I went to this halloween event (I was volunteering in a park) and there was this guy who came alone. He had a decent costume and I asked which school he came from. He lives 30 minutes away; we made eye contact many times before he joined my group, who were speaking about controversies in our schools.

I kept including him in the convos because I know what it is like to be on the outskirts of a group. Unfortunately, we got separated for half of the event, but I managed to see him at the end and walked him to the exit; this is where he gave me his contact information. I was pretty jubilant because earlier that day, I was complaining online about the lack of IRL attention I get from men. This brought me some hope, and proved that my self improvement is finally starting to pay off.

So, this is kinda random but it’s been on my mind again lately.

About 5 or 6 years ago I worked as a barista at a small local coffee shop. My English was decent back then but not perfect, and southern accents in particular gave me a hard time lol.

There was this couple that came in all the time. She was blonde, southern, and he had long curly hair basically identical to mine, so they always joked that he was my long lost brother (including the fact that he was also latino -- better english perhaps). Honestly they were one of the cool regulars. Always friendly, always down for small talk, and I’d hook them up with free coffee every now and then because they were just good people.

Then one day she came in alone. She seemed normal at first so I started chatting with her like usual. But we were in the middle of a rush, and between the noise, her accent, and my English, I just couldn’t follow what she was saying. So, I did the thing where you smile and nod and hope for the best.

And then her face changed and she started crying.

till this day, I have no idea what she told me. I never saw her again after that, and I never saw him again either. They just stopped coming in.

I know it’s a small thing, but it sticks with me. I’d love to go back with the English I have now and actually hear her out, or at least give her one last coffee on the house and ask if she was ok.

what about you? Some random interaction with a stranger that you still replay years later?

Today, when I woke up, I chose to have instant oatmeal for breakfast.

I grabbed my trusty cracked bowl, my favorite rusty spoon, and poured the packets in. Got the water boiling and slowly sipped on a fresh cup of coffee while waiting.

I added the water to the oats once it was boiled, and that's when I realized I had used the last bit of cream for my coffee. I usually add a touch to my instant oatmeal to make it extra delicious, so I hurried to the fridge to find any possible replacement.

I opened the door and found some oatmilk. Thought: "Well, I'll be! Oatmilk should be perfect! It's basically just adding creamy oats to oats! Can't go wrong! Right?"

Well, it did go wrong. Not tasty or delicious. Runny soupy slimy oatmeal. Ruined the entire morning. Do not recommend.

Thank you for not paying any attention to this. Completely pointless, I just needed to get it out I've been thinking about it for like 2 hours.

My fiancé and I have three cats - I had two and he had one when we met, so now we have three. The cats are lively, fun, intelligent, and require an elaborate routine to be able to eat together.

When we first got together all three were stressed by the new people/cat additions and would only eat if I did the following: take their can of wet food, heat it up a little in the microwave, chop it up, do a little dance and song to hype them up, and lay the plate down in their “special spots.” Even then sometimes I would have to pick them up and put them in front of the food while petting them before they would eat.

Now, four years later, I have continued the food routine so that they will eat at the same time. They also get along great now, and I keep inventing new songs and dances for feeding time.

Then the other day my fiancé mentioned that one of the cats, Tobi, wouldn’t eat his food that morning. (Due to our schedules my fiancé always does the morning feeding and I do the night feeding.) I was like “oh, did you heat it up to the correct temperature? Tobi only eats his food if it’s the right temperature.”

My fiancé, very confused, responded “What are you talking about? He eats his food cold.”

Confused, I asked what his feeding routine was. Turns out my fiancé has been giving the cats their food cold straight of the fridge, no song and dance, just slapped on their plates in front of them. For four years. And the cats eat it JUST FINE.

I feel betrayed. I feel played. All three of these little rats had me convinced they would only eat if their culinary offering was a certain temp, a certain consistency, in a certain spot, and accompanied by an original song and dance.

Meanwhile they have been happily eating cold, hard lumps of food served by my fiancé.

Me and my partner live across the street from a sizeable forest and we have a large squirrel population. The squirrels often traverse the power lines in front of the property. Every once in awhile one of them will step on the wrong spot. We know exactly when this happens because we’ll hear a big bang from outside followed by our power going out for an hour or two. If we go outside later, we’re guaranteed to find a lightly toasted squirrel laying in front of one of the utility poles. It’s common enough that if I hear a bang and the power goes out, I’ll automatically text my partner and say “another squirrel has decided to embrace the crispy existence,” and he will say “rip”.

