Same here. I wash my pans with soap if they need it, dry them well and hang them up. Occasionally will rub a little oil in once they are all the way dry. Have been going for about 30 years, most of them. I did have to train my husband, he was soaking them overnight and that does mess with the seasoning. Now he either cleans immediately and dries it or throws it in the oven dirty to do later.

IME they are nearly indestructible and you don’t need to be so careful. The cast iron is my daily driver and I am not a gentle fussy cook. Just don’t soak them in hot soapy water for hours.

For me, cast iron are by far my most used pans. You know how flannel starts out sort of awful but gets better and better as it gets older? That’s cast iron. Starts out sticky PITA but over time becomes satisfying satiny nonstick surface. I’ve always used them a lot so that’s how my cooking style evolved.

We also have one steel pan we call the Stick pan, sometimes you want food to stick so you can deglaze. My kids use it for potsticker dumplings, and they like it also because it’s lighter, cast iron is heavy. And of course a rice and pasta pot, those are steel.

I don’t buy “nonstick” pans, they don’t last and I’m not convinced they are safe.

No, my kids call me mom and yes I’d think it kinda rude if they first named me.

But

My step-kids call me by my first name, and my kids call my husband by his first name, and that is fine with both of us somehow.

When kids are small here, they usually call adults Mr. or Ms. First Name. Older kids to teachers Mr. or Ms. Last Name, but my kids friends who are older still called me Ms. First Name. Not much Sir and Ma’am anymore but I still hear it sometimes.

Water for sure #1

Cafe con leche favorite caffeine drink. Diet coke distant second, but I like it.

Cocktails, tie between margarita and paper plane I think.

Wine? A dry Sauvignon Blanc.

I dunno, they have the same ones in grocery stores here, still. Toledo No Springs. I haven’t been back lately, they may still have it. And yes it was in a sort of lobby where the line for the tellers waited.

No. I have had dreams that happened later in real life, precognitive (I used to set an alarm early, jot them down, and go back to sleep.) Not big, predictable events. I’d dream of someone I hadn’t seen in years, seeing them in a location, and then see them. Sometimes comically. Never in any way that was helpful.

Most notable example, I dreamed that I went to the local bank, they had a scale to weigh people. I got on the scale but it went backwards! I turned around and saw this girl Joann who I’d not seen since middle school. Wrote that down in my dream journal.

Couple weeks later - I am at the bank I dreamed about. I get on the scale, but it’s broken. Tells me I weigh 30lb. I turned around and who did I see? Joann, who I hadn’t seen since middle school.

I do not say this to convince anyone. It’s my own evidence, and I personally know the dreams were precognitive, only because I wrote them down and often wonder if everyone does this, are we all dreaming the future? It really pissed me off when it happened because it made me feel like the future had essentially already happened and we had no free will.

I guard my sleep more now and don’t do the dream journal, but do still have them somewhere. If I hadn’t written it down when I dreamed it I would have just thought I had deja vous.

One day as I was leaving for work, my penultimate daughter said “mom, that fit shreds” and I was like, excuse me, WHAT did you call me?

“Your clothes are great!”

My outfit, it shreds. Apparently.

I don’t hate it but don’t remember being very slangy as a teenager.

I’m from here. The cities are still ok. The culture war bullshit is at least partly smoke and mirrors, there was still a teacher doing a drag routine at my kid’s middle school talent show at the performing arts school (and if you’ve never seen the talent show at a performing arts school, I recommend it.). Teachers still addressed my trans kid as they preferred. They broke New College for sure, though , that is terrible. The beaches are still ok.

If I EVER run for office here, my slogan will be MFFA, Make Florida Freaky Again. The conservative assholes trying to squeeze us into a mainstream tight laced conservative hellhole have mistaken our mix of freaks and diversity for something homogeneous, like they think you can just average us out and squeeze it farther to the right, but that average was made up of a population that is so diverse no matter what axis you spin it on, I don’t think you can bleach & iron it out like they seem to.

So yeah it’s getting worse, but is not yet as bad as when I was growing up (it was extremely violent down here). So my hope remains. All my kids are progressive.

Generally I just wing it, have been cooking so long I can develop my own recipes for most things. But sometimes I do have to look for tips, and will read recipes for inspiration.

