Husband taking percocet while trying to get pregnant

Using throwaway bc I already know I’m TA.
Context: I work in an outpatient imaging facility and work primarily with cancer patients. Only me and one other person in this department.
Two days ago this patient calls saying she’ll be 30 minutes late for her appointment, can we still take her. The dose we give decays over time (imagine a phone battery that dies over time) so because of the limited window and because this dose is only given intravenously, I asked, are you a tough stick? As in, is it easy to access your veins or is this going to require extra time? She says she’s EASY. So I say okay we’ll take you. She arrives, in a wheelchair so that takes extra time. I bring her back, look at her veins. She’s morbidly obese which means it could be tricky to find a vein. I try two times, two other techs try two times. 6 attempts later nobody can get a vein so we have to reschedule (not my call, I would have told her to go get it down at the hospital with more resources to access veins). This also puts us 45 min behind. These patients have to fast so the ones that came after her weren’t happy.
Today she comes back and on time. This time wailing bc she has back pain. Also told us she had diarrhea this morning so asked for several pads to be put under her. Again, 6 attempts, no luck. Telling us to try this and do that. High maintenance. She has us run her to bathroom bc she has diarrhea. Being obese it wasn’t easy to move her. Being at the far end of the building we didn’t have time to call for help. I’m 32 weeks pregnant I shouldn’t be doing heavy lifting but it was that or deal with cleaning explosive diarrhea. After that she was waiting for her ride and had a meltdown which required us to console her. And after all that and telling her she needs to get this test done at a hospital, which should have been the case since her first appointment, this puts us behind and again the patients after her will suffer. Knowing she was in pain, knowing she had diarrhea this morning, knowing she was a tough stick why come to us and waste our resources and not only our time but also our patients’ time.
I’m sorry but I have no sympathy for people knowingly put themselves in these situations and act like they’re the only patient on our schedule.

I try to get traffic while playing offline. But shutoku - Shibaura PA Traffic isn’t loading (it takes a very long time). It says: shuto_revival_project_beta: intializing AI spine…

For anyone who feels lost trying to apply for accommodations on the MCAT, you are not alone! I will try to keep this short with as much information as possible. Please feel free to DM me with any personal questions!
Accommodation History

• Junior year of HS, my ACT tutors recommended I get a neuropsychological evaluation for support for extra time on the ACT due to clear signs of ADHD and testing struggles.
• Received full 2 day neuropsych eval outlining my ADHD and testing struggles.
• Received time & a half on all standardized tests (SAT, ACT)
• Received time & a half on all college assessments.

First MCAT Attempt - Normal Timing
I took the MCAT with no accommodations on 6/17/23. I scored below 500 (which was not consistent with my practice exams, but I remember being extremely nervous on test day, really running out of time, and only being able to guess on the math questions because I had no time to attempt them).
Reasons For Not Originally Attempting To Apply For Accommodations:
AAMC requires a neuropsych eval that has not expired within 4 years. My eval had just expired. It is pretty expensive and time consuming to get this done.
Didn't want to spend the time and money on a new neuropsych eval.
AAMC accommodation process seemed tedious and intimidating. I almost felt like I would be using my time better by studying for the MCAT instead of working on the application.
The stigma surrounding ADHD/receiving extra time on tests - I think I wanted to try to "overcome" my disability because of the fear of being judged..Especially when thinking about how doctors don't receive extra time in the real world. However, I can confidently say that there is no reason to feel judged for finding what works best for you as an individual and as a test taker, especially in order to "level the playing field". And we all know the MCAT is not comparable to real life emergency situations.
Important Resources/Documents I Submitted When Applying for Accommodations:

• Received a new neuropsychological evaluation.
  • As I said before, this can be extremely costly. Unfortunately, I do think this is absolutely necessary.
    • AAMC posted this Lower-Cost Evaluation Option for those who cannot afford pricey testing: https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/article/university-clinics
• Submitted previous neuropsych eval from 2017.
• I attended the same school from Kindergarten - 12th grade. I reached out to them and asked if they kept my report cards and notes from teachers throughout my academic career. I chose quotes from teachers that highlighted my ADHD-like tendencies throughout my time at the school.
• Reached out to the ACT to have them send my approval of taking the ACT with extra time.
• Submitted my ACT score when I tested with normal time & after testing with extra time (to show improvement)
  • a screenshot of your score is fine, just make sure your name is shown somewhere in the screenshot.
• Letters from High School + College explaining proof of receiving accommodations.

What I applied for (Applied on 10/24/23):

• Standard Time & 50% (This means testing over 2 days)
• Stop-The-Clock Breaks
• Extended Section Breaks (Only get one 10 min break per day when testing over 2 days)

First Decision Received by AAMC: (11/28/23)

• Approval for Standard Time + 25% (testing over 2 days)
• Stop-The-Clock breaks (30 min per testing day)
• Extra 5 minutes of break time for a total of 15 minutes, as opposed to 10 mins.

Wrote a Reconsideration Letter on behalf of myself & had my evaluator write a reconsideration letter.
Submitted this reconsideration letter on 12/22/23
Received Final Decision & Approval of What I Initially requested on 01/20/24.
This was a really long post and an extremely long journey. While I am extremely grateful that I have all these resources to share with you, I acknowledge that every situation is different. Please don't give up if you truly feel you deserve certain accommodations. The MCAT does not define you!
Good Luck & feel free to message me with any questions!!

