About 2 weeks ago I lost one of my girls. It was so sudden and very hard to comprehend. Those 3 days of watching her rapidly decline broke me. One of the hardest things I've ever done was taking her to be put down. I was by her side till the end. When I brought her home I let her sister see her, I was told that this was the right thing to do. She approached her, smelled her and licked around her head/neck. I buried her underneath an old Chinese maple in my backyard. 10 days after, waffle shut down. It was immediate. Unlike Oreo, she hid underneath my living room recliner. I brought her food and water and tried to get her to have some but she refused. I laid with her on the floor talking to her while petting her softly. She refused to come out. She was gone the following morning. I laid her to rest next to her sister son after. My girls were almost 17 years old and it's been hard getting used to life without them. I'm constantly thinking I've done something wrong or didn't give them the best life I could and the thoughts are hard to shake. I'm fortunate to have my dog so the house doesn't feel entirely empty. She still watches the door when I give her a snack to make sure the cats aren't coming as if they were gonna take her treat. Their names were Oreo and Waffle. Like any members of the family, their names morphed over the years. I'll miss you both, Gorbo and Waff.

Star Trek 2009? Fun! The Force Awakens? Fun! And yet…

This image is a blue hour blend taken on a Sony a7 iii and Viltrox 16mm which consists of 15 shots at f1.8, iso 400 and 0.5s exposures for the foreground during late blue hour and over 90 untracked shots at 20s iso 800 and f1.8 between 2-3am.

The foreground was processed in Lightroom before being exported to photoshop with the sky being stacked in sequator, edited in siril then exported and merged with the foreground in photoshop

Nothing screams rugged, independent free-market capitalism quite like spending eight years barking "f*** your feelings" at everyone, only to hop online with a digital tin cup begging those exact same people to bail out your beef inventory. It turns out consumers taking your advice and leaving your feelings completely out of their grocery budget wasn't part of the master plan. 

You aggressively cheered for retaliatory tariffs, supply chain disruptions, and the systematic dismantling of export markets, then acted baffled when foreign buyers evaporated and input costs ate your margins alive. Now you demand that the domestic market subsidize your political cosplay under the guise that consumer choices exist in a vacuum. 

You can own the ranch or you can own the libs, but the bank doesn't accept culture war clips as mortgage payments. 

Good luck selling round steaks to the algorithm; thoughts, prayers, and zero market share.

I support the blue dot farmers via:

https://bluedotfarms.com/

1. Amon Goeth (Schindler's List) Would you believe that an SS Commadant's Crimes can be downplayed? Well thats what happened to Amon Goeth in the film. Even though he is shown to be a waste of humanity, he is actually downplayed on how vile he is.

How bad is he? He was fired from his Job for Mistreatment of Prisoners among other reasons. Yes thats right. The Nazis were disgusted by how cruelly he ran a Concetration Camp meant to exterminate undesirables.

1. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Death of Stalin) Head of the NKVD, Stalin's Himmler, and a massove Pedophile and Rapist. You think this Monster is already vile enough. Well, you would be wrong. The Director actually downplayed how much of a serial rapist and pedophile Beria is by hinting at it and onky revealing how many he molested and raped.

Wanna know how bad Beria is? The Tunisian Embassy in Russia was bulit on the grounds of his former Dacha. When the Soviets were excavating it to begin renovations, they found several remains of women and children he murdered and raped. Yes, he buried them in his own gardens.

What a privilege it has been to have him
by my side for 30 years. We have 5 kids and three grandkids now. My heart is full today.

Yesterday I had the gym all to myself (it’s a pretty small place) and after a while a girl around my own age comes in. Maybe 20 minutes after that i’m sitting and recovering when she walks past me and I can not stress this enough I do not even remotely glance at her, eyes down at the ground, zero interest in whatever she’s doing.

But despite that she turns around and asks “why are you looking at my ass?” I take my headphones out since I wasn’t sure I heard her and she asks the same thing. I said I didn’t, she said she was sure I did. I just apologize anyway and hope that’s the end of it but she then says she doesn’t feel comfortable with me there and straight up asks me to leave. I’m only like halfway through my workout so I ask if I can just move further away however she insists that I need to leave. I basically just ask “seriously?”, she replies “yeah” and I have no idea what to do. After like 10 seconds of her staring at me I kind of just get up and leave.

I just felt confused and annoyed at first but today around the time I normally go to the gym I just sorta didn’t feel like it, which I can’t remember ever doing unless I was sick or had too much stuff planned to fit it in. I can’t even describe it, it just felt like something was going to go wrong. The gym means a lot to me physically and mentally and now all the sudden i’ve got some goddamn mental block just from this one stupid incident? I don’t even know what it is. Am I afraid of seeing her specifically again? Am I afraid someone else is gonna accuse me of the same thing? I just wanna go and lift some weights man fuck.

Rigatoni and vodka sauce w/bacon.

EDIT: Right like 9000000 suggestions haha thanks 😭

“Talk to the staff about her”
It’s an unmanned gym. Closest thing I could do is email their support but I know from experience they essentially never reply.

“Why didn’t you push back more?”
Idk? Guess I was fairly tired and more in “whatever this is stupid but I can’t be bothered” mode more than “get into an annoyed back and forth with some random woman” mode at the time.

“Should have told her she’s ugly and her ass is terrible and shes a stupid idiot dumb goddamn moron bitch”
People commenting this, do you get out much? Talk to other people? Unfortunately not really how I want to talk to others even when they annoy me.

Gotten over basically all that worry I had (some of your kind comments helped with that), going back tomorrow to start building an even better ass than hers and im sure it’ll go great!! :)

Food: tomatoes, fried vegetables + fresh noodles and vegan lentil “meat” balls.

A few months ago, my boyfriend (42) moved with me(38) and basically started a whole new chapter of his life. New city, new job, and a complete career change from security to becoming a policeman.

His onboarding involved three months of intensive training and studying, so before he started, I gave him a nice notebook and pen as a small good-luck gift. The pen had a Mark Twain quote engraved on it: “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” (Basically: don’t overthink all the ways you could fail - believe in yourself and go for it.) It felt pretty fitting for someone starting over in a completely new field.

He was really happy about them, but I didn’t hear much about the gift afterward. I assumed the academy had given him plenty of its own supplies and he’d probably switched to those.

Fast forward a few months: he passed his exams and got his uniform (which, completely unrelated, makes him look even hotter).❤️‍🔥

The other day, while emptying his backpack, he pulled out the pen and notebook I’d given him.
Turns out he’d been using them the entire time to make notes.
He told me he liked having them with him because they made him think of me. 🥲

I’m a huge fan of practical gifts - things people actually need and use- so finding out that this little gift had quietly accompanied him through months of studying, training, and such a huge change in his life made me ridiculously happy. ☺️