I wouldn't put much stock in dreams or feel guilty about anything that happened in one. I think they are part of the way the brain encodes and recalls episodic information (things aren't necessarily stored all together in the right order and in context in the brain). So if you talked about your old work, your brain did a recall to double check on that and since the guy was flirty your brain pulled up some flirty/TeA stuff and blended them together. Annoying of the brain but not guilt worthy. I can often tell what in real life (or on TV) triggered recall parts of my dreams, sometimes the stuff was days before. Last night I had a dream that I had planted my large garden in my good friend's guest room including adding loads of compost and watering everything for months. The garlic was just ready to pull as well as the early potatoes, but when I came to harvest, her DH had shoveled out everything and tossed all my perfectly good garlic and potatoes along with the dirt and plants and bugs. I was furious!!! Hateful words were said by dream me. Friendship was ended. It was brain picking up on my anxiety about leaving town for two weeks during peak harvest period in my actual outdoor garden plus me not hearing from friend for a few weeks and wondering if she was coming up to visit soon as she said she might (guest room).

A big hug for you! I think we women need a lot more hugs than we get! Two months ago I clocked 1900 miles in two weeks driving back and forth between three people who needed me, my MIL who was dying, my mom who started the wandering stage of Alzheimers, and my young adult with autism became depressed and was flunking all his spring semester college classes and he had a minor car accident! I ate junk food for two weeks and my hip was killing me and my Achilles tendonitis flared up and I just kept on driving and caring for people who could not care for themselves. All this was while dealing with abnormally low funds because my clients for my husband's business suddenly dried up. I am so glad you wrote to us here in the Hive. You did the right thing. What helped me was being open and honest about it. When my MIL died, all my girlfriends called me and I just told them all the bad things. They were so kind and it buoyed my spirits to know I was not alone emotionally. One friend I assumed had everything together admitted that her FB images of family life are not reality either. All of them told me to call any time. My husband, however, (other than taking condolences for the death of his mother) does not like to talk to his friends about any troubles, especially with our kids. Partially due to avoiding calls (because his friends would ask about the kids) and not being totally honest with his friends and not ever realizing that life is almost never perfect, he has slipped into depression. In order to survive the crisis time (many of these issues continue) I got a theme song (Big SMO's "Workin' ") and played it every morning. It is a "put your boots on" and "push harder" type song about the strength and sacrifice of blue collar workers, but sometimes I think moms are unsung blue collar workers. Then after the worst two weeks, I started getting up early before everyone else to walk on our quiet road no matter what else had to be done (and my list is long and never ending) and made sure I was eating healthy again. Putting on the oxygen mask. There has been much written lately about the "mental load" women carry. So it is slowly being recognized. I assume it will be a few decades before it is more balanced in society. Or not. I feel like the teens I had were very different from the teens I grew up with. Much less capable of handling things. I can only blame myself I guess for following the parenting styles of my times rather than my parents parenting style which produced two very realistic capable women (if I say so myself, lol). But there are no do-overs. I soldier on with what I have and enjoy thoroughly the moments of breakthrough like when I woke up yesterday and my daughter had emptied and filled the dishwasher unasked! It was like a present! Oxygen mask, keep the basics of health going for yourself--exercise and nutrition. Also, think about going on a news diet. I haven't had TV for 15 years and I avoid watching any news on the internet. I will read a newspaper. This has quelled my world-anxiety so much. There is a world that needs me more and that I can actually help, my family and friends and neighbors.

We had a Honda Accord for 17 years with nothing needing fixing. Our 2029 Honda CRV replacement for the Accord is great. Got it before the prices on cars started going up and it was a good deal compared to other brands we looked at. This one has the older engine which according to our mechanic was tried and true. Don't know how the new engine it was replaced with is. The car is zippy! Great for merging and city driving. Shorter than my Subaru Outback so good for parallel parking. Good sound system. Good gas milage, BUT it has a smaller gas tank than my Subaru, so I have to remember to get filled up sooner on long drives than I would with the Subaru. Crash test ratings are very good. Most importantly, it is reliable and so far hasn't needed any repairs.

Keeping your family in my thoughts. Remember to keep yourself hydrated and fed and sleep when you can so you can be at your best for the child, all things considered.

