My walmart cakes

EDIT: i wasn’t very clear in this post and should not have used the words “dress code.” what was said in the actual invitations was “egl fashion encouraged, but not required. please contact me for details regarding the dress code,” and then i gave more specific information to people who reached out about it, which was almost everyone. i did make sure they knew it was optional! apologies for the unclearness
i am excited as heck for the wedding next month and we have made everything work out so far, so the stuff im about to complain about isn’t really that important- but i wanna express my displeasure at a couple things that have happened along the way
firstly, and most importantly, my mother :( we are on decent terms but definitely have issues, i only continue to be amicable towards her because i need badly to remain on her insurance right now due to some health problems i am working out. when we got engaged, she was very excited and promised that since it was a small wedding, she would pay for almost everything and we had no budget. she backtracked on that pretty fast, which was totally fine, and we agreed early on that she was going to pay for the venue (small, cheap venue,) the fabric and supplies for me to create my wedding outfit, a cake, and our wedding bands. this was amazing and i was so grateful as due to my recent inability to work due to the aforementioned health problems, money was an issue for us. as it turned out, she never intended to help out much at all. she did pay for some of the fabric for my outfit, but made me choose the cheapest options and was appalled that is was going to be over $30- so i ended up paying for one of the fabrics and the buttons alone. not a huge deal. then when the time came to pay for the venue, she claimed she did not remember agreeing to pay for it and wanted me to cover the whole thing. slightly bigger deal, cheap venue but expensive for me in my current situation. i showed her proof of our prior agreement and she eventually agreed to pay the deposit. that was a huge help, but still put me way over budget. and then last week she asked what we were doing for a cake. i reminded her that the cake was part of our agreement and she said she could not do it and suggested buying one from walmart instead, but honestly i am probably going to just make one myself as i am a very good baker and would rather not have a walmart cake. she did buy our wedding bands and i am very happy with them, but they did have to be under $100 each (completely fine with me, love the rings, but weird considering her “no budget” claim early on)
nobody else in either of our families has contributed either, which makes sense as they arent exactly drowning in money. lots of “please send me your registry!” but no items purchased from them either. i did figure that the registry was probably pointless so that does not bother me, just made one since people were asking for it. i did ask my dad a while ago if he could help us with part of the cost of a small airbnb for the wedding night since we live with my fiancés mom currently and he said he could not afford to contribute anything. i purchased the airbnb myself since we wouldnt have anywhere to stay otherwise, but then today i see on facebook he took his wife on a “spontaneous vacation” to san francisco, which is just a little odd as he says they are always totally broke. he is also acting super annoyed that he has to drive us an hour to the town the wedding is in when he was totally down for it before and said it was no issue.
two more complaints, these not so much about money.
numba one- guests were informed 4 months in advance that the dress code was egl fashion, lolita, ouji, aristo. i provided all potential guests with information on the fashion and links to places where it could be obtained affordably,and even said that if it couldnt be done anything with a victorian vibe was great but that it was optional. . every single person except for my mother said they were gonna make it happen. fast forward to now, i messaged people confirming rsvps and asking how things were going with that, and every single person now says that they will in fact not be wearing egl fashion or even anything adjacent to it. even my best man, who chose an outfit with me and said he would order it months ago. said best man has also now backed out of the wedding for money reasons as their car broke down. no judgment for that part of course, it happens.
numba two- of the 20 people who initially said they would absolutely come, only 11 have rsvp’ed and most others have said they can no longer make it :( unfortunately now the wedding is filled with only family members that i didnt really want to invite but was urged to, and maybe 3 freinds.
overall i know the important thing is that this event will bring me and my fiancé together and it will be wonderful day for me. i am happy and ready for this to happen, but i am also very broke now after all the unexpected expenses and a little disappointed in the guest list. it does feel a bit like nobody is taking the wedding seriously, based on their demeanor about the whole thing. not a single person from my fiancés family is attending, even his mom who we live with, and the people in my family who are attending do not really seem excited about it. everybody else in my family who gets married has a beautiful photo hung up in my grandparents house, and i wont have that either because my grandparents now think i am an abomination for being gay and trans, so that hurts a little too.
apologies for the essay! i needed somewhere to express my displeasure with some aspects of the process so far.

If this is a long read, please forgive me. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about it except my mom.
Around 2019-2020, I was diagnosed with celiac disease. I was scared and took it very seriously. In Girl Scout cookie season with my nieces, I only ate the gf one. I stopped eating free cake and donuts and pizza at work. I had a terrible time on a vacation during covid because many restaurants and stores were closed and gas stations wouldn’t let me inside, so I ate meat and cheese sticks and lays potato chips to survive. Thanksgiving was hard. Gf processed food took a lot of getting used to. But I persevered, lost 40+ pounds, and felt pretty good.
Then around 2023, my doctor didn’t believe I had celiac. She was even kind of mean about it and told me to prove it or she would never chart it. I went back to my gastro doctor and asked for paperwork. The paperwork said inconclusive. I felt betrayed because they said I definitely had it. I spent so much money and gave up so much food and holidays…for nothing?
So for about a year and a half, I made up for lost time. Ate all the free food offered. Burger King came to town and I became a regular. All the southern food like fried chicken and flaky biscuits and mac and cheese I ate again. Gained my weight back. Had months of diarrhea and blamed it on Taco Bell. I felt worse and worse.
I finally decided enough was enough and I had a bunch of tests run to make sure. It cost over 5 grand because my insurance was so so. I was miserable eating gluten on purpose until my tests in September. After a colonoscopy and endoscopy and a bunch of other tests, it was found that I had Celiac, it was definite and much worse, and now I had Barrett’s Esophagus too. My doctor had taken me off prilosec a couple of years ago because she said I could get dementia. That upset the gastrointestinal team who said esophageal cancer would be so much worse.
So I stopped going to my home doctor, started protonix, and have tried my best the past 7 months, but it seems so much harder. I was too easily swayed by people telling me to just get one donut, by fast food being in my work parking lot and close to home, and by all the doctors I had to pay and dwindling gf shelves.
I tried to reward myself with virtual medals I earned miles on every time I ate gf. It helped, but didn’t stop me. I could eat gf breakfast and dinner at home, but I did terrible at work. So I quit Walmart and got me an office job where I have to bring a lunch. But my big family eats up my safe snacks so I end up buying gross tasting, gluteny, expensive food in the lunch room. I still don’t have insurance and I ran out of protonix and famotidine. I was ok until last week. I developed a horrible cough (at a call center, no less) and I started tasting blood and having horrible heartburn. I wasn’t able to eat for a couple of days. Finally my brain cleared up and I remembered that I had Barrett’s Esophagus also. I went back on famotidine and am taking tums until I can afford protonix without insurance. I feel a little better today. But I got depressed when I found out my former coworkers got a huge wage and I was drowning in debt and no insurance, so I went to McDonalds because I have absolutely no willpower and my depression is returning. I don’t know what to do. I want to do better! I want to be healthy and here for my family. I could really use some encouragement right now. Sorry this was so long.

Alright, this wedding doesn't turn out to be a complete disaster but it is pretty rough. So lets dive in with some background info:
My parents were in the middle of a divorce when my father passed away. She played the ailing widow and showed up drunk to the funeral. Despite her claims that my father was the "love of her life" and that they were never "actually" going to get divorced - she officially started dating a former coworker of hers 4 months later. Mind you, there were suspicious that they had been having an affair while they worked together several years back.
My mother assured us that regardless of their relationship, she never wanted to get married again. She said that if they did anything it would be a "spiritual" wedding but nothing official and she wanted to keep our dad's last name. Well that all changed about 2 years ago when my sister got engaged. We all knew she was gonna marry this guy so The speed at which they got engaged was a bit shocking; but it wasn't unexpected. My sister jumped right into wedding planning and gave my mother and I a date for us to go wedding dress shopping and was talking to us about colors and what not. Well 2 weeks later my mother calls us and Surprise! She is engaged! seemed a little fishy that she "never wanted to remarry" but 2 weeks after my sister got engaged she did too. What's even stranger is that she was so excited to get married that she was "being careless" and planned her wedding day for the day we were supposed to be wedding dress shopping with my sister. This meant that my sister had to reschedule her dress shopping day and I actually wasn't able to attend- which pissed me off.
before we go to much farther, it is important to know my mom prides herself on being cheap. She was one of those extrema coupon ppl and is always bragging about how she gets things for "practically free". this meant that she wanted to have her wedding the cheapest way possible. The Irony is that used used to bitch about how her and my dad got married in my grandparent's Livingroom because they were broke but now she actively wanted her wedding to be cheap.
So, she bought her dress on amazon to save money and did not get it tailored so the top would not stay up properly. she didn't want to spend a ton of money on a venue so she rented a local park. The issue with this is that the ground had not been tended for a while and the grass was covered in goose shit. ADDITIONALLY, she only rented half of the very small park to save money- so little Timmy was having his birthday party 20 ft away from her wedding. when asked why she didn't just rent the whole park she said that Fifty dollars was a lot to spend on a venue and they really only needed half so twenty- five dollars was much more reasonable.
Her MOH was supposed to set up the venue and everything before people arrived but she didn't bring half of what they were supposed to use for decoration and she had no way to hang things so my sister and I were scrambling to help get everything set up before the ceremony. Also I have a half sister that neither me or my sister have ever met and my mother was so excited to introduce us to her. About 20 mins after we arrived we got word that she wasn't coming, so my sister was trying to calm my mom down from that situation which was not easy. and my sister had to redo her makeup ( she was the one that did it the first time too).
The food was potluck style, so everyone brought a dish, which is fine. and the cake was a sheet cake from Walmart and a dozen or so cupcakes. Frankly a perfectly fine option. The event however was also bring your own chair. the park had picnic tables for the "reception" but if you didn't want to sit on the grass during the ceremony, you had to bring your own chair. She was also pissed when the single portable speaker she brought to play music died just after the ceremony and asked me why I wasn't dealing with it ( I wasn't even in charge of bringing the speaker so not sure why this was my fault). I tried to find a charging cord but we had no luck. When she started to cry another guest found an old speaker in her car that we were able to use for a while,: until, her phone started to die and I was once again on a charger hunt.
The real kicker to this story is the wedding photos. she asked a friend of hers to do the photographs, Said friend had a few months old baby that she brought to the wedding however and only wanted certain people to watch the baby ( i.e me and my sister ) which made group shots a chore. Oh and one small detail about her- SHE IS LEGALLY BLIND. she still has some vision but not much. So while she was actually able to take a few good photos, all of them were crooked and off center.
At the end of the day she was happy with it ( she says she is at least, she looked pretty miffed at the time). and now she s remarried and no longer tainting my father's good family name with her first name. ( we don't get along) thanks for reading.

So my son is 10 and starting Thursday night he is "off" he took a nap after school and then went to bed early which he never does, like EVER. I kept him home on Friday because I was genuinely so worried but that was my only concern. Friday he stayed in his room and played his game and watched t.v as normal. But once again fell asleep early for his usual self. Today we got up and I needed to do some shopping so he went with me and sister to Walmart we hit up Starbucks and he got a cake pop. It gave him a tummy ache and soon into our trip he was done walking and ready to go. We came home and he had diarrhea got in the bed and was just lazy. Then around 7 he tells me he is ready for bed. Is he going through something or is it just a normal growth spurt?

We look the same and we always have but we couldn’t be more different from each other. I think that’s the best place to start with this. Some identical twins have a lot in common. They like the same foods, the same things on television, some even spend their entire lives dressing in the same clothes, but we were never those girls. For as long as I remember, it’s been hard for even our own parents to tell us apart were it not for our very different personalities. Our own mother can’t tell the difference between our voices over the phone to this day. We even have the same laugh, but after that we diverge. I’m extroverted and would much rather be outdoors than inside where she is bookish and reserved. As far as personality traits go, Lily and I have always shared very few.
We both have our father’s nose and our mother’s heart shaped face and her high cheekbones. The same raven-black hair falls in waves past both of our shoulders and the same emerald green, almond shaped eyes sparkle with hidden flecks of gold that you can only see if you take a look up close.
Still, there’s a connection between us that can’t be explained. We just feel it. Know it’s there. It’s a thing with identical twins no matter how truly different they really are. Some say it’s a sort of telepathy, if you believe in that sort of thing.
That’s the reason I knew something was wrong before I had proof. I knew when I woke up in the morning that something was happening and that it was big. I even knew when I finally got up the nerve to send her a text, she would reply this time; not right away–but this time–she would. She hadn't been replying to me at all lately, no matter how often I sent her messages. Something was different now. I'd hear back from her but it would be at least a week–possibly a few days more before I did. Sending this text was different. Something I could feel in my bones told me she'd finally tell me what was going on with her. Where had she been? In my heart, I knew the lack of communication over the past several months wasn’t something she had chosen. Somehow I knew she wanted to talk to me but for some reason she couldn’t and that was a very strange and unnerving feeling for a twin to have. In the past, before Lily’s recent radio-silence, she and I had rarely gone for more than a day or two without checking in. In the past year that had suddenly changed and I had no logical explanation for it.
This particular morning, a feeling of unease is everywhere around me and even somehow inside me. I feel it in bed before I even open my eyes. Like an itch you can’t scratch because you know it will just make the rash worse and trying to ignore it altogether will drive you mad. The worst part about the itch was knowing that after months of nothing, I would finally hear back from Lily. It was time. She was ready to talk. I knew it. I don't know how–I just did. Somehow after months of unanswered messages, my next text would finally garner a response and knowing that made me jittery. The itch was made worse by the inexplicable knowledge that the response was going to take days. At least I would get it, but I'd have to wait for it for days. If she hadn't replied to me in months, why should that make me feel so uneasy? I couldn't say. The whole prospect of this scenario made me nervous but I told myself I would send the message right after breakfast because my sister needed me to send it and she needed me to send it today. It was important that I reached out to her this morning.
Whatever happened is bothering me so much that I burn the pancakes and have to start them over three different times.
“Vibes are off today, Emily,” my wife Jasmine begins. She sits patiently waiting for me to serve her a plate of good ones, pancakes that aren’t burnt, at the table in our kitchenette, “I just changed that bag last night you know, and if you keep doing that I’ll have to take it out again before we even get to eat. What’s up with you?”
“Not me,” I reply, “it’s Lily. Something’s up with Lilly.”
“Oh? You finally hear back from her? What’s going on?”
“That’s just it. I haven't heard anything in months but that's definitely about to change. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, babe. Hard to explain,” I say.
“A twin thing?” She asks.
“Exactly. It’s twintuition. It’s like–”
“–Intuition,” she finishes for me, “I get it. Did you try calling her or texting her yet?” Jasmine asks.
“No, but it’s because I’m afraid she won’t answer right away and I don’t want to have that fear be real.” I admit. “That’s weird isn’t it?”
“Very,” she says getting up from the table. She picks my phone up from the counter and grabs me by the waist, moving me away from the stove and spinning me around. She pecks a small kiss on my lips and lifts one of my hands, placing the phone into it. She gives me a little shove toward the kitchenette table and pulls out the chair for me.
“You’re going to sit here and write a text to your sister and I’m going to finish making breakfast.” She tells me.
I sit here looking at my phone for a while, unsure of how to start. Finally I type:

Anything wrong? Worried about you.

