What is your current bedtime routine? Do you do something relaxing (that doesn’t involve a screen) for awhile before bed?

Thanks for the recent replies! So many great ideas! :) I don’t know what I did wrong the first time, but your tofu scramble recipe was delicious, Hornblower! Thank you so much!

As many cosmetics companies as are out there, I'm hoping I'll be able to find something that will work. I just haven't started looking yet because I have been using up what I had already purchased. I'm not willing to compromise on that one because it's just such completely unnecessary cruelty. The safety (and risks) of the ingredients they use has long since been established, so it just seems so pointless to me. I was more worried that I might have to compromise on the shoes, because that's an issue of mobility and functionality, not just appearance. But now that I know there are vegan Birks, I'm more optimistic. And I've sent emails to Keen and Teva asking if any of their vegan sandals have metatarsal support. So I'm hopeful!

Thank you for all the help! This is wonderful!

Thank you, everyone, for all of the great suggestions! I knew you guys would have ideas that I hadn't considered. :001_smile: Eventually I will need new workout shoes too, but I'm going to wear out my current ones. So what I'm in the immediate market for is street shoes, particularly sandals because summer comes early and stays late here, so the weather will be warm in no time. What I'm wearing right now is Clinique "lip chubbies". They are truly fragrance-free. A lot of companies that claim to be fragrance free will still use things like rosemary, mint, or citrus. My lips can't tolerate natural fragrances any better than conventional fragrances, so it still burns and chaps badly. And I need a really moisturizing formula, not a long-lasting one and definitely not a "plumping" one (those burn the worst!). If your dd knows something that fits the bill, tell her I am profoundly grateful! Oh, are there? That would be great because they have both arch support and metatarsal support. I didn't know this, because the only ones I've owned were leather. Thanks! I am going to try this tomorrow morning. Thank you! Hopefully I'll have better luck with a second attempt. Not for everyday, but I do enjoy that kind of stuff on the weekend. If you have favorite recipes to share, I'd be grateful for those too. My first attempt at vegan French toast didn't go so well. It was a chia-based coating. It tasted fine, the problem was that it stuck to the pan really badly, and it made the bread pretty soggy. Maybe it was more about technique? I think there's a learning curve to vegan cooking! Thanks, I'll check into that. That sounds really good! I've been thinking about getting an air fryer! Is there a particular brand/model you would recommend?

Don’t want you guys to think I’m ignoring you. I appreciate the help so much! Will post more ASAP.

Hi Ladies! (and gents?) I was wondering if you could help out this newbie vegan (vegan since August 2017) with two things. The first is suggestions for non-sweet breakfasts. I've been eating oatmeal with berries or Kashi nugget cereal with berries and soy milk, and I'm getting pretty bored with those options! I tried making a tofu scramble as a substitute for eggs once and it was AWFUL. I don't know if I did something wrong or what, but it was super bitter. My only other idea is to keep some tortillas and chile beans and roasted potatoes on hand for a simple breakfast burrito. Initially, this was only about food for me, but I am trying to go "cruelty free" with cosmetics and clothing as well. I'm having a hard time with both because my super sensitive lips can only tolerate one brand of lipstick, and it isn't a cruelty-free brand. :crying: But the more pressing issue at the moment is, do you know of any high-quality brands of shoes that aren't made of leather? I need both arch support and metatarsal support because I have pain in one foot that will interfere with my ability to walk and to exercise if I wear shoes that lack those features. My ability to exercise is pretty critical for my psychological health, so I will admit, I'm going to be very picky about this, and I may not be able to go cruelty-free in this area if I can't find something that supports my foot properly. So I thought I would see if the hive can point me in the right direction! Thanks in advance for your help. :001_smile:

I did not know that! In fact, I didn't even know it was possible to become an Orthodox priest without attending an Orthodox seminary. Interesting.

:grouphug: I think my post may have sounded harsher than I meant it to, so I wanted to apologize. It's obvious you love her and just want the best for her! And some layers and thinning are nowhere near as drastic as what my mom did to my hair! Someone else suggested having the stylist talk to her about it first, and I think that's a great idea.

As a person with very unpleasant memories of my mom deceptively giving shorter-than-I-wanted cuts, or forcing me to cut when I didn't want to, I definitely wouldn't recommend it. So instead I would recommend what I wish my mom had done for me: teach her how to braid it.

Yes, all of those things are spread out, miles and miles apart from one another. It's madness, I tell you!

Me too! I grew up in a rural area, so we drove everywhere. But summers I would sometimes stay with a cousin who lived right smack in the middle of a small town. Together we rode bikes to the corner store, to the library, to the park. It was so much fun! Of course part of the fun of it was that it was just the two of us, no boring grown-ups. :D But there is also something very satisfying about getting somewhere you want to go using the power of your own body. I wish I had given my daughter that kind of childhood.

That was me. I didn't mean to imply that he is not Orthodox, just that he doesn't represent Orthodoxy. There are extremists in any church. I don't think we can judge the entire church by one random extremist, that's what I was trying to get at. I *do* however think it's fair to judge the church by its priests. They do represent the church. They've gone to seminary, they are supervised by their bishops. They are the "face" of the church in the day to day experience of the parishioners.

About the issue of the amount of time it takes, I think that really goes back to the point that most communities were built around cars. I mean, if you live in a place that was designed with pedestrians in mind (or retroactively changed with pedestrians in mind, like the article Bluegoat linked to about Arlington), then you spend x minutes walking to the store. If you live in a more typical car-based, spread out place, then you spend x minutes driving to the store. Either way, we're going to spend a significant chunk of our day moving from point A to point B. The question is how we want to do that. And I'm not speaking of rural communities here, I'm talking about suburbs and towns that are more spread out than they need to be, because they were built in a car-based culture. Take my neighborhood for example. The elementary school is within easy walking distance of my house and many other houses. The line of cars to pick up the kids when school lets out is astonishing. The entire neighborhood is a congested mess for quite some time before and after the pick-up and drop-off times. Cars are sitting there waiting, and waiting, and waiting. I'm convinced that many of them could have walked in the same amount of time that they sit there and wait. But it seems like we tend to think of the time we spend sitting in our cars as just a fact of life, we don't really question it. But time spent walking is seen as a burden. (Edited for a misspelling)

That was an excellent article. Thank you for sharing it!

Let me assure you, no one, in the documentary or here, was claiming that Andrei had anything to do with the church. No one is saying this is all because of the church. But since I had read that the church supported the move to decriminalize, I asked about that, and steered the conversation in that direction. I was baptized and chrismated into the Orthodox Church in 2010. I wanted to know what role, if any, the church has in all of this, not to demonize it, but also not to turn a blind eye. Though I have not attended church in awhile, I still love and admire the Orthodox church. But the church, like any church, is also made up of imperfect people, who sometimes do crappy things. It most certainly was not my intention to offend or to blame the entire church.

Thank you! I also found this: My city has 2966 people per square mile.

Hmm, that’s interesting. So what does the census consider urban? I’ll have to look into that. It wouldn’t honestly occur to me to think of anything smaller than about 300,000 people as a “cityâ€. I would call that a town. I live in a city of over 400,000 and I think of it as a small city. When I lived in places of 100,000-200,000, I thought of them as bigger towns. I grew up in a place with 20,000 and I thought of it as a small town. Not saying I’m right! That’s just my perception. Interesting how we’re defining the terms so differently!

Yes, I don’t want to keep living when my quality of life is gone either (quality being, as you said, defined by me). But I’ve never set up a medical directive or “living willâ€. I really should do that.

Yes, that’s a very good point. Bypass surgery saves lives, but it still comes with pain, trauma, risks (blood clots, infection, and others), and a long recovery.

Okay, I see what you're saying. Sure! But the things which increase lifespan are usually the same things that increase "healthspan", so by doing things that will increase my odds of making it to 92, I'm also increasing the chances that it will be quality time. Daily exercise improves quality of life as we age, I'm sure we're all in agreement about that. It improves mobility, decreases fracture risk, decreases risk of debilitating diseases, decreases depression and anxiety, and so on. Same with diet. A diet that decreases my chances of developing diabetes, for example, doesn't just mean reduced odds of dying from a diabetic stroke (which is how my grandmother died) but it also means reduced odds of amputation, blindness, kidney failure, and a lot of other things that would make life much harder and less pleasant (including one of my personal big fears: a stroke that doesn't kill but leaves you debilitated). I don't even strive for 100% compliance to my "ideal diet" though! Like you, I leave room for indulgence, and when I do it, I enjoy it completely guilt-free. If I were battling a particular disease which could be treated through diet, I probably would demand better compliance of myself. I do avoid migraine trigger foods pretty religiously because if I don't, I get punished with a migraine! But other than that, I try to do the best I can 95% of the time, and I don't worry about the other 5%

Sorry, I forgot about the rest of your post! I agree, given the options available, a heart attack is not a bad way to go. But I'd much rather have that heart attack at 92 than at 62. So I eat the way I do first and foremost to try to improve my quality of life, but also to try to change when I die.

Did I really sound like that's what I was getting at? Okay, let me try this again, because apparently I was very unclear. I avoid certain parts of my city (especially in the evening or at night) because I know I'm at greater risk for violent crime there. I avoid certain foods because I know they put me at greater risk for heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. If I were being attacked, I would call 911. If I were having a heart attack, I would also call 911. But what I was commenting on was the fact that the fear is disproportional to the risk. Both in myself and in society in general, it seems to me there is a great fear of things like murder, terrorism, and plane crashes, enough fear to generate action on a society level, while the attitude about the "diseases of Western civilization", the things that are actually FAR more likely to kill us, is "Oh well, we're all going to die eventually! What can you do?" The rare causes of death frighten us, but the mundane ones bore us. I think that's a little odd. Am I the only one?

I was thinking it was interesting from a fear and perception standpoint. I have a lot more fear of murder than I do of heart disease, but I'm actually far more likely to die of heart disease. It's just an interesting example, I think, of how I'm not very good at risk assessment.

Good point. I live in a high crime city (by which I mean that violent crimes occur at a rate of 2 - 2.5 times the national average, depending on which crime you look at). Your post made me curious, so I looked up some stats. Per 100,000 people here per year: 10.9 were murdered and 148.3 died of heart disease. By way of comparison, out of 100,000 people nationally: 5.3 people were murdered and 192.7 died of heart disease. So compared to the nation, my area has much higher rate of murder, and lower than average rates of heart disease. And yet, even so, we're still 13.6 times more likely to die of heart disease. Nationwide, you're 36.4 times more likely to die of a heart attack than to be murdered.