#and I have lots of surprises in store!

[honeyjars-sims]

Part 2 1.01 A Big Splash

It's a typical Saturday morning, and as usual, I slept in. As hard as it is to drag myself out of bed, I know I have things to do today, so into the shower I go.

While I'm getting ready, I can't help but reflect on my recent birthday. It's hard to believe how much has happened over my lifetime, or even just in the past 10 years. In a lot of ways, I still feel like that same kid who thought he knew everything but had so much to learn. If I could go back and tell him what was about to happen in his life, I don't think he'd believe me. Sometimes, I still don’t believe it.

As I head downstairs, I hear the familiar sound of Paul stirring something in a bowl and briefly wonder what he's making before chuckling to myself. I already know it's pancakes. It's always pancakes, but I can't complain about the predictability when I know they're going to be delicious. 

I make it downstairs and the girls are so busy helping that they don't even notice I've come down.

Well, Rachel is helping, at least. She has her own bowl and is standing on the footstool at the island stirring away. Chelsea, however, can't be trusted with anything that we plan to eat unless I'm there to supervise. Otherwise we run the risk of having a secret ingredient–toddler slobber or animal hair or whatever else has ended up on her grubby little hands. 

I sneak up behind her and give her a little tickle. She turns around. “Dada!” she squeals, as I scoop her up and give her a squeeze.

“Good morning, my loves,” I say.

“Dada, we’re making pancakes!” Rachel tells me, as though I should be surprised by this revelation. 

“I see that. I can’t wait to try them.” 

“What are you in the mood for this morning?” Paul asks me. “We’re out of bananas, but we have plenty of blueberries and strawberries.”

I come up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist. “I'm in the mood for some of this,” I say, and he turns his head to meet my lips.

 ���Lucky for you, there’s always plenty of that.”

Rachel and Paul finish the pancakes and we all scarf them down. It’s times like this when I wish we had more space. There’s not enough room for a dining table in our townhouse.

Chelsea insists she doesn’t need a high chair but can’t reach the barstools, so she ends up having most of her meals on the couch. Which is why the pillows smell like maple syrup and feel sticky.

Once we’ve finished breakfast, Rachel has a request. “Can we go to the splash pad? Please?

“Yeah, Dada, pwease?” Chelsea echoes. How can I say no to that?

The splash pad isn’t far but we have to drive, which means packing up everything we need and getting the kids secured in their seats. And of course, they want our dog Tucker to come with us.

Once we arrive, though, it’s worth all the effort. The girls love splashing around in the water...and yeah, so do Paul and I. 

“This was a good idea,” I tell Paul once we take a little break from the water.

“Yeah, it’s a beautiful day. We should do this more often, especially now that Chelsea’s getting older.”

“True, it’s a lot easier going out now that she’s not a baby anymore. Although…”

Paul sighs. “John,” he warns. He knows exactly what I’m hinting at.

“I’m just saying, she’s getting so big. I miss having a baby around.”

“So do I, but it would be much harder to have days like this with a newborn. Besides, we barely have space in the house for the four of us.”

“Exactly. We’re already outgrowing the house, so we might as well upgrade to something bigger and fill it with more babies.”

I gesture over to a lot across from the splash pad. “Look how close the Hopewell Commons expansion is. They have bigger units there. If we lived there we could just walk to the splash pad. Imagine how much the kids would love that.”

“Well, there has to be a unit available first,” Paul points out. “But I suppose we can let Gail and Ellie know we’re interested so they can let us know when something opens up.”

“Cool. So baby time?”

“I’m not saying no, but can we think about it a little more?”

“Yeah sure,” I agree. Sometimes Paul’s need to consider every possible angle before making a decision can be a bit frustrating, but I have to admit it’s helpful to have someone to reel me in sometimes. It’s a nice balance–a little chaotic, a little structured, and a lot of fun. 

Once again my thoughts turn to the past. Paul and I have been together for almost 10 years now. When I turned 20, I had no idea that my roommate would end up being my husband. That was certainly a year of discovery for me. And with a new home and a new baby possibly on the horizon, year 30 is shaping up to be quite an adventure as well. 

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Bonus pics below!

[johnnyshrine]

★ 121 // “Star Chains”

// These light-up star chains will be available for sale during THE JOHNNYDROP™, my fundraiser sale to help me move! Drops 05.01.25 on my store. (AKA LATER TODAY!!!! BE THERE!!!!)

[creativemessbyvd]

As a writer, you sometimes start with an idea and have a clear destination. Like being a bus, you know the stops, maybe some construction around the city takes you through a different street. But you generally know how you'll end up in your desired destination.

All the buses I take are not buses but rollercoasters. From the outside I can see the start and end but the loops I thought I would have are not the same I end up having, the drops arrive too soon and I am unable to stop them as I am carried to them. All my characters are laughing in joy around me on the ride as I gaze in horror at what appears on the document as I throw all my plans and outlines out the fucking side to watch them fall down the side of the rollercoaster.

[the-dog-watch]

We’re always laughing about the time Jack got Stephen’s sloth irresponsibly drunk in HMS Surprise (Debauchgate) but we don’t talk enough about the time Stephen accidentally got the entirety of the ship’s rat population coked up in The Nutmeg of Consolation.

