Garbage shed

Woodworking: all things made from trees.

2008.08.27 23:03 Woodworking: all things made from trees.

Woodworking is your worldwide home for discussion of all things woodworking, carpentry, fine furniture, power tools, hand tools, and just about anything else about making - anything - from trees!
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2013.01.31 10:32 SplodeyDope Florida Man!

A subreddit dedicated to the world's worst superhero, Florida Man
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2024.05.19 19:13 harvestgobs 3 y/o reactive Border Collie just started Prozac; Can anyone else share their/compare my experience?

I've had Maia since she was a puppy. We thought she was having a lot of issues due to her fear periods, but as she got older and her issues got more severe, we decided we needed to do something.
For example, on Mondays, garbage day, the sound of the trucks would cause her so much distress that she wouldn't eat and would run into walls. She'd also become very aggressive.
We took her to the vet and were given trazadone and told to go to a behaviorist, but didn't get much progress for the amount of money we were spending.
We had some issues with the vet unrelated to her anxiety (with both Maia and my cat), so we ended up changing vets and the new vet suggested trying her on Prozac.
She's been on it about a week or two, and I will say, it seems like the edge has been taken off. She no longer climbs on us and barks in our face. I can even safely take her for a walk again!
There is one trouble side effect though that I was hoping people could share their experiences with. Maia has separation anxiety, and we have to have the house cut in half because sometimes she chases the cat.
Yesterday, my mom was cleaning her room and Maia spent all morning whining/crying/vocalizing and panting because she was separated.
Today, we were cleaning the house and, though we weren't near her and let her go to her safe space, she continued to whine and vocalize all morning as we were cleaning. It also took her a very long time to finally settle down and stop pacing/panting.
I know this can be a side effect of the fluoxetine, but I was wondering if this is a side effect that other people have seen in their dogs and if it eventually diminishes/goes away.
Sorry if I'm not making sense, my vet is closed today, so I probably won't get a chance to talk to them until Monday or Tuesday and was just wondering if it was normal and if its something that might occur as long as she's on prozac or if those side effects might eventually go away.
submitted by harvestgobs to reactivedogs [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 01:43 OddGazelle121 No idea what to do with my test levels

I made a post earlier but basically I’m 21 years old and have decently low test. My last 3 tests ranged from 280 ng/dl to 380 ng/dl. I’m decently strong and have a decent bit of muscle but my sex drive, energy, motivation, etc is in the garbage. I would like to do a cycle of test but feel that I’m way to younger and my longevity and fertility is very important to me. Trt is out of the question because I don’t want to pin for the rest of my life. These last few months I’ve been focusing on sleep and vitamins but nothings helped. I’ve also had a very tough time cutting weight compared to a few years ago when I could shed weight very easily. 6’3” 250 lbs. what can I do to improve my test naturally or thoughts about any cycle that wouldn’t mess up my longevity or hormones permanently (if that’s even possible). Thank you guys
Most recent bloodwork: https://imgur.com/a/gmtlsN4
Edit: my doctor said that my levels are low but still within range and there’s nothing to do.
submitted by OddGazelle121 to Testosterone [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:59 GoAheadMMDay UPDATE 3: Torment Techniques Used by Canadian and US Militaries

UPDATE 3: Torment Techniques Used by Canadian and US Militaries
Update #3 appears at the bottom.
Due to numerous disparaging comments by multiple individuals, I have reposted my article.
Heckling does not change what occurred. People need to know these truths, especially those who have experienced the same. They need to know they are sane, that such things are indeed being perpetrated, and the perpetrators use shame to silence them and protect their activities.
I write to encourage them not to listen to disparaging people who speak without knowledge.
February 10, 2024
I am Joseph Cafariello, a Canadian citizen and ex-member of the Canadian military. Of sound mind, not on medication, not a drug user, not a marijuana smoker, not an alcohol drinker, with no mental disorders.
I recently posted to this Liberty subreddit experiences of harassment by Vancouver's police and fire departments (Vancouver, BC, Canada). I’m the fellow who was repeatedly ordered by police to stay out of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, and was continually harassed whenever I visited the park (which I do every second day on my early morning walks).
Immediately following that post, they changed some of the techniques they use in my case. They were either informed of my post or found it themselves, seeing as my internet activity, and phone activity for that matter, are under continuous surveillance (plenty of proof which I will not include here to avoid running off-topic).
In this post, I would like to shed some light on other harassment which is still ongoing, since it occurs in private, away from potential observers. It involves the Canadian and US militaries.
Havana Syndrome
In 2016, numerous employees of the Canadian and US embassies in Havana, Cuba, started experiencing head injuries ranging from mild headaches to concussions. It happened in their sleep, and came to be called Havana Syndrome.
Wikipedia explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana\_syndrome):
“Havana syndrome is a cluster of idiopathic symptoms experienced mostly abroad by U.S. government officials and military personnel. The symptoms range in severity from pain and ringing in the ears to cognitive dysfunction and were first reported in 2016 by U.S. and Canadian embassy staff in Havana, Cuba. Beginning in 2017, more people, including U.S. intelligence and military personnel and their families, reported having these symptoms in other places, such as China, India, Europe, and Washington, D.C. The U.S. Department of State, Department of Defense, and other federal entities have called the events "Anomalous Health Incidents" (AHI). Of over a thousand purported cases, the majority of US investigative bodies found only a few dozen cases to be suspicious.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you exactly what happens, because I have been experiencing this since I first joined the Canadian military back in 2002, and am still experiencing these “torments” (as I call them) to this day, already 3 years after leaving the military.
I go to bed. In about 15 minutes, just as I am on the cusp of falling asleep, a hear and feel a heavy thud reverberate and ultimately strike my skull. My body releases a sharp burst of adrenalin, my heart starts racing, and my blood’s circulation speeds up significantly. Depending on the severity of the blow, it can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep again. Though there have been times I could not return to sleep for more than 2 hours.
A strong headache is felt immediately, and lasts for hours. There have been times when my heart felt like it was going to burst, having been startled as such.
The pulse to the head sometimes reverberates through the wall and my bed’s headboard. I distinctly feel as though I have been hit on the top of my skull. At other times, it feels as though the pulse has come through the air, striking the side of my skull.
This is not a sleep disorder, for it does not occur regularly. At times, my sleep is disturbed in this manner 3 or 4 days in a row. At other times, there is no disturbance for up to a week. But they never let me go more than a week without such interruptions to my sleep.
Neither is it sleep apnea, as I do not awaken gasping for breath. The pounding headaches, sudden release of adrenaline, and heart palpitations I experience are caused by external impacts of sound waves or air bursts.
Sonic Weapons
How these pulses are produced is not easy to identify. As Wikipedia explains:
“Once the story became public, various U.S. government representatives attributed the incidents to attacks by unidentified foreign actors, and various U.S. officials blamed the reported symptoms on a variety of unidentified and unknown technologies, including ultrasound and microwave weapons.”
Sonic weapons have been in use for many years by militaries, and by police in crowd control. As Wikipedia explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic\_weapon):
“Some sonic weapons make a focused beam of sound or of ultrasound; others produce an area field of sound. As of 2023 military and police forces make some limited use of sonic weapons.”
(Do not believe the 2023 timeline. The Canadian military has been using these weapons since the early 2000’s at the latest.)
Wikipedia continues:
“Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation. This is usually sufficient to incapacitate a person. Less powerful sound waves can cause humans to experience nausea or discomfort.”
The users of these technologies must also be using thermal detection equipment to monitor the target’s sleep. As I mentioned, I most often feel these blows the moment I am falling asleep. Body temperature drops when we sleep, and brain activity slows. Heat-detection equipment is likely being used to identify the point at which the target is falling asleep.
Why they prefer to strike at the start of someone’s sleep as opposed to the middle of their sleep, I do not know. Perhaps their intent is to deprive the body of early sleep, limiting the amount of deep sleep available to the person before their alarm rings in the morning.
Ordinary Hammers
Not all such “torments” (as I call them) are caused by high-tech equipment. I have heard and felt distinct hammer strikes running along the 2x4 beams inside my walls. These strikes can be a single hard strike, or several strikes in a row. It is definitely caused by a person with a hammer because the intervals between strikes are equidistant in time; that is, the time spacing between strikes is not random and does not change from strike to strike, but is constant between strikes, exactly as when someone is hammering. And no, it is not someone hanging pictures at 1:30 am, multiple times a week, for years.
On one occasion, when I was standing at my kitchen sink, I felt the floor-board directly under my feet pulse so sharply it felt like a brick had struck the soles of my feet. In this case, my military neighbour likely used a hammer to strike the floorboard on his side of the wall. It is the only plausible explanation.
Surveillance
This leads to surveillance of one’s activities at home. I have plenty of proofs of that. They seem insignificant on an individual basis. But when you put them all together, they present a clear picture of home surveillance.
My laptop computer’s lid cracked one night, at the bottom left corner of the screen. The next day at work, I heard my military supervisor relate to another co-worker that the night before, his laptop computer’s lid cracked at the bottom left corner. I swear to the Lord in Heaven, I am being truthful.
I tested my suspicion of being surveilled. At home one night, I blurted out-loud, “VW Passat. What an ugly sounding word, ‘Passat’”, I said. A few days later, my military colleagues at work started playing a card game at lunch, invented by one of them. The name he gave his game was “Passat”, and when he spoke it, he looked at me for a reaction. If you ever contact the Halifax military base, ask for the Claims Department and ask them if they are still playing Passat.
On another occasion, at a time when I frequented the gym every second day for a few years, I suspected my van had been fitted with a listening device. I suspected so because a number of things I had spoken with people about on my phone while in my van (nothing illegal) were repeated by people at the gym in conversations among themselves. Too many times, parts of other people's conversations matched parts of conversations I had had with others while I was in my van.
I already knew my phone was being tapped, but I also suspected my van was bugged. So one evening while driving in my van, I blurted out-loud a number of things I said I hated. "I hate (this or that)"; "I hate it when...". One of them was, "I hate when people chew gum with their mouths open." I then vocalized an exaggerated gnawing sound, "Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw."
The very next time I went to the gym, 2 days later, while I was at an exercise, a fellow sat at an exercise directly behind me. And sure enough, he started chewing with his mouth open, vocalizing that gnawing sound, "Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw." I didn't look behind at him, because I knew what was going on, and I wanted to avoid playing into his hand. So he repeated himself again and again until I was done and moved to a different station. Now, honestly, who chews gum at the gym? You can't. Or you run the risk of choking for the heavy breathing, not to mention when laying down on benches. And with precisely the same exaggerated vocalized gnawing sound I had made in my van just 2 days prior.
Their whole intent is to let you know you are being surveilled. They want you to know, as both a warning and a provocation. They want you to say something, to launch accusations, which they would readily deny, making you look paranoid. If you react too strongly, they could even have you diagnosed with some kind of disorder, and put you on medication, which further plays into their hand. (More regarding medications in the last section of this post.)
This is why, as I mentioned in my previous post, they would park their cars shining their high beams on me as I walked past them during my morning walk. And why on some occasions, a group of 3 or 4 would exit their cars and stand on my path just as I approached, forcing me to go around them. They would then remain standing on the path until my return trip through, and after I had passed by the second time, then would then return to their cars - making it absolutely clear I was their interest.
Their intent is not only to make me aware, but also to present themselves in close proximity to me, within easy reach, in the hope I would confront them, resulting in an altercation that could land me in a lot of hot water - 4 witnesses against me, all pleading innocence.
Again, it is all designed to make you look bad, and to warrant some kind of legal measure against you - preferably a medical diagnosis, discrediting you in everything you say about them. If they can't refute your claims, their only remaining option is to discredit you. That's what all of these tricks are designed to accomplish. Who would believe anything you say, once you have been diagnosed with a disorder?
There are plenty more examples. But who would really believe them? I’ll save them for the future.
Home Invasion
Both during and after my military service, I have had my apartments entered without any signs of break-ins. How? Lock-picking and duplicate keys. Indications? Missing objects; ie: money, phone adaptor, etc. Nothing major. Just something to make us understand we are being watched, and to make us understand what they can do.
But it is always something small, something for which you would be ridiculed for divulging.
Two more examples: I found my razor, which I always lay-down razor-end to the wall, turned around, razor-end toward me. Also, in one of my house slippers I found a small shoe sticker on the up-side of the heel. I had those slipper for years, and never had any shoe stickers on them. Yet there it was, clearly visible on the top surface of my slipper, not the bottom. Could I have stepped on a shoe sticker when barefoot in my apartment, only to have the sticker transfer itself to my slipper when I wore it? How many shoe stickers do you have laying around your apartment that you can accidentally step onto?
If I had stepped onto a sticker in my apartment and had it stick to my heel, that means the sticky side was up against my skin. This means the sticker would have had to flip upside down such that the sticky side would then be down, allowing the sticker to stick to the slipper. Do you really think that happened? That sticker was not there when I left my apartment, but it was there when I returned. And it was the wrong sticker, wrong brand, wrong size.
Again, what is their intent? To make someone look ridiculous so no one will believe them should they speak of other more sensitive things.
Staged Incidents
The above incidents clearly point to coordinated and staged events (at my work, my home, on my walks, etc). This is so frequently met with incredulity. "But that would require coordination on the part of so many people," the public dismisses. "They wouldn't do that."
Oh yes they would, and they have, as explained in https://fightgangstalking.com/. Note the documented cases involving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS, Canada's equivalent to the US' CIA) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, Canada's national police force), which were reported in national newspapers.
From https://fightgangstalking.com/ :
“Disruption operations often involve tactics which are illegal, but difficult to prove. These tactics include – but are not limited to – overt surveillance (stalking), slander, blacklisting, “mobbing” (intense, organized harassment in the workplace), “black bag jobs” [home invasions], abusive phone calls, computer hacking, framing, threats, blackmail, vandalism, “street theater” (staged physical and verbal interactions with minions of the people who orchestrate the stalking), harassment by noises, and other forms of bullying. Many of these tactics were used by the FBI during its illegal COINTELPRO operations, as documented by stolen official documents and subsequent Congressional investigations.
"Although the general public is mostly unfamiliar with the practice, references to “disruption” operations – described as such – do occasionally appear in the news media, even though that fact would apparently be news to the editors of The New York Times. In May 2006, for example, an article in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used “Diffuse and Disrupt” tactics against suspects for whom they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute. A criminal defense attorney stated that many of her clients complained of harassment by authorities, although they were never arrested."
She can add me to that list too.
For the Benefit of Others
The experiences I have recounted here seem so trivial, so insignificant, they make you look ridiculous if you talk about them. But if we don’t talk about such things, no one will ever know about them. Other people have experienced the same, and are forced to endure such torments in silence. They need encouragement to talk about their own experiences, and so I write about mine in the hope they will talk about theirs, even if I do look ridiculous. The perpetrators are more ridiculous for doing them.
I remember a military colleague being hauled away by military police one morning, as she was struggling and having a violent fit. A fellow on her floor told me she was throwing chairs at her walls screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”. When he mentioned that, I knew exactly what they had done to her. She was considered unruly, and was being watched intently. They wanted her out, and that is how they accomplished it. Through wall tapping and sleep deprivation, they push you to the breaking point. And when you finally lose control and do something rash, they pounce on you, and you’re out. Now she has a criminal record, considered a criminal when in reality she was a victim. Welcome to the Canadian military, and other militaries besides, I am sure.
There are dozens upon dozens of experiences I could present. But who will really read them? Worse still, who will really believe them? I overheard my military supervisor in Halifax whisper to another, “Do you think he knows?”, after I had mentioned one of the many “coincidences” I experienced, but with a tone of my being aware it was not a mere coincidence. As I turned my face to my computer screen, I whispered under my breath, but still loud enough for him to hear, “Yes, (rank) (name), I know.” A few minutes later, as he walked past my desk, he leaned in by my ear and whispered, “We’re trying to help you.” I should have pressed him for answers right then and there, but you just don’t know how much trouble you can get into when making such accusations in the military. So I let it go. But I will never forget.
Should anyone reading this ever decide to launch some kind of inquiry, I can mention names of over 100 people to contact, including military personnel, family members, neighbours, building managers, and others who have been contacted by military personnel with false narratives about me. They flash their ID’s and other credentials, and people believe anything they say. They turn family, friends, co-workers and neighbours against you, even recruiting their participation. Your acquaintances not only participate, but actually feel justified and emboldened playing tricks on you. It isn't their fault, though; they have been misled. I would reference them solely for corroboration.
As a final thought, here are explanations of two military programs in which certain persons (sometimes military, sometimes civilian) are kept under constant surveillance, and are in some cases subjected to conditioning in an attempt to turn them into what is called a “sleeper agent”. Almost all of the tactics presented below have been experience by me, including constant surveillance (ie: my previous post here regarding being harassed on my morning walks) and sleep deprivation (as per the top portion of this post, which other military members in Cuba and elsewhere around the world have also experienced).
Pentagon’s Signature Reduction Program
See Newsweek’s article: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-1591881
Some excerpts from that Newsweek article, plus more background information on the Pentagon’s Signature Reduction Program, can be found here: https://fightgangstalking.com/
“The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called “signature reduction.” The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.
“…a little-known sector of the American military, but also a completely unregulated practice. No one knows the program’s total size, and the explosion of signature reduction has never been examined for its impact on military policies and culture. Congress has never held a hearing on the subject. And yet the military developing this gigantic clandestine force challenges U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, the code of military conduct and basic accountability.
“…The signature reduction effort engages some 130 private companies to administer the new clandestine world. Dozens of little known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations.
"Federal spy agencies are using Americans to spy on their fellow citizens – the same approach to governance famously employed by communist East Germany."
How to Develop a Hypnotic Sleeper Agent
By Dantalion Jones / Masters of Mind Control
The following “was” on the web, but has been removed. Surprise, surprise. But I saved its web files to my computer years ago, knowing that sooner or later it would be removed. I made a jpeg image of the web page as it once appeared, attached here.
Note that I have experienced almost all of the tactics described below, including the stalking I mentioned in my previous post here (regular walks in the park), the sleep deprivation noted at the top of this post, and the surveillance and intrusions described here as well.
Quoting the now-removed webpage: “How to Develop a Hypnotic Sleeper Agent” (from here to end of post):
Amid all the conspiracy theories one of the most feared is that there exist "sleeper agents" in our society who are programmed to come into service when they are triggered by a phone call or key word.
These alleged sleeper agents don't even know they are programmed to become saboteurs, soldiers, suicide bomber, etc because of the thoroughness of their programming. They are the feared "Manchurian Candidate" that the movies portray.
The question is "Are they real?"
If they are true sleeper agents there is no way of telling until they are activated. One can however theorize exactly how they are made.
Indoctrination
Using indoctrination a person can be made to embrace a religious or philosophical belief that would make becoming a sleeper agent possible.
This would be a person so committed to an ideal they would be willing to wait patiently as a member of society until they are called into action. These people would know their mission and consciously hold it secret while interacting with the rest of society.
Conditioning
Conditioning is a repetitive process where the desired responses are enforced and rewarded and unwanted responses are punished. This can be done consciously as part of training drill and it can be done subconsciously using hypnosis or drugs to create amnesia.
Hypnosis
It has been demonstrated that hypnosis can create "amnesia walls" in which the subject has no conscious memory of what happened in the hypnosis session. It has further been demonstrated that hypnosis can give post hypnotic instruction to be carried out automatically in the waking state without the subject knowing it or questioning the behavior.
What follows is conjecture and theory based on testimonials of people who were alleged to be sleeper agents and soldiers.
Continuous Supervisions
Continuous supervision doesn't mean that the subject is cut off completely from society. It means that they are constantly overseen and every aspect of their lives are managed (without their knowledge or consent) to support their hypnotic programming.
This would include:
• Repeated reinforcement of all hypnotic conditioning.
• Handlers. Handlers are people who help maintain the subjects environment to maintain all the programming. They can play the role of family, friends, lovers, psychologists, coaches or any roll the subject perceives as supportive. The truth is the handlers are their to support the successful fulfillment of the programming and not the subject as a person.
• Minimal sleep so that the mind/brain does not process all the sleeper conditioning during sleep.
• Creating constant environmental challenges like unemployment or poverty. This gives the subject something other than their programming to focus on.
• Frequent hospitalization. This gives overt opportunity to sedate the subject for conditioning. If the subject has a history of hospitalizations for mental disturbances all the better. No one will take them seriously.
Joseph Cafariello
PS... Today is the second day after this post (February 12, 2024). A garbage truck just slammed into my parked car.
PPS... I finish writing this post because I am satisfied with its shape and content; not because of what happened to my car.
It is similar to when you are reaching for your coat, and someone tells you, "Take your coat." Since you have to take your coat, your brain tells you it's ok to obey them, and you comply. They just created an instance where they led you, and you followed them. And your brain accepted it.
It's a technique the military uses all the time. It trains you to accept instructions from that person or group. Done enough times, you become comfortable obeying them.
I just say, "I take my coat because I choose to, not because you tell me to." It's important to make that clear, to block the conditioning and affirm our self-governance; not just to them, but to ourselves as well. Now our brain realizes we took our coat by our own choice; we are still in command.
So too, I say regarding today's event. "Thanks for the warning, but I had already finished writing my post. I finished by my own choosing."
UPDATES 1 & 2: February 26 & March 07, 2024:
My apartment was once again entered while I was out. Either a key was used or the lock was picked. This may or may not have included assistance from building staff. Home invasions are included in the list of their techniques noted above, referred to as "black bag jobs".
All tenants on my floor received new fridges a couple of weeks ago. I removed the tape securing the bins inside my new fridge, and also removed all styrofoam pads from the corners of the glass shelves when I repositioned them.
The person(s) who have been invading my living space on a regular basis have struck again. As you can see in the photo below, the styrofoam pads on the corners of my fridge's shelves were restored when I was out of my apartment. I had removed all pads when I repositioned the shelves. Yet now they are back.
It is a tactic used to undermine our observational awareness in an attempt to make us second-guess and doubt ourselves. The aim is to cause people to feel less sure not only of the things we have done, but also feel less sure of the things others have done. They want us to question the accuracy of our observations and memory.
The idea is to train you to dismiss any anomalies you may observe as being your own misperception of things. Once they convince you not to trust your own judgement, they are free to do whatever they want to you, and you will simply accept it without questioning.
UPDATE 3: May 18, 2024:
Confrontations with individuals keep occurring, at times potentially violent. Following are just 3 such encounters as of late.
1 - Kick-boxer in the park:
As I parked my car in one of the parking lots in Vancouver's Stanley Park one night, another vehicle drove up behind me and parked several spots away. A tall man exited that vehicle, and walked hastily along the path I always walk, down some steps to the water's sea wall path. I took my time and followed my usual walk, also down the steps down to the sea wall. The man knew my routine, and was in a hurry to get ahead of me.
As I walked along the sea wall, I saw the same man sitting on a bench, playing a loud religious sermon in a foreign language on a device I did not clearly see. As I walked past him, he called out to me to stop and chat. I ignored him and continued walking past. He rose and started walking behind me.
I opened my umbrella, turned, and walked past him the other way, returning to the stairs back to the parking lot. He also turned and continued following me. I started running. He also started running. I ran up the steps, as did he.
Being taller than I am, his legs are longer than mine, and he quickly caught up to me on a grassy patch at the top of the steps. I turned to him and asked, "Why are you following me?" He did not reply, but stood profile to me, the same stance a kick-boxer uses when ready to kick someone. He was tall, thin, and in excellent physical shape as you would see in a kick-boxer.
He did not speak at all, but was just waiting for me to make a move. I turned, entered my vehicle and left. The encounter continued with a chase through the park in our cars. Yes, that is correct. He chased me out of the park in his car.
2 - Told to keep quiet:
The perpetrators need to operate with as little detection as possible, and they repeatedly warn their subjects to keep their mouths shut about their experiences.
On another of my recent nightly walks, a man stood on the sidewalk ahead of me about half a block away, looked at me, and shouted into the sky at nobody, giving the appearance of being a homeless person shouting for no reason. He then started walking in my direction. I continued walking straight. As he passed me, he leaned into my face and shouted into my ear, "Shut the f_ck up!" I continued walking in my direction, and he resumed walking in his.
The idea is to make it seem as though he is just a deranged man wandering the streets at night, shouting at nothing, so that when he shouts at me, any observer would simply dismiss his actions. But in reality, he was sent to send me a message to stop publishing posts like this, which I had done many times on many sites, and continue to. They don't like it when we reveal their methods. But the truth must be known.
3 - You'll be sorry:
On another occasion, while returning from grocery shopping one afternoon, I walked past a man sitting by a storefront. He was clean-cut, wearing clean clothes, without any carts or wagons or any belongings of any kind. As I passed him, he asked me for some spare change. I replied, "I'm sorry," and continued walking past. He replied, "You will be."
There are numerous other experiences, like two seemingly unassociated men standing on the sea wall about 100 meters away from each other, each of them spitting just as I walked past each one.
There are too many experiences to mention. Looking at each experience individually, one would easily dismiss them as being unrelated and simply coincidental. But put them all together and a picture starts to form, like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.
As I hand you each piece of the puzzle one by one, you dismiss each piece, saying, "This could be anything." And you discard it. You keep discarding each piece as I hand it to you. By the end of it, you look down at the table and say, "You have nothing." That's because you looked at each piece as a separate item and threw it away. But if you leave the pieces on the table as I hand them to you and do not hastily discard them, you will see they form a clear picture when put all together.
We must look at all these events as a whole. Individually, each one could be anything. But when all of these experiences are put together and considered as a whole, they form an undeniable picture. Do not be quick to dismiss each piece. Leave the pieces on the table and look at the whole. The picture I present is sound. Remember, I have all the pieces; you do not. I see the picture more clearly than you do.
https://preview.redd.it/we31ymcsm91d1.jpg?width=966&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d56ac3dd3558a60d477ba9315104d1b66b139f8
submitted by GoAheadMMDay to Liberty [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:34 djangomahoni A garbage shed in Munich, Germany

