#tamra bottles

[harshitajoshi28]

Ayurvedic Curved Copper Bottle Plain - 1 Litre | Sleek Style

Copper, or Tamra in Sanskrit, has been an essential element of Indian Ayurvedic culture for centuries due to its numerous health benefits. This long-established tradition has now also been validated by modern scientists who have validated its antibacterial and antimicrobial qualities. It has been proven that Copper helps eliminate bacteria and viruses such as E-Coli & Rotavirus. We have created a range of beautifully designed copper bottles to re-integrate this ancient tradition into our modern lives.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The Mystery of Zebb Quinn

On January 2, 2000, 18-year-old Walmart employee Zebb Quinn met with co-worker Robert Jason Owens to possibly buy a car in a nearby town outside of Asheville, NC. Quinn followed Owens, who had told him about the vehicle, in his Mazda Protege. Before arriving at their destination, the two stopped at a convenience store to buy sodas. It was the last time Quinn was seen alive. Although Owens was eventually charged with Quinn's murder in 2017, the teen's body has never been found.

What happened to Quinn remains a mystery, but his car was found four days later. Instead of providing solid clues that could aid investigators in their search efforts, the Mazda produced evidence that left law enforcement with more questions than answers. Someone had parked Quinn's car in a Little Pigs Barbecue parking lot, leaving the headlights on and a lipstick drawing of a mouth with an exclamation point on the back window. Inside, officers found a live Labrador retriever puppy, drink bottles, a jacket that didn't belong to Quinn, and a keycard from an unknown hotel. Witnesses recalled seeing a mysterious woman driving the car around town.

From there, the story gets even more bizarre. A composite sketch of the mysterious female driver held an uncanny resemblance to Misty Taylor, a young woman Quinn befriended a few weeks prior. When police questioned Owens, he mentioned Quinn had received a message on his pager from his aunt and needed to rush home. Quinn's aunt, Ina Ustich, revealed she had been dining at the home of her friend Tamra Taylor – Misty's mother – and wasn't in the position to make the call. However, Ustich's house was broken into that night. Although nothing was stolen, she reported to police that things were out of place. Misty and her abusive boyfriend, Wesley Smith, were also eating dinner with Ustich the night Quinn disappeared. Authorities suspected Owens was responsible for the disappearance, but didn't have enough evidence to arrest him.

Then, on March 17, 2015, Owens was arrested for killing Food Network Star contestant Cristie Schoen Codd, her unborn child, and her husband Joseph. He was convicted of three murder counts and two counts of dismembering human remains. During this investigation, officials learned of a "fish pond project" that Owens had worked on up until the day of Quinn's disappearance. When investigators broke through the cement poured over the abandoned project, they found fabric, unidentifiable hard fragments, and multiple bags of an unidentified powdery substance that resembled pulverized lime or powdered mortar.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

The Mystery of Zebb Quinn

On January 2, 2000, 18-year-old Walmart employee Zebb Quinn met with co-worker Robert Jason Owens to possibly buy a car in a nearby town outside of Asheville, NC. Quinn followed Owens, who had told him about the vehicle, in his Mazda Protege. Before arriving at their destination, the two stopped at a convenience store to buy sodas. It was the last time Quinn was seen alive. Although Owens was eventually charged with Quinn's murder in 2017, the teen's body has never been found.

What happened to Quinn remains a mystery, but his car was found four days later. Instead of providing solid clues that could aid investigators in their search efforts, the Mazda produced evidence that left law enforcement with more questions than answers. Someone had parked Quinn's car in a Little Pigs Barbecue parking lot, leaving the headlights on and a lipstick drawing of a mouth with an exclamation point on the back window. Inside, officers found a live Labrador retriever puppy, drink bottles, a jacket that didn't belong to Quinn, and a keycard from an unknown hotel. Witnesses recalled seeing a mysterious woman driving the car around town.

From there, the story gets even more bizarre. A composite sketch of the mysterious female driver held an uncanny resemblance to Misty Taylor, a young woman Quinn befriended a few weeks prior. When police questioned Owens, he mentioned Quinn had received a message on his pager from his aunt and needed to rush home. Quinn's aunt, Ina Ustich, revealed she had been dining at the home of her friend Tamra Taylor – Misty's mother – and wasn't in the position to make the call. However, Ustich's house was broken into that night. Although nothing was stolen, she reported to police that things were out of place. Misty and her abusive boyfriend, Wesley Smith, were also eating dinner with Ustich the night Quinn disappeared. Authorities suspected Owens was responsible for the disappearance, but didn't have enough evidence to arrest him.

Then, on March 17, 2015, Owens was arrested for killing Food Network Star contestant Cristie Schoen Codd, her unborn child, and her husband Joseph. He was convicted of three murder counts and two counts of dismembering human remains. During this investigation, officials learned of a "fish pond project" that Owens had worked on up until the day of Quinn's disappearance. When investigators broke through the cement poured over the abandoned project, they found fabric, unidentifiable hard fragments, and multiple bags of an unidentified powdery substance that resembled pulverized lime or powdered mortar.

[realhousewives-fan]

RHUGT3 Wasn’t the Best Girls Trip

This trip to Phuket was wasted on this bunch. It says a lot about this group of women when their concierge ended up being the star of the show.

There are different reasons for why this trip wasn’t entertaining and they variate, depending on who you ask.

If you were to ask me, I would claim that Gizelle Bryant ruined the trip. Others would argue that Leah McSweeney was a casting mistake.

Maybe it was a mistake to bring housewives who hadn’t filmed their reunion yet, like the women from RHOP and RHOSLC.

Alexia Nepola and Marysol Patton wasn’t that much fun on this trip either.

There was only one on this trip that was able to use it to her advantage, and that was Porsha Williams, and she wasn’t even supposed to be there!

She was the replacement of Tinsley Mortimer.

At least the women on the other shows were able to prove how vital they were for the franchise, and that’s why the Ex-Wives Club remains as the best Ultimate Girls Trip for me.

Tamra Judge was asked back to RHOC, Vicki Gunvalson was allowed to film as a friend, and Taylor Armstrong is the first housewife to ever switch shows!

Brandi Glanville, Eva Marcille, Phaedra Parks and Vicki was asked back for another season of RHUGT and that was a huge victory for them, in my view.

Well, until whatever happened between Brandi and Caroline Manzo happened…

While the first and second season is highly rewatchable, I would probably never watch this season again. It just wasn’t a fun season to watch.

And in my opinion, Gizelle is mostly to blame for that. 

The drama with her missing tequila bottle wasn’t needed or entertaining, and she forced us through it.

She made their concierge, Pepsi, cry!

But there were too many tag teams on this trip, and they steamrolled all over the younger women. 

Bravo and Peacock needs to avoid this type of casting in the future.

But with the ugly drama between Caroline and Brandi in RHUGT4, it makes me wonder: Is RHUGT in trouble now?

[sense22yoga]

Health Benefits of Drinking Water from Copper Bottles

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in ancient wellness practices, one of which includes drinking water from copper vessels. This age-old tradition, rooted in Ayurvedic principles, is now gaining popularity due to its purported health benefits. Here, we delve into the science and tradition behind this practice and why you should consider switching to buying a copper bottle.

The Tradition and Science of Copper

Copper, a trace mineral essential to human health, has been used for centuries in various cultures for its medicinal properties. Ancient Egyptians used copper to sterilize water and heal wounds. At the same time, Ayurvedic texts recommend drinking "Tamra Jal" (water stored in a copper vessel) to balance the three doshas in the body—Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.

Modern science supports some of these ancient claims. Copper possesses antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties, making it beneficial in multiple ways when used correctly.

Health Benefits of Drinking Water from Copper Bottles

Improved Digestion

Copper has been shown to stimulate peristalsis (the rhythmic contraction and relaxation of the stomach that helps digest food), kill harmful bacteria, and reduce inflammation in the stomach, making it an excellent remedy for ulcers, indigestion, and infections. Storing water in a copper bottle allows a small amount of copper ions to leach into the water, promoting better digestive health.

Enhanced Immunity

Copper's antimicrobial properties help in killing bacteria and viruses, thus acting as a natural cleaner. Drinking water from a copper bottle can help in boosting the immune system by reducing the microbial load and ensuring the body's defenses are more muscular.

Anti-Aging Properties

Copper is packed with potent antioxidants and cell-forming properties that fight off free radicals, one of the main reasons for the formation of fine lines. Drinking water from a copper bottle can help maintain youthful skin and reduce the appearance of wrinkles.

Better Brain Function

Copper plays a crucial role in the synthesis of phospholipids that are essential for the formation of myelin sheaths, which act like a conductive agent for nerve cells. This, in turn, helps improve communication between neurons, thus enhancing brain function.

Aids in Weight Loss

By improving digestion and breaking down fats more efficiently, copper helps in weight loss. Regular consumption of copper-infused water can assist in maintaining a healthy weight.

Cardiovascular Health

Copper helps regulate blood pressure and heart rate and lowers cholesterol levels. Its anti-inflammatory properties also help in reducing inflammation in the arteries, thus supporting heart health.

