Last week was a great week for both SwagHer Magazine and myself. I stepped out on faith, and it paid off big time. I am not one to say it is not about who you know but what you know. I strongly disagree. One thing Karlyn always stressed to me was to surround myself with like minded positive people and that is what I have been doing. I know that it is paying off.
Today I feel so motivated and inspired. I feel good. For those that know me personally, then you know this is not common. I am the world worse worrier. I guess it is the Libra in me that looks at both the good and the bad, but lately things have been good.
Last Sunday, I spoke with Gavin Richard, author of Katrina, and he agreed to do a blog talk radio show with me. I am so excited. I asked Gavin, because he wrote Katrina at the age of something like 22. How many Black men do you know of writing non-fiction books at the age just to prove a professor wrong for talking bad about their city. Gavin's city is New Orleans by the way, so you know he has swag.
Friday, I met with the web designer. She has been trying to explain to me where we can implement advertising on the site. I wanted to be positive that I understood everything before actually trying to sell the space, but to be honest I am so ready to sell, because at this time, I do not make a single dime. I only make expenses, but in my heart I know they are going to pay off. SwagHer is my calling. I can feel it. Anyway, so as we are sitting there talking I began to tell her about some of the problems I have been encountering with publishing and some of the things I do not like about the site. Guess what we came up with...we are not only going to redo the site, we are going to move it! I am so excited and that also means we will have a new SHORTER URL. That may be small beans to some but to me who has to call that out, but for me it is a relief. We should have things up and running by the new year.
Saturday, I interviewed Kim Bullock aka Brown Suga of Brown Suga Radio. What intrigued me about Brown Suga was her current situation. I am not going to get into her situation at this time, but I will say her faith is strong and I admire that. By the way, Brown Suga is from Las Vegas, NV. Notice how we are growing further out. Her article is going to be a good read.
Sunday, I interviewed Stephanie Alva, owner of My Life Keys. Stephanie is a life coach who is really doing her thing. She has demand all over the globe. I was appalled when her publicist contacted me, but it was hard to get into her schedule. She is based in Atlanta. For our interview, I had to set Atlanta time on my iPhone world clock. Even after doing this, I took a nap and then woke up and read the e-mail and then thought I had another hour to do it. I almost missed the Great Alva again! Luckily she called me back and had a few minutes to talk before an engagement she had. The interview was great. She had gave me a story within fifteen minutes! As we ended our call, I apologized again for not calling at the scheduled time and was explaining how busy I had been. She told me this, "Don't worry about what all you have to do. Keep your mind focused on the end result. Don't worry about the advertising. Don't worry about the stories. Think about the end result, you will be a publisher. You will be a writer." I needed those words at that time, because even as I blog I am exhausted from this weekend. Yet someone told me the same thing on Twitter not too long ago. I had been worrying about not having writers, but i did not want to look for any because I was afraid they may not have been serious and committed. @SugartheGirl told me to just continue writing and they will come. She was so right. I have gained two new writers and two poets. I got them at times when though I needed them, I was so focused on just getting the job done that I was not worried about it, but it happened.
The little secret, I mentioned on Facebook the other day is.... Matthew and I got married Friday! It was very small and private. We went to the justice of the peace, but we are planning to have a ceremony once we are better situated financially. I keep looking at my ring, trying to believe it. I have only shared this here. No where else, and I would kind of like to keep quiet just a tad bit longer.
Sooo... that is a review of my week as I stepped out on faith.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Hailey
Today is a special day for me. Five years ago on this day, I gave birth to my youngest daughter, Hailey Serena Derkota Felder. Yet while this is a special day, it is also a sad one. Hailey is my daughter I have been fighting for custody for almost two years. It has been the hardest experience of my life. It has also been my motivation.
Custody battles are something I had only heard about on TV. I remember the day when my mother called me while on I was on the interstate leaving Baton Rouge on my way to Mississippi for my other daughter's (Dylan) fifth birthday party. I had been working extra hard to make sure I had gotten all the things she had asked for, a necklace and earrings and some other toys. My mother had gotten her a ring, which was the thing she had wanted the most. We were working extra hard to make sure her birthday was a good one because, unlike Hailey and her dad, Dylan's dad has never been a part of her life. She had only saw him maybe two or three times then, and I had to drive hours to the state's penitentiary for that. I was so busy trying to play mama and daddy to one daughter, I had not given much thought to losing the other to a man who though then claimed to love her but before would not claim her and would not even visit her or help with anything.
