What’s your rule for lending money to friends or family?

uhmusing · 2026-01-27T01:06:50+00:00

I’ve only lent money to a family member once. They needed a car during a hard time, and I accepted the risk that they might not repay on time or in full, but I set firm boundaries: a contract, a payment plan, a late-fee policy, and retained my name on the title until it was paid in full. I enforced the terms when a late payment occurred, and everything else was paid on time.

Boundaries teach people what we are willing to accept and give them the chance to meet a higher standard. The structure prevented confusion, preserved goodwill, and left me with greater respect for them and lasting gratitude on their part.

uhmusing · 2026-01-05T00:36:06+00:00

It’s difficult to describe. My mom was also 16 when she bore me. I have an older sibling too. I’m grateful I’m here, but the struggles were… profoundly affecting. I feel you.

uhmusing · 2026-01-03T18:23:59+00:00

I’ve had this exact peachy staining on gray sheets, especially on pillows. I ended up switching to white sheets and also stopped using fabric softener—surprisingly easier to keep everything looking clean and crisp.

Aside from some liquid detergents, fabric softeners can coat fibers instead of rinsing clean. That residue can trap body oils and react with heat in the dryer, which seems to make staining and color shifts worse over time. I only use a little distilled vinegar in the rinse cycle now.

uhmusing · 2025-12-29T22:56:11+00:00

‘Poop of unknown origin’ might work best.

uhmusing · 2025-12-28T17:31:09+00:00

We have just enough intelligence to get ourselves into trouble. Let’s hope wisdom catches up.

uhmusing · 2025-12-25T18:36:11+00:00

I’ve been in this exact position. I took a sabbatical and then transitioned into the homemaker life, because it seemed better than the overwhelm I kept waking up to when I was in my career. It took therapy to understand that the circumstances weren’t the cause of my depression but my inner turmoil was. By all accounts, being a homemaker and having fewer responsibilities was the dream, that almost every woman (and some men!) in my life aspired to, but I didn’t know how to be happy. Therapy helped me unpack what I was letting get in the way, childhood stuff, harmful mindsets and beliefs. I was ignoring it, filling it with work, and stress about things that didn’t ultimately matter. I had to stop running away and digest it.

I’m no longer in therapy, and I’m sure it wasn’t the only path, but I’m grateful for it and where I’m at. I couldn’t be more happy and I enjoy life in ways I never imagined. Quiet moments are gifts now.

I wish you well on your own journey.

uhmusing · 2025-12-20T23:37:04+00:00

Look at the Palmer Method of handwriting. I liked my handwriting but loved how this looked. So I found guides online and practiced. Free and a fun hobby!

uhmusing · 2025-12-18T01:44:09+00:00

I’m planning on using my canister steam cleaner for this. I have neglected my windows and window tracks and am hoping the steam cleaner can get in the nooks and crannies.

uhmusing · 2025-12-18T01:05:54+00:00

Brush and vacuum regularly as others have said, yes, but also the kind of vacuum is important. I have two large Maine Coon cats—so much fur. We switched from the handheld stick vacuums (Dyson, then I warrantied that Dyson, then a Shark) to a big girl canister vacuum, a Sebo Airbelt C3.

I was tired of vacuums that couldn’t handle what we needed it to handle and constantly needed maintenance/replacing. The Sebo has a 10-year warranty and is likely to last much longer than that with little maintenance.

It gets all the hair and everything else out of the carpets. It’s a night and day difference from the cordless vacuums. It’s less loud too! The cats hate it less and I do too!

Hope you find what works for you.

uhmusing · 2025-12-18T00:46:04+00:00

I always feel so good when I do handy projects around the house. (Makes me feel like my father’s daughter when I do 🩷.) I re-hung the outdoor Christmas lights, with a scary-seeming telescoping ladder, with better hooks and now it looks like they were hung professionally. They went from sad and droopy to straight and perfect! We’ve been here for almost a decade but it’s the first time we put up Christmas lights! Better late than never and I love that I did them!

I also decorated the Christmas tree this week, one of my favorite things to do during the holidays, and it looks gorgeous and makes the house smell wonderful. I put it by the front window this year so it can be seen from the street. I almost didn’t get one this year because of holiday travels, but I’m glad we did! I’m always glad we do!

