What should i pay my plumber hourly

Time sheet questions for those who may know and, more importantly, may know where documentation exists to back up their position:
Shift workers, rotating schedule. Regular day off falls on the holiday, so we are entitled to have an "in-lieu-of" holiday per all the specifics regarding those.
We are being told by the folks that manage our time sheets that we are no longer to 'move' the holiday on our time sheet, just leave it on the holiday where it falls, and we will get credit for those hours, either as 8-hours of extra pay or as a day off.
A couple of problems here (all days are examples, with Monday as a Federal Holiday):
1) Monday is my regular day off, Tuesday I was scheduled to work but I took my "in-lieu-of" day off so left the work hours as 0. Number of hours is correct, but technically, I was not scheduled to work on Monday, so having holiday hours on that day isn't right, while I *was* scheduled to work Tuesday and now I have 0 hours.
2) What if I don't take a day off and just get the extra pay as if I worked the holiday? Monday is my regular day off, I work on Tuesday as scheduled. Total time is correct, but on my time sheet I have 8 hours of holiday on a scheduled day off and 8 hours of regular pay on Tuesday, what would be my "in-lieu-of" day. The total hours are correct in that I am getting the extra 8 hours of pay, but still not precisely accurate as they don't reflect what actually happened.
3) Holiday pay is NOT based on night differential, is that correct across the board? So if I work a night shift on Monday, I get holiday pay and shift differential, but the holiday pay is based on my base pay, not base pay + night differential, and night differential is based on base pay, not holiday pay. So my pay is base pay (200%) + night differential (base pay * 10%). Likewise if I am off on the actual holiday on Monday and work a night shift on my "in-lieu-of" holiday on Tuesday - there is no difference in pay: base pay (200%) + night differential (base pay * 10%). But again, my time sheet should show this.
Bottom line is that I believe we need to move the holiday hours on our time sheets to accurately reflect what is going on - if I am normally off on a Federal Holiday, I am taking an "in-lieu-of" holiday on another day and my time sheet should show precisely that, even though the total hours for either will be exactly the same.

Hello!
We are an independent organization with one purpose: to make you feel good in your own home and restore the peace and quiet! We deal in all kinds of intruders, from cockroaches to rats to racoons: all sizes and shapes and colors! Safety and comfort is one call away!
We offer a high variety of services, accommodated to your needs and enquiries, and have a flexible schedule. Call us anytime!
That's the job I work at. For privacy reasons, I won't say the name of the company.
The pay is decent, the hours are flexible, and I get uniforms on the house and meals. Yes, I do have to deal with all kinds of infested homes: from termites to roaches to bees, and even 'intruders' like racoons, foxes, once even a snake. It can be dangerous, but I take my precautions.
I can also take phone duty if I'm feeling particularly lazy. Like last week. Don't imagine we're working non-stop: we rarely get any calls. Not a lot of incidents happen around here, in this village.
Last week, however, I had three calls, which was interesting enough by itself, because I rarely get this much activity. Three calls also meant that I had to go do ground duty, because we didn't have enough personal for three interventions in one day.
The first call happened at around 6PM.
"Hello, this is XXX Exterminators, where the safety of your home is our priority. How can I help you today?"
Hi, yeah, my name is Emily and I think there's something in my ceiling.
"Hi, Emily! Could you describe the issue with a bit more details? What kind of noises are you hearing, any signs of anything living up there... anything like that can help a lot."
Okay, um... so I've been hearing these faint scratches, like rats? The scratches started yesterday, around midnight, and at first I thought it was the rain, you know... the way you can hear each individual drop fall on the roof of your house... Then I imagined it must've been the birds, but I ended up realizing it was coming from the attic, because I, uh, I heard the scratches... like... coming from right above me. And I thought something had gotten into the house - I live next to Helene-
"Right, so the gas station. Which one, exactly? The one you pass by going to Kaden or the other one down the road to the bridge?"
No, the one down the road. To the bridge, right next to the creek. My house is the blue one right when the town starts. I don't have any neighbors. It's Pollen Street no. 3. So, you know, I'm afraid something got into the house from the forest. It wouldn't be the first time. I just hope this time, it isn't a snake. But snakes don't scratch like that.
"Are you hearing the scratches now?"
They're really faint, but persistent. Could be rats.
*"*Okay, Emily! We'll be on our way soon."
Thank you.
I sent the team over there, but they couldn't find anything out of place. No insects, no animals. No rats.
The next call came around 10PM.
"Hello, this is XXX Exterminators, where the safety of your home is our priority. How can I help you today?"
Hello. I keep hearing these scratches and thuds coming from the ceiling, and I think it moves to the walls. I'm not sure, though, but there's definitely something in there.
"Could you describe the issue with a bit more details? Anything like that can help a lot."
The noises started like three hours ago. At first, I thought it was the pipes, but they're too... rhythmic. Like footsteps or more like something dragging its limbs through the walls. I don't understand and I can't identify the animal. It sounds big. This is an old house, and it's relatively easy to dig through it. I've never heard anything like it.
"Where is it, right now?"
I can't hear anything right now. I don't know where it went.
"Could you tell us your address?"
Pollen Street no. 7.
My stomach tensed. Could it be a coincidence? Maybe some raccoon was making its way through homes...
"All right, thank you. We'll be on our way!"
I sent the team to the location, and was left alone with Andrew, a coworker. The night had fallen and I hated night interventions, so I hoped the phone wouldn't ring again until they came back. Honestly, I was pretty relaxed. There wasn't such a high chance that I'd get any other calls for the day-
Riiiiiiing.
I lifted my head from the lasagna. Me and Andrew stared at each other.
Riiiiiiing.
It had been... what, like 30 minutes since the last call? The fuck?
Andrew raised his shoulders. I stood up and lifted the receptor.
"This is... um, XXX Exterminators. How can I help you?" I mumbled.
There was a pause on the other line, then heavy breathing.
"Sir? ... Madam? Are you okay? What happened?"
It fucking dragged something into the house.
"What do you mean? Who dragged what? Sir, be more precise."
Andrew's eyes widened. "What?" he whispered.
I shook my head and motioned to him to be quiet.
"Sir, what's going on?"
Something broke into my, my house. But there's two of them. Two... DISTINCT... bodies. Not a raccoon. Not a bird. No, and at first I thought there were two alive things, but as I listened more I realized one of them was... dragging the other. Across my attic. On my fucking ceiling. I don't even know how it got there... I ain't heard anything like climbing on the house... Like it just landed on the roof then dug down to the attic. I don't know.
"... Right."
No, I'm not done. I got scared shitless, because I thought it was a person at first. It sounded big enough to be a person. I was like, shit, it's a murderer, but that was until I heard it... eating.
*"*Eating? What do you mean?"
Andrew frowned. The fuck? he mouthed.
Yeah. I can hear this heavy thing eating right above me, and I hear the floorboard of the attic creaking. I'm afraid it's gonna come down. The thing is dragging something... heavy. Fucking hell... please just come. I wanted to call 911, but I know it's not human.
"All right. I will send someone right away. Address and name, please?"
"Who are you gonna send?" Andrew asked. "There's just us-"
Finnick Gallen. Pollen Street no. 11
Fuck me.
"Okay. Sir, we'll be on our way."
After I hung up, a moment of silence followed, where me and Andrew just stood there, perplexed.
"You know it's us that have to go there, right?" Andrew asked.
"I'd really rather not."
"Then call Walt. Ask him if they're finished there. Are the houses close to each other?"
"All three calls came from the same street. Pollen Street. Near the forest."
"Fuuck. Yeah, call them."
I dialed Walt's number. It took a while for him to pick up.
"Hi! Walt? You done there? Cause I got another call..."
"Liam, there was no one in that house."
My hand was shaking on the receptor. "What do you mean?"
"There was no creature, no person, nothing. However, the scene is rather... interesting. I'm afraid we'll be busy here for a while."
"Why?"
"The windows are broken. Furniture destroyed. The attic is covered in scratches and broken wood. And there's the blood... it's fresh. I don't know what happened here, but we need to find your caller. And the intruder. We're searching the property."
"Right." I responded, my mouth dry.
The third call had mentioned something dragging something else...
We need to find your caller.
I think I knew where he was.
I had never been so afraid. As me and Andrew put on our uniforms, I couldn't help but wonder if I should get the police involved. This was no snake, no fox, no bear. The most frustrating thing was that I didn't know what it was.
We took a deep breath and drove into the night.
Reached our destination pretty fast. I know what you'll say: if the houses' numbers were so close, why couldn't Walt just take a look at number 11 too? Well, the numbers were really far apart. This area wasn't so populated.
I reached this cabin with its lights on. We hesitated, then got out of the car and knocked on the door.
I got an instant response - Finnick opened, pale and shaking. "I am so, so glad you came."
I was used to clients being afraid. Finnick, however, was deeply shaken. His eyes were glossy and his movements irregular - he sensed the same thing I had, that something sinister was going on, but we couldn't quite label it out. I tried to remain calm.
"Sir, you can wait in the car if you want."
He didn't need to be told twice. Me and Andrew made our way upstairs, to the master bedroom.
The house looked pretty normal. Nothing out of place, and nothing broken like on number 7. The bedroom had old, creaking furniture and floors - it was undeniable that something was in the ceiling. I could hear the sound of something being torn apart, and scratching. So much scratching. The ceiling was old too, consisting in some slabs. Andrew and I took out our equipment, gathering our courage to go inside the attic.
Had the slabs always had this... red tint? I raised my hand and felt them - they were humid and smelled like metal.
"Andrew, get your gun."
Pulling the attic stairs down, I tried to be as quiet as possible. I didn't want to make our presence known.
As silent as we tried to be, the stairs creaked obnoxiously and I closed my eyes. Fuck.
The sounds upstairs stopped.
"Okay, you go first." I told Andrew.
"Fuck you", he responded, then disappeared into the darkness.
I heard his footsteps, then a loud, echoing scream that turned into an inhuman wail. My first instinct was to crouch and stay on the ground, with my hands on my ears. Then, I heard two gunshots and Andrew cursing.
More gunshots followed. Then, glass breaking and something batting its wings and wailing. The voice was not human, but had some inflexions of a woman - it made my skin crawl.
The attic window was broken, and the thing had flown away. I don't know why, but I pulled away the curtain to the bedroom and looked outside, for any signs of what it could have been.
When Andrew came back down, he was crying. I had never seen him cry.
"I saw it... I saw it... I saw hell, Liam. I looked right at it. I saw it happen."
The sweet smell from the attic made me gag. I put on my mask and went upstairs, leaving Andrew frozen, staring into a corner.
The light didn't work, so I had to use my flashlight. The floor was humid and darkened in blood, and the smell lingered, putrid and overwhelming. I couldn't understand at first what I was seeing, and at first it had no impact on me. I didn't realize I was staring at what would turn out to be the second caller.
I have never dealt with gore, so my head didn't know how to take it. I guess I knew in some sort of way that that inflated shape was supposed to be the head, and what was above it were the limbs... the stomach lay somewhere farther, and the torso was dug into. I was in shock, and the images just didn't seem real. Above the body, it had carved something on the wooden wall. Some symbol.
My face felt numb. Remaining in the same position, I made a call.
"Hey, Walt?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you guys done there?"
"Are you ok? You sound... weird."
"Yeah, um..." I blinked a few times, then cleared my voice. "Are you done there?"
"We didn't find anything. Did you guys do the other intervention?"
"Oh, yeah. We did."
"And?"
"We found the caller. Not all of him, though. And the thing is gone now. Probably resting."
"What?"
"Yeah. You might want to come."
Since then, I have been giving interviews non-stop. Asked to describe the three calls and our interventions. The creature. I told them everything.
Well, almost everything.
That night, I had looked through the window as an instinct.
I don't know why. You know how the most horrible things have a way of drawing you in.
Pulled the curtain, placed my face close to the window. I hadn't heard it fly away yet. I should have waited for it to leave.
In the darkness, I saw two eyes shimmering a few inches from mine, two eyes that looked so human, I almost thought it was my reflection I was seeing. Except, well, they were upside down, and the other parts of the face had been kind of carved into the flesh, with blood drained skin sort of stretched over them. Behind the head, large wings, made the same way. It turned its head so it wasn't upside down anymore, but the body remained exactly the same. I felt it had wanted to see me better.
Then, it pressed its forehead onto the glass. Fear paralyzed me, but I remained still. I hadn't known it had a mouth until then, when it smiled. It had no teeth, just more skin - not even gums, not even a tongue.
Then, it flew away. The rest of its body was stretched out, the limbs curved and molded from the grey flesh. I watched it disappear into the night, leaving nothing but a bloody stain on the window, where it's forehead had been.
I didn't get a lot of sleep after that. I was hesitant to return to the job, but I had no better option.
It has been exactly a week since then. As I am typing this, it is almost midnight, and I got a call earlier.
"Hello, this is XXX Exterminators, where the safety of your home is our priority. How can I help you today?"
There is something in my ceiling, scratching-
*"*Address?"
You didn't even let me finish! Pollen Street, no. 13-
*"*Ma'am, get out. Just leave. Trust me."
What?
"Yeah, fuck no we ain't helping you with that. It's beyond us. That shit needs a priest."
Are you kidding?
*"*Nope."
As I hang up, I know we can't run from that forever.
And there's this other thing I know.
My address is Hamney Lane no. 34. Right across from Pollen Street.

