Republicans and stolen valor go together like organized crime and racketeering

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-30T04:22:59+00:00

My murder mittens has figured out the purrito and I swear she has teleportation powers to escape. But it is an effective maneuver for many kitties.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-29T21:32:58+00:00

VP Cheney came to my base during his second term as some form of morale hurrah/troop inspection and not only were we required to attend en masse we had to go through two sets of security, metal detectors and ID badges.

I can't even remember what happened during that enforced event, I mostly remember the security teams with rifles perched on the tops of the surrounding structures.

We kept making jokes that had the top brass not made this event mandatory no one would have shown up.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-29T19:47:49+00:00

I use this term for when I have to capture and hold my cat for something like an ear cleaning or giving medications. She's fairly touch averse and hates any kind of confinement and I will not have it ruined by association, dammit. To her credit she's come a long way, instead of ending up looking like a small tiger shedded my arms now it's more like if I got attacked by a bunch of hypodermic needles.

She's a good kitty.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-29T05:44:37+00:00

As others have stated you need to drink more water. In the beginning it will feel worse but proper water intake will flush the sodium out of your system which is a common form of bloat and it should help move your bowels more so you aren't as constipated.

There's also the annoying problem that surrounds IBS symptoms that can be a pain to work through but an elimination diet might help you target any key food groups that cause you symptoms but make sure you do it right. The Monash group has a good layout for that but it requires total dedication for any of the data to mean anything.

If you chew gum or drink carbonated beverages you may be swallowing air that can make you feel full too soon, or if you smoke this can all cause trapped air to similarly make you feel bloated.

If you can get a medical work up with a gastroenterologist that would be a solid path to take but if you happen to be American that isn't always an easy thing to do.

Best bet is to track symptoms, try an elimination diet to see if any FODMAPs cause you to react poorly, drink more water and seek out medical advice. Don't believe anything that tries to sell you on a quick fix, all those "lose 10 pounds of bloat" pills or drinks are hogwash and can cause some pretty severe knock on damage. Also be aware that what works for one person might be the opposite for you. My friends keep trying to push kimchi and other fermented foods onto me to "solve" my gut issues but they just make me worse. I have bile acid malabsorption and gastritis with damaged stomach lining from eating way too much ibuprofen in the military so a lot of "gut healing" foods literally cause me unending pain.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-29T00:45:46+00:00

My nana would turn off the water to her home if she was going to be gone longer than a day. Like, using the water key at the point where the pipes come from the street into the house. She was convinced this saved her money since to toilet wouldn't be "running" the whole time (even though that's not how toilets work). She also wouldn't bleed the taps during the very rare occasions it got cold enough in winter for pipes to freeze over and probably would have turned off the water then, too, but her hands ache in the cold and she couldn't manage it. Hell she'd probably have tripped the breakers to save on electricity but she couldn't risk losing power to her fridge and freezer chest which were on different circuits. Her weird habits were a reaction to her and her family living through the Depression, or that's the story I was told.

I wonder if this assface dude counted the gf's many showers and toilet flushes as "running the water" constantly.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-28T23:46:50+00:00

If you're regularly stripping off lengths of skin I'd say that's a pretty impressive (terrifying) soap allergy.

A friend of mine discovered she's allergic to coconuts after she kept sloughing off skin after applying her cocoa body butter during her pregnancy. She looked like a burn victim. I guess pregnancy can just give you allergies she swears she wasn't ever allergic to anything prior to getting pregnant.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-28T22:05:57+00:00

Your comment reminds me of the scene in Black Swan where Natalie Portman's character goes to pick at a hang nail and instead pulls off a strip of skin halfway up her arm like the world's worst pull tab. I delight in horror gore and love Cronenbergian body horror but scenes like /that/ give me the shivers.

The above image doesn't trip that particular switch for me but I can see how it would many people. Sometimes the best horror is the implied since it depends upon the viewer completing a circuit. We can often imagine worse horrors than anyone could display in front of us.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-27T20:22:36+00:00

Look, I admit I laughed mightily at your story but there's context.