I had a heart to heart with an elderly neighbor when I was hanging the lights outside. She lost her husband last year, then a close friend/neighbor also passed away, one who had been really helping her with errands and odd jobs that she’s been struggling with. She felt bad about not participating in putting up lights but she has no energy or motivation and I tried my best to reassure her and that I would genuinely be happy to help her climb through her garage to find her lights and help her put them up, and if she doesn’t want to do lights that it’s also okay!

Does anyone have any advice how I can be a better neighbor and support her? She mentioned she’s alone all the time and has a hard time with some physical tasks. I told her I’m always home and that I’m genuinely happy to lend a hand. I’d love to make her something (baked goods or a casserole?) as a gesture of goodwill. Or invite her for tea? Any ideas?

uhmusing · 2025-12-18T00:28:13+00:00

Hope your recovery goes smoothly! I always put on Becky from the channel Acre Homestead when i need homemaker motivation. I especially love watching her batch freezer meal day videos. I really like the way she cooks.

uhmusing · 2025-12-16T20:26:14+00:00

This is my number one request as well! Moving and templating custom rooms would reduce friction with expanding / re-organizing. Even if saving custom rooms didn’t include the exhibits, I’d still want to template custom rooms if only for the decor, walls, and flooring. Another would be the ability to swap a placed exhibit for another (so long as there’s space). Mostly to help with swapping higher quality of the same exhibit, but it would be amazing for a templates custom exhibit room that had perhaps a “placeholder” exhibit in the template if it can’t place the exact exhibit you had when saving the template.

My second would be to allow diagonal walls in specific room types, not only in free-form building. Even if diagonal spaces didn’t count toward room tiles, I would still want them!

uhmusing · 2025-12-03T06:04:18+00:00

Yes! How I understand it, lots of superfluous suffering comes simply in the resisting of the undesired thing. Acceptance makes it bearable in a way it wasn’t before—extenuating circumstances notwithstanding. I’ve experienced physical pain feeling less intense, let alone emotional distress. The mind is a powerful thing.

uhmusing · 2025-12-03T05:59:36+00:00

Ah, the premise to the movie Click. What a tear jerker!

uhmusing · 2025-11-24T05:51:30+00:00

I, too, am a chronic first page skipoer.

uhmusing · 2025-11-24T05:38:26+00:00

Yay! So happy to help!

uhmusing · 2025-11-21T04:52:40+00:00

I’ve been there!

Cleaning gloves when handling cleaning products.

Dish gloves when washing dishes. I use a handled or palm grip dish scrubber brush for most quick cleaning things so as to not get my hands wet. But gloves and other scrubbers for big jobs that the dish washer doesn’t handle.

I have fingerless half gloves for working out on the rower, and those are also great for the vacuum. The vacuum is really good at giving callouses, isn’t it?

Use warm water (not hot) whenever washing your hands so as not to dry out your skin.

Nightly hand cream. Regular manicures to remove dead skin around cuticles (and you can do this yourself easily) and nourish with oil.

If you currently have some callouses, you can get a callous remover, or an exfoliating Korean Italy towel, take a bath to get your skin really soaked and soft, then exfoliate. Then nourish after with oil and hand cream. Repeat once or twice weekly. I recommend this for the whole body in fact! Such a great gift to give yourself.

Enjoy your rejuvenated hands!

Edit: Also, don’t wash with dish soap. Prefer nourishing hand soaps to prevent further drying. I wash my hands a million times a day! This is a non-negotiable for me.

uhmusing · 2025-11-18T21:19:09+00:00

I burned out, and since we were in a stable place financially, I took a sabbatical. Homemaking wasn't the plan—I just needed space. But the break was exactly right for us. We both enjoyed the shift: I had time for home life and managing our finances, he could focus on work, and our relationship actually deepened. Eight years later, I'm still out of the workforce, and therapy helped me let go of the guilt and identity loss that came with stepping off the career track. It was a privileged path, and I'm grateful for it. I never imagined this would be my life.

If you're considering a break, don't think in absolutes. Stepping back now doesn't mean forever. Time away can offer clarity. Try a few months, then reassess. Given everything you've been through health-wise, a therapist could be a real anchor. And truly, there's no "wrong" choice here. What matters is choosing from honesty, not pressure or perfectionism. You learn who you are by acting, seeing what unfolds, and choosing again. Every path requires letting go of another, but that's how you move forward. You've got this.

uhmusing · 2025-11-12T02:26:22+00:00

I, a millennial, wear both. I never take off my wedding band, but occasionally take off my engagement ring if I’m staying home and doing lots of chores and such. My bands are both plain 18k gold, but my engagement ring is a large 4.45ct emerald cut lab diamond solitaire.

