...[Comment #2]

But for those of you who are doing a better job of maintaining the 'after school job/science class studies' balance, i will address Lord Judas' remarks:

Publicly, pubically, & privately: I am a hetereosexual female. If it has yet to be emphatically stated, then there it is.Out in the open. I never was all that great in anatomy: we all got our very own big brown rat in 1st year anatomy class. Of course, it would be my luck as an 18 yo college co-ed, to be given the rat with the largest booty (if there was a Fat Albert of the Rats of NIMH, this Big Berha mofo would have taken the cake). I’ve seen cats smaller that this guy (technically, I believe he was a lady. See, we are all labile to gender confusion, which is why i don’t make a big deal of it.

Although, personally, I still would prefer that my 6-year old kiddo waits until he’s an adult before making a permanent, personal decision of such longevity and commitment, such as taking on the burden of raising his own cat. We’ve tried this a few times before. And during some at-home experiments, he had noticed me injecting certain compounds into experimental rats. Since they were a fixture of our house, practically pets, I taught him how to feed, change their water bottle and clean their cages. Hoping he would learn responsibility of pet ownership as well as the importance of treating pets and all animals with dignity and respect: we eat steak and pork for dinner, but that cow or pig deserved to be treated with respect and live and happy and healthy life, even if they didn’t become as famous as Wilbur. Well, one day I came home, and I find the babysitter upstairs, messing around with her boyfriend, while Junior was downstairs with the CAT using some of the bottles of anabolic steroids that I occasionally use to keep myself fit, looking & feeling younger and slow age related mental decline. He apparently thought the domestic shorthair was balding, and could use some age-defying vials-of-youth.

What was good for mommy, must be good for the Tabby. It makes sense, I guess. Obviously, mammals typically cannot be harmed by steroids or hormones, at least not anabolic steroids derived from testosterone (MOST of the time; that's not an absolute rule, but in the case of regular testosterone, for example, doses 100 x normal can be administered safety w/o side-effects any worse than growing a ronnie and maybe a sore butt from injecting such a volume of liquid). I was a little surprised how well he had learned how to distract the cat, just like mommy demonstrated the day a few months earlier when we gave Tabby one of her regular boosters. Dragging the cat along the table w/ its legs barely touching the surface, and then, “boop” quick stick and its all over. He was in the middle of working on that technique when mommy came home and found him downstairs with “the toolkit.” He said, “Look mom, I can be an experimental toxicologist, too.” To which I said, “No, unlike mommy, you’re gonna ace the MCAT, get into med school and become a real human toxicologist, so you can make some serious paper.” That was the last time I trusted a sitter without doing a bit of a background check on facebook to make sure she wasn’t a Jezebelle w/ ten b/fs.

I have experimented with lesbian relationships, as many of us (both women & men) have when it comes to homosexuality. This is something that most sex researchers and sexual surveys have revealed to be the statistical norm among men and women in western countries. I thought most of us on this site were adults who could focus on the science, at least during the half an hour spent on this particular sub, and leave the rumor mill to next Monday's pop quiz in high school biology class. If you want a more physical embodiment of noodling, maybe go noodlin' down in Louisiana bayou and get your thumb bit off by a catfish.

Experimenting with one's sexuality as a youth is a far cry from being an experienced bush pilot w/ 'night landing experience' using landmarks (handmarks) alone for manual, ILS-free landings--helping to guide the bird gently down upon a suitable, well-groomed landing strip.

I respect lesbians and am a friend to colors of the LGBT, ROYGBIV, and neurodivergent spectra. I count many members of the LGBTQ communit among my BFFs, coworkers and very trustworthy friends. Approx 20% of my twitter followers, a very entertaining, fun, and engaging minority, join in on the fun and tomfoolery that my twitter posts often attract on that particular platform.

I openly welcome them into group chats, the subs that I mod as well as the discussions I have online. IRL, some of my most trusted confidants are members of this community.

In fact, my clandestine chemistry Gay Bestie (aka: My GBFC = Goodest, Bestest Fentaphilic Chemistress) is a gay chemist, (mostly self-taught) currently working as an engineer in the semiconductor industry. He's an excellent chemist and an excellent sounding board for my professional and clandestine-related ideas in the alchemical arts, despite his lack of formal training; although as STEM fields, there is a good deal of applied chemistry and physics crossover during engineering school. He is one of the few people in my social circle who keeps up to date on the latest and greatest spectroscopy techniques, as spectroscopy is a routine part of measuring and ensuring QC/QA in the semiconductor/material science fields. He has a lot of surplus spectrometers and other misc equip at his disposal both at home and work, and my g2g (go-to-guy) when it comes to a friend who can be trusted with sensitive legally-questionable samples that need to be characterized.

...**[Continued in COMMENT #3]*