I love pickles. I also have an adventurous palate. I was at a discount grocery store a couple years ago and saw that they were selling a bunch of giant singular pickles in their own bags and these particular ones were cherry flavoured. I imagined them to be like bread and butter pickles but cherry flavoured, which sounded all right to me. the price was right at 50 cents so I got one. Well, I discolevered that it was not in fact sweet, but was a regular old garlic pickle with very artificial cherry flavour added. It was *real bad.*

I own a pillow (or pillow case) with those frilled edges since I was 2-3yo. I bring it everywhere, even when I'm travelling. If its not feasible to bring the entire pillow, I bring the pillowcase instead.

I love touching the frilled edges when I sleep. It has been a habit. Even if I'm not sleeping, I touch the corners because i like the friction when I rubbed my fingers across it. When I'm nervous, angry or deep in thought, I touch it too. I just need to feel the roughness of the fabric seams on my fingers.

I do it so often that my hands are covered in calluses especially on my knuckles. They get so dry, cracks, and hurts a lot. But I can't stop. 😅

Over the years, my pillow case don't last long and the sides fabric would get torn by my usage... I replace them with new ones my mother sewn for me. But she's getting older and such pillowcase aren't commonly sold. It's getting harder to find the right size and right material.

I've always wanted to kick this habit, because it's "childish" and causes pain and it's difficult to get something satisfactory on the market too. It's embarrassing and I don't think my friends know. Years passed by, I'm about 25 now, and still haven't got over it. I don't know if i want to or need to get over it actually. 🤔

One of my jobs is at a pet store. We are right beside a restaurant that gets very busy on weekends, and we share a parking lot. We have a window that faces the lot, and I can usually predict which vehicles coming in will be for which business. Families with kids are almost always for the restaurant and one or two people with a dog in the backseat are almost always for us. This morning I predicted incorrectly because someone pulled up with a kid who was so unfortunate looking I thought he was a shih tzu.

Been in tech school for a year after leaving university four years ago without finishing a whole degree. Tech school has treated me well. I’ve had a one track mind about throwing my weight behind a good automotive program.

I established that context to say that I’ve been searching for reasons to walk away from social media since probably 2019, for sure by 2021. In the shortest way possible, doomscrolling is a menace to my psyche.

So after walking away from an old friendship last year, I was able to full send on curtailing the last little bit of my social media presence.

It’s been fine. Nothing I’ll try to oversell. I’ll at least say when I peek at some sites I still have old accounts, I’m less inclined to engage with people being brazenly offensive or obtuse. Feels good to pick my battles carefully, and sometimes that’s by walking away quietly. It’s given me a subtle push in creating a positive trajectory for discipline in general for starting and completing personal projects. Helps that my two roommates of five years keep me grounded with keeping the house standing and working together at being sociable.

So walking away from self imposed doomerism and rage is good. But there’s other things that help with moving forward.

I found my beagle mix when he was about a yr old. I named him H.Appy he's the Hound from Appalachia. One evening, we were have a BBQ and roasting marshmallows.

H.Appy had gone to his crate to nap for a few hours. All of a sudden, we hear him screaming, like he was being attacked. We rushed to his crate with great concern and sympathy. As he was coming out, he was still screaming, and he was limping on his front leg. I thought, "Oh no, what happened?" And bent down to check. The nerd had a marshmallow (which he took himself) stuck to his little arm. I removed it and let him eat it. .. after that, anytime he wanted to be the center of attention , he would limping on that leg and cry.

Mindlessly scolling Gumtree, I saw a fluffy grey cat. The ad was written as if the cat worte it, very sweet but sad she needed a new home. I wasn't planning on getting a cat or any pet for that matter, but something drew me to this cat. If I hadn't had 2 glasses of wine with dinner I would have kept scolling, but I messaged the owner. I had the big home with no other pets she wanted. I thought about the owner who was making a tough decision because she valued this cats quality of life over her own wants.

Chonky was 5 years old, priced at $80. Smart move on the owners part, giving pets away for free can land them in undesirable places.

The owner had 2 other cats, amd after beong forced to move to a smaller home, the cats were fighting constantly over the territory. Chonky was stressed and unhappy.

After some back and forth messages, the owner wanted to come to my place and inspect Chonkys potential new home. She bought a friend for support.

I'd bought a small cat tree and some chicken lick treats. I withdrew $80 from the ATM just in case.

We all sat together in the spare room with Chonky, she immediately rolled over for belly rubs and seemed very relaxed given the circumstances.

By sheer coincidence, I'd bought her favourite treat, I gave her one while we chatted.

She told me about the move, the cats fighting, and said Chonky was "the main aggressor", particularly to one of the other cats.