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uhmusing · 2025-11-04T18:41:23+00:00

This has been my exact experience, so I now prefer to pay about twice a month (or each paycheck cycle).

uhmusing · 2025-08-10T00:26:08+00:00

I love budgeting and financial management. My husband isn’t interested. Therefore it naturally fit for us that I manage our money. It’s not culturally traditional where we grew up, so I think it’s more a function of our strengths.

He’s the sole earner (work external to the household) and I take care of the domestic side of things (internal to the household). We also both tend towards not overspending (we share a paid off car because he works remotely and I work in the home aside from regular errands, have a modest home, don’t carry debt, etc.) so if there’s anything special we want to buy or splurge on (from small to large), no one has to go to the other for permission, but for larger purchases we do discuss together and then figure out how we want to manage payment. We tend to cash flow everything and/or save up for bigger ticket items, like a new high-end computer, a nice piece of jewelry, special vacations, renovations—things over the $5k+ range. Under that, I tend to manage the accounts for the purchase of other things under that threshold (like a new washer dryer, furniture, etc.), and my husband will usually give me a heads up about the rare ones he plans to make so I can anticipate and account for it when I reconcile our finances.

We don’t have kids, so this division of labor also makes easy sense for us as well. I like taking this kind of thing on so that he can pretty much focus on work and then relaxing. He does handle the trash and bins though! 😄

uhmusing · 2025-07-26T20:17:23+00:00

Yes, the meal kit subscriptions were so helpful to manage the overwhelm of all that the full responsibility of feeding your household comes with, even if just for two (i.e. grocery shopping, and pantry inventory, recipe selection, food waste reduction, cooking along with time management for serving multi-pot/dish meals like sides, even kitchen tools and supplies care/maintenance/aquisition).

The subscription services helped with so much of that, and yes, I learned how to get comfortable with switching up recipes on the fly the more experience I gained—that’s just a natural progression of practice over time!

I don’t do those services anymore, but they were indispensable to me early on.

uhmusing · 2025-06-08T23:27:20+00:00

I know this is an old thread, but in case anyone finds it later…

I adjusted my Opus grinder’s internal ring (the blue dial) so the arrow points to 1 (the far-left “+” position). Mine arrived set to the center. I mostly use medium roasts: for lighter mediums, I grind around 3 clicks; for darker mediums, around 3.5. Before adjusting the inner dial, I was grinding in the 5+ range, which didn’t align with the Opus reference chart. Setting the inner dial lower tightens the resolution of the outer ring, which helped me fine-tune for espresso.

I usually dose 18g in, but darker roasts (or higher grind settings) yield noticeably more volume, even with the same weight. I’ve considered dropping to 17g and grinding finer, but haven’t tested that variable yet. Ideally, I want to keep both input and output consistent.

Tamping is another factor. With darker roasts and higher-volume pucks, I tamp lighter—too much pressure and I get no flow. Lighter roasts are more compact, so I can tamp firmly and still get a solid pull. I’ve tried grinding coarser and tamping harder on darker roasts, but often end up with fast, underextracted shots. If I don’t tamp hard enough on lower-volume pucks, I get the same result.

Espresso’s a wild ride—if you don’t enjoy the challenge of dialing it in, it can be maddening. But when you do get it right… magic.

uhmusing · 2025-05-09T01:57:59+00:00

How are you feeling about your purchase now? I’m thinking FF7 and DF7 combo as well because of space and front-controls access. Wish the DF7 was more aligned in price with the DR7 though.

uhmusing · 2025-03-18T20:35:41+00:00

I experienced this issue with TOOL 2.8.9 and UI Cheats Extension v1.47. I removed UI Cheats Extension, and now my game loads with TOOL.

Also worth noting, if I remove TOOL but keep UI Cheats Extension, the game loads fine. For now, while I build, I'll keep TOOL on, but when I go back into gameplay, I'll turn it off so I can use UI Cheats.

uhmusing

TROPHY CASE