Thanks for the good wishes everyone
@ Beldarna my 9 year old niece is the same. When she was 7 or 8 my sister bought her a couple of huge LOL doll sets for Christmas and now she only wants makeup and clothes. I wasn't allowed to wear makeup in public when I was that age and then I think my Mum eventually gave up when I was about 15. We played 'dressing up' but it was clearly a game and not how we looked most of the time. Anyway, I ended up buying my niece a Bobbi Brown makeup set for Christmas last year, thinking that it was for 'dressing up' but actually she just wears it all the time. I actually really dislike seeing her face with smudged mascara at 9 years old. She's also trying to talk as though she's a young adult, about bands and clothes but she's kinda lisping and hasn't got much confidence or conviction in what she's saying. I would have expected her to think more along these lines in about 5 year's time! There must be massive pressure on her to act this way and it makes me so sad, that her childhood is already over. I guess as an older Mum there is a bigger gap for me between how things were when I was a child and how things will be for kids now. But my daughter is just past one year old, so at this rate we only have 7 more summers with her as a child. I try not to think about her growing up because it makes me sad and I don't want her to pick up on it. But I have to remember not to let her childhood pass by in a blur. Big sigh.

Today... well both baby and husband have had some awful cold for the last week and are still coughing at times. I had to keep them both on paracetamol etc. for about 4 days and I'm still feeling pretty tired from nursing them. However, I can finally take baby swimming today. She's had no classes for two weeks now and of course no visits from Granny so she's really bored and starting to act a bit naughty. I'm just so glad she's better that I don't really mind. She's so precious at the moment. Hopefully swimming will be good for her today, I know it always is for me.

Artie, ooh, I hate the whole 'fighting illnesses' thing too. I got so upset at cancer commercials when my sister was going through chemo. They make it seem like it's your fault if you die, because you didn't try hard enough or love your family enough. I HATE that thought process. Like, believe in a higher power if you want but at the end of the day either the treatment and medicine work, or they don't.

Glad it's not just me and glad you found a handyman company for some of your stuff and if they are good you can use them for other things if you need. It did cross my mind that you're an artist kinda making it work as a studio, and also I'm glad to hear that you're feeling fairly good at the moment.

Update on my Mum: she's out of hospital but still on atibiotics. Hub and Squish are mostly over it all now. I will take her to see Granny today.

I have a Rakuten Kobo reader that works well for me. It connects to my local library service. I prefer it now since I find it easier to read larger text than wear my glasses in bed. But I don't oay for any subsciption on it. I bought a few books when someone gave me a voucher, but prefer to stick to the classics.

I still use my old collection of reference hardbacks, paperback fiction, CDs and to some extent DVDs because I like to repeat watch certain films. However, my husband doesn't and has never forgiven me for throwing out some of his box sets that you now have to pay to stream like Downton Abbey and Steptoe and Sons. I thought they belonged to his late wife. Anyhoo.

We have a small house and the media does take up a lot of room, but I stand by my decision to keep most of it. The reference books are really useful for avoiding trash on the web and the information just stays where I last put it. We are lucky to be fairly settled, but moving house last time was a trauma.

Post Merge: February 27, 2024, 12:10:36 AM

yeah i regret getting rid of my old 90s boombox after i moved everything to MP3s.

MP3s lacked quality for me even at high bitrates so I never quite cut the cord. I wish I still had my Dad's old Akai tape deck though.

i was a tech early adopter for so many things back in the 2000s-2010s.

Same here!

but lately everything feels so broken that i'm reverting to analog.

I only use MLP Arena in terms of social media. We got Amazon to help buy kid's things quickly when we needed them but I need to cancel it soon. So I can go back to exploring my collections of physical media. It just takes longer to find things, but the handling it and pondering are all part of it that we've lost. I have so many books I haven't really read. Cookbooks where I've only tried one recipe. A whole drawer of violin music, most of which I've not played.

i'm a disaffected tech worker now i guess. i had high hopes for tech and now i'm just sad. i don't work for a tech company though. i work for a company that actually makes stuff.

I'm glad to hear that actually, I've heard that things are pretty tough in Tech right now

i love the convenience of having all of my music in one place and the variety i get with streaming. i don't think it's all bad. i've definitely found music i never would have known about if it weren't for streaming. i don't miss the way music was when i was in school where you just had to know people who were "cool" enough to introduce you to music or spend hours listening to the radio. but i do hate the data collection and the way streaming platforms prey on artists. especially the more niche artists who will never make money from Spotify, etc.

I miss the copied tapes kindly given to me by other kids, with hand written sleeves. Sometimes swapping tapes was my only real friendship at school. Kids who wouldn't be seen with me might still share a record or a tape with me. I also miss listening to John Peel on late night radio and scribbling things down. Although most of the DJs from that era are now being criticised for their sexual behaviour it wasn't something I was aware of at the time. I must admit I learned a lot via the old YouTube algorithm. Google dumbed it down considerably for a while but it seems to have revived again a bit for me.

records are so expensive compared to CDs so i think i'll probably buy some CDs soon too. CDs are way more affordable for albums where i don't necessarily like all of the songs. i just need to find a good cd player.

