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Спасибо for the correction.
For practice:
Akkor rossz a tojás, ha miután feltörtem, furcsán néz ki (homályos, valami nő benne, piros pöttyöket látok), illetve rossz szagú. A tojásokat mindig külön pohárban töröm fel, nehogy az egész ételt rontsam el vele. Miután megnéztem és megszagoltam, nyugodtan beletehetem a serpenyőbe. A barátnőm azt mondja, hogy amelyik úszik a vízben, az már nem jó, de ez csak azt jelenti, hogy már nem a legfrissebb és óvatosan kell bánni vele. Szeretem a rántott tojást és a töltött tojást és a tükör tojást is de az utolsót csak pirított kenyérrel.
Szegeden élek. Ez körülbelül 4 óra busszal Pécstől. Vonattal még hosszabb az út, mert Budapestre kell utazni és ott átszállni. Így Szegedről Pécsre 180 km-t kell utaznom északra, ahhoz hogy délnyugatra menjek. :D A busz egyenesebb útvonalon megy.
Eggs have gone bad if, after opening one, it looks strange (cloudy, something growing in it, I see red spots), or if it has a bad smell. I always break eggs in a separate cup, lest I ruin the whole meal with one. After I've looked at it and smelled it, I can safely put it into the frying pan. My girlfriend says that the ones that floatin water are bad, but it just means that they aren't so fresh any more and need to be treated with care. I like scrambled eggs, deviled eggs, and over easy eggs but the those I only like with toast.
I live in Szeged. It is about 4 hours by bus from Pécs. It is much longer by train, because you have to travel to Budapest and change trains there. So from Szeged to Pécs I have to travel 180 km north in order to go south west. :D The bus goes on a straighter path.
Thanks for the information. :) I suppose that in general, then, "unheard of leaf vegetable that's being suggested for a salad" can be replaced with "regular salad leaves" and "unheard of vegetable being suggested for pasta" can be replaced with "vegetable i like in pasta" and "some cheese that i dont know what it tastes like" can be replaced with gouda, which is good on everything.
I wonder if leaf parsley's roots taste the same as root parsley's. Wikipedia says they are smaller, since they're not being grown for the root, but I think since it's pretty much the same plant, it should taste at least similar. I don't know if you garden, but if so, you might plant some regular parsley and when the time comes to dig them up see how much root there is. Otherwise, if you shop at farmer's markets, you might ask the parsley-seller about the roots. Types of carrots (in Hungarian anyway) are sugar beets (called sugar carrot), parsley (called white carrot), and carrot (called orange carrot)
I am planning to move in about a year's time, to live with my girlfriend who I'm engaged to and live together. I cannot move sooner because to move in with her, I need to apply for a partner visa, and then wait for it to be processed. It is theoretically possible to move somewhere else, in the interim, but it's only a year, and I don't think I have the energy to move right now. Also, I really like my landlady. She's the kindest person I know. My previous apartments were much worse. At the last one, I was attacked and then stalked by a neighbour and the landlady talked to me about the commandment not to commit adultery (neither of I nor the neighbour are married.) Before that things were kinda okay for five months, then the landlady had "new ideas for the apartment" and I had to move into the first place I found. Before that I was living with an aunt would say to me without warning "we're going somewhere in an hour. wash [explicit list of body parts including private ones] but dont wash your hair or [random list of body parts]." and never mind if I already had plans (like a class to go to or something). There was more insanity that that, this is just an example. And before that there was a mother who was worse than the aunt. And before that there were two parents, which was the worst of all.
Here, the neighbours say hello in the stairwell and that's it. No one bothers me. I'm not afraid to leave the apartment. My landlady is understanding. So, fungus is a step up. and there will be another step up in a year when I get to live with the girl of my dreams.
I have two cats that can't be abandoned for a week, and im not sure where i'd go anyway.
Well, it was food left out of refrigeration as well. I've never really thought of ramen as cooked food -- it was heated in the microwave for the required time, though, so I suppose you're right.
Humidity has been around 80-90% recently, and the temperature that day was probably no higher than 30. The amount of growth was small -- just a few clusters less than a centimetre in diametre, but black and definitely fungus. I put it on the opposite side of the room where it wouldn't be near me and let it grow a little longer and it was covered within a few days.
The building is made entirely of concrete. If you think of a stereotypical cold war era eastern european apartment building, you'll get the idea, though ours has been prettied up (insulated, new windows put in, painted cheerfully) by the city. The walls in this room are hard to the touch, but in my bedroom, the wall is slightly spongy, but not visibly damaged in any way. The sponginess is uniform throughout and feels like I'm pressing against styrofoam instead of concrete. I assumed it was some sort of insulation.
I live on the fifth floor with cats and have no fly screens. There are shutters in the bedroom, so I leave the windows open and the shutters closed, so that air can get in, but cats can't get out. The window in this room leads to a balcony, though, which the cats are scared of because they don't like the noises from the street, so I can open the window in here as well if I keep an eye on them. They really like sitting on windowsills, though, so I'm careful about that. The cats aren't allowed in the kitchen (enforced by a closed door), so I can leave windows open there. I can also air out different rooms alternately with closed doors.
This is what the fungus looks like that was on my clothes: http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012sbbx I managed to wash it twice yesterday, which decreased the smell and made the spots go away. I want to wash it a few more times before deciding what to do, and I think washing will kill at least enough of the spores to make it safe for me to throw them out, if I deem them unsalvageable.
There is a doctor I know of who would see me for free that I could go to. I've lived here for almost three years, and I really like my landlady. Also, I'm planning to move in with my girlfriend in about a year. It can't be sooner, because it will take a long time for my visa application to be processed. I am still at the satge where I have to run around and gather things for the application, but health problems makes it difficult. I want to improve my life as much as I can before I can move, but I'm reluctant to do drastic things ilke move out when I know I'll be moving again so soon.
My preference is a happy medium between the two. My experience vascillates between "chewing little rocks" or "i'm eating baby food" yet I like lentils, despite these problems.
My lentils are labeled in greek (ПΟΛΕМИΔΙΩТНΕ КΥПИАКХ ΦАКН), and my greek is worse than my russian (i can recognise about half of the letters and only those words which English stole and didn't change very much) but they look red to me and definitely not green. I got them when a friend was moving home to Cyprus and didnt want to lug her pantry back with her. That must have been five years ago. She gave me several bags, and a little lentils go a long way.
Because I live in a former eastern bloc country (Hungary). My only guess is the fridge is that old. (It's not mine, but it came with the apartment I live in. The building I live in is Russian built too. :)
I will look again it, to make sure I got the letters right and to make sure it is pointing at what I thought it was. Since my Russian is so bad, when i checked last time what the words said, I was repeating "V soft sign K L" to myself so i wouldnt forget it before i got back to the keyboard. (I was confident i could remember min and maks) so it may have stood out in my head enough that i forgot what it was set to.
