After getting a horrible haircut I left a review in Google maps, with a photo of the bad haircut. It has been viewed over 5000 times in a month, so I know the guy who cut my hair must have shared it somewhere. The salon is a little hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere, so no way has it had this many views on its own. How do I find out where it's been shared?

Hello!
My partner and I recently bleached my hair at home, and overall it turned out well, except my partner missed a few spots in the back and and as a result I have some patches of brown close to the roots (oops).
I previously had natural level 6 hair, so it lifted really light with 20vol (up to a level 10 or so). Is it safe for me to just use a bleach bath on the patchy strands a week later, or will my hair fall off?
Thanks in advance!!

Growing up so disconnected from my emotions, I frequently need pieces of media to help me through my grief. I love spoken word poetry and I wanted to share two poems by Andrea Gibson. While they are both called The Call, they are very different from each other and I have related to both in different stages of my healing. I hope they help you.
​
THE CALL, OPTION 1
 
I pay seventeen dollars online to track down the phone number
of the man who sexually assaulted me, and my friend asks, "What
do you plan to say?"
 
I'll tell him I know he lost
all his money gambling
and was forced
 
to sell the building
where he did what he did.
I'll tell him karma is a hell
 
of a feminist.
I'll tell him my silence
was his worst bet.
 
I'll tell him I'm watching
him through the bullet hole
he left in my childhood,
 
and if he comes within
two hundred miles
of a child's trust, my body
 
will start bleeding his name
all over Main Street in his middle-
of-somewhere town.
 
I'll tell him
he's the middle of nowhere:
a man with no stop
 
lights, the kind of place kids grow up
desperate to escape. I'll tell him
as soon as I got out,
 
I imagined him sanding off
his fingerprints, the guilt
filing him down to half his size.
 
When I met him,
he was the biggest man
in town, had set records
 
in the deadlift, was as old
as my father. I weighed
ninety-six pounds, was still
 
spending sleepovers practicing
how to kiss. I'll tell him how big
I am now. So big
 
I could make his address
the title of my next book,
and yes, I think he asked for it.
 
Asked me to play hangman
with his name on the local news,
asked me to spray paint ME TOO
 
across his pickup truck
and say, I dare you
to compare property damage
 
with someone you made property.
With someone whose puberty
you mutilated.
 
I'll say, Trauma
is a pretty word for how to die
every day of the year,
 
but my voice is alive
and right now it is the only justice
system I trust
 
to ensure men like you
understand the law
of gravity, understand
 
you will always be held down
by what you held down.
There is no such thing as rising
 
from someone else's ashes.
No man's spirit escapes the hell
he denies putting a child through,
 
which is to say, I am the only one
out of the two of us who survived
you, and I survived you
 
so beautifully. Even on my worst days,
my scars are the backroads
where kids sneak out their windows
 
and drive through the night
to hear poetry. I am so much
of who I dreamed I'd be
 
when I grew up, and what
does the boy you once were
think of the man you became?
 
A man running
from his own name.
A man who must wake
 
fifty times a night, terrified
the truth is somewhere breaking
from its chains and racing
 
for the world's ear.
When the truth gets there, will you try
to tell your friends I wanted it?
 
Will you try to tell your wife
how old of a soul I was?
At thirteen? At thirteen,
 
I had the youngest soul
in the universe.
I was so brand new
 
I thought reincarnation
was a flower I would wear
on my wrist
 
if someday someone asked me
to the ninth-grade dance.
I'd stand in my full-length mirror
 
and practice not blushing
when a slow song came on.
That's how old I was.
 
That's the kind of man you were.
The kind of man who makes children
grow up and search
 
for your phone number,
our bodies riddled with the wish
that all the records will say:
 
No one by that name exists.
 
 
 
THE CALL, OPTION 2
 
I pay seventeen dollars online to track down the phone number of the man who sexually
assaulted me, and my friend asks, "What do you plan to say?"
 
There is a world in which you did not touch me.
A world in which you thought about touching me
and were so nightmared by your own mind
you climbed inside your skull and bloodied your knees
 
crawling across the tundra of your history,
turning over every rock to chase out every worm
that might trick you into believing anything
could be cut in half and keep living.
 
There is a world in which you saw
how easily you could become an ax
splitting the personalities of children,
so swore your fingerprints
 
would be like the rings of trees, that your growth
could be counted on. In this world you have
groomed no one, and I am made of flyaways-
gleefully unclipped, wholly uncombed through,
 
braiding myself around a song, certain
I've invented dancing. Look at me
still calling you a hero. You built my trust
and never became the quake of earth
 
that shattered my foundation. Look at you
mothering your own nature, calling yourself home
at the first sign of dark. In this world you might
still be poor but not where it counts.
 
You might have still lost all your money,
but look at what you saved: Me
and Her and Her and Her and Her and Her
and the child you once were-how proud
 
he is to see who he's become. In this world
you still have secrets, but they are like my father's
secrets. The ones he doesn't know I know.
The ones my grandma told me: how he stayed
 
home nearly every weekend of high school
to keep my grandfather's drunken fist from the glass
of her jaw, how good my father was at pretending
he didn't love the movies, hadn't saved
 
all summer to buy a secondhand suit
for his first school dance. There is a world
in which you, too, only lie to save someone's life,
a world where you still live a stone's throw
 
from Canada but walk the river's shore never plotting
how you'd swim to freedom, never practicing
the backstroke of denial, never hoping I drowned
the letters you wrote me when I was graduating
 
eighth grade and you were forty and marrying
someone you said would never be your type.
The first time I called, your wife answered
the phone. I hung up, not strong enough
 
to be like you to throw a brick through
a woman's chest and have no doubts about it
being the right move, but there is a world
in which the truth is as soft as the pillow
 
that holds your wife's head when she dreams
about the day you met. In this world you wake up
before she does, make her coffee, read her horoscope
and forget to read your own. Where you stand behind her
 
when she looks in the mirror, tell her she's grown
more gorgeous every one of her sixty-seven years,
how you feel like the richest man in town
with your hands in the silver
 
of her hair. In this world I celebrate the news
of you having a daughter, a granddaughter, a niece.
In this world I don't panic when I see a pink tricycle
in your neighbor's driveway
 
as I'm driving to meet friends at the riverfront,
my hometown still a home you never haunted.
I roll the window down, holler your name
into the autumn air. You look up
 
from raking a pile of golden leaves, smile
and wave back to me. Can you see it?
I know you can. Everyone can
see who they were supposed to be.
 
It's the readiest grief in the world.
 
 

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Feel free to skip any, elaborate on what and why, share an opinion, have friendly debates, ask questions, and more!
​

• Hair always down vs Hair always up
• Wash daily vs Wash twice or more times a week
• Air dry vs Blow dry
• Brush damp or dry hair only vs Brush both dry and damp hair
• Oil damp hair vs Oil dry hair (not scalp oil treatment, regular post-wash hair length oil)
• Silk pillowcase vs non-silk pillowcase
• Self-cut hair vs Hair salon
• Layers vs Blunt cut
• Dyed hair vs Virgin hair
• Heat styling often vs Nevevery rarely heat styling
• Above waist current hair vs Below waist current hair
• Above waist hair goal vs Below waist hair goal

And an extra question I've always wondered, how often do you see people with hip-length or longer hair in your daily life? Being on here almost 'desensitized' me to the sight of extremely long hair and altered what I perceive to be 'long hair', my friend often describes people with BSL hair as "that girl with long brown hair" and I can never pinpoint who she's actually talking about because I didn't see it as 'long'.
I realized now how uncommon LONG long hair is irl, at least where I live.

So I’m not looking to be a dad, or help raise kids right now. But as with most people on this sub I do have a serious breeding kink that I can’t get out of my head! I would love to be a NI donor for anyone looking to conceive naturally. Or I’d love to find a woman with a similar kink that isn’t ready to have children/on BC, but wants to meet regularly and satiate those urges! (Regulatrusted partners are the best for this obviously) I am only interested in making plans to meet irl, no fantasizing please! Thanks!
I am from the DMV area(northern Va specifically) and prefer to drive to meet somewhere before heading to your place, or a room if you can’t host. I am not comfortable hosting, or flying somewhere to meet strangers at this time. I will drive a decent distance to you however.
Me: Single, White/Latin background, 6’0, 185lb, Long dark hair, brown eyes, thick membehung & large loads(see post history), very high libido, not on any medications, no chronic diseases, clean/DDF etc. NSFW posts in my history if you’re curious about that sort of thing!
I am open to single women, or couples that can’t conceive. Or maybe you’re from out of town, and want to get pregnant/have risky fun with someone local to this area? However I’m not into being involved with other men at all, so one on one time with the woman is a must. FFM is open to discussion though. I am open to and excited by the idea of taking pics/videos of our encounters, no faces of course! This is not a must however. Message me if you have any questions or are interested!