I am hoping to chat with someone and hopefully be good friends.
About me: I’m 30, I do not get outside much currently, thanks to mental health stuff (Mental health is a bitch right?) & the main problems I have are basically General anxiety disorder, depression and agoraphobia.
Thanks to that I spend most of my time indoors gaming or watching movies and anime, or listening to music.
I don’t have any friends because of it online or irl, I’ve been trying to make friends online multiple times but so far no luck. It usually takes a little while to warm up to someone and get used to chatting, but if I get a good vibe from someone I will usually be pretty talkative straight away.
General Hobbies: Gaming usually on Xbox series X or PS5, watching movies mostly the old classics from the 80’s/90’s, watching tv shows like GoT, and some anime too.
For the gamers my current games: baldurs gate 3(Xbox) Final fantasy 14 online(Light Dc), Red dead redemption online (PS5) and a few others.
If you read my post and wanna chat send me a message I will respond when I can :)

I am hoping to chat with someone and hopefully be good friends.
About me: I’m 30, I do not get outside much currently, thanks to mental health stuff (Mental health is a bitch right?) & the main problems I have are basically General anxiety disorder, depression and agoraphobia.
Thanks to that I spend most of my time indoors gaming or watching movies and anime, or listening to music.
I don’t have any friends because of it online or irl, I’ve been trying to make friends online multiple times but so far no luck. It usually takes a little while to warm up to someone and get used to chatting, but if I get a good vibe from someone I will usually be pretty talkative straight away.
General Hobbies: Gaming usually on Xbox series X or PS5, watching movies mostly the old classics from the 80’s/90’s, watching tv shows like GoT, and some anime too.
For the gamers my current games: baldurs gate 3(Xbox) Final fantasy 14 online(Light Dc), Red dead redemption online (PS5) and a few others.
If you read my post and wanna chat send me a message I will respond when I can :)

So, a little back story… I had a drinking problem, and it was bad. I hid it for awhile. Fast forward to him being in NY, myself, and children were not invited. I decided I needed rehab, and made the call. He had to come home 1 day early. Left on my birthday, he took his ring off once I was gone, and texted me for a divorce. This was 2022. He kicked me out, I was drinking again. Keep in mind, we are still talking daily, seeing if it could work, but that was a joke. I was there for sex. He never came to see me when I was in the hospital, that we both work at, he didn’t even come upstairs, had to feed the dog. Now, it’s 2yrs, he hasn’t done taxes, nothing is filed, we aren’t even legally separated! I am sober now. I did not want this. He never tried to help me. Do I have the right to take this to court? I’ve been patient, all while being heartbroken. Now I’m pissed. I am a good person, that had a problem. He never gave me a chance. Wrecked my world while trying to get help. I was told that I lied, obviously our vows meant nothing.

So let me start off by saying I’m 30 and my husband and I want to try for a baby come July/august I’m currently on Wegovy injections and am going to stop those after I’m out in the middle of June. I’m also currently on birth control. I was just diagnosed last summer with the PCOS and am trying to navigate through it with everything but have some concerns.
When I stop the birth control and let’s say I (hopefully) become pregnant right away, will my PCOS symptoms come back even being pregnant? The symptoms I’m worried about being: uncontrollable weight gain, facial hair and acne. I know you gain weight during pregnancy but I’m worried about too much and it being a health issue. Did your symptoms flare up during pregnancy? I know a lot of women’s flared up after pregnancy but what happened during? I’ve worked so hard the last 9 months to lose almost 50lbs and get to a healthy state physically so I can have the best chance at getting pregnant. I’ve never been able to have a period on my own without birth control so obviously fears of becoming pregnant come into play but I also have all these other anxieties. I’m hopeful I’ll get pregnant but not naive to think it may take some time. I just want to know what women’s experiences were when they got pregnant and how that was like having PCOS. Specifically those that struggle with the same symptoms I do. Thank you in advance.

Hey all, just looking for some motivation, support, and maybe clarity haha. The background story is that my parents could not agree on a name for me. They ended up putting both of their choices in my name- one is my first name and one is my middle name- and calling me by the name they prefer, from birth. What this means is that one parent from the get-go has called me “Sarah” and one has called me “Beth” (not my real names). They then proceeded to get divorced. What this has meant for me is that I virtually grew up being one name at my mom’s house and one name at my dad’s house. The name my mom calls me “Sarah” has been what I’ve largely (like 95% of people in my life) been called. “Beth” has only showed up in a small subset of my life. Nonetheless, being called two names in my formative years by parents who expected different things from me did leave me with a bit of a name crisis. Maybe even an identity crisis…Am I Beth or am I Sarah? WTF?
The name I go by most often is extremely common. As an example I recently went to a women’s book club of 14 ladies and was the FOURTH person by this name. I also went to a different social event (also all women) and in a group of 10 I was the THIRD person by that name. I’ve been running into other “Sarah’s” my whole life and it has always annoyed me. I’ve always entertained the idea of going by my less common middle name.
I tried when I interviewed for graduate school to go by my middle name but I kept on messing up my introduction- I was so used to saying my other name- and I ended up jumping ship out of embarrassment and fear of how much effort it would take. Now I’m in my early 30’s and just took the plunge again. I’m going by my middle name in some social groups and by some of my family members. It’s only been a few months.
I’m running into significant anxiety about it all. I’m ruminating over whether people think I’m going through some big identity crisis (I’m still myself and I don’t want people to THINK that I am in crisis haha). And, I’ve run into something I didn’t expect: my middle name doesn’t feel super natural to go by from people that aren’t my dad! What? Hearing it come out of my husbands mouth just sounds…weird. Introducing myself has become easier the last few weeks but I feel a sense of imposter syndrome. The name doesn’t fully feel mine, even though I’ve gone by it my whole life. And, recently when discussing that with someone close to me, I started to feel like I don’t have the support I need to do this. I was told that I don’t “feel” like a “Beth” to them. Naturally I’m second guessing it all. Im afraid everyone is judging me, thinking I’m going through some crisis or just that it’s stupid. Should I do my thing without fear of judgement? Ideally, yes. But it’s been tough on this one! I’d love some insight from others, and honest thoughts about adult name changes. Maybe all the judgements I’m fearing are mostly in my head, and maybe I’ll get used to my middle name?

