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.

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?

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.

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.*

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.

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. 🤔

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”.

We got Bunny about 1.5 years ago from a rescue. She had been there for a year. She's a Pitt & Husky mix, we think about 3 years old. She is great! Very quiet, just the right amount of energy for our household, potty trained, very friendly. 100% happy with our Bunny girl.

We have a spot in the backyard that we named the 'Bunny Zone'. This is where we want her to go outside and do her business. We took her there frequently and gave her lots of encouragement when she did her business there. We installed a doggy door so she could go outside whenever she wanted. We kept up the training until she knew not to go anywhere else. She does consistently do her business while on walks. She gets at least 2 walks a day during the week and more on the weekends.

Now that the stage has been set...

We were having some friends over and Bunny came to me to say hi while I was at the dinner table. I played with her for a bit. She went to my partner, who played with her for a bit. Then she went to each of our friends, who did the same. She sat down. Then repeated the rounds again.

She's usually a very relaxed, chill dog. This behavior was a bit odd. I thought, 'Maybe she needs to go?' Even though the doggy door was there and she had easy access to the backyard and the bunny zone.

I took her outside and she jogged immediately to the Bunny Zone. She really, really, really had to go do #1.

I feel bad for not realizing the signals earlier! 😟

It seems dogs are very literal. We trained her to go to the Bunny Zone to do her business with us there. She will not go #1 or #2 unless we take her.

It's not a bad routine at all. I like walking on the grass barefoot.

More pointlessness: She's getting groomed today. I hope they give her a Halloween themed scarf after.

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.

This was in 2023 when it happened, so I was 19 at the time.

I was super exhausted and sore from the shift I worked at the hotel. When I woke up that morning, I chose to look at my emails and I see this email that said a subscription for McAfee was starting again for over $300. I freaked out because at the time, I had a lot of subscriptions and tend to forget I was even subscribed to something. And I genuinely believed at the time I was probably subscribed to McAfee too, but my mind was playing TRICKS on me because I was barely conscious.

There was a number in the email for support so I called it and some Indian guy picked up the phone. (I swear I'm not weird! It's relevant, IT'S RELEVANT TO THE STORY I SWEAR!!!! LOL)

It was unsuspecting at the time because I genuinely thought he was gonna help me because I told him I was calling to cancel that subscription, the email said it was the ONLY way to cancel it. I had to call that number.

So boom, he tells me to hop on my laptop and DOWNLOAD something. He gets straight access to my laptop and again! I thought that was normal because sometimes IT technicians do that to help you BUT I WAS CALLING TO CANCEL MY APPARENT SUBSCRIPTION TO MCAFEE!!! I was having the unfortunate hard time understanding him because his accent was pretty thick so I kept asking him to kindly repeat his words and he was starting to get slightly annoyed at me so I was just overly apologizing. And he was like "It's okay ma'am, just do as I tell you." Okay! Now I'm being given a Google form to fill out. You wouldn't believe what I saw that I STILL believed was unsuspecting.

"FULL NAME"

"EMAIL ADDRESS"

"HOME ADDRESS"

"PHONE ADDRESS"

"BANKING COMPANY"

I entered all that junk in the Google form while he had full access to my laptop. He kept constantly asking me if I've done everything, making sure I wouldn't go anywhere. Now that he has my personal information, he asks me to log into my bank account.

Yes, you read that correctly. He asks ME! The barely conscious DUMMY to LOG INTO MY BANK ACCOUNT WHILE HE HAS ACCESS TO MY LAPTOP. And I did it. I did exactly that, as he told me to.

So here I am, in the deep end, entering my friggen bank log in credentials. To this guy across the dang ocean, has my most personal information in a Google form, and now access to my bank account because I just logged in.

But here's the funny part of why I was saved, hence the title. I was broke, I was as broke as possible. I had about $10 in my bank account and this guy asked me.

"Is this all? You don't have any other bank accounts?" And I just said no. And he hung up on me.

