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In love with this JSK I wore for the first time today ♡

Hair strawberries: Unknown

JSK: Blooming Snow White Print Ribbon JSK by Baby, the stars shine bright

Blouse: Powell Craft

Bloomers: made by me

Socks: aliexpress

Shoes: Clarks unstructured

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daily affirmations:

i am kind

i am in control of my emotions

it does not bother me when someone is in the kitchen while i was planning to be in there alone

everyone in the house has the right to be in the kitchen

i am kind and in control of my emotions even when someone is in the kitchen while i was planning to be in there alone

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Peeta: I'd like to wake up with you every day for the rest of our lives.

Katniss: I wake up at 5am every day to go hunting.

Peeta: I'd like to see you at some point every day for the rest of our lives.

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what I think will happen if I message my mutuals

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Tchaikovsky was inspired to create the piece, ‘Swan Lake’ after watching the film, ‘Barbie of Swan Lake (2003)’. Close friends of Tchaikovsky reported him saying it was, “one of the most emotionally thrilling and aesthetically divine” films he’d ever seen.

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Why do you use It/Its pronouns...

i got tagged in elementary school and never recovered

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The first rule of cable management is "out of sight, out of mind"

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2020-12-26

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Putting this upfront: I know I’m asking too much of this website but don’t be annoying. Pretend you can have a list of absolutely nots, and this is not just work or sex but any and everything.

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*meeeting a friend for coffee* friend: how's work been?

me: oh you know *mimes putting a gun in my mouth but i moan a little and start sucking the barrel and pushing it deeper

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Dr Ignoreitandhopeitgoesaway does make some good points

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cats are little household celebrities

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Jobs I think The Warriors have outside of their gang activities (because beating people up doesn't pay the bills.)

Cochise: A line cook at one of those gas station restaurants where the food is bad and the coffee is worse.

Cowgirl: Helps out with pony rides at Coney island. The hat was part of the somewhat embarrassing uniform which Cowgirl now tries to spin into her own joke.

Fox: A beautiful young housewife to a man so goddam self-obsessed he doesn't notice her leaving sunset after sunset.

Cleon: Sole member of the gang to get paid under-the-table by the Coney Island residents. They don't want a worse gang taking her place.

Ajax: Full 80s business-woman. Wears the power suit, whip-smart with paperwork, calculates like a machine and swallows the jokes, the comments, the micro-aggressions. Makes her mama proud arriving home at five o' clock but works "late" more often than not.

Rembrandt: A waitress at one of those gas station restaurants where the food is bad and the coffee is worse.

Swan: Carnie at Coney Island. I can see her running one of those duck netting games or boredly switching a tilt-a-whirl on and off.

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Katniss stares at the figure in the doorway for a second, and then turns away, shaking her head.

"Absolutely not."

"But Katnissssss"

The mock whiny voice forces a smile out of her even as she struggles not to yield.

"No"

"There's no-where else for him to go . . ."

Peeta steps into the kitchen anyway, sing-song, wiggling the poor little stray, trying to draw her eyes to the pitiful sight. Paws too big. Ears too floppy. Eyes too dark and wet for him to resist.

"Go give it to Ripper, she has the- she takes care of mangy things like that."

"Ripper's the one who came to me, she's overflowing. She can't take another puppy."

The little creature stirs uncomfortably, lurching up to lick at scarred hands. Katniss slams a pot down a little too softly to seem in control.

"Buttercup will kill him."

"We'll teach them to be friends."

"I suppose you think I'm going to walk him?"

"I don't want you to be lonely in the woods."

She loses the struggle but oh, how she clings to the fight.

"Don't you think between you and me and buttercup and Haymitch, there's too many mouths to feed already? The last thing Greasy Sae wants is to add some mutt to her shoppi-"

The word slips out before she can stop it and it shudders in the air between the two of them. When Katniss turns around, the look on Peeta's face is more than she can bear.

It's a sun-shadowing grin.

The puppy stays.

. . .

He sleeps in a basket in the living room, filled with all the unwanted blankets of the house. He's too small still to manage the stairs by himself, but every day, the basket creeps closer and closer to the bedroom.

When Peeta was young, he dreamed of having his own dog. Spurred by the sad sight of the next-door neighbour's flea-ridden bone-bag, he imagined feeding it his unwanted sausage roll scraps by the fire. He imagined taking it for walks around the town. He imagined the mighty and powerful dog (in his dreams) sleeping by his bed, and guarding Peeta from robbers in the deep of night. Of it launching an attack against their mother when she raised the griddle pan. That dog died when he was eleven. Very sad.

