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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   1004 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 8, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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My house is cleaner, more organized, and in better repair than it's been in decades and it makes me incredibly sad.

It's been almost 6 months since my husband died and I have spent the time doing. It was hard to get things done before because he was the guy and if there was a task and I started doing it he would feel guilty that he wasn't doing it (ADHD is a bear) and I didn't want him to feel guilty so I would bring things up instead of just doing them and he would be all oh yeah I will do that and then ADHD. Now I can just, do it.

There's still a ton to do. So many things. I think I need to replace the steps on my deck (steps end directly on dirt and things have shifted over the years). I know nothing about rebuilding steps on a deck but I can dig holes and buy stringers and pour concrete and screw down boards. So I probably won't make things worse. And one more thing will be knocked off the to do list making the house more pleasant to be in. Because it's easier when I am not working around my spouse's ADHD. And boy doesn't that make me a jerk.

I cooked the second cup of Good Mother Stallard beans in the crockpot. Several hours on low worked well. I tossed mirepoix, salt, and a bay leaf in. Added the beans and a few cups of water. They were ready when I finished mowing the lawn & fighting with the weeds.

They're nice. I am thinking of a carrot lentil salad for the lentils. There is a sweet carrot salad I like (carrots, raisins, lemon juice, cinnamon) and I am curious if I would like a savory take.

I do think sauteing the mirepoix makes a difference.

I've been force-feeding myself some pretty crappy food since it's all I have, and since it's better than eating nothing until my next paycheck (or until the SNAP application comes back). At this point I'm wondering if I should just resign myself to finding something dirt-cheap but nutritionally whole I can make and eating only that, though that's not a very appealing thought for what I hope are obvious reasons. Then again, my sister finally found a new job, which means it shouldn't be a choice between rent and good food for much longer. I hope.

Anyway, what are the cheapest foods I can get/make that won't end with me having scurvy and the like? Preferably including meats and veggies (doesn't matter what kind). What I've been doing hasn't really been working.

I eat oatmeal, beans, rice, apples, frozen broccoli & cauliflower. My apples are expensive and now my beans are expensive, but you can go cheap on them.

Go to food banks. They exist to help people eat.

A length of pork loin at Sams is like $2 per pound. At Walmart they're a little more, like $2.50. But they come in 6-7lb lengths and it's the cheapest $ per lb of fresh meat I know of. You'll have to cut them yourself, but pork chops take excellently to a wide variety of seasonings, marinades and cooking styles and pair excellently with cheap fillers like rice and potatoes.

Breakfast sausages are a bit more per pound, and the Great Value brand is on par with the name ones. Pairs well with eggs, which are once again dirt cheap ($4.50 for a 36 pack or $7 for 60).

Great Value bags of fresh veggies (broccoli, green beans, asparagus, peppers) are also fine, just make sure to look at them first because they will leave them there until they start to get a bit funky. They sell fast enough that it usually isn't an issue.

I don't know where you are, but my area has a chain of specialty produce stores that are even cheaper than Walmart for fruit and vegetables, it just comes in a decent sized bulk.

If you're actually worried about scurvy and the like, invest in a multivitamin. Like 5-10 cents per pill depending on what brand.

If you're actually worried about scurvy and the like, invest in a multivitamin. Like 5-10 cents per pill depending on what brand.

I think just vitamin C tablets from the drugstore are enough to fight scurvy in particular. A random product at pharmacies near me was 18 cents per 1000mg serving.

I don't know how cheap you consider cheap, but I used to buy canned chilli con carne in bulk. You can bulk it out further by mixing it 1 part chilli 1 part (or more) black beans without any real loss of flavour, and rice is cheap.

My wife had our baby boy on Monday. Kid came too fast for the epidural, so she had him au naturel. Which was how she wanted to have him, but labor is hard and she changed her mind. Baby decided to keep her honest, and speedran the birth canal instead. By the time the anesthesiologist was in the room, baby was a knuckle away from crowning. So my wife got to learn she's way tougher than she thought she was. I'm really proud of her.