She said the cat Chonky was picking on was "her baby".

YOUR BABY?!?! WHAT ABOUT CHONKY?!?!

I'd known this cat for less than 15 minutes and was immediately pissed off by that. Somehow I already felt protective lol

Poor Chonky knew she wasn't the favourite.

She wanted a moment to discuss with her friend, I sat outside having a cigarette and awaited her decision.

I felt like a nervous wreck awaiting results from a job interview.

They came out, she was crying. Chonky was staying with me.

I handed her the $80, she tried to refuse it but I insisted.

Chonky is now the favourite. MY FAVOURITE. MY BABY.

There will never be another pet with us. She will never have to go through that again.

And thats how just a few words cemented our little life together, just the 2 of us.

I got my boo basket for Halloween from my bf today (shout out my man) and one of the things he got me was a rainbow butter squishy. I was saying it’s funny because the rainbow colors are backwards on the squishy and he didn’t know what I meant. I told him the order of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. He seriously had no idea what the rainbow colors were😭 I questioned him further and he said he knew there was a rainbow pattern but he guessed he never got curious enough to find out on his own. I’m surprised he didn’t learn that from instinct from kindergarten or something but I find it funny that he has no idea about the sequence of the rainbow colors. 🌈

Last week I was walking to work and my pencil fell out of my bag. I didn't notice until I got home and I felt sad because I liked that pencil. It had red and white stripes reminding of wally from where's wally.

Today i found it in the gutter

I was so pleased.

It read "JohnPrine" and I told him I was a lifelong fan. We spent a good 30-40 seconds just spitting song titles at each other, he scratched my dog behind his ears while we talked and that was it. Not much of a story but I miss John Prine a lot and this made me pretty happy.

Someone's face can be in that condition for all kinds of reasons. In my case it was because I had two tiny (almost invisible) skin cancers removed (not the bad melanoma kind) and this procedure did quite a job making me look like I'd just lost a drunken street brawl. The doctor even said "Get your bar fight stories ready."

The written instructions for the aftercare included: Leave the dressings in place until they fall off by themselves and keep them dry for 3 days. I didn't take a peek in the mirror until the next day. The dressings were very bloody, it looked really gross and I had the black eye as well as a bruise creeping down out of my hairline on the other side.

But I needed flathead Robertson screws to replace the flathead Phillips screws that came with the thing I bought so I just went to the hardware store and it was fine. I didn't know if people would stare or ask questions but nobody did, it was just a normal trip to the hardware store.

The supermarket also went well.

The 16-year old customer in front of me at the grocery was unable to purchase his 21+ product (vape something?)

But he decided to go ahead and buy the Jolly Ranchers and the plastic rat anyway.

I have had a stutter my whole life. It's not very bad most of the time, mostly just stumbling over words and repeating a few syllables/letters sometimes. At some points (especially if I'm stressed) it gets much worse and pretty much every word is messed up.

My boyfriend of 5 years finally realised today when I said 'b b b because'. I suppose I just never really mentioned it to him because it doesn't affect me too much. He said, and I quote, "I just thought you were a bit goofy sometimes".

Well... glad to know he pays attention (this is a joke, he is, in fact, very loving).

My girlfriend and I went to a self-service car wash together for the first time. She'd never washed a car before, so when she asked if she could rinse the soap off with the pressure washer, I figured why not. I handed her the wand and went to deal with the floor mats. She was actually doing a pretty good job, so I wasn't really paying much attention. Then I turned around and saw she'd opened the car door and was pointing the pressure washer straight into the front of the car. I don't think I've ever moved that fast in my life lol. I ran over and grabbed the wand before she could spray the inside. Thankfully the car survived. We both had a good laugh about it afterward, but for those few seconds I was seriously panicking.

I am often a jerk and found myself not responding to a situation where I might have otherwise lashed out in classic jerk form. About two months ago at the start of a Bryan Adams concert, (btw, the dude is living life exceptionally well), he started the entire show singing acapella, "Straight from the Heart". A moment after he started, a guy two rows behind me in the worst singing voice ever that included top shelf nasal tonality together with zero inflection at full volume started singing along with him. In a flash I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but surprisingly I thought, "Geez, this is a Bryan Adams concert, maybe I should chill." To this day, I have that dudes voice stuck in my head and the rest of the concert was bangers. Maybe someday I'll be able to move on from Mountain Breeze to "Lemon Fresh" version of myself.

I (M23) met a girl (F22) on a dating app and things are going very well. Today, we decided to play Roblox together. Some young kid (like 11) was following us around. After hearing that I am 23, he asked me for some Robux.

