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Geocaching.  [I'd talk about it](https://www.geocaching.com), tell some [personal](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2019/02/22/well-i-was-actually-in-duval-county/) [stories](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2019/09/16/an-illegal-border-crossing/), [ramble](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2023/12/08/826-portland-cumberland-county-me02/) [about](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2022/02/01/675-las-vegas-clark-county-nv01/) [some](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2022/09/13/geocaching-headquarters/) [of](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2023/10/10/785-washington-d-c-dc1/) [the](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2021/08/20/560-fairplay-park-county-co29/) [places](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2023/12/13/829-boston-suffolk-county-ma03/) [I've](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2024/05/23/844-salt-lake-city-salt-lake-county-ut04/) [been](https://geocachingwhileblack.com/2022/01/14/663-independence-montgomery-county-ks080/), and then cash the check and prepare for my next adventure...Seriously, I would be interested in that. The thing is - I somewhat dipped into that few months ago when I encountered some pretty much out of nowhere mental issues and lot of sources pointed me to my diet.  
So I got some recommended books from Amazon, specifically Change your diet, change your mind from Georgia Ede and How to not die from Idontrememberthename and the thing is.... they are pretty much exact opposites. And both are supposedly great and really informative etc. but should a layman like me make any sense out of it when lot of the sources point to completely opposite things. Like - vegetables are great, eat as much vegetables that you can, legumes are awesome etc. VS. vegetables are not that great, you are not getting as much stuff from them as you would think as lot of it cant be properly absorbed and quite some stuff in them is downright toxic, you should focus mainly on animal-based diet cause thats what we evolved to eat.  
  
sigh>Where do you even get the bees from?

Either you catch a swarm or you buy them from a beekeeper.

>If you start with a Queen bee, where does she come from?

You start with a queen and a colony.  Usually about 3000-5000 bees with a queen.

>Are you just stealing a colony's Queen?

Sorta.  You gotta bring the queen with the colony or the colony dies out.  All those bees?  one queen laid them.

>Can multiple Queens be born in the same hive?

Yep.  Usually a sign that the hive is crowded or the original queen is dead or near to dying.

>Do they each make little kingdoms and have their bee armies fight it out for who becomes the new over-Queen or do they fight one on one cage match style?

When you buy a bee package, generally speaking the bees are not actually from the Queen that comes with them.  The Queen comes in her own little cage with some candy plugs on each end.  The other bees will take a few days to work at those plugs to get her out, by which time her scent has fully worked its way through the hive and marked the colony as hers.  If you dropped a different queen in that hive, they would tear her to pieces.


>Do bees even have cages, and if so are they made of really solid honey or something else?

No.  Well, sorta...but not really.  They have a hive with one or a few entrances.  Bees produce four main things:  Honey, Wax, Royal Jelly, and Propolis.  You're likely familiar with the first two.  The jelly is the foodstuff they feed growing larva, or in massive amounts to create a new queen.  Propolis is like a natural glue or resin they use to seal in any cracks or holes in the hive that are not their entrance.There's really three different ways to get bees, although I guess if you get down to it they're all just different flavors of the same thing.

The first way is to capture a swarm. This is how colonies naturally reproduce and spread: they raise some replacement queens and just before they hatch, the existing queen and around half the workers leave en masse to start a new colony elsewhere. At some point the swarm will gather and rest temporarily on a tree or other object in a big ball while scouts fly off to find an ideal place for the new hive. While they're in that condition, you can go up and just grab the queen and all those workers all at once. There's a method to it, of course, and it can fail once in a while, but on the whole bee swarms are surprisingly amenable to just being caught and placed in a suitable hive. It's how I got my first colony!

The second way is to buy a package of bees, which is basically like an artificial swarm. In the early spring, large apiaries make these, they build big robust colonies that are just full of bees and shake a certain amount of them into small screened cages, together with a queen from a queen bank (queens produced for this purpose), and you can either pick the package up or have it delivered to you by mail. Yes, the USPS will handle these, although the local office is highly likely to call you at 5am and ask you to come get them. Once you take the package home, again there's a method involved but you basically just pop the top and gently shake the bees into your new hive.

The third method is just to buy an existing hive from someone and take it home (or wherever you're putting the bees). Some sellers make this process easier by selling nucs, which are little half-hives from which you can transfer the frames into your own equipment. The seller will usually want the half-hive box back from you and maybe a few new empty frames in exchange.

Once you have your own bees, if you have a fairly strong hive you can actually split it and make two hives from it. You''ll just have to order a queen for the new one - you can buy them individually from the aforementioned queen rearers. If you want to make your own queens you can do that too.There’s soooo much that goes into it. But the biggest I think is the role that Estrogen plays in dopamine production. Those with true adhd are dopamine deficient and estrogen increases dopamine production. When estrogen is suddenly raised to an all time high during the ovulation phase and then dropped in the luteal it’s going to have more of an affect on a women with ADHD vs someone who doesn’t have it. So much so that many report that they feel it mimics PMDD in a lot of ways and only feel “good” for maybe 3-4 days out of a month . For example, ovulation is one of the phases in menstruation cycle that interests me the most because it’s NEVER talked about. Many women with ADHD notice a major uptick in impulsiveness, extreme anxiety, poor emotional regulation, and stimming during this period. Since the brain is already low on dopamine and now it’s suddenly surged with it, it begins to crave more and more. Thus resulting in these unwanted behaviors/emotions. Now you have a brain that’s craving dopamine and suddenly its dopamine supply plummets once the luteal phase hits. This is when many women report their ADHD symptoms appear to be at its worst. While most women go through regular PMS, women with ADHD seem to have more extreme behavioral symptoms. Ex, executive function freeze, overstimulation, extreme fatigue, brain fog, depression etc. There is such little research on the topic and a lot women don’t have this knowledge but it’s becoming more and more discussed in the community about there is absolutely a correlation between ADHD and a women’s hormonal cycle.