But it's definitely cold in fridge, so it cannot be set to "turn off."
This time, I take my camera with me :)
.... and discover that it is set to maximum (МАКС).
Here is a picture http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012rat7 . It also has another setting "НОРМ" which im going to assume is the "normal" or "medium" that i was remembering that it had. I think I set it to maks some time ago in attempt to solve the food spoilage problem.
It's really hard for me to remember выключить because my knowledge of Slavic languages (and understanding of Russian via cognates) comes mostly from southern slavic languages which I have studied, like Serbian, and uključiti in Serbian means "to turn on".
googling "when is ripe" in hungarian gave me a site with a chart (but not all the fruits and veggies i could think of) as the first link. im sure further links down the google results page would include the missing ones.
i will try making the water soapier. also, evaporation plays a problem if i leave it too long. but i want to get in the habit of cooking often enough that i wont have to worry about that. i remember i used to wash any stray dishes while waiting for water to boil. i have lots of tricks like that i seem to have to rediscover again and again. a couple years ago, i had an epiphany that soapy water made things clean, not soapy, and that helped for a while, until i forgot again. i mean, i never stopped using soap, and i used soap before that point, but there was a moment when i understood at an intrinsic level that the soap applied to a dish could be removed from that dish, and the dirt would be removed along with it, through the application of water, and that all dirty things could be made clean, that nothing was dirty beyond repair. whereas othertimes i remember that i don't like the taste of soap and i sink into a vague suspicion that i'm just adding soap to the dirt and making soapy dirt and wonder what makes me so sure that adding soap to a spoon will make the food that later comes onto that spoon more edible. The manner in which I wash dishes doesn't really change, but by mental approach to it changes from disgust at the wrongness on the dishes to delight at the opportunity to right a wrong.
Spinach canned. Hm, so it does. I'll keep an eye out for it. My mental image of the aisle in the store that sells canned food mostly contains corn, peas, and beans, along with a few types of soup (mostly goulash soup, the one i like best), but googling in hungarian tells me there is indeed such a thing as canned spinach. i've seen it frozen, too, in small enough quantities that it could conceivably be eaten in one sitting. and i think frozen spinach would keep for at least a day in the fridge as well.
oh, the english wikipedia page for turnip shows something completely different. the dictionary I was using was wrong. I'm not really familiar with turnips, I guess. What I call white carrot is, according to wikipedia, actually parsley root, which looks somewhat like parsnips, but doesn't taste like them. it's not really carroty in flavour either, just shape. you put it in soups and stews, and chicken noodle soup should have at least one of them and at least one carrot as well.
the roasted squash sounds easy and good. i think i have a vague memory involving squash, zucchini, tomato and pasta with a creamy sauce. which sounds easy to make.
i'll give leek another chance. :)
cream of broccoli soup is wonderful. i tried to make it once, but it wasnt very creamy when i made it, and i used too much broccoli (and therefore too much water and too much of everything else), but it was good.
I remember finding a recipe once online that if I took out everything that I was confused by/didn't think I could get here/didn't like, I was left lentils and water. i didnt like lentils and water all by themselves, and realised that anything i could add to it would be something of my own creation, not resembling the original recipe at all. it's not usually that bad. usually it's something like "capers" (which seem to be something pickled, but i only like pickled cucumbers) or "cheese-whiz" or takes an english cookbook off the shelf and flips through randomly "parmigiano-reggiano (a small handful)", "radicchio", "swiss chard." The book was a present from my mother, but almost every recipe contains something we don't have here, or something i don't like, or something expensive. I've mostly given up on the cookbook as useless. :)
Anyway, a quick googling of "mikor érik" (when is ripe) got me to this page: http://www.hazipatika.com/topics/zoldseg_gyumolcs/seasonality (warning, not in english)
although it doesn't list strawberries. for july, it says: sweet cherries, gooseberries, black currant, watermelon, sour cherry, peach, currant, apricot, plum. the ones that are in the middle of their season will be cheapest. the ones just starting or just ending will be expensive. so my bet is that sour cherry is cheapest.
for vegetables: zucchini (meh), kohlrabi, lentils, sunflowers, capsicum (bell pepper), tomato, pattypan squash, pumpkin, green peas, and horseradish.
If I can figure out what's wrong with the fridge (and whether it has an easy solution), I could make cherry soup http://www.chew.hu/meggyleves.html (recipe in English)
i dont know if they have vanila sugar where you are, but it's equivalent to a tsp or tbsp (but definitely not a cup) of a vanilla i think. you could just keep adding small amounts of it until it tastes good. :)
on the veggies list, the only things on that list that i've cooked with before and would know how to make something edible are: lentils, tomato and capsicum (Both of whom are just starting their season and arent at their cheapest yet)
but there may be other fruits and vegetables not on this list.
Hungary (southern plains, specifically, but it's a small enough country that it doesn't matter. My city is the one that gets an average of 2000 of sunlight a year, the highest in the country.). I noticed a while ago when strawberry prices stopped going down and started going up that strawberry season must be ending, but I didn't attach a date to this noticing in my mind, so when next year rolls around, I still won't know. (Though I remember they never went below 665 HUF/kg (about $3. I would've bought if they went down to 565. This information may or may not be useful next year due to inflation)
Just checked Freecycle. There are three in the country, but none in this city. Deliapro (southern classified ads) has people selling stuff used. currently, someone's selling a gigantic one (230 litres) for about $75, someone else says they're selling various kitchen appliances for $40 and up. i dont want a large one. I wouldnt have space for it anyway. But I could fit a 30-60L one somewhere. I live in a 1.5 room apartment, and the kitchen is tiny, but there is a space in the pantry where I could fit a small freezer.
The fridge I have is a bar fridge. There is a freezer compartment, but the door broke, so I fixed it with duct tape (which means I can't open it). Before the door broke, it would fill with snow on a weekly basis and was tiny anyway (it would fit one frozen pizza.) so I gave up on it and just use the fridge.
i've started crocheting semirecently. i actually started with "smoke less" in my mind. my first project is a hyperbolic möbius strip (directions: chain as many as you want, sc to end of chain, repeat for a few rows, crochet it together into a möbius strip, then continue sc increasing one every three stitches). perfect for mastering single crochet stich. Maybe I'll do the next with double crochet stitches to work on those. im slow at it and not very good yet, but that is because i am a newbie.
and i do have a ring to play with. i'll try to use it more. :)
This is true, but I've also read studies that within 24 hours of quitting smoking, there are already noticable health benefits and lowered risks of problems, which continue to get better the longer the time has elapsed. I'm not arguing that smoking between the ages of 15-18 & 20-27, as I have done, will have no effect, but if I quit while I'm still young -- I probably have a few years left where one way or the other won't matter too much -- then by the time I reach an age where heart disease, lung disease, cancer, stroke, etc. are more likely dangers for me, my lungs will have had a decade or so to recover and hopefully that will be enough. I've gotten a few grey hairs already, and a few wrinkles, so I know that the time to quit will be soon, but I don't know if I'm ready to do it just yet. The last time I quit (for an entire year, cold turkey), it was because I got tired of the way I smelled and didn't want to smell like that anymore. I only started up again because I had friends who smoked (who have since moved away). I think if I can get into that headspace again, where I really don't want to smoke and am tired of it, then I will be able to quit easily, whereas if I'm just doing it because of knowledge of health risks in the distant future -- that's not immediate enough to make it easy.