A garbage shed in Munich, Germany submitted by djangomahoni to streetart [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:17 TGhost21 Fuck Petco moron groomers

I can fucking believe that while dropping my Golden Retriever for a bath and de shedding and after giving CLEAR instructions to DO NOT CUT THE LONG HAIR IN THE CHEST, BEHIND BOTH LEGS AND TAIL, the fuckwitz inbred morons basically shaved my dog. This place needs to lose its license. I am so incensed right now. Fuck this garbage place.
submitted by TGhost21 to petco [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 05:14 ELite_Predator28 Sister refuses to let me change her A/C, engine filter, or A/C hose on her beater car to save her some money and my little brother some future trouble

Super annoyed by my ice queen of a sister who drives an '06 Mazda Tribute. Junker car, we've had it in the family for a few years. I drive a 2013 Mazda 3 sedan and I recently became interested in retrofitting it with some aftermarket parts, like replacing the radio with an Android radio, routing a rear-view camera in through the trunk, replacing the interior lights with LEDS, replacing the headlights with LEDs, running an 8-gauge wire to the throttle body from ground to improve response to the pedal on a 10 year old car (I can't believe this actually worked lol), etc. Next on the docket is getting a cold air intake, and some other fun stuff, but that's beside the point. She plans on getting a new car while the Tribute is likely going to my brother who just got his licence. I figured it was time for a little spring cleaning.
I haven't been in that car in a while, and noticed that when I pulled it out of the driveway to make way for my car, firstly, IT REEKS. My sister had some bad allergies and it's likely she doesn't notice because she's all stuffed up. Filter is 100% all filled with garbage like leaves - we park under a giant oak tree that sheds leaves all year round. Was the case for my car. When I press her about this, she just claims that the car is old and just deals with it. She also has no idea when or even if we've ever changed the filter since my mom bought the car like 20 years ago. Secondly, the A/C is coming out of the defrosting vents, which means that there's a hose that's likely all corroded or leaking, causing the pressure to go down. Is old car, very likely. Lastly, it takes like 20 minutes for the A/C to actually kick in. Again, probably the same hose that controls the pressure for the A/C. IDK how she's dealing with this as we approach summer and it's going to be like 95F out here every day.
So, I decided to start small and ordered the parts for the Cabin Air Filter and one for the engine for good measure. Maybe there's just a bunch of crap in the filter that makes the pressure suck (huehue)? The air filter for the A/C literally sits on a tray underneath the hood, held together by two plastic clips. Literally just have to pull it out and replace it, then put it back in. Wait for her to go out for the day, then I open the hood. I'm sure I can see the corroded hose and where the A/C lines are losing pressure. Inform her that I can replace the hose and the cabin filter do that her car (and my brother's future car) doesn't smell like a swamp. Inform her as much, and she effectively tells me to piss off and gets all bitchy about it.
The killer part is that she doesn't even drive the thing outside of work - she drives my parents cars to go out and stuff.
I guess the my main annoyance with her is that she would never try to do something like this for me.
submitted by ELite_Predator28 to mildlyinfuriating [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 02:05 lilpotatobake AITA for trading my family for a boyfriend and a bachelor's degree?

I (23F) have been struggling with this issue for several months now and have been receiving somewhat mixed reviews, so advice is also welcome. I am also a first time poster and this is going to be long, so hello!
To start, let me give some context to my family dynamic. My parents divorced when I was very little and have since remarried (spouses will be referred to as bonus mom or bonus dad). My dad has always had 100% custody of my brother (20M) and I and we have also moved around a lot, so I have no friends dating before college friends.
With the exception of two seasons of a several month program, I have always lived with my father. He married my bonus mom when I was 18 and they have since had my two sisters (4 and 1 years old) and have a baby on the way. My bonus mom and I have had a good relationship, and while we have had some major rough patches, her and I have both put a lot of effort into our relationship and as a result our relationship grew much better and our respect for each other grew as well. I also very much adore my baby sisters.
My mother married my bonus dad while I was in middle school and have always adored him as well. He has been nothing but kind to myself and my brother and is a massive teddy bear. For a long time my mother and I have been somewhat distant from each other. I think we both just hurt from the decisions she had made in the past, but since then we've grown closer and this situation has made even more so.
All sets of parents are religious. My father and bonus mom are a niche kind of Christian. My mother and bonus dad are more of a typical kind of Christian. This piece is a very dynamic part of the story.
After my dad got a job in another state my bonus mom, brother, two sisters, and myself moved there. I quickly found a college to finish my associates degree that I fell in love with. I finished up my associates with little issue and had planned to stop there. However, when approached by the registrar with a degree audit letting me know I could finish my bachelor's within a year, all of my parents strongly encouraged me to pursue it. I was unsure at first because the amount of debt I had accumulated on this schooling venture made me nervous (the state where I had originally started my degree allowed me to pursue it for free, this one did not), but I chose to pursue it anyway.
That fall semester I started to pursue my bachelor's degree I got to know someone who I had previously noticed and admired from afar. He would become my boyfriend (21M). Let's call him Babe because he is one. Him and I have a lot of the same passions and our shy friendship developed into feelings over the course of the semester. To make the long story short, we ended up sleeping together and going on dates, and throughout this whole ordeal I never once felt used as I had in previous relationships with less intimacy. I felt 100% loved and cared for and I still do to this day.
At the end of the semester during finals week my bonus mom noticed him at the choir and jazz concert that my bonus mom and I both performed in. She had singled him out in the crowd when she noticed him observing me and later that evening asked who that "boy sitting alone" was. I tried to play dumb at first, but said he was a fellow classmate and friend. She asked if we had feelings for one another, to which I said yes. She asked me, "OP, why do you keep getting into these relationships that won't work?" Before this moment she had never seen him before and had never spoken to him before that. She informed me that we would have to talk to my father about this, and then I went to bed.
Side Note
In referring to "these relationships" she is making reference to a coworker I had liked that they also had not met. My dad and bonus mom instructed me to quit my job, which I did. There was also someone else who I had met online in a group of friends I had gotten close with, but they discouraged me from the group chat and from the guy, so I left the chat and him alone.
They had also not wanted me to go to a local Bible study because of how late it was at night and with how early I had to go to a different job in the morning. However, I think their real main concern "there are other young men there that are watching you and one of them could try and follow you home." Those parents live in the country just on the outskirts of town. The poor guy that would have supposedly followed me would have been lured into darkness and to a neighborhood that was very protective of its land.
When I have expressed that I wanted to go because I wanted friends, they told me, "Maybe God just wants you to be alone right now and just focus on Him." I at first thought this was legitimate, but later began to question that line of thinking.
Side Note Finished
Anyways, after that night I had texted Babe informing him what was happening. He told me if he needed to step back so I could work on my relationship with my parents he was more than willing to do so. He was also more than happy to be in my life. Just whatever was best for me. This was not the first time he had suggested this, and it honestly made me not want to let go of him more.
The next morning my father told me I needed to cut ties with Babe. I told Babe about this and we spent most of the day crying. Him and I performed our final concert that evening and I went to the grocery store to pick up some things for my bonus mom. She found out that I was at my concert and not at work and asked why she and my dad hadn't been invited. I told them that in the past I had tried to invite them to other concerts and things and had reminded them multiple times and put them on both calendars (monthly and weekly) for the family to see, but had been blamed for not informing them of my events the night of. I had grown tired of this and eventually stopped inviting them to things. They felt this wasn't fair since I tend to get my dates mixed up for different events, and said that they felt that trust had been broken.
Over the next few days (which was finals week, by the way) many conversations were had. I mostly listened and answered questions. Things seemed to be going well until they found out that we had slept together through a series of questions, and my father had blown up. He became so angry at Babe for "defiling [his] daughter" and described in detail how he wanted to hurt him. When they found out Babe was not a believer like ourselves, my father asked why I had stooped so low. It were these moments that sealed my decision to move out. My dad had assured me he was not angry with me, but I could not shake his anger towards Babe.
They also informed my brother what was going on, and him and I had a long conversation. He wanted me to stay with them at home, but was open to my boyfriend since " he must be really special if you slept with him." By the end of the conversation my brother had a positive impression of Babe and was decidedly Switzerland in this situation.
He had also asked me what I had done in return of my parents' kindness of letting me live rent-free in their home. I reminded him that any second that they needed something I would drop everything and do it for them. As long as I wasn't in class or at my in person job I would go wherever they wanted me to go and do whatever they wanted me to do. I would also help take care of my sisters on nights that I came home before they went to bed. I would give them baths and read them bedtime stories and get them dressed for bed and sometimes even put them to bed. I would watch them whenever I was asked to. If I had to do online work I either had to start late or it was cut short because my bonus mom would ask for help. Most anything that they would ask I would do. During days that I would be home all day I would help get the girls up and even watch them so that my bonus mom could nap and catch up on some much needed sleep. If my time and efforts were going unnoticed I was sadly displeased. I loved taking care of my sisters and helping around the house, but that doesn't mean that those things shouldn't be recognized. I also pointed out that I never asked for anything in return or ask for help with money. Sometimes I would get paid for watching them on date nights and whatnot (which were not often) but I never expected it.
This set of parents had also attempted to convince me to visit my mother and bonus dad and other family who live in another state. The irony of this is that they had thoroughly convinced me not to visit her on two occasions that I had planned to. The next evening my dad and bonus mom both told me the conditions of me living with them:
  1. The truck would be taken away for two months. I would be taken to and from wherever I needed to go. This truck was my grandfather's truck who passed away last summer. My grandmother had been very insistent in wanting to put it in my name, but my dad and I insisted it be put in his name. At this point, the keys had been taken away and I was being transported to and from school. I was regretting not getting this truck in my name.
  2. I would no longer be allowed to finish my bachelor's degree. Neither set of parents had ever contributed any money to my education or programs once high school finished up, with the exception of when I was asked to quit my job. Then my bonus mom and father paid maybe $400-$600 towards my tuition plus the other expenses and rent taken off for about two months before I got my online job with our friend.
  3. I may also be asked to quit my in person job as well.
I told them I wanted to move out.
I had a college friend who was getting married that weekend offer her apartment to me while her and her husband went on their honeymoon for three weeks. That would give me enough time to cram my things into her place and search for a new one. That is where I was planning to stay temporarily. I had a feeling that this may fall through, and asked Babe if I could store some of my things like my furniture at his place and potentially stay there temporarily if my friend's place fell through. He had spoken with his landlord who also lives in the house, and his landlord said it would be okay.
Between all of this, Babe and I called my mother twice and explained the situation. She asked various questions about our relationship, including how to navigate and respect one another's beliefs as well as his family's (his family is Catholic), and we both had confidence that we could have compassion and respect for one another. She encouraged me to listen to my voice and covered the rest of what I needed in order to attend school the next semester. She thought my father putting me at this ultimatum with school was highly unfair and not very cash money (my words not hers).
I told Babe that if I was going to do this, he couldn't leave me and had to stick with me through it. He promised he would and has stuck to that promise to this day.
I removed my wall decor among other decor and hardware and wrapped them in clothes and garbage bags. Babe texted me throughout the night as I did this. I finished up at around 2:00 in the morning.
The next day as my father was taking me to school he asked if I was still with Babe. I said yes. He told me as long as I was still with him and sleeping with him I would have to move out, preferably by that night. The next 10 minutes or so of the drive consisted my father speaking curses over my life. Some of the more memorable include:
"You should take off your head covering. God is not covering you."
"You are rushing to sin and to shed man's blood."
"You will be a curse of destruction to anyone's home you come under."
Etc, etc.
I left the vehicle silently and went to my main building of work to weep. I called Babe crying and he assured me he would be there soon. He was, and him and his friend agreed to help me move some things out of the house before they left to see their families for the three week winter break. Their families lived in a different state. Them putting their break on hold meant a lot to me since his friend and I had hardly spoken before, and we were off. My parents were also on their way to an appointment for my sister about an hour away, so I knew the house would be empty and safe. I had also texted a coworker who knew what was happening and asked her if she could help move things and she agreed to come.
I let Babe and his friend only in the necessary parts of the house to collect my things. His friend mostly stayed by his truck in my driveway. I did my best to separate anything that may be of my parents since I was doing my best to move quickly. At one point I was informed that my bonus mom wanted to speak with me via our neighbor, so I went to go talk to my bonus mom on the phone. I was confused why she hadn't called me directly. I believe my neighbor had noticed unknown people carrying things out of the house and had informed my parents.
Apparently this was a conference call and my bonus mom and dad began to yell at me about how it was inappropriate to bring unknown men to the house and at the police and my father were both on their way. I apologize profusely and told them that I would leave immediately and ask them to call the police off since I was going to leave. I apologize saying that I didn't intend to disrespect them further or cause tensions to heighten, but they said that they would not call the police off and that my dad would not turn around. He also threatened to get in a fist fight with any unknown man on his property.
I told Babe that my father and police were on their way. He hurriedly gathered what he could while I grabbed important documents and things and rushed out of the house.
Lo and behold the cops had arrived and Babe and his friend were being searched. I set my purse down by Babe's friend's truck since it had a pocket knife and pepper spray in it and approached them with my hands up. I was also searched and the three of us were separated for questioning. Soon there were a total of 5 police cars and several police officers circulating between the 3 of us, hungry for the gossip. Unfortunately, Babe's friend was not terribly interesting since he was just trying to help and had no idea what was happening, so he got the least amount of attention. The cops mostly passed between Babe and I since we had the juicy details. All of the cops were confused why this whole situation was happening to begin with. Even those who were religious were confused how my parents could reject my boyfriend without ever speaking to him, and why that would cause me to need to move out in less than 24 hours.
They let us go and we got out of there as fast as we could. It was through this interaction that Babe and I became officially a couple since they had to ask "Who's that in relationship to you?" and boyfriend/girlfriend seemed to be the best response.
We dropped off what we could at my boyfriend's house and we all returned to school so I could ask for a place and they could get whatever Babe's friend needed for their trip. Babe and I said heartfelt goodbyes and I gathered what I could after some crying and a snack, and walked the 45 minutes or so it takes to get to his house. I collapsed into his bed, called out of work, and cried until I passed out.
My friend had still offered her place to me, but I refused saying that I wasn't going to intrude my sorrow on her during a time that was supposed to be joyous for her. I also realized that without a car it would be an hour or more to walk to and from work, and I close so that was not a good option. She did allow me to use her truck, so when my coworker picked me up from work that evening, we grabbed my friend's truck and went to my parents' house to grab everything I could think of that was mine. I informed them that I was coming, and they did not respond. My brother was also instructed not to help me with my move.
My father had locked up the place like Fort Knox so I could not get in through the way that would give me the easiest access to my room. I got in through the front door and went downstairs to open the garage (I lived on the garage level in the basement lol; which was actually quite a nice area; it resembled a little apartment) and found he had disconnected the power to it. When I went upstairs to wait I ran into my dad locking the front door. He turned towards me and looked at me and surprise and said, "You really came in here while we were praying?" I didn't know what to think of that. He reconnected the power to the garage and opened it, and watched coldly as my coworker and I moved things out. At the end, I returned my keys and told my dad that I loved him. He said he loved me too, and my coworker and I went to my boyfriend's house to unload my things.
Babe kept in constant contact with me and his landlord did his best to make sure I felt welcome and took great care of me when I needed it, between making sure I was fed and interacting with someone in my emotional fragility and even taking me to the ER when I was experiencing a lot of pain. His landlord even suggested I could move in, and that is when I began the excruciating process of sifting through all of my things and decorating the room. My mother and bonus dad also made sure to keep in closer contact with me as well, insisting I did nothing wrong but fall in love.
2 close family friends had also reached out to me during the week that followed my leaving. One was gently trying to guide me in the direction that she thought that I should go, but never shamed me. The second one sent me an angry text saying that I left God at my parents house and that I should return back to them, and that what I am doing is 100% wrong, and that I could block her if I want. She later texted me and apologized for her harsh words. I never have responded to either of them.
My father had also tried to withhold my paycheck from me, but eventually put it in the mail and it came to me via an address reroute. My bonus mom texted me saying the way I was speaking/not speaking to my father was dishonoring to him and I need to do better. She texted me that she missed me once. This was all within a week after moving out, and I never responded. I haven't heard from either of them since.
So now a little over 5 months have passed. I have army crawled through the semester and have successfully passed with honors and have graduated. My parents have missed all of the important events that have taken place during the semester, including the graduation ceremony. While I never invited them they also didn't exactly ask. My small group of friends have done their best to show support to me. Even small friends in unlikely places.
My father and bonus mom have not been in contact with me, but have insisted to others that they have tried to reach out to me and that this no contact situation has been 100% my doing. They had apparently been willing to talk until my friend from another state had come to see my graduation and pick up something of hers from my parents house that she had accidentally left with us, as well as my things. She had gone there twice asking for my things that day, and it had turned into a whole situation that ended up with them refusing to give her my items that I had left by accident and asking her to leave multiple times. There has also been a lot of other things that have happened but those are all stories of their own.
I am very happy with Babe as we journey through our relationship together. Well there have been so many emotional breakdowns, a few disagreements, and many, many tears, he has been so compassionate and gentle through it all. He has been so kind to me and has been gently guiding me to more healthy conflict-resolution tactics, lines of thoughts, and more. I had thought I was happy with my parents, but as time as gone on and as I reflected on my relationship with them I realized how shut down, isolated, and bottled up I was. I feel safe to cry in the arms of my beloved, to express my thoughts, make my own decisions, and to laugh with him too. When he is wrong he is quick to realize it and apologize. When I am feeling insecure his desire is to reassure me. I hope that I do the same for him. If I asked, I'm sure he would say so.
However, even despite all of this, I do miss my parents, my brother, and my sisters greatly. Especially my brother and my sisters. I am sad that I have missed my father's birthday and Mother's Day. I am sad that I will miss my new sibling's birth, and that they will miss my birthday. I want to reconcile with them, but I also want them to respect my decisions and especially respect Babe.
The few times that we have seen each other my father has not looked me in the eye or has barely acknowledged me. I know that it was my decision to move out, but with how quickly things went I feel like I was also kicked out. At first I only felt displaced, but now I also feel disowned. I'm not sure what they're telling people or even entirely what their side of the story is. My brother is still kind to me but our contact over the phone is very minimal. I'm sure that he has been discouraged to speak with me. When we run into each other we get to talk, but that's about it. I know that he is hurt and that he loves me, and I wish that there was more that I could do for him.
I am also scared of what my sisters' reactions will be if I do come back. I'm sure that they feel some level of abandoned, and I know that they have been crying about me because they miss me (via my aunt when she went and visited and ran into me). I don't wish for them to hate me, and I want to be involved, but I also don't want the Babe's vehicle that we share to be identified. If they called the cops on me once, what would stop them from doing it again? My trust for them completely dissipated after that incident, but the worst part of it all is that I didn't get to say goodbye to the girls or to my bonus mom. They had all gone to bed by the time I had come home from work and was finished moving out.
So... what should I do? AITA for trading my family for Babe and a bachelor's degree?
submitted by lilpotatobake to CharlotteDobreYouTube [link] [comments]


