Yeah, I want to be a part of the solution but I never feel like I have anything of value to add to the discussion.

Y

Y

Thats really cool, I love it.

They break easily, I bought 20 and added a tiny touch of super glue to the join. Let them dry on a sheet of baking paper. Now they last forever.

I love stores like that. Go in looking for a particular colour string and leave with bags of all kinds of fun things I didnt know I wanted until then.

For people who arent super into baking they are a cheap, fun activity for an afternoon. Just add water and maybe some oil mix it with a spoon and bake it for the time stated on the box. No need to store or buy excess cocoa, flour, sugar, eggs and so on.

Sims can find seeds laying on the ground. So if insects, gems, and small animals are still spawning then gardenings still doable. If they have access to water then so is fishing. With a fire they can roast things. Thats food sorted. Socialising is doable if they befriend a wild horse. Not sure how theyd get clean, so theyd be stinky and cranky about that. But theres a few options for sims to entertain themselves without items. Come winter theyd die without shelter.

It depends on the group. There was a casual yoga thing in my hometown where after they would all go for a coffee. Some people arent into that and do just want to do it and go home, but others like getting out and socialising after. Unfortunately theres no hard and fast rules. Women are just people, people vary a whole lot in likes, dislikes, and what topics they like to talk about. Ive seen heaps of comments from people of all kinds all over the internet and making friends in general gets much harder after university. And harder again once kids, jobs and relationships get in the mix.

But you could just try a casual hello, before yoga/pilates. If they are receptive give chatting a go and once class starts go do your own thing. Little hellos and casual small talk can build familiarity where you can see if they might be up for being friends.

You could find a hobby that leans more female. Depending on your age if you are at the time where most people have kids under the age of 15 then you might struggle. People with kids connect more easily to other people with kids. People without kids or whos kids are now largely independent will have more time for things like hobbies and friendships. If you are in an area with a large population there are sites meant to help people in your exact position, like dating, but for matchups with groups and other women who are also looking for friends.

I have a fair few women friends now but their ages arent necessarily close to mine. The older you get the less weird that feels, once the kids part is done life experiences seem to level out.

Also online friends are an option. If you find someone with similar interests and sense of humour then you just talk about whatever you are interested in and whatever’s going on. Theres no gender specific topic, the ladies at the car club meetup talk about cars, the ones playing golf talk about golf. If you start with a common interest and talk to them enough you might find you actually share a lot of interests and from there you can bring up going to a local event or concert or whatever it is you are interested in.

Your position isnt that rare, so maybe youll get lucky and find someone in a similar boat who clicks with you and from there it will be easier. Just might need to try something new and go where the other women are to find them.

I was gifted a phone without a headphone jack after my last one died a few years back. I miss it all the time, remembering to charge bluetooth headphones and not losing bluetooth buds is tricky for me. So a lot of the time I just dont play music anymore. Very annoying.

Pokemon go, since they upped the price of remote raids and made waaay harder for people like me out in a remote town to fully participate I’ve not been back. Which sucks because I really liked collecting pokemon with it. But I kept getting the feeling that the company hated me. Well it doesnt seem to like any of its users, but it especially didn’t like the ones in locations like mine. So I left and refuse to go back.

Also a local art shop , the owner was really snobby and said I couldnt afford the paint I was after. She was correct but still, not nice to make me feel bad about it.

Whenever I think of the future I get it bad. Disabled, poor, parents are my carers, couldn’t afford to live on my own even if I could. And every year the bushfires get bigger and closer to home. If I let it it constant dread would become my default state, but I am aware of this and try to focus on the now.

Not to say I don’t do my best to safe guard the future, have plans in place for if I ever need to navigate the things that scare me most. But I try not to dwell on it. Someday my parents will die, failing some sort of miracle I will end up in a care home without my pets. But I might also drop dead tomorrow in which case all my worrying will have been for nothing.

Right now at this very moment things are going ok and the number one thing that makes it not ok is worrying about a time in the future when its entirely not ok. But why meet it in the middle? I can’t change the rivers current, best I can do is try to steer on the odd occasion where the path splits.

I’ve put a fair few hours into this game and really enjoyed it. Didnt get around to completing it, life got in the way. But the parts I played were fun.

Its hard work, I admire the people who do it. Its a very necessary job. But I’ve seen the toll the job takes on people. Long hours, working nights and holidays, usually understaffed and under a lot of pressure to provide great care with limited resources. Theres also a high emotional toll if you care, and some of the higher care residents will take a swing at you. Higher pay wont fix all the problems, more needs to be done, but its a good first step.

I’m more twitchy about forced online and them trying to make it “social”. Or subscription based. Ew.

First hit being free to try and lure new people in isn’t entirely new. It will be bare bones but the base game usually is.

That looks great. Now I am hungry.

When my brother and I were around 14 we were killing time waiting for our mum while she was shopping. The main street was old so the storefronts opened out onto the street and the foot path was undercover. Every store had a sign hanging out the front. We were running along and jumping to touch every sign.

We came across one that was too high. I gave up but my brother was jumping for all he was worth and I was laughing at his failure to touch it. Because thats what siblings do.

My brother stopped to catch his breath and this really tall adult man wearing professional bright white chef clothing flies past, jumps really high and touches the sign. He shoots us a wide toothy grin mid air, lands on the ground, then casually continues on down the street. It was so unexpected, such a high jump from such a fancy looking man. We were extremely impressed and talked about it for months.

I bought an old box full of used cast iron cookware from a mostly boarded up corner store that smelled weird. I had spent the day looking through yard sales trying to find some and we needed to buy a drink, it was the only shop for a while.

The door was open but the lights were off in the middle of the day, so it was really dark in there except from the glow of the drink fridge at the back. Really unsettling. There was an old lady at the counter but she didnt look up when we passed her. We went through to get to the drinks, the food on the shelves was dusty and looked like it had been there a while. Then crammed into the back corner was a small collection of second hand junk, including a box of cast iron cookware. Exactly what I had been looking for. $10 for the lot. Great deal. Paid the uninterested lady and got the hell out of there.

They got busted for distributing drugs and shut down not long after. Which answered pretty much all the questions I had about that experience in general.

Cute idea.