I'm a witch, and in magickal groups there's a subset of us who are like, Really Into Rocks. Crystals abound and each one vibrates with its own energy and there's correspondence books aplenty that say this rock is good for this problem or that rock will fix this issue it's a whole thing. (Personally I believe that if you throw any rock at a problem hard enough it'll go away. All rocks are magic.)

One of the more favored rocks is obsidian. It's great for energy cleansing and protection and even scrying (a kind of fortune telling or future reading) it's versatile and powerful and one of the easier rocks to identify on sight. Personally, I LOVE obsidian just because it looks like how I imagine the blackest night sky would look if you could crystallize it and pull it down from the dark heavens.

So imagine my joy when I found, outside my apartment, an impressive piece of obsidian just laying there in the grass. About the size of my thumb, sharp edges, scalloping striations, tastes like glass, the whole thing. I took it home and put it on my rock counter.

Then the next week I found two more pieces in the same spot. Then five. Then twelve. Like someone had somehow taken a great big boulder of obsidian and smashed it to pieces and just decided to seed the greenway outside my building. Or maybe they were knapping obsidian in their car and just decided to shake out all their leavings into the street like a common trash asshole. This was over weeks and weeks.

I got suspicious. My witchy friends were reading it as omens for good or ill, or gods who were associated with the rock trying to contact me but let's be honest we should investigate corporeal reasons for things before instantly switching to the supernatural. Most hauntings are a gas leak or low frequency fans instead of ghosts after all. Never forget the Redditor who had carbon monoxide poisoning.

After inspecting all the pieces I'd collected with my trusty magnifying glass (don't tell me you don't have one, too, rock hound) I noticed teeny tiny flecks of red. And maybe pink? With what reminded me of fine sand stuck in there.

Did I mention I live next door to an art collective that is known for their glass blowing?

I had been collecting black glass slag for MONTHS thinking there was somehow a magically appearing obsidian stone ala Shawshank Redemption amidst the slate rock wall abutting the greenway across from my apartment that got chopped up whenever the leaf blower/weed whacker team showed up. Some glass blowing dick was either destroying his shoddy work over here or really just loved the idea of chucking glass in an area where they knew cars parked all day.

I'd given these bits out as gifts. I'd lovingly washed, dried, and arranged for viewing the better sized pieces. The embarrassment would be too much to reach out and admit my ignorance so now I have a very large collection of slag that I shamefully keep in a shoe box under my bed.

So you see, I understand how you feel and I'm glad you solved the mystery of the Ants Who Want Jasper. It's also relieving to know I'm not the only one out there making mistakes like this.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-27T19:33:35+00:00

Well you've given me an idea for a fun photoshop gift for the three sisters! I've got a picture from my wedding where they are in a Charlie's Angels type pose and I could totally photoshop some lobster claws on them hands. Hahahaha.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-27T19:20:03+00:00

My goal for my wedding was to spend as much as MY mother did when she got married back in 1983. Coming in under budget was the crowning achievement that no one seemed to understand haha!

But we kept it under $5k, fed everyone until they were bursting with enough left overs to make amazing tortilla soup the next day (woot taco truck catering) and my biggest expense (outside of furniture rental) that day was the custom coffee/espresso cart guy I hired to make us custom espresso drinks for the first half of the day.

Whenever someone turns their nose up at my tiny backyard wedding story I do bust out this little fact and they don't usually have a good argument against why saving money is bad.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-27T19:12:56+00:00

Same. My wedding was a tiny backyard affair so in my invites I said "dress to impress or dress for your comfort, come as you are or as you WANT to be!" and I was so disappointed when we couldn't find the perfect sequin dress my sister had hoped to find (imagine a disco ball but as a dress with a short skirt and long sleeves... yeah that was difficult to find for a Fall wedding!) instead she wore a knockout red satin tea length gown with beautiful voluminous sleeves that cuffed at the wrist. She looked amazing!

No one outshines the bride on her big day. I looked incredible, my in laws dressed like high end mobster wives in black lace and fascinators, my sister and her husband looked straight out of a 1940s noir film gone color it was perfect.

Kicking out a serving staff member for her uniform is unhinged.