This dog is different. It has to be shown where the low saucer of water sits. He sniffs indifferently at the sausage rolls but huffs up the envious filling of his meat pies with gusto. Greasy Sae starts bringing in bones from the butcher, and her grand-daughter asks what the little puppy's name is.

Katniss scratches behind his ear.

"Dog" she shrugs.

Peeta objects "No! Something sentimental . . . sweetheart."

Katniss rolls her eyes but waves for him to go on. He balks at the short notice, eyes darting around. He looks up and down the dog, patches of everywhere, of speckled grey, of deep black, of the distinct orange-yellow and he lands on . . .

"Cheese bun."

"Too long" Katniss says.

"What do you mean too long?"

"What do you think I mean? It takes too long to say."

They quarrel for a couple of days, jumping words between each other. Peeta strings out Ebony, Darlin', Powder and Rainbow. Katniss blocks and offers up Buttercup Two or Jet. They talk about it so much, they don't even notice the gaping back door or the puppy slipping out until it shows up hanging by the neck from Haymitch's hand, raging that the goddam dog had a peculiar taste in spilled beer. He sits the rambunctious pair down and doesn't leave until they pestered into taking the name

"Stout!"

. . .

Katniss is patient, knowing. Stout learns to sit. He learns how to come when his name is called. How to lie at the door while she's waiting. Peeta learns how to clean the dog piss off the floor, and together the trio learn who the real Alpha of the house is- Buttercup. The two pets aren't friends by a long shot. But as long as Stout knows not to disturb the patriarch when he's sleeping, all get along as they should.

Eventually, Katniss brings Stout into the woods. He's louder than Peeta in the autumn leaves, apparently and more of a nuisance to find when he runs away. He helps Katniss unload the snares. Day by day, he learns to be stiller, when told. Day by day, he grows into his massive paws. Day by day, he gets faster. Until he runs like a bullet, just as silent and deadly to the birds and the woodland animals. Then, he begins to grow fat and happy on stag bones.

On days when Katniss goes out by herself, Peeta brings Stout to the bakery. Stout lauds himself the task of herding the customers in, of greeting them at the door and cleaning up the buttery crumbs they leave behind.

At home, on lazy days, he chases the geese. They don't seem to mind so much, as far as anyone can tell.

. . .

Greasy Sae comes in one day- just to meet- her cleaning days are over, her grand-daughters taking over the family business. She finds a cat, lounging on her favourite seat on the couch and an overeager dog tripping her up at the door and every sort of bird flying outside the windows, drawn like poor sailors to Katniss's trilling as she butchers in the kitchen. Peeta sorts through the seasonal furs they seek to either keep or sell in the winter season.

Greasy Sae throws her hands into the air "Haymitch warned me I'd be toiling at the madhouse! No-one told me about a zoo!"

Katniss and Peeta laugh, but one of the geese breaks in. Then they scramble.

. . .

One day, Peeta comes home from the bakery late. Tired and covered in flour, he finds his bed mostly taken up by a mixture of fur and lanky limbs. Katniss buried under the dog they both agreed would not be allowed on the furniture and the cat napping on top of her neck.

"You know" Peeta offers. "At times like these, I'd like to kiss my lovely wife."

"Well." Katniss says, muffled. "That's a shame."

. . .

Greasy Sae dies and is buried. Buttercup dies and is buried. Peeta starts finding grey in his hair, and it doesn't worry him as much as it would some other people. Haymitch leaves the house less and less than he ever did, visiting the doctor more and more. New neighbours flood the district, some immigrants from far-flung places and some children, growing older and taking their places in a community. Peeta realises- with a shock- that his next-door neighbour is at the age he was when he was reaped. Katniss watches from the doorstep as a mother and daughter scream at each other over dresses, dances, and wonders, how anyone who looks so young could ever be considered a revolutionary symbol. She's only seventeen, that girl. She's so young.

The dog jumps up and down, excited to show the two new kittens where everything goes and how everything must be, just so. Greasy Sae's strange grand-daughter goes on cleaning their house, teaching her daughter how to do the same.

Katniss catches Peeta playing peek-a-boo with a baby in a pram. She and Peeta take Stout all the way down to the lake. That night, she dreams about puppies.

. . .