When I accepted the job here in Baton Rouge, I thought I was doing a good thing getting away from D., Hailey's dad. I was 23 at the time and he and I had been messing around since I was 18. 17 actually, because he promised to take me on a date the summer before my birthday but stood me up and then he resurfaced and took me out the week before my 18th birthday. From that day on, I was in love. The thing with D. was he would come around for periods of time and then disappear. Not many people knew him, so I had no way of knowing what was going on. Finally someone told me he had a girlfriend that lived out of town. He disappeared from December until about April of the next year. He waltzed back into my life claiming he wanted to be with me and then disappeared again. I remember addressing a graduation invitation to him with hopes of him, but he never showed up so...
That time, I said I was done with him and resumed my relationship with my son's father. Soon after, I discovered I was pregnant. Although I was with Demetrius, I was so afraid it could've been D's, so I told Demetrius about my one night rendezvous with D. He began to tell me well he could not have any more kids. I was nineteen at the time and believed him. Plus I did not want to have another baby for him when he had not ever been around to help with my son, because he was always in training school or jail. Shortly after he was back in jail again, and D. came back again. He knew I was pregnant, but he never really stepped up. I had my daughter at 7 and half months. Because I had already had my son at 6 months the doctors were worried and kept in the hospital for almost five days before deciding it was time for me to have her. D. came to the hospital and sat with me once. I had been rushed to Jackson a city an hour and a half away from my home because they were better equipped, and he was staying in Jackson attending barber school. The day decided to take my baby, just happened to be the day I had finally allowed my mother to go back home, because they had said earlier it would not be the day. However, D. was already supposed to been coming to see me. About an hour after she left, the doctor checked me and said it was time. I wanted to wait because I did not want deliver alone. I had already done that before, and D. was supposed to be on his way anyway.
The whole time while waiting on the epidural to kick in and the cleaning and all of that, I kept expecting him to show up but he never did. I was terrified. I was worried about my delivery but I was also so worried that maybe he had been speeding and had an accident or something. I remember praying for him on the table. I delivered my daughter alone. When the medicine wore off, I could not wait to call him, but he never answered. This went on for days. Somehow my mother reached him one day and he said he would go and see the baby. Those were some of the most depressing days of my life. I remembered asking him what name he liked and him telling me Dasia, so that is what I named the baby, but after he never showed up, I changed her name to Dylan. I got so depressed that I got sick and to be hospitalized again. He only answered the phone for me because I called from the hospital number. I do not remember what he said. When I came home, that is when his girlfriend called asking me the things she had heard.
For a while we did not talk. Then he came around because his parents took a liking to Dylan. They only had boys and no grandchildren. We were going to apply for child support and although he was in agreement the case worker ordered us to do a paternity test, which is when we discovered Dylan was not his daughter.
I was just as shocked as he was, but I suppose he never got over it because it damaged his and his girlfriend's relationship. His parents claimed they understood, and I honestly thought they did. He and I did not talk for months but I began to see him again after growing tired of my abusive boyfriend, who I thought would be able to replace those feelings I had for him. I had never stopped loving him, and I thought we were going to be together one day. He told me he was with his girlfriend because he needed her support to finish school. I believed him.
I know the exact day, Hailey was conceived. I remember it clearly because he kind of freaked out during it, and it kind of hurt my feelings. A couple of weeks later, I remember us sitting on the side of the bed and him telling me, "We both know what you need to do." To this day, I get teary eyed when I hear him say that, but I tried to explain, I could not bring myself to do such a thing.
I tried to continue on my relationship with Angry Man as I will refer to my abusive boyfriend, but had I stayed with him he probably would have killed me. I was once again faced with the worries of not being totally sure. D. never said he and I would be together but he always said you never know what may happen in the future. We continued to see each other throughout the pregnancy but I never felt comfortable trying to just put my unborn child on him.
I delivered Hailey alone as well. By this time, my mother was in prison, so I was already having to take care of my other two children alone. I was doing ok, but having to do everything alone while working 10-14 hour shifts was hard. Twice they had to stop my labor. Of course, the worrying played a big part. I had even tried talking with a profit, and to be honest everything he told me was true or came true but he could not tell me which man was the father of my baby. He did tell me that my child would be a prophet as well and instructed me to anoint her by drinking oil and rubbing oil over my belly. I tried it but I still do not know.The night I finally delivered, the doctor told me to leave his office and drive straight to the hospital. He never said I was in labor but by then I could tell, and I could not tell him before I drove to the hospital I had to make sure I had my other two children situated.
I gave birth to Hailey and she was 4lbs and 9oz, the combined weight of my son and other daughter. That was my hardest delivery. I have always had cesareans because of how young and small I was when I had my son.I began having anxiety attacks while they were preparing me before the procedure, so they had to stick me quite a few times before I actually received the epidural. I was back in Jackson, so I only had my uncle who came that night to check on me and one of my old coworkers who worked at a plant there to visit me. It was very depressing but I knew I had to get up because I had to get back home to my other kids.
D. and I continued to see each other when I came home but he never acted like there was the slightest possibility of Hailey being his daughter. After a petty argument betwee]n us one day, I decided to stop seeing him. For a little while I did, but when the paternity for Angry Man came back negative, I had to have dealings with him again. He kept blowing me off and we kept arguing. I told him if we got the test results back and she was his I was taping them to my car windows and telling his girlfriend. He told me do what I had to do. I'll never forget those words because that is what I have had to do since then.
Though we had been bitter toward each other then, he and I resumed our affair after seeing each other during the testing. Yet while waiting on the results, I heard of his engagement. It was something I had been waiting to hear for quite sometime but it still broke my heart. He never denied it. He just acted as if it was nothing. When the results came back, his mother began to come get Hailey and he would act as if that was the only time he saw her though he and I were still sleeping around. The week before his wedding I kept waiting for him to say he was not going to go through with it but he never did. He did call me up until the day before asking for his "birthday present" however. I remember the day of the wedding I was working at Sears, and one of my classmate's mother worked with me. She asked how did I feel knowing he was going to get married that day. I do not remember my response, but I remember later going into the men's Levi's section and crying as I pretended to straighten up the bottom row of jeans. The man I thought I was my knight in shining armour whom I had waited to get his act together for years, was now married to someone else.
I do not even remember how it happened again but somehow we got back together again. I went through another relationship but when he went to jail, I went back to D. again. When I graduated from community college, I wanted to break the cycle and show him I was better than how he treated me. He never put his hands on me but sometimes he hinted that I was not good enough, and marrying another woman is more than a hint. He tried to discourage me from moving to Baton Rouge but I thought things would be better if I did. I was ashamed there, because I could never deny the fact that I loved him. I still do even now...
I asked my mother to watch my kids when I began working in Louisiana but because she had a small child herself, I also asked his mother to help. It seemed fine. Once before someone had told me that his mother had said she got tired of me asking for things, and that had really hurt my feelings. I could not call D. whenever Hailey needed something, so I had to call her, and she had always claimed it was not a problem, but after hearing that I stopped taking her calls. When she finally reached and I told her, she swore to God, she had not said that and I believed her. I looked up to her and her husband, still partly wishing that D. and I had a chance to be like them one day. I even bought her a Mother's Day cake and had wanted to invite them to my graduation but did not want to cause an awkward situation.
Imagine my surprise when I received the call from my mother that day saying a constable was looking for me and how she had begged him to tell her why and discovered it was a custody suit. I did not know what to do. I called D.'s mother first. She claimed she did not know anything about it, and said she would talk to him to see what was going on. After meeting the constable with the papers, I went to her house and cried. I really trusted her. She claimed she would try talking to him and that she had not known this was going on.
I later found out his lawyer was their family lawyer, and she has been very involved in our case. That was a hard pill for me to swallow, because I trusted this woman with my daughter and looked up to her.
In our first court appearance, the judge granted him the domiciliant. He has married in two income household and I am single with two other children. The fact that I was trying to build my life in another state was seen as unstable. I had not even been gone a year and my daughter was spending more time with both of our mothers than either of us but he was still in the same state. She granted me visitation on every weekend but the third weekend of the month. The fifth was to be at our discretion and I could keep her until the end of the school day, but since the paper work was not typed up with those specifics I have to ask his permission for extra time. He has just began to grant it, but I think it is only because we will be back in court again and he wants to seem like he does try to compromise.
