Hi mamas,
This sub has been my single source of inspiration for continuing my breastfeeding journey. My baby is 4.5 months now and healthy and doing great. Seeing him thrive, I forget all the pain that I go through for pumping. Lately, I have been having a hard time managing my time between my full time crazy desk job and managing my son. I do have my husband and dad fully helping me with the baby and the household work- but I feel like I am not doing justice to my pumping schedule. I am pumping 4 times and make 21oz and my son eats around 28-30 oz daily so I need 2 bottles of formula. I know deep inside my heart that if I pump in the morning by sleeping at night on time I can reduce that to one formula bottle only - but I feel like I am slipping away into laziness. I know my job is mentally draining and tough, I have client calls early AM where I have to be responsible and I am skipping my morning pump to 11am - literally losing the first half of the day and then I pump 4 hours to get 5 oz each pump. I am disappointed with my self, I feel guilty every night but I don’t know how to come out of this mess that I have created. My husband places all the pump parts in a ziploc bag next to my bed and he wakes me up at 7 to pump and I don’t know where the time passes by and it’s already mid day. Please help me out. I want to pump till my baby turns one that’s my dream that’s my goal. Help me achieve it please. I need motivation and advice from y’all to get me pump more. Any quick tips or hacks ? Anything that helps me.. please don’t judge me..I want to pump it’s just that I suck at time management..

I bags office hours and even more so I hate the fact that no training or staff explain how it works!!! For the middle schools and high schools in my district there are QR codes that are supposed to be scanned to check in. When I sub the kids never do it and it feels like kids are just there to mess around. I’m told that kids can go to ANY classroom and scan the QR code and a teacher today told me I didn’t have to let any students in. So I told the class not to stay for office hours because if they refuse to do work and mess around I have no authority.
I get a call from the sub desk who just this morning said kids can go to their classrooms for office hours and schedule with their teacher ahead of time. The teacher I’m subbing for said she had no one scheduled and her board even said “last day of office hours may 9” So following all that logic i tell them all to please find another classroom to go to
The kids wine and say they have no where to go. A group of probably 6 kids go straight to their PE TEACHERS and annoy them (instead if going to a proper classroom) saying I kicked them out and they had no where to go. Campus security is obviously annoyed and calls the sub desk asking why their 3rd period teacher didn’t let them stay for office hours.
I get a call asking why I kicked them out. I’m like 1. I thought they were allowed to go to any classroom so long as they scanned the QR code and I thought they were supposed to talk to their teachers in advance asking permission to attend and 2. The teacher I’m subbing for said I didn’t have to have any one in for office hours and I could ask them to “relocate”
The teacher returned half way through and I explained to her the situation. She said “oh my god really ? That’s the first time I’ve seen admin care about office hours in years! It isn’t your fault.” I said “yeah they never really explained to me how it works” idk if she was trying to make me feel better but she said “they don’t explain it to us either” (which baffles me!)
I really also have to note that I asked the vice principal of the 10th grade (they have a diff one for each) to explain it to me via email 3 WEEKS AGO because I was having problems with students coming in and being extremely disrespectful and doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING . I got no response. The sub desk coordinator told me not to worry about this and it is “water under the bridge” but I’m honestly scared I’ll get black listed over this.
Just crazy. If anyone actually understands office hours and can provide some insight please comment below

Idk if anybody has heard this, potentially by your parents you're LC and/or NC with, other "family" members, "friends", coworkers, etc. but it makes absolutely ZERO sense to me how choosing to opt out of an entirely one-sided abusive dynamic which you've navigated your entire life thus far as opposed to genuine retaliatory efforts made in anger and in the name of revenge for said abuse is selfish and... vengeful.
It takes so much more maturity and strength to exit out of environments and relationships that are abusive after attempting in earnest through strenuous and enduring effort to educate, communicate, and self-advocate with a demanded (often necessitated) demeanor of softness, gentleness, patience, and calmness which is repeatedly met with even MORE abuse (yelling, name-calling, gaslighting, manipulation, triangulation, physical violence, even sexual violence).
These DARVO ass bitches are just pissed they no longer have access therefore control to their punching bags that kept them regulated because they had a vulnerable victim who LOVED THEM FFS to unload all of their negative and ugly feelings off onto with absolutely no concern for the ways their behaviour seriously and detrimentally and holistically impacted their child and continues to impact them as adults usually resulting in thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of therapy needed just to learn better coping and regulation skills and strategies to live day by day to feel even a fleeting moment of happiness but is nonetheless commonly inaccessible to the majority of people.
But yea, it's "selfish" for someone to make the insanely difficult decision to go NC with the person they literally loved the most since birth and navigate life isolated (idk if anyone else is like me but I am totally isolated, NC with my entire immediate and extended family and have been since I was a teenager).
It's disgusting and apologists of these people, including but not limited to flying monkeys and golden children, need to gtfooooooooooo and stop perpetuating the abuse in the name of "family" and "unity" when family and unity very fundamentally means DON'T ABUSE YOUR FUCKING KIDS.

Ok so to start, it started a few months ago, me and my friends were doing the normal dnd session. Go into a dungeon and clear it out, get the quest done and go home. The debate started when i did my first evil action, it was a goblin lieutenant and he was really insulting my character so much so that i got annoyed irl, after killing said goblin i desecrate the goblin corpse by doing horrible shit to it, i.e. cutting the dick off of all its goblin friends and feeding those to it, and then some, after that most of my party members acted like im a villain which i admit considering what i did might make me one. Cut to months later and i was talking about how after everything that happened in the campaign they might be as evil as i am now, then one of my friends denies it saying how my character is the most evil of the group and that "NO ONE is equal to (my pc)" of course i say that after everything they did they had no right to talk about how evil my pc was, and that i wasn't even saying they're worse but that they're equal now he refused to admit they were equal in evil, so heres what we decided to do put all the evil that i did in a list and all of theirs and reddit gets to decide if they're as evil as me
My pc's crimes (and general asshole moves):
-Desecration of a corpse (goblin corpse)
-Thievery (stole my friends gold as a joke)
-Assault (ate lunch without us and as a joke punched him to make him throw up and eat lunch again)
-Breaking and entering (following the party)
-Harrasment? (Tried to comfort an ally kobold by patting her in the shoulder, my pc did not know she was a woman and when she revealed it the party started accusing me of sexual harrasment, your judgement if it should count)
Party members crimes (and general asshole moves):
-Attempted torture (rolled a nat 1 and victim died)
-Attempted arson in a populated area
-Grand Arson of a national landmark (a forest)
-Murder
-Tried to destroy the party's loot (got angry one time when the thieves guild stole our loot, and attempted to cancel the bag of holding thinking it would destroy the loot)
-Attempted murder
-Assault
-Thievery
-Breaking and entering
-Using magic on civillians
-Using magic in a civillian area
Those are most of the crimes i can think off the top of my head, any thoughts? I'm not saying my character is good I'm just saying they were as evil as me, though they refuse to admit it.
Tl:dr party assumes im the most evil member of the group when they do shit just as bad if not worse crimes
Edit: the world was a homebrew one made by our dm, if was also all of our first campaign, and our dm upped the punishment of crimes so my view on crimes are a bit skewed. I.e. murder is punishment by death (no matter if your a royal or a commoner)
2nd Edit: the goblin was very annoying at the time, it was a 2 hour long fight and whenever a turn is made he hurls insults at my pc and only at my pc which was funny at first but became annoying quickly and maddening at the end, so i vowed i would do what i did to it when i killed it, which i did.

Mo

By Copious Garlic Bread (not putting my irl name here for privacy)
Era 0
Suicide Mo
In the second floor of a 5-story apartment complex lay the utterly fucked body of a man that looked, somewhat comically, identical to Richard Nixon. Mind you this wasn’t Richard Nixon at all but rather some man who happened to look a lot like him. This is not a form of symbolism, I just thought I might mention it.
Non-Nixon’s head was, for all intents and purposes, not present. It may be strange to give someone the attribute of Nixon-like if you can’t even see their face but the police has identified the man, and back in the times when he was alive and had a face he did indeed, look like Richard Nixon.
Non-Nixon killed himself approximately 2 weeks ago give or take, with the help of a 12 gauge. It’s doubtful he experienced pain for long before the lights went out. However I wouldn’t know this because I haven’t killed myself yet, pretty apparent by me writing this manuscript you fucking shithead. While the police took like 30 minutes to get there and found his ID almost immediately, a little DNA testing doesn’t hurt. Very quickly, the case was ruled out as a suicide. They had been correct.
Non-Nixon’s brains were splattered across several corners of the room. One of the strandules kinda looked like a weiner which made one of the blaséd crime scene cleaners have a hearty little giggle. The landchad that owned the complex wasn’t too happy about the holes in the ceiling.
In the second floor of a 5-story apartment complex, at around 9:08 PM EDT, Non-Nixon shot himself in the head with a 12 gauge shotgun because life wasn’t going quite well. No-one really cared but the people that lived in the apartment complex bought him some plastic flowers and someone put a cross at his door and another even laminated a google slide memorial for him to tape at his door which was promptly taken down once the landlord figured out all the shit he caused with the lease. Non-Nixon did not have any living family or friends, and no real funeral was held.
In the second floor of a 5-story apartment complex, at around 9:08 PM EDT, Non-Nixon shot himself in the head with a 12 gauge shotgun because life wasn’t going quite well. As his head was split apart like sticky, undercooked pancake batter in a pan, his synapses fired one last time, trying to make sense of things that couldn’t be made sense of. Frequently-traveled thought patterns struggled to make a whole cohesive thought when they were flying towards shitty drywall at mach 10. Despite this, Non-Nixon birthed a brief existence before the lights went out. An entire universe emerged and died, because that's the only thing that he could make sense of in the fleeting moments of hyperawareness.
When Non-Nixon killed himself, it, for a brief place in time, rented out the throne of God.
Era 1
Birth
𒀭 (Diĝir) was taking a ridiculously fat fucking piss in the innerwall northwesteast bathroom. He was actually pretty surprised that the stream didn’t cut through the porcelain like a cheese wire through a malleable butter. Needless to say the little urinal sponge did not survive the offensive.
𒀭 walked out. 𒀭 did not wash his hands, the dirty fucking animal. Not like he could even if he wanted to, the plumbing was shitted to 3 weeks from Sunday, not enough funding was going into building upkeep.
𒀭 arrived to class. It’s his first day here so as per usual in the life experience of all, traversing an unknown campus tends to take up time people generally do not have.
𒀭 reached out his hand to open the door, but it opened before him. This is because he was going to open the door anyways, so the door didn’t see why it should bother waiting for him, especially given his tardiness.
As the door opened and 𒀭 entered, several students in the lecture hall glanced over to him in a reaction to the door opening, and promptly recalibrated their attentions to the lecturer, who in lieu of the students glanced over at 𒀭 as well. He annoyedly ordered 𒀭 to sit down, to which he began traversing to the closest unused seat.
It took 𒀭 972 months to reach his seat.
By the time 𒀭 reached his seat, class has long since ended. In fact, not only has class ended, but the college in which 𒀭 was enrolled in has seen its demolition, firstly bombed, then from the rubble arose an apartment complex, which was bombed again. The lecturer’s desk remained, as did the lecturer himself.
“𒀭, please take no more steps. You’ve shown me you aren’t effective at traversal” said the lecturer.
𒀭 felt shamed yet angered at the absurdity. “Sir- I believe you saw me approach the nearest desk. I do not understand why it took me such a long time but I was on the fastest available route” said 𒀭.
“And yet it took you 972 months to do so. Not to mention your tardiness in general isn’t a good look. Look around you, the university doesn’t even exist anymore. We stand among rubble” said the lecturer.
“I do not understand”, said 𒀭.
“And neither do I. You and I exist in 0 dimensions. It should take you non-time to arrive anywhere, really” said the lecturer.
“This is my first time on campus. I don’t have any previous reference of the layout” said 𒀭.
“I reinstate, traversal in 0 dimensions is trivial. Literally just arrive” said the lecturer.
“How does one simply arrive if it takes time to walk to a location?” said 𒀭.
The lecturer took an amusing sort of astonishment from the stupidity of the student. A freshman at university, especially one as hard to get into as this one, is absolutely a peculiar sight.
“I believe you may be asking the wrong question. We do not exist on a one, a two dimensional plane- nor one of three, four, or more. In fact dimensional space does not exist in the way you’d think it should. Therefore arriving anywhere is an instantaneous process given that there’s no real space to traverse. Your non-acquaintance with our campus does not hinder this process. Just arrive to class. Preferably in the time in which the class still exists” said the lecturer.
“That doesn’t explain why it took me 972 months to reach my desk when I was already inside the lecture hall” said 𒀭.
“Well, obviously reaching a place that's further away from oneself takes more time. Not that long, though” said the lecturer.
𒀭 stood on-top the shiny vinyl plank floor, rendered unreflective by the dusts of once-pink insulate and finely mashed concrete. He thought about the logistics of what the lecturer set forth. T
he lecturer bent over, his back cracking and him emitting a discomforting grunt of age. Behind the lecturer’s desk emerged his hand clutching his duffel bag full of whatever items lecturers tended to drag around.
“Have a nice day, 𒀭. I’d advise you to vacate the building, your enrollment period’s long gone. As is the university itself. I’m going home, my wife said she cooked me filet mignon tonight” said the lecturer.
The lecturer went home in an instant- as in a literal instant, clearly showing the trueness of the 0-dimensional traversal which he lectured to 𒀭. At the same time, 𒀭 had no trouble at all seeing him slowly shamble and awkwardly step over haphazardly placed miscellaneous chunks of was-university and was-apartmentcomplex and head down the street, and into the metro station adjacent to the rubble building. As 𒀭 stayed stood, an air raid siren slowly picked up its wail which was the final prompter telling 𒀭 to get moving.
In an instant, or maybe it took a couple years, 𒀭 left the debris.