As far as pregnancy goes, I think that as long as I quit at least a year before I'm planning to get pregnant, the fetus will be okay. My grandmother was encouraged by her doctor to smoke during pregnancy to calm her nerves. (This was in the early 1960,s I believe, and I'm fairly certain the effects of smoking were known to doctors at that time, but i dont know) The kid was born weak and sickly with all sorts of allergies that none of his siblings shared. He survived, and it could have been much worse than allergies, but it was still a bad thing.
the fridge isn't mine -- came with the apartment. and it's a communist era fridge (complete with Russian labeled dials), so it probably dates back to before the wall came down. i have it on medium setting and will look at acquiring a thermoter to see if that means <5°C like it should or, something ridiculous like 10°C (i think i'd notice if it was warmer than that. it feels cold to me.)
I think the beans in question are just old beans. I add salt to taste at the end.
I love indian food amd I like lentils and beans. And lentils are supposed to be quicker to cook (I have some really old lentils. I should get newer ones. They aren't expensive.) The trick seems to be getting them soft but not mush. I used to cook indian more often, but I always made too much. It's amazing how much food one carrot, one onion, one tomato, and some lentils turns into.
I have some spices -- one year for my birthday, I told my mother to get me spices. And small quantities of spies are available quite cheaply - packets containing only a few grams can last me over a year, since I'm only using a pinch of one, a pinch of another. I have most of the common european spices (salt, black pepper, sweet paprika, rosemary, thyme, oregano, dill, basil, sage, etc.) and also I have some curry and garam masala, ground and whole cardamom (which I never knew what to do with). i have chili powder as well, which i add in small quantities to various things for health reasons -- i dont like very spicy, but i dont mind it a little.)
I live in Hungary, and I've been trying to shop less European, because if I don't have emergency supplies on hand and I can't leave the house, then I'm stuck. I try to keep foods on hand that won't spoil to use as emergency foods (some days I have a migraine and don't make it outside), but on the days I can go out, I should be a good European and visit the market across the street in the mornings where there's fresh seaonal produce from surrounding villages, and the bakery just down the street where I can buy 1/2 kg of bread for 115 forints (about $0.57). Lately, though, I haven't been making it outside very often and so I eat into my supplies until I have to buy more.
woah, that is so totally cool. Expensive -- more than a month's rent and utilities combined, but seriously cool.
Also, they sell them in my country -- even in my city, and the webpage says they have a promotion thing where you can borrow it for a night and then take it back the next day for free -- under the idea that a person would be sold on the idea and wouldnt want to go back to their old vacuum cleaner. So, basically, I could get my carpet cleaned for free, and then give it back. If the thing would clean it thoroughly (and I'd be willing to babysit it for a night if it needed to be emptied frequently), it's possible that it could get enough of the ingrained dirt out that i could make reasonable progress with regular vacuuming.
hm, that's interesting. That doesn't seem like something I could easily test for at home, but I may ask a doctor the next time I see one.
The symptoms I have are really weird... not like what I've seen in adverts about heartburn (no burning pain in the chest, no stomach pains), but they come after eating acidic foods, so I try to avoid those foods. After eating something like chili or pizza, I feel like there's something 'stuck' in my esophagus (the feeling is like when you swallow a pill, and it gets stuck on the way down), but there's nothing really there. It is accompanied with burping and/or hiccups which last for hours. it hurts to lie down, so i have to stay seated. and it's a recent development. I never had problems like this before a few months ago. I thought that until I could see a doctor I should just avoid foods that make me feel like this, and googled "alkaline foods" to see what foods might calm my stomach when it does that, if it's reacting badly somehow to acidic foods. unfortunately, there's a big pseudoscience diet called alkaline foods which lists foods like "lemon" as being alkaline, not acidic, because of some sort of reasoning that i couldnt quite follow. the signal to noise ratio was so bad that i gave up on googling for this information.
We don't have Craigslist in Hungary, but we have a newspaper for classified ads that posts the ads online as well. I could search that to see if anyone's advertising something. My landlady has a steam cleaner and has said I can borrow it sometime.
I always take off my shoes at the door, but the cats get hairballs (I give them special treats to cut down on hairballs, which seems to help, but not 100%), and accidents happen, so some sort of shampoo might work.
I wrote a small program in PHP/MYSQL for keeping track of my migraines. You list what you ate that day, what (and how much) you drank, how much you slept and between what hours, pain levels, other complaints, and a few other things. It keeps track of your menstrual cycle as well (if you're doing it every day, there's a checkbox to check on the first day of the cycle). It then lets you sort by any of those criteria so that you can look back over the data and try to make sense of it. It's not hosted online anywhere (i was never done tinkering with it, and i never added anything like a login form or support for multiple users, so you have to have a server with php and mysql set up on your computer to run it. I kept track of it for a while, but then started forgetting more and more and I had no idea how to analyse the data I'd amassed (and probably would've needed more data anyway). Also, I wasn't sure if I was asking the right questions (or enough of the right questions). A big source of my migraines was the bad mattress I was sleeping on, which wasn't even in that data. Getting a new mattress earlier this year helped a lot, but things have started to get bad again (though now at least, I know I'm sleeping well on a good mattress).
i think if i ate eggs once every 3 days ( to keep from getting tired of them. i tire easily of eggs) I could get through a carton (10 eggs) with time to spare before they expire.
milk: i've mostly switched to powdered milk (which i wont drink, but can use in cooking and it doesnt go bad). When I want drink milk, I've started to buy a half litre of it that I will drink as soon as I get home. The problem with UHT is that once I open it, I have to drink the whole litre in a couple days. I need to figure out what's wrong with my fridge. I was more using milk as an example of something that I can't buy and use in the way normal people do because it spoils quicker than it should.
meat: i do like those, and a little can go a long way. There's a store here (Aldi) that sells 300g Nürnburger Rostbratwurst for ~€3. 300 grams can last me quite a while. -- These don't seem to go bad in the fridge actually, as long as I use them in a week. I keep them in the original package which I don't open very far and also wrap that in plastic. I can buy a small amount of minced meat for 1€ and make a stir fry with it that serves one person, but I don't do this very often.
pasta - yeah, I live off of pasta.
