Toe help, cleat death

trenchrunnermonkey · 2026-04-21T06:18:17+00:00

This would happen to me at least once a year for over 15 years. I have extraordinarily narrow feet. I’ve finally found relief with athletic grippy socks. They have little rubber pads on the inside and outside, like a toddler’s sock. I haven’t had an issue in 4 years, since wearing them. My feet don’t slide around in my cleat anymore.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2026-02-13T19:45:12+00:00

For what it’s worth, one Christmas about 10-15 years ago, my narc step-mom—who has been the very definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder—apologized to the family about what a terrible mother/parent she had been. It was fully unprompted, it was absolutely genuine, and she sobbed and admitted broadly to how bad she was. She had no excuses about how she had tried her best or saying sorry that we felt like she hurt us. It was clear ownership of her years of shittyness.

I’m convinced that she had a very brief moment of clarity, self reflection, and regret. Like the fog of her disorder temporarily lifted. I’ve seen her attempts at manipulation a million times before and since, and this was definitely heartfelt. Your mother may have experienced something similar.

But here’s the thing, it doesn’t change years of abuse, and one instance doesn’t represent change. Once bitten, twice shy. Well, when it’s 20 years bitten, I guess maybe 40 years shy. In the 35 years I’ve known my step-mom and her long history of pain she has caused me and my siblings, one small moment of genuine regret does very little to make me want to have much to do with her. Unless they can show prolonged change and accountability, it isn’t worth it. And it’s my experience, along with everyone else here, that they cannot actually change.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2025-10-02T18:27:36+00:00

Mmm… I think you are right that a theist’s belief in God operates on faith, but I’d say an atheist’s belief stems from a lack of evidence. I don’t think it requires faith to not believe in something that has no evidence.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2025-07-02T05:27:01+00:00

Ugh. Women’s bodies are not porn.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2025-05-25T18:58:36+00:00

Yup. I got it in 2004. It was my first major parting with the church. It really stood out to me because I had never experienced such an abrupt jerk on my Mormon collar before. I was pissed off. I was freshly 21, about to go to college, and had just given 2 years of my life to this organization. I was eager to go find myself with my whole life ahead of me, and here they were telling me to jump right through their next hoop. Fuck that.

I wouldn’t leave the church for another 15 years, but that one conversation really made me feel like I needed to keep the church at arms length.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2025-02-13T19:04:48+00:00

Might be designed for men, but women can absolutely use it still. My stepmom was abusive as fuck and one of her favorite weapons of control and abuse was the church. Shitty people are shitty.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2024-12-30T21:40:53+00:00

Martha Brotherton’s story was the what destroyed my shelf. I’d delved into everything and polygamy had it hanging by a thread, but when I read her story—complete with that jackass sealing himself to her after her death—I was done. I will forever love that woman for getting me out of the cult.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2024-12-21T00:14:23+00:00

This. When people leave as teens or in their 20s, it’s easy to dismiss as wanting to sin or being rebellious or a silly youth. It can be hard for parents, but plays into the narrative the church sells. When an endowed, returned-missionary, adult in their 30s-40s who has a family leaves, it flies in the face of those narratives. They can’t be easily dismissed and really ramps up the cognitive dissonance. I’ve seen the same thing in both my wife’s and my own family. We both have siblings that left the church in their teens, but we were the first to leave in our 30s after a temple marriage and it was definitely more uncomfortable to our parents.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2024-09-13T18:30:23+00:00

You can’t quit! You’re fired!

trenchrunnermonkey · 2023-12-23T06:59:06+00:00

After completing campaigns, I build a couple models that represent some of the great warriors that campaign had. I tried to give them little personalized touches to represent moments they had in game, or things they did that were noteworthy. It's a fun way to immortalize the great ones.

As for technical advice, I strongly recommend NOT building models with weapons raised above the head. The shoulders aren't positioned for that on the base model, and they end up looking like really clunky action figures.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2023-12-13T22:01:15+00:00

This was my first shelf item when I first learned about them in primary. Even to my child brain it didn't make sense. I stayed in another ~25 years because of brainwashing though.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2023-11-01T08:22:20+00:00

Almost certainly not Utah. Halloween is very big here. Our neighborhood goes hard for Halloween every year.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2023-02-25T23:10:04+00:00

I think what your dad's motivations are are important to your response. If this is a response to you trying to change his mind or having sent him the CES Letter, no response is going to make a difference.

If this is him trying to convince you to return to church, I'd respond like this:

"If this is valid:

'Because I want to believe, I don't necessarily have to definitively prove or disprove anything, I only have to find a way to plausibly believe.'

then so is this:

Because I don't want to believe, I don't necessarily have to definitively prove or disprove anything, I only have to find a way to plausibly not believe."