I am not the OOP. The OOP is u/ResponsibleBox4681 posting in Parenting
Concluded as per OOP
Content Warning - child sexual abuse
Mood spoiler - terrible parenting
Thanks to u/shesalive_dammit for finding this BORU
1 update - Medium
Original - 6th May 2024
Update - 31st May 2024
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My daughter is treating my son like he’s dead to her
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I’m at the end of my rope and desperate for some input. This is a throwaway for the obvious sensitive reasons below.
My husband and I have DD (17) and DS (14). They have never been overly close siblings, but weren’t sworn enemies either. Just two different kids with two different personalities, but as long as everyone was respectful that was okay with me.
When DD was 10 she was the victim of abuse by a family member that saw them convicted and go to jail. She was in intensive therapy for years and we are so proud of the strong, confident and intelligent young woman she is today. She has always, however, been very private about it. Besides our family, her lifelong best friend/her parents knew, and that was it. My son, however, knew about the abuse too.
He flippantly told some friends about it 2 months ago, and before you know it, the whole school knew. DD was devastated, to say the least. She’s been back in counselling since and has been coping as well as possible. This counselling has come at a financially really tough time for us and is obviously worth every penny, but the fact that we can’t afford more counselling factors into the other part of this.
DD blew up at DS when this first happened and he saw the fallout of her coping with this firsthand. But since that night where she found out he told people and word was going around, she hasn’t spoken a word to him. She doesn’t look at him when he enters a room, or react when he speaks directly to her, or about her, or anything else of the sort. For example at dinner, she’ll speak to us and he’ll chime in and she continues the conversation as though he hadn’t said anything.
DS has tried daily to talk to her and apologized, begged, pleaded and cried and it’s always the same - she’ll usually crack a book/look at her phone, put some AirPods in and ignore him completely. She won’t discuss it with me besides to say that he’s dead to her and she has no intention of ever seeing or speaking to him again when she moves out in 10 months, and she hasn’t wavered even a bit in that sentiment since.
I’m at a complete loss. DS is on total lockdown - he’s lost his phone, video games, any sort of privilege or ability to do things with friends - he essentially goes to school, comes home, does his homework and goes to bed and he knows we are devastated and beyond disappointed.
I believe he’s sincerely sorry and contrite - he’s broken down crying and apologizing to us more times than I can count - but I’m unsure of how to proceed. We can’t afford family counselling, and DD’s personal counsellor won’t talk to me about what she says to her about any of this, besides to say not to push her on anything. I know she has every right to be furious.
But at the same time, I can’t help but feel like it’s also not mentally healthy for my son to be treated as though he literally doesn’t exist in his home for the next year. I know it’s a natural consequence, but it’s gut wrenching to see and be living with. Not to mention, as a mom I don’t want my kids to be permanently estranged. It breaks my heart.
Has anyone else experienced anything even in the ballpark of this that could offer any advice?
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Comments
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amjay8
Best you can do right now is try to access counseling for him, too. It would be wrong & counterproductive to push her to forgive him for a betrayal so deep if she doesn’t feel she can. He’s just a kid, and he can be redeemed, but the consequences of his actions are outside of your control.
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istara
I agree. The daughter is deeply traumatised and the only thing that may ever ameliorate that is time. A lot of time.
So her brother has to learn patience and acceptance. Sometimes the mistakes we make don't get an easy fix or forgiveness. Which is a very harsh lesson to learn at 14 and it doesn't sound like he was malicious, just very stupid and very clueless.
So while her reaction probably feels disproportionate to him, and perhaps to the parents, it is what it is and there's no way to make her "unreact". She's suffered what she's suffered and she feels what she feels.

OOP: I have tried to broach the topic of forgiveness and him being sorry with her. She’s not interested in hearing it, seems irritated and annoyed I’m bringing it up and has never once even slightly wavered in saying something like he’s dead to her and she plans to never see or speak to him again when she moves out. I’m worried if I push her on it, she’ll cut us out too as I get the sense she sees it as me taking his side. She’s minimizing being home, which is minimizing their interaction but also makes me really sad that she doesn’t want to be here in the last few months before she moves out. Her therapist is understandably concerned more with her emotional well-being than our family dynamic, and won’t really discuss much of anything with me.
She is going to college and moving out in the summer. We don’t have super nearby family for my son to stay with, nor do we have the funds to offer to help pay for his upkeep even if we did. I’m at a loss.

Catface17
"Her therapist is understandably concerned more with her emotional well-being than our family dynamic"
WHY AREN'T YOU???
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JacobTroy94
It’s clear to me, the son is the golden child of the family. If it was my kids this was happening too, best believe the son would be punished accordingly and I would support the sister ignoring his ass
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bjorkabjork
it's 10 months. i would not force her to interact with him, if she wants to go no contact with him, she can.
i would get him out of the house and sign him up for some other activity tho. taking stuff away isn't as good as adding on responsibility imo. community service hours look good on college applications for his future and will get them apart more in the day to day. don't focus on his relationship with his sibling, focus on how to help him grow up into an adult who won't make a hurtful mistake like that again.
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bonesonstones
I love this idea. As an initial punishment, grounding may have served its purpose, but it seems like it's time to switch gears and accept that this is what the next 10 months will look like. Your son needs to adapt to that, and getting him out of the house will be helpful.
I'd like to add - OP, just because you're uncomfortable with the situation doesn't mean you get to force your freshly re-traumatized daughter to accept an apology she does not want. Why are you making it her responsibility to ease your or your son's negative feelings? That's absolutely shameful.
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Update - 8 months later
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I posted about our issues last year, where my son joked about my daughter's CSA to friends in an attempt to be edgy. She stopped speaking to him and said he was dead to her, despite living in the same house as him.
I want to thank people for the advice, some of it harsh but necessary. Unfortunately, things have not gotten better. My son's grounding came to an end, and he got supervised access to his phone, video games and friends back. My daughter was livid with us about it, and no amount of explanation that continual punishment for a year wasn't an option made that understandable to her. I get that from her point of view, but it began to strain her relationship with me and her dad too. She still ignored my son, and he still cried and was depressed over it. I booked three sessions of expensive family counselling and made her come, but she just kept her earbuds on, with music playing, the entire time.
She turned 18 in January. My son dipped into his savings to get her a necklace. I gave it to her and told her it was from him after she opened it, and she threw it away. Within a few days, she had moved out and into her best friend's parent's house without telling us she was going to. I invited her home for Easter, and she didn't come because her brother (who had nowhere else to go) would be here.
I'm still at a loss. Her graduation is next week and we weren't formally invited by her - we basically got an "I guess you can come" when I asked. My son obviously isn't invited, and he's still struggling mentally with all of this; therapy and medication hasn't helped much, but our options of what we can afford are very limited.
Has anyone been here? I never dreamed of having children estranged from each other and a daughter who pulled away from us over her brother's idiotic mistake.
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Comments
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Mannings4head
I think you need to understand that your daughter is under no obligation to ever forgive her brother. She was sexually abused as a child, which is something most people never fully recover from, and then was violated in another way by her own brother. A very personal part of her story was shared without her consent and that's never going to be okay. If a friend of hers did this, most people would say to cut that friend out of your life. It's unfortunate that it's her brother and has an impact on the entire family but your son made a "mistake" and has to deal with the consequences of his actions.
For the record, I generally am against the whole "cut them out of your life forever" line of thinking that is popular on Reddit but in this case it isn't your call. You don't get to tell her she has to forgive him. You don't get to decide when she should be over it. She is traumatized and has to do whatever she can to heal, including not being around someone who added to her trauma and made her life harder. I get wanting your kids to be close. I am currently on a road trip with my 2 kids to drop the eldest off for a summer internship and love the bond my kids have with each other, but they would never do something your son did. They know personal things about each other that no one else knows and are going to keep it that way. That's what siblings do. Your son messed that up, NOT your daughter so don't put the blame on her.
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Garp5248
My advice would be to stop trying to interfere in their relationship. Don't be a go between for your son to your daughter. Don't push your daughter to forgive your son.
Let your daughter know that your son is still your son. You regret his actions, but still love him. He didn't hurt you but he hurt her and you understand that. If you don't understand that, you need to before having the convo with her. Make time for her to be in your life separate from your son.
For your son, explain to him his actions have consequences. He needs to figure out how to make it right. You can't and won't force sister to forgive him. He needs to earn his forgiveness.
And that's all you can do. You're not peacekeeping. You are creating space for a relationship with your son and daughter that does not require them to interact with each other. Their relationships with you are independent of each other. That's it.
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I am not the OOP. Please do not harass the OOP.
Please remember the No Brigading Rule and to be civil in the comments

Yesterday i went to a small restaurant , the owner had 2 QR codes,apparantely one doesnt work and i didnt knew that..... after i was done with my ordered meal of 110rs ,i paid him 110rs on the wrong Qr(paytm),he said it doesnt work and at that time my money didnt deduct from account then he said to pay on the other and the payment was done, guess what , the payment of 110rs was done 2 times to him and i got to know about this after a few hours. I informed him on the phone, he said he will refund me later , but when i called him after few hours ,he blocked my number ,closed his store and not even responding to my calls, what kind of service is this? what have i done to him? i was so nice to him, paid for my food and still this thing happened to me.... plz tell me what should i do now?

