I guess my anxiety's so obvious they can hear it through the phone (which honestly tracks with my life).

Fought with my wife for three months over the temperature in the house. I kept saying 68 is fine. She wanted it at 72. Turns out the thermostat was just broken. A thirty dollar fix and we both get along better now. Sometimes you waste time on the wrong thing just because you refuse to look at the easy answer.

Honestly, I've been there too. For Terraforming Mars, I just started treating the Tharsis Republic thing as a bug, not a feature, and house ruled it from the start. What helped me was making a little index card with the corrected rule for each game and tucking it in the box, that way I don't have to remember every little erratum. Ngl, I've definitely played games wrong for years because of stuff like that, so I feel your pain on the Anachrony one. Tbh, sometimes I just accept I'll never know if I'm playing perfectly and just have fun with it.

Honestly, 30 minutes for a full rose from one piece of bar stock? That's insane. I've been messing around with a coal forge for like two years and I still can't get a petal to not crack on me. Feels like I'm learning a secret language when I see a guy move metal like that, from raw steel to something that looks alive. I bet he's got calluses as thick as a horseshoe from doing it a thousand times.

My sister did the same thing with my chili last fall, told me it needed cumin and I told her I had it covered. Sat down to eat and it was straight up bland, had to dump a whole jar of salsa in it to save dinner. Now I keep a little notebook in the kitchen and jot down any tweaks she suggests, even if I think shes crazy. Best move I ever made was testing her tip on a small batch first, like a single roll or a half cup of dough. That way if shes wrong you only waste a little bit, but if shes right you just saved a whole loaf from tasting like nothing.