u/Cosmic_Hitchhiker

Coloring for adults used to be about taking time to relax and do a simple task while indulging your inner child.

It is now about coloring the same animals and ghosts as everyone else but doing it the best. There are techniques you have to use. The colors have to be right. But god forbid you do a technique you learned because actually coloringrainbowdiva420 owns that and you're stealing from her.

The coloring police coming for anything that doesn't fit their mold is INSANE and I see it all the time.

There's this romantic visual people have of doing some craft with a cat in your lap and tea by your side and it's raining and the light is soft.

The creator and purveyors of this have never met a cat.

Have you tried any kind of craft around a cat? Did you want to pull string or yarn out of their throat? Did you want your well organized supplies knocked to the floor? Did you want to worry about them eating or stepping on something? By all means, craft with a cat.

She is currently SCREAMING at the closed door because she CANNOT BE TRUSTED not to eat string and fling beads.

Demon.

Any ideas for putting nail polish in my journal? I love doing my nails and want to display the color I'm doing this week.

I keep thinking lenticular but that's not it.

I have some bacon bourbon marinated chicken breasts I'm going to cook up for dinner tonight. I'm not sure what to put with them. We like having a veggie and carb. I will definitely do broccoli or green beans, but what about a carb? Mac and cheese? some kind of rice? maybe bake them on some rice with flavoring?

We don't have any pasta other than mac n cheese. Any other ideas or recipes welcome!

Some people in one of my last posts requested more information about the Rat Lady. Buckle up, there's a lot.

Her actual nickname between my partner and I is Rat Wife, because when we started dating, I had some leftover trauma from being in relationships and finding out the person was married, and so I was convinced briefly that she was secretly his wife and that he was pulling one over on me. It quickly became clear that that was VERY MUCH not the case.

First things first: why do we call her "Rat Wife"? This woman lived on the first floor and my partner lived on the second. The first floor had her bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the rodent room. This was a room completely dedicated to her pet rodents. I know now that they were guinea pigs, but at the time, my partner did not know exactly what she had, just that the stench of unchanged bedding and the squeaking of wheels emanated from the room at all times. Rat Wife stuck.

Surely, even at that, you can understand why we weren't big fans of this woman as It was clear that she was not taking particularly exceptional care of her animals. But wait there's more.

This house was not in the best area, but it was a gorgeous house. It was owned by the Rat Lady's father, a man in his late 70s. So long as someone was renting out the upper floor, he allowed her to pay around $200 in rent. She regularly railed against this and felt that he should allow her to live there for free.

I know she did because she loved having all phone conversations at maximum volume, screaming into the phone. She would scream at her father for not giving her as much as he gave her brother and not giving her more. She could not hold down a job and was working part time as a stem cutter at a grow, having been fired from several jobs previously. He brother had a thriving business that their dad invested in. She believed her father should buy her a car. She had gotten her license 2 weeks prior. Her father made her the very kind offer to match whatever she could come up with for a vehicle fund, if she could also pay for insurance. This was also unacceptable to her.

Hearing this, you may think this woman is maybe in her early 20s. Upon meeting her, I believed she was in her mid 40s. Turns out she was 37. Thirty. Seven. And talking to her dad like a bratty teenager.

I normally wouldn't care. Her life is her own. But every conversation was a screaming match, to the point that if she was talking we would have to pause what we were watching, because even upstairs and across the house, we couldn't hear the TV 10 feet in front of us.

She wasn't only loud on the phone though, oh no. She would also scream at the TV. Sometimes this is acceptable. When you are excited about a playoff game, or watching a particularly shocking show scene...but she was watching Grey's Anatomy re-runs and replays of old Golden State Warriors games...and it was 1 in the morning.

The downstairs of the house was all hardwood, save for 1 rug in the living room, which, of course, had to be vacuumed for several hours beginning at 11pm.

But the sounds were just the beginning.

My partner was working 60+ hours per week, and he's a big guy. It came to my attention that he was not eating real meals. This shocked me because, as I understood it, the kitchen was a shared space in the home. Unfortunately, she made it entirely unusable by leaving it so disgustingly dirty all the time. Overturned bottles on the counter, produce rotting, piles of newspapers on the GAS stove, her filthy shoes strewn about. Once, she even put a lock on the fridge, insisting my partner was going to steal her food. (She had boxed wine, fish sticks, mayonnaise, and shaky cheese.)

Because I love my partner and love cooking, I began meal prepping for him. I would come over with about a weeks worth of meals for him that he could stock his mini-fridge upstairs with and not have to feel like he could only eat rice and chicken nuggets.

She did not like this. She installed a ring camera on the side door I came in and would have loud phone conversations talking shit about me and "all the bags" I was bringing in. Then she decided I was running some sort of scam because I had out of state license plates on my car. Then she decided that I was stealing from her. She even once threw a fit because I threw a cup in their outdoor garbage can. She sent several texts to my partner about how I don't lock the door when I come in. Then when I did lock the door she sent texts about how I locked her out. She regularly had her friend who was a LITERAL neo-Nazi over when I was there (I am black). And when her dad found a bunch of whippits cannisters outside near their trashcan (hers) she said it must be me and my partner.

