#and donated bulbs to many friends

[bethestaryouareradio]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

RIP, Roger Wood, genius assemblage sculptor

Last week, my dear old friend Roger Wood died, very suddenly, of cancer. He was 80. Roger was a brilliant sculptor, a Canadian veteran navy gunner, and gay. He was my neighbour for a decade. I miss him already.

Roger and I both lived in an old WWI munitions factory in Toronto, which had been turned into 15 illegal live-work studios with 20-foot ceilings which leaked, massive south-facing windows (which leaked), and a warm and collegial vibe of weirdos and artists.

Roger was a self-taught sculptor, a mad collector of all sorts of junk: scrap metal, old toys, discarded electronics, decorative items. He tore these apart, painted and mutated them, and turned them into whimsical assemblages.

Many of these were built around clocks; often with a small feather attached to the second-hand that quivered as it revolved around and around the clockface. Roger was making things that could be called “steampunk” before the term existed — and once he learned it, he embraced it.

In those years, I was working very long hours on the early web, but I was often and easily sidetracked at Roger’s studio, where I’d sit and smoke cigarettes with him and hear navy stories (his time with the big guns had left him somewhat deaf) or just tour his beautiful new pieces.

Roger, too, had an incredible work ethic. He told the Toronto Star’s Barbara Turnbull, “Even on Sunday mornings, when good citizens are off to church, I’m off to the local flea market, always scrounging different bits and pieces.”

https://www.thestar.com/life/2007/10/13/timepieces_of_art.html

And he was content: “But I survive, so why complain? I think mere survival as an artist in Canada propels me into the top 10 per cent of the ranks in this country.”

Turnbull really captured Roger’s studio when she wrote: “But it’s the overwhelming number of storage containers, loosely labelled and filled with the items he uses for his fanciful designs that makes the jaw drop: picture lamp bulbs, lamp parts, wooden balls, drawer pulls, buttons, clock springs, gears and faces, dials, jewellery, candlesticks, shoemaker moulds, picture frames, musical instrument parts, vacuum tubes from old radios, gas lamp parts, typewriter keys, bottle caps, old gauges, camera lenses and nameplates.”

Roger loaned me dozens of his largest, most impressive pieces for my wedding, where he was resplendent in a hall that was filled with his sculptures. I was living in the UK at the time, and shortly after, high Toronto rents pushed Roger out of the city and to Hamilton. I saw him again a few years later when he came to an event of mine in Hamilton and we had dinner.

But then he moved back east, to Nova Scotia, where, he emailed me, he built the studio he’d always dreamt of. I didn’t see him after that, though we corresponded some. Mostly, I felt in touch with Roger because I’ve got so many of his sculptures in my home, including the diptych he gave us as a wedding gift.

Knowing Roger is gone has left an ache in my heart. He deserved to be so much better known, and better treated by the cities he graced with his art and his presence. He was a sweet, kind, talented, funny man and it showed in his art.

In Roger’s obituary in the Globe and Mail, his family says, “Donations to the Charity of Your Choice or support an artist, buy an original piece of art.” Support the artists in your life, folks, and cherish them. Goodbye, Roger. I was very lucky to count you a friend.

Here are some of my photos of Roger, his studio and his work:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=37996580417%40N01&sort=date-taken-desc&text=klockwerks&view_all=1

[writers-block-is-now-a-person]

Thrift Store Haunt

I got this idea from a TikTok about a girl finding a jar of ashes at a thrift store, so enjoy!

