My son loves reading time before bed, but he’s only 3.5 so the books have mostly been picture books until now. Lately though he’s been getting more into stories with plots and an extended narrative, but entirely in the form of movies. There aren’t a lot of kid’s books to go around with the sorts of dramatic stories he likes, they’re more like “caterpillar eats food” and “train engine climbs a hill with grit and determination” type stuff. And whenever I’ve tried to have him just lay down and listen to me read a story without any pictures to stare at he has absolutely no interest. He really likes having pretty visuals to look at.

I know when I was a small child these sorts of board/picture books weren’t really a thing in India. The pre-sleep ritual was usually “storytime” instead, where my parents would tell us stories. I’m a little bit concerned that my kid has been so accustomed to always having visual cues presented to him that it’s stunting his imagination a bit, like failing to exercise his capacity to visualize ideas and concepts for himself without being anchored by some artist’s depiction.

So I’m curious to hear from other parents or caregivers/educators (@kfwyre?). Did you find there was a natural transition point between going from picture books to telling/reading stories? Was there any sort of work you had to do to enable it? Are there “exercises” I can work on to help my son exercise his imagination? I have been working with him to have him tell me stories about his day, which he does pretty well. But his stories are always quite grounded and he’s usually telling me what he’s actually done and seen. When my nephews and nieces were his age they tended to spin out a lot of random stories that pretty obviously did not happen, and I assume this is because they had more experience being told stories themselves rather than just factual reporting about the happenings around them.

I graduated in the spring and spent the last few months at home with family. I'm hoping to find an apartment/job in a major US city working as a legal assistant or paralegal.

I've never rented before, so I have questions, but due to circumstances related to the ones pushing me away from staying at home any longer, I don't have any parents or older siblings to ask for help, so I'm hoping to crowdsource wisdom here. I have specific questions, but also happy to hear any general advice for someone renting an apartment for the first time.

Some relevant context:

• Studio apartment is nonnegotiable. I don't know anyone I trust enough to be my roommate. If that weren't enough, I'm one of the only people still wearing a mask and trying not to get COVID, so it's gotta be a studio for me to be able to relax.
• I'm looking for a walkable neighborhood and good public transit in addition to affordability, so really looking at Chicago and Philly right now.
• I love to cook, but I know studios often have really lackluster kitchens. Hoping to find one with a usable amount of counterspace.

Those questions I had:

1. If you offer to pay a landlord the cost of the lease in full, is it typical for the landlord to waive the requirement that you provide proof of employment, or if you asked them to waive that, would they be likely to say yes? I would really like to take some time off, and coming home was intended to be that, but toxic family means I've just been stressed the whole time, so being able to get a place without needing a job right off the bat would be a fantastic setup to make sure this new start goes well. (If I save up part-time earnings for the next 2-3 months, I'll have enough to pay a lease on a $1200 studio in full, furnish it with the necessities, and feed myself.)

2. Recently I realized that when apartments are listed as unfurnished, that means no bed or mattress either. (I kind of see now why futons are a thing.) How do people usually address this issue? Do you buy a mattress and bed frame with the expectation that you'll take it with you whenever you move out to the next apartment?

3. Since I don't live in the city I'll be moving to, I most likely won't be able to see the apartment in person before committing. Any particular ideas on how I could handle this or what I should be wary of? I've heard of services where you can pay someone to show up to a tour and video call you so you can follow along (https://www.gandertour.com/). $50 doesn't seem too steep, but I don't know if that specific service is trustworthy, or if there's a cheaper or simpler way to deal with this.

Those are my questions, and like I said above, any advice not 100% related to these questions is welcome too!

My fiancee and I are considering adopting a dog, most likely in the age range of 6 months to 2 years. I've read before that pet insurance is only worth it if you get the dog as a puppy, but I'm wondering what real people think, particularly for a dog that's 2-3 years old. Does anyone else have a pet insurance policy? Who is it with? How's it working out for you? Would you do it again?

I was having a recent conversation with my friends about PTO and who thought they had too much or too little.
The results were interesting, so I thought I'd ask Tildes.

• Are you happy with the amount of PTO you get? Do you wish you had more or do you struggle to spend them?
• US and European PTO is very different, how do you feel about the other side of the pond?
• Do you like the format you get given PTO? Or is there a better way you'd prefer?

Let me know!

Edit: Thanks everyone for responding! So many interesting thoughts and different policies, it's really hard to reply to any specifically lol. I've read them all though!!

