2700 walker way desoto tx

Let’s say the saviors still have their three outposts and the the sanctuary, and the whisperers arrived way earlier then planned. The saviors mostly used guns and the whisperers hide in Walker herds. So how should the fight be handled?

Any recommendations for a baby chair product that can be used in multiple ways? Obviously I'm running out of space so like if I had a walker that could also be a dining chair or a bouncy that would be great

Opal stood up with a sigh, grimacing at the pain along her back and arm. She looked down on the man crumpled on the floor. “Sorry Devona. But life’s a bitch.”
“...fuck you,” he mumbled.
Opal’s eyes widened slightly. “Man, he’s one tough cookie. Not much he can do now though.” She pulled the documents out from her bag to verify that they were still there, and then slid them into her jacket. She turned to leave before pausing. Something felt… off. Her eyes scanned the area and she tensed herself. Even with Opal being as alert as she could, she didn’t see the fist coming at her face until it was too late. Her vision spun as her head snapped back, feeling her feet leave the ground as someone slept her legs out from under her. She pushed herself off and jumped to her feet, only to be met with a swift kick waist. She tried to swing her crowbar but a hand wrenched her wrist to the side and a knee slammed into her stomach. She doubled over and felt her lunch struggle to the surface before she was promptly slammed face-first into the wall. She slid down like wet spaghetti onto the floor.
She turned her head to the side to watch the retreating footsteps as she waited for her entire body to stop aching. Devona, if that was his name, was already sitting up, wincing but very much functional despite the blood dribbling down his face. She could see the figure now crouching beside him, doing something with their hands. It took Opal a few seconds to realise that they were signing something.
-you alright?
Devona nodded, rubbing his bruised cheek. “Yeah, I’m fine, Harlow. Don’t worry about me.”
Opal would have sworn out loud, but the pain in her face was making it hard to speak. “Are you kidding me? They sent the damn wolf after these documents too?” Speaking of the documents, why was she after them again? She frowned and rooted around her memories like a child digging in the sand. Right, to sell the information within. Wow, she was scatter-brained. Probably to do with the ringing headache she had.
She had to get away. But with her current situation, a foot race would be a pointless endeavour. All she needed to do was get to her motorcycle parked a few metres away, and she’d be able to depart. She looked over the side of the roof and studied the area. Then she rolled over the side. She grabbed onto the railings by the side and yanked them off, managing to swing herself into a window after skidding down several metres. If she couldn’t outpace Harlow, then she could at least slow them down. She shoved herself to her feet and started to run, the sound of someone scaling the wall already behind her. She shoved desks and cabinets in front of doors as she ran, the only sound she could hear being her own footsteps and bated breath. If she got caught once, if she slowed down for a single second, she’d be headed for the rocks.
She turned the corner and felt that same shiver of anticipation run up her spine. They’d caught up to her, somehow. She readied herself and ducked under but still caught the edge of the hit as Harlow appeared from behind her. She grabbed an oil can and crushed it behind her back, spilling it down onto the floor. They rushed forward anyway, using the momentum to slam into Opal and throw her across the floor. This time it was her scrambling upon the oil to get up, grabbing onto the wall to try to pull herself up. She was instead hoisted up and thrown through the door and onto the clean floor of the corridor where she pushed herself up and began to run again. Something nagged at her but she ignored it, electing to get to the exit as fast as possible.
She finally shoved the door open and ran upon the gravel, finding where her motorcycle was parked. She kicked back the stand and revved the engine, tearing off as fast as she could while weaving for good measure. She relaxed her body once she reached the empty fields of high grass, shooting a final peace sign towards the dwindling buildings. She reached into her jacket and then realised that the documents were not there.
“God. Fucking. Dammit.” That conniving bastard. They’d probably stolen the documents during that final tussle, and the nagging feeling she’d so carelessly discarded was how strange it was that they didn’t continue to chase her. There was enough time to go back, perhaps she could -
There was a massive explosion from one of the buildings, loud enough for the windows on the neighbouring structures to shatter. On second thought, perhaps she’d let this one go.
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Claren soared through the air and slammed against the ground and wall, bouncing around like a handball. He pressed a hand to his head with a groan as he stopped, barely managing to dodge the glaive that slammed into the ground and sent a blast of lightning into the earth. As he looked, he could see that metal had been infused into the bone and flesh that comprised the glaive. Laurel came at him again, swinging her glaive again and again as lightning coursed through her body. Claren blocked her attacks, but he was forced to the defensive, the lightning preventing him from getting close.
He pushed forward nevertheless, grabbing onto the end of Laurel’s glaive as she tried to drive it into his chest. He didn’t know how much longer his shield could keep up, but there was no chance for him to take a moment to recover. He could feel the heat from the electricity scouring the air, not hot enough to injure but hot enough to hurt. His fist connected with Laurel’s face and sent her flying backwards before she launched herself forward with a burst of electricity, sending him slamming through the door and into a hallway. He didn’t have time to test if his bones were broken before she was launching herself into the air, electricity worming around her like a writhing cocoon. Claren rolled to the side to avoid her slamming into the ground, sending shards of concrete everywhere. His thoughts rushed around his head as he jumped to his feet and started the process again.
Claren didn’t have time to consider the ramifications of why her magic was so different to what it had been before. All he had was to try and hold her off for long enough to… what, exactly? Figure out a way to beat her? For backup to arrive? Have the crime lords escape? He almost laughed at that one - internally, of course. He barely laughed out loud. He’d dedicated most of his life to law and order, and here he was: potentially throwing his life away for a bunch of high-end criminals. The thought of it casted a bitter taste in his mouth and he could feel his teeth grit together. The sudden, uncontrollable action startled Claren enough to make him almost freeze up. He’d trained himself for years to hold in anything of that ike, and here he was, in the midst of battle yet unable to compose himself. He smoothed his expression again and hit Laurel across the head with a hook.
“You know,” Laurel managed between breaths while dodging and weaving, “this would be a lot easier if you just stood aside.” Her glaive gave her the advantage in reach, but Claren’s bubble provided him with enough manoeuvrability to get in and out.
“I mean,” she continued, “why bother trying to save people like that? They’re scum, or lower than scum. Just the greedy pigs of the world that managed to get enough money to stay on the top of the bottom.”
It was such a mirror of his own thoughts that he almost, for a second, considered it. He tried his hardest to push her words from his mind and levelled his gaze at her. “I don’t make deals with people like you. Not to mention, you already murdered the English council, so don’t pretend like you’re above them.”
Laurel scoffed. “Please, they were politicians. Barely even people.”
She stomped her feet and a wave of electricity radiated off of her, scorching the ground and furniture around her. She raised her hands and a scent of ash filled the air. Fire suddenly flared into existence all around her, bright and blindingly hot. Claren had to jump forward as he felt himself cooking alive from the fire that rose just a few inches away from him. Laurel opened her palm and a wave of flame erupted from her hand right towards Claren. He expanded his bubble just before it washed over him, keeping the scorching heat away. He rolled to the side and outstretched his hand into a finger gun. His shield was sucked around his hand and onto the tip of his finger, hanging there like a dew drop. It fired off and slammed into Laurel, sending her flying backwards. It shot back and wrapped around Claren just as another wave of fire rushed at him.
He dodged to the side as she swung wildly with her glaive, the blade lit by flame. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his yo-yo. Laurel guffawed as she saw it, her voice revealing the emotion that her mask was hiding.
“A yo-yo? Seriously?”
Claren’s shield flowed over the yo-yo and he lashed out with it, wrapping around Laurel faster than she could register. He swung the yo-yo around and Laurel followed, being slammed all around the wall and floor like a ball attached to a ping-pong paddle. He pulled and she spun like a top as the yo-yo retracted to his hand before crumping to the floor.
“That’s Captain yo-yo to you,” Claren said dryly. The bubble from the yo-yo started to wash over him. It wavered for a second, and then shattered. That was not good. But with Laurel out for the count, he should be able to wait out for his shield to form again.
Laurel stood up. Claren was momentarily taken aback. Someone who was without any physical enhancements should have been taken out by that assault. She stretched her neck and arms.
“Nice trick. Wanna see me do it?” She lashed out with a strand of lightning, faster than Claren could dodge and wrapped it around him. While it was much faster, it barely tickled his skin as it pressed against him. Then the strand of lightning erupted into flames, and Claren could feel his flesh start to bubble. She slammed him all around the room and the world began to blur, his vision flashing white intermittently from the agony of the experience. She brought him in close, spinning him around like a ribbon dancer would, and punched him in the face. He collapsed to the ground as the last of the fiery electricity stopped holding him up, body still steaming as his wounds hissed.
Laurel picked him up by the collar and dangled him in the air.
“Like I said. This would have been a lot easier if you just stood aside.” She was tall, tall enough that with the two of them at eye-height Claren’s feet couldn’t find the floor at all. She started to carry him towards the window and Claren thought about how high the mansion was from the ground as she threw him through it.
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Cirius had taken a quick break when he felt his eyes start to slide from their sockets. He excused himself to the bathroom, died, and then came back out as fresh as a daisy. Ignoring the incredibly confused and alarmed expressions of the crime lords, he continued to lead them out until they were in the front yard.
“Welp,” he said, “you can all go home now.” He heard some commotion from the mansion, and turned around. The noises stopped.
“Huh. Must have been the wind.”
The window shattered and Claren hurtled through. Cirius scrambled around the lawn and managed to catch Claren, taking the brunt of the fall as the man slammed into him. He was burnt heavily all over, and a hiss of pain escaped his lips as Cirius set him gently upon the ground. He looked up as a figure jumped down, landing on top of a car as electricity coursed around her. It was the woman from before, still brandishing her glaive and with her mask covering her face. Bauble, was it?
“Hey,” said Cirius, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“Hey,” she returned casually, leaning against her glaive onto the ruined wreck. She seemed to be trying to appear flippant, but too much of her weight was put on the glaive for that to be true.
“Did you do this?” he asked, gesturing towards Claren.
“Yep.”
Cirius nodded. “Not going to lie, Bauble, you suck. I kinda have to fight you now.”
Even with the mask Cirius could feel her glare. “First off, it’s Laurel. Second off, I don’t have time to waste on you.” She directed her gaze towards the crowd and waved her finger around. The crowd surged as if trying to disperse before she slammed her foot and sent a wave of fire soaring up to block them.
“Not you, not you, not you,” she muttered. “Ah, there you are!” The flames dispersed and the crowd backed away from the man she was pointing to. He looked around, as if for anyone to help. Everyone turned and ran towards their cars, getting in and driving away within seconds.
Laurel twirled her glaive and jumped down. “I’m going to kill you now, okay?” She dodged leisurely to the side as Cirius tried to tackle her, sending volts of electricity through his body with a casual backhand. She grabbed Cirius by the collar and threw him with a blast of lightning, hurtling him several metres away. The man turned to run and she shot out a small bolt of lightning, seizing him up and collapsing him to the ground. She stepped forward, scraping the glaive across the scorched grass before being slammed in the back. She whipped around to see Claren pointing his index finger, his face screwed up in pain yet eyes forced open.
“You really don’t know when to quit, so you?” she snarled. She hoisted her glaive into the air but was interrupted once again as Cirius popped out and managed to grasp onto Laurel’s leg. Before she could kick him off, he clambered up onto her back and clung to her.
“What the fUCKKK” she yelled, the yell turning into a screech as Cirius bit down as hard as he could on her shoulder. She wheeled around wildly, shouting curses to the sky as she tried her hardest to shake Cirius off. He continued to hang on, his fingers gripping tightly and only the gloves preventing his nails from sinking into her skin. Fire and lightning roiled off of her yet Cirius continued to cling on. She slammed her back against the mansion again and again. Cirius heard something crunch from within his body. Still holding on with one hand, he grabbed a disk from his pocket and tossed it into the air. Dropping down, he kicked at Laurel’s feet before running away as the disk exploded and sent debris tumbling down onto her. He ran to Claren and hauled him up, trying his best not to touch the deep burns. He turned his attention to the man who was still lying on the ground as if pretending to be dead. Cirius walked over while holding up Claren and kicked him in the side.
“Ah! Just kill me quickly!” he screamed before seeing that it was just Cirius. Cirius stared down at him.
“Just get up and help me support Claren.”
They managed to get into a building and barricade the door. Cirius propped Claren up against the wall as the man started to pace the halls.
“God, where are the guards! They should have stopped her!” he yelled. Cirius grabbed a pen and threw it at his head.
“Shut up. She’s going to hear us.”
“Hear us! Who cares if she hears us! She’ll find us anyway! We’re doomed!”