All items that are required sealed we plan on having in a large plastic bag together. Hydro pack & pockets empty aside from phone & wallet. Obviously no weapons or anything unusual. Never been, how intensive is the search and can you do anything else to expedite the process and make everybody’s life easier?

Hi everyone,
This summer, we're planning a three-week camping trip with the whole family from Germany to Spain by the sea. We'll be traveling with a VW Bus and a large Thule roof box. Our children are 2, 4, 5,8 and 10 years old.
My main question is whether anyone has experience with fitting all the gear (air mattresses, sleeping bags, large tent, clothing, camping kitchen, and dishes) into a VW Bus and a roof box? What do we need to consider, and how can we pack to make the most of the space?
Additionally, I'd appreciate any tips on what to pay special attention to on such a trip in the summer (over 30 degrees Celsius). We're looking forward to your experiences and advice!
I also think a holiday home or apartment might be better, but it's much more expensive. Our kids love car rides, and we've already driven to Spain twice before. However, our car has always been full with clothes, toys, and the stroller, so I'm unsure how to fit all the camping gear in as well.
Thank you in advance!

It’s been a long time I wanted to submit this story to the Potato Queen herself!
It’s a long story, actually it’s two stories in one, because as it involves the same person over more than decade long, it’s worth telling the whole story all at once (and it makes it may more fun too!). I decided to share it because it’s the kind of story that doesn’t seem to happen very often.
Below you will find goodies about an ex, a wedding, a dress, a delivery company and more! Please simply be mindful English is not my first language, trying my best to entertain you all the same.
This story goes back a long way, when (let’s name him) Frank (M) and myself (F) were both in college (both 17 at the time, we’re now 33), young and naive teenagers. We started as friends and eventually decided to be together. We then decided to move to another city together, as I was about to start university.
It went well for a while and then started to go south. So, long story short, after about two years together, we decided to break up. It wasn’t a mean breakup or anything, I think we were mostly disappointed it didn’t work out. Anyway.
We live in the province of Quebec. For those who don’t know, there is this weird tradition of starting and ending about any lease on July 1st. I have no idea why, but Canada’s Day has always been for anybody moving, in this province, a synonym of sweating under the sun, moving boxes, lifting heavy things and ending the day with cold beer and cheap pizza in a new and probably not so clean apartment. Why this context? Because we broke up two weeks before July 1st. It means it was virtually impossible to find another apartment so close to this date. We were about 7 hours away from both our families living on the countryside. We were also awfully broke students. We decided to give it a chance at being roommates.
Yes, it was super awkward at first, really not easy to manage to say the least. We were walking on eggshells and were definitely on edge for a while. There were also some pretty awkward situations, like this one time he decided to bring a one night home as I was sleeping in the adjacent room. Not only that, but the shameful phone call he had to make, waking me up in the middle of the night, so I could unlock the front door because he had forgotten his keys to find out he had brought home an acquaintance of mine. Nowadays I find this story delightfully funny tbh. But on that night, as I couldn’t go back to sleep because the gal decided to show off how an amazing singer she could have been —because, oh boy, this voice carried loudly all the way to my ears for more than an hour — I did not find it funny. I was furious, but prepared myself for the eventuality it would ever happen again. Do you remember the “Tiny Wall Challenges”? Let’s just say I had some games ideas after that night.
Anyway, anybody would probably have walked away but we still deeply cared for each other. We even did better than just survive through this whole year as roommates, we decided to move into a bigger apartment with two other friends. Believe it or not, we stayed there two more years. Moreover, these years were some of the best years and I still keep lots of good memories from this period.
Fast forward to the second part of the story. After being roommates for years, at some point we parted ways and lived our lives. We maintained contact throughout the years and when Frank finally started dating his wife to be, I was absolutely happy for him. He asked her to marry him and she said yes! Our friendship still held such a high place in both our hearts that he asked me to be one of his groomsmen, with his other best friend and his little brother. I felt so honoured, as I was technically a female, to be chosen to be on his side at the wedding.
The bridesmaids chose matching dresses in a beautiful forest green, all from a specialized website from UK, and I was to also be in a dress on the groom’s side, but matching the colour of the other groomsmen suits. With Frank, We all shopped together for their suits, chose a beautiful dark grey for his and a light grey for us, and we were able to match it perfectly with clothing samples I ordered from the website. Everything was going as planned. That being done, I ordered the dress, considering buying two inches heel shoes to go with it. It would take about four months to be done and the dress would arrive about a month and a half before the wedding. I decided to wait for the dress to arrive to pick shoes to go with it.
Four months passed, and I finally received a notice that the dress was on its way. The bridesmaids dresses arrived a bit before mine and they were all absolutely beautiful. As we all ordered from the same shop, we were able to choose different dresses that suited each of our styles, with identical fabrics that made the whole thing look fantastic.
I received the delivery’s notice, saying it was to be delivered by DHL. (If you never had to deal with this delivery company before, let’s just say this in itself is a red flag, but what could I do.)
I chose a delivery date that I could be home all day. I awaited their arrival, and waited. At some point I received a notification that they couldn’t deliver it because there was an error in the address. I called DHL customer service as soon as I read it and could verify with the clerk on the phone that there was no error on the original delivery address and that actually, internally, they miss-wrote a letter of the postal code. The person assured me that the delivery person would be notified and they would then be on their way back.
I waited. It never came.
The next morning, I received a notification that, unable to deliver it, the expeditor had agreed to DESTROY the package! I screamed! Why in the world would the UK online shop allow to destroy a custom made dress that took four months to do?! And why the hell the delivery service didn’t make any other attempt after being responsible of the address error in the first place. I was beyond mad. I called DHL, they confirmed someone at the company had agreed on the destruction of the item. I wrote to the person I was in contact with from the beginning at the online shop (this lovely clerk who clearly never asked for any of this). Over there, they couldn’t find who the hell agreed to this insane request to destroy the dress. They were also appalled and didn’t understand how it could have happened. They could put a request to redo the dress rush, but we first needed to either try to stop the destruction from happening by going to the DHL warehouse directly, or to obtain a proof from DHL that the dress was irreversibly lost forever.
It felt surreal! The fiancées were both furious too. There was only one DHL warehouse we could go to do this kind of request in the city and it was really far. As the clock was ticking, they jumped in their car, joined me, and to the warehouse we went, arriving a few minutes before closing like an epic movie scene. The clerk there was mind blown by the whole situation. It seemed we were too late and the best we could do was to have the proof that, in their system, the dress had effectively transited and was destroyed.
With photos as proof in hand, I forwarded everything to the clerk of the online dress shop. Days passed, as they were awaiting the okay to start sewing a new dress. They were really trying their best to help the situation but it seemed to be a mess over there about the whole situation. We were now a month before the wedding. At some point, I was starting to panic. They finally agreed to redo it, but it would be waaaay too close before the wedding to receive it. Like a few days before kind of close, if nothing happened in transport this time.
I decided to go shopping for another dress. I spent a whole day trying to find the perfect grey that would fit the other groomsmen suits. In the last possible boutique, there was one dress checking all the criteria. I bought the new one and wrote to the first shop, hoping they would agree to refund the lost dress.
I took an appointment later that week to do the adjustments on the new dress. I then shopped for shoes. I found a cute pair with one inch heel that would be perfect for me. I’m not used to walking with heels, so the lower the better after all.
Like all this turmoil wasn’t enough, my family called and told me that my grandfather’s health suddenly decreased. Remember? Seven hours drive from family. I canceled some plans and bought a ticket for the night’s bus ride right after the dress fitting. On that morning, the UK shop agreed to refund the dress. That part was a big relief. I went to the dress fitting. At last, three weeks before the wedding, The second dress would be ready in about seven days. I came back home to gather some things to get back out to catch my bus.
But suddenly, the doorbell rang.
I opened.
Some DHL delivery man casually gave me a package and left.
Yes. That’s what you think.
I closed the door, went to my room, sat on the bed, opened the bag. It was indeed the first dress. I had a melt down. I cried so hard. I put the dress down, looked at it, told it “I’ll deal with you when I come back” and went away to the bus station.
Few days later, coming back from the family, I collected the second dress and dealt with the first one, which no longer fitted the length of the shoes! My MIL at the time knew an old lady who was lovely enough to accommodate me and do the fitting of the first one for a as modest price. I decided to keep it a secret until the wedding day. (These friends wouldn’t do any drama about reveals etc, nor would they think it was stealing any of their thunder, don’t worry about that.)
On the wedding morning, I effectively surprised the bride and groom with both dresses. They were mind blowed, flabbergasted to say the least! I put the original one for the official photoshoot and discretely changed right after dinner for the other one. People around that had followed the incredible adventures were laughing out loud and finding it hilarious that I decided to wear both of them as I had so much troubles!
Quite a story with dresses and with an ex, right? Guess what, I’m also the godmother of their first child!

Hi Reddit, I had a frustrating experience with United Airlines and could use some advice. My flight was canceled due to rain earlier in the day, but the weather had cleared up by the time of my departure. Despite the chaos at the airport, United couldn't accommodate me on a later flight, so I had to book a last-minute ticket with Southwest to make it to a wedding. Now, United is refusing to refund my original ticket or cover the cost of the new ticket, not to mention the additional expenses for transportation and rental car adjustments. They haven't even refunded the fees for checked bags on the canceled flight. Has anyone else dealt with a similar situation? How did you manage to get a refund and reimbursement? Any recommendations or a path forward would be greatly appreciated.

