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Awww, nice to know you have a kitten. Most kittens tend to have diarrhea as their young gut is adjusting. I believe with your food, he will soon form healthy firm stools in a few more months, if not sooner. Billy didn't like my chicken pate either when I first made it and it was weeks of him just licking a few times and then he would walk off and I'd pick up the plate and then put it near him again, to entice him to eat. Then he'd lick a bit more then off he goes again. I did that many times because if I just left the plate there, another cat would come and finish it off. It took at least 4 - 6 weeks of doing so until one day, he just started really liking it and I didn't have to pick up the plate anymore. I was so tired in the beginning because of constantly following Billy with his plate and fending off the other cats. But thankfully, he now polishes off everything and steals other's food. I think over time, their gut microbiome tells them, it's delicious. They will grow to love it. With any new food, my other cats also developed diarrhea (cats really don't like change) but those were short lived diarrhea. I hope your kitten will be all good soonest! Thank u.

Oh yes, they were all fighting over the hammock! I wished I had realised this earlier than 2024 to help Billy. But i am really happy he no longer feels pain. It took me that long to figure it out!

I wished they did tho!

Yes indeed and it is unfortunate. They never blame the kibbles, it's always the wet food that they will accuse for causing diarrhea.

@@PatriceBoivin first thing the vet did when I took my kitties for their shots was to try and push that poison on my cats. They make money off it and don't care about yr cats' health as the ingredients are toxic, unnatural and very harmful.

Thank you for sharing! I wished I started off like you, giving them good quality food. But I chose kibbles from the start due to just lack of knowledge, back then, we didn't have You Tube or any doctors who wrote blogs to educate people like me. I was always busy with corporate work, now that I am not actively working for a company, I can do this. it's tough work tho to make own food! I wish you and your 4 fur babies lotsa good health!

Thank u for your suggestion, i did, i steamed fresh pumpkin tho, it's way cleaner this way. I showed it at 1:52 but Billy didn't like it. I am sure it works for most cats, only if they are willing to eat.

Thank you for dropping in and sharing your story. CKD was one of my earlier cat's cause of death :( When my primary vet suggest go all kibbles only, i was annoyed. And same with the hospital vet who gave the prescription kibbles which had hideous ingredients in it. I am happy that your boy is now thriving with raw food. I had considered making raw food too, as per Dr Pierson's recipe but I think I could not do it because it's going to be a lot of raw food to make, for 9 cats. Plus not all will tolerate the raw food, esp one fussy pot. So i decided cooked food, which is more manageable to me for now. But I believe Billy would also do well on raw food, he was adopted from a rescue pet shop who fed all their rescues raw meat. Your story is precious to me to refer back to for CKD and i am happy for you. We all work so hard for our kitties, don't we? I am seriously tired but happy that Billy is no longer in pain. It took me that long to realise such a simple thing, and only due to being so worn out from washing soiled beds and wiping floors daily, I wished I had realised this sooner.

@@lebooshdiaries You can't blame yourself. It is hard to navigate when you have little to no guidance. What counts is you realized research will be there for you and to learn from it. It took me a long time as well. In the end is what counts and we both got there and it will be easier next time as we know a bit more on how to find our own help for our little ones. He is alive because of that/you, I smile for you :) We also need keep in mind most vets as with human Dr. are not trained in the way we are looking to take care of our little ones, they are still trained in the old standards, to deal with a symptom (which will make more symptoms) instead of cure the cause with natural holistic ways. Even when it comes to food, that too is in their training, It is the only way they know. So much other stuff besides clean protein which is not what they would get in the wild. A prey only has very little non protein food in their tiny stomachs which cats would get. Canned food is full of stuff veg, fruit, synthetic supplements, etc., that they would not have if they were wild. Think about our vitamin C, what kind of food do you think of when you think of getting vit c, fruits, yet they make it from GMO corn. I find organic made from real fruits high in vit c. Cats systems are not made to handle what commercial food and commercial supplements are made from, so they get sick. There are those vet's who practice both ways and some who are all natural/holistic. I have since found a vet who does both ways and really listens when I talk. It is just the standard vet is plentiful and the other two are hard to find. They two have obstacles to over come as they are out numbered by the standard ways. Most are not open minded to even try, they just feel they went to school and they know best. Even for myself I have gone the natural holistic way for the same reasons I do it for my fur babies. You have a great holiday season :)

@@AnnHopy thank u for your kind words. I understand. U have a great holiday season too! take care.

Thank you for your kind words. I hope you will always find the strength to get up and do something, anything, even if it's just to take a slow walk outside to enjoy the fresh air. Always keep moving and take care of yourself. Have a good weekend!

That is true, unfortunately cats can jump unlike dogs. That is why I cook and strain kefir in my wet kitchen, which is behind a glass door. No cats go in there unless under supervision so no cat paws on counter. I do not let them stand on my cutting board, there is no where in this video or any video that showed any cat standing on cutting board which is terribly gross if they did.

@@lebooshdiaries 🤦🏼‍♀️ Thank goodness. I thought it was a cutting board in the kitchen. And wasn’t aware you prepared in a different area. It’s hard for me to read captions and pay too close attention otherwise. That’s why I didn’t understand why you were being so sanitary in every other regard , wasn’t making sense to me

@@lilagood1963 i think what u saw was my cat on my island counter. But i was straining on a counter against the wall, not the island. I was being sanitary because i cook everything there, including cutting/chopping raw meat. Every night i wipe down the counter with detergent but since this video detailed out my first time ever with kefir, i wanted to be extra careful not to contaminate the grains or milk. I am quite the germophobe and ensure everything is always clean, no matter what anyway. A germophobe who has cats, the irony of it lol!

Thank u! Yes, u are right, it is not good for cats but not enough to kill them if they ate a bit. That is why i don't let them bite it. Thanks for the reminder yea.

Thanks for your kind comment! I understand they grow in clumps because once i separated them, each one grew pups, so adorable. But this big ball was not a natural thing because in the video, u can clearly see me cutting the metal wires that hold the ionanthas together. I've seen the nurseries get clumps of ionanthas, like 4 - 6 big clumps and then tie them together into a ball like what I had. The ball was also tied to the spanish moss with a metal wire which i immediately removed once i brought it home. So much metal everywhere. I wished they didn't do it like that.

Thank u! Yes indeed, i have broken some of these glass jars when i moved them here and there or to wipe down my workspace in a hurry. That was so wasteful of glass jars! I usually will wash the jars every few weeks when I feel icky, to get rid of any oil stains or more so, the dust that accumulates inside the bottom of the jar. Hanging plants. Ok. I can help u with that. I just put pothos in there because i have a lot which i propagated from the 2 original pothos i have. I put them into a plastic pot then i put them into the hanging round terracota pots. And these pots have drainage hole at the bottom. Just 1 medium sized hole. So i f i overwater, the water will flow out of the plastic pot into the terracota pot and drip out of the terracota hole. That is when I know to stop watering. As for the hanging woven basket, the pothos are also in a plastic pot. If i overwater, it will flow out and pond in the basket because the basket came lined with plastic. That one is a bit tricky, i will have to wipe the insides of the basket or i leave it to dry by itself. After a few months, i'd take it down and do a thorough cleaning of the plastic inside the basket, wash it and dry it. Then place back the plastic pot and hang. In any case, it is always best to put a plant there that doesn't need a lot of water. Like succulents or cactus. That way u only need to water a little and not worry about overwatering/ponding issues. But with pothos, it can work because it's really very hard to kill pothos. They are seriously the hardiest plant ever, hands down.

@@lebooshdiaries I was just now laughing again! at where you said you wanted the branch so high that you then had trouble reaching it! hahahahahaha It was really neat to get to see more of your husband than just his holey shirt in this vlog! I was really surprised since he is usually too self-conscious to even let his voice be heard too much. (You said he normally clams up when the camera comes out, haha) Thanks for the plant pot info - I could not see any holes in the bottoms of any pots, and what you used is so much nicer looking than the usual boring plastic pots. I don't currently have any pothos plants, but I have had them in the past, and they are definitely long-lived and easy to keep.

@@SunrayStar He didn't know i was filming him and at what angle. and when lol. I just record at random and it's not like take 1, action! But i guess over time he gets more used to it. Yea, i don't know why i like to hang things so high. It's like i think I'm 5' 8" or something. Some of the bars for hanging clothes and misc are so high that i usually have to stand on my toes.

@@lebooshdiaries lol! 6:15 - the absolute funniest! Yes, I have particular trouble with the highest shelves in the kitchen cabinets and the cabinet over the fridge, also high shelves in closets, and I am forevermore having to go get either a chair or stepladder to get something way back on the shelf where standing on my toes isn't good enough. Today I had the sardine-garlic toast for lunch YUMMY! (the one like you made on toast with butter, garlic, herbs and anchovies). I actually did get some anchovies and tried it once with them (wow, sal-TEE) but I'd rather have a whole bowl of mashed sardines to eat along with the toast, and then I had to keep the extra anchovies from the tin that I didn't use on the toast in the fridge and use them up elsewhere. When you use an anchovy or 2, what kinds of things do you use the rest of them in?

@@SunrayStar Anchovies are really salty. A little bit goes a really long way. Normally mine comes in a small tiny glass jar. So i'd take 1-2 pieces out each time. Because I don't use it often, it can stay quite long in the fridge. Sometimes i'll buy the ones in the tin and then i'd keep the remaning in a glass jar. It takes maybe close 6 - 12 months to finish, unless i use them often. I don't eat garlic bread everytime so it's like a treat when i do. There are usually 3 things i used up the anchovies : 1. chop 3 pcs and use them as flavor in my tomato sauce base. That base is either used to make shakshuka or tomato soup or pasta. I don't eat pasta a lot these day as am trying to cut down on processed food but i'll still indulge in noodles. In fact, it can be used in any soup as a natural salty enhancer. Just chop it up really tiny so that it 'melts'. 2. chop 2 pcs and stir fry in oil, garlic and birds eye chilies, then add in chinese yau mak (lettuce) and add a bit of oyster sauce and salt. Serve with rice. 3. Chop and put them into my sundubu jjigae...but most times i prefer to put dried salted anchovies. But the wet anchovies can work too. 4. When i used to eat aglio olio pasta, i would chop 2pcs up and saute with garlic and herbs and then toss in the pasta.

Thank you for watching, have a good weekend yea!

I saw them both. You know I like watching health related videos right. I dislike going thru research journals because the words used are so snore inducing. Lately, it feels like everything that is good is just bad. Or everything bad is supposedly good. I feel the more i watch, the dumber i become. This video by Jill Ritchie popped up on my feed and i watched it. Would you like to watch it and tell me what u think? I think recently because I've been looking more into extra virgin olive oil and seeing if i could cook with it instead of olive oil, this video popped up. These days, seems like in order to get views, people need to make topics that go against the normal understanding. And is it real? Every doctor video i have watched is selling something - a course, supplements, book, exercise program....u end up not knowing who is telling the truth, and who is spreading FUD to get eyeballs. If u have time, watch it, since u also cook with olive oil. On a separate topic, i've bought whipping cream 2 times to drink with black tea and matcha. Definitely very tasty and delicious, quite addictive. But because i noticed that every whipping cream in my grocery store has carrageenan, i've stopped using it with my teas. I'll prob treat myself from time to time with it, sparingly. Does your whipping cream have carrageenan? I'm trying to also move away from drinking tea with milk as it is supposedly better but...still trying.

@@lebooshdiaries (#3 of 3) Yes, I do know you like watching those videos. I always dread if the only info that comes up on something is a research paper, because they are so wordy that you waste so much time even trying to find the results! haha. And even more, sometimes even after looking through the whole paper, you really can't ever determine what their results were! I agree with everything you said there, which is why I do research separately off YT for at least 90% or more of stuff and really do not trust YT unknowns in general (I didn't even learn about Dr. Ellie through YT; that came from non-YT articles). I usually read lots of individual articles in trying to learn things and compare the info in them, and consider who is writing them as the source is very important. One newer variable that has popped up in these last 4 years is much more sinister than just trying to make $ off people, which is the technocratic agenda (globalists). C-ship is rampant (can't say it), as is people spouting their agenda everywhere with wrong info that they want to convince the masses of. I don't think that everyone involved realizes what they are doing, as they may have been fooled already and/or derive gains from doing so. So all info now must first be carefully considered and possibly suspected, not just assumed to be correct. (You already know this.) You didn't say the name of the video, but I think I found it as not too much came up - is it the title including the name Bryan Johnson? I checked my heavy whipping cream (from TJ's store). I do know that they used to include carrageenan in the ingred. for a number of years after I began getting it, and somewhere along the line they made the change of removing that and including gellan gum instead. So now it contains only organic heavy cream and gellan gum. I would use it (and did) regardless of carrageenan because that was my very best choice of organic cream, but I am happier that they exchanged that carrag. out in the last couple of years or so. But when I was using it with carrag. all that time, I could not find anything better at the time and chose to just ignore that rather than do without it. Everyone has to decide these things individually. I never had any troubles that I knew of from the carrag., but even though gellan gum is thought to be safe for consumption, it is still another thickener/stabilizer and better to limit it in the diet because all food additives may alter intestinal bacteria and cause issues. So I understand your current plight on this type of cream. But let me tell you about something I learned from a search that may help you out with cream if you're interested in trying it. It sounds very interesting and potentially a great substitution to avoid the carrag.; it's an easy recipe to make your own fresh cream out of butter and milk. Here is what the person said, and this is not common knowledge: "You can blend together melted butter and milk in a high powered blender or immersion blender and basically reconstitute it into cream. I blend 1 cup of melted butter with 1 cup full fat organic milk, and it makes a super thick, delicious heavy cream that holds its emulsion. Just blend them together for a couple of minutes until they heat up a bit, then chill in the fridge 4 hours to use as pouring or spooning cream, or chill in the fridge 8 hours or more to be able to whip the cream." Let me know if you ever decide to try this what the results are! I don't want to add more to this one comment, so I'm going to do a 4th one (!) right after this. So now there will be 4!

@@SunrayStar Yes, sorry i forgot to include the title. Yes it is the one with the Bryan Johnson name, about olive oil. If u can find time, do watch it. And let me know what u think. I find the video a bit scammy. In fact, the whole channel feels a bit scammy. No explanation who Jill Ritchie is, just that she's a 50s expert but what entitles her to that? At least spell out her credientials, is she a doctor or physical therapist, a scientist? When you go to her official website, there is nothing there for you to see except to sign up for her workout. So i wonder if she's just purposely making such claims to get views. Gellan gum prob could be a lot better than carreegenan. I can't find any whipping cream that has gellan gum. All is just carrageenan. Butter and milk? I think i saw that before long ago. I've also heard of mixing milk with corn starch, euw. I didn't think too much of it. Now, would u say butter is healthy? I think it is but again, so many videos say it isn't and this saturated fat will cause heart attacks...I eat quite a lot of butter these days as it is delicious and easiest to eat with sourdough when busy. I just don't know who is right anymore. Wonder how it would taste like.