quick trigger warning! mention of suicide.

~~~~~~~~~

“Well, that didn’t last long,” Blake said to himself.

The move didn’t surprise him, or the time he spent in that box in the garage. But being donated to a Goodwill certainly did. Blake’s jar moved from box to box after his family’s renovation until it finally settled on the shelf at one of the countless Goodwills in the state. Blake settled himself on his new shelf, staring at all the underpriced glassware and ceramics. His jar was placed behind a stack of hand made plates that looked suspiciously like a female chest. Blake gazed around the tiny Goodwill, florescent lights overhead, white metal shelving and plastic racks all holding forgotten or useless things.

Blake sighed. “Bloody brilliant.”

Let’s rewind a bit.

Blake is dead. And has been for a while.

Nine years ago, at the age of seventeen, Blake killed himself by jumping off a bridge onto the half frozen river below. His family, completely oblivious to Blake’s will that was accidentally put into recycling that stated he wanted his body buried, cremated him. Or rather, cremated what was left of him.

Blake’s ashes were put into a modest glass jar. With swirls of black and blue glass filled with little white things that looked like stars. Blake detested it for a while, mainly because it looked like the night sky the night he killed himself. The glass jar full of his ashes was placed onto the mantle piece in the dining room, right next to his last school photo (featuring his horrid school uniform that he was still wearing), the mouthpiece to his trumpet, and his little boat figurine (he made it himself when he was twelve).

If he knew he’d end up as a ghost, Blake wouldn’t have killed himself. Now, he was forced to be some intangible thing still damned by reality but unable to interact with it.

Blake and his jar sat there on the mantle, he suffered through endless family dinners that made him want to tear out his eyes, too many business discussion his father had, and every single mothers meeting his mother and her friends had. At least his younger siblings still played board games in that room, Blake loved messing with the monopoly pieces when his brother was distracted, and constantly tipped over the chess pieces when his sister was so close to checkmate.

Even dead, Blake still terrorised his siblings. And in more ways than one. Blake tested the restraints of his ghostly form, he could only be within eyesight of his jar, which confined him to the closed dining room, and sometimes the hallway when the door was open. Blake would wave his ghost hand through the lights, making them flicker and his mother scowl at his father, demanding him to check the bulbs. Blake would whisper nonsense behind his sister, making her rub the back of her neck. Blake tried to grasp the tablecloth, to give it a good tug every now and then. Blake would snuff the candles, right when tensions were high or he was bored. Blake often stood in the doorway when there was some kind of event. Making every person to unknowingly walk through him and shiver. He always laughed at their panicked faces and wild eyes.

But that time came to an end when his mother declared a full house renovation. Blakes photo, trumpet mouthpiece, boat figurine and jar were carefully placed into a box, that box put into the garage, and eventually, found its way into a donation pile.

Now, Blake sat on his shelf. Unfazed by his families forgetfulness, entirely surprised at his new placement.

Days slowly meant nothing to Blake in his new environment. All sorts of people walked in and out of the cramped store. Some old people looking for clothes that reminded them of something. People tight on cash looking for cheap clothes. Plenty of people just looking. Some making it seem like a great effort to go to a thrift store. Blake messed with those people the most. Waving his hand though their phones or head, making them shiver.

But mostly, Blake did what he did best, judge people.

“Wow, how original, coming in and filming everything like you’re the Messiah,” Blake drawled to himself, following a teenager who was in fact, filming everything. Blake waved his hand through their phone, the thing cut to black immediately. Blake whistled to himself as he left.

“You know what would really go well with that?” Blake, standing on top of a shelf and peering down at the old lady. The old woman had picked up yet another ceramic statue of a cat. “The other seventy cat statues here! I bet they’ll all be back by the end of the year!” Blake waved fondly at the bag full of carefully wrapped cat statues as the old lady left after three hours of collecting them. “I’ll see you at Christmas!”

Blake followed a young man through the glasswares. He was tall and dark and dressed far too old for his age. Blake judged all the glass vases and bottles he had in his hands. “Mmm, I see, a Collector, mm, yes, much like myself, I prefer glass that won’t shatter under hot water, but we are all individuals.” The young man held Blake’s jar in his hand. Blake had never gone so still. The young man put his jar back. Blake wanted to smash his ghostly skull into the wall and strangle the man.

Blake followed another young girl, who had an eye for old glassware. She picked up each glass structure and eyed it carefully. “Don’t worry love, that one doesn’t have lead in it, oh yeah, that one probably does. Oop, better put that one down. You have no idea where that one has been, better put it back, good girl. That, is in fact, a candelabra. That’s just broken dear, try again.”

“Mmm, yes, I see, a theme of every ugly thing you can get your hands on. I’d kill to see your living room.”

“That jar? With those rugs? Darling, please get some professional help.”

“If I had a bloody dollar for every old lady collecting cat things, I’d be rich enough to buy all of the cat things.”

“You put that back! Those platters are older than your entire existence!”

“How about you try a different store, hmm? Maybe one that has a wider collection of the most horrendous table centre pieces? Because I assure you that this is not that kind of store.”

“Oh darling, please pick up those glass flowers, they will go lovely with your dress. Okay, jeez, don’t take advice from a ghost then. Rude.”

“Ah, another man covered head to toe in tweed. Reminiscing the 1920’s are we? How old are you? No, seriously, how old are you? Your skin is amazing.”

Day in and day out, Blake followed, judged and terrorised anyone who came within eyesight of his jar. Blake spoke to them as if they could hear him, Blake begged some and cursed at other who picked up his jar. One girl shook it, Blake felt his entire ghostly form realign.

Blake sprawled out on the top shelf, just across from the shelf where his jar was tucked away. How long he had been there he didn’t care for. All the bottle and cups that were submerged in his ghostly legs meant nothing to him. He could feel the dust not only on his jar, but start to settle on his stomach.

Blake missed his little boat figurine. He couldn’t find it in this store, chained to his jar restricted him from lots of areas. Blake missed a lot of things, mainly his little boat, and warm socks, and food, and the feel of grass under his hands, and driving and the sound of his friends lau-

“Hey!” Blake bolted upright. “You put that back! You put me back! That jar isn’t for sale!”

Blake towered over the young woman who held his jar in her hands. Her dark skin melted into the swirls of black, she brushed the dust off the lid and curves. “There we go, proper bit of shine right there.”

Blake was stunned. No one had even bothered to dust his jar, not even his family, let alone hold it with such compassion. Blake watched the young woman clutch his jar. She walked away from the shelf and continued down the aisle.

Blake watched in silence. Then panicked. He sped after the woman, trying to grasp onto shoulders he never could touch.

“Wait, wait, ma’am, please, don’t buy me, you don’t want me. I’m trash! I’m just clutter! It’s far better back on that shelf! You won’t buy me. It’s just a useless jar you can’t open!” Blake begged the woman who couldn't hear him.

Blake was panicking. Not really understanding why he was panicking, but he was panicking for something. What would his jar do? Just be on another shelf? Would the woman try to do something with his ashes? Many people had tried to pry open his jar and none prevailed, it was perfectly sealed. Blake continued to ramble reasons to this woman, begging her silently to just put him down and leave him on that shelf.

Regardless, the woman spent a few more minutes perusing the shelves. She nodded thoughtfully at a black glass tray, then gently held it against her chest next to Blake’s jar. Before his eyes, and very much to his surprise, his jar was bought. The faded sticker on the bottom scanned (Blake cost a meagre three dollars fifty), the glass jar wrapped carefully in newspaper and handed to the lady.

Blake, rendered speechless, followed the lady out of the store.

“Hmm,” Blake said to himself. “Damn.”

[whiskeybeforesunset]

Just a Crush 2 | Steve Harrington

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Male!Reader

Word Count: 1.4k

Synopsis: Reader is in love with Steve. Unaware of this, Steve makes an insensitive joke. This leads to an argument. Later, Steve tries to talk to the reader, causing an emotional encounter where Steve has to confront his denial of his own sexuality. Sad ending.

Warnings: Angst, unrequited love, internalized homophobia, crying, reader may be a little biphobic but hey it’s the 80’s, self deprecation, sad ending :(

Author’s note: You could probably read this as a stand alone but I would recommend reading part one first. The gray ash scene doesn’t happen in this story. Also thank you to the reader who asked for part two. I wasn’t planning on making one but I’m really happy with how this turned out. I read all your comments and tags!

Part 1

—

You’re sitting in the backseat with Robin on the way to Hawkins High. There are boxes in the trunk of Steve’s car ready to donate. Dustin of course, insisted he sit shotgun, little brat. Maybe he’s entering his rebellious teenager phase, or whatever that looks like for a dork that plays D&D and goes to science camp.

Four car doors slam as you exit the vehicle and begin grabbing boxes from the back. A girl points you to where you can help those hit hardest by the ‘ earthquake.’ Robin goes to help make sandwiches, Dustin wanders off to god knows where, while Steve and you sort donations. 

You’ve been trying your best to not make things awkward with Steve. After all, you were able to be friends with him before… all of that, so you should be able to stay friends after. That’s what people say right? That it’s good to maintain friendships with someone after you break up with- I mean sleep with them and neither of you ever mention it again. 

Your position sorting clothes just so happened to give you and Steve the perfect vantage point to watch Robin fumble through a conversation with Vickie. It seems like things are actually… going well though, shockingly. Maybe the two most awkward sapphics in Hawkins may actually just figure it out.

“Fast Times, 53 minutes 5 seconds.” Steve remarks while throwing a shirt over his shoulder.

“What?” You respond, face twisting in confusion.

“I told Robin, Vickie returned Fast Times at Ridgemont High at 53 minutes and 5 seconds. The only people who do that are people who like boobies. Looks like I was right.” Steve says smugly. 

You’re briefly stunned that the word ‘boobies’ just came out of the mouth of a fully grown man before remembering who you’re talking to. “Oh, right.” you reply. Steve pauses for a moment, contemplating whether or not he should say what he wants to say next.

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t know.” He laughs awkwardly.

Asshole.

“Come on, I was just joking.” Steve quickly offers, apparently your change in mood was visible. Damn it. 

“Oh I know.” You say, “it’s just a bit ironic, don’t you think?”

Steve briefly looks confused before the dust mites in his brain manage to turn the light bulb on.

“Oh my god.” You say while shaking your head at him. “You didn’t even remember?”

“No I-” he stammers. “It’s not like that I just-”

“I can’t even believe you right now.” You cut him off. He looks down, unable to respond; in the silence you take a moment to take in this information.

“Yeah,” you pause. “Yeah, you know what I think I’m just going to go.” 

“No- wait listen I-” he starts. 

“No. Steve, don’t.” You say as you start walking towards the exit. 

…

You’re almost proud of yourself. If what happened last week happened even a month ago, it would have broken you. You haven’t spoken to Steve since your ‘fight.’ Normally you would have to see him at work, but the video store shut down ever since giant cracks showed up in the ground. 

You needed some air though. You hadn't left your house much since… that, and things were starting to feel cramped. You end up sitting on a sun bleached bench at one of Hawkin’s many luxurious parks. It’s strangely quiet. The overgrown soccer field you used to play on as a kid is empty. Moms are more hesitant to let their kids play outside; worried they’ll fall into a giant crevice or something. But this is what you wanted, right? To be alone.

“Hey,” someone says from behind. You recognize the voice.

“How’d you find me,” you ask without turning. He sighs, after seeing your demeanor he knows how this conversation is going to go. Nevertheless he makes his way around the bench and sits next to you. 

“I asked your parents.” He says, you scoff at him.

“Look, I just wanted to make sure you were ok.” He adds.

“I’m not one of your kids.” You respond flatly.

“Oh, so that means I can’t care about you?” he asks rhetorically.

“No…” you say quietly.

“Look I,” he pauses. “I just wanted to apologize.”

“For what? All you did was forget about a fling that meant nothing to you.” You say turning to look at him. He seems tired. His normally perfect hair is flatter than usual.

“It didn’t mean nothing I just,” he averts his gaze. “I’m not gay, man.” You nod lightly at his words before taking in a breath. 

“Could have fooled me.” you respond sarcastically. Steve sucks his teeth and adjusts his posture. 

“You were there for all the conversations about how I don’t know what I want. You,” he pauses. “If you chose to ignore those in hope that something else would come out of that night…” He turns to look at you again. “Then I don’t know what to tell you.”

“You are so fucking selfish.” You say quietly. 

“Jesus I-” he hesitates. “It’s not my fault if you caught feelings.”

Steve regrets the words the second they exit his mouth. There’s a long silence. It makes you thankful for the emptiness of the park. This isn’t exactly the kind of conversation you’d want to have with an audience. 

“Y’know this is a really great apology Steve.” You say plainly.

“Well what do you want me to say?” Steve exclaims. “That I wish I were gay for you? That I wish things were different?”

Yes. That is what you would like him to say. You can feel your eyes begin to water. Your throat is starting to tighten, making finishing this conversation without crying feel increasingly unlikely.

“Look, it was fun alright, but what I’ve had with girls… what I had with Nance-”

“Oh for fuck sakes Steve.” You stop him from continuing, angry tears streaming down your face. Steve turns to you, surprised by your sudden outburst. 

“You are so stuck on her. I mean, what's it been? Two years? Since you two last dated? She’s moved on. And you're just,” your throat tightens, causing you to hiccup, “so obsessed with her.” You say while shaking your head slowly. 

“Do not bring Nancy into this.” Steve responds, his voice revealing he is more agitated than he’s been at any other point in this conversation.

“You are the one who brought her up!” you cry.

“Oh…” he says quietly.

You move your hand to rub your eyes, this conversation is giving you a headache. It feels like forever till one of you speaks again. 

“Look, that night brought up feelings in me that I don’t know how to describe.” he says in a measured, quiet tone. 

You look at him, slightly surprised. Maybe… maybe there’s a chance of this working out. If he’s able to recognize he has those feelings…

“It’s complicated. I mean,” he fidgets with his hands. “I like girls, and maybe I…” he doesn’t finish his sentence. He can’t even say it. You look at him with pity, knowing how difficult it can be to come to terms with being gay. 

“I like girls.” He repeats. “And if…” he pauses to compose himself, “if liking girls makes my life easier, why shouldn’t I just stick with that.” He finishes his sentence quietly. His eyes are distant, like he isn’t even there. Tears form. You look away from him to process his confession.

God.

How could you have been so stupid. He couldn’t even say it and you… you somehow thought that there was any chance of being with him? You really thought he would change his entire life trajectory, throw away his dreams of a family for you?

You look at him with anger, though whether the anger is for him or yourself, you don't know. 

“You are a coward, Steve Harrington.” You say shortly.

“I know.” He responded, refusing to meet your gaze. 

You turn away from him, but can still see his tears falling from the corner of your eye. 

Part of you wants to tell him that it’s ok. That you understand how he feels, but you can’t. Not honestly, and your days of lying to Steve so he can feel better about himself are over. 

Instead you stand up and walk away, wondering if that’s what you should have done the second he sat down. 

[bibliocratic]

muddle along or: the Pokemon / TMA crossover I’ve been promising @speakerunfolding for AGES jonmartin early S4

Jon considers the knapsack left for him.

Exhaustion is already feasting on any clarity he might have obtained in the near quiet. His body stiff, unused to the casual labour of his bones. The storage room, its shelves overburdened, the air vents popping like cracked knuckles, has gained nothing in his absence except a resurgence of dust and, in a dismal corner, a pile of boxes and a suitcase. A pathetic truncated shrine to his thirty odd years of living.