I'm a 29 year old male and i will try to summarize the horrendous situation I find myself without leaving to many crucial details out. I was with my ex girlfriend for nearly 6 years. The red flags were present fromn the beggining but looking back I had no way to understand what they were at the time partly due to my young nievete and partly due to the fact that coming from a emotijallyabusive household I had normalized many of the more subtle behaviors and therefore they fell within a blindspot of my cognitive distortions at the time. From the very start she would begin punching herself in her own head if i ever became upset with her in any way or during any attempt to verbally work a problem out. I thought she was just a bit flippant and intense. Dare I say I almost found it attractive in a strange sense. She was and still to this day, stunningly beautiful and menacingly seductive and knows how she can have a significant effect on males especially without doing very much in the way of actions. Fast forward she unknown to me at the time discontinued her birth contorll pills while still assuring me she was taking them and ultimetly lied by telling me she had just to fund out she had become pregnant herself after missing a period. We were both in our mid to early 20s still more or less financially dependant on our parents and were living on public city streets in our tow behind rv with our 2 dogs. She was idealizing me and to be frank I remebr this period of time as the happiest iv been eever before and up untill now. This memory of "happiness" I think was the biggest reason it took me so long to finally start trying to advocate for my self respect instead of hanging my head and just ignoring the abuse so that I would get the sweet reward of psedo- intimacy with her a few times a week. Despite my fond memories looking back I see now what could only be described as patterns if coercive control that seriously escalated over the 5 years we were in a relationship with each other and included her beggining to cheat early on and the resulting systemic lies and relational damage from needing to formulate and bend the nature of reality around those lies. Her hot and cold treatment of me with any postive(hot) behavior usually at least in the last few years being exclusively sexual in nature and cold behavior usually manifesting as her stonewalling me and or simply disappearing for multiple days at a time sometimes. The day my son was born i accompanied her to the hospital and sat with her the entire time helped her push ans enouraged her with love. She treated me with indifference and disdain. Once our wonderful little boy came along this a became even worse. The sense that she was making it about him and her vs everyone else including me was strong. She became quite introverted secretive and "cliquey" with my newborn and at the same time seemed to loose all desire to be physically or emotionally intimate with me. (Of course i gave her plenty of time and space right after she gave birth amd was understanding that it might be a while before things were back to normal).it was almost like she had a new partner-our child. she refused to fully move in to the apartment my grandparents had spent a huge amint of money on to give us a chance at raising our soon in a healthy environment. She would start random and seemingly pointless arguments often escalating into her screaming mean things at me innfront of our 3 month old son like she ****ed me and then raging followed by quickly slamming the door and taking our infant son backto her mother's house where she would stonewall me for a few days then send me. A message that emotionally blackmailed me into taking full blame for the rupture and apologizing profusely. In addition she did not trust me with our son but had no reason not too and as a result gatekept him in an extremely overcintrolling and damaging(for him and for me) manner. to this day (he is 3.5] I have never spent the night alone with him and have had him 1 on 1 dad and son time signifigantly less than I should have and not for lack of trying on my part. Despite her overcontrolling coercive sabatoging and alienating actions my son and I formed a loving and beautiful bond that up untill I saw him last a few months ago has amazingly endured through the storm. The tradegy goes on and on but to wrap up ultimitely she purposefully betrayed me by starting a relationship with my good friend and had him suggest to me that he should move in so he became my roommate all the while lying to my roommate that I ht her and simultaneously having him report back to her on my whereabouts at any Givin time and the things I said about her when venting after a prticulringly humiliating attempt to see my son or similar interaction and also give her info about what I was doing during the day. He became quite controlling himself and severed to further isolate me from people that weren't trying to ruin my life. They started to play mindgames with me that ibsee now attempts to gage how much I knew or suspected about what was going on. Mind you my son who was around 2 at this point was privy to the whole thing it was only kept a secret from me and due to this my son was coached to not tell me about it although what was actually said I will never know. Eventually a mutual friend of my roommate and I reached out and told me he had seen my roommate "playing dad" with my girl and son at dollar tree that day. I remebrr that day I sat at a local park in my car sullen and confused having been led on via sms from her only to randomly stop responding and never managing to get any time with my son. This sort of thing had become a regular occurance She then began withholding my son all togethar simply not answering at all or lying about him being asleep ridiculously early in the afternoon etc etc. My own parents failed to suppprt me and are still failing to show any sort of care other than somehwat monitarily. In fact my mom and her were two peas in a pod and my mom activly participated in the emotional abuse partly becauee of being manipulated by her partly because my mother is emotionally abusive. If I had better support or access to court resources at the time I'm confident things would have gone much differently but I was so isolated and lonely and in a deep state of despair at this point and the only thing I still was enduring for was the brief and inconsistent times i got with my boy whom I love more than life itself. I managed to get a hold of her via phone at this point and said i was going to go to court and pursue custody since she seemed unwilling to value my valid role as father. Her mom and her immediately became overly nice and invited me over where they sat me down and offered to make a visitation schedule and kindly suggested I dident go to court. It wasent much but it was signifgantly more respect than I had been shown any instance prior so I gobbled up the manipulations and left feeling invigorated and hopeful. The schedule was never adhered too and within a few days it was back to me not even be able to get a hold of her let alone see my son. The final day I saw him before things blew up I went over to her house in the evening. My son wanted to play hot wheels so we began to line them up on the floor but my ex was hovering over us with a hostile air. I asked if we could have some space or if at least she could sit down and play with us and she just kept standing there glaring at me. This made me uncomfortable and my son noticed this by sayig daddy play with me! Upon hearing this she in a angry tone said "play with your effin kid isent that what you wanted to do soooooo badly" right in front of him. I asked not to be spoken to in front of him like that and she went and got her mom and started whispering abut me to her mom in the hallway while they watched my son and I. I got up and said I'm leaving this is innappropriate and she said "wow that checks out you harrass me to see your son and then you don't even wanna see him. how pathetic and typical" " you just want to stress me out dont you" you don't actually give 2 you know what's about him" right in front of my son again. I speechlessly went to leave and my son comes running after me begging me to wait. I'm on the verge of tears and i picked him up cherishing how warm he was and how lovingly he was clinging to me. I tentatively requested I be allowed to go for a walk with him around the block and her mom this time dismissively says ya go and shoos us out the door. I get down the driveway and my ex comes sprinting out of the house tears streaming down her face and a look of rage and starts hitting me while I'm holding our son. Amazingly he start4d pushing her away saying mommy stop mommy stop. She says you have 5 minutes or I'm calling the cops and goes back in. I walk him around the block and say "mommy's feeling sad right now but it doesn't mean that either one of us loves you any more or any less than we used to and it's absolutely not your fault." I go back inside and without saying anything I walk up to her and give her a hug wich my son joins in too. All the sudden she is happy again and trying to speak to me in a casual tone but I basically just leave without saying much else. After this a week of no contact with my son occurs which at the time was the longest we had gone apart I felt like I had no choice but to confront her and assert my rights AGAIN although looking back I feel terribley silly for thinking she was going to repsect me at that point. Keep in mind i ALWAYS was extrmely respectful of her space and never would just show up at her moms house even though our relationahip by many accounts was more than informal ennough to make an occasionaI drop in to say hi. In addition she on Many occasions had told me that I could just come by if she didn't Answer her phone or simular situation arose. I texted her I was coming by to say goodnight to my son and phrased it as a statement not a question or request. I was already on the way when I sent the message and so I arrived (unintentionally)before her being able to fully respond to it to see my romate come running out of the front door (this is when I first had proof ab about all the stuff I mentioned earlier about their secret relationship) and go hide in the bushes, her poke her head out the door and then shut and lock it and turn all the lights in the house out and close the blinds. I walk up to the door and knock to no avail and so I confront her about what i know and saw via sms. She directly denies all my proof and accusations and then after calling me crazy and a stalker blocks me on all channels of communication. I go back to my car and collapse in tears and ultimtly fall asleep. I wake up to see her quickly shoving a duffel bag and my son into her moms car and her and my roommate get in and she pulls quickly away. Upon passing me on her way to the main road she becomes aware that im still there in my car and she burns rubber and begins driving extremely fast and erratically. In a moment of panic I knew she was probably trying to go into hiding with my son to prevent me from evrr seeing him again and I fearing for the safety of my son and our relationship I regrettably felt compelled to follow. We got on the freeway where she initiatied speeds of 100 plus miles perhour weaving in between semi's and this sort of thing continued d for an hour in the interim I had called 911 and also she had pulled up too a gas station casually got out and pumped gas upon her getting back in the car I witnessed my roommate making derogatory and taunting sexual gestures referring to my ex and also what i can only describe as cuddling with my son in the back seat and became enraged and made some threatening motions with a large wooden shovel handle while standing next to her car that were directed at my betraying friend and I feel terrible for doing in front of my child but in the moment I was so desperate and upset by the psychological torture i had been through it clouded my normally good judgment. In the end the police couldn't locate us due to my 911 call continually being transfered fron highway patrol dispatch back to whatever city we were in at the times dispatch. Also ultimetly no physical harm or even any other attempts happend or anything to anyone of the people involved and eventually I gave up and drove back to my hometown. She immediately filed for a domestic violence restraining order and used a recording she took of me looking aggressive and threatening outside her car as proof im abusive and violent even though i have never been either of those things. Especially not violent. I may not have been the most mature or experienced or attentive partner for some of our relationship but anything I did was truly a far cry from the serious emotional anguish I have ben subjected to here and not abusive. I did not lie, cheat,manipulate, gaslight, trick, triangulate, turn family againts or ever feel superior or entitled to harm or use her in any way. I loved her and she did all those to me and now is trying to steal the most precious thing I have left in the world from me so she can emotionally scar him with her idea of what good parenting is which in truth is emotional abuse.. She moved my old roommate in to her moms house full time the very next day and from what I hear they both are abusing meth and who knows what else currently plus this guy is not somone that is safe around my son to that degree. He is not a healthy safe adult for such a young boy and in addition he is vindictive and dislikes me mostly because my ex told him I hit her and abused her which are absolutely complete lies. I'm facing a situation now where I have to sit by and watch my son turned agsints me and withheld from me and abused and eveyone treats me like im the abuser. I have tried to contact every dv organization in my local area and as soon as they hear what happend it's almost like I can Feel the switch flip and in the moment it's evident that all the abuse that I had recounted surviving through doesn't matter because I'm some "unhinged abusive guy that chases people down the freeway" eveyone I have reached out to locally has invalidated me and berrated me for "what I did" and successfully pathologized what I consider to be a huge mistake that I feel very regretful for loosing my composure but also a rather understandable emotional reaction to severe mistreatment and fear for my son. I'm beggining to feel so isolated riding the emotional Rollercoaster of self doubt and powerlessness that this abuse at the hands of my ex but dare I say worse yet the abuse by way of victim blame and invalidation from these people and organizations that exist to help dv survivors has caused me. which because I reacted I'm not worthy of being included as a survivor. Cn you offer any advice or support or suggestions? I'm terrified for my sons wellbeing currently and haven't been able to see him in going on 2.5 months now clear and to be clear the domestic violence restraining order is still temporary. I have the final hearing in August.i

Hey all, looking for some feedback on our writing & newsletter in general. Here is a recent basis for an article that we published in shorter format:
Have you ever wondered why the rich get richer?
It's a common sentiment that the wealthy have an easier time getting richer. 'The rich get richer' is not just a saying, but a fundamental truth in finance. Today, we’ll take you behind the scenes to explain why the rich get richer, and specifically why your net worth takes off dramatically at the $100,000 mark.

The journey to $100,000: more than just numbers

Embarking on the path to amassing $100,000 might feel more like hiking up a financial Mount Everest. It's tough, sweat-inducing, and you might ask yourself why you didn't just just go on that 6 month backpacking trip around Europe with your friend Chaz and spring for that $27 salad at lunch instead of the bagged lunch you made with left-overs. But once you make that goal and reach that summit, the view (and the rewards) are spectacular. This initial stage requires an extreme amount of discipline, patience, and sacrifice. But once you achieve this milestone, two major financial principles kick into high gear: the scale of capital and the magic of compound interest.

The scale of capital: where your money starts working for you

Consider this: if you invest $1,000 and get a 10% return, congratulations, you've made enough for a fancy dinner ($100). But when you play the game with $100,000, that same 10% return suddenly buys a used car—or a very fancy dinner party. That's the scale of capital in action, where your money starts to do some serious heavy lifting.

The Eighth Wonder of the World: Compound Interest

Often referred to as the eighth wonder of the world, compound interest is the phenomenon where you earn interest not only on your initial investment but also on the accrued interest from previous periods. This principle causes your wealth to grow exponentially rather than linearly. For instance, once you hit that first $100,000, getting to the next $100,000 doesn't just get easier—it practically feels like your money is on a treadmill, gaining speed while you sleep. This is when you start making money in your pajamas, and honestly, who doesn’t love making money in their sleep?