@@lebooshdiaries Milk with corn starch doesn't even sound like it COULD taste at all like whipping cream, and just sounds like milk with tasteless thickener put in it, euw is right. Seems like arrowroot powder as a thickener would be better than corn starch, but that all sounds no good anyway. Those people in the blog that were talking about the butter and milk recipe had already been using it for a while and said it was delicious and tasted like fresh cream and that you could even whip it after refrigerating thickened it, so I thought it sounded like it had a lot of hope. I would give it a try myself if I need to sometime. I just normally don't ever have any milk in the house (I only kept milk when I was doing kefir). Yes, I believe butter is very healthy. I use many different healthy fats in cooking and in just eating on foods - butter, cream, olive oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, nut butters; I currently even sometimes use duck fat in cooking that I was able to get, and I have been able to get beef tallow before, but can't find it now. I try to use a lot of different fats, each in moderation and with variety. Focusing on only one thing is too much of that one thing and then can become unhealthy. Notice earlier I said I use 'healthy' fats. Fats are only beneficial when they're a healthy fat. I avoid what I believe are unhealthy fats, like of course all the trans fats, and many processed vegetable oils like canola, soybean, corn, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower. Most of the vegetable oils produced are from GE crops and full of glyphosate, contain pesticides and herbicides, are already rancid by the time someone buys them, and cause body inflammation and lots of other effects. Of course, I do get some of the bad oils in my diet even if I don't want them, from eating any restaurant food and occasional processed junky foods. Even organic blue corn tortilla chips, that I view as healthy and eat regularly, contain some of these oils I'd rather not have - normally safflower and sunflower - so it's hard to stay away from all of it. (You may remember me mentioning before about usually eating those blue corn chips for lunches alongside sardines packed in olive oil and then ending the meal with fruit. I also started throwing in some pumpkin seeds and broccoli sprouts to the bowl of mashed sardines and sometimes diced tomato too. If I was using sardines packed in water instead of in olive oil, then I would probably add mayo to the sardines.) The few doctors who focus on natural health that have been my main trusted source of info for many years have always said that we need saturated fat for our health and that it does NOT cause heart attacks. (Dr. Berg was not one of those original drs. I learned so much from as I only learned of him a couple of years ago, but he has several videos on why sat. fats are healthy.) That info that used to be spread around so, so many years ago that sat. fat caused heart attacks was later determined to be incorrect, but once the "disseminators of info" jumped on that and pushed it all around all those years ago, no one would ever let that one go, so it persists and keeps on going. After that became widely accepted, then companies came out with the dreaded trans fats as replacements, which actually did harm health. And then also to try to keep people off sat. fats, they began saying that all fats were bad and caused high cholesterol and such, and so companies everywhere began removing fat from all kinds of processed foods and replacing it with sugar, because when you remove fat, most of the good flavor is gone, and so you have to replace it with something that people think tastes good or they won't want to eat it, so that's why they chose sugar. And then artificial sweeteners often in place of sugar, because sugar has a bad reputation too. So that's how the low-fat way of eating was born. But low-fat food (removing fats from food that naturally has fat in it) is very unhealthy, even though so many people still believe it is the way to go because they believe eating fats will make you fat. Those people are also eating the wrong kinds of fats when they do eat any fats. And none of that ever helped any people to lose weight or be healthier, either. I'll send another message later about the video you mentioned.

@@lebooshdiaries (#1 of 2 on that video) - I thought her video was so bad that I will pay no attention to anything she said because in my opinion it is filled with crazy talk. But I kept jotting down thoughts on a piece of paper as I went through it just for the sake of discussing it. When I first watched it (at high speed, haha) there were no comments at all, which I found very odd. Today, before leaving you this comment, I went back to it again and found that there are now 56 comments on it, and they are mostly in heated opposition to her, so fortunately most people aren't being swayed by this and are telling her they don't agree with it. I really could not begin to know what her motivation is for such a video, but my main concern is that she will be misleading impressionable people who will believe her. So, sinister intent? It's totally possible. And also very disturbing that YT is promoting her videos. (Over ones like yours?!) So now I'll just give a bunch of misc. thoughts on it: First off, she is pushing incorrect info about saturated fats, but as I said earlier, that has been still going on for years now. Then she said any sat. fat at all will raise LDL cholesterol. I don't have a direct comment on what will or will not raise LDL chol., but rather that I don't find paying a lot of attention to LDL chol. specifically to be very significant when using chol. labwork numbers to determine risk of heart disease. The best predictor of heart disease, according to the doctors I've learned from, are to do the math on the results: a) HDL divided by Total Chol - this number should be above 24%; below 10 is dangerous; ideally, it should be 30% or higher, and it rarely gets above 50%. b) Triglycerides divided by HDL - this is an indicator of insulin disturbance - This ratio should be below 2; the higher the number, the worse insulin control may be. Those are the only figures I pay attention to on chol. labwork results. She said there is no safe amount of sat. fat for human consumption - this is just plain wrong and ridiculous. Said olive oil has 0 nutrition; it is one of the healthier fats, and we need fats for good health. I do believe that everyone is different, and some people will do better on more fats, whereas others will do better on fewer fats. But everyone needs at least some. The polyphenol antioxidants she mentioned in olive oil are definitely one of olive oil's benefits. She seemed like she was promoting whole wheat over olive oil, but why compare? It's a completely different food item. However, as long as she was comparing, I believe wheat (all types, whole wheat included) should be avoided in the diet as much as reasonably possible. Wheat is now not the same as wheat grown many years ago; now it is hybridized and is allergenic for many people, and causes inflammation. She seemed to be promoting wheat as good for health. Should I even comment at all on her saying that olive oil is no different than ice cream and candy bars? What about Eskimos (Inuits), that because of where they live and their long history of simply the type of people they are, they have historically eaten primarily fat in their diet, and actually needed that to thrive. I'd better split this up - to be continued.

Oh i do worry but i can't let it worry me everyday, it's not good for health. I don't let them out of our property but Ocky always manages to escape. She and Shamu would usually climb the gate but we placed perspexs on the top part of the gate so that they cannot hook their claws onto the gate. This was after my 11th cat, ginger boy Tom Tom went missing. He climbed out one day and never came back in 2021. There are a lot of pythons around, huge ones and i think he ended up being eaten by a python. You can see Tom Tom briefly in vlog 90 at 8:45. Shamu gave up on climbing and pretty much is contented hanging in the garden but Ocky no. She started to climb a tree. There were many mornings where I'd stand nearby the tree and when i see her walking towards the tree, i would run towards it and say NO! But unfortunately, I can't guard the tree the whole day so....husband bought air tags attached to the collar for Ocky and Shamu so we can track them if they ever got lost. Since Shamu doesnt try to escape, once Ocky lost her air tag, we gave her Shamu's air tag. So she wears it and at least we can find her if she doesn't come home, providing that her collar does not fall off. Husband did put some soft siky silicone around the tree before to deter her from climbing, she'd climb another tree lol. She wants to go to the opposite house, where she used to live till one day she decided to pack up and ring our doorbell. The opposite house was vacant for a long time with no owner and Ocky had been living there for a while by herself. That is why she always need to return to it. Now there are people living in that house and i think she goes there because they feed her. I suspect so because since i stopped giving them kibbles and go on a whole food diet, every cat has lost some weight but Ocky looks chubbier by the day! It's hard to keep outdoor cats in the entire day. Especially if you have adopted them into your home when they are already at an advanced age. They have been living outdoors for the longest time and they do not like to be cooped up inside. They thrive better outdoors. Fortunately, Shamu's lazy so it's ok but Ocky still has the wanderlust spirit. I am also grateful that Shamu doesn't attempt to climb trees to get out because he would chase any cat he sees, even if it's not his territory. He's a real gangster and super embarrassingly loud too. I am surprised your dog doesn't like nail trims and would put up so much noise. I've never heard a dog screech before, only bark and whine. If u are worried about hearing, do like me, I wear ear muffs/warmers. Esp when vacuuming or using any appliances that makes a lot of noise. It looks silly esp in a hot country, but yea, it helps to reduce a bit of the noise. Not much but some. I used to use ear plugs but the worry of infecting my ear canal with dirty plugs won over so now i only mostly use ear muffs. But boy, it does make me hot n sweaty after a while! i can imagine the flopping and head lolling lol. Mango's a real terror isn't she? Her screams are over the top. I don't have a fixed routine on cutting nails. I am bad at that. But every few weeks, i would touch their paws and feel their nails. If it's sharp, it's time to cut. So it can be anywhere 4 - 6 weeks.

@@lebooshdiaries It sounds like you've made the best of the situation of Ocky always wanting some freedom and you've done everything you can do, and at least that gives you a little peace that you can track her. Oh, you poor, poor thing, losing Tom Tom that way. I mean, certainly because of what you suspect, but even that you could never know what happened for sure. My heart goes out to you. Yes, dogs are all different on who will withstand nail trims without complaint and who is terrified of them, and everything in between. I had one dog that was the easiest dog in the whole world to trim nails, and that was the bigger one, the Siberian Husky, and plus, I only had to do it no more often than every 3 months! I didn't know how easy I had it with that dog, on absolutely everything except hair. That dog had two coats of fur (underlayer and outer layer) and shedding year-round like you would not believe. Part of keeping him was a daily, without fail, rain or freezing weather, 20-minute long intensive brushing outside and vacuuming every day. On my two now, one of them is compliant but nervous, and the other one who is so loudly vocal about it truly hates them because I believe they are very uncomfortable for her for some reason and sometimes causes pain with a clip, even if there's no reason you can see it would hurt. I think she's just extremely sensitive in the nails. I had one other dog before that was extremely sensitive in nails too, and I could never get that other dog's nails clipped as short as I thought they needed to go without running into the quick; that one just had weird nails. I remember the vet commented when I mentioned it that some dogs' nails are just that way about not being able to get them short enough and you can't do anything about it. Fortunately! I don't have to wear any ear protection anymore because of that grooming table. From the very first time I put her up on that table to trim nails, she never made any of those loud screeches again. I have no idea why being up on that table made the difference for her! Yes, ear muffs do sound funny in hot weather, but you do what you have to do, and whatever! The thing is, when you get a nail ready to clip in your video, you just go right in and quickly clip it like it's so easy to clip a nail without cutting it short enough to get the quick. I have always had a lot of trouble with dogs' nails, getting them as short as I can without getting the quick, because the quick is SO easy to get, and if I don't get down low enough, then that leaves too much nail to start out growing long (you know, that whole receding-quick thing). I wonder if it's easier to clip cats' nails without catching the quick because cats' nails are finer/thinner/pointier than dogs' nails, which are wider/thicker. Do you think there's a chance Mango's nails could be really sensitive, too, and trims are really uncomfortable, or rather that she just doesn't want to be messed with? What about something like putting a thick cotton sock over the paw (hand, haha) you aren't working on so that she can't reach out and scratch you with the other paw? Maybe a small but thick child-size sock, and holding it on with a rubber band or something. (Boy, I'll bet she would really dislike that too, haha.) Oh, you would not believe the vocalizations of these two dogs, way more varied than just barks and whines. Even with barks, barking is a whole language, and the barks all sound different from each other, depending on the meaning. For instance, one dog now and also a previous past dog, both had a particular bark that when I hear it from another room, I know exactly what it means - "help me! I've knocked this toy accidentally over here where I can't reach it! Come and get it!" and that is the only time that particular bark would ever be used. It's a super-sharp, higher-pitched, just one bark (repeated if you don't come soon) of a particular unusual tone. Husband can't tell any difference between the barks. With our first dog, I couldn't do this. Somewhere along the line, I was able to begin picking up the difference in a lot of the barks and other kinds of vocalizations and what the meaning of each is. I can do it with several kinds of barks/sounds and wish I could know even more of them. The other current dog (the girl) makes so many unusual vocalizations other than barks that it makes me laugh often; she's got skills, haha. There is this one sound she makes ONLY when we are good-naturedly teasing her, like calling her a little rat when she has annoyed us or something, and before we are even completely done with the teasing, she immediately and with purpose jumps right off the dog bed or sofa or whatever and sharply gives us back this plaintive-sounding "a-hoo-ah, a-hoo-ah" and she is expressing her offended protest of being teased! It's so funny that she knows every time when we are teasing her. If we stop, she won't do it again, but if we don't and say something else, she will say it again. There are so many things she says like that, but they are all different kinds of noises, some higher-pitched, some rumblings, squeaks, one noise like a shrill "waowww" and each one is used for only one particular kind of situation. The boy is mostly a huge barker and whiner, but he has a large number of different kinds of barks (the loudest, shrillest, most upset urgent one I call the 911-emergency bark, reserved for some stranger coming to the door or some noise outside that he is nervous may be a danger), and the various number of whines this kid has is unbelievable, depending on what he's communicating. (He really annoys us horribly with the whining when he is being pushy about something.)

Oh yes, i've moved to a closed lid fermentation vs the open top with cloth. My kefir grain seller was the one who did the open top with cloth method so i followed initially. But closed lid feels better for me in terms of hygiene. May i learn from you what minimal sterilization do you do? I technically don't do any sterilizing and sanitizing anymore since May onwards as i became too busy. Also I felt more confident than i was when i first did it.

@@lebooshdiaries Yes, precisely. It's all a matter of confidence. If I feel it is necessary, as for example with the natto I prepare weekly, I'll boil water in my electric kettle and pour it slowly over the utensils for 30 seconds or so. Check out the several videos on The Ikigai Diet channel here on YT about the likely factor why there are three times the number of centenarians in Japan's Kyotango prefecture: fermented foods. Specifically . . . vegetable-fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi; milk-fermented foods such as kefir and yogurt; and natto which is fermented soybeans. ruclips.net/video/nctp8AXezho/видео.htmlsi=FhZj0xfO7wCWTYeu

@@mhpjii Thanks, i will watch it. I do like natto too, glad you like it and you make it yourself! I tried to make fermented cucumber pickle a few months ago using whey that i strained from kefir. It was sour but the cucumber was soft. I think i fermented too long. I also make cultured fruit drinks with whey. Yoghurt i eat a smaller tub now as i have kefir. There's always kimchi and miso in my fridge. Besides that, i eat budu(fermented anchovies) and cincalok (fermented shrimps) which is similar as the saeujeot used by Koreans in fermenting kimchi.

Bahahahah, yes, that is why he gets holey shirts! And yes, that is the kalamansi pot. I only have this one pot in the garden, sadly. And it's not even us who grew it, it was father in law. He could grow anything and make it good. He gave this pot to us years ago and it almost died one time but then flourished. I posted photos of it on the section marked POSTS on my page. U can see the kalamansi

@@lebooshdiaries Ohhhh, thank you! I actually have never noticed this page and so I've never seen these things on there before! The flowers on the kalamansi are very pretty. I'm going to have to check out that page now that I know about it.

Yea I am amazed too, I literally sprayed water on its leaves after watching someone do this on YT. It was quite powerful each blast. I was so upset i told my husband it's probably gonna die. he said, nevermind, let it die, don't stress over this small thing. So i just left it there in front of my window and it didn't die. I didn't even know before that what spider mites were. Just one day, i saw something that looked odd. Like a few leaves were wrapped in cobweb like thing. And I thought, i don't remember the leaves being like this. When i looked closer, i saw tiny insects crawling in the web and my skin started to crawl. That is when i went online and saw that it was spider mites and best method is to spray the leaves. When it started shooting all these new shoots and grew taller, i couldn't spray this way. It only is applicable when it's small and short. So i had to squish it, no one taught me this, just a natural thing that came to me. See a bug, squish it, just like how i do with roaches. And I was very diligent, almost daily I look at it with the magnifying glass the plant showed tremendous determination to grow, so i put in effort to protect it. When i saw that it didn't die and just kept growing, i thought, this can be a good topic to share and started to video it from time to time. That is why i only have footage of when it started growing and not the first few months when I first bought it and how the first spider attack looked like. A lot of people don't really know this plant, so it's good to share what spider mites is and that they can get a very big plant out of something so small and fragile. Unfortunately though, for me, my plant is still alive but it seemed to have stopped growing. Some leaves have become orange so i had to snip it off and what's left is a bushy top. I talked to it, gave it fetiliser, sometimes epsom salt, fresh soil but nothing works. I think maybe it needs to be repotted but I don't dare to report yet. Maybe once all the leaves have browned and been snipped off, i will do so.

@@lebooshdiaries I don't know if this would be of any help for getting it growing again or not, but I have a houseplant book that has asparagus fern in it. It says to repot every spring using soil-based potting mixture, and that if you don't want to move older plants into a larger pot, then topdress instead. One other source backs that up and says that repotting every 1-2 years can help maintain plant health and encourage new growth.

@@SunrayStar Thanks! Exactly what i thought so. I did the top dress up twice already and the pot is full to the top with soil. So i can't top dress anymore. I've also given nutrients for it to grow. So i think i need to repot as last resort but only after all the leaves are gone.

@@lebooshdiaries Do you mean you only added more new soil to the top? (That's what it sounded like because you said you were out of room at the top.) In topdressing, you need to remove an inch or two of old soil first before replacing it with fresh soil. That means however much you can remove without too much trauma to the roots, but some light root removal is fine to do, in order to get some of that old soil out, along with some old roots at the top. The top of the old soil is always the worst, worn-out soil and contains those salts buildup from fertilizer (and water mineral residues too) that is not good for the plant roots, so it's good to first clear off completely that worst top part. Then, new fresh soil can do even better.

@@SunrayStar oh dear, yes i only add on top. I never scooped out any of the top soil. I got it wrong, i always thought top dress means just add on. I've always been adding on to some of my plants. It can get pretty messy tho to do this. I think i'll rather wait to repot later once all the leaves have turned brown. Thanks for this clarification!

I know! Not as fussy now, it's been 8 months since I made kefir, a lot of things I did is skipped. And working on it for other aspects of my life too

@@lebooshdiaries well done! Don’t be too hard on yourself! Trust me no one cares in this world about you except you yourself.. People forget what they see and observe. Good luck

@@mamtabawa259 thank u so much for the reminder. It is definitely needed. Take care too!