Ungarn :) I live south of Budapest, so food is cheaper here than it is there. The price of tobacco is set at a national level, however. A box of cigarettes costs 560 forints, about €2. However, I have found it is cheaper to buy tobacco directly. A 40g packet of tobacco also costs €2 and will make 50 cigarettes. A box of 200 empty cigarette tubes costs €1. So, the price of 200 cigarettes made by hand is €9. The device that puts the tobacco in the tubes costed €5 and has lasted me over a year so far. It paid for itself very quickly. I smoke about a pack a day, so €0.90. 1 kg of bread costs €1. 10 eggs is a little more than €1. At Aldi I can buy a can of Gulyás soup for €1, but it is €3-4 in stores close to me.
i'll look around. it sounds like a nice way of cooking.
some cheaper food is cheaper because it is about to expire and the store wants to make at least some profit off of it. other cheaper food is just cheap because it's cheaper to produce.
the dial on the fridge is labeled in Russian. My Russian is not very good (i can read most of the letters and get a basic idea of what i'm reading, but more than 50% of the words are unknown to me), but i can easily make out МИН "minimum", ВЬКЛ "medium", and МАКС "maximum" and have it set to medium. i have no idea what actual temperature this refers to. i have a thermometer but it is only for measuring human body temperatures. i will have to see if i can find a cheap thermometer that could measure the fridge, because I am curious.
i may look into the cost of pressure cookers down the track.
oh, this is helpful information. I didn't realise there was a difference. It seems to be the latter case. Things are fine unopened until their expiration date. Things that are opened need to be used very quickly. There are things growing in certain dishes in the fridge (another problem I'm not really up to tackling) but I have had this problem since I moved into this apartment, even during long stretches of time when there were not things growing in the fridge (because I was using the fridge less -- wasn't cooking as much as didn't have leftovers). It doesn't seem to matter whether I buy UHT milk or regular. They keep okay unopened most of the time, but opening them means I have to use them quickly. I've swtitched to powdered milk, which I wont drink, but a teaspoon of the powder with a little extra water works well for sauces that call for milk.
When I do get round to throwing out things that are growing in dishes (the current ones are covered in plastic wrap), i also take the opportunity to wash the fridge with cleaning supplies and vinegar, in case any of the scary stuff escaped.
in winter, i've had some success using the balcony as a fridge/freezer. but it's summer now.
That's an idea. I'll look for some hydrogen peroxide next time I'm at a store.
I would love nothing better than to rip out this carpet. Even if there was nothing but concrete underneath it, I would gladly consider that infinitely better than this mess of crumbs, kitty litter that the cat kicked out of the box, cat hair, human hair, cat vomit, cigarette ash, dust, the microscopic creatures that feed on all of that, and their poo. It's an ugly orange colour that was fashionable when it was installed over 30 years ago. In some places, it's threadbare. It's a nylon carpet, which means it holds onto hair and dust and won't let it go.
I'm a renter, though, so it's not my decision. I'm not sure if getting rid of the carpet (and replacing it with nothing but the bare concrete underneath it) would devalue the property ("carpeted" sounds so nice and soft under your feet -- though this the carpet is neither) or increase its value (it really is a terrible carpet). I might bring it up with the landlady, but I'm tempted to just put up with it for the year or so longer that i'll be here before i can move in with my girlfriend.
This comment was really helpful to me. Thank you. Googling "toxic fungus" was sufficiently scary to get me out of "what is it about laundry that i'm just not understanding that caused this to happen" mode (answer: there is nothing about laundry that i don't "understand". i also have long been aware of what fungus is and what conditions foster its growth, but was unable to prevent those conditions from occuring because of health problems, which the fungus exacerbated), and made me realise the flaw in my: "wait till i'm feeling better and then deal with it" strategy.
drugs that don't help:
1) anything over the counter (aspirin, ibuprofin, acetomenicin (sp?), etc.) do not touch my pain levels.
2) coffee can lower my pain levels by a small amount, but i am sensitive to caffeine and use it sparingly.
3) i have some (expired) tramadol, which gave me rebound headaches, so i stopped taking it.
4) promethazine used to help a lot, but i think my body got used to it, and now it does nothing.
5) Quarelin (metamizol-sodium, caffeine, drotaverin-hidrochlorid), which is available here, but was taken off the market in most western countries because of a few deaths, does help, but i'm wary of taking it too often or too much. it won't make it all better, but it can take me down from a 7-8 to a 3-4 on my pain scale. i can function at a 4, but stlil have to be careful. I'm useless at an 8.
6) i think they tried some antidepressants as well as a teenager, since i was depressed in addition to the migraines back then, and some antidepressants have been found to help with migraine. (I am no longer depressed), but they didn't help (neither with the depression nor with the migraines). 14 different psychiatric medications were tried, most of them were not approved for use in children, all of them caused bad side effects, and i still have facial twitches which started when I was a 12 year old on zoloft. (i am 27 now). this has made me wary of medication, since most meds cause harm even when they do good, but i am willing to try medications with a patient doctor who understands that if there is a rare side effect (lactation, aphasia, sleeping 18 hours a day, extreme paranoia), I will probably get it and deem it worse than the condition it was meant to treat.
i've never taken the preventative meds for migraines, just the PRN ones.
My access to medical care is somewhat limited by not having insurance (€25 a month), but I know a doctor who is willing to see me even though I don't have a health card and who might be willing to help me access medication at health card rates. Deciding whether to see her and take advantage of this is a moral quandary. On the one hand, I believe this to be stealing and I believe stealing to be absolutely wrong by standards I hold myself to. (It is a black and white issue with regard to my own conduct. I admit to grey areas for other people by assuming they are doing the best they can and making their own choices based on their own moral reasoning.) On the other hand, the citizens, of which I am one, who cannot afford to pay €25 a month for healthcare are the ones who need it the most, the ones for whom preventative healthcare would have vast and far reaching effects beyond their (our) class. And perhaps I would be able to pay the €25 a month for healthcare if I were healthier. The doctor would be at risk for helping me and others like me if they were found out, but the chances of their being found out are small, especially since I have no intention of telling someone who it is that is helping me, and it is their decision to help.
I have accepted help in getting Quarelin in this fashion (it is prescription only, but I prefer the other method of accessing it: going to the pharmacies where the employees won't ask the prescription). But for experimenting with new medications, I would need to make the decision to see a doctor regularly who can evaluate my progress and make adjustments as needed.