I live in a colder climate than most of you and we've had endless rain. All the seedlings I raised under lights indoors were on pause for a while after planting, then we had two sunny days and the tomatoes grew seemingly 1 foot each day.. The hardneck garlic I planted last fall is doing well, we cut the scapes last week. The potatoes (red Maria, red Pontiac, and early red Norland) are lush, and I hope that does not mean they won't produce much as the super lush Kennebec and Katahdin's did last year (disappointing!). My husband doesn't like "wet" tomatoes, so I grow paste tomatoes for fresh eating and salsa. I have Amish paste and San Marzano type. They have just started flowering. The sage that overwintered from last year is huge. The rosemary I bought seedlings of has grown just a little. The peppers (early jalapeños, and the sweet peppers king of the north and provident), have flower buds but have barely grown since I put them out weeks ago. They are not having it with this cool weather and rain. But the slugs and snails love the cool weather and rain. Thousands of them. They ate almost everything I planted from seed at the first-two-leaves stage. All the cucumbers, the cilantro, the basil, and the carrots. The beans are trying to live but look like they have been attacked by a paper-punch. I went to the greenhouse at the end of June and bought what they had left for cucumber plants, trying to get the largest they had and those have survived the snails and slugs. I am going to grow cilantro and basil indoors under my lights. The beans will live or die on their own as they are nobody's favorites. I am angry about the carrots (they are my favorite vegetable) as I got good germination using the board method and then two days after lifting the board, eaten to the ground. If it stops raining at fall crop planting time, I will try again.

To continue to write novels as a side gig and to have a day job alongside my good friend who works in guest services at a zoo and basically gets paid to wander around the zoo all day talking to families about the animals!

I have two closets in my whole 2,100 sq foot house. We make use of chests, trunks, tall baskets with lids, picnic baskets, ottomans with storage, clothing racks, bookshelves, decorative paperboard boxes, hanging baskets (like the kind for fruit but we use for bathroom items), and wardrobes and we store a lot of stuff under the beds.

Those carefree days of childhood were the best, for me and my children. We had a blast. They could be wholly themselves. And, boy, did they say the funniest things. I would go back in an instant.

I met Susan Wise Bauer at a conference! I saw Stevie Ray Vaughn at a Burger King at an interstate service center. He had just had a concert at the University of Maine. I had no idea who he was, but my boyfriend at the time was speechless and pointing. I should have gone up and asked for his autograph for my boyfriend, but I was 19 and didn't think quickly enough to do it. I met Titus Welliver (Bosch lead actor) at my high school reunion (which is for all classes that ever graduated-small school). I had no idea who he was, but I knew his last name because of the Maine artist Neil Welliver. When I asked if he knew him. Titus was like, "Yeah, that's my dad." I saw Will Smith in an elevator once in NYC. I knew who he was, but my companion was flipping out so I remained cool to balance out her crazy.

What about starting a nature study group? We had one when I was homeschooling. We had an email list and I'd post the outings (which were rather random--they fit in my schedule) date, time, place and directions. People would come or not as they wished. We started with two families and it grew to about 25 families as they told their friends. Not all came to every walk. There was no commitment to do so. That way if they missed one they didn't feel guilty and thus stressed. My friend is a birder and I am a naturalist, but anyone could such walks, all you need is curiosity and some field guides (or a nature-ID phone app.) Go at a slow pace. Let the kids run and play. Tell them to call everyone over when they find something interesting and call them back if you find something interesting. The attendees told my co-leader and I that it was the best activity they ever did with their kids. One of our most frequently attending moms told me before she died tragically young of multiple myeloma, that our nature study group outings were what she looked back on as the best times she ever spent with her kids. People loved it because it was spontaneous and unstructured. They didn't have to feel guilty about missing a walk if the baby was napping or they had a doctor's appointment; there would be more! The stay at home dads said they were much more accepted than at other activities. And we learned a ton! PM me if you want more details on how to start one.

I lost mine this week. It was under the dog bed. Do you have a dog?