A part of me keeps hoping he will drop the suit and let my daughter come home to be with her brother and sister, but it has yet to happen. A few weeks before we went to court the first time, we tried to sit down and come to an agreement. I begged him to let me keep her. I even told him I would agree to no child support. He had began welding by this time so I thought maybe money was the issue. I still think it might be but he acted like he was going to agree and my lawyer and I kept waiting on his lawyer to call, but they never did. We almost went to court unprepared thinking we had came to an agreement, but like always he left me hanging.
Having to go court and stand and be judged by people who do not know me and know nothing about my character has been another one of the worse experiences of my life. I feel like a criminal when I have done nothing wrong, and my accuser is the man I have spent most of my adult life chasing trying to get to love me back. I was well known where I was from because of my accomplishments in school but also because of my mother and her history. I no longer feel comfortable there because of all the shame and how I feel people must look at me for not being able to keep my daughter. People used to speak highly of me, because I had my son at 14 but was still very involved in school. I worked and was in almost every club including the band, and I was student body president. Now I feel like people think I was always a fake or something. Pretending to be better than I was, but I have always been upfront. That is why I tell people about the suit, because I do not want to seem like I have it all together when I do not, but I am striving to get there.
No one knows how tiresome it is to drive six hours every weekend to get my daughter. The three on our way Baton Rouge are peaceful but the other three are so unhappy. She cries the majority of the time. I try to take her at night or early in the morning hoping she will stay sleep but as soon as she rises she goes right back to crying. It is so hard to not let her see me do the same. Of course, Dylan cries along with her and I hate to split my daughters up like that. What really shocks me is when my son, TyAaron who is 11, silently cries too. No family deserves to serve this kind of pain.
I remember one day while pregnant, I was standing in my utility room washing Dylan's too little things and thinking about how anxious I was for my baby to arrive because then I felt like my little family would be complete with just us four. When she got here, I thought my wait was over....
Custody battles are something I had only heard about on TV. I remember the day when my mother called me while on I was on the interstate leaving Baton Rouge on my way to Mississippi for my other daughter's (Dylan) fifth birthday party. I had been working extra hard to make sure I had gotten all the things she had asked for, a necklace and earrings and some other toys. My mother had gotten her a ring, which was the thing she had wanted the most. We were working extra hard to make sure her birthday was a good one because, unlike Hailey and her dad, Dylan's dad has never been a part of her life. She had only saw him maybe two or three times then, and I had to drive hours to the state's penitentiary for that. I was so busy trying to play mama and daddy to one daughter, I had not given much thought to losing the other to a man who though then claimed to love her but before would not claim her and would not even visit her or help with anything.
When I accepted the job here in Baton Rouge, I thought I was doing a good thing getting away from D., Hailey's dad. I was 23 at the time and he and I had been messing around since I was 18. 17 actually, because he promised to take me on a date the summer before my birthday but stood me up and then he resurfaced and took me out the week before my 18th birthday. From that day on, I was in love. The thing with D. was he would come around for periods of time and then disappear. Not many people knew him, so I had no way of knowing what was going on. Finally someone told me he had a girlfriend that lived out of town. He disappeared from December until about April of the next year. He waltzed back into my life claiming he wanted to be with me and then disappeared again. I remember addressing a graduation invitation to him with hopes of him, but he never showed up so...
That time, I said I was done with him and resumed my relationship with my son's father. Soon after, I discovered I was pregnant. Although I was with Demetrius, I was so afraid it could've been D's, so I told Demetrius about my one night rendezvous with D. He began to tell me well he could not have any more kids. I was nineteen at the time and believed him. Plus I did not want to have another baby for him when he had not ever been around to help with my son, because he was always in training school or jail. Shortly after he was back in jail again, and D. came back again. He knew I was pregnant, but he never really stepped up. I had my daughter at 7 and half months. Because I had already had my son at 6 months the doctors were worried and kept in the hospital for almost five days before deciding it was time for me to have her. D. came to the hospital and sat with me once. I had been rushed to Jackson a city an hour and a half away from my home because they were better equipped, and he was staying in Jackson attending barber school. The day decided to take my baby, just happened to be the day I had finally allowed my mother to go back home, because they had said earlier it would not be the day. However, D. was already supposed to been coming to see me. About an hour after she left, the doctor checked me and said it was time. I wanted to wait because I did not want deliver alone. I had already done that before, and D. was supposed to be on his way anyway.