But he didn't drink it immediately did he? I had to say drink up. While I was drinking, he was looking at me with that face - do i have to? We normally drink the 2nd kefir drink before dinner and when i said, i want to film it, he's like all super awkward lol. What do i do with the leftover watery kefir after i scooped out the thicker part on top - i drink it hahah. I don't scoop all the kefir up, i just scoop like half. So there's still plenty kefir left but it will be like milk watery. That is why you can see some of my kefir looked quite watery. I'd either drink it as it is or use it for breakfast smoothie. When i strain kefir to make kefir cheese, i'd end up with a good amount of kefir whey - i will throw that into my smoothie too. Few times i used the whey to ferment fruit juices to make kefir soda (I learnt that from Donna. She didn't have a video on how to, but she mentioned it and have a blog on how to do it) U know what - since May, my strained kefir does not separate like in my video anymore. I kinda miss it because...i can't make desserts anymore! All my bottles do not have separation anymore and it's thick, but not super thick like separated kefir with whey at the bottom. Not thick enough to make layers like triffle. I don't know what happened but a few things i can think of - 1) i switched to closed lid fermenting like Donna sometime in Feb/March instead of the open lid with cloth on top 2) i dropped the temperature of my fridge so that it is colder 3)I keep eating my grains as they grow, maybe i ate the bacteria or yeast that causes the separation These days, when I open my lid to strain the kefir, it doesn't have crater-like curds floating on top anymore, as per my kefir making video. The top is now smooth, slimy like silken tofu. I could have killed some yeast that caused the floating curds with my anaerobic fermentation. How did your bottles of strained kefir looked like in the fridge?

@@lebooshdiaries When I got on to that certain kefir-fermenting routine I finally hit on, which worked out to give me the same results just about every single time, I stuck with that, because I was going for the uniform-thickness kefir without breaking down into watery whey. I would watch the clock and check on it to make sure that when I first saw the very beginnings of that bubble-look down in the lowest inch of the jars, it was time to strain it. Sometimes I didn't catch it at the exact moment and it would just start to break down and separate more, but if I waited much past that, then it would go on and break up into the really liquidy whey. I didn't want that because it changed the consistency and flavor that I was going for. I also found that it depended on which season it was as to how long I had to leave it until time to strain. In the hotter summer months, it would ferment too quickly and would be separating before 24 hours even elapsed, whereas in cold winter it could be several days until ready! But most of the year, it stayed about the same without extremes, which I think was 2 days until it was time to strain. For me, the environment temperature had everything to do with how long it took before breaking down and separating. I never did try the open lid with cloth on top; from the beginning I always used the full lid screwed almost all the way down, but not quite. Huh, I can't quite picture what you described when it's time to strain now with a smooth, slimy top. I always had the bumpy thick curds floating on top. My bottles of strained kefir in the fridge would last ages and ages, it seemed, without anything bad happening. So sometimes I would collect too many finished mason jars in there that I needed to get through. What I ended up doing to keep from having to make more kefir (keep the grains alive and going) that I would then have trouble drinking, was to put the strained grains into a very small glass jar, add just about a half-cup of milk, tighten the lid down all the way and store it right in the coldest part of the fridge. I would check on it in about a week's time to see if they still looked OK, but if the milk began to have that separated look, then I would just add more fresh milk to last longer if I still wasn't ready yet to make more kefir. Once I was finally ready to use those grains to start more kefir, then I would drain off that fermented milk, put the grains in new clean mason jars, and add fresh milk to start the new fermenting process. I never wasted the small amount of fermented milk that was kefir-like that I drained off; I would put it in the dogs' meals like 1 Tablespoon at a time. They loved kefir very much. It's hard now to remember exactly what that drained liquid was like; but I believe it was mostly like kefir, except not quite as thick, and the flavor was a little different and not as good as what I was normally going for. So I suppose the grains were doing the same thing, making kefir, out of that small amount of milk, but since it was in the cold fridge at the time, it just did it very, very, very slowly. About your last question, my bottles of strained kefir in the fridge were always, to me, about perfect in consistency for drinking - not too thin and not super-thick either. (Super-thick would be really good, but they just weren't like that.) I would always shake the bottle and then open it and pour, and it came out with the consistency of a milkshake, medium in thickness.

@@SunrayStar It's great when u have cold season and it ferments slowly. Here, i can't even watch the clock. I strain in the morning, put in fresh milk and when I wake up at 6.30am, it's already separating. But I can't strain till later at 8am because I have to feed the cats, scoop litter boxes, bring them down to the garden and watch them. When I had been boiling my utensils and jars, i had to let them cool down, which meant i could only start straining around 8.30 or 9am. By that time, the kefir had separated even more.The beginnings of the bubble starts somewhere at 4am. I can never catch that. Only time i can catch it is on Sunday, when I bring out my kefir from the fridge from their resting state at 3pm to pour fresh milk and start the fermentation process for the new week. I normally ferment from Sunday to Thurs. On thurs after the final strain, i will put them into the fridge with an adequate amount of milk and keep them there thru fri, sat and sunday till 3pm. That gives me some rest time and allow me to focus on house cleaning. Just imagine smooth/silken tofu. U never had it before? It's just so soft and silky. That is what i have now vs the bumpy curds i had before. i believe it's because i mainly do anaerobic fermentation now instead of the cloth on top open style.... so prob some or most of the yeast has died. Sigh. Do I want more yeast or bacteria? I chose bacteria. But I know there are some really beneficial yeasts in there. I guess if I want to have best of both worlds, i need to do one with close lid and another one with open lid. 2 fermentation jars at the same time! My husband would think i've gone crazy because the amount of milk we need to buy.... When your kefir grows, do you eat them?

Hi there, I used Miracle Grow indoor plant food which is a liquid type. Just one pump for a lot of water, as shown in the video. But I do not use it anymore as it is really not needed for Spanish Moss. In fact, more fertiliser could harm it. If you really want to use one, as your nursery for specific fertiliser for air plants or bromeliad fertilizer. Don't use it too often. Spanish moss can survive with just tap water, or best, rain water if you are able to collect. Thank u.

@@lebooshdiaries Thank you for the info :)

Good question. I believe my mom never did it because her mom (my grandma) was ill for a very long time and passed away relatively young. I also believed that even if my grandma lived till a ripe old age, she wouldn't have demanded my mom to do so because grandma is not like that. My mom only gave red packets to her own sisters and brother's children, not distant aunts and uncles children. The tradition of giving red packets is a worldwide practice by the Chinese, no matter which country they live. But the culture of being forced to "pay back" to relatives offsprings (distant and close) is just my mom. She just wanted her siblings and relatives to know her children have manners and not stingy so that she does not lose face. In Malaysia for example, once u are married, you need to give to an unwed person if u saw them during the lunar new year or they visit you, your subordinates at work (even if they are married), your parents, grandparents (as respect), your closest friend's children and any service worker you wish to give (like the garbage disposal guys, postman, etc). Maybe in other countries, the tradition is a bit different in who you chose to give to. I heard in Vietnam, even when you are single but already working, you will need to give red packets. I don't remember my cousins who married before me gave me any red packets which means my aunts never forced them to do so. So it was just my mom forcing me. I am so glad that I eventually put my foot down. It was quite a lot of money!

@@lebooshdiaries Thanks for your story; this was all so interesting to me. Wow, I was so surprised to hear that your mother never had to do this to the extreme extent that you did, so surely she must never have really understood what a burden on you it was, since she didn't experience that herself in the same way. I'm sure it's a lot different if you are only giving the packets to close relatives' children that you already know well, vs. giving away a whole lot of money to virtual strangers, AND that you are giving the packets to them only for a limited amount of time. Was your brother not expected to give back red packets also? And what about people who were supposed to give red packets away, but they did not earn much and could barely afford their own bills? I do wonder if all the other children that received packets from you all through those 15 years thought that "Aunt Sarah" was the most generous person ever, to keep giving these far and wide for so long, and thought of you so kindly. I say this because when I was very young, starting probably around 5 years old or a little older, there was an aunt of my father's who was very old and lived all the way across the whole country, who I never met a single time. She was a widow for a long time until she died. She would occasionally mail me a letter with some amount of cash like $10, for birthdays for sure, and she did this a number of times until I got to be a pre-teen. Since she never even met me, but she was thought of and spoken of very highly of by my father, who really thought a lot of her when he was a young boy, it seemed very generous of her to send me those cash gifts. I'm sure she did it because she was so fond of my father as a young boy. I always thought so kindly about her and really appreciated her and thought she was very special even though I never met her, and I wrote her a few letters back when she would send me letters with money. So you may really be thought of highly far and wide, haha. Anyway, you must have felt such a huge relief and lifting of a burden when you finally got it out into the open and addressed it. Good for you!

@@SunrayStar Oh, my brother married much later than me. I have to give him red packet every Lunar New Year, which is terribly annoying. I don't know if he was forced to give red packets once he married. My mom's fav child is not me, let's just leave it as that. This money giving is a tradition, not a law. So if one doesn't want to give because they are struggling to get by, then they can choose to not give. Just have to be thick skinned a bit because sometimes people will give u a look because they won't know your financial background. This is the kinda look my mom did not want to get from relatives. She didn't want them to question and judge her for why her daughter did not give red packets - is she stingy, is she poor, is she not working, etc etc. It doesn't bring her honor. Fortunately, I was able to give but it was a burden - i could use the $ for something else or give to someone who needs it more. I know many adults who do not look forward to lunar new year because of this. Even the person who used to cut my hair lamented that it's no fun to give away money every year when cost of living is rising. Only children love it! Your story is heartwarming. It was so kind of her to send u letters and money. And u were nice to write to her back to thank her. $10 is a lot back then! I never got any thank you calls. I am sure they wondered, who is this person giving me money but hell yea, i love the money! I really don't know how my cousin's children look like. Some are not in the same country. When I was young, my mom would make me call each aunt/uncle who gave me the red packet to say thank u, if we were not able to travel back to the state where they live. Yes, i am glad i am not still paying every year!

@@lebooshdiaries Well, I don't know if I should tell you this or not, but heck it, I will anyway. Oftentimes it's very hard to get the correct meaning to come across when writing something vs. speaking to someone, so I hope the empathizing intent is plain to see. I have continued to think about this on and off all the time, and so finally I decided to tell husband the story about this whole red packet business and what you've been through with it. This was kind of unexpected, but he said it made him feel angry! FOR you, that is. He said that normally he would not have any emotion about something like this that happened to someone he didn't even know, but that since I like you so well, that made it different to him and so it made him feel really mad that you were treated that way. The unfairness of it. I guess he felt that the extent you were forced to be involved bordered on outrageous. Then he went on and said BUT it spoke really well of you and said a lot that you honored your mother by doing what she wanted anyway.

@@SunrayStar Oh! YOur husband is very kind to get upset for me. Thank u, grateful!!! Tell him, it's ok because my mom never asked me for a portion of my salary every month. So when she asked me to give all these red packets, i didn't think too much (until after many years that is). I felt more of the burden after I left work and wasn't earning much as an artist and the resentment started to grow. But asian kids are raised up to be subservient to their parents. In the case of boomer parents, almost all children then were beaten into subservience. So we rarely say no. Growing up, if I had thrown any tantrum or talked back, it would be the cane or a big slap on my face. But it was normal growing up like this back then. My mom also had a tough life with my father. So when they part ways, we try our best to make her happy and do as she says. The thing about parents is, they always make you feel bad or guilty if you don't do as they say because they have sacrificed so much for you. This is one of the many reasons why i chose not to be a human parent so that this type of toxicity does not continue.

Blinds that repel dust is very much welcomed! Problem with wooden blinds is that they can grow mold. I wished I had gotten curtains instead. Those that slide into a rod, not those with the metal legs and u have to push them into the curtain. I just wiped my blinds again at the end of July but didn't have the energy to wipe the windows. Maybe by end year, I might just do a quick wipe of the blinds and spend more time on wiping the windows. Yes, I use damp cloth. I vacuum the blinds first - not for removing the dust, but the cat fur actually. Those dust won't really come off with vacuuming because they are long settled dust. They have grime sticking to them, altho invisible, the grime holds on to the dust, u prob can only vacuum about 50% off. So i'd vaccum for a short while to get the cat fur off and most of the time is spent with the cloth. I love that i am able to wipe everything off and get in between the strings that hold the blinds together. Dust will only come off 100% with vacumming only if you wipe everything nicely once and then vacuum every 2 days because the grime has not settled in yet. The reason i press the blinds down like that is to prevent the blinds from banging uncontrollably on the window frame as i wipe. Especially the super tall blinds, they are really heavy and sometimes i worry the strings might break if they bang here and there too much. I had 3 rooms with blinds but now 2. I had to remove the one from Sesame's room. It was just too many blinds for me at this age. I asked husband to take it down. Fortunately, someone wanted the blinds so it is being reused, not discarded. I normally clean them once a year but this year i couldn't help but wipe it in July (mid year) because it's so dusty due to the next door construction dust. I don't know how long i am able to climb up like that to wipe, it's quite dangerous. Even when I had my helper, she'd only wipe the blinds from ground up to her head level and no more. I had always been the one climbing up to wipe all these 10 years and counting. There must be somewhere in your dryer that allows for removing lint buildup. Maybe it is behind? Lucky for me that I am not afraid of cockroaches. That was a bad dream! I would be the one chasing after roaches when i see one, i'd use a paper towel to catch it and then i'd squish it and discard. Gross? My husband thinks so. He can't even bring himself to squish the cockroach. I wished I have no fear of worms. I would be such a great gardener lol. Yeah he was so disappointed that the shell was empty. I think most of its content fell into the sauce...some crab heads are loaded with fatty gunk...he wanted that!

@@lebooshdiaries Oh, I totally agree about choosing curtains with a rod pocket instead of that kind that uses those metal leg pieces. I had that metal leg type once and I hated them! I didn't even like the look of them. In the living room where the largest windows are, I have only blinds on them (no curtains over top), but in two other rooms I have the blinds against the windows, and then very light lacy see-through curtains over top (they are just for added interest; they don't block light). In the kitchen where I have blinds over 3 regular-sized windows there, I have toppers for decoration over them. Do you use that word 'toppers' for tiny top curtains in Malaysia? Just in case you don't, I'm talking about very short "curtains" with a rod pocket that only cover about the top 12 inches of the window. My curtain toppers are a very sheer material with some light blue color woven into them, and at the bottoms they have little prism-shaped beads hanging off the edges, just simply for decoration. My blinds are all a very light neutral color like off-white or ecru, so the small toppers in the kitchen really spiff them up with added interest and a bit of color. Gosh, I don't know what you'll do about cleaning those really tall blinds in the future, either. You have to be so high up on a ladder. In a worst-case, what about a cleaning company that could come in to clean the blinds? Of course, you may worry about if they would damage them. What you said about having to be careful so strings don't break, that's why I have to be so careful with vacuuming. A couple of years ago, I did have one very small string part break all the way at the top where the first top blind slat is, and now I have a teeny tiny little space at the top that can let in just a little bit of light. i understand about holding them down flat with your hand to keep the movement down. I really think from now on I would really like to wipe them by hand with a damp cloth rather than keep up this vacuuming that is hard and also doesn't clean all that well. I just think that for the machines made in our country, they don't give us those lower lint access points like the ones some of the other countries have. I have looked all over the machines for any other cleanout panels and there are none. Also, diagrams of the machines in the owners manuals do not show any such things, nor do they mention the possibility of any access to be able to clean under the maintenance section, or anywhere else. The only place the dryer has to remove lint is from the pullout lint trap part in the actual drum part of the dryer, and that leaves behind all the other gunk inside the machine past that part. And the washing machine simply has nowhere at all to be able to clean out anything.