Claren slitted his eyes open. “Keep it down. I have a headache and it’s…”
“Killing you?” Cirius interjected.
Claren raised an eyebrow. “No. My wounds are killing me. My headache is simply a pain to deal with.”
Cirius chewed his lip. He needed a plan. Devona and Harlow were both off somewhere else, and he didn’t have time to wait for them to come around.
“Think, think,” he muttered to himself. An idea sparked in his head. It wasn’t very good, but it was all he had.
“You there,” he said, pointing at the man who he had thrown the pen at. “Uh, what’s your name?”
“Winston Haxter,” supplied Claren with a pained voice. “He’s the one I was supposed to be negotiating with.”
“I see, I see. What’s your discipline?”
“I, uh, can run well.”
Cirius hummed. “Super-speed, eh? Yeah, I can work with that.”
“No, I run at normal speed. But like, I don’t get tired. I can just keep running.”
“Huh. So you have infinite stamina?”
“Yeah. But like… just for running.”
Cirius hummed again. “Well, I can probably still work with that.” He stepped towards Winston and pointed towards a long hallway. “Alright, when she gets here, you’re going to start running down there.”
“What! She’ll kill me!”
“Come on man. Your magic is literally just running. You can outpace her. ‘Sides, I have a plan. Claren’s going to be at the end of the hallway, and he’ll bubble the two of you up. I’ll distract her and lead her far away where I’ll… I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”
Winston stared at him. “You’ll die.”
“Oh, most definitely. In fact, probably several times! But hey, that’s just how it is.”
Winston’s face dropped even more, if that was even possible. “You’re absolutely insane. We’re all going to die.”
“Nope! Just me! Anyways, go wait by the hallway. Don’t want to lose any ground.” He walked over to Claren before Winston could protest. He sat down next to him.
“Hey.”
Claren titled his head down. “Mr. Walker.”
“You up for the plan?”
He shifted his body and winced. “I am. I don’t think it’s an especially good plan, but I don’t see a better way.” A strange expression settled over his face. It took a while for Cirius to discern it. It was discontentment, irritation, bitterness. Claren seemed to recognise this and swallowed the expression.
“You know, it’s not too late to toss Winston at her and walk away.”
“What did you say?” Winston called out.
“Nothing!”
Claren sighed and his shoulders sagged. “No. That’s not for me to decide. I have a job, and I need to do it.”
“Why? I mean, you clearly don’t want to protect him.”
Claren looked away. The two of them sat in silence before Clarne spoke up again. “I need to do my job because it’s… it’s not a good job. It doesn’t feel good to look people you know have done horrible, horrible things in the eye and shake their hand. To watch them walk away and know that you could have stopped them but… couldn’t. Or just didn’t. I won’t - I can’t let anyone else do that.” His hand reached up to the two rings on his fingers and twisted them - a golden band with a bright yellow gem and a silver band with a cool blue one.
Cirius stared at the ground. “Wow. That kinda sucks.”
Claren huffed a laugh. “That it does.” He shook his head. “Look at me, talking about my feelings while on the job. How unprofessional.” He staggered to his feet. “You should go and get prepared. Won’t be long until she finds us.”
Claren was right. The door was thrown off its hinges and a figure ducked down. The light glinted off the white mask as Laurel stood in the frame. She stared down across the room at Winston, who was doing a very good job looking like a deer in headlights. She cocked her head to the side. Winston bolted down the hallway, his breaths sharp and panicked. She blasted forward with a bolt of lightning, each step energised as she leisurely followed him.
Laurel ran down the hallway, every step bringing her closer to Winston. Cirius let out a silent exhale. It was time. All the doors along the hallway were open, and a short figure jumped out of one only to be met with an immediate blast of lightning so strong it sent the figure slamming back immediately. Laurel had anticipated a trap being laid. Unfortunately for her, Cirius had anticipated her anticipation. The makeshift, stuffed, humanoid doll wearing Cirius clothes smouldered, the string that attached it to the tripwire carefully hidden across the floor snapped from the sudden force of the lightning. At the same moment as she turned to unleash her magic, Cirius leapt from the opposing side and tackled Laurel, sending the two of them crashing to the ground.
Laurel grabbed him by the arm and slammed him into the wall, fire roiling off of her and washing over him. Cirius kicked at Laurel until he felt it connect with something hard and her grip loosened. He dropped down as he realised that his eyeballs had been burnt off. He scrambled around blindly for several seconds before a glaive tore through his chest and ripped him in half. A foot stomped on his head again and again until his skull cracked open and his brains were mushed upon the floor. Laurel stomped on the desecrated body again and again until blood and gore started to coat the cuffs of her pants.
“You know, I’m starting to feel a little insulted.” She whipped her head around and stared at Cirius, standing there perfectly fine.
“Wha- you-” she looked back at the corpse, then at Cirius. “I killed you!”
“You missed.”
She looked back at the corpse. “No I fucking didn’t!” She grabbed her glaive and threw it at him, slicing his face wide open along with the rest of his head. The top half of his head slid cleanly off and onto the floor.
“Missed again,” said Cirius from behind her. She gathered lightning in her hand and sent a bolt right through him.
“You should really aim better.”
“What the fuck!” Laurel screamed. “I killed you! I killed you several times!” “Yeah, I get that a lot.” He dodged the glaive being thrown at him again and turned to run. Laurel charged after him, each charged step leaving cracks within the floor. He ducked down as she ripped through the air, fire and lightning trailing behind her. She brought down a wave of flame with a kick, following it up by swinging her glaive as it crackled with lightning. Cirius ducked under, rushing forward through the flame and punching Laurel in the stomach. His gloves glowed for a second, a frosty cyan that pierced the air, and a blast of energy ripped out that slammed Laurel into the wall.
Cirius was hit with a wave of exhaustion. He’d died thrice in a row, and although there didn’t seem to be any limit on how many times he could die and revive, it certainly wore on him after a while. He needed to think of something to do. Laurel was already drawing herself back to her feet, her mask shifted to the side and revealing her cold, hard eyes that blazed with fury. His mind scoured all of what he knew of buildings like this.
“The boiler room! Of course! If I can get there, I can blow this place sky high and take her down with it.” He forced himself up and started to run, turning around briefly to wave at Laurel. As expected, she gave chase, her movements more akin to a rabid animal than a hunter. He ran through winding corridors and locked doors, barely dodging the stray bolt of lightning or fireball. He could already feel the exhaustion from dying and reviving thrice in a row; he’d be too tired to outpace Laurel if he had to die again.
He reached the door to the boiler just as Laurel caught up, tackling Cirius and sending him crashing through the old, rotten wood. She kicked him in the face as he slid across the floor, preventing him from righting himself. She stepped forward and pressed her foot down on his back.
“I wonder,” she said, “how many times can you die until it becomes too much? Is there even a limit for you?” Her voice was sing-songy and slightly manic, like glass about to shatter into thousands of sharp, sharp fibres. Cirius rooted around his pocket. He didn’t feel any explosives. He clicked his fingers and a spark flicked to life, the cyan light barely visible before fizzling out.
“I mean, if there is, I certainly haven’t reached it yet.” He clicked again and a bigger spark emerged. He managed to shoot it out of his index finger right towards one of the thermal tanks. The tiny spark travelled through the air, hit the tank and did absolutely nothing.
“Well. We’re screwed.” As Cirius started to lament his poor planning skills, Laurel’s head snapped up.
“What was that?”
“Uh. Nothing,” Cirius replied like the excellent liar he was. Laurel cocked her head. “Oh, so that sound from behind that thermal tank over there was nothing?” She lifted her arm and her hand flared with electricity. “Hope you won’t mind this, then.” She shot a bolt of lightning and hit the thermal dead centre. There was a beat of silence. “Oh, fuck.” A moment later, absolutely nothing happened.
“Oh. I really thought those were going to explode. Like, as soon as I realised I had blasted lightning at a thermal tank, I was all ‘that’s going to explode’.” She laughed. “Wow. That’s pretty funny.”
Cirius felt something brush up against the hand that was still in his pocket. He pulled it out.
“Oh hey! I still have an explosive disk!” He activated it, threw it at the thermal tank and the world exploded.
“-ey. Wake up.” Cirius blearily opened up his eyes. He was laid out across the floor next to what presumably had been the building. Claren was crouched next to him, snapping his fingers in front of his face.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.”
Cirius nodded and got up. He was so incredibly tired, but a sense of accomplishment filled his chest. “We did it.”
Claren nodded. “Indeed we did.”
There was a small silence before Cirius broke it. “Hey, about what you said before. I know it probably isn’t much, coming from me, but,” Cirius hovered his hand above Claren’s shoulder. “I think you’re really awesome.”
Claren bowed his head. “Thank you, Cirius.” He stared at the hand. “I’m sorry, what is this?”
“Well, I heard from bossman that you don’t like physical touch. So I’m doing this to show reassurance while still respecting your boundaries.”
Claren blinked. “That’s… pretty thoughtful, actually.”
“Hey, uh, am I safe to go now?” Winston asked, standing a few feet away and ruining the moment.
“Yeah, it should be all good,” Cirius responded before a bolt of lightning ripped through Winston’s head.
Claren immediately flared up his shield around the two of them, blocking the next bolt of lightning. Laurel, her mask half-shattered to show her furious eye, tuxedo torn with skin scraped raw underneath, and arm clearly broken staggered towards them.
“You clever, clever little fucker. You led me on quite the wild goose chase.” Her mouth twisted into a manic grin. “Typically, I’d just leave you be. But now? I think I’m going to kill the shield guy first and string out his body across the buildings here. Then I’m going to throw the little one in a box and toss him into the deepest, darkest part of the ocean.” She hoisted her glaive as lightning crackled around her, larger and more volatile than before.
Claren narrowed his eyes. “Cirius. Are you in any condition to fight?”
Cirius shook his head. “Going to be honest, this feels like a running situation.” As if on cue, a wall of flames erupted to life around them.
Something silent flew through the air. A thin, red line appeared over Laurel’s cheek. The crossbow bolt embedded into a wall. Laurel turned around and Harlow faced her, holding a crossbow aimed straight at her. There was a beat of silence as Harlow stared her down, their message held clearly in their hands. Laurel stamped her foot and a circle of flame enveloped her. When it cleared, she was gone. Harlow stared off towards the air, as if contemplating pursuing her, but turned to Claren and Cirius instead.
“I must admit, it would have been very useful having you here earlier.”
I was busy, they replied as they poured a blue vial over Claren’s wounds.
“Where’s bossman?” “Right here.” Devona popped into existence behind them and his eyes scanned the area. He looked down at the two of them. “Claren. You don’t look so good.”
“I could say the same about you. Broken hip?”
“Certainly feels like it. Cirius, you alright?”
Cirius flashed him a thumbs up. “You know it.”
“I’ll inform you of the details after I get these wounds treated,” Claren told Harlow. “I think I’ll be fine to walk on my own for now. I’ll let you know if I require any assistance.”
They made it all the way back to the original drop-off point and called Axon. After Claren explained a basic overview of why they were so late and Harlow was forced to promise to describe everything that happened, the portals opened up. Claren waved Harlow and Cirius through but held Devona back.
“Yeah? What’s up?”
Claren hummed. “Cirius was… the only reason that I survived. If it wasn’t for him, then I wouldn’t be here right now. He may seem strange and irrational, but-”
“When push comes to shove, you can count on him.”
Claren nodded. “It took me a while to realise that. But from what I’ve heard from Axon, you seem to be able to put up with Cirius’s less serious side very well. How is that?”
Devona scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know. Guess I’m just used to it.”
“I see.” Claren bowed his head. “Goodbye, Mr. Verdant. And do get that hip checked.”
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“Jamie, no! That’s a terrible idea!”
“Come on, Vivian. It’ll be great! I’ve constructed the perfect plan!”
Vivian folded his arms. “Oh yeah? And what is that, pray tell?”
“Alright, so, in order to make our own water-slide, we steal all the blankets from all the houses and wet them. We tie them together, and then we attach it all around the town and slide around! It’d be amazing!”
Vivian stared at his twin sister with a mix of disbelief and amazement. “And how are we going to attach it all around the town?”
She faltered. “I’ll… I don’t know. I’ll think of something.” She clasped her hands together. “Come onnnnn Vivi, please!”
Vivian sighed. “Fine. Just this once,” he replied, perhaps for the fifteenth time.
“Yay!” Jamie slung her arm over his shoulder. “I promise you, this is going to be awesome.”
“I’m sure,” he responded dryly, but he couldn’t hide the small grin on his fsce.
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Laurel Pariah was pissed. She winced as she jolted her broken arm, and she felt how her entire body radiated with pain from every movement she took. The wind was howling, so she didn’t hear the footsteps approaching until they were right behind her.
“You’ve returned,” the figure said brightly.
“That I have.”
The Dreamer hummed, and Laurel shifted her gaze to see him picking at his nails. “Did you achieve your mission?”
“I did. I just ran into some… complications.”
The Dreamer chuckled unkindly. “I can see that.” He cocked his head to the side, his expression hidden behind a mask decorated with white stars. “You broke your mask again. They’re not going to be pleased if you keep doing that, you know?”
“They collapsed a fucking building on me. What do you exp-”
The Dreamer put his hands up. “Hey now, hold your horses. Yes, yes, opponents were tough yadda yadda. I get it, I really do. Sucks to get your ass beaten so often, doesn’t it, poor little baby? I mean, I wouldn’t know, but still.”
Laurel grit her teeth. “Go fuck yourself.”
The Dreamer laughed. “Well then, I’ll see you later, Demon of Babel. Toodles!” He walked away, deep into the thicket of trees until he vanished from sight. Laurel kicked at the dirt before turning to walk away too, leaving only the wind to howl to an empty sky.