And I hit send.
_____________________________
Eight days pass before Lily texts me back and it’s a flood of texts in the morning from an unknown number. One after the other.

Sorry I didn’t get back to you right away. You were right about Eric. I didn’t tell you a lot because I thought you’d be ashamed of me. Or mad. You’ve always been so much stronger than I am.
I packed and left the night you text me. I was afraid to reply because I thought he might be able to read it somehow. He definitely was tracking the phone so I left it at the bus station that morning.
It took me a few days to get set up, but I’m in Echo Bay now and this is my new number. Just got one of those burner phones from Walmart. It’s nothing special but that’s on purpose.
I’m staying in a bungalow on the beach. Very cute. Just a few miles from you and Jasmine, actually. It’s nothing permanent, just an AirB&B. I figured coming here would be safest for now to figure out what to do next.
I never told him where you were and he’ll try to find me if he can. He’ll follow me to the end of the Earth. I should have told you about him. The whole truth. Now I finally can. If you’re not busy, come by today and I’ll tell you the whole story.

The last text she sends puts tears in my eyes and I call her right after I read it and we make plans…

I’m pretty sure if I stayed he’d have killed me sooner or later. Probably sooner.

I meet Lily for lunch at her bungalow in the afternoon and she’s right, it’s very cute. She, on the other hand, looks like a mess and I find myself both irate and awestruck. I don't understand how the bruises haven’t fully healed or even begun to heal a little. That bastard really did a number on her. It's eight days later and her face and skin is purple and green with bruises in so many places–appearing to be so fresh that you'd think she'd been at the bottom of a three-car pile up just the night before.
“He wasn’t always like this, you know,” she tells me, “in the beginning he was really charming…it took a long time to figure out that person wasn’t real.”
She doesn’t eat much, mostly just moves the food around on her plate with her fork. She goes quiet and drifts away from the conversation a lot which is strange for me because she was always the one with more focus. I’m the daydreamer. She’s the grounded one. That’s how we’ve always been. A few times while she’s sitting silently, she begins to cry. When I hold her hand, it turns into a wailing sob and I reassure her that none of this is her fault. That this sort of thing happens to a lot of women. That they feel trapped and never try to get out. Never try to escape. They don’t make it out. I reassure her that she’s still strong because she saw what was happening and she did something about it. She left. I reassure her quietly that although it shouldn’t be this way, that it shouldn’t happen, this still happens to lots of women anyway. She’s not alone. She escaped it. She’s a survivor.
“We can help find you a lawyer if you want,” I offer at one point, “we have money saved. We can pay for it,” and she immediately shuts the idea down.
“No. I’m not doing that,” she says adamantly, “I just want to be done with it. I came here to heal. I don’t know if I’m staying or not yet…”
She pauses for a moment and then adds: “I just need some time to figure out where I’m supposed to be.”
“But if you let him get away with it, he could do this to someone else,” I say, “you do realize that right? You need to do something. He needs to pay for this.”
“He does need to, but what if he gets away with it?” she asks, “what if I report all of it and he sits trial for it…and what if he gets off? I can't take that chance. It isn't worth the consequences of it. What if I don't win?”
“What if you do?” I ask her. She gets really quiet then, “promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I will,” she says and it’s almost a whisper, “I just need some time. I made it away and I’m safe. I don’t know if I want him to know where I am. If I do this then he knows I’m here and when he does, if I lose, he will kill me. You understand that don’t you? He will kill me. That man operates on some sort of twisted revenge. He won't even consider what would follow once he's gotten it. He'll just think about getting even with me.”
“Jail isn't a deterrent when you're dealing with a human grenade. He'll only want to explode–to destroy. He won't worry about what happens to him after that. He doesn't work that way.” She says.
She doesn’t want to let me take pictures of her bruises but I insist on it and somehow actually win that argument. She tells me she’s been trying not to even look in mirrors right now. She doesn’t want pictures of her looking like this on her brand new phone because what if she decides to take a picture of something beautiful, like a sunset, and she opens the camera and the photo gallery is right there and she has to look at this instead. I tell her that she’s still beautiful no matter what happened to her. All that matters is what happens next. So I take the pictures for her with my phone. She takes off her shirt and there are more bruises everywhere underneath and we take pictures of those too.
I manage to keep my own feelings bottled up for the entire afternoon until she takes her shirt off and now before I realize I’m doing it, I’m crying also.
“Shhh,” she whispers, “you can’t cry. You’re the strong one.”
I shake my head and tell her that we’re both strong and then we’re both sobbing and she presses her face against my chest and I press my head onto the top of hers until she steps away from me and tells me that I have to stop crying on her because I’m getting snot in her hair. We both laugh.
It’s not funny. Nothing about this afternoon has been, but we both laugh anyway and our laughs still sound the same.
I spend the entire day with her and as the sun goes down we leave her bungalow and take a walk along the beach.
“So, can I ask how you ended up falling for this guy? Identical or not we clearly operate on different wavelengths romantically and I just don't understand.” I say, and then add: “forgive me if that's too personal.”
“No. It isn't.” She begins, “and if only we operated on the same wavelength or even similar ones. I thought about you a lot in the past few years. Thought that if only I was a big old lezzie–like you, if I'd just went for girls, none of this would've ever happened.”
“Don't be so sure. Domestic abuse doesn't have a gender. There's shitty, abusive partners in queer relationships too.” I tell her.
“Well, regardless, I've actually asked myself the same question about a hundred times in the last week. What drew me to him and where and when did things change–you know? When did he go from the ideal boyfriend to an absolute monster?”
She tells me that when she met this bastard, Eric Warminster, it was like something out of a movie, and her story begins that way too–like a cheesy rom-com–so corny it sounds fake…I almost tell her how much I hate romantic comedies, I almost tell her to give me some horror flick any day of the week. I think better of it just before I do and don't say the thought aloud. She never went for horror, even when we were girls–and that's what she ended up with despite her aversion to it. That was what her life had become.
She tells me they were both in the produce section of the grocery, neither of them paying too much attention–he on the phone and she looking over her shopping list. They both reached for a pineapple–the last pineapple in the crate. He asks her what she plans to do with it if he lets her have it and she tells him she's just going to cut it up and eat it. He tells her he’s making a pineapple-upsidedown cake with it.
“I've never had that.” She tells him honestly; matter-of-factly and he invites her over to his place later that night to be the judge of whether or not his recipe is any good. Normally, she tells me, she'd never have done something like that. She tells me that she's not the type to just go to a strange man's place on a whim…but he was good looking and had a charming way about him. She fondly describes his smile. It’s out of character and she can't say exactly what makes her drop her guard and give this man her number, but she does…
And the dinner he cooks for her as well as the cake he makes are both excellent.
“That wasn't the only cake he made for me. One day when we were still getting to know each other he asked me a load of questions. What's my favorite color? Favorite flower? That sort of thing. Remember that movie ‘Steel Magnolias?’ I told him that was my favorite movie. He says he's never seen it. Not a week later, he tells me he watched it and asks me to come by after work. Says he's got a surprise for me...” She says.
“No fuckin way.” I said, interrupting her. I told you rom-coms aren't really my thing, but I'd known that was Lily's favorite since we were in middle school. Of course I'd suffered through it and we'd watched it together…her with a tissue pressed against her eyes and me rolling mine.
“He made the Armadillo Cake?” I ask, “you mean to tell me he watched the movie just because you mentioned it and then he made the cake?”
Lily smiles briefly at the recollection and nods.
“He was very romantic…in the beginning.” She tells me.
Eric does all sorts of things to win Lily's heart: he'd make her breakfast in bed, take her on picnics. She tells me he would even sit there calmly while she complained about her co-workers and instead of trying to fix the problem or offer his advice, by the end of the conversation he'd have found a reason to hate the people she said she hated in her story and have his own complaints about them too. According to Lily, he was perfect…and then shortly after she moved in with him, things started to change and they changed fast.
Little things at first…she accidentally buys the wrong type of cereal at the store and is met with: “Frosted Flakes? Really? Not Frosted Flakes! Mini Wheats! Are you stupid or something? Frosted Mini Wheats! How hard is that for your useless, stupid brain to remember?”
She tells me that once she folded the towels the way our mother always had when we were growing up. He didn't fold them that way so he calls her into the bathroom, throws open the linen closet and proceeds to yank each one of them out one by one, unfolding them with a flick of his wrist before smooshing them into balls and leaving them in a heap on the floor.
“Do it the fuckin right away the first time, or do it again, moron.” He shouts at her before storming out of the room.
“He told me all my friends were toxic next. I didn't have any friends except my coworkers so he told me he didn't want me working anymore. Most women would kill to be homemakers. Do the dishes. Spend the afternoon watching soap operas. He put me on an allowance and I couldn't buy anything without telling him I was buying it.” She says. “He told me you were toxic too. Said you didn't love me and the way he said it…how he explained it, it was so convincing. That’s the reason I stopped returning your calls.” After she says this, she begins to cry quietly.
He tells her if she tries to reach me or any other of her so-called “toxic” family, and he finds out, he'll sell the car he bought her and they'd start having everything–all the shopping and groceries–delivered. She becomes afraid if she lets anyone know what’s happening she’ll lose what little freedom he grants her and she'll be trapped in their house for good…trapped there with him for good.
There are a few other anecdotes just like those ones in her story and I find myself getting more and more angry as she recounts all of this to me. Then it hits me: each story is just another small escalation. I'm so mad I could run this man down with my car, then get out and curb-stomp his head before setting him on fire.
I can feel the desire to do that just from what she tells me up to this point…
She still hasn't gotten to the day he begins to put his hands on her and my blood is already boiling.
She gets quiet for a long time and we just walk. I reach out and take her hand, and when I do she puts the thoughts that I was having just a moment earlier into words:
“I can sense how mad you are. I haven't even told you about the first time he hit me.” She says.
“You can keep talking about it, but you don't have to if you don't want to.” I say.
“I don't want to, but I'm going to anyway. I'm ashamed.”
“You shouldn't be. None of this was your fault.” I tell her.
“I know. I am anyway.” She continues, “I feel like I need to tell you. I have to tell someone. I haven't talked about any of this. It's poison and I want it out.”
The first time he hits her, it’s a punch in the face. He doesn't even start off with a slap or something. He'd never hit her before and the first time he does, it's a closed fist. She isn't expecting it to happen. The reason he claims he did it afterward is that she'd overcooked his pork chop. They finish eating and as she collected his plate she askes him how it was. He says it was chewy and then out of nowhere he punches her in the eye.
After he discovers he can get away with something like that, it starts happening all the time…
He throws her against a wall for forgetting to charge his phone for him. She'd forgotten somewhere that she was responsible for every small thing when it came to keeping the household running–even things that she'd never been asked to do. Things as small as putting his phone on the charger for him so he wouldn't have to do it himself.
He didn't want a girlfriend or a partner…he wanted a slave.
If he was leaving for work and she couldn't tell him where his keys were, he'd choke her so roughly and long that her vision would go white–then black–only to stop moments before she was about to pass out.
She’d forget who she was dealing with and speak out of turn and he'd take her by a fist-full of hair and drag her into their guest room where he'd installed a padlock she hadn't noticed before. He'd lock her inside and leave her there for a full day–sometimes two–without anything to eat or drink.
He'd tell her how lucky she was to be so well kept.
He'd tell her that the first time she ever tried to leave him would be the last time she tried that because dead women can't leave anyone–ever.
The awful stories pour out of her. Sometimes slowly like the tears that well in the corner of her eyes, growing like drops at the tip of a leaky tap until big enough to fall… Sometimes in a deluge of rolling sobs as a powerful wave like a wall of water from a burst dam. I don't interrupt her. I don't know what to say so I only listen. I know my sister. She doesn't want me to say anything because nothing I could say would take away the pain of any of this for her.
Eventually the emotions and stories are all spent and she grows silent. When she speaks again, it's to change the subject.
“What’s that out there?” She asks, pointing out at a spot in the water. The sun has nearly set and the only thing we can see is a great dark space on the horizon. The place where I live is old and still has a working lighthouse; it’s more for nostalgia than anything else now. As if on queue, the light sweeps across the darkness revealing a large, not so distant island that mostly exists as an outcropping of rocks.
“The locals call it Mermaid’s Roost,” I tell her, “lots of the old-timers, the superstitious ones, say that’s where the sirens live.”
She smiles at that. I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile all day and it’s an incredible feeling. It’s too soon to call it healing but it’s the beginning of something like it and I can feel it radiating from her. It feels warm. She lifts her phone and opens the camera.
“It’s gonna be my first picture in my new phone,” she says, “I was waiting for something beautiful. I wanted the first one I took to be something beautiful.”
“The Roost is why they put the old lighthouse here in the first place. Supposedly there’s dozens of old ships that sank out there,” I tell her.
“They heard the sirens singing and rammed their ships against the rocks to be closer to them.” Lily says, “The legend is that they’re still out there and you can still hear them if they want you to. If they want you to come out to them…when men hear them from the water it’s because they want to smash the ships. When they hear them from the shore it’s always a trick; a call to swim out to them. Most don’t make it. There's an awful undertow. They drown. If they do make it that far, the sirens just kill them and eat them. They’re not actually mermaids at all but birds with the heads of women. Weird right? They’re from Greek mythology, you know. Surprising anyone believes anything like that out here.”
“That’s right,” I say, struggling to hide my surprise, “but how do you know all that? You just got here.”
“There’s a book about it at the house,” she explains, “I didn't just get here. I’ve been here for about three days. I’ve read the whole thing twice. Didn’t realize it was a local thing. That explains two things…why it was in the house to begin with, but also why it wasn’t written very well. I thought it’s probably self-published or a vanity press sort of thing,” She shrugs and says, “I didn’t realize why it was at the house until now. I like it anyway. It’s just about the only thing there is to read in there.”
I’m flabbergasted, “Three days? You got here and waited three days to text me?” I heard the rest of what she said but that’s the only thing that registers.
“I was scared,” she says, “scared to tell you about any of this stuff.”
“I get it. I’m not mad or anything but Jesus, Lily, you’ve been this close for three days? I’ve been worried sick about you for over a week!”
“I know,” she whispers and grabs my hand, “I’m sorry.”
“We should probably get back before it gets too dark,” I say.
“Stay with me tonight? Say you will? Call Jasmine and tell her you’ll be home in the morning?”
I say I will and that we need to start to head back to her place. We’ve walked about a mile so it will take us a while to get back and this isn’t the kind of beach that’s made of gentle slopes of endless sand. There’s sand of course, but it’s also full of rocks to trip and bust your head open on in the dark.
When we’re halfway there and the sky is a deep, dark purple, like the color of wine when it's still in the bottle, she stops and looks back at Mermaid’s Roost. The shadow of it still looms on the dark violet horizon, like a giant sleeping in the sparkling black blanket of water. Her eyes grow wide and seem to fill with tiny golden diamonds, like flecks of light reflected by the stars. Her face glows with an uncharacteristically innocent wonder.
“Emily,” she whispers, “do you hear them too?”
And I think she’s fucking with me so I say “sure” and tell her to hurry up because I’m starving and I want to order us a pizza and call my wife to let her know I'll be staying with her in her bungalow. Also that my feet hurt. The truth is that I can barely hear her when she asks the question in the first place.
“It’s beautiful,” she says quietly and I agree because I think she’s talking about the town or the beach or the moon or the stars or anything else–anything real–and not some local legend that she can hear over the sound of the waves and wind that I can’t.
When we get back to the little beach house, she pauses in the doorway and stares for a long time back at the island of rocks. It’s distant, but big enough to still see, if only just barely when the light from the lighthouse sweeps across it in the dark.
_____________________________
The house is awash with the chill and the sounds of the sea wind when I wake up. We went to the master bedroom around 11:00pm to watch a movie. The plan was for us to stay in the same bed like we used to do sometimes when we were little girls. The house has a guest room and I could have slept in there, but Lily begged me to stay with her, so I did and the truth is that I wanted to.
It’s 3:00am and the cold is what’s roused me from sleep but it’s panic that pulls me fully awake now. She’s not here with me. I know she’s not in the house. I know this the same way that I know she turned the TV off when she left. She did this so a loud commercial didn’t wake me. I know this because it’s what I would have done if I was trying to sneak away and I didn’t want her to stop me. I know all of this the same way I knew she was in trouble but I didn’t know how or why over a week ago. Twintuition.
I’ve never had a feeling like this one before. It’s strong and clear but also deep and dark like the water outside. I know from the moment I wake up that I won’t see her alive again, but I search the entire house for her anyway. I go from room to room checking every closet, beneath both the beds and even behind the shower curtain in the bathroom. When I get to the living room I see the reason the house is so cold; she didn’t shut the door behind her when she left.
“The Legend of Mermaid’s Roost” is laying open on the counter and she’s used seashells to hold the pages open to where she’s circled a passage in black marker.

