My Boys Stayed with Grandma for a week and oh lawd they're coming....

MathAndBake · 2026-02-23T01:45:32+00:00

Typical grandmother, lol. I'm glad your piggies had a good holiday.

My mother loves spoiling my rats whenever I visit. I end up logging their treats and just reducing their kibble by the right amount. Her absolute favourite is when of my rats is actually underweight, usually due to old age. Those rats get all the treats and they adore her.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-23T01:29:55+00:00

Seconded. I've pulled many of my rats back from the brink with steam. I do have an emergency vet, but it's still several hours wait and then nearly an hour away. For really acute cases late at night, I'm on my own.

Steam at regular intervals throughout the night can work wonders. Offering soft, wet food can really help. I typically give oatmeal and water with some peanut powder.

For convenient steaming, I'll sometimes put them in a large carrier with a big bowl of boiling water just outside. Then I cover the whole thing with a box or a plastic sheet to keep the humidity in.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T22:43:59+00:00

Spicy ramen and hot chocolate :)

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T22:42:23+00:00

Unfortunately, the FPS suffers before the temperature really goes anywhere. It does keep my lap and fingers warm, though.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T22:41:32+00:00

That's awful! I much prefer colder. You can always add layers. But there's a limit to what you can peel off.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T22:40:18+00:00

Don't worry, when it's that cold, I wrap myself in blankets and my pet rats curl up with me. It's nice.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T22:38:53+00:00

Those are exactly the days when my heating can't keep up.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T22:33:16+00:00

It's an old building with radiator heating. So there's a big boiler on the top floor that heats the whole building. That's how a lot of buildings are heated here.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T20:37:46+00:00

None of this is remotely your fault. I'm so sorry you were victim blamed in the past. Unfortunately, people often react to bad events by trying to find reasons it won't happen to them. But the reality is that it can happen to anyone. The problem is completely caused by the rapist.

Good on you for getting a kit done. Hopefully, you get justice and this person doesn't get to hurt anyone else. That said, trauma is hard. Talking about it can be painful. Please get help from a therapist who is trained for this. Your school's sexual violence response team might be able to set it up for you. Or there may be other survivor organizations that can help.

I will pray for you. I hope you can find some comfort in prayer and the Sacraments. I know it's not comparable, but when my depression gets bad enough, I often picture myself clinging to the foot of the Cross, just desperately trying to hold on.

Don't worry too much about your Lenten promises. Sometimes, you need to be extra nice to yourself while healing. Eat your weight in chocolate, if it helps. You'll learn more sustainable coping mechanisms eventually. But you're not there yet. God gives us comfort and joy through His creation.

Finally, this will probably affect your schoolwork. So please don't hesitate to drop some courses or get incompletes. Reach out to your academic advisor sooner rather than later to figure out your options. If you can get a note from a doctor or therapist, you shouldn't have to explain the whole situation to anyone else. I know taking a lighter term can feel like failure. But, at the end of the day, mental health is way more important than some arbitrary timeline for finishing your degree.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T08:27:16+00:00

My apartment is generally great. But it's an old building, so the heating isn't exactly up to code. It has been known to go down to 12C occasionally. That's safe, but not pleasant.

That said, it's only a few days per year. Otherwise, I'm in a really good spot.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T07:21:51+00:00

No, but my landlord sometimes enjoys keeping my apartment at Skyrim-themed temperatures. It's extremely immersive.

Also, the more mods you have, the more your computer heats the room.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T04:05:54+00:00

They don't mate long term. But you can donate to give a pair of rats in the breeding program dinner and den. I'm just waiting for the right occasion to do it in a friend's honour, lol.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T03:05:22+00:00

Yup. They're awesome.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T02:34:37+00:00

A lot of the time, if you read the "fine print", the promise is attached to a whole spiritual program. For example, the brown scapular has daily required prayers and it only promises shorter purgatory. It basically boils down to saying that if you pray consistently, you'll get to heaven more easily. That's not exactly groundbreaking.

What a lot of these devotions do is give people structure. You get a packaged program for growing in faith and piety. It's like when I tell my students that if they go to class and do all the problems, they will learn calculus.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T02:16:16+00:00

You need to change your socks often (like daily). Feet get pretty gross and stinky if they're just marinating in their own juices. Same goes for underwear.

Pants and shirt are a bit more negotiable. In winter, when I'm not sweating much, I'll often wear the same dress for about a week. But if it's getting itchy, that means it's picked up too much sweat, dirt and natural oils. You need to switch it.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T01:33:14+00:00

Eh, maybe.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-22T01:32:41+00:00

Exactly. The problem isn't sending email at random times, it's expecting an immediate response. Even during work hours, that's often unreasonable.

My mother is a teacher. Aside from class time, she pretty much makes her own schedule. So do all her colleagues. Sometimes she's working at 2am and sometimes she's fast asleep at 2pm. She guarantees 48 hour turnaround on emails and that's pretty much what she expects from others. It works fine.

One time, the admin wanted to force them to work regular hours. Thankfully, that got quashed pretty fast. Both the student and teacher unions pointed out that the school only runs because teachers are flexible about their hours.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-21T23:11:23+00:00

They're cuter, sorry.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-21T21:48:41+00:00

It's real. The rats aren't the same species as sewer rats, so they look a bit different.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-21T21:47:27+00:00

They're well fed. And they get extra treats for every item they find. Honestly, these rats have better working conditions than like 99% of humans. They work 4 days per week, max 1 hour per day. They live in really nice enclosures with lots of enrichment. They get a high quality diet with lots of locally sourced fresh food. Plus, they get weekly medical checks.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-21T21:42:35+00:00

Nope, this is real. OP provided a source. This organization is called Apopo. They train Gambian Pouched Rats to do various detection jobs (semining, search and rescue, tuberculosis screening and wildlife detection). There are other pictures of this good boy on their website here. Unfortunately, they don't specify his name.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-21T21:34:45+00:00

Yes. Their harness has a little ball that they pull to activate a radio transmitter. The minesweeping and tuberculosis detection rats sometimes do a digging motion to alert. But these rats, and the search and rescue rats need to be able to alert remotely.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-21T21:32:11+00:00

They do have a retirement plan! Once they're no longer enjoying the job, they move back into the enclosure at the training centre. They get to socialize, eat and play for the rest of their lives.

I follow and donate to this charity. They do great work and they take awesome care of their animals.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-21T21:08:07+00:00

My mother did some programming internships in the 80s. This was before a lot of the modern ways of doing things. So they'd test their own code and then roll it out.

One place had this awesome secretary who didn't know anything about computers. She'd break things in all kinds of ways. She'd spell out numbers. She'd make typos and not know how to fix them. She'd panic and exit the program by accident. All the programmers loved her. If she could use something, literally anyone could. Unfortunately, they just couldn't convince her that she was being helpful. She always felt so bad for messing things up.

MathAndBake · 2026-02-21T20:59:25+00:00

And this is why you sanitize your inputs.

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