Reposting This from AITA sub. Hi Mark I see your videos on YT, maybe one of these days I'll see my own story in your video.😆 This is going to be a long one so bear with me please. I am also giving a lot of backstory and past issues bcz I feel they are relevant to the matter and also I feel like ranting. Also this is in India so the currency is Rupees. Before we start I just want to say that I am not perfect in any way or form and I have done any fair share of mistakes.
I(20F) have been in a relationship with my bf Jake(22M)(fake name) for roughly 5.5 yrs now. My family is not rich but we do have a lot of money bcz both my parents are doctors but I did not realise we have this much money until 2yrs ago. (Am not very street smart as U will see in this post). Since after abt 1.5 years of relationship (May 2020)when lockdown started his family fell on hardtimes as his family owns a shop and bcz of the Pandemic they weren't able to run it.
At first it was bcz one of his friend got into an accident so he needs money and he told me he will give it back etc (i don't remember if he ever did as it was yrs ago). At the time I had money saved up so I helped out the first few times with my own money. Then when I ran out of money then he said to ask my dad or mom, or steal from my house and give him some. A lil back story here, my mom and dad are separated so they did not used to talk about finances so I would take extra money from my dad than what was actually required and give the rest to jake. For e.g I required 3k for a parcel or smrg then I would ask for 5k, give my mother the 3k(I live with her, my father lives separately) and give the 2k to jake. I also gave him cash many times by essentially stealing from my mother's closet. When I used to say NO he hurled abuses at me and called me every name in the book which a person can imagine, guilt tripped me and pushed me very hard and I gave in almost every time. He told me he will give me back eventually, he has made an investment,etc. Basically all stupid lies to have more time, then one day during an arguement I pressed on when he is gonna return the money and after a lot of time he told me there is no investment and he used the money in his family's shop.
After 2.5 year of this in October-Nov of 2022 we both got admissions in universities which were around 2 hours away from each other. Till then this pattern continued and his family was still struggling bcz of his father's brother divided the joint business or something else.
Before this when we were at out respective homes he told me he got some operation done for smtg in his abdomen. I gave him 10k from my mother's closet for that and even when I went to meet he had an area bandaged (was very unprofessionally done my dumb self should have understood that it was also fake) one of his friend also confirmed that he had operation done and I was coordinating with him on the said dates when he was supposedly admitted. He also used to frequently tell me that he has suicidal thoughts and he will end himself etc .
After we went to our respective colleges once we had a big fight and next day he told me that he tried to end himself by jumping of the balcony but his friend (who he was staying with at the time),Luke, stopped him worrying for him I called Luke later and told him I was worried for Jake and to pls take care of him. He was confused by this and asked me why what happened. I asked him abt last night's attempt, he told me nothing of that sort happened. This opened a can of worms where it was revealed that he was making a fool out of me, guy owned a fucking Iphone and was telling me that his family was on hard times and taking money from me. This is also when I found out that their was no operation. I don't remember what else I found out that night but felt like a huge betrayal and I talked to 3 of his friends that night for quite a few hours where a lot of lies were revealed.
I broke it off with him, at this point I had lent a total of Rs.75-80k. He begged me for weeks for forgiveness, at first I laughed in his face but as weeks went by I started to miss us. He came to meet and win me back a few times at my uni. Eventually, a month later I forgave him on some conditions like he wont lie and share everything with me, won't tell me who or who not to be friends with (he did that before a lot).
Few months later the cycle started again, I was back to giving him money from the monthly spending amount I used to get(it was a lot at first bcz I was just settling in,now my monthy allowance is wayyy less). He did not like the friend group I was in so I stopped talking to them (bcz they knew abt our situation as I broke down crying in front of them when I found out abt all this so he felt like he lost respect and They didn't respect me etc, admittedly they weren't good and I would have distanced myself eventually anyways maybe cuz the vibe didn't match but that should have been my call I feel) and he still (>1 year later) yells at me if he suspects that I am casually talking to them.
My college is in a much smaller city so I go to meet him once to twice a month as he shares a flat with few ppl and the city has more activities to do. Other than the first few times (when we got back together) I pay almost if not all bills like gas (for his 2 wheeler) and food. It's very frustrating at times but I understand that he does not has enough money as his father does not send him enough to cover rent, food and expenses or so he says ( sighs IDK anymore guys what's true and what's not). Jake says his family is still struggling bcz his sister went to UK last year to study and that took a huge chunk of money and they have loans to pay, etc. I can believe this is true. Also he says they have virtually almost no savings left bcz business isn't doing great hence his father sends him rent t food expenses andsays to manage The rest on his own (he does not has a job so guess where the money comes from 🤡). In the Past few months admittedly he has not asked for money frequently but when he does its like a huge chunk. He has also taken loans (with interest) from some of his friends without telling me. He has done this multiple times before after I have repeatedly asked him to stop. (Embarrassingly I admit there are more instances when he has acted like a red curtain but I think I can write a book at this point if I list them all out so let's move on to the latest problem).
Onto The current issue Almost 3 days ago now, Jake called me (we already have been fighting for I don't even remember how many days at that point a week maybe?) and we told me that he was told by his dad that they have been unable to make payments for the loan they took from a person keeping their shop as collateral, they have to pay half the amount (Total amount was 5 lakhs) and interest which was 64k tomorrow to that person, they have arranged most of the money but are short by abt 30k. He asked me can I do something (steal or ask my dad). I refused as there is no money in my mother's closet anyway and I haven't talked to my dad in abt 3 months now. (ofcourse I did not outright refuse and just gave him my reas oning buz I'm a doormat 🥰🤡🤡).
He pressed me to pls talk to my father about money and tell him I need it for my tablet (I bought one just a few days prior). I refused and said he won't give me money anyway. He asked what about my mother's bank account, it must have something. One account is linked to UPI ( It's for making online payments in India) and one is not. The one that is linked does not have much money bCz my mother's salary has not been credited in 4 months. The other account has money but as it does not has UPI activated online payments cannot be done.I told him all of this. He asked can I activate the UPI if my mother's asleep and plz transfer him the money (also said to transfer it first to my own account so if she finds out then I can say my friend needed it so I have lent some for a month or two🙂 ) I mean maybe I could if I really wanted to but I have had enough, I do not want to steal. Now his family is potentially loosing the shop and he is blaming me for it. I have repeatedly tried to reason with him and told him that if I had the money in my account I would have given him (My account had 1k and I transferred him that😔). He says his blood relatives (his father's siblings refused to pay even a dime, I mean they and their children all are grown ups and have jobs and if They didn't pay how does he expect me, who does not has never had a job give him money, probably it's my fault I have enabled him enough every down time by giving him money so how he just expects everytime that I'll help bcz I am family).
He is still pressing me to give like 5k now bcz now he wants to go to another city and talk to the lender's brother to pls provide them with some Time. But I do not have the money 😕. He says that 'if I would have really wanted then I could but I did not think of his family as mine ', " U will understand my pain when U will loose something of yours for lesser value Than it really is " (The shop's market valve is 4O lakhs and they lost it for 5 lakhs) Also has called me quite a few names since then. He arranged 1K and said " I'm going today there I'll see what to do after reaching there." Says he wants to breakup ( it's pretty normal to say it's over after fights so I don't really know if he is even serious) for 2 reasons - 1. I did not give him money 2. When he will go to uni he won't have any spending money so he'll expect are to help out, and he knows I won't and he does not want that disappointment.
I mean TBH I wouldn't care if it were a few hundred rupees but it won't be, additionally I will be The one covering The costs as usual when I go to meet him. I won't have any money left for my own. And I really want to start saving up again. I have spent outrageous amounts of money in The past year (go figure the reason) and saved up nothing. Today he was still begging (he used the word) me to pls arrange the money. He said I leave for uni in 2 days after summer vacations so I'll get my allowance, technically I can ask for it in advance and give him. But I don't want to after he has treated me. Everytime I tell myself that this is the last time, I'll leave the next time he does this but I just stay.
I know I'm not responsible for him and his family but I still feel really guilty about not giving him the money. I know I should end things but it's just difficult to leave something which you have been attached to for so long, it just feels natural to you. Rn he owes me I don't even know how much but it's maybe around 1 lakh something. Not counting The amount of gifts (some he guilt tripped me into buying 🙄 ) I have bought him and the money I have spent on my trips to visit him. IDK if I'll ever see that money again probably not. Please also give me advice on how should I proceed with the breakup, I don't want him to do anything drastic like come to my house or call my mom to tell him abt our relationship (frowned upon in India).
I know the answer but still need the answer should I give him some money from my allowance and WIBTA if I don't ? (Sorry for any errors in writing, I'm writing on tablet with a stylus)

TLDR: my ex husband’s girlfriend hates me, is controlling and abusive towards my ex, is manipulating my young children, wants to replace me as their mom, and move them to Costa Rica.
My ex husband and I were together for almost 15 years and we have two daughters that are 5 and 6 years old. I initiated our separation and divorce almost three years ago in 2021 after learning about his failed plan to have my 10 year old Pomeranian taken and euthanized while I was on vacation. We shared custody with a seven days on, seven days off schedule which was working well for us at the time. In August 2022 I sustained a serious head injury, and I agreed to a temporary emergency custody change so that the girls would stay with him full time while I recovered. During this time the county ordered that I pay him child support at $800 a month despite him making three times as much as I was and being unable to work in my usual job as a clinical therapist. What was supposed to be a temporary custody change became a nightmare when he refused to give them back. My children had been mentioning a new babysitter named Sadie (not her real name), and it became clear after a couple months that this woman was not a babysitter but his new girlfriend. I had no love for him anymore and I did not care one bit that he was seeing someone. I even told people that another positive adult in their lives was a good thing and I thought she and I could have been friends. When I first met her she seemed shy and almost intimidated by me, but it didn’t take long for it become clear that she was the dominant one in their relationship. My ex and my girls moved into her home full time and she became hostile towards me when she got more control. I was in a relationship with a man who was physically abusive and after he was arrested for assisting me, I needed a ride home from the hospital because I had an injury to my eye. I called my ex when I couldn’t get ahold of anyone else, and she volunteered to drive me home. When she got to my house, she came inside, started going through my and my boyfriend’s things, threw all of his clothes, pictures, and other personal belongings in a pile in my backyard, lit all of that on fire, and she stole his jewelry, cologne, small electronics, knives, and a BB gun. She also stole my Cricut machine and a digital picture frame off of my wall. When I asked for those things back I was told by my ex that they threw them away. I’m pretty sure that’s a lie and that they sold them, but either was it was theft. Things got worse from there, and my contact with my kids was limited to one hour a week at a secure facility with supervision and camera monitoring. This was not court ordered, there was never any CPS involvement, and my kids were never removed from care. I agreed to a TEMPORARY EMERGENCY custody change and he was given the power to have “ultimate discretion” about my parenting time with the kids and how long he should have full custody. I noticed my girls started to call Sadie Mommy, which bothered me at first but I let it go because she taking care of them full time and was in a motherly role. Then they started calling me by my first name instead of mommy. When asked them about it they said that’s what they were told to call me. My youngest who was just turning four at the time asked me if I was her “real mommy,” and it was clear that they were becoming confused. I started to complain about this and reported it all to my lawyer, the kids’ therapist, and anyone else who would listen. I was being verbally harassed and embarrassed by Sadie when I attended any school functions, sports, and dance recitals. They told me I wasn’t allowed to be there because it was outside of my supervised visitation hours, but I reminded them that it’s a public place and I had a right to attend. One day I brought new shoes I bought for them to T-ball practice and my ex and Sadie threw a fit, yelled at me in front of my kids and other parents, and ripped the shoes out of my five year old daughters hands. Later I was informed they got rid of the shoes. The next practice I came to, I was told that I was not welcome and that they were calling the police to have me served with a restraining order. I was served with two restraining that they sucessfully got ordered after lying many times in the paperwork. I have all of the screenshots and other evidence that proves they lied. They started telling the girls that they are going to move to Costa Rica where Sadie owns a second home. I raised the alarm and reported this to everyone including my attorneys who responded with: “well that’s illegal. He can’t do that.” I’m aware it’s illegal. People do illegal things all the time. Including them when they stole from me and lied on legal documents. Sadie would communicate with me while impersonating my ex and she sent at least ten unhinged, incoherent messages to me in our coparenting app that she is not supposed to have access to. She painted herself into a corner when she got a restraining order because she couldn’t harass me anymore, so she started attacking my mother, my best friend, and anyone else she could get to. She is a drunk, got fired from her job, yells and screams at my ex and my kids, threw a rock through her own house window in a fit of rage, and last night she refused to let me speak to my children on the phone when she answered my ex’s phone. I have reported all of this to my lawyers, therapists, and family members but no one takes it seriously. She had ovarian cancer ten years ago so she has no children of her own. I think she is jealous of me and my relationship with my girls. They love me and want to be with me all the time. I am so scared that she is manipulating my kids and actively working on parental alienation. My girls are young and I’m terrified of how impressionable they are and I’m scared they will be turned against me. No one will help me and no one wants to acknowledge her control and abuse. I don’t know what to do.

[Edit: this is for early career employees who earn low wages with the intention to grow that salary in the future. This is how the whole world works. No one comes full blown into this world with money and assets. It’s built over time, over generations. This is how countries are built and that is how your kids and grandkids will make money. Most of our grandparents were poor and it will need some generation to get out of it.
-end-edit ]
Apartments.com show lots of 2 beds for rent under $2000 within 90 mins of Cupertino.
Regarding wages: Here is my calculation based on minimum wage of ($10/hr and a 60 hour week) or ($12/hr and a 50 hour week) or ($15/hr and a 40 hour week) Weekly wage for one parent $1060 = 600. Two parents make $1200 a week. 4.5 weeks a month so that’s 12004.5 = $5400.
Taxes on it will be $1100 per month. So net pay is $4300.
Cutting out rent $2000, you have $2300. Cutting out utilities of $300, you have $2000.
Is $2000 per month not enough to live for a family with 1 kid?
Context: a lot has been said about California Bay Area not being livable for people working on low hourly wages. Back in my home country I used to travel 1-1.5 hours one way in a bus to get to college and to go to work. So according to me, commuting 2-3 hours a day is acceptable if you trying to make a living. My wife and I seem to disagree on how much a family should earn to live in the Bay Area. I think people have a case of inflated lifestyle or a case where people want to live like their middle class or rich neighbor and that’s causing the problem. But if you want to live by, you definitely can under $5K a month earned by 2 working parents. Am I wrong?
Note: This is not about the rich and the middle class, but about poor families supporting a child. Trying to learn about what I’m missing and how I may be wrong.

