Our oven stays fairly clean, I guess we don't cook a lot of messy stuff. But mine has a "steam clean" feature that's a 20 minute quick thing for light messes. All I need to do is wipe out the excess moisture afterwards. I use that as a maintenance thing, to prevent build up of anything bad. I've never actually used an oven that was really gunky, but like others have said, I'd be afraid it could trigger a fire or make baked goods taste bad. I've read that the self-clean cycle can be very bad for oven longevity, as most of them don't adequately insulate the control panel from the high heat. I don't know if that's true or not, but my current one is just a year old and I intend to do what I can to make it last.

If you want a traditional sandwich type loaf the King Arthur easy everyday sourdough bread is good. I see now that there's a link in the recipe to one of their own Pullman type pans for baking. When I started using the recipe they were recommending this one, and it works very well and is a little less expensive than theirs.

I think it's probably very difficult to make friends if you move frequently. I have three people that I call friends. We're approaching old lady status now and we've known each other at least since high school (I've known one of them since first grade). We all stayed in the same area and have managed to maintain our friendship all these years. We go long periods of time w/o communicating with each other, but we get together several times a year for very long lunches, and I feel sure if I needed anything they'd be there for me. But it's not the kind of friendship where we're talking/texting every day, or meeting for a walk or cup of coffee kind of thing. Truthfully I'm not suited for that type of friendship. That much interaction would absolutely wear me out. My social needs bucket is extremely shallow, so it doesn't take much at all to fill it up and make it overflow. I think if those ladies weren't in my life I wouldn't feel a hole, or at least not a very big one. Like @sweet2ndchance said, I don't crave more social interaction and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

There are some anti-anxiety type meds that can be given to cats that are often very helpful in stopping inappropriate elimination. This article lists some of them.

You say this has been building up for over two decades, so that would have been since she was around 50. What was she like before then? Was she ever much into housekeeping? I'm wondering if this isn't so much an older person slipping as it is simply becoming "more" of who she always was -- someone not overly concerned with housekeeping? Add in a lack of concern plus almost certainly some degree of diminishing eyesight and I can see how things could get pretty bad. FWIW, we have an elder (a real elder--almost 90) who's been going in the other direction. She's so concerned about old person funk that she's gotten fairly obsessive about cleaning and bathing, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's getting into unhealthy territory. It's another case of becoming "more" with age.

I only went to community college, graduated at 20, started my first full time job the Monday after graduation, and lived with my parents for over two years while saving almost every penny I made. No vacations, not even a weekend getaway, very little spent on anything discretionary. So I had two years and a few months of salary saved up. And I'd always been a saver, so even before starting a full time job I had money saved up from birthdays, graduation gifts, etc. I was able to make a roughly 30 percent down payment, and that reduced the mortgage enough that I could afford it. FWIW, the interest rate was (IIRC) somewhere between 7 and 8 percent and at the time it seemed like a very decent rate.

That was my first thought, too. And many of us knew it was wackadoodle even before it was officially thoroughly debunked.

I don't know how long ghost job listings have been a thing, but I know for sure some large chains here were doing it long before the pandemic. The nearest Target to me was always "now hiring."

I bought my first house in 1985. I went in person to a small, local savings and loan and met with a VP/loan officer. As well as I remember the loan application form I had to fill out was less than two pages long. I suppose they at least asked for a W2, but I don't remember. Maybe they called my employer to verify that I was, in fact, employed. As well as I remember the approval process took just a few days. Compared to how things are nowadays my first mortgage experience seems kind of surreal.

22 and single

DH and I currently have SnugglePedic pillows, which are pretty much the same, I think -- shredded foam, comes with extra so you can add (or remove) to make them as perfect as possible. DH's was fine out of the box, but I had to do some playing around with mine to get it right. We like them, but we're side and back sleepers. And you are so right that the perfect pillow is elusive!

You have been/are going through a lot. It's okay and healthy to "own" that. Please don't minimize it or compare, unless you find that helpful. If someone else here was dealing with the same stuff -- I bet you'd have a ton of sympathy and offer plenty of support. Give yourself the same grace and space and compassion that you'd give others. Hugs.

