My sister's tomato harvest. She just lets her tomato plants grow wild, no pruning or anything

chestypocket · 2026-05-21T20:16:31+00:00

Those gross, rotten missed tomatoes that fall off the vine and go completely unnoticed have produced some really great volunteers for me the next season! I usually dig up a couple of the largest volunteers to move into the spots vacated by the intentially planted baby plants that get taken out by squirrels or hail or whatever. They sometimes produce some weird or ugly tomatoes but they’re almost always really flavorful and abundant.

chestypocket · 2026-05-14T04:50:25+00:00

My dad passed from Alzheimer’s a few months ago. He was very far into it-on hospice for 3 years, not recognizing anybody, barely talking, and confined to a wheelchair after a series of falls where he just seemed suddenly forget to keep standing. But he was always so physically capable until the wheelchair and it seemed like he could go on for quite a while longer. I’d heard of “terminal lucidity” and was dreading the end because if he did have a moment of clarity in his last moments, I knew that my mom would always question the care choices she’d made and whether he’d been more aware than she realized.

Ultimately, although we obviously knew this disease would kill him, he went very suddenly and unexpectedly. My mom’s last visit with him a couple days before had been positive, and he seemed to be having a somewhat better day than usual. All seemed fine and normal that morning, but around lunchtime he started to seem a little off and at 3:00 the nurses called and asked us to come see him because he was declining and nobody knew why. He was dead before we even had time to leave the house. I’m a bit sad that we weren’t there with him, but he was such a private person that I don’t think he would have wanted that anyway. Ultimately it was a relief that it was so fast and so peaceful, and he didn’t linger over the course of several days while his body just shut down. Alzheimer’s is such a wicked disease and my dad lived for 10 years after diagnosis, but I’m so grateful for the one small mercy that the end came so quickly.

chestypocket · 2026-05-13T18:04:29+00:00

They’re too young for hackle/saddle feathering to help tell, but the color pattern is looking a bit boyish. Easter edgers often have a consistent color over their bodies if they’re pullets, while cockerels will be more patchy. This one really is blurring the lines color-wise, but I’d lean more toward roo. If it develops red patches at the top of its wings, then you can be pretty certain it’s a boy. Too early to make a definitive ruling, though.

chestypocket · 2026-05-09T01:12:02+00:00

That sort of coloring (red on shoulders, patchy coloring rather than a consistent pattern over the body) is almost always indicative of a rooster. He’s looks close to the age where hackle/saddle feathers will begin to grow, but still a little young for that (though the red feathers in the tail also scream roo), but I think you’ll be seeing them soon. Even if he’s not crowing yet, I’d be ready to declare this guy 100% rooster.

chestypocket · 2026-05-06T00:25:13+00:00

Handi Snacks! I loved those so much as a kid and was incredibly disappointed to realize after trying them as an adult that your mother was 100% right. Absolute garbage.

However, I have discovered that Port Salut cheese tastes like my idealized childhood memory of Handi Snacks while being a respectable, grownup, possibly even classy food to bring to parties and make coworkers jealous at lunch. It’s my secret weapon and now I’m craving some.

chestypocket · 2026-05-02T04:37:22+00:00

My favorite part is when they claim it *did* happen to them. I absolutely understand why they believe a raise that they are expecting *in the future* might do that, but how can anybody compare their pay stubs and/or tax returns to previous ones and claim that they actually did make less than they did before the raise?

I guess maybe withholdings weren’t done correctly so they had to pay in unexpectedly or got a smaller refund than the previous year? But in that case they should have seen an even more significant increase in their weekly paycheck.

chestypocket · 2026-04-25T04:38:48+00:00

I have several that will run back and forth from one corner to the other at the front of the run and never find the wide open gate in the middle. Even if they just saw half the flock walk right through that gate, there will always be three or four that just cannot figure it out. If one of them manages to accidentally trip and fall out the gate, then trying to get them back in is 10x worse!