Husband of 20 years is probably cheating on me. So here it goes, sll of my dirty secrets.
I, 45f been married to my husband 46, male for over 20 years to a man I met in my early 20’s. We have been very best friends since the day we met but it has been a rocky relationship. I am from an abusive alcoholic family and I was for a time blissfully an alcoholic along with the family. This of coarse was problematic when looking for a date. More than one boyfriend broke up with me because I drank too much, partied too hard and studied too little. Cue in my dream man, he’s responsible, well educated and a heavy drinker. We partied all night and he got up the next day, no matter how hungover and went to work. My mom said that this is normal, it’s how it’s supposed to be. If a man makes it to work everyday then he’s not an alcoholic. By her definition, only a man who misses work can be accused of drinking too much.
I married this replica of my father and for many blissful years we were married and we partied and drank. We’d drink a bottle or two of wine a few nights a week and on weekends we’d stay up all night, often having parties at our home. It was grand fun, until we had kids. All of the sudden I had to handle night feedings and morning diaper changes while tipsy, drunk or hungover. It didn’t take me long to quit, I had already quit for 9 months while pregnant and I had gotten the idea that life is better sober. But my partner didn’t agree. He was drunk most nights while I was pregnant. When I got annoyed and asked him to quit he hid the bottles. I had a second child with him in spite of the drinking (I wanted a matching set), not my best decision but I don’t regret it. When I was at the hospital he looked exhausted so I sent him home to rest. He went home and drank himself into a stupor. My mom had to drive me home from the hospital and when we got home, he was passed out on the living room floor. He slept for another 10 hours like that and he was drunk the entire first week of my daughter’s life. I had to ask my mom to help care for her since I’d had complications with the birth and had over 30 stitches.
His drinking went on for years with me going from kicking him out of the home to drinking with him. Often I would plead with him to quit and he’d refuse. On 4 occasions we separated, each time selling our home and dividing the property. But he’d get sober and he was always very sorry. At this point we had two kids and I needed the help.
Over time things got better and he went years and years without drinking. I had quit altogether after our first child. In fact things go so much better that he asked to start drinking again. He rationalized that he had been sober for 5 years and that he can handle one of two drinks a week. I agreed under the following terms, he can have up to two drinks with dinner once a week. I know this is a terrible decision, I think it’s fair to say that there is a pattern here of gawd awful decisions on my part. This 2 drink agreement lasted a few months but of course two drinks turned into 3, then it turned into a couple nights a week. I saw it was getting out of hand and I banned drinking again.
In the meantime my partner has gotten substantially better looking. It’s through a combination of favourable genetics, some recent work done and some excellent supplements. He aged well going from a 6.5 in his 20’s to a current day 8.5. More than that he’d recently opened a business and it was booming. For the first time in our married life he started to out earn me. For the first 20 years I was the primary wage earner, but now he’s making the more than me (this is temporary as my wage is about to pick up). The woman are noticing him and It’s not lost on me or him. We went to Mexico last year and women were practically following him around and throwing themselves at him. We go out to eat and woman hit on him. They hit on him at the grocery store and they hit on him at work. To his credit he does not respond to this in front of me or the kids. Nor have I ever heard of him hitting on somebody.
I’m a solid 7 - 7.5. I’ve aged okay, I look decent, I’m maybe a little heavier as size 10. But I’m not a hot young thing giggling at him. I am a wife and a mother, so not always sexy, but still quite a lot prettier than average. But realistically on the open market, I’m probably not attracting an 8.5 that earns his kind of money.
About 8 months ago he started coming home from work drunk. He was hiding it but I could smell the booze on his breath. He claimed it was heartburn but I knew better and I ignored it. I just wanted everything to be okay. There was a woman he was working with, he claimed to hate her, she seemed overly interested in him. There were a few incidents, that made me suspicious but he claimed he hated her. He was never home late from work. She moved away and he seemed fine and I was relieved. But a few months after this the drinking started, along with my denial. I guess I kinda figured that who cares if he cheated, she moved away. Now we can get on with our lives.
Recently he’s coming home from work late, but not too late. It’s an hour late here and there. Sometimes he’d claim that he’d have to stay an extra hour. A few times he went completely missing and claimed to have fallen asleep at the office. The problem is that I don’t really know his hours, it’s possible he’s done earlier. For context, he is self employed and rents a space. But other people rent spaces there too,
He’s been coming home drunker and drunker lately while still denying he’s been drinking. I’m ashamed to admit it but I ignored it to the point where I let him drive the kids a few times like that. I was just so far into denial, but I knew somewhere deep down that he was drunk.
He’s normally off work at 5pm and in the car by 5:10pm. But lately he’s not in the car until 5:45pm, ignoring my calls and sometimes coming into the house as late as 6pm. I mean it’s only 45 minutes right? A few times he’d go missing until 7:30 or 8pm and he’d say that he hate a late client appointment and had told me but I forgot. Strangely he’s never hungry when he gets home, in spite of being at work all day. In fact he’s not hungry 2 - 3 times a week. He told me that his stomach is bothering him.
Last night he went missing so I went to his office to look for him. I found him asleep in his office alone with an empty bottle of hard alcohol on his desk. I checked his office drawer and it was full of empty bottles. The office is a disaster, messy and all that. I’m not sure how he sees clients in a room like that and I’m worried that he’s taking appointments drunk. His business is doing really well and building it up was a joint effort. I’m worried that his drinking will destroy everything we built.
I woke him up and he was visibly drunk. He told me that he wants to stay at the office to sleep it off and that no he doesn’t want to talk about it and he didn’t come home. It’s been 6 hours. The thing is, that he hates sleeping in his work clothes and his office is desperately uncomfortable. I just don’t see him staying there overnight alone.
When the drinking flared up 6 months ago, it was just him drinking alone. But when he was sober he was still my best friend. But over time he’s stopped responding when I speak. He tells me that he drinks because he can’t stand to listen to my problems anymore. If I ask him about his day I get a one word answer. More and more he looks at me with contempt while drinking. But even stranger, he wants sex more often, I don’t know why this is. But he’s weird about it and hounding me. He’s going on and on about how to wants to try a sex position we’ve never done, talking about how much he likes it. He’s also looking over my shoulder and checking my phone, which is new. it’s intrusive as I don’t even know his passcode and feel no temptation to check his phone.
He gets paid in cash and has a drawer full of it at the office so I can’t check his cards.
Now I know what you are going to say. He’s definitely cheating, I mean he probably is. But we live in a no fault place so what does it matter if I get proof or not? Also I have two kids to think of and we aren’t in a financial position to leave. I will need time to pay down our joint debt and I need a new job. I’m thinking that the best course of action is to stay silent and improve my situation so that I can support my kids and myself. I think this works for him too as he doesn’t want to get stuck with all sorts of child support or alimony. Giving me time to get back on my feet and improve my financial position works for both of us.
The thing is that if I even bring up getting divorced or separated he says that I am the light of his life. He says that he loves me and that I’m his best friend. He says that he doesn’t want to leave. Then I feel so badly. If I even broach the topic of separating, he’ll shut it down so quickly. He’s overwhelming and persistent and he out talks me. I think there’s no use in talking it out and I don’t see us living together well under some sort of “arrangement”.
Do you have any advice on what to do next? Do you have any idea why he’s acting this way? If he wants to separate why not just do it? Also what’s with the increased sex drive?
One of the oddities is that I’ve been doing really great lately. I’ve lost some weight, my hair is looking good. My business sucks but I’ve been taking on new gigs and retraining. I’m becoming a person that I’m really proud of and every day seems to be getting better. But the better I do, the more contempt he seems to have for me. I can see the bitterness in his drunkenness. And he gets drunks on nights when I have to work and when I have something important going on. He blames the drinking on me. He says that I only talk about myself (maybe I do, I’m trying to improve). He says that I ask too much of him and that I make him contribute to the house too much but I do 100% of the grocery shopping, cooking, lunches, school stuff, homework and kids activities. He comes home and goes straight to bed while complaining that he’s doing too much. Meanwhile I’m breaking myself trying to make the home perfect enough.
Is there any chance that he’s just old and tired and not cheating? I mean he’s only missing for 45 minutes a day? I should mention that he’s stopped answering my calls during the workday and stopped reading my texts.
The weird thing is that I felt relieved to find him surrounded by booze bottles and I’m glad he’s done tonight. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life begging him to be sober. Tonight I could see the contempt in his eyes towards me. I just don’t know that I can move past it. I think I just want to be free from this now.
Do you have any advice? I’ve never been through anything like this and I could use some support and guidance.
I think that taking 4 - 6 months to resolve the situation might be best. This gives me time to find a new job and to pay down some debt and bolster savings.

So I've (19F) been texting this guy (22M) since May. He's 3 years older than me. I first met him at church as a mutual older friend.
A little context, though: in my country, all men are required to do mandatory military service, so he's currently in the army serving. He's supposed to be released in a few months.
I met him a few months ago when he was on a break, and he was in our church seeing his family, and because I was one of the only people who knew him, I just talked to him a little and we traded Instas. I thought he was cute, but back at the time I had a boyfriend so I didn't really care much about him.
A few months later, fast forward and I broke up with my now ex boyfriend. He posted something that I recognized on his story so I just casually responded to it, and while we were talking I mentioned that I'd broken up with my boyfriend somewhere along the way. He just laughed but I guess that's where it started, because we've been talking every day since May.
No joke. Every day: when I wake up in the morning there's a good morning text from him, and we always say goodnight to each other before going to bed. He texts me whenever he has access to technology (which is around a few hours a day, seeing as how he's in the military) and we've called a few times, since he gave me his phone number.
He's called me cute a few times, pretty once, but both only just in passing as a brief comment. He's told me I look good without makeup. We've talked about our types and I ticked off quite a few boxes on his checklist (and him on mine as well). I can't tell if he was openly flirting, but he told me he liked girls with glasses (I wear glasses) and chokers (I wear chokers) and short girls (I'm short). We've also arranged to meet up when he's on break and he's promised to spend a whole day with me together. He's also paying for the whole thing, which he says is because he's older but also????? Yes.
But, I have a few skeptical points.

1. He has quite a few female friends. He gave me his private Instagram a few weeks back and he has a lot of female friends (out of the 5-6 people that follow his private Insta, over half are women), some of which he hung out with 1-on-1, and although he hasn't hung out with a female friend 1-on-1 after 2024, I'm still skeptical because a lot of them are prettier than me and also fit his type more.
2. Also, I can't tell if he's just bored/lacking female contact because he's in the military, or if he actually does genuinely like me. Some people around me do say that men are a lot more desperate for female attention in the military, which I guess could be true, and that's making me quite skeptical.
3. I'm a few years younger than him. I can't tell if he sees me as just some cute kid he's hanging out with, or if he actually sees me as a woman. Once I told him I was going out with a male friend of mine and I got a thirty-minute lecture about how you can't trust guys (😭) so I'm worried he just sees me as a little sister to take care of and he just finds me vaguely endearing.
4. The longer we talk, it just seems like the less we have to talk about. Don't get me wrong, he still texts me every morning, makes sure to tell me if he can't respond because of this or that reason, and texts me goodnight, but it just seems like our conversations are getting repetitive and I'm paranoid that he's getting bored.
5. He's also mentioned in passing that he's starting to lose major hope in dating due to the conditions around him and the people around him. I just laughed it off because I've said that many times before getting into relationships, but also, what if he's genuine?

Any advice would be appreciated. Do you guys think he likes me? Am I being massively played? What am I supposed to do next in this situation?? What should I do next?

I will be asking a neighbor to pet sit for my 2 cats and 2 parakeets for anywhere between 24-36 hours. I've only ever asked family before so I don't know what to expect to pay.
What should I plan to pay if I need them to show up twice a day (once around 8am and once around 8pm)?
Tasks include: - uncovering/covering bird cage - feeding/changing water for birds in AM - turning on/off TV for birds to have background noise - feeding cats (dry food in AM, wet food in PM)
No litter box as we have a litter robot.
Any insight would be appreciated!!

I have hundreds of hours in FO4, so I'm pretty familiar with the base game mechanics, scrapping everything and building everything etc. I'm a whopping level 27 in 76 though and I have so many questions that google has mostly failed me on and I'm hoping you guys can shed some light.

1. I'm trying like heck to get caps so I'm not worried about paying 10 caps every time I fast travel, but nothing in my vending is really selling. I have all types of ammo I find at 1 cap and any cool stuffies or plans I don't need at like 10. I'm setting up camp on water near the newbie bar (Wastlander?) so I can sell purified, is this too low of a level for people who buy from vending to bother with? I try to keep the vending as close to roads as I can and easy to find, but I just feel like I'm missing some trick. I'm not selling scrap yet because I'm a builder at heart and want to make my camp awesome eventually.
2. I like to use pistols generally, but I still have the basic slow revolver I started with and I haven't yet found something better (I can afford anyway) or good mods to upgrade it at all. Tons of other guns, no pistols. Is there a newbie friendly quest line or area I can focus on to get a better one? Current damage on mine is I want to say like 75ish. I've been mostly just exploring, haven't been in a hurry to do a lot of quests.
3. I've been hopping into the meat events I see and praying that higher people join the hunting ones so I don't get my face ripped off by 6 bears. The cookout one though, I saw someone mention that the super mutant dude is a vendor? I've tried to interact with him before, but I guess a bunch of people were already queued. What should I be looking for on the event vendors? Is there any other event tricks that I should know or care about? Someone said somewhere the plans from it sell really well, but I have no idea how to get any of them.
4. Someone said in a thread that you can get plans for a bar or something neat from a faction guy? Are there factions I should be concentrating on if I want to build up my camp with fun stuff or get good starter gear?
5. I've been cooking up a storm, mostly because stim packs are not cheap and I am squishy. Is there recipes that will sell? Is it worth it to try to keep your food and water meters full, because water seems to drain real fast.
6. It seems like there are about 400 currencies in this game, so I'm guessing I'll figure them all out eventually. Is there one or 2 I should focus on at this low of a level in the forest area?

That's mostly it. I've been enjoying the heck out of this because I always end up using mods in FO4 and this is a real challenge without them. I forgot the pain of having to worry about my weight. I'm having fun just wandering around, killing and looting and stuff, don't get me wrong, I just feel like an idiot overall in game.
Any tips are really appreciated. I'm playing on XBox.

