My mom decided to gradually start working a while back, she's on all the government assistance programs you can think of and after years of that decided she wanted some financial independence.

She worked part time for like 3 months at a seasonal holiday place and made something like $2.5k. It was great, she was planning on doing it again the next year and seeing what she could do on the summer. She was happy, more of a person, made some friends.

The only problem is with that extra $2.5k she lost like $6k in benefits the next year, which for someone getting a couple hundred bucks a month to surving is a lot. So she never went back and fell back into a semi reclusive state. I can't blame her for it either, who wants to go to work to lose money at the end of the day.

That sounds nice. I was standing at a crosswalk for almost 15 minutes today walking home with my son in his stroller as cars were just flying by not taking a second glance. Last year 4 people died in seperate cases in that crosswalk. It's nuts.

For the longest time I thought people who had solar panels had a battery on their property somewhere, they're panels would charge battery and they would only switch to the grid if their battery ran out.

I don't know much about it, but this seems like a pretty viable solution and I still can't believe this isn't how it works.

The top crack and the little stairstep pattern crack following below it were my main concern. I've just always hear to watch out for the stair pattern and when I saw the big gap I panicked a little.

Thank you so much!

That's a huge relief. The stairstep pattern following the big crack had me worried.

Thank you so much!

I have a couple pear trees in my back yard that I planted for my son when we was a baby. When my wife and I had a miscarriage on our 2nd and 3rd try we burried what we could with the pear trees, when out best cat died we burried him there, when my lizard that I've had for 12 years and went through hell with me died we burried her there, when my grandma died I burried some of her trinkets there.

I don't mow much back there and let the grass grow, just keeping the base of the trees clean. Sometimes I like to go sit in that overgrown grass under the trees. It feels safe and comforting, the bugs keep me company, one time I had a garden snake sliver over my shoes and just sit there for a while.

I've never thought about it but I keep my phone in my left pocket. It stays on dnd most of the time and I hardly use it especially when I'm out. The right pocket it for the stuff I'm likely to pull out and use.

I would love even a dumbed down wonderbot from that movie robots. Even something just to load the dishwasher would be amazing.

But we have to prioritize here, if it can't fuck there's no point, throw it in the trash.

I feel like I need this /s although I wish it was obvious.

I once found a shirt I really liked at a thrift store for $2. It had a funky block design that I really liked and I thought I scored big because it looked like a fancy shirt that would've cost me $50 new.

One day I spilled coffee on it and was devistated so my wife ordered me a new one without telling me. When it got here I was a little put off because the thought of wearing a tshirt that cost more than $20 kind of throws me off.

I pressed her a little since at the time we weren't doing super hot. Turns out it was a marshalls brand and cost like $12 to get delivered. I was increasingly more stoked than I was when I thought it was some designer brand.

Fun Little Story.

I'm not big on the whole internet thing so I didn't know about the whole Ivermectin thing until way later.

Around the time that craze was really I was hospitalized for what turned out to be a tropical parasite (strongyloides) which the only place I had gone was deep in the mountains in a cold region so it was a big shocker when the test came back.

They told me I needed Ivermectin and they were just waiting for approval, all the while I'm almost certain I'm dying, agonizing pain, at this point I was throwing up blood.

After a while of "waiting for approval" I couldn't take it anymore, like 2 weeks had passed and all they were doing was pumping me with morphine, which as a recovering addict I loved in the worst way. So I left the hospital I was at and went to another one. Went into the ER and told them the whole shibang, tropical parasite, I was told I need Ivermectin etc. And the second hospital basically told me to fuck off.

Out of frustration I gave up, I called the first hospital and asked if they got approval and they said they were still waiting and would call me back.

So I went home and basically waited to die, taking basically any opiod I could get my hands on. My neighbor who got me some stuff hung out with me one night and I told her the story, later on she brought me more stuff only this time she had 'something else' for me. I didn't question it, just popped it back, never thought about it again until recently.

I still don't know what it was but I ended up recovering, the pills were harder to kick but I did it.

I don't know why the first hospital was so hesitant to give me the medication, if they didn't have it or were worried about how it would look prescribing it. But fuck that place.

I do wonder if they're still in there and I'll just drop dead one day but I'm off medicade now so doctor visits are out of the question.

I'm much better off financially than my mom ever was, and my grandma even though she did pretty good when she was working was on disability for the last 20 years of her life fighting renal failure and after paying her bills had a couple pennies to rub together each month.

My grandma couldn't do much the last few years and didn't really need money, so I put quite a bit into fixing up her house and making her home dialysis situation as comfortable as I could. New floors, fancy chair, big TV, I even redid her whole lasndscaping outside even though she never really got to enjoy it, she felt better knowing it looked nice.

My mom on the other hand gets about $300-400 on a normal from me for random things for her and my sister, going out to eat, clothes, nails, extra food. Which is essentially the only thing that let's them live a live outside of total poverty. They live in the projects but they can buy things when they want or don't have to worry about how they're gonna get their next meal.

My whole life plan revolves around getting enough land to put a second modest home on for my mom. I'm almost there, which if that wasn't the case I can say with certainty she'd die in those projects and not from old age.

I've never really thought about not taking care of my elders. I guess my situation is one of those exceptions.

I'm pretty good at the whole interacting thing when it's one on one, but put me in a room with more than one person and I freeze up, completely fall apart.

My wife and I watched the fall guy while we worked last night. We both thought it was a really good movie but weren't fully paying attention. There were a few scenes that had us both shutting our laptop lids a little waiting to see how it played out.

At my job we're expected to at least try to be available if needed after hours which in my 3 years here has happened once and it took about 30 minute and I waited until my son went to bed for the night.

In return we get to leave for doctors appointments, picking up kids, errands etc without having to use PTO or make up the time. It's a pretty sweet deal for the developers and no one abuses it to much.

At my old job they tried to get us to work after hours pretty frequently for a fraction of what our hourly rate was, we were salaried but when you broke it down you'd be getting like $20 an hour instead of $50. Ridiculous and almost no one did it.

Is this the case? I don't feel like I've ever had to install Perl but I've had to install Python plenty of times and I use both pretty frequently on a daily basis. Not to mention a newer version, older version, 2.7.4 instead of 2.7.3.

I used to love these. I always wanted to be the last one running. One year another kid and I ran so long the bell rang so we ran some more and got to skip the next period all together.

Funny enough my wife is a wedding photographer, I shoot with her a few times a year and absolutely hate it. She can't imagine doing anything else but if it wasn't my wife you couldn't pay me enough to do it more than once a year.

The second hand gear is the way to go though, she got some Sony camera a while back that cost like 2k new for around 900 because it had a small scratch on the body and one of the metal things that hold the thing on was loose. We ordered a new metal thingy and with a couple screws it was practically new.

Oh man I put so much time into my garden this year, planted so many vegetables, started a bunch indoors on a nice indoor greenhouse I set up with one of those rolling shelves. I was basically ready to feed my whole family from the garden...

So far I've got a whopping 3 bell peppers, 6 tomatoes and one tiny baby squash that's starting to grow.

Granted we had a very hot summer that I wasn't prepared for and even watering 3 times a day a lot of my stuff just burnt, plus the ravenous squirells that ate every seedling I put out.

But I'll do it all again next year because it was a blast.

Exactly this. Woodworking, gardening, working out, macrame, knitting, eating, making spices, building robots.

For a while I felt bad about all the stuff I learned and didn't keep up with but at a certain point I just accepted that most of the hobbies I pick up won't last long and it's been great since then.

It reminds me of those people who get working dogs and then lock them up in a tiny apartment.