“When men hear the sirens singing, it is always without a doubt an attempt at temptation. Their beautiful and deadly song is said to be a lure calling sailors ever closer to the rocks of Mermaid’s Roost to smash their ships along the stoney shore, but the sirens don’t stop there. Their singing has not only been heard by men at sea, but by those who walk along the shores after dark. They call out to the men on the mainland trying to convince them to swim out to the Roost; a distance just over half a mile. According to the legends, most of those that attempted to swim the distance to the island would get caught in the undertow and drown. If they managed to make it the entire way, the sirens of Mermaid’s Roost would rip them apart with their talons and eat them alive while they screamed for a mercy that would never come. Death is always the fate of men who hear the song.”
“According to the myths, women almost never hear their enchanting calls from across the bay, but for those that do the call is never a deadly temptation, but rather an invitation to join them. To sing with them and lure men to their untimely ends. Those women that do hear them may choose to join their deadly flock if they wish to do so. According to the local histories this is rare and the women that choose to join them are never seen nor heard from again.”

At the bottom of the page, a note in her handwriting simply reads: “Figured out where I’m supposed to be. Thanks for today. I love you always.”
I rush outside knowing there’s no reason to hurry because I’m already too late. She’s already made her choice and I don’t need my twintuition to tell me that because I can hear her.
She’s singing…Mermaid’s Roost is over a mile away and I know it’s her voice because it sounds so much like my own. It’s quiet from this distance but the preternatural nature of her chorus spans the space between us with ease and clarity…but this song is not my invitation to join her…
It’s her last request.
When I offered to pay for a lawyer so she could make him pay for putting his hands on her, she was afraid she wouldn’t win but that fear is gone now. She’s found a whole flock that’ll be willing–that lives for the sole purpose of picking better men than him apart, and they will, as they’ve done to so many before him…that is if he even survives the swim.
He’s too far from here to hear her song but he’s not too far for me. I don’t know exactly how to reach you, Eric Warminster, but I know where you live and there can’t be more than one man with that name where you are. In the morning I’ll make a few calls until I find you and when I do, I’m pretty sure that Lily was right when she said you’d try to kill her if she ever left. I'm banking on her fear that you'd follow her to the end of the Earth. I’m also pretty sure you won’t know the difference between her voice and mine, especially not over the phone…our own mother can’t most of the time. I don’t even have to face you and I already know what I’ll say to get you out here too. I’ll taunt you and belittle you just like you did to her. I'll be laughing the entire time. You’ll come. It should be easy enough…our laughs sound the same…
…All I have to do is tell you to meet me at the beach after dark. I know by the sound of the song she's singing that she's changed so much already. I wonder if the transformation was instantaneous or if it takes time for her feathers to grow in and fully form. I wonder if that even matters. I wonder if she must complete her change before she can do what she means to do to you and something about her tone tells me, no. She's ready for you now. The words of her melody aren't in English anymore, but in a vernacular that up until now, I would have believed impossible. The sweet song seems to originate from a great creature both mythical and feminine and beautifully deadly. Birdlike, the calls drift out from the newly-formed and massive beak. I see her face has shifted and grown it already with my mind’s eye. The sound reaches out over the water for only me to hear. Lily sings in a language so musical and ancient now that the words themselves have long been forgotten. Yet, despite their foreign nature, I don't have to understand the tongue to understand the meaning of her song. The sound of the music of Mermaid’s Roost fills my mind. Entering my ears, it surges though my head before seeming to flow and tread before my eyes. I can see what she wants me to do in images that hover barely visible like an ethereal painting before me. She wants me to get you to this beach and I will. That’s her last request–her only request. Get you to the shore and she’ll take care of the rest.
ss

I’m a deli associate who’s going to start working as a cake decorator (hopefully) on Sunday. My TL told me I’d have to fill out some paperwork and accept the job offer so I can be transferred over, and then my title would be Cake Decorator and I’d get an unspecified pay raise (she figured about a dollar more, which is what the current cake decorators were making). This is what everyone in my area thought and expected.
However, when I talked to my coach, I found out that she says the position no longer exists. She is hiring another cake decorator that works weekends only, and when they tried to open a job offer for her (allegedly) they clicked cake decorator, it only took them to deli/bakery with the base deli/bakery pay. She said she didn't know why it was like that or when they changed it, but I won't have to do any paperwork and will just start decorating cakes Sunday. Now, this isn’t enough to make me not want to do cake decorating as it would get me out of the chaotic deli, but I was really expecting a pay increase, or at least a different job title and proof that I was indeed decorating cakes if I wanted to be transferred to a different Walmart in the future.
So, is this true? Is this the way it is now? Or are they mistaken?

(As always, flyers are out Wednesdays, most store sales for the new flyer start on Thursdays)
Adonis

• Chicken breast (boneless skinless) - $5.99 per lb -- Fair price for chicken breast and a common price at Adonis. Lower is definitely possible, where $4.50/lb is a "best target".
• Chicken legs - $2.49 per lb -- Fair price for chicken legs and a common price at Adonis. The stock-up price target is about $1.50/lb.
• Fresh Sea Bass (free cleaning) - $6.88 per lb -- Nice! Fresh fish!
• Red Sea Bream (free cleaning) - $9.99 per lb -- Ohh, more bream this week! Nice to see!
• Shrimp skewers - $0.99 each -- Ad is a little unclear, but if these are 99c a skewer, that ain't bad!
• Red vine tomatoes - $0.99 per lb -- Excellent price for tomatoes!
• Flat cabbage - $0.99 per lb -- Good price for cabbage.
• Cucumber - $0.99 each -- Great price for a cucumber, but watch out for other deals.
• Blueberries - $2.99 full pint -- Good price for a full pint.
• Boursin cheese - $4.99 150g pack -- Nice!
• Jarlsberg - $9.99 300g -- Decent. We've seen Jarlsberg go as low as $2/100g.
• Camembert (Le Rustique) - $9.99 250g -- Fair price if it's really good camembert. You can score deals on soft cheeses like this that can swing that price down to about $2.50/lb, but it's rarer and rarer these days.
• Brie, triple cream (l'Extra) - $9.99 300g -- Fair price for really good brie.
• Deli - Havarti (Casetelo) - $1.99 per 100g -- Great price for havarti. Tasty stuff in a nice sandwich!
• Deli - Beef bologna (Solmaz) - $1.49 per 100g -- Cheap deli!
• Deli - Chicken breast (Alzahraa) - $1.29 per 100g -- Cheap deli!
• Deli - Turkey breast (Schneiders) - $1.99 per 100g -- Great price for medium-brand deli.
• Deli - Prosciutto (San Daniele) - $2.79 per 100g -- Great price!
• Produce Price Rating: Medium, but always has well-priced chicken, the deli meat sale rotations are always fantastic, and just the overall variety of goods is refreshing. Personal favourite store.

Farm Boy

• Atlantic Snow Crab - $7.99 per lb -- Fun seafood option. Definitely a treat, but might make for a nice dinner!
• Bacon (Leadbetter) - $3.99 375g pack -- Not the cheapest option in bacon, but it's a step up from value-brand bacon.
• Vidalia onions - $1.88 per lb -- Ouufff, that hurts my feelings. Vidalias are my favourite onion, but at nearly $2/lb when regular ones shouldn't go over 80c/lb, it's a tough one to swallow...
• Cucumber - $0.99 each -- Great price for a cucumber, but watch out for other deals.
• Deli - Black Forest Ham (Brandt) - $1.99 per 100g -- Good deal on good ham!
• Deli - Chicken breast roast (Maple Lodge) - $2.49 per 100g -- Good deal on nice deli.
• Produce Price Rating: High

Farmers Pick (can be a little late on their flyer) (https://www.farmerspick.ca/flyer-specials)
Food Basics

• Chicken breast (boneless skinless, Maple Lodge) - $4.98 per lb -- Good price for chicken breast!
• Bacon (Leadbetter) - $3.88 375g pack -- Like the Leadbetter's at Farmboy, it's step-up bacon, and it's a good sale price.
• Atlantic salmon - $10.88 per lb -- Fair price for salmon.
• Carrots - $1.25 2lb bag -- Awesome!
• Onions - $1.25 2lb bag -- Awesome!
• Broccoli - $1.25 per crown -- Great price!
• Mini cucumbers - $1.99 6-pack -- Nice! Good price!
• Apples (various) - $2.98 3lb bag -- Fair price for apples, but mind the type you buy. Some varieties bruise up easily and you could easily lose a few soldiers if not careful.
• Lemons - $2.98 2lb bag -- Fair price for lemons.
• Oranges - $1.88 3lb bag -- Great price for oranges!! That's 60c/lb!!
• Blueberries - $1.88 half pint -- Good price for blueberries. About 1.50-175 for a half-pint is good.
• Mango - $0.67 each -- Wow! Haven't seen a 67c mango in months!
• Cantaloupe - $2.98 each -- Good ol' $3 melon.
• Mini watermelon - $3.98 each -- Great price for a small watermelon!
• Corned beef (Hereford) - $2.98 340g can -- Not the most exciting ingredient, but it's good to have one or two cans in the pantry.
• SPAM - $2.98 340g can -- Same as the corned beef.
• Smoked ham (Selection) - $8.00 675g toupie -- That works out to just about 1.18/100g, which is a good rate on ham for sandwiches, or frying up for a meal.
• Tofu (Fountaine santé) - $5.00 For 2x 400g packs -- Good price for tofu. $2.50 for 400g is "nice average". If you're paying $2, it's a good deal. $3+ and you're either outside of town, or you're paying for a special brand or dessert tofu.
• Silk plant bev - $2.88 1.74-1.89L -- Excellent deal on the Silk stuff. This is commonly $4-5 per jug, Under $3 is a good deal.
• Produce Price Rating: Low to medium low

FoodLand

• Pork chops (loin cut) - $2.99 per lb -- Fair price for decent cuts of pork. Given these are boneless, you're a meat gavel away from schnitzel.
• Chicken breast (boneless skinless) - $5.88 per lb -- Fair price for chicken breast. Lower is definitely possible, where $4.50/lb is the a "best target".
• Beef cross-rib roast (AAA) - $7.99 per lb -- Fair price for beef, but not my price-point. I prefer to see at least $6/lb before I start entertain these cuts and products. Though, I'm maybe a poor judge as I'm not really a fancy steak kinda guy. But, that's also how I save tons of cash. As the saying goes, the customer is always right in matters of taste!
• Atlantic salmon - $10.99 per lb -- Fair price for salmon.
• Brick cheese (Compliments) - $5.49 400g bar -- Not the best price for cheap brick cheese, but it's ok. It's at least 50c my standard go-to rate. But Foodland isn't an "in-town" brand, so the price scales higher as you move out of dense city areas.
• Luncheon meat (Holiday) - $1.99 340g can -- I think this is similar to SPAM, but I've never had it personally.
• Produce Price Rating: Medium-high to high.

Freshco (price matcher)

• Chicken breast (boneless skinless) - $10.00 4-pack -- Marge Simpson grunts, these products are deceiving. Throw these on the scale and make sure they're at least 2lb.
• Smoked sausages (Compliments) - $7.99 900g pack -- These come in a couple of different flavours, including "bacon cheddar". Works out to $4/lb, which ain't bad. I think these are pre-cooked as well. You can score good raw sausage for about the same price or just a bit more, but it'll be much tougher to find.
• Sweet peppers - $3.99 4-pack -- Fair price. Not the best, but not the worst either.
• Hothouse tomatoes - $0.99 per lb -- Excellent price for tomatoes!
• Corn - $2.00 for 5 ears -- Excellent! 40c an ear!!!
• Celery - $2.99 per head -- Ok price for celery. Lots of places charge $4 for nice big heads of celery...
• Bok choy, Napa, Flat Cabbage - $0.99 per lb -- Amazing price for choy and napa, fair for cabbage. The other day, I made a choy salad with a little light dressing. Super tasty.
• Green onions - $0.99 per bunch -- $1/bunch is basically the new normal when it comes to green onions.
• Ginger - $1.99 per lb -- Good price. You'll often find it more in the $3/lb range.
• Garlic - $1.29 5-pack -- Nice!
• Asian pears - $1.88 per lb -- Nice! Not bad for a fancier fruit. In season, you can score these easily under 1.50/lb
• Apples (Gala) - $1.49 per lb -- Not bad for a good apple, though it's still a bit high. 1.25/lb would be the better rate. But, short of sending your kids off to school with a head of bok choy in their lunch, I don't know what we're supposed to do here...
• Brick cheese (Armstrong) - $4.44 400g bar -- Nice! Sub-$5 brick cheese!
• Silk plant bev - $3.49 1.74-1.89L -- Nice little sale price. Down from about $5 this week.
• Carole's Japanese Cheesecake - $8.88 500g cake -- All I can think of is Charlie from It's Always Sunny, in the mail room freaking out about Pepe Silvia, and how there's no Carole in HR.
• Dr Oetkey pizzas (Ristorante) - $4.49 whatever -- Dude, what happened to these?! They used to be, like, $2-2.50 in 2020.
• Produce Price Rating: medium low (more on the medium side)

Giant Tiger (*note the VIP prices; sales begin today) (price matcher)

• Chicken breast (boneless skinless) - $6.97 500-818g -- Aaahhhh boyyyy! Freakin' lotteries again. Limit of 5. Assuming there's 650g in a pack, that'S 1.5lb for $7, which is about 4.66/lb, which is good. Find a scale and check the weights!
• Bacon (Olymel) - $3.88 375g pack -- Like the Leadbetter's at Farmboy, it's step-up bacon, and it's a good sale price.
• Breakfast sausage (Olymel) - $3.88 375g pack -- Not feeling bacon, you can swap out to sausages.
• Celery - $1.88 per head -- Great price, but careful, these are often smaller heads. Two of these is about the same as one big $4 head at Basics, for example.
• Iceberg lettuce - $1.88 per head -- Good price for lettuce!
• Green onions - $1.88 per bunch -- This may sound pricey, but I found the bunches have suffered some shrinkage. Last I went to GT, these were bigger bunches. Mind your step when it comes to green onions, I guess.
• Salad kit (Dole) - $1.97 340g bag -- Great price for a salad kit. These can range easily into the $4 range. In fact, Basics has them for $4 this week. So, consider these half-price salad kits.
• Mini cucumbers - $1.97 6-pack -- Nice, $2 is a good rate. We were seeing $4 6-packs some weeks (though, I doubt we've seen the end of those days...)
• Apples (Royal Gala) - $2.88 3lb bag -- Good rate on galas. On that $1/lb target.
• Lemons - $2.88 2lb bag -- Fair price for lemons.
• Clementines - $2.88 2lb bag -- GREAT price for clementines!
• Cream cheese (Lactantia) - $2.47 250g bar -- Great price! Can often range into $4 for the same bar.
• Dr Oetkey pizzas (Ristorante) - $4.97 whatever -- What the... How did it get worse from Freshco to GT....
• Produce Price Rating: Generally on the low side.