The 12" records I bought in the 90s and 2000s are still about the same price on a lot of second hand sites. One or two have gone up in value but not many. So I think I must have had bad taste in music 

i also hate, hate, hate the data collection model. every year when i get that spotify wrapped it just reminds me that they're collecting all of my listening habits. it didn't have to be this way. a lot of these tech companies are still burning cash even while selling our data. of course the executives still have more money than god.

Ick. Same here!! I loathe it. Now that the NHS data is being sold to Palantir I feel as though this is a paradigm shift in British society that will affect my life forever, but particularly my child's life. Very depressing.

i also use a physical planner and notebook now. it's so nice to just pick up a pen and write something down instead of making notes on my computer that always end up getting lost anyway. it's also much faster to just write it down instead of trying to deal with multiple windows.

I never stopped. My black Moleskine diary is viewed as an eccentricity in my family. So nice that someone else gets it. I use Outlook as quite a serious tool for work though.

i have an apple watch but there are so many notifications that it's unwearable. i'm not getting texts or anything fun either. it's junk texts, junk calls, and notifications from my security cameras. heaven forbid one of my neighbors is moving their lawn. going back to an analog watch sounds good at this point. all of the notifications are stressful.

Good to know. I wish my husband would get why it's not good for the mental health to leave his phone to hand all the time. It's like having a constant leak in your sanity. He thinks I'm odd for reading the Bible. I call his smartphone the Devil's Window. Or should it be Mirror. I also like to read Sci Fi written during the 1950s and 1960s. I'll sign off now!

Those jigsaws are delightful! Congratulations!

My wish list hasn't moved for nearly three years. So you can see that some items, even though not the most popular, are getting rare. I just don't have time to keep monitoring sales any more. But even before that I had slowed down to only one or two purchases per year, mainly from kind people on the Arena. I don't use ebay any more, for the reasons below.

One happier thought about accessories though, they are mostly not made of UPVC so they are more likely to survive being stored in a loft, whereas ponies get plastic breakdown. So if you do find a childhood collection that's been stored in a loft, the ponies might be in a sad state but any accessories might be salvageable.

@Artie, if i'm remembering correctly Samuel is pretty far through. some of those Old Testament books are a slog. I haven't read them all the way through. even after many many years of Catholic school. i would like to at some point.  Also, i hope your mom recovers quickly

Numbers reads like the 'shipping forecast' if you know what that is. Maybe this is where the expression 'brass tacks' comes from. Leviticus is odd because I can't always work out whether the voice is Moses or God. Maybe there is no real distinction. After that, I find it hard working out how some of the stories relate to the Commandments, what happens and the outcomes. Sometimes the people in the stories seem to go against the Commandments and sometimes they seem to get away with it, sometimes not. I'm trying to just go through it rather than get stuck on things, thinking I will go back to it later.

Thanks, Mum is doing better. She had a kidney stone removed etc. She's mending. Although painful, it could have been worse news. Hope you're doing OK.

Post Merge: February 21, 2024, 11:36:23 PM

First, look up a pizza recipe online. I got my dough mix from a recipe for air fryer pizza (which suits me due to air fryer). The main difference I noticed between a basic bread & a pizza dough is the pizza dough has vinegar in it (not much, about a tablespoon, but it's there in the pizza recipe & not in the bread one).
Second, resting the dough between initial mix & knead is a big part of the bread recipe, but for pizza dough it seems you go straight from mix to knead.
Third, when rising the bread dough, it's greased. For the pizza dough, it's not. You don't grease the pizza dough until you're just about to bake it (after pricking below). Both greases are done with a coating of liquid oil.
Fourth, when putting the dough in for pizza, it's rolled out flat & thin, then pricked all over. The more pricks the better. With bread you don't make it flat, rather, you shape it gently, then bake, no pricking. The bread has to rise, while the pizza is better mostly flat.
(also for toppings, if the veggies are wet, the pizza will be. Heat them for five minutes at the same temp as you cook the pizza before putting on the pizza & the moisture will steam out of them. This is especially important if the veggies are frozen.)

I think we have forgotten to prick it, thank you. Will also try the vinegar and the idea of drying the toppings out a bit in the oven before putting them on the pizza. This could change everything! Will let you know

today have to take my husband to the hospital to remove his staples from his head incision.
yay another day of work that I have to miss... it's getting impossible to catch up and do my job at this rate...

I'm sorry you're going throught this. I hope he's all mended very soon.

Post Merge: February 21, 2024, 10:29:31 AM

Once I tried to read the Bible like a chapter book. I was 7 or 8, I believe.

Have you read The Power of Now at all?

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I thought I had done more, turns out that I have done more pose swaps to the walking/Moondancer pose not Gusty or Buttons pose.

Love pkw xxx

Oh wow, that red! I'd love to have custom Moondancer and Sunlight one day in pretty much any other unicorn pose.