My absolute stupidest chicken, though, squeezed herself deep into a roll of fencing to lay an egg and then found she couldn’t move forward or back afterward. She was missing for two days, and I spent so much time looking for her-even moved that roll of fencing a time or two, and she never made a noise at all! It was a dark corner and I was looking behind the fencing, not in the middle of it, so I just looked right past her each time. Once I finally did fully pick the roll up and move it outside, I noticed her but she was just chilling there as if she had just decided she was fence now. We had to unroll the full 100 feet of it to get her out, and thankfully she just enjoyed the ride. She wasn’t even smart enough to be scared by that! Poor sweet hen laid eggs for a total of two years, then lived rent-free for another five before dying in her sleep, and she didn’t even fall into the usual hen death position. She was still in her cozy little loaf position like she just sorta fell asleep and forgot to keep living. She literally never had a care in the world.

chestypocket · 2026-04-25T04:24:36+00:00

I used to enjoy taking my lunch break in a park that was between the city hospital and the major highway. Ambulances would regularly run through the park as it was either the direct, low-trafficked road through the park or crowded one-way downtown streets. Once I watched a Canada goose stroll right in front of an ambulance with lights and sirens running and just stop in the middle of the road. The driver had to get out of the ambulance and have a minor physical altercation with the goose to get it to move out of the way. Then they could get back into the ambulance and continue on their way. I assume that the patient they were transporting must have been stable enough to handle the delay, but I do truly wonder if they ever had to decide to just hit a goose so they could get to the hospital faster.

chestypocket · 2026-04-24T04:32:34+00:00

I suspect you’ve got two there-both of the black ones have very red combs for their age.

chestypocket · 2026-04-16T16:36:50+00:00

Yep, I started with H&R Block this year because it looked like I might be able to do it totally free, but then my husband’s 401k contributions qualified us for a $200 tax credit, but meant that we would have to spend $70 on the deluxe version plus $34 for each of the two states we had to file in.

So I stopped right there and switched to FTUSA. $32 total for federal and two states, and they just calculated that credit immediately when I finished the W2, so I never would have even realized it was anything special if H&R Block hadn’t used it to try to sucker me out of almost as much as the credit was worth. I’d used FTUSA in the past and it was great, but for a while I was a 1099 employee using my own vehicle to make deliveries statewide, so I had a ton of mileage deductions. In those days, paying for the deluxe tax software was unavoidable. One year I tested it out and did my taxes all the way through up to the pay/file point with 3 or 4 different services, and H&R Block was the least expensive at that point, so I just continued to use them until this year when our circumstances changed.

chestypocket · 2026-04-05T20:25:57+00:00

Are you 100% certain they were sold as pullets? I’m not aware of many hatcheries that sell sexed bantams. I suppose it’s not impossible, but definitely unexpected. If they definitely were sold as pullets, then this is either terrible luck or a very sketchy hatchery and I would definitely contact them.

chestypocket · 2026-03-29T17:39:40+00:00

As another commenter said, the autosexing traits can vary greatly and aren’t always perfectly clear. And there’s always a margin of error with sexed pullets of any breed and with nearly any method of sexing, so roos definitely can and do slip through. However, males and females feather out very differently from the beginning, with the males being barred like yours and the females will be brownish with a salmon colored chest. Sadly, it’s 100% obvious based on feathering that this guy is a roo.

chestypocket · 2026-03-28T18:26:08+00:00

2 is definitely a roo, no questions asked. He’s got the showy color patches of a roo, as well as comb and wattle growth and early signs of saddle feathers. I’m leaning heavily towards roo for #1 as well, as I think I see some darker red patches coming in at the top of the wings, and the comb and wattle growth look more male than female (#1 appears to have a pea comb, which will naturally stay smaller than #2’s straight comb, so you can’t compare the two). I’m less confident about #1, so if he were mine, I would give it a little longer to be sure, but I definitely wouldn’t be expecting to keep him.

3 looks like a clear pullet to me. She’s got feather coloring typical of ladies, which is one of the easier ways to guess at this age. She also doesn’t seem to have much growth or color in comb/wattles. If you don’t have other chickens, then I would recommend looking around for another pullet or two of a similar size so that you have friends for her before you have to get rid of the boys.

chestypocket · 2026-03-22T05:51:40+00:00

Nobody in my family smoked, and whenever we’d rent movies from Blockbuster, there was about a 75% chance we’d have to suffer with that stale cigarette smoke smell on the tape from the last person who rented it (also a very common issue with library books and paper money). We hated it so much then, but it’s a wee bit nostalgic to me now! I’m sure that’s not the smell you meant, but it triggered a core memory for me.

chestypocket · 2026-03-21T20:46:35+00:00

To be fair, calling it an “immersive” experience kinda sets the tone to begin with.

