Sometimes I do it before, not after, because UTI. Hands are dirtier than any other part of you, generally speaking. Usually after, but it’s just an opportunity to wash my hands in general - I don’t really think touching toilet paper to my pussy is going to get my hands dirty. So yeah, I wash my hands because it’s a convenient time to do that.

State marriage, if available at all, needs to be available to any couple. Religious marriage doesn’t. If I am a priest who wants to marry only straight people, only gay people, only groups of 3 or more, that should be fine and protected.

But if the government wants to be in the business of establishing legal protection for family groups, it cannot be allowed to discriminate. Absolutely agree. It is not discrimination to disallow discrimination, no matter how they try to spin it.

I would be fine with your idea, no more “legal marriage” just religious and no option to register it with the state.

Yeah 2 of ours plus the girlfriend of one of my daughters live with us. The couple both have pretty good jobs and are saving up to get a place in the summer, then we will be down to one, the last in a very long line of children. I’m not in a hurry, my mom kicked me out at 17 and it really set me back in life. Have been through this several times with mine, they do leave when they want to, and eventually they want to. Having time to work & not pay rent helps with getting started on adult life.

No, not normal. If you enjoy it, something is wrong. If you just aren’t upset by it, but care, you might make a good emergency room doctor.

How do you feel if it’s someone you care about, or yourself?

Not where I live. “Nice” in our office for men is a button-up tucked into actual pants, and good shoes. Maybe a sweater or blazer if it’s cold (not often here) Just looking put together. Some guys wear that everyday, others are more casual.

Women gave up formal office wear completely because that involves heels and pantyhose. For “Nice” we have a similar outfit as the guys, or a dress or skirt & top combo. Some women dress like that everyday in our office but just like with the men, most of us do not. I wear jeans and a good T-shirt or button-up or a light sweater.

I hate the noodly introspective jazz. But cannonball Adderley Mercy Mercy, and Kamasi Washington Cherokee, so good.

I am kinda like this - I don’t usually ask for things unless I NEED them. If it’s just a request that a no is fine for, feel like I need to make that clear. Like if my hands are full, “could you open the door” but if I have a hand free but am wrangling the dog, “do you think you could open the door, I can if you can’t, I just want Dog to sit while you go in and then while I go in” I do feel like I have to explain it’s not a demand.

I am from the US and went to England for school one year. In the lunch line here, if there is a choice, you ask for it and say thank you, like “Carrots and potatoes” then “thank you!”. But in England they said no, that is rude. It’s “carrots and potatoes, please.” Then “thank you” when you get them. Needed both just to be minimally polite.

I AM polite with my kids, I model it but don’t demand it really. They catch on fine. I have friends and relatives who made their kids “yes sir” and “yes ma’am” them. I don’t think that’s cool. I told my kids to ma’am and sir wait staff, cashiers and teachers but not family, it does seem almost cheeky, somehow, to be too polite with family.

My mom worked as a university professor, then advisor, and what she said about college was “it just shows a prospective employer that you can follow rules and commit to doing something for a few years and follow through on it. That’s why they want the degree. Also cuts down on applicants, fewer to sort through.”

So, from someone on the inside, she didn’t think the main reason was education, in terms of specific jobs. I know in accounting I don’t use so much of what I learned and that’s a pretty specific degree. Anyone with a mind for numbers & systems could be trained on the job to do what I do.

Yes, this is one of those odd double standards I don’t understand. I can comment on a hot woman, call her sexy and nobody bats an eye. I am not turned on by women who look hot but it’s like I know what I would like if I was? My husband will say things like “ideal build” for both men & women but would only comment on the sexiness of a lady not a guy.

But are none of the streets long enough to end up with a 1867, or whatever?

I am not good with left and right, mostly orient myself in the world using north, south, east, west and it is oddly disorienting to be on the diagonal road, my mind keeps wanting to think of it as a north-south road. Until I can FEEL it I keep saying it. The corners of the house are the compass points. My work office right now also is set diagonally like that!

May I ask a question about German addresses? Here, they go up and up as you move out from the center of town - we have a zero/zero, so to speak, at one corner, and if you live at 100 N, you are one block north of center. So if you are 100 blocks north of center you live at 10000. I lived at 1500 E on 15th St I’d be 15 blocks away in two directions from that central point.

Our German addresses are always like 6, never a big number. How?

Our house is on a slanty road and I’ve never lived on one before, my mind rejects it. The CORNERS of the house point in cardinal directions. It’s because we are near a river, some of the streets in my neighborhood follow its course, which right here runs southwest.

I just have to stop and think every time. Because I have only stayed on N-S or E-W roads my mind thinks our walls ought to be along those lines. I have to point at the corner and say NORTH out loud more often than you’d think.

Community service, unpaid labor was part of the Bright Futures scholarships here (they changed it to paid or unpaid work) and was part of the IB curriculum two of mine did too. This is likely true in most states. A lot of high school kids are already doing hours and hours of unpaid community service.

But there is only one real farm inside what I’d define as close enough, an organic community farm that already uses lots of volunteers and unpaid interns and still ends up too expensive for what we got, when we tried buying a share one year. They are not raking in cash at all, either. It just is an expensive endeavor.

I am older, and have not found any of that to be true. As a lady, more makes more; more sex makes sex feel better and it’s easier to get off, and sexual frustration does not make me creative at all, just distracted and frustrated.

There is also physical benefit to sex for older women, I don’t know if it’s the same for younger, but certainly after menopause sex prevents vaginal atrophy and prolapse of internal organs, it’s sort of a use it or lose it situation. Penetration and orgasms are good for muscle tone, apparently. Beyond the obvious benefits of pleasure and relationship building.

Are you a lady? I work in an office at a sports company (so sporty casual is common) and there are several women here who wear dresses and skirts not pants, several more who switch back & forth. Not me - pants feel much more secure to me - but it’s nothing anyone really notices.

A man wearing skirts we would notice for awhile, not care but notice; if you are customer facing then you might encounter that surprise over and over, if not, I don’t think it will be a big deal.

Not religious but my mom was Methodist and open-minded. Basically she said the Bible was a document from a different time, and the most important commandments were to love your neighbor and take care of the least of us.

The behavioral rules she just thought relics of an earlier time, said many had been solved with science (ok to eat pork, be gay, whatever).

My grandma was Catholic and she just basically wasn’t evangelical, right? So sure, maybe we were going to hell but that was between us & God, nothing to do with her. On homosexuality she (like others I’ve talked to) said, yeah of course gay people were made that way by God, that was their cross to bear, they had to be celibate. “So do nuns and monks and priests, some people are not supposed to have sex, it’s always been that way.”

They are the most adorable little spiders. One time I was at the park with my kids and I had a cold drink that had condensation on the outside. There was a jumping spider on the table I was sitting at. I put down my drink, he comes and drinks the condensation. I pick it up for a drink, he retreats. Rinse and repeat for half an hour. I was so delighted, it was delightful.

Just coffee. I would eat a late breakfast one day, then stop eating, coffee (no calories) the next morning and then nothing until supper, usually around 8pm.

Yes the LDL went back up. I know it was related to the fasting and not weight loss - I am not fat and maintained calories overall to keep my weight stable. I had been sort of stumped, like you are. Obviously if someone is overweight and loses weight that will have benefits, there wasn’t a lot of research on people of normal weight fasting and not reducing. I got the one measurable benefit, but no improvements I could feel in any way, and the headaches were pretty bad.

ETA - short fast doesn’t need careful refeed. I just made a regular supper to break those fasts. No problems, and in general digestion has never been a weakness for me.