I'm considering starting a Pilates studio but feeling quite scared about it. I've been doing Pilates for over a year and I'm keen on owning a studio. In my area which is very posh (I feel my business could attract steady quality clients, there are no nearby Pilates studios, and I wonder if it's due to high rates, as all studios are at least 5 miles away.
I'm curious about what it takes to start a studio, as I have limited experience in this area. How difficult is it to get certified, and is certification necessary to own a studio?
I'm planning to start with used reformers, aiming for 8-12 units. I'd offer 30-minute free trial classes once a week and unlimited classes in barre, yoga, and strength training. Currently listening to a few podcasts such as 'Pilates teachers' manual to educate myself.
I had a food truck business that didn't work out due to industry challenges, which made going back to a 9-5 job tough. I currently work in commercial real estate (2 years now and can easily look for space , currently make about 60k a year at a very flexible position. I have great credit about $30,000 in savings from my previous business . Currently looking at spaces in my area $17 NNN 2000 SF .
My husband owns a construction company, and while his income has decreased post-COVID, ( we have ample emergency savings) he's supportive of my venture but believe I shouldn't lease in the area , but I would literally be the first . My sister suggests opening an affordable daycare Like she has because she claims Pilates isn't an essential business, ( her business is very successful , she currently has 40+ kids at her daycare, pays minimal rent for a commercial space and makes quite a bit a month as she adds more kids everyday , she started her business less than 5 months ago, I do value her input but I'm drawn to the idea of a Pilates studio and she doesn't seem to think they are that profitable and thinks I'm being dumb, so I figured I would ask here on expectations.
I'm seeking advice and experiences from others who have started Pilates studios or similar businesses. Any insights or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm determined not to let doubts hold me back from pursuing this dream but I am still a realist. Also, as a minority (black woman) in a predominantly white, conservative area, I'm nervous about how my venture will be received ( my sister lives near by and ran into the same issue but was able to rise through it). Any advice would be helpful too on what I should expect as far as worst case and best scenarios if I do indeed venture towards that route .
Thank you in advance for any guidance you can provide.

I've been catching up on the IDW series out of a desire to see what they do with issue 150 (please no spoilers or opinions on what happens post-Armageddon Game). I'll share my overall thoughts on 101-150 after I've finished, but for now I wanted to take a minute to talk about The Armageddon Game.
On the whole, it was a miss for me. There are some decent elements and ideas to it, but it doesn't come together as a satisfying story.
The Lead-up
For me, the build-up felt too brief. Particularly, the element of Shredder training the turtles and teaching them kuji-kiri. There had been elements of mysticism leading up to this (reincarnation, astral projection), but the turtles being able to wield abilities like this feels like a major shift that deserved more time to carry a fitting sense of weight. I grew up watching Dragon Ball Z. Often, there would be some sort of warning of when the next major threat would hit, so there'd be a full string of episodes depicting the characters in training. It made increases in their power feel earned and effectively set the stage so that when the conflict arrived, viewers had the sense that the last however many episodes had built to this moment. It was finally time to test whether the training had been enough. The training here just feels so quick and easy. I would've liked to see a full arc or two rooted in them having to unlock this potential within themselves. Make the breakthrough moments feel earned and satisfying so that the new status quo of their increased formidability feels like the culmination of a real journey.
The Scope
On paper, it sounds epic. A TMNT event spanning about 25 issues. A conflict with an ancient, immortal being, spanning dimensions and pulling in the turtles greatest foes and allies. But in execution, it's just unwieldy, lacking effective structure and momentum. Too much feels unrelated. The recruitment mission in Dimension Z (or was it X) feels entirely disconnected from the stake of the upheaval in Mutant Town. The Triceraton/Utrom conflict feels like an unrelated complication that just happens to coincide with and spill over into the problems in Mutant Town. Rather than one, multifaceted story, it feels like multiple truncated arcs thrown in a blender together to all of their detriment.
The "Game"...
didn't really feel like a game. Reading the title "The Armageddon Game", I was so intrigued about what the actual game would be. It's not like I expected them to play monopoly, but when I think about a contest or game, there's an objective, parameters, rules, strategy, etc. Done right, that's a pretty cool story! Stories with game-based struggles and conflicts that come to mind Die Hard with a Vengeange, Marvel's Secret Wars (original version), Jumanji, Ready Player One, and Knives Out
https://baduk.news/article/how-%E2%80%9Cknives-out%E2%80%9D-uses-go-as-a-pivotal-narrative-device
The story fails to deliver on the game element structurally or thematically. In effect, Rat King gets a few villains together and says "Do some bad stuff." And they do. But it doesn't really feel like he's manipulating the pieces on the board. In spite of referring to his allies in chess terms (his knight, his queen) Rat King never feels like the sort of crafty mastermind you'd want to be the antagonist of a deadly game.
I wanted to see a back and forth, move/countermove cerebral interplay. Give me a classic "We played right into his hand! Rat King has been two steps ahead of us this whole time!" moment.
I can imagine a version of this in which Rat King lays out the parameters, describing it as a game of both wits and brawn. Naturally everyone is like "Donnie, take the lead." Mikey tries to advise him at certain points citing his knowledge of games, but Donnie dismisses his "DnD experience." Yet Donnie's more conventional, intellectual approach is easy for Rat King to anticipate and outmaneuver. Ultimately, Donnie has to learn some humility and respect for Mikey's way of thinking, combining their strengths for a final play that outwits Rat King. It sounds a bit like someone that could happen in a 20-minute episode, but I think there's a way to do that that suits the complexity you'd want from a story like this.
The Ending
The conclusion of the story just felt awkward to me. There's so much going on that they end up having elements of climax and resolution at the same time. While the Turtles have their final showdown with Rat King, other stories are already wrapping up. April and Sally dictate the terms of how Stockman will help Mutant Town and then someone is like "Where did Shredder take the turtles?" It's just weird to have things so disjointed in terms of the level of tension.
After this whole "game" Rat King is basically like "I'm going to kill you all and destroy everything!" So what was the point of all that led up to this? Did any of what his alliance did or failed to do matter? And then it all comes down to Cherubae, who we barely know, and the turnstone, a MacGuffin that the story barely focused on. A fairly unsatisfying conclusion to a fairly unsatisfying story.
Closing Thoughts
I didn't hate this story, but it's frustrating because it felt like a major missed opportunity. I truly believe everyone involved did their best, but I don't think they had a grasp on how to handle this type of event and capitalize on the potential of this premise. It would be less irksome if it was just a regular arc, but they stretch the story out over so many issues told through multiple series to do so little narratively.