They moved his possessions here, when his rent went unpaid, when his water bills and council tax and internet payment reminders piled up like demanding snowdrift on his mucky welcome mat. Mutely, he glances over the hastily sellotaped boxes that now form his packaged-up life with all the distance that six months of bad dreams have afforded him.

He wonders who packed up his kitchenware, despairing at the mismatched cutlery harvested from student halls and charity-shop finds; clucked their teeth at the bread freckling mouldy in the barren landscape of his fridge; folded his clothes neatly into the suitcase he always kept stuffed under his unmade bed, even pairing up his socks; who took the books off his shelves in the belief he might thumb through them again one day.

He wonders if it was Martin.

Basira gave him the knapsack some hours ago. When he’d found some semblance of normalcy in the dull weight of a sandwich coating his stomach, dressed in clothes that now hang like rags off a coat hanger, sat at the table in the otherwise empty staff room with the heat of a cup of tea cactus-prickling his palms.

“He asked if you’d look after them,” she’d said. The strap of the bag held securely in the jaw of her Absol. “While he’s – well, you know…” She waves an exasperated done-with-it hand that manages to express a multitude of emotions that refract and merge like the morphing shades of a bruise. “Doing whatever the hell it is he’s doing. Or he thinks he’s doing.”

Jon wishes he knew.

He sits cross-legged in front of the storage room door, a sharp-boned barricade, thrumming like a struck tuning fork with the thought that even here, he will not be safe.

Gardevoir is a heavy weight against his shoulder. She’s quieter than he remembers, solemn and sombre in her new form. She used to demand being lifted up when she was Ralts, her flat red horns digging into his chest and leaving impressions, scrabbling down to shelter half-behind his legs when strangers approached. He left for the Unknowing and she’d been Kirlia, her face set and her cries insistent and infuriated, trying to push her Pokeball into his hand to make him bring her with them. Tim hadn’t asked where she was, when they all piled into the rental car, Houndoom taking up one of the seats in the back but snarling when Basira suggested putting her in her ball.

Jon doesn’t know when she evolved. It pains him, a dull-knife strike of thought, another wave against his tide-bashed flood barriers, to have slept through such a moment in her life when every other milestone they shared together.

“Now is a good a time as any, I suppose?” he asks her. His voice traces above a whisper. His Abra has calmed now, drained down from a difficult and teary reunion, and is now breathing deep and slow, curled into the port of his crossed legs. His three-fingered hands are still clenching the fabric of Jon’s shirt.

Gardevoir nods. Then gives him a nudge and a look when it seems as though he’s stalling, when he must be bleeding out apprehension like watercolours seeping through paper.

“Can’t get anything past you now, huh,” he says. She smiles, fond and he manages a short smile back, and it is almost, almost like it was before.

The bag is old, its original function probably for a laptop of some kind. The plasticky outer skin of it has rubbed away, flaking to mesh at the edges, the piping worn down to wires. Jon folds back the front of the bag, and inside there are four Pokeballs, the basic and cheapest red-and-white models. Jon had worked a thankless summer job at a beach-side amusement arcade to save up the money to get Ralts a customised ball, and had done similar when Abra came along a few years later.

To the side of the Pokeballs, ziplocked and labelled, there is a small forest of freezer bags bulging with berries and treats and care equipment. In a plastic pocket, there are precisely written instructions pertaining to each Pokemon and their requirements, and Jon’s throat tightens unexpectedly to see Martin’s looping joined-up handwriting, to see words that seem penned by someone who doesn’t expect to be coming back.

Gardevoir makes a low noise next to him. Her arm alighting on his, a solid weight, grounding. Jon clears his throat and takes out the Pokeball nearest the top, pushing the button on the front so the size balloons to fill his palm.

Most people have one Pokemon, maybe two, unless they’re involved in competitive breeding and training. When Abra came along, he remembers his gran remarking on the upkeep, how it would be his responsibility to feed and care for and train them, and it hadn’t been the cheapest venture but Jon had born the expense gladly.  It doesn’t surprise him that Martin has amassed so many in comparison to the norm.

At lunch one day years ago, the weather nipping frost-touched, they’d sat outside a cramped cafe because there’d been no seats indoors, and Martin had confessed that he was always taking them in. Thinking back, Jon knows that Martin was attempting to keep the conversation buoyant, coaxing him away from deeper, darker waters. Jon remembers being irritated, sore-eyed with sleeplessness, his spine strung with paranoia.

“My lost causes, Mum called them,” Martin had said, and his voice had tried for a levity that landed without cushioning. He’d torn off a bit from the end of his panini to feed a hopeful-looking Pidove pecking expectantly around their feet. The cause of the conversational turn, Martin’s newest acquisition, had sat grumpily mewling on the other man’s knee, wriggling and sniping as he tried to feed them some medication he’d got from the vet. Despite himself, Jon had been distracted from miring thoughts of Gertrude by watching Martin’s charade unfold, the man making a show of giving up with a theatrical sigh to scratch the Nidoran behind the ears in a show of defeat, being careful of their spikes. The Nidoran had headbutted his hand whenever his motions slowed to stopping, and Martin had used the distraction to fold a chorizo slice he’d pulled from his panini around the pill, which the Nidoran had happily snaffled from his fingers, gulping it down before returning to demand affection.

“They’ll be all healed up within the week,” Martin had continued, plastering over the continued lull with his chattering. “I’ve taken in a few Nidorans before, they tend to be pretty hardy.” He had scratched under the Nidoran’s chin as his words ebbed with the nudging of an undemanding tide.

Jon had picked at his sandwich as Martin had fold him about hiding Pidgeys and Swablus in an old shoebox under his bed, lined with the nesting material of some of his t-shirts donated to the cause. A chipped-edge bowl borrowed from the kitchen brimming with water and his own early team of Pokemon keeping them company while their wings healed in their splints before they were strong enough to leave again.

These four Pokeballs in the knapsack aren’t just random strays. They’re Martin’s Pokemon. The ones that never left him, the ones that he’s raised and doted upon and taken worriedly to the Pokecentre over every cough and sniffle and fever.

And for the meantime, they’re Jon’s.

Jon presses the release button on the first ball.

There is a chittering surprised coo as an Oddish materialises in a buzz of light and reforming matter.  They reform to stand a little higher than Jon’s ankle, only to fold their leaves half over their eyes at the unkindness of the halogen strip light. They totter when they take a step, tumbling to sitting with an affronted noise before, with a determined heft, they rock themselves up to standing again. Jon’s seen Martin’s Oddish before, approaching every walk around the assistant’s office space like a tightrope. Tim had bought them a little plant pot as a novelty Christmas gift once, and they’d unironically loved it, hopping into it cosily and getting specks of soil all over Martin’s desk.

Their leaves are poked through with ragged little holes, like they’ve been nibbled away, the green tinged in places to a sickly yellow. In the bag there is a vial of luminous blue medicine, complete with dropper and application instructions. It’s a stress thing, he dimly remembers Martin had once explained to him. It’s like an eczema, of a sort, that afflicts Grass-types, but it affects Oddish’s balance when it flares up.

The Oddish looks at Jon. They don’t have a neck as such, so they lean their whole bulb-like body backwards on their stumpy legs to study Gardevoir, who gives a reassuring blink. They glance around the storage room and its uninspired treasures of boxes and the unpromisingly weak-seeming metal frame of the cot, with a fretful shake of their leaves. They’re expecting to see someone else.

“Hello,” Jon says. He clears his throat, attempting to present a friendly face, to avoid the grimace he senses forming at his discomfort, his presentation to a critical audience that is already finding him wanting. “I’m… well, I’m Jon. You’ve probably seen me before, I’m um… I’m a f-friend of Martin’s. He’s, well, he’s not here at the moment. But he asked me to look after you. While he’s – he’s away.”

Oddish blinks their beady round red eyes. Their leaves wave uncertainly with the lazy swish of palm fronds. They coo again, a longer sound, plaintive and stretched out in melancholy. They take the opportunity to look around again, a full-body swivel that has them unbalanced, but Gardevoir leans down with a careful hand to steady them upright.

Jon watches them amble off to study their surroundings. Every so often crying out in a searching noise. Gardevoir keeps an eye on them as they rootle around in one of the boxes they can reach.

The next few releases are equally unsuccessful. Skitty reforms only to barrel under the cot as a pink-and-white blur, slinking further back with his tail swishing furiously whenever Jon addresses him. One undamaged ear twitches anxiously. The next Pokemon fails to materialise at all, refusing to leave their ball.

This was a mistake. Martin should have known better, known him enough to see that he would be no good at this, his skills in offering comfort atrophied. He can barely take care of himself, these days. Never mind additional charges who are scared, who need reassurance that is rendered rusty in his throat.

He reaches out to cradle the last ball in his cupped palms. He knows who is inside. The youngest of Martin’s acquisitions, and as far as Jon was aware, full-on adverse to getting inside a Pokeball. Their favoured mode of travel was Martin, using him as a climbing frame while he attempted to work, kicking their little feet against his forehead, clinging giggly to his mop of hair to get a better view, squealing shrill and disruptive and delighted when Martin would playfully shake his head to rock them. He thinks with the uncertainty that memory offers him, that Sasha had loved them, lifted them and pretending to throw them while they chattered and babbled, snuck them berries when Martin wasn’t looking. Jon has paid ear to more than one lecture from Martin on nutrition and proper feeding times and sugar levels. They might have played with Sasha’s own Pokemon, like they had tottered after Houndour’s short and wagging tail when she was out of her ball, like they had ran after Skitty to join in games, but that memory has been scratched from recollection like initials scored out of tree bark.

They were by nature vocal, rambunctious, unthinking and unheedful of danger, a child really, and Martin had been forever apologising when Jon would find them where they weren’t meant to be, carrying them back cautiously and carefully to Martin’s fretful hands. He thinks Martin had thought that they had irritated him. It hadn’t been that. They had been so small, smaller than they should have been for their species, the runt of some litter abandoned or lost by their parent or cracked and emerging blinking from their egg over-early. They had been so curious, and the world of the archives had grown increasingly unsafe around them. Jon had worried, in his own poorly expressed way.

He presses the button, and aims at the ground. Martin’s Togepi manifests in a fizz of red light and sound crackling like champagne.

They turn around with a confused noise.

Jon gets the chance to voice an awkward, low-pitched ‘hello’ before they take one look at him and their face clenches upset, breath starting to bubble with sobs.

“Oh, oh, nonono, hey,” Jon says, scooping them up into his hands. Abra is dislodged, wakes up startled and teleports a few feet away with a ‘pop’ of displaced air. “It’s… nonono, shush, it’s alright.”

Big messy tears fall out of screwed up eyes. Hitching sobs lengthen into wails. Jon looks frantically at Gardevoir as he rocks and shushes the bawling Pokemon against his chest in a way Martin was so much better at.

Martin would know what to do, what to say. How all this could work out for the best. But Martin isn’t here.

Jon’s own eyes dampen.

“Shshshsh,” he croaks thickly. “It’s – it’s going to be alright. I’ve got you.”

He uses the sleeve of his shirt to wipe away the worst of the tears. He strokes the top of Togepi’s head.

“It’s going to be alright,” Jon repeats.

Many hours later, Jon wakes up, cotton-mouthed and his back vengeful for the position he’s slept in. His legs, still crossed, have degraded to numbness that he’ll pay for as soon as he wants to stand. In his lap, he sees the matryoshka doll set up that’s occurred, Togepi exhaling with little whistling breaths into Abra’s chest, Abra’s face planted against Jon’s shirt. Skitty has emerged from his defensive fort under the cot to coil into a ball of heat, curled up in the crook of Abra’s overhanging tail. Gardevoir is half-awake in that dozing but alert way she has, and she must have turned off the light in the room because it’s dark except for the emergency glow from the fire-exit sign that casts the walls and floor in an unsettling green. Jon sees the husk of an opened Pokeball, the shadow of something small and yellow crouched on Gardevoir’s shoulder, and something inside him eases, just a little bit.

Oddish is looking up at him from the floor. Jon moves the only hand he has that’s not squashed under Abra, and when he sets it down they alight with an unsteady gait and he transfers them to the higher terrain of his knee. He rubs a careful finger along their leaves until they sit, their head nodding as they struggle to stave off sleep, although they still glance around with uncertain eyes.

The room has dropped colder. Oddish shivers along with Jon.

“I know,” Jon says. “I miss him too.”

[lynn-writes-things]

Birthday’s

“For a prompt, maybe a Hunter and reader fic where the bad batch help celebrate the reader's birthday? Maybe some fluff or smut?“

Thank you so much for the request, and thank you SO so much for the donation!! I appreciate it more than words can say!

Word count: 2470

-

*takes place pre-Echo

Birthday’s weren’t really a big deal in the GAR, seeing as though the Jedi were taught to remove any attachment to the day of their births; the clones didn’t even have birthdays that they knew of; and any civilian officer was likely too busy to remember, let alone to celebrate. It just wasn’t something that you did often. Of course, you knew your birthday – knew the exact date and time, because as a child, you had asked your mother about it every single year until you memorized the time to the last minute.

At one point in your life, your birthday had been your favorite day of the year. More so than Life Day, even. You had always loved the festivities – the focus on you; people showing how much they care about you; not to mention the gifts and the celebrating. You’ll never forget the year you became legal to drink, and your friends had taken you out for fun. It had been a night to forget – though the events leading up to the drinking were fond ones that you will treasure forever.

That time of year was drawing near again, and you couldn’t help but talk about it to the boys – who you’d been on assignment with for the past several months – in fact, it had almost been a year. You figured they wouldn’t like you talking about your birthdays of the past much, considering that they’d never really experienced a birthday, but to your surprise they all encouraged you to keep talking.

“When I was really little, my parents filled my entire bedroom with balloons, so that it would surprise me when I woke up – only I woke up too early, and I sat alone in my bedroom for hours just playing with the balloons. When my parents came to check on me, they couldn’t stop laughing.” You explained with a little laugh. It was early, and you all were drinking cups of caff. You swirled yours around, letting the swirl entrance you deeper into your memories.

“Then, when I was a teenager,” You smile, this memory a particularly pleasant one. “Me and some friends went out to this bakery with her parents – they had money, like they had mad credits. They took me cake-tasting to decide which kind I liked best for my cake, they told me that was my present from them. I wasn’t going to complain- free cake!” You laugh. “Anyways, I tried this one kind, (your favorite cake here), and it literally change my life- I’ve never had any cake that was as good as that. It’s kind of hard to find, but there’s a really nice bakery on Naboo that has it for a lot cheaper than the fancy place did.” You explain, considering making a special trip just for some cake, then immediately telling yourself that it’s a stupid idea.

“What about when you were an adult?” Crosshair asks. “Surely it gets more boring.”

“Oh, it does,” You laugh. “It gets so kriffing boring after a while. But, certain ages grant you certain milestones. Like, when you turn twenty, they let you drink. My twentieth birthday was insane- my friends made me go out to this bar with them – they were all older than me – and they ordered this drink for me, it tasted like starcherries and Mandalorian oranges – it was so good.” You exclaim, missing the taste of your first (legal) drink. “Anyways, they called it a Sailor’s Sunset, I think? But, it was a super fun night, we danced for hours, and I met this really cute guy, and… Well…” You laugh, cheeks heating up at the memory. “Anyways!” You exclaim, clearing your throat. “It was a really fun night. I also learned that I could shoot Corellian whiskey better than any of my friends.”