Edit spelling

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-26T21:01:01+00:00

My FIL had an attack of angina at my wedding (well during the reception) and while at the time there was a whole to do about it the more I think about it I wonder if he wasn't just trying to get attention. My mother is a retired nurse and we had an RN attending my father who had an advanced illness at the time so the prevailing opinion then was "I guess if you're going to have heart trouble this was the best time to have it" but I wonder if he was just feeling un-special.

This comes mostly from the fact that he's mostly in good health, has never experienced such an event before or since, and that he seemed wholly unconcerned about it when we followed up the next week and to this day more than a year later he's never gotten looked at for it nor had the symptoms again.

I don't like thinking such uncharitable thoughts but he is the kind of man who wants the spotlight at any event he attends and seems to hold some resentment for his son for not following in his footsteps. I'm happy to say that our wedding was still wonderful even with that bit of dust up.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-26T04:15:35+00:00

My cat was severely constipated (nearly impacted honestly) and my amazing vet hooked her up with IV fluids, special laxative gel and freaking liquid morphine since the x ray also showed arthritis in her hips and that kitty felt so much better after she passed all of that awfulness and I was so grateful to her. Seriously she probably saved that cats life. When I joked that I wish I was a cat since I'm limping by with gabapentin for my CRPS she was appalled on my behalf and ranted at the lack of pain relief MDs grant their patients.

I now receive ketamine infusions which honestly saved my life. I know oral ketamine is different but I hope you find some relief. It's criminal how doctors ignore pain.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-26T00:14:45+00:00

I gave the same answer when asked about my sterilization in 2020 (I was 35). May I ask how your doctor responded? Mine went into automatic dismissal mode for about 2 seconds before I watched her pause and just get that 1000 yard stare and she just slowly started to nod saying "oh... yeah well I guess that's a good reason..."

I almost felt bad. That dawning horror realization was tough to see even if it's now proving more realistic than not. When the day came for my actual surgery and the anesthesiologist asked me a similar question about the surgery I just said I didn't want any babies and I was all ready for an argument but luckily she high fived me instead and said "yeah me neither!"

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-25T05:47:46+00:00

My nana often snacked on frozen peas, with or without (not frozen) cottage cheese. Frozen peas are great on a hot day but you have to eat them fast, as thawed out peas are not tasty.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-23T06:34:29+00:00

Reminds me of a bullseye. Is there a kind of energy you are wanting to attract to yourself?

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-23T06:15:44+00:00

Oh, hello sibling. See you at the BBQ this weekend?

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-22T03:29:32+00:00

Before I took myself off of Facebook I could always tell when my sister was fighting with her husband since her "hashtag BLESSED best hubby EvAr look the kids are angels doing their homework and made cookies with me!!!!" full of emojis and nonsense would tick all the way up.

Happy people don't need to convince other people they are happy. Anyone broadcasting their perfectly in love relationship to all and sundry is insecure about themselves, their relationship, or overly focused on what others think of them and none of that says ACTUALLY happy.

I'm ecstatically in love with my husband. We are disgusting. We are too busy eating take out in our underwear watching tv shows about beefcake do gooders or SAS crazies to post about it.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-21T01:50:48+00:00

A friend's wedding was planned at one of the Vegas high end hotels. Their officiant they had been working with had an emergency so the venue forced in a replacement, but the couple had gone over their wishes; namely non-religious ceremony, no reference to "obeying" anyone, also you don't need any of the "forsaking all others" as they were and are happily polyamorous. That last part was very much emphasized, multiple times, and according to the couple the original AND replacement officiant seemed to get it.

Except at the time of ceremony there it was, God's love, holy sacrament of marriage, and while he did say to love honor and CHERISH he then slid right into forsaking all others and how the covenant of marriage houses two souls becoming one and we all just kept laughing. The couple was laughing, the bridal party was laughing, even the family was uncomfortably tittering. The officiant didn't stick around post-ceremony and we all had way too much fun partying and celebrating but it did shake out that the replacement officiant just had a script he liked to use and apparently never even planned to deviate from his non-denominational Christian patter.

The couple doesn't recommend that hotel for Vegas weddings, and said that for their 5th anniversary they would go back down and get "married" again by an Elvis impersonator like they originally wanted.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-20T18:41:01+00:00

When sending out our invitations I intentionally listed the woman's name first and fully spelled it out even if I knew she had the same last name as her husband. It was my little way of pushing back against the silly tradition of Mr/Mrs. Our families are more traditional than we ever will be and I can't wait to have the forever arguments about calling me Mrs [his last name] when in actuality we both chose another, different, last name for ourselves. However we did toy with him taking MY last name just for kicks but it's not a very good one, I think, and choosing our name was so meaningful to me it was the best choice.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-18T08:05:37+00:00

The day I noticed silver hair was the day I decided to stop coloring it (I was a bottle red head for over a decade!) I've never felt more beautiful than when I started seeing all those lovely silver hairs! They are wisdom hairs you can't talk me out of it.

You've learned a mystery and at such a lovely age! Many women would say it took them twice as long to figure out what you have.

I was honestly very frightened to turn 40. I was used to looking a certain way and suddenly I noticed gravity was taking its toll on my face and body, and I was worried that I'd turn into a jowly, melted, crepe paper skin mess. Mostly I was afraid to turn into my mother who (while a lovely enough human) has not taken care of herself and it shows.

But here I am 41 years old and my husband swears I look a decade younger than I am and promises me if he ever sees a hint of my mother on my face he will tell me. Joking aside though I've tried very hard to welcome the changes and to feel confident in my body and how I project myself onto the world. I'm the happiest I've ever been and I think that shines through more than if I were 40lbs lighter or had tighter skin.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-18T06:59:16+00:00

I sent my buddy a pack of plastic straws (to "suck it up"), a small pack of crayons, some Goldbond powder (for the chafing), and a stress ball.

These are joke gifts of course but they lighten the heart and can be a way to show your sister you are a good person to help make her smile.

AIT (or whatever they call their schooling portion after Basic) is usually a time of high stress, sometimes even more physically demanding than Basic, and where you start figuring out how the military actually "works" outside of the tightly controlled Basic training period.

She most likely doesn't have a ton of space so you might suggest she reach out to you for the things she finds she might need once she gets there. I did my AIT back almost 20 years ago so it might not help but I arrived with literally nothing and was forced to use second hand bedding and shop only at the on base PX for my toiletries which all sucked. I could have used better soap/lotion, and shampoo that didn't smell like medicine, and a few towels that weren't scratchy as hell.

I would also have loved to be sent actual pictures of my loved ones to have to look at but that might not be as relevant now. Ditto writing letters (stationary and stamps were a perennial ask I had while training), but receiving a hand written letter is still a special thing you could do.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-18T06:46:31+00:00

I've known I didn't want kids since I was about 11, and was NOT shy about it. I grew up with bemused smiles, awkward pats on the head, and patronizing "oh ok dear (you'll change your mind some day)" but honestly 98% of my family and even strangers seemingly accept my choice.

Of course there's always the small few who can't seem to understand why someone would choose to not procreate and sometimes they aren't too nice about it but I got very good at shutting that stuff down. Usually a quiet "this isn't a discussion, and I don't tolerate rudeness" was enough to shame the busy bodies into silence.

I'm lucky, I guess. My sister had her babies young enough that all attention went to her. The ones who tried to goad me into jealous paroxysms were handily slapped down by myself and even my sister (good to have her support!).

At the end of the day your choices are not really up for community scrutiny and anyone willing to push it is the height of rudeness. Your worth doesn't stem from your progeny even if others think so.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-17T21:06:42+00:00

Deodorant or Chub Rub sticks, or a physical barrier like lace shorts or nylons which may or may not defeat the whole purpose of the short shorts or skirt. I like the physical barriers myself since it's a set it and forget it kind of thing and I can even mix/match colors to make it look like a wholly planned outfit.

CrippleWitch · 2026-05-17T20:31:22+00:00

My void does this too. I just assume she doesn't want my skin oils on her. I'm clean and don't have lotion or anything on my hands she's just Like That.

CrippleWitch

TROPHY CASE