@@SunrayStar My parent's home had curtains everywhere with the metal legs. I hate them. I used to have to put them back on and hang them up. I don't like putting them back on, they were so tedious. I think by the time we moved out into our apartment and now landed home, the rod pocket type of curtain was relatively new and unknown. That's why prob i agreed to blinds due to not wanting to deal with curtains with metal leg inserts! Yes i know what toppers are. I don't know what else they are called. It's not popular here but I understand what u mean. It makes the home look more cozy and is esp nice when the home has a cottage feel/look or is really a cottage in the woods. They are nice with short windows, not my tall ones. I recently installed rod pocket curtains in my wet kitchen, because it was getting so hot and the sun felt harsh on my skin. Since I am using tretinoin, I figured, it's best to just put up some curtains. I've been deliberating about it for a long while but never did it because i do kinda like to look out at the street while cooking. Altho not the nicest view, but it's still quite interesting sometimes, u see cats and dogs walking around. Now my view is covered with curtains. And i didn't buy a super long one to cover the entire height of the window, so as not to have to deal with so much fabric when washing. It blocked some sun rays but not entirely. Some parts of my kitchen still have harsh rays shining onto it. Prob get another curtain which is longer later so i can alternate between the two. Cleaning service - one time we had people come in to clean the exterior part of our windows and we asked if they could help us clean the blinds in the guest room. They went in, and then came out quite quickly, said it's done. The next day, i went in to check and i don't think they wiped anything. I don't trust people to clean the blinds with the same tenacity as i do. U really have to wipe the blinds one by one. After holding them down and wiping a few at a time, I'd still wipe each blade because when u stack them flat, there are some parts of the blind that overlaps with the one below and above. Then i will wipe the bottom of the blind too because wooden blinds then to grow mold on the bottom of the blade that faces outwards, not the one facing you. I do go to the bathroom a lot of wash off all the dirt on the cloth and then come back to wipe. I aim for total smoothness on each blind after i finish. Not a bit of grittiness here and there. When I had my helper, her work result is like that. It wasn't clean at all. The biggest blind is in my study. It's around 11 feet and 4 pieces together. I don't like the idea of strangers entering my bedroom and then having to go into my closet to access the bathroom to wash the cloths. With such tall blinds, normally cleaning companies will send men. Not women. They won't ask women to climb up that high. I don't like the idea of men going into my closet. Once i feel like it's too dangerous, i will stop. Just clean where I can. Hopefully by then, it's time to move out to a smaller place. I guess if there is no outlet to remove lint, then perhaps the machine is made well and lint is only inside the drum. My washing machine has a tiny thing inside the drum too that can be pulled out to remove the lint. But it's just a small flap on the side of the drum. Nothing major like my dryer. Perhaps we bought a cheap dryer, therefore, it needed to be cleaned like this.

@@SunrayStar Oh, my dryer and previous dryers did no t have any outlet hose to blow hot air out. Those hose are only on washing machines. That is so interesting! Yes, i do not like men going into my closet. Now I know it's not a good thing to have a closet room that leads into the bathroom. There should be another door to access the bathroom without going thru the closet. It's where my most intimate things are, panties, bra, and i feel so vulnerable. When we had painters, the painters were supposed to repaint the bedroom, closet and bathroom. I felt i had to move my innerwear out of my island drawers into my standing wall cabinet. I just felt so worried anyone might just pull open the drawers for fun to see. When I was working, my husband would just bring in repair men to repair stuff in the bathroom or the air conditioning where they had to go into the bathroom to wash the air con stuff without telling me prior. I would be so horrified because sometimes things may be hanging in the closet that I won't want strangers to see. I remember last year I told him that I do not want the air con guys to go into the closet into the bathroom to get water for the air con cleaning. I said husband must be the one to do it. So i asked him to stand in front of the closet door so as to block the repair guy. But he moved and the air con guy somehow managed to walk in so quickly into the closet to get water! I was sitting on my desk in the study and saw the guy walked into the closet and my husband was like rushing in after him. Sigh.

@@lebooshdiaries Wow, tell me - what is the dryer vent setup like on your dryers? It is somehow vented to the outdoors, isn't it? In ours, the hot air with lint in it goes out the back of the dryer, where a hose is attached there to carry it to the outside. Some people have a dryer located on an outer wall of a home (those are the best setups) where a very short hose can lead from the dryer and go straight outside through the wall there. But others will be located on an inner wall (like mine) which must have that hose run into a hole in the wall and either down underneath the floor to come out on the outside of the house (again, mine), or any other assortment of placements underneath upper floors or whatever, to reach the outside. My setup is not the best, because lots more lint gets stuck inside the pipe inside the wall or going below the floor before it can reach the outside. Hence, it's possible to get a lint fire. In our house, you have to go into the master bathroom in order to reach the closet door. I don't like that because of humidity that could get into the closet coming from the bathroom. I always keep the closet door shut as much as possible. (There is another bathroom on the other end of the house that has its own door and is not connected to another room, but that one is not located anywhere near that attic access that contains the HVAC air handler unit.) Yes! I would feel the need to do the same thing in moving out private items before strangers would need to come in for any work. Oh, your story ... MEN!

I will certainly look at the video. I have been massaging my behind her neck area in a way for better lymphatic flow few months back (watched a video on it) and somehow then stopped and forgot to do it. I will look at your recommendation. I definitely know the importance of better drainage and like doing it. Just perhaps i've been so distracted and tired. Your story reminds me of me but in relation to housework and cleanliness of the house. But it also brings me back to the time when i was a little girl, being taken care of my aunt during the day while my mom was at work. I would go to her house after school, eat lunch and spend my time there till 7pm when my mom drives up to take me home. My aunt would be like you, pulling out the weeds in her garden one by one and i have to help her. I didn't enjoy it tho! I never do garden work at this house now. We just have people come and cut the grass every 2 months, shovel the dead leaves from the drains. They don't pull out weeds either because there is too much. We also live nearby the forest reserve so there are a lot of weed spores floating and after a year or so after moving into this house, the weeds came up. It's all weedy now but the piece of land is too much to manually pluck. We can't apply weed killer as well as it is not good for environment and our cats. Good thing is, the cats love to eat some of these weeds. But yea, housework, i am like you during your gardening phase, I still am. At the height of my health, when my helper goes back to her home country for a month, i'd do the entire 3 floors within 1 day. I'd work from 10am till 8pm starting with ground floor, first floor then 3rd floor where my study and bedroom is. Then i'd finish with washing my bathroom and bathe, then head out for dinner. I'd work till my back is sore and my arms hurt but it's like i can't stop until everything is clean. Now, I cannot do so and would do each floor per day. So that's 3 days of housework. It's still very tiring because when u have more time per floor, u tend to then want to do more. Am working on seeing if i can clean only every 2 weeks but i haven't been able to. Still a wip. The house's really dirty after a week. Every time i mop, the water's all black. It's the open windows and cats, their vomit, fur, the next door construction dust...everything just feels so icky after a week. It doesn't help that dust bothers me, even a bit of dust bothers me. So how do you maintain your garden now?

@@lebooshdiaries Oh, thank you for sharing that memory of staying regularly at your aunt's. I was just now trying to picture it. I had a much older aunt who loved to garden, but she didn't have a whole lot of it to do; it's just that those shrubs and plants she did grow and those little plots of annual flowers and green peppers she would plant every year, she enjoyed that so much. Wow, only every 2 months for cutting the grass; we can't go that long here except for late fall through winter, until spring when the grass comes out of dormancy and starts to grow again. It depends on which month it is and how much rain we get during that month. Sometimes it has to be done every week and even then it has started to get too tall again, but during summer drought it could be once a month. Husband is in charge of mowing the yard. How much rain we get really is the difference, as that is what makes the grass grow really fast. We don't use any weed killers, either, or any other chemical pesticides or herbicides; we want to avoid anything that would damage our health.(So we do have weeds throughout the lawn.) However, all around us other people do douse their yards with chemicals, so I hate that but we can't get away from it. We are always seeing dead birds and rodents just lying out in unlikely places all throughout the neighborhood, and the good insect populations have just been simply decimated, and that all makes me very sad. One of my dogs loves to eat dandelions (the fluffy white seed heads) during the times they are actively growing in that stage. Well, I do totally understand what you were describing with all the rigorous cleaning, because I used to be just like that, too, except that house I lived in back at that time was still not as large as yours is, so it didn't take me quite that many hours to do the whole thing. But it did still take the majority of a day. I wanted to get it all done in one day, too. That house had stairs in it (more than one floor). That house made me never want another house with stairs, haha, so now we are back to one story, which I think is easier living. At that time, we had a dog that was a Siberian Husky, and when he got older he developed hip arthritis and I would have to get behind him to help push him up the stairs because he had a lot of trouble with those. We've also lived near construction in the past, and that is a real mess. Gardening now is the easiest for me it has ever been. I now have as the majority of my shrubs, flowers and plants those kinds that are drought-tolerant and can fend more for themselves, with only a very small number that need watching more closely for wilting and need of supplemental water or additional fertilizer. Also, I have changed the type of mulch I use on all the planting areas to big pine bark nuggets instead of finely shredded hardwood mulch. The fine type breaks down so much faster and needs to be replenished with a large mulching job every year or two, but the large nuggets lasts so much longer without breaking down fast, and a plus is that I actually think it's prettier and more decorative, too. So I no longer have as much weeding, either. I would say that I now do not have to do gardening any more often than once a month, which will normally take me at least half a day, or sometimes most of a day. That would mostly be for things like weeding, deadheading, cutting back or pruning, etc. But I rather enjoy that now and don't mind so much any more since those sessions are so infrequent, compared to in the past when I had to regularly go out and take care of the yard once every week (and I'm not counting those crazy years where I was working in the yard several days per week). I chose to stop collecting those kinds of plants that required so much more care and tending. During busier seasons of plant growth, I will have to go out and take care of much smaller jobs as needed, outside of the full-yard sessions, and that is no big deal. Actually, it's much preferable to do the smaller jobs as needed rather than lump a lot of stuff all together for one longer day.

@@SunrayStar I am with you on smaller place, no stairs. When u are all the way down, and then u realised you left your phone or something important upstairs in the bedroom, oh man. It makes me tired even to think of it. My knees hurt so much going up the stairs at one point. Luckily now, after doing weight and resistance training, i've rebuilt my calf, hamstrings and glute muscles and my knees no longer hurt for now. 2 months before the gardeners come to cut the grass. It isn't pretty, for sure. But because we have walls and gate, no one can see how unruly our grass is. Cutting grass is a noisy affair and it stresses the cats too, so we try to stretch it. Having a beautiful lawn is something i like but i am also ok seeing overgrown grass and weeds everywhere. Some are quite pretty! My OCD does not bother with lawns, thank god. Anyway, speaking of lawns - i remembered this video i watched last year. It's by Future Proof and title is How America Got Addicted to Lawns. If u have time to watch it, u can tell me if its true. Also, my most preferred garden look is the pretty potager garden. I used to love In Beth's Garden, if I ever was a green thumb, i would love to make my garden look like this. More stones on ground, less grass, very neatly organised. U can watch her Beth's Winter Vegetable Garden Tour 2015

@@lebooshdiaries Unfortunately every single thing he said in the lawn video you mentioned is true. Husband and I do not agree at all with all of the lawn craze. We live in a standard subdivision with an HOA, and it is true that they do have a lot of rules, one being that your grass should be kept at a reasonable height and not allowed to get out of control. One year they sent around a message to all residents that highly encouraged everyone to kill all the weeds in their lawns by either hiring a service or at least going to the store and getting a bag of chemicals yourself to apply to the lawn. (We ignored that and did nothing other than to just keep the yard mowed as usual.) There must have been some people complaining about others' lawns with weeds for them to send that around. And it seems to me that maybe half of the households pay companies to come and treat their lawns with chemicals, and lots of other people put out products themselves, so that means the number of people not doing any of that are in the minority (like us). I really dislike it because their use of dangerous chemicals affects others also. The products they use wash out of their lawns and onto others', as well as into city wastewater drain systems. It is concerning for the dogs walking on public sidewalks where they've recently applied products as well as our own yard that would get washout or overspray from neighbors' yards. The other issue is the broad expanses of nothing but just grass. I guess some people must think that the gold standard is to have a yard full of grass as perfect as you can make it, with only the barest minimum of other yard plants, usually only a line of plants in the front foundation of the house and a tree, if that. We have a very small yard, but I have it chock full from one end to the other with trees, shrubs and flowering plants. There is grass covering the yard outside of all the mulched planting areas, but there are no weed killers used, so there are weeds growing all throughout the grass. It's not all that noticeable from a distance as the yard is routinely mowed before it would get too overly tall, but if you're up close, you can certainly see all the weeds and be able to tell that it is not treated grass. I prefer the look of a yard with some weeds as it looks healthier and more natural to me. The pristine grass lawns look bare, lifeless and antiseptic to me (but really they are poisoned). This year when 3 of my yard trees leafed out for Spring, they had deformed new leaf growth, and those twisted, curled leaves are still on there now. The ends of the branches did eventually start growing some more normal-looking leaves, though. I learned from the county extension agent that we had sustained chemical damage by either a person or a company who had used some kind of herbicide chemical in the neighborhood that was blown in the air and affected a huge number of neighborhood trees. He said the damage likely occurred last year, but it gets in the trees' vascular system and then really showed up when the new leaves emerged this Spring. That was so upsetting that you can just be minding your own business and have things like that happen to your plants out of your control at the hand of someone else. And if it happens again, it will further weaken the trees, until they could eventually die. That's really interesting that In Beth's Garden is the exact look you would prefer to have. When I saw her yard, I thought "English" (as in the country of England) at first, but I saw that she was influenced by the French parterres. The English manicured estates seem to me similar to the French in both countries' formal gardens. Now as for me, I'm not too big of a fan of the formal look. It just feels fussy to me and comes across as high maintenance. But it certainly is interesting and pretty. If you might be interested in taking a look at something similar, yet slightly different, there is a channel called Garden Sanity that I used to watch a whole lot, and this woman's home is grass-less. She and her husband removed all grass from their entire yard and put in lots of planting beds full of trees, shrubs and plants. In the front yard, they placed pavers as the hardscaping material to walk on between all the planting beds, and in the backyard they used gravel (kind of like In Beth's Garden) in between all the planting beds. I fell in love with the look of her entire yard from the beginning and watched her channel for about 2 years until I moved on to other things, but I still do watch it every once in a while. Her yard is still on the fussy side, but not as formal as the English and French formal gardens. Here are 2 of her videos showing parts of her yard; one video focuses on the front yard and the other one on the back yard: "Mid Summer Garden Tour: Backyard Garden" and "Panicle Hydrangea Garden Tour in Mid-August", both by Garden Sanity.

@@SunrayStar Thanks for watching. Everything you said about the gold standard - perfect weed free grass and minimal plants, etc...is often shown in American movies. The ideal suburban home yard. It's clean and organized. I do quite like that look but i know it's not easy to keep it like that. One good thing about Malaysia is. we have gates and fencing/walls. And u can do whatever u want in your garden as long as it is within the fence/walls. No one can complain unless there are snakes breeding in your home as a result of your jungle-y garden. Oh i love beth's garden so much. I always tell husband, i want a french potager. And he's like rolling his eyes - who will maintain it? My heart likes the high maintenance look but my brain says no. But most of all, i like it because there is lack of grass, mostly gravel. Due to my fear of worms and anything mollusk, i definitely love more gravel than grass. But i know weeds can grow out of those gravel too as how they grow out of my garden gravel. It's a losing battle. I wonder how her garden looks now. She had never posted anymore videos after introducing her garden. I guess it's too much work. I do LOVE Garden Sanity's garden! No grass yea! I didn't dare to watch too much because it will make me yearn again to have beautiful blooms, and most blooms i want cannot be grown here. I used to watch Garden Answer and i love her estate. She works with Proven Winners and always show off really beautiful blooms from them. Always huge, always vibrant. At one point, I actually emailed Proven Winners and asked if they could ship their seeds to Malaysia. Of course they replied NO. The flowers i want won't be able to grow here.

Hope that was interesting to you! I use salt for softer, leafy veggies and baking soda for tougher veggies that don't have leaves like tomatoes, chilies, cucumbers, eggplants, etc. I do run them under water but I soak them first to get rid of any microorganisms or worm eggs, esp for those grown in soil, pesticides and handling contamination (esp leafy veggies). Now that most of the veggies we buy are hydroponically grown, i still do it to get rid of any hand/glove contamination, dust and again, possible pesticides. Because u will never know how organic an organic labelled veggie is unless u work there. It is more tedious, I know but I've helping my mom soak veggies for each meal since I was a teenager so the habit stuck lol!