I've been with my wife for about two and a half years. Before marriage, we discussed non-monogamy. It was often a subject on the table with non-romance, and with people in mind, it became a topic with romance, and it developed while going through our wedding. Shortly after our wedding, that quad situation crashed and burned, and wife closed off (she was always anti-social, so her closing off was even more extreme). She expressed a preference for monogamy, but it became kind of set in stone that her end goal was a monogamy that could co-exist with my polyamory.
A lot happened for that to crash and burn, but my interest in polyamory didn't die with that relationship. There was a period of about 9 months of emotional work of discussions restructuring the relationship and continual renegotiation and learning alongside each other before I felt comfortable that I could offer someone a partnership I could be content with. That work missed steps for sure, in retrospect, namely that it wasn't clear enough that our old relationship was killed and in the process of being rebuilt from the ground up. I think it felt that way to both of us, but there was a strong anchoring bias that is still present to some extent to this day from her.
The relationship I had to offer (that was agreed to be within bounds) threatened her in every way. She hated not being a part of it unlike the first one where she was, but that was part of the work. I think it came as a reality check to her that I was going to be autonomous from her. We were highly codependent, and in that process I had grieved it and cut away, but she hadn't yet. It came with many primal panics and she hated her meta at the time for it. We both knew it wasn't meta's fault. My relationship to that person fell apart for a separate reason, and it nearly took my relationship with my wife with it. It felt like divorce had finally entered the conversation as an option. She said she didn't view it as one, though, and I said she has to, because how else is she supposed to be able to consent or not consent to the relationship? She made me feel like I should trust that she is expressing her agency and is consenting in her full autonomy to everything we're ironing out in agreements together while also telling me that she strips away her last resort option and made me at times feel like I was simply subjecting her to a life she didn't want. I told her there are people who are just as emotionally competent, humerous, and whatever else as me, while also matching her hobbies more, who are monogamous, and I really needed to know she wasn't damning herself to me but rather that she was choosing me the same way I was choosing her. Choosing her has limited my polyamorous expression severely, and I've done it every day.
I began dating my current longest standing girlfriend in December. She initially doesn't like any new connections whatsoever, but tends to like them after putting a name and face together and having a meal or three with them. This girlfriend is largely very okay being secondary. We've ironed out our exact relationship agreements, know exactly how much we'll talk to each other and when we see each other, and I think wife benefits heavily from our consistency and has been proactively giving in her expressed comforts (such as nights that I wouldn't have spent with girlfriend out of an assumption it wouldn't be okay, but it was expressed as okay without my asking). I found myself in this relationship realizing that I wish I had a more solo polyamorous lifestyle, but I realize this after legal marriage, cohabitation, and financial enmeshment, and don't plan to do the life shattering necessary to disentangle all of that as of this moment, but it weighs on me that I have so much friction and feel a bit as though I need permission to sleep certain places or have someone sleep in my spaces. It makes sense given the current set-up, though. YEARNING!
There are so many actions that still cause so much insecurity to arise in my wife. Every action I take with another partner is measured within myself immediately on how it will affect her. Am I spending too much time away from her? Am I doing too much cool stuff without her? But then I try actively dating her and she doesn't show much enthusiasm for much other than default time together. We get a date or two a month maybe while I date my other partner once to twice weekly. I find myself falling in love with another person and being afraid because I know that'll only hurt my relationship with her. After two and a half years am I fooling myself? Is she fooling herself? Are we fooling each other? It's stupid because I'm in the middle of it, and so is she, and I'm pretty sure neither of us want to answer that question with all sincerity. There is also the potential that I'm just way too selfish and should be okay limiting my polyamory as much as I do or even more given my commitments to her. I've struggled with polyamorous guilt with her every time I want time away from her, but then we acknowledge that this much time away from her with friends would do a similar thing anyways?
The timeline: Non-monogamy talks mid 2021, marriage December 2021, first poly relationship beginning and end spring 2022, first autonomous polyamorous relationship began January 2023, ended summer 2023, began dating current partner who she's okay with December 2023, partnered temporary long distance with someone April 2024 and have had a majorly important person come back into my life in a will they won't they way this month that is bringing up a lot of insecurities as well
Thank you to anyone who reads this and puts in any emotional labor and literal time labor producing a response to my wordy ass (and this was me trying to be concise lmao)