The Power of Margin: Security and Opportunities

Reaching $100,000 provides what's known as 'financial margin.' This margin acts as a buffer against life’s uncertainties, giving you the freedom to choose opportunities that match your career ambitions without the immediate pressure of financial survival. This buffer is your financial fairy godmother, providing you the freedom to chase better job opportunities without the panic of imminent doom hanging over your head (it’s okay, we’ve all been there).

Tips on Accelerating Your Journey to $100,000

1. Start Early: They say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Even if you can't start with a large amount, the key is to start as early as possible and take a structured approach to make your decisions stress free and automatic. Trust in the process, and you’ll be rewarded.
2. Increase Your Investment Amount: Focus on increasing how much you can invest regularly. Small increments in your investment contributions can significantly reduce the time it takes to reach your next financial milestone.
3. Set Clear Financial Goals & Celebrate Milestones: Establish specific, measurable financial goals and track your progress. When you hit a milestone, even a small one, celebrate it! This could mean a modest splurge or a simple pause to acknowledge your progress. Rewarding yourself not only makes the journey enjoyable but also keeps you motivated to chase the next goal.

Conclusion: The Path to Financial Freedom Starts Here

Getting to $100,000 is like building the first lego block of your financial empire. It’s tough, but every subsequent block snaps into place more easily than the last. This is the point in your life where you begin to be able to sit back, admire what you’ve accomplished and utilize the discipline & poise you just put on display into living your own fulfilled life.
More of our content can be found here: https://compoundinterests.beehiiv.com/
Thanks all!

30F, have left my plush job to start my fashion D2C brand (resort wear bags & footwear). I would like to know how much you make owning a D2C brand, any category, how many years did it take you to reach there & how much money did you invest?

Welcome to Prepping 101! Whether you're new to prepping or looking to brush up on the basics, you're in the right place. In this guide, we'll cover the fundamental concepts of prepping in simple terms, so everyone can understand.
What is Prepping?
Prepping is all about being prepared for emergencies or tough situations. It's like having a backup plan for when things don't go as expected. Preppers think ahead and get ready for things like natural disasters, power outages, or even unexpected job loss.
Why is Prepping Important?
Prepping is important because it helps keep you and your loved ones safe when things get tough. Imagine if a big storm knocks out the power for days, or if you suddenly can't go to the store for food. Prepping helps you stay calm and have what you need to get through tough times.
Basic Prepping Principles

1. Water: Water is super important! Make sure you have enough clean water stored up for drinking and cooking. Aim for at least one gallon per person per day.
2. Food: Stock up on non-perishable food items like canned goods, rice, and pasta. Don't forget a manual can opener!
3. First Aid: A basic first aid kit is a must-have. Include bandages, antiseptic wipes, and pain relievers. It's also smart to know basic first aid skills.
4. Shelter: Your home is your first shelter, but have a backup plan in case you need to leave. A tent or sleeping bags can come in handy.
5. Communication: Keep in touch with loved ones during emergencies. Have a plan for how to reach each other if phones aren't working.
6. Safety: Stay safe! Have a flashlight, extra batteries, and a whistle in case you need to signal for help.

Getting Started with Prepping
Start small and build up your supplies over time. Set aside a little bit of money each week to buy extra supplies. Make a list of what you need and check things off as you go.
Remember, prepping is all about being prepared, not scared. By taking small steps now, you can feel more confident and ready for whatever comes your way.
Stay tuned for more prepping tips and guides here on Prepping 101!

Just a theory, possibly totally unrelated. But there are some new confirmable pieces and connections that I haven’t seen mentioned at all yet. So if I’m wrong at least there is a partially correct timeline here that can be edited to correctness. My last attempt to connect any dots I think. Please feel free to find holes and debunk it and suggest edits.
A 74 year old woman was murdered 1/18/23 and found on 1/21/23 bound, gaged, and SA’d in her ransacked apartment days later. This is on 83rd and The Mark Hotel is on 77th. Half a mile walk through the park away. EP mentioned a big bag that hotel staff was told to dispose of for Drake.
Here is what appears to be a bag in the video EP posted. There was a girl in the frame too.
A NY post article about this murder mentions:
“A young woman — who was entering the building carrying a large bag that appeared to contain clothing - choked back tears when asked if she was related to the victim. ‘It's very, very hard for me and my family. We've already talked to the police and the district attorney. I don't want to talk anymore,’ the woman said, without identifying herself.”
This woman was brutally SA’d. House was ransacked.
“The two suspects loaded up Hernandez’s belongings into a blue rolling Jansport backpack and a green rolling bag and were on CCTV divvying up cash, prosecutors said.”. The day this article is released, Drake is seen leaving The Mark hotel.. He is seen the next day at Lil Yatchy’s listening party in New Jersey.
These were posted August 2023 by EP on his Facebook page. They look like old lady clothes. I found other photos of the victim in this case and they look like what she would wear. They could just be things left behind at the hotel by others ofc.
The murder and robbery on 83rd street was almost certainly a boosting attempt, and by the sounds of the perpetrators counting cash on CCTV as reported by police, it sounds like it was a successful boost. This happens where I live but they typically steal from big chain stores. Ironically it keeps residential crime lower, it’s non-violent, and people would prefer new things anyway, or at least nice things. It’s a pretty common black market thing in cities to the point where I live, even regularly law abiding people will purchase things from boosters with the understanding it was stolen from a store. Iykyk. The victim being an upper east side woman she probably had some nice things, clothing and jewelry in particular as ladies do especially at her age. That’s what this looks like to me. And the jewelry EP posted didn’t look new or like it would have been for a younger girl.
This woman was brutally SA’d.Her home was ransacked. These were posted August 2023 by EP on his Facebook page.. They look like older lady clothes. I found other photos of the victim and they look like what she would wear. But ofc, this could just be things left behind at the hotel by others. Strange though, because these are the only clothes EP ever posted on his Facebook.
It is strange Drake only wanted one thing from a big bag and there was loads of jewelry left behind by him. They said the rest of the stuff in the big bag was trash but because the items were expensive and it’s Drake’s stuff, it was instead put into lost and found.
In my mind I would see it play out like this: a booster brings a bag of goods. Wealthy purchaser pays enough for one item he wants where the booster is like here, take this whole thing (get it off their own hands). And the purchaser only wanted one thing for so the rest, jewelry, clothing, etc. is disposed of.
OR
There was a specific item and something specific about this lady having it. The rest of what was in the bag was just to hide the one item. But I couldn’t find a single piece of info on her outside of crime articles and an obituary with family photos but no text to really know anything more about her. This theory would suit the little bag mentioned that was suppose to have been shipped somewhere.
Either way, Drake & crew take the one thing they need and the rest ends up with hotel staff for disposal, but it was a large bag full of expensive things. It appears EP was instructed to put it in lost and found.
There’s an incident report from Mark security on July 20th. Probably when EP had to protect Drake from protests that Theodore organized.. Or EP had to report an underage. Perhaps Drake was what led to the crackdown or a mandated report, and EP sees it as Drake’s fault he now had to deal with Theo and protect him from protestors, for which he nearly got arrested for doing his job. This was probably the next time he saw Drake since January. EP keeps mentioning 7/27/23. This is the day Theodore the underage drinking protest organizer filed a lawsuit naming EP as part of it.
Officer Viola had a CCRB citation for trying to contain the protest. Officer Viola and EP both got in trouble for protecting Drake that night. EP mentioned that this relationship probably saved him from getting arrested The two probably had probably had to help corroborate eachother’s stories from the protest incident.
EP is so fed up with Drake at this point. [EP cites many examples of why he takes offense to Drake and crew for their treatment of staff. Their hubris.
The man he almost got arrested for protecting and his team are treating EP and his coworkers like shit. He cites cultural reasons as well, echoing Kenny’s “not like us” sentiments.
At some point EP’s is instructed by his director to clean out the lost and found. By August he’s so fed up that he’s going to sell these things and not protect Drake by what might come out if anyone recognizes these items as belonging to that lady from 83rd street. He posts them on Facebook.
Fast forward to now, and Kendrick drops a diss track. At some point, either Akademiks snitched on EP for having the items. or him and Drake both did.
EP has been pushed and pushed. He has to take this treatment and give the friendly enjoy your evening.
“Meet the Grahams” comes out and EP said I understood the assignment. Kenny at some point gets the album art from EP with item’s that appear to have belonged to Drake.
Drake releases “The Heart Part 6” said that he fed the cover art content to Kenny. Why would he lie about that? Why not say wow Kenny you got people going through my trash? Because buying stolen goods is illegal, and if they’re connected to, or even worse you ordered or someone you know is involved in, a murder and horrific SA of an elderly woman… yikes bad optics any which way. But EP, on the other hand, obtained the items after they were disposed of, which is legal even if they were stolen and especially if they were unclaimed after x many days, from my understanding.
EP’s manager finds out about the album cover and questions him about how the items were obtained. But she knew that EP had these items already, as he was instructed by to not throw them in the trash originally and then months later instructed to throw them out. EP implies that policy/practice allows him to claim the items at this point. From what I’ve heard from people who worked at hotels throughout my life is that this is generally true for other hotels as well.
He explains to his boss how the items were obtained. She advises him to get a lawyer which is strange because staff knew these items were in the lost and found and that by law, if they aren’t claimed within a certain amount of time they’re fair game. But if they’re stolen from a murdered woman, yeah you might want to speak to a lawyer because possession of stolen property is illegal even if you didn’t know it was stolen and it also may implicate you in a murder that took place nearby. It doesn’t make sense to me that EP’s boss would advise a lawyer when she knew all of this, unless she knew ALL of that.
CA knew about this, perhaps due to proximity? He sees the bag or hears the conversation about it. He thinks he has to do the right thing and tell the police, or somehow gets assaulted so that he keeps quiet. EP alleges that police were called because someone got assaulted that night.
I’m not sure who this is but It appears to be the same man pictured about a minute later.
EP tweeted
“Those were good men… One was from Texas. He loved cowboy boots, guns, and horses. other was from the Bronx, and well on his way to becoming a "Blue H.E.N.R.Y."
There were two men charged with this murder. One was noted for saying something like “I didn’t do it. Check the scene check dna!” Police claim they have footage from other areas incriminating the men but it hasn’t been made publicly available. If I had anything left in me for this I would figure out if those things EP said apply to those men, or if they are connected to Ebony House, if they could have been been patsies.
Tweets about them: Here Here Here

Have been behind the plate and in the field for 10 playoff games so far... Minors, Majors, and Juniors and these are the major details I've noticed..
1. PROPER BASE RUNNING IS VITAL: Every game I've had so far (except a lone blowout) has featured base running miscues ranging from not stretching a single to a double to full blown TOOTBLANS. So many teams are giving away outs like it's Halloween.
Coaches need to start with drilling home the idea of running hard to first base and through the bag every single time. In a last night's game, consecutive batters were out on sure infield singles because (for reasons that defy all logic) they coasted the last few steps to the bag and ended up being out easily.
Then there's commitment to reaching the next base. Have watched so many kids run into outs because they can't commit to sliding or hesitate/panic when they realize there's going to be a play made on them. Again, in the same game last night, a kid tried taking 3B on a passed ball but inexplicably came to a full stop when he saw the ball was on the way. Kid could have walked to the bag but instead, he froze. When he finally snapped out of it, he tried retreating to 2B but his trailing teammate was already there and it turned into the world's lamest rundown.
Finally, there's situational awareness and it all comes down to knowing what to do when the ball is in the air. There've been so many double plays from kids getting doubled off and so many wasted opportunities of kids not running on contact with two outs.
2. THE BOTTOM OF YOUR LINEUP WILL MAKE OR BREAK YOUR TEAM: At least half the game have ended in walk-offs and in each of those, a kid at the bottom of the order has come up big- either with a fluke hit, working a walk to turn the lineup over, or sticking his arm up and making a clutch catch. In games where bottom of the lineup kids lived up to their reputations, it's all been a matter of them being able to be in the game and not just stand there and watch a fly ball sail over their head. These kids need to be kept engaged and know what to do when the ball was hit to them. One walk-off game ended on a single to right field. The RF made a nice play but threw the ball to second base (as if it were a routine play to the cut-off man) instead of chucking the ball home and the runner on 2B was able to coast in to end the game.
3. MITIGATE DAMAGE, DON'T LET THE WHEELS FALL OFF, AND NEVER LET THE KIDS SEE YOU'RE SCARED: Anything can happen in baseball and so many of these playoff games have been flipped upside down when one fluke play snowballs into another. Watching a string of coaches meltdown and send their teams into full-blown panic mode after a ground ball slips through a fielder's legs has gotten painful at times.
4. PITCHING: Sure, kids with wipeout stuff are great to have but the ability to get the ball over the plate is the most important thing. Here's how last night's walk-off ended: Walk, Hit Batter, Walk, Walk (tying run), Walk (winning run). I was on the bases last night and that final at-bat lasted probably 10 pitches. Batter kept fouling off anything close and when the fateful pitch came in, I could see it was a ball from out behind the short stop. Still, the kid's manager tried to argue it was a strike. Not a single out was recorded in that inning.
5. POSITIONING: I've noticed the best coaches are aggressive with moving players around to ensure compliance with participation but they always make sure to have a good catcher, shortstop, 1B and left and/or centerfielder.

