I was always taught to do this with bread crumbs as well, throw it in the oven to dry it out and smashhhhhh.

I promise I’m not a doomsday prepper or anything, just a person in my 30s who grew up in poverty and has only recently gotten to a point of being slightly above water. We are aware that having a child would immediately bring us back to scraping by, which means that we may not be able to afford any extras for said child. No dance classes, no preschool, no crayons with the sharpener on the back. Just stressed out parents who won’t be able to give as much attention and care due to burnout and survival mode. That doesn’t sound nice for anyone involved… The kinder thing for me to do is either wait till we’re in a better financial state(where aging and inflation works against us) or just accept we won’t have them. Our plan, as I said, is to eventually foster and hopefully adopt from there, because by the time we feel financially stable enough to support another human in our world, I’ll probably be too old for a safe pregnancy.(Which I’m disgusted by as well, but that’s a whole different issue)

This isn’t a situation where I’m worried about the world blowing up, it’s accepting that we’ll either be trapping ourselves and a child in poverty and continuing that cycle we both came from or dealing with a high risk geriatric pregnancy and a baby in our 40s.

You’re getting downvoted, but I kinda agree with you. I think if someone is ready and has hope for the future, sure, it makes sense for them to have a kid. I think a lot of people are aware the world sucks and the future of that child may be uncertain/bleak, many people have kids cause it’s “the next step” in adulting, sometimes always wanted to be a parent. The obvious hope is that the future will figure it out. I would like to think most aren’t being overly selfish, just following the flow.

My husband and I want kids, but the thought of bringing someone into our current world, and with our financial restraints, it seems cruel from my perspective… Like, the kindest thing I could do for a future child of my own womb would be to just not have them currently. (Plus, ew pregnancy) We’ve been looking into adoption from foster care once we feel financially ready because those kiddos are already here and need a supportive home.

Followed!

Same. I’m one of the few people that prefers self checkout. Covid was a magical time for me while grocery shopping. No one awkwardly had to smile after eye contact, everyone gave space and avoided each other, just get in and get out without ever taking out my headphones. Self check out is always faster where I’m from too.

That’s all so awesome. Have you always been doing it for work or did you get into it later? Sorry for all the questions and no need to answer obviously, just fascinated by everyone’s story in the industry. I’m too much of a chicken for much of your skills, but I love admiring it from the other side of the field. Hopefully one day our paths will cross in the performance world!

That one never caught my interest. It makes me so nervous. I’ve gotten into stilts and jumping stilts over the past couple years. I’d love to get back into juggling and unicycling but that will have to wait for a bit. I also really wanna try German wheel and aerial hoop!

Also editing to add: what made you wanna do fire and what’s your favorite way to use fire? I have a friend who just got a sword, another who favors fans, and most men I know use staff or poi. I personally have never spun or played with fire, but it fascinates me. Many of my friends will eat but not breathe it.

My husband wants kids, I’m okay without for the same reasons as you and a big disgust of pregnancy. I have a lot of experience with kids in my career and we love kids, but it just seems the kindest thing to do for them is to not bring them into this world. We’re planning on fostering once we’re in a better financial position and hopefully adopting from there. I’d rather grow our family with a kid or toddler that already got the shit luck of being here.

I’m an entertainer as well and thought about fire breathing. I spoke with a couple friends who do it and them all casually talking about collapsing a lung a few times turned me off that idea.

My local store flagged me cause I had my coffee cup in the cart. It said, “you only scanned 5 items” and it thought I had 6 in the cart. I was a bit surprised cause I didn’t know it was that far of a view.

There’s a flag going around of something like, “she’s as open as our borders” with a drawn picture of Harris with her legs spread open suggestively.

Uncle Sam’s red white and blue top hat.

Isn’t that one of the main jokes in the Borat movies? When the characters are yelling at each other in Kazakh it’s all a mixture of Hebrew, Bulgarian, polish, Armenian, Romanian, and a ton of other phrases and sayings?

I worked for a brewery that brought in all their water from the same spring or something. Even though it was a chain with multiple us locations.

Mine was noticed because I have a multinodular goider. I asked about potential issues with it a couple times over the years and was always told I just needed to lose weight till the doctor finally noticed it in my early 20s. Who knew it was a lot easier to be active and control your appetite when your metabolism is actually working and you don’t feel like you always wanna crawl into bed?

You normally will get it after puberty, pregnancy, or menopause(at least with what I have, which is hashimotos thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease. Not sure about others) so, if it’s similar you likely developed it during puberty like myself and didn’t realize it or notice the changes because you assumed it was normal.

Excuse me, battle for bikini bottom and the shrek 2 game were FIRE.

I live in a bigger city with some heavy foot traffic areas. Those are normally where I get comments still. I feel part of it has to do with the fact that some of them actually think they aren’t creepy, and others know you won’t fight back on it and enjoy your discomfort.

The first time I realized I was being leered at was a man probably in his 40s while at the airport going on vacation with my family. I was 10 or 11 at the time.

I remember getting in trouble for leaning on a store counter a couple times, my mom eventually explained it was because the salesmen were looking down my shirt. I was in middle school.

Memories of us getting cat called walking to and from school with my friends are strongest when we were all around 14. I remember being groped by a 20something year old while giving them a forced hug as they cornered me at a party around 15 before ducking and running away to the crowd.

I had my first sexual assault at 18.

Now on the other side… I had a stalker at 23, was likely roofied a few years ago at 28, and one of my friends in her 40s was recently cornered in her hotel room by a friend assuming favors. Which we then found out was a well known habit of his.

Not to say any of this to argue your point, young girls are absolutely going to be cat called or given unwanted attention more than a adult or middle aged+ woman. More so just when I started listing a few I realized that unfortunately, we will always have to have our guard up. I’m in my early 30s now and get leered at/inappropriate comments from the 50-60 year old men in my industry. It is never not uncomfortable when you’re looked at like a piece of meat.

I’ve had great success in saying I’m cancelling/leaving because I’m moving away. I picked a random area I knew wasn’t close to any of their chains and said I loved everything but unfortunately needed to move on. I’ve had 3 different chains immediately end the contract for me over the phone or in person doing this with no hassle.

The time I tried to quit one to swap to another gym, I had to make 3 calls, email multi-paragraph statements of why I was leaving and wait multiple months before they finally stopped charging me.

There used to be an app or site called “buycott” or something and you could set what you were trying to avoid(example: avoiding human rights violating companies, avoiding specific companies, morals of certain companies, etc.), and you could scan an item and it would tell you. I used it for a tiny bit years ago but didn’t stick with it. Not sure if it’s still around.