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

Deer food!

 

It has been just 12 to 14 hours shy of six months since my friend Emily's death...

- My girlfriend Amanda last saw Emily alive just over a week before her death (Wednesday, April 23rd or Thursday, April 24th of 2025)
- I last communicated with Emily via text just before 1pm on Monday April 28th, 2025
- Amanda last texted with Emily on the night of Thursday, May 1st, 2025
- Emily's ex-boyfriend last texted with her at 9:59pm on Friday, May 2nd, 2025
- We believe that Emily spent the night in her bed and survived the night, but passed away on the living room couch somewhere between 6am and 12pm on Saturday, May 3rd
- Amanda realized she hadn't heard from Emily in two days at about 8:10pm on Saturday night, and we both attempted to contact her
- At a little after 8:20pm, we hopped in the truck and drove to Emily's condo
- We arrived at Emily's condo shortly before 8:40pm and saw her through the front window, apparently unconscious on her living room couch
- After failing to wake Emily up by screaming, and pounding on the door and window, I go back to my truck and grab my phone to call 911
- I call 911 at 8:40pm
- A police officer arrives at about 8:46pm, followed by an EMT and a paramedic in an ambulance shortly thereafter
- The paramedic kicks in the door at about 8:47-8:48pm
- At 8:51pm, the cop comes out and informs us that Emily is deceased

MY DASHCAM CAPTURED EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED FROM ABOUT 8:21PM TO 9PM!

 

The first cop on the scene told us at 8:51pm that Emily was deceased and likely had been for about a day. Emily had the A/C on in the condo at the time of her death because it had been warm that weekend, and this no doubt preserved her body. However, due to my natural morbid curiosity I looked up exactly what happens to a body in the first day or two after death, especially in a controlled environment like a home with the central air running. Apparently, decomp doesn't start to set in noticeably until a day or more after death; Emily was very obviously dead, but she didn't look bad. Her skin was pale, but at the same time had a yellowish tint to it. Amanda and I surmised that she passed away 12 to 14 hours before we found her, which would have been in the range of 6:30am to 8:30am that morning. The fact that all of the lights were off was a huge clue that she had passed when the sun was out. We think she woke up at around 7:30am like she usually did, to take Hannah out. She may or may not have taken Hannah out, and since Hannah had an accident in the house we are thinking she didn't. We only saw Emily through the window for less than 20 minutes and did not go inside the condo that night, but one of the cops told us that Emily's iPhone was plugged into its charger in the bedroom (she had a second one in the living room, next to the couch where she died). This would indicate that Emily had just woken up and was possibly disoriented or in some sort of distress, because she was addicted to her phone and was rarely without it. My theory is that she came out of her bedroom sometime before noon on Saturday, may or may not have taken Hannah for a walk, then laid down on the couch to take a nap from which she never woke up. She apparently hated sleeping with the lights and TV on, which is further evidence that she died in her sleep. Her position on the couch, and the fact that she was in her pajamas, are also both clues that she died in her sleep. If she had died while watching TV, she likely would have been in a different position than she was, and also more than likely the TV and some of the lights would have been on.

We got to meet the responding paramedic months later, and he told us based on his experience that Emily had probably been gone for six to twelve hours before we found her; I think it's close to, or possibly more than, twelve hours. Emily was known to spend the entire day in her pajamas, but had she died after 12pm the TV and some of the lights likely would have been on.

I brought a sledgehammer with me because I was expecting that we would have to make entry into the condo, and while I never wanted my friend to die, I am glad that she died on that couch instead of in her bed or somewhere else in the condo that wasn't visible through the window. Bits and piece of that night are a blur, but I believe that I started pounding on the door before it occurred to me that the blinds were bent enough that I could see into the condo. I then looked through the window, immediately saw Emily on the couch, and said something to Amanda to the effect of "Holy shit, she's right there on the couch!" We then started pounding on the window and door, and screaming Emily's name. This woke up the daughter of the guy who lives in the condo above Emily's but obviously didn't wake Emily up; Amanda's eyes tricked her into believing she'd seen Emily's chest go up and down, and this gave us the illusion that she was alive. Thanks to the patio light and the combination of high-beams and foglights from my Tacoma, we had a pretty good view of Emily, but it was still so dark in the apartment that she looked like she was sleeping. When she wouldn't respond, we assumed she was unconscious. It was not until the paramedic kicked in the door, and the lights inside the condo were turned on, that we knew Emily would never wake up again. The moment those lights came on is the moment that illusion of Emily being alive was shattered...