The world outside my doorstep is unorganized chaos and I am blind to most of its existence.

Say I'm looking for a job. And I know what job I want to do. I can search for it on a job listing site, but there will still be many such jobs that won't be cataloged on the site and that I'll hence be missing. How can I find the rest? What are some alternative approaches?

Also there are two ways you can end up with a job: either you find it (going on a job search), or it finds you (headhunters etc.). Obviously the latter possibility is much better as it's less tiring and it means you end up with an over-abundance of opportunities (if people message you every week). What are some rules of thumb for life to make it so that the opportunities come to you? (and not only for jobs)

Often I don't even know what opportunities are on offer out in that misty unknown (and my ADHD brain finds it straining to research them (searching 1 job site feels almost futile because you don't know how many of the actual opportunities you aren't seeing)), so the strategy I resort to is imagining what I concievably expect to be out there and then trying to find it. This has several weaknesses: firstly I could be imagining something that doesn't actually exist and waste hours beating myself up because I can't find it. Or, almost even worse, my limited imagination might be limiting what sorts of opportunities I look for which means I miss out of the truly crazy things out there.

Here's an example of an alternative approach that worked for me once:

Last month I wanted to visit a university in another city for a few days to see if I liked it, and I needed a place to stay. I first tried the obvious approach of searching AirBnB for rents I could afford, but none came up. Hence I had to search through the unmapped. What ended up working was: I messaged the students union -> they added me to their whatsapp group -> sb from my country replied to my post on there adding me to a different WA group for students from my country -> sb in that WA group then DM'd saying I could crash on their couch.

I would have never thought of trying an approach like this when I set out, and yet I must have done something right because it worked. What? The idea to message the students union and join whatsapp groups took quite a lot of straining the creative part of my brain, so I'm wondering whether the approach I took here can somehow be generalized so that I can use it in the future.

TL;DR: Search engines don't map the world comprehensively. You might not even be searching for the right thing. What are some other good ways to search among the unstructured unknown that is out there?

Looking for books that target (1) teen person and (2) parents which go over with a fine tooth comb how to navigate basic social skills.

I'm looking for something with as explicit instructions as possible, such as "when someone gives you something, catch their attention, make eye contact, and speak in a loud enough voice to say thank you".

I need something with troubleshooting involved such as, what if they're not looking at me, what if the environment is loud, what if I have my mouth full, what if I've already said it and they didn't hear. I need the instructions to cover things like "what if I'm supposed to follow two conflicting rules".

Basically explaining human customs and manners to bodiless angels who do not learn from observation and whose minds are pure intellect wholly sufficient unto itself, and who need to expend energy and effort to interact with mortals on our plane and operate on our dimensions.

Basics like, how to pass through a doorway when someone is holding the door for you, how to move out of the way when someone is coming towards you on a narrow sidewalk, how to pull over a shopping cart so it doesn't block other shoppers, don't throw/toss things at people when they ask for you to pass an object. These statements have been repeatedly shared with them any number of times to no avail: they're not looking at the world in the same way at all. They're not situationally aware, they're not interested in the world.

I grew up in a world that just screams at people until they behave out of fear and forced compliance. I'm trying to find a different way. Thank you kindly for any recommendations or suggestions.

I live in the desert, and many months out of the year, it's way too hot to be wearing covered shoes. The problem is, though, when it comes to sandals, my feet sweat A LOT and start sliding around, and they become impossible to walk in comfortably. I need a sandal that is super durable, comfortable, will strap to my feet, and look decent enough to be casual or semi formal, and lastly, they will not have their wearability affected by my sweaty sweaty feet. Anyone got some good suggestions?

Desperately need a new mattress and there are just so many options, and so many unspoken sponsored recommendations everywhere (reddit, especially).

Anyone purchased one recently (last five years or so)? The last thread we had on this was two years ago, and there were very few actual recommendations in there.

It is easy to feel helpless at times. As if there is nothing you can do to impact the "greater good." Many of us currently feel rather helpless in relation to politics, but there are many other reasons for this as well.

One argument I hold against this helplessness is the Butterfly Effect, which (in this context) proposes that even the smallest action can significantly alter the future.

An example could be giving encouragement to someone about to give up on a task (even if you aren't aware of it), which keeps them on a trajectory they would have otherwise never continued.

Have you been fortunate enough to identify when this has happened around you?

Of course, there could be negative outcomes related to this too, but I hope we can identify some positive ones.

