42 inch kitchen sink base cabinet

Hey all, I live in Brooklyn and I've been having issues getting apartment repairs and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions of resources to look into.
The story is—February 2022, the kitchen sink started back flowing. It got to the point where my wife and I were bailing about 15-20gal of water out every day. After some prodding, the super referred us to a plumber who, after several calls, came out, didn't fix it on the first try, came out again, and sort of fixed it so it wasn't back flowing for about a month and then not back flowing more than an inch or two into the sink and only irregularly at that. We more or less forgot about the issue until the beginning of June when it began to back flow again like it had originally. We called the super on June 2 and he again referred us to the plumber who didn't answer his phone, and then we proceeded to call both the unresponsive and otherwise unhelpful super and the completely unresponsive plumber all weekend. The plumber finally called back and wouldn't schedule a time with us, but said he would be there when he could. By Tuesday we called the super again because at this point the pipe (which was old) had rusted through and there was now a hole in the drain, and he managed to get the plumber to come right away. Plumber fixed the pipe, refused to acknowledge that the issue was anything other than a clog in the drain making the water back up, and then left quickly once there was no more water in the drain. About 5min after he left, I went to use the sink and it wouldn't drain at all, and over the next few days it resumed back flowing worse than it ever has, and won't drain at all. He came back Thursday after a really angry message sent to management about the issue and how we were being treated by both the plumber and the super, and we managed to convince him the problem was deeper in the plumbing of the building, which he finally agreed with. Told us before he left Thursday that he needed a longer snake to get to the clog that was causing the back flow and would return Friday. He didn't come back and now neither the super nor the plumber are responding.
My question is, what are some avenues we can use to either fix this problem or remove ourselves from having to deal with it? We called 311 at some point in this process and they've been slow to help. We got a call from HPD asking if the problem had been resolved and nothing else. I'm aware that Repair and Deduct is likely relevant here, but we're planning on moving out of the city in the fall, so a court battle over rent owed would be a massive pain in the ass. Constructive eviction may also be an option if we can swing getting out a few months ahead of when we planned, but again, I'm sure this would end up involving a court case about unpaid rent after we've left the city.
Anyway, does anyone know of any resources I can use or have any advice of avenues to pursue (recognizing that it is not construed as legal advice)? Or other subreddits to post this to? It's been two weeks of this, my body hurts from having to carry buckets of water from the sink every day, all the water is gray-water from other parts of the building, and my wife and I are afraid to leave the apartment empty for more than a few hours for fear we'll come home to a flood.

Hey all, I live in Brooklyn, NY and I've been having issues getting apartment repairs and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions of resources to look into.
The story is—February 2022, the kitchen sink started back flowing. It got to the point where my wife and I were bailing about 15-20gal of water out every day. After some prodding, the super referred us to a plumber who, after several calls, came out, didn't fix it on the first try, came out again, and sort of fixed it so it wasn't back flowing for about a month and then not back flowing more than an inch or two into the sink and only irregularly at that. We more or less forgot about the issue until the beginning of June when it began to back flow again like it had originally. We called the super on June 2 and he again referred us to the plumber who didn't answer his phone, and then we proceeded to call both the unresponsive and otherwise unhelpful super and the completely unresponsive plumber all weekend. The plumber finally called back and wouldn't schedule a time with us, but said he would be there when he could. By Tuesday we called the super again because at this point the pipe (which was old) had rusted through and there was now a hole in the drain, and he managed to get the plumber to come right away. Plumber fixed the pipe, refused to acknowledge that the issue was anything other than a clog in the drain making the water back up, and then left quickly once there was no more water in the drain. About 5min after he left, I went to use the sink and it wouldn't drain at all, and over the next few days it resumed back flowing worse than it ever has, and won't drain at all. He came back Thursday after a really angry message sent to management about the issue and how we were being treated by both the plumber and the super, and we managed to convince him the problem was deeper in the plumbing of the building, which he finally agreed with. Told us before he left Thursday that he needed a longer snake to get to the clog that was causing the back flow and would return Friday. He didn't come back and now neither the super nor the plumber are responding.
My question is, what are some avenues we can use to either fix this problem or remove ourselves from having to deal with it? We called 311 at some point in this process and they've been slow to help. We got a call from HPD asking if the problem had been resolved and nothing else. I'm aware that Repair and Deduct is likely relevant here, but we're planning on moving out of the city in the fall, so a court battle over rent owed would be a massive pain in the ass. Constructive eviction may also be an option if we can swing getting out a few months ahead of when we planned, but again, I'm sure this would end up involving a court case about unpaid rent after we've left the city.
Anyway, does anyone know of any resources I can use or have any advice of avenues to pursue (recognizing that it is not construed as legal advice)? Or other subreddits to post this to? It's been two weeks of this, my body hurts from having to carry buckets of water from the sink every day, all the water is gray-water from other parts of the building, and my wife and I are afraid to leave the apartment empty for more than a few hours for fear we'll come home to a flood.

Build Help/Ready:

Have you read the sidebar and rules? (Please do)
yes
What is your intended use for this build? The more details the better.
about 30 percent video editing, 70 percent gaming and regular home use. Games I play the most are Total War (WH3), CK3, Bannerlord, and B4B
If gaming, what kind of performance are you looking for? (Screen resolution, framerate, game settings)
HIGH fps on 1440p, ultra to high settings if possible. my goal is to smash the hell out of 1440p rather than move up to 4k and get 80 - 90 fps averages. My current monitor is a 1440p 165hz 27 inch monitor.
What is your budget (ballpark is okay)?
technically i've set aside 4.5k for this build, but I'm not trying to pay a huge markup just to be on the bleeding edge. the 4090 is too much card for what I want or need, I'm not interested in paying to get pretty good framerates at 4k when I could get killer framerates at 1440p for less.
In what country are you purchasing your parts?
'Murica
Post a draft of your potential build here (specific parts please). Consider formatting your parts list. Don't ask to be spoonfed a build (read the rules!).
PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D 4.2 GHz 16-Core Processor	$669.00 @ Newegg
CPU Cooler	ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 56.3 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$139.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard	$219.99 @ Amazon
Memory	TEAMGROUP T-Create Expert 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL34 Memory	$169.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Solidigm P44 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$119.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Solidigm P44 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$119.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	PNY XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X RGB OC GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Video Card	$1099.99 @ B&H
Case	Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case	$98.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Vetroo GV1000 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$155.99 @ Amazon
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 11 Home OEM - DVD 64-bit	$99.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2893.91
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-06-10 11:28 EDT-0400

Provide any additional details you wish below.
Mostly looking to tweak this build, I am somewhat under budget so basically just looking to improve the experience at 1440p as much as possible. I'm a little shaky on the graphics card but seeing as I do video editing as well as gaming I would like to have all bases covered. I'm really hoping to get 5 years out of this machine, which is why I'm running the 7950x3d, I like the power draw versus the i9 series and I like the fact that the AM5 socket is still due more support.