2024.05.17 12:07 cock1roach How Cockroaches Spread Diseases and Health Risks

Cockroaches are notorious for being disease carriers. They can transmit pathogens like salmonella, E. coli, and various viruses, contributing to food poisoning and gastrointestinal illnesses. Cockroaches pick up these harmful microorganisms while crawling through decaying matter, sewage, and garbage. When they enter homes, they contaminate surfaces, food, and utensils with their droppings, saliva, and shed skin. Additionally, the allergens they produce can trigger asthma and other allergic reactions, particularly in children. Effective sanitation, pest control measures, and prompt addressing of infestations are crucial to minimize the health risks associated with cockroach infestations.
submitted by cock1roach to cockroachusa [link] [comments]


2024.05.16 06:37 my_call_a_G Letter from my HOA today. So much of these rules are completely unnecessary

Hello Homeowners! As the weather is warming up, I wanted to send out some friendly reminders to the community:
  1. The HOA dues are considered late if received after 15 days from the 1st of the month.
  2. The 2024 meeting schedule has been set! Please mark your calendars with the following dates so you can participate in the meetings and find out what is going on in your community. All meetings have been posted to the HOA’s website. All meetings are open to the public and homeowners are encouraged to attend.
  3. Trash day for the association is on Tuesday. Trash service is included in your HOA dues, and the volume based rates apply, so please reach out to your account manager if you would like a different size cart. Asking for a smaller bin if you don't use all of the space you currently have may save the association money. Cart sizes available are 35, 65, and 95 gallons.
• Please note that no garbage or trash cans or receptacles shall be maintained in an exposed or unsightly manner (except that a container for such materials may be placed outside at such times as may be necessary to permit garbage or trash pickup.) The HOA's governing documents state that trash may be placed on the street for pickup after 5:00 a.m. on the day that such trash is to be picked up. Trash containers must be properly stored the evening of pickup. Some holidays may delay trash pick-up, please see the schedule enclosed on the last page for details on holiday delays.
  1. When parking in driveways, please ensure the vehicle is parked all the way forward and not protruding over the sidewalk for pedestrian safety. Cars may not be parked in the street for longer than 48 hours per city guidelines.
  2. Pet owners, please ensure you are cleaning up after your pet in the community, including in your fenced yard. Dog feces carry disease that is harmful to humans and other pets so it is important to keep up with this regularly. Dog waste left not picked up can also lead to disturbing odors. Additionally, all pets must be on a leash when in the common areas of the community.
  3. Any exterior modifications to your lot require board approval. Please ensure you complete the attached ARC request form and submit it through your portal along with any photos, plans, drawings, etc of your project, before you begin a project.
  4. With warmer weather upon us, most homeowners like to entertain guests and be outdoors more. Please ensure you are being respectful neighbors and keeping noise levels low as not to disturb those around you.
  5. All lots in the HOA are to be kept in a clean and attractive condition. Please do not dispose of any food or compost items in the common areas as they may attract unwanted pests. Please ensure turf areas are mowed regularly, weeds are mitigated, overgrown shrubs/trees are pruned, ground cover (such as rock and mulch) are in place and tidy, and house repairs and paint are in good shape. Bags, coolers, toys, sports equipment, and other miscellaneous items should not be left outside and visible from the street when not in use.
  6. Basketball hoops: The HOA's governing documents state that no basketball backboards shall be attached to the garage. Only portable backboards shall be allowed and do not require approval if the following guidelines are met: 1) portable units cannot be placed in the public right of ways, streets, or sidewalks; 2) location must be at least half of the length of the driveway away from the street. This location constitutes proper placement and the unit must be kept in this location. Basketball hoops must be stored out of sight when not in use.
For those who have received violations prior to the beginning of May, those are considered to be courtesy notices, and moving forward courtesy notices will be in the form of an email rather than an emailed letter attachment. Warning letters will come after courtesy emails, and then the first and second violation notice will follow given that the violation has not been corrected. We are currently working together with the landscaper on maintaining the common areas.
  1. The HOA has a vacant position on the board. If anyone is interested in serving on the board, please let us know by May 24, 2024. The board would like to appoint someone who may be interested in the treasurer position. The term runs until the annual meeting this year, December 4, 2024.
End of letter, effectively.
Everyone knows that property values plummet when basketball hoops are left out overnight, it’s just a fact don’t ask any questions about it.
Edit: for those of you that want more examples, here you go:
Basketball goals can’t be left in driveways. Playhouses for kids can’t be more than 6 ft high. If a single dandilion is in your yard you get a weed violation. You can’t plant trees in your front yard. You can’t plant a garden in your front yard. You can’t have a shed. You can’t have privacy fences. You can’t install more than one gate on your fence. You can’t fly pride flags. You can’t install solar panels without permission. You can’t install a back deck or patio without permission and it has to be a specific kind of deck. You can’t have too many garden boxes in the back yard. You can’t have a trailer. You can only plant certain trees in your back yard. You can’t have a satalite dish.
Fuck HOAs. Anyone who wants this shit is not someone I want to be friends with.
submitted by my_call_a_G to fuckHOA [link] [comments]


2024.05.16 00:16 Necrolancer96 Summoning Kobolds At Midnight: A Tale of Suburbia & Sorcery. 200

Chapter CC

Trout's Landing.

Ruby stretched with a contented sigh. She turned her head over to where Jeb slept beside her. Or where he was when she fell asleep. She sat up and looked around the dark underground room but he wasn't here either.
"Wonder where he went."

Oh well, she thought as she stretched a few stiff muscles before hopping up and collecting their eggs. As nice as it was to sleep with them, they needed more consistent warmth. So she sat them to the side, bundled up in the still warm blanket, and departed to secure a source of fire for their eggs.

Which wasn't all that hard, she realized as her dark vision faded as the blue glow from the torches up ahead illuminated the main gathering area for the burrows. She smiled as she saw the tribe return to something familiar that she missed seeing for a while.

Several tunnels branched off towards the other cabins and already kobolds came and went from them as they began to migrate away from the chill air above for the, still cool but more comfortable, air below. As they did she could see the collections they brought back and forth. Animals, alive and dressed, were being moved down here and out of the elements for better care. As well as an easier time keeping the ever gluttonous salamanders from sneaking another meal. Scraps and salvage collected from around the lodge or while out exploring being brought down and being traded or even used to furnish the space.

Bits of wood with simple carvings were lodged into the dirt along side scraps of metal or rock with soot, mud, or crushed flower pigment to paint symbols or words on them for decoration or directions. While it wasn't the bustling forum that they once had, it gladdened her to see her tribe returning to normalcy once again.

She shook away the distracting thoughts and set her sights on some scrap of wood nearby. She darted over to the vendor, deftly avoiding a section of the ground being dug up as the kobolds dug ever deeper as they sought to expand their burrows ever more. It was in their nature to dig and burrow. While they no longer had a draconic master to excavate massive caverns and tunnels for, she wouldn't be surprised if kobold tunnels ended up expanding far past the border of the lodge itself and going far into the wild where they knew nothing about save for what little Jeb has told them.

Eventually, even this gathering area will be abandoned as the tribe moved deeper down, putting as much dirt and rock between them and whatever threats laid above. The only thing that would remain would be an assortment of traps to keep any invaders wary of going deeper than the kobolds wanted. Even then, many of the tunnels that would lead deeper would be dead-ends meant to slow or hinder any invader. Some would even be traps in and of themselves, collapsing the "tunnel" on top of even the most cautious of invader or even just blocking their escape and leaving them to die before the kobolds eventually dug out their remains and collected their gear with no trouble.

She stood before the assortment of wood and looked over the scrap. Some of it was processed lumber that looked to be from the buildings above, most was collected bits of wood from the forest though. Which was fine, she didn't need anything too big. No bartering took place. She was a leader of the tribe and it was assumed whatever she wanted was for the good of the tribe.

Even starting a warming fire for her eggs was good enough for the tribe to skip bartering and simply give her what she needed. So she collected enough wood for a nice fire and returned to her home. She sorted it into the indent in the ground that Jeb had placed their eggs in before. It would be a good place to start a heating fire for them, she thought as she finished arranging them.

She left and collected some tinder made of dried moss and grass before looking around for some stone or flint to start the fire with. But no such luck. All the stone was deeply imbedded in the dirt or was too large. She once more returned to the gathering area in search of fire. Which she quickly found in the form of the glowing blue fire that Jeb had created for the kobolds.

She shuffled a little as she stared at the dancing flame. She knew Jeb didn't like the idea of the kobolds using the blue fire. He probably wouldn't like the idea of heating their eggs with it either. She should be worried as well, she thought. But she wasn't. Staring at the flame reminded her of the vision that The Crone showed her. Of her and Jeb within a ring of flaming blue orbs. They were happy. The tribe was happy.

"He'll understand." She said as she darted and collected a piece of wood to transfer a spark from a nearby torch.

Ember in hand, she rushed back to her home. She gently eased the flame towards the bundle of wood. She yipped in shock when the flame leapt from her temporary torch and engulfed the pile! Their room burst into dancing shadows as the flames danced from their new home. So pretty, she thought as she stared at the fire. She had seen it when she would come out of their room in the old building for a break. But it seemed so mesmerizing now that it was right in front of her.

She widened the indent in the ground a little so that the eggs could receive the warmth from the fire without being too close. They might be mildly resistant to fire, but not enough to throw their eggs in a fire! Then again, she thought with worry as she held her claw out at the fire. The warmth from it isn't as strong as a normal fire it seemed. Like it was contained.

She clicked her claws in worry. She didn't want to push them too close, but they wouldn't get enough heat if they remained where they were. It would only get worse as it got colder and the cold seeped into the ground. Maybe just a little closer, she thought as she nudged the eggs closer to the fire.

The flames sputtered at the movement of air, but nothing more. She held out her claw to gauge the temperature once again. But it still wasn't enough, she thought as she clicked her claws against a nearby stone in thought. She cast a glance towards the tunnel. She could maybe see if one of the others have something to make a proper fire, she thought.

She put a claw on the eggs.
"No. That'll take too long."

She looked worryingly at the tunnel as if Jeb would appear and lambast her for even thinking what she was. She held her breath and pushed the eggs forwards. Then more. Then even more. The flames sputtered and danced as the eggs were pushed closer and closer. She could only just feel the heat as she did so. Why did the fire seem so weak, she thought as she pushed the eggs right up beside the bundle of burning wood.

Yet the fire seemed to move around the eggs, like they were doing their best to avoid touching them. Even the heat from the fire seemed to be avoiding them! Ruby growled in frustration and pushed the eggs right into the fire!
"Can you just keep them warm?!"

The fire stilled and froze as the eggs were pushed into it. As if it didn't know what to do. Then the flame roared to life once again. The balefire caressed the onyx shells as it seemed to dance across the smooth black surface of the shells. As if a barrier broke, the heat from the flame radiated outwards now. Ruby could now feel the warmth from the fire where seconds ago she felt nothing.

Ruby blinked at the eldritch flame and moved her claw to touch her eggs. She instinctively pulled back as a tongue of balefire arced in her direction. She whined in worry at possibly making a terrible mistake. She held her breath and once more reached out to caress her eggs. She bit her tongue and shut her eyes when the fire arced towards her once more.

But she didn't feel pain. No burning sensation one would get when normally sticking an appendage into a roaring fire. Instead she felt a comforting warmth. Like she felt when close to Jeb as they slept together. She cracked open an eye and found the baleful flame caressing her claw. She experimented a little by pulling her claw back, feeling as the flame seemed to latch on like it didn't want her to leave, before snapping back to its "body". She pushed her claw into the fire, further this time, all the way up to her elbow. The fire latched onto her once again and flooded her with a comforting warmth that shot straight to her core!

She turned her claw upwards and pulled back once more. She watched as the flame held on as she did so, once more refusing to leave her scales. She watched as the flame snapped once again, but this time, it broke! Instead of snapping back towards its body, she now held a burning ball of balefire in her claw!

She couldn't do magic. There were few of the tribe that could before they fled to this world. The Chief was the last among them that had any ability to harness it. Yet here she was, holding a magical fire within her claw! She watched as the flame danced and twisted in her grasp. She sucked in a breath when she watched it start to diffuse INTO her scales! The flame lessened and lessened as if it were dying, but instead the fire seeped between the cracks of her scales. She could feel it racing through her body, flooding it once more with a wave of comforting warmth.

"Den Mother?" A voice asked from the tunnel nearby.

Ruby yelped in surprise and turned towards the voice. She saw the Chief standing there watching her with a curious and amazed expression on his snout.
"Having fun?"

"Chief!? I was-"

"Playing with fire?" The Chief asked playfully as he stared at the blue fire.

She shuffled nervously as he did so. Eventually he chuckled and she began to relax.
"It's alright Den Mother. You're not the only one that Master Jeb's flame as entranced among the tribe."

"Why do you think it acts so different from normal fire?" She asked.

The Chief shrugged.
"Who knows. Perhaps it is how magic works in this world. Perhaps it is something on Master Jeb's part. Perhaps it is because our former- Kortaza, was the Keeper of Flame."

"But we never had much protection from fire before. And not any way to manipulate it." Ruby said.

The Chief sighed.
"True. I truly do not know why it is so different than normal fire. Fire is alive, yes. But this one seems almost..."

"Living?" Ruby suggested.

"Yes. Like it has a mind of its own. Though I doubt that much, perhaps it merely follows the will of Master Jeb, knowingly or not on his part." The Chief continued as he walked closer and sat down beside Ruby and watched the eggs glimmer and shine within the fire where they remained quiet for some peaceful moments.

The Chief then perked up.
"Oh! Master Jeb returned!"

"He did?! Where is he?" Ruby asked and looked around expecting to see him coming down the tunnel.

"Well, he did return. Rushed around and collected an assortment of food, and then he vanished away again. Something about a trade?" The Chief explained a little unsure.

She frowned, wonder what he was trading, she thought. Though, with the eggs now taken care of, and Jeb away for a moment. Perhaps now was the time she could see about doing something special for him. She turned to the Chief, he was more knowledgeable when it came to humans and their customs.

"Chief?" She asked.

"Yes? What is it?" He asked at the tone of her voice.

"What do you know of this world's humans?"

"Oh? What would you like to know?" He asked a little excited in being able to use his collected knowledge.

"What do humans do with those they care about?" She asked a little uncertainly.

The Chief hummed in thought and tapped his claws.
"It depends. Humans are as diverse in this world as ours. Many customs I've read about belong to different groups."

"What about the tribe that Jeb belongs to?"

The Chief hummed once more in thought and got up before darting away while calling back.
"I will check! I'm sure I have something!"

While she waited, she continued to play with fire and tend to her eggs. Since they were in the flame, they didn't need quite so studious attention as they did before. She could probably just leave them and go tend to her normal duties and not have to worry about them anymore.

Who was she fooling, she thought. Even if there was a way to hatch and tend to the eggs completely without her, she'd still want to look after them. She thought she heard Jeb mentioning something about an "electrical egg incubator" once upon a time. Whatever that was.

The Chief returned, huffing from being out of breath and holding a thickly bound tome with pages of different sizes and colors poking out of the patched bindings. He placed the heavy tome on the ground with a huff.
"This is my collection of this world's customs and knowledge. If there is something that will assist you it will be in here somewhere!"

Ruby oohed and awed as the Chief flipped open the tome and leafed through page after page of information. Some were pages from magazines, others were snippets and clippings from books, there was a few pages that contained pressed cuttings of local flora as well as a collection of small animal bones among the bindings.

They stopped on a page that read MODERN COURTING FOR THE MODERN WOMAN in bold letters on a page that felt smooth to the touch. On the cover was a gorgeous human woman wearing a sleek beautiful dress and jewelry. Ruby pointed towards the page.
"Oh this one!"

They thumbed through the pages looking for information. Most neither one of them got as it talked about stuff like make-up, libido, popular fashion, and other things that they didn't either understand or see the appeal of. Then they found a page that described how a modern woman should act. Though this seemed to confuse the both of them even more.

"Be 'dem-or' and assertive? What does 'dem-or' mean?" Ruby asked the Chief.

"I'm not sure. There are many words within that don't seem to fit." He explained.

A pattern they soon found to be common among the pages of information, much of the words would make sense but spread out among them were these spots of words that seemed just out of place. What they COULD understand still didn't make any sense either.

"Be soft yet firm? How does that work?" The Chief asked.

"If you like a potential mate why make him keep trying to win your heart?" Ruby asked equally confused.

"Modern" humans were just as confusing to them it seemed. However, among the pages of contradictory information, they were able to get SOMETHING of value! Humans like gifts. Though they both knew that and didn't really feel like these pages of "modern courting" did anything more than confuse them.

"What kind of gifts?" The Chief asked as he and Ruby tried to decipher the mess of flowery wording and nonsense.

"Jewelry, clothes, food." Ruby read off as they got the general gist of the overly convoluted wording. The pictures helped more though.

"Well! At least we found something... I think?" The Chief declared at least with a little uncertainty.

"Why did you collect all this?" Ruby asked.

"It was in a book, so I thought it was important. But it would seem that not everything in this world's books are worth keeping." The Chief stated before retrieving the tome and departing.

"Where are you going?"

"To go through my collection. It would seem that some of it is not as important as I first thought." He called out as he left.

She could hear him mumbling to himself and heard the occasional tearing as he did. Well, at least they found something, she thought as she turned towards the eggs once more. She placed a claw on the onyx shells and felt the comforting warmth of the fire as well as the warmth of the eggs. They'll be fine for now, she thought as she got up and left.

"Jewelry, clothes, and food." Ruby murmured as she went down the tunnel once again.

He was getting low on clothes, she thought. But there wasn't much around here to make some with. Though perhaps some animal hides would work? But much of what they've collected was too small for clothes of Jeb's size. Getting him food seemed redundant too. He could make his own food whenever he wished. Which left jewelry.

It was the better of the options, but they didn't have much in the way of jewelry either. No raids means no loot and the piles of treasure back in their former home wasn't exactly a priority at the time of their exodus. But then she spied the copper wire the kobolds had collected while scavenging. A copper band would be nice, she thought as she was given the piece of wiring from the scavenger.

But what else, she thought as she looked around some more. The pictures in the magazine showed jewelry that glittered with gold and diamonds and so much more that they no longer had. Nothing around here could compare, she thought dejectedly. But then she saw a group of kobolds coming down a tunnel with a collection of shells and waterlogged timber.

"What is this?" She asked them.

"Salvage from the camps up river." The kobold replied as he and the others began to sift and sort the mess.

She watched as they distributed everything they collected to the tribe that came over. Some took the waterlogged wood, others took polished stones, and others took the collection of shells. She eyed the shells. Back home, alot of the fishfolk in the rivers and around the sea collected pearls from the water. Perhaps the ones upriver also had some?

She followed after the group of kobolds that had collected the shells and assisted them in opening a few. Mussels were what was mainly here, no surprise though since it seemed they were far from this world's ocean. What was a surprise was how many pearls they actually managed to find among the mussels!

It was rare for the kobolds to find one during their fishing trips by the sea. Even among the rivers pearls were not much more common. So it surprised them that several mussels had multiple pearls within them! She was going to actually barter for potentially the single one they found, but with there being so many the shuckers didn't mind at all and gave Ruby a small handful for her project.

They weren't all that big, but that was fine by her. They'd do for what she had in mind. She borrowed a small thin metal needle from a scavenger and retreated back to her room. Copper wire and freshwater pearls in claw.

-----

Well, that's taken care of, Jeb thought as he appeared in the open air of the lodge. He flicked the gold and garnet band into the air and got it with a spring in his step and a tune on his lips as he made his way over to the Trap Master who stood near the river where he received reports from the salvagers.

"How's things?" He asked when he got close.

"Good. Strange. But good." The Trap Master stated as he dismissed the salvagers.

"How so?"

"The 'murlocs' you called them? Haven't returned to their former homes." He explained.

"And? Wasn't that kinda the point?"

"It was. But there isn't any sign of anything else other than birds flocking to the area."

"Again, wasn't that the point?"

"Only if something worse didn't move in." The Trap Master explained further.

Jeb groaned.
"What moved in?"

"Nothing."

"Nothin'?"

"That we can see. No new tracks, no scents, nothing."

"So what's the problem?"

"The problem is that much carrion should've drawn every scavenger and hungry animal for miles."

"But it hasn't." Jeb finished.

"No. The birds infest the area but largely leave us alone. Though some get a little territorial over their spots of carrion. But nothing else has moved into the area."

Jeb groaned again.
"So what do you wanna do?"

"Nothing."

"Really?" Jeb asked in surprise.

"Yes. If the other animals and creatures nearby are giving the place a wide berth then we'll exploit it as long as we can. We'll send some scouts to keep an eye on the place though."

"Perhaps the smell of death is what's doin' it?" Jeb suggested.

"Maybe. Would explain the large number of birds. But nothing else?"

"Yeah, you're right. Well let me know if you need help with it." Jeb said.

"Will do."

"Oh! Before I forget, I made a trade agreement with the dwarves."

The Trap Master cocked a scaled brow.
"Oh?"

"Yeah. Food for tools. We'll need to set aside five crates twice a week, but we'll get some decent tools to help speed up excavation." Jeb explained.

The Trap Master tapped his claws against his scales in thought.
"That's doable."

"You sure? Cuz I'm more than happy to do it all myself." Jeb said and conjured an apple to make his point.

"No. The tools are for us, we should assist. Besides, we gathered more for our former master. Five crates twice a week will be easy enough to do." The Trap Master stated in a relaxed tone.

"Alright, if you're certain." Jeb said.

"I am. We'll let you know if anything changes." The Trap Master replied.

"Alright, have it your way." Jeb returned and departed while tossing the conjured apple towards the lazing salamanders nearby.

Jeb ported down to the main gathering area. The place was just as busy as when he left as the kobolds went about their duties and tasks with vigor and joy that he's only really seen when they were staying in his basement. Guess he was the one living in their basement now, he thought with a chuckle.

He played with the gold and garnet band as he shuffled nervously. Wasn't sure why he was so nervous, he thought. She already had his kids, kinda, sorta. They were already living together. This would just be the natural progression of things. Kinda, sorta. He heaved in a big gulp of air to steady his nerves.

"Alright. Quite procrastinatin' Jeb." He muttered to himself and started down the tunnel towards his home.

He stopped when his boot stepped on something different. He looked down and picked up a magazine page.
"Modern courtin' for the modern woman? Where the hell did this come from?"

Probably Sammy's, Jeb thought as he tossed aside the girly garbage. Not sure what it was doing out here though. Maybe she brought it for Thanksgiving and forgot it? Or maybe the kobolds swiped it when they raided her hairspray? Or maybe she just left it among his other articles one of the times she and his pa would go over to his place.

"Oh well." He said as he continued on.

He could hear humming as he got closer, and saw a familiar pale blue light. He walked into his room and saw Ruby humming as she tinkered with something. Nearby was their eggs, sitting in the balefire. He should've panicked. He should've dropped everything and ran over trying to save his kids. That's what a father would do right?

But he didn't have that gut wrenching feeling of seeing your kids in danger he thought he would. Still, he walked over beside Ruby. She yelped in surprise and fumbled with what she was working on as Jeb reached out a hand and touched their onyx colored eggs.

"Jeb?! I was- They were-" Ruby tried to explain while also trying to gather her things.

"It's alright." Jeb said.

"It is?" She asked with concern.

"Yeah. They're not hot." He said as he stroked the shells through the fire that did nothing to him.

"Are you sure?" She asked with worry and concern.

"Yeah. Doubt it'll do anythin' more to 'em." Jeb said with a bit more bitterness in his voice than he wanted there to be.

He saw Ruby's face fall at his words. Nice job dickhead, Jeb thought to himself. He sighed and turned towards Ruby.
"I'm sorry. I'm just nervous 'bout everythin' happenin'."

"I'm nervous too." She stated and leaned into him for a hug, which he eagerly returned.

They held each other for a long moment before Ruby perked up and scrambled away.
"Hold on! Don't look!"

"Look at what?" Jeb asked with a cocked brow as he did his best to hide his own gift.

"I said don't look!" She chided.

"Alright!" He said with a laugh.

He turned away as he heard her grumbling and fumbling with whatever she was working on when he walked in on her. While he waited, he stretched out his hand and caressed their eggs. Please don't get any weirder, he pleaded mentally while he waited.

"Ok! You can look now!" Ruby called at last.

Jeb turned back around and saw Ruby holding a ring towards him. It was some braided copper wire with a couple of small pearls threaded on. She held it up to him.
"What do you think?"

Wait, was this a gift or was she asking him to marry her, Jeb thought. He had to say something though, the look of confusion on his face was making Ruby sad.
"I love it! What's it for exactly?"

"Well, I'm courting you!" She said as Jeb accepted the copper and pearl braided band.

"Courtin' me? What does that-" Jeb started when he noticed a rustle from his left boot.

He looked down and pulled off a piece of paper that had stuck to it. MODERN COURTING FOR THE MODERN WOMAN, it said in bold on the paper. He turned it around towards Ruby.
"Did you read this?"

She shuffled.
"Yes? I wasn't sure how you court a human in this world! But the words were confusing and didn't make any sense and- why are you laughing?"

"I'm laughin' because this is trash! None of the stuff in here is how you should court someone!" Jeb said with a laugh.

"But it says-" Ruby started when Jeb tossed the magazine paper into the nearby fire, which ate it instantly.

"It's just somethin' that girls read to pass the time. Nothin' in there is worth the paper it's printed on." Jeb declared.

"Oh. So?" Ruby asked dejectedly as she gestured to the ring she made for Jeb.

"This is just fine. Though do you know what it means to get a ring for someone?" Jeb asked.

"That they love one another?" Ruby said a little unsure now.

"Yeah. I guess it does. But the act of givin' someone you love a ring is a symbol that you want to be together." Jeb explained and produced his own gift for Ruby.

Her eyes went wide as she grasped the gold and garnet band.
"But we're already together."

"Yeah. We are."

"So what does the rings mean?" Ruby asked as she examined the band.

"Well, it's more religious really."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. It's supposed to mean... somethin'." Jeb started as he realized he didn't entirely recall what the meaning of the ring was supposed to mean.

"Mean what?" Ruby pressed as she tried to fit the band on her arm and then her tail.

"Well. It generally means being together forever."

"But why the ring?"

"It means a sort of exclusivity for folk." Jeb explained.

"Why? What about the rest of the tribe? Does that mean you won't help them?" She asked.

"No! I can, or will, or... this is harder than I thought it'd be." Jeb said with a sigh.

Ruby cocked a brow as well.
"So what happens?"

"Well, we exchange rings and promise to love one another forever. In sickness and health and yada yada. Then we're husband and wife." Jeb explained.

"Why? We're already mates and we love one another. What does our health have to do with it? And what is a 'husband and wife'?"

"Well... You know what? Forget it. Do you promise to love me?"

"Yes! Do you?"

"Yup!"

"Yay!" Ruby cried and hugged Jeb.

"And I now pronounce you man and wife." Jeb muttered as he kissed Ruby.

Ruby giggled and pulled away.
"So what happens now?"

"Now... I don't know. Usually there would also be paper work, but given... us, it prob'bly wouldn't matter."

"So what changes?" Ruby asked as she affixed the gold and garnet band to one of her horns with a smile.

"Uhm... nothin'? We're already together, we already live together, we already have kids... kinda." Jeb listed off.

"So what's the rings supposed to mean?"

"It means... I love you." Jeb replied at last, giving up on trying to explain something he himself wasn't entirely informed of.

"I love you too!" Ruby cried and kissed him.

He returned the kiss. Not like this would've been an official wedding anyway, Jeb thought. They don't exactly have a licensed priest to officiate it. Or witnesses. He doubt their still shelled eggs would count. He could ask the Chief to oversee it. But he already got a headache trying to explain marriage to Ruby, he didn't really want to explain it to the Chief, or any other kobolds that might be interested.

Not like it made anything different, Jeb thought. Ruby was right. They loved one another. They lived together. They had kids together. For all intents and purposes, they were mates. Sure if he was particularly religious he could insist on going to a church and doing things official. But given how things have turned out for them lately, he wouldn't be surprised if he burst into flames stepping inside a church.

Well, there was ONE tradition that they could still do, Jeb thought with a smirk as he picked up Ruby bridal style.
"Wanna consummate our marriage?"

"What does that mean?" She asked.

"Don't worry. You'll like it." Jeb said as he led her over to their moss bed.

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submitted by Necrolancer96 to HFY [link] [comments]


2024.05.15 21:54 Helloooo-oooo PU Teambuilding Help

Hey, looking to try playing PU and made this team real quick. Any advice on how to improve it?
Bronzong @ Leftovers Ability: Levitate Tera Type: Electric EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD Bold Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Calm Mind - Iron Defense - Stored Power - Body Press
Scrafty @ Leftovers Ability: Shed Skin Tera Type: Poison EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 Spe Adamant Nature - Bulk Up - Rest - Drain Punch - Knock Off
Rotom-Mow @ Choice Scarf Ability: Levitate Tera Type: Electric EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe Timid Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Trick - Volt Switch - Leaf Storm - Thunderbolt
Duraludon @ Eviolite Ability: Heavy Metal Tera Type: Fairy EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD Adamant Nature - Swords Dance - Dragon Claw - Iron Head - Tera Blast (edit: changed to brick break)
Florges @ Leftovers Ability: Flower Veil Tera Type: Water EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpA / 8 SpD Modest Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Calm Mind - Draining Kiss - Giga Drain - Psychic Noise
Hitmontop @ Assault Vest Ability: Intimidate Tera Type: Steel EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe Careful Nature - Rapid Spin - Close Combat - Bullet Punch - Ice Spinner
My speed tiers are garbage so I’m really just going for surprise set up wins. Rotom is my clean up and can help stop set up with trick, bronzong is good against no dark teams, scrafty is there because I like him and shed skin is cool, duraludon is a tower with swords, and florges+hitmontop are the special tanks and support to round off the team. Willing to take everything but sword tower off. Thanks!
submitted by Helloooo-oooo to pokemonshowdown [link] [comments]


2024.05.15 13:45 IdeaRegular4671 This is a personal message to all of the psychiatrists in the entire world and everybody that works in the mental health industry.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! U SUCK! U STINK! U ARE A TRASH HUMAN BEING! STAY IN THE TRASH CAN! GET THE HELL OUT OF THIS PLANET! WE DONT WANT YOU HERE! Everything you touch you destroy!!! GET OUT OF MY FACE! 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻🍅🍅🍅👩‍⚕️🧑‍⚕️👨‍⚕️your “science” drugs and medicine” are absolute hot garbage it’s trash 🗑️. If I ever die I will write on my tombstone 🪦 that you were personally responsible for my death and deceased state 🧟‍♂️. You are responsible for my chronic sickness illness and eventual death. That’s all you are good at. At destroying everything. I wonder if you are proud to being a glorified drug dealer and a judge jury and executioner of the state/system we live in. You are a jailer and a warden not a good doctor who heals people and makes their life better. You are a mere lifeless soulless emotionless tool of the state and of the elites who exploit your work to crush others and the people who employ you don’t give a fuck about you. If you died they wouldn’t care about you or your precious job. I bet your family hates you and your friends hate you as well. A vast majority of the public despises you have a grudge against you and wouldn’t care if you got really sick and just died one day. You don’t matter. You are worthless person who lives a meaningless life who dishes out trauma and senseless violence to innocent people. You are demon wearing human skin. A slimy snake. You are a net negative in this world. All you bring to this world is negativity chaos evil and destruction of life’s and the environment. I hope you are proud of being a bad evil person with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I wish you all of the worst in life. I hope you go broke and lose all of your money and your job. And become unemployed forever and become homeless and die in a ditch somewhere . I wouldn’t shed a tear for your demise. Karma is a beotch isn’t it. What goes around comes around. Fuck around and find out. You are poison you are toxic that hands out poison to others. I wish someone would lock all of you up and throw away the key. That’s the fate the destiny y’all actually deserve not this lie and farce and sham and scam y’all live everyday. You don’t deserve wealth, fame, social prestige and power over others. You are a fake. See you in hell shrinks.
submitted by IdeaRegular4671 to Antipsychiatry [link] [comments]


2024.05.15 11:18 CringeyVal0451 MARRIED Mary's Many, Many, Many Majestic Members (Part 10)

