Tereza Okava

Nancy Reading wrote:(1 teaspoon of tea leaves for the day would be tough!)

Every time I see these wartime ration things, this is the thing that makes me shudder!! that's really not much!

oh nooooo! and hiding under the covers until, say, May isn't an option huh.

Hopefully you can dig up an old face mask and a container of vapor-rub and occupy yourself thinking about anything that's not pasty, squishy, squicky or even worse. Think about ducklings, maybe. I Love Lucy. All the kinds of mushrooms you know. Maybe all together.

ah i don't miss this part of living in snow country....
what kind of surface is it? hoping for something hard (concrete) that you can shovel and then hose? (ideally, sprinkle some sawdust over and then shovel....) gravel? (ugh)

if you don't have a shoe tree, find something that you can wedge in there to create some space. I find that wadding up kitchen or hand towels often works just great for the toe box of too-tight shoes. Really bang it in there and let it sit overnight. In your case maybe wad up a sock and put it in the toe and then wedge in some sort of kitchen utensil against something that will push back the irritating padding part, maybe a rubber eraser? see what you have around. It will definitely involve invoking the spirit of MacGyver, which I think you're probably darn good at!!

I would try that and maybe putting some tape on my heel where the thing rubs for the next few wears. I get blisters from almost all shoes, even when they're not new, it's constant. I have medical tape around at all times, and between that and wearing very thin socks (those low stocking socks ladies used to wear are ideal, you can sometimes snag them from shoe stores for trying on shoes) under my normal socks to make the friction go elsewhere, I somehow manage to wear shoes every day.

if you can keep up with the clothes as you dirty them, you should be fine doing them in the shower. I have heard of people washing the clothes in the shower as they wear them as well (then taking them off for a normal shower).
It's when they pile up that it turns into a horrible chore.
Just hanging can be good too. For many years I lived in places without facilities and didn't have money for laundromat, so I've washed clothes in dorm sinks, bathtubs, etc. As an adult I have tried every permutation of this dance over the years, with and without machines. It was all fine til I had kids and the quantities just exploded. At that point I bought a small apartment-sized portable (had to keep it secret from the landlady) but still hung it all in my apartment.
Having some sort of water extractor seems critical- a roller or a spinner, usually.

Sorry, you asked about soap. I often just used what I had (body soap, shampoo, etc-- living in dorms there was usually a years worth of lost-and-found supplies available at the end of the school year, I'd hoard that). Later I used dish soap. I don't think I ever thought about laundry-specific soap until I bought a washing machine.

Jay Angler wrote:use the rabbit poop to improve your soil?

You betcha!! Best thing I've used so far (going to pick up 2 more new "employees" tomorrow, in fact.

when i was young my mother took in her elderly aunt to live with us. She was old fashioned and weird, in my opinion as a smartass kid, and had some real unique words. she said "anticues" for antiques, cue-pons for coupons, reseeps for recipes and, my favorite, oinkment for ointment. There were probably more. Laughing at the way she talked was a recipe for getting sent to bed without supper so I held it in but a few years ago (many years after she was gone) my mother and I had a lot of laughs remembering some of her gems. (she remembered many more than i did)

Anne Miller wrote:I would ship stuff if I had an address to ship to or buy when we get there if I thought I might get the opportunity.

this is a great option if you can. most hotels will accept deliveries (I didn't see where you're going or what the circumstances are). i've done this a few times and often bring a folding bag if I'm going somewhere i expect to want to bring things home from. When I went to Italy I brought only a carry-on out there, but my folding suitcase was inside and came back home stuffed with cheese, soap and nice clothes from the street fairs. (I had a checked luggage allowance, but it was planes/trains/automobiles to get to my destination with lots of transfers and train stations with stairs and I needed to arrive on time for an event, so I kept it easy on the way there. on the way back things were more relaxed).
As for what you can bring, check out the TSA website to know for sure. https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/liquids-aerosols-gels-rule

I try to spend some time with my mother in Pennsylvania every year, which means an international flight between Brazil and the US, usually combined with domestic legs and visits to friends in the Midwest or Florida. Last year I skipped it because of $$/and regional unrest, this year I may go in September (if my passport can get sorted in time). I find that international flying is 500 times better than domestic flying in the US, which is sometimes dehumanizing. Smaller airports can be gems though (Madison, WI and Allentown/Bethlehem PA are frequent destinations for me, and are the kind of place where the guy doing the security inspection talks to you like a neighbor, such a great experience compared to, say Philly international, which is definitely one of the circles of hell.) And even at the big places, treating staff like people gets you a long, long way. A few years ago I started bringing a box of local chocolates for the flight attendants on my international flights out of Brazil, and you want to see some happy folks... It doesn't necessarily "get" you anything, but it's nice and makes someone's day in a job that can be full of difficult people.

In 2024 when I went through Newark, NY, Chicago and Milwaukee I was surprised to see that so much of the check-in/ticketing process was done at kiosks without human involvement. If you have to check bags and pay for them, it's so much easier to pay for it online beforehand than to have to find someone. And I am very surprised at how the companies' apps have improved-- I often fly United and their app is actually useful.
I do find domestic airlines to be very persnickety about carry-ons (since now they charge for everything but the air you breathe). If you're flying internationally the domestic flights have to honor the international luggage allowance so I rarely worry about it, but I did once take a cheapie flight to England with no allowance, all I brought was my computer backpack that was definitely within the size/weight range and they wanted to charge me for that!! (they started with the "we have no space for bags on this flight" and i said I'd be happy to contribute by letting them gate check my carry on, which made everyone happy.)

I really enjoy flying, airports and traveling. I'm getting old enough that a 10-hour flight is painful and takes me a day to recover from, but I always make sure to get my step count in walking around the airport, and I love the people watching. It's fun to go where I'm going, and equally fun to go back home.

Anne, as for printing the boarding pass- when you buy your ticket they give you a code (6 digit? 8 digit?) in the email that you type into the kiosk at the airport to print your boarding pass when you arrive. it's not a big deal. If you don't have that code, then you can go to a desk to check in, but as I said, in my experience it's hard to find staff in airports lately. Still, frankly, if it were me and I didn't have a phone I'd make a stop on the way to the airport if I had to to print things out, as I always carry paper copíes of tickets (even though I use my phone for everything now. old habits die hard.)

Edited to add: In college I did aerial moose counts in upstate NY near the Canada border one summer. The plane was WW2 surplus and made of fabric and rivets. Luckily I was at the age of adventure and didn't think about the fact that it ran on what looked like a lawn mower engine and had the structural integrity of an old pickup in snow country. Now just thinking about it makes me shudder. I'll stick with the big planes where I can't see the mess in the cockpit!!!

i let the rabbits eat the leaves and run the remaining stalks through the chipper, use as mulch or in compost.

after some years having stopped switching, i can say that while I still wish we were on daylight savings time rather than our standard time permanently (that ship has sailed, though) it has been nice to not have "the change" screwing things up twice a year. I was also one of those people who left the car clock on the old time (until my husband got ticked off enough to fix it himself).