The intimacy of someone protecting your name when you’re not in the room.

at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you

at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.

at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly

at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.

at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.

at some point in your life you'll make a stew that's entirely too watery and you're too hungry to simmer it down for hours and you'll think you can boil pasta in the stew to save much time. this is the devil talking, or maybe you could figure that out halfway through the sentence

the day is gonna end anyway and your warm bed will be waiting so you might as well do the hard things and not let them ruin your day

this is unironically how I push myself to do everything I dread

If my father passes away, please remember that I begged you for a small donation or to share his post. I will not forgive anyone who sees this post and doesn't support it with a single word or a small donation, and simply ignores it.

Worse still, his health has deteriorated sharply, and he has great difficulty moving. The pain and weakness have rendered him unable to lead a normal life. He urgently needs medical attention and ongoing treatment to improve his condition, but the cost of treatment is prohibitively expensive for us. Currently, he cannot sleep comfortably due to the constant pain, and he cannot afford the medications and painkillers that might alleviate his suffering because of their high prices.

He needs your help to alleviate his pain and save him as quickly as possible. Please, he doesn't want to die. Help us raise the necessary funds for his treatment and surgery as soon as possible Stand by him. Please donate.