Can I just say, I fucking hate doctors scaring the fuck out of us over every little thing? First was a fetal scan where the MFM made it sound like my baby had a bad heart and would need emergency surgery and/or die. Then a fetal cardio walked it way back and made it clear that what was being seen had a more than likely chance of resolving itself after birth. Which it did. Then that same MFM kept riding my wife's ass to induce or cut the baby out ASAP because of some bullshit about how every day of a geriatric pregnancy increases the chance of still birth. Even 5 days before the kid was born, that MFM was telling my wife there was a 1/1000 chance of stillbirth from where we were.

Mind you, all the stats were perfectly normal. Minus the ambiguous heart scan that resolved itself.

Even now after the first appointment, the family doctor was riding our ass that the baby wasn't peeing enough. He'd only last peed at 4 am and it was 11 am at the time. Then he peed in the office, and she was still all "Well, you need to call me and let me know he's peed again before I leave the office or I'll be very worried." This was after she remarked that he looked perfectly healthy, vitals all perfect, good color, nothing concerning about his appearance.

Just... why are doctors like this? My wife's neurotic enough without doctors making her believe every normal variance is a sign that her baby is going to die.

Shit even got to me in that span between crowning and crying. All my posturing that everything was going to be ok, that the MFM was just an asshole, began to crumble and I wondered if my optimism was leading my family into life changing tragedy. It may have only lasted 5 seconds, it may have been a minute or two. I honestly can't say. But hearing him cry for the first time was the most relieved I can ever recall feeling. The baby cried, I cried, and I turned to my wife and she was crying.

Later that night in recovery, I rocked him in my arms and told him about his big sister, the cats and dog that are excited to see him, how funny it is to watch chickens run, and how much better the world now is with him in it.

Congratulations and blessings upon you and your family!

Don't sweat the doubt. It happens to the best of us. "Oh God, what if I'm wrong" is a natural thought to have at some point in that kind of stressful event. It's a biological sanity check - is your confidence strong enough to override this rush of panic hormones?

Years ago, I was out being an adult. My mother had my kids. She called me in a panic, claiming my daughter had a fever of 107 and I needed to come get her right away for an ER visit. But she put the girl on the phone. And she sounded somewhat sick, but reasonably coherent for a five year old. Hardly life-threatening, brain-damaging EMERGENCY RESPONSE CATATONIA I would expect for a 107.

But I dutifully rushed home and then rushed her to the ER, because oh my God, what if?

Her actual fever, as determined by the ER staff, was 102.

My mother is a nurse.

But maybe one day my reasoned opinion will be wrong. Most situations you'll face will be much less consequential than the C-section choice. An extra trip to a specialist isn't that much of an inconvenience.

More generally, enjoy the roughhousing. Playfighting with my son when he was little was one of the greatest joys of my life. Your boy will probably be into it sooner than you think. Buy bokken. Teach him to Flynn.

Congrats!

Congratulations!

Congrats!

I think doctors are that way because their checklists are written for dealing with the least common denominator (nurses and patients both). The system is designed so that the worst nurses can convince the worst patients to still do the right thing. So you are taught to stress the RISK and FOLLOWING THE GUIDELINES.

I will say that in my very limited experience, doctors/nurses are much more that way in the big city, and in the countryside a bit more laid back. But I have no idea how much that generalizes.

Congratulations

Congrats! And doctors are like this because of the medical malpractice risk of not disclosing potentially important information to a patient. So they are incentivized to bring up every tiny risk.

Go get some sleep while you still can!

Yes. OB spends more on malpractice insurance than most people make in a year.

Amazing!

Congratulations!

New Year's resolution check-in:

  • Still on holiday and so haven't been to the gym. Can deadlift 1.84x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.28x for 6 reps and bench press .87x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st. Nearly at the halfway mark.

How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?

I've barely been drinking, I went out twice in June and not at all so far this month. I moved into a new apartment and work is picking up so I've just been too busy and it's way too hot in France to get away with a hangover at work.

The physicality of working in a kitchen is getting to me a bit, I'm decently fit so there's no joint pain but I'm going to go to the doctor and buy new shoes because when I get up and take the first few steps in the morning my feet feel like they're bruised.