Green Fresh Supermarket (Vanier) (check https://greenfreshottawa20.wixsite.com/greenfreshottawa) * Produce Price Rating: Usually very competitive, catering to Asian cuisine. Warning: their newest sales start on Fridays - so this is a late advertising of their sales.
IGA (price matcher)

• Lobster - $8.77 per lb -- Scene Member Price.
• Bacon (Mere Michel) - $3.99 375g pack -- More $4 mid-range-ish bacon going around.
• Greenouse tomatoes - $0.99 per lb -- Nice! Another great $1/lb tomato deal!
• Blackberries - $1.44 half pint -- Scene Member Price.
• Brick cheese (Armstrong) - $3.99 400g bar -- Awesome!
• Dr Oetkey pizzas (Ristorante) - $3.47 whatever -- Bon, criss! And even then it's still too pricey for show shitty these pizzas are. What's a walk-in special at a pizza place these days?
• Produce Price Rating: Medium

Independent

• Beef brisket - $4.99 per lb -- Awesome price for beef brisket.
• Chicken breast or thighs (boneless skinless) - $4.99 per lb -- Good price. Go for the chicken and get out.
• Pork tenderloin - $3.49 per lb -- Fair price for tenderloin.
• Avocado - $2.49 each -- You know, you wanna give them the benefit of the doubt, but at 2.50 for an avocado, it better be big enough to kill a man, whether eaten or via bludgeoning.
• Blueberries - $2.77 full pint -- Awesome price!
• Brick cheese (Black Diamond) - $4.88 400g bar -- Sub-$5 cheese is always welcome.
• Produce Price Rating: fairly high with few exceptions

Loblaws

• Pork tenderloin - $3.49 per lb -- Fair price for tenderloin.
• Asparagus - $2.99 per lb -- Not bad for asparagus. We've seen better, but it's also not $4/lb we can commonly see.
• Salad Kits (PC) - $11.00 for 2 300g-ish -- We had mentioned earlier that GT has Dole-branded kits, same size, for $2. At $2, Dole could spit in my salad, and I still wouldn't look at these PC kits.
• Bok choy - $2.99 per lb -- Freshco has theirs for 99c/lb.
• Strawberries - $1.99 454g shell -- Awesome price for strawberries! Let's hope the quality is there. Sometimes cheap is cheap for a reason.
• Brick cheese (Black Diamond) - $4.88 400g bar -- Sub-$5 cheese is always welcome.
• Produce Price Rating: fairly high with few exceptions

Provigo

• Atlantic Lobster (live) - $7.99 per lb -- Good price on lobster.
• Beef striploin steak - $7.88 per lb -- Good price on steak, but no indication of the grade.
• Chicken legs - $2.49 per lb -- Faiaverage price for chicken legs. Same as Adonis.
• Strawberries - $2.44 454g shell -- Not as good as the 1.99 deal, but still quite good.
• Brick cheese (Ptit Quebec) - $4.88 400g bar -- Sub-$5 cheese is always welcome. Took some digging, but I found out that it's the same owners as those of Cracker Barrel, hence the easy-same-price swap between Provigo and Loblaws.
• Produce Price Rating: fairly high with few exceptions

Maxi (price matcher)

• Whole chicken - $1.99 per lb -- Awesome price for chicken! Learn to carve up a chicken. There's real savings there!
• Pork chops - $2.88 per lb -- Fair price for pork chops.
• Atlantic Salmon - $8.99 per lb -- Good price for salmon, under that $10/lb target.
• Small potatoes (Yellow, Russet) - $0.94 3lb bag -- Wow! 31c/lb! That's really good!
• Celery - $2.49 per head -- Good price for celery. Let's hope the heads are big and nice, and not "size-scaled according to price".
• Beefsteak tomatoes - $1.49 per lb -- Good price for tomatoes, but we're seeing some $1/lb sales. But if the quality is there, don't hesitate.
• Sweet peppers (green and red) - $3.99 4-pack -- Fair going price for peppers.
• Blueberries - $1.87 full pint -- WOW! Insanely good price for blueberries.
• Apples (Imperfect) - $6.00 6lb bag -- But is it 6lb?! Weigh the bag on a scale and check. Too much funny business in the fixed-weight products lately.
• Brick cheese (Ptit Quebec) - $4.87 400g bar -- Sub-$5 cheese is always welcome. Took some digging, but I found out that it's the same owners as those of Cracker Barrel, hence the easy-same-price swap between Provigo and Loblaws.
• Flour (Five Roses, Robinhood) - $13.99 10kg bag -- Hmm, these bags have seen a small increase from $11-12...
• Dry pasta (Primo) - $1.33 750g packs -- Great price! Stock-up a little!
• Produce Price Rating: Generally medium low pricing! This store can post some impressive deals at times.

Metro

• Beef prime rib roast and steaks (AA) - $8.99 per lb -- I want to like this sale. It's prime rib, which is a nice cut, but I wish it was AAA grade. Best go in with options in mind, and make your decision when you see the meat. Give it a poke, check the fat lines, make sure it's going to be nice and tender.
• Pork loin chops or roast - $2.99 per lb -- If the beef doesn't look good, you've got a pork parachute.
• Chicken breast and thighs (boneless skinless, Prime) - $5.99 per lb -- Not the best price, but definitely a little lower than regular.
• Strawberries - $1.99 454g shell -- Awesome price for strawberries! Again, always mind the quality at these prices.
• Burrata - $20.00 2x 250g balls -- This cheese is stupendous. It's a treat and priced accordingly, but worth trying. Think of super-fresh mozz balls or fior de latte, but with a mozz-cottage-cheese thing going on inside.
• Dr Oetkey pizzas (Ristorante) - $3.49 whatever -- How is it that we go from $5 for these, to $3.50... That's such a huge swing...
• Produce Price Rating: High. Kinda like Sobeys. You can see a 50% average mark-up compared to a lot of other stores. It's nice produce, but it costs you.

No Frills (price matcher)

• Chicken drumsticks - $1.87 per lb -- Good enough price for chicken drumsticks. I'd rather see legs at this price, but this is fair.
• Smoked sausages (No Name) - $6.99 900g pack -- Goodness these look a LOT like the Compliments bag at Freshco lol...
• Peameal bacon - $2.88 per lb -- Interesting. Sometimes it's hard to find peameal for less than $4. Meanwhile, I've never bought the stuff, and I don't think I've seen many put it in their cart. I don't get it lol.
• Atlantic Salmon - $9.77 per lb -- On that $10/lb target.
• Corn - $0.33 per ear -- Great price for ears of corn!!
• Potatoes (Red, Yellow, Russet) - $4.99 10lb bag -- Fair sale price for potatoes. Regular prices can float easily over $7 now...
• Blueberries - $1.99 full pint -- Another fantastic blueberry sale!
• Pears (Bartlett) - $0.88 per lb -- Awesome price for pears!!!
• Milk (Neilson) - $4.88 4L bagged -- Great sale price on milk considering it's about $6-7 at the very least.
• Canned tuna (Ocean's) - $0.99 170g -- There's some funny business in the flyer this week. There's, like, 3 different cans of tuna. This one for 99c, a Clover Leaf for 2.99, and another Ocean's for 2.99.
• Produce Price Rating: Generally quite low, selectively amazing for some items.

Produce Depot (usually a little late on the flyer) https://producedepot.ca/

• Ground beef (medium) - $4.99 per lb -- Not bad. Not a stock-up price, but this would be good burger material.
• Beef top sirloin steak - $7.99 per lb -- No grade mentioned, so mind your step. But if the quality looks good, it'd make a great treat!
• Cod fillet (fresh) - $11.99 per lb -- Fair price for fresh cod.
• Cucumber - $0.49 each -- WOW WOW! That's a DEAL! Meanwhile, Loblaws and affiliates can't sell us a cucumber for less than $1 on average, or 2.49 for a fancy organic one...
• Flat cabbage - $0.99 per lb -- Nice! Great to see cheap cabbage. I think we're going to see a resurgence of hardier, self-stable veg like this becoming popular.
• Sweet peppers - $1.99 per lb -- Great price for peppers. It's hard to find off-season peppers for less than $3/lb.
• Oranges - $1.29 per lb -- Not amazing, but still pretty good. $1/lb is really the better target. But, a couple of oranges won't risk the coop.
• Strawberries - $1.69 454g shell -- WOW! Produce Depot coming around to prove a point! These won't last, so plan your trip if you want these!
• Cheese counter - Fontina (Castello) - $2.79 per 100g -- Nice cheese for a good price. It's not cheap per se, but it's on point with prices for artisanal cheese.
• Deli - Pastrami - $2.39 per 100g -- Great price for nice deli meat!!!
• Produce Price Rating: Medium-low with very competitive specials on a shortened flyer. The small flyer is nice because it doesn't uselessly feature $6 heads of cauliflower and extremely high-price items that are either a confusion on the consumer, or an insult on the injury of not being able to afford supreme quality items.

Real Canadian Superstore (price matcher)

• Beef sirloin tip roast or steaks - $4.99 per lb -- Great price! I wonder about the grade, and I think I'd sooner do the roast because I know could get a tender bite out of the cooking method, versus fighting a tough steak that'll never rest into anything tender.
• Chicken breast (bone-in, skinless) - $3.99 per lb -- Good price for chicken breast, and bone-in is not bad. Boneless chicken loses out on a lot of flavour and moisture from the bone. And, there's so little bone along the breast that you don't really face the issue of undercooking it like you would with a leg (which requires higher temps or longer cooks, which can dry out if left too long in the oven or on the grill).
• Smoked sausages (No Name) - $9.99 900g pack -- From No Frills to RCSS, it'll cost you $3 to be in the store to get the same sausages...
• Asparagus - $2.99 per lb -- Good price for asparagus. When the crop-outs come through, we can see this dip to $2/lb, but out of that you can see as high as $4/lb.
• Mini cucumbers - $4.00 11-pack -- Well, considering we're seeing so many 6-packs go for $2, you've lose a cucumber with this 11-pack.
• Sweet peppers - $3.50 4-pack -- Great deal on a 4-pack.
• Vidalia onions - $5.99 3lb bag -- Sigh... $2/lb onions... Good onions, but damn...
• Potatoes (Imperfect) - $6.00 15lb bag -- Excellent! Great potato deal here, don't skip these! Pro tip: prep/cook whole potatoes in advance. Steam or pressure cook them, and keep them in the fridge. They slice real easy, and they fry/sauté really easily. Great for breakfasts, and a great alternative to bread.
• Grape tomatoes - $6.00 907g shell -- Great price for grape tomatoes. Freeze the ones that you don't use, and use them for stocks or to throw into soup to stew a bit before serving.
• Strawberries - $3.98 2lb shell -- Great deal. $2/lb, basically. That aligns with other great sales we see on strawberries.
• Pineapple - $3.00 each -- Good price for pineapple. $2 is the better target.
• Cantaloupe - $3.00 each -- Easy to find cantaloupe for $3, $2 occurs here and there. For the amount of melon you get, I don't think it's worth chasing that $1.
• Honeydew and Mini Watermelon - $4.99 each -- Meh prices for these melons. Not terrible, but not the greatest.
• Brick cheese (No Name) - $4.99 400g bar -- $5 brick cheese!
• Deli - Ziggy's Beef deli - $2.50 per 100g -- A consistent returning item and price for decent deli meat.
• Canned tomatoes (PC Blue Menu) - $1.59 796ml can -- Good price for canned tomatoes. Sometimes you can score canned tomatoes for as low as 1.25, 1.50 is still a very good price. $2 is not that great. 1.25 is the real stock-up price.
• Flour (Robinhood, Five Roses) - $11.99 10kg bag -- More and more I stand by having a 10kg bag in the pantry along with a jar of quick rise yeast. Making your own bread is not difficult. It's a fantastic skill to have. And after a dozen loaves, you'll get the hang of it.
• Produce Price Rating: Generally medium-low pricing, selectively amazing for some items.

Sobeys

• Chicken breast or thighs (boneless skinless, Compliments) - $5.88 per lb -- Upper-end fair going-rate for chicken breast. It's regular Adonis pricing, and more expensive than some of the better sales we see floating around.
• Chicken breast or thighs (boneless skinless, no antibiotics, Compliments) - $6.99 per lb -- Interesting to see the no-antibiotics version be $1/lb more. I wonder how that scales across all stores and brands... Seems to me $1/lb extra isn't bad.
• Pork tenderloin - $2.99 per lb -- Scene Member Price.
• Pork back rib - $2.99 per lb -- Scene Member Price.
• Beef brisket - $5.99 per lb -- $6/lb for AA grade ain't bad. Independent has the better deal on brisket, but choices must be made.
• Beef eye of round - $6.99 per lb -- It's a big cut of beef, but if you know how to spot and cut around the grain, you could get beef cubes, strips and marinating steaks out of this very easily.
• Scallops - $21.99 per lb -- Now, I usually don't recommend scallops, but I saw some scallop prices range of $28-32/lb. Farm Boy is just charging $3 for 2 scallops. LOL. And then you can score 300g frozen for $10 at Super C. Or get Metro bay scallops for $10/lb. No wonder I always go cross-eyed with scallop pricing.
• Cucumbers - $0.99 each -- Great price. Not the 50c sales we're seeing come up, but certainly better than some historical pricing we've seen.
• Red vine tomatoes - $0.99 per lb -- Awesome price for tomatoes!
• Brick cheese (Compliments) - $4.99 400g -- Good ol' $5 brick cheese!
• Cooked and frozen pork ribs (Compliments) - $13.99 680g pack -- I bring this up not because it's a valid suggestion. I bring this up because the same 1.5lbs of pork rib can cost you as low as $4.50 at the same store with the Scene pricing. You could get 4.5lb of rib. That's at least 2 big racks, which easily feeds 6 people with sides. Take that in. It is non-trivial! Manufactured/prepared products like this suck us dry.
• Dr Oetkey pizzas (Giuseppe) - $4.94 whatever -- Here we go again...
• Produce Price Rating: Generally a high price store, especially for produce. Some items are 50% more than more value-oriented stores. Kinda like Metro, some of the deals can be quite good.