But the story that she sticks out in my mind with the most, the image that lives in my brain, is that one day we heard shouting from outside and looked out the window to find that one of the neighbors who was a known meth user was being pretty brutally arrested. Several cops, multiple dogs, the guy was thrashing and the cops were roughing him up. There was a circle of cop cars around the event, and all the neighbors were watching from outside the circle.

And then, right through the middle, where these cops have tasers drawn and dogs barking and are clearly trying to secure the scene, she comes waddling across in her house coat and slippers. not a care in the world. Stops in the center and watches before being SCREAMED AT to move. and she acted like SHE was the affronted one!

My partner and I moved in together shortly thereafter and now live across town in a cute little house with the most beautiful cat-daughter in the world.

If I remember any more Rat Lady stories, I'll drop them in the comments.

Does anyone happen to have a velatus color wheel laying around? I'd be glad to regift!

There are a few authors I've given multiple chances to who I will not be reading from going forward.

Marcus Kliewer- I read both "We Used To Live Here" and "The Caretaker" and they're both just creepypasta style stories he really failed at extending into full length books. They leave more questions than answers because the world building is bad and his main characters are incredibly annoying women with 0 ability to function at all.

Eric LaRocca- I've read 4 of his books and every one felt shocking for the sake of shock, not shocking in a way that adds to the story.

Nat Cassidy- I LOVED Mary- An Awakening of Terror then I had major issues with Nestlings, but enjoyed the majority of it...but When The Wolf Comes Home was straight dookie. I genuinely believe it was at least partially AI based on how it has 0 trust in its readers to understand and draw conclusions. The sleeping pill packaging part lives in my mind rent free as so insanely stupid.

Kirsten White- Mister Magic had so much potential and wound up being so boring and unmemorable. Hide felt the same. The writing is weak.

Hi all. I just had a really weird experience.

I use an app that helps me get discounts on groceries. I won't name the app here because this isn't an ad, although usually I tell everyone I know about it because it's AWESOME.

Basically, when grocery stores have good that is overstock, short dated, or otherwise wont sell before it goes bad, they can post it to this app for a steep discount, usually around 50%. You buy food through the app and pick it up at a special fridge at the service desk.

I've used this app for YEARS now. It's NOT a food subsidy program or a low income food program, it's not funded by any government or non-profit entities and it has no requirements. It is just a way for grocery stores to reduce food waste while still making money.

Today, I went to go pick up a large order because they had a lot of great deals on meats.

The lady at the counter made a comment on my order saying "you're going to eat all that?" And i said we usually freeze it and use it for a while.

She said "oh you must have kids then."

And i said no, but my partner is 6'8 and works out heavily, so groceries get expensive fast.

She gave me a dirty look and walked away from the desk.

I always viewed it as similar to couponing, but her reaction to me not having kids has made me wonder if I'm missing some social faux pas and maybe theres an unspoken understanding that things like this are really only for people in DIRE need and kids to feed?

AITA for using the food discount app???

Hi THT fam!

I've been binging old episodes while I work and in some older episodes, Morgan talks about the fart dynamic in their relationship.

This made me think y'all may enjoy this story from my relationship.

My partner and I started talking in November of 2019 and had our first date January of 2020.

Obviously, we had an interesting beginning to our relationship and did not often go on real dates. Instead, we spent a lot of time at his house. At the time he was working ~10hrs/day, 6 days/week, so the time we had together was limited.

I'd come over, we'd watch a movie, maybe eat dinner together, and go to sleep. The next morning, he'd get ready for work and we'd leave together.

As a member of the tummy hurty community, I wake up GASSY. Something about laying all night leaves me feeling like a balloon. Being only a few months into a relationship with a guy I REALLY liked, I couldn't let him know I have bodily functions, so in the morning he'd get up and take a shower and I would use that time to deflate. They were LOUD but he was in the shower and they didn't reek, so I was flying high, knowing my secret was safe.

It is important that I take a moment to explain his living situation at the time and the layout of the space.

He lived on the upper floor of a house (an insane lady lived on the lower floor, please let me know if you want stories about the Rat Lady) and had a 6 foot landing that connected the bedroom at the top of the stairs, a second room, and the bathroom at the end.

One day, while chatting, I said "I'd never fart. I don't do that."

To which he responded, "....you know I hear you every morning, right?"

The urge I had in that moment to sprint into the woods and never return cannot be overstated. I stared like a startled deer.

"Did you NOT know???" He asked. "I figured you could hear ME!"

"You're in the shower!!!! I thought the sound of the shower covered it!" I replied, hoping I could melt into a puddle and seep between the floor boards.

"I'm TEN FEET AWAY!" he laughed.

I was mortified.

Somehow, though, he stuck around, despite the fact that he believed I was casually ripping massive horse farts internally for him to hear.

It's been 6.5 years now and we live in our own house with a beautiful little cat daughter. He's my best friend and farts are still funny.

Haven't lived that one down though.