Long term things are looking good. I'm working at a high enough level now that I'm pretty confident I could ask for a better wage soon, the head chef disappeared for a month to cover for an emergency at the owner's other restaurant and me and the sous-chef are managing just fine.

When I worked in a hotel, rubber or gel insoles were a godsend.

Going great. feeling motivated to work out more. Porn is down hallelujah!

I saw a physiotherapist for the back pain, and he told me I had been handling it reasonably, and that my stated suspicion that I should go to the gym more and not baby it overly was the correct insight. Converting that into action? That's another matter. I have a lot on my plate. At least I only had to take a single day off sick, after hitting the daily limit of ibuprofen without making the pain manageable. It's better now. It'll just take longer to heal than I'd like. And I might have to do lower back exercises and fight the hoes for the leg press machine.

Anyway, I did push-ups last week, and I'll do more at some point. I'm surviving on cocodamol and the knowledge that I've got annual leave ahead of me. To be spent drinking and driving (not at the same time) and seeing the country properly while being the reasonably assimilated/integrated and wiser older brother.

Work hasn't been too bad. It's a wonder what mostly adequate staffing, sigh peers and seniors who like me can do, in terms of moving a bad workload somewhere to the vicinity of bearable. I continue not writing about the people who have asked me not to write about them, I continue being charming at pubs and making friends by engaging when attacked by feral extroverts. I have been kidnapped (with consent) in the middle of the night and driven to cities across the country on a weekend. I've made sure some very faded women in the back of an SUV driven by a bipolar gay man just barely processing heartbreak drank enough water - while making sure I sat behind an airbag. I continue, in other words, to have as much fun as a recently badly depressed and overworked psychiatry resident can have during an Indian British Summer.

At least I only had to take a single day off sick, after hitting the daily limit of ibuprofen without making the pain manageable.

Next time, I recommend looking at a cheap personal TENS machine. Like mine cost about 50 dollars off of Amazon, is as big as a walkman and the consumables are cheap (wired self adhesive electrodes and a 9V battery). Don't expect it to miraculously heal your back, but it's essentially "free" pain relief, at least during usage and sometimes longer. Having spondilitis, I'm on a steady diet of ibuprofen for back pain and inflammation reduction in general, but that machine permits me to give my system a break.

That sounds very interesting. I'll look into it, thanks. Though I have to concede that looking at the internals doesn't cure back ache.

  1. Work. At a class in the UK for the next two weeks, then vacation in Germany. Travel to the UK was a bit of a shit show (cancelation, missed connection, and finally a lost bag). Research environment in Europe is much more chill, but also very inferior to the US.
  2. Fitness: Did 2x tempo sessions again last week and 60 miles. Weight is continuing to drop as I have kind of lost my appetite with the heat.
  3. Intellectual stuff: finished a blog post for this month, and working on my Spanish/Italian as usual. Almost done with Blood Meridian, but it's like pulling teeth.
  4. Finances: Not even thinking about this until the end of the month.
  5. Dating. My roommate convinced me to redownload dating apps, which I think was a mistake.
  6. Tarot. No session.
  7. Socializing: nice change of environment has got to me excited to socialized and meet people!
  8. Screen time: 1 hour!
  9. Mental health: Pretty good, although lots of anxiety on this travel trip

Spending is $2,916.38 lower than this day last year. Once the home repair bill goes through this month, I'll probably be even. I hate that I keep losing progress, but at the same time, I've dealt with some very expensive medical bills, home repair costs, and travel due to illnesses in the family without having to cut my savings. I guess I can call that a win.

It might help to think of the net spending tally not as "progress", but as "a (rough) estimate of progress". There are enough significant one-off events that the error bars are likely larger than the expected savings on timescales shorter than multiple years. As I see it, you're likely to be in one of two scenarios (which one is TBD):

  1. This year's expenses are anomalously high -> Spending carefully will reveal its fruits in future years, and it's just by chance that they're not visible yet.
  2. This year's expenses will be typical going forward -> Spending carefully allowed you to weather them without tapping savings, which under this scenario would be ruinous in the long term.

Either way, you're better-positioned than you would've been in the counterfactual world where you hadn't adjusted behavior, and I would concur with your gut that it is quite the win.

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