Super C

• Chicken legs - $1.29 per lb -- WOW! Stock up! Fire up the BBQ! Marinate those legs over morning in some lemon juice, a little wine, rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper. Makes a great dinner main!
• Ground pork (extra lean) - $2.49 per lb -- WOW! Excellent price for ground pork!
• Tomahawk beef steak - $13.75 per lb -- Now, I'm not one to often suggest steaks like, this, but this is actually a tremendous cut. It might make a nice main for a special dinner!
• Bacon (Mere Michel) - $3.77 375g pack -- Good price for decent bacon. Lots of these sales going around.
• Asparagus - $2.77 per lb -- Great price for asparagus!
• Red vine tomatoes - $0.84 per lb -- WOW! Cheapest in town!
• Cucumbers - $0.99 each -- Nice! Let's hope these cucumber sales keep lowering!!
• Sweet potatoes - $0.99 per lb -- Great price! We're often seeing loose sweet potatoes range into the $1.30+/lb range.
• Blueberries - $0.99 half-pint -- Great price for blueberries!
• Lemons and limes - $0.99 for 3 -- Wow! Awesome price for citrus!
• Cantaloupe - $1.84 each -- Awesome! There's that $2 cantaloupe I was hoping to see!
• Oka cheese (and others!) - $4.75 170g pack -- Fantastic sale!!! Includes Monsier Gustav St-Paulin, Agropur Grand Cheddar, Notre-Dame brie, l'Extra Camembert. That's a lot of nice cheese at a nice price!
• Cheese Sale - $18 for 3 - varies -- Super cheese deal! Lots of varieties avialable, and you can score a lot of different products for basically $6 each.
• Earth's Own plant bev - $7.00 for 2x 1.75-1.89 --
• Dr Oetkey pizzas (Ristorante) - $3.47 whatever -- I think we can agree that these should be about 3.50 these days. Not $5...
• Produce Price Rating: Generally low, but can creep into medium for some items. But, there's always something decent available!

T&T Supermarket https://www.tntsupermarket.com * Produce Price Rating: Usually very competitive, catering to Asian cuisine. Warning: their newest sales start on Fridays - so this is a late advertising of their sales.
Walmart

• Whole chicken - $1.94 per lb -- Nice! I love $2/lb chicken! It puts us more on par with those loss-leader cooked chickens.
• Bacon (Great Value) - $2.94 375g pack -- Another bacon sale!
• Dinner sausage (Your Fresh Market) - $4.97 500g 4-pack -- Good price for raw sausage, but it's also close to the fresh-made price you can find at some stores ($6/lb). Note: precooked sausages and wieners are not something we should eat too often. They're packed with extra salts and fats, especially nitrites, which are used as a preservative, and it keeps meat pink. It's found in basically any processed meat you find on the shelf. In small quantities, it's fine, but North America is big on consuming these sorts of products, and some reports suggest 1/2 a hotdog a day, along with the bun and condiments, is linked to a 20% hike in rates of intestinal cancers. Raw fresh-made sausage often do not have nitrites. Just some food for thought and a reminder to check the ingredients listed on the package.
• Vine tomatoes - $1.94 per lb -- Not that great considering the sub-$1/lb sales we've seen.
• Green peppers - $1.94 per lb -- Fair and good rate on green peppers.
• Zucchini - $1.94 per lb -- A little high, but on par with other stores this week.
• Eggplant - $1.94 per lb -- A little high, but on par with other stores this week.
• Green onion - $0.94 for 2 -- Ouuu that's good for green onion. I was just saying $1 was the going-rate. This is half that! Excellent deal!
• Cilantro bunch - $0.94 for 2 -- Oh wow, that's really good for fresh cilantro. Bunches can be 99c, 1.50, or even $2.
• Mango (Red or Ataulfo) - $0.94 for 2 -- Awesome price for mango! There's an opportunity here for a mango salsa!!!
• Brick cheese (Armstrong) - $4.94 400g bar -- Good ol' $5 brick!
• Frozen veg (Great Value) - $2.47 500-750g -- More of a reminder to look out for this sort of pricing on frozen veg. Bags of corn, peas, string beans, these can all be had for about this price. And, they're perfect nutritious, if not more than "fresh" on a shelf as it's frozen after being picked when ready, instead of picked early and thrown onto a truck for a thousand kms.
• Olive oil (Sapurito) - $11.94 1L bottle -- Wow! $3 off the average doesn't sound like a lot, but 20% is 20%. It's kind of like "buy 4 and get 1 free".
• Butter (Gay Lea) - $4.94 454g bar -- $5 butter. Still expensive as all heck, but it's not $7-8.
• Produce Price Rating: A little all over the place. Some really good prices between a lot of average pricing.

Costco (Note that these are the online/shipped prices - reduce each item by $3 for in-store pricing)

• NOTE: NEED TO REVISE - --
• Paper Towel (Kirkland) - $27.99 12-roll pack -- 2-ply; 160 sheets
• Paper Towel (Bounty) - $27.49 12-roll pack -- 2-ply; 86 sheets
• Toilet Paper (Kirkland) - $25.99 30-roll pack -- 2-ply; 380 sheets
• Toilet Paper (Cashmere) - $24.99 40-roll pack -- 2-ply; 250 sheets (on sale)
• Dish soap (Dawn Platinum) - $18.99 2.66L -- Food Basics often has this jug for $10!
• Laundry detergent (Purex) - $24.99 9.24L -- 250 loads
• Garbage bags (30 gallon; large) - $15.99 100-pack -- Amazon has Glad standard 74L bags, 100-packs for $23, sometimes less if on sale
• Countertop green bin liners - $21.99 125-pack -- Amazon has Glad Compostable green bin liners 100-packs for $18, sometimes less if on sale
• Produce Price Rating: I need to do a proper check to be sure, but I find it's pretty average. There's an illusion of getting a good deal because of the bulk. Just be careful.

Jean Coutu (new sales start Fridays)

• Produce Price Rating: I have to start checking these just in case...

Shoppers Drug Mart (new sales start Fridays)

• Produce Price Rating: Sometimes they have cheap butter, eggs, and milk on weekends.

Some additional references!

• Grocery Review Google Drive Location https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xhLvBP1smXb1eSnxAW5yyBjO2aYFLJHC?usp=sharing
• Cooking Tips and Recipes https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TCcHm9y0kWIa3x18hznKN2ix0BPcUv-m?usp=drive_link
• Google Maps list of the Grocery stores in Ottawa https://maps.app.goo.gl/YT7cZmv8vMQWU4J59

This is neither a rant nor a funny story, moreso immensely arousing. I believe that urinal cakes are profound aphrodisiacs.
I am generally fairly sexually uptight, only a handjob here or there, a bootycall or two from an ex only if I'm ovulating, only put out on the first date if the dude is particularly nice or smells good. As a devout Christian, I value my chastity outside of what I think God is willing to forgive me for.
Anyway, all of that changes once I've gotten a whiff of a sweet, salty puck, after which I start grabbing whatever cocks happen to be available. There's usually a few since I huff exclusively in the men's bathroom. I know, I know, you can get them at Walmart fresh- but they just don't have the divine odour or fermentation boasted by the sunshine painted ones in the men's room. Yes, I could just pee on them myself at home, but it isn't the same. A man's urine has a musky odour that I believe is a gift from God himself. Plus men very generously share their safe space with me despite my obvious womanhood- or at least, the womanhood that becomes obvious once I start huffin and puffin.
Men take my rapid, frenzied advances as a compliment, first with a cautious "what the fuck are you doing with your head in the urinal?" Then perhaps exclaims of rejection as I reach towards their manhoods, stunned by my animalistic lust as anyone would be, and then a shrug of their shoulders and "whatever" before we ravage each other's bodies. Together, we are spiritually awakened.
Pucks seem to be an otherworldly beacon of pleasure, I mean, how am I supposed to ignore my womanly urges after my body is filled with a urinal cake's gift of euphoria that is nye electric? Does a wearwolf look at a full moon and resist becoming his natural form? Of course not, that's absurd.
I am far from a lady of the night and resist temptation at every turn as a Godly woman does. But pucks... Pucks hit the spot. I think I'm going to head to my local gas station now.

Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. Let's dive in...
Amazon is delaying its controversial new low inventory fee for the second time as it looks to satiate the hundreds of thousands of sellers it outraged with the original announcement. The company announced via its seller forum that it would be extending the grace period through May 14th. In addition to the delay, Amazon made some general changes to the upcoming fee structure such as the fee will not apply to products that have sold fewer than 20 units in the last week, any fees incurred due to excessive inbounding and processing times caused by Amazon will be refunded, and Amazon will provide an exception to the fee on products that are part of Prime-exclusive sales for the four weeks following Prime Day.
Shein has been courting brands like Colgate-Palmolive, Hasbro, Suntory Beverage & Food, and Bella Aurora in an attempt to sell more household names on its platform. The company, which is known for selling its own cheap clothing and accessories, is moving into other categories like beauty and household items to better compete with Amazon on its turf. So far Shein has given brands and retailers access to its platform in nine European countries, United States, Brazil and Mexico. Shein says that the inspiration for adding new categories is that customers were already searching for those types of products and brands across its platform.
Kohl's is re-entering the same-day delivery business — this time leveraging the Instacart app and its network of drivers. The company says that Instacart enables 109M US households to obtain delivery in as fast as an hour from 1,172 Kohl's stores across the U.S. Customers ordering Kohl's deliveries on Instacart can still earn their Kohl's Rewards loyalty points, as well as place orders for either same-day or scheduled delivery, with the same prices as in-store. Product categories eligible for same-day delivery include accessories, home goods, beauty & skincare items, and pet supplies.
As part of its mission to enhance its e-commerce business, Nordstrom introduced a new digital marketplace on its website, initially showcasing a selection of products from Mulberry, Adore Me, Cynthia Rowley, and DXL. This move catches Nordstrom up to retailers like Macy's, Walmart, and Michaels, which have all created third-party marketplaces in recent years. As opposed to casting a wide net, Nordstrom is being very particular about which sellers to allow on its marketplace, carefully selecting brand partners “to ensure that our marketplace experience drives the relevance and inspiration that Nordstrom customers expect from us.”
Walmart is now able to sell physical goods directly to users inside Roblox for the first time. The introduction of real-life e-commerce of tangible items is a milestone for Roblox, which aims to become an all-encompassing destination for virtual life. Virtual users are greeted with a new storefront that showcases virtual copies of physical items sold at real-life Walmart stores. The customer can try out the virtual item on their avatar. Customers can then load a virtual browser window inside Roblox that imitates the experience of shopping on Walmart's website. From there they follow the traditional form of entering their payment and shipping details within the virtual checkout. (Missed opportunity! They should have had the virtual avatar fumble with a self-checkout kiosk while an angry Walmart employee avatar stares them down. LOL)
Roblox also expanded access to its video ad inventory to all advertisers last week, following a six-month beta test. Advertisers can now purchase video ads through Roblox's self-serve tool, with plans to allow advertisers to purchase ads through PubMatic in the near future. Video ads in Roblox take the form of screens and billboards embedded within Roblox’s virtual worlds. The launch of video ads is part of Roblox’s aim to get brands to view it as a full advertising platform rather than a testing ground for their innovation budgets.
Amazon reported its first-quarter earnings last week and it turns out the company is doing really well. CEO Andy Jassy and CFO Brian Olsavsky informed investors of several company milestones on its recent earnings call such as tripling its profit from $3.2B to $10.4B in the same period YoY. Net sales at its online store rose 7% to $54.7B and at physical stores rose 6.3% to $5.2B. Ad sales overall rose 24% to $11.8B.
Walmart is planning to close all 51 of its health centers across five states, changing course from its originally stated plan of expanding to 75 locations this year. The company also plans to end its telehealth services, citing operational costs and reimbursement complexities that made its healthcare business unsustainable. All centers stopped accepting new patients last week, however, Walmart said it would continue to care for existing patients during the transition, as well as help its healthcare associates transition to other roles as it winds down the business. The company plans on keeping open its 3,000 vision centers and 4,600 pharmacies, which will continue to offer health screenings and testing.
Amazon, Starbucks, and McDonald's executives say US consumers are becoming more prudent with their spending — now looking for deals, seeking lower priced items, and being more particular about where they spend their money. Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan said, “We continue to feel the impact of a more cautious consumer, particularly with our more occasional customer,” noting that it had affected traffic and sales across the industry. “Many customers are being more exacting about where and how they choose to spend their money, particularly with stimulus savings mostly spent.” (Mostly spent? LOL. How long does he think that $1200 lasted?) Or maybe the true story is that consumers have ALWAYS been prudent with their spending, and these corporations simply took their price increases too far so people went elsewhere? Maybe the country is NOT headed into a recession and we're all just sick of your price gouging?
Travis Hess is joining BigCommerce as the company's new president, charged with leading its global strategic and operational expansion. Hess has spent more than 15 years in senior leadership positions at e-commerce companies, most recently as managing director of Accenture, and he's also served on partner advisory boards for Shopify, Klaviyo, SAP/Hybrid, and Rackspace.
Social media overtook paid search as the world's largest advertising channel, with Western platforms growing the fastest driven by Chinese brands targeting US and European audiences. Social media ads are forecasted to reach $247.3B this year, up 14.3% from a year ago, with TikTok estimated to earn $23.1B of that.
16% of U.S. parents surveyed said their Gen Alpha children have an online-shopping addiction, with 22% saying their kids prefer online shopping to other forms of entertainment including watching TV. Almost half said their kids buy themselves clothes online, and 32% said their kids are interested in beauty products. Sounds to me like 16% of U.S. parents could use a lesson on parenting.
TikTok said in its latest safety report that it blocked 37M attempted product listings and 2M seller registrations from July to December 2023. The company said it also remove 133k individual products after they were listed on the site and deactivated the accounts of more than one million sellers because of policy violations.
Wix launched a new feature called Wix Proposals that helps users create attractive proposals to convert leads into new clients, collect digital signatures, and manage setting up payments. The feature is powered by the Prospero business proposal platform, which is now integrated directly with Wix’s business management tools.
The Canada Revenue Agency wants to obtain large troves of Shopify merchant information including bank account info, total transaction value, birth dates, and social insurance numbers in order to check if they've paid all their taxes. Shopify has been fighting the “outrageous” request for over a year now, also arguing that it doesn't keep much of the requested information on hand, which the CRA doesn't believe.
Sam's Club is turning to AI to speed up the process of exiting its stores, allowing customers who pay either at a register or through the Scan & Go mobile app to walk out of the store through large scanners instead of having their purchases double-checked manually by employees. Since unveiling the technology this past January, Sam's Club deployed the scanners at over 120 stores in the US, with plans to expand to all its stores by the end of the year.
Kajabi, the platform for content creators to sell online courses, launched a no-code mobile app offering that lets users host their own customized native app through the App Store and Google Play. The platform previously offered a mobile app for hosting online courses, but this new product allows creators to control the user experience, send push notifications, add custom links to the menus, offer in-app purchases, and more.
Federal prosecutors are investigating the internal practices at Block, with suspicions that its subsidiary Square processed thousands of transactions involving countries subject to economic sanctions as well as multiple crypto transactions for terrorist groups. Most of the transactions discussed with prosecutors were not reported to the government as required, and Block did not correct the company processes when it was alerted to the issues.
Speaking of Block, the company announced its strategy of regularly purchasing Bitcoin for its corporate balance sheet using a dollar cost averaging strategy. The company plans to allocate 10% of its monthly gross profit from Bitcoin products towards investments in the cryptocurrency itself.
The Save Mart Companies which operates Save Mart, Lucky, and FoodMaxx grocery stores, is deploying Instacart Caper Carts, which use computer vision and AI to automatically identify items as they are placed in the cart, at select Save Mart and Lucky stores in the coming months, followed by a broader rollout later this year. The company is also implementing the Instacart FoodStorm order management system, which enables Caper Cart customers to place orders for made-to-order items like fried chicken or custom cakes and pies directly on the cart screen while they shop and receive a notification once it's ready.
ToysRUs.co.uk is seeking a partner for its e-commerce site, which launched in 2022. The company confirmed to suppliers that it is “transitioning to a non-transactional website” as it seeks a new e-commerce partner, but that the website will “continue to promote the Toys R Us brand including our much-loved mascot Geoffrey, while also fully supporting the opening of TOys R Us stores at WHSmith throughout the UK.” Really Toys R Us — an e-commerce partner? Haven't you been down that road before and been majorly burned?
Carvana, the online used car retailer, told investors on an earnings call that it became the most profitable public automotive retailer in the US for the first time after setting new all-time company record this past quarter. The record performance impacted its inventory, with the average time from posting a vehicle on its website to a customer purchasing it decreasing to 13 days in March.
Sam Ash Music, the 100-year-old family operated music instruments retailer, is closing all 42 of its remaining stores nationwide. The company noted on its website that the “unfortunate news also presents a fantastic opportunity for great deals” and marked down all of its products with sale prices that are still higher than what you can buy the same products for on Amazon right now.
Rue21 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its third time in the past twenty years and began the process of closing all 540 of its stores. The company has assets worth up to $500M and liabilities of almost an equal amount, according to its submitted documents. Sounds like a great acquisition target for Overstock! LOL.
A professor from Columbia University asked US courts to affirm the legality of Unfollow Everything 2.0, a browser extension that makes it easier to stop following friends, groups, and pages on Facebook. The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the browser extension does not violate Meta's TOS, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or California's Computer Data access and Fraud Act, also arguing that through Section 230, US lawmakers sought “to promote the development of filtering tools that enable users to curate their online experiences and avoid content they would rather not see.” The developer of the original Unfollow Everything was banned from Facebook in 2021 and never released version 2.0 because Meta threatened to sue him if he did.
Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Babylist have pulled weighted infant sleepwear like swaddles, blankets, and sleep-sacks from their shelves amid ongoing concerns over the safety of the products and after receiving a letter from the Consumer Product Safety Commission asking major retailers to remove them from stores. Studies haven’t been able to irrefutably demonstrate the risks of weighted infant sleepwear, however, experts are adamant that weighted products are not safe for infants and claim that the proposed benefit does not outweigh the danger — which is pretty much the same argument lawmakers are using to force the sale of TikTok.
Remember that couple from Utah who accidentally shipped their cat to Amazon in a return package? Well, the cat and her family have since been reunited. After she was discovered, an Amazon employee took the cat to a vet where her microchip was scanned. The couple was contacted and promptly flew to California the next day, rented a car, and drove back home with the cat.
Plus 10 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including T-Mobile completing its $1.35B acquisition of Ka’ena Corporation, the parent company of Mint Mobile and Ultra Mobile. The deal was first announced last March, and the FTC finally approved the deal over a year later. Ryan Reynolds will continue to serve as Mint’s ambassador, and the company will continue to offer its $15/month 5GB data plan.
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
For more details on each story and sources, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/amazons-fee-delays-sheins-everything-store-nordstroms-marketplace/
What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
-PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter
PS: Want the full editions delivered to your Inbox each week? Join free at www.shopifreaks.com