How to Use a Copper Bottle

For maximum benefits, it is recommended to store water in a Sense 22 yoga copper bottle for at least 6-8 hours. Drinking this water first thing in the morning on an empty stomach can help in flushing out toxins and promoting a healthy digestive system. However, it is crucial to clean the bottle regularly to avoid the build-up of harmful bacteria and tarnish.

Conclusion

Incorporating the practice of drinking water from a copper bottle into your daily routine can offer numerous health benefits, from improved digestion and enhanced immunity to better brain function and cardiovascular health. With the convenience of online shopping, you can easily buy copper bottles from reputable sources. Ensure you choose high-quality, pure copper bottles to maximize these benefits. Embrace this ancient practice and experience the positive impact on your overall health and well-being.

By making a simple switch, you can enjoy these time-honored health benefits. So, why wait? Buy a copper bottle today and take a step towards a healthier lifestyle.

If you have any questions or need further information, please don't hesitate to contact us.

[productexplorer]

why do you want to drink water from a copper bottle?

Cancer has unfortunately become a common occurrence and this dangerous condition has been constantly challenging the medical fraternity for many years. Water stored in copper bottles or copper vessels is an excellent source of antioxidants, that can combat free radicals responsible for tumors and stimulating cancer cells. If you are often exposed to sun rays, make it a point to carry a copper bottle along, as the water stored in it produces melanin – a natural skin pigment that shields skin from harmful ultraviolet rays.

Boosts Haemoglobin Count: Haemoglobin, the protein molecule present in the red blood cells is extremely crucial for body functioning. Lack of hemoglobin can cause anemia leading to severe fatigue, brittle bones, disorientation besides other chronic conditions. Studies reveal that copper water aids in the breaking down of food for the production of hemoglobin and helps in the better absorption of iron into the body. Copper, an important trace mineral, is required by the body in the right amounts to prevent certain haematological conditions.

Regulates Hypertension: Copper, being a vital trace element plays an extensive role in maintaining blood pressure and regulates the amount of bad cholesterol or LDL and triglycerides in the blood. However, if a person is diagnosed with a deficiency of copper since childhood, chances are high it might lead to hypotension or low blood pressure. Similarly, a sudden copper deficiency in adulthood can lead to hypertension or high BP.

some best copper water bottles in my opinion https://amzn.to/3t3Crhp

Fights Infections: Copper though a metal, exudes the properties of a natural antibiotic. When this metal comes in touch with harmful microbes on the surfaces or in water, it is destroyed immediately. Doctors recommend drinking water that has been stored in a copper bottle for at least 8 hours for the complete filtration and elimination of various bacteria including E.coli, Cholera bacillus, etc.

Maintains Heart Health: Cardiologists believe that lack of copper in the system can often cause plaque deposits blocking the blood vessels. Copper deficiency can weaken heart muscles, reduce ejection fraction (the pumping capacity of the heart), and also the ability to react to stress. Heart patients are strongly advised to drink copper water to attain the optimum copper levels in the body.

Helps Lose Weight: Copper is an amazing mineral that can melt away the excess fat deposits in the body. The right amount of copper in the body boosts metabolism and burns fat helping you lose weight in a healthy weight. However, do not consume copper water in excess as it can lead to copper poisoning.

Improves Brain Function: The brain is a vital organ and its functioning depends on various factors including healthy habits and stress-free life. The brain communicates with the rest of the organs through electrical impulses and studies have revealed that a glass of ‘tamra jal’ in the body stimulates its functioning, balances hormones, and instills positive thoughts.

Delays Ageing: Copper these days has become an integral part of beauty products. Used by ancient Egyptians several years back, copper-based cosmetic products have made a comeback in recent years owing to their natural antioxidant properties that can assist in generating skin cells by preventing the signs of aging.

some best copper water bottles in my opinion https://amzn.to/3t3Crhp

Here are some tips for drinking water from a copper bottle: Drink room temperature water: Hot water can cause the water to absorb too much copper from the bottle. Don't refrigerate the bottle Clean the bottle every three months: Wash the bottle and let it dry naturally. Drink water in the morning: Drinking water twice a day is enough to provide your body with the necessary amount of copper.

Conclusion: Copper bottles though the latest fad are nothing new in India. Storing water in copper utensils, and vessels is an ancient practice in Indian households owing to its wide range of therapeutic and medicinal properties. Store clean drinking water in a copper bottle or glass for at least 8 hours and drink it on an empty stomach to derive various health benefits including regulated thyroid function, maintenance of high blood pressure, combat cancer, soothing painful joints, and bones, stimulation brain functioning and for defying the signs of aging.

[lakannada]

Celebrity gossip, sightings in and around Connecticut in May - CT Insider

Celebrity gossip, sightings in and around Connecticut in May – CT Insider

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate“Breaking Bad” stars Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston sign bottles of Dos Hombres and take selfies with their fans at Fortina in Stamford on May 18. WATCH WHAT HAPPENS LIVE WITH ANDY COHEN — ���BravoCon” Episode 16186 — Pictured: (l-r) Tamra Judge, Vicki Gunvalson, Emily Simpson, Gina Kirschenheiter, Shannon Storms Beador, Braunwyn…

[classicalfusiondance]

Time in a Bottle (2017)

Choreography by Kayley Thompson, solo choreography by Carla Maria Ramirez

Dancers: Tamrae Decker, Carla Maria Ramirez, Diego Ramirez, Melissa Tapia

Performed for ClassicalFusionDance's concert The Price of Fame (2018).

[greener-living]

I’m creating my first morning ritual: a daily dosage of energised water. ayurveda recommends storing water overnight for 8-10 hours in a copper jug and drinking it first thing in the morning. the water helps to balance all three doshas and helps maintain the body’s ph balance. also, if you know me personally you know that I am the WORST at drinking enough water anyway 💧⚡️

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

Why do I feel like the batfam would totally love to hang out with Dick's girlfriend's dad?

Because they would. Because This guy is based on no less than 4 big scary biker men that I know. And they like a party.

"And you're sure this won't be a problem?" Bruce asked, looking at Dick. Cars lined the streets and the smell of smoking meat drifted over the neighborhood. It was mouth watering.

"It's a block party, Bruce," Dick said smiling. "It'll be a nice time."

He snorted when Bruce grunted and hefted the cooler out of the car, grateful when Jason grabbed the other side. "Y/N where do you want this?" Jason yelled, catching sight of you loping through the grass in shorts and a tank top.

"Just set it in the back. I'm about to pull the meat off the smoker," you say around a yawn, twisting the top off a glass bottle and pitching the cap into a coffee can by the garage door.

"Where's your dad?" Dick asked, looking around.

"Round back," you answer, standing on your toes to kiss his cheek and pushing the door open, accepting hugs hello and turning to lead them through.

"How is your dad so tall and you got none of that?" Jason asked, casually resting an arm on top your head to illustrate the point.

"Her mama built her ass too close to the ground," Robert chuckled, accepting hand shakes and introductions, hauling himself to his feet with a groan of effort, leaning on his cane. He was a big man. Nearly seven feet tall and close to 300 pounds. Imposing in spite of the cane. But when you crinkle your nose at him, he grins. Looking boyish under the grizzled features.

"That. looks. amazing." Dick said, watching you pull meat off the smoker.

"We'll see. I still don't think she used enough black pepper."Robert huffed before he started distributing drinks, happy to have new people to tease. "Tamra," he yelled, "Do we have more ice?"

"In the garage!"

"I'll get it daddy just give me a minute-"

"You just pay attention to what you're doing," he snorted, pausing long enough to wrap one arm around your shoulder and squeeze.

Bruce watches you track him as he makes his way, unsteadily over the grass. "Dick can you-"

"Yup," he said, kissing your head before following after him.

Some of the tension leaves your shoulders and you pick up a perfectly sharpened knife to start cutting the meat, looking satisfied. "Damn I'm good-"

"Uh huh," Robert said, taking the plate you set aside for him, "There's no way-" He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully for a second while you turn to pull off the pork. "Not bad, kid," he said nodding.

"Not bad?" Bruce said, quirking an eyebrow, trying the bite he was offered.

"Not enough black pepper," Robert said, winking as you turn to glare at him.

It's a similar process when your mother appears, putting bowls down long tables, and before long, neighbors appear with more platters and bowls. Lights strung on fences glow softly and it doesn't take long for musicians to appear.

"Damian, if you give me a minute to scrape everything down, there's veggie burgers," you call.

"Acceptable," he said, nibbling on some peppers that had been sliced and set out before making his way to where you were standing. There were 75 people filtering in and out of the yard. It was simultaneously nice. And sensory hell.

But it looked calmer by the grill where you'd been most of the day.

"It's a lot, I know," you hum, "But it'll start winding down here soon.

"I'm fine," he huffed, glancing over to where Jason, Steph, and Bruce were talking with your dad. Listening to whatever outlandish story that he was telling- Not about a bigfoot but about the time he worked in a zoo.

But when you hum and turn back to scraping off the grill, he's glad you don't push. And by the time you're handing him a black bean burger on a gluten-free bun, the headache behind his eyes has abated enough for him to sit in the grass at Bruce's feet.

Your father had a deep voice and a rumbling laugh. And the more the night wore on, the funnier the stories got.

Damian was just grateful no one expected him to contribute much. But when you caught his eye, with a smile and a wink, he figured he could do this again. As long as you didn't forget his burger.