@@lebooshdiaries 😍😍

I sanitize the utensils, glass and sterilize my work surface with alcohol because it feels yucky to work on the same place where i handle raw meat. Also, the kefir grain seller sent me a long message to tell me how important it is to ensure everything is clean and sanitized before use, I wanted to honor her genuine concern on contaminaton. She even had a demo video on pouring hot water onto the spatula and glass jars. I was so new, I had only watched 2-3 videos on how to make kefir, I hadn't even come across Donna Schwenk...i just wanted to drink kefir because my body craved it and i was tired of buying bottles and bottles of store kefir. Honestly, I was so worried, what if I contaminate the kefir and poison us both? I'll never hear the end of it from my husband lol. I could strain kefir outside on the big kitchen table where no raw food is handled but the cats may come and disturb and their fur is forever floating in the air. But yes, I was able to slowly reduce all that sanitizing prep over the months. It started off with reusing the same fermentation jar for a whole week. In my video, I put my strained kefir into a new, clean jar because i said I hated the milk streaks on the current kefir fermentation jar. That saved time. And recently, because i was so tired from all that housework and making cat food, i skipped boiling the glass jars. When I first made kefir, i still had my weekly cleaning helper but then from Jan 2024 onwards, it was only me who cleaned the entire house. What else changed - I don't boil the nylon mesh anymore but i do want to eventually switch to stainless steel. I do think from time to time - are we drinking microplastics that is swimming in our kefir, courtesy from the nylon mesh? Just haven't found time to find a good quality stainless steel strainer. Most that are sold online are cheap stainless steel that I worry will rust. I also don't wash the cleaning sponge with filtered water anymore, I just make sure it gets really dry after each use. Before that, i used to be so upset if the sponge fell on the floor and would replace it with a new one. But some days, my germophobic nature wins over me and I will just boil a small pot of water, then pour it over the utensils, the mesh, pyrex jar and glass jars and let them cool down before i strain my kefir. It's not as time consuming as boiling a big pot of water and then submerging all my things in the boiling water for a few mins. I think i watched too many Chubbyemu and Brew hahah. It's like you are ok until you are not ok kinda thing. Sometimes we do things and we think hey, i am ok, i didn't get sick. But the one time you do get sick, u will remember for life, if you came out of it alive. I am amused that u mentioned Donna S. like I knew who she was - lol, fortunately, I do! I listened to mostly all her podcasts. I think i found her after 2 weeks into making kefir. But i heard of the 2nd fermentation thru other creators. I've tried it but after a while, i stopped. I expected my kefir to taste like strawberries or whatever fruit i put in there, but it didn't haha. Donna said it's so delicious but i can't taste the fruit nor even smell the scent of it. I've put mostly berries, oranges, kalamansi peel and mulberries (frm my garden), even some prebiotic fiber. I don't know if it's really true - does it even grow more good bacteria as a result of it? Was there a research done to ascertain this fact? There is no research link on Donna's video on 2nd fermentation. My question is - we were always taught that kefir grains consume lactose only. So why would they consume these fruit sugars during 2nd fermentation? Fruits don't contain lactose, they contain fructose. No one would answer me. And Donna, she never replies to anyone except to those who asks about her links to buy stuff. Water kefir consume fructose and glucose. I think 2nd fermentation concept would work on water kefir, but not milk kefir. I think someone started saying this for milk kefir and then everyone else followed blindly. I could be wrong but there's no research published on this. Maybe there is, i just didn't find it. If you have it, let me know?

@@lebooshdiaries (#1 of 2) Regarding germs, I'm from the camp that believes the more germs your immune system is exposed to without sanitizers and such to kill them, the stronger you are. Do you know, (you will probably recoil), I will accidentally drop food onto the floor, and instead of wasting it by throwing it away, I'll just quickly give it a rinse under water and go on and eat it anyway. I haven't used sponges for years and don't really like them; I use cotton dishrags instead. But I use one new clean dishrag per day (at the end of the week, I do a towels laundry load that I wash them in). However, I will clean many types of things in a day with that one dishrag and soapy water - and that may also include wiping the floor! and also doing dishes... the more germs, the stronger you are, and it was years and years ago the last time I was sick with a cold or flu or anything. I also scoff at all things like "you'll get sick if you go out in the cold with a wet head" and do things like that and more. The only time in my life I ever ate something and felt very ill (I believe it was likely food poisoning) was when I was a teenager and bought a slice of pizza from a store in the mall! I have no idea what someone had done to contaminate that pizza, but that put me out of commission for the rest of the day and most of the next. I wish I could attach here a document (39-page ebook) that was sent to me by the business that made the kefir grains I bought - it is called "Kefir Unleashed" by Thomas Egbert of Fusion Teas and contains all sorts of fantastic info. I remembered that they were really pro using non-metal strainers, so I went back and looked that up. Have you ever done any research on what type of strainers to use? I never did; I just went by their instructions and purchased the nylon one. Under a section called "Kitchen Tools You Will Need", he said this as the first point: "A Good Strainer: I like to use a fine plastic or nylon mesh strainer. Stainless steel will work, but other metals should be avoided (they put that last part in red italics to highlight it). Other metals can change the balance of the bacteria and yeast. I prefer a fine plastic or nylon mesh strainer because sometimes you need to break up the curds and push them through the strainer with a plastic or wooden spoon. Doing this with a stainless steel strainer can be a little rough on the kefir grains." And my own comment: if non-stainless steel metal can be harmful to kefir, then it is really hard to trust any stainless steel strainers, either, because with the lack of quality manufacturing in today's world, you can't be 100% positive that a strainer claiming to be only stainless steel really is! I'm going to continue this in another post so this entry doesn't get too long ...

@@lebooshdiaries (#2 of 2) Wow, I wonder why you could never taste the flavor of any fruits that you put into kefir for the 2nd fermentation? That is really interesting! For instance, if I put 2 little frozen strawberries into the kefir, it picked up their flavor very quickly and tasted (to me) of faintly strawberry-flavored kefir. Really delicious. I'm sure there's some kind of valid reason why you couldn't taste it, but it would be hard to learn somewhere what that reason was. No, I have not run across any research done on 2nd fermenting with fruit added, but I never looked for any on purpose, either. So I tried to see now if anything would come up on that. There are quite a number of things, and I ran across a lot of interesting pieces of info, but I didn't see any official research that would "prove" something. Actually, it was sounding like the probiotic bacteria in the strained kefir, not the kefir grains, are what consume the fruit sugar and prebiotics from the fruit (because the kefir grains would have already been strained out BEFORE adding the fruit). (So this may be the answer to your question?) Then the amount of probiotics in the kefir increase even more. One thing said: "Generally, people use fruit for the second fermentation of milk kefir. As fruit contains sugars which essentially re-feed the kefir bacteria, this boosts the overall probiotic content. The vitamins contained within the fruit also help increase the nutritional value of the milk kefir." So whatever vitamins that particular added fruit contains is what gives the finished kefir additional nutritional content. Another thing said: "The additional sucrose from the fruits added in the 2nd fermentation encourages the fermentation process by providing more food for the bacteria to survive." Another source said: "You can increase the vitamin content by adding fruit to the second ferment. Like oranges for vitamin C or blueberries for vitamin K, or bananas to increase potassium." This one said: "Kefir grains are not present during a second fermentation. This means that you can add any prebiotic food you like without it affecting your kefir culture in any way. It’s important to select food rich in prebiotics for the second fermentation. Kefir is rich in probiotics, and prebiotics act as food for probiotics. In other words, probiotics eat prebiotics." Then that last one went on to suggest a number of different fruits, spices, etc. to try adding during 2nd fermentation as prebiotic sources.

@@SunrayStar Yes, that is why i mentioned that even tho I want stainless steel, i think most that are sold online are really cheap stainless steel. To get a good one, it won't be cheap. But do people actually make it because who would want to buy an expensive stainless steel strainer? So that is why i am still sticking to my nylon mesh for now lol. I didn't do any research on stainless steel but i remember an article I read that says it must be 100% stainless steel, then only it can work. but stainless steel has different grades and it can still rust over time. Something for me to think about. I'll reply u on the others. Am running a lot of errands today so i will get back to u. I hear my cats fighting a bit, it's dinnertime and they are hangry lol.

@@SunrayStar Dropping food on floor and washing it to eat. Hmmm...yea....euw. But i did pick up food which i drop on table and eat it when i was not so germophobic. These days, we do not do the 5 second rule anymore, ever since all that diarrhea and vomiting started from the furries. I usually would drop a 1-2 pieces of vegetables sometimes when i cook them in my wok and i would be like arrgghhhh...but husband would be like yaaaayyy, pls drop more so i don't have to eat veges. Your thinking is same as my husband. But it's not always true because every individual is different. My mom is clean like me (but actually i am cleaner) and she would always be sick for no reason. My brother, on the other hand, is very lazy when it comes to keeping his home clean. And he gets sick too, with constant cough issues. My husband, was raised in a hoarder's home, everything is dirty, full of dust and he's fit and fine. I am super OCD clean and i have only been sick last month, once in 2021/22 with covid...rarely do i ever get feverish sick during my employment time. But i do get dizzy due to low blood pressure due to a genetic condition. That one has nothing to do with immune system or anything. Like I said, u are ok until u are not ok. As we age, our brain will not be as fluffy as when we are 20 years old. Same goes with our immune system, no matter how hard we exercise and live healthy. So just be mindful that today u are ok doing such, later in life, maybe be a bit more careful.

Well thank u for watching so many videos and being consistent in being chronological! Even I don't watch someone's videos in chronological order, you have a lot of discipline. That holey shirt lol. I rarely carry the cats unless I have to, like to the bathroom for baths, or to remove them from danger. I only carry Pikachu like a baby, sometimes Sesame (but he hates it). All the cats do not really like to be carried, it's in their character. But some cats may love being carried around, just that I don't have such cats. Mine all struggle the moment you carry them. Also, I do have apron on for most of the day when I am not in the study so, if they did claw me, it would be my apron. Husband loves to catch the cats and carry them around like babies, hence the holes! Ah, I just wanted to give some excuse why i don't put up any decorations but it didn't mean that u have to be a christian then only be able to put up the decorations. I do know Xmas, which is a religious celebration is one of the most embraced celebration universally, and a lot of people, regardless of religion puts up lights and decorations for the warmth and festive cheer it brings. But typically in Malaysia, the ones who puts up the decorations are church goers. U won't see Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus doing so. I believe if i had asked my parents to put up a tree and lights during xmas when i was a kid, my mom would scold me. I think a tree strewn with fairy lights is so ethereal. We have been talking about doing this for many many years now. But u know, my husband takes a year to do anything. But this one is a huge project, he would take 10 years to get to it. I wanted some of the bigger trees to have fairy lights on their branches and trunk but we haven't figured out how to do the lighting and all, who is gonna climb up the tall trees to hang those lights. So for now, I can only just imagine my garden with fairy lights.

@@lebooshdiaries Regarding watching in chronological order, it really isn't discipline for me; it's just the orderly, well-organized person in me. I'm an organizer! haha. I have fun organizing cabinets and closets, for instance (some people absolutely hate that kind of activity). So in watching videos, I did the same thing with Nami's and Hamimommy's and Niko's videos - once I found them and really enjoyed the channel by watching a recent video and being interested in watching more, rather than just pick up from there and go forward, I would rather go back to the beginning and start from there and watch them in order, so I will see the natural time progression in their lives. It's a way more satisfying experience for me doing it in order that way than to disjointedly watch them here and there, higgledy-piggledy. And that explains why I'm still not yet caught up and am now in something around May of this year for them! I will get caught up sometime this year; it just takes time to get through them all and up to date, and eventually when I reach the newest current ones, I'll then just watch the newest ones as they're posted, and it just seems much more satisfying and less confusing to me arriving at the newest ones, having already seen all the ones that came before. If I jumped around, I would likely miss some and never get to see them. And I enjoy every one immensely as I go along! Happy time. (That includes yours!!) Oh, and I never fail to get such high amusement out of your husband's holey cat shirts, so that's an added bonus, haha. Have a super weekend!!!

@@SunrayStar I used to do that for hamimommy then i lost interest and just watched whatever new ones she posted. Sometimes i miss some and i never bother to go to those. I like it all over the place even tho I am quite an organizer. But for videos, for some reason, not so much.

Hi, I hope your baby girl is gonna be ok. Having so much experience with cleaning up diarrhea, I can definitely know it's time consuming. Sometimes, animals and even humans can develop allergy to something out of the blue. Hopefully it is temporary and will stop over time. I am still very cautious about Billy and diarrhea. Even tho he's been free of it since May, i still hold my breath every morning when I walk out from my bedroom. That thing climbing up the wall is a squirrel. It was eating the jackfruit and saw the cats!

Thank u very much! Take care!

Oh thank you very much, have a good weekend yea.

Billy's always sleeping or even when he's sitting on the dining table hoping for a table scrap, he'd close his eyes while he waits for us to finish our dinner. He sort of "powers down" or go on standby mode with eyes closed but ears perked up so that he can hear what's going on despite closed eyes. I'd say he has the lazy eye, he likes to keep it closed for most of the time. This year no major eye issues but once in a while he does get some redness and it's always his left eye. So, so far so good. But i am sure u have seen Billy with eyes opened before like vlog 90 where i made an artwork of him based off his photo at 9:17. Big huge eyes.

@@lebooshdiaries I went to look at that in vlog 90, and I would have never recognized Billy from what he looked like there with the huge eyes. I always think he looks so cute with his face like that when his eyes are closed! That is so funny - "standby mode".

Some are from my imagination, like the apple with ice cream and greek yoghurt. I used to make fro yo using whipping cream, sugar and greek yoghurt and it's easy to think of substituting the whipped cream with ice cream, since the latter is mostly made of whipped cream anyway. And it has sugar so essentially, it has all the ingredients to make fro yo. Great way to finish my ice cream too. These days, i don't buy ice creams anymore so it's just apples and yoghurt for me lol. As for the egg with rice and seaweed, i think that's pretty normal tho. I don't remember where i learnt that. But for the last one, i did watch one pot rice meals long time ago and then decided to make my own with whatever sauces i have. Most are usually from what i've seen online (i don't read cookbooks as I prefer to watch videos) and i adapt it to my own. I do think i can be more adventurous because it's kinda boring and safe these days. I would love to cook more delicious things but it all takes time to learn. Yes, matcha poured into milk! It's slightly nutty, only slightly bitter from the matcha. Mixed with whole milk, it's delicious. Next time i will try with whipping cream. Matcha with milk and ice is one of my comfort drink ever since i stopped drinking boba tea.

@@lebooshdiaries There was an attempt on Trump's life this evening at a rally he was speaking at. His ear was nicked and injured; they took him to the hospital and he is doing fine. But someone back behind him lost their life. I was cooking dinner and husband was watching the news on TV when they interrupted the show with the announcement.

@@SunrayStar yes, i saw. news are pretty quick to cover. Kindly excuse me as i had been sick since wed with fever. Just resting. I think my body just needs to rest, not doing much, just sleeping.

@@lebooshdiaries Hi, I just wanted to check on you. You aren't still sick, are you?

@@SunrayStar much better now but still sniffling a bit. Other than that, am ok but just taking it slower than usual. thanks for checking in.

Thank u! I think 1:42 where Pikachu bit Max's neck, that was very cute and naughty of her. My routine's changed so much in 2024. Ever since I started making wet cat food, I now wake up at 6.30am daily except for Sunday. Some days I wake up at 6am. After eating homemade food and very little kibbles, everyone (except Mango) now wants to go to the garden for a while, not just Itsy and Pikachu. I let them out 2 times in a day now, after their breakfast and dinner. It's a good that they are more active!

@@lebooshdiaries Yes, that was naughty and cute! Haha! And Max was just quietly minding his own business! How interesting that most of the rest of the cats began wanting to go outside after their diet was changed; that could not be a coincidence. Do you have any insight into why a better quality of food would change their mindset on something like going outside? And did you ever have a good idea of why the others did not want to go outside previously; like for instance, was it fear-related of the outside, or that they just had no interest in spending the effort on going outside because the mainly kibble diet may have made them feel sluggish and uninterested, or if the increased nourishment in the new food has simply caused the brain to work better and show interest in something new that didn't used to appeal? (Just trying to think of reasons for the change.) I think that is a very good sign that they are enjoying going out for leisure! I would love to get up at 6 or 6:30 in the morning. But I need to get to bed even earlier to do that. But that is my goal! I have already been getting to bed quite a bit earlier for a while now. For an extremely long time, I had been like you were previously, staying up half the night, with the resulting sleeping later in the morning. In your case, you were working, but in my case, it was varied - partially doing personal work like paying bills, researching needed info, even little jobs around the house, along with a large amount of YT video-watching, but I have had a hard time changing my bad habit because it is so FUN to stay up so late, when all is so quiet and I can do whatever I want! (Dogs just follow me all around and sleep in any of the many pet beds all over, haha, but that is not good for them, either, to have their nighttime sleep disrupted so much.) So I did scale it back and have been getting to bed mostly around the 1-1:30 AM time frame and then waking up earlier than before, which varies wildly as to when I wake up (that may be because I haven't made myself have a firm enough routine), but I am definitely still not getting enough sleep per night, like on average getting only 6 hours, sometimes up to 7 hours, sleep. That is not enough for me now as I have sleep-deprived myself for way too long as it is. So I am now trying to move everything back earlier; it is hard to do! That means make dinner earlier, so I can get all finished with cleaning it up earlier, then I will have more time to do things after dinner without having to stay up so late. My goal is to get to sleep by 11 PM at the latest. Oh, guess what I just learned when I went to call up a Niko video to watch while I eat my lunch? I am now up to the episode called "Solo Travel" where she visited Karuizawa a week later after she announced her video titled "I have been diagnosed with mild depression". You and I had already discussed this, about how that seemed way too soon to be able to do these kinds of things after just coming down with depression. But I had never yet worked my way up to this solo travel video (when the depression video came out, I got out of line and watched it right away because of the subject. And I'm glad I did, or else I may never have been able to see it!). So I thought "was that depression video really the one right before this one" and went back to check to see if it was, and she has removed it! Isn't it exceedingly rare for someone to remove one of their videos from their channel that they make money on? Wouldn't they lose "credit" for all the views and comments if they remove it? (I have never actually learned how they make money from views and comments - who pays them for this? I used to think YT paid them, but I never understood where YT would get all the money.) But she apparently did not want that one video on there any longer for anyone to see, I guess because it had served its purpose (in preparation for the launch). I found that so interesting that it had been removed.