One book I have found helpful is How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay https://www.amazon.com/How-Have-Impossible-Conversations-Practical/dp/0738285323/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OCEH2JSDUSEI&keywords=how+to+have+impossible+conversations+a+very+practical+guide&qid=1683649994&sprefix=How+to+have+impo%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1

Probably 200, but in this very-cold-in-winter 4 season area and with my activities, I use them all. I have almost no fashionable clothes, just two pretty dresses, and one black funeral outfit. The rest of my clothes get used outside until they fall apart (which is sooner now than in decades past). My sister was going to donate my mom's clothes from the 70s-90s, but I stopped her and added them to my hundreds. Every one of those items (mostly from L. L. Bean) is of much better fabric quality and sewn so much better than anything I have bought in the 2000s (even from L. L. Bean--their clothes are really poorly made now), that they will last forever, even under my usage. I think people should have as many clothes as they use. It is silly to think that "74" is some ideal number. If I lived in the tropics and never did outdoor work and had the same non-interest in fashion, I could be happy with 21. But where I am and for what I do, I am happy with my hundreds. And if someone actually uses 100 frilly fashionable dresses throughout the year, they shouldn't feel bad about it. People who buy for a temporary "look" and toss, those people should consider alternatives, but people who use all the clothes they already have shouldn't give a second thought to an "ideal"number someone came up with so they could write an article.

I don't worry on a daily basis because I do what little I can: conserving resources, supporting preservation of wild habitat, and voting. I am deeply concerned because the worst effect will be the widespread extinction of insects (already down 50-75% in biomass since 1970 primarily due to habitat loss and industrial agriculture during that period but now accelerated by climate change) which will in turn cause the extinction of most insect-eating species, most species that eat insect-eaters (meaning most animal life on earth), most insect-pollinated plants (trees, wild plants, and crop plants) (again most vegetable life on earth), and will stop the decomposition cycle in the soil, effectively rendering it infertile. If we lose our insects, agricultural production will cease as will the building of new soil. Only wind-pollinated crops (such as the grains) will remain viable in the short term after that and only if chemically fertilized. It is predicted humanity will only survive a few months to a year after the ecological collapse that results, which will probably be accelerated by war over the remaining food. We have basically broken the life machine. I am glad I got to live to see the tail end of the beauty we've destroyed. I feel like Dr. Who watching the end of the earth with Rose. She's brokenhearted and he's like, duh, of course that's what happened.

I just read this statement by the murderer in an article about the shooting of the young woman in the car in NY: "Mausert said Monahan did not intend to hurt anyone when he fired. “When you have a victim and a tragedy, the thing everyone wants is a villain, but not every time there’s a victim and tragedy is there a villain,” he said. “A number of errors were made that were unintentional.” Kevin Monahan. https://www.yahoo.com/news/boyfriend-n-y-woman-gunned-054624188.html My god, if you point a gun at someone and pull the trigger the result is likely to HURT someone! Firing a gun at a car is INTENTIONAL. If you shoot at unknown people you can't even see in a car, you are a VILLAIN!!! Are people so cut off from basic reality that they don't know this?? Do they live in a fantasy video game where everyone has 12 lives???? I can't even. Since the gun lobby always wins when we try to make laws against murderous weapons, maybe we could try to get at them sideways with mandatory gun safety and ethics training, at least 6 hours before anyone can purchase a gun. And make it old style training--a gun is a tool not a weapon, never point a gun at a person, etc. Or get at them by forcing gun owners to buy insurance in order to own guns, just like we have to when we buy automobiles. I have no idea why this second one isn't already a thing. Both are deadly weapons.

I live about 40 minutes away and my sister lives in the next town. I am so angry. Mainers have had a long history of responsible gun ownership, but the American culture of violence is bleeding into our formerly peaceful state. I recently found out that a brother of one of my old friends is a huge assault weapon advocate, here, making videos and booklets to scare people and get them hot and excited about the power of guns in their hands. I can't imagine any of the people I knew here back in the 70s or 80s doing such a thing or condoning such a thing. He would have been shunned by his small town. Guns were tools for hunting, putting down injured farm animals, or killing the garden-eating woodchuck. Now killing people is fetishized in our culture. I wish COVID lockdowns hadn't convinced us not to let our daughter go to college in Canada (we were worried about border closures and not being able to get to her). We had hoped she'd marry someone and settle up there, moving the next generations of our family to a slightly more sane country. Now, Maine is still comparatively safe, obviously compared to many other states, the last mass shooting like this happened in the 40s, I think, but won't be for long with the gun and hate and fear propaganda reaching into everyday people's homes here through the internet. Once the internet allowed anyone on Earth to influence hearts and minds of millions with evil intent and violent propaganda, it was game over for civilization, I think. Only the strictest gun laws can save us, and those are never going to pass, because dollars are more important than lives.

The mom at my neighborhood friend's house stored Harlequin Romances in both of theirs, stuffed to the top! Her husband was a cad so probably for "Calgon, take me away" moments.