“Bet you can’t shoot it better than us.” Hunter teased.

“You’re probably right,” You laugh. “But I’d be willing to give it a shot.” You joke, and there’s a chorus of groans at your terrible pun that you couldn’t help but to make.

“So, when is your birthday, anyways?” Tech asks, ready to mark it in his holopad.

“It’s next week, on the second.” You explain. Not that you’d been keeping track of the days when you thought it might be close – not at all. That most definitely was not the case.

-

The night of the first, when you fell asleep, the boys all got up and got down to business.

“Okay boys,” Hunter began. “This has to be special. We want her to feel like she’s one of us, right?” He asks, and they all respond “Right!”.

“Crosshair, you’ve got the whiskey?” He asks.

“And the mixers.” He says. He didn’t know how to make a Sailor’s Sunset, but he was willing to give it a try, for your sake.

“Wrecker, you’ve got the balloons?”

“Yep! I might’ve gotten too many, though.” He says.

“No such thing- this is Y/N we’re talking about.” Hunter replies. “Tech, you’ve got the cake?”

“Took it out of the freezer yesterday, it should be defrosted by morning.” He replies. Getting the cake from Naboo without you figuring out what they were doing had been a challenge, but they had just barely managed to pull it off while you were in the refresher.

“Alright,” Hunter said, satisfied. “Bad Batch, let’s throw Y/N a birthday to remember.” He says with a smile, and they all get down to work. They all start blowing up balloons, with a goal to fill the barracks with the blown up latex. Wrecker had gotten different types- colorful ones; black and white ones; he even had found some that when blown up would read “happy naming day!” which was as close to “happy birthday” as he could find. They meant the same thing, more or less. He just hoped you didn’t get offended by the slight difference.

It took hours to blow all of the balloons up, but once it was done, there was a thick layer covering the floor, as well as a few smuggled into your bunk with you – but just a few, so you likely wouldn’t pop any and scare yourself awake. Though, Crosshair thought that would’ve been kriffing hilarious. Mean, but hilarious. He figured if it happened, you’d end up laughing once the initial fear wore off – he knew your sense of humor pretty well. But, still, Hunter refused to let him risk it.

“Wait,” Tech began. “Does anyone know how to make her caff?”

“I do,” Hunter answered. “She likes it the same way I do. She told me that before.”

“We’ll have to wake up before she does.” Crosshair says.

“That won’t be too hard,” Hunter answers. “Her alarm is always set for 0700, we just have to wake up before then.”

“How do you know that?” Tech asks.

“We usually wake up at the same time. You catch on to things like that after a while.” He replies with a shrug. He was used to waking up with you, the two of you would often talk over your morning cups of caff before the others woke up. It was the one time of day where there was no stress- just peace between the two of you. It was easy to forget about the war in times like those, which meant everything to you both. Neither of you would ever miss a morning, both cherishing your morning caff-sessions more than either of you would admit. During these early-morning moments, the two of you had gotten very close with each other, and shared very intimate conversations. Secrets were shared, as well as light-hearted compliments. You had a feeling the long-haired Sergeant liked you, which was good, because you liked him as well, though neither of you would confess. The early mornings weren’t a time for heavy confessions like that. But your birthday? Oh, your birthday might be, Hunter thought, mentally preparing himself for that night.

The boys had picked out a planet that they knew had a lake that was safe to swim in, with little risks for attack. Just private enough to take the night off and celebrate over drinks, cake, and swimming. Tech had put in the coordinates, and you were currently on your way there.

-

When you woke up, it wasn’t to your alarm blaring- it was to the smell of caff, and the boys saying, “Happy birthday!”. You smiled and groggily rubbed your tired eyes, looking up at them all with looks of adoration.

“You guys didn’t have to— Balloons!!” You cut yourself off, getting excited about seeing all the multicolored latex bulbs all over the ground, and all over your bunk. “Did you guys really-?”

“We did.” Hunter says. You sit up and he hands you the cup of caff. You take a sip and smile; it’s exactly how you’d make it for yourself. You can’t help but sway back and forth in happiness.

“Maker, you guys are my everything.” You say, taking a sip. “Thank you.”

“Oh, we’re not done yet.” Tech says. You get out of your bunk, and follow them out to the main area, where you see balloons strung up on the wall messily that say: “Happy naming day!” and your smile is so wide that it hurts your cheeks. Then you see the cake box, and you gasp.

“You didn’t-!”

“We did.”

“When?!” Your voice had jumped several octaves in your excitement, and you felt bad for Hunter, though he was smiling at your excitement. He didn’t give a damn that you were yelling, or how high your voice had gotten. He was just happy that you were happy.

“When we went to Naboo last,” Tech answers. “It’s been in the freezer.”

“How didn’t I notice anything—”

“That’s sort of what we’re known for, Y/N.” Hunter smiles.

“Yeah, but—” You can’t help the tears of happiness that well in your eyes, your heart swelling in your chest. You can’t believe that they’d go through all of this just for you. Crosshair puts a hand on your shoulder, and you quickly turn to just hug him. It catches him off guard, but he smiles regardless, holding you in return.

“Thank you guys.” You sob. “I love you all so much.”

“We love you too, Y/N.” Hunter says, preparing to say something slightly different later. But that could wait for now.

“Looks like we’re approaching,” Tech says, checking the navigation. You would’ve asked which planet, though you knew he wouldn’t tell you – Tech always made you guess where you were going. Always. You weren’t complaining, though, it was always a fun game, not to mention a good way to boost your memorization of the planets.

-

Once you were landed, you stepped out and realized that you were staring at a lake. Not a grimy pond, but a real, actual lake. The water was so clear that you could see to the bottom – it didn’t look too terribly deep, either. A long time ago you had told the boys that you loved swimming, you were surprised that they even remembered the comment.

You decide to all swim in your blacks to avoid any awkwardness with you being the only naked female around, which you’re thankful for. Though of course, the boys take their shirts off at least. You do your best not to stare at Hunter or his impressively toned muscles—You absolutely do not get caught by Crosshair, who laughs at you, but promises to keep your secret. You swim around for what feels like hours. You’re in and out of the water until the sun starts to go down, and you suggest drinks. You all climb out and start trying to dry off. Tech gets the cake cut, and Crosshair pours a round of shots for everyone. You take yours and grimace at the taste- it had been awhile since you had Corellian whiskey. It had been a long while.

“What’s that face for?” Hunter teases. “Thought you said you could out-drink us.”

“I said I might be able to.” You laugh. “If you’re looking for a challenge, Sarge, you’re on.”

“You don’t want to do that,” He laughs.

“Trust him, you don’t.” Wrecker tacks on, clapping his brother on the back. “He can even drink me under the table.”

“How—”

“Here, try this,” Crosshair says, thrusting a glass filled with a peachy-pink drink in it at you.

“What is it?” You ask.

“It should be a Sailor’s Sunset.” He sighs. You giggle – the color’s all wrong. But you try it regardless, and it’s shockingly just as good as you remember. You hum in appreciation.

“It’s really good,” You smile at him. “But it could use a smidge more cherry.” Crosshair smiles, pleased with himself for guessing the drink correctly.

“Hey, can I talk to you?” Hunter speaks up, nodding away from the others, towards the tree-line. You follow him over, and he down the shot in his hand before continuing.

“I figured now’s a good time to tell you,” He says, and pauses. You know where he’s going with this before he even starts, and you can’t help the smile that takes over your face. “I—”

“I like you too, Hunter.” You say, cutting him off.

“I don’t think you understand how much,” He says. “I’d do anything for you, Y/N.”

“Trust me, I understand.” You gently caress his cheek with your free hand. He leans into your touch, looking at you with a softness in his eyes that was usually reserved for your early morning chats. You don’t need to say more- neither of you do. He leans forward and kisses you, your lips connecting in a slow, passionate dance. You only break apart when you hear cheering from behind you, where the boys are watching with smiles on their faces.

“I love you, Hunter.” You say quietly, your nose brushing against his; his forehead against yours.

“I love you too, Y/N.” He smiles.

After several shorter kisses, you all go back to the ship and enjoy some cake. It’s just as good as you remember it being all those years ago, and you thank them ten-fold for it. For everything. You cry again as you thank them, and Hunter wraps an arm around you. Wrecker is on your other side, and he wraps an arm around both you and Hunter. Hunter gestures for Tech and Crosshair to come over, you all move to the floor. Crosshair leans against Wrecker, and Tech settles between your legs, leaning back against you as your arms wrap around him.

“I love you boys.”

“We love you too.” They all reply, and it doesn’t take long for you all to fall asleep like that. It’s heaven, you think. This was just simply heaven.

[lady-divine-writes]

Kurtbastian - “Always and Forever” Chapter 2

After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt wraps himself up in his grief so tightly he starts to push Sebastian away, and Sebastian, feeling himself shoved aside when he needs Kurt most, cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. While redecorating the room that will be his studio, Kurt comes across something interesting underneath the wallpaper. It starts to become an obsession for Kurt - an obsession that begins to replace Kurt's love for his husband, which Sebastian is holding on to by a thread. Can Kurt and Sebastian break through the pain and the hurt and find a way to fall in love again?

Read on AO3

Chapter 2 (5061 words)

The first evening in their new house becomes a long, exhaustive dance of unpacking and cleaning in preparation for the movers to arrive in the morning. What, in the past, would have been an upbeat two-step of flirting in the hallways while lugging in suitcases, punctuated by the occasional stop, dip, and smooch, is now a formal, boxy waltz, with Sebastian giving Kurt a wide-berth whenever he hears his husband coming, and Kurt pausing in doorways, eyes darting elsewhere when Sebastian passes by.

The rush to clear the dirt away and make things suitable for the furniture they chose to bring with them affords Kurt ample opportunities to send Sebastian on a host of errands, ensuring him stretches of time that he can spend alone to reflect and think.

Consider the past and plan for the future.

Even after the furniture arrives, they should have tons of space left. They had decided not to bring everything they own with them. They aren’t selling their penthouse. Keeping it furnished for the odd trip back seems like the practical thing to do. So, they only packed those things that they absolutely could not live without. 

They didn’t bring any of the furniture from Grace's room. That Kurt donated to the Salvation Army with the exception of one item – a Winnie the Pooh lamp that he had found in mint condition, ironically, at the Salvation Army, on the day he and Sebastian found out their surrogate was pregnant. It's ceramic, hand-painted, with Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh sitting back to back as the base, each holding a handful of balloons. One red balloon, larger than the rest, contains the bulb, the colored plastic lending a rosy tint to its glow. Along the bottom edge are written the words: “If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”

Kurt’s mother had read him Winnie the Pooh books his entire childhood. He could recite most of A. A. Milne’s writings by the time he turned eight.

The year his mother passed away.

He'd read those same books to his daughter. She’d had them mostly memorized, too.

Seven hours of scrubbing, sanitizing, and (for Sebastian) racing around town wipe the two of them out, to the point where falling asleep is simply a matter of inflating an air mattress and putting heads down on pillows. They had picked up a Queen size one at a JCPenney along the way. It’s nowhere near as luxurious as the custom-made King size bed currently stuck in the back of an Allied Moving Truck, waiting to take a journey on the 495. This mattress is a tighter fit than they’re used to. It doesn’t help that the thing sinks in the middle whenever one of them rolls over. With the both of them measuring six-foot-plus tall, they have to lie in the fetal position to fit comfortably, which would require them to spoon. But Kurt finds a way to keep himself out of his husband’s arms.

The material the mattress is made out of seems perpetually ice-cold, not warming up a touch with their combined body heat, which Kurt didn’t anticipate. They have the gas and electricity switched on, but there’s something wrong with the central heating. They don’t have the requisite amount of blankets to keep from freezing, which adds to the misery. Despite being pissed at Sebastian, Kurt doesn’t have the heart to send him out at one a.m. to the 24-hour Walmart, so he closes his eyes and resigns himself to suffering until dawn.

For the next five hours, Kurt’s mind stays blank. No noise, no dreams, and no flashbacks, thank God. It’s not restful, but it’s the best he could have hoped for. The last half a year has not been conducive to dreaming. The nightmares keep coming, one after the other, the next one worse than the last, shaking him to his core until he jars awake with a pain in his chest like someone had tried, in steel boots, to stomp him into the dirt. But waking up doesn’t solve the problem. He doesn’t know what he hates worse – waking up weeping in his husband’s arms or waking up weeping alone.

Kurt’s feelings for Sebastian are complicated when he thinks they shouldn’t be. Kurt should either love him and forgive him or hate him and move on. But he loves him and hates him. His hands itch to hold him, but a second later, he wants to shove him away. He wants to go, but he can’t imagine leaving.

As much as it sucks, Kurt can’t imagine living without him.

He would prefer to go back to being shamelessly and hopelessly in love with him. Hating him has become a crutch. But it’s enough to get him through. Regardless of that fact, which should tie up the loose ends, mend the hurts and cool the hate, it doesn’t, because Kurt can’t find a way to forgive him.

A well-meaning Facebook friend had told Kurt over Messenger that the problem was Kurt’s pride had been hurt by Sebastian cheating. Push the pride aside and get over it. Ultimately, the marriage is more important. Then he said something about Kurt putting on his “big boy” pants, mentioned God, and quoted the Bible.

A minute later, Kurt blocked him.

That’s another blessing of moving - leaving behind the get over it already crowd. He hates them more than the forever sorry folks. The people who tell him to move on, to get over it, to put it behind him, don’t really care about him. They want him to stop complaining, as if they’re obligated to follow him on social media, and that puts the burden on him, in turn, to make them feel comfortable.

Maybe some of them do care, but not enough to put themselves in his shoes and understand that it’s just not that easy. Being on the outside of the swamp and looking in at a man who’s drowning, yelling at him to grab a branch and pull himself free, is different than being the man stuck hip-deep in mud that feels like cement and losing a fight that’s beyond his control.

Sometimes, as a matter of self-preservation, you simply give up.

Kurt doesn’t know who Sebastian slept with. He has his suspicions, but he doesn’t know for sure, and Sebastian won’t confirm. He says it’s because he wants to put it behind him, forget it ever happened, and that infuriates Kurt. If sleeping with another man was something Sebastian would need to put behind him, why even do it? Or (and Kurt hates himself for thinking like this), if Sebastian didn’t want Kurt to dwell on it, why not take steps to ensure that Kurt wouldn’t find out? Sebastian, of all people, should have known that this would eat Kurt up inside. It’s the kind of thing he’d never let go of. Yes, Kurt would be devastated if he discovered the cheating and the cover-up years after the fact, but he’d be in a better place to mourn his marriage apart from mourning his daughter.

What Sebastian did was selfish on so many levels.

Kurt knows that sex isn’t love, but he can't help wondering – was there a moment in the middle of all of it, caught up in the kissing and the fucking, where it felt like love?

Kurt met Sebastian in high school. Kurt wasn’t just a virgin back then. Oh, no. He had created his own category of virgin for which he could have had a cape and costume custom made – Captain Super Prude. Sex was a taboo topic for him, so much so that his high school’s chastity club hated him. 

Apparently, he set the bar too high, made them look loose in comparison. 

As much as he had fantasized about finding a special someone who would sweep him off his feet, gently usher him into manhood by making soulful but passionate love to him, he preferred not to think about it too often or too in-depth. The "talk” between him and his father was a mortifying experience.

There were pamphlets involved. 

He still has some of them.