I'm [38M] in another country for an educational program for about three weeks now, and I started dating one of my classmates [23]. She is from India and this is a religious educational program. She was raised into the religion that I converted to. There were religious pilgrimages involved as part of the program, etc. I wasn't much attracted to her at first and basically thought nothing of her for about a week. The first interesting thing she said was when we were out in the city with a few other people and I went to exchange some currency. She exclaims that it's a lot of money and I shush her with my finger to my mouth and she jokingly asks if I'm going to be getting prostitutes.
Then eventually I thought I got some pretty clear signs that she was interested in me, and I started to develop feelings for her. At a group dinner one night, she chose a seat next to me and spooned some ice cream into my mouth at one point. She mentions a restaurant she wants to go to, so I ask her out a couple days later to that restaurant and she brings a guy/girl somewhat-couple from our class along. While we're walking to dinner, she asks me if I'm married, and I explain that I'm a widower since about a year ago. At that dinner, she takes a couple fries individually from my plate and the other guy points this out and I just shrug it off. Generally, she gave some strong eye contact at times during this outing. I gave her some playful nudging with my elbow at some point, that's about as far as I went in terms of being flirty.
A few days later, I ask her out on a date explicitly, and she eagerly accepts and this time doesn't bring anyone else along. The dinner date goes well enough, although I don't touch her at all or make any moves. At the end, she offers to walk to a second location and buy some tea for us at a popular religious landmark. This part goes well also, and we have some stimulating conversation. Eventually, I say I'm ready to go to bed and we walk together through a large crowd for a bit until we reach the road where she's staying and I just say "goodbye" and keep walking through the crowd to where I'm staying. Shortly after I get to my room, I receive a text asking if I reached, and I make my response really short and tell her good night.
Here's the part that seems to be where I started fucking up. The next morning, I send her a somewhat long message saying that I had a good time and I don't want her to think I'm not interested in her because I really am. I explain to her that this was my first date in almost 12 years and my dating skills are really rusty and not what they used to be when I was in my 20s. I explain that I didn't try to kiss her, but I actually really want to. Then I proposed a second date of some expensive tour in the area since I'll only have one free day left in the country to do such a tour, and I'd enjoy her company.
She responds saying that she didn't realize that I actually meant "date" when I said "date" and only understood I was being serious after receiving this message. She said she never imagined herself going on a date, and especially not with me, because I'm older and wiser than her. She declined my offer and says that she will not continue this with me. I may have forgotten some exchanges in between, but I eventually said that I didn't understand how she could think I was joking about a date. I told her I'm 38 years old, I know what I want, and I don't play games. I told her that she broke my heart. I say that I won't lash out at her, but I wanted her to know this so that she can avoid breaking other guy's hearts in the future . We're eventually texting more, and she explains that she isn't ready for a relationship. She says she wants to settle her life, finish school, etc. before getting married and starting a family. (I never mentioned marriage and family.) She also says she's not into long distance, since we're both going back to our home countries next week. She doesn't say anything along the lines of not being interested in me or not having feelings for me. She seemed to imply that she never had a boyfriend and never even went on a date before, although she didn't answer directly when I asked if that was the case, since there were multiple questions in one message.
I try to explain to her that we don't need to be thinking about marriage and a family right now. She says she's not ready for the "big things" right now, so then I ask if it's a "big thing" to have a boyfriend. She says it is a big thing to have a boyfriend. She needs to have feelings for him and she can't just be in a relationship and leave the relationship the next week. I took this as a test to see how serious I am about her, but who knows.
Later she says she will see me the next day, but then she changed her mind the next morning and I haven't seen her outside of class since that only full one-on-one date we had a few days ago. We're now in a different part of the program where there's no more classes together. So, there's no real reason we'd ever see each other again unless we intentionally meet.
I ask her if she just doesn't have any feelings for me and she just repeats that she isn't interested in any relationships right now but doesn't actually answer my question. I responded with a crying emoji and got really grovelly and self-debasing toward her. Then I deleted those messages and just said "Ok 🙏" and she reacted with 🙏
At this point, I'm just leaving it and waiting to see if she reaches out to me again before I leave. But I'm really confused by this one, reddit. Any thoughts?

[ADHD, Bipolar 1, Autism]
I'm having a hard time on spending too much time on a career switch which is inappropriate to work on right now while I'm unemployed. I'd like to focus on organization and communication skills more.
Organization and communication skills are contributing to me failing to get employed again and ultimately switching careers.
Researching and working on the career switch takes no effort to get started and is immediately shiny and feels like I'm making progress every time I touch it.
For organization and communication, I'm not finding many things that I can latch onto that allows me too see that realtime progress. There's a lot of mixed or low quality guidance that I can find online and I'm trying to rely on books for both of these. Books/audiobooks aren't shiny unfortunately but are helpful some. I'd love to do communication therapy, but I haven't found anything available in my area for adults for that. I also can't afford an ADHD coach for organizational problems.