Hello, fellow Redditors! Today, I want to delve into an intriguing topic that has sparked discussions for centuries: the Bible's verses regarding men's shaving and dietary restrictions. Let's dive in and explore these passages together.
Leviticus 19:27: "You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard."
This verse from Leviticus has been interpreted by some as a commandment prohibiting men from shaving their beards or trimming the hair on the sides of their heads. While it is essential to consider the historical and cultural context of this passage, it is worth noting that the Bible does not explicitly command men to refrain from shaving altogether. Different interpretations exist, ranging from a literal prohibition to a call for maintaining natural appearances.
Leviticus 11:1-47: Dietary Restrictions
Leviticus 11 outlines dietary laws for the Israelites, specifying which animals are considered clean and can be consumed and which are unclean and should be avoided. The chapter lists various creatures, including certain birds, mammals, and seafood, categorizing them as either permissible or forbidden. These dietary restrictions were given to the Israelites as a part of their religious and cultural practices during that time.
It's important to note that in the New Testament, these dietary restrictions were not explicitly upheld. In Acts 10:9-16 and Mark 7:14-23, Jesus and the apostles clarified that it is not what goes into a person's mouth that defiles them, but rather the intentions of the heart.
As with any biblical interpretation, it is crucial to consider various factors such as historical context, cultural practices, and the overall message of Scripture. Different denominations and individuals may have varying perspectives on the relevance and application of these verses in modern times.
Now, I turn to you, the Reddit community. How do you interpret these biblical passages? Have you encountered differing viewpoints or teachings regarding men's shaving and dietary restrictions? Let's engage in respectful and open-minded discussion, sharing insights and perspectives on these fascinating topics.
TL;DR: The Bible contains verses such as Leviticus 19:27 that some interpret as prohibiting men from shaving their beards and trimming specific hair. Leviticus 11 outlines dietary restrictions for the Israelites. The interpretation of these passages may vary, considering historical context and cultural practices. Let's discuss and share our thoughts on these biblical teachings.
Edit: Thank you all for your contributions to this discussion! It's inspiring to see the diverse interpretations and insights shared. Remember to approach this topic with respect and open-mindedness, as we aim to gain a deeper understanding of these biblical teachings together.

(owing to the reddit character limit, I'm posting this in two parts, but it's one contiguous story)
There are instincts that you develop when you’re a parent. If you don’t have any children it might be a little hard to understand. If you have a toddler, for example, and they’re in the other room and silent for more than a few seconds, there’s a good chance they’re up to no good. I take that back, most of the time they’re doing nothing, but you still have to check. You feel a compulsion to check. I don’t think it’s a learned skill, I think it’s an actual instinct.
Paleolithic parents who didn’t check on their toddlers every few minutes, just to double check that they weren’t being stalked by smilodons were unlikely to have grandchildren and pass on their genes. You just feel you need to check, like getting goosebumps, a compulsion. I suppose it’s the same reason little kids are always demanding you look at them and what they’re doing.
I think that instinct starts to atrophy as your kids grow. They start learning to do things for themselves, and before you know it, they’re after their own privacy, not your attention. I don’t think it ever goes away though. I expect, decades from now, my own grown kids will visit and bring my grandkids with them. And the second I hear a baby crying in the earliest morning hours, I’ll be alert and ready for anything, sure as any old soldier who hears his name whispered in the dark of night.
I felt that alarm just the other day. First time in years. My boy came home from riding bikes with a couple of his friends. I’m pretty sure they worked out a scam where they asked each of their parents for a different new console for Christmas, and now they spend their weekends traveling between the three houses so they can play on all of them.
We all live in a nice neighborhood. A newer development than the one I grew up in, same town though. It’s the kind of place where kids are always playing in the streets, and the cars all routinely do under 20. My wife and I make sure the kids have helmets and pads, and we’re fine with the boy going out biking with his friends, as long as they stay in the neighborhood.
You know, a lot of people in my generation take some weird sort of pride in how irresponsible we used to be when we were young. I never wore a helmet. Rode to places, without telling any adults, that we never should have ridden to. Me and my friends would make impromptu jumps off of makeshift ramps and try to do stupid tricks, based loosely on stunts we’d seen on TV. Other people my age seem to wax nostalgic for that stuff and pretend it makes them somehow better people. I don’t get it. Sometimes I look back and shudder. We were lucky we escaped with only occasional bruises and road burns. It could have gone so much worse.
My son and his buddies came bustling in the front door at about 2 PM on a Saturday. They did the usual thing of raiding the kitchen for juice and his mother’s brownies, and I took that as my cue to abandon the television in the living room for my office. I was hardly noticing the chaos, by this point, it was becoming a regular weekend occurrence. But as I was just leaving, I caught something in the chatter. My boy said something about, “... that guy who was following us.”
He hadn’t said it any louder or more clearly than anything else they’d been talking about, all that stuff I’d been filtering out. Yet some deeper core process in my brain stem heard it, interpreted it, then hit the red alert button. My blood ran cold and every hair on my skin stood at attention.
I turned around and asked “Somebody followed you? What are you talking about?” I wasn’t consciously aware of how strict and stern my voice came out, yet when the jovial smiles dropped off of their faces it was apparent that it had been so.
“Huh?” my son said, his voice high-pitched and talking fast, like when he thinks he’s in trouble and needs to explain. “We thought we saw somebody following us. There wasn’t though. We didn’t really see anybody and we’d just spooked ourselves.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“Nothing? We really didn’t see anybody! Honest! I just saw something out of the corner of my eye! But there wasn’t really nobody there!”
“Yeah!,” said one of his buds. “Peripheral! Peripheral vision! I thought maybe I saw something too, but when I looked I didn’t see anything. I don’t have my glasses with me, but when I really looked I got a good look and there was nothing.”
The three boys had that semi-smiling but still concerned look that this was only a bizarre misunderstanding, but they were still being very sincere. “Were they in a car?”
“No, Dad, you don’t get it,” my boy continued, “They were small. We thought it was a kid.”
“Yeah,” said the third boy. “We thought maybe it was Tony Taylor’s stupid kid sister shadowing us. Getting close to throwing water balloons. Just cause she did that before.”
“If you didn’t get a good look how did you know it was a kid?”
“Because it was small!” my kid explained, though that wasn’t helping much. “What I mean is, at first I thought it was behind a little bush. It was way too small a bush to hide a grown-up. That’s why we thought it was probably Tony’s sister.”
“But you didn’t actually see Tony’s sister?” I asked.
“Nah,” said one of his buds. “And now that I think about it, that bush was probably too small for his sister too. It would have been silly. Like when a cartoon character hides behind a tiny object.”
“That’s why we think it was just in our heads,” explained the other boy, “That and the pole.”
“Yeah,” my son said. “The park on 14th and Taylor?” That was just a little community park, a single city block. Had a playground, lawn, a few trees, and some benches. “Anyway, we were riding past that, took a right on Taylor. And we were talking about how weird it would be if somebody really were following us. That’s when Brian thought he saw something. Behind a telephone pole.”
“I didn’t get a good look at it either,” the friend, Brian, “explained. Just thought I did. Know how you get up late at night to use the bathroom or whatever and you look down the hallway and you see a jacket or an office chair or something and because your eyes haven’t adjusted you think you see a ghost or burglar or something? Anyway, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned there wasn’t anything there.”
“Yeah, it was just like sometimes that happens, except this time it happened twice on the same bike ride, is all,” the other friend explained.
“And you’re sure there was nothing there?”
“Sure we’re sure,” my boy said. “We know because that time we checked. We each rode our bikes around the pole and there was nothing. Honest!”
“Hmmm,” I said. The whole thing seemed reasonable and nothing to be concerned about, you’d think.. The boys seemed to relax at my supposed acceptance. “Alright, sounds good. Hey, just let me know before you leave the house again, alright?” They all rushed to seem agreeable as I left the room, then quickly resumed their snacking and preceded to play their games.
I kept my ear out, just in case. My boy, at least this time, dutifully told me his friends were about to leave. He wasn’t very happy with me when I said they wouldn’t be riding home on their bikes, I was going to drive them home. The other boys didn’t complain, but I suppose it wasn’t their place, so my boy did the advocating for them, which I promptly ignored. I hate doing that, ignoring my kid’s talkback. My dad was the same way. It didn’t help that I struggled to get both of their bikes in the trunk, and it was a pain to get them back out again. My boy sulked in the front seat on the short ride back home. Arms folded on chest, eyes staring straight ahead, that lip thing they do. He seemed embarrassed for having what he thought was an over-protective parent. I suppose he was angry at me as well for acting, as far as he knew, irrationally. Maybe he thought he was being punished for some infraction he didn’t understand.
Well, it only got worse when we got home. I told him he wasn’t allowed to go out alone on his bike anymore. I’d only had to do that once before, when he was grounded, and back then he’d known exactly what he’d done wrong and he had it coming. Now? Well, he was confused, furious, maybe betrayed, probably a little brokenhearted? I can’t blame him. He tramped upstairs to his room to await the return of his mother, who was certain to give a sympathetic ear. I can’t imagine how upset he’ll be if he checks the garage tomorrow and finds I’ve removed his tires, just in case.
I wish I could explain it to him. I don’t even know how.
Where should I even begin? The town?
When I was about my son’s age I had just seen that movie, The Goonies. It had just come out in theaters. I really liked that movie, felt a strong connection. A lot of people do, can’t blame them, sort of a timeless classic. Except I wasn’t really into pirate’s treasure or the Fratellis, what really made me connect was a simple single shot, still in the first act. It’s right after they cross the threshold, and leave the house on their adventure. It was a shot of the boys, from above, maybe a crane shot or a helicopter shot, as they’re riding their bikes down a narrow forested lane, great big evergreen trees densely growing on the side of the road, they’re all wearing raincoats and the road is still wet from recent rain.
That was my childhood. I’ve spent my whole life in the Pacific Northwest. People talk to outsiders about the rain, and they might picture a lot of rainfall, but it’s not the volume, it’s the duration. We don’t get so much rain, it just drizzles slowly, on and on, for maybe eight or nine months out of the year. It doesn’t matter where I am, inside a house, traveling far abroad, anywhere I am I can close my eyes and still smell the air on a chilly afternoon, playing outdoors with my friends.
It’s not petrichor, that sudden intense smell you get when it first starts to rain after a long dry spell. No, this was almost the opposite, a clean smell, almost the opposite of a scent, since the rain seemed to scrub the air clean. The strongest scent and I mean that in the loosest sense possible, must have been the evergreen needles. Not pine needles, those were too strong, and there weren’t that many pines anyway. Douglas fir and red cedar predominated, again the root ‘domination’ seems hyperbole. Yet those scents were there, ephemeral as it is. Also, there was a sort of pleasant dirtiness to the smell, at least when you rode bikes. It wasn’t dirt, or mud, or dust. Dust couldn’t have existed except perhaps for a few fleeting weeks in August. I think, looking back, it was the mud puddles. All the potholes in all the asphalt suburban roads would fill up after rain with water the color of chocolate milk. We’d swerve our BMX bikes, or the knock-off brands, all the way across the street just to splash through those puddles and test our “suspensions.,” meaning our ankles and knees. The smell was always stronger after that. It had an earthiness to it. Perhaps it was petrichor’s lesser-known watery cousin.
There were other sensations too, permanently seared into my brain like grill marks. A constant chilliness that was easy to ignore, until you started working up a good heart rate on your bike, then you noticed your lungs were so cold it felt like burning. The sound of your tires on the wet pavement, particularly when careening downhill at high speed. For some reason, people in the mid-80s used to like to decorate their front porches with cheap, polyester windsocks. They were often vividly colored, usually rainbow, like prototype pride flags. When an occasional wind stirred up enough to gust, the windsocks would flap, and owning to the water-soaked polyester, make a wet slapping sound. It was loud, it was distinct, but you learned to ignore it as part of the background, along with the cawing of crows and distant passing cars.
That was my perception of Farmingham as a kid. The town itself? Just a typical Pacific Northwest town. That might not mean much for younger people or modern visitors, but there was a time when such towns were all the same. They were logging towns. It was the greatest resource of the area from the late 19th century, right up until about the 80s, when the whole thing collapsed. Portland, Seattle, they had a few things going on beyond just the timber industry, but all the hundreds of little towns and small cities revolved around logging, and my town was no exception.
I remember going to the museum. It had free admission, and it was a popular field trip destination for the local school system. It used to be the City Hall, a weird Queen Anne-style construction. Imagine a big Victorian house, but blown up to absurd proportions, and with all sorts of superfluous decorations. Made out of local timber, of course. They had a hall for art, I can’t even remember why, now. Maybe they were local artists. I only remember paintings of sailboats and topless women, which was a rare sight for a kid at the time. There was a hall filled with 19th-century household artifacts. Chamber pots and weird children's toys.
Then there was the logging section, which was the bulk of the museum. It’s strange how different things seemed to be in the early days of the logging industry, despite being only about a hundred years old, from my perspective in the 1980s. If you look back a hundred years from today, in the 1920s, you had automobiles, airplanes, electrical appliances, jazz music, radio programs, flappers, it doesn’t feel that far removed, does it? No TV, no internet, but it wouldn’t be that strange. 1880s? Different world.
