Lasagne or, if I really want to go all out, home made gnocchi. Not hard, but quite labour intensive and so much better than any bought alternatives

From my limited experience: just try it out! It’s a relatively easy process and you can refine after the first try.

I’m usually significantly over the recommended water intake in summer, but in winter I kind of forget water exists and I have to force myself to drink

Italy is referenced in the very last paragraph, with a vague statement that they are talking about starting a test there too

your digestion’s going to get weird

Suddenly, I can’t handle porter beers anymore. All other beers and alcohols have the usual effects, but porters give the worst hangovers even with minimal consumption.

At random, I struggle with milk. Happened consistently for a while, I stopped drinking milk. I started again after a year or so, I was fine again. Nowadays once a year or so milk hits wrong and I can’t digest it, while I can most of the time.

Caffeine hits way more as well. I used to not care, now two coffees/a big coke and I can’t sleep for hours.

Mindblowing that increases in temperature have been the norm for decades and every time they happen it’s an “extreme [unforeseeable] event”…

Onions and carrots, maybe a celery piece, really add to the favor too!

More than that! Last time was in October/November it i remember correctly

“More flexible protocols” can also mean less test patient protection…

Other than that, yeah , I shenanigans the US has pulled with research funding have done lasting damage to its research environment

Expanding on this: it’s a great time to challenge your assumptions and try building ip different routines! Be mindful to not “get stuck” on routines and habits you don’t like

Ouch!

Same here. With my kids, I really struggled to get stuff ready for their birth because it gent like tempting fate. Cue scrambling to get everything ready once the baby was back home.

In smaller stuff, always knock on wood. Fake wood counts as wood.

Heartbreaking

You only have cards to set up your space empire, potentially trade based

Infinite miniatures allow you to defend or attack the Shire

EU here, I was pregnant and gave birth both in Germany and in France.

In Germany, the overall cost was 0€. It included monthly follow ups with a gynecologist, many blood exams and echos, the birth, MUCU for baby for three days, hospital stay for both of us for four days, at home visits for ten days, monthly visits with the gp for a while. Health insurance is through your work, so you pay for it via taxes but significantly less than in the US (I think my partner and I were paying just under 200€/month? It’s a percentage of income) I had 3.5 months of maternity leave at full pay, then I could stay home longer with 60% pay for up to a year cumulative with my husband.

In France, the overall cost was a bit higher (~50€) because not all blood exams are completely free, so over the first 6 months of pregnancy I payed less than 10€/month for some blood tests. Gp and gynecologist visits are free, so are the ecos and the hospital stay. I decided to pay a little extra (50€/day) to have a private room after the birth where my husband could stay overnight. It should still be conferred by my extended health insurance (not mandatory). I was also in sick leave for the white pregnancy, and for the first 3 months I had full salary, then it dropped to 1/3, the got back to 100% when I went in maternity leave (~4.5 months). I decided to stay home a bit longer, without pay. My husband can also choose to stay home without pay, and has one month of paternity leave.

I also lived in the US. Incomparable. On top of not having to pay, when there is a charge it is always stated clearly upfront, while in the US knowing what you’ll have to pay is a wild guessing game. Overall: I moved back to Europe for a reason.

I read the first book and I couldn’t get over the bad writing. The MC justification for everything is “the big baddies killed my lovely wife”, but the wife feels so one-dimensional, their love just a plot necessity. And the reminder of the wife just gets randomly sprinkled all over the book, just a couple of random sentences totally disconnected to whatever is going on at the moment.

The MC feels both extremely young, with a memory of just a couple of pages, and like an adult already well set on his ways.

The society could be interesting, a cool cast system à la Huxley, war games with reasonable strategies… but everything is just a flat cheap prop with no in-depth discussion, just a quick line dropped at random with no follow up.

Overall: really do not recommend.

Where I come from and where I live, April’s fool pranks are exclusively about taping paper fishes to people’s backs, usually stealthily. I always loved it - short term and fun for everyone.

I understand this sucks. A lot. And you are probably right that the birth mother is influencing your child. But you can’t let it get to you and you can’t let you anger towards it (and the birth mother) show.

Unfortunately, it seems your child is stuck between his two parents. He will most likely lash out, now and in the future. And it will hurt.

I don’t have a lot of advice, just some support to give. Don’t let it get to you. Your kid loves you and you love him. Acceptance (yours towards whatever he say and will say) is fundamental even in the face of anger and rejection. You are also right that with only two hours a week there is little to do. I wish you all the best.

You met three days ago? And you are “basically living together”?

Considering the length, it’s a fling. Considering you haven’t talked about it, it’s a situationship.

My unwanted and unasked advice is to take some distance for at least a day before calling it anything at all. And then talk about expectations.

Honestly (anecdote time!), when I started going out with my partner, I had some weird and totally personal hang ups with the word “boyfriend”. So for a couple of months they were “the person I am seeing” then became my “partner”. We had the conversation about exclusivity and such, talked about where we saw stuff going and so on, but wording was difficult. A word is just a word, as long as you both agree on the rest it doesn’t really matter much.

I would trade my very limited woodworking skills for equally limited artistic skills of any type, ideally music related.

I would trade some other skills (really any pick) for extra house improvement skills. It’s not even that I’m bad at it, I’m just too nervous to fuck it up to even start…