First Prev
Patreon Arxur POV of the Cradle Series wiki Official subreddit Discord
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Memory transcription subject: Slanek, Venlil Space Corps
Date [standardized human time]: January 16, 2137
The infected predators were whisked out of the research station, and away from the Battle of Mileau to be isolated in quarantine. The Kolshians had been holding the inner sanctum of the system, since the human fleet was mainly composed of Duerten allies. With the goal of a cured Terran race making itself evident, sending rescue teams for the Dossur prisoners was inadvisable. That would need to await proper biohazard gear, which would take days, if not weeks, to arrive.
Earth was making preparations for itself and its colonies to counter “bioterrorist” measures. Marcel wanted nothing to do with me, during our ride to the quarantine station. The cured humans would be kept isolated for study, until they determined whether the disease was communicable. Initial observations didn’t suggest transmissibility through close contact, though it wasn’t clear if other means could spread the virus. All of us relinquished blood samples for a scientist team to peruse.
Tests were run to determine the extent of the allergic reactions, and doctors came prepared to treat anaphylaxis. My bloodwork was the only one that came back allergen-free; it had been determined that the human-tailored bioweapon couldn’t cross the species border to other sapients. As such, I didn’t have to worry about any modifications to my genome, and I was free to leave at any time. The medical staff became primarily Zurulian too, after this development was confirmed.
Nobody has brought up my execution of the Kolshian prisoner, but it’s a matter of time. Has Marcel not been feeling well enough to raise the alarm?
Concern for the redhead was the reason I hadn’t vacated the facility; no matter what, having him in this situation strained my heart. I wandered up to a Zurulian medic, who was conversing with a human in biohazard gear. The quadruped swiveled around, and his face jogged some faint recognition in my mind. Had I seen this individual before? No, what mattered was discovering how Marcel was holding up, since my…former best friend wouldn’t speak to me.
“Slanek!” the Zurulian announced. “Just the Venlil I was hoping to find. When I heard you and Marcel were among the infected, I had to come.”
I leaned my head back. “We do know each other. You were there, at the battle of Earth. Helping to save his family. Your name is…”
“Wilen. You might remember my wife, Fraysa, too. We wound up living on Earth after the war, sharing notes on human and alien physiology with top experts.”
Fraysa ducked out from within a cabinet. “The Zurulian exchange program was a great way to get to learn what the predators are really like! They don’t deserve this. I understand how close you were with your human, Slanek. Mine is into gardening—gardening, for fun! A predator.”
I don’t give a shit. We met for about an hour, months ago; we’re not friends.
“Cool.” My tail twitched with irritation. “Could you guys tell me how Marcel is doing?”
Wilen squinted. “You haven’t asked him yourself?”
“Oh, of course I have! I just mean from a doctor’s perspective—what’s going on biologically. I’m worried, and I wouldn’t want to ask in front of him. You might not be as straightforward if it’s bad news.”
“Walk with me. I have to deliver these fever-reducing medicines to the sick ones,” Fraysa replied. “The short version is, the virus inserts DNA into the human genome, which induces desired immune reactions to specific meat-based proteins and enzymes. The severity varies from person to person.”
Wilen trotted after his wife. “I was just talking about Marcel’s bloodwork; I want to help him. What Fraysa is saying, is that some humans may only react severely to meat and egg foods. Others are more sensitive to lesser things they eat, like animal lactation, boiled animal tendons in gummies, or even things they wear like cured hides.”
“They put what in gummies?!” I shrieked.
“I thought you knew.”
“Forget it, Doctor. How does this relate to Marcel?”
“Marcel’s blood shows signs of an especially sensitive reaction,” Fraysa commented. “It could be because he’s vegetarian, so some of the proteins are particularly foreign to his body.”
Wilen pawed at a semi-circular ear. “I’m sure you don’t like to think this about your friend, but predatory items pervade human culture, far beyond diet. His furniture and his clothes are probably animal-sourced. Their medicine, a nurturing field by definition, is no longer safe to him; he won’t be able to get egg-based vaccines. I was informed by a human colleague that even cosmetics for dry skin and shoe polish might be off-limits.”
“Treatments for dry skin trigger the cure?” I blinked in confusion, unable to believe the predatory items ran that deep with my human. “Why?”
“Because of a wool grease called lanolin. Look, he’s going to need to be very careful. Our simulations suggest extreme cases like Marcel can’t even breathe the vapors of cooking meat, without triggering anaphylaxis.”
Fraysa slipped a pill packet under a door. “Wilen and I were shocked, realizing how deep hunting runs in the fabric of human society; it’s almost better not to know. What do you think should be done, dear?”
“I think it might be best for Marcel to live on a Federation world, if he needs to avoid animal products altogether. Maybe you could offer to take him in, Slanek, on Venlil Prime?”
My legs locked up, and left me unable to follow the Zurulian medics. Wilen and Fraysa whirled around, noting the shock on my features. Since Marcel didn’t consume meat in the first place, I figured the cure wouldn’t affect his daily life at all. It was within my knowledge that he ate some “animal products”, such as the revolting lactation juice Wilen mentioned, but I figured those could be cut out of a diet too. It wouldn’t be that big of an adjustment, given that my human already avoided them around me.
But now, I realized something as simple as his slick couch, in his Earthly home, would induce the allergic reaction. Marcel couldn’t go to social events with other humans, if breathing in the scent of flesh would place him in jeopardy. That would’ve precluded hanging out around Tyler, or being in the service at all! The vegetarian’s military days were over; it didn’t seem fair that his ordinary life was ruined too. Shit, if he got sick, he couldn’t seek some treatments at a Terran hospital anymore.
Poor Marcel will have to think of every little thing, as small as treating chapped lips in the winter. If he stays on his world, I don’t know how he can go out in public without risk…but he certainly doesn’t want to live with me.
I pinned my ears back, searching for an excuse. “Marcel has family on Earth. He has a life there!”
“It will be…difficult, for his predator relatives and friends to accommodate him. They’d need to be very cognizant,” Wilen said. “I’m not pressuring you to do anything you don’t want to. But if you care about him, you need to tell him what staying on Earth means for him.”
“He could wear some breathing mask…and a contact suit?”
Fraysa scrunched her nose. “Maybe, but does he want to do that every day of his life? It’s a rough situation. Though there is good news, Slanek.”
“What, that he’s not dead?!”
“I’m sorry you’re so upset. But the good news is, for the air-transmission version, there might be hope of reversing the cure in the near future. The humans have their own gene-splicing systems, such as CRISPR. This incident helps them understand the general principles of what the cure adds, so it might help them identify unnatural edits in other species too.”
“I don’t care about other species! They don’t want it undone, I can fucking tell you that. Marcel does!”
“Well, the humans might be able to undo his gene edits, with proper study. If he chooses to stay away from Earth, it might only be for a little while. His normal life might be restored in a few years…maybe months. Terrans are quick studies.”
Hearing that the predators could figure out a reversal, without outside assistance, alleviated my guilt for killing Navarus. Clearly, we didn’t need any of the prisoners alive to undo the damage. Besides, there were more captives, like the scientist my friend had brought in, who could provide the information Earth sought. That demonic Kolshian, who laughed at the idea of destroying Terran culture, deserved a bullet to the head. Marcel was unreasonable, but other humans might be more rational. Maybe I was fretting over one man’s skewed morality.
I chewed on what the Zurulian doctors imparted. “You qualified the hope of reversing the cure as being for the airborne version. Does that mean the other humans, from the research station, are incurable?”
“We didn’t say that, but the injected-serum is much harder to cure,” Wilen proclaimed. “I think that’s why the Kolshians favor that method, when given a choice. They transmit the virus directly into the bloodstream, and also inject certain proteins and enzymes into the skin…to spark allergies the old-fashioned way.”
“I see. So they’re permanent herbivores.”
“Permanent’s a strong word, Slanek. Curing the genetic side would prevent the disease from being passed to offspring, at least.”
Fraysa flicked her ears. “Besides, I expect you would know, as a vegetarian’s friend, even if those people are eating grass…humans are still violent predators. The Kolshians succeeded in pissing them off, not gentling them.”
“Right! What makes them human is that they’re insane,” Wilen remarked. “So, my Venlil buddy, are you able to break the news to Marcel for us? He deserves to know right away, and it would be better coming from you. A friend.”
“Well.” My throat clammed up with guilt, not wanting to reveal our relationship’s dire straits. Selfishly, all I wanted was to see and comfort Marcel during this revelation; I could brainstorm a plan to ease my entry into his room. “Yes. I’ll tell him.”
“Excellent! Well, his door is right here; I’ll leave you to the unpleasantries.”
My eyes widened with alarm, as the Zurulians pushed me through a plastic isolation flap. It hadn’t occurred to me that the conversation’s timetable would be accelerated; I hadn’t realized we were walking past Marcel’s room, while I was distracted worrying about him. Wilen and Fraysa watched with expectancy, giving encouraging ear flicks. Nausea twirled in my belly, as I didn’t dare explain what happened between us.
My paw issued a tentative knock, before I twisted open the sealed door. The red-haired predator studied me with lethargic eyes, perspiration lining his skin. He shifted on the bed, and curled his lip with displeasure. A booming cough racked his body, causing him to fall back against the pillow. A pitcher of water had been nearly drained; he hadn’t been able to get up to refill it at the filtration sink.
“Hi Marc,” I offered.
A low groan came from his mouth. “Go…away.”
“Please, let me get you some water. I can’t leave you like this.”
I scurried over to the pitcher, feeling my heart rate hit an all-time high. Chiding myself not to drop the glass and look like more of a fool, I carted it over to the spout. The water filled the jug with the speed of molasses, and my tail swished across the floor with impatience. Temptation overtook me, so I risked a glance at Marcel. The human’s face looked puffy; it was clear his immune system was in overdrive.
I wish that I could curl up next to him, and make him feel better. I miss having such a wonderful friend.
Those hazel eyes struggled to stay focused on me, which caused sympathy to tug at my heart. I balanced the full pitcher with new determination, pressing it to his lips. The rift between us felt palpable, as Marcel reluctantly accepted the hydration for his own sake. Even in his discombobulated state, I could see that he hadn’t forgotten what I did. Fury was causing him to distance himself from me; I got the sudden feeling my lie had been what pushed him over the edge.
“I was asked to tell you something, by the Zurulian doctors,” I spoke hurriedly, while setting the pitcher down on the table. “Your reaction to the cure is severe. The doctors don’t think you should live on Earth for a while. They said you’d be deathly allergic just smelling meat or touching animal products…like apparently, your couch. Which I slept on.”
Marcel didn’t speak a word. Even in his listless stupor, his binocular eyes managed to level me with intensity. I noticed a slight lump pass down his throat; he was either swallowing down hurtful thoughts or thirst. The human, who’d become the faithful friend my world revolved around, just wanted me gone. That stung worse than the prickle of a thousand thorns, but I was glad we hadn’t quarreled again.
With legs that felt as heavy as stone, I trudged toward the door. It was impossible not to feel the predator’s gaze boring into my spine. His judgment punished me, as if he were the aggrieved party in the Navarus execution. Part of me was angry about the Terran’s mandatory policy on mercy, but I couldn’t berate him in this sorry state.
At the end of the day, I cared about Marcel. What I said to him back on the research station was accusatory and less-than-kind, though it was true enough. If this was the last time we ever spoke to each other, I didn’t want to cut contact with hurtful words. Perhaps he could learn to remember our adventures with some fondness, in time. This hadn’t been how I wanted our close-as-brothers bond to fizzle out.
“I’m sorry that they did this to you.” I kept my back turned to the human, resting a paw on the door handle. “You remember why I joined the exchange program? I read your book, Frankenstein. About a monstrosity who only wanted a friend…or acceptance, and was hated and abused by the world. Judged for his appearance.”
There was nothing but silence from the human, and the certain feel of his watchful gaze. Without looking, I could feel the dazed rhythm of his blinks. How had I ever feared that Marcel would harm me? He couldn’t dole out punishment to the people that deserved his wrath, let alone to anyone he called a friend.
“I felt sorry for the creature. For you. And maybe, in some weird corner of my brain, I was curious what it was like to be a monster,” I continued. “Now, I know that I am one too; just not one of appearances. Maybe the book was trying to say that the real monsters were the ones who wronged the physical monster. I hope you’ll find someone who sees you for what you truly are, because I can’t do it anymore.”
My paw cracked the door ajar, and I slumped my shoulders in the entryway. This went against everything that my heart desired, pulling away from the only person I thought I truly knew. The reality was that I had changed too much; Marcel didn’t sign up to be partners with someone he saw as a monster. If I could go back to how things used to be between us, I would. Now, I had nobody to turn to.
A faint growl rumbled behind me. “That whole plot you saw was bogus. The real ending…of that book. Not the censored one the UN doctored up. Do you know what it is?”
My head whipped around. “What? You changed it?”
“Of course we did. It’s a vengeful story, not one where Frankenstein’s monster is innocent and lives alone with another of his kind. The real tale? Suffering immensely from rejection…the creature strives to take everything from his creator that he ever loved. After the death of his maker occurs, the wretch commits to end his own life of unhappiness in turn.”
“That’s…” My blood ran cold, as I tried to decipher what lesson such a story could tell. That was in stark contrast to a story that garnered sympathy from the viewers; it proved the point that the monster was a monster! “I don’t understand.”
“Humans changed it because we wanted you to take the message that we could be friends. We weren’t trying to vow vengeance for our rejection then. But maybe we should’ve left the message that there are consequences, for such inhumane and callous treatment of a ‘monster.’ It’s fitting, in hindsight.”
“That doesn’t sound like something you would say…Marc.” I took one hesitant step back toward the Terran, and noticed that he had averted his eyes. “You never want consequences.”
“Fuck, you think I don’t want the bastards to pay for all of these horrible things? I have…suffered plenty too. You seem to forget.”
“Then why…why do you let every bad person we come across get away with everything?!”
“I don’t. Read the book, and maybe you’ll understand. Here…I’ve had a copy in Venlil-script on me, ever since I knew you liked it. I wasn’t sure about giving it to you, but now I am.” The human rummaged through a satchel near his bedside, and weakly held it out with a hand. I inched closer, pulling it from his slender fingers. “There’s also a lesson for the monster in there. In his revenge, the monster damned himself too. I know from Sovlin that that was almost me.”
“I lied to you. Can we ta—”
“No. Come back when you’ve finished the book, and then, we’ll talk. I…need to rest. And process my family’s future.”
My tail flicked in a gesture of acceptance, and I plodded out of his quarters with a lighter heart. Marcel didn’t sound as angry; his voice was choked with tiredness, but his hatred had evaporated. Perhaps the human didn’t have the energy to project his grudge, though I wasn’t going to complain if that was the reason. It must be a lot for him to reckon with, learning how the cure would wreck his entire life. He still hadn’t complained or exploded with emotion.
I have no idea how he really feels, but I guess I’ve started to assume he doesn’t experience hate. He’s just always so…moral.
My claw traced the cover of the real Frankenstein, wondering how it could apply to my own feelings of monstrousness. Maybe I was ready for the lessons humanity hadn’t wanted the Venlil to absorb in the beginning. I had fallen far enough to heed teachings meant for the more depraved minds among predators. Regardless, I was curious to see what the full narrative held in its pages. If this was a slight chance to salvage my friendship with Marcel, it was a no-brainer to seize it.
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First Prev
Patreon Arxur POV of the Cradle Series wiki Official subreddit Discord

Hi there ! Let me tell you about what I plan.
First off i've been printing for a decade or so but being self taught I have a lot of blind spots, I regularly learn about seemingly basic things that I somehow missed . Last one in date was hypo clearer solution before washing and residual hypo tester.
I also have access to a fablab to make most of my stuff myself.
• So here's what I have :
It's a 20m² local , I have a 6x7 color enlarger I use for b&w and color prints. I'm modifying another head for UV printing . I have a jobo CPP2 processor and a scanning setup . A paper tank too.
I'm building a 3 in 1 50w LED lab light with red (660nm emission), high CRI 5600K and low CRI 3500K (that doesn't produces UV's , for alternative printing work)
I have a fairly complete I think chemical mixing equipment. Glassware, a 0.001g scale, protectrice gear. I'll use it for alternative printing mixing but i'm considering sourcing the darkroom cookbook to mix a variety of useful chemicals . I've come across interesting formulas on the web.
I have a kitchen ventilation hood i'll set up above my chemical mixing table, and I'll add several venting grids in the local to ensure proper air movement.
• Now here's what I know that I don't have :
I don't have a proper lab sink. I plan on building one unless I can find a good one used. Any suggestion welcome ! I'm thinking of copying the one I saw on The Naked Photographer's YT channel.
I don't have a drying cabinet and I wonder if it's that useful, I was thinking of making one in a metal locker, a second hand shop near me has some. No Idea how i would do that though.
I don't have any special print dryer or flattener. I always hanged my prints and my FB prints are terribly curly, what are the options here ?
• And most importantly, I don't know what I don't have . Please enlighten me on your most useful accessories !

Anyone here designed their own HVAC system? Any recommendation for good literature? Online/free preferred but a good book also welcome.
My focus is heat pump in heating mode only with central return in the corridor very close to the air handler.
My understanding of how that works is:

1. Calculate heating loads for each room. Will be based on square footage, ceiling height, windows, insulation assumptions and possibly other heat sources. Units: Watts or BTU/h
2. From heating loads get heat flow requirements. Units: CFM
3. From CFM determine the vent size area (unit: square inch) for each room
4. Place the (supply) vents at various locations at each room
5. Calculate the effective length from each vent to air handler (effective length is length incl equivalent length of all turns/bents/boots).
6. CFM requirement for the room and effective length gives duct size (?)
7. Total CFM requirement of the supply determines CFM requirement for the return (possibly with substantial margin factor)
8. Similarly, effective length and CFM give return duct diameter
9. Total required return CFM determines grille size area

​
Is this the right approach?
If would be great of the reference would discuss how to handle multiple vents+ducts per room and how to account for open living spaces (in my case there are no doors between stairs, living room, dining room, kitchen, corridor etc)
​
​

how do you guys deal with touching surfaces without having to clean them everyday? i feel comfortable using my couch, bed, and desk bc it was newly bought. but i find it impossible to touch the walls, bathroom sink, kitchen cabinets, door frames, carpets / floor, etc. i got into a habit of using tissues and paper towels so i don’t need to wash my hands every time i touch something.
how do i accept that life will only be 100% clean after my shower, and that doing daily things/tasks like going to school or work will require you to get a little dirty. i can avoid noticeable filth, but it seems literally impossible to be clean all the time unless i never leave my bedroom. thank you

Collapsible storage: - Outdoor storage - Self-standing utensils - Intelligent furniture - Smart pillow - Smart stove - Wireless devices - Fast furniture - Auto dispenser - Irobot cabinet - Irobot lawn leaf racker - Outdoor vacuum - Mowing outdoor vacuum - Sink auto dispenser - 3D printing, custom fabrication, and eco-friendly, plant-based polymers for furniture production - Furniture vertical farming
Divorce platform: - Old people utensils - ABC fashion - Covid insurance e-platform - Blockchain disabled dog wheeler - LOCAL college merch swag - Where does it hurt diagnosis app - Auto health diagnosis by voice - Wisdom tooth accessories biz - Recycled forever solo cup - Flight accessories - Mountain biking accessories - Mountain bike niche bike bags - Abs cruncher for sitting in traffic - Bike delivery - Bike insurance - Athlete's foot wet swipes - Diet sugar-free popsicles
Business and technology: - Concierge doctors - Car retail sales automation - Sales promotion kiosk - Match mirror - Mirror frame - Art gallery - Digital lego assemble - Self-built light-on gallery - Newsletter for business ideas - Uber Eat lob gift - LED screen chair furniture - Changing color design stitching quality varies across surgeons around the world - Hospital simulation 3D cyclist - KYC-powered forum - Camera built-in Roomba security - Recycle aluminum - Customize greeting cards - Drone in cars - Tattoo parlor - Customized framing online - True reflection mirror frame - Picture framing using AI and customization - Automated scheduled direct mailing service - Handwritten direct mailing service with embedded CRM - Hidden power outlets - Plant-based any everygoods - Microhouses
Personal services: - Have a personal art curator on call 24/7 - Have a personal interior designer on call 24/7 - Have a personal chauffeur on call 24/7 - Doctor on demand - Chef on call
Other ideas: - RC plane making - New clothing materials (besides nylon and cotton) - Climate-controlled shirts - AI matching for potential long-term dates - Self-dry cleaning - Indoor sea/ocean activities like kayaking and sailing for all people due to space issues and overpopulation - Emotion mind reader detector of humans - No dry cleaning shops, just a machine inside - Everybody tall and beautiful - Drone flying bodyguards with loaded tasers, pepper spray, and sirens - Niche for AI-generated anime self-made porn - Furniture for young people and old people - No need for photo studios, use Dall-e sensor instead - Switch to touch using hands instead of light switches - Space travel instead of air travel to reach places faster - Presentable Taiwanese food flying zone service - Uber for shoe making - Pizza with bugs as toppings - Bumper sticker on cars in Taiwan - Solar-powered furniture - Hydroponics - AI lifetime partner matching platform based on big data of marriage key success factors and web crawl candidates' social media and LinkedIn profiles - SaaS system for a global worldwide network of doctors and lawyers that automates menial and trivial tasks like doctor appointments and legal letterheads