Welcome back to a little more MARRIED Mary Mania before I wrap things up with The Abridged Goblinization. I decided that this bit deserved its own chapter. Some of you seem to be entertained by Mary (or at least entertained by your own loathing of her), so I hope this will prove amusing. In my life, I've encountered an inordinate number of low-key lolcows (probably because I was far too patient and far too passive for far too long), so I might as well throw just enough distortion on the page to protect the good guys and the genuinely reformed beards. But I'm also gonna shine a bright, unflattering spotlight on the lolcows, creeps, weirdos, pervs, and BEARDS, both neck and leg.
And I'll very, very cautiously tiptoe over the bit where I do a bunch of mental gymnastics, squint my eyes, tilt my head, and convince myself that dating Whisky might be a welcome change of pace. I have no delusions when I look back on it. This was a dumb move in retrospect, but all the mental gymnastics in the world can't bring me to a reasonable scenario where I was psychic and thus able to predict what he'd become once he stopped pretending to be a gentleman. Nor can the most elite, Olympic-level mental gymnastics execute a double salto layout with a half-twist perfectly enough to force me to concede the "logical point" that I should have spotted warning signs that I'd never freakin' seen before. Okay, that's enough saltiness for today. Don't worry. This chapter mostly focuses on Mary's mania. Whisky's just kind of... there.
So there I was... dating a guy who called when he said he would, remained consistent in his affections, never asked for weird stuff in the sack (in fact, we weren't even intimate at that point), and claimed to be a secular humanist who practiced elements of Hinduism (as opposed to conveniently becoming born-again whenever it suited his needs to wallow in shame). And we seemed to have similar enough tastes in media, which made for pleasant movie nights and enjoyable conversations about nerdy stuff. It felt like a step up. It felt like emotional maturation. It wasn't. I was deluding myself and I was listening to people who had seriously whacked-out views on romance. I'd learn eventually. But at this point in time, I was "de loo loo" and impressionable. For shame!
But here's an even more shameful admission for ya. My original intention was to make Whisky the "for now guy." I knew I could do better. I was formally educated, I was in shape, I was normatively attractive, and I tended to be successful in both my theatrical and academic endeavors. Plus, I was super friendly and good with people. Whisky was kind of a bump on a log. Sure, he seemed nice. He was sometimes able to make interesting conversation. But my overall sentiment regarding the relationship was, to quote Whisky's favorite catch phrase, "Meh."
I knew he was mooching off his mysterious "big bro," and he wasn't doing this with the intention of saving up and eventually becoming self-sufficient. He just kicked up a fuss whenever he wanted something, and... it usually appeared. I still thought he was physically unattractive, too. I hate nasty-ass beards, I have a strong preference for shorter guys (they don't need to be as short as Dennis, but I don't exactly love being towered over), and Whisky had whatever the dude version of resting bitch face is. I admonished myself for being shallow and decided to soldier on. Date after date. And I did kind of get used to all the shallow things I objected to.
But, really... Dating Whisky at all was a dick move on my part. Then again, how many Nice Guy (TM)s want girls to do exactly what I did? Not attracted? Think he's kind of a bum? Find him a bit boring? Just give him a chance!!! Go on a crap-ton of dates with him until you like the familiarity enough to settle for him. That's the key to a healthy relationship!!! It never works. You could flip this around and apply it to Nice Girls who want pity dates, too.
Anyway. Lucy knew I was dating Whisky, and she thought it was great. She was honestly just happy to see that I was no longer pining over Dennis and that Whisky was no longer getting relentlessly stalked by Mary. Speaking of Mary... She'd had an imaginary dramatic breakup with Scumbanger not long after she crashed Lucy's brunch. Murky aside... The following summer, I'd do another show with the pervy pest and I'd find out that Mary had given the former Rum Tum Tugger a tug in the parking lot of The Imp and had let him motorboat her. When dozens of lewd messaged filled his inbox the following day, the most indiscriminate playboy I'd ever met in my freakin' life blocked that clingy legbeard's number and never had any further contact with her. But seeing as neither of them are especially reliable sources, my best guess is that the truth is somewhere in between.
After the dramatic "breakup" with Scumbanger, Mary immediately became obsessed with the new tech guy. I wasn't seeing shows as often, but I heard from Lucy and George that Mary had taken to wearing see-through mesh shirts with no bra since Tech Guy operated the spotlight. She'd rush out to Tech Guy's car as soon as the show ended and just... wait for him. George said he often saw Tech Guy sneaking out of the emergency exit. Lucy said she saw him get into an Uber a few times and leave his car in the parking lot all night with Mary lounging provocatively on the hood. Did she finally give up and go home? No one knew. No one cared.
Soon enough, Tech Guy's wife started attending shows. And she would remain glued to him. And so, Mary's narrative became, "He was shy about things at first 'cause he's married. But then I explained ethical infidelity and polyamory to him. So now I'm the guest star in their sex life!!!" Neither Lucy nor George saw any evidence of this. In fact, Mrs. Tech Guy was consistently rude and aggressive towards Mary. According to the delusional legbeard, "That's just foreplay. She loves angry bangs! And I'm cool with being a sub. She ties me up and shoves her entire fis..." Lucy would usually shush her when she sensed that Mary was ramping up the raunch factor.
After a very short time, Tech Guy issued a formal complaint, which led to Mary getting called into the artistic director's office. Tech Guy quit the following week, and Mary was suddenly "officially" dating the artistic director of The Imp. She began calling herself the "First Lady of the Theatre." At first, this seemed outlandish. But the director had been the one to hire her. And he repeatedly refused to replace her when she consistently failed to learned her lines, ran around naked, stalked the tech guy, and contributed little more than mukbangs to the comedy.
Some sort of skullduggery was certainly stirring. Was it "sexy time," as Mary enthusiastically claimed? Who knows. Chuckie might have been paying the dude to give Mary a hobby. But not long after Mary started boasting about boning this new boo, he lost his temper during a show, stormed onto the stage, swept her mountains of food aside (making an enormous mess), and shouted in her face, "You've had enough food for four fucking lifetimes, so put the fork DOWN. And put your big bazoombas away. You're not as hot as you think you are. In fact, you're getting FAT." The audience, thinking it was part of the sketch, apparently roared with laughter. And then Artistic Directer pivoted and added, "And learn to deliver a joke for the love of FUCK." Mary burst into tears and went into hiding for a few days.
When she reemerged, she was miraculously back in the improv group, much to Lucy's chagrin. She began dressing a little more conservatively (which basically only meant that she knocked off the deliberate nip slips and started wearing underwear). The director barely interacted with her, and she still wept in the dressing room over the harrowing breakup. Was this true in the slightest? Well, Mary bragged that she could sue the director for sexual harassment if he fired her. Seeing as she could have and SHOULD HAVE been booted many times over, it does check out to some extent.
She went through a brief phase during which she was hounding me and George Gay to have a threesome with her. WHY? Apparently, she had worked herself into a snail trail-y frenzy thinking about Scumbanger's rumor. Plus, she wanted to "out-threesome" him since he'd been such a terrible boyfriend. I was unfortunately accustomed to unsolicited sausage selfies... But unsolicited twat shots and Jupiter jpgs were quite new to me. And to George. We tried gently refusing her offer and gently suggesting that there were more appropriate recipients of her lewd pictures, but she continued to whine about her desire to "one-up" Scumbanger. It was never happening. Obviously. George was gay, I was straight, and Mary was female. It took a sleazy meet-cute with a straight biker dude and his bi wife to make Mary give up on becoming the "meaty meat" in the Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer sandwich that never even existed.
So that brings me to the pièce de résistance of Mary's misadventures in mating. Mary's biker dude was disgusting. Most of her previous obsessions had been questionable, weird, or possibly imaginary. But we all saw (and smelled) this one. He was as fat as a Hutt, he smelled like a grease trap, motor oil, B.O., and a very specific type of cheese... The few teeth that he had were black and green, his fingernails were yellowed and a few of them oozed pus. Finally, the volume and crackly, bubbly properties of his frequent farts indicated to George Gay that he, "definitely had a virgin booty." Mary's lard-ass loverboy called himself "Hogg," which was probably a reference to the two-wheeled vehicle that he was very obviously too large to actually ride. Or it might have just been an obvious nickname for a filthy fat fuck.
But Hogg, like Tech Guy a few loverboys ago, had a wife. And she made frequent appearances at Filthy's as well. Hogg's wife was shockingly... kind of pretty. A little rough around the edges. Didn't smell the greatest. But she stood in stark contrast to her repugnant hubby, even with her fried hair, her sloppily inked tats, her awkwardly placed piercings, and her imprecisely applied eye makeup. Her teeth were free of obvious rot. She had a beautiful figure. And she had a carefree attitude that was probably attractive to a number of people. She'd fart right along with Hogg, she didn't shave her legs, and the profane compound nouns she came up with always cracked me up (lard-tard, smegma-booger, felch-belcher).
And Mary was once again claiming to be in a throuple with The Hoggs. I think she was more into the wife than she was into the fat dude, but she might have just been having a gross-out contest with herself. They'd get busy in some corner of the establishment, and even got booted from the dive bar a few times for lewd behavior, offensive odors, and illegal drug use. On one particular night, Mrs. Hogg lit one of her hubby's prize-winning ass-rippers while Mary was doing her thing, completely shrouded by his big belly. The blue flame ignited some spilt booze on the dingy floor, and a small fire erupted. The staff were able to stomp it out, but the nasty throuple was unceremoniously banished.
Alas, management allowed Mary to re-enter the bar because she apparently had some sort of sway with one of the bartenders. Instead of meeting her...uh... "partners" for some more boom-boom, Mary decided to come back inside and gush about Hogg's majestic rooster to all of us. She smelled like D cheese, ammonia, and burnt farts as she plopped down at our table, already screeching about how much bigger her "new boo" was, compared to that vile turd of an artistic director and how Mrs. Hogg's snail trails tasted like raw bacon and ketchup.
George Gay: Fuck me, Mary!!! You reek. Go wash the uncircumcised methhead off your hands and then you can sit with us.
Mary started to protest. Lucy cut her off. "Your whole body is probably a veritable Petri dish from fooling around with those nasty-ass people." She handed Mary some Purell. "Wash the junkie junk off, keep the bottle, and don't you fucking touch me when you come back!"
Mary's bottom lip began to quiver and she looked pleadingly at me. "Just wash up," I told her. "You're too pretty to go around smelling like that.”
Off she went to the dingy bathroom. Maybe I wasn't harsh enough, but flattery got results in this instance. And when she returned, she had managed to dilute the stench enough so that we could stand to sit at the same table with her.
Mary took a deep breath in preparation to gush about something that would have undoubtedly been disgusting, but George cut her off this time. "Mare. How do you even BANG someone with a belly like that?"
Mary (speaking a bit more quickly than usual): Oh, it just takes some creative positioning. We get him to lie down. If Mrs. Hogg is taking in the rod, I hold his bowl of jelly up with both arms and stick my cooter in his face. He eats it like his mommy made it! And when it's my turn to get blasted, the missus uses a bunch of yoga straps to hold it up. I have to take it from behind because my own little tiny, itty bitty bit of va-jiggle-jaggle bumps up against his bowl of jelly if why try to smash like vanilla people. It's soooo hot, though!!! And then he props his bowl of jelly up on the coffee table and plays with himself while he watches his honey strap on a dil...
George: I so regret asking.
Mary: They're glorious to fool around with! I think they might be my forever partners! (Her hands were too shaky to slide down her body in unbridled ecstasy, so she clasped them together and hid them underneath her itty bitty little gunt.)
Lucy: So when are you gonna dump Chuck?
Mary: Well... Hogg and the missus don't have much scratch. And what they do have, they spend on smokeables. When I meet a real sugar daddy, I'll get rid of Chuckie. He pretended to be a baller before we got married. But he's just middle management and he's content to stay there. Pffffftt. No ambition.
Mary launched into another long, unnecessarily graphic gushing about her garbage partners and their nasty-ass boom-boom. So I decided this would be a good time to clear my conscience about dating Whisky. Mary hadn't so much as mentioned him in months. She was inexplicably smitten with The Hoggs. And her ultimate dream man was obviously some filthy rich dude (perhaps a literally filthy dude who was also rich), which took Whisky out of the running. I still think it would have been amusing if Mary had tried to date Mori...
I waited for her adult film star gasp to wind down before I finally interjected, "Wow. Sounds like you've got a fantastic sex life right now!"
Mary: I do! You need to get over that born-again bozo and find a real man so that you and I can have good girl talk!
Me: Well... I'm not banging anybody, but I am dating somebody. Sort of. It's not really that big of a deal. I'm not even sure that I'm completely into him. But he's been super sweet to me...
Lucy put her arm around me, almost as if she knew I was about to need protection.
Mary: TELL ME!
I hesitated. "Well... It's Whiskers."
In an instant, George jumped up and grabbed Mary by the shoulders, lest she lunge at me.
But Mary got very quiet. Silent tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She gasped and buried her face in her hands, now emitting one seemingly endless, impossibly high-pitched whine.
George loosened his grip and began to pat her on the back. Lucy's grip tightened on me and she whispered, "Here we go. Overreaction sequence has commenced."
Mary lifted her red, tear-stained face and glared at me. "HOW COULD YOU???"
Me: Mary, I swear. I thought you hated his guts. I haven't heard you talk about him in ages. When he asked, I thought it would be good for me to give him a chance since he's always been really sweet to me.
Mary: But what about the way he treated ME??? He was such an asshole!
Lucy: Was he? Mary, you stalked the guy. If he was rude, it was only because you weren't taking NO for an answer.
Mary: He never told me he wanted to end things. He just kept ghosting me. But whenever I showed up at his house and jumped on him, we always wound up smashing. Eventually.
I didn't have the gumption at that point in my life to suggest to Mary that it's wrong on every imaginable level to coerce someone into intimate activity, regardless of gender. And even knowing what Whiskers would eventually become, he didn't deserve THAT. I should have called her out. Instead, I tried to steer the conversation back to her current bedroom bliss, hoping she'd get distracted by the disgusting thoughts that delighted her so much.
Me: Who cares what he's doing now?! Aren't you insanely happy with your fun new lovers???
Mary: NO! THEY STINK! HE'S FAT. I want my sexy Whisky-Boo Whiskers back!!! Give him back, Valley! Puh-leeee-eeee-eeeee-eeeease.
Me: I don't "have" him. I'm just seeing him. If he hurt you this much, why don't you try to sit down and have a real conversation with him? It might be good for both of you to clear the air.
Mary: He blocked me on everythi-iiiiiii-iiiii-iiiiiing. Waaaaaaaaaah!
Me: Well, I guess that's your answer. You probably overwhelmed him. He seems like a bit of a softy. Personally, I need a softy right now. But I think you need a manly man.
Mary rose. She gave me an icy stare. And then she cooed in an unnervingly sweet tone. "I love you, Valley-Boo. I know you didn't mean to break my heart."
Me: Thank you, Mary. Really, I wouldn't have even considered his initial invitation if you hadn't been calling him "Satan," and telling us all that you hated him, and dating all these new guys. I didn't do it to spite you, I swear. It just happened.
Mary (still creepily, icily sweet): Yes. We're so alike, you and I. It's perfectly understandable that the same guy would go for both of us. But you owe me. You owe me big.
Me: I disagree. If you think I slighted you, just tell me to fuck off and never talk to me again. If you really do understand that these things happen, then you'll accept that there was no malice on anyone's part.
Mary: Mmmm-hmmmm. We'll see about that.
She jiggled her Jupiters, tossed her hair, and stalked out of the dive bar...

AND THEN SHE BANGED DENNIS.
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2024.05.15 04:47 PyroDesu The Redbud Murder Saga

DO NOT COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS. I am NOT OP. Original post by u/God_Dammit_MoonMoon in treelaw
trigger warnings: Tree Destruction
mood spoilers: Mild Confusion
 
(Virginia) Neighbor is on video ripping my eastern redbud sapling out of the ground - 2024-05-05
TLDR -- (location: VA) neighbor came onto my property -- I have her on video coming from her yard and carrying yard debris, looking around as she goes, walking up to one of my redbud saplings, ripping it out of the ground and breaking it in half a couple of times as she walked back to her property. The tree is very clearly on my property. She was (very clearly) looking to see if anyone was around before she did it. What is "standard procedure" here? How do I get her to replace at least the one tree I have her on video destroying? I'd ask how to not make this living situation awkward, but we're way past that at this point.
Long Version:
I live in Virginia in a neighborhood without an HOA. I bought my house a couple of years ago and there were zero large trees in the yard.
All of my neighbors have very landscaped yards. My house needed renovation, so I haven't done much in the yard other than plant some trees so they had time to get established. In the 2 years I've lived here, I've planted 7 trees in the front yard.
4 of the trees I have planted have been eastern redbud saplings on either side of my driveway. The first pair died over the first winter I was here and then I planted the second pair this past fall.
The most recent pair survived. One was absolutely thriving and the other was struggling but had growth. Between the trees and my neighbors property is my mailbox and the trees have mulch rings.
I say these things because it's not like there's a question of whose property the trees were on or did they look dead (and did the neighbor think they were doing me a favor by removing yard debris).
Three weeks ago, I went out to check the mail and the one closest to my neighbors yard was missing. There wasn't a sapling laying on the ground so it wasn't like an animal chewed it at the base and it fell over. The entire thing was gone but the mulch wasn't disturbed. I even dug into the mulch to try to find the root ball because it was so weird. No root ball.
My partner and I couldn't remember the last time we had seen it and we had friends in town helping with the renovation so it went out of our mind as a weird thing. Partner was convinced it was an animal. I was convinced someone stole my tree.
Tonight, I went out to take the garbage to the road and -- lo and behold -- the 2nd redbud is missing.
I look around for it -- in case it's on the ground and it's not there. Mulch isn't disturbed. Exact same situation as the other one. So I dig down to try to find the root ball and there isn't one. it's only 4ft tall, so not like there'd be a big one to begin with.
I call my partner and let them know. They've been out of town but mention when they left Wednesday morning, they remember checking on the tree. So I go to the video footage.
It was there the morning of the 1st and the morning of the 2nd. The morning of the 3rd....hard to tell. It might be there. It might not. I go through more video from friday and confirm the tree is not there.
So I go back to the 2nd and I start going through the video and around 7pm, I get my answer -- I see my neighbor walk onto my property, carrying yard debris from her yard. She's looking around, and then walks up to the tree, rips it out of the ground, and walks back off to her property snapping the tree in half a couple of times as she goes. If I had to guess, she was carrying the yard debris as a cover "oh I thought it was yard debris and I was just trying to help".
I went back to check to see if I have her on video doing the same thing to the first tree, but the video doesn't go back that far unless you specifically save the video (which I didn't think to do). If I were a gambler, I'd put money on the fact that she did the same thing to the first tree.
I know tree law in VA states that if the trees are on your side you can trim them as long as you don't do it to a point where you kill them, but these trees were very much on my property. The one that she killed recently, it was literally the tree, my driveway, a small stretch of yard (where the 1st tree was that went missing) , my mailbox, and then the neighbors yard.
What is standard procedure here on addressing this with a neighbor? I don't want to get police involved for destruction of property but at the same time, who comes onto someones property and rips their trees out of the ground?
Unrelated -- my relationship with this neighbor has always been wonderful. Like I bake them pies and the give me things from their garden. We bring in packages for each other when fedex inevitably delivers them to the wrong house. There was a windstorm in March that blew a tree from their neighbors yard (two houses down from me) into their yard and I went out with my chainsaw to help cut it up so it didn't just sit.
*quick update\*
So this has gathered far more comments than I expected but I figured there were a couple of things that needed to be addressed.
First -- the video. The video is safe. I have a copy on my phone, personal laptop, work laptop, and have sent it to many, many friends because it's such a batshit situation. We have copies should I need to use it.
Second, tree proximity to property line -- because I was curious, I went out with my handy dandy tape measure to check to see how far the trees were planted from the line. The first tree that was yoinked 3 weeks ago was 6ft from the property line. The second tree that was pulled a few days ago was 22 feet 3 inches from the property line. The only one arguably "close" to the property line was the first one (6ft from the line) and honestly, if she had come to me with a concern about it, I probably would have agreed to move it in the fall when it went dormant and it was safe to do so. Instead she chose tree violence.
Third, "the plan". Because my partner travels a lot, we both own our houses (so neither of us are going anywhere), and because I want to make sure she doesn't retaliate against the other 9 baby trees in my backyard (that's fenced in) or my dog, I've decided to take u/kemperflow 's advice to an extent. Basically I'm going to tell them someone vandalized and stole property out of my yard and that I'm going to be going through the video from one of the cameras in the next couple of days and this camera points at the area of the trees. I'm going to ask them if they've had anyone vandalize or steal their property in the last week or so. Basically giving them the opportunity to fess up and give me whatever lie they come up with on the spot as to why she destroyed the trees. If she owns up to it, I'll ask her to buy me new trees to make it right and then tell her she should not come onto my property and do something like this again without my permission. If she doesn't, in a few days I'll go back with the video and give her another opportunity to make it right. At that point if she still doesn't, then I'll report her for theft and destruction of property and have her trespassed. Because we're not going anywhere anytime soon, I don't want to go completely nuclear in the first round. Hopefully it doesn't get to last bit.
Fourth, she is an avid gardener. She has trees lining the back of her property, trees on the property line she shares with me (close to where the redbud massacre of 2024 occurred), a vegetable garden, so many rose and phlox bushes I've lost count and recently added some new low shrubs near the trees on the back of her property. Her yard is very curated with many shrubs, trees, and flowers -- both deciduous and evergreen. While I could be wrong, I don't think her removing the trees had to do with her being concerned about their leaves. If she were, she'd probably take down one of the two 60 yr old maple trees in her backyard.
 