@@SunrayStar I believe it's just the homemade food and B complex (which contains B12) that I put in. Previously, le Poo did go outside, so did Max but not all the time they want to go. Billy always preferred to stay inside but once in a while he will creep out and then run back inside. But once i started them on high protein, lots of moisture and removed kibbles out of their diet, I see the biggest change in Billy. After eating, esp the first month, he would go to the grill and pull it, wanting to go downstairs to the garden. He never did that. I think he was not feeling good, with all that diarrhea and prob inflammation. The kibbles being cut out of his diet helped. I wished I had known that earlier. In between wet food, i also supplement raw food that's gently dried (to remove pathogens) to them all which includes fish or chicken + inulin, natural vit e, turmeric, cod fish oil and coconut oil. Everyone but Mango loves it. She refuses to eat so i had to source for another dry kibble which is slow baked and only has 1 starch in it. She gets a bit of that. She didn't change much. She doesn't really enjoy going outside, she hates touching the grass. Once thing is for sure, they are a lot more hungry than before! Esp Billy and even Sesame who never like to eat much. I guess no carbs - more active, more hungry. They are always asking for food! It is a bit scary at times how much they harrass me for food. It is good that u are making effort to sleep earlier. That is the first step. Hopefully, u are able to reach that goal of sleeping at 11pm. I used to sleep at 11pm at one point after starting kefir, i was very good at it. Now that I clean all 3 floors by myself and started making homemade food and feeding them, letting them out for the 2nd time in the evening after their dinner, i find that I finish up my day 1 hour later. I used to be able to go up to my study by 8-8.30pm, but now, it's mostly 9pm or at times 10pm. So now i am sleeping later at 12midnight, sometimes 1am. This is not good. I got to go back to 11pm. So much to learn, so little time! I used to have a weekly helper come and clean ground floor and 1st floor. I let her go since Jan 2024 due to attitude issues. Even when she was helping me, i pretty much still had to clean a lot of things, like the windows, high spaces, floor traps, garden patio, etc. Hah, she took it down huh? I am not surprised. It is not rare for anyone to take down videos that they think it may implicate them later. They have something to hide. She prob realised how she acted in that video and the title 'mild depression' does not match. I watched her launch video after u told me and she can cry without red eyes. It felt like the tears were already there before she started talking and she just let it roll down. Sigh, i am a marketer too, i am just too jaded with all these text book type of marketing methods. How YT pays? Brands advertise on YT. This is ad revenue to YT. YT will then distribute these ads to the videos they have on their platform. When you watch an ad that comes on before or in the middle or after the video WITHOUT pressing the SKIP button, YT will pay ad revenue to the creator 55% and YT keeps the 45%. How do they pay the creator? based on the number of views the creator gets. Why would they pay creator, why not pocket 100%? Well then, no one would be motivated to post videos on YT. Here, i copied and paste what is on google (lol because i am lazy to explain) : "The amount of money a RUclipsr earns per view varies greatly and depends on several factors, such as the type of ad, the viewer's location, and the advertiser's budget. On average, RUclips pays around $0.01 to $0.03 per view. This means that for every 1,000 views, a RUclipsr can expect to earn between $10 and $30" So the more views, esp in millions, means better ad revenue for creator. Because most audience might not want to watch the ad and press the skip button. So more views, means a better chance of having people who may watch the ad the whole way thru. YT does not pay based on comments. Comments is only to show how engaged the audience is to the creator's video and that may tell google it is worthy to show the video to more audience. But it is not true, comments don't really make YT show your videos to more. It's more complex than that. But only eligible creators are eligible for ad revenue monetisation. Eligible means u've 1000 subscribers and achieved 4000 hours of watch time in a period of 12 months. Means from Jan 2023 - Jan 2024, u must have 1000 subs and 4000 watch hours. And when Feb comes, it's counted as Feb 2023 - 2024. Now we are in June 2024. So YT will look at the time frame of June 2023 - June 2024 to see if one has 1000 subs and 4000 watch hours or not. If u have met these two criterias, u can apply for monetisation and someone in YT will check out your channel and decide if they want to approve or reject your channel for ad monetisation. I am definitely not eligible for ad revenue monetisation even tho ads do appear on my videos and u've watched it whole way thru. It seems like how things are moving, i guess even after 20 years of doing videos, i may still not be eligible HAHAH. if u fall below any of these 2 criteria after being approved for monetisation, u will get demonetized, means u lose the chance to earn ad revenue. This is why...most creators do not always depend on ad revenue money. They go for sponsor deals which is just between them and the brands, affiliate links, sell books, subscriptions, services, classes, products, etc etc.

@@lebooshdiaries Well that is just fantastic that they are so much improved on the new diet, and I'm happy that Billy is doing so much better! That's really neat about him going to the grill and pulling it. So about them harassing you for food, yes, it could totally be because they're feeling hungry, but here's another thought: they could find your new homemade food so much more delicious and interesting than dry kibble that they just want to eat more! (It's fun to eat.) When my rescue first came here 4 years ago, at first she was just plain afraid. In general. And just kind of had a beaten-down demeanor about her. But she started getting all the various "special" meals from Day 1, and she took to that like wildfire. I'm sure she had never been given anything before other than dry kibble, and all of a sudden here was all this interesting and tasty food, and lots of variety, and she was SO excited every time it was meal time (and still is). It makes me happy to have them enjoy their food so much. The cats could feel that way about the new food too. Hey, I never knew that you used to have a cleaning helper! Was it just too hard to find a replacement when you let her go, or did you decide you didn't want someone coming in any more? Wow, thank you SO much for explaining all that to me about how people make $ on YT! That has answered so many questions that either I never knew or that just didn't make any sense to me. And I'm going to read what you said to husband too, because we have mentioned that subject a few times over the last several years, not understanding how on earth people made $ from YT. And especially for that .01 to .03 per view info, which really gives a good understanding of how easy it is to make a lot if you have one of those highly-viewed channels. I'm going to bring one thing from the last video discussion over here, because I'm now getting wary about posting too much more on that one, haha. It's about the bathroom construction style there. So I understand how you can spray and wash the bathroom walls if they're made of tile and marble (pretty!) whereas most walls here are drywall (same as sheetrock, gypsum board), and they are dry and kind of crumbly/dusty on the inside, so they would be able to easily soak up moisture. You can't spray drywall or wash it except for just rubbing a wash cloth over it if there were some marks you wanted to try to remove. It is always painted and it's very easily marred with dirt/marks. (I've just told you all that, and now I realized you may have drywall in your home also! So you would already know exactly what I'm talking about.) But what I still wonder about is the flooring and drainage system. We don't have floor drains at all unless it's in a house that has a basement. Basements will often have a floor drain somewhere (but still not bathroom-related). So how are your bathroom floors set up with the drainage system that you can spray or hose water all over the bathrooms and then not have to worry about big mold growth in the flooring, especially because it's tropical and so humid? I understand that the floor drains would be an outlet for the water to flow into, but what about all the excess water that didn't make it into the floor drain, and then the flooring would stay wet for a while until it eventually dried, for mold to form in? And around things that could trap the floor water under them, like toilets, for instance, or cabinets that reached to the floor?

@@SunrayStar Your dogs are really happy with your choices of meals. I would be too if i were a dog. Different meals daily, never get bored. It's easy to get anyone to come and clean house here and it's not too expensive. But it will never be clean the way I want, despite gently reminding from time to time. Some times, i don't even tell her, i'd just clean the dirty parts myself. And i'd climb up the high windows in my living room to clean because that one, i wont let her clean, it's too dangerous. However, the biggest reason i let her go is her attitude, one of which being - constantly taking photos of things in my house and sending it to her daughter. She'd show that she took some photos once in a while but i don't know what else she took. It is one thing to film myself and show on YT, it's another thing for someone to take photos of my belongings and share with people, they all know where i live. Do i want to have another person come in? Maybe when i cannot cope. Like this week, i am sick and i still force myself to clean. 3 floors is quite a lot. It's too tiring at times so i will see how it goes eventually. But not having anyone come in makes me feel more at ease. At least, if anything breaks, it's because of me, not a helper. She did break quite a lot of things. I do have dry wall on selected areas like the ceiling where i can punch a hole to hang things. But all the vertical walls are concrete. All the houses here are built like this, it's safer from harsh winds. I am sure u have a floor drain when u have a shower. Or a bathtub. Ours is no different. We have a floor drain where our shower is, and that is just it. Only one drain. if we chose to hose everything down, then it could get moldy, no one said it won't. And also, calcified stains on the floor over time. I learnt the hard lesson on the latter because my current floor is dark grey and calcified stains can be seen very obviously. After endless days of scrubbing and scrubbing, i finally removed them. What i do to prevent it from happening again is to use a floor squeegee after every bath and sweep all the water off the floor towards the floor drain. I'd squeegee the walls as well or if gung ho, wipe walls with cloth. Then i'd wipe down my shower head, knobs and all my bottles down. I only wash my toilet flor and the walls once a week, so the other days it remain quite dry, after squeegeeing. My husband does it too because he doesn't want to see my scrubbing and scrubbing the calcium deposits off the floor again like that. We've also removed our shower glass wall years ago to lessen the work of cleaning them. My shower area is slightly lower than the other parts of the bathroom so i can squeegee the water towards this area easily and then into the drain. So yes, previously in my earlier years, i never squeegee the floor and it will be left wet for a while before it dries. Some mold would appear but not a big deal because my bathroom windows are huge. But i can remember growing up in my parent's home - the bathroom was always wet, had a wet smell and it wasn't so pleasant. And dangerous too. Even today, after squeegeeinh the floor, i can still get some mold at the area where the drain is but it's very minor. I am not sure about the other creators' home u had watched - maybe they don't always hose everything down or they really wipe up everything properly after cleaning. For sure, if u factor in wiping down, then would take more than 10 mins. As u don't know what they do, u cannot assume that their bathroom is always dry and not moldy. Some toilets have exhaust fan to blow humid air out and keep things dry. They may have it, u just don't see it. Cabinets - i don't have cabinets in my toilets. I keep all my towels and things away from the toilet seat. I don't put anything on the floor that can soak up water. Even plastic stuff is removed before washing the floor and then put back after squeegeeing. I have a floating toilet so i never have to worry about water ponding around the base. But yes, in my old house, i'd have to use brush to scrub off some mold there. When it comes to bathroom, i think Asian toilets are more designed around being able to clean as fast as possible. Any cabinets, wicker baskets to nicely stack toilet rolls is usually kept outside the bathroom.

le Poo can sleep thru anything hahah. I would like to think the vloggers are that neat in real life but u are right. Always trying to get husband to keep this table neat. It used to be worst when we had those long tables before changing to this shorter one. I can imagine Kiarah! Does Boston sit like human too?

@@lebooshdiaries No, Boston sits like a typical dog. He's very solid whereas Kiarah is quite flexible and bendy

@@ouraussieanimalfamily Awwww!

Awww, that's Mango being playful, she loves playing with my broken rattan bits...rest in peace my poor rattan stool...

YT notified me on this new message! Thought I'd better reply as thurs - sat, am super busy. Arm and Hammer being expensive because it's imported. Our currency is weak against the USD. Also, factor in cost of shipping, import duties, taxes, etc...the local distributor who imports it in needs to raise the price to a level that they can have profit. Therefore, it's always better to buy local, esp if it's something as simple as bicarbonate soda. I can't remember how much it is but if i remember, i'd go check it out in the next grocery shopping trip. I normally just pour the powder detergent straight into my pail with rags or anything lol. I only pour into the cup (yes it came with the box) when i wash the litter boxes as i don't want to bring the entire detergent box over to where i wash the litter boxes and get it all wet with the water sprays. I could always make it a habit to pour the powder into the cup for anything i do but it's like an extra step. And when they come out too much, it's not easy to pour it back unless you open the whole lid. Which is all extra steps to do lol. I think they whey protein powder with the scoop could work well! At least there is a scoop. I hope the new laundry detergent is going to be good.

@@lebooshdiaries Oh good, I'm glad the notification worked on the last message. See, that's so weird that I just earlier mentioned about sometimes having to reply to the original thread comment because it would delete what I tried to post if I replied directly to a sub-comment, and it happened shortly after I said that! Wow. Except in this case, I just decided to start a whole new thread instead of risk typing the @name and having it show in black and not notify...what shenanigans! Buying local whenever you can makes sense. It makes no difference what brand of baking soda is available, in my opinion. I've not seen any difference in the characteristics between them. No worries about skipping days replying! Some days there just aren't any spare moments for relaxing or anything. My Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest days of the week. Have a great weekend!

@@SunrayStar oh i just went to the supermarket and Arm and Hammer 454g is RM7.55 and the smaller one is RM5 something. But my 500g baking soda that is from a baking supply store is only RM2. So that's why i said it's expensive. It used to be RM1!!! Inflation is a pain. Have a good and productive weekend!

@@lebooshdiaries Well it seems then that the price of A&H after being shipped in to Malaysia is surprisingly not that much more than it is here (although you did tell me that you can't really convert), but the super-low price of your baking soda from the baking supply store seems almost free to me! Like money someone would just throw in a wishing well or something! (not me, heh heh - I'm not throwing any money away) To me, anything that costs around $1 (RM4.71) is so low it's almost nothing. But that brings up the other point you said about the cost of living being so much lower in Malaysia. I always used to hear that same thing about Puerto Rico - a lot of people seemed to want to retire there because of the cost of living. Inflation has gotten completely over-the-top out of control, with lessening quality and quantities; I complain about it often.

@@SunrayStar Yea don't convert lol! Just think of it as dollar to dollar. Say, example, u earn USD5000 monthly and I earn RM5000 monthly. U pay USD1.47 for a 1lb and I pay RM2 for 500g (a bit more than 1lb). Makes sense right? But I am buying non branded, no brand baking soda here. The packaging is just clear plastic with just the word bicorbonate soda 500g. I would say then in the case of baking soda, you are getting quite a good price for a well known, highly commercialized brand. i'v known of Arm and Hammer since i was a teenager!