Hi ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in...
Amazon is delaying its controversial new low inventory fee for the second time as it looks to satiate the hundreds of thousands of sellers it outraged with the original announcement. The company announced via its seller forum that it would be extending the grace period through May 14th. In addition to the delay, Amazon made some general changes to the upcoming fee structure such as the fee will not apply to products that have sold fewer than 20 units in the last week, any fees incurred due to excessive inbounding and processing times caused by Amazon will be refunded, and Amazon will provide an exception to the fee on products that are part of Prime-exclusive sales for the four weeks following Prime Day.
Shein has been courting brands like Colgate-Palmolive, Hasbro, Suntory Beverage & Food, and Bella Aurora in an attempt to sell more household names on its platform. The company, which is known for selling its own cheap clothing and accessories, is moving into other categories like beauty and household items to better compete with Amazon on its turf. So far Shein has given brands and retailers access to its platform in nine European countries, United States, Brazil and Mexico. Shein says that the inspiration for adding new categories is that customers were already searching for those types of products and brands across its platform.
Kohl's is re-entering the same-day delivery business — this time leveraging the Instacart app and its network of drivers. The company says that Instacart enables 109M US households to obtain delivery in as fast as an hour from 1,172 Kohl's stores across the U.S. Customers ordering Kohl's deliveries on Instacart can still earn their Kohl's Rewards loyalty points, as well as place orders for either same-day or scheduled delivery, with the same prices as in-store. Product categories eligible for same-day delivery include accessories, home goods, beauty & skincare items, and pet supplies.
As part of its mission to enhance its e-commerce business, Nordstrom introduced a new digital marketplace on its website, initially showcasing a selection of products from Mulberry, Adore Me, Cynthia Rowley, and DXL. This move catches Nordstrom up to retailers like Macy's, Walmart, and Michaels, which have all created third-party marketplaces in recent years. As opposed to casting a wide net, Nordstrom is being very particular about which sellers to allow on its marketplace, carefully selecting brand partners “to ensure that our marketplace experience drives the relevance and inspiration that Nordstrom customers expect from us.”
Walmart is now able to sell physical goods directly to users inside Roblox for the first time. The introduction of real-life e-commerce of tangible items is a milestone for Roblox, which aims to become an all-encompassing destination for virtual life. Virtual users are greeted with a new storefront that showcases virtual copies of physical items sold at real-life Walmart stores. The customer can try out the virtual item on their avatar. Customers can then load a virtual browser window inside Roblox that imitates the experience of shopping on Walmart's website. From there they follow the traditional form of entering their payment and shipping details within the virtual checkout. (Missed opportunity! They should have had the virtual avatar fumble with a self-checkout kiosk while an angry Walmart employee avatar stares them down. LOL)
Roblox also expanded access to its video ad inventory to all advertisers last week, following a six-month beta test. Advertisers can now purchase video ads through Roblox's self-serve tool, with plans to allow advertisers to purchase ads through PubMatic in the near future. Video ads in Roblox take the form of screens and billboards embedded within Roblox’s virtual worlds. The launch of video ads is part of Roblox’s aim to get brands to view it as a full advertising platform rather than a testing ground for their innovation budgets.
Amazon reported its first-quarter earnings last week and it turns out the company is doing really well. CEO Andy Jassy and CFO Brian Olsavsky informed investors of several company milestones on its recent earnings call such as tripling its profit from $3.2B to $10.4B in the same period YoY. Net sales at its online store rose 7% to $54.7B and at physical stores rose 6.3% to $5.2B. Ad sales overall rose 24% to $11.8B.
Walmart is planning to close all 51 of its health centers across five states, changing course from its originally stated plan of expanding to 75 locations this year. The company also plans to end its telehealth services, citing operational costs and reimbursement complexities that made its healthcare business unsustainable. All centers stopped accepting new patients last week, however, Walmart said it would continue to care for existing patients during the transition, as well as help its healthcare associates transition to other roles as it winds down the business. The company plans on keeping open its 3,000 vision centers and 4,600 pharmacies, which will continue to offer health screenings and testing.
Amazon, Starbucks, and McDonald's executives say US consumers are becoming more prudent with their spending — now looking for deals, seeking lower priced items, and being more particular about where they spend their money. Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan said, “We continue to feel the impact of a more cautious consumer, particularly with our more occasional customer,” noting that it had affected traffic and sales across the industry. “Many customers are being more exacting about where and how they choose to spend their money, particularly with stimulus savings mostly spent.” (Mostly spent? LOL. How long does he think that $1200 lasted?) Or maybe the true story is that consumers have ALWAYS been prudent with their spending, and these corporations simply took their price increases too far so people went elsewhere? Maybe the country is NOT headed into a recession and we're all just sick of your price gouging?
Travis Hess is joining BigCommerce as the company's new president, charged with leading its global strategic and operational expansion. Hess has spent more than 15 years in senior leadership positions at e-commerce companies, most recently as managing director of Accenture, and he's also served on partner advisory boards for Shopify, Klaviyo, SAP/Hybrid, and Rackspace.
Social media overtook paid search as the world's largest advertising channel, with Western platforms growing the fastest driven by Chinese brands targeting US and European audiences. Social media ads are forecasted to reach $247.3B this year, up 14.3% from a year ago, with TikTok estimated to earn $23.1B of that.
16% of U.S. parents surveyed said their Gen Alpha children have an online-shopping addiction, with 22% saying their kids prefer online shopping to other forms of entertainment including watching TV. Almost half said their kids buy themselves clothes online, and 32% said their kids are interested in beauty products. Sounds to me like 16% of U.S. parents could use a lesson on parenting.
TikTok said in its latest safety report that it blocked 37M attempted product listings and 2M seller registrations from July to December 2023. The company said it also remove 133k individual products after they were listed on the site and deactivated the accounts of more than one million sellers because of policy violations.
Wix launched a new feature called Wix Proposals that helps users create attractive proposals to convert leads into new clients, collect digital signatures, and manage setting up payments. The feature is powered by the Prospero business proposal platform, which is now integrated directly with Wix’s business management tools.
The Canada Revenue Agency wants to obtain large troves of Shopify merchant information including bank account info, total transaction value, birth dates, and social insurance numbers in order to check if they've paid all their taxes. Shopify has been fighting the “outrageous” request for over a year now, also arguing that it doesn't keep much of the requested information on hand, which the CRA doesn't believe.
Sam's Club is turning to AI to speed up the process of exiting its stores, allowing customers who pay either at a register or through the Scan & Go mobile app to walk out of the store through large scanners instead of having their purchases double-checked manually by employees. Since unveiling the technology this past January, Sam's Club deployed the scanners at over 120 stores in the US, with plans to expand to all its stores by the end of the year.
Kajabi, the platform for content creators to sell online courses, launched a no-code mobile app offering that lets users host their own customized native app through the App Store and Google Play. The platform previously offered a mobile app for hosting online courses, but this new product allows creators to control the user experience, send push notifications, add custom links to the menus, offer in-app purchases, and more.
Federal prosecutors are investigating the internal practices at Block, with suspicions that its subsidiary Square processed thousands of transactions involving countries subject to economic sanctions as well as multiple crypto transactions for terrorist groups. Most of the transactions discussed with prosecutors were not reported to the government as required, and Block did not correct the company processes when it was alerted to the issues.
Speaking of Block, the company announced its strategy of regularly purchasing Bitcoin for its corporate balance sheet using a dollar cost averaging strategy. The company plans to allocate 10% of its monthly gross profit from Bitcoin products towards investments in the cryptocurrency itself.
The Save Mart Companies which operates Save Mart, Lucky, and FoodMaxx grocery stores, is deploying Instacart Caper Carts, which use computer vision and AI to automatically identify items as they are placed in the cart, at select Save Mart and Lucky stores in the coming months, followed by a broader rollout later this year. The company is also implementing the Instacart FoodStorm order management system, which enables Caper Cart customers to place orders for made-to-order items like fried chicken or custom cakes and pies directly on the cart screen while they shop and receive a notification once it's ready.
ToysRUs.co.uk is seeking a partner for its e-commerce site, which launched in 2022. The company confirmed to suppliers that it is “transitioning to a non-transactional website” as it seeks a new e-commerce partner, but that the website will “continue to promote the Toys R Us brand including our much-loved mascot Geoffrey, while also fully supporting the opening of TOys R Us stores at WHSmith throughout the UK.” Really Toys R Us — an e-commerce partner? Haven't you been down that road before and been majorly burned?
Carvana, the online used car retailer, told investors on an earnings call that it became the most profitable public automotive retailer in the US for the first time after setting new all-time company record this past quarter. The record performance impacted its inventory, with the average time from posting a vehicle on its website to a customer purchasing it decreasing to 13 days in March.
Sam Ash Music, the 100-year-old family operated music instruments retailer, is closing all 42 of its remaining stores nationwide. The company noted on its website that the “unfortunate news also presents a fantastic opportunity for great deals” and marked down all of its products with sale prices that are still higher than what you can buy the same products for on Amazon right now.
Rue21 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its third time in the past twenty years and began the process of closing all 540 of its stores. The company has assets worth up to $500M and liabilities of almost an equal amount, according to its submitted documents. Sounds like a great acquisition target for Overstock! LOL.
A professor from Columbia University asked US courts to affirm the legality of Unfollow Everything 2.0, a browser extension that makes it easier to stop following friends, groups, and pages on Facebook. The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the browser extension does not violate Meta's TOS, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or California's Computer Data access and Fraud Act, also arguing that through Section 230, US lawmakers sought “to promote the development of filtering tools that enable users to curate their online experiences and avoid content they would rather not see.” The developer of the original Unfollow Everything was banned from Facebook in 2021 and never released version 2.0 because Meta threatened to sue him if he did.
Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Babylist have pulled weighted infant sleepwear like swaddles, blankets, and sleep-sacks from their shelves amid ongoing concerns over the safety of the products and after receiving a letter from the Consumer Product Safety Commission asking major retailers to remove them from stores. Studies haven’t been able to irrefutably demonstrate the risks of weighted infant sleepwear, however, experts are adamant that weighted products are not safe for infants and claim that the proposed benefit does not outweigh the danger — which is pretty much the same argument lawmakers are using to force the sale of TikTok.
Remember that couple from Utah who accidentally shipped their cat to Amazon in a return package? Well, the cat and her family have since been reunited. After she was discovered, an Amazon employee took the cat to a vet where her microchip was scanned. The couple was contacted and promptly flew to California the next day, rented a car, and drove back home with the cat.
Plus 10 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including T-Mobile completing its $1.35B acquisition of Ka’ena Corporation, the parent company of Mint Mobile and Ultra Mobile. The deal was first announced last March, and the FTC finally approved the deal over a year later. Ryan Reynolds will continue to serve as Mint’s ambassador, and the company will continue to offer its $15/month 5GB data plan.
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter
PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