I live in a busy area and my foster dog is reactive to other dogs, new stimuli, and people behaving weirdly. He has a lot of general fear and anxiety and it’s hard to get him to feel comfortable to go potty.
For that reason, I potty him across a small backroad in state maintained grass. The other dog walkers in my community don’t venture down this road much so there are far fewer triggers in that area, which we know is important. Obviously I always pick up after him.
Friday I was trying to get him to pee over there and some guys in a lawn truck rolled by and said “Hey sweetie!! You live in those apartments?” 😒 My dog starts barking his face off bc people yelling to us from a truck is unusual behavior. I say Yes?! And they say “Yknow they have a dog park down there!” I said “Okay thanks” in an annoyed way, bc it feels unsafe to not be polite as I’m a woman, alone. I turn my attention to calming my dog and they leave.
Today, Sunday I was walking my dog along the same road. He wasn’t pottying, he did that earlier, it was just a walk. That same truck rolled by and slowed down, but I ignored it. I realized it was these men checking on me and my dog (probably to accuse me of leaving poop, which I don’t do) as they slow to a stop 100 feet ahead and look at me in the rear view. We continue on our walk, and the truck looped around the parking lot at the end and passed me, and the guy actually GOT OUT OF the truck and looked around on the ground where he initially saw my dog sniffing. I saw him spit on the ground in annoyance that he didn’t find anything and get back in his truck!!
First of all, it’s Sunday morning on a holiday weekend. Isn’t it unlikely that these guys would be working? Does that mean he was waiting in his truck in my apartment parking lot hoping to catch me in the crime of leaving my dogs poop on public grass so he could harass me further? Basically, wtf??
Also, not enjoying the implication that I can’t think for myself. I don’t take this dog to the dog park bc it is far too busy and I need to keep him below threshold. It’s almost like I have my own brain and am capable of making choices based on logic and reasoning that he is not aware of and doesn’t deserve to have explained to him bc it’s not his business. Also eff him for calling me sweetie. “Hey” or “miss” or even “ma’am” would’ve been more appropriate bc I am a human deserving of respect, not someone’s brainless sweetie.
Anyway, what should I do if this happens again? He’s never going to catch me leaving poop bc I don’t do that but I’m getting the feeling that I might be being watched. And if I go out for a walk without my dog I’m not sure I’ll feel safe.

I’ve unintentionally offended a parent of my neighbour and need some advice on what to do next.
I’ve outlined some context, what happened and whats swirling around my head.
Context We live in a street which is quite private. The houses are spaced apart and are set back from the street. Some people live here to be totally private. So it’s not easy to identify the parent of a neighbour, what car they drive or even your on neighbours car in some cases!
We have a parking problem on the street which has improved a lot over the past couple of years. This has been achieved simply by putting out a note which always says the same thing “No parking. Please move you car. Thank you”. 90% of the time people don’t realise it’s causing an issue, there was a period when several houses were getting blocked in by parked cars. Garbage trucks struggled to get passed. Now we probably get one a week. They park up and go anywhere…. Can be there for 30 mins or all day… they might be dog walkers, restaurant attendees, church goers… anything and all types. You have no way of knowing who they are, how long they will be or where they are going.
One of my neighbours has a terminally ill child. The illness has been progressing for several years. Over the past 6 months their child has had palliative care at home and in a hospice. We are aware he goes to the hospice every week approx.
What happened? I went to do my grocery shopping and a car was parked outside. I left the ‘no parking. Please move your car. Thank you’ note. Whilst I was out the owner of the vehicle knocked on the door. He apologised for parking and explained he was a family member visiting next door. My husband apologised for leaving the note, we didn’t realise he was from next door. The man explained he needed to move because the ambulance was coming to take his grandson to the hospice. He said his grandson is dying. He said that we should investigate the circumstances before “leaving a note like that on someone’s car”. My husband apologised again and explained the parking issue, the man acknowledged he was aware of the issue (the neighbouring house had been blocked in in the past on several occasions). The man thrust the note at my husband and said “you can take that and do what you want with it. I hope you never have to go through what my family are going through.” He started walking down the driveway shouting that we should investigate before we leave notes like that and so on. This is all on doorbell cam so I can see the exchange. He is polite in his word choice but clearly agitated and wants to vent at my husband.
What’s swirling around my head - help please! - under any other circumstance, I’d just message my neighbour and say something like ‘sorry if we unintentionally upset your dad, let me know if you need anything’ - I don’t know if the child is going to the hospice on a non scheduled visit because he is dying now (sorry for my poor phraseology) - if so do you really want to be bothered by messages about your dads parking upset…? I can’t related to their situation of caring for a terminally ill child. I experienced a unexpected bereavement recently of an immediate family member. Whilst caring for them and after, I found messages overwhelming. - I don’t think we’ve done anything wrong (?) - we had no idea who it was, I have no idea who’s car it is, the note was polite, we apologised on the doorstep… I’m concerned he may have said we left a ‘nasty note’?
I want to acknowledge my actions have upset someone and be a human being but given the circumstances, i would appreciate a level headed point of view please.
What would you do?