Ooohhh, I was kind of upset when I found that YT had not ever sent me a notification for this message, and I literally just ran across it totally by accident because I had wanted to come back to your last comment above and read all through it again, and at the end my eye caught the new message down below and I was like "what is this?" and found it was a brand new message! I'm so glad I saw it. I wonder if you could possibly have sent me any others that it never notified me of? I hope not! Well, if it happens that you send me a new message unconnected to another thread that I don't reply to, please be suspicious that I may not have received it. I did notice that my name was in the usual black print, not the blue print that shows when the message is sent as a "reply", but I myself have had to occasionally send a message the same way because every once in a while for whatever reason it will not let a comment go through in a direct reply to a sub-comment, so in those cases I have had to hit the reply button on the main originating comment at the top and type in the @name in black in the message. (I have had to do that a few times in the comments on Dr. Ellie's channel when I was answering questions, and YT apparently does not like me on there! and there was only one or possibly 2 times I had to reply to one of your messages here this way to get it to go through.) But what I've found is that if the comment is added to an existing thread in this roundabout way without clicking reply directly on the person's sub-comment, I think it usually notifies the receiver of the message only because it notifies you of any new comments from anyone that have been added to a thread you have commented on, but it doesn't seem to recognize a new comment as needing to notify the person it's for, if the @name is typed in black and not "replied" to, which will show up in blue. Does this make sense? That is a little confusing to try to describe in detail! But to me, it's a flaw in their communication system. Anyway, I hope I didn't miss any other messages from you. It's too bad how we have to always be double-checking this system now for if the messages will actually go through or not. Anyway, about your comment! Thank you for letting me know! I had not watched her new video yet because I'm currently up to about April 28 in her videos (catching up soon!) but I went and found the bottle you mentioned in the new one. This looks like it will be a good video. I have never seen a bottle like that before that will actually open on its own; what a great idea. One thing about glass bottles with screw-on caps that olive oil and stuff comes in is that they can be messy and there's always the potential for drips down the outside. Do you know those large plastic canister-type jars that a lot of health supplement powders come in? (The larger size ones.) Well, those larger ones have plastic screw-on lids that are pretty wide as compared to small vitamin bottle lids. I save many of those lids to use for other things, and one of those uses is to sit a bottle of olive oil on an upside-down lid inside the cabinet, so that way if there is ever an olive oil drip down the jar that I don't see in time to wash it off, the cap will catch it and keep it contained. I use those lids for all kinds of things. I have used the bigger ones before for holding very small houseplant pots (protect from water underneath the pot), and also inside larger houseplant pots used like a cachepot with a smaller potted plant inside, to lift the small plant pot up inside the larger pot and hold it - I may need to stack a few lids of different sizes on top of each other to lift a pot up. Or hold something small in the bathroom to dry like a drain cover. All kinds of things. All that to say, this bottle that will open by itself sounds like a great invention! And that could be a great use for keeping baking soda in. I have not yet come up with some small kind of closed container for keeping at the sink, but I would still like to. Recently at the sink I thought I would like a little baking soda for something, but my hands were soapy and wet and I would have had to dry them to get the large canister of it out from the cabinet to get some. Yes, I can see what you mean about needing to shake the bottle to release baking soda, and if the baking soda clumps up in the bottle, then it won't be able to flow out. Well, what about this - do you know those little moisture-absorber packets (desiccant paks, and sometimes they call them adsorbents) that come in vitamin/supplement bottles? They are generally ageless (they say that on a lot of them, anyway.) You could put a few of those at least in your larger container of baking soda that you store the bulk of it in and they would surely help your baking soda to last longer from humidity in the air. I'm not sure if one placed in your small sink bottle of baking soda would get in the way of the pour-spout or not, but it could be worth a try. I save those all the time out of finished supplement bottles to add to new bottles that don't come with any, and also to add a larger quantity of them to bottles that come with just one packet already inside, to keep the products fresher longer. I have by now accumulated a whole bottle of just extra packets, and another small bottle full of the other type that are like little hard plastic canisters instead of flat envelope packets. Do you have any of those? I'll look forward to seeing what happens with your bottle.

@@SunrayStar gosh! I didn't know all that about the blue name and the black name...now only did i notice it...it makes sense altho i have to read what u said like 3 times. Kinda understand. I never realised it. I always thought as long as I typed your alias properly, it would notify you. Good to know and i'll be more mindful in future. Glad that you found the message tho! I don't think i ever sent you anymore messages that is not a reply from a thread. In any case, if u read and didn't reply, it doesn't matter but if u hadn't known about it to even be able to read it, then it's wasted effort. Yes, indeed, many times when i needed to dry off my hands to open the bigger tub of baking soda to get some for tenderizing my raw meat before cooking...it's a hassle. I don't scoop the ones in the bowl to tenderize my meat because it would be all exposed and a bit soggy, dirty. So having this auto pourer is good. Now, i can use it to remove oil from pans, clean my wiping rags, pour into my laundry and tenderize meats, all using one source of baking soda in the pourer. I think it's fine that it doesn't pour out continuously but more like salt (even without clumps at this stage) because i do admit that i tend to use more baking soda than necessary when i was scooping it from the bowl, hence it runs out fast. So this helps me get a small amount at a time and if not enough, i will shake it again and again to get the amount i need. Now it's not clumping but i don't know if it will after a few months, so we shall see. I don't think i want to put the absorbents into it because that is what i did for my powder detergent container (with a spout) and it keeps coming out because the spout is very big. I forsee that the absorbent will definitely block the opening of the auto pourer therefore, making it harder to get the baking soda out. If it did clump up eventually due to humidity, i think i'll open the auto pourer and use a chopstick to break up the clumps. With the auto pourer, i will not be storing anymore baking soda in my larger tub. I will store it in the auto pourer, use it all up and then open a fresh pack to refill. I'll use the tub for something else. I have never seen the hard plastic canister absorbents. Just the packets and also flat piece of plastic (for cat food).

@@lebooshdiaries I totally agree that it would feel like wasted effort if I wrote a long message and then you were never even able to see it. Because it's a conversation. I laughed where you said you had to keep re-reading what I said; it was a little hard to keep everything I was trying to describe straight and say it right! Yeah, it seemed to me like it may not work to put one of the desiccant paks inside the baking soda bottle because of it falling to the opening. Since you said you won't be keeping a larger tub of baking soda any longer, does that mean that your auto pourer is large enough to hold a whole box of baking soda at once? I don't know how your baking soda comes, but ours usually come in cardboard boxes of different sizes. The smallest is 8 oz. (226g), then 1 lb. (454g), and even 3-4-5-and even 10 lb. or some other different sizes, but they've started putting the 4 lb. and up sizes into plastic bags sometimes instead of boxes. On the bags, they'll put a resealable zipper, but I have been finding for at least the last 2 years that those are rarely any good any more (on all plastic bags of products, not just baking soda)! The zippers on the bags are all being made so cheaply that they will not properly seal, or else they'll open up with barely a movement, which could lead to a powder disaster, so I basically have to pour everything that comes in a plastic bag into a different container for storing it. You mentioned your powdered detergent container with a spout - did you mean laundry detergent? And is this the container that it originally came in or did you transfer it to another container? Just recently I bought a new kind of laundry detergent that I had never heard of before. It's called Charlie's Soap Laundry Powder. I am finishing up my liquid laundry detergent first and will be starting the new powder soon. I was intrigued when I read about it, because #1) I haven't used powder for the laundry in many, many years, and #2) this one is unscented and says that it deep cleans and rinses completely with no brighteners, perfumes or fillers, totally non-toxic, etc. and gets outstanding reviews. The company even says that their detergent will cause your washing machine to stay deeply cleansed and odor free. I'll be interested to see how it does. I don't think that modern-day washing machines clean all that well because they changed them hugely to run on hardly any water, and they just don't clean near as well now as a result. BUT the one thing I consider a big problem is that the new powdered detergent comes in a small plastic resealable bag! There is no way I'm trusting that bag with something like powder. It may not seal well, it could get a hole in it, seems like it would be hard to get the proper amount of detergent out of the bag for a load, and be awkward to handle being a bag. I want to transfer it to another container after I open it, but I don't know yet what the best kind would be to use. Those hard plastic canisters used in some supplement bottles are not very often used any more, but occasionally you'll open a new bottle and find one in there. I used to get them frequently in bottles a long time ago. Sorbicap is the name of one kind used. They are really small, not any longer than around 12-13mm or so, and round with flat ends, just like some kitchen storage canisters. They are really sturdy and last for ages. I forgot about those flat pieces of plastic you mentioned. I have seen those before in food packages. For sure I've seen them before in dog treats.

@@SunrayStar The baking soda i use is non branded, i get them from a baking supply store that packages them in see thru plastic for very affordable price, way lower than in the grocery stores. 500g is the only size they sell now, previously i could get a bigger bag of 1kg. My auto pourer is 500ml capacity, so it can contain most of the baking soda, there was a bit left in the bag, so i took a food clip and clipped it and kept it in the cabinet. I can always refill my auto pourer. Having it clipped and inside a cabinet where it's not always opened and exposed to air, keeps the baking soda dry and nice. But it's a small amount left, like a small scoop's worth. Cardbox box baking soda - Arm and Hammer, yes? It's so expensive here! I know what u mean by useless zippers, i have those issues too. Yes, i meant laundry powdered detergent. I keep mine in a plastic box with spout. I think u can see it in most of my videos when i wash things at the wash trough. U can see it in vlog 91 at 8:04. The spout's big tho and sometimes i pour out way too much, straight into a bucket of water, There's no saving that. My absorbents usually fall right thru so now i don't put it anymore. The tedious thing about this is i always have to remove the cap to pour and remember to put the cap back on in case i splash water into it while washing or in case I left it out and it rains...I may consider putting cello tap across the spout's mouth to make it smaller so that i don't waste powder detergent or eventually place the powder into an auto pourer as well. Still a thought at this stage. For clothes, i normally use liquid detergent. Powder detergent is used for washing wiping cloths and rags, cat beds, litter boxes and everything else because it's cheaper. Your newly bought laundry powder sounds like a dream! No scent is a plus. Never seen a sorbicap before. I googled it. Maybe it's only for US supplements. I only buy collagen peptides and inulin powder and they don't come with anything like that, not even absorbent paper. Thanks for sharing.

yes i remember about your soap bars. Hope u had been enjoying using it! It's very pretty before use, once used, esp the artisanal ones with flowers and all. U just don't even want to use it. I think my husband didn't know i was filming. Sometimes the camera is there but it may not be turned on. He might have thought the camera is not on lol. If he knew it was on, he'd speak softly...he made that noise..i couldn't hear it but i think that is because when he was mixing the sauce into the bowl of chicken, one piece fell out and landed onto his rice! It was a stroke of luck that it didn't fall onto the table, the red color would have stained badly. We have spilt all kinds of gravy, liquids and stuff onto this poor table.

@@lebooshdiaries What I have enjoyed most from that bar soap is its beautiful natural rose scent (and it doesn't come from any kind of synthetic ingredients or perfumes, so it really does smell natural) and its soft, cushy lather. I say "soft" because its lather really does feel soft and cushiony, a little bit creamy, when using it as opposed to the feel of liquid soaps that leave the skin more squeaky-clean. The scent is so faint that you have to put your nose up to it to smell it, so it definitely is not an overpowering scent. And it leaves the hands feeling not as dry as liquid soaps. Those are the big +'s. But it does take much longer to use than liquid soap (picking up the bar, rubbing it on after wetting the hands, putting it back), and it is also harder to get all rinsed off, so that means more time and more water usage, which made me feel a little bad. So those are the reasons I don't think I want to keep using it after what I have is all gone. This brand doesn't put any visible things in the bar soap like flowers; it just looks like solid-colored soap. Oh, well that explains it! (That he didn't know the camera was on.) I remember your saying earlier that when the camera came out, he closed his mouth, which made me laugh! Oh well, that table is an outside table, so it's going to take the wear from the elements, anyway. But I understand that you still wouldn't want to have to see a red stain on it. That's how I would feel, too. There was one video where you couldn't eat outside that day because it was raining all day and it showed the wet table. Does sun ever hit the table during any part of the day or is that area normally in shade? The sun would have a bleaching effect (plus sanitizing).

Oh nice to know and sounds yummy too! Did you hubs like it too? My herbs for the pasta was just dried oregano and thyme. But basil sounds nice too! Glad you had a good meal and enjoyed it!

@@lebooshdiaries Yes, he did! In fact, I believe he commented 3 different times during the meal (without ever being asked) about how good it was. I never would have thought of putting fish on top of pasta on my own. Thanks for relaying which herbs you used; I was really curious about that.

@@SunrayStar awwww!

happy June! Time sure flies right? Jackfruits are super heavy, heavier than the cats! I brought it out to the living room to see if the cats would be curious but they were meh! The photo in the thumbnail was me carrying it back to the kitchen at the back because no one was interested to sniff it lol. Jackfruits very sweet and the aroma is quite pungent - it's sweet and a bit metane-ny. Yea, i don't remember seeing it in Australia when I was there. But i've seen it in UK because it made viral news when someone took photo of it in a UK supermarket and they had cut it like how they would cut watermelon! Not the right way tho. Husband's pretty lucky he hasn't cut his fingers yet....No choice to drink it with jackfruit in my kefir, there's just too many and every week another huge one ripens!

@@lebooshdiaries You know, I would probably be that UK person to cut it like a watermelon 🤣🤣🤣

@@ouraussieanimalfamily HAHAHAHA!

Thanks for the EFT mention! I doubt it can really release any negative memories but then again, it doesn't really bother me much anymore unless I think about it. it's not just the sour face but the way she turned people against me. That's quite a big, indirect bully. I remember we went to a conference in Vietnam years ago and after the seminar on the last day, I asked if she wanted to go to the day market to look for gifts and stuff. I really wanted to go. Like let's all go together. She's like don't know, not sure....but the instance i got into a conversation with my boss for a few mins, she gathered everyone, including the 2 executives reporting to me and told them let's go to the market. So everyone went to the market and I was left alone with my boss. Who then left to join other bosses and I was all alone till they got back. I am not very good with directions and at that time, there was no google maps or anything like that. Pretty cheesed off by the way she had purposely excluded me out despite knowing that I reallly wanted to go. It's good that i went thru all this because it shaped the way i am today. I may be strict when i work with people but never unfair or bias or intentionally hurtful. I also believe when we do something bad, karma will get us eventually.

@@lebooshdiaries Yes, that is exactly the kind of thing I would expect someone like that would do. That is just despicable. Well, I just thought I would suggest both of those things in case you were interested, because I find that it personally feels painful emotionally when you remember really bad things such as that, that you have strong emotions tied to. I mean, it feels bad when you think of those memories! These exercises won't make the actual memories disappear, because you can't erase your memories. You'll still always be able to remember something that happened; what they do is help you process your remaining bad feelings connected with the memory to clear the negative feelings, so then in the future if you think of those things, they will become sort of neutral-feeling and like "who cares?" or "it doesn't matter" so that you no longer feel the negative emotional pain (or however you would describe the bad feelings) connected with those memories any longer. Many people do the quick EFT tapping exercise on things and have a lot of success with it because it sort of releases "stuck" feelings in the body's energy system that you never fully processed and allows those feelings to be released, but after I read David Hawkins' book "Letting Go" and put his mental exercise into practice, I found that it worked for me even better than EFT tapping, and these kinds of things are really easy to do and not at all time-consuming. It's so interesting to me how this helps. For instance, if there's something that's bothering me or worrying me a lot that keeps coming to mind, instead of keeping on thinking about it and feeling the terrible feelings from it, or instead of trying to reject the feelings or to make myself stop thinking about it (in which case it will come back again sometime), I just concentrate for a few moments and do this letting go exercise on it; and while I'm thinking about it and feeling the really negative energy or painful feeling, all of a sudden I can feel the energy starting to dissipate and just disappear, and I'm left with no painful feeling and a sense of relief, and a feeling like that bad event or worry or whatever doesn't have any importance any more, or that it just doesn't matter any more, something like that. And then that thing just isn't bothering me any longer. So it feels freeing and healing. There is a specific way to do the exercise, what you're concentrating on and how you're thinking during the exercise that makes it work. And it works not only on bad memories, but also worries, and all kinds of things too numerous to mention from regular daily experiences that make you feel bad or frustrated. So many people refer to it as life-changing. It's just a tool to help you live happier. I'm sorry if I didn't do a very good job at describing my personal experience with it, but I was trying to just put a little synopsis of it into words. It's hard to describe something like the whole book in a short snippet, but just to give you an idea.

Yes! Hope it can help you in any way! I bought a rectangle pack of nori sheets fir this. It's almost square but this is the most rectangle I can find here

@@lebooshdiaries Thank you again! I feel so honored that you made this. I already found out from you previously that I was not using the correct rice for this, but now I see also that the way I cooked it was way too moist for making gimbap. I can't tell you how much I laughed at these cats' antics. At 2:00 Billy is the cutest ever. And hilarious. And Pikachu rotting in the corner! HAHAHAHAHA - so she does this a lot, you said? I've never seen this before! And Mango kept intercepting the bites. What an absolutely hilarious rice bag picture. I don't consider it OCD at all to use filtered water for the rice cooking water; it's just safer. It's what I do, too, to keep the tap water chemicals out of the food. I like sesame oil in the rice, too, but I never thought of adding sesame seeds in there also. I've just added them near the end of making gimbap, but I'm going to try them in the rice next time. I haven't made it in a while now, ever since I started making your folded gimbap! Another thing I have never done is to press the rice down hard onto the nori sheet. I will definitely do that next time. I have had an awful time getting the rolled gimbap to be super-tight, in spite of trying to squeeze and roll as firmly as possible, and so I've really had major trouble with the stuffing always trying to squeeze out the ends. The rice part could be the answer to all this. I used bulgogi ground beef, cooked carrot strips and egg strips each time in the gimbap, and I used some mango once. I'm glad you included that, because I had forgotten all about mango and am definitely going to add that again, and also cucumber. Cucumber will be great in there!