[thecorsetcollection]

dvd collection #-i

9 dir. Shane Acker 12 Monkeys dir. Terry Gilliam Aftermath Genesis dir. Nacho Cerda All That Jazz dir. Bob Fosse Altered States dir. Ken Russell Amour dir. Michael Haneke Angst dir. Gerald Kargl Annie Hall dir. Woody Allen Another Public Enemy dir. Kang Woo-Suk Antiviral dir. Brandon Cronenberg Audition dir. Takashi Miike Battle Royale dir. Kinji Fukasaku Before Sunrise dir. Richard Linklater Before Sunset dir. Richard Linklater Begotten dir. E. Elias Merhige Bill Osco's Alice in Wonderland dir. Bud Townsend Black Swan dir. Darren Aranofsky Blood and Black Lace dir. Mario Bava Blue Valentine dir. Derek Cianfrance Blue Velvet dir. David Lynch Bottle Rocket dir. Wes Anderson Bruno dir. Larry Charles Bubba Ho-Tep dir. Don Coscarelli Bully dir. Larry Clark The Burning Moon dir. Olaf Ittenbach Cabin Fever dir. Eli Roth Cache dir. Michael Haneke Calvaire dir. Fabrice du Welz Cannibal Ferox dir. Umberto Lenzi Cannibal Holocaust dir. Ruggero Deodato Casablanca dir. Michael Curtiz Castle in the Sky dir. Hayao Miyazaki Cigarette Burns dir. John Carpenter The Conjuring dir. James Wan Coraline dir. Henry Selick Corpse Bride dir. Tim Burton Crimson Peak dir. Guillermo del Toro Cure dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa Delta Farce dir. CB Harding The Dentist dir. Brian Yuzna The Devil's Backbone dir. Guillermo del Toro Dogville dir. Lars Von Trier Double Indemnity dir. Billy Wilder The Dreamers dir. Bernardo Bertolucci Drive dir. Nicolas Winding Refn Dune dir. David Lynch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind dir. Michel Gondry The Evil Dead (1982) dir. Sam Raimi The Evil Dead (2013) dir. Fede Alvarez Experimental FIlms dir. Maya Deren Fando y Lis dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky Fantastic Mr. Fox dir. Wes Anderson Flowers dir. Phil Stevens The Fountain dir. Darren Aranofsky Freddy Got Fingered dir. Tom Green The French Dispatch dir. Wes Anderson Frontier(s) dir. Xavier Gens Funny Games (2007) dir. Michael Haneki Girl, Interrupted dir. James Mangold Goodnight Mommy dir. Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala The Grand Budapest Hotel dir. Wes Anderson The Great Muppet Caper dir. Jim Henson Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood dir. Hideshi Hino Gummo dir. Harmony Korine Half Baked dir. Tamra Davis Happiness of the Katakuris dir. Takashi Miike Hara-Kiri dir. Takashi Miike Hard Boiled dir. John Woo Hard Candy dir. David Slade Heathers dir. Michael Lehmann Hellraiser dir. Clive Barker Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer dir. John McNaughton Her dir. Spike Jonze A History of Violence dir. David Cronenberg The Holy Mountain dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky The Host dir. Bong Joon-Ho The Hunt dir. Thomas Vinterberg Ichi the Killer dir. Takashi Miike The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus dir. Terry Gilliam Imprint dir. Takashi Miike In a Glass Cage dir. Agustin Villaronga Inland Empire dir. David Lynch Inside dir. Verane Frediani & Franck Ribiere I Saw the Devil dir. Kim Jee-Woon I Spit on Your Grave dir. Meir Zarchi Isle of Dogs dir. Wes Anderson

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Zebb Quinn [mention of Cristie Schoen Codd]

On March 17, 2015, Robert Jason Owens was arrested for the murder of celebrity chef and former Food Network Star contestant Cristie Schoen Codd, her husband Joseph Codd, and their unborn child. As part of a plea deal, Owens admitted to killing the Codd family and dismembering their remains. When the police searched Owens’s home, they found “fabric, leather materials, and unknown hard fragments” buried under a layer of concrete, as well as human remains in Owens' wood stove.

The murder of the Codds wasn’t the first time that Owens had been involved in a mysterious disappearance, and it would soon become clear that those unknown fragments and human remains were remnants of an earlier case.

Some 15 years earlier, Owens seems to have been the last person to see Zebb Quinn alive. At the time, Quinn was a young man of 18, working in the electronics department of a Walmart in Asheville, North Carolina. On January 2, 2000, Quinn got off work at around 9:00 P.M. and met his friend and coworker Robert Jason Owens in the parking lot. The two were planning to go to the nearby town of Leicester to look at a car that Quinn was interested in buying.

Quinn and Owens drove separately and stopped at a gas station along the way to buy drinks. Surveillance footage from the gas station provides the last known photographs of Zebb Quinn alive. After leaving the gas station, Owens later told police that Quinn signalled for him to pull over, saying that he had been paged and needed to return the call right away.

After going to a payphone, Owens claimed that Quinn was "frantic" and had to call off the trip, speeding away in such haste that he actually struck Owens' vehicle. Later that same night, Owens was treated at a nearby hospital for broken ribs and a head injury that he claimed to have acquired in a separate accident, though no accident report was ever filed for either collision.

This was just the beginning of the bizarre circumstances surrounding Zebb Quinn's disappearance. Police eventually traced the call that was placed to Quinn's pager to the phone of his aunt, Ina Ustitch. Ustitch told police that she wasn't even home at the time of the call: She had been having dinner with a friend named Tamra Taylor.

Taylor was the mother of Misty Taylor, with whom Quinn had a relationship that may or may not have been becoming romantic at the time of his disappearance. However, Misty and her boyfriend Wesley Smith were both present at the dinner as well. Ustitch later reported to the police that her house had been broken into while she was out to dinner with her friend, though nothing was stolen.

The next day, Quinn's mother filed a missing person's report for her son, but it wasn't until four days later, on January 6, that his car was found abandoned in the parking lot of the Little Pigs Barbecue restaurant, near the hospital where his mother worked. She later told police that she believed the car had been left there on purpose, so that whoever had abducted her son would be sure that she would find it.

In the car was a live puppy, several empty bottles, a jacket that didn't belong to Quinn, and a hotel key card that the authorities were never able to match with a particular hotel. The headlights had been left on, and a pair of lips and an exclamation point had been drawn in pink lipstick on the rear windshield. Of Quinn, however, there was no trace.

Two days after Quinn's disappearance, before his car had yet been found in the Little Pigs parking lot, a phone call was placed to the Walmart where he worked. The caller claimed to be Quinn, saying that he was calling in sick, but the coworker who took the call said that the voice didn't sound like Quinn's. Robert Jason Owens would later confess to placing the call, at the time saying that he was doing it as a favor to his friend.

For 15 years, the investigation went on, though seemingly little progress was made. Misty Taylor and her boyfriend were questioned, as were others, but nothing could link them to the disappearance of Quinn. In 2012, the case was featured on the show Disappeared, but still no answers were forthcoming. Quinn’s case became well known on the internet, where many communities attempted to discover the evidence that would either bring his killer to justice or make clear exactly where the teen had disappeared to.

While Robert Jason Owens remained the chief suspect, it wasn't until the murder of the Codd family that he was finally charged with a crime. According to Owens, he ran over the Codds while on painkillers and then dismembered and hid their remains in a panic. He never confessed to the murder of Zebb Quinn, but in 2017 a grand jury finally handed down an indictment charging Owens with Quinn's death some 17 years before. Authorities said that the indictment was "the result of years of investigative work and persistence," but whether it was ultimately prompted by new evidence discovered during the investigation into the murder of the Codd family hasn't been revealed by the police.

[northernindigenousbeautyhailey]

TAMRA JEWEL KEEPNESS.

FEW CHILDREN IN CANADA JUST VANISH. Fewer still stay gone for longer than a couple of days. Some are found alive, others are hurt or killed, but rarely does a child simply disappear. The RCMP’s National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains database lists 147 missing children, in a country of more than 35 million people. Of the sixty children under the age of twelve, a quarter are thought to have been abducted by their parents. A large portion of the others were lost to apparent accidents or misadventure, falling through ice or swept away in the pull of wild rivers, their bodies never recovered. The database shows twenty-four children in the past sixty years who have inexplicably disappeared. Because there are so few, we know them. In Edmonton, there is Tania Murrell, six when she vanished while walking home from school for lunch in January 1983. In Toronto, Nicole Morin, eight when she disappeared from a condominium building in July 1985. Michael Dunahee was four years old when he went missing from a playground in Victoria in 1991. In Regina, there is only Tamra Keepness.

THE LAST TIME anyone saw Tamra, she was five years old, with bobbed black hair and soft, round cheeks. In one picture, she wears a T-shirt dotted with flowers, standing against the colourful collage of a classroom wall. Her smile is broad and open, her eyes lively. She was so smart that her mother called her “my little Einstein,” so feisty that when a little boy pushed her once, Tamra shoved him right back, and harder. She liked playing Mario Kart on Nintendo and climbing her favourite tree, down the block from her house.