Imagine red cedars, so big you could have a full logging crew, arms stretched out, just barely manage to encircle one for a photographer. Felling a single tree was the work of days. Men could rest and eat their lunches in the shelter of a cut made into a trunk, and not worry for safety or room. They had to cut their own little platforms into the trees many feet off the ground, just so the trunk was a little bit thinner, and thus hours of labor saved. They used those long, flexible two-man saws. And double-bit axes. They worked in the gloom of the shade with old gas lanterns. Once cut down from massive logs thirty feet in diameter, they’d float the logs downhill in sluices, like primitive wooden make-shift water slides. Or they’d haul them down to the nearest river, the logs pulled by donkeys on corduroy roads. They’d lay large amounts of grease on the roads, so the logs would slide easily. You could still smell the grease on the old tools on display in the museum. The bigger towns had streets where the loggers would slide the logs down greased skids all the way down to the sea, where they’d float in big logjams until the mills were ready for processing. They’d call such roads “skid-rows.” Because of all the activity, they’d end up being the worst parts of town. Local citizens wouldn’t want to live there, due to all the stink and noise. They’d be on the other side of the brothels and the opium dens. It would be the sort of place where the destitute and the insane would find themselves when they’d finally lost anything. To this day, “skidrow” remains a euphemism for the part of a city where the homeless encamp.
That was the lore I’d learned as a child. That was my “ancestry” I was supposed to respect and admire, which I did, wholeheartedly. There were things they left out, though. Things that you might have suspected, from a naive perspective, would be perfect for kids, all the folklore that came with the logging industry. The ghost stories, and the tall tales. I would have eaten that up. They do talk about that kind of thing in places far removed from the Pacific Northwest. But I had never heard about any of it. Things like the Hidebehind. No, that I’d have to discover for myself.
There were four of us on those bike adventures. Myself. Ralph, my best friend. A tough guy, the bad boy, the most worldly of us, which is a strange thing to say about an eight-year-old kid. India, an archetypal ‘80s tomboy. She was the coolest person I knew at the time. Looking back, I wonder what her home life was like. I think I remember problematic warning signs that I couldn’t have recognized when I was so young, but now raise flags. Then there was Ben. A goofy kid, a wild mop of hair, coke bottle glasses, type 1 diabetic which seemed to make him both a bit pampered by his mother, who was in charge of all his insulin, diet, and schedule, and conversely a real risk taker when she wasn’t around.
When we first saw it…
No, wait. This was the problem with starting the story. Where does it all begin? I’ll need to talk about my Grandfather as well. I’ve had two different perspectives on my Grandfather, on the man that he was. The first was the healthy able-bodied grandparent I’d known as a young child. Then there was the man, as I learned about him after he had passed.
There was a middle period, from when I was 6 to when I was 16, when I hardly understood him at all, as he was hit with a double whammy of both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's. His decline into an invalid was both steep and long drawn out. That part didn’t reflect who he was as a person.
What did I know of him when I was little? Well I knew he and my grandmother had a nice big house and some farmland, out in the broad flat valley north of Farmingham. Dairy country. It had been settled by Dutch immigrants back in the homesteading days. His family had been among the first pioneers in the county too. It didn’t register to me then that his surname was Norwegian, not Dutch. I knew he had served in the Navy in World War II, which I was immensely proud of for reasons I didn’t know why. I knew he had a job as a butcher in a nearby rural supermarket. He was a bit of a farmer too, more as a hobby and a side gig. He had a few cattle, but mostly grew and harvested hay to sell to the local dairies. I knew he had turned his garage into a machine shop, and could fix damn near anything. From the flat tires on my bicycle to the old flat-bed truck he’d haul hay with, to an old 1950s riding lawnmower he somehow managed to keep in working order. I knew he could draw a really cool cartoon cowboy, I knew he loved to watch football, and I knew the whiskers on his chin were very pokey, and they’d tickle you when he kissed you on the cheek, and that when you tried to rub the sensation away he’d laugh and laugh and laugh.
Then there were the parts of his life that I’d learn much later. Mostly from odd passing comments from relatives, or things I’d find in the public records. Like how he’d been a better grandfather than a father. Or how his life as I knew it had been a second, better life. He’d been born among the Norwegian settler community, way up in the deep, dark, forest-shrouded hills that rimmed the valley. He’d been a logger in his youth. Technologically he was only a generation or two from the ones I’d learned about in the museum. They’d replaced donkeys with diesel engines and corduroy roads with narrow gauge rail. It was still the same job, though. Dirty, dangerous, dark. Way back into those woods, living in little logging camps, civilization was always a several-day hike out. It became a vulgar sort of profession, filled with violent men, reprobates, and thieves. When my grandfather’s father was murdered on his front porch by a lunatic claiming he’d been wronged somehow, my grandfather hiked out of there, got into town, and joined the Navy. He vowed never to go back. The things he’d seen out in those woods were no good. He’d kept that existence away from me. Anyways…
Tommy Barker was the first of us to go missing. I say ‘us’ as if I knew him personally. I didn’t. He went to Farmingham Middle School, other side of town, and several grades above us. From our perspective, he may as well have been an adult living overseas.
Yet it felt like we got to know him. His face was everywhere, on TV, all over telephone poles. Everybody was talking about him. After he didn’t return from a friend’s house, everybody just sort of assumed, or maybe hoped, that he’d just gotten lost, or was trapped somewhere. They searched all the parks. Backyards, junkyards, refrigerators, trunks. Old-fashioned refrigerators, back before suction seals, had a simple handle with a latch that opened when you pulled on it. It wasn’t a problem when the fridges were in use and filled with food. But by the 80s old broke-down refrigerators started filling up backyards and junkyards, and they became deathtraps for kids playing hide-and-seek. The only opened from the outside. I remember thinking Tommy Barker was a little old to have likely been playing hide-and-seek, but people checked everywhere anyway. They never found him.
That was about the first time we saw the Hidebehind. Ben said he thought he saw somebody following us, looked like, maybe, a kid. We’d just slowly huffed our way up a moderately steep hill, Farmingham is full of them, and when we paused for a breather at the top, Ben said he saw it down the hill, closer to the base. Yet when we turned to look there was nothing there. Ben said he’d just seen it duck behind a car. That wasn’t the sort of behavior of a random kid minding his own business. Yet the slope afforded us a view under the car’s carriage, and except for the four tires, there were no signs of any feet hiding behind the body. At first, we thought he was pulling our leg. When he insisted he wasn’t, we started to tease him a little. He must have been seeing things, on account of his poor vision and thick glasses. The fact that those glasses afforded him vision as good as or better than any of us wasn’t something we considered.
The next person to disappear was Amy Brooks. Fifth-grader. Next elementary school over. I remember it feeling like when you’re traveling down the freeway, and there’s a big thunderstorm way down the road, but it keeps getting closer, and closer. I don’t remember what she looked like. Her face wasn’t plastered everywhere like Tommy’s had been. She was mentioned on the regional news, out of Seattle, her and Tommy together. Two missing kids from the same town in a short amount of time. The implication was as obvious as it was depraved. They didn’t think the kids were getting lost anymore. They didn’t do very much searching of backyards. The narratives changed too. Teachers started talking a lot about stranger danger. Local TV channels started recycling old After School Specials and public service announcements about the subject.
I’m not sure who saw it next. I think it was Ben again. We took him seriously this time though. I think. The one I’m sure I remember was soon after, and that time it was India who first saw it. It’s still crystal clear in my memory, almost forty years later, because that was the time I first saw it too. We were riding through a four-way stop, an Idaho Stop before they called it that, when India slammed to a stop, locking up her coaster brakes and leaving a long black streak of rubber on a dry patch of pavement. We stopped quickly after and asked what the problem was. We could tell by her face she’d seen it. She was still looking at it.
“I see it,” she whispered, unnecessarily. We all followed her gaze. We were looking, I don’t know, ten seconds? Twenty? We believed everything she said, we just couldn’t see it.
“Where?” Ralph asked.
“Four blocks down,” she whispered. “On the left. See the red car? Kinda rusty?” There was indeed a big old Lincoln Continental, looking pretty ratty and worn. I focused on that, still seeing nothing. “Past that, just to its right. See the street light pole? It’s just behind that.”
We also saw the pole she was talking about. Metal. Aluminum, I’d have guessed. It had different color patches, like metallic flakeboard. Like it’d had been melted together out of scrap.
I could see that clearly even from that distance. I saw nothing behind it. I could see plenty of other things in the background, cars, houses, bushes, front lawns, beauty bark landscape.. There was no indication of anything behind that pole.
And then it moved. It had been right there where she said it had been, yet it had somehow perfectly blended into the landscape, a trick of perspective. We didn’t see it at all until it moved, and almost as fast it had disappeared behind that light pole. We only got a hint. Brown in color, about our height in size.
We screamed. Short little startled screams, the involuntary sort that just burst out of you. Then we turned and started to pedal like mad, thoroughly spooked. We made it to the intersection of the next block when it was Ralph who screeched to a halt and shouted, “Wait!”
We slowed down and stopped, perhaps not as eagerly as we’d done when India yelled. Ralph was looking back over his shoulder, looking at that metal pole. “Did anybody see it move again?’ he asked. We all shook our heads in the negative. Ralph didn’t notice, but of course, he didn’t really need an answer, of course we hadn’t been watching.
“If it didn’t move, then it’s still there!” Ralph explained the obvious. It took a second to sink in, despite the obvious. “C’mon!” he shouted, and to our surprise, before we could react, he turned and took off, straight down the road, straight to where that thing had been lurking.
We were incredulous, but something about his order made us all follow hot on his heels. He was a sort of natural leader. I thought it was total foolishness, but I wasn’t going to let him go alone. I think I got out, “Are you crazy?!”
The wind was blowing hard past our faces as we raced as fast as we could, it made it hard to hear. Ralph shouted his response. “If it’s hiding that means its afraid!” That seemed reasonable, if not totally accurate. Lions hide from their prey before they attack. Then again, they don’t wait around when the whole herd charges. Really, the pole was coming up so fast there wasn’t a whole lot of time to argue. “Just blast past and look!” Ralph added. “We’re too fast! It won’t catch us.”
Sure, I thought to myself. Except maybe Ben, who always lagged behind the rest of us in a race. The lion would get Ben if any of us.
We rushed past that pole and all turned our heads to look. “See!” Ralph shouted in triumph. There was simply nothing there. A metal streetlight pole and nothing more. We stopped pedaling yet still sped on. “Hang on,” Ralph said, and at the next intersection he took a fast looping curve that threatened to crash us all, but we managed and curved behind him. We all came to the pole again where we stopped to see up close that there was nothing there, despite what we had seen moments before.
“Maybe it bilocated,” Ben offered. We groaned. We were all thinking it, but I think we were dismissive because it wasn’t as cool a word as ‘teleport.”
“Maybe it just moved when we weren’t looking,” I offered. That hadn’t been long, but that didn’t mean anything if it moved fast. The four of us slowly looked up from the base of the pole to our immediate surroundings. There were bushes. A car in a carport covered by a tarpaulin. The carport itself. Garbage cans. Stumps. Of course the ever-present trees. Whatever it was it could have been hiding behind anything. Maybe it was. We looked. Maybe it would make itself seen. None of us wanted that. “OK, let’s get going,” Ralph said, and we did so.
I got home feeling pretty shaken that afternoon. I felt safe at home. Except for the front room, which had a big bay window looking out onto the street, and the people who lived across it. There were plenty of garbage cans and telephone poles and stumps that a small, fast thing might hide behind. No, I felt more comfortable in my bedroom. There was a window, but a great thick conical cypress tree grew right in front of it, reaching way up over the roof of the house. If anything, it offered ME a place to hide, and peer out onto the street to either side of the tree. It was protective, as good as any heavy blanket.