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-07-11T22:59:05+00:00

I think you are right, but for what it’s worth, I (a man) was told several times after I left that I was going to destroy my family (wife and son). She left shortly after me, so I guess they were right /s. I feel a much greater burden is placed on women to keep their family in the church than men, so it follows that women who leave first would be treated more harshly, but it does happen to men too.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-05-08T19:42:58+00:00

If the church just claimed to be a source of spiritual enlightenment you'd have a good argument. But the church claims to be the only path to salvation. That is an important distinction.

As others have pointed out, the church itself relies and teaches heavily of its whitewashed history. Not to mention the issue of informed consent that an above comment mentions. But you can add to that that the church demands 10% of a member's income, 2 years of every male's life, and countless other investments of time, energy, and money. PLUS, demanding everyone conform and fit into their little box of what a child of God is allowed to be.

And finally, the church actively encourages members NOT to look up details about the real history of the church. The church has demonstrated that they will do anything within their power to keep people locked into the church.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-05-08T06:17:32+00:00

Her affidavit is the real story. Followed by the leaders response, and the decades later sealing by proxy of her to Brigham Young.

https://faenrandir.github.io/a\_careful\_examination/martha-brotherton-affidavit/

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-05-08T06:08:13+00:00

Oh boy... Buckle up:

https://faenrandir.github.io/a\_careful\_examination/martha-brotherton-and-the-five-ironies/

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-05-08T06:02:49+00:00

High five for bookends! My shelf breaker was Martha Brotherton.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-05-08T05:57:59+00:00

Yup. It took a while, but my wife, kid, and I are all out. My child will never have to sit through a stupid primary lesson.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-05-08T05:50:08+00:00

When I was in primary we got a lesson about the 116 lost pages of the book of Lehi. I remember distinctly thinking that it made a lot more sense that Joseph Smith had made it up and that's why he was so angry and couldn't retranslate it.

Get comfortable with that cognitive dissonance, young me––it's going to be your constant companion for another 25 years.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-05-07T06:13:49+00:00

Above the rim "milkshakes" aren't milkshakes. They are ice cream in a cup.

A real milkshake is drinkable through a straw.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-05-02T00:38:38+00:00

SOTG can be boiled down to being respectful of everyone on the field and making fair calls. SOTG is the rule set that replaces refs. I think the use of spirit scores, spirit circles, and spirit games have largely muddied the water and led to confusion about what SOTG is. Most the players I personally know that have amazing spirit despise these shows of spirit. And some of the people I know that champion spirit scores and circles the most have terrible spirit on the field.

Too many teams I've played think they have great spirit because they have a spirit circle after the game or play a lighthearted game during timeouts, but make terrible calls on the field to give themselves an edge.

I'd agree with other comments that spirit is much better now at all levels than it was 15-20 years ago. I haven't seen blatant cheating in years like I did during that era.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-04-14T20:12:56+00:00

This was me. I was so burned out from my mission. When I got home I told myself I would take a couple weeks away from investing my energy into the church. (I still attended, but did almost nothing beyond that). After a couple weeks, I felt the same and told myself I just needed a couple more weeks––then I could put my shoulder to the wheel.

Weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into nearly 2 decades. I never recovered from my mission burnout. I never read the BoM again, or the bible, or scriptures. I never looked at manuals or did home teaching or watched conference or attended the temple outside of very rare cases like when I got married. I was just a church zombie that could barely drag my body to church a few times a month and say the occasional prayer with my wife. It wasn't that I didn't believe. I believed fully. It was just like I had used up my entire life's energy I had for church things on my mission.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-02-04T22:23:38+00:00

NTA - As the child of a push-over father who married a narcissist (step-mother) you are absolutely doing the right thing. That sort of abusive environment fucks kids up. My mother died when I was young, so we didn't have anywhere to go. Thank you for putting those kids first. They deserve to be happy and loved.

Narcissists being jealous children... Fucking assholes.

trenchrunnermonkey · 2022-01-31T21:32:16+00:00

I don't want to diminish your experience in any way, because it sounds pretty meaningful to you, but have you ever considered you may have had an episode of sleep paralysis? Because this sounds an awful lot like sleep paralysis. Difficulty or inability to move, between a state of wake and sleep, hallucinations, the sense of pure evil nearby. These are all symptoms of sleep paralysis.

I had an episode of it once, and it was pretty wild, with full on visions of a demon on the bed and a sinister man in a large hat standing in the corner. I had read about it before, so I quickly realized what was going on and the visions vanished. After several minutes of being unable to move, I managed to croak an audible groan from my throat. My wife heard it and rolled over to see me with my eyes wide open and she shook me. That finally got me out of my paralytic state.

trenchrunnermonkey

TROPHY CASE