(Meta note: I was debating if this should be under ~talk or ~life and went with ~life, but feel free to move it if you disagree.)

It's 5am. My family is asleep. I slide out of bed, creep down the stairs, and enter the kitchen. Through the window, faint light dapples the horizon, teasing a rising sun.

I turn on the stove. While it heats, I prepare my station. A knife. A bowl. An old plastic mixing fork.

I inspect the fork. It is old and worn and made of cheap plastic. I don't remember where it came from, perhaps a dollar store. It seemed like something we've always had, following us from home to home to home, always finding its own place to settle amidst our ever-changing lives.

I like this fork.

The dogs grow restless. They wonder if I have forgotten them. I have not. I fill their bowls with food and water. They thank me with wagging tails. I return to—Oh right, the cat. I haven't forgotten you either. Heh. Sorry about that. Here you go.

I return to the kitchen. I can smell hot metal. It's time.

Oil. Hashbrowns. Sizzle. Nice.

I lean my back against the counter and close my eyes. The oil crackles on the stovetop. The rest of the world is still. The day ahead will hold many moments for many people, but this one belongs to me.

I open my eyes. The sun is showing a bit more of itself now. It peeks through the window and spies on me. It wants to know how I make my eggs.

One egg. Crack. Two egg. Crack. Three egg. Crack. Into the bowl they go. A splash of milk. The mixing fork does its job. Around and around and around. Good job, fork.

I turn back to face the sun. Soon, the Earth will finish a single rotation and the sun will rise high into the sky. It has completed this ritual 1.6 trillion times. More times than every breath I will ever take.

I hear a creak from above. My family is awake. They come down the stairs. My wife smiles. My son smiles. I smile. Away they go. They have rituals of their own to attend to. The sun, the fork, and I will attend to ours.

I dump the eggs onto the hashbrowns. The mixing fork does its job yet again. Fried salami joins the fray. I top it all with melted cheese. Nice. I grab plates, utensils, napkins, and orange juice. The ritual is complete.

In the next room, my wife has finished feeding our son. I set her breakfast down. She thanks me. She doesn't know I'm the one thanking her.

I sit down beside her and grab a remote. I press shuffle. The music plays. David Bowie. Nice.

♫ I heard the news today, oh boy
I got a suite and you got defeat
Ain't there a man who can say no more?
And, ain't there a woman I can sock on the jaw?
And, ain't there a child I can hold without judging?
Ain't there a pen that will write before they die?
Ain't you proud that you've still got faces?
Ain't there one damn song that can make me
Break down and cry? ♫

We eat our breakfast. The sun has risen. The world is awake.

Today will hold many moments. But this one is ours.

Kitchen was in a house of hoarders and has had various roach infestations over the decades. It is something where I cannot mentally use the kitchen with all of the memories of opening a dish drawer/cabinet and having roaches run out, and so part of this deep cleaning (and making this thread) is to quell that mental aspect by literally scrubbing it from top to bottom.

I guess I'm mostly looking for this thread on what product would you use to clean? Obviously the most specific stuff will have their own products (eg the oven) - but it terms of just scrubbing down every inside/outside of every cabinet and shelf and what not, what would you use to say "okay I have peace of mind that this has been cleaned and is safe to use"

But also still looking for general advice, as I've never fully deep cleaned a kitchen. Eg Something I didn't think about but came across was deep cleaning a dishwasher (and I've seen them crawl out of the drain there, so even washing dishes haven't been safe). But I mean macro level it's basically "clean the room and clean the appliances" I imagine lol

...which, and I'm guessing more a plumbing issue than a cleaning one, there is a smell that permeates from drains. It's especially bad in the kitchen sink which does have a garbage disposal (and so I imagine it's mostly take that part and clean it out), but I figured I'd still throw that out there now too for any tips on helping with that

(I've already applied Bifenthrin as an insecticide, and haven't seen anything in the past couple months. I've also completely emptied out the entire kitchen, so I can literally scrub from top to bottom.)

I have grown dissatisfied with my mattress. I bought a new one 2 months ago, and I chose the firmest grade of foam available in my country. I don't like springs. When choosing a mattress, my goal is to find something that provides sufficient support without being too rigid. The foam grade vendors suggest for my weight is extremely soft, like sleeping on cotton candy. I don't know why people have this obsession with softness -- it is uncomfortable and terrible for your back.

