#I have literally never been on a vacation with friends that wasn't for a convention

[atomskdluffy]

Really looking forward to vacation this weekend. Not looking forward to the 4 hour drive to get there of course, but if it's leading towards a few days on the beach I'm more than ok with that. Here's hoping the sun, sand, and sea will do my body some good!

[songfell-ut]

**If this makes you feel things, please read moar**

Hiya, people. I have a really simple problem: I need money, and I would greatly appreciate receiving some here. To that end, I want to produce NSFW Songfell material (not individual commissions, but one collection of short pieces) at a rate of $1 for 20 words, up to 10,000 words.

Why? The short answer is that I am not facing homelessness or any other real emergency, we just really need a break. The long answer? Well...

*background ripples as flashback sequence begins*

Let's turn the clock back 18 years, when I was a wee lass of 19. I was moderating an anime message board for the Anime Web Turnpike (which was literally just a list of links to people's fan sites). I encountered a lot of cool people, especially another mod that I flirted with for a while and wound up driving a few hours to meet. We hit it off okay, but mostly as friends, which was fine. (If you're out there, Blue-Ghost, hi! Hope you're doing well!)

A couple weeks after this momentous occasion (I met a guy! For...sort of a date! And I didn't get murdered by an Internet stranger!!), I saw a post from a kid I'd noticed here and there. He'd never really stood out, just seemed kind of whiny and morose, as you do. Well, it turned out he was on summer break at New Mexico State University, and his mom had just gotten a job in my city in Texas, so he would be moving there for a few months--did anyone want to meet up and show him around?

Gonna be honest: I almost deleted it. I didn't really like this dude, and I didn't want our board to facilitate stranger danger. Buuut then I thought of meeting the other guy, and not getting chopped into pieces, and how I'd wished he lived closer so we could do friend stuff...so, with not much to lose (and the power to ban his potentially creepy ass), I PMed the whiny guy and offered to show him around town.

He was excited and non-murdersome, so I went ahead and agreed to meet him at his parents' house. To my surprise, it was barely 15 minutes from my parents, in a good neighborhood. Neat! So I went over there the next day.

...I don't think I'll ever forget driving down that street for the first time and rounding the corner, then immediately spotting my future husband. He wasn't the slouchy, twiggy douche I'd envisioned: he was a big, bearded teddy bear standing on the lawn with a nice smile, sporting a convention-style name badge and a Jimmy Buffet tarp held aloft to be sure I'd know which house it was. And I went...hm. Okay, cool.

Turned out his name was Mike, and he wasn't whiny. He was a shy, self-effacing, fairly awkward dude, and I thought it was kinda cute.

...I could literally go on writing this for hours, and I will do so if there's a lot of interest. To summarize, we met on the porch of my parents' house at 1 am just a few weeks later, the night before I was set to go live in Ohio for the summer. It was so awkward, we didn't know if we had to sign something or how exactly you get to be boyfriend and girlfriend, but we really liked each other, so yeah

...

Well. The story of how we met was cute, and I'm happy to report that we've been together ever since, married almost 10 years, and are the parents of a beautiful little girl. But life since then hasn't been very cute. We both eventually finished college with English degrees, and I have had literally two dozen jobs that my mental health has not allowed me to stick with--I was only diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD and bipolar disorder type II a few years ago, nearly in my mid-30s. I'm now a stay-at-home mom, which does not pay well.

So, yeah, I do not have and cannot keep a job that will pull my weight in our very modest household, much less allow us to do anything cool. We never had a honeymoon, just walked around downtown the day after the wedding, and then I went back to school on Monday; we've never taken a vacation longer than an overnight trip or a weekend in a local hotel. Our families are amazing (little did I know visiting his house that day, I would end up living there off and on for two years) and I fully credit them with our survival, but they can't fix me. D:

Meanwhile, Mike is drowning. He's suffered from depression and a boatload of health problems due to his weight, and has spent three years working his ass off at an editing position that demands PhD-level skill but pays less than a goddamn fast-food job. I have been a financial millstone around his neck for a long, long time, and he never says a word to me about it because he's watched me try and fail for over 15 years straight.

(How sad is it that I barely even remember he has $50,000 out in student loans? It's such an immovable, impossible thing that we're not even worried about it, just keep applying for forbearance and waiting for the 25-year mark when it'll be forgiven. Only 12 more to go!)

This is depressing, but good context for why we want to go to his hometown in New Mexico for our 10th wedding anniversary, and why we need some help. I paid our motel and airfare way in advance, but our babysitting AND housesitting have fallen through (long story) and we have to reschedule everything, which is $204 for the plane tickets and...hopefully, that's it, but even that amount kinda wrecks our food and transportation budget. (Rental car prices rn are insane omg)

I was on the cusp of asking Mike this past week if we should just cancel the damn thing and do our usual anniversary celebration of hanging out downtown for a couple days, but after a particularly bad day at work, he just blurted out, "Oh my God, we have to go on this fucking trip," and my heart broke in a zillion pieces. D:

I feel a little bad writing this whole screed for money when there are people who need help more than we do, but then I remember that it's not a zero-sum thing where only one type of problem deserves any attention whatsoever, and I am also offering a valuable service in exchange--namely, what happens when Frisk teases her 10-foot husband about keeping her like a pet. Please don't worry about it if you can't spare any cash, just share the link and/or send good vibes my way. Love you all kthx <3

P.S. My patrons will be getting previews and informal polls on what direction to take with my crowdfunded filth. If this works well enough, hell, I'll do it again for more smut, idfk

tl;dr My husband deserves much better than he's gotten from life, and it kills me that my mental illness has made him have to work so hard. I will write porn in exchange for enough cash to take him back to his hometown for a few days' respite.