Me and my husband have been playing POTs together for quite a while and all of a sudden it is not letting us join each other’s servers.
It either tells us it has timed out trying to get in or it tells us something about needing a patch to get into the other server (but never loads). Is anyone else having this issue/know how to fix it.
We’ve tried with us both on the mobile app, me on my switch him on the mobile app, and me on my switch and him on the Xbox.

I feel like I should feel content with the current friends I have, however I'm just not happy and have been feeling lonely as of late.
Im a 18M college student who's had to transfer from living in a dorm at university back to community college where I'm taking online classes only. Because of this, I've lost IRL touch with most of my friends. I still call them & enjoy talking to them. However, it doesn't feel the same as talking to them in person & they are usually busy so I end up talking to them wayy later. At the moment, I have very few IRL friends from highschool that I've hanged out with (really enjoying those times), but they've also gotten MUCH MORE busier with life stuff such as work or school.
I've had this really special-to-me hangout with a long distance female friend. I offered if she wanted to go to a 4 day local event + a place to stay so she didn't have to drive back & forth from her home (4+ hours). We enjoyed the event & plan on going to more in the long future :) But what I really enjoyed the most was the down-time in between the days where we were chillin together. We played some video games together and I felt like I was truly bonding with her. Plus, we tucked ourselves in a blanket on a bed while comfortably watching some K drama shows. Really, just platonically chilling in bed as we try out watching different kdrama episodes. This is by far my most cherishable experience as I've never done anything like this (closest being watching shows with friends over discord). We just vibed super comfortably. And I MISS THAT so much. She probably didn't think much of it but I've never felt so relaxed as that in a long time. Shes not my girlfriend nor do I have a crush on her, just a great friend that I occassionally talk to when she's not busy (usually is). But I really want someone to do that with again, someone new that I can hang out IRL & have more availability. But I obviously can't ask for someone & have them magically appear. It just happens.
With how a lot of my friends have gotten busy / distance from me in combination of one of my most cherisable moment has gotten myself to HATE MYSELF as I feel much more lonely. So far, I've been using it as some motivational fuel to go to the gym, study harder, and work on myself but DAMN I just HATE THIS FEELING that comes and goes all the time. I just wonder if I can meet someone that I can vibe & telax with on a couch / bed to watch shows and enjoy it while making fun remarks or talking / whatever more often...
I've never ranted like this before & have kept these kinds of feelings in check on my own. I've gone to therapy once but realized that I'm still a sane & functioning person and don't need it compared to others who may need it more than me. I guess I'm just at that age where shitty feelings PEAK & my lid of SHITTY feelings slightly leak. Im not depressed & Im not desperate to get a girlfriend as I dont think I'm ready until I work on my life. I feel like I want to be more MATURE but am stuck feeling like a CHILD even though I am technically an adult. I feel undeserving & selfish for wanting what seems like so much more to myself (socially, economically, and everything else). But I just wonder when things will change & how long would I have to endure these lonely + confusing feelings?
I JUST DON'T know. But, I hope I can meet more new friends as I take more in person classes & show up to some clubs in the future (though talking to new people in clubs is kinda difficulty when they've felt kinda cliquey as people seem to already have their groups).
Thanks for reading my rant I guess 🥲 Maybe I'll feel better the next few upcoming days, weeks, or months... I'll try to keep myself distracted in the meantime!

An hour after getting back from the Mason apartment, Bruce Kenner had the distinct misfortune of meeting Bertha Henderson.
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?

Hi All,
This is a very long story, so thanks in advance for reading and letting me vent about the last week.
I had my baby boy on 5/7 at 38+2 via c section for breech presentation after being diagnosed with cholestasis. I ended up developing postpartum preeclampsia and required magnesium drip x 24 hours which prolonged my hospital stay to 6 days.
My SIL is a labor and delivery nurse at the hospital I was at. The night before the section, she asked if she could be present in the OR. She is making us a baby book and wanted to take pictures. She also said she could offer support during the spinal until my husband was allowed in. She offered to be “stork” which is where the nurse takes the babies weight, VS, etc. I said no to everything except that it would be okay for her to present for pictures only. Well, she ended up doing everything. She held him first, she did the weight, VS, and was taking pictures with him in the OR. Meanwhile, I was not tolerating things well and didn’t get to hold my baby until I got to the PACU. I realize this is common for a c section, but it gives me a weird feeling that she was the first one to hold him.
My SIL then went on to be my RN overnight 3 times during my stay. She fought with other nurses to be able to do that. Multiple nurses said to me I could say no, but I know that would cause drama with her and probably my MIL. She took my son overnight while my husband and I slept. She continued to take pictures with him and of him and held him all night long except when she was tending to another patient. She pushed me to give him formula when my preference was to do donor milk until my milk came in. Then, she came into work while not on shift and slept in an empty patient room and took him all night and again was taking more pictures with him and him. I know this because there is a shared album. There is one picture of her laying in bed with him almost looking like his mother about to breastfeed….
I was so out of because of the stress of developing preeclampsia after having no issues during my pregnancy and of course because of the magnesium drip. If you’ve ever had to do that, then you know what I’m talking about. I feel like I wasn’t in a good place to consent to my SILs heavy involvement in my medical care. My husband is not very confrontational and I believe he was so desperate for sleep after needing to be primary care taker since I could barely pick my son up.
Now that I am home, I am reflecting on the last week and becoming uncomfortable. My SIL keeps offering to sleep at our house and my MIL says “you should take her up on the offer”. My SIL and MIL come over and they stay for 8 hours and hold him the entire time. They completely take over the care of my son and continue to push me to go lay down or tell my husband and I to go out to eat. They want to FaceTime and my SIL is constantly asking for updates about how baby is doing and how is doctors appointments are. The night we got home from the hospital, SIL offered to stay over and said my son “needed her”. This was really upsetting for me and insulting. This morning, she texted my husband and asked to sleep over so she can hang out with baby….
I am not very confrontational, but I am at the point of telling her off. My husband respectfully said she can visit, but no sleepovers. My MIL is constantly offering to come over and watch him. Then she stays for 8 hours and just holds him the entire time. We took her up on the offer yesterday while I went to the OB and she gave him formula instead of my pumped breast milk after we showed her how to use the warmer…
I just feel so uncomfortable and not respected. Are my feelings valid or are my hormones making me crazy?? A lot of times my SIL is really great and helpful, but I feel like it’s getting weird.
Thanks for reading.

CRAZY BITCH!! WATCH OUT FOR THIS PERSON
This is Ashley Cota. She is beyond words crazy. This women has her own cleaning business called Ashley’s Classy Cleaning. She will steal things in peoples houses and turn around and sell them to buy pills for her drug addiction. She has 4 kids and she is one of the worst mothers you’ll ever meet. She has cut her wrist in front of her kids and blamed it on them. She takes pills to make her shit and throw up all her food, and tell her daughter not to get fat or she won’t be pretty. She will stick her fingers down her throat and teach her daughter how to throw up her food. She waste all her money on tummy tucks and Botox, sucking all the fat out of her body and then promotes “body positivity “ all over Facebook. She rips sinks off the wall and punches holes in the wall whenever she is slightly mad. She cheats on her husband like crazy and then turns around and accuses him of cheating. She straight up had a baby with another man and blamed it on her husband, she has ran her husband over with a truck. She raped a girl and laughed about it. I’m not even going to get into that story cause it’s scary. Her mom also does crack, and is high wile watching her kids.. if you see this women be aware! She is the devil. She will try and get close to you and then steal from you, break up your marriage, or even set you up for jail. I’m not joking!!! Continue at your own risk.

An hour after getting back from the Mason apartment, Bruce Kenner had the distinct misfortune of meeting Bertha Henderson.
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?

Hi all. I’ll try to keep this as short as possible. Basically me (23F) & my (23F) gf broke up January 2023 after 4 years of being together For pretty much all of 2023 we had this very toxic on and off again relationship. Very toxic. About 2 weeks after she broke up with me I found out she was seeing one of her friends I had actually met a few months prior to this. She told me she just wanted to be on her own so finding this out was shocking. Essentially it was just me fighting for her back and her being extremely cold to me. She would tell me really messed up things , anything you can think of in this situation probably fits besides calling me any names. After about a month I would drive about 4 hours to see her and we would basically be together again. This meet up happened about 4 times. And when I would comeback home she would be extremely cold again. This was the situation for months. I was a hot mess as you could imagine. Her actions were very calculated as well. She was basically seeing two people at the same time. What she did to the other girl was objectively fucked up too but I will only speak for myself. All of this didn’t come out until I was seeing my ex one time and decided to check her phone. We all know how that goes. I talked to the other girl my ex was seeing and compared timelines and yeah… enough said about that. But throughout all this I still stayed. I made excuses for everything and tried to see the brighter side. Stupid I know. Since about end of 2023 till now, we’re trying to work it out and things are “good”. At no point did we ever go no contact which is not good. It’s hard to move past the previous mess that was last year. Sometimes I randomly break down in full on tears thinking about what she put me through. It was very traumatic. Every time I look at her she’s the source of my happiness and disgust. To be fair we’re both changing things that we didn’t like in the past but I can’t get over it. We are also each others first and it’s not necessarily that I didn’t get to try with anyone else it’s more like imagining her doing the same things we did with someone else just gives me major icks. I at least want to take some time off from doing this but I don’t think I can really let go of it ever. I feel like she HAS to be with me and I ruined something new for her? Throughout the mess she kept telling me she didn’t get a true chance with the new girl but my ex always let me back in so how much of that is possibly my fault. If I don’t end up with her in the end I guess I will feel guilty I did all this just to eventually drop it but at the same time I always maintained my love and loyalty while she got to mess around. Not sure how to feel about this, what are your overall thoughts?

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.