Food:

Bon Appetit

Recipe Tin Eats

Boy who Bakes

Perfect Loaf

Food and Wine

NYT Cooking

Cocktails:

Punch

Imbibe

Exhaustion is so disorienting. I remember when my kids were very young and I couldn’t sleep well, sometimes would get up because I had to pee, go to the bathroom but not be entirely convinced I was actually awake and not dreaming so I wasn’t going to risk peeing in case I was dreaming.

Now I go to sleep when I am sleepy, not before, and if it’s late I text my husband “let me sleep until I wake up please”. He has an alarm but I sleep through it, he wakes me up gently. Very luxurious.

Oh, and speaking of Charley we were lucky enough to have the Charley Crockett/Leon Bridges show come through, holy crap, I’d seen both of them live before but getting TWO great performers in one night, wow. And that intersection between county and R&B is such pleasant music.

I saw Joshua Ray Walker open for Marcus King and didn’t even like his show but looked him up and found his recorded work to be incredible, THEN he found out he had cancer and that was part of why the live show was weak, nothing to do with his music, and says he is recovering now, but I felt so uncharitable thinking the show sucked when he was dealing with something so awful.

But anyway - I do use streaming but like you find bands other ways, opening acts, radio, sometimes Brooklyn Vegan, that site posts about bands I’ve never heard of, I listen and find stuff I like (and a lot I don’t).

That’s a very odd looking 2 nearly 3 year old.

Leftover turkey, blue cheese, pickled onions and fresh sliced thin sweet onions, with mayonnaise on homemade sourdough.

I had been joking with my husband, said we needed cheese for sandwiches because all we had left was blue cheese and Parmesan, but then decided blue cheese and turkey didn’t sound bad at all, and it wasn’t.

I am an enthusiast but not a musician. So somewhere in the middle I guess? I try to go to several live shows every year, I’m aware of when someone I like puts out new music, I seek out unknown artists because I do love live performances more than recordings.

I care enough about sound to buy Klipsch Bluetooth speakers on sale for the portable ones, all wired earbuds sound fine to me, as do the Google speakers we have paired to do stereo in the living room. I don’t have the sort of ears that can tell great from good speakers, but can’t listen to music on my phone speaker like my kids & husband can, those are so bad it bothers me.

Music to me is art and entertainment, I don’t think I’d call it content.

I am similar, everyone said Oh just wait till your 30s, oh just wait till you have kids, oh just wait till your 40s but it was my 50s that the weight really did stick, and like you I am not fat by any real standard, smack dab in the middle of healthy by BMI, and probably more conventionally attractive body type with a little bit of T & A but was so attached to being skinny it is disorienting. Logically I know this size is probably healthier for my bones and I feel good and am active, but I feel like I lost part of my identity, and don’t like it.

Cosmetic or elective procedures aren’t covered by insurance though. If you mean resources like doctors, I agree somewhat, but insurance denying/underpaying/jamming access to essential procedures to force profit is a separate issue, and a much bigger one.

I will counter with Martha Stewart, Helena Bonham Carter, Courtney Cox, and I’m sure so many more who really look like they have had face/neck lifts but just look good.

My daughter says she hates it because it means money can make you look better.

I kind of like that though - it is more democratic than “natural beauty” being the standard. If beauty is something you do or buy, maybe people think it’s cheating, but how is that worse than it being luck?

Don’t imagine I’ll ever have enough $ to want to spend it on cosmetic surgery, but I knew a lady with bad skin tone - she had a baby and was overweight, lost the weight but her torso skin stayed stretched out, all saggy. She got a tummy tuck and boob lift and holy cow it looked amazing, she felt so good about her body and said “it cost as much as a car but I will drive my body much longer than my car.”. Nobody is going to convince me that’s a bad thing that she ought not have done. She wasn’t disfigured before, she did it to look good and she sure did.

Every person owns their own body and should modify it however they want. I am not against even creative cosmetic surgery, you want elf ears, go for it. And I do not think ugly people are under any obligation to get modified so that they look “better” either. Whatever the individual wants, it is their call. This is one situation where I really feel it is not my business at all.

I am in my mid-50s and surprised by a few things. I’m not jaded, small things still delight me. I’m not nostalgic, find so much good new music every year, new authors and books, still figure out different ways to approach problems at my work - I thought I’d be more stuck or settled by now, and for sure thought I’d be bored and jaded.

And I am constantly surprised nothing really hurts yet, thought I’d be less together physically than I am. Sometimes surprised I can still cartwheel.

I am unhappily surprised to see society going backwards and hope I live long enough to see it turn back around and progress.