My new mattress is perfectly fine but it is still not firm enough. Foam quickly loses its rigidity, and I can feel that it is happening already. It is not as firm as it was when it arrived. On a whim, I decided to sleep on the floor. Not literally on the floor, as I have no wish to press directly against the ground all night. I piled the folded plastic plaques we previously used for my son's playpen and wrapped them in a pair of thick quilts. The result was still very rigid but gentler on my joints. I slept on it yesterday. It was a success. I felt refreshed, only woke up once and got back to sleep right away. It was better than sleeping on my mattress.

I looked up traditional Japanese tatamis and futons, but they must be imported in my country because they were more expensive than a mattress. I ordered 4 meters of EVA -- each roll is 2 meters by 1 meter, 1 centimeter thick. I intend to stack them for a thickness of 2 centimeters, providing greater comfort with the same amount of rigidity. I may transition to (kinda) sleeping on the ground full time.

How do you like your mattress? Do you sleep on the floor as well? Or in something that resembles sleeping on the floor?

So I'm about to attend a Green Day concert on my own. First time in my life doing that, I think in a sense I'm proud of myself for attending something like this solo, it shows that I'm prepared to do things I enjoy on my own purely because I enjoy them, but in a way it makes me a little sad to think that I don't have a friend or a group of friends that I couldnl share this with. What do you think about attending things like live music, movie, entertainment solo?

It's been a while since I last posted on Tildes but I wanted to make a follow up to a previous post I made here almost a year ago, mostly for the catharsis! At the time I was deep in a pit of despair over my young Belgian shepherd's anxiety/ reactivity and a sitter cancelling on me last minute and causing me to miss a friend's wedding just pushed me over the edge. Some things we did to resolve the issues:

• Paid an arm and a leg to lock into an 8 week long reactivity course, at the recommendation of someone on here that I actually got to meet up with (thank you so much, you know exactly how incredibly helpful it's been!). This was worth every penny to us for finally getting guaranteed, regular contact with a trainer and behaviourist alone. She had a lot of valuable insights that other trainers hadn't suggested, for example actually doing LESS with him. At our peak we were doing 2 - 3 long walks per day, training and classes 3x per week. Paring our schedule right back gave us both some much needed space to relax.
• Now that we were working with a behaviourist, we were able to get her to speak to our vet and recommend a short course of Reconcile (fluoxetine), which she'd advised a lot of shepherd dogs with these issues responded well to. We gradually increased to 64mg per day, but even on lower doses we saw rapid improvement in his behaviour.
• Probably just let time pass, honestly. More experiences. We go off to different places at the weekends, book on one-time workshops every now and then, visit lots of family. Each subsequent visit has been better. He LOVES my in-laws and took a while to warm up to my grandparents but the last time we saw them he actually got on my grandad's nerves because he kept going up to him for a fuss! It was such a good problem to have. He's still young but starting to get a little bit of frosting on his lips; I've slowly been able to see some of the teen brain adjusting and a little bit of mellowing with age. It DOES get easier as they get older. I've heard it gets even better once they're 3.

People who know him say he's a totally different dog these days. He's now satisfied with one long walk per day and some short sessions of training, play, scentwork and agility dotted through the week. We've also reintroduced one 40 minute class at the weekend which seems to be working well for him, and we're always bumping into his friends or arranging to do something with them at least once a month.

He can cope with strangers being in close proximity - he's a bit choosier about other dogs now but it's all within the realms of normal. A huge milestone for us was being able to have him be a part of our wedding like we'd always hoped. He will occasionally still react to things, but this only tends to be when he's had a very long day and gets tired/ overstimulated. We're more aware of the signs and he's a lot quicker to settle.

He's going to be 2 next week and had a very positive medication review at the vet's this afternoon. We sat in the waiting room and encountered 4 or 5 different dogs, lots of people and a small, energetic child and he had nerves of steel the entire time. What would have felt like a total nightmare 6 - 9 months ago only gave me mild concerns when the kid got a bit too close. He even accepted a pat from someone!

The vet was really impressed by his progress and agreed that we can start decreasing the dosage and tapering him off of his medication. This all would have been about a million times easier if we'd been able to find a reliable trainer in the first place (still couldn't tell you if it was our bad luck or they're normally that flakey) but thank god we finally got there. I'm cuddling my handsome, happy, silly boy this evening and just feeling a huge sense of peace and relief.

If you've read through all of this and/ or were part of the original thread, thank you!