We see several Thunderstriders hanging around a comfortable home base. No Pain was sitting on a chair sipping some delicious in front of a nice well made hard wood table and Snail, Cloudy, and Indi would all be snuggled up on a giant bean bag occasionally kissing the other. Junk was currently eating a slice of cake left in the fridge just for him.
Suddenly without warning the lights would randomly shut off. Everyone was a bit confused but it was likely just a power outage or the generator acting up nothing that wouldn’t be easy to fix.
Snail stood up leaving Indi and Cloudy on the bean bag and No Pain fallowed suit.
No Pain: It’s dark. We should fix the generator immediately!
Snail: On it dad! You guys can hang out while I work on it!
No Pain turned on a lamp placed on the hard wood table and just sat back down leading to Indi and Cloudy to push the bean bag closer to No Pain.
Cloudy: Oi! No Pain! Tell me mate what are you even doing these days?
No Pain: Taking care of my family and friends and saving people. It’s just what I’ve always have.
Indi: BUUUTTTTTTTTT! I saw you at Walmart yesterday?!
No Pain: … and? I was-
Cloudy: Everyone knows normal people don’t go too Walmart!
Indi: So what are you really MR?!
No Pain: W-where did you get this absolutely ridiculous idea?
Cloudy: That one meme on Reddit said so!
No Pain: You shouldn’t use-
Cloudy: I’m telling Snail!
Cloudy would then roll off the bean bag over to where Snail went. Junk walked over finishing his cake he was eating he carelessly yeeted the plate and fork he ate them away before speaking extremely bored.
Junk: So mates tell me what y’all been up too?
No Pain: Well I’ve been trying to spend more time with family! Though strangely I’ve been speaking to Bread less and less…
Indi: I’ve been-
He freezes in place before looking at the floor dumbfounded. He seemed confused and began scratching his head as smoke came out his ears…
Junk: He over heating?
Indi: I can’t remember…
Snail: GUYS! GUYS!
Indi jumped and immediately ran to make sure Snail was ok fallowed by Junk and No Pain.
Indi: BABE?!
Indi shouted out as he slipped down an old dusty and shaky ladder. No Pain would grab Junk’s hand and instead float down rather than even touching that disgusting ladder. They see the basement was very dark only lit by a dim light blue glow from the generator… or more specifically the old timey box tv that was on top of it
Cloudy was poking at its knobs as Snail looked extremely confused while staring right into it.
No Pain: Snail…?
Snail: Dad when did we get a TV down-
TV?: And everyone… I’d like to welcome the star of our shows!
They all hear a small beep and immediately felt weak and began dropping onto the hard dusty floor one by one with No Pain being the last one standing to now see a glowing face on the tv screen.
No Pain: W-who are…
Before they could finish the sentence they would pass out on the floor

Context - my parents are divorced. My dad's a light sleeper. He messaged me an hour before I got to the house to tell him when I was leaving my mom's (I had to grab my stuff since I didn't have time to pack it before school because my phone's alarms glitched out) and coming to the house for the weekend. This was all after a day at school and a Friday shift from 5:30pm-11pm with only one snack that was thrown out halfway through my shift. I'm a tired, hungry, and achey 17 year old girl that just wants to eat and go to bed after driving the 30mins to my mom's and the 17mins to my dad's. I messaged him at each step. My sis (best friend, A) over call said I should've stayed home (at my mom's) and go to his after my morning shift while I was driving to his, but I didn't want to cause issues. I should've listened. More context - The front door at my dad's sticks. It doesn't have a knob or handle, just a little thing you press down with your thumb and push the door open after putting in the code. After the years of using said stupid door on weekends, schedualed summer weeks, and now recently for weekly dinners, I've learned there's a certain way to open it when it sticks. I got there at 12:30am, went to the door, tried to open it 20+ times before calling my dad's phone. No answer. I kept on calling and calling and calling. STILL no answer. Even MORE context - He literally stays up until 3am on a coloring app on his phone with golf on the TV playing in the bacground in the living room. I start calling while still trying to open this damn door. It'd probably looks a little sus if anyone was looking. I then called my brother's phone since he had to leave him phone in the living room at night thinking that it might get my dad's attention. Nothing. Then I call my step-mom's phone. Nothing. After calling for 25 minutes and trying to get this damned door open I have a last ditch thought. My liitle sister has an iPad, it's in her room, and sets both my step mom's phone off and rings at a decent volume. Nothing. I start banging on the door which sets our dog Brody off and makes him whine, but the more noise the better chances I have of getting inside so I keep going. But still nothing. I banged on my brother's window. Nothing. I was panicking at this point so I throwed my body against the door WHILE pressing the damn thing but it still didn't open or get anyone's attention. After calling everyone that lives in the house and banging on the door and slamming my body into the door while still trying to open it with no response for 30mins, I called my mom who was dead asleep and coudn't even wake up fully to say bye to me (no hate on her though because she's an angel). 5 RINGS. It took 5 FREAKING RINGS for her to answer. She's worried of course, and her voice is all that it took for me to start crying which turned into sobbing. She talked me through trying everythings again and finally frantically ringing the door bell which in theory would wake everyone up. Theory wrong. I remember saying "All I want's to go to sleep, all I want is sleep" while sobbing on the phone. "I don't even wanna eat, I just wanna sleep, I'm so tired" and "I feel so pathetic", all while breaking down on the phone. The camera on the doorbell caught everything. After ringing it 30+ times, doing what I did before, and seeing if I could open our garage ALL THE WHILE my step dad was calling my dad and step mom several times, I gave up, dragged my suitcase back to my car, and went back. I texted my dad "'Doors stuck no one's answer their goddamn phone I'm going to moms see u tmrw'". My mom made sure I got back home okay, distracting me with walking her through the steps of microwaving frozen ravioli for me to eat when I got back. When A saw that I drove back to my moms (she got the notification on our Life 360 circle of just me and her), she called me worried and I broke down all over again. I kept saying "Your were right" and "I feel so pathetic" and "Why did no one hear me" until my mom came out to get me from my car and help me bring my stuff inside at 1:30am. She thanked her and I said I had to go inside and that I'd call her tomorrow (same day but later since it was so late at night and I didn't see the time until late2am). I told my mom what happened and how pathetic I felt (tbh idk if I still feel pathetic or not still). She immediately comforted and consoled me. She distracted me by asking about work, and work had been good that day, fun since my favorite servers were there and someone I usually work Saturdays with was with me for the night. He (J) took one of my shifts since I had my orchestra banquet on the 10th and needed to get it off my work schedual, so in return I took his one hour of his shift that was supposed to end at 11pm so he got to go home at 10 instead after he bussed all the dirty tables. That's when my step mom FINALLY called me back. My mom picked myphone up when it started buzzing and made a face. I told her to ignore it and just put it back down. NOW they called me? NOW they answer?? Why didn't they hear me in the first place??? I went to bed around 2:30 with feeling like my dad didn't care about me. Forget about our past issues, this took the whole damn cake! I had to wake up at 6am too. My mom came to wake me up a few mins after my alarm woke me up. She made me cereal and was with me until I had to leave for work. I freaking love my mom. I had to get gas omw to work, so I stopped at the Walmart by home. That's when my car starts to mess up, eating through the gas like a kid eating candy. I still got to work safely but with my engine light on. Later I would realize that I filled my car up with bad gas and I would just have to get more after my shift ended. I read my messages then and my dad sent this : "'Sorry baby. I tried to stay up but passed out. Don't know why you can't get it open? [Little sister's name] can open it'". ... WTAF does that have to do with it?? My little sister getting lucky with the door opening has nothing to do with what just freaking happened!! I didn't respond. While I was telling my fellow host friend (M) about my breakdown, guess who calls? Oh, my fridgin dad! And I tell her just that and ask J to watch the host stand so I could answer. He said hello like nothing was wrong in a ''funny'' way to which I say hi and that I'm at work. Yadda yadda yadda. He then says he saw the doorbells camera footage and proceeded to say I was "'blubbering like a baby'". The call didn't last that much longer. I came back and M asked if I was okay, and I said yes. I just didn't wanna deal with it and I WAS going to have a good day at work. I FINALLY didn't have to put names down on the iPad with the podium at the front which I hated doing and I got to seat people instead. When I got off work, I saw my step mom msg me "'Sorry babygirl. So sorry I crashed out last night. I have you on emergency bypass on my phone now. We have to practice with you on that front door.'" Again, WTAF. So that's two big 'ol ''sorry but'' 's. I get gas after asking my mom for some money on my allowance card, went home while munching on any left over snacks I had on me from my morning shift, and was exhausted since I'd slept about 3 1/2hrs. My mom being concerned asked if I wanted her msg my dad that I was gonna take a 2hr nap before I went to his house. He was fine with it at first, but right after his first response, he followed up with why I didn't come straight back to his. She responded exactally how I would've liked (W for mom), saying she didn't force me to and that he'd have to talk to me after I woke up. She explained what happened when she woke me up and after groaning and stretching I called him. Que a silly voice saying hello. I hear my little sis in the background yelling, so my little cousins were over. He eventually asked why I didn't have my stuff packed in my car when I left for work. I told him I had to get gas on the way. He then asked why I didn't just leave my things in y car when I went back to my mom's. I was annoyed, so I said "'I already had it packed when I went to the house last night. NO ONE answered my calls. I had EVERYTHING I needed for work AND the weekend ready to put in my room there but after banging on the door and slamming my body to tey to get it open and ringing the doorbell 30+ times for 30mins.'" It was quiet for a few seconds before he said "See your soon?" and I told him that I's see hime soon. I then REPACKED all my shit and hugged my mom and step dad goodbye and left for my dad's. When I got there, guess who still can't open the damn door? Me. My lil sis opened it for me and I gave her a hug, said his to all the kids. APPARENTLY my dad told my brother and sister that I was crying cause I couldn't get the door open last night. WTF. My brother said hey Miss cries a lot. I shut that shit down real quick. Turns out I'm just playing babysitter since my dad and step mom are in the process of wrapping up getting ready to go to a club with my older sister who turned 21 on the 1st (no hate to my sis). I tell my step mom about my shift, but it doesn't seem like she really cared. My dad then tried to teach me to open the door, saying "You gotta hit it right above or below the keypad", which I did. STILL wouldn't open, so I kicked it where he said and STILL NOTHING. It took my dad who works for the railroad and has muscles 10 FRIDGIN HITS for it to open. And you know what I get another of? ANOTHER SORRY BUT from her and him!! It's fucking bullshit!! Like, WTF!! Then they left saying Auntie was gonna pick them up on her way back from where they were all going early (10ishpm) (also no hate on my aunt whe had no ffin clue what had happened the night before). I ended up on the phone with A. She said it was bullshit how they basically just wanted me over after my shift so they'd have a free babysitter and I agreed. We talked about everything that happened the night before and when I got to my mom's and my dad's. I told her about the sorry but apologies I got and how they tried to teach me how to open the friggin door, like I'm basically an idiot for being the only one who can't get it open. It's been giving us trouble for YEARS but nOOooOOooOoOo, act like I'M the idiot. Today, they acted like nothing happened. I was distracted from all my feelings, so it was a win but not for the right reasons. I had a good time when I was distracted. I had fun, but I still feel like shit. My last weekend with them before I get to choose whether I go or not, when I'm finally 18yrs old, and this happens. Not to mention my brother had no context to what happened and was acting like a dick about it when me and my mom picked him up from practice. My mom changed his tune real quick and I wasn't the happiest about it, but it's fine now I guess. With him acting like that and saying the crap he did, NOT the whole situation. If i told my older sister what happened she'd be livid. I might because Idk what to do anymore. But basically, why couldn't they hear me? Like really?? The banging, crying, ringing, and calls? It's all loud!! So why couldn't they?? And then they have the NERVE to basicall say sorry but to me, the child who couldn't do anything else at the moment? It's all bullshit.