I think I could hold some clean cotton underwear to my face as well, which helps when the kitty litter is stinky, though that would leave me one handed, so if i can find some, your solution will probably help.
These are good suggestions. I will try. I've made some progress (girlfriend talked me into running it a few times without opening the drum to touch the scary stuff, and the smell has gone down and the fungus has decreased) since the taking it out is the risky part (it can be fairly loud, but i mostly cant hear it if i close the door to the bathroom and also the one to the hallway), killing some of the fungus, even though i couldnt take it out today, was a useful activity that may buy me more time and will make it safer to handle the clothes when I am feeling well enough to either hang them out or put them in a large trash bag.
southern Hungary. A bit of a swim from the location listed in your profile, it seems. :)
I will try. I really did think there was some simple answer that I was missing that would enable me to do it on my own, like everyone does, but i wasn't accounting for the fact that the people who manage to stay on top of their laundry dont have disabling migraines.
I have a mother who lives very far away, who would spend money she didnt have to come help me if she knew, but I'd feel very guilty about the whole thing.
My best friend is currently at a summer camp like training thing for a new job and following that is moving to Budapest (2 hour train ride away) with her boyfriend (my other friend). So they're very busy right now and currently unavailable, and they've helped me out so much with other things in the past, that I dont want to be a burden on them. I'm ashamed of the condition of the apartment, but I know they would be understanding.
i have a religious community, but the last time i was very sick, in 2009, (3 weeks of influenza + 3 weeks of strep throat), I asked for help getting to a doctor (I had a high fever, was sleeping 22 hours a day, could not keep even a small sip of water down, and was terrified that i was going to die of dehydration). They helped me get to a doctor and get antibiotics and medicine to help me keep things down, but while they were here, they took one look at my flat (a mess. i was too busy throwing up to keep things tidy) and wrote my mother a letter saying that i was clearly mentally ill because of disarray I was living in which reflects an inner disarray of mind and emotion and my mother was so worried that she flew out to see me (which she could not afford to do), but by the time she got here I had mostly recovered and I made an effort to show her that I was okay, not having a nervous breakdown, was a little weak after a physical illness which had led to the mess that had been there (all tidied up in a frenzy that i wasn't really well enough to do before my mother arrived), and that i did not need to be taken back to live with her where she could ensure that i find a good psychiatrist, because the antibiotics had cleared up the "mental illness" just fine, thank you. i succeeded. This experience has made me much less willingly to reach out for help from the people involved (and it's a small community, so pretty much everyone was involved). (Their reaction has no basis in our scriptures, which say that when you are sick you should seek the best medical advice available to you and obey it. But the pseudoscience is strong in the individuals in question.)
My neighbours are mostly elderly and I would feel improper asking them to clean up my messes for me. My landlady is a dear, knows about my migraines, and if she knew I was in trouble would probably be able to find someone who could help. She's seen my flat in disarray before (she took care of my pets when I very suddenly had to go help my mother recover from a surgery (she recovered well)). It's mostly shame that keeps me from reaching out to people I know. And expecting other people (even those who seem trustworthy -- after all, I'd known those religious people for a years) to assume I'm mentally ill instead of helping.
My girlfriend also lives far away (we're planning to get gay marriaged and move in together, but there are a lot of logistics to sort out because her country is difficult to move to, and Hungarian is a very hard language to learn (and there are other, valid reasons that mean it would make more sense for me to move there. It will probably be another year yet till I can move. Even though we are engaged, it will take many months for the visa to be processed, and before that there a million and one hoops I have to jump through (health checks, background checks, saving up money, and more) to get the 60+ pages of forms filled out and submitted. she is available daily on skype for moral support, and can tell me when I'm overthinking things. (Until I got all these responses, I really did think that there was just some basic step to laundry washing that everyone but me knew and I was stuck going over the steps in my head trying to figure out how to get into a universe where I do not have frequent, sudden, unpredictable headaches that lead to situations like these. this step by step analysis of all of a problem is great for identifying the racing condition that is causing the bug in the code I'm writing. But it's not useful for simple things like laundry where I understand the steps of putting clothes in, adding detergent, and taking them out, and can't think my way into a situation where my clothes aren't rotting in the washing machine.
I didn't sleep last night (was too panicked about the washing machine), but today my girlfriend talked me into running it a couple times. I set it to 60°C, added extra detergent and vinegar, extra fabric softener, and ran it twice, napped, and then woke up to my mother calling to tell me to expect a phone call from my sister (who also lives far away), and I had wanted to wash it a couple more times before trying to take anything out. But I couldn't, because I wouldn't be able to hear my sister on the phone if the washer was going. She didn't call till 11pm, so tomorrow I'll wash them a few more times. I peeked after the second wash, and the fungus is no longer visisble, and the smell has decreased and was no longer dizzying. Tomorrow, I'm going to try to wash them a few more times, and if I can, I will try to take them out. If I can't, I'm not sure what I'll do. But I figure that the washing does seem to have killed at least some of the fungus which will make them safer to handle when I get to the point of deciding whether to put them into a trash bag and carry them downstairs to the bins or whether some of them are safe.
It might be possible to wash them daily, and then when I hit a day where my pain levels are lower I can take them out and make a decision. This does seem like a tremendous waste of water, detergent, and fabric softener, and my financial resources are not unlimited . But it's summer, and hot, and 82% humidity, and I left out a bowl of ramen noodles that I couldnt finish last week and it grew visible fungus within 8 hours. so it's the season where everything will rot if i'm not on the ball all the time, which i cant be. And comments here have made me realise that my usual strategy of "wait till i'm feeling well and then deal with it" won't work if the thing that needs dealing with is actively making me sick, which it might well be.
that's a really good idea. I will have to see where I can buy paper plates. Most places seem to only sell plastic, but they must be available somewhere. This would probably work for paper bowls as well, placed inside a regular one.