The whole time while waiting on the epidural to kick in and the cleaning and all of that, I kept expecting him to show up but he never did. I was terrified. I was worried about my delivery but I was also so worried that maybe he had been speeding and had an accident or something. I remember praying for him on the table. I delivered my daughter alone. When the medicine wore off, I could not wait to call him, but he never answered. This went on for days. Somehow my mother reached him one day and he said he would go and see the baby. Those were some of the most depressing days of my life. I remembered asking him what name he liked and him telling me Dasia, so that is what I named the baby, but after he never showed up, I changed her name to Dylan. I got so depressed that I got sick and to be hospitalized again. He only answered the phone for me because I called from the hospital number. I do not remember what he said. When I came home, that is when his girlfriend called asking me the things she had heard.
For a while we did not talk. Then he came around because his parents took a liking to Dylan. They only had boys and no grandchildren. We were going to apply for child support and although he was in agreement the case worker ordered us to do a paternity test, which is when we discovered Dylan was not his daughter.
I was just as shocked as he was, but I suppose he never got over it because it damaged his and his girlfriend's relationship. His parents claimed they understood, and I honestly thought they did. He and I did not talk for months but I began to see him again after growing tired of my abusive boyfriend, who I thought would be able to replace those feelings I had for him. I had never stopped loving him, and I thought we were going to be together one day. He told me he was with his girlfriend because he needed her support to finish school. I believed him.
I know the exact day, Hailey was conceived. I remember it clearly because he kind of freaked out during it, and it kind of hurt my feelings. A couple of weeks later, I remember us sitting on the side of the bed and him telling me, "We both know what you need to do." To this day, I get teary eyed when I hear him say that, but I tried to explain, I could not bring myself to do such a thing.
I tried to continue on my relationship with Angry Man as I will refer to my abusive boyfriend, but had I stayed with him he probably would have killed me. I was once again faced with the worries of not being totally sure. D. never said he and I would be together but he always said you never know what may happen in the future. We continued to see each other throughout the pregnancy but I never felt comfortable trying to just put my unborn child on him.
I delivered Hailey alone as well. By this time, my mother was in prison, so I was already having to take care of my other two children alone. I was doing ok, but having to do everything alone while working 10-14 hour shifts was hard. Twice they had to stop my labor. Of course, the worrying played a big part. I had even tried talking with a profit, and to be honest everything he told me was true or came true but he could not tell me which man was the father of my baby. He did tell me that my child would be a prophet as well and instructed me to anoint her by drinking oil and rubbing oil over my belly. I tried it but I still do not know.The night I finally delivered, the doctor told me to leave his office and drive straight to the hospital. He never said I was in labor but by then I could tell, and I could not tell him before I drove to the hospital I had to make sure I had my other two children situated.
I gave birth to Hailey and she was 4lbs and 9oz, the combined weight of my son and other daughter. That was my hardest delivery. I have always had cesareans because of how young and small I was when I had my son.I began having anxiety attacks while they were preparing me before the procedure, so they had to stick me quite a few times before I actually received the epidural. I was back in Jackson, so I only had my uncle who came that night to check on me and one of my old coworkers who worked at a plant there to visit me. It was very depressing but I knew I had to get up because I had to get back home to my other kids.
D. and I continued to see each other when I came home but he never acted like there was the slightest possibility of Hailey being his daughter. After a petty argument betwee]n us one day, I decided to stop seeing him. For a little while I did, but when the paternity for Angry Man came back negative, I had to have dealings with him again. He kept blowing me off and we kept arguing. I told him if we got the test results back and she was his I was taping them to my car windows and telling his girlfriend. He told me do what I had to do. I'll never forget those words because that is what I have had to do since then.