This is going to be a long one so bear with me please. I am also giving a lot of backstory and past issues bcz I feel they are relevant to the matter and also I feel like ranting. Also this is in India so the currency is Rupees. Before we start I just want to say that I am not perfect in any way or form and I have done any fair share of mistakes.
I(20F) have been in a relationship with my bf Jake(22M)(fake name) for roughly 5.5 yrs now. My family is not rich but we do have a lot of money bcz both my parents are doctors but I did not realise we have this much money until 2yrs ago. (Am not very street smart as U will see in this post). Since after abt 1.5 years of relationship (May 2020)when lockdown started his family fell on hardtimes as his family owns a shop and bcz of the Pandemic they weren't able to run it.
At first it was bcz one of his friend got into an accident so he needs money and he told me he will give it back etc (i don't remember if he ever did as it was yrs ago). At the time I had money saved up so I helped out the first few times with my own money. Then when I ran out of money then he said to ask my dad or mom, or steal from my house and give him some. A lil back story here, my mom and dad are separated so they did not used to talk about finances so I would take extra money from my dad than what was actually required and give the rest to jake. For e.g I required 3k for a parcel or smrg then I would ask for 5k, give my mother the 3k(I live with her, my father lives separately) and give the 2k to jake. I also gave him cash many times by essentially stealing from my mother's closet. When I used to say NO he hurled abuses at me and called me every name in the book which a person can imagine, guilt tripped me and pushed me very hard and I gave in almost every time. He told me he will give me back eventually, he has made an investment,etc. Basically all stupid lies to have more time, then one day during an arguement I pressed on when he is gonna return the money and after a lot of time he told me there is no investment and he used the money in his family's shop.
After 2.5 year of this in October-Nov of 2022 we both got admissions in universities which were around 2 hours away from each other. Till then this pattern continued and his family was still struggling bcz of his father's brother divided the joint business or something else. Before this when we were at out respective homes he told me he got some operation done for smtg in his abdomen. I gave him 10k from my mother's closet for that and even when I went to meet he had an area bandaged (was very unprofessionally done my dumb self should have understood that it was also fake) one of his friend also confirmed that he had operation done and I was coordinating with him on the said dates when he was supposedly admitted. He also used to frequently tell me that he has suicidal thoughts and he will end himself etc .
After we went to our respective colleges once we had a big fight and next day he told me that he tried to end himself by jumping of the balcony but his friend (who he was staying with at the time),Luke, stopped him worrying for him I called Luke later and told him I was worried for Jake and to pls take care of him. He was confused by this and asked me why what happened. I asked him abt last night's attempt, he told me nothing of that sort happened. This opened a can of worms where it was revealed that he was making a fool out of me, guy owned a fucking Iphone and was telling me that his family was on hard times and taking money from me. This is also when I found out that their was no operation. I don't remember what else I found out that night but felt like a huge betrayal and I talked to 3 of his friends that night for quite a few hours where a lot of lies were revealed.
I broke it off with him, at this point I had lent a total of Rs.75-80k. He begged me for weeks for forgiveness, at first I laughed in his face but as weeks went by I started to miss us. He came to meet and win me back a few times at my uni. Eventually, a month later I forgave him on some conditions like he wont lie and share everything with me, won't tell me who or who not to be friends with (he did that before a lot).
Few months later the cycle started again, I was back to giving him money from the monthly spending amount I used to get(it was a lot at first bcz I was just settling in,now my monthy allowance is wayyy less). He did not like the friend group I was in so I stopped talking to them (bcz they knew abt our situation as I broke down crying in front of them when I found out abt all this so he felt like he lost respect and They didn't respect me etc, admittedly they weren't good and I would have distanced myself eventually anyways maybe cuz the vibe didn't match but that should have been my call I feel) and he still (>1 year later) yells at me if he suspects that I am casually talking to them.
My college is in a much smaller city so I go to meet him once to twice a month as he shares a flat with few ppl and the city has more activities to do. Other than the first few times (when we got back together) I pay almost if not all bills like gas (for his 2 wheeler) and food. It's very frustrating at times but I understand that he does not has enough money as his father does not send him enough to cover rent, food and expenses or so he says ( sighs IDK anymore guys what's true and what's not). Jake says his family is still struggling bcz his sister went to UK last year to study and that took a huge chunk of money and they have loans to pay, etc. I can believe this is true. Also he says they have virtually almost no savings left bcz business isn't doing great hence his father sends him rent t food expenses and says to manage The rest on his own (he does not has a job so guess where the money comes from 🤡).
In the Past few months admittedly he has not asked for money frequently but when he does its like a huge chunk. He has also taken loans (with interest) from some of his friends without telling me. He has done this multiple times before after I have repeatedly asked him to stop. (Embarrassingly I admit there are more instances when he has acted like a red curtain but I think I can write a book at this point if I list them all out so let's move on to the latest problem).
Onto The current issue Almost 3 days ago now, Jake called me (we already have been fighting for I don't even remember how many days at that point a week maybe?) and we told me that he was told by his dad that they have been unable to make payments for the loan they took from a person keeping their shop as collateral, they have to pay half the amount (Total amount was 5 lakhs) and interest which was 64k tomorrow to that person, they have arranged most of the money but are short by abt 30k. He asked me can I do something (steal or ask my dad). I refused as there is no money in my mother's closet anyway and I haven't talked to my dad in abt 3 months now. (ofcourse I did not outright refuse and just gave him my reas oning buz I'm a doormat 🥰🤡🤡). I pressed me to pls talk to my father about money and tell him I need it for my tablet (I bought one just a few days prior). I refused and said he won't give me money anyway.
He asked what about my mother's bank account, it must have something. One account is linked to UPI ( It's for making online payments in India) and one is not. The one that is linked does not have much money bCz my mother's salary has not been credited in 4 months. The other account has money but as it does not has UPI activated online payments cannot be done.I told him all of this. He asked can I activate the UPI if my mother's asleep and plz transfer him the money (also said to transfer it first to my own account so if she finds out then I can say my friend needed it so I have lent some for a month or two🙂 ) I mean maybe I could if I really wanted to but I have had enough, I do not want to steal. Now his family is potentially loosing the shop and he is blaming me for it. I have repeatedly tried to reason with him and told him that if I had the money in my account I would have given him (My account had 1k and I transferred him that😔). He says his blood relatives (his father's siblings refused to pay even a dime, I mean they and their children all are grown ups and have jobs and if They didn't pay how does he expect me, who does not has never had a job give him money, probably it's my fault I have enabled him enough every down time by giving him money so how he just expects everytime that I'll help bcz I am family).
He is still pressing me to give like 5k now bcz now he wants to go to another city and talk to the lender's brother to pls provide them with some Time. But I do not have the money 😕. He says that 'if I would have really wanted then I could but I did not think of his family as mine ', " U will understand my pain when U will loose something of yours for lesser value Than it really is " (The shop's market valve is 4O lakhs and they lost it for 5 lakhs) Also has called me quite a few names since then. He arranged 1K and said " I'm going today there I'll see what to do after reaching there." Says he wants to breakup ( it's pretty normal to say it's over after fights so I don't really know if he is even serious) for 2 reasons - 1. I did not give him money 2. When he will go to uni he won't have any spending money so he'll expect are to help out, and he knows I won't and he does not want that disappointment.
I mean TBH I wouldn't care if it were a few hundred rupees but it won't be, additionally I will be The one covering The costs as usual when I go to meet him. I won't have any money left for my own. And I really want to start saving up again. I have spent outrageous amounts of money in The past year (go figure the reason) and saved up nothing. Today he was still begging (he used the word) me to pls arrange the money. He said I leave for uni in 2 days after summer vacations so I'll get my allowance, technically I can ask for it in advance and give him. But I don't want to after he has treated me. Everytime I tell myself that this is the last time, I'll leave the next time he does this but I just stay.
I know I'm not responsible for him and his family but I still feel really guilty about not giving him the money. I know I should end things but it's just difficult to leave something which you have been attached to for so long, it just feels natural to you. Rn he owes me I don't even know how much but it's maybe around 1 lakh something. Not counting The amount of gifts (some he guilt tripped me into buying 🙄 ) I have bought him and the money I have spent on my trips to visit him. IDK if I'll ever see that money again probably not. Please also give me advice on how should I proceed with the breakup, I don't want him to do anything drastic like come to my house or call my mom to tell him abt our relationship (frowned upon in India).
I know the answer but still need the answer should I give him some money from my allowance and WIBTA if I don't ? (Sorry for any errors in writing, I'm writing on tablet with a stylus)

Hi I recently got a job in mindbridge of international customer service.They are offering to 57k with incentiveb base salary 34k but they going to move me to a different branch which quite far from my home.
This is a full time job I have heard this pay is low when they told I wasn't able to talk to them as there was rush at there office for interviews.
What should I do should i talk to the hr any advice would be appreciated.
The shift is of 9 hours.

Hi all I recently completed giving my GMAT FE first attempt and scored 665 (V81,Q86 , DI 82) When I had given my first mock I had scored a 475 and was quite disappointed , especially with my Quant score but then decided to power through it and realised I probably needed some mentoring / coaching / test preparation course
I realised while I wanted to be done with the exam quickly, I also had to invest a certain amount of time in order to make right decisions for myself and to address the gaps. I’m outlining my entire journey here and I hope it can help someone else in their prep as well.
Firstly I took a couple of trials of different courses available to see what fits best for me and I actually found the second company that I tried checked all the boxes I was looking for. They had a self paced course , a good question bank and plenty of mocks to practice and I really found their content very helpful and detailed.
For verbal , I realised through both the course and practice that, what was integral for me was to be able to visualise the argument in case of CR and the passage in case of RC. When I started immersing myself in the scenario and imagining what would happen, it became easier to understand what was the assumption or what could explain a paradox or strengthen a scenario. This is especially important for Hard / Medium- Hard questions because it feels like the answer choices are very close and a lot of times we are able to narrow down to last two answer choices but still not get the correct one. In the beginning i wasn’t too concerned with the time , I was more worried about understanding the logic and getting my answer correct and sometimes it took me lot longer to solve the question but ultimately i think that’s what helped me get the accuracy as well. Once I was comfortable with the visualisation, it became second nature and naturally the speed also improved .
Coming to quant, I am from a tech background so it wasn’t the concepts that were a challenge or even the actual problem solving. Common faltering point for me was missing to read what the GMAT question language was actually asking. I would miss on Must be True / Could be True , if there was a hidden constraint saying the given number is a positive integer and I would take 0 also in the solution… common things like that and once I started paying attention to the question language and not be in a rush to solve , it greatly made a difference in accuracy. Maintaining an error log helped me greatly here.
Lastly Data Insights , this was the most dreaded section for me but I think once I was done mastering verbal and quant , DI is actually pretty easy , because the level of difficulty for the math part is much easier and same goes for non math question also. I would say that the calculator is tempting and initially I was using it very often to solve but this was leading to me spending 7-8 minutes on a question sometimes. I realised that the GMAT isn’t testing calculations so I need to be vary of using calculator , instead most questions test your inference skill , so I tried to formulate an approach and infer what I could from the data given. This helped me solve the question correctly in the prescribed amount of time. Paying attention to the data and the question stem and drawing inferences from data helps a lot before just jumping into solving.
I attempted 3 mocks in the 10 days before giving my final exam and my scores were as follows Mock 1 : 615 ( prep company ) Mock 2: 565 ( prep company ) Mock 3: 605 ( official mock 2)
With the mock scores it did not seem very likely that I would be able to get 90 percentile but here are my three biggest learning’s which I think is crucial for anyone going to give the exam and wants to see an improvement from mock scores

1. Make an error log and use that to see patterns. I was extremely detailed while making my error log and I used that to derive a check list of things where i commonly falter and which I should revise day before the exam
   
2. There is no point in revising till the last moment or doing questions till the last day. It is more important that you are able to get rest and go with a calm peaceful mind so you can process information while giving exam. A lot of people giving the exam are out of the student phase and it has been years since you sat and gave an exam for 3 hours , so go with a well rested mind and body.
   
3. Work on building mental resilience and strategy to attempt the paper through your mocks. Start with strongest section first so you feel comfortable while giving the paper. Take it one question at a time , one section at a time. I had started with verbal but I was unable to complete it due to nerves, and normally that would send me into panic and jitters but I learnt through my mocks to stay focused and calm and just put all my attention to next section , this helped me finish both DI and Quant with a couple of extra minutes to spare.
   

My entire journey took me around 5 months and it was filled with ups and downs. With a full work schedule and household responsibilities to manage , it does feel overwhelming at times. Especially when your mock scores doesn’t improve , it is very easy to get discouraged but I kept reminding myself why I was doing it. The day of the exam , I just went with the mindset that this score will tell me where all I need to put more effort in and I wasn’t focused on getting a score , rather my focus was on solving the question to the best of my ability. I think this change in my mentality also contributed to my score and I would recommend the same to anyone who is attempting the exam.
To anyone who read till the end of the, thanks a lot and I hope you were able to gain some helpful insight.
Good luck to anyone who’s giving the paper. I know it’s hard , but you can do it 😊