I will have a look at one of the health shops that sells protein powder to see what it costs, and will look online to see what I can slip it into without noticing the taste.
i am lukewarm on eggs. I like them enough to eat a few of them, and you can stir certain vegetables into them and add cheese if you have some and salt and pepper and they can taste nice, maybe every few days but then I have to get creative to use the last few eggs in the carton before they go off. if i make a concerted effort, I can eat a carton of 10 eggs in 3 batches spread over 9 days, and they do last longer than that. maybe I could make every day divisible by 3 egg day. Today's the 179th day of the year (well, now that it's 2am, it is), so if I went out tomorrow (which will still be the 179th, but it's tomorrow because i'll have slept between now and then) to pick some eggs up, I could start tomorrow. If not, I could start on the 182nd.
there's a store that's only 1km walk and a bus ride away where I can buy many things very cheaply and the quality is better than anything else in the town. Cans of soup for €1 a piece instead of €4 (hmm, i wonder what their canned beans are priced like. If it were €1 it might be worth it, though when you can get an entire kilogram of dried beans for less, it feels like a waste to spend €1 on one meal). sometimes when I go there I buy sausages. These are more expensive, about €3, but cheaper than I can find elsewhere and the quantity will last me about a week, since I use them sparingly to make them last longer. I shop there when I can, but most days I don't have the energy to spend a couple hours taking busses and walking with a heavy load (the savings in buying their products vastly outweigh the cost of the bus tickets), so I also shop at places that are nearer to me, where the selection is poorer and the prices are higher. at these stores, i'm careful what I buy and tend to buy things where the price difference is smaller
The cheapest source of vegetables isn't these foreign stores. It's the market across the street where the farmers from neighbouring villages come in the morning with carrots that look like they've just been pulled out of the ground. You have to get up early if you want to buy anything, and the prices change every day -- and if you don't know the seasons as well as everyone else seems to, they will stop going down and start going up just when you were thinking you'd buy at the next price drop. I don't know the seasons well, but I could probably find something with googling -- except I get a feeling that questions like "when is strawberry season here?" is considered common knowledge. Once, I was playing "guess the fruit" with a six year old, and he was giving me hints for the fruit he'd thought of. The first clue he thought of was not "it is yellow" or "monkeys eat it" but "it's ripe in winter". (Bananas, grown in the southern hemisphere, are ripe in our winter. it made sense once I thought about it, but I'd never thought about it.) but maybe I can find a website aimed at slow six year olds who don't yet know which two weeks are strawberry season, and whether sour cherry season comes before or after black cherry season.
about number 4. i do need to find a way to do some self modification for that. it's kind of ridiculous. the goal of frugality is living within my means and someday, trying to get to the point where i have 1 months expenses saved up in my bank account so that i have a small cushion if my money's late or i don't get paid or an emergency comes up. buying food, eating nothing, letting it go bad, and throwing it away isn't frugal. Actually, it reminds me of something the Cullens would do (I'm a big fan of Luminosity and Radiance. Never read Twilight, but mom sent me to the DVD since she knows nothing about my tastes heard it was popular, so I downloaded subtitles for it in one of my target languages (Macedonian) so i could watch the gift and call it language practice.)
heartburn can be medicated. i've looked up some medications that i can get without a prescription at the local pharmacy. (All medications here have to be bought from a pharmacist, even aspirin, but some don't need a prescription) I am painfully shy, and having to ask for something by name is a trial for me, but I have been meaning to get down and buy some antacids. it's probably stress related heart burn anyway. I can afford to spend a few euros on antacids. I am poor, but I actually live more frugally than strictly necessary, because I want to improve my situation and frugality can help with that (though neglecting my health is not frugal in the long run or even in the short run, I know. I need to cut that out.)
6) i've done a lot of thinking recently because knowing why is the first step. After my parents divorced, when I was about ten, I was terrified we'd have to go back to living with my father if we failed to make it on our own financially and knew that we were poor, so I tried to do all that I could to prevent that from happening. I knew I was too young to get a job, too young to legally babysit, and I knew I wouldnt have earned much anyway. So, I stopped wanting things. I stopped whining about the toys I saw on tv, I stopped eating breakfast, knowing that my overworked mother would see the opened and partially empty box of cereal and not replace it until it was nearly empty because she would see that I had something to make myself when I got up before going to school. I stopped eating lunch, because the agreement was that I would ask for more money to buy school lunch when I needed it, and I knew she wouldnt remember how recently she'd given me the money. So I kept the money and spent it as infrequently as I could, knowing that the longer i stretched it, the longer my mother would have to go without giving me more. I probably did save her some amount of money this way, but i didnt really have all the facts, and the teacher's reports that i'd stopped responding to my name and mostly stared off into space all the time led to doctors appointments which definitely costed more than school lunch. Dinner was eaten together when she came home from work. Sometimes I cooked, sometimes she did, and I ate dinner every night. I don't remember much about that year, but I spent most of it dizzy and spaced out. after a while, my body got used to it and i didnt have much appetite anymore. It was logical in its own way, but i didnt have all the facts, and i was very young. and then as a young adult, i was again scared that if i couldnt make it on my own financially i'd have to go back to living with my mother, so i went back to skimping on food. it's like an eating disorder, but i don't obsess about calories and couldn't care less what I weigh.
freezers are indeed useful. someday, i shall have one.
i already use a piece of paper on a tray to catch crumbs if i'm just eating bread or something. pasta i eat out of the pan (i am cooking for one, after all, why dirty a plate?) my cup is rinsed well the first time i'm going to use it that day. who knows how many flies visited it over night (no fly screens either, and it's summer), but after that i dont wash it between uses. i've used disposable plates and forks in the past, and though i feel guilty about environmental concerns, if i can't eat any other way, then i can't. i'd really like to find some paper plates instead of plastic, because the only plastic ones i can find melt in the microwave, which renders them useless to me. when i cook in the oven, i use aluminium foil instead of a pan, if i can get away with it.
dishes: i do rinse them, and then i come back to them a week later and they are slimy. (solution: come back the very next day. i try, and i can succeed for days at a time sometimes, but then something comes up and i'm back to having a sink full of petri dishes.
vegetables you mentioned that I know what they are called here and remember seeing in a store, even if rarely, and think i like or have questions about whether i would like it or not:
spinach - <3 but hard to find out of season
kale - it's called "kale cabbage" here, which has scared me off it, since i dont like cabbage. does it taste like cabbage? my real problem with cabbage is that it is huge and i cant eat an entire cabbage before it goes bad, and i dont like it pickled. i can tolerate the taste here and there, but ill never be enthusiastic about eating a lot of it at once.
peppers = capsicum. - will eat them, and wil sometimes like them, but am not crazy about them. they do go nice in pasta sometimes.
we don't have celery here, but we do have celeriac. it is large and hard to use all of it in time, but i do like it. the problem is you only need a tiny bit to get the right flavour.
turnips - are called "white carrots" here and are good in soups, but it is impossible to cook soup for one person and i dont know any other ways of preparing them. can they be eaten raw?
squash - like, but they are usually large, and i dont know whether they can be eaten raw or how to turn them into the tasty mashed stuff (i dont have a masher), or if they can be prepared non-mashed.
leek - is a readily available, mostly green, gigantic, cylindrical onion. i like onions, but do not know if i could consume an entire leek. i imagine that slices of it would be good on just about anything though.
broccoli - is only sold in 500g batches, is hard to find, and somewhat expensive. i love it, but have trouble using up so much of it.
cauliflower -is cheap, white coloured broccoli that is sold by the head. impossible to use an entire head without it going bad if you are only one person.