PODCAST: https://ayearofwarandpeace.podbean.com/e/ep1572-hail-and-farewell-george-moore-vale-chapter-112/
PROMPTS: George does not care about you, whatsoever.
Today's Reading, via Project Gutenberg:
Borde could not enlighten him on that point, and I suggested that he should make application to the publisher of his Prayer-Book and get his money back. There is nobody. I said, like him. He is more wonderful than anything in literature. I prefer him to Sancho who was untroubled with a conscience and never thought of running to the Bishop of Toledo. All the same he is not without the shrewdness of his ancestors, and got the better of Archbishop Walsh, and for the last five years Vincent O'Brien has been beating time, and will beat it till the end of his life; and he will be succeeded by others, for Edward has, by deed, saved the Italian contrapuntalists till time everlasting from competition with modern composers. He certainly has gotten the better of Walsh. And I thought of a picture-gallery in Dublin with nothing in it but Botticelli and his school, and myself declaring that all painting that had been done since had no interest for me.... A smile began to spread over my face, for the story that was coming into my mind seemed oh! so humorous, so like Ireland, so like Edward, that I began to tell myself again the delightful story of the unrefined ears that, weary of erudite music, had left the cathedral and sought instinctively modern tunes and women's voices, and as these were to be found in Westland Row the church was soon overflowing with a happy congregation. But in a little while the collections grew scantier. This time it couldn't be Palestrina, and all kinds of reasons were adduced. At last the truth could no longer be denied—the professional Catholics of Merrion Square had been driven out of Westland Row by the searching smells of dirty clothes, and had gone away to the University Church in Stephen's Green. So if it weren't Palestrina directly it was Palestrina indirectly, and the brows of the priests began to knit when Edward Martyn's name was mentioned. Them fal-de-dals is well enough on the Continent, in Paris, where there is no faith, was the opinion of an important ecclesiastic. But we don't want them here, murmured a second ecclesiastic. All this counterpoint may make a very pretty background for Mr Martyn's prayers, but what about the poor people's? Good composer or bad composer, there is no congregation in him, said a third. There's too much congregation, put in the first, but not the kind we want! The second ecclesiastic took snuff, and the group were of opinion that steps should be taken to persuade dear Edward to make good their losses. The priests in Marlborough Street sympathised with the priests of Westland Row, and told them that they were so heavily out of pocket that Mr Martyn had agreed to do something for them. It seemed to the Westland Row priests that if Mr Martyn were making good the losses of the priests of the pro-Cathedral, he should make good their losses. It was natural that they should think so, and to acquit himself of all responsibility Edward no doubt consulted the best theologians on the subject, and I think that they assured him that he is not responsible for indirect losses. If he were, his whole fortune would not suffice. He was, of course, very sorry if a sudden influx of poor people had caused a falling-off in the collections of Westland Row, for he knew that the priests needed the money very much to pay for the new decorations, and to help them he wrote an article in the Independent praising the new blue ceiling, which seemed, so he wrote, a worthy canopy for the soaring strains of Palestrina.
Unfortunately rubbing salt into the wound, I said. A story that will amuse Dujardin and it will be great fun telling him in the shady garden at Fontainebleau how Edward, anxious to do something for his church, had succeeded in emptying two. All the way down the alleys he will wonder how Edward could have ever looked upon Palestrina's masses as religious music. The only music he will say, in which religious emotion transpires is plain-chant. Huysmans says that the Tantum Ergo or the Dies Irae, one or the other, reminds him of a soul being dragged out of purgatory, and it is possible that it does; but a plain-chant tune arranged in eight-part counterpoint cannot remind one of anything very terrible. Dujardin knows that Palestrina was a priest, and he will say: That fact deceived your friend, just as the fact of finding the Adeste Fideles among the plain-chant tunes deceived him. For of course I shall tell Dujardin that story too. It is too good to be missed. He is wonderful, Dujardin! I shall cry out in one of the sinuous alleys. There never was anybody like him! And I will tell him more soul-revealing anecdotes. I will say: Dujardin, listen. One evening he contended that the great duet at the end of Siegfried reminded him of mass by Palestrina. Dujardin will laugh, and, excited by his laughter, I will try to explain to him that what Edward sees is that Palestrina took a plain chant tune and gave fragments of it to the different voices, and in his mind these become confused with the motives of The Ring. You see, Dujardin, the essential always escapes him—the intention of the writer is hidden from him. I am beginning to understand your friend. He has, let us suppose, a musical ear that allows him to take pleasure in the music; but a musical ear will not help him to follow Wagner's idea—how, in a transport of sexual emotion, a young man and a young woman on a mountain-side awaken to the beauty of the life of the world. Dujardin's appreciations will provoke me, and I will say: Dujardin, you shouldn't be so appreciative. If I were telling you of a play I had written, it would be delightful to watch my idea dawning upon your consciousness; but I am telling you of a real man, and one that I shall never to able to get into literature. He will answer: We invent nothing; we can but perceive. And then, exhilarated, carried beyond myself, I will say: Dujardin, I will tell you something still more wonderful than the last gaffe. II gaffe dans les Quat'z Arts. He admires Ibsen, but you'd never guess the reason why—because he is very like Racine; both of them, he says, are classical writers. And do you know how he arrived at that point? Because nobody is killed on the stage in Racine or in Ibsen. He does not see that the intention of Racine is to represent men and women out of time and out of space, unconditioned by environment, and that the very first principle of Ibsen's art is the relation of his characters to their environment. In many passages he merely dramatises Darwin. There never was anybody so interesting as dear Edward, and there never will be anybody like him in literature ... I will explain why presently, but I must first tell you another anecdote. I went to see him one night, and he told me that the theme of the play he was writing was a man who had married a woman because he had lost faith in himself; the man did not know, however, that the woman had married him for the same reason, and the two of them were thinking—I have forgotten what they were thinking, but I remember Edward saying: I should like to suggest hopelessness. I urged many phrases, but he said: It isn't a phrase I want, but an actual thing. I was thinking of a broken anchor—that surely is a symbol of hopelessness. Yes, I said, no doubt, but how are you going to get a broken anchor into a drawing-room? I don't write about drawing-rooms. Well, living-rooms. It isn't likely that they would buy a broken anchor and put it up by the coal-scuttle.
There's that against it, he answered. If you could suggest anything better—What do you think of a library in which there is nothing but unacted plays? The characters could say, when there was nothing for them to do on the stage, that they were going to the library to read, and the library would have the advantage of reminding everybody of the garret in the Wild Duck. A very cruel answer, my friend, Dujardin will say, and I will tell him that I can't help seeing in Edward something beyond Shakespeare or Balzac. Now, tell me, which of these anecdotes I have told you is the most humorous? He will not answer my question, but a certain thoughtfulness will begin to settle in his face, and he will say: Everything with him is accidental, and when his memory fails him he falls into another mistake, and he amuses you because it is impossible for you to anticipate his next mistake. You know there is going to be one; there must be one, for he sees things separately rather than relatively. I am beginning to understand your friend.
You are, you are; you are doing splendidly. But you haven't told me, Dujardin, which anecdote you prefer. Stay, there is another one. Perhaps this one will help you to a still better understanding. When he brought The Heather Field and Yeats's play The Countess Cathleen to Dublin for performance, a great trouble of conscience awakened suddenly in him, and a few days before the performance he went to a theologian to ask him if The Countess Cathleen were a heretical work, and, if it were would Almighty God hold him responsible for the performance? But he couldn't withdraw Yeats's play without withdrawing his own, and it appears that he breathed a sigh of relief when a common friend referred the whole matter to two other theologians, and as these gave their consent Edward allowed the plays to go on; but Cardinal Logue intervened, and wrote a letter to the papers to say that the play seemed to him unfit for Catholic ears, and Edward would have withdrawn the plays if the Cardinal hadn't admitted in his letter that he had judged the play by certain extracts only.
He wishes to act rightly, but has little faith in himself; and what makes him so amusing is that he needs advice in aesthetics as well as in morals. We are, I said, Dujardin, at the roots of conscience. And I began to ponder the question what would happen to Edward if we lived in a world in which aesthetics ruled: I should be where Bishop Healy is, and he would be a thin, small voice crying in the wilderness—an amusing subject of meditation, from which I awoke suddenly.
I wonder how Dujardin is getting on with his Biblical studies? Last year he was calling into question the authorship of the Romans—a most eccentric view; and, remembering how weakly I had answered him, I took the Bible from the table and began to read the Epistle with a view to furnishing myself with arguments wherewith to confute him. My Bible opened at the ninth chapter, and I said: Why, here is the authority for the Countess Cathleen's sacrifice which Edward's theologian deemed untheological. It will be great fun to poke Edward up with St Paul, and on my way to Lincoln Place I thought how I might lead the conversation to The Countess Cathleen.
📷
A few minutes afterwards a light appeared on the staircase and the door slowly opened.
Come in, Siegfried, though you were off the key.
Well, my dear friend, it is a difficult matter to whistle above two trams passing simultaneously and six people jabbering round a public-house, to say nothing of a jarvey or two, and you perhaps dozing in your armchair, as your habit often is. You won't open to anything else except a motive from The Ring; and I stumbled up the stairs in front of Edward, who followed with a candle.
Wait a moment; let me go first and I'll turn up the gas.
You aren't sitting in the dark, are you?
No, but I read better by candle-light, and he blew out the candles in the tin candelabrum that he had made for himself. He is original even in his candelabrum; no one before him had ever thought of a caridelabrum in tin, and I fell to admiring his appearance more carefully than perhaps I had ever done before, so monumental did he seem lying on the little sofa sheltered from daughts by a screen, a shawl about his shoulders. His churchwarden was drawing famously, and I noticed his great square hands with strong fingers and square nails pared closely away, and as heretofore I admired the curve of the great belly, the thickness of the thighs, the length and breadth and the width of his foot hanging over the edge of the sofa, the apoplectic neck falling into great rolls of flesh, the humid eyes, the skull covered with short stubbly hair. I looked round the rooms and they seemed part of himself: the old green wallpaper on which he pins reproductions of the Italian masters. And I longed to peep once more into the bare bedroom into which he goes to fetch bottles of Apollinaris. Always original! Is there another man in this world whose income is two thousand a year, and who sleeps in a bare bedroom, without dressing-room, or bathroom, or servant in the house to brush his clothes, and who has to go to the baker's for his breakfast?
We had been talking for some time of the Gaelic League, and from Hyde it was easy to pass to Yeats and his plays.
His best play is The Countess Cathleen.
The Countess Cathleen is only a sketch.
But what I never could understand, Edward, was why you and the Cardinal could have had any doubts as to the orthodoxy of The Countess Cathleen.
What, a woman that sells her own soul in order to save the souls of others!
I suppose your theologian objected—
Of course he objected.
He cannot have read St Paul.
What do you mean?
He can't have read St Paul, or else he is prepared to throw over St Paul.
Mon ami Moore, mon ami Moore.
The supernatural idealism of a man who would sell his soul to save the souls of others fills me with awe.
But it wasn't a man; it was the Countess Cathleen, and women are never idealists.
Not the saints?
His face grew solemn at once.
If you give me the Epistles I will read the passage to you. And it was great fun to go to the bookshelves and read: I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
Edward's face grew more and more solemn, and I wondered of what he was thinking.
Paul is a very difficult and a very obscure writer, and I think the Church is quite right not to encourage the reading of the Epistles, especially without comments.
Then you do think there is something in the passage I have read?
After looking down his dignified nose for a long time, he said:
Of course, the Church has an explanation. All the same, it's very odd that St Paul should have said such a thing—very odd.
There is no doubt that I owe a great deal of my happiness to Edward; all my life long he has been exquisite entertainment. And I fell to thinking that Nature was very cruel to have led me, like Moses, within sight of the Promised Land. A story would be necessary to bring Edward into literature, and it would be impossible to devise an action of which he should be a part. The sex of a woman is odious to him, and a man with two thousand a year does not rob nor steal, and he is so uninterested in his fellow-men that he has never an ill word to say about anybody. John Eglinton is a little thing; AE is a soul that few will understand; but Edward is universal—more universal than Yeats, than myself, than any of us, but for lack of a story I shall not be able to give him the immortality in literature which he seeks in sacraments. Shakespeare always took his stories from some other people. Turgenev's portrait of him would be thin, poor, and evasive, and Balzac would give us the portrait of a mere fool. And Edward is not a fool. As I understand him he is a temperament without a rudder; all he has to rely upon is his memory, which isn't a very good one, and so he tumbles from one mistake into another. My God! it is a terrible thing to happen to one, to understand a man better than he understands himself, and to be powerless to help him. If I had been able to undo his faith I should have raised him to the level of Sir Horace Plunkett, but he resisted me; and perhaps he did well, for he came into the world seeing things separately rather than relatively, and had to be a Catholic. He is a born Catholic, and I remembered one of his confessions—a partial confession, but a confession: If you had been brought up as strictly as I have been—I don't think he ever finished the sentence; he often leaves sentences unfinished, as if he fears to think things out. The end of the sentence should run: You would not dare to think independently. He thinks that his severe bringing-up has robbed him of something. But the prisoner ends by liking his prison-house, and on another occasion he said: If it hadn't been for the Church, I don't know what would have happened to me.
My thoughts stopped, and when I awoke I was thinking of Hughes. Perhaps the link between Hughes and Edward was Loughrea Cathedral. He had shown me a photograph of some saints modelled by Hughes. Hughes is away in Paris, I said, modelling saints for Loughrea Cathedral. The last time I saw him was at Walter Osborne's funeral, and Walter's death set me thinking of the woman I had lost, and little by little all she had told me about herself floated up in my mind like something that I had read. I had never seen her father nor the Putney villa in which she had been brought up, but she had made me familiar with both through her pleasant mode of conversation, which was never to describe anything, but just to talk about things, dropping phrases here and there, and the phrases she dropped were so well chosen that the comfort of the villa, its pompous meals and numerous servants, its gardens and greenhouses, with stables and coach-house just behind, are as well known to me as the house that I am living in, better known in a way, for I see it through the eyes of the imagination ... clearer eyes than the physical eyes.
It does not seem to me that any one was ever more conscious of whence she had come and of what she had been; she seemed to be able to see herself as a child again, and to describe her childhood with her brother (they were nearly the same age) in the villa and in the villa's garden. I seemed to see them always as two rather staid children who were being constantly dressed by diligent nurses and taken out for long drives in the family carriage. They did not like these drives and used to hide in the garden; but their governess was sent to fetch them, and they were brought back. Her father did not like to have the horses kept waiting, and one day as Stella stood with him in the passage, she saw her mother come out of her bedroom beautifully dressed. Her father whispered something in his wife's ear, and he followed her into her bedroom. Stella remembered how the door closed behind them. In my telling, the incident seems to lose some of its point, but in Stella's relation it seemed to put her father and his wife before me and so clearly that I could not help asking her what answer her father would make were she to tell him that she had a lover. A smile hovered in her grave face. He would look embarrassed, she said, and wonder why I should have told him such a thing, and then I think he would go to the greenhouse, and when he returned he would talk to me about something quite different. I don't think that Stella ever told me about the people that came to their house, but people must have come to it, and as an example of how a few words can convey an environment I will quote her: I always wanted to talk about Rossetti, she said, and these seven words seem to me to tell better than any description the life of a girl living with a formal father in a Putney villa, longing for something, not knowing exactly what, and anxious to get away from home.... I think she told me she was eighteen or nineteen and had started painting before she met Florence at the house of one of her father's friends; a somewhat sore point this meeting was, for Florence was looked upon by Stella's father as something of a Bohemian. She was a painter, and knew all the Art classes and the fees that had to be paid, and led Stella into the world of studios and models and girl friends. She knew how to find studios and could plan out a journey abroad. Stella's imagination was captured, and even if her father had tried to offer opposition to her leaving home he could not have prevented her, for she was an heiress (her mother was dead and had left her a considerable income); but he did not try, and the two girls set up house together in Chelsea; they travelled in Italy and Spain; they had a cottage in the country; they painted pictures and exhibited their pictures in the same exhibitions; they gave dances in their studios and were attracted by this young man and the other; but Stella did not give herself to any one, because, as she admitted to me, she was afraid that a lover would interrupt the devotion which she intended to give to Art. But life is forever casting itself into new shapes and forms, and no sooner had she begun to express herself in Art than she met me. I was about to go to Ireland to preach a new gospel, and must have seemed a very impulsive and fantastic person to her, but were not impulsiveness and fantasy just the qualities that would appeal to her? And were not gravity and good sense the qualities that would appeal to me, determined as I was then to indulge myself in a little madness?
I could not have chosen a saner companion than Stella; my instinct had led me to her; but because one man's instinct is a little more clear than another's, it does not follow that he has called reason to his aid. It must be remembered always that the art of painting is as inveterate in me as the art of writing, and that I am never altogether myself when far away from the smell of oil paint. Stella could talk to one about painting, and all through that wonderful summer described in Salve our talk flowed on as delightfully as a breeze in Maytime, and as irresponsible, flashing thoughts going by and avowals perfumed with memories. Only in her garden did conversation fail us, for in her garden Stella could think only of her flowers, and it seemed an indiscretion to follow her as she went through the twilight gathering dead blooms or freeing plants from noxious insects. But she would have had me follow her, and I think was always a little grieved that I wasn't as interested in her garden as I was in her painting; and my absent-mindedness when I followed her often vexed her and my mistakes distressed her.
You are interested, she said, only in what I say about flowers and not in the flowers themselves. You like to hear me tell about Miss —— whose business in life is to grow carnations, because you already see her, dimly, perhaps, but still you see her in a story. Forget her and look at this Miss Shifner!
Yes, it is beautiful, but we can only admire the flowers that we notice when we are children, I answered. Dahlias, china roses, red and yellow tulips, tawny wallflowers, purple pansies, are never long out of my thoughts, and all the wonderful varieties of the iris, the beautiful blue satin and the cream, some shining like porcelain, even the common iris that grows about the moat.
But there were carnations in your mother's garden?
Yes, and I remember seeing them being tied with bass. But what did you say yesterday about carnations? That they were the—
She laughed and would not tell me, and when the twilight stooped over the high trees and the bats flitted and the garden was silent except when a fish leaped, I begged her to come away to the wild growths that I loved better than the flowers.
But the mallow and willow-weed are the only two that you recognise. How many times have I told you the difference between self-heal and tufted vetch?
I like cow parsley and wild hyacinths and—
You have forgotten the name. As well speak of a woman that you loved but whose name you had forgotten.
Well, if I have, I love trees better than you do, Stella. You pass under a fir unstirred by the mystery of its branches, and I wonder at you, for I am a tree worshipper, even as my ancestors, and am moved as they were by the dizzy height of a great silver fir. You like to paint trees, and I should like to paint flowers if I could paint; there we are set forth, you and I.
I have told in Salve that in Rathfarnham she found many motives for painting; the shape of the land and the spire above the straggling village appealed to me, but she was not altogether herself in these pictures. She would have liked the village away, for man and his dwellings did not form part of her conception of a landscape; large trees and a flight of clouds above the trees were her selection, and the almost unconscious life of kine wandering or sheep seeking the shelter of a tree.
Stella was a good walker, and we followed the long road leading from Rathfarnham up the hills, stopping to admire the long plain which we could see through the comely trees shooting out of the shelving hillside.
If I have beguiled you into a country where there are no artists and few men of letters, you can't say that I have not shown you comely trees. And now if you can walk two miles farther up this steep road I will show you a lovely prospect.
And I enjoyed her grave admiration of the old Queen Anne dwelling-house, its rough masonry, the yew hedges, the path along the hillside leading to the Druid altar and the coast-line sweeping in beautiful curves, but she did not like to hear me say that the drawing of the shore reminded her of Corot.
It is a sad affectation, she said, to speak of Nature reminding one of pictures.
Well, the outlines of Howth are beautiful, I answered, and the haze is incomparable. I should like to have spoken about a piece of sculpture, but for your sake, Stella, I refrain.
She was interested in things rather than ideas, and I remember her saying to me that things interest us only because we know that they are always slipping from us. A strange thing for a woman to say to her lover. She noticed all the changes of the seasons and loved them, and taught me to love them. She brought a lamb back from Rathfarnham, a poor forlorn thing that had run bleating so pitifully across the windy field that she had asked the shepherd where the ewe was, and he had answered that she had been killed overnight by a golf-ball. The lamb will be dead before morning, he added. And it was that March that the donkey produced a foal, a poor ragged thing that did not look as if it ever could be larger than a goat, but the donkey loved her foal.
Do you know the names of those two birds flying up and down the river?
They look to me like two large wrens with white waistcoats.
They are water-ouzels, she said.
The birds flew with rapid strokes of the wings, like kingfishers, alighting constantly on the river, on large mossy stones, and though we saw them plunge into the water, it was not to swim, but to run along the bottom in search of worms.
But do worms live under water?
The rooks were building, and a little while after a great scuffling was heard in one of the chimneys and a young jackdaw came down and soon became tamer than any bird I had ever seen, tamer than a parrot, and at the end of May the corncrake called from the meadow that summer had come again, and the kine wandered in deeper and deeper and deeper herbage. The days seemed never to end, and looking through the branches of the chestnut in which the fruit had not begun to show, we caught sight of a strange spectacle. Stella said, A lunar rainbow, and I wondered, never having heard of or seen such a thing before.
I shall never forget that rainbow, Stella, and am glad that we saw it together.
In every love story lovers reprove each other for lack of affection, and Stella had often sent me angry letters which caused me many heart-burnings and brought me out to her; in the garden there were reconciliations, we picked up the thread again, and the summer had passed before the reason of these quarrels became clear to me. One September evening Stella said she would accompany me to the gate, and we had not gone very far before I began to notice that she was quarrelling with me. She spoke of the loneliness of the Moat House, and I had answered that she had not been alone two evenings that week. She admitted my devotion. And if you admit that there has been no neglect—
She would not tell me, but there was something she was not satisfied with, and before we reached the end of the avenue she said, I don't think I can tell you. But on being pressed she said:
Well, you don't make love to me often enough.
And full of apologies I answered, Let me go back.
No, I can't have you back now, not after having spoken like that.
But she yielded to my invitation, and we returned to the house, and next morning I went back to Dublin a little dazed, a little shaken.
A few days after she went away to Italy to spend the winter and wrote me long letters, interesting me in herself, in the villagers, in the walks and the things that she saw in her walks, setting me sighing that she was away from me, or that I was not with her. And going to the window I would stand for a long time watching the hawthorns in their bleak wintry discontent, thinking how the sunlight fell into the Italian gardens, and caught the corner of the ruin she was sketching; and I let my fancy stray for a time unchecked. It would be wonderful to be in Italy with her, but—
I turned from the window suspicious, for there was a feeling at the back of my mind that with her return an anxiety would come into my life that I would willingly be without. She had told me she had refrained from a lover because she wished to keep all herself for her painting, and now she had taken to herself a lover. She was twenty years younger than I was, and at forty-six or thereabouts one begins to feel that one's time for love is over; one is consultant rather than practitioner. But it was impossible to dismiss the subject with a jest, and I found myself face to face with the question—If these twenty years were removed, would things be different? It seemed to me that the difficulty that had arisen would have been the same earlier in my life as it was now, and returning to the window I watched the hawthorns blowing under the cold grey Dublin sky.
The problem is set, I said, for the married, and every couple has to solve it in one way or another, but they have to solve it; they have to come to terms with love, especially the man, for whom it is a question of life and death. But how do they come to terms? And I thought of the different married people I knew. Which would be most likely to advise me—the man or the woman? It would be no use to seek advice; every case is different, I said. If anybody were to advise me it would be the man, for the problem is not so difficult for a woman. She can escape from love more easily than her lover or her husband; she can plead, and her many pleadings were considered, one by one, and how in married life the solution that seems to lovers so difficult is solved by marriage itself, by propinquity. But not always, not always. The question is one of extraordinary interest and importance; more marriages come to shipwreck, I am convinced, on this very question than upon any other. In the divorce cases published we read of incompatibility of temper and lack of mutual tastes, mere euphemisms that deceive nobody. The image of a shipwreck rose up in me naturally. She will return, and like a ship our love for each other will be beaten on these rocks and broken. We shall not be able to get out to sea. She will return, and when she returns her temperament will have to be adjusted to mine, else she will lose me altogether, for men have died of love, though Shakespeare says they haven't. Manet and Daudet—both died of love; and the somewhat absurd spectacle of a lover waiting for his mistress to return, and yet dreading her returning, was constantly before me.
It often seemed to me that it was my own weakness that created our embarrassment. A stronger man would have been able to find a way out, but I am not one that can shape and mould another according to my desire; and when she returned from Italy I found myself more helpless than ever, and I remember, and with shame, how, to avoid being alone with her, I would run down the entire length of a train, avoiding the empty carriages, crying Not here, not here! at last opening the door of one occupied by three or four people, who all looked as if they were bound for a long journey. I remember, too, how about this time I came with friends to see Stella, whether by accident or design, frankly I know not; I only know that I brought many friends to see her, thinking they would interest her.
If you don't care to come to see me without a chaperon, I would rather you didn't come at all, she said, humiliating me very deeply.
It seemed to me, I answered, blushing, that you would like to see ——, and I mentioned the name of the man who had accompanied me.
If I am cross sometimes it is because I don't see enough of you.
It seems to me that it was then that the resolve hardened in my heart to become her friend ... if she would allow me to become her friend. But in what words should I frame my request and my apology? All the time our life was becoming less amiable, until one evening I nipped the quarrel that was beginning, stopping suddenly at the end of the avenue.
It is better that we should understand each other. The plain truth is that I must cease to be your lover unless my life is to be sacrificed.
Cease to be my lover!
That is impossible, but a change comes into every love story.
The explanation stuttered on. I remember her saying: I don't wish you to sacrifice your life. I have forgotten the end of her sentence. She drew her hand suddenly across her eyes. I will conquer this obsession.
A man would have whined and cried and besought and worried his mistress out of her wits. Women behave better than we; only once did her feelings overcome her. She spoke to me of the deception that life is. Again we were standing by the gate at the end of the chestnut avenue, and I remembered her telling me how a few years ago life had seemed to hold out its hands to her; her painting and her youth created her enjoyment.
But now life seems to have shrivelled up, she said; only a little dust is left.
Nothing is changed, so far as you and I are concerned. We see each other just the same.
I am no more to you than any other woman.
She went away again to Italy to paint and returned to Ireland, and one day she came to see me, and remained talking for an hour. I have no memory of what we said to each other, but a very clear memory of our walk through Dublin over Carlisle Bridge and along the quays. I had accompanied her as far as the Phoenix Park gates, and at the corner of the Conyngham Road, just as I was bidding her goodbye, she said:
I want to ask your advice on a matter of importance to me.
And to me, for what is important to you is equally important to me.
I am thinking, she said, of being married.
At the news it seems to me that I was unduly elated and tried to assume the interest that a friend should.