I (27F) attended school in the UK. Towards the end of our final year of school, when we turn 18, our schools organise something called a Formal, which I suppose is a bit like a prom without the romantic aspects as you’re not expected to go with anybody, and the idea of promposals generally isn’t something that’s done here.
Nearly 10 years ago, as I was preparing to leave school, I found out that, not only did a boy in my class have a massive crush on me for years, but he was planning one of these massive “promposals” that are often done at proms. He had always been a horrendous bully to me. He would go from calling me hideous and claiming that I would die alone and unloved, to stealing my friend’s phone to get my number, or sneaking up behind me and cutting out strands of my hair that to keep, or going so far as to find my house through my father’s distinctive car.
Naturally, when the day for his “promposal” came along, he came out with his sign in front of the entire school, and I bluntly said no and walked away. I don’t like confrontation or arguments, but I had no intention of sparing his feelings after all he had done, and I was honestly just uncomfortable and wanted to leave. He badgered me until the day I left school for turning him down and being heartless. His friends did the same. I didn’t care.
I recently met one of his old friends in my old town. I went to the business where one of them was working, and he kept bringing this up, saying that my bully had gotten depressed after we left school and hadn’t dated at all because he was embarrassed from the rejection and was still hung up over me. He kept asking me why I felt it was OK to reject him like that over some nasty words, and if I was really that petty. I got sick of it, so I told him. Turns out that, because all of these creepy things had happened within the classroom, he hadn’t seen them, or even heard of them happening. His friends and my other bullies within the class were covering for him. The friend abruptly left without a word, but apparently, the gossip did the rounds.
Now, the friend group is divided in two. Many of those who didn’t know are pissed at him for lying, and pissed that their other friends hid what was happening as they think it went too far. The others are pissed at me for airing his dirty laundry. His parents apparently also know now, and they’re pissed that he had their sympathy through lies, and now know that he practically stalked me, which brings up questions about whether they want him to take over the small farm vs a younger brother. I wonder if I should have just let his friend be mad at me. I’d probably have never seen him again, anyway. I didn’t know that he would tell anyone as he’d never been one for gossip that I knew of, but I also didn’t expect this to potentially ruin the life of someone I haven’t seen for nearly a decade.
AITA for telling his friend the truth about what happened?