I (26F) don't really date much. It's just never been my thing. But I'm doing well in most aspects of my life and I finally felt ready enough to actually put myself out there.
I started with a few "test" dates with some guys I met on Tinder and Bumble. Just a way for me to dip my toes in the dating pool without getting too serious too quickly. I was completely upfront about this with guys and a few of them were totally cool with it, which was nice.
Conversations and drinks flowed, and everything went well. Especially with one guy in particular. I hadn't thought anything of him initially. But he was kind and I loved the way he made me laugh. It also didn't hurt that he was very cute. We had gone on a few other dates after our initial one. And by our fourth, I felt safe enough to meet him at his place for a fifth date.
Johnny (not his real name) lived about thirty minutes away, so I had time to clear my head. And the weather was nice, which helped calm my nerves a bit. I hadn't been over to a guys house for a date since my freshman year in college. But by the time I was knocking at his door, my nerves had actually turned into excitement.
He opened the door and smiled at me, which made me more excited. There was just something about his crooked smile that made me adore him.
We stepped into his apartment and began our fifth and final date.
Inside, the room was mostly candle-lit, save for the kitchen. The overhead lights revealed a wide array of pots, plates, and food. Johnny popped open a bottle of wine and poured me a glass. I sat myself down at a nearby table. It was dressed with more candles, some flowers, and fancy silverware. If he wanted to impress me, it was working. I liked how much thought he put into everything.
Dinner went especially well. As always, he was great at conversations and flirting. Teasing him was fun too. And I could tell with every smile he'd flash me that he was enjoying it just as much as I was.
In all honesty, up until that point, it had been one of the best dates I'd been on. Johnny was incredible and I was ready to make things serious with him. But I felt it best to leave it for the next day since we were both full and tipsy.
We finished dinner with a slice of chocolate cake he'd picked up from a local bakery. The chocolate was rich, decadent, and fresh. But my God that cake was something else. So moist.
I decided to ask about why he'd decided on takeout for dessert. He immediately averted his eyes and started fiddling with his ring finger.
"Is everything okay?"
He stopped fiddling with his finger and pushed up his glasses. There was a crack in them, small enough that I hadn't noticed before. "Yeah it's just... well, it's complicated."
Those famous words. I’d heard them often enough in movies and books. And I knew where this conversation was heading. Or at least, I thought I did.
"I'm a widow," he continued. "My wife and I, well we loved baking together. It was her passion."
He started to touch his ring finger again. I wasn't sure what to say. He was my age, which meant they must have met young. The pain he must've felt with such a loss... I wasn't one to complicate things either. And I knew it was best that maybe we end things or at least take them slow.
"Are you sure you're-" my voice was cut off by a bang. I looked towards a darkened hallway.
He pushed his chair back and stood. "Excuse me."
I watched as he rushed down the hallway. Then I heard a door open and close hard.
Minutes passed and he hadn’t returned.
I thought about leaving, I felt uncomfortable. It was this weird feeling at first. As if I wasn’t alone. I checked the hallway, the living room, and the balcony.
As I was looking around, I noticed there were no pictures. Anywhere. The apartment, the silence, the emptiness of it all was startling. I hadn’t heard footsteps, or nearby neighbors talking.
Maybe I was scaring myself, but I suddenly felt as if I was being watched. Not from afar, but right across from me, from Johnny’s chair.
A part of me really believed there was someone there. That if I reached a hand out, I’d meet with some invisible force. I was tempted to, just to test out my theory. But I wasn’t insane enough.
I shifted in my chair, ready to run. But before I could leave, Johnny came back flushed. His face was red and wet with sweat. He took his seat across from mine. I had to keep myself from warning him to not sit down, that there was already someone there.
Ignoring my senses, I looked at Johnny and asked, "Are you okay?"
He took a quick glance at me then averted his eyes. "Sure, yeah."
"Look we can pick back up tomorrow if you'd like?"
Johnny nodded his head. "That'd be for the best."
As I stood from my chair, my stomach grumbled. Fuck. The wine, pasta, and cake were not mixing well. I was embarrassed but I knew I wouldn't make it to my apartment.
"Is it okay if I use your bathroom?"
"It's down the hall, to the left."
I hurried down the hall, found the door to my left, and entered. His bathroom was clean and God was I grateful for that. I tried to not take longer in his bathroom than I needed to, but something kept me from wanting to leave. I chalked it up to me being buzzed after so many glasses of wine.
Or maybe it was the incident with the chair. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. As my mind wandered, I heard a faint noise. It was inaudible at first and then, as it grew louder, I realized it was crying, from a baby. It went on for a few seconds and then stopped.
Johnny hadn’t mentioned a child on his profile or in any of our conversations. But at this point, I was tired and creeped out. I wanted to go home.
I got up and washed my hands and face. But as I turned to the door, I heard a bang again. Like a door slamming shut.
I rushed out of the bathroom. A nearby door was wide open. I walked over and peeked inside. It was dark. "Johnny?"
Silence. There was that feeling again. Of someone's eyes being on me. But it was as if they were standing right in front of me. Staring right into my face.
The room light came on.
The room was full of shelves and in the center was a baby crib and rocking chair. I stepped backwards. The shelves were lined with baby dolls. But not the cheap kind you pick up from Walmart. They were the hyper-realistic kind. At least a hundred.
Some of their eyes were wide open, hands reaching up for invisible parents. Others had their eyes closed, hands tucked into their chest.
Rows and rows of them, just completely identical to each other. All of them were clothed. And all of them were male.
From the corner of my eye, I caught nearby closet doors opening slightly. And then I heard a baby crying again. I walked towards the crib and peeked inside. Thinking maybe, just in case, there was a real baby in there.
Instead, there was a doll inside and sitting next to it was a phone, playing a recording of a crying baby.
Out of some weird instinct, I stopped the recording.
The closet doors burst open, crashing against the walls. A woman dressed in a bloody hospital gown rushed out, her clawed hands reaching for me, screaming like a banshee. Her face was raw from scratch marks. "My baby!"
I fell backwards, hitting my head hard on the floor.
The woman turned to the crib and picked up the doll. She looked down and cooed at it. As she picked up her baby, she screamed. “¡Está muerto!.”
She threw the baby hard against the wall and turned to me. “What did you do to my baby?”
The woman moved towards me, tears running down her face, her screams raw.
I hate to admit it, but I fainted at that moment.
The next day, I woke up in my bed. Maybe Johnny had taken me home, or he called one of my roommates to pick me up. Regardless, I was happy to be home… and alive. He had sent a text, just saying “I’m so sorry.” But I didn’t bother replying. I deleted his number, my Tinder and Bumble profiles, and then the apps themselves.
Dating would be off the table for a long, long time.
I’ll admit, I’m not sure if anyone will believe me. I’m still having trouble believing it myself. And just making sense of everything that happened. But I needed to tell someone. Thankfully it's been cathartic for me writing about all of this. It’s strange but it’s helped. The only thing is, I still can’t shake this feeling that I’m being watched.

I been working at Walmart specifically in the deli for 3+ years now. Yesterday I was taking the new person (2nd day) back to the baler to teach them how to use it. Two coaches walk by, overnight and GM. I don't know why but I feel like the GM coach is always out to get me because it's like Everytime I see her, she has a stick up her ass. Everytime I go to her with a question or something (I try to avoid her as much as possible but sometimes she's the only coach around) she has to question me and makes it seem like I do not know what I am doing. I don't know how long she has been with Walmart but I know I have been in our particular store at least 2 years longer than her and she has never been in grocery side.
Anyway last night when they stopped us she asked us where our vests were. Mind you I was told when I was hired as long as you have a name tag and/or a Walmart hat, you didn't need to wear the vest, just a apron. 90% of deli expect for team leads and the one cake decorators only wear a apron. The new guy told her the People Lead that he didn't need an apron. I told her that the two people who hired me, told me I didn't need to wear a vest. She started asking me "I don't know who they are so how do I know you aren't lying to me" but the overnight coach, bless her heart, stepped in and confirmed this.
I don't know if I am being paranoid or something but I feel like this coach is always out to get me because this isn't the first time she will question my judgement/honestly. All the other coaches and store manger know me and trust me and my judgement as I have been there a long time and know that I know my shit.
I am especially mad she had to question my honesty in front of the new guy because I don't want him to think that any advice I give him can be untrustworthy.
I my partner told me I should report this because it's not respect for the individual but I don't know. What would you guys do?

I have a kid in the 1 year old room. Will be 2 in a couple months so doesn’t have too much longer with the teachers. I absolutely love the teachers, and the daycare as a whole. This is my kids first year in daycare, therefore the first teacher appreciation we are celebrating. Also, a bit of context, my kid was in a daycare before this one for a couple months and it was awful. Always coming home with diaper rashes, let formula sit in the bottles for weeks before giving them back to me (and not washing them), rude teachers, they didn’t put the air on in the summer, among many other problems. It’s the complete opposite at this daycare. So I really appreciate the teachers here and am so happy to have my baby in a great environment. My kid is learning so much and I can tell they are so happy there.
My mom has also been a daycare teacher for pretty much my whole life, but in the last few years has been a sub due to the flexibility. When I told her my plans for teacher appreciation week, she said I was doing too much and it was “weird.” So now I’m getting anxious and I don’t want to come off as weird, especially since that’s coming from the perspective as a former long time daycare teacher.
The office staff gave parents a sheet on different things we can do each day of the week. They are low cost, meaningful things. I don’t want to name it all as I don’t want to possibly dox myself but I’ll give examples relating to what I plan to do.
For example, one day is “bring a flower or make a flower for your teacher.” For this day, I ordered a cake from Walmart which is shaped like a flowerpot and has flowers coming out of it. I had them write on it “thank you for helping my (kids name) learn and grow.” This is for all the staff at the daycare. I thought it was such a cute idea and put a little twist to the recommended idea and was so exicted for it.
Another day is to buy school supplies for the classroom. I asked the teachers in my kids classroom what supplies they needed and I got everything they needed and got a teacher related tote bag to put everything in.
There were 3 others days with ideas but I decided to opt out and instead I got a beach tote bag for both of the teachers with their initials and I filled it will snacks, a throw blanket, and two different gift cards each: a $25 one to a retail store and a $10 one to a food place.
So, am I doing too much? Should I tone it down? Would you be weirded out as a teacher to receive this? I’m already an anxious mom and part of the reason I went all out is because these teachers really are amazing and help me feel less anxious about leaving my kid at daycare.

6.6/10 - I am not a nut guy. Never have been, and probably never will be. HOWEVER, this one didn’t suck for me. The base ice cream is fantastic, the brown butter cake chunks were a hit most of the time, but those praline chunks threw me off. It’s not the taste, but it’s the consistency of them. If it had just been praline flavoring, this would have been in upper 7 territory. If you like nuts and sweets, give this one a shot!
And yes, you’re reading that right. I scored SEVEN more pints today! I had a service call on the other side of the metro area and found a Walmart over there. I’m glad I grabbed a cart on my way in!

advice This story is going to be long but i need to give enough details in order to remember this. My boyfriend and I have been together for 4 years, since 14 years old. Now we are 18 and 19 in college. He doesn’t have any friends in college and never goes out, i like to go out and have a couple of friend up here overall i am happy with my social life. He has been really depressed all semester, not eating enough and keeping up with hygiene. he gets snappy and has zero social battery. he hasn’t been himself and it’s been really sad to watch. We have had the conversation but he just says he’s fine. On his birthday, it was halloween weekend on a friday. the day before i took the bus to walmart to get his gifts and a cake. i get back and walk to the dorm. i go home and make his card just to have everything ready. the next morning i go to his dorm with his gifts and surprise him. i doordashed us breakfast at like 9am and then let him go back to sleep. later that afternoon we have dinner with his parents and he is in a horrible mood.he is sad and drained. His parents leave and i ask him what’s wrong and he says he’s fine. we go back to his dorm and drink. i ask him if he wants to go out and he says no. after we get more drunk i try again and ask if he wants to go to a live music event and he says no, then i get defensive and say he never leaves his room and that is why he is so sad and he needs to at least try to go out (i completely disrespected his boundaries and am aware of it now) he says no he doesn’t want to so i say I’m leaving and left. i came back about 20 minutes later and he was really upset. we didn’t talk about it and just moved on with our night. Beginning of February i am really stressed about housing next semester. we cannot live on campus and the place i had in mind didn’t fall through. i cant afford anything and my parents are really unreliable. this housing situation and school is making me really depressed. One night i took a bunch of nyquil and it didn’t work. i had never done anything like that before. On top of this my boyfriend is majorly depressed and refuses to get help. Valentine’s day rolls around and he doesn’t get me a gift or plan anything. we had always done things in the past and this was really hurting me. i told him that i am really depressed right now and need to process the nyquil incident so i think that we shouldn’t be together right now. that didn’t last long and we ended up arguing the whole weekend. he tells me that i really hurt him on his birthday and he can’t believe that i would leave him on his own birthday. i understand that is hurtful. anyways we end up “fixing” things. i told him he really hurt me on valentine’s day because i expect a gift/card/candy/something and i had got him a card and chocolate. i told him that he’s really emotionally distant and i really want him to get help. yes i go to therapy and take meds!!! don’t come at me. anyways he does short term therapy (5 sessions) through the school and doesn’t do it again. Few months later pass by and it’s my birthday weekend. the day before my birthday we’re hanging out with my friends and he is sitting in a corner silent. being really moody and distant with everyone including myself. the next day is my actual birthday and he doesn’t get me a gift. i text him that night and say “not to be rude but did you not get me a birthday gift” and he replies “not yet im going tomorrow im sorry” i was drunk at this point so i leave it alone and talk about it tomorrow. i tell him that it really hurts me because he should’ve done it before my birthday and just take me into consideration. at this point it just feels like he’s telling me he doesn’t want to be with me.i end things with him and ell him that when he gets help we can work on things because he’s been really emotionally absent and inconsiderate this whole semester. i asked him multiple times if he thinks he’s too depressed to be in a relationship right now and he’s just silent. i ask him if he wants to break up or if he doesn’t want to be with me anymore but he says no. he refuses to get help and would rather lose me it feels like. Now that we are i guess not together he says he wants to work on it but is being super cold and mean towards me.please help i don’t know what to do. i

advice This story is going to be long but i need to give enough details in order to remember this. My boyfriend and I have been together for 4 years, since 14 years old. Now we are 18 and 19 in college. He doesn’t have any friends in college and never goes out, i like to go out and have a couple of friend up here overall i am happy with my social life. He has been really depressed all semester, not eating enough and keeping up with hygiene. he gets snappy and has zero social battery. he hasn’t been himself and it’s been really sad to watch. We have had the conversation but he just says he’s fine. On his birthday, it was halloween weekend on a friday. the day before i took the bus to walmart to get his gifts and a cake. i get back and walk to the dorm. i go home and make his card just to have everything ready. the next morning i go to his dorm with his gifts and surprise him. i doordashed us breakfast at like 9am and then let him go back to sleep. later that afternoon we have dinner with his parents and he is in a horrible mood.he is sad and drained. His parents leave and i ask him what’s wrong and he says he’s fine. we go back to his dorm and drink. i ask him if he wants to go out and he says no. after we get more drunk i try again and ask if he wants to go to a live music event and he says no, then i get defensive and say he never leaves his room and that is why he is so sad and he needs to at least try to go out (i completely disrespected his boundaries and am aware of it now) he says no he doesn’t want to so i say I’m leaving and left. i came back about 20 minutes later and he was really upset. we didn’t talk about it and just moved on with our night. Beginning of February i am really stressed about housing next semester. we cannot live on campus and the place i had in mind didn’t fall through. i cant afford anything and my parents are really unreliable. this housing situation and school is making me really depressed. One night i took a bunch of nyquil and it didn’t work. i had never done anything like that before. On top of this my boyfriend is majorly depressed and refuses to get help. Valentine’s day rolls around and he doesn’t get me a gift or plan anything. we had always done things in the past and this was really hurting me. i told him that i am really depressed right now and need to process the nyquil incident so i think that we shouldn’t be together right now. that didn’t last long and we ended up arguing the whole weekend. he tells me that i really hurt him on his birthday and he can’t believe that i would leave him on his own birthday. i understand that is hurtful. anyways we end up “fixing” things. i told him he really hurt me on valentine’s day because i expect a gift/card/candy/something and i had got him a card and chocolate. i told him that he’s really emotionally distant and i really want him to get help. yes i go to therapy and take meds!!! don’t come at me. anyways he does short term therapy (5 sessions) through the school and doesn’t do it again. Few months later pass by and it’s my birthday weekend. the day before my birthday we’re hanging out with my friends and he is sitting in a corner silent. being really moody and distant with everyone including myself. the next day is my actual birthday and he doesn’t get me a gift. i text him that night and say “not to be rude but did you not get me a birthday gift” and he replies “not yet im going tomorrow im sorry” i was drunk at this point so i leave it alone and talk about it tomorrow. i tell him that it really hurts me because he should’ve done it before my birthday and just take me into consideration. at this point it just feels like he’s telling me he doesn’t want to be with me.i end things with him and ell him that when he gets help we can work on things because he’s been really emotionally absent and inconsiderate this whole semester. i asked him multiple times if he thinks he’s too depressed to be in a relationship right now and he’s just silent. i ask him if he wants to break up or if he doesn’t want to be with me anymore but he says no. he refuses to get help and would rather lose me it feels like. Now that we are i guess not together he says he wants to work on it but is being super cold and mean towards me.please help i don’t know what to do. i