u/Gusteauxs

This is kind of a long post but feeling like I’m running out of options with our 10-year old cat Luna. We “adopted” her from a relative that was hoarding animals in their house about 6 years ago. It was more of a “we have to take her” than a “we want to take her” because we thought, at that time, that we could give her a significantly better life. She spent about the first 3 years of her life with this relative locked in a cage in a mostly unused bathroom, which was outrageous.

When we took Luna home, she was mostly fine. No major issues other than that she seemed to sneeze a bit more than our other cats and also required a lot more affection and pets than the others. Makes sense to us.

Three years later, we moved to a new house and things went as usual, until suddenly Luna just stopped using her litterbox and decided to use the carpet in a loft area upstairs. We tried everything and nothing would stop it. We shampoo’d the carpet countless times, used cat attract litter, added new litterboxes, tried every different type of litter, put the litterbox in a bunch of different spots, etc. Nothing ever worked, she would still primarily go on the carpet and rarely use the box. She also started sneezing significantly more often at this point and had an almost constant stuffy nose.

We took her to the vet and they said she was overall completely fine, but her teeth were in really bad shape and she needed a full dental cleaning and maybe some extractions. We proceeded and got the dental cleaning done, praying to any god above that it would solve the litterbox problems. It seemed to work for a couple weeks and then she was right back to using the carpet. We asked the vet about her nose and they basically just said “some cats are like this” and recommended paying for more vet visits to figure it out, but we couldn’t financially do that after paying for the dental.

At this point, she had done probably thousands of dollars worth of damage to this area upstairs that we will probably need to replace and we genuinely could not handle it anymore. We came to the decision to place her in our bedroom so that she could have her own isolated area from our other 2 cats (who she has grown up with and never had any issues with) and also couldn’t get to that carpeted area anymore.

That was about a year ago and she’s been in our bedroom ever since with her own food, water, and litterbox. We tried to let her back out into the house a couple months after putting her in our bedroom, and it worked for a couple days, and then she went on the carpet again.

I don’t know what else to do, but I can’t handle her being in our bedroom anymore. I feel like my bedroom has been taken over by her and I hate that I can’t leave my bedroom door open. Her food, water, and litterbox makes our en suite bathroom dirty and I’m just over it which makes me feel like a terrible person and animal owner.

I want to let her back out into the house but if she goes in that area again and uses the bathroom on the carpet, I genuinely have no other option than to surrender her. We have tried reaching out to all of our friends and family but nobody can take her or wants her. I’ve made posts on rehoming pages on Facebook that got zero attention because she’s an older cat. I know that it’s bad to surrender a senior cat because of the stress it puts on them, but I feel like I have done everything I can for this cat and it’s not working, and we don’t have the funds to get her the vet attention that she potentially needs.

I’m caught between just keeping her in our bedroom, which I know is cruel to her because she’s alone most of the day and can’t interact with our other cats, or having to surrender her (assuming letting her back out into the house doesn’t work), and keeping her in our bedroom is beginning to have a serious affect on my mental health and doesn’t seem like a realistic long-term solution.

If anyone has any tips or suggestions, I am genuinely all ears and would appreciate any guidance - especially if anyone can offer any insight into what’s going on with her stuffy nose / constant sneezing.

I met with my manager a couple months ago to petition for a significant raise that I wasn’t entirely sure I would get but figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. It was my first time ever asking for more money. I put a document together with all of my greatest achievements over the past year, what value I bring to my team, and market research of salary ranges from five similar jobs to mine from competitors.

All in all, I was asking for about a 11-13% raise. I figured it was a pipe dream until my manager met me again recently and told me that I got exactly what I asked for AND a massive bonus to boot. While I am extremely happy and grateful, the whole experience has led me to wonder why this was approved.

I work at a big private equity international company so I know this stuff goes through many levels of approval. My manager forbade me from ever telling another soul because apparently I was the 4th highest percentage raise in our entire department, which is hundreds of people, and I didn’t even get promoted.

While I am a top performer and consistently recognized for my achievements, it still just doesn’t make sense. Is there a chance I was just being grossly underpaid? Am I about to be laid off? I feel like I never see stories where this happens and don’t know how to feel about it.

Been having this problem for a week. The EA app is just running super slow and has a banner at the top saying “Things are taking longer than usual to load” and it won’t let me install my game. I just got a new PC and all I want to do is install my game but it’s not working.

Here are the steps I’ve tried so far:

1. Running the EA app as administrator
2. Clearing the EA app cache and restarting
3. Clearing the APPDATA cache for EA and restarting
4. Reinstalling the EA app and performing all of the above
5. Disabling DEP in security settings and restarting
6. Verify antivirus is not monitoring EA app / blocking it
7. Using task manager to close all EA background services and restarting the app
8. Using the command prompt to force quit the EA background service and restarting the app

After step 8, I got the app to ar least show me the download button but when I click it, the download just sits on “Installing” forever but the install never starts.

Everything else on my PC is working fine except for this stupid half baked application and I just want to play the games that I paid for. If anyone has any advice please let me know, I feel like I have tried almost everything suggested on Reddit at this point.

Been vaping for a while and mentally, I am so sick of it. I hate the taste, the smell, how much it takes my energy and happiness away, etc. but I still for the life of me cannot quit.

I’ve tried everything: patch step progression, nicotine gum / lozenges, cold turkey, read Allen Carr’s book TWICE, downloaded the apps that reward me for my progress, tried journaling my feelings, lots of cold water, sucking on mints all day, buying a zero nicotine vape, going on walks / to the gym, but at the end of the day as soon as I start feeling cravings, I just can’t stop myself. It’s literally like an autopilot feature turns on in my brain that disregards all of my true feelings and just goes and buys a vape.

