Stopped biting my nails after about 35 years of tearing them to the quick. It wasn’t my first attempt, but when I successfully stopped, it was cold turkey. It’s been over four years now. I buy a new nail tool periodically to keep them looking good. I’m proud of them despite how trivial. The novelty of tapping on things and peeling stickers hasn’t worn off.

Shemomedjamo - Georgian word meaning to eat past the point of fullness because it tastes so good or as I heard it, “I accidentally ate the whole thing.”

Get it to the corners of the lips and thick, you got a Tom Selleck, just around the edge, you have a Ron Swanson, 2cm past, you’re into Fu Manchu territory

I’ve tried so many things throughout my life. Getting yourself to stop is going to be a personal thing. The last thing I tried that succeeded was taking a job out of town where I worked 12-16 hour days. It was manual skilled labor. I was working with my hands, they were often dirty, and frankly, there wasn’t much downtime to find myself chewing my nails. This attempt to stop just happened to finally work for me. It’s been almost four years. Keep at it, you can do it!

Biting my nails.

I started at about two years old and chewed them to the quick for over 35 years.

I’m over 40, have ADD, have extensive experience, and am grieving two close friends who died of fent in their coke in the last few weeks. You’ll likely conclude the same thing I did, that it’s way overpriced and you need a whole lot more to get the dopamine dump that makes it worthwhile.

You asked, I answered. Knock yourself out (but please, test your shit. Fent strips are cheap and often free. Check with dancesafe.org or others for best practices on testing. I’m not worrying about you, but I’m sure you have people in your lives that love you dearly, and I hope they never go through what I’m going through right now.)

Because of that? It’d be a lot cheaper and much much safer to get a prescription for ADHD medication. You’re not missing anything.

I read something at some point about how our fists seemed to have evolved or at least adapted to be well suited to delivering a punch. Many people do not use proper hand forms for it, but I suppose it’s a learned skill if not at least through trial and error.

Some places are. I looked around until I found a community care clinic for people who don’t have insurance. It’s free. The university near me also offers free/low cost therapy. Years ago before we were married, my wife and I found couples counseling from an intern who was gaining experience at no cost to us.

I know everyone doesn’t have the same resources, but just wanted to point out that if someone gives up because they assume it’s expensive, they may not find the affordable options available to them.

I haven’t read through comments yet so I may be redundant.

Hey… So sorry. Pets are a personal relationship. That loss is a grief just like any other. It’s hard because others don’t have the relationship to that individual that you have.

Grief is something you carry through life. It isn’t linear, but it does get easier. Grief will come in waves. You’ll be fine and then it hits you out of the blue.

Do we just live and suffer and die? Well, yeah. But we also love, and get excited, and feel, learn new things, explore. We fall in love; we experienced heartbreak. We have moments when we notice the light coming through the leaves in the forest, or the sound of water on rocks in a creek, an interaction between a grandparent and young child, the smell of a newborn’s head, that first time a cat settles in your lap, coffee when no one else is awake, the first sign of success in a new hobby, I could go on and on. So many things. Observations that have a visceral yet intangible emotional reaction. So so many things.

Let grief make you tender. Let grief remind you that everyone will deal with it in different ways. You can connect to others through vulnerability. Don’t let it make you hard or resentful; there’s so much beauty and love in the world. There’s so much love in the personal relationship with a pet. There is love you can’t describe.

Engage with the grief. Don’t bottle or avoid it. Feel it. You’re grieving because of the depth and complexity of the relationship. That’s totally okay. That’s healthy. It’s gonna hurt. It hurts.

I’m so sorry you’re feeling this right now. Take your time and feel it. Don’t feel like you ever have to let that go. That’s life.

Live, suffer, and die? Yeah, you could say that, but it’s in the most beautiful way, and there’s so much in between.

To remember that we’ve spent almost 18 years together and that we’re best friends. That we’ve carried each other and comforted each other through so much.