Once or twice a year, my friends and I do a "Friend Getaway" where we rent an Airbnb and all communally nerd out. Magic, D&D, videogames, tabletop stuff, etc. It's a great time. We look forward to it every year.

Unfortunately, our experience with Airbnbs has progressively gotten worse over time (not that it was ever great), with this past weekend being our worst ever. We ended up leaving early and escalated a complaint with the platform (not that I actually think that will do anything, which is one of the problems with Airbnb in the first place).

Unfortunately, we're kind of stuck with going with an Airbnb (or similar, like VRBO) if we want to keep doing this because they're the only thing that give us what we want: private common spaces.

The reason we get an Airbnb in the first place isn't for the destination or the attractions around it. It's so we can all hang out together in the living room and dining room, and cook group meals in the kitchen. We retire to the beds to sleep, but 90% of our waking time is spent grouping ourselves up in the common areas by interest.

If we could stay at a hotel and rent out a living room, dining room, and kitchen for the group, we absolutely would. Ever since Airbnbs became a thing, I was hoping hotels would move a little bit in the direction of offering similar setups, but it feels like at most you can simply get a regular hotel room with a kitchenette. They're not really conducive to groups at all.

To me, there's currently a huge gap between what hotels offer and what Airbnb offers, and if you want the latter, you have to put up with a lot of awfulness that's just sort of embedded into their business model.

I don't really have a point in posting this other than to highlight that and hope that it starts some discussion. I'm also hoping that someone tells me that I'm completely wrong and that there are hotels out there that actually do offer Airbnb-like stays/facilities and I just don't know about them.

I'm quite a few years out of highschool, and recently went back to school.

I'm enjoying the environment (weekends and sometimes online), which was one of my biggest worries, because I tried doing more school right after high-school and it did my head in.

However, I'm struggling with actually learning the more dry stuff. For a few of the courses there's stuff to calculate, there's problems to solve and such, and I can get that to stick and not dread doing it.

That is not the case with the very dry legal things... how do I learn stuff like that? Any tips? Because right now I'm looking at basically trying to brute-force it by hoping to be lucky and re-re-re-reading the entire book hoping the right stuff sticks for the exam.

I have a bit of a curveball for the kind folks of tildes. I have a fairly successful, flourishing and comfortable business of manufacturing-export in India which I handle with my dad.

I handle communication with customers, some documentation work like invoicing, the wages for the workers (we employ a 150 people). I also handle the manufacturing schedule, the quality team and the product development along with planning for material.

It is a fairly technical line of business ;processes range from press stamping, welding, milling, drilling, turning, hot forging, polishing, chrome plating, zinc plating, powdercoating etc.

Alot of my work is just looking over what my team does and just guiding them, motivating them and making sure they are taken care of.

I have worked hard to reduce the Labour turnover and uplift my workforce financially. It's a big family, albeit with hiccups from time to time.

But I have learned from mistakes and kept on improving.

Now on to the advice bit. I got married and my partner moved from the UK to be with me. We discussed all the challenges and thought we could make it work.

But it has been extremely difficult for her to move here. Quitting her job, leaving her family and not being able to settle here is affecting her mentally.

Seeing the state of the country she doesn't want to raise our kids here. Which I wouldn't mind either, but it will be extremely difficult for me to start afresh in another country.

The business is very hands on, and I'm not sure I can handle it remotely even if I find someone to handle the supervisors. Training someone alone for that role will take a lot of time, trial and error.

To find someone who will care for the work and put in the effort will want a good amount of money, and finding someone you can trust in itself is a challenge for a small business.

30% of my revenue goes into salaries, rent and electricity. About 40 to 50%% into material and maintenance, not to mention unanticipated expenses like bribes. So there isn't a lot of margin to experiment with big hirings anyways.

A big reason for our profitability is because we're quite lean.

Winding up the business would also be difficult. It would take a few years to do, it would be difficult emotionally for my parents and me. I know the amount of work my dad put into it.

They will want my happiness so it's not impossible to do. They could live their retirement years on rental income and me taking care of them.

The final challenge would be finding a job in UK or Europe (wherever we move). I'm not sure how employable I will be in a corporate environment. I don't have any other work experience other than an internship in Toyota in supply chain during my mba days (I have an economics background with an mba in marketing)

I know ultimately only I myself can figure this out. But I just needed a sounding board and just share as much as I could.

If anyone read this far ahead, thanks for taking out the time, really appreciate it.