Just bought a rather modest new home in a gated community. I hesitate to define it by “class,” as it’s certainly not the most expensive community in the area, and the folks I’ve met so far seem to be from varying walks of life.
In my case, it’s “my wife and I have saved our entire lives to build the house we’re eventually going to retire in” class.
I picked “middle class neighborhood,” because that’s accurate for the houses nearest ours. We’re not really part of the neighborhood, but it’s adjacent to our land. Our house is much different than those “up the hill.”
Our home (hobby farm) doesn’t really fit anywhere. Not gated, but a private drive. Huge yard and horse pastures, but farm style landscaping.
My neighborhood doesn’t fit anywhere at all in the choices. It’s rural; some neighbors are on ~100 acre farms and others on residential lots anywhere from under an acre to several acres; some of the houses are large, some are small; some places are well kept up; others aren’t, and that doesn’t correlate with the size of the houses; I don’t think anybody’s hiring a professional landscaper but am not sure, but some people sure mow their lawns a lot and have very neat gardens while others have erratically mowed lawns with miscellaneous scattered over them, though I wouldn’t say anybody’s got “trash everywhere”; farmsteads tend to have farm equipment scattered around; some of the houses have cars, kids’ toys, scrap piles, gardening stuff, etc. scattered around and others have them neatly inside garages; etcetera. I’m pretty sure some of us have a good bit more money than others, and I think, though I haven’t seen anybody else’s financial accounts, that the range goes from dirt broke on assistance all the way through upper middle class, though I don’t think we have any billionaires.
Mine doesn’t fit anywhere, either. I mean, it’s upper middle class, in an expensive suburb. My next door neighbor and the house across the street are recent mcmansions, as are several nearby. (All were built on tear-downs, it’s not a new neighborhood.) But “professionally landscaped”? I guess the new ones started out with “landscaping” professionally designed by the developer, but it’s crappy landscaping, and the neighbors mostly redid stuff. I hire professionals to prune my mature oak trees, or remove them as they fall. But I’m pretty sure they were all planted by squirrels. And most of the smaller stuff was planted by me. Same with older properties, and, as mentioned, homeowners have made extensive changes to the “professional landscaping” that includes land that went swampy every spring and a “hedge” of immature white pines.
Re: the quadratic equation, I think I knew it 40+ years ago, but it didn’t look familiar when I googled it.
I could solve for x (I mean, I can still do basic algebra) but I’d have no idea why, or what this particular equation is useful for.
So “I remember something about it from school but that’s about it” was my answer.
The house poll definitely could have used an ‘other’. We live in a neighborhood that has a big old antique colonial (mine), a converted barn, quite a few multi-families (both apartment and duplex), some houses where people do pay for landscaping, some capes, a state forest, and some little saltboxes.
That’s me. In the winter, it has become once every 3-4 days and in the summer usually every other day. And I always lotion or oil -up afterwards (fragrance-free). What a blessing it was when my skin could handle showering every day.
@Maserschmidt I agree. While I live in a condo, the homes across the street are not fancy but on double lots, and the behind our cute-but-not-luxurious condos are fancier condos and then really fancy homes with gated driveways (river bluff). At the east end of the street there starts a warehouse and service company business area. It’s very mixed. Other would be the best choice.
This is me, exactly, right down to consulting the Google Machine.
As for bathes/showers, going to bed immediately after a shower feels SO much better than going to bed without a shower.
mmm
I remember the quadratic equation. I know how to use it. I haven’t had to use it in decades. Don’t ask me to do any higher level math.
I shower every day usually when I wake up. I feel dirty and my scalp is itchy if I don’t. Could I do it less often? Sure, I was in the Army. Didn’t like it but I did it.
To me having a gate around a community is not a good gauge of the affluence of an area. The gated community that comes to mind has an unmanned gate and putting in the code slows us down from responding to the shooting, overdose and domestic violence calls.
And it’s not like they do any good anyway. My brother lived in a gated development and hated it. There’s a universal code for for emergency responders and everybody knows it. His neighbor had stuff stolen out of his garage when he was home.
I wouldn’t call it a “thunderclap” exactly. But I was awake and then I wasn’t – in one case I was saying ‘no I’m not getting sleepy! Still wide awake here!’ as they started the procedure. And then (whew) I wasn’t awake.
Waking up was in at least one case more gradual, though, or else I wasn’t out that deep in the first place; I remember hearing people talking, but not knowing (or caring) what they were saying. (When I told one of the health care people that I’d heard them talking, though, I thought they looked a bit disturbed; I don’t know whether because they’d thought I was still out deeper than that, or whether they were saying something that they were glad I either didn’t understand or couldn’t remember.)
I was given the twilight sleep for a colonoscopy, which is not general anesthesia, but I fell asleep after a couple of minutes… So I picked other.
They put me under for my last colonoscopy. She had warned me in prep that the drug might burn a little.
They wheeled me into the exam room and hooked me up to the machines. While I was playing with my heart rate (they asked me nicely to please stop, so they could get a baseline), she put the drug in my IV. I remember wondering why my arm was on fire…
And then I woke up in recovery.
I had to pick gradual but the gradual was very quick. Each time I felt it start to hit but the onset was very quick.
Last time I was under general anesthesia was 15 years ago for gall bladder surgery.
As I was being wheeled to the OR, I heard somebody say “I’m going to give you something to help you relax.” Next thing I knew, I was waking up in recovery.
Yeah, this is what it was like for me.
The Quadratic Formula? I was told there would be no math…
If I don’t bathe daily, I just feel dirty and stinky. I’ve gone for two or three days while camping, and good Lord it felt good to get in the shower when I got home.
I’ve only been under anesthetic once, for my sole colonoscopy so far, and was amazed at how quickly I went under. Then, when I woke up, I was very disoriented. It really felt like only a few seconds had passed, and hey presto, there I was in a different room. Not unpleasant, exactly, but really weird.
Ditto. I’ve been called a breeder, with a smile, by gay friends, and it doesn’t bother me in the least.
I consider “childless” a statement of fact, not a judgment. But I could certainly see where tone of voice and/or context could make it a criticism or even an attack.
About 40 years ago i dislocated my leg in a motorcycle accident.
Before they put it back, someone stuck a needle in the back of my hand
and told me to count down from 10. I got to about 8 or 7 then woke up
in recovery.