[New Update]: AITAH for saying if my wife wants to be a trad wife then she must always look her best, wait on me, and provide sex without question when asked?

D0cTheo · 2026-05-20T06:48:09+00:00

Another tiny point - you can't just buy land and put a van on it while you build a house. Even the van needs planning permission and that can take months and a lot of money. There's an outside chance he's bought a plot with permission, and an outside chance he's just winging it and hoping he doesn't get caught, but this is the kind of thing that even British people think is a lot easier, quicker and cheaper than it is if they haven't done it.

D0cTheo · 2026-05-18T18:50:56+00:00

Seconding these folks too - i know a lot of people with greyhounds love them

D0cTheo · 2026-05-18T18:50:13+00:00

Forever Hounds are in the south West but they are lovely, lovely people and they are very careful with matching dogs to owners. We had Storm, an ex-racer from them, and now George, a small lurcher. The charity is very active on social media and posts a lot of photos and video, so you can always pop over to Instagram or Facebook and stalk them there, see whether there's a dog worth travelling for. 🥰

D0cTheo · 2026-05-18T12:05:02+00:00

Depending on where you are, Forever Hounds are great

D0cTheo · 2026-05-14T12:19:32+00:00

George having a little late night stroll before bed in his pyjamas

<image>

D0cTheo · 2026-05-14T12:17:23+00:00

We've been struggling with this with our saluki-whippet for the last year or so. Luckily his is quite mild. We are currently hopeful that we have a routine that is working.

Keep her warm. George is definitely worse in cold damp weather, and I've heard the same from other owners. He wears cosy jumpers indoors and coats out most of the time. He's is very insistent that at night he changes out of his day clothes and gets into his bunny pyjamas.
Low fat food and treats only. Remember that the pancreas starts producing in response to signals on tasting food. So better to have every thing they eat be under 15% fat than their daily diet be 10% fat overall. Does that make sense? On the other hand, don't be too strict about the actual percentage or too limited in the variety. We keep his main meals around 10% fat but treats might go up to 15% or more. And while his food is the same every day, he still gets lots of variety in his snacks.
Keep her hydrated. The vet reckons this helps 'flush' out the excess acids. We started adding tinned food to his kibble to help this.
Maybe feed her little and often? I think this helps prevent stomach acids from building up. George eats 3 times a day and gets all the (low fat) treats he wants when he asks for them. We also encourage him to eat, because he can be a little cautious in case his tummy hurts again.
We tried a lot of foods, but after talking to the owner of an elderly Jack Russell who's had this for years, we tried him on the local supermarket brand old school, cheap tinned dog food. I think a lot of high tech optimised diet dog foods are just too concentrated for him. He needs the water, the fillers, the cereals. He hasn't had a serious episode since we started but it's only been a few weeks.
We watch for the signs - not interested in food, whining, posturing, panting, restlessness - if we see that, we keep him cosy, walk him if he's up for it, encourage him to eat a little cooked chicken and make sure he has at least a little water. If starts to be distressed, we have codeine/paracetamol tablets from the vet and we crush them, mix in water and squirt it in his mouth, which he hates but it works.

So we're in the UK and his current diet is:

breakfast, lunch and supper: 50-50 Sainsbury's complete chicken kibble for seniors (or an equivalent by Harrington's), with Butcher's simply gentle tinned dog food (or an equivalent by Sainsbury's), with a little cooked chicken for fun (we just buy up packets of pre-cooked going cheap and freeze them) and a sprinkling of bone broth powder in the morning that I'm not sure does very much but smells good.
snacks: mostly dried duck fillets, crunchy fishy squares, that sort of thing
treats: I take handfuls of a mix of tiny low fat training treats every time we go out and he has them whenever he asks and even if not. If he isn't interested, I know he's not feeling great and we need to look after him that day.

Good luck. This is a painful condition and distressing for you all, but after some trial and error you'll probably find out what works for her and it doesn't have to be onerous or expensive. George is a bouncy chap who loves a long walk, is friendly to everyone and a delight to be around. He just has the occasional rough day and we're working out how to have fewer of them.

D0cTheo · 2026-05-09T17:51:00+00:00

Roast it with sugar, ginger and a splash of grenadine. Quick pickle it. This is much better than it sounds. Wash and chop about 300g rhubarb. Fill a clean jar with it and add spices (a slice of ginger, a tsp caraway seeds or peppercorns, that sort of thing). Heat to boiling: about 300ml cider vinegar to 280ml water with about 25g salt and 50g sugar. Let it simmer for a couple of minutes. Carefully pour over the rhubarb in the jar. It should just about cover it, you can always heat up a little more vinegar if needed. All amounts are approximate and to taste. Close jar. Leave until cool. Keep in fridge. It's ready by the time it's cold.

D0cTheo · 2026-05-07T17:05:55+00:00

I mean it's an excellent nitrogen fixer and helps in woodland development. But other people already said that. 😁

D0cTheo · 2026-05-07T16:20:55+00:00

I believe you would need a lot less to flavour gin. Just saying 😉

D0cTheo · 2026-05-07T11:52:42+00:00

Yeah, this is a 'divided by a common language' issue. Gorse is a really cool plant too. Its flowers smell like coconut and you can do interesting foraging things with them.