Do most vegetables go well with each other? (in a stir fry, on top of pasta, etc.)
I like reading recipes online, but sometimes get frustrated when they list ingredients that are unavailable to me (happens more often than not.) but i'll look around some more.
okay. that's a good idea. I put two into separate comments and then edited this one so it only contained the last one.
Things I really need to do but can't seem to make myself do them:
there are clothes rotting in my washing machine. I had a migraine and couldn't hang them up, and the migraine lasted about a week, and now there's fungus growing on them. I've read online that this can be fixed by washing them 3-4 times and then hanging them in the sun to dry. Adding vinegar to the washing machine can help. The washing machine is right next to the bathtub, and I can't bathe properly because the smell is overpowering and makes me dizzy and light headed.
1) I'm still sore and constantly on the verge of a migraine. There's no guarantee that if I start a load I'll be able to hang it up.
2) Medicines sometimes help the migraines but not very much. I mostly have to ride them out. It may be a week yet till I can be sure that I can hang it up to dry.
3) There are noise restrictions in my building, so I can't make lots of noise after 8pm. This means that I'd need to get up early in order to wash the clothes. I got up early for a few days, but it made the headache worse, and it rained anyway, so not much sunlight.
4) I think the real reason is that when I do eventually take them out of the washing machine (having been washed X more times), I will have to touch them with my hands.
5) I can't really afford to replace them. Some of the items in the washing machine I could get over losing (I do have other shirts), but others are items I don't own enough of as it is.
6) i am very allergic to bleach and have trouble breathing if i walk through an area where it was used within the last half hour. so i cannot use it on my clothes. but vinegar should do the trick.
7) if i leave it much longer, the fungus will eat holes in my clothes. and leave stains. but some of the articles of clothing may not be too stained any may be wearable around the house, once they are fungus free.
Similarly, the floor in the apartment is filthy. Absolutely filthy. Covered in all sorts of stuff. It's a really hard carpet to clean (you have to brush it to coax the dirt out before you can vacuum it, or the vacuum doesn't do anything). But vacuum cleaners are loud and the noise would drive my pain levels up even higher. i can't vacuum, because i would have to devote an entire day to it (literally. have done so in the past and it still wasn't fully clean, just cleaner), and i dont have the stamina for a day of it. this is really the same problem as the laundry except that it's less bad and less urgent.
I don't eat enough vegetables or protein.
1) Vegetables and meat are expensive and are generally not in my budget.
2) I don't like the way I feel after eating meat. I find my thoughts are slower and my stomach feels slightly queasy.
3) Beans take forever to cook. Even if I soak them overnight. Canned beans are expensive.
4) When I buy food, I tend to try to eat as little of it as possible to make it last longer. When I do this with vegetables, they go off and have to be thrown away. But it's so hard to make myself eat now when I could eat later. I know that I'll be hungry a few hours after I eat, so longer I go, the longer it'll be till I get hungry again.
5) Some fruits and vegetables give me bad heart burn. Others don't taste very good.
6) I'm probably not saving all that much money on food by not eating. It's just a weird behaviour I can't break myself of.
7) I'm cooking for one and it's very hard to cook the tiny portions I require. Or rather, it's a lot of work and I only get one meal out of it. If I do get two or three meals out of it, I'm get tired of eating it and can't eat it for a while.
8) I have a small fridge, but no freezer. Frozen vegetables aren't an option for me unless I use them all at once (and then the portion is too big and half of it goes bad).
9) I have problems washing dishes (and of course cannot afford a dish washer), and sometimes i have to wash a plate on 4 or more consecutive days before it's clean. (this isn't /just/ OCD. there really is visible grime on it still after so many washes. i just dont have the arm strength due to the chronic pain.) washing dishes can tire me out to such an extent that i am then unable to cook. cooking and eating tires me out to such an extent that i cant wash the dishes. the best plan i can figure out is to alternate days: eat bread one day and wash dishes. cook the next day and dirty dishes. but the current state of affairs is that all dishes are dirty and have to be washed before each use.
10) most ingredients for cooking don't keep for more than a day or two, even in the fridge. milk, bread, veggies, leftovers, they all go bad. i think it's something about the humidity.
Vegetables I like: tomato (heartburn), onion (heartburn), garlic (no problem)
Vegetables I like, but don't really know what to do with: carrots, lettuce (can't buy small enough quantities anyway), corn, potatoes
Vegetables I don't like all that much or at all: peas, string beans, asparagus, brussel sprouts, capsicum, cabbage, eggplant, zucchini
there may exist vegetables that i forgot to mention. i may or may not like them or be able to afford them or know how to prepare them.
Fair enough.
I have textural issues too although mine seem to have different triggers than yours. But it influences what foods I can eat (nothing squidgy, which might be a made up word, but it means mushrooms and anything else that feels like i'm eating a condom), what clothes I can wear (i can only wear nylon tights if i wear thick white socks underneath), even what kind of books I can read (smooth textures are the worst for me, my hands break out in sweat and i get a fight or flight response). i've used cotton gloves before to soak up some of the sweat from my textural problems, but any other type of glove would exacerbate it. i have to be really careful with what kind of socks i buy as well. -- no i'm not suggesting you knead dough in cotton gloves.
yeah, i had a feeling the deodorant thing wasn't going to be too helpful -- it's nice for armpits, but you can't slather it on your face or hands or feets or other places. and deodorant does nothing for the heat rash you get under the bra after sweating.
it's true, bicycling and rollerblading cost money if you dont already have the equipment (i already have rollerblades, so its cheaper for me to use them than to take a bus -- my rollerblades have saved me a lot more money than their initial cost, but that is only the case if you know you are going to be able to use them for transportation).
I think it's probably best to just avoid the sun as much as possible.
another thing that is potentially exercise, if you like kids, looking after one for a while. true, you can just stand there and watch, but joining in tends to be a bit of a workout.
yoga should not be painful. you may be stretching too far. for example with lotus position (where you twist your legs up like a pretzel), you shouldnt do that until your body is ready to do that. instead, just put your feet together, and try to get the knees as close to the ground as you can without it hurting -- if this means your thighs are at a 45° angle compared to your torso and floor, that's okay. you do it so that it's a tiny bit of a stretch, but not painful, and over time, you're able to go farther. but if it's not for you, it's not for you. i will probably never be able to touch my toes. i can touch my knees. and i can touch a little farther, and then if i go any farther, it hurts, so i dont. I think stretching and yoga can probably be done safely by most people (definitely not all, though) if they granularise it enough -- work on touching the knees before touching the top of the shin, then the middle top, then the middle, etc. but every body works differently and you know yours best -- i only elaborate about the yoga because a lot of people seem to try to turn into a pretzel on day 1 and it doesnt work. my body is pretty weird actually. For example, walking (at all) is usually a bit painful for me, but rollerblading is not. something about the stride, or the way my foot is held tightly by the skate, but not too tightly.)
our local ice skating rink sometimes has deals where they let everyone in for free (but you still have to pay to rent skates). Maybe your local public pool (you did mention swimming) has similar specials from time to time.
having cats is also a source of exercise for me: carrying a heavy bag of kitty litter up 5 flights of stairs. then carrying dirty kitty litter down again. phew. and carrying them to the vet when one of them gets sick is exercise. My one cat has been sick , constantly, though something different each time, since October (UTI --> antibiotics --> diarrhea from the antibiotics --> ringworm --> nearly went bald --> eye infection. So for a while I was having to carry her (in my arms, with a leash attached in case she made a break for it) about a km every week or so. Thankfully, she's much better now.