There was that time I had to climb fifty feet up a tree with hardly any limbs with ropes and a harness to get him when the crows goaded him into climbing higher. The rusty antique farm equipment below would have mangled him had he fallen. I had to lift him with one hand, balanced, hoping he would roll out of my grip, and put him in a cinch top bag with a rope attached to lower him to my wife on the ground. Once he reached her hands, I broke down and sobbed while I made my way to them. I was so scared. I woke up the next day and he was curled up around my hand, holding tightly. He didn’t want to go outside for months.

He pees on me regularly now. Sometimes when I come home with my hands full and can’t give him attention immediately. Sometimes when I’ve been home all day and he didn’t get a snack fast enough. Maybe his kitten baby sister is trying to play with him or he’s stuck on the other side of the door while I’m brushing my teeth. He has hyperthyroidism and kidney disease. We give him everything, do the best we can for his health care, but it’s getting close to the time we say goodbye and it’s breaking my heart.

I just wish he’d remember me the way I remember him.

I lifted him onto my lap yesterday morning, out of the reach of his gentle but playful six month old kitten sister. He peed all down the front of me. I didn’t scold; I just held him until he was done, knowing the last time I hold him isn’t far away.

That’s when I just let them have the hole they dug. I’d normally at least tip 20% (usa of course.)

I get that the service staff has little to no control over this charge, but I got it earlier tonight on a party of two. No extra service, no check-ins, no waters, nothing other than “here ya go.” They even had a QR code to order and pay with phone number, email, and address requirement even though I’m out of town on a one off drop in.

Isn’t Japanese read from right to left?

Keep experimenting and refining.

Pine can be stained and finished. Oak, cherry, and maple can sometimes look like crap. It’s a matter of preparing the wood properly. Try making sample boards. Sand consistently, don’t skip grits, don’t apply much pressure to the sander (let it do the work,) experiment with a pre-stain conditioner. It can help minimize splotching and some tooling marks.

Traditional (penetrating) stain needs to be applied evenly and benefits greatly from pre-stain conditioner.

Gel stains (sometimes called wiping stains, but that term gets misused) are wipe on, wipe off excess about five minutes later if you weren’t already doing that. They are made to sink in a certain amount and stop.

Urethanes don’t typically do well with back brushing, especially fast dry varieties. Spread urethanes thick and consistently and try not to go back over it. Lightly sand at 220 or 320 between coats and remove swarf with tack cloth or lint free cloth lightly dampened with alcohol.

Tung oils are rubbed in. Danish oils are applied thinly. These are relatively similar. Lightly sand between coats like above.

The book “Understanding Wood Finishing” by Bob Flexner is an astoundingly comprehensive book on the subject.

Don’t give up on pine just yet. Hemlock, heart pine, many others can all be quite beautiful in the right setting and application. For rough stuff, try the pre-stain conditioner

It doesn’t have to be strict. Some people make too big of a deal out of it. Most of us are used to eating in certain combinations anyways and our bodies have adjusted. One small example that you’ve probably heard, turmeric’s beneficial components are more bioavailable when eaten with black pepper. The body digests foods in varying ideal circumstances depending on what it is. Ultimately, you’ll probably be just fine eating a varied diet, but there are combinations that are better or worse for nutrient uptake, gastric comfort, blood sugar spikes, etc.

Poor food combinations can give you gas/bloating, indigestion, fatigue. Good food combinations work together and can help with the uptake of certain nutrients.

Don’t you think mental health is stigmatized enough without using it to make fun of people you don’t understand?

Look up books and info on food combining. Some foods interfere with the digestion of other foods while some help, as you probably know.

She didn’t get depressed because you didn’t talk to her, and she wasn’t interested in you because you were VP of the science fiction club in high school. It all just sounds so self important even if that’s not your intent.

My wife found one huddled in the middle of the road earlier this year, probably only five or six weeks old. Our attempts at fostering have failed spectacularly. She loves it here.