Update: (Virginia) Neighbor is on video ripping my eastern redbud sapling out of the ground - 2024-05-07
Okay, so this will *hopefully* be the final update and there won't be any need to get motion activated sprinklers involved. I'm not ruling them out if this ends up escalating after this post.
Today I worked from my closet because it has a window that just so happens to overlook my neighbors garden and her car was in her driveway so I knew she was home.
Around 1pm she made an appearance so I went out to "check the mail". I waved to her with a big smile and said hello. She said hello and we exchanged minor pleasantries. And then I segued into asking
"Oh hey, have you guys noticed if you've had anything stolen or vandalized in your yard?"
"Oh no. not at all."
"I'm glad to hear it. I've had two trees taken from my yard over the last 3 weeks."
"What do you mean taken from your yard?"
"Well the two redbuds I had at the end of the driveway -- they were saplings and one was by the mail box and the other was by the lamp post. The first disappeared about 3 weeks ago and the second one disappeared sometime after Wednesday last week."
"No, we haven't had anything like that happen."
"That's great. Yeah, I don't know what happened. I'm going to check one of the cameras I have on the property in the next couple of days. It's pointed at the driveway, so it gets clear views of the trees and we'll be able to see what happened. Hopefully it's just animals or something because if someone came onto my property and stole them, I'm going to have to get the police involved for theft."
If I didn't have her attention before, I definitely had it at the last bit because she started asking more clarifying questions about these missing trees -- What kind of trees did you say? And where were they? How big were they?
I answer all of her questions and add on that it sucks because I bought these trees and they had been planted since fall but "Yeah, I guess we will find out what happened in a few days when I have an opportunity to check the video." And that's about the time she says "Oh, That might've been me. I think I thought they were weeds." (For the record — no I do not believe she mistook two 4ft saplings for weeds.)
I let her know that if that's the case, I would like her to replace them. To which she replies that she's not sure but it might've been.
I reassured her that it's okay if she doesn't know. We can wait to resolve this until I view the video because I absolutely do not want her to pay for replacements if she's not responsible.
Y'all. She absolutely did not want me to go to the video.
She asked me what kind of trees again and I told her. She said that if I told her how much they were, she’d pay me back.
And I said “are you sure you don’t want to wait to check the video?”
“No no. I’ll take care of it. Just let me know.”
I pulled my phone up and found comparable redbuds online and we calculated the total that she would owe together. She went inside and gave me cash to get replacements for the redbuds. We stood and chatted for a couple more minutes but I did reiterate that she needed to talk with me before doing something like this in the future and if she see's some weeds that she thinks needs to be pulled on my property to let me know because it isn't fair or right for her to bear the burden of weeding my yard.
And so concludes The Redbud Murder Saga. (I hope)
 
Reminder - I am not the original poster. DO NOT COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS.
submitted by PyroDesu to BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]


2024.05.14 23:27 AiryAerie Post 1.0, how are we holding up?

Firstly: thanks to Dina for kindly unbanning me from this sub. If this worries you to hear, fret not: my ban was from long before the sub changed hands and back when it was... uh... ran more like the official Discord, I guess you could say. Got a bit frisky with some of the diehard supporters after Jao first reneged on his promise of Kickstarter rewards being "exclusive" and decided that, actually, everybody deserves to play as everything. I'm sure some of you know how it goes.
Secondly: if there happen to be any who remember my name, hello fellow veterans. It's been a while, hasn't it? Who would have thought that in 2019, four and a bit years ago, we would eventually find ourselves here?
Thirdly: if you don't recognise me, then hello, hi, I'm Airy, an idiot who initially backed at $30 and then bought those spare $200 keys they had.
Fourthly, if you remember me from the Discord: I did tell you all that the game was going to head this way after Jao kicked me from the mod team and banned me on the Discord, after telling him to his face he was running his moderation team into the ground by stirring up constant drama and refusing to just... I dunno, develop his game? Please know it brings me no joy to see how right I was that he would constantly make a victim of himself and sell the story that he's just "unfairly hated" by people, but I'm not surprised by it, either.
I mean, what did we expect from the man who happily announced in his Discord that he thought YandereDev was one of his idols and that YanDev's "Hate and Shame" video was a perfect description of what he was going through? (And have you seen the YandereDev stuff recently? If you haven't... maybe don't look it's kind of nasty actually.)
How are we all doing here? For those of you somehow still playing, especially given that the 1.0 update seemed to trend towards being absolutely unplayable even on top end rigs, are you pleased with the updates? For those still playing who were KS backers, do you think you got your money's worth these four and a half long years later? I'm asking genuinely, by the way. I think the game's a garbage fire of the highest order, developed by somebody who constantly invokes the name of his dead father to try and illicit sympathy from people he's swindled both financially and in terms of stealing their time, but I'm in the unique position of having been in voice calls with the man behind the scenes and witnessing first hand how this was all going to go down about, oh, three years ago. Needless to say that any take I'd have on the game would be a little bit biased, let alone if asked my opinion of the man himself. So I'm curious how the rest of you are doing, if you feel you've been robbed or if you think you've gotten your money's worth. Where you think the issues lie, if you think there are any. Is 1.0 everything you wanted it to be? Or is it every nightmare you wished the game would avoid becoming?
I will say, credit to the moderation team on this sub for grabbing a hold of it after it got effectively taken around the back of the shed for a while. Moderating regular communities without the baggage this one has can be unforgiving, moderating communities like this one where everything is so polarised is arguably far worse and you might have to be a little insane to voluntarily do it. I respect it, though. We're mostly all here for the same reason: we thought this game could be good, and were blatantly lied to. The commitment to keeping a singular space open and uncensored given the penchant for the official's rather problematic management is a noble one. Hats off to you.
Man y'all remember when I made that big post when it was first revealed Jao was walking back his promise of Kickstarter exclusives? Good times, good times. Do you ever look at some (not all, but some) of the promised new dragons and almost miss those goofy, silly Unreal assets? All that time spent, sitting by the oasis, chatting because chatting was the only thing you could do, having a great time being excited for what this game had the potential to become? Man I miss those times. So innocent, so naive, so hopeful. Did any of you move on to Century: Age of Ashes after this fiasco? Can you believe in the span of four years we've watched two really promising dragon games get ruined by mismanagement, incompetent development teams, unfixed bugs and really bad Discord administration teams? I'd joke "How much do we have to pay for a good dragon game" but I think we'd all run out of money before we got one. Maybe we should go back to games like Spyro or something.
submitted by AiryAerie to DayofDragons [link] [comments]


2024.05.14 20:33 unheimliches-hygge Meet up?

Hi "Oonagh,"
Hey, how have you been? I was wondering, would you ever have time and willingness to meet up with me, and just have a conversation about things? It's coming up on two years since "Clive" broke up with me, but I still struggle with a lot of heartbreak and trauma over how it happened and all the fallout afterwards. It has just been a hard thing to process, that someone would be so nice to me as a friend for so many years, and then treat me so horribly when we dated and after, when I was at my most vulnerable, and also knowing that I was a trauma survivor with trust issues. I had a few conversations with "John" that were sort of helpful, but I have tried to minimize what I told either of you, for various reasons that I've told you already. But, I feel like it might help me if you and I could sit down and I could talk really openly about what happened, and if I could just hear your take on things. Like I shared with you, I had some theories that would explain a good portion of why it all turned into such a dumpster fire, but I keep feeling like there are things I'm just missing that you might be able to help me figure out, as the person who is closest to him.
The question I really keep going back to at the heart of it all is - did he ever actually care about me? And if he did, why did he stop caring and stop wanting to be my friend? After three months of us dating, he broke up with me by telling me that being with me made him feel consumed with guilt, because it reminded him of all the other times in the past that he hurt women because he didn't care about them at all and was just using them as an ego boost. It came across as him telling me that I was just another one in a long line of women he had used and didn't care about. Maybe I wouldn't have found that so easy to believe, but in the three months before that, he had seemed to change pretty dramatically from the guy I knew and loved before things became physical between us, into someone erratic who would flip back and forth unpredictably from acting like his old self, to behaving very coldly and devaluing me. Sometimes I felt like I was seeing a mask slip, sometimes I was just baffled, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was just very troubled and scared and it was a kind of self-protective strategy, one that was unfortunately hurtful and toxic to the person on the other end of it, me.
I tried so hard afterwards to accept that for whatever reason, he had decided I was garbage to him and that just was how it was. But part of me couldn't really believe it for a long time. Because, why? I kept wanting to think it was all a series of sad misunderstandings. It took me like a year of processing things in therapy before I could wrap my head around the fact that it wasn't misunderstandings that were to blame - at a number of crucial points, he just blatantly lied about things. He lied by omission, and also lied by saying things that were just plumb not true. He lied to me, he lied to "Javier," he lied to you, he lied to other women he'd been with ... But the lies were weird, because he would say them with so much confidence, I would think I must have just misunderstood when he'd said almost the exact opposite before. It wasn't clear in retrospect whether he actually believed what he was saying, or was delusional, or just didn't feel any compunction about bending the truth. But then, a big question that lingers in my mind is you - is it really possible that you could live with him for 25 years, or however long, and not notice the lying? You are maybe the biggest mystery about him. How could a guy who has such severe issues with how he treats women maintain a long term relationship with you - someone who clearly cares a lot about ethics?
Those are some of the mysteries for the ages, and maybe you can offer me no insights, and maybe you wouldn't want to try to help me understand even if you could. But, I've been at a place of "aporia" with this for a long time, so it seems worth trying one more time to see if any light could be shed on these awful experiences. Of course, understanding the "why" of him discarding me can't change the fact that he did discard me. And most likely the real answer is that it wasn't my fault, he is just a dishonest, uncaring person who uses people and then discards them. That's been all the answer I've been able to discover for the last two years, and it hasn't made me feel a ton better. And since he clearly stopped caring about me at some point if he ever did care about me, does it actually matter whether he was ever sincere and ever did care? I wish I could forgive him and feel at peace about things, but it's hard to forgive a person who I think doesn't care about whether I forgive him or not, and would continue to treat me with contempt regardless. I'm also scared because I wouldn't trust him not to try to hurt me more if he could. And I'm scared of him hurting more women in the future, since I understand from what he and others told me that he has a long history of hurting women.
The only thing that could make any real positive difference to help me get closure would be him making an effort to mend fences. I tried several time to mend the fences, but since they weren't broken one-sidedly, they couldn't be fixed one-sidedly, and I was clearly the only one interested in fence-mending. I've 99.9% accepted that the fences will never be mended, and the best that can be hoped for is that the dumpster fire eventually burns itself out, and I move on and heal and let go of my hurt and grief. I just still can't help but wish for a better and easier way, with less dumpster and less fire involved. Anyway, I am just rambling at this point, so I will wrap up. I hope you and John are doing okay.
All the best, me
submitted by unheimliches-hygge to UnsentLetters [link] [comments]


2024.05.14 15:17 Silly_Traveler1746 isolating belongings since coming home from europe

hey all, i just came home from three months in europe. my apt there definitely had an infestation from day 1, which i deluded myself into believing was something else until about 2 months in. at that point the problem was undeniable but it was my landlords turn to be delusional and he did the bare minimum to treat.
i came back about a week ago and put my belongings in quarantine. working on sticking everything in the dryer or both washer and dryer before reintegrating into my personal belongings here.
whats the best way to prevent hitchhikers from colonizing my home? the clothing from my suitcases that hasn’t been washed is in garbage bags, the suitcases are in the shower. my boyfriend is concerned i could have shed bugs or eggs on the walk from quarantine to the washing machine. would i be able time see critters migrating from one place to another? should i excessively clean and wash my bedsheets for the next few months as precautionary measures?
i have to start studying for a massive career based exam and its not an ideal time to be paranoid but also not to be obsessively cleaning. whats the best thing i can do to mitigate my risks?
i am still working on my possessions bc even tho i came back from europe a week ago i had to leave again basically immediately for a family engagement.
submitted by Silly_Traveler1746 to Bedbugs [link] [comments]


2024.05.14 03:47 CheckUrCrawlspaces Growing up, my mother forbade me from ever talking about my little brother outside the house. 50 years later, they're both dead, and I'm ready to talk