Part 1 - https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/11ovngn/i_play_a_game_they_call_sleep_points_every_night/
Previous Part - https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/13deva8/i_play_a_game_they_call_sleep_points_every_night/
When I got home from school, even though I knew the clock wasn’t literally going to try to eat me alive like it always seemed to want to on weeknights, I still watched it intensely, dreading every minute that passed. Even though this had all been what I was hoping for over the course of the last week and a half, going through with everything I would need to do to meet up with Anastasia at her house in the middle of the night still seemed way scarier than just dealing with the clock’s nightly threats against my life which, by that point, had become something of a routine for me.
At 11:00 PM, my parents looked like they had gone to sleep. I would wait another hour as Anastasia had advised. I would leave at midnight. And that wouldn’t be a problem since it was a Friday night, and my clock wasn’t going through its usual changes. By that time, the clock hadn’t started glowing or even turning the slightest shade of red.
When midnight did come, the clock was still in the same state as it was at 11. My parents were still asleep. They hadn’t even gotten up for a bathroom break. I turned on the kitchen lights, hoping it wouldn’t wake my parents up. It didn’t. I went to the kitchen table to take the keys to my father's truck. They weren’t there. I had no idea where else to look for them.
I tried looking all around the kitchen and living room. I checked mom and dad's bathroom. Nothing. I didn’t know how I would make my way to Anastasia’s house now. I could just picture her, spending all night at her back door, waiting for me to show up, without me ever coming. Maybe I'd find the keys tomorrow. But that seemed like a fat chance since dad wasn't gonna be driving anywhere tomorrow.
I wouldn't have him to find them for me. It looked like I’d have to wait a whole nother week on any answers now.
I had recently invested in a new watch. I had some allowance money left over from when I was a kid. My school has a little gift shop with small things like school-themed wristwatches, so after my last class of the day, I stopped by and picked up a College High watch so I could check the time without needing to look at the clock in my room or at my phone. I'm bringing this up because at around this point I was watching with increasing anxiety as time was passing by. According to the watch, the time now was 12:30 and I still didn’t have any access to my father’s car.
I was already feeling hopeless enough, just thanks to that fact, but then I remembered that I still didn’t even know how to get to Anastasia’s house.
Since I still didn’t know where the keys were and it didn’t look like I’d find them any time soon, I figured I’d take a break from looking, and go on my phone to look up her address on google maps. I knew I shouldn’t have been using my phone since it was apparently super important not to let it die. I figured it must've been one of those rules like keeping my head under the blanket when the monster showed up, along with the rest of my body. But I would only need my phone for a few minutes. Just enough time to look at google maps and sketch out a rough map of the route from my house to Anastasia’s.
The first thing I noticed when I typed in her address was that, thankfully, her house wasn’t too horrendously far away from mine. It would just be a 4-mile drive. So hopefully this meant that, if push did come to shove, I could still just walk there if I had too. I’d probably be late, but that would be better than not showing up at all. So, I at least had that as a back-up plan if nothing else. But it would still be risky. It would take a lot of time to walk there, and then to walk back. Maybe mom and dad would be up after all was said and done. Maybe they’d hear me coming back inside the house, regardless of how I made it to Anastasia’s. Maybe I’d wake up Anastasia’s parents too.
Since I only had an hour and thirty-five minutes left, I had no time to worry all that much about any of this though. I had to get to work, jotting down the path to Anastasia’s house. I would turn left out of my driveway, stay on that road for about a mile and a half, then turn right and stay on that road for another half-mile, then turn left for another mile, and then left again for a final fourth mile.
Another thing I noticed was that Anastasia lived out in the middle of absolute nowhere. I thought I did too, but Anastasia’s house was on a whole nother level of out there.
Fortunately, that meant I’d be driving pretty much exclusively on backroads, so it would literally be impossible to take a wrong turn after I made my first turn out of the driveway and the next right turn after that after about a mile and a half. It also meant that I would be pretty much guaranteed not to run into any other drivers, especially at that time of night. But I guess her remote address explained why she didn’t have the internet connection she would need to do a video call.
Since it was a quarter to 1 by that point, after I found out how to drive to her house, I put on all the layers I could find, took the flashlight that my mom had given me for the walk I had went on during the week prior, and started trying to walk over there, without my parents’ car, despite her recommendations. Even though it was four miles by car, I wouldn't have to worry about staying on the road if I just walked there. If I walked in a straight line, I could get there in just over 2 and half miles or so. I had decided to leave, not out of the front door, but out of the door in the hallway that led to the garage. That door made less noise than the front door.
Unfortunately, I started to get the sense that I hadn’t thought this plan through when I realized I would still have to open the garage door in order to make my way into the outside world. Which, yeah, made considerably more noise than the front door. But then I realized it didn’t matter, since I was gonna have to open the garage door anyway if I wanted to get the car out of the garage and onto the road. So, I had still made the right decision. Except no I hadn’t, because I had just remembered that I still didn’t have the car keys, and so I was supposed to be ditching the whole car idea anyway and had just randomly forgotten about all of that.
I know that all probably sounded pretty messy and wasn't very easy to follow, but maybe someone else reading with ADHD can relate. But anyway, confusing thought processes aside, I walked out the front door and started making my way to Anastasia’s on foot. It really was freezing though. I really did wonder if I could actually make it all the way to her house.
Before I even made it to the end of the driveway, I began to change my mind and decided driving really would be a more reasonable alternative. Obviously, the backroads wouldn’t even be close to snow plowed. But the snow only looked to be about maybe 6 or 7 inches deep, which was still driveable enough with the snow-proof tires that my dad had on his truck. This level of snow isn't all that uncommon around here, so those tires are pretty much a must-have for anybody living in deathly cold climates like us.
So, I could still drive despite the snow, albeit only very slowly what with how much the snow would slow me down. But I was supposed to be driving slowly anyway because I was only 14 and didn’t have a license. But I still couldn’t drive without those keys. Then I remembered I still had my bike in the garage. It was supposedly “all terrain”, so hopefully that meant it could handle the snow. I went into the garage, got my bike out, and tried riding it. Unfortunately, the tires on that bike weren’t even close to capable of handling the snow. I tried pedaling as hard as I could but hardly got anywhere before falling over. I had a feeling this would probably happen. It seemed like a dumb idea but, since I didn’t want to steal my dad’s truck and I couldn’t even seem to find his keys anyway, I figured it was at least worth a shot.
I was just about to say “fuck it” and try meeting Anastasia again on some other night when, just as I had put my bike down in the garage, I had seen that my dad had left behind his keys in the key slot of his car door. Apparently, the reason that they weren’t where they usually were was because my father had locked the truck and just forgot to take his keys with him. I turned the key sticking out of the driver’s side door and it opened. So I really could get inside of his truck after all.
I put the key into the ignition and then put it in reverse. The truck made quite a bit of noise when its ignition started, so I had just hoped that I hadn’t woken up my parents with that. Luckily, my garage is on the other side of the house from where my parents sleep, so the sound did at least have a long way to travel. Once I started backing the truck out of the garage and into the driveway, I ran into another problem. Since the roads weren’t plowed, they were just as snowy as anywhere else. So even with the rearview mirror, I had no idea where my driveway stopped and the road started. I figured I would just keep backing up until I felt like I’d gone far enough.
Far enough came sooner than expected though. Eventually, the car had very clearly backed into the grass, meaning I had backed up too far. Fortunately, I saw that I hadn’t veered too much out of the straight line I was trying to go in, because driving in reverse meant I could see the truck’s tracks right in front of me with the help of the headlights. The car fell onto the grass from back to front. So that meant that the road was now directly in front of me. Since I needed to take a left from my house if I was facing away from it, and I was now facing the opposite direction given that I was looking right at it, that meant that I now had to make a right turn in order to still be going in the right direction.
I took a moment to make sure my logic was right and, once I felt confident, I turned the truck right and then tried to feel for where the road was based on how well the truck was able to move. Eventually I was able to drive relatively smoothly, so I took that to mean that I was back on the road. I tried to angle myself properly so that I wouldn’t wind up veering off the road again. Now and then I would wind up driving myself off the road. But since I was only going like 5 miles an hour, I was able to catch myself before the car wound up falling into any ditches or something.
Since the road was entirely empty, I eventually made the decision to just drive in the middle of the road. Or at least, wherever I thought the middle of the road was. That way, I’d limit the likelihood of driving myself off the right edge.
After about 20 or 30 minutes of driving painfully slowly, I finally saw the sign for my first turn. Since all the turns I was making were fairly sharp ones, they were basically all 90 degrees, there were road signs that I could use to gauge when I should turn without needing to see the road itself. So I still knew when to do it, even though I couldn’t see the road under all the snow and I couldn't use GPS since my phone had to stay on the charger at all costs.
But the snow still made those sharp turns very difficult to make. So I had to start all my turns pretty far ahead of where they actually would’ve been in the road. Naturally, I wound up driving off the road when making literally all of them. But I was always able to work out where the road was supposed to be soon enough. I guess since people are more likely to veer off the road when making turns as opposed to when they’re driving straight, there didn’t seem to be any ditches around all those sharp turns, thankfully enough.
After I made that first turn, I checked my watch. It was now a quarter after 1. I still had 50 minutes to go. I wasn’t making great time, but I had still made it about a third of the way in only about 25 minutes. If I kept up the pace, I’d be there after just under an hour of driving. Which would put me there a little bit after 2 AM. So, pretty much exactly at 2:05, the time we agreed on.
I kept on driving incredibly slowly for what felt like forever. Finally I had made my last turn, and after a bit, I could see lights from the houses off the side of the road in the distance. I figured that this must be the neighborhood Anastasia lived in. If you could even call it a neighborhood. The houses were so hugely spaced out that it hardly even made sense to say you had neighbors. But then, she really did live out in the middle of nowhere.
Every time I passed by a house, I got out of the car and looked for an address with my flashlight. This slowed me down, but it still ensured that I would be headed for the right house. I kept the slip of paper with her address on it since I knew that, without that sheet, I’d absolutely forget which address was hers. I was actually pretty pleased with myself for having thought ahead like that. I usually didn’t. I guess I still usually don’t, if I’m being honest.
I was worried that this whole procedure of getting out of the car to scope out for an address every time I passed a new house would make me late. But fortunately, Anastasia’s house was the third house I came across on that street. So thankfully, I didn’t wind up having to check that many houses and it only cost me maybe another 5 minutes. When I checked my watch, I found I had actually arrived sooner than I had thought. Even with checking every house I had come across up to that point for the address, it was only 1:50.
I had made it with 15 minutes to spare. That meant I had made that last two thirds of my trip in about the same amount of time that I had spent on my first, meaning I had wound up going twice as fast. I suppose as I had gotten comfortable with driving, I sped up the car a little without even realizing it. Doubling your speed sounds like it should be a huge difference, but when you’re only going from 5 miles per hour to 10, I guess it must be pretty hard to notice.
Since I had so much time left and the weather outside was still hellishly cold, I stayed in the truck with the heater blaring. After a couple of minutes, I noticed an ominous red light glowing out of the side of the house. That seemed off to me since surely that couldn’t have anything to do with Anastasia’s clock. It wasn’t a weeknight and even if it was, it was still well past midnight. I remembered what she had told me about how I was still on Stage One. Maybe the fact that she was on a much later stage had something to do with what I was seeing. The fact that I was still on Stage One did, after all, seem like it had something to do with the fact that I was only threatened by the clock on weeknights.
My curiosity had gotten the better of me, and so I braved the cold and snow to go check out what was happening. There was a window on the side of the house. The curtains were left open so with the red light blaring from it, I could see inside fairly easily. Especially since the house was only one story, so it wasn’t like the window was too high up off the ground for me to see through, either.
My fears had been confirmed. Upon looking into the room, I could see exactly where the red light was emanating from: the clock on the nightstand. The face inside was as clear as ever. Every feature slowly growing, approaching the glass in front of the clock’s face. But it wasn’t looking at me. It was very clearly directing its vile and hateful gaze at the person under the covers.
The person had her head covered underneath the blanket, so I couldn’t directly tell who it was. But I figured it had to be Anastasia. For one, there was no way in hell anybody else in her family was playing Sleep Points too. I mean, what are the odds of that? And for another, the room pretty clearly looked like it belonged to a teenage girl about Anastasia’s age. Everything looked like it was pink and had all kinds of frills to it. I even noticed some boyband poster on the other end of the room. If this wasn’t the most stereotypical teenage girl’s room, I had no fucking clue what was.
Finally, 2 o’clock had come. I could see why she had told me 2:05. I had never seen the monster from the clock break out. I had always had my head under the covers whenever it happened. But since this was Anastasia’s clock and not mine and since the face in the clock was staring her down and not me, and since I had an entire wall separating me from the thing, I guess I somehow managed to muster up the courage to watch the monster in action.
Suddenly, the hands and numbers of the clock’s face began to almost melt into the monster’s face. It had broken out of the sheet of glass holding it back. But that seemed to be the only thing that was broken. The rest of the actual clock remained pretty intact as the unspeakable thing from within started to slither out of the clock and onto the floor. Since the hands and numbers were still on its face, it kinda looked like they had been imprinted on it like some kind of tattoo artwork. It very quickly expanded in size and let out this unholy screech that I could hear very loudly even from behind the window. But Anastasia was still sleeping very peacefully. Totally motionless like nothing at all was going on.
It prowled around her bed, looking for the slightest sign of motion. It looked almost skeptically at her. As if it could tell whether she was really sleeping or not. And God only knows what would’ve happened to her if she wasn’t. Eventually, the monster seemed satisfied with what he saw and shrunk himself down to his original size. He slid back into the clock, and as he did so, there was one last glow of red light. The glass had been restored. It was now 2:01.