@@SunrayStar It is my pleasure! I wasn't thinking of making a gimbap video but u had a lot of good questions, did make sense to do one. I am glad you told me you'd prefer a long format video vs shorts. It would have been hard to fit all that info into a shorts! Pikachu does rot at that spot esp these days. But they constantly change spots after few weeks or months. This far end corner is her go to spot at the moment. If not, she'd be rotting in the cat tree box with the cushion covering the entrance instead of her sleeping on it. Try to get a small pack of korean or japanese rice. I don't eat short grain rice everyday but whenever i feel like sushi or gimbap or just something stickier, i'd go for it. It's really nice, that sticky lumps of rice with asian style stir fries and vegetables. I normally just get a small pack and it will last 3-4 months. On other days, i normally eat jasmine rice, thai fragrant rice and recently, purple and red rice. One thing I never do tho, is use short grain rice for fried rice. I'd use long grain rice for that. I know Koreans use it for fried rice but i don't think i am skilled enough for it. Prob turn out all lumpy and soggy. It's nice to add sesame seeds into the rice for a bit of texture but it's quite negligible in terms of taste. Most of the taste will come from the oil itself. But in the 2nd half when i made gimbap for dinner, i added fried garlic bits into the rice with sesame seeds and oil. Just that elevates the gimbap - very nice. But i didn't fry the garlic bits, i used a store bought one which from time to time i have in my fridge. Best to do yourself of course but it's purely convenience for me to just get a bottle once in a while. I had forgotten to put salt in my rice hence that is why husband said not salty enough because the carrots, enoki and scrambled eggs were very lightly salted. Yes, press rice down so that it sticks well onto the nori sheet. That way, when u roll, the rice won't be slipping and sliding. Just think of it as a foundation to a house. The foundation must be solid, then only can u build the house. At least this is the way i do it. I see most people don't, they just place the rice loosely on the sheet and they can still roll. They are more expert in it to be able to do that. I just prefer to firmly press down my rice because it's very easy to roll after that initial work. With my way, it's ok to layer the rice all the way till the end, it won't get squeezed out at the end because it's firmly sticking to the sheet. Stuffings will always squeeze out no matter what if they are small and not long. That's why most videos show gimbap made with long strips of food. My scrambled eggs kept oozing out lol! Another thing I did - i didn't neatly place all the food one after another on the rice. I pile them up loosely and somewhat messily. Just to show you that it can still be rolled up. Just need the rice to be set well in place and it's good. On the first fold when u roll, spend time tucking the sheet under and press down onto the rice. Then continue to roll and press down as u go. I hope u like my double sided tape hack at the ends! It's not necessary but it's nice to have. Thanks for watching!

Once to twice depending on how hot and dry the climate is

Thunderstorms here are very fierce and getting fiercer every year! Poor cats hate all these lightnings and thunder, esp Pikachu and Mango. The salad dressing is aged balsamic glaze, olive oil, pinch of salt and pepper. It's the balsamic in vlog 49, when husband came home from from Italy. It's a huge bottle so i try my best to always use it. Sometimes i get bored so then i'd do lemon juice + oilive oil + salt and pepper + nutritional yeast flakes There was a baby monkey too somewhere but I didn't film it lol I don't like tropical forest lol - leeches. I should have mentioned it in the video. Am constantly worried if one attaches itself to me. Am constantly looking and checking my legs the whole time, everytime we go into the forest. I always tell my husband, look at these non tropical forests, they look so nice. And the trees look very pretty too esp during fall. Some vlogs romanticize walking in the woods with nice hat, pretty dresses....lol...my husband just rolls his eyes. Humidity is also a big factor, in just a few mins of walking, u'd start to sweat profusely, all sticky and wet by the end of it. When I wear a hat in the forest here, i end up with wet head and flat sticky hair all over my face!

@@lebooshdiaries Well, it turns out that I was asking what you put on the salad, when what I use more than 50% of the time on my own salads is almost exactly the same! The only difference at all is that I have balsamic vinegar rather than balsamic glaze, and I also use olive oil, salt and pepper with it. The other times I will alternate red wine vinegar instead of the balsamic for a change. It must have been the actual lettuce mixture you used that looked so special. The only other salad dressings that I make occasionally are one that contains olive oil, a crushed garlic clove, balsamic vinegar and a little Dijon mustard, and salt/pepper (very tasty!), but I don't do it nearly as often because it takes a little longer to make as I have to crush up garlic (I know, that's a good argument for keeping prepared garlic in the freezer like you do). And the other one is an herbed balsamic vinaigrette that contains olive oil, balsamic or wine vinegar, and a little of each of the herbs basil, thyme, marjoram, paprika, and also a dash of either dry mustard or Dijon mustard, and pepper/salt. Those are the only salad dressings I ever use. Yes, haha to the baby monkey! Yikes! Leeches. That is something I have never seen in person and I certainly did not know that they would be that easy to get or that they just lived in tropical forests. For some reason, I always thought they lived in water because I saw some show once where someone went in a body of water and got them all over. I'm so curious about this - do they fall out of trees, or are they on the ground and somehow they are able to get on you as you walk by? I just can't picture how they could do that from the ground, though, as I picture them being extremely slow and not able to move well, like a slug. We do have slugs here, but they don't ever try to get on you and only eat holes in plants (they are also much smaller than leeches and they can barely get around at all they are so slow). However, we do have ticks all over our forests. You don't have ticks there, do you? Ticks have been rampant for years now, not only in forests but anywhere that there's a lot of grassy weeds growing that isn't kept cut short. They hide in the weeds and if a person or animal brushes by close, they're waiting to just attach to the person for their meals. The theories on why they expanded and are out of control is because of reasons such as no longer having enough natural predators, environmental conditions, increase in deer populations as they are a good source of meals for ticks, etc., and the most terrible thing about them is that they carry and spread several pathogenic tick diseases (Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and a big handful of other different diseases) that can almost ruin the rest of someone's life if they get a bad case of it and their immune system can't fight it off. I have always truly loved hiking, but it is so sad to me that for a number of years now I have been afraid to do any hiking in forests any longer due to the ticks, and also because of this: I had a horrible experience with my previous dog when we went to a state park and took a walk with the dog in the forest on a trail, and as a result of that walk, 2 or 3 days later we found out that he had been infested with hundreds of microscopic seed ticks on that walk (they are the larval stage that is too tiny to see), as they grow fast and then became evident, and tons were showing up and dropping off every day as they got big enough! It was horrifying. Rather than use poisons on him, I did the alternate treatment - I used gloved hands with tweezers to handpick over 300 of them off him over 3 days' time. I felt so terrible for how they must have made him feel and from then on was too afraid to ever take a dog in a forest. It is definitely a loss for me, and it really is a shame it has gotten this way, because being in the forest is so relaxing and peaceful, and it is definitely extra-beautiful in the fall. I still enjoy the fall colors from a distance, though. Yes, your husband is right to roll his eyes at a silly thing showing sauntering through a forest with a flowy dress and fancy hat - a dress would be a super easy thing to brush up against plants to get tick transfer (or poison ivy or similar), and big hats would get caught on low-hanging tree branches (as well as the dress). And I'm sure they don't wear proper shoes, either, and it would be really easy to trip over a tree root or rock on the trail. Sometimes you will see a snake laying on a trail if you come up on one. The good thing about the snakes is that they don't go after anyone; they don't bother you if you leave them alone. But you can see snakes coming out of forests and ponds or lakes anywhere. In a previous house we lived in that had a very small forest running along the bottom end of the yards, I would routinely be gardening in the yard and run up on a snake that had made its way up from the forest. It was always startling! And once, with a Siberian Husky dog I had even before the previous dog, in that particular yard this dog came up on a snake and curiously nosed too close to it and came away with a foaming mouth! That was really strange. It kept on foaming for a while and I think it startled the dog. I called the vet, and he said from my description that he didn't even believe the dog had been bitten, but rather by touching the snake that he had gotten some kind of snake chemical (I can't remember any exact wording) off the snake that caused this reaction! It may have been some natural protection the snake had to be able to do that to a predator. Well, apparently I'm back with a bang on another long comment! HAHAHA!

@@SunrayStar U don't use caesar? Occassionally I crave for caesar salad so i'd just buy the dressing but lalely, i just use strained kefir mixed with raw garlic, salt, black pepper and a pinch of lemon if needed. If i didn't have strained kefir, then i'd sub that for mayo. So many recipes for salad dressing but i always just revert to the balsamic glaze one for convenience and speed. And that I need to finish that big bottle. Oh gosh, what a horrible story about ticks. I cannot imagine 300!! Just makes my hair stand thinking about it. Yes we do have ticks of course. They love high humidity but even that, it seems quite uncommon to get one vs a flea. Fleas are more common for pets here. But that said, yes, there are ticks. I heard of lyme disease from ticks but i never really knew in specific about it. Just that it's really bad if you get it. With all this, definitely ticks wins hands down on being more dangerous than leeches but because of my phobia on anything that moves like worms...i just worry getting one attached to me. They live in any place that is damp, muddy, wet. With tropical rainforest, it's never dry, very high humidity and muddy here and there. Not some place u'd want to walk barefoot or sit on the grass, at least not for me.They don't climb trees but if it was raining and the leaves on the floor are wet, u might find them under the leaves. I'd walk a few mins then pat my legs to feel if there's anything! It's an irrational fear. They are slow but they can lurch themselves forward by "jumping". They'd jump towards anything that smells like it has blood lol. They are not slow like slugs, which i am also deathly afraid of, Leeches can also "stand up" like a meerkat to sniff the air for potential human beings or other mammals.Just typing this gives me the creeps so i will stop. I don't know what would happen if i ever had one attached to me in the forest - everyone who's hiking would be alarmed by my blood curdling screams. Yea, i've seen enough of you tubers romanticizing the forest/woods by walking prettily in their pretty dresses, hats, picking wild flowers and all that. Not a bead of sweat, no curly long hair out of place, no shoes, everything's so dry and pretty. The trees are so lovely to look at and the grass is so pretty, speckles with small flowers. TheCottageFairy is one of them. She walks in the forest wearing pretty dresses. How many times have i told my husband - look at me, all sweaty, short hair clinging messily to my face - look that them, like Snow White. Let's move to a cold country! He'd be like sure!

@@lebooshdiaries I have never thought about making Caesar salad dressing, but I probably should try it, because I looked it up and it sounds like it may be good (I've never had it!); but I found it just a little confusing because the recipes vary so widely. Some of them were yogurt-based, with a small amount of added olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, garlic and pepper (with optional Parmesan cheese added in too), while other recipes were really totally different, like mayo-based with garlic, Parmesan, anchovies, lemon juice, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, salt and pepper. I have to say, I am not very likely to make that last one because of all the ingredients!! I mean, I will make many different main meals with all kinds of ingredients in them, but for a side salad, it seems that it would just add on too much extra time to make me want to do that second recipe. It already takes so long to cook dinner as it is, plus preparing the dogs' dinners. So which kind of Caesar recipe are you referring to that you like? Now, the one you mentioned above that's kefir-based sounds like an easy one to put together. It sounds like you don't really need to worry much about ticks there, then; maybe you just don't have large numbers of them there like we do here. Many years ago, that Lyme disease just appeared in the New England states and then spread out from there, but we have a number of different kinds of ticks, and not all ticks are everywhere. You'll only find certain ticks in certain states. And the diseases they carry are specific to each tick. One tick would not carry all the tick diseases. But there's a big assortment - at least 8 diseases. However, I looked it up, and it was saying that Malaysia only has 4 tick diseases and only 3 kinds of ticks, and that each of these has been found on snakes and rodents, which I found very interesting. I'm really surprised about snakes getting them. It said there are over 90 (90!) species of ticks in the U.S. (I had no idea that many) but that only a few are known to transmit diseases to humans. I think it's hard to get a tick unless you go in the areas they are plentiful (shady forests and any weedy or tall grassy areas, particularly shady weedy areas). And even if you get one on you, it's still not a high percentage of people that would actually get a disease. Also, if you have a strong immune system, your immune system can fight off a disease. OK, that is seriously creepy about leeches being able to jump. I would definitely be afraid of them! I would do what you do and keep checking my legs, but that's also what I've done regarding ticks whenever I used to hike. I just now remembered a piece of information I forgot all about - ticks normally need to be attached to a person for at least 24 hours before they can transmit diseases, so that gives a good amount of time to be able to find and remove them first, something about the process of how bacteria moves through a tick's body before it can be transmitted. Probably best to stick to talking about salads - hahahahahahaha

@@lebooshdiaries Wow, I can't believe this, I started out wanting to specifically ask about your pasta recipe and completely forgot about it in the midst of that parasite conversation! I rewatched this whole video because I wanted to see that meal again - I want to make that pasta. I could tell what the vegetables were, but what about that cheese/olive mixture? I can get feta easily, and I saw the olives. It looked like you mixed in probably olive oil? And what about the herbs for this mixture - what did you use?

oh no, i replied u on this but it never showed up. Now i know how u feel! Did u get my reply by any chance?

@@lebooshdiaries Oh shoot, no, I never received any earlier reply - just this one!

​@@SunrayStar Gah, this is not good. Now I have to be cautious like u too, to copy my reply and paste it somewhere just in case. I was replying to say that these takeaway containers are norm now here because since more than 10 years ago, our govt banned styrofoam and approved this sort of plastic takeaway containers. Some use cardboard but food cardboard containers usually have a plastic coating on it to prevent leakage - those cannot be recycled. In any case, i always prefer to eat out than takeaway to avoid receiving any form of containers. Or use my tiffin carrier. However, with in laws and even my parents, they just do not care. So when there's a birthday, husband would buy all these food and bring home to celebrate and once eaten, they will be thrown without washing. I just don't feel right so one day, I decided i would just bring them all home, wash (with baking soda and detergent) and find ways to reuse them. I've been using them since early 2023, some have cracked over time and sent to the recycling center...each year i get new ones during in laws' birthday but it's getting lesser now as we only celebrate MIL's bday. FIL is in a nursing home with dementia. I don't know what those words on the CU cup say because I can't read korean. But it's definitely something positive and cutesy. I used it so much it broke so that is the end of it. Good cup tho! Never bought another drink from CU. Those two pigeons are so adorable, right? They were right outside the window where i cook.

@@lebooshdiaries Right, it's kind of a pain! And of course, shouldn't be necessary to have to do that. About the takeout containers, Wow! That is really outstanding that they outlawed styrofoam! At least it's possible to reuse the current type they're using. Yes, that plastic coating on the cardboard ones is exactly what I was talking about when I said shiny, but I never knew that was plastic. I had to look up what a tiffin carrier is. Those look really nice. So I guess restaurants will put your takeout meals in there if you take them in and request it? HAHA! - I can't believe you never tried to find out what the cup said! That makes me laugh. Oh, I'm sorry to hear about FIL's current condition. I remembered from your Christmas video, which was the very first one I ever watched when I found out about your videos, that in that video you had mentioned your husband was having to leave numerous times to go tend to his father with health ailment emergencies and all. My mother died around 6 years ago with dementia, and she had it for a number of years. (Time to copy the comment before hitting Reply!)

@@lebooshdiaries Oh, I forgot to add in the last comment - you mentioned using baking soda and detergent to clean these containers, like we were recently talking about in the other video. Well, tonight when I was just starting to cook dinner and had the vegs cut up, I went to get the brand new glass bottle of olive oil out of the lower cabinet (I had only used it once so far), and something happened, not sure exactly what, when I was reaching for it. It got knocked or tipped or something and fell over and onto the hard tile floor and broke! It was a big mess that got worse because the big round of olive oil in the floor kept running farther along the grout in the tile. It took me around an hour and a half to clean it all up because some got under my shoes and I was tracking it farther around the kitchen to get things to clean it up with, and it even started to run under the fridge. I had to use a ton of napkins to get up what I could as fast as possible, but there was still a hugely oily mess, and the grout! So I ran some hot soapy water in the sink and wet the floor with that, and then I went to get the baking soda and poured a bunch over that and then cleaned over and over again with a rag, going back to the sink many times. Well that baking soda really helped the detergent a lot! I'm not sure if I'll have any trouble with the grout later on or not, with any oil that could have remained in there, but I got it as clean as I could and the tiles felt completely clean. So I thought of you right away with the baking soda when I was thinking what to do.