When it came to finding a boyfriend, Sebastian wasn’t what Kurt had planned on at all. Where Kurt was attracted to debonair, old-school, gentlemanly types a few years older than himself, Sebastian was crass, rude, explicit, and a year younger. On top of that, he was (to coin a phrase stolen from one of Kurt’s best friends, Quinn) the biggest French whore of them all. Sebastian didn’t care for romance and he didn’t attach emotions to sex, but he definitely had a way of making men fall in love with him. Kurt Hummel and Sebastian Smythe were the two people in the world least likely to fall in love with one another. But according to Sebastian, he fell in love with Kurt long before Kurt fell in love with him.

Sebastian claimed that Kurt was the first man he had ever fallen in love with, and at first sight, no less.

He whispered those words in Kurt’s ear the first time they made love.

He said those exact words during his toast at their wedding.

He wrote them in every birthday, Christmas, and anniversary card he ever gave to Kurt.

He said them over Grace’s crib the night they brought her home.

“Look at this little thing, Kurt,” Sebastian had sighed, reaching out to stroke Grace’s cheek. “Our daughter. Is it ridiculous that I’ve only known her for two days and I’m already in love with her?

“Technically, nine months and two days. But, no. It’s not ridiculous.”

“I never thought I could fall so fast in love with another human being before I met you.”

“Really?” 

“A-ha.” Sebastian smiled when Grace yawned, her whole mouth moving in a complete circle before she settled down again. “I fell in love with you the second I laid eyes on you. And then, well, it was all over for me.”

Those words, the memory of that happiness, breaks Kurt’s heart. Could it be possible that, after close to twenty years of marriage, after reciting those words so many times, they didn’t mean anything anymore? Had Sebastian found someone else he could fall in love with?

Kurt has asked, but Sebastian won’t answer that question. He says it’s insulting.

Whatever the answer, he probably thinks he’s doing his husband a kindness. What he’s really doing is prolonging the torture, not giving Kurt the information he needs to make a decision that he can stand behind. Every time Kurt looks at his husband, he sees touches on his skin that don’t belong to him, kisses on his lips that he didn’t put there.

Kurt doesn’t know how to make himself see past them.

Instead, he looks away.

The second Kurt feels sunlight on his face, he’s out of bed. He grabs his messenger bag and pads down the hall to his studio before Sebastian can stir.

The room looks different with blurry morning sunlight bleeding through the windows. Kurt didn’t put black-out curtains up, and the sheer curtains that came with the house let fingers of light poke through, bouncing off the wallpaper and brightening the floor. 

Yikes.

Kurt examines the floor now that he sees it clearly. It’s a mess - the wood warped as if someone had paced it incessantly. It had been varnished at one time. Spots of resin dot the boards like oily puddles. The wood itself (some variety of walnut, Kurt suspects) has blackened to a morbid pitch with age. It sucks up the light and gives little back.

“Oh, yeah,” Kurt murmurs, pressing around the brittle edge of one spot with his toe, watching it crackle into shards. “This has to be completely redone.”

He gets stuck on the idea that this room could have been his daughter’s if she were still alive. He and Sebastian had talked about raising Grace in a suburban environment, and as much as he regrets not giving her a house with a yard and room to grow, Kurt leaned heavily on the side of staying in the city. Some of his motives were selfish. He loved Manhattan. It had been his lifelong dream to end up there. He wanted his daughter to grow up with all of the things he didn’t – culture, diversity, theaters and libraries and museums a train ride away. He didn’t want her raised around the closed, narrow minds of small-town folk. He wanted her to be an independent thinker – liberated, rational, intelligent. But he also wanted her to be compassionate and kind. He wanted her to know the world, its wonders and its failings, the way it truly was, not the way it looked on a movie screen, and long to change it for the better. They participated in fundraisers, gathered donations for the homeless, and volunteered in soup kitchens.

Grace was a pure light, a driving force that, at her age, Kurt didn’t get the chance to be.

So in honor of her, he wants his workroom to be bright and colorful - a mixture of his vintage aesthetic and her fun-loving personality. He’ll paint the walls her favorite colors, put homages to her in the details, choose the furnishings she would have preferred.

Since this will be the room he spends most of his time in, he wants it to be everything about his daughter that he adored.

He opens his bag and pulls out his phone, checking the time. 6:08. The movers are supposed to arrive between eight a.m. and ten. But movers, electricians, plumbers, and cable guys never arrive on time. He fishes out his sketchbook, sits on the floor, and gets to work jotting down a layout. First things first, he decides where his drafting table will go, where he’ll store his bolts, where he’ll put his sewing machine, a spot for a work chair, marking places here and there for personal touches like his mother’s vanity, his first-ever dress form, a few of his awards...

And photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.

He didn’t keep photographs in his studio at Vogue. He had an obsession with keeping his private life private, which he doesn’t apologize for. Since he met clients there, he liked to keep that space impersonal. Nothing to get in the way, spark a conversation that might derail the job at hand. 

Unlike Sebastian, who hung candids galore. He stuffed the most Godawful photographs from their high school and college years into collage frames and nailed them to every wall of his office, squeezing things like his degrees and diplomas into far corners so that those pictures could be prominently displayed. He said that people knew the Smythes by name and reputation. If anyone wanted to see his credentials, they could Google them. But when people walked into his office, he wanted them to know that first and foremost, he was a family man.

Sebastian knew from childhood that he would become a lawyer. He never dreamed he would be a father. 

Or a husband.

Those were the two accomplishments he seemed the proudest of.

Kurt regrets not having more pictures of Grace hanging on his studio walls, her smiling face to look at every hour of every day, watching his meetings, overseeing his layouts. She was his good-luck charm, his missing puzzle piece. She deserved a place of honor.

Now, he’ll give her one.

His stomach growls as he works. A smell from somewhere tickles his nose, and he groans. Just a few more seconds of sketching on the hard ground, and he’ll grab a bite to eat… maybe. With his ass numb, he doesn’t see a reason to get up, and bedsides, he’s on a roll. Car doors closing and constant banging echo in, and he winces, his head throbbing from lack of sleep. Dammit! If it would just stop till he finishes! It’s hard enough to concentrate as is! He hopes this is a one-time-only thing. He’d hate to wake up to that cacophony every morning. If he ever decides to go outside and meet the neighbors, he’ll have to find a polite way of asking them not to do whatever that is before he has his morning coffee.

Of course, soundproofing is also an option.

“Kurt? Kurt, are you… ?”

Kurt shifts his legs underneath him. He lifts a hand to massage his shoulders. That mattress must have killed his back. His arms ache something fierce. Sitting on this floor doesn’t help, the uneven boards digging into his legs, but it’s not an impetus for him to stop.

Just one more minute.

One more minute of sketching out this room, and he’ll join the world. One more minute to get his thoughts straight. One more minute to brush aside the things that like to torture him. Forget that his mother died when he was eight, his stepbrother when he was eighteen. Forget that his father passed away three years ago and his daughter six months ago.

Not too long after, his husband cheated.

Five.

That’s how many things he had loved in this world more than himself.

Those are the things that he’d lost.

They were the things he needed to forget in order to make it through till the evening.

He’ll replace the insulation and the drywall, smother everything in a noise-proofing compound, then paint the walls in swirls of pink and gold. He’ll do the ceiling in shades of blue, indigo, and violet, like the sky at night, and cover it in crystals to represent stars the way Grace had wanted to do with her bedroom. Kurt had promised her he would the second everything was over, when they could risk her being around the debris and the fumes.

He has never broken a promise to Grace. He isn’t about to start.

He scribbles those notes in sloppy script in the margin of his paper, wipes tears with the back of his shaking hand. He tries to focus on specifics to bring himself back from the brink of a breakdown. He needs a good cry, but he doesn’t want the comforting that will go with it if Sebastian hears him. He can’t right now. Sebastian comforting Kurt turns into Kurt comforting him back, and Kurt only has the strength to handle one outburst.

“Kurt? Did you want to… ?”

Kurt waves a hand to shoo away the buzzing beside his ear, relieved when it doesn’t take much more than that.

In order to paint the walls, he’ll have to take the wallpaper down.

That brings to mind the corner of torn paper over by the window and the word written underneath.

Darling.

That corner offends him. Kurt keeps entertaining the thought that that word has nothing to do with Sebastian, that there is another layer of wallpaper underneath festooned with line art of flowers, along with quotes from various love poems sprinkled throughout, circa 1800s. But then that would make that one tear and that one word an incredible coincidence since darling is the pet name Sebastian has called Kurt since day one. When he started doing it, every time he said it, Kurt had an urge to sock him on the jaw.

He was a pain in the ass, even back then.

Did Sebastian actually think Kurt would fall for writing darling on the wall? After the things he said? After what he did?

Kurt’s hand trembles so badly, he smudges the ink on his page. He stops writing, takes a deep breath, and counts to ten. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the sun warming his face. It’s gone now when it was there a second ago, which is disconcerting, but he has to ignore that and calm down.

He has to relax.

He promised he’d give this marriage a chance, that he’d try to make this work. Sebastian, so far, has held up his part of the bargain. He’s given Kurt space. He’s listened to him vent uncontested. He’s let Kurt keep tabs on him – where he goes, when he’ll be back, with photo texts in between to prove that he is where he said he would be. Kurt has to give him the benefit of the doubt. If Sebastian extends an olive branch, Kurt should take it.

But did he want to?

“I didn’t hear you when you got up this morning.” Sebastian’s voice starts Kurt’s hand up again. He wants to look busy. He doesn’t want to be caught in a position where he has to give his husband his full attention.

He hasn’t forgotten everything yet.

“Well, you were dead to the world,” Kurt replies, distracted.

“I’m just saying, see? You won’t disturb me. You don’t need to put a bed in here.”

Kurt bobs his head back and forth, adding a place in his layout for a foldout out of spite. “We’ll see. It’s only been the one day.”

“That’s true.” The way Sebastian says it, it sounds like a challenge. A tired challenge. Like Sebastian knows he’s already lost. “So, you like the room?”

“Yeah. I think I do.”

“And what about the rest of the house?”

He doesn’t know why Sebastian sounds like he’s asking. It’s a done deal. They both agreed on a new house. Sebastian found one he thought Kurt would like and bought it. What? Are they going to back out now and magically move somewhere else?

Will moving around from house to house solve what’s wrong between them?

“It’s fine, I guess. I don’t know. I think it’s hard for me to visualize without taking the grand tour. I’ll be able to tell better when I get started decorating.”

“Are you gonna hire that guru guy to help you with the yin and yang stuff?” Sebastian jokes cautiously. “That Kung Fu guy… what’s his name… ?” Sebastian snaps his fingers as if he’s seriously trying to remember.

“He’s a Feng shui practitioner, and his name is Carl.”

“His name's Carl?” Sebastian laughs. “No no no, his name is not Carl. Carl is the name of a dentist. He’s not a guy you call to Wang Chung your house.”

“Feng shui,” Kurt corrects again. “I hired him to help me create balance in our home.” He chuckles despite the fact he doesn’t want to find Sebastian funny. He doesn’t want Sebastian to affect him. But he’s right. The man’s name irked Kurt, too, when Isabelle referred him. “Ridiculous name or not, he seemed like a knowledgeable guy.”

“Do you think that Shaolin stuff could work here?”

Kurt pauses to give the matter some thought, and that kills the moment. The levity becomes saturated by the pain hanging in the room, and Kurt coils further into his sketch.

“That remains to be seen. But I think I’m going to try doing it for myself this time. Of course, the overall effect is going to be completely thrown to heck when you hire whoever never to decorate your office.” Kurt throws a derisive scowl over his shoulder. It misses its mark when Kurt won’t look Sebastian in the eyes.

Sebastian swallows Kurt’s scowl without thinking of a comeback. They’ve had that argument before when Kurt redecorated their penthouse. Kurt felt the need to redecorate whenever something big happened in their lives, but Sebastian’s office was off-limits, so it stayed the same. Kurt tried to find one or two things to put into his design scheme that would bring a theme from Sebastian’s office out so that the penthouse would blend, but whatever the thing he chose was – a print, a vase, an ottoman, or a coffee table – it stuck out like a sore thumb, until Kurt tried less and less.

“Can’t fight City Hall,” he’d say, returning to the business of finishing the rest of the space. Things changed around them, and yet, in Sebastian’s carefully curated world, life stood still. The last time Kurt redecorated was before Grace was born. Nothing in the penthouse matched Sebastian’s office after that.

“I want you to do it.”

Kurt stops scribbling. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

Kurt almost looks back to see if Sebastian is serious. He stares at the paper in front of him, the surface more ink than white. “Are you… are you sure? You always said that we need our separate spaces.”

“That’s only because you’re a little heavy-handed with the pastels. I trust you. Just don’t go making it all shabby chic.”

Kurt is speechless. This is the opportunity he has been waiting for their entire marriage – to decorate Sebastian’s office. Once upon a time, he saw it as the ultimate gesture of trust.

Back when he was naïve and fairly stupid.

“Don’t worry. I won’t.” Kurt debates standing up and giving Sebastian a hug or a handshake. This seems like a time that would warrant it. But when he rolls an inch to his knees, his entire body screams with pain. God, he feels old. How can he be this stiff after just half an hour?

Kurt returns to his planning. Even though he doesn’t feel prepared to leave his sanctuary, he fixes on that solid mask he’s been wearing for weeks around Sebastian. Just one more minute. One more minute, and he’ll go downstairs. He thinks he says it out loud. He expects Sebastian to go back to their room and get ready for the day, but he stays in place like a statue, watching Kurt draw, huddled over his sketchbook with his back turned to him and the door.

Kurt waits to hear the sound of footsteps retreat the way they came, but they don’t. His pencil stops above a square drawn in the corner meant to represent his stereo. He can’t continue his drawing with his husband watching, so he bites the bullet.

“Was there something else you needed?” he asks.

“They’ve… uh… got the bed in,” Sebastian says. “And the TV.”

Kurt scrunches his nose and lifts his head. What does he mean? The bed and the TV are on the moving truck. Kurt looks at his phone, resting on the floor by his knee.

“What are you talking about?” Kurt scoffs. “The movers haven’t even arrived yet. It’s only 7:15.”

“That’s right.” Sebastian speaks slowly, the way he does when he’s explaining something to Kurt that he thinks Kurt might explode over. He leans forward like he wants to come in but doesn’t without an invitation. “It is 7:15. In the evening.”

Kurt's head snaps up, eyes rolling because Sebastian is crazy.

There’s no way.

He's ready to object, but with his gaze away from his page, he notices something different about the light in the room. Instead of a soft, diffused blue, it has become a thicker yellow. Shadows stretch across the floor that weren’t there before. The room is warmer than he remembers, and the skin of his left shin, folded over his right, feels hot and irritated, like he might have gotten a sunburn.

“Evening?” Kurt shakes his head. “How can it… ? But… why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come get me?”

“I tried. I told you when the movers arrived. I asked you what you wanted for lunch. I brought you the portable heater and put a lamp in here when it started to get dark.”

Kurt looks around. In the emptiness of the room, they’re easy to see - a plug-in heater behind him, and, in the corner of the room to the left of the door, standing straight and tall like a structural support beam, a brass lamp without a shade, filling the room with artificial light.

The first two pieces of furniture in his new studio, and Sebastian put them there.

Kurt doesn’t want them. He’d rather be cold and alone in the dark.

“We don’t have WiFi or cable yet, but I set up the Blu-ray player,” Sebastian continues. “I thought I could go get some take-out, and we could have a picnic dinner on the bed. Maybe watch a movie?”