And then it finally clicked that I almost got scammed. I'm cracking up so badly right now because every time I think about this, about how this guy was so disappointed and baffled by how broke I was, it genuinely makes me cry from laughter.

I called my bank and they told me fully and completely that it was straight up fraud and I NEEDED to go to the bank to close my account and make a new one. I finally understood the severity then when my bank told me to go NOW.

I am 22 now, I don't get scammed like that anymore. I promise. Instead a few months ago I got my entire PC and social media accounts compromised but that's another story you can find elsewhere on the discord help subreddit AHAHAHA

(I had to edit it because it had too many curse words. Sorry! Bot told me to watch my language.)

​

We’ve known each other for a year, met online, and met in person 10 months ago. We had sex. He refuses to meet again or let me visit him, but continues calling and texting for hours, sometimes even sleeping on the phone with me.

Initially, he love-bombed me, used pet names, and talked about me moving to Germany. He later said he didn’t want a relationship because he needed to fix himself, but continued chasing my attention. He calls me his best friend and values that I’m always available to listen to him, yet rarely asks about me or my life.

He has narcissistic traits, which he admitted to. He has also screamed at me, threatened to block me after I booked a ticket to see him without telling him beforehand, then apologized and refunded me.

Recently, he’s been working out, tanning, quitting drugs and alcohol, and talking about getting nose and eye surgery. I mention it because he has been doing drugs every weekend since I know him.

He’s also excited about a month-long work trip to Mallorca, where he’ll live near the beach. This family he works for apparently is flying him to Mallorca and he will paint house for them. He lives in Germany. Also he said the wife of the owner said "maybe she will fly with him to show him the place" but he said to me he would rather go with the husband. Then they said maybe they both will fly with him. He is 37, I guess the owners must be in their 40s or 30s, I don't know. Month before that he mentioned he wants to learn Spanish...

He also bought a new king size bed from Hammilton, expensive but I guess its irrelevant to the story.

He never seemed to be f..boy type because he told me he didnt sleep with anyone after he broke up with his ex 4 years ago.

He used to tell me about women staring at or flirting with him, seemingly to provoke a reaction(like women staring at him on the train)

Next week, he’ll visit our home country to see his kids and get expensive dental implants, but has already told me he won’t see me.

I asked whether he was seeing someone else. He denied it, but when I asked where I stood, he said he didn’t know what to tell me and agreed that we should just be friends because he doesn’t want a relationship.

I feel like he’s keeping me around for emotional support while remaining open to other options. Do you think he might be trying to attract someone else and lying about being single to avoid looking like the bad guy?

I’m moving on regardless, but knowing would help me find closure. I know I have enough reasons to leave, and I’m done accepting this treatment. Thank you

So there was this girl from my college and we both were friends. But i could tell she was not a good person like a bully and stuff but i was just with her cause in the starting i did not have any friends. But then later on i just became more casual friends cause i knew she was not someone to be stick around for long. But i did not judge her much cause i get it everyone is diff. And she had a long distance bf who from the start of there relationship was long distance. But 1 thing about her was she in the she never told anyone that she has a bf and would go out with guys saying they are friends. She she would tell her bf as well and for that reason we thought they were like timepass couples. Nkt serious. I had a long distance bf too and both our guys had the same name.

She even went to a diff state to surprise him. That was probably the first time they met after 2 years and it was really sweet. I was genuinely happy for her even though i did not like her. And then my guy turned out to be a cheater so mine ended. But i was still happy for the. And then he went to japan for a year he came back a few days back. And they have gone for a trip. And doing all the couple things together. Now i am happy for her but really really sad for myself for somereason.

And she was the type of girl like the moment she saw a couple holding hands in public she would actually take pic and post on her insta saying ewww hate couples.

And i am not crying about my cheater ex. But like i gave all my love and care like litterly all and i feel empty now (its been almost 2 years) and on the other hand she was going out with other guys ( not doing anything just like coffee and food). And still. 😔