Sorry this is long AF I could just go on and on😅Oh well I would be happy to share what I have learned! My biggest suggestion is to get a binder, put everything in it and document everything you do. The months following diagnosis are confusing and stressful, so stay organized. Once you get diagnosis they will likely suggest you begin various therapies, providers for these often are booked out a year or more so get right on it, but if you stay on top of it you will get help. Your insurance company can often help figure out logistics.
If your kiddo is in school, they will be eligible for IEP, which is hugely helpful and will often cover a few of the therapies, so you don’t have to source those yourself. 
Be patient, but persistent. Be ready to push and advocate for every service your kid needs to be successful. It’s a grind!
The process sucks, it’s hard and frustrating, but all the work is so worth it because suddenly you have an entire team of people helping you, almost all of the educators and therapists I have encountered have been wonderful. 
Lastly, look to the parents of the kids in your child’s classes for tips, comradely, and a kind ear. Parenting an autistic child can be isolating, find some people who understand what you are going through first hand.
Best of luck, feel free to DM me anytime!Meno is the body shutting down the baby-making machine.  One part of the body says let's shut this down.  Another part of the body says hey, waitaminnit, this baby-making stuff should be working and it isn't, lets send more hormones to \*make\* it work.  And the first part of the body keeps trying to shut it down.  So the second part of the body sends even more hormones.  

If things get ... interesting ... listen a lot.  Ask questions.  Listen some more.  

"Plant seeds."  You can make a statement, or ask a question, or even ask a rhetorical question, talk that might be ?sensitive?  Hormonal me would react with emotion, but later, looking back, the seed sometimes took root.  

Stay calm. She's hormonal.  It doesn't always make sense. Don't argue.  Don't raise your voice in exasperation.  

Just plant seeds.  Be succinct.  A breadcrumb trail she can maybe follow.

All this is, if she does have a "Change of Life" that gets difficult.  Some go through meno with no problems, others go off the rails, most fall in between. 

Hopefully things will go well for both of you together.  Sounds like you care, and that's important.  Understanding what is going on, that it is Not You, it's the hormones, is kinda important too.Hopefully, her OBGYN can alleviate some of her fears and answer her questions. My new GP just recommended the book "The Menopause Manifesto," which I intend to get even though I'm through the first half. When I started with the night sweats at 35, I knew it was going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Things I wish my husband had done? His own research. I was doing my own, and it seemed like he didn't want to talk about it. I would have felt much more supported (and less alone) if I knew I could talk with him about what was going on with me. I wouldn't have expected him to keep up to date on the latest, but just have a working knowledge -- Menopause 101. And maybe ask me about how the symptoms are going every once in a while. Just to show he was paying attention to it. Just by asking this question, you're showing that you want to support your wife, so you're headed in the right direction. You might check in with her and ask her to think about what she'd like from you as she starts this process.That example is solving a very different problem. A bunker is small, immobile, and intended to have the enemy directly on top of it. The vent to bunker ratio is also huge, seeing as how people in bunkers like air. Air vents are also not under pressure. Presumably whatever exhaust a core has is more fatal than CO2, and comes out faster too. 

We do not know if there was a bend in the exhaust or not. The torpedoes do a 90 degree downturn to enter it in the first place. It is not unreasonable that once inside they can follow the path, or even have the path programmed since the details were known down to the centimeter.

We also do not know the details of how the core vents exhaust. Having a bend greater than X degrees might prevent the exhaust from venting properly. It was a very, very long vent (roughly the radius of a small moon) and adding blockages like that might stop it from working at all. 

You are looking at this from a perspective of what already failed and not a new construction project. The engineer conversation probably went like this:

“The core creates Y amount of exhaust, so we need to vent it.”

“That creates a direct access from space to the center of the station. Safety first, what are the minimum specs?”

“This station is huge…. But I think we can get the hole down to 2 meters as long as the exhaust is straight line.”

“Does it have to be a straight line?”

“No… but if there is a pressure variance from bending the exhaust and it causes a leak we are venting INTO the station. This isn’t like a car, this exhaust will run right next to working people.”

“How do we relieve the pressure?”

“Make it bigger?  A 10 meter exhaust is still small compared to the size of a moon, but it is big enough to fly an A-wing into it.”

“No no no, 2 meters is better.  As long as no one gets close that’s a very small target. How do we prevent access?”

“Well, it HAS to vent directly into space, so covering it is out. Best I can think of is to ring it with guns.  Lots of guns.”

“Won’t that make it obvious?”

“What do you want from me?  You have a core, it makes exhaust, you need to vent it. This is as small as I can go, small enough that you basically have to stand on it to notice it even exists, and if you don’t want someone to stand on it shoot them before they get close.”

“I don’t know. I’m still not sold on this.”

“Ok, which is more likely?  I make an overly complicated system with a ridiculous amount of planning that has the potential to fail and do internal damage. OR… I make this non-complicated exhaust system, which works perfectly, and someone randomly discovers where exactly it is on this pseudo planet and then gets past the army of TIE fighters and then gets past the death gauntlet of turrets and then makes an absolutely perfect  nothing but net free-throw while still dodging said turrets and TIE fighters into a gap the size of a person?”

“…. Yeah that isn’t happening. Work it up.”