I dropped my pen on the floor next to my office chair. I leant over to pick it up but was stopped short by a couple of inches because my ribs were touching the arm rest. Eh, I leaned over harder and stretched some more and as I touched the pen I heard a loud "POP" and then a sharp pain.
Last year I had fallen onto the edge of a cabinet and cracked a rib in the same location. Possibly the same rib.
Now it sucks because breathing deeply, walking etc all brings some pain. And, it's going to take a couple of months to heal again.
This getting old malarkey is not for the weak.
P.S. No, I haven't gone to the hospital/doctors because based on the prior experience there's shit all they will do besides bill me.

So i’m due to have a baby girl very soon i’m 35+1. We are planning to co sleep and are very familiar with the safe sleep 7. However I have been searching all over to find the right mattress and i’m not sure how to know if i’m doing this right? it seems next to impossible to find a mattress that is actually firm. I’ve found one that is a king sized, MEDIUM firm mattress with no fiberglass. Which is perfect but it’s also got the 8/10/12in memory foam on top, does that change the safety of it? I currently have a queen sized bed with memory foam on it, it is medium firm as well (unfortunately does have fiberglass in it) and it feels quite soft/impressionable to me. I’m not convinced that it’s firm enough for a tiny baby. Am I overthinking this? Is medium firm/ memory foam fine?

Just bought a home. Kitchen appliances are very old. At some point once I have the money I’d like to replace appliances, and install new countertop, sink and backsplash. Okay with painting cabinets and not replacing. Also would love to install wine fridge if feasible. I will call contractors for quotes. Is that there where I start? Any suggestions? I live in a HCOL area.

This is my attempt to extract tips from this free stutter book (pdf version).
Intro:

• People who are not familiar with stammering have no idea what it is like to have a full-blown adult stammer. They think it is a small interruption of the speech flow, causing the speaker to feel vaguely inconvenienced and that sometimes it is done deliberately for effect. Little do they know (page 30)
• Lay opinions on the origin and treatment of stuttering abound. Many people believe that all stutterers are shy, or insecure or lacking in confidence and that this is the cause of stuttering (in fact these ‘causes’ are usually consequences of the disorder) (page 36)
• In spite of this ignorance it would seem that some people have benefited from lay methods. I (referring to the author of the book) have known a medical practitioner who overcame his stutter. He told me that he was cured by a teacher who believed in the sink-or-swim approach. This teacher forced him to speak out in class, to read aloud and to give speeches as often as possible, apparently on the assumption that this would make him less shy. He described this therapy as hell on earth, but it did cure his stutter. Similar cures, though few in number, do appear in the textbooks on stuttering. How can this be explained? It may be that the enforced public speaking improved the doctor’s confidence, thus lowering his tension levels below his threshold (see the chapter ‘A Possible Cause of Stuttering’ for details of this theory of stuttering). Consequently the stuttering reflex was not adequately activated and in time disappeared. This is not to say that forced speaking will benefit all stutterers. Forced public speaking may well be so traumatic as to increase tension and aggravate the stutter
• Due to the fact that stuttering is stress-related, natural recovery is usually difficult to achieve (page 40)
• A large part of stuttering consists of learned behaviour and conditioned responses. As a result treatment can become very complicated (page 42)
• Tension (which usually makes stuttering particularly bad) may serve as a distraction (page 48)
• A fluency technique can serve as a distraction, resulting in a temporary improvement in his speech – not necessarily due to the effectiveness of the technique, but because it distracts his attention from feared sounds. This feature complicates the extent to which the effectiveness of techniques can be proved. In other words, the lengths to which people will go to rid themselves of stuttering defy credibility (page 49)
• There is a lot of research on stuttering. The big question that nevertheless remained unanswered was: What exactly is the stutterer struggling against? (page 54)
• One eventually becomes very conscious of the air pressure in the mouth. High air pressure in the mouth indicates that airflow is inadequate (page 172)
• According to Schwartz there are two reflexes: hereditary (where tension results in contraction of the vocal cords) and learned (where contraction of the vocal cords results in struggle behaviour). (page 55). Tension is mostly learned, and the freeze response may be hereditary. (page 85) In my opinion: I disagree, I argue that the 'freeze response' of the laryngeal, respiratory and articulatory muscles are also learned behaviors and not hereditary. My hypothesis is that unhelpful beliefs/attitudes may have resulted in physical tension (or physical pain) which in my own experience is headache tension; inhibiting execution of motor movements (aka a speech block or silent block) is simply done to alleviate this physical tension in this hypothesis. The main question is then: How did this physical SUDDEN pain begin/manifest? What do you think? Answer: perhaps the sudden pain manifested from:
  • unhelpful reacting/thinking to pressure or anticipation
  • giving up on applying fluency laws (e.g., by blaming other factors or having no confidence to instruct to execute motor movements) and therefore feeling hopeless what to do as intervention
  • adopting an unhelpful attitude of relying on thoughts, feelings, sensations and experiences when trying to unblock
  • linking self-esteem to speech performance
  • conclusion: I argue that above four reasons are merely excuses. I believe, if we reinforce these unhelpful beliefs/attitudes (such as blaming the freeze response on other factors), then it may eventually lead to the subconscious mind being riddled with conditioned stuttering responses. However, I hypothesize that this physical pain is mainly manifested from the unhelpful learned behavior: measuring air pressure during a speech block. In other words, I hypothesize that my stutter disorder was developed by replacing a helpful attitude ('deciding' or 'instructing' to execute motor movements) with an unhelpful attitude (measuring glottal air pressure to decide whether to initiate speech movements or not)
• Therapies focus more on the ‘stutter more fluently’ (or easier stuttering) approach in contrast with the ‘speak more fluently’ approach (page 56). In my opinion: it may be more effective to focus on (1) stress management, and (2) maintaining the forward flow of speech. Likely, if we avoid #2 (focusing on maintaining the forward flow of speech) when doing stress management, it may make us more sensitive to fluency (even though we become more tolerant against stuttering). In my opinon, completely replacing #2 with #1 is what led us to develop a stutter disorder to begin with
• Stuttering is a complex combination of psychological and physiological problems. It becomes very difficult to prove any particular theory of stuttering. (page 57) If I stuttered, I saw myself as a stutterer; if I saw myself as a stutterer, I stuttered. One problem perpetuated the other (page 69)
• Stress is known to affect people both psychologically and physically. It can cause muscular spasms in the back, shoulders or neck, often resulting in muscular pain. Some people develop ulcers, spastic colons or tension headaches. In my opinion: When I got past my 'stuttering anticipation', I entered my next stutter phase where I was able to feel headache tension. As explained here, I currently experience that I 'freeze' speech muscles (aka blocking) in order to reduce this pain; so an unhelpful (habitual) belief/attitude leads me to block (or to inhibit execution of motor movements)
• Types of stress affecting speech: (page 70)
  • situational stress
  • word or sound stress
  • authority figure stress
  • uncertainty stress
  • physical stress
  • speed stress
  • external stress
  • communicative stress
  • linguistic stress
  • speech stress
  • emotional stress
• Habits begin as spiderwebs, and become cables, such as conditioned speech fears, conditioned struggle behaviors, learned stress patterns, and self-image (page 108)
• Two causes of relapse: 1) the subconscious reaction of the self-image, and 2) failure to practise regularly and maintain the newly acquired fluency (page 164)
• A PWS has a subconscious image of himself as a stutterer. So, if the stuttering stops for long enough, it is as if the subconscious becomes ‘worried’; it receives a message that the status quo is changing. The subconscious then tries to restore the status quo by increasing base-level tension. This higher base-level tension has a twofold effect: renewed stuttering, plus a disruption of the newly acquired fluent behaviour. As a result the PWS resumes his stuttering and the subconscious is ‘reassured’. This subconscious reaction is often responsible for the many relapses demoralising us. So, change the subconscious in a more gradual manner, minimising psychologically-based relapses. Techniques are for example: visualisation, stress management, improving self-image, and minimising any subconscious reactions (page 165)
• Don’t be discouraged (in order to reduce stress)
• Tension is often the result of the body’s response to a real or perceived threat. Change can also be perceived as a threat. Change involves unfamiliarity and uncertainty, the underlying question being: ‘Will I be able to cope with the new situation?”
• Stress is relative
• Tension isn’t necessarily inherently harmful. Some amount of tension is normal. It provides the energy we need to tackle new challenges. Without it, life would be dreary and aimless. The goal should therefore be to control and not eliminate tension. So, identify the cause of stress (page 188)
• Most stress has been learned, and can therefore be unlearned. If you always get tense when in a shop (even when not speaking), you can try to weaken this conditioned response
• Self-image is the product of your perceptions of the way others react to you. For example, parents expressing their concern or disapproval directly, or indicating it with their body language. This may lead to intense shyness and feelings of inferiority and guilt, and may lower self-confidence, which is part of the self-image (208)
• A poor self-image can have a negative effect on one’s behaviour and achievements and set in motion a vicious circle. Psychologists report that the self-image affects virtually every aspect of life, and that many psychological and physiological problems have their origin in a poor self-image (209)
• One would expect that, should our fluency improve, the self-image would automatically follow and get better. However, that’s not at all a foregone conclusion (page 210)
• PWS may find it difficult to really come to terms with his new fluency achieved. If we speak fluently, we likely think: "But this isn’t me!". Resulting in not applying stress management, and then begin to stutter. Conclusion: it may be more effective to change your self-image, and rethink the old, negative stutterer’s self-image – and rather start working toward a positive self-image of yourself as a slow, but fluent, speaker (page 211)
• You are what you think (212)
• By seeing yourself as a ‘stutterer’, you may be perpetuating the stutter itself (215)
• Being positive reduces tension
• Critics leaning toward the ‘conditioning and learned behaviour’ explanation of stuttering have in fact pointed out that artificial stuttering could reinforce the stuttering (261)
• Reacting to stuttering in an emotional way increases tension
• Reasons why PWS may choose to stop practicing, after a relapse:
  • practicing takes too much time or effort
  • expected a miracle
  • stuttering was easier than the hard work required
  • did not find stuttering such a handicap
  • the psychological transition from stutterer to a more fluent speaker may have been too much (breaking away from the ‘stutterer’s mentality’ is a long-term process requiring a sense of purpose and willpower)
  • fear of freedom or fear of the unknown, such as "‘I’d rather stay here, in a world that I know. Yes, I stutter, but I can cope to some extent."

Tips:

• reduce and control stuttering and stress and reduce detrimental psychological and social consequences
• work on your sensitivity to stress, the strength of the vocal cord closures, and personal determination
• replace speech fears with ‘speaking confidence’ (the previously feared situations or words no longer cause tension) (page 99)
• stress-desensitise yourself in problematic speaking situations
• work on acceptance of and psychological adjustment to the defect. Don't wait on a miracle cure (page 100)
• set limited, well defined goals (it may be more realistic to aim at success in a particular problem area) (page 102)
• create a good self-image (If you want to become more fluent, first ask yourself a very basic question: Do you REALLY want to stop stuttering?) (page 110)
• openness about stuttering
• emotional self-control
• time, energy, motivation and perseverance (note, it’s not difficult to learn a new speech technique, even though it requires a lot of effort. The real challenge is to apply the technique in real-life speaking situations, when it is easy for your conditioned reflexes and fears to simply take over) (148)
• distract your attention away from the feared word (page 116)
• don't stare like a robot
• use a mirror to monitor your posture
• move your hands, head and eyes freely and naturally
• take note of how others use body language when they speak, and imitate it (page 117)
• low energy speech is soft, with minimal movement of speech motor movements
• knowing what to do and having the technique immediately available are two different things. Having the technique available means you have practised it sufficiently (page 121)
• reduce scanning
• reduce avoidances
• the mouth should be in a relaxed and neutral position
• apply variations to counter monotony (page 128)
• work on your word fear e.g., by reading pages with many B sounds (page 129)
• toughening exercise: goal is to resist speaking pressure. A friend peppers you with questions aimed at exerting as much pressure as possible. The answer should be a complete sentence. Your friend should occasionally interrupt you, so that you then stop immediately and pause briefly before answering
• role-playing exercise: you pretend to be in a restaurant, to place your order. Other role-playing could be ordering food from a busy hostess; explaining a problem to an impatient shop assistant; an interview with your boss; a conversation with a stranger who has lost his way; an argument with an aggressive traffic officer, policeman or neighbour; a conversation with a foreign customs official who hardly speaks English; a conversation at a noisy party – you want to introduce your wife or girlfriend to the others; testifying in court; apologising to your dentist for being late for your appointment, read an excerpt from a short play
• visualisation exercise: instead of ‘seeing’ yourself stutter, see yourself speaking slowly and in a relaxed manner. This prepares your subconscious. It should be as realistic as possible and as true to your life. Imagine feeling relaxed, confident in yourself and your speech, being in control, and satisfied (page 235)
• resist relapse (page 164)
• develop a fluency-enhancing lifestyle (page 169)
• your technique should not become an obsession – it should be part of a holistic approach
• guard against exaggerated speech control (because you may lose all spontaneity and merely increase your base-level tension)
• establish comfortable eye contact
• enter a contract (e.g., with your friend or yourself) to reinforce your strategy. This falls under an operant conditioning strategy (258)
• practice classical conditioning by applying association to learn helpful behaviors. Research found that both types of conditioning play an important role of stuttering behaviour. For example, if you practice where you usually have difficulty speaking, then in this way you may begin to associate your strategy with the 'classroom' or 'office' (258)
• don’t fight your way out of a block
• don’t go back to words that have already been said
• consider yourself a former stutterer to prevent relapse (page 180)
• change the stutterer within you (page 182)
• develop a positive and flexible attitude
• sometimes it is better to take a tolerant or fatalistic view of a situation, or to accept the problem, perhaps in terms of religious beliefs. Research has shown that deeply religious people are less susceptible to stress (189)
• when under stress, always ask yourself: Is this really important enough to worry about?
• try to establish what it is that you do wrong. Compare your stuttering behaviour with the normal pronunciation of sounds. You will notice that during stuttering you do far more than is required to pronounce that specific sound. Try to reduce those excessive activities (206)
• accept that you have the right to make mistakes and fail. Making mistakes is part of the learning process. Be gentle with yourself; be your own best friend. You also have the right to stutter, and the right to not stutter or apply stress management, you have the right to choose (229)
• grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to distinguish between the two.--- Traditional prayer (241)
• don't hate your stuttering, if you stutter. Instead identify the particular type of stress involved: word/sound stress, situation stress, etc
• acceptance doesn't mean resignation (241)
• don't overreact (243)
• unlearn secondary characteristics. Start by changing, delaying or weakening this secondary behaviour, rather than attempting to eliminate it all at once. You can also unlearn a learned stress response in a shop for example (259)
• work on your fears of the way others will react to your speech, fear of stuttering and fear of silences occurring in speech (Sheehan's approach) (261)
• you can try clinical hypnotherapy, where you are awake and in control to use this state of relaxation to access the subconscious and ‘reprogramme’ issues such as, shyness, stress, lack of confidence. Anti-stuttering hypnosis can assist PWS address the underlying stressors that contribute to stuttering (262)
• be your own speech therapist (290)