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Menopause ,definition, symptoms,causes, effects,

Menopause is that the time that marks the tip of your expelling cycles. It's diagnosed once you've got gone twelve months while not a expelling amount. climacteric will happen in your 40s or 50s, however the common age is fifty one within the u. s..
Menopause could be a natural organic process. however the physical symptoms, like hot flashes, and emotional symptoms of climacteric could disrupt your sleep, lower your energy or have an effect on emotional health. There square measure several effective treatments accessible, from mode changes to internal secretion medical care.
Menopause ,definition, symptoms,causes, effects,

Symptoms

In the months or years leading up to climacteric (perimenopause), you would possibly expertise these signs and symptoms:
• Irregular periods
• Vaginal waterlessness
• Hot flashes
• Chills
• Night sweats
• Sleep issues
• Mood changes
• Weight gain and slowed metabolism
• Thinning hair and dry skin
• Loss of breast fullness
Signs and symptoms, together with changes in expelling will vary among girls. possibly, you may expertise some irregularity in your periods before they finish.

A special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for the fantastical universe.
A grand thanks to u/Liberty-Prime76 for assisting me with proofreading!
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Memory transcription subject: Barlim, Gojid Refugee
Date [standardized human time]: October 11th, 2136
The green, forested hills and plains rolled by as the car drove along the smooth black pavement. The rolling landscape extended as far as the eyes could see, broken up only by more roads, trees, hedges, and the occasional human dwelling, but with a different stylistic architecture to them than I was used to. About an hour had passed since the airplane had landed at the airport. We had gotten about four hours of sleep on the airplane and with this self-driving and legally acquired taxi. We were able to sleep a little bit more.
Well, we really didn’t actually get any sleep at all in the taxi. The drive from the airport to Jaxton’s address was less than thirty minutes. Thank the Protector it was so close! I would have begun plucking quills at this point if I had chosen the other airport, which was more than four hours away, minimum!
Still, I felt icky from the long flight, so I had my eyes closed and my muzzle resting on top of my two paws. My right shoulder was pressed against the side of the door, and I was trying to doze off, but unlike the night prior, I was struggling to fall asleep. My heart was racing with excitement!
What am I going to say? What am I going to do? How is Jaxton going to react? What’s his family like?
I wasn’t able to ask any more pertinent questions, let alone answer them before the car came to an abrupt halt! The car coming to a screeching halt as Telg slammed on the brakes and pointed off to the side with an exclamation. “The SPRAK is that!?”
My attention is easily grabbed by the stopping of the car and my gaze quickly shifts over to Telg. The older man by this point has all of us fully awake, expecting something to happen, but nothing does. All Telg continues to do is point with one of his claws out to the right. Naturally, everyone’s attention shifts to follow his direction.
What? What are those?
It took some thinking to understand what I was seeing; fluffy white clouds, quadrupedal, and bleating! Upon seeing that, my memory was quickly collected “Those are sheep!”
Not all the sheep were white, nor were they all fluffy. Some of their undercoats were showing, hinting at the fact that the humans really did harvest their wool. None of them appeared injured as they meandered their way toward the parked car: Inquisitive about the world around them, but locked behind the fence between the road and their grazing lands.
I felt bad for them, to be trapped behind wooden poles and rolling metal wires, but after a second of thought, and remembering that Earth was a Ki-yu-born hellscape. Another predator, assuming the humans applied their empathy without restraint to their environment, aka, not kill the predators, would gladly come along and try to consume the humans’ clothes producers.
“That’s not what I am pointing at. Look a little bit farther out, pass the sheep!”
It took a second for me to see, for the thing Telg was pointing at wasn’t much taller than the sheep’s height, but upon seeing it. I could feel my paws grow numb.
That’s… That’s a venlil out there!?
There was a rather large venlil sitting out in the field, idly plucking grass, and taking the small strands into her mouth. It wasn’t like she was grazing, but she was just nibbling at it. She didn’t look starved in the slightest. Honestly, she looked pretty well off, muscular enough to probably break a human between her thighs, and she was easily eight-point-five quills tall [5’8”]. Meanwhile, her heavily dark wool coat was heavily shorn. I could actually see the darker flesh underneath with a few small patches of void-black wool. She must’ve been sheared within the last month!
Emotionally though? She looked kinda dead inside. Her other paw had briefly raised up to rub at her eyes, wiping away unseen tears from this distance.
It was a bit of a shock to see! The humans had venlil cattle!? That was the first thought that raced through my mind. It was nice to see that they didn’t eat her, merely stole her wool, which that in of itself still wasn’t great, but the more I looked. The more something just felt… off?
Pragh was the first to gain her bearings. “We can’t just leave the poor girl out there! I-” She sounded like she wanted to say something along the lines of never expecting humanity to do such a thing, but honestly, with left being right and up being down here, anything could be possible!
Regardless, she chose not to speak and opened up her car door, running to the fence line! “Hey there!”
Instead of reacting to Pragh’s words, the venlil reached down and slowly plucked another blade of grass, taking it up to her lips before nibbling down on it. She only did this for a few seconds before a crimson red eye peered up, spotting the waving gojid. Finally, an apathetic and lethargic wave came back from the venlil, paw outstretched.
Pragh tried to jump the fence line but decided against it based on the risk that she may accidentally land on the curious sheep. The baaahing and bleating came in an orchestra as more and more of the quadrupedal imposter venlil came over, by the dozens!
It took nearly a minute of waiting before the venlil got up, and seeing that we weren’t planning on leaving, meandered her way toward us. The sheep parted for her with some resistance, leading to the large venlil having to push a few sheep out of the way. When she finally came closer, I could tell that the poor woman had been crying; eyes puffy and orange, cheeks damp with tears, and a generally sullen attitude and posture. She wasn’t looking great.
Pragh looked left and then right and then gestured for the venlil to come climb over the fence. “Come here. I don’t know what’s going on here, but you shouldn’t be in there with the sheep. We can get you out of there.”
Instead of taking the offered paw, the venlil gently pressed down on it with her own, flicking her ears in sign of disagreement. “I… I must.” Her voice hitched when she tried to speak. She took a few deep breaths before looking right back down. Instead of finishing her statement, she got nuzzled by one of the white-wooled sheep and then proceeded to wrap her paws around it, nuzzling her snout against the imposter venlil. She looked down at it and began rubbing the top of its head.
By this point, Telg, Tack, and I all got out of the car, but only once Telg had it pull off the road. With the sheep semi-distracted by Pragh, the three of us just leaped to the other side of the fence. Immediately, some sheep came over to investigate these newfound intruders, some stayed back, watching with suspicious eyes, and a few fled like actual prey. The brief amount of confusion gives Telg a chance to move closer to the upset venlil.
“Hey, no need to be upset. We can get you out of here. And quit eating grass! You’re not some animal.” It wasn’t that hard for Telg to get closer considering the sheep parted with less resistance compared to the venlil, allowing him to move closer.
“I’m not sure what to think,” Tack finally chimed in quietly, taking a small glance at me. “Venlil cattle?” He rubbed his paw to his muzzle, questioning the situation within his mind. “I mean, a part of me wants to say that the humans had to be good to be true, but there have been so many things that I have gotten wrong that this could be a simple miscommunication.”
“Maybe she lost some sort of bet?” I joke, trying to keep up some level of optimism. “Or maybe, she did something bad, and the humans thought about punishing her by taking her wool?”
“Could there be other venlil being treated like this?”
“Maybe, but this could be just her moping amongst sheep, and the humans just allowed her to be here,” I added with a shrug.
In the brief amount of time that I was distracted, Telg had made his way closer to the stressing venlil. He was close enough to put a paw on the woman, attempting to comfort her. She moved like lightning at the touch. The once-moping venlil grabbed Telg’s wrist, spun her shoulder into his chest, and then proceeded to chuck the gojid male a few quills off to the side! She almost rushed over to deliver a kick to the side of his chest but stopped right before doing so.
Well, that wasn’t expected!
Both Tack and I were tempted to rush over to the flung gojid, but a quick, “I’m ok!” was shouted from Telg. The male gojid easily stepping back up onto his paws rubbing his back and hindquarters from where he hit the ground. “Quite the nasty throw you got there,” he remarked to the void-colored venlil.
“S-sorry,” the venlil’s bleat was barely audible, coming out with a squeak unbefitting for a venlil of such impeccable stature. The woman crouched down low as if trying in vain to hide behind one of the fake venlil, keeping her head above it to keep her eyes watchful, waiting to see if we might retaliate, or if she was simply too shy or embarrassed to speak. “Sorry,” she said again. “I just… I just don’t- I can’t-. My- My mate he…” Again, the venlil was unable to finish her sentence before she started to bawl. She falls to her knees and buries her face into the sheep’s wool, unable to keep herself from crying any longer. “I-it’s all my fault! I- I wa-wasn’t paying attention! I was angry and up-set! And- and- and!” Her paws latched onto the sheep tighter, which just allowed itself to be used as the sad venlil’s sobbing pillow.
The four of us were able to encroach closer onto the venlil, taking cautious steps from all around; Pragh finally climbed over the fence, Tack and I simply moved closer, and Telg took a few ginger steps before delicately placing a paw on the woman’s shoulder. This time, she didn’t have a violent reaction, merely gripping tighter onto the fluffy white quadruped in front of her.
“There there, everything will be alright. Can you tell us what has happened? Maybe we can help?” Telg coos softly into the sad venlil’s ears, gently stroking her back with a single paw. She shook her ears in disagreement and said nothing.
I’m briefly distracted from the venlil by the sound of growling behind me. Swiftly, both Tack and I snap our heads around, spotting a maw of sharp, vicious teeth, and heterochromatic blue-green forward-facing eyes! A dog! It skulks forward, rumbling deeply, and approaching steadily. It must have arrived over the hill following the inquisitive sheep and found us!
