u/See-Are-En-Ayeeee

I think the movie is about consciousness. The backrooms are just collective human consciousness. fMRIs have allowed us to discover most of what we know about the human brain. There’s a reason why this MRI company suddenly pivots away from building MRIs; with these doors to the backrooms opening up around the world (as Phil mentions at the end of the movie), they’ve found a literal glimpse into human consciousness. But it’s so messy and full of trauma and misremembered people and places because human consciousness is also messy. As a result, they’re struggling to understand what the hell they’re looking at. But that’s the point of the film: there is NO making sense of the human mind. It’s messy and ugly and inaccurate. It’s up to each one of us to determine what is real, what is important, what stays with us, and what we have to let go. That’s the genius of approaching a movie about consciousness through the lens of the therapist-patient dynamic.

Mary gets to peek inside Clark’s mind when he kidnaps her and takes her to the memory of his house, and she challenges him to take responsibility for his failed career, his failed furniture store, and his failed marriage. Monster Clark devoured real Clark the moment he stopped and accepted that he would rather just stay the same person forever, trapped in his own habits and damaging thought patterns. He was comfortable in the backrooms because it was easy and familiar. The backrooms that we see in the film represent the obsessive, repetitive thought patterns he had after his wife kicked him out. “I don’t want to change,” he said. Nobody wants to change, because it’s HARD. Mary couldn’t help him because ultimately, it’s up to each one of us to decide whether or not we want to change.

But regardless of whether or not we want to change, our traumatic experiences still exist. This explains the last shot of the film where the collective human consciousness shows its rendition of the trauma Mary is experiencing being trapped in that room with Phil, unsure about whether or not they’ll let her leave.

Is this normal? She cannot go to sleep (either for a nap or for bedtime) without first absolutely screaming her head off for 5-15 minutes, sometimes longer. She’s been doing this for as long as I can remember, but I kept thinking, “This will get better any day now.” For some added info, we follow Huckleberry’s sleep and wake windows, and she definitely gets enough sleep. If anything, she may be undertired, but if we wait any longer to try and get her down for a nap, she starts to get fussy, which seems to only prolong the misery.

When she does fall asleep at night (usually around 9 PM), she sleeps so well. We’ve been getting one 6-9 hour stretch of sleep almost every night since she was 5 weeks old. But man, getting her to fall asleep is never easy.

Early on, we started babywearing for her naps because it was the only way to get her to nap for more than 30-40 minutes. I’m worried that we sabotaged her sleep development by only contact napping.

Otherwise healthy with normal growth and development. Breastfed except for a bottle of breast milk every couple days to keep her familiar with the bottle.

Alright, going to summarize as best as possible. My wife and I bought our first house last fall when we found out she was pregnant. We were both 30 at the time, and we had always rented. We bought a house right in the middle of the range we could afford. We both lacked experience and failed to recognize that this early 1990s house was in need of plenty of maintenance: new roof in the next couple of years; new gutters/ soffits/ fascia; needs exterior paint (Tudor style with lots of wood trim); driveway will need resurfaced or replaced soon; about 10 double-hung windows are 25 years old and drafty; and the wood deck is likely original and was painted with Behr deck-over before being listed.

I’ve committed to about $35k of repairs & maintenance this summer: $14k to reside the south-facing side of the house in Tudor style Hardie panel and trim because it’s in rough shape, $15k to get the whole exterior painted (other siding is in pretty good shape), and about $6k to rip out a horribly overgrown garden bed with tons of landscaping fabric + remove a few dead trees. We also live in an area that is prone to power loss and want to install a whole-house backup generator (got a quote for $15k for 24 kw General for 4,000 sq ft home, which seems reasonable).

Neither of us love this home. We’ve realized that we want to live somewhere a bit smaller with more land. A lesson learned. But the house is in a great neighborhood in a very good school district.

Do I continue to dump money into this house and stay for 5ish years minimum, or do I focus on getting out around 2 years (almost been here 1 year)? I’m fairly confident that I will get decent ROI on many updates due to the neighborhood and school district, but obviously, it will never be 100%.

I want to stop worrying about these things and be present with my wife and baby, but this deliberation is paralyzing me. Help!

I (31M) just feel like I experience emotions at 10% of the level that I used to. I love my little girl, and I cried like a baby myself when she was born. I choked up watching my wife walk down the aisle when we got married. I occasionally feel happy or excited, but mostly I just feel… equilibrated? Instead of feeling things, I deliberate, rationalize, and strategize my way through life.