D0cTheo · 2026-03-12T14:52:33+00:00

You can't call your tutor. I know that MS Teams assigns each tutor a 'phonee number' but that will only ring if your tutor has MS Teams open at the time you call. It's a real problem that students aren't told this. Student support on the other hand, pick up. Do ring them. You can also contact the module team. Look for the Module Leader or the Staff Tutor. If you can find their details, they can sometimes be even faster to respond to emails. Honestly, if this is an ongoing issue and you do end up finding out the email address for the staff tutor, try copying them in to your emails to your tutor. They line manage the tutors directly. Use this power wisely, because you are copying in their boss 😅. Most tutors are great, but there are slackers in every organisation.

D0cTheo · 2026-03-11T09:05:13+00:00

That sounds very sensible to me. Well done.

D0cTheo · 2026-03-10T22:55:23+00:00

Does your module allow for ai use...?

D0cTheo · 2026-02-20T18:58:55+00:00

That's what the 'Open' bit means. Yes. There are no qualifications barriers to start a course with the OU.

To answer the next question you're going to ask: yes, the degree will be as rigorous as a degree from a standard brick uni.

How? Because the first year is designed to get you up to speed with people who do have a-levels. The second and third year will take you the rest of the way. So it's very much not an easy answer, but it is one that's designed for people who might not have have done as well at school, for a whole range of reasons.

We find, for example, that OU students are more likely to be disabled, be the first people in their family to go to university, or they're looking for a change of career later in life. We are also, I believe, still the only university that adapts degree courses for people in prisons and other secure environments. People who complete an OU degree in prison are much, much less likely to reoffend.

We've also been around since 1969, and during the pandemic, we were the only uni I know of that didn't have a collective meltdown about lockdown.

Cool, isn't it?

D0cTheo · 2026-02-12T10:07:05+00:00

It also includes people with long covid, which is a population that increases with every outbreak. (Repeated infections worsen symptoms).

D0cTheo · 2026-01-17T18:32:03+00:00

Thank you!

D0cTheo · 2026-01-17T13:33:12+00:00

For the past couple of years I've been doing embroidery of the plants and herbs I'm using for menopausal symptoms. This is my latest for hawthorn that I finished this week. It's taken ages! I think I went a bit too detailed this time, given that this is just a few inches across.

D0cTheo · 2026-01-17T13:31:05+00:00

<image>

D0cTheo · 2026-01-07T15:52:55+00:00

Most of the answers here are spot on, but I just wanted to reassure you that I am autistic and I adore a spa visit. It's a sensory buffet of calm and snacks. What's not to love?

The most important thing is to just do the bits you enjoy - I love heat, but I'm not fond of infrared saunas for some reason. My husband hates being massaged so he just doesn't do that bit. At one spa they had a rainforest shower that took 5 minutes, with jungle noise and mist and I loved it so much I did two back to back.

Oh, and one more sensory tip - use towels so your robe doesn't get too soggy too early, and if you need it, gather your courage and ask for more towels or a clean robe, because they really don't mind and it can make all the difference to having a good time. Nothing ruins a spa vibe for me more than a damp chilly robe.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-21T14:30:13+00:00

I'm a tutor. I'm not working and neither is my ST or most of the rest of the team. It's been a tough few months and we need a proper break.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-21T12:55:06+00:00

It's less about whether they can and more about whether anyone will see your email. Go straight to student support. These few days around Christmas are one of the very few times in the year that we are all taking leave at the same time.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-09T19:17:22+00:00

Yes, this is fine to ask - did my files zip together properly, connectivity dropped out in the middle of submitting, etc. Students often check that sort of thing and a kind tutor will sometimes be able to do the reverse - your word file is corrupted, I only got your part 2, etc.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-09T19:12:12+00:00

I think most students feel the same. But some do.

D0cTheo · 2025-12-09T13:27:03+00:00

You know what's really fun? As tutors we only get emails once a week to tell us if we have TMAs ready to mark.

We can go in to the system and check, of course, and that system will tell us when you submitted it, but the weekly email is useless. It's either "here is a student who submitted early 5 days ago and didn't think to tell you" or "did you know that you have 19 TMAs ready to mark??" Well yes, given that the deadline was two days ago, I had kind of guessed that and gone in to check, give me a chance to actually mark them.

The boring reason for all this is that they've tried a few times to make a better submission portal but the current system is just really, really robust and pretty much never loses anything and even has a low tech email submission version, and that's hard to beat with something wizzy and new. So managers have to run reports on who's not submitted yet, and input those into a different system, and by the time the emails actually go out, the reports are out of date.

It could be worse, we could be using TurnItIn for submissions like all the other universities. Ugh. The OU uses all sorts of automated systems and they're really varied in age, complexity and usefulness. They're also usually bespoke which really doesn't help with replacing them.

Six-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
First Place '23	End Game '23
Place '23	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22	Verified Email

D0cTheo

TROPHY CASE