QualifiedKitten

He's pooped in that stance since he was a tiny kitten. We have litter boxes of various styles and sizes, and I've even tried setting up an identical box for him, minus the lid, but he seemed to prefer the one with the lid. 🤷

As I read other people's comments, my diagnosis experience seems somewhat unique. I may be misremembering the exact sequence of events, but I'll try my best.

As a young kid, I did okay in school. My report cards often noted that I did really well on the tests, but I often forgot to do my homework, and since homework was a large portion of the grade, I had lots of Bs and Cs. On the standardized testing we did each year, I'd score well above my grade level on everything except the listening portion, which was just average. In junior year of high school, I made it a point to have no missing assignments. Even if I didn't finish my homework, I'd still turn something in, and suddenly I had straight As.

Around the time I was 18, I began trying a variety of antidepressants, mostly SSRIs.

I was probably 20 years old when my parents suggested that I see "Dr. Feel Good". In their experience, he handed out prescriptions like candy, so he'd probably give me whatever I asked for. When I went to him and explained my struggles and how I felt they were indicative of ADHD, he told me that I couldn't possibly have ADHD since people with ADHD don't get depressed. I think he did end up giving me a 30 day prescription though, and suggested I find a more specialized doctor.

I think it was after that that I began seeing a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist again put me on an SSRI, I think Zoloft. I took it for a while, but eventually got fed up and just stopped taking it. I think it was when I told him that I stopped taking it that he finally gave me a prescription for Adderall. Or maybe my time with him overlapped with the next paragraph.

Somewhere around that same time, I had dropped out of university and decided to take classes at the local community college while I figured things out. Somehow, I learned that the community college offered learning disability testing, so I signed up. From what I remembered, I did really well on everything except (surprise, surprise) the listening portion. I was told that my results indicated that I have an "auditory processing deficit". I eventually wound up taking the test results to a new psychiatrist, and they put me on Adderall right away.

Honestly, I'm still not totally sure if I'm "officially" diagnosed as ADHD, but I've moved around a bit and changed doctors a few times, and 15ish years later, I'm still getting ADHD meds.

All this is to say that there's lots of doctors out there that won't take you seriously, and/or have outdated understanding of mental health, so whether or not you have ADHD or anything else, don't give up until you find a solution that works for you.

In the places I've lived (all US), no businesses could sell alcohol between the hours of 2am and 6am, and some alcohol licenses have even more limited hours. I'm pretty sure I overheard a cashier at the Target near my parents' place telling a customer that they couldn't sell alcohol until 8a, and I believe I've encountered some alcohol licenses with a cutoff as early as 10p.
I hear that some regions don't allow alcohol sales at all on Sundays, but luckily I've never lived in any of those places.

I do often put my tongue between my teeth in an attempt to recduce damage to my teeth, but I still bite my tongue, which I think still makes the muscle tension worse. My current approach is to open my jaw as wide as possible and hold it for like 30 seconds to stretch the muscles. It seems to kinda help, but depending on where I am, it can be kinda awkward.

I think many people may view those sort of costs differently than the monthly subscription costs of Netflix, etc. Hardware is generally seen as a "one time" cost, and the added electricity costs are difficult to tease out from all the other variable electricity costs.
My personal argument is that I pay a monthly subscription ($15/mo) for a seed box, which is roughly the same cost as subscribing to a single streaming service.
Back before the password sharing crackdown, I had access to my parents' Netflix account, and every once in a while, I'd try it out, but I'd always quickly get annoyed and would finish watching whatever I was watching via my Plex server.

Cons: The side effects. It wasn't always this bad, but they increase my tendency to clench my teeth, which can lead to enough pain by early afternoon that I can no longer focus on anything but the pain. I'm on a relatively low dose (10mg XR), and didn't notice any benefit when I tried a non-stimulant medication.

Edit: I just need to shout into the void about this for a moment. No Adderall for at least 5 days, and no coffee/soda/energy drinks for even longer. It's the weekend and I'm just vegging, so not a whole lot to be stressing about, but for some fucking reason I'm clenching and my jaw fucking hurts. 😬

I don't have any experience with Usenet or any current DDL sources. I generally check public trackers first, then private trackers, and mostly use private trackers when I can't find something on public trackers.
My selfish reasoning is that with public trackers, I don't have to worry about my seed ratio, etc. I generally seed to a 3.0 ratio, and I do have some older/more niche stuff set to infinity, but when I need to clear some space in my seed box, it's nice to be able to delete stuff without worrying I'll be penalized.
From a less selfish perspective, if it exists in decent quality on public trackers, I'd rather contribute to keeping it alive there, where more people can access it.

Right as cold/flu season was taking off, the location near me went and removed over half of the equipment cleaning stations (paper towel dispensers & spray bottles), so I decided to cancel my membership. After hearing so many horror stores like yours, I was shocked at how easy it was, since I was able to cancel mine online.
Although, I did quickly learn that I had also effectively prepaid for another 3 months, so even though I cancelled on October 31st, and was not charged for anything after that date, my access didn't end until January 31st. I think part of it was credits from the COVID times, but I never went back to test it, so if anyone reading this is thinking about cancelling, be aware that you may have access for quite some time after cancelling!

The only reason I check Reddit with any regularity anymore is for content local to where I live. There's a few communities on the fediverse for my area, but with only minimal, sporadic activity.

I would love to see more activity around fostering animals, particularly cats. I started !fosteranimals and have participated over at !fosterkittens, but it seems there's not many of us so far.

Edit: No clue why I can only get 1 of the 2 links to work correctly, but FosterAnimals is on kbin.social, and FosterKittens is on lemmy.world.

I have 2 cats, one who generally yells the entire time I'm preparing food, and the other is totally silent. I have also found myself quite annoyed with the yelling and have tried various methods to train him. The most effective method to stop his meowing has been feeding him via an automatic feeder, meaning that there's a separation between when I prepare his food and when he gets to eat. For a variety of reasons, I had to stop using the auto feeder, and have instead worked on training myself to be less annoyed by the meowing. It still gets to me when I'm already stressed, but I've learned to appreciate it most days. The other thing I notice with my cat is that if I respond to his meowing, he tends to meow more, so if it's one of those days where I'm annoyed by it, I try my best to keep my mouth shut while I dish up their food.

One other idea that I haven't actually tried yet is clicker training. Well, I've done some super basic clicker training, but haven't reached a point yet where I've tried using it to train "speak" or "quiet". My loud cat is also HIGHLY food motivated, and seems to pickup new commands with the clicker training very quickly, so you might also have some luck with that option.

I'm a millennial, and I will abandon my basket 99% of the time when there's not a staffed cashier lane available, especially if I'm trying to buy more than 2 items.

I actually tried to use the self-checkout at the airport recently when I was buying a single bottle of water, and the cashier jumped in almost immediately to assist anyway. I forget exactly what happened, but it was definitely overly complicated compared to the staffed checkout that I used at the same shop the previous time I flew through that airport.

Yup. Use an instance that makes that data visible, such as kbin. It takes a few clicks, but it's there for anyone to see.