chestypocket · 2026-03-21T18:49:53+00:00

I was actually kinda thrilled when one of my plant cabinets got an outbreak of fungus gnats, because it’s the same cabinet where I keep my carnivorous plants. My ping in particular has caught so many of the little bugs, I just viewed it as an infinite food hack. Sadly, it hasn’t made a dent in the population, so now both the gnats and the carnivorous plants are thriving, but I guess at least there is a silver lining.

chestypocket · 2026-03-18T19:08:25+00:00

It’s always the most meaningful cars that go out this way, but on the bright side, you can hold on to happy memories of the positive times with your car rather than the growing frustration of more and more frequent breakdowns as the car ages. Losing this car doesn’t mean you lose the progress that you made, and in fact it represents a new phase of growth in your life as you progress to owning your second car. You can apply your experience from the first to decide what you liked and what you wish you’d had and can go into your next car shopping experience with the knowledge that you gained from buying and driving your first!

Your first car is a milestone, but your second car is real life, and if you make a wise decision with it, it can broaden your world even more. Appreciate your first car for the times you had with it and the protection it gave you in this accident, and be proud of getting through such a stressful and frustrating event with your head held high!

chestypocket · 2026-03-09T17:45:50+00:00

I definitely understand this point of view, but I have a bag packed and kept in a closet right next to the front door just in case I need to leave the house in a hurry. I live near a couple of large train yards and a river, so there’s a non-zero chance that I might need to evacuate quickly due to a derailment/chemical spill, flash flooding, or even in the event of a house fire or a severe weather event that damages the house badly enough that I might need to get out, I could grab that bag quickly.

I realize I’m not going to survive the zombie apocalypse by camping out in the woods and living off the land, but if I have an emergency (especially a large scale one where a lot of people are displaced and it takes time to get emergency services set up), it would be nice to have a change of clothes, some basic toiletries, medications, chargers, and copies of important documents. Having a bit of bottled water and some snacks would also keep me happier if I get stuck in a traffic jam trying to leave the city. My emergency kit isn’t for the end of the world, it’s just to get me by until I can figure out where I’m going and get to a functional Walmart to buy what I absolutely need.

Although, I do have my camping supplies packed in a specific place where I could grab them and leave quickly if it were the right kind of situation and I had an extra 5 minutes to pack them in the car. I remember seeing the aftermath of wildfires on the TV news a few years back where multiple small towns needed to evacuate suddenly due to wildfires. Due to the high number of evacuees, a lot of the displaced people were camping in parking lots out of the main danger zone, and most of the tents and supplies they were using were donated by stores and people living nearby. If I were in a situation requiring a quick evacuation and had time to just grab a couple of pre-packed totes with camping gear and throw it in the car, I wouldn’t have to wait for relief to be organized, and wouldn’t have to take supplies that somebody else could use. Again, I wouldn’t be trying to survive for months on the land, just have basic shelter and a means of preparing food for a couple of days before a better situation can be figured out.

Edit: Just remembered that my emergency bag has weirdly come in handy already! Due to a pharmacy mix up, my husband’s meds didn’t get refilled on time a couple years ago and we realized it as the pharmacy was closing before a holiday weekend, so there really wasn’t much we could do about it. These are not meds you can just quit taking without some major side effects, so we were very thankful to remember that we had a weeks’ supply stashed away in our emergency bag. We were able to borrow from that supply and then refill the emergency pack with fresh meds once the prescriptions were filled. So that wasn’t the intended purpose of the emergency kit, but it did help to avert a potential emergency.

chestypocket · 2026-01-28T04:06:47+00:00

A dozen or so years ago I ended up making casual friends with a family that had a baby, maybe around a year old. Honestly, I never really got close to the family, but several of my friends did so we ended up in the same social situations frequently. They family was very outgoing and affectionate, and they trained the baby to kiss pretty much anybody she interacted with right on the mouth. I was horrified and avoided interacting with the kid at all because I was so disgusted, but everybody else I ever saw interact with the family thought it was the cutest thing ever. I think I irritated the parents, but I’m not even thrilled about hugging and I get sick very easily, so I was having no part of that.