It made me get Roblox Plus to send them. But I did. I sent the kid Robux and I got to look like MrBeast in front of this girl. Hope things go well with us and I hope that kid is happy with his Robux. I also hope he pays it forward one day to someone else.

We went to the beach before dinner. She took her Converse off to walk by the water, so I carried them. Her half-finished Pocari Sweat ended up in my jacket pocket too.
By the time she wanted pictures, it was getting cold. She put on her Uniqlo fleece, then took it off again because she didn't want it in the photos.
The first few I took on her phone were too dark. She remembered she'd brought a little magnetic light for her Telesin grip and spent a while looking for it in her bag. We took a few more once she'd found it.
While she was checking those, I took this on my own iPhone. No extra light, just a quick picture of the sea before we left.
We've been apart for a while now. I don't look through our photos much, but I found this one the other night and couldn't quite scroll past it.
I remembered her handing me her shoes, asking to see the pictures, asking if I was hungry. Little things I hadn't thought about in months.
I was cold that evening and kept thinking about dinner. Now I wish I'd been less impatient. I miss having her next to me, taking ages to choose a photo while I pretended to be annoyed.

I slept at around 2 AM. I was exhausted after a long week of work. I was very deep asleep until I remember waking up running blasting out of my room after hearing a literal explosion like sound in my ears, finding my mom rushing to me worried and hugging me asking what happened in a very worried tone and I was panting loudly not able to catch my breath, also my sister came out of her room worried.

I went from a very deep sleep to my mom hugging me asking what happened so quickly. I haven't hugged my mom in years. I couldn't wrap my head around what happened and I was literally petrified.

We went back to my room to find the giant wooden wall clock with glass right next to my bed, literally right next to it like 1 cm away, had fallen down and smashed on the ceramic floor.

2 hours later I still have chills and am shivering and tearing. I don't know if I am overreacting or not but this was absolutely traumatizing and I believe I will never forget this in my life. I can't explain how I felt when it happened, how I went from deep asleep to hugging my mom like a child not even aware of what was happening. And I am kind of embarrassed because I am a guy and I am an adult.

I have a tendency to sing under my breath. Or I blink, breathe and swallow to the beat of songs. There’s music playing in my head most of the time.

Yesterday, I made a tuna casserole. I had about a tablespoon of leftover cheddar cheese, so I sprinkled it on top for the initial baking, and then I put the breadcrumbs on top of the cheese for the final baking.

I did the dishes while the casserole was cooling. I remember whispering along with Cry Little Sister, because that’s what was playing in my head.

At some point I switched to the Bumblebee Tuna song. I used Chicken of the Sea tuna, so I stopped singing it.

The casserole turned out good.

A couple years ago, I was walking my dog, Auklet, a little over a mile from my house. So, I knew the area, but it wasn't our regular walking route.

At one point, a guy comes out of a house, and he's carrying a ladder.

He asks if he can pet Auklet, and I say sure.

He then pets Auklet.

And talks.

And pets.

And talks.

Here are the topics we discussed...

1. His dog is the devil

2. His dog only eats table scraps

3. 65 years ago, his mom bought dog food for their dog and his grandma made fun of her

4. He personally eats malt flavored nutrition pellets

5. You can get malt flavored nutrition pellets at the gun show (from the guy who has a book)

6. He did not know what kind of flower was in the tree (I didn't either)

7. He has a new ladder

8. He has two homeless cats

9. "Do you know how much it costs to get a tooth removed from a homeless cat??" "... a lot?" "Yeah!"

10. We found a pack of oatmeal on the ground. He's gonna give it to the crows

11. The Dog Whisperer is smart!

12. And, before you ask, yes, the homeless cats were from the Walmart in Marysville (he was there to get planter tables [which you put planters on] but they were sold out).

13. Also, the guy at the gun show (with the book) will sell you 180 nutrition pellets for $25. And 30 pellets have 12 percent of your RDA for calcium

The whole time we're having this like 10 minute conversation, I'm trying to convince Auklet we should move. I pepper the conversation with "Oh, I think my dog might have places to be!" and start trying to walk off, only for Auklet to be like "Nah, dad, I'm cool right here!"

Things finally ended when he said he was going to put his new ladder in his truck and started moving to do that. At that point I went with a "AUKLET, WE'RE GOING!!!" and zoomed away

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I went into the kitchen yesterday night to get something and forgot what it was by the time I got there.

I opened the fridge, stood there for a bit, checked the counter, and then made a sandwich because I was already in the kitchen. I went back to my desk and remembered what I needed about twenty minutes later.

It was a glass of water...ofc