I just miss the passion and zest for life and experiences that I had when I was younger. Maybe I didn’t actually feel those things, and I just think I did in retrospect; it’s just nostalgia, and that’s it. Who knows. I just keep waiting for my life to change in some way that allows me to feel things deeply. Very infrequently, I’ll experience deep, profound emotion when listening to music or even less frequently when watching a great movie.

Are my expectations just unrealistic, or does anyone else feel this way?

She screams like I’m hurting her when I’m putting her in the Boppy ComfyFit, but then she’ll usually almost immediately calm down. She’s often asleep within 3-4 minutes, and she’ll sleep for 1.5-2 hours at a time while being worn.

Anyone else deal with this? I worry that I’m hurting her in some way, especially her hips. I don’t always achieve a perfect M-shape, but her legs are always well-supported

Our 8-week-old has always hated tummy time as much as any newborn. We got serious about tummy time on the floor with a support pillow under her chest/arms around 4-5 weeks old. She never lasted for more than two minutes without losing her cool.

About one week ago, we started using an exercise ball instead. It definitely takes two sets of hands to do it safely, but it allows us to roll the ball to change the angle of her torso, making it easier or harder for her to hold up her head. The second person sits on the ground in front of her and shows her something interesting like a high-contrast baby book. We shoot for three 5-minute sessions each day. She tolerates this much better, and the amount of progress she’s made in one week is astounding. She can now hold up her head for 4-5 minutes while lying flat on the floor with her support pillow.

Maybe I live under a rock, but I never saw anyone recommend this trick, and it has been one of the most useful babyhacks we’ve tried so far!

My almost 8-week-old has been sleeping like a champ at night since maybe 5 weeks old. She never really lost more than a few ounces of her birth weight, and she was a pound above her birth weight at her one-week visit. Despite this, we still woke her up at least every 3.5 hours around the clock to breastfeed until she was about 5 weeks old. Then we decided to let her sleep for a 5-hour stretch at night. Then 6. Now, we let her sleep for a 7-hour stretch at night (8:30ish to 3:30ish), but we will still wake her up at that point to breastfeed. She’s clearly hungry at this point. After this 3:30ish AM feed, she’ll go back to sleep until 6:30-7ish AM.

We’ve been enjoying the sleep, and our baby seems happy with this routine. She’s also growing and developing beautifully. I really don’t want to mess with a good thing, but I’m curious when everyone else started letting their baby just sleep through the night.

I’m about 130 pages into Words of Radiance, and I’m 99% sure that >!Dalinar did not actually *give* Sadeas Oathbringer at the end of TWOK. Because he’s such an experienced shardbearer, he was able to simply lend the shardblade to Sadeas while maintaining ownership over such a long period of time. And I can’t even imagine how incredible it will be when Sadeas discovers Dalinar’s returned betrayal.!<

Edit: as soon as I posted this, I realized I wouldn’t be able to read any comments until I discover if my prediction was right or wrong… sorry guys! I will return to this post and read all of the comments as soon as I get there! Can’t risk a spoiler!

I’m letting that spit slide right down my trachea. No chance I’m gonna cough and fuck this all up. I wasn’t expecting the good lord to test my willpower like this, no sir not today, but I ain’t backing down from this fight. Bring on the pneumonia if it’s the price I must pay.

I’ve recently started putting our one-month-old down for naps in the Snoo throughout the day, which has been great by the way. She’s an extraordinarily fussy, grunty, kicky baby, so I place my hand gently on her chest as she falls asleep. I’ve noticed that right bedore the Snoo drops its comfort level (she always cries at first, so we never start at baseline), it gives one aggressive jerk. Usually, our baby just pops open her eyes for a second and falls back asleep, but sometimes it wakes her back up. Obviously, that’s maximally frustrating.

Anyone else have this issue, and if so, what was your solution?

Just bought a Tudor revival style home with about 40% brick siding and 60% stucco panel + wood trim. I’m in the process of getting quotes for painting, and the first painter said he would do what’s called a “California cut,” for the trim boards. Sounds great because it’ll save me money, but I’m worried with this amount of trim, it’ll look off. Currently, it’s painted in the “French cut” style, but it doesn’t look wonderful because of the bumpy caulk lines. Thoughts?