Kurt does a 180 on his sore ass and looks at his husband (which is to say he looks at a spot over Sebastian’s head) with a mildly confused expression. He’s not really thinking about the bed or the movie or dinner at all. Even though he was hungry earlier, apparently hours earlier, he’s not hungry now. He couldn’t be less hungry. His desire to eat simply evaporated. It's been waning for weeks. Sometimes he forgets to eat until Sebastian sticks a sandwich in his face. Sebastian has become devoted to keeping Kurt's stomach full. He knows better than to comment on his weight loss, but he keeps a stock of temptable foods on hand.

He’s keeping Kurt on life support.

Sebastian stuck a spear into the heart of what they had together. Now he’s keeping Kurt alive to help him fix it.

Kurt hates that he didn’t see it that way until just now.

“Kurt? Please?”

Here’s the olive branch, Kurt thinks. He has to decide whether he’s going to take it or toss it aside.

He had promised Sebastian he’d try, and Kurt has never broken a promise to Sebastian.

No matter how much he hurts, he’s not going to start tonight.

His father always said that a man is only as good as his word.

Kurt closes his sketchbook. “Alright. I’m coming.” He tries to unfold his legs, but his knees lock up on him, and he rushes to massage the beginnings of a cramp. Sebastian looks like he’s about to spring in and help, but Kurt puts up a hand. “I’ll be a minute.”

Nodding, Sebastian takes a step back. Even with that rejection, he looks happier, more hopeful. He takes his phone out of his pocket and leaves the room. The grateful smile on his lips should fill Kurt with warmth. It used to.

But it doesn’t.

After a meal of Szechuan from a questionable establishment (not questionably clean, just questionably Chinese) and The Devil Wears Prada (a movie Sebastian swore up and down he’d never watch again), Sebastian falls asleep with his head on Kurt’s chest. And Kurt lets him, even if he himself barely gets a minute of peace.

[elminx]

Garden Adventures, Early May 2022

My garden continues to grow and change daily. All of my bulbs have passed (I need to put in tulips this fall as I now know that they are good for eating) so it is up to the ground cover to hold the flower line until my later spring blossoms keep up.

Last year we planted some creeping phlox since we're both obsessed with how it looks at one of the local art spaces and its native to our area. There are four color varietals but this hot pink one bloomed first. The other three are right behind it though - I think that they will have blossoms by the end of today now that the sun is out again.

When we moved in, there wasn't Ground Ivy (aka Creeping Charlie) in the garden - it must have snuck in with one of the many plants that our friends donated to our cause. This is what has crept the farthest across the ground of the garden so far but that's great because it is what our early bees have been visiting (as opposed to the dandies like everybody always says).

My late spring bloomers are growing fast though! I think that we may get a lupin bloom this year - they are really starting to look like a real plant. (And look glorious full of raindrops, too.)

And False Indigo! I am so excited. We planted this two years ago from a sproutling and it has been such a flimsy little thing for so long. I think this year we may see what they are really about. I look forward to making some ink from its blossoms.

Also in its third year, my Sea Holly has finally gotten a good hold on the garden. We knew that they would - they were one of our sproutlings (along with the false indigo) that we bought specifically because it is a pollinator plant indigenous to this area. This, along with its sibling Rattlesnake Master, are what brought all of the bees to the yard last Summer.

Finally, sweet yarrow. This little plant didn't have a good transplant last summer and we were a bit worried but it's coming back nice and strong. I can't wait to get to know it better as it blooms this season.

There's a ton of work to be done as there always is at this time of the year. All of the basement plants will be able to go into the ground in the next week (we've had some later frosts so we're eying the weather pretty closely this year) and, as you can see in the photos, we need a good weeding...as always.

[bethestaryouareradio]

Dig and Divide

“There are no happier folks than plant lovers, and none more generous than those who garden.” Ernest Wilson

Many years ago, I was considering adopting two miniature ponies. When I visited the ranch where they were living there was a small pond surrounded by a flush of gorgeous pink blooms that I had never seen before. When I asked the property owner what they were, she told me they were Naked Ladies, a bulb that boasted bright green spear-like foliage in the winter. When the foliage died at the end of spring, it was necessary to remove the brown leaves, leaving the turtle- shaped bulbs slightly protruding from the ground. Indicating that her Naked Ladies needed dividing, she dug up a bulb, instructing me to plant it in the sun “anywhere”, irrespective of soil condition.  “Wait for next summer’s surprise,” she said. I followed her directions, and that one bulb has evolved into many hundreds that blanket my hillside in a sea of pink perfection. Over the years I have divided, dug, and donated bulbs to many friends, offering them a summer surprise. Dig and divide! It makes me so happy!

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This time of year is a perfect time to divide a wide variety of bulbs and perennials. Besides increasing the number of plants in your garden, divisions can be given to other gardeners. Dividing overcrowded plants will give the remaining plants room to grow, maintaining their health, and rejuvenating your beds.  

Before you begin, water the area well a few days before digging. With a shovel or garden fork, dig a large area to remove a clump with the root ball, bulbs, or rhizomes intact. Once out of the ground, shake off the excess dirt and cut or pull apart individual crowns. For perennials, make sure you have roots and leaves. Bulbs and rhizomes need roots attached. To avoid having the roots dry out, plant immediately in another area at the same depth and water deeply. To conserve moisture, add mulch to these newly divided plants.

Overcrowded and overgrown plants will not bloom profusely, however, not all perennials or bulbs benefit from dividing. It’s best to leave Baptista, goatsbeard, lupine, milkweed, Russian sage, peony, red hot poker, bleeding heart, Hellebores, lavender, verbena, and oriental poppies alone.

Plants that need dividing every few years (two to five years) for peak performance include:

Agapanthus

Bearded and Dutch iris

Daylilies

Daffodils and Narcissus

Hosta

Lilies

Monarda

Phlox

Cymbidium orchids

Astilbe

Rudbeckia

Echinacea

Yarrow

Lamb’s Ear

Blanket Flower

Aster

Coreopsis

Naked Ladies

Agave

Thimbleberries

When dividing plants, follow these general guidelines:

Prepare the soil: Amend the new location with compost and choose a well-draining location for the divisions.

Water: Before dividing, water the plants thoroughly to ensure they are adequately hydrated.

Dig: Only divide healthy specimens. Be careful to not damage the roots or bulbs by gently digging up the plant clumps using a shovel or garden fork. Start at the drip line by creating a trench and work inwards.

Divide: The best time to divide is when flowering has halted. Once the clump is out of the ground, clip off the remaining stems at the base and trim any dead or dying leaves and roots.  Carefully separate plants into smaller divisions using your hands or a sharp knife. Make sure that each division has healthy roots.

Replant: Plant the divisions at the same depth as where the original plant was growing. Water deeply and mulch to conserve moisture.

Maintenance: To establish these new divisions, continue to water and watch. Remove weeds, leaf debris, and grassroots from beds and add a mulch of straw or wood chips. After the blooming season, spent blooms, as well as spent branches, can be removed carefully to keep your beds looking fresh and colorful. 

Bulbs should be divided when they are noticeably overcrowded. Bulbs produce offshoot bulbs and as they grow, flowers diminish although leaves flourish. This is when you know it’s time to divide. Let the foliage die back naturally as the plant needs that energy for next year’s growth. Although most plants can be divided in spring or fall, by dividing plants in September, the root systems are allowed to grow before winter arrives.  Sometimes when dividing in spring, the heat arrives before the roots have had a chance to develop. Ask for assistance from your nursery or gardening expert if you feel your plant has any specific needs. Follow best practices and you will be rewarded with a healthy garden with a plethora of flowers.

The agapanthus that I grow in my garden came from divisions. My favorite color is the midnight blue agapanthus followed by the pure white species. This season I will be dividing my agapanthus and my iris. The healthy green leaves of the iris will be left undisturbed until later this month, then I’ll trim the leaves to approximately six inches and start dividing.

If you are looking for easy-to-care desert-loving species that require minimal water, agave and prickly pear cacti may fit the bill. Agave is propagated by separating the pups from the mother plant and replanting in another location in sandy or gravel-filled soil.  If you enjoy eating the fruit of the prickly pear cacti, and admiring its pretty flowers, I suggest you plant one at the back of your garden so that the spines won’t interfere with your other gardening tasks. The fruit is delicious, the flowers are bold, yet the spines are ferocious. Make sure to wear heavy gloves when working with prickly pears. If you don’t want to cultivate a jungle of these cacti, make sure to pick up and discard any pads that fall on the ground. No need to divide a prickly pear…they spread on their own via dropped pads.

Gardening and sharing the bounty results in joy and happiness. I’ve been fascinated by the flocks of mourning doves that have decided to call my garden home. They do devour my mulberries, but they also eat enormous amounts of weed seeds. Each night I go to sleep to their calming cooing. These peaceful birds don’t seem to mind me photographing them, even in their nests. (See photo).

I didn’t adopt the adorable miniature ponies because the family decided to keep them (smart move), yet I am forever grateful for that single division of the Naked Lady as these belladonnas have brought such beauty to my landscape and the gardens of others. Divide, share, and be happy!

Mark Your Calendar:

On Saturday, September 30th, Be the Star You Are!® will host a booth sponsored by the Lamorinda Weekly Newspaperand  MBJessee Painting at the Pear and Wine Festival in Moraga. Stop by to plant seeds and pick up bags of free potpourri. More info at  https://www.bethestaryouare.org/events-1/2023-pear-and-wine-festival

Happy Gardening. Happy Growing. Divide and Delight!

For more gardening advice for all seasons, check out Growing with the Goddess Gardenerat https://www.CynthiaBrian.com/books. Raised in the vineyards of Napa County, Cynthia Brian is a New York Times best-selling author, actor, radio personality, speaker, media and writing coach as well as the Founder and Executive Director of Be the Star You Are!® 501 c3. Tune into Cynthia’s StarStyle® Radio Broadcast at www.StarStyleRadio.com. 

Her newest children’s picture book, Family Forever, from the series, Stella Bella’s Barnyard Adventures is available now at https://www.CynthiaBrian.com/online-store. 

Hire Cynthia for writing projects, garden consults, and inspirational lectures. Cynthia@GoddessGardener.com  

Read Lamorinda Weekly: https://www.lamorindaweekly.com/archive/issue1714/Digging-Deep-with-Goddess-Gardener-Cynthia-Brian-Divide-and-delight.html

©2023 Cynthia Brian. Photos and Text, All Rights Reserved.Subscribe

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[strongbrew-hamstery]

Do you remember momma #Keely from the #SquishBabies that our friend @sooperdoopers rescued? It's been a while now and all the pups are flourishing in their new homes. Momma Keely, the 89g super hamster mum who managed to raise 5 little babies despite being given pretty much no food (remember this was her second INTENTIONAL litter), is now living a life of luxury. Due to the situation she came from I won't give more details other than she has a new name, a new amazing family, and she is thriving.

This video in particular makes me laugh so hard. Keely gives us such a good lesson in how to appropriately stretch 😂💗. She was a rockstar momma but she is perhaps not the brightest bulb but no matter. She is a total gem and deserves the world for all she has gone through. She's also gained almost 100g now and is 185g!

Keely's situation makes me sad though. So many people take breeding into their own hands simply because it seems easy. The person who bred Keely did so to make money by selling her pups. I cannot fathom this. As someone who puts the best care possible forward for my hamsters and their offspring, short changing things BY NOT FEEDING THEM is unconscionable. It is inhumane. It is cruel.

If you're making money breeding animals you're doing something wrong. If your goal for breeding is making money, you will shortchange their care and compromise their quality of life. Breeders breed to improve the health, longevity, temperament and health of these animals. We have enough unwanted and potentially unhealthy animals needing homes. Don't create more.

If Keely's story touched you, I encourage you to consider following and donating to some of our favourite local and international rescues:

- @tinypawsrescue

- @allcreaturesto

- @munchiesplaceforhomelesspets

- @tinytracksrescue

- @sycamorerescue

- @ohana_hamster_rescue

- @tinyheartscritterrescue

- @raticalrodentrescue_

Thank you to these amazing people for being selfless, phenomenal advocates for hamsters and other Critters. I so very much appreciate the work you do.

[anysquared]

Dear Friends of AnySquared,

A very belated Happy New Year! February 2022 will be AnySquared’s 12th Anniversary, an excellent time to celebrate everything we have accomplished in the past year and get excited about everything coming up this year. We won the Artist-Run Chicago Grant from Hyde Park Arts Center! We received an $8,000 grant in mid 2021. The grant sustained AnySquared, supported our events this year, and helped purchase items that we needed to replace or add to our arsenal of tools and materials to create events, murals, etc. For the first time, we were also able to give artists stipends.

In addition to using the money for supplies and support, we filed paperwork to become a 501c3 NonProfit organization! Now that we are a 501c3, we can create new sustainable platforms of support for Chicago artists and generate inspirational and fun programming that allows artists a chance to leverage their art to organize for the greater good.

Click here If you would like to support the overall work of AnySquared and want to make a tax-deductible donation

_____ Highlights from the past year

Since Dec 2020, we have hosted nearly 30 AnySquared Spotlight art talks online. Artists took centerstage with our talks that featured those of all experiences first weekly and then monthly after we went to in-person Studio Days in the spring. Thanks to Lily BE's steadfast collaboration since December, we are grateful to have it streamed on Hairpin Arts Center's Facebook Live. See our fantastic lineup of videos on here >

In February & March, we streamed our Life in Progress Video Series, wrapping up our LIP 2020 Arts Festival programming that was interrupted and canceled in March 2020. The series showcased work that expresses definitions and critiques of "progress." See our three video programs here >

Beginning in mid-April, after a winter and early spring hiatus, we resumed in person Weekly Studio Days at AnySquared with safety measures. Masks on! Make Art on Wednesdays!

In June, AnySquared was invited by Renegades of Funk to paint on Project Congress mural walls. Check out all the murals organized by ROF wrapping around the exterior walls of the Congress Theater at 2135 N. Milwaukee, Chicago.

In July, we collaborated on Art in the Park with Unity Park. The lead organizer of the event was AnySquared's Helen Sanchez-Cortes. We helped organize the events of the day, provided volunteers, and created and completed the "Taking Care of Each Other" community banner mural (drawn by Helen) with the help of the broader community. It was a beautiful day of art plus community.

In September & June, we hosted 2 Against Da Fence outdoor mini art festivals in collaboration with Renegades of Funk. These events were a celebration and cooperation of the communities around Project Logan. It included: art on the fence, sticker-making, painting on the wall, and art vending. We were also excited to open up the community mural wall for painting this time! June IG photos • September IG photos • September facebook album

In mid-October, AnySquared hosted the ART-OFF! at the Hairpin Art Center, featuring 30+ artists curated by Tattianna Howard and produced by AnySquared volunteers! The event included live painting, slaps/sticker-making, an interactive art wall, and many many artists! The ART-OFF was an amazing artmaking extravaganza, and it was exciting to see an exhibition created before our eyes! facebook album • Instagram video

In Late October, AnySquared was invited by Logan Square Neighborhood Association to be part of the Dia de Muertos / Day of the Dead installations at Comfort Station. The beautiful ofrenda was created by Cesar Luna, Helen Sanchez-Cortes, Alys Calvillo, and Josue Aldana with Bee Figueroa. See photo details of the alter.

In early December, we capped off the year with Renegades of Funk: the Ornament Tournament was a fun holiday event with, decorating bulbs while showcasing over 60 artists from around the city, including artists from AnySquared! IG photos 1 • IG photos 2 • IG photos 3

_____

Upcoming Programming & Projects