Lexus is releasing the GX and TX on the same day (June 8th).
Long story, but 3 kids (all boys), Lexus loyalist, skipped Lexus 4 years ago because the RX L 3rd row was basically unusable.
Anybody else in a similar situation waiting for these 2 to come out? If so, which way are you leaning?

Hey all, I've been doing 19-5 IF for the past 3 months, but have since switched to OMAD for the past 2 weeks, after seeing that I don't mind the hunger pangs and that it carried me over a plateau. I do around 1500 kcals a day (my TDEE is around 2700 per MacroFactor app), and doing an hour daily rowing sessions. So I'm happy with the deficit and the ensuing wight loss (around 5 kilos or 11 pounds per month so far).
The issue is I'm a pretty picky eater, so I find myself not eating a varied diet with a lot of whole foods or vegetables. Mostly meat and carbs. Also taking 65 grams of protein from whey protein shake if I end up that day in a protein deficit per online calculators, which I almost always do, even with the help of the shake. Am I starving my body of vital nutritions? Can I just take other vital supplements? Is it potassium, is it calcium, or some other words? What exactly are they? This type of nitty gritty is all very overwhelming for me and I don't want to think about any of this. I just want to keep restricting calories and lose weight, and not think about anything else, but unfortunately it's not so simple. So I come to your warm embrace for advice.
Even though OMAD doesn't necessarily lead to malnutrition, the way I'm utilizing it might, I fear. Any concrete suggestions for a picky eater? I don't see myself picking up a kale et al. any time soon, even though it would solve a lot of my problems, and my wife happens to be an expert chef. Thanks all!

Is it accurate to say that you are now attempting to choose whether you invest in a glass table top for your home in Houston, TX.? Have you pondered the job your furniture plays in the look and feel of your home in Houston, TX.? Regardless of whether it's a crazy new end table or a glorious lounge area table, your furniture is basically the explanation piece for a whole room. Glass has numerous novel ascribes that make it ideal as a table top regardless of the style of your home's stylistic layout, whether modern, traditional or even antique.
Of all the rooms in your home in Houston, TX., maybe perhaps the main one is the lounge area. It is the one feeling where families should eat their dinners, children can do their homework and fathers play a game or partake in a decent drink with companions. However, keeping that unique conversation starter clean can be a significant overwhelming assignment. At the point when you make those loads of factors, it is difficult to believe that such countless wooden tables remain somewhat unprotected, remaining in this way presented to the unavoidable mileage of day by day use, scratches and absorption of moisture.
In fact, glass is additionally a permeable material however it will not gulp up stains like wood, leather or fabric—and with a basic glass sealant, it tends to be made for all intents and purposes pore-less. Notwithstanding, the failure to stain is only one of the many benefits of picking a glass table top. Here are just a few benefits why glass table tops are the best choice.

1. Low Maintenance or Easy to Clean

First, transparent glass table tops are the simplest to clean. Certain individuals in Houston, TX., think glass shows spills, tacky wrecks or different issues more so than different materials. Regardless of whether you have a spill or a development of residue, everything necessary is a speedy wipe with a material or Glass Cleaner and it has returned to looking pristine. Nonetheless, on the grounds that you don't handily see a wreck on wood or different materials doesn't mean it's not there. Glass table tops really make it simpler to see where spills are so you can clean them in a snap. Wouldn't it be great never to need to stress over stains or scratches again?

1. Glass Creates the Illusion of More Space

You definitely realize that lighter tones present the illusion of more space. Notwithstanding, I don't think about clear or transparent materials. Consider it. What might make a lounge area look bigger: A table with a glass top, or one with a solid, colored top? You definitely know the appropriate response, and space is in-demand regardless of the area of your home in Houston, TX.

1. Protects the Underlying Table

This is maybe the fundamental benefit of a glass table top. Many glass tables come as a surface over wood and other sensitive materials, which acts to shield the underlying table from any scratches and buffs.
Furniture like an eating table can be over the top expensive. With a major speculation, you definitely should attempt to secure it and we don't mean a seal layer, although that might help and give the table a decent completion, just a hard surface could forestall the previously mentioned impacts. This is particularly helpful in the event that you have pets or youngsters. You can likewise take on a DIY project and add glass to a current table in your home in Houston, TX., to assist with securing your table, while additionally giving a dash of style simultaneously.

1. Prolong the Life of Your Wood Furniture

Water rings, scratches and even sun harm can age your wood furniture rashly. A glass tabletop can shield from day by day mileage and can assist with protecting the attributes that make the piece exceptional.

1. Replacement

Allow us to return to the drawn out investment idea. On the off chance that your table gets harmed or destroyed, wouldn't the expense of replacing or fixing it be far higher than that of a glass table top replacing? It is fundamentally an issue of appearance and usefulness as well as a financial matters choice. It just bodes well to ensure your dear household item.

1. Ambiance in the Light

When hoping to lighten up a room, transparent glass can make an excellent shine and shimmer when presented to the daylight.

1. Elegance

This relies completely upon the viewpoint of your lounge area and the inside plan idea of your whole home in Houston, TX., as a general rule, current constructions where vanguard subjects and minimalism rule the field, gem tables win as far as possible. Most homes in Houston, TX., are not really modern and they keep a more rustic traditional appearance which is the reason we contend that a glass table top works on the vibe of a wooden table and all the more critically safeguards it for what seemingly is a long term purchase.

1. Styling Options

There are such countless choices to browse you can without much of a stretch pick one that accommodates your theme. Glass comes in various thickness and tones, just as layering and examples. So you can track down an ideal fit to suit your modern or contemporary design. The glass tabletop edges can be exclusively cut to give your tabletop an exquisite and modern theme or a fun and stylish energy.
Is it accurate to say that you are searching for another table or a way of enlivening a current one? Why not consider a glass table top for your lounge room, bedroom, or kitchen? Glass table tops are the ideal arrangement when you want a table with a lovely appearance, joined with low maintenance. The right table can have a colossal effect on the presence of a room. When hoping to add a table that will add allure and appeal to your space while effectively lessening stains and scratches, a glass table top can be the ideal option to your home in Houston, TX.
At long last, there's the expense issue. Glass is much more reasonable and moderately simpler to have altered. It's strong and solid, yet in the event that it ends up breaking it's easy to replace. On the off chance that you need assistance with a glass table top, let the Sugar Land Glass and Shower in Houston, TX., help you for simple, reasonable and stunning allure. Also, obviously, they can assist you with all of your custom glass table top necessities.

In season 11, they talk about this "new variant" of walkers that can climb, use weapons, whatever, and they never really go anywhere with that, but they're all super shocked about it. But in the literal pilot episode you've got walkers sprinting after rick, turning doorknobs, picking stuff up, seemingly aware of their surroundings, etc. so not only has this "variant" been around since the beginning, but at least some of the group has definitely already encountered them.
Just a tiny plot hole I noticed, but I wonder why they decided to bring back this other variant of walkers in the final hour like that. Just trying to bring it full circle in a way maybe? New writers who just didn't watch the early seasons?
What's your favourite silly plot hole? I love nitpicking

Want to preface this by saying this is not an either or question, I want them to be part of this team for the next 5+ years. If we draft Walker or Hendricks I think it'd be safe to assume they start (although we thought that about Mathurin) along with Haliburton, Mathurin, + Turner.
So who do you want starting next to those 4 guys? Personally I'm going with Andrew Nembhard as I think he is the best perimeter defender we have and I like his secondary playmaking. Either way I expect them to log heavy minutes.

I got a Chase Tactical Bump helmet and some Walker's Razor ear pro. Running into a problem with the ear pro sitting way too low. The top of the ear cup is overlapping with the top of my ear and does not seal at all when mounted to the ARC Rails. Any suggestions welcome, though I'd like to stick to this current setup as it was fairly cheap. Was thinking about maybe adding 4D 1" pads? Looks to me like the pads that come with the Chase Helmet are 1/4th"

Period: 187.69 days

	Submissions	Comments
Total	1000	6982
Rate (per day)	5.33	37.12
Unique Redditors	48	878
Combined Score	25426	29352

Top Submitters' Top Submissions

1. 8359 points, 357 submissions: FarPiano9575
   
   1. This was US Marine combat veteran Ruben Gallego as violent MAGA insurrectionists were overrunning the Capitol on January 6th. He gathered fellow Democrats to prepare to fight if necessary. "I would have killed motherfuckers to save this democracy. Fuck those guys." (638 points, 128 comments)
   2. Students from Nashville-area high schools and colleges, including Belmont University and Vanderbilt U, are pouring into downtown Nashville to gather at the Capitol for another rally to call for safe gun laws following last week's mass school shooting. (112 points, 20 comments)
   3. Sen. John Fetterman is back. “Great to be here,” he says. (77 points, 9 comments)
   4. My friend's late father, at 18, fighting the Nazis in France. He was ANTIFA. (74 points, 16 comments)
   5. Fun fact: Speaker Pelosi won nine consecutive leadership elections—on the first ballot. (71 points, 7 comments)
   6. This is historically important and this is the first step in holding Trump accountable for his crimes. (67 points, 10 comments)
   7. "We're literally building bridges, and they're literally banning books." - Pete Buttigieg (64 points, 3 comments)
   8. Insurrectionist Marjorie Taylor Greene has just been placed on the House Homeland Security Committee. Does that make you feel any more secure? 😱 (64 points, 29 comments)
   9. Trump hid in an underground bunker while Americans protested in the streets. Joe Biden flew into the middle of a war in Kyiv, Ukraine on President's Day and walked the streets as air raid sirens blared. One man stands for world freedom and peace, while the other stood only for his narcissistic self (61 points, 14 comments)
   10. 200 students walked out of class at an Alabama high school after they were reportedly told their student-led Black History Month program could not reference slavery or the civil rights movement "because one of our administrators felt uncomfortable" (60 points, 10 comments)
2. 7529 points, 276 submissions: ProgressiveDemocrats
   