If anyone is interested - I wrote a trip report from a recent trip a buddy and I did earlier this week. I highly recommend this trip if you’re in the area, it was well worth the 4 hour drive for us.
A co-worker and I from an outfitter down in Southeast PA decided to plan a trip to Ansonia, PA to Paddle Pine Creek. We planned the trip mostly out of the Keystone Canoeing book by Edward Gertler and information on the PA DCNR website. We originally planned to do a 2 night, 3 day trip. Pine Creek runs through a beautiful section of PA’s Grand Canyon, and is known for its beautiful views, good water, and amazing trout fishing. We met at our local outfitter at 6am to pick up our boats and get in the same car. By 6:30 we had our boats strapped down and our gear loaded and we hit the road. We stopped at wawa for sizzlis, energy drinks, nerd gummy clusters, and jolly ranchers which would serve as our road trip sustenance (we decided to eat super healthy this trip ;)). We had a 4 hour drive ahead of us which actually took a little bit longer since we stopped about halfway through for gas and a shit break. Aphex twin was the soundtrack of this road trip. At about 11am we rolled into the parking lot of Pine Creek Outfitters (PCO). Inside we were met with very helpful and knowledgeable staff, we also purchased a map there which ended up being super helpful as the maps we had from Keystone Canoeing weren't quite as detailed. The employees at PCO said the creek is pretty self explanatory but there's only one section we should be worried about which was Owassee rapid, they told us to just keep left and hug the bank. PCO directed us to a public canoe access no more than a quarter mile down the road where we would start our trip. We were on the water by noon and the views were not great at this point, as there was a large overcast and we were not quite in the depths of the . We had a quick flat paddle for about a mile or two until the water got going, and at about 12:30 we stopped to check the map. At this point we knew Owassee was coming up and we wanted to make sure we weren't surprised by it. The map noted that Owassee was preceded by a cabin with notable arches which we passed probably around 12:45. We pulled off towards the right side of the island at Owassee as PCO noted that the left side is known to have some killer strainers. We scouted Owassee for the next 15 minutes or so and crapped our pants. We were super nervous, this was the biggest water that either of us had run in a canoe before, let alone with all of our camping gear in our boat. The most daunting section of Owassee was a set of massive boulders to the right side of the channel which all of the water pushes you towards. Immediately following Owassee is a massive set of wave trains that I would (totally unprofessionally) eyeball to be 3-4 foot standing waves. Immediately preceding Owassee are a couple of flat boulders which are hard to see from the water so we were happy to scout and get a good look at it. I’d guess that at this water level Owassee was easily a Class 2+ or 3. We decided to take a line which stayed left pretty much the entire way until the big wave trains following Owassee where we could cut over to the right. At this point we headed back up to our boats to run it. It was a little sketchy, but not as bad as we thought it would be, a couple back paddles and keeping your bow pointed toward the island and you will be okay. The wave trains following Owassee were a little hectic, and we ended up taking on some water, especially me in my Heavy Old Town Discovery 168. We pulled off to the right after the Wave Trains to bail our boats and have a celebratory Miller Lite and Croissant (godly combo). We were in front of this awesome cabin called “Tiadaghton Lodge”, the cabin had a sweet foot bridge that crossed the river to allow for access to the cabin from the rail trail. At this point the sun had come out and we were officially in the heart of the PA Grand Canyon, the views were spectacular and it was just an overall phenomenal day outside. Once we were back on the water, we were super pleased with the flow. It was consistent Class 1’s with sprinkled Class 2’s pretty much for the rest of the day, it was a super enjoyable paddle and a pleasant challenge from the barely Class 1 water we were used to. We were now in the heart of the canyon and the views were just breathtaking, the vast canyon extending on either side of the creek really makes you feel small, and it was insane to think that this wildly different terrain was still in PA. The canyon was lined with awesome waterfalls that were really pleasing to see and hear along the way. Around probably 2 or 3 we stopped for a bathroom break and lunch. Up to this point we had only seen about 4 other people and none of them were on the river, 2 were riding horses and the rest were just hikers along the rail trail. By around 4pm we took a smaller channell to the right side of an island which turned out to be a good choice as we found an awesome little campsite here. We finished up clocking about 10 miles that day. There were two fire rings and a weird but cool table made by balancing a rock on top of a cut down tree stump, pretty cool. We spent the next hour or so setting up camp and then we relaxed in our hammocks until around 6 when we decided to make a fire and get dinner started. We struggled with starting a fire because of the rain that morning and the day before, but we got it started just enough to cook our food. I made Bombay Potatoes with Rice and some canned chicken and Owen (My coworker) made turkey sausages and canned tamales. We also made some warm fresh bread with some dough I had made when we got to camp. After eating we went into a food coma for a little until we decided to really make the fire big. We got it going probably for about an hour when we finished off all the miller lites we had brought. At this point we went to bed. I slept super well and was definitely warm enough despite only having a 50 degree bag, which is something I was worried about. I’m used to hammock camping, so having a tent was a super nice luxury to have. We woke up at about 7 or 8 am and took our morning nice and easy. We had planned to do an easy 15 miles this day and camp out at a campground in Cedar Run where we would try and figure out a ride back to our car. We took it easy, and ate instant oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and bacon spam along with instant coffee. It was an awesome breakfast although I could almost feel the heart attack from the spam. I definitely recommend Starbucks Via instant blonde roast for anyone looking for a good camping coffee option. I've been loving it so far, especially given that it's instant coffee. After breakfast we chilled in our hammocks by the water for about 15 minutes before we packed up camp and were back on the water by 10am. It was another beautiful day, atleast to start and the views were still just as stellar in the heart of the gorge. We had another nice stretch of river to start. We passed an awesome waterfall which I can’t remember the name of almost right after we left camp. We pulled over at about 11am to pee, make coffee and filter some more water. We pulled off next to this awesome waterfall that I used to wash some of my dishes from earlier and collect water that I could filter later on. We paddled for another 30 minutes or so until we saw a bald eagle chilling in a tree overhanging the creek. We stopped paddling and took out our phones to get some awesome videos of it. The eagle took off and flew around us and then up river with the crows in tail. It was an awesome experience. At this point the water chilled out for the most part, besides one more notable rapid called thread the needle, it was a super fun little bend and reminded me of a rapid back home. About an hour after this, the overcast came back and the wind really started to pick up. At this point the grand views from the gorge really seem to chill out as we started to enter civilization again. We passed the town of Blackwell and a nice little campground on our left side, there was a nice little canoe access there with some people hanging out and fishing. This would have been a good spot to end the trip if you just wanted to see the gorge. After Blackwell we passed Rattlesnake Rock where we saw some Mennonites hanging out and we asked them for some of the lore on the rock. They said that it was named by loggers back in the day when they found a ton of Rattlesnakes on it. The rest of the way was pretty mediocre water and we really ended up fighting the wind. We also passed a kayaker here who said that slate run (where we planned to get out) was only about an hour away. He ended up being wrong as it was about two hours but we paddled on, deciding to end the trip a day early and drive home that night. There were two more notable rapids before getting to slate run, one which must've been a Class 3 was notable due to the MASSIVE wave trains and a huge boulder hidden behind a standing wave, it must’ve been 4 foot standing waves we paddled through. The second was right before slate run, right next to a campground. Massive wave trains which swept you towards these massive undercut rocks which were super sketchy. These rapids were fairly easy to navigate as you can kind of avoid them altogether and were most likely larger than usual due to the rain the days before. We pulled into Slate Run at about 2pm. A local informed us that Slate Run is one of the best spots for trout fishing in the entire country, there was even a hotel basically just for trout fishermen across the creek from the We had no plan for a ride back to our care so we talked to some people at the Slate Run access asking for a ride. We also went up to the general store to ask some employees there. We got ice cream which was fantastic and then called PCO for a ride back. They weren't too happy with us as they usually require a reservation for their shuttle service and were getting ready to head home for the day, but they nonetheless gave us a ride. We made some coffee and instant ramen while waiting for the shuttle to arrive. Our shuttle driver was super nice and helpful and even took us the long way back to show us this cute little town of Wellsboro. She even offered us jobs in exchange for cheap NRS gear after seeing how easily we threw our boats around. She also showed us the way to get to an awesome lookout over the whole canyon. Overall I highly recommend PCO for any trips and if we ever come back will definitely be using them again, awesome people. After getting the car and boats loaded up, we headed up the canyon to checkout the canyon from the top. It was breathtaking, and a super cool and different perspective from what we saw from the water. After leaving the overlook we headed home. Stopping at Mcdonalds for some food along the way, and we rolled into the parking lot at about 11pm. Overall this was an awesome trip and highly recommended for anyone looking for awesome water, amazing views, or great camping. We will definitely be coming back.

I'm autistic and ADHD, and I have a big issue with getting stuff I don't need because of impulsivity. I went through a clothing phase and now have about 6 60l boxes of clothing, shoes and bags, I went through a jewellery phase where I now have 3 jewellery boxes filled, and I had a bad book collecting phase where I ended up with 246 books until summer last year (I am down to under 100 books now because I bought doubles or triples of the same book thinking I didn't have it). It's like Confession of a Shopaholic but less designer, more alternative clothing and decor, and without the debt.
When I moved last year, the movers made a joke about my stuff being more than one person's worth, which was very hurtful. My current place has a lift, but it took 7 trips to get everything in with a folding hand truck and another person. I'm planning on moving in the next month and a half into a place with just stairs, and I don't want the same comments again.
My problem is that I have such guilt about getting rid of things! I don't know how to let go of whatever memory or emotion I have attached to having gotten the item. The Marie Kondo method does not work because I'm finding joy in remembering I have something. Example: I have a set of 6 pastel coloured teacups I bought last year - they are so kitsch and adorable (though I never use them) but I can't find the nerve to donate them because I love seeing the colour splash in my shelf. I also have stuff from my grandma that I can't part with because, well, they're a memory of her.
I want to try and reduce my stuff by at least 20% in the next month - I'm currently looking as a giant TK Maxx red bag filled to the brim with shoes, clothing, tech accessories, and bags, and ready to be donated tonight to my building's donation station. It's slow, but I want to make sure I do it right and not end up back at square one.
Can anyone help me out with some tips? How did you manage to let go of things and stop the worrying that you'll end up needing something? Were there any methods that you found really helped?
Thank you in advance!