TW: past medical abuse, mentions of miscarriage, preemie baby and Nicu stay.
This is my second baby, and my last! He was due in early May. Two years previously, I had his older sister at 36 weeks, so I knew that there was a possibility of going into labor early. So I scheduled my maternity leave at school to start at around 36 weeks, thinking if I relax I could keep him in for another week or so and have a full-term baby. Nope!
I had had a lot of previous issues with this pregnancy, like a hemorrhaging incident at 10 weeks in which we thought I had a miscarriage, some continue to bleeding and cramping at different points in my pregnancy, and a premature loss of my mucus plug. I was told each time that everything's fine and there's no sign of anything wrong and he should be a healthy full term baby. I felt like everyone around me thought I was being dramatic or looking for attention, but I really just wanted my baby to be okay and had this constant feeling that something wasn't right. Well, something wasn't right.
I, just like with my daughter, spontaneously went into labor at 34 weeks. PPROM, with my water breaking impressively around midnight at home. We of course we're not expecting this, so my husband ran to a neighbor to get them to come house sit until his mother could arrive to watch our sleeping toddler upstairs, and we drove to the hospital. I originally had wanted to drive myself because I just didn't want to leave our daughter without a parent at home, but I was gushing so much water that I couldn't hardly string two words together, let alone walk.
We got to the hospital, went into the emergency room entrance because it was after hours, and went to labor and delivery triage. Won't behold, I'm a couple centimeters dilated and in labor. The nurse I had was pretty rough giving me a cervical check, and it was the only one I've ever had between the two children have given birth to that hurt. The same nurse also failed to get my IV port in and left in half, and thankfully another nurse who wasn't in a bad mood came in and got it on the 4th attempt. My poor arms were covered in massive bruises for a couple weeks afterwards. Amazingly we were put in the same in sweet Nicki room as we were for my daughter 2 years ago, good old room 350!
Labor progressed well I'm without need for any intervention, like pictocin. I handled the contractions better than I did with my first, but wanted to make sure I got my epidural before I progressed to pass the point of no return-- I in no way wanted to experience the feeling of possibly ripping my vagina 🫠
It was really tough mentally, getting my epidural. With my first baby, the anesthesiologist was horrible. You can look at my previous birth story if you want the full rundown, but he assaulted me, so I was really nervous this time around. The nurse caught on that I was feeling apprehensive, and with talking to her I came to found out that the previous anesthesiologist had been fired for assaulting multiple women the same way he did me! Really hope he never works again. They brought in the new anesthesiologist, and he was the most gentle and kind person! It went very smoothly, and it was nice to have a relief from the contractions and pressure.
I was hoping I could maybe rest or even nap once I got my epidural in like I did was my first. But nope, 10 minutes later I was being told he is right there and ready to come out, about half a day after labor started. I don't know why, probably because he was so little, but he was incredibly easy to push out. I was told to stop pushing, and not push so hard, and got him out in about three gentle but steady pushes. Thankfully I had no damage at all, no tearing or even bruising or swelling. After my epidural wore off it literally just felt like I had written a bike for the first time in a while. As immensely grateful, because I was going to be run through the ringer taking care of my family and a Nicu baby.
When he first came out, my son was very small, yes, but incredibly pink, very lively and noisy, and he peed all over me immediately lol. They let him have extra time with his cord before they clamped it due to him being early, and I got to do my wonderful hour with him before they wished him over to the NICU attachment of the room. He had respiratory distress for the first 24 hours of his life, which was gut-wrenching to watch. He could not regulate his body temperature at all, so unless he was snuggled under many blankets on me, He stayed on the warmer. He couldn't eat by himself so his NG tube was placed and used for the majority of his stay. His blood sugar was monitored very religiously, and it was so tough watching his little feet be pricked over and over and over.
I was released after 2 days from the hospital, and I probably could have been released earlier but I wanted to stay officially as a patient for a little longer. It was hard, being away from my toddler daughter was a special kind of hell. But then when I was with her, my heart was torn to pieces that I wasn't with my baby. No matter where I was, I felt horrible guilt. I triple fed, pumping every 3 hours, and if I was a NICU nursing him before they topped him up with his special increased calorie premium formula. Any milk I produced was fortified to give to him as well. He steadily lost weight despite them constantly increasing the size of a speeds, the point of him constantly spitting up from having way too much in his tummy. But I was told that this is just what they do until they start gaining weight. I was told with preemies that they just won't put on weight for the longest time, and then suddenly start putting it on, and suddenly eating on their own.
I was starting to lose hope of that, when on about the 10th day he put on weight overnight. They took out his tube and we worked on feedings with him, which he seemed to struggle so hard with. But then just like with the weight, he suddenly started eating well. On day 12 we could take him home! In a way it was even harder at home to keep up with the pumping, fortifying the milk I pumped myself, mixing the special recipe of extra calories preemie formula, and nursing. He gained weight so well that I was given the okay after a few days at home to stop pumping if I didn't want to. I very gratefully stopped pumping
. He eventually started showing signs of a milk protein intolerance, just like my daughter had, and just like I had as a baby. It was no surprise to me when he was put on hypoallergenic formula. We're still dealing with all of that right now, with me trying to keep dairy out of my diet and struggling with the decision of whether I want to keep combo feeding or just switch over completely formula. He will be 2 months old in about a week and he is put on 4 lb so far, almost doubling his birth weight!
Right now we are also struggling with his head shape. This was new to me, because my first born head no issues with any flat spots or head shape at all. But being in NICU, they always faced him in the same direction, facing the nursing station when I was not there. He developed a tendency to put his head to the right, and developed a bit of flat spot. We've been working with him on tummy time, gently repositioning his head the other way, and just doing everything in our power to help correct this... All to know avail. His spot has gotten worse, and we are fairly certain that he will be getting a helmet soon. I know it's no big deal, but apart me feels like I failed somehow 😭 his poor, cute little lopsided noggin 🥺 otherwise, besides his head shape and figuring out his dairy intolerance, he's doing well!
I've tried multiple times to figure out why my babies were born so early, why my body couldn't keep them in to be full term. The OB had no answers for me and just sort of shrugged her shoulders at it, saying that since I showed no signs of having an incompetence cervix or anything else, it was just something that we'd never know why. She was relieved though to hear that we did not plan to have any more children, as that would have made things a bit more complicated given my history of early birth.
It's hard of me is sad that I'm not having any more children, but the possibility of having another preemie baby, especially one even younger than my first two, is sobering. I will just enjoy my two very healthy and happy babies I have 💕