July 6, 2004, was the first time Sergeant Ron Weir would hear Tamra’s name. He was getting ready to leave on vacation that day when he got an urgent call back to the police station. Weir was a veteran cop with the Regina Police Service and head of emergency services, which included search and rescue. In a meeting, officers from the major crimes unit laid out what they knew: sometime between the night of Monday, July 5, and the morning of Tuesday, July 6, a five-year-old girl had gone missing from her home in central Regina.

Weir had been a police officer for twenty years. He knew that kids often went missing and turned up safe a short time later. Sixty-five percent of missing children and teens are located within the first day, and almost 90 percent within the first week. But Weir also knew that Tamra was too young to get far as a runaway. Patrol officers had already checked the neighbourhood to make sure Tamra hadn’t wandered away or ended up at the house of a playmate or relative, as was often the case with missing children. They’d found nothing. Even in the early hours of the investigation, Weir suspected this case would be different.

TAMRA LIVED with her mother, stepfather, and five siblings at 1834 Ottawa Street, a shabby brown-and-white two-storey with a windowed porch at the front. The house stood between 11th and 12th avenues, just east of downtown Regina. The neighbourhood was a mix of long-time elderly residents, young families drawn by low prices for heritage houses, and ramshackle homes where residents struggled with poverty and addiction. The area was sometimes known as the “low stroll,” a place where women and girls sold their bodies for drugs or booze and men drove around looking to buy them, circling the neighbourhood in trucks and station wagons. Many of the women and girls who lived or worked in the area were First Nations, like Tamra. Long before calls for a federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women would dominate the political conversation, women were going missing from those streets. It was from that same area that nineteen-year-old Annette Kelly Peigan disappeared in 1983, followed by eighteen-year-old Patsy Favel in 1984 and Joyce Tillotson in 1993. Two years later, two young white men picked up a woman named Pamela George, sexually assaulted her, and beat her to death.

The last public development came in November 2014, when a Reddit user posted to the website a scrawled map with the words: “Location of Tamra Keepness, check the wells.”

Tamra’s house was less than a block from the Oskana Centre, a halfway house for federal parolees, and not far from the Salvation Army’s Waterston House, a residence and shelter inhabited by former inmates and men struggling with drugs, alcohol, and psychiatric issues. Residents of both facilities had been responsible for serious attacks in the past. Just four months earlier, convicted violent sex offender Randy Burgmann had lured a woman into his room at Waterston House with alcohol, before violently sexually assaulting her and leaving her beside a dumpster to die. The Oskana Centre had previously been home to both serial rapist Larry Deckert and Billy John Francis Whitedeer, who began committing violent sexual offences on children when he was ten years old. A few blocks farther was the Ehrle Hotel, one of the worst bars in town, from which patrons spilled soggy and staggering onto the sidewalk, and which appeared regularly in police reports and court testimony.

Police also had serious questions about what was happening at 1834 Ottawa Street. There was a broken window and blood spatter in the porch. Social Services had been involved with the family since not long after the oldest child was born in 1993, and there had been more than fifty reports made to crisis workers, most often about Tamra’s mother’s use of alcohol and drugs, and neglect of the children. Her mother’s boyfriend had a history of violence and domestic assault. In most cases, investigators knew, children are hurt by people closest to them.

POLICE STARTED with a thorough search of the area immediately around the home, then cast their efforts outward in an expanding grid. As the sun rose on the morning of July 7, 2004, the search effort intensified. First, there were ten officers, then twenty, then more. Some officers accompanied trained volunteer search teams; others questioned family members and potential witnesses, going door-to-door gathering leads or chasing down tips. The RCMP training academy provided cadets, and members of the public soon began arriving on their own to help.

Police set up a command-centre bus in the parking lot of a nearby church, from which Weir co-ordinated the search. Though it was an urban environment, the terrain posed serious challenges. The area was filled with overgrown yards, empty houses, piles of garbage. Tamra weighed forty pounds, and stood three foot five. There were so many places a child could hide or get trapped or be held, where a child’s body could be concealed or dumped. Searchers in orange vests worked in grids, knocking on doors, inspecting junked cars and crumbling garages, peering under discarded mattresses and piles of wood, looking down manholes. Police stopped garbage pickups, checking all the bins in the neighbourhood, the trash putrid and reeking in the summer heat. Some bins had already been emptied, so plans were made to search the dump as well.

And what if she had been taken farther? Not far away were industrial areas, large abandoned lots and buildings, Wascana Creek, and beyond that, the vast Prairie. With a thirteen-hour head start, someone in a vehicle could have had Tamra in Vancouver before she was reported missing.

When they were not speaking to police, members of Tamra’s family waited anxiously on the fringes, watching the searchers, eyeing the growing assembly of reporters and news crews holding out microphones and pointing camera lenses. “It’s not like her to go off by herself,” said Tamra’s father, Troy Keepness, sitting on the front steps of his ex-wife’s house, his voice tight with worry. “We’re trying to do our best to get her back.”

Weir worked in the command-centre bus, surrounded by maps and whiteboards. A scribe logged every aspect of the search in real time, recording ideas and progress. No one wanted to break, not for food or rest. Everyone knew the situation grew more serious with every passing hour. As the heat of the day gave way to evening, Weir stood outside and looked up. A strong wind had come in, and storm clouds were spreading, darkening the Prairie sky.

The next day, police strung crime-scene tape around Tamra’s house and the one next door, drawing it through the back alley and across six garages, long slashes of yellow dividing the street. Officers guarded the perimeter while forensic investigators went in and out of the house in boots and masks. “While we don’t have any direct evidence that Tamra has come to any harm, we also don’t know where she is,” police spokeswoman Elizabeth Popowich told reporters. “And if, in fact, this comes to a point where we determine that she’s come to some harm and it’s because of a criminal act, this location could potentially be the scene of some evidence.”

THERE WERE three adults in the house that evening: the children’s mother, Lorena Keepness; her boyfriend, Dean McArthur; and a family friend named Russell Sheepskin, who had been staying with the family. All three had come and gone during the night, and investigators were starting to question their movements. There were no signs of forced entry to the house, and there were gaps, inconsistencies in their timelines that didn’t make sense to investigators.

The story the three told publicly, compiled from various interviews, was that Lorena and McArthur got into an argument while watching a movie on Monday evening, and McArthur and Sheepskin left the house around 8:30 p.m. to go drinking. The men returned briefly to drop off a bottle of formula for the baby, then left again. Lorena went out around 11 p.m, kissing Tamra goodbye before she went. The oldest child in the house was ten-year-old Summer, the youngest was Lorena and McArthur’s nine-month-old baby. Lorena returned briefly to check on the children and then left again around midnight. At about 3 a.m., Sheepskin returned home drunk and saw Tamra sleeping on the couch. Not long after, McArthur got back to the house and assaulted Sheepskin on the porch, punching him through a window and then stomping on his head. (Both men later said the fight had nothing to do with Tamra.) Sheepskin walked alone to the hospital to get stitches, and McArthur went to stay at his aunt’s house a few blocks away. Though it should have been a short walk, he said he got lost and kept passing out as he walked there. He didn’t arrive for at least two hours, until 5 or 5:30 a.m. Meanwhile, Lorena got home around 3:15 or 3:30 a.m., climbed in through a window, and passed out on the couch. She said that she got up to undo the latch on the door for her mother around 8 or 9 a.m. and that the two eldest children, Summer and Rayne, left on their own in the morning to attend a summer day-camp. Lorena didn’t realize Tamra wasn’t there until about three hours later, when the five-year-old didn’t come downstairs. At 12:16 p.m., a family member called the police and told them Tamra was missing.

Rayne, who was eight, said he had gone to bed squeezed into the space between the wall and mattresses piled on the floor in an upstairs bedroom. He told his mother he felt Tamra get up at some point, the slight movement of a child’s weight. All he could remember was that it was light outside.

FRIDAY WAS hot again and wet from the previous night’s rain. An odour of decay hung in the air around Ottawa Street. Tamra had been gone three full days and become national news. Her picture seemed to be everywhere, hanging on street poles and store windows. In news stories, she became “missing five-year-old Tamra Keepness,” but more often she was just Tamra, as if we knew her. The front page of the Regina Leader-Post spoke directly to her, asking, “Tamra, Where Did You Go?”

Tips flooded in to police. On the street, there were rumours that Tamra had been seen at a dollar store with an older woman. Business owners in the neighbourhood said detectives had been looking for a middle-aged white man named Roch or Rocky, but police wouldn’t confirm whether that was related to the search. Lorena and McArthur said they gave police the names of five people they thought could be suspects, including a man who had befriended Tamra and later been discovered to be a pedophile. For a while, there was even a theory that Tamra had never existed at all, that she had been a scam to get extra money from Social Services. (Hospital records proved that was not the case.)

Searchers were coming from around the province to volunteer, streaming into the city from towns and First Nations communities, motivated by the faces of their own children or grandchildren to help in whatever way they could. “I’ve got a boy, and he’s twenty-one,” said Jerry Scott, one of the volunteers who joined the search. “And if he left, I’d go nuts, too.” Around the city, people organized vigils and barbecues, brought water and snacks for the searchers, wrapped ribbons around trees to show their support. Some left teddy bears and angels on the steps of Tamra’s house. Days of intensive searches had turned up lots of items that seemed as though they could be connected—clothing, a child’s shoe—but none of it belonged to Tamra. “I’m starting to go on different conclusions, like maybe someone took her, I don’t know,” Troy Keepness said. “I just hope nobody would hurt my daughter.”