TL;DR summary:
In summary, this post discusses various insights and tips from a free stuttering book. It highlights the misconceptions about stuttering and explores the causes and treatment options. The book emphasizes the importance of stress management, maintaining a positive self-image, and setting achievable goals. It suggests techniques like stress desensitization, role-playing exercises, visualization, and classical conditioning to improve stuttering. Additionally, it also addresses relapses and the need for perseverance and commitment to the chosen strategies.
I hope you found these tips helpful! If you also want to write tips from stutter books, here are many free PDF ebooks about stuttering that you can read.

Part 2
Day 11
The pain was excruciating and all over my body. A thousand knives seemed to dig into me. I lay there for a minute with the dead creature still on top of me. I was trying to muster enough strength to get up and move this horrible thing off me, but I couldn’t. Finally, after what seemed like lying there for an hour Chloe came over and helped me move its dead body off me.
She froze when she saw me. I must’ve looked horrible so much had happened to me in the last 10 minutes. I saw her eyes move to my left hand. I found my tired eyes looking over, and what I saw was horrifying. My left hand was a bloody broken mess, fingers were missing, bones were sticking out in odd places, and a huge chunk of my palm was completely gone. I puked all over myself. Chloe looked like she was trying so hard to keep herself together.
The next few minutes were tense. Chloe tied one of her layers to my arm as a makeshift tourniquet. Then we slowly made our way home with Chloe practically dragging me.
They had to stitch my wounds while I was still conscious due to us not having anesthetics, and those were the most painful moments of my life. I felt the needle go in and out of my skin, I felt the small string pull my muscle and skin back together, and I felt when they had to cut one of my fingers off. It was absolutely excruciating and after it was done I passed out.
Chloe sat on the couch feeling awful and tired. She’d just spent an hour trying to get the food that had been in the fridge into coolers, but her mind was so busy she hardly cared. She felt awful about everything. There was so much she could’ve done, so many ways she could’ve helped me. So many ways that led to me still having a hand. If only I hadn’t been a coward, she thought, if I just hadn’t stood there maybe he would still have his hand. If only she’d just shot it again. She wiped her face trying not to cry. She had to be the strong one now, she had to be brave.
She was very curious, she wanted to know what exactly had happened to Carl. Joey hadn’t had the time to tell her whether or not the man was dead. She assumed he was due to the blood and the creature, but there was a small chance. She told Gretchen and Ronda (my mom) what her plan was. They agreed and she went to get ready.
She brought two guns, the sniper and the semi-automatic. She also found an old motorcycle helmet and decided to use that as a makeshift helmet. She knew if I had been awake I wouldn’t have not in a million years let her go, so she made her process quick just in case I did wake up.
Crunch! The snow had melted slightly the night before so now it felt more like walking across huge ice sheets. As she walked she realized she didn’t even have to use the GPS because of the blood trail. She followed it for a while, the snow constantly attacking her. After a couple of minutes, she found it. Lying in the middle of the street now with a fresh layer of snow on it was the creature, the hound as she’d begun to refer to it in her head. She hadn’t gotten a good look at it like I had so her eyes went wide when she saw the body. She was struck by how much its exoskeleton looked like big chunks of rocks. She also noticed the now frozen yellow-greenish blood around the body. Chloe leaned down to examine what was left of the head. What was left was a hollow shell of the exoskeleton; the gunshot in the mouth had practically liquefied everything in its head. She remembered how everything had exploded from the mouth and eye holes. The image of the eyes getting blown out from behind disgusted her.
She found herself examining the rest of the body and she couldn’t help but keep looking at the four legs. They looked so out of place on the body. They looked so mammalian for such an insect-like creature. They literally looked like stretched-out bald dog legs. She had a feeling of deja vu as she looked at the legs, she couldn’t help but think of the black dog they’d seen the other day. She made a note in her head that she wanted to take the body with her on the way back.
Finally, she stood up and started making her way towards the store. Like before she just followed the blood. She remembered when Joey ran into her he was covered in blood, like he’d slipped into the trail. She dreaded to think what he’d found in the showers. Her trek was slow and eerie. Then as she got closer the dead silence was cut by a ticking sound. She vaguely recognized it as something those spiders had made. Specifically the stinger ones. She kept the semi-automatic raised and got ready for a fight, but the ticking sounds slowly faded and she kept moving.
The store was just as she had left it early that morning. It was still a complete wreck. She hurried past the shattered glass and toppled shelves, through the small break room, and into the bunk room. It looked even worse than before. It looked like the creature had destroyed a few more things after it caught the headlamp. She specifically noticed a new deep gash in the bunk they’d hid behind.
As she walked into the shower room she heard a faint dripping sound. She started going one stall at a time to find it. First empty, second empty, but the third she wanted to throw up. Carl lay in the back of the stall, his body a bloody mess. His torso was almost gone. Everything inside of it had been ripped out along with most of his flesh. His ribs were shattered and lying on the floor. His spine was cracked and twisted. It looked like it had been broken. She threw up and stepped away from the sight, making her start to sob. Pull yourself together, she thought to herself, now isn’t the time. She wiped the tears off her face and continued. He had a daughter and a wife. She had to know what happened to them. So with much hesitance, she continued.
Fourth room empty, fifth empty, sixth empty, seventh empty, she stood next to the eighth stall dreading what she’d find inside. She didn’t want to see what was in there, but she would never forgive herself for not looking.
Two cocoon-looking things lay in the stall. They were white and pulsating slightly. They looked like the web cocoon the stingers had wrapped around the dog, but these were too big to be dogs. Instantly she knew what had happened to his wife and daughter. Chloe stepped away so she didn’t have to see it anymore, and then she had a thought. They wouldn’t leave them unattended, would they? She became much more nervous and started cautiously making her way from the room. She started to hear the ticking noises outside again and her hands started to shake. She took a deep breath and kept walking.
She walked into the main part of the store and saw a dozen or so stingers crawling in through one of the broken windows. She gasped, then in a hurry ducked back into the breakroom. Her whole body was shaking as she stood there listening to them scurrying around the store. Then after a minute one walked into the breakroom didn’t see her and disappeared into the bunk room. Then another went through, then another, then another, then another, and soon all but one had passed through. Her whole body was trembling when finally it walked through. This one was walking more slowly and looking around much more than the others, and suddenly its small beady eyes met hers. Scre… Rat-a-tatata! Four quick bullets cut through the stinger. All four hit it right in the head. She had a small feeling of triumph then Screech! The other stingers started running into the room. She hurried out in such a rush she didn’t watch where she was stepping and slipped on a piece of glass.
Smack! Her helmet slammed into the ground and then the rest of her. She watched them hurriedly crawl towards her. She tried to get a shot but they were just too fast. Then she felt a sharp pain in her leg. One of the stingers had sunk their stinger into her calf. Another was about to sting before she made her move. She grabbed a large piece of glass and stabbed it into the one on her leg, and then quickly stuck the shard into the other one that was about to sting her. Then she quickly stood up. Her body was starting to feel heavy and she was getting a little loopy. The other stingers were screeching and running toward her. Rat-a-tatatatata! She shot 10 rounds into the remaining nine stingers. Seven exploded when the bullet made contact, another got three legs blown off, the last wasn’t hit, and before she could shoot again it had lodged its stinger in her boot. She stopped for a second realizing that the stinger hadn’t actually pierced her foot then Rat-a-tat! She shot two bullets into the thing and then pulled it off her foot.
Her adrenaline was wearing off and the venom was doing its work fast. Her eyes were starting to close and she had to concentrate just to keep them open. I need to get somewhere safe, she thought looking around, and then her eyes fell on an intact door.
She locked the door to the women's restroom and then slumped against it as she felt her consciousness begin to slip. All she could think of was me hoping that I was okay, and hoping that she’d be able to see me again. Then finally she blacked out.
Her eyes fluttered open to see she was in the same place she’d passed out. There was a small puddle of blood around her calf. She weakly reached over and touched the wound. It wasn’t bleeding any more. I must’ve been out for a while. She thought, gingerly beginning to put weight on her leg. It hurt but she could walk. Click, she unlocked the bathroom door, raised the gun, and opened the door. She was nervous, worried that maybe more of them had come while she was out. It didn’t look like too much time had passed, and even more importantly there were no stingers. She looked over and saw her footprints were still visible through the heavily falling snow. Good not much time must have passed, she thought. Then she pulled out the phone and called Gretchen.
Bzzz…
“Gretchen, I got stung and passed out. What time is it?” She asked.
Gretchen’s relieved voice cut through the phone: “Oh Chloe thank goodness, it’s 2:42. You left around 12.”
Day 13
I woke up to giggling and laughter. I sat up and looked at the doorway and on the other side I could hear the boys quietly playing together. I moved the covers and tried to move my legs, but instantly daggers of pain went up my right leg. I wanted to do it more slowly but nothing seemed to help.
“Chloe!” I called and immediately heard something clatter upstairs followed by fast footsteps into the basement.
In a second Chloe had sprinted into the room and was on top of me giving me a huge hug. She pulled away and gave me one of her pretty little smiles.
“How are you feeling?” She asked.
My stomach growled and that answered her question.
“You’ve been asleep for almost two days, no wonder you’re hungry.” She said, I froze and looked over at the clock, but nothing showed on it. It was just a blank black screen.
“When did the power go out?” I asked, turning back toward her.
“Not long after you fell asleep.” She said, “We put as much food as we could into coolers, but most of what was in the fridge and freezer has gone bad.”
Her face was sad and grim. I reached for her hand with my good hand and squeezed it.
“We’ll get through this just like everything else. We’ll make it through if we stick together.” I told her starting to realize how hoarse I sounded.
She smiled then looked up at me again: “I’ll go get you some food… and a water bottle.” She said walking back out of the room.
I lay there in deep thought when Alan poked his head in.
“Uncle, are you okay?” He asked, sitting down on the foot of the bed.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, smiling at him.
He smiled back, “Uncle you’ve got a Lego hand now.” He yelled pointing to my left hand.
I looked at my hand and saw the way they wrapped it did look like a Lego hand.
“Ha… yeah I suppose so.” I chuckled, Alan nodded and disappeared into the hallway.
A few minutes later Chloe appeared in the doorway with a plate and Mom and Gretchen tailed her.
“Sweety, are you ok?” My mom asked, walking over to the bedside and putting her hand on my forehead.
“Yes Mom I’m ok, I’m as ok as I can be right now,” I told her.
“Well I’m glad you’re ok,” She said, hugging me.
“Me too,” Gretchen added, hugging me.
After a minute they broke away and Chloe gave me my plate. It was some dry cereal and a piece of toast.
“Sorry… that’s all I could scrape together.” She said her expression was sad.
“How much is left?” I asked her.
“A few days maybe, the water situation is even worse though,” She said grimly.
I felt a crushing sense of defeat at that.
“We’re going to need to do something now,” Gretchen said, “Before we can’t do anything.”
“Agreed, but what? There is no chance of leaving without a snow plow.” I grumbled, becoming more disheartened.
“What if we had a snow plow?” Chloe asked.
“What?” Me and Gretchen asked.
“I mean, they keep it at the tractor place just a mile away. We could get the snow plow.” She suggested a hint of hope in her eyes.
“I don’t think we’ll all fit. Let alone supplies.” I told her.
“So then we bring two vehicles,” She said, “One or two of us go to the place, get the snow plow, and come back to the others in the other vehicle and follow behind.”
It was actually a pretty good plan, but it was still wishful thinking. They had a lot of variables on that.
“That might work, but it will take time and we don’t exactly have time,” I said.
“Well then let's get some more time. We might be able to find more food in other homes,” My mom said.
“Yes, in theory, that would work, but we don’t have two people to go,” I said.
“I’m out of commission, Gretchen isn’t leaving her boys, and not in a million years am I letting you go, Mom,” I argued.
“She can handle herself, she did the other day,” Mom argued back.
“What?... no I was with her…” I turned toward Chloe in confusion.
I saw a guilty look on her face and she told me that she’d gone to the store on the 11th day after they were done treating me.
I pulled her into a tight hug and whispered in her ear: “If you do that again I will use whatever force necessary to make your stay here.”
She looked at me, her eyes darkening: “Joey if I don’t go, we will starve. I’m terrified too but if that is what needs to be done I’ll do it.”
“I… I… I don’t want to lose you.” I sputtered out.
Her face turned red before she said: “I don’t want to lose you either, or any of you guys and that's why I need to go.”
I finally relented, Gretchen and my mom left the room, and Chloe sat and chatted with me while I ate my mediocre breakfast.
She perked up and said, “Joey I need to show you something.”
She got up and helped me get out of bed. Getting out wasn’t that hard unless I had to move my left leg or arm. Once I was standing she helped me over to the restroom and then helped me sit down.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” I asked, looking around the bathroom.
“This,” She said, pulling the shower curtain open and revealing what was inside.
Lying inside the tub was the body of the dog bug creature.
“Why the heck did you bring that in?” I asked.
“Aren’t you curious what it is?” She asked, an almost crazed look in her eyes.
“Fair, I am curious,” I said. “Found anything out so far?” I then asked.
“Well a no, not yet,” She said looking disappointed now, “I just know it isn’t anything science knows of.”
“Nothing, nothing interesting?” I inquired.
“Well yes there are interesting things,” She said, “Like look at this.”
She grabbed a knife covered in yellowish-green blood and used it to open a previously cut incision into the body. I looked inside and saw something quite strange. This thing still had an endoskeleton.
“Nothing that we know of on earth has an endo and exoskeleton, and I honestly don’t know why an animal would have both.” She said looking up at me.
“Hmm… mind if I take a look?” I asked.
She nodded and I moved over and took the knife with my right hand. I used the knife to hold open the incision and I looked at the bone. It looked normal but I was suspicious so I set the knife down, reached in, and yanked the femur I’d been looking at out. The femur was the size it should’ve been for a normal dog, but for this creature, it was extremely undersized.
“Just as I thought,” I said, looking over at her.
“Can you explain to me what it is that you just figured out?” She asked, very confused.
“Look how small this femur is, it should be double the size for this creature, but it is the adequate size for a normal dog. The way I figure this is that during the metamorphosis that changed the dog into this thing the bones were not destroyed or changed. That’s why they are still there but not the right size.” I explained holding the bone up to her.
“I suppose that your theory makes sense,” She said after a short pause.
Day 14
Chloe sat on the bed strapping on the extra gear I was making her take. I knew I couldn’t stop her from going so I decided I would make her as safe as possible. I dug through old boxes and found my dad's old Kevlar vests. There were two so I cut one up to make guards for her arms and legs. Then I made her put on an extra coat to add one more layer of protection, as for other parts I agreed that the motorcycle helmet was the best helmet we had so she put that on.
Now she was sitting on the bed with the helmet sitting next to her while she was loading her weapons. She was bringing the semi-automatic and the sniper rifle with extra ammo for each. She also had a hunting knife strapped to her belt saying it would’ve come in handy last time. I looked at her and gave her a tight hug.
“If you don’t come back I’ll find you and teach you a lesson.” I jokingly threatened her.
She let out a giggle, “I’ll try my best.”
Again she made her outside into the blizzard. It raged on around her as it had been for days. She had to climb the almost four-foot-tall pile of snow before she could really start exploring. They’d assumed that the people who had left town wouldn’t have much food in their homes, so she planned to hit Carl’s house and the Garrison’s house today. Then check out a few other houses the next day, but right now she had to focus on simply taking the next step because anytime she stepped wrong she’d sink further into the snow. Slowly through the whipping wind and freezing snow, she walked. It was exhausting especially with her still being sore from a couple of days ago, but she continued despite the pain and weather. Despite it all she kept taking step after step after step, and the whole time the blizzard's icy claws were digging into her.
Eventually, she saw the destroyed store and walked past it, her eyes eyeing the shattered windows for any movement but nothing happened. She continued onward knowing that Carl’s house was now only a block away. She walked carefully and precisely trying not to step in the wrong place. Then she saw it. Carl’s house was a small colonial-style two-story home with a big wrap-around porch, but now it looked horrible. The door was ripped out of its hinges and two or three windows were shattered. She slid down a short snowy slope and onto the porch. Crack! One of the wooden planks that made the porch broke from under her foot and her foot slipped down. She pulled it out of the hole and slowly walked into his house.
There was a trail of snow leading in from the fallen door almost like a carpet leading her into this place. It was horrible on the inside. It reminded her of the store. Furniture was thrown every which way, some bearing deep gashes. The closest door to her had a hole going straight through it. She walked over a vast sea of shattered glass and turned into the kitchen. The granite countertops had been ripped from their places and shattered on the tiled floor. A large gash was in the door of the now fallen fridge. She walked over and kneeled down near the fridge, ripping open one of the doors. As she suspected, everything in there was frozen solid. Sitting in there was cheese, deli meat, assorted fruits and vegetables, shattered glasses of condiments, and two steaks. She grabbed everything and stuffed it all into one of the duffel bags she’d brought. Then she saw a loaf of bread lying on the ground near her and grabbed that too. She stood up and looked around the kitchen. She noticed a box of pasta sitting next to a pot on the stove. The box was full, so she grabbed it. The pot was partly melted onto the stove and frozen tomato sauce sat inside.
The picture of what had happened began to emerge in her head. Carl had likely been walking home from the store when it attacked. It chased him inside, breaking down the door and destroying everything in its path. His wife, Greta, had been making spaghetti for dinner when it happened. He ran into the kitchen and grabbed his wife with the beast following him. It destroyed the kitchen as it chased them.
Chloe pushed those thoughts from her head and opened their pantry to see if there was more food. There were lots of boxes but her eyes fell on the cans that lined the bottom of the pantry. There were dozens of them, probably a hundred or two cans. She kneeled and started eagerly grabbing the cans and putting them in the duffel bag. She even took out the cheese and pasta to make for more room.
She stopped her eager collecting when she heard a slight ticking noise. Stingers she thought and then pulled her knife from her belt in preparation. The ticking was slight and distant. It probably just walked in, she thought. With the ticking, she heard the slight creaking of the wood floor in the hall as it approached the kitchen. Then a scraping tapping sound as it began walking on the tiles. She gripped the knife tightly and got ready to stab the thing. Scr…! The stinger managed to give off a faint screech before the sharp hunting knife pierced its windpipe. She yanked the knife out of its neck severing the head from the body. Then she resheathed the knife and quietly got back to what she’d been doing. She didn’t stop until the bag was bulging then she zipped it closed and heaved it under her arm. It was heavy but she wasn’t weak.
She walked over to the front door and set the duffel bag next to it. She wanted to check out the rest of the house before she left.
She crept down the hall and into the master bedroom. It was intact, everything looked right and nothing was broken. She walked over to the dresser and started going through the drawers. Darn, just clothes. She thought as she dug her hands in shuffling the clothes around. She opened the drawer and start thrashing around the clothes when she felt something hard. She pulled a box of ammo out of the drawer. It was for the revolver she looked to see how much but it was empty.
Almost every stair on the way upstairs bore scratches and one or two were cracked. They creaked so loud she began to worry that the noise would get the stinger’s attention but nothing came. Then finally she arrived upstairs. The second floor of their house was composed of two rooms, a restroom, and his daughter Lacy’s bedroom. The bedroom door and a dresser lay on the room floor scratched and broken. The rest of the room was torn apart. The bed was shredded and a mirror lay shattered on the ground. Her eyes fell to the window which was propped open.
The rest of their story seemed to fall into place. Carl and Greta ran upstairs chased by the hound, and into Lacy’s room. They barricaded the door as the creature tried to get it, and then they all quickly slipped out of the window onto the porch roof and then to the ground. They ran to the store and bunkered there. The creature searched the whole shop but couldn’t find them. Then later the hound came back and Carl went to fight it. He told Greta and Lacy to hide in a stall and made his way to the main part of the shop. There he was killed and then dragged into the shower stall to be eaten, and at some point during that time the stingers and slugs got to Lacy and Greta.
She shivered, they’d tried so hard but it still got to them. Maybe if he’d had more bullets he could’ve survived. Thinking of the empty box and the two shots that had woken them that night.
She walked out of the bedroom and back downstairs. She found her eyes wandering around the destroyed first floor again, and it struck her that something bigger had to have done this. There was no way the deer-sized hound would have destroyed this much. She hurried over into the kitchen again and looked at the gash in the fridge. That’s too big. Way too big! She thought looking at the huge gash. She started to think about the store and the same inconsistencies began to appear in the memories. All the damage, the claw marks, the strength, it was all too much, too big, there was no way the hound had done this.
As she was thinking she noticed a doorway she hadn’t been through. Next to her was the doorway to the basement stairs with the door wide open. She peaked down and saw light down there, not much probably from a window, but it was something.
Creak! Her first step of descent was loud and made her worry again that something would hear her. She stopped and listened, but nothing. So as carefully as she could she continued. Every step was as loud as the first and every step made her jump in her skin and wait for something to happen. But after what seemed like ages she arrived at the bottom.
The basement was large with two spare bedrooms and a large storage room. She slowly walked down the hall looking into the bedrooms on both sides of her. They were bare with nothing much more than beds, so she walked forward and into the main storage room.
The storage room had large shelving units across the whole room. The shelves were partially filled with labeled boxes. She walked over to one shelf and started reading the labels. Christmas, no, I don't need that. Halloween, not that. Games, nope. Sports could be useful. She thought as she grabbed the heavy crate and set it out in front of her. She grabbed the latches on either side, undoing them and popping the lid off.
Suddenly a ripping sound erupted from another part of the basement. The ripping had a sort of wet sound to it. Chloe started to walk over to the sound far too curious not to. Screech! It came from the same direction as the ripping sound. She got the gun ready and then jumped from around a shelf not facing what was making the sound. She watched one of those hound things fully emerge from a cocoon and look over at her. A chill ran down her spine as its four eyes met hers; the two to the left were icy blue and the two to the right were dark brown. This one was also slightly smaller but much stockier than the other. Rat-a-tatatata! She released a quick barrage of bullets hoping to stop the disgusting thing, but it just started charging for her. Quickly she moved to the other side of the shelving and pushed it down. Her whole body was shaking, but she had to keep calm and keep fighting. The hound howled in pain and started cracking through the wooden shelf to get to her. She took this time to aim a good shot at its face. Rat-a-tat! She shot two quick bullets into its face. One sunk into its exoskeleton the other buried itself into one of its eyes. SCREECH!!!!! It broke through the shelf and made a quick dive toward her. It pinned her to the ground, knocking her gun away in the process. It sunk its jaws into the helmet and it started to break and crack. She started to cry. This thing was going to eat through her helmet then her face, but during this moment of panic she remembered something. She pulled the knife from her belt and stabbed it into the hound's semi-exposed underbelly. It screeched again in pain so she stabbed again. She then shoved the hurt thing off of her and dove for the gun. She felt one of its praying mantis talons slash her vest and then her upper leg, so she turned around and fired. Rat-a-tatata! She shot it four more times, one hitting its forehead, the second hitting its mouth, the third mouth as well, and the fourth badly damaged its lower jaw. Its face was covered in yellow-greenish blood and it was throwing up blood onto the floor. Just as she thought it might be dying it made a quick sprint toward her. It bit her right knee, its teeth sinking in and actually managing to make her bleed. But then crash! It shoved forward and caused her to fall on top of it. Not having a good shot she grabbed the knife and started stabbing anywhere she could until it finally stopped fighting.
She lay there catching her breath until finally she stood up. Her vision was disrupted by the cracks in the helmet’s visor. She tore the helmet off and threw it down onto the dying hound. Even as it lay there it still tried to get toward her and attack her. She thought about executing it but decided that would just be a waste of a bullet and in a weird way she found its attempts to attack entertaining.
The sports crate she’d opened earlier didn’t have much use. It contained a few balls and two or three different types of rackets. She continued looking through the shelves until she found a box labeled camping. She slid it off the shelf and onto the floor, undid the latches, and popped the lid off. Inside the box were all sorts of goodies. At the top of the box were two big mummy sleeping bags. She pulled those out to see fire starters, water purifiers, bug spray, sunscreen, a small tent, utensils, pots and pans, and a large hatchet. Excitedly she grabbed her other duffel bag and moved everything from the crate into it.
She heaved the duffel bag under her arm and carried it back upstairs. She set it next to the other and turned around. She wanted to check one more place before she left the house. She walked across the house and to the backdoor pushing it open and looking outside. In their backyard half buried in snow was a shed. She hurried over to the shed through the deep snow. The doors were almost completely covered in snow and she knew she wouldn't be spending the whole day shoveling. Luckily there was a small window near the top of the shed. She gave it one good kick and the window popped open. She slid through the hole and dropped down into the shed.
The shed was small with very little inside. There was a lawn mower and a few tools but that was it. The one thing that did catch her eye was a small wooden sled with a rope tied to the front. She picked it up thinking how much easier it would make carrying the bags.
Chloe carefully shoved the sled through the window frame and then squeezed through herself. She carried the sled into the house, used tape to keep the bags secure on it, and then started pulling the sled back towards home. Carl’s house was near the top of a small hill, so for a short couple of seconds, she rode the sled as it slid down the icy slope. It made her feel like a little kid and she wished it would have lasted longer.
After a long walk through the blizzard she arrived home tired and her face feeling like it was freezing off. Gretchen hugged her the moment she walked in.
“Are you ok? We thought we heard gunshots.” She said a little worried.
“You did… I had to kill another hound thing. Just like the one in the tub. The armor worked like a charm though, I hardly felt its bite.” Chloe said motioning to the rip in her pants around the knee.
“Oh shoot you bleeding,” Gretchen said looking at her leg.
Chloe looked down to see a cut on her thigh and a few small nicks on her knee.
I sat in bed. I'd just heard Chloe come in and I waited patiently for her to come down. After a couple of minutes, I heard footsteps come downstairs and start creeping down the hall. Then I saw her face poke in from around the door. She smiled and walked in when she saw I was awake.
“Hi babe, how are you feeling?” She asked, taking a seat next to me.
“I mean my hand still hurts like heck, but yeah I’m fine.” I joked.
She smiled, “Seriously though, are you feeling alright?” She asked.
“I’m feeling fine,” I lied trying to get her to stop worrying.
“I want to hear about everything that happened,” I said sitting up.
So she told me everything that happened, even her theory on what exactly happened to Carl and his family.
“Did they have a dog?” She asked me after finishing her story.
“Yeah… a pitbull I think,” I replied, trying my best to remember the odd times when Carl talked about his dog.
“That explains it, that hound was a lot stockier than the one you shot.” She said, “Also it destroyed the helmet so I need a new one before I go to the Garrison’s house.”
I gave her a worried look, “Do you need to go?” I asked.
“YES!” She insisted, “We don’t know what happened to them, and I’d like to find a little more food.”
“But do we need more food?” I asked, “You got a lot of cans.”
“Joey, this has already been going on for two weeks. Who knows how long it will last? More preparation never hurts.” She argued, sounding a little angry now.
“Ok… Ok… Just be safe,” I told her and gave her a big hug.
Gretchen found an arguably better helmet in the garage, a big metal welding helmet. It fit Chloe almost perfectly, and as a backup, she wore two thick hoods to protect the back of her head. She had a very bad feeling this time, as she stood there by the door she couldn’t help but shake. She wanted someone to come with her, and as big Herman came over to say his goodbyes she had an idea.
She marched through the deep snow with Herman atop the sled she pulled. She’d try to have him follow on foot, but the snow was just too high and he kept getting stuck. But she didn’t care that he was just extra weight because she was just happy that she wasn’t facing this alone. She slowly made her way down the street, the blizzard more relentless than ever. It seemed to her the longer the blizzard continued the stronger it was becoming. The snow continued to pound down on top of her slowly wearing down her will to continue, but it didn’t stop her. She took one step after another after another. She was starting to tire and the pain of the injuries was beginning to wear on her. But every time she seemed to slow Herman would give a little woof, and she would keep on going.
The snow had become so hard to see through that more than an outstretched hand was invisible to her. Her vision was so bad she didn’t know the group of crawlers and slugs were there until she was practically right on top of them
Meanwhile…
“Hey, we should probably start clearing the driveway now,” Gretchen said suddenly to her mom while they both sat at the kitchen table.
“That’s probably a wise idea,” Our mother said with a smile.
Gretchen and Mom began their efforts with large snow shovels. Gretchen did most of the work as Mom had to take frequent breaks. They shoveled and shoveled as the day wore on going over their work with salt so as to not let more snow accumulate. Gretchen was exhausted from the work, but she continued nonetheless. She kept digging ad digging until she heard the shovel scrape concrete then she moved to the next section. Despite the cold, they were both dripping with sweat.
I sat by the window watching them work while the boys played. I so wanted to go help but knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but sit and watch them work. I felt horrible as I watched, and then my mind started thinking of Chloe. I pulled out the walkie and pressed the button to talk.
The first thing Chloe heard was Screech! The stinger was right in front of her clearly just as surprised by her as she was of it. But it wasn’t alone from her restricted view; it looked like there were about 10 stingers and 3 or so slugs.
She tried to raise her gun but they were scattering around far too quickly. Then she heard a ripping noise as one of them drove a stinger into her boot. She pulled out the hunting knife and made quick work of the stinger. Two more stingers were charging straight for her and one was coming from her left. Before she could do anything the snow under the two erupted and they were dragged down into it. She wasn’t able to see what it was and she began to shake as it did the same thing to the one coming from her left. In a sudden panic, she turned around to see the sled empty with a hole in the snow right next to it. She let out a small cry whatever was under the snow had gotten Herman and the stingers, but there was no time for mourning as more of the stingers began coming for her. Again the snow erupted under them but this time she got a better look. Whatever was under the snow was big and white. She got the gun as the thing took out the rest of the slugs and stingers. She assumed it was coming for her next. She hurried and jumped atop the sled so it couldn’t take her down easily. She stood there ready to fight whatever monster thing had gotten everything. Horrible images of twisted spider mole creatures flew through her head. Suddenly the snow next to the sled exploded open and she saw the large white beast jump out of the snow and on top of her. She closed her eyes expecting to feel teeth begin to sink down, but after a second she heard a lapping sound. She opened her eyes to see Herman on top of her licking her helmet. She smiled and let out a laugh.
“Good boy!” She said encouragingly.
Herman was completely covered in snow; he looked more like a polar bear than a dog. She brushed some of it off but didn’t bother to do much. She helped the big dog back onto the sled and continued forward. She walked another block before she finally saw her destination to her right was the Garrison’s large house broken and beaten from obvious attacks. It stood there somehow feeling more eerie than the surrounding houses. She stepped onto the wooden porch and there was a loud creak. Ever so more carefully she and Herman crept across the porch and into the house. If only they’d known what they were about to walk into.