Bernoulli's principle? "Bernoulli's Principle says that the pressure decreases inside a stream of flowing air. When the balloon begins to move out of this low pressure stream, the higher pressure of the air in the room pushes it back into the moving stream." Scifun.org

I feel for you. I am from the northeast and icy conditions pretty much give me a panic attack. Though it was incredibly stressful, you got your charges safely through a very dangerous situation. You are a really good driver. Sure, luck had some part of it, as other people were going out of control around you, but you (unlike I would in a similar situation) did not freak out. Also, when the other people on the road passed, you took your cue from your experience and good sense, and stayed the safe course. Luckily, you do not have to be a bus driver when you grow up, and luckily for your passengers you were their driver this time.

I am so so sorry.

I have had very little time to read published books as I have been reading a.k.a copyediting the memoir of a friend and my daughter's novel in progress. But I did read two fiction novels from a bag of books my friend passed on to me: Good Eggs by Rebecca Hardiman and The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I think the one by Matt Haig was thought to be some kind of great philosophical thought experiment, but it seemed obvious and almost dated. I didn't put either down, but neither would I recommend them. Just "airport" books, I guess. I have on my desk The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts. "In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family and she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died..." It is a biography, and I am wondering if I should have bought Annie Wilkins personal writings about her journey instead. We'll see! I like the idea of it, because I used to ride all the time and my secret dream has always been to find a retired police horse (or other solid, bomb-proof horse) and ride the backroads of Maine taking photographs. and The Reindeer Hunters by Lars Mytting which is Norwegian fiction set in 1903.

If you live at the eastern edge of a time zone like I do and it gets dark in the winter at 3:58 p.m.!! you love springing ahead more than anything. And I suppose if you live near the western edge of the time zone, and the sun comes up at 8:30 a.m., you love falling back. Perhaps we just need narrower time zones and more of them. lol Our family is so erratic about time that we never have trouble adjusting. Because of where I live, I want to be springing ahead forever, keep daylight savings time so that our people don't get out of work in total darkness every single day during the cold, snowy grip of winter. Even though I am a dyed in the wool democrat, I love George Bush for extending daylight savings time, as much as I hate President Roosevelt's moving Thanksgiving to November.

My kids are both young adults now. We were fine until they went to brick and mortar school and the school gave the kids iPads and insisted all assignments be submitted electronically and we needed phones for pickups after play practice etc. Well, if I had to do it all over again, I (a rather liberal person), would NEVER have let them have phones, iPads or any time on the internet that was unsupervised in person (as in I would be sitting right there next to them). The damage the "anorexia influencers" alone did to my daughter is incalculable. Not to mention all the other horrors of the internet that got into my children's hearts and minds. Even adults are not equipped to be barraged by the bad images, ideas, sales pitches, etc of millions of people at once. It is too much to process and leaves even adults feeling depressed, that the world is an ugly place, and lonely and hopeless. My best friends parents almost cry over how horrible it is to raise children now with the internet. They feel so sorry for us. My daughter says that I should never have listened to her begging for a phone and that her kids will never get them because it was like handing a direct line from people with bad agendas to her eyes and ears and heart. In retrospect, I should have stood up to the schools and asked for alternatives for viewing and submitting assignments (which they would not have given, because it was their way or the highway) then I should have taken them out of the experiment (brick and mortar school) and homeschooled again. Of course, so many many people are not in the position to do that. And for others it might not have been as big as a mistake. I am sure some kids come through it jaded but generally fine. My kids are fragile and now I can't undo what that exposure at a young ages has done.

I am sorry the system wasn't able to recognize your dedication to learning. It seems (I am in my 50s) that workplace of all types (and especially medical) have changed for the worse since I was in my 20s and 30s. With computer technology came the ability to constantly surveil and measure every action of employees, instead of seeing, in the older way, workers as part of the workplace family. Corporations are now legally allowed to put the shareholder's profits above all else, and thus are allowed to quite literally poke and squeeze every bit of effort out of every employee to line their pockets. The speed at which things are processed is one of the many ways the shareholders make more money. Another is to hire fewer employees than are necessary to do the job. This efficiency and monitoring and maximization of profit at the expense of the worker (and the customer!) is affecting all jobs from doctor to supermarket cashier. I am so sorry it affected you. I also worry how it will harm the younger generation just entering a workforce in which every second will be monitored and controlled. I hope you can find a job or workplace that has respect for people and does not treat them as machines.

Maine: Milk with a short "I" rhyming with silk.