I saw plenty of dead bodies when my parents took me to Body Worlds at the Franklin Institute in early 2006, but those were permanently preserved and heavily modified for display. I went to an open casket funeral for the first time in November 2007, at the age of 17, when my grandpa lost his battle with lung cancer. I can still vividly see my grandpa's body in the casket, but he was embalmed and made up to look like he was sleeping. I also knew that he was very sick and that his death inevitable, so aside from the sadness of losing my grandpa way to soon, it never really affected me. I went to less than half dozen open casket funerals, including my grandpa's, from November 2007 to January 2024. My grandpa was the only funeral I went to for a blood relative, or someone who I knew particularly well. The other ones were my cousin's husband's maternal grandparents, both of whom were not in the greatest health by the time my cousin got married in 2016 and died before COVID, my neighbor who died from breast cancer in October 2021, and my teacher's son who died in a car accident in January 2024; I've been to so many funerals in the last 21 years that I have lost count, but only five of those were open caskets. My friend Jim (1947-2022), Amanda's birth mother (1965-2025), and Emily (1988-2025) were all cremated. My maternal grandma (1926-2015) was also cremated, as were all of my other grandparents who have died in the last 20 years or so...

Emily was the first "fresh" body I've ever seen, and I'm hoping it's the last one I see for a VERY LONG TIME. Lots of people, including my parents and my therapist, agree that finding a dead body in itself was not particularly traumatic to me. It's the fact that I knew the person whose body it was, that my friend was so young when she died, and that it was literally the worst-case scenario. Amanda told me the other day that deep down, she knew Emily had likely passed away, but she didn't want to believe it until she saw it.

As stated above, I had never seen a "fresh" body before and didn't immediately know what I was looking at until the lights came on in the condo. I am about as far from being a medical expert as one can be, and I didn't know exactly what the EMS guys were doing when I saw them attaching the 12-lead EKG to Emily's body. Amanda has worked at four different nursing homes since her teenage years, and has walked into the rooms of residents to find them dead in bed numerous times. As a result, she knew as soon as the lights came on that Emily was gone. Like I've said many times, Emily did not look gross or even particularly bad, but you could just tell she was dead. Amanda said she didn't say anything at first because she didn't want to believe it was true until one the first responders told us officially. My girlfriend and I both believed that I was experiencing mild PTSD, but during a session last Thursday, my therapist says that I don't meet any of the symptoms or other criteria for PTSD. I have autism, and in my opinion people on the spectrum process traumatic experiences differently than neurotypical people; I also knew Emily for nearly two decades, and while she was a pain in my ass for most of the last decade or so of her life, I still deeply cared about her. I never wanted her to die, and as if losing a friend before the age of 40 isn't bad enough, taking it upon yourself to conduct a welfare check and finding that friend's body in the process definitely adds to the tragedy.

 

Good as long as that's all they eat and not devour anything of value on your landscape.

 

Deer have been known to eat landscaping in my neighborhood, but from what I can tell they have never gone after ours…

 

They used to not mess with my place, but last Winter they chewed off a ton of my black raspberry canes. That decimated my berry production this Summer because the previous years canes are what produces berries the next year. Trying to decide if l should try to create some kind of barriers for Winter this year.

 

I slept okay last night, but not as well as I would have liked. No doubt, the fact that Emily died exactly six months ago had something to do with it. The responding paramedic told us that, based on his experience, that Emily had been gone for six to twelve hours before his arrival. That would place her time of death as late as 2:45pm, which is not likely in either of our opinions; I think that she probably died sometime between 7:30am and 12pm. We will never know exactly when she died, but I arrived at work at about 8am that morning, and I believe there’s a chance she could have still been alive.

