As I stare down my impending "Wilford-Brimley-when-he-was-cast-in-Cocoon" birthday, I'm feeling a growing disconnect between "how I feel," vs "how I expect someone my age to feel". Old doesn't actually feel that old.

TV/film trope I'd be glad to see the end of: A man's life is in shambles, and you can tell because he...grew a beard. Oh, wait, he shaved, we're allowed to believe he's capable of happiness again!

That's fair! I'm also coming from a place of having the same best friend now as I did 38 years ago. "Best friend" is baked into our ideas of each other to a degree that if I applied that label to anyone other than him, I know he'd be genuinely crushed.

And I think that that for me, having our own "best friends" apart from each other has been essential to maintaining the health of the friendship within our partnership.

Yeah, I'm with you there. I mean...I'm the sort who usually felt a need to to have a well-established friendship with someone before I could even decide if they interested me romantically. But I think there's a big middle ground between "best friend" and "marriage of convenience."

Ohh, I feel strongly that "partner" and "best friend" should *always* be two different people. Expecting a partner to be both puts too much pressure on one person. And it's important to me that my wife also has a best friend, so that she has someone she can talk to *about* me if she needs to.

I wasn't familiar with this one, so I googled the plot synopsis, and good lord...I am very much convinced that this belongs in the vault. I can't imagine any positive interpretation of a story celebrating the right of people to literally demand and receive parts of another person's body.

I'd second the roasted garlic powder! It's its own thing, but just as versatile! Fennel seed has become one of my most frequently-used spices. It goes in tomato sauces, strong cheese sauces, pizza, chili, beans & sauce dishes (& anything remotely Italian, really).

I have the profound luck to have a Penzey's storefront walking distance from my apartment. (A pretty long walk, honestly, but worth it.) Every spice on the shelves has a jar of that spice right next to it, so you can get a scent of everything. It's so great!

I've genuinely had this same thought. Maintaining that degree of ongoing dishonesty would be SO EXHAUSTING, I just can't imagine that it could even be worth the effort.