I’ve spent probably hundreds on NRT, and even more on vapes that I buy, feel guilty for buying, and immediately destroy. I swear the person at the local shop probably thinks I’m insane with how often I come in to buy a cheap vape because I just can’t handle the withdrawals.

I’m genuinely considering breaking my car keys and cutting all of my cards in half with scissors for an entire week so that I have no choice but to stay home and struggle through it. I feel like I need a strait jacket at this point just to control myself.

My partner hates that I vape and it’s at a point where I have to quit or I might jeopardize my marriage, and that’s STILL not enough to stop me when I start feeling cravings.

I keep telling myself that I CAN do difficult things and that I am a strong person that doesn’t need an adult pacifier to get through their day, but as soon as something even mildly triggering happens, I’m running for the next dose of nicotine.

What sucks even more is I grew up in a household of smokers and addicts and I ALWAYS knew I would never end up like them. Never smoked, never drank, etc. I did really well in school, took care of myself, and never even THOUGHT about smoking until one of my friends started vaping and I thought “a few puffs can’t hurt.”

Turns out, they can. I think the version of me 5 years ago would be disgusted with what I’ve become now and honestly I just don’t care enough. I know that I should but I can’t break out of this cycle. I feel like I’m running out of options and I’m so close to just giving up not caring anymore.

At this point Im genuinely beginning to question if I need to go to inpatient rehab for nicotine addiction. How ridiculous is that.

Sorry for the long post, would condense but there’s a lot of nuance to this conversation. Happy to answer questions.

My partner and I have been together for many years. About six years ago, we had a major falling out with his family, particularly his older sister who adopted him (so kind of his mom?)

When we first met, I lived with him and his family for a couple of years. It was a pretty emotionally volatile environment, and there was a lot of conflict and hurt feelings. His sister refuses to medicate her bipolar disorder and anger issues and took those out on me on an almost daily basis for 2 years. Eventually I was asked to leave the house very unexpectedly, my partner moved out shortly afterward and in with me and we both basically went no contact with his family.

The complicating factor is that my partner works for his brother-in-law’s company (sister’s husband, but also kind of his father figure) and has worked there for years. His relationship with his brother-in-law has remained pretty much the same as always and he never asks my partner about his personal life or anything outside of work, but my partner has had almost no relationship with his sister during this time. I have personally not talked to anyone in his family since the day I was kicked out (about 6 years).

Recently, his sister reached out to my partner and asked both of us to dinner because she wants to apologize and talk about what happened. My partner feels like we need to go because of the family and work connection, and I understand why. But we also know that she isn’t scheduling this to actually apologize and is likely just using it as a way to get face to face with us so she can demean us even more and find stuff to gossip with her family about.

The problem is that I honestly don’t want a relationship with her. The situation years ago caused me a lot of anxiety and emotional distress that took a long time and professional therapy to work through in my early 20s and I would have been perfectly content never speaking to her again.

I’m nervous because I know she’s going to want to talk about what happened six years ago, and I’m worried about saying the wrong thing or upsetting her. My partner’s job depends on maintaining good family relationships, so it feels like there is a lot riding on this conversation. My partner is also much more conflict avoidant than I am, and I suspect he’ll be very accommodating during the dinner, which makes me worry that his sister will interpret the conversation as us wanting to rebuild a close relationship, even though neither of us want that.

My biggest fear is that the dinner goes well from her perspective and suddenly we’re being invited to holidays, family dinners, and other events that neither of us really wants to attend. She tends to take rejection very personally, so I worry that declining future invitations could create tension that eventually affects my partner’s job.

Is it reasonable to attend this dinner for practical reasons while still wanting to maintain very limited contact afterward? And how would you handle questions about the past when you know the other person may not react well to honest answers?

Also, before anyone might ask, there is no way for him to leave this job with the current job market and also because he skipped college / professional certifications to pursue this job which he now has an executive role in, so leaving would be highly impractical and affect us financially. That would be the first thing we’d do if it was an option There is also no way to get out of this dinner with his sister, for the reasons I mentioned before.

Need some help and outsider input on my current salary situation. For background, I am a Senior IT Auditor in a MCOL area. I work in Public (non-big 4), 4 YOE (1 as Senior). No CPA or CISA.

I currently make $88k and have never asked for a raise or bonus. I've always been afraid to tarnish my relationship with the partners in my department (for some reason), which has always been great. I frequently receive 'exceeding expectations' reviews when I request feedback from partners and managers, some of which don't even regularly work with me on a day-to-day. I have always taken on more work than what I think I am responsible for without complaint, can handle complex engagements independently, and I have always worked very well with clients. In my opinion, I feel like I have always performed at a higher level than my peers and have been told the same from multiple people on my team throughout my time with this firm. I feel like I have solid evidence I can show to support my worth, but I'm still second-guessing myself.

I want to ask for $100k, but I would be happy with $95k. My firm is offering a similar job to mine in the same geographic market with base salary ranging from ~$85k to ~$160k, which leads me to believe that I have a good reason to ask for more considering I am barely above the lowest possible salary for my position. I have also been told by a few of my colleagues that I may be underpaid. While I haven't told my co-workers my exact salary, I have shared that I'm below $100k, which always receives pretty shocked responses.

I'm very nervous to ask for more, even though I know I shouldn't be because this is a normal thing to ask for. Any tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated!