4 M's and a silent Q

men just love to run their fucking mouth about what women do or do not want without even once considering consulting any actual women on the matter

Fun fact, I make my own raisin bread (in the bread machine, I don't have the patience to make bread by hand) and when I started I went looking for a recipe for the bread, but because I only use raisin bread for toast and I only ever see other people use it the same I tend to use the two terms synonymously so I googled raisin toast recipes.

One example is canning dairy products (milk, butter, cheese). They'll show up in a canning group and say something like, "Look how I canned all this milk that the store was getting rid of this milk for 50 cents a gallon because it's the last day!"

Sane and responsible members of the group will say things like, "Dairy isn't safe for home canning; if you have fresh milk that you need to save for later, you can freeze it or make cheese!" And, "If you need shelf-stable milk you can buy powdered milk," or "You can dehydrate it at home, but you need a really good dehydrator, plenty of trays, and it takes forever; you're usually better off just buying it."

And then the person who just canned 20 quarts of botulism will start frothing at the mouth about how when the shit hits the fan--

And yeah, I'll grant that if grocery stores cease to exist, and you are entirely reliant for your winter survival on what you can put up during times of plenty, the risk-benefit analysis would be different. But in the actual world that we currently live in, it's false economy at best, and at worst a stupid flex that could end up killing somebody.

Anyway, TL;DR, "simple" often refers to an imagined past when the problems of modernity did not exist--yet somehow, the problems of that era have been left behind--which in turn is often a racist dogwhistle.

Specifically about how it was hell on fucking earth and how her grandmother fucking hated every single second of it

The moment her grandmother could buy canned fruit easily in the supermarket? Never fucking canned a thing herself again and was so relieved and grateful that she would never have to again

Canning as a hobby in your kitchen? I can see that being fun

Canning because you have a fuck ton of fresh fruit coming off of your trees and if you don't can it all NOW you won't have any fruit for winter and it's all you do from sun up to sun down in the middle of summer?

(Tbh, I think she's the happiest she's ever been since I was born. She would probably agree.)

My dad, on the other hand, took his half and bought a tiny parcel of land with a rickety barn on it with the determination to do the homestead life. It's in the middle of nowhere and off the grid completely: no electricity, no sewage, and has a well to draw water from. It's been a little over a year since he moved onto it full time and he explains his life like this:

"It's simple — simply harder."

Every moment of his day, from the moment he gets up to the moment he goes to bed, there's something that needs built or repaired or prepped. Now that it's warmer, it's a race against the clock to grow and can his food and cut down enough wood for the winter because he lives on a mountain and that means snow comes in much earlier for him than everyone else. There's just not much downtime if he wants to be comfortable and, idk, alive, after the snowfall has blocked him in for weeks.

On top of that, something is always going wrong from the generator (decided to quit working in the dark in the middle of winter), to the barn he renovated to live in (mystery hole in roof discovered just as it starts to piss pour outside, along with a bat just chilling out and pissing off the cats). And it's not like he can just call a guy to come fix it because he's living quite a way from civilization, so dad has to do it all. He's always been the guy to call when you need something fixed, so it's whatever to him, but how many of these "preppers" have that kind of know-how?

Shit, my dad doesn't even have a mailbox bc the mail carrier says that putting one at the end of the little road to his property would be too dangerous, which it would be because it's located on a blind corner with no lights. And that road is nearly always foggy (from the low lying clouds) and driving it at night when you can't see far ahead and there's no street lighting is terrifying.

Canning some meals (safe!) for reheating or using as meal components later is good for things that can well, because they reheat fast. It's fun to do and convenient to have.

Dehydrating to make tomato skin powder and mushroom powder mean I have wonderful additions to meals that you can't buy in stores.

Maintaining a sourdough starter and baking all my own bread is great fun, tasty, customisable, and nutritious. I've become so spoiled, I now hate most commercial bread because it's not my special wholemeal-rye-spelt combo.

I'm learning to repair things, I'm getting better at it, but I've never been and likely will never be much of a sewer or knitter. I'm certainly not at the point where I make my own clothes - but I do knit my dishcloths.

Doing all this for survival would be hell. I very rarely buy tinned food or bread or whatever but I like to know I can if I need to!!

Body Horror: Things that cannot happen in real life. EX: The Thing, stomach mouths, eyes on hands, etc

Gore: Fresh injuries, often severe. EX: Severed leg, gutspill, deep gashes, etc

NEITHER: Healed injuries and burns, congenital differences, missing appendages, etc. If I could theoretically go to the store and see that character browsing the isles- It isn't body horror or gore. That's just a person. *AND the amount of people that tag, not just fictional characters, but real human beings as body horror is staggering. Its not solely a fandom issue, ableism and bigotry against anyone that looks sufficiently "different" is prevalent in real life and has devastating consequences.