to be treated more as a tagalong or novelty, though, and gender isn’t a guarantee of future behavior (for example, one of my current coworkers is a man who politicks like a woman).

Unpacking

I still don’t like vertical videos. My natural field of view is landscape and portrait feels crowded and stressful. Also vertical videos have to be watched 2-3 times to see everything, because the person filming has to pan the camera so much, and they usually move too quickly. It’s like everyone forgot that a phone can be rotated.

Only once they start to wear out under the big toe, otherwise I can’t tell the difference.

Same. I use granulated salt from a jar near the stove while cooking, and there’s a grinder on the table for when I forget.

I prefer old-school trance, mostly, but anything high-energy and instrumental works. I’ve been known to use the Mario Kart soundtrack now and then. The important part is that either there are no lyrics, or the lyrics are in a language I’ve never attempted to learn.

I’m mostly remote now, but on my in-office day it’s a 25mi/40km trip. (We bought the house years before I got this job, I don’t have the energy to keep a house showing-ready while working full time, and the houses near work aren’t in great shape.)

The morning commute takes about 40 minutes by car, the evening commute is more like 50-60 minutes. There’s technically bus service available, if I wanted to take 2+ hours each way, but I prefer having time to eat real food and do some exercise and mabye a hobby.

According to my urogynecologist, who specifically instructed me to always point my shower wand downward when washing my nethers, spraying water can indeed push bacteria up there!

It may only be dangerous for the subset of women who have problems requiring a urogynecology specialist in the first place, IDK, but better safe than sorry.

Thanks, that’s sweet of you. <3 Things are much better for me now that I’m out of that line of work, so I do my best to stand up to trashy customers on behalf of the people who can’t.

This kid is way too young to be taking verbal abuse from customers. I remember being 19-but-looked-15 and grown-ass adult customers calling me stupid and useless, and generally speaking to and looking at me like I was a piece of dung stuck to the bottom of their shoe. People who thought I was a literal child behaved this way. Not to mention all the perverts. Kids shouldn’t be working customer service, not in a world where adults have such disgusting behavior.

DIY wet wipes (reaching over to the sink and dampening some tp while at home, or dampening a paper towel before entering the toilet stall in public)

It’s pretty common for people with ADHD to be able to play video games for a long time, because games are designed to make the brain pump out dopamine.

Up to you whether to get an assessment, ofc, but time blindness is a really common symptom. Your OP and others’ responses sounded really familiar to me.

Example, I recently had an argument over what a habit is. The other party claimed it’s something you do without thinking about choosing it, like muscle memory. Which I still insist is bullshit because everyone knows a habit is when you feel weird not doing the task, and the urge to avoid the wrong feeling makes you remember the task and outweighs the urge to be lazy. (Apparently this isn’t how it works for normal people?)

Have you considered getting evaluated for ADHD? (One of us, one of us!)

I was also expected to be very quiet and perfectly behaved, and have also struggled with resentment toward rowdy children as a result. Even now, at 39 years old, I sometimes want to retaliate with an Aztec death whistle.

Therapy can be really helpful in learning to deal with that resentment. If possible and reasonable, so can talking about it with your parent(s).

Several years ago I said to my mother, “I’m feeling angry right now because I’m thinking about that loud kid we saw in the store today and remembering how I had to repress myself as a child.” Then we had a really productive conversation about the pressure to defy stereotypes about poor parents, being a parent with unrecognized and unsupported neurodivergence, and sensory issues.

I hope you’re able to dissolve a significant amount of your resentment, too. In the meantime, there’s a kind of reusable earplug that reduces noise just a little bit so you can still have a conversation (can’t remember the brand name though).

I’d like to piggyback on this question and ask: if the bidet is in the toilet bowl, doesn’t it get dirty while you’re shitting?

Weird that they didn’t have her change into a gown first. Or maybe they did, in which case where did she put-- you know what never mind that’s enough internet for today