I think that's correct. DH and I are exploring that right now, with the help of our financial advisor. It is complicated, and we want to make sure we understand things thoroughly. We don't want to make a mistake either by leaving money on the table or by drawing too early and costing ourselves (or whoever survives the longest, which is overwhelmingly likely to be me) a lot.

I'm no expert. I could be wrong. SS is extremely complicated, so outside of a financial planner or other qualified person who truly has expertise in the area I'd be leery of accepting any advice given as gospel. But what I posted above is my best understanding. The best thing for her to do is find his SS number and then set up an appointment to speak with someone at the Social Security Administration.

She is eligible to start drawing SS at 62, but her full retirement age is 67. Anything she starts drawing now, either on her own record or on the deceased former spouse's record, will be reduced accordingly. I think at her current age the reduction would be roughly 30 percent. Each month that she waits to draw will increase the amount. If she waits until her full retirement age (67) then she'd be eligible for his full amount. That is assuming he didn't start drawing early, and therefore had a reduced amount himself. I don't know how that would affect things. SS can get very complicated when there are two records to figure out. In this case it's her own and the deceased former spouse's, but the same is true for every married couple. It's a pretty big strategy thing to figure how how to best go about it.

I brought up infrastructure in the other thread, but many ignored it. But it's a massive problem in some areas.

I think it's safe as long as the pipes are drained. Plus there's the added benefit of not having to worry about potential leaks that could be caused by other things besides frozen pipes.

I hate flat rate definitions because there's no nuance. Thirty percent is going to look wildly different depending on individual circumstances. Either of my young adults could pay significantly more than that and be okay. They have no other debt and have good to great benefits through their employers. But for a single young adult with student loans, or a married couple with student loans, two kids in daycare, and who have to cover a lot of their own health insurance/medical costs -- that thirty percent is going to be a mucher harder reach.

Oldest is a high earner. Youngest is 2E (on the spectrum), works full time in a decent but not high paying job and still lives at home. So widely varying circumstances, but still . . neither has a pessimistic attitude about the current state of things in this country.

FWIW, and because we touched on generalizations earlier in this thread -- I have two 20 somethings and neither of them feel or think anything remotely like this, nor do I hear it from any of their friends.

There have been lots of generalizations, and I hate it, and I've engaged in a little of it myself. Of course in my area it's not *only* younger people who are complaining and wanting to keep more developing out, and not *all* older people are welcoming of new development. But overall I do hear more younger people complaining than I do older people. But of course my experience may or may not be an accurate indicator, it's only the perception of one person.

I read the minutes of all local planning and zoning committees (both our little town and the county) and DH and I periodically attend public information meetings. So it's official stuff. The complaints I hear are IRL and on FB. I have close family members who are first responders, so I also get their take on that end of things.

In my area it's the younger, newer people who are the ones doing the complaining! It's not lifelong residents my age (61) or older, it's the younger people who moved here in the last 5-10 years. They moved here because they wanted the lifestyle (and less expensive property taxes and better/safer school system for their kids than in the nearby city) but by golly now they don't want others to have that opportunity. So they say the families who've owned farms here for a century or more and have now decided to retire and sell to a big developer are greedy.

I'm not sure I'm following you? In my area the development is happening and has been for awhile. The infrastructure planning isn't happening, or where it is (mainly road improvement plans) it's moving slower than a snail's pace. And that (IMO) is a valid complaint being made by the people who rant and rave about the "neighborhood character."

I agree we absolutely need more affordable housing options, but I don't think people should be allowed to build willy nilly. Infrastructure (or lack thereof) really, really needs to be taken into consideration. I get tired of the people in my area griping about all the new housing developments going up, but on the infrastructure front they do have valid arguments, IMO. There have to be workable plans for our schools, roads, and fire/LEO/EMS services to keep up with a growing population. Right now schools and the basic public safety services are in pretty dire shape here. The existing schools are bursting at the seams, response times for fire/EMS/LEO are significantly longer than they should be, and the county can't hire enough people to fill existing vacant positions. There are fewer and fewer large(ish) tracts of vacant land, and it's expensive. Where are the schools going to be built to accommodate more students? I don't know the answers to all that, or how to go about planning to meet the needs of more/most people best, but I do know that careful planning is required, and that some areas are dropping the ball on that.