Not sure if this will be interesting or useful to anyone, but I made this document a while ago and recently shared it with a colleague who thought it was helpful. This system has helped me stay organized, plan for what foods I already have, and save money at the grocery store without eating the same meals over and over again. Since covid, my grocery bill has actually gone down significantly by becoming an "ingredient household". I spend between $70 and $100 a week on groceries (and toiletries) for two people in a HCOL area. I do have a Costco membership, but I rarely go and when I do, I buy paper towels, detergent, etc. I have bought eggs there as well, but that's only two times per year. I'll try to make a post in the near future about my grocery budget and how I keep it under $100 each week for two adults (one male one female). Anyway...
Here is the spreadsheet I use for my own household weekly meal planning. They are color-coded to indicate if they are vegan, vegetarian, have fish, or meat/dairy. They include all of the main ingredients and meal names. Some of the less intuitive recipes are hyperlinked to external recipes that I like. Many of my favorite spice combos are there. There is a section dedicated to what I typically have stocked in my kitchen. I am also slowly beginning to add to a sauces and marinades section. This is not a comprehensive look at what I eat, but it's the baseline.
How to use:
Sheet 1: Cabinet stock.
This sheet breaks down the items that are sometimes, often, and always in my kitchen. It breaks them up into the ways I stock and think about them. Those items are color-coded to indicate how frequently I use and purchase them. There is a checklist next to each item which can be used to indicate what you have or what you need.
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Sheet 2: Meal Plan.
I am not a vegan, but my diet is plant-based. In here, I have the name of the dish (some of which are hyperlinked to external sites with recipes that I like to loosely follow). Next to the dish name are the ingredients. These are the main ingredients, but not everything. Items that may not be listed: olive oil, salt and pepper, other seasonings, marinades, etc. Again, this is not a comprehensive recipe but rather a guideline to base your meals off. Each dish is color coded to the corresponding dietary base. For example, yellow for vegan, green for vegetarian, blue for seafood, and red for meat and/or dairy. Obviously you know your own dietary restrictions, but I find this helpful to get an idea of what your diet is really comprised of. For me, this helped me realize that I eat mostly plant-based (completely by accident). Are you eating more meat than you really want to? Do you want to be a vegetarian or vegan but think it would be too hard to start? By tracking your meal bases, you can get an idea of where to make adjustments if desired.
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Sheet 3: Marinades & Dressings
This is a new sheet. I don't really use this because I just sort of store this in my head and pull from it as I go. If I want salmon tonight and I have cauliflower, I could take that a number of directions: Asian style soy-based sauce, garlic and herb forward, Middle Eastern, Latin, etc. I'm the kind of home cook with a ton of spices and tend to just get inspired once I pick the main ingredients, but I think it would be good to have it organized. Keep posted for more on this sheet.
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Sheet 4: Notes?
This is sort of a catch-all page. Sometimes, I learn something while making a meal that I want to log for later. For example, a fun rice recipe that I think goes well for burrito bowls. This is the place to leave yourself tips! I might delete this sheet in the future because I don't use it much, but I am trying to.
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Sheet 5: Spices!
Spice combos! This is just a picture I found online with a few easy seasoning combinations to make at home. Today, I have a ton of spices, but I didn't always. It can be a huge money saver to learn how to combine spices you already have rather than buy premixed spice blends.
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That's it! This document is a work in progress (and it wasn't made for anyone's eyes but my own) so bear with me! Please feel free to copy this document to your google drive and make edits and suggestions so that I can make it more helpful and user-friendly. I will continue to use and update this document so check back for more additions that I will include in additional dated sheets. Hope this helps someone! If there are any questions at all, please let me know and I'll try to answer!

This is long story because I want to document every little detail I can remember from this life changing experience since its still very fresh in my memory.
TL;DR at the bottom.
I’ve had a re-occurring dream every so often where I’m on a boat in an ocean in complete darkness with a group of random people. Most times I just walk around talking with different folks, sometimes I go out on the deck, but there are no stars, no moon, no lights at all except for the lights coming through the windows from inside. Complete blackness in every direction. The boat looks like an oversized tugboat with three levels of interior spaces and a large main deck. The boat is a little run down, seems like its been through some storms and is well weathered and banged up, its just floating along in a pitch black environment in a body of water with small waves lapping at the sides. Inside there are different rooms with different groups of people in each room doing different activities and other random stuff. Not much to think about and nothing of any significance ever happened in this re-occurring boat dream over the years, until last night.
Let me pause for a moment and mention that I have lucid dreamed off and on most of my life, I have a hard time triggering it, but when it does happen, I can usually do some crazy things in the dream world. I would say i'm well versed and experienced in lucid dreaming but not an expert, but I have successfully dream jumped in past lucid dreams.
This dream started out after a WBTB (Wake back to bed) method of lucid dreaming. I entered REM sleep and stepped into the dream on the 3rd floor of the boat and chatted with a random woman, and moved throughout the floor interreacting with different folks. Lucidity was triggered shortly after by my wife coughing in bed next to me so I was able to hear that in the background of the dream and I suddenly realized I was sleeping and became lucid. I was balancing right on the line between the physical world and the dream world, but I focused hard on remaining in the dream. As I take in the scene from this new lucid perspective, I can't seem to change anything about the scene. I could control my actions but I could not control the scene or any of the characters. I figured, alright lets try jumping out of this boring boat scene into something more fun and entertaining. I went through my preparatory process to jump out, concentrating on the scene I wanted to go into, and nothing happened. tried again and nothing. Then a third time, and nothing, strange. I’ve done this many times before where the scene would usually fade out to a bright white empty canvas and the new scene builds off that.
The woman was standing there watching me and looked very confused.
Her: What are you doing?
Me: I'm trying to jump out of here
Her: Why would you want to do that? this is your boat
Me: What do you mean this is my boat?, I'm just in a dream
Her: This is your boat, you don't normally leave until after we dock
Me: What are you talking about?
She gets closer and whispers in my ear, "this is your boat, you own this boat, and you own everything on this boat, all these people here are you"
Me: what do you mean all these people are me?
The wheels are turning in my head, "these people are me?" and it takes a few seconds to come to the shocking realization of what exactly is going on here.
Me: You mean everyone here is a version of me? is everyone here a past life?
She stepped back, slowly smiled and nodded her head and then a wave of energy that felt like goosebumps combined with a pressure wave just radiated across my body and I fell backwards to the floor. The shock of what I just realized brought me to the verge of waking up. The scene was starting to collapse and I could start feeling my bed, pillow and blanket on my body but I was not going to leave this dream on a cliffhanger like that. I concentrated as hard as I could, and as determined as possible and forced myself back into the dream, slowly trying to stabilize my consciousness back into the scene. I am normally not successful going back in after it starts fading from a shock like that but this time it worked!
I'm back on the boat, jump to my feet, and so many thoughts are racing through my head. Suddenly a bell rings and the woman says, "we're about to dock, this is when you leave" I realize I have only a minute or two at this point to try and gather as much info as possible before I wake up. The first thing I realized I must do, is count all the people. I have to know how many reincarnations are here. I want to start at the bottom floor and work my way up, going room by room, hopefully ending at the helm. I immediately run all the way down to the first floor, as i'm running downstairs I make a mental note to try and remember and the rough age, race, gender, clothing style or anything else unique that may stand out from each individual to ponder on later.
I hit the first floor and bust through the first door in the hallway like the cool aid man just tore through a wall of a building and there are several people standing around jamming out to some music, "oh, this must be all the lives I lived as a musician" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, clothing styles range from 1920's to 1980's. Next door, two middle aged women that look like they're cooking dinner in a kitchen, they must be chefs, 6, 7, next door, 8, 9, 10, cowboy hat, Indian garb, next door 11, 12, 13, and so on. Door after door, the count goes higher, up to 20 now, most common characteristic so far is mostly middle aged folks from different time periods and different regions of the world within the last 200 years.
Next floor up, level 2, kicked in the first door, this was the sports room, about 8 people here, mostly basketball players with football and soccer player mixed in, this must be why I used to be able to sink 3-pointers like nothing when I was 15 years old. total count of 28 now, next several rooms, 29,30,31,32,33,34,35, 2 Asian men, one middle eastern woman, a monk, other random normal looking people, until I got to the last room on this floor. This room was the largest room, had the most people, and was the most emotional for me. I bust through the door, and its the kids room! I literally gasped as I looked around at just over a dozen or so toddlers and young children playing games on the floor with some young teenagers mixed in. My heart absolutely sank for all these lives I lived that were cut short for whatever reason. I took a few moments to walk through the group and put my hand on the head of each young child as I counted them off as they peered up at me with a look of endearment on their faces. I had to keep moving though, time was running out. total count of 50 now.
Back up to the third floor, room by room, this is the floor I started on so I had a general idea of who was up here, 51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60, a mix of male and female, ranging from mid 20's to mid 50's. I get through all the rooms and start frantically looking for the staircase up to the helm, who's steering this boat? who's controlling this thing? how do I get up there? as I frantically look around, suddenly I sense the boat bump the dock as it slides into its berth. Its only a matter of seconds now, I don't even bother to try and look out the window to see what was out there, I was scrambling around looking for the door to the top of the boat to see who or what was in control of this thing. At that moment I come face to face with a past life, older gentleman with glasses, thin body and balding head.
Him: Calm down, everything is going to be okay
Me: There are 60 people here! I exclaimed
Him: No, there are 66 people here and we are all you.
At that moment a powerful force immediately started dragging me backwards out of the scene and I fought hard against it, I was pushing hard to stay to find out more, I wanted to know more, I wanted to interview every single life and for a few seconds I floated above the floor fighting against the forces, but eventually it overcame my efforts and pulled me out of the boat and the scene disappeared. I woke up in my bed in a pool of my own sweat and my heart racing as I jumped up in bed in shock at what just occurred.
Out of the 60 people I counted in less than 2 minutes here is a very rough breakdown:
Gender - about 40 male, 20 female Race - about 8-10 black, 3-4 Asian, 2-3 Indian, 1 middle eastern, 1 Tibetan, 2-3 Hispanic and the rest mostly white
Age - this surprised me the most, 15 children under 15, less than 5 above 60 and rest in between. It’s seems more than 2/3rds of my past lives died before age 40. (I’m currently 46)
Time period - it seems all past lives lived within the past 200-300 years based on the clothes I saw, with most in the past 100 years, which reinforces the fact I believe that reincarnation is not linear with time and lives do overlap with other lives along the same earth timeline.
Takeaways
I no longer believe our consciousness is destroyed when our soul is wiped during the reincarnation process. I believe the consciousness and memories from each lifetime is removed and transported to this higher dimension storage realm where they are collected for each soul for some sort of future retrieval. Kind of like a safety deposit box for holding all the souls lifetime experiences.
This experience has completely humbled me, I thought I was an old soul that lived hundreds if not thousands of past lives, boy was I wrong. 25% of my past lives didn’t make it to adulthood, which was shocking to me. Most wisdom comes with age so I now consider myself a young soul with limited experience in this world. A lot of things do come easy to me, like sports, music, cooking and other activities but I realize these skills were practiced and perfected in previous lives.
It’s a little comforting knowing my current life experiences and memories will be saved and transferred to the boat realm for safekeeping after this body’s death, but also a little uneasy about that because who knows no long this will go on for? Do these past lives just wait around for eons while more past lives continue to arrive with the main soul occasionally stopping by to visit?
At what point does the main soul say that’s enough, go and collects all of the past lives, absorbs their life experiences and memories and moves onto something else? So many questions.
TLDR: I became lucid in a seldom re-occurring dream where I'm on a boat with a large group of people surrounded by complete blackness only to discover all the other occupants of the boat are all my past lives. All 66 prior life experiences, memories and consciousness from each life my soul has lived on this planet so far are all stored on this boat like a safe, hidden in a higher dimensional realm that I have visited many times before, but this time I was lucid to understand what it was.

