When I was a dancer - if one of us was injured, they made us come & watch the practice because apparently your body does gain knowledge just by watching.

But that was with a baseline knowledge already.

I think it would help, learning about swimming before doing it. More so if you are already physically active in some other way though.

3 single donuts please.

Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.

Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.

English to Vietnamese or Vietnamese to English is harder than, say English to Spanish or Arabic because the sounds are so very different - I am sure I simply can’t hear some of the different sounds in tonal languages, and had a friend who moved here from Taiwan when she was so young she learned better in English than Taiwanese but still she could not hear the difference between ear and year.

I don’t think it’s impossible but do think it’s unusual. My dad was bilingual English and Spanish and I wish my parents had done the “one speaks English one speaks Spanish” language immersion but we only spoke English at home.

I’m American. I regularly walk to the shop that’s 1.75 km, won’t drive it because it’s too close.

The closest Real Grocery is 2.5km, that I take electric bike. Same for the Whole Foods that’s much farther (5.5km) but that I consider an adventure ride and certainly not a walk. The groceries would melt by the time I got home if I walked.

All of these my husband drives to, and I think that’s more typical. I have hangups about driving short distances.

I can understand her wanting you to be productive, but can’t understand her not being thrilled that you don’t have to work for money. I had a guy who lost his job and descended into rage and right wing racism because he stayed on the computer all the time, he definitely needed to work, so personally have some baggage about guys who don’t work (men wired to protect and provide can get crazy paranoid if they don’t think they are providing) and perhaps she has some experience informing her too but that’s her problem not yours. And I’d relax if you were taking care of the house and all, that IS productive work. Maintaining a property is hard.

If she wants more lifestyle she can work, and add that $ to the household income.

Could be, sure. But also might not. That’s not really something we can know now, but I think we can know that a pyramid scheme is unsustainable. The price of less polluting renewable energy is falling fast, for one thing. I personally don’t think the big population is all bad, so many people means more good people too. So much technological progress.

I get this, but we can’t have an infinitely expanding population, at some point it will have to stabilize, and there has to be the glut of old people at the beginning of that. People are aging more slowly than in the past, at least, even if living longer more of those years are good and can be productive.

Knee pads?

Huh. I have. Didn’t know what it was, but heated the water, dropped in a spoon and it boiled over aggressively even though it didn’t look like it was boiling.

We do use a kettle, this happened at work - the microwave there was a lot stronger than mine, and I couldn’t get the water to look like it was boiling.

Wow this recipe looks so weird! Campari and absinthe are both so intense and sweet. I can almost see it working with orange juice, the pineapple juice is throwing me.

Going on the list for after this Dry July, sure we’ll have pineapple juice, planning tepache after the strawberry kvass is gone.

I don’t use my car much anymore, so would consider that liquid, and could make the kids pay some rent now they are working (not much), if I sold that and nothing in the house needed repaired or maintained (ha ha ha) I am at almost 3 years. So I guess if I had some fatal illness and was willing to run out all of both my &my husband’s retirement money I could stop working. Well, no, nevermind, I couldn’t, because the medical care would bankrupt us. But we would not immediately starve anymore. It only took half a century to get here!

I have eclectic taste in music. Mostly I give thanks for streaming services and radio - back when we had to buy albums I got literal anxiety because there was simply no possible way I could get even 1% of what I liked, and the thought of cataloguing it also oppressed me.

So -

I do read Brooklyn Vegan occasionally for stuff I might not have heard of, and tours, Pitchfork for live versions of songs.

I also let the streaming algorithm have its way with my playlist often, when not listening to a whole album. And I listen to radio (literal FM community radio) shows I like, and sometimes my kids scoop me on some artist they think I will like. And understand that the universe of music I might enjoy is blessedly so large I will not get to the end of it.

Oh and I go to concerts - often I have found bands because they opened for someone I went to see.

You know - the only thing you can really control at all is yourself. So it can be true that the world sucks, but making yourself suck is not going to do anything except hurt you, yourself. And make the world a little bit suckier.

So regardless of the outside circumstances, the best action is always to work on yourself. Generally speaking that does make you look differently at your circumstances too, so that you might be able to improve your situation with some action but even if those circumstances don’t change you are still better equipped to deal with them.

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.

Has this man never eaten a sandwich? Pizza? French Fries? Tacos? What is this nonsense?

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.

I do have thoughts in words, language. I don’t exactly hear or see it but it’s definitely language based. Often two levels of thought, one superficial and another underneath, thinking about those superficial thoughts.

I wouldn’t say I’m a girl’s girl, like I wouldn’t go on a girls cruise with friends or anything like that, but have daughters, some of whom are lesbians, and all the boys are straight so lots and lots of women around that I do get along with, and at work same attachment men or women, but not more friendly with women. On the block I’d say friendlier with the dudes, but because they are the ones outside more often, it’s availability not preference.

I was kinda alienated as a kid but did have friends and good friends.

I do, yes. But I worry about the not “white” and not native born people of my family and my city. Have seen one incident with unmarked cars but don’t know if it was a drug bust (it looked like one) or ICE.

Some of the houses in my neighborhood are full of Mexicans, and they used to be outside all the time to say “buenas tardes” and wave but no more, and the house across the street was getting a new metal roof, and it’s been halfway done for weeks, not sure what’s going on with that, but think it’s related, the roofing companies use a lot of immigrants in their crews.

IMO - it is better in a way to act normally, that normal life is what we are fighting for. Renew your passport, and keep documents handy but don’t let them cow you into submission. You worked to become a citizen, that’s more than I did by just being born here.