MrsDoyle

We get free use of a spot next to an apple orchard, so I guess pollination is our “rent”, plus some honey. I don’t know what arrangement commercial beekeepers have - near us they move 60+ hives in when the oilseed rape (canola) is flowering, then move them again when it’s finished. A guy I was talking to said they reckon they can break even with 300 hives, because one person can deal with that many. More than that they have to employ someone else, and bang go the profits. Sounds like a nightmare. I struggle to cope with 7 hives!

Lol, I was the computer genius in my office job because I knew how to change the paper size on the printer from Letter to A4. Soak up the praise!

People praise me up for “saving the bees”. Honey bees don’t need saving. It’s the other bees that do, the hundreds of species of bumblebees, mining bees, solitary bees etc etc. Bees that are outcompeted in some areas due to the number of hobbyist beekeepers and commercial bee farms. I’m one of the baddies.

Cheap cat food. She turned her back on it, made scratching motions as if burying shit, gave me a “look” and stalked away.

I’m still eating blackcurrant jam I made in 2013. I use jars whose lids have the pop-up seals. Pour hot jam into hot jars, screw on the lid and the little thingie in the middle should pop down as it cools, showing it’s sealed. When you open the jar it pops up again, to show the seal is broken. Just about all my jars come from a particular brand of pitted kalamata olives I’m partial to. Perfect size for jam.

When I was a child mum sealed the jars of jam with a disc of cellophane that had been dampened in vinegar, fastened with a rubber band. Pretty good seal actually, it tightened as the jam cooled. But if the jam went mouldy we’d just scrape the mould off - no big deal.

Best was my sister’s - her new in-laws’ gift was the use of their sauna business as the venue (they were nudists, it wasn’t a sleaze thing). The caterers had to turn the sauna on to heat the food, so after we’d all eaten, most of the guests stripped off and had a sauna - including bride and groom and me, chief bridesmaid. Really nice, fun atmosphere.

Worst … nah, I enjoy weddings. Never been to a bad one.

Raspberry jam is insanely easy to make. Equal weights of fruit and sugar, heat slowly to dissolve the sugar, then boil rapidly for five minutes. Bung in jars and screw the lids on while still hot.

The only sterile part is the jars - I put them in a lowish oven for ten minutes or so after washing them. Lids are washed, dried and swabbed with vinegar.

I have a Toshiba Satellite T110, 11.6" screen, now running Linux Zorin. I’ve had it for 15 years - got a new battery at one point and added RAM, very easy to do. It’s been a cracking little machine, really nice for travelling with.

I blocked the moth person, I got sick of those posts.

I subscribe to c/womensstuff and I’ve seen the messages to men who post there accidentally. They go like this: “thanks for your comment, but unfortunately this community has a rule that only women are permitted to comment - hope you understand 🧡”

How is this “somewhat abusive”?

“Normal”, hmmm. I remember being confused at school when we had to analyse literature and “motherly love” was given as an example of a universal theme. Really? Not in my experience. According to my own dear mama, my younger sister and I were both mistakes. She made it very clear always what a heinous burden we were.

In retrospect, she was a terrible person for saying such things. We were not awful kids, and grew up to be pretty good people. Yes, we’ve both struggled a bit with depression and self doubt, but on the whole, not bad.

So I would say your mother’s cruelty isn’t what’s generally considered “normal”, but it’s not that uncommon. Some people shouldn’t have children, in my view. There’s a lot of societal pressure to procreate in the first place, and then barriers to choosing not to. And it must be horrendous to find yourself not enjoying motherhood at all when it’s supposed to be your peak experience. Still no excuse for such meanness though.

Carry on living, young adult! It’s too easy to get dragged down by shit like this. Life is fleeting in the grand sweep of the universe, keep your heart open to possibilities and options and chances. And remind your mother that you’ll be choosing her care home one day.

Awww! That’s so nice!

We were astonished. It could easily have turned extremely nasty, but we instinctively trusted him. It made me a better person I think, more generous.

Relevant clip from The Commitments

Good luck! I hope the docs come up with solutions as well as a diagnosis, and you recover.

After ten years keeping bees as part of a charity project, next year I’m leaving that and getting my very own bees. I’m very excited at the prospect!

Also, at the end of this year I’m going on a trip abroad for the first time since 2019. I’m quite apprehensive but still looking forward to it.

A friend and I tried to hitch from Calais to Paris in 1980 or so. Scruffy punks don’t get lifts, turns out. We got the train and arrived in Paris late at night. Hotels by the station were either full or too expensive. We were staring at our map in despair when a young man asked if we needed help. Long story short, he walked us to his mother’s flat and made up a bed for us on the sofa. She cheerfully made us breakfast in the morning - I got the impression her son often brought home waifs and strays. Really nice people.

I left a necklace in a hotel in Canada one time and wrote to them on the off chance that they found it - it wasn’t valuable, it was a sentimental thing. The receptionist posted it back to me in the UK with a lovely kind message. The hotel is called Kindred Spirits and it is on Memory Lane in Cavendish, PEI. The house next door has green gables, just saying.

I grew up in New Zealand in the 50s-60s. We got most info on current events from the radio. Later on there was TV, but it was mainly radio. Our radio had long-wave and if atmospheric conditions were right you could pick up foreign broadcasts.

Other knowledge came from school, obviously, and from libraries. I absolutely haunted my local library, and read voraciously. I still have a fund of info in my head from back then that comes in handy in pub quizzes. When I wasn’t reading I was out with my friends on our bicycles. We rode for miles at a time - I don’t remember ever telling an adult where we were going.

(About libraries - I don’t know if you’re aware, but the tycoon Andrew Carnegie funded libraries around the world, including the one in the city near my home town.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

Having said all that and making it sound idyllic, it wasn’t. Society back then was repressive in major ways and people’s viewpoints were generally narrow. History books weren’t always telling the truth. It wasn’t terrible compared with say apartheid South Africa, but not great. There was a counter-culture bubbling away - beatniks and then hippies - so it was possible to get an alternative view, just about.

I love the technology that gives me access to not just information, but the lived experience of people round the world. I love reading posts here about mad trivial stuff like what you all are having for breakfast. I love taking a Street View tour of places I’ll likely never visit. I’m reading a novel set in Iceland at the moment, and can “drive” along the route a character is taking. I can video chat with my sister, who lives 10,000 miles away. It’s a miracle!

“Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil,” Vice President JD Vance said in a post on X Saturday night.

Big yikes. “Insurrectionists”? Bloody hell.