“P-Pragh. Telg! We got a dog!” I manage to force out a whine, taking one step back.
I could see that Telg was a little bit too busy to help out with the dog. He was too busy trying to calm down the venlil, who probably knew how to deal with the non-sapient predator. Pragh was just a bit farther past them, and I doubted she knew what to do in the given situation. That just left Tack and I. The younger male took a paw step forward, trying to place himself between the canine and I.
The dog lowered itself, not that it helped blend its black and white fur into the bright green grass, but it still kept up the gazing, adding to the nerves I felt getting fried. Then it barked and charged, leaping and bounding across the grass.
I didn’t have the nerve to fight. I had never fought before, so I turned tail and ran into the ball of sheep. Tack, unsure of how to fight the quadruped, decided against harming the canine and chose to join me within the slowly moving crowd of herbivores. Luckily for us, only the sheep around the edge of the herd moved away from the predator, leaving a healthy chunk of other sheep between us and that… that beast! It continued to sit there, watching, panting, and waiting for one to make a move.
Slowly, it skulked forward once again, taking step after careful step forward on silent paws. It’s menacing gaze swapping between the nearest sheep and us. This action was making more sheep move away from it. Our herd of protection slowly traveling along the fence line. It was just one predator, but if the sheep wisely feared it. Well, who were we to argue?
The one problem was the big, void-colored venlil, that Telg and Tack had to partially pick up. Her entire body had gone slack, choosing not to resist the two males picking her up. They had to be really careful not to cut her with their claws and quills, but they managed to get it to work.
We followed along with the newfound herd until it came to a stop, stopping only because our chasing predator stopped, sitting down content again to let the herbivores graze. We probably sat there for twenty minutes, having been herded a hundred feet away from the parked self-driving taxi, which was just longingly out of reach. Tack tried to sneak out through the northern end of the ball, but as fast as that idea had come. The predator was faster, encircling the length of hundreds of sheep only to sit down on the other side, drilling in its deep blue-green gaze.
Even with Telg working to distract the dog by traveling to the south end. The dog would zip around the sheep with blinding speed, coming to a sharp stop just before either of the two males. Tack even got nipped, letting out a pained yelp as it caught his ankle!
“Lacey! Lacey, come here girl! What did you see?” A lone human had crested the ridge line. Her hair was a bright shade of orange and a bit disheveled. She had two eyes that were cut through us like grass: A deep, piercing green that one would see from an untamed forest! Her skin was a dainty pale hue, and she was remarkably short compared to most of the humans that I have seen. She looked slightly out of breath judging from the fact that her face was flushed with exertion, and she walked with a little bit of a limp. Her walking came to a halt once her binocular vision focused on the four gojid surrounded by sheep!
Her waving hand slowly lowered itself down and her once brimming smile gave way to a look of confusion. I knew it wasn’t anger because her face didn’t scrunch up, nor was it joy because her lips weren’t curled up, so the emotion had to be confusion! There were also other emotions that could have been, but if I were in her situation. I probably would have been very confused to see some aliens I wasn’t expecting
Though, it wasn’t just a human, but right behind her followed a venlil with blonde wool and equally green eyes! Like this black venlil, he was as shaved as a venlil could possibly be, but upon noticing us, his reaction was to immediately bloom! He said something to the human that we couldn’t quite hear, but if I had to guess he looked like he wished to turn back around. His lack of wool meant that his… Telg was right about carrots.
The human slowly made her way to us with a light jog, leaving the venlil behind, and whistling sharply in a way that made the dog spin around and come after her. She knelt down and the dog barreled into her almost at full speed, causing the human to fall over. We then watched in stunned silence as the dog licked the human’s face repeatedly, dragging a long, broad, and slobbery tongue across the woman’s face. “Down Lacey! Bad girl! Haha! Stop! Ah, I got important- stuff to tend to!” The human’s tone was not indicative of anger, and she had to put some effort into stopping the dog in its frantic barrage of licks.
Now with the distraction merely yipping and barking at the human’s ankles. She cleared the rest of the distance back to us with relative ease. “Hello there,” she said with such blatant simplicity that it felt almost comical. “What are you all doing out here?”
Pragh was the first out of our group to respond, pushing forward until she reached the edge of the crowd of sheep. “We are rescuing that poor venlil from your cattle farm! You might-”
Pragh was swiftly cut off from speaking as the human frantically waved a hand. “I did not take her against her will. She’s out here because she’s upset. Something that’s partially my fault-”
Whatever the human was about to say, she was unable to finish her statement before Pragh jumped right back on her with a verbal assault. “Then where’s her wool? What about that other venlil I just saw? Who’s this venlil? What about that one? Was that her mate? Who are you?”
All the while, the human was folding her hands up in a gesture I knew to be surrender amongst humans. Eventually, Pragh paused, taking a breath and giving the human enough time to lay her case out in front of us. “Let me answer your questions in order. Ok? I took her wool as a sign of an apology. That other venlil was Trivi… He’s my mate.”
There was a pause, but no shocked gasps from us, or anything said from the human. It was as if she was expecting at least some degree of pushback, but got none.
“Your mate?” Pragh finally got out with a look of bewilderment. “But then why was he shaved?”
Yeah, why was he shaved if he owed no apology?
“Well, that’s simple. I asked if he wanted to join in on the fun as I was calling it. He shrugged and said to throw him in. His coat needs to grow a bit more if you couldn’t tell.” It was hard to tell if the human was flustered or still out of breath, for both had similar symptoms. “Anyways, that’s Tova over there. There was an issue between her and her mate recently, so she’s been hanging out with the sheep as of late. She wanted some time to herself.” The human then gestured to her canine pack member. “And this here is Lacey, she’s not my dog.” The woman reached down and petted the dog on the head. “She belongs to the Wellingtons.”
Wellington? Jaxton’s last name was Wellington! We must be almost there.
“Wait, so Jaxton lives here?”
The human is briefly caught off by my question. Her green irises light up brightly, opening up widely for a split moment. “Yeah, why do you ask?” There was a brief pause. “Wait, don’t tell me you four came all the way over from Dawsonville!?” She held up a hand before any of us could answer her question. “No, I know you did. I don’t know how you all got here so quickly. He just came back the other day.” She just shook her head in disappointment. “At least no one got hurt, it seems. Still, that was ridiculously stupid, why would you even think to do that?”
Another awkward silence fills the air for the briefest of moments before the black venlil works her way up to her paws. She maneuvers herself over to the short human, and just… drops herself onto the small human. Arms outstretched, landing on the human’s shoulders, and then just, laying atop the human in what felt like dramatic moping. Though, judging from the venlil’s expression, it was anything but moping.
“There there, Tova. Deep breaths. Everything is going to be alright.” The human brushed the venlil between her ears, giving a few small strokes. For a moment, it was as if the human forgot we were there, focusing on the void-colored venlil. It took a while, but her attention soon returned to us. “Oh, and where are my manners? My name is Arwen, Arwen Conway. It’s a pleasure to meet you, and this big venlil is Tova, and… Oh, there you are!” Not far up the hill was that blonde venlil, hiding awkwardly behind a pair of sheep. He waved at us from afar.
“Hello,” he shouted. “Names Trivi!” He moved his way closer using the sheep to hide his embarrassment.
“Oh, so you two are mates? Judging by Arwen’s appearance and your equipme-” Telg was not able to finish his sentence, falling silent as Tack decided to place his paw on Telg’s muzzle once again. Though, judging by the sudden bloom that swept across the two individuals’ faces… It was safe to say Telg threaded right through the bramble bush.
Even my ears went a little bit blue. I could still recall what Pragh and I saw the other day.
“Of course, humans and venlil would be perfect for each other! ” I could hear Telg saying within my mind.
“I uh, that’s mate business.” Trivi stammered, quietly lowering himself down behind one of the sheep. “And don’t pester humans on their mate stuff. It’s not really something they enjoy talking about. Unless it is with family, friends, or their partners, but mostly their partners.”
Arwen, equally red to Trivi’s orange, nodded with agreement. “Yeah, let’s change the subject. I’d rather not faint with a venlil about to crush me. Tova? Tova? Can one of you help me? She’s really heavy*!* Ah!” As soon as Arwen managed to say that, her limbs finally gave way, resulting in her getting crushed under the big venlil! Though, judging by the fact that the venlil was firmly latched onto the human. I had a sneaking suspicion that’d we’d probably spend the latter part of an hour trying to separate the two, then look for Jaxton.
After a small amount of encouragement from Trivi, the four of us moved closer to Arwen, ignoring the dog’s barks and yaps.
I could feel anxiety brewing down within me as I thought over a question I was having. “Can you point me toward Jaxton’s home? I assume it isn’t that far if you’re out here, right?” I was awkwardly rubbing two of my opposing claws together, waiting for Arwen to answer. Tack and Telg were once again trying to pick up the big, moping venlil.
“Can’t wait, huh? You must be the ring leader then?” Arwen’s little guess wasn’t right or wrong, so I merely shrugged in response. “Just over the hill and less than a mile if you keep walking. I assume- Hey! You can still get lost if you’re not careful!”
Maybe it wasn’t the wisest move to begin running up the short hill, but being so close to my goal. I felt my limbs have a second wind and an urge to keep moving, to keep pushing. I just didn’t want to stop, not a mere mile from Jaxton!
Almost there! Not much farther!
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I filled my at home acrylic nails last week and they are already lifting. I can't stand them getting stuck in my hair. I use alcohol prep pads before starting, the nail primer, everything but they still lifted. Any tips/tricks? When I filled them I removed all the previous lifting with a cuticle cutter. Should I cut off the lifting and fill them again, remove all and start over, or is there something I can do to keep them on but seal in the lifting, or a different brand? Very much appreciated! (Using Kiss Complete Salon Acrylic Kit)