Though we had been bitter toward each other then, he and I resumed our affair after seeing each other during the testing. Yet while waiting on the results, I heard of his engagement. It was something I had been waiting to hear for quite sometime but it still broke my heart. He never denied it. He just acted as if it was nothing. When the results came back, his mother began to come get Hailey and he would act as if that was the only time he saw her though he and I were still sleeping around. The week before his wedding I kept waiting for him to say he was not going to go through with it but he never did. He did call me up until the day before asking for his "birthday present" however. I remember the day of the wedding I was working at Sears, and one of my classmate's mother worked with me. She asked how did I feel knowing he was going to get married that day. I do not remember my response, but I remember later going into the men's Levi's section and crying as I pretended to straighten up the bottom row of jeans. The man I thought I was my knight in shining armour whom I had waited to get his act together for years, was now married to someone else.
I do not even remember how it happened again but somehow we got back together again. I went through another relationship but when he went to jail, I went back to D. again. When I graduated from community college, I wanted to break the cycle and show him I was better than how he treated me. He never put his hands on me but sometimes he hinted that I was not good enough, and marrying another woman is more than a hint. He tried to discourage me from moving to Baton Rouge but I thought things would be better if I did. I was ashamed there, because I could never deny the fact that I loved him. I still do even now...
I asked my mother to watch my kids when I began working in Louisiana but because she had a small child herself, I also asked his mother to help. It seemed fine. Once before someone had told me that his mother had said she got tired of me asking for things, and that had really hurt my feelings. I could not call D. whenever Hailey needed something, so I had to call her, and she had always claimed it was not a problem, but after hearing that I stopped taking her calls. When she finally reached and I told her, she swore to God, she had not said that and I believed her. I looked up to her and her husband, still partly wishing that D. and I had a chance to be like them one day. I even bought her a Mother's Day cake and had wanted to invite them to my graduation but did not want to cause an awkward situation.
Imagine my surprise when I received the call from my mother that day saying a constable was looking for me and how she had begged him to tell her why and discovered it was a custody suit. I did not know what to do. I called D.'s mother first. She claimed she did not know anything about it, and said she would talk to him to see what was going on. After meeting the constable with the papers, I went to her house and cried. I really trusted her. She claimed she would try talking to him and that she had not known this was going on.
I later found out his lawyer was their family lawyer, and she has been very involved in our case. That was a hard pill for me to swallow, because I trusted this woman with my daughter and looked up to her.
In our first court appearance, the judge granted him the domiciliant. He has married in two income household and I am single with two other children. The fact that I was trying to build my life in another state was seen as unstable. I had not even been gone a year and my daughter was spending more time with both of our mothers than either of us but he was still in the same state. She granted me visitation on every weekend but the third weekend of the month. The fifth was to be at our discretion and I could keep her until the end of the school day, but since the paper work was not typed up with those specifics I have to ask his permission for extra time. He has just began to grant it, but I think it is only because we will be back in court again and he wants to seem like he does try to compromise.
A part of me keeps hoping he will drop the suit and let my daughter come home to be with her brother and sister, but it has yet to happen. A few weeks before we went to court the first time, we tried to sit down and come to an agreement. I begged him to let me keep her. I even told him I would agree to no child support. He had began welding by this time so I thought maybe money was the issue. I still think it might be but he acted like he was going to agree and my lawyer and I kept waiting on his lawyer to call, but they never did. We almost went to court unprepared thinking we had came to an agreement, but like always he left me hanging.
Having to go court and stand and be judged by people who do not know me and know nothing about my character has been another one of the worse experiences of my life. I feel like a criminal when I have done nothing wrong, and my accuser is the man I have spent most of my adult life chasing trying to get to love me back. I was well known where I was from because of my accomplishments in school but also because of my mother and her history. I no longer feel comfortable there because of all the shame and how I feel people must look at me for not being able to keep my daughter. People used to speak highly of me, because I had my son at 14 but was still very involved in school. I worked and was in almost every club including the band, and I was student body president. Now I feel like people think I was always a fake or something. Pretending to be better than I was, but I have always been upfront. That is why I tell people about the suit, because I do not want to seem like I have it all together when I do not, but I am striving to get there.
No one knows how tiresome it is to drive six hours every weekend to get my daughter. The three on our way Baton Rouge are peaceful but the other three are so unhappy. She cries the majority of the time. I try to take her at night or early in the morning hoping she will stay sleep but as soon as she rises she goes right back to crying. It is so hard to not let her see me do the same. Of course, Dylan cries along with her and I hate to split my daughters up like that. What really shocks me is when my son, TyAaron who is 11, silently cries too. No family deserves to serve this kind of pain.
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