   1. Wow. Students are standing outside the Tennessee House right now and chanting, “Fuck you fascists.” Young people are absolutely pissed off & we are about to give Republicans hell like they’ve never seenZ We aren’t forgetting this. (814 points, 309 comments)
   2. President Biden just schooled Republicans by reminding them, “Ronald Reagan was doing the 28% tax rate, you know, that wacko liberal guy." Does anyone else love President Biden’s sense of humor? (122 points, 22 comments)
   3. JUST IN: Justin Jones has been voted BACK to the Tennessee State House by the Metro Nashville Council! The Council was responsible for choosing who would fill the seat until the special election, and they voted to select Jones. Right after the vote, Jones embraced the council members. (115 points, 14 comments)
   4. Holy shit. The former Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, just came forward to say he was part of a secret Republican operation that convinced Iran to keep Americans held hostage in order to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s 1980 presidential campaign. (Link to the story in comments below) (84 points, 15 comments)
   5. As the Republican party tries to gaslight Americans into thinking Biden's State of the Union Address was terrible, note that 72% of Americans had a positive view of the Address. - That's leaps and bounds better than any Trump SOTU. - Joe Biden knocked it out of the park. (82 points, 6 comments)
   6. WOW. Absolute power move by Hakeem Jeffries. After Republicans kicked Ilhan Omar off of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Jeffries immediately put her on the House Budget Committee. Republicans messed with the wrong party and person. Rep. Omar won’t be silenced. (82 points, 19 comments)
   7. Way to go, Tulsa high schoolers!!🥳 (80 points, 9 comments)
   8. HOLY SHIT! Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin is about to put the smackdown on SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas after revelations that he's been accepting luxury gifts from Republican donors and not disclosing them. 📢 (71 points, 14 comments)
   9. MAGAs are attacking Arnold Schwarzenegger for posting a video in which he condemns anti-Semitism after his visit to Auschwitz. It was a 12-minute video that was powerful, uplifting, and inspiring -- and Arnold doesn't even talk about politics. Why are they offended by this video? (71 points, 29 comments)
   10. BREAKING: In a SHOCKING move, two Texas Republicans just joined the Democrats to PASS the “Raise The Age” gun control bill out of committee in the Texas Legislature! That's right – TEXAS! (more in the comments) (64 points, 11 comments)
3. 2671 points, 84 submissions: Top-Bottle7403
   
   1. Jamie Raskin just destroyed Lauren Boebert with Donald Trump's OWN Words. Rep. Raskin is truly the greatest. (113 points, 15 comments)
   2. If you're randomly posting about World War III on Easter, you don't need to be running for the presidency, you need to run to a mental health provider. (99 points, 21 comments)
   3. BREAKING: Four members of the Proud Boys, including their former leader Enrique Tarrio, were convicted today of seditious conspiracy for plotting to keep Trump in power after his election defeat by leading a violent mob to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (78 points, 8 comments)
   4. Jamie Raskin is owning MAGA Republicans, all while undergoing cancer treatment on a daily basis. He’s a true hero! Please drop a comment below ❤️ to show him your support. (72 points, 12 comments)
   5. Sometimes one image can say more than a thousand words (70 points, 6 comments)
   6. Wonderful people should get to hear the wonderful things about themselves while they're still with us. Jimmy Carter was the first President I cared about when I was a kid, and he's been an incredible human being ever since. Thanks President Carter, for living an exemplary life in service of others. (66 points, 7 comments)
   7. God has nothing to do with it. (64 points, 6 comments)
   8. Last month, DeSantis signed a bill that “will allow anyone who can legally own a gun in Florida to carry one without a permit. It means training and a background check will not be required to carry concealed guns in public. It takes effect July 1.” Get ready for more mass shootings in Florida. (63 points, 21 comments)
   9. The China spy balloon just sent back its first pics from Missouri (61 points, 8 comments)
   10. This 1977 image is of GOP Tennessee Gov Bill Lee dressed in drag. There nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that Bill Lee is about to sign a bill that will ban and criminalize drag in the state. - The image is from a high school yearbook. GOP hypocrisy just keeps getting worse and worse. (58 points, 11 comments)
4. 2598 points, 101 submissions: In-The-Middle12
   
   1. Eight years. No scandals. No impeachment hearings. No drama. Just class and grace personified. Let's let them know we miss this wonderful family. (79 points, 14 comments)
   2. If Republicans in the TN House can expel fellow members of the opposition party simply for protesting gun violence, then surely Democrats in the US House should be able to expel members of Congress for taking part in or aiding an insurrection, right? (79 points, 7 comments)
   3. BREAKING: Tesla has fired 30+ workers at its Buffalo gigafactory, one day after workers there announced a unionization campaign. -Tesla managers announced surprise performance reviews, then fired 8x as many workers as usual. - Tesla is notorious for union-busting. (61 points, 6 comments)
   4. A five-hour police delay in alerting the public that the Monterey Park, California, dance hall killer was on the run is throwing a spotlight on the nation's flawed, patchwork system for warnings of mass shooters at large. (58 points, 7 comments)
   5. Can you find five people in any job outside of policing where one of them wouldn't have stopped the others from beating a man to death? There are no dentists or plumbers, or accountants who would've done that to Tyre Nichols. Only cops have been trained to think that's normal. (49 points, 10 comments)
   6. NEW: Some actually newsworthy footage that was just released in connection with a Jan. 6 trial of Ed Badalian, the InfoWars superfan whose buddy drove a stun gun into Mike Fanone's neck during the Capitol siege. From inside a trashed suite of Senate hideaway offices: (49 points, 7 comments)
   7. Texas Republicans just found out that if they secede from the Union, they lose all their government checks. Say what!! The right-wing Republicans are now double-thinking this move. (49 points, 15 comments)
   8. Oh my. A new video just surfaced that shows Rep. Nate Schatzline (R-TX), who wrote a bill to restrict drag shows, dressed in drag while skipping through a park wearing a black sequined dress. (48 points, 4 comments)
   9. When Trump was POTUS he was still renting an entire floor of Trump Tower to China’s largest state owned bank. They paid him 5.4 million while in office so y’all can STFU about Biden. (48 points, 3 comments)
   10. If you only share ONE post today, let it be this list of 156 House Republicans who voted to raise the retirement age for Social Security to age 70. -- Don't let them get away with it. - Make sure EVERYONE knows. (45 points, 1 comment)
5. 1121 points, 37 submissions: Safe_Salt9663
   
   1. This is not normal (81 points, 20 comments)
   2. D.C. should be a state. What do you think? (80 points, 19 comments)
   3. A corrupt Republican lawmaker has just been EXPELLED from the Arizona State Legislature over ethics violations, including some relating to election misinformation. (62 points, 11 comments)
   4. BREAKING: Wall Street Journal drops bombshell, reveals that Elon Musk’s Twitter is now a whopping $13 billion in debt due to Musk’s failed Twitter Blue grift and the wave of advertisers fleeing to “protect their brands” from Twitter’s toxicity. (click for more) (61 points, 16 comments)
   5. Walker’s campaign paid $595,600 to a company called ‘Jetts’ to supposedly charter private planes. However, Fox has learned that ‘Jetts’ is a defunct car wash that was owned by a Walker donor. (54 points, 12 comments)
   6. The stacked Supreme Court… (49 points, 5 comments)
   7. Another war I must’ve missed. (44 points, 14 comments)
   8. MAGA world is sharing this photo claiming 700K migrants are on their way to the US border. This is FALSE. This photo was taken on October 27, 2018, of Honduran migrants in Arriaga, Mexico, heading to the US. Under Trump's presidency. Just another lie from the GOP. (43 points, 7 comments)
   9. JUST IN: Far-right extremist Riley Williams has been sentenced to 3 years in prison for storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and directing a mob toward the office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (click for more) (41 points, 5 comments)
   10. Happy Sunday to everyone who knows that no sitting US President has ever attended the coronation of British royalty, so if you're trying to shame President Biden for not doing so, you're a complete dummy... Get a grip. (37 points, 4 comments)
6. 485 points, 17 submissions: Top_Bottle7403
   
   1. This is why every vote matters! (91 points, 18 comments)
   2. Thank you Senator Blumenthal for holding Clarence Thomas accountable — (49 points, 11 comments)
   3. Child labor is making a comeback in Republican-led states. That’s what THEY mean by “progress”. (47 points, 11 comments)
   4. A conservative city council has banned the LGBTQ+ flag from government property in Huntington Beach. Another attempt to marginal LGBTQ+ individuals. But hate cannot be allowed to win. Not in California. Not anywhere. (44 points, 13 comments)
   5. Donald Trump just called Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg "a Racist in Reverse," and claimed that Joe Biden pushed Bragg to prosecute him. He then made a call to “investigate the investigators!” (34 points, 13 comments)
   6. The Southern Baptist Convention decided Tuesday to oust Saddleback Church, the second-largest congregation of the convention, because it has a female pastor (34 points, 6 comments)
   7. I wonder what the MAGA zombies think when Trump says DeSantis is being disloyal. Do they then hate DeSantis? Do they think he’s part of deep state? Or do they think Trump is a senile, old man? There are no policy differences. So, do they weigh which one is owning the libs harder? (29 points, 9 comments)
   8. BREAKING: After taking heat for days trying to handle this on his own with Norfolk Southern and making it much worse, Gov. Mike DeWine finally relents and declares a disaster so he can get federal assistance. (25 points, 3 comments)
   9. Here’s my advice to everyone — like me! — who’s excitedly awaiting Trump’s indictment: Relax, and keep your popcorn ready. 🍿 (20 points, 9 comments)
   10. Good morning and Happy Saturday to everyone who agrees that it's better to be "woke" than to sleepwalk through life acting like a rude, obnoxious, selfish asshole. (18 points, 1 comment)
7. 288 points, 10 submissions: SetMau92
   
   1. Sanders Counters GOP Giveaways With Tax Hike on Estates of UltraWealthy"Over and over again, Republicans in Washington have professed their deep concern about the national debt and yet virtually all of them have signed onto legislation that would provide a $1.8 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires. (43 points, 2 comments)
   2. Senate Finance Chief: Nothing Unites GOP More Than 'Helping Rich People Cheat on Their Taxes' "It's a centerpiece of the ransom Speaker McCarthy has cobbled together as he threatens to trigger a catastrophic default," said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden. (43 points, 11 comments)
   3. Audio Reveals Top GOP Lawyer's 2024 Strategy: Make It Harder for College Students to Vote "Instead of fighting for the people or actually earning the votes, Republicans' only plan is to try to 'combat' voting on college campuses," said Rep. Summer Lee. (39 points, 5 comments)
   4. All is not well in Florida... (35 points, 1 comment)
   5. Darn those pesky facts.. (33 points, 4 comments)
   6. Sanders and others Ramp Up 14th Amendment Pressure on Biden to Counter 'Reckless' GOP "Republicans have made it clear that they are prepared to hold our entire economy hostage unless you accede to their demands to reduce the deficit on the backs of working families. That is simply unacceptable." (29 points, 10 comments)
   7. GOP Debt Limit Bill Could Put Over 10 Million at Risk of Losing Medicaid: Analysis "This agenda would narrow opportunity, deepen inequality, and increase hardship," said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (23 points, 2 comments)
   8. GOP Readies 'Shameful' Vote to Oust Omar From House Committee "You cannot remove a member of Congress from a committee simply because you do not agree with their views," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "This is both ludicrous and dangerous." (17 points, 2 comments)
   9. Progressive Young Voters to Biden: Energize Us and Win or Ignore Us and Lose "We need you to deliver the bold ideas that our generation cannot live without—stop the climate crisis, fight for the rights and dignity of immigrants, impose real gun control—and run on a bold platform." (17 points, 4 comments)
   10. Whitewash is to “gloss over or cover up,” (9 points, 1 comment)
8. 125 points, 4 submissions: blixt141
   