WHEN Tamra had been gone a week, police announced they were suspending the ground searches. At a press conference, Regina police chief Cal Johnston announced a $25,000 reward for information and vowed, “We will find Tamra.” Police questioned sex offenders living in the area and obtained surveillance tapes from convenience stores, bars, gas stations, and the Greyhound bus depot nearby. Johnston confirmed that “criminal interference with Tamra is a distinct possibility” and drew attention back to Tamra’s house and family. “There were comings and goings from the house that night that remain not fully explained to our satisfaction, and we continue to ask those questions,” he told reporters. He would not elaborate.

Tamra’s family was growing increasingly angry at the police, and the strain of the situation was starting to show. Lorena told reporters she’d signed consent forms for police to search her house and had given her DNA, but still she felt as if they were focusing too much on her family and not enough on trying to find Tamra. She was angry that police hadn’t closed the highways out of the city and that there was no Amber Alert because police said it didn’t meet the criteria. “I’m fed up,” she told reporters. “They are wasting time. This is my little girl we’re talking about.”

The family was growing frustrated with the media, too. Lorena’s mother yelled obscenities at reporters one day, and on another, members of the family nearly came to blows with a TV reporter doing a live update from the front lawn. They had been watching the news inside the house when they heard the reporter imply what many in the city were already wondering: If not someone in that house, then who?

On July 19, two weeks after Tamra had been reported missing, police charged McArthur with assaulting Sheepskin the night Tamra disappeared. McArthur told reporters he had been interrogated for twenty hours, not about the assault, but about Tamra and about what had gone on inside the house that night. “It was always the same questions, and they were assuming that I knew the answers to those questions, but I didn’t know the answers, and I still don’t know the answers,” he said. “I would never hurt a hair on that little girl’s head.”

Two days later, Tamra’s brothers and sisters were removed from the home by child-protection officers. Tamra’s twin sister wore messy pigtails and clutched a colouring book and a yellow blanket as two women led the children away down the front steps of the house. Neither government officials nor police would say whether the children’s seizure was related to Tamra’s disappearance. When the children were gone, police searched the house again.

One night late that summer, Tamra’s father, Troy, showed up at the house with a baseball bat and confronted her stepfather, McArthur. Troy was charged with assault, though McArthur later said police “got things misunderstood.” “Everybody’s looking for answers,” he said. “We more or less talked.”

LORENA KEEPNESS was fourteen years old when she ran away from her home on the White Bear First Nation, 200 kilometres southeast of Regina. She had been in residential school for about three months, but that wasn’t what did it. For her, it was the same ugly stuff at home. She found her way to Regina. When her mom tried to take her home, Lorena wouldn’t go. She lived on the streets instead.

She had her daughter Summer Wind when she was twenty, her son Rayne Dance not long after. It was after the ultrasound for her third baby that she walked home in a daze and told her husband, Troy, “We’re having twins.” She kept repeating it until it sunk in, and then they just stood together in the kitchen and laughed. Her mother said “Way to go!” but Lorena told her, “They came from God. Not like I planted those in me.”

The babies were born on September 1, 1998. Fraternal twin girls, each weighing more than six pounds, carried almost right to term and curved around one another like pieces of a puzzle. Lorena and Troy split up when the twins were little, and after that, the girls stayed sometimes with their mother, sometimes with their father or with other relatives. Lorena and Troy each struggled with substance abuse, and their lives were sometimes too troubled and unstable to have the children with them. At five, Tamra was bold and courageous, and protective of her twin sister. Once, Lorena heard a soft knock in the middle of the night and opened the door to find the twins standing there. The children had left their father’s house and walked four blocks back to Lorena’s in the middle of the night, Tamra leading her sister by the hand as they found their way through the dark. REGINA POLICE received more than a thousand tips in the first six weeks after Tamra’s disappearance. At one point, a Volkswagen van that had been stolen the night Tamra disappeared was found burned outside the city. A jail guard told police she and a former inmate had stolen it, picked up Tamra, and then dumped the child’s body in a ravine on the Muscowpetung First Nation. Ron Weir led a week-long search on Muscowpetung, draining multiple beaver dams with compressor pumps, while searchers slogged through water up to their hips. The jail guard later confessed she had made up the story. She was charged with mischief and wrote a letter apologizing to the police. In court, her lawyer said she had been trying to get her abusive boyfriend locked up again.

Returning from medical leave to the police department in the fall of 2004, superintendent Troy Hagen could feel how Tamra’s disappearance was weighing on his colleagues. Hagen noticed it in everyone he spoke to, from the police chief down, whether they were involved with the case or not. Sergeant Rod Buckingham, one of the lead investigators, was among those who felt the growing frustration. “It’s a mystery,” he would say. “And I don’t like mysteries.”

Officers had spoken with more than 6,000 people by then, but there had been no arrests, and leads were drying up. Shortly after, a special task force was struck to re-examine the case, to see whether anything had been missed. The name of the project was iskwesis ayishowak e mamayahi, a Cree term meaning “little girl bring people together.”

TWELVE YEARS LATER, Lorena Keepness spends her days doing odd jobs and picking bottles, trading them in at the depot for cash. She is forty-three and lives with her eldest son in a rundown shack of a house on Victoria Avenue, a fifteen-minute walk from Ottawa Street. Lorena’s children were never permanently returned to her custody after the disappearance, and the three babies she had after that were all taken by Social Services, too. Tamra’s twin sister is seventeen now. Lorena says she is an athlete, smart and beautiful. Lorena lost her family pictures when someone threw all her stuff in the garbage a few years ago. The only photos she has of Tamra now are the ones on missing-child posters.

Tamra’s twin and her older sister, Summer, don’t want to be interviewed. Neither does Tamra’s father, Troy. McArthur couldn’t be reached. Lorena needs a six-pack of Black Ice beer to talk. She doesn’t really want to be interviewed either. She has never liked reporters or their questions, and it hurts to talk about that time. “But part of me wants to,” she says, as her face crumples. “Part of me needs to share what the fuck happened. Someone stole my child.”

Lorena has heard many theories about what happened to her daughter. Some believe Tamra wandered away and was abducted by a driver cruising the area or that she got lost, then crawled in somewhere so small she has never been found. Other theories focus on the adults in the house that night. Some officers will say off-the-record that they think Tamra is in the dump but that they just couldn’t find her in the mountains of debris. Many in the city believe that Lorena and McArthur sold or traded Tamra to pay off a cocaine debt. Lorena has heard that one the most. One night, she was at a bar and heard some women talking, loud enough so she could hear. “Yeah, she sold her kid for dope. She has a whole bunch of babies. She has kids just to sell them for drugs.” Her friend told her not to listen, but Lorena couldn’t ignore it. She swore at the women, promised she would get them for even thinking she could do that to her child. They met at the same bar again the next day, and that time they fought, a tangle of hair and fists. One of them had a knife and slashed her twice on the back of her arm. More scars to wear for life. It wasn’t the only time. One night, she was attacked in Moose Jaw. Not long ago, a woman shouted “Baby killer!” at her across the street.

Lorena and Dean McArthur are still together, on and off—“more on than off,” she says. Police tried hard to turn them against each other, but she always believed him in the end. He may be all kinds of things, she says, but he’s not a baby killer. “If I thought he did something to my daughter, I would have killed him myself,” she says. “I think the police were just so sure. They figured, ‘These guys are a bunch of nobodies. She did her own child.’ They already had their conclusions drawn before they even tried to look for anything.”

The suggestion she could have had something to do with her daughter’s disappearance still pushes Lorena to the point of violence. You can see her eyes flash, her muscles tighten at the question. But she holds back— it’s not worth going to jail. She’s had enough of the police, has grown used to the accusations. In the past twelve years, she’s repeated her story publicly many times, and it has never really changed.

REGINA POLICE have never released full details about the investigation into Tamra’s disappearance, on the grounds that it remains an open case that they still hope to solve. In an interview, Troy Hagen, now Regina’s police chief, would not speak about any working theories or confirm any specifics of the investigation, including whether one of the people questioned about Tamra’s disappearance had failed a polygraph test. Instead, Hagen echoed what police have said since the beginning: That there remain important unanswered questions about the comings and goings from the house on Ottawa Street that night. That they will continue to investigate every tip. That they won’t stop looking for Tamra until they find her. He pointed to cases in the United States where children have been gone for years, sometimes decades, and then been found alive. In Canada, twelve-year-old Abby Drover was held in an underground bunker in Port Moody, British Columbia, for six months after being abducted by her neighbour in 1976. There was an intensive search of her community—including by her abductor—but she had been only feet away from her house the entire time. She was found alive. It seems impossible, but it happens. “I refuse to lose hope,” Hagen says.

