DrainKikoLake

In May my spouse and I are going away together for a few days without the kids for the first time in a decade.

The tulip and daffodil leaves are emerging in our gardens and soon we will have flowers.

Our church is starting up again this week & I love choir.

French's ketchup is made from tomatoes grown in Leamington, ON. It was a huge deal when Heinz pulled out from their plant there & then French's bought it.

The username might be a clue here.

I wish my grocery stocked it. I buy Earth's Own oat milk though.

It's hard but even small efforts help. For me the hierarchy kinda goes like this:

• Canadian company
• Non-Canadian, non-US company
• US company franchised/operating in Canada
• US company operating in the US

I aim for number one, try to avoid number four, and the two inner ones are a little more loosey-goosey for me and will depend mostly on the individual product. There are some things we just don't produce here so... I just do what I can, where I can, and don't feel guilty if there's an American product I can't replace (ever/yet).

I use an app called ReadEra which I like very much. I use the free version but it looks like the premium version does what you're looking for: it can sync via Google drive and you can upload your own fonts. (Premium is a one-time $20 payment, not a subscription.)

https://readera.org/

I just spent $7 for a pound of Ontario greenhouse strawberries instead of $1.99 for a pound from California. Just as an example. My brothers and I keep texting each other Canadian products we've found to replace US options. We're far from alone.

What American media is downplaying is that this is about way more than tariffs. This is about a friendly neighbour suddenly deciding that it would like our stuff/land/people and making real threats about taking it. It's about a bully threatening our national sovereignty and everyone in his country either going along with it or throwing up their hands in despair. It's an incredible betrayal and Canadians are enraged.

(As an acquaintance of mine put it: do you know how hard you have to work to get Canada to boo your country? That's a real accomplishment, you guys.)

In terms of how things are going, here are some recent pieces from our national media:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/article-buy-canadian-movement-starts-to-take-a-sizable-bite-into-us-business/

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6679836

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/decline-travellers-driving-from-canada-u-s-february

Cozey.ca for things like couches and ottomans -- founded & made in Canada, and free Canada-wide shipping! We bought a couch from them earlier this year & it's fantastic. (It's all modular which makes it easy to get places like down the basement stairs, and very easy to assemble.)

OP seems to be in Europe, so I'm not sure how much of your second point applies.

I don't see them with boost.

Aw dude, no, flip it around: I can't imagine having a sexual relationship with someone I'm not romantically entwined with. Real intimacy is about so much more than sex -- sex is part of it, but it's also about trust and openness and what you've lived through together... It's a whole package and you're focusing on one small aspect & not even looking at the rest.

I've been married 13 years. We're aging. I birthed three kids and my stomach looks bizarre now. We've got grey hair, we've both had a variety of body shapes and sizes over the years... our love has only grown and the sex has never been better. Don't take your friend's anecdote as something that happens to everyone. It doesn't. (You should talk to someone who works in a senior's home sometime; people our grandparents' age are still sexually active despite being pretty far from the bloom of youth!)

I agree with a lot of the other commenters that people in their 20s are nice to look and and can be fun to talk to but also seem like children to me at this point. I couldn't even imagine pursuing someone so much younger than me; mentally and in terms of experience we're way too far apart.

Ps. Don't look at who you're most physically attracted to & assume everyone feels the same way. I've always thought that men hit their peak around age 55.

The other major advantage of credit cards is consumer protection. Generally speaking you can't file a dispute or do a charge back on a debit transaction -- or at least it's very difficult and time-consuming. Credit cards offer a certain amount of peace-of-mind when it comes to things like fraudulent transactions.