The pain was the worst thing`Dominick Mason had ever known…and he knew what it felt like to die. It felt like his brain was in a blender, being chopped to liquid for a Jeffery Dahmer smoothie and though it seemed melodramatic, he imagined he could feel himself losing brain cells by the minute. The sun, Merrick told him, would not burn him, but it would decay him faster, so sleep or rest during the day. With the sick, throbbing agony in the center of his brain, however, that was impossible. He spent most of the day curled up on his side, hugging his knees, and moaning. He had flashbacks to dying in his apartment, and that made things even worse. The room became too small, too close, the air too stale. His heart, filled with the blood of last night’s meal, pounded in his chest, and he went from slightly chilly to hot and feverish as blood was forced through his circulatory system. It mixed with the embalming fluid and left him feeling full and constipated. He didn’t want to get up, but he also didn’t want to go on lying there. He was the definition of miserable.
Before long, the pain became too great and he got up to pace, pressing his hands to the sides of his head and gritting his teeth. Merrick, who slept very little if at all, sat in his chair and watched, trying his best to talk him through it. “It’ll be over soon,” Merrick said. “The pain receptors in your brain are the first to go. When they burn out, you won’t feel anything.”
“When?” Dom asked, his voice raising with the tide of pain.
“A couple days?”
“A couple days???”
“The pain will lessen gradually,” Merrick said, “this is the worst of it.”
Dom believed that this was, indeed, the worst of it, but he doubted it would lessen gradually. For the rest of the day, the pain got worse and worse until every light blinded him, every sound turned his stomach, and the smell of anything made his gorge rise. The cloying smell of the embalming fluid, the light but unmistakable odor of dead flesh, and the scent of stale blood sitting in decomposing stomachs made him want to vomit, but he was afraid to. He didn’t think he could handle the sight of blood rushing from his mouth and splattering the floor. He still possessed enough of his facilities, he believed, to go insane.
Pain has a way of darkening one’s mood, and by the time the sun began to set, Dom was in the most sour mood possible. Even Merrick’s calm, fatherly voice was beginning to get on his nerves. When he took the oath to him the day before (or was it the day before that?), he turned his faith and trust over to Merrick entirely. He was finally accepted, included, finally had the love and fellowship that, in the pit of his soul, he had always wanted. Merrick understood him, Merrick was kind to him.
But deep down, Dom realized that he didn’t fully trust him. He said that his brain didn’t rot because he was “lucky.” That sounded like some bullshit to Dom. Why wasn’t Joe a blithering idiot too? Was he lucky as well? Did lightning strike in the same place twice? In life, people had done nothing but hurt and lie to Dom. Why would death be any different? He thought back to the strange liquid that always seemed to leak from Merrick’s nose, and Joe’s. He thought it was embalming fluid, but it never leaked from his own nose, or from anyone else’s. He tried to tell himself that it was far too soon to judge, but once he began to doubt something, his mind raced away. He felt a twinge of guilt, as Merrick had done absolutely nothing to deserve his doubt, but goddamn it, his head was on fire and he wanted it to stop. Anything to make it stop.
Just after sundown, the music began as Club Vlad opened for the night. It throbbed in the center of Dom’s head and made him want to claw his eyes out. When it became too much for him, he slipped away and stumbled into the sultry summer night. He came out in the alley running behind the club, clutching his head and breathing through bared teeth. He staggered, bumped into a metal trash can, and roared at the top of his lungs, as if he could purge himself of the pain by screaming.. His voice echoed and came back to him, making the pain worse.
Merrick was lying. He knew it. People always lied to him. His brain was rotting and PEOPLE WERE LYING! Flashing with anger, he slammed his fist into the brick wall of a Chinese restaurant. He barely felt anything so he did it again and again until his hand was lumpy and shaking. He sat heavily on the ground and pressed his hands to his head. It felt like maggots were burrowing into his brain, and he was suddenly terrified that they really were. He needed to stop this awful pain, but how?
An idea came to him.
The funeral home.
Maybe there was something there.
He was on his feet and lumbering there before the thought had even finished reverberating through his mind. It was a long shot, but he was desperate. On the way there, he stuck to the shadows, staying out of the light cast by the streetlamps and avoiding people. When he passed them, he kept his head down. When he reached the funeral home, he went to the back door where he and Jessie had gone the other day. He tried it, and it opened.
Inside, he bounced off the walls like a pinball, knocking over an end table and tearing at the flesh of his head, pulling it away in long, gray strips. He panted like a wild animal, his body a raging tempest of emotions. It was reaching a crescendo, he thought, his brain was about to go supernova. The world dimmed, things got really echoy. The young man he’d picked the embalming fluid up from was there, looking scared.
Flashing, Dom grabbed him by his shirt and slammed him against the wall, knocking a painting of a flowery field to the carpet. Everything seemed to go in slow mo. “How does Merrick keep his brain from rotting?” Dom heard himself demanding from far away. “How does he keep the pain away?”
The man trembled. “I-I-”
Dom slammed him again. “Tell me or I’ll make you like me.”
“No!” the man wailed. He shook his head from side to side, his eyes wet with fear.
“How?”
“He-He uses a solution,” the man stammered. “Some kind of special thing. It preserves his brain. That’s all I know.”
An idea occurred to Dom.
Holding the man by the back of his neck, Dom dragged him into the embalming room and pushed him against the table. His head felt like it was swelling. Hot, screaming, getting ready to explode. He looked around, found the embalming machine, and grabbed the hose. There was a sharp tip on it so that you could jam it into a body. He held it in his hand, hesitating for just a moment before pressing it to his temple. The man watched in horror as Dom slowly shoved the tip into his head. It tore his flesh, broke through his skull, and sank into his brain. He felt no pain, only pressure, but cried out anyway. His eyes rolled up into his head and a shudder went through his body.
“Turn it on!” he yelled.
“That’s not what he -”
“TURN IT ON!”
Starting, the man turned the machine on. Cold embalming fluid squirted directly into Dom’s brain. Almost at once, the pain began to ebb away, replaced only by a fuzzy sense of numbness. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, looking for all the world like an addict taking a hit of his favorite substance after a long and trying day. Fluid leaked from his nose, ears, and eyes and dripped down the back of his throat.
The man waited for a long time, then turned the machine off.
The pain was gone.
At least for now.
“Tell me again,” Dom said.
The man did. Merrick used a special preserving agent to keep his brain intact. Joe, the man suspected, got it as well. So Merrick had lied to him.
Dom felt betrayed.
And angry.
Leaving the man (Dom realized that he didn’t even know his name), he walked back to Club Vlad, his hands fisted in his pockets. All his life, he had been hurt, lied to, and ignored. All his life, people had done wrong to him. And all those years, he just took it.
He resolved not to be so accepting in death.
At last, he was going to stop being a sniveling little bitch and stand up for himself.
When he reached Club Vlad, he slammed through the back door and took the stairs two at a time. At the top, he called out Merrick’s name. The old man was sitting in his chair, being attended to by Jessie and Matt. He looked startled when Dom came in. “You lied to me,” Dom said, stalking over to his benefactor.
“What are you talking about?” Merrick asked, doing his best to sound innocent.
“You lied to me!” Dom screamed. He bent over and got so close to Merrick’s face that he could have kissed him. “You told me there was no way to save my brain, but that’s not true. You’re pumping your head full of shit and letting the rest of us rot.”
A dark shadow flickered across Merrick’s face. “Watch your tone when you talk to me,” he said. His voice was low, menacing.
“Fuck you,” Dom said. “I should k -”
Suddenly, Dom was being grabbed from behind and yanked back, an arm around his neck. He cried out in alarm as Joe swung him around and slammed him face first into the wall. He heard his nose crunch, felt his teeth shatter. Next, Joe wrestled him to the glitter-sprinkled floor and wedged his knee between his shoulder blades.
Merrick watched with a sneer of disgust, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. He wheeled himself over, Jessie holding his IV stand steady and following behind. “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Merrick said, “you’re lucky to be a part of this family.”
Cold fear filled the pit of Dom’s stomach, yet he wouldn’t back down, couldn’t back down. He had lived his entire life like a mouse in a burrow, he wasn’t about to live his entire death the same way.
“Fuck your family,” he said defiantly. “And fuck you.”
Merrick’s face darkened and he sat back in his chair. He looked at Jessie and nodded. She went away and came back a moment later holding something in her hand. Dom’s eyes widened when he saw what it was.
A wooden stake, one end honed to a razor point.
Why they had one of those lying around, Dom didn’t know; it’d be like Superman keeping a piece of kryptonite on the mantle over the fireplace. Merrick directed Max and Matt to hold Dom’s arms down/ Joe pivoted, kneeling on his head now so that Dom’s back was exposed. Dom’s heart slammed with terror and tremors raced through his body.
“Is this what you want, Dominick?” Merrick asked. “To die? To truly die?”
Dom swallowed hard. No, it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to live, to love, to have a family one day. He wanted a happy, normal life, the life TV and social media had been promising him since he was a little boy.
But all of that went out the window the night he died in his little apartment. There was no life anymore, just a grotesque parody of life. What was there for him other than death? Clinging desperately onto life for decades like Merrick? Stuffing himself full of embalming fluid and moth balls? Grinding for one more minute just so he could sit hooked up to a machine?
Dom spoke.
“What?” Merrick asked, not having heard.
Dom licked his lips. “Just fucking do it.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Expectation hung in the air. Finally, breaking the tension, Merrick nodded to Jessie. Kneeling down, she brought the stake up, and Dom closed his eyes.
This was it.
He braced himself for death.
Jessie brought the stake down just as a shot rang out, deafening in the small space. Her head whipped back, embalming fluid, skull fragments, and gray, sickly pieces of brain showering from the back of her head. She flopped back and landed on the floor with a sickening thud.
A woman cop, her black uniform in stark contrast to the burning white light, stood in the doorway to the hall, her gun drawn. Everyone did, indeed, freeze, more out of surprise than respect for authority. They all looked at her, their dead mouths agape, resembling children who’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Everyone on the ground!” she barked.
No one knew what to do. They hadn’t expected to be raided by the police so had not prepared. She jerked her gun and everyone instinctively flinched. “On the ground!” she repeated. To Max: “You too, bone boy.”
The first one to react was Joe. He sprang at her like a big, undead frog. She brought the gun around and fired, but he was already crashing into her. The shot went wild and struck the IV bag next to Merrick; he ducked and let out a sound of fear. The others rushed her, and Dom got quickly to his feet. Jessie lay on the floor, her mouth open in a silent scream and her bony fingers frantically examining the ragged hole in the center of her forehead. For a moment, he was frozen; everything was happening too fast. Then, when Merrick saw him and cried, “Stop him!, he came alive. Jessie tried to grab at his leg, but he kicked her hand away and stomped on it like it was a giant spider. On the other side of the room, Matt, Joe, and Max had forced the cop to the ground. Perhaps excited by all the action, perhaps just hungry, they began to tear her apart. She howled in pain, and the last thing Dom saw before he fled was her open, blood-filled mouth. Her eyes were filled with pain…with terror.
After that, Dom ran.
***
When the interloper was dead, Merrick directed Joe and Matt to dispose of the body. “Get rid of it,” he said wearily and rubbed his temples, “make sure it isn’t found.”
They rolled her into a carpet from the office, and the way her feet stuck out may have been comical under other circumstances.
Goddamn it, this was bad. Merrick’s entire philosophy rested on avoiding detection. He had done well in that regard. Whereas other vampires had attacked their villages and gotten themselves dug from the ground and staked, he had made it four decades. He never shat where he ate, and there is no bigger turd than killing a cop. They might dawdle on all the boys who’d gone missing - taken because their blood was stronger and more robust than the blood of girls - but they would not take a cop dying lightly at all.
Merrick owned various businesses around the country. He and the others would simply move on. Tomorrow night, they would disappear into the night. They had done it before and they would likely do it again. Once things were settled at their new base of operations, he would have Joe killed for all the trouble he’d caused.
And Dom?
Let him go.
The little rat wouldn’t last a month on his own.
“Jessie?”
Jessie sat against the wall, gazing into space.
“Jessi…start packing. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
She didn’t move, didn’t seem to hear. The shot had all but lobotomized her.
Damn it.
Joe backed the van up to the back door of Club Vlad, and then helped Matt carry the carpet-rolled body down the stairs. They loaded it in and closed the back doors. Together, they drove around looking for a place to dump it. Merrick wanted it to go unfound, but Joe doubted there was anywhere isolated enough in the city. On a whim, he drove to Washington Park, a vast expanse of green trees and shadows. There was a large pond there. It seemed the best option. They were leaving tomorrow anyway, so did it really matter?
Joe backed the van to a railing overlooking the dark water and put it in park. He and Matt got out, fetched the body, and carried it to the railing. They lifted and heaved it over. It splashed. Thus, they rid themselves of Vanessa Rodregiez.
***
Bruce sat anxiously up in his easy chair and waited for his cell to ring.
Parked in front of the TV by warm lamplight, a beer wedged between his legs, he’d been watching the 11’o’clock news when the phone rang. He picked it up and it was Vanessa. “Hey,” she said, “I think I found our body?”
“Which one?” Bruce asked and took a drink. “We have a lot of those these days.”
“Dominick Mason.”
Bruce sat forward in his chair. “Dead Dom? Where?”
“He just came out of a funeral home, ironically enough.”
“That sounds about right,” Bruce said. “Where are you now?”
“I’m following him east on Central.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Bruce asked.
“I think so, but I’m not sure. I’ll call you back when I’m done.”
Bruce sat the phone aside and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
At some point, he fell asleep sitting up, his head lulled to one side and his mouth open. He snorted himself awake, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He checked his phone and was perturbed to see that it was past 2am.
Vanessa hadn’t called.
He dialed her number and let the phone ring until it went to voicemail. Sighing, he ended the call, then waited a few minutes and called again.
Still no answer.
It was possible she had forgotten. Maybe the guy turned out to not be Dead Dom after all. She followed some random guy around, realized it, and that was that. Hell, she was probably too embarrassed to call and tell him about it.
Something told him that wasn’t right, however.
There was something else going on here.
Something…darker.
Just before 3am, his phone rang. He snatched it off the end table next to the chair and answered it. It was Burt, the night sargent. “Rodriguez is missing,” he said simply.
Bruce’s heart sank. “Missing?”
“Yeah, she hasn’t checked in for hours and she isn’t answering calls.”
“I’m on my way,”
Bruce tore through the house, pulling on his uniform, socks, and shoes in less time than it took a Daytona 500 pit crew to service a car. In ten minutes he was speeding down 787, the Albany skyline rising in the distance. As he hurried to the station, he thought back to his last conversation with Vanessa. She’d found Dom the Dead Man, the “corpse” who’d scared Ed Harris out of a 20 year career. Despite all their talk about vampires and the living dead, Bruce didn’t believe it, not really. Even so, he was sure that Dominick Mason had done something to Vanessa.
He checked in at the station before doing anything else. They had triangulated Vanessa’s last known location via cell towers. Cops were already out searching the streets for her. Bruce went out as well, intending to start from her last known position and work his way east on Central. The closest funeral home was Tebbutt and Frederick on Central. There was also Lasak & Gigliotti on North Allen Street. Bruce didn’t know which one Vanessa had seen Dom come out of, so he checked both.
Both were deserted at this hour.
Undeterred, Bruce drove up and down Central Ave. At one point, he noticed a shape in an alleyway that looked human. He hit the brakes, jumped out, and pointed his gun at it. “Freeze!”
An old wino stepped out of the darkness. “Alright, you got me,” he said, hands up. “I started COVID. It was an accident, I swear.”
Bruce sighed and put his gun away.
For two more hours, Bruce searched the streets of Albany for Vanessa. At 4am, he spotted a squad car abandoned in the rear parking lot of an abandoned gas station on lower Lark Street. He called it in and the desk sergeant confirmed that it was the one Vanessa had signed out that night.
Still there was no sign of Vanessa herself.
Just after dawn, as the city came alive and CDTA buses began lumbering up and down the streets, Bruce got a call on his cell. “A jogger found a body in Washington Park.”
Bruce was in his personal car. He had no bubble light, no siren. Even so, he sped through the streets like he did, blowing through red lights and stop signs with little care to himself or anyone else. When he got to Washington Park, he found an army cops by the pond, the scene cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. He slammed on the brakes, threw open the door, and jumped out without even turning off the engine.
The body was rolled up in a carpet and lying on the bank. Two beat cops unrolled it at Bruce’s direction. “We should wait for -” one of them started, but Bruce cut him off.
“Do it.”
They compiled, and at the carpet’s center, like a rotten cream filling, was the body of Vanessa Rodregiuez. Her head was tilted to one side, her eyes wide and staring. Her throat had been mangled and ripped away, her head nearly severed. Even in the black and red mess, Bruce could make out the teeth marks and puncture wounds. They may have looked like something else to anyone else who saw them, but he knew, in that moment, what they were dealing with.
A sharp pang of horror sliced through him, and his knees went weak.
“Jesus Christ,” one of the beat cops drew.
Bruce fell to, rather than knelt on, one knee. He bent over the body, a mixture of horror and grief welling his throat. He wanted to reach out, to comfort her in death, but he stayed his hand. Instead, he visually examined the body. She had bruises on her face, defensive wounds on her hands, and her gun was gone. Whoever had attacked her, she put up a fight.
Something glinted on her pants.
“What’s that?” one of the cops asked.
“I dunno,” the other replied, “but it’s all over the carpet.”
Indeed, there were glinty little specks all over it, winking like mocking eyes. Nice work, eh? We really fucked her up, didn’t we? Wink wink.
“It looks like…”
The other cop cut him off. “Glitter.”
Bruce flashed back to his visit to Club Vlad the other day.
There had been glitter everywhere.
Bruce stood up.
He had work to do.
***
Instead of going back to the station to start his shift, Bruce went to Lowes. There, he bought a mallet, a gas can, and a dozen sticks of wood. An employee in a blue vest used a machine to sharpen them to a wicked point and he took his purchases to the car. Next, he drove over to the Mobil station and filled the gas can. He was so hellbent on revenge that he sprang for premium, the good stuff. No expense shall be spared.
His final stop was at a Catholic church. He filled a canteen with holy water from the marble font by the door, then swiped a crucifix from the wall. He stopped by the station, went inside, and grabbed a black duffle bag with POLICE written across the front in yellow. He opened the gun cabinet in his office, took out a shotgun, and loaded it with shells. He grabbed a handful from the box and stuffed them into his pocket.
He was just finishing up when Bertha came in. “There you are,” she spat, “I’ve waited long enough for you to do something. I demand -”
Bruce shoved the duffle bag into her arms. “Make yourself useful.”
“What?” she demanded.
“We’re going to get your granddaughter,” Bruice lied. Kind of.
Bertha’s demeanor changed. “Good. It’s about time. I was starting to think you were a complete incompetent.”
Bruce didn’t answer. Outside, he plucked the bag out of Bertha’s hands and tossed it into the backseat. He slipped behind the wheel and Bertha sat in the passenger seat. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Club Vlad,” Bruce said and started the engine.
“I want all of them arrested.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bruce said.
She barked orders the entire way there. Bruce was so deep in his thoughts that he barely heard her. The image of Vanessa’s ruined throat and terror-twisted face haunted him, and he felt a lump forming in his throat. Hot tears filled his eyes but he blinked them back and forced himself to calm down.
I’ll cry when I’m done killing, he thought.
A few minutes later, he pulled to the curb in front of Club Vlad. It was a hot and sunny day and the place seemed even more ominous because of it. The windows were black, the front cast in perpetual shadows by the old marquee from when it used to be a theater. The place was surely closed, but Bruce could hear music still playing from inside, some techno dance bullshit. “Alright,” he said, “let’s go.”
Getting out, he slung the dufflebag over his shoulder and carried the shotgun, the canteen full of holy water clasped to his belt. Bertha carried the gas can, looking confused. “Why do we need this?” she asked.
“We’re burning the place down.”
Bertha blinked in surprise…then an evil grin carved across her face. “That’ll show the bastards.”
Unlike last time, the door was locked. Bruce used the butt of the shotgun to break the glass, then reached inside and unlocked the door, being careful not to cut himself. This was the point of no return. What he had in mind would probably get him kicked off the force or even thrown in jail - and we all know how tough jail can be for a former barnaclehead. The memory of Vanessa’s contorted face pushed him on, however.
He’d suffer any consequences he needed to just so long as he got the sons of bitches who did this to her.
Inside, the club was cool and cave-like. Strobe lights flashed, on and off, black and white, dazzling Bruce’s eyes. The bartender was at his station, cleaning up from the night before. When he saw Bruce and Bertha come in, he started. Bruce pointed the shotgun at him. “Don’t fucking move,” he commanded.
The bartender hesitated, then reached for something under the bar.
The shotgun kicked in Bruce’s hands, and the bartender flew back, turning as he crashed into the barback. Bottles, glasses, and mugs crashed to the floor along with the bartender. Bruce racked the gun, and the shell flew out. He moved low and fast now, expecting to be swarmed by vampires, living thugs who worked for vampires, or vampire thugs who worked for themselves.
Though the shot had been like thunder, no one came.
Bruce had no idea where to go, but he imagined that vampires were naturally gravitate to the lowest part of the building. Was there a basement? Shit, he should have looked up the building plans at city hall. Damn, this is what happens when you go off half-cocked. He searched around a bit, opening doors and sweeping the rooms beyond with the shotgun. He found no basement, only stairs leading up. “Stay close,” he said to Bertha.
In the lead, Bruce crept up the stairs, the flashlight on the shotgun providing a cone of clean, white light. At the top of the stairs, he went right, and came to an office and a store room. Backtracking, and bumping into a bungling Bertha, he went into the next room. It was large and open with a vaulted ceiling, almost like a ballroom. Here the same strobe lights throbbed on and off, making him dizzy. Was this to dazzle prospective vampire hunters?
Either way, this was the place. Bodies lay strewn across the floor, some curled up on their sides and others in the classic vampire pose: Flat on their backs with their hands laced over their chests. In the center, like the sun to the planets, Merrick Garvis lay slumped back in his wheelchair, his neck exposed for any potential assassin to come and cut. Not that it would kill him. At least Bruce didn’t think it would.
“They’re all dead,” Bertha whispered. She looked around and gasped. “There’s Jessie.”
Jessie lay on her back, her hands folded on her chest. She had a ragged bullet hole in the center of her forehead. “Oh, God,” Bertha wavered, “someone shot her.”
He hoped it was Vanessa. And he hoped it fucking hurt.
Looking around, Bruce couldn’t find Dominick Mason. Was he the one who killed Vanessa? Was it a group effort? He wanted the little son of a bitch bad, but it looked like he’d have to go on without him. They didn’t have much time.
Unshouldering the duffle bag, he knelt down and rummaged around. “Start splashing that gas on the bodies,” he said.
“But -”
“Just do it,” he snapped.
There must have been a harder edge in his voice than normal, because Bertha jumped and did as she was told. She upended the can and began to splash gasoline onto the sleeping forms, the smell of it acrid and strong.
Taking out a stake and the mallet, Bruce went over to Merrick and knelt down. He gripped the stake in one hand and placed it firmly against Merrick’s chest. He brought the mallet up and hesitated, the gravity of what he was doing finally reaching him. What if he was wrong? What if -
Merrick’s head whipped up and their eyes locked.
Too late.
Bruce brought the mallet down as hard as he could. The stake drove deep into Merrick’s heart, and the vampire let out a howling screech that rang through the chamber like the cry of a banshee. His bony fingers clawed at the stake and his head whipped from side to side, his back arching and his robe coming open. In the quick strobe pattern, Bruce was shocked to see that his body was little more than a wood frame, chicken wire, and cotton balls. His blacked heart was hidden behind a screen of mesh that the stake had easily torn through. It throbbed, seemingly in time with the strobe lights, and Merrick let out another wail.
Bertha screamed, and Bruce jumped to his feet.
The vampires, drawn by their master’s cries of distress, were rising to their feet. Two, four, six of them, pale and ethereal like ghosts in a gothic mansion. They came toward Merrick, and Bruice fell back a step. The old man had gone still and lay slumped to one side, his eyes open and his mouth slack, embalming fluid leaking from the corner of his lips. Jessie bent over him and touched his face. Though she moved like a zombie, with no human emotion, Bruce was crazily sure that it was a touch of tenderness and love. Merrick didn’t stir.
He was dead.
Jessie looked at him. Yellow liquid leaked from her eyes like tears. Instead of attacking him, she turned on her grandmother and slammed her against the wall. Bertha screamed and dropped the can. It landed on its side, its contents sloshing out onto the floor. A man that resembled the pictures Bruce had seen of Joe Rossi only deader rushed him, slamming into him and knocking the shotgun aside. It hit the floor and skidded away. Joe grabbed Bruce around the throat and squeezed. Still the lights flashed, off and on, off and on. The walls thrummed with the mechanized beat of dance music, pierced only by Bertha’s screams as Jessie ripped out her throat.
Joe leaned in, his fangs wicked and glowing in the light. Bruce clawed at the monster’s face, tearing away strips of dead flesh. Joe turned his head to the side, and Bruce kneed him in the groin. Even dead, getting kicked in the balls hurt like hell, apparently. Joe’s grip loosened and Bruce was able to shove him off. Bruce unclasped the canteen and frantically screwed the cap off as Joe recovered. Joe sprang at him again, and Bruce splashed him in the face.
A sound like sizzling meat filled the air, and Joe screamed at the top of his lungs. He pressed his hands to his face and danced around the room, his skin liquifying and oozing between his fingers. The others were coming now, led by a terrible skeletal thing. Bruce scooped the shotgun off the floor, brought it around, and fired. The blast hit the thing dead center, tearing it literally in half. The top half flew back, an all too human look of surprise on its face, and the bottom half fell over with a wet thud. Another vampire came at, and Bruce slammed it across the face with the butt of the gun. He heard its jaw crack, saw teeth flying.
Bertha lay dead on the floor, Jessie bent over her. The smell of Bertha’s blood attracted the others, who seemed to forget about Bruce, Merrick, and everything else. Joe was on his knees, wailing in pain, and the skeletal thing was pulling itself toward Bertha. A feeding frenzy broke out as vampires fought to get a piece of her the way piglets might fight over their mother’s teat. Bruce watched in a mixture of horror and fascination, but recovered himself. He grabbed the gas can from the floor and dumped the rest of its contents on Merrick’s body, the feeding vampires’ backs, and the floor, using the last of it to make a little trail to the door. He tossed the can aside, bent down, and stuck a match.
A huge, fiery whump filled the room, and fire streaked along the trail. The vampires all went up in a huge ball of flames, and fire shot up Merrick’s body, catching his robe, his hair, and the wooden frame that had kept him semi upright for God knows how long. Letting out inhuman screams, the vampires broke from Bertha’s corpse. One stumbled around, bounced off the wall, and fell; another toddled toward Bruce before falling to its knees. The half skeleton kept drinking from Bertha’s neck even as it burned.
The heat was enormous, baking. Bruce backed away, and the last thing he saw before smoke obscured his vision was Merrick Garvis.
He was literally melting.
***
Dominick Mason tried to go home, but he no longer had a home. All of his worldly possessions sat on the sidewalk in front of his building, discarded coldly as easily. His key didn’t work in his door and there was a FOR RENT sign on it. Why would it be any other way? He was dead. Sooner or later, everyone forgets you when you’re dead, and all the things you held so dear wind up in the trash. It was a hard pill to swallow, but most people aren’t around to see it after they die.
He was.
From his building, he walked east toward Washington Park. In the distance, thick, black smoke billowed into the air, and sirens rose. He barely noticed and wouldn’t have cared even if he did. No more rubbernecking for him. That was for the living.
The pain that had plagued him so the previous day came back, only less this time. Maybe he was imagining it, but it was getting harder to think. Not that he cared, really. What was there to think about anyway? How he had no one to mourn or miss him? How he died and not one single person, except for maybe his mother, cared, or even noticed? How he had done nothing with his life? Even to the women he’d slept with, what was he? Just another dating app hookup. They probably didn’t even remember his name.
Merrick had been right about one thing. Death was easy. It was life that was hard…life that hurt.
With that in mind, Dominick made his way to Washington Park. It was a vast and deep place with many small caves and thickets. Kids played on the playground, their cries of laughter scenting the still air. It had grown cloudy and began to rain. Still, smoke poured into the sky in the direction of Club Vlad. Dom didn’t wish ill on Merrick and the others, didn’t hope it was them burning. He didn’t care anymore. Not about them, not about anyone. For better or worse (and he would argue it was worse), his life was over. His time came days ago, he just missed the boat.
Picking out an isolated little area, Dom sat against a tree with his legs splayed out in front of him. He titled his head back and closed his eyes. Yes, thinking was hard now. His mind felt sluggish, cold. He was thirsty…so, so thirsty, but he ignored it.
Slowly, the bugs found him. Flies buzzed around him and laid their eggs in his skin. Beetles scuttled over him, followed by worms.
Next, it was the birds. They ate out his eyes and nibbled at his blue, bloated skin.
The animals came last.
Their appetites were bigger.
And they left little remaining of poor, outcast Dominick Mason.
***
That night, Bruce sat alone in his little trailer, a bottle of whiskey wedged between his legs and unshed tears in his eyes. He stared at his reflection in the darkened TV set and took long swallows from the bottle. He planned to drink until he forgot or passed out, whichever came first. He tried to not think about Vanessa, but in his addled state, he couldn’t control himself, and began to cry. When that storm passed, like the others before it, he chugged from the bottle.
As distant church bells clanged the hour - midnight - a feeble knock came at the door. Bruce took another drink and it came again. Getting up, he stumbled, nearly fell, and gripped the bottle tightly. He didn’t want to lose one precious drop.
Again, the knock.
“I’m coming,” Bruce slurred. He staggered to the door and fought with the lock. He was dizzy and seeing double.
When he got it, he opened the door.
The bottle dropped from his hand and clanked onto the floor.
Vanessa, clad in a puke green hospital gown, stood on the step, her hands pressed to her chest and a look of anguish on her milk white face. Her head tilted to one side, the wounds on her neck cleaned but open, gaping. Her dark eyes shone with tears. “I’m dead,” she said.
Breaking down in tears, she collapsed against him and they sank to the floor. She was cold and smelled. Bruce wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest anyway. “Shhh, it’s alright,” he said drunkenly. “Hey, it’s alright.
“I’m dead,” she repeated, and her voice broke. “I don’t want to die.”
Bruce held her close, trying to warm her icy skin. He didn’t know what to say, so he cried with her.
“You’re safe now,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”
“I want blood,” she said and sobbed harder, “I want to hurt people.”
“Shhh,” Bruce said again. “It’s okay.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a utility knife. He flicked the blade across his wrist and searing pain shot up his arm. “Here,” he said and offered her his blood, “drink this.”
He did this without care and without thought. She needed him, and one barnaclehead always backs up another.
Vanessa hesitated, looking from his face to the oozing blood, unsure.
“Go ahead,” he told her.
Vanessa brought his wrist to her mouth.
And began to drink.