Lisa hummed quietly while she worked in her kitchen, maybe it was William’s influence, or maybe Rebecca’s, but she still liked making coffee the old fashioned way. Not that any of them minded using preground beans, but no technology has replaced the power of freshness.
So while I sat waiting for her to return, I simply watched what was already on her screen. It was an animated drama of some sort, maybe horror, there was a demon weeping over a grave at least, could have been anything, really.
And I just listened while she hummed along with the coffee grinder, those things have changed a lot over the years, now they were near totally silent, I saw one in an Earth museum once that made a tremendous racket, but these had only the faintest hum as the beans were reduced to powder.
I didn’t know the tune Lisa was humming, but it felt strange to hear her let out a little tune after I told her I was leaving, and of course I couldn’t know if I’d be coming back.
She and I [Redacted], and we really did like each other, a lot, actually. Of course we both knew it couldn’t last forever, we were quite literally from different worlds, and we wanted different things out of our lives.
But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have something good for a time. I had to wonder if she was thinking about this as the time to let go? Humans have a habit of putting a brave face on things, they have a whole philosophy called ‘stoicism’ which is basically just putting a show of strength on while enduring a lot of unpleasant shit.
I can’t say I liked that philosophy very much, it reminded me too much of my homeworld’s view of things. I suppose it had a valid point when it came to hard times, but it seemed too much to like hard times. At least as I understood it, perhaps I was wrong in that regard. I’m sure the subject will be hotly debated over for years.
Regardless, at that moment I was just enjoying the noise of her preparations, watching out of the corner of my eye while she brewed coffee the old fashioned way. I pause for a moment here to tell you, in addition to the supply of alcohol that went to Dlamias, at my suggestion, Bonny Red also dropped a large supply of coffee off at the neutral trading station where she had to deliver her goods. Along with directions for how to prepare it.
Now, in the capital of Dlamias, I knew for a fact that a small number of ‘coffee bars’ were starting to open up. The stay awake juice was used by a number of government employees to help keep them focused, and… well, in the Earth middle ages coffee was banned in an empire because people stayed up late talking politics while drinking the stuff. Coffee shops became hotbeds of political dissent.
It was one more little monkey wrench I’d thrown into the gears of Dlamisan society. Awake for longer and with time to talk, I had absolutely no doubt that the buried frustrations of my people would start to bubble up as surely as the water was boiling in Lisa’s pot right now.
I know my government, they’ll use the stuff to extend labor hours and keep people working harder, and they’ll put it together with food for convenience…
And my infection will spread. Longer hours, but also time to complain, and with the first humans settling in too…
The dam would burst and change would be forced. I did wonder if they would try to use military force to quell dissent. But I doubted it, especially now. In a way, this danger with the return of the Rogue World and the disappearances and the threats from the Praeda, couldn’t have come at a better time.
Concessions would be the government’s only option, and once that began, there would be no stopping it.
‘Even if I die out there, my will, will be done no matter what.’ I thought, and made the evil finger pyramid of doom with my hands.
Lisa returned a moment later with coffee in hand and a smile on her face. She sat beside me on the couch and asked, “Did you enjoy the show?”
I hadn’t really paid much attention to it, but it seemed alright. “I haven’t seen that much, but… it looks alright.”
“It’s based on an old novel, that demon,” she pointed to the ashen figure, “lost his wife to human invaders, his village, everything but his daughter. This season is based on one of the sequels in that series, he’s finally reclaimed the land where there village was, and he found her body still buried in the rubble of their home. So he had her buried there and all the grief hit him at once, everything he kept buried while he worked to raise their daughter.”
“Oh… so humans are the villains in this one?” I asked.
“Sort of.” She said as she leaned back and slipped her arm over my shoulder from behind while she drank from her glass cup. “Like, the humans started it, they built the first cities and needed labor so they started conquering nomads and villages to work their farms and whatnot. So that’s bad, but not all humans are the bad guys. Some demons are shown as bad, same for some of the elves and dwarves… I guess you could say that their ‘governments’ do bad things to each other.”
“Oh, so everybody is kind of bad sometimes?” I asked.
“Yeah, kinda.” She sipped, “A lot of gray there, most of what happens that’s bad after a certain point, happens because everybody is too afraid to stop. They don’t want to keep fighting, but they’re afraid of what happens if they pull back.”
“That’s interesting.” I said as I brought the cup to my mouth. It was hot, rich, fragrant, the rich steam rose from within and I inhaled it with the vigor of somebody bursting from beneath the water after nearly drowning and finding air again.
I made a mental note to bring some of this with me when it was time to leave, Lisa was quiet, seemingly waiting for me to explain. A lot would be necessarily classified and, reckless as I may be, I knew better than to let things like this slip.
“I’m going on a peace mission, actually, not just me. The whole family is. It’s… complicated, but Bonny Red is taking us to a neutral zone where we can talk to the Praeda, all of them, or most, at least.” I shifted a little in my seat, I didn’t want to tell her how dangerous it might be for us, but I hated keeping secrets.
“Do you know when you’ll be back?” She asked, her wide eyes fluttered a little, “Is this one of those ‘gone for decades and I’ll be an old lady by the time you get back’ talks?”
I snorted my coffee just a little and smacked my chest a few times. “No… I mean I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but it will take months just to get there, it’s over thirty-thousand lightyears away, so even at the fastest possible speed through thick space, we’re looking at nine months travel without doing any jumps.”
She whistled long and low, “So… what you’re saying is, I’ll need to pack my toothbrush, and a pair of replacement heads for it?” She asked.
“Say what now?” I asked and my ears twitched.
She turned to the side and propped her head up in her hand, then gave me a quirky smile and said, “You’ve got all those ears and still didn’t listen to me? Alien or not, you’re definitely male.” She laughed at her own joke while I could only cock my head in confusion.
“Say what now?” I asked again.
“I want to go too.” She clarified, “Listen, Bonny Red and I have had a nice arrangement going for a while now, but alien or not, I know that woman and she’s definitely planning on spending a lot of time on Earth after all this, she’s been in the void for a few years now and I know how sailors, pirates or not, get when they finally hit a safe port. The easiest thing for all of us is if I just go along. Besides,” she held up her arm and waved one hand around her room, “I don’t really have anything holding me back. I have my degree, my job won’t go anywhere, I can sublet my apartment. And how many people get a chance to go out that far?” She asked.
“Wait, you’re serious?” I asked. I definitely wanted to know what she was talking about when it came to Bonny Red, but the more pressing matter was her thought of coming with us.
“I don’t have to be part of your envoy, I’ll just join her crew for a year or so. I’m no stranger to hard work or military stuff, you know that.” She said.
“Well, I mean, that’s up to Bonny Red, not me… but… why would you…” She stopped me by putting a hand on my chest.
“Because you and I both know this can’t last. You’ll live for hundreds of years, your stages of life are in line with mine right now, but that’s going to change. I’ll grow older, faster, maybe I’ll want to start a family of my own, something we can’t do, but even if I don’t do that, time changes all humans, faster than you know. You saw how Fauve has grown up, right?” She asked.
I could only nod. She was in her twenties now and while there were echoes of the child I knew, she was like a tree that I’d watched grow from a sapling. I could still recognize her for what she’d been, but she was not the same.
“That’s how it will be for me from my twenties to my thirties, and thirties to forties. I’m going to change, I won’t be the twenty-something who gets hammered with her friends on weekends anymore, but you’ll still be the you that you are right now, when I’m old, gray, and thinking ahead for my funeral.” She chuckled, “From my perspective, you’re kind of like if Peter Pan was a college student and not a young boy.”
I only vaguely knew the story, but I got the gist of what she meant, I just didn’t know what to say to it.
“To you, nine months, two years, three years, those may not sound like a lot. To me, they’re big bites out of my life, and when we’re done, those days won’t come back. So, if you don’t object…” For a moment she looked quite vulnerable, like she thought I very well might refuse her, inching herself away a little but leaving her hand where it was over where my hearts were beating faster by the moment.
“I’d want to go with you. If I can. If I can’t… then I have to be honest, that’s too much of my life to slip by to wait on something that can’t really last anyway.”
She wasn’t wrong. I did my very best to never think about the differences in our lifespans, but clearly that wasn’t something too far from her mind. “It’s not really up to me, but… if she refuses to let you sign on…” I didn’t want to finish that sentence.
“Right. I think she will. She understands a lot about things not lasting.” Lisa smirked a little, “I will have to figure out what to do with my hair on this trip though, there aren’t exactly seasons in space.” She ran her free hand through the long strands, and I suggested… “You could have it done like stars, put the night sky design on there instead of the season?” I suggested, and realized that in saying that, I more or less acknowledged that I wanted her to go along. I knew she was right, this might very well be the last of our times together, she was in her mid to late twenties now, I think. Twenty-five or twenty-six, even if we got out there and stayed for one day and came back, eighteen Earth months would have come and gone, and that’s if we stopped for nothing. In reality we could be gone for a full two years with ease.
“You’re a genius, Bailey.” She said and set her cup down with a smirk, “I’ll make sure to pick up enough dye for the trip, and I’ll send an ‘application’ to Bonny Red before she gets here.”
Humans do not move slowly, that much is for sure. As far as she was concerned, the matter was settled.
I wasn’t sure if Bonny Red would be alright with this, but she was frankly as strange as Lisa. For some reason, unbeknownst and inexplicable to me, I always end up surrounded by oddballs and outliers.
And you know what?
I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m trying to install a reverse osmosis system under my kitchen sink and am looking for extra room for the tank.
Is there any issue with cutting out part of the side wall and using the dead space next to the cabinet. Since my sink is at a 45 degree angle (see picture) there is extra space that I could use.
https://i.imgur.com/ZwPwvXR.jpg
Sink cabinet is on the right hand side in picture.
Thanka

I did some research and reading on this sub, and watched other videos.
We recently purchased a narwal freo for $1,000 during one of their sales. And now... I am at a loss of how to set it up to reach all the areas. And haven't found the company's support to be able to think creatively about this problem.
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We live in a pre-1900 old 1,500sqft, 2-storry farmhouse.
First floor: kitchen where the dock is now, and then 3-inch step-up to living/dining room and 1st-fl bathroom.
Second floor: primary bedroom same 3-inch step-up to a rabbit warren of a hallway, a 2nd bathroom with a transition the robot probably won't like and 2 small bedrooms.
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I read on here about making a ramp, which I'll do for the 1st and 2nd floor transitions. But what to do about the 2-stories? Do I carry the dock upstairs when I want to clean the 2nd floor? Right now we have the dock on the 1st floor bc the kitchen needs to be cleaned almost daily, rest of the house stays pretty clean. 2 adults live here, no pets, some child visitors. Unless we have people over for summer outdoor hangs, shoes off, etc.
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I'm disabled and tire very easily, and just trying to figure out an easier way to keep things clean, and I'm realizing maybe the narwal isn't it? The house is so small and broken up with no storage (pre-1900 style) so I didn't want to buy separate vacuum and mopping robots, there is nowhere to store anything. No cleaning or broom closet, no mudroom, etc.
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But do I keep the narwal on the first floor and get a 2nd expensive vacuum for the small 2nd floor - that seems crazy. I thought maybe I could just pick the robot up and bring it back to it's base when it needed to self-clean, refill, recharge etc, if it was on the 2nd floor, but now I don't know... that doesn't seem like it will work.
It all feels crazy! I would love some guidance from this expert community.
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