Last month, The Bad Batch came to its end with a quite explosive finale. And I made no mystery that I had a few issues with how this story wrapped up. After all the build-up we had in the previous episodes, the finale kinda fell flat, especially on a few meaningful plot threads that were basically dropped unceremoniously. Of course, I still love this show despite everything; this post is not meant to be a criticism towards the show creators: it's their show, and they did what they wanted with it. But I figured it wouldn't hurt to try to imagine a different ending just for the fun of it. I have no pretension to claim that my take is objectively better by any means; it's just different, some people may like it, other my prefer the ending we got or a completely different one and there is nothing wrong with it.
Also, I need to clarify that this whole thing came to me almost by itself in a moment when I just had the right inspiration to collect all the random ideas I had in the back of my mind and put them in a somewhat cohesive order. I admit that it might feel a little disjointed at times, and for that I apologize, but I wrote it in less than two hours and I didn't want to change it too much before posting it. I'm not a professional writer, and this post is meant to be just a fun experiment. Now, in order for this ending to work, we would definitely need to make the finale longer: half an hour should be enough and would make the finale as long as the pilot. Also, a few scenes, like Omega's escape with the kids and the unleashing of the Zillo beast could be moved at the end of the penultimate episode, to gain a little more time for the finale (would be nice if Omega were the one to control it through the Force, but that's a whole other can of worms I'm not ready to open).
My alternate ending differs from the original in three key aspects: first, Rex is present to play a small but important part in the mission on Tantiss, and ideally he would bring along a few of his men, including Howzer and Gregor. Rescuing the clones from Tantiss has always been his quest since late season 2; the Batch basically tagged along just to save Crosshair, and later Omega. Why would Rex only send Echo on this very important mission? They could have easily explained his arrival on Tantiss in various ways. Maybe they could have said Echo sent him the coordinates. Or even better, they could have showed that the ship they used to hitch a ride on the science vessel had a tracker on it, so that Rex could follow: just like they originally planned to do on Eriadu.
Second, the CX troopers would have a more meaningful role in the climax, without being just reduced to mindless NPCs that need to be killed: Rex and the others know very well that those clones are all victims; which leads me to the third, most obvious, point: Tech is revealed as CX-2. Now, I don't want to start another debate on the subject: no use to argue about it now that the show is over. I had my reasons to believe that the story could only benefit from Tech being alive, and I had plenty of reasons to believe CX-2 was actually him. This is just my opinion, and you are not forced to agree with it; if you think Tech's disappearance was handled correctly or that it was necessary for "stakes" or whatever reason, then it's fine. It's just that my version works with him being alive, in order to give us a proper pay-off with a complete family reunion. So, now that the premise is over, I can finally start to explain how the ending would be different in my take:
The big changes would start during the scene in the training chamber. Like in the original, while Hunter, Crosshair and Wrecker are being reconditioned, Hemlock does his evil monologue, where he mentions the last time they saw each other, after losing a brother and says that "history my repeat itself". To me, those lines seemed to be specifically written for a Tech reveal, so in this scene Hemlock actually has CX-2 unmask himself: maybe he could say something like "Isn't this a lovely family reunion?", while the others are being reconditioned, and can't even say a word as they look in horror at what their brother has become. As Hemlock leaves the room to answer Tarkin's call, Echo, Rex and the others are the ones dealing with the CX troopers down below while CX-2 (and not the other big guy) is the one watching over the others as Omega comes to rescue them. As soon as Omega recognizes Tech, she calls him by his name, and hearing it for the first time causes something to trigger in the assassin's mind. Then the scene goes differently after Omega frees the others.
They all try to fight against Tech who still has the upper hand for various reasons. We know he's a capable fighter and the smartest of the group. He's also actively trying to harm them, while the others are pulling their punches. Not to mention Omega is too weak for him, Hunter and Crosshair are already depleted and Wrecker is also injured. During the fight, however, the others try to talk to him, and he clearly starts to hesitate, especially when he hears some words that he might recognize. Even after being incapacitated, Crosshair is the one that's more desperate in trying to reason with his brother, by bringing up his personal experience with the chip and telling him that it's never too late to do the right choice. But then Hemlock, noticing Tech's weird behavior, calls him with the order to bring Omega to the landing platform for a quick escape. So he's the one who drags her on the bridge while she still desperately tries to reason with her brother, begging him to remember who he is, possibly referencing that conversation they had in the cave back in season 2.
Now, before the climax, we need to talk about the other 3/4 assassins that Echo, Rex and the others would be dealing with. Of course, they wouldn't just kill them, but they would make an effort not to harm them, trying to stun them instead. Unlike Tech, these assassins won't be freed from their mind control immediately, we could say it's because the chip has made the reconditioning take better hold of them. We'll leave the door open for Rex and the others to figure out a way to cure them after taking them away from Tantiss (no matter what, they're still their brothers). As an added bonus, we could reveal two of them to be named clones that we know of. One could be Cody, since Rampart could have lied about him being AWOL; in this scenario, I would also say that Cody should be the one to cut Crosshair's hand, adding another layer to their interesting dynamic. Another one might be Wolfe, who also might have tried to desert after Teth, or maybe they just took him before he could even start to doubt the Empire (apologies if this doesn't align well with Rebels: correct me if that's the case). This will, of course, add even more tension to the fight with Rex and the others; maybe, as cruel as it might be, he could be the one to kill Howzer, tough it's not mandatory, and personally I don't like pointless deaths.
Now, on the bridge the scene is a little different; my ideas can be a little confusing from now on so bear with me. Omega still gets handcuffed to Hemlock while Tech and Scorch are guarding his escape, maybe with a few more stormtroopers who are easily shot down by Hunter and Crosshair. Wrecker is also there this time: though he doesn't have a blaster, he charges straight towards Hemlock, but Tech shoots him on the shoulder and the leg, neutralizing him. So now we have Crosshair and Hunter on one side, Hemlock and Omega on the other like in the show, but we also have Tech, Scorch and the incapacitated Wrecker in the mix. The ship still needs to arrive and land on this specific platform, so we still have time for a brief verbal confrontation between Tech and the others during this stalemate. Hemlock tries to prove a point by giving Tech the order to finish off his brother, but Crosshair finally manages to breach through him by asking him "When have you ever followed orders?", to which Tech finally breaks free of the reconditioning on his own ("We do not need help. We will figure out a solution, as we always do").
Without thinking twice, Tech shoots Scorch to disarm him but in turn Scorch tackles him off the railing and they both fall; Tech manages to throw a grappling hook on the bridge and Wrecker, crawling on his side, is able to catch the rope before it snaps. Tech is still dangling for his life while Scorch is still clutching his leg, but Wrecker, despite his injuries, is not willing to let him go this time. The tension is high, and the ship for Hemlock has finally arrived, but Omega manages to stay calm and collected and so do Hunter and Crosshair. Just like in the show, she manages to stab Hemlock, allowing Crosshair to shoot the handcuffs with Hunter as a "tripod". Finally free from Hemlock, Omega rushes to help Tech, grabbing his hand after he finally manages to kick away Scorch. After everyone is safe, Wrecker starts to embrace Tech with all the strength he has left, crying as he promises that he'll never let him fall again, while Omega runs to Crosshair and Hunter, and they hug just like in the show: that scene was perfect, so I wouldn't change it one bit. Then of course there is a whole group hug (Echo may join as well), with a softer yet triumphal variation of the main theme in the background.
After the clones are back on the ship, headed to Pabu, Tech apologizes to his brothers for the harm he caused as Hemlock's puppet, describing how terrible it was to act as a soulless assassin while desperately struggling with his mind to break free. Crosshair apologizes to Tech for choosing the Empire over them and for indirectly causing his fall and capture. Tech reassures him not to feel guilty about it, and says that he made his choice when he executed Plan 99, and that, if he could go back, he would still do it, though Hunter jokingly orders him to never do that again, with Omega immediately backing him up. And I don't think I would need to add anything else after this. The rest can go on pretty much as in the original episode; we only need to spare a minute for a proper reunion between Tech and Phee ("Better late than dead") and of course everyone will be sitting under that tree in the end.
And there you have it, this is the best I could come up with after letting my mind wander for a couple of hours. Could have this been plausible? Maybe not. Is it perfect? Definitely not. Is it better than the original ending? I'll let you be the judge to that. But I still wanted to share it with you guys, as a testament to how much I love this show and these characters. Thank you, if you managed to stick this far; whether you liked it or not, hopefully I managed to entertain you a little with my ramblings. Have a good day, and may the Force be with you, always.

Husband of 20 years is probably cheating on me. So here it goes, sll of my dirty secrets.
I, 45f been married to my husband 46, male for over 20 years to a man I met in my early 20’s. We have been very best friends since the day we met but it has been a rocky relationship. I am from an abusive alcoholic family and I was for a time blissfully an alcoholic along with the family. This of coarse was problematic when looking for a date. More than one boyfriend broke up with me because I drank too much, partied too hard and studied too little. Cue in my dream man, he’s responsible, well educated and a heavy drinker. We partied all night and he got up the next day, no matter how hungover and went to work. My mom said that this is normal, it’s how it’s supposed to be. If a man makes it to work everyday then he’s not an alcoholic. By her definition, only a man who misses work can be accused of drinking too much.
I married this replica of my father and for many blissful years we were married and we partied and drank. We’d drink a bottle or two of wine a few nights a week and on weekends we’d stay up all night, often having parties at our home. It was grand fun, until we had kids. All of the sudden I had to handle night feedings and morning diaper changes while tipsy, drunk or hungover. It didn’t take me long to quit, I had already quit for 9 months while pregnant and I had gotten the idea that life is better sober. But my partner didn’t agree. He was drunk most nights while I was pregnant. When I got annoyed and asked him to quit he hid the bottles. I had a second child with him in spite of the drinking (I wanted a matching set), not my best decision but I don’t regret it. When I was at the hospital he looked exhausted so I sent him home to rest. He went home and drank himself into a stupor. My mom had to drive me home from the hospital and when we got home, he was passed out on the living room floor. He slept for another 10 hours like that and he was drunk the entire first week of my daughter’s life. I had to ask my mom to help care for her since I’d had complications with the birth and had over 30 stitches.
His drinking went on for years with me going from kicking him out of the home to drinking with him. Often I would plead with him to quit and he’d refuse. On 4 occasions we separated, each time selling our home and dividing the property. But he’d get sober and he was always very sorry. At this point we had two kids and I needed the help.
Over time things got better and he went years and years without drinking. I had quit altogether after our first child. In fact things go so much better that he asked to start drinking again. He rationalized that he had been sober for 5 years and that he can handle one of two drinks a week. I agreed under the following terms, he can have up to two drinks with dinner once a week. I know this is a terrible decision, I think it’s fair to say that there is a pattern here of gawd awful decisions on my part. This 2 drink agreement lasted a few months but of course two drinks turned into 3, then it turned into a couple nights a week. I saw it was getting out of hand and I banned drinking again.
In the meantime my partner has gotten substantially better looking. It’s through a combination of favourable genetics, some recent work done and some excellent supplements. He aged well going from a 6.5 in his 20’s to a current day 8.5. More than that he’d recently opened a business and it was booming. For the first time in our married life he started to out earn me. For the first 20 years I was the primary wage earner, but now he’s making the more than me (this is temporary as my wage is about to pick up). The woman are noticing him and It’s not lost on me or him. We went to Mexico last year and women were practically following him around and throwing themselves at him. We go out to eat and woman hit on him. They hit on him at the grocery store and they hit on him at work. To his credit he does not respond to this in front of me or the kids. Nor have I ever heard of him hitting on somebody.
I’m a solid 7 - 7.5. I’ve aged okay, I look decent, I’m maybe a little heavier as size 10. But I’m not a hot young thing giggling at him. I am a wife and a mother, so not always sexy, but still quite a lot prettier than average. But realistically on the open market, I’m probably not attracting an 8.5 that earns his kind of money.
About 8 months ago he started coming home from work drunk. He was hiding it but I could smell the booze on his breath. He claimed it was heartburn but I knew better and I ignored it. I just wanted everything to be okay. There was a woman he was working with, he claimed to hate her, she seemed overly interested in him. There were a few incidents, that made me suspicious but he claimed he hated her. He was never home late from work. She moved away and he seemed fine and I was relieved. But a few months after this the drinking started, along with my denial. I guess I kinda figured that who cares if he cheated, she moved away. Now we can get on with our lives.
Recently he’s coming home from work late, but not too late. It’s an hour late here and there. Sometimes he’d claim that he’d have to stay an extra hour. A few times he went completely missing and claimed to have fallen asleep at the office. The problem is that I don’t really know his hours, it’s possible he’s done earlier. For context, he is self employed and rents a space. But other people rent spaces there too,
He’s been coming home drunker and drunker lately while still denying he’s been drinking. I’m ashamed to admit it but I ignored it to the point where I let him drive the kids a few times like that. I was just so far into denial, but I knew somewhere deep down that he was drunk.
He’s normally off work at 5pm and in the car by 5:10pm. But lately he’s not in the car until 5:45pm, ignoring my calls and sometimes coming into the house as late as 6pm. I mean it’s only 45 minutes right? A few times he’d go missing until 7:30 or 8pm and he’d say that he hate a late client appointment and had told me but I forgot. Strangely he’s never hungry when he gets home, in spite of being at work all day. In fact he’s not hungry 2 - 3 times a week. He told me that his stomach is bothering him.
Last night he went missing so I went to his office to look for him. I found him asleep in his office alone with an empty bottle of hard alcohol on his desk. I checked his office drawer and it was full of empty bottles. The office is a disaster, messy and all that. I’m not sure how he sees clients in a room like that and I’m worried that he’s taking appointments drunk. His business is doing really well and building it up was a joint effort. I’m worried that his drinking will destroy everything we built.
I woke him up and he was visibly drunk. He told me that he wants to stay at the office to sleep it off and that no he doesn’t want to talk about it and he didn’t come home. It’s been 6 hours. The thing is, that he hates sleeping in his work clothes and his office is desperately uncomfortable. I just don’t see him staying there overnight alone.
When the drinking flared up 6 months ago, it was just him drinking alone. But when he was sober he was still my best friend. But over time he’s stopped responding when I speak. He tells me that he drinks because he can’t stand to listen to my problems anymore. If I ask him about his day I get a one word answer. More and more he looks at me with contempt while drinking. But even stranger, he wants sex more often, I don’t know why this is. But he’s weird about it and hounding me. He’s going on and on about how to wants to try a sex position we’ve never done, talking about how much he likes it. He’s also looking over my shoulder and checking my phone, which is new. it’s intrusive as I don’t even know his passcode and feel no temptation to check his phone.
He gets paid in cash and has a drawer full of it at the office so I can’t check his cards.
Now I know what you are going to say. He’s definitely cheating, I mean he probably is. But we live in a no fault place so what does it matter if I get proof or not? Also I have two kids to think of and we aren’t in a financial position to leave. I will need time to pay down our joint debt and I need a new job. I’m thinking that the best course of action is to stay silent and improve my situation so that I can support my kids and myself. I think this works for him too as he doesn’t want to get stuck with all sorts of child support or alimony. Giving me time to get back on my feet and improve my financial position works for both of us.
The thing is that if I even bring up getting divorced or separated he says that I am the light of his life. He says that he loves me and that I’m his best friend. He says that he doesn’t want to leave. Then I feel so badly. If I even broach the topic of separating, he’ll shut it down so quickly. He’s overwhelming and persistent and he out talks me. I think there’s no use in talking it out and I don’t see us living together well under some sort of “arrangement”.
Do you have any advice on what to do next? Do you have any idea why he’s acting this way? If he wants to separate why not just do it? Also what’s with the increased sex drive?
One of the oddities is that I’ve been doing really great lately. I’ve lost some weight, my hair is looking good. My business sucks but I’ve been taking on new gigs and retraining. I’m becoming a person that I’m really proud of and every day seems to be getting better. But the better I do, the more contempt he seems to have for me. I can see the bitterness in his drunkenness. And he gets drunks on nights when I have to work and when I have something important going on. He blames the drinking on me. He says that I only talk about myself (maybe I do, I’m trying to improve). He says that I ask too much of him and that I make him contribute to the house too much but I do 100% of the grocery shopping, cooking, lunches, school stuff, homework and kids activities. He comes home and goes straight to bed while complaining that he’s doing too much. Meanwhile I’m breaking myself trying to make the home perfect enough.
Is there any chance that he’s just old and tired and not cheating? I mean he’s only missing for 45 minutes a day? I should mention that he’s stopped answering my calls during the workday and stopped reading my texts.
The weird thing is that I felt relieved to find him surrounded by booze bottles and I’m glad he’s done tonight. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life begging him to be sober. Tonight I could see the contempt in his eyes towards me. I just don’t know that I can move past it. I think I just want to be free from this now.
Do you have any advice? I’ve never been through anything like this and I could use some support and guidance.
I think that taking 4 - 6 months to resolve the situation might be best. This gives me time to find a new job and to pay down some debt and bolster savings.