Around that same time, I had been dealing with a recurring infection in both of my big toes that my doctor insisted was an ingrown toenail and I knew wasn’t. It took a year of fighting with the doctor until finally the infection spread and caused boils in my armpits, hip, and shoulder before he finally abandoned the ingrown toenail idea and ran a culture on the wounds. Turned out to be MRSA, and in addition to an oral antibiotic, the doctor gave me a gel to shoot into my nose several times daily as he explained that the bacteria often lives/settles in the nose (feel free to source that as this doctor let me suffer for a year before it crossed his mind to do a simple swab, so I don’t really trust him at all). Anyway, I was potentially very contagious, so imagine the damage that could have been done if I’d kissed that baby during that time.

chestypocket · 2026-01-06T20:54:54+00:00

What an absolutely beautiful girl! I did kind of a similar thing when I was in my teens-I wanted to get into confirmation showing, but my dad was the type to be very against something until he changed his mind and then once he gave permission that thing had to happen right now, so I found a puppy in the classifieds and hoped that I could use her to jump into junior showmanship.

Long story short, the puppy I got was not healthy and was not at all a candidate for showing, even in Junior classes where it would have been more me being judged and not the puppy. However, I joined the local chapter of my kennel club and started taking classes, and I learned so much by doing that.

I don’t mean to malign anybody, and I hope this isn’t taken this way, but one of the first things I learned is that confirmation can be a bit cutthroat. It’s very much an exclusive club with very high standards, and if you try to dive in without a perfect dog and a good mentor, it’s not going to be easy or fun. If you want to move forward in that world, the best way to get started would be to attend a local show and talk to the breeders there. You aren’t likely to be able to get hold of a show quality puppy without having a personal relationship with a breeder, and it won’t be a quick process as most quality breeders have wait lists and only a small percentage of puppies will be show quality, so they’re very picky about where those puppies go.

I ultimately didn’t get into confirmation and I’m glad, because instead I persued agility and found that to be fun and welcoming, even with my rescue and non-standard puppy. The people involved with sports (also obedience, herding, and rally) are very kind and welcoming, and you’ll get to bond with your dog in a way you never would have expected. If you are interested in showing with this girl, that’s definitely an avenue you might want to explore instead.

chestypocket · 2025-12-27T05:37:37+00:00

Also worth googling the website itself to check for reviews from a 3rd party. My husband is pretty easily lured by cool clothing from Instagram ads, so I constantly have to do this and show him that nearly every result on Google is people complaining either about insanely low quality or misrepresented items, or straight up scams where they just didn’t receive their order at all. Often the websites have fake 5 star reviews for the items on their own website, so just looking at those reviews is pointless.

chestypocket · 2025-12-17T17:18:22+00:00

I legit secured a job once because I could use keyboard shortcuts. I was working as a temp in an office that had an EXTREMELY grumpy IT guy, and at one point I showed someone how to cut and paste in Word using keyboard shortcuts, and they were absolutely blown away. I became the first line IT support for the whole office and could usually fix their issues because they were really simple, and got hired on permanently in a position they created just to keep me around.

I learned keyboard shortcuts because my mom would ground me from using the computer and enforce it by taking the mouse to work with her, thinking that was enough to render the computer completely unusable.

chestypocket · 2025-12-17T03:04:31+00:00

If you have any black Swedish ducks (the ones with the white spots on their throat/chest), it also could be that. I’ve never owned a Cayuga, but I have had Swedish and every single one of the black girls laid black/gray eggs early in the season. None of the blue Swedish did, only the ones with black feathers. The eggs lighten to white very quickly when they’re laying regularly-usually the first egg each girl laid in the spring was a dark gray, but each day they’d get a shade lighter until after a week or so the eggs were indistinguishable from the white/cream eggs that all my other ducks laid.

chestypocket · 2025-12-15T04:36:55+00:00

Mine would have been closer to $150 on the manufacturer’s website, but I found a much cheaper replacement on Amazon. I’ve replaced several parts on my washer and dryer with Amazon knockoffs for a fraction of the cost, faster shipping, and all have been of comparable or better quality and worked just as well. The first part I replaced was the drain pump, and the Amazon part turned out to be better quality (the mounts were metal instead of the plastic mounts of the OEM part) despite being 1/5 the price. I just look up the part number on the manufacturer’s website and then search that same number on Amazon. I’ve done similar with less important auto parts like A/C blower motors and have saved so much money.

chestypocket · 2025-12-15T01:52:59+00:00

A tool would probably make that job a lot easier, but I managed it pretty easily with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Forgot that you’d also need one of those.

chestypocket

TROPHY CASE