[krashing-starz]

hey dude i'll be back in a minute. yeah i'm good ive just got to explode my mom w/ my mind, yknow how it is

[lilnasxvevo]

A new bookstore opened yesterday not too far from where I work so I went down there to check it out and really didn’t see anything I liked (the bookstore is not fully set up yet so I’m gonna come back again in a few weeks or months when they have more. you know. Books) but finally I went up to the register and I was like “Hey when I walked past this place on Wednesday there was a book on pirate history in the window but it’s not there anymore? Do you know if you still have a copy or…?” and the lady at the register LIT UP and said “Be right back! I don’t think we sold it, no!” and the other person nearby told me “She was the right person to ask!” and then she came back and sold me the pirate book. So the new bookstore gets my vote because not a lot of small indie bookstores that I’ve seen have books on the history of piracy. Yay!!!!

[tuxedo-rabbit]

Separate bonus question bc I completely forgot to add it to the main question this week:

Everyone else brought some kind of grocery food items with them to the Lighthouse kitchen. What did Dulce bring, if anything at all?

She probably brought her coffee fixings-- a bunch of sugar, and then whatever extras she can afford that week (probably tends to be cinnamon, unless vanilla and cocoa prices in Antiva are reasonable...not sure if we know what the spice market is like in Thedas).

She also has a jar of hard candies. She keeps some in her pockets for the road. At one point Taash borrows one of her jackets and is baffled by the amount of candy hidden in all the pockets. Future Dulce will definitely be the type of granny that has purse candy.

[skeilig]

I am back in st mary and it is snowwwingggg I'm so happy to be back 😁😁😁

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

For anyone annoyed by the Tumblr changes, if you're on desktop I would recommend using XKit Rewritten (and New XKit for any other odd changes you'd like to try out, including even older aspects of Tumblr). It's the older version of Rewritten but most of the extensions on it are still supported/do work). I can't guarantee they'll definitely make a fix for it/a direct fix for this particular UI change, but it's possible that they might since they usually make extensions that allow you to essentially revert changes made to the UI. Other various UI extensions (such as old ones from Tumblr's past UIs that the extensions basically just revert you to) may also help fix up your UI.

As you might expect these extensions need to be on to work/revert the appearance of the UI (so if you turn them off you'll revert to the current state of Tumblr), but while they are on you can curate your UI to look how you want it. This goes for both New XKit and XKit Rewritten. I use both and I couldn't live without them lol. You can get some big oldies of Tumblr's, like classic search on Rewritten or the Tweaks extension (full of various UI tweaks) on New XKit (including the old shade of blue Tumblr used a long time ago that I never stopped using!).

Unfortunately I don't know of any solution for mobile if it affects mobile at any point (or if it already has), but whenever you're on desktop, I would definitely recommend both these versions of XKit. I have so many extensions from them that I often don't even realize when there are UI changes (remember how Tumblr added themes for your dashboard? I didn't even notice for the longest time because I've had New XKit on the whole time) because Tumblr's default coding is overwritten by the extensions I have on.

[lonelyasawhisper]

ok. these past few days i’ve sort of… took a trip down memory lane and fallen down the queen rabbit hole again..?? there have been a lot of changes in my life but somehow i ended up watching the entire montreal recording again two days ago and i put on live at the odeon in the background today. and then i realized oh wow i forgot how much i love queen. and damn i love the guitar. two-years-ago-me had incredible taste.

[gay-for-the-snz]

Christmas was great! c:

[clockworksheep2]

very funny (and slightly crushing) experience when i was out earlier w sister -

we were checking out at a store and the cashier was chatting w me and my sister but mostly my sister (i was wearing a mask and sister wasn't so this may explain some of her weirdness towards me idfk) and anyways just as we were grabbing our stuff off the countre, the cashier told my sister she's rly pretty and just. did not acknowledge me at all. it was so fucking weird and awkward and it definitely wasn't any sort of sapphic flirting or anything so what the fuck. like okay great i guess im just Big Ugly over here, hello????

and then my sister told me after we left the store that that cashier was someone she knew from highschool but did not recognize her lol and that this girl is like super Fake and Preppy, and she tried to tell me that this girl is one of a kind in that behaviour and i had to just shut up bc i tried to say "uh no, maybe to that degree but that was like. a normal interaction w any teenage girl for me." but she insisted i was wrong abt that <- is autistic and not pretty and kind of stupid so girls in highschool did not treat me as a fellow human 90% of the time and usually treated me as a stupid animal that made them laugh (or if i had smth they wanted (usually answers to schoolwork) then they'd try to butter me up and i stopped falling for that after a couple years thank god)

[yandereshingeki]

also wanna say thank you to those being patient with me and my slow ass self with writing… I’m trying to write as much as I can but it’s hard to find the motivation with work weighing me down so much （；＿；）+ the holiday seasons been so busy for me… but im hoping stuff will cool down after and it’ll get better. I’m also actively looking for another job that I hope will be less physically draining so that I’ll feel better lol

[ashmp3]

this may come as a surprise but i own 0 black mini skirts. I had 5 (1 of them a leather skort) and gave them all away to my sister and friends because they were too big on me. And ever since then i haven’t bought not even one. is this a surprise to you teo nation…….

[ukulelegodparent]

Heartbreaking: This German almost died bc they had to manually select Germany as their location on a German-language website, bc the default was Switzerland or Austria bc that's where the company is from

[softgrungeprophet]

first live concert i ever saw was a tmbg concert i don't remember because i'm pretty sure i was like, 4 or something (so, late 90s) (or maybe i was a little older i don't remember) but i vaguely recall there being something involving puppets in a totally dark venue