Greetings Experts,
Need your expert inputs/suggestions/advice on our current scenario.
Just to set the context, we are running a Preschool as a Franchise from a well-known brand - our first entrepreneurial venture. Started operations around 9 months back. We currently have the following staff: Centre Head (CH, similar to Principal), 1 Teacher, 1 Help Staff, and 1 intern who will be made a Permanent Teacher in a week. CH's role is primarily to manage the overall Center, do online marketing, oversee the staff, do counseling for parents, and take care of admissions. There's also a Center Manager working online primarily through calls and online meetings, who oversees the staff, and daily activities, liaises with the Franchiser, and provides general guidance for the staff - I know there's an overlap here, will detail it below. As a Business Partner, I visit the Center maybe once in 2 weeks or in case of any occasion as well - I'm not involved in the day-to-day activities. We have weekly meetings to check on the progress and I provide the required guidance to the team. I always ensure to get feedback from my team, things that can be improved on and provide motivation in general. We do have CCTV per the directives from the Franchiser and biometrics at the Center.
General Leave policies per the Franchiser are 1.5 days Casual Leave every month with no carry forward. Summer Vacation of 20 days spread over 2 months was allocated to the Teaching staff only per the Franchiser. We extended this leave policy to the CH and Help Staff as well, as we would like to take good care of our staff. All Sundays and 2nd & 4th Saturdays are weekends. All public holidays per the State Government Calendar. School timings are 9-5 for CH and Help Staff; 9 to 4 for Teachers.
Now coming to the scenario, there are a couple of things that I would like to seek expert opinion on. 1. Center Head was on Medical leave for 3 weeks last month due to a minor accident. According to the Franchiser, there's no Medical Leave policy as such. Was researching this and came across a policy for another private school mentioning half-pay Medical Leave with the required Medical Certificate and so on. CH had already utilized 12 days of Vacation in the 2 months, and then 18 days of Medical Leave. Now, even if I consider adjusting the Medical Leave against the vacation days, it will still be 10 days more than the available days. How should we go about with this situation? Should 10 days be considered for Half-Pay? Or are there any other suggestions? Have to make the salary payment by tonight. Appreciate a quick response on this. 2. Our school timings are 9 to 5. For the month before this accident, our CH was consistently late by more than an hour or so. Had provided verbal feedback on this requesting to be on time. I had given a formal warning as well at the start of April, but unfortunately, CH met with an accident after that. Post joining back, CH was again late by 45 minutes on the first day back to work. This was the day our Franchiser Zonal Manager was visiting the Center and I was at the Center as well. This prompted me to provide a Second and Final Warning to the CH and mentioned will have to take disciplinary action if it is repeated. What can I do further in this situation to ensure that the CH arrives on time? How did the veterans of this sub manage such situations? All our other staff are almost always on time, except on rare occasions. 3. We had to get Center Manager involved as the CH was not doing the activities/duties that they were supposed to do. When provided with certain tasks or instructions to the CH, there is often a delay in the completion of the said task by the CH requiring multiple follow-ups too. And this is not a one-off case, noticed this in many situations. I don't micromanage - I expect them to take accountability as a responsible adult and perform the required actions in a timely manner. How do you deal with a situation where the staff is not performing the tasks allocated to them within a reasonable time? 4. During the absence of CH, our Teacher had to take over the role of CH in the interim. Teacher was paid Overtime for staying beyond the normal teacher's timing. And the best part is, the teacher was able to convert the enquiries from the Parents into confirmed admissions during this time frame more than what was done by CH. We had received multiple enquiries previously and these were not confirmed. Now that I look back with the insights that I have now, I'm wondering if it has something to do with the way our CH is pitching it to the Parents. Now I'm considering promoting the Teacher to CH and converting the CH to Teacher - just pondering on this. Any thoughts on this? Did anyone have to do anything of a similar sort for your venture?
Let me know your thoughts on this. Looking forward to hearing from the experienced folks. Open to hear advice in general and words of wisdom too for a budding entrepreneur.
Thanks in advance.

Greetings Experts,
Need your expert inputs/suggestions/advice on our current scenario.
Just to set the context, we are running a Preschool as a Franchise from a well-known brand - our first entrepreneurial venture. Started operations around 9 months back. We currently have the following staff: Centre Head (CH, similar to Principal), 1 Teacher, 1 Help Staff, and 1 intern who will be made a Permanent Teacher in a week. CH's role is primarily to manage the overall Center, do online marketing, oversee the staff, do counseling for parents, and take care of admissions. There's also a Center Manager working online primarily through calls and online meetings, who oversees the staff, and daily activities, liaises with the Franchiser, and provides general guidance for the staff - I know there's an overlap here, will detail it below. As a Business Partner, I visit the Center maybe once in 2 weeks or in case of any occasion as well - I'm not involved in the day-to-day activities. We have weekly meetings to check on the progress and I provide the required guidance to the team. I always ensure to get feedback from my team, things that can be improved on and provide motivation in general. We do have CCTV per the directives from the Franchiser and biometrics at the Center.
General Leave policies per the Franchiser are 1.5 days Casual Leave every month with no carry forward. Summer Vacation of 20 days spread over 2 months was allocated to the Teaching staff only per the Franchiser. We extended this leave policy to the CH and Help Staff as well, as we would like to take good care of our staff. All Sundays and 2nd & 4th Saturdays are weekends. All public holidays per the State Government Calendar. School timings are 9-5 for CH and Help Staff; 9 to 4 for Teachers.
Now coming to the scenario, there are a couple of things that I would like to seek expert opinion on. 1. Center Head was on Medical leave for 3 weeks last month due to a minor accident. According to the Franchiser, there's no Medical Leave policy as such. Was researching this and came across a policy for another private school mentioning half-pay Medical Leave with the required Medical Certificate and so on. CH had already utilized 12 days of Vacation in the 2 months, and then 18 days of Medical Leave. Now, even if I consider adjusting the Medical Leave against the vacation days, it will still be 10 days more than the available days. How should we go about with this situation? Should 10 days be considered for Half-Pay? Or are there any other suggestions? Have to make the salary payment by tonight. Appreciate a quick response on this. 2. Our school timings are 9 to 5. For the month before this accident, our CH was consistently late by more than an hour or so. Had provided verbal feedback on this requesting to be on time. I had given a formal warning as well at the start of April, but unfortunately, CH met with an accident after that. Post joining back, CH was again late by 45 minutes on the first day back to work. This was the day our Franchiser Zonal Manager was visiting the Center and I was at the Center as well. This prompted me to provide a Second and Final Warning to the CH and mentioned will have to take disciplinary action if it is repeated. What can I do further in this situation to ensure that the CH arrives on time? How did the veterans of this sub manage such situations? All our other staff are almost always on time, except on rare occasions. 3. We had to get Center Manager involved as the CH was not doing the activities/duties that they were supposed to do. When provided with certain tasks or instructions to the CH, there is often a delay in the completion of the said task by the CH requiring multiple follow-ups too. And this is not a one-off case, noticed this in many situations. I don't micromanage - I expect them to take accountability as a responsible adult and perform the required actions in a timely manner. How do you deal with a situation where the staff is not performing the tasks allocated to them within a reasonable time? 4. During the absence of CH, our Teacher had to take over the role of CH in the interim. Teacher was paid Overtime for staying beyond the normal teacher's timing. And the best part is, the teacher was able to convert the enquiries from the Parents into confirmed admissions during this time frame more than what was done by CH. We had received multiple enquiries previously and these were not confirmed. Now that I look back with the insights that I have now, I'm wondering if it has something to do with the way our CH is pitching it to the Parents. Now I'm considering promoting the Teacher to CH and converting the CH to Teacher - just pondering on this. Any thoughts on this? Did anyone have to do anything of a similar sort for your venture?
Let me know your thoughts on this. Looking forward to hearing from the experienced folks. Open to hear advice in general and words of wisdom too for a budding entrepreneur.
Thanks in advance.

I’m leaving the org at the end of summer. I’ll finally be financially ready. I have my letter for social services ready. I’m mailing it Monday. I have three career choices in mind as well. My mom/legal guardian is an Uber PIMI.
The woman who studied with me is in her 90s and her daughter asked me to stay with her in 12 hour shifts (7 pm to 7 am) The thing is I actually stay more than 12 hours. I’m there from 7 pm to 9 am. When the next person comes to relieve me. They only pay me $50.
I did not want to do it. They use people in the congregation so they don’t have to take care of their own mother. I said no when she asked but my mom told me I owed the woman who studied with me. Then went on about how selfish I was. I just took it to shut her up. I should have stuck to my guns. On top of that…they offered $75 but my motheguardian told them to pay me $50. Plus there are days the daughter forgets to pay me but I kindly wait until next week.
I let her know last week I’d be quitting in August. I don’t want to do this anymore - period. Whether I get placed in a group home or not… I don’t want to sit with this woman. Am I wrong? Am I selfish? Do I owe her? Tell me and I’ll stand corrected.
Her elder son lives right next door + her granddaughter lives 10 minutes away. The daughter is making a big deal about me quitting. “How am I going to find someone to replace you?” — Easy! One of the family members can do it. It’s a lot I’m leaving out of context but just understand the family is lousy. She won’t stop nagging me. I muted notifications from her on my phone.
They don’t understand what they ask people to do is a lot. I got bit by a snake and almost attacked by a wild animal since I’ve been working for her. I also told her that a neighbor I briefly did elder care for paid me $600 a week for the 2 weeks they needed me. She said I’m not in a position to ask for a raise.

Me [22M], met my [25F] gf online. We got along pretty good and I liked her a lot. Soonafter we met, my dad died and I became very dependent on her for emotional support. Eventually after several months of talking we decided to meet up. I booked a cheap flight to where she lived (a few states over) and we hung out. At this point I had inherited a little bit of money (a few thousand) and saved up a ton. Of which she blew during my two week trip (luring me into expensive clothing stores saying she just wanted a hat only to spend 700$ and guilting me in to paying). This habit continued for another several months until I moved here to be with her (my own family was super toxic and after my dads death the verbal abuse became worse). My arrival was met with intial disgust from her, as I had to try and save money for a few weeks until I started working at my new job. Additionally its seems now there is little to no love from her anymore and she only pretends to like me when we are with her family. I stopped going to college after my depression became borderline manic and was almost hospitalized, and I'm looking to transfer to a local college for a year then university. However, she hates this idea, only because it means I'd have work less hours to make room for school. On top of that she really wants to get married, not because of her burning love, but instead so she can quit her job and have me provide for her.
What should I do?