First, I would never buy something like this for myself, I usually just hit the field and record my form with my phone. But I have wondered about my nose angle and spin for a while and my wife asked me what I wanted for a gift and this fit the “gift” bill perfectly.
Second, if you don't know what Gameproofer is, it's a competitor to TechDisc.
I don’t like to write negative reviews, especially about new companies, but I can honestly say this thing is not good – right now anyway. This is beta hardware with a lot of strange design decisions that just do not work.
The first is the complete lack of buttons. I’m sure this made sense from a “it’s completely waterproof” situation, but it’s honestly terrible. I have taken this thing to the field twice now and I couldn’t use it either time. The first time the battery was dead, more on that later. The second time, I forgot the magnet to turn it on – which I left by the charger because of the charging issues. There is no other way to turn this thing on without it.
The charging issues. I don’t know what it is about this device, but it does not stay charged. When I first got it, I left it on the charger overnight, checked it on the app and it was at 100%. I clicked the “power off” button in the app and put it in my bag. Three days later I went out to the field to throw it and it was completely dead. I brought it home and charged it again to 100%, “powered it off” and I again checked it a few days later before heading out, completely dead. I recharged it to take it to the field and left as soon as it was charged… forgetting the magnet on my desk because I wanted to make sure it was full before leaving, so I had no way to power it on. Super weird that it wouldn’t just auto power off even if I didn’t click the app button just by sitting on my desk doing nothing. Another note on charging, this does not come with a charger. Not a huge deal as you can get something that works on Amazon for about $13, but keep that in mind. This isn’t like a tech disc where people have 100 USB cables laying around so you can just plug it in and charge it.
There seems to be a lot of discrepancy between their "vision" and what is actually available on their site. They have said for almost a year they will offer discs that can be bought with the device attached, or bought separately. Neither is available still. You have to attach it to your own disc, which is probably fine I bought it knowing this, but it seems like companies like TechDisc calibrate their device on the actual disc, which makes me wonder how accurate this is. There is a tool to find the "center" of your disc, but it comes with a piece of sand paper and you have to actually sand the injection nub off yourself before attaching the device.
The LEDs. Again, the completely sealed design just doesn’t work. The LED blinks through the top of the plastic disc. If you’re using a red or blue or green disc on a very sunny day it’s almost impossible to see the LED in the daylight.
Apparently, there is a subscription with this thing? I have no idea because I have yet to be able to actually use it. I don’t see this listed anywhere in the app or anywhere on their website. I did not preorder this so I guess I have to pay it eventually according to their official account? I only found out about this via the Gameproofer Reddit account arguing with people on this sub.
Overall, I am super disappointed. I wish I had spent the extra $100 and waited for the techdisc which is tried and tested as this point. I believe Gameproofer will eventually have a good product, but the R&D is not done on this thing as it stands. I don’t think the decision to make it waterproof over ease of use with a physical button, charging port, and bottom facing LED were good decisions.
Hope this feedback helps improve the product and offers some insight for anyone looking to buy one of these.