The years since Tamra’s disappearance have exposed the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Suspected serial killers are facing charges in the Prairies, but there has been no public indication that Tamra’s disappearance may be connected to any of those cases. Hagen said police have also explored a possible connection with thirteen-year-old Courtney Struble, who disappeared from Estevan, a city 200 kilometres from Regina, four days after Tamra was last seen. Investigators initially believed that Struble was a runaway, and she had been gone for seven years before RCMP announced that her case had become a homicide investigation. No one has ever been charged, and her remains have never been located. Hagen says it’s strange to have two unsolved missing-children cases linked so closely in time and geographic proximity. He says the possibility of a connection was “very much” explored by police, but there doesn’t appear to be a correlation. The police investigation into Tamra’s disappearance is one of the largest and costliest in Regina’s history, but Hagen says it has never been about the money. If there were more leads or work for investigators, the police chief says he would reconvene the task force “in a heartbeat.” But the flood of tips has slowed. The reward for information that leads to finding her, now $50,000, sits unclaimed. The last public development came in November 2014, when a Reddit user with the name MySecretIsOut posted a scrawled map with the words: “Location of Tamra Keepness, check the wells.” The person later wrote that the map belonged to their grandmother and had come from a great-aunt who had visited an inmate in Alberta. “We, like many others, haven’t forgotten about you, Tamra, and continue to search and hope you are found,” the person posted. Police searched twenty-one wells around Muscowpetung but found nothing.

Sheepskin died on January 1, 2009, “with his family by his side,” according to his obituary. Many of the police officers who worked on Tamra’s case have retired or moved from the department to other jobs. Hagen says he thinks of Tamra whenever he is walking through the forest, not looking for her but always half expecting to see her there. Sometimes he looks at people he passes on the street, examining their faces and imagining what Tamra might look like now.

THROUGH THE YEARS, Lorena has developed her own theories about what happened to her daughter. These days, she mainly wonders about a drifter who used to stay with them, a woman Lorena knew from when she was a girl. A woman who sometimes told people she was pregnant even though she wasn’t, who Lorena knew by one name but whose medical documents said something else. The woman was around so much that Lorena’s children called her Big Auntie. Big Auntie had been staying at the house before Tamra disappeared, but left after she and Lorena had a falling out. Lorena says it took a long time to realize Big Auntie wasn’t coming around any more. When she did, she put word out on the streets, but no one there had seen her either. Big Auntie didn’t even show up for her own sister’s funeral in Regina a few years back. Lorena says she told the police about Big Auntie many times, but doesn’t know whether they ever found her, or whether they even looked. “She’s just gone now,” Lorena says. “Same time as my child.” Maybe it’s something. Or maybe Big Auntie is missing, too.

When I ask Lorena whether she thinks Tamra will ever be found, she struggles for an answer. “I don’t know,” she says. “But can I tell you about a dream I had?” There are two, both so vivid it’s as if they were real. In one, Tamra is inside a big house in a city Lorena has never seen. There are silk clothes draped around, and broad windows, and Tamra is upstairs, sitting on the edge of a bathtub putting on stockings. She is grown, with dark, shiny hair like her mother’s but cut straight all around. In the other dream, Tamra is still a little girl, running into her mother’s arms. “There you are!” Lorena says. “There you are!” She picks up her child and holds her, until Tamra wriggles free and is lost again.

[slversoul]

* lauren tsai, cis female + she/her | you know ramona pei, right? they’re twenty-three, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, eight years? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to can i believe you by fleet foxes like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool while your lungs are screaming for air, the muffle of a tv from behind a closed door at 3am, ripping your dress as you crawl into your friends window thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is march 6, so they’re a pisces, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( corny :D  )

also sorry this got so long :(( really meant to shorten it but uh oh well. let’s get into it shall we...  

TW: blood mentions, violence, arson, emotional manipulation, cheating, absentee parenting, parental fighting

ABOUT.

in her hand, ramona held an antique vase, white with blue detailing. passed down from generation to generation, it had been in her family for decades. not wanting to drop it, she held it as tightly as possible. held so tight that it shattered anyway, breaking into hundreds of pieces that cut her hand as they fell.

a trip to china to celebrate graduating college despite having two children in between, patti met a man and had a short-lived but passionate affair, only to return home to find out she was pregnant.  

in the middle of a storm, ramona was born into a home longer than it was tall. patti gave her her father’s last name, some shallow attempt to connect her to a man and culture she didn’t know. 

ramona’s early years float through her mind like a montage of memories. rolling in the dirt and eating worms. climbing up the trees that shadowed the driveway to their house, jumping from branch to branch. cutting her doll’s hair before cutting her own to match. the first meeting of patti’s new boyfriend. his hairy belly hanging out of his white wife beater as he fell asleep on the couch with the tv on.

patti loved her children. she loved trent, shirley, and ramona with her whole heart, but she was tired. working all day and all night, it was hard to keep tabs on them at all times. the three of them woke up early every morning, singing as they packed lunches, and they kept up with their chore wheel, and they ran barefoot for hours in the woods behind their house.

she first learned to swim in a grimmy lake a couple miles from her house. she’d sit on the bike with trent as he took them there. she jumped right in and paddled her arms until she learned to stay afloat. she’d go under and swim deeper and deeper until her siblings were screaming her name. she’d come up and laugh, knowing that her siblings cared for her.

her first friend was debbie. they were inseparable. holding hands on the playground. playing hopscotch after school. swimming in the lake by her house. as the days went on, debbie made new friends. less and less she was at ramona’s house, eating peanut butter sandwiches trent had made. a thursday afternoon, ramona stole a hershey’s bar from the gas station — deb’s favorite candy. after her mom tucked her in, she snuck out and ran to her friend’s, still in her pjs. she threw rocks at the window, and one was thrown a bit too hard, shattering the window. debbie’s screams woke the whole neighborhood. the cops were called. while she was escorted home, ramona was crying the whole time, confused as to what she did wrong. all she wanted to do was win her friend back.

she felt like she didn’t belong. she’d cut up pictures of her favorite actresses and paste pictures of her own face over theirs, hanging those portraits all over the walls of the house. if she lived like the characters on the tv, she would have to be real. that was real life. there were times when everything felt perfect. the feeling of relief that comes from placing the last piece in a puzzle. snapshot memories like sitting at the table with her siblings, swinging her feet because her legs were too small to hit the ground. her first kiss underneath the slide. running with her friend, crayons in hand as they doodled along the walls. she was inclined to freeze these memories, trying to prolong them and make them last forever.

so when trent left for college, ramona, 13 at the time, hugged him so tight and wouldn’t let go. her mother and sister had to pry her off of him, and she scratched him so hard she drew blood in the process. or when her first boyfriend broke up with her and two weeks later he had a new girlfriend. she took her nail polish and wrote ‘cunt’ on his locker, earning herself a week-long suspension. shirley only congratulated her. her mother was at work. her step-father was passed out on the couch.

she acclimated to high school easily with shirley there to guide her. but she quickly made her own friends. tamra’s parents were hardly home. her house served as homebase. ramona’s parents didn’t realize when she left. they were too busy screaming at each other over the static of the tv. she’d slip out and run to tamra’s, climbing into the window left open. they’d put makeup on like their favorite movie character and get in their nicest dresses, before meeting their girlfriends and boyfriends in the parking lot of the abandoned walmart, making a competition out of who could get the drunkest. they would head home and four or five of them would pile into tamra’s bed and sleep there until late afternoon.

ramona’s first serious relationship was russell. she swore they were in love until she caught him making out with someone else at a bonfire. she pushed him over and ran into the woods. two weeks later, they were back together. he was her dream guy. not even nicholas sparks could write a lead so romantic. he kept pushing her and pushing her because he knew she wouldn’t let go. until one night she got so mad that she smashed in the windows of his car and sliced up the leather interior. fits of rage were rare for her, but when they came around, they were all consuming. she was lucky he didn’t press charges. 

life was a whirlwind of change the summer before sophomore year. shirley was packing up for college. patti was getting a divorce and moving them to irving, her hometown. ramona locked herself in her room. she wouldn’t come out for anything. the next day, when she still wouldn’t leave, shirley broke into her room, only to find it empty with the window wide open. a town-wide manhunt ensued, only to find her hiding up in a tree in the woods. 

even though she was back home, she wasn’t really there. she wouldn’t speak. didn’t speak until the day shirley moved away to go to college. 

 despite her reservations, she liked irving. she had never seen the ocean before. ramona stepped up to the shore and looked out at the horizon. peace washed over her as the waves lapped at her ankles. there was a sense of security in feeling so small. she took to swimming in the ocean rather than the lake, searching for sea creatures big and small to befriend.

the tv was always on at their house. her mom couldn’t stand the quiet and neither could she. the house was empty with three less booming voices. ramona clung to her friends, using them as an escape for everything she didn’t want to think about.

surrounded by all of these people, she still felt alone, isolated, like they only loved a certain version of her. when her and patti left to meet trent to visit shirley at school, she cried the whole trip, thinking her friends would talk about her while she was gone, and that they would be closer when she wasn’t there.

but she seemed to always be there, forcing her way into every plan and every activity rather than be left out. it was suffocating, but she was usually kind, so people put up with her.

there were always the times she wasn’t kind. when she’d make passive aggressive comments about what a bitch someone was because they didn’t want her using their favorite eyeshadow. or when someone said they wanted space and she went on a tirade about how horribly they treated her because she didn’t want them to leave her -- a reactionary measure that always seemed to make everything worse. but then she would act out her favorite television episodes for her friends and they would laugh and clap along, forgetting her desperate attempts to fight change. 

she couldn’t follow in her siblings footsteps. siblings she hardly hears from anymore, but desperately tries to reach out to. she stayed home and got a job as a swim instructor and a lifeguard in the summer. she sells handmade jewelry on the side. she’s floating and untethered, waiting to see where the tide carries her, only wanting to make fun memories from now until the end of time. 

