My ex during his racist abusive phase was by far the worst I've had to deal with personally.

We knew a former basketball donkey named Barbara. She was so very sweet. We would stop to give her a carrot or apple, she was very used to people and very old.

I grow bananas in my yard, and know several other people who do also grow bananas. Not commercially but I would think anyplace that can grow sugarcane can grow bananas.

And there are some banana farms in Florida.

I grow Red Cuban bananas, not Cavendish.

I'm about as far away from you as it's possible to be & still be in the Continental US, but a couple of things. Pineapple I hardly water at all, have it basically in orchid mix (my yard soil is atypical for Florida, very rich and damp) and they don't absorb much through the roots so if you are trying to fertilize it or give it minerals, spraying diluted fertilizer on the leaves will work better than putting something in the soil.

It did give me some perspective, I'd say. I used to set an alarm and take notes then go back to sleep, to record dreams, which is how I found the precognitive ones, I recommend that method if you think you don't have much dream life, I suspect everyone does but we forget them as part of healthy sleep cycles. But that one dream I can still see the tree, the setting, and remember the feeling it was like unzipping my body, not scary. We really are just ephemeral happenings and part of the universe, we are not as separate as we think.

LSD is the only drug I would do again, if I could. Would love to try micro dosing too.

But my trippiest experience was in a dream, not with psychedelics.

I had a dream that I turned inside out, not in a gross way, but everything that had previously been outside of me WAS me, and only what I had been before was outside of "me". It was so transcendent.

Citizens (used to be called the JUA) is "insurer of last resort" to catch those the private market won't cover. The private market works exactly like your other comment:

• it’s more like they get a shit ton of money and then don’t pay anyone out, file for bankruptcy, and then repeat*

It's a racket, not insurance. If the state forced everyone onto Citizens, rates would go down, not up. I have made zero claims in 35 years of having old house here, and have paid so much it would have bought another house. The private companies cherry pick and overcharge, then dissolve, run with the money, and come back under a different name.

Of netpay? All of it. Of gross pay? About 12% is going into retirement accounts so I guess 88% is going to life.

My husband does a little better - we don't have to always use all of his pay (which is variable) so if you are counting household net pay, I think maybe 80% over the course of the year, 20% available, we used it this year to pay off renovations on the house which I would call desired improvement not just repair. So together we are pretty strong.

I don't know but the palmetto bugs here, I have an irrational level of fear of those. They will fly AT you. Just writing about them freaks me out.

I am sure they have a place in the world, and a function. But if I never again see a flying mating swarm of them it will still be one too many times.

I love spiders, love snakes. Rats are so interesting and clever. Love vultures and crows. Bugs in general I don't like except ladybugs, dragonflies, bees, and butterflies but only the overgrown roaches really terrify me.

Yeah ours has the vinyl and it does cheapen the look. It's on the list. The boxes though - they are just blocks made with concrete blocks and stucco-ed.

I like some gray but gray fake wood floors are among the worst, who thought that would look good for more than 5 minutes? I don't like marble floors either. Wood in a wood color is #1, terrazzo is fine, nice tile is fine.

I do know people have different taste but don't think that this exterior or interior could be pleasing to anyone, and again the house was well over a million $. Though to be fair they had to drop it from 1.5 to 1.2 to sell it, that is still too much and nobody is building anything reasonable except people who are hiring their own builders. All the speculative ones are either straight up boxes or something like this, going into a neighborhood that was just little houses, frame or block. For that $$ I would want much more kitchen too.

Near 60, tried it, can do that without warming up but I do yoga. And recommend yoga. It really does help with strength, balance, flexibility. All things that help you age better.

I honestly don't understand the houses going up in my neighborhood - it's getting gentrified and what is being built is so ugly. Who is buying these ugly ass houses for 1.5 MILLION dollars? If that was my budget I'd build something beautiful with a big porch like this picture, but all the "luxury" homes are boxes with big garages in front. I look at them on Zillow and they aren't even pretty on the inside.