Hi again everyone it's me, if you remember. I got a couple people in my dms asking how I'm doing and I'm allowed to write another update so... well. Here I am. Almost exactly 6 weeks since the worst 48 hours of my life.
I guess I'll just get into it since I'm using this as a diary at this point but I did also start journaling but journaling feels kind of lonely sometimes. And a lot has happened that I would appreciate everyone's thoughts on because you have all been really helpful. Thank you so much.
TL;DR: I'm back at work and getting on my feet and going to group art therapy. I met one of my boyfriend's old friends who's taking care of him and putting him through rehab. My old friends are coming back around and I'm trying to figure out how to be accountable and better for them. I'm ok, I'm safe, I'm almost happy.
I went back to work on May 1st because I promosed myself I would. I work at a smoothie shop, and we are a small team of 4 who usually work in pairs with my boss (the owner) there during rush hours and the baker who works before any of us come in.
When I came to open the shop that morning, the baker talked with me and asked how I was doing. I don't want people to know a lot but she has always been nice to me so I vented a little to her. I wasn't expecting how good it felt to talk to someone about everything that happened even not super detailed. Especially when she gave me such a big hug which made me cry tbh and told me to be strong and she was so happy I came back and didn't hide. 🥺
After talking to her and the coworker I usually work with, I felt better about therapy and stuff because talking does help. So when I got the call from that group therapy thing I wasn't as scared and didn't chicken out like I thought I would. I went and met people in my group, and it was a good experience. I am still going today.
A few days after the 1st I got a call from an unknown number. I don't normally answer those but with the situation and numbers I've been calling lately I didn't want to miss something important so I answered. A man introduced himself to me (I will call him "Tom") and told me he was a friend of my boyfriend "Luke".
I had never heard of this person before and I was just completely shocked and kind of just said "oh" and he started talking. He said he paid the rent for May for the suite and said he gave notice of ending the rental agreement, and asked if I wanted anything of mine from the place and if so he told me I had until the 11th before he dumped/sold stuff and start cleaning.
I came back to myself after that and was just like "hang on who are you and did you find Luke or what???" Because as far as I knew Luke was still missing and also I didn't know who he was.
So basically, a little background on Luke's life: He's originally from very very rural Quebec. He was taken into custody by the ministry when he was 8 after his mom passed away via sui and tried to take him with her because of his dad's extreme physical and sexual abuse towards both Luke and his mom. There were no foster resources in his town so he was taken to a bigger city and put with a family there.
He got into a lot of trouble with the ministry and police and kept having to get moved around due to threatening behavior towards his foster family (parents and siblings). Eventually he got into drinking and drugs and very badly beat up his younger foster brother and foster mother when he was 11 or 12. He got diagnosed with a conduct disorder and got put into juvie prison.
There was a project starting at that time in BC that was rehabilitation for juvie kids in MCFD custody. Basically they set up group homes that were staffed by social workers and counselors, like a foster home but run by a non-profit group not one family. This is actually something similar to where I grew up, but mine was for kids who "failed to thrive" in single-family care while Luke's was for kids who were criminals or addicts.
Because of his childhood situation and how they got him into custody, the MCFD wanted to see Luke go through one of those programs and hopefully be better. So they told him either the group home or juvie and he picked the group home, and a social worker from BC came to get him and flew him to the city. But in this new city even though he got to go back to public school and do stuff like gymnastics which he missed, he didn't know english as much and didn't have friends. So he started acting out again and got arrested more times.
Back to now. Tom told me that when he was in grade 10 and Luke was in grade 8, Tom joined a leadership club at his high school. Because of Luke's history he was forced into leadership club's "big brother" program with threat of being expelled if he didn't. Tom got assigned Luke in his "big brother" project, and they became friends, and then they became family all through high school and through Tom's first 3 years at uni. When he was telling me this I was blown away because Luke literally never even mentioned him so I finally just asked "well then why don't I know you? what happened?"
Tom said "Well, you know Luke." And I guess I do. Soooo yeah.
Luke showed up at Tom's childhood home a week after the stuff with Peanut, and Tom's parents called 911 because he was erratic and very high. The ambulance came and took him, and Tom went to the hospital to see him after his parents told him what happened.
At this point I had to go catch the bus but I told him we could text and meet and I wanted to help him clean the place too because I felt responsibility. He insisted it would be fine but I insisted I wanted to help so I texted him my schedule and we arranged a time to meet.
When I told my boss about all of this she and especially her husband asked if I could take a friend or if one of them could go. I told them I would ask my coworker since we have the same days off so I wouldn't trouble his busy schedule and definitely my boss should NOT go because she is getting so pregnant it's crazy and she needed to rest and still does need rest.
So my coworker I will call Nerd bc inside joke (who is male and big so that is helpful) agreed and we bussed to Luke's place. There was a car in front I didn't know so I assumed it was Tom's and sure enough he was there when I went in and was dealing with the fridge.
We shook hands and I introduced Nerd who kind of puffed up and made a stupid joke about beating Tom's ass over funny business but tbh the second I met Tom I got pretty OK vibes. But I guess well maybe I shouldn't trust it but really he was ok.
We went separately through the place and I spent most of my time in my "room" which was just a corner of the living room with a curtain tbh but my stuff was there so I packed it into garbage bags I brought. Kinda got flashbacks of packing as a kid which felt... weird tbh. 🙃
It also didn't help that Tom was kind of weird. Like not in a bad way but he would curse and mutter to himself when he found something gross or messed up like bad food, Luke's collection of drug stuff, that kind of thing. But then he would also tell me and Nerd what to do and where to put trash vs other stuff, but ALSO like... acted like he didn't want to touch anything himself? Like super cautious.
He also asked me stuff about my life here and how things were and what me and Luke did together, and I answered what I was comfortable with but he still kept apologizing and telling me he didn't want to know my personal stuff. Like it wasn't bad weird like I said but I think he was rly uncomfortable. He did pull me aside in the bathroom and asked if Luke ever hurt me and I was able to answer honestly and say no, he never even treated me that bad. But when I said that he kind of scoffed and muttered "that bad" like sarcastically and seemed mad so seriously it was. Weird. But idk if I were Tom I'd probably be pretty messed up about all of this so.
I insisted to help clean and Tom went to take the trash out. Nerd said he had to go soon bc he had an exam he had to study for and I said he could go and promised I'd be ok because I didn't get a bad vibe from Tom and Nerd admitted Tom seemed ok too. So he left but told me to call if I needed him bc he wouldn't be SUPER busy.
After saying goodbye I kind of asked Tom after a while what was going on with Luke. I just needed to know I guess? I don't know, I felt a lot of emotion being back there. Like I felt the love for him again and wished he was ok but Tom didn't tell me anything yet about where he was or how he was just that he was alive and reported found to police.
So... Luke's in rehab on the island. Tom talked to him in the hospital after he detoxed and said he explained the situation that happened. Apparently Luke broke down sobbing when he told him how he killed Peanut, and said the words: "I killed Peanut. I killed Peatie." Tom started crying while telling me this and tbh I cried too. I thanked Tom for being there bc Tom said he held him and comforted him and after all the hugs I got after Peanut and how that helped I'm just glad Luke got that too.
But yeah, so Tom told Luke it was time to get it together and Luke agreed. Tom seems hopeful it'll stick "this time," which he explained their original falling out was bc Luke lied to Tom about being sober after Tom put him through rehab once before. I really hope it will too and I am glad he has Tom to help him and pay for rehab bc it's not cheap especially those private places on the island but apparently the first time it failed it was in one of those cheap places in the DTES and Tom told me since he's been running programs there he's seen firsthand how those places are run and says the private is worth the money. Which I think is sad bc so many people are poor and need help too but it's complicated ig.
Tom offered me a ride home and I accepted. He told me before we got into the car that it would be ok if I wanted to text a picture of his license plate and car and ID to a safe person and I didn't even consider that so I felt kind of stupid but I did do that stuff and texted my boss and told her we were leaving. But tbh I wasn't worried. Tom seemed so nice and he gave me so much closure on what happened with Luke and knowing he's in good hands with someone that seems really sweet and put together makes me feel better about all the choices I made and also makes me feel like Peanut's loss has more meaning.
When I got home Tom introduced himself to my boss briefly and then we went in. She asked how everything went and I told her everything I wrote out here except I started crying hard and she cuddled me and told me to take it slow. But unlike other times I've cried since Peanut passed, that cry felt different. Like I was weak and emptied out, but not emptied out of all the good things, more like emptied out of the heavy things to make room for even more. And I haven't cried since. Not over Luke, and not over Peanut.
So I'm doing ok. Me and Tom met up twice more to clean the suite and I joined him for the inspection yesterday with the landlord. It felt good to leave that on a good note too, because the landlord let me move in back in fall which he didn't have to do especially with Peanut, and always treated us well. He told me that even though I wasn't an official tenant I could use him as a reference.
After the inspection yesterday Tom took me, my boss, boss' husband, and their daughter for dinner at a REALLY nice place which we all said was unnecessary but he insisted. He said really nice things to me about how he's grateful I tried so hard to take care of Luke and knows personally how difficult it is to love him. He promised me that nothing was my fault and that I can let it go now because he's going to take care of him and I should focus on moving forward into adulthood without any burdens. Idk maybe you had to be there but the way he said it was like... maybe I'm reading too much into it but it was like he was really specifically saying this stuff for Luke's sake or bc Luke hurt me and he felt like he had to make up to me? But it was nice either way.
Oh and I reconnected with a few of my old friends from high school!! The ones who I had a bad falling out with over Luke and my bad choices. My one friend Taylor reached out to me after I made my story on May 22nd a selfie of me reading that 'why does he do that' book and saying "1 month single 🙏" I guess a mutual mentioned it to Taylor and she added my number on sc again.
It's only kinda been small talk and stuff so far, but I've been trying to be really nice and I'm waiting for it to come up to take accountability for my bad treatment of the friend group but I'm thinking maybe I should say something first bc no one is bringing it up? Idk, if anyonr has advice I would appreciate it a lot bc I really want to be so much better than I am and I was and everything. For Peanut, but also for me.
This is the last update I'll post bc honestly it feels like things are mostly sorted out and I can't help but feel like I'm wasting people's time. 💀 But thanks again everyone and for those who wanted an update I hope you enjoy this freaking novel...

Greetings Experts,
Need your expert inputs/suggestions/advice on our current scenario.
Just to set the context, we are running a Preschool as a Franchise from a well-known brand - our first entrepreneurial venture. Started operations around 9 months back. We currently have the following staff: Centre Head (CH, similar to Principal), 1 Teacher, 1 Help Staff, and 1 intern who will be made a Permanent Teacher in a week. CH's role is primarily to manage the overall Center, do online marketing, oversee the staff, do counseling for parents, and take care of admissions. There's also a Center Manager working online primarily through calls and online meetings, who oversees the staff, and daily activities, liaises with the Franchiser, and provides general guidance for the staff - I know there's an overlap here, will detail it below. As a Business Partner, I visit the Center maybe once in 2 weeks or in case of any occasion as well - I'm not involved in the day-to-day activities. We have weekly meetings to check on the progress and I provide the required guidance to the team. I always ensure to get feedback from my team, things that can be improved on and provide motivation in general. We do have CCTV per the directives from the Franchiser and biometrics at the Center.
General Leave policies per the Franchiser are 1.5 days Casual Leave every month with no carry forward. Summer Vacation of 20 days spread over 2 months was allocated to the Teaching staff only per the Franchiser. We extended this leave policy to the CH and Help Staff as well, as we would like to take good care of our staff. All Sundays and 2nd & 4th Saturdays are weekends. All public holidays per the State Government Calendar. School timings are 9-5 for CH and Help Staff; 9 to 4 for Teachers.
Now coming to the scenario, there are a couple of things that I would like to seek expert opinion on. 1. Center Head was on Medical leave for 3 weeks last month due to a minor accident. According to the Franchiser, there's no Medical Leave policy as such. Was researching this and came across a policy for another private school mentioning half-pay Medical Leave with the required Medical Certificate and so on. CH had already utilized 12 days of Vacation in the 2 months, and then 18 days of Medical Leave. Now, even if I consider adjusting the Medical Leave against the vacation days, it will still be 10 days more than the available days. How should we go about with this situation? Should 10 days be considered for Half-Pay? Or are there any other suggestions? Have to make the salary payment by tonight. Appreciate a quick response on this. 2. Our school timings are 9 to 5. For the month before this accident, our CH was consistently late by more than an hour or so. Had provided verbal feedback on this requesting to be on time. I had given a formal warning as well at the start of April, but unfortunately, CH met with an accident after that. Post joining back, CH was again late by 45 minutes on the first day back to work. This was the day our Franchiser Zonal Manager was visiting the Center and I was at the Center as well. This prompted me to provide a Second and Final Warning to the CH and mentioned will have to take disciplinary action if it is repeated. What can I do further in this situation to ensure that the CH arrives on time? How did the veterans of this sub manage such situations? All our other staff are almost always on time, except on rare occasions. 3. We had to get Center Manager involved as the CH was not doing the activities/duties that they were supposed to do. When provided with certain tasks or instructions to the CH, there is often a delay in the completion of the said task by the CH requiring multiple follow-ups too. And this is not a one-off case, noticed this in many situations. I don't micromanage - I expect them to take accountability as a responsible adult and perform the required actions in a timely manner. How do you deal with a situation where the staff is not performing the tasks allocated to them within a reasonable time? 4. During the absence of CH, our Teacher had to take over the role of CH in the interim. Teacher was paid Overtime for staying beyond the normal teacher's timing. And the best part is, the teacher was able to convert the enquiries from the Parents into confirmed admissions during this time frame more than what was done by CH. We had received multiple enquiries previously and these were not confirmed. Now that I look back with the insights that I have now, I'm wondering if it has something to do with the way our CH is pitching it to the Parents. Now I'm considering promoting the Teacher to CH and converting the CH to Teacher - just pondering on this. Any thoughts on this? Did anyone have to do anything of a similar sort for your venture?
Let me know your thoughts on this. Looking forward to hearing from the experienced folks. Open to hear advice in general and words of wisdom too for a budding entrepreneur.
Thanks in advance.
PS: should I post this to the smallbusiness and startups?