PERSONALITY. 

um she’s a bit horrible? her heart is always in the right place and her intensions are good. she romanticizes literally everything. she wants to be loved so badly that she will look past any and all flaws <3. she often acts out because she is scared of losing her friends, and so she’ll be rude and passive aggressive. she wants them to feel like they need her more than she needs them. it’s all a weird power move in a way to keep her friends close. consumed by fomo. sometimes she can be outright mean and aggressive, but she really has to be pushed to her limit. doesn’t ever see what she’s doing as wrong. her older siblings were more of parents to her than her actual parents, and since they were all within 5 years of each other in age, her siblings never disciplined her because they were all immature. she is playful and untamed and just likes to do things because she can’t sit still. can always be found hanging out with friends and doing arts in crafts, or climbing rocks or swimming in the ocean. 

HEADCANONS.

she can’t get rid of things. her windowsill is lined with empty makeup bottles and empty deodorants and flowers in old wine bottles. she wears clothes until they literally fall apart. she has a million posters and pictures covering every space of her walls and ceiling. her room is a collection of her life with piles of clothes on her desk chair and bras and sweaters hanging from door handles.

for three months, she wore a bathing suit every day. some days it was under regular clothes and others it was the only thing she wore. she liked it and thought it was fashionable. it was how she was most comfortable.

she can’t drive! only rides her bike!

only wears dresses now <3

cannot sleep without the tv on! likes to hear voices lull her to sleep and inspire her dreams.

speaking of dreams, she has a whole notebook filled with the time she decided to analyze dreams for fun. has a notebook per passion she wants to explore. is always trying new things or researching new things to try to find her forever interest, not coming to terms that she wants to run wild forever and live like a witch in the woods, completely unburdened by anything.

she has a scar on her knee and the palm of her hand. she was hiking up a waterfall with friends one time, and got dared to climb up some slippery rocks. needless to say, she fell and cut herself badly.

she likes laughing and running and swimming. she likes posters and nail polish and cozy comforters. she dislikes being confined indoors and people who go out of their way to be mean and rainy days. she dislikes the color orange and words she can’t pronounce and learning from a textbook. she likes bikes and she doesn’t like cars. she likes anyone with kind eyes.

[halothenthehorns]

Lupin’s Lovesick Ladies

In lue of a chapter, here's this little nugget I promised!

HPHPHPHP

Griselda Summers dumped him when Peter dropped a bottle of ink all over her and Remus laughed along with his friends.

Chrissy Monthser left him after three days, apparently she'd only asked him out to try and get closer to James Potter.

Emma Watson was a lovable girl, but a few years too young for him, as his friends constantly pointed out, so he kindly broke up with her no matter how much she protested age shouldn't matter.

He lied and told Kiki Silver he was allergic to cats.

He fell hard for Regina Snaps, but panicked when she agreed to go on a date with him, and told her he hated the color pink, her favorite color.

Ursula Waters broke it off when told by Sirius that Remus' skin would continue growing paler until it turned bone white and would eventually go full albino.

Tamara Rome ditched him when he couldn't buy her a birthday present that year.

Ariel Truman 'caught' him talking to a dog, having a full blown conversation with it apparently. She quietly broke up with him, she couldn't even bring herself to admit how crazy she was now convinced he was, and he was left confused.

Lila Evert had spent the month long relationship trying to mother him. He'd eventually shaken her by foisting her onto Peter, the girl was happy for the trade for a time.

He lied to Crystal Brown and told her he couldn't sleep with anyone who couldn't get a little 'ruff' in bed.

He ditched Alison McCormack when he grew sick of her trying to tag along with their Marauder pranks.

Minca Harrow broke up with him when she saw the scars and he lied, turning it into a joke about love sick puppies. She called him an insensitive wart and he still genuinely regrets never asking where she got hers.

He spent three hours telling Samantha Wrest about Periodontal Disease, taking the Muggle sickness and spinning it to horrifying proportions of all the blood someday soon would be spilling from his gums. After a quick sip from a bottle of cherry filling, she ran off after seeing the 'blood' dripping down his chin.

He told Penny Wisehouse he couldn't see anyone who wasn't a dog person.

He broke up with Merla Omna when her cat chased Wormtail, confusing the poor girl more than anything.

James spent a memorable month telling anyone who would listen that Remus had the hots for McGonagall. Finally Tara Plow believed him when she caught Remus in a compromising position in her head of Houses' private office- Remus then had to make a very quick get away before said professor showed up and saw what he'd charmed a statue to look and sound like.

He broke up with Aubry Melano because of how bloody smart she was, he was convinced she was going to figure it out, so he dumped her without giving a reason, and she quietly accepted it, scaring him all the more of what she knew.

Tamra Rome apologized and asked to take him back, he agreed, but then she broke up with him again when Valentine's day came around and he again had not bought her a gift, claiming transfiguring flowers into another kind of flowers didn't count.

He spent five minutes with the depressing tale of Dysmetabolic Syndrome, so that Greenie Greenwood would no longer ask why he was addicted to sweets. The taste of chocolate on his lips wasn't worth his heart one day bursting out of his chest.

He took Kiki Silver back for a time, lying about Madam Pomfrey's recent discovery of a cure to such allergies. She'd gotten rather wild in their time apart, far too untrustworthy with the close kept secret he had and he had enough of those kinds of people in his life, so broke up with her again that weekend with a new sudden allergy to her perfume.

Things didn't work out with Gary Oldman because he kept his own secrets, the two drove their own wedge between each other

Juniper Carnell spent her time in the Greenhouses trying to recreationalize plants she really shouldn't have been.

Ava Pride was far too competitive and kept arguing with Prongs every time they were within sight of each other.

Hue Mendoza had refused to keep meeting him in empty classrooms when Remus made a joke about inviting more people for fun, the guy had a bad sense of humor anyways.

He never learned Titania's last name, they spent a fun hour snogging, which is how Dumbledore found them when he had to inform the girl her parents were pulling her from school.

Once he got bored with him, he gave a very descriptive account of mononucleosis to Matthew Kimura, who actively avoided every Gryffindor the rest of that year in fear of how contagious it apparently was.

Sirius subtly broke up Remus and Polly Fuchsia's relationship because he got jealous she asked Remus out when he'd been wanting to date her for ages. Yes, Sirius can be subtle when he wants to. He paid off an older student to make it look like Remus had been the one to try and slip her a potion.

Tamara Rome tried to get back together with him, again, and he allowed it for the sole purpose of then scaring the piss out of her by describing his disease of Neurofibromatosis. He didn't even have to exaggerate that one.

Sophie Hightower 'discovered' his disease of CNN, and when she confronted him, he admitted he was sneaking out once a month to go attack cows, as the disease obviously suggested.

Chloe Harkins shot off one too many views about her feelings on how Dark Creatures weren't being regulated enough. Remus' friends got mad, and despite Remus' protests it would seem suspicious, the three orchestrated a 'mermaid' attack, nearly drowning the poor girl by accident in the process when the giant squid didn't save her like they thought it would. She dumped Remus anyways because she thought he'd been in on the joke.

Skyler Smith broke up with him when she broke her leg and he never came to visit her in the hospital wing that weekend.

Rue Quill ended it with him after she admitted she'd only been trying to make Sirius jealous.

Remus dumped Leo Hamptr after he made some snide comment about Sirius being in the wrong house.

He was very forcefully encouraged by a seventh year to stop dating Angela Bones, and despite his friends retaliating, he left her anyways, they already had one Marauder having a war because of a girl.

Benjy Fenwick complained Remus spent too much time with his friends. Remus did the obvious thing and flipped him off, the relationship fell apart from there.

Lisa Farlocks refused to admit cardigans were comfortable.

Melissa Carthill fell in love with Sirius.

Natalia Tena and he gently parted ways when he made it clear he never wanted to have kids.

He spent nine glorious months with Tegan Shilling. He agreed with his friends, she was 'the one that got away.' He'd been a breath away from telling her of his werewolf status, she deserved it for as patient and kind as she'd been with him during his last year of school, but panicked at the last second and instead fell on his old standby and lied, telling her he'd slept with her sister. He needn't have bothered in the end, she didn't come back from the Easter Holidays.

"I'm gay." She looked from him, to Sirius, and then nodded with a disappointed but unsurprised look and walked off.

HPHPHPHPHP

As you could probably tell, I highly enjoyed taking Muggle diseases and exaggerating them to freak out some purebloods/ half bloods. I do this to people in real life and crack up laughing when they think I'm serious, (shut up Sirius!). P. S. I think Remus' mom was a nurse, that's how he knew them.

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1316

Monday, March 8, 2021

 Coming up on a year since the pandemic started. I hope you're all healthy and safe. I am hopeful that vaccines will be deployed widely and help us all feel less anxious. I am fortunate enough to be one of those people who is happy as a bug snug in a rug while self isolating. I do really miss my dear friends and family but hugs can wait until we're all vaccinated.