The garage door shut with a groan behind us, closing us in the gloom of the single bulb hanging over the car.
Mother took a drag off her cigarette and sighed as she exhaled, the smoke filled the cabin of the Ford and stung my eyes.
“You really disappointed me today, Julianne," she tapped her cigarette in the ashtray below the dash, "you embarrassed me in front of the other mothers at the Ice Cream Social, shoveling down seconds and thirds like a pig. I thought I raised you better than that.”
She took another drag, daintily holding the cigarette between her perfectly manicured fingers.
“I'm going to have to tell your brother about this," she continued, “he'll have to come up with a punishment fit for a pig."
I felt my stomach drop. My kid brother, Thomas, was only six, but could be exceptionally cruel. Mother seemed to encourage him and was deferring to him more and more frequently for how the house was run, especially concerning my upbringing.
"Mother, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you. I'm sorry I was a pig and ate so much ice cream. I promise I won't do it again, I'll never eat any ice cream again," I was pleading with stone, unyielding.
“Hush your mouth. Go to your room and wait for Thomas," she put out the cigarette and got out of the car, I had no choice but to follow.
It felt like walking to the gallows as I stepped inside the house and headed towards the stairs to go to my room. Thomas had grown fond recently of physical punishment, he obviously delighted in Mother whipping me with a belt or, recently, Mother had allowed him to start beating me with a wooden spoon. He would squeal and giggle like a normal child watching bubbles in the wind while I screamed. I was dreading whatever was going to happen tonight, I chastised myself for eating that ice cream, I should have known she would show up. My sins were always laid bare.
Down the hall, I could hear Thomas watching television in the den. I only got to watch TV for half an hour on Saturday morning and new episodes of Happy Days with Mother and Thomas. Thomas got to watch all the TV he wanted. He could listen to the radio and turntable as much as he wanted, as loud as he wanted. Thomas had an entire room just for his toys.
I entered my bedroom, it was a space I occupied, but it didn't feel like mine. Mother kept it spartan, white walls and white bedspread. A crucifix over the bed and a painting of Jesus over the door. I had my desk and chair and a dresser with some of the porcelain dolls Daddy gave me before he died that Mother let me keep. That was it.
I placed my book bag down and sat on my bed, waiting for Thomas. It was a while, sitting there with nothing but my own thoughts and staring at the open door. I felt humiliated, I was almost thirteen and my entire life was dictated by my brother. Mother kept the house in constant lockdown to keep Thomas a secret. No outsiders were allowed in. I couldn't have friends because she was afraid I would mention him or sneak a friend in to gawk at my brother and tease him for being different.
I would never make fun of him, I was terrified of him. Terrified of what he was and what he was becoming.
Eventually I heard his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and I felt my heart start beating faster and my palms began to sweat. I kneaded my skirt in my hands, trying to calm myself and dry my palms. His slow arrhythmic footsteps came down the hall and I watched him as he entered the room.
I couldn't help but internally recoil at his appearance, even though I'd known him since he was born, I could never adjust to how unnatural he appeared. Thomas had been born at home and had never seen a doctor, but he was obviously unwell.
He was six years old and was barely over two feet tall, but very squat and wide. His skin was thick and gray, the whites of his beady eyes were yellow and his hair was wispy and white like an old man's, spreading out like a halo around his gargoyle face. A slight odor of decomposition hung about him, it reminded me faintly of garbage cans on a hot summer day. I hated when Mother made me help him with a bath, his skin felt like old brittle leather that flaked onto my clothes in gray flecks. His body was dense like concrete, I could barely lift him into the tub. Picking him up forced his hair into my face where that smell of rot would fill my nose, causing me to gag, silently, so as not to offend him and draw any ire from him or Mother.
Today, Thomas was wearing bib overalls with a red and green striped sweater underneath, reminding me of a grotesque doll.
“Mama says you acted like a piggy today at the ice cream social,” he spoke up to me in his unsettlingly high pitched, yet raspy voice, like a child that smoked as much as Mother, "you need to come down for dinner right now for your punishment for embarrassing Mama."
He turned and walked back down the stairs and I had no choice but to follow his toddling form downstairs to the dining table. We entered the kitchen and the table was placed with two settings. Mother was already seated and Thomas clambered up into his booster seat at his normal spot next to Mother. She took a drag off her cigarette and motioned vaguely to the floor without even looking at me.
Neatly situated on the linoleum was my dinner, not on a plate, but directly on the floor. A pork chop, scoop of mashed potatoes, and a small pile of peas. No utensils, either.
Thomas giggled with glee upon seeing my face.
“You have Mama's permission now to eat like a piggy, now. No hands! Piggies just use their face!” He stood up in his chair and reached out for Mother’s ash tray and flung it out over my meal, peppering my dinner with cigarette ash and butts.
"Oops! Piggies don't mind trash though, do they, Mama?” he giggled and the sound filled me with rage.
"No, they don't,” Mother replied coolly while maneuvering her ashtray back in place and carefully putting out her cigarette before saying prayer.
As angry as I was, I got down on my hands and knees and did my best at eating what I could without using my hands. I knew if I refused, it would be far worse. The whole meal, Thomas made pig noises and would reach down and poke me with his fork, making comments about what a fat piggy I was and how he wished he could roast and eat me. I doubted Mother would even object if he actually did kill me and eat me.
Gagging my way through another bite of ashy pork chop, I felt a warm splat over my head and heard Thomas giggling. I reached up and felt he had dumped mashed potatoes into my hair.
Choking down tears, I asked Mother if I could clean the floor and bathe. She rolled her eyes and excused me to clear the table for them as well while she changed Thomas into his pajamas. Picking him up, she walked out of the room and Thomas stuck his putrid little purple tongue out at me before they made it out the kitchen door.
I silently cried while I cleared the table and washed the dinner dishes. Tears splashed down as I mopped up the mess from my food on the floor. I hated how awful Thomas was. I hated how they treated me. Ever since Daddy died and Thomas showed up, I was their punching bag. I missed Daddy so much.
Mother was kinder then, too. She was still severe, but Dad kept her tempered. After he died, there was a change that came over her. I was only six, so I didn't remember her too much from before, but I did remember her gushing on and on when she was pregnant with Thomas. How the baby was a gift from Our Heavenly Father, that it was going to complete our broken family.
My sixth birthday happened right after Daddy died and I remember sitting on the patio crying while the house was full of people after the funeral, normally he would have gotten me a new doll and a chocolate bar, instead I was forgotten. No doll. No chocolate. Just funeral potatoes and a house full of cigarette smoke from the adults.
Nobody remembered. The closest thing I got was my dad's sister, Aunt Judy, sitting next to me on the patio step for a few minutes of comfortable silence before giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. I don't think she knew her brother was memorialized on my birthday. Next year, Thomas was born the day before my birthday, so it was completely eclipsed as Mother had just birthed her new love into the world…
I stopped mid mop as a lightbulb finally went off. I had never put much thought into the dates before.
Thomas was born a full year after Daddy died. He couldn't be his dad. Who was Thomas’ actual father?
Washing mashed potatoes out of my hair that evening, I ran over and over the timeline. No matter how I parsed it out, Thomas was only my half brother. Going to bed that night, I kept myself awake, going over and over again to make sure. I couldn't remember any men being around at that time, but that didn't mean much. Adults can easily hide things from children. Tension began throbbing through my head and I felt queasy. Mother had always known all of my secrets, able to sniff them out like a bloodhound out or using Thomas to spy. Now I had one of Mother's secrets and I didn't know what to do with it.
First I wanted to confirm it, but it would mean snooping, which was difficult in a house that was rarely left empty. I would have to try finding Mother's calendar book or journal to see if she mentioned any dates or men.
But when could I attempt such a daring maneuver? Thomas hardly left the house. As proud as Mother was of him, she was very cognizant and protective of his differences and didn't want to draw attention to herself or Thomas like that. Mother herself had few social engagements throughout the week and mostly stayed home to watch her golden child.
I finally decided I would take the risk and fake sick on Tuesday, grocery day, so I could stay home from school while she went shopping. All Thomas did all day was watch TV downstairs, so that should give me about an hour to look through her room for clues. I decided to tuck my head down, try to behave as best as I could to avoid their wrath, and wait for Tuesday.
That weekend limped along agonizingly slow. Thomas was in a fine mood and was constantly seeking out a reason to poke me, punch me, slap me… he'd laugh while calling me a piggy with his off-putting wide mouth. I tried to mostly stay in my room and it seemed like neither of them cared.
School on Monday was a relief, but my anxiety ramped up. The consequences would be dire if Mother caught on that I was faking sick to stay home. I didn't even want to imagine how off the leash she'd let my half-brother become in his punishment for that level of insubordination.
I stayed up all night, my stomach was in knots, but I was committed to my plan. Throughout the night, I screamed as hard as I could into my pillow. Screamed until my throat was raw and I could barely talk. It felt cathartic in a way. When it was close to school time, I put on my heaviest flannel pajamas and began doing jumping jacks until my face was flushed and my scalp was soaked with sweat.
Looking in the bathroom mirror before heading down to talk to Mother, I thought I looked pretty convincing, my skin was flushed and sweaty, my eyes had circles under them from lack of sleep, and my voice croaked like a frog.
Heading downstairs, Mother was already feeding Thomas breakfast. I hesitantly stepped into the kitchen and stood there awkwardly for a second, pawing with my pajamas to keep my nerves steady until she noticed my presence and looked up.
“Why aren't you dressed, Julianne?"
"I don't feel well. My throat hurts and my tummy hurts.” My voice graveled out more than I was expecting, I really had hurt my throat.
She strode over to me and placed a cool hand on my sweaty brow.
"You do feel warm. Take an aspirin from the medicine cabinet and go lay back down. I'll check on you later," with that she turned back and walked over to Thomas, who was frozen in place, glaring at me over a forkful of scrambled eggs. The sharp glint of malice in his beady eyes made me shiver before I shuffled out of the kitchen.
I laid in bed, trying my best to look miserable until I eventually heard the faint sound of the television playing in the den as Thomas settled in for his normal daytime routine and the garage door opened as Mother headed to the grocery store. I bounded out of bed and watched the car back out of our driveway and head up the street.
My heart began to pound as I tiptoed down the hall to Mother's bedroom, a place I rarely even caught a glimpse of, let alone entered. I very slowly opened the door, taking great care to not make any noise to alert Thomas downstairs that I was out of bed.
Creeping into the butter yellow room, I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my skull, this was the naughtiest thing I had ever done by far. I stepped onto the rug to help disguise my footsteps and slowly made my way past the brass bed and towards her desk. My hands shook as I opened the top drawer, I pawed through rapidly and found nothing. I checked the next drawer down and again found nothing of interest, just stationary and envelopes.
Finally, the bottom drawer was what I was looking for, a stack of journals from the past decade. I flipped through, trying to find entries relevant to when Daddy died and who Mother slept with afterwards.
I've never fully recovered from what I read.
July 6, 1968
Edgar died today. Car accident. I cannot believe this is real. My light, my life, my anchor... Dr. Benson gave me a sedative at the hospital and I feel so tired. So very, very tired. Why has my Lord forsaken me so?
July 9, 1968
I feel like I am in a very bad dream, I feel numb and disconnected. All the consolation and pity from everyone makes me feel sick. After the memorial, it took everything in me to not break dishes and to scream at everyone to get out of my house. Julianne was moping about crying and I wanted to throw her out, too.
If I hadn't seen my dear Edgar's body in the hospital and held his urn in my own hands, I wouldn't believe he was really gone. I still don't entirely believe it.
I have prayed to God every night asking him to show me why he took my husband from me and I have gotten no answer.
I skimmed over the next few months, as it was more or less similar sentiments repeated night after night. I finally got to an entry that caught my eye.
September 17, 1968
My battle with my faith has been fraught the past few months, but Hallelujah! I feel I can see the Lord again in all his glory and might, for he has given me a way to reconnect to my Edgar!
I was thinking about the night Julianne was born, right in this very home, it was a difficult birth and she struggled to breathe at first. Ingrid, my midwife, made a comment to me that if the baby had failed to wake up on her own, that Ingrid had ways to make sure she would have made it.
I remember asking if it was a medical methodology and she made it clear to me that in certain circumstances, it was a mystical property she used to bring the air of life into a struggling baby's lungs. She gently alluded to being a practicing member of the dark arts. At the time, I felt quite scandalized to have someone like that in my God fearing home. Now I see her as the answer to my prayers! My angel!
On a whim, I called her and asked if she still practiced such techniques. She hesitantly confirmed that she did. I asked, if she could turn breath into the lungs of a child without, could she turn breath into a child that did not exist? Could she magick into existence another child of my beloved Edgar? She told me she had to do some research and she'd be back in touch.
Ingrid just called back after a few hours and said there was a spell she found, but it was dangerous and might have unpleasant results. I said, yes, of course! I trust my Lord and I believe he sent this woman of blessed magick to me for this purpose.
She says we will have to do it soon, in a few days during the new moon. She has a potion to brew, but it is happening! Praise God!
September 23, 1968
The ceremony was last night, and Ingrid believes it was a success, but we will have to wait. It did not take long, only an hour or two. Ingrid lit my bedroom with many beeswax candles and she had me drink a thick and bitter tea that caused me to become quite relaxed and foggy.
From my inner thigh, she cut me and collected my blood in a chalice, with which she mixed quite a lot of Edgar's ashes and other ingredients which I could not glean from my supine position and groggy wits. Ingrid began to chant, calling upon a higher power, as I pleaded with my Lord to let this work. To give me any piece of my Edgar back. She came to the bed and worked the paste between my legs into my womanly chamber, which was very uncomfortable, but manageable with the numbing effects of the tea.
She continued to sit with me and chant, her hand placed over my womb, until she decided at which time it was complete. She left and I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up this morning, I felt quite uncomfortable, my body ached and when I used the restroom, a yellow fluid like pus poured out of me, but no sign of any ashes or blood, which gives me hope it was absorbed into my womb.
November 3, 1968
Praise be to our Lord, Ingrid just confirmed for me that I am with child, I had been hoping so, I had not gotten my cycle in October, but I wasn't sure if that was because of the discharge like pus that was still coming. She told me that was common with this spell and a side effect that would stop after the baby came.
I feel like I am floating on air, for the first time since Edgar left, I feel-
I suddenly became very aware of the feeling of eyes on the back of my head. I had become too engrossed in what was written before me and I had lost track of my surroundings. Very slowly, I turned around and my heart began pounding again as I saw Thomas standing in the doorway holding his wooden spoon in one hand. How had I not heard him?
He pointed at me with his empty hand and screamed, just a pure guttural screech from somewhere deep inside his disgusting little body. He charged at me from across the room, his horrible feet thumping solidly along the rug. He began beating my legs ruthlessly with the spoon, causing my legs to buckle. I crashed down to my knees in front of him, and he began lashing at my face, pulling my hair with one hand while wailing away at my head with the spoon.
I had dropped the journal I was holding and was desperately trying to get a hand on the spoon or push him away. All I could hear was him screaming. My arms flailed and I reached around on Mother's desk and grabbed onto the first thing I found and sank it into Thomas’ neck.
The end of Mother's gold letter opener protruded under his jaw. He went silent and he looked at me with utter shock. He dropped the spoon and collapsed on the ground, clutching at his neck as his thick black blood oozed out from his wound, letting out a stupendous odor of rot that filled the room. He didn't really say anything or make any noise. He just twitched for a moment and I saw his eyes glaze over.
In shock, I stood over his little body for a moment and I watched as he seemed to mummify in just a few minutes, like an ash person from Pompeii dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Even his blood that looked like shiny oil a second ago became like potting soil on Mother's rug. Reaching out to touch his hand, it crumbled away like sand.
Panic ran through me like a rabbit caught in a snare. Not knowing what to do, I ran. I ran down the hall, changed my clothes, put an extra change of clothes in my backpack and the last doll Daddy had ever given me and I ran. Mother would absolutely never forgive me and I was genuinely afraid she would kill me in retaliation for taking her beloved Thomas away from her. Her precious gift from God. My feet flew over the pavement and took me away from that house.
I called my Aunt Judy from a payphone outside the five & dime, and told her Mother had kicked me out and asked if I could stay with her. She had always had a strained relationship with my mother and it didn't take much convincing that she had kicked out her “only” child. Only Mother, Ingrid, and I ever knew about Thomas.
She gave me a home and took care of me. She never beat me or humiliated me. Even with her love, I was far from okay. For years I would close my eyes and hear Thomas scream, then the sudden silence. I'd see him fumbling at his neck and turning to ash. But I would also remember all the ways he would hurt me and how bad he was becoming. I could never talk to anyone about it, especially not the silent relief I felt I refused to admit to myself. Over time, however, Thomas' screams became a whisper and his silence faded into dust in my mind.
I moved on with my life. I went to college and became a photojournalist, getting to travel the world and watch history unfold. By choice, I never married, but was quite blessed with many beautiful friendships for companionship over the decades. I found balance in my life and a sense of happiness, if not peace. I never could quite stomach mashed potatoes again, though, they always taste ashy to me.
Mother never made any attempts to reach out to me or find me, at least that I'm aware of. Ten years ago, I was contacted by a hospital and they said my mother had been admitted earlier after falling and was about to pass, so she must have kept some tabs on me to know my phone number for her emergency contacts. Apparently she had collapsed in the driveway and a neighbor called an ambulance. I got there and her only words to me were, “take care of him," as she placed a locket in my hand. I opened the locket, Jesus was on one side, Thomas on the other. I didn't say anything to her, just held her frail old hand with nicotine stained nails until she passed in the night. My mother was gone and I felt nothing except a vague sense of relief.
When I got to her house, it was like a time capsule. Other than a newer television, it was just like it was when I'd fled so many years ago. The smell of tobacco smoke hung like incense in the air. It felt oppressive, like a tomb.
I wandered the house in a bit of a daze. The one place I didn't want to go was upstairs. I didn't want to see my old room, or Thomas' room, or Mother's. Putting it off, I went to fix myself some supper, realizing I hadn't eaten in almost a day. I took a pause when I opened the fridge and saw a baby bottle on a shelf. Silently praying she had been babysitting for a neighbor, I fixed myself some toast with sardines and sat eating in the den watching TV. It had been almost forty years and it still felt rebellious not eating at the table and watching TV without permission.
My eyes grew heavy and I finally mustered up the gumption to head upstairs to go to bed. The stairs creaked in a familiar way under my feet and I was taken back to the feeling of dread hearing either Mother or Thomas climbing up. My old room was at the top of the stairs, I saw the door was nailed shut and had rambling quotes about Judas copied from the Bible in my mother's handwriting taped to the door. I sighed gently and turned from the door to head down the hallway, deciding Mother's room was probably the best place to sleep.
I passed by Thomas’ toy room and I heard a murmur from the room. I stopped, curiosity got the best of me and I entered. In Thomas' old toy room was a crib with joyful clown sheets. Dread swelled up inside me as I heard more murmurs and saw the sheets move. Approaching slowly, I peaked under the sheet and gasped.
Tucked inside was what looked like a baby gargoyle, gray and papery looking. Pus leaked out of its milky, bulbous eyes. I pulled back the blanket and saw it had no legs and its arms bent back, like wings on a bird. It was wearing just a cloth diaper, overflowing with tarry looking stool that took my breath away with its pungency, it smelled like Thomas’ blood, but somehow worse. My heart broke for this poor creature, Lord only knows how many years it has been in this crib suffering from its unholy existence.
So this is who Mother had wanted me to take care of…
Not knowing what else to do, I gently scooped him up. Like Thomas, he was shockingly heavy for how small his body was. Placing him on the changing table, I cleaned him and rewrapped his bottom in a clean diaper cloth. It was difficult, he fussed tremendously, crying and flopping around as much as his flipper-like arms would allow. I tried wiping off his oozing eyes and he snapped his mouth, which I saw was full of disturbingly square yellow teeth, trying to bite me. I carried him to the kitchen and rocked him while I heated up his bottle and he became furious with me, almost barking like a dog when my hand would get near his face.
He settled a bit as he fed, but he would still sometimes suddenly spit out the bottle and attempt to bite me. I laid him back in his crib, this abomination in a clown sheet, and I walked down the hall to Mother's room letting out a long sigh.
Combing through my mother's journals in the early hours of the morning, it looked like she tried the ceremony again shortly after Thomas died, but she either lacked Ingrid’s help or didn't have enough of my father's ashes left. Something went terribly wrong. She was vaguer than she had been about Thomas’ conception, but I suspect she had used some of Thomas' remains. The resulting birth she named Isaac.
Mother's journals told a sad tale of her and Isaac's suffering. She never mentioned me, but lamented the loss of Thomas and Dad relentlessly. She was hyper protective of Isaac, as that was all she had left. If her world had been small before, it became microscopic after he entered her life, requiring nearly constant care. According to Mother, he was blind and colicky, sometimes going years at a time without sleeping through the night. She had breast fed him for years, but she had to stop after he grew teeth and began biting her intentionally and feeding on her blood.
I spent a lot of time over the next few days pondering what to do. I had to get her estate in order, she had left me the house, in an obvious attempt to get me to continue caretaking for Isaac, but I didn't want it. I had my own cozy home an hour away from here, filled with happy memories and my possessions acquired traveling the world. Mother's home had a heavy energy I couldn't shake. Her and Thomas were both gone, but the memories of the scoldings and beatings hung in every corner, like cobwebs that would never sweep away.
So, I fed Isaac and kept him clean and tried to keep him company, although he seemed to hate me passionately. I took care of him, all the while thinking about what I was going to do. After a week, I felt resolute in what had to be done.
Gathering up all of Mother's journals in a tote, I made my way to Isaac and picked him up and carried everything to the living room.
The ancient logs in the fireplace meant for display ignited instantly. One by one, I fed the journals into the fire, burning away years of my mother's consuming sorrow. Isaac fussed and moaned next to me the entire time. When the last pages shimmered away into lacy ash, I took a throw pillow off the couch and gently cradled Isaac in my other arm. It didn't take long before he stopped struggling and I felt his little body relax after decades of suffering.
I gently wrapped up a bundle in a clown sheet and placed it in the fire. It burned furiously, like the paper in my mother's journals, and was soon gone. Nothing but ashes and embers.
“Don't worry, Mother,” I said purely for my own sake, "I took care of Isaac for you."
And finally, I felt at peace.
submitted by CheckUrCrawlspaces to nosleep [link] [comments]


2024.05.14 03:39 MundaneDisk7661 Scared I'm hitting a dead end on life

29, AFAB nb. I have adhd, depression, anxiety, and ptsd from childhood abuse.
Ever since I was very little I loved writing and wanted to be a writer. I wrote so many stories. I started getting noticed for my writing at just 14, seriously thought I had the talent to take it somewhere.
But I didn't get diagnosed with adhd until I was 23, and in that time a lot of things fell through in my life. I got my BA in English after honestly destroying my mental health, then I just...couldn't write. Trying to write made me feel ill.
I went and started working doing content editing online, and I had a decent career at it, but I hated it. I'd do nothing all day, come home, and feel too exhausted to do anything. I gained a bunch of weight over 6 years.
Then the pandemic hit, and at first I was thrilled to work at home, and I seriously thought I'd finally be able to write. But I saw how horrible everything was, and how I was still expected to do my meaningless work while the world burned outside, and...I just felt empty. There was nothing I had worth writing. I just wanted to numb myself with mindless entertainment.
Then I lost my job in content work and couldn't find anything for over a year. Finally landed an active job in petcare, shed a ton of weight, honestly really like this job except I'm paid barely above minimum wage. I'm basically having to restart a career all over again when I'm nearly 30 and have bigger bills to pay.
And still I'm too stressed to really write. I've joined a writers group where we just sit and write for 45 minutes at a time and I've been able to pump out 2000-3000 words an hour with that. And that feels amazing! But I can't make myself do it at home, and they only meet once a month.
I'm just so angry at myself for not writing. I keep thinking I could have had some kind of career for myself by now if I wasn't such a lazy piece of garbage.
Basically I don't know what to do. I feel like I've ruined my life. I've tried dedicating myself to all these careers but I'm finding nothing. I dont think I'll ever be able to own a home or start a family. This is bigger than the writing thing but the writing thing is all mixed up in it. Every solution I've seen out there costs money I don't have.
How can I stop hating myself long enough to do something? And can I get some assurance that this isn't the end, that my life isn't completely ruined?
submitted by MundaneDisk7661 to LifeAdvice [link] [comments]