   1. Nebraska Republican Says Six-Week Abortion Ban Is Necessary Because White People Are Being Replaced (49 points, 9 comments)
   2. Supreme Court rolls back federal safeguards for wetlands under Clean Water Act (35 points, 13 comments)
   3. Where Things Stand: Biden Shreds McCarthy’s Performative Debt Limit Bill (33 points, 5 comments)
   4. Police: 11 shot, injured during mass shooting at South Carolina park (8 points, 1 comment)
9. 108 points, 5 submissions: Smelly-taint
   
   1. I love how the GOP wants to destroy everything that their own constituents benefit from. (33 points, 7 comments)
   2. Can't think of anything better than a dictator. 🤦🏽‍♂️ (30 points, 9 comments)
   3. Yes! Yes! Yes! (21 points, 28 comments)
   4. Woke? (13 points, 3 comments)
   5. Fuck these Anti Constitutionalist. Attack the Capital then attack my rights. (11 points, 20 comments)
10. 89 points, 6 submissions: Puffin_fan
    
    1. Idaho Republicans Deny Girls Free Tampons in School (28 points, 6 comments)
    2. GOP’s Proposed Expansion Of Work Requirements Targets Low-Income People In Their Early 50s Who Already Work (20 points, 3 comments)
    3. Finland's average electricity price slips into negative territory (14 points, 2 comments)
    4. 'I’m trying not to go into panic.' Review of millions of Medicaid enrollees plagued by error and confusion (10 points, 4 comments)
    5. After Signature Bank Deal, FDIC Is Left With $11 Billion in ‘Toxic Waste’ Loans (9 points, 3 comments)
    6. As Rail Profits Soar, Blocked Crossings Force Kids to Crawl Under Trains to Get to School (8 points, 0 comments)

Top Commenters

1. SpukiKitty (2210 points, 453 comments)
2. SqnLdrHarvey (1737 points, 394 comments)
3. In-The-Middle12 (1456 points, 284 comments)
4. Top-Bottle7403 (1301 points, 240 comments)
5. SmylesLee77 (1147 points, 294 comments)
6. ProgressiveDemocrats (1104 points, 204 comments)
7. FarPiano9575 (1090 points, 205 comments)
8. Alternative-Flan2869 (679 points, 178 comments)
9. HillbillyEulogy (588 points, 124 comments)
10. Biishep1230 (533 points, 101 comments)

Top Submissions

1. Wow. Students are standing outside the Tennessee House right now and chanting, “Fuck you fascists.” Young people are absolutely pissed off & we are about to give Republicans hell like they’ve never seenZ We aren’t forgetting this. by ProgressiveDemocrats (814 points, 309 comments)
2. This was US Marine combat veteran Ruben Gallego as violent MAGA insurrectionists were overrunning the Capitol on January 6th. He gathered fellow Democrats to prepare to fight if necessary. "I would have killed motherfuckers to save this democracy. Fuck those guys." by FarPiano9575 (638 points, 128 comments)
3. President Biden just schooled Republicans by reminding them, “Ronald Reagan was doing the 28% tax rate, you know, that wacko liberal guy." Does anyone else love President Biden’s sense of humor? by ProgressiveDemocrats (122 points, 22 comments)
4. JUST IN: Justin Jones has been voted BACK to the Tennessee State House by the Metro Nashville Council! The Council was responsible for choosing who would fill the seat until the special election, and they voted to select Jones. Right after the vote, Jones embraced the council members. by ProgressiveDemocrats (115 points, 14 comments)
5. Jamie Raskin just destroyed Lauren Boebert with Donald Trump's OWN Words. Rep. Raskin is truly the greatest. by Top-Bottle7403 (113 points, 15 comments)
6. Students from Nashville-area high schools and colleges, including Belmont University and Vanderbilt U, are pouring into downtown Nashville to gather at the Capitol for another rally to call for safe gun laws following last week's mass school shooting. by FarPiano9575 (112 points, 20 comments)
7. If you're randomly posting about World War III on Easter, you don't need to be running for the presidency, you need to run to a mental health provider. by Top-Bottle7403 (99 points, 21 comments)
8. This is why every vote matters! by Top_Bottle7403 (91 points, 18 comments)
9. Holy shit. The former Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, just came forward to say he was part of a secret Republican operation that convinced Iran to keep Americans held hostage in order to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s 1980 presidential campaign. (Link to the story in comments below) by ProgressiveDemocrats (84 points, 15 comments)
10. WOW. Absolute power move by Hakeem Jeffries. After Republicans kicked Ilhan Omar off of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Jeffries immediately put her on the House Budget Committee. Republicans messed with the wrong party and person. Rep. Omar won’t be silenced. by ProgressiveDemocrats (82 points, 19 comments)

Top Comments

1. 26 points: KayleighJK's comment in Wow. Students are standing outside the Tennessee House right now and chanting, “Fuck you fascists.” Young people are absolutely pissed off & we are about to give Republicans hell like they’ve never seenZ We aren’t forgetting this.
2. 23 points: Similar_Candidate789's comment in Wow. Students are standing outside the Tennessee House right now and chanting, “Fuck you fascists.” Young people are absolutely pissed off & we are about to give Republicans hell like they’ve never seenZ We aren’t forgetting this.
3. 23 points: SpukiKitty's comment in Wow. Students are standing outside the Tennessee House right now and chanting, “Fuck you fascists.” Young people are absolutely pissed off & we are about to give Republicans hell like they’ve never seenZ We aren’t forgetting this.
4. 23 points: brotherstoic's comment in Should we be looking for someone other than Biden?
5. 23 points: moreobviousthings's comment in Holy shit. The former Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, just came forward to say he was part of a secret Republican operation that convinced Iran to keep Americans held hostage in order to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s 1980 presidential campaign. (Link to the story in comments below)
6. 22 points: westofme's comment in Alex Jones transferred his assets to his family and friends, evading payments to Sandy Hook families. It should be illegal, but sadly, it's not.
7. 20 points: Explorers_bub's comment in The city of Franklin, Tennessee is voting whether to allow a Pride festival. Someone during public comment says it will result in “a rainbow room where 8-12 year-old kids are given butt plugs & dildos.” --- This is what GOP propaganda is doing.
8. 19 points: ProgressiveDemocrats's comment in Holy shit. The former Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, just came forward to say he was part of a secret Republican operation that convinced Iran to keep Americans held hostage in order to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s 1980 presidential campaign. (Link to the story in comments below)
9. 19 points: westofme's comment in Another war I must’ve missed.
10. 18 points: HillbillyEulogy's comment in Please tell me whats wrong with this picture?

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I wouldn't draft either them top 6. I wouldn't draft Cam Whitmore there either.
In Whitmore's case, I love his physical brand of ball, I like the shooting upside, I like the athleticism. I just don't think he's processing the game at a high level. He doesn't make basic plays, passes after he collapses the defense.
Suggs was the latest example that you can't brute force your way to success in the NBA. You'll just get injured and collect tons of offensive fouls on the way. He adjusted this past year and he's been a really good player. I don't think Cam will be able to make the same transition.
On the twin brothers, the whole situation is weird. They're super old prospects playing against high school aged kids, are supposed to have this insane never-seen-before athleticism, are supposed to be great playmakers, yet they could only manage to score 16ppg in an unproven league with no defense?!?
They could pan out but that's a bet to make in the low lottery.
My big board for the magic would look like this:

1. Wemby
2. Scoot
3. Brandon Miller
4. Taylor Hendricks
5. Anthony Black
6. Gradey Dick
7. Jarace Walker
8. Cason Wallace
9. Jett Howard
10. Cam Whitmore
11. Ausar
12. Amen
13. Keyonte George

Honestly, after the top 8, those are the hail Mary guys you hope can put it together.

Okay so tl;dr of the back story is that there's a guy in my neighborhood who looks EXACTLY like the old school celeb I have a huge crush on. I've seen him around a few times walking his dog and tried talking to him but I literally somehow fell on my ass right in front of him. It was mortifying. It's in my history if anyone is curious.
So today, I saw him coming by walking his dog again, it's been weeks since I saw him so idk where he's been (tbh I was pretty sure he was avoiding me because basically, I overthink everything like crazy) but just like before I went to check the mail just as he passed by.
We both said hi and he joked that the dog wanted to play "that game" again from last time which obviously meant when I fell on my ass because he thought she had knocked me over and I assured him it was me being clumsy and not her.
Obviously being the obsessive freak I am I totally remembered what he'd told me his dog's name was because it had something to do with my crush but just to try to play it off a little I pretended not to remember and I'm so glad I did that lmao, because apparently I'd heard him wrong the first time.
Anyway it was a similar sounding name and also weirdly associated with my late crush only this time, it's the name of his wife. Very unlikely to be related in any way but yet an oddly adorable coincidence still lol. And THEN, he told me HIS name which is super cute and fitting to what he looks like actually (although not the name of my crush so I can't be shouting it in bed, KIDDING!!) and I told him mine which I managed to do without somehow falling over or otherwise looking stupid.
Soo based on your suggestions here, I told him I was fresh out of school and looking for some extra income and that if he ever needed a dogsitter or dog walker I'd be happy to help and he said she usually travels with him but he STILL TOOK MY NUMBER! And he seemed idk, like maybe he was interested in me he seemed kind of shy and awkward like you would think a guy would be if he liked you so I hope I'm not imagining it lmao. He was smiling hugely the whole time it was extremely cute, sorry I know I'm being cringe and I hate it when people write like this on here lol.
I wish I had somehow been able to get his number too but now I'm like okay. He's probably not going to just randomly call or text, that would be weird right? I hope he is interested though, I'm just so inexperienced with dating at all that I'm not sure what he would be expected to do. Maybe I should just try to talk to him again and get his number? Anyone got through that novel and have any advice? I really want to try to hang out with him at some point, somehow.

Hi!
I'm 43, White, very tall, work out every day and I take good care of myself. Clean cut, full head of hair. College educated with a professional job. Clean no STDs
My mother would describe me as her son. I wish I worked for the government so I could say you know I’ll f*** you hard. First biggest turn on: a girl who reads. Second biggest? A girl that writes (to me). haha
I’ll be Burger King, you be McDonald’s. I’ll have it my way, and you’ll be lovin’ it. Let’s have a who’s better in bed contest. Hoping to make you a sore loser. Before all that though...
Let’s play doctor. I’ll go first. You owe me $2700

26M/5’9/190lbs/TX USA
my husband decided to rescue a kitten that got hit by a car on the street today, and in the process obviously the stray kitten bit him. it left very superficial small wounds.
we tried to take him to a hospital but he unfortunately passed on the way. the only thing we knew of him is he couldn’t move his legs and he was scared. we dropped him off at the hospital anyway to send the body out for rabies testing.
next we went to urgent care where they told us they don’t have rabies protocol but could do a tetanus shot and antibiotics so we agreed. they said he would probably be fine because it’s a cat but the ER was up to us. we decided yes on the ER and the doctor said cats are very low risk but that she would consult the CDC and another doctor. she concluded that the risk was so low that the benefits did not outway, and that the texas health department would reach back out.
now i guess we wait for the cat testing results, but i feel like they should’ve given him a vaccine regardless? needing a second opinion on this.