Hey all, bandwagon fan from NYC here in peace. I'm planning a work trip to Minnesota later this year to visit a company in which we've invested. The founder wants to bring me to a Vikings game and I'm so in! I've fallen in love with the team, I'm pumped that I'll get to see Harrison Smith in what may be his last season, and I even have a Vikings hat now. It's done. I drank the Kool-Aid. I want to see the dang Vikings win it all.
So let's start with a home game...or two?
I've never been to a Vikings home game but I hear it's amazing. I can't wait! Was supposed to come out last season but couldn't make my schedule work. I can plan my trip with enough time to see two games at US Bank -- hopefully the team does better at home this season!! One game I'll go with the company founder and a few coworkers. The second game a friend and I want to plan as a surprise weekend for a friend of ours who is going through a really rough divorce and loves the Vikings (especially KOC). We'll leave our guys at home, my gals will fly out and we'll sit in the stands cheering our hearts out.
Which two Vikings home games would you recommend for a first-timer?
OPTION 1: Sept 15 vs. 49ers (another team I love) and Sept 22 vs. Texans
Pros: See the Vikings beat the 9ers in back to back seasons; see Danielle Hunter's return. (I miss him already!) Beyond the games, more opportunity to do nature stuff while the weather is still good.
Cons: If the Vikings start 0-3 this season AGAIN, ugh. That's gonna be tough. I don't think they will -- the teams I root for tend to do really well, and I believe Minnesota has an amazing youth movement, Red Sox circa 2004 underdog story going for them. Not sure how this season is going to start though.
OPTION 2: Some combo of Dec 1 vs. Cardinals, Dec. 8 vs. Falcons, Dec. 15 vs. Bears
Pros: I'd get to see the return of Kirk (all due respect to him, I think it's pretty lame that he left for the bag, but I think it's the best thing that could have happened for the Vikings), and either a great divisional game in the Bears or a hopefully easy win against the Cardinals...? These games should have playoff implications, which gets me more interested. Plus I bet Minneapolis is really pretty in the holiday season!
Cons: It will probably be really cold, which isn't a big deal to me because I lived in Colorado for several years, but might be a big deal to my friends who are from sunny southern California originally. December probably isn't cold enough yet for ice fishing, which is something I've been told I need to try on one of my Minnesota visits, is it?
If you were me, which games would you fly out for? I'll be sure to do my research but any recommendations about hotels, restaurants, hikes within a couple of hours of Minneapolis are also so great to have! Happy to offer suggestions for any fans coming to Week 1 at the Giants!