2024.05.13 22:17 SciFiTime Aliens Were Never Prepared For Cookie Scouts

So far sales had been steady but not spectacular. Jenna hoped they would pick up after the school let out. She chatted and sampled with customers, pitching her spiel about supporting their troop's efforts to earn badges. It was fun work even if tiring on her feet.
Gazing up at the cloudless sky, Jenna wondered idly if it might rain later. The forecast hadn't mentioned anything, but you never knew. A tiny speck in the distance caught her eye. She squinted, trying to make it out. It grew rapidly in size—and shape. Whatever it was, it wasn't a bird.
"Hey Jamie, do you see that?" Jenna nudged her friend, pointing. Now the other girls had turned to look as well. What had been a speck was now clearly some large, cylindrical object descending from the heavens. It shone silvery-grey in the sunlight.
"Is that...a rocket ship?" breathed Tammy.
As it neared the treetops, its design became evident. Definitely not any spacecraft Jenna had seen on the news or in movies. It was smoothly rounded on all ends, with no visible engines or fins. Eerily silent, it drifted toward an open field and settled softly on four tapering legs.
The girls stared open-mouthed, cookies momentarily forgotten. A hatch appeared in the side of the ship. Light spilled out, glowing an ethereal blue. Then towering figures emerged, moving with an inhuman grace.
Jenna caught her breath. Peering closer, she could just make out bipedal forms wrapped in loose, silvery garments. Their limbs seemed overly long and jointed in odd places. As they turned in her direction, two dark eyes set wide in hairless faces met hers. No nose or mouth was visible beneath.
"Aliens," Jamie whispered. "Actual aliens. I don't believe it."
Tammy squeaked and clung to Jenna's arm. But Jenna's mind was racing. This was an incredible opportunity, too good to pass up. She flashed the others a mischievous smile. "Come on, girls. Let's go make some sales!"
The troop fell into step behind her as she marched into the field. The creatures had paused, gazing around at their surroundings with a palpable air of curiosity and caution. As Jenna neared, they angled their expressive eyes down at the little band approaching. Up close, their skin shimmered in shades of aqua and moss green, veined with silvery networks.
The tallest one shifted its gaze between the girls, as if taking their measure. It spoke, but the sound was like rushing wind and dripping water blended into an eerie melody. Its friends chattered in response, their voices blending into a dissonant choir.
Undeterred, Jenna beamed and proudly presented her box of Thin Mints. "Cookies!" she enunciated clearly. "Would you like to buy some cookies?" To her astonishment, a glowing rectangle like a computer screen lit up on the tall one's torso. Words scrolled across it in crisp English letters.
WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND. WHAT ARE COOKIES? IT SEEMS YOU ARE SELLING SOMETHING, BUT WE HAVE NO CURRENCY OF YOUR WORLD.
Jamie leaned in to whisper, eyes shining, "They can understand us! This is so cool."
Jenna gathered her thoughts, focusing on her sales pitch despite everything unusual about the situation. "Cookies are a sweet treat made of chocolate and biscuits. They're very popular here on Earth. And all the money we earn from selling them goes towards fun trips and learning new skills as Girl Scouts. Please, won't you buy a box to help support our troop? I'm sure you'll love them!"
The aliens conferred amongst themselves, still in untranslatablespeech. Finally, the glowing display lit up again. I APOLOGIZE, BUT WE HAVE NO MEANS OF TRANSACTION. WE ARE EXPLORERS HERE IN PEACE TO STUDY YOUR WORLD. PERHAPS ANOTHER TIME WE CAN BARTER. FOR NOW, WE ONLY WISH TO LEARN.
Jenna tried to hide her disappointment. This wasn't how she'd envisioned the interaction going at all. But she had come this far, so she wasn't giving up yet. An idea bloomed in her mind. "Well, since you want to learn about us, how about a trade? We'll give you a box of cookies to try in exchange for letting our whole troop come aboard your ship for a little while. What do you say?"
The girls held their breath. This was assuredly against every safety rule. But an opportunity for an out of this world experience was too enticing to pass up. The aliens conversed quietly before responding.
VERY WELL, HUMAN CHILDREN. FOR THE SAKE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE, WE AGREE TO YOUR TRADE. COME, WE SHALL GIVE YOU A TOUR OF OUR VESSEL.
Screeches of delight arose from the Scout troop. Jenna tried to shush them, not wanting the aliens to change their minds. But she couldn't contain her own grin of excitement and triumph. This was going to be one very memorable cookie sale!
Jenna stepped forward nervously, holding out the box of Thin Mints for the aliens to see. She did her best salesperson smile while gesturing to the colorful packaging. "Cookies!" she said again loudly and clearly.
The tallest alien leaned down, its large dark eyes fixing on the box in Jenna's hands. A long, nimble finger reached out to poke gently at the box, then drew back just as swiftly. Its companions murmured again in their strange tongue.
Frustrated not being able to communicate properly, Jenna popped open the lid so the sweet scent could waft up. She took one mint and mimed taking a bite, sighing happily and rubbing her belly. The aliens copied the sign for stomach, looking quizzical.
An idea sparked in Jenna's mind. Rummaging in her bag, she pulled out her phone and found the notepad app. Typing awkwardly with her thumbs, she showed them the words "Will you trade for this?" Arrows pointed to the cookies and to their ship.
A spark of understanding lit in the aliens' eyes as they studied the makeshift message. Their glowing display lit up in response. I APOLOGIZE, SMALL HUMAN, BUT WE HAVE NOTHING OF VALUE FROM OUR WORLD TO OFFER IN RETURN. OUR MISSION HERE IS ONE OF DISCOVERY ONLY.
"Please?" Jenna typed, giving her best pleading look. The girls clustered behind her, joining in the silent begging. But the aliens only seemed perplexed by this behavior.
Suddenly Tammy piped up, "What if we clean your ship for you? We'll dust and sweep and take out the garbage." The others stared at her, surprised by this inventive offer.
The display considered this. THAT IS A GENEROUS OFFER. HOWEVER, OUR CRAFT UTILIZES TECHNOLOGY FAR BEYOND YOUR WORLD'S CURRENT STAGE. I DOUBT YOU COULD PERFORM MAINTENANCE TO OUR STANDARDS.
At this rejection, the girls deflated with twin sounds of disappointment. But Jenna wasn't giving up yet. She furiously texted another message. "How about you give us a little tour then? We promise to be very careful and not touch anything."
The aliens conferred quietly amongst themselves for several moments. The girls held their breath, hoping their persistence was finally paying off. Then the glowing display lit up once more.
VERY WELL, SMALL HUMANS. FOR THE SAKE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE, WE WILL ALLOW YOU A BRIEF LOOK INSIDE OUR VESSEL. BUT YOU MUST FOLLOW OUR INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY. OUR TECHNOLOGY COULD PROVE DANGEROUS IF MISUSED.
The Girl Scouts whooped and cheered, doing a little victory dance. Jenna grinned, popping another Thin Mint in her mouth triumphantly. "Deal! Thank you so much for this."
The tallest alien gestured gracefully with one long arm. "THIS WAY, YOUNG ONES. WE SHALL BEGIN OUR TOUR."
Clutching their cookie boxes eagerly, the girls fell into line behind the extraterrestrials. They followed them up a floating gangway into the belly of the ship.
Inside, the walls glowed with an otherworldly luminescence. Strange symbols and interfaces winked all around, totally indecipherable. The floors felt bouncy underfoot, as if made of gelatin.
"Wow," breathed Jamie. "It's so beautiful in here."
The aliens guided them through sleek corridors and compartments full of glowing tech. They pointed out living quarters, a laboratory, hydroponic gardens, and an observation deck showing the curve of the Earth.
In the cockpit, countless viewscreens displayed alien constellations and scans of their small town below. Control panels rippled like liquid mercury beneath touch.
"This is where we navigated our journey to your solar system," explained their guides. "Truly a marvel, the distances stars can be bridged.
Tammy peered out the main viewing portal. "Your ship is so fast! How did you get here from wherever you came from?"
As the explorers launched into an explanation involving hyperdrives and folded spacetime, Jenna began to lose the thread. Space travel clearly worked very differently where these beings hailed from.
Their tour lasted nearly an hour, the aliens answering every barrage of questions patiently. All too soon, it was over, and they found themselves back outside in the late afternoon sun
"Thank you so much for the amazing tour!" Jenna gushed, hugging her now-empty cookie box. "Learning about aliens is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The tallest being dipped its head graciously. "IT WAS OUR PLEASURE, SMALL HUMANS. YOU HAVE PROVIDED US AN INSIGHT INTO YOUR YOUNG ONES AS WELL."
Its fellows chattered in their musical language, some holding half-eaten cookies and gesturing appreciatively. Jenna beamed, glad they seemed to have enjoyed the treats.
"Will you come back to see us again?" asked Jamie hopefully.
"PERHAPS, IF OUR EXPLORATIONS BRING US BACK THIS WAY," was the reply. "BUT FOR NOW, WE MUST RESUME OUR JOURNEY AMONG THE STARS. FAREWELL, AND THANK YOU ONCE MORE FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY.
The aliens turned as one and glided back up the gangway. The rockets flared, rising gracefully into the sky until they vanished into the dusk.
The girls stood watching long after, buzzing with excited chatter about this unforgettable day. In the end, it had been the best cookie sale ever. Maybe even worth breaking a few rules...
submitted by SciFiTime to HFY [link] [comments]


2024.05.13 22:16 SciFiTime Aliens Were Never Prepared For Cookie Scouts

So far sales had been steady but not spectacular. Jenna hoped they would pick up after the school let out. She chatted and sampled with customers, pitching her spiel about supporting their troop's efforts to earn badges. It was fun work even if tiring on her feet.
Gazing up at the cloudless sky, Jenna wondered idly if it might rain later. The forecast hadn't mentioned anything, but you never knew. A tiny speck in the distance caught her eye. She squinted, trying to make it out. It grew rapidly in size—and shape. Whatever it was, it wasn't a bird.
"Hey Jamie, do you see that?" Jenna nudged her friend, pointing. Now the other girls had turned to look as well. What had been a speck was now clearly some large, cylindrical object descending from the heavens. It shone silvery-grey in the sunlight.
"Is that...a rocket ship?" breathed Tammy.
As it neared the treetops, its design became evident. Definitely not any spacecraft Jenna had seen on the news or in movies. It was smoothly rounded on all ends, with no visible engines or fins. Eerily silent, it drifted toward an open field and settled softly on four tapering legs.
The girls stared open-mouthed, cookies momentarily forgotten. A hatch appeared in the side of the ship. Light spilled out, glowing an ethereal blue. Then towering figures emerged, moving with an inhuman grace.
Jenna caught her breath. Peering closer, she could just make out bipedal forms wrapped in loose, silvery garments. Their limbs seemed overly long and jointed in odd places. As they turned in her direction, two dark eyes set wide in hairless faces met hers. No nose or mouth was visible beneath.
"Aliens," Jamie whispered. "Actual aliens. I don't believe it."
Tammy squeaked and clung to Jenna's arm. But Jenna's mind was racing. This was an incredible opportunity, too good to pass up. She flashed the others a mischievous smile. "Come on, girls. Let's go make some sales!"
The troop fell into step behind her as she marched into the field. The creatures had paused, gazing around at their surroundings with a palpable air of curiosity and caution. As Jenna neared, they angled their expressive eyes down at the little band approaching. Up close, their skin shimmered in shades of aqua and moss green, veined with silvery networks.
The tallest one shifted its gaze between the girls, as if taking their measure. It spoke, but the sound was like rushing wind and dripping water blended into an eerie melody. Its friends chattered in response, their voices blending into a dissonant choir.
Undeterred, Jenna beamed and proudly presented her box of Thin Mints. "Cookies!" she enunciated clearly. "Would you like to buy some cookies?" To her astonishment, a glowing rectangle like a computer screen lit up on the tall one's torso. Words scrolled across it in crisp English letters.
WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND. WHAT ARE COOKIES? IT SEEMS YOU ARE SELLING SOMETHING, BUT WE HAVE NO CURRENCY OF YOUR WORLD.
Jamie leaned in to whisper, eyes shining, "They can understand us! This is so cool."
Jenna gathered her thoughts, focusing on her sales pitch despite everything unusual about the situation. "Cookies are a sweet treat made of chocolate and biscuits. They're very popular here on Earth. And all the money we earn from selling them goes towards fun trips and learning new skills as Girl Scouts. Please, won't you buy a box to help support our troop? I'm sure you'll love them!"
The aliens conferred amongst themselves, still in untranslatablespeech. Finally, the glowing display lit up again. I APOLOGIZE, BUT WE HAVE NO MEANS OF TRANSACTION. WE ARE EXPLORERS HERE IN PEACE TO STUDY YOUR WORLD. PERHAPS ANOTHER TIME WE CAN BARTER. FOR NOW, WE ONLY WISH TO LEARN.
Jenna tried to hide her disappointment. This wasn't how she'd envisioned the interaction going at all. But she had come this far, so she wasn't giving up yet. An idea bloomed in her mind. "Well, since you want to learn about us, how about a trade? We'll give you a box of cookies to try in exchange for letting our whole troop come aboard your ship for a little while. What do you say?"
The girls held their breath. This was assuredly against every safety rule. But an opportunity for an out of this world experience was too enticing to pass up. The aliens conversed quietly before responding.
VERY WELL, HUMAN CHILDREN. FOR THE SAKE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE, WE AGREE TO YOUR TRADE. COME, WE SHALL GIVE YOU A TOUR OF OUR VESSEL.
Screeches of delight arose from the Scout troop. Jenna tried to shush them, not wanting the aliens to change their minds. But she couldn't contain her own grin of excitement and triumph. This was going to be one very memorable cookie sale!
Jenna stepped forward nervously, holding out the box of Thin Mints for the aliens to see. She did her best salesperson smile while gesturing to the colorful packaging. "Cookies!" she said again loudly and clearly.
The tallest alien leaned down, its large dark eyes fixing on the box in Jenna's hands. A long, nimble finger reached out to poke gently at the box, then drew back just as swiftly. Its companions murmured again in their strange tongue.
Frustrated not being able to communicate properly, Jenna popped open the lid so the sweet scent could waft up. She took one mint and mimed taking a bite, sighing happily and rubbing her belly. The aliens copied the sign for stomach, looking quizzical.
An idea sparked in Jenna's mind. Rummaging in her bag, she pulled out her phone and found the notepad app. Typing awkwardly with her thumbs, she showed them the words "Will you trade for this?" Arrows pointed to the cookies and to their ship.
A spark of understanding lit in the aliens' eyes as they studied the makeshift message. Their glowing display lit up in response. I APOLOGIZE, SMALL HUMAN, BUT WE HAVE NOTHING OF VALUE FROM OUR WORLD TO OFFER IN RETURN. OUR MISSION HERE IS ONE OF DISCOVERY ONLY.
"Please?" Jenna typed, giving her best pleading look. The girls clustered behind her, joining in the silent begging. But the aliens only seemed perplexed by this behavior.
Suddenly Tammy piped up, "What if we clean your ship for you? We'll dust and sweep and take out the garbage." The others stared at her, surprised by this inventive offer.
The display considered this. THAT IS A GENEROUS OFFER. HOWEVER, OUR CRAFT UTILIZES TECHNOLOGY FAR BEYOND YOUR WORLD'S CURRENT STAGE. I DOUBT YOU COULD PERFORM MAINTENANCE TO OUR STANDARDS.
At this rejection, the girls deflated with twin sounds of disappointment. But Jenna wasn't giving up yet. She furiously texted another message. "How about you give us a little tour then? We promise to be very careful and not touch anything."
The aliens conferred quietly amongst themselves for several moments. The girls held their breath, hoping their persistence was finally paying off. Then the glowing display lit up once more.
VERY WELL, SMALL HUMANS. FOR THE SAKE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE, WE WILL ALLOW YOU A BRIEF LOOK INSIDE OUR VESSEL. BUT YOU MUST FOLLOW OUR INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY. OUR TECHNOLOGY COULD PROVE DANGEROUS IF MISUSED.
The Girl Scouts whooped and cheered, doing a little victory dance. Jenna grinned, popping another Thin Mint in her mouth triumphantly. "Deal! Thank you so much for this."
The tallest alien gestured gracefully with one long arm. "THIS WAY, YOUNG ONES. WE SHALL BEGIN OUR TOUR."
Clutching their cookie boxes eagerly, the girls fell into line behind the extraterrestrials. They followed them up a floating gangway into the belly of the ship.
Inside, the walls glowed with an otherworldly luminescence. Strange symbols and interfaces winked all around, totally indecipherable. The floors felt bouncy underfoot, as if made of gelatin.
"Wow," breathed Jamie. "It's so beautiful in here."
The aliens guided them through sleek corridors and compartments full of glowing tech. They pointed out living quarters, a laboratory, hydroponic gardens, and an observation deck showing the curve of the Earth.
In the cockpit, countless viewscreens displayed alien constellations and scans of their small town below. Control panels rippled like liquid mercury beneath touch.
"This is where we navigated our journey to your solar system," explained their guides. "Truly a marvel, the distances stars can be bridged.
Tammy peered out the main viewing portal. "Your ship is so fast! How did you get here from wherever you came from?"
As the explorers launched into an explanation involving hyperdrives and folded spacetime, Jenna began to lose the thread. Space travel clearly worked very differently where these beings hailed from.
Their tour lasted nearly an hour, the aliens answering every barrage of questions patiently. All too soon, it was over, and they found themselves back outside in the late afternoon sun
"Thank you so much for the amazing tour!" Jenna gushed, hugging her now-empty cookie box. "Learning about aliens is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The tallest being dipped its head graciously. "IT WAS OUR PLEASURE, SMALL HUMANS. YOU HAVE PROVIDED US AN INSIGHT INTO YOUR YOUNG ONES AS WELL."
Its fellows chattered in their musical language, some holding half-eaten cookies and gesturing appreciatively. Jenna beamed, glad they seemed to have enjoyed the treats.
"Will you come back to see us again?" asked Jamie hopefully.
"PERHAPS, IF OUR EXPLORATIONS BRING US BACK THIS WAY," was the reply. "BUT FOR NOW, WE MUST RESUME OUR JOURNEY AMONG THE STARS. FAREWELL, AND THANK YOU ONCE MORE FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY.
The aliens turned as one and glided back up the gangway. The rockets flared, rising gracefully into the sky until they vanished into the dusk.
The girls stood watching long after, buzzing with excited chatter about this unforgettable day. In the end, it had been the best cookie sale ever. Maybe even worth breaking a few rules...
submitted by SciFiTime to u/SciFiTime [link] [comments]


2024.05.13 18:56 salivanto Lingolia and "Pooled Ignorance"

Yesterday was an interesting day. In addition to getting involved with the recent thread about how to pronounce "scias", one of my students reached out via private message to ask about some text she'd found online which left her confused. When not otherwise engaged celebrating Mothers' Day, I found myself digging through the whole "Lingolia" Esperanto course (not recommended!) -- and then today, I woke up to someone on Reddit calling me some names, then calling me a few more, and then blocking me.

Pooled Ignorance

The offensive text that I'd written which warranted being called names was apparently this:
Double S? Soft T? What do these terms mean who speak English differently from how you do? /C/ is one sound, not two. English speakers will have to learn that sound before they can learn /SC/.
I didn't think that was overly harsh -- but let it be known that if anybody found that offensive, I guarantee that they will be offended by what I'm about to say: There is a lot of bad information about Esperanto out there, and too often learner forums for Esperanto, including this one, operate on a principle of "pooled ignorance."
And by the way, I am not asking for feedback about whether I ever sound "harsh". Any such feedback is unwanted and will not be seen as constructive. If you (dear reader) cannot look past your initial perceptions of "tone" in my writing, then I am not talking to you. I'm talking to the forum participant or forum visitor who is interested in getting good information about Esperanto.

Avoid Lingolia

I don't know that I'd ever heard of the Lingolia course. Online reviews basically say that it's "OK but overpriced" -- but when it comes to Esperanto, it's not even OK. It's just overpriced.
The course seems to have decent credentials, but - and I'm not exaggerating - ever single article that I looked at had several mistakes in them. Some of them were quite significant - turning the article into utter garbage.
I know for certain that there have been people who have worked through this course and found it pretty good. Why? Because they didn't know any better. If you're just learning, then how will you know that your teacher is teaching you crap?

Upvotes are meaningless

I am amazed at some of the answers in this forum which get voted to the top. I don't mean to say anything bad about the person who wrote them, but it makes me think that something similar [to what happens when people think Lingolia is great] is happening here. A learner sees an answer, thinks "seems legit" and gives it an upvote - even though this person is not in a position to evaluate whether the advice that's being given is actually true.
I know people don't like being corrected, but I guess I'd just like to put it out there that if you're the kind of person who gets offended when I reply to a top-voted answer to say something like "um, that's not how this works", then it could be that I'm not talking to you.
Esperanto is a real language with actual rules that take time to learn.
submitted by salivanto to learnesperanto [link] [comments]


http://activeproperty.pl/