We are excited about future AnySquared community arts events and collaborative projects that provide mentoring opportunities, including:

Art. Swap.Meet! Feb 26, 2022

AnySquared Spotlight Art Talks

Exhibitions

Summer Outdoor Community Arts Events

Community Mural Projects

AnySquared Online Store

2021 was another year that was not easy for any of us, but we are grateful that we could move forward despite COVID setbacks. We remained flexible and ready to pivot when needed. With your help, we can continue making good things happen that support our work and mission. Your donation will help fund our future work as well as supplies and artists' stipends that make our events and projects happen. Please make your tax-deductible donations payable to AnySquared, PayPal: projects@anysquared.com, or donate on our website. Wishing you a safe and art-filled year, Tracy Kostenbader, Anysquared

_____

Help Support AnySquared! Donate Via Square OR PayPal: projects@anysquared.com

If you prefer to mail a check: AnySquared, 2328 N. Milwaukee, 2nd floor, Chicago, IL 60647

____

[alarawriting]

Inktober 2020 #3: Bulky

The entity scowled, tapping his (its? Their?) foot impatiently. “I told you, you get to bring one thing.”

Sara smiled brightly at him. “This is one thing. My garden.”

Ganymede looked down at her, his expression even more supercilious than usual. “Do you honestly think I’m going to allow an entire garden as one thing?”

Sara sat down on the tree stump. Part of her still couldn’t believe she’d lost the house, that all of this – the tree stump her father had cut down to prevent the wind from knocking it onto the house, the tire swing he’d put up for her, Mom’s rose trellises all around the house and the herb patch she’d had Sara weeding and tending from the age of 5, the screened-in porch, the attic bedroom – all would be gone in a matter of weeks. The bank would take it, and sell it to someone who would probably destroy everything her parents had built to make the place special and unique, and she would never see any of this ever again.

She’d thought Ganymede’s offer would allow her to take at least a part of her home with her, but he was balking.

“When you think about it, can we describe anything as just one thing?” she asked. “Everything we have is made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of quarks. We’re all a multiplicity. We all have legions contained within us. So how is a garden not ‘one thing’ but, say, if I wanted to bring a bicycle, that would be ‘one thing’ even though it’s made of so many things?”

Ganymede’s expression went from deeply irritated to reluctantly amused, and he chuckled. “A nice argument, but no. Your garden’s too bulky. It can neither transport you, nor can it be carried around with you.”

“You never said there was a weight limit.”

“It’s not a weight limit. If you wanted to bring a car, you could. I don’t advise it, but you could.”

“Are any of the others bringing a car?” Sara asked.

Now Ganymede laughed. “Tsk, tsk. I told you I wouldn’t tell you anything about what the others are choosing.”

Ganymede – who appeared to be a tall, slender man with pale skin and curly green hair, like he was some kind of comic book character, and who claimed to be a very bored alien with godlike powers who was taking human form so that he could interact with Sara – had showed up at the café Sara waitressed at, three weeks ago, and was apparently very impressed with Sara’s ability to put up with entitled idiots and even get them to calm down and do what they were supposed to do. He’d ordered cherry pie and asked her if she’d ever wanted to travel into the past, and when Sara had pointed out that in the past, she would have had her rights severely curtailed because she was a woman, he’d asked, what if she could bring one thing from this time, one thing in her possession?

Sara’s master’s degree in the history of plant cultivation in Europe and how it impacted society had never done her a damn bit of good. It had resulted in crushing student loans that a job as a waitress couldn’t keep up with and still pay the mortgage her parents had left to her when they’d died in a car accident, and it hadn’t resulted in a good-paying job in academia like she’d expected when she started college. She was about to lose her parents’ home, the only place she’d ever considered home in her life. And before her boyfriend had dumped her last month, he’d turned most of their friends against her with lies and distortions.

Sara didn’t want to die, but she had lately been seriously reconsidering how badly she actually wanted to live.

So she’d agreed to Ganymede’s offer. Go back to the pre-Renaissance medieval era – or something very much like it – with one thing brought from the future. He’d explained that she wouldn’t actually be going to her own world’s past, so she couldn’t create a paradox by changing the future – she could freely do whatever she wanted without worrying about making her grandparents never born or something. He’d also told her that he was making the same offer to several other people, but that she wouldn’t necessarily get to meet them unless they happened to run into each other by chance in the past-world. And she had a month to get the thing she wanted to bring to the past.

Sara had spent the last three weeks digging up her garden and potting everything in ceramic pots, figuring ceramic wouldn’t be an issue in the past like plastic would be. Sadly, she’d had to abandon the apple trees, the peach tree and the grapevines – she couldn’t exactly dig out trees and pot them – but she’d gotten everything else. The potatoes had been a challenge – exposing potatoes to light while they were growing would make them inedible, so she’d had to dig them out on a cloudy night with no moon, more or less digging by feel instead of sight. Carrots, potatoes and onions had needed very large, deep pots. She’d wound her zucchini around a tomato cage in the large pot she’d put it in. The small fruit bushes – the blueberry bush, the raspberry bush – were already in pots. She had her peppers, her tomatoes, her tiny soybean bush, her arugula.

And now, after she’d done so much work to pot everything, Ganymede was telling her she couldn’t bring it?

“Look, if I had a caravan wagon and a horse, I could definitely carry all of this.”

“But you can’t bring a caravan wagon and a horse back with you.”

“No, but I could get one there.”

Ganymede chuckled. “You think I’m sending you with money? You get period-acceptable clothes, the ability to speak the language, immunity to all the local diseases, and the thing that you bring with you, and that’s it. If you appear in the middle of a field, or a town square, surrounded by potted plants, how are you going to bring them with you to whatever shelter you need to take?”

“They’re plants. If I have to leave them out in a field for a few days while I carry them all to wherever I end up going, nothing bad’s going to happen to them.”

“And what if you appear in the middle of the town square?”

“Then I prevail upon some good gentlemen to help me move them someplace safe.”

A deep sigh escaped Ganymede. “I’m almost tempted to let you. Just to let you find out first hand how much your plans are not likely to work. But no. An entire garden is too bulky, and I’m quite certain that most humans would define a garden as a collection of things, not one thing.”

“Come on! I did a lot of work to put all these plants into pots! Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Sadly, no.” Ganymede walked around the garden of pots, randomly touching most of the plants. “You did do quite a lot of work. I tell you what, I feel bad for you. Pick something else to bring and I’ll make sure all your plants get donated to people who like to grow things and are good at it.”

“And aren’t racists,” Sara insisted.

“It’s interesting that that matters to you; aren’t you part of the dominant ethnic group in this nation? Racism doesn’t affect you, generally speaking.”

It was true that Sara was white, and therefore, racism rarely directly affected her, but she had an answer for that. “Racist people in this country have been brainwashed into believing that climate change is a hoax, that gay and transgender people are some kind of terrible threat, and that it’s more important to make sure the government doesn’t tax rich people than to put any accountability on big corporations. Everything bad that we can’t get solved in this country and we can’t even begin to start solving it, because people won’t let us… it’s because rich people have figured out how to use racism to brainwash white people into voting against their own interests.”

“Oh, I understand.” Ganymede grinned broadly. “You’re a hippie, aren’t you?”

“Uh… not really? That was sort of my parents’ generation? I think of myself more as solarpunk. But if what you’re trying to get at is that I’m someone who cares about the environment and wants people to be happy and healthy and to care about each other, then yeah.”

“All right, very well. I’ll hand them over to people whose political beliefs generally track with yours, who are good with plants, and who have space to grow them. Now, pick something else.”

“A big sack that I can carry on my back, maybe 50 pounds, and I get to fill it with seeds and bulbs and anything else plant-related that I can fit in the sack.”

Ganymede raised his eyebrows. “You’re really dedicated to this bit, aren’t you?”

“I know how to use plants to change history. I don’t know how to change history with anything else – not in a way I might want to. I mean, I could bring a gun, but after I was out of ammo, what good would it do me? And also, I don’t like guns.”

“All right,” Ganymede said. “I’ll allow it. As long as you can carry the sack on your person, you can stuff as many seeds into it as you want.”

Sara smiled at him with her best customer service smile. “Thank you, I really appreciate that.”

“One more week,” he said, and vanished.

One more week and she’d leave all this behind. One more week and she wouldn’t have to worry about the foreclosure and impending eviction anymore, because she’d be in a whole other world.

[johngarfieldtribute]

Singer and songwriter, John Prine’s The Late John Garfield Blues song isn’t really about the actor. It’s a song originally included on the artist’s second release from 1972, “Diamonds in the Rough.”

My take is that Prine is describing that feeling you get when something chill is ending and you’re about to go into a less desirable set of circumstances. As Prine says, “life’s in-betweens.”

Give the original recording of the song a listen.

Prine re-recorded the song for his album “Souvenirs” released in 2000. Here’s that beautiful rendition.

John Prine wrote this about the song:

The Late John Garfield Blues notes

"What I was writing about was how late Sunday night going into Monday morning was always a weird period of time. Whether you were apprehensive about work or school, it was like the twilight zone. At first, the song was called "The Late Sunday, Early Monday Morning Blues." I finally decided to make it like the kind of movie that would be on TV at that hour, a John Garfield movie. It's not so much about him, the actor; I used this character to get into something else.

When Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge got together, they moved into this house on Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles. They had an acetate of the record, and when they played that song, the electricity went out in the house. The next day, they found out that John Garfield used to own the place. It's a good thing it wasn't a song about John Garfield, or he'd have been turning my lights out.”

Kristofferson and Prine chatting it up. Looks like it’s probably in the 1970s.

Kris Kristofferson does a cover of the song too. He’s pictured above with Rita Coolidge.

In an article about John Prine, by Gabe Meline, he recounts a slightly different version of the story, “Kristofferson told me that when he was living at Rita Coolidge’s place in Hollywood, he bought Prine’s latest album ‘Diamonds in the Rough’ one day and was playing it on the turntable. And it got to that song, and it kept stopping in that song! He said, What the hell’s wrong with this thing?”

“And we looked at the title, ‘The Late John Garfield Blues,’ and Rita said, ‘My God. This was John Garfield’s house!’ There we were in John Garfield’s old house, and the record stopped twice to call our attention to it.”

A mysterious happening for an even more mysterious tune. “As to what it’s about?” Kristofferson added. “God, I don’t know. But I love the song.”

God’s possible favorite songwriter is pictured below singing with Kristofferson.

And below sharing the stage with Bruce Springsteen who had strong feelings about Prine’s passing. Prine fought numerous health battles throughout his life, but he tragically couldn’t beat a coronavirus attack and died in Nashville on April 7, 2020. He was born on October 10, 1946, in Maywood, IL. He passed away at age 73 while hospitalized at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

“John Prine was a sweet and lovely man, and I was proud to count him as my friend,” Springsteen said during a Sirius broadcast shortly after Prine died, “He wrote music of towering compassion with an almost unheard of precision and creativity when it came to observing the fine details of ordinary lives. He was a writer of great humor, funny, with wry sensitivity. It has marked him as a complete original. His death just makes me angry. He was simply one of the best we had and we will miss him.”

This article from NPR recounts John Prine’s life and has links to some of his music.

Prine’s widow also shared this message:

Our beloved John died yesterday evening at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville TN. We have no words to describe the grief our family is experiencing at this time. John was the love of my life and adored by our sons Jody, Jack and Tommy, daughter in law Fanny, and by our grandchildren.

John contracted Covid-19 and in spite of the incredible skill and care of his medical team at Vanderbilt he could not overcome the damage this virus inflicted on his body.

I sat with John - who was deeply sedated- in the hours before he passed and will be forever grateful for that opportunity.

My dearest wish is that people of all ages take this virus seriously and follow guidelines set by the CDC. We send our condolences and love to the thousands of other American families who are grieving the loss of loved ones at this time - and to so many other families across the world.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the outpouring of love we have received from family, friends, and fans all over the world. John will be so missed but he will continue to comfort us with his words and music and the gifts of kindness, humor and love he left for all of us to share.

In lieu of flowers or gifts at this time we would ask that a donation be made to one of the following non profits:

thistlefarms.org

roomintheinn.org

nashvillerescuemission.org

The Late John Garfield Blues by John Prine

Black faces pressed against the glass

Where rain has pressed it's weight

Wind blown scarves in top down cars

All share one western trait

Sadness leaks through tear-stained cheeks

From winos to dime-store Jews

Probably don't know they give me

These late John Garfield blues

Midnight fell on Franklin Street

And the lamppost bulbs were broke

For the life of me, I could not see

But I heard a brand new joke

Two men were standing upon a bridge

One jumped and screamed you lose

And just left the odd man holding

Those late John Garfield blues

An old man sleeps with his conscience at night

Young kids sleep with their dreams

While the mentally ill sit perfectly still

And live through life's in-betweens

I'm going away to the last resort

In week or two real soon

Where the fish don't bite but once a night

By the cold light of the moon

The horses scream- the nightmares dream

And the dead men all wear shoes

'Cause everybody's dancin'

Those late John Garfield blues

[axultraplus]

50 Tips to starting your own business

These steps are what every entrepreneur must follow in order for his idea to be successful.

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Starting a business is not for the faint of heart. It is very stressful and demands practically all of your time and attention. On the other hand, it can also be a great personal and professional experience. Here are 50 tips to help you on your entrepreneurial adventure.

1. Discover your skills. Not everyone has what it takes to start a business, that does not mean that your idea is not brilliant, only that you may not have some vital personality characteristics to launch your company. Before investing time or resources, evaluate yourself and see if you have the typical skills of an entrepreneur.

2. Develop an idea. Don’t start a business just because something is hot or because you think marketing it will make you money. Develop a business concept that you are passionate about related to something in which you have some experience. Next, think of a product or service that you think will improve people’s lives.

3. Prove your credibility. Once you have an idea, discover how you can turn it into reality. Is the product something that people want or need? Can you make a profit selling it? Does it work?

4. Write a business plan. A solid business plan will guide you forward. You will also need it to present your idea to potential investors. It should include a mission statement, executive summary, company summary, product or service samples, description of your target market, financial projections, and cost of operations.

5. Identify your market. Even if you have detected some interest in your business, you need to do more homework. Evaluate the market so that you sell to the people who will surely make the purchase. Take a competitive evaluation.

6. Determine the costs. Do additional research and learn about standard costs within the industry. This will not only help you run the business more efficiently, but it will also be valuable information for investors.