I should stop smoking.
1) I am addicted to nicotine.
2) Nicotine patches are expensive, cigarettes are very cheap.
3) cigarettes supress my appetite and they are cheaper than food. I can smoke 25 cigarettes for the cost of a loaf of bread. it takes me more than a day to smoke that many. if i want to buy things to put on the loaf of bread, we're up to about 3-4 days worth of cigarettes.
4) if i quit smoking i would have more money for food, but not so much more as to make a huge difference.
5) smoking is my only vice and my only luxury.
6) I currently have a 0% chance of becoming pregnant (long distance relationship + we're both girls anyway), so I do not have to worry about harming a fetus. -- i do plan to quit someday before i have children, but that is a few years away yet.
7) i'm in my mid 20s, so the health risks aren't looming large yet. i can quit later.
8) i need something to do with my hands and my mouth. i dont like gum or lollies all that much.
If you don't like water, but like lemonade (or some other drink that can be served chilled and isn't too expensive), filling a water bottle with it can be nice. If it's too sweet, it'll make you thirsty, but watering it down fixes that. I tend to add just enough syrup/juice/whatever to water to make water palatable. (i dont like water either).
i know a person who has a medical condition that gets worse with exercise. they have to avoid it as much as possible because they can feel poorly for weeks afterwards (even moderate amounts of exercise, like walking too much). The condition in question is not a heart condition, but it is possible that there are other conditions that react poorly to exercise for different reasons than the one my friend has. So you should definitely consult with your doctor AND listen to your body. If you feel really crummy after exercise, you should be doing smaller amounts of exercise to build up your strength. If you feel really crummy after a tiny amount of exercise, you probably shouldn't be exercising. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor.
solution to sweat: deodorant
solution to sunshine: a wide brimmed hat and sunscreen, if the problem is sunburn, or a sensitivity to light, or heat.
other solutions to sunshine, if you are a night owl: rollerblading at night -- is safer than walking since you can zip by other people. is also less hot and sweaty. bicycling at night. these sorts of things are best done in well lit areas
another solution to sunshine: if you are in a building with an elevator, take the stairs at least part way up. if you have a washing machine, hang your clothes up on a clothesline to dry (i have a clothesliine over my bathtub. they're easy to make. i don't have a dryer, and hanging up heavy, wet clothes can be tiring, especially lifting them up over your head. you can also flush toilets with a heavy bucket of water (you dont have to empty the entire bucket, just a little bit will do. this saves quite a bit on the water bill as well -- my water bill has gone down since the flush on my toilet broke. bake bread now and then. kneading bread is also quite a workout. if you take public transportation, get off a stop early when you aren't in a hurry. little things like these add up and they're often more interesting than sitting on an exercise bike -- getting off early lets you explore on foot a part of town you might not have known as well. and these tips are all good for number 4 as well -- they're cheap. most of them (including the elevator one, since i'm living on the fifth floor and my building doesnt have one) are things i do not really by choice but because i'm that poor.
solution to boring: audio books! i prefer reading a book to listening to one, but listening to one is more interesting than listening to nothing. also, if you like television and are doing something that can be done in front of a television (yoga, stretching, lifting cans of beans and pretending they're dumbbells...) then television is another option.
I suppose, then, that the most utility could be gained by donating time to local projects in your area of interest -- tutoring kids, red cross, what have you, and money to global projects. It doesn't take a lot of expertise to send $10 to starving kids in Africa, or what have you. You decide that Sub-Saharan Africa is a place where your money will probably go a lot farther than most other places, you google around for some charities, then do a little background research, and send in your money.
But with donating time, where you're doing something physically, you're going to generate a lot more utility by doing something you already know something about than by something you'd have to learn from scratch.
I think using hyperlinks in some of the horoscopes would be useful.
Thanks for explanation about the one I didn't understand. You're right that I could've easily missed it. I did originally assume it was a litterbox cleanliness problem, but I very early on I noticed that I'd clean the litter box, and then within an hour, the cat would go in it, pee, bury it, hop onto the chair, and poo right in front of me. I've been reinforcing "not on the chair" with a fan pointed at the chair. The cat hates the fan, but apparently there are too many other places she's willing to poo if the chair is too windy. So she went on the floor, and then I cleaned it and put some trash down on the spot she'd went on, and now at least we've got the trash solution. Maybe she just doesn't like the location the litter box. I could try moving it.
I think "Are you asking the right questions to accomplish your goals?" would be a suitable rewording.
I think it would be useful to be able to rate a horoscope "confusing." This wouldn't be a numerical rating that got averaged in, but a separate tally. Then now and then you could look at what is most frequently rated "confusing" and see if it's an issue of jargon or if it's just too vague. They need to be vague enough to apply to a broad scale of people but not so vague that they stop applying.
For example, today I rated yesterday's horoscope as "not useful" because I spent the entire day trying to figure out what it meant, how I could apply it to my life and interactions with the universe and never came up with an answer. (It was "Are you asking the right things?" which I guess isn't the right thing to ask me. I wasn't really sure what 'things' meant in this context, or 'asking' or 'right' but I don't think it's a jargon problem.
Most questions I ask myself are ones that I go on to find answers to. The most recent one was "Hungarian used to have a lot more grammatical tenses than it currently does. I've seen them enough in old texts that I have a vague sense for their meaning but I wonder how they were differentiated from each other." so I googled and bookmarked a few pages and if I read through it a few more times I should be able to communicate effectively the next time I travel to 16th century Hungary, for all the good it'll do me. Most of my questions are of this type: how does x work? what is y like? and then i do research and find out.
One question that puzzled me for weeks was "how can I get the cat to stop pooing on the chair?" The answer ended up being "by putting some paper trash in a corner for the cat to poo on instead." (Keeping the litter box clean was my first hypothesis, but the cat disproved it.)