 My thanks to Doug for lending me these comic books to read.

 Batman Annual #5 - James Tynion IV (writer) James Stokoe (art) Clayton Cowles (letters). It's the origin of Clownhunter and it's not very original. If I had to pay $4.99 US I would have passed on this and lived with leaving a hole in my Batman collection. If you're not familiar with this new vigilante, he's an Asian teenager named Bao who decides he's going to kill the Joker and all of the villain's sycophants. The reason he becomes Clownhunter (and killer) is very mundane. I wish they could have come up with a new motivator. Maybe the philosophical discussion about what to do about the Joker might interest some fans but I found this story quite tedious. I also didn't like the way Bao and his parents were portrayed. Did they really have an Asian saying "Ah, so"? Yes they did on page 8. Shades of Charlie Chan, Batman. I was not offended, just disappointed.

 Batman/Catwoman #3 - Tom King (writer) Clay Mann (art) Tomeu Morey (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). I was thrilled to see the town of Port Orange, Florida mentioned on the first page. My pal Al lives there. It's also where Selina finally catches up with the Joker and does what Batman never did. I love this Black Label book taking familiar characters and treating them in a new and interesting way. Here's a future where Selina has survived her husband Bruce's death and their daughter Helena is the new Batwoman. Now I wait to see how mother and daughter deal with the Angel of Death.

 And now, more Future State books.

 Future State: Robin Eternal #2 - Meghan Fitzmartin (writer) Eddy Barrows (pencils) Eber Ferreira (inks) Adriano Lucas (colours) Pat Brosseau (letters). The consequence of Tim Drake/Robin being dunked in Lazarus resin is that now he's immortal. Whoop-dee-doo. Not only is this a boring Robin beats up bad guys issue but the art lacked any logical perspective. This issue takes place on a train but you would think it's in a huge building based on the art. I know it's comic books but I hate when one doesn't make visual sense. I think that's just laziness.

 Future State: Kara Zor-El Superwoman #1 & #2 - Marguerite Bennett (writer) Marguerite Sauvage (art) Wes Abbott (letters). This 2-issue fairy tale was not meant for old farts like me and Doug. With it's soft pastel colours these books should have included glitter and bubblegum flavoured lip gloss. Maybe young tween girls will like this. The moral of this story is "no one is born wise".

 Future State: Dark Detective #3 - Mariko Tamaki (writer) Dan Mora (art) Jordie Bellaire (colours) Aditya Bidikar (letters). There are not one but two Batmans in this issue. You've got Bruce in his new capeless costume but here he's wearing a trench coat to give that fluttering effect, and then there's the new guy in the Bat suit, cape and all. The "uh-oh" point of the story hits here when the bad guys discover where Bruce is hiding out. The Matthew Rosenberg (writer) Carmine Di Giandomenico (art) Antonio Fabela (colours) & AndWorld Design (letters) Grifter story concludes here too with a double cross and a whole lot more of Helena/Huntress. This is my favourite Future State book so far.

 Future State: Superman of Metropolis #1 & #2 - Sean Lewis (writer) John Timms (art) Gabe Eltaeb (colours) Dave Sharpe (letters). If you're wondering how a grown up Jonathan Kent takes over for his dad as Metropolis's protector then these two $5.99 US books will satisfy your curiosity. The villain of the story is an evolved Brainiac who is a big multi-mouthed ball now. Metropolis is shrunk ala the bottle city of Kandor, the citizens go nuts but Jon returns things back to normal in the end with the help of Kara/Supergirl. I don't know why Kara's a girl in this story and a woman elsewhere. Each issue has two back-ups so you get your money's worth. One features Mister Miracle and the other the Guardian. They are both dealing with bad things inside the bottled Metropolis. You won't miss much if you don't read them. The Mister Miracle story "The Metropolis Menagerie" is done my Brandon Easton (writer) Valentine De Landro (art) Marissa Louise (colours) Dave Sharpe (letters). The Guardian story is brought to you by Sean Lewis (writer) Cully Hamner & Michael Avon Oeming (art) Laura Martin (colours) AndWorld Design (letters). This one got me excited because a villain wants to throw Jimmy Olsen off of the Daily Planet building.

 Future State: Catwoman #2 - Ram V (writer) Otto Schmidt (art) Tom Napolitano (letters). Read this to find out if Catwoman saves the lives of the people on the train. You will also find out if Bruce is freed from the bad guys. Talia Al-Ghul appearing is the deus ex machina in this story. I like the new Cheshire and Onomatopoeia is always fun.

 Future State: Superman: Worlds of War #2 - Phillip Kennedy Johnson (writer) Mikel Janin (art) Jordie Bellaire (colours) & Dave Sharpe (letters). In "The Many Deaths of Superman" the Man of Steel fights in the arena of Warworld where Mongul resurrects him after every death match. It's the typical brutal battle scenes and super villain gloating. What's more compelling is an old newspaper story that Clark Kent wrote that inspired a young woman who travels to Smallville. I was totally confused by the three back-up stories featuring Mister Miracle, Midnighter and the Black Racer because they were not very good. I am a completist and have to finish what I start. I could have stopped reading after the $3.99 US main story in this bloated $7.99 US comic book  but my obsessive compulsive nature wouldn't let me. It's a character flaw I wish I could change.

 Future State: The Next Batman #1 - John Ridley (writer) Nick Derington (art) Tamra Bonvillain (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). All the teasers for this book hyped the fact that this Batman is black. You won't get the secret identity in this first issue but there are a bunch of likely candidates. Lucas Fox is a possibility but it's confusing because he's a bad guy in another Future State book. This is another $7.99 US book with back-ups. These are more coherent than the ones in Future State: Superman: Worlds of War.

Future State: Outsiders by Brandon Thomas (writer) Sumit Kumar (pencils) Sumit Kumar & Raul Fernandez (inks) Jordie Bellaire (colours) & Steve Wands (letters) gathers together some old Batman associates helping Gotham City citizens escape persecution by the Magistrates outside Gotham City's borders. Get it? It was nice seeing Katana in action.

Future State: Arkham Knights by Paul Jenkins (writer) Jack Herbert (art) Gabe Eltaeb (colours) & Rob Leigh (letters) gathers together some of Batman's rogues gallery to fight the oppressive Magistrate. Two-Face, Mr. Zsasz, Dr. Phosphorus, Killer Croc and other ex-inmates of Arkham Asylum are being lead by an armoured Astrid Arkham. It's super villains being super heroes.

 Future State: The Next Batman #2 - John Ridley (writer) Nick Derington (breakdowns) Laura Braga (art) Arif Prianto (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). We learn the secret identity of the new caped Batman in this issue. It's Lucas Fox's brother. He has a brother? This also has three new back-up stories.

"Batgirls" is by Vita Ayala (writer) Aneke (art) Trish Mulvihill (colours) & Becca Carey (letters). Batgirl/Orphan Cassandra Cain gets locked up in the Magistrate Detention Facility where both good guys/white hats and bad guys/black coats are incarcerated. She got caught on purpose because her mission is to find Oracle and Batman and free them. She gets help from Spoiler who is queen of the inmates. In this reality Cass is way more articulate than she used to be. I didn't like that. I also didn't like that in the other Future State stories the Magistrate foot soldiers have a shoot to kill order for any masks that they encounter. Why are all of these masks alive? Anyways, this part ends with the white hats and black coats forming an alliance so Cass can get on with her mission.

"Gotham City Sirens: Ladies' Night Out" is by Paula Sevenbergen (writer) Rob Haynes (breakdowns) Emanuela Lupacchino (pencils) Wade von Grawbadger (inks) John Kalisz (colours) Becca Carey (letters). Catwoman and Poison Ivy spring a domestic droid named Dee Dee (get it?) from servitude and they have a night on the town at a bar. The bar is run by Sam Bradley and both super heroes and villains can imbibe in peace. Fans of Sex and the City may like this. Not a lot of drama until the last page when the joint is raided by Magistrate goons and major characters are shot.

 Future State: The Next Batman #3 - John Ridley (writer) Nick Derington (breakdowns) Laura Braga (art) Arif Prianto (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). This is the "uh-oh" moment in the story where the hero is felled by the villain. A wounded Batman is attacked by the murderer he's trying to bring to justice. I saw that coming.

I like the change with Black Lightning in the Outsiders back-up.

I like the art in the Arkham Knights back-up even though the dialogue is eye roll inducing.

 Future State: The Next Batman #4 - Jace/Batman lives, as if that was in any doubt. This story would have been a lot more interesting if Bruce/Batman was really dead. Even if the Future State line of comics dies out this Next Batman is a cop out. The Batgirls story ends with Cassandra/Orphan saving Barbara/Oracle and the Resistance gaining ground on the Magistrates. The Gotham City Sirens story ends with Catwoman and Poison Ivy helping the Resistance get an advantage in their war with the Cybers thanks to Dee Dee.

 I admit that I was sucked in by the hype for this mini. The Next Batman being black intrigued me. The story itself was meh and I would not have missed anything by not reading it. I was not engaged as a mature reader but I think someone in their teens might like all the stories in these four issues.