The upstairs neighbor captured Emily leaving her condo to walk Hannah during daylight hours on either Thursday or Friday, via doorbell camera. The fact that the camera didn’t pick up Emily on Saturday morning tells us that she probably did not take Hannah out before she died. I think she laid down on the couch to take a breather not long after getting out of bed, and nodded off, and which point the embolism took her in her sleep. She looked like she was sleeping until the lights were turned on, and even when it was pretty obvious she was dead, it still looked as she’d gone in her sleep while lying down and did not suffer; I’ve been told by a nurse that a pulmonary embolism takes anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds to kill a person.

Some people may remember that we initially suspected liver failure due to the fact that Emily’s skin had an obvious yellowish tint to it (jaundice), and Emily had almost died back in 2020 to cirrhosis caused by a blocked bile duct; I’m sure that Emily’s liver was in lousy condition due to her poor diet, but the autopsy results showed that it did not kill her.

 

Another thing is that the events of that night continue to replay in my mind, and it still seems surreal…

Amanda and I hopped in my truck and drove to a friend’s house in a severe thunderstorm because Amanda got a very bad feeling. It was probably about 8:15pm when I said “Fuck it, get in the truck” and we arrived at Emily’s condo before 8:40pm; I called 911 at 8:40pm, the first responders arrived at 8:46pm, and we were informed at 8:51pm that our friend had passed away. I would say that the coroner arrived sometime after 10pm, and we saw them remove Emily before 11pm.

Hannah was considered part of the crime scene at first and they initially couldn’t release her, but then the first cop on scene noticed that she was doing the potty dance and was kind enough to leash her up and bring her out to me at maybe 10:30pm…?

We stayed long after the police were done asking us questions because while the police were fine with us taking Hannah, Emily’s dad was next of kin and had to verbally give us permission to take her.

And that’s yet another thing; Emily’s dad was spared having to find his daughter’s body, but I could not begin to imagine getting a call from a police department and then finding out my child was dead. Neither of us had Emily’s dad’s cell phone number, and all we could give police was his name and a couple of addresses. The police managed to track down his phone number, but he didn’t answer immediately, and I feel like it was well after 10pm when they did reach him (probably closer to 11). He finally pulled up, along with his girlfriend, at well past 11:20pm. This was thankfully after Emily had been taken away, and as such they were allowed to enter the condo. Amanda’s dad immediately hugged Amanda when he saw her and, with the cops present, gave us permission to take Hannah. My parents showed up a short time later to swap their Murano for my truck.

Emily’s condo was in her dad’s name and owned outright, so there weren’t any legal hurdles like there were with transferring the title of the Mitsubishi. After months of renovations due to a plumbing failure unrelated to Emily’s death, the condo is finally on the market for way more than I can afford right now.

I would give damn near anything to have Emily back, and at the same time I would not do anything different if I had to relive that night again. It’s just the kind of people we are.

 

Maybe wrap them in the cloth mesh, I had to use it on my shrubs for that reason

 

Did it help?

 

So, Enterprise gives employees one “paid volunteer day” per years; I used that today to volunteer at the polls since it’s Election Day. Among other things, I pick up political signs at the end of the night to be added to my scrap pile; I ended up with a metric shit-ton of scrap, and there was a period of time where we weren’t needed, so I brought that to the scrapyard. Emily’s condo is less than a mile from our bank, so we decided to cruise by the place one last time before it gets sold…

If I’d parked to the left of Emily’s car (now mine and Amanda’s car), my dashcam would have captured everything!

 

Emily’s condo was considered a crime scene and only the proper authorities could enter, so I got permission from the cops on scene to pee near one of those trees, while they were standing right there!

 

Make any money at the scrapyard?

 

$27, but that’s only half the load…

 

$27 for basically free sounds good to me, even better that you have more to take yet.

 

Yes, rockauto has them.

 

The Outlander now has a backup camera!

 

Seems like it did yup