Brace yourselves, this is gonna be a long one.
Table of Contents
1…… The Main Goal
2…… What I’m Seeking
3…… Personality
4…… Interests
5…… Physical Characteristics (with pics)
6…… Expectations of You
7…… Living Situation
8…… Deal Breakers
9…… Closing Remarks
(1)
The Main Goal:
Well if you’re browsing this subreddit then much like me, you were alone this weekend and I’m sure you’d like to change that as much as me. I won’t lie, I am going through a rough part of my life right now. It’s difficult for me to find the energy for anything at the moment and I’m just really seeking affection in general, anything that will give me a push. I don’t want to be that person who brings everyone down but I could really use someone to talk to right now. I’d really like to find someone who’s similar to me so much to the point that we do everything together and talk about everything while not having to pretend to be interested. I want someone with whom we can mutually spew our emotions onto and have those feelings reciprocated. Not an emotional punching bag, but an emotional teddy bear to hug and cuddle until everything feels better as many times as we need. There’s people who I’m sure have told you the same, they’ll be there no matter how many times you need the support, no matter how many times the insecurities and bad thoughts come back but they don’t mean it. I will be the exception, I’m not so ignorant to think some nice words and tales of relating to you will magically forever heal whatever ails you then get mad when you seek the same support again. Mental ailments are rarely temporary and I don’t care about someone because they’re perfect, caring about someone means being there no matter how many times they need you to be. It doesn’t feel like a chore, it doesn’t get old, and it never will.
(2)
(2.a)
What I'm Seeking:
I will upfront let you know if I’m clicking better with someone else or if you’re the one, I’m not here to tread the sea of fish or keep my options open, I’m here for one singular person.
(2.b)
Relationship:
A relationship is difficult for me right now, it’s been nearly half a year since I got out of my last relationship and the reasons for it ending are partially responsible for how I’ve been feeling and why it’s so hard for me to seek the comfort I so desperately crave. I will tell you about it but for the sake of not treating the entirety of the internet as my therapist, it’ll be in private. I really need the comfort of intimacy and the warmth of someone who cares. I'm not going to feel better if I just sulk and don’t move on. This is my attempt to get better, I’ll admit I’m not great right now and I don’t expect you to be either. If we can help each other heal, then I’d be more than happy :) A relationship isn’t just being there for when someone’s at their best. Even if a relationship is hard at the moment, I do want a life partner and I don’t want to be alone. Things aren’t going to get easier without you so I don’t want to hesitate. I view my other as an equal, I don’t like categorizing us into specific roles. We take care of each other and treat each other how we like to be treated, whatever that is, it's as simple as that. I don't care if you're "successful" or not, living simple lives with our days filled with love is the ultimate measure of success to me.
(3)
Personality:
(3.a)
On the Surface:
As you can tell I can be rather… stoic but that’s largely due to my current stressors, I truthfully am goofy and fun loving but I just can’t find it in me right now. I want to return to that but without someone to light up my world it’s been difficult to just have fun and enjoy stuff. I’m definitely more introverted, you won’t catch me at any parties or really outside at all. I definitely prefer being home though the occasional outing is not out of the question and one day I’d like to travel to other countries because I think that kind of perspective is important.
(3.b)
The Core of My Being:
I like being a spectator to it all and if we bear witness to humanity burning or its miraculous recovery, I want to watch it with you. I enjoy watching humanity advance, less so when it devolves but I want to watch it to the end nonetheless. I’m both a realist and someone who lives with my head in the clouds dreaming of scenarios or worlds that don’t exist. I’m saying that I enjoy a good narrative and can suspend my disbelief to enjoy something but you won’t catch me refusing vaccines or ignoring blatant facts for the sake of some pseudo science or witch doctor’s remedy. I’m an atheist but I do not rule out existence after death, not because I’m agnostic but because due to the nature of potentially infinite time at some point after how many googol years with a googol amount of 0s after that, something’s bound to replicate your consciousness perfectly at some point. It’s actually a really fascinating topic I like talking about. If infinite time and infinite possibilities exist, does non existence exist? Though that’s an awfully existentially dreadful thought process considering the ramifications of infinite existence and infinite possibilities during said infinite existence. I would say I’m confidently left leaning and I don’t think I could truly get along with anyone right leaning, at least America’s definition of right leaning. Left and right seems to have just become; do people deserve to suffer or do they deserve to live good lives? Being political is not something I expected to become but how can you not be when crimes against human rights are being passed on a daily basis and at the end of the day, everything’s political. Oftentimes I imagine the perfect moment as relaxing with my significant other playing games or cuddling in a cold room under blankets.
I value that special someone above all of the existential thoughts, the bad of the world, the good of the world, they practically become my world. So many worries wash away when I’m with them. I don’t know if that’s the defense mechanism my brain created to not feel bad 24/7 but if it is, I’m currently without it.
(3.c)
Insecurities:
I talk of philosophy and politics here but really I spend most of my time just playing games, watching stuff, and trying to not be sleep deprived. I’m also nowhere near as well spoken, heck sometimes I feel like my speech is broken. I won’t claim to be something I’m not, I sit at home while I complain about the world doing nothing about it wishing I had someone here with me. I’m not noble nor do I really want to be, I have morals I uphold but much like most other hypocrites I acknowledge that my comfortable life is built on the suffering of others without doing anything about it. Why? My sleep problems? Am I depressed? Is that why I have no energy to do anything? Do I just think nothing I could do could help? I can’t nail it down myself, maybe it’s a mix of everything, maybe I’m just a bad person. I have always told myself that if I had wealth I would help people but if I get that kind of wealth will I just become a wealth hoarder who tries to justify my riches as something I earned rather than something given to me through incredibly lucky circumstances? If I do help people is it because I’m a good person or out of guilt? Will I die alone? I feel like I drive everyone away with my clinginess, I get paranoid often and need reassurance often. It’s something I want to work on, something I’ve been trying to work on. Hearing that someone cares about me just never gets old. I value self awareness even if it’s painful.
(3.d)
Socializing:
I’m definitely a socially anxious/awkward mess, especially around strangers. I do feel a large amount of anxiety in public, people can’t tell by looking at my face since I kind of go stone faced in an attempt to block everything out but yeah you’ll notice that if we go out in public. Growing up my pediatrician said I was probably autistic, never got a formal diagnosis so that’s just great. But yeah that explains why I can’t make eye contact with people, I kinda just stare at the ground and avoid their gaze at all costs. A lot of these social struggles go away to a great degree once I know you for a bit but yeah I apologize for how terrible I am at socializing at first. Don’t let my social struggles fool you though, I love cuddling and being close with my person.
(3.e)
Sexuality:
I am a heterosexual male, though I’m not very masculine like at all. I may even be a bit feminine sometimes. Not that I believe any activity or manner of acting belongs to a gender but I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m definitely super affectionate and love it when my partner is too. I am open to dating demi people but I do have a libido so I don't think asexual would work out.
(4)
Interests:
(4.a)
Video Games:
As stated before, I do spend a lot of my time playing video games. It’s been hard lately with me having no energy but I really do want to play more games and have a good time playing them with you! I primarily play on PC though I do have a switch. I’m primarily into platform fighters, roguelikes, open world, survival, and sandbox games. As for single player story games, I enjoy watching them through twitch or youtube but for the most part I don’t play them myself. I’d watch you play them though!
Here’s a list of games we can play:
-Minecraft (Java)
-Risk of Rain 2
-Gunfire Reborn
-Roboquest
-7 Days to Die
-Phasmophobia
-Rust
-Unturned
-Bloons TD 6
-Platform fighters: Super Smash Bros. Melee, Slap City, Multiversus, Flash Party, Fraymakers
Whatever you want to play I’ll give it a shot! I will say that League bores me to death but I’ll play it for you :) I try to avoid MMOs, not because I don’t like them but because of how addicted I can get to them. I enjoy learning games in-depth so MMOs can be a fast track to addiction.
I recently got Kerbal Space Program 2 and ehhh not really worth it right now but hopefully later it will be? I’m super excited for Tears of the Kingdom! In the far off future I’m excited for Rivals of Aether 2 which is a platform fighter releasing in 2024, let me know of your most anticipated releases and I’ll see if I could play them with you!
Also I never got into FPS games but I could totally see myself playing like CoD with you or Escape From Tarkov. Any FPS really, I’m down.
I am a fan of Pokemon but with how things have been lately I don’t know how long that will last. Pixelmon is a common Pokemon mod I play for Minecraft if you want to play that! Also if I say I want to play something with you I mean it but there are often times when no matter how much I want to I'm just drained and can do little more than lay in bed so please don't think I'm making an excuse.
(4.b)
Science:
I really enjoy keeping up with the latest advances in pretty much everything, it could be biology, technology, astronomy, anything! I love seeing progression and I love talking about it! Really I could go on and on about what I’m obsessing about that day. I particularly love technology, ask me for my laptop specs I dare you. When I was little I always wanted to be a scientist of any kind but then insomnia and fear of college stuff hit me like a truck aaaand that’s the end of that dream.
(4.c)
Anime:
You got me, I like anime but I’d like to think my tastes are benign.
Here’s some of my favorites I can list from the top of my head:
- To Your Eternity
- Vinland Saga
- Spice and Wolf
- Re:Zero
- Mob Psycho
- Dr. Stone
- Attack on Titan
- Spy x Family
- My Hero Academia
- Ranking of Kings
- Demon Slayer
Okay I can go on and on but I will say I don’t like pointless fan service and the spamming of cliche anime moments. I mostly enjoy action and anything well animated if it doesn’t have a potato story. Heck Demon Slayer could be my top 3 out of season 2’s animation alone. I don’t watch slice of life often or romance but I would with you!
(4.d)
Misc:
I’m not going to go on and on about the tiniest little things when the main ones are covered but I’ll watch pretty much any show with you and anything really. I like random youtube videos that explain some kind of lore or mystery, sometimes mini documentaries too.
As for food I looove sushi and I’m a sucker for fast food. Okay and candy, definitely candy.
I used to play tennis but haven’t really had the opportunity nor friends to play it with and I’m way too socially anxious to seek it out. Also I will say that when we move to something like discord I type waaaay more casually. I’m not going to expect long paragraphs back and forth like we’re writing English papers for each other, I do enjoy long conversations but seriously don’t worry about having to put the utmost effort into every response, I just like making good first impressions I guess.
(5)
(5.a)
My Physical Characteristics:
I’m 5’8 (172cm), 128 pounds (58kg), with curly brown hair and blue eyes. I like keeping my hair long in the winter and cutting it in the summer. I’m pretty slim in general so if you’re looking for someone large, that’s not me. I don’t work out but my work is pretty physical so at least I’m not totally inactive. I don’t have the urge to work out or gain muscle but I do want to maintain my slim figure so if I start losing control of that I’ll work out. I like to keep my face shaved because I don’t think I look good with a beard/mustache so if you’re into those I apologize. I have an average amount of body hair? I’d prefer to be completely shaved but it’s easy to lose motivation with that battle, if you prefer shaved then I’d have no problem complying. Anyways here’s what I look like: https://imgur.com/a/MZZgf2t
(5.b)
My Physical Preferences:
Having physical preferences makes me feel shallow, if I could make myself not have them I would but unfortunately that’s now how that works. I don’t care if you’re shorter or taller than me and I don’t care if you weigh more or less than me. All I ask is that you’re slim-average weight. I would never ask for someone to be something I’m not. I don’t care about tattoos or piercings.**(6)Expectations of You (Relationship Only):**I am not looking for someone “exciting” or someone to “keep me on my toes” I’m not looking for someone to cater to my every whim or anything like that. I don’t care if you’re “boring” or if you aren’t “successful”. I know it’s a common thing for people to not want a “boring” relationship and to seek something argumentative or something with constant challenges but I just want to be with you. During the exciting times, the boring times, and everything in-between, all of it will be great with you! Maybe we do argue sometimes or maybe there will be challenges but that will never be something I purposefully seek out and I don’t want that to be something you seek out either. I will not play tricks on you and I will not play mind games, I expect the same from you. We all have personal measures of success we may or may not have lived up to but what I care about most is our commitment to each other. If we have each other we can get through tough times, near the ends of our lives I want us to look back and feel that this life together was worth more than anything. That’s not saying I want us to be haphazard, I don’t want us to make poor decisions for the sake of yolo and I want us to always be rational, especially with each other. I want you to be someone I can trust to make decisions and weigh the options with a level head, I’ll try my best to live up to the same for you. Most of all I want empathy, understanding, someone to feel the utmost comfort and trust in.
(7)
Living Situation:
Currently my life is pretty relaxed, I work 3 times a week as a night shift stocker. I currently live in a 2 bedroom apartment with my roommate but we’re looking to move into someplace larger by the end of the year if everything works out. The internet is weirdly great for Ohio too like I have fiber and later this year we’re supposed to be getting dedicated fiber so that’s neat. I’m not attached to Ohio so the ultimate goal living location wise is probably moving to a country that won’t send you into a lifetime of dealing with the repercussions from one medical emergency.
(8)
Deal Breakers:
Might as well make this simple and make it a list.
- Anti-vaxxers
- Unironically believing astrology
- Right wingers
- Hard drugs (occasional 420 and alcohol is fine, may even join you)
- Wanting children, there was a time when I was younger when I wanted children but with the state of the word that’s a definite no and I feel like I wouldn’t be able to handle the stress. I’d love a stress free life with as much time with you as possible.
- Homophobic
- Transphobic
- Racist
- Super Religious
- Don’t be a bigot and don’t deny facts.
(9)
Closing Remarks:
Well you made it, I was thinking that finding someone I’d be willing to put a lifetime of effort into at least required this much effort. If I think of anything more I’ll update the post. Also about timezones, it really doesn’t matter where in the world you are. I don’t have a sleep schedule and I have most of the week off from work so it really doesn’t matter.
I request that in your response you do put effort into it, it doesn’t have to be anywhere near as long as this but at least enough so I know that you read this and enough about you so I know why you saw potential compatibility. I will seriously read all of it and respond the best I can. I do also request a pic included in your response (sfw please) or one soon after we start talking to prove identity, I’ll send identity proving pics too. As long as this post is up, you can send a reply!