7. Establish a budget. Once you determine how much money you will have to work with, find out how much you need to develop your product or service and create a marketing plan.

8. Find the right investors. You’re going to need some type of financing to get started, whether it’s from savings, credit cards, loans, venture capitalists, or donations. Find an investor who shares your passion, someone you think you can work with.

9. Listen to investors. Like it or not, they will have an opinion when it comes to your business. Listen to their advice and suggestions, but that doesn’t mean you have to do everything they tell you.

10. Have a great support system. You are going to invest a lot of time and resources in your new business adventure. Make sure your family agrees. They should be aware that this process will challenge them financially and emotionally.

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11. Determine the legal structure. Determine what is best for you: being the sole owner, having a partner, a limited liability company, an S corporation, a non-profit organization, or a cooperative.

12. Select your company name. Decide on a name that goes with your brand, then see if that’s available and if you can use it freely in your country and state.

13. Register the name of your business. If the name you want is available, register it as soon as possible in the corresponding offices.

14. Take advantage of resources at no cost. These can be social networks or even a person who offers you advice and experience to move your startup forward.

15. Buy insurance. Make sure you have the right insurance for your company. This can vary according to the type of business. If you work from home, make sure your insurance includes theft or damage to company assets as well as liability for damage related to it.

16. Fix the ledgers. Keep track of all the money that comes in and goes out of the business.

17. Choose the right location. Choose a location that suits the needs of your business, one that offers an opportunity for growth, the right level of competence, and proximity to suppliers. It must also be accessible to customers.

18. Don’t worry about an office. If you are not making a profit, do not be mortified by acquiring a space to work, you can do it from home.

19. The patent can wait. Patents can cost a lot of money. Pay this amount when you are sure you have enough clients to pay off the bills.

20. Be flexible. Odds are, your original idea will have to be modified. Being able to adapt and change something to offer the customer something they want will determine whether or not you will be successful.

21. Sare your ideas with friends and family. The people closest to you are the ones who will be the most honest with you about your idea. Feel free to seek their advice and suggestions.

22. Ignore the negatives. There is a big difference between constructive criticism and someone quickly saying that your business will fail. The best thing to do is ignore these people.

23. Don’t be angry. If your idea is rejected by clients or investors, don’t succumb to anger. Find out what they didn’t like, make adjustments, and come back to them once you’ve changed what they wanted.

24. Deliver the product or service quickly. Your business is a work in progress and if you launch a product or service quickly, you will be able to build a community of customers who can provide you with valuable feedback that will help you improve your offer. As the founder of LinkedIn says “If you are not ashamed of the first launch of your product, you made it known very late”.

25. Offer new products or services. If you already have clients make sure you take care of them by giving them new products or services.

26. Be patient. Always keep in mind that success will not happen overnight. It’s going to take you some time before you win anything.

27. Deliver more than they ask for at the beginning. Once you have a new client make sure you go the extra mile for at least the first month. You’ll have that customer hooked.

28. Post on your blog all the time. Don’t be ashamed to share your triumphs and struggles. Customers will enjoy your honesty.

29. Avoid fights with partners. If you have disagreements, fix the problems as soon as possible. Fighting can distract you from doing things right in business.

30. Don’t worry about losing a percentage of the company. An investor has acquired a share in your company. Recognize the fact that eventually at some point you will have to give up a portion of control of the business.

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31. Hire a copywriter. Unless you can write very well, hire someone to write the emails for the target customers. It will also help you with press releases and other things that will bring out company news.

32. Prepare for meetings. When preparing for your meeting with a client, read as much as you can about the industry, your competition, and that client’s company.

33. Make a meeting agenda. Have the targets you want to touch on hand. Mail that agenda to your colleagues before the meeting so they can prepare too. Make sure these goals are clear and understood by everyone.

34. Don’t be afraid of the competition. Do not speak ill of the competition when you are with clients or investors. There is no need to be pitied. In fact, talking this way may turn customers away from competitors who offer a product or service that you don’t. Remember, when the competition leaves, there will be a market for your business. Use that knowledge as inspiration to do things better than your rival.

35. Benefit from word of mouth. Nothing beats good word-of-mouth marketing. Let your friends, family, and influencers share what your product or service does.

36. Offer a customer experience. An experience includes sensory marketing. This means managing colors, lights, scents, and so on. Integrate all these sensations into your offer, in such a way that they conquer the senses of your consumers.

37. Network. Don’t be afraid to go out and show your face to the public, whether it’s at a conference or just hanging out with a friend on a Friday night.

38. Give impeccable customer service. Interacting with people is an important part of your job. Your business could win new customers because you made them feel important. For example, Zappos was not the first online store to sell shoes, but the company perfected its customer service and won over many buyers.

39. Make sure your website works. Potential customers want to know as much as possible about your business, so access to it should be quick

40. Don’t worry too much about your finances. Some of the best businesses were launched when the economic situation was not the best for the world, so don’t think twice and go for it!

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41. Make sure customers pay the bills. Make sure you receive payment for your product or service. Instead of being taken advantage of, set a certain time to make the payment. It also won’t hurt to accept credit cards or have the option of having them pay directly on your website.

42. Find the right employees. Hire the right people for the position. Even if it’s your business, you won’t be able to deal with everything, so you need qualified people to complete the job.

43. Assign responsibilities. Delegate achievable tasks to your work team.

44. Honesty is the best policy. If you have any employee issues, make sure they are resolved. Nobody likes talking behind their back.

45. Remember that opposites attract. Hire people with skills and personalities opposite to yours. They will challenge you and bring new things to your business.

46. ​​Say goodbye to your social life. You are going to spend a lot of time dedicated to your business. Even if you plan a night out with friends, you can leave early because a light bulb went out. The good thing is that these people will understand you.

47. Accept that you will be the last person to get paid. As CEO, you will be the last to receive a check, and that will be until you have the appropriate earnings.

48. Don’t expect success right away. Just because your business hasn’t made you a millionaire (yet) doesn’t mean your business is a failure. If you have received some kind of profit doing something that you are passionate about, it is a success story, right?

49. Accept when it’s time to retire. Failure is inevitable. If things aren’t working out and you��ve done all you can, put your pride aside and shut down. Something like this is not easy to accept but it is for the best.

50. Don’t just trust the advice of others. Although I offer to give you these tips, perhaps the most important is something I learned the hard way: Even if many people offer their help, realize that in the end, you are the owner of the business and the person responsible for its success or failure. of the same. If you know what worked, you will have the skills and knowledge to move your business forward.

[luv-surveys]

44

Do you wear a ring on your finger? no. Do you expect to be married in the next two years? no way. What is your favorite type of cookie? chocolate chip. Are you allergic to pollen? yes, my allergies have gotten worse over the past couple years unfortunately :( Do you have more upper or lower body strength? more lower. Do you like hot tubs? yes they’re fun! Do you know anyone who is battling cancer? not to my knowledge. Have you ever donated money to a charity? yes. What was the last movie you’ve seen in theaters? i believe it was the live action aladdin. Do you prefer Apple or Android? apple. Do you like the color lime green? yes, but not neon lime green. Do you like the Silent Hill movies? i’ve never seen them. What movie scared you the most out of any other movies? probably “house on haunted hill” or something like that. Tell me something you’ve been made fun of for in the past. i’ve been made fun of for my height. Do you support war? it depends. Have you ever wanted to be on American Idol? When was this? no. Do you like kissing lightly better than just making out? nah, i prefer making out. You get a text from someone saying that they want to hang out - who would you most like it to be from? it’d probably be my friend kylie. Do you attend school, college, or university? i attend college/university. Name 5 things you don’t believe in. 1) love at first sight, 2) soulmates, 3) polytheism, 4) reincarnation, 5) the existence of bigfoot. If you could have any friend that you’ve lost back, who would you pick? probably my friend eva. When was the last time you did something for the first time? i listened to a song for the first time about 30 minutes ago. Do you have blinds in your bedroom? not my bedroom at home, no. When was the last time you had an interview? How did it go? march, for a job. it went well, but covid happened and everything got messed up. What was the most damaging relationship (romantic or not) that you’ve ever been a part of? probably my friendship with a girl that bullied me in high school. Who was the last person you cut out of your life? Do you regret it? i cut my ex out, and i don’t regret it because he treats me poorly. Who is the most attractive person you know personally? personally, i think a girl i know from high school is the prettiest person i know. Do you remember the first time you truly enjoyed sex? Or have you always? i’ve never had sex LOL. Have you ever done anything sexual in a car? yes if making out counts. What do you wish you had been better prepared for? my college auditions. Do you know anyone with a semicolon tattoo? nope. Who knows you best, excluding romantic partners? my parents. The last news you got that shocked you, what was it, and was it good news or bad news? probably that somebody was in a relationship with somebody, which is good news ig. If you have pets, who normally puts food and water in their dish? my mom does unless she’s away; then i do. Do you organize the pictures on your computer into different folders or are they all just under “My Pictures”? they’re all unorganized. Do you think if someone is in a relationship, that it is acceptable to have sleepovers with other people of their preferred sex? yes, but as long as there are no feelings whatsoever. Would you shoot a gun if given the chance? If you’ve shot a gun before, how many different types of guns have you shot? i would NOT shoot a gun lol. Do you feel uncomfortable sharing things like artwork or poetry you’ve written? Is it because you don’t think it’s good enough to show off or because it’s too personal? yes, i don’t like showing it off because it’s probably not good enough. For those who have anxiety, has anyone ever told you that you just need to calm down and actually face your fears? Were you insulted or frustrated by this comment? yes and it was both insulting and frustrating. Do you have any siblings you absolutely despise? Why do you despise them? no, i love my siblings! Do knives scare you? Is it from watching scary movies? they make me unsettled, but not from scary movies, just anxiety. Say lyrics from the song currently playing? “no time to regret this, what we’ve done” If you HAD to get a piercing (not ears) what would you get? i’d probably get a nose piercing. How many closets does your house have?
 there’s seven closets, i think. What has been your most epic cooking failure?
 i made cookies and they didn’t work and melted all over the pan and oven lol. What was the last single item you spent over $100 on?
 i don’t think i’ve ever spent over $100 on a single item. Have you ever climbed a chain-link fence? no. What is your LEAST favorite Disney animated movie? i don’t like the older ones, like pinocchio. Who was the last person’s house you went to besides your own? the guy i’m seeing’s house. Do you enjoy the birds’ singing in the morning? yes it’s lovely! List these apple types from greatest to least greatest: red, yellow, green. I’d say red, green, yellow. On YouTube, who are two people you find hilarious? i love jennxpenn’s videos, as well as pewdiepie. If you had to live in a palace, what would be the color scheme? probably red and gold. Favorite dinosaur? i love pterodactyls! What is the best part of fall? the tastes and smells. Favorite style of hat? probably just baseball caps. How do you eat Oreos? i used to split them and eat them separately but now i eat them whole. Name the first vine that you can think of. i coulda dropped my croissant! Beyonce vs Rihanna? i prefer rihanna. What’s fake about you? Like extensions, fake nails, botox etc. nothing, tbh! Have you ever gotten into a Facebook fight? never. What are your favorite smells? i love smells like lemon and grapefruit. Do you shave your pits? yes. Do you know anyone who has been on life support, and survived? no. What light in your house was the last to have a bulb burn out? i’m not sure since i’m not home rn. Have you ever been in an abandoned house? no. What is your favorite phase of the moon? full! What season do you want to get married in? probably spring. Besides the USA, what is your favorite country? i’ve always liked japan! Would you rather go to Europe or Asia? europe. Would you rather go to Africa or Australia? africa. Would you rather go to Mexico or Canada? canada. Are there such things as stupid questions? yes. Did you get in trouble for cussing on accident when you were a kid? yes, but my parents didn’t hear, only my sister. What’s the highest you can count in a different language? like 100 in french. Where would you like to be buried? just a local cemetery near where i grew up :) Have you ever had yourself drawn in caricature? nope. Have you ever seen a ghost orb picture? yes! Do you think abortion should be illegal? no. How many keys are on your key-ring? two. What are some piercings you want? more ear piercings, but that’s it. Dogs or cats? Why? dogs, because they’re more loving and fun. Do any of your pets have strange habits? Explain? my dog likes to eat napkins. Have you ever told an extremely inappropriate joke? dark humor, yes. What is your favorite non-traditional fruit? i like passionfruit! What’s your favorite older film? i don’t watch a lot of older films!  Aliens or unicorns? unicorns. Where did you meet your current or last significant other? instagram. Would you ever get a face tattoo? no way. If you asked your mom to describe you, what do you think she’d say? she’d probably say i’m smart, caring, and hardworking. What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world? more love and understanding! What are you most grateful for? how good of a childhood i had. Who is the most interesting person you’ve ever met? i’ve met some people with great stories from their lives. When do you love yourself most? when i do something well haha. What would you most readily die for? my parents. What single word do you hate most? probably slurs like the n word. Who in life have you felt the strongest need to protect? whomever i’m dating at the time. What would you most like to be remembered for after you die? my friendship. What’s the biggest surprise you’ve ever had in bed? in bed? or in bed? if we’re just talking about in bed, waking up with my retainer under the sheets at the foot of my bed when it had been in my mouth when i fell asleep. What is the most sacred thing in your life? my religion. Who have you most feared in your life? probably my bullies. What was the quickest friendship you ever made? i’d say my roommate. What single word would you use to most accurately describe your parents? wise. What is the worst word anyone ever used to describe you? probably immature LMAO.

[bethestaryouareradio]

Thanksgiving, Psychological Pain, Planting Peace

Thanksgiving is a celebration of abundance, family, and friends. Giving gratitude is essential for happiness and we gather to express our thankfulness for everything we are and everything we have. How can we create an attitude of gratitude daily?

Pain is real and can be debilitating. When pain becomes chronic, pain is anticipated and may be psychologically induced. The way we think and respond to pain determines how we experience it.

Do you feel peaceful in a park or a garden? How can you plant peace? It is time to dig holes for spring-blooming bulbs and finish our autumn landscaping chores. Give thanks for nature and the bounty that it provides.

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