PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

Two days ago, I stopped by the house where I got all the scrap from…

 

These things take time my friend. Keep leaning on your support and taking that next step.

 

I have known people that do that..some are very private about it, or prideful..or just their way.

Totally this. One of the reasons I haven't job hunted, my insurance is damn good.

 

Didn't use any Great White to christen it?

 

Didn’t have time to sync my phone with it last night…

 

Figured you would have the disc always in your reach hthough

 

I haven't seen that CD in years; I always play it through my iPod/iPhone...

 

Time to buy another one..haha..

Saw these guys last week, been blasting the disc..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYYGKCanqfA

 

Oh, and Amanda's car no longer has a CD player; I couldn't afford any of the head units with CD players that also had CarPlay...

 

Amanda was driving my truck on Monday while I was at work because the PT Cruiser was still in the shop, and it hit 219K while she was driving. After driving from Emily’s memorial service to work, I had 218,998 on the clock. It has been a busy few days, but here is my current odometer reading as of 12:13PM on May 21st…

 

So, just about five days before Emily presumably died, I had a conversation with her via text message. She was saying how she had a double respiratory infection or something, and I brushed it off as her overreacting. Emily had mental issues in addition to her obvious mental issues, and I kinda thought she was just crying wolf to get attention. I am feeling rather guilty about how I just brushed her off.

 

You can’t place any blame on yourself. it’s not in your control to manage anyone’s health beside your own and even then, we can’t control every aspect about our health.
Coming from someone who has had similar thoughts when a close friend of mine passed away unexpectedly, it’s really important to acknowledge that any regrets you may have are probably coming from a place of just wishing she was still alive/love. Be thankful that you got to be on the crazy ride that’s life at the same time as Emily and that despite any differences you were her friend and that sort of thing is priceless. Just my 2 cents and not trying to preach as I’m no expert.

 

So sorry. It is awful to lose those that we love

 

Knowing that someone died vs being the one to see it or be there for it are very different experiences.

It's never pretty.

 

As stated in the original message, mine and Amanda's relationship with Emily was very tumultuous for the last two years of her life. Amanda met Emily in 2005, and I met Emily in 2006. Amanda and I met in 2009, just not through Emily. I would say that golden years of my friendship with Emily were about 2006 to 2012. She had a nasty horseback riding accident in 2012 that Amanda and I believe resulted in a traumatic brain injury. I saw the last semblance of the Emily I knew pre-TBI in about 2015-2016, and then I stopped talking to her in 2017 because she was annoying and obnoxious. I somehow started talking to her again in the summer of 2021, and it was through her that I reconnected with Amanda. I started talking to Amanda nonstop in September 2021, but her then-fiancé didn't take too kindly to that and put a stop to it...

A series of shitty events took place between October 2021 and January 2023 that sent Emily off the deep end, and by the time I reconnected with Amanda and ultimately started dating her, the Emily who I knew and loved was not there anymore. Emily was very jealous of mine and Amanda's relationship and said some very nasty things about me early on in that relationship. My relationship with Amanda almost didn't make last through the summer of 2023, because of Emily!

My longtime followers will remember that Emily's dad helped her get an apartment back here in Pennsylvania, and I borrowed a 16-foot trailer from my employers to help them move down here. I towed that trailer behind my high-mileage 4-banger Tacoma and managed to get 17 MPG!

Needless to say, before the summer was over, we were sick of Emily's shit and by the grace of God were able to get Amanda her own place. Amanda and I both severed ties with Emily for nearly a year, but by December we had allowed her back into our lives.

 

It's never easy, my man. It's especially never easy when you experience the full spectrum of a person, both happy and erm, aggravating.

I personally prefer to contextualize things as moments. I am grateful for the good moments I shared with the people who have departed our universe, and will remember them with fondness. I will forget the bad moments, as they no longer have lessons to apply in my life. Rather, I will take the best of them, celebrate what we shared, and share it with others in the same manner. Keep the best parts of us living on in small pieces, little quirks, mannerisms, tall tales, inside jokes. And I let the rest go. It honors them and it imparts a much needed dose of wisdom unto me.

I wish I could say that it gets easier with practice. Fortunately, it doesn't. It hurts every time. But, I remain grateful for the time I had with friends no longer amongst, and I remind myself to appreciate the time I can still give to others.

 

The backup camera was going to be installed on June 5th, but a certain someone whose name starts with the letter “A” backed into pole at work, so that’s getting pushed up to May 29th (the Cruiser has comprehensive coverage so any damage not caused by a collision is covered, but not collision). Luckily, my friend owns a junkyard and has two PT Cruisers, so I’m scoring a replacement taillight for twenty bucks!

 

On another note, the car passed inspection with flying colors, only for the CEL to come on like two miles after Amanda left my mechanic. She called him, he told her to bring it back, and he did a diagnostic scan. Turns out it’s a $70 pressure sensor of some sort, so that’s getting replaced when the backup camera is installed, and the right wheel bearing is also getting replaced…

 

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@shakerhood
@steelcity2

Some of you may remember that my girlfriend's birth mother died unexpectedly just before Valentine's day, and was not found for about five days. She had two small elderly dogs. We did not find the body in the case of Amanda's mother, but the whole experience is what influenced us to hop in my truck and drive to Emily's condo in a severe thunderstorm. Hannah is almost 10, and while we had a feeling something bad had happened to Emily, we knew Hannah would still be fine and wanted to save her.

Anyway, Amanda called the Chester County Coroner this morning and the woman she talked to said she'd talk to her supervisor. It has been about 13 weeks since the autopsy was performed, and we were told 8 to 12 weeks until the results come back. We were at our friend Richard's property picking up some scrap when the morgue got back to Amanda, and they had the autopsy results...

Amanda's mother died of a heart attack, which was one of the theories that I had from the beginning. What shocked us both, especially Amanda, was that cocaine was found in her system. The cocaine had already metabolized, so there is no way to tell if there was fentanyl or anything else in it. Amanda didn't know that both powder cocaine and rock cocaine will come up as "cocaine" in a toxicology report until I told her, so it's pretty obvious that she was smoking crack not long before her death.

Barb had stents in her heart (in addition to her arteries, arm, clavicle, and leg]. but Amanda is not aware of her ever having had a heart attack prior to this one. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling if the cocaine was directly responsible for the heart attack.

Prior to this shocking revelation, the last time Amanda was aware of her mom having a relapse was in 2012. We have no idea when she started up again, but I do believe that the aforementioned neighbors were last aware of her using in October 2024. If the VA or her case manager had found out she was using, it would have been her third strike, and she would have been kicked out of her apartment. As per her neighbors, she had recently started smoking crack again in the last few months prior to her death as a means of easing the great amount of physical pain she was in.

Regardless of how long she'd been using crack again or how much she'd been using, she straight up lied to us. She would flip shit when friends posted pictures of beer they were drinking on Facebook, and would not allow alcohol in her apartment. She also criticized us if she heard we had more than one beer per social gathering, because she'd also been a raging alcoholic.

She hid the fact that she was using really well, and it came as an absolute shock to us that she'd been lying.

 

Addicts with an active addiction often criticize other for their actions, in order to draw suspicion away from themselves.
I wouldn't hold anything against the woman. It's all part of the addiction and symptoms.
The fact is, the woman is dead. There is absolutely nothing she can do to